Re: <nettime> rage against the machine

[Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.com>]

On 28.03.19 16:38, tbyfield wrote:

> Yes and no. In theory, plane crashes happen out in the open compared to
> other algorithmic catastrophes. In practice, the subsequent
> investigations have a very 'public secret' quality: vast expanses are
> cordoned off to be combed for every fragment, however minuscule; the
> wreckage is meticulously reconstructed in immense closed spaces;
> forensic regimes — which tests are applied to what objects and why — are
> very opaque. And, last but not least, is the holy grail of every plane
> crash, the flight recorder. Its pop name is itself a testament to the
> point I made earlier in this this thread about how deeply cybernetics
> and aviation are intertwingled: the proverbial 'black box' of
> cybernetics became the actual *black box* of aviation. But, if anything,
> its logic was inverted: in cybernetics the phrase meant a system that
> can be understood only through its externally observable behavior, but
> in aviation it's the system that observes and records the plane's behavior.
> 
> Black boxes are needed because, unlike car crashes, when planes crash
> it's best to assume that the operators won't survive. That's where the
> 'complexity' of your sweeping history comes in.

Let me just pick up on one point, because it kind of annoyed me since
the start the thread, the significance of the the existence of a "black
box" in the airplane and in cybernetic diagrams. To the best of my
understanding, these two "black boxes" stand in no relation to each other.

In the case of the black box in cybernetics, it stands for a
(complicated) processes of which we only (need to) know the relationship
between input and output, not its inner workings. In the case of the
airplane, the it's just a very stable case protecting various recorders
of human and machine signals generated in the cockpit. There is no
output at all, at least not during the flight.

There is, of course, a deep connection between aviation and cybernetics,
after all, the fusion of the pilot with the plane was the earliest
example of a system that could only be understood as consisting humans
and machines reacting to each other in symbiotic way. So, the main
thrust of the thread, and the rest of your post, are interesting, this
little detail irks me.

Felix



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