The reading for this week was a chapter from the book “Radical Technologies: Design of everyday life’’ by Adam Greenfield. Greenfield is an American writer and has worked in the field of information architecture. The first chapter of his book talks about smartphones and how technology has shaped us as a society. He assesses how technology alters the every day we have.
His subject line at the start of the chapter, ‘Networking of the self’ strikes a contrast of its own. An object like the smartphone, even though made for communication, does not afford communication. We are losing a network of our surroundings by being so dependent on the phone. We forget metropolitan rituals as Greenfield describes them and instead see them dematerialising. This chapter focuses on how technologies can change social habits counterproductively. with the effect of time.
The extinction of objects and the digitisation of all has put society in a quite hard position. We might even call them objects of extinction. The concepts of social theory are applied to our technologically aided modern lifestyle. Greenfield also talks about smartphones and consumerism. The way society chooses to turn a blind eye to the ecological imbalance caused by smartphones.
Greenfield also highlights the hypocrisy of giving up on our data just to get a good customer experience. He focuses on the people’s relationship with technology, rather than an eye-wide lens. All this data can be stored and used by agencies world wide. This is a huge intrusion to privacy only for a hassle free experience of a few minutes. This data can be then used to map out behaviours and it turns to weaponisation of design in no time.
References
Greenfield, A., 2018. Smartphone: the networking of the self. Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life. New York: Verso.
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