Written by: Suzanne Smythe, Gwénaëlle André, and Nathalie Sinclair. Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada

Abstract: In this article we investigate how automation structures consent for people, and the pedagogies that might expand or reframe consent, both in research contexts and on digital platforms. We do so as researchers involved with adults who attend a bi-weekly drop in “computer support” café, many of whom are new to computers even as their lives are increasingly organized by automated agencies. We think with theories (Jackson and Mazzei 2012) of Indigenous relationalities (Maynard and Simpson 2022), feminist approaches to sexual consent (Consentful Tech Project 2020; Siggy 2021; Ward 2019); and concepts of individuation and technicity (Simondon 1958; 2005) to explore what consent might entail if it returned to its etymological origins of consent, or feeling-with. In keeping with the theory-as-method approach we re-imagine two modes of consent, that of our university’s informed consent protocol for researchers, and the consent protocol for a government sponsored electronic ID. We find that both converge in the logics of corporate platform design that incentivize “epistemologies of ignorance” (Bhatt and MacKenzie 2019). We conclude with speculations upon how con-sent as feeling-with might be re-animated in research methods, design and pedagogy that foreground ethical relationality.

Keywords: Meaningful consent, feeling-with, platform design, automation, digital literacy, theory as method