… [That is, on-line chat] interaction is a uniquely disembodied experience. Traditionaly conceptions of selfhood as that which is contained or affixed to physical body are deeply problematic and will not hold empirical muster in the online context. … In the digital social world of [on-line chat] environments, the body is transformed into pure symbol in the process of social interaction. ..
… selves and and social worlds emerge entirely in a process of dislocated and disembodied communication ….Cyberself: The Emergence of Self in On-Line Chat, DENNIS WASKUL, MARK DOUGLASS, 1998

The types of socio-cultural theory and method most often used within the human-computer interaction community include ecological or systems approaches, ethnomethodology and phenomenology. It is not coincidental that all these ways of thinking are ontologically and epistemologically compatible with the general principles of cybernetics – among other things, it makes translation between (and enrollment among) the necessary players much easier.

On the other hand, studies in science, technology and society, as well as cultural studies, critical theory and continental philosophy, including feminist theory, have challenged these ways of understanding human (and human-computer) interaction. Researchers like Donna Haraway, Manuel de Landa, Bruno Latour, and Lucy Suchman have been instrumental in these critiques of technoscience – … comment via