Chapter 2. Appendix: The records read

When an online space one has grown fond of closes its doors, who should take the memories made together?

After a service ends, who holds the rights to a shared record?

A scene in which a hypothetical hobby community is about to close.

A way to preserve the memories without carelessly moving the traces of others.

Moved outside the service, the scope of what is public can change.

The tension between the continuance of shared memory and individual control.

Anonymous posts and deleted posts, and members who oppose preservation.

If one asks only who owns it, the difference between conditions of access and the right to delete disappears.

Do I ignore others' wish to erase on the grounds of keeping my own memories?

It distinguishes the memories I will keep from other people's utterances. It looks at the operator's authority and the members' consent procedures. It asks about the public character of cultural records accumulated on private services. It does not see the memory of living things and stored records as the same persistence. Records also differ in where they are kept and in what access costs. A file that lasts long does not guarantee a record that is understood long.

Why does a walk without the tracking app switched on feel like time with no achievement at all?

Does measurement come to judge the value of experience in its place?

The question of a hypothetical user who has come to care about a walking score.

The ease to enjoy experiences that are not left as numbers as well.

One feels that unrecorded time cannot be evaluated.

The difference between measured achievement and value experienced directly.

The people met while walking and the pleasure the body felt.

If measurement is seen as a single problem, the ways of using it that help also disappear.

Does one blame the tool even for a pleasure that began thanks to the recording?

One can try expressing today's mood without a score. It looks at whether a culture of competing records changes the time for rest. It asks about resources gathering only around results that are easy to measure. The state of a living thing cannot all be explained by one indicator. Indicators that measure the value of the environment also have sides they cannot capture. The range of what is measurable and the range of what is meaningful are not the same.

If an artificial intelligence has produced sentences that resemble my writing, has my voice been taken from me?

How does similarity of expression differ from infringement of a voice?

The worry of a hypothetical creator who has come across similar expressions.

An explanation that distinguishes being influenced from unjust replacement.

Style is connected to the experience an individual has built up.

The tension between distinctive expression and reuse.

The actual degree of similarity and the uncertainty of the training path.

The metaphor of a voice can mix up similarity of expression with legal rights.

Did one's own style not also grow out of other people's expressions?

It looks at how my name and my works are connected. It looks at how distribution platforms mark sources and authors. It thinks of the sharing of creation and the continuance of creators together. Imitating sentences alone cannot be seen as sharing experience. It compares the treatment that creative works in different languages receive. It does not treat the reproduction of information and a person's life as the same.

If late-night self-driving shuttle buses have been introduced and travel has become safe and cheap, but the warm gaze of the human driver who used to look after drunk passengers and emergency patients has disappeared, is that progress?

How do the cost savings and precision brought by making mobility technology driverless and automated replace the human care and safety net within the space of travel?

A situation in which a hypothetical smart city is running a pilot of 24-hour Level 4 driverless self-driving shuttles to close the blind spots of night-time public transport.

Trust in a human presence that, beyond the cold efficiency of the machine, can notice me and reach out a hand in a moment of emergency.

The perception that driving work is not simple vehicle operation but complex care work that watches over the condition of passengers and keeps safety and order in the space.

The gap between the maximisation of technical rationality and the emotional and physical care required in the public space of travel.

The rough kindness of the driver who used to wake a passenger who had dozed off on the last bus all the way to the end of the line, and the human alertness to spot in real time a passenger who has collapsed on board.

The limitation that, by reducing the benefits of introducing the technology to a sentimental backlash over the loss of the human touch, it may shut off the possibility of collaboration between technology and human care.

Is a robot bus that carries no risk at all of drowsy or drunk driving, and that threads through every corner of the alleys 24 hours a day without tiring, not far safer for passengers?

When I ride a driverless shuttle bus alone in the middle of the night, do I feel relief, or do I feel fear? When I see another passenger in trouble on a self-driving bus, do I have the civic courage to go over and help in person? How should mobility technology policy make remote safety monitoring and emergency rescue systems for vulnerable groups mandatory in the course of going driverless? What effect do the lidar (LiDAR), radar waves and high-frequency signals that self-driving vehicles emit have on the sense organs of night birds and insects? How will the complete automation of travel fundamentally reshape the human experience of the city and the forms of chance encounter? In a future in which artificial intelligence controls every path of travel in the city without a second's error, where do the human right to get lost and the freedom to take a detour go?

Is a high-tech device that is sealed with adhesive, without a single screw, for the sake of ultra-thin waterproofing, and that must be thrown away whole when it breaks, progress for humanity's technological civilisation or a betrayal of repair?

What paradox between technological progress and sustainability does the unrepairability (Unrepairability) caused by the one-piece sealed design (Glue-in Design) of high-tech devices expose?

A situation in which, at a hypothetical tech review event, the latest laptop is unveiled, boasting waterproofing and an ultra-slim design, though its body must be destroyed to replace the battery.

A technical rationality that lets one enjoy the benefits of physical waterproofing and slimness while, when the battery or the keyboard breaks, replacing only the part instead of throwing away the whole device.

An engineering ethic holding that true technical elegance lies not in a smooth shell that cannot be taken apart but in a modular design that can easily be opened, repaired and made to last for ever.

The structural technical contradiction between the pursuit of functional completeness (waterproof, ultra-thin) and ecological repairability.

The helplessness of the consumer watching an expensive electronic device sink into waste in just 3 years because it cannot be repaired, and the everyday reassurance that cutting-edge waterproofing gives.

The bias of wholly denying the real gain in durability from the waterproofing and dustproofing that ultra-thin sealed design made possible, and of taking repairability alone as the absolute standard.

Is a sealed design that protects the device perfectly from dust and water and so blocks breakdown at its source not a far more advanced technology than repair?

When I buy an electronic device, do I consider whether it can be taken apart with screws and its parts replaced? Can I actively support and buy from brands that produce eco-friendly-process devices that can be repaired by their owners thanks to modular design? Should industrial regulators legislate ecodesign rules that ban the strong adhesives that hinder disassembly and make standard screws mandatory? When sealed plastic devices break and flow into the sea, how great is the disaster of their remaining for ever undecomposed and filling the stomachs of marine life? Against the control of giant Big Tech, which makes consumers dependent by turning technology into a black box, how will 'technology that can be opened' be democratised? In an age of smart materials that reassemble themselves molecule by molecule, what kind of legend will 'the classic repair of tightening and loosening screws' be told as?

Instead of a metaverse game in ultra-high-definition 3D graphics, why is the analogue play of a board game, sitting around with friends, playing paper cards and rolling dice and reading one another's faces, more thrilling?

Set against the dazzle of flawless digital virtual-reality technology, what distinctive sense of connection does analogue tabletop play, based on physical tools and bodily encounter, give?

A hypothetical weekend evening, in a room where young people have sealed all their latest smartphones away in a basket and sit around the table enjoying a board game with wooden meeples and cards, sizing one another up.

A longing to rest a brain addicted to the dazzling visual stimulation of cold screens, and to taste real human bonds by jostling hands with the others in front of one and watching their faces.

The realisation that true immersion in play comes not from the resolution of pixels but from the texture of cards touched by hand, the sound of rolling dice, and the mutual bodily tension of reading the tremor in another's pupils.

The multisensory reality and emotional intimacy of analogue physical play, which surpass the convenience of digital technology.

The bother of having to read out and explain board-game rules one by one, and the physical effort of having to set out the board and put the pieces away.

The bias of belittling the immense narrative immersion and global connectedness that digital games provide and of making an absolute of analogue retro taste alone.

Is an online game, in which one connects in real time with millions of people around the world to explore a vast virtual world, not a far more advanced form of play than sitting in a corner of a room rolling dice with three or four friends from the neighbourhood?

Have I ever, without a smartphone, savoured the tension of a board game or a card game while meeting the eyes of others? When playing a game, can I enjoy the laughter and sighs that burst out from everyone as the dice roll more than the result of winning or losing? Should libraries and youth centres expand varied public libraries of board games and analogue play that can replace digital screens? What are the dynamics of the physical, body-contact play that animals form as they snatch a twig or a pebble from one another and run away? In an age when algorithms have captured all human dopamine into virtual screens, how will 'the physical play of hands and eyes' be defended? In a future society in which fully immersive neural-link virtual reality has become the standard, what special sensory heritage will 'the memory of rolling real wooden dice in the palm' become?

What has the convenience of watching on a screen a delivery rider's real-time location and an arrival time estimated to the minute taken away from the experience called waiting?

Is ultra-precise real-time tracking technology an advance of civilisation that relieves the anxiety of waiting, or an obsession with control that removes chance and leisure?

Hypothetical situation: a user who has ordered food is refreshing a map app every 10 seconds, watching the rider's motorbike icon stop at traffic lights and turn down alleys.

It is the psychological need to remove the uncertainty of not knowing when it will come, so as to manage one's schedule efficiently and feel reassured.

It is the technological optimism that every physical movement and every process of logistics ought to be made perfectly visible and controlled as digital data.

The impatience of modern people and the invisible gaze of surveillance, hidden behind the convenience that precise tracking technology provides, come to light.

The second-by-second surveillance and the threat to safety felt by the delivery worker who keeps to the signals on the road and rides through bad weather are hidden.

Leaning toward a nostalgic aversion to technology, it may play down the positive side of the supply-chain innovation and safety management that real-time logistics tracking has brought.

When knowing the exact arrival time lets one prepare one's schedule without wasted time, is there any reason to long for the vague waiting of the past?

Individual: Where is the room in my mind to take my anxious eyes off the rider moving on the smartphone screen and open a book? Relationship: What about an encounter in which, opening the door and taking the food, one offers a warm look of greeting that says 'Thank you for coming safely'? Society: How might social safe-speed regulations be set up that protect the lives and safety of riders from the platform algorithm's second-by-second dispatching and delivery pressure? Other lives: What about the attitude of a researcher who observes with satellite trackers the routes migratory birds take on the seasonal winds, yet holds back human intervention and waits? Planet: As logistics and delivery around the world are tracked and accelerated in real time, how can the speed of the carbon pouring into the Earth's atmosphere be slowed? Distant future: In an age when quantum sensors predict the path of every particle in the world in real time, what value will a waiting that cannot be predicted have?

What is the difference in emotional temperature between a mobile coffee coupon sent with three taps on a smartphone screen and the gift of a warm cup of tea handed over with both hands, face to face?

Is the hyperconnected convenience of digital mobile gift vouchers the democratisation of the gift, or the outsourcing of emotional labour from which bodily presence and ritual have evaporated?

Hypothetical situation: an office worker having a birthday received 20 coffee-coupon barcodes as gifts by messenger and, while copying and pasting thank-you replies, suddenly felt an indescribable emptiness.

It is the wish to exchange congratulations easily even across physical distance or amid busy days, without losing human warmth and heartfelt connection.

It is the doubt that the essence of a gift lies in bodily presence, in physical contact, facial expression and the hand that offers it, and that a digital data code cannot fully replace it.

The paradox is sharp: platform technology has lowered the barrier to giving gifts to the extreme, while the sacred ritual quality and personal depth that the gift once had evaporate.

The real usefulness of digital connection, which has let busy modern people go beyond the limits of time and space and convey their feelings at once to acquaintances far away, is belittled.

Leaning toward a retro aversion to digital technology, it may fail to embrace the new form of light bond that the culture of mobile gift coupons has created.

When, thanks to barcode coupons, countless relationships that might have been forgotten are tended and people receive the real comfort of a cup of coffee, must one insist on the analogue way?

Individual: Amid the flood of barcode notifications, what is the inner stillness of putting the smartphone down, looking out of the window and missing a real person's face? Relationship: What about a new etiquette of modern care, in which even when sending a mobile coupon one adds the long, heartfelt sentences of a handwritten letter? Society: What should an institution look like that returns to the public the huge fees that large platform companies take by monopolising the gifting market and their breakage income from unused coupons? Other lives: What about the long-distance exchange of signals by elephants and whales, which confirm their bonds by echoing one another's calls across great distances? Planet: How aware are we of the carbon footprint of the data centres that run 24 hours a day to process hundreds of millions of mobile coupons and payment traffic? Distant future: In the age of a tactile internet, in which virtual gifts sent by hologram can be touched, what kind of religious rite will the act of giving and receiving real physical things become?

When we do a group assignment by borrowing devices with different specifications, how should we cooperate with technology?

How does collaboration that shares different devices change the relationship with technology?

Hypothetical situation: in a study room behind a university, twenty-year-old students pass laptops and drawing tablets around. Whenever file formats do not match, they look at one another's screens and find a way.

They want to know the knack of getting a group assignment done together without buying expensive devices.

They assume that sharing devices narrows the technology gap and increases cooperation.

The question remains of how collaboration by sharing different devices changes the relationship with technology.

Concrete scenes of collaboration, such as the study room, passing the drawing tablet around and matching file formats, disappear.

It pictures device sharing only as cooperation and fails to hold the question of responsibility for breakage and loss.

Does sharing devices not instead break down the boundaries of personal data and become a burden?

As an individual, how does learning begin when one handles an unfamiliar device? As a society, how can sharing devices help those who do not have expensive tools? As humankind, what if the wisdom of using technology together narrowed the gap? As life, what if it resembled the cooperation of birds that fly on one another's borrowed wings, each different? As a planet, what kind of current would a use of technology that buys little and shares long become? As the cosmos, how would it feel if the light of small screens gathered to light up a wide night?

When torn between printing a neighbourhood guide map on a printer and drawing it by hand, how might one bring out the charm that the tremor of a hand drawing gives?

How do the convenience of printing by machine and the feel of drawing by hand differ?

Hypothetical situation: on the eve of a village gathering, two young people have laid a printed map and a hand-drawn map side by side and are comparing the thickness of the lettering and the drawn markers.

The wish to choose gladly between convenience and the feel of the hand, and to use them

The dichotomy that what is printed is accurate and a hand drawing falls short

The dilemma of choosing between hand and machine remains

The bustle of the eve of the gathering, laying the two maps side by side, handling them and talking them over, is left out

If only the comparison of convenience is left, the curiosity and the fun of fixing that belong to hand drawing grow faint

Even if a hand drawing is a bother, if the people who see it smile, is that bother not also part of the charm of technique?

When I see a line that holds the tremor of my hand, what scent of a person might be felt? How might a friend who likes printing and I, who like drawing by hand, try making a map together? If hand drawing and printing were mixed in every village, how might the sharing of information become warmer? For a moth that smells printing ink and the pencil of a hand drawing, what difference might there be? What kind of consideration would the wisdom of using machine and hand together be for the Earth's electricity and paper? If hand maps are drawn even in a space village of the distant future, what greeting might their tremor carry?