Overview

The world today is so complex that it mitigates our understanding of it. It can be difficult to comprehend the flows of power which run through the networked technologies, global supply chains, and supranational regulations that exist all around us and influence our everyday lives. These are systems - sets of things interconnected in such a way that they produce their own patterns and behaviours over time. Systems Ultra explores how we experience these phenomena, how to understand them more clearly, and, perhaps, how to change them. In a series of scenarios, Georgina Voss shows us how to parse our complex world, looking at it through five themes - scale, legacy, matter, deviance, and breakage - via contemporary industrial settings of ports, air traffic control, architecture and construction, payment systems in adult entertainment, and car crash testing. In these human-made systems, what is designed and what emerges? What does it mean for a software-dependent car to break? What does the use of design software tell us about the workplace culture of architects, and therefore the limitations of architecture? What happens to port cities and workers if container ships keep getting bigger? Systems Ultra offers a toolbox for comprehending, and changing, the world.

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9781839760556

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Reviews

Georgina Voss thoughtfully explores the dizzying operations and implications of the vast machineries that dominate contemporary life, without ever losing sight of their everyday physicality: their meat and flesh, silicon and steel. A brilliant and hugely enjoyable read. -- James Bridle, author of <i>Ways of Being</i> With an ethnographer's eye, a comedian's wit, and a travel guide's sense of adventure, Georgina Voss steers us through the docks and control rooms, the convention halls and design studios, the interfaces and archives from which we can glimpse the global systems that constitute and actuate our contemporary world. Along the way, we gather a set of critical tools for looking at, listening to, mapping, diagramming, scaling, sensing, and feeling our place within these sublime structures - not merely to understand them, but also to equip ourselves to resist, break, hack, and hustle when things need to change. -- Shannon Mattern, author of <i>The City Is Not A Computer</i>

Georgina Voss thoughtfully explores the dizzying operations and implications of the vast machineries that dominate contemporary life, without ever losing sight of their everyday physicality: their meat and flesh, silicon and steel. A brilliant and hugely enjoyable read. -- James Bridle, author of <i>Ways of Being</i> With an ethnographer's eye, a comedian's wit, and a travel guide's sense of adventure, Georgina Voss steers us through the docks and control rooms, the convention halls and design studios, the interfaces and archives from which we can glimpse the global systems that constitute and actuate our contemporary world. Along the way, we gather a set of critical tools for looking at, listening to, mapping, diagramming, scaling, sensing, and feeling our place within these sublime structures - not merely to understand them, but also to equip ourselves to resist, break, hack, and hustle when things need to change. -- Shannon Mattern, author of <i>The City Is Not A Computer</i> Step inside this book and suddenly, you've got a golden ticket to a Willy Wonka wonderland where everything is connected to everything else. You'll never see systems - of any kind - the same way again -- Fred Turner, Harry & Norman Chandler Professor of Communication, Stanford University Unpacks the hidden complexities of the way we live today, and shows why it is essential for us to understand their means and characteristics. From the networks that control payments systems, vast global shipping routes as well as the ways our cities are designed, she explores their history and why they matter. Too often, we only realise these extraordinary powers that dictate our everyday lives when they go wrong, this is an essential manual to modern life. -- Bruce Schneier, author of <i>A Hacker's Mind: How the Rich and Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend Them Back</i> It can be surprisingly hard to articulate what a ""system"" actually is, but thank goodness we have Georgina Voss whose humorous and thought-provoking book vibrantly unpacks the nuances of systems and system thinking. As we follow her through a gargantuan electronics fair in Vegas, one of the largest shipping container ports in Rotterdam, a slick makerspace in Silicon Valley, and a pornography industry trade show, Voss draws on her unusual expertise as both creative practitioner and a researcher to distill what a systems worldview does, what it overlooks and where it breaks. -- Tega Brain, author of <i>Code as Creative Medium</i> Voss manages to skillfully unpack the power structures that make up, and reinforce, the large-scale systems we live in. Along the way, she also dispels many of the stories we're told about their inscrutability and inevitability.She does all this with humor, intelligence, and a boundless sense of curiosity. -- Bryan Gardiner * MIT Technology Review *

Georgina Voss thoughtfully explores the dizzying operations and implications of the vast machineries that dominate contemporary life, without ever losing sight of their everyday physicality: their meat and flesh, silicon and steel. A brilliant and hugely enjoyable read. -- James Bridle, author of <i>Ways of Being</i> With an ethnographer's eye, a comedian's wit, and a travel guide's sense of adventure, Georgina Voss steers us through the docks and control rooms, the convention halls and design studios, the interfaces and archives from which we can glimpse the global systems that constitute and actuate our contemporary world. Along the way, we gather a set of critical tools for looking at, listening to, mapping, diagramming, scaling, sensing, and feeling our place within these sublime structures - not merely to understand them, but also to equip ourselves to resist, break, hack, and hustle when things need to change. -- Shannon Mattern, author of <i>The City Is Not A Computer</i> Step inside this book and suddenly, you've got a golden ticket to a Willy Wonka wonderland where everything is connected to everything else. You'll never see systems - of any kind - the same way again -- Fred Turner, Harry & Norman Chandler Professor of Communication, Stanford University

Georgina Voss thoughtfully explores the dizzying operations and implications of the vast machineries that dominate contemporary life, without ever losing sight of their everyday physicality: their meat and flesh, silicon and steel. A brilliant and hugely enjoyable read. -- James Bridle, author of <i>Ways of Being</i> With an ethnographer's eye, a comedian's wit, and a travel guide's sense of adventure, Georgina Voss steers us through the docks and control rooms, the convention halls and design studios, the interfaces and archives from which we can glimpse the global systems that constitute and actuate our contemporary world. Along the way, we gather a set of critical tools for looking at, listening to, mapping, diagramming, scaling, sensing, and feeling our place within these sublime structures - not merely to understand them, but also to equip ourselves to resist, break, hack, and hustle when things need to change. -- Shannon Mattern, author of <i>The City Is Not A Computer</i> Step inside this book and suddenly, you've got a golden ticket to a Willy Wonka wonderland where everything is connected to everything else. You'll never see systems - of any kind - the same way again -- Fred Turner, Harry & Norman Chandler Professor of Communication, Stanford University Unpacks the hidden complexities of the way we live today, and shows why it is essential for us to understand their means and characteristics. From the networks that control payments systems, vast global shipping routes as well as the ways our cities are designed, she explores their history and why they matter. Too often, we only realise these extraordinary powers that dictate our everyday lives when they go wrong, this is an essential manual to modern life. -- Bruce Schneier, author of <i>A Hacker's Mind: How the Rich and Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend Them Back</i>

Author Information

Georgina Voss is a writer, artist, and academic. She is Director of Supra Systems Studio at University of the Arts London, and co-founded research studio Strange Telemetry. Her writing has been published by The Atlantic, Harvard Design Magazine, The Guardian, BBC Futures, V&A, WIRED, and MIT Press, amongst others. Her installation and performance work has been shown at TAC Eindhoven, The Design Museum, Auto Italia South East, Artefact Festival, Vienna Biennale, Brighton Digital Festival, STUK, Tate Modern, and Akademie Schloss Solitude. She has held residencies with transmediale, Autodesk, RAMLAB: Port of Rotterdam, Somerset House Studios, and Lighthouse Arts Brighton. She has held previous and visiting positions with Tinker London, MIT, Royal College of Art, Goldsmiths, University of Southern California, The New School, and NYU.

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