Touchable Speculation: Crafting Critical Discourse with 3D Printing, Maker Practices, and Hypermapping

the computer

The four computers in the lab capture both the evolution and stasis of computer design over the years. Despite aesthetic and functional differences, the embodied experience of using a computer has remained largely the same. Even as the decades pass in computer design, the human posturing need not change. The computer disciplines the human body. Just as much as the computer is designed to “mirror” the human body that will use it, the human body that spends time in use with the computer is also reflectively reformulated. The design of the computer then comes to live in our bodies: in blurry vision, in aching wrists, shoulders, and fingers, in spider veins that emerge from hours of sitting.
The disciplining of the body through technoencounters can span the virtual and the physical. For instance, in the wake of the 2016 election, whose outcome was rendered nearly impossible by political analysis, specifically that of Nate Silver via his website FiveThirtyEight, my virtual dream self and my physical body, both living in shock, demonstrated the internalization of the disciplinary embodied effects of technoencounter. In my dream, my virtual self was scrolling through the news on my smartphone, frantically. This action of a thumb gliding up the glass rectangle—kind of like a reverse “lighting a lighter,” but with a wider palm. Because the dream was so unpleasant, I woke up. I woke up to my hand performing the same “smartphone hand; scrolling thumb” construction as my virtual dream self.

My consistent technoencounter with a smartphone has become internalized by my real and virtual embodied practices, so much so that the technological object need not be present to evoke those actions. In this way, the device is virtually inserted into the body by proxy. Like Foucault’s discussion of panopticism,[1] the disciplinary practice of technoencounter no longer requires physical presence to achieve disciplinary power, as it has become internalized by those whom it controls.

The maker movement, which often explores DIY computer design, may offer alternative forms of embodied practices of technoencounter. Of course, the most effective way to reduce the disciplinary power of technoencounters would be through the reduction of our use of technological devices. Yet, DIY design of the technoencounter, largely through the design of the device itself, helps redistribute this control back to the user. Speculative design projects that reformulate the traditional embodied practices of the technoencounter develop alternative forms of human-computer interaction. Perhaps these speculations could be easier on the body, accessible by more bodies, and customized to fit the needs and desires of the individual.

The capitalist market has responded to these issues via additional products that seek to address the embodied problems of traditional computer design, such as ergonomic everything (mice, keyboards, chairs, mousepads, wristpads, etc.), standing and treadmill desks, and other exercise equipment that allows for movement while doing computer-based activities (like ankle slings and Technogym wellness weights). Dealing with the computer-disciplined body, largely because of the rise of computer-based labor, is big business and reproduces affirmative computer design even as it attempts to help the ailments of computer interaction. This is one example of how speculative and DIY approaches to technoencounters can reformulate the (often painful) embodied effects of affirmative computer design. Perhaps, then, speculative design is a form of preventative medicine.

Unanswered Questions:
►How do paradigmatic design and the need for clear affordances suppress variation and innovation in computer design?
►How do various interfaces change the relationship between computer-human and human-human?
►How do we appear to the computer? How does it appear to us? Can embodiment exist beyond affordance? Must the ontology of things reflect their use?

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[1] Michel Foucault, “Panopticism,” in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 195–228.