Post AHgOzYtO67mIBFPHEG by mrufrufin@post.lurk.org
(DIR) More posts by mrufrufin@post.lurk.org
(DIR) Post #AHdaAEyZvGcaDCDi6a by entreprecariat@post.lurk.org
2022-03-21T12:27:22Z
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Hi all, I'm currently preparing a workshop on "misconvenience" and I'm curious to know what you think of this notion and what concrete examples come to mind with it. By "misconvenience" I mean the quality of those technologies where the knowledge necessary to understand or modify them is not accessible but opaque.I'm inspired by the notion of industrialization by Ivan Illich and that of proletarianization by Bernard Stiegler. The former argued that when technologies become industrialized they cease serving the users but they become self-serving. The latter suggested that the proletarian is the one robbed of their know-how. From this I identify two qualities. Inconvenient Convenience: the quality of technical solutions that seem to improve someone's life by making a task easier, faster or completely automated, but actually they generate subservience, proletarianization, or negative externalities. Inconvenient convenience is generally deemed "smart".eg: infinite scroll, face recognitionConvenient Inconvenience: the quality of these techniques that deliberately introduce slowness, friction, manual labour, non-automatized decision-making to indirectly improve one user's experience. eg: the bike, making your phone black and whiteDoes this resonate with you? If so, how? thx!
(DIR) Post #AHdkQdyVkCE5v4eIVM by pixelflowers@notbird.site
2022-03-21T14:22:22Z
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@entreprecariat one could argue that...workshops themselves aren't that much accessible. The opaque technologies are a fact, but will their average, generic victim ever attend a workshop about them?
(DIR) Post #AHdxEnigzBvm4VvunQ by Femke@post.lurk.org
2022-03-21T16:45:54Z
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@entreprecariat but all depends on whose convenience, and at what moment in a process, right? Could it be that misconvenience locates a bit too much power in the tool/tech itself?Lately, we've been picking up a long running thread on awkwardness, discomfort and clumsiness -- it is not the same obviously but maybe something to look at:A catalog of formats for digital discomfort (Jara Rocha; continued with @ccl and Karl Mubarak in The Cell for Digital Discomfort at BAK) http://titipi.org/projects/discomfort/CatalogOFFDigitalDiscomfort.pdf Clumsy Volumetrics (Helen Pritchard) https://volumetricregimes.xyz/index.php?title=Clumsy_VolumetricsAwkward Gestures (vintage!), https://snelting.domainepublic.net/texts/awkward_gestures.pdf+ on the timeliness of convenience:Let’s First Get Things Done! On Division of Labour and Techno-political Practices of Delegation in Times of Crisis (with Miriyam Aouragh, Seda Guerses, Jara Rocha) https://twentysix.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-196-lets-first-get-things-done-on-division-of-labour-and-techno-political-practices-of-delegation-in-times-of-crisis/
(DIR) Post #AHe1XLWMS7WjvvGPxY by entreprecariat@post.lurk.org
2022-03-21T17:34:03Z
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@Femke @ccl thank you for all these references! I'm adding them to the resources and will spend some time tomorrow looking into them. The question you ask, namely, "whose convenience?", really resonates with the framing I'm trying to give to the workshop :) Here's the abstract, btw: Can a technology stop to serve its users by working *too well*? Or, conversely, can the value of a technology lie in the fact that it is *not* perfectly efficient? During this day, we will focus on the notion of misconvenience, namely, the quality of those solutions that, while allowing to save some time and effort, are indirectly detrimental to the ones who use them. Interrogating together the work of Bernard Stiegler and Ivan Illich, we will form two camps: the camp of "inconvenient convenience" and that of "convenient inconvenience". The two camps will gather various materials, make a case for them and present it to the opposite camp. In this way, we will try to shed light on a fundamental question: when it comes to convenience, whose convenience are we talking about?
(DIR) Post #AHe25Fad0jubNrQVRQ by entreprecariat@post.lurk.org
2022-03-21T17:40:11Z
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@RainbowStardiver this is indeed an interesting example, where ppl have to fight algo "conviennce" by resorting to non-automated hacks!
(DIR) Post #AHe3fphiJfDtllkT2m by Femke@post.lurk.org
2022-03-21T17:58:02Z
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@entreprecariat @ccl nice! and who will defend the inconvenient inconvenience camp 😉 + really interested in the outcomes, you keep us posted?
(DIR) Post #AHe3npiw7uuq9C8RoO by entreprecariat@post.lurk.org
2022-03-21T17:59:29Z
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@Femke @ccl someone will need to do the platform's advocate eheh :unacceptable: . Will fwd pads etc. afterwards :)
(DIR) Post #AHg5Lx96beKEgm9roO by indigo@tilde.zone
2022-03-22T17:26:17Z
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@entreprecariatAlthough I see valid use cases for it (flexible scaling), I feel most businesses using cloud platforms are doing it for inconveniently convenient reasons.
(DIR) Post #AHgGB8fsVBFykqX7j6 by praxeology@post.lurk.org
2022-03-22T19:27:34Z
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@entreprecariat I love how you frame the dichotomy. My only critique is that I get confused about which one is Con-Inc and which is Inc-Con and have to keep scrolling back up to the original post.
(DIR) Post #AHgOzYtO67mIBFPHEG by mrufrufin@post.lurk.org
2022-03-22T21:06:21Z
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@entreprecariat ahhh, this is a lot of interesting things to think about. definitely the ability to repair is akin to a sort of power and "ownership" and it has been a huge issue for awhile, particularly with companies cracking down on people showing how to repair their tractors and what not. But also accessibility doesn't really mean anybody can do it and there is always a level of opaqueness somewhere, I mean obviously the architecture of an i9 chip is a greater deal of opaqueness and requires more up-front of the user to be able to understand, but arguably perhaps in some circumstances not as needed and being able to change out a fan. But there's different levels of opaqueness and maybe not everybody needs to know how to even change out a fan in your computer, as it requires some standard of dexterity and tools and not everybody has to availability to invest in that, so obviously it's bad if the balance of power solely resides in large corporations, but there's always going to be some sort of power imbalance. i don't know half of what's going on in my car and don't particularly want to know, yes it would be helpful, but there's other things more interesting and more pressing to me to know.
(DIR) Post #AHgP9nJtJNgpp2gOYq by bfluzin@mastodon.social
2022-03-22T21:08:11Z
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@entreprecariat I like the 7 questions of Postman : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlrv7DIHllEFor me, misconvenience could be : someone solving a problem that wasn't mine, thus creating a problem (habit) that *will* be mine to solve (regulate).
(DIR) Post #AHgPJ8tiSHNVLotgHo by mrufrufin@post.lurk.org
2022-03-22T21:09:53Z
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@entreprecariat notions of subservience and relying on a certain technology is interesting too, as that also has power dynamics at play. I suppose ideally we wouldn't want to be dependent on large power-hoarding entities to live, but I mean, at least some technologies are meant for us not to have to do everything and inevitability we rely on these services provided but then are able to focus on other things and i'm not quite sure where line between relying on something and subservience exists.
(DIR) Post #AHhCE9WFc1qRaJAhg8 by despens@post.lurk.org
2022-03-23T06:18:02Z
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@entreprecariat Isn't this the eternal digital dichotomy, as in "Desire & Efficiency" (Perspects)It starts at touch screen keyboards which are objectively bad to type on, but suggest autocomplete words because your keyboard is "learning" what you want to type. As a result, you cannot type without this incredibly complicated software anymore.Or workflows are optimized so much that "undo" is not possible or conceptually required anymore. There is only one possible outcome for any action, for instance, completing an order.Probably global functions such as copy/paste/undo, screenshotting, and software that asks users to "report bugs" are places/activities where the most friction exists that generates the most user power. The crassest one is probably a user/password based login, the most hated UI pattern, but the one that lets you assume different identities.
(DIR) Post #AHhSMGFY4QxW2hFPsG by entreprecariat@post.lurk.org
2022-03-23T09:18:45Z
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@despens thanks for this. I'm actually really much focused on these small, almost invisible interactions. Coincidentally, I read this answer by Ursula K. Le Guin on autocomplete: "Rewriting is as hard as composition is — that is, very hard work. But revising — fiddling and polishing — that’s gravy — I love it. I could do it forever. And the computer has made it such a breeze. (Once I learned how to keep the computer itself from 'correcting' my grammar, that is. Hey, butt out, Bill Gates, this is MY syntax.)"
(DIR) Post #AHhSdboT9UddqIqz3I by entreprecariat@post.lurk.org
2022-03-23T09:21:55Z
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@bfluzin it's a wonderful definition, thank you!
(DIR) Post #AHhUJOE89g8Rp4LKJU by jine@sonomu.club
2022-03-23T09:40:38Z
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@entreprecariat Where can I find the quote? :blobaww:
(DIR) Post #AHhlN8uUk6VkhKXA8G by despens@post.lurk.org
2022-03-23T12:51:49Z
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@entreprecariat
(DIR) Post #AHk4XbqaIVNImkKT1E by entreprecariat@post.lurk.org
2022-03-24T15:36:01Z
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@despens didn't manage to play this as OST of the workshop but I'll def do it in the next iteration!
(DIR) Post #AHk5CPSdFpUsF6a3w8 by entreprecariat@post.lurk.org
2022-03-24T15:43:24Z
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@jine on her official website! http://www.ursulakleguinarchive.com/FAQ.html#Help 🥰