Lots of definition were thrown around during the Disobedient Objects (DO) discussion in class. From what I read I gathered I concluded that disobedient objects live in the realm of everyday Electroncis that protests, opposes social norms or suggest social improvements. They draw attention to issues that would otherwise go unnoticed. During class this was further expounded on suggesting that not only do they live in the real world but they are designed to cause interruption to the everyday. It can be argued that Technology slowly removes human interaction from our lives, DO works to bridge the gap between humanity and technology. In the same vain that art is used to educate, inform and touch on, DO uses this bridge to help open our minds and expand our view points.
DO can often straddle the fence and act out the disobedience in terms of the law. They operate in the a legal grey area as a response to the frustrations of people that wish to agitate a system that cannot be burned down.
Garet Hertz talks about there being a spectrum of technology that can add to the DO movement. There is no right or wrong proportion to how much you forgo functionally over a message or vice versa. But it is sometimes posed as a reaction to the maker culture that empowered people to make electronics and yet it puts emphasis on making with purpose. This brings up an interesting point on what is useless or useful? Objects become disobedient when they stray from the intended use. For example, the 79% work clock sounds when 79% of the day has gone alerting women to the gender wage gap in America. When a clock is supposed to go off when you set or just tick away, the act of it going off around 3.40pm and only then makes it disobedient or useless in the connection to your expectations of how a clock should operate and why but in a simultaneous realm it is useful as it act as a reminder.
I worked in a group that discussed the use of social media and the growing community of users who share or post stories without checking validity or necessity. Social media seemingly has little control over what people post beyond censoring ‘hate speech’ or ‘rude’ words. They are trying to tackle these issues but my group suggested a DO that would be an interruption that monitors your usage, suggests alternative solutions for you to mull over and reminds you to check your sources. In other words, it would be a tool to inject social responsibility into a place where freedom of speech is used as an excuse to operate blindly and without tolerance. It took many forms, one was a wi-fi router that users consent to using but just like most free wi-fi providers you would in a coffee shop or bank or at work, it monitors you but in an obvious way. For example, when posting/reposting news stories on social media, a popup with appear asking if sources have been verified, or is it untrue? or if it is promoting hate, violence or intolerance? But it will allow the user to send anyway. Another instance is connecting to bank app service using unsecure public wi-fi connection, it will intrude and ask if they are aware of the amount of time they have tried to connect to unsafe connection in the past months? or they are aware this is not a secure connection? but give them the freedom to proceed anyway. All of these interruptions will be consented to through access to normal access to public internet.
References
AMT Interview with Garnet Hertz (no date). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD43kCvI1wY (Accessed: 19 January 2020).
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