Subject: CFP: Futures Past MIT Conference, November 21-23, 2013
From: "Touloumi, Olga" <touloumi@fas.harvard.edu>
Date: Sun, February 10, 2013 1:54 am

FUTURES PAST: Design and the Machine
MIT, November 21-23, 2013
Deadline: March 29, 2013

http://descomp.scripts.mit.edu/futurespast/

Call for papers

In 1960, the readers of the IRE Transactions on Human Factors in
Electronics encountered J.C.R. Licklider speculating on the future. “The
hope,” he contended, “is that, in not too many years, human brains and
computer machines would be coupled together very tightly and the resulting
partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought.” He called this
new cooperative interaction between the human and the computer a
“symbiosis.” At that moment, computers were conceptualized either as
compliant instruments extending the capabilities of the human subject, or
intelligent replacements, automating operations previously performed by
the human mind and hand. Positioning himself between the distant prospect
of artificial intelligence and the use of machines as mechanical
extensions, Licklider declared “symbiosis” a productive way to engage with
the changing technological environment.

This manifesto-like proposition coincided with the changing role of
technology in design. Faced with the difference between the “symbionts” –
the “man” and the “computer” – new research agendas raised questions of
method, representation, interaction, and imagination. As computational
media pervade design pedagogy and practice, the model of interaction
between humans and computers in relation to the creative process persists
as a research question, even though consistently obscured by the
exigencies of practice. A new encounter with Licklider’s proposition fifty
years later will help us rethink and contextualize the relationship
between the human, the machine, and design.

This conference invites papers that inquire into the past that preceded,
the present that coexisted with, and the future that followed Licklider’s
proposition. We are interested in explorations of the assumptions and
hypotheses that conditioned the coupling of humans with computational
machines, and the debates around the roles of design and designer. Papers
that investigate the institutional and intellectual history of
human-machine systems and/or situate them within the social and economic
context of the second half of the 20th century, are particularly welcome.

Topics include but are not limited to:

• Research laboratories and design thinking
• Scientific methods in design and their critique
• Knowledge transfer and the military-industrial complex
• Interfaces, human-computer interaction and design
• Networks, infrastructure, environmental thinking, and computation
• Computer labs in architecture schools
• Computation in design (architecture) school curricula
• Participatory design tools and methods
• Computation before and after the computer
• Information and the architectural object
• Computational representations and their intellectual history
• Cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and models of the designer
• Experience and computation
• Mediation and media in human-machine systems
• Impact on contemporary pedagogy, research, and practice

In 1960s Licklider anticipated that the immediate future concerned with
the agenda of “symbiosis,” would be “intellectually the most creative and
exciting in the history of mankind.” Is this future past?

Submission

Please submit your CV and an abstract of 500 words to futurespast@mit.edu
by March 29, 2013. Accepted participants will be notified by April 26.

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