Masters Thesis - Developing Desirable Technology with User Innovators. Case Nokia 770 Internet Tablet

HELSINKI SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS (HSE) Department of Marketing and Management

DEVELOPING DESIRABLE TECHNOLOGY WITH USER INNOVATORS: THE SOCIOTECHNICAL CHANGE OF THE NOKIA 770 INTERNET TABLET

Marketing Master’s Thesis Jussi H. Mäkinen k72221 Fall 2006

Approved by the head of the department of Marketing and Management _____/_____ 2006, and awarded the grade _____________________ ______________________________________________________

HELSINKI SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS Marketing master’s thesis Jussi H. Mäkinen

ABSTRACT October 31st, 2006

DEVELOPING DESIRABLE TECHNOLOGY WITH USER INNOVATORS – THE SOCIOTECHNICAL CHANGE OF THE NOKIA 770 INTERNET TABLET Research objectives The research objectives of this study was to understand the role of users and user made innovations in the product development process of a new consumer hightechnology product, the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. The theoretical part of the study focused on user’s role in the innovation process and in technological development concentrating especially on a user innovator group calling themselves as “hackers”. The empirical part focused on describing how these user innovators following the hacker culture reinvented the functionalities of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. Research methodology Research methodology in this thesis was adapted from the model of social construction of technology. This model emphasizes cultural and social factors in the product development process thus viewing the users as the agents for technological change. The author of this study worked at the Nokia Multimedia organization while doing this thesis and during that time 15 people were interviewed in order to create a social construction of Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. The people interviewed for this thesis were separated into three social groups: Nokia managers involved in the development of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet as the first group, hackers who had developed new functionalities for the product as the second group and a the nonusers as the third group. Research results As a result of this study I propose a new concept, hacker-hobbyism, to define how innovations and insights from a group of users, hackers, affected the functionalities and usage possibilities for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet after it was brought to the markets. Hacker-hobbyism is a user innovation activity that follows hacker culture and which is not restricted by legal or proprietary issues that sets guidelines for manufacturers’ development activities. The consequence of hacker-hobbyism is that hackers can develop and implement functionalities to the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet which would be impossible to do for Nokia’s official product development. In this way hackers could reinvent the product to function beyond its original use possibilities. Hacker-hobbyism can then be used to gain insights and innovations for Nokia’s internal product development.

Key words Hacker-hobbyism, user innovation, consumer technology, product development

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HELSINGIN KAUPPAKORKEAKOULU Markkinoinnin Pro Gradu –tutkielma

TIIVISTELMÄ 31.10.2006

DEVELOPING DESIRABLE TECHNOLOGY WITH USER INNOVATORS – THE SOCIOTECHNICAL CHANGE OF THE NOKIA 770 INTERNET TABLET Tutkimukseni tavoitteena on ollut kuvata kuluttajamarkkinoille suunnatun uuden teknologiatuotteen kehitysprosessia ja käyttäjien sekä käyttäjälähtöisten innovaatioiden merkitystä ja roolia tässä prosessissa. Tutkimusongelmaani olen lähestynyt Nokian 770 Internet Tabletin kehityshistorian kautta. Vuonna 2005 markkinoille tullut Nokia 770 Internet Tablet on Nokian ensimmäinen avoimeen lähdekoodiin perustuva tuote, jonka kehitystyön oleellisena osatekijänä on käyttäjien osallistuminen tuotteen sovelluskehitykseen. Erityisen mielenkiinnon kohteeksi tutkimuksessani nousivat ns. ”hakkerit”, jotka edustavat historiallisesti merkittävää, mutta usein innovaatio- ja teknologiatutkimuksessa pienelle huomiolle jäänyttä teknologiaan liittyvää käyttäjäinnovaatio-alakulttuuria. Tutkimusmenetelmänä olen käyttänyt teknologian sosiaalisen konstruktion mallia joka korostaa kulttuurisia ja sosiaalisia tekijöitä tuotteen kehitysprosessissa sekä käyttäjiä teknologisen kehityksen muutosagentteina. Empiirisen tapaustutkimuksen olen tehnyt Nokia yhtymän multimediayksikön tuotekehitysyksikössä Helsingin Ruoholahdessa 1.5 - 31.09.2006 välisenä aikana, jolloin osallistuin tuotteen kehittämiseen sekä haastattelin tuotekehityksessä ja markkinoinnissa mukana olleita henkilöitä Nokian sisältä sekä käyttäjiä, jotka olivat kehittäneet omiin tarpeisiinsa innovaatioita niin Nokian 770 laitteelle kuin muillekin kaupallisesti menestyneille mobiileille teknologiatuotteille. Tutkimukseni tuloksena on uusi käsite, hakkeri-hobbismi. Hakkeri-hobbismi syntyy, kun teknologiatuote koetaan haluttavaksi kohteeksi käyttäjäinnovaattoreiden hakkerikulttuuria seuraavalle kehitystyölle ja sen seurauksena syntyy innovaatioita, jotka eivät aina lähtökohtaisesti palvele kaupallisten toimijoiden liiketoimintamalleja mutta jotka silti voivat lisätä teknologiatuotteen toiminnallisuuksia ja haluttavuutta syntyessään ja levitessään hakkeriyhteisöissä ja niiden ulkopuolella. Hakkerihobbismin kautta on mahdollisuus myös saada uusia näkökulmia tai jopa konkreettisia innovaatioita yrityksen sisäiseen tuotekehitystyöhön. Avoimen lähdekoodin käyttäminen teknologiatuotteessa kuten Nokian 770 Internet Tabletissa edistää hakkeri-hobbismia, mutta ei kuitenkaan ole välttämättä edellytyksenä ilmiölle. Hakkeri-hobbismi -käsitteen kautta olen halunnut tuoda esiin myös käyttäjälähtöistä luovan tuhon prosessia, joka osaltaan erottaa käsitteen muista käyttäjälähtöisistä innovaatiokäsitteistä. Vaikka hakkeri-hobbismista sekä käyttäjälähtöisestä luovan tuhon prosessista löytyy esimerkkejä muidenkin teknologiatuotteiden kuin Nokian 770 Internet Tabletin osalta, pitäisi hakkeri-hobbismi ilmiötä tutkia kuitenkin enemmän ennen kuin tutkimuksessani esittämäni tulokset olisivat laajemmin yleistettävissä.

Avainsanat: Hakkeri-hobbismi, käyttäjäinnovaatiot, teknologia, tuotekehitys

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TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................... 5

1.1 ”If it’s not hackable, it’s useless…” ................................................................ 5 1.2 Goals of the study.......................................................................................... 7 1.3 Research design ............................................................................................ 8 1.4 Terminology ................................................................................................ 10 2. REPRESENTATION OF THE HACKER................................................11

2.1 Hackers and the history of computer technology ....................................... 11 2.2 Hacker culture .............................................................................................14 2.3 Categorizing hackers ...................................................................................16 3 SOCIAL SHAPING OF INNOVATION .................................................. 19

3.1 User’s roles in the innovation process .........................................................19 3.1.1 The imagined user.............................................................................20 3.1.2 The emerging user ............................................................................ 21 3.1.3 The creative user...............................................................................22 3.2 Social construction of technology ............................................................. 25 3.2.1 Relevant social groups......................................................................26 3.2.2 Interpretative flexibility ...................................................................28 3.2.3 Closure and stabilization .................................................................29 3.2.4 Technological Frame........................................................................29 4 THEORETICAL RESEARCH FRAMEWORK ........................................30 5 EMPIRICAL RESEARCH PLAN ........................................................... 33

5.1 Research methods ....................................................................................... 33 5.2 Conducting the research............................................................................. 35 6 THE SOCIOTECHNICAL CHANGE OF THE NOKIA 770 INTERNET TABLET ................................................................................................40

6.1 Nokia and the challenges of open source Internet Tablet.......................... 40 6.1.1 The software challenge .....................................................................42 6.1.2 The operator challenge..................................................................... 45 6.1.3 The market challenge .......................................................................46 6.2 The birth of the product ............................................................................. 48 6.3 Non-users’ problems towards the product ................................................ 52 6.4 Hacking the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet ..................................................... 55 6.5 Developing the concept of hacker-hobbyism............................................. 64 7 CONCLUSIONS ...................................................................................68

7.1 Limitations and further research suggestions ............................................ 70 7.2 Managerial implications ............................................................................. 72 References............................................................................................. 75

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1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 ”If it’s not hackable, it’s useless…” Diffusion and domestication of personal computers and digital tools has democratized creativity. Users of products and services - both firms and individual consumers - are increasingly able to innovate for themselves (von Hippel 2005). Enthusiast

hobbyists

are

constantly

customizing,

exploring

and

altering

technological products. The internet is now full of communities of user innovators sharing the methods and the results of their creativity freely with everyone. Studies (von Hippel 1986, 1998, 2005, Jeppesen 2005, Jeppesen & Molin 2005, Jeppesen & Fredrikson 2005) show that companies are taking a growing interest in harnessing and engaging creative consumers in order to produce commercially attractive innovations. In many cases companies have substantially profited from the inventions and solutions created by hobbyists. According to the same academic literature, it might seem that this form of innovation is the dream of every manufacturing organization in the fast changing world of high technology and short product life cycles - an innovative and outsourced R&D organization of hundreds or even thousands of volunteers improving products and constantly creating new innovations. The problem is that not all user innovators want to maintain or facilitate the business models that companies have devised to profit from. Revenue models and intellectual property rights are usually ignored when a particular user innovator group, hackers, began to re-invent products to function beyond their original specifications. Popular consumer technologies, or more specifically, technologies that have become popular have been desirable targets for hackers in the early stages of their lifecycle. Apple’s iPod was a popular hacking platform when it was first introduced to the market, and it was hackers who first implemented disruptive functionalities, such as Microsoft Windows compatibility, when the product officially supported only Apple’s own operating system (Kahney 2005, 73). Sony’s Playstation Portable (PSP) gaming device was hacked to function as a web-browser and an emulator for old console games long before Sony officially released the updates to enable web surfing and game emulation on the device. These disruptive ”homebrew” functionalities that

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were first implemented by hackers have since become standard features on their respective technologies and are now part of the revenue model for the iPod and the PSP. Whether by accident or intention, the official product development of these highly successful products followed the path that was first taken by hackers who refused

to

accept

the

limited

functionality

given

by

the

manufacturer.

Moreover, ’’hackability’’ or the ability to reinvent products has become a major dimension of the desirability of technology. Examples of this can be seen as technology enthusiasts speculate on upcoming products on the internet. As one anonymous user stated in a online discussion forum analyzing his interest towards an upcoming product ”…if it’s not hackable, it’s useless.” Companies have now started to listen to the voices of the underground: the director of design strategy at Nokia, Marko Ahtisaari, turns this phenomenon into a design challenge in his public weblog by asking “How do we design for everyday hackability?” (Blogging over Las Vegas 2005) Manufacturers of technology have chosen very different strategies towards the user driven hacking phenomenon. For instance, after one hacker developed and distributed free software that allowed the robot dog Aibo to perform break-dance moves, manufacturer Sony Corporation responded with the threat of legal action (Mollick 2005). On the other hand, the use of open source software has recently created a new wave of user innovation activity. Mobile communications house Nokia has recently launched their first open source based product, the 770 Internet Tablet, which means that anyone who is willing and able to develop further product functionalities can do so thanks to its open software architecture. Since the product is now shaped by a collaboration of users and the manufacturer, the interaction between these user innovators and the manufacturer continuously shapes the product creating new challenges and possibilities for Nokia, while at the same time this opens up an interesting research subject in the field that combines new product development with technology and innovation studies. With all the actions manufacturers are now taking to facilitate, stop, or adapt the work of hackers, the culture of consumption as well as the methods of development of consumer technology is changing. The dialogue between hackers and manufacturers is shaping technology and the way that desirable new consumer

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products are being developed and consumed. My thesis is a study of this contemporary sociotechnical change.

1.2 Objectives of the study This thesis is about new product development. Within the field of new product development, the main interest lies in users and user driven innovations. The main objective of this thesis is: 

To examine the role of particular user innovators – hackers - in the development process of a new consumer product, the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet

The sub-goals of the main research problem are: 

To understand hackers and hacking as a consumer subculture



To examine how hackers’ knowledge, insights, and innovations shape a product after its market launch; and



To understand how a technological artefact evolves in alternation, variation, and selection between different social groups

In the theoretical part of this thesis, I will attempt to make sense of the role of user innovators and the specific representation of hackers, in the development of new products. Upon completion of the theoretical section of this paper, I will construct a theoretical frame to be used in the empirical part. It was a commonly held view among the product developers and managers who were working for Nokia that open source software will possibly be used in all the products that Nokia makes in the future. The open source software movement has close linkages to hacker culture so the aim of this study is to bring in the cultural perspective of product development. This is done by studying the connections between economics and culture and how these connections and meanings are tied to technology and its social construction as in a form of a material artefact brought to the marketplace.

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As a result of my study, a new concept “hacker-hobbyism” is proposed to describe how knowledge, insights and innovations from users following hacker culture affected the functionalities of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, and how due to its “hackability” the product was seen as desirable and “working”. I will also attempt to generalize my findings beyond the particular artefact studied in this thesis and propose how hacker-hobbyism can create a “user driven creative destruction”. This activity can then be used as a resource to give new insights and innovations for product development and possibly even create new revenue models for companies that are resourceful enough to pay attention to hackers and their underground innovation activity.

1.3 Structure of the study This thesis begins at the same point as successful product development; product developers draft the products of the future for imaginary consumers and as a result their way of representing the end-user is the key to their success (Kotro & Pantzar 2002). The second chapter starts to construct a representation of a hacker, the main actor followed in this study. This representation is formulated through the story of the birth of personal computers and by reviewing the culture and work ethics that hackers follow. At the end of the chapter hackers are categorized further by their ability to innovate in two different dimensions of technology; applications and platforms. The third chapter places the user in an active role in the innovation process and further places this interaction into a larger sociotechnical framework. The users who are at the leading edge of change are the source of the majority of all commercial innovations, especially in the field of high-technology (Hippel 1986, 2005). The way that this “hobbyist knowledge” from the users enters the product development stage and finally into a new product is a complex social and cultural learning process (Kotro 2005). The process of innovation does not however end when the new product is launched and brought to the marketplace (Akrich 1995). It’s often the innovative consumers who determine and define the uses for the technology, assuring that successful diffusion and domestication are made possible (Pantzar

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1996). This approach to explaining the success of artifacts, as in new products or technologies, follows the theory of sociotechnical change of technology: (…) for the theory of technology, “working” of a machine should be the explanandum, not the explanans. The “working” of a machine is not an intrinsic property of the artifact, explaining its success; rather it should figure as a result of the machine’s success. (Bijker 1995, 14)

In the fourth chapter the theoretical framework of this thesis is presented using the framework adapted from the theory of social construction of technology developed by Pinch and Bijker (1984). The fifth chapter presents the empirical research plan used in this thesis. The author worked as a graduate trainee in open source product management inside Nokia Multimedia organization between 17.5.2006 – 28.09.2006, while at the same time preparing a rich case study of the research subject, the 770 Internet Tablet. Before joining the product development team for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, three interviews were made with the director of open source platform, a senior R&D manager and product program manager, all of whom were part of the team developing the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. While working at Nokia on the product management team more interviews were made with managers inside Nokia and users outside Nokia. Also, on-line communities, weblogs and discussion boards where users and non-users “spoke up” about the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet were followed during the period of time when this thesis was developed. The sixth chapter begins the empirical part of this thesis, which is a case study of the development process of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. The distinctive feature of this product is that after its market launch, its development is continued through collaboration between users and the manufacturer, which will be the first time that Nokia has used this kind of “open source” development model on any of its released products. At the end of the sixth chapter, I will present a model of the social construction of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet based on the findings from the interviews and observations made while working for Nokia.

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Finally, the seventh chapter brings together the theory and the empirical part of this thesis to form a conclusion on how technological, cultural and social dimensions met in this thesis. In the seventh chapter also limitations and further research suggestions and presented along with the managerial implications.

1.4 Terminology This section reviews the central terminology used in this thesis. Domestication of technology: How an artifact takes different shapes during its lifecycle (Pantzar 1996, 53). Innovation: In general, an idea, process or tool which has some level of newness to one who adapts it (Rogers 1983). Innovation can also be divided to technological-, economical- and organizational innovation as Schumpeter (1934). Innovation can be also characterized by its impact on existing markets or businesses. Disruptive innovation significantly changes a market or a product category while sustaining innovation allows organization to continue to approach the markets in a same way (Christensen 1997) Re-invention: Degree to which an innovation is changed or modified by a user in the process of its adoption or implementation. (Rogers and Rice 1980, 500-501) Hacker: 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming. 3. A person capable of appreciating hack value. 4. A person who is good at programming quickly. 5. An expert at a particular program, or one who frequently does work using it or on it; as in `a Unix hacker'. (Definitions 1 through 5 are correlated, and people who fit them congregate.) 6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. 7. One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations. 8. A malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around.

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Hence “password hacker”, “network hacker”, the correct term for this sense is cracker. (The Jargon File 2003) Homebrew: Software that is done without official approvement of the system that it has been made for. (Homebrew Open source software: Software that is made freely available to all and can be further developed by anyone. Well know examples of open source software is the GNU (Gnu Not Unix)/Linux operating system (Hippel and Krogh, 2003, 209)

2. REPRESENTATION OF THE HACKER The creation of successful artifacts depends on the ability of innovators to generate user representations and integrate them into their designs (Akrich 1995, 169). The aim of this chapter is to introduce and understand better the innovative users followed in this study, known as hackers, and demonstrate how their innovations and insights are represented in personal technology. In order to demonstrate this, the history and culture of hackers and personal computers are examined and finally a model to categorize hacker’s innovativeness with technology is presented.

2.1 Hackers and the history of computer technology Hacker is a term for a person that is usually associated with computer criminality in the popular media. However, in the counter-culture context, the term hacker refers to a pioneer or to an underground hero that explores alternative uses for technology. (Levy 1984) The creation of the modern microcomputer can be seen either as a routine process of linear technological innovation or as a product of social vision of democratic technology. Linear history suggests that the invention of the microprocessor at the Intel Corporation in 1971 was the key invention for the development of microcomputer technology but the other one is based on a socially determined

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representation of innovators – the hackers – led by their ideology (Bardini et all 1995, 41). The term “computer hacker” along with the idea of personal computers that could be used and configured by users originated in the 1960’s in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A group of young researchers who were interested in computer technology and wanted direct access to operate computers, that at that time consisted of room sized computer mainframes that were operated by special group of people called operators. The actual users or programmers were not even allowed to touch the computers. (Himanen 2001, 159) This resistance to the mainframe approach and group of computer “operators” was the start of the personal use of computers. In the late 1970’s the corporations that manufactured mainframe computers saw the personal use of computers merely as a meaningless detour in computer technology. Ken Olsen, the chairman of the Digital Equipment corporation said in 1977 “No one wants a computer at their house” (Gatlin 1999, 39). The personal computer appeared as a revolutionary rupture in computer technology history, made possible by the new actor, the hacker, who used technology as a means to personal expression and social autonomy (Bardini et all 1995). The first commercial personal computer that was usable to non-engineers, the Apple 1, was built in 1976 by Steven Wozniack, a 25 year old computer hobbyist and a selfreclaimed hacker and member of the ”homebrew computer club” in San Fransisco. Unlike other hobbyist computers of its day, which were sold as kits, the Apple I was a fully-assembled circuit board. Followed by the success of Apple 1, the Apple 2 was a complete personal computer set, the first computer that was ready to be used out-ofthe-box (Himanen 2001, 160). After the success of the Apple 2 in 1977 other personal computers began to appear on the market. The US based electronics chain Radio Shack introduced the TRS-80 model in 1977. Lindsay (2003, 35) stated that the envisioned users of the TRS-80 were also members of the early hacking culture – people who had not only an interest in technology, but also skills and knowledge to construct their own machines.

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Unlike today, in the early days of computers, an operating system and other commercial “packaged” software applications were a rarity. Much of the software development in the 1960’s and 1970’s was carried out in academic and corporate laboratories by scientists and engineers. These individuals found it a normal part of their research culture to freely give and exchange software they had written, to modify and build upon each other’s software both individually and collaboratively, and to freely give out their modifications in turn. (Hippel and Krogh, 2003, 209) As researchers that were coding software started to also work for commercial purposes the culture of freely revealing the source codes of computer programs started to quickly vanish. Opposing this development, a young researcher named Richard Stallman developed the free software licenses and the GNU operating system which later on gave birth to the open source software movement and Linux operating system. (Williams 2002) The best know open source software project today, the Linux operating system, was originally created by a university student and a coder hobbyist, Linus Torvalds. Torvalds uploaded the first early and incomplete version of his Unix based operating system Linux to an electronic bulletin board in 1991 and asked for help from other hobbyists to improve it’s functionalities. Since then Linux has grown into a huge worldwide success and to a flagship of hacker culture, opposing commercial software and promoting hackers innovative culture. (Hippel and Krogh, 2003) Raymond (1999) emphasizes that the most important feature of the success of Linux was not technical but sociological. Until the development of Linux, everyone believed that any software as complex as an operating system had to be developed in a carefully coordinated way by a relatively small, tightly-knit group of people. After the success of Linux these attitudes changed, creating a new boom of open source software development projects all over the internet to oppose proprietary software and to promote the culture of hackers. Today, "the hacker community" and "opensource developers" are two descriptions for what is essentially the same culture and population (Raymond 2001). The majority of open source developers state that the hacker community is a primary source of their identity and this aspect of their

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community is big part of their motivation in participating in open source projects (Lakhani 2005, 12).

2.2 Hacker Culture While the history of computer technology provides a good foundation from which to understand hackers, they cannot be understood solely in terms of technology which they are intervened (Thomas 2002). In this section of this thesis the culture of the hackers is studied further. The whole culture of hackers is based on a special “hacker ethic” which is a set of concepts, beliefs, and morals that came out of a symbiotic relationship between the hackers and their machines. According to Levy (1984) the principles of the “hacker ethic” are:      

Access to computers should be unlimited and total. All information should be free. Mistrust authority—promote decentralization. Hackers should be judged only by their hacking skills You can create art and beauty on a computer. Computers can change your life for the better.

Thomas (2002) argues in his study of hacker culture that hackers and hacking are also much more about a set of social and cultural relations, and also the ways in which the image of the hacker has been crafted, redefined and used as a symbol in popular culture to understand technology and give a face or image to the fears and hopes, uncertainties and beliefs that accompany technological change. Linus Torvalds, the programmer of the original Linux operating system and a respected hacker himself defined the culture of hacking further when saying that a hacker is not someone who uses computers and computer related skills only to survive or to earn money, instead computer hackers are driven by two higher motives, social and entertaining (Himanen 2002, 15).

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First, a hacker uses a computer as a social tool where communication through discussion groups and chat rooms create communities where ideas, solutions and best practices circle from one peer to another. The social status and order of a hacker in the community is determined by his/her ability to create code and new programs that work well to serve its purpose (Mayer 1989). Highly skilled and innovative programmer hackers are sometimes referred as “Elite”. Some hackers have created toolkits, scripts or patches for others to easily perform hacks and modifications to readymade software like computer games (Schleiner 2002). In hacking slang, the users who don’t have the ability to create novel computer code but use ready made tools or action scripts to perform “hacks” are known as “script-kiddies” (Mollick 2005). Secondly, technology itself, as in the form of a computer, represents entertainment for hackers. Existing games and other forms of digital entertainment are merely extensions of that fun. In the very heart of hacking is one’s ability to create something new and unique and to share it with others. (Himanen 2002, 15) Reflecting this view on hacking, entertainment and technology, it does not come as a surprise that Spacewar, the first computer game ever was originally a “hack” as in a clever program developed by a hacker, Steve “Slug” Russell at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1961 (Haddon 2002, 58). The first “hacks” were in fact simple computer games made by students to entertain themselves and their peers. One important fact of this entertainment was also the chance to show off with one’s coding skills. In the hacking spirit, early computers were treated as entertaining toys, rather than scientific tools (Haddon 2002, 58). Thomas (2002) argues in his study of hacker culture that by the late 1980s, hacking had undergone a critical cultural transformation. As computers and information technology became increasingly ubiquitous, centralized, and seemingly beyond society’s ability to understand or control, the hacker assumed symbolic significance: mysterious, dangerous, the embodiment of contemporary anxieties about technology. In this new vision, hackers were no longer seen as guardians or innovators but as criminals. This notion of cultural transformation serves as a good introduction to the

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next chapter where hackers are categorized further on their ability to innovate and their motives to do so.

2.3 Categorizing hackers Hackers can be categorized in many different ways, including motivation, the communities they work in, and what is most relevant to this thesis, by their ability to innovate. This section reviews the way hackers have been categorized and then a matrix is formulated in order to better understand their innovativeness. According to the Jargon File (2003) , which is a file used to store the language and culture of hackers, the often loaded term "hacking" refers to Grey Hat hacking, which is generally understood to be any sort of technological utilization or manipulation of technology which goes above and beyond the capabilities inherent to the design of a given application. This usage attempts to maintain neutrality, as opposed to the politically charged and often contentious terms White Hat hacking, which is designated as "hacking" motivated exclusively by good intentions (e.g. enhancing the performance of a device or exposing the vulnerabilities of a security system for the benefit of the system administrator), or Black Hat hacking, which is designated as "hacking" motivated exclusively by bad or selfish intentions (e.g. stealing useful information or exacting technological revenge through sabotage). The usual divide between illegal and legal hacking is made between “white hat hackers” and “black hat hackers” (2006: The hacker Quarterly). According to the Jargon File (2006) these terms derive from the dress code of formulaic Westerns, in which the bad guys wore black hats and the good guys white ones. Hackers also differ depending on their hacking skills. In the figure 1 I have combined descriptions of hackers’ inventiveness from various sources.

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“Elite Hacker”

“Programmer / Coder”



Ability to re-invent and expand a devices capability to perform outside of manufacturer’s technical or legal specifications



Ability to create new computer code and programs rapidly and expertly



How: Re-writing and reverse engineering firmware, device drivers and circuit level code



How: Creating programs for personal and public use.

“Modder”

“Script Kiddy / Wannabe”



Ability to create technical and aesthetical modifications to products enabling added functionality and looks



Use of ready-made tools like toolkits and action scripts to modify programs or devices functionality



How: adding memory, storage, LED’s, stickers, general accessorizing



How: using toolkits and action scripts to create extensions or added functionality

Higher

Inventiveness related to the platform / hardware

Higher

Inventiveness related to the applications / software

Lower

Figure 1: Defining the dimensions of hackers inventiveness

First, hackers are seen to represent innovativeness with technology on two different dimensions, software and hardware. Software hackers are highly skilled programmers while hardware hackers are hardware modifiers.

This divide

incorporates two dimension into the matrix, inventiveness related to the platform / hardware and inventiveness related to the applications / software. “Script Kiddies” and “Wannabe hackers” are at the lowest level of the hacker social order (Mayer 1989). While they are not skillful enough to innovate themselves, they use tools provided by other more skilled hackers. The term script kiddy has typically referred to a malicious hacker, or a wannabe cracker who forces their way into computer systems (Mollick 2002; Know Your Enemy 2000). Raymond (2001) adds

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that the highly derogatory term “Script kiddies” is often used to indicate those who either claim to have far more skill than they actually have, or who exclusively use programs developed by others to achieve a successful security exploit. Voiskounsky & Smyslova (2003 ,178) stated that when a inexperienced hacker increases his/hers own hacking challenge he becomes a wannabe hacker whose rewards are getting noticed by other more skilled hackers. “Programmer / Coder” refers to a hacker that has expertise in writing computer code rapidly and expertly. According to the Jargon File (2003) , a hacker is a person who is good at programming quickly. Raymond (2001) writes in his essay “How To Become A Hacker” that learning to program is the fundamental hacking skill and further, in order to gain more status and reputation as a hacker, one has to specifically write open source software. Another type of hacker is one who creates novel hardware modifications, “a modder”. At the most basic end of this spectrum are those who make frequent changes to the hardware in their computers using standard components, or make semi-cosmetic themed modifications to the appearance of the machine. This type of Hacker modifes his/her computer for performance needs and/or aesthetics. These changes often include adding memory, storage or LEDs and cold cathode tubes for light effects. (Hardware hacker 2006) “Elite Hacker” is a term that refers to someone who has the ability to write circuitlevel code, device drivers, firmware, and low-level networking, and uses these techniques to make devices do things outside of their specifications. Elite Hackers are typically in very high regard among hacker communities. This is primarily due to the enormous difficulty, complexity and specialized domain knowledge required for this type of work, as well as the electrical engineering expertise that plays a large role. Such hackers are rare, and almost always considered to be “wizards” or “gurus” of a very high degree. (Hacker 2006) It has to be noted that the matrix presented here is a simplification. As a simplified model it helps to understand different dimensions of hackers’ innovativeness towards technology but the model also has its limitations. The definitions presented

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in the matrix are flexible and overlapping. The important thing to realize is that the term “hacker” can be used to represent a wide array of users and innovations.

3 SOCIAL SHAPING OF INNOVATION This chapter places users in an active role in the innovation process and new product development. The interaction between users and producers is then placed into a larger sociotechnical framework within the theory of the social construction of technology. The aim of this chapter is to help understand what roles users have in the innovation process and how technology is socially and culturally constructed.

3.1 User’s roles in the innovation process In the 1980’s and 1990’s the old view of users as passive consumers was largely replaced in some areas of technology studies, along with the linear model of technological innovation and diffusion (Oudshoorn and Pinch 2003, 3). In the linear diffusion models the users role was to passively adopt new technologies while innovation was restricted to research and development and stopped when the product left the laboratory (Williams et all. 2005, 53).

Later on, this way of

downplaying the role of users led to technological determinism which has been largely criticized in science and technology studies (Merrit & Marx 1994). By bringing in social and cultural factors to the innovation process in product development one can acquire a richer view of the roles of the user. This why the classical linear product development processes (e.g. Ulrich and Eppinger 1995) are not discussed here further. Moisander (2005) describes the cultural approach to product development as a view that emphasizes the users role in the innovation process, as it implies that the only way to understand consuming and producing is to see it as a dynamic process between consumers and producers where ideas and culturally shared representations materialize in to cultural artifacts. The innovation process in which the user’s role is defined in this chapter consists of three phases. The first phase is where product developers create new products, the

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second is bringing the new product to the marketplace and the third is creating something new based on the experiences and knowledge acquired from users in the marketplace. In each of these stages users have a different and important role. With the help of these three different phases I have also divided the roles of the users into three: the imagined user at the development stage prior to the market introduction, the emerging user after the market introduction and the creative user in the stage where new knowledge is created by the users that is then used as input for new innovations. The following sub-chapters will go through the relevant theories about the user’s role in each of these stages.

3.1.1 The imagined user Before new innovations as in new products, services or technologies can enter into existence, an imagined user is created by the innovator and incorporated in to the design of the innovation (Akrich 1995). According to Akrich (1995) there are two ways, explicit and implicit, that innovators create imagined user representations. Explicit techniques are often “legitimized” in a corporate environment and rely on market surveys, consumer testing and feedback on experience. However, all of these methods they have weaknesses when put in use. Market surveys may be used to identify potential buyers or add sales arguments but they have very little to do with design and development of the actual product and they can be used merely to convince company management about a need to build up a project. Trott (2001) follows this view and states that market research should be used as a method that helps the decision process, not as a tool that provides managerial solutions. Akrich (1995, 172) argues that consumer testing is used to minimize the number of dissatisfied users while assuming the existence of an average standard of taste and the feedback on experience is usually filtered twice, first by the users themselves who pass only remarks that they think are relevant with the system itself or with its agents; and then by the latter for similar reasons. Akrich (1995) continues that the less “legitimized” but in fact dominating implicit techniques actually address real users but rely on spokespersons of three general

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types: self-experience, expert consultants and other products. Other products can be used as a reference of benchmarking while the outside “experts” can be used as consultants to bring in the experience of users. Self-experience is when a designer takes the role of the user by replacing his professional self with a layman; this typically occurs when there is no other available mean of bringing in the end user. Akrich calls this method the “I”. Kotro (2005) built up from the concept of the “I” and proposed “hobbyism” and “hobbyist knowledge” to describe how insights, values and ideals from hobbyist communities were transferred to actual products through product development in the Suunto corporation. While Akrich (1995, 173) noted that the “I” was coined when the product developer or designer took the “hat” of a layman, hobbyist knowledge was created when product developers and marketers were participating and learning extreme sports “in situ” and took the knowledge and insights with them back to inside the organizational frame of the manufacturer.

3.1.2 The emerging user As real users encounter the new products brought to the market and apply them in practice, they also transform their own lives accordingly, in the direction pointed by the products (Pantzar 2000, 3). New consuming practices emerge from new products and these practices and their consequences are not always predictable by the innovator. The bicycle for example, became a source for women’s emancipation, as the skirt was impracticable to ride a bike with (Bijker 1995). Thomas Edison, who invented the early phonograph never imagined ordinary people as its users because the machine was to be used as a business dictating machine (Carlsson 1999, 182). As seen above, the consuming practices that are born along with products may or may not be in line with manufacturers views of correct consumption. When the personal computer started to domesticate in the 1970’s it created a set of “appropriate” and “inappropriate” uses connected to the ideals mainly around gender and family (Reed 2000). It was acceptable for boys to be interested in

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computer technology while storing cooking recipes was almost the only appropriate use of computers for housewifes. As home computers and computer networks further domesticated into homes, they created entire consumer counter-cultures around services like Napster as it introduced a new technology to get music from other people through the Internet (Desmond et al. 2000, 266). As Williams et al. (2005, 57) sum up, domestication refers to ways in which an artefacts technical capabilities are explored, meanings attributed and practices developed as artefacts are integrated into local social settings. When products domesticate in the marketplace after their market introduction the users’ role also goes through a transformation. Pantzar (1996, 2000, 2003) studied the histories of several emerging product technologies and concluded that a product has never been “ready” when it is brought to the marketplace in either its technical or social aspects. As novel products domesticate after they are brought to the markets the users and their motives for product choice, along with the function of the product, are transformed in the course of this domestication lifecycle. According to the studies of Pantzar (1996) the changing relationship of the consumer to a new commodity can be seen as a three stage process in what he calls consumption as “play”, then as “work” and finally “art”, where in the final “art” phase consumption becomes critical and creative. In the next section, this creativity related to consumers is studied further.

3.1.3 The creative user While imagined users are represented in the product designs and new users emerge as new products domesticate in the marketplace, users can also provide creative and resourceful inputs for new product innovations. According to von Hippel (2005, 19) the idea that manufacturers, not users, develop novel product innovations is ingrained in both traditional expectations and scholarship. In many cases however, the user becomes a manufacturer to fulfill one’s own needs for customized products. Von Hippel (2005, 22) argues that the major finding of empirical research into innovation by users is that the most commercially attractive user-developed products and product modifications are developed by users with “lead user” characteristics.

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According to von Hippel (1986), lead users are defined as members of a user population having two distinguishing characteristics: 1. they anticipate relatively high benefits from obtaining a solution for their needs and 2. they are at the leading edge of an important market trend(s), and so are currently experiencing needs that will later be experienced by many users in that market. The idea that a group of users is ahead of market trends and is experiencing needs that will later be experienced by many in the marketplace is well known in the course of linear innovation diffusion studies. Rogers (1962) divided users in different adopter categories according to their ability and willingness to adopt new products or ideas.

Potential users could be categorized as innovators, early adopters, early

majority, late majority and laggards based on their ability to adopt innovations. Innovators were the first to adapt new inventions and in some cases they also had the ability to innovate themselves. Rogers and Rice (1980, 500-501) further defined reinventions as a degree to which an innovation is changed or modified by a user in the process of it’s adoption or implementation, but did not specify further the role of reinventions in the diffusion process of innovations. Flecks’s (1988) concept of innofusion - as in innovation in diffusion - contested the linear views of diffusion and argued that the process of innovation continued as artefacts were brought to the marketplace, but his studies were limited to industrial products while ignoring users as in individual consumers. Du Gay (1997) stated that consumer practices also create input for producers and manufacturers. This is done in an ongoing cycle of commodification – where producers make new products or new versions of old products as a result of consumers’ activities – and appropriation – where consumers make those products meaningful. Sometimes this creates a new ”register” of meaning for artefact that affect production in some way. In this sense, the meanings that products have are constructed in this process of dialogue between production and consumption. (du Gay 1997, 103). Each new consumer technology, in other words, both sustains culture and produces or reproduces cultures creating what du Gay (1997, 23) calls a circuit of culture illustrated in the figure 2.

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representation

production

consumption

identity

regulation

Figure 2: The circle of culture Source: du Gay 1997, 23

Shove and Pantzar (2005, 60) argued that the concept of re-invention can also be cultural and it is highly useful when studying successive emerging practices. Practices require continual reproduction since the companies can make consumer artifacts such as Nordic walking sticks, but in contrast they can’t make the practice of consuming happen. Akrich (1992) named consuming practices as “scripts”. She emphasized that as designers and product developers “inscribe” their visions of the future users in the technical content of the new object create a “script” for consumption but it’s often the innovative consumer who determines or defines the transcripts for new commodities, which then become established. Pantzar (2003) further stated that scripts can be divided into “open” and “closed” according to their tolerance to be challenged by users. The washing machine for example was characterized from the start by a closed script which restricted any consumer interventions in the product where advisory organizations together with manufacturers, advertisers and the press established “almost a national guideline for the usage, placement and appearance of washing machines” (Pantzar 1996, 91). As seen throughout this chapter, users, whether as in imagined representations, emerging through domestication processes or as part of the creation of new

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innovations, play an important part in the innovation process. The next chapter proves that users are also powerful actors in technological change.

Each new

technology has a particular set of practices associated with it – a way of using them, a set of knowledge, or know-how, that is sometimes called a social technology (du Gay 1997, 23). In the next chapter the importance of this social aspect of technology is studied further.

3.2 Social construction of technology One of the first approaches to draw deep understanding to users and also non-users in technological change was the model of social construction of technology (Oudshoorn and Pinch 2003, 3). Social construction of technology (SCOT) is an approach to technology studies by Pinch and Bijker (1984) which was created to describe the dynamic development process of technological artefacts where users are the agents for technological change. The main emphasis in this model is the social aspect of the development process so that technological artefacts are constructed and ultimately assembled between different social groups. According to Pinch and Bijker (1995) the advantage of SCOT over the other models of technological development is that it combines the technological and non-technological aspects of the artefacts development process. According to the SCOT methodology, different social groups can construct radically different meanings of technology. Bijker (1995, 50) for example illustrated the development of the current design of “modern” bicycles “through the eyes” of the members of relevant social groups of users and non-users of different bicycle designs in history. One design that had a big front wheel, called the Ordinary bicycle, was “non-working” for elderly people but for young athletic men it was “working”. Different social groups constructed radically different meanings for the Ordinary as each social group had different problems with the artifact. With this, Bijker (1995, 52) wanted to emphasize that artifacts have a fluid and ever changing character. Each problem and each solution, as soon as they are perceived by a relevant social group, changes the artifacts meaning, whether a solution to those problems is implemented or not.

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The changing meaning of an artifact came to be known as technology’s interpretative flexibility. Bijker (1995, 75) deconstructed the Ordinary bicycle into different artifacts and argued that it was a “macho bicycle” or an “unsafe bicycle” depending on the social group evaluating the artifact. The “working” and “unworking” of an artifact was then a socially and culturally constructed assessment, rather than being based on intrinsic properties of the artifact. One artifact comprises different socially constructed artifacts, some of which may be “working” while others are “nonworking”. Pinch and Bijker (1995) stated further that the technologies that fail have to be taken into account when analyzing the development of an artefact so that the level of analysis would be symmetrical. When only winning products and artefacts are taken into account in the history of technology, the level of analysis is asymmetrical and can lead to implicit adoption of a linear technological development also known as technological determinism. Pinch and Kline (1996, 774–775) elaborated on the original SCOT model by pointing out that the way a product is interpreted is not restricted to the design stage of a technology, but can also continue during the product’s use. They illustrated this point with the case of the automobile and how manufacturers adopted some of the rural users’ innovations, generally after a lag. For example, a car that could also serve as a small truck was first re-engineered by some farmers and eventually offered as a commercial product by manufacturers. In the next sub-chapters, the components of the SCOT-model will be reviewed along with some examples. These elements are then used to build up my theoretical research framework in chapter 4.

3.2.1 Relevant social groups To understand the development of technology as a social process, it is crucial to take the artifacts as they are viewed by the relevant social groups (Bijker 1995, 49). Relevant social groups consist of heterogeneous groups of people that have similar

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views of the technology that they have feelings towards. The way that relevant social groups can be identified and described is by “rolling the snowball” and then by “following the actor” (Ibid. 46).

Social group

Social group

Artefact

Social group

Figure 3: Related to an artifact, the relevant social groups are identified. Source: Bijker (1995, 47)

By “rolling a snowball”, Bijker (1995, 46) identified social groups that were relevant with respect to the specific artefact, the bicycle, by noting all social groups mentioned in relation to that artifact in historical documents. By using the snowball technique the first list of relevant social groups could then be made. When after some time the researcher does not find reference to new groups, it is clear that all relevant social groups have been identified. Using this as a starting point, the researcher can then “follow the actor” to learn more details about the identified social groups and delineate them from other relevant social groups.

Problem Problem Social group Problem Problem

Figure 4: Artifacts are described by focusing on the problems perceived by the relevant social groups Source: Bijker (1995, 51)

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After identifying relevant social groups, the focus turns to the problems and solutions related to the artifact. Bijker (1995, 50-51) argues that there are two reasons why this has to be done. First, it helps to avoid implicit linearity in technological development where, for example, one artefact can be said to represent the “first modern bicycle” where the problems and solutions and the impact of other bicycle designs are ignored as they are retrospectively seen to have failed. Secondly, the variation and selection on the levels of problems and solutions can help to cast an evolutionary model. When the relevant social groups see a variety of problems, a new variety of solutions are then generated and some of these solutions are selected to yield new artifacts (Bijker 1995, 51).

Solution

Solution

Problem Solution

Solution

Figure 5: The solutions are described that are seen as available to each of the perceived problems Source: Bijker (1995, 52)

3.2.2 Interpretative flexibility According to the social-constructivist view technological artefacts are culturally constructed and interpreted: in other words, the interpretative flexibility of a technological artifact must be shown in order to build a social construction. This can be done by showing how, for different social groups, the artifact presents itself as essentially different artifacts. (Bijker 1995, 76) Bijker (1995, 75) demonstrated how the early bicycle was seen as different artifact based on different social groups evaluating it and its uses. The young athletic users saw the big-wheeled bicycle differently as elderly men and other users. This way the big front-wheeled bicycle was deconstructed to two different artifacts. It was an

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Unsafe Bicycle for elderly men and to non-users and a Macho Bicycle for athletic young men. This difference in how these social groups saw one artefact allowed for an explanation that for the “working” and “non-working” of technology there was no universal culture-independent criterion.

3.2.3 Closure and stabilization Closure, in the analysis of technology, means that the interpretative flexibility of an artifact diminishes. Consensus among the different relevant social groups about the dominant meaning of an artifact emerges (Bijker 1995, 86). History offers many examples of the closure and the stabilization of technology. The way that the QWERTY-keyboard layout for computers stabilized is an illustrative example. The QWERTY-layout was first used when commercial typewriters emerged and was specifically made to keep the typing speed low to keep the most used alphabets as far away from each other as possible (Perdue 1994). As this type of keyboard layout became widespread by typewriter manufacturers the users had to adapt to it. This kind of closure did lead to a decrease of interpretative flexibility – one design, the QWERTY keyboard lay-out, became dominant and others for the most part ceased to exist. Bijker (1995, 84) describes in his study of the development of the bicycle how for example the air tire and “safety ordinary” reached closure as one group of users saw the earlier designs too dangerous and hard to use. As part of the same movement, the dominant artifact developed as an increasing stabilization among the relevant social groups other than “young men of means and nerve” who were physically fit enough to ride the bicycle with a big front wheel.

3.2.4 Technological Frame According to Bijker (1995, 123) the concept of ”technological frame” can help to capture the diversity of interactions among individual actors inside a relevant social group and also the interactions between the relevant social groups.

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The theoretical concept of technological frame of a social group is employed to explain the interactions within and between social groups that shape the artifacts: these technological frames shape and are shaped by these interactions (Bijker 1987). A technological frame is built when interaction ”around” an artifact begins. If the interactions move actors of the social group in the same direction, a technological frame will build up; if not, there will be no frame, no relevant social group and no future interaction. (Bijker 1995, 123). To describe a technological frame, Bijker (1995, 125) presented a tentative list of its elements: -

Goals

-

Key problems

-

Problem solving strategies

-

Requirements to be met by problem solutions

-

Current Theories

-

Tacit Knowledge

-

Testing procedures

-

Design method and criteria

-

User’s practice

-

Perceived substition function

-

Exemplary artifacts

According to Bijker (1995, 125) the list of technological frame elements can only be tentative. In each new case, in each new relevant social group, additional elements may need to be incorporated or taken out from the list to give an adequate interpretation of the interactions.

4 THEORETICAL RESEARCH FRAMEWORK This chapter will present the theoretical research framework that is used to guide the empirical research in this thesis. As a result of the literature review in this thesis, it was proved that the users, whether real or imagined, have much impact on how new products and technologies are

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consumed and taken into everyday use. Manufacturers have their own ways of bringing in the end user into a product development process, but the users ultimately make products successful and meaningful. The aim of this thesis is now to approach users’ interaction with technology from cultural and social viewpoints. As a result of my literature review, my understanding is that the social construction of technology provides the best and most complete theoretical tools for preparing a thorough view of the development process of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. This is because the social construction of technology (SCOT) -model emphasizes the role of the users who in turn play an important role in the development of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet due to its “hackability” and open source development approach.

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Demonstrate interpretative flexibility = different views of the artifact

Define technological frames = interactions around the artifact

Look for closure & stabilization = Interpretative flexibility diminishes

Solution

Solution

Problem

Problem

Solution

Social group

Problem

770 Internet tablet

Problem

Social group

Solution

Problem

Solution Problem

Solution

Users’ roles in the different phases in the development of the product

Figure 6: Theoretical research framework

Figure 6 visualizes my theoretical research framework used in this study. The empirical part of this study attempts to understand how different social groups interact around the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet and what are the problems and solutions that encourage actors into this interaction. The social construction of

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technology serves as a starting point for understanding these interactions. In order to build a social construction, the first task is to identify the relevant social groups related to the artifact. Then by focusing on the problems and solutions of these social groups, build a technological frame on the interactions around the artefact and demonstrate if there is interpretative flexibility in how the artifact is seen by the actors of relevant social groups. Closure and stabilization happens then if interpretative flexibility towards the product diminishes and different social groups see the product in a similar manner. The criticism towards the SCOT-model has to also be taken into account when conducting this study. Klein & Kleinman (2002, 34) wanted to further emphasize the influence that actors and social groups have in the social construction. What they believed missing in all of the case studies was the discussion of groups’ capacity or power or what enables one group’s interpretation to be embodied in the artifact. Following this view, Williams and Edge (1996) state that the final consumer may have little opportunity to engage upon the development of a product other than the “veto power” to adopt a product or not. The criticism towards the SCOT-model has been taken into account in the empirical part of this thesis by concentrating on the most powerful group of users, hackers, whose engagement upon the product and its usage is not limited only to the veto power to purchase a product or not.

5 EMPIRICAL RESEARCH PLAN This section focuses on the methods of the empirical part of this study. It will explain why the particular qualitative approach was used in this study and how the research was conducted in order to reach the conclusions presented.

5.1 Research methods The theoretical framework used in this study is adapted from the constructivist approach to science and technology studies. The social construction of technology

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model (Pinch and Bijker 1984) served as a framework for presenting rich case studies of technological artifacts. Stake (1995, 42) emphasizes that the constructivist approach used in case studies encourages providing readers with ”thick description” for their own generalizing about the subject or phenomenon. Thick description is not complexities objectively described but rather particular subjective perceptions of the relevant actors. While total objectivity towards the research subject might be impossible to achieve, subjectivity is used as a tool to stimulate further reflection, optimizing reader’s opportunity to learn. The researchers role is to organize the study to maximize the opportunity for ”naturalistic generalization” through experiential learning. (Stake 1995) Generally, qualitative research studies rely on three basic data gathering techniques: participant observation, interviews, and social artifact content analysis (Wolcott 1995; 1999). A qualitative approach for this thesis was chosen because it presses for understanding of the complex interrelationship among all that exists while quantitative research presses for an explanation trough scale and measures (Stake 1995, 37). This also seemed feasible to the theoretical framework of this study, as the goal is to gain more understanding of the involvement of innovative users, hackers, in the different stages of product development through the social construction of one particular technology, the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. This artifact was chosen because it is a fairly new product, as it was launched in 2005, and it is the first product of it’s kind for Nokia; a communication device using open source software but at the same time it is not a GSM phone. Furthermore, it represents a new approach to consumer technology as it has become a medium for hacker culture and its innovations. By studying the artifact’s ”story” one can possibly learn a great deal about the ways that a new kind of product development process works between the product manufacturer and the innovating users and what was the role of ”hacking” in the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet’s product development and in making sense of its users. The material and the insight to provide ”thick description” and ”experiential understanding” as Stake (1995) calls it into this case study was brought by working as

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a graduate trainee at Nokia’s open source product management division in Helsinki 15.5 – 29.09.2006. Working inside the product management division opened up the possibility for participatory observation, which allows for observing while taking an active role in the group being studied (Stake 1995).

5.2 Conducting the research Following the methodology of SCOT and my theoretical framework, the first task in the process of creating a social construction of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet was to identify the relevant social groups that were then to be studied. I identified three relevant social groups: the people involved with the development of the 770 Internet Tablet inside Nokia, the users who were participating in the development of the product and the non-users. Next, I will briefly go over why these social groups are relevant for my analysis and the method of how the data was collected from these groups.

Inside Nokia It was self-evident that the individuals who took part in the product development team of the 770 inside Nokia made up my first relevant social group. A total of 7 semi-structured interviews were made with the people who were involved in the product’s development and marketing. The “snowball” method was used to get to these contacts after I first approached the vice president of the Nokia’s convergence products business group, the group that was in charge of the development of the 770 Internet Tablet.

The snowball method basically means identifying important

interviewees by asking interviewees to name others with whom the researcher should talk to (Bijker 1995, 46). The “snowballing” started as the vice president of the business group who was in charge of the 770 platform replied to my email and gave me the first contact, a director of open source platforms in Tampere who then gave the contacts of a senior R&D manager in Helsinki. From him I went on to a program manager in Oulu. Based

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on these interviews I managed to get a good overview of the challenges that Nokia was involved with in this product development project and what was most important to this thesis, I also received a graduate trainee position to work on a target user project which was to provide input for innovations and new ideas to the product development and marketing of the Internet Tablet product line. Four more interviews were made as I worked in the software product management of the 770 Internet Tablet making up a total of seven interviews inside Nokia. 1. Director, Open Software Platform 2. Senior Manager, R&D 3. Product Program Manager 4. Senior Product Manager 5. Senior Project Manager (Symbian Platform) 6. Product Manager, Marketing 7. Senior Manager, Product Marketing All the interviews were made in a semi-structured manner to bring about a more natural feel to the situation and to encourage free discussion around the subject. I was prepared for the interviews with a list of questions but I also let the interviewees lead the discussion when I felt that it was going in an interesting direction. In general, my questions were about the interviewee’s role in the 770 product, then questions about the markets and users, followed by questions about the product and its development. After the interviews that I conducted, I felt that not many new ideas were coming out anymore. In addition to conducting interviews I was constantly participating in situations were I could collect material through observations and discussions that went on considering the product, as a result the interviews were not the only source for analysis. This gave more insight to the research subject that would have been possible to acquire only by conducting interviews.

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The users – hackers and geeks For the second relevant social group I turned my attention to users. Bijker (1995, 46) states that relevant social groups can be described by following two rules: “roll a snowball” and “follow the actor”. The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet proved to be an interesting study subject, due to the open source Linux operating system, which enabled the view inside Nokia that the current adopters of the product were mainly “hackers” and “geeks”. JM: In your view, who are the current users of the 770 internet tablet product? At the moment I would say that they are these very early adopters of technology.

[Interviewee 6, product manager (marketing)] They are beyond early adopters, they are extreme hackers doing amazing things with our product.

[Interviewee 2, senior R&D manager] They are these geeks..linux geeks who like to hack the product

[Interviewee 3, product program manager] Developers, geeks and technology leaders. This is mainly because the product concept is totally new. The maturity of the product is still low. The product has not been marketed so that’s why it has not diffused beyond those people mentioned.

[Interviewee 4, senior product manager]

As demonstrated in the second chapter, not all hackers are alike and others are more innovative than others. The more innovative the hacker, the more powerful he/she is as an actor and more relevant a member of the social group. Among the users of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, the most innovating and most power ones were to be identified. This was done by observing popular online communities and discussion forums dealing with issues around the 770 Internet Tablet and by finding out what

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were the most popular user made applications for the device and which of them had created most discussion and “buzz” on the Internet. With this method, I found five applications that were the most discussed on the Internet and the three users behind these applications. The first person contacted, John “Gnuite” Costigan was the user who had created a program called Maemo Mapper for the 770 Internet Tablet. Maemo mapper is an application that turns the 770 into a GPS-navigator. It downloads maps from the internet and when used with a GPS-receiver it shows information of the whereabouts of its user. What is notable in this application, is that in its user license it has been very clearly pointed out that using the program might violate copyright laws when downloading maps from Google maps or other commercial services. Second contact was Urho Konttori who had made two popular homebrew applications for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. Media converter is a program that let’s users convert videos from their computer to a format that is supported by the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. This has to be done as the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet has a limited amount of media formats that it supports since the device was not intended for media usage. In addition to the media converter, Urho Konttori has also made a program called theme maker that can be used to customize the graphics, fonts and the general look of the user interface of the device. Final contact, Tomas Junnonen, had made a Bluetooth plugin and ported a SCUMMVM application for the 770 Internet Tablet. The Bluetooth plugin could be used to connect a keyboard using the wireless Bluetooth technology improving the input methods of the device and SCUMMVM is an application that can be used to play old LucasArts computer games on the device. What came as a surprise for me when contacting Tomas Junnonen was tha he was also working for Nokia. The reason why this was a surprise was because his “hacks” were distributed at his personal website titled “hacking the 770” and there was no mentioning of the fact that he was actually working for Nokia. After identifying the users behind the five most downloaded and discussed applications, I contacted the developers by email and then conducted the interviews with an instant messaging program and captured the logs of these interviews.

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8. John “Gnuite” Costigan 9. Urho Konttori 10. Tomas Junnonen Non-users – also relevant for the analysis As for the selection of the third relevant social group, Bijker (1995) states that the non-users have to be taken into account to achieve a ”symmetrical” view of the social construction of the technology that is studied. The relevant non-users were recognized through a study that I was working on in Nokia while preparing this thesis. The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet was a product meant for internet usage so the starting point was that these non-users had to be internet users. After this, four advanced internet users who kept weblogs and used the latest internet services were selected for interviews. The criteria for being an advanced Internet user were that the interviewees all kept a public weblog and were users of various social networking services in the Internet. 11. Isko Salminen 12. Herkko Hietanen 13. “Digital Gopher” (pseudonym) 14. Jyri Engeström 15. Shaun “Dragonminded” Taylor In addition to these non-users, one more interviewee who could be described as a member of the social group of hackers was identified and interviewed. This was done to achieve knowledge about an innovating user who could be described as a hacker but who was not a user of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. The final interviewee of the non-users group was Shaun “Dragonminded” Taylor. He had developed a homebrew program called DSOrganize for the Nintendo DS gaming device that made the gaming device to work as a personal digital assistant by adding calendar and email functionalities to the product. With this “hack”, Dragonminded had become one of the most known hackers of the Nintendo DS. He was contacted by email and interviewed with an instant messenger program.

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In conclusion, eight Nokia employees and seven others were interviewed making a total of fifteen interviews. Out of those fifteen interviews, six interviews were conducted with an instant messaging program and the chat logs of the interviews were captured. The rest of the interviews were recorded on a digital sound recorded. As was mentioned earlier, in addition to the interviews, informal discussions and meetings provided a lot of material for this case study as did observations made from the discussion groups, weblogs and websites considering issues around the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet in the Internet

6 THE SOCIOTECHNICAL CHANGE OF THE NOKIA 770 INTERNET TABLET This chapter first introduces the case subject, the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, and then follows its development from the birth of the product to market launch, and finally to how users referring to themselves as hackers reinvented the product to better suit their needs. Along with this chapter, the social construction of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet is developed through the elements of the SCOT-model to better understand the input of user innovators in the shaping process of the this artifact. Finally, based on the findings in this thesis, a theoretical concept, ”hacker-hobbyism”, is proposed to describe the innovation activity around the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet.

6.1 Nokia and the challenges of open source Internet Tablet Nokia has been one of the most successful corporations in the mobile phone industry. It was the first firm in the industry to reinvent its products as a branded good at the high end of cultural industries (Pantzar & Ainamo 2004, 83) and before that, the decision to concentrate on mobile phone technology, especially to the GSM standard, was the basis of Nokia’s future success (Häikiö 2001). Communication technologies, along with the portable electronics industry, are now facing rapid changes. The Internet is making it possible to communicate globally with text, voice and multimedia with a near flat rate fee all over the world. On the other hand, mobile phones and other portable electronics are now turning into versatile multimedia devices capable of handling rich media content like music,

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pictures, video, games and even wireless internet access, all contained in a single device. Only educated guesses exist as to what kind of device will become a cultural icon for the next generation of mobile lifestyle. In the 1960’s and 1970’s it was a portable radio kit, in the 1980’ it was the Sony Walkman which was then followed by the Nintendo “Gameboy generation”, then cell phones invaded the market of portable technology in the late 1990’s (Weber 2005). After the year 2000, it seems that, at least for a moment, the Apple iPod has became the cultural icon of portable electronics (Kahney 2005). Nokia’s goal with the 770 Internet Tablet is to capitalize on the current “Internet revolution” by making a non-cellular connected product for consumers’ home and mobile use. This case study of the Nokia 770 internet tablet contributes to this thesis in more than one way. First, the Nokia 770 provides an opportunity to study the development process of a totally new product. It is Nokia’s first entry in the communication device market without utilizing GSM-technology. With this product, Nokia is focusing on capitalizing on the promise of new mobile internet. The 770 Internet Tablet is not a mobile phone nor its peripheral but rather a portable internet tablet with a touch screen utilizing wireless local area networks (WLAN) or Bluetooth technology through a mobile phone to connect to the Internet. Since it does not necessarily need a mobile carrier network to function, its distribution and marketing methods are different compared to mobile phones. The cellular operators’ interest in subsidizing the products price or promoting it is different from a mobile phone since the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet does not support the operators’ business model as do mobile phones. This was one reason why the 770 Internet Tablet became the first product that is sold directly trough Nokia’s website. Second, the 770 Internet Tablet is Nokia’s first and currently only mobile communication device that uses Linux as its operating system, and as such is published under an open source license. Without going too much into the technical details of open source, it is sufficient to say that in the scope of this thesis the open source license assures that users and programmers have the following rights with the program that is licensed under the open source license (Markus & Manville 2000, 20):

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

The right to make copies of the program, and distribute these copies



The right to have access to the software’s source code, a necessary preliminary before you can change it



The right to make improvements to the programs and to distribute them.

By making the product’s operating system open source and releasing and application development environment called Maemo, Nokia made it possible to become involved in a dialogue with hobbyists and use their expertise and insights to further develop the product and its functionalities. I will next start to develop the technological frame of Nokia, that according to Bijker (1995, 122) illustrates how interactions around artifact are structured. The problems and solutions that Nokia is dealing with regarding the 770 Internet Tablet defines the interactions around the artifact. In the next sub-chapters, the main challenges of developing a new product category with the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet are presented.

6.1.1 The software challenge The first thing that stood out in the interviews conducted with Nokia managers was that due to the rich functionalities of the multimedia mobile phones, the software that is used to operate the products is becoming increasingly important. The competition between other portable products is becoming more intense, so software is one important way to differentiate Nokia’s products from competitors’ products. In order to do this, Nokia has now turn itself into more of a software company that has to be able to create novel and complex software rapidly and professionally. Currently there are two main operating systems, Symbian and Linux, used in the multimedia products that Nokia manufactures. The Symbian operating system is a joint venture among the top companies in the mobile phone industry and is currently owned by Ericsson (with 15.6% of the shares), Nokia (47.9%), Panasonic (10.5%), Samsung (4.5%), Siemens AG (8.4%), and Sony Ericsson (13.1%) (Symbian, 2006). Symbian is based on open standards, but is not an open source product, as the source code is not publicly available. Linux, on the other hand, is open source software that is developed further by the open source community that works and communicates

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through the Internet.

The 770 Internet Tablet is Nokia’s first consumer

communication product to use the Linux based operating system. The interviewees emphasized the importance and meaning of Linux and open source in the development process of the 770 Internet Tablet.

JM: What is the meaning of the open source based 770 for the Nokia’s product development?

It is a big change.

[Interviewee 3, product project manager] Using open source software enabled us to move faster, much faster in our product creation than with other software platforms [symbian] and moving faster means saving money. When starting something from scratch there is usually no agreements made until 6 months due to NDA’s and intellectual property rights questions but these are already taken care of in open source with the licenses like the GPL and others. So, Instead of long negotiations open source starts faster. This was never thought of before.

[Interviewee 1, director of Open Software Platform] I believe that the 770 revolutionaries the way new products are created inside Nokia.

[Interviewee 2, Senior R&D manager] For Nokia, the utilization of open source means that they did not have to create their own operating system software from scratch to run the device, rather an operating system based on the Linux was created. This made it possible to develop the new product much faster compared to mobile phones. The open source development model that Nokia uses in its 770 Internet Tablet is a mixture of social and technical elements. Jaaksi (A Strategy 2006) specifies the uniqueness of Nokia’s open source development strategy in his weblog by defining the possibilities of the interaction between the manufacturer and the open source user communities by separating four different scenarios surrounding how companies can collaborate with open source communities.

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Figure 7: Open source development matrix Source: Ari Jaaksi’s Blog, 2006

On the vertical axis of the figure 7 Jaaksi (A strategy 2006) makes the distinction between open & native development and closed or sandbox development. On the more open model, in which the Nokia 770 currently is currently placed, native application development and system hacking is possible. The closed development model, on the other hand, supports only application “sandboxes” on top of the software, which restricts the access to the lower level software core. The horizontal axis creates a distinction between utilizing Linux distributions and companies as proxies from the “go to the source” approach, which means operating directly in open source communities without using companies as proxies who take care of the details of open source on Nokia’s behalf.

Nokia

Motorola

Figure 8: Nokia and Motorola on the open source development matrix Source: Ari Jaaksi's Blog, 2005

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Jaaksi (ibid.) emphasizes that there are no right or wrong places to be on the matrix presented. There are just different open source software strategies, and that the important thing is to know where actors are positioned in the matrix. As presented, Nokia’s competitor Motorola has a very different strategy in utilizing Linux software and open source development model than Nokia has with their 770 Internet Tablet. Motorola uses commercial Linux distributions of the software, thereby making native application development, “hacking”, impossible.

6.1.2 The operator challenge In many cases, it is the carriers that ultimately decide which functionalities are implemented to the new mobile phones.

[Interviewee 1, Director of open software platform] The second challenge to Nokia that rose up from the discussions was the symbiotic relationship with the cellular network operators that the mobile phone manufacturers had to get used to. In many key market areas, North America for example, the cellular network operators first buy phones from manufacturers like Nokia, and then they offer them to customers at subsidized price while locking customers into their networks for a certain amount of time. While this gives customers easy and inexpensive access to new phone models, the downside for the manufacturers is that the operators are keen to subsidize products that add value to their business models, and in this way they have bargaining power over the features and technology contained in upcoming products. Jaaksi (2005) explains in his weblog why the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet is not a cell phone: Cellular operators, who are the most important channel to markets, are demanding – they have tons of requirements for phones. Also, end users expect a very high level of maturity. Mandatory requirements for cell phones, such as type approvals, operator requirements, legislative requirements, operator subsidies, and other such elements make the business structure very complicated. You cannot sell a phone without SMS, WAP, MMS, SIM lock, sync, MIDP, 911 stuff, various approvals in different countries, and so on. (…) Internet Tablets are different – they are new. Rules, markets, technology, customers, partners, and channels to customers are new and still evolving

(It’s not a cell phone – and it’s good 2005)

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Anssi Vanjoki, the president of Nokia’s multimedia group stated in an interview (Wired 2005) that carriers’ activities can even prevent innovation. This happened when a North American carrier, Verizon Wireless, decided not to support Bluetooth technology so that when transferring pictures or other content from your mobile phone to a computer, users would have to pay for using Verizon’s network. Nokia’s 770 Internet Tablet is not attached to the operators’ business model in the same manner as mobile phones. This was also mentioned as one of the reasons why the Nokia 770 became the first product that Nokia started to sell through its website.

6.1.3 The market challenge The third challenge is new competition and market landscapes that Nokia is now entering with their new wave of portable computers like the 770 Internet Tablet. Mobile gaming devices, music, media devices and ultra portable computers are all posing new competition in addition to the existing competition from other mobile phone manufacturers. Future generations of portable devices are expected to have wireless Internet capabilities along with instant messaging and other social functionalities that once were only accessible with a mobile phone through a carrier network. I would now say that we compete with these new UMPCs (Ultra Mobile PC’s) more that with mobile phones…what we are trying to do here with the 770 is to create a new category of products.

[Interviewee 6, product manager (marketing)] We compete now with laptops…and maybe with some highly sophisticated linux smartphones

[Interviewee 7, product manager (marketing)] Even tough Nokia is the world’s leading mobile communication house, it has had its own share of difficulties breaking into new markets beyond mobile phones. In 2003, Nokia released the Nokia N-Gage mobile gaming system with great expectations. Mobile gaming was supposed to be the next ”killer application” in

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mobile phones preceded by the huge success of the Nintendo Gameboy gaming device and partly because of the buzz created by the famous Nokia ”worm game”. Nokia’s aim was to sell between six and nine million N-Gage units before the end of 2004 (Nokia figures claim massive n-gage sales 2003). However, in 2004 the CEO of Nokia, Jorma Ollila told the Financial Times that sales had not been as expected and it would take until 2005 before the success or failure of the platform can be properly judged (Nokia fesses up poor n-gage sales 2004). In 2004, Ilkka Raiskinen, the head of Nokia’s gaming section explained how risky it is to try to develop a new device category: The whole strategy is about being able to use those components which we have anyway, and test whether we can create a good enough games platform. Creating an optimal games device is easy - big screen, lots of horsepower, big battery - but making money and creating a business case that's viable, that's the tricky part. And now we are betting, or you might want to say gambling, on the fact that we can build on our mobile phone heritage in this space.

(Ilkka Raiskinen on N-Gage 2004)

A new and improved version, the N-gage GQ was introduced in 2004 and flaws in the original product were fixed, however it did not save the project. The head of Nokia’s Multimedia organization Anssi Vanjoki stated that while the aim was to sell six million units in three years, only one-third of that was actually sold and the product was a failure (Nokia misses n-gage sales target by miles 2005). After that, the dedicated N-Gage product line of gaming phones was ceased, and currently it serves as a software platform for Nokia’s multimedia products upon which other companies can develop games for. With the 770 Internet Tablet, Nokia is now again in 2005 trying to establish and promote a new product category called Internet Tablets, something that was not successful with their last attempt with mobile gaming phones and the N-Gage. The methods that are now used are however visibly different from the last time. Where as with the N-Gage had big marketing campaigns, the 770 Internet Tablet was brought to the markets very quietly.

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6.2 The birth of the product The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet was a product first started to develop around the year 2000. The concept was based on the vision that wireless internet technology (WLAN) was about to come very big and that laptop computers and personal digital assistants (PDA’s) were unable to answer consumer’s needs for the mobile internet (Forum 24 2006). The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet concept combined two development streams inside Nokia into one project. One stream was a hardware concept of a portable widescreen device made for Internet usage and the other stream was a Linux based open source software product. From my point of view, the idea for the 770 product was born somewhere around 2000/2001 when I was working in special products department doing standardizing things. We got WLAN cards to our product portfolio and at the same time, we had to think about what else uses could there be for WLAN other than data cards and business tools (communicators). I had some experience from 3G/WLAN from my university studies so someone happened to ask me... The concept was born in a brief moment of time. At that time I was an avid stock-trader and hooked on stock markets and stockrelated news. I couldn’t came away from the PC or leave home. So, a solution to my need had to be found. I then created a product concept named “Darude”. The “Darude” did not go into production in 2000 due to the screen technology was not ready and WLAN penetration was not high enough. It then took year or two and a concept that was born dead called “multipart” come from somewhere. Multipart was a concept where you had a cellular modem in pocket and an operating system around it. So, we [me and the product program manager] saw an opportunity in this for the ”Darude” and started to work with it.

[Interviewee 4, Senior Product Manager]

At this point, the first problems related to the product concept that was the starting point for the Nokia 770 can be connected. “Darude” and “Multipart” product concepts did not go into production since the screen technology was not ready and

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the WLAN-technology penetration was not high enough. In the figure 9 I have illustrated the first connections of the social construction of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. What is also worth noticing is how personal interests like stock trading and inability to move away from the PC were mentioned as a source for the needs that created the “Darude” product concept. Following Akrich’s (1995, 173) definitions, this was an implicit “I” method of representing the end user in the product design by relying on personal experience.

Artefacts

Social group

Problems

“Darude” product concept

Screen technology

Nokia product development

Symbian platform

“Multipart” product concept

WLAN penetration

Figure 9: Problems related to the product concepts Source: Author

For a couple of months we tinkered with a Symbian platform and we realized that we simply are not getting any kind of support for the project due to the limited resources. At the same time a strategic decision was made that Nokia will do a Linux product.

The Linux team was looking for a

product and we had a product “without an operating system”. Looking now backwards I have wondered many times that was this coincidence or a strategy of someone wiser :)..and so, this was the start of the 770 Internet Tablet

[Interviewee 4, Senior Product Manager]

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According to the interviewees, the solution to a problem around the Symbian operating system developed into the early Nokia 770 Internet tablet. With Linux, the software development of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet could start and move faster. I addition to the “Darude” and “Multipart” concepts, a third concept that never made it to the market called the “Laika” was also being developed in 2004 before the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet was brought to the market. The main feature of the “Laika” was an integrated hard drive, something that the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet lacked. According to the product manager who was in charge of the “Laika” concept, the time was not ready for the product, and a management decision not to do a “media device” was made because of the many products competing in the media device category. Figure 9 shows when the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet was brought to the market and the timeline of its development along with the product concepts that didn’t make it to the market. About one year after the market launch, Nokia published a software update called OS 2006 that added the possibility to make internet phone calls and use an instant messaging service called Google Talk, as well as a full screen touchkeyboard to make text entry easier. May 25th 2005 Before the market launch 2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

After the market launch 2005

2006

“Darude”

“Multipart” “Laika”

Product concepts not brought to the markets

Software update: OS 2006 May 16th

Figure 10: Timeline of the development of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet

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After reviewing the technological background of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, the envisioned users of the product and the role of market studies was discussed with the interviewees. We did not have that kind of educational background that we would have troubled ourselves too much with any kind of target users. From the beginning, the product was made with “let’s do it for us” mindset because there had to be others like us with similar needs for sure. (…) Then when we had to seriously think about this as there had to be some kind of input for the marketing we concluded that the concept was “broad appeal” though we did not use that term, but when we described as whom we see as the users and it was broad appeal without any strict age segments.

[Interviewee 4, Senior Product Manager] The interviewee that was involved in making the product concepts stated that the product was made with a “let’s make it for us” attitude. Again, this serves as a good example of Akrich’s (1995) “I” method where the own persona serves as a starting point for bringing in the end user of the product. What is also worth noting is that how a “broad appeal” approach to a product’s target consumer was decided as there had to be input for marketing to work on. The role of market studies in this product’s development was interesting. According to the interviewees, while there was end-user studies created for the Internet Tablet concept that clearly showed that there was little or no interest in the concept, and that their role was not significant in the final product. Interviewees said that this was because in those studies, the products that were used were not functioning and the users in the studies were PDA-users whose needs for a mobile product were different than what the internet tablet product concept offered. They [Nokia’s internal user insight organization] made an end user study and the results were - according to the professionals – extremely discouraging. The results were worst in the history of these end user studies. (..) But [product program manager] made a lot of noise about these studies since no real products were used… only mock-ups. The users were also PDAusers so they had different kind of needs from a product than what the 770 could deliver.

[Interviewee 4, Senior Product Manager]

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Creating a compelling marketing message for the product was also a challenge. Since the product was using Linux, the open source community developing the operating system was an important group of potential customers of the product. For this group of users, Nokia launched a developer website called Maemo.org. According to the senior R&D manager, the early marketing material created to promote the product and development environment was not usable since it did not represent the right kind of message that Nokia was trying to send to the open source community. Lot of the marketing material that was produced was useless…it was like that Nokia would came and take over the Linux world. It was just wrong and it felt like the marketing department didn’t understand at all the message we were trying to send.

[Interviewee 2, Senior R&D Manager] In short, the product development process of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet from the first product concept to the final product was a five-year process, driven by the vision of mobile Internet penetration, and made with a very implicit way of envisioning the end user of the product. User studies that were created with the products did not significantly affect the products development even though the results of these studies were discouraging. Before the market launch of the product, the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet had created a lot discussion around the Internet due to its open source development model and the non-phone approach to developing a new kind of communication device. The next chapter goes through how the non-users in the interviews saw the product and what were the initial reactions towards the product on the Internet.

6.3 Non-users’ problems towards the product In order to understand the non-users and their problems with the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, two different methods were used. First, five non-users were interviewed, of whom four were chosen because they were heavy users of the Internet; they all kept a public weblog and used several social Internet services. The last interviewee was chosen to represent a non-user who belonged to the social group of hackers. The

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interviewees were all male aged between 20 and 29. Two of them were from North America and three were from Finland. The second method of how non-users view of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet were collected was by observing popular discussion groups, weblogs and technology news site on the Internet. Both of these methods, interviews and Internet observations, were then used to make a list of the problems that non-users had with the product. All of the interviewees emphasized how they saw the potential of the device as a “media player” or a “media device” due to its portability and quality widescreen. The possibility of using the Internet was seen as somewhat of a “bonus” or a “nice feature” but many of the problems seen in the device were derived from its inability to store large amounts of media like music, pictures and video. This proved that the idea of an “Internet Tablet” was somewhat hard to comprehend for the interviewees. The lack of keyboard was another problem that almost all the interviewees mentioned along with the media problem. I don’t use 770.. It’s not pocketable and it is aimed for multimedia usage. I have no use for a gadget without a keyboard.

[Interviewee 11] Net connectivity is a good bonus, but touch screen as an input device is not compelling. Text input is an important feature to me.

[Interviewee 12] My dream machine would be something like this, wide & touch screen, 80 gigabytes of memory and a small keyboard.

[Interviewee 13] There's a couple of key reasons I haven't pulled the trigger on a 770 yet 1) no storage, 2) I've read that the applications run slow, 3) some have actually complained about a lack of keyboard but I could maybe live without that , 4) battery life.

[Interviewee 14]

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I don't like the 1GB limit on the MMC memory card.. For something that can play music and videos, one gigabyte is a very small limit to content. I would tire of swapping memory cards to access all of my music or videos.

[Interviewee 15] In order to reflect the views of the interviewees, comments about the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet from various discussion groups and weblogs on the internet were also observed. The following comments are examples from various technology related Internet sites that published stories about the 770 Internet Tablet following the public introduction of the product. ..Instant failure. No HDD. - If they could increase the battery life, this would be awesome as a networked portable media player - But the choice of the OMAP processor is bad. It can only go up to 220 MHz as the previous post mentioned. Not good for multi-tasking and other functions. (Engadget.com 2005) - (1) No built-in hard drive. With most newer devices vying for attention by putting in at least 1Gb of storage, its a real mystery why this doesn’t come with at least 4Gb. (2) Too little RAM. Why limit it to only 64Mb? With memory so cheap nowadays, this should have 512Mb or more. (3) No keyboard. This is the big clincher. For some reason someone out there in Corporate world believes nobody wants a keyboard. Not so. We want BOTH a touch screen and a keyboard.

(PCMAG.com 2005)

- I think it's a pity that the rather beautiful design and obviously neat software doesn't include Nokia's core function: mobile phone connectivity (and not through BT). (Slashdot.com 2005) - But for most mainstream users, the 770 is a disappointment. With more horsepower and a revamped interface, it might get closer to the holy grail.

(Personal Technology 2006)

In addition to the issues with the product’s memory and text input methods, the missing mobile phone feature and the products processing power were seen as problems. The problems of the non-users group in relation to the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet are presented in the figure 11.

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Storage problem Non-phone problem Non-users

Memory problem Text Input problem Processing power problem

Figure 11: Problems of the non-users related to Nokia 770 Internet Tablet

Even though non-users had many problems with the device, it was obvious from the very beginning that hackers were interested in the product since it was easy to customize and “hack”. In the next chapter, hackers’ innovation activity around the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet is reviewed further.

6.4 Hacking the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet Due to the Linux operating system, the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet is very “hackable” since it is relatively easy to develop new applications for the device. This section will introduce the most popular user-made applications, or hacks, for the 770 Internet Tablet and go through the interviews with their authors. As the applications are licensed under an open source license, they are also distributed freely to anyone. The aim of this section is to demonstrate how hackers expanded the functionality of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet by developing their own solutions to their needs regarding the device. This way the problems and solutions of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet can be connected to the social group of hackers. Maemo Mapper Maemo Mapper, is an open source application developed by John “Gnuite” Costigan, that can be used together with a GPS-receiver to show the whereabouts of its user.

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The program downloads maps from on-line map repositories and uses them to display the location of its user on the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet’s screen. When the first version of application was introduced on internettablettalk.com, it soon became the most discussed application for the device. I've been working with computers (in an educational or occupational capacity) ever since I was about 9 years old. I've always loved to concept of controlling computers with programming, so when it came time for college, the choice seemed pretty obvious, especially with the tech boom going on at the time. (…) My hobbies have always included computer-based things like programming and learning new languages and such

[Interviewee 9, John “Qnuite” Costigan]

Figure 12: Screen capture of Maemo Mapper application for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet developed by John "Gnuite" Costigan

JM: How did your development work on the Nokia 770 start? While participating in the forums at Internet Table Talk, I started becoming interested in the idea of using the Nokia 770 as an inexpensive navigation system. The large screen seemed ideal for it. Upon introduction to the community, it got a very positive reception. People claimed it as the bestlooking application available on the Nokia 770

[Interviewee 9, John “Qnuite” Costigan] In order to function properly, Maemo Mapper needs graphical map data that is not included with the application. Instead, the application can be assigned to download maps from on-line map repositories like Google Maps. The problem is that the user

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license of Google’s Map service, along with other similar services, forbids users to download the map data to be used in applications like the Maemo Mapper. To avoid legal consequences, John Costigan states in the user agreement of the Maemo Mapper that he cannot held responsible for users actions with the application. Also, to (hopefully) cover my own butt legally, use of this software requires and implies that you agree that you understand that using Maemo Mapper to download maps from a commercial map repository may be considered a violation of copyright law and that John Costigan cannot be held responsible for any of your actions related thereto. (Maemo mapper website, 2006)

As the application is legally somewhat in a “gray area” whether it is legal or not, for Nokia it would be problematic to officially endorse the Maemo Mapper application even tough it has gotten very popular among the hacker community.

Media Converter and Theme Maker Along with Maemo Mapper, Media Converter and Theme Maker are two popular programs that also expand the functionalities of the 770 Internet Tablet beyond browsing the Internet. I wanted to make it easier for the people to make better use of their 770 internet tablet. I have made Media converter program that makes it easy for users to convert videos from their own machine to the format that the 770 supports and also I have made the Theme Maker program that makes it possible to create different themes for the device. (...) I dare to say that almost everyone in the non-developer scene [of 770] has my media converter program. (…) It has been downloaded over 11,000 times.

[Interviewee 8, Urho Konttori] Media Converter is a program that converts video files to a format that is supported by the Nokia 770 internet tablet. At the same time, the size of the video file is reduced as the video is cropped to optimal resolution for the device. In this way, the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet can easily be used for something that it was not originally meant to be used for, as a portable media device. Media converter has been one of the most

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downloaded applications of the device, with over 11.000 downloads according to its author, Urho Konttori.

Figure 13: Screen captures of Media Converter and Theme Maker applications developed by Urho Konttori

So the need for the Media converter was born since the video playing software [of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet] was very limited and there was no video convertors that could do the thing that I was looking for. Media Converter was a program that I developed because as soon as I got the device I wanted test videos on it. I was trying some examples and I found that they were working beautifully, Then I trying to assist people on the Internettablettalk.com forums to do the same that I was doing. No luck, they couldn’t do it. Then I made a bat script that could be used by dropping a video file to it. Again, people couldn’t use it. I decided, that I will make an app that even the average Windows user could use.

[Interviewee 8, Urho Konttori] The motivation for Urho Konttori to create media converter software was the need to use the 770 Internet Tablet as a media player and to help others to do the same. His development work was driven forward by the inability of normal users to use the tools that he developed. GAIM instant messenger The GAIM instant messaging application is an interesting example of the relation between “hacking” and the interests of commercial actors. GAIM is a multiclient messenger application for Linux that can be used to connect to various instant messaging clients. Nokia employee, Devesh Kothari, ported GAIM to work with the Nokia 770 as a hobby project in 2005. What makes this interesting is that users could

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then use this program to connect to instant messaging services that Nokia did not officially support nor paid licensing fees for. Finished port of Gaim 1.5 internet messenger for Maemo/Nokia 770. This had been my hobby project and took me not long to get all the dialogs etc work nicely for n770 screen size. DISCLAIMER :) This is my hobby project and Nokia has nothing to do with it.

[Devesh Kothari Blog 2005]

Figure 14: Screenshot of GAIM instant messenger port for Nokia 770 Internet Tablet.

The question of whether or not GAIM is illegal is not straightforward. Instant messaging services are typically closed. The protocols used by MSN Instant Messenger or AIM Instant Messenger are not public protocols. Tools like GAIM have to reverse engineer the protocols to work. When there is no source code available for the software, the efforts towards discovering the source code for the software is called reverse engineering (Reverse engineering, 2006). Technically, using a non-supported client such as GAIM is probably illegal (Notenboom 2006). The author of GAIM for Linux, Mark Doliner, stated that connecting to other instant messaging servers might be trespassing since the servers belong to other people, but on the other hand they have put their servers on the internet making it possible for anyone to connect (Are there legal issues? 2004). When asked about the legality of GAIM when it connects to Microsoft’s messenger service, Microsoft’s product manager states: At this time, there is not a program or set of API's for licensed connectivity to the Messenger service. There have been one-off licensed examples, the Reuters IM client, the Microsoft Office LCS Communicator

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client, the Yahoo interoperability that was announced in October, and a handful of mobile clients.

However, the desktop clients that you

mention, GAIM and Trillian, are currently operating in an unlicensed manner.

(Legal issues 2006)

In 2005 when GAIM was ported to the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, the device did not officially support instant messaging. Nokia however stated at the launch of the product that a software update would be provided to make instant messaging and internet calls possible. After a year, when the next installment of the 770 operating system called OS 2006 came out, Google chat and Google talk instant messaging and voice over internet protocol (VOIP) clients were added to the device. However, the word around the hacking weblogs and discussion groups was that the device was capable of these features straight from the start. The best news for you is that Nokia has set up a comprehensive development site. (...) It even has a walkthrough for how to port applications to the device. As an example they show how to port GAIM which is funny because most places have reported that IM [ instant messaging] support won’t be released until 2006. (Hack a Day 2005)

The GAIM example demonstrates how it is faster to develop and implement a new feature, instant messaging, to the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet by hobbyist “hacking” than what could be officially done by Nokia. Nokia officially could not develop and include this functionality to the device itself as it would have to pay licensing costs to Microsoft or to other companies. ScummVM and Bluetooth plug-in ScummVM is a multi-platform virtual machine which was originally made to allow one to play Lucas Arts adventure games that use the SCUMM-programming system on platforms other than those for which they were originally released. Due to copyright restrictions, ScummVM does not include the game data, so users have to own copies of the games. Tomas Junnonen, a Nokia employee, ported ScummVM for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet and distributed it along with the Bluetooth plug-in in his personal homepage titled “Hacking the Nokia 770”.

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Figure 15: Screenshot of ScummVM port for the Nokia 770 Internet tablet playing “The Secret of the Monkey Island 2” I’m a great fan of the old LucasArts games such as Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion etc. The idea of the SCUMMVM for the 770 was almost self-evident, if there’s a way to run code on some device someone will eventually port SCUMMVM for the device.

[Interviewee 10. Tomas Junnonen] The Bluetooth plug-in was another program developed by Tomas Junnonen. With the Bluetooth plug-in it was possible to connect the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet to external keyboard to make the text input easier. The development of the Bluetooth plugin started inside Nokia as a [internal name of the development project], these are typically “it would be cool if” kind of projects. The purpose of this was for me to learn a new development environment and maybe at the same time make something useful. (…) It wasn’t obvious at all that the plugin would be distributed outside Nokia at all. (…) The idea for keyboard support came from the team but to release it outside Nokia was my idea (…) At the moment the keyboard support is not a product-level feature that Nokia would want to support, but if / when a keyboard support for the product is added, the groundwork has been already partly done.

[Interviewee 10, Tomas Junnonen] Scummvm, Bluetooth keyboard plug-in along with GAIM were applications developed by Nokia employees as a hobby projects that were then released and distributed in their developers personal websites. Nokia as a company had

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nothing to do with these applications while the hackers enhanced the usage scenarios of the Nokia 770 Internet tablet with their applications. Similarly, Media converter, Theme Maker and Maemo Mapper were applications developed by users of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet who were all motivated to reinvent the product to do something more than what it originally could do. According to the hackers, Nokia 770 Internet Tablet offered them possibilities that other products did not. Many interviewees said that they were quite satisfied with the product even while many of them mentioned same problems in the product than the non-users did. This is why the “problems” that connect the social group of hackers to the solutions could also be referred as opportunities to innovate. In the figure 16 the innovation activity around the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet is demonstrated as I have connected the social group of hackers to problems and solutions around the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet.

GAIM Messenger Communication problem Gaming problem

Hackers

SCUMM VM

Media problem

Media Convertor

Customization problem

Theme Maker

Connectivity problem

Bluetooth plugin

GPS Navigation problem

Maemo Mapper

Figure 16: Nokia 770 Internet Tablet connected to hackers and their problems and solutions

I have incorporated all of the interactions around the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet followed in this thesis to the figure 17. There are three social groups present manufacturer Nokia, the non-users and the hackers. Nokia is connected to the three product concepts that were not brought to the markets and to the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet that was launched in 2005. Trough the problems and solutions that Nokia had, the outcome was the Nokia 2006 software update for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet adding new functionalities for the product.

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Non-phone problem Memory problem

Non-users

“Laika”

Processing power problem “Multipart” Text Input problem

Linux operating system

“Darude”

Bluetooth plug-in

Text Input problem Symbian platform problem

WLAN Penetration problem

Media problem

Nokia

Gaming problem Nokia 770 Internet Tablet

Screen technology problem

Media Converter

Hackers

SCUMM VM

Navigation problem

Font problem Text Input problem

Maemo Mapper Instant Messaging problem

Communication problem

Theme Maker

GAIM Messenge r

Google Talk VOIP

Google Talk IM

Artifact

Social group

Problems

Finger keyboard OS 2006 software update

Solutions

Figure 17: Problems and solutions of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet connected to relevant social groups and other artifacts

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The focus with the non-users was in the problems of the product. This helped to understand the reasons why this social group did not want to adopt the product. Through the interviews and on-line observations with the non-users, it became clear that the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet lacked the features of products that it was compared against. It could not store large amount of media like digital media players, it could not be used as a mobile phone and the ability to browse the Internet was not as significant functionality that it would had overcome these problems. The social group of hackers was similar to the non-users in sense of their problems related to the product, but the opportunities for hobbyist hacking that the product was embedded with enabled them to start innovative interactions around the product. In the next chapter, the meaning and the implications of these interactions is studied further.

6.5 Developing the concept of hacker-hobbyism In this chapter, I will develop the concept of “hacker-hobbyism” to describe hackers’ innovative interactions around the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. This is done in the context of the social construction and incorporates the components of the SCOTmodel –relevant social groups, interpretative flexibility, technological frame and closure & stabilization – while at the same time building on the concept from Kotro’s (2005) studies about hobbyism and hobbyist product development. By “rolling the snowball” and then “following the actors” it was first identified that the current users of the 770 internet tablet were seen as “hackers”, “geeks” and “developers”. With this identification, the first element of the SCOT model, the relevant social group of users, was brought in. In the interviews that were conducted with these innovating users, they all mentioned computers, technology and customization as their hobbies when general questions about their lifestyle was asked. Further, when “following the actors” into their personal websites and discussion groups on the Internet, they were referring to their development work as “hacking”. Remembering the fact that the Nokia 770 uses Linux as its operating system and that hacker culture and the open source movement are closely tied together (Hippel 2003,

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Himanen 2000, Raymond 2001, Lakhani 2003) this is not a surprise. Due to these reasons, the relevant social group of users was named simply as “hackers”. The interpretative flexibility towards the product was demonstrated as the people inside Nokia, hackers and the non-users were making sense of the Nokia 770 in the interviews. In addition, also discussion groups and blogs around the Internet were investigated to reflect the views of the interviewees. While Nokia’s goal was to established a new kind of consumer device category with the “Internet Tablet” concept, the initial reactions toward the product with non-users was that the product was a “media player” or “media device”. Moreover, it was seen as a “non-working” device since it lacked many of the features that non-users saw as important, for example adequate amount of memory to store media content. The hackers instead were satisfied with the product. For them, the product was “working” as it allowed them to “hack” the product due to its open source operating system, while the problems and limitations of the device didn’t seem to matter. For this user group, the ability to customize and solve problems by hacking the product resulted in its problems being overlooked. The third combined element of closure and stabilization of technology, in the analysis of technology, means that the interpretative flexibility of an artifact diminishes and consensus among the different relevant social groups with regards to the dominant meaning of an artifact emerges (Bijker 1995, 86). In the scope of this study, I cannot make any arguments about the closure or stabilization of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. I find two possible reasons for this. First, it must be remembered that it took decades for the design of the “safety bicycle” to reach closure and stabilize in Bijker’s (1995) study. The Nokia 770 internet tablet was brought to the markets in 2005, so by following its development for one product generation, which is equivalent to the time spent making this thesis, might be too short of time for interpretative flexibility to diminish or to observe it. Secondly, the inability to recognize “closure” within this study is somewhat in line with the critics of the SCOTmodel. Williams & Edge (1996) state that the SCOT approach tends to have difficulty in accounting for closure since the possibilities of interpretative flexibility seem endless.

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The fourth and the final element of the SCOT-model, the technological frame, can help to understand why and how the innovations of hackers shape the product in a different direction than Nokia’s product development. Bijker (1995, 123) states that technological frame structures the interactions among the actors of a relevant social group. In this thesis I argue that there are differences in how hackers and Nokia’s product development team interacts with the artifact, thus creating a different technological frames in which interaction happens. For hackers it was possible to implement new features for the product with the applications they developed. For a manufacturer like Nokia, it takes a longer time to implement and test new functionalities that can then be incorporated to the product. In the interviews and in informal discussions that I was involved with it was stated many times that applications like GAIM messenger and Maemo Mapper had functionalities that Nokia could not utilize or endorse due to its possible licensing costs and conflicts in intellectual property rights not owned by Nokia. Now, after going through the elements of SCOT, I want to extend Kotro’s (2005) concepts of “hobbyism” and “hobbyist knowledge” towards the concept of “hackerhobbyism”. Kotro (2005) argued that product developers and other people involved in the product development process working at the sports manufacturer Suunto, brought the values and ideals of the sport communities that they were involved with as a resource for the innovative product development process. As one interviewee said in Kotro’s (2005, 13) study: “What is close to your heart follows you to work”. Hobbyist knowing is based on taking part in the use context of a product and making sense through practices embedded and embodied in them and by “bringing personal to the product development” (Kotro 2005, 173). Hacker-hobbyism takes place when “hobbyist knowledge” allows translating and bringing both individual insights, values and ideals of communities into one’s own work and product development (Kotro 2005, 13). However, hacker-hobbyism differs from “hobbyism” as the hackers bring their ideals and innovations to the product after it is brought to the marketplace. This innovation in the diffusion phase of the product could also be referred to as innofusion (Fleck 1988), re-inventing (Rogers &

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Rice 1980) or in a more cultural sense appropriation (du Gay 1995) but adding to those concepts, I want to emphasize the nature and consequences of hackerhobbyism to prospective and current business models of commercial actors like Nokia. For example, if Nokia would consider to build a business model out of selling location based services like map software for the 770 Internet Tablet, the company would have to consider that a free application, Maemo Mapper, has already been created and is constantly being developed further by the hacker community. As this example shows, hacker-hobbyism possesses a challenge for developing prospective business models at Nokia, but at its best, it can be used to provide new insights and new ideas in this task. On the other hand, the situation where hackers innovate against current business models of commercial actors is what could be described as “user driven creative destruction” in contrast to the Schumpeter’s (1975) industrial creative destruction that was driven by capitalistic entrepreneurs. In addition, the terms parasitic innovation (Mollick 2004) or disruptive innovation (Christensen 1997) could be used in to the situation where the innovation activity conflicts with business models of commercial actors, forcing them to seek new ways to maintain their market position. One interviewee gave an insightful example of this with Sony and their Playstation portable (PSP) gaming device. As Sony’s business model is based on game sales, hackers are constantly trying to make the device able to run “homebrew” code and game emulators and by doing so they fight against Sony’s business model. Sony updates their firmware often, and every time, they patch the holes people have found to enable homebrew. Every step of the way is a fight against Sony to continue homebrewing on their console.

[Interviewee 6, Shaun “Dragonminded” Taylor] Hacker-hobbyism can, in its most destructive form, lead to an open conflict against the business models of commercial actors in order to enable the diffusion of the “homebrew” innovations made by hackers. By utilizing the open source development model, like with the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, hackers can easily put their code on the device and develop new applications for it.

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The fact that it [770] is open source means that there would be easier ways to put my code on. That is a major selling point of the unit for people

like

me

since

they

[Nokia]

are

not

fighting

against

homebrewers/personal developers.

[Interviewee 6, Urho Konttori] By nature, hacker-hobbyism is a user innovation activity that is not restricted by legal and proprietary issues that normally sets guidelines for corporation based research and development processes. Hackers instead, develop new functionalities and applications that they see useful for themselves and others in the community. This difference makes the process of innovation more straightforward and faster to deploy than inside manufacturer’s organizations. Nokia’s senior R&D manager follows this view. The hackers can make things happen faster than we can, no doubt about it. They can develop solutions regardless of laws, regulations and formal organizational chains much faster than Nokia”

[Interviewee 3, senior R&D manager, Nokia] The hacker-hobbyism concept emphasizes the meaning of hacker culture that brings in social and cultural factors to ones work as the process of innovation is referred to as “hacking” and where the innovation work is not limited to necessarily working merely as “co-developers” (Jeppesen 2003, 2005) towards shared and out-spoken goals of the products manufacturer.

7 CONCLUSIONS The goal of this thesis was to examine the role of hackers and user made innovations in the development of a new consumer product. I approached this problem through a rich case study of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet by Nokia and chose the social construction of technology as my theoretical framework, which guided the empirical part of my research.

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In this thesis, the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet was deconstructed into a three different devices following the three different social groups making sense of the product. For the people inside Nokia the product was an “Internet Tablet” made for the mass markets while the relevant group of users, hackers, saw the device as a “hackable device” and non-users saw the product as a “media device” based on interviews and observations from the Internet. In the SCOT-methodology this difference as to how relevant social groups see the product is called interpretative flexibility. Hackers saw the artefact as “working” because in spite of its problems, it was “hackable” due to its open source Linux operating system. The non-users saw the product as “nonworking” because they compared it to other products like digital media players or mobile phones while intended main use of internet browsing was seen as a nice bonus feature. Through another element of the SCOT-model, the technological frame, I have attempted to define a dimension in the field of user innovation that has not received much attention in the academic literature. As a result of this study I propose a term “hacker-hobbyism” to define how innovations and insights from a group of users, hackers, affected the functionalities and use possibilities for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet after it was brought to the markets. Hacker-hobbyism is a user innovation activity that follows hacker culture and which is not restricted by legal or proprietary issues that sets guidelines for manufacturers’ development activities. The consequence of hacker-hobbyism is that hackers can develop and implement functionalities to the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet that would be impossible to do for Nokia’s official product development. As demonstrated with ScummVM, GAIM messenger and the Bluetooth keyboard plugin, sometimes even Nokia’s own employees drive hacker-hobbyism by developing new functionalities to the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet as personal hobby projects. This can then be used to get early feedback from the hacker community and test whether the new functionality poses potential for future development. The results of hacker-hobbyism, the popular applications among hackers like the GAIM messenger port and Maemo Mapper are questionable in terms of intellectual property rights, which make it difficult or even impossible for Nokia to officially endorse them. Nokia could not have developed an instant messaging program that

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connects the 770 Internet Tablet’s users to proprietary instant messaging protocols without negotiating first with the owner of those protocols. Similarly, Maemo Mapper that has become one of the most used homebrew application for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, uses Google’s map repositories in a way that would be impossible for Nokia to use since the maps can only be used for non-commercial purposes according to its user license. Hackers innovation activity around the artifact is free of the many legal and organizational issues that company based R&D is attached, demonstrating the difference in the technological frame of these two social groups. This makes the process of innovation easier and faster for hackers to achieve with the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet than what it is to Nokia’s product development. The outcomes of hacker-hobbyism make the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet more versatile as a product than it was originally developed to be. The open source Linux operating system of the device makes it easy for skilled users to develop new applications for the device. Nokia 770 Internet Tablet can now be used as a gaming machine, GPS-navigator, digital media player among many other possible use-cases. The innovation activity and potential around the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet has transformed it into a highly desirable product among the social group of hackers. It remains as an inspiring challenge for Nokia to use this unexpected market position to their advantage while seeking mass-market acceptance for the next generation open source products. By combining cultural and social aspects of technology- and innovation studies into the product development story of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet in this thesis, a rich case study has been presented on sociotechnical change.

7.1 Limitations and further research suggestions The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet was launched in November 2005 being the first product of the Internet Tablet product line in Nokia. The whole product line is still in a very early stage of its diffusion and shaping process. Successful new artifacts can take many product generations to develop as it took decades for personal computers to domesticate into everyday use at homes. Being an interesting

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research subject because of its newness, the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet also has some set limitations for this study.

First, the social construction of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet is very ”young” as is the artifact itself. In Bijker’s (1995) study, the development of bicycle was followed for hundreds of years and over multiple product generations and variations. This brings in an interesting question; was it too early to develop a social construction of an artifact that has just been brought to the markets? One could compare this study to a study of the first machine that distantly resembles the modern bicycle somewhere in 1785 followed for a 10 month period of time.

Secondly, this thesis only followed one artifact and furthermore one successful artifact. Bijker (1995) specifically called for analysis of unsuccessful artifacts to reach a ”symmetrical analysis”. This limitation is also part of the first limitation; as the diffusion to markets has just begun, it is too early to call for unsuccessful artifacts generated after the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet.

Third, some notions about the reliability and validity of this study should be made. The social construction of the Nokia 770 internet tablet as presented in this study is not by any means a complete, all-inclusive model. Rather, the constructive approach to the study subject makes this study a subjective and explorative study into user innovation activity around the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. More studies about hackers involvement in the development of other new high-technology consumer products should be conducted before the results of this study can be generalized.

For further studies the following research questions might be interesting. -

What kind of conflicts, if any, rise between hackers innovations and Nokia’s business models in the future?

-

What has been the role of hacker-hobbyism in the next product generations of Nokia’s open source based consumer products?

-

What kind of form does hacker-hobbyism take in the development of other high-technology consumer products?

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-

Can hacker-hobbyism produce weak signals on how technology evolves in the future?

Further, also the meaning and the input of the open source software communities in the development of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet could be an interesting research subject and would help to understand hackers and their innovativeness better. In this thesis, the approach was more in the innovations of individual hackers. This was for the reason that the open source software communities tend to focus on making software platforms like Linux slowly more stable and better while the outcomes of individual hackers were more “visible” as in stand-alone programs like the popular applications reviewed in this thesis.

To sum up, the social construction of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet presented in this study is not a complete, all-inclusive model but it can still provide insights and ideas for new cross-disciplinary studies about user innovations, hackers and the social change of technology.

7.2 Managerial implications In this section, I will draw together my experiences working inside Nokia and suggest managerial implications based on my study. Nokia’s goal is to create a new market for internet tablet devices like the Nokia 770 and capitalize on this market. In order to create a new market, I would argue that also an imaginary user has to be created that represents the new markets. This is something that cannot be done by what Akrich (1995) calls explicit methods, by market surveys or based on user feedback because the imagined user has to represent new markets, not existing ones. Instead, I want to do is emphasize the role of implicit methods of creating a imaginary user representation. This process should involve people from marketing, R&D and product development. The inability to come up with an appealing implicit user representation was something that I viewed currently as a challenge for the Internet Tablet project inside Nokia.

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I want also to challenge the view that a company developing high-technology open sourced consumer products, Nokia in this case, can or should ultimately decide and speak out what an artifact is and what should it be used for. The manufacturers “script” of use scenarios should be tolerant and open. In the interviews and in the informal discussions managers at Nokia were often saying, “it’s not a media device”, “it’s an internet tablet”. When looking at the most used applications for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, it was somewhat easy to see what the product was used for among the hackers. The most discussed and downloaded application for the device was the media converter program that decoded video files to be played with the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. One hacker said in an interview “the large screen just screams, play a dvd on me”. Further, many of the non-user interviewees said that the internet is just a nice bonus on the device. It should be considered that maybe manufacturers are unable to tell to its most innovative customers anymore what a product is and what it should be used for. To this day we have taken zero intentional input from our user community to our product development…we should listen them more than we do now.

[Senior R&D manager, Nokia] What Nokia could do instead is to first turn to the most innovating hackers and see what kind of uses they have discovered for the product and then formulate the “scripts” of possible use cases that are communicated to markets. This might be a successful strategy in order to seek mass market acceptance for the product as hackers most likely represent the “lead users” (Hippel 2005) of technology that are ahead of important market trends and are positioned to benefit significantly by creating innovative solutions to their problems. There are also examples of hacker-hobbyism and its consequences on products other than the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. One of the hackers interviewed for this thesis said that he has recognized how Microsoft uses hackers’ innovations as a source for their gaming console product development.

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I know for a fact that smarter developers like Microsoft are watching the homebrew hacking scene closely. Lost of the features of this new Xbox 360 console are the same as hackers did for the original Xbox.

[Interviewee 15, Shaun “Dragonminded” Taylor] Kaheny (2005, 73) writes in his book about the cult of Apple’s iPod that hackers might have been source of inspiration for Apple’s product development when functionalities beyond music playback where added to the Apple iPod. It is possible that Apple had planned from the start to make the iPod into an erzats PDA, but it’s also possible that the company took its lead from the iPod hackers, who, almost from the minute the gadget hit the store shelves, were busy figuring out clever ways of making the iPod do more than just play the music. (Kahney 2005, 73)

Hacker-hobbyism and the hacking phenomenon should be explored further when creating a compelling marketing strategy and message for the future open source products of Nokia. The user-producer interaction is a unique selling point that could be used to generate new kind of consumer culture around high-technology products. Until now, the unique user-producer interaction around the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet has not been used to communicate products advantages to the potential customers other than other than hobbyists and hackers. At this time, there are no similar portable computers that involve user innovators as much as the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, so it should be marketed as the most desired flagship product of the hackers and their innovative culture. In conclusion, the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet is unlike any other product currently in the markets. Hackers, their innovative culture and interaction around the product should be used as a resource not only for product development but also for market development. In this task, Nokia should consider developing a marketing strategy utilizing the innovating culture of the hackers.

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Online references 2600: The hacker Quarterly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2600:_The_Hacker_Quarterly 26.05.2006 Are there legal issues? 2004 http://www.kingant.net/gaim/GaimPresentation/www/index.html 19.02.2006 A Brief History of Hackerdom, 2000 http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/hacker-history/index.html 15.01.2006 A strategy. Ari Jaaksi’s Blog, 2006 http://jaaksi.blogspot.com/2006_02_01_jaaksi_archive.html0 18.02.2006 Blogging over Las Vegas, 2005 http://ahtisaari.typepad.com/moia/2005/09/blogging_over_l_10.html, 07.07.2006 2.11.2005 Devesh Kotari Blog, 2005 http://dkothari.blogspot.com/2005/11/gaim-15-for-maemonokia-770.html 24.5.2006 Engadget, 2005 http://www.engadget.com/2005/05/25/nokia-770-internet-tablet-sees-nokia-veerinto-non-phone/ 11.11.2005 Hardware hacker, 2005 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_hacker 2.7.2006

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PCMag.com, 2005 http://discuss.pcmag.com/forums/498041001/ShowPost.aspx 24.05.2006 Personal Technology, 2006 http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20060720.html 20.07.2006 Symbian, 2005 http://www.symbian.com/about/fastfacts/fastfacts.html 6.8.2006 Raymond (2000) The Cathedral and the Bazaar, 2002 http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ 20.6.2006 Raymond (2001) How to became a Hacker? http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html 12.11.2005 The Jargon File (version 4.4.7), 2003 http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/ 13.3.2006 Williams S. (2002) Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallmans crusade for free software. O’Reilly Media, Sebastol, CA. http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom 11.04.2005

Interviews Ari Jaaksi, 23.2.2006. Tampere Valtteri Halla, 28.2.2006. Helsinki Harri Lilja, 27.3.2006. Oulu Janne Jalkanen, 15.6.2006 Helsinki Jari Valström, 18.7.2006. Helsinki – New York Karoliina Ervasti, 29.7.2006. Helsinki Juha Lehtomäki, 3.8.2006. Helsinki Tomas Junnonen, 13.8.2006. Helsinki Shaun ”Dragonminded” Taylor, 5.6.2006. Helsinki – San Francisco John Costigan, 20.8.2006. Helsinki – Washington D.C ”Digital Gopher”, 14.07.2006. Helsinki – San Francisco Urho Konttori, 27.7.2005. Helsinki Jyri Engeström, 19.06.2006 Helsinki Isko Salminen, 22.6.2006. Helsinki Herkko Hietanen, 03.07.2006. Helsinki

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