The rise of speculative devices : hooking up with the bots of Ashley Madison

Light, BA

Abstract

I attend to two areas of increasing significance in relation to Web 2.0 since its announcement in 2005. The first is a focus on the non-human in digital media research, and the second is the normalisation of dating apps in society. Building upon ideas from speculative design and speculative method, I introduce the idea of speculative devices, those things that are set in place based on a conjecture of an outcome. Drawing upon a case study of Ashley Madison, generated using a walkthrough method, I demonstrate how the speculative devices of bots and profiles can operate, and why. I argue we need to give careful thought to how our research and practice is understood, and conducted where speculative devices are concerned.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 28, 2016
• Online Publication Date: Jun 6, 2016
• Publication Date: Jun 6, 2016
• Deposit Date: Oct 11, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 11, 2016
• Journal: First Monday
• Electronic ISSN: 1396-0466
• Publisher: University of Illinois at Chicago Library
• Volume: 21
• Issue: 6
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v21i6.6426
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5210/fm.v21i6.6426
• Related Public URLs: http://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm
• Additional Information: Access Information : This is an open access journal.