 
All right.
It's going to be
interesting now.
My talk goes in a similar
direction to Finn's talk.
But everywhere
where you were dark,
I'm going to be cute and cuddly.
[LAUGHTER]
 
I need to set up my sound first.
[DING]
Lights are on.
Lights are on.
 
Do you see this?
All right.
I hope I'm loud enough.
Let me quickly start thanking
Wendy for inviting me
and for a lot more, and
also the Brown University
and this building for
sheltering us from the weather
and for giving me
the opportunity
to give my talk here,
which will be presenting
a bit of my research
that I just started
about the internet of things.
And Interface is
the title, as some of you
might have noticed is
stolen from W. J. T.
Mitchell, who wrote this essay
Looking at Animals Looking.
And it goes in a very
different direction,
but animals will play a role.
The coming media--
the things around us
have started to address us.
Our car insists stubbornly
that we turn our seat belts
or lights on, asks
for attention when
parking, as it fears its
body might get scratched,
screams for help when it reckons
someone else it does not know
wants take it.
The vacuum cleaner informs
us that it is stuck
and that you need to "move
Roomba to a new location."
[LAUGHTER]
You can see I have one
from me imitating it.
And then there's
also Siri, of course.
And soon there will
be many Siris more.
As things are
becoming interactive,
to use their
technical interfaces
means to communicate
with technology.
Of course we understand that
it is not technology itself
that has raised its head
and started to speak to us,
and yet Heidegger
had good reason
to look further than
those statements--
technology as a means to an end,
technology as a human activity.
Now our technological
devices have
started to address us
with multiple voices.
Whatever your take
on technology is--
non-human, non-human-
made, or even inhuman--
I am sure we can agree that
the recent development is
transforming our being
with technology and with it
our contemporary discourse.
My talk explores this
being with technology
from the perspective
of communication,
and it does it in four steps.
When writing this
lecture, however, it
turned out that those steps
do not always go forward,
but also sideways.
So please bear with me.
In the first step,
I will look-- oops.
I will look at the
theoretical take
on the force of communication
as well as at a particularity
we find when communicating
with digital media.
In the second step,
I will my attention
from theory to
technology to find out
how the dialogue
between man and machine
is initiated by digital media.
How is technology addressing us?
In the third step, I will
look at the specific form
of logic being invoked
in this addressing
and with this dialogue.
And finally, in the
fourth step-- slightly
going sideways-- I explore
the discursive concept
that is to be
encountered here, as I'm
interested in how the force
of this dialogue works.
But let's start
with the first step.
Communication theory
has always suspected
that communication, and
therefore media and technology,
is transforming our
being in this world.
While there are
different takes
on communication-- you mentioned
already some-- one question has
always been at its heart--
what force is shaping
while we are communicating?
What force is
happening-- sorry--
while we are communicating?
Shannon's Mathematical
Theory of Communication,
for example, implies
that the range
of the medium-- as Kittler has
frequently pointed out-- also
defines the possibilities
of meaning, thereby
claiming a certain dependency
from the transmitting medium.
Derrida adds to
this perspective--
that something else is
going on when communication
is happening-- by observing
that communication also does not
simply transmit content--
sending, iterating
a message relies on its
fundamental displacement.
Of its meaning, one
can never be certain.
Raymond Williams points to
a very different aspect,
one more related to its
aspect of communion.
In his Keywords, he discussed
the force of communication.
It's a distributive act.
Communication makes
something common to many,
whereby two different
qualities can happen.
It can be manipulative
as well as participatory.
Not far from this we
find the important take
of Donna Haraway-- here
with her dog Cayenne--
who has shown that technology
is communicating with us, also
on a fairly different
level, gender.
And our being in this world
is interwoven with technology.
We are integrated.
All those different
takes on technology
explore a force happening
while we are communicating.
This force is changing
with digital media.
More recent conversations
have pointed out
the specificity of digital
media communication, which
is two-fold-- being
written in code itself.
It has two strands
of communication--
the program and the user.
In other words, it
has two interfaces--
one for the machine and one
for the user-- the human.
More than 10 years ago,
the alert Wendy Chun
wrote about this bivalence,
describing software
as an invisible system
of visibility, quote,
"a functional
analog to ideology,"
end of quote-- an
important point
to which I will
come back to later.
Following her, Alex Galloway
has addressed the interface
as affect and ethos
to make a similar point.
Interfaces are not simply
transmitting our messages
in their bivalence.
They are opening or enforcing
a particular dialogue
with technology.
When discussing digital
media, theorists
have often differed
where exactly
the door to this dialogue
with technology is located.
Is it in the source
code communicating
with the hardware?
Or is it in the
graphical user interface
communicating with the user?
Where is it that software
studies has to look at?
To make things even
more complicated,
we recently added a new
parameter to this data.
Whenever looking at
our communication
with technology, this
lecture, however,
is interested in a very specific
aspect of this dialogue.
It is not looking at how we
can interact with technology
in order to establish a
superior role for a human master
in this communication.
Instead, it is more
interested in what it
means to live with technology.
And as you might guess
from these words,
I'm very influenced by
Gilbert Simondon.
I'm very happy
Gertrude already
mentioned his name this morning
and also relating to him.
So I'm therefore looking
at the following question--
how is technology addressing us?
How is technology addressing us?
The force of being
addressed, as we all know,
has famously been unveiled
by Louis Althusser's Theory
of Interpellation, which
is highly influential,
although it is less
a theory but rather just
a paragraph in which he,
with the help of a policeman,
showed that being addressed is
an act whereby an individual is
transformed into a
specific subject.
And here is the quote.
 
I need to read it myself.
"Ideology acts or functions
in such a way that it recruits
subjects among the individuals
or transforms the individuals
into subjects by that very
precise operation which I have
called interpellation or
hailing." So let's tune
into what's being said to us by
technology as what are we being
recruited when technology is
addressing us as what are we
recruited in this call.
 
And I'll show you a few
pictures to help you out.
A nice, cute fox.
Little bird.
Little owl.
 
Who remembers this?
It was quite annoying.
It always popped up when you
wanted to write something.
Then we have a cute, nice Mac designed by Susan
Kare.
Penguin.
And the nice Google
logo, of course.
Here technology approaches
us in bright colors,
with big typography, looking
at us friendly, being cute.
In short, it approaches
us in an infantile way.
It's a children's
birthday party.
The internet has created a
world full of animated animals
or things with friendly
faces in playful scenes.
We are addressed by technology
as if we were children--
very different from the brand
design of consumer goods
or services, not only because
several mainstream services
come at the hand of a mascot.
There is Twitter,
Firefox, Hootsuite,
and this little white
alien here with an antenna.
There are animals wherever
you look, from Tux the Penguin
to the black Octocat
that excuses
the 404 pages of GitHub.
Even a non-mascot
service, like Facebook,
has a little animal, which
is my current favorite.
Who of you have seen this?
It's a Zookerzauer.
Here you can see it in action.
It tells you that you should
care about your privacy
settings.
 
What is the reason that internet
services put little animals
everywhere and make their
world appear like we
are Alice in Wonderland?
Of course one can blame
this on the human tendency
to anthropomorphize
the world around us,
and with it, the force
called technology.
But there's more to it.
Much like Heidegger anticipating
the being of gears
broken-- of gears
from looking
at those gears
broken, what
this infantilization really
is and how it is related
to the force of technology
shows itself best
where it goes a bit wrong.
For example, when making
rather serious topics,
like surveillance or privacy,
looking like a funny,
playful thing to deal with,
nothing of importance,
which is not only the case with
the Zookerzauer, but also
here with Google's pages,
a little ship that tells you
how much email was
encrypted in transit.
It wants to make email safer.
And you find this
nice page where
it's like one of the Czech
children books Marcell Mars
showed us in his keynote.
Google is, in fact, an
excellent example for this,
even though Apple's brilliant
user interface designer Susan
Kare needs to be credited as
the one who sort of invented
this mainstream approach
which it has become now.
Google was the
company whose logo--
despite several changes,
which you can see here
over the years-- always
remained the look
and feel of "my
first search engine."
Making graphic designer Peter
Saville, who some of you
might know from album
covers like this,
describing the strategy like--
and I quote-- "everything
about it is
childlike-- the colors,
the typeface, even the name."
Looking at the
design of tech games
for children addressing the
adult in the child--
and I brought you to
a couple of slides.
This is a bit small, I'm afraid,
but it's all I could find.
It's an old sight of data rams.
Some of you might know him from
the Brown alarm clock.
So he designed this sort
of tech game for children.
And here you can see it's
a very different approach.
It approaches the adult
and the child to learn.
And this is very different now.
Today we can say with
a colorful design,
with big typography, and the
general attitude of breaking
down complexity with all the
friendly faces of animated
animals or things
that make us feel
like we are in a fairytale,
we are certainly not
addressed as young,
reasonable persons.
Online our world
looks more like this--
a Fisher Price Activity Center.
That this world is made
suitable for children
can also be seen with the
Google Doodles coaching
the events and persons shaping
human history and culture
with imaginative cuteness.
Until 2010, Google had
sporadically changed
its prominent search website
logo into those Doodles
in order to mark an
anniversary or event.
On those special
occasions, one could
find a sketch that playfully
intertwined the topic
of an event with a logo.
Here you see the birthday of
the English mathematician Ada
Lovelace.
 
This is the Magna Carta.
If we have time later,
I can show you the gif.
It's fantastic.
 
Martin Luther King.
After 2010, the
playfulness intensified.
In the years 2011 to
2012, the Doodle number
went up to 76 and 83, and
has gone up ever since.
I stopped counting them.
More and more
historic events were
turned into fabulous stories.
Today we see them weekly.
Considering that Google
is now an essential part
of our public sphere,
Google Doodles
are the monuments we find on it.
As we pass by those
monuments when searching,
they commemorate
important moments
that shaped our human
fate, in contrast
to the historic
monuments cast in stone
and erected on our
public squares,
which foster a certain symbolism
and spread an air of pathos.
 
That's Roger Williams here.
Korean War Memorial,
also in Providence.
The first president of the
National Rifle Association.
Martin Luther King, Washington.
And I also brought you, of
course, Karl Marx from Berlin.
 
But now it looks like this.
 
The online Doodle
monuments are not pathetic.
Instead they turn achievements
into playful stories.
 
We are recruited by technology
as very young children.
So what do we need to read this
strange approach of technology?
What ideology-- to link
back to Wendy Chun--
do we find at play here?
The way technology
is communicating
with us is surely not just
about being amicable and nice,
communicating the friendliness
of cuddly Silicon Valley
companies.
Addressing us as
very young children,
it is rather suggested
that the user does not
need to understand.
She or he just needs to try it.
Go press this button,
speak to it, create.
The black box that technology
always was has become colorful,
but it remains non-transparent.
We don't need to understand
the forces or interests that
have created those
bright, colorful surfaces.
We don't need to worry,
everything's just playful.
Certainly this
playfulness imposed on us
can be addressed
as manipulation.
Everyone who has been
disciplined by its [INAUDIBLE]
has noticed this.
Since technology has
started to speak,
the human tendency is
to feel patronized.
This has spread to
our supermarkets.
And I don't know if you have
self-service tills here.
I brought the sound from them.
Unexpected item in bagging area.
Remove this item
before continuing.
This can now be
placed in your bag.
Club card accepted.
All of your Tesco points add up.
Please take your change.
Notes are dispensed
below the scanner.
Please don't forget your
change, especially notes.
 
This never works [INAUDIBLE].
 
At other places,
the patronization
is well hidden, for example,
in the looks of a sad koala.
Even if the interfaces
around us are
doing this in a very clever
way-- hardly noticeable--
it is still patronization.
We are getting manipulated.
But this is 2015,
and we are already
way in what will later be
called the confusing complexity
of the 21st century.
So there's more to it.
With this manipulation,
something else
is happening-- an
idea of empowerment.
Making interfaces
easy and playable
is also a way to
increase media literacy
and to make the usage
of new technologies
attractive to users.
Go experiment and intervene.
In fact, this idea was
essential for the evolution
of graphic user
interfaces in the 1970s.
The third part of
my talk will look
at the logic being used there.
And this part comes
with a subheading.
Logic is not a
derivative of language.
As nerds and digital
media theorists,
we know that computers
have tremendously
changed in the '70s.
This was not only as they
shrunk to the size of a coffee
machine, fitting on
every desk, but also
because their interface
became graphical.
Generally we refer to the Palo
Alto Research Center, Xerox,
who took an important role in
developing and refining it.
What is less known, however, is
that their computer scientists
owe their approach to a Swiss
developmental psychologist Jean
Piaget.
In the '60s and '70s, Piaget
had researched a rather new
approach towards understanding.
His theory was that for human
understanding and learning,
not reasoning-- the
work of the mind--
but practical and
experimental understanding--
the work of mind and
fingers together--
or the work of fingers
first and then mind,
however you want to
take it-- are central.
When observing
very young children
between the ages
of two and seven--
which is as we are addressed
by technology at the moment--
Piaget recognized a specific
way in which children play.
They analyze their environment
using real things that
become mental symbols, which
means logic is not only formed
in the brain.
Quote, "I believe that logic is
not a derivative of language.
The source of logic
is much more profound.
It is the total
coordination of actions,
actions of joining things
together or ordering
things.
This is what
logical-mathematical experience
is."
This approach was to be picked
up by the computer scientists
Seymour Papert and Alan Kay,
whose lab we visited yesterday.
For eight years,
until 1966, Papert
had worked with Piaget at
the University of Geneva.
And he adapted Piaget's theory
to teach children programming.
 
Here you see them.
But it was his friend
and colleague Alan Kay
who broadened this approach
from kids to us, the adults.
An early iPad that
came to be known
as the portable
educational computer
Dynabook, which
was to be commanded
by experimental actions.
 
Today's infantilization
of interfaces inviting
you to experiment
with them can be read
as a sequence of this approach.
And here things are
getting complicated.
For this means if
infantilization
can invite and empower and
also patronize the user,
infantilization works both ways.
It can empower the
user, but it can also
be used to manipulate
him or her and distract
from what is really going on.
And here you can see exactly
what Alan Kay put out there--a
personal computer for
children of all ages--
is this gesture of empowering
the user and empowering
children.
So it can go both ways.
 
Here things are
getting complicated.
Both ideological attitudes are
an effect of infantilization--
empowering and patronizing--
and, of course,
their difference is decisive.
How can one conceive
this difference?
How do we know if a digital
interface is addressing us
with the aim of empowerment,
or deceiving and sedating us?
This is the question
that marks the beginning
of the end of my lecture.
And with it, we
enter its last part--
to look at
infantilization again,
but this time with a
different perspective--
one that's looking at
the discursive concept
happening there
understanding a flip side.
From a philosophical
point of view
that is curious about
how power unfolds,
it is tremendously interesting
that infantilization
is able to turn
both ways-- being
patronizing and empowering.
For this means its
differences refrain
to follow a well-behaved
dialectical thinking.
 
I'll hurry up.
 
Its concept does not unfold
in an oppositional way.
And this is specifically
what interests me,
because we always moan that
we live in the 21st century
and we lost the other.
So I'm interested to understand,
how can we think differences
when there are multiple others?
Oh, no.
Anyhow, I just continue.
Should not stop--
deviate from your talk.
Not good.
All right.
Its concept does not
unfold in oppositional way.
It does not rely
on an antagonism,
which complicates things.
Being for the
user's emancipation
does not equal being
against infantilization.
The tension here is
not a dialectic one.
It is more complicated--
post-dialectical, so to say.
And it cannot only be
observed with infantilization.
Sociologists have--
since quite some time--
observed the same tension--
or missing tension really--
when it comes to work
and creativity, which
became the new
spirit of capitalism
while remaining something
we all thrive for.
The more it is important that
philosophy takes a closer
look at this and dissects
the conceptual machine
we find at work here,
because it is not
that work and creativity or
patronization and emancipation
have become the same.
The concept we encounter
here is post-dialectical.
Post as a fundamentic
dialect remains.
There are still differences.
The infantilization
of an interface
can potentially be
emancipatory and deceptive,
but it is actually whether
emancipatory or deceptive.
Instead of following
the antagonism
we know from dialectics
being for or against--
we encounter a
concept where one is
the flip side of the other--
a flip side that functions
according to a different concept
its other side is not against.
Perhaps you have
already noticed it.
This resonates very
strongly with an approach
of Karen Barrett.
And here I don't
know if I'm now--
I think I'm more glad
that she couldn't come.
Also at the same
time I'm really sad.
 
It's too short to really
honor what she did.
So Karen Barot
found this--
she described it as diffraction.
She developed it by looking
at the physical phenomenon
of the same name.
I'm sure most of you are
familiar with her work.
This is a sketch of 1803 by
Thomas Young-- sketch
of a two-slit diffraction.
And you see it's-- is it
black, or is it white?
You can't decide.
It's a flip
side even for their
differences to be
seen on the thing.
It's a very simple explanation.
As a conceptual
approach, diffraction
avoids to focus on
essential otherness
and oppositions.
Instead it involves reading
insights through one
another-- a process
Barrett
has turned into an
inspiring method.
But she also writes
about another aspect,
and this is the one I
want to focus here on.
"Regarding diffraction one
has to attend to and respond
to the fine details."
This is something she wrote.
Because it is how the
fine details are entangled
which is making the difference.
It is the how one
needs to turn to.
It is this aspect in her theory
that I want to emphasize here,
as this is the only way to
give an answer to the question,
how do we know if a digital
interface is addressing us
with the aim of empowerment
or deceiving and sedating us?
There is no general way of
knowing, but it can be known.
The devil is in the detail.
But I want to put
your attention also
somewhere else, to a shift
of our theoretical landscape.
And this is where
I step sideways,
for instead of looking
into the terms of media,
I want to show you that media
has changed the terms, overall
turning to the fine
details has become
a habit of media
theorists, as has
the questioning of oppositions.
It is currently to be seen in
several approaches of media
theorists who have analyzed
technology-- or media-- to show
that the discursive
formations in our societies
have changed their
interrelations.
With new media, former
antagonistic word pairs,
like public-private,
global-local, free-controlled,
nature-technology,
work-play, to name but a few,
have changed their relation.
Once understood as
antithetical, today theorists
point out that their
conceptual relation does not
seem to be essentially
oppositional anymore.
[INAUDIBLE] was
among the first
who discussed the ambiguity of
digital media, that commenting
online is free labor, but
also an important force
in digital capitalism,
thereby remaining
pleasurable-- a paradox.
Wendy Chun analyzed a
change of free-controlled
to show that digital media is
spreading democratic freedom
along with the fact
that it also accelerates
the potential for control
and global surveillance.
Turning to a very
different antithetical
pair-- that of
nature-technology--
Jussi Parikka dissects an
ideology of media--
the entanglement
of today's media
with nature-- in
a very poetic way.
While from a
philosophical perspective
that picks up computer
science signs, Luciana Parisi
has questioned today critique
of instrumental rationality,
pointing out that
incomputability and randomness
need to be conceived as the
very condition of computation,
not instrumentality.
One could add [INAUDIBLE]
or Christopher [INAUDIBLE]
and many more, whose
recent books or essays
discuss how to deal with the
new ambiguities and paradoxes we
live with.
If this is showing
up in technology
and becomes visible
in communication,
or if this shift is the
effect of technology
is not mine to answer, although
it is a very interesting
question, also for the
positioning of the humanities
and their approach
to technology.
For now let's return to the
beginning and end this talk.
As this world is-- as
[INAUDIBLE] once put it--
becoming technology,
things are changing.
But we know that when
things become medium,
when they start to have an
address and raise a voice
and speak thereby addressing us,
it is not technology we hear.
Technology is, as Heidegger
put it, nothing technical.
There is a force happening
when we are communicating,
and the effect of
this force is a shift.
It is our discourse shifting.
Familiar antagonisms
are vanishing.
Extremes meet in a literal way.
Oppositions disintegrate,
but differences remain.
Even though they often need an
analytical dissection to become
visible, as we live in an
over-complex 21st century,
differences are still the case.
And with it, the
concept of the political
remains in communication.
And with this last step
that clearly went sideways,
I'll end my talk.
Thank you very
much for listening.
[APPLAUSE]
 
