By Gordon Hull
Over a couple of posts (first, second), I’ve used a recent paper by Brett Frischmann and Paul Ohm on “governance seams” – basically, inefficiencies (sometimes deliberate) in sociotechnical systems that are moments for governance – to think about what I called “phenomenological seams,” which are corresponding disruptions in our experience of the world. I suggested that the combination of the two ideas could be usefully explored by way of Albert Borgmann’s criticism of the stereo as a way to listen to music, rather than direct instrumentation, against the background of Heidegger’s account of breakdowns in our phenomenological experience that occur when tools aren’t as expected.
Borgmann’s objections are notable because of how the stereo, as opposed to the instrument, recalibrates the seams that structure the boundaries of the home. This is obvious enough in retrospect, in a world with Spotify and wireless earbuds, but the connection shows a couple of things.
First, as Heidegger’s examples also indicate, there is a strong connection between technological governance and phenomenology. Frischmann and Ohm emphasize that governance seams can be there both to announce their own presence and to achieve transparency. This interruption makes transparent the phenomenological relations that govern a particular experience in the same way that a broken hammer does. For all that’s wrong with them, the GDPR-mandated cookie notices on websites try to change the experience of websites and nudge users to think about the amount of data they are surrendering. This example also shows the ways that phenomenological experience can limit the regulatory effect of seams: privacy is way too much work, and users are (as a result) cynical, confused, and disillusioned. But the cookie requirement establishes a new relation to the websites, precisely because the regulatory seam has phenomenological import.
Frischmann and Ohm don’t talk about stereos, but they do make the connection to TV, happily without all the moralizing:
“Consider, for example, how the introduction of television into the home can change internal environments, such as living rooms and bedrooms. These rooms with and without a television are different technosocial environments, which raises governance concerns (e.g., whether to introduce the device, what rules and norms govern its use, etc.). The rise of the personal computer changed the governance structures of the spaces in a home once again” (1140).
Smart devices enable lots and lots of information trafficking inside and outside a home, all in order to enable personalized experiences and with concomitant security risks (1141). They thus propose a baseline governance regime designed to shore up – or at least articulate clearly – the governance seams of the home:
“Given our goal of protecting the privacy, autonomy, and governance authority of those within the home, the better governance seams to shore up are the ones that keep information inside the home from being exfiltrated as intelligence to those outside the home. Walls serve this purpose, while windows and broadband connections challenge these seams by literally piercing those walls. We propose that any data generated about activity inside a private home cannot be shared by / smart devices with anyone outside the home, subject to very narrowly prescribed exceptions. We thus propose a set of rules that at least (1) recognizes the physical governance seam defining the difference between inside and outside of the home; (2) recognizes a social governance seam defining the difference between insiders and outsiders; (3) makes transparent, at least to insiders, information flows across those seams; and (4) splits data sets, with one set of data collected by devices being internally accessible and a more limited set being accessible externally under narrow conditions and subject to additional friction-in-design (e.g., comprehension tests)” (1143-4).
It seems to me that this insight shows what is right and wrong with Borgmann’s paper. Borgmann is like Donna Haraway once characterized Harlequin novels – wrong, but on the right topic (“Pop physics books on the consequences of quantum theory and the indeterminacy principle are a kind of popular scientific equivalent to Harlequin romances as a marker of radical change in American white heterosexuality: they get it wrong, but they are on the right subject”). The objection to the stereo as a disruption to parlor music is better cast as an objection to the way that we have modeled embodied experience on the physical space of the home. Stereos are, on that account, the leading edge of the erosion of a way of life that isn’t so much characterized by the presence of expensive devices that make nice music, but a sociotechnical change in how the experience of music is mediated (notice that I am not going to say that the experience with an instrument is immediate!), away from requiring a physical object and surrounding walls to a more socially and spatially distributed form. Rather than objecting to this loss (or experiencing it as the breakage of the music experience system), it would be better to see Borgmann as proceeding from the introduction of a phenomenological seam to grasp at its normative implications.
However, what Borgmann does not see is that his characterization of the disruption and reconfiguration of the phenomenological experience of music is also one of power relations. Or, perhaps he does see it but he doesn’t like it, as evidenced by his “no one plays instruments anymore” complaint (did the masses ever have the kind of musical training he’s talking about? How often did the average person get to hear a string quartet in their living room? Etc.).
Derrida says of Heidegger’s preference for handwriting:
“I wanted to point out in what way Heidegger’s reaction was at once intelligible, traditional, and normative. The tradition of these norms is often respectable, and is reserve considerable when it remains vigilant in the face of technological mutations. But it also gives rise, sometimes in its least naïve form, to a confident dogmatism, to an assurance that we have to interrogate” (“Word Processor,” 19)
A second connection is that phenomenological efficiency is often a goal of technological efficiency. That is, what websites absolutely do not want is for your experience with them to be interrupted or experienced as optional. Netflix has carefully curated the amount of time it takes it to start playing the next episode of a show. The pause between episodes is a (very narrow) governance seam, but it’s been optimized to make sure that you are likely to stay on the site, without feeling like you’ve been railroaded into it. Given the prevalence of A/B testing on sites like Facebook, I assume that Netflix has done A/B research with different amounts of time between episodes to see exactly how much time keeps the most people on, without them either getting distracted and wandering off or turning off the TV because they feel bullied.
In short: the Heidegger/Borgmann thought that interrupting technically-mediated, efficient phenomenological experiences was important is on the right track. But not because that’s going to make you authentic or because the interruption represents moral decline away from authenticity. It gives a chance to take stock of how the sociotechnical systems function to help create the experience, and how we might want to govern that process.
As Derrida notes of word processing (and computer writing more generally), the technology rearranges our sense of inside and outside:
“The computer installs a new place: there one is more easily projected toward the exterior toward the spectacle, and toward the aspect of writing that is thereby wrested away from the presumed intimacy of writing, via a trajectory of making alien. Inversely, because of the plastic fluidity of the forms, their continual flux, and their quasi-immateriality, one is also increasingly sheltered in a sort of protective haven. No more outside. Or rather, in this new experience of specular reflection, there is more outside and there is no more outside” (27).
It seems to me that in articulating the governance end of this – pointing out that this phenomenological experience is the product not just of affordances but of specific governance decisions, where some seams are streamlined and others made more obtrusive; and in gesturing to the phenomenological end, Frischmann and Ohm are pointing out something important.
Recent Comments