Erik hoffmann

Erik Hoffmann

Histories & Theories

Mechanoid Man the Tool Maker Tool the Man Maker

Histories & Theories

Term II Tutor: Zaynab Dena Ziari

Erik Hoffmann

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AA Third Year / Term II

Erik Hoffmann

AA Third Year / Term II

Histories & Theories

Table of Figures Figure 1 Karel Capek, R.U.R poster, Steve Chan, 2015

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Figure 2 R.U.R filmed scene, Marylin Fine Art School, 1956

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Figure 3 Eric: UK’s first rovot, Robots, 2017, exhibition, Science Museum of London, Erik Hoffmann

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Figure 4 Robotic arm, George Devole, Udessa, 1954

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Figure 5 The Iron Hand 1950, Unkown

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Figure 6 Internet of Things graph, 2014, i-Scoop.com

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Figure 7 Smart city & IoT, 2015, Philips Inc.

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Figure 8 Robot Visions first edition cover, Isaac Asimov, LW Currey, 1991

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Figure 9 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, 1968, edition book cover 1972

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Figure 10 Bladerunner, 1982, film poster

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Figure 11 I, Robot, first edition cover, Isaac Asimov, LW Currey, 1950

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Figure 12 Robot helper: NS-5 in I, Robot (film), Alex Proyas, 2004

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Figure 13 CHARLIE H by roboticist Dennis Hong, TechMag, 2016

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Figure 14 ‘The Replicator’, Star Trek: The Next Generation, 1987-1994

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Figure 15 3-D printing, Pegasus, unknown, 2013

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Figure 16 ‘3-D printing robot, Westworld (TV Series), 2016

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Figure 17 Open Source Android (ROSA), Robots, 2017, exhibition, Science Museum of London, Erik Hoffmann

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Figure 18 Open Source Android (ROSA, 2017, exhibition, Science Museum of London, Erik Hoffmann

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Figure 19 Pneumatic arm, 2017, exhibition, Science Museum of London, Erik Hoffmann

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Figure 20 YuMi IRB 14000, 2017, exhibition, Science Museum of London, Erik Hoffmann

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Figure 21 Inkha, 2017, exhibition, Science Museum of London, Erik Hoffmann

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Figure 23 Kasper, 2017, exhibition, Science Museum of London, Erik Hoffmann

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Figure 24 Early mechanical clocks, 2017, exhibition, Science Museum of London, Erik Hoffmann

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Figure 25 Early mechanical clocks, 2017, exhibition, Science Museum of London, Erik Hoffmann

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Figure 26 Early prosthetics, 2017, exhibition, Science Museum of London, Erik Hoffmann

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Figure 27 Full-body prosthetic exoskeleton, 2016, SuitX’s Phoenix

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Figure 28 Wayan Sumardana, 2016, BBC

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Figure 29 Exoskeletal armour, 2009, Avatar, film frame

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Figure 30 Iron Man: The Invincible, 1968, Marvel Comics

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Figure 31 Jacquard Loom, 2015, BBC-timelines

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Figure 32 Turing Machine diagram, 2012, PcTak

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Figure 33 Bombe, 2013, Autosketch

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Figure 34 Paul, 2009, Patrick Tresset

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Figure 35 Paul, 2009, Patrick Tresset

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Figure 36 Aikon-II project diagram, 2009, The Creative Machine/Goldsmiths University

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Figure 37 Bank Lock, Mechanisation Takes Command, 1948

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Figure 38 Yale Lock, Mechanisation Takes Command, 1948

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Figure 39 Post-box Lock, Mechanisation Takes Command, 1948

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Figure 40 Linus Yale JR Lock, Mechanisation Takes Command, 1948

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Figure 41 New York Single Apartment, Mechanisation Takes Command, 1948

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Figure 42 American Compact Bathroom, Mechanisation Takes Command, 1948

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Figure 43 Pig-Scraping Machine, Mechanisation Takes Command, 1948

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Figure 44 Hog-Cleaning Machine, Mechanisation Takes Command, 1948

Figure 45 Instrument to Extract Hair from Skins, Mechanisation Takes Command, 1948

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Erik Hoffmann

Histories & Theories

AA Third Year / Term II

Abstract

The essay will explore the changing human condition brought about by technological progress.

By defining the human condition as an increasingly transient entity, the human experience is directly shaped by the tools we make. We make tools, and in turn they change us. More importantly, the process of machine making will be scrutinised as the greater influence of such imposed techno-human experiences by depicting the instances where technological development is not only an end-product/user effect, but a procedure heavily informing us about ourselves, our ambitions and the greater inventory of technological precedents. This will be described through the role of narratives giving direction to the development of technologies: the power of speculating on a certain techno-social relationship prior to the realisation of the corresponding machine will be identified as a core driver in the realisation of self-fulfilling fictions of imagined technologies.

By analysing the long-quest of creating machines more anthropomorphic—both physically and intelligently—and the extent to which these technological developments reflect the human condition, smart ubiquitous technologies such as the Internet of Things and robots—along our speculated future relationship with them—will be depicted through a seminal fictional novels and films with present day attempts to translate human behaviour into software and hardware. The concept of technological progression will be argued to be most deterministic in its vertical relationships as machine typologies encounter themselves from the grand technological inventory humans have documented over the years.

Moreover, the notion of mechanisation as a deterministic influence on human behaviour and as a proposed study by Siegfried Giedion will question the extent to which machines are able to change human behaviour, and the tendency of mechanisation to obscure its past physical, and metaphysical, relationships with humans as it has evolved.

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Histories & Theories

Erik Hoffmann

The

AA Third Year / Term II

definition of what it means to be human in an era of incomprehensible technological

complexity is of utmost importance when exploring the ways in which technologies have shaped the human experience, especially along narratives that give direction to contemporary architectural activity and technology in general. From technologies that predate the modern human as archeological artefacts, to complex machinery and production lines to the ones that might outdate us as data and record our own history, there is an inextricable relationship between the human’s ability to speculate by imagining to create and develop future techno-social relationships, and the study of their historical precedents. What is seemingly apparent is the duality of the techno-human condition: just as the creation of technologies educate our understanding of the world, it also portrays inherent qualities of ourselves and desires to augment our capacities1. The creation of a machine is an education into what humans are; through the creation of a machine, we learn about the human condition2 at both a synchronic and diachronic level. It demonstrates a fixed and continuous association between the development of technologies both vertically and horizontally and how those, in turn, change our behaviour upon their creation. The condition of the human is in constant transience along our co-evolution with technologies: we humans are what tools made of us, “man is man the toolmaker”3 .

The first exploration of what it means to be human in our growing techno-society is to be established through self-fulfilling fictions. Fiction as a mode of speculation has always played a substantial role in the process of invention4 . Film makers, novelists, scriptwriters just as much as computer scientists are the pioneers of future narratives of innovation5. Technological development feeds on fictions as it tries to realise them in a similar or different way by inventing them. It sets a particular relationship between our ability to imagine, and its power to change the everyday in consensus with our desires as a deterministic factor6 . Every time a seminal word or writing on speculated technological futures has emerged, substantial Research & Development (RnD)7 has grown into attempting to recreate a certain version of such a technology. For example, the simple coining of the term ‘robot’ by Czech writer Karel Capek to denote a fictional humanoid in his 1920 play R.U.R8 (figures 1-3) [as a progression of the automaton9] sparked greater research into them in Europe in the following years (figures 4-5).

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Alvise Simondetti at "The Smart City & Post-Anthropocene." AAgora. Architectural Association, London. 31 Jan. 2017. Debate.

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Frederic Fol Leymarie at "The Smart City & Post-Anthropocene." AAgora. Architectural Association, London. 31 Jan. 2017. Debate.

3

Sterling, Bruce. Shaping Things. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2005. Print.

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Picon, Antoine. Smart Cities A Spatialised Intelligence - AD Primer. Erscheinungsort Nicht Ermittelbar: Wiley, 2015. Print.

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Stocking, L.S. Angus W. "A Video Game Is Overtaking Post-Occupancy Evaluation in Architecture." Redshift. N.p., 05 Oct. 2016. Web. 12 Feb. 2017.

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Picon, Antoine. Smart Cities A Spatialised Intelligence - AD Primer. Erscheinungsort Nicht Ermittelbar: Wiley, 2015. Print.

Research & Development (RnD) is the general term for activities in connection to technological innovation. It is situated at the front of innovation life cycle and usually ends up in commercialisation. It can also be applied to corporate or governmental innovation.

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Research and development is situated at the front end of the innovation life cycle, which may end with commercialization.

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Russell, Ben. Robots. 8 Feb. 2017. Exhibition. Science Museum, London.

Automatons were reference as self-manoeuvred machines following a predetermined sequence of operations. Most of them used to function in a way that gave illusion that they were operating under their own command. The term was then replaced by the word robot.

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Erik Hoffmann

Figure 1: Updated version of Karel Capek’s 1930s classic robot play.

AA Third Year / Term II

Histories & Theories

Figure 2: filmed scene of Capek’s play. Robots were played by humans with slight mechanical movements. They stand around their creator as they have taken control of the laboratory.

Figure 4: Designed by George Devol in 1954, this robot was the first industrial robot able to carry objects from on point to another within 3 meters. In the 60s, mechanical arms were introduced in factories for the first time.

Such robots were programmed to perform step-by-step instructions, excelling at carrying out repetitive tasks with speed and precision. Compared to cybernetic machines, such robots could only work in highly controlled areas and operate exactly as they were programmed to. Therefore, they were still unable to to function under unpredictable situations or work safely amongst humans.

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Figure 3: Inspired by and built less than a decade after the word ‘robot’ was first used in R.U.R, Eric, the UK’s first robot was created in 1928 by A.H. Refell and Captain Richards. It disappeared as it travelled the world in exhibit, and was rebuilt by a kick-starter campaign May 2016 to ‘bring him back to life’.

Figure 5: The Iron Hand (1950), with its unknown creator. There were limited options for the controlling of machines. The Iron Hand was controlled by a traffic light controller, a timer that fired hydraulic valves.

Erik Hoffmann

Histories & Theories

AA Third Year / Term II

Additionally, is Mark Weiser’s article in Scientific American journal: Computing in the 21st Century speculating on a striking ending depicting Sal—a working mother in the Silicone Valley. As she is waking up, her coffee machine is signalled by her alarm clock and sleeping movements on her bed. The coffee is prepared in advance and she simply picks it up once in the kitchen. Arriving to work, parallel screens inform her of available parking spots, and while correcting a paper of a colleague, various machines of differing sizes and functions project information on her walls suggesting how she should behave whilst proposing alternatives if her choices prove unwise. Such depictions triggered sporadic RnD programmes on ambient intelligence (also knows as pervasive computing)10. This is a term in computer science used to explain computing able to appear anywhere at anytime. It contrasts to desktop computing in the manner that it can occur in any device, format and localisation whilst researching a wide range of topics11 .

The mining of data collected from such items—generally equipped with sensors—is able to output communications between the network of inter-connected object. Weiser’s speculation on a form of technology that powers of calculations are no longer confined to computers but to objects found all over the place with numerous electronic chips to control our surrounding machines, pioneered the immense hype today on The Internet of Things (IoT) (figure 6). As Weiser mentions: the most profound technologies are those that disappear, They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it”12 (figure 7). Things therefore have to exist in association with an organism, and thus designers are the emissaries of generating object and human correspondence13. This process would be the advent of a post-anthropogenic era filled with pervasive inter-communicating objects as depicted by Weiser, where designs will be inextricably linked with the rapidly transient human condition as we experience real-time engaging technological relationships with increasingly smarter devices turning our cities and homes more ‘sentient’. With with autonomous smart objects already increasingly entering our everyday sphere and communicating with us, it seems clear that we already are in an age of self-fulfilling fictions brought by initial narratives on what our lives could be if we gave greater agency to machines, enabling a greater level of dialogue between us and our created technologies increasingly embedded in our surroundings. In a sense, one might hence question the change in the sense of scale of our spaces as they adopt autonomous, smartly-interconnected devices communicating at a digital format rather than through physically visual operations.

Pervasive computing / ubiquitous computing, is the growing trend of embedding computational capability (mostly in the form of microprocessors) into our everyday utensils to make our objects communicate and perform useful tasks in a way that minimises the end user's need to interact with computers as stationary objects. Pervasive computing devices are network-connected and constantly available.

Mattern, Friedemann; Floerkemeier, Christian. "From the Internet of Computers to the Internet of Things" (PDF). ETH Zurich. Retrieved 23 October 2016.

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Research topics range from: distributed computing, context-aware computing, sensor networks and human-computer interaction to artificial intelligence and mobile computing. The underlying technologies supporting ubiquitous computing include: networks, localisation and positioning, new user interfaces, sensors, operating systems, mobile communication, the Internet and new materials.

Nieuwdorp, E. "The pervasive discourse". Computers in Entertainment, 2007. pdf 11

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Mark Weiser, Ubiquitous Computer, Scientific American. Life Sciences for the 21st Century. 1991 Web.

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Allenby, Braden R and Daniel R Sarewitz. The Techno-Human Condition. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2011. Print.

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Histories & Theories

Erik Hoffmann

AA Third Year / Term II

Figure 6: By 2020, 20% of all computers will learn not only process, but also work and manage things like humans. Around 50 billion devices are going to be connected to the ‘Cloud of Things’. This will create an exponential quantity of data generated from computing operated by humans, and self-regulating apparatus. The above graph represents exponential growth in the number of devices connected, and the possible order of the object typologies that are gradually implemented to participate in the cloud. The Internet of Things - infographic: The Connectivist, based on Cisco Data, 2010.

Figure 7: The Internet of Things is the inter-networking [connection] of physical devices [‘smart devices’ /‘connected devices’], buildings & and other items. Such objects will be embedded with electronics software, sensors, actuators, network connectivity enabling these objects to collect and exchange data amongst themselves and humans. It allows objects to be sensed, and/or controlled remotely across existing infrastructural networks. These create opportunities for the more direct integration of the physical world into computer-based systems in order to improve efficiency, accuracy, and economic activity with reduced human intervention. Each ‘thing’ is uniquely identifiable through embedding computing systems and is able to inter-operate in the existing internet infrastructure. Libellium Smart World, 2015.

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Erik Hoffmann

Histories & Theories

AA Third Year / Term II

The increasing pervasiveness of technology in the everyday is not only one of wonderland, but has also largely been narrated as dystopian the day the human overlooks the scale and power of intelligent technology14 , and is consequently overwhelmed by it. Philip K. Dick’s 1968 influential fictional novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep explores the issue of what it means to be human in a postapocalyptic scenario, whereby the lines between what one can call living and not-living are blurred (figures 9-10). Dick explores the essence of humanity based on the philosophy of empathy as the sole differentiator between humans and pervasive robots. As an existentialist15 novel, the conception of the human condition and the quest for identity of the principal character, Rick Deckard, is questioned through the narrative of confusion around how to remain, or be a man in an era where robots are identical to people, with the core argument being that human’s irrationality is not programmable. Even upon encounter with machines that are sure to be human and find empathy amongst themselves, just as the human’s ability to be empathic in groups and towards robots occurs in a fictional novel, it is certain that the core value of the novel is that discussing the role of remarkable artificial intelligence in contrast to our natural intelligence. There is a portrayal of both our deep rooted and superficial changes to our behaviour brought by technological progression. The narrative of the story raises the question of machine learning in an anthropogenic era16 replacing or undermining the human. Even though Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is not the first and will probably not be the last novel to explore this issue, it is not until recently that concessions around Artificial Intelligence (AI) are taking place to direct the arising entity of ‘technological life’ into a lawfully substantiated direction. Recent European Committees are pushing for the drafting of regulations to govern the creation of AI and use of robots as a form of electronic personhood17 .

As growing number of areas in our daily lives becomes increasingly influenced by robotics, “this reality must be addressed to ensure that robots are and will remain in the service of humans with a robust legal framework”18. The proposed legal status for robots is said to become analogous to corporate personhood. This becomes extremely controversial with the granting of certain human rights to robots, whereby a created robot might realise an invention that could be patented. Hence, is the patent owned by the firm or the robot? If the robot is sold, could its intellectual property go with it or stay? Furthermore, is the obligatory implementation of a ‘kill switch’: the need to keep machines under human control largely before a plausible ‘intelligence explosion’ occurs19 , which is interestingly based on prolific science-fiction novelist Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics20 (figure 8). As substantial as it is to create such a framework for the growing proliferation of smart technology, one can seemingly notice the increasing agency that fiction and technology marks upon us as we develop it to ever newer limits that blur the

Ana Araujo in Smart, Andrew, Alvise Simondetti, Frederic Fol Leymarie, Karl Kjestrup-Johnson, Ana Araujo, and Tané Kinch. "The Smart City & Post-Anthropocene."

AAgora. Architectural Association, London. 31 Jan. 2017. Debate.

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Existentialism: is a term a allied to several 19th & 20th century works by philosophers with common belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject and not merely the thinking subject. It starts with the acting, feeling and living human individual.

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Alvise Simondetti at "The Smart City & Post-Anthropocene." AAgora. Architectural Association, London. 31 Jan. 2017. Debate.

Hern, Alex. "Give Robots 'personhood' Status, EU Committee Argues." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 12 Jan. 2017. Web. 23 Mar. 2017.

Pandey, Avaneesh. "Artificial Intelligence: EU To Debate Robots' Legal Rights After Committee Calls For Mandatory AI 'Kill Switches'." International Business Times. N.p., 13 Jan. 2017. Web. 23 Mar. 2017.

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Pandey, Avaneesh. "Artificial Intelligence: EU To Debate Robots' Legal Rights After Committee Calls For Mandatory AI 'Kill Switches'." International Business Times. N.p., 13 Jan. 2017. Web. 23 Mar. 2017.

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Isaac Asimov is considered as one of the fathers of hard science fiction. As a prolific writer and critic. He wrote the Robot series of 38 short stories and 5 novels between 1920-1922. His Three Laws on Robotics specifically and explicitly designed to prevent the kind of situation of robots where robots endanger humanity. Also knows as Asimov’s Laws, they have been appropriated in series of other science fiction movies as nowadays, a core principle to keep robots under full human control.

- The three laws go as:

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A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

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A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

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A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

Asimov, Isaac. Robot Visions. New York: Roc, 1991. Print.

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Erik Hoffmann

Histories & Theories

AA Third Year / Term II

boundary—and lend further acceptance to the pervasive question—of what it mans to be human in an era of extreme technological complexity. We inevitably are expecting our new companions by placing great hype and distress on how they will change our lives for the better or for worse (figures 11-16).

Figure 8: Cover of Robot Visions by Isaac Asimov

Figure 9: Cover of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick.

Figure 10: Poster of Ridley Scott’s science fiction film classic Bladerunner (1982) was a

Figures 11-13: On the left, book cover of Isaac Asimov’s series of nine fiction short-stories depicting a robot with a quasi-identical physicality of a human. In the centre, a 2004 film I, Robot directed by Alex Proyas is a screen suggested in Asimov’s collection with the same name. It enlist the core principles of human ‘helper’ robots living on the earth in the future, with their existence strictly conditioned under Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics (proposed explicitly in his Robot Visions) with as a neo-noir dystopian brand. On the right, development of CHARLIE H by roboticist Dennis Hong, one of many household helper robots developed by several firms around the globe. The ambition to one day live side by side with our mechanic cousins is already turning into a reality.

Figures 14-16: On the left, Star Trek: The Next Generation introduced the ‘replicator’, able to make matter out of energy or re-organise existing matter into new form. On the centre, the current wide commercialisation and accessibility to 3D printing today as a precise & economic additive manufacturing method has rapidly gained popularity and new conceptions on how to fabricate virtually anything from them is underway by various competing firms and research laboratories today. On the left, the 3D printing of a human (much like a robot) that similar to Philip K. Dick’s androids, are identical to human beings and are featured in a future Western-themed amusement park populated by android hosts starting to malfunction and killing the human visitors in TV series Westworld (adaptation of previous film franchise in the 1970s under the same name). It is hence interesting how successful sci-fi narratives are often recreated into desired technologies, and even further speculated over-time into films again.

They augment the narrative’s visual qualities along the with general increase of technological progression to make such fictions believable once again, precisely in the moment we live on, encouraging us to once again speculate into their future possibilities. It seems to never be a direct lineage of specific narrative development into one technology, but rather the re-interpretation of several narratives to imagine the creation of a new machine or even further, a new techno-social relationship.

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Erik Hoffmann

Histories & Theories

AA Third Year / Term II

In order to understand the apparent paradigm of the machine becoming increasingly human-like, it is necessary to consider the human obsession to recreate itself with enhanced qualities. The exhibition Robots, curated by Ben Russell in the Science Museum of London reveals the 500 year pursuit to make machine human by “exploring the ways robots mirror humanity and the insights they offer into our ambitions, desires and positions in a rapidly changing world”21. From state-of-the-art research labs and science fiction robots, down to 16th century automatons, humans have classified their own potentials and have speculated upon how they could be enhanced technologically: What if a machine had human capabilities, and vice versa? How do we make a tool a human and a human a tool? (figures 26-30). This comes from transforming our understanding of the human body in relation to the wider technological inventory of existing inventions. For instance, one can note the evident mimicry robotics takes from the human body and its sensory capacities (figures 17-19), nonetheless, its roots come from early mechanical clocks and cogs22—the idea of infinite rotation and the re-interpretation of body parts as functioning mechanical systems23 (figure 24–25). One can hence note the series of ‘humble’ technological precedents that lead to the physical realisation of these centenary ambitions. Robots are simply a machine typology, with their aspirations to become human in an abstracted sense, but the symbolism of such a technology is perhaps not as remarkable as the process behind abstracting other technological precedents and human qualities at a translatable intelligence/operative level (figures 20-23)—namely known as cybernetics24. For instance, it is seminal to point out that the beginnings of machine intelligence—to automatically operate under a set of rules and conditions—such as the Turing Machine was in fact deeply rooted from the Jacquard Loom, a weaving machine25 (figure 31). The Jacquard Loom was invented more than century after Liebniz26 invented the binary code and utilised it for the making of a textile machine.

Joseph Jacquard invented an automated steam-powered loom by guiding pieces of cardboard with lines of punched holes. Series of punched and non-punched holes gave the machine a reading to weave into a specific pattern, thus the agility to instantly change its style of production27. Such binary cards were simply sets of instructions for the loom, and at the same time the forerunner of future computer program28. Over a century later, Alan Turing uses this conception to argue that computers could do operations that would otherwise be too complex for humans to think of. His creation of the Turing Machine in 1936 was actually imaginary. It included the idea of a computer program called the ‘Turing Test’29 to determine if a machine could be called intelligent30. It functioned by simply imagining a long tape of numbers (1s & 0s) as long as it needed to be, and as it reached a ‘box’ under a certain programmed 21

Russell, Ben. Robots. 8 Feb. 2017. Exhibition. Science Museum, London.

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Russell, Ben. Robots. 8 Feb. 2017. Exhibition. Science Museum, London.

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Sterling, Bruce. Shaping Things. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2005. Print.

Cybernetics is the science of automatic control systems and communication in both living organisms and machines. Such study came to light as a multi-disciplinary study in the 20th century seeking to re-crate lifelike intelligence and work out the baffling workings of the mind via machinery. Experiments on cybernetics was a first in demonstrating how AI machines could be created to respond and interact with the surroundings.

Robots. 8 Feb. 2017. Exhibition. Science Museum, London.

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Jago, Mark. Turing Machine. Computerphile, 2014. Computer Science at the University of Nottingham, print.

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Gottfried Leibniz was a German mathematician who invented the code underpinning modern day computing: The Binary Code of 0s & 1s as language of operation. He never made a machine but his theory was acquainted with future inventors, notably the Turing Machine.

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Brown, André, Michael Knight, and Philip Beridge. Architectural Computing from Turing to 2000: Proceedings of the 17th Conference on Education in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe, 15-17 September 1999, Liverpool. Liverpool: Education in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe, 1999. Department of Architecture. University of Edinburgh. Web. 28

"BBC - IWonder - How the World Came to Be Run by Computer Code." BBC News. BBC, n.d. Web. 23 Mar. 2017.

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When the program of a computer can do what a Turing Machine can, it is said to be Turing Complete.

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Jago, Mark. Turing Machine. Computerphile, 2014. Computer Science at the University of Nottingham, print.

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Histories & Theories

condition, it would re-write the tape and stop once it was done running across it. Nowadays, a term for computer science, the Turing Machine is a lineage of devices, a system of rules, and states of transitions rather than a real machine (figure 32). As modest as it might sound, it did however pave the way for the study of formal computational models. All computerised machines today are ‘Turing Complete’ and no machine to the present can do more than it31. It is therefore remarkable to note the vertical relationship of technological progression as machines are developed and evolved from other inventions, and even sometimes from simple principles abstracted from our own forms of basic decision-making. The process of machine creation is hence profoundly narrative based and can be exploited to give a certain direction for technological progression in general as we explore core principles and methods to understand our capacities and the ones of machines.

Robots operating like humans [f. 17-19]

Figures 18: With a plastic skeleton structure similar to the human, these series of robots are designed to move like a human with the use of tensile ropes operating as tendons with motors, actuating is limbs as muscles.

Often imaging robots as clunky due to their early versions, roboticist Rob Knight invented a machine able to perform movements highly anthropomorphic. It features an XBOX Kinect for ‘seeing’ its environment and can be operated by a video game console controller. Rob’s Open Source

Figures 19: Prototype of robotic arm actuated by the use of pneumatic ‘muscles’. Each motion is realised by the association of several pneumatic arm muscles working in conjunction, as in the human body. Upon inflation, the muscles contract, and relax upon deflation. David Buckley Shadow Robot Company, 2001

Android (ROSA), 2010-2016

Robots working with humans [f. 20-23]

Figure 17: Collection of 500 years of Robots, exhibition, Science Museum, London, 2017. Above, robot responding to posterior visitor as their face is captured on the robot’s face by a camera, and displayed on a visible screen on the robot’s chest. Rob’s Open Source Android (ROSA), 2010-2016

Figures 20: The first two-armed robot certified to be able to work with humans. It assembles medical, electric and other small devices whilst able to work across the table from a person, unlike larger powerful robots able to cause serous harm.

YuMi IRB 14000 - ABB Ltd, Switzerland, 2015

Figures 21: A robotic receptionist to greet visitors. It comprises of facial communication traits such as eyelashes, lips and eyes. As human communication occurs largely through body language, this creation reveals how to interact with us. Making robots able to express their needs like humans, it becomes easier for us to use.

Inkha - Matthew Walker & Peter S. Longyear,

Figures 23: Kasper was created as a humanoid for children with autism spectrum condition. They can find difficulties in understanding other’s facial expressions or interpret their behaviour.

The robot performs as social interface to engage children in games of social communication and interaction with real people. As children play with Kasper, they increase they confidence to interact with others.

Kasper [latest model] University of Herdfordshire, UK, 2005-2016

31 31

Jago, Mark. Turing Machine. Computerphile, 2014. Computer Science at the University of Nottingham, print.

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Erik Hoffmann

Histories & Theories

AA Third Year / Term II

Figures 24-25: Some of the earliest mechanical devices were clocks commissioned by churches and monasteries. These clocks on display in the exhibition come from the 17th century. Ownership of one suggested wealth, status, and an interest in science through the mechanical workings of the universe. These early devices allowed us to think in a synchronic way; “through machines: human conception of time is generated by instrumentation, not philosophy” - Bruce Sterling, Shaping Things, 2005. We measure the world though devices such as: telescopes, clocks, radio-carbon daters, spectrometers etc. and today sensors not only merely measure qualities, but also change. Robots. Exhibition. Science Museum, London, 2017.

Figure 26: Armourers in Europe (1500-1700 A.C.) were the earliest to craft complete suits of armour enabling the movement of the body under them, whilst also creating early artificial prosthetics replacing lost limbs in battle.

Robots. Exhibition. Science Museum, London, 2017.

Figure 27: Advanced full-body prosthetics—otherwise known as exoskeletons—are already on sale at $40,000 for the disabled as a custom-fit alternative than a wheelchair, equipped with battery packs of up to 8 hours. SuitX’s Phoenix exoskeleton, 2016

Figure 29: James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) is a science-fiction film widely acclaimed upon its release featuring pronounced visual effects, acting and directing. The film features series of future human technologies such as sizeable warfare exoskeletons granting the humans ability to rule over the ferocious creatures and native inhabitants of planet Pandora. It illustrates the human’s capacity to extend its physical capacities through technologies that combine and react directly with the subject user’s decisions and reaction in real-time.

Figure 28: Featured in world news: Wayan Sumardana, dubbed ‘Iron Man’ or the ‘Cyborg of Nyuh Tebel’ by the Balinese local press as he built himself a facilitator bionic arm out of scrap materials after loosing response to his left arm. He argues to control the machine with his mind, utilising it to continue his work as a welder. BBC, 2016

Figure 30: Cover of super hero Iron Man: The Invincible in his advanced exoskeletal suit. As shown above with Mr. Sumardana, the wide range of fictions seem to have a core role of referencing technological typologies to the greater public.

Marvel comics, 1968

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Histories & Theories

Figure 31: The Jacquard Loom: the automated loom transforming the 19th century textile industry and becoming the inspiration for future tabulating and calculating machines. Developed by French silk-weaver, Joseph-Marie Jacquard (1752-1834), it used punch cards to control its weaving operation.

Figure 32: The principles behind the Turing Machine, consisting of a ‘tape’ and ‘head’ running across it and re-writting it. The table of instructions might be on another ‘read only’ tape, or perhaps on punch cards. Normally, a ‘finite state machine’ is the model for the operations table.

Figure 33: A notable use of the Turing Machine was to decipher the Enigma Machine in World War II with the creation of Bombe, a decoding machine.

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AA Third Year / Term II

Erik Hoffmann

Histories & Theories

AA Third Year / Term II

This can be seen to an extend in Patrick Tresset's series Etudes Humaines, a work exploring the extent to which the machine and digital art can be part of our increasing technological progression by prototyping sequences of machines, which in turn prototypes our own ambitions32 . What does machine making tell us about ourselves and our values? The project further blurs the role of the machine and the artist in the creative process using autonomous computational systems in theatrical installations featuring the human as an object of curiosity for the machine. The human is sat in front of a classroom desk featuring Paul, a live drawing machine (figures 34-35) and as the subject’s portrait is draw behaviourally by the observing machine in a Vanitas style33, that is “intended to tell us stories of humanity,” it allegorises what has been called the post-human condition: “man’s face finally washed out by the ocean, not recognisable anymore as an important figure of knowledge or merely one of its tropes.”34 Thus not only is the robot narrated as an object studying the human and recording its history, but it illustrates a human condition to reach eternal life; to leave traces for successors to see35. Similar to a life-drawing class: the human is without personality and is simply an object of study. The output of the drawing machine is apparent, but its process is hidden in the strokes it outputs from its real-time observation. In order to teach a machine to draw, the AIKON-II36 project under the skin of the technology investigates 30’000 years of methods humans have been using to draw. How does an artist chose which lines to draw for an immediately recognisable style/manner and spontaneously throws lines on paper to be aesthetically pleasing and understandable? This requires understanding of human behaviour in the activity of drawing prior to the teaching of the machine. We learn about ourselves in the machine making process37 . Such levels of understanding explore human cognitive activity and reasoning and are translated as computer visions, computational hardware, and AI to permit the simulation of cognitive and perceptual processes38 (figure 36). The paradigm of the machine increasingly becoming anthropomorphic in this instance is steadily narrative based, whilst exposing a process of self-discovery on our own behaviours, prior to the making of a machine which will eventually technologically translate the explored human quality artificially.

Consequently, it is apparent that formulating a history of the human along an inventory of technological precedents is necessary for understanding how profoundly we change machines, and how machines account us.

32

33

Latham, William, Tanaka, Atau. Fol Leymarie, Frederic. Creative Machine. 7 Nov. 2014. Exhibition. Goldsmiths University, London.

Vanitas is a still life painting style of 17th century Dutch genre containing symbols of death or change as a reminder of their inevitability.

34

“Etudes Humaines." Patrick Tresset Web. 23 Mar. 2017.

35

Latham, William, Tanaka, Atau. Fol Leymarie, Frederic. Creative Machine. 7 Nov. 2014. Exhibition. Goldsmiths University, London.

36

Project directed by Goldmsiths univerisity by Frederic For Leymarie in 2014.

37

Frederic Fol Leymarie at "The Smart City & Post-Anthropocene." AAgora. Architectural Association, London. 31 Jan. 2017. Debate.

38

Latham, William, Tanaka, Atau. Fol Leymarie, Frederic. Creative Machine. 7 Nov. 2014. Exhibition. Goldsmiths University, London.

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Erik Hoffmann

Histories & Theories

AA Third Year / Term II

Figures 34-35: Paul, the drawing machine, using the human as an object of curiosity and drawing its portrait in a morbid style (Vanitas), whilst also drawing in Patrick Tresset’s style not as a pastiche, but as a re-interpretation of drawing informed by the qualities of the robot, ‘dubbed its drawing behaviour’. The machine is equipped with low-resolution web-cams looking up at the subject, and down at the paper as it draws lines, highly similar to a human’s mode of drawing.

Figure 36: AIKON-II project process diagram featuring the feed-back loop developed from our own understanding of how humans naturally draw and translated as a computational sequence.

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Erik Hoffmann

Histories & Theories

AA Third Year / Term II

Profound interest in the effects that machines have on us was largely studied in Siegfried Giedion’s Mechanisation Takes Command (1948), a near-encyclopaedia of 700 pages and over 500 images of mechanisation technology, work and life. More precisely, Giedion saw a study on “mechanisation, like other objects, tools and processes, when properly studied can reveal fundamental attitudes to the world”39 and key changes in architecture and design40. He attempted to organise a narrative that explained and gave direction to contemporary architecture. Acclaimed for his attention to technical detail and ostentatious claims of the zeitgeist—in other words the defining tenor evident by the present beliefs and ideas of a particular time period—Giedion marks moments in his volume dedicating 25 pages on the development of the lock into an industrially produced mechanism fundamental to the security of fortunes in finance and banking of the 19th century (figures 37-40), to the part of the bathroom and the development of the industrially manufactured tub in the normative dimensions of bathrooms of American homes41 (figures 41-42). Giedion shifts between scales of machines and production to reveal mechanisation as a field of investigation by writing the stories of objects that have played a substantial role in the theorisation of architecture, yet without directly referencing modern architectural practice.

Rather he seeks for the historical continuity of the past and present and reveals the guiding trends of a period by placing technological trajectories greater than the individual, to connect the precise instances to explain the general42 . He coins this as Anonymous History, arguing for the self-effacing functions of mechanisation due to its existence and history as a process. This process entangles with our lives and in hand we develop a form to ‘neutralise it’—it becomes part of who we are and what we become by obscuring the history of things. For example, Giedion narrates the ‘Murder Machinery’ present in slaughterhouses as the mechanisation of death that begins to blur the line between the ending of biological life and the operation of the machine as “death cries and mechanical noises are almost impossible to disentangle” (figures 43-45). Importantly, the role of his discussion seems not to regard this condition sentimentally, but rather reveal the requisite condition of mechanising death on human experience:

“What is truly startling in this mass transition from life to death is the complete neutrality of the act. One does not experience, one does not feel; one merely observes. [...] How far the question is justified we do not know, nevertheless it may be asked: Has this neutrality toward death had any further effect upon us? This broader influence does not have to appear in the land that evolved mechanised killing, or even at the time the methods came about. This neutrality toward death may be lodged deep in the roots of our time. It did not bare itself on a large scale until the War, when whole populations, as defenceless as the animals hooked head downwards on the traveling chain, were obliterated with trained neutrality”.

Therefore pointing to the fact that it is not merely the encounter of biological life with mechanised slaughter, but rather the indifference to this destruction that mechanisation has imposed on us. “History on this, becomes a tool for teaching us something about our contemporary lives by showing the historical development of a condition that wants to hide itself once developed”.43 Henceforth, it is apparent from Giedion’s view that the divide between the human and the machine is one of imposed conditions by

39

Giedion, Siegfried. Mechanisation Takes Command: A Contribution. to Anonymous History. New York: Oxford U Pr., 1970. Print.

40

Bryan E. Norwood, Siegfried Giedion Mechanisation Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2013

41

Series of objects in Giedion, Siegfried. Mechanisation Takes Command: A Contr. to Anonymous History. New York: Oxford U Pr., 1970. Print.

42

Bryan E. Norwood, Siegfried Giedion Mechanisation Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2013

43 43

Giedion, Siegfried. Mechanisation Takes Command: A Contribution. to Anonymous History. New York: Oxford U Pr., 1970. Print.

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Erik Hoffmann

Histories & Theories

AA Third Year / Term II

technologies that in turn change us and make us absorb the progression. He goes on to argue that the construction of continuity of anonymous histories lie in the vertical typologies rather than the horizontal sequential progression of a single technology44 , thus the making of a techno-social relationship is far more entwined with the narratives that have brought the vertical association together than on the specific inventions themselves.

Figure 37: Joseph Bramah’s Bank Lock [1844] (left). Relationship between the bank locks of 18th century and Elder Yale’s door lock (right) solutions for mechanised door lock. That is the implementation of one common spring to raise the whole number of sliders.

Figure 38: Yale’s lock shown to be independent of the door’s thickness as the key no longer needs to be extended through the door (1889).

Figure 39: Linus Yale: Lock for post-office boxes. The company saw the advantage of a key mechanisms independent of the bolt, a simple arm operates to lock the face.

Figure 40: Linus Yale JR: The Magic Infallible Bank Lock. The key is reduced to a compact minimum to completely fill the keyhole and keyhole bits where carried to remote part of the lock.

Figure 41: One room apartment with kitchen and batch back to back with the shared wall carrying fixtures for both. Seventh Avenue, New York.

Sketch by Florence Schust

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Figure 42: The American Compact Bathroom with a recessed hub as before the one-piece double shelled tub could be mass produced (1915)

Bryan E. Norwood, Siegfried Giedion Mechanisation Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2013

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Erik Hoffmann

Histories & Theories

Figure 43: The Pig-Scraping Machine (1900). The endless chain drags the pic under a series of small knives on an adjustable spring to fit around the shape of the pig with little eort.

Figure 44: The Hog-Cleaning Machine (1864). Flexibility of rubber and steel used to operate on small organic bodies mechanically. [patented 1864]

Figure 45: The Instrument to Extract Hair from Skins (1837). ‘One of the jaws is designed to supply the place and oďŹƒce of the thumb as used in extracting hairs with the common knife, and is therefore covered or cushioned on the inside with leather. [patented 1837]

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AA Third Year / Term II

Erik Hoffmann

Histories & Theories

AA Third Year / Term II

The conception of what it means to be human in an era of incomprehensible technological complexity is of utmost importance when exploring the ways in which technologies have shaped human experience, especially along narratives that give direction to technology in general. Series of tools for the development of technologies such as the ability to speculate and narrate seem to play a substantial role in the fulfilling of imagined fictions and proposing a possible techno-social relationship that humans might encounter with an imagined technology. It is therefore about the human reaction to technological change and “it is mentally easier to divide humans and objects than to understand them as a comprehensive set and interdependent system: people are alive, objects are inert, people can think, objects just lie there’’ but effective intervention “takes place not in the human, not in the object, but in the realm of the technosocial”45 . Thus, the state of transience might be the most engaging human condition, able to absorb new technological experiences and compost the old ones46 . As much as technological ingenuity increases, our understanding of ourselves and the translation of personhood to object will increase, consequentially, the process of technological development will become increasingly entwined in our everyday lives. We might find our ambitions to dominate and be the masters our destiny in a circumstance profoundly dependent on technology. It becomes apparent that we are entering the paradox of the cyborg: “just as a cyborg which cannot exist without technological support at all times, it claims not to be a prisoner of it.”47

45

Sterling, Bruce. Shaping Things. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2005. Print.

46

Kelly, Kevin. What Technology Wants. New York: Viking, 2010. Print.

47

Sterling, Bruce. Shaping Things. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2005. Print.

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Erik Hoffmann

Histories & Theories

AA Third Year / Term II

Bibliography Allenby, Braden R and Daniel R Sarewitz. The Techno-Human Condition. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2011. Print.

Asimov, Isaac. Robot Visions. New York: Roc, 1991. Print.

"BBC - IWonder - How the World Came to Be Run by Computer Code." BBC News. BBC, n.d. Web. 23 Mar. 2017 Bryan E. Norwood, Siegfried Giedion Mechanisation Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2013.

Brown, AndrĂŠ, Michael Knight, and Philip Beridge. Architectural Computing from Turing to 2000: Proceedings of the 17th Conference on Education in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe, 15-17 September 1999, Liverpool.

Liverpool: Education in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe, 1999. Department of Architecture. University of Edinburgh. Web. Patrick Tresset, “Etudes Humaines." Web. 23 Mar. 2017.

Giedion, Sigfried. Mechanisation Takes Command: A Contribution. to Anonymous History. New York: Oxford U Pr., 1970. Print.

Hern, Alex. "Give Robots 'personhood' Status, EU Committee Argues." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 12 Jan. 2017. Web. 23 Mar. 2017.

Jago, Mark. Turing Machine. Computerphile, 2014. Computer Science at the University of Nottingham, print.

Kelly, Kevin. What Technology Wants. New York: Viking, 2010. Print.

Latham, William, Tanaka, Atau. Fol Leymarie, Frederic. Creative Machine. 7 Nov. 2014. Exhibition. Goldsmiths University, London.

Mattern, Friedemann; Floerkemeier, Christian. "From the Internet of Computers to the Internet of Things" (PDF). ETH Zurich. Retrieved 23 October 2016.

Nieuwdorp, E. "The pervasive discourse". Computers in Entertainment, 2007. pdf Pandey, Avaneesh. "Artificial Intelligence: EU To Debate Robots' Legal Rights After Committee Calls For Mandatory AI 'Kill Switches'." International Business Times. N.p., 13 Jan. 2017. Web. 23 Mar. 2017.

Picon, Antoine. Smart Cities A Spatialised Intelligence - AD Primer. Erscheinungsort Nicht Ermittelbar: Wiley, 2015. Print.

Russell, Ben. Robots. 8 Feb. 2017. Exhibition. Science Museum, London.

Sterling, Bruce. Shaping Things. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2005. Print.

The Smart City & Post-Anthropocene. AAgora. Architectural Association, London. 31 Jan. 2017. Debate.

Weiser, Mark, Ubiquitous Computer, Scientific American. Life Sciences for the 21st Century. 1991 Web.

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