Hospitality and Hostility to Technology

Derrida has discussed the "paradox of hospitality": foreigners must ask for hospitality in the language of the host. Yet this forcing of foreigners to speak in a language that is not native to them is the opposite of hospitality. This metaphor is for Derrida a way of thinking about the manner in which language and culture create barriers to participation, inclusion, and understanding.

Claudio Ciborra has applied this metaphor to technology. In Ciborra's version, technology is the foreigner. If host organisations wish to absorb the technology successfully, they must learn to speak in its language and adopt the culture of the tool where appropriate.

Coleman extends Ciborra’s use of the hospitality metaphor to understand reactions to new technologies that users may see as ‘ambiguous strangers’ who both enable and constrain them in what they are trying to do. The extension of Ciborra’s metaphor includes users’ (possibly hostile) mood and prior expectations of the technology that may have been hyped in advance of its introduction in an organisation html .

Coleman is questioning Absolute Hospitality that may be expected of organisational users of new technology but not freely given. These organisational users may not understand the language of the new technology, feel that they are experiencing the First Violence to Foreigners and respond with silence.