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Scholarly Research

[CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS] ”Automation Takes Command”

Kiel Moe
AUTOMATION_TAKES_COMMAND.pdf
Published: ACSA National Conference Proceedings 2006 03/12/2006

Technology is social before it is technical. Any technical element is first an expression of an immaterial need or desire and only later becomes material and technical. Thus, it is a primary presumption of this paper that any technology is principally undetermined until its broader historic, economic, social, intellectual, and cultural assembly establishes a more coherent view. In order to project effective theories, techniques and technologies in architecture, it is vital to substantiate the agencies that shape technical practices.
The case of digital fabrication techniques of Numerical Control (NC) is particularly illustrative of this confluence of the social and the technical. Rather than ‘new,’ this technology is the result of choices made in a multitude of adjacent but interdependent technical practices over time. Technologies such as NC unfold in long phases of social preparation, mental habits, and technical development. It is crucial to articulate, for instance, the habits of mind of a particular historical period that swerve the course of technical development of a technology. In this view, it is hubristic to dissociate digital fabrication from the conditions that prepared and developed it.
This paper will present the multifaceted assemblies that presuppose and engender NC technologies. By looking more deeply at a technical practice of today, the aim of this paper is to temper technical practices with a deeper view of technology. Two robust contemporary projects will illustrate a deeper understanding of new technology and its potential effects that exceed the uncritical infatuation with, and perpetual rush towards, new technologies.

Research Topics:

• Market-Oriented Design Innovation