Media/Interface

Architecture 209X, Spring 2007

Words and Cities: The rhetoric and meaning of statistically improbable phrases

Nicholas De Monchaux

Qing Wang

Media/Interface

It is interesting that both Man-Computer Symbiosis and Laws of Media treat machine/computer/tool/weapon/the extension of our human being as another independent individual. By contrast with the common senses which human being invented those tools and they serve us, both of two readings emphasize on the independence and interaction of the interrelationship. In Licklider’s article, he interpreted the current problems of computation devices and the reasons they need be shifted. The computers were designed to solve the problems by pre-determined programs or formulas. They are used to do the tedious repetitive works for people who normally are considered low efficient in that kind work. All of those performances of computers rely on human-designed pre-determined program and formulas. Computers only do what you designed in advance. They execute only one or few commands every time but in an extremely fast speed. They can find the answer of a set question much faster than human brain. However, the problem is sometimes that it is harder to find the question rather than the answer. Once computers can participate into the question-finding jobs, the process of solving a problem will be accelerated dramatically. On the contrary of optimistic thinking of Licklider’s article, Laws of Media starts with a much shadowy tones about the influence of media. It implies that the inventions of tools make people distrust and isolated psychologically. Artificial weapons as one of human body’s extension make people cruder. The more advance the weapon is, the less sympathetic people are. The analogical influence happens on the relationship between people and media. The detachment of people and physical reality enhances the deconstruction of social identity. “Radical changes of identity, happening suddenly and in very brief intervals of time, have proved more deadly and destructive of human values than wars fought with hardware weapons.” Based on that provocative narrative, artists (or architects?) have been described as the counter-force to resist the negative impact from media. “Without the artist’s intervention man merely adapts to his technologies and become their servo-mechanism. …the role of art is to liberate man from the robot status imposed by adjusting to technologies.” It recalled me some familiar ideas that art should save the society when the Germany National Museum was commissioned to design. Instead of the fetish of art or artist, I more believe that this counter-force is derived from the deepest part of our subconsciousness. The art is the materialized subconsciousness. The artist is the person who executes it.