User-Agent: If everything is so smooth, why am I so sad?
<p>Today, any inhabitant of a city is treated as a computational User by default. Smooth interfaces and real-time feedback loops augment our urban experiences, making us feel empowered, while subjecting us to processes of profiling, quantification, optimization and isolation. However, the sense of comfort and personal freedom that is gained comes at the cost of political agency and autonomy.</p> <p>This book aims to investigate what it means to be a human User in today’s technological infrastructures. While it attempts to grasp and map out a complex structural issue, it also reflects on the impossibility of addressing the problem alone, from a singular vantage point or field of expertise. Drawing on interviews with practitioners, including policy researchers, UX designers, software developers, architects, journalists, artists, social activists and media theorists, it brings together new (and sometimes opposing) perspectives on the issue.</p> <p>What strategies can we employ to gain more agency? How can we become aware of our own position and be re-politicised? And what does it mean to create and distribute printed content in the age of ubiquitous computation? 11 interviews, accompanied by a short essay, represent one of the many possible constellations of disparate ideas, viewpoints and interdisciplinary strategies for contesting platform capitalism.</p>
Authors: Anastasia Kubrak
Contributors: Nicolay Boyadjiev, Benjamin Busch, Genevieve Costello, Lina Dencik, Cade Diehm, Lucia Dossin, Lídia Pereira, Rinie van Est, Sam Hart, Silvio Lorusso, Surya Mattu, Francis Tseng
Copy Editor: Laura Schuster, Will Pollard, Nicoleta Pana
Essay Advisor: Rana Ghavami
Graphic Designer: Anastasia Kubrak