Re: web archive/Postal Buddy

=?iso-8859-1?Q?Yrj=F6?= =?iso-8859-1?Q?_?= (engestro who-is-at helsinki.fi)
Tue, 7 May 1996 22:05:54 +0200

Just a short clarification about Postal Buddy. Marty was annoyed when Olav
called the kiosk "a failure". Well, as an innovation it definitely was a
failure. The US Postal Service cancelled its contract with the Postal Buddy
Corporation and the machines were withdrawn from the post offices where
they had been installed - and eventually scrapped. This is the sense in
which we discuss its failure in our chapter in the volume edited by Bonnie
Nardi (see Engestr=F6m & Escalante, 1996).

The designers of the kiosk claim that it was advanced and wonderful as a
piece of technology. Well, you can invent a rocket that in principle takes
you to the moon cheaply, but as long as it's not financed and made a
working reality, it is a failure as an innovation. This is how the social
construction of technology works.

In one sense it may have been a relative success. The Postal Buddy
Corporation (principally Sid and Marty Goodman) sued the US Postal
Services. The dispute was recently settled out of court and the Postal
Buddy Corporation was awarded 50 Million US dollars. This is how the social
construction of justice works (in the US).

Yrjo Engestrom

Reference:

Engestr=F6m, Y. & Escalante, V. (1996). Mundane tool or object of affection?
The rise and fall of the Postal Buddy. In B. A. Nardi (Ed.), Context and
consciousness: Activity theory and human-computer interaction. Cambridge:
The MIT Press.