It's intrinsically interesting reading about a concept as now readily assumed as everyware in the context of it's far off potential, as it was seen thirteen to fifteen years ago; as seen in the texts presented.
Focusing on the weightiest of the three texts, Adam Greenfield submits what is essentially a pitch for an idealised everyware-structured society. While the ominous nature of this kind of techno-evolution is touched on, it is not further discussed in a conscious choice to focus on the more positive attributes of this notion of everything we are and come into contact with being applicable as a form of information translation.
He frames the nature of a world where even our "sweaters" (?) are embedded with info-processing technology as the bright future ahead, introducing Mark Weiser and PARC's idea of "calm technology" and Greenfield's own recurring theme of 'hassle-free' hardware and inter-connectivity.
This is what gives away the 2006-ness of his piece. Discussion on progressions of this kind a decade later tend to focus more on the dangers of such a mediated world; mostly since we are now deep in an irreversible state of that world. The idealism is also prevalent in the somewhat misguided attitude regarding the language used. The fact that all the various social, work, education facets of my life are all interconnected through the devices I use, and the fact that the software involved in any and all of these processes raises an increasing number of questions regarding privacy, mental and physical well-being- as opposed to what is referred to in the article as the "hassle" of the PC-oriented world being moved away from- is far from calm or without hassle.
Knowing that I cannot be without technology or that I cannot truly exit the constant network of stuff in my life is a reasonable contributor to the underlying anxiety that flavours contemporary existence. The stirred in with the issues of climate, politics, economy etc. This notion of calm technology is presented as synonymous with invisible technology and this is false. The article discusses the immediate processing power of everyware, using the Mastercard PayPass as a case study, saying that the chips used- what we would now regularly use and identify as "paywave" technology- process all the necessary information to authorise a transaction in 0.2 seconds. This may be invisible in that we are not exposed to all that goes in that time frame, but this is not calm. This is a stressful amount of media noise being exchanged between different electronic bodies. Just because we as users don't hear it doesn't mean that the pollution of that noise isn't something to consider.
The other concern is the idea of "hassle" as it is presented here. The piece suggests that using a PC was a hassle because it stagnated the fluidity of technology use during day-to-day life. Anyone who has a smartphone now knows just how much of a hassle THAT technology has become, given that studies have suggested the average American checks their smart-phone every 12 minutes (Asurion, 2018). If our connection to the internet of things was limited to an hour or two a day, maybe some of that anxiety I spoke about would subside.
