What Can Get Lost Within User Experience

Speaker: Robert Rosenberger, Professor of Philosophy in the Carter School of Public Policy, Georgia Tech

Sept. 4, 2025
12:00 p.m. Lunch; 12:30 p.m. talk starts
Location: Hodges Room, 3rd floor, Centergy One building in Technology Square

Abstract: People grow accustomed to technology usage. The devices we use every day become normal to us. However, it can be important to sometimes step back and unpack the sense of normalcy that gets attached to our technologies. Some ideas from the field of philosophy of technology can be useful for articulating the details of our relationships to our devices and inspecting these relationships for places where problems can pop up. Here in this talk, I introduce some concepts from a growing school of thought called “postphenomenology,” a practical perspective for describing the details of user experience, and one that has found wide interdisciplinary application. In particular, I focus on the potential for this perspective to help draw out how our relationships with technologies can at times capture, direct, or divert our attention in problematic ways. I instantiate these ideas in two lines of study, the problem of smartphones and driver distraction, and the problem of the hidden politics of public spaces.

Bio: Robert Rosenberger is a Professor of Philosophy in the Carter School of Public Policy here at Georgia Tech. He serves as the Coordinator of the IAC Graduate Certificate in Science & Technology Studies, and has just completed his term as President of the Society for Philosophy of Technology. His edited and co-edited books include Postphenomenological Investigations, Postphenomenology and Imaging, and The Critical Ihde. His monographs include Callous Objects: Designs Against the Homeless, and Distracted: A Philosophy of Cars and Phones which recently received The Dorothy Lee Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Culture from the Media Ecology Association.

----

IPaT: GVU Lunch Lecture Series