… this is not necessarily a negative paranoid setting – it can be creative as well (see Koolhaas and others). Also I found the following text (Anne Galloway) which tries to get a broader approach for the notion of ‘invisibility’ as mentioned usually in combiantion with new technologies by following definitly a non-linear thread …
Despite the appearance of novelty, ubiquitous computing draws on a long and complex history of relations between materials and ideas, industry and business, government and law, individuals and groups, to name but a few. All of these processes have been mobilized – and will continue to be mobilized – to shape Ubicomp as we know it. To separate ubiquitous computing from these contexts is to deny that it is always already embedded in practices of everyday life. It is precisely this blurring of boundaries, this hybridization, that challenges traditional practices of autonomy and social control, and makes responsibility and accountability increasingly difficult to locate. Just as context shapes Ubicomp, so too ubiquitous computing shapes contexts of interaction. Recalling Latour, I believe we are not politically ready to engage Ubicomp as long as we continue to assume that ubiquitous computing merely comprises new tools, neutral in and of themselves, and independent of broader networks of relation.
I still like to think about the increasing hybridization expressed in developments of technology as a link or hint towards a general process. And despite the positive and mulitiple possibilities inherented the current actual imaginations are seemingly not ready to conceive the meaning of hybridization on a social level. Within this process thus the facets of control are yet going to be emphazised and thus have to be critizied as well.
