Perception, Mobility and the Affordances of Portable Computers: An Historical Epistemology of Mobile Computing

The interaction between humans and portable technologies, as a part of the broader problem of technology use in Human-Computer Interaction, has received considerable research attention and has been approached from diverse angles. The concept of affordance, drawn from ideas in the psychology of perception, is one of these angles. Unfortunately, most of these theories of perception which premise technology affordances are understood from biological or physiological sense-modalities in essentialist theories of perception, and from relativist theories of perception in which ‘seeing’ for example is reconstructed as ‘seeing as.’ In short, they are ahistorical. Moreover, in the context of mobile computing, existing conceptualizations of technology affordances have overlooked or ignored human mobility which is an essential aspect of mobile computing. In this paper, the affordances of portable computers are examined from an historical perspective. Based on an historical epistemology of perception, in which perception is a mode of human action that is endowed with goal-orientation and teleological consciousness, mobile computing is analyzed to tease out the dynamic affordances of portable computers in mobile activities. The model which emerges from these discussions contributes to the understanding of affordances of portable computers and also provides practical guidelines for the design and integration of portable technologies in mobile activities.