Week 7: Serious Play and the Introduction of Technology into Society

Ellerbrok's thoughts on the artifice that is "play" technology intrigued me. Meaning, Ellerbrok highlights the artificial categorization of technology: "...the coding of technologies as fundamentally serious or playful, hard or soft, undermines opportunities for more robust public scrutiny"(p. 543). I am reading Ellerbrok's mail on this one. To me, marketing technologies as "play" disarms society, lulling the public into a false sense of security about the real time and long terms consequences of irreversible surveillance power plays. Once we are conscious as a collective about the guise of play and the reality of the encroachment of privacy and its impositions on us with respect to surveillance, it is too late. Scrutiny then becomes ineffective as it would be an uphill battle. Public debate should surround the categorization of technology prior to introduction to society. Of course, there are unforeseen circumstances but part of democratic praxis should be the mitigation of risk through collective assessment of new technologies. Then the balance of power between the state and its citizens is somewhat "balanced" and not "off balance". We are too dependent upon the state to choose for our best interest, and regulation alone does not take care of the inflexible nature of the inevitable courses that "play" technologies sometimes takes on. It's time to re-assert ourselves. Ellerbrok talks of the "... undermining of the opportunity for... public scrutiny" (p. 543), but I say do we have public opportunities to scrutinize as a part of the state apparatus?