Digital wellbeing, according to Google

Author: Daniel Svensson
MSc in Media and Communication
Supervisor: Magnus Andersson
Examiner: Fredrik Miegel

Abstract
In May 2018, Google presented a new initiative called Digital wellbeing at their annual
developer conference, Google I/O. Digital wellbeing consists of part a new design philosophy
guiding the company’s products, part a set of tools to improve people’s relationship with digitaltechnology. Using an STS influenced approach, this thesis seeks to better understand what role
Google thinks technology should play in everyday life. This is done by analyzing the keynote
presentation of Google I/O 2018, drawing from theories on the social shaping of technology
and critical modernity theory, bringing a contextualized understanding of the visions presented
on stage and their relation to the products and services that are shown.
The analysis finds the relationship between humans and technology articulated in two different,
and not so easily conjoined ways. One the one hand, the Digital wellbeing initiative presents
digital technology as something one can step in and out of, a distinct domain of the everyday
life, put in contrast to “the real world”. We can measure and limit our time spent withtechnology, and the applications provided by the Digital wellbeing initiative are presented asmeans for gaining control over our devices as well as ourselves. Wellbeing in this sense is tobe an autonomous subject, able to use technological devices to increase efficiency, and to havethe power to disconnect whenever needed.
On the other hand, the overall vision brought by Google suggests a situation where digitaltechnology is fully integrated into daily life, no longer bound to particular devices and always
available by voice. It’s envisioned as an omnipresent servant that covers more tasks anddomains with every software update. The ideals of efficiency and time-saving that permeates
Google’s vision of technology encourage users to give away control to Google in order to gain
control over their time. The lack of control over time spent with technology that users report,
is turned into an argument for potentially giving up further control. In the first definition, AI
means artificial, in the second, intelligence.
Keywords: Digital wellbeing; Google; technology; smartphones; science and technology
studies; social shaping

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Acknowledgements
I want to thank my supervisor Magnus Andersson for all the guidance and support throughout
the process. You encouraged me to try to see everyday things in new ways. Thanks also to myfamily and my friends, who, throughout this process not only helped me think about my thesis
but also to forget about it at times.

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Table of contents
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................... 5
RESEARCH AIMS ............................................................................................................................................... 7
BACKGROUND: WELLBEING AND TECHNOLOGY .............................................................................................. 8
METHODOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS ................................................................................................................11A QUALITATIVE CASE STUDY ................................................................................................................................11
LIVING WITH TECHNOLOGY ............................................................................................................................15
THE SOCIAL AND THE MATERIAL ...........................................................................................................................15
The social shaping of technology ............................................................................................................16
The impact of technology .......................................................................................................................18
LATE MODERN TEMPORAL TROUBLES ....................................................................................................................19
Social acceleration..................................................................................................................................20
Digitized activities ..................................................................................................................................22
Productivity as an ideal...........................................................................................................................23
INVISIBLE TECHNOLOGY .....................................................................................................................................25
Theorizing smart technology...................................................................................................................26
Experience turned into data ....................................................................................................................27
DIGITAL WELLBEING, ACCORDING TO GOOGLE ...............................................................................................30
LOSING CONTROL OVER TECHNOLOGY ...................................................................................................................30
Excessive use ..........................................................................................................................................30
Too much information ............................................................................................................................33
TAKE BACK CONTROL ........................................................................................................................................36
Optimization of the self ..........................................................................................................................36
The Digital wellbeing app .......................................................................................................................37
Taylorism of the everyday life .................................................................................................................38
Quality and quantity...............................................................................................................................40
MAKE GOOGLE DO IT .......................................................................................................................................41
Technical assistance ...............................................................................................................................42“Make Google do it” ...............................................................................................................................43
Reveal and obscure ................................................................................................................................46
The Digital Assistant: ubiquitous and invisible .........................................................................................49
Don’t mind the technology .....................................................................................................................50
HUMAN COMPUTERS ........................................................................................................................................52
Talking to the phone...............................................................................................................................53
Blend in ..................................................................................................................................................54
New problems ........................................................................................................................................56
CONCLUSION: ARTIFICIAL OR INTELLIGENT? ...................................................................................................60
What is wellbeing? .................................................................................................................................60
Digital assistance ...................................................................................................................................62
Too much to know ..................................................................................................................................63
Being human ..........................................................................................................................................64
REFERENCES....................................................................................................................................................66
Literature ...............................................................................................................................................66
Empirical material ..................................................................................................................................72

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Introduction“The great thing about technology is that it’s always evolving” says the Google CEO Sundar
Pichai. He’s on stage at the keynote opening Google I/O 2018, the company’s annual developer
conference1.

It’s a three-day event with talks, product demonstrations and seminars: acelebration of technological progress and the possibilities opened up by it. In a rapidly changing
business, the event is all about “showing the progress from last year”.
Watching the Google I/O keynote is not just information but a show. Having been worked onover years in secrecy, new technological inventions are unveiled on the big stage, before
thousands of cheering enthusiasts. Celebrities demonstrate the powers of AI. Products
seemingly appear from out of nowhere, no one knows what is coming next. From medicine andwellbeing to driving and conversing, there seem to be no limits of what computers can do for
us. Once made public, new features quickly become available through software updates,delivery times belong to the past. They’re invented in Google’s labs and brought upon theworld.
Google’s promises of what the digitally enhanced life can be are constructions of what Spigel
et al (2010) call electronic elsewheres: representations of a faster, better, or at least different
future. Technical inventions have since long had a prominent role when imagining the future,often presented as means for liberation and a better life (Spigel 2010: 58; Jasanoff 2015: 321ff).
These elsewheres come to us from magazines, advertisements or a sunny stage in California.
Listening to the stories told by Google employees echoes familiar promises of new technology
alleviating us from everyday chores. In the narrative of constant progress, the solutions to our
immediate problems might always be just around the corner.
However, many of these contemporary problems seem to rise out of digital entanglement.
Running through the I/O keynote is Google’s diagnosis that there is something wrong with
contemporary technology. “Our team has heard so many stories from people who are trying tofind the right balance with technology” we hear from the stage. People feel tethered to theirdevices, hindering them to productivity instead of fostering it, consuming time instead of1This and all forthcoming quotes is taken from the Google I/O 2018 keynote, unless something else ismentioned.

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freeing up. Google’s goal is to “give users back time” but users blame their stressful present ontechnology itself.
Despite the magical belief in technological liberation, freedom is always one more step away.
“Overwhelmed by the volume and velocity of our lives, we turn to technology to help us findtime. But technology makes us busier than ever and ever more in search for retreat” writes
Sherry Turkle (2011:17). Turkle’s worries echoes those of Jacques Ellul who in the 50s posed
concerns about the limitations of the instrumental thinking he saw encompassing more andmore of life’s domains. “Doubtless, technique has its limits. But when it has reached theselimits, will anything exist outside them”, asked Ellul (1964:85). With such confidence in the
powers of technology, what should be done when the smart devices that so much of our lives
revolve around pose a threat?
For Google, the answer is called Digital wellbeing, a new initiative to give users a healthier
relationship with their technological devices. As the headline on the Digital wellbeing website
says, “great technology should improve life, not distract from it”. Digital wellbeing constitutes
a general philosophy permeating all of Google’s undertakings, putting the users’ wellbeing incenter. Its values are also materialized as a series of smartphone applications to help users
monitor and control the time spent on their devices.
This thesis takes a closer look at the Digital wellbeing initiative in order to better understandthe values guiding Google’s vision of digital technology. What should it be like to be human ina world of algorithms and digital devices? And what role does the technology play in thisfuture? With their prominent position in a world increasingly intertwined with digitaltechnologies, Google have a substantial influence over how digital life is shaped. Not only are
they creating the hardware and software used in the day to day life around the world, Google
also help shaping the visions of what technology can be and how humans and thesetechnological systems should interact with each other.
Studying Digital wellbeing makes a great entrance for understanding Google’s ideas, as it
shows an attempt to come to terms with some of the problems they see in the digital present.
Technology is always evolving. But when it moves in the wrong direction, it forces Google toarticulate how things really ought to be.

6Research aims
The aims of this thesis are made more concrete in the following research questions.
– How does Google construct contemporary digital technology as a problem?
– What constitutes digital wellbeing according to Google, and how is it addressed through theDigital wellbeing initiative?
– How do the values guiding Digital wellbeing relate to the other products presented during theGoogle I/O 2018 keynote?
Taken together, these questions can open up for a better understanding of the human–
technology relationship that is proposed by Google. My ambition has been to find out what it
can mean to be human in a world increasingly lived with, and mediated through, digitaltechnology.

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Background: Wellbeing and technology
Digital Wellbeing is a Google initiative presented in May 2018 at the company’s annual
developer conference, Google I/O. Short for input/output, the conference is a three-day event
taking place in Mountain View, California every spring, where thousands of developers,
industry professionals, enthusiasts and journalists meet. In typical Google fashion, spatialpresence is not required to experience the event, as all the sessions are recorded and broadcasted
online2.
The opening keynote at the conference is aimed towards the general public, an audience thoughtof as potential consumers rather than software developers. Focus lies on what the products cando, and how they can be integrated into everyday life. They are demonstrated without much useof technical jargon, providing little information about the mechanisms that operate behind theuser interfaces. The event provides a good opportunity to study how Google envision how
people in general should integrate their services in their day-to-day life.
Part of the keynote focuses on both the threats and possibilities with digital technology.
Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai explains it as following:It’s clear that technology can be a positive force. But it’s equally clear that we just can’t be
wide-eyed about the innovations technology creates. There are very real and importantquestions being raised about the impact of these advances and the role they’ll play in ourlives. So, we know the path ahead needs to be navigated carefully and deliberately. And
we feel a deep sense of responsibility to get this right.

Digital wellbeing can be understood as Google’s answer to these questions. Encapsulated under
the slogan “Great technology should improve life, not distract from it”, the Digital wellbeing
initiative is presented as a general philosophy running through Google’s products and services.
Digital wellbeing is an attempt to help people get a better relationship with the technology intheir lives by focusing on four areas: Understanding habits, focus on what matters, help
switching off, and help families find the right balance with technology.

2

Upwards of 100 hours of material is uploaded from the three days to the official YouTube playlist.
It’s a cheaper alternative to the 1175 US dollar tickets and can be accessed here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOU2XLYxmsIInFRc3M44HUTQc3b_YJ4-Y

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In addition to these general guidelines, Digital wellbeing include some concrete tools for users.
The Digital wellbeing app that is built into Google’s mobile operating system enables
monitoring of all user activity on the device, showing how much time is spent on the device
and in various applications. This detailed information can then be used to diagnose ones’ habits
and set limits to better manage ones’ time. Google’s aim is to “create healthy habits” by “giving
everyone the tools they need to develop their own sense of digital wellbeing”.
In order to help people focusing on what is most meaningful for them, Google suggest not only
to limit smartphone use, but also to “Make Google do it”, by letting their services alleviate
unwanted tasks for its users in order to free up time.
Although Google is the main interest of this study, they are far from the only company who
recently have introduced initiatives for helping users to create healthy relationships withtechnology. Last year, Apple released the app Screen time, which lets users monitor their timespent and set limits where needed. Facebook and Instagram have presented similar dashboards
for users to monitor themselves. There is also a range of third party solutions for people whoneed metricize their phone use.
These recent attempts to give users better tools for reaching wellbeing in online environments
is perhaps a changing trend toward users’ wellbeing. Philip Brey (2017) notes that designingtechnology for users’ wellbeing is “still in its infancy”, however with “some promising
approaches” (2017: 8). One reason for the lacking focus on wellbeing in technology can be thatthe desires of the users not always coincide with those of the producers (Hayles 2012; Zuboff2019). Users desire for spending less time with technology may mean a direct loss in revenue
from makers of technology, and, as Karppi (2018) shows in a social media context, might leadto companies rather changing their services to make it harder to disconnect.
Another problem in designing technology for wellbeing is the elusiveness of the term itself.
Wellbeing has a different meaning for different individuals, which makes it hard to determine
objectively (Brey 2015). But despite its subjective nature, designing technology for wellbeing
is not impossible (Brey 2017: 8). Taking mobile phones as an example, Brey argue thatdesigning technology with wellbeing in mind should consider not if mobile phones are
inherently good or bad but how their experience can be improved (2017: 9). This is an approachthat is echoed in the Digital wellbeing initiative, trying to improve current technological devices
9through software updates. The same mobile communication devices can then be both the threat
to a good life and the proposed facilitator for it (Verbeek 2011: 120).
Perhaps initiatives like Digital wellbeing and Apple’s Screen time can incite further researchon technology designed for wellbeing, an area scarce on scholarly work. Brey (2015) highlights
a lack of methodological development and case studies (2015). The subjective nature of
wellbeing and the insufficiency of looking at the technological products themselves in order tounderstand their effect on wellbeing, call for more case studies to provide “in-depth studies of
how technologies function in the life of users” to help create healthy technology (Van de Poel2012). Modern technology and life quality is also the topic of the anthology “The good life ina technological age” (Brey et al 2012).

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Methodological foundations
Because I am interested in how the concept of Digital wellbeing is envisioned by Google, thisthesis will be based on a social constructionist approach. Social constructionism asserts thatwhile there is a physical world that exists independently of us, our knowledge about that world
is socially constructed (Couldry & Hepp 2017: 21). This means that Digital wellbeing should
not be treated as a stable concept that is clearly defined and then just worked towards, but anormative construction made by Google. Depending on what properties are assigned to aconcept like wellbeing, different solutions will be favored. In short, how the problem isconceptualized will shape the solution, and by looking closer at the Google presentation, we
can get a better understanding of Google’s idea of a better world. Therefore, a fundamental partof this study lies in examining what beliefs are expressed and what language is used by Google
to shape certain assertions about the world.
With this methodological foundation, the methods are not meant to be seen as means for findingknowledge about the objective nature of reality. An account of how ’things are’ is not fruitful
to seek with interpretive methods (Saukko 2003: 9). Social sciences shouldn’t try to emulate
the truth claims of the natural sciences but emphasize the contextual dependency forunderstanding about social phenomena (Flyvbjerg 2001: 4). The way in which I’m doing so ispresented below.

A qualitative case study
Since this study is based on the assumption that technology is shaped by the social, I havechosen to incorporate both the social and material aspects of technology that are presented at
Google I/O 2018. This is done in part by at what is said about human–technology relations, andalso seeing how the products and services shown relate to what is said on stage. Morespecifically, I want to understand how the range of Google products fit into the Digital
wellbeing initiative.
In order to gain a deeper understanding about the questions posed above, I’m doing a qualitative
case study. The case study has the benefit of taking a clearly defined empirical material andexamine it thoroughly (Merriam 2009: 40). In this way it is possible to get near the object of
11the study and see it from several aspects, with the intention of getting a deeper, more nuanced
understanding of what is explicitly shown at a first glance in the presentation. The keynote isone mediated event among many steps of mediation: from technological innovation, to event,to YouTube, to my screen. Using the Google keynote as a clearly defined material can provide
better insights to Google’s overall vision of what role digital technologies should have in
people’s lives, while at the same time keeping the amount of empirical material manageable(Merriam 2009: 54).
The main method for doing this is a qualitative text analysis. Here I focus on the speakers on
the stage, and to interpret what they say. What is Google’s idea of a good life and how do theydescribe the role of technology in achieving this?
I have found inspiration in the work of Lynn Spigel (1992; 2010) on discourses about the placeof new technology in people’s lives. In magazines, advertisements, news and popular culture
in general, representations about new technological inventions help people form anunderstanding of how to incorporate them in their lives. As Spigel (2010: 58ff) shows,technology often play a lead role in imaginations of the future, often as means for overcoming
the problems of today. From this we also understand that these new products are not justsomething to add into everyday life, but that helps creating and transform the preconditions for
our lived experience. My approach here is to reflect on how the products shown at Google I/O,
try to tie together the discursive element of the presentation with the material reality it
addresses.
Technology companies have a long tradition of displaying their products in settings that show
how they should be used, and in that way providing their material affordances with a normative
dimension (Spigel 2010: 58). There are several ways forward with technology, as the theoreticalframework suggests. This method is developed with the aim of understanding Google’s utopian
vision and how they seek to convince us that it’s the best one.
This method has similarities to what Saukko (2003: 126ff) calls genealogy of the present.
Traditionally, we think of genealogy as an archaeologic method for tracing discourses. When I
seek to understand the role of humans and computers that emerge in Google’s vision, it is doneby “following statements that begin to recur in diverse areas of life, weaving together a12discursive formation with its specific social and political connections and effects” (2003: 127).
How are different areas of life relating to each other in Google’s proposed vision?
Since Digital wellbeing is a new initiative and therefore lacks scholarly research, I have tried
to make use out of the privilege to be able to approach the material without too many
preconceptions about what to find. Therefore, an inductive research process is chosen as it
encourages the researcher to be guided by the findings rather than a preset theoreticalframework and be freer in the interpretation (Merriam 2009: 15). This method allows me tomove back and forth between empirical material and theory, to revisit the material with newtheoretical insights in order to do new observations. All of this, however, is not to say that I
have entered into this process with a blank mind, but rather trying to follow the material as
much as possible and build a theoretical framework from the findings (2009: 16).
More concretely, my research process started with some initial scouting observations of theGoogle I/O 2018 keynote, which is accessible in full on YouTube (Google 2018). The unedited
presentation runs for an hour and 46 minutes and consist of a walkthrough of Google’s new
products, services and projects, aimed towards consumers. After getting an overview I foundsome themes that helped me approach the literature. The initial findings included a recurring
mentioning of giving users back time with the help of technology and the focus on rational
behavior and fear of falling into irrationality. The belief in progress and digital technology is
not unexpected when it comes to a company that operates in computation and data business,but this trust became more interesting when seen in relation to the problems that Google seewith digital technology, especially smartphone overuse. Another initial theme I found was thediscussion whether people should use their devices less or more, which seemed to differ acrossthe keynote. These preliminary findings helped shaping a relevant theoretical framework. With
new theoretical knowledge I have then went back to the presentation again, and made new
findings, while at the same time reevaluating theory and material. This moving back and forth
between empirical material and theory allowed for new findings and a successively broader
understanding of the human–technology relationship proposed by Google. As this course ofaction suggests, my goal has not been to provide a final objective answer on the questions
posed, but a deeper understanding of the relations between humans and digital technology.
There are some implications for the validity and reliability of the chosen method. The
qualitative inductive method puts the researcher in a central role of the process, interpreting and13

deciding what is in the material. This makes for low replicability: if someone else were to
examine the Google I/O keynote, some other findings are likely to occur. This, however, canbe seen as a benefit of the method. Following Flyvbjerg’s (2001) advice on the strengths ofqualitative case studies, I have here provided a narrative, “gradually allowing the case narrative
to unfold from the diverse, complex, and sometimes conflicting stories that people, documents,and other evidence tell them” (Flyvbjerg 2001: 86). The question about technology’s place inpeople’s lives is a big one, this case study provides one way to manageable approach it.

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Living with technology
This part will provide a theoretical framework for the analysis and situate it with previous
research. It is split into three parts: the first one addresses the relationship between the social
and the material, the second focuses on time and technological help for self-optimization. The
third part discuss technological integration into the everyday life.

The social and the material
What is the relation between technology and society; the material world and social? The firstpart of this chapter will investigate some different approaches for the interplay between thematerial and social, drawing from Science and technology studies, philosophy of technology
and critical theory. These fields are brought together by Feenberg in his critical studies oftechnological progress and social change (2002; 2010).
Science and technology studies turn against the common theme in social sciences to focus oneither the material or social, which in media and communication studies is expressed as adivision between producer/content and audience, treating the two as distinctly separated fromeach other, usually with a focus on the social. One possible reason that this happens is thattechnology often is perceived as something that’s “just there” and therefore escapes criticalanalysis (Orlikowski & Scott 2007: 436). Analyses focusing on the textual dimension ofcommunication may neglect the mediating role of technology, and vice versa.
Instead, technology should not be seen as an isolated phenomenon but deeply intertwined withthe social (Feenberg 2010; Gillespie et al 2014). To understand modern media technologies,
one should therefore aim to understand the context in which they emerge and are inescapably
related to. Scholars such as Feenberg reject a technology determinist view of society for being
too simplistic and lacking the nuances of how it emerges and how individuals engage with it.
Although technology often “is perceived as autonomous, and technical disciplines present theeffects of past social influences as purely rational specifications” (2010: preface), concepts suchas linear progress should be problematized but showing how technological inventions havelooked different across the world depending on what views have been guiding them.

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If technological development is deeply embedded in society, this means that there is no obvious
right path forward with technology; invention and use are subject to social struggle (Feenberg(2010; Wajcman 2015: 4). The need for bridging the material and social becomes evident whenlooking at, for instance, the early days of the telephone and radio, mediums that both could havebeen used for mass communication as well as point-to-point contact. In the words of John
Durham Peters, “the issue is not so much the inherent properties of the medium as the social
constellation of speakers and hearers that became enforced as normative” (1999: 195).
Turning this assertion to the digital technological devices that Google have built their businessaround, there are countless possibilities that are not utilized in the mobile phones we have in
our hands; either dismissed as ’bad ideas’ or not even thought of (Feenberg 2010: 10). The
plethora of smartphone apps all share that they are suggestions of what our devices can orshould be. New software can reshape a device and make us see it in a way. It’s on this condition
that Digital wellbeing aim to change our relations to digital technology through updates ofsoftware and mindset. Google believes that the very same phone can be made less of a threat
and more a utility.
With apps ’creating’ mobile devices this become evident, but it goes with all technology. So
instead of treating Google’s innovations as an autonomous force moving forward through linear
progress, Feenberg (2010: 7) encourages to better understand what unarticulated beliefs(politics, ideologies) are guiding its origin. “If technology has many unexplored potentialities,
no technological imperatives dictate the current social hierarchy. Rather, technology is a sceneof social struggle” (Feenberg 2010: 13). The following parts will develop the theory on how
the social shape the material and vice versa.

The social shaping of technology
The social shaping approach asserts that technological inventions are primarily a reflection of
the society in which they are created (Wajcman 2015: 165). They are materializations of aparticular sociocultural context (Feenberg 2010: 70). This approach downplays the agency ofmodern technology: it’s not the smartphones fault that people are stressed, but rather the social
norms that make people unable to let the work mail be outside office hours. Although thematerial preconditions for use are the same for everyone using an identical mobile phone, for16

instance, different people might find varying use of the same device. When technologicalchange is seen as its own force it risks having scholars asking questions like: “How should we
adapt to technology?” (MacKenzie & Wajcman 1985: 3).
Because technology is shaped by the social context that it stems from, it becomes important tounderstand who produces the technology of everyday life. Large tech companies such as
Google have the power to influence the reality for people all over the world, and in theirservices, it is reflected what these companies consider important and not. Both Wajcman (2015)
and Feenberg (2010) express criticism towards the geographical concentrations of techcompanies in Silicon Valley, arguing that the devices that play such a central role in our lives
are often developed in a different context than that of its users. This risk fostering technology
alienated from everyday experience (Feenberg 2010: xvii). By studying technology as deeply
related with the social, one can uncover the material affordances that invite its users to use it incertain ways and what beliefs are guiding such affordances (Gillespie et al 2014: 23).
Such an approach becomes useful in studying Digital wellbeing. The technological inventions
that are meant to help people get a better relationship with technology and improve wellbeing,
are created with certain ideas of what those terms mean, and that culture is reflected in theirmateriality (Light et al 2018). Companies like Google might help us feel better, but in doing sothey also help define what that means.
Given that a technological object is shaped by its social context, the values guiding it can also
be traced back from the object itself. Feenberg use the concept of technical codes to point at
how interests or ideology is implemented into material things (2010: 68). The technical code is“a criterion that selects between alternative feasible technical designs in terms of a social goal
and realizes that goal in design.” It allows us to describe how technical activity is “deeply
marked by culture” (2010: 184). What this means is that we should take a closer look at thetechnical solutions in our lives and see what interests they really adhere to. (In a capitalist
society, the technical code is the way that a technological artefact serves capitalist ideals.)
Feenberg explains that the technological devices that we use are made up of many parts whichon their own are relatively neutral. They could as well be organized in other ways, to serve
other purposes (2002: 77–8). But, as developed ensembles of such parts, the end product inheritcertain design choices that make it “fit” within a social context.
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Technologies can be designed to justify a certain social order or economic model. The ideals
of freedom and individualization in contemporary digital devices can be understood not just asa mean in itself but also in the context of what Zuboff (2019) calls “surveillance capitalism”.
The responsiveness of these technologies is made possible by their ability to collect behavioral
data from the users. They render usage into valuable information by design.

The impact of technology
Studying how technology is shaped by the social is important just because of the impact thattechnology has on society in general and also individual lives (MacKenzie & Wajcman 1985).
The properties of technologies “influence how people are going to work, communicate, travel,
consume, and so forth” (Winner 1985: 30). It is important to acknowledge that the things thatsurround us have moral and existential implications. To treat them as neutral and fully
subordinated to their users increase the threat of failing to see how they affect us (Verbeek
2011: 2).
What this means is that technological objects are not only shaped by the social but play a partin further shaping the social. The spread of mobile phones, for example, “directly help togenerate new ways of communicating and interacting” (Verbeek 2011: 4). Always having
mobile communication tools readily available makes one experience the relation to space, timeand other people differently; the world “shrinks” (Rosa 2013: 104). The world with the mobile
phone, then, is not the same world as the one in which it was invented, which indicates thatexisting technology is “an important precondition for new technology” (MacKenzie &Wajcman 1985: 10). Even if inventions are socially shaped, they are created not only as a
response to a social reality but also a material one. The saying “give a man a hammer and thewhole world will look like a nail” captures how the world reveals itself to us through things.
The ontological powers of digital technology can also be discussed from an infrastructure
perspective. The media infrastructures themselves are often so taken for granted that they risk
being overlooked. Couldry & Hepp (2017) have explored the issue of agency in a time where
digital communication technologies have become an increasingly important part of our social
interactions. The social world is “fundamentally interwoven with media” (Couldry & Hepp18

2017: 16). We not only use technology to communicate with other people, but a lot ofcommunication is done between human and machines. They have become not just mediators of
information but computerized conversation partners to which people turn to for informationand help (Jones 2014). The power of media technologies/infrastructures lies in how theirmaterial properties affect how we as individuals come to make sense of the world. What weknow about the world shape how we will act in it. The design of the digital infrastructures thatmediate our perceptions of the world therefore have the power to, as Woolgar (1990: 59) writes,“configuring” its users by providing the allowances and constraints, shaping the conditions on
which future actions are, at least in part, based.
What happens to human agency when the perceived reality against which we are to form
decisions is generated through algorithms, constructed with certain interests in mind? Agency
is complex when the world is heavily mediated by algorithms (Van Dijck 2009: 54). Much ofthis social interaction is centered around the services of a few larger companies forming what
has been called a ’platform society’ (Van Dijck et al 2018). When we log onto social media
sites or interact with personalized smart assistants the reality that we meet is different from thatof another person, because it is based on individual interests and prior actions. When we put
our trust in smart technologies for helping us throughout the day, we delegate to them the power
to influence our perception of reality. These services intervene in our everyday life to promote
us to act in certain ways (Verbeek 2011: 123). Being accustomed to a data driven world means
being reliant on algorithmically intervened information flows. For the person using thetechnology, it is not very evident how these algorithms are intervening in what information is
being shown.

Late modern temporal troubles
Google offer technological solutions in order “give users back time”. It’s a mantra that runs
through the Google I/O keynote. This section will look deeper into the relationship between
modernity, time and ideals of productivity and self-optimization: starting with an account forthese relations on a macrosocial level and then look more specific at technologies formonitoring oneself and the ideals that can be seen in these technologies and practices. Because
technology can’t be fully understood without taking its social dimension into considerations,
one should turn to its place in daily practices (Wajcman 2015: 33).
19

Furthermore, Conrads (2007) has shown how social problems are increasingly being treated as
individual problems in need for technological solutions. However, the faith in technology as anomnipotent, magical power to solve all problems with rational means is in itself irrational,
Stivers (1999) points out. It is rational thinking that is the source of many contemporary
problems. Most technological inventions, argues Stivers, are simply attempts to come to termswith earlier iterations of technology (1999: 38). How can it be that inventions that are meant tofree up time, instead increase the pace of life for individuals?

Social acceleration
Rosa (2013) defines modernity as essentially characterized by the phenomenon of social
acceleration, where technology, social change and the individual pace of life are mutually
influencing each other. Technical acceleration refers to the speed up of communication,transportation and production of goods (2013: 63). Accelerating social change includes a
general destabilization of time horizons as modernity progress, manifested by a changeover ofjobs, preferences or norms (2013: 77). The pace of life is accelerating both objectively in an
overall increase of actions carried out per unit of time, and subjectively, in the feeling of lacking
time (2013: 79).
While these are three distinct analytical categories, they are highly entangled in practice.
Technical, social and personal acceleration are reinforcing each other (Rosa 2013: 151ff).
While technical acceleration saves time, it opens up more possibilities and promote a higher
pace of life to cope with these. The social changes brought by technological acceleration
increase time scarcity and leads to a heightened pace of life. More technical acceleration isneeded in response to the feeling of lacking time.
Everything is just as far away as the time needed to get there (2013: 99). Digital technology
have reduced the Internet to the size of a smartphone, always readily available. Hayles (2012)
explains how this is linked with thinking on an individual level: “Perhaps most significant at
this level is the feeling one has that the world is at one’s fingertips. The ability to access andretrieve information on a global scale has a significant impact on how one thinks about one’s
place in the world” (2012: 2). As the world grows closer and the present contracts, the news
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cycle covers a larger geographical area in a faster pace. It’s not just the physical proximity that
affects our lives (Rosa 2013: 118). The continuous flow of information enabled by thetechnology of an interconnected society signals the standardness of change.
Technical acceleration finds us new ways to do the same things as before faster and affects timein a phenomenological way. Knowing what is possible, ones’ expectations changes. What once
seemed fast, rapidly becomes slow. Old computers that were considered fast in their prime but
now make a dreadful experience; traveling by train have gone from fastest to a relatively slow
mode of transport (2013:82). This is further reinforced in the narrative of progress proposed bymanufacturers: not only is the new and fast praised, but the current and the past also becometarget for reevaluation. Earlier technology becomes “that which we shall learn to dislike andchange” (Riis 2015: 171).
In a paradox, faster means of communication and production don’t free up time but rather the
opposite. “The temporal scarcity of modernity, arise not because but rather even thoughenormous gains in time through acceleration have been registered in almost all areas of sociallife” (Rosa 2013: 67). Shouldn’t people have more time at their hands when e-mails let us
communicate faster than regular letters, modern transportation is faster than horse carriages andso on, asks Wajcman (2015). Instead, these time-saving inventions are brought to existence andused in a social context that does not foster a lowered pace (2015: 2). As long as a busy lifestyle
is considered a status symbol, the time freed up by more time-saving inventions will enablepeople to increase their temporal density with more layers of activity (2015: 83). The result isthat the same smart devices that are meant to alleviate us from time pressure become are theones that are contributing to it. Wajcman’s study (2015) shows how the social imperatives fora fast-paced life make people see the newly freed up time as a way of getting even more done.
Technological inventions are made with this in regard and allows for a higher temporal density,
turning freed up time into a chance for multitasking, that is, adding several activities on top ofeach other. We can clean the house and listen to audiobooks while the dishwasher frees up timeby doing a task previously carried out by humans.
The increasing pace of time thus manifest itself through the growing number of things whiletime itself stays the same (Turkle 2011: 164), resulting in a development where the time one
can spend on each activity shortens (Rosa 2013:125). Here, the social and technicalexpectations of the ability to be permanently reachable play an important role (2013: 306). In
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conclusion, the solutions for coping with time scarcity by inventing faster means ofcommunication and increasingly efficient technologies becomes “an essential element of its
causation at the macrosocial level” (Rosa 2013:156).

Digitized activity
The reflection of late modern temporalities in self-measuring technology is highlighted by Berg(2017; 2019), who’s case studies of several devices for quantifying ones’ everyday activity arepresented as technological means for coping with the heightened pace of late modernity. They
do so by allowing the individual to outsource information gathering about oneself that can beused for diagnosing and improving the everyday life. Such practices are often aimed atproviding data with a degree of truthfulness that transcends human capabilities. Self-measuring
technology is often envisioned as tools for objectively revealing the world (Sharon &Zandbergen 2017).
In the pursuit of increased productivity and efficiency, computerization play an important role,both as a facilitator of information as well as for alleviating cognitive tasks from people. The
increasing interest in self quantification can be partly derived from the emergence of widely
available digital consumer technologies that have made it easier to facilitate such practices,using sensors and smart devices to collect, store and analyze data about oneself (Lupton
2016: 1). Devices used for self-tracking sometimes gather “heretofore inaccessible data” (Vanden Ende 2015) and enable more rigorous control over one’s activities. This is further facilitatedby a social life that is played out increasingly in the digital domain, making it more easily
captured in metrics (Lupton 2016: 39). Various digital technologies can lend themselves foroutsourcing of the individuals cognitive undertakings. They provide the information necessary
to act in a more optimal way.
A thorough sociological approach to self-tracking is made by Lupton (2016), who explains thepractices as “complex and multifaceted” (2016: 63), combining the purposes of knowing andimproving oneself. Self-tracking technologies provide externalized information gathering andanalyzing of the self. They provide metricized information to act upon and also function as amotivator to do so. They are meant to provide metrics for better self-management in times
where the abundance of information and high pace of the surroundings prove to be too much22

information to take care of without technological help. Berg (2017) looks at Moodmetric, a selftracking device that quantifies mood levels, which is being presented as an instrument forsituations where users “cannot trust their own experiences”. In a fast-paced world with toomuch possibilities to focus on, such devices promise a technological cure for ontologicalinsecurity (Berg 2017: 4–5). They provide a “sense of comfort” with the help of datafication
practices (2017: 8).
Tools for self-measuring are often talked about in terms of optimization and increased
efficiency, they are “pushing us to rethink life in a data-driven manner” (Pantzar & Ruckenstein2015). The technologies foster a more data-based relation to ones’ life (Oxlund 2012: 44). Selfmeasuring devices allows for individuals to both “live by numbers and that they tell their stories
by numbers” (2012:53), reflecting how the central role that digits and data play in rendering theworld understandable. These conclusions are reflected by Van den Ende (2015) who offers a
postphenomenological approach to self-tracking, suggesting that the devices encourage theirusers to see the world in a new way, as through the possibilities enabled by the devices.
Even if it is important to study self-tracking devices themselves and the representations thereof,
it should be added that that their materiality tells us little about how individuals incorporate
them in a meaningful way into their lives. A “distanced theorizing of personal analytics is not
sufficient if one wants to capture affective encounters between humans and their data doubles”(Ruckenstein 2014).

Productivity as an ideal
Self-measuring devices indicate how principles regarding productivity and optimization havespread from the workplace into other aspects of everyday life (Gregg 2018). In her study oftime management apps and self-help literature, Gregg (2018) points at a sort of Taylorism of
everyday life, where not just paid hours but every aspect of life is subject to optimization. In
the productivity paradigm, “realms such as leisure, play, culture, education, and family
relationships have been gradually penetrated by rationalization logics and organizational
patterns” (Bakardjieva (2017: 210). Productivity is alleviated into common sense. As

23technology is made to help us cope with contemporary problems, the struggle for increased
productivity and efficiency is reflected in consumer technology (2018: 84).
Productivity holds the promise of alleviating one from the workloads of everyday life. Gregg
borrows the term shore subjectivity from Sloterdijk (2013), referring to the idea that “superior
individuals are those who have the will to separate themselves from the river of life and enjoy
the unimpeded view from the shore” (Gregg 2018:77). Living a good life equals to being incharge of how one’s time is spent (2018: 78). Temporal sovereignty, to have control over how
one spends time is a significant measure of wellbeing (Wajcman 2015: 164). In order to reachthis state, apps like Digital wellbeing can provide an elevated perspective of ones’ life,transforming daily activities into quantifiable metrics and foster ongoing evaluation andimprovement of the self (2018: 90). “In those societies that come to value the individual, reason,and freedom, self-control becomes a virtue” (Stivers 1999: 205). Productivity and wellbeing gowell together in contemporary western societies.
Productivity allows for an ideal that needs no higher moral impediments to function (Gregg
2018: 98). It works on the condition that whatever goal the individual or society desires, it canbe carried out with a higher rate of efficiency. It is often treated as a neutral layer that can beestablished on top of either ideology. In a way, productivity as a paradigm means freedom
because it’s not limited to a specific end goal. On the other hand, it fosters an instrumental viewof the world where all activity becomes reduced to its measurable qualities. “Under this new
dispensation, meaning and ends appear subjective, nature and means objective, and no
mediation reconciles them” (Feenberg 2010: 216). Instead of a deity above, it’s sensors anddatasets that sees everything. Rosa come to a similar conclusion in his analysis of social
acceleration: Modernity has given rise to the perception of a “directionless movement”
manifested trough continuous technological and social acceleration but without an overarchinggoal to strive towards, creating a “frenetic standstill” (2013: 314) that, without a defined goal,
nonetheless moves towards a disastrous future (2013: 322).
However, everything does not accelerate (Rosa 2013: 80ff). There are also counter movements
to this paradigm. Apps designed to help users disconnect, mobile free camps (Sutton 2017),
mindfulness classes for finding ones’ inner self in an otherwise fast paced and always on-world(Sharma 2014). But while these on an individual level are thought as counter measures to the“dazzling rhythm of technological development and the social changes that accompany it”
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(Zizek 2001), they function in practice as means to keep the system going, “oases ofdeceleration” where one can recharge the batteries and then come back even stronger. Many ofthese are also explicitly tools for coping with a high paced environment in order to increase
overall productivity (Sharma 2014).

Invisible technology
So far, we have highlighted the close relationship with material things and the social world thatthey find a place in. This last part of the theoretical framework will provide some approaches
to the role of digital technology can be understood as it progresses from dedicated devices into
an increasingly all-encompassing state of everyday life.
The term “ubiquitous computing” was introduced by computer scientist Mark Weiser in a 1991
article on the future on personal computers. To Weiser, “the most profound technologies arethose that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are
indistinguishable from it” (Weiser 1991, quoted in Zuboff 2019: 200).
There are two ways of making technology invisible. One is to integrate it into everyday life ina way that it feels like a natural part of it. Spigel’s (1992) account of the entrance of the
television into postwar American households showed how this large foreign object evokedvarious discourses: it threatened to “disrupt traditional patterns of family life”, in other cases a“vehicle for family togetherness”, whose qualities was not just in the content mediated throughthe screen but as an object imbued with its own meaning (1992: 9). Suddenly the whole room,
furniture and practices, was ordered after the new apparatus (1992: 107ff). Makers of newtechnology face the challenge of turning them into unreflected parts of everyday routine. We
see this when looking at the Google presentation, with its product demonstrations and carefully
curated videos showing the products in everyday settings. The people on stage that explain how
they face the same everyday struggles as you and I, and how these new innovations enhancetheir lives, by overcoming human limitations, are all attempts to do this (Gregg 2018: 87–8).
The other way is to create ubiquitous computing in a more literal sense. In that way people
don’t even notice that they are interacting with it. Google’s former CEO Eric Schmidt havepreviously stated that this is the future the company is moving towards (Zuboff 2019: 199).
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Google’s Digital assistant, a mediator between user and the digital sphere, is preferably
controlled by voice. It signals a departure from stationary objects to omnipresent computinginteracted to via voice and sensors.

Theorizing smart technology
The ideas seen in Google’s Digital assistant has been studied under the name Ambient
intelligence. Ambient intelligence refers to a paradigm within information technology where
technological aides become detached from concrete devices and becomes a part of theenvironment. They are intelligent in the sense that they can adapt to the user, for instancebrining personalized answers. It brings the vision of people, without having to keep track of a
dedicated device, can speak out the wonderings and get algorithmic assistance at any place. It
makes computers ubiquitous and invisible at the same time, hiding the processes in the
background. The term is often used to describe so-called smart systems that are characterizedby making technology “sensitive, responsive, adaptive, transparent, ubiquitous, and intelligent”(Augusto et al 2009: 278). It’s often envisioned as means to empower everyday life with sensors
and ubiquitous computing (Brey 2005: 157). One variant of these smart surroundings is madepossible today via so-called digital assistants, such as Google’s Digital assistant, Amazon’s
Alexa or Apple’s Siri. These voices are integrated in devices that need no tactile interaction but
can be talked to and respond back.
However, the conveniences brought by voice assistants also raise critical questions as thecomputing helping users through day to day life becomes increasingly obscured andomnipresent. Ambient intelligence systems “though often designed to enhance freedom andcontrol, has the potential to limit freedom and autonomy as well” (2005: 157). Within thesesystems the user takes a managerial role and delegates control to the computers instead, creating
a situation where users give away control in order to gain control (2005: 160). We can now letour (digital) assistants read and send messages, control the lights, thermostats and other home
appliances. Their powers are the effect of users willing to give technology access to more partsof private life.
One of the benefits of the smart assistants is that not only execute tasks but conveniently hides
them away from the user, alleviating layers from a crowded schedule. “We will no longer need26

to search for anything since we are perpetually monitored, with the relevant information sent to
us on the basis of perceived need” (Wajcman 2015: 172). Crawford and Joler (2018) havestudied the obscured infrastructure that makes its services possible. Opened up, the smart
assistant only consists of a few microphones and sensors to mediate information between user
and remote server halls that carry out the computation. Nothing in its material appearance “willalert the owner to the vast network that subtends and drives its interactive capacities” writes theauthors.
As these technologies weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life, many scholars
approach the new step in consumer technology with ethical wonderings. Rouvroy (2008)
stresses that the era of ambient intelligence raises “unprecedented challenges” with regards to
privacy and data protection. The adaptiveness of smart technologies to the users’ needs have
implications for human autonomy as these intelligent interfaces make decisions for users, andit becomes harder to see in what way they intervene. This new way of interacting with media
technologies “challenge, quite radically, the classical Enlightenment notion of the sovereign
subject” (2008: 43). Questions of agency become complicated when so much of our interactions
are heavily mediated and altered by algorithms (Van Dijck 2009). Jones (2014: 254) add thatas communication with machines become more prevalent in everyday life, it becomes more
important and also more difficult to understand its consequences.
However, in addition to the benefits of technology turning invisible, enabling technologicalassistance without being intrusive, there are also dangers of “forgetting” about the technologythat affect ones’ life. It becomes harder to see the impact of technology when it’s taken for
granted Verbeek (2011). The invisible nature of voice controlled digital assistants brings new
risks as it “enhances the influencing power of AI” (Taddeo & Floridi 2018: 752).

Experience turned into data
Smart voice assistants have been compared to “technological Trojan horses” (Zuboff
2019: 513) because of their ability to incorporate surveillance deep into everyday life without
the user necessarily reflecting on it. They make their way into people’s lives promising to27

alleviate tasks and free up time, while their actual task is to index people’s lives and create newmarkets for advertising and for influencing behavior (see also Vaidhyanathan 2011).
Zuboff (2015; 2019) provide an insight into the economic incentives guiding the transition tovoice guided smart assistants. They embody what Zuboff calls surveillance capitalism, a logic
that guides companies to turn people’s actions and experiences into valuable data. She writes
that “the currently institutionalizing logic of accumulation that produces hyperscaleassemblages of objective and subjective data about individuals and their habitats for the
purposes of knowing, controlling, and modifying behavior to produce new varieties ofcommodification, monetization, and control” (Zuboff 2015: 85).
These products, while used as means for enhancing productivity also open up for new forms ofdata collection (Zuboff 2019: 219). Convenience and data collection goes hand in hand. In orderto get personalized help from smart technologies, they need to know who we are. Making moreobjects ’smart’ means enabling new sorts of experiences as data and a more comprehensive
data set of the user (2019: 233). This also means new arenas for advertising, in kitchen applies
and other connected devices (2019: 259). Zuboff argues that the automation of society really is“the replacement of society with machine action dictated by economic imperatives”(2019: 221). Seen this way, loss of agency is not just a consequence of smart technology but amotivation for it.
A critical approach to datafication practices of Google is recently made by Cheney-Lippold(2017) who is critical towards the impact our datafied selves have in both online and offline
situations, as the algorithms have trouble capturing the humans they are meant to reflect. People
have very little control over the data doubles that companies like Google use for personalizing
content. Cheney-Lippold highlight the problems with bias built into algorithms. Data doubles
are never really doubles but a collection of traces, like footprints to a person. However, thesedata have considerate impact on our online and offline experiences are shaped.
While smart technologies are often seen as an ethical threat, Dorrestjin (2009) argues that they
primarily become a problem when not designed with users’ wellbeing in mind. Companies
should use the knowledge of the behavior effects of technology in order “find ways to create
ever more intelligent and active technical environments in which users feel nonetheless incontrol of their own actions and lives” with more focus on usability and ethics. As a way to28

maintain the benefits made by artificial intelligence while still allowing humans to be in control,
ethical frameworks that foster human wellbeing could be a solution (Taddeo & Floridi 2018).

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Digital wellbeing, according to Google
The analysis is divided into four parts. The first half focuses on how Google define current
problems with digital technology, and, based on their diagnosis, what they present as a solution.
In the second half on the analysis I widen the scope to see how the values guiding the Digital
wellbeing initiative relate to the other Google services presented in the Google I/O Keynote.

Losing control over technology
What are the problems with contemporary digital technology use? With Digital wellbeing,
Google have set out to define and solve the problems with contemporary digital technology.
This part examines how Google conceptualize issues related to use of digital technologies suchas smartphones and online services. Google have the privilege to define what constitute a threat
to healthy human–technology relations. How the problem is conceptualized will in turn shape
the solution.

Excessive use
Mobile phones and other digital devices can pose a threat to individual autonomy. This is themain problem brought forward by Google when presenting the Digital wellbeing initiative at
the Google I/O. They demand our attention and we risk losing control over the technology in
our lives. Lack of control over the technology manifest itself in several ways, one of which isexcessive use.
The introduction of Digital wellbeing starts with a personal story from Sameer Samat, VP of
product management at Google. He is one of the developers behind the initiative and explainsthat his excessive phone use became a problem:
On a recent family vacation my partner asked if she could see my phone right after we got
to the hotel room. She took it from me, walked over to the hotel safe, locked it inside, andturned and looked me right into the eyes and said: you get this back in seven days, when
we leave. I was shocked. I was kind of angry. But after a few hours something pretty cool30

happened. Without all the distractions from my phone I was actually able to disconnect, befully present. And I ended up having a wonderful family vacation.

The anecdote told by Samat initially seems counterproductive to a company like Google, whosebusiness revolves around digital devices and services. With most of the company’s services
being free to use and widely available, Google generate profit out of the time and informationthat people invest in their services, providing user data that can be used for targeted advertising.
In terms of revenue generation, Google’s core business is not providing tools for searching the
web but selling users “attention to advertisers” (Vaidhyanathan 2012: 26). Simply put, the moretime users spend with Google’s services, the more revenue the company generate. Yet here
Samat stands on stage, telling the world that locking our smart devices into safes might help us
feel better. The smartphone, linking humans with Google’s services, is described as a threat toa meaningful vacation.
The smartphone is undoubtedly a useful device for productivity, but can also have the opposing
effect, consuming people’s precious time on less useful things, says Google. Smartphones andtablets here echo problems often associated with watching tv, a technology device they to someextent have replaced (Rosa 2013: 142). Similar to watching tv, these devices can function as
temporal gap fillers. They require little preparation or follow-up, providing bite-sizedentertainment whenever needed (2013: 138). Scrolling through endless social media feeds
might feel rewarding in the moment, but afterwards it can leave users with the feeling of having
wasted their time. Samat further explains that many Google users experience the same problems
as him:People tell us a lot of the time they spend on their phone is really useful. But some of it
they wish they had spent on other things. In fact, we found over 70 % of people want more
help striking this balance. So, we’ve been working hard to add key capabilities right into
Android to help people find the balance with technology that they’re looking for.

It’s not just entertainment that risks consuming too much time. Smartphones have helped
blurring the distinction between work and leisure time (Ragsdale & Hoover 2015). Their ability
to make us stay connected at any time makes it easy to go in and check the work email outsideof office hours. On stage, Google’s Sameer Samat shows a diagram of his email activity over31

the last weekend: five minutes here, six minutes there. Each separate session seems
insignificant, but the total leaves him with a bad feeling.
…when I saw this, it did make me wonder whether I should have been on my email all
weekend but that’s kind of the point of the dashboard.

Furthermore, the ease of connecting can turn into a problem when people can’t resist theirdevices at the wrong time:
We heard from people that they often check their phone right before going to bed. And
before you know it, an hour or two have slipped by, and honestly, it happens to me at least
once a week

As can be seen in the quotes above, smartphones and constant connectivity is presented asambivalent: One the one hand it fosters individual autonomy. Smartphones are tools forliberation, increasing the individual’s ability to plan life, without being tethered to a specificplace or office hours. It enables instantaneous access to information. But the same things alsopose a threat to wellbeing. Without discipline the technology might take control over its users.
When Google talk about the pervasiveness of smartphones, all of the examples revolve aroundpeople using their devices and regret it afterwards.
Today, many of the most popular mobile apps are designed to keep its users online for as longas possible (Karppi 2018: 5). In a market model where many apps are free to install, but generate
revenue out of people’s time spent using the apps, business is flourishing when users forget
how much time they have spent inside the app. This create a situation where the interests of theindividuals not always are the same as the companies producing applications (Hayles 2012:18).
In the battle for users’ attention, Google want to place themselves on the users’ side. Digital
wellbeing provides tools for giving users control over how they spend their time on their digital
devices. Without the technological tools provided by the Digital wellbeing app, Google reminds
us how easy it is to lose track of time and become consumed by technology.

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Wellbeing in this sense is achieved by cutting down on unnecessary device use. Many of thefunctions built into Digital wellbeing are encouraging its users to “schedule custom breathers
as often as you want, pausing what you’re currently watching and encouraging you to stepaway” (Google 2018).
The solution mainly focuses on giving users a better sense of how much time they spend doing
different activities on the phone. In providing statistics for one’s digital behavior, time that
previously have ’disappeared’ now becomes tangible, transformed into clear metrics, presented
as interactive diagrams. Without forcing its users to either use the functions or take action basedon the results, the wellbeing app can be interpreted as a mainly mnemonic function, aimed togather information that otherwise would have been forgotten. This is a common use for selfmeasuring devices (Lupton 2016). The dashboard provides documentary evidence for
persuading users to switch off. Google want users to take back control over their technology.
This means that individuals can be able to use it on their own terms.

Too much information
When Google talk about the role of their digital services and devices in people’s lives, ideas
about efficiency, time saving and means for liberating individuals in their everyday life arealways prominent. Their services are engineered to “give users back time”. “Great technology
should improve life, not distract from it” (Google, 2018) says the headline on the Digital
wellbeing website.
However, this vision has not fully come true. The actual place of smart phones in people’s lives
is more ambivalent. Filled with so much potential, the smartphone can cause trouble byinformation overflow, tells Google. The same device that is made to enable productivity
suddenly becomes a hinder to it. Google’s Sameer Samat explains that
People have also told us that they struggle to be fully present for the dinner that they’re at,or the meeting they’re attending because the notifications they get at their device can be
distracting and too tempting to resist. And come on, we’ve all been there.

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The same capabilities that make smartphones useful also become their problem whenexaggerated. This unintended mishap of technologies designed for speed can be understood as
what Rosa calls “slowdown as dysfunctional side effect” of acceleration (2013: 84). Rosa uses
the example of traffic jams which becomes a useful metaphor in this case. Every single car isundoubtedly faster than previous means of transportation, and thus has the potential for
accelerating traveling. Yet with too many cars in the same area, together they can cause aslowdown. With mobile phones, each new app can increase productivity, but taken together, allinstantaneous possibilities may lead to inefficiency. Google mention that too many incoming
notifications can turn individual pieces of useful information into a collective flow of
disturbances. These slowdowns are common consequences of a general acceleration in society.
More efficient technologies don’t necessarily lead to people having more free time.
Paradoxically, it’s often the contrary. This has been the case since long before Google, as
Cowan (1983) show in her historical analysis of the impact of new technologies on Americanhouseholds. The transition to stoves in American households indeed made cooking more
efficient compared to the hearths it replaced, but it also facilitated more advanced cooking.
With more competent technologies for cooking ready at hand, households also got the ability
to cook several dishes simultaneously through multitasking, which may have led to more work
rather than less (1983: 61–2). Although each meal took less time to prepare, stoves “probably
increased the amount of time that women spent” in the kitchen. The stove, like the digital
devices Google seek to tame, did not force an increased pace or amount of work, but its
constitution paved the way for social changes in the household that ended up doing so.
Similarly, new digital technologies themselves don’t force a higher tempo of life. Wajcman
notes that “the same technologies that promote the extension of working time can also increaseautonomy and control over when and where work tasks are accomplished” (2015: 159). But as
the Google CEO Sundar Pichai points out during the keynote, there is an “increasing socialpressure to respond to anything your get right away. People are anxious to stay up to date withall the information out there.” How innovations are used is not invented in the lab but in thereal-life context in which they are used.
Here, another conflict related to the ideals of autonomy becomes evident. The possibility tocommunicate outwards at all time comes with the cost of always being in reach to others. The

34

incoming notifications and the social pressure of answering directly makes users feel like they
are not in control of their devices. They have to obey their devices.
This problem is addressed in the Digital wellbeing by a smartphone function called Wind Down,
a way to remove disturbances by limiting the communicative functions of the device. Wind
down mode, preferably turned on when the user is done for the day, turns the screen intogreyscale and blocks incoming notifications. It is “far less stimulating for the brain and can help
you put the phone down” says Sameer Samat. To help users control their devices, Google wantto make them less appealing. “It’s such a simple idea, but I found it’s amazing how quickly I
put my phone away when all my apps go back to the days before color TV”. The other Digital
wellbeing functions, which will be returned to in the next chapter, include timers to limit use ofcertain applications.
Digital wellbeing essentially consists of a series of technological invention to give people abetter experience of other technological inventions. The initiative shows a great belief intechnology as a tool of improving human life. The fact that a solution to the problems can besent out via software updates highlight the malleability and diversity of contemporary digital
devices. While smartphones do have a certain materiality that shape how they can be used, they
are much less determined by it than pre-digital media. The digital structure allows devices tosimulate and comprise any other media form such as tv, radio and phone, constituting what has
been called the end of media (Kittler 1999: 1). The malleability and mobility of smartphones
turn them into substitutes for a wide range of media.
So, when Google want to improve the experience for users they don’t have to produce newphones, but instead refine the already existing ones. This approach follows the argument thatsmartphones aren’t good or bad for wellbeing in themselves, but that their experience can be
improved (Brey 2017: 9). The same devices can then be both the threat to a good life and the
proposed facilitator for it (Verbeek 2011: 120). The next part of the analysis will look closer at
how Google think we should interact with our devices.

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Take back control
The Digital wellbeing application is Google’s way of materializing the values guiding theDigital wellbeing initiative. The following section examines how notions of rationalization andself-improvement with the help of metrics guide the company’s ideas about wellbeing. Digital
wellbeing expands its scope from designing technology suited for humans, into encouraging
humans to be better adapted to the technology surrounding them.

Optimization of the self
Are the problems associated with technology use exist because of the way the technology
devices are designed or caused by how they are used? Scholars arguing for the social shapingof technology often point out that the media technologies themselves can only suggest how to
be used through materializing certain affordances, in response to technology deterministic
approaches that place more agency in the material (Gillespie et al 2014; Feenberg 2002; 2010).
Study of the technologies themselves is insufficient to understand their place in the lives of
their users. From the perspective of technology producers, this illuminates the problems
designing the perfect technological tools as they require a fully adapted human counterpart tofunction as intended.
Google acknowledge that there are certain problems with contemporary consumer technology,
but that digital technologies also would be less of a problem if humans were better suited tothem. Problems appear where Google’s vision of the rational technological world becomes
hindered by the irrational behavior of individuals. They are not behaving with sufficient selfdiscipline, easily falling into technological misuse and irrational behavior. When Samat explainthat “over 70 % of people want more help” it also signals that some people have the capability
to handle their devices. With the right discipline it is possible to become victorious in latemodern society, empowered and not burdened by the technological devices (Gregg 2018: 89).
The Digital wellbeing tools suggest that it could be possible to live with pervasive technologies
if human willpower was strong enough. “We’ve all been there”, says Sameer Samat on stage.
The focus on making individuals better adapted to the technological world can also be seen as
a part of a larger process in which problems are increasingly being treated as individual36

problems that technology can fix instead of symptoms of wider social struggles (Conrad 2007:153). Excessive technology use is presented in a similar way as alcoholism, which sees overuse as the problem rather than use itself. Phone addiction also have the individual causing
problems for both itself and its proximity. Like an addict, Sameer Samat fail to acknowledge
his excessive use until his wife intervene and locks the phone away from him. To reach digital
wellbeing, Google prescribe a healthy amount of technology use: the smartphone is a fantastic
device as long as users can keep a healthy relationship to it. With this in mind, Digital wellbeing
is not only about designing better technology for humans, but to help humans to optimize theirrelationship with said technologies.

The Digital wellbeing app
The Digital wellbeing app acts as a tool for optimization of smartphone use. It’s designed tohelp its users live with the digital technologies that always call for our attention and time.
Google says that they have “been working hard to add key capabilities right into Android tohelp people find the balance with technology they’re looking for”. Balance is here mainly
associated with time management, as becomes evident when looking at the functions broughtby the app.
The app can be compared to a personal control center. It measures all of the users’ smartphone
activity and displays it in interactive metrics. It is always running in the background, collecting
information about how much time has been spent in different apps, how many times the phonehas been unlocked and how many notifications one has received. It’s designed to silently collectdata and help users with the things they would miss out on otherwise.
However, achieving digital wellbeing doesn’t only mean collecting information about ones use,
but also implies to act on the metrics. The metrics can help users improve their behavior. The
app encourages users to set time limits for certain apps or to suggest taking breaks when having
watched YouTube for too long. These are what Feenberg (2002: 74ff) refers to as technicalcodes, materializations of ideas built into the technology. The Digital wellbeing turns everyday
life into an activity that should be monitored and improved.

37

If users only have sufficient information about their screen use, they can make better decisions.
Like a fitness tracker measuring training activity, the Digital wellbeing app turn behavior into
metrics that can be measured against a set of goals. It’s an approach that echoes the prominent
explanatory role numbers have in contemporary western societies (Lupton 2016: 96). Digital
wellbeing’s proposed strength is that it makes use visible. Based on the numbers, users can get
a sense of fulfilment or a clear message that they fail with their goals. Google doesn’t force its
users to take measures, they are free to define what is reasonable use. However, they encourage
users to voluntarily engage in optimizing their own lives using self-surveillance techniques(Lupton 2016: 50).

Taylorism of the everyday life
The practices used for improving efficiency by Google follow the same patterns as thosedescribed by Lupton (2016) in the productivity-monitoring devices and software guiding
worker efficiency in the workplace. Services for monitoring are useful “as employers seek to
identify the habits of staff members in the interest of collecting data that will assist in
maximizing worker efficiency or in reducing costs” (2016: 25). The main difference, of course,is that unlike in the workplace, this measuring is made voluntarily. Digital wellbeing thus
follows Gregg’s (2018) argument that the strive for productivity in the workplace have becomea norm guiding other parts of life. Productivity and efficiency are here an end goal in itself.
Google never define what should be done with one’s time, but once the user has made thedecision, Google’s role is to speed up the process. Their mission to give users back time can beapplied to anything.
Spending too much time on devices is bad because it could have been allocated in a more
optimal way. The way Digital wellbeing is designed and presented alludes to a sort of Taylorismof the everyday life (Gregg 2018). By breaking down device use into smaller components, theuser will be able to analyze it from above. The information should then be used to identify
redundant aspects that can be optimized in the same way as scientific management sought tostreamline workplace practices. By turning device use to metrics, the app activity is separated
from the person that is producing it. There are no traces of the person in the numbers. Instead,the app only captures statistics of actions carried out over a certain time span.

38

With Google’s revenue mainly coming from matching advertisers with suitable users throughmapping of user behavior, their “core business is consumer profiling” argues Vaidhyanathan(2011: 9). The more information Google have about its users, the better basis it has for making
money. However, that presuppose the user data generated is representative of the person its
gathered from. And that is not always the case. As the Digital wellbeing initiative states, one
major problem with contemporary digital technology is that people lose agency over theirdevice use. If people don’t spend their time online in accordance with their own desires, thedata they produce becomes less useful to Google, which makes it harder to match them with
relevant ads. No matter how small pieces the Digital wellbeing app break down device use into,
it fails to recognize whether the user found the time spent was meaningful to the person or justanother example of a device hard to put away. Helping users take back control over theirtechnology can therefore be valuable not just for the users themselves but also for Google.
Furthermore, the metrics used in the app only cover time spent using the device’s screen, whichmeans that voice interaction with Google’s Digital assistant, through other devices such as
smart speakers is excluded from the statistics. If digital wellbeing is defined as limiting timespent with smart phones and screens, the more one switch over to Google’s new technologies,
the better it looks according to the app.
The Digital wellbeing app is more about techniques for handling current technology on a
personal level than a way to transform it. It’s a set of tools for living with digital technologies,
keeping up efficiency and resisting the temptations of wasting ones’ time.
A parallel can be drawn between Digital wellbeing and how modern mindfulness techniques
inspired by eastern religions serve a purpose in maintaining the high paced life in the west rather
than being a resistance against it. Inspired by the old Marxist notion of religion as an ’opium of
the people’, Zizek (2001) argues that mindfulness/lunch break power yoga serves as a treatment
against the symptoms, a tool for the individual for enduring without touching the cause, an“imaginary supplement to terrestrial misery”. Western Buddhism, as Zizek describes it, is arationally grounded form of coping with accelerating technological and social change. It fails
in its new context because of “the very form of their endeavor”, seeing mindfulness as a tool
guided by the notion of progress, the very opposite of its eastern roots, reducing it to a powernap from technology for returning recharged into the same society one needs a break from.
Sharma (2013: 82) retells the story of a lunch yoga instructor telling the class that they can39

“take this yoga back to your desk”. Like yoga instructors, the Digital wellbeing app is a ’speed
therapist’ (2013: 89), a rationalization of breaks to raise overall efficiency. In the optimizationof the everyday life, “leisure too has been reduced to a rational technique” (Stivers 1999: 202).
Sharma (2013) adds that these voluntarily slowdowns in modern society of slow food and yoga
classes for finding ones’ inner self, work on the condition that the high pace of society is
maintained outside of these oases. They become paradoxes of slowdown in the sense that theyfurther make possible the high pace as a norm. With the Digital wellbeing app, a tool is provided
for continue living with something that might threaten wellbeing. Users can take short breaks
from their smart devices serve as a way to disconnect for a short time and return with their own
batteries charged (Rosa 2013: 87).

Quality and quantity
The metrics provided by Digital wellbeing app should not just be used to cut down time using
the phone, but also to manage how time is spent on the device. With so many possibilities, users
can be more effective to make their technological engagement more meaningful. Sameer Samat
explains:
Now, when you are engaging is one part of understanding. But what you engage with inapps is equally important. It’s like watching TV: catching up on your favorite shows at theend of a long day can feel pretty good but watching an infomercial might leave you
wondering why you didn’t do something else instead.

There is obviously time for people to spend on their devices. The problem is that they spend it
wrong. The evolution of life and work in west has led to a general increase in unscheduled timethat can be allocated at the desire of the individual. But having time at disposal gives a sense ofpressure to invest it wisely. It’s not just the quantity of time but the quality that is main sourceof contemporary sense of harriedness (Wajcman 2015: 4). Rosa (2013) notes that the amountof possibilities for an individual to do is increasing much faster than the time available. The
pace of life is much a matter of perception, defined not only from the amount of time one has
but through expectations of how time should be allocated (2013: 135). This help explains thetroubles preceding Digital wellbeing. Many who feel distracted by their devices obviously have40

time (quantity). The problem is that it’s consumed by social media feeds, messaging, games
and other tasks that doesn’t feel meaningful afterwards.
However, meaning is absent in the material that should be used for taking action. The Digital
wellbeing app handles interaction as a purely quantifiable matter. It does not acknowledge how
spending time with one’s phone can be either meaningful or not depending on what is done.
In this search for more meaningful engagement, the emphasis is put on more. Outside of thepart of the keynote reserved for Digital wellbeing, the time given back by Google is not somuch presented as a way to relax, but to get even more things done. The advances in smart
technology “makes it so easy to enjoy my favorite shows while multitasking around the house”
says a Google employee demonstrating the company’s new smart screens during the same
keynote. The general idea is that technological engagement can be made even more efficient,by removing all redundant elements of interaction, and make people able to fit even moremeaningful content in the same amount of time. The idea of multitasking is to not just do one
meaningful thing at a time but several, and that Google can help us fit even more things into
our tight schedules. Wajcman (2015: 104) use the concept ’temporal density’ to explain people
having several processes going on at the same time. Digital wellbeing encourages users tomaximize their amount meaningful engagement. As long as Google’s solutions are thought ofas a way of getting even more done in combination with the self-optimization values embeddedin the Digital wellbeing app, the conditions that have made Digital wellbeing needed remain in
Google’s vision of how human–technology relations should be.
Ultimately, Digital wellbeing according to Google is not so much about using technology lessas it is about using it in a more efficient way. Using digital devices is not a problem in itself as
long as it is done the right way. To Google, smart technology should give users time, not takeit away.

Make Google do it
Google present their computational services as means of liberation from a contemporary world
filled with too much information and possibilities, but not enough time. With the slogan ’Make

41

Google do it’, Google propose that AI can overtake tasks that previously have been carried out
by humans, thus increase individual efficiency by freeing them from menial chores. By handing
over cognitive tasks to Google, the individual gain control over time but at the cost of control
over and insight to the processes. The values guiding Digital wellbeing (control overtechnology, limit use) become at odds with the rest of Google’s services, as they encourage
further integration of digital technology into the everyday life.

Technical assistanceTechnology is not just a threat to wellbeing but also the prescription for it. “The great thing
about technology,” says Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai, “is that it’s constantly evolving”. For
every year, the list of things that computers can help with is growing. The event is ademonstration of “all the progress since last year’s I/O”.
To Google, there are seemingly no limits to what can be done using computation. For instance,
one problem brought forward in the Digital wellbeing presentation is that smartphones pose athreat to healthy sleep habits. Even here, Google’s idea is that people shouldn’t avoid
technology to sleep better. “Getting a good night’s sleep is critical and technology should help
you with this, not prevent it from happening” says Sameer Samat. The problems associatedwith smart technology are not because of technological integration as such, but current
technology being insufficient. What is needed, then, is further development and integration
towards a future where these problems are solved technologically.
Initially, there seem to be an antagonism between on the one hand Digital wellbeing with its
focus of reducing time spent on digital devices, and on the other hand the rest of Google’s
products, which promote digital technology as a means for improvement of every area of life.
Google’s news app, News, for instance, is marketed with the complete opposite of reducing
time with technology: the more you use the application, the better it gets, thanks to the machinelearning algorithms learning about ones’ interests and adjust the news displayed. The common
denominator across these services is to increase efficiency in order to save time. Just like one
should cut down on unnecessary screen time to promote wellbeing, Google wants us to stop
wasting precious time doing menial tasks.

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“Make Google do it”
There are several reasons to “Make Google do it”, as their slogan reads. The first one is that
Google can alleviate tasks from us, either because people don’t want to do it, or because Google
can do it better.
Let’s start with tasks that we don’t want to do. In the pursuit of better time management, there
is a clear connection to Digital wellbeing here. Why should we do things that doesn’t feel
meaningful to us, when computers and machines can do them instead, asks Google. There aremany tasks that can be alleviated from a hectic schedule: Finding information (Search),
automatically editing photos (Photos), navigating (Maps), making phone calls (Duplex), or
driving (Waymo) to name a few. As Sundar Pichai explains:
A common theme across all this is that we are working hard to give users back time. We’ve
always been obsessed about that at Google. Search is obsessed about getting users theanswers quickly and giving them what they want.

Google’s e-mail client Gmail has also seen improvements in order to save time for users. It can
now use artificial intelligence to help composing messages, says Sundar Pichai, while
demonstrating it on stage. “It takes care of mundane things like addresses so that you don’t need
to worry about it, you can actually focus on what you want to type” he says while thesmartphone application helps writing an email about dinner, based on the headline “TacoTuesday”. “I’ve been sending a lot more emails, not sure what the company thinks about it” headds jokingly.
Many of the tasks that Google wants us to leave to the computers are far from complicated to
do in person, writing an e-mail is a good example of that. But that’s part of the reason we should
not spend time doing them. They consume time but give little back and prevent us from doing
what we really want to do. In the presentation of Duplex, Google’s AI service to let computers
do automated phone calls, the examples of uses include situations far more boring thancomplex, at least for humans:

43

A big part of getting things done is making a phone call. You may want to get an oil changescheduled, maybe call a plumber in the middle of the week, or even schedule a haircut
appointment. You know, we are working hard to get users through these moments

The mundanity of tasks is a recurring theme during the presentation, and it highlights a qualitythat separate computers from humans. Computers don’t complain about their assignments anddon’t get tired or lose focus over time.
The solution is to automate said tasks. Automation refer to the “execution by a machine agent(usually a computer) of a function that was previously carried out by a human” (Parasuraman& Riley 1997: 231). Automation is often applied to tasks that are considered unwanted, timeconsuming or include intensive labor. Action that have previously been considered typicallyhuman, tend to become perceived as machine-like once they are able to automate, even in thesituations when carried out by a human (Turkle 2011). We can see this in how Google market
their services. Things that have been commonly taken care of by people until now are met with
the question: why should we do this when computers can do it instead?
Another reason to let computers take care of tasks is because they can do them better than us.
While computers lack the ability to handle qualitative concepts, such as those regarding moral
and meaning or contextual thinking, it has the ability to handle larger quantities of information
than any human could ever imagine (Stivers 1999: 6). Google start their presentation by talking
about the progress made by their AI systems in medicine, where computers can process large
quantities of patient information, “more than any single doctor could analyze”, to help makediagnoses.
When computers take over tasks it not only provides faster execution speeds but also benefit
from decreasing the risk of human error in situations where they are prone to make mistakes
caused by stress and/or inexperience (Parasuraman & Riley 1997: 235). To Google, humans
are great at deciding what should be done, but often would benefit from letting the computer
carry out the task. This relates to the usual role of humans in fully automated systems, which
often “involve human operators in a supervisory or monitoring role” (1997: 232). In their
managerial role, Google users should not do the work but supervise it.

44One example of where computers should replace humans is driving cars. Waymo, Google’s
company for self-driving cars, cite security concerns as one of the main reasons for replacing
humans with automated vehicles. They are not quite there yet, but every step on the way is“moving us closer to a future where roads are safer, easier, and more accessible for everyone”
as we’re told on stage. With self-driving cars then, the element of risk caused by humans could
be removed while still providing a means for transportation.
Self-driving cars also progress in a way that humans can’t. Since all cars share a common
software, every mile driven will improve the whole car fleet. In addition to improving Waymo’s
cars in real world settings, the cars are being trained in simulations. “In this virtual world, we’redriving the equivalent of 25 000 cars all day, every day”, adding up to a total of over five billion
miles.
The idea of self-driving cars fit well into Google’s narrative of time optimization andeliminating tiresome tasks. Old fashioned driving shares the same problem as smartphones inthat it occupies the drivers’ hands and eyes. Turkle (2012: 171) writes about drivers feeling a“need to connect” and the problems that arise when they hear the sounds of incoming messages
while on the road. It’s hard to stay connected or be productive when driving. With Waymotaking care of the driving, its passengers don’t have to take a break from when moving fromone place to another: it’s public transport but made to support individualism.
Maybe using Waymo is more like a taxi service than a replacement for one’s own car. Taxi
drivers, as Sharma (2013: 62ff) have shown, often treated/used by customers as if they were
technological assets. Their role is to submit to people with “temporal demands” (2013: 63) toenable them to keep up a high pace. Drivers’ days often consist of wait times, being in standby,
ready to serve those who don’t have time to wait. It’s a business that shows the relationshipbetween time and power; to have others investing their time in making one’s day more efficient.
Google want it to be technology, instead of other people, that enables us to keep our pacethroughout the day. Computers not only process information faster than humans, they also don’t
mind being on standby. waiting to serve us. The taxi drivers, however, whose jobs could be atrisk in a future inhabited by self-driving cars, are not mentioned at all by Google.

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Reveal and obscure
Google create a world of too much information and then produce services to help people
navigate through it. Sundar Pichai explains Google’s core mission as to “make information
more useful, accessible and beneficial to society”. One of the problems that was brought up
with Digital wellbeing is that there is too much information and possibilities on the Internet.
How can we know what’s important when it’s impossible for humans to scan through all
information? The updates presented to News and Maps address these issues by trying to makethe web experience more efficient, filtering out redundant information and give users analgorithmically curated version. Knowledge is not the gathering but discarding of information(Peters 2016: 318). Today, news sources are expanded from established newspapers andofficials, to tweets and blog posts, making everyone a theoretical contributor to the news flow.
With so many versions of stories available, which ones are right? Seeing the whole world as a
newsroom, Google is volunteering for the editorial role.
As Google’s head of News tells us, there is simply too much information available online forhumans to navigate through it all. The benefits of letting Google’s AI curate the newsfeed for
us is contrasted against human limitations. Unlike humans, News can “bring together
everything”. It aims to give users the full story “effortless”, so that users “don’t have to hunt
for answers”. Google’s AI continuously scans the web for “the millions of articles, videos,podcasts, and comments being published every minute, and assembles the key things you needto know”. In the name of convenience, users don’t have to tell Google their interests because
the app already knows what you like based on previous internet activities. User profiles are
generated and maintained invisibly in the background as web activity is processed
automatically (Couldry & Hepp 2017: 126). Google tells us that “it works right out of the box.
And because we’ve applied techniques like reinforcement learning throughout the app, the more
I use it, the better it gets”. It’s a selling point that doesn’t go too well with their plan to help us
cut down on device use.
News is presented not just as a convenience but a necessity in a time of information abundance.
Media platforms like News have the ability to reshape the digital environment (Van Dijck
2018: 8ff) by turning large amounts of information from threatening into utility (Peters 2016).
Instead of having to deal with all information out there, they sort out what’s important. Google
bring order to what they call a “deluge of information” through algorithmic filtering. It is not46

for humans to dive into this torrent unequipped, argues Google, offering a safer and more
efficient way of news reading, gathering information from all over the web and presenting it in
the familiar form of a uniform graphical user interface. This sort of algorithmic selection ofcontent taking over from humans is common across web platforms (Van Dijck 2018: 63). In
doing so, services like News are co-shaping the ontological dimension of everyday life (Couldry& Hepp 2017: 126). They gain control to curate what information is provided to users, theinformation out of which the social is constructed (2017: 213): what information is relevant,and which should be hidden away?
Like News, Google Maps makes a convincing argument for itself by mere existence. Maps
reveals how much there is to be known, showing that “the world is filled with amazing
experiences” as Google’s Jen Fitzpatrick says on stage. The digital map covers “hundreds ofmillions of businesses” and is getting increasingly detailed with the improvements incomputation. It aims to help people “explore and experience more of what the world has tooffer”. And that is a lot, more than users can keep up with without its help.
With so much information available in one application, Maps has too much going on for its
human users to be able to keep up with everything. It can create a sense of information overload.
Fitzpatrick acknowledges how many restaurants that might be near, and how overwhelming it
can be to choose the right one. The new updates to Maps will take use of machine learning tofilter all possibilities to give the most relevant information for the individual, “to tell you what
you need to know about the neighborhood you care about”.
Maps now contain technological improvements to help users through the problems that
previous versions of Maps have brought up. All of its information cannot be indexed by humanbrains alone: It creates the need for curation made by computers, allowing users to gain newexperiences without the dangers of making the wrong decisions. Of course, users can stick totheir familiar places, but with so many possibilities revealed by Maps, why not make use ofalgorithmic guidance: “This is super useful, because, with zero work, Maps is giving me ideas
to kick me out of my rut and inspire me to try something new” tells Fitzpatrick.
As can be seen, both News and Maps are presented as ways to navigate oneself through a lifethat contains so much information that external computation is needed to keep track of it all.
To “get the full picture” needs algorithmic intervention. This corresponds with Rosa’s (2013)47

argument that social and individual life is changing with new technological inventions. Newsand Maps aren’t made to just make our current lifestyles easier but to enable an even wider
intake of information into our daily routine. To do that, they take care of filtering and present
the users with a curated view of the real world: selected news stories and restaurants can beboth a convenience and a way of influencing the user to take certain decisions.
Adapting to new possibilities enabled by this computing makes it hard to go back. Couldry andHepp (2017: 212) explain their worries when we tie ourselves on a societal level to “an evermore complex infrastructure of interdependent communication”. It creates a world wherecompanies like Google have the power shape the ontological dimension of everyday life
(2017: 126), and since life is ordered around the availability of these services they become hard
to renegotiate. Today the social life and media communication technologies are built aroundeach other, making them interdependent (2017: 215). A quote presenting Maps show how itallows for a more lifestyle increasingly dependent on Google:
Today our users are not only asking for the fastest route to a place. They also want to know
what’s happening around them, what the new places to try are, and what locals love in theirneighborhood.

The scenario presented by Google is one where users are in need of smart solutions in Maps tosort through the innumerable possibilities surrounding them, because of all the possibilities thathave been made visible by Maps. It’s a lifestyle that urges smarter technologies (Rosa
2013: 174ff).
Users don’t know the inner workings of the algorithms that curate what information should be
visible and what should be hidden. This should be understood as one of the benefits. Google
does it so that users don’t have to think about it. However, some transparency is provided inboth News and Maps. They provide information about what previous actions have influenced
the recommendations that appear in the apps. Based on the “Restaurants I’ve rated, cuisines
I’ve liked, and placed I’ve been to…you will see reasons that it’s recommended just for you”.

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The Digital Assistant: ubiquitous and invisible
In a world overcrowded with information, the uncluttered existence is appealing. To mediatehuman and computer, Google have created the Digital Assistant. It’s the way Google thinks weshould connect with their services, preferably by voice. The Assistant is a software interface
for handling user queries. It is summoned from devices by saying “Hey Google,” followed bya question or demand. People can then delegate cognitive tasks such as searching for
information, read or send messages, scheduling, turn on the light or thermostat or tell a joke.
The Assistant gets lot of space in Google’s presentation, as its meant to be the service tying allother Google services together.
The Digital Assistant is made to “help you get more done and get time back”, and to “makeyour day easier”. The way of doing so is to connect the assistant with other devices thus making
them smarter. At the time of the presentation, the Digital assistant is connected to half a billion
devices around the world. It exists not only in smartphones and Google’s own smart devices,
but in cars and 5 000 different home devices, “from dishwashers to doorbells”. Still, the journeyof the Digital assistant is just getting started, assures Google.
The Assistant gives the experience of technology being fully on the individual’s terms. It hides
in the cloud, always ready to help, yet never intrusive. “Our vision for the perfect assistant isthat it’s naturally conversational. It’s there when you need it, so that you can get things done in
the real world” declares Google’s Scott Huffman on stage. The Digital assistant is made evenmore tempting by playing on ideas of a real-world servant, an exclusivity for the wealthy,
loaded with connotations of personal prosperity. (Zuboff 2019: 257). Like a butler, the Assistantwill effectively carry out tasks without questioning, taking care of work and conveniently
hiding the process. Because it’s always there yet can’t be seen, the Assistant exemplifies how
technology is getting increasingly “ubiquitous and invisible” (Taddeo & Floredi 2018).
Although the Assistant can be contacted through every phone and smart speaker, the actual
computing takes place in remote data centers. The workload is obscured from the user, who ispresented with the result without getting insight into the process. The suggested advantage is
not only to optimize life by carrying out tasks but also to effectively hide it and add to theimpression of a paceful life. It’s a way to reach shore subjectivity as described by Sloterdijk49

(2013), the ability to escape the rushing river of information of everyday life and watch theprocess from aside.
However, while freeing time for people, the examples of how Google services can be used tosave time does not promote a slowdown of the pace of life but acts as a technological tool toincrease the tempo. In the video ads exemplifying everyday interaction with the Digitalassistant show people using it while being off their phones. Thanks to the assistant, one cancontinue the mail conversation while showering or driving. It allows and encourage increased
temporal density by allowing another layer of activity while already occupied (Wajcman 2015).
When we “Make Google do it”, everything that leads up to the result is obscured behind theuser interface (Crawford & Joler). The result is convenience and cleanliness for the price oflacking control over the process.
There is no way to access the real computers powering the Digital assistant. Open up one of
Google’s own smart speakers in search for the Assistant is like disassembling a telephone insearch for the person in the other end. Inside are sensors and microphones, mediators between
every home and the Google servers: “nothing will alert the owner to the vast network that
subtends and drives its interactive capacities” (Crawford & Joler 2018).
Talking about Digital wellbeing, Google emphasize the need for having control over thetechnologies in our lives. At the same time, the shift towards outsourcing of cognitive tasks
using the Digital assistant leave the user with little information about how the results came tobe. Making Google do it foster an illusion of having control: the user gets to decide what should
be done but not how.

Don’t mind the technology
To the average consumer, Google’s products are meant to just work. Not much is shown about
how they actually work, but this is also part of the argument for making Google do it: not only
can they overtake unwanted tasks, but also conveniently hide them from view. All the workload
enabling a digital assistant in the home, from computation to natural resources building themachines to human work is hidden far away, so that the user doesn’t have to see it (Crawford& Joler 2018). The Digital Assistant, like human assistants before it, maintain a professional
50

and effortless demeanor while obscuring the workload enabling its convenient services. “Whileconsumers become accustomed to a small hardware device in their living rooms, or a phoneapp, or semi-autonomous car, the real work is being done within machine learning systems thatare generally remote from the user and utterly invisible to her” explains Crawford & Joler(2018).
People utilizing technical features without fully knowing how they work is nothing new. Since
industrialization, humans have been accustomed to “tools that can be neither manufactured nor
understood by the workers who use them” (Cowan 1983: 7). Take for example Weber’s(1977: 20) definition of the disenchantment process in modernity, wherein magic andsuperstition lost its relevance as explanatory model in favor of rational interpretation. Weberargued that people have no problem traveling by train unknowingly of how the vehicle actuallyfunctions. Yet they believe that it can be rationally explained if one needed to gain that
understanding. The convenience of the end product, whether it’s public transportation or
artificial intelligence services, can be fully appreciated without having insight in the underlying
processes that make them possible. In a world dreamt up by Google, their technologies are usedby everyone yet deeply understood by very few.
Lack of knowledge about the technologies one has implemented in life risks increasing
dependency. “The tools are not always at our beck and call. The less we know about them, themore likely it is that they will command us, rather than the other way around” writes Cowan(1983: 10) which sound even more relevant in a time of algorithmic interdependency.
Digital wellbeing is not about leaving technology or disconnecting. Contrary, Google proposes
deeper integration with digital technology in everyday life. This is done by altering the ways inwhich human–technology is imagined. To Google, it is the perceived gap between the real andthe artificial that is the problem. People spend a lot of time with digital technologies, but when
they turn away from their devices it feels like the time has been wasted. For a company relying
on users investing time in their services, this experience of otherness in technology is a hinder.
This explains Google’s repeated mention of how technology should be useful “in the realworld”. It’s not the large amount of time spent on digital media technologies that is the problem
but that it’s experienced as separate from the real world. Hence the solution cannot be to further
distance ourselves from technologies (disconnecting) but to make it even more thoroughly51

integrated. When people get something done using Google it should be clear that although theintelligence is artificial, the benefits are undoubtedly real.
Google’s approach, with a shift toward voice-controlled assistants and more elusive technology
in form of an omnipresent assistant, makes it easier to put the phone down but harder to escape
the Google ecosystem. Using the Digital assistant can reduce the feeling of being tethered todevices. It allows to stay connected without having one’s hands occupied by smartphones ortablets, as is made visible in the video clips playing to show the Digital Assistant: it focus on
situations where people otherwise would have to choose between the phone and something else;a steering wheel or coffee mug.
In a paradoxical turn of events, the desires to limit technology use from users’ perspective havebeen met with Google turning their technological integration even more encompassing andelusive. This is, however, not an unusual development. Companies that profit from user
engagement, such as social media companies, have shown to approach increasing desire to
disconnect by taking “anticipatory measures and build new ways to engage users even moredeeply in the processes and practices the platform mediates” (Karppi 2018: 122). Google’s offer
is convenience at the cost of insight. Although being presented as means for getting individual
freedom and control, the services provided by Google can in certain ways also limit freedom
and autonomy, without the user being aware of it. The influencing powers of AI are enhanced
when it doesn’t appear as they are there (Jones 2014: 247, 250).

Human computers
Digital technology is made less visible by hiding its material character. This part of the analysis
explore how Google try to make their AI communicate in a more humanlike way, in order tomake it more naturally integrated to everyday life. By making the Digital assistant ’more
conversational’ and appear humanlike, Google further blur the distinction between human andcomputer, fostering more technological integration while avoiding the feeling of thetechnological overuse that is being portrayed as a problem in the Digital wellbeing initiative.

52

Talking to the phone
As interaction with AI becomes a more natural part of everyday life, the goal is to make theinteraction itself feel more natural. Voice here becomes “the foundation of the Google
Assistant,” and a way to deeper (and unreflected) integration between humans and digitaltechnologies.
To make the Digital assistant appear humanlike is of great interest to Google, and it makes one
ask what qualities are sought for. To Google, the humanness of the assistant is shown throughits capability of natural conversation. It gives the impression of speaking to another person
instead of a computer. One benefit of making the assistant appear more humanlike is that it
makes it more intuitive to use. For anyone new to a digital device, it can be unclear how it
should be used correctly. Google say its goal is to make it “more naturally conversational,” oneshould talk to it like if it was a real person, “without having to adapt to a machine” (Leviathan& Matias 2018). But to sound humanlike requires extremely advanced technological solutions.
”AI is helping us make big strides so that everyone can have a more natural conversation with
their Assistant” (27 min)
When it’s obvious that one is talking to a computer, it may change the way of speaking, trying
to be extra clear to get the message through, as if talking to someone that has trouble
understanding (Bottenberg 2015: 175). Google thinks we should not have to adjust our ways
communicating with technology when the technology can be adjusted to suit us.
When presenting Duplex, Google’s AI service for making real life phone calls, we’re told thatit “brings together all our investments over the years in natural language understanding, deeplearning, text-to-speech”. Ever since the first computers, it has been “human frailty, rather thanrationality, that machines have difficulty mimicking” (Peters 2001: 237).
There is of course no real person hiding inside the Assistant. Google’s new software is capableof fully synthesizing human voice, it “models the underlying raw audio to create a more natural
voice. It’s closer to how humans speak, the pitch, the pace, even all the pauses that convey
meaning”. Compared to text communication, the voice delivers information in so many more
ways than just through the series of words uttered.

53

Google want its digital assistant to be “a great conversation partner”, which require it “to fully
understand the social dynamics of conversation”. The assistant’s inability to fully act like ahuman becomes an obstacle that needs overcoming. Users shouldn’t have to begin every inquiry
with “Hey Google”, just as they’re not calling their friends by name at the start of every
sentence. Therefore, new software updates include the ability keep ongoing conversations with
the Assistant, and to ask multiple questions at once, “something that feels really natural for us,
but it’s very difficult for computers to understand”.
The anthropomorphizing of computers helps blurring the line between computer and human.
This is useful for how we interact with digital assistants, making them a less reflected on partof life (Zuboff 2019: 260). It also solves the problem of technology feeling intrusive that’s
brought up with Digital wellbeing. The clear distinction that Google want to surpass had thebenefit of clarity, who is a person and what is a machine. Emulating human behavior in amediated environment helps obscuring the otherness of the computer. Its humanlike appearance
is made to reduce the feeling of actually engaging with technology.
Every step that makes the Assistant more conversational is also an indication of thestrengthened ability of Google’s devices to collect sound-based information from theirsurroundings. The Digital assistant’s ability to provide personalized assistance is dependent on
its knowledge about the user (Zuboff 2019: 262).

Blend in
Google’s quest for making technology blend in seamlessly in everyday life is best shown
through the introduction of Duplex, an “AI system for accomplishing real-world tasks over thephone” (Leviathan & Matias 2018). More concrete, users can ask their digital assistant to booka table at a restaurant, whereupon the Digital assistant will make the call in the background,
without the user being a part of it. Afterwards, the assistant then leaves a notification that thereservation has been made. The demonstration of Duplex shows Google’s AI making real-timephone calls to a restaurant and a hair salon to schedule appointments, simulating humanbehavior and voice in a way so that the person in the other end can’t tell its talking to a computer.
Why would they? There is no reason to believe such a thing if the criteria for being human in
the specific mediated situation is fulfilled (Hutchby 2001: 81).
54

Duplex show how different media technologies provide different expectations of what is
considered human, because of what can be stored and transferred through the medium (Kittler
1999). The human features that Duplex is unable to replicate, such as bodily appearance, areirrelevant when talking on the phone. In this sense, media are co-constitutors of what i means
to be human. They provide the preconditions for presentation and expectation of the self. ”Thelarge social significance of the media” writes Peters, lies ”in their rearrangement of our bodily
being” (2001: 228). In this environment, created by digital communication technologies, themessages are separated from their senders and turned into data. Here, both human personae andcomputer is represented solely through ones and zeroes, which makes it a mediatedenvironment where its easier to equate humans and computers. All that can be transferred overthe line can in theory be replicated by a computer (Hayles 1999: 2; Bakardjieva 2017: 213).
This means that when human voice can be effectively synthesized, humans as a whole can be
replicated in a mediated situation where voice is the sole source of authentication. Duplex
benefits on the phone medium, and its inability to see who is on the other end. It is replicating
human behavior in a situation where humans are accustomed to being limited to voicecommunication, unable to see facial expressions and gestures. The telephone puts the speakerin a situation of “cuelessness” (Hutchby 2001: 86), made human through voice yet remaining
anonymous. Still, the human voice can carry a range of emotions and subtleties, which makes
the telephone capable of what Hutchby (2001) calls ’intimacy at a distance’. Duplex adds
occasional filler words like ’umm’ and ’uh’ to the conversation, which give the AI a morehumanlike impression (Turkle 2012: 8) as well as some extra processing time. “The amazing
thing is that our system can actually understand the nuances of conversation” explains Sundar
Pichai.
Social conventions contribute a degree of predictability that facilitate the quantification ofhuman conversation. Duplex’s ability to mimic human behavior is facilitated by thestraightforward situation of calling a hair salon. Because this kind of calls usually consist of aset of questions and answers – concerning time, date, type of service – it holds a degree ofpredictability that enables the computer to overtake the task. It’s a conversation between two
people, but ideally limited to an exchange of information. Surprising elements are unlikely toappear. This is also why Google sees the task as redundant and time consuming. Calling for an55

appointment has long been a situation where people act like machines. Duplex only work inlimited settings, but Sundar Pichai explains the vision for the future:
Done correctly, it will save time for people, and generate a lot of value for businesses. We
really want this to work in case, say, if you are a busy parent in the morning and your kid
is sick and you want to call for a doctor’s appointment.

Now that Google Assistant is made more humanlike, it can help its users avoid real humaninteraction. You can ask the assistant to order food for you, so that it’s ready to pick up without
human interaction. The AI becomes a substitute for the real person. Talking, however, is notremoved from the process. The user still has to explain its order to the Digital assistant insteadof an employee. In the strive to “get things done”, and “give users back time”, human interaction
becomes an obstacle and liability. Who knows what might go wrong in a real conversation?
The Digital assistant always provide conversation on the users’ terms. It’s supposed to feel likespeaking to a real person, but without the risks associated with it.
When people make Google do the call, they will not hear the call itself, but receive a notification
when the task is completed. However, this is not considered a problem but another benefit of
the Digital assistant. Google not only alleviate from us unwanted tasks, but also conveniently
hide it in the background. With this automation of everyday life activities, temporal density canincrease while maintaining an uncluttered surface. Duplex lets users step out of the processes
that are considered unwanted, and they will still be done. And because the user doesn’t want to
do it, the loss of control over how the actual call is made is not addressed as a problem but aconvenience. “When we are done, the assistant can give you a confirmation notification sayingthat your appointment has been taken care of” explains Sundar Pichai. It’s the same interactionthat you would have with a human assistant.

New problems
The problems with Duplex have mostly to do with the irrational human in the other end, a theme
that appear several times across the keynote. The demonstration includes two calls. The firstgoes as planned, while the other show how Duplex handle conversation with a restaurant56

employee who lacks sufficient understanding of English. In the call we see that when the humanfail to play its part the demands on AI rise dramatically:
Employee: “Hi, how may I help you?”
Duplex: “Hi, I’d like to reserve a table for Wednesday, the 7th”.
E “For [pause] seven people?”
D “Umm It’s for four people”
E “Four people? When? Today? Tonight?”
D “Next Wednesday, at 6 pm.”
E “Actually, we reserve for upwards of five people. For four people, you can come”
D “How long is the wait usually to be seated?”
E “For when? Tomorrow? Or weekend? Or?
D “For next Wednesday, uh, the 7th.”
E “Oh no it’s not too busy. You can come for four people, okay?”
D “Oh I gotcha, thanks.”
E “Yep. Bye, bye.”The restaurant employee misinterprets the date 7th with seven people, an example of thecontextual understanding that are hard to train computers to (Leviathan & Matias 2018). She
struggles with conversation but not with being human.
The Digital Assistant replicate human qualities without the irrational traits that cause so many
problems in human–technology communication. It’s supposed to be a conversational partner
that, unlike a real person, always has the right information and doesn’t forget.
We have many of these examples where the calls quite don’t go as expected, but ourassistant understands the context, the nuance, it knew to ask for wait times in this case andhandled the interaction gracefully.

Humans are a liability when it comes to efficiency. They are easily distracted, can’t handle
large amounts of information and are prone to making errors. The people interacting withtechnology shown in Google’s presentation become another argument for why we should let
Google do the job for us.

57

The human traits of the Digital assistant aim to make it easier and more natural to interact with.
But the blurred barriers between human and computer not only solve problems of everyday life
but create new ones, tells Google, who have new technological inventions to cope with thesechallenges.
An unintended consequence that Google diagnose is the possible negative effects on children
caused by the rise of digital assistants. With Google’s assistant being possible to summon at alltime using the phrase “Hey Google,” it has become widely used for both adults and children(Telegraph 2018). It’s both a tool and caretaker of children, keeping them entertained when
parents are busy. The two months leading up to Google IO, 130 000 hours of children’s stories
were told by the Digital assistant. But as more communication is played out between humans
and machines, questions arise about whether their increasingly humanlike qualities change our
behavior towards machines, and other humans (Jones 2014: 253–4). As the Google employee
on stage says:
Now, as we continue to improve the experience for families, a concern that we have heard
from many parents, including people on the team who have children is: are kids learning
to be bossy and demanding when they can just say “Hey Google” to ask for anything they
need? It’s not a simple area, but one step that we’ve been working on is something we callPretty Please.

Pretty Please is a software feature to make the assistant recognize and encourage kind behavior,such as ending a question – which really isn’t a question but a demand – with “please” or “thankyou”. The video demonstrating Pretty Please show how the assistant then complimenting its
response saying, “You’re very polite”, “What a nice way to ask me” or “Thanks for asking so
nicely” before doing what it’s asked to.
So, the assistant understands and responds to positive conversation with polite
reinforcement. We’ve been consulting with families and child development experts, andwe plan to offer Pretty Please as an option for families later this year.

Pretty please is what Stivers would place in the growing category of technology that serves as“a compensation for the impact of technology” (1999: 38–9). As the Google presentation show,
many of Google’s challenges are arising from how digital technologies are used in society and58

the new problems that come with them. “A typical reaction to the negative side-effects ofmediatization is not to withdraw, but to solve the anticipated problems by even further
introduction of media technologies, so reinforcing, not undermining structure (Couldry & Hepp
2017: 218).
Should you be nice to your device? Saying ’thanks’ to the Digital assistant is redundant to get
the task done. Some will feel compelled to do it, while other have compared it to greeting a
toaster (The Verge 2017). A whole new world of moral questions has opened up with theinvasion of intelligent machines in our everyday life (Gunkel 2017).
In Google’s vision of creating efficient services to free up people’s time, manners cost nothing
but time. The Assistant was invented to complete tasks without the redundancies of humaninteraction and cumbersome social conventions. But as soon as humans are to be integrated in
the technological system compatibility errors occur.
Pretty please show Google’s belief in solving technological problems with even more
technological updates. Like Digital wellbeing, the solution is not to take a step away fromdigital technology but to improve it to make it even more integrated. Pretty please is anotherinvention to cope with technology’s unwanted as well as unintended risks (Stivers 1999: 38),
like the improvements to Maps and News are to help people cope with all the information thetwo have made visible before. Google often mention the phrase ’in the real world’ as to makea distinction between the artificial and the real, but its efforts in Pretty Please further fuse thetwo together. A new generation being born into digital assistants should learn not to separate
machines from living beings but to treat them as such. Then technology will lose a bit more of
its otherness and become more closely integrated into everyday life.

59

Conclusion: artificial or intelligent?
What role should technology have in our lives? The analysis finds the relationship between
humans and technology articulated in two different, and not so easily conjoined ways at theGoogle I/O keynote. On the one hand, the Digital wellbeing presents digital technology as
something one can step in and out of, a distinct domain of the everyday life, put in contrast to“the real world”. Looked at this way, no matter how similar to a real human the synthesizedvoice of Duplex sounds, technology is essentially different. We can measure and limit out timespent with technology and the Digital wellbeing initiative provides tools for gaining control
over it. Wellbeing in this sense is to be an autonomous subject, able to use technological devices
as a means for empowerment, yet able to disconnect whenever needed.
On the other hand, the overall vision brought by Google suggests a situation where digitaltechnology is fully integrated into daily life, no longer bound to particular devices and always
available by voice. It’s envisioned as an omnipresent servant that covers more tasks anddomains with every software update. The ideals of efficiency and time-saving that permeates
Google’s vision of technology encourage users to give away control to Google in order to gain
control over their time. This is also a vision where humans and computers blend together, anddistinctions are blurred. It’s one where communication with human and machine are the same,
and where digital assistants should be treated nicely. In the first definition, AI means artificial,in the other intelligence.
In this thesis, I have used Google’s Digital wellbeing initiative as an entrance to ask somequestions about how Google sees the role of digital technology in our everyday lives. Following
the assertion that technologies have implications for our sense of reality, and that it’s deeplyintertwined with the social, I have asked what it means to be human in the world of Google. In
what follows, I will present some concluding thoughts.

What is wellbeing?
To Google, wellbeing and rationality seem inseparable. To live a healthy life is to have fullcontrol and thus avoid falling into irrational behavior. What is desirable is to be a productive

60

and efficient being. Inefficiency, on the other hand, is the main harm of technological devices.
People use their devices too much because they lose control over their usage. Google paint the
picture of a battle for users’ attention, with the users on one side and pervasive digitaltechnologies on the other.
With this diagnosis of the current situation, Google also have a cure: Digital wellbeing ispresented as a way of giving users the tools to regain autonomy over technology and be able tolife free and safe in the digital sphere. Wellbeing, in this context is very much seen as a personal
victory, individuals finding a balance that resonate with themselves. Ideas about individual
freedom permeate both Digital wellbeing and the rest of Google’s services.
If bad technology may threaten autonomy, then good technology can improve it. Using digitaltechnologies should be on the users’ terms, says Google. Digital wellbeing helps users block
unwanted incoming information. The tools for measuring and analyzing device use can createawareness of one’s behavior patterns, and by extension increase control. It shows both thestrong belief in technology as well as metrics to achieve wellbeing (Lupton 2016: 96).
We measure and limit technology use because it manifests itself as a threat to the good life
rather than enabler of it: taking valuable time without making us more productive. This is whatshould be fixed, thinks Google. But disconnecting is not the right way, even if it enhancespresence for the moment. In this interconnected world, where so much information from somany different places have impact on our daily routine, we need digital assistance to navigate
safely.
Even if one of Google’s executives tell the story about how joyful and liberating it feel todisconnect during the vacation, the rest of Google’s presentation show that this doesn’t meanthat we should break up with digital technology, but rather the opposite. The problems withtechnology should be solved by making it better adjusted to human needs and even more
integrated. Vacations are just a temporary break from the ordinary.
A problem with our technological devices is that, while they have become a natural part of daily
life, the way that we use them can also be a threat to being present, says Google. The
smartphone occupies hands and eyes. Looking down at the screen makes it hard to focus on
what’s around.
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Google provide the tools for taking time off technology, while at the same time pushing for
further technological integration in everyday life. We should learn to live without thesmartphone, because in Google’s vision, digital technology is not located in a distinct device,
but as an ambient intelligence. The Digital wellbeing app, measuring screen time and phone
unlocks, rewards using Google’s Digital assistant, and to learn to put away the phone. Stoproam around the internet for answers when Google can get them for you.

Digital assistanceOn the one hand, wellbeing is to have full control, and to have all the data necessary to do theright choices. At the same time, giving up control is necessary in order to live in accordance tothe pace enabled by smart technology. The goal for the Digital assistant is to free users fromthe abundance of information and technological interaction in everyday life, by handing overchores and queries to Google. It changes our way to interact with technology so that it hides itin the background, enabling users to take a break from the fast pace of late modern society, or
to fill up the time space with other things. Society is built around an incessant flow of
information, connectivity, reachability and for this to go on with people’s wellbeing in mind,
Google suggest we hand over workloads to them.
Google thinks that we do not need to choose what restaurant to go to, algorithms can do that.
Neither should we make the reservation, AI can do that. Drive to the restaurant? The car doesit better. We are presented with a utopia in which struggles are conveniently vanished and theway to new, meaningful experiences is frictionless.
However, when Google take care of our duties – searching, scheduling, navigating, calling anddriving – they become a powerful agent in shaping our daily lives. With so much information
available, knowledge is not only compiling facts but choosing what is important and what isn’t(Vaidhyanathan 2011: 177). What emerges is a conflict where users are both proposed to getbetter control over themselves by giving up control. To ’Make Google do it’ means giving up
insight to how it’s done. The revokes the old question of freedom or security: is freedom tohave all choices or not having to worry about choosing (Stivers 1999: 211).

62

With so much everyday activity taking place through mediated communication channels,
critical reflection is needed on how the media technologies themselves affect our lives.
Companies like Google enable a new form of institutional powers (Couldry & Hepp 2017: 217–
8). They shape and influence the reality in which the user then can experience freely andautonomous. The services presented by Google are liberating and democratic in the sense thatthey empower individuals with instantaneous access to a world of information. They are widely
available and doesn’t cost any money. Everyone should be inhabitants in Google’s world, but
the world building in itself is not a neutral act (Karppi 2018: 2).

Too much to know
Today, lack of information is rarely a problem. Digital media technologies have madeinformation more visible through storing, connecting and communicating. When a Google
search give millions of results, it’s a reminder of the endless amount of information out there.
It is not humane to go through every result. Through their services for managing the world’s
information, Google effectively point out how much information there is, and make anargument for the inability to cope with it without their help. Search, Maps and News are all partof creating a world in which Google services are necessary.
“There has always been too much to know” writes John Durham Peters (2016: 321), butsometimes it’s more evident. The impression of information abundance did not emerge withdigital media technologies, but has been around for thousands of years, as pointed out by
historian Ann Blair (2010). There is no concrete amount of information that cause this feeling.
Instead, it’s a mix of personal and cultural expectations, media technologies and both thequantity and quality of the information available (2010: 3). In the middle ages, as books became
more widely available, so did also the concern that the abundance of books would lead people
to waste time reading the bad books instead of high quality literature. In the era of the printingpress, one way of coping with the large number of books was to create even more books:
Anthologies and encyclopedias was a way of fighting information overload with even more
information3.
3

I got the example of anthologies and encyclopedias from a lecture given by John Durham Peters in 2014 called“What is knowledge good for? And what does communication have to do with it.” It can be viewed on
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INEN6n2IR48

63

Google can be placed in this historical tradition of indexing and sorting the information of theworld, making it more easily accessible. Google do not create content themselves (generally)
but serve as a compiler and mediator of knowledge. They bring order and cleanliness to a web
glutted with information, people, and devices. They remind us of how hard all of this would be
without technological help.
When users let the Google AI handle recommendations, searches, news and other tasks the lossof agency is not portrayed as a bad thing. Instead, this is made the biggest selling point of
Google’s services. They take care of the abundance of information available, filter it and give
users what they need, while hiding the unwanted information. The things that Google take careof are unwanted, menial tasks, things that a machine could do instead of a human. To be humanin Google’s world is to stop doing what computers can do for us and instead focus on what’s
truly meaningful. The presentation of News is characteristic for how Google believe that AI
should improve our lives. It not only process information better than humans, but also in morequantities than we could never handle on our own. When everyone can have their voice heard
through social media or blogs, it is simply not humane to go through it all.

Being human
What is considered human is continuously rethought in relation to what machines can do. Whenthe technologies around us change, so does the preconditions for living. New media
technologies thus have existential consequences (Peters 2016: 315; Lagerkvist 2017). They
have us reconsider what it means to be interacting with other people and what that interaction
can be like; what is useful knowledge and what is not.
History is filled with things that we don’t have to worry about in our day to day life anymore
thanks to more specialized technology. When we bake bread ’from scratch’ today, it rarely
includes harvesting wheat and obtaining yeast. In her study of the transformation of household
work during the industrial age, Cowan (1983: 6) remind us that few would know how to maketheir own bread without external help if so our lives depended on it. This kind of knowledge,
crucial for households a couple of hundred years ago, have been turned obsolete because oftechnological change and centralized, specialized production. At all time, we are surrounded64

by technological inventions that often aren’t noticed until they stop working or disappear. “The
more one work with digital technologies, the more one comes to appreciate the capacity of
networked and programmable machines to carry out sophisticated cognitive tasks” (Hayles
2012: 3). Living in late modernity, means constantly making use of goods and tools which we
not fully understand how they were made or how they work, as long as they work (Cowan 1983:
7).
Google’s technologies not only remind us of our inherent shortcomings but also hold thepromise freeing us from them. “Technology is seductive when what it offers meets our humanvulnerabilities” writes Turkle (2012: 1). We should be managers of the technologically infusedworld, deciding what should be done and then let machines do it for us. Sometimes because we
don’t want to do the tasks needed, sometimes because machines can do them better, faster andwith higher reliability. When they work, lacking human senses and therefore not affected by
the bore caused by repetitiveness, we can focus on what is truly meaningful, says Google.
Digital wellbeing is about creating technology suited for humans and not the other way around.
The wellbeing.google website state that the goal is that ”life, not the technology in it, stays frontand center”.
However, there is also a level of human adaptation needed in a world filled with digitaltechnologies. The Digital wellbeing is an attempt to help people live peacefully with the digital,
because a life without it is impossible. Technology today is an environment to us in the same
way that nature has been historically (Stivers 1999: 23): It presents to us the challenges and thesolutions of everyday life. Google are investing in educating children and adults to become
better prepared for a world revolving around the digital. An initiative includes educating fivemillion kids to "Be internet awesome”, learning to safely explore the web. As technology andsociety change so does the demands on the people living in it. Google offer to help people
transition into the world they too create.

65References
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