Reflections of the needs for Safe modes; and who needs them – Konstantin Economou

Konstantin Economou. Bearhug, I´m your best friend. 2020. Still image and internet meme from hacked family security camera inset into image of glass bears sculptures. The notion of the Bearhug conveys the feeling of giving care and love but with a too tight squeeze, just that little bit uncanny. Bearhug is also a term in economics meaning a “friendly” takeover offer, here denoting the complex relationship between user and used, and who is in service of whom in contemporary everyday technology life.

The ways in which technologies have permeated private and personal life have been widely discussed during the last century, and now well into the 21^st we are in the midst of its latest formulations. A shift from technologies as enhancers of human ability, and of possibility to develop, enrich and further human life, to a view of technologies as veihcles of control, surveillence and ownership has made us aware of both the promises and pitfalls of being permeated by contemporary algoritmic digital technology. Of how we become part of the machine itself in order for it to function, and to seemingly fulfill its promise of making for us a better life…

Preemtive strike

We are more and more connected, more and more giving input to the algoritms that need to feed of our input as data in order for them to learn what we are like, who we are and what we porduce. From input of our selected content to the bouncing back of our own “choices” made unselectively as offers to buy what the algorithm already “knows” that we want. For this we are just the object of desire for the machine, the customer that the AI can throw suggestions at, in the hope that something will stick, and that we will click the button to buy…or to brush it aside with a stroke of our fingers, if not a full hand, of rejection. So, our agency becomes one of reacting rather that acting preemptively – a “reagency”. If we are first and foremost the providers of data that the machine needs in order to learn what we “want” so it already “knows” it before us, the only thing we need to do, and in fact can do, is to just act normally – going about our everyday life generating the type of data that the AI machine can use as “knowledge” – everything it needs to function in order to give us back our desires we should know we have, but just haven´t realized yet. And when we are presented with them, we can feel confirmed: isn´t somebodys´ knowledge of what I want or need the strongest proof of caring? Like a parent, or a partner knows me better than I do myself, technology has learnt to replace them with a preemtive strike of moving in closer to me, and pretend to know better what it is I really want. To become my carer.

Self-protection

But can technology cope with so much caretaking? Keeping its users safe and sound – for them to continue to use and buy, might be exhausting. The machine might need to pause, to take a rest. Safe mode protects the technology itself – but doesn´t being in safe mode contradict what would be a “normal mode”, thus maybe making the ordinary use a potential danger? Does it then mean that what technology needs protecting from is us, the lacking users? Then the idea of who is in service of who is overturned – technology needs to go into safe mode to be protected from its users. And, from the shere multitude and mass of all the virtual and material energy that we are generating to keep up –to keep production and consumption going to perpetually continue over the top…

surplus

But yet, apart from temporarily shutting down in safe mode, the default will still be “surplus mode” – offering us a multitude of possibilities inherent in the technology and in the interfaces and hardwares that we are offered and given – but that we in fact are paying for dearly – not just with our money but also with our time. What was sold as competitively beneficial and timesaving stack up both expenses and hours of work to setup, maintain and upgrade. Thus it gives us continous work to do, rather than freed-up time and resourses – what was once the inherent promise of technological advancement. Thus even green technologies that claims to be a solution to the climate crisis will just serve to keep up the surplus levels of energy.draining consumption that we are convinced we need. Need for what – for being modern individuals retaining our ultimate freedom: that of choise of consumtion, but not anymore as citizens in a community understanding the needs of coming together to deliberate – to make the choises that are important for societies to function?

Pause

Maybe it is the ultimate irony that technology has found the need to create a safe mode to protect itself from the overload its users create in their process of energizing the surplus of choises that is on offer. And for us, the-user-of-technologies (as opposed to the active citizen engaged in social dialogue) the safe mode becomes a numbing sense of not being able to act – not being able to browse, to click, to surf, to like, to hate, to date, to cancel…and thus becoming frozen in timespace in waiting for the system to reset. But, maybe, the safe mode is the temporary pause, and memento mori needed to remind us to slow down, and to see ourselves and our peers…Before we choose to run ahead…