Via Liz: Mike Axelrod’s piece on traditions of software development. It’s a nice piece, and the kind of thing I’d like to read more of (suggestions anyone?). Might dovetail well with Ellen Ullman’s recent novel The Bug which I’m teaching in both my classes this semester. Axelrod employs the familiar trope of software as a machine or mechanism—though he gets there via a more organic approach, woodworking. As I said, it’s good stuff. But this is something I’ve been thinking a lot about in the context of my own work, and also by way of Manuel De Landa’s robotic historian’s account of the “machinic phylum” in War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (Zone 1991). As De Landa demonstrates, the clockwork metaphor is the product of specific singularities within the machinic phylum; thus the “clockwork armies” of Frederick the Great (closely packed formations of men moving and firing in unison). De Landa, as is his way, ties this to the epistemology of the age (which is in turn an outgrowth of the technological conditions of war). My question: why are we so drawn to this now anachronistic image (mechanism, machine, clockwork) when talking about software? Can we determine the genealogy of that trope? Hmm, maybe someone should write a book.
Posted by mgk at January 14, 2004 10:19 AMJust a thought: one might argue that a clock is a device that tracks and measures something that deeply structures our existence, but that is otherwise inaccessible (or just plain unimaginable) on such a finely differentiated scale. An "unnatural" creation, it nevertheless brings us closer to something that seems to be an integral part of nature. This might account for why the clock is such a persistent trope for the power of technology.
Stuart Sherman has written a well-received book titled _Telling Time: Clocks, Diaries, and English Diurnal Form, 1660-1785_ (U of Chicago, 1997). http://tinyurl.com/2hkan
Posted by: George at January 17, 2004 10:17 AM | Link to Comment