The fabric of digital life. Uncovering sociotechnical tradeoffs in embodied computing through metadata
| Date | 13 August 2018 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JICES-03-2018-0022 |
| Published date | 13 August 2018 |
| Pages | 311-327 |
| Author | Andrew Iliadis,Isabel Pedersen |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information & communications technology |
The fabric of digital life
Uncovering sociotechnical tradeoffs in
embodied computing through metadata
Andrew Iliadis
Department of Media Studies and Production,
Lew Klein College of Media and Communication, Temple University,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, and
Isabel Pedersen
Department of Communication and Digital Media Studies,
Faculty of Social Science and Humanities,
University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Oshawa, Canada
Abstract
Purpose –This paper aims to examine how metadata taxonomies in embodied computing databases
indicate context(e.g. a marketing context or an ethical context) and describeways to track the evolution of the
embodiedcomputing industry over time through digitalmedia archiving.
Design/methodology/approach –The authors compare the metadata taxonomies of two embodied
computing databasesby providing a narrative of their top-level categories. Afteridentifying these categories,
they describehow they structure the databases around specific themes.
Findings –The growing wearables market often hides complex sociotechnical tradeoffs. Marketing
products like Vandrico Inc.’s Wearables Database frame wearables as business solutions without
conveying information about the various concessions users make (about giving up their data, for
example). Potential solutions to this problem include enhancing embodied computing literacy through
the construction of databases that track media about embodied computing technologies using
customized metadata categories. Databases such as FABRIC contain multimedia related to the
emerging embodied computing market –including patents, interviews, promotional videos and news
articles –and can be archived through user-curated collections and tagged according to specificthemes
(privacy, policing, labor, etc.). One of the benefits of this approach is that users can use the rich metadata
fields to search for terms and create curated collections that focus on tradeoffs related to embodied
computing technologies.
Originality/value –This paper describes the importance of metadata for framing the orientation of
embodiedcomputing databases and describes one of the first attempts to comprehensivelytrack the evolution
of embodiedcomputing technologies, their developers and theirdiverse applications in various social contexts
through mediaarchiving.
Keywords Ethics, Privacy
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The wearables industry is a growingarea of personal computing. A Google N-gram search
for the term “wearables”shows use rising in popularity since 2010s. In 2015, Gartner Inc.’s
Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies report –an annual rating of technology industries
that serves as a predictive tool for investors across businesssectors –included wearables at
the top of their hype cycle (at the “peak of inflated expectations”). The following year,
The fabric of
digital life
311
Received10 March 2018
Revised2 June 2018
Accepted3 June 2018
Journalof Information,
Communicationand Ethics in
Society
Vol.16 No. 3, 2018
pp. 311-327
© Emerald Publishing Limited
1477-996X
DOI 10.1108/JICES-03-2018-0022
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1477-996X.htm
Vandrico Inc., an industrial solutions company, collaborated with the professional services
network Deloitte to createthe Wearables Database, a popular marketing tool for purchasing
wearables (the database currentlylists over 400 devices from 266 companies). The industry
shows no signs of slowing down.
Critical scholarship on the wearables market, quantified self and self-tracking
movements has also grown in recent years (Young, 2012;Pedersen, 2013;Nafus, 2016;
Neff and Nafus, 2016), leading to novel insights about ethical relationships with emerging
forms of tactile, embodied computing (Pedersen, 2005). Such alternative approaches can
be expected, as manufacturers push innovative applications for wearables in diverse
domains of social activity, including recreational health and fitness (Yan et al., 2015;
Canhoto and Arp, 2016;Pedersen and Ellison, 2016), organizational and scientific
research (Esposito, 1997;Chai et al., 2014), safety and security (Tang, 2016;Kwee-Meier
et al., 2016), libraries and archives (Bruno, 2015), theater and performance (Kozel, 2008)
and fashion (Ryan, 2014;Berzowska, 2005). At least part of the reason for the increase in
critical scholarship on wearables has to do with companies that enact political and
discursive work when they market wearable technologies to individual consumers and
social groups, establishing narratives built around calls for efficiency and innovation.
The innovation-driven nature of the wearables market and concomitant expectations of
maximal efficiency can mask complex sociotechnical tradeoffs that individuals are
unable to navigate (Acquisti et al., 2015), including concessions related to privacy and
data ownership.
This article proceeds in four parts. First, we highlight the discursive work of wearables
and argue for the importance of tracking suchwork in the market because efficiency is used
as a manipulative lure. To unpack this discursive manipulation, in the second part, we
introduce the concept of embodied computing and explain how the term is preferable to
“wearables”by identifying thematically distinct varieties of body-centered computing. In
the third part, this definitionaffords us a term to discuss origin narratives and the social and
cultural contexts in which embodied computing occurs. Finally, in the fourth part, we
present our central method, the analysis of two databases that store information about
embodied computing technologies through contextual metadata. Vandrico Inc. provides a
marketing-driven Wearables Database[1], while the FABRIC database tracks embodied
computing technologiesand their social impact[2]. Each database tracks the discursive work
of wearables in differentways through metadata curation, producing distinctnarratives and
framing embodied computing tools in different ways. We discuss how the classification
schema for each database reveals not only the motive for collecting the content but also the
value systems and judgments unique to each. As Feinberg (2011) has pointed out, “the
longstanding ideal of neutrality as a design principle for information systems has been
repeatedly problematized.”We proceed by analyzing the top-level metadata categories and
the classification schema used for each database. The overall goal is to show how
innovation-driven discourses surrounding the marketization of embodied computing
technologies are baked into contextualmetadata and how they can be countered by critical
alternative discoursesthat help uncover complex user tradeoffs.
The lure of efficiency: tradeoffs
Histories of efficiency have been well-documented (Cobley, 2009). Researchers have long
contributed to debates surrounding efficiency and media technologies, specifically relating
to tradeoffs shared between technology users and various online developers (Wallace and
Freuder, 2005;McClanahan, 2008;Kambourakis et al.,2014), including technology users’
relationships to privacy (Ackerman, 2004;Bowes et al., 2012), subjectivity and agency
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