Lauren Haughey
 is a multidisciplinary visual artist, writer and event organiser based in Dublin.
Her practice is mainly concerned with exploring our present historical moment; a time of increasing techno-cultural accexxleration and profound alienation and disembodiment. 
Any profound moment of change is flagged by an permeability of boundaries, and Haughey's practice places a magnifying glass on these intersections of identity and culture. Her work engages with themes of cyborgification; between nature, technology, humanity and culture.
She values magic and mythos, and engages with the inexplicable and illusory as a way of understanding the present world, and generating imaginations of new worlds to come.

Selected works
2025
Creggan

2024
Source, Stream, Encryption
Infinity Point

2023
Into the Furze
Household Code

2022
Circadian Supplement
Spiders

2021
Vertical Fence

Food Art
Hedge Scullery (2025)
Sculpture Supper (2025)
Kale Kultures (2023)
Chleb i Sol (2023)

Writing
2025
The Reproduction of Tiki and the Hawaiian Original
Smart Devices and the Myth of Magical Ease
2024
Fermentation as Embodied Ecological Practice


CV

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Smart Devices and the Myth of Magical Ease



Introduction

In this essay I will explore the myth of magical ease in technology culture, with reference to Roland Barthes. I describe Latour’s concept of the black box, and Leo Marx’ technological sublime in support of this research. I will track through the cultural and historical conditions in which computer technologies were developed and distributed, and the ways in which the development of their physical form supports and reinforces the myth of magical ease. I will begin by describing the origins of the modern computer, and apply Latour’s theory of the black box in comparison with Leo Marx’ concept of the technological sublime to demonstrate the way by which the origins of computing set a precedent for a culture of occlusion. 

In my second chapter, I will explore the computer’s mass dissemination as it coincided with the systemic turn of the 70s. Through this exploration I will demonstrate that the adoption of the computer was influenced by, and influenced the sociocultural shift towards postmodernism. 

To close, I will explore the physical form of the modern smart device, drawing together the notions of the black box and the technological sublime through the example of the iPhone.

The outcome of my research will demonstrate the self-justificatory bourgeois myths inherent in modern technology cultures, which are symptomatic of a wider cultural perspective. The form of the modern smart device, as pure mediation, exemplifies this perspective; creating an inherent disempowerment.

Chapter 1


 1.a.  Magical Ease
Barthes, in Mythologies, defines myth as “depoliticized speech” (1972, 142). 

Myth has the task of naturalising “historical intention”, with the aim of justifying bourgeois society. Barthes asserts that the bourgeois “regime of ownership” creates a culture of “consumption”(139); which permeates every level of society, affecting everyday life and media. However, the bourgeoisie insist on their own anonymity, and seek to deny their existence as a class, erasing history and political intent with the aim of sustaining their own social and political position. In order to create this justificatory narrative, the bourgeoise frame the state of the world as ‘natural’, rather than the outcome of sustained political intent; “Bourgeois norms are experienced as the evident laws of the natural order” (Barthes 1957, 139). Myth lays things out in the open, presenting them as self-justificatory fact-of-life eternal truths. In erasing history and politics, myth purifies things. (143)

Myth, in Barthes’ view, is arranged in support of a set of key rhetorical figures. In this essay I will primarily focus on the second principal figure of bourgeois rhetoric provided by Barthes: The privation of history (151).

In the privation of history, myth presents objects and phenomena without context or politics. We may enjoy things “without wondering where [they] come from” (151). This privation can present things as spontaneously originating in the present, or as eternal- in both cases the thing in question exists only to serve bourgeois man. Exotic locations exist for the tourist. 

The removal of context erases any trace of origin, evaporating history.  If determinism is removed from sight, we can relax into blamelessness and guiltlessness; a concept Barthes frames as common to most bourgeois myths: “the irresponsibility of man.” (151)

In his essay The Brain of Einstein, from Mythologies (1957) Roland Barthes introduces the myth of “magical ease” (emphasis added, 69). Einstein, a generational mathematician, is depicted as a transcendental genius, to whom mathematics came as easily as breathing. The labour and work of Einstein is reduced to the singular quality of his god-given brain.The popular imagery of Einstein with his most famous discovery, e=mc², removes the complex mathematical equations, leaving only the end product- “knowledge [is] reduced to formula” (69). This allows the viewer to imagine that they might understand the process without asking that they actually perform the intensive work to do so. We can feel part of this momentous scientific discovery without actual engagement, and we can avoid acknowledgement of the engagement that Einstein undertook, attributing the discovery to “magical ease”, by way of his genius. This myth of magical ease comes from the rhetorical figure of the privation of history- erasing context, labour, and origin. The myth of the singular “genius” supports this rhetoric, while further attributing the work of many to the genius of one. 

This myth of magical ease is alive in modern technology culture (Angel, 2008). Technology is sleek, and attractive and powerful; invented by the virtuoso of Silicon Valley. This myth erases the labour of slaves’ bodies, who toil in order to assure the system’s function. Magical ease hides the blood, sweat and complexity from the consumer. The appearance of the device reinforces and embodies this myth. Working parts are obscured; every element of the object is designed to evoke sleekness, simplicity and ease.  The Russian robota means to work, from which we get ‘Robot’ (Samman, 2024, 66). There is a pleasure in assumed ease, in distance from inner workings. 

This rhetoric, which treats both the artefacts and creators of technology as “embalmed” objects, which must, and do exist “just because”, transforms our relation to these things from engagement to passive consumption.  Through hiding the historical conditions which influence the trajectory of cultures of technology across time, a secondary myth is introduced.  If we are to take things at face value, without considering why, and where, and how they came to be; it follows that we should not consider why they continue to work in the present.  The current conditions of the world, as well as the artefacts in it are the result of a “particular, historical” (Barthes, 1957, 141) trajectory that is intentional rather than incidental, with the aim of justifying and enforcing the regime of ownership mentioned prior. An erasure of dialectics and complex history represents an occlusion of power.

1.b. The ENIAC and the SSEC

After the second world war, huge amounts of funding were made available for research into computation. John Von Neumann developed the Havard Mark I machine, which contributed to calculations for the Manhattan Project- a wartime project that led to the development of the American atomic bomb. (Brindle, 2018, 25, 26, 31). Von Neumann later contributed to the development of the ENIAC in 1946 (Fig.1). The ENIAC was designed to calculate artillery firing tables for the US Army’s Ballistic Research Laboratory, but in 1948 it was repurposed as a meteorological calculator (Brindle, 2018,.29). The ENIAC was an enormous beast, covering three walls of the research lab it was housed in. It produced tremendous amounts of heat, and had to be reprogrammed by turning hundreds of rotary switches by hand. Harry Reed, a mathematician who worked on the ENIAC described the machine as a computer that one “lived inside” (as quoted by Brindle, 30). 


Fig. 1: The ENIAC circa 1947-1955


The ENIAC, as repurposed military equipment, marked an interesting point on the path of technological progress- its internal workings took place independently, but it still required intensive hands-on involvement from the user. It was a legible machine, with electromechanical processes that could be interpreted by the initiated- lights flashed signalling which stage of processing the machine was in, and operators recognized particular distinctive sounds it made when it had completed calculations. Still, it was an apparatus of industry, used in a University lab by trained professionals- closer to a machine in a factory than a modern laptop.

In parallel, the IBM SSEC was installed in New York in 1948 to rival the ENIAC. While the ENIAC was housed in a university lab, the SSEC was installed behind a glass window in a former shoe shop in New York, beside IBM’s offices, (Fig.2). The computer was installed on a raised floor, which hid unsightly cables. When it opened to the public, they crowded against the glass to bear witness to the machine. Publicity photos of the event were airbrushed to remove supporting pillars in the room, as per the request of IBM’s president.


Fig.2: The SSEC room in 1948

The operations of the SSEC seemed to harken a new age of computational transparency- mathematicians came and went, and the computer made calculations in full view of anyone who might wish to look through the window. Unbeknownst to the public, the SSEC was used to run a programme called Hippo, which ran simulations of the first hydrogen bomb (Brindle, 2018, p 33). The SSEC ran at least three simulations of a hydrogen bomb explosion during the months it was housed in that shopfront window in New York City- in full public view, but entirely illegible and encrypted. The seeming transparency of the operations hid enormous, insidious power from view- a convergence of covert military aims with commercial, for-profit operations.

The legacies of these two pioneering computers bring forth lessons in modern computing culture. The ENIAC might seem enormous to us, as room sized computers shrink to pocket sized devices; but in reality computational infrastructure has simply expanded to cover the globe. If the ENIAC was a computer that you “lived inside”, by virtue of its colossal walls, we might all be said to now live inside an enormous computer. The walls of the new computational infrastructure, however, are much more difficult to identify.

The modern myth of magical ease is supported by the invisibility of the mechanics and infrastructure that supports and produces technology.
The public debut of the SSEC, and its visibility mediated by the “transparency” of the window separating the computer from the public belied a deeper and greater divide. Even though the computer was out in the open, it did not reveal its process or aim. The aesthetic of transparency concealed an opacity of power and control, and the sinister outcome of the calculations performed. Both computers were inexorably bound to military interests- The ENIAC in its initial development as an artillery fire table calculator, and the SSEC in its use for the Hippo bomb simulation programme.

Through an insistence of transparent self-evidence, the privation of history depoliticizes things- we do not have context, so bourgeois interests can remain anonymous, receding into the background.

In the above example, a differentiating factor between the ENIAC and the SSEC is the visibility of mechanics or “mess” associated with the workings of the machine. Concealment of inner workings is a hallmark of the trajectory of technological design. In the 50s, the “cloud” began to emerge in patent applications- a fuzzy circle, a puffball. What exactly the cloud represented- “a power system, or a data exchange, or another network of computers”(Brindle, 2018, 12) was irrelevant. The function of the cloud as a metaphor was to reduce complexity. The only relevant information, for the patent applicant, was whatever they were proposing- the here and now. The cloud represents ‘over there’, somewhere else, someone else’s problem.


1.c. The Black Box

The emergence of concepts like the cloud, can be seen as part of a wider trend towards black boxing, another kind of mythologised object.
The black box was first described by Bruno Latour, in Pandora's hope: essays on the reality of science studies(1999). Latour sees all phenomena that can possibly be encountered in the world as parts of networks of relations between actants. Some networks are vast, others are small. Blackboxing is a process by which the “joint production of actors and artifacts [is made] entirely opaque” (Latour, 1999, 183). When you use a computer it becomes a functional, self-standing object with both its internal engineering and external relations with other things that make it work hidden from view. The computer would not exist or function without this network, but until the computer breaks the network is invisible and unconsidered. Until that moment, these entities were invisible parts of the “black box” of the device. Blackboxing makes “scientific and technical work” invisible through efficiency- one need only focus on “inputs and outputs” rather than “internal complexity”. Through this process, the work becomes increasingly “opaque and obscure” (Latour, 1999, 304).

Per the myth of Einstein’s brain in Barthes’ account, the labour and knowledge that produced the black box is wiped clean from the slate; as well as the internal operations of the black box itself. “Knowledge [is] reduced to formula” (Barthes, 1957, 69), and our interactions are framed through the lens of consumption rather than engagement.

There is a disempowerment inherent in this dynamic, in which objects stand in for a world of assumed but unseen complexity. In the examples of the ENIAC and SSEC, as well as Einstein’s genius, we can feel part of the line of progress and discovery that produces knowledge. Barthes describes a kind of bourgeois rhetoric in which ‘humankind’ is unified in a kind of liberal assimilationism (1957, 152). This flattening cleaves the class and culture divide between people, and draws attention away from power structures, while allowing the everyday person to feel part of the ‘success’ of a society. Despite this sense of collective progress, the back-ending and blackboxing of the mechanics of technological advances create an experience of spectacle, rather than understanding.

1.d The Sublime

This sense of awe at the grandeur and complexity of technology might be compared to the sublime, a sensation that is “essentially religious”, aroused in confrontation with impressive objects (Nye, 1994 xiii). The concept of the sublime has traditionally been attributed to natural phenomena such as vast waterfalls or enormous mountains, but Leo Marx describes the emergence of a technological sublime. In the rise of the railroad in the United States, a tension emerged between the pastoral ideals of the pre-industrial world, and the new technological sublime as framed by the expansionist bourgeois. Technology is framed as a “rational” (1964, 194) force which could “elevate the mind” and impart “greater compass and strength” (195). In the context of the American west, technology represented a civilising tool, to reform the ‘raw’ landscape (203). In the technological sublime, nature is a brute force waiting to serve man. This is supported by Barthes’ assertion that bourgeois ideology “transforms the reality of the world into an image of the world” (1957,140), through both ideology and scientific, technical dominion.

Nye (1994) frames the technological sublime as a realisation of the power of the collective human intellect (1994). In particular, communications technologies can collapse space and time “violat[ing] the sense of the possible” (62). In the classic dynamic of the natural sublime, the mind reels at its inferiority when faced with overwhelming natural power; whereas in the technological sublime the overwhelming force itself is manmade. The sublimity lies in the fact that man has “subjugated matter” (62). The sublime landscape of the contemporary world system can render a sense of overwhelm or insignificance in the subject, while simultaneously engendering feelings of “superior selfworth”(197).

As an individual, we cannot grasp the totality of the landscape we find ourselves situated in, but this extrasensory dimension has been constructed by members of ‘mankind’- a class which we are part of (p 197). Despite our membership of this class, there is a chasm between the observing subject and the actual means of production by which the sublime landscape has been manufactured. The technological sublime emerges as an important part of industrial society, reinstating the observer’s role in the social order as a passive subject (197).

Nye recalls the 1939 World Fair, which included a large “House of Magic”, which blended technological advances with show tricks. Many companies hired magicians as presenters. Through framing the experience of new technologies as magic, the audience was guided towards a spectacular, immaterial world wherein anything was possible. The machines seemed to self-regulate, and mechanics were obscured from the audience’s view. The presenters emphasised their function as mediators rather than operators- the new world was easeful. The exhibits were rarely explained, intended instead to be interpreted as spectacle; entertainment rather than education. (1994, 216)

We can experience the technological sublime as another kind of secondary myth, derived from Barthes’ rhetoric of history’s privation. The myth of the technological sublime seeks to have the everyman self-identify with bourgeois accumulation of capital. Rather than a contextual, historical reading of this technical, scientific progress, liberal assimilation subsumes the subject into an experience of spectacle or awe, which ultimately manifests as a quiet acceptance of alienation.

In the first section of this essay I discussed the means by which the historical origin of the computer set a precedent for a blackboxing of intent, and internal mechanics, which masks bourgeois interests through an insistence of collectivism. However, “the cloud”, mentioned earlier, is the core metaphor through which we understand the modern internet. It represents not only a kind of spectacular technological sublime- a sense of man’s subjugation of matter, but a wider postmodern sublime- acting as a window into enormous systems beyond our comprehension.

Chapter 2


The things we encounter in everyday life in spectacular societies are almost always a proxy for some deeper reality of which we are unaware, and our alienation from that deeper reality reduces our agency and quality of life. 
Debord, as quoted by Brindle, 2018, 91

Since the mid 1980s, computers cannot be conceived of in isolation Castells (2010, 43). From the mid 70s, computers began to shrink. The size of computers progressed in a few short decades from the room-sized ENIAC, to microcomputers which could sit at individual desks. This progress was driven in part by the invention of the transistor in 1947 (Wall, Webber, 2014, 3), which was cheaper and smaller than its predecessor, the electron tube; but also as a result of networking. The use of centralised databases allowed computers to share information between themselves. However, as mentioned prior, this networking- what we might now call the beginnings of “the cloud” ultimately represents that it’s somewhere else and someone else’s problem.

2.b. The Systemic Turn of the 1970s

The emergence of this system of networked computation coincided with a wider systemic turn of the 1970s. Particularly in the U.S, the 70s was a time of rapid destabilisation of the social order, and a restructuring of the capitalist systems of production. A combination of rapidly rising inflation and the oil crisis led the US government to abandon the Bretton-Woods system of international economic management, and the gold backed dollar, and transition to a system of fiat currency, which relied on trust and governmental authority (Harvey, 1989, 164). These changes created a new global financial system. The economic downturn combined with the rise of the globalised economy led to narrowed profit margins for companies. Corporations grappled to intensify labour control by weakening unions (Harvey, 1989, 145). Technological progress as a result of wartime innovations hastened and augmented these changes through automation (Castells, 2010, 263).

Fordism, an industrial system of production that relied on standardisation, assembly lines, and employee retention was outcompeted by flexible accumulation- a system which involves subcontracting labour, temporary or part-time contracts, and just-in-time manufacturing; which reduced stock inventory (Harvey, 150). Manufacturing became geographically dispersed as corporations moved to zones of easier labour control, which was bolstered by the expansion of the use of the shipping container. Goods could flow freely across the world, collapsing space and increasing international competition (Harvey,1989, 165). The political rise of neoconservatism, beginning in the 60s, despite its overall economic achievements (High unemployment, weak growth, spiralling indebtedness (Castells, 2010, 171)), is attributed instead to a general shift away from the norms and values of the 1950s. The new values of this era were marked by competitive individualism, and a culture of entrepreneurship. The 70s marked a transition to a global system, in which nations were at the behest of a worldwide networked economy; and under which the individual became an exchangeable unit within enormous systems they could not begin to comprehend. Like the phenomenon of technological sublime mentioned above, this effect is at once unifying and alienating. Collective action became extremely difficult, while rampant individualism was encouraged as a necessary condition for the model of flexible accumulation. The new, nimble model of flexible accumulation emphasises the transient and the fleeting- fashion and ephemerality, and constant search for individual improvement and success; as opposed to the comparably solid, material values of Fordism. In these new networked, decentralised systems, the hierarchy of power and control still exists, but it is harder to identify because the chain of cause and effect is made obscure.

This transition, described by some as a move from modernism to postmodernism represents a success in terms of the bourgeoisie’s insistence on their anonymity, per Barthes. In the defeat of the Union and a valorisation of entrepreneurship, the liberal assimilation of mankind can proliferate, with ignorance as to context and history. With the rise of the global system and subcontracted labour, the myth of magical ease can proliferate.

2.b. Networked Computation

All of these changes and advances were augmented by the development of new digital technologies. The computer becomes the ultimate tool of collapsing spacetime- allowing instantaneous communication across the earth. The computer allows a total dissolution of the normal constraints of discrete, tangible systems, allowing for total decentralisation. The age of the computer and the new networked society mark a total collapse of legible cause and effect. Bourgeois ideology prevails, unseen- the world can be “possessed, catalogued [and], embalmed” through the proliferation of myth in order to prevent any “flight towards other forms of existence” (Barthes, 156).

Castells’ The Rise of the Network Society (2010) traces the changes in clerical work in parallel with the progress of information technology, breaking the changes into three major phases:
The 1960s and 70s mark the initial phase of computer technology entering the office. Mainframe computers (Fig. 3) were used for batch processing of data, performing self-contained operations.

By the 1980s, microcomputers (Fig. 4) were used by employees in charge of the actual work process; interacting directly with the process of generating information. The microcomputers connected to a centralized database.
By the late 80s, technological advances led to the formation of networked workstations. Microcomputers could interact among themselves, and with mainframe computers, forming an interactive web (2010, 262-263).


                     Fig. 3: Operating a mainframe computer (1962)                                                                                   Fig. 4: The microcomputer, available for purchase (1983)

The model of the Mainframe computer- a discrete machine performing operations entirely internally, which are legible to the trained eye might be seen in parallel with an older Fordist society, with ideals of reliability, and solid cause and effect. The microcomputer represents a fragmentation of tasks, the computer shrinks and interactions co-involve the user, but the system is still legible- a contained unit. However, the rise of the decentralised computer network, which first emerged in the office, and then began to link corporations and colleges before it grew to swallow the globe, mirrors a new postmodern society.

The rise and permeation of information technologies coincided with the social and political transformations of the 70s, and per Castells, the dialogue between changing social values and the advances in technology created an interplay wherein one force shaped the other. These forces create a convergence- a new technological paradigm and a new organizational logic constitute the foundation of the new informational economy, wherein black boxes proliferate. Under conditions of postmodernism, we must accept that things are not what they may seem to be. There is an assumption that things are done ‘elsewhere’ by a specialised expert who knows far more than we do. This radically decentralised form of power, spread across geographies, residing in time as system rather than as place obscures its own existence. This decentralised form, with individual actants as nodes, encourages the individual to see themselves as a footloose capitalist- the entrepreneur- and through strategies of individualism, prevents solidarity. This system of postmodernism, wherein the bourgeois actant makes himself anonymous, mirrors the form of the emergent system of global computation. As demonstrated prior, from its inception the computer was an inherently blackboxed technology, requiring a relationship based on faith. As computers shrink, a large part of their shrinkage involves an offloading of operation to a network; one which we cannot see, and generally cannot affect. The rise of this paradigm fits entirely with the conditions of the 1970s. An acceptance of one form of disempowerment paves the way for another.

As computers made the world more complicated, we needed more computers to process and interact with the world’s complexity.

Chapter 3


I will return to a topic I introduced earlier- the black box. In this chapter I will analyse the evolution of device design, exploring the privilege of the screen, and the device as a commodity.

3.a. The Device as Mediation

The form of the computer ultimately acts as a mediating actor. The consumer, in their use of the computer, does not want to think about the millions of transistors, circuits, mathematical calculations and technical components. The computer acts as a means to an end, as in Albert Borgmann’s device paradigm (as described by Verbeek, 2005). In Borgmann’s framing, a device produces outcomes, unburdening humans from involvement with process. Through technology, things are divided into means and ends- machinery recedes into the background (Verbeek, 2005, p177). Whether my Macbook has an Intel or Apple Silicon chip has little bearing on my experience of using the device.

This emergence of the black boxed device began very early in the computer’s domestic adoption. Bill Moggridge (widely considered to be the father of interaction design) was responsible for the physical design of the GRiD Compass computer (1980)- an involved, laborious process. He describes a turning point that occurred when he began to use the object he’d been working on-

I was surprised to find that I became absorbed in the interactions with the software almost immediately. I soon forgot all about the physical part of the design and found myself sucked down into the virtual world on the other side of the screen.

Moggridge, 2007, 13

In the use of most tools, the locus of attention of the object is its physicality, but the device perverts this- “almost all of the subjective qualities that [matter] the most [are in] the interactions with the software, [not] with the physical design” (2007, 13). As screens grow larger and the locus of interaction moves from the material form of the device- the “outside”, towards the content and “inner world” of the device, interaction design emerged to address this shift. The role of design in digital technology is to make access to the commodity of content as frictionless as possible. We should only notice the device itself when it’s inactive, switched off- upon activation, it should become invisible, acting as a portal between the material and immaterial.

The black glass of the smartphone screen is an apt metaphor for this paradigm- it is glass, but it does not act as a window. When the phone is in use, its physical form becomes invisible, and the content of the screen is forefronted. When it’s switched off, the glass becomes a mirror, and the only thing we can see is ourselves. We are never truly let in. This occlusion, this flattening, mirrors the myth of magical ease- our devices work without our involvement, and largely act in the ways which we might like.

3.b. The Device as Identity

In this paradigm, devices act as products and objects, becoming “signs”- symbols and icons for their owners’ lifestyles (Verbeek, 2005, 2). Jesse Adams Stein describes the manner by which the plastic casing of the Apple II, inspired by kitchen appliances, transformed the computer from a machine into a “personal appliance”, by “simplif[ying] and obscur[ing]” the workings of the computer (2011, 194) . Prior to the Apple II’s release in 1977, computers were associated white collar industry, or specialised computer hobbyists. Apple’s role was to move the computer into the home (196). The sealed plastic casing of the Apple II made the computer approachable: “users no longer had to understand how a computer functioned when using the device”(202). While revolutionary, this model of relation truly established the computer as a black box- the user is deskilled, and enters an obscured and mystified interaction. The sealed plastic case becomes what the consumer understands the word computer to mean. In the face of complexity and implied labour, a mediating figure, a black box must hide the mechanics. Through the visual language of the domestic appliance, the computer enters the home; framed in terms of its usefulness and output, remaining unconsidered as an object in its own right.


Fig. 5: Diagram from the Apple II Reference manual (1979)

Despite the Apple II’s domestic exterior, the computer’s reference manual reveals diagrams and schematics which experienced users could reference in order to modify their computer’s performance (Fig. 5). This window into the mechanics of computation quickly closed- in 1983 IBM released their object-only code policy, which limited users from access to the source code of their software, and in the same year the Apple Computer, Inc. v. Franklin Computer Corp. lawsuit ruled that copyright could apply to computer programs (Peplińska, Radzewicz, 2024). In 1987, Nintendo updated their NES game cartridges to include proprietary anti-tamper screws (Fig.6), known as gamebit screws (Mehnert, 2017). This, as far as I can find, is the first example of device design actively locking out the user through physical means. The notion of the device as a hermetically sealed object is the norm nowadays- Apple introduced their own proprietary screw, the pentalobe (Fig. 7), in 2009 in order to prevent users from accessing the battery of the MacBook Pro.


Fig.6: A proprietary Nintendo Gamebit screw        Fig.7: Diagram of Apple’s Pentalobe screw

While corporations justify these techniques as maintaining quality standards, Right to Repair advocates criticise the strategy as a means by which to enforce planned obsolescence and monopoly (Kahney, 2011). This paradigm in which we deal only with mediating figures creates a “psychological oscillation between attraction and alienation” (Samman, 2023, 62). The tension between the inaccessibility of the ‘central truth’ of the object we use, and its privileging of content and image create a user experience that feels closer to packaging. Samman describes the phenomenon of “unboxing videos” on YouTube- a format in which creators unbox new devices, as an “affective performance” (2023, 62). The video creators pull away layers of plastic and cardboard, in a performance of discovery, however the ‘discovered object’ remains locked, sealed- blackboxed.

This spectacular relation to an object of unseen, unknown origin and intent mirrors a more ancient relationship to the inaccessible. As mentioned prior, this dynamic requires trust. Black boxes are not inherently bad, or malicious; but their occlusion means that interfacing with them requires an act of faith that they are not. This disempowerment, and mandatory faithfulness grates against the ideology of the user as a “free subject” (Samman, 2010, 63)

The example of the Apple II’s visual language signalling its use as a domestic object brings to the fore another aspect of device design- form is abstracted from function. The design of the modern smart device is bound less by the scale and arrangement of internal mechanics, and informed more by the expectations of the user, and dimensions of the human body. The design of the modern device is used “to express not actual efficiency, but an ideal of function” (Miller, 1987, as quoted by Stein, 2011, 200). Device design exists as representation, primarily in terms of visual language and aesthetics as opposed to constraints imposed by function.

3.c The iPhone

The launch of Apple’s iPhone in 2007 revolutionised device design. The iPhone created a new visual language for technology- eliminating almost all physical buttons from the phone, and creating a screen-first user experience. The device did away with styluses, and the user could touch the screen, creating an experience of ‘closeness’. From this launch onwards, Apple inverted the trend towards miniaturisation in prior device design. From 2007 onwards, each new iPhone launch was larger than its predecessor (Godwin, 2020). In the launch of the 2014 iPhone 6, Apple, for the first time, offered two sizes of device. The iPhone 6 had a 4.7 inch display, while the iPhone 6 Plus boasted a 5.5 inch display- the largest phone ever released at that point (Apple, 2014). This launch marks a rapid break towards abstraction. The dual sizes of the devices bear little relation to differentiation in performance- the 6 Plus has marginally better battery life (Apple, n.d); but rather acts purely to serve consumer preference.


Fig. 8.1, Fig. 8.2: Print advertisement for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus (2014)

Black denotes a screen or veil separating users from what is inside. It invokes an epistemic relation.This is not only an optic metaphor, but for some products, a literal condition.
Samman, 2023, 64

The inside of the iPhone 6 could be made of jelly, the iPhone 6 Plus, cake; our experience of using these devices is entirely abstracted from their internality. Differentiation is influenced as much by the commodity fetishism of the consumer as by technological developments. We trust that the new device will be better, that it will function, that we will hopefully never need to consider the device’s inner workings.

Advertisements for the iPhone 6 focus on the smooth assembly of its exterior, its rounded corners and seeming seamlessness. It does not appear to have been manufactured, rather born, perhaps originating spontaneously. To borrow Barthes’ description of The New Citroén, it “excites interest less by its substance than by the juncture of its components” (1957, 88). Any mark of human touch, of assembly is erased, smoothed over- Nature is subjugated by technology, man rules over matter.

Advertisements assure us that the consumer technologies available to us are lighter, more beautiful, and have more capacity for performance than prior models- the apex of human achievement. In the mode of the technological sublime, we can feel part of a civilisational move towards enlightenment, through knowledge that this new machine is possible and accessible (Angel, 2008). As mentioned prior, the myth of magical ease is enforced by the frictionless user-interface design. Operating systems are tested to ensure they’re not confusing, and the dimensions of devices are mapped to the dimensions of the average human body to ensure they’re as comfortable as possible to use. The language of operating interfaces is jovial and polite, and the device fits seamlessly in our hand. Magical ease folds the myth of user-friendliness under its wings. The line of progress is magical and powerful, but also friendly.

We don't want to think about the politics that built them or the economics that makes them available to us. We aren't interested in knowing or even viewing what makes computers work. We don't want to learn codes. We want the internal structures hidden and well-dressed, like industrial technology's velvet cushions and mechanical technology's shining chrome. Our machine's casing is sleek, the interface is easy, and we can own it.
Angel, 2008

The design of the device’s external casing renders knowledge as formula, per Barthes. The efficient, complete black box makes no demands of the user, only reassures us of its ‘accessibility’, made available not through education but through purchase of the unit. We are consumers, but the myth of technology, and of ease, allows us to feel as though we are on the helm of “the ship of civilisation”, “in partnership” with the trajectory of technological progress, which promises us a share the attractive, sleek attributes of our device (Angel, 2008). 

Conclusion

The more the small item I hold in my hand is personalised, easy to use, ‘transparent’ in its functioning, the more the entire system has to rely on the work being done elsewhere, in a vast circuit of machines that coordinate the user’s experience. The more our experience [appears] non alienated, spontaneous, transparent, the more it is regulated by the invisible network controlled by the state agencies and large private companies that follow secret agendas
Žižek, 2013

The design of smart devices seems intent on its own disappearance. Computers move from being room sized, to pocket sized to subcutaneous. The smart device seems to want to evade perception, to evade scrutiny. Content should be the focus of the user, not form. The screen grows ever-larger even as devices shrink, swallowing up the casing of the smartphone and television; matter disappears. The computer becomes immaterial: a brain, community; digital rather than analogue; it is a network, it exists in the cloud.

The immateriality that the metaphors of the computer imply disconnect the computer and infrastructures of computation from the material world. The computer insists on its separation from “the corrupt structures of law, economy, and power of the material realm” (Thumfart, 2014). The cerebral world which the computer seems to insist on residing in is a trick. It is energy hungry, demanding extraction of minerals which incite and fuel wars in Afghanistan and the Congo (Thumfart, 2014). Cheap laptops require exploitatively cheap labour. The form of the smart device encourages us to view it as spontaneous, almost eternal- a self contained unit. This framing obscures the intensive environmental and human cost of building and maintaining the devices themselves, and the network in which the device inexorably resides. Slaves toil, while corporations continue to accumulate capital.

The myth of the smart device, and its privation of history and trace origin reinforce bourgeois ideology, while reinstating our place in the social order. We are free to enjoy beautiful objects, which augment our identity and lifestyle as individuals. The objects seem to serve us, laying content at our feet before receding invisibly into the background. However, this consumptive relation with reality though technology cuts human existence off from its material and social contexts.

Our understanding of the cloud as somewhere else is symptomatic of a wider relinquishment of agency under postmodern conditions. Our device works ‘by magic’, as do our globalised systems of manufacture and distribution. Power accumulates, but through an insistence on anonymity, the bourgeois evade scrutiny. Each of us, like the devices we use, operate in networks- we are nodes of the system but our daily life is also reliant on these systems. The trick of postmodernism is to encourage us to view artefacts- our devices, and our labour, as atomised entities. We are entrepreneurs, our devices are black boxed.

We experience this awareness of systems as a kind of sublime, a landscape with which we can identify through experiences of spectacle, but ultimately we can never truly pass through the ‘screen’. The devil is in the details, in the mechanics, and abstraction of these details in the form of a mediating figure is a substitution. Substitution inherently muddies the water- we open the box to reveal another box. Abstraction removes control from the consumer- The cloud, like government, and economy, is managed in a top-down manner. We look up into the cloud and experience a metaphorical cloudiness, through which this system is invisible. The postmodern, neoliberal epoch is defined by public use and private control, (Žižek, 2013)- a framing reinforced by bourgeois myths that naturalise this dynamic.

Things are illegible and incomprehensible, no longer bound by time and space. Knowledge production is increasingly specialised, systems of manufacture and distribution are unintelligibly huge, the complexity of the economy surpasses understanding; by-in-large the world becomes dominated by systems with no discernible relationship between inputs and outputs. Very few people stop to wonder where the internet comes from- the sealed form of the smart device dissuades curiosity.

Through this sustained proliferation of the myth of magical each, which erases context, history, and origin; globalisation and the regime of postmodern neoliberal accumulation can continue, unnoticed, through their insistence of self-evident justification. The modern smart device, as a black box, gesturing towards an unseen technological sublime, epitomises this paradigm.



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