Tech beyond the myth

reflections after the two weeks [21 nov 22]

useless machines

The (supposedly) ever-improving automation and digitisation of industrial tasks has not led to a significant decrease in work hours for a long time, if it ever has. In this sense, most industrial machines are useless, at least under current social conditions. The ‘almost useless machines’ we were asked to design in groups as a main deliverable of this course were also pretty useless.

Our machine was a bubble maker that you activate by making the same motion as you would to open a bottle of bubble-making soap water. The idea is that the bubble machine frustrates you attempt at making bubbles yourself by making them for you, but only if you put in the same effort as you would making them yourself. To be complete, the machine should also force you to blow into some kind of device, but we didn’t get that far. Perhaps as a second prototype, should we choose to make one.

You can find a presentation of the machine here:

BUBBLE MAKER

misc comments

After these intense weeks of exploration, prototyping and input, my mind feels a bit empty and I don’t have many interesting comments to make. It was interesting to go a bit deeper on the political economy of the electronics industry, much of which was literally hands-on (screwdrivers taking apart devices, and combining the parts in new ways). I was also glad to finally play with an Arduino, something I’ve been meaning to do for years but never ‘got around to’.

This tendency for practical experimentation is one I have always liked but at times had a hard time putting into practice. The same is true for the habit of doing things collaboratively, building/making together and then seeing what hapens, building networks of expertise / practice instead of thinking one has to know everything / plan everything oneself. I’m glad MDEF is pushing me further into a collaborative and ‘make first ask questions later’ (maybe some before) attitude.

I don’t have much to say beyond that, except perhaps this: One of the topics discussed in class, the entangled, oligopolistic and not very resilient nature of chip manufacturing left me wondering if there is a realistic alternative. I have often thought about similar issues about the data mining/selling industry (social media companies, search engines, etc) - where the problem is difficult enough but it is at least somewhat clear what an alternative would look like (federated, interoperable, owned by users, etc). But for its physical basis, the chips and wafers and cables, the infrastructure of the internet, it is much less clear how it could be completely replaced by an alternative I find promising. That’s somewhat disheartening but also very interesting. I would like to find out (and think) more about it.