title: Technological Health Clinic: Reframing and Reimagining our Relationships with Technology
Creators: name: Caceres Rivero, Laura
Publisher: name: Emily Carr University of Art and Design
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Technology
valueUri: http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85133147
subject: Health
valueUri: http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85059518
subject: Mental health
valueUri: http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85083615

description: It is reasonable to argue that technology is disruptive, psychologically and socially; it can appear to be uncomfortably fast-paced, overbearing, and have unpredictable effects on our day to day behaviours, seemingly linked to anxiety, depression or stress (McFadden, 2019), and more so on socio-cultural values, perception, interdependence, and relational structures (Verbeek, 2005). Still, technology and society continuously co-shape each other. Systematic philosophy professor Hans Achterhuis reasons about the social logic of technology claiming that 'on the one hand, the development of technology is accompanied by a transformation of society, but on the other hand that process is determined by socio-cultural factors' (Achterhuis, 2001, pg. 8). This co-shaping conditions us to passivity due to our disposition to technological optimism while generalizing the aftermath of this shaping as unfavourable, reducing what we believe, think or know about technology to a merely instrumentalist perspective, in which technologies are conceived as a neutral means to help carry out a specific practice, while denying that they frequently transform this practice in radical ways (Smits, 2001). In either case, the spectrum both removes the user from the context and frames them as victims, taking away the agency and responsibility we as individuals have on said outcomes. The project seeks to develop techno-social literacies around our relationships with technology, the ways of being it co-constructs, and the behaviours it affords. Such literacy, as argued for by technology critic James Bridle, is seen as a necessary first step toward addressing a range of contemporary health conditions which are increasingly linked to our use of technology and immersion in media; it connects us to issues such as computational thinking (Bridle, 2019, pg. 4), novelty addiction, convenience culture, sedentary lifestyles, and FOMO, to name a few. By critically looking at how we relate with technology, not as the source but rather the output of fundamental human ethos, the work seeks to reframe issues with technology as social rather than technical. As a result, a generative and ongoing process of restructuring practice and unveiling action turned my interest in empathy, un-wellness*, care, and agency into the concept of technological health as a propositional, exploratory design research approach. To expose the shift in meaning, culture, and value that our current relationship with our devices appears to highlight, my Research looks at intervention structures that could aid in reframing and reimagining our relationship with technology. A Technological Health Clinic is proposed as a means of Research into such relationships, venturing with lifestyle experiments that question the ways we act, resist, and behave, to open up possibilities for restructured agency and self-understanding through the increased perception of our techno-mutualism.