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Questions of Practice in Philosophy and Social Theory Edited by Anders Buch and Theodore R. Schatzki I� ��o�!�!n��:up NEWYORKANDLONDON 7 Pragmatist Aesthetics and the Experience of Technology David L. Hildebrand Technology enchants; it makes us forget what we know about life. Sherry Turkle (2015, 13) It is not enough to insist upon the necessity of experience, nor even of activ- ity in experience. Everything depends upon the quality of the experience which is had. John Dewey (1938, 12-13) Technological Practices and the Need for Theory To live in society means to live with technology. It is a complex, multifarious relationship, fraught with a variety of benefits and burdens. Often, when we think of technology, we focus mainly on the devices and the functions they provide. But, of course, these devices are embedded in larger technical systems as well as in the systems comprising existing institutions (banking, trade, education, etc.) and our personal social arrangements. The fact we live with and because of these systems means that when a new device, such as the mobile phone, is introduced, there are disruptions, both micro and macro. New practices arise, older ones vie for survival, and a cascade of changes causes both enthusiasm and consternation. What are we to make of these devices and their attendant practices? What new opportunities do they offer? Which cherished values do they threaten? How are they chang- ing what or who we are? These questions raise the further question: how should we study such phenomena? What will shed light on their practical, phenomenological, and normative dimensions? How can we grasp what they mean, it1 the larg- est possible sense? It is here that both social theory and philosophy can make their contributions. For while the introduction of new technologies is studied in detail by those with a financial stake (manufacturers, mar- keters, investors, etc.)-and those with an indirect financial stake, such as industry-supported academic researchers-philosophers and social theoi;ists often raise broader, more normative concerns. Beyond sizing up individuals Pragmatist Aesthetics and the Experience of Technology 115 as "users" or "consumers," with certain behavioral inclinations and choice- preferences, they want to know how new practices effect well-being or capacity to contri�ute as a citizen. Do new technologies empower people to lead richer and more reflective interior lives? Such theorists, then, situate phenomena within a wider plurality of cultural and ethical imperatives. For this reason, one might argue, theorists are necessary for truly "objective" assessments because they are better positioned to challenge technologies' impact despite (or perhaps even because of) popularity and potential com- mercial success. While I approach these issues as a philosopher, I'm no technophobe. Throughout my life, I've harbored a deep interest and affection for tech- nology (especially phones, computers, and either consumer electronics); an early and enthusiastic adopter of technology, I am typically a key source of advice for family or friends. But my heart is changing, and I am increasingly skeptical. New technologies arrive too early and too often; they promise hyperbolically, break quickly, and inveigle more trust and resources than deserved. Moreover, technologists (and the press which cover them) never advise scaling back or eliminating technology; life, it seems, cannot be improved with techniques that are slower, simpler, or free. My more important concern regarding these devices' uses-the way they are transforming practice and experience in the spheres of family, work, education, and personal life. My contention is that new technologies- particularly personal information technology (PIT)-are affecting expe- rience in profound ways that can best be understood using vocabularies rich in phenomenology and philosophically pragmatic analysis. While I do not find much in social science and communication theory that explores such deep changes in experience, my hope is that philosophical analysis can unearth some important discoveries which can then be reincorporated into both common sense and expert assessments of technology.1 My paper proceeds as follows. After briefly explaining the pragmatic approach (I), I review the technological issues by consulting several com- munication specialists (II); the key question is: how is PIT amending or changing our practices? Most important among these theorists is Sherry Turkle whoj more than the others, pushes beyond usual analyses of behav- ior and usage to the psychological, even existential, stakes. But because Turkle only raises philosophical questions and does not inquire into them, she opens the door to a philosophical investigation of technological experi- ence (III). Here, I deploy the work of John Dewey, William James, and John J. McDermott; these pragmatists articulate different categories of experi- ence and provide nuanced techniques as to how such experience can be analyzed. Finally, applying their work, I make connections between tech- nology, experience, and (pulling it all together) pragmatist aesthetics (IV). I conclude with the suggestion that pragmatist aesthetics provides useful ideals for evaluating, normatively, new technologies being deployed into everyday life. 116 David L. Hildebrand The Pragmatic Framework While further details about pragmatism will be discussed later, here is the basic pragmatist framework within which experience is to be understood. Pragmatists understand human agency in terms of ongoi�g practices. B�t practices are not behaviors somehow separable from feelmgs �nd ex�en- ences; there is a dynamic and iterative relation between undergomg, cogitat- ing, and acting. In brief, no encounter is ever completely nai*ve or raw; rather, thinking is proleptic-always occurring in a matrix of ongoing �eelings and purposes. Action, too, cannot be radically isolated, for we act m resp�nse to feelings and purposes. Any practice, then, is constituted by collocat10ns of encounters, thoughts, and actions all taking place in environments with both physical and cultural dimensions. Such environments contexti:alize practices in crucial ways. An environment may be fecun_d and conductive �f practices' growth; they may be barren or even destructive of growth. Envi- ronments can change, too; fecundity can be replaced by toxicity, transform- ing or destroying practices. This, in general, is the pragmatist picture. �t is a transactional ecology of organisms-constituted-by-practices encountermg, cogitating, and acting in and with their environment. The Pragmatic Concern: What Is Technology Doing to Experience? Given this framework, it is possible to telegraph a couple of pragmatist concerns about the experience of technology. (Evidence for these concerns follows, shortly.) First, if experience is being fundamentally altered by new practices-engendered by, �or example, personal informati?n �echn�lo- gies (PIT)-then we are obligated to understand these alterat10ns qualita- tive character. It is plausible, now, to think that the way we encounter the world is changing; the question is: how? Second, the pragmatist will also be concerned about how reflective knowing is changing. As described by the ecological framework described earlier, knowing emerges from encoun- ters ("had" experience). Therefore, if encounters are changing (if we are increasingly distracted or fragmented by technology), then we must try to understand what happens to thinking built upon such experience. Are the resources for intellection being degraded? Finally, if both encountering and thinking is being altered by PIT, what might this portend for our efficacy as actors? To my mind, these questions about the impact of technology upon experi- ence and human practices relate directly to this volume's missions. One mis- sion is to conceptualize action and practice; my contribution argues that the technological practices we are adopting are still unclear, even disturbing, to us. Conceptualizing them helps locate them as they penetrate our life activi- ties. In addition, the volume also seeks to identify the ways in which prac- tices can be normative. Again, technological practices call out for normative assessment. After all, much is at stake. The level of specific assessments may Pragmatist Aesthetics and the Experience of Technology 117 be local (e.g., are cell phones ruining dinners?) or global (e.g., are we seek- ing control at the expense of authentic feeling?) but the key lesson is that normativity is inescapable. While practices can be described narrowly, no neutral description is ever possible; every description involves selection and emphasis and thus raises questions about prescription-normativity. Prac- tice theory, and pragmatism, both acknowledge and engage the normative dimension from the get-go. Recent Themes in Communication Analyses of PIT PIT and Absent Presence A large literature documents and analyzes the use of technologies of vari- ous kinds, including smart phones (PIT). While Turkle is part of this litera- ture, she pushes beyond it into philosophical territory. Before discussing her work, and the philosophers relevant to it, a quick review of several promi- nent issues around PIT will be helpful. The first deals with the phenomenon Kenneth Gergen (2002) names "absent presence," when people make themselves "absent" from face-to- face situations ("co-presence") by engaging with PIT. Analysts are not uni- vocal on the implications of this phenomenon. Gergen worries that such absences can weaken trust and even moral standards. (Gergen 2002, 232) At the same time, Gergen acknowledges that the technology can empower "new integrations" of people across distances (Gergen 2002, 239). Richard Ling, an academic also employed by the Norwegian mobile powerhouse Telenor, harbors no similar worries; while absences can be disruptive of social life, he argues that because PIT uses are becoming "embedded" in the social fabric (as clock time was), people are adjusting their expectations and etiquette. (Ling 2012, 3-4)2 PIT and Interpersonal Relationships A second prominent research area concerns PIT's effects upon interper-s?nal _relationships, especially those created and sustained in co-present s1tuat10ns. Researchers generally recognize that the near-constant avail-ability afforded by PIT can be both comforting and stressful. Gergen's view is decidedly mixed: PIT can undermine co-present relationships in ways that might weaken moral obligations and even lead to a "whole-sale devaluation of depth in relationship" (Gergen 2002, 233 ); alternately, though, he sees that cyber-relationships can provide empathy and support otherwise lacking, and that such contacts may facilitate closer and more �ntimate bonds that can reinforce co-present relationships. Ling, again, 1s much less worried. Because PIT functions as social mediators, people are prone to forgive a variety of drawbacks (Ling 2012, 7-8). PIT makes micro-coordinations possible, permitting people to exchange information 118 David L. Hildebrand and feelings; the net effect is often, he argues, improved social cohesion (Ling 2012, 1 1 1-112). Ling draws upon Erving Goffman's work on ritual to argue that our new technologies are giving rise to new rituals, the fun- damental basis for all relationships.3 Theorist Nancy Baym, now with the Microsoft corporation, sees the issue as frequently double-sided; on one hand, PIT offers people greater control over relationships via enhanced contact. On the other hand, that increased potential for control may result in the disclosure of private information and opens up the possibility of manipulation by others.4 Still, Baym, like the others, sees ways in which new messaging abilities can extend relationships into new domains and communities of interest (Baym 2015). PIT and Self-Identity A third pertinent area of inquiry concerns PIT 's effects on self-identity. While this is another extraordinarily complex topic that cannot be summa- rized here, several interesting points are germane to this essay's remainder. Gergen, again, strikes chords of both worry and hope. Individuals' increased investment in a "floating world" of online information and communication may result in a dangerous divorce between people and "the pragmatics of everyday life" (Gergen 2002, 235). The divorce is dangerous because the more attention such floating worlds get, the less involved we are in co- present communities. But these communities are crucial for the recognition selves need; deterioration of that sphere, Gergen argues, removes the "scaf- folding for a recognizable self" (234 ); the skills and repertoires necessary for daily relations weaken, and a "coherent and centered sense of self, moral bearings" is threatened (Gergen 2002, 236). Yet Gergen strikes a hopeful note, too. PIT increases one's ability to be more selective about who can contact us, and so we can focus attention upon people that matter; that increased focus, he says, "more effectively sustains one's identity as a singu- lar and coherent being" (Gergen 2002, 238). Baym, for her part, reviews both "utopian" and "dystopian" literature about effects on identity, but sees both as overwrought. Seeking to defuse their concerns, she writes: "These rhetorics are predictable, and tell us as much-if not more-about society than they tell us about technologies" (Baym 2015, 44). Unlike Gergen, she doesn't fret about the wide range of options for identity play, noting that the literature on embodied vs. online representation of identity shows that "most people, most of the time, use new media to act in ways mostly consistent with their embodied selves" (Baym 2015, 118). She notes that online activity can aid identity formation; for example, online self-disclosure, expression, and assertiveness practice can all "help people to work through issues involving control and mastery, gain competence, and find a comfort which they can then transfer to their embodied encounters" (Baym 2015, 139). Finally, she argues that the sup- posed gap between online and offline relationships is overemphasized. "The Pragmatist Aesthetics and the Experience of Technology 119 identity foundations on which new relationships are built," she writes, "can be just as sturdy online as off" (Baym 2015, 141). Sherry Turkle While Sherry Turkle's work fits squarely with that of Gergen, Ling, Baym, and the wider body of communications research, it ventures further in ways which bear directly upon philosophical issues. Turkle is a psychoanalytically trained sociologisr at MIT who has spent 30 years describing and analyzing technology's impact on our practices and identities. Her work encompasses what she calls "the 'subjective side' of people's relationships with technol- ogy, especially computers" and focuses upon culture, therapy, mobile tech- nology, social networking, and sociable robotics. 5 Her recent books, Alone Together (2011) and Reclaiming Conversation (2015), examine how the capacities and applications of recent technologies are already having deep impacts upon experience and identity formation. Her extensive and careful ethnographic and analytic work limn a host of ethical, political, and meta- physical dilemmas raised by new technologies, incorporating case studies worthy of further philosophical analysis. Reclaiming Conversation paints a picture of PIT use that has become pervasive, intensive, and disruptive. Consider the following facts she relays about connectivity: Every 6.5 minutes, Americans check their phones; within five minutes of awakening, 25% of teenagers connect to a device; American teens send an average of 100 texts per day; 80% of teens sleep with their phones; 44% of teens never unplug, even during sports or religious services; most American students use four forms of media at any given moment. (Turkle 2015, 42) This is just a small sample of the data she presents, but it conveys the gist. In addition to teens, of course, parents and younger children are also using PIT. (I shall omit a picture of the Fisher-Price iPad Apptivity Seat, a baby bouncer for "Newborns-to-Toddlers" that includes a 7-inch mirror with the "option to insert iPad (not included) into the mirror's case."6 ) As this degree of connectivity implies, PIT infiltration has spread to venues and practices fundamental to personal, educational, and professional life. Older practices are either being disrupted or displaced, including, for example, the family meal, breastfeeding, bathing and sitting with children, classrooms, offices, and public spaces such as cafes and streets. Thoreau's "Three Chairs" and Disruption Across venues, old norms are being modified or broken, spurred on by new technologies. Turkle is concerned, as are other researchers, not to judge these phenomena too rashly, nor lump them together. Culture is always complex and changing; there is a multiplicity of situations and applications of technology, so caution is warranted.7 The situations Turkle describes, however, are endemic enough-and their implications for the meanings of 120 David L. Hildebrand our practices is profound enough-that attempts at psychological and phil- osophical analysis are warranted. To organize her concerns as a psychologist and sociologist of technol- ogy, Turkle draws from Henry David Thoreau's notion of "three chairs." In Walden, he writes, "I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society" (Thoreau 2004, 140). Thoreau is espe- cially relevant today, Turkle argues, insofar as he sought to live deeply and deliberately in a milieu with accelerating degrees of clamor and distraction. Moreover, T horeau was not against conversation-unlike monks or sages, his proposal of more deliberate living didn't require vows of silence. Indeed, the three chairs metaphor provides Turkle with what she calls a "virtuous circle," and by understanding that circle we glimpse not only the value of conversation, but the basic dangers of PIT. These three chairs plot the points on a virtuous circle that links conver- sation to the capacity for empathy and for self-reflection. In solitude we find ourselves; we prepare ourselves to come to conversation with something to say that is authentic, ours. When we are secure in our- selves we are able to listen to other people and really hear what they have to say. And then in conversation with other people we become better at inner dialogue. (Turkle 2015, 10) Turkle then explains how "technology disrupts this virtuous cycle" (Turkle 2015, 10). The prompts and affordances of PIT have a far-reaching impact on all three basic elements-solitude, friendship, and society-by disrupting the stillness and patience required for empathy: We are so accustomed to being always connected that being alone seems like a problem that technology should solve. And this is where the virtu- ous cycle breaks down: Afraid of being alone, we struggle to pay atten- tion to ourselves. And what suffers is our ability to pay attention to each other. If we can't find our own center, we lose confidence in what we have to offer others. (Turkle 2015, 10) Changes in Habits and Problematic Effects Turkle analyzes disruptions to conversation and empathy as a social scientist and therapist-documenting how changes in technological practice can alter both emotional and physical habits; these new habits are connected with increasingly problematic situations in psychological and social life. Impor- tant changes in habits engendered recently by PIT include: (1) "hyper atten- tion" (as opposed to "deep attention") where attention shifts constantly; (2) "multi-tasking" (as opposed to "uni-tasking"), the rapid switching between Pragmatist Aesthetics and the Experience of Technology 121 actions; (3) "fear of missing out," a constant anticipation of updates, even emergencies; (4) avoidance of co-present interactions (by substituting PIT) because they pose what seems, now, as too great a risk of emotional intimacy; (5) "cognitive offloading," where device or online information resources are substituted for natural memory; and, (6) increased impatience with inter- personal situations containing lulls and silences; such lulls increasingly seem like evils to escape rather than fallow moments generative of new discovery. These changes have generated, Turkle argues, significant psychological and social problems. Here are five of the more important ones. (1) Solitude and loneliness. Constant connection and hyper-attention increase impatience with silence, lulls; this impedes the ability to be alone, self-reflective, and exploratory of one's own feelings and imagi- nation. For many, creative "solitude" has become "loneliness" or "bore- dom." There is a feedback effect, as anxiety to escape loneliness increases the frequency and intensity of digital connections. As Turkle puts it: "In our new culture of connection, we are lonely but afraid of intimacy" (Turkle 2015, 357). (2) Alone-with-others. This impatience with silence/lulls also diminishes the ability to be alone with others; quiet moments of companionship with friends or children become increasingly intolerable. Again, the affor- dance of external stimulation is invited to punctuate those spaces. One casualty of this change is eye contact, which we know is deeply impor- tant to infant and childhood development (Turkle 2015, 28, 36). ( 3) Conversational impoverishment. The anxieties mentioned earlier pro- duce a profound effect upon conversational length and depth. Besides overt disruptions to conversation via divided attention (users multi- tasking, interrupted by notifications, etc.), studies indicate that phones need merely to be present-even just face down-to impoverish conver- sation (Turkle 2015, 21) . Anticipating interruption, conversations are becoming shorter and less intellectually and emotionally adventurous; pale "connection" is replacing earnest "conversation" (Turkl-e 2015, 27, 35). Having lowered expectations about what conversation can deliver, we also anticipate less earnestness or empathy from partners. Echoing some of Gergen's concerns, Turkle worries about the amplificatioμ of coarseness and emotional distance in the way we relate. (4) Existential displacement (absent presence). As with other theorists, Turkle pays considerable attention to absent presence. But she is more concerned than many about how this degrades being together, co-presence. The capacity and temptation to be "elsewhere" is -now embedded in how we inhabit place and time; moreover, powerful PIT techniques keep emerging to keep users online ("clickbait" ). "When we have our phones in our hands," Turkle writes, "we are invited to stay in the world of our phones" (Turkle 2015, 124 ). Such invitations to remain "elsewhere" change the nature of domestic, professional, religious, and 122 David L. Hildebrand (5) public spaces; not only are we seduced away, but we now present a n ew public-facing mien: "do not disturb me." 8 Friction-free engagement. At least in developed countries, there is an increasing assumption that most tasks can be done effortlessly, b y remote control-as evinced by the expression, "There 's an app for that." PIT extends this assumption, Turkle notes, to politics (texti ng, donating, etc.), social intercourse (via texting, Facebook), and fam ily disagreements (over chat) . In other words, the meta-message of PIT i s that everything can be made convenient-including difficult, m essy, human interactions. Turkle's concern is that these presumptions w ill play 'into more frequent miscommunication, and even the frayin g of social bonds.9 Extending Turkle's Concerns: PIT and Experience This review of Turkle is sufficient to show that fundamental changes are at work beyond the level of actions, practices, and norms. Changes are being effected at fundamental levels of both reflective and non-reflective experi- ence. I turn now to a brief review of the pragmatic notion of "experience," especially focusing on the account given by Dewey and James of experience in its basal form. "Experience" is a concept that, once understood, offers a handle that philosophers, theorists, and everyday users might use to appreciate the subtler ways new technologies affect us. In addition, prag- matic experience links us to an alternative aesthetic vision regarding how new habits might be reconfigured in ways more meaningful than those foisted upon us, willy-nilly, by for-profit companies, futurists, and other techno-mandarins. Philosophers Dewey, James, and McDermott on Experience Escaping Epistemology: Experience vs. Knowledge How might Dewey diagnose problems arising in daily life under the impinge- ments of information technology? First, one should recall that Dewey began by rejecting one of philosophy's earliest prejudices: that experience was infe- rior to knowledge. While the history of " experience" is long and complicated, Dewey (and other classical pragmatists) argued that the term's exoneration was crucial to shifting away from metaphysical and epistemological dual- isms.10 In the new Darwinian Weltanschauung, change-not permanence- was the ineliminable basis for stories about human beings and their natural environment. In a dynamic and changing arena, successful adaptive crea- tures develop capacities and utilize resources necessary to survive and grow. While experience certainly includes sensory and emotional components (as the tradition insisted), pragmatists rejected reductive "input/output" sche- mas that made sensation and emotion primordial suppliers of materiel for Pragmatist Aesthetics and the Experience of Technology 123 intellectual work. Indeed, there were various ways, pragmatists said that s�nsation� (as received) were indebted to a range of prior influences (;ogni- t�ve, physic�l, ;tc.); b� �raming sensat_ io_n as another activity, they empha-sized sensat10n s select1v1ty. That select1v1ty was never reducible to reason in any p�re or isolated sense, but depended on a variety of factors, many not reflective. Moreover, "reflection" was also framed as something creatures constantly do; thus, the philosophical traditions' predilection to intellectu- ally prescind "powers" of the mind (sensation, cognition, imagination, etc. ) and then nominalize them was rejected. In place, pragmatists argued for a m?�e dynamic view of human habits which admitted that many of the tradltlonal powers could commingle in complex ways-ways which were saturated, even guided, by emotions. �h_is potted history (about pragmatists' escape from epistemology) anticipates the rescue of "experience" from its lowly status. By rejecting th� dual�sm between "experience" and "knowledge," it was now possible to mvest1gate the many forms and functions experience could take-as con- sciousness, as attention, as inquiry, as judgment, as imagination, and so on. They could offer a reconstructed account of what it meant to know or do �omet?ing-an account not embroidered with a rigid and narrow temporal-tty (stimulus-to-response, sensation-to-conception) . One lesson of Dewey's famous 1896 "Reflex Arc" paper was that human responses should be seen as constituting cir�uits_ or s�tuations; such situations are, themselves, part of more comprehensive s1tuat10ns. The intended lesson, for epistemology, was that our m?re _comple� responses to the world-"knowledge," -emerged from expenential circmts; these experiences are "had" and become available fo� futur: uses. Tests of knowledge claims should be understood in light of this frammg-as experiments which take place in experience. �alient he�e is that James and Dewey were arguing for a conception of active expenence no longer awaiting validation by static, reflective knowl- edge. _Rather, th: masterstroke was declaring experience 's autonomy; if the que�t10n -:vas raised whether a present experience was "right," the answer lay m the issuances of future experience. As John McDermott puts it: Rather than honoring a simple dualism between thought and action the American bent toward the practical should be viewed from a wide; perspective. Both the method of reflection and the method of action are to be seen as conjoined and rotating functionaries of an experimental approach. (McDermott 1976, 10) What this "rotating priority of thought and action" exemplifies McDermott adds, is that: ' e_xperie?ce, as such, has informing, directive, and self-regulating quali- ties which are ordered and managed as subject to intelligence and as 124 David L. Hildebrand responsible to the burdens of the various contexts in which inquir y finds itself. Experience, as such, is educational. (McDermott 1976, 10) The Continuum of Experience: From Had to Known Though Dewey rejected epistemologies' elevation of knowing over feel- ing and acting, he nevertheless recognized there were genuine, functional distinctions indicated by those terms. In works such as Experience and Nature, Dewey delineated two basic kinds or levels of experience to help explain those distinctions. Most basic is what he sometimes calls "primary," "direct," or "had" experience. It is minimally reflected upon or regulated; it is felt, . qualitative. The other kind of experience he names "secondary," "mediated," or "reflective" experience. This form of engagement operates more abstractly, apart from the immediacy of feeling or the shock of events. Secondary experience takes an interest in arranging and rearranging sym- bolic elements, sizing up relations and connections, in service of some fur- ther purpose. 11 The two kinds of experience may be seen on a continuum because both co-constitute the flow of our lives-ways of being, so to speak. (They can be categorized as "primary" or "secondary," as "feeling" or "cognition" insofar as there is a use for those labels-e.g., in psychological or philosophical inqui- ries.) What is important, though, is that "primary" ("had") experience is fun- damental, the qualitative how imbuing every situation. There is a how to the way one is feeling, acting, or even calculating; I awake perturbedly; I solve a crossword puzzle relaxedly; I suss out my flight's gate hurriedly, etc. Note that the "had" aspect of these experiences is not reflective. A reflective experience is always had in some way, but a had experience is not always reflective. (This explains why reflective experience is designated as secondary by Dewey.) Aspects of Primary Experience Relevant to Technology The foregoing effectively conveys how what James called "radical empiri- cism" was integral to classical pragmatism. To get at what was practically at stake in our meanings and actions-the commonly understood purpose of "pragmatism"-one needed to not only debunk bad dualisms, but also take a more earnest approach to what was being experienced. To try to take experience as it is had, to observe and describe without the heavy-handed intrusion of theoretical preconceptions-that was the insight. 12 The relevance of radical empiricistic pragmatism for our purposes, then, is to utilize it to reconceptualize and reexamine anew the effects of the technologies under scrutiny here. Doing this requires some familiarity with pragmatism's close analyses of experience at the "had" or "primary" level. Here, in brief, are several aspects of primary experience useful for a fulsome critique of contemporary technological experience. Pragmatist Aesthetics and the Experience of Technology 125 Relations and Qualities-Experience as Relational and Emotional In wor�s like The Princ�ples of Psychology, James called out philosophers for placmg undue attent10� upon t�ings rather than relations. Famously, he urged_ new respect for relauons, notmg that without relations, things become meanmgl_ess. As �cDermott points out, f or James, "Meaning is located in �he ongomg fabnc ?f relations, by which we mean it is found neither in an ISolated self n�r an isolated thing but, rather, in the environment constituted by s�ared part1cip�tion" (McDermott 2007, 358). Dewey richly details how relational_ transact10ns between organism and environment cross various culturnl fields (e_ducati?n, politics, aesthetics, and more). Besides weamng thmk:rs from a disproportionate attention to things, Ja�e� and Dewey used this new emphasis upon relations to downgrade the pnonty placed upon concepts. Concepts, too often, provide pat formulas that ar� ta�en as permanent realities. Such "vicious abstractionism" (James) was a . philosophic f�llacy" (Dewey) that induces formulaic thinking and d_esens1�1zes our attent10n from the moving, emotional, and qualitative expe-riences imbued the flow of events. Fringe vs. Focus-Experience as Pervasively Qualitative The sh_ift t_oward rel�ti�ns an� away from things and concepts can be understood m light of a s1blmg adJustment involving "focus" and "f * " H " * 1 1 h"l rmge. 1ston�a Y, P i osop�y's development has centered upon the intellectual quest clarity and d:fimti�n. _Pragmatists drew back from their discipline's myopic feal1?' to clanty, pomt1�g out that conscious foci are possible only because of frmge elements not m focus As James puts i't "Our f1"eld f h . . * , s o experience �ve no more defmite boundaries than have our fields of view. Both are fringed forever by a MORE that continuously develops, and that continu- ou�ly sup�r�:des the�_as _life proceeds." (James 1978, 1 58) James' "more" �efies defmm?n �et 1S,, md1spensable for meaningful experience. "The expe- nencmg of this frmge, �cDermott writes, "yields awareness while defying �ny con�eptu�l formulation. For James, the crucial area of human activity 1s found precisely where the conceptual order breaks down " {McDermott 2007, 353) In "Qualitative Thought _, " �ewey tak�s up James's point. However, Dewey refuses to call such qu�htat1ve expenence a "fringe" because that term und�rstates the way a umty of pervasive and underlying qualities "regulates fert_mence_ or . relevancy and force of every distinction and relation" and gmd�� selection and rejection and the manner of utilization of all explicit terms. The presence of such a quality, Dewey continues: enables us to keep thinking about one problem without our having con- �tantly to stop to ask ourselves what it is after all that we are think- mg about. We are aware of it not by itself but as the background, the 126 David L. Hildebrand thread, and the directive clue in what we do expressly think of. For the latter things are its distinctions and relations. (Dewey LW5, 247-48 13 How are these ideas ("fringe" or "pervasive quality") relevant to technol- ogy? For one thing, we can better see how PIT 's new rhythms intervene in our typical fringe/background experience. They tend to reinforce prejudice against the ambient fringes and toward the overt and bright. "Modern man is . . . a victim of clarity. Much of our difficulty proceeds from the demand for certitude and an inability to recognize and live with the irreducibility of shadows" (McDermott 2007, 350) . We should be aware that PIT desensi- tizes us to fringe experience; we become less able to acknowledge experience outside of conscious focus, and less inclined to remember it as necessary to meaning.14 The Connotative: Experience as Learning-_Capable In addition to the ontological points James and Dewey made (about rela- tions and transactions) and those regarding the phenomenology of expe- rience (fringe, focus, pervasive quality), they also highlighted experience's epistemological capacities-the ways in which experience generates knowl- edge. Primary experience is "connotative"-not specious, but thick. It is a fabric of relations, of "perchings and flights," in James' phrase. Experience, ongoing, draws upon itself and projects anticipated futures. "Dewey accepts the claim of James that experiences are indeed cognitive of one another, so that the transaction is not without a guide, a source, leaning, a hint, a hunch" (McDermott 2007, 415). Thus, experience is not a Humean moment-after- moment affair, but one capable of continuity. To learn from experience is to make a backward and forward connec- tion between what we do to things and what we enjoy or suffer from things in consequence. Under such conditions, doing becomes a trying, an experiment with the world to find out what it is like, the undergoing becomes instruction-discovery of the connection of things. (Dewey LWll , 2 15) Again, this relates directly to technological life, raising the question: "is the primary experience on devices capable of subtle connotation, or is it dominated by intense titillation? " Temporal Experience-Urban Time vs. Nature Time The last dimension of primary experience to discuss is temporality-how time feels. In Principles, James argues that time is experienced not as clo�k Pragmatist Aesthetics and the Experience of Technology 127 time-a specious, knife-edge present-but rather as durations of varying thicknesses and feels. He describes the cognized present as: a saddle-back, with a certain breadth of its own on which we sit perched, and from which we look in two directions into time. The unit of compo- sition of our perception of time is a duration, with a bow and a stern, as it were-a rearwardand a forward-looking end. (James 1 983, 609) McDermott builds upon James, and considering the technology of the 1970s, distinguishes "urban time" and "nature time." Urban time tends to be faster, thin, tense, jagged, and aligned with machines; nature time con- nects, more variously, to natural events; it tends to be thick, liberating, and continuous (McDermott 2007, 200-201) The difference between these kinds of time becomes a useful critical tool for understanding contemporary technology. T he network of communication media . . . constantly tunes us in to sen- sorially multiple experiences . . . . Our imagination, and fed at all times by the messaging of electronic intrusions, races far ahead of our body which we often claim to drag around. (McDermott 2007, 201, 202) Technology problematizes life, in part, because while "the speed of urban time revs up our capacity for multiple experiences," it is also "intensifying the need for inner personal space to play out the experiences subsequently in our own 'good' time" (McDermott 2007, 202). The challenge we face, to a greater degree than did McDermott in 1974, is the never-ceasing "urban time" of devices. In the 21st century, information flow is relentless; there is never "enough time" to unfold, unravel, or unpack what is foisted upon us by "urban time." Between the portability of PIT and the near-omnipresence (via satellite) of connectivity, all spaces can become urban spaces, experien- tially. What theorist Richard Ling celebrates as the opportunity of "micro- coordination" would be seen, from McDermott's perspective, as the fulfillment of urban time's hegemony over primary experience. "We isolate here the dilu- tion of embodiment and the worship of speed" (McDermott 2007, 453). Technology, Experience, and Pragmatist Aesthetics Technology, at the end of the day, expresses how human beings suppose they want to live; whether we are talking about affordances such as "video on- demand," "constant availability," "micro-coordination," or "online dating," they are all arranged by us (engineers, managers, marketers, and consumers). What philosophers (and philosophical theorists such as Turkle) can do is back 128 David L. Hildebrand up and raise the normative question: "are these choices producing the kinds of lives we ideally want to live?" This ethical question is also an aesthetic one about what is ideal; pragmatist aesthetics may have some suggestions. As we have seen, descriptions of experience with technology can be more or less explicitly normative. In this piece, Gergen, Turkle, and McDermott raised profound normative questions about the patterns of experience PIT can create. What grounds the normativity of such judgments? As a psy- chologist, Turkle is concerned about the constituents of psychological well- being: sympathy, empathy, and authentic communication; she warns against isolation, loneliness, disconnection, and alienation. The philosophical case can reach toward further grounds about the nature of experience. Here, pragmatist aesthetics (utilizing the criteria of experience offered earlier) can provide standards with which to judge the upshot a way of life shot through with PIT experiences. Here, I select Dewey's aesthetics as my model. An (Consummatory) Experience in Dewey At the heart of Dewey's aesthetics was his notion of experience at its best: "an experience" or " consurnmatory experience." The opposite he termed the "anesthetic." Understanding this spectrum can provide metrics with which to judge technological experience. Dewey introduces "an experience" (his emphasis) by contrasting it with ordinary experience-the humdrum, dis- persed, and inchoate character which is part of everyday life. Oftentimes . . . the experience had is inchoate. Things are experienced but not in such a way that they are composed into an experience. There is distraction and dispersion; what we observe and what we think, what we desire and what we get, are at odds with each other . . . because of extraneous interruptions or of inner lethargy. In contrast with such experience, we have an experience when the material experienced runs its course to fulfillment . Then and then only is it integrated within and demarcated in the general stream of experi- ence from other experiences. A piece of work is finished in a way that is satisfactory; a problem receives its solution; a game is played through; a situation . . . is so rounded out that its close is a consummation and not a cessation. Such an experience is a whole and carries with it its own individualizing quality and self-sufficiency. It is an experience . . . [and in it] . . . every successive part flows freely, without seam and without unfilled blanks, into what ensues. (LWl0:42) This extended passage may reveal why critics often found it hard to connect the term "aesthetics" with Dewey. Dewey's general project is wider than art criticism; rather, he sees art as a form of human expression capable of illuminating ways that experience, more generally, can manifest as whole, Pragmatist Aesthetics and the Experience of Technology 129 harmonious, and exemplary in meaning. Understanding art as experienc- ing provides an object lesson as to how daily life experience could be more meaningful, even beautiful. And understanding what can go wrong in art helps reveal the "anesthetic," features which are present all too often in daily life. Here, again, such analyses of experience can help highlight which of our habits are anesthetic habits-both the older or newer ones (especially those imported through new technologies). Having discussed consummatory, let us briefly consider the .anesthetic. Anesthetic Experience Opposed to an experience is the anesthetic. The anesthetic is actually a lethal cocktail, comprised of two different poisons-one is slackness, dissolution, while the other constriction, coercion. As Dewey puts it: The enemies of the esthetic are neither the practical nor the intellectual. They are the humdrum; slackness of loose ends; submission to conven- tion in practice and intellectual procedure. Rigid abstinence, coerced submission, tightness on one side and dissipation, incoherence and aim- less indulgence on the other, are deviations in opposite directions from the unity of an experience. (Dewey LW10, 47) Again, the anesthetic pertains both to the experiences of art and daily life. Much in contemporary life, Dewey argues, prevents it from being fulfilling. He notices, as does McDermott, the "urban time" phenomenon which pre- vents ordinary experience from being more fulfilling. We suffer from what he calls an " excess of receptivity"-what we might call "information over- load." In our lives, Dewey writes, Zeal for doing, lust for action, leaves many a person, especially in this hurried and impatient human environment in which we live, with expe- rience of an almost incredible paucity, all on the surface. No one experi- ence has a chance to complete itself because something else is entered upon so speedily. (Dewey LWlO, 51) Dewey noticed that the increased pace of life, the adoptions of various forms of technology (not limited to information technology) had changed the habits and expectations people held for themselves-and others. What happens, in such cases, is the impoverishment of experience over the long term. He writes: What is prized is then the mere undergoing of this and that, irrespec- tive of perception of any meaning. The crowding together of as many 130 David L. Hildebrand impressions as possible is thought to be "life," eve� though no one of them is more than a flitting and a sipping. What 1s called experience becomes so dispersed and miscellaneous as hardly to deserve the name. Resistance is treated as an obstruction to be beaten down, _ not as an invitation to reflection. An individual comes to seek, unconsc10usly even more than by deliberate choice, situations in which he can do the most things in the shortest time. (Dewey LWlO, 51) Technology and Pragmatist Aesthetic Ideals Pragmatist aesthetics offers more than just criticisms, though; it _ offers an ideal to assess how technology can lead us away from expenences w_e acknowledge are better, more enduring, more meaningful. �ot all expen- ence is the same; experiences which have reached a zemth of c�mple,� tion and wholeness yield what Dewey called "consum�a_tory expenence, whereas other experiences can fall short in various spec1f1C ways. _ Prag1!1a- tist aesthetics such as Dewey's are informed by our nature _ as b1olog!cal beings, and remain open to scientific findin_gs about �ttent1on, �mot10n, neural activity, and so forth; still, pragmatist aesthetics r�cogmzes that aesthetics should be meliorative-a way to improve expenence through- out our lives. Much of what I have laid out is, admittedly, cursory. But what seems clear is that problems illustrated by Turkle and othe_rs-interr�pted c_on- versations, disrupted public spaces, fragmented attent10n, overst1mulat1on, ennui, etc.-call out not only for new rules of etiquette but deeper no_rma- tive assessments, particularly the ways in which deeper levels of expene�c_e are affected. My sketch of Dewey's pragmatist aesthetics means to exh1b1t the viability of applying pragmatist aesthetic criter _ ia to PIT and other tec�- nologies; regarding details, it must remain a pro��ssory note. �ventuall!, it demands a point-by-point mapping between spec1f1c technological practices and their aesthetic attributes.15 . . My brief need not be taken as neither pessimism nor dete�mm1sm abo�t technology. PIT can and does produce consummatory expenentes; there 1s no reason it cannot be designed to produce more-and/or reduce the ways it contributes to the various forms of anesthesia around us. It c�n becorr_ie a more "appropriate technology," as Alan Drengson ( 1982) _ m1gh� put 1t, affording space to the viewer-experiencer rather t�a� suffocatmg with con- stant prompts. An appropriate technology can mv1te gently, _so that one becomes freely absorbed in a new experience. But let us be realists, too. Let us not suppose we are there-or heading there, yet. 16 While tools can be shelved or redesigned to seek better ends, I am reluctant to_ thi�k the� will be without criticism. Pragmatist aesthetics offers an expenential basis for such criticism. Pragmatist Aesthetics and the Experience of Technology 131 Summary and Conclusion To briefly summarize my argument, this inquiry began with a feeling that something is amiss about the ways PIT affects individual and social life; the inquiry moved next to an initial characterization of the problem. Then the problem was described in richer empirical detail, asking: what kinds of technology? How are they colonizing attention? With what initial conse- quences ? The work of communication theorists and especially Turkle helped lay out these aspects, arid Turkle's foci on conversation and empathy were especially helpful in displaying the complex psychological and social stakes. These initial phases showed that there was a further philosophical dimen- sion worth exploring; I suggested that technology impinges upon something even more fundamental that the conduct singled out by Turkle et al. This fundamental thing is experience. To explore technology's implications for experience, we looked at Dewey, James, and McDermott. After reviewing pragmatism's critical reconstruc- tion of the term, we saw that Dewey (and James) developed a distinc- tion between had/primary experience and known/secondary experience. The had-primary/known-secondary distinction legitimates their detailed work on the phenomenology of had-primary experience (e.g., relations, qualities, fringe, focus, connotativeness, temporality) which, I argue, can now help frame and make sense of the welter of changes introduced by new PIT. Finally, I argued that these philosophical instruments-analyses of experience-lead toward a constructive last stage: the application of a pragma- tist aesthetics (constituted by experiential analyses) to the phenomena of PIT. In the end, technology really doesn't matter. What matters are empathy, care, justice, and consummatory experience. The reason to care about prag- matism, as a conceptual tool for the analysis of practices, is its commitment as a theory to meliorism-to remaining in honest touch with practical life to make it better. Because pragmatism is equipped to understand the habits of both organisms and their cultural environments, it can evaluate the variety of experiences which emerge. Such evaluations are, themselves, tools for the direction of better, future experience. Because technology is so pervasively informing our habits, it is now falling under pragmatism's critical purview. This paper has provided one critical approach. The inspiration for doing this work now is prompted by watching my students and my own children. Forces beyond my control are driving dis- traction, ennui, and perhaps depression. What is technology's role in this? I need to find out. Like Dewey, I am ethically staked in promoting growth. As McDermott points out: Growth is not a casual word for Dewey, for its absence denotes dying, as when children, by virtue of the pedagogical ennui which so often 132 David L. Hildebrand envelops them, become dead unto themselves. In our time they escape into varieties of electronic media. (McDermott 2007, 423) Dewey worried that the schools of his day were trading away the r�c�mess of the present for some supposedly more important futu�e. They demgrated the potentialities and direct enjoyments of present �x�en�nce and fomented on children the anesthetic poisons of slackness, d1ss1panon. Many schoo�s and workplaces today are still doing this. Too often, attempts to cure th�s are proposed by new technologi:s; yet they may present the other a�esthetic poison of overstimulation. Curmg boredom with the ever-app�almg new seems like progress; but understood through the lens _of pr�g1?1at1st a est�et- ics we see how it can lack fullness. The technological fix 1s our version of 'rhe specious present James warned about, the isolated moments which entertain but don't teach, connect but do not pause for regenerative solitude or genuine conversation. We are taking big gambles; we should take a closer look. Notes 1. This is a traditional ambition of classical pragmatists such as John De1weyd, Whi�-liam James, G.H. Mead, Jane Addams, and others. Dewey encap�u. ate t 1s vision by calling philosophers "liaison officers": "philosoph_y as a cn�1cal <?r?an becomes in effect a messenger, a liaison officer, makmg reciprocally mtell�g1ble voices speaking provincial tongues, and thereby enlarging as well as rectifymg the meaning with which they ace charged." (De�ey LWl, 306_) . _ " 2. Ling's industry association is with Telenoi:-, a firm t�at descnbes itself as one of the world's major mobile operators" with 176 m1lhon customers c�mnected in 12 markets across Scandinavia, Central and Eastern Europe, and Asia. [URL: www.telenor.com Accessed 14 January 2018]. . 3. Consider the ritual of a birthday party. PIT can extend such co-present mter�c-tions to later online periods (e.g., by sharing photos via the web). P�oto-�harmg may itself become part of the ritual. In this way, the co-present relat1onsh1ps may be strengthened via new rituals. _ _ , 4. As it is alleged Microsoft did in cooperation "".ith the N:uo_nal Security Agency s Prism program. As The Guardian reported m 2013, Microsoft_ has collabo-rated closely with US intelligence services to allow users' commu1:1canons to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to c1rc1;1mvent the company's own encryption, according to top-secret documents obtamed by the Guardian" (Greenwald et al. 201 3). 5. Sherry Turkle, MIT website; www.mit.edu/-stur�l_e/ Accessed 20 August 2017. 6 . URL: www.amazon.com/Fisher-Price-Ipad-Appt1v1ty-Seat-Newborn-to-Toddler/ dp/B00EL4N15U Accessed 16 January 201_8. . . _ _ _ 7. As Baym cautions, "we need to stop talkmg ab?ut me�a m overly s1mphst1c terms" and seek out "concepts to help us recognize the d1vers1ty amongst what may seem to be just one technology" (Bay_m �01,? , 6-7_) . . 8. As Baym points out, PIT often "doubly pnvatize _pubhc spaces-:-first, �ser� opt out of public space availability, and second, they fill that space with their pnvate matters (Baym 2015, 5 ) . ,. Pragmatist Aesthetics and the Experience of Technology 133 9. See e.g., Turkle (201 5, 52-53). Thus, one might say, PIT takes the concept of a "device" to the next level. Over 30 years ago, philosopher Albert Borgmann (1984) described the evolution of a "device paradigm" disconnecting people from the sources of their heat, food, and consumer goods. Such " disburden-ments," Borgmann pointed out, hide the natural and social connections implicit in our practices. Though such changes increase conveniences, there is also an increase in fragility, as we become less informed and less self-reliant. 10. On the history of "experience" see Jay (2005). 1 1 . See The Quest for Cer_fqinty. There, Dewey writes, Experienced situations come about in two ways and are of two distinct types. Some take place with only a minimum of regulation, with little fore-sight, preparation, and intent. Others occur because, in part, of the prior occurrence of intelligent action. Both kinds are had; they are undergone, enjoyed or suffered. The first are not known; they are not understood; they are dispensations of fortune or providence. T he second have, as they are experienced, meanings that present the funded outcome of operations that substitute definite continuity for experienced discontinuity and for the frag-mentary quality due to isolation. (Dewey LW4, 194) 12. This is not phenomenological bracketing a la Husserl; pragmatists did not advo-cate that a neutral (free of all cultural, historical, and personal valences) account of experience could or should be strived for. But they recognized that theoretical preconceptions can pervert genuine openness to experience; some amount of "intellectual disrobing" (as Dewey put it) was possible and worth attempting. See Dewey LWl, 40. 13. Richard Shusterman traces this movement from James' Principles to Dewey's Art as Experience. In Principles, James writes that "Every definite image in the mind is steeped and dyed in the free water that flows round it . . . . The signifi-cance, the value, of the image is all in this halo or penumbra that surrounds and escorts it." (James 1983, 246) As Shusterman points out, "This 'halo of felt rela-tions,' James continues, forms a 'psychic overtone' or 'fringe' whose felt quality essentially guides our consciousness, selecting and organizing the elements and focus of our thought so as to render them coherently unified in terms of their felt 'sense of affinity' to that quality. 'Any thought the quality of whose fringe lets us feel ourselves "all right" [may be considered] . . . a relevant and appropriate portion of our train of ideas.' (James 1983, 247, 249, 250)" (Shusterman 201 1 , 359). 14. We need to accept that "ambiguity bathes our experience" and that this means " the one-to-one correspondence between the perceptual act and the objective order is challenged" (McDermott 2007, 354). 15. I don't, however, think this would be very hard to fulfill. Even Dewey's simple comparison between our pace of life and the obstacle it creates for engaging in art or conversation makes that plain-Turkle would happily concur. In modern life, Dewey writes: Continued acceleration is breathless and prevents parts from gaining dis-tinction. In a work of art, different acts, episodes, occurrences melt and fuse into unity, and yet do not disappear and lose their own character as they do so-just as in a genial conversation there is a continuous interchange and blending, and yet each speaker not only retains his own character but manifests it more clearly than is his wont. (Dewey LWl0, 43-44) 134 David L. Hildebrand 16. Much contemporary technology involves us by instigation rather than by invita-tion; the terms of our engagement are highly controlled-the lines along which we "choose" are carefully scripted, delimited, and timed. Or, technology shoves us this way and that-disrupting whatever investment we have started to make (e.g., the "clickbait" of news websites, the pop-up advertisements, the use of sexual imagery). In either case, there is a failure to achieve the aesthetic or con-summatory (the highest level of aesthetic experience) because of the anesthetic poisons of distraction, coercion, and overstimulation. No "pervasive and under-lying quality" has a chance to inform the experiences undergone, nor is there a chance for experience to reach forward and back-the "connotation" which leads to growth and learning. References Baym, Nancy K. 2015. Personal Connections in the Digital Age. Malden, MA: Polity Press. Borgmann, Albert. 1984. 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