Discussions about participatory culture often neglect the fact that they are as much about technology as they are about social interactions. Although technology is assigned an important role, many discussions insufficiently analyse the extent to which technology influences emerging media practices. Technology is perceived as somehow magically enabling users to participate in collective production, especially in the discourse on participatory culture. Perceiving technology as having appeared out of thin air leads to a moral framing of participatory culture, which results in analyses dwelling excessively on ‘good’ or ‘bad’ consequences. Highly informed by the positive connotation connected to community, participation, or user-led creation, technology is often reduced to the role of a neutral activator, while practice and use become the objects of a myopic moral perception. In order to develop a different understanding of participatory culture, the following chapter will examine key technologies such as the computer, software, and the Internet in light of their characteristic features. Affordances of these technologies which either enable or repress participatory uses of technology are examined with respect to design decisions. Design features may have ideological connotations as well, that is, they may be construed as a mere pragmatic solution to a given problem. As has been argued above, technology is open for interpretation, as are all media texts. Reviewing technology, which is ideologically charged in a participatory culture, reveals that design decisions, which were caused by pragmatic solutions, may be interpreted as ideologically motivated designs at a later stage. This often results in technology being perceived as something with an almost mythical status, which inseparably blends with the popular discourse on participation. In order to untangle this tight web of semantic connections between discourses and technological design in the dispositif of participation, the technologies involved will be examined in light of their specific qualities.

As Norman emphasizes, technology is affected by the qualities of the material used and the design that shapes it (1989:8). These qualities are defined as affordances. In his discussion on design, Norman uses the term affordance in an ambiguous way, one that constitutes a twofold understanding (Norman 1989:9). Affordance describes the material that is used to build or design something, just as wood can be used to design a table, for example, but it also describes the basic qualities of a designed object.