Self-Regulating Applications. Towards a Programmed Intimacy

(1)

Self-Regulating Applications

Towards a Programmed Intimacy

A Thesis Submitted to the MA Programme «New Media & Digital Culture» of University of Amsterdam

by

Supervisor

Natalia Saánchez-Querubíán

Second Reader

Niels Van Doorn

(2)

ABSTRACT

This paper stands as an attempt of approaching the embrace of intimacy within software culture. Mapping a territory within which self-regulating applications have been criticized accordingly from perspectives of efficacy on physical health, work productivity and the innovations and impacts of affective computing, what has been left aside is the interpretation of processes proposed by the embrace of emotional self-tracking mobile applications produced by and within software culture as media environments. When individuals are unable to self-elaborate their personal emotional state and personal relationships, software innovations bring the perfect 24 seven agent, one that algorithmically can track, measure, evaluate and legitimize individual’s emotional states and decisions. In this thesis, I will draw on contextualizing methods and extensive object analysis, based on four different case studies, so as to reveal how specific interfaces function and how one should theorize the practices and the patterns proposed by the “new” intimacy as being weaved within software culture. Thus, by mapping certain software proposals, my further aim is to trigger aspects of meaning making and patterns of normalization considering a proposed “programmed intimacy”.

(5)

1. INTRODUCTION

This thesis is about the operationalization of intimacy and emotional treatment through practices of self-tracking and self-regulating proposed and produced by and within software culture. It questions how software apparatus, functionalities and processes institute certain patterns of intimacy that produce alternative and new meaning makings and perceptions of emotional care and well-being.

Computational dimensions of everyday life have been analysed and criticized from multiple perspectives. First and foremost, the practice of self-tracking benefiting from mobile applications has been situated as a form of maintaining efficient levels of physical health and high levels of productivity. Practices of tracking weight, calories and steps have been in the center of critical attention ever since machines leveraged the power of tracking and measuring, revealing interest around issues of novel health services, issues of sousveillance, big data and ethical approaches (Swan; Mann, Nolan, and Wellman; Crawford, Lingel and Karppi). Perceiving the body as a machine through the lens of the Quantified-self movement initiated multiple research studies within the sphere of efficient everyday life and common habits. Meliss Gregg, Principal Engineer at Intel Corporation, is one of the researchers whose study focused on the “app-lification” of productiveness within working environments revealing the transformation of mobile applications into perfect assistants (Gregg). As a second dimension, the emergence of machines capable of sensing or expressing affection raised many theoretical and epistemological questions concerning the future of accepting and transforming machines into emotional competent actors (Picard,

Towards Machines with Emotional Intelligence 18). Tech specialists have been gazing

the market growth of wearable devices as sensors of personal affection so as to trigger questions such as whether humanity is moving towards a domination of computational

(6)

authority and decisive algorithmic agents (Facts And Statistics On Wearable Technology). Moving to the third dimension and taking a distance from the physical health perspective and affective computing criticism, we will come across with intimate respective agents claiming to achieve emotional health and well-being. Multiple mobile applications came to the foreground as effective twenty-four 7 agents that promise to bolster feelings of happiness such as Moodnotes1_{, maintain effective} relationships such as Pplkpr2_{and enhancing the levels of emotional intelligence such} as the Mood Meter3_{. Positioning my thesis within this third dimension of intimacy,} this paper does not stand neither as a perspective upon the healthy impacts of the self-tracking approach, nor as an aspect of how to programme affect into a machine. Yet it is urgent to inquire the conditions and assumptions that these increasingly popular applications are putting forward. Positioning self-regulating applications of intimacy as media environments, it becomes essential to elaborate upon the effects of software processes as proposed in the McLuhanesque medium theory, the proposed patterns and the new considerations coming about. In that sense, particular ways in which software can be analysed (processes, features, default settings) will be handled as sources of the new considerations and conditions of intimacy proposed. According to Taina Bucher, social relationships in social networking sites are “algorithmically and dynamically shaped around the pursuit of participation” leading to a model of a “programmed sociality” (Bucher 10). Echoing Bucher’s study providing a software perspective on social networking sites so as to reveal how sociality has altered and established online, I propose a respective mode of “programmed intimacy”. With this being the case, my aim is to reveal how practices of emotional regulation and emotional care are becoming entangled with the logics of software, what is being normalized following a route towards an “app-lification” of emotional states, what is being privileged and what the conditions and the assumptions of the practices proposed are.

1 Available here: http://moodnotes.thriveport.com/ 2 Available here: http://pplkpr.com/

(7)

Operating from this grasp, this study is both of a theoretical and methodological contribution within the new media field. One should firstly ask how to study programmed intimacy, what is the theoretical baseline according to which software might reveal further considerations that refer to media as environments responsible for further alterations. In order to advance this critique, this thesis will focus on notions such as measurement, power and algorithmic control. While the concept of “measuring” is not something new, we now live in an era according to which everything should be measured in order to be understood. From the Domesday Book to modern statistics, measuring is a prerequisite of apprehending and intervening in the social world (Ajana and Btihaj). Whether we are dealing with human steps or digital “reputation” for holiday accommodation, the notion of measuring provides us with knowledge of what is normal and what is deviant, what is more and what is less, what is right and what is wrong (Ajana and Btihaj). Within the neoliberal model and the emergence of movements such as the Quantified-Self, the responsibility of regulating and measuring has been switched from the institution to the self, a change that brought to the foreground notions such as the interminable self-improvement, self-management and the “fear” of personal failure. In that sense, the need of measuring and regulating emotional states came to the foreground as a mode of power leading to a commensuration and equalization of abstract qualities such as emotional states with clear metrics. After contextualizing the notions of measurement and self-improvement I will elaborate on the shift held in terms of power from the perception of it as a hegemonic notion and the shift towards a culture according to which, power is mainly articulated around the liability of the individual and the impacts of self-management. I will continue by analysing the importance of software within this context of self-improvement and I will elaborate on how one should study intimacy in terms of software and of a McLuhanesque sense of the media world.

Within this background, applications that claim a better self settled as part of everyday life and norm of things. As examples of promoting emotional well-being, four different mobile applications will be used: the Stigma application, the Mood

(8)

Meter application, Moodnotes and the Pplkpr application. These technologies, as mediators of normalization, promote a call to action of (re-)experiencing the qualitative as quantitative through specific practices so as to make it countable, understood and valuable for future personal reflection. Since the broader questioning of this thesis lies upon the ways according to which emotional regulation is assimilated from software culture, two sub-questions will be incorporated. In more detail, issues such as how software functions in order to get the ways in which technical specificities aggregate, measure and evaluate emotions, in terms of redistributing emotional consciousness and self-awareness, will be addressed; secondly, the question of how one may theorize the practices and the patterns proposed by the “new” intimacy as being weaved within software culture, will act elaboratively.

From a methodological perspective, I will use a combination of methods that will enable valid and trustworthy critical conclusions around the processes proposed by the cases of study. Firstly, I will contextualize the practice of emotional tracking throughout time and the alternative techniques proposed. I will try to reveal how these technologies have been studied and the theoretical assumptions they enacted so as to acknowledge the differences in terms of the present mobile self-tracking practices, what of the processes has been digitized, what has been left aside and what has particularly emerged within software culture. This analysis will be used so as to better interpret in the present objects of study. The four objects will be analysed as logical progressions of older practices and media so as to reveal the transforming circumstances of intimacy. Secondly, after contextualizing the objects of study, they will be analysed in terms of an extensive material object analysis initiating observation, testing and empirical experiments -when needed- so as to reveal the medium specificities and processes, affordances and built-in infrastructures of software and the proposed usage of the applications. In order to be able to build a fruitful methodology that will lead to efficient critical conclusions, a theoretical, conceptual and methodological framework will be provided in the following section.

(9)

2. THEORETICAL & CONCEPTUAL CONTENT

This chapter stands as the theoretical background upon which I will make the attempt to answer my thesis questions. It is evident that in contemporary societies of today, broader currents have arisen, such as the notion of conceptualizing the body as a machine, the precedence of neoliberalism and self-regulation, the unlimited practices offered via digital innovations and the imperative to understand and control the unpredictable nature of one’s body, mind and –from now on- soul. As a theoretical starting point of this study, I have defined to set the shift in perceiving power not as a hegemonic notion anymore, but as a personal responsibility being held in a neoliberal context, as being introduced by Michel Foucault (The Birth Of Biopolitics). After analysing the idea of the neoliberal self, I will continue by studying the role of software within this self-management environment so as to be able to propose in the next section my theoretical perspective of how and why one should study intimacy from software perspective and the power of algorithms.

2,1. Adding a Computational Dimension to Ordinary Existence 2,1,1. Measuring One Self

Elaborating on the shift from power as a hegemonic notion to power as a personal acquisition that initiates self-regulating ideas and mechanisms is one of the theoretical prisms of observing the broader phenomenon of self-tracking practices. According to Michel Foucault, whereas in the disciplinary governmental pattern, power was hegemonic and state was the one and only regulating system, the neoliberal model emerged by creating an intimate modification of knowledge, governmentality and subjectivity (Foucault, The Birth Of Biopolitics 75-150, 215-233). Within the neoliberal model new forms of “citizens”, control and regulations have arrived. While power is not anymore circulated around the police sciences and the state sciences, individuals have their own freedom and responsibility for their own actions and well-being (Foucault, The Birth Of Biopolitics 75-150). In contrast with the Keynesian policies of the welfare state, the notion of governing within the neoliberal model is constructed

(10)

upon and within the social surface, “so that the concurrential mechanism can expand and multiply at all levels and in all regions of the social body” (Cotoi 114). As in the market economy the idea of “erasing” the hegemonic power emerged in order to introduce freedom in the market transactions instead of implemented regulations, the neoliberal person is free to strive, decide, secure and evaluate his own well-being. Individual success or failure are interpreted in terms of personal achievements or failures respectively “rather than being attributed in any systemic property (such as the class exclusions usually attributed to capitalism)” (Harvey 65-66). The rise of personal productivity systems reflects in the digital era in plethora of digital applications that promise a better and more efficient and productive self. These digital artifacts create certain governmentalities that lead to a “programmable reality” (Cotoi 117), one that for the purposes of this study could be transformed in the concept of a “programmed intimacy”, narrowed down to emotional states and interpersonal relationships instead of networking relations, as pointed out by Taina Bucher in her study: “Programmed Sociality: A Software Studies Perspective On Social Networking Sites”.

Within this background of the neoliberal productiveness, well-being and self-efficiency, I will recall the concepts of body as a machine and the Quantified-Self, as foundations that serve the need of personal efficiency within the new media field. Starting from the idea of perceiving the body as a machine, I would like to point out the need of measuring and meaning making of ourselves. Following Deborah Lupton, a sociologist interested in emotions, digital media technologies in medicine and public health, when referring to a body as a machine we should always keep in mind that the combination of body and machine should be understood as an entity, one that needs input and provides output that can be measured, evaluated and quantified (26). Although the idea of thinking the body as a machine has a long history in western culture, the emergence of self-tracking devices and the innovative digital technologies of the past initiated objective researches and practices concerning the quantified self-approach. The term “Quantified-Self” was firstly introduced in 2007 by two editors of Wired Magazine, Kevin Kelly and Gary Wolf (Wolf). One of the main points of the

(11)

Quantified-Self movement is that nothing can be improved until it can be measured (Kelly). Neoliberal individuals in order to achieve efficiency, productivity and even “happiness” need a measuring scale so as to be able to quantitatively conclude any kind of evaluation. While the Quantified-Self movement emerged as a small group of people obsessed with recording, nowadays the term is not used only in relation to this particular group, but has been generally connected with any tracking practice or life logging that both have to do with the recording practice of everyday data. The Quantified-Self concept is one that positions the neoliberal self as a responsible person that needs to take care of his own interest, health care, knowledge, education and so forth. The neoliberal self, needs no probation so as to be productive but rather has its own will of living well, self-observing and evaluating his own practices. But this might not take only the form of a must have in terms of responsibilities, but it might also appear as a chance of working on personal data and being able and willing to assist your own personal needs.

While the idea of the Quantified-Self is mainly being understood in terms of health issues and care, tracking devices brought to the foreground alternative ways of wearables monitoring activities as reliable companions across multiple domains of productivity and efficiency. Tracking applications are used for different purposes and settlements, tracking weight, steps, calories and many more. Meliss Gregg researches the area of “measuring” personal productivity as one that can be captured by tools that turn input into cues of quantifying and perfecting activity (Gregg). Her study focuses on mobile applications that are being transformed into perfect assistants creating autonomous workers that manage themselves in transient, adhoc workplaces. From the productivity of personal health up to the productivity within a working environment, the concept of the Quantified-Self proposes a way of measuring the effectiveness of the self, providing the ability of evaluation and creating the expectation of neutrality based on data and algorithms. Within this background, we should keep in mind that the idea of the Quantified-Self should be understood in terms of a governing power of the self, one that is being acted through the notion of aggregation, measurement and evaluation of personal emotional data.

(12)

2,1,2. Measuring One Self With Software

In this section I will grasp on the importance of studying the individual’s emotional life from the perspective of software. In other words, I will elaborate on why it makes sense to study emotions by asking what software does and why it is like that. In order to do so, I will introduce as a prism of this study the notion of affective computing that triggers the issue of emotional machines. According to Picard, Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT, “affective computing relates to, arises from, or influences emotions” (Affective Computing 1). Her idea of affective computing arose parallel with the shift of computers towards the need to express and recognize affect and the question whether computers should or should not have emotions. Since the very beginning of the affective computing theory, questions concerning the future of the computational sphere in relation to our intimate and social life have become apparent. Another key point arose from the ambiguous nature of emotions. Emotions are considered to be inherently non-scientific, because of their nature and their lack of rationale and logical arguments in subjective cases (Picard, Affective Computing 1). Affective computing, however, is not an ontological theory that should provide us with answers concerning the causes and nature of emotions, rather it is a fruitful base upon which we can start mapping the territory of digital affect recognition, measurement and evaluation. In all of the cases, affective computing is being used as a window of knowledge that could not be accessed before in terms of pre-digital human perception and understanding. Following Picard’s thoughts in her paper “Affective Computing” we will come across many cases according to which affective computing is being used as an “external” tool of the human self, providing assisting performance and enhanced abilities. “The affective piano teacher” of the MIT Media Lab is a computer system that focuses on better piano teaching skills. Based on what a piano teacher -as a human- would have been able to do, the affective piano teacher tries to evaluate not only the student’s gestural input, timing and phrasing but also to be able to understand student’s emotional state (Picard, Affective Computing 3). Paul

(13)

Ekman4_{, teamed up with Terry Sejnowski}5_{, provided a research on neutral networks} that could be enhanced with computer-based facial measurements. Based on Paul Ekman’s theory of the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) of 1978, a system of measuring facial expressions in terms of activity in the underlying facial muscles, Ekman and Sejnowski tried to explore ways according to which, a machine would be able to automate the FACS and provide computer based affect recognition (Bartlett et al.).

Making a forward leap and moving to the wearable technologies of today, we will recognize a plethora of technological components that track and measure any aspect of everyday life. Wearable technologies brought human closer than ever to the perpetual need of self-knowledge and self-management through the power of measuring and aggregation. However, the idea of wearing something that measures is not new. In the seventies, the “mood rings” were the heat-to-color transformer rings that initiated the dream of wearing a real measuring technological infrastructure (Picard, Affective Computing 13). Moving to the 21st_{century and more specifically in} 2013, the “Quantified Self, Self Tracking Report”, published a survey according to which 69% of adults track a health indicator for themselves or others, 34% of individuals who track use non-technological methods such as notebooks or journals and 21% of individuals who track use at least one form of technology such as apps or devices (Ramirez). Furthermore, according to “Statista”, “2014 was hailed by many 4 “Dr. Paul Ekman, Professor Emeritus in Psychology at UCSF, is the researcher and author best known for furthering our understanding of nonverbal behavior, encompassing facial expressions and gestures. In addition to his own distinguished academic career, Ekman has authored more than 100 published articles and holds several honorary doctoral degrees. A pre-eminent psychologist and co-discoverer of micro expressions with Friesen, Haggard and Isaacs, Ekman was named by the American Psychological Association as one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century, and TIME Magazine (2009) hailed him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. In 2014, Dr. Ekman was ranked fifteenth among the most influential psychologists of the 21st century by Archives of Scientific Psychology.” (Paul Ekman Group LLC)

5 “He received his PhD in physics from Princeton University and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School. He was on the faculty at the Johns Hopkins University and he now holds the Francis Crick Chair at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies and is also a Professor of Biology at the University of California, San Diego, where he is co-director of the Institute for Neural Computation and co-director of the NSF Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center. He is the President of the Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) Foundation, which organizes an annual conference attended by over 1000 researchers in machine learning and neural computation and is the founding editor-in-chief of Neural Computation published by the MIT Press.” (CNL : CNL People)

(14)

tech publications and experts the Year of the Wearable” and a very quick market growth appeared in the sector (Facts And Statistics On Wearable Technology).

So as to be able to contextualize the case studies of this paper within the sphere of Affective Computing, we should refer to the four categories of affective computing diversified according to expression and recognition, as being schematized by Picard (Affective Computing). The two basic principles of this distinction are: 1) whether the computer can or cannot perceive affect and 2) whether a computer can or cannot express affect (Picard, Affective Computing 9). For a better understanding, the model is schematized as followed:

Computer

Cannot express affect Can express affect

Cannot perceive affect I. II.

Can perceive affect III. IV.

Figure 1: Four categories of affective computing, focusing on expression and recognition. (Picard, Affective

Computing 9)

This paper will focus on analysing cases that fit in category III, according to which computer perceives users’ affective state, “enabling it to adjust its response in ways that might, for example, make it a better teacher and a more useful assistant” (Picard,

Affective Computing 9). In this category, computers do not have the ability to express

affect, however, they use the input of affective statements as the main source of providing a helpful output for the user. From that point of view, computational interfaces function as a reflection of affection, as an analogue of self-improvement and self-regulation of emotional life. Within this background of self-knowledge, personal well-being and affective computing, new relationships between different qualities of emotions are being born and transformed into standardized quantities, an issue that makes a call fot further elaboration.

(15)

2,1,3. Re-experiencing the Qualitative as Quantitative: Commensurating Emotional States

The practise of measuring and providing an output of one’s emotions with the contribution of technological infrastructures proposes alterations in the way people perceive, evaluate and even talk about emotions. Emotions appear to be non-scientific in terms of one universal theory and as a result, there is not one unique answer that can provide sufficient knowledge of the rationale of emotions (Beck). That lack of universal theorized rationalities that affect emotions makes personal evaluation of emotional states a difficult and abstract process that may lead to subjective outcomes. However, technological infrastructures appear very decisive and claim, that based upon affective dimensions, the power of algorithms and human interaction, they are able to recognise, measure and evaluate human emotions and as a result to provide a better and more efficient emotional life and care. Affective computing interfaces serving the need of perceiving affection for self-reflection within the neoliberal context transforms the affective qualities into quantitative metrics making a call for re-experiencing ambiguous emotional states as concrete values. From that grasp, dealing respectively with the combination of the notions of perceiving and measuring and the ambiguous nature of emotions, another dimension should be mentioned leading to the concept of commensuration. According to Espeland and Stevens, commensuration is a concept that should be perceived as a way of minimizing and clarifying disparate information into numbers that can be handily compared, in other words, commensuration refers to the transformation of qualities into quantities (316). Throughout this thesis, perceiving different qualities of emotions as metrics should be handled both as a technical process that has to be examined by how software functions in order to make this quality-to-quantity transformation as well as a fundamental feature of social life leading to a different perception and evaluation of emotions that will be further clarified in the discussion section. What has to be mentioned at that point though, is that ever since the fifth and early fourth centuries the significance of order semantically corresponds to the notions of numbering, measurement and commensuration whereas chaos, anxiety and threat pairs with incommensurability (Nussbaum 56-57). Dealing with the above pairings,

(16)

commensuration and equalization of emotions into standardized proxies leads to order and stabilization of emotional life. While Espeland and Stevens talk about college rankings that numerically compare organizations, social statistics that may lead to comparisons among cities, nations and so on, we now deal with strict quantities, graphic visualizations and several metrics that refer to the equalization of emotional states towards common metrics (315). The concept of commensuration takes advantage of two core dimensions, both leading to a simplification of inaccessible issues. On the one hand, ambiguous and abstract qualities are standardized in constructed proxies and on the other hand, information is reduced and as a result, simplified approaches and scopes of decision-making are offered (Espeland and Stevens 316). From this lens, humanity’s desire to master and manage uncertainty leads to modes of power within which standardized proxies are presented as one of the best ways to handle emotional situations and efficient decision-makings (Espeland and Stevens 316).

2,2. How Studying Intimacy in Terms of Software Culture

In this part, my aim is to analyse how one may be able to approach the practice and the results of emotional well-being and self-regulation through the lens of software studies. Starting from the broader question of this study that trust to reveal the penetration of intimate culture through software culture and what does it mean to adopt digital self-regulating applications of intimacy in everyday life, I propose to start the analysis from a medium focused perspective, one that perceives the medium as the key factor of great socio-cultural changes. As a first step I will elaborate upon the figure and ideas of Marshall McLuhan, Canadian philosopher of communication theory, by taking advantage of medium theory and his perspective of analysing media as environment and not as plain transporters of a message. Following that line, I will continue by taking a deep dive in the software infrastructure and the power of algorithms, so as to elaborate on how software functions in order to get the ways in which technical specificities aggregate, measure and evaluate emotions, in terms of

(17)

redistributing consciousness and self-awareness. The theories presented in this section will be used as theoretical and methodological tools, so as to practically elaborate upon the case studies of this thesis. The reason of focusing my approach primarily on software derives from the realization that software affects and brings transformation in all kinds of cultural and social aspects of life, and as a result, is “responsible” for regulating and transforming individual’s intimate life (Manovich, Software Takes

Command; Fuller). Following this line, I will end up this section by explaining the

reasons and the importance of studying intimacy in terms of software and the reasons of bringing into question the impacts of algorithms in terms of proposing certain patterns of intimacy.

2,2,1. Understanding Media as Environment

Following Marshall McLuhan’s understanding of media, I propose that in order to reveal what it means to lean on self-regulating technologies in terms of a person’s intimate life and what kind of emotional life they are proposing we should start by trying to capture the personal and as a result, the social consequences that these technologies –as extensions of our selves- introduce. Throughout this study, emotional self-tracking applications will be exploited as media that create a certain environment by their mere dominance. Leveraging their presence and their spread in personal relationships and emotional sphere, they do create identical new practices and circumstances. In that sense, media should be perceived, according to McLuhan, not only as transmitters of certain messages but as extensions of the human that are being shaped and led by their forms. Understanding media as extensions of the self, refers to the acceptance of the perspective that media are human prothesis or extensions of the central nervous system that introduce new ways and functions, new prototypes and roles in the taxonomy of the world (McLuhan, Understanding Media:

The Extensions of Man 7-21). The reason for recalling McLuhan’s medium theory

stands upon the realisation that technologies by claiming regulation of emotional state, as all of the four case studies, shape and influence the socio-cultural alterations that most of the times remain un-noticed. Although, according to McLuhan, living in

(18)

a society where everything is divided and split under the importance of power and control, we have to think in terms of a dominant and complete structure that knows no division (Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man 7-21).). This undivided truth is the alike medium that should be understood not as a means of transferring a certain message but as the message itself that is the main important factor of the personal and social ramifications. Media should be understood as environments that presuppose a certain reading of their infrastructures, a reading that avoids making sense of what is the content of the message and which, rather focuses on realising the impact of the medium’s adoption sociologically and culturally. Pointed out alternatively, McLuhan proposed in his medium theory that “the medium is the message” so that to define that the medium influences how the message is perceived and thus the message as plain content is nothing that we should elaborate on (Understanding Media: The Extensions

of Man 7-21). Communication theorists criticized that claim as nihilistic or even as an

aphoristic one. However, in this study this theory will be used as a main foundation, so as to be led to the acceptance that analysing the medium itself will provide us with certain knowledge of how digital intimacy is being schematized or at least how it is being proposed. The usefulness of this theory in parallel to my study stands upon the fact that the medium, being the message, shapes human thought and beliefs, shapes the way we perceive the world and the knowledge about it. Based on medium theory, as it is introduced by McLuhan, I will claim that applications such as my case studies are far from neutral, rather, they shape and influence socio-cultural transformations (Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man; The Gutenberg Galaxy). In our case, since all of the four case studies refer to the regulation of intimate life, I will expand this idea of socio-cultural transformation into the intimate sphere and personal affect.

2,2,2. Software Studies Background

Software studies were born and still exist as an interdisciplinary object, one that offers a fertile ground in order to avoid being trapped exclusively into the technical parts of computer science and initiate critical thinking from theoretical and cultural perspectives (Dodge, Kitchin, and Zook). However 2006 was the year that initiated a

(19)

first attempt of approaching software studies, it was in the year of 2008 that the field of software studies was established, with the contribution of Lev Manovich and Matthew Fuller (Fuller, Software Studies; Manovich, Software Studies Initiative). Manovich had already tried in 2001 to make a first call in his book “The Language of New Media”:

New media calls for a new stage in media theory whose beginnings can be traced back to the revolutionary works of Harold Innis in the 1950s and Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s. To understand the logic of new media, we need to turn to computer science. It is there that we may expect to find the new terms, categories, and operations that characterize media that became programmable. From media studies we move to something that can be called “software studies” - from media theory to software theory. (48)

However, until 2011, although software was already woven into culture, economy and politics few have understood the need of a more theoretical scepticism rather than technical (Manovich, Cultural Software). The emergence of the electrical signal brought new dimensions in the surface and interface appeared as the new way to present and control the signal (Manovich, Media after Software). Accepting the importance of software initiates questions around possible controls and representational regimes inherited by spinoffs of software. In that sense, more research effort should be concentrated around the notion of software in terms of revealing specific properties of medium and the consequences, realities and environments that are being shaped. The importance of studying algorithms for software studies has already been indicated in 1982 by Les Goldschlager and Andrew Lister in their textbook, “Computer Science: A Modern Introduction”, according to which the algorithm is the concept that enables all the activities which computer scientists work with. Nowadays, algorithms are not considered as a domain that interests exclusively computer scientists, but is much more that of an interdisciplinary concept that should initiate cultural questions as well. For that reason, a closer look to the notion of algorithm is needed and will be provided in the next section.

(20)

2,3. The Power of Algorithms

Algorithms can be found everywhere. We are living in an era of “Algorithmic Culture” a term that has been introduced by Ted Striphas, Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado-Boulder, according to which algorithms and culture shape one another (Granieri). More specifically, the term is being used referring to the ways “in which computers, running complex mathematical formulae, engage in what’s often considered to be the traditional work of culture: the sorting, classifying, and hierarchizing of people, places, objects, and ideas” (Granieri). Google’s algorithms are in charge of the information we access everyday, Facebook’s algorithms of News Feed organize our social scenery, shopping sites, websites for accommodation or entertainment; they provide us with suggestions based on the already chosen tastes we expressed that have been already archived in terms of input. The ways in which algorithms propose to users any kind of information creates certain new or relatively new cultural aspects. This is exactly what McLuhan means when talking about socio-cultural changes that are being initiated form the adoption of new media. Adopting algorithms in any aspect of everyday life presupposes the acceptance of new social-cultural realities. Algorithms decide what is “hot” or “trending” or even “most discussed” (Gillespie 1). Under these circumstances, algorithms of applications that have to do with our intimate life produce new habits of intimacy, feelings and ways of interacting that would not exist in its absence (Granieri). From that prism, this paper is an attempt to elaborate on the algorithmical cues that enable practices and patterns of intimacy that would not have exist in that way without a computerized insertion.

The fact that nowadays human look for answers of any issue in algorithms is comparable with what people used to do in the past with the opinions of experts, science or even god (Gillespie 2). To realise the power of algorithms in terms of constructing certain cultural patterns, a closer look to the term is needed. According to Gillespie, algorithms make things happen, “they are encoded procedures for transforming input data into a desired output, based on specified calculations. The procedures name both a problem and the steps by which it should be solved” (1).

(21)

More specifically, Gillespie in his paper “The Relevance of Algorithms” refers to the importance of public relevance algorithms, the algorithms using mathematical cues which produce and certify knowledge (2). Information produced and represented to users creates a certain knowledge logic that individuals tend to shift our public discourse and intimate life (Gillespie 2). But why do people trust the output algorithms produce? Algorithms are presented as an assurance of impartiality claiming that produce results with algorithmic objectivity (Gillespie 2). This objectivity should be incorporated in terms of the journalistic objectivity (Gillespie 14). Just like in the past and even now, journalists test the validity of their sources, never publish anything if they are not sure and always provide a double check, algorithms are based on careful articulation of inputs that assure relevance and credibility. Within the context of eternal productivity in terms of social life, intimate life, professional life and so on, individuals trust the algorithmic outputs as legitimized and relevant, as the source that can provide them with skills and answers that without them would not have the opportunity to accomplish.

Summing up this theoretical background and taking into consideration all of the above, I want to reveal a “programmed intimacy” –pursuing the steps of Taina Bucher6_{- that is being proposed from the power of algorithms when using this kind of} self-tracking and emotional self-regulating applications. Following McLuhan’s methodological turn in analysing the past in “The Gutenberg Galaxy”, I will continue by creating a mosaic of the past by looking on emotional self-tracking practices. My aim is to reveal casual operations in history so as to create a fertile background upon which I will then analyse the infrastructures of the case studies chronologically placed in the present. The importance in revealing the past lies upon my belief that patterns produced by the acceptance of emotional self-tracking applications create a new taxonomy in the sphere of emotional life. Making this methodological turn in the past, I will then be able to elaborate on what it means to adapt and adjust individual’s intimate life according to algorithmical suggestions and what patterns concerning future intimate life these technologies propose. After projecting this background, I 6 See: “Programmed Sociality: A Software Studies Perspective On Social Networking Sites”. Diss. (Ph.D Thesis)

(22)

will get into the ways according to which software tracks, analyses and measures the emotions of the users so as to propose these new patterns of intimacy. The methodological framework as well as the case studies will be analysed accordingly in the next section.

3. OBJECTS OF STUDY & METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK

In this chapter I introduce the objects of study and the methodological approach that will be applied upon them so as to provide applied perspectives of the ways according to which intimacy has been assimilated from software. A combination of two methods will be employed that will enact a diverse analysis. Firstly, I will elaborate on a detailed analysis of context and the technicity behind the practices of self-regulation of emotions over time so as to be led to the gravity of digital practices of today. This will enact a synchronical and diachronical analysis of my case studies, following the practice of tracking emotions in terms of emotional regulation and well-being. Thus, my aim is to reveal the overall frame and the circumstances under which the objects of study were born, used and schematized as they are, and what was and what is the cultural context within which they sustain themselves. Does the cultural context remain the same or does the emergence of digital applications based on algorithmic cues propose natively new patterns of intimacy? In other words, the aim of this analysis is to think of the new and the old in parallel lines and to elaborate on the “conditions of existence” (Parikka, What is Media Archeology? 6). Secondly, I will rely on a material object analysis upon software built-in affordances, text and visual representations, restrictions and codifications so as to reveal how software functions in order to get to the ways in which technical specificities aggregate, measure, evaluate emotions and provide treatment and possible strategical proposals. Having elaborated firstly on the context within which the practice of emotional self-regulation has been born, I will draw a path so as to reveal the route of the same practice within the digital field, by shattering the utilities of my objects and providing an extensive object and infastructural description. Since the algorithms of these applications are not

(23)

“open” and visible and a more technical analysis could not be applied, the method of the material object analysis will be used in terms of revealing as much as possible concerning software’s peculiarities and proposals of use. While the approach of revealing the background of emotional tracking practices will provide me with the tools to excavate the past so as to understand the present, material object analysis will shatter the objects of study into pieces, make them readable and effective in order to critically elaborate upon the practices proposed by them. At first, let’s take a look at the four objects of study that both of the above methods will be applied to.

3,1. Objects of Study

Four different objects of study will be analysed, Stigma, Mood Meter, Moodnotes, and the Pplkpr application. I have decided to focus on these four applications for multiple reasons. Firstly, since my aim is to reveal the practices regenerated from the penetration of intimate culture within software from the perspective of self-tracking mobile applications, I have made a selection of four applications that take advantage of multiple practices in order to promote their effectiveness, measurement and evaluation of emotional states, diagnosis and treatment. Since analysing all of the applications of the emotional tracking sphere would have been impossible in the present thesis extension, a confinement in the most profitable practices seemed the best recourse. Secondly, since listings of applications depend on different characteristics, such as which application is cheaper, well-known, on trend etc, I have decided to avoid being trapped in certain listings and consciously investigate and decide on the applications that suit best my research goals. Thirdly, each one of the applications chosen has a different reasoning of being part of this study. Stigma is a personalized journal application that is based on the old practice of emotional journal writing and provides no certain advice when stressful situations are being detected. Mood Meter is an application that promises emotional intelligence built for a lifetime and thus is based on a certain emotional theory transferred and adjusted into software culture. The most crucial part of this application is the step of deciding the exact feeling at a certain emotional time and situation. Moodnotes, on the other hand, is

(24)

based on Cognitive Behavioural Theory (CBT) and the main concern of the app is to define under what circumstances a certain feeling has being produced (from whom, why, where), devoting a lot of attention to self-reflection practices and proposing multiple ways of unpacking distressing situations. Pplkpr is an art project that I have decided to include in my research because of its critical stature among self-tracking applications. The application tracks emotional response and provides certain algorithmical results. All of the applications chosen appear at the end of this thesis to have logical and progressional characteristics of the past theoretical assumptions and practices, a phenomenon that proves reasons and aspects of relativeness of the applications chosen. The applications will be described in more detail in the upcoming sections.

3,1,1. Stigma

According to its creators, Stigma is the world’s most popular personalized journal application (Stigma App). Stigma relies its practices on research studies concentrating on the effectiveness of journal writing that leads to a healthier well-being. More specifically, it improves physical health, psychological well-being, reduces stress, improves sleep and overall happiness (Stigma App). Based on the idea of the traditional emotional journal writing, the app provides a fifteen second journey entry so as to avoid the fussiness and the unlimited extension of the traditional paper and pen practice. Traditional journal writing makes reflection impossible since experiences are hidden among the unread pages that demand considerable time in order to reflect upon them. Stigma, provides prompt and easy journal entries followed by proposed emotions and a writing space in order to add details about the circumstances of each emotional state. The app organizes and visualizes the user’s entries into word-clouds so as to make self-reflection simple and meaningful.

3,1,2. Mood Meter

On the other hand, Mood Meter does not depend on the practice of journal writing, but claims a long lasting self-awareness of emotional life. Based on decades of

(25)

research from Yale University the Mood Meter app motivates the user to add how he feels and build emotional intelligence that lasts a lifetime (Mood Meter App). The app claims five key factors that will initiate the change towards a better emotional balance and life (Mood Meter App). To begin with, the app promises expansion of the emotional vocabulary of the user and claims that it will help the user discover the nuances among personal emotions. Secondly, it provides insights about the user’s inner life by exploring what causes the user’s feelings over time. Thirdly, the app offers strategies so as to trigger the user to regulate his emotions and manage his intimate life accordingly. Furthermore, due to the fact that manual documentation is obligatory when using this app, it provides certain notifications so as the user will not forget to add the feelings he felt through the day. Finally, after collecting enough data, the app provides the user with reports of his personal feelings that influence his decisions and performances.

3,1,3. Moodnotes

Moodnotes is an application that started as a project of leveraging digital tools to improve the health of people in general and their mental health in particular (Moodnotes). Since the team recognized the need of individuals to take control of their health, their goal was to create an app that would have a great impact on people’s well-being (Moodnotes). Moodnotes provides an emotional journey according to which the user has the ability to track emotions and thoughts, get advice, reflect on daily experiences and understand himself better. The application is a product of “ustwo”7_{, creators of the hit mobile game “Monument Valley”}8_{in collaboration with} two clinical psychologists Dr. Drew Erhardt, Psychologist and Professor of Psychology and Dr. Edrick Dorian, Clinical and Police Psychologist, creators of the highly-acclaimed MoodKit app9_{(Dredge). Main ideas behind the emotional journey} are the treatment principles of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and positive psychology, as applied in order to enhance users’ tracking of their emotional state and 7 Ustwo: https://ustwo.com/

8 Momentum Valley: http://www.monumentvalleygame.com/

(26)

help them to adopt healthier thinking habits (Collins). The app tracks the user’s mood and identifies what influences it, promotes and develops healthier thinking habits, provides information about emotional “traps” of the user’s thinking and makes suggestions about how to avoid them, while promising to increase self-awareness as well as the reduction of distress in terms of a well-being life.

3,1,4. Pplkpr

Pplkpr is an optimizer of social life. It has been created as an art project by Lauren McCarthy and Kyle McDonald so as to explore the implementation of the quantified living within the context of social relationships (Pplkpr). The two artists were interested in posing questions such as who owns the data and what it means to capture them and use them (Pplkpr). In a broader sense, the two artists wanted to research as well, the possibility of an algorithmical understanding of personal relationships so as to achieve better interpersonal decisions (Pplkpr). The project started as an art project and has been tested for the first time with a performance from students of Carnegie Mellon University (Pplkpr). The app now is normally being used particularly from iOS operating systems. The app tracks manually or automatically physical and emotional response while hanging out and analyses the data to reveal and visualize who stresses the user most and less, who makes the user excited, sad or happy. Pplkpr, when being used in combination with a wearable device, is based on measurements of heart variability, which means that it detects the heart rate rhythm signals that reveal possible changes in the user’s emotional state (Pplkpr). The app monitors the user’s social life accordingly after collecting enough data, it proposes to keep hanging out with good influencers and blocks the bad ones. When the app aggregates and analyzes data, it is searching for trends so as to reveal the good and bad affection. Thus, the more the user provides the app with data, the better understanding and matching of the user’s patterns are being presented.

(27)

3,2. Methodological Framework

3,2,1. Contextualizing Emotional Self-Tracking Applications

This method will be used as a conceptual bridge so as to analyse my objects of study by creating a solid background of the past. The data from this analysis will constitute a fruitful background so as to approach my new media case studies presented as logical progressions of older practices and media. In other words, following the steps of Jussi Parikka, Michel Foucault and Friedrich Kittler I will provide a fruitful analysis of my case studies as media of today that are by definition historically contextualised and that should be studied synchronically and diachronically in relation to older practices and media. Since throughout this part of my analysis I am proposing an alternative to the method known as “Media Archeology”, I would like to point out some relative parameters. The aim of this contextualization is to provide a different reading of technicities of the past concerning emotional self-tracking applications so as to reveal historical alternatives of my objects of study. In that way, whereas I will not provide an alike “Media Archeology” approach, I would firstly like to elaborate on certain comments around the process of “Media Archeology”, an approach that offered to me certain angles in order to provide my contextualization of objects. Michel Foucault in his work “The Archeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language” analysed the notion of archeology by pointing out the importance of knowing the reasonings of why a certain object, discourse or statement has been schematized and utilized as it is (Parikka, What is Media Archeology? 6). On the other hand, Friedrich Kittler followed and built on Foucault’s ideas of archeology but is imposing such an archeology that is close to media technological approaches and understanding (Parikka, What is Media Archeology? 6). In other words, what Kittler tried to do was to provide a different reading of technological objects, one that could be done in parallel to Foucault’s readings of discourses and written documents. What should be mentioned at this point is that throughout this paper and analysis, the aim is not to provide a “geneology” by providing a clear geneological approach of the descendants and a critique of origins as being mentioned later on by Foucault

(28)

(Parikka, What is Media Archeology? 6), but the aim is to provide a cultural-historical and discursive research so as to reveal historical alternatives and provide a complete socio-cultural and technological criticism of the present objects of study. Theorists like Erkki Huhtamo, Eric Kluitenberg, and to an extent Wolfgang Ernst share with Zielinski the perspective that media archaeology’s core assumption is to reveal alternative genealogies for the development of technological artefacts over time (Parikka, What is Media Archeology?). Wolfgang Ernst is another media theorist that proposed his own perspective of media archeology, one that is very close to the analytical approach of this paper. Taking as a baseline Kittler’s huge impact on media studies and media archeology, Ernst provides a more materialistic approach concentrated in modern technical media (Parikka, Operative Media Archaeology:

Wolfgang Ernst’s Materialist Media Diagrammatics 53). Following the line of the

German tradition of media materialism and Bruno Latour’s ideas, Ernst points out: Equally close to disciplines that analyze material (hardware) culture and to the Foucauldean notion of the ‘archive’ as the set of rules governing the range of what can be verbally, audiovisually, or alphanumerically expressed at all, media archeology is both a method and aesthetics of practicing media criticism, a kind of epistemological reverse engineering, and an awareness of moments when media themselves, not exclusively humans any more, become active ‘archeologists’ of knowledge. (Parikka, Operative Media Archaeology:

Wolfgang Ernst’s Materialist Media Diagrammatics 56)

In that manner, Ernst’s ideas get closer to a McLuhanesque approach, one that pays more attention to the signal and less to the content of the medium (Parikka, Operative

Media Archaeology: Wolfgang Ernst’s Materialist Media Diagrammatics 64). This

perspective, as pointed out by Ernst, triggered me to analyse the practices of the past as archives of knowledge in terms of technicity and presupposed usage circumstances, so as to reflect on algorithmic intimacy as being diffused into software culture. In any case, I would like to point out that this part of the method will not be handled as a “Media Archeology” approach, though by taking as starting point ideas and issues refered in parallel with that method, I will provide a contextualization of the objects of

(29)

study so as to reveal connections in terms of theoretical assumptions and conditions of existence.

3,2,2. A Perspective of Technicity

In order to elaborate on what emotional self-tracking applications propose in terms of use and meaning making of the world, I propose to elaborate on two main surfaces. An observation of the interface of the study objects will initiate answers concerning the ways that these applications represent and control “signal” (Manovich, Media

After Software 30). On the other hand, taking a closer look at the properties of each

object, which according to Lev Manovich, are being proposed by the centrality of software, will produce certain conclusions related to the ways intimacy is being produced and articulated through software (Manovich, Media After Software 32). The concept of ‘properties of a medium’, as pointed out by Lev Manovich, refers to all of the techniques that are intended to work and create meaning in certain software applications, media ecologies and content (Media After Software). From another angle and time period, J.J.Gibson named the actionable properties between the world and an actor (either person or animal) as “affordances” creating a whole new idea of how we should perceive the world (Gibson). Under these circumstances, the objects of study will be analysed in terms of revealing how software functions, what are the ways of aggregating, measuring and evaluating emotions, what are the built-in affordances, restrictions and codifications in each case. Since all of the objects of study are being structured upon different software logics, representational and expressive capabilities vary as well. Thus, I will focus on an extended interface observation, either by describing the functionality of the application or by testing them empirically when needed. In other words, I will make the attempt to reveal the built-in assumptions of how software presupposes certain usage, what the user allows to do and what are its restrictions.

The analysis is conceptually built upon two main sections. Firstly, for each of the objects of study I will provide an extensive analysis of the object itself. Issues such as,

(30)

from whom they were ment to be used, what are their theoretical assumptions and epistemological theories behind them, what is their main usage, within what context and what are their different proposing functionalities will be addressed. As follows, I will elaborate on analysing the representational regimes, both textual and visual. I will provide information concerning their communicative tone of voice and communicate goals and present their different visual modalities: graphics, images, animations, data visualizations etc. The last part of this analysis will be focused on providing a detailed interface and technical analysis in order to bring all of the above together and reveal the overall functionality. Throughout the second approach, I will present a feature matrix representation of core data, one that will lead the way in order to discuss software practices of emotional self-tracking as a broader phenomenon. This part of the analysis will build an integrated idea of different practices of emotional self-tracking proposed by software and will initiate questions such as what kind of application journey is being proposed, what parts of the journey appear more decisive and what has been left aside and thus, what are the assumptions and proposals of meaning making.

4. ANALYSIS

4,1. Making the Past Speak

My aim in this section is to provide an analysis of several techniques for tracking emotions existed before the emergence of mobile applications, so as to create an appropriate background upon which I will project the objects of study as practices tangled with software. Thus, after elaborating on self-tracking methods before the emergence of mobile application interfaces, I will be able to reveal to what extend applications such as the four objects of study are a form of digitized emotional therapy or whether they present medium specific alternatives that one could even refer to as a natively digital emotional therapy. Two main angles have been exploited. On the one hand, I will look in methods and technologies that have been used in terms of individual’s emotional reporting and on the other, I will elaborate on the relative

(31)

research points that have been made mainly from researchers by focusing on secondary sources. The practice of tracking emotions could be traced between two different main categories that some of them existed long before the digital domination: self-reporting methods based on subjective feelings, and self-tracking methods based on motor expressions and physiological arousal by using specialized apparatus. Methods of self-reporting are characterized by the willingness of the individual to talk privately or socially, write, or even rate his emotions by using a given scale in any other way whereas methods of motor expression or physiological arousal base their effectiveness on automation.

4,1,1. Organizing Subjective Feelings into Units

The practice of expressive writing about stressful incidents, known in one term as written emotional disclosure, was firstly tested by Pennebaker and Beall (Pennebaker and Beal, Confronting a Traumatic Event: Towards an Understanding of Inhibition

and Disease). Writing about emotional experiences has been characterized as one of

the most effective practices of reinforcement of emotional life and subjective well-being (Pennebaker, Writing about emotional experiences as a therapeutic process 162). Individuals who appreciate emotional disclosure in a written form only need a pen and a notebook in order to write down emotional experiences. Disclosure appears as a decisive therapeutic factor that potentially is perceived as substantial during the healing process of an individual (Pennebaker, Writing about emotional experiences as

a therapeutic process 162). James W. Pennebaker is one of the first researchers who

studied the underlying mechanisms of emotional disclosure as a writing practice by creating his own “basic writing paradigm” (Writing about emotional experiences as a

therapeutic process 162-164). According to Pennebaker, the emergence of emotional

writing came to the foreground due to the assumption that not expressing emotions is a form of inhibition (Writing about emotional experiences as a therapeutic process 164). His method had as a starting point an experiment based on random allocation of participants into groups, who were assigned to write about emotional topics for three to five days in a row, in the laboratories, fifteen to thirty minutes per day. Participants

(32)

were free to choose any important emotional incident that has affected them whereas feedback was not part of the procedure (Pennebaker, Writing about emotional

experiences as a therapeutic process 162). What Pennebaker found out after applying

this “basic writing paradigm”, was that when individuals have the opportunity to express deeply personal aspects of their lives, they are pleased to do so (Writing about

emotional experiences as a therapeutic process 162). Thus, according to Pennebaker,

the underlying mechanisms that make the process of writing about emotions so effective lies upon the differences among the opposite ideas of inhibition and disclosure. Albeit, most of the researches around emotional disclosure have been focused around the writing method as a writing process, emotional disclosure can occur in multiple alternatives such as “mental imagery, bodily expression, typing, talking privately out loud, speaking to a passive listener, and speaking to an active facilitator” (Slavin-Spenny et al. 994). Apart from researching all of the available methods of emotional disclosure and the possible writing paradigms, other research studies focused their interest around the importance of the presence or absence of an audience during the process of emotional disclosure (Radcliffe et al.). In any case, the existence of any kind of listener appeared pretty decisive in terms of results produced. Pennebaker was again one of the researchers who brought to the foreground the importance of talking to a person named as listener instead of talking to a soulless tape recorder (Pennebaker, Hughes and O’Heeron, The Psychophysiology of

Confession: Linking Inhibitory and Psychosomatic Processes). In their testing

process, Radcliffe, Lumley, Kendall, Stevenson and Beltran, revealed that shared disclosure appeared more effective in terms of reducing physical symptoms, reduction of depression and interpersonal sensitivity more than private disclosure (Radcliffe et al.).

While all of the above practices does not presuppose any particular categorizational activity, other inventions estimate the need of providing certain scaling dimensions and qualities. The PDA Emotion Scale is a scale based on binary affective qualities/units. It has been invented by Albert Mehrabian in 1980, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, UCLA, and stands as an acronym for Pleasure, Arousal and

(33)

Dominance, the three dimensions assessing the affective quality of the experience (Mehrabian). More specifically, the model consists of independent dimensions that are used as a base to describe and measure emotional states: pleasure-displeasure, arousal-nonarousal, and dominance-nondominance. The pair pleasure-displeasure distinguishes the positive against the negative affective quality of emotional states, the pair arousal-nonarousal refers to a combination of physical activity and mental alertness whereas the pair of dominance-submissiveness is defined in terms of control against lack of control (Mehrabian). The PAD Emotion Scale uses a three-dimensional emotion space so as to describe emotions in specific terms. When the PAD scale scores are standardized, every emotion can be described in terms of the above values of pleasure-displeasure, arousal-nonarousal, and dominance-submissiveness. More in detail, the PAD scale takes advantage of eight basic emotional varieties that are being distinguished and grouped according to their position within the above three dimensional model. All of the possible combinations of the levels of pleasure, arousal and dominance are being analysed and after elaborating on the data, the result comes out (Mehrabian).

Although the PDA Emotion Scale offered the option of binary affective qualities, the need for rich emotional vocabularies brough to the foreground alternatives such as the option of tension and the importance of indicating a certain level of affection. Following the basic idea of the PAD scale, the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) has been created form Lang in 1985, as a non-verbal pictorial assessment method that measures pleasure, arousal and dominance of a person’s attitude (Bradley and Lang 50). Apart from the affective qualities/units, SAM presents its scaled data in terms of levels and tension (see Figure 2). At its first steps, SAM was implemented as an interactive computer programme, whereas later on, a version of paper and pencil was released (Bradley and Lang 50). The paper version, as shown in figure 2, consists of graphic depictions of the major affective dimensions.

Self-Regulating Applications. Towards a Programmed Intimacy