Has Morality Become a Skeuomorph?

An early strategy for making new technology feel familiar

I was thinking this morning about two subjects that don't usually go together, skeuomorphs and morality.

A skeuomorph is a design element applied to a product that looks as if it's functional but really isn't. Its real purpose is to evoke a sense of familiarity and comfort. The literary critic N. Katherine Hayles cites as an example the dashboard of her Toyota Camry, which is made of synthetic plastic molded to look as if it's stitched fabric. 

Software designers use lots of skeuomorphs for their user interfaces; examples include the "pages" that seem to "turn" in e-readers and word processing programs. Hayles calls skeuomorphs “threshold devices." They "stitch together past and future," she says, "reassuring us that even as some things change, others persist."

For a few months last year Apple Computer took a lot of flack from the design cognoscenti for its dedication to skeuomorphs; the linen texture that appears as background on the iPod and the wooden bookshelf used for the iBook display were frequently cited examples. The company's skeuomorph aesthetic was said to be a legacy of Steve Jobs, who was convinced people needed recognizable touchstones to ease them through the uncharted expanses of cyberspace. 

Enough! cried the cognoscenti. The time for such reassurance has long since ended! So it was that cheers greeted the firing in October of Apple's software leader, Scott Forstall, carrier of the skeuomorphic torch, as well as the introduction of Microsoft's sleek new Metro Design, which doesn't pretend to be anything other than pixels on a screen. 

Apple's iBooks display

Although I'm pretty sensitive to the look and feel of things, my thoughts about skeuomorphs this morning had nothing to do with user interfaces. Rather I was thinking that perhaps the idea of a skeuomorph might be applied outside the domain of design, specifically to the realm of ethics. 

It seems likely that in an era of mass-market technology morality has become – not always, but often – a skeuomorph: a feature that's retained for the sake of appearances rather than any practical function. Any function, that is, other than that of reassuring people that even as some things change, others persist.

These admittedly dark thoughts were prompted by reading the cover story in last Sunday's New York Times magazine, "The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food." Reporter Michael Moss describes in brilliant detail the lengths to which America's biggest food and beverage conglomerates have gone to design products we can't get enough of, literally. Their profits and our waistlines get fatter. They prosper, we don't.

Moss opens the piece by telling the story of an extraordinary summit meeting of food industry leaders, convened in Minneapolis in 1999 by a Pillsbury executive named James Behnke. Among those in attendance were the presidents or CEOs of Kraft, Nabisco, General Mills, Procter & Gamble, Mars, and Coca-Cola. 

Behnke called the meeting to discuss the implications for their businesses of the nation's skyrocketing rates of obesity. Health officials and physicians' groups were sounding alarms: Obesity was a health-care catastrophe in the making, especially among children, and the products sold by the men at Behnke's meeting were a major cause of the problem.

Behnke, a chemist with a doctorate in food science, believed it was time the industry addressed the obesity issue, not only because it was threatening to become a public relations liability, but also because the health officials and physician's groups were right: the industry did bear some responsibility for undermining the health of its customers. His feelings were shared by a vice president from Nabisco named Michael Mudd, who presented to the assembled executives an obesity primer, describing with the help of some 114 slides the scale of the epidemic and the threat it posed to the packaged food industry. 

 

Mudd then offered a series of recommendations. First, he said, the industry should acknowledge that its products were more fattening than they needed to be. Second, the industry should vow to do something about it. He suggested a three-step course of remedial action that began with a program of scientific research to determine what was causing people to eat more than was good for them. Once that was determined, the industry could reformulate its products to reduce their harmful ingredients and devise a nutritional code for its marketing and advertising campaigns.

It would be lovely to report that Mudd's presentation was greeted with a standing ovation and an impassioned, consensual vow to go forth and reform America's packaged foods marketplace for the sake of the people. That didn't happen. According to Moss, the next person to speak was Stephen Sanger, who at the time was leading General Mills to record profits by selling just the sort of fat-, sugar-, and salt-filled products being blamed for the obesity explosion. 

 

A General Mills success story: a "health food" with twice the sugar per serving as the children's cereal, Lucky Charms

Sanger wanted no part of Mudd's remedial program, or, for that matter, his guilt. General Mills had always acted perfectly responsibly, he said, not only toward its customers but also toward its shareholders. Consumers buy what they like, and they like products that taste good. General Mills was in the business of selling products that satisfy those tastes and had no intention of doing anything else. His competitors, Sanger suggested, should do the same. On that note, Moss reports, the summit meeting ended.

That these captains of industry would proceed, with endless creativity and ambition, to fill the shelves of American supermarkets with mountains of unhealthy, wasteful, dishonest products, knowing the pernicious effects those products would likely have on the well-being of millions of consumers, was the source of my dark thoughts this morning. 

It's hard not to conclude from examples such as these – and there are many others – that in the pursuit of corporate power moral restraint becomes – not always, but often – a  skeuomorph, a decorative element that pretends, for reassurance's sake, to be functional, but really isn't. There's nothing new about greed, of course. The difference is the scale of mendacity advanced technologies put at our disposal, and the ease with which checks on mendacity are discarded. The only justifications required: consumers will buy it and stockholders will profit.

The divorce of technology from morality is a theme that was sounded repeatedly by the philosopher who has most influenced my thinking on matters such as these, Jacques Ellul.

As I've explained elsewhere, Ellul pictured technology as a unified entity that relentlessly and aggressively expands its range of influence. Ellul used the term "technique" to underscore his conviction that technology must be seen as a way of thinking as well as an ensemble of machines and machine systems. Technique includes the methods and strategies that drive those systems, as well as the quantitative mentality that drives those methods and strategies. The invention, production, distribution, and marketing of addictive junk foods are all manifestations of technique. 

Jacques Ellul

The single overriding value of technique, Ellul repeatedly said, is efficiency. Worries about morality are obstacles in the attainment of efficiency, except where the brutality of efficiency's pursuit causes concerns that might produce resistance, and interference. "It is a principle characteristic of technique that it refuses to tolerate moral judgments," Ellul wrote in 1954. "It is absolutely independent of them and eliminates them from its domain." 

Moral "flourishes" remain, he added, but only for the sake of appearances. In reality, "None of that has any more importance than the ruffled sunshade of McCormick's first reaper. When these moral flourishes overly encumber technical progress, they are discarded – more or less speedily, with more or less ceremony, but with determination nonetheless. This is the state we are in today."

At the time of the food summit in Minneapolis, it's clear James Behnke hadn't fully acclimated himself to those conditions. Stephen Sanger apparently had. 

(For a related post, see Autonomy continued: Technology or Capitalism?)

©Doug Hill, 2013

 

On Immovable Technologies

There are some Big Ideas in the philosophy of technology that I find very helpful in understanding what's going on in the world of machines today. One of those ideas is a concept known as "technological momentum."

Technological momentum is a phrase coined by the historian Thomas Parke Hughes to describe the tendency of successful technological systems to become entrenched over time, growing increasingly resistant to change. This resistance is a product of both physical and psychological commitments. We invest materially in factories and emotionally in careers. Equipment and infrastructure accumulate and intertwine; dependence and force of habit build.

Professor Hughes' label has its problems, for reasons I'll explain, but before I do let me note two recent examples of technological momentum in action. Both, as they say, are ripped from the headlines.

Carol Bartz

The first example involves comments made earlier this month at a Fortune magazine forum by Carol Bartz, fired last year as president and chief executive officer of Yahoo. According to the NewYork Times, at one point Bartz was asked if she had any advice for her successor in those roles, Marissa Mayer. Bartz replied that Mayer shouldn't kid herself about quick turnarounds at a company as large as Yahoo. When informed of proposed changes in policy, she recalled, staff members there typically responded with agreement to her face and defiance in private. Bartz came away from the experience amazed by "how stuck individuals can be, much less 14,000 people." 

“It’s very, very hard to affect culture," she said. "And you can get surprised thinking you’re farther down the path of change than you really are because, frankly, most of us like the way things are.”

The second example involves an even bigger tech brand, Microsoft. In August Vanity Fair magazine ran a lengthy dissection of the company’s creative decline under the stewardship of its Chief Executive Officer, Steven Ballmer. 

Steven Ballmer

The article portrays Ballmer presiding over a “lumbering” behemoth, "pumping out" tried and true products (Windows and Office) while failing to exploit opportunities (search, music, mobile) that have turned other companies (Google, Apple) into global icons. “Every little thing you want to write has to build off of Windows or other existing products,” a software engineer told reporter Kurt Eichenwald. “It can be very confusing, because a lot of the time the problems you’re trying to solve aren’t the ones that you have with your product, but because you have to go through the mental exercise of how this framework works. It just slows you down.”

That comment suggests why Professor Hughes’ "technological momentum" label isn't ideal. Momentum implies movement, but often as not the dynamics he’s describing lead to paralysis. Computer programmers refer to the acquired intractability of older software systems as problems of "legacy" or "lock-in," terms that may more accurately convey the obstinacy involved.

The fact that a software program can be an obstacle to change underscores a point touched on earlier: technological momentum is about more than stubborn geezers stuck in their ways. Technological systems become entrenched because they’re made out of real-world stuff. Companies can replace operating systems and assembly lines, but not without a lot of energy and expense, and inevitably the replacements have to incorporate some of what came before. An entire society’s commitment to a technology becomes almost impossible to reverse. America’s highway systems won’t be dismantled any time soon; the problem is keeping them repaired. 

Technological momentum tells us that technological systems tend to be self-perpetuating. There’s irony in that because the quality we typically associate with technology is progress, not stagnation. In fact both things are true: technological systems can be both disruptive and obstructionist, sometimes both at the same time. It’s also true, as any football fan knows, that momentum – forward momentum, that is – can be lost or regained. Steve Jobs did both at Apple, and Steve Ballmer is in the process, with the introduction of a new operating system, a new music service, a new phone system, and a new tablet computer, of trying to pull off the same trick at Microsoft. 

The greatest example of technological momentum is technology itself. Technology is astonishingly creative within its own realm, but it's incapable of recognizing any realm outside itself. To the degree that we fail to recognize that fact – which these days is almost completely – we surrender ourselves to the technological paradigm. Even sane people are beginning to think that the only way we'll be able to save the planet from environmental catastrophe is by the invention of some ingenious technique. Individual ambitions aim in the same direction; everyone’s out to make a dent in the universe on the scale of Gates or Zuckerberg or Jobs. These dreamers may consider themselves consummate innovators, but their thinking is still trapped in a box labeled “Technology.”

Image credits: Bartz, Tony Avelar/Bloomberg via Getty Images; Closed Mind illustration: Harry Campbell

©Doug Hill, 2012

 

Steve Jobs, Romantic

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Steve Jobs

"…the season

Wherein the spirits hold their wont to walk

the fruitful matrix of Ghosts…"

                                                  Samuel Taylor Coleridge 

Steve Jobs died a year ago October 5th, and we can expect his ghost to appear in any number of recollections and assessments as the anniversary approaches.

I'd like to talk here about a spirit that Jobs carried within himself. It's a spirit he relied on for inspiration, although he seemed at times to have lost track of its whisper. In any event what it says can tell us a lot about our relationship to machines.

I refer to the spirit of Romanticism. I spent much of this past summer reading about the Romantics – the original Romantics, that is, of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries – and it's remarkable how closely their most cherished beliefs correspond to principles that Jobs considered crucial to his success at Apple.      

What Apple does that other companies don't, Jobs often said, is infuse the technologies it produces with human values. "It's in Apple's DNA that technology alone is not enough," he said during one of his famous product introductions. "We believe that it's technology married with the humanities that yields us the result that makes our heart sing."      

Jobs can be forgiven for never getting very specific about what he meant by marrying technology to the humanities. It's by definition a subject that's hard to pin down, though not especially hard to understand. Basically he was saying that Apple's products have soul, and that people are attracted to those products because they can feel that soul, both consciously and unconsciously. These are things the Romantics thought about a lot.

That the creative artist can bring life to inanimate objects was a central conviction of the Romantic poets. (I'm speaking of the thrust of the Romantic movement in general; individuals within the movement disagreed on specific issues.) For them the inanimate object in question was words, for Jobs it was technology, but the basic point – that a work of art, properly executed, carries within it an invisible, living essence – was the same. Devoid of this essence, said Samuel Taylor Coleridge, what's produced is as lifeless as the "cold jelly" of a corpse. 

Jobs onstage presenting Apple's iPad 2

Put in contemporary terms, soul from the Romantic perspective is an emergent quality, a product of an organic, harmonious relationship between constituent parts. Even when those individual elements are familiar in other contexts, as the elements of Apple's products were often said to be, combining them with due attention to essence can bring something new into the world. As Coleridge put it, the true artist "places things in a new light…What oft was thought but ne'er so well exprest…[He] not only displays what tho often seen in its unfolded mass had never been opened out, but he likewise adds something, namely, Lights & Relations."

Relations, in turn, create unity. Each part is completely faithful to the creation as a whole. To construct a work in accord with some "mean or average proportion" is to dilute its essence, said William Hazlitt, "for a thing is not more perfect by becoming something else, but by being more itself."

This supports Jobs' insistence that Apple maintain control over both its hardware and its software, a policy that insured they would work seamlessly together. Soul emerges on its own in nature, but not in art. The unity on which it depends is concealed, as one critic put it, beneath "a surface world of chaos and confusion." To reveal essence requires not only vision, but also focused attention and deliberate action. Coleridge coined a word to describe the unifying power of the creative imagination: "esemplastic," derived from the Greek for "to shape into one."   

Nor will essence emerge on the strength of reason alone. Indeed, Romanticism was explicitly and decidedly a revolt against reason, a rejection of the empirical presumption of the Enlightenment. Coleridge considered the "Mechanico-corpuscular philosophy" his lifelong enemy; its endless reductionism smothered, he believed, any trace of vitality. What remained wasn't art, he said, but "a lifeless Machine whirled about by the dust of its own Grinding" – a fair description of how Steve Jobs viewed the products of Apple's longtime rival, Microsoft.          

The Romantic contemplates nature

There's no question that Jobs was intimately familiar with and sympathetic to the Romantics' convictions, if only because they were shared by two of his most formative influences, Eastern religion and the 60s counterculture. This is not to say he was directly aware of that coalescence; I've seen no interview with Jobs in which the Romantics are mentioned. Nor is there evidence to suggest he recognized how freely the streams of the three philosophies intertwined. Ralph Waldo Emerson, for example, wrote poetry based on the Bhagavad Gita and paid tribute in person to Coleridge and Carlyle. Autobiography of a Yogi, a book Jobs claimed to have read annually since he was in college, quotes Emerson several times. Values regularly celebrated in Romantic texts – passion, spontaneity, authenticity – were counterculture touchstones as well.

Jobs' philosophy, then, overlapped with the Romantics', whether he knew it or not. Coleridge famously said that every person is either a born Platonist or a born Aristotelian – the Romantics were Platonists, Bill Gates would qualify as an Aristotelian – and that no one changes from one orientation to the other. It may be that Jobs was, as he and many others contended, an exception to that rule, able to play successfully on both sides of the technology/humanities divide.

There were signs that Jobs wasn't finding it easy to hold on to his Romanticism as his business career progressed. In Apple's early days he'd been a believer in the messianic promise of computers, convinced they were the greatest force in history for human liberation. In more recent interviews he dismissed suggestions that technology can solve the problems of the world, and he was stung by critics who said that some of Apple's products were more about consumerism than creativity. He also expressed disappointment in the narrowness of vision he saw in the students who came to hear him speak on college campuses. The only thing that seemed to impress them, he said, was how much money he'd made.

Jobs' weariness speaks to a point I'd mentioned at the beginning of this article: that the spirit of Romanticism can tell us a lot about our relationships to machines. To believe that technology can be our savior was a minority opinion in the counterculture. The predominant sentiments of the time were more in tune with the Romantics, who believed that salvation was to be found not in mechanical power, but by living as simply and as close to nature as possible.

Pastoral retreat on any substantial scale isn't likely at this point. Our technologies are with us to stay. Living more simply would seem to be an option, though. We might also consider the possibility of constructing those technologies more Romantically. That would entail recognizing, as Steve Jobs did, that the things we create really do have souls, and that they speak a language we can hear.                  

Books that were especially useful in my research for this reflection were Richard Holmes' two-volume biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, M.H. Abrams' The Mirror and the Lamp, David Newsome's Two Classes of Men: Platonism and English Romantic Thought, and Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs.

Note: This essay was published earlier this morning by O'Reilly Radar. Thanks to Mac Slocum for opening the door. 

Image credits: iPad 2 presentation: Rob Pegoraro, Washington Post; "Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog," Casper David Friedrich, 1818.

©Doug Hill, 2012