I first used a technographic approach to inquiry in 2005. It was a lonely approach back then. Qualitative research in technology was only starting to be understood as a crucial method in audience/end user research. Since then there has been a steady increase in the use of technography, and many innovations. I am starting to notice some repetition in reviews of the method, and also some gaps in references of works that don’t get recognized as often as they should be. My goal in this site is to provide a centralized resource for technographers to consult and build a community around.
Vision
I hope our technography community will grow large enough to some day hold a technography conference, and to publish a technography scholarly journal. Please join the community and altogether we’ll see what can happen.
Defining Technography
The description and study of the arts and sciences in their geographical and ethnic distribution and historical development. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/technography
“…an interdisciplinary methodology for the detailed study of the use of skills, tools, knowledge and techniques in everyday life. This paper argues that technography is a useful methodological approach for the integrative study of social–technical configurations.”
Jansen, K., & Vellema, S. (2011). What is technography? NJAS: Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, 57(3–4), 169–177. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.njas.2010.11.003
“the term ‘technography’ came into use during (and possibly in reaction to) the late-nineteenth-century turn from words to things. A technography is a description of technologies and their application with primary regard to social context. Technography, itself technologically mediated like all forms of writing, is a reflection upon the varying degrees to which all technologies have in some fashion been written into being. It examines the crucial role writing has played, not just in the description of technological objects and their functions, but in the inscription of technologies within social and cultural life.”
Technographies. Editors Steven Connor, David Trotter and James Purdon. https://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/series/technographies/
The earliest known use of the noun technography is in the 1840s. Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest evidence for technography is from 1840, in Journal Statist. Society London. https://www.oed.com/dictionary/technography_n?tl=true
TECHNOGRAPHY 