February 15, 2015.

Computer Or Human? + Thad
http://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia
My comments on the above interview:

It was great to hear Thad's intellegent and personal story. He is such an optimist about his technology; he has reaped so many benefits from it, benefits that seem real to me. But I believe his optimism and trust in "his personal wearable" are a reflection of the fact that he made it. He knows exactly what it does, and its intention.

Becasue as I listened to the piece, I realized my concerns about Wearables lie the opacity of commercial Wearable maker’s intentions and the knowablity of what wearables actually do.

Game companies already use complex behavioral science to manipulate people to keep playing. And what tech companies know about us—our unknown data portrait—and who they sell it to, is far from clear. Thad is a researcher, not company. He is interested in knowledge. Corporate motives are ultimately about profit.

Which brings me to the argument in the show about eye-glasses, and how we are already augmented by technology. Glasses are an analogue device. They magnify. What they do is transparent. :) Literally. How they operate and help us is understood. Even drugs, like anti-depressants are understood in that their effects are bio-mechanical. And simplistically, their intention is relatively clear. To make people less depressed.

So how does this translate to commercial Wearables?

The mechanism of software is never clear; it is not the result of physical analogue system. For instance, if you look through eyeglasses, you see the world magnified. If you look through an Occulus Rift, you see a highly designed story—or you feel like you are falling off building. You can see anything, and it can be designed to manipulate your emotions.

And software is created by programmers and a large corporations with subjective, external goals, you cannot see, or know. The programmers and makers may not even really know.

So knowing the intentions, and actual effect of commercial Wearables on the self is ultimately impossible.

That is what is scares me.

Maggie

December 15, 2014

Destablizing Technology vs. Wage Fixing

Response to the NYTimes "Elegy for the 'Suits'" by Sal Nunziato

I clicked on the NYTimes' "Elegy for the 'Suits'" by Sal Nunziato this morning, expecting to find a piece about the decline of suit sales due to casual Fridays!

But instead, I found myself empathizing with former Indie record store owner, Sal Nunziato, who was lamenting the demise of the music industries’ suits: the extinct pre-iTunes overlords who once dictated who got recorded; who made it in the industry. Without the evil suits, Sal found himself drowning in a tsunami of uncurated low-quality Internet music.


The comment section reacted with the typical simplistic free-market economic assertions: Internet = Free Market = Choice = Democracy = Good for Artists; and I felt compelled to respond to two of their points: 1) More consumer choice is always better. 2) The Internet creates greater opportunity for artists and workers, through greater market accessibility.

I 'll start with consumer choice is always better.

Like Mr. Nunzito, I often feel overwhelmed by the volume of uncurated on-line books, music and art. Thanks to the Internet, every visual artist, musician and writer in the world can publish their work in seconds. And the professional look of Internet publication, made possible by high-quality phone cameras and on-line publishing tools like Word-Press, has an equalizing effect. If the "Medium is the Message", and everyone uses the same media to publish (the Internet), it can be difficult to discern quality from average work without experiencing it; and listening to music, reading, even looking at visual art, all takes time.

Which is why Mr. Nunziato is correct: more choice is not always better. Too much choice can create what is called a "use-burden" in Human Computer Interface Design. If the burden of using the Internet to find music (the time it takes to listen to the available music) exceeds the payoff (the ability to find good music), then more choice is NOT better.

Now for the second issue raised in the comment section: the assumption that the Internet creates greater opportunity for artists (and workers), through greater market accessibility.

Over the past two or three decades digital formats for media have decoupled creative activity from physical goods. Writers used sell books—now they sell bits. Musicians used to sell records or CD's—now they sell bits too. And the Internet has taken that a step further, by enabling the instant distribution, marketing and sales of digitized works. No longer do writers or musicians need a publisher to distribute their book to Barnes and Noble or their records to stores. They post their creative work, self-market it, and hopefully sell it.

At first glance, this seems a greater opportunity for artists: the Internet Democratizes the Market by making it easy for anyone to publish or distribute music or writing. HURRAH! But unfortunately, participating in this "Free Market" is not a choice for writers or musicians. Creative people are simply NOT free to opt out of selling on-line; and they can’t opt out of the low fees they are being paid by the Tech distribution companies like Amazon and Spotify either.

Currently, the trend is for Tech companies is to be structurally separate from the workers who provide their services (like Uber), or actively work to reduce the fees paid to artists (like Amazon and Spotify). Consequently creative people have no say in what their goods are sold for. And in the case of musicians, they can't live on pennies from Spotify.

This is classic decoupling of the means of production from management: directing all the profits to the top, and leaving none for the workers.

In this world, the Techies build cool tools and claim they are all about technical innovation, democracy and making things cheaper for consumers. Then they cut wages to those making the music or writing the books or driving their Uber taxis, and say they are helping the world.

But if artists don't have an alternative to selling their work on-line for pennies—which they don't—that is not a free market. It is an unfair monopoly and wage fixing.

On a good day, I am not a Luddite: I don't believe that Internet has to be a space for worker exploitation. I belieive that the Internet has the potential to be space for either democracy or oligarchy.

But what is so disturbing in the Pollyanna Tech Industry is the simplistic claim that everything Internet is by nature more democratic, when it is not. For all their “virtuous” technology innovation and social liberalism, the Tech world is succumbing to greed and free-market fundamentalism; it is becoming nothing more than another Walmart—cutting worker pay and benefits by offering a plethora of cheap goods.

A final note. The argument that wage reduction due to Uber or Spotify is a result of destabilizing technology is false. Destabilizing technology reduces the cost of a low-end product, like a cheap camera, through innovative technology. For instance, the iPhone destabilized the consumer hand-held video camera market; hence the death of the Flip camera. Many don't remember the lightening fast of rise and fall of this great product, but it was made obsolete in one year by the practically free video camera on the iPhone. That was destabilizing technology.

In contrast, Spotify and Uber are not creating technology that makes music making or the cost of owning a cab (car+gas) cheaper. They are simply reducing the amount paid to the workers in these industries by using their technology as a wall against their responsibility to their workers. They could choose to pay musicians or cab drivers more— but they don't, because they don't have to; and their technology keeps them safe and remote in their Technology Despot Bubbles.