The more our technologies become transparent, the more they become opaque

People with longer memories and digital presence will join me in nostalgically remembering those days when videos had to buffer, when computers needed time to process image manipulation, and when softwares and applications routinely demanded down-time, as they struggled with complex computing and high memory operations. The glitch or the hang have become things of the past, and when they appear, they suddenly confront us with the fallibility of our machines, as well as the complex infrastructure that is hidden behind our smooth interaction with digital devices around us. On a regular day, when machines behave themselves, responding to every thought, desire, action and gesture, going beyond the call of duty to even do things that you did not ask — think about automatic updates, maintenance runs, and virus scans in the background — it is easy to forget that our machines are not transparent. So powerful is the seduction of the screen that we almost believe that the digital devices are natural extensions of our bodies and senses.

And as glitches become invisible — it is not just about the efficiency of our machines, but also about the ways in which the controls and mechanisms of our machines have now been outsourced so that the invisible hands and eyes are monitoring and dealing with errors. This gives us an idea of seamlessness which belies the complete opaqueness of infrastructure, control and governance that our machines hide behind their glossy and transparent interfaces. We have long since given our control over these devices to corporations that produce them and companies that manage them. We might own our devices, but we don’t really know what to do, other than sending a digital prayer to the gods of Ethernet, when we want to do anything beyond what has been designed in the interface.

WYSIWYG is a gloss over this losing battle of control that we have with the digital. The more technologies become light, seductive, easy, and connected, the more we are losing control over what we can do with and through them. We can’t open our machines. We can’t install software unless it is validated by a control mechanism. We can’t reconfigure them to taste. We can’t customise them to fit our needs.

We might be able to customise to the last detail, the look, the feel, the images on wallpapers, and screensavers of choice, but these are choices that are granted by the machine. In our day of high customisation, we have traded freedom for choice, and allowed governments, markets and other players to actually control what we can and cannot do with our enslaved machines.

Similarly, when Facebook becomes the only entry point in consuming digital services for a generation that is coming online for the first time, and one telecommunication corporation becomes the only gateway of access, it is important to pause and try and figure out who is in control and what we have given up when we blithely click on Terms of Service for the latest gadget or app.

Nishant Shah is a professor of new media and the co-founder of The Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore

The story appeared in print with the headline What You See is Not What You Get