IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2015 - 95

technologies should be understood as a form of technological mediation.
As a user embodies a technology, we can ask just
how present that device remains within the user's
awareness. That is, we can ask to what degree that
device either stands out to the user, or instead fades
into the background. Ihde uses the term "transparency"
to refer to the particular degree to which the device
steps back within the user's awareness and no longer
itself remains a significant presence, even as it continues to transform the user's experience. As Ihde writes,
when a device is highly transparent, "It is a means
of experience, not an object of experience in use"
[46, p. 42]. This can be seen in Merleau-Ponty's example
of the typewriter. As a user embodies the typewriter,
and as her or his bodily experience is extended through
the keyboard, the keyboard itself takes on a degree of
transparency. If the user knows how to type, if she or he
is accustomed to writing with the device, then she or he
doesn't think about the position of the keys or the intention behind each individual keystroke. As the keyboard
is embodied by the experienced typist, she or he concentrates on the content being written, rather than on
the means of that writing, which instead is drawn back
into the background of the user's awareness.

Field of Awareness
I find it helpful to at times think about technological mediation in terms of the potential for the entire
field of a user's awareness to be reshaped. That is,
we can ask how the use of a technology recomposes
the entirety of that which a user is aware at a given
moment; what stands forward as relevant; what sinks
to the background as contextual; what is occluded
or ignored entirely; et cetera. For example, if a user
watches a video on a laptop computer screen, we
can follow Ihde and conceive of this as an embodiment relation, and one that is possibly established
with a high degree of transparency. As a user types
the keyboard to call up the video on the screen, she
or he may embody that keyboard with a high degree
of transparency, taking that keyboard into her or his
bodily space. But as the video plays, and as the user
becomes engrossed in its content, I suggest that
something further occurs. An engrossing video has
the capacity to pull the viewer in. Its content can
occupy the viewer's whole mind. In such moments it
does not seem enough to say that everything in the
user's environment takes on a degree of transparency,
from that keyboard, to the space around the screen,
to the user's broader surroundings in the room. It is
more accurate to say that the content of the video
steps out and fills up the user's awareness. This particular relationship to this particular device would be
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characterized as one in which the user's overall field
of awareness is composed by the video's content.
We could even ask how strong the habits associated with a particular human-technology relationship
happen to be. In the case of video viewership, we
could ask how strongly the habits associated with
this particular relationship with the laptop screen
hold for this user. If she or he is deeply accustomed
to this usage, then the user's bodily perception is
trained and ready to experience the video display in
this manner. This particular organization of experience, in which the video content occupies the whole
of the user's field of awareness, may snap into place
immediately and automatically at the moment the
video starts. And it may even do so in a way that
resists easy interruption. It may do all this because
of the strength of the associated learned habits of
bodily perception.
This phenomenological account of technological
mediation can be applied to the experience of cellphone-induced driving impairment, e.g. [1]-[4]. The
account I outline below at once remains consistent with
the empirical data, and at the same time distinct from
the brain-centered account reviewed in the previous
section. In what follows, I apply the notions of mediation, embodiment, transparency, and the field of awareness to the experiences of driving, using the phone,
and, finally, using the phone while driving.

Technology is not simply one of the
things we see, touch, hear, or act
upon, but something that enables
transformed perception and action.

Phenomenology of Driving
The technological mediation of the car of course
involves massive transformations to a user's ability
to travel. And the use of the car requires the development of strongly habituated embodiment relations to
the car's interface. "Learning to drive" involves more
than simply memorizing the rules of the road and the
procedures for operating the vehicle; it involves the
training of one's body. A driver must become strongly
accustomed to the car's interface, the steering wheel,
the dashboard readouts, the pedals. A driver must
also become strongly familiar with the signs and
signals of the roadway. Indeed, a deeply transparent

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