Asking what things do in a way that carefully navigates between the Scylla of essentialist, dystopian accounts and the Charybdis of shiny, utopian futures is a daunting task. I believe that Peter Paul Verbeek of Twente University, Holland, has managed this navigational task quite beautifully in his book with the succinct title What Things Do (with the less poignant, but somewhat explanatory post-dash: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design. From Karl Jaspers demonization of technology through Ellul’s and Borgmann’s nostalgia to Latour’s theories of artefactual agency, Verbeek manages to aptly join fierce theoretical insight with design knowledge and visionary design practices. For example, drawing on products by the Dutch environmentalist design community “Eternally Yours”, he sketches out a novel way of understanding objects as not only semiotic or symbolic (i.e. emitting life-styles or choices) but also as “material”, as things that we form relations to and that relate to us in return, guiding and misguiding us, teaching, pleasing, shaping and generally mediating our relations to our world. He shows how the concept of mediation (drawing on US philosopher of technology Don Ihde’s relativist version of phenomenology which he occasionally calls post-phenomenology) is useful for understanding technologies as existential materials - as things that are not only there for us to use on the world, but that take an active part in shaping our world. Designing, in this perspective, then naturally entails ethical as well as practical and experiential perspectives. Verbeek’s book is not an introduction to existential phenomenology vis-a-vis technology, but, rather to my liking, presents a clear cut (if complex) argument for a deeper understanding of things, and how philosophy can position itself as a reflexive/pragmatic inquiry.
February 19th, 2007
This is weird:
Speed cameras in the Scottish Borders may soon be monitored by security cameras to protect them from vandals.
…not only do we increasingly try to make account of ourselves, we’re also training our technologies to make themselves accountable. Ad absurdum! Interesting.
February 5th, 2007
Read this and weep! FedEx refuses to ship arty “novelty” items since they look “suspiciously like bomb making material” - note that bomb-making material, according to the cans, could be stuff like “infinite impropability” rocket fuel or just air: cans with nitrogen (78,084% pure - like the atmosphere) or neon (0,0018% pure) - suspicious, oh but how! What’s the paranoia coming to? Reminds me a little bit of the Steven Kurtz case - only silly!
January 18th, 2007
This paper presents a personal RFID security administration tool that can be used to jam certain RFID signals emitted by the carrier and or by jamming RFID signals that attempt to impinge on the hertzian space of the carrier. Slightly clumsy, and we might wonder to which extent we actually care to thoroughly manage our own personal digital spaces in this way. Nevertheless, ingenious and certainly a device that, in some form or another, will become relevant in the years to come. What I’d like to see is how to actually do an interface for such personal body-firewalls - how do we work with them and how will we become aware of them working for us?
January 7th, 2007
from indexed - just very very funny!
January 6th, 2007
Just a wee recommendation for your X-mas Flickr browsing pleasure: GET PICLENS FOR SAFARI - it’s a great little app that enables full screen browsing of flickr and other photosharing sites. And have a merry little christmas y’all!
December 18th, 2006
The venerable Lord Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society, Astronomer Royal (…and all that) says in the annual adress of the Royal Society, that
“How the science is applied and prioritised should not just be decided by the scientists; these choices should be made after the widest possible discussion by the public.”
All well and good. Yet, disappointingly, he goes on to say that
“such discussions should be based on sound science”
…which is, in fact, to say that public debate is generally misguided and irrational. So much for the good intentions of bringing other voices into the debate around how we use (or misuse) techno-science. If the proposed “discussion” must necessarily be based on what Lord Rees finds to be “sound science”, how can the discussion become anything but an expert dominated, empiricist field day? I mean, if the final measure is science anyway, how can we ever hope to integrate “non-scientific” voices or sentiments into these discussions? As so many studies in the past decades has shown, science is never (merely) sound, but always contingent upon interests, economics - politics. In competing with the presumably irrational sentiments of an (uneducated, lacking) public it seems to harness itself by claiming its untainted “soundness” and neutrality, and reserves its right to be the final measure upon which decisions about technology is made. This, excactly this is what Lord Rees tries to do - the rest is merely pretend!
December 6th, 2006
Toot toot: Look, listen! In Halberstadt, Germany, a bunch of musicians, organ-builders and theologists (no less) will make an organ-version of John Cage’s As Slow as Possible. While the original piece was to be played on piano, with the natural limitation of the sustain of the piano strings ringing out, the new performance is done on an organ, which of course has a constant sustain and thus the estimated duration of the piece is…639 years. Provided the organ keeps in good shape. Provided the funding doesn’t run out. Provided the earth still stands…etc. A musical tribute to the long now - let’s party like it’s 01999!
December 6th, 2006
Another totally amazing weblabel, Leep - short for Leeuroparisien I guess. Anyway go check it out, it’s pwetty mad! I especially fell for Tracy Lee Summers work. Noisy musique concrete stuff, but with a sense of melody and harmonies that you don’t encounter so often. 
November 9th, 2006
Great little Bruce Sterling short story at New Scientist:
We teenagers have to live in “controlled spaces”. Radio-frequency ID tags, real-time locative systems, global positioning systems, smart doorways, security videocams. They “protect” us kids, from imaginary satanic drug dealer terrorist mafia predators. We’re “secured”. We’re juvenile delinquents with always-on cellphone nannies in our pockets. There’s no way to turn them off. The internet was designed without an off-switch.
Always did like Sterlings writing and his intricate weaves of future technology with social and political wit…
November 7th, 2006
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