“Enjoy your feeling”: A media archaeology of material publics

Abstract

Ubiquitous technology depends upon imposing standards. Choices in function and form reflect the homogenization of artifacts, necessitated by the intentions of experts to satisfy a plurality of users. In material publics, users with expert knowledge can develop customized artifacts satisfying desired affordances or aesthetics. This project involves a media archaeology of computer keyboard design to explore the relationship between experts, publics, and the creation of these artifacts. Participation in these communities and study of enthusiast records result in a public-expert knowledge. The importance granted to minutia of design, from the choice of plastics to spring tensioning, parallels new form factors that reflect highly personalized choices. These reassert user control over the materiality of an otherwise ubiquitous and mundane mediating artifact. Publics then create a new political materiality by recomposing artifacts beyond what commercial expertise prescribes.

Introduction

If we were asked to picture an object that testified to the conflict and tensions between experts and publics, the keyboard would probably not be our first thought. But it bears all the hallmarks of a thing hiding its power in plain sight. It is ubiquitous, it stands between us and others, and it is often uniform or standardized. Its mundane status hides the strong implications behind how it is designed and intended to be used. This makes it a centerpiece for a material public of mechanical keyboard enthusiast communities, who recompose their devices so that every keystroke is a joy.

Publics are political. These are groups invested in an issue, and how people and things are effected by one another, even in the most minute way (as we will demonstrate). Democratic theorists idealize deliberation as one of the most important functions of a public. In the best possible world, participants negotiate outcomes, arrive at better mutual respect and understanding, and sometimes achieve consensus. The dichotomy between experts and non-experts presents a classic conundrum in political communication about the nature of participation and agency in publics. Publics are typically conceived of in terms of human actants as the interactions between people with mutual interests and concerns. If we expand our understanding of publics to involve non-humans and the technological ecologies or relationships between people and things, we can interrogate artifacts as sites where the expert/public conflict exists.

These “material publics” (Marres, 2012) have political logics, inscribed in the design and use of artifacts. But the artifact has a different sort of agency, which can be subverted by members of the public willing to tinker with its materiality. Artifacts are more than just inert, instrumentalist things. They embody a set of prescriptions (Latour, 1992; Winner, 1980) on behalf of designers. Their intended use reflects the will of the system that created them, which may conflict with the will of a user. Expert/public can then be mapped onto designer/end-user, with similar power dynamics, although this is complicated by the process of creating any new technology, which takes the form of a “technological imagination” in Balsamo’s (2011) terms, and sets the stage for any form of innovation.

Those binaries between expert/public and designer/end-user are not truly reflective of all the actants involved in composing an artifact’s political logics. Creating a thing involves many economic, engineering, and social variables (Bijker, Hughes, & Pinch, 1987), and a variety of users with various intentions exist. The way an artifact is created for a material public involves a form of deliberation, but end-users seem to have very little say beyond choosing whether or not to participate. The binary of designer/user only serves to illustrate differing levels of agency, which is subverted when a human public interrogates the artifact and gains expertise of its materiality.

This article involves the way a public goes beyond “yes or no” (Lippmann, 1922) modes of participation to choose their practices by recomposing the artifact itself, in the case of the computer keyboard. We use media archaeology as a method for examining the historical and contemporary materiality of the keyboard to understand what sort of political logics are prescribed in its design. Material publics emerging from communities interested in keyboards include casual and passionate enthusiasts, all interested in re-asserting user control over the physical and material characteristics of the artifact. This goes beyond simple customization of existing designs. The keyboard is recomposed as an artifact with unique prescriptions for the community (or the single user). The choices in designing and choosing parts from scratch involve personalized attentiveness to the haptic qualities of the artifact, which may run counter to mass-produced, commercially manufactured keyboards. Brands become associated with a standard feel, a “hapticality” which signifies the brand through its specific tactile responsiveness (Parisi, 2015). Users who design their own artifacts subvert imposed standards. In this case, online communities like Deskthority, GeekHack, and reddit’s /r/mechanicalkeyboards create a public of enthusiasts who become experts of the artifact. For full disclosure, one of the authors is a passive member of the community (a “lurker”) who bought and customized their own keyboard for an intended distinct and personalized “hapticality” all their own (See Appendix A).

The goal of this project is to describe how attentive users in communities with an ethics of care and repair (Jackson, 2014) form material publics, which communally engender the acclimation of expertise, therefore enabling them to improvise technologies for their own interests and needs.

When people and artifacts meet

This study draws from material participation, actor–network theory (ANT), and media archaeology. Each points to ways that we can reconceive relationships between experts, publics, and hidden actants that co-constitute the political dynamics of these associations.

The perspective of material participation and material publics, as articulated by Marres (2012), involves a turn to objects. This makes the mundane relevant by focusing on some of the ways “things mediate publics” (p. 23). Marres argues that publics, or “communities of the affected,” are largely understood in procedural terms. They are seen as groups constituted by the mere act of coming together and participating. However, materialist dimensions of publics emerge when we consider both the interdependency of the people, things, and the common environment. Additionally, we interact with material entities, which help to constitute us as material subjects. The “normative capacity of things to activate and mobilize publics” (p. 33) described by Marres as “post-instrumentalist” questions assumptions about a passive nature of artifacts as mere objects of human agency.

Marres’ ideas resonate with both ANT (Callon, 1986; Latour, 2005) and object-oriented ontology’s (Bogost, 2012) de-anthropocentrizing of how we conceive of human/non-human relationships. The Latourian approach (which we have adopted for straightforwardness) conceives of humans and non-humans as actants, connected by networks which engender meaningfulness in their enchained relationships. While we traditionally conceive of actants as being strictly human (and bearing agency) or non-human (and lacking agency), Latour (1993) argues that this is a feature of rationalism’s “purification”—to distill subjects and objects into discrete categories. However, we historically subject to “hybridization.” No person or thing is ever a fully autonomous subject—instead, their agency derives from the associations they make with other actants (human or non-human).

Additionally, Hodder’s (2010) perspective on entanglement, or the historical interdependency of humans on each other, things on other things, and humans and things together further makes the case for a more ecological perspective on agency. This is similar to governmentality and other “technologies of the self” (Foucault et al., 1998), or sociotechnical arrangements of humans and non-humans conjoined via mutual investments with one another. Arguments for a historically technical human emerge in work on individuation by Steigler & Barison (2009) and Hansen (2006). The argument that humans have always been technical (Miller, 2011) becomes stronger when we extend what is “technical” to all of the otherwise mundane. The study of technology and artifacts is a study of the human.

To be invested in an issue is to be concerned of how people and things are effected by one another. Marres’ ideas engage with political theory by examining American pragmatism and the debates of Dewey (1927) and Lippmann (1922). Pragmatists argue that publics emerge when actants are affected by others’ actions, but are unable to participate in deliberative affairs, resulting in a complicated ontological question of relevance (Marres, 2012, p. 49). Pragmatism also describes object-centered publics emerging from dynamics opposed to just technocratic problem solving. These publics center on the devices of mediation that facilitate their organization. Marres feels that acknowledging the materiality and politics of objects is not an argument against anthropocentrism but a form of “non-exceptionalism,” and that “we should treat the politics of objects as we would other forms of politics” (p. 104), as a type of performance. For Marres, the importance of material devices is the role they play in distributing public problems.

Marres’ framing of publics via the Dewey/Lippman debate is notable for pointing out how we only notice the humans in those groups. Our departure from their argument between technocracy and democracy comes from the observation that all entities have political capacities. A secondary goal in this article would be to demonstrate how things actively play a role in constructing and forming publics, first as the objects around which Marres’ material publics are centered, and second as mediators and/or actants. This moves past media effects to thinking about media affecting and being affected by users, what Hansen (2003) describes as the “autonomy of affect” (p. 224). With regard to keyboards, this happens via the “keyfeel” and other haptic, phenomenological experiences.

Discussion about publics tends to have totalizing implications. But attentiveness to practices concerning how we individually engage with sociotechnical systems (De Certeau, 1984; Feenberg, 1992) can stave off critiques of technological or social determinism (Wyatt, 2014b), frequently employed as a “critics term” (Dafoe, 2015). Balsamo’s (2011) study specifically works to “avoid attributing agency to technological devices so as not to reproduce the technological determinism of the common histories” (p. 112). Balsamo, instead, focuses on the necessity of democratizing the innovation process so that future technocultures are more conscientious of the various needs the public places on technology. The problem with focusing solely on the roles of people as innovators or democratic makers is that we may overlook the existing technological lifeworld—the infrastructure and materiality that acclimate us to what is sensible and directs all future action.

Forms of use and types of participation also matter. We may not all be the users that Balsamo’s innovators imagine. Casemajor, Couture, Delfin, Goerzen, and Delfanti (2015) conceptualize both active and passive forms of participation, as well as non-participation (in digital publics), and Wyatt (2014a) calls for a deeper conceptual framework to explain the degrees of involvement we have with technologies, beyond use/non-use. Despite the optimism around “defiant publics” empowered by technology, characterizing the public sphere as increasingly Habbermasian or Foucaultian (Drache, 2008, pp. 166–167) misses the importance of what new materialism could say about publics (Connolly, 2013; Galloway, 2015; Parikka, 2012a) when we consider material participation. While one could argue that all forms of participation are material (in that materiality facilitates participation), we focus on communities concerned directly with the materiality, drawn together via specific artifacts of concern (in this case, keyboards).

It is essential to understand how the materiality of an artifact can have a sort of political logic or a prescriptive dimension. Latour (1992) describes prescription as the moral dimension of an artifact. Winner’s (1980) arguments about the politics of artifacts involve a good deal of philosophy of technology but little discussion of the actual democratic dimension (Smits, 2001). This is a point that history of technology could also illuminate on such as Adas’ (2009) study of American foreign policy and technological imperatives, or Pacey’s (1983, 1999) work in studying the meaningfulness of technology in various historical contexts. Scholars like Brunton (2013), Mills (2011), Nye (2010), and Gitelman (2006) have produced histories of technology that focus not just on social arrangements but also on materiality and non-human actants.

Such work bears a resemblance to media archaeology and could contribute to current research on material publics of experts and participants by incorporating new methods and insights. Studies by Shaw (2011) and Richardson (2016) focus on open-source software and the hacking of software, and the implications that has for democratization of technology. Hunsinger and Schrock (2016) bring together studies on the role of hacking/maker culture and their political implications for technical expertise, but are also largely concerned with the role humans play in coordinating together around sites and objects of conflict. This study hopes to reveal embedded political materiality and a measure of agency on behalf of the object itself.

How to think about living with things

The technological lifeworld emerges from the sensibility afforded by how we acclimate to the things around us. Balsamo (2011) uses the term “technoculture” to describe the inseparability of technology from culture, also a key point of Ihde (1990) and post-phenomenology of technology (Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015) and media (Markham & Rodgers, 2017), who, instead, use the term “lifeworld” (Lebenswelt). We do not need to make ontological arguments to say that human-lived experience is technological—we need to only consider the degree to which we depend on our technology in our daily lives and the ways that it defines what is sensible around us. As Moores (2017) points out, although we associate mediated experience with disembodiment, the use of digital media “is intimately bound up with the habitual movement of human hands” (p. 65). The physical, haptic qualities of this are phenomenologically significant.

For instance, a watch may govern a train, as well as its passengers, according to “time” (Mayr, 1986). With the refinement of artifacts to better satisfy what is sensible (whether this is based on a sense of good economics, a sense of comfort, or something else), things are redesigned, or what we will call “recomposed.” In Feenberg’s (2011) terms, this is a form of design critique, but in our framework, political materiality is an embodiment of relational dynamics and not essentialist qualities.

Composition is an ongoing alteration to the materiality of non-humans, which alters associative power dynamics. It is a non-linear and sometimes holistic effort that re-articulates intentionality and the nature of associations. While humans may be conditioned to better suit a principle, artifacts are continually recomposed, as struggles between experts and publics lead to ideal compositions, or what Bijker et al. (1987) call “rhetorical closure.” These struggles are not purely hegemonic or oppositional subversions of intentions and prescriptions (Feenberg, 1992). Rather, they involve balancing the positive agency provided by an augmentation (Novak, Archer, Mateevitsi, & Jones, 2016), with the autonomy of publics resisting undesired prescriptions. This is how we conceptualize the mutual political agency and intentionality of humans and non-humans, or the effectiveness of people on things and vice versa.

Hunting and pecking at keyboards and typists

Research design

To understand the way expertise is cultivated in material publics and the political logics of artifacts at the heart of those communities, this project involves media archaeology and participant observation. Media archaeology (Parikka, 2012b) is a theoretical orientation that speaks to the increasing focus on “new materialisms” in media studies and science and technology studies. The orientation involves a historical analysis of the choices and affordances (Nagy & Neff, 2015) of various design decisions. Approaches vary and the literature draws from a rich variety of disciplinary orientations and motivations, largely centered on the archive and reanalyzing forgotten potentials in media history. These include media history inspired by Foucault via historical investigations into specific technologies (Packer, 2013), investigations into “dead” or “zombie” media (Hertz & Parikka, 2012), the study of techno-logics and the political discourse of artifacts (Ernst, 2015), and engagement with political materiality in a lab setting, treating hardware like an epistemological framework for media (Parikka, 2015). In terms of this article, we are interested in how an artifact is composed in different ways at different times and in analyzing the implications of those compositions. This is how we engage the political materialism of artifacts and the intentions of objects like the mechanical keyboard and its components.

Research data involved the study of patents (for a full list, see Appendix 2), various community-driven designs for computer keyboards, knowledge of different materials, features, mechanisms, and choices in assembling new and recording historical varieties of keyboards. Three online keyboard enthusiast communities and an open wiki were the repository of most of this knowledge (private, industry information made public). These include the Reddit subreddit forum /r/mechanicalkeyboards, geekhack.com, and deskthority.com, as well as the Deskthority wiki. We also explored industry and community websites, including Signature Plastics, Cherry Keyboards, taobao, World Association for Sustainable Develop-ment (WASD), ModelFKeyboards.com, Unicomp, and DasKeyboard. Since many unique designs are collectively run through “group-buys,” the online communities were essential for understanding how publics shared and dispersed expertise in recomposing the materiality of keyboards.

A short history of keyboards

The computer keyboard derived much of its form from the typewriter, as a common interface for data entry and word processing. Here, we are concerned with the surface interface, meaning the actuating keys and switches arranged most commonly now in International Standard Organization (ISO), American National Standards Institute (ANSI), or Japanese Industrial Standards (JIS) format. This analysis does not extend to keyboards with alternative formats, such as those on linotype machines, mobile devices, and chorded keyboards like stenotypes. We are also concerned with mechanical switches, rather than touchscreen interfaces or so-called “rubber dome” or membrane switches, which have lower physical responsiveness to touch. There are two reasons for this exclusion. First, it is not possible to exhaustively explore all the varieties of interfaces that exist, and enthusiast communities largely focus around prosumer options. Second, mechanical keyboard enthusiast communities have a universally negative view of the “rubber dome,” citing the lower quality of the materials and the unpleasant feeling of these keyboards. While nearly all laptop computers feature a built in keyboard, the “scissor-style” switches have different material affordances (shorter travel time, less contoured key surface, and no actuation response) that lead some enthusiasts to carry an extra keyboard and to replace cheap and common rubber dome keyboards as needed. This passion for tactility has historical roots, which is why a brief overview of the “key” is warranted.

Early recorded usage of “key” in the context of a button pressed to produce numbers or data emerges in 1873, with the first English patent for an electric telegraph by Cooke and Wheatstone (Liffen, 2013). Prior to this, the term “key” is used in several contexts, including as the mechanical implement for opening locks, winding machines, joining wood and arches, and also as an essential musical quality and device. Keys always transmit, but in a musical context, the sensorium is especially important. Notes played in the wrong “key” will have a dissonant, atonal quality with heightened intensity (Daynes, 2011). One can “feel” the lack of harmony and almost insensible lumping of “wrong” notes.

With the development of the piano, increasingly complex mechanisms were developed until an ideal form of touch response or hapticality could be generated in the stroke of each piano key. Keys needed to sustain individual musical notes, and have a dynamic range and responsiveness related to weight and return for both the finger and the strings played. Different types of “touch” were important for the designed action of the piano key (Askenfelt & Jansson, 1991). There is an awareness of the demands of the player in designing action, a dynamic between experts and publics that composes the artifact.

The key as a button for transmission has a genealogy from telegraphs, to typewriters, and to terminals. Many of the IBM-designed 1970s era terminals featured what are referred to as “beam spring” switches (US Patent No. 4274752 A, 1981). These were replaced by still-popular “buckling spring” designs in the IBM Model F (US Patent No. 4118611 A, 1978) and later by the IBM Model M keyboards (US Patent No. 4528431 A, 1985). Buckling-spring keyboards use a flexible coil of metal to actuate the switch and complete the circuit when pressed, with a highly distinctive tactile and auditory response. Still, as users transitioned from typewriters to the IBM Model M, complaints about the Shift and Enter keys being too small and unfamiliar led Hooleon to sell keytop expanders that would improve tactile responsiveness (US Patent No. 203/0197627A1, 2003).

Buckling-spring and “Alps” style switches (US Patent No. 4186290 A, 1980), found in Apple products during the 1980s and 1990s, were the last two widespread consumer products utilizing a mechanical switch. By the 1990s, consumer keyboards would be largely replaced by “rubber dome/membrane” keyboards. These had been explored much earlier (US Patent No. 3594684 A, 1971) but were later designed to be more cost-effective, as they were easier to manufacture and used less expensive materials. Circuit matrixes were printed on plastic membranes rather than a printed circuit board (PCB). The resistive material was no longer a mechanical switch but a piece of flexible rubber. The commercial market for mechanical switches disappeared and became limited to industrial, commercial, and enthusiast communities. At present, Unicomp is the last company that can make IBM-style buckling-spring keyboards, as it purchased the licensing and tooling from Lexmark in 1996 (About Us, n.d.; Kaste, 2009).

The present design trend of commercial keyboards is to recede into the background, shrinking in size while often evoking unfavorable responses. Cult of Mac (Pierini, 2015) noted how the 2015 Retina MacBook’s changed “butterfly” switch keyboard elicited negative responses, with a changed keyfeel that was jarring to users of previous models. The negative visceral reaction points to the power of haptic identification formed between fingers, keys, and brands. As personal computing moves toward increasingly mobile options, lighter tablets, and smaller laptops, the keyboard is a cumbersome interface for designers who compose a figurative black box into increasingly hermetically sealed devices, incomprehensible for users (Emerson, 2014). The desire for increased mobility often results in sacrificing considerations of tactility. The archaic and familiar mediator of QWERTY (for North American typists) is indebted not only to social inertia but also to a type of touch-based knowledge and feeling that keyboarding communities privilege in their collective design choices. As writer Paul Auster told in Wood (2003),

If I could write directly on a typewriter or a computer, I would do it. But keyboards have always intimidated me. I’ve never been able to think clearly with my fingers in that position. A pen is a much more primitive instrument. You feel that the words are coming out of your body and then you dig the words into the page.

Finding publics of expert use

Communities interested in mechanical keyboards are extremely attentive to the range of options that exist for the space between the tips of their fingers and the deep materiality of the computer itself. This is a space where we find “people, societies and discourses at work” (Coleman & Brunton, 2014, p. 80).

In the absence of large-scale contemporary mechanical keyboard manufacturing for US and European markets, small batch and community-driven manufacturing have led to artifacts that satisfy different demands from users. These are often focused on the tactile qualities of the artifact—the spacebar on Vortex’s Poker II keyboard bore the words “Enjoy Your Feeling,” making its intentions clear. User feedback and strong opinions about this label led to its removal when Vortex manufactured Poker III.

Custom products are chartered by communities through the “interest check” and the “group buy.” Someone will circulate plans for a new PCB, keycap design, especially machined plates or cases, and so on. Others will provide feedback and express whether or not they would buy the product, with some making reserve orders. These activities range in formality and represent the great trust between members, who may wait several weeks to years for their products. Public designers will mediate between communities and manufacturers, collecting orders and funds, then submitting designs and working until a finished product is deliverable, and finally working as a distributor to complete the orders.

As an example, “Round 5” was a keycap set organized by 7bit on the Deskthority website. The interest check was posted 22 October 2013, and the completed keycaps were not shipped until the summer of 2015. The previous group buy for Round 4 started with an interest check in late 2011 and was completed in 2013, shipping spring of 2013. Certain distributors and manufacturers like Massdrop and Signature Plastics become familiar names to users following groupbuys. Outside of these community-driven builds, there are a handful of mechanical keyboard manufacturers, and some products intended for Asian markets are purchased through intermediaries and brought back to English-speaking consumers.

We can examine the artifacts in layers. The deepest layer of the keyboard is the PCB, which contains the controller and the circuit matrix, determining where keys can be mounted (whether to a plate or to the PCB itself).

The majority of commercially produced and distributed keyboards have one of two form factors—full size or tenkeyless (TKL) models (which do not feature a numpad cluster). Mechanical keyboard communities have created a market for alternative form factors and in many cases designed their own, ranging between “75%,” “60%,” and “40%” (which increasingly depend on chained commands as more keys are excluded), as well as “ortholinear” designs (keys arranged on a grid rather than staggered in a traditional fashion), PCBs geared toward ergonomics such as the “Ergodox”, and completely unique layouts and designs (see Appendix 1 for a brief list). These unique arrangements are similar to the efforts of communities to move beyond traditional QWERTY QWERTZ, AZERTY typing layouts to alternatives like Dvorak Simplified Keyboard or Colemak (Francis, 2015). These communities do overlap—some groupbuys for keycaps feature multiple ISO layouts, as well as dvorak and colemak schemes.

Between the layout of a PCB and the keycap are the switches. While some prototypes of modular buckling-spring switches exist, the majority of mechanical keyboard switches include “clones” of the Alps design (sharing most of the same dimensions as an authentic switch), Cherry MX switches (US Patent No. 4467160 A, 1984) or Topre (US Patent No. 4584444 A, 1986; US Patent No. 4851626 A, 1989). Each has distinct keyfeels and different compatibilities with third-party keycaps. There are ranges of weights requiring a range of light to heavy forces to depress the key, typically color-coded. Keys may be “clicky” (creating audible feedback when pressed), “tactile” (providing a “bump” feeling when actuated), or linear. The intensity of responses can vary depending on the product or materials. Furthermore, Cherry MX and Topre “clones” like Gateron, “Zealios,” and Kailh, which feature different components and costs, increase the range of options. Components may also be replaced and customized, so that a switch with a certain light scratchy keyfeel and an audible click can be lubricated and modified with a heavier spring to increase the force required to depress it.

Finally, users have a great attentiveness to choices in materials and keycap profiles. Common plastics used include acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) or polybutylene terephthalate (PBT). Each has different advantages. PBT retains a certain grainy texture that some users favor, while ABS keycaps are more easily produced with doubleshot printing of legends. Printing methods are also a source of consideration, as users will insist about the advantages of dye sublimation over pad printing (the most common commercial method, which easily wears and fades). Unique profiles are an additional feature. As commercial keyboards grow “shorter” and key travel is reduced, “chiclet” keys with a flat, uniform profile become more common (as seen on most laptops). But the shape of key rows can be curved, contoured, or “staircase” as well. The surface of the keys themselves may be “cylindrical” or “spherical,” creating a different feel depending on which manufacturer produces them to what specification. Other novelty materials and designs (wood, figurines) that can be mounted to the switch also exist as collector’s items. All of this result in a wide knowledge base for creating a specific form of tactile response, which enthusiasts explore, assimilate, and put into practice as they build their own keyboards.

Users are not limited to using prefabricated or even custom-manufactured components. Communities share the plans to modify keyboards even further. The “bolt mod” is a technique of replacing plastic riveting connecting the IBM Model M PCB to the metal plate to which the switches are mounted. Over time, plastic rivets may wear and break, and as these keyboards have seen over 30 years of use, replacing the plastic with metal bolts creates additional stability and improves keyfeel. Another mod involves actually cutting a keyboard in half and then reconnecting broken circuits from the PCB with wire to create a layout similar to the Ergodox or ergonomic split keyboard designs. As noted above, switches may be lubed as well as keyboard stabilizers, LEDs can be added to some keyboards for light effects, PS2 connectors on vintage keyboards can be replaced with new controllers, allowing them to be used with USB ports, and keys can be fitted with “landing pads,” “o-rings,” and dental floss to change the acoustics of the keyboard and reduce sound or eliminate “ping” (undesirable ringing after pressing a key).

The nuance that exists in user’s choices to compose an artifact with absolutely ideal properties points to the expertise that is accumulated by participation in the community. These are users that are concerned with tactility, audible responses, esthetics, and sometimes programmability (remapping keys to macros and alternative layouts). In ways, they may exceed what we traditionally conceive of as expertise, since they are able to completely recompose the notion of what is possible with the materiality of the keyboard. The enthusiasm for vintage or discontinued keyfeel also motivates a type of historical knowledge that allows for the care and recomposition of dead media. In 2016, the Brand New Model F Keyboards project brought back IBM’s Model F into production for the first time since 1994 and produced over a $140,000 worth of orders (as of 24 October 2016). This keyboard first shipped with the System/23 in 1981 but was replaced after 2 years with Model M, which was less costly to manufacture. But enthusiasts both restore Model M keyboards (http://clickykeyboards.com) and now manufacture the Model F (https://www.modelfkeyboards.com). Those doing so are not former engineers or designers from IBM but mere users with a passionate form of public expertise.

The haptic politics of material publics

The haptic dimensions of the keyboard are a prime factor driving the development of cumulative expertise and participation in keyboard enthusiast communities, which number in the hundreds of thousands for the groups studied. The participants in these communities have developed a level of expertise, concerning the haptic dimensions of keys, switches, and other technical artifacts which allow them to subvert the expert publics intent on designing for massification and normalization that articulate keyboards and hands in limited configurations. In doing so, their formation as a public partially stems from shared haptic experiences that formalize, privilege, and politicize the relationship between touch and feeling.

Although designers consider how keyboards affect human–computer interaction, economic reasons compel them to standardize the keyboard. This requires users to conform to the layout and feel of the keys, or risk being excluded. While standardized designs may work for some users, allowing them to connect via touch in a positive way, “where it occurs without full knowledge of the individual subject it may be harmful and disabling” (Cranny-Francis, 2013, p. 470). Beyond reducing accuracy or speed for a typist or gamer, a keyboard that is designed with limited knowledge of a subject’s fingers, hands, and body may lead to literal physical harm, as is the case for sufferers of repetitive strain injury (RSI). To combat RSI, designers have developed adaptive technologies that “make repetitive touch labour easier” (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2009, p. 298). But instead of relying on designers to make incremental changes that can never fully account for a full diversity of bodies, and variety of desires to feel the keyboard in certain ways, the community has developed a level of expert knowledge that allows them to craft keyboards for what Heidi Rae Cooley (2004) refers to as “fit.”

As Cooley (2004) defines it, “fit is not a condition or quality but a moment of acting in and through, a moment that reveals the potential for dynamic and reciprocal engagement” (p. 137). In other words, fit recognizes the intersecting agencies of the human and the machine in the configuration of hapticity. Entries on the Deskthority wiki on Keyfeel (https://deskthority.net/wiki/Keyfeel), Travel (https://deskthority.net/wiki/Travel), and Force (https://deskthority.net/wiki/Force) are emblematic of the haptic knowledge accumulated in the material public, allowing them to continually engage in alterations of those haptic configurations.

Breaking down keyboard feel, Deskthority primarily focuses on cutaneous forms of contact, which register touch through the skin (Paterson, 2007, p. ix) and the tactile qualities of the haptic that focus on feelings generated by variations in pressure. The feeling of pressure, explained using the term force, involves a discernable effort to press keys. To gain a sense of how force works with keys, fingers give way to coins as an analogy for how keys exert variations of pressure in engaging and disengaging various forms of switches. As the US nickel weighs exactly 5 g, enthusiasts can use multiple nickels to test the strength of their switch’s springs. The keys, acting as a kind of skin, cover the switches. Variations in pressure are further categorized through notions of weight, denoting “heavy” keys as requiring more effort to press than “light” keys. The mixing of “heavy” and “light” keys results in the most customizable form of keyboard, configuring the keyboard to conform to the relative strength or weakness of certain fingers. Keyboards coming from the Topre Realforce family provide one example of these variable weighted keyboards. The pressure, or force, exerted in interaction with the keyboard provides a kind of tactile feedback that the Deskthority community wiki categorizes as linear, tactile, parabolic, and progressive rate. Each one of these creates a different kind of feel in the human-keyboard interaction and alters their haptic connections. Linear switches maintain uniform increases and decreases in force when pressing and depressing keys, which according to the site, are favored widely by gamers, perhaps because of the fluidity of their feel. Tactile keys yield uneven pressure through use, resulting in the feel of a “bump” during key travel. Using a variety of exacting terminology to disambiguate the feel that each key and switch produces, the site also features graphs that help visualize the tactile interaction, breaking the process down into five steps, including preload, tactile force, actuation force, terminal force, and peak force. This public analysis identifies “hysteresis” (when the switch release is higher in travel than the point of actuation) as a desirable quality for when a user wants to rapidly repeat keystrokes on a single key.

In generating their own haptic expertise of the interface, Deskthority and others are not so much controlling the haptic interface, but wresting control from designers and subverting their intention in order to design a human–machine haptic assemblage that increases their sense of agency by altering the responsiveness of the artifact to a desired hapticality. In asserting control of human–machine communication at the level of fingers and keys, at the level of touch, the expert community developed around keyboards is assuming control over a level of interaction defined by its visceral and primal capacities. Donald Norman (2013) suggests that our visceral level of cognitive processing is “most tied to our musculature: sensory-motor system,” and that designing for the visceral is about “the pleasantness of a mellow, harmonious sound or the jarring, irritating scratch of fingernails on a rough surface” (p. 51). This concern for the visceral is felt when these publics work to describe how different keys and switches produce greater tactility, or feel of touching and being touched. The give and take between the fingers of the users and the weight of the keys materialize the relationality of agency.

Touch is not only physical but also cultural (Classen, 1997, p. 401). Being cultural means the sense conditions “our experience and understanding of our bodies and the world at a fundamental level” (p. 402). Mechanical keyboard communities are engaging a phenomenological practice when describing the feeling of the keys as sensual encounters subjectively felt but collectively experienced. As Paterson (2007) describes, “the phenomenological analysis of bodily experience, the description and redescription of felt meanings, emotions and sensations, rests on the ability to signify sensations, the ability to express such experiences” (pp. 153–54). In a sense, touching the keys becomes a way of feeling with the community. The materiality of the keys, experienced by the mechanical key public, draws them, through their tactile encounters with the same sorts of keys and through an embodied knowledge not necessarily experienced by those outside the public, into a kind of intimacy that is achieved through collective tactile interactions. By developing a vocabulary and skills to alter the material conditions of their keyboards, guided by considerations of force, travel, and keyfeel, the community also pushes back against the haptic conditioning enforced by the standardization of massification to create shared cultures of touch which allow them greater experiential and embodied control.

“The big red button”: command interfaces and control

The political materiality of artifacts rests on their deliberate intentionality—they must do what they ought to do. Particularly as a mediating input, the mundane tool must cooperate with our desires to be “ready-at-hand” in Heideggerian terms. We do not expressly operate the keyboard—we operate the computer, the interface recedes to the background (Moores, 2017) despite its critical linkage in human/non-human associations. The interface must be reliable and invisible. This means that unintended outcomes of using it disrupt our control over the artifact. It can be disconcerting to type on a flat surface like a touchscreen. When mechanical keyboard users tout the satisfaction of hearing a “click” or feeling a response, it is because this signals that they have definitely pressed the key and there is no uncertainty.

However, there are control issues, typically related to problems with the keyboard controller or the PCB itself. “Chattering” is when normal contact bounce between the metal closing the circuit of a switch exceeds the parameters of a keyboard controller. The controller will disregard multiple changes between open and closed after the first, but if the contact bounces too long, multiple keystrokes can be registered. “Ghosting” can also result in registered keystrokes where no keys have been pressed, in the rare event of a flawed PCB allowing current to flow around a circuit matrix in unintended ways. A simple fix is to have the keyboard control limit the number of recognized simultaneous keystrokes, for instance, two key rollover (2KRO), while newer models that solved these issues are called n-key rollover (NKRO) and can register multiple keystrokes accurately. Early IBM Model F keyboards were NKRO because they used a capacitive contact in the switch, but Model M keyboards did away with the expensive capacitor option and depended on 2KRO controllers.

Keylogging is also worth considering. Logging users keystrokes can be done through software- or hardware-based approaches. In the case of hardware, a microcontroller or keylogging module could be installed within the keyboard itself. The potential of keylogging introduces an anxiety over what affordances the keyboard is offering who. Is it working as I intend it to? Or does the political materiality of the intentional artifact compromise my sense of autonomy? Keys are command interfaces. As an actant in the associative chain of humans and non-humans, they mediate relationships through the public at a chokehold. But they are more than mediators, becoming vital haptic interlocutors that inform the human–computer assemblage. The button from the idiomatic “finger on the button” is characterized as a fundamental, but inert actant. If one were to push “the button” and nothing happened, suddenly the command interface’s relationship to control comes to the forefront. This is why the intentionality of artifacts in a material public must match the user’s agenda to avoid insecurity. A sense of brokenness reveals the importance of the artifact as a key actant in publics of material participation.

Conclusion

By studying both physical characteristics of keyboard components and communities that compose unique artifacts for their personal use, sharing and propagating those designs and the ideas behind them with others, we reveal a political materiality in the otherwise mundane artifact of the computer keyboard. This is one material public centered around a specific artifact. These communities are reflexive and attentive to political materiality, and engender a form of public expertise, as members assimilate and improve upon shared knowledge. This allows them to recompose the artifact at the center of their public in a way that changes traditional dynamics of expert/public. This changes the dynamics these communities would otherwise have with an expert composing artifacts prescriptively. Some materials manufacturers have begun to market directly to these communities by offering more custom keycaps and specialized switches in small batch quantities, more readily than was previously possible. Other keyboard manufactures (e.g. Razer, Corsair) now take their cues from the community to target “gamer” demographics by promoting the alleged superiority of their switches, as well as options like backlit switches with RGB LED functionality. While unique designs (like those in Appendix 1) are still very much community driven, examples like the Brand New Model F illustrate the market created from the awareness of the unique hapticalities these communities generate.

The community is engaged in connective work through their shared experiences with the keyboards, and it is partially the materiality of the keyboards, both before and after they mod them, that makes this identification and connection possible. Making contact produces meanings that are “rhetorical in that they convey messages, craft character, and create emotion in a way that fosters a potential for identification and connection among toucher and touched” (Walters, 2014, p. 4). The feeling produced through touching the keyboards is the nexus of the community (the public)—it is a public formed precisely because of the haptic politics pushing back on the homogenized feel of standardized keyboards. Paradoxically, a sensation that is often thought to be experienced intimately, as my touch is only ever my own, is actually produced through the communal discourses and collective material constructions made possible by a public forming to alter the political materiality of keyboards.

The stakes of such a study are to better understand individual agency in the technological lifeworld and how dynamics in material publics are prefigured by designed intentions. By using a specific example and exploring prescriptive materiality via media archaeology, we can realize the close relation between the importance of lived experiences and the actual materiality of objects. Lived experience and materiality intertwine in the publics that cultivate expertise over concerns with the haptic dimensions of keyboards.

Attending to the relationship between touch and feeling that is generated at the nexus of our material encounters is fundamental to understanding material participation. As we theorize, the political materiality of artifacts and their impact on the formation of publics, we turn to reflections of our embodied experiences, to the feelings generated through touch, to better understand the social, political, and agential interactions accompanying material existence, lived experience, and expertise.