The Questions Concerning Technology An Essay by L.M. Sarcasas theconvivialsociety.substack.com What sort of person will the use of this technology make of me? What will the use of this technology encourage me to notice? Does the use of this technology bring me joy? What limits does the use of this technology impose upon me? Upon what systems, technical or human, does my use of this technology depend? Are these systems just? technologyethicscollections
What Do Metrics Want? How Quantification Prescribes Social Interaction on Facebook A Research Paper by Benjamin Grosser computationalculture.net What are the effects of this enumeration, of these metrics that count our social interactions? In other words, how are the designs of Facebook leading us to act, and to interact in certain ways and not in others? For example, would we add as many friends if we weren’t constantly confronted with how many we have? Would we “like” as many ads if we weren’t told how many others liked them before us? Would we comment on others’ statuses as often if we weren’t told how many friends responded to each comment? In this paper, I question the effects of metrics from three angles. First I examine how our need for personal worth, within the confines of capitalism, transforms into an insatiable “desire for more.” Second, with this desire in mind, I analyze the metric components of Facebook’s interface using a software studies methodology, exploring how these numbers function and how they act upon the site’s users. Finally, I discuss my software, born from my research-based artistic practice, called Facebook Demetricator (2012-present). Facebook Demetricator removes all metrics from the Facebook interface, inviting the site’s users to try the system without the numbers and to see how that removal changes their experience. With this free web browser extension, I aim to disrupt the prescribed sociality produced through metrics, enabling a social media culture less dependent on quantification. metricstechnology