We stopped considering the user as a human being and started thinking of them as a spherical wallet in a vacuum. The user exists purely as a source of revinue and absolutely no other consideration is given.
> We stopped considering the user as a human being
Imho once you say "user" you are already halfway on that path. Look how impersonal your sentence is. Users are an abstract concept that belongs to the app, which in turn is created by the developer who has all kinds of dreams for that app. Just keep calling them people, persons, or specific stakeholder names that correspond to the role they have, and their identified needs. The app serves people, and not the other way around. Not calling people users is a step towards avoiding their disempowerment.
Try starting your user stories "As a human being fully endowed with creative and critical faculties who yearns for purposeful, reciprocal engagement within my Lebenswelt..." and see how it goes?
My understanding of user stories is that they specifically are NOT supposed to start with "as a user", but instead, should start with what you called an "empathy sutra" in a sibling comment.
E.G. "As a single mother of four, I want my children to have a nutritious lunch but have very little time to prepare it" might be the first phrase of a user story for your foodmaking robot.
neither "as a user" nor "As a human being fully endowed with creative and critical faculties..." help the product and tech team understand the constraints and yearnings of the person this feature will serve.
PS: I used to have a PO who would write "As a product owner, I want a feature that does X" and it drove me crazy
So you choose "user" then? If you don't have more information than "user" in your user stories you are already on the wrong path. How about "As a person" for a general case, "As a buyer" in your webshop app, "As a solution developer" in your low-code design studio. Etcetera. (You did not add the /s so I'll answer seriously).
I agree that personification has value, and there's a happy medium to be struck. I don't know that we need to recite a compassion sutra at the head of every story, although I guess it couldn't hurt?
That's not unique to tech either. Before my career in tech, I went through school doing retail jobs. The verbiage then was "how do we capture our share of their (the customer's) wallet?" Not how do we provide what they need, a good experience, or whatever else. As if the company was entitled to a portion of the shopper's income.
I found it completely disgusting, and this wasn't unique to one retail chain either. It's how the capital class views people, as a resource to be extracted.
Imho once you say "user" you are already halfway on that path. Look how impersonal your sentence is. Users are an abstract concept that belongs to the app, which in turn is created by the developer who has all kinds of dreams for that app. Just keep calling them people, persons, or specific stakeholder names that correspond to the role they have, and their identified needs. The app serves people, and not the other way around. Not calling people users is a step towards avoiding their disempowerment.