Vocabulary across four lenses · Companion to The Configurations Lab · 2026
Forty concepts, and the convergences between them.
Before selecting metaphors or analogies for the lab's name, harvest the actual theoretical vocabulary the wave-four work draws on. Four lenses (HCI, STS, Organizational, and CAS) each contribute ten concepts. Concepts that live in more than one lens are marked. The cross-lens overlap is not noise. It is the signal that tells you which concepts already do the boundary-breaking work the lab is built on.
§ 01Legend
How to read the map, the overlap is the signal.
Each cell carries a concept, a one-line gloss, and a source attribution. Concepts that exist in more than one lens get a convergence marker showing how many lenses they bridge. The higher the convergence, the stronger the concept as a candidate for the lab's name, because it is already doing boundary-breaking work in the literature.
HCI lens
Wave-four HCI: entanglement, configurational design, posthuman HCI. Bødker, Frauenberger, Forlano, Suchman.
STS lens
Science & Technology Studies. Actor-network theory through agential realism. Latour, Callon, Akrich, Haraway, Barad, Suchman.
Organizational lens
Institutional theory, practice theory, algorithmic isomorphism. DiMaggio & Powell, March, Thornton & Ocasio, Weick.
CAS · the inheritance
Complex Adaptive Systems. The systems-thinking inheritance the lab carries forward, and the accessible bridge into wave-four work. Holland, Arthur, Mitchell, Teixeira & Forlano.
×2, Two-lens convergence
Concept lives in two lenses. Moderate boundary-breaking strength. Marked with ×2.
×3, Three-lens convergence
Concept lives in three lenses. Strong boundary-breaking candidate. Marked with ×3.
×4, All four lenses
Concept lives across all four lenses. Strongest possible boundary-breaking candidate. Marked with ×4.
§ 02The map
Forty concepts across four lenses.
Read each column top-to-bottom to see what a single lens contributes. Read each row to see thematic resonance across lenses. The convergence markers show where the lenses already share vocabulary. Those concepts are the ones the lab can build its name on without choosing sides between disciplines.
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HCI
Human–Computer Interaction
Wave-four HCI · entanglement, configurational design, posthuman practice
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STS
Science & Technology Studies
From actor-network theory to agential realism · the deepest ontological lens
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ORG
Organizational Theory
Institutional theory · practice theory · the algorithmic-isomorphism turn
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CAS
Complex Adaptive Systems
The systems-thinking inheritance · the bridge into wave-four work
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Entanglement ×3
The wave-four claim that humans and technology are not separate entities that meet but are co-constituted through their encounter. Lives also in STS & CAS.
SourceFrauenberger 2019 (Entanglement HCI) · Suchman 2007
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Intra-action ×2
Entities co-emerge through their encounter rather than existing prior to it. The wave-four replacement for "interaction." Lives also in HCI4.
SourceBarad 2007 (Meeting the Universe Halfway)
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Algorithmic Isomorphism
The AI-era extension of DiMaggio & Powell. Organizations converge on similar forms under algorithmic pressure they did not centrally decide on.
SourceCaplan & Boyd 2018 · DiMaggio & Powell 1983
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Emergence
Properties that arise at the system level from local interactions without being reducible to any component. The signature CAS claim.
SourceHolland 1995 · Mitchell 2009 (Complexity)
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Configuration ×4
The unit of analysis in wave-four HCI, the arrangement of humans, AI, and context whose components don't pre-exist their relations. Lives in all four lenses.
SourceSuchman 2007 · Frauenberger 2019 · Forlano 2017
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Configuration ×4
Barad's material-discursive phenomenon from which actors emerge through agential cuts. The replacement for "network" in wave-four STS. Lives in all four lenses.
SourceBarad 2007 · Haraway 2016 · Suchman 2007
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Configuration ×4
In dynamic-capabilities theory, the arrangement of resources and routines that defines organizational form. AI configurations rewrite the unit. Lives in all four lenses.
SourceTeece 2007 · Galunic & Eisenhardt 2001
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Configuration ×4
In CAS, the state-space arrangement of a system's components. A configuration is a snapshot of the system at a moment, and the next configuration is already different. Lives in all four lenses.
SourceHolland 1992 · Kauffman 1995
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Reconfiguration ×2
Suchman's term for the continuous reshaping of human–machine arrangements through use. The title of her foundational 2007 book. Lives also in Org.
SourceSuchman 2007 (Human–Machine Reconfigurations)
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Agential Cut
The moment when an enacted distinction temporarily separates subject from object, observer from observed, agent from instrument. Agency belongs to the cut.
SourceBarad 2007 · Hollin et al. 2017
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Reconfiguration ×2
In dynamic capabilities, the firm's ability to reconfigure resources and processes in response to environmental change. Lives also in HCI4.
SourceTeece, Pisano & Shuen 1997 · Teece 2007
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Adaptation ×2
The capacity to change behavior or structure in response to environmental change. Foundational to CAS, distinct from optimization. Lives also in Org.
SourceHolland 1995 · Levin 1998
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Hybrid ×3
The subject of wave-four HCI, neither purely human nor purely technological but their inseparable combination. Lives also in STS & Org.
SourceForlano 2017 · Haraway 1985 (cyborg)
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Hybrid ×3
Latour's term for the entities that resist the modern purification into "nature" vs "society." The wave-four normal state. Lives also in HCI4 & Org.
SourceLatour 1993 (We Have Never Been Modern)
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Hybrid Organization ×3
Organizations combining multiple institutional logics in stable form, public/private, profit/social. AI introduces a new hybrid logic. Lives also in HCI4 & STS.
SourceBattilana & Lee 2014 · Pache & Santos 2013
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Co-evolution
Two or more systems evolving in response to each other, each shaping the selection pressure on the others. Human–AI co-evolution is its newest case.
SourceKauffman 1995 · Lewin & Volberda 1999
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Probe
The methodological signature of wave-three and wave-four HCI. Cultural probes (Gaver), configurational probes (Rivera). Instruments for surfacing what users / configurations enact.
SourceGaver, Dunne & Pacenti 1999 · Boehner et al. 2007 · Rivera 2023
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Inscription
The script designed into a technology that anticipates and shapes its use. Wave-four sharpens this to material-discursive inscription, script and response are co-constituted.
SourceAkrich 1992 · Latour 1992
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Institutional Logic
The taken-for-granted assumptions about how things are properly done in a field. AI introduces an algorithmic logic that competes with prior institutional logics.
SourceThornton & Ocasio 1999 · Friedland & Alford 1991
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Feedback Loop
The mechanism by which a system's output becomes its input. Positive feedback amplifies; negative feedback stabilizes. AI configurations contain both at speed.
SourceWiener 1948 · Forrester 1961 · Sterman 2000
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Posthuman Design
Design practice that refuses the human-as-finished-subject premise. Designers configure relationships among humans, non-humans, AI, and contexts.
SourceForlano 2017 · Wakkary 2021 (Things We Could Design)
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Mediation ×2
Technology does not transmit pre-existing meanings; it mediates and reshapes the relationship between humans and world. Lives also in HCI4.
SourceLatour 1994 · Verbeek 2005, 2011 · Ihde 1990
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Sensemaking
The retrospective process by which organizations come to understand what just happened. AI accelerates the gap between action and sensemaking.
SourceWeick 1995 · Maitlis & Christianson 2014
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Self-Organization
The spontaneous emergence of structure from local interactions without external control. Markets, ecosystems, and AI-augmented teams all exhibit it.
SourcePrigogine 1977 · Camazine et al. 2001
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Embodiment ×2
The phenomenological insight that cognition and interaction are inseparable from the body. Carried forward from wave-three HCI into the entanglement turn. Lives also in STS.
SourceDourish 2001 (Where the Action Is) · Merleau-Ponty
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Sympoiesis
Haraway's term, "making-with." Replaces autopoiesis (self-making) with the insight that nothing makes itself; we are all made together with others.
SourceHaraway 2016 (Staying with the Trouble)
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Ambidexterity ×2
March's exploration / exploitation tension, the organizational capacity to do both. AI sharpens the tension by enabling both at unprecedented speed. Lives also in CAS.
SourceMarch 1991 · O'Reilly & Tushman 2008
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Attractor
A state or pattern that a system tends to settle into. Strange attractors produce ordered chaos. AI configurations can shift the attractors organizations fall into.
SourceLorenz 1963 · Strogatz 1994
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Constitutive Technology
The wave-four update to Fogg's Persuasive Technology. Technology that constitutes rather than persuades, shaping practice, cognition, and identity from within.
Sourcethis lab · Verbeek 2011 · Schrage 2020
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Diffraction
Barad's methodological metaphor, reading insights through one another to produce interference patterns, rather than reflecting them back as mirror images.
SourceHaraway 1992 · Barad 2007
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Loose Coupling
Weick's term for systems where components are connected but retain autonomy. The classical case study of organizations under uncertainty. AI tightens couplings unpredictably.
SourceWeick 1976 · Orton & Weick 1990
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Coupling ×2
The degree of connection between system components. Tightly coupled systems amplify perturbations; loosely coupled systems absorb them. Lives also in Org.
SourcePerrow 1984 (Normal Accidents) · Glassman 1973
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Speculative Design
Wave-three design practice that uses fictional artifacts to provoke critical reflection. Re-tooled in wave four to surface what could be configured otherwise.
SourceDunne & Raby 2013 · Wakkary et al. 2015
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Cyborg
Haraway's foundational figure for the wave-four subject. Neither human nor machine but the relation that holds them. The 1985 manifesto still organizes the field.
SourceHaraway 1985 (A Cyborg Manifesto)
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Practice
The site at which organizational life actually happens. Practice theory makes practice, not structure, not strategy, the unit of organizational analysis.
SourceSchatzki 2001 · Feldman & Orlikowski 2011
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Edge of Chaos
The narrow region between order and disorder where adaptive systems generate the most novelty. The state organizations seek under AI conditions.
SourceKauffman 1993 · Brown & Eisenhardt 1997
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Threshold ×2
The liminal moment when one interaction paradigm gives way to another. Bødker's wave-transitions are thresholds. Lives also in CAS (phase transition).
SourceBødker 2005 · Turner 1969 (liminality)
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Material-Discursive
Barad's claim that matter and meaning are inseparable. The script and the response, the artifact and the interpretation, co-emerge through intra-action.
SourceBarad 2003, 2007
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Coherence
The diagnostic outcome of your Three Lenses dashboard, the continuous alignment between behavior, language, and institutional logic. A practice, not a state.
Sourcethis lab · Wittgenstein on forms of life · Suchman
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Phase Transition ×2
The point at which a system's qualitative behavior changes, water to ice, organization to chaos. The moment Bødker's HCI waves cross. Lives also in HCI (threshold).
SourceStanley 1971 · Mitchell 2009
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§ 03Convergence analysis
The concepts that already break disciplinary boundaries, the lab's name lives here.
Concepts that bridge multiple lenses are doing the wave-four work in the literature itself. A name built from one of these inherits the boundary-breaking without having to argue for it. Sorted by convergence count.
All four lenses · Strongest candidates
The ×4 concept, the one word the lab is built on.
×4Configuration
Configuration is the only concept in the table that lives natively in all four lenses with distinct but resonant meanings. In HCI4 it is the entangled human–AI arrangement. In STS it is Barad's material-discursive phenomenon. In organizational theory it is the dynamic-capabilities arrangement of resources and routines. In CAS it is the state-space snapshot of a complex system. The four meanings nest cleanly. The configuration is, at every layer, the temporary arrangement from which everything else emerges. This is why "The Configurations Lab" was a natural early candidate. The word is doing structural work the lab has been building on across every conversation in this project.
Three lenses · Strong candidates
The ×3 concepts, cross-disciplinary load-bearing.
×3Entanglement
×3Hybrid
Entanglement lives in HCI4 (Frauenberger), STS (the broader posthuman tradition), and CAS (coupling-and-emergence literature). Hybrid lives in HCI4 (Forlano's hybrid subjects), STS (Latour's We Have Never Been Modern), and Organizational Theory (hybrid organizations literature). Both are strong candidates for the lab's name because their boundary-breaking is already established in the literature.
Two lenses · Moderate candidates
The ×2 concepts, partial convergence.
×2Intra-action
×2Reconfiguration
×2Adaptation
×2Mediation
×2Embodiment
×2Ambidexterity
×2Coupling
×2Threshold
×2Phase Transition
Nine concepts bridge exactly two lenses. They are weaker candidates than ×3 or ×4 names because they require choosing a side, but they each carry serious theoretical work and could anchor a more specialized lab framing. Threshold and Phase Transition in particular bridge HCI's wave-transitions and CAS's phase changes. They could anchor a lab focused specifically on the change-moment.
Single lens · Most specialized
The ×1 concepts, lens-specific power.
Concepts living in only one lens carry the most specialized theoretical weight but the least cross-disciplinary reach. Diffraction is purely STS-Barad. Cyborg is purely STS-Haraway. Algorithmic Isomorphism is purely organizational. Edge of Chaos is purely CAS. These make weaker lab-name candidates on their own but are essential to the lab's vocabulary. They are the words the lab will use to describe its work within each lens.
§ 04How to read
Three ways the lab uses this vocabulary.
Use 01, As the lab's research vocabulary. The forty concepts in this map are the vocabulary the lab uses to describe what it does, in papers, in dashboards, in cover letters, in conference talks. The convergence markers tell you which terms travel across audiences (and which to reach for when speaking to specific disciplinary communities). When the lab writes about configurations, the word does specific work because of how it sits in this map, bridging HCI's entangled arrangement, STS's material-discursive phenomenon, organizational theory's dynamic-capabilities arrangement, and CAS's state-space snapshot.
Use 02, As a teaching artifact for collaborators. The map functions as orientation material for new collaborators, guest researchers, doctoral students, industry partners, joining the lab's work. Rather than asking newcomers to read four traditions of literature before they can engage, the map shows the concepts that matter and where they connect. The cross-lens convergence pattern argues visually for the boundary-breaking work the lab does, without requiring prose to explain it.
Use 03, As a publishable figure. With minor refinements, the table can function as an opening figure in forthcoming papers, including Beyond Persuasion (the wave-four update to Fogg's triad) and any methods paper introducing Configurational Probes. The convergence ranking makes a real theoretical claim, that Configuration is the load-bearing concept across all four lenses, and that claim can carry an article opening on its own.
The signal in this map. Configuration is the only concept living natively in all four lenses, which is why the lab is named for it. The map confirms structurally what the lab claims theoretically: the configuration is the unit of analysis the lab works on, across every lens it brings to bear.
§ 05Where the vocabulary lives
The vocabulary deployed across the lab's research program.
The Configurations Lab · An independent research practice
Bogotá · Chicago · est. 2024
v2.0 · 2026