Technology for losers: Re-equipping the excluded

Abstract

The agenda of technology for losers is closely related to a politically more correct concept of using technology to empower disadvantaged regions or individuals. Technology for losers emphasizes the fact that losers are those that had something valuable, which they have subsequently, for whatever reason, lost. Although commonly used as a highly patronizing and even offensive term, the term loser, literally, refers to diverse users of technology such as people marginalized because of unemployment, individuals with special needs, and poor people in developing regions. Hence, together they form a majority of humankind. Working with losers requires technology designers to focus more on urgent and concrete problems, while the traditional perspective of disadvantaged users calls for correct strategies at the policy level. The key characteristic of designing technology for losers is the fact that it starts from the identification of their strengths rather than needs or lacks; thus recognizing their ultimate resources, which can be released by re-equipping them with what they have lost.