Human-Technology Relations – The Empirical Turn

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Hermeneutical Approach – Readiness-to-hand and Presence-at-hand

The first systematic and comprehensive study of the technology and its implication on the life of human beings can be traced back to Heidegger’s work on ‘tool analysis’ (Zwier, 2011; Verbeek, 2005). Heidegger, in his study of tools, focuses his attention on the hermeneutical aspects of the role of technology on human beings. He seeks to understand how the reality is revealed to and interpreted by human beings through the use of tools. He maintains that tools ‘connect’ people to the reality (Verbeek, 2005; Verbeek, 2011b). In order to explain this, among other concepts, Heidegger introduces two notions: ‘readiness-to-hand’, Zuhandenheit, and ‘presence-at-hand’, Vorhandenheit (ibid).
To explain the notion of readiness-to-hand, Heidegger uses the example of a hammer. When a person uses a hammer to drive a nail, her/his attention is not directed toward the hammer itself but to the world. The world is presented to the person and the person perceives it through the use of the hammer. The hammer itself withdraws from perception and attention of the person; what remain are the human being and its world (Zwier, 2011; Verbeek, 2006; Verbeek, 2005). Another example will illustrate this: consider talking to a friend on your mobile phone, you are not talking to the phone but through the phone to your friend. The phone itself is withdrawn from your attention. Hence, you are connected to the outside world through your mobile phone. In these examples, the hammer and the mobile phone are ready-to-hand and it is through these ready-to-hand artifacts that human beings’ involvement with reality takes shape (Verbeek, 2006).
However, sometimes it happens that the hammerhead is detached from its handle or your connection through the mobile phone to your friend is interrupted because of bad network or low battery. At this moment, your attention is directed back toward the tool/device itself. When this happens, you try to reattach the hammerhead to its handle or in the case of mobile phone, you try to move around looking for a spot where you can get a good signal while constantly checking the bars on your mobile screen or you try to connect it to a power supply in the case of low battery. In these last two examples, the hammer and the mobile phone unfolded from being ready-to-hand to become present-at-hand.
Using a phenomenological approach, Martin Heidegger sets to find the essential characteristics of technology, in another word, the ‘conditions of possibility’ of technology – the essences and conditions that cause the technology to come into being. Due to this focus on the search for the essences and the essential characteristics of the technology, Verbeek (2005) argues, concrete technologies retreat from sight. ‘Technology’, instead, take their place. This approach makes it less potent to deal with and explain our modern, technological artifacts and their implications on our everyday life. Consequently, this approach is criticized to be essentialist / transcendentalist; Verbeek argues: “Heidegger’s transcendentalist approach is not able to give an adequate account of modern, technological artifacts.” (Verbeek, 2005, p. 94).

Existential Approach

The other classical philosopher of technology, Karl Jaspers, focuses his attention on the existential aspects of the role of technology on human existence. He paid attention to the question: what makes human beings human and what is the role of technology in this process? Jaspers, like his contemporary philosophers of technology, looked for conditions of possibility of technology. He contemplated on technology as a whole, overlooking concrete technologies. In conclusion, he asserted that technology has ‘alienation’ properties which take away the possibilities for human beings to realize their existences authentically (Verbeek, 2005). Here again, technology is approached monolithically – as a whole – and concrete technological artifacts retreat from consideration. Verbeek (2005) draws upon Jaspers’ idea, that technology may influence the way human beings realize their existence. Verbeek asserts that if concrete technological artifacts are brought back into consideration, this would help to identify new possibilities for realization of human existence by the use of technological artifacts: “If, however, technology is ‘forwardly’ approached in terms of concrete roles it plays in human existence, this directs our attention to the existential possibilities that technologies open up for us, rather than close off” (Verbeek, 2005, p. 38).
As discussed above, classical philosophy of technology overlooked concrete technologies. Some of the contemporary philosophers of technology, however, criticized this approach and tried to bring back the concrete technologies under consideration. Next section explains this approach.

Human-Technology Relations – The Empirical Turn

The overlooking of concrete technologies in the classical philosophy of technology in order to find the essential characteristics of technology and its inability to account for modern technological artifacts and their implications on humans’ lives led to dissatisfaction among contemporary philosophers and practitioners. In consequence, this dissatisfaction led to an empirical turn toward concrete technologies with an aim to open up the black box of technological development, its implications on human life, and the actors which are involved in the whole process of technological development (Achterhuis, 2001a; Ihde, 2009). For instance, Albert Borgmann (1984) introduced the notion ‘device paradigm’ to analyze the influence of concrete technological artifacts on human engagement with reality (Tijmes, 2001; Verbeek, 2011b). As another example, Bruno Latour introduced the Actor Network Theory to study the hybrid characteristics of human-technology relation and its influences on society (Verbeek, 2011b).
Don Ihde, one of the founding fathers of post-phenomenology, is among these contemporary philosophers of technology who set to overcome the shortcomings of classical philosophy of technology. Verbeek explains this in the following way: “Don Ihde’s approach … accomplishes this turn from Technology to technologies within phenomenology.” (Verbeek, 2001, p. 122).
Don Ihde (2009), in his approach to turn from studying technology as a whole to the study of concrete technologies, distinguishes several forms of relationship between human and technology. The four different forms of human-technology relationship are: ‘embodiment relations’, ‘hermeneutic relations’, ‘alterity relations’, and ‘background relations. These human-technology relations are explained in the following sections.

Embodiment Relation

Embodiment relation is a human-technology relationship in which technology is embodied by the human being. Human being, then, engages with his/her environment through the embodied technology (Ihde, 2009). Ihde uses eyeglasses as an example to describe this kind of relationship. A person who is wearing eyeglasses perceives and experiences the world through them. She does not perceive the eyeglasses per se. The eyeglasses themselves are withdrawn from the person’s attention and as Ihde (2009, p. 42) puts it, they become ‘quasi-transparent’. This example recalls us of Martin Heidegger’s hammer and his notion of readiness-to-hand. Don Ihde formalizes the embodiment relation in the following way: (Human-Technology) Environment (Ibid.).
What this schematic depicts is how human embodies a concrete technology. The outcome of the relationship, then, perceives the environment/world. For instance, (Human-Eyeglasses) World, depicts that human embodies the eyeglasses and through which human perceives the world. This form of human-technology relation is of importance for the purpose of this dissertation since it shows how human’s perception of the world may be mediated by a technological artifact or in other words how technological mediation in its embodied form, shapes human’s perception. Furthermore, this technological mediation of perception transforms what it is perceived by the human being (Verbeek, 2006). I will describe this further in the subsection ‘Transformation of Perception’, see page 19.

Hermeneutic Relation

Hermeneutic relation is the second form of Ihde´s human-technology relationship. In this form, technology provides the human with a representation of an aspect of the world. Then, this representation is read and interpreted by the human. This form of relation is called hermeneutic because central processes – reading and interpretation – are also central aspects in hermeneutics. Thus, the engagement with the world is mediated by means of the artifact but not through it. In the hermeneutic relation, as opposed to the embodiment relation, the artifact is not withdrawn from our attention. Consequently, we turn our attention to the artifact in order to read and interpret the representation that it provides of the world (Verbeek, 2001; Ihde, 2009). A thermometer is used to illustrate this type of human-technology relation. The thermometer reveals an aspect of the world, the temperature, for us. When we read -25°C on a thermometer – a representation of the outside temperature, we conclude then that it must be very cold outside. Don Ihde (2009, p. 43) depicts the hermeneutic relationship as follows: Human (Technology-World). What this scheme illustrates is how a concrete technology provides a representation of a specific aspect of the world – which is represented by (technology-world) part in the schematic. This representation is, then, read and interpreted by the human. Hermeneutic relation is of importance for the purpose of this dissertation since it shows how human’s interpretations of the world may be mediated by technological artifacts or in other words how technological mediation helps to shape human’s interpretations.

Alterity Relation

The alterity relation is the third form of Don Ihde’s human-technology relation. In this form, technology itself is in the center of the attention. That is, human beings are not related to the world through the artifact or by means of the artifact (as it was in embodiment relationship and hermeneutic relationship respectively); rather, they are related to the technology itself (Ihde, 2009; Verbeek, 2005). As an example of this kind of relationship, Verbeek (2005) uses the automatic train tickets machines. A person buying a ticket from this machine, interacts with the machine choosing the destination, checks the available time, etc. on the screen, pays the fee and then collects the ticket. The person’s attention, here, is directed toward the automatic ticket machine – the technology and not the world. Heidegger’s notion present-at-hand might help to explain this way to interpret the relationship. This notion was illustrated by the broken hammer or lost mobile phone connection because of low battery, see page 14. When a breakdown takes place, the artifact switches from being ready-to-hand to become present-at-hand. The artifact is not embodied anymore since it directs the attention to itself. When a breakdown happens it might be necessary to do something to the artifact so that it becomes handy again. For instance, reattach the hammerhead to its handle or connect the mobile phone to its power supply. This is the moment when the relationship to the artifact switches from an embodiment relation to an alterity relation. Verbeek (2008, p. 389) provides a schematic to represent the alterity relation: Human Technology (-World). What this scheme illustrates is that the human’s attention is directed towards the technology itself rather than to the world. This form of human-technology relation will be used in this dissertation to analyze how some artifacts, because of their design, might repeatedly call for attention, preventing them from being embodied. For instance, consider the small buttons on the keypad of a mobile phone used by an elderly. Since the buttons are small, the elderly person might have difficulty in pressing the right button, therefore, s/he needs to constantly check whether s/he has pressed the right button. Here, the device calls for attention.

Background Relation

The notion of background relation is the fourth form of human-technology relationship. In this relationship, technology helps to shape the context in which our experience of the world occurs but it does not have a central role in the interpretation of the experiences. In the background relation, as opposed to embodiment relation, the technology is not embodied and the world is not perceived through the artifact. In addition, as opposed to the alterity relation, humans are not explicitly related to the technology and almost always do not attend to it (Ihde, 2009; Verbeek, 2005). Consequently, technology disappears to the background. Ihde (2009) exemplifies the thermostat as a technology to which we can have this kind of relation. The thermostat works in the background, namely keeping the room temperature at a certain degree without human’s interactions. However, the first time that a person is adjusting the thermostat’s dial to a certain degree, she is in an alterity relation to the thermostat but then her attention is directed to other things and eventually a background relation is established between her and the thermostat. The schematic for this form of relationship is: Human (-Technology/World).
The four forms of human-technology relationship presented above show how technological artifacts mediate the relation between humans and their world. Later in this chapter I will describe how two of these four forms account for the mediation of human’s perception. This will be described in the subsection ‘Mediation of Perception’, see page 19. Now, I turn the focus towards the theory – technological mediation.

Technological Mediation

In the following sections, all the concepts that together form the theory of technological mediation are explained. Technological Mediation as a theory provides us with concepts suitable for explorations of the phenomenon of human-technology relation. This theory has its roots in post-phenomenological approaches to study concrete technologies and the implications these technologies may have on humans’ lives. In a previous subsection, I described how Martin Heidegger explained that tools / technological artifacts while they are ready-to-hand may shape the human’s involvement with reality – how humans are present in their world and how their world is present to them, see pages 13-14. This way of understanding the human-world relationship pays attention to technological artifacts as mediators of the reality. Verbeek (2006, p. 364) explains the notion technological mediation in the following way: “Things-in-use can be understood as mediators of human-world relationships. Technological artifacts are not neutral intermediaries but actively coshape people’s being in the world: their perceptions and actions, experience, and existence.” (Verbeek, 2006, p. 364).
However, the notion of mediation should not lead us to the dichotomous thinking – the subject / object divide. This is the exact kind of thinking that phenomenology and post-phenomenology have criticized. In order to avoid falling back to the dichotomous thinking abyss, a specific post-phenomenological reading of this notion should be adopted. In this way of reading, technological mediation is the origin of objectivity and subjectivity and not something in between of the pre-given subject and object. As Verbeek (2011a, p. 392) puts it: “In such a post-phenomenological reading of the concept of mediation, the ‘subjectivity’ of human beings and the ‘objectivity’ of their world are the result of mediations.” (Verbeek, 2011a, p. 392).
When technological mediation takes place, or to say it in other words, when technological artifacts mediate the relation between humans and their world; technological artifacts influence their users on two facets of experience and behavior (Verbeek, 2006). Technological artifacts mediate human beings’ perceptions of their world. In addition, they mediate human beings’ actions toward the world. Goeminne and Paredis (2011) explain this as follows: “Technologies help to shape how reality can be present for human beings, by mediating human perception and interpretation; on the other, technologies help to shape how humans are present in reality, by mediating human action and practices.” (Goeminne and Paredis 2011, p. 102).
These two facets of technological mediation, mediation of perception and mediation of action, are explained in sections 2.4 and 2.5 respectively.

Transformation of Perception

The transformation of perception will be better understood with the use of some examples. In the case of the embodied relation, consider observing the moon with a telescope. With the naked eye we might just see a white plate with some gray stains on that plate and some small white blinking dots in the background of this white plate (This is exactly what I experience/perceive when I look at the night sky with my naked eyes.) On the contrary, looking through the telescope, we might be able to see more details on the moon’s surface; we might find out that those things that looked like stains are actually craters on the moon. Even though we see more details of the moon through the telescope but we fail to see those small white blinking dots which were visible to the naked eye.2 This example illustrates that using a telescope has caused certain aspects of the moon to be amplified (now we can see the craters on the moon) while certain aspects have been reduced (we no longer see the blinking stars in the background). Ihde (1990, p. 76) puts it this way: “Embodiment relations simultaneously magnify or amplify and reduce or place aside what is experienced through them.” Phenomenologically speaking, this simultaneous ‘amplification’ and ‘reduction’ are the structure/essence of the transformation of the perception (Verbeek, 2006).
2 I have to admit that I have not experienced looking at the moon through a telescope. Therefore, so that my account to be legitimate, I went online and looked for videos or photos to see how the moon looks like when observed through telescope. This, itself, is a good example how modern technologies may mediate our experience of the world (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7L2gi782NY, accessed on August, 2013).
In the description of the hermeneutic relation form, the example of thermometer was used. There, I mentioned that the thermometer represented / amplified a certain aspect of the world, namely temperature, while other aspects such as rate of humidity, UV radiation rate, etc. were overlooked / reduced. However, there might be other devices that for instance represent the rate of humidity or the UV radiation rate but instead overlook another aspect of the world. This is another example that shows how technological artifacts have the potential to transform the perception of their users. Ihde (1990, p. 48) introduces the notion of “technological intentionality” to describe technological artifacts’ potential to transform human’s perception. According to Verbeek (2008, p. 392) the notion of technological intentionality needs to be understood: “as the specific ways in which specific technologies can be directed at specific aspects of reality.”
These examples are used to illustrate how technological artifacts have the capacity to transform the perception by amplification and reduction. Another example will be used to explain the notion transformation of perception: Consider a person using a technological artifact for a specific purpose; the use of this specific artifact causes the person to experience a certain aspect of reality, that which is amplified, while simultaneously she is being deprived of experiencing other aspects of reality, those which are reduced. Therefore, by using an artifact, she gains something while she loses other things. So, in an analysis of an artifact, we can look for what we gain and what we lose by its use in terms of perception and experience of reality.
Having presented the ways in which technological artifacts mediate human beings’ perception of their world, now I turn my focus on how technological artifacts mediate human beings’ action toward the world in the following section.

Program of Action, Translation of Action, Delegation, and Prescription

Program of action can be understood as an ‘intention to do something’. For instance, if your intention is to ‘open the entrance door to your apartment’, your program of action is to ‘open the door to the apartment’. Human beings are not the only ones that can have a program of action; artifacts may have program of action too. A light switch on the wall has a program of action. Its program of action is to turn on/off the light once it is flipped up or down. Another example is a game you play on your computer or your smartphone; its program of action might be to entertain you while you are playing it. Bruno Latour (1992) defines the program of action as follows: “The program of action is the set of written instructions that can be substituted by the analyst to any artifact.” (Latour, 1992, p. 175).
Furthermore, two different programs of action may combine to form a new program of action. For instance, suppose that a person’s program of action is to ‘enter into her apartment’. A key’s program of action is to ‘unlock a specific lock’. The combination of these two programs of action results in a new program of action; that is, ‘unlocking the door to the apartment by the key in order to enter the apartment’. Hence, when two entities (either human or nonhuman) with different program of actions come into a relationship, it may result in a new program of action. This phenomenon has been noticed by Latour and he calls this ‘translation’ of programs of action or ‘translation of action’ in short (Verbeek, 2006).
The definition of the program of action illustrates how an artifact’s program of action is put into / inscribed in the artifact by its analyst / designer. The process in which the designer gives a specific artifact, a desired program of action is called ‘delegation’. Hence, the designer delegates a specific program of action or responsibility to the artifact (Verbeek, 2006).
Once the program of action is inscribed in the artifact, the artifact itself requires the user to behave in a specific manner. This specific way of behavior imposed on the user, is called “prescription” by Latour (Verbeek, 2005). For instance, while I am writing this text on the word processor, every now and then I make some spelling or grammatical errors. Once the error is there a red or green curly line pops up on the screen. Their presences inform me that I have made a mistake and require / prescribe me to do something about it. Since I do not like having these disturbing curly lines on the screen I stop writing and start looking for what has gone wrong trying to make it correct. As it happens often to me, when I start to write again, I have forgotten what I wanted to write because of the interruption by the prescription. As it is evident from this example, the ‘program of action’ is to have an error free text. The designers of the word processor have ‘delegated’ to the word processor the task of recognizing and locating the spelling and grammatical errors and notifying the user by the colorful curly lines. In addition, they ‘prescribe’ the user to do something in order to correct the errors.

Script, Invitation, Inhibition, Context Dependency of Script, Multistability

The concepts program of action, delegation, and prescription were described above. I return now to the concept script of a technology and its definition. According to Latour (1992, cited in Verbeek, 2005), the script of a technology is the “built-in” prescriptions or in Verbeek’s own words (2005, p. 160): “A script is thus the program of action or behavior that an artifact invites.” This can be exemplified by the spelling / grammar checker in the word processor that invites to correct the error or the speed bump that invites the driver to slow down. Looking from another angle, we might notice that these scripts also ‘inhibit’ certain kind of actions or behavior. For instance, the spelling / grammar checker inhibits making mistakes otherwise you are punished by those disturbing, colorful, curly lines (in my case, it seems to me that I am being punished because of the mistake that I made) or the speed bump inhibits driving too fast otherwise you might damage your car.
In the subsection, Transformation of Perception, I described how amplification and reduction structure the transformation of human’s perception. By the same token, in the translation of action by means of technological mediation, certain actions are ‘invited’ while others are ‘inhibited’ (Verbeek, 2006). Phenomenologically speaking, this ‘invitation’ and ‘inhibition’ are the structure/essence of the translation of action. What is important to be remembered is that: technological artifacts have the ability to direct our actions by invitation and inhibition. An example will help to explain these processes: Consider a person using a technological artifact for a specific purpose; the use of this specific artifact causes the person to act / behave in a certain manner and to stop acting in another manner. But this does not mean that the users always follow what is inscribed in the artifacts or to say it in other words that they follow the prescriptions. For instance, Andrew Feenberg (1995, cited in Achterhuis, 2001b, pp. 80-82) has brought to the foreground the case of Minitel use in France as an example of user’s not following what is inscribed in the technological artifact. Minitel was primarily designed as an accessory to telephone so that its users may have access to central data in order to do some task such as telebanking etc. but instead some users used it for communication, gossiping and other unimagined uses (Achterhuis, 2001b, pp. 80-82).
Ihde’s concept multistability may be used to explain what happened in the Minitel case. According to Ihde (2009), each artifact might have certain stabilities but depending on the context in which the artifact is being used a specific stability becomes prominent, hence the notion of context dependency of the scripts inscribed in the artifact. In order to get the idea of multistability, Ihde (2009) provides us with the example of a Necker Cube. Depending on how we look at the Necker Cube we might see different shapes. Therefore, in the Minitel case, at first, Minitel was multistable but because of the specific way of using this device by certain users, one of the stabilities was selected for and became stable for that specific group of people. Those who followed exactly the prescriptions provided by the device have stabilized another form of stability, the one which was intended by the designer of the artifact.

Table of contents :

Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Aim of the Study and Area of Interest
1.2 Contribution of the Study
1.3 Scope and Limitation of the Study
1.4 Structure of the Dissertation
Chapter 2: Theoretical Framework and Literature Review
2.1 Classical Philosophy of Technology
2.1.1 Hermeneutical Approach – Readiness-to-hand and Presence-at-hand
2.1.2 Existential Approach
2.2 Human-Technology Relations – The Empirical Turn
2.2.1 Embodiment Relation
2.2.2 Hermeneutic Relation
2.2.3 Alterity Relation
2.2.4 Background Relation
2.3 Technological Mediation
2.4 Mediation of Perception
2.4.1 Transformation of Perception
2.5 Mediation of Action
2.5.1 Program of Action, Translation of Action, Delegation, and Prescription
2.5.2 Script, Invitation, Inhibition, Context Dependency of Script, Multistability
2.6 Theoretical Framework – a summary
2.7 Remembering
2.7.1 Prospective Memory
2.7.2 Retrospective Memory
2.8 Internal and External Strategies to Remember
2.9 Memory Aids
2.10 Electronic Memory Aids
2.11 ICT–enabled Memory Aids
Chapter 3: Methodology
3.1 Research Paradigm
3.2 Research Approach
3.3 Research Method
3.3.1 Participants and the Participation Criteria
3.3.2 Data Collection
3.3.3 Data Analysis
3.4 Validity and Reliability
3.5 Ethical Considerations
Chapter 4: Empirical Findings and Analysis
4.1 Calendars on Mobile Phones, on Computers, and Online Calendars
4.2 Alarms on the Mobile Phone
4.3 Notes on the Mobile Phone and Computer
4.4 Contact List on the Mobile Phone
4.4.1 Program of Action – an Extended Analysis
4.5 Bookmark Option on the Web Browser
4.6 Online Banking and Automatic Payment of the Bills
4.6.1 Script and Program of Action – an Extended Analysis
4.7 Global Positioning System (GPS) and Online Maps
4.8 Notifications
4.9 Summary of the Findings
Chapter 5: Discussion
Chapter 6: Conclusion
6.1 Reflections
6.1.1 On the Choice of Philosophical Worldview and the Theoretical Framework
6.1.2 On the Conducting of the Interviews
6.1.3 Closing Reflections
6.2 Further Research
References

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