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GILLESPIE, Tarleton :
Imposing Law through Technological Design: A Consideration of the FCC “Broadcast Flag”

- What happens to technology when they are desined to function like law, constraining user actions?
- In this case, the technology must be built not only to constrain action, but to limit user innovation
- Broadcast Flag case…
- US gvmt gave away spectrum to broadcasters in 1990′s for use for digital transmission, with condition that when switchover to digital happened broadcasters would give back analog spectrum
- Content industries threatened to withhold their product, slowing the digital switchover, unless copyright protection was built into the system
- Broadcast flag: two parts, one marking the content and the other a set of rules that govern what’s done once the flag is read
- Why can’t you hack your TV, disable broadcast flag, and do what you want?
- 2 sets of rules: compliance rules (what you can and can’t do with content) and robustness rules (what users can and can’t do w/r/t the technology; opening up the box, etc.)
- Theoretical issue at stake is user agency
– ideology of ownership
– societal measures: user manuals, etc.
– possible commercial gain through user agency (getting hired by the company, starting one’s own company)
– Building a hood on a car (as opposed to just sealing the engine in a box) subtly postulates a world in which a user *could* (if inclined) open it

SIMON, Bart :
Geek Chic: Machine Aesthetics, The Materiality of Information and the “Hardcore” Gamer
- Donald Norman quote, r.e. the goal of making the computer “fade away out of sight”
- IBM ethic along the lines of the hacker tendency to work in the guts of the machine, Mac invites users to stay on the surface (Turkle?)
- Eco’s thesis that the PC is Protestant, while the Mac is Catholic
- To what extent is the box/operating system open to users, or closed?
- Ultimately all software is based in material hardware
- Conditions that make user alienation from the hardware possible: miniaturization (of processors), design, and LCD screens
- User’s engagement with technology is “imagineered” as an amusing ride (slide of refrigerator-front computer)
- Immersion is ultimate goal of game designers and gaming culture
– “Dumb systems” like console games (playstation, etc) serve to diminish visibility of material technology in the household
- In so-called “twitch games” like Quake etc., the processing speed/video refresh, etc. can actually help or constrain gameplay
– materiality of machine affects immersive gameplay (*structurally similar to Nascar racing?*)
- Case modding: case windows to allow view into the box and display components
- Spectacle of the hardware becomes a component of the experience of the game itself
- “We cannot all be hackers (neither the time nor the inclination), but we are increasingly all gamers”
- Q&A: Case modders who build machines into radios, etc. are maybe drawing attention to the alienation of the technology by ironically packing it into an “invisible” yet incongruous package

TJONG TJIN TAI, Sue-Yen :
User representations of Philips professionals for the “intelligent” house
- “A critical-realist model of user configuration for technology”
- content analysis of publicity images of an intelligent house – people generally staring at screens
- General notion that an intelligent house should be like a human being in some way; “…must know when to keep quiet and when to speak up, what to say and not to say…”, “recogniz[e] what sort of mood we are in”
- Began with question of how Philips engineers configure users
- User configuration: Akritch; Production of Consumption: Schot, Albert de la Bruheze; Values: Pacey (virtuosity, economic, user)
- Content analysis of images shows that they depict a far higher percentage of males 18-45 than the rest of the Netherlands population, and a *far* lower percentage of females over 45 (4% compared with 20% in the general population)

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