Reflections on Digital ‘Focal Things and Practices’ in the Wilderness
Bødker, Mads(Frederiksberg, 2017)
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Resume:
This position paper reflects on Borgmann’s notion of ‘focal things’ and its applicability in the discourse about interaction with technologies in nature. Using the example of a combined cooking burner and thermoelectric 5W smartphone charger (a BioLite cook stove), this position paper gives an example of how a mundance “device” turns focal once it is connected to a contextual infrastructure (the ‘wild’), and reflects on the applicability of the notion of focality. The guiding question is how the notion of ‘focal things and practices’ drawn from Borgmann might help us think about the (strained) relationship between digital technologies and the wilderness.