Seda Özçetin

I am working on designing alternatives for the Terms of Service (ToS) as part of DCODE Network’s work package 4 “Democratic data governance”. In this PhD project, rather than focusing on improving the usability of ToS, I am designing and following a reflective and transformative alternative route by zooming in and out and moving around ToS through ongoing and experimental speculative readings to reveal what it is and what it could be. The first reading – ToStopography – looks at ToS research landscape and the blank spaces to situate the research. The second reading – Programmatic Time Travel – looks at design history to understand what ToS is. By making an association between ToS in digitalization and ornament in early industrialization, PTT proposes a program around aesthetics of relating rather than a program of usability. The third reading – ToSsphere – looks at the social life of ToS to reveal that ToS is not a single document but is part of a social ecosystem of policies and legal frameworks distributed across corporations and continents. Through these readings that are unfolding over time, I intend to create a program aroud aesthetics of relating for a more-than-human world where care is a central concept.