Re-working by the Linux Kernel developers

Technology design is generally a matter of re-working existing systems rather than the designing of entirely novel artifacts. In this paper I explore part of a computer operating system called Linux that is designed to be re-worked by its users, a process I call 'designing for redesign'. I examine the practices of reworking within this development effort using some concepts gleaned from activity theory, a meta-theoretical model that particularly focuses on the simultaneously material and conceptual aspects of artifacts. This work is two-fold; first to examine design as part of a larger activity of re-working, and second, to begin to put together a model of socio-technical activity that incorporates the complex epistemological and ontological conditions that characterize current human conditions. Understanding the sociality and materiality of "knowing" and "doing" in technologized society means unpacking what we mean when we talk of 'access' and understanding 'use' as often an activity of re-working.