Spooky Technology: A reflection on invisible and otherworldly qualities in everyday technology

We often hear that the technologies in our everyday lives would appear to be ÔmagicÕ and potentially terrifying to people in the pastÑinstantaneous communication with people all over the world, access to a vast, ever-growing resource of human knowledge right there in the palm of our hand, objects with ÔintelligenceÕ that can sense and talk to us (and each other). But rarely are these ÔotherworldlyÕ dimensions of technologies explored in more detail. There is an often unspoken presumption that the march of progress will inevitably mean we all adopt new practices and incorporate new products and new ways of doing things into our livesÑall cities will become smart cities; all homes will become smart homes. But these systems have become omnipresent without our necessarily understanding them. They are not just black boxes, but entities in our homes and everyday lives which work through hidden fl ows of data, unknown agendas, imaginary clouds, mysterious sets of rules which we perhaps dismiss as ÔalgorithmsÕ or even ÔAIÕ without really understanding what that means. On some level, the superstitions and sense of wonder, and ways of relating to the unknown and the supernatural (deities, spirits, ghosts) which humanity has felt in every culture throughout history have not gone away. Instead, they have transferred and transmuted into new forms. The project leading to the book youÕre now reading focused on creating an inventory of Ôspooky technologiesÕ over the ÔCOVID summerÕ of 2020. To do this, we (a group of students and faculty from Carnegie Mellon) collected and reviewed work across art, design, and human-computer interaction research, both historically and more recently, along with forays into writings on the supernatural, myths, and superstitions. Our aim was to produce, collaboratively, a set of examples, from which we can extract possibilities, insights, and opportunities.