{"id":12291,"date":"2012-10-05T20:50:11","date_gmt":"2012-10-06T00:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=12291"},"modified":"2012-10-07T07:43:07","modified_gmt":"2012-10-07T11:43:07","slug":"salientification-explicitization-deobscuration-looking-for-less-awkward-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2012\/10\/05\/salientification-explicitization-deobscuration-looking-for-less-awkward-words\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Salientification, Explicitization, Deobscuration\u2019: Looking for Less-Awkward Words"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
All your blame is belong to device?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Cyborgology readers, I need your help. I\u2019ve put the post I was writing for today on hold because I\u2019m short a key piece of terminology, and I\u2019m hoping one of you can either a) point me to a good preexisting term, or b) help me to assemble a term that\u2019s a bit more graceful<\/strong> than the ones I can come up with on my own.<\/p>\n

The phenomenon I\u2019m trying to describe is one that I\u2019ve encountered a number of times over the past week, and is a theme I identify fairly often in conversations about newer technologies. I describe it below, first generally and then with a couple recent examples.<\/p>\n

To set up my description, remember that \u2018the physical\u2019 and \u2018the digital\u2019 aren\u2019t separate worlds, and that human behavior \u2018online\u2019 has a whole lot in common with human behavior \u2018offline.\u2019<\/strong> Note that I\u2019m specifically avoiding saying that behavior online \u201cmirrors\u201d behavior offline here, because that would imply that online and offline expressions of a given behavior are actually two separate behaviors that closely resemble each other; after all, your reflection closely resembles you, but you and your reflection are not the same thing. I\u2019m starting from the assumption that the various online and offline expressions of a behavior (sharing, bullying, etc) are, at the most fundamental level, the same behavior.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now that we\u2019ve established that, here\u2019s what I\u2019ve observed: a new technology (or a change to an existing technology) enters the scene, and makes more explicitly visible to us some facet or aspect of human social behavior that a) is usually more latent, subtle, or obscured, and that b) makes us feel anxious, uncomfortable, or even repulsed.<\/strong> The behavioral facet we see on display through the new technology isn\u2019t new, it\u2019s just newly visible (or more visible than it was before); it is also not unique to behavior connected to the new technology, even if the affordances of that technology seem to encourage the specific behavior.<\/p>\n

When we try to identify and explain our unpleasant feelings, however, sometimes we don\u2019t correctly identify the source of our discomfort as having been forced to confront a distasteful aspect of how our society works that we would rather have kept ignoring. Instead, we blame the new technology\u2014and we blame it not for being a too-effective lens, but rather for \u201ccausing\u201d or even \u201cbeing\u201d the unpleasant aspect of our society itself<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

To help illustrate what I\u2019m talking about, here\u2019s a couple recent examples:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

1) Klout. We love to hate Klout\u2014or at least, I love to hate Klout; as I\u2019m so fond of repeating, Klout \u201cencourage[s] nothing good<\/a>\u201d\u2014but let\u2019s face it: \u201csocial ranking\u201d doesn\u2019t happen only through Klout.<\/strong> Social ranking existed well before Klout (else, why would anyone have bothered to built Klout? The concept would have made no sense), and it had the power to affect who got jobs and preferential treatment before Klout, too. At the most basic level, Klout isn\u2019t creating any new kinds of human behavior<\/strong>; Klout is just making more explicit and blatantly visible something that\u2019s usually easier to hide or ignore. Does that something (social ranking) make us uncomfortable? Yes it does. And is Klout trying to smack a glossy veneer of Science\u2122 onto social ranking? Yes it is (and that’s what really gets me). But in the end, what we\u2019re doing when we hate Klout is resenting it for forcing us to acknowledge something about our society we\u2019d rather ignore. Pretending that Klout is the cause rather than a symptom is just an attempt to re-obscure what\u2019s too disquieting to have in direct view.<\/strong><\/p>\n

2) Facebook\u2019s recent announcement that it will give users the option of paying to promote their posts<\/a> on the site, so that more of their \u2018friends\u2019 see them. There\u2019s a lot tied up in here to dislike<\/strong> (where’s that “dislike” button when you need it?): the idea that money talks, the idea that we have to buy our friends\u2019 attention (we don\u2019t like to think about friendship and money at the same time), the idea that our care and attention\u2014two important aspects of friendship itself\u2014can be purchased, the idea that people should act like corporations (first corporations get to be people, now this?), and the idea that your personal identity has become a brand identity<\/a>, to name just a few. But again, promoted status updates are a symptom, not the cause; Facebook wouldn\u2019t be rolling out this option if it didn\u2019t think people would actually use it. We can defriend people who promote status updates all we want, but again, this is just an effort to re-obscure<\/strong>; the problem (problems, really) isn\u2019t the promoted updates themselves.<\/p>\n

There are other recent examples related to self-tracking and decision-making apps that I\u2019ll be talking about next week, but for now, I\u2019m looking for some new words:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
OH GOD CAN’T LOOK<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What do we call what it is that we\u2019re really reacting to when we lash out against technologies like Klout and promoted status updates, which is the fact that something threatening, distasteful, and inescapable is now too visible, too explicit, too overt, too blatant for comfort<\/strong>, is displayed in too-stark relief, has been distilled down to a too-bitter concentrate that\u2019s near impossible to swallow? \u201cExplicitization,\u201d\u00a0 \u201csalientization,\u201d and \u201cdeobscuration\u201d start to get at the point, but I have to admit: they’re pretty awful as words.<\/p>\n

Similarly, what do we call our reactions, our misplaced resentment? What do we call the attempt to re-obscure<\/strong> that which we don\u2019t want to confront by trying to turn the occasion for visibility into the phenomenon itself, by treating the setting of a behavior\u2019s display as its root cause?<\/p>\n

Please leave your ideas and suggestions in the comments section<\/strong>; I\u2019m looking forward to your responses!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Blame the phone image from http:\/\/www.redorbit.com\/news\/technology\/1112522497\/when-carriers-fight-we%E2%80%99re-the-ones-to-blame\/<\/a><\/p>\n

xkcd Klout comic from http:\/\/www.xkcd.com\/1057\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Strange creature can’t look photo from http:\/\/1funny.com\/cant-look\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cyborgology readers, I need your help. I\u2019ve put the post I was writing for today on hold because I\u2019m short a key piece of terminology, and I\u2019m hoping one of you can either a) point me to a good preexisting term, or b) help me to assemble a term that\u2019s a bit more graceful than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1875,"featured_media":12292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9967],"tags":[18503,942,12723,18505,18504,18501,10125,18502,311],"class_list":["post-12291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","tag-explicit","tag-facebook","tag-klout","tag-obscure","tag-overt","tag-terms","tag-visibility","tag-vocabulary","tag-words"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2012\/10\/blame-it-on-tech.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1875"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12291"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12320,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12291\/revisions\/12320"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}