An intertwined perspective on technology and digitised individuals: Linkages, needs and outcomes

Abstract

Information technology (IT) has changed dramatically over the last several decades. Although, in its early days IT has been mostly used as a tool for conducting business or running complex governmental and organisational operations, it has shifted to also become a productivity and hedonic tool for individual users (Matt, Trenz, Cheung, & Turel, 2019). Readers can reflect on how many technologies surround them now, as they read this article. These can include a range of mixed-use technologies that cater to both hedonic and utilitarian objectives. Examples include, but are not limited to, the device through which this article is read (desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone), a smart TV, smart kitchen appliances, smart watches, wearable fitness trackers, and connected or autonomous cars that drive the readers whilst they listen to a text-to-voice generated version of this article. These changes in the technological landscape have presumably been supported by technological advancements that have made technology more connected and affordable than before, smaller, yet broader in its capabilities, beyond merely being job- or leisure-oriented (Turel et al., 2019). Since many of these technologies are used exclusively in leisure or non-work settings, or in both work and non-work (including leisure) settings, they have created what we call digitised individuals, defined as users who use at least one digital technology in their non-work life domains.11 This implies that most people can be considered as digitised individuals yet they clearly vary in their degree of being digitised - from very low (e.g.,a person who uses a smartphone to check the weather once a day) to very high (e.g., a person who manages most of his or her non-work life via digital technologies). We use this broad concept of the digitised individual to include all types of linkages between individuals and technologies. However, it is worth noting that there is a broad spectrum of degrees of digitisation that result from the choices illustrated in our framework below. Note that digitised individuals have existed since the dawn of personal computers, but we see major growth in the last decade with the vast penetration of smartphones, social media and personal lifestyle and health technologies. We view the collective of digitised individuals as contributing to the phenomenon of the digitisation of individuals, defined as the proliferation of digital technologies in the lives of individual users (Matt, Trenz, et al., 2019). Although the bare minimum to qualify as digitised individuals according to this definition is using one technology for non-work including leisure purposes, nowadays, many people use multiple technologies to different extents, being integrated into their lives in many different ways. This creates a large variability in the extent of their digitisation. The combination of the significant diffusion of digital technologies used by individuals with the variability in their (partly joint) usage leads to the necessity to develop an intertwined perspective that considers technology and the individual at the same time, that is, a socio-technical perspective. Several studies have argued for a need to understand digitised individuals, the drivers of the digitisation of individuals and the consequences of this digitisation, because technologies aimed at the digitisation of individuals have unique features that distinguish them from commonly examined business technologies, or that are insufficiently highlighted and understood in studies of non-work technologies (Matt, Trenz, et al., 2019; Turel et al., 2019). These characteristics include: (1) the creation of new application domains (e.g., Internet connectivity in any home device that has not been IT-infused before, see Yashiro, Kobayashi, Koshizuka, & Sakamura, 2013), (2) ubiquitous use, including even embedding IT into human bodies and creating cybernetic organisms, or 'cyborgs' (Pelegrín-Borondo, Arias-Oliva, Murat