Technological sightlines

→ When robot taxis get stuck, a secret army of humans comes to the rescue

This Washington Post story from the end of last year caught my attention. TLDR; when a seat belt gets caught in the door of a self-driving car the car doesn’t have the necessary appendages to fix the problem itself and so it is temporarily deactivated. The solution is gig-work roadside assistance, and $20 to the responder who closes the door properly.

The article reminded me of a concept in architecture called sightlines. Sightlines are the consideration a designer gives to a visitor’s view in a specific location. As you can imagine, this is particularly important in stadium and concert venue design, but also in the placement of streets and monuments, see, for example, the Axe historique in Paris.

In theme parks sightlines are also deployed in reverse, that is, to ensure that certain things are hidden from visitors. You don’t want to catch a glimpse of Mickey on his cigarette break, nor a cowboy walking through Tomorrowland, and so you design the park accordingly. It kills the illusion otherwise.

Technology deserves similar terminology.

A technological sightline could be the practice of obfuscating the human labour that goes into making a technological product or service. Food gets delivered “at the tap of button” but it’s the person on a bike who gets it across town. A car can “see” as long humans spend millions of hours labelling images of traffic lights.

So we are living in a theme park?

Well that conclusion feels somewhat extreme, and yet, we live in an increasingly synthetic world in which entertainment and frictionless customer experiences are paramount. And that story from the Post can be added to a long list that evidence that the human labour underpinning those experiences is strategically hidden from view.

Maybe it tracks after all?