Introduction: Technology Socialisation? Social Appropriateness and Artificial Systems

The present volume is based on research on the thematically specific research subject of social appropriateness: socialisation is thought of combined with social appropriateness, insofar as socialisation processes are in some respects related to questions of appropriate behaviour. “Technology socialisation” can be understood in two ways: on the one hand, people are socialised by and with technology, on the other hand, the question arises to what extent one can speak about a socialisation of technologies and whether, and if so how, this could be influenced on the design side. Technology is interwoven with judgments of appropriateness. By suggesting, supporting and securing certain ways of acting as well as concealing and inhibiting others, technology has a fundamental influence on the choice, mode and success of our actions. To the extent that this effect is explicitly or implicitly incorporated into the design of technology, to design technology is to mediate action. Insofar as technology mediates action, we call it socioactive in a broad sense. Implemented in every technology are judgments about correct, useful, appropriate behaviour in dealing with or using that technology. In the wake of digitalisation and the extended adaptability and behavioural variance of ‘intelligent’ systems capable of interaction, the interaction of technology design, judgments of appropriateness, and mediation of action becomes problematic to an increased degree which may even intensify. In a narrower sense, “socioactive” thus refers to the ability of technical systems to choose between different behavioural sequences accessible to the system based on certain “sociosensitively” ‘perceived’ social signals (for example, by corresponding sensors) and to adapt thereby to the ‘perceived’ situation.