[@wiltseRelatingThingsDesign2020]
Privacy as care in the Internet of Things
Privacy in legal terms is based on the needs and model of head-of-household, which is predominantly heterosexual, white, cis-male. So the handling of privacy is based on property and not on human dignity. Design isn’t helping much and more often then not actively trying to keep the user from having any say or control in this.
- We should seek to maximize the ability to be autonomous and maintain privacy (as given in the example of child care)
- Privacy is crucial for autonomy
- Privacy is negotiated within intimacy and interdependence
With these framing, the problem of privacy can be look at through a post-phenomenological viewpoint; Within care-like situations due to their physical presence in familial, household spaces.
- GPS is paternalising, never leaving our sides, always telling us, what we should do
- The setting up of Virtual assistants with skills is akin to deepening a friendship through shared common interests; But is then belied on because the companies behind only want you to buy stuff. VAs also can never open up to create personal bonds. Nonetheless the relationship is already intimate through their placing in our inner life; kitchens and bath and other places alike. A VA user needs to develop a theory of mind of the VA in order to work with them and a clear vocabulary.
- Home automation demonstrates care, expanding the autonomy of the inhabitants. But the fact that the tech companies are interested in collecting and reselling data on the inhabitants tells another story. Also, these technologies enable new ways of control due to third parties, like abusive partners.
- PARO (a care needing robot) creates a balance for the elderly, who are heavily dependent on others.
- RIBA gives needed mobility support, while removing the humanized shamed attached to being dependent, creating a kind of autonomy In contrast to a legal-juridical context, in interpersonal relationships, the loss of privacy is more akin to a negotiated boundary through which bonds and intimacy are created; whereas in the former it is always portrayed as a loss.
Revealing Relations of Fluid Assemblages
“However, when it comes to things that are fluid assemblages, there is also another set of dynamics in terms of how a stable relation can emerge from a variety of other possibilities and solidify in use. Specifically, in addition to humans being able to introduce variations in use, things that are fluid assemblages also introduce variations in how they present themselves. They can automatically customize themselves to specific users in specific contexts, showing up in slightly different con”gurations depending on the user and situation. “Smart” devices, for example, are customized from the “rst moments of setup, and the personalization only continues during use and through connection to other services with accounts and user data and machine learning capabilities. There are thus multiple sources and kinds of instability—or what can be called multi-instability.”
“Breakdown is the inverse of Heideggerian withdrawal during use, the moment when a thing instead comes to presence as a broken, obstinate, misbehaving tool. If withdrawal means things retreating into the shadows, moments of breakdown trigger a metaphorical &oodlight.”
There is a strong notion of nomad subjectivity in these fluid assemblages, but a bit more on the thing-side.