Configuring the user - The case of Grid computing

From a semiotic point of view, we observe that technologies can increasingly be "authored" or "written" by their users. If we are to understand processes of user-driven innovation, we need not only to consider how the user writes the technology but also how the user is configured within and through different discourses. Our study aims at contributing to a more fine-grained concept of the user in organization studies by suggesting that the technological artefact as well as the user are simultaneously under recursive (social) construction. In supplementing typical innovation studies' retrospective research design, we ground our argument in the empirical case of a currently ongoing development of a not yet stabilized technology, Grid computing, that allows us precisely to study in vivo how different versions of users are written and negotiated in the recursive development of technology and communities of users.