Misbehaving effects. The Mechanical Magic of Organic Machines
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In this talk, I trace the dream of intelligent machinery as a specifically modern magic: the promise of effects that exceed their mechanical causes. Against accounts that reduce technological power to prediction and control, I distinguish the ambition to know what will happen from the construction of organic machines capable of reacting to what happens. Power, on this account, lies in an unequal capacity to keep reacting and creating, rather than in an all-encompassing plan. The talk was part of a conversation with Simone C. Niquille and Dave Murray-Rust, moderated and organised by Andrea Muniáin and Paula Ramos Mollá.