Mediated life activity, double stimulation, and the question of agency

Abstract

Life activity is mediated by culturally informed sensory perceptions, engagement with artifacts and the built environment, and communicationwith conspecifics. Humans readily adapt to historically accumulated cultural practiceswhile improvising anticipatory actions in the process ontology of the unfolding present. Many routine activities are regulated by auxiliary stimuli, such as the use of fingers for counting andmeasurement of time for organizing schedules.More elaborate examples include the following. A driver's rate of travel in a motor vehicle is mediated by the visual field, a speedometer on the dashboard, digital data displays on navigation units, traffic calming features such as speed humps, rumble strips, and traffic circles, admonishments for driving too quickly from a passenger (‘slow down!’), and (in principle) by posted signage reflecting legal speed limits. In the commercial fishing industry, fishers make decisions as to where to set their gear based upon a wide array of instrumentation and displays (radar, sonar, depth sounders, digital chart and course plotters, fish finders, Loran navigation), communication with other fishers on both ‘secret’ and open radio channels, past log books documenting fishing productivity from prior years, national and international regulations and catch reports, and contingent dynamics such as weather, tides, and the presence of other vessels in the vicinity. In the contemporary era, sporting activity, while rooted in bodily kinesthetic experience, is increasingly mediated and objectively re-presented to participants through fitness apps which provide GPS mapping of running and cycling (among other) activities and provide average rate of speed, elevation gained, total and moving time elapsed, and ranking of one's immediate performance against other users. These data are typically fed into social networks that allow users to comment, provide accolades (and also taunts), and to compare one's immediate performance with prior performances. Based on personal experience and reports from others, use of such fitness apps incites running or cycling faster (or attempts to do so), violating traffic signals in order to increase overall rate of speed, and adding distance at the end of a session in order to reach a round (but arbitrary) distance number (not 98.6 km, but 100 km!). Related phenomena includedebt blogs, focused on publicly externalizing ones difficultiesmanaging credit problems in order to regain self-regulation on spending, food tracking apps for better controlling diet, and participation in academic networks such as academia.edu and researchgate.net, which quantify downloads of academic articles, profile page views, number of ‘followers’, and