Into the archive of ubiquitous computing: the data perfect tense and the historicization of the present

Abstract

PurposeThis paper theorizes ubiquitous computing as a novel configuration of the archive. Such a configuration is characterized by shifts in agency underlying archival mechanics and a pronounced rhythmic diminution of such mechanics in which the user's experiential present tense is rendered fundamentally historical. In doing so, this paper troubles the relationship between: archival mechanics such as appraisal, accession and access; the archive as a site of historical knowledge production and the pervasiveness of data-driven daily life.Design/methodology/approachBy employing conceptual analysis, I analyze a classic vision of ubiquitous computing to describe the historicization of the present tense in an increasingly computerized world. The conceptual analysis employed here draws on an interdisciplinary set of literature from library and information science, philosophy and computing fields such as human-computer interaction (HCI) and ubiquitous computing.FindingsI present the concept of the data perfect tense, which is derived from the future perfect tense: the “will have had” construction. It refers to a historicized, data-driven and fundamentally archival present tense characterizing the user's lived world in which the goal of action is to have had created data for future unspecified use. The data perfect reifies ubiquitous computing as an archive, or a site of historical knowledge production predicated on sets of potential statements derived from data generated, appraised, acquisitioned and made accessible through and by means of pervasive “smart” objects.Originality/valueThis paper provides foundational consideration of ubiquitous computing as a configuration of the archive through the analysis of its temporalities: a rhythmic diminution that renders users' experiential present tenses as fundamentally historical, constructed through the agency of smart devices. In doing so, it: contributes to ongoing work within HCI seeking to understand the relationship between HCI and history; introduces concepts relevant to the analysis of novel technological ecologies in terms of archival theory; and constitutes preliminary interdisciplinary steps towards highlighting the relevance of theories of the archive and archival mechanics for critiquing sociotechnical concerns such as surveillance capitalism.

Documentation to Documentality in the works of Michael Buckland

“…Foucault's influence here is particularly noted in Frohmann's works, but it is implicit in Buckland and Ferraris' works, too, as well as other, more recent authors' works, who read governmentality more through technical systems (such as Elliott Hauser's work on what he calls “system-dependent truth” [4] and Neal Thomas' works on AI and what he calls “social computing” (Thomas, 2018)). Discussions of “authorless” documents in Documentality intersect with recent discourses on datafication, whether critical (Seberger, 2022) or utopian (Ferraris, 2020, 2022), with unclear boundaries on what would constitute the difference between data and documents (which we may recall was a difference stressed in David C. Blair's works some years ago (Blair, 1984, 2006)).…”

“…Behavioral and other positive approaches understand information in terms of metaphysical presence (Day, 2001), or as Frohmann called it (Frohmann, 2004;"epistemic content"), where this "in-between" is erased, and so the material basis for different degrees of "information-as-thing," and things as being informative. Documentality and other, similar, analyses in information science argue for exposing the material "contexts" or "arrangements" (Frohmann, 2012) for the appearance of what is informative in different forms, whether such occur through information systems (Buckland), "infrastructure" (Bowker and Star, 1999), experience, collections, vocabulary, and ideology (Day, 2014), different types of ontological dispositions and affordances across various epistemic, literary, and ontological entities (Day, 2019), memory institutions, practices, and temporality (Bowker, 2005;Ferraris, 2013Ferraris, , 2020Ferraris, , 2022Seberger, 2022), and graphic form (Drucker, 2014).…”