German philosopher Martin Heidegger introduced the concept of thrownness in his major philosophical works during the 1920s. The term Geworfen describes how human existence appears as being cast into a specific family, culture, and historical moment without prior choice.
William J. Richardson argued that thrown-ness remains the most accurate English translation for Geworfenheit because other options carry misleading ontic connotations. Words like abandon, dereliction, or dejection suggest emotional states rather than the matter-of-fact character of human finitude according to Richardson.
Ernst Bloch wrote about thrownness in his multi-volume work The Principle of Hope between 1954 and 1959 and correlated it with what he called a dog's life. He argued that hope cannot tolerate existence where one feels passively cast into what simply is and used animal imagery to describe the passive reception of fate.
The Doors released their song Riders on the Storm in 1971 featuring lyrics about being thrown into the world with lines comparing human arrival to a dog without a bone. Simon Critchley dedicated a 2009 column in The Guardian to explaining this connection after noting that Morrison attended lectures at Florida State University in Tallahassee during 1963.
Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores applied Heidegger's concept of thrownness to computer science in 1986 through their book Understanding Computers and Cognition which established a new foundation for design theory. They argued that software systems must account for users' arbitrary starting conditions and treat technological interaction as embedded within existing social and historical contexts.