IT for Good. How Technology Adoption and Technological Artefacts Can Support a Local Community: Two Case Studies

Abstract

In this paper we discuss how ecology of artefacts and their design are connected with motivations and values within a community. We consider artefacts both as social constructs and as tools and means by which communities can pursue their goals. The complex intertwining of artefacts creates ecologies made of interactions between communities, humans and technologies. Our focus is on grassroots communities oriented towards sustainability-related goals, where we explore how the nexus between motivations and community goals is embodied (or not) by the technologies chosen and domesticated by communities. Thus, motivational aspects are all but immaterial or fortuitous. Indeed, they proved to be tangible, context-dependent and they work as infrastructures whose shape continuously change according to the necessities of the community members.