The Inner History of Devices

Intimate Ethnography is the practice of actively listening to peoples stories and creating a safe place for their stories to emerge so the full subtleties can be examined.

Through memoir, Turkle explains, we learn about our own inner lives, and how to find the general in the particular. Technology serves as a Rorschach over a lifetime, a projective screen for our changing and emotionally charged commitments.

What is it about modern community that has so taxed us, that we sometimes reconstitute it through machines? And is that really satisfying?

It makes me think back to a conversation I had with my brother over Christmas. He has always been a hacker of sorts - figuring out things on the computer and living in a virtual space alone in physical proximity - but full virtual people exactly in his predicament. He pointed me to the Hackers Manifesto:

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me... Or feels threatened by me.. Or thinks I'm a smart ass.. Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...

And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is found. "This is it... this is where I belong..." I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all...

This text was a revelation for him. This is a place where he also felt competent and valued - even if in a superficial way. Here is a constructed world, where at least he can exhibit control and see visual confirmation of his value.

I'm not sure if there is a direct correlation between vicarious living in movies, film, literature, computer games, or even the imaginary worlds constructed by children in play. They all involve substituting direct experience for vicarious - and then somehow learning about ourselves through indirectly relating to aspects of ourselves in constructed narrative spaces. All this probably sounds a bit too academic, but it's starting to bring together a portrait of modernity where the myths we create are more dynamic and we actually engage in their creation and interpretation.

In the Second Self, Turkle tells the story of how she came into the practice of studying how people interact with computers and machines at MIT. Essentially machines are entering into our thinking about ourselves - we use unconscious language slips or phrases that have anthropomorphic connotations - without thinking about why.

As a programmer, I agree with some of this - but there is an aspect of this that Sherry has completely left out. Often, when working with a program on a computer, I think of the people who designed the software, and the intricate web of political ideas that enable that particular technology. If I am using a service I like to know who made it - and consider mistakes more of a design problem. As a designer, I see people behind everything I interact with and it feels more like a rich landscape to navigate than an extension of myself.

She also points out that many times what we construct on a computer often represents some aspect of our lives in which we feel we have failed, or is fostered better in the relative safety of a virtual representation. (many examples of computer programmers, even in 1984)

For many people I think this is accurate - a good interpretation - but often what we do on a computer is a means to an end, and the process of getting there is a battle with an entirely unflexible logic based system, with predictable agency. The more I get to know how a systems works the less I mythologize it - I see it a facilitator - or a vehicle for very human ideas and expressions - one that is particularly lacking when it comes to understanding human subtly.

A "thick description" (as verbosely described) by Geertz - might be characterized as understanding the subtlties of semantics - not sytax: differentiating the behavioral intentions and social motivations behind an action by intimate understanding and considering the context. A wink, twitch, or mock - are all understood differently - and a thick description parses the underlying ideas behind human behavior. It does this "I think" if I understand correctly - by making evident and available the answers that others have given in the context of their actions - in other words if we are doing memoir work - rather than extrapolating and bringing our own values into an ethnographic description we try to exercise a deep listening and translate that in an authentic and intricate manner.

One of the frustrating things for me is the "turtles all the way down" complexity of it all style of writing that obfuscates the overall intention of the ethnographer - which is to increase the understanding between cultures, and give us insight into our human nature. We are all human, and learning how to live together and make decisions that cultural gaps is a big part of the battle.

Mumford speaks of a "machine-tool" like a lathe - where the line between man and machine, at least when categorizing is weak. A musician and his instrument, and programmer and his computer - the language by which we structure the instruction set - are all intertwined.

The notions of time, the magician - and a mechanized view of time becoming part of our consciousness is really interesting. It is true that the things we make change who we are - I deeply believe that - and can see that that is the first step to understanding this line of inquiry. If what we make changes who we are then the designer has a deep responsibility to consider the implications of what the release into the world - and what that design might mean to the person who incorporates it into their life.

From Wikipedia for reference:
Claude Lévi-Strauss was a French anthropologist and ethnologist, and has been called the "father of modern anthropology".

He argued that the "savage mind" had the same structures as the "civilized" mind and that human characteristics are the same everywhere. These observations culminated in his famous book Tristes Tropiques, which positioned him as one of the central figures in the structuralist school of thought, where his ideas reached into fields including the humanities and philosophy. Structuralism has been defined as "the search for the underlying patterns of thought in all forms of human activity."