Life threading
In class today, there was a discussion about how context aware devices would integrate with our daily routines in the future. The class analyzed various hypothetical situations, including the classic text message from your refrigerator while shopping at the grocery store to remind you that you are low on chocolate syrup since that swinger’s party last week.
During the discussion, it seemed to me that part of what the research community is doing is perhaps inappropriate. If my refrigerator tells me that I need chocolate syrup, and the grocery store draws me a map right to it, then between them, they have effectively removed my agency during the trip to the store.
There were other examples that we covered in class, to be sure, but they all had a similar feel that I can only describe with the term life threading. I’ll define life threading as the act of using context aware devices to make our lives more efficient by getting us to where we need to be faster with fewer interruptions.
The problem with this approach is that when taken to extremes, such as my refrigerator’s unsolicited opinion or the grocery store’s over eager helpfulness, it also removes some of my agency, as well the opportunity for reveling in the unexpected or acting on curiosity.
Shopping at that point becomes about what my refrigerator told me to do and the instructions I received from the grocery store on how to do it. My brain shuts off. I become a passive participant even though the point of context aware devices should be to make us more fully active participants.
So let’s get old school on this. The rule that I think context aware devices should adhere to is to speak only when spoken to. It’ll make us all a little more empowered and teach the little bastards their place.
Update: After a comment by Don, I checked around and apparently Jen Rode attends Irvine as well... which means that I probably already met her and didn't remember. Now I have to play the "Didn't I meet you before..." game the next time I meet her, which will either be the first or eleventh time. Sigh. I can feel the awkward coming from a mile away.
During the discussion, it seemed to me that part of what the research community is doing is perhaps inappropriate. If my refrigerator tells me that I need chocolate syrup, and the grocery store draws me a map right to it, then between them, they have effectively removed my agency during the trip to the store.
There were other examples that we covered in class, to be sure, but they all had a similar feel that I can only describe with the term life threading. I’ll define life threading as the act of using context aware devices to make our lives more efficient by getting us to where we need to be faster with fewer interruptions.
The problem with this approach is that when taken to extremes, such as my refrigerator’s unsolicited opinion or the grocery store’s over eager helpfulness, it also removes some of my agency, as well the opportunity for reveling in the unexpected or acting on curiosity.
Shopping at that point becomes about what my refrigerator told me to do and the instructions I received from the grocery store on how to do it. My brain shuts off. I become a passive participant even though the point of context aware devices should be to make us more fully active participants.
So let’s get old school on this. The rule that I think context aware devices should adhere to is to speak only when spoken to. It’ll make us all a little more empowered and teach the little bastards their place.
Update: After a comment by Don, I checked around and apparently Jen Rode attends Irvine as well... which means that I probably already met her and didn't remember. Now I have to play the "Didn't I meet you before..." game the next time I meet her, which will either be the first or eleventh time. Sigh. I can feel the awkward coming from a mile away.
2 Comments:
At 10:51 AM,
Don said…
You should look at Jen Rode's work critiquing ubicomp in the home. The basic gist of it is that the home is not an office and the goal is not efficiency. Ubicomp that tries to make the home an office is going to fail. She argues that a home is a collection of social processes and that ubicomp must integrate into the social processes, not into the information processes. Think communication rather than lists.
At 6:05 AM,
Jatindar Tiku said…
I watched a 2 hour show last night---How William Shatner changed the world-- I think it spoke to some of your concerns. The forward looking show star trek opened eyes to some of the possibilities that were purely imagined by the show. The point that fascinated me was that the show essentially came to the conclusion that this blind adoption and following of technology was responsible for the borg coming into existencence. The same thinking, mass acting , controlled and psuedo humans bereft of all human values is a definite possibility. At one point we thought that 1984 was "just a book" but we know that it did not only become possible but infact is currently practiced (Bin Laden still being on the loose notwithstanding). Any who think about the Borg angle. I think the fate of humanity along the current trajectory is fascinating.
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