GVU Center at Georgia Tech | ledantec@cc.gatech.edu
Are food and shelter more important than a mobile phone? For the urban homeless, the answer to this question is unclear. Public phones are disappearing from cities, job services are increasingly accessible mainly through digital means, and modern society has become ever more accustomed to instant availability and dependent on personal communication devices. Each of these factors raises the importance of a mobile phone for finding and securing basic needs.
For society’s mainstream, the march toward technology-mediated interactions is facilitating a reinterpretation of our environment. Sophisticated personal devices and context-appropriate services enable us to map our progress; to communicate with whom we wish, when we wish; to create personal space in public forums; and to distract ourselves with media, music, and games. Yet as urban social interactions are undergoing transformation in the face of these technologies, the homeless, who share the same environment, are at risk of further marginalization. As
such, it is incumbent upon us to examine the consequences for individuals who are not part of the mainstream yet whose lives are changing as a result of these technologies, whether or not they have access to them.
To assess those consequences, I undertook a study of the homeless community in Atlanta, Georgia. In Atlanta, as in the rest of the U.S., the homeless community is diverse and has evolved from being mostly single males from the laboring class to include an increasing number of families, many of which are headed by a single-parent female [ 1, 2]. The causes of homelessness mirror the diversity of the population. The most significant is poverty [ 3], but disability, addiction, and displacement (as demonstrated in the wake of Hurricane Katrina) are all factors as well. The net effect is a lack of stability: not being able to find shelter, food, a job, medical care, and services such as counseling.
Given the potential for misguided technology interventions (the over-rationalization of care, technological paternalism, or a default to universal humanism), I was interested in understand-
ing how the homeless used and perceived technology—from electronic bus passes to mobile phones and the Internet—and how that relationship affected their ability to seek basic services and participate in the larger urban community. Through this understanding, I wanted to more deeply engage some of the assumptions that we, as systems and interaction designers, have about how technology is used: what kinds of capabilities are empowering and inclusive, and conversely, disempowering and marginalizing.
In developing the study, I worked closely with two homeless outreach centers. Staff at the centers provided introductions to the community and direction on the details of the study to ensure sensitivity and appropriateness. It was paramount that the interviews I conducted with members of the homeless community were considerate of their needs and of the difficult and stressful situation they were in.
Participants in the study were given a disposable camera and instructions to take photos of their daily lives (some of which
[ 1] Axelson, L. J., and P. W. Dail. “The Changing Character of Homelessness in the United States.” Family Relations 37, no. 4 (October 1988): 463–469.
[ 2] Foth, M. “Facilitating Social Net working in Inner-City Neighborhoods.” Computer 39, no. 9 (2006): 44–50.
[ 3] Tompsett, C. J., Toro, P. A., Guzicki, M., Manrique, M., and J. Zatakia. “Homelessness in the United States: Assessing Changes in Prevalence and Public Opinion, 1993–2001.” American Journal of Community Psychology 37, nos. 1–2 (2006): 47–61.
September + October 2008
All images were taken by the participants in the study on homelessness.
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