Chicken in a jacket!

 

 Fig. 7 Adrian Cheok’s Poultry Internet is intended as
a means of increasing good relations between people
and their pets (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v
¼1x-8EzuMiqU). This image shows Cheok with the
rooster Charlie, who is wearing the jacket that allows
him to be petted remotely (reproduced with permission
from Adrian Cheok). (Galey and Ruecker 420)

Hi everybody.  First of all, I just wanted to post this image from our reading, because this is a picture of a CHICKEN in a JACKET, and that is amazing!

I do think that this picture brings up some points about ethics and technology, though.  Apparently, when the chicken is wearing this jacket, he can feel his owner petting him remotely (Galey and Ruecker 420). So I guess his owner could still pet him if he went on vacation.  However, since the chicken can't tell us what he thinks of the jacket, how do we know if this is a good thing?  The chicken might think that it feels really weird to be stuffed into a jacket and feel the sensation of being pet without understanding where it is coming from.  

I think that this ties into what Matt Ratto was saying today about making the process of design inclusive, and his example of trying to involve blind people in the process of designing blind tennis balls, but failing to make the process accessible for them.  If designers of technology are making products for people and not with them, how do we know if these products are actually useful?  I think we should think more about finding out what people (or pets) want and need, rather than telling them what they need and throwing products at them.

Reference:

Galey, A. and Ruecker, S. (2010). How a prototype argues. Literary and Linguistic Computing, 25(4), 405-24.