Stevphen Shukaitis: Imaginal Machines: Autonomy & Self-Organization in the Revolutions of Everyday Life (2009)

“All power to the imagination? Over the past forty years to invoke the imagination as a basis for radical politics has become a cliché: a rhetorical utilization of ideas already in circulation, invoking the mythic unfolding of this self-institutionalizing process. But what exactly is radical imagination? Drawing from autonomist politics, class composition analysis, and avant-garde arts, Imaginal Machines explores the emergence, functioning, and constant breakdown of the embodied forms of radical imagination.

What does it mean to invoke the power of the imagination when it seems that the imagination has already seized power through the power of the spectacle? Does any subversive potentiality remain? Perhaps it is only honest to think in terms of a temporally-bounded subversive power. It might be that imaginal machines only work by breaking down. That is, their functioning is only possible, paradoxically, by their malfunctioning. By reopening the question of recuperation, the inevitable drive to integrate the power of social insurgency back into the working of capital and the state, we create possibilities for a politics continually reconstituted against and through the dynamics of recuperation: to keep open an antagonism without closure.”

Publisher Minor Compositions, London/NYC/Port Watson, 2009
ISBN 1570272085, 9781570272080
255 pages

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2016-2-21)
EPUB (added on 2016-2-21)
ARG (added on 2016-2-21)
Scribd

Ellen Lupton: Mechanical Brides: Women and Machines from Home to Office (1993)

During the 20th century, the marketing of domestic appliances and office machines has been directed primarily toward women. Mechanical Brides examines this phenomenon through extensive graphics (advertisements, catalog pages, photographs) and analytical text.

Publisher Princeton Architectural Press, 1993
ISBN 1878271970, 9781878271976
65 pages

google books

PDF (no OCR, updated on 2012-9-21)

Norbert Wiener: The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society (1950–) [EN, FR, BR-PT, RU, ES, SC, IT, GR]

“Founder of the science of cybernetics—the study of the relationship between computers and the human nervous system—Wiener was widely misunderstood as one who advocated the automation of human life. As this book reveals, his vision was much more complex and interesting. He hoped that machines would release people from relentless and repetitive drudgery in order to achieve more creative pursuits. At the same time he realized the danger of dehumanizing and displacement. His book examines the implications of cybernetics for education, law, language, science, technology, as he anticipates the enormous impact—in effect, a third industrial revolution—that the computer has had on our lives.”

Publisher Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1950
241 pages

New edition
With an Introduction by Steve J. Heims
Published by Free Association Books, London, 1989
ISBN 1853430757
xxx+199 pages

Wikipedia (EN)

The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society (English, 1950, added on 2021-4-8)
The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society (English, 1950/1989, updated on 2021-4-8)
Cybernétique et société: l’usage humain des êtres humains (French, 1952/2014, EPUB, added on 2021-4-8)
Cibernética e sociedade: o uso humano de seres humanos (BR-Portuguese, trans. José Paulo Paes, 2nd ed., 1954/1968, added on 2013-12-12)
Kibernetika i obshchestvo (Russian, trans. E.G. Panfilov, 1958, DJVU, added on 2021-4-8)
Cybernética y sociedad (Spanish, trans. José Novo Cerro, 1958, added on 2021-4-8)
Kibernetika i društvo: ljudska upotreba ljudskih bića (Serbo-Croatian, trans. Ljubomir Radanović, 1964, added on 2021-4-8)
Introduzione alla cibernetica: l’uso umano degli esseri umani (Italian, trans. Dario Persiani, 1966, added on 2021-4-8)
Kyvernētikē kai koinōnia: ē anthrōpinē chrēsimopoiēsē tōn anthrōpinōn ontōn (Greek, trans. Giannē Iōannidē, 1970, DJVU, added on 2021-4-8)