a journal of software studies
Introduction The original Spanish title of Arturo Escobar’s Designs for the Pluriverse 1 uses the term disoñar to allude to “dreaming-designing” – a multitude of different ways through which humans think about the future, anticipate what will come, imagine alternatives, and construct new possibilities 2. In this paper, we describe two very different design investigations. …
Prelude Mathematics is a strange attractor of ‘worldviews.’ From Plato to Alain Badiou, mathematics has been, and still is, a seductive vector along which various philosophical claims can be articulated. The role that certain currents of thought attribute to mathematics, and by extension to computing in some cases, can reveal a great deal about their …
In 2021, my social media feed brought up a CIA recruitment ad entitled I Am Unapologetically Me. The video features a CIA officer describing herself as “a woman of colour, a mom, a cisgender millennial who has been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder”.1 Her identity is presented both as a marker of diversity and as …
Introduction The mathematics of our current understanding of probability was formalized in the 18th century, with the emergence of actuarial insurance, risk management, and shifting economic and colonial power.1 As part of this development, Thomas Bayes (1702-1761) aimed to address the problems of induction formulated by Hume and other Enlightenment thinkers, and fashioned a proposal …
Continue reading “Quantum Cognition and the Limits of Classical Probability Models”
During the 1956 Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, which some consider to be the birthplace of AI research, the problem of artificial intelligence was posed as an attempt ‘to make machines use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now reserved for humans, and improve themselves.’1 Here the link between symbolic …
Continue reading “Learning How to Learn: Abduction as the ‘Missing Link’ in Machine Learning”
1. Introduction Bayes Theorem has claimed an increasing number of applications and stimulated widespread interest, but remains largely studied in analytical terms as the preserve of statistics and probability theory. This article instead considers the significance of Bayes Theorem from the standpoint of qualitative social research. It draws upon conceptual resources from Science and Technology …
Continue reading “Subversive Witness: The Disruptive Influence of Bayes Theorem on Forensic Science”
The chip stands as the cornerstone of today’s digital age, impacting every aspect imaginable. Across nearly every societal process, this inconspicuous piece of technology plays a critical role: mobile phones, laptops, self-driving cars, the banking system, medical equipment, the internet, and even coffee machines all rely wholly or partially on chip technology. The development of …
Continue reading “Pluralities of Scale, Thinking Through Technical Development”
With a mildly ironic nod to its philosophical energies, I would say that this book is not only important but necessary. Giving it a notice is the least we can do. The Digital and Its Discontents is, however, a difficult book to review precisely because it is so clearly and concisely written, not only with …
As the morning sun filters through my windows, I greet the day with a simple, “Alexa, good morning.” The Amazon Echo’s blue ring glows, and Alexa’s voice responds cheerfully, “Good morning! Here’s your daily briefing.” She provides the weather, the latest news, and my schedule for the day, embodying the idea that frictionless interactive elements …
Almost twenty years ago, philosopher and literary theorist Katherine Hayles described the growth of programming languages. Unnoticed by most, new languages are springing into existence, proliferating across the globe, mutating into new forms, and fading into obsolescence. Invented by humans, these languages are intended for the intelligent machines called computers. Programming languages and the code …
Introducing the sayable through the visible Demis Hassabis, co-founder of London-based, Google-owned DeepMind, speaks of the shift from hacker culture to a scientific culture at Google AI, the arm of Alphabet Corporation leading on ML/AI: One reason we teamed up with Google back in 2014 was, Google …. came out of a research project that …
Continue reading “Generating samples: re-writing Bayes Rule as a probabilistic AI hack”
Introduction Between the years 2009 to 2013, one of us (hereafter referred to as the modeller) developed a so-called nutrient export coefficient model (ECM) in a Bayesian framework as part of an analytic-deliberative management project for the Tamar river catchment (UK). Modelling aimed to help stakeholders–land owners and land managers, government agencies, water companies, civil …
The programme of life-building and perspectival vision is what proletarian culture begins to mean when it encounters the experience and events of revolution as they unfold. Maria Chehonadskih, p.232. Matthew Fuller: In this issue of Computational Culture we are looking at potential overlaps between different approaches to epistemology, specifically, political understandings of it arising …
Continue reading “Life-building and Perspectival Vision, an interview with Maria Chehonadskih”
Building on previous critical theory approaches to an experiential paradigm of digital labour, this article considers the pervasiveness of further discursive formations of user experience (UX) apparent in workplace computational cultures.1 Closely aligned to broader ‘frictionless’ Silicon Valley ideologies,2 and an emotional turn in human computer interaction (HCI) research,3 UX has also become increasingly congruent …
Google’s Neural Machine Translation In September 2016, Google researchers announced a new system that would soon become known as Google Neural Machine Translation (GNMT).1 This marked a shift from the statistical machine translation (SMT) model employed by the tech firm since 2007 to a deep-learning based recurrent neural-network model, which not only replaced phrase-level translation …
Continue reading “Machine Translation and Benjamin: Pure Language”
When Jae Hyun Lee—a media scholar at Seoul National University whose work on artificial intelligence and algorithmic society explores the philosophical and cultural implications of digital technologies—published “Machine Translation and Benjamin: Pure Language” in 2019, transformer-based language models were still emerging technologies.1 Six years later, after ChatGPT became a household name and countless think-pieces about …
Continue reading “Translator’s note to “Machine Translation and Benjamin: Pure Language””
Juni Schindler and Goda Klumbytė contributed equally to this paper. Visual Abstract 1 Introduction Today, versions of Bayes’ Theorem have applications in all areas of social and natural sciences. The increase in probabilistic approaches entailed by the widespread application of methods of statistical computing have only increased the uptake of this approach. A significant body …
Continue reading “Situated Bayes – Feminist and Pluriversal Perspectives on Bayesian Knowledge”