Tablet computers and technological practices within and beyond the laboratory

ed away from view by this fetishisation. Fuller argues that “[software’s] ostensive neutrality can be taken as its ideological layer, as deserving of critique as any such myth” (Fuller, 2008b: p.3). Indeed, in direct contradiction and critique of this perceived neutrality, it is not difficult to find academic work that describes and discusses the cultural values bound up in software. Fuller’s edited collection abounds with illustrations of this point. Montfort uses the example of a software practice called ‘naming obfuscation’ to argue that “everything about a programmer’s task is not automatic, value-neutral, and disconnected from the meanings of words in the world” (Montfort, 2008). While it is relatively easy to demonstrate the non-neutrality of technologies, the important work comes in understanding how neutrality operates, how it is used to justify certain practices and exclude others. I address this issue in each chapter, with particular focus in chapters four and six. Affordance Ambiguity A key concept that has informed research into human and technology interaction in many academic fields is the idea of ‘affordances’ (Gibson, 1986: chapter 8). Of particular interest is the way that affordances have been used as a materialist corrective to the social constructivist approaches in STS in general and SCOT in particular (see: Lievrouw, 2014