Interfaces and Us

Zachary Kaiser is Associate Professor of Graphic Design and Experience Architecture at Michigan State University, USA. His research and creative practice examine the politics of technology and the role of design in shaping the parameters of individual, social, and political possibility. His work has been featured in national and international exhibitions, and his writing, on topics ranging from the future of the arts in higher education to dream-reading technologies, appears in both scholarly and popular publications.

Acknowledgements
Introduction

1. Historical and Conceptual Roots of the Computable Subjectivity
Introduction: Disrupting the Insurance Industry—“Convenience” and “Freedom”
Producing and Looping, or, Biopolitics and Biopower
The Value of Convenience
Freedom and Countercultural Technocracy
The Selfish System: Cybernetics and Rational Choice Theory
Markets as Information Processors: Cybernetics and Economics
The Neoliberal Governmentality
Conclusion: Foundations and Ramifications

2. Data=World
Introduction: Can You “See” Your Dream Data?
Data and World: An Origin Story
Computational Instrumentation: Templates and Translations
How Computational Instruments Disappear
Conclusion: The Great Inversion, or, Operationalism’s Legacy

3. Prediction and the Stabilization of Identity
Introduction: Whisper and the Scrambling of Algorithmic Anticipation
The Digital Production of Fragmentation and Alienation
Ontological Insecurity: One Consequence of Fragmentation and Alienation
The Digital Mirror Self: Soothing Ontological Insecurity with Computation
The Role of UX in Producing, then Soothing, Ontological Insecurity
Consequences: Soft Biopower and the Proscription of Potential
Conclusion: Becoming Cyborgs

4. The Moral Imperative of Normality through Computational Optimization
Introduction: The Optimized Professor and the Pressures of Optimization
Measurement, Normativity, and Morality: Two Origin Stories
The Moral Imperative of Self-Optimizing Technologies: The Case of the Amazon Halo
Consequences: Anxiety, Superfluity, and the Instrumentalization of Interpersonal Interaction
Conclusion: Fighting for Servitude as if it Were Salvation

5. The Questions of Political Economy and the Role of Design Education
Introduction
Question 1: The Issue of Political Economy and Chile’s Socialist Cybernetics
Question 2: The Role of Design Education in Resisting the “Reality” of the Computable Subjectivity and the Reformist Approach
Conclusion: Returning to Political Economy and the Limits of the Reformist Approach to Design Education

Conclusion: Towards a Luddite Design Education
The Politics of UX and the Computable Subject as the Ideal Political Subject
The Lingering Problem: The Computable Subjectivity and Political Economy
The Revolutionary Approach: Luddite Design Education
A Provisional Program of Luddite Design Education
A Luddite Design Education, Now

Bibliography
Index