Air/time Travel: Rethinking Appropriation in Global HCI and Futures of Electronic Exchange

This paper reexamines appropriation in human-computer interaction (HCI), which refers to the unexpected alterations made to artifacts by users. We analyze when earlier informal practices of exchanging airtime for cash became enclosed into proprietary mobile money platforms, and show that this enclosure has a longer history in global telecommunications. Building on interviews with 19 experts in computing, policy, and media, we challenge teleological narratives of the inevitability of mobile money often overlooked in computing and global development. We develop an ‘appropriation matrix’ introducing a dialectic of re- and reverse- appropriation animated by three elements—users, artifacts, and imaginaries—that unexpectedly switch between production and consumption, complicating invention and innovation in formal and informal economies. This matrix may help HCI and development better understand how different values, visions, and practices might have led (or could still lead) to different designs of products like mobile money.