CS213 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Image Editing, Distributed Computing, Cultural Determinism
Week Seven - Critical Engagements, Repopulating with Non-Human Actors:
Causality Review:
1. Photoshop is a raster-based image editor that is the product of many years of
development. Its ability to seamlessly edit images has resulted in a general loss of faith
in the photographic image. (simple mechanic causality)
2. Photoshop is a raster-based image edited that is the product of many years of
development. Its ability to seamlessly edit images allows users dot either improve or
distort photographic images but the tendency to “photoshop” has resulted in a general
loss of faith in the photographic image. (symptomatic causality because the results are
not concrete, symptom of a cultural practice)
3. If you want to understand why, when it comes to photographic images, the old adage
‘seeing is believing’ no longer holds true, you need to consider how digital image
editing became so pervasive with the emergence of digital culture and the widespread
availability of computer devices. (soft determinism, digital culture that needs digital
devices, has direct consequences of effects)
- distributed system of agency, agency works within a system of connectors, rather than
particular actors and agents
From Causality to Agency:
- Example of Wise’ Desk
- Two viewpoints:
• Technological determinism
• Cultural determinism
- Either way, unable to see how the elements of the desk are ordered, arranged and operate
together
- In either case, one is looking through the lens of “mechanical” causality, have to get away
from idea of individual actors
Question:
- What cannot be addressed when we are transfixed by this mechanical causality lens?
- The broader network of relations, we cannot see all actors, only principle stars
- What we find in fact is there are no principle stars
- Actions and phenomena are not the product of a direct intervention of a single cause
- Starling birds example, emerging behaviour, no cause,
Three Simple Steering Behaviours:
- Boids Artificial Flock (Separation, Alignment and Cohesion)
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Our new assumptions:
- Technology is always embedded in the context of its development and use, not
autonomous
- Culture is made up of interconnections not simply parts
- Technologies arise in these connections and join with them and are effective with them
- Example: toaster doesn’t toast bread because you put bread in it, who cleans it, who
makes sure theres bread in the house to make toast, who asks for the toast, etc (network
of connections)
Expressive vs Articulation and Assemblage:
- Expressive, one force or connection is dominant and guides the form taken by others
- Articulation, no force dominates but rather emerges through the interaction of the
interconnections
- Mechanical vs Non-mechanical: commercial of girl getting in car for blind date
Mechanical:
- Newtonian Model
- “To every action there is an equal but opposite reaction” Sir Isaac Newton
- “Sorry, I ate some raw broccoli at lunch and it gave me gas”
Non-Mechanical:
- Thinking in terms of systems
- Resultants vs emergents
- “Every resultant is either a sum or a difference of the co-operant forces… it is otherwise
with emergents, when there is a co-operation of things of unlike kinds. The emergent is
unlike its components insofar as these are incommensurable, and it cannot be reduced to
their sum or their difference”. G.H. Lets
- It was the emergent outcome, literally, of the intersection of different systems
- Example: Digestive System, Food System (what makes the produce available), factory
system, olfactory system/mind, thinking she was getting into a car by herself then later
realized there were people in the back seat
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Week seven - critical engagements, repopulating with non-human actors: development. Its ability to seamlessly edit images has resulted in a general loss of faith in the photographic image. (simple mechanic causality) Photoshop is a raster-based image editor that is the product of many years of. Photoshop is a raster-based image edited that is the product of many years of. If you want to understand why, when it comes to photographic images, the old adage. Seeing is believing" no longer holds true, you need to consider how digital image development. Distributed system of agency, agency works within a system of connectors, rather than particular actors and agents. Two viewpoints: technological determinism, cultural determinism. Either way, unable to see how the elements of the desk are ordered, arranged and operate together. In either case, one is looking through the lens of mechanical causality, have to get away from idea of individual actors.
