Luciana Parisi: Contagious Architecture: Computation, Aesthetics, and Space (2013)
Filed under book | Tags: · abstraction, aesthetics, algorithm, architecture, cognition, computation, computing, cybernetics, design, evolution, feedback, infinity, information, interaction design, knowledge, media, metaphysics, networks, neural networks, philosophy, processing, randomness, sensors, software, space, temporality, time, topology, variation
“In Contagious Architecture, Luciana Parisi offers a philosophical inquiry into the status of the algorithm in architectural and interaction design. Her thesis is that algorithmic computation is not simply an abstract mathematical tool but constitutes a mode of thought in its own right, in that its operation extends into forms of abstraction that lie beyond direct human cognition and control. These include modes of infinity, contingency, and indeterminacy, as well as incomputable quantities underlying the iterative process of algorithmic processing.
The main philosophical source for the project is Alfred North Whitehead, whose process philosophy is specifically designed to provide a vocabulary for “modes of thought” exhibiting various degrees of autonomy from human agency even as they are mobilized by it. Because algorithmic processing lies at the heart of the design practices now reshaping our world—from the physical spaces of our built environment to the networked spaces of digital culture—the nature of algorithmic thought is a topic of pressing importance that reraises questions of control and, ultimately, power. Contagious Architecture revisits cybernetic theories of control and information theory’s notion of the incomputable in light of this rethinking of the role of algorithmic thought. Informed by recent debates in political and cultural theory around the changing landscape of power, it links the nature of abstraction to a new theory of power adequate to the complexities of the digital world.”
Publisher MIT Press, 2013
Technologies of Lived Abstraction series
ISBN 0262018632, 9780262018630
392 pages
For a New Computational Aesthetics: Algorithmic Environments as Actual Objects lecture by Parisi (2012, video, 72 min).
Reviews: Lecomte (Mute, 2013), Ikoniadou (Computational Culture, 2014).
PDF (24 MB, updated o 2021-10-28)
Comments (2)David M. Berry: The Philosophy of Software: Code and Mediation in the Digital Age (2011)
Filed under book | Tags: · code, computation, computing, philosophy, software, software studies
The Philosophy of Software is a critical introduction to the subject of code and software, and develops an understanding of its social and philosophical implications in the digital age. The book has been written specifically for people interested in the subject from a non-technical background and provides a lively and interesting analysis of these new media forms. Software is a tangle, a knot, which ties together the physical and the ephemeral, the material and the ethereal, into a complete system that can be controlled and directed. However, software exceeds our ability to place limits on its entanglement, for it has in the past decade entered the everyday home through electronic augmentation that has replaced the mechanical world of the twentieth century. From washing machines to central heating systems, children’s toys to television and video; the old electro-magnetic and servo-mechanical world is being revolutionised by the silent logic of virtual devices. It is time, therefore, to examine our virtual situation.
Publisher Palgrave Macmillan Limited, 2011
ISBN 0230244181, 9780230244184
200 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-8-3)
Comment (0)Joseph Weizenbaum: Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment To Calculation (1976) [English, German]
Filed under book | Tags: · artificial intelligence, computation, critique, critique of technology, ethics, technology
“Joseph Weizenbaum’s influential book displays his ambivalence towards computer technology and lays out his case: while artificial intelligence may be possible, we should never allow computers to make important decisions because computers will always lack human qualities such as compassion and wisdom. Weizenbaum makes the crucial distinction between deciding and choosing. Deciding is a computational activity, something that can ultimately be programmed. It is the capacity to choose that ultimately makes us human. Choice, however, is the product of judgment, not calculation. Comprehensive human judgment is able to include non-mathematical factors such as emotions. Judgment can compare apples and oranges, and can do so without quantifying each fruit type and then reductively quantifying each to factors necessary for mathematical comparison.”
Publisher W. H. Freeman, 1976
ISBN 0716704633, 9780716704638
300 pages
Review: Amy Stout.
Computer Power and Human Reason (English, 1976, DJVU, updated on 2013-11-22)
Computermacht und Gesellschaft (German, trans. Gunna Wendt, 2001, unpaginated, added on 2013-11-22)