The Tympanic Eclipse (www.tympaniceclipse.org)

Smart phones, smart boards, smart homes…. every technology is apparently so darn smart, but how are we keeping up with these gadgets ourselves? Smart technologies are referred to as such because they seem intelligent enough to know about our personal needs, desires, and curiosities and they cater their computational functions to better serve us as individuals. They know us through the data we generate about our lives and appetites, but of course, that means they’re left with a database of info on us, the tasty consumer, to sell to hungry corporations. Dr. Sarah Kember explains what this looks like today with the emergence of the smart home, where ubiquitous computing is rebranded as ambient intelligence, and sold as an invisible but necessary part of domestic life for the future. There is some crazy mic hissing in parts of this piece! // Dr. Sarah Kember is a writer and academic. Her work incorporates new media, photography and feminist cultural approaches to science and technology. She is a Professor in