Affect and Technology The affect of technology is a field that has already been explored for a long time. How the affect from technology affects us in ways we do not realize or are aware, and the fact that the smartphone is with us at all times and becomes part of our lives. Amongst others Turkle, Miller & Sinanan as I have mentioned earlier in this thesis. In Yangon today, with a relatively short period with full access, one can see how fast this technology becomes a big part of people´s lives. How quickly we adapt and get involved in the internet in all sorts of ways. I would argue that people in Yangon today are not any less attached to their smartphones than people that had full access since “the birth” of this technology. Turkle writes about a tethered self, addressing how the phone becomes a part of you (Turkle, 2011). It can be described as “an extra limb,” her focus is on how the smartphone affects us, in many ways without us realizing it. How concentration is more laborious, as we get distracted, conversation and socializing is different and that the term always on/always on you makes perfect sense. If one then looks at affect as something that creates a gap between the cause of the affect and a person’s interpretation of it, and that the cause of affect is a general trigger that releases a built-in phycological response which is free of meaning. It would occur ahead of any cognitive intention (Tettegah, 2016, p. 4); it raises questions on how affect and emotion are connected. If we then look at the affect or source of affect as the smartphone, the question rather would be; how are the smartphone and a person´s emotional picture connected? In the theory of attainment, Miller and Sinanan argue towards an understanding of this technology as part of our humanity, not in the middle or “in the way” of it (D. Miller & Sinanan, 2014). Miller and Sinanan disagree with Turkle in the general understanding of the affect of the technology since Turkle looks at it as something in between that facilitate communication, rather than something we, our selves, mediate. Even though my understanding of tethered still resonate with the arguments in the attainment theory. Once something or someone is tethered, the technology is, in many ways, part of you and then also part of your humanity. Moreover, as Miller and Sinanan argue, whatever the future brings, something nobody can know, it is still going to be a part of our humanity (D. Miller & Sinanan, 2014, p. 12). 65