This Reading Review explores the paper Postcolonial Computing: A Lens on Design and Development by Irani, Vertesi, Dourish, Philip & Grinter (2010). This paper was suggested by Associate Professor Chris Lawrence from the University of Technology, Sydney. The insights and research from Irani et al. is used by Associate Professor Lawrence as a foundational framework for projects he is currently undertaking to conceptualise and establish the notion of digital land rights (Lawrence, Leong, Gay, Woods, & Wadley, 2017) in Australia. The paper discusses the significant challenges faced as technologies travel to new cultural contexts and western centric design processes are confronted by differing world views and theories of knowledge. Irani et al. offer postcolonial computing as a lens to reflect on current design practice and respond to global connectivity and movement and challenge the notion of the terra nullius education (Matthews, 2015) system discussed in a previous Stronger Smarter Institute (2017b) reading review. Postcolonial computing provides a shift that aims to “reconfigure design-orientated cultural encounters” in the space of Human-Computer Interaction for Development (HCI4D) (Irani et al., 2010, p. 1).

The original full reading can be found here.  

Citation: Irani, L., Vertesi, J., Dourish, P., Philip, K., & Grinter, R. E. (2010). Postcolonial computing: A lens on design and development. Paper presented at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems – Proceedings.

READ the full review: REV_STEM Postcolonial Computing