From Care for Design to Becoming Matters: New perspectives for the development of socio-technical systems

In this paper, we start by deconstructing the widely-mentioned concept of care in the IS literature, to unveil its inherent shortcomings and ambiguities, and find opportunities to go beyond it while preserving its value for the development of better socio-technical systems. We find an important strand in the feminist studies tradition, and in particular in the contributions related to the so called "new materialism". Notwithstanding their differences, these contrarian and often neglected voices point to the importance of relational thinking and material engagement with our technological objects. For this reason, in continuing the path indicated by Ciborra with his idea of care, we advocate a new shift from this step to the next one, where becoming matters more than being, and the caring about matter is more important than design abstractions.