Soft machines and the design of perception

Slide 1: Soft Machines and the Design of Perception

Slide 2: an organizational system in which robot-like problems are taken care of automatically and unconsciously, leaving man free to explore, to create, to think, and to feel. Clynes & Kline, ”Cyborgs and Space”

Slide 3: The design of technology is a site of struggle. Andrew Feenberg, Critical Theory of Technology

Slide 4: Technology designates instructions for the production of the signified. David Porush, The Soft Machine

Slide 5: Presence protocols technologies that facilitate a space of shared attention where people can be notified about what others are doing

Slide 6: embodiments of a procedure for the production of sense David Porush, The Soft Machine

Slide 7: Topics  Social space and cell phones  Social space and iPods  Connected  Soft Machines: The Connected (Post-)Human

Slide 8: Social space and cell phones

Slide 9: What radio communication was to the Nazi blitzkrieg, the cellphone is to hand-to-hand combat McKenzie Wark, ”The Cancer of Cellspace”

Slide 10: Social space just isn't social anymore, when you can "privatize" it with a cell phone. McKenzie Wark, ”The Cancer of Cellspace”

Slide 11: mobile spaces produce an accelerated, intensified, sense of freedom Caroline Bassett, ”How Many Movements”

Slide 12: Social space and iPods

Slide 13: The Sony Walkman has done more to change human perception than any virtual reality gadget. William Gibson, Time Out, 1993

Slide 14: I can’t overestimate the importance of having all my music available all the time. It gives me an unprecedented level of emotional control over my life. Michael Bull, ”No Dead Air!”

Slide 15: sound engulfs the spatial thus problematizing the relation between subject and object. Michael Bull, ”The World According to Sound”

Slide 16: iPod users make the urban street conform to their own aesthetic desire Michael Bull, ”No Dead Air!”

Slide 17: The ‘outside’ world becomes a function of the desire of the user Michael Bull, ”The Seduction of Sound in Consumer Culture”

Slide 18: Walkman users both present themselves via technology and construct the social via technology. Michael Bull, ”The World According to Sound”

Slide 19: Connected

Slide 20: Connecting to a mobile space is often experienced as going 'live' Caroline Bassett, ”How Many Movements”

Slide 21: Social websites I use  Facebook - procrastinating with my friends, under the guise of 'networking'.  MySpace - MySpace is dead.  Last.fm - music service which logs what I listen to.  Wordpress - two self-hosted blogs, one for work and one for play.  Del.icio.us - bookmarking service.  Simpy - another bookmarking service.  Tumblr - a micro-blog, mostly for re-posting what I find on the web.  All Consuming - updating what I read, watch and listen to.  Twitter - brief updates about what I do.  Flickr - photos.  SpongeFish - social community focussing on user-submitted knowledge.  Wists - wishlist.  LinkedIn - dunno. Networking site, but pretty useless.

Slide 22: What we say matters less than the fact that we are saying it in the network. Steven Shaviro, Connected

Slide 23: Soft Machines

Slide 24: Social interaction is based on technological connections

Slide 25: we need technological devices in order to interact with others

Slide 26: we must extend our bodies into technology, or be cut off from the network.

Slide 27: the delirium of advanced technology has been entirely woven into the texture of everyday life Steven Shaviro, Connected

Slide 28: We occupy layers of space rather than a singular space

Slide 29: Each time we extend ourselves technologically, some part of the real gives way to the virtual. Steven Shaviro, Connected

Slide 30: that which is “artificially” constructed by human beings, are now becoming hybridized so that the time of nature and the time of culture are becoming inseparable for the mutants that we are. Gray Kochhar-Lindgren, TechnoLogics

Slide 31: Presence is less signifcant, participation is paramount.

Slide 32: Be connected.

Slide 33: Steen Christiansen / newmappings.net / steen@hum.aau.dk