Soft Machines and the Design of Perception

This weekend, I was at a succesful conference in Copenhagen, on the subject of “The Word Becoming Flesh”. It was organized by Circle 4 at Nordisk Sommer Universitet. I’m posting my talk here, after the cut. Right here, however, are the slides.

| View | Upload your own

Most of us are probably either wearing several mobile devices right now, or have them close by. Cell phones, iPods and mp3-players, PDAs, laptops have become necessary extensions of man, to the extent where the boundaries are blurred between our wearable and personal communication devices and ourselves. I know that I, for one, cannot remember the telephone numbers of my girlfriend or my close friends - my cell phone remembers them for me. The same goes for my appointments, meetings and reminders - they are all tucked safely away in my cell phone, making sure that I keep up with my deadlines and day-to-day chores.

Or, in fact, my calendar and phone numbers aren’t that safe at all - I can easily lose my cell phone, which is bound to leave me feeling stranded and at a loss of what to do next, and if there’s something I have forgotten. I would definitely feel amputed and handicapped. In the words of Professor Henry Jones, I’ve written these things down, so I don’t have to remember them.

So, my cell phone can be viewed as “an organizational system in which robot-like problems are taken care of automatically and unconsciously, leaving man free to explore, to create, to think, and to feel.” (Clynes & Kline, 27)

This is of course the original definition of Clynes’ and Kline’s cyborg system, and it does provide us with a good example of how technology slowly becomes indispensable. These devices extend our bodies beyond our skin - my memory is partly placed in my cell phone. Of course, humans have always extended themselves beyond their bodies by writing. Notes, diaries, letters and so forth are all communication technologies that pre-date digital technologies and remain in place. What makes mobile devices different is the fact that they have become so ubiquitous - everybody in our technologized Western culture seems to carry them around constantly, as opposed to pieces of paper, diaries, notebooks and what not.

What this shows us, is the fact that we are dealing with a quantitative change, not a qualitative. We as humans have always extended our bodies into technology. We should also keep in mind that just because we keep our memories in part in technological devices, this isn’t to say that our memories weaken - they are instead distributed and connected.

Furthermore, except for a few PDAs, it isn’t possible for us to write in free-hand on our mobile devices. If we want to use them, we need to conform to the design of the device. This may in fact be more problematic than it sounds. One of my friends carries two cell phones, using the one only as his calendar. When he switched to his new walkman-phone, he was annoyed with the limits of the new calendar function, and so chose to keep his old phone as a calendar. As this shows, design does have an impact on how we use technology, but it also shows that technology doesn’t determine everything - we as users have a say in the matter.

This brings me to my first argument: The design of technology is a site of struggle. Whether we are talking about visual design, mechanical or programmatic design, it matters because it changes the way we use things and it changes the way we perceive the world around us. I’m not talking about technological determinism, but rather focussing on altered relations. Another of my friends is an iTunes fan and buys most of his music in the iTunes store. He has often spoken out against those of us who do not like iTunes, arguing that we are old-fashioned and paranoid of technology. Imagine his frustration when he bought a walkman-phone and could use nothing of all the music he had bought on iTunes. That’s design with a vengeance and it brings me to my second argument: Technology designates instructions for the production of the signified.

In other words, we perceive the world around us in relation to the technology we use at the time. Cell phones, PDAs and iPods all change the relationship we have with the world around us, and we understand the world in a different way when we have access to these devices. These technologies are referred to as “presence protocols” (Niels Olof Bouvin, “Kommunikation gennem tiderne”); technologies that facilitate a space of shared attention where people can be notified about what others are doing. MySpace and Facebook are the most typical examples of this, but so are text messages and instant messaging.

The point here is that these technologies are: “embodiments of a procedure for the production of sense” (David Porush, The Soft Machine) The embodiment is the technological device, in this case, and as I have already pointed out, the design of that device is significant. We can identify two primary areas where technology has an impact: social space and personal identity. To serve as specific examples, I choose to focus on cell phones and iPods. The rest of my talk will follow these points:

• Social space and cell phones
• Social space and iPods
• Connected: A Social Paradigm
• Soft Machines: The Connected (Post-)Human

Social space
First, however, let me briefly point out how I view social space. For me, it is a combination of Jürgen Habermas’ public sphere and Zygmund Bauman’s social space. I believe we are dealing with a multiplicity of public spheres, overlapping and conflicting in complex and sometimes even paradoxical ways (Douglas Kellner, “Habermas, the Public Sphere, and Democracy”). This includes excluded groups in addition to mainstream configurations, much in the vein of Dick Hebdige’s view of culture. New technologies affect these public spheres, but do not determine them.

Bauman helps us focus on three processes: cognitive, aesthetic and moral “spacings” - pointing out that all three are significant. My emphasis here will be primarily on the aesthetic and to a lesser extent the cognitive and moral dimensions. It should also be noted here, that public space is of course a recent construction, but it remains something we are affected by, partly because we are socialized that way.

Social space and cell phones

“What radio communication was to the Nazi blitzkrieg, the cellphone is to hand-to-hand combat” (The Cancer of Cellspace, McKenzie Wark)

Public space is currently being penetrated by private space. Walking around any larger city necessarily subjects you to any number of private conversations, but the conversations that are the most intimate take place on cell phones, irrespective of the fact that these conversations can be heard just as easily.

Once on a train, I overheard a woman speaking loudly on her cell phone, complaining that there was no room on first class, and that she had to ride coach along with the common mob. I’m sure most of you have had similar experiences, overhearing things you were not meant to hear, and didn’t even want to hear. We seem to think that we are cocooned in our own private bubbles, when we speak on our cell phones, yet this is not the case.

Yet, our mobile spaces disconnect us and distances us from our surroundings. We choose to prioritize the space offered by the cell phone, and it is difficult to interact properly with people when they are on their cell phone. A collegue of mine told me that when she worked as a waitress, she hated when people came in already talking on the phone. Some would expect her to go take their order despite them being already engaged on the phone, while others would be offended if she tried to take their order. She never knew how to deal with these people, and in a way that is not surprising. We carry a little piece of our private space with us, when we use the cell phone. This is what makes it so awkward overhearing others’ conversation. “Social space just isn’t social anymore, when you can “privatize” it with a cell phone.” (Wark, “The Cancer of Cellspace”)

This is what McKenzie Wark talks about when he speaks of the cancer of cellspace: the walls of public space break down as if by a cancerous agent (Wark, “The Cancer of Cellspace”). However, we shouldn’t take his phrase ‘cancer’ too seriously, he merely intends to point out that cellspace transforms public space by breaking down barriers that were previosuly impermeable. As Caroline Bassett points out, we are never disconnected (Caroline Bassett, “How Many Movements”). We can choose to be unconnceted, but most of us don’t. Part of this is due to what is called safe autonomy (Johannes Andersen, “Jeg snakker med mig selv…”) - the fact that we are autonomous subjects that are free to move about as we please, but can still be reached or reach out.

Bassett argues for a distinctive connective force to mobile spaces. While most of the activities that occur through mobile spaces are banal, they are compelling enough to be prioritized over physical space. How many of you are going to check your cell phone for messages in the break? I know I am, and do you know why? “Mobile spaces produce an accelerated, intensified, sense of freedom” (Caroline Bassett, “How Many Movements”)

We feel free and able to cope with contemporary life, despite it being fast and accelerated. It provides us with a degree of satisfaction. But this is more about personal identity and I’ll return to that in a bit. For now, let me shift another other mobile space - the iPod.
Social space and iPods
When I say iPod, I could in many ways be talking about any mp3-player, except for the fact that iPods are by far the most popular and are also available with the largest hard drives. This is singificant, as many iPod users speak of carrying their entire music library around in their pockets - something related to freedom, again. However, if we stay with space for now, sound is of a different quality because is has no spatial dimension, but instead “…sound engulfs the spatial thus problematizing the relation between subject and object.” (Michael Bull, “The World According to Sound”)

There is no distance between sound and subject, therefore sound cannot be said to be a proper object, different and apart from the listening subject. Unlike vision, there is no distance to sound and certainly not when we are listening to our iPods. Because of this, iPods re-spatializes subjective experience and does so accordinng to the soundtrack we choose for ourselves.

Michael Bull has worked a lot with the use of Walkmans and iPods, and he notes how most users experience their surroundings in aesthetic terms, depending on the music they listen to. Listening to iPods become a way of constructing personal narratives from routine movements through the city. Public spaces are transformed and personalized by iPods - but unlike with cell phones the spaces are not privatized, nor do they become publically intimate. We can rarely hear what others listen to on their iPods - at most we get a sense of the beat and tempo of the music, if it is turned up really loud.

So, iPods question the meaning of public and private realms of experience, since the traditionally private experience of listening to one’s own music collection is brought into the public. The point here is that we are dealing with individualized listening, not concert experiences. Individual users choose these experiences themselves, from the options available. As Michael Bull states “iPod users make the urban street conform to their own aesthetic desire.” (Bull, “No Dead Air!”)
This re-configuration of space is a distinctive change, because it appears to give the iPod user an unprecedented freedom in managing space and just as significantly, one’s relation towards others. When listening to an iPod, you can choose to ignore those around you and pretend that you don’t hear them.

An iPod creates what we can call ontological security, in that we can manage our surroundings, block out annyoing sounds and people and safely cocoon us in our own, personal mobile space. Bull again “the ‘outside’ world becomes a function of the desire of the user and is maintained through time through the act of listening.” (Bull, “The Seduction of Sound in Consumer Culture”)

What the iPod offers is the transcendent space of a utopia, because it offers us that we can completely control our surroundings, but of course, this is not exactly the case. iPods proliferate throughout our everyday life, and they do so through a strategy of inividivuality - most people refer to the ease with which they can use them, how they can carry their entire collection with them at all times. Ever so slowly, they are tied closer and closer to a specific technology and faith is placed in the technology to secure the user - suddenly the everyday may seem unmanageable without one’s trusty iPod to handle spatial configuration. Our abilities to navigate social space is suddenly contingent upon a technological device, rather than ourselves. “Walkman users both present themselves via technology and construct the social via technology.” (Bull, “The World According to Sound”)

As Bull points out, experience becomes both manageable and significant when it becomes technologized - in other words, urban and everyday experience becomes technologized experience. Our perception of the world around is affected by technology and we produce sense and meaning of the world through these technological, mobile devices. We extend ourselves into these machines, just as they extend into us. We connect to the world around us via machines, and that makes us soft machines.

It seems no coincidence that connectivity has become a dominant feature for most mobile devices. I can check my email from my cell phone, but more significantly, I can also update my Facebook profile, see what my Facebook friends are up to, and I can even log on to my instant messaging service. The same holds true for the iPod Touch which comes with wifi connectivity. Being connected is the new paradigm, and this results in a reconfiguration of what it means to be human.

Connected

“Connecting to a mobile space is often experienced as going ‘live’” (How Many Movements, 350)

With this in mind, it is hardly a coincidence that the old Micrsoft Messenger application has changed its name to Windows Live Messenger, nor that Microsoft’s MySpace competition is named Windows Live Spaces, or that their blogging application is called Windows Live Writer. ‘Live’ seems to be Microsoft’s discursive challenge to Apple’s ‘i’ (iPhone, iPhoto, iBook, etc). Being connected versus being an individual.

But perhaps that difference is smaller than we might expect - increasingly it seems that being an individual is contingent upon being able to connect to one’s surroundings. I mentioned the term presence protocols earlier, and that is exactly what we are dealing with here. I am only present when my friends can see what I am doing. A wealth of services provide us with the opportunity to broadcast what we are doing, right now. Being interested in this, I am probably a special case, but I use the following services:

• Facebook - procrastinating with my friends, under the guise of ‘networking’.
• MySpace - MySpace is dead.
• Last.fm - music service which logs what I listen to.
• Wordpress - two self-hosted blogs, one for work and one for play.
• Del.icio.us - bookmarking service.
• Simpy - another bookmarking service.
• Tumblr - a micro-blog, mostly for re-posting what I find on the web.
• All Consuming - updating what I read, watch and listen to.
• Twitter - brief updates about what I do.
• Flickr - photos.
• SpongeFish - social community focussing on user-submitted knowledge.
• Wists - wishlist.
• LinkedIn - dunno. Networking site, but pretty useless.

I don’t know how many follow me, but it’s clear that I communicate quite a bit, about many aspects of my life. Some of these networking services are automated so friends could conceivably know more about what I do, than I do myself. The point here is that I am a connected individual - I am connected to the network, and that is what matters. As Steven Shaviro has pointed out “what we say matters less than the fact that we are saying it in the network.” (Shaviro, Connected)

All of these traces of me in the network functions as keys to my identity. They are traces of what I have done and they keep a history of my actions, that I myself can access later. They show part of my experience, and produce me as a highly connected subject. What is significant here, is the fact that what matters to me is that I am connected - it matters less how many follow what I do. Johannes Andersen provocatively suggests the new communicative networks are best viewed as a communicative mirror - sender and receiver are the same (Johannes Andersen, “Jeg snakker med mig selv…”). I don’t fully agree, but I do see his point. What also occurs in this loop, is a certain projection of our own, inner feelings onto the network.

Communication asserts participation and thus guarantees subjectivity and individuality. Only by participating in these social networks can I assert my individuality, and what matters is that I am connected, that I communicate, not what I say. The matter of who I am becomes a matter of between and across which technological spaces. I need my mobile devices to keep up with being connected. No longer is the world a matter of boundaries between distinct and seperate spaces but rather a matter of interfaces. Interaction has become community and community is based on being connected. But we don’t connect physically, we connect technologically.
Soft Machines: The Connected (Post-)Human
Social interaction is based on technological connections, which means that we need technological devices in order to interact with others - we must extend our bodies into technology, or be cut off from the network. Our subjectivities are synthesized from these technologies, and dispersed along the network of social connections and technological interfaces.

We reconfigure the world through our technologies: we penetrate and break down previously established spaces, we aestheticize and control our experience of space, but we are also ourselves reconfigured by technology. We need to be connected at all times in order to feel as a proper subject. Without our mobile devices, we feel cut off and incapable of dealing with the world. We lack the instructions for producing the signified; in other words social space has broken down, but we need a cell phone to navigate it, and an iPod to feel comfortable in it.

“The delirium of advanced technology has been entirely woven into the texture of everyday life” (Shaviro, Connected) This is a feedback loop which we are all caught in, and this is why the design of technology is a site of struggle. What can be done with technology, what does the interface facilitate? We may enjoy the possibility of updating our Facebook profile from our cell phone, but feel annoyed if we’ve forgotten our phone, because what if something happened? We enjoy our iPod, because it removes the tedium of travelling, but if we forget it the world around us is seen as boring, standing still or at worst even threatening and insecure.

We occupy layers of space rather than a singular space - we can sit on a train, listening to our iPod while Facebooking and checking our phone for messages. Our body is as much an interface to the world as the keyboard of our phone or the click-wheel of the iPod. This is how the perception of the world is designed: mobile devices extend our senses by making them virtual. “Each time we extend ourselves technologically, some part of the real gives way to the virtual.” (Shaviro, Connected)

We are as much virtual as we are physical, which must make us realize that presence - the old understanding of physical presence - has become reduced in importance. What is important, is participation. This becomes paramount, as we must be connected to the network.