Interfaces and Us: User Experience Design and the Making of the Computable Subject

Description

We're all familiar with smart TVs making suggestions on our future watching, real-world exercise data being transferred into stats and infographics on our workout apps and turning up our home heating before we start our commute – but how does this world of technological interfaces affect our actions and perceptions of self?When society relies on computer models and their interfaces to explain and predict everything from love to geopolitical conflicts, our own behaviour and choices are artificially changed. Zachary Kaiser explores the harmful social consequences of this idea - balanced against speed and ease for the user - and how design practice and education can respond positively. - Concepts of freedom vs convenience - Smart objects and manipulation - Real world information transformed into data - Technology's decisions made on our behalf Cover Contents List of Figures Acknowledgments About the Author Introduction Laws of Love The Historical and Conceptual Underpinnings of the Computable Subjectivity Are We and Our World Nothing but Data? Fragmentation, Prediction, and Identity New Normals and New Morals Is the Computable Subjectivity Actually the Problem? If So, What Do We Do? Concluding by Way of Beginning The Co-Constitutive Nature of Design, Design Scholarship, and Design Education Notes 1 Historical and Conceptual Roots of the Computable Subjectivity Introduction: Disrupting the Insurance Industry—“Convenience” and “Freedom” Producing and Looping, or, Biopolitics and Biopower The Value of Convenience Freedom and Countercultural Technocracy The Selfish System: Cybernetics and Rational Choice Theory Markets as Information Processors: Cybernetics and Economics The Neoliberal Governmentality Conclusion: Foundations and Ramifications Notes 2 Data=World Introduction: Can You “See” Your Dream Data? Data and World: An Origin Story Computational Instrumentation: Templates and Translations How Computational Instruments Disappear Conclusion: The Great Inversion, or, Operationalism’s Legacy Notes 3 Prediction and the Stabilization of Identity Introduction: The Scrambling of Algorithmic Anticipation The Digital Production of Fragmentation and Alienation Ontological Insecurity: One Consequence of Fragmentation and Alienation The Digital Mirror Self: Soothing Ontological Insecurity with Computation The Role of UX in Producing, then Soothing, Ontological Insecurity Consequences: Soft Biopower and the Proscription of Potential Conclusion: Becoming Cyborgs Notes 4 The Moral Imperative of Normality through Computational Optimization Introduction: The Optimized Professor and the Pressures of Optimization Measurement, Normality, and Morality: Two Origin Stories The Moral Imperative of Self-Optimizing Technologies: The Case of the Amazon Halo Consequences: Anxiety, Superfluity, and the Instrumentalization of Interpersonal Interaction Datafied Superfluity: Bullshit Jobs, Bullshit People, and Teaching from beyond the Grave Conclusion: Fighting for Servitude as if It Were Salvation Notes 5 The Questions of Political Economy and the Role of Design Education Introduction Question 1: The Issue of Political Economy and Chile’s Socialist Cybernetics Question 2: The Role of Design Education in Resisting the “Reality” of the Computable Subjectivity Conclusion: Returning to Political Economy and the Limits of the Reformist Approach Notes Conclusion: Toward a Luddite Design Education The Politics of UX and the Computable Subject as the Ideal Political Subject The Lingering Problem: The Computable Subjectivity and Political Economy The Revolutionary Approach: Luddite Design Education A Provisional Program of Luddite Design Education A Luddite Design Education, Now Notes Bibliography Index