This research commentary on Future Directions for HCI Research responds to research commentaries on the same topic by Benbasat (2010) and Lyytinen (2010), and to two articles in Volume 1 of the AIS Transactions on Human- Computer Interaction (Galletta and Zhang, 2009; Zhang et al. 2009). It employs a two-dimensional framework for exploring the scope and challenges of HCI that combines a social/ technical dimension and a behavior dimension that emphasizes differences between engineered and emergent behavior in sociotechnical systems. This framework is used to reflect on possible differences between the scope of a definition of HCI in those articles and the scope of the topics identified in the extensive survey of HCI literature reported by Zhang and colleagues (2009). Implications include the possibility that future HCI research and theorizing may find significant opportunities related to "designing for emergence," or even "engineering for emergence."