Domestication, Design and Technological Objects: Affordance and the Challenge of the Virtual

Abstract

In its relationship with technological objects, design has historically used aesthetic, stylistic and symbolic devices to tame what was perceived as wild. Drawing on the ideas offered by the framework of domestication, this paper addresses the issue of the relevance of the relationship between user and technological object in an era characterised by the rapid transformation of physical objects towards dematerialisation. Does it still make sense to speak of affordance in the face of a shift from the physical plane to the virtual in the user-object relationship? And what happens to this relationship when technology loses its materiality and becomes ephemeral?