Feminist cybernetic, critical race, postcolonial, and crip propositions for the theoretical future of Human-Machine Communication

Abstract

The authors review theoretical trends in HMC research, as well as recent critical interventions in the HMC journal that usefully reshape and expand our research terrain. Conventional research such as positivist and quantified approaches are identified as restraining research questions and delimiting understandings of concepts including subjects, agency and interactivity. Feminist cybernetic, critical race, postcolonial and crip theoretical approaches are offered, examining how they fill research gaps in HMC, expanding content areas explored, and addressing diverse intersectional pressures, situated, and time/space dynamics that impact human machine interaction. The authors suggest these shifts are essential to expanding HMC research to address diverse populations, regional realities around the globe, and engage in vibrant scholarly debates occurring outside HMC. They contend these shifts will outfit HMC to weigh in on important issues of justice, equity, and access that arise with emerging technologies, climate change, and globalization dynamics.