Becoming Digital - Curtis Roth - Software Epigenetics and Architectures of Life

Software Epigenetics and Architectures of Life

Curtis Roth

Arc_BD_CR_1

An artist paints one of four lunar models comprising Project Lola, the physical precursor to General Electric's digital simulation. The orbiting camera track the artist is standing on would soon become the orbiting of a digitally simulated eye. Image: NASA, 1965.

Becoming Digital
February 2019










Notes
1

“Frequently Asked Questions on End User Undertakings” FindlawUK (June 26, 2015), .

2

Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," (New York: Penguin Adult, 2008).

3

Karl Popper, Of clouds and clocks; an approach to the problem of rationality and the freedom of man (St. Louis: Washington University, 1966); Karl Popper, “Of Clouds and Clocks,” AD Magazine 9 (1969).

4

Peter Kamnitzer, “Computer Aid to Design,” AD Magazine 9 (1969).

5

Ibid.

6

Nicholas de Monchaux, Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011).

7

The term Space City is referring to NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center, now called the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

8

Kamnitzer, “Computer Aid to Design.”

9

Popper, “Of Clouds and Clocks,” AD Magazine.

10

Karl Popper, “Of Clouds and Clocks: An Approach to the Problem of Rationality and the Freedom of Man,” in: Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972).

11

Gabriel Almond and Stephen Genco, “Clouds, Clocks, and the Study of Politics,” World Politics vol. 29, no. 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).

12

Lev Manovich, “Alan Kay’s Universal Media Machine,” Northern Lights vol. 5, 1, (Chicago: Intellect Books Ltd., 2007).

13

Alan Kay, “User Interface: A Personal View,” in The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design, ed. Brenda Laurel (Boston: Addison-Wesley Professional, 1990).

14

Thomas Rowland, “Jerome S. Bruner, A Philosopher of Educational Psychology,” Journal of Thought vol. 3, no. 2, (San Francisco: Caddo Gap Press, 1968).

15

Alan Kay, “User Interface: A Personal View,” 126.

16

Ibid.

17

By this, I mean to suggest a general reframing of digital technologies from instruments for designing and manufacturing cultural artifacts, to digital technologies as cultural fields in their own right.

18

Jose Carlos Norte, “Advanced Tor Browser Fingerprinting,” (March 6, 2016), .

19

Jeff Bercovici, “Peter Thiel Is Very, Very Interested In Young People’s Blood,” Inc. (August 1, 2016), .

20

Starr Roxanne Hiltz and Murray Turoff, Network Nation: Human Communication via Computer (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993).

21

Ibid.

22

Bill Stewart, “IRC History -- EMISARI,” Living Internet (January 7, 2000), .

23

G. Henri ter Hofte, Working Apart Together: Foundations for Component Groupware (Enschede: Telematica Instituut, 1998).

24

Trudy Johnson-Lenz and Peter Johnson-Lenz, “Post-Mechanistic Groupware Primitives: Rhythms, Boundaries, and Containers,” International Journal of Man Machine Studies vol. 34 (1991).

25

Ibid.

26

The use of everyday physical artifacts such as desktops, folders or windows as analogies to ease the anxiety associated with encountering unfamiliar technology is a recurring trope in the early history of personal computing. I would like to argue, however, that members of EIES such as Turoff weren’t simply normalizing the chatroom by relying on the room as an analogue, but attempting to redirect our understanding of software’s possible agency.

27

Johnson-Lenz and Johnson-Lenz, “Post-Mechanistic Groupware Primitives.”