New Now Know How

Ricky writes about a conversation that we had on, among other things, seamful and seamless computing. As ever with this ongoing debate between Ricky and myself, I think we agree on more than it seems we do.

Jumping right in with an example of where we agree more than disagree:

Furthermore, this talk of having computers blending with the natural environment is a complete red herring, designed to draw your attention away from one of the real goals of ubiquitous computing, which is simply to release users from explicit interaction with technology as far as it is possible and sensible to do within certain applications of technology. The extent to which this is possible and the degree to which it remains sensible is determined by the users themselves. [my emphasis]

To which I say — sort of. The extent to which users are able to not explicitly interact with technology rests with designers in that the designer is the person who makes interaction possible (and the converse is also true). The degree to which it is sensible to not explicitly interact with technology is with the user and how they are using the technology in question. I think Ricky is saying (see emphasissed sentence in above quote) that the degree of invisibleness of a technology is a dynamic thing. It’s on a continuum with invisible/implicit at one end and visible/explicit at the other. Ideally, a user is able to negotiate that continuum themselves, being aware of when they are and are not “using” the technology.

Ricky’s example of RFID being a “different kind of visible!” is a good one. As Chalmers & Galani (2004) said:

“underlying infrastructural mechanisms are ‘literally visible, effectively invisible’, in that everyday interaction does not require attention to these mechanisms’ representations–but one can selectively focus on and reveal them when the task is to understand or even change the infrastructure.”

Invisibility or seamlessness is constructed (or, if you like, performed) by the people using a technology. To varying degrees the technology is “literally visible, effectively invisible” because the users make it that way. This happens already. To take a technology for granted is to render it effectively invisible. The many layers between my desktop computer and the internet at large are invisible to me. I can delve into them if I choose but there is typically no need to do so. The same is true of many other taken-for-granted technologies.

Making the transition from invisible to visible might be necessary for a lot of different reasons. Somthing’s broken. Something’s breaking. Something needs re-configuring to make a new thing happen. The thing can be used both implicitly and explicitly and the time has come to make the move. And more besides. It will be possible to design things that are so simple that it is easy to learn to treat them as invisible and never have to render them visible again. However it will also be necessary, as ubiquitous technologies become more sophisticated and begin to do more for us, to be able to shift these technologies into the foreground, or indeed to be able to not treat them as invisible in the first place.

I think that seamlessness and seamfulness are less about whether things are or are not invisible but whether it is possible to make the transition from invisible to visible and back again if the need arises. Depending on the depth of what you want to be (in)visible, this either has very little to do with the actual nuts and bolts (or 1s and 0s) of ubicomp infrastructure or it has everything to do with it.

It’s pretty common among mobile technology geeks to point at how the Japanese use their mobile phones as a view of the future of the mobile in the west. According to anthropologist, Mizuko Ito, that’s not necessarily the case. In a typical example of technological determinism:

In conversations about technology in Japan, the assumption is that there is something inherent in a particular technology that makes it get taken up in a particular way, and it’s not inherently culturally specific. But at the same time, if there is something that seems different from how other countries have taken up a technology, it gets attributed to the cultural strangeness of the Japanese, i.e., if the Japanese don’t use cell phones like people in the U.S. it must be something cultural.

This is the falacious argument that if a technology succeeds then it was something in the technology but if it fails (to replicate successes) then there was something social that caused the failure. Ito says that a better explanation is to look at the “technological trajectory” in each country as a way to explain the differences (and similarities).

The U.S. is an incubator for advanced PC Internet technology, and Japan is at the other end of the spectrum. The reason the Japanese are doing more diverse and cool things with their mobile phones is because they’re depending on them more as their primary information devices. It will continue to be an incubator for interesting mobile technologies, but is certainly not the site were you should look for everything IT.

The promise of computing technology dissolving into behavior, invisibly permeating the natural world around us cannot be reached. Technology is, of course, that which by definition is separate from the natural; it is explicitly designed that way. Technology only becomes truly invisible when, like the myriad of pens sold in Japan’s department stores, it’s no longer seen as technology at all. Deliberately creating something ‘invisible’ is self-defeating. I can think of few recent technologies as visible to the public as RFID, no matter how physically ‘invisible’ it might be.

The point being, that you can’t design something to be invisible. It becomes invisible as people make it part of their lives, as it becomes part of the “fabric of society” or just something that people take for granted.

Design for appropriation is where it’s at. Being aware of the seams between things rather than making the seams invisble. Seams are useful. Edges make things clear. Inside. Outside. Here is the street. Here is the footpath.

I moderate a discussion forum. It is a continual (inner) struggle to let the forum be what the members want and to reign them in when they go too far.

Often there are crisis that arise because members can represent themselves to be other than they are or because people do not believe that people are who they say they are. Other problems come from people not acting on (through?) the forum as they would in real life. Being a car forum full of young guys, this often takes the shape of posturing and insults that would probably never be said aloud in a pub, or, if they were said, would end up in one or more bloody noses.

The participants of these electronically mediated virtual communities acquire skills that are useful for the virtual social environments developing in late-twentieth-century technologised nations. The participants learn to delegate their agencies to body representatives that exist in imaginal spaces contiguously with representatives of other individuals. The become accustomed to what might be called lucid dreaming in an awake state — to a constellation of activities much like reading, but an active and interactive reading, a participatory social practice in which the actions of the reader have consequences in the world of the dream or of the book. The older metaphor of reading undergoes a transformation in a textual space that is consensual, interactive, haptic, and that is constituted through inscription practices — the production of microprocessor code. The boundaries between the social and the “natural” and between biology and technology take on the generous permeability that characterises communal space in the most recent virtual systems.

From Allucquère Rosanne Stone The war of deire and technology at the close of the mechanical age, 1995, MIT Press, pg121

Rhys’ recent post on Manila reminded me of part of a story about the demise of the Atari Research Lab. The story takes up on the day of the close of the lab. At 8am word came down that a new boss of Atari was going to close the lab. People were scurrying about trying to rescue some of their personal belongings. Because they were quite annoyed, some large-scale pilfering took place, “chairs, bookcases, sofas, stereo systems and television sets”. This is my favourite part:

Amid the confusion, scurring, shouting and occaisional screams, Larry Bowles sauntered in the front entrance, walked up to the security guard with a comb wrapped in a wad of tissue paper, and said, “I need an equipment pass for this personal item I’m taking inside.”

“What is it?” the guard asked, pulling out the form.

“It’s a Dynair switcher,” said Bowles, naming an extremely expensive, high-end piece of video-editing gear.

“Okay,” the guard said, writing out the pass.

An hour or so later, Bowles came back downstairs lugging a huge, expensive, top-of-the-line Dynair video switcher, went to the door, and handed the guard the pass. “One Dynair switcher,” the guard said. “Personal property. Thank you.” Bowles put it in his car and drove away.

(from “The end of innocence, part I: Cyberdammerung at the Atari lab” in The war of desire and technology at the close of the mecanical age by Rosanne Allucquere Stone, 1996)

The Adelaide Advertiser is reporting on a conference/sales event that will showcase “smart” technology for cars.

The technology, being jointly developed in Adelaide, will be demonstrated this week on the Clipsal 500 track in Victoria Park, along with a range of traffic advances in an industry-only peek into the future.

Experts say the advances have the potential to dramatically slash the road toll and ease congestion – and could within a generation lead to cars that drive themselves.

Sounds great, doesn’t it, concerned motorists? But, what is this miracle technology?

Among innovations on show will be the Intelligent Speed Adaptation (ISA) system being developed by Melbourne firm MoTeC in partnership with Datalink and Adelaide-based Tenix Electronics.

ISA combines three systems to let cars know at what speed they should be moving – GPS for location, video recognition of speed signs, and devices inspeed signs which transmit information to passing cars.

So, the car will get information about prescribed speed limits from various sources. Now, nigh on ten years ago now (eek!), I was given some sage advice from my Dad, which I will now present for the elucidation of you, concerned motorist. That advice is this: You will often find that the safest speed is lower than the speed limit.

But back to the wonderful technology. How will this technology be implemented?

MoTeC spokesman Alex Caldwell said the technology was affordable and it would be up to governments as to how far it was implemented.

Because governments are always able to make sound, informed, decisions about new technologies.

“You could use it so a simple warning noise sounds to alert a driver the car is over the limit,” he said.

“On the other hand, you could have legislation so the sign can `order’ a speeding car to slow to the legal limit regardless of the driver.”

Other advances on show include red lights which “order” cars to stop, sensors to keep a defined gap between cars to prevent rear-end crashes, and video cameras that sound an alert if a drowsy driver’s eyes start to close.

Notice the unctirical nature of the article, concerned motorist? The “advances” include such wonders that remove agency (or the ability to act) from the driver and give it to the computer inside the car and, since governments will (in some distopian future) legislate for this technology the agency is intended to pass from the computer to the government who are looking after the motorists interest. This delegation of agency is supposedly to give governments the power to make things “safer” on the road.

Australian Automobile Association executive director Lauchlan McIntosh said:

“I can see an era of driverless cars happening in my lifetime. We should not accept that we have five people killed on our roads every day when we have the technology to prevent it.”

Obviously, I think this is a bad idea. Getting back to that sage piece of advice: You will often find that the safest speed is lower than the speed limit. The reason that advice is so important in this arguement is that any system that rigidly enforces compliance with the posted speed limit brings with it the implication that it is always safe to travel at the speed limit when that is not the case. These sort of systems could (will) reconfigure people’s perceptions of what it means to be a driver. Instead of being an active driver, engaged with the road conditions, other motorists and road users and activities happening near the road, such a system could, and, in my opinion, will, transform drivers into disengaged passive participants in their own demise.