Jasmine Cox‘s Displacement Engine (Dundee) is “a navigational compass which gives you a little extra push to break away from routine, to wander the unexplored route… By pulling the slider closer and pushing it further away, the user learns to relax the need to be heading in an absolute direction. It allows the experience of a place and an outdoor space to absorb and distract them.” The variability of the GPS signal means that the device perhaps won’t always be ‘reliable’ – again, leading the user to explore and think for him or herself rather than being able to trust the device entirely. As Jasmine says here, it’s somewhere between a sat-nav and dérive.

The question of how much the paths and routes we take (physically and in whatever metaphorical way you can think of) are controlled, or at least influenced, by what maps, devices, signs, etc are telling us is something that I’ve touched a few times with this blog over the years (e.g. here). Practical semiotics as wayfinding decision-making heuristics, maybe. As someone who grew up obsessively poring over maps and atlases, memorising road networks and coastlines, trying to visualise these unknown places (and drawing plenty of my own), I’m fascinated by the possibilities of sat-navs and navigational devices which structure our choices for us (as Adam Greenfield notes, perhaps even removing routes we ‘don’t want to be walking down’), even though (in practice) I very much dislike using them, and it horrifies me to become reliant on them. I’ve had the “ROAD ENDS 800 FEET” sign looming at me out of the night after following a calm voice’s directions down a canyon track somewhere off Mulholland Drive. I’ve also spent happy afternoons driving across the Fens with a scruffy, annotated Philip’s Navigator on my lap and no purpose in mind other than seeing interesting places, and I know which I prefer. Jasmine’s project helps bridge that divide a bit, or at least twist it in a new and intriguing direction.

Jasmine’s blog chronicling the development process is interesting, too: it’s a great insight into the thought processes of how a project like this actually gets done, the decisions made at different stages, and how contingent the result is on conditions, insights and ideas earlier on. I expect something like this helps quite a lot with writing up a major project, though I know I always wrote the development story for my projects right at the end, when the various dead-ends and mistakes could be woven and re-ordered into something that sounded more professional, or so I hoped.

Intended to encourage people to drink more water while out shopping or walking, without buying bottled water (and throwing away the bottle each time) Source by Oliver Craig (Loughborough) is essentially a modern take on the public water fountain (which has disappeared in many areas of the UK – how many new shopping centres include them?), combining it with the convenience of bottled water: using special bottles filled via a valve in the base, pedestrians could get free filtered tap water from a network of fountains, positioned at the entrances to participating stores who would also sell the bottles. Re-using the bottles earns the user points which can be spent in the participating stores.

From one point of view, free fountains which don’t require a special bottle (i.e. no format lock-in) would be preferable (as so often in the UK, the concern is about “value for money” and vandalism rather than public need), but something like Source, with special bottles, the sale of which funds the scheme, could be a step in the right direction.

Ravensbourne’s Kei Wada‘s How Long? Door Knob and Tag, along with his Whose Turn? Bottle Opener address behaviours in a shared environment such as a student house, applying design to ‘bad habits’. The Bottle Opener (right, below) “is a playful bottle opener that can be spun to help make decisions” such as who has to take the rubbish out, or buy milk, in the format of an object associated with parties and fun (whether this would increase or decrease the likelihood that housemates adhere to the ‘decision’, I don’t know!).

The Door Knob and Tag (left and middle, below) are timers for bathroom or shower doors – the knob is a replacement knob / lock for the door itself, while the tag can be hooked over the handle without actually enforcing a ‘lock’. But the principle is the same: “inspired by the annoying occurrence of never knowing how long flatmate will take in the shower. The person who takes the shower sets the timer when he/she locks the door, so the other housemates do not have to knock on the door and disturb their ablutions. When time is up, it rings to let the housemates know the room is vacant.” I particularly like Kei’s statement that “the act of setting the timer now becomes an extension of the motions involved in locking the door” – whether or not this kind of action (which requires prior thought in terms of deciding how long to set it for) could become an unconscious habit or not would be interesting to study.

Aside from annoying your housemates less, the timers could also work to reduce water and energy usage, in terms of time spent in the shower: if the alarm ringing sound were annoying or loud enough to make it socially unacceptable to spend too long in there, then this is a kind of socially enforced shower timer.

More projects coming up in Parts 2 and 3…

Images from the graduates’ websites linked.

We’ve looked recently at water taps with meters built in, the thinking being the ‘speedometer’ approach to shaping users’ behaviour – making users aware of the scale/rate/level of some activity should cause them to adjust that behaviour.

A number of projects and initiatives also apply this approach to electricity use – one of the most explicitly ‘designerly’ being Wattson – but there are a variety of different approaches, a handful of which I’ve reviewed here.

Harry Ward: Orb Energy Monitor
Recent design graduate Harry Ward’s Orb energy monitor (above and below) is especially attractive: a toroidal inductor is clipped around the cable being measured, and transmits data wirelessly to the Orb itself, a hand-held unit which glows different colours depending on the power being drawn.

The display on the Orb could show the user the direct electricity cost and CO₂ emissions equivalent, as well as the actual power being used and cumulative energy (kWh) used over a period. Harry has applied for patents and is looking to license the design in order to get the Orb into production.

UPDATE (27.vii): The Orb Energy Monitor website is now online with more information, images and contact details.

Images courtesy of Harry Ward

Ambient Devices: Energy Joule
The Energy Joule / Home Joule from Ambient Devices of New York (found via Michael Jefferson’s blog) shares some similarities with Harry’s Orb, but addresses a different problem: demand response, rather than actual consumption reduction.

The Energy Joule is designed to remain in situ, plugged into a wall socket, and it glows different colours (red, yellow, green) according to the price of electricity at the time – the idea being to encourage users to shift discretionary electricity use to times when there is less demand, and help the electricity generators balance their loads (an increasing problem), in return for ‘rewards’. As part of a wireless network (the Ambient Infocast Network – this is getting closer to everyware), the unit also displays other information such as temperature, weather forecast, and so on – and it’s the community’s electricity usage which is generally intended to be displayed, rather than the individual user’s.

Image from Ambient Devices’ website

(Ambient Devices also have a product called the Energy Orb – no relation to Harry’s product above – a version of their general Orb specifically locked-in to displaying the same electricity price/demand level as the Energy Joule.)

Gustafsson & Gyllenswärd: Power Aware Cord
Stemming originally from the Static! project at Sweden’s Interactive Institute, the Power Aware Cord by Anton Gustafsson and Magnus Gyllenswärd, is illuminated proportionally to the power being drawn:

Take the use of an everyday iron. A microprocessor within the Power Aware Cord immediately detects and converts the amount of energy used to power the appliance into a phosphorous thread that glows. The modern blue light intensifies and diminishes relative to energy flow. Increase the temperature of the iron and the cable will instantly glow brighter.

The versatile cord can be built-in or connected to the modern electrical appliance both directly or in distribution board format. Turn the appliance on and the flow of energy lights up the cord with a decorative glow.

This is an interesting approach: it allows users to be immediately aware of the devices which are consuming power, perhaps on standby, and is visually distinctive enough to make it difficult to ignore. As with all these products, extra energy is used to power the monitoring and display (lighting, etc), but this amount is small compared with the amount that may be saved if users do adjust their behaviour significantly.

 
Images from Power Aware Cord website

Kieva Mussington: Energy Monitor Switch
Kieva Mussington, a product design graduate from the University of Brighton, has specifically addressed the problem of devices left on standby, with the Energy Monitor Switch:

This product concept helps reduce wasted electricity in the home caused by appliances that have inefficient standby modes by making users aware of how much energy they use. Further developments include a light switch and plug socket disabling device that will make it easier for the user to save electricity.

 
Details and images from the University’s 2007 design graduate directory

I’ve made the observation before on the blog that without undertstanding what being ‘on standby’ involves for many devices, a lot of users assume that because just that one red LED is lit, that’s all the power being used. Anything which can bust the myth by showing that significant power is still being used is very much worthwhile, although changing the way that standby modes operate would ultimately be preferable (I’m dubious about the moves to ban standby functions entirely, for reasons explained here).

But do these kinds of things actually work in reducing energy use?
Eric and Alex let me know about an ongoing research project by Jordan Fischer, Sarah Jones and John Kestner at the IIT Institute of Design in Chicago in which methods of making users aware of their energy use are tried out:

They wired up a house to constantly monitor energy consumption in real time to increase awareness… no one knows how users might respond unless the concepts are tried out and feedback is gathered. What my classmates found when they prototyped their system was that the housemates (who are concerned about sustainability if not acutely aware of their impact) ended up turning the system into a game. “How low can we get the number to go?” Not sure how such a game would work for long term behavior change yet, but who knows. If it’s fun, it might work.

Alex, a participant in one of the experiments, sheds some more light on the ‘game’ aspects:

One thing that I never expected was that I tried a couple of time to see not only how low we could get the number, but also how high. I am not sure either what the more long term effects of such a game might have been, but thinking back, as with these water meters, it is difficult to improve your consumption habits once the obvious sources of waste are eliminated. Or, if it is a game, are we trying to beat our own averages those of our friends or neighbors or some ideal rate? What are we to compare to, A Bill McDonough Zero Waste standard or incremental improvement?

It will be interesting to see the results of the project as it progresses – one intriguing aspect is the Watt Watchers trial [PDF link], where a network of light bulbs dims if too many are left on, and thus ‘coaches’ the user not to leave lights on unnecessarily:

All the light bulbs in a house have special collars that find each other via a mesh network and say whether they’re on or off. Then they all decide based on how many of them are on whether to dim to remind the occupant that too many things might be on.

Image from Watt Watchers summary [PDF]

Overall, there are some very interesting products and projects in this field of ‘making energy use visible’, and if it does have the potential to influence user behaviour significantly, more widespread adoption must be likely in the years ahead.

We’ve looked before at a number of technologies and products aimed at ‘preventing’ photography and image recording in some way, from censoring photographs of ‘copyrighted content’ and banknotes, to Georgia Tech’s CCD-flooding system.

Usually these systems are about locking out the public, or removing freedoms in some way (a lot of organisations seem to fear photography), but a few ‘fightback’ devices have been produced, aiming to empower the individual against others (e.g. Hewlett-Packard’s ‘paparazzi-proof’ camera) or against authority (e.g. the Backflash system intended to render a car number plate unreadable when photographed by a speed camera). The field of sousveillance – lots of interesting articles by Régine Debatty here – is also a ‘fightback’ in a parallel vein.

Taking the fightback idea further, into the realms of everyware, Miquel Mora’s IDentity Protection System, shown last month at the RCA’s Great Exhibition (many thanks to Katrin Svabo Bech for the tip-off), aims to offer the individual a way to control how his or her image is recorded – again, Régine from We Make Money Not Art:

With IDPS (IDentity Protection System), interaction designer Miquel Mora is proposing a new way to protect our visual identity from the invasion of ubiquitous surveillance cameras. He had a heap of green stickers that could stick to your jacket. Or anywhere else. The sticker blurred your image on the video screen.

“With the IDPS project I wanted to sparkle [sic.] debate about all the issues related to identity privacy,” explains Miquel. “Make people think about how our society has become a complete surveillance machine. Our identities have already been stored as data in many servers ready to be tracked. And our self image is our last resort. So we really need tools to protect our privacy. We need tools that can allow us to hide or reveal our visual image. We must have the control over it.”

“For example in one scenario a girl is wearing a tooth jewellery with IDPS technology embedded. So when she smiles she reveals it and it triggers the camera to protect her. With IDPS users can always feel comfortable, knowing that with a simple gesture like smiling, they are in control. The IDPS technology could be embedded in all kind of items, from simple badges to clothes or jewellery. For the working prototype I’m using Processing to track the stickers and pixelate the image around when it founds one.”

Image from Miquel Mora’s website

While the use of stickers or similar tags (why not RFID?) which can be embedded in items such as jewellery is a very neat idea aesthetically, I am not sure what economic/legal incentive would drive CCTV operators or manufacturers to include something such as IDPS in their systems and respect the wishes of users. CCTV operators generally do not want anyone to be able to exclude him or herself from being monitored and recorded, whether that’s by wearing a hoodie or a smart black hat with maroon ribbon. Or indeed a veil of some kind.

Something which actively fought back against unwanted CCTV or other surveillance intrusion, such as reversing the Georgia Tech system in some way (e.g. detecting the CCD of a digital security camera, and sending a laser to blind it temporarily, or perhaps some kind of UV strobe) would perhaps be more likely to ‘succeed’, although I’m not sure how legal it would be. Still, with RCA-quality interaction designers homing in on these kinds of issues, I think we’re going to see some very interesting concepts and solutions in the years ahead…

In part 1 of ‘Shaping behaviour’, we took a look at ‘sticks and carrots’ as approaches for shaping (or changing) people’s behaviour. It’s especially worth reading and thinking about the comments on that post as there are some very thoughtful analyses which go beyond my rather cursory treatment. ‘Shaping behaviour’ is a vast field, encompassing pretty much all of politics, advertising and marketing alongside much of religion, education, psychology (and psychiatry?), product and graphic design.

The ‘sticks, carrots and speedometers’ classification was originally mentioned to me as a possible method by Chris Vanstone, of the UK Design Council’s former research arm, RED. The idea is that you can get people to change their behaviour by persuading (or forcing) them with ‘sticks’ (punishment/disincentives), ‘carrots’ (rewards) or ‘speedometers’ (showing them the results of their actions, how they’re doing, or how well they could be doing if they changed their behaviour). Having looked at sticks and carrots – and found the classification rather limiting – let’s take a look at speedometers.

Some gauges provide information which directly relates to a user’s actions at that time. An actual speedometer or rev counter allows the user to determine what effect his or her actions are having on a vehicle, and take corrective action if the information displayed is outside the ‘correct’ range (of course there are other factors, such as the resistance to motion from drag or going uphill, and if one can hear the engine, a rev counter’s perhaps not really necessary, but I digress). Other gauges, such as fuel or temperature gauges (see photo at top) show us information over which we can’t have so much direct influence (or, in the case of a clock, say, no influence…) but about which we need to take action if certain levels are reached. Certainly, we change our behaviour as a result of taking in the information displayed. Usually. And the speedometer can of course be a metaphor for other methods of feedback or information displays – which I’ll get to later on.

Energy use

Sticking with physical gauges for the moment, in recent times there’s been a lot of design effort put into devices which monitor and display our energy or fuel use, with the hope that they’ll persuade us to change our behaviour, or bring to our attention which devices (e.g. in a home) are more power-hungry than others in an immediately persuasive way. The Design Council’s Future Currents project, which investigated a range of interesting techniques and design approaches, put the idea well:

Energy is invisible, which makes it difficult to control. We can give people the tools to monitor their own energy use. Studies show that if people can see what they’re using, they use up to 15% less energy.

An anecdote in Kalle Lasn’s Design Anarchy claims an even larger reduction:

The manager of a housing co-op was increasingly frustrated with her tenants. No matter how much she reminded and badgered them… the tenants would not, could not reduce their energy consumption. Finally she hit an idea. What would happen, she wondered, if the electricity meters were moved from the basement to a conspicuous spot right beside the front door, so that each time the tenants left or entered their home, they could see how fast their meter was whirring? The meters were moved. Lo and behold, within a few weeks electricity consumption fell 30 percent.

(It’s not clear whether there were individual meters so tenants could see each other’s consumption – that kind of “control by embarrassment“, or social pressure, may be effective in this free-rider or unequal contribution situation.)

 
 
 
Above left: Wattbox by Gary Lockton, Brunel University, 1992, a simple unit which displayed the cost of electricity being used as well as estimated bills; Above right: ‘You make waste visible’ from Kalle Lasn’s Design Anarchy; Centre left: Wattson, from DIYKyoto; Centre right: An example ‘greenness gauge’ from the Design Council’s Future Currents project; Bottom left: Static! Flower Lamp ‘blooms’ when a household has reduced its power consumption for a period; Bottom right: Static! Power Aware Cord glows with an intensity related to the power being used. First image courtesy of Paul Turnock; other images from the websites linked.

The convergence of new monitoring and connectivity technologies such as home wireless networks and RFID, with the pressure to scrutinise our environmental impact, has meant that there are more opportunities for potentially persuasive, interesting ways of approaching this area. Tom Coates has some good thoughts on this, and the relation to continuous monitoring of other parts of our (and others’) lives, and how fascinating it can be. Wattson (thanks to both Richard Reynolds and Michelle Douglas for originally bringing this to my attention) takes an especially ‘designer’ approach, becoming a coffee-table talking point as well as showing (in different display modes) the power currently being used, the costs, and, via a coloured glow projected onto the table below, a non-numerical indication of the intensity of power usage. Similarly playful methods are used in some of the Static! projects from Stockholm’s Interactive Institute – perhaps, in fact, when the ‘event’ which occurs as the ‘speedometer’ registers more desirable values is exciting in itself, the technique is closer to a ‘carrot’ than a speedometer.

 
Left: The Energy Label, required on certain products/packaging in the EU; Right: A typical mess of adaptors powering home electronic equipment. Here we have a scanner, a power drill charger, a printer (plug hidden), a battery charger and a cutting plotter. How easy is it for a consumer to audit the power usage of this kind of mess?

The related debate over standby buttons on home electrical equipment which I covered briefly in July last year, brought home an important point to me, as someone who’s worked on quite a few consumer electronic products powered from adaptors: many users think that if a red LED is on when the product is ‘off’, that little LED is all that’s being powered. That’s quite an important issue when it comes to consumers having a better understanding of their home energy use.

When seeing the Wattson and Future Currents projects for the first time, I was tempted to say “well, why don’t people just look at the power ratings on the appliances they buy?” but soon realised that that’s a pretty entrenched engineering mindset rearing itself in my mind. People don’t want to have to look on a label on the back of the product. They mostly don’t think about energy use when buying products. Even the use of ‘green’ labelling on the front of products (e.g. the EU label shown above) doesn’t hit home the actual monetary costs of different devices over typical usage periods. In this sense, monitoring devices which really get the user interested in using products more efficiently do seem to be very much worth it, even when they themselves use more power than strictly ‘necessary’.

(There are a few points I’d like to make about home lighting and ‘energy saving’ light bulbs, especially since some aspects of the recent blogosphere commentary made me think a little further, but they can wait for another day…)

Economy gauges

 
Left: A traditional analogue vacuum gauge showing ‘fuel economy’. Image from brochure for Reliant Rialto 2, 1984; Right: Toyota’s Eco Drive meter from the Camry – image from HybridCars.com. As an aside, I have no idea how 35-40 mpg can be considered ‘excellent’! What year is this?

Moving away from home electricity consumption, the increased prevalence of electronic in-car trip computers, usually built-in, has meant that second-by-second fuel economy read-outs are much more common, and can again inspire a kind of self-challenge to maximise economy while driving. As the miles-per-gallon (or perhaps L/100 km) figure drops (or increases) with every blip on the accelerator or rapid acceleration from the traffic lights, drivers really can train themselves to change their behaviour (indeed, I know a couple of people who are constantly shifting their gaze from the road ahead down to, alternately, the speedometer and the miles per gallon figure, to see “how well they are doing”, which is not necessarily ideal). Economy gauges in cars are nothing new – vacuum gauges were quite a popular home-fit accessory at one time, but they generally did not directly relate to the fuel consumption per distance travelled, merely the vacuum in the inlet manifold, hence the amount of fuel-air mixture being drawn through, whether or not the car were moving.

An alternative type of economy gauge was that once used by Volvo and other manufacturers, which compared the engine’s rpm (or the gearbox rpm?) to the gear selected (manual only, I presume) and illuminated a gearstick icon when the driver was in the ‘wrong’ gear, i.e. driving at less than optimum efficiency. Even more simply, some car companies used to mark the ‘gearchange points’ on the speedometer with dots at certain speeds – assuming the driver could not tell from the engine note that the gear engaged was too high or low, the dots would at least give some indication, though of course different driving conditions and loads would make the dots’ positions guidelines rather than absolutes. (I do have photographs of both these designs, somewhere, but will have to post them at some point in the future.)

Speedometers and control

Certainly, then, physical speedometers and gauges can have an effect on users’ behaviour and can encourage people to change; technology seems to be making this easier and more interesting and engaging. There are so many opportunities; already in some countries, there are roadside speed displays to make motorists aware of their speed (which present a fun challenge for drivers, or indeed cyclists, wanting to see what they can achieve) – how long before we have roadside CO2 monitoring (with displays)?

But are any of these ‘architectures of control’?

In the sense that they are methods of persuasion rather than methods of restriction or enforcement, they are on one side of a line with rigid control on the other, but when we look at techniques such as the “control by embarrassment“, or social pressure mentioned earlier, we can see that there is some kind of continuum related to how the information displayed by the speedometer (of whatever form) is used: if only you can see your personal energy usage habits within a house, you can make the choice whether or not to change your behaviour, but if the rest of your household can also see your habits, and see that you’re costing them unnecessary money, the pressure on you to change is much greater.

That, I think, is where the ‘control’ element comes in. Say that every household’s yearly carbon emissions (however this were to be calculated) were monitored. If the information were available to the householders, it may give them food for thought, and may inspire changing behaviour. If the information were available to the government, it may lead to taxation, and may lead to changing behaviour. If the information were legally required to be displayed on an illuminated sign outside the house, so neighbours could see who was “getting away with more carbon emissions”, it may (perhaps) lead to people changing behaviour too, or risk recriminations from the community, possibly worse than just social embarrassment. This last case is pretty much speedometer + blackmail, and I would say that that crosses the line to become control. If you want to fit in, and not be censured by others, you have to conform. That is an architecture of control, very much so, and hence we can see that speedometers, as with many other possible design elements, can be used as part of systems of control, but are not in themselves necessarily political. It’s the way they’re used that makes them, possibly, controversial.

The speedometer metaphor

Metaphorically, of course, a speedometer can be any method of making users aware of their behaviour, or the link between their behaviour and some other effect. Many of the examples studied and created by Stanford’s Captology / Persuasive Technology lab fall into this area, offering users feedback on their actions, or encouraging them to behave in a certain way (e.g. giving up smoking) through highlighting causal relationships.

But isn’t this, to some extent, what all persuasion is about, if we allow our ‘speedometer’ to have, in some situations, only two values (on/’good’ vs off/’bad’)? Everything ‘persuasive’, from advertising campaigns to counselling, is about saying “A is happening/not happening because you’re doing/not doing B; it will be better/stop happening if you stop/start doing C.” A speedometer is saying “You’re doing OK because this is the result of your actions” or “Look at the results of your actions – you need to change what you’re doing!”

Is it true, then to say that any situation where one entity (person/animal/plant) is trying to change the behaviour of another entity is resolved either by control (forcing the change in behaviour) or persuasion (inspiring the change in behaviour), or a combination of the two (e.g. by tricking the entity into changing behaviour)?

Or is that too simplistic?

Image from Monkeys & Kiwis (Flickr)

Chris Weightman let me know about how it felt to watch last Thursday’s iPod Flashmob at London’s Liverpool Street station: the dominant sense was of a mass of people overturning the ‘prescribed’ behaviour designed into an environment, and turning the area into their own canvas, overlaying individualised, externally silent experiences on the usual commuter traffic.

Probably wouldn’t get away with that sort of thing at an airport any more anyway, but what will happen to this kind of informal gathering in the era of the societies of control? When everyware monitors exactly who’s where and forces the barriers closed for anyone hoping to use the space for something other than that for which it was intended?

In my review of Adam Greenfield‘s Everyware a couple of months ago, I mentioned – briefly – the work of Hendricus Loos, whose series of patents cover subjects including “Manipulation of nervous systems by electric fields”, “Subliminal acoustic manipulation of nervous systems”, “Magnetic excitation of sensory resonances” and “Remote magnetic manipulation of nervous systems”. A theme emerges, of which this post by Tom Coates at Plasticbag.org reminded me:

“There was one speaker at FOO this year that would literally have blown my brain away if he’d happened to have had his equipment with him. Ed Boyden talked about transcranial magnetic stimulation – basically how to use focused magnetic fields to stimulate sections of the brain and hence change behaviour. He talked about how you could use this kind of stimulation to improve mood and fight depression, to induce visual phenomena or reduce schizophrenic symptoms, hallucinations and dreams, speed up language processing, improve attention, break habits and improve creativity.

…

He ended by telling the story of one prominent thinker in this field who developed a wand that she could touch against a part of your head and stop you being able to talk. Apparently she used to roam around the laboratories doing this to people. She also apparently had her head shaved and tattooed with all the various areas of the brain and what direct stimulation to them (with a wand) could do to her. She has, apparently, since grown her hair. I’d love to meet her.”

Now, the direct, therapeutic usage of small-range systems such as these is very different to the discipline-at-a-distance proposed in a number of Loos’s patents (where an ‘offender’ can be incapacitated, using, e.g. a magnetic field), but both are architectures of control: systems designed to modify, restrict and control people’s behaviour.

And, I would venture to suggest, a more widespread adoption of magnetic stimulation for therapeutic uses – perhaps, in time, designed into a safe, attractive consumer product for DIY relaxation/stimulation/hallucination – is likely to lead to further experimentation and exploration of ‘control’ applications for law enforcement, crowd ‘management’, and other disciplinary uses. I think we – designers, engineers, tech people, architects, social activists, anyone who values freedom – should be concerned, but the impressive initiative of the Open-rTMS Project will at least ensure that we’re able to understand the technology.

“This is the paradox of social media that has been bothering me lately: an ‘empowering’ media that provides increased opportunities for communication, education and online participation, but which at the same time further isolates individuals and aggregates them into masses —more prone to control, and by extension more prone to discipline.”

Slashdot on ‘A working economy without DRM?’ – same debate as ever, but some very insightful comments

Slashdot on ‘Explaining DRM to a less-experienced PC user’ – I particularly like SmallFurryCreature’s ‘Sugar cube’ analogy

‘The Promise of a Post-Copyright World’ by Karl Fogel – extremely clear analysis of the history of copyright and, especially, the way it has been presented to the public over the centuries

(Via BoingBoing) The Entertrainer – a heart monitor-linked TV controller: your TV stays on with the volume at a usable level only while you keep exercising at the required rate. Similar concept to Gillian Swan’s Square-Eyes

Josie Appleton, at the always-interesting Spiked, takes a look at the increasing systemic hostility towards ‘young people in public places’ in the UK: ‘When did ‘hanging around’ become a social problem?’

As well as the Mosquito, much covered on this site (all posts; try out high frequency sounds for yourself), the article mentions the use of certain music publicly broadcast for the same ‘dispersal’ purpose:

“The Local Government Association (LGA) has compiled a list of naff songs for councils to play in trouble spots in order to keep youths at bay – including Lionel Richie’s ‘Hello’ and St Winifred’s School Choir’s ‘There’s No One Quite Like Grandma’. Apparently the Home Office is monitoring the scheme carefully. This policy has been copied from Sydney, where it is known as the ‘Manilow Method’ (after the king of naff, Barry Manilow), and has precursors in what we might call the ‘Mozart Method’, which was first deployed in Canadian train stations and from 2004 onwards was adopted by British shops (such as Co-op) and train stations (such as Tyne and Wear Metro).”

(I do hope each public broadcast of the music is correctly licensed in accordance with PPL terms and conditions, if only because I don’t want my council tax going to fund a legal battle with PPL. Remember, playing music in public is exactly equivalent to nicking it from a shop, and, after all, that’s the sort of thing that those awful young people do, isn’t it?

I also wonder why there is a difference between a council playing loud music in public, and a member of the public choosing to do so. If kids took along a stereo and played loud music in a shopping centre or any other public place, they’d get arrested or at the very least get moved on.

What would the legal situation be if kids were playing exactly the same music as was also being pumped out of the council-approved/operated speakers, at the same time? It can hardly be described as a public nuisance if it’s no different to what’s happening anyway.

What if kids started playing the same music as was on the speakers, but out-of-synch so that it sounded awful to every passer-by? Maybe shift the pitch a little (couple of semitones down?) so the two tracks overlayed cause a nice ‘drive-away-all-the-customers’ effect? What would happen then? What if kids build a little RF device which pulses repeatedly with sufficient power to superimpose a nice buzz on the council’s speaker output?)

Anyway, Ms Appleton goes on to note a new tactic perhaps even more extreme than the Mosquito, and a sure candidate for my ‘designed to injure‘ category (perhaps not actually endangering life, but close):

“Police in Weston-super-Mare have been shining bright halogen lights from helicopters on to youths gathered in parks and other public places. The light temporarily blinds them, and is intended to ‘move them on’, in the words of one Weston police officer.”

Wow! Roll on the lawsuits. (Nice to know that the local air ambulance relies on charitable donations to stay in the air, while the police apparently have plenty of helicopters available)

The article quotes what increasingly appears to be the official attitude:

“…this isn’t just about teenagers committing crimes: it’s also about them just being there. Before he was diverted into dealing with terror alerts, home secretary John Reid was calling on councils to tackle the national problem of ‘teenagers hanging around street corners’. Apparently unsupervised young people are in themselves a social problem.”

As we know from examining the Mosquito, this same opinion isn’t restricted to Dr Reid. It was the Mosquito manufacturer Compound Security’s marketing director, Simon Morris, who apparently told the BBC that:

“People have a right to assemble with others in a peaceful way… We do not consider that this right includes the right of teenagers to congregate for no specific purpose.”

So there you have it. As Brendan O’Neill puts it in a New Statesman piece referenced in the Spiked article:

“…Fear and loathing… is driving policy on young people. We seem scared of our own youth, imagining that “hoodies” and “chavs” are dragging society down. We’re so scared, in fact, that we use impersonal methods to police them: we use scanners to monitor their behaviour, we blind them from a distance, and now employ machines to screech at them in the hope they will just go away. With no idea of what to say to them – how to inspire or socialise them – we seek to disperse, disperse, disperse. It will only heighten their sense of being outsiders.”

According to Reuters,

“The [US] government will not require recorders in autos but said on Monday that car makers must tell consumers when technology that tracks speed, braking and other measurements is in the new vehicles they buy.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration regulation standardizes recorder content and sets guidelines for how the information should be disclosed.

…

Safety experts, consumer groups and insurance companies have long pressed the agency to mandate recorders in cars, but industry has responded voluntarily in recent years. About two-thirds of the new vehicles now produced each year contain the device that is connected to air bag systems.

…

Under the new rules, auto recorders must track vehicle speed, acceleration, and deceleration, braking, steering and some air bag functions. In some cases data on vehicle roll angle, steering inputs, and passenger safety belt use will be recorded.

…

Rae Tyson, a NHTSA spokesman, said… that recorder information is private property that cannot be downloaded without permission of the vehicle owner.”

Let’s get this straight: these are black boxes intended to help compile safety data and undestand accidents, and the data will not be shared with insurance companies except with the car owner’s pemission, so drivers have nothing to worry about?

Or will it simply be the case that signing up for car insurance will require you “voluntarily” to allow the insurance company to access your data?

Are these actually that different to insurance black boxes??

Another point which stands out of the story, since reading Scott Craver‘s Privacy Ceiling outline, is that the black box is legally optional yet two-thirds of all new cars in the US have them.

In a liability culture, that violates Scott’s 3rd principle:

Do not bother to design a system or business model that balances user privacy with [potential external] demands. All this does is insert an architecture of monitoring or control, for later abuse. In other words, design an architecture for privacy alone. Anything you put in there… will one day be used to its full extent.

If the black boxes are in every car a company (such as GM) makes, that leaves the company open to certain, ah, liability issues. Say NHTSA analysis of accident data shows that a particular model has peculiarities related to, e.g. “vehicle roll angle and steering inputs” as tracked by the black box (or, even worse, inconsistencies related to this issue, with some cars having a problem and others not).

That car manufacturer is instantly plunged into the spotlight as a maker of dangerous products, even if the problem is not necessarily as simple as it seems (certain types of car attract better drivers than others, for example), and it will be very difficult to defend the issue and deal with lawsuits, since the information is now publicly available. (Conversely, having that amount of information should also make it easier for the company to analyse and respond to the problem).

Yet they could have “got away with it” by not fitting the black boxes in the first place. That may be a Ford Pinto-esque, bury-your-head-in-the-sand approach, but when company planners look at the potential upside and downside of any strategy decision, the decision to fit black boxes voluntarily may not seem such a sensible one in view of the liabilities to which it exposes the company.

(Reuters link via Open Rights Group discussion)

“This is an economic limit on privacy violation by companies, owing to the liability of having too much information about (or control over) users.”

It’s the “control over users” that immediately makes this something especially relevant for designers and technologists to consider: that control is designed, consciously, into products and systems, but how much thought is given to the extremes of how it might be exercised, especially in conjunction with the wealth of information that is gathered on users?

“Liability can come from various sources… [including]

Vicarious infringement liability.

Imagine: you write a music player (like iTunes) that can check the Internet when I place a CD in my computer. You decide to collect this data for market research. Now the RIAA discovers that this data can also identify unauthorized copies. Can they compel you to hand over data on user listening habits?

Your company is liable for vicarious infringement if (1) infringement happens, (2) you benefit from it, and (3) you had the power to do something about it—which I assume includes reporting the infringement. So now you are possibly liable because you have damning information about your users. This also applies to DRM technologies that let you restrict users.

Note that you can’t solve this problem simply by adopting a policy of only keeping the data for 1 month, or being gentle and consumer-friendly with your DRM. The fact is, you have the architecture for monitoring and/or control, and you may not get to choose how you use it.

Other sources of liability described include: being drawn into criminal investigations based on certain data which a company or other organisation may have – or be compelled to obtain – on its users; customers suing in relation to the leaking of supposedly private data (as in the AOL débâcle); and “random incompetence”, e.g. an employee accidentally releasing data or arbitrarily exercising some designed-in control with undesirable consequences.

Scott goes on:

“Okay, so there is a penalty to having too much knowledge or too much control over customers. What should companies do to stay beneath this ceiling?

1. Design an architecture for your business/software that naturally prevents this problem.

It is much easier for someone to compel you to violate users’ privacy if it’s just a matter of using capabilities you already have. Mind, you have to convince a judge, not a software engineer, that adding monitoring or control is difficult. But you have a better shot in court if you must drastically alter your product in order to give in to demands.

…

2. Assume you will monitor and control to the full extent of your architecture. In fact, don’t just assume this, but go to the trouble to monitor or control your users.

Why? Because in an infringement lawsuit you don’t want to appear to be acting in bad faith… if you have the ability to monitor users and refuse to use it, you’re giving ammunition to a copyright holder who accuses you of inducement and complicity.

…

But … the real message is that you should go back to design principle 1. If you want to protect users, think about the architecture; don’t just assume you can take a principled stand not to abuse your own power.

The third principle is really a restatement of the first two, but deserves restating:

3. Do not attempt to strike a balance.

Do not bother to design a system or business model that balances user privacy with copyright holder demands. All this does is insert an architecture of monitoring or control, for later abuse. In other words, design an architecture for privacy alone. Anything you put in there, under rule #2, will one day be used to its full extent.

I have seen many many papers over the years, in watermarking tracks, proposing an end-to-end media distribution system balancing DRM with privacy. Usually, the approach is that watermarks are embedded in music/movies/images by a trusted third party, the marks are kept secret from the copyright holder, and personal information is revealed only under specific circumstances in which infringement is clear. This idea is basically BS. Your trusted third party does not have the legal authority to decide when to reveal information. What will likely happen instead: if a copyright holder feels infringement is happening, the trusted third party will be liable for vicarious infringement.“

Summing it up: any capability you design into a product or system will be used at some point – even if you are forced to use it against the best interests of your business. So it is better to design deliberately to avoid being drawn into this: design systems not to have the ability to monitor or control users, and that will keep you much safer from liability issues.

The privacy ceiling concept – which Scott is going to present in a paper along with Lorrie Cranor and Janice Tsai at the ACM DRM 2006 workshop – really does seem to have a significant implications for many of the architectures of control examples I’ve looked at on this site.

For example, the Car Insurance Black Boxes mostly record mileage and time data to allow insurance to be charged according to risk factors that interest the insurance company; but the boxes clearly also record speed, and whether that information would be released to, say, law enforcement authorities, if requested, is an immediate issue of interest/concern.

Looking further, though, the patent covering the box used by a major insurer mentions an enormous number of possible types of data that could be monitored and reported by the device, including exact position, weights of occupants, driving styles, use of brakes, what radio station is tuned in, and so on. Whether any insurance company would ever implement them, of course, is another question, and it would require a lot tighter integration into a vehicle’s systems; nevertheless, as Scott makes clear, whatever possibilities are designed into the architecture, will be exploited at some point, whether through pressure (external or internal) or incompetence.

I look forward to reading the full paper when it is available.

This is the first book review I’ve done on this blog, though it won’t be the last. In a sense, this is less of a conventional review than an attempt to discuss some of the ideas in the book, and synthesise them with points that have been raised by the examination of architectures of control: what can we learn from the arguments outlined in the book?

Adam Greenfield‘s Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing looks at the possibilities, opportunities and issues posed by the embedding of networked computing power and information processing in the environment, from the clichéd ‘rooms that recognise you and adapt to your preferences’ to surveillance systems linking databases to track people’s behaviour with unprecedented precision. The book is presented as a series of 81 theses, each a chapter in itself and each addressing a specific proposition about ubiquitous computing and how it will be used.

There’s likely to be a substantial overlap between architectures of control and pervasive everyware (thanks, Andreas), and, as an expert in the field, it’s worth looking at how Greenfield sees the control aspects of everyware panning out.

Everyware as a discriminatory architecture enabler

“Everyware can be engaged inadvertently, unknowingly, or even unwillingly“

In Thesis 16, Greenfield introduces the possibilities of pervasive systems tracking and sensing our behaviour—and basing responses on that—without our being aware of it, or against our wishes. An example he gives is a toilet which tests its users’ “urine for the breakdown products of opiates and communicate[s] its findings to [their] doctor, insurers or law-enforcement personnel,” without the user’s express say-so.

It’s not hard to see that with this level of unknowingly/unwillingly active everyware in the environment, there could be a lot of ‘architectures of control’ consequences. For example, systems which constrain users’ behaviour based on some arbitrary profile: a vending machine may refuse to serve a high-fat snack to someone whose RFID pay-card identifies him/her as obese; or, more critically, only a censored version of the internet or a library catalogue may be available to someone whose profile identifies him/her as likely to be ‘unduly’ influenced by certain materials, according to some arbitrary definition. Yes, Richard Stallman’s Right To Read prophecy could well come to pass through individual profiling by networked ubiquitous computing power, in an even more sinister form than he anticipated.

Taking the ‘discriminatory architecture’ possibilities further, Thesis 30, concentrating on the post-9/11 ‘security’ culture, looks at how:

“Everyware redefines not merely computing but surveillance as well… beyond simple observation there is control… At the heart of all ambitions aimed at the curtailment of mobility is the demand that people be identifiable at all times—all else follows from that. In an everyware world, this process of identification is a much subtler and more powerful thing than we often consider it to be; when the rhythm of your footsteps or the characteristic pattern of your transactions can give you away, it’s clear that we’re talking about something deeper than ‘your papers, please.’

Once this piece of information is in hand, it’s possible to ask questions like Who is allowed here? and What is he or she allowed to do here?… consider the ease with which an individual’s networked currency cards, transit passes and keys can be traced or disabled, remotely—in fact, this already happens. But there’s a panoply of ubiquitous security measures both actual and potential that are subtler still: navigation systems that omit all paths through an area where a National Special Security Event is transpiring, for example… Elevators that won’t accept requests for floors you’re not accredited for; retail items, from liquor to ammunition to Sudafed, that won’t let you purchase them… Certain options simply do not appear as available to you, like greyed-out items on a desktop menu—in fact, you won’t even get that back-handed notification—you won’t even know the options ever existed.”

This kind of ‘creeping erosion of norms‘ is something that’s concerned me a lot on this blog, as it seems to be a feature of so many dystopian visions, both real and fictional. From the more trivial—Japanese kids growing up believing it’s perfectly normal to have to buy music again every time they change their phone—to society blindly walking into 1984 due to a “generational failure of memory about individual rights” (Simon Davies, LSE), it’s the “you won’t even know the [options|rights|abilities|technology|information|words to express dissent] ever existed” bit that scares me the most.

Going on, Greenfield quotes MIT’s Gary T Marx‘s definition of an “engineered society,” in which “the goal is to eliminate or limit violations by control of the physical and social environment.” I’d say that, broadening the scope to include product design, and the implication to include manipulation of people’s behaviour for commercial ends as well as political, that’s pretty much the architectures of control concept as I see it.

In Thesis 42, Greenfield looks at the chain of events that might lead to an apparently innocuous use of data in one situation (e.g. the recording of ethnicity on an ID card, purely for ‘statistical’ purposes) escalating into a major problem further down the line, when that same ID record has become the basis of an everyware system which controls, say, access to a building. Any criteria recorded can be used as a basis for access restriction, and if ‘enabled’ deliberately or accidentally, it would be quite possible for certain people to be denied services or access to a building, etc, purely on an arbitrary, discriminatory criterion.

“…the result is that now the world has been provisioned with a system capable of the worst sort of discriminatory exclusion, and doing it all cold-bloodedly, at the level of its architecture… the deep design of ubiquitous systems will shape the choices available to us in day-to-day life, in ways both subtle and less so… It’s easy to imagine being denied access to some accommodation, for example, because of some machine-rendered judgement as to our suitability, and… that judgement may well hinge on something we did far away in both space and time… All we’ll be able to guess is that we conformed to some profile, or violated the nominal contours of some other…

The downstream consequences of even the least significant-seeming architectural decision could turn out to be considerable—and unpleasant.”

Indeed.

Everyware as mass mind control enabler

In a—superficially—less contentious area, Thesis 34 includes the suggestion that everyware may allow more of us to relax: to enter the alpha-wave meditative state of “Tibetan monks in deep contemplation… it’s easy to imagine environmental interventions, from light to sound to airflow to scent, designed to evoke the state of mindfulness, coupled to a body-monitor setting that helps you recognise when you’ve entered it.” Creating this kind of device—whether biofeedback (closed loop) or open-loop—has interested designers for decades (indeed, my own rather primitive student project attempt a few years ago, MindCentre, featured light, sound and scent in an open-loop), but when coupled to the pervasive bio-monitoring of whole populations using everyware, some other possibilities surely present themselves.

Is it ridiculous to suggest that a population whose stress levels (and other biological indicators) are being constantly, automatically monitored, could equally well be calmed, ‘reassured’, subdued and controlled by everyware embedded in the environment designed for this purpose? One only has to look at the work of Hendricus Loos to see that the control technology exists, or is at least being developed (outside of the military); how long before it\’s networked to pervasive monitoring, even if, initially only of prisoners? See also this article by Francesca Cedor.\r\n\r\n\r\nEveryware as \’artefacts with politics\’\r\n\r\nOn a more general \’Do artefacts have politics?\’/\’Is design political?\’ point, Greenfield observes that certain technologies have “inherent potentials, gradients of connection” which predispose them to be deployed and used in particular ways (Thesis 27), i.e. technodeterminism. That sounds pretty vague, but it\’s — to some extent — applying Marshall McLuhan\’s “the medium is the message” concept to technology. Greenfield makes an interesting point:\r\n\r\n

“It wouldn\’t have taken a surplus of imagination, even ahead of the fact, to discern the original Napster in Paul Baran\’s first paper on packet-switched networks, the Manhattan skyline in the Otis safety elevator patent, or the suburb and the strip mall latent in the heart of the internal combustion engine.”

\r\n\r\nThat\’s an especially clear way of looking at \’intentions\’ in design: to what extent are the future uses of a piece of technology, and the way it will affect society, embedded in the design, capabilities and interaction architecture? And to what extent are the designers aware of the power they control? In Thesis 42, Greenfield says, “whether consciously or not, values are encoded into a technology, in preference to others that might have been, and then enacted whenever the technology is employed”.\r\n\r\nLawrence Lessig has made the point that the decentralised architecture of the internet — as originally, deliberately planned — is a major factor in its enormous diversity and rapid success; but what about in other fields? It\’s clear that Richard Stallman\’s development of the GPL (and Lessig\’s own Creative Commons licences) show a rigorous design intent to shape how they are applied and what can be done with the material they cover. But does it happen with other endeavours? Surely every RFID developer is aware of the possibilities of using the technology for tracking and control of people, even if he/she is \’only\’ working on tracking parcels? As Greenfield puts it, “RFID \’wants\’ to be everywhere and part of everything.” He goes on to note that the 128-bit nature of the forthcoming IPv6 addressing standard — giving 2^128 possible addresses — pretty clearly demonstrates an intention to “transform everything in the world, even every part of every thing, into a node.” \r\n\r\nNevertheless, in many cases, designed systems will be put to uses that the originators really did not intend. As Greenfield comments in Thesis 41:\r\n\r\n

“…connect… two discrete databases, design software that draws inferences fromt he appearance of certain patterns of fact—as our relational technology certainly allows us to do—and we have a situation where you can be identified by name and likely political sympathy as you walk through a space provisioned with the necessary sensors.\r\n\r\nDid anyone intend this? Of course not—at least, we can assume that the original designers of each separate system did not. But when… sensors and databases are networked and interoperable… it is a straightforward matter to combine them to produce effects unforeseen by their creators.”

\r\n\r\nIn Thesis 23, the related idea of \’embedded assumptions\’ in designed everyware products and systems is explored, with the example of a Japanese project to aid learning of the language, including alerting participants to “which of the many levels of politeness is appropriate in a given context,” based on the system knowing every participant\’s social status, and “assign[ing] a rank to every person in the room… this ordering is a function of a student\’s age, position, and affiliations.” Greenfield notes that, while this is entirely appropriate for the context in which the teaching system is used:\r\n\r\n

“It is nevertheless disconcerting to think how easily such discriminations can be hard-coded into something seemingly neutral and unimpeachable and to consider the force they have when uttered by such a source…\r\n\r\nEveryware [like almost all design, I would suggest (DL)]… will invariably reflect the assumptions its designers bring to it… those assumptions will result in orderings—and those orderings will be manifested pervasively, in everything from whose preferences take precedence while using a home-entertainment system to which of the injured supplicants clamouring for the attention of the ER staff gets cared for first.”

\r\n\r\nThesis 69 states that:\r\n\r\n

“It is ethically incumbent on the designers of ubiquitous systems and environments to afford the human user some protection”

\r\n\r\nand I think I very much agree with that. From my perspective as a designer I would want to see that ethos promoted in universities and design schools: that is real, active user-centred, thoughtful design rather than the vague, posturing rhetoric which so often surrounds and obscures the subject. Indeed, I would further broaden the edict to include affording the human user some control, as well as merely protection—in all design—but that\’s a subject for another day (I have quite a lot to say on this issue, as you might expect!). Greenfield touches on this in Thesis 76 where he states that “ubiquitous systems must not introduce undue complications into ordinary operations” but I feel the principle really needs to be stronger than that. Thesis 77 proposes that “ubiquitous systems must offer users the ability to opt out, always and at any point,” but I fear that will translate into reality as \’optional\’ in the same way that the UK\’s proposed ID cards will be optional: if you don\’t have one, you\’ll be denied access to pretty much everything. And you can bet you\’ll be watched like a hawk.\r\n\r\n\r\nEveryware: transparent or not?\r\n\r\nGreenfield returns a number of times to the question of whether everyware should be presented to us as \’seamless\’, with the relations between different systems not openly clear, or \’seamful\’, where we understand and are informed about how systems will interact and pass data before we become involved with them. From an \’architectures of control\’ point of view, the most relevant point here is mentioned in Theses 39 and 40:\r\n\r\n

“…the problem posed by the obscure interconnection of apparently discrete systems… the decision made to shield the user from the system\’s workings also conceals who is at risk and who stands to benefit in a given transaction…\r\n\r\n”MasterCard, for example, clearly hopes that people will lose track of what is signified by the tap of a PayPass card—that the action will become automatic and thus fade from perception.”

\r\n\r\nThis is a very important issue and also seems especially pertinent to much in \’trusted\’ computing where the user may well be entirely oblivious to what information is being collected about him or her, and to whom it is being transmitted, and, due to encryption, unable to access it even if the desire to investigate were there. Ross Anderson has explored this in great depth.\r\n\r\nThesis 74 proposes that “Ubiquitous systems must contain provisions for immediate and transparent querying of their ownership, use and capabilities,” which is a succinct principle I very much hope will be followed, though I have a lot of doubt.\r\n\r\n\r\nFightback devices\r\n\r\nIn Thesis 78, Greenfield mentions the Georgia Tech CCD-light-flooding system to prevent unauthorised photography as a fightback device challenging everyware, i.e. that it will allow people to stop themselves being photographed or filmed without their permission.\r\n\r\nI feel that interpretation is somewhat naïve. I very, very much doubt that offering the device as a privacy protector for the public is a) in any way a real intention from Georgia Tech\’s point of view, or b) that members of the public who did use such a device to evade being filmed and photographed would be tolerated for long. Already in the UK we have shopping centres where hooded tops are banned so that every shopper\’s face can clearly be recorded on CCTV; I hardly think I\’d be allowed to get away with shining a laser into the cameras! \r\n\r\nAlthough Greenfield notes that the Georgia Tech device does seem “to be oriented less toward the individual\’s right to privacy than towards the needs of institutions attempting to secure themselves against digital observation,” he uses examples of Honda testing a new car in secret (time for Hans Lehmann to dig out that old telephoto SLR!) and the Transportation Security Agency keeping details of airport security arrangements secret. The more recent press reports about the Georgia Tech device make pretty clear that the real intention (presumably the most lucrative) is to use it arbitrarily to stop members of the public photographing and filming things, rather than the other way round. If used at all, it\’ll be to stop people filming in cinemas, taking pictures of their kids with Santa at the mall (they\’ll have to buy an \’official\’ photo instead), taking photos at sports events (again, that official photo), taking photos of landmarks (you\’ll have to buy a postcard) and so on. \r\n\r\nIt\’s not a fightback device: it\’s a grotesque addition to the rent-seekers\’ armoury.\r\n\r\nRFID-destroyers (such as this highly impressive project), though, which Greenfield also mentions, certainly are fightback devices, and as he notes in Thesis 79, an arms race may well develop, which ultimately will only serve to enshrine the mindset of control further into the technology, with less chance for us to disentangle the ethics from the technical measures.\r\n\r\nConclusion\r\n\r\nOverall, this is a most impressive book which clearly leads the reader through the implications of ubiquitous computing, and the issues surrounding its development and deployment in a very logical style (the \’series of theses\’ method helps in this: each point is carefully developed from the last and there\’s very little need to flick between different sections to cross-reference ideas). The book\’s structure has been designed, which is pleasing. Everyware has provided a lot of food for thought from my point of view, and I\’d recommend it to anyone with an interest in technology and the future of our society. Everyware, in some form, is inevitable, and it\’s essential that designers, technologists and policy-makers educate themselves right now about the issues. Greenfield\’s book is an excellent primer on the subject which ought to be on every designer\’s bookshelf.\r\n\r\nFinally, I thought it was appropriate to dig up that Gilles Deleuze quote again, since this really does seem a prescient description for the possibility of a more \’negative\’ form of everyware:\r\n\r\n

“The progressive and dispersed installation of a new system of domination.”

‘