What about the discrete glance?

The new iPhone doesn’t have a fingerprint reader to unlock.

Face ID on the iPhone X uses a “TrueDepth” camera setup, which blasts your face with more than 30,000 infrared dots and scans your face in 3D. Apple says this can “recognize you in an instant” and log you into your phone. (ArsTechnica)

While it is common to feel obstinate and antagonistic towards technical change there is one thing that this technical change will force.

Think about all the times and social settings where your phone is lying flat on a table and it’s socially awkward to pick it up. If you want to glance at the screen, maybe to check the time, a text, or even your emails. You simply press the home button and glance at the phone.

Do you now need to pick up the device? This micro-movement is huge, it open obvious and can even be a social slight.

The Importance of Being Blue

After switching from iPhone to HTC it is as I suspected. Perfectly fine. The world did not explode and I did not grow horns or facial warts. The technology is beautiful and works great. There are differences but hardly worth mentioning. Everything I could do on one device I can now do on the other device.

Except for one thing. I cannot appear in a blue bubble when I text an iPhone user. Since I am no longer part of the iPhone exclusives my texts appear in green. I am marked as an outsider. The appearance of a green bubble among a long line of blue users not only marks me as an outsider but it marks be as “the other”, not the norm.

Indeed this status of otherness needs to be interpreted by those who receive the message. There first thought seems to be whether or not the color appears in error – for surely he cannot have chosen to become “other”.

Some seem to ignore it, unfazed by this color, or at least seemingly uncommenting. Are they ignoring it out of disinterest or is there a touch of embarrassment/shame? In the same way as when a friend lets himself go, or falls on hard times… its easier to avert ones eyes – are they doing the same with my green bubble?

Anne Worner Communication cc by saAnne Worner Communication CC BY SA

What is the interpretation of the green bubble? How do we judge those not part of the apple universe? One of my friends expressed his astonishment that I could even consider leaving the iPhone universe. iMessage is one of the major lock-in factors that keeps people to Apple devices. It is a great system that (when it works) allows for great functionality.

It is also an interesting marker that signals something about a user, a contact, or a friend. What does it mean to be green? Why aren’t you blue?

Controlled by the path of least resistance

Technological systems leave their mark on the way in which we live our lives. An obvious example is this fascinating nighttime photo of North and South Korea taken from the International Space Station. It’s obvious because the two countries are separated by access to the basic supply of electricity.

North Korea is almost completely dark compared to neighboring South Korea and China. The darkened land appears as if it were a patch of water joining the Yellow Sea to the Sea of Japan. Its capital city, Pyongyang, appears like a small island, despite a population of 3.26 million (as of 2008). The light emission from Pyongyang is equivalent to the smaller towns in South Korea.

Astronaut photograph ISS038-E-38300 was acquired on January 30, 2014, with a Nikon D3S digital camera using a 24 millimeter lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center.

An even more brilliant (bad pun) illustration is the images of Berlin by night taken from the International Space Station. The photo, taken by Colonel Chris Hadfield, shows that the city still carries with it the heritage of the division. The Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and since then Berlin has been rapidly unifying and developing. Despite this, the East-West divide can be seen in the color of the street lights.

Colonel Chris Hadfield’s photograph of Berlin at night shows a divide between the whiter lights of former west Berlin and the yellower lights of the east. Photograph: Nasa

The technological systems follow the political and administrative lines of the past and cannot be removed as easily as the wall which divided them. The Guardian explains the different colors:

Daniela Augenstine, of the city’s street furniture department, says: “In the eastern part there are sodium-vapour lamps with a yellower colour. And in the western parts there are fluorescent lamps – mercury arc lamps and gas lamps – which all produce a whiter colour.” The western Federal Republic of Germany long favoured non-sodium lamps on the grounds of cost, maintenance and carbon emissions, she says.

These examples are of traces of systems that have failed (or are going to fail). They work on the principle that by controlling users with force they can maintain power. In the end, systems like these, will collapse because the effort of keeping control outstrips the ability to control. Real control is efficient when (1) the users internalize the surveillance/supervision (Foucault: Panopticon) AND (2) users believe that they are acting in their own convenience and desire.

What fascinates me with these examples is the way in which our technology use marks our surroundings. An obvious example of this is the desire path that line which appears in the snow or bare track in the grass that shows how the world is really used by people as opposed to the idea which the designer believed the technology would be used.

The difference between expected use and actual use. Technology use leaves its traces in our consumption and adaption to the technology upon which we rely. However, it works both ways. By controlling the technology we rely on, we the users, can be led to believe that we desire the features of control that are provided.

An example of this is the way in which the popularity of the iPhone is no way diminished by, from a usability point of view, android operating systems are infinitely more adaptable to different needs. Or the ways in which the collection of data from technology users is all but ignored by the users in their desire for convenience.

If the iTunes/iPhone is to be compared to a silo keeping its users locked in, then it can only succeeded if (1) the users can be convinced that they are happy with the surveillance/control (Foucault: Panopticon) AND (2) any other alternative would be less convenient. If (1) fails then users would happily jailbreak their devices (on a much larger scale than now) and if (2) fails then the system will eventually collapse under its own weight when users realize that life is better on the other side of the wall.

We will all be controlled by the path of least resistance.

 

Artificial Needs of Technology

Most of the time I listen to Adam Gopnik in the Point of View podcast but I could not resist re-reading his recent piece for Point of View: Why I don’t tweet. Naturally I was interested as a researcher and an avid twitterer. It had to be something more than a “meh” or the even more annoying argument of its being pointless. And Gopnik didn’t let me down:

…while I merely like my computer, I love my smartphone. I clutch my phone tight to myself, I hold it in my hand like a talisman – a feeling of panic overcomes me when in a strange city I find I have mislaid it, or that I forgot to bring its charger. But though it has altered the shape of my days and hours, has it really altered the life those days add up to and achieve?

He goes on to list the needs that were fulfilled prior to the technology that are now filled with the technology. He is not a luddite but he recognizes a very important aspect of our love for all things new and shiny:

Like so much modern media technology, it creates a dependency without ever actually addressing a need.

mail overload

Surrounded by the devices we love and enjoy and become dependent upon the question is do they really address a need? They change our lives and we create needs that only they can fill but the real need was maybe an artificial one to begin with?

Take my e-book reader. It’s stuffed to the gills (?) with more books than I will ever read. Wonderful. But did when was the last time I had nothing to read? On the other hand it changes the way in which I read. With digital books I am more prone to be bored unless I am captivated immediately. It’s easy to be bored because I already have the next book right there. It doesn’t actually address a need, but it changes behavior and creates needs.

It’s not about denying the usefulness, but it is about understanding what the technology does to us.

The unconnected iphone

Not sure about the source (One FPS) of this but it is interesting

A little birdie says that about 50 percent of Apple Store customers who need to get their iPhones swapped have never plugged them into iTunes after the initial activation and sync. This is a big reason, according to this birdie, for why Apple Store Geniuses are excited about iCloud.

What I find interesting is thinking about what the lack of syncing means? Sure the “Geniuses” are excited about iCloud but my interpretation is different.

The lack of connections between the iPhone and a computer could indicate that many users do not use the phone in its full potential. But they prefer to use the phone for its stand alone features: talking, texting and taking photos. If this is the case then most of these users have bought a phone that is much more sophisticated than it need be. Image is everything?

It also means that the iCloud will not solve the “geniuses” reported problems as the users will still not connect.

WordPress client for iPhone

This snappy little application means that you could blog anywhere anytime… all I need now is an iPhone… Strangely enough I still don’t feel the desire to own one…

Excellent news for bloggers came…when WordPress announced that they’re developing a client application for the iPhone.

The WordPress client for iPhone is available in the App Store and in iTunes.