11 June

I think machines are the most social parts of our societies. Tracey Kidder, an American journalist, spent about a year visiting a major computer manufacturer, observing how a computer was made. He wrote up his experiences in a book called “The Soul of a New Machine”. What Kidder noticed was that every aspect and part of a machine was intrinsically social. One of the engineers said to him they could open a machine made by a rival and read the organisational structure of the other company, by looking at its internal workings. And that extended to every part of the machine, which was a mediating object between hundreds or even thousands of people. Even at the level of the overall function of a machine, it’s all social. Like a photocopier - copying is a social function, what else could it be? Machines are the most concentrated social bits of society, knots of intense social connection.