Seeing Ourselves Through Technology: How We Use Selfies, Blogs and Wearable Devices to See and Shape Ourselves

verfasst von: Jill Walker Rettberg

Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan UK

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Über dieses Buch

This book is open access under a CC BY license. Selfies, blogs and lifelogging devices help us understand ourselves, building on long histories of written, visual and quantitative modes of self-representations. This book uses examples to explore the balance between using technology to see ourselves and allowing our machines to tell us who we are.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

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1. Written, Visual and Quantitative Self-Representations

Abstract

There are three distinct modes of self-representation in digital media: written, visual and quantitative. Each mode has a separate pre-digital history, each of which is presented briefly in this chapter. Blog and written status updates are descendents of diaries, memoirs, commonplace books and autobiographies. Selfies are descendants of visual artists’ self-portraits, and the quantitative modes of lifelogs, personal maps, productivity records and activity trackers are descendants of genres such as accounting, habit tracking and to-do lists. In today’s digital culture, the three modes are intertwined. Digital self-representation is conversational and allows new voices to be heard. However, society disciplines digital self-representations such as selfies and blogs through ridicule and pathologising.

Jill Walker Rettberg

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2. Filtered Reality

Abstract

This chapter proposes using the term ‘filter’ as an analytical term to understand algorithmic culture. In everyday speech, we filter our photos and filter our news. In today’s algorithmic culture the filter has become a pervasive metaphor for the ways in which technology can remove certain content and how it can alter or distort texts, images and data. Filters can be technological, cultural or cognitive, or they can be a combination of these. Examples discussed are the skin tone bias in photography, Instagram filters and the genres of social media as filters that embed a drive towards progress, and baby journals and the apps that automate them.

Jill Walker Rettberg

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3. Serial Selfies

Abstract

Social media genres are cumulative and serial. Looking at an individual post, tweet, status update or selfie tells us only part of the story. To really understand social media genres we need to see them as feeds and analyse each post or image as a part of a series. This chapter looks at visual self-representational genres that are strongly serial: time-lapse selfie videos, profile photos in social media, and photobooths, one of the closest pre-digital precedents of today’s selfies.

Jill Walker Rettberg

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4. Automated Diaries

Abstract

Today’s diary writes itself for you. Apps can turn your smartphone into an automated diary that will keep track of where you go, sort your photos for you and pull in your social media updates to generate detailed records of your life. Lifelogging cameras like the Narrative Clip are clipped to your shirt and automatically take a photo every 30 seconds throughout the day. This chapter discusses the information and images that these devices record and the ways in which they present the data to try to make it meaningful for the user. Are our devices ‘active cognizers’, to use N. Katherine Hayles’ term, making us cyborg selves collaborating with our machines? How do these devices and apps filter our lives?

Jill Walker Rettberg

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5. Quantified Selves

Abstract

The title of this chapter is taken from the quantified self movement, where people track and analyse aspects of their lives such as steps, travels, productivity, location, glucose, heart rate, coffee intake, sleep and more to understand and improve themselves. Quantified self-representation has rapidly become common far beyond this movement, though: one in ten Americans owns an activity tracker such as a Fitbit or Nike Fuelband, and there are hundreds of other devices and apps to measure different aspects of our lives. This chapter considers what we can measure about ourselves and what we cannot measure, and the consequences of seeing ourselves as data bodies, using smart baby monitors, sex tracking and activity trackers as examples. Concepts discussed include dataism, the new aesthetic and machine vision.

Jill Walker Rettberg

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6. Privacy and Surveillance

Abstract

In addition to our intended self-representations, our digital traces are being gathered by entities far beyond our control: government agencies, commercial companies, data brokers and possibly criminals. We have little or no access to these representations of us, although the data that shapes them comes from us. Foucault’s idea of the panopticon is frequently mentioned in discussions of surveillance, but the practices of surveillance are changing yet again. Employers and insurers are just starting to ask us to willingly agree to constant surveillance of certain aspects of our life: our driving or our health, and in return we are promised discounts if we prove ourselves worthy. How can we create a balance between using our machines to see ourselves and being forced to be seen by machines?

Jill Walker Rettberg

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Backmatter

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Titel: Seeing Ourselves Through Technology: How We Use Selfies, Blogs and Wearable Devices to See and Shape Ourselves
verfasst von: Jill Walker Rettberg
Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan UK
Electronic ISBN: 978-1-137-47666-1
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-99539-4
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137476661