Ian Bogost starts with today’s badly-working sensor-driven toilet as an icon for technology’s displacement of more servile, and less autonomous gizmos, and he spins a condemnation of our society from that starting point.
So many ordinary objects and experiences have become technologized—made dependent on computers, sensors, and other apparatuses meant to improve them—that they have also ceased to work in their usual manner. It’s common to think of such defects as matters of bad design. That’s true, in part. But technology is also more precarious than it once was. Unstable, and unpredictable. At least from the perspective of human users. From the vantage point of technology, if it can be said to have a vantage point, it’s evolving separately from human use.
This is just the point of departure. Bogost weaves in the postnormal disconnect for working people’s disenfranchisement as a second element of the disassociation of people by technology. Bogost goes on:
“Precarity” has become a popular way to refer to economic and labor conditions that force people—and particularly low-income service workers—into uncertainty. Temporary labor and flexwork offer examples. That includes hourly service work in which schedules are adjusted ad-hoc and just-in-time, so that workers don’t know when or how often they might be working. For low-wage food service and retail workers, for instance, that uncertainty makes budgeting and time-management difficult. Arranging for transit and childcare is difficult, and even more costly, for people who don’t know when—or if—they’ll be working.
Such conditions are not new. As union-supported blue-collar labor declined in the 20th century, the service economy took over its mantle absent its benefits. But the information economy further accelerated precarity. For one part, it consolidated existing businesses and made efficiency its primary concern. For another, economic downturns like the 2008 global recession facilitated austerity measures both deliberate and accidental. Immaterial labor also rose—everything from the unpaid, unseen work of women in and out of the workplace, to creative work done on-spec or for exposure, to the invisible work everyone does to construct the data infrastructure that technology companies like Google and Facebook sell to advertisers.
But as it has expanded, economic precarity has birthed other forms of instability and unpredictability—among them the dubious utility of ordinary objects and equipment.
He tries to make the connection between the oddball oversensitivity of automatic toilets – that flush unnessarily, wasting water – and the end goal of corporations that deploy these toilets, which is to have fewer employees cleaning the bathrooms. But, he really is arguing that these highly technological gizmos – the self-flushing toilet, Amazon’s online store experience, the vagaries of what shows are available today on Disney, search results on Google – the uncertain nature of how they work becomes internalized:
But why would new technology reduce rather than increase the feeling of precarity? The more technology multiplies, the more it amplifies instability. Things already don’t quite do what they claim. The fixes just make things worse. And so, ordinary devices aren’t likely to feel more workable and functional as technology marches forward. If anything, they are likely to become even less so.
Technology is not an agent, acting like a colony of ants or a class of capitalists.
This is the center of Bogost’s fearful insight: the more technology multiplies, the more it amplifies instability. But his scifi leanings – where he ends up wondering if technology is acting for its own end, evolving independently of us – slides off the rails:
Things already don’t quite do what they claim. The fixes just make things worse. And so, ordinary devices aren’t likely to feel more workable and functional as technology marches forward. If anything, they are likely to become even less so.
Technology’s role has begun to shift, from serving human users to pushing them out of the way so that the technologized world can service its own ends. And so, with increasing frequency, technology will exist not to serve human goals, but to facilitate its own expansion.
I think Bogost starts strong and ends weak in this piece. Technology is not an agent, acting like a colony of ants or a class of capitalists. I think he veers away from pointing a finger at the real culprits behind the dehumanization of technology. He fails to ask the question ‘who benefits?’
The same people who gain and consolidate power through the growing precarity of workers – the 1% and the deep government that serves them – are also served by technology ephemeralizing all work, just like they’ve benefitted from all other workforce reductions, and the zeroing out of the power of counterinstitutions like the unions, and civil and social activism.
Re-reading Raising a Bebé and it makes so much more sense now.
WQXR radio station subversively plays Colonel Bogey’s March, and then the DJ comes in and informs us how during the war the song had anti-Nazi lyrics.
Alas, she tell us cheekily, the lyrics are not appropriate for the radio.
Can we just make it anti-Trump resistance song again? I’ve been humming it all day!
Bannon has only got one ball Donnie has two but very small Sessions has something sim’lar But poor old Spicer has no balls at all
So as a cartoonist I’m pretty obviously a visual learner, and I never really felt like I was much good at science and math (sound familiar?), but getting to know Wick Perry (@wickworks here on Tumblr) has changed a lot of that.
Wick makes really elegant video games. He’s smart and compassionate and has a real enthusiasm for explaining the principles of brain mechanics or geology in ways that players will understand.
His new game, Crescent Loom, is a hands-on way for players to build custom creatures and imbue them with motor functions and life via neurons, muscles, sensors, and more. It’s a tactile way to engage with principles of neuroscience while also building weird critters and exploring an alien landscape, and I think it’s SUPER COOL.
Since it’s highly likely that folks following me are also big ol’ nerds, I thought I’d share it. If you dig science, video games, using technology for education, or just putzing around with a neat little amoeba friend, help get it funded on Kickstarter.
I’m so deeply impressed with all the work Wick’s put into developing this game over the last three weeks. It looks AMAZING.
Also there’s a demo party happening today if you live in Portland. Come by the Lucky Lab on SE Hawthorne from 5-10 to see the gameplay in action, build a creature of your own, and pit it against other players’ creations.
I would have slept a lot better if I hadn’t read about Bannon’s speech last night.
And about Dugin, who he is a big fan of.
And if I hadn’t watched pieces of 1980s scary af TV film “The Day After”.
Our planet is constantly changing,
and we use the vantage point of space to increase our understanding of Earth, improve lives and safeguard our future.
These images show change over
time, with periods ranging from centuries to years. Some of these effects are
related to climate change, some are not. Some document the effects of
urbanization or the ravage of natural hazards such as fires and floods. All
show our planet in a state of flux. Take a look…
Urban
Expansion in New Delhi, India
Between the times these two images were taken, the
population of India’s capital and its suburbs (known collectively as “Delhi”)
ballooned from 9.4 million to 25 million. It is now second
in population only to Tokyo, which has 38 million people.
Great
Salt Lake Shrinkage, Utah
Dramatic change
in the area of the Great Salt Lake over the past 25 years. The lake was
filled to near capacity in 1985 because feeder streams were charged with
snowmelt and heavy rainfall. In contrast, the 2010 image shows the lake
shriveled by drought. The Promontory Peninsula (protruding into the lake from
the top) is surrounded by water on three sides in the first image, but is
landlocked on its eastern side in the second.
Exceptional
Early Ice Melt, Greenland
Meltwater streams, rivers and lakes form in the
surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet every spring or early summer, but melting
began exceptionally early in 2016. Melting encourages further melting when
pods of meltwater develop, since they darken the surface and absorb more
sunlight than ice does. Surface melt contributes to sea-level rise when the
water runs off into the ocean.
Iran’s
Lake Urmia Changes Color
Some combination of algae and bacteria is
periodically turning
Iran’s Lake Urmia from green to red. The change typically occurs when
summer heat and dryness evaporate water, increasing the lake’s saltiness. Data
from satellites indicate that the lake has lost about 70% of its surface area
over the last 14 years.
Owens
Lake Degradation, California
Owens Lake lies in the Owens Valley between the
Sierra Nevada and the Inyo Mountains, about 130 miles north of Los Angeles,
California. For thousands of years, it was one of the most important stopover
sites in the western U.S. for migrating waterfowl and shore birds. However, in
the early 20th century, the lower Owens River, which fed the lake,
was largely
diverted to the Los Angeles aqueduct. Water from springs and artesian wells
kept some of the lake alive, but toxic chemicals and dust impinged on the
regional environment and disturbed the bird habitat.
Baban
Rafi Deforestation, Niger
Baban
Rafi Forest is the most significant area of woodland in the Maradi
Department of Niger, a west African country on the southern edge of the Sahara
Desert. These pictures show the loss of a significant fraction of the natural
landscape (darker green areas) of the forest to agriculture. Population in this
region quadrupled during the 40 years leading up to the 2007 image.
Colorado
River Evolution, Mexico
These two pictures illustrate the extremes
of water flow in the Colorado River since measurements began in the late
1800s. The 1985 image was taken in the midst of record high flow, while the
2007 image shows the driest period. Excessive rains or severe droughts directly
change the amount of water available in the Colorado River Basin, and so does
the increasing pressure of human needs throughout the western states.
Helheim
Glacier Melt, Greenland
Along the margin
of the Greenland Ice Sheet, outlet glaciers flow as icy rivers through
fjords and out to sea. These pictures show a fjord in which Helheim Glacier (on
the left) is crumbling into large and small icebergs (light blue, on the
right). The glacier outlet held steady from the 1970s until about 2001, then
began to retreat toward its source about 4/7 miles between 2001 and 2005. The
glacier’s flow to the sea has also sped up.
Drying
Lake Poopó, Bolivia
Lake Poopó, Bolivia’s second-largest lake and an
important fishing resource for local communities, has dried
up once again because of a drought and diversion of water sources for
mining and agriculture. The last time it dried was in 1994, after which it took
several years for water to return and even longer for ecosystems to recover.
Flooding
on the Ganges River, India
Heavy monsoon
rains have caused catastrophic flooding along the Ganges and other rivers
in eastern and central India. At least 300 people died and more than six million
were affected by the flooding, according to news reports. These images show a
stretch of the Ganges near Patna.
All of this knowledge about our home planet enables
policy makers, government agencies and other stakeholders to make informed
decisions on critical issues that occur all around the world. From rising sea
levels to the changing availability of freshwater, we enable studies that
unravel the complexities of our planet from the highest reaches of Earth’s atmosphere
to its core.
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