Semen Korsakov: A Depiction of a New Research Method, Using Machines which Compare Ideas (1832/2009) [Russian]

The translation of the Korsakov’s brochure describing his machines “for the comparison of ideas”, a punched card-based apparatus for the automated comparison of data, invented apparently independently from Charles Babbage. The translation includes a supplementary article which contains the history of the invention and an endeavour to interpret theoretically the functioning of the five machines and an analysis of Korsakov’s innovative ideas.

Originally published in French as Aprecu d’un procèdè nouveau d’investigation an moyen de machenes à comparer les idèes, St. Petersburg, 1832
Translated by A. S. Ramov; with A. S. Mikhajlov
Title: Начертание нового способа исследования при помощи машин, сравнивающих идеи
Publisher: Moscow Engineering Physics Institute, Moscow, 2009
ISBN 9785726211084
44 pages

more on Korsakov’s machines (English)
wikipedia

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Jussi Parikka (ed.): Medianatures: The Materiality of Information Technology and Electronic Waste (2011-)

“Medianatures picks up from Donna Haraway’s idea of naturecultures – the topological continuum between nature and culture, the material entwining and enfolding of various agencies, meanings and interactions. Medianatures gives the concept of naturecultures a specific emphasis, and that emphasis is at the core of this living book. It is a useful concept and framework for investigating some of the ways in which our electronic and high-tech media culture is entwined with a variety of material agencies. The notion of ‘materiality’ is taken here in a literal sense to refer, for instance, to ‘plasma reactions and ion implantation’ (Yoshida, 1994: 105) – as in processes of semiconductor fabrication, or to an alternative list of media studies objects and components which are studied from an e-waste management perspective: ‘metal, motor/compressor, cooling, plastic, insulation, glass, LCD, rubber, wiring/electrical, concrete, transformer, magnetron, textile, circuit board, fluorescent lamp, incandescent lamp, heating element, thermostat, brominated flamed retardant (BFR)-containing plastic, batteries, CFC/HCFC/HFC/HC, external electric cables, refractory ceramic fibers, radioactive substances and electrolyte capacitors (over L/D 25 mm)’, and which themselves are constituted from a range of materials – plastics, wood, plywood, copper, aluminum, silver, gold, palladium, lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, selenium, hexavalent chromium and flame retardants (Pinto, 2008).” (from Introduction)

Publisher Open Humanities Press
Living Books About Life series

View online (wiki/PDF/HTML articles)
PDF (PDF’d Introduction with hyperlinked articles)

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun: Programmed Visions: Software and Memory (2011)

“New media thrives on cycles of obsolescence and renewal: from celebrations of cyber-everything to Y2K, from the dot-com bust to the next big things–mobile mobs, Web 3.0, cloud computing. In Programmed Visions, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun argues that these cycles result in part from the ways in which new media encapsulates a logic of programmability. New media proliferates “programmed visions,” which seek to shape and predict–even embody–a future based on past data. These programmed visions have also made computers, based on metaphor, metaphors for metaphor itself, for a general logic of substitutability.

Chun approaches the concept of programmability through the surprising materialization of software as a “thing” in its own right, tracing the hardening of programming into software and of memory into storage. She argues that the clarity offered by software as metaphor should make us pause, because software also engenders a profound sense of ignorance: who knows what lurks behind our smiling interfaces, behind the objects we click and manipulate? The less we know, the more we are shown. This paradox, Chun argues, does not diminish new media’s power, but rather grounds computing’s appeal. Its combination of what can be seen and not seen, known (knowable) and not known–its separation of interface from algorithm and software from hardware–makes it a powerful metaphor for everything we believe is invisible yet generates visible, logical effects, from genetics to the invisible hand of the market, from ideology to culture.”

Publisher MIT Press, 2011
Software Studies series
ISBN 0262015420, 9780262015424
239 pages

Reviews: Jentery Sayers (Computational Culture, 2011), McKenzie Wark (Public Seminar, 2015).

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2019-10-10)