{"id":3979,"date":"2017-03-03T10:59:07","date_gmt":"2017-03-03T10:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oii.ox.ac.uk\/policy\/?p=3979"},"modified":"2020-12-07T14:24:47","modified_gmt":"2020-12-07T14:24:47","slug":"five-pieces-you-should-probably-read-on-reality-augmented-reality-and-ambient-fun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/five-pieces-you-should-probably-read-on-reality-augmented-reality-and-ambient-fun\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Pieces You Should Probably Read On: Reality, Augmented Reality and Ambient Fun"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

This is the third post in a series that will uncover great writing by faculty and students at the Oxford Internet Institute, things you should probably know, and things that deserve to be brought out for another viewing. This week: Reality, Augmented Reality and Ambient Fun!<\/strong><\/p>\n

The addictive gameplay of Pok\u00e9mon GO has led to police departments warning people<\/a> that they should be more careful about revealing their locations, players injuring themselves, finding dead bodies, and even the Holocaust Museum telling people to play elsewhere<\/a>.. Our environments are increasingly augmented with digital information: but how do we assert our rights over how and where this information is used? And should we be paying more attention to the design of persuasive technologies in increasingly attention-scarce environments? Or should we maybe just bin all our devices and pack ourselves off to digital detox camp?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1. James Williams: Bring Your Own Boundaries: Pok\u00e9mon GO and the Challenge of Ambient Fun<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

23 July 2016 \/ 2500 words \/ 12 min \/ Gross misuses of the “Pok\u00e9-” prefix: 6<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe slogan of the Pok\u00e9mon franchise is \u2018Gotta catch \u2018em all!\u2019 This phrase has always seemed to me an apt slogan for the digital era as a whole. It expresses an important element of the attitude we\u2019re expected to have as we grapple with the Sisyphean boulder of information abundance using our woefully insufficient cognitive toolsets.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pok\u00e9mon GO signals the first mainstream adoption of a type of game \u2014 always on, always with you \u2014 that requires you to \u2018Bring Your Own Boundaries\u2019, says James Williams<\/a>. Regulation of the games falls on the user; presenting us with a unique opportunity to advance the conversation about the ethics of self-regulation and self-determination in environments of increasingly persuasive technology.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

2. James Williams: Orwell, Huxley, Banksy<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

24 May 2014 \/ 1000 words \/ 5 min<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cOrwell worried that what we fear could ultimately come to control us: the \u201cboot stamping on a human face\u2014forever.\u201d Huxley, on the other hand, felt that what we love was more likely to control us \u2014 by seducing us and engineering our compliance from within \u2014 and was therefore more deserving of a wary eye. In the age of the Internet, this dichotomy is reflected in the interplay between information and attention.\u201d<\/p>\n

You could say that the core challenge of the Internet (when information overload leads to scarcity of attention) is that it optimizes more for our impulses than our intentions, says James Williams<\/a>, who warns that we could significantly overemphasize informational challenges to the neglect of attentional ones. In Brave New World, the defenders of freedom had \u201cfailed to take into account man\u2019s almost infinite appetite for distractions.\u201d In the digital era, we are making the same mistake, says James: we need better principles and processes to help designers make products more respectful of users\u2019 attention.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

3. James Williams: Staying free in a world of persuasive technologies<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

29 July 2013 \/ 1500 words \/ 7 min<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe explosion of media and information has made it harder for people to be intentional or reflective about their goals and priorities in life. We\u2019re living through a crisis of distraction. The convergence of all these trends suggests that we could increasingly live our lives in environments of high persuasive power. To me, the biggest ethical questions are those that concern individual freedom and autonomy. When, exactly, does a \u201cnudge\u201d become a \u201cpush\u201d?\u201d<\/p>\n

Technologies are increasingly being designed to change the way we think and behave: the Internet is now part of the background of human experience, and rapid advances in analytics are enabling optimisation of technologies to reach greater levels of persuasiveness. The ethical questions raised aren\u2019t new, says James Williams<\/a>, but the environment in which we\u2019re asking them makes them much more urgent to address.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

4. Mark Graham, Joe Shaw: An Informational Right to the City?<\/a> [The New Internationalist]<\/strong><\/p>\n

8 February 2017 \/ 1000 words \/ 5 min<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cContemporary cities are much more than bricks and mortar; streets and pipes. They are also their digital presences \u2013 abstract presences which can reproduce and change our material reality. If you accept this premise, then we need to ask important questions about what rights citizens have to not just public and private spaces, but also their digital equivalents.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time for the struggle for more egalitarian rights to the city to move beyond a focus on material spaces and into the realm of digital ones, say Mark Graham<\/a> and Joe Shaw<\/a>. And we can undermine and devalue the hold of large companies over urban information by changing our own behaviour, they say: by rejecting some technologies, by adopting alternative service providers, and by supporting initiatives to develop platforms that operate on a more transparent basis.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

5. Theodora Sutton: Exploring the world of digital detoxing<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

2 March 2017 \/ 2000 words \/ 10 min<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe people who run Camp Grounded would tell you themselves that digital detoxing is not really about digital technology. That\u2019s just the current scapegoat for all the alienating aspects of modern life. But at the same time I think it is a genuine conversation starter about our relationship with technology and how it\u2019s designed.\u201d<\/p>\n

As our social interactions become increasingly entangled with the online world, some people are\u00a0insisting on the benefits of disconnecting entirely from digital technology: getting back to so-called \u201creal life\u201c. In this piece,\u00a0Theodora Sutton<\/a> explores the digital detoxing community in the San Francisco Bay Area, getting behind the rhetoric of the digital detox to understand the views and values of those wanting to re-examine the role of technology in their lives.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Authors<\/strong><\/p>\n

James Williams<\/a> is an OII doctoral student. He studies the ethical design of persuasive technology. His research explores the complex boundary between persuasive power and human freedom in environments of high technological persuasion.<\/p>\n

Mark Graham<\/a> is the Professor of Internet Geography at the OII. His research focuses on Internet and information geographies, and the overlaps between ICTs and economic development.<\/p>\n

Joe Shaw<\/a> is an OII DPhil student and Research Assistant. His research is concerned with the geography of information, property market technologies (PropTech) and critical urbanism.<\/p>\n

Theodora Sutton<\/a> is an OII DPhil student. Her research in digital anthropology examines digital detoxing and the widespread cultural narrative that sees digital sociality as inherently \u2018lesser\u2019 or less \u2018natural\u2019 than previous forms of communication.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Coming up!<\/strong> .. The platform economy \/ Power and development \/ Internet past and future \/ Government \/ Labour rights \/ The disconnected \/ Ethics \/ Staying critical<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the third post in a series that will uncover great writing by faculty and students at the Oxford Internet Institute, things you should probably know, and things that deserve to be brought out for another viewing. This week: Reality, Augmented Reality and Ambient Fun! The addictive gameplay of Pok\u00e9mon GO has led to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":3984,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[448,451],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3979"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3979"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4911,"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3979\/revisions\/4911"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}