From Debris to Sediment addresses the rising relevance of these residues. From the perspective of media studies, geography, sociology, environmental sciences, and artistic research, the contributions to this volume deal with key sites and issues related to the mounting layers of anthropogenic refuse and explore sediments as a geo-philosophical figure of thought. What media, politics, and ecologies are implicated in accumulating “future fossils”? And how do they envision the new material cycles emerging from these growing deposits?

Contents

Introduction 7
Arianna Borrelli and Helena Durnová

[ 1 ] Synthetic Machines and Practical Languages: Masking the Computer in the 1950s 27
Mark Priestley

[ 2 ] Practical and Theoretical Objectives of Early Machine Translation in the 1950–60s 61
Jacqueline Léon

[ 3 ] Big Machines for Big Science: The Beginnings of Scientific Computing at CERN 83
Arianna Borrelli

[ 4 ] The Influence of Organization and Methods on Early Business Computing 121
Elisabetta Mori

[ 5 ] The Division of Mental Labor in Computing Practices: Presuppositions, Advances, Biases 147
Marie-José Durand-Richard

[ 6 ] Mainframe Computer or Programmable Pocket Calculator? Calculation Tools and Practices of Computing in Medieval History (1960s–1980s) 193
Edgar Lejeune

[ 7 ] Computing Practices, Data-Based Design, and Knowledge Cultures During the Post-War Period 227
Nathalie Bredella

[ 8 ] Tense and Temporality: Computing and the Logic of Time 255
Troy Kaighin Astarte

Authors 281

Diese Frage steht für eine doppelte Öffnung: Medienästhetik markiert eine Suchbewegung, die die philosophischen wie medienwissenschaftlichen Grundlagen erkundet, die in medienästhetischen Kontexten in Erscheinung treten können. Zugleich lädt sie ein zu einer historischen Kartographierung und begrifflichen Konturierung von Medienästhetik, einer Diskussion ihrer unterschiedlichen Modellierungen und der sich daraus ergebenden Optionen für Kritik.

Ziel ist es, den Begriff Medienästhetik offen zu halten und aus seiner Problematisierung immer wieder neue disziplinübergreifende Debatten anzustoßen. Das Jahrbuch bietet unterschiedlichen Projekten, Positionen und Fragestellungen Raum, die zueinander im Modus des Dissenses, der Überschneidung, der Assoziation, aber auch der inhaltlichen Weiterführung stehen können.

Shintaro Miyazaki’s joyful book builds a media theoretical proposal for collective rhythms in computational culture. The mix of wonderful readings and insights offers alternatives to the depressing beat of capitalism, while maneuvering from cybernetics and computational modeling to play, from media archaeology to Marx and digital commons.

— Jussi Parikka, Aarhus University & Winchester School of Art

Earth and Beyond in Tumultuous Times is part of the series Future Ecologies dedicated to rethink the multiple ecologies that flourish and struggle on Earth and beyond.

Two seemingly contradictory developments serve as starting points for this volume. First, technological innovations such as affective computing, mood tracking, sentiment analysis, and social robotics all share a focus on the recognition and modulation of human affectivity. Affect gets measured, calculated, controlled. Secondly, recent developments in politics, social media usage, and right-wing journalism have contributed to a conspicuous rise of hate speech, cybermobbing, public shaming, “felt truths,” and resentful populisms. In a very specific way, politics as well as power have become affective.

Affect gets mobilized, fomented, unleashed. When the ways we deal with our affectivity get unsettled in such a dramatic fashion, we have to rethink our ethical, aesthetical, political as well as legal regimes of affect organization.

“This engaging volume provides readers with a historically rich and media-scientific focused introduction to the philosophical problematic of acting at a distance.”

– Jeremy Packer, University of Toronto

“An inspiring volume that invites reflection on a crucial issue in our digital cultures: the materiality of transmission.”

– Dawid Kasprowicz, RWTH Aachen University

Unterwachen und Schlafen stellt nicht das theoretische Programm einer vollautomatisierten Lebenswelt in Aussicht, sondern das Konstrukt einer nunmehr medialen Umsetzung anthropologischer Grundelemente wie Autonomie, Freiheit oder Vertrauen.

This volume contributes to the ongoing discussion on the epistemic position of computer simulations in a variety of physical disciplines, such as quantum optics, quantum mechanics, and computational physics. Originating from an interdisciplinary event, it shows that accounts of contemporary physics can constructively interfere with media theory, philosophy, and the history of science.

With texts by Kiene Brillenburg Wurth, Rosemarie Buikema, Mercedes Bunz, Kári Driscoll, Yvonne Förster, Annemie Halsema, Birgit Mara Kaiser, Leonard Lawlor, Jacques Lezra, Sam McAuliffe, Timothy O’Leary, Bettina Papenburg, Esther Peeren, Asja Szafraniec, Melanie Sehgal, Kathrin Thiele, Sybrandt van Keulen, Veronica Vasterling, and Jennifer A. Wagner-Lawlor.

With texts by Benjamin Bratton, Orit Halpern, Adrian Lahoud, Jon Lindblom, Catherine Malabou, Reza Negarestani, Luciana Parisi, Matteo Pasquinelli, Ana Teixeira Pinto, Michael Wheeler, Charles Wolfe, and Ben Woodard.

In the post-fordist era of digital networked media the cyborg unfolds itself in the dissemination of multiple bodies: on the Internet, in the shift of individual identity, in the new collective aggregation connected by software. It bridges virtuality and concreteness, possibility and necessity. The cyborg thus becomes a field of social conflict, one of the new figures in which the bio-political perspective is embodied.

Souriaus radikale Herangehensweise hat auch Bruno Latour und Isabelle Stengers entscheidend beeinflusst. In ihrer ausführlichen Einleitung zu Souriaus Text von 1943 und dem ebenfalls zum ersten Mal in deutscher Sprache veröffentlichten Vortrag  „Über den Modus der Existenz des zu vollbringenden Werks“ (1956)  zeigt sich eindrucksvoll die Aktualität seines Denkens.

Anticipating the age of planetary technology Kostas Axelos, a Greek-French philosopher, approaches the technological question in this book, first published in 1966, by connecting the thought of Karl Marx and Martin Heidegger. Marx famously declared that philosophers had only interpreted the world, but the point was to change it. Heidegger on his part stressed that our modern malaise was due to the forgetting of being, for which he thought technological questions were central. Following from his study of Marx as a thinker of technology, and foreseeing debates about globalization, Axelos recognizes that technology now determines the world. Providing an introduction to some of his major themes, including the play of the world, Axelos asks if planetary technology requires a new, a future way of thought which in itself is planetary.

Edited by Stuart Elden.