Research as Resistance: Recognizing and Reconsidering HCI's Role in Technology Hype Cycles

2025-04-11

AI Summary

This paper confronts the accelerating hype cycle in information technology development and its attendant social inequities, political instrumentalization, and environmental externalities, critically examining how capitalist logic deeply co-opts human–computer interaction (HCI) research. Method: Drawing on generative AI as a paradigmatic case, it integrates critical technology studies, political economy analysis, and reflexive HCI theory to develop a novel conceptual framework. Contribution/Results: It introduces—first in the field—the “research-as-resistance” framework, repositioning HCI as an ethically grounded, interventionist practice aimed at contesting technological commodification. Moving beyond traditional neutrality, the paper proposes an actionable set of resistance strategies, advances the adoption of hype-aware research ethics guidelines within the HCI community, and catalyzes policy-level reflective practice at ACM SIGCHI.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Human-Computer Interaction
• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Bias, Fairness & Equity
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Research challenges in human and human-AI computation
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization

Abstract

The history of information technology development has been characterized by consecutive waves of boom and bust, as new technologies come to market, fuel surges of investment, and then stabilize towards maturity. However, in recent decades, the acceleration of such technology hype cycles has resulted in the prioritization of massive capital generation at the expense of longterm sustainability, resulting in a cascade of negative social, political, and environmental consequences. Despite the negative impacts of this pattern, academic research, and in particular HCI research, is not immune from such hype cycles, often contributing substantial amounts of literature to the discourse surrounding a wave of hype. In this paper, we discuss the relationship between technology and capital, offer a critique of the technology hype cycle using generative AI as an example, and finally suggest an approach and a set of strategies for how we can counteract such cycles through research as resistance.

Problem

• HCI research contributes to technology hype cycles
• Technology hype cycles prioritize capital over sustainability
• Proposing research strategies to resist harmful hype cycles

Innovation

• Critique technology hype cycles
• Analyze capital-technology relationship
• Propose research resistance strategies