Grasping the Teams meeting?
Although we have grown more accustomed to digital ways of working, it’s entirely possible that we haven’t yet quite understood how the digital truly functions. The challenge with digital working is that, as we no longer share space with our co-workers, we also lose our familiar grasp of ordinary, everyday situations.
So how do we grasp digital space? Is there a way to inherently “know” and “feel” how digital tools function? And how do we address complex digital processes, including the biases inherent in them?
It’s been one year since remote working suddenly became the norm. We created our make-shift home offices in guest rooms, garages, children’s bedrooms and closets. Our teamworking spaces and conference rooms became Zooms, Teams and Hangouts. Digital remote working took a giant leap forward across countless businesses, schools and other institutions. To make our new work routines function properly we shifted our teaching, our meetings and even our lunch breaks online, and we learned to use the tools available to us — while dealing with their inevitable shortcomings. But even as we’ve grown more accustomed to the digital ways of working, it’s possible we’ve not learned how the digital really functions.
The digital is abstract: it’s based on code. A code that someone somewhere has written, and, as a result, doesn’t necessarily follow a logic familiar to you or me. I personally have had a hard time trying to comprehend the inner logic of Microsoft Teams, for example. How on earth can it be so complicated and unintuitive? Many times, my remote work has led to frustrated yelling.
In short, digital tools may be hard to get your head around. By comparison, pen and a paper are incredibly easy to work out. We can find a pen on our desks without even looking (well, in theory at least, when our desks have not endured 365 consecutive days of work-from-home) but the same is not true of many digital tools. Digital tools lack the physical space, and the links with the laws of physics and materiality. The question we therefore need to ask is: how do we grasp the digital space? Is there a way to inherently” know” and” feel” how our digital tools function?
This question is not only limited to being able to use Teams without a meltdown but reveals two considerable challenges associated with the digital:
1. The digital disrupts our embodied way of knowing the world.
2. The digital adds intensity and a further layer of abstraction to our social, cultural, economic and political initiatives and challenges.
Moreover, these questions are tied together and form complex intertwined sets of challenges, for both individuals and societies. The first question brings forth the difficulty of grasping how digital tools work and function. Our thinking, and our being in general, do not happen in some abstract space of the brain, both activities are inextricably tied into our bodies. And our bodies, in turn, are tied into the physical space we inhabit. Hubert Dreyfus, philosopher and professor at UC Berkeley, argued back in 2001 that one of the challenges of digital working is that we lose our grasp of the situation: closeness to co-workers, body language, facial expressions, movements, and so on. Furthermore, Dreyfus argues that we lose the knowledge normally gained through being and sharing the same physical space. Dreyfus quotes Nietzsche to illustrate his point:
“I want to speak to the despisers of the body. I would not have them learn and teach differently, but merely say farewell to their own bodies — and thus become silent.” (Dreyfus, 2001. p.143–144)
The second challenge is closely entangled with the first: when we don’t grasp the tools we are using, we miss out on an embodied familiarity with them. We might think we are using a tool for communication, but the tool is at the same time collecting, and selling, information about us. The data can then be used to influence or even manipulate our behaviour, purchasing decisions and our thinking. Furthermore, digital processes, often involving machine learning, may have biases that affect our thinking and limit our actions. An image search, for example, might categorise women as people working in the kitchen and men as someone carrying a briefcase. This applies to racism too: a person of colour may be tagged as a criminal, for example. Such inner workings of complex digital processes are impossible to fathom from just googling things or using Zooms. And yet they are something we should all definitely be aware of.
In our paper Grasping the future of the digital society, we attempt to present one way of thinking through these challenges. Inspired by the work of Dreyfus (and others), we define the act of “grasping the digital” as the awareness and involvement of an individual in the digital world. We argue that we should approach the digital through the notion of embodiment; discussing how the digital actually feels and developing an embodied knowledge and understanding of it to complement our intellectual understanding so that we are better able to better grasp the digital world. Taking a critical approach to our surroundings, whether we’re talking about a digital or a more familiar physical setting, is an important starting point. After that, art, creativity, and a fearless attitude to tinkering with our digital underpinnings may lead to a more easy-to-grasp and, hopefully, better digital experience. Maybe in the future, we won’t have to yell at computers so much?
Tomi Slotte Dufva
Tomi Slotte Dufva is a lecturer at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture. His research revolves around the digital, AI, future studies, art & technology, media and education. He is also a visual artist mixing traditional and new media.
Dufva, T., & Dufva, M. (2019). Grasping the future of the digital society. Futures, 107, 17–28.
Dreyfus, H. L. (2001). On the Internet. Routledge
