Capital and CHI: Technological Capture and How It Structures CHI Research

TL;DR

The paper argues that CHI research is structurally shaped by capital through a mechanism termed technological capture, which forecloses non-aligned futures and channels research into four forms: market-creating, market-expanding, market-aligned, and externality-reducing. It develops a frame-analysis methodology to map CHI subcommittees to these forms, showing how industry ties, sponsorships, and startup dynamics influence the field’s values and research questions. The key contribution is a theoretical framework that links CHI's dominant research agendas to capital interests, while acknowledging countervailing, non-capital logics and the existence of work outside capture. The significance lies in highlighting power and funding dynamics in CHI and proposing structural options to foster innovation beyond capital capture, including open approaches and emphasis on societal implications.

Abstract

This paper advances a theoretical argument about the role capital plays in structuring CHI research. We introduce the concept of technological capture to theorize the mechanism by which this happens. Using this concept, we decompose the effect on CHI into four broad forms: technological capture creates market-creating, market-expanding, market-aligned, and externality-reducing CHI research. We place different CHI subcommunities into these forms -- arguing that many of their values are inherited from capital underlying the field. Rather than a disciplinary- or conference-oriented conceptualization of the field, this work theorizes CHI as tightly-coupled with capital via technological capture. The paper concludes by discussing some implications for CHI.

Figures (1)

• Figure 1: Structural overview of technological capture and CHI. Capital captures a set of technological futures aligned with its interests. CHI tightly couples to technological capture through a variety of vectors, resulting in four forms of CHI research.