La Ineficacia probatoria de la Prueba Ilícita y sus efectos.

Technological artefacts do not just mediate actions, but they can also mediate human experiences and perceptions of reality. Humans can have to relations of mediation with technologies. This can be an embodiment relation, where users incorporate technologies, or the hermeneutic relation, where technologies provide a representation of reality. Engaging in such a relation with technology means for the user that their relationship with reality can change. This transformation of perception can either amplify or reduce certain aspects of reality, depending on the context of use. Therefore, there can be multiple amplifications or reductions based on the user and context of use (Ihde, 1990 In: Verbeek, 2006, pp. 364-366). Focussing first on the relationship between information technology and Officers of Duty, it became clear from the interviews that Officers of Duty engage in a hermeneutic relation with the information technologies presented to them. That is at least for the use of information technologies during incidents. This means that the Officers of Duty, taking part in this research, were all engaged in hermeneutic relationships with the information technologies at hand. The frequency of use and the extent of use has no influence on this. In the hermeneutic relationship users are provided with a representation of reality that they still need to interpret themselves.

32 As one can see in appendix 3, many of the technological applications are aimed on providing information about the structures, the incident or location and applications providing

geographical information. These applications therefore mainly influence the situational assessment of the Officer of Duty and their image of the incident. However, all these

applications provide information on reality, but all the information means nothing if the users, in this case the Officer of Duty, do not interpret the information. This interpretation is very personal, meaning that while information has become more complete, there can still be a difference in perception of the incident between Officers of Duty. The Officers of Duty can, for example, use the images provided by Streetview or Google Maps to provide them with a representation of reality that they need to interpret themselves in terms of what it means for the incident and how they will act upon the image that they get.

There is a variety of applications and hardware available for the Officers of Duty to use during an incident or crises. These different technological artefacts can amplify or reduce certain parts of reality, and thus mediate the perception of the Officer of Duty on the incident (Ihde, 1990 In: Verbeek, 2006, pp. 364-366). The interviewed Officers of Duty all stated that the main advantage of using information technology is that it helps them to get a quicker and more complete situational assessment. Thus, information technology does something to their image of the incident or crisis. This influence has multiple stabilities, amplifications, and reductions, for the Officers of Duty based on their use context. Some Officers of Duty for example stated that having a faster and more complete image of the situation beforehand, make them think more focussed about their options, thus the information technology helped them to reduce the perceived amount of options for tactics.

The use of information technology amplifies the visualisation of the incident and the situation at hand. They get a more complete image of the situation, because information technology amplifies the actual situation at hand by showing many different aspects of the incident, such as building specifications, water supply and hydrants, areal overviews, units responding and situation at hand. By amplifying the visualisation and image of the situation a reduction happens of the possibilities at the scene and reduction in options for tactics. Another stability of the perception that is reduced using information is the emotional component. Before the use of information technologies, the Officers of Duty were more in contact with the

emergency central to get their information. This contact was human between human and this brought an emotional component to every incident.

33 With the use of information technology Officers of Duty have less contact with the

emergency central and get their information presented by a technological artefact. The

reduction in emotional component made it for some Officers of Duty slightly more difficult to estimate the severity of the situation, thus shaping their perception of the situation differently. The use of information technology has amplified the risk awareness of Officers of Duty. Some Officers of Duty stated that by using information technology they were more aware of possible risks and dangers at the scene than before. By getting a quicker overview of the possible risks and dangers, the Officers of Duty become more aware of risks in the earlier stages of the incident. Officers of Duty experienced having more risk awareness as positive, because they feel it can make them work safer or consider safer tactics and options.Besides reducing the options for approaching the incident, the amplification of visualisation of the incident can also reduce the chance of the Officer of Duty being set on the wrong foot. As an Officer of Duty said: “before I would just receive the address of the incident and I would not immediately know what it could entail. But now I can take my tablet and immediately see the type of building and I have a more complete image”. So, on the one hand information

technology amplifies the necessary items for a completer situational assessment while at the same time reducing the possibility for the Officer of Duty to create a different or incomplete image.