Moral Interfaces

Isn’t the SixthSense’s "natural interface" a contradictory proposition? My understanding of this technology is that it deploys hand gestures arising from metaphors or conventions developed in different social situations as its interface. While one can take a picture by touching both thumbs with both opposing indices, one cannot argue that this is a natural way of photographing objects. A brief history of photography would clearly demonstrate that there are hundreds of different gestures involved in taking photographs and only a few of these, at a few times, benefited from the use of the finger frame.

Perhaps we might present a better term and call the SixthSense’s interface "iconic." Instead of using abstract mechanisms to communicate with the processor, one can now import the constraints of previous materials, oh yay! For example, the SixthSense will project a display of the time if one looks at one’s wrist, because of course a watch fits on the wrist and not on other body parts. In a different world of fashion it could have told the time when one looked at one’s palm as though one were holding a pocketwatch. The reason it is not arbitrary however is because the projector cannot display the time on just any body part, given its own material constraints. The SixthSense brings in the out dated constraints of the watch because that technology’s constraints match its own.

It is absurd to discuss these gestures as though they were “natural,” when they are the result of social conditioning and the distribution of labor between people and machines. Drawing from Latour’s "Where are the Missing Masses?", we can gain insight into how new technology are not only re-appropriating old technological constraints, but their moral labor as well. What is more, we can understand the SixthSense, with its attempt at grounding computing in physical space and in integrating the body, as doing trendy moral work. Pranav Mistry, in his Ted talk goes so far as to claim, “I think that integrating information into everyday objects… will also help us in some way to stay human… it will help us to not be machines sitting in front of other machines.” This sounds like the same kind of alarmism we find all new technologies incur; the only difference is that Mistry thinks more technology will save us by mimicking older technology.

“Oh, yeah, for now. But the beeper's gonna be making a comeback. Technology's cyclical.”
-Dennis Duffy (30 Rock)

"Now, if you're part of Control Group Kepler-Seven, we implanted a tiny microchip about the size of a postcard into your skull. Most likely you've forgotten it's even there, but if it starts vibrating and beeping during this next test, let us know, because that means it's about to hit five hundred degrees, so we're gonna need to go ahead and get that out of you pretty fast."
 -Cave Johnson (Portal 2)