How to kiss a cannibal, or the future is liminal
As we marvel, fear, and debate our relationship to new technologies, we appear stuck in a false dichotomy: relating to tech either as a sentient being, or as a mere object.
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On the one hand, relating to tech as another person will always disappoint and never reciprocate real humanity; on the other, relating to it as a transactional object fails to account for the very real opportunities technology might bring to experience meaning, even the sublime.
There is a third and far more interesting door: liminality.
The term liminality was derived from the Latin word “limen” which means “threshold,” and was first used by anthropologists at the turn of the century describing rites of passage: the emotional, metaphorical, and sacred space for transitions between our everyday baseline of transactional existence, and the realm of the possible: that which makes experiences literally extraordinary.
Despite all our modernization since then, we apply liminality daily. A cinema for instance, is specifically designed as a separate space to help us leave our noisy reality at the door, and, as house lights dim, hand ourselves over to the fictional possibilities of the screen. An art gallery is the same. Travels can be. Night clubs, tea houses, and churches for sure. And “getting lost” in a book, or a late-night conversation with a good friend, often brings a singular focus and feeling of immersion that momentarily suspends our sense of reality: we are encouraged to play with our imagination, who we are, and to consider alternatives to the known status quo. As a transformational process, this is well documented to nurture creativity, trust, deeper connections, and personal growth.
More ambition, not less of it
Liminality, however, is markedly absent from our interactions with technology. And what is standing in the way of real liminality’s capacity to help us take our mediated experiences beyond what can be indexed, searched, and clicked is the growing appetite of a corporate cannibal dependent on reducing users to something it can digest: scalable, average and predictable, the very opposite of what it means to be uniquely human.
The very same cannibal is perfectly happy to have us subsist in our dichotomous relationship to technology — a relationship rooted in the 1923 writing of Martin Buber, I and Thou. His argument is that we relate to the world along two pathways: the titular I-Thou relationship covers the infinite possibilities of relating to another person, and I-It describes the simpler practical and transactional relationship we have with a thing, say a tree or a tool. Despite the rampant anthropomorphism of chatty bots and cutely named digital assistants mimicking consciousness, technology consistently disappoints when it presents itself as a person — a “thou.” Looking at technology as a “tool” is less disappointing, but mostly because it lacks ambition.
Technology is a cannibal, if we let it
Yet, our devices need to be more than a mere “tool” — technology, after all, mediates, predicts, suggests and organizes a lion’s share of our interaction with others and the world around us. In a Marshall McLuhan kind of way, technology is the world around us. And for this, we need more ambition, not less of it.
Today, we might spend a full day on a single, ad-cluttered screen doing things that traditionally required discrete tools and movement between dedicated places. Liminality and focus is lost — by design — and we open ourselves up to spell-breaking interruptions, and more ads. And in the process, we, the user, are reduced to being scalable, average, and predictable — the very opposite of what makes us human — to be more digestible by the underlying business that is the machine. Technology is a cannibal if we let it, and we are on the menu.
Kissing, is the first step to cannibalism
Writer George Bataille famously stated that “Kissing is the first step to cannibalism” — and it is true, again, if we let it. By creating a liminal space between us and select technology experiences, we can step back momentarily from our default transactional mode to instead explore with openness. We need refuge in the liminal — a place to safely immerse in the only experiences that can move us deeply: those that are both surprising, personal, complex and sincere in challenging the status quo.
Making Liminal Design part of product development and UX design, forces the distinction we asked for initially: a clearer separation between transactions, and deep experiences. Both are allowed to be the best that they can be, but never the same. A new version of Microsoft Word for example, might shed features to clear cluttered windows and help us find a state of flow in what we write next. Google Search might borrow from fiction to help explore a topic as a narrative journey with what Aristotle asked of all stories: to be both inevitable and surprising at the same time. The Metaverse would explore its real potential in augmented introspection, not as a subpar reality real estate play. And perhaps Zoom will finally deconstruct that great late night conversation between two people described earlier, where direct eye-contact, ability to read body language, and a complete focus on the other could actually help bring a remote working world closer together when we need it the most.
Liminality is an attitude
Had we asked someone 20 years ago what they hoped technology would bring humanity by now, a survey of today’s technological landscape would be sure to disappoint and horrify. Liminal Design delivers not only focused experiences that we have lost, but also aspirations for what we have never seen. Like all real changes, it is not about bending small parts of a narrative, but rather providing new ones that speak hope more directly to our imagination. There is no one single way to apply Liminal Design. And in its wider acceptance as part of product development, the multitude of solutions will lead to just as many new and profound experiences. That is liminality: the attitude to look, so that we might see what we don’t expect, and the courage to safely but thrillingly kiss the cannibal.
Johan Liedgren is author of Liminal Design (Frontiers in Psychology, 2023), an award-winning film director, writer and business consultant working with narrative structures to bring deeper meaning to design and product development. As a frequent university lecturer and keynote speaker, Mr. Liedgren applies storytelling and art to explore complex problems and to inspire new ways to approach competition. More Johan.