joke: crime is a unique way of interacting with architecture
woke: architecture is the biggest con job ever pulled
bespoke: architecture solely exists to facilitate crimes
snippet: bruise suits and psychometry
I’m going back and rereading my old notes for the cybernetic anthologies. I’ve put this on hiatus for almost two years, and it is really fucking hard to get back into the enthusiasm I used to have for the project–not to mention the feeling of dread and shame I get when I realize how far behind I’ve fallen. Oh well; better late than never.
One of the earlier entries in the physically-focused part of the anthology is what’s called a Bruise Suit. It’s mostly used by paralympic athletes: it’s a thin, flexible material that changes color when stressed (including stress from impact.) Somebody wearing a bruise suit will develop Extremely Colorful bruises on the site of any impact–a pretty hefty boon for anybody without nerve feedback.
Feeling extremely tired, I connected this with a superpower I always wanted as a kid…psychometry. The ability to touch an object and know everything about that object’s history. How it was made, where it’s been, what it’s been used for, who else has touched it….etc etc.
There’s a point to be made here, about creating the psychometry of our own bodies–how I spend hours (in bits and pieces) thinking about my own scars and tattoos, trying somehow to divine the occult-feeling history of where I’ve been, how I was made, who’s touched me and what’s shaped me. The Bruise Suit is a very on-the-nose example, I think, of a purpose to which we regularly bend our backs–trying to figure out what happened, what just hit us, and where? (I speak only semi-metaphorically.)
Oh well.
Also, I think I’m depressed again….in case nobody could really tell from the general gist of this fragment. oops.
Excerpt: A System for Cybernetic Classification
This is slightly old, but I’m going to post it without extensive re-editing–may get another look-through later on.
In a simplified model, there are four primary axes along which cybernetic technology can be categorized. The first is the axis of function, ranging from the restoration of a “lost” function (for example, the use of a hook restoring the function of grasp) to reconfiguration of function (the offloading of memories from our brains onto paper notepads or cellphone SIM cards) to enhancement of preexistent function (the womb-like cockpits built to enhance fighter pilot’s reflexes) to the creation of a new function (the addition of electromagnetic sensory input.)
The second axis is that of proximity, ranging from the object (a cellphone or bluetooth) to the apparatus (a watch) and the prosthetic (an artificial hand or ear) to the transdermal (a cochlear implant or anything else that permanently penetrates the skin) to the implanted (subdermal magnets and pacemakers) to the inhabited (some plane cockpits, exoskeletons, etc.)
The third axis is that of identification, the degree to which somebody feels a piece of technology to be part of themself. This axis is less intuitive or linear than the others–for example, cellphones are objects we keep on our person, daily, for the majority duration of most of our lives, which effect our thought patterns and may well change the fundamental nature of how our memory recall works; yet most people don’t consider the cellphone to be a part of who they are, they don’t identify with it in any meaningful capacity. When a technology, a device, is not identified with, it is often othered or even actively rejected on a conscious level–again, such as you see with the love-hate relationship many people have with cell phones.
Conversely, a fencer may feel their rapier to be an extension of their body–they may only use it sporadically, and certainly don’t generally keep it attached to their body at all times, but it is still pulled into their self-identity, and is often described as feeling like an extension of their arm.
The last significant axis (related to the one immediately former) is duration, the frequency of occasion and length of instance in which an object is in contact with the person. This ranges from objects that are used only sporadically but incur strong feelings of identity (such as exoskeletons or some trade tools) to objects that are separate from the body but used constantly (prosthetics of all types, cell phones, etc) to objects that are attached to the body but for a finite duration (IVs, some subdermal implants, bone-lengthening devices) to objects that are meant to be permanently joined with the body or self (the majority of implants, some transdermal apparatus, etc etc.).
The vast majority of cybernetic technology can be classified or at least located along these four axes; however, none of them are regularly quantized, and many of these traits are subjective. (For example, whether somebody considers an arm prosthesis with inbuilt devices to be an enhancement or a reconfiguration is a deeply personal choice, as is how closely somebody considers any given object to be an extension of the self.) This is messy and only somewhat accurate: personally, I think that’s very reflective of how people consider their own bodies. I would be highly suspicious of any categorization system that claimed to provide both flawless and useful information about how people relate and identify to anything.
Is tech redeemable?
Had a kind of interesting conversation with a friend of mine today–it was very awkward and I felt like a goddamned buffoon for most of it. ~~the tenets of rationality~~ say that I should try and focus on whatever makes me feel confused or conflicted, because that’s where I’m mostly likely to be wrong, yet I’m fairly certain that I basically always feel confuslicted; oh well.
We talked about a lot of things, but the thing that I felt most unsteady about was technology. It’s a hot take, but I think technology is….good. It’s beneficial to me. I would not be able to survive without it, due to the genetic illness that I have. I also would not be able to know nearly as much about the world around me without it; most of my education is derived from the internet and pirated ebooks (which is pretty evident in how I communicate, if we’re being honest.) I know that postindustrial production requires the unsustainable and unethical extraction of rare-earth minerals, but I also don’t know if it logically follows that an infrastructural collapse is….inevitable? Desireable? This is the question on everybody’s lips, granted, but isn’t it possible to create a pedagody/practice/school of technological recovery?
The specific things that I want to find out, discuss with others, and come back to, are as follows–
- Is it possible to create wireless, digital architecture–internet or similar–using only metals which are ubiquitous and relatively benign to harvest?
- If not, have enough rare earth minerals been harvested to supply 10,000,000,000 people with, say, a smartphone and a laptop? (Also, holy shit, the earth has so many people. fuck.)
- Even if so, is it possible to reduce our use of those materials aaanyway?
I also have some complicated feelings related to the….ethics, I suppose, of technology. (I’m unclear on the difference between ethics and morals–one is fake and the other is not, obvs, but which one is which seems to be Controversial.) This is explored deeper in the manifesto for subversive cybernetics, but there is an obvious need for people to regain control over technology. To lift the veil of production, naturalize the motive by which technology is created, and develop stronger roots of entanglement/interfaction with the mechanisms by which technology works. Or, to put it in non-asshole terms: in times of industry-state conspiracy that rotates around technology, is in the interest of “the people” to learn how to control the technology that surrounds them; fixing, destroying, creating, modifying, and using; phones, cameras, displays, vehicles, circuits, etc. In light of the impending hard times (read Desert if you haven’t already, lmao) this seems to be more of an obvious need than it might’ve been a couple decades ago.
I don’t feel like any of that is a particularly hot take, all things considered; I do think that I’m more likely to fight hard for some kinds of technology (eg, bacterial manufacturing of human-genome derivative enzymes) due to how my life, ykno, depends on those technologies. So it goes! Cold take tho it may be, however, I do feel that it bears reiteration, as most folk who I speak with in passing seem to absorb a more and more damning or complacent view of digital technology–either being deadset against it, or not giving a lot of consideration to the sociopolitical context in which smartphones occur. Whatever. The point of this is to establish that I think there needs to be a second layer to anarchist practices of technological rehabilitation. No deep thoughts yet, but–it’s not enough to know how your smartphone works (a 21st century exploration of the infraordinary may be in order), you also need to know the impact of what you do with it. Here’s my knee-jerk feelings on the matter:
- Video games are usually bad and designed for addiction/complacency, but can sometimes be good.
- Social media is usually bad.
- In point of fact, media that captures you for a long-term period of time (upwards of four or five hours) and imposes a minimum of analysis (lacks depth, has little narrative, weighs heavily on unsubstantiated propaganda, whatever) is usually bad.
- However, a large part of why these things are bad is due to how they reproduce social alienation–they are designed to distract you from actions which are entangled with the physical/material world surrounding you, and to perpetuate existential dissatisfaction while also encouraging superficial satisfaction. In instances where these devices have been preceded by the alienation, they can actually be beneficial. (I spent two years as a child stuck with my abusive household in the alaskan tundra with no physical means of leaving the square mile around my house for any social purpose. Video games and social media preserved my sanity, and could not have contributed to my alienation from society, because that alienation was already there.)
I don’t have a clean point to any of this, other than what my friend said earlier tonight–that building our own smartphones won’t matter if we still have facebook on them (and it doesn’t matter who’s running facebook, either.) Frankly, this blog is partially an exploration–on my part–of potential ways to see how digital interaction can be actualized in actively subversive ways. We’ll see how it goes~