Technology as Seducer

I loved Gluckman & Hanson’s remark that “Technology seduces us” in their new book, Ingenious. I’m surprised that I hadn’t thought of this as a mythical template before.

Here's the quote in a little context; more on my Quotes blog:

Technology seduces us. Rather than being happy with what we have we want more, fashion dictates that we need a new phone even when we don't. Industry wants us to have more. . . . But these phones soon also performed other functions—they fed users' data back to the supplier. It was a Faustian deal that many other companies joined in on.

I hadn’t really thought of Tech as Aphrodite until now; though, to be honest, Aphrodite isn’t really the symbol of seduction as much as of love and libido. Actually, I couldn’t think of any gods that symbolized seduction. Zeus’s abductions and rapes certainly don’t count. A web search turned up Peitho, but she’s definitely not an A-list deity. Interestingly, the Wikipedia entry states that Peitho represents both sexual and political persuasion. The closest familiar myth or legend is the story of Helen and Paris. Wikpedia again: “In art, Peitho is often represented with Aphrodite during the abduction of Helen, symbolizing the forces persuasion and love at work during the scene.”

Once I started searching the web, I found some interesting results for “technology seduces”; see the appendix below for a listing. Some impressions:

• Deception, or at least sleazy manipulation, is a common theme.

• There are quite a few items with a religious angle.

• Physical intimacy is often invoked.

• Apple is associated with seduction more than other high-tech company.

• A pattern my colleague Rachel Anderson found with stories about automation shows up here too: mythic language in the headlines, but just dry factuality in the body text. One can see this as clickbait-and-switch; or in rhetorical terms as playing both the pathos and logos cards.

Definitions & connotations

Lexico points out that the original 15th century meaning of ‘seduce’ was to persuade someone to abandon their duty; from there one moves easily to enticing someone to do (or believe) something inadvisable or foolhardy, including illicit sexual activity.

Wikipedia defines seduction as the process of deliberately enticing a person away from duty, rectitude or the like; to corrupt them; or to persuade or induce into engaging in sexual behavior. Seducers from history, legend and fiction include Lilith, Delilah, Casanova, Don Juan, Cleopatra, and James Bond.

To me, seduction entails a not-altogether-free, but not coerced, choice of something not-good: something impolitic, improper, imprudent, inappropriate, indiscreet, injudicious, or any of the other im/in-words.

Seduction also implies an agent and an object (patient, subject). The agent has intent, and since the outcome benefits the seducer more than the seducee, there’s a sinister edge.

Finally, turning to the seducee, there’s a sense that the affection and loyalty that the seducer inspires is misplaced; they are trusted, but should not be.

Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple

Some of the concepts that people seem to associate with les GAFA (see my Analysis 2019-12-13 = GAFA is like.docx), like drugs or cults, resonate with seduction. Addiction or cult membership is often voluntary, more or less, just like seduction. I find seduction to be a more potent mythic lens than drugs or cults, however, since it implies agency. Stories of dependence often focus on the patients, disparaging and even blaming their weakness; the addict is the actor, and the drug is a prop. In seduction, the moral responsibility of seducer is highlighted. In stories of drug pushers and toxic cult leaders, the seduction trope is invoked.

I wasn’t surprised that only Apple, of les GAFA, showed up in the ‘seduction’ searches, given the supposed sensuality of its designs and its supposed intimacy with customers. (While the “Adam, Eve, & the Apple” nexus is presumably a coincidence, I do wonder.)

• The first three Google hits for “apple seduction” (on March 19, 2020) were stories about the company in business magazines. However, this wasn’t replicated on Bing, where I got hits for books and music; search algorithms do make a difference.

• Apple is the only one of les GAFA with a sustained and plausible focus on aesthetics and affinity. That accounts for its success, but also the ambivalence revealed by its association with seduction. 

• Rachel Anderson has noted (personal communication) that while public perception associates High Tech with Hard Science, all companies lean heavily on the soft sciences and humanities for PR and marketing. I think that when this is effective, as it is in Apple’s case, it’s accompanied by the uneasiness about mythology (mythos, as opposed to logos) that goes all the way back to Plato.

Ambivalence about seduction makes sense for Apple, but not for Facebook, who people either seem to love or hate. (I can imagine someone fantasizing about being seduced by Steve Jobs, but not by Mark Zuckerberg.) For those who use but worry about Facebook, the relationship is much more on the coerced than the voluntary end of the spectrum.

Google and Amazon feel orthogonal to the Apple—Facebook axis. I’m unhappy that I don’t have a good alternative to Google Maps, and no alternative to YouTube, but I don’t feel as if I’ve been led astray. It’s just that there isn’t a viable alternative, and I don’t hold Google responsible for that. I’ve been beguiled, but not seduced.

I feel the same way about Amazon, though there are questions about its way of doing business. TechAltar had a nice critique on YouTube; and the ProPublica story, How Amazon and Silicon Valley Seduced the Pentagon explicitly uses the s-word. Even though the article text avoids references to seduction, it’s explicit in the headline. The “and Silicon Valley” in the headline suggests that the seducer is not just a company, but a whole sector: Tech is a seducer.

Thinking back to my attachment to Google Maps and YouTube: To the extent that the Pentagon was a willing seducee, I’m arguably a willing subject of Alphabet’s minstrations.

To wrap it up, it’s worth recalling Scott Galloway’s 2018 Esquire story about Silicon Valley’s Tax-Avoiding, Job-Killing, Soul-Sucking Machine. He argues that “the only way to build a company with the dominance and mass influence of Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple is to appeal to a core human organ that makes adoption of the platform instinctive.” Google goes for the mind, Facebook for the heart, Amazon for the gut, and Apple (surprise!) for the groin.

Faust

This post focused on seduction, but we shouldn’t ignore the other mythical reference in the Gluckman & Hanson excerpt: “a Faustian deal.” The notion of a deal with the devil is another fruitful avenue to explore. There are useful pointers in Adam Briggle and Volker Friedrich’s short article on Faust in the Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Ethics (Vol. 2, p. 755):

The story of Faust has been widely used in literature and popular discussions to reflect on the ethics of science and technology. . . . All of the interpretations are united by the central theme of one man's insatiable quest for knowledge and its implications for his world and his own soul. . . , [In the original German tale, Faust] personifies the scientific, inquisitive intellect that is opposed to both the Catholic tradition founded upon papal authority and the humility and consciousness of sin . . . Marlowe's Faust is a complex character and a renaissance person who is driven by an overwhelming intellectual curiosity. [Goethe’s] Faust is not interested merely in power, pleasure, and knowledge, but longs to take part in the divine secrets of life. . . . [In the second part, he] wishes to wrest land from the sea in Greece, so he begins the engineering construction on a system of dykes—thus becoming an archetype not just of one pursuing scientific knowledge but also of someone intent on technological power. . . . Goethe's Faust is a tale of reckless striving for boundless love, knowledge, and power. In the end, this culminates in the blind and maniacal pursuit of an engineering project that breeds outrage, destruction, and doom.

Appendix: Web search results for “technology seduces”

Results that caught my eye in searches on DuckDuckGo, Google and Bing on 19 March 19, 2020; my commentary in italics.

• New Technology Seduces Us When Death Beckons | Craig D. Turner: “The decision to opt for medical care that relies on the most costly technology is often based on blind faith that newer, elaborate and expensive must be better. . . . So exalted is medical technology that it has become our de facto God during times of personal health crisis. . . . One health care administrator told me the basement of the hospital is full of million-dollar machines collecting dust -- not because they didn't work or because they were ineffective, but because they have been displaced by newer technology.” The “blind faith” was evocative, and the author maxxed out on religious references in the opening paragraphs.

• Robotika (Technology Seduces): A YouTube music video to listen to while reading the rest of this screed ;-)

• Outlier Technologies - Home: “Today’s mobile technology seduces organizations into feeling like their workers are infinitely productive. . . . The mobile productivity gap is the state of being hamstrung by the constraints of today’s smartphones and tablets. . . . At Outlier Technologies, we help organizations bridge the mobile productivity gap . . .” An unfulfilled promise that this company promises to fulfill.

• The Seduction of Technology - ChurchMag: “Technology seduces us at every turn. . . . The Apple logo is fitting. Like Adam and Eve, we are drawn to the knowledge and ideals of technology. . . . Christians are called to a new way to be human and our use of technology should be the same—different. Understanding technology’s seductive qualities and its appeal to our humanness, can help us keep technology in its rightful place and help us know when to sign out, turn it off and put it down. Like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, know when to put down the apple and refuse to take a bite.” Umm, sorry, did you mean “unlike Adam and Eve … know when to put down the apple”? Anyway: the link to faith again!

• The Technology Seduction | Colin S. Levy: “The technology seduction is, at its core, about the legal industry’s focus on shiny new technologies at the expense of its broader implications for the legal industry. . . . So, how can one avoid the technology seduction?” I feel like a teenager being preached at. Anyway, this is the same argument Craig Turner was making about medical technology, above.

• Technological Seduction and Self-Radicalization (paper): “. . . the mechanisms by which the Internet facilitates self-radicalization are disputed; some fault the individuals who end up self-radicalized, while others lay the blame on the technology itself. In this paper, we explore the role played by technological design decisions . . .” Morality at play again.

• Digital Technology Seduces Art: “As the art market continues to spill over into the digital world, it comes to no surprise that digital technology will begin to madly influence the output of art. . . . With so many creative tools in our reach, it’s only a matter of time until we find ourselves completely awestruck with its capabilities.” Best I can tell, it’s a short puff piece promoting a company, so here (unusually) seduction might have positive associations.

• Global Technography: Ethnography in the Age of Mobility (book): “[McLuhan's] idea of involvement remains a useful way of characterizing the nature of particular media devices, . . . In particular, the notion of seduction can be invoked, which can be understood to signify simply how a technological device as actant calls to a user to form an alliance. The laptop seduces the user through the nature of how one engages with the machine, through the involved nature of typing and/or clicking a mouse while looking and possibly hearing. Communications technology seduces its users through the promise of human intimacy. The promise of mobile technology is the promise of human relationship.” A rather literal link to seduction through references to intimacy.

• High-Tech Worship?: Using Presentational Technologies Wisely (book): “We cannot conquer our spiritual doldrums instantly with the latest powerful technologies. Moreover, God often reveals his glory by tabernacling among the weak. The apparent power of technology seduces us into believing that we can eliminate everything that is arduous, difficult, and painful, when living for Christ calls us to self-sacrifice.” Huh – religion again. Seems to be happening too often to be a coincidence… 

• The Strategy Apple Uses to Seduce Its Customers | Inc: “Apple thrives because it recognized that the more human technology behaves, the more intimate we allow it to become--less a computer than a consort. . . . Apple's seduction has been slow but steady. With each new Apple product, the physical contact has grown closer, more intimate.” Intimacy again. “A corollary of seduction is the surrender of control. So it can be with Apple.” Now we’re cooking – I hadn’t realized that’s the subtext of this seduction thing. *

• How Amazon and Silicon Valley Seduced the Pentagon - ProPublica: “Tech moguls like Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt have gotten unprecedented access to the Pentagon. And one whistleblower who raised flags has paid the price. . . . It would be hard to find a purer embodiment of the proverbial revolving door — or a stealth influencer — than Sally Donnelly.” A classic pathos/logos bait-and-switch in headline/text: no mention of seduction in the body text. However, the sub-title alludes an innocent who pays a heavy price, often part of the seduction plot.

• Temptation and Seduction in the Technological Milieu (paper): “Jacques Ellul's work on propaganda provides the basis for this analysis of life in technology. Advertising and the mass media rely on temptation and seduction and create a constant flow of propaganda, all of which serve the technological system.” The author keeps repeating that technology tempts and seduces us; the temptation harks back to Adam and Eve.

• Cloud scalability seduces the financial sector: Pathos/logos again. The closest we come to the image promised in the headline is the closing sentence: “The publication of guidance from regulators . . . should  give financial services firms more confidence in the cloud and encourage them to fully embrace [ahem – P.] its possibilities and benefits.”

• Tech's Mirage Still Seduces | TheStreet: Pathos/logos, again with the closing sentence looping back to the headline with a quote of one of the people they talked to: “Before the bear market is finally over, people will be disgusted with technology because after you have a giant love affair, you end up with hatred and loathing.”

• Apple seduces Android users with switch-to-iOS app | ComputerWorld: Bait & switch; no seduction language in the article.

• How Apple Store Seduces You With The Tilt Of Its Laptops | Forbes: “But the main reason notebook computers screens are slightly angled is to encourage customers to adjust the screen to their ideal viewing angle—in other words, to touch the computer! . . . Multisensory experiences build a sense of ownership. . . . The ownership experience is more important than a sale.” Many connotations of seduction, including touch, and an experience that builds over time.

• Apple “Porn”: Design Videos as Seduction and Exploitation (paper): “Apple creates design videos [that] seduce viewers into accepting a fantasy world of enchanted technological devices uncoupled from the realities of labor, including exploitative working conditions, making the design videos a form of Apple ‘porn.’” The author quotes Karl Marx in the epigraph with (no surprise by now) a reference to religion: “[The analysis of a commodity] brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.”

Footnote

* Rachel also noted that the “tech seduces as it becomes more human” idea is reminiscent of some AI tropes. In the movie Ex Machina, the AI is clearly seducing the human to achieve its ends, and it turns out badly for the human. It does play out in different ways, though. In Her, on the other hand, there the human falls in love but isn’t seduced, and everything turns out fine in the end.