Technological Instrumentality
What powers still remain with the architect to critically affect the world around him or her given the speed of architectural production enabled by new advents in technologies and the shift in scale of design projects from that of singular buildings to entire cities?
What new abilities does the architect gain from new instruments, and to what degree might such abilities become themselves instrumentalized by others?
How does the change in the modes of [architectural] production and technics– more specifically the aesthetics and/or politics of software as distinct from that of the standardization and factory machines?
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Technology in the hands of an industrious culture will crave for and produce better technology inherently, this is because technology has been a vehicle for industrializing cultures and the human race.
Technology began with the first use of a tool to assist in any function. In early human kind the first tools where merely extensions of the limbs to assist in hunting gathering and protection all in hopes of preservation of the wielder. This holds true in progression of technology into today’s adaption and use of modern technology.
Humanity is naturally conditioned to trust technology to assist in preservation of humanity. To image technology in a way that can be faulted is unimaginable because if technology did completely disembowel itself from assisting in today's world the existence of humanity would drastically change. When technology fails the user generally will have no way of regressing their understanding of the function of said technology to complete the task leaving a complete halt in the task.
This is a representation a shift in technology when the current technology fails and the user will have to regress into a prior form of technology to complete a task. This ultimately results in an understanding that’s precludes the task.
Humanity has always stepped into the next shift in technology without truly understanding its implications on society and that the next generation won’t be able to step back into previous versions with skill sets commonly associated with the task.
Technology is an instrument for the preservation of humanity. With every new instrument humanity shifts its understanding of the built environment taking precedent on the next instrument that makes the next shift.
Technology is also instrumental in the progression of humanity as a means to an end. Technology progressed humanity into the next generations but is the current representation of humanity any better then the last?
If the actions of humanity as an industrious culture are not critically understood the instruments that guide it will lead it to its end quicker than expected.
QUICK TYPE PRODUCTION
Tools Make Machines
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What are the implications of allowing machines to do our work? The use of tools for early mankind became crucial for survival whether for protection or hunting, but the fundamental shift in the way tools were used was when tools were used to create other things.
Tools have shaped the built environment we all live in. What if tools were never used to create other things? Would humanity exist in the same way?
Tools create machines under the direction of consciousness. Consciousness being the important aspect of creating something. Its inherent that society puts a higher value on handmade objects, but is it just a value of time and labor invested into the object or could it be that humanity can sense the none authentic nature of its creation?
Tools guided by consciousness create objects (machines), but when objects create objects the authenticity is lost.
Authenticity in today’s society cost substantially more, because of the increased production which utilizes machines for output. How much is authenticity worth to mankind?
Machines are replacing human labor because they can perform the work quicker and cheaper. Blue collar jobs are being replaced by the cheapest form of labor machines, but white-collar jobs such as architecture also use machines to guide the way they work.
Building Information Modeling such as Revit helps architects to create adaptable models that can change relatively quick, compared to when architects used tools for producing drawing, they had to spend a large amount of time and client money to produce the drawing.
The BIM software is a machine that thinks for architects to produce images for the highly consumerist society we represent.
Unsurprisingly the life of the modern civilian revolves around machines that think for them. The most notable machine produced by machines is the modern cell phone.
The cell phone is the thing many people wake to and last thing they see before they sleep. This is a technology that builds up patterns of what the user does and predicts what will be done next. Anyone who texts can see this first hand when text pop up and suggest words commonly used in their rhetoric.
What authenticity can be claimed when the way we think is already hacked?
TECHNOLOGICAL SHIFTS
