Week3:  Hansen, Mark B.N. “Ubiquitous sensation”

              Veel, Kristin “Calm imaging: The Conquest of Overload” 

“Ubiquitous sensation”

The development of technology gives rise to people’s desire to expand their sensory capacity. Ubiquitous computing makes smooth and invisible cooperation between the technology and its users. It doesn’t require people’s attention. It remains the user’s periphery.

“Calm imaging: The Conquest of Overload”

…Arvidson’s tripartite model seems particularly apt at capturing this multilevel quality of attention. What is of particular interest for us here is his substitution of the term unconscious with margin of attention because he finds the negation inherent in unconscious to be maldescriptive: “The margin has depth and is a genuine dimension in our lives- an ongoing presence in attending life. Just as everything in the unconscious can never be made conscious, but nonetheless some of its content may be active in my ongoing life, everything in the margin can never be made thematic, but nonetheless some of its content may be active in my ongoing life”.(2006, 181).

Replacing the term unconscious with margin of attention does not imply that we are aware of the whole sphere of attention all the time or that events cannot occur below the threshold of our awareness. However, Arvidson’s conception of attention as a sphere(rather than as a binary opposition between conscious and unconscious) makes it easier to imagine the nature of our interaction with calm technology, and it provides a model for understanding how we can be affected by what goes on in the margin even if we are not aware of it, which seems to be at the heart of the discomfort with ubiquitous, calm computing that we have seen in the criticism of softwear-sorted societies and in Rokeby’s Sorting Daemon……..

I wonder if I understand the context correctly, yet, Kristin Veel explains about ‘calm computing’ and its influences, for instance, quoting Arvidson’s opinion as a key for the awareness about today’s situation. Maybe, it can be connected with the last week’s my thought about the role of art. Through it, people can have the power to overcome problems in their lives and recover from the stress of modern life.