Fellows SS 2016

My project is a transdisciplinary investigation of how we deal with technological mediation processes and the immense amounts of data and digital formats that constitute our composite analogue/digital life-world. Focusing on both visualization and sonification processes, the project’s research scope involves the investigation of contemporary artistic and experimental design practices occupied with exploring digital formats, big data, protocols, and perceptual coding strategies. 

Her current research projects focus on the possibility and forms of forgetting on the web, on a sociology of algorithms and on the proliferation of rankings and ratings for the management of information.She published many works on the theory of social systems, media theory, memory theory and sociology of financial markets. Among them: «The Future of Futures. Time and Money in Financing and Society», 2011 (Edgar Elgar Pub); «Die Verbindlichkeit des Vorübergehenden. Paradoxien der Mode», 2004 (Suhrkamp);  «Soziales Vergessen. Formen und Medien des Gedächtnisses der Gesellschaft», 2002 (Suhrkamp). 

My current research activity concerns the history of computation and cybernetics, both to plumb the past and to assess its affect on the present. Using historical investigations into the work of Albert Londe, John von Neumann, Nils Aall Barricelli, and Guy Debord, I examine the conditions of possibility for cybernetic society. Of particular interest is the formation of systems containing discrete entities, the organization of entities into systems, and the regularization of difference within the system overall.

During the time at MECS the Petra Gehring will work on methodological Problems of an ‘accompanying’ research for computer simulation, and she will ask for possible theoretical approaches to the politics – i.e. «governance» ‒ of computer simulation.

My project is to elucidate the emergence of a new infrastructural condition for design practices linked to software and digital networks, and to develop a theoretical and methodological framework for the study of the new modes of design that it has elicited. It extends my previous work on the intellectual history of Computer-Aided Design in the United States and on new data tools for visualizing building design as a socio-digital phenomenon.

At MECS I hope to more fully address the computational history of energy conservation, and the simulation of energy demand, and to reflect upon this engagement with the support of the MECS community. Before working at RAND, Roberts’ was taught by computer scientist Dana Scott (1932-) whose work on finite automata was closely linked to Alan Turing’s work on ‘universal machines’ and Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitt’s work on ‘neural nets’. Given the significance of these figures in the history of computing, I wish to explore the relation between Roberts’ work and the wider intellectual history of automation and simulation. Alongside this genealogical work, I hope to be able to reconstruct aspects of Roberts’ energy demand forecasting model, and to reflect on this simulation to reconsider the relation between computation and the political economy of energy resources.

The correlated debates on explanation and causality in agent-based models have contributed to the recent shift of the epistemological focus from laws to mechanisms in biology and social sciences. But, at the same time, some research programs still try to go a step further or - which could seem controversial - to go back to what could be called again «laws». What for?

Despite the relevance of climate science to one of society’s most pressing problems, and despite the fact that climate science exemplifies one of the most significant developments in the sciences over the last fifty years - the explosive growth of techniques of computer simulation - it has only very recently begun to attract attention from philosophy. There exists nothing like, moreover, a systematic treatment of the philosophical problems of climate science. During my time at the mecs, I will be working to remedy this.  I will be working on philosophical issues in climate science, climate modeling, climate simulation, and in the application of climate modeling to inform policy.