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Handling things that handle us

Things get to know who we are and tie us down to who we were

Gransche, B.: Handling things that handle us. Things get to know who we are and tie us down to who we were, in: Wiltse, H. (Hg.): Relating to Things That Relate to Us. London/ Oxford: Bloomsbury (im Erscheinen, vorauss. 14. Mai 2020).

Photo by Louis Hansel on Unsplash
Relating to things

Abstract des Sammelbandes

We relate to things and things relate to us. Emerging technologies do this in ways that are interesting and exciting, but often also inaccessible or invisible. In Relating to Things, leading design researchers and philosophers respond to issues raised by this situation – inquiring into what it means to live with and relate to things that can actively relate to us, and that relate to each other in ways that do not involve us at all.

Case studies include Amazon’s Alexa, the Internet of Things, Pokémon Go and Roomba the robot vacuum cleaner. Authors explore everything from the care work undertaken by objects, reciprocal human/machine learning, technological mediation as a form of control, and what it takes to reveal things that tend to be hidden and that often (by design) conceal the ways in which they use us.

As a whole, the book is a collaborative philosophical inquiry into the nature and consequences of contemporary technological things. It is a design inquiry into the current nature of the artificial, and possibilities for how things might be otherwise.

Inhaltsverzeichnis des Sammelbandes

Introduction
Heather Wiltse (Umeå University, Sweden)

I: Caring for Things That Care for Us
1. Privacy as Care: An Interpersonal Model of Privacy Exemplified by Five Cases in the Internet of Things
Dylan Wittkower (Old Dominion University, USA)
2. Attachment to Things, Artifacts, Devices, Commodities: An Inconvenient Ethics of the Ordinary
Michel Puech (Paris-Sorbonne University, France)
3. The New Assisted Living: Caring for Alexa Caring for Us
Diane Michelfelder (Macalester College, USA)

II: Learning from Things That Learn from Us
4. Handling Things that Handle Us: Things Get to Know Who We Are and Tie Us Down to Who We Were
Bruno Gransche (University of Siegen, Germany)
5. Can Ethics be Learned? Videogames as an Ethical Sandbox
Fanny Verrax (independent scholar and consultant, France)
6. Casting Things as Partners in Design: Toward a More-than-Human Design Practice
Elisa Giaccardi (TU Delft, Netherlands)

III: Controlling Things That Control Us
7. Hostile Design and the Materiality of Surveillance
Robert Rosenberger (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)
8. A Tool for the Impact and Ethics of Technology: The Case of Interactive Screens in Public Spaces
Steven Dorrestijn (Saxion University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands)
9. Postphenomenology of Augmented Reality
Galit Wellner (Tel Aviv University, Israel)

IV: Revealing Things That Reveal Us
10. Imagining Things: Unfolding the “of” in Philosophy of Technology, through Object-Oriented Ontology
Yoni Van Den Eede (Free University of Brussels, Belgium)
11. The Disappearing Acts of the Morse Things: A Design Inquiry into the Withdrawal of Things
Ron Wakkary (Simon Fraser University, Canada; TU Eindhoven, Netherlands), Sabrina Hauser (Simon Fraser University, Canada) and Doenja Oogjes (Simon Fraser University, Canada)
12. Revealing Relations of Fluid Assemblages
Heather Wiltse (Umeå University, Sweden)
13. Designing Networks that Reveal Themselves
Holly Robbins (TU Delft, Netherlands)

14. Reflection and Commentary
Erik Stolterman (Indiana University, USA)

Link zur Publikationsseite

zu Bruno Gransches Beitrag im Band

Abstract

The rise of highly-automated, ‘autonomous’ systems marks a new stage of an ongoing development of technology and human-technology relations: a shift from craftsman to conductor. This essay provides insight into learning systems, everyday artificial assistance, a cunning of systems, competence, skill, and potentiality aspects from a philosophy of technology and action theory perspective. It discusses potential consequences for how humans relate to technology, to each other, and to themselves. A fundamental theory on technological acting and handling things is outlined in order to investigate potential effects of emerging human-technology relations; therefore, a multi-level approach for shared autonomy is presented. The focus lies on emerging learning, intelligent systems that we encounter in our everyday lives – such as assistance systems or social robots – and on the consequences for our autonomy, our potentiality, and eventually the openness of our future. In emerging human-technology relations, machine learning complements human learning. However, skills are acquired by putting them to work, not by delegating them to artificial assistants. Thus, future human-technology relations are at risk of confronting humans who know less and less about increasingly opaque systems with intelligent systems that learn more and more about the so called ‘users’ – especially how to serve and how to handle them.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction
1. Handling things – Technical acting
2. Being handled by things – Intelligent systems
2.1. Types of technology and human-technology relations
2.2. Intermezzo: Literally?
2.2. Machine learning, everyday pervasion, and the cunning of systems
3. Effects on future openness

Bloomsbury
Stimmen zum Beitrag:

  • Bruno Gransche adds another riff on the main theme with his consideration of “handling things that handle us.” He sees the rise in autonomous systems as marking a new stage in human-technology relations, one in which humans shift from craftsman to conductor. The chapter carefully builds up the argument that human learning of skills in service of particular goals is progressively displaced, as technologies increasingly provide what humans need or want without requiring much effort or skill on their part. Eventually, this seems to lead to a situation in which even the setting of goals is handled by intelligent systems that know how to serve and handle their “users.”

    Heather Wiltse
    Umeå University, Sweden

  • What if we take another step and not only relate to things but partner with them? What if things could be designed to be partners in human activities? Is that possible, and what would it mean? [...] We can, of course, push this question further, for instance, by asking what would happen if things could learn in the same manner as humans, and even more so? How would that change the way we understand things? Gransche explores this in his chapter on what might happen if things develop the ability to really know who we are. One consequence could be that humans rely more and more on things that can form systems which, over time, learn everything about humans—and maybe more than humans can know. Gransche explores such a development and warns us that it could lead to a situation where things are no longer only our partners but our superiors. As a consequence, humans might be locked into certain roles that only the system can control and will allow. The interesting aspect of this may be not a final and possible dystopian future—we’ve all seen that in many sci-fi movies—but the idea that it will be caused not by extraordinary intelligent robots but by large numbers of things operating in collaboration with the best intentions in mind when it comes to the well-being of humans. This would mean that we should not fear an apocalypse brought on by the singularity and killer robots but rather a wealth of comfortable designs that work together to establish systems and mechanisms that provide people with all they need in a way that drastically lowers their ambition to critically investigate their own reality.

    Erik Stolterman
    Indiana University, USA

Several developments are contributing to a new kind of human-technology relation in which things (systems) gain technological autonomy and learn how to handle ‘users’. Thus, the role of human actors can gradually shift from active agents to passive participants of systemic processes.

(Bruno Gransche)

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