Paper presentation at the Halfway to the Future 2019 symposium. Abstract below. Full paper available at the ACM Digital Library (https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3363477) and at http://airilampinen.fi/files/httf2019-33.pdf For further publications, see: airilampinen.fi/publications "The changes that have come about through the increased speed, ubiquity, and scale of computational systems require a reconceptualisation of how we think about and study the relationship between humans and computers. Driven by the increased production of data in interaction and the transfer of value from interaction to data, we argue that computing that fundamentally impacts human-computer relations is no longer happening only in interaction but also without and outside interaction. While recent arguments have highlighted interaction as a problematic concept for HCI — challenging what constitute users, use, the human, and the computer in interaction — we propose post-interaction computing as one means to conceptualise a fourth wave of HCI. We propose four concepts — immediacy, (un)intentionality, interaction effects, and instability — that can help us in identifying and slicing our objects of analysis in new ways that better match the challenges that HCI is now faced with."

1. TOWARDS POST-INTERACTION
COMPUTING
ADDRESSING IMMEDIACY,
(UN)INTENTIONALITY, INSTABILITY
AND INTERACTION EFFECTS
Rob Comber^, Airi Lampinen*, & Jesse Haapoja’’
^KTH Royal Institute of Technology,
*Stockholm University, & ’’Aalto University

2. • Increased speed, ubiquity, and scale of
computational systems
• Increased production of data in interaction and the
transfer of value from interaction to data
• Computing that fundamentally impacts human-computer
relations is no longer happening only in interaction but
also without and outside interaction
S T A R T I N G P O I N T S

3. • Building on recent reconsiderations of the key concepts
of HCI: Interaction, User, and Interface
• To us, what defines the shift from one wave to the next, is
a change in how we can think about what computing
technologies are, rather than a shift in domains of study.
• Toward a fourth wave by identifying and reslicing the units
of analysis: Four guiding concepts
P O S T - I N T E R A C T I O N C O M P U T I N G

4. • Feedback loops have become too small to ‘fit’ a human.
• Feedback loops have become too long to be meaningfully
human-alterable.
• How are different immediacies, in and outside of interaction,
mutually constituted?
I M M E D I A C Y

5. • We must not always assume intentionality in interaction
as the norm, but investigate it.
• By whom are actions ‘intended’? Are interactions habitual
and routine, without meaningful intentionality?
• (Un)Intentionality gives us a frame for understanding
what is left out of and left over from our interactions.
( U N ) I N T E N T I O N A L I T Y

6. • The consequences of interaction with one system often
influence or even propagate to another.
• These interaction effects have profound impacts on people,
across populations and in aggregate.
• How does the (non)use of multiple systems create
interactions? At what sites do interactions collide?
I N T E R A C T I O N E F F E C T S

7. • How to study and describe interaction without an extensively limiting
depiction in the only here and now?
• Making sense of services is always tied to specific moments and
contexts as the systems we encounter will not stay the same.
• Don Ihde’s notion of multistability provides a means to make sense
of patterns of interaction — although objects are never fully known,
they are in some perceptual ways persistent.
I N S T A B I L I T Y

8. • Four guiding concepts:
Immediacy, (Un)Intentionality,
Interaction Effects, and Instability
• What might post-interaction studies look like?
• How might we engage in interaction design
with post-interaction sensitivities?
P O S T - I N T E R A C T I O N C O M P U T I N G