Knowing Glances; Communication and Technology Division, ICA 2004
p. 19
made for the purposes of the market, ignores, deflects, and denies real political concerns
of poverty (especially among lesbians) and social oppression (Badgett 2001). In
reconfiguring social groups as markets, issues of social justice are subordinated to issues
of appropriate consumption, and economically undesirable groups (that is, the poor) are
excluded, again, from public discourse (Chasin 2000, Sender 2001).
Market profiles are used by marketers for their own purposes. The interests of the
subject, or of the demographic group to which the subject is assigned, are considered only
insofar as they align with the interests of the profiler. These interests may well be
partially aligned. Public recognition of gay or lesbian markets – whether for Subaru cars
or ‘I can’t even think straight’ T-shirts – is certainly advantageous to some buyers and
some sellers. But interests are often at odds, and it is quite possible that one would not be
offered ads for health insurance or particular vacation packages because of a private
analysis of one’s surfing habits (Li 1996).
In a sense, these digital models may be more insidious than public representations,
because the models and the algorithms which guide their use are privately owned and
circulated, and so unavailable for public contestation (Gandy 1993). Ubiquitous
computing has the capacity to feed the demographic process with almost limitless data.
Since the representation of groups is a process of social structuring, it is a political
contest. The issue that designers of ubicomp systems must address is not what are the
proper representations, but how does the system itself lend itself to claims and contests
over those representations. In particular, designers should ask two questions.
The first is: How far does the environment permit individuals to occupy it as public
space? We mentioned above the necessity of an available public environment in which
Convention