The Object and The Opportunity for Criticism
In its platonic form a functional object cannot question the society that it supports. The intrinsic value of that object is service and utility, not criticism. A functional object alone will not challenge its audience unless that challenge lies in its mode of operation or method of use. Once the object begins to question its audience it moves from the position of a functional object to the realm of art. Design, and more specifically the design of functional objects, does not question society or context, rather it seeks to resolve society's questions. In this manner design is the socialization of technology. If the design of an object attempts to question its audience and the audience is unsure of its functional value, in all intents and purposes, the design has failed. If we accept design as the socialization of technology, then artistic production, specifically within the context of works that engage objects such as PDAs as a sites of cultural intervention, is not the questioning the of the technology, but rather questioning the socialization of technology.

A course a designer's work has a cultural significance, but to what degree is culture and society really considered in a mode of production that primarily perpetuates the over-economy? Design, visible bourgeois culture, the spectacle of technology, conspicuous consumption, and western economic growth have a profound accord. It is the designer who is responsible for its perpetuation, and increasingly artists and cultural critics. They perpetuate the utopian current that the ultimate attainment of success lies in proliferation of the new.

Abject Intent and Expectation/Promise
The Personal Digital Assistant is an example of this desire for the proliferation of the new, and because of this the PDA possess a certain allure that seduces us. As producers we are seduced to the PDA in much of the same way as the consumer as is, by promises of a life made richer through technological engagement. Even more damning, just as we are seduced, we are also implicated in the production of the seduction: glorifying the platform of the PDA not even for the sake of the technology but for the sake of the new. The exploration of these devices certainly does hold some legitimacy. However, we cannot deny that the exploration of these devices is also driven by the promise of innovation and recognition as a member of a progressive elite.

The glorification for the sake of the new that drives us is dangerous. It is dangerous because it does not drive us to explore these devices as they are. It drives us to explore these devices as objects that represent something else, as symbols of progress and innovation, both for society and for our selves as producers of culture. Both are questionable in intent.

What is the origin of this glorification that drive us towards the PDA as both consumers of products and as producers of culture? It's much more than a clever name that brings us to spend hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours on these devices. It's a story, a promise, a potential.

What is this story? At its essence it is a very old story. It is the story of progress, velocity and obsolescence. But the story has been specified to the PDA: The Personal Digital Assistant. It is the story of the Information Appliance, the tool that combines information with usefulness to create an object of value.

The story of a PDA is that it will help us organize out lives. And through this organization of our lives, reduced to telephone numbers, addresses, and schedules, it will empower us. The story of the PDA is that it will empower us because we are able to have all of the information that we need at our fingertips. And that with this information at our fingertips we will be able to do what?

This glorification is dangerous because it lacks critical insight; it seeks to perpetuate a certain model of progress that is so abstract that it denies the producer the opportunity to step away to a point where the velocity of production for the sake of production (be it marketing or art) can be curbed.

The Information Appliance Is Not
Issues of glorification and promise are rife within the discussion of information appliances. A prime example is the smart refrigerator. It has been suggested that this Information Appliance might be able to tell us when we are out of milk. (I personally think that the light in side of the refrigerator does a swell job of helping me figure this out.) The smart refrigerator would read the bar code on the side of the milk carton and when the milk carton is gone for a long enough time, it would note this and let me know. It might tell me outright the next time I walk into the kitchen. It might be significantly more complex and send an alert to my in-vehicle display system the next time I drive into the grocery parking lot.

Information Appliance is a loaded term. It is meant to describe a certain type of product that uses computational technology to mediate its relationship with other appliances as well as with the users of the appliance.

But what is an appliance? An appliance is something of use. Its value is intrinsic to its usability as product. A toaster is an appliance; it is used to toast bread. Once the toaster stops being able to toast bread its value as an appliance is gone. And what for that matter is information? Let's not take too philosophical of a position here. Gregory Bateson described information in quite an elegant way: "Information is news of difference." Information is data that is different. But that does not necessarily make it meaningful.

An Information Appliance is supposed to be an appliance that provides information that should have some true value and somehow, in some alchemical, or mythological manner the combination of the tool with data is creates gold.

A suspect reaction is appropriate.

Information is not enough. News of difference is not necessarily meaningful. Especially out of context. If the temperature shifts one degree that may not matter much, unless that one degree is enough to melt the polar icecaps. In order for information to have value it must have meaning, it must be situated within a context where that news of difference matters.

The Imposition of Logic
Information Appliances exist beyond the smart refrigerator. A ubiquitous example is the Personal Digital Assistant. Due its proliferation it serves as object that we can examine and reflect upon. The Palm Pilot, the Handspring, the Clie, the I-Pac, and so on. Difference devices? Not really. The allegory is familiar, the device falls under the guise of the object of advertising mythology, ie. soaps, washing powders, aspirin, all the same compounds differentiated through myth. In a manner similar to desktop computing, the options for PDAs are essentially none. Interestingly, the personal digital assistant is even less personal than the personal computer. The PDA has even fewer options then their desktop counterparts because they are tightly based around a very small core set of applications. The prominence of these core applications is so intense that they are even assigned specific hardware buttons on the device. Even with the addition of 3rd party applications and the larger application set of Windows on some devices, at the end of the day, the PDA is focused on Personal Information Management applications.

What does this mean?

This means that our interaction with the Personal Digital Assistant is mediated and prescriptive based upon assumptions reflected by the core PIM applications. It is not only assumed, but enforced that the core use for such as device as the PDA is to manage information. What are these PIMS? They tend to focus around a date book and a contact manager, with a sprinkling of other supporting applications such as a memo pad and a to-do list. Much of the structure of these applications is nothing more than an electronic version of the Franklin Planner, without the strangee rigor of a Franklin Planner. It's a way to record, store, and organize. It is not a way to investigate or make a mark upon the world. If it is a manufactured and pre-determined window into the utopian new world, what does the view provide you? When examined outside of the glory of new the view is rather bleak.

There are many ways to judge the value of information. Like statistics, such ways can be used to present any story desired. In then end, with these Information Appliances the value of the information is purely subjective and contextual. That subjective and contextual information is something that we are conditioned to believe is of value. This conditioning is in part manufactured desire by marketers and in part constructed from the use and context of the appliance. The information that emerges from the use and context of the appliance in peoples' lives is not manufactured but is experienced directly. However, despite the origins of the information, the value of the information is questionable. It is important to note that if the information is not of value, then the appliance that it is attached too is also not of value.

(As such, it appears that the Information Appliance might negate itself.)

It's not as though the intent of the PDA is malevolent, (although it is still a question of capitalization or fiscal value). Marketers, designers, and engineers alike believe in the absolute: that an object such as the PDA will profoundly effect our life by the way we interact with the data. While inasmuch this is true, it does affect how we see ourselves in relation to our data, and like so many other objects it's a technology of convenience rather than necessity. But it is the imposition of such a rigid structure that is concerning. With the PDA we are given a hierarchy, an order, to which we must apply our data, time and communications with the world. Once this order becomes accepted, as with the most technological use metaphors within greater western society, it is set and final. Our data usage model is formed and usability becomes abstracted and subordinate, devoid of any assistance. The device thus becomes less about our needs as it becomes about fulfilling a prophesy of progress and efficiency.

This is one version of the process of the socialization of technology. A disturbing, but the predominate version of the process. However, the audience must question, how is this device assisting me? Is it organizing information for me? Not really, I still have to do that. Is it making the information clearer? No considering the low resolution of the information it is presenting it is an extremely narrow world view. Even the form factor lies: its hard to hold, to read, and to interact with. Above all the question is, "is this device allowing me to act on this information in a meaningful way?" Perhaps not.

Designed for Society
It is somewhat naïve to believe that this process of socialization is not anachronistic. Complacency to socialization is part of the conditioning in a western society, our blueprint for societal conduct. Since a young age we have been touched by it to some degree, high school, family, the church, right and left media, and bureaucratic/governmental entities. As a technology, all of these manifest an irrefutable mystique to the layperson or pacifist: a hierarchy in the social order of the nature of understanding.

The marketer, along with designers, and engineers, take the liberty as a techno-institution to act as structural innovator. An example is user research, a somewhat pseudo-egalitarian methodology, the 'diplomatic' justification for development of the structures we are forced to work within. This is a reductive approach, taking a perceived demographic and applying to it a limited set of western cultural stereotypes: the businessman, the housewife, the technophile, and the follower. The usability researcher's take a cross-section of this audience and apply 'appropriate' parameters to the interactions from which the results of 'user testing' are obtained. As there is little possibility to accurately represent a cross-section of the complexities and nuances of any society through this procedure, the results by which development is justified are generalized, token, and arbitrary. Although, in all fairness, critical thought is applied as to how these impositions have a wider impact on structures or modes of thought within a western society. Paradoxically the nature of the capital motivation eventually transgresses this critical rationale.

While it may not be appropriate for the designed object to question its context we believe the designer can question the context of their work (even though as a profession design propagates commercial interest, desire, and fiscal value). Typically the designer questions the context of their work within a framework defined by the vision of the marketers. The designer can abstract the value of his/her production to a level of cultural significance, appeasing the desire for meaningful work with social conscious and a need to be consequential and purposeful. Yet this is a rather grandiose notion, the idea that criticism can be of value from within the industry it perpetuates, and not all facets of design would want to subscribe or even fit such a profile. But when looking at design from a human interaction level above that of perception or subtext, and dealing with vague concepts like 'usability' and 'experience' the designer's work has a profound impact on society and how it functions. This is why the criticism of such production outside its realms is necessary and vital.

The Audience and Authorship
Who is the author of this story of promise and potential? The first answer, the obvious answer is marketing. After all, it is marketing that is tasked with creating a story to sell the product. There is no need for criticism of marketing here. This is what marketing is. It has created a compelling story and sold it well enough.

Perhaps we all believe it enough. We believe it enough to be writing this, you believe it enough to be reading this. We, the authors, believe it enough to help manifest it. As designers we too are involved in creating a story sell the product. Our story may be much less literal in its narrative, but it is much more direct in its experience. Marketing may decide the feature, but we create the behavior.

Has marketing fulfilled on its story, its promise, its potential? No. But perhaps it's not its job to fulfill. Perhaps that is the job of design. And has design fulfilled on this story, this promise, and this potential? No. There is a lot of blame we can place on the designers and we are not hesitant to do so. As designers, we orchestrate the confines that define the PDA as the limited experience that it is.

The value quality of the diamond and the PDA are somewhat analogous. They are both objects of desire loaded with connotations of class structure and status. Technology is limited and intended, through its associated language and necessary infrastructure, for particular social spheres and contexts. Both the diamond and the PDA are signs of intrinsic value in a society divisible by class. And it is the privileged who afford the opportunity to intellectualize and consider the manipulation and representation of these signs be it within business, technology, science, or artistic practice.

Production and the Context of Use
One way we can view cultural production is as the production of signs. This method of semiotics is no longer arcane but rather assumed. We read these signs or messages and interpret what we can given our historical and socio-economic upbringing. From these signs our questions about society and our individual or collective context within that society are formed. Most often these questions are answered, interpreted, recontextualized by individuals, collectives, and pseudo-corporations formed out of ethnicity, demographic, socio-economic groups, minorities, and belief structures. The questioning of value, such as the value described in the above text in relation to the PDA is one of intrinsic relation to the effectiveness of cultural production within a context.

However, if artistic production seeks to question its audience by contextualizing a message, and the message glorifies the initial model from which the object was designed and relies fundamentally on its technology as a means for delivery, in a larger cultural context it will fail. Unfortunately, work of exactly this type is abundant. Work that does not question but blindly accepts the technology as part of its artistic expression. Although delivery of cultural production through these contextualized messages that glorify the new can be the most irritating form of art, it should be no less valid, especially if the artists intentions are clear and unpretentious. Just as ephemeral or eclectic design is not respected in certain "modernist" circles. The PDA is intrinsically a novelty, it's an indulgence of the privileged - for now. There is no illusion about the democratization of such a platform, this is/has been a fallacy and a familiar lament, even though accessibility, ubiquity will/has increased as corporations target demographics and the economics of participation are not unattainable. Once the platform alone carries the art, it becomes consumed by the signs represented in that platform, and is no longer effective in questioning its vehicles context. Technology as host can be interesting conceptually but not just for the sake of it. Often a medium is viewed/pursued such as in this case as a cannon for originality, authenticity, and perpetuation of the myth of the individual as artist.

But is there a value of this technology that extends past this proliferation? And if so, what is it's context of use? Examples do exist.

Another Promise, Different Intent
Most interestingly electronic-activism or hactivism, somewhat under the guise of artistic practice, has re-purposed the portable, ubiquitous, and communicative potential of computational mobility. Artistic or political/ethical motivation aside, such bodies of resistance have gained individual or collective autonomy, subverting the motions of corporate or bureaucratic entities via the self-development of applications such as tracking and mapping utilities for the nomadic dissident through the use of wireless connectivity and Bluetooth Personal Area Networking capabilities that enhance communication and awareness of imminent surroundings or environment. This is not art seeking a purpose. This is a purpose engaging a medium. Even in concept alone, the re-purposing of this technology implodes corporate research and development and attempts to counter the immense fiscal investment towards such products assimilating into a specific, intentional and commercial niche within our society. Ironically, through a trickle-up effect the innovative and applied DIY concept of mobile hactivism is eventually re-appropriated and used by the same corporations and agencies it was designed to act against.

Including but also beyond examples of hactivism there must be an opportunity to fulfill on the story, the promise, the potential described so well by marketers, designers, artists, activists, and cultural critics alike. We have to be careful of glorification and to refrain from creating any sort of a manifesto, or projection of utopian notions. But there is an opportunity and at least two strategies. The opportunity rests with individuals and collectives who operate outside of product development as it is currently known. This call for people to socialize the technology for themselves rather than buying the socialization sold to them. The strategies are simple. The first strategy is to embrace the PDA for what it could be as a personal digital assistant and to explore that concept outside of the bounds of corporate marketing and design, creating software that fulfils upon the promise by moving beyond prescriptive design. The second strategy is to embrace the PDA as an open vessel, a new container for something that uses the technology as the technology is relevant in relation to us and its context, something more than a picture gallery, that something for use to determine and develop ourselves.

Either strategy will do, both are better than the current situation.