Writing a Machine:
Technical Critical Practice
14 February 2004
Under Construction VI: Heart Shaped Black Box
MIT-RPI-Cornell STS Graduate Student Conference
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Troy, NY
Joseph ‘Jofish’ Kaye
Culturally Embedded Computing
Cornell Science & Technology Studies / Information Science
jofish@cornell.edu
Plan
I. Reading a Machine
II. Writing a Machine
III. Technical Critical Practice
a) definitions
b) Who?
c) Example - LAMP, MIT
d) Example - Shopping carts, Wodiczko
IV.a Why?
IV.b Why not?
V. Conclusions
I. Reading a Machine
We can read a machine as a text, e.g. the Model T:
“…is cheap only if it is produced in volume. And the
only way to produce in volume is to produce by
machines. That is an essential meaning of the Model
T read as a technological text: it is a machine built by
machines. Its design makes sense only if it is built by
machines. Hence, to have designed it is to have had in
mind a machine-based system of production, in
scheme if not in detail.”
Mahoney (2004) Reading a Machine
(machine (noun):
Mahoney uses the term machine I “generically
for the products of technology”, a practice I
continue.)
II. Writing a Machine
So, by symmetry, we can write a machine.
III.a Technical Critical Practice
Critical practice = what all we do
Technical = build machines, writing code, etc.
Technical Critical Practice = building machines
for critical discourse
(Critical technical practice: Phil Agre (1987)
Computation & Human Experience. )
III.b Technical Critical Practice: Who?
- Technologists: Josh Mandel & Keith Winstein:
Library Access to Media Project
- Historians: Otto Sibum, Klauss Staubermann
- Artists: Krzysztof Wodiczko
- STS: Natalie Jeremijenko, Chris
Csikszentmihályi, Bill Gaver, Anthony
Dunne, Michael Mateas, Phoebe Sengers,
Simon Penny, Warren Sack, Noah WardripFruin, Casey O'Donnell, Ken Fleischmann,
Joseph 'Jofish' Kaye…
III.c Technical Critical Practice: Who?
- Josh Mandel & Keith Winstein: Library
Access to Media Project, MIT
Uses the campus-wide analog cable television
network to legally broadcast music on demand
that campus residents select over the internet.
If
that back-to-the-future solution seems overly
complicated, blame copyright law and not M.I.T., said
Jonathan Zittrain, who teaches Internet law at
Harvard and is a director of the university's Berkman
Center for Internet and Society. The most significant
thing about the M.I.T. plan, he said, is just how
complicated it has to be to fit within the odd
boundaries of copyright law.
"It's almost an act of performance art," Mr. Zittrain
said. Mr. Winstein, he said, has "arrayed the gerbils
under the hood so it appears to meet the statutory
requirement" - and has shown how badly the system
of copyright needs sensible revamping.
(Schwartz, J. (27/10/03). With Cable TV at MIT, Who Needs Napster? NYT)
Example: Krzysztof Wodiczko
- Shopping carts for the homeless
- Extensive participatory design and
ethnography
- Final design given to 'Mike' at press conference
- Queers other shopping carts used by the
homeless
Wodiczko, K. (1999). Critical Vehicles: Writings, Projects,
Interviews.
Example: Natalie Jeremijenko: Feral Robotic
Dogs (for Selma)
- Modify robotic toy dogs with video cameras & volatile
organic sensors in workshops by middle school
students
- Middle school sites: landfills, toxic waste, etc.
- Cameras under tails
- The narrative is the experience of watching the dogs,
not the Discovery-Channel dog-eye-view
IV.a Why write a machine? Why do technical critical
practice?
- A power in the built (not theoretical) machine: the
agency of the object
- The potential for (naïve/novel) appropriation by the
user - agency of the user
- Boundary objects: A way to communicate across
disciplines
- Evangelism: STS can't just sit at home and talk to
itself.
- Agency: we can have agency in IT!
IV.b Why not write a machine? Why not T.C.P.?
- Learning to read the machine (code, etc)
- Inability to participate in the writing
- Inherent superiority of text to convey abstract ideas in
the academy?
- Our metrics for achievement are text based: tenure,
theses, publishing (but that's discipline-specific)
- Too close to the production; can't be critical
- (I'm still bleeding from the Science Wars. Sounds
like sleeping with the enemy to me.)
- (We don't need to have this discussion! We're
already doing that here.)
V. Conclusions
Technical Critical Practice is a methodology for
discourse in STS, allowing for expanded discussion,
interdisciplinary collaboration, and advancing the
discipline within and outside traditional boundaries.
jofish@cornell.edu
Talk:
Paper:
http://jofish.com/talks/
http://jofish.com/writing/