Homework #10

The lord of the machine: big data as divination.

The relationship between the contemporary man and machine could be described as a mutual slavery. The necessity to solve complexities built up in many stratification and multi disciplines application, has brought the construction of places, virtual or real, where data are collected and organized outside human brain. So machines works as pure slaves that only works for storage with a little progressive performance. It seems that men memory and calculation possibilities are too narrow confronting the contemporary challenges: he needs to concentrate in something else, conceptualizing and not memorizing. In this relationship men, abusing the capacity of the machines have forgotten the creative construction of knowledge, working as an assembler of copy and paste information, without concerning the capability of shifting the boundaries of the fields of knowledge.

So how man and machines are collaborating in the contemporary? They are by now fully separated regarding each other as a mystery for both parties (which are the manners machines carry on calculation? few people know it. Which is human nature? Machines can only explain part of the problem). And mystery advocates divination, and not knowledge. So integration could be a way, where machines are plugs-in and extend human power. So mystery disappear and remains a natural progress, moving humans in his deeper dream: the Nietzsche Superhuman.

Homework #9

“Soul Mountain” reflects so many aspects of nature that we can say that it’s the real machine that recreate the people imagination and combine in itself the research of human being. But it’s not artificial.

Despite this reflection I have selected a passage when a contemporary machine, an X-ray machine, that revealing the no presence of cancer in the protagonist give him the possibility of talking about fate. In this way it became a real protagonist, changing with its response the whole plot, obliging him to run away and found himself somewhere else, transforming its complete artificial information a real consequence. Like an antagonist, like an obstacle against witch it’s impossible to compete.

He looked at the X-ray and threw up both of his arms in grand theatrical style.

“Isn’t this wonderful?”

“Do I still have to have that done?” I was asking about the final Xray.

“Still have to have what done?” he berated me, he saved people’s lives and had this sort of authority. He then got me to stand in front of an X-ray machine with a projector screen and told me to take a deep breath, breathe out, turn around, turn to the left, turn to the right.

“You can see it for yourself,” he said, pointing to the screen. “Have a look, have a look.”

Actually I didn’t seen anything clearly, my brain was like a great blob of paste and the only thing I saw on the screen was a blurry rib cage.

“There’s nothing there, is there?” he loudly berated me as if I were deliberately being a nuisance.

“But then how can those other X-rays be explained?” I couldn’t stop myself asking.

“If there’s nothing there, there’s nothing there, it’s just vanished. How can it be explained? Colds and lung inflammation can cause a shadow and when you get better, the shadow disappears.”

But I hadn’t asked him about a person’s state of mind. Could that cause a shadow?

“Go and live properly, young man.” He swivelled his chair around, dismissing me.

He was right, I had won a new lease of life, I was younger than a new-born baby.

Grazie Robot!

Chi non si è perso ieri sera Automata su Sky Cinema?? Passi da gigante nella tipica dicotomia uomo-macchina...bah...

Homework #8

When a coffee machine is brutally has Far-West reminiscences. Too much of them can kill you! And of course we continue to remember that machines kill. Forgetting that they are man made. So humans kill.

Homework #7

If I could quote the passages talking about rivers and trees... so the machine in "Soul Mountain" reveals the human brutality over nature, the political history that leaves traces.

“Afterwards when she ran out of ammunition, she was caught, stripped, and a soldier fired a magazine of bullets from his submachine gun into her vagina.” (the ranger of Heiwan River talking about his period during the army).

“However waterwheels aren’t used today and the irrigation machines are driven by electricity, so such sights are no longer to be seen.” (the protagonist talking about the natural environment of South-China around the city of Jiangling).

“People were tied with wire at the wrists in groups of three and forced into the river by spraying them with machine gun fire: if one was hit all three fell.” (the chief officer of one boat describing the Cultural Revolution period to the protagonist while smoking)

“He saw her before she changed to go into the machine room and, after praising it, said she should only wear clothes she had designed herself. A couple of days later he got two tickets for a fashion show and invited her to go with him.” (Narrating to the protagonist the sad story of a young woman of one village, probably fictional).

Homework #0

Presentando la montagna dell'anima incontro prima ancora della macchina la ricerca smisurata dell'io nel paesaggio cinese che mi sta accompagnando nella ricerca di dottorato. Dove il mistero di ciò che rimane fuori dalle grandi città si mescola alla tragedia delle storie che si annidano nella foresta, dal lascito delle barbarie dell'uomo, alla delusione dei miseri alla superstizione che abita il sacro (e il profano). La montagna dell'anima è prima di tutto un"io" e un "tu", dove i nomi si perdono come la verità del mondo razionale. Un assaggio fondamentale per chi lascia l'Europa e cerca di relazionarsi con una cultura tanto diversa, dovendosi prima abbandonare e ricostruirsi pezzo pezzo. Senza timori. Senza pregiudizi. Questo forse accade nel lungo flusso di coscienza che presenta Gao.

HOMEWORK #6

Se l'oggetto di studio non è una macchina dell'ingegneria ma lo studio delle complesse pratiche che regolano lo sviluppo della città cinese, forse l'aspetto più tracotante è quello della macchina stessa della trasformazione, una macchina primordiale che nel suo affinamento ha sempre e solo più alleggerito la sfida che divide l'uomo e le barriere naturali: la macchina per movimentare le terre.
La ruspa è già una sottocategoria ben specifica. La tassonomia perciò parte dal principio di come smuovere il terreno per poi suddividersi in diverse categorie in funzione dell'obiettivo ricercato: le applicazioni (spostare, scavare, trasportare), la tipologia di movimentazione derivata da altre macchine ben note (su ruota, su binario, galleggiante, su cingoli) e quale sia l'altitudine di applicazione (in elevato, accidentale o addirittura sottoterra). Lit tentativo è quello di dimostrare che questa sfida tra l'uomo e l'elemento naturale per eccellenza ha da sempre alimentato la costruzione di altre macchine più performanti e che si influenzano mutualmente.