Appropriable artifacts

In Designing for Appropriation Dan Perkel sums up a discussion at the Berkeley school of information about the misuse of artifacts in a sense that people use them in a different way than the creators had ever anticipated. He argues that users need to be able to modify the functionality and consequently the usage of a software according to their needs or wishes. Even though enabling the appropriation of an artifact would contradict the idea of misuse it could make it far more useful. So, if one wants to create an appropriable artifact it needs to be open. Dan relates this to open APIs & standards, hackability, and participatory design. I would like to add open source as a key concept for appropriation.

At the end of his write-up he writes about how some decision-makers at Flickr one day banned drawings from public listings. This seems to me as an excellent point since i have many troubles with Flickr becoming the universal photo repository. In fact, i am spending the beginning of my internship with investigating how photo sharing could become more participatory, hackable, and/or appropriable.

via peterme.com: When is it appropriate to appropriate?