The Machine

I have a question to ask about the machine, but first let me set up the background.  Everyone these days seems so annoyed at the machine.  "Organic" is all the rage: "organic" leadership structures, "organic" food (which somehow implies the opposite of "mechanical" food, lol, I guess), "organic" architecture (the famous Frank Lloyd Wright, whose buildings were actually quite mechanical, btw), "organic" church services, and a bunch more "organic" stuff that I'm probably forgetting at the moment.  The point is, everyone seems to love "organic."  And on top of that everyone seems to have a deep mistrust and even hate for the machine.  There's a famous band called "Rage Against The Machine", for goodness sakes!  But I have a sneaking suspicion that this is often at least somewhat of a knee-jerk reflex against a misunderstood presence and history of the machine in our society.

Since I'm an architect, architecture is the best way for me to approach the topic.  It is what I know.  I don't think the problem is with the machine itself (although I think at first if most people heard me say that, they would want to disagree).  I think the problem is that our buildings these days actually look like machines (and in reality actually ARE like machines)!!  They don't look like "edifications"; they don't look like they've been built up.  Instead they look like they've been dropped in by aliens from outer space and left to rot here among us lowly earthlings.  They don't leave us feeling edified.  They leave us feeling more like tools (for the machine, of course :)  And of course, we don't like that.  I myself would prefer not to feel like a tool.

So let me explain a bit of the history of buildings in relationship to machines, of which many of us are probably unaware.  As a matter of pervasive general practice, machines were how the building was built up.  You might respond by saying, "Well OK, but isn't that how it is today?"  Well, yes, but with key differences.  The difference is that prior to modernity the end product of the building itself was not considered to be a mechanical object in space.  The building itself, the end product, was meant and considered to be an edification and interaction of the four elements (earth, air, fire, water).  The machines were part of the kind of revered hidden inner workings of the cosmos that held things together. 

In Greek theater, for example, when a god (seldomly) appeared on stage, it was lowered down from above by machine.  Alberti, the Renaissance painter, architect and writer who wrote the second treatise in the history of Western society on architecture, covered "Machines" as a subset of his section on "Ornament."  Now to understand the meaning of such a move, we have to understand what "Ornament" meant to Alberti.  Ornament was not what "decoration" is to us.  It was not a kind of personalization of a previously alien and common "space" through our own nic-naks or memorabilia.  "Ornament" for Alberti was the visible appearance out in the open of how the building (and so also the people viewing it) was "elevated" (which in his case has sacred connotations, like a piece of edifying sacred choral music by Robert Shaw).

Alberti, being a Renaissance man, was particularly Romanized.  So his buildings had a lot to do with the relationship between the "fundaments" (down below) and the "firmanents" (the heavens, which moved more mechanically).  So for him if a building was built up from the fundaments, then the machines were what allowed the building to be a kind of iconic joint between earth and heaven!  So of course machines for him didn't have the negative connotation they have for us; and, in fact he took great care and concern writing about them in great detail in his treatise (in the section on "ornament"). 

But again I think it is important to remember that key difference I mentioned before.  Alberti's buildings didn't actually look like machines.  For him that would have been a perverse inversion of the hierarchical orders of the cosmos.  Our buildings today - in general - actually do look like machines.  Sometimes there's little difference between the crane used to build the building and the building itself. 

Society itself has even come to be thought of as a kind of machine.  "The social sciences", which by their very nature assume that society works in accordance with predictable laws of nature like a machine, have come to pervade our idea of self.  Not having the foggiest idea who Comte is, I think maybe we subconsciously think of ourselves as machines, due at least partially to the influence of very common studies done with the same assumptions that Comte held about "society", which we come into contact with on at least a daily basis. But then no one seems to give the machine that much thought, except to say that they don't like it and would rather have all things "organic."

So then my question is as follows: considering the history of the machine in our society - which seems to say that the problem isn't with the machine itself but with the fact that things actually appear and are mechanical out in the open public (causing a strange kind of perverse obscenity based on the alien-like feel of our buildings, kind of like what it would be like for a man to see another man's wife naked, who he doesn't even know) - is it still a worthwhile concern?  Should we still be concerned with "organic" leadership structures and "mechanical" or "ritualistic" church services (as if "mechanical" and "ritualistic" really have anything to do with each other!!)?  If so, then why?  And, if not, then how should the discussion go?  One thought I might offer in that direction might be to clarify the meaning of "ritual" and "leadership".  Interestingly, I think the key for both might be "edification" of the human soul!!  Speaking of the perverse inversion it is for the building itself to actually appear as a machine, is the soul really "the ghost in the machine"?

Peace!

Jason

Comments

[Geoff Holsclaw]

jason,

as always you've gotten to the heart of the issue from the direction of architecture. 

In our church, and I hope Dave Fitch is listening, we are having continuous dialogue about how to balance being 'organic' and being 'organized' or having an 'organizational structure.'  For many being, organized or even being an organization smacks of everything wrong with the modern church (hierarchy, bureaucracy, corporate, etc.) and that the 'organic' church is the answer (non-hierarchical, 'authentic', local, unorganized, spontaneous, etc.).  These types of conversation are always going on in the emerging church. 

But as you mentioned, organization should be in service to the organism (and of course organisms are very organized entities) just as machines are in the service of building edifices for edification.  But the purpose of a building is for the dwelling of man between earth and heaven (sorry if i've slipped into my heideggarian mode), not merely to function mechanistic.  The charge against 'organizing' within the church usually come from a mega-church critique that these churches merely organize to perpetuate themselves rather than witness to the kingdom, and that organization alway destroys rather than fosters community. 

The question is, how can communal organization edify organic community?
Is there a way beyond these polarizations?

[David]

Excellent angle! The thought came to me towards the end: is THIS the realized fear of Orwell's 1984 except instead of Big Brother it's the Big Machine - we were encouraged by Orwell to be prepared to fight/prevent Humans from becoming Big Brother, but not machines.

On a different slant, one having to do with my vocation, we have found (in social sciences and elsewhere) that some people *prefer* the machine because they tend to think in terms of Utility. Perhaps these people feel more at-home in the machine? Perhaps this is one of those cases where specific "personality traits" seem to map over sweeping periods of time/place?

So getting to your actual question: might it be that "the machine" we abhor (for it turns us into the ghost) is the organizational model(es) we have in the "business realm" (this is a Western-specific idea)? Someone's "vision", essentially, turns me into a tool, a robot, for the carrying-out of said vision. Is it that the leadership and/or the ritual is for someone else's machine (vision)?
- Does this then mean that "organic" is another way of saying, "This has to include MY wishes, too!"? Is it a selfish plea? Or is it a healthy-and-selfish plea?

Thanks for the post, I'll be thinking about it for a while.

David

[Jason Hesiak]

Geoff,

One difficulty for DF...I'm sure...is that eveyone these days has expectations for the church to run based on the state's democratic model. Something I didn't mention in the post...and that I don't think Heidegger got into in "Building, Dwelling, Thinking" either (if I remember right), is that...when buildings when you have buildings that don't actually appear as machines, you also have people making them behind closed doors so to speak. Masons who know and pass on the secrets of their craft to their sons, for example. But democratic leadership happens in a glass box, or else the people can't throw stones at you and DF when you guys do something wrong!! You mentioned heirarchy...and I think is a big issue.
And no apologies necessary to me for "slipping into Heideggerian mode". :)

And interesting that you got the "organism" thing. I actually never mentioned that directly ;) But yes...amen to that, so far as I'm concerned.

David...not Fitch...

very interesting thoghts on the selfishness thing in regards to everyone's wanting a piece of the leadership (anti) structure. I plead guilty while I was a lay person in LA helping plant a church. Healthy selfish plea? I don't know. I'm going with "It depends on how good the leadership is." But I'm not always going to be a good judge of that, so I don't know. I think there's a certian level of trust and humility that has to go ALL around...in the leadership and the congregation. But this is a newly humble thought of mine that is just an immediate reaction to your comment, so I don't know what else to say about that, ha ha.

Of note, though...I wouldn't trust what the "social sciences" have to say about who does and does not "prefer" the Machine. Would not the assumptions behind such a study already imply a highly mechanized world (one that actually appears as mechanical, that is, to go back to my post)?

And I'm getting to a point where I'm not so sure of this "personality" stuff either.

Peace...I'm at work...good stuff. Maybe more later...

Jason

[John Médaille]

One is reminded here of the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Instead of a building that hides a machine, it is a machine that hides a building; its mechanical "guts" are on the outside, on full display. And isn't it ugly?

Yet, for all that, something else is going on. A building always has been--and should be--a mechanism. And this in itself is not an aesthetic problem. Machines are beautiful things, and I, for one, appreciate indoor plumbing and gas heat. But these systems are meant to serve the real needs of man. What has happened, perhaps, is that now we serve the machine; we are its servo-mechanisms, instead of the other way round.

The first to become a mere servo-mechanism was God Himself. The Enlightenment Deist reduced the role of God to mere watchmaker. Atheism merely got rid of the watchmaker, which hardly mattered once the watch was running. After all, we don't care about who designed our car once the car is running; he has no further function in our lives. Attachment to God the watchmaker can only be mere sentimentality, but hardly makes any difference to the functioning of the watch.

If God the watchmaker can disappear, does the same happen to man? One recalls Belloc's wry comment on evolutionary theory:

The species man and marmoset
Are intimately linked.
The marmoset
Survives as yet,
But men are all extinct.

So perhaps the Centre Pompidou represents the extinction of God and man in favor of his mechanisms; it documents an already achieved fact. The answer, of course, lies in liturgy and sacrament. At one time, we could make machines to serve us as we served God; but now we must serve the machine.

[John Médaille]

One is reminded here of the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Instead of a building that hides a machine, it is a machine that hides a building; its mechanical "guts" are on the outside, on full display. And isn't it ugly?

Yet, for all that, something else is going on. A building always has been--and should be--a mechanism. And this in itself is not an aesthetic problem. Machines are beautiful things, and I, for one, appreciate indoor plumbing and gas heat. But these systems are meant to serve the real needs of man. What has happened, perhaps, is that now we serve the machine; we are its servo-mechanisms, instead of the other way round.

The first to become a mere servo-mechanism was God Himself. The Enlightenment Deist reduced the role of God to mere watchmaker. Atheism merely got rid of the watchmaker, which hardly mattered once the watch was running. After all, we don't care about who designed our car once the car is running; he has no further function in our lives. Attachment to God the watchmaker can only be mere sentimentality, but hardly makes any difference to the functioning of the watch.

If God the watchmaker can disappear, does the same happen to man? One recalls Belloc's wry comment on evolutionary theory:

The species man and marmoset
Are intimately linked.
The marmoset
Survives as yet,
But men are all extinct.

So perhaps the Centre Pompidou represents the extinction of God and man in favor of his mechanisms; it documents an already achieved fact. The answer, of course, lies in liturgy and sacrament. At one time, we could make machines to serve us as we served God; but now we must serve the machine.

[Jason Hesiak]

John - Centre Pompadu is a great example. I used to hate that building, but now I realize...even though my professor tried to tell me when I was in school...that it is meant to be comedic. It can't be anything else as rediculous as it is. But at the same time I would agree...considering the other topics you broached...that its not really that funny once you get down to it.

And I would agree on your comment about liturgy and sacra-ment.

Jason

[Andrew Duerr]

Jason,

Great post! and very timely as I have recently become very enamored by the concept of organic community, church, and organization...and somewhat less enamored by the machine, be it political, corporate, or ecclesiastical.

I'm not convinced that we, in the west, have developed an aversion for the machine (rather we're still rather obsessed with them - although they're now much smaller (microprocessors - or much larger (the new Woodrow-Wilson bridge) - but I agree with others who have mentioned that we are growing increasingly weary of being treated as machines - as a means to an end. In the west, this end is often organization, efficiency, profit, increasing the population of our churches, etc.

A frustrating aspect of organic anything is that it is difficult, if not impossible, to engineer. It seems to just happen. I'm sure, as an architect, you're familiar with Christopher Alexander's landmark book entitled The Timeless Way of Building. In describing the "quality without a name" which is inherent in any timeless building, Alexander writes the following:

"It is not only simple beauty of form and color. Man can make that without making nature. It is not only fitness to purpose. Man can make that too, without making nature. And it is not only the spiritual quality of beautiful music or of a quiet mosque, that comes from faith. Man can make that too, without making nature.

'The quality which has no name includes these simpler qualities. But it is so ordinary as well, that it somehow reminds us of the passing of our life.

'It is a slightly bitter quality."

In one sense, the organic discussion is the new craze...but I also think (hope) it reflects a deeper yearning to rediscover the timeless way of the kingdom. For some in the institutional church, discovering this timeless way may come at the cost of their organization and efficiency. For those, like me, enamored by organic (and small), it may come at the cost of our preconceived notion that organic means small, disorganized (I prefer less-organized to the term disorganized), and flat. After all, the mega-church I attended for 7 years began in someone's basement 25 years ago.

Perhaps the current skepticism regarding the machine has more to do with the abuses of power we see with most every social machine with which we're familiar? But the hidden irony is that these same abuses are inherent in the contrived organic community too.

I don't think the quest to rediscover the timeless way is selfish - I think it's part of how we're made as human beings. But walking in the timeless way is difficult - even more difficult in a culture mired in hurry-sickness and addicted to efficiency.

Andy

[Geoff Holsclaw]

I was just reading over the comments, and last night I was reading Wendell Berry's collection of poem's, "A Timbered Choir", and I think the turn to "organic _________" (add a noun) stems from the fact that hardly any of us were raised on a farm. We actually have no concept of the rhythms of organic life, nor the use of machines for its cultivation. But Berry has such a balanced concept of organic cultivation, of the intersection of natural processes and human industry.

And to Andy's point, that "slightly bitter" quality spoken of in relation to a building I hear in Berry's poetry about farm life. There is always something bitter about farm life because you just can not make the plants grow, you can only help them. There is that sense of being out of control.

[Jason Hesiak]

I will have to re-turn...speaking of "cultivation"...since I'm "at work"...speaking of cultivation...but I just wanted to mention that some folks seem to be at peace with not being in control and "just watching plants grow", so to speak. My best friend from college...who went there for architecture, like myself, mind you...who is now a farmer...once asked his dad..."Dad, why do you like being a farmer." Dad - "I like watching plants grow."

And again...I'll be back...but speaking of poetry...I wouldn't be surprised if T.S. Eliot grew up on a farm. Or any poet who understands that the rhythm, or "form" (to avoid Christopher Alexander for a moment), carries the message more PRIMarily than the content of the message. I think of Wallace Stevens...EE Cummings. But then funnily I think Mr. "Leaves of Grass" - Mr. Anti-Rhythm himself - probably grew up on a farm, too. Ha ha. My theory just found the trash bin. Oh well...I'll be back for more...

Oh and Andy - thanks for the compliment!

PEACE!

Jason

[Dawie Coetzee]

(Thanks, John, for sending me the link to this.)

Two things spring to mind. First, I've recently finished reading Jacques Ellul's "The Technological Society" and, for all its shortcomings, I can recommend it to anyone interested in the topic under discussion here. Something that comes through very strongly in that work is the idea that the palliatives introduced to ameliorate the effects of "technique" in Ellul's very specific (but sometimes strangely nebulous) sense are themselves part and functions of "technique".

It is possible to consider the current popularity of all things “organic” in terms of the above: though it is imperative to understand that the term is used variously and not always without cynicism. In ergonomics the introduction of soft, floppy, “organic” shapes is too often the occasion of hiding the machine by reducing our experience thereof to a face, a skin, a “front end”. The ergonomists then have the gall to call the resulting condition “transparent”. It very much illustrates Ellul’s point that making machines “human” in this way actually reduces our own, personal technological empowerment (even though this manifestation was not common at the time “The Technological Society” was written). We are shown the function but are denied understanding of the mechanism – because the machine is extended so that it understands the mechanism for us.

Second, I have for some time been aware that the traditional dichotomy between the Natural and the Artificial has been augmented by a third class of phenomena, or the illusion of such a class. It was that a thing belonged either to God’s domain, generally living things whose “technology” lay beyond mortal understanding, or in man’s domain of artificial things. We understood not only the Frankenstein message that it is wrong to play in God’s domain but, and as importantly, that anything made by human hands can be unmade, remade, altered, reinterpreted, added onto, magnified, reduced, copied, adjusted, adapted, modified, or generally hacked about by human hands. Now there are attempts afoot to introduce a third class, things that are neither in God’s domain nor in yours and mine: things made by the very powerful, things whose existence requires the agency of heavy industry or huge organizational scale. Most modern examples of “the machine” thus fall into the class of “products of sorcery”.

So, I agree with your notion of “a misunderstood presence and history of the machine in our society”. We are very much technical beings, each of us is a machine-maker, and that is part of our God-given creative nature. Yet the making of machines is no longer seen as something belonging to you and me. Indeed, all kinds of pretexts are assembled to the effect that it is highly irresponsible to play in industry’s domain: and it affects the design of things, as the social, economic, and political basis on which a thing is made will always affect its design on a most obvious and practical level. Hence we have had inhuman machines made even more inhuman in the attempt to make them human.

A “human” machine is unashamedly a machine. It is unashamedly made by human hands and utterly vulnerable to human understanding. Give me an electric drill that looks like an automotive starter-motor with a pistol-grip bolted to the end of it. I don’t mind having to watch out for sharp edges if I am thereby given the power to understand that I shall have to watch out for sharp edges. But let it be well made. (Do you know Pugin’s “Principles”?)

The “built-up” building is likewise unashamedly made by human hands. I very much appreciate your built-up/dropped by aliens contrast. The “dropped by aliens” building aspires to be a product of sorcery, and there is an unflattering sycophancy implicit in the fact that it is really nothing of the sort.

[Jason Clark]

Great post Jason, thank you for using your background to highlight the ongoing tension we have with institutionalization/organisation.

Systems theory using notions of 'organic', be they star fish, spiders, bees, can sound cool, and 'holistic', but often provide no real world traction for organizing people to achieve anything.

At the heart of this is I think, the loss of agency in some of these metaphors/theories/systems.

Machine has become a pejorative, just as organic has become a self congratulating platitude.

[Jason Hesiak]

Dawie...as for your first 2 or 3 paragraphs...I am reminded of some pretty popular and generally highly esteemed work (although not in my mind) these days. One of the guys who recently wone the highest architectural prize in the world...his kronies do a lot of that quasi-organic technological skin transparent mumbo jumbo work. His name is Rem Koolhaas (pronounced Rem Koolhause).

As a somewhat less "pretend skin" and pretend transparent example...by him instead of one of his kronies...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:McCormick_Tribune_060304.jpg

His kronies seem to generally know what they are doing less than he. But I don't like any of it.

As for your paragraph on the natural and artifical...which shockingly but pleasantly ended on a note about sorcery. Amen. There was once a time when only priests were allowed to play around with material reality. Moses recieved the revelation for the tabernacle the way we now take for granted. Elijah for the second Temple.

I think you have to be a used to playing around in zero land to assume the kind of dichotomy between natural and artificial that we take for granted. The medievals are kind of the kink in the chain of that statement...they thought of the two as quite separate. But they also weren't modern...but they weren't exactly ancient Jews or Greeks, either.

And I agree about your second to last paragraph...about making machines even more inhuman by trying to make them human. The scary thing about that...I agree with McLuhan that our technologies are extensions of our selves. So what does that say about us!? WE TOO are becomeing less human!!

And no I don't know Pugin...???

And as for the built-up/dropped in thought...I have to share a secret or make a confession :) The medieval con-figuration of the crypt and clocktower is like my secret clue/icon/model into the universe :)

Jason...thanks and good to hear from you. Good to hear your thoughts. I would agree...some traction would be nice in our thinking about organ-ization. After all, organs have weight!!

Andy - I'll be getting back to Christopher Alexander later. He pushes my buttons!!

[Dawie Coetzee]

Jason - Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_W_N_Pugin

His "True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture" is to be recommended, usually found in one book with "Contrasts" these days. My favourite Pugin maxim: "Decorate construction, never construct decoration."

I agree wholeheartedly about Koolhaas and his ilk. Indeed they do not know what they are doing; and I maintain it is because they believe in nothing at all except their position in history. In this they are not untypical of the essay-writing classes. Faced with a question like, "Why does that screen lean over like that?" they look shocked and gasp, "Well, it's 2008, isn't it?"

Maritain coined the term 'chronolatry'. Implicit faith in "our age" remains the most dangerous idolatry in circulation.

[Andrew Duerr]

Jason,

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on Alexander...I'm not an architect - but an engineer - and I really like the stuff he talks about.

I have a partially unfinished paper that I wrote for seminary that used some of his stuff if your interested in reading it. Perhaps I'd even put a little effort into finishing it after 3 years... :)

Andy

[Jason Hesiak]

Andy - I would LOVE to read your paper. No need to finish it...I just want to get a sense of where you are. It would help me to engage you and Alexander better...THANKS...my email is...

jhesiak@yahoo.com

Dawie...on Koolhaas and his kronies...funny image. I laughed. Thanks :) I have a hard time believing that people actually think like that, actually. Call me naive.

On Pugin...I've been to London. I need to look into him more before I can or could really comment...

Peace!

Jason

[Jason Hesiak]

And Dawie...how do you know so much about this architecture stuff?? Are you an architect?

[Erdman]

We humans are always "embodied." We are embodied creatures. It is our nature to be embodied. Even in the future, the Scriptures say that we will "be clothed with our heavenly bodies." Even God, himself, always presents himself in some sort of bodied form, with the possible exception of mystic communion.

If we are embodied beings by nature, then the philosophical question that is becoming more relevant with each passing day is this: what happens when humans become more and more embodied as machines and machines start to become embodied as humans?

For example, as I type out and send this comment from my computer to The Church and Postmodern Culture discussion, I am assuming a new body. The fact that I am a 6'1" male with a thin frame does not matter, anymore. My "body" is no longer my body in the traditional sense. I have assumed a new body. I use the keyboard to type out a comment that I think is rather clever, and I then count on the machine to embody my comments and thoughts and take them into an online dialogue where I can now conversate with other bodies from all over the world.

We can apply the same example to other forms of technology: phone conversations, text messaging, artificial limbs, glasses, various forms of repair surgeries. Even the clothing we wear is a form of a machine. No one goes out to kill an animal, skin it, and wear its hide on their backs! We buy clothing made by machines. Shoes, in particular, are very highly technological, and they continue to improve everyday. There is a real sense, then, in which our technology (shoes) takes us out of contact with the real world: we no longer need to physically connect with the actual, real world. So, what is "real," anymore? Who knows? Who even cares???

In the above comments, John M said:

"What has happened, perhaps, is that now we serve the machine; we are its servo-mechanisms, instead of the other way round."

The difficulty I have with this statement is that it is not at all clear what is "machine" and what is "human." Humans are more and more technological, which means that we more and more resemble machines. Machines are also becoming more human: various machines can now speak, see, taste, touch, smell, and hear. Machines and humans are adapting themselves to each other for the new virtual reality.

In sum, we are turning ourselves into Frankenstein and there is really no turning back. Distinguishing between "human" and "machine" is still important, but it is futile to truly draw a dichotomy that holds.

At the beginning of the movie Gattacca, they quote Qohelet, "No one can straighten what God has made crooked." In other words, there is a sense in which God got us into this mess, and there's no fixing it.

[Jason Hesiak]

ERDMAN!!!! GOOD to hear from you...

BUT...actually...on the thing about being embodied and typing a message that embodies your thoughts and how that translates to phone conversations, ect...actually I'm with McLuhan, who said something like: "What people don't understand about electronic media is that it angelizes man. When you are talking on the telephone you have no body."

So for me, then, the distinction sill holds. Analogia entis (I have no idea if I spelled that right). Metaphysics of absence and presence again, dude :))

[John Médaille]

Dawie, A very interesting comment about sorcery. It was somewhat of a surprise that, when presented with the computer, this marvel of scientific culture, the children used it to emulate magic and violence. I think, perhaps, the children grasped the real meaning of the machine. The computer is mysterious to even the sophisticated. If you design hardware, the operating system is "mysterious." If you write operating systems, both application and hardware is mysterious. If you write applications...etc. At each level of expertise, the higher and lower levels are pure sorcery.

There was a time when I could disassemble a car engine, and only a real wuss would go to a mechanic to do something as simple as replace a head gasket. Now engines are so complex, I hesitate to even raise the hood. To that extent, I have been "un-manned," at least according to the standards of my youth.

As for the machine emulating man, I agree that it disembodies him, which leads to a kind of doubled violence (Milbank comments on this in "Being Reconciled," I think.) Real violence has a limit; if nothing else, we run out of time, or strength, or ammunition. Computer violence can be repeated over and over again; it has no limits. Violence is addictive, and now is unlimited. Milbank argues (correctly, I believe) that the passive violence of the computer is actually more violent than actually participating in violence.

And of course, sex becomes strongly linked to violence, all the moreso as it is the passive sex of pornography, which may easily be the single largest use of computers. Of course, there was always some connection between sex and violence, but now it is becoming more of an identity of the two.

[Jason Hesiak]

Just to put my architectural two cents in on this violence/machine/embodiment thing...

Alberti used a compass. Its a bodily thing. And he used it to make lines with lead (earth) on paper (made of a bunch of different stuff, I think, but earthy).

We use a computer. And interestingly the distance between the world of the computer (really you have to create a world in the computer) and the actual world in which the building is built...is difficult...in architectural practice.

And I think its very difficult for young architects coming up (including myself) who don't think with their hands anymore. Although I'm doing that more again now (I mean drawing on paper with a pencil)...for a number of reasons. But interestingly it definitely leaves me much more at peace and less full of angst...about that distance between worlds. When taking responsibility for the set of construction documents coming out of the office, its important for me to feel like I understand the building. The act of drawing actually helps with that a lot.

[Andrew Duerr]

"Alberti used a compass. Its a bodily thing. And he used it to make lines with lead (earth) on paper (made of a bunch of different stuff, I think, but earthy).

We use a computer. And interestingly the distance between the world of the computer (really you have to create a world in the computer) and the actual world in which the building is built...is difficult...in architectural practice."

Jason,

We design roads and bridges with computers every day - and I share your sense of need for designers to be more hands on. But, I also see our CADD software and related programs becoming extensions of ourselves similar to the compass and the pencil. But, and this is a big BUT, our engineers need to understand design enough to know when the computer is giving them the correct answer and when it is not.

I'm one of the first generation of nearly entirely digital engineers - and we've made mistakes trusting the output of some program. As the saying goes...crap in is crap out.

But, I've also seen the programs evolve to the point where they're incredibly powerful and robust - saving designers time, improving accuracy, and reducing costs to clients and our local, state and federal governments.

My greater concern with the computer in general is the speed at which technology changes and grows - to the point where a person like me - once extremely technologically savvy - no longer understands the operating system or software that under girds my everyday computing. Big brother may have all of my info - may know of all my virtual comings and goings - and I would have no idea. That's scary.

[Dawie Coetzee]

Jason - Yes, I'm an architect.

I entirely understand what you mean by thinking with your hands. I often find young architects have trouble with spatial insight because they don't think with their hands. The great irony is that their computer work suffers as a result. If I find a CAD drawing in which all the lines are a fraction of a degree off square, or walls are represented as being some non-integral approximation of the intended dimension thick, it is invariably the work of a youngster who has been using CAD since their first year.

This rather illustrates a shift in the nature of tools (I mean between types of tools more than an historical shift): in which the absolute types may be called a hammer and a slave. One uses a hammer by pure manipulation (in the literal sense). One "uses" a slave by pure instruction. The ultimate instruction to a slave is "make it so" without any reference to how that end is to be reached. By contrast the "how" is the intimate essence of the act of driving a nail with a hammer - even more with tapping a piston into a bore with the shaft-end of a hammer.

The recent history of CAD software is a shift from hammer-nature to slave-nature. Something like AutoCAD (on which I generally work) has a direct kinship with draughting on the board (which has in turn a direct kinship with proportional setting-out using ropes and pegs, without using a standard system of measure), with an increasing addition of slave-nature functions. With the newer 3D-model-based packages the entire process is closer to issuing orders to slaves. An extrapolation of the trend would suggest that future architects would not so much manipulate form as write briefs.

I think a book can be written on this. Already I can connect the last paragraph to a distinction between creative and selective liberty, and the strange way the distinction has become linked to notions of snobbery, contrary to expectation assigning the former to a despised bourgeoisie, so that the design professional is expected to do no more than choose the latest whoopworthy invisible electric kitchen mixer out of a catalogue.

But I think that we are generally mistaken in believing these things to "happen". They do not "happen": in so far as they are not actually done they are suggested or proposed. We really go astray in our conception of provenanceless happeningness - and I think it has something to do with what I said earlier about chronolatry. By faith in "our age" I mean not in its desirability but in its supposed role as the source and origin of all that exists. Chronolatry is no longer the ideological idolatry it was for Maritain or CS Lewis, it has become a cosmogonic idolatry, a belief in the times as creator of Heaven and earth, and of all things seen and unseen. Hence an uncritical reception of the just-there-ness of things.

[Jason Hesiak]

hey guys thanks for the comments...just wanted to aknowledge them...i'll have to return later and respond...

[ktismatics]

My oboe (lost, alas, in our move back to the States) is a machine, an "instrument." It's a beautiful machine that, in the right hands, produces beautiful music. All machines are instrumental, intended not as ends in themselves but as means. So if buildings are becoming more machinelike, doesn't that mean that they are increasingly being regarded not as structures but as instruments or devices?

Crypts are structures; clock towers are devices. Farm houses are structures; silos and hen houses are devices. Factories are devices, designed for efficient layout of mechanical work processes. Wouldn't it be fair to say that buildings look more like machines because they're expected to function more like machines, as instruments for people to get things done -- specifically, to get work done, to function efficiently in the economy? When houses look more like machines, it's because home is increasingly an extension of the workplace.

Not being a churchgoer, I offer this as a hypothetical question: are churches structures or machines? Is a church a sanctified space that encloses an alternate reality? Or is it a device designed for doing worship, fellowship, teaching, etc.?

[ktismatics]

As you architects have described, buildings are also increasingly "machined" rather than drawn and built by human hands. Buildings are polished with a sheen that separates them from the people who make them, disguising their human origins. Depersonalizing the artifact turns it into a commodity to be bought and sold in the marketplace, something that has exchange value as well as use value. And the machined sheen of these buildings also gives them a fetish value -- as you say, they look like objects dropped down from the sky by aliens rather than things built up from the ground by people. They become mysterious and uncanny objects of awe and desire, like the obelisk on the moon in the film 2001. People are willing to pay extra for fetish value, beyond the labor that went into building the thing.

The transition of buildings from idiosyncratic human constructs to exchangeable fetishes means that buildings, like anything else advertised for sale in the marketplace, have become machines for generating profits. The continued escalation of real estate prices demonstrated the effectiveness of commodifying construction products; the recent tanking of the market also testifies to its irrationality.

[Jason Hesiak]

ktismatics...good to hear from you...again...I'll be coming back to this...thanks for the comments...

[Billy Daniel]

Coming late into this conversation, but thought I'd chime in anyway. If you think back to the medieval invention of the clock, it was a "machine" created for the monastery. It was created to enable the people to gather at holy hours to worship and pray with each other to God. It was a means of gathering the body. We know how this project ended. We have become slaves to this holy idea. Churches, those building in which we worship, likewise became mechanistically employed. They were designed to be public gathering spaces (ekklesia). The structure itself cannot be said to have any real instrumental nature to it. It is a meeting place, but a very specific meeting place where heaven and earth collide in the eucharistic celebration that takes place when the body is so gathered.

The structure can, however, be said to have a storied form, and this, I think, is what is really taking place when we talk about modern architecture—it is not storied. The buildings took on a distinct form because of the liturgical action that took place within it. But this is reciprocal as well. What goes on in a defined space is limited by the space. During the rise of the stipendiary priesthood, altars were installed all throughout the church to accommodate the new liturgical practice, which had the adverse effect of making possible the private mass. Prior to these architectural changes—and at this point it becomes difficult to ask whether the egg or the chicken comes first—the building was storied by the cross and had the eastern flow of praise directed to God as a singular liturgy of the many liturgists (bishop, deacon, laity), gathered together by the mediation of the bishop-Christ (the president of the festal gathering, who gathers our many offerings into a single offering to the Father through the Son). The church becomes mechanical as it undergoes the transformations brought about by piety, eucharistic controversies, and so on, and eventually we have fortified rood screens that keep the laity at a close distance from any engagement with the Divine.

We certainly see how the church building can become mechanistic, which is the natural result of people without a story, or, rather, who have exchanged stories—who have become un-storied. The church building, structure, or what have you, does not enclose an alternate reality; rather, it is the medium of God’s procession into the world and his return to himself. Our gathering, then, is our participation in God’s procession and return. It is the world’s stage, if you will, and the only public stage for God’s Divine drama to be enacted. The building/structure hereby participates in the economy of God in the world and becomes inseparable from the people who flow in and out of its doors.

[Jason Hesiak]

Billy...again I will be coming back...but one thing I will say...I think modern buildings ARE storied. I like that aspect of Radical Orthodoxy. What might claim, for example, to be simply "objective", is actually part of a mythos, a world/text, too.

[Jason Hesiak]

So I'm back...

Andy,

On Christopher Alexander...I never got your paper, unfortunately...so I go at this hesitantly. Christopher Alexander pushes my buttons so because I think he fits in so well with the question I was asking in this post. I feel like - and you don't have to accept this or agree with it - Alexander is someone who reacts to the machine in a typically American Romanticist way. My attitude toward American Romanicism is similar to T.S. Eliot's - a certain fondness for what they are seeking but almost a kind of contempt for what they are actually doing as a work of art. I mean Alexander referred to the idea of "making nature." That phrase is completely rediculous to me (again you don't have to agree). Men don't "make nature." Men participate in the laws of nature when they make artifacts. And that's why I also don't like the whole "quality without a name" lingo. Made and existing things have qualities and names. In fact I might go so far as to say a thing does not exist until it has a name. So if we make things that have no name then we've made nothing. And I think that gets to the heart of the problem of what it is that's actually happening in much of American thought or action or whathaveyou...our typically Romantic notions which I think are often at least subconsciously associated with this whole "organic" thing. So yeah sorry if I'm stepping on your toes, but I think we just disagree. But like I sort of hinted at, I think Alexander and Romantics and "organics" as we might call them here are SEEKING something for which I do have an certain affinity (which I think T.S. Eliot shared, as well).

And on a side note...I am most familiar with Alexanders "A Pattern Language." That REALLY pushes my buttons. Another typically American con-fusion that occurs in our curren conflagu-confusation about the relation between things metaphysical and physical. His thoght in that book really gets my goat. To use the term "archetypes" the way he does in such an problem/solution empriically scientific way...is just rediculous...to me.

It reminds me of another argument where I had it out with a typically conservative evangelical who really like the theories of "Strauss and Howe" (see following link:
http://explanation-guide.info/meaning/Strauss-and-Howe.html)
- who use really metaphysical language (archetypal) to describe VERY "periodical" (current events) phenomenon in our every this-world world. To me its completely rediculous and in reality it ends up sounding like not only an excuse to hold onto his conservatism (the phenomenon described by the theory is that of the liberal/conservative split...or at least that's what my conservative friend reads it as) but another one of those poor "i'm going to read everything through my own lense and no other lense actually exists" scenarios. On top of that the theory of Strauss and Howe is a very ragged hand-me-down from Hegel...its a theory on history...but again completely devoid of antyhing metaphysical at all...but retaining lots of metaphysical language (some Hegelian, some not).

To me the whole thing is completely rediculous and the whole series of hermeneutical events reminds me of the problem I have with this "organic" stuff...and how it comes from typically American misreadings of...everything.

Sorry for the rant.

Dawie,

As for Auto CAD...my problem with digitization has less to do with my privacy...I don't think "privacy" is very prime to what it means to be human. My problem is more in line with Marshall McLuhan: "What people don't understand about electronic media is that it angelizes man. When you talk on the telephone, you hve no body." This is why to me the problem basically comes down to the use of the hand. And I think that too is related to this question of the "organic"...and "the quality without a name" and "making nature."

Dawie - interesting stuff on slavery. Slavery blows. I know what you mean.

Ktismatics,

You said: All machines are instrumental, intended not as ends in themselves but as means. So if buildings are becoming more machinelike, doesn't that mean that they are increasingly being regarded not as structures but as instruments or devices?

Are you referring to the difference between means and ends as definitive of the difference between things mechanical and things "structural"? And if so...what is the relation between that distinction and the distinction between things mechanical and things "organic"?? Lol I'm confused.

But anyway...you asked Not being a churchgoer, I offer this as a hypothetical question: are churches structures or machines? Is a church a sanctified space that encloses an alternate reality? Or is it a device designed for doing worship, fellowship, teaching, etc.?

To me it would depend on whether the worship, fellowship, teaching, ect. were FORCEFUL. To me the idea of "applied force" IS "definitive" of all things "mechanical." So to me no a church is not a machine. Or at least its not meant to be. But if is "operates" off of "applied force" (and ultimately I don't think any church does that), then yes I'd say it is quite mechanical. But at the same time...again I don't think that ultimately any church does that (God - who I think ultimately IS "in charge" of all churches - isn't genrally "forceful", I don't think)...but some churches I think can APPEAR more "mechanical."

And Billy -
Thanks again for the comment. I think I about covered my own personal response with the "modern mythos" thing.

PEACE,

Jason

[Jason Hesiak]

Andy - btw I think at least some of Alexander's conflaulation of confusion between things metaphysical and physical comes from his partial engineering background. Just FYI some of my favorite architects were also trained as engineers. Le Corbusier is one. And Louis Barragan was I think actually a practicing engineer prior to becoming a famous architect. And neither seem to participate, in either their works or their words, in the kinds of con-fusions in which Christopher Alexander is regularly enmeshed, with both his works and his words.

If you ask me, at least.

[Jason Hesiak]

btw for those who don't know...here's a sample of the previously referenced work of Luis Barragan...

http://www.hylandbaron.com/barragan/images/church.jpg

[andy.duerr]

Jason,

Thanks for the response. I'm still looking for my paper that includes a discussion of the "timeless way." I'll forward it when I find it.

I'll post a response to you most recent posts next week.

Andy

[Jason Hesiak]

Thanks Andy...look foward to both...

[Billy Daniel]

Jason,

I'm glad you pointed this out, that modern buildings are storied, and that is what I meant to say indeed when I refered to them being un-storied. Because that is first what they are, un-storied, so they could then choose a different story. Buildings are hereby mechanical because they are storied by an atomistic cosmology where all the different parts are supposedly inert objects, having a meaning apart from its participation in the whole. But this was not always so, and no architecture is possibly more evidence of this holistic, architectural drama than medieval gothic church, where every part, in all of its intricate detail made by some diligent craftsman, participates in the harmony of the whole structure. That is, the Gothic church makes music and is made for music. Whatever the modern building is made for, it doesn't seem to be this.

[Jason Hesiak]

Cool Billy good point about the stories thing...and medieval architecture!! Shoot...they even had a burial ceremony for stones that the masons screwed up (and so couldn't go into the building)!! As for modern buildings and music...I think it depends on whether you are talking about Corbusier and Palladio...or Durand, Perrault and Norman Foster or Renzo Piano.

"The Modular" by Corbusier is all about music...he specifically refers to "visual acoustics" in many of his writings!! And his master was Palladio.

But then Durand and Piano are reading and writing the mythos of effeciency and programmatic social operation (of the machine, of course :)