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
By:
Zachary Kaiser (Michigan State University USA)
Imprint: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 234mm,
Width: 156mm,
Spine: 25mm
Weight: 454g
ISBN: 9781350245259
ISBN 10: 1350245259
Pages: 224
Publication Date: 06 April 2023
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Acknowledgements Introduction 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 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 3. Prediction and the Stabilization of Identity Introduction: Whisper and 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 4. The Moral Imperative of Normality through Computational Optimization Introduction: The Optimized Professor and the Pressures of Optimization Measurement, Normativity, 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 Conclusion: Fighting for Servitude as if it Were Salvation 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 and the Reformist Approach Conclusion: Returning to Political Economy and the Limits of the Reformist Approach to Design Education Conclusion: Towards 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 Bibliography Index
Zachary Kaiser is Associate Professor of Graphic Design and Experience Architecture at Michigan State University, USA. His research and creative practice examine the politics of technology and the role of design in shaping the parameters of individual, social, and political possibility. His work has been featured in national and international exhibitions, and his writing, on topics ranging from the future of the arts in higher education to dream-reading technologies, appears in both scholarly and popular publications.
Reviews for Interfaces and Us: User Experience Design and the Making of the Computable Subject
Zach Kaiser's Interfaces and Us dares to peel back the plastic film protecting interface design to reveal how it is both shapes and is shaped by everything from convenience and consumerism to market forces and economic inequality. While finally putting to rest the idea that design is inherently neutral, it's an indispensable guide to the politics of how we interface not just with the digital systems around us, but with late capitalism itself. -- Tim Maughan, author of Infinite Detail, Canada Interfaces and Us blends theory, art, activism and pedagogy into a cogent story about the making of selves and societies. This incisive text will be an inflection point for design education. -- Jenny L. Davis, School of Sociology, The Australian National University
