The event will take place at Macquarie University on Friday, April 28th, in the Macquarie Arts Function Centre (Arts Precinct, Level 1, Building C).
Schedule
9:00 – 9:30: Coffee in foyer
9:45-10:00: Conference Introduction
10:00 – 11:00: David Spurrett: "On Hostile and Oppressive Affective Technologies"
11:00 – 12:00: Nick Brancazio: "The co-creation of meaning in tech-mediated spaces"
12:00 – 13:30 Lunch (roof garden)
13:30 – 14:30 Jelle Bruineberg: "Attending in the attention economy"
14:30 – 15:30 Michoel Moshel: "Neuropsychological deficits in disordered screen-use behaviours: A systematic review and meta-analysis
15:30 – 16:00 Afternoon tea
16:00 – 17:00 Amanda Third: Youth Agency, Child Rights and the Promise of a Well-Designed Digital World
Abstracts:
On Hostile and Oppressive Affective Technologies - David Spurrett (UKZN)
4E approaches to affect tend to focus on how users can manage their situated affectivity, perhaps in analogy to how they can help themselves cognitively through epistemic actions, or by using tools, artefacts and scaffolding. Here I focus on cases where the function of an affective technology is to harm or manipulate the agent engaging with it. My opening example is the cigarette, where deliberate technological effort has transformed the affective relationship of smokers to consuming nicotine. I follow this case studies of two very different affective technologies. Casinos and electronic gambling machines deploy computationally intensive affective technology to shape the onset and continuation of gambling episodes. High heeled shoes, on the other hand, affectively engineer wearers’ relationships to their own embodied capacities, and are predominantly expected to be worn by women. I conclude with some preliminary thoughts about the size and shape of a space that could contain such varied examples.
The co-creation of meaning in tech-mediated spaces - Nick Brancazio (Macquarie University)
Tech-mediated interactions are notoriously prone to misunderstandings. This is unsurprising to 4E theorists, given that in unmediated agent-agent interactions, making sense together can involve linguistic statements colored by tone and inflection, sharing embodied meaning through gestures and cues, affective sharing, and contextual aspects involving the environment and institutions in which they are situated. In this talk, I’ll look at (1) different kinds of interpersonal interactions in tech-mediated spaces and how we can think of differences in the interpersonal affordances offered therein, (2) the re-shaping of meaning by tech in these interactions, and (3) differences in the shaping of agents in participatory sense-making within tech-mediated spaces.
Attending in the attention economy - Jelle Bruineberg (Macquarie University)
The aim of this talk is to investigate the notion of attention that underpins debates about the attention economy: what is it about the omnipresence of digital technologies that seems to make it difficult to attend to what is relevant? Much of the contemporary literature assumes that digital technologies bombard us with an overload of sensory information, making it difficult to apply scarce attentional resources to the relevant information. I will articulate a number of shortcomings of this view. I will then develop an action-based account of attention in which the need for attention stems from the need to coherently organize action. Using this action-based view, I will develop a more specific diagnosis about what it is about digital technologies that makes attending difficult: digital technologies change the layout of action possibilities in the environment, and thereby make it more difficult to coherently organize actions.
Neuropsychological deficits in disordered screen-use behaviours: A systematic review and meta-analysis - Michoel Moshel (Macquarie University)
Given the predominance of screens in our everyday lives, the excessive and problematic use of technology, such as online gaming, internet browsing, social media, and smartphones, has raised concerns about their impact on our cognitive abilities. For many, technology is used to the exclusion of other obligations, needs, or responsibilities and causes quite significant functional impairments. The effects of disordered screen use on cognitive functioning have yielded mixed and inconsistent results in prior research, prompting this systematic review, which aimed to estimate the magnitude of overall cognitive impairment and the cognitive domains most affected by disordered screen use behaviours. We also aimed to determine the sensitivity of different cognitive tests in detecting impairment and whether the cognitive deficits were influenced by the classification of screen-related behaviours or the format of test administration. We identified 43 cross-sectional studies that assessed neuropsychological performance in individuals with disordered screen use behaviours, out of which 34 were included in the meta-analysis. The results of the meta-analysis revealed that individuals with disordered screen use behaviours showed significant small to medium cognitive deficits (g = .38) relative to controls. The cognitive domain most affected by disordered screen use was attention and focus, with a medium effect size (g = .50), followed by a significant reduction in executive functioning (g = .31). We also found that the classification of disordered screen use behaviours into internet or gaming categories or the format of cognitive testing did not moderate these deficits. The study emphasises the importance of methodological considerations in interpreting disparate findings and demonstrates that disordered screen use can significantly impact cognitive performance. It concludes with recommendations for future research and discusses the implications of the observed cognitive deficits.
An integrationist account of the impact of Wayfinding Technologies: navigating between technophilia and romanticism - Alex Gillett (Macquarie University)
Human spatial cognition is profoundly shaped by our cultural ecologies in a variety of ways – language, social practices, embodiment, niche construction, concepts, and technologies. Careful understanding is needed here because our connection to place, and how we navigate around the world, is profoundly important for human well-being (Scannell & Gifford, 2010; Ingold, 2000). Evidence related to some wayfinding technologies – such as GPS devices – appears to imply “cognitive deskilling” (Gillett & Heersmink, 2019). But some of the analysis here verges dangerously towards unwarranted romanticism, in which there is an implicit ‘in the head is best’ stance. Another nexus of complicating factors here are the inherent values imbued in wayfinding technologies due to late-stage neoliberal capitalism – “surveillance capitalism” (Zuboff, 2018; Hebblewhite & Gillett, 2021). In order to navigate between these elements, so that we can avoid being overly optimistic or pessimistic, I propose that an integrationist account (Menary, 2007; 2018) is warranted. By distinguishing between offloading, scaffolding, and integration (Menary & Gillett, 2022), I demonstrate that an integrationist account can provide an adequate understanding of how human spatial cognition is enculturated in these complicated circumstances. And how to think about designing wayfinding technologies that are supportive of human well-being.
Youth Agency, Child Rights and the Promise of a Well-Designed Digital World - Amanda Third (Western Sydney University)
In recent years, rights-based approaches to children’s engagement with the digital environment have featured prominently in the work of governments, civil society and the private sector, culminating most recently in the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s adoption of General Comment 25 on children’s rights in relation to the digital environment. A concept of the agentic child is central to both the Convention on the Rights of the Child and a rights-based approach to understanding and supporting children’s interactions with all things digital.
At the same time, there has been a flurry of design-based initiatives to ensure children around the world can realise their rights in relation to the digital environment. These initiatives include, for example, safety by design, privacy by design, and child rights by design.
If design aims to preclude certain actions and encourage or nudge others, then the emphasis on design as a mechanism for delivering on children’s rights in the digital environment is in tension with the idea that children have agency. This paper thus asks to what extent it is possible to design for children’s agency. Drawing upon an in-depth qualitative study with over 700 children in 27 countries about their digital practices, to inform the drafting of UNCRC General Comment 25, this paper examines how children themselves configure agency in order to suggest how the tension between agency and design might best be navigated.