The faces of Frontiers: Amber Case

The faces of Frontiers: Amber Case

Amber Case calls herself a Cyborg Anthropologist, defined as "a framework for understanding the effects of objects and technology on humans and culture." Named one of Fast Company's Most Influential Women in Tech in 2010, she's spoken at TED and is now coming to Florence to speak at

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Thu 16 Jun 2011 12:00 AM

Amber Case calls herself a Cyborg Anthropologist, defined as “a
framework for understanding the effects of objects and technology on humans and
culture.” Named one of Fast Company’s Most Influential Women in Tech in
2010, she’s spoken at TED and is now coming to Florence to speak at Frontiers
of Interaction.

 

You’ve described your research work as doing ‘future history,’ observing
internet pioneers’ relationship with the concept of ‘online identity.’ What
elements or concerns [in this field] have you observed as constant over the
past 20-30 years?

 

There’s something I’ve been calling a “utopia phase” of every
online network. It’s the moment in time when the network first begins and the
first few people are out there exploring the space, meeting each other, and
finding what the network can do. If you go back to the discussions that were
exchanged on the first bulletin board systems in 1978-1979 you can see the
excitement that exists there. The early IRC discussions are similar. The Well
was a fantastic place where people from all over the world were having these
intense discussions. They would sometimes meet in real life and feel like they
had all known each other for years. Twitter had a similar feeling in the
beginning, when people realized that they could share things so quickly and
easily. After a while, though, a place begins to fill up, and spam-bots and
random people come in and try to sell things or troll or mess with people. It
becomes a little less magical because the discovery stage has ended and it’s
kind of a normal space where everyone is. I see this happen again and again no
matter what era of technoconnectivity people happen to exist in. There are
always these spaces being created, opening up and being explored. It’s all very
exciting.

I think the magic of the web and one’s online identity is that when you’re
online you’re not rooted to a certain geography. For instance, you can get to
know me from before you’ve even met me, because my online identity can interact
with you before you even meet me in real life. Online, your mind can travel
farther than your body, and this is very exciting. It’s especially important
for those who live in situations in which they don’t really fit into the
community of people around them. Online they are really able to find people
that they get along with and that understand and share the same interests as
them. This is something that has been constant over the past 20-30 years. The
only difference now is that more and more people are discovering this fact
because more people have access to the web. Before, only a comparatively small
number of researchers and students had this opportunity.

 

We’ve interviewed Mark Coleran on fantasy user interfaces in films, while
you speak of evaporating interfaces. How different is this imagined future of
interaction from your own vision?

 

In the beginning, the most basic interfaces were composed of solid buttons.
In order to get a machine to do something, a series of buttons had to be
pressed. In order to get the buttons to do something else, you had to take
apart the machine and hardwire the buttons to do something else. Then you had
to put it back together and make sure it didn’t break down. When software
arrived on the scene, the entire idea of buttons changed. Suddenly, buttons
didn’t have to be solid anymore. They could appear anywhere on the screen. They
were no longer solid, they were liquid. If you wanted to change what the
buttons did, you could edit the code behind the buttons without taking apart
the machine. This was revolutionary! Also, with software programs and a
computer monitor, a single screen could hold any amount of buttons in any
amount of configurations you desired! So computing for a very long time has
been solid buttons, then liquid buttons. What is next? Well, as the saying
goes, “From solid, to liquid, to air”. But what does a button made of
air look like? Well, first, it is invisible! It is action based. Xerox Parc
researcher Mark Weiser coined a term for this type of interaction with
computers. He called it “calm computing”. The idea is that the power
of computers will increase, but their physical form will decrease and recede
into the background. So what is an example of an invisible button? Well, when I
get home at night, the lights in my house automatically turn on because my
house has detected that I am home. Simply the action of me walking up to my
house has triggered the lights to go on. I didn’t have to press a single
button. The idea behind calm, invisible or ubiquitous computing is that the
interface gets out of the way and lets you live your life. That’s how I think
of the future of computing and the future of the interface.

 

What advice do you have for social media users who wish to set boundaries
to protect their privacy?

 

Don’t put things up online that you might regret later. Unlike a spoken word
or small action, there is a geological history of your thoughts and actions
stored online. Everyone can be a paleontologist and dig up what they wish.

Learn more about where your information is going and think about how much of
it you want to share. Spend some time tweaking the privacy controls on your
Facebook page. Understand that if you are cognitive of how you present yourself
online you can do very interesting and powerful things online instead of simply
share that you are having a bad day. You can reach further and learn more than
you have before. You don’t have to share every detail of life – only the ones
that will set up a feedback loop that will help you reach your goals. If you
have to share delicate information, try to send it to trusted people on private
channels such as text or Email. I would suggest reading sociologist Erving
Goffman’s Presentation of Self in Everyday Life from 1965. The book was as
relevant in the year it was published as it is in today’s digital world.

 

Have you been to Florence or Italy before?

 

No, but I have heard from the world that it is a beautiful place with
amazing, intelligent people. What I am most excited about are the historical
buildings. Where I am from the history only goes back a few hundred years. I
know that Bruce Sterling likes Italy, and he has very good taste.

Check out all of Amber’s blogs, websites, and socials at http://caseorganic.com/

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