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- Convenor:
-
Finn Olesen
(Aarhus University)
Send message to Convenor
- Chair:
-
Finn Olesen
(Aarhus University)
- Discussants:
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Vincent Laliberté
(McGill University)
Markus Bohlmann (University of Muenster)
Annie Kurz (Hessen State University of Art and Design)
Elisabeth Assing Hvidt (University of Southern Denmark)
Finn Olesen (Aarhus University)
- Format:
- Closed Panel
Short Abstract:
The papers of this panel take an empirical-reflexive methodological approach to investigate how technologies mediate human experience. Complementing STS approaches, each paper on this panel is a ‘case study,’ examining a particular technology in a specific use context.
Long Abstract:
This panel includes four papers that employ an empirical-reflexive approach to scrutinize how technologies mediate and shape human experience. Each paper analyzes a particular technology in a specific use context, and each speaks of making and doing transformations in its own way. By highlighting the colors and forms of digital detoxing apps, Annie Kurz decodes the visual language of such apps and – with the coming AI revolution – she thinks through the implications of deploying apps against apps. Continuing with topics in mobile computing, Markus Bohlmann’s in-depth interviews with early-adopters of table-use in German schools contain important findings for education policy going forward, specifically casting doubt on the promised educational transformations of such use. Empathy has always been important in healthcare, but how is empathy transformed when we move from face-to-face consultations to technologically mediated communications between health professionals and patients? This is the question that Elisabeth Assing Hvidt and Finn Olesen take up in their empirically based study of teleconsultations between health-care providers and patients. Finally, Vincent Laliberté’s ethnographic study of animal rights activists in Canada reveals the centrality of digital technologies – screens, internet, social media, and documentaries – in persuading others to make an ‘ethical transformation’ of their own.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Annie Kurz (Hessen State University of Art and Design)
Long abstract:
This paper deals with the phenomenon of digital detoxing framed within the school of thought known as postphenomenology and mediation theory. It investigates apps against apps (also known as digital wellbeing or productivity apps) through exploring variations of aesthetic promises made by the app companies. A small paradigmatic lineup aims at a comparative analysis to explore variations of logo designs and the (visual) language used on the app websites. The main question explored is how the notion of digital detoxing is being communicated through aesthetic means such as color and form. Ideas of a good life, good health, more (quality)time, better focus or happiness “without” or with “less technology” find expressions in photographs, graphics and logos using for example symbols of nature, resistance or freedom. Phenomenologically, the first impressions show the dialectic (tensions) between nature versus technology. This paradigmatic case study of apps against apps gives empirical texture to a rising phenomenon that with the expansion of AI, so my speculative argument, will find even more relevance. The broader question that follows for postphenomenology is how to think the hermeneutics of apps against apps and how to conceptualize the non-use these apps promote. What do the symbols of flowers, butterflies or the crossed-out smartphones expose about our relationship to digital technologies? Through exploring questions of aesthetics and semiotics as well as American Philosopher Don Ihde’s hermeneutics, this paper seeks to work toward decoding the visual language of digital detoxing and toward a concept of mediation of non-use.
Markus Bohlmann (University of Muenster)
Long abstract:
German schools underwent a major technological transformation in 2019-2023 as a result of the “Digitalpakt Schule” (digital pact for schools), a billion dollar federal funding project. The implementation of student operated tablets is a central element of this transformation. We conducted a series of in-depth interviews with early adopters of tablet use (n=4), students who brought their own tablet to school at an early stage (BYOD). They reported their experiences and human-technology relations before widespread use. Using the tools of postphenomenlogy and a specially developed question format, we investigated particular situations of use and found some interesting results. Active learning does not appear to be a stability of the tablet technology that can hold attention. Social groups emerge through communities of sharing via "air-drop" and users often use the tablets in a path-dependent manner analogous to the classic college block. The findings have implications for the further use of tablets in schools and disappoint some political hopes for the digital transformation of the educational system. In a view that complements STS, it is possible to explain how classic problems, such as the path dependency of technologies, take shape in concrete experience at the level of human-technology relations in society-wide technological transformations.
Finn Olesen (Aarhus University)
Long abstract:
This presentation contributes to the ongoing discussion of how use of digital technologies in healthcare can alter the conditions for demonstrating empathy and proximity in health professionals’ relationship with patients. Use of digital communication will likely increase over the next few years in the Danish healthcare system and abroad. Hence, it is important to understand how technology-mediated consultations between health professionals and patients is different from consultations based on physical proximity. That helps improving the understanding of strengths and weaknesses of digital health communication. The empirical basis for our presentation is derived from ongoing empirical research on digital video consultations between patient and general practitioner, and between COPD patients in their own homes and a specialist nurse in a hospital. We mainly draw on phenomenology and post-phenomenology as theoretical basis. Phenomenological thinkers such as Max Scheler, Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein have elaborated and founded the phenomenological tradition on the concept of empathy, which has been further developed over time in the cognitive sciences. On the other hand, the postphenomenological, STS-embedded tradition of Don Ihde has not, to our knowledge, developed the concept of empathy in any systematic way. In our presentation, we will try to establish a bridge between classical phenomenology and post-phenomenology, where the concept of technological mediation is brought into play as part of investigating, and possibly justifying, technologically mediated proximity and empathy. Merleau-Ponty's concept of whole-body presence will be used in our argumentation.
Vincent Laliberté (McGill University)
Long abstract:
The last twenty years or so have seen a boom in the animal rights movement, which led notably to the ban of the horse-drawn carriage industry in Montreal in 2019. The increasing number of adherents to this cause is generally understood in terms of moral progress. To explore how people actually join the cause, I conducted ethnography with animal rights activists, including spending time at public demonstrations such as the Cube of Truth and through interviews. Activists explained their ethical transformation through the work of reason, intention and morality, as well as being touched by the suffering of animals. However, I also discovered the very important presence of digital technologies – screens, internet, social media, documentaries and algorithms – being used both as a way to persuade others and in activists’ stories of ethical transformation. To make sense of this, I turned to the burgeoning field of postphenomenology – including notably the work of Peter-Paul Verbeek, Kirk M. Besmer and Bas de Boer – to analyze how experience is mediated by particular technologies. I became particularly interested in postphenomenologists’ recent interest in “technological intentionality” and how technologies shape us through their “passive” activity as discussed by Dmytro Mykhailov and Nicola Liberati. Postphenomenology helps understanding how digital infrastructure mediate the ethical transformation of activists in relation to animals in ways that often escape their awareness. Finally, given the increasing presence of digital technologies in anthropology’s fieldworks, I will expand on the benefits of a new dialogue between anthropologists and postphenomenologists.