2.4.2010
I’ve seen this article a couple months ago and it works nicely into my current context. The boundary between work and leisure is and has been blurred for many centuries. Can electronic objects enjoy “weisure”?
I’ve seen this article a couple months ago and it works nicely into my current context. The boundary between work and leisure is and has been blurred for many centuries. Can electronic objects enjoy “weisure”?
In Marxist theory, commodity fetishism is a state of social relations, said to arise in capitalist market based societies, in which social relationships are transformed into apparently objective relationships between commodities or money. The term is introduced in the opening chapter of Karl Marx’s main work of political economy, Capital, of 1867.
As it relates to commodities specifically, commodity fetishism is the belief that value inheres in commodities instead of being added to them through labor. This is the root of Marx’s critique relating to conditions surrounding fetishism—that capitalists “fetishize” commodities, believing that they contain value, and the effects of labor are misunderstood.
Marx’s use of the term fetish can be interpreted as an ironic comment on the “rational”, “scientific” mindset of industrial capitalist societies. In Marx’s day, the word was primarily used in the study of primitive religions; Marx’s “fetishism of commodities” might be seen as proposing that just such primitive belief systems exist at the heart of modern society. In most subsequent Marxist thought, commodity fetishism is defined as an illusion arising from the central role that private property plays in capitalism’s social processes. It is a central component of the dominant ideology in capitalist societies.
Thinking about idle time a little deeper, I started looking up information on “down-time” of electronics. Most of them talked about how many hours we spend on TVs, computers, video games, cell phones, and etc. What I find interesting about this info graphic piece is that it shows how much energy is used during their down-time. I guess this can be perfectly explained with the idea of “basal metabolism”—energy spent even when we are sleeping, resting…basically doing nothing at all. This image doesn’t necessarily represent what I’m trying to do but it gives me an idea as to what to do next. I think a chart with how many hours of down-time each piece of electronic piece has can be a good one.
source: http://awesome.good.is/transparency/008/trans008vampireenergy.html
Only when we are able to enjoy the richness of material culture does a functional and expressive piece of technology come alive. However, sub-fields of experience design, haptic feedback, ergonomics, and usability to name a few, all look at how we interact with objects when we are giving them full attention. I’m interested in the fact that we could still be interacting with technology in our absence—”interaction” in the sense that technology can do something that may impact us in a meaningful way.
The idea of work and play has been an interesting concept in the history of mankind. In “Homo Ludens” or “Man of Play,” Huizinga suggests that play is primary to, and is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition of the generation of culture. Historically, the idea of play and work has been merged in many cases. Fishers and farmers sang songs to make work more enjoyable. Recently, the idea of “weisure,” a compound noun for “work” and “leisure” has been a rising trend. Instead of over-working for efficiency, people started making work time enjoyable and play time productive. A good example would be someone who is replying to emails on his blackberry while playing golf with his friends. It’s happening. So then can technology also enjoy “weisure”? What would that be like? And how would it affect us?
I plan on presenting an array of familiar everyday objects that tries to keep a relationship with the owner in both the “in-use” state and “rest” state. The “rest” state would be used to reveal their “personal lives” under different themes; having an obsession, trying to fit in, exposing boredom and asking for entertainment, observing people, and trying to get attention from people. I want the “personal life” part to take advantage of the “affordance,” “imperfection,” or “personality” of each object that is revealed in their work state behavior or appearance. By seeing the functional affordance of an object contrasted with other possibilities, the viewer will think about familiar objects and our interaction with them in different ways. If quality relationship is built between the owner and the machines, maybe the owners won’t throw their belongings away as soon as they break.
Kevin Kelly, founder and editor of Wired Magazine stated, “technology is the 7th kingdom of life,” because “the major trends in technology evolution are the same as in biological evolution—the same drives that we see, towards ubiquity, towards diversity, towards socialization, towards complexity.” But if this is true, why is it that we can’t accept imperfection in technology? The evolution of technology has typically focused on the usability, capability, and the convenience of tools. One dead pixel will send a TV back to the factory. One small error on a computer will make its owner call the designer “stupid.”
Let’s think about people for a moment. In life, we come across many people but not one that is exactly like another. People have different strengths, weaknesses, personalities, obsessions, habits, and behaviors. Because it is not easy to find people who are like ourselves, when we find people that share our interests, it makes it that much more exciting. Because we are not perfect beings by ourselves, we admire and seek people who can fill our imperfection in many ways.
The biggest imperfection in technology as a form of life that I can identify is that it does not have, nor will it ever have ‘consciousness.’ We can impose consciousness on technology by personifying objects. We look at a tree and see it as an animate being because it resembles the movement of an animal or a person. We look at a pair of birds and see them as a married couple because they are flying side by side. Similarly, we think that the web camera on a computer is “watching” us when the green or red light next to the camera turns on. Clues, cues, and feedbacks let us understand what is going on with an object, and this potentially leads us to personify inanimate objects.
Another thing that can help us see technology as a living creature is to use the idea of “work” and “play.” Take hotel security guards for instance. They have a clear “work” manner that they show when working, but what are they like when they are off-duty? Do they like knitting? Do they like going to rock concerts? Who knows. Similar to the ideas of “work” and “play,” technology has two states of usage; “in-use” and “idle.” The “in-use” state shall be a productive one, where it is interacting with its owner in some way. On the other hand, the “idle” state can be used to do a variety of things. It can be used to “recharge” or do “house-keeping” work. A printer self-cleaning the toner or a computer defragmenting when not in use is a good example though its down-time is still used as a utilitarian purpose. Other than doing more work, in its idle state, a piece of electronics can interact with other forms of life, enjoy music, have a hobby, or communicate with other pieces of technology. This may seem unproductive or pointless but it definitely helps us see them as a form of life.
