adornment, enchantment, magic and ridicule

8/13/2019 Adornment, enchantment, magic and ridicule

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Adornment, enchantment, magic and ridicule

Simon Roberts, Founding PartnerLondon, 10thDecember 2013

@ideasbazaar & @stripepartners


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Anthropologists have always been into wearables


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Wearables dress us and address society


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Wearables extend our selves into society


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Wearables locate us culturally and socially


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The culture coding of clothing

Image that illustrates the fine distinctions that can be signaled

by clothes that we wear and the rich set of stories and

schemas required to decode these

Wearables consist of and conform to codes


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The power of wearables is often in the software


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Material matters

But there is also immense power in the hardware


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Hardware

Firmware

Software


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Lollip[op man

The power of our adornments

Our wearables are already smart


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Our wearables are technologies of enchantment


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Techniques of production are sources of power


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The enchantment of technology is thepower that technical processes have of

casting a spell over us so that we see the

real world in enchanted formAlfred Gell


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Our wearable future will see enchantment amplified


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A retail person come over to talk to her. My pprt quickly zoomed in past the

data outflows spilling out from the customers like polluted surf falling upon once-

pristine shores and focused on McKay Watson. She was beautiful, the Retail girl. Atall, straight-necked creatureI caressed McKays data

She had graduated from Tufts with a major in international affairs and a minor inRetail science. Her parents were retired professors from Charlottesville, Virginia,

where she grew upShe didnt have a boyfriend at present but enjoyed the

reverse cowgirl position with the last one


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New forms of power dressing? Whats the (dress) code for wearables?A new role for clothing?


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Emergent forms of power dressing


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But where does power and control lie?


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20And does clothing become a dumb pipe?


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Magic and technology

A magical attitude is a by-product of technological activity


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Magic and its discontents

The pursuit of wearable futures is animated by magic


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But to avoid our gadgets

being ridiculed we haveto demonstrate the

existence of a problem tobe solved by the

innovation


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24Nordic walking is open to ridicule perhaps but


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Segway

And so is (was?) Segwaying


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Stuff(Hardware)

Skills

(Firmware)

Images(Software)


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Thank you. Do stay in touch.For more on skill,s image and stuff see: Consumers, Producers and Practices : Understanding the invention and reinvention of Nordic

walking, Elizabeth Shove and Mika Pantzar in Journal of Consumer Culture 2005 5: 43

For more on magic and enchantment see Alfred Gell - The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology, in

Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics(1992)For more on gadgets and ridicule see Mike Michael - Inoculating gadgets against ridicule, in Science as Culture (6: 2, 1996)

@ideasbazaar & @stripepartners

adornment, enchantment, magic and ridicule

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