form, function, and matter: crossing the border of materiality

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Form, Function, and Matter: Crossingthe Border of Materiality

Jannis Kallinikos

In a hallway I saw a sign with an arrow pointing the way, and I was struckby the thought that the inoffensive symbol had once been a thing of iron,an inexorable, mortal projectile that had penetrated the esh of men andlions and clouded the sun of Thermopylae and bequeathed Harald Sigurd-son, for all time, six feet of English earth.

Jorge Luis Borges, Mutations from the collection The Maker

Introduction

In this chapter, I examine whether and to what degree the physical or materialsubstratum of technologies and technological objects affect the shaping oftheir functionalities, and the social relationships that develop around theirconception and use (Pinch, 2008). Straightforward as such an objective mayseem, actually achieving it is elusive. Even simple objects such as a chair or aknife entail much more than the materials of which they are made. Do thefunctions objects fulll in social settings stem from their material makeup?A chair, for instance, is so shaped as to serve sitting rather than cutting and yetinvoking the function of sitting is a purposeful (meaningful) act. To the degreethat function is a modality of meaning, a particular way through which beliefsor intentions are expressed with respect to technological objects, it could beseen as predominantly nonmaterial (Faulkner and Runde, 2011; Searle, 1995).1

1 Such a position does not assert that meaning is unrelated to contextual or material conditionsand even less that it is deprived frommaterial consequences. But it does assert that the ontology ofmeaning is predominantly immaterial. In other words, there is difference between ideas and thingsand something important is lost when this difference is glossed over.

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How are then matter and function related to one another? These are trickyquestions and they do not admit easy answers.These difculties, though, should come as no surprise. The reexamination

of the role material conditions play in social life reprises major divides inWestern thought such as those between mind versus matter, representationversus action, or rationality versus experience, to name but a few. The currentinterest in materiality and the material conditions of social action is, however,of more recent descent. Though variously taking side for matter, action, andexperience (Suchman, 2007), such an interest reects a growing awareness(see, e.g., Leonardi and Barley, 2008; Miller, 2005; Orlikowski, 2007) that theordinary distinction between social and material relations may often obscuremore than it reveals. Approaching the relevant issues through the lens oftechnology provides, I contend, an opportunity for shedding new light intothese old and vexed questions. There would seem scarcely better focus onwhich to reassert the crucial role material conditions play in social life (Pinch,2008). Whatever shifts to the meaning of technology that software-basedsystems and artifacts have brought about, the dominant associations technol-ogy invokes still evolve around the object world. Material embodiment isessential to technology. The functions objects embody either by deliberatedesign or haphazard use are variously conditioned by their material consti-tution. Cotton, for instance, cannot be used to construct hammers or screw-drivers, while wood, glass, or iron are not appropriate materials for clothing.Thus, conditioning the deployment and shaping of technological objects or

processes, the materialness of matter enters into human affairs. The consti-tution of matter would seem to circumscribe the eld of possible objects orfunctions that can be accommodated by that matter. It is also implicated inthe prole of skills and social practices that are associated with the masteryand use of materials. Traditionally, craftsmanship has developed around themastery of specic materials such as wood, stone, clay, gold and iron, andtextiles (Mumford, 1934, 1952; Sennett, 1994, 2008). Object agency, crafts-manship, and materiality are thus closely related to one another. Such arelation undoubtedly varies between different objects or elds and has beenshifting in history through the evolution of crafts.Function andmatter are therefore closely related to one another, andmatter

has traditionally been used, elaborated, and formed to serve particular func-tions. Granted the ambiguity and diversity of meanings tied to materiality(Kallinikos, Leonardi, and Nardi, this volume; Leonardi, this volume), theobservations put forth so far should be taken to indicate that I take theconcept of materiality to literally signify the material or physical constitutionof technological objects (or lack of it) and the implications (social and technical)such a constitution has for the design, making, and use of such objects. Noother signication is attributed to matter (e.g., what matters, context


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embeddedness) if this does not stem from, or is closely related to, the materialconstitution of technologies.A corollary of this is that technologies and technological objects are under-

stood to grow at the conuence of form, function, and matter and thus entailmuch more than their material constitution. At the same time, technologiesand technological objects are distinguished from standardized social behaviorcrystallized in routines, programs, and standard operating procedures. Despitefar-reaching standardization and various material supports, routines, pro-grams, and standard operating procedures lack the elaborate function struc-ture of technological objects mapped to an equally elaborate structure ofphysical components (Ulrich, 1995). These dening attributes set technologyapart from routines, programs, and standard operating procedures (see, e.g.,Kallinikos, 2006, 2011a). A clock, for instance, is a technology, a schedule aprogram. They are, of course, closely related to one another, and programs,routines, and standard operating procedures are often supported by technolo-gies (DAdderio, 2011; Sismondo, 1993) but this does not justify lumpingthem together.In the section that follows this introduction, I seek therefore to outline the

basis on which function, form, andmatter as dening attributes of technologycould be analytically disentangled from one another. I then put forward thekey argument of the chapter that is predicated on a reading of cultural andtechnological evolution that accords modern technology and technologicaldesign (function and form), a growing emancipation from the materials withwhich they are entangled. Counterintuitive as it may seem, such a claimmakes sense against the background of the progressive dissociation of func-tion, form, and matter. This dissociation has been driven by the decompos-ition of matter afforded by scientic advances and the growing entanglementof science with technology. I take the development of computation asa powerful and distinctive manifestation of the analytic predilection oftechnology that industrial techniques once inaugurated (Borgmann, 1999;Mitchell, 1996, 2005b). I therefore dedicate a section to AQ1discussing the dis-tinctiveness of computation and the ways by which it relates to matter andform. In the nal section of the chapter, I summarize my claims reectingupon the explanatory potential of the concept of materiality and the implica-tions my ideas have for empirical research.

Object Architecture

Deployed in a broad and associative fashion, materiality may seem as astraightforward condition that recalls the tangible, physical constitution ofthings and the inescapable material anchorage of life. However, upon closer


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scrutiny, the term turns out to be more slippery than this. Most of the thingsthat populate our everyday personal or working space are cultural objects, thatis, things, tools, or utensils constructed by humans to serve specic purposes.Such a condition sets human-made artifacts apart from objects and formsfound in nature. It is precisely the imprinting of purpose and use upon matterthat makes them cultural objects. This unavoidably raises the question concern-ing the materiality of cultural objects. To what extent is a simple and straightfor-ward object as a table material? A table is made of some matter; yet what we calltable is the designation of a certain function that has been perceived and imposedupon whatever matter can be made to serve that function, that is, wood, iron,synthetic material, stone (Searle, 1995). By function, then, I predominantlymean the purpose or purposes an object, or a set of objects, fullls.In the context of modern life, function is more often than not the outcome

of deliberate design, that is, the activity of shaping matter to accomplish anend. I use the term design in this broader sense to designate not simply theprocess of form-giving as an epiphenomenon but to include as well theknowledge-based processes through which problem-solving arrangementsare conceived, invented, and materialized (Flusser, 1999; Simon, 1969; Ulrich,1995). Thus viewed, design is a cultural practice with strong artisan roots butalso an activity closely associated with the faculty of imagination and theformal or experience-based knowledge on the basis of which it is exercised.Regardless of how deeply rooted in practice design may be, the invention andembodiment of function and form upon matter are heavily conditioned byknowledge, thinking, and imagination. This holds particularly true for thosetechnological elds in which scientic knowledge plays a signicant role(Ulrich, 1995).Thanks to the spectacular development of science and technology in

modern times, the uses of matter have expanded remarkably through theimprovement of the conversion (matter to object) process and the discoveryof new elements or matter qualities. Nuclear power furnishes a dramatic,perhaps, example showing how the disentanglement of matter (the identi-cation of uranium and plutonium) can be used to support new processes(ssion) out of which energy is produced. But there are plenty of humblerexamples from petrochemicals (oil renement), paper (extracting cellulosebers out of wood), the evolution of computer processors afforded by newmaterials or matter qualities, to food crops. These examples reveal that theidentication and discovery of matter qualities brought about by advances inscience and technology affords penetrating the interior of matter, decompos-ing its compact nature, and promoting selective use and (re)combination ofmatter qualities along a broad spectrum of matter (Arthur, 2009). Humans,says Paul Valry, in his imaginative and eloquent text on architecture Eupali-nos or the Architect, extract from matter just some qualities (smoothness,



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hardness, resilience, plasticity) that t their purpose and, within this context,remain as a rule indifferent to the rest (Valry, 1950). Extraction is a physicallyconditioned state but one mediated by the implicit or explicit conceptualoperations of abstraction: that is, the analytic ability to disentangle a qualityor set of qualities from the bundled status by which they usually occur inphysical states.A case could therefore be made for the fact that, while important, the

material substratum of technological objects does not sufce to dene theirinstrumental identity. This last is contingent on form and function that arethe deliberate outcomes of shaping or using matter to serve particular pur-poses. Form, in particular, provides the mold to which matter enters and is, aswe know since Aristotle, the causa formalis (the receptacle, design, eidos) of aparticular object or artifact, distinguished and to some degree juxtaposed tothe causa materialis (matter, hyle). Technological artifacts combine then form/design and matter in different proportions or patterns. A lever (function) isperhaps more matter than design, while a software program perhaps exempli-es the opposite.Form relates to function, which in some respects is the quintessence of

technology. As indicated, function is the purpose which an object or artifactis made to serve, what can be accomplished by it, the causa nalis, in Aris-totles terms. While form may serve aesthetic sensibilities, within the overallperformativity context technology establishes, it is closely tied to and, to somedegree, derives from function, an idea that has succinctly been captured bythe modernist motto of architecture form follows function. In the design ofsimple artifacts (tools and utensils), form is, as it were, phenotypic, betrayingthe function that it serves and with which it is closely associated. A knife mustbe sharp, the surface of a table at, a vessel concave. The close relationshipbetween function and form, however, becomes often blurred in complextechnological systems that may thus give the impression of amorphous as-semblages but persists, certainly, in such complex artifacts as aircrafts, motorvehicles, ships, or skyscrapers.Form and function admit various types of matter; for example, a table may

be of wood, metal, or other material. A particular matter, in turn, can assumedifferent forms and serve different functions; for example, wood can beformed to table, chair, or door. These observations suggest that a certainfreedom exists as to how function, form, and matter can be brought to bearupon one another. In the context of contemporary design, function assumes aguiding role. Technological objects often result from the conception of afunction or set of functions that are subsequently mapped to physical com-ponents. While I have so far spoken of function predominantly in the singu-lar, the fact is that technological objects result from the conception of morethan one function, often organized in a layered system or function structure



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(Ulrich, 1995; Yoo et al., 2010; Yoo, this volume). Even a simple object such asa desk is composed by several functional elements (e.g., surface, legs, drawers),each of which is designed to perform one or more functions.Once conceived, functions are mapped to physical components and

brought to bear upon one another via the links or interfaces that connectfunctions and their physical components. That mapping entails a consider-able degree of freedom with respect to the choice of matter and form of thephysical components and, crucially, the way they should be connected to oneanother. The sum of these activities (functional elements, function structure,physical components, and links), which Ulrich (1995) refers to as productarchitecture, decides whether an object would acquire en bloc makeup (integralarchitecture) or bemade of decomposable subassemblies (modular architecture).Ultimately, links and interfaces are functions as well, indicating the pivotal rolefunction assumes in the conception, design, and making of technologicalobjects. Rather than simply providing the overall purpose an object serves(Aristotles causa nalis), functions in principle cascade throughout the entirespectrum of elements and physical components that make up an object andprovide the framework within which matter is made to matter.2 Any talk ofmaterial agency (Leonardi, this volume) has therefore to contemplate this intri-cate network of functional relationships which technological objects embody.Such a state of affairs is closely associated with the aforementioned decom-

position or unbundling of matter and the technological extraction of matterqualities or attributes. As with all analytic reasoning, scientic knowledgepierces deep into the compact and opaque nature of matter and identiesqualities and attributes possible to isolate and extract through technologicalprocesses (Borgmann, 1999). This opens up a space of deliberation, whereby amatter quality detached from its original, bundled physical state can be fur-ther enhanced, enriched, or combined with other matter qualities to createnew qualities and, by extension, new technological objects, states, or pro-cesses. Much of technological evolution can be read along these lines. Fromthis standpoint, technology emerges as a combinatorial methodology formolding (decomposing and recomposing) matter and reality: an open lan-guage, as Arthur (2009: 45) suggests, entailing a vast and, certainly, miscel-laneous repertory of principles and techniques out of which matter can bebrought to accommodate new functions and uses. Once the site of

2 I am not hereby claiming that the design of functions and the making of technological objectsis a rational process, in the sense of entailing a linear and unambiguous progression from theconception of function to object-making. In some cases, it may indeed be; in others it may involvevarious trade-offs and negotiations between interest groups or trial-and-error and experientiallearning. In yet others, it may even result from haphazard or serendipitous events or outcomes(Bijker et al., 1987; Margolin, 2002). The point I make is that, however this happens, it will alwaysinvolve the consideration, confrontation, or negotiation of the role function and functionalelements are assumed to play in the making of technological objects.



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craftsmanship (technique) and a means of production, technology isbecoming a chemistry (Arthur, 2009: 45), a eld in which matter is made tomatter according to the principles that rule that chemistry.Technological evolution has consequently transformed the game of tech-

nology from a system of xed processes and ends to a generative matrix out ofwhich new functions and forms are constantly produced. Placed in such acontext, matter, as an important resource of technological ingenuity, becomesa space of possibilities, supporting a variety of human purposes as these aremanifested in the functions and forms which mater combinatoria3 is able tosustain. The disentanglement of the bundled ways by which form, function,and matter are shaped into technical objects and the pivotal role functionassumes in this process are therefore essential prerequisites to accounting forthe distinctive nature of such objects and assessing the implications of tech-nological dynamics.These ideas suggest that function, form, and matter are key constitutive

elements of technological objects and processes. Different technologies exem-plify varying strategies (designs) through which function, form, and matterare made to bear upon one another. Such empirical variability makes it dif-cult to extract a common pattern that applies across technological domains.At the same time, experience indicates that technological development dis-rupts established strategies and conventions and establishes new relationshipsbetween form, function, andmatter. This is dramatically exemplied bymajortechnological shifts such as the one signied by the transition from agricul-ture to industrial production but also by technological changes within par-ticular domains such as, for instance, those of building and architecture(Mitchell, 2005a, 2005b; Terzidis, 2005) or software development (Nardi andEkbia, this volume; Yoo, 2010; Yoo, this volume). In a sense, technologicaldevelopment coincides with the invention of new functions and forms and/orthe invention of a new material (dis)order (Hughes, 2004; Valry, 1950) inwhich existing functions and forms are differently supported bymatter. It is inthis respect that technological evolution loosens the ties connecting matterand material conditions with the functions and uses which technologicalobjects and processes are designed to serve.

Technology and Materiality

Placed against this backdrop, a case could be made for the fact that, in thecontext of modern science and technology, the technological domestication

3 I juxtapose mater combinatoria to what, since Leibniz, is known as ars combinatoria, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Leibniz, accessed March 10, 2012.



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of matter achieves massive dimensions. In this process, technological projectsare increasingly being driven by the vision of design rather than the exigenciesof matter encountered in natural states, characteristic of less advanced tech-nological stages. Technologically advanced societies epitomize a differentrelationship to materiality whereupon hyle (matter) gives way to eidos (func-tion/form) and craftsmanship to techno-science.These claims should not, however, be taken to imply that technologically

advanced societies are less dependent on matter. In many respects, industrialsocieties manifest a growing yet qualitatively different dependence uponmatter (resources). The more matter qualities are discovered, the broader thedependence on matter becomes, yet that dependence is of different kind.A tower or sailing ship exemplies a different dependence on matter thanadobe houses or dugout canoes, domestic heating systems other than the oilstove or the traditional replace (Arthur, 2009; Borgmann, 1984). The sameholds true for the hydroelectric power plant compared to the traditional wateror windmill (Heidegger, 1977; Mumford, 1934), or, to mention more recentexamples, an analog camera and a paper document compared to a digitalcamera and a computer le, respectively. It is that difference that I am atpains to bring into focus. As technological sophistication grows, dependenceon matter becomes increasingly contingent on particular matter qualities thatare possible to extract, exchange, and combine across a wider spectrum ofmatter. A tower building can be made of stone, glass, or concrete of variouskinds possible to combine in large variety of ways. Construction of adobehouses is critically contingent on the availability of the right type of clay.Thus, comments Flusser (1999: 28) on the issue in his characteristically oracu-lar yet evocative style:

[N}ow what we have is a ood of forms pouring out of our theoretical perspectiveand our technical equipment and this ood we ll with material so as to materi-alize the forms. In the past, it was a matter of giving formal order to the apparentworld of material, but now it is a question of making a world appear that is largelyencoded in gures, a world of forms that are multiplying uncontrollably. In thepast, it was amatter of formalizing a world taken for granted, but now is amatter ofrealizing the forms designed to produce alternative worlds.

Some of these ideas are given a colorful illustration in Lvi-Strauss imagina-tive juxtaposition of the archetypical gures of the scientist/engineer, the brico-leur, and the magician, representing modern, medieval, and pre-technologicaltimes, respectively. The scientist/engineer, the emblem of the technologicalsophistication of modern times, proceeds with his tasks in a deductive/ana-lytic fashion, whereby the problems confronted are, despite one or anotherdeviation, approached by and large through the lenses of what is alreadyformally known, controlled, and practiced. Confronting a task, the scientist/



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engineer draws on an extensive body of cumulative knowledge and availabletechniques that provide him with the analytic and practical resources fordening problems and addressing them accordingly. In Lvi-Strauss ellipticyet vivid language, the scientist/engineer tends to produce events out of struc-tures, that is, the entanglements of formal knowledge, practices, and technolo-gies that dene the state of the art in the relevant eld at a given time. Thecontingent and particular (the event) or what some of the authors in thisvolume will gauge in terms of materialization and consequence (see Kallini-kos, Leonardi, and Nardi, this volume) is always subordinated to the enduringand general (structure).By contrast, the bricoleur (a handyman, jack-of-all trades and professions)

exemplies an approach to problem-solving in which each problem occasionis negotiated in situ. What is in each case addressed is not strictly predened,even though a general objective (e.g., unlock a door, x a broken machine)may provide the context for the undertaking. Through playful exploration(rather than deductive/analytic reasoning) of what is possible, the bricoleuradjusts past solutions, reframes, or manipulates technical memories of pastevents and projects to make them bear upon or even redene the problem athand. This is accomplished by relying on a miscellaneous toolbox of materialsand quasi-tools whose functional capabilities are tried on the spot. Ratherthan having been designed in advance with specic purposes in mind, thebricoleurs instrumental resources are experiential leftovers that summarizehis technical life journey. They have accrued over the years, as the outcome ofthe bricoleurs haphazard confrontation with a variety of projects. In theirunpolished, underspecialized nature, the bricoleurs instrumental resourcesexemplify the interplay of function and matter and the shifting invasion ofone by the other that his game exemplies. A particular cube of oak could bea wedge to make up the inadequate length of a plank of pine or could be apedestal . . . in one case it will serve as an extension, in the other as material(Lvi-Strauss, 1996: 1819).The bricoleurs method thus exemplies a procedural trajectory that stands

opposite to that of the engineer, ascending, as it were, from the contingent/particular to the general/enduring, building up structures (recurrent solutions)out of the events that he encounters in his diverse undertakings and technicalconfrontations. The bricoleur, Lvi-Strauss claims, may not accomplish hisgoals but derives pleasure from the challenge and poetry of his undertaking. Atthe same time, the very poetry and capacity for contingent responses thatderive from the bricoleurs nature of instrumental resources place severeconstraints on what can be accomplished by them. The constraints deriveboth from the nite number of the elements that make up the bricoleursinstrumental set and the limited extendibility which the xed and stuckmaterialization of each of these elements affords. Function is tightly tied to



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matter and to the forms that his tools have acquired as the outcome ofexperiential use rather than deliberate design. Each project is an occasion inwhich new tools or materials can be added, while older ones may break down,be modied, and perhaps abandoned. In other words, function, form, andmatter occur in bundled ways that considerably limit the space of possibleuses in which the bricoleurs toolkit can be brought to bear upon. Whileallowing for contingent exploration, the limited and underspecialized natureof the elements of the bricoleurs instrumental set forcefully constrain thenumber of possible combinations they can enter with one another.By contrast, the abstract nature of the knowledge of the scientist/engineer

and the standardized character of the techniques that rule his practice, Lvi-Strauss claims, makes them in principle, if not in practice, open toward amuch wider spectrum of possible opportunities or combinations. Like cur-rency or standardized information, abstract entities, Lvi-Strauss claims, canenter into a much wider range of relations and combinations with oneanother, a condition that Yoo et al. (2010) and Yoo (this volume) closelyassociate with the agnostic or non-product-specic functions or componentsthat they claim are characteristic of many contemporary technological eco-systems (see also Varian, 2010). In such systems, particular elements, whileheavily specialized, are still divested from single functions and particularmaterializations (hence agnostic) and given the possibility of entering into amuch broader spectrum of combinatorial relations (Kallinikos, 2011a), as itoften happens these days in the case of the so-called apps tied to one or moreplatforms. These claims, I feel, resonate well with the view of modern tech-nology outlined earlier in this chapter as open language or chemistry (Arthur,2009), a generative matrix, as it were, resulting from the analytic and practicaldisentanglement of matter and the many combinations and functions thisenables.4 As soon as the bonds tying form, function, and matter are loosened,a new space of action and deliberation opens in which technological func-tions are less constrained by the material substratum of technological objectsor processes and can break through specic functional boundaries usuallyassociated with specic products, industries, or platforms (Varian, 2010).There may be good reasons to question Lvi-Strauss idealized description.5

The advance of science and engineering managed to keep bricolage at bay butnever entirely extinguished it from the technological culture of modernity(Barley and Orr, 1997; Ciborra, 2003; March, 1976). An interesting and timely

4 The scientist/engineer and the bricoleur are further distinguished from the all-embracingdeterminism of magic (and religion) and the pretension of the magician to produce outcomesthrough imaginary and noncontingent connections between causes and effects, means and ends,for example, healing by praying or talking, rain by dancing.

5 See for instance Derrida (1978: ch. 10) for a thoughtful commentary on and deconstructionof Lvi-Strausss distinction between the bricoleur and the scientist/engineer.



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analogy to make is perhaps between the portrait of bricoleur painted by Lvi-Strauss and Zittrains procrastination principle. According to Zittrain (2008),both the personal computer and the Internet owe much of their innovativeand generative potential to the fundamental condition that they remainintentionally unnished technologies, hence the principle of procrastin-ation. Similarly, perhaps, to the bricoleurs toolkit, the procrastination principledoes not close up, through specialization, the future use of computing tech-nologies and the Internet. Rather than being dened in advance throughspecialization and ne-tuning, the components and procedures that populatethe digital ecosystem can be brought to a variety of combinations by experi-menting individuals. The PC, the Internet, and much of software innovationare the outcomes of deviant and experimenting routes pursued by amateurswho have an intrinsic predilection for bricolage.Yet, the experimentation of these amateurs and hackers differs essentially

from the technical poetry of bricolage, as this is portrayed by Lvi-Strauss. For,the experimentation opened up by the unnished nature of computing tech-nologies is still mediated by a highly developed and standardized techno-logical landscape without which its innovative outcomes would be severelycurtailed. Indeed, the combinatorial prospects of the unnished technolo-gies, functional elements, and physical components characteristic of theinternet ecosystem are the outcome of the far-reaching standardization ofthat ecosystem along a number of dimensions, including components, proto-cols and standards, and programming techniques (Varian, 2010; Yoo et al.,2010). The fuller appreciation of Zittrains argument requires the understand-ing of the conditions that dene the generative capacities of computingtechnologies. And these are closely associated with a series of critical separ-ations, among which gures prominently the disjuncture of hardware fromsoftware and function from matter. Let us turn to these issues.

Computation: Architectures and Principles

The exibility and functional capacity of computing technologies are widelyunderstood as being related with the abstract or logical nature of software, andits loose coupling to the underlying physical machine or hardwired infrastruc-ture. Being a set of logical instructions written in a specialized code, softwarestands at the center of the issues that concern us here. To some degree, it is atechnology without matter, a conceptual scheme or frame in which a number ofcognitive relations and procedures are laid out and ordered in ways that makepossible their machine execution.The transition to a technology instrumented as set of logical relations

represents a long evolutionary trajectory whose origins can perhaps be traced



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back to systems of writing, counting, and calculation as methods and tech-niques of ordering reality, mastering production, and aiding economicexchanges. But it is instructive for the issues that concern us here to recallthe initial or proto-environment of computing, as this is represented by theefforts of Charles Babbage to construct the rst mechanical arrangement ableto perform computational operations. On the one hand, the voluminousnature of Babbages machine forcefully asserted its materiality and the indis-soluble bond tying abstraction to matter. On the other hand, the machinediffered conspicuously from all other known species of machines. Despite itsimposingmaterial presence, it neither processedmaterial inputs nor producedmaterial outputs. Thus describes Gleick (2011: 801) that innovation:

Like the looms, forges, naileries, and glassworks he studied in his travels acrossnorthern England, Babbages machine was designed to manufacture vast quan-tities of a certain commodity. The commodity was numbers.The engine openeda channel from the corporeal world of matter to a word of pureabstraction.6 The engine consumed no raw materialsinput and output beingweightlessbut needed considerable force to turn the gears. All that wheel-workwould ll a room and weigh several tons. Producing numbers, as Babbage con-ceived it, required a degree of mechanical complexity at the very limit of availabletechnology. Pins were easy compared with numbers.

The contrast between the weightless inputs and outputs of Babbages machineand its imposing material presence is interesting and instructive. On the onehand, the often invisible yet massive infrastructures on which modern com-putation relies could be seen as the analog of Babbages voluminous machine.On the other hand, the original separation of the two orders (matter andabstraction), which the machine pioneered, has progressed along the linesI have been at pains to describe in this chapter. However, the developmentssince Babbages original attempt to build a bridge between ideas and thingscould be construed, they are epitomized by a number of separations amongwhich gure the dissociation of information processing from communication andthe construction of software systems able to operate independently from thesemantics and pragmatics of communication (Shannon and Weaver, 1949).Such a context-free ideal of information processing is an instance of theunbundling of information processing (conceived as a function or set offunctions) from the dense context of communication within which infor-mation processing is traditionally embedded. Once conceived as separablefunction, information processing could be given technological embodimentthrough programming and ultimately, via appropriate machine architectures,by the separation of software from hardware. This last separation permits the

6 My own stress.



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development and functioning of software without immediate interferencefrom the underlying hardware infrastructure. The two systems stand looselycoupled to one another. The higher level technological operations the soft-ware embodies, including their regular update and development, can bepursued relatively independently from the prevailing hardware constraints.This is key to understanding how the paradigm of computation epitomizes anew relationship between function, form, and matter.It would be relevant in this context to briey comment on the exchange

mechanism or channel through which matter and function, logical or cogni-tive relations, and hardwiring solutions are brought to bear upon one anotherin the context of computation. The mechanism is no other than binarycoding, which, as Leibniz already perceived (see, e.g., Borgmann, 1999), is orcan be rendered the fundamental and elementary operation of cognition. For,cognition and communication could be conceived as coinciding with themaking, packaging, and transfer of distinctions derived or performed upon aprimary (including emotions) reality (Bateson, 1972, 1979; Gleick, 2011).Each binary alternation can be made to signal or carry a difference (distinc-

tion) and several differences (bits) assembled together in a pattern (bytes andbeyond) could be used to describe reality (convey meaning) or, prescriptively,lay out the bits and pieces that make up a task or procedure. A consequence ofthis is that the compact (continuous, analog) nature of reality can be reducedto elementary binary alternations and scaled up again as assemblies of differ-ences to cultural and perceptual units of apprehension and cognitive behaviorthat allow interaction with human agents (Bateson, 1972; Borgmann, 1999;Kallinikos, 2009). On the other end, the machine (the hardware) can justsupport the processing of binary alternations without needing to get involvedin higher level operations of semantics and communication. For that reason,all software needs, at the bottom, to secure the link to the hardware and benumerical (Shannon and Weaver, 1949). Recall that, in the digital world,pictures, images, and forms that have the habitual appearance of reality(simulations or representations) are assembled by means of numerical com-putations andmanipulated and dissolved accordingly (Kallinikos, 2006, 2009;Manovich, 2001). Digital pictures and images are just patterns of pixels orequations,7 ultimately numbers (digits).The relative independence of the critical layer of advanced technological

functions that the software embodies from the underlying hardware infra-structure has a series of implications that cascade across the social relationsthat develop around the use or consumption of software-based objects andprocesses. At the human/machine interface, users confront cognitive inputs/

7 Pixels and equations correspond to the raster and vector software engineering techniques ofimage composition and manipulation, respectively.



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outputs and templates organized in procedures and operations that must beapprehended and acted upon accordingly. This makes imperative to perceive,fathom, and relate to whatever cognitive output the use of software produces.The use of software and the cognitive content it mediates have so far appealedprimarily to apprehension and addressed by and large perception and cogni-tion rather than action or bodily skills (Flusser, 2003; Simon, 1969; Zuboff,1988).This has been a development with far-reaching social implications. What-

ever humans are able to accomplish with software presupposes user under-standing of the functionality of the software and its cognitive output (orcontent). In information-rich environments, work, AQ2Zuboff (1988) observedmore than two decades ago, becomes literally reading (see also Hayles,2009), a condition that has been aggravated but also obscured from thebewildering array of inventions that have since her astute observationsmarked the development of computing, media, and the Internet. The trend,in particular, away from desktop computing that is often predicted to beimminent (e.g., ubiquitous computing) is expected to dissolve the gap separ-ating design from use, information processing from AQ3behavior (Greenberg,2006), reconnecting technology and human drives (Norman, 1999). Theseparation of form, function, and matter that is at the heart of the techno-logical developments associated with computing suggests, however, that thereare good reasons to doubt the implications of these predictions.8 The growingmass of data characteristic of the internet ecosystem suggests that reading andcomprehending software output and its structure are still vital requirementsfor relating to it and whatever it affords. The diffusion of software in organiza-tional and social life continues to put cognition and cognitive mastery of thecontent the software helps produce at a premium (Zuboff, 1988). This has, nodoubt, been a slow social change preceded and moderated by the culture ofwriting and printing but a deep going change, nonetheless, toward a culture ofthe virtual or nonmaterial (Gleick, 2011; Hayles, 2009; Kallinikos, 2011a).Let it be clear that the software admits as inputs sign tokens (data or infor-

mation items) and equally produces its output again exclusively in this cogni-tive medium. The software makes the semiotic medium of the sign thefundamental, universal, and pervasive stuff of social life. This is a radicalshift away from the original confrontation of technology with matter andmatter qualities and an important outcome of the dissociations (informationprocessing from communication, hardware from software) described above.

8 Greenberg himself cites Intel Researchs Elisabeth Goodman who claims that (t)he promise ofcomputing technology dissolving into behavior, invisibly permeating the natural world around uscannot be reached . . . technology is . . . that which by denition is separate from the natural(Greenberg, 2006: 28).



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A serious implication is the profusion of sign tokens of every kind and theimpressive expansion of a complex and, crucially, steadily accruing techno-cognitive net spun by data items and the cognitive patterns (knowledge orinformation) underlying them (Edwards et al., 2009; Gantz et al., 2008;Hayles, 2009). This constantly accruing net of information and knowledge,of which the Internet is the most conspicuous manifestation, becomesincreasingly an important vehicle through which context-free models ofcognition and communication penetrate social practice and mediate situatedencounters (Borgmann, 1992, 1999; Kallinikos, 2006; Lvy, 1997).These observations make it relevant and perhaps fruitful to conceive of

digital content as yet another layer distinct and above the habitual layers ofhardware and software (Weinberger, 2007). Individual machines and theInternet as the most encompassing computing environment exemplify theseparation or, perhaps more correctly, loose coupling of digital content fromthe software through which that content is produced and acted upon and therange of physical devices (PCs, handsets, laptops) and hardware infrastruc-tures supporting software. The centrality and growing importance that digitalcontent assumes in the digital ecosystem is indicative of the layered andmodular architecture of the digital ecosystem (Weinberger, 2007; Yoo et al.,2010; Yoo, this volume; Zittrain, 2008) and marks an important developmentof technology toward the ether of the virtual and the immateriality of cogni-tion and communication, supported underneath by increasing selectivity inthe use of matter.The relative independence of the layers of the digital ecosystem may, how-

ever, obscure the steadily shifting boundaries between hardware and software.A very interesting development in this respect is what is often referred to ashardware virtualization (Carr, 2008). At some basic level, hardware virtualiza-tion is nothing other than the deployment of software to redistribute memoryand processing capacity and, in cases like cloud computing, to lease the use ofsoftware in novel and granular ways. In this respect, it bespeaks the steeringrole software assumes in the digital ecosystem. And yet, in some other moreprofound way that recalls Borgess iron mortal projectile that became adirection sign (the passage quoted at the outset of the chapter), hardwarevirtualization betrays the expansiveness of software and its capacity to pene-trate, extend, and, ultimately, domesticate hardware. In this sense, the devel-opments associated with hardware virtualization and cloud computing areindicative of the trends that I have been trying to depict in this chapter,concerning the predominance of function over matter and form, and thechanging parameters of social action that result from this (see also Nardi andEkbia, this volume).Arent these claims derived from an approach to computation predicated on

representational models of computation (Greenberg, 2006; Yoo, 2010)? What



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about material hermeneutics and the reentry of things in the space of everydayliving afforded by embedded, experiential computing and the so-called Inter-net of things (Greenberg, 2006; Ihde, 1990, 2011)? The developments that areassociated with experiential computing (Yoo, 2010) are complex enough towarrant their own lengthy treatment. However, the ideas put forth in thischapter do carry some important implications with respect to how theinvolvement of computing technologies in the space of everyday livingshould be understood. What I have primarily sought to do in this chapter isto analytically disentangle the shifting articulations of function, form, andmatterthat underlie technological evolution. If I am right, then experiential comput-ing is bound to interfere with the primary processes of perception (Kallinikos,2011b) and reality framing, the original circumspection that Heidegger saw asthe basis on which things are apprehended and absorbed into everyday living(Dreyfus, 1991). The voice that embedded computational functions lend tothings is after all premeditated, designed, and embodied even though thesefunctions are often activated on the y. Experiential computing is computingnevertheless, a signicant evolutionary step in themodes of computation thatpulls agents and things together, instead of separating them as traditionalmodes of computation have done, an undeniably signicant development(Greenberg, 2006; Kaptelinin and Nardi, 2006; Yoo, 2010). At the same time,experiential computing allows technology to tread upon aspects of humanliving that have traditionally escaped technological mediations of this sort(Hayles, 2005).

Postscript

In this chapter I have claimed that the bonds tying the invention and makingof technological objects and patterns to matter have increasingly becomeloosened over the course of technological evolution. Technological sophisti-cation measures the degree to which technological objects or processes resultfrom considerations (function and form) that transcend the qualities of theirmaterial substratum (Faulkner and Runde, 2011; Flachbart andWeibel, 2005).In this regard, technological operations could ultimately be seen as decontext-ualized conceptual arrangements (templates or matrices) on the basis of whichreality is ordered to objects or patterns. Such arrangements can materialize aswhen a piece of music represented as lines of code is burned to a disk or othermaterial but they do not need to do so (Faulkner and Runde, 2011). Thesoftware, then, most clearly epitomizes this immaterial/incorporeal ontologyof technology and the gradual and progressive dissociation of function frommatter and, of lately, form.



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I do not associate any moral value to this and I should not be understood assaying that the trends I seek to describe are good (or bad). If I am allowed tomake a confession, then I am convinced that at least as much is lost as it isgained (Nardi and Kallinikos, 2010; Nardi and Kow, 2010). Also, powerfulpolitical and economic interests undergird the developments I describeabout which I have been virtually silent (Feenberg, 2005; Margolin, 2002),while the ways these developments are refracted across the social fabric varyrather substantially from one societal context to another. I can console myselfin front of these limitations by the fact that this chapter was meant to serve adifferent purpose. I have predominantly sought to deconstruct the notion ofmateriality, hoping to get away fromwhat I often perceive as a frivolous use ofthe term and a supercial understanding of the depths of collective historicalexperience from which our relations to the material world ascends (Borg-mann, this volume). Despite the differences separating my approach to tech-nology from those of Pinch (2008), Suchman (2007), and Orlikowski (2007),I deeply regret that in the course of just few years the original promise of theterm materiality as outlined in their deeply engaging research has beenshattered and the term has grown to an inating buzzword, an empty vesselable to contain an amazingly large and ambiguous web of signications.But I feel less certain today than the moment I started few years ago, which

is, I assume, what a good intellectual journey always affords. I will still hold,albeit with less rm a conviction, that the progressive dissociation of function,form, and matter from one another is the most remarkable attribute of technologicalevolution whose implications are poorly understood and, with few exceptions(Hayles, 2005, 2009; Kallinikos, 2009, 2011a; Zuboff, 1988), seldom investi-gated to a sufcient degree. Such dissociation has shifted and continues to doso the parameters (some may prefer to call them affordances or mediatingconditions) of social action as habitual forms of associating to people andthings have several times been disrupted or regured (Borgmann, thisvolume). The appreciation of these shifts seems tome an essential prerequisiteto any reection and research on the role material relations play in techno-logical and, by extension, social processes.Short of appreciating the relative independence of function, form, and

matter, characteristic of technological sophistication, the involvement oftechnology in human affairs runs the risk of being misconstrued. Importanttechnological change disrupts the prevailing equilibrium between abstractoperations and real things, intangible templates, and their materialization.Empirical research on technology and technological change therefore needsto recognize the wider effects of that disruption and assimilate it to thestudy of particular technologies and practices (Feenberg, 2005). It is vital toappreciate the ways technological functions become implicated in the pur-suits of social agents with or without their awareness, consent, or preference



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(Kallinikos, 2011a; Zuboff, 1988). By the same token, it is important to histor-ically understand how human agency is framed and constructed by importanttechnological developments. Before they contemplate history, humans, wrotethe renowned British historian Carr (1986/1961), are the products of historyand a similar claim could be advanced with respect to technology and techno-logical evolution. This recursive relationship between technology and agencyhas to be contemplated and its crooked history disclosed.Function, understood that way, is of course as much a technological as a

social or communal accomplishment.9 What is recognized as technologicalfunction takes place against the background of established beliefs and socialpractices and cannot be studied apart from them (Orlikowski, 2007; Pinch,2008; Suchman, 2007). But function is equally crafted upon the material orlogical embodiments of technological objects and systems. Software and thepainstaking computations it embodies are not trivial things and they certainlycannot be wished away. Crucially, the enactment of function requires theformation of skills and capabilities distributed throughout communities andcarried out by entrenched educational and vocational institutions that tran-scend situated practice. It is along these paths, I feel, thatmateriality and socialtheory could be linked (Leonardi, 2010).

Acknowledgments

Many people have helped me improve this chapter. I would, above all, like tothank my coeditors in this volume Bonnie Nardi and Paul Leonardi. I am alsovery much indebted to Daniela Piana, Elena Esposito, Giovan Francesco Lan-zara, Jochen Runde, andMireille Hildebrandt, who providedme with valuablecomments over the rather extended time I have been writing this text.

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Author Queries

[AQ1] The year "1995" in Mitchell (1995) has been chagned to "1996" as perreference list. Please confirm.

[AQ2] The year "1998" in Zuboff (1998) has been changed to "1988" as perreference list. Please confirm.

[AQ3] Authr name "Greenfield" has been changed to "Greenberg" as per referencelist. Please confirm.



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form, function, and matter: crossing the border of materiality

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