From Screens to Ambient Bodies: Rickert and Hawk on the Mundane
Podcast:
This podcast seeks to expand upon Rickert and Hawk's work in proposing the human body as the most mundane of technologies. Using Robert Johnson's concept of the mundane as a lens in which to read both Rickert and Hawk, I suggest that the trend toward immersive media experiences is linked with and inseparable from the idea of (what I call) ambient bodies.
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Comments
The idea of a "complex
The idea of a "complex constellation" of technologies where individual technologies are never considered by themselves but only as a whole is reminiscent for me, as I'm sure it is for you and Hawk and Richter, of Heidegger's concept of the "referential totality" where each constituent part of any workspace or frame of human experience "refers" to one another, operating in a ready-to-hand harmony with each other part such that they conceal themselves by withdrawing into the whole or "totality." For Heidegger, this ready-to-hand referential totality only becomes obvious/apparent to the dasein/human entity experiencing it when some constituent part breaks down, revealing the totality as present-to-hand, something of which the human user is consciously aware.
The way I understand this, and I may be wrong, is that in the ready-to-hand subsumption of dasein into the referential totality through doing work in it, dasein/the human DOES become part of the referential totality or complex technological constellation.
I'm sure it does, but in what ways does your concept of ambient bodies move beyond these Heideggerian conceptions? I find particularly interesting (and fresh) the idea of more than one body being incorporated into the technological constellation/totality. What is the upshot of this technological communion? Do ambient bodies become of rhetorical agency to one another in non-traditional (perhaps "asignifying") ways? What might be a concrete example of ambient bodies in technological constellation with one another? This might be helpful in my becoming more readily able to think this in many ways unthinkable (pre-rational, mundane, ready-to-hand) idea.
The Keyboard is an Extention of the Hand
I really appreciate the direction you took with this podcast. The emphasis on the inclusive nature of ambiance and the immersive nature of technologies work well together.
As an immersive environment, computers, as you point out, allow information to flow freely and along avenues that may not have been noticed or even possible prior to the advent of these technologies. Thus they present an interesting space that can be utilized in a number of ways, our specific scope here being potiential classroom applications.
As I listened to your podcast, I couldn't help but think about the Ittersum article which speaks to the conflict of how technology should serve (or be served by) the writer in a given rhetorical situation. Your point about technologies not being split into individual entities (or bodies) echoes Christina Haas' stipulation cited by Ittersum, that there is no single computer. Regardless of networks and other forms of interconnectivity, each computer is different with its own software, hardware and applications. Thus each computer is a relationship between its user and the ways in which it facilitates his/her activities. This idea obviously supports the concept of the computer (and other technology) as am immersive/ambient environment where the user is but one part of a complex system that functions as a illusionary whole, though each inseperable part is at work in community to make the function possible.
Another point from Ittersum's piece is the idea of whether technology should be adapted to the users current practices, or whether the user should adapt his/her practices to the technology. This conflict is illustrated by Engelbart who claims users and technology should 'co-evolve' to develop new practices, versus Licklinder (glad I didn't have to go through grade school with that name) who argues that technology should be developed to serve the users current practices in new and convienent ways.
I'm not sure which side is right (or if either are) but the idea that technology and users meld and work together would lead me to believe that either approach would be successful.
Good Podcast,
Nate
I like your (ambient) body
Hi, Kyle
I appreciate the way in which you are able to link Johnson's concept of the mundane to the Rickert and Hawk readings. I agree with you that what Rickert and Hawk are arguing is that we must break down distinctions between being and doing, user and tool; that, in other words, we are and always have been in a state of mundanity.
I also like your idea of "ambient bodies" for two reasons. First, because it gets away from the idea of the physical, planted body (and, as you know, I'm all for that post-human stuff). And second, because that term is really troubling and therefore raises tons of questions that I think are exciting, potentially productive, and definitely worth exploring.
The first issue that your coined term raises is how might "ambient bodies" change the way Rickert's ambient linking works. Ambient bodies complicates Rickert's definition of ambience because it draws the body "out of" the amalgamation of the elements that constitute ambience itself (environment, technology, bodies, language, really everything ...everywhere...ever). What I mean is that if Rickert's ambience is grounded in the idea of "linking" without giving any one element "primacy" over the others (he writes, "a multiplicity of connections are always ongoing and interactive, and none of which can be said to be primary."), then "ambient bodies" seems to suggest that while linking is occurring, everything will eventually link back to the "body" part--This, I think, is a really interesting complication, because it refuses to take bodies completely out of the rhetorical equation (which seems to be the impulse of current rhetorical, post-human scholarship). What our readings continue to wrestle with, which your own reading seems to do as well, is what place is there for the body, the human? In other words, where is the human agent in all of this? (Because, we seem to think that despite our preference for ecology theory, he's still out there).
I also wonder how your term complicates or is similar to embodiment. I wonder if "ambient bodies" falls too close to what Rickert calls "hardware" or does it instead sit, quite nicely, on the precipice between "hardware" and "software" and in doing so help to move, affirmatively, away from that software-hardware, being-doing binary? Additionally, if being starts with the body--after all, Einstein couldn't invent until he was physically born (dumb analogy, but you get where I'm going here)--then "ambient bodies" might ground Rickert's ambience in a really important way and help us to resist the urge to move too far away from the physical, the practical, the potential applications of these theories.
Either way, let's talk soon about putting this term up on Urban Dictionary and see where the masses take it.
Best,
Allison