In 1947, Grace Murray Hopper a pioneer in early computing made an unusual entry into her daily logbook: lsquo;Relay #70 Panel F in relay. First actual case of bug being found.rsquo; Accompanying this entry is an actual celluloid tape encrusted bug, or more specifically a moth, fastened to the page of the logbook. According to Hopper, one of the technicians in her team solved a glitch in the emHarvard Mark II/em computer by pulling an actual insect out from between the (...) contacts of one of its relays. Word soon went out that they had lsquo;debugged the machinersquo; and the phrase quickly entered our lexicon. After languishing for years this mythic moth was eventually transported to the emSmithsonian/em where it now lies in archival state. The mothrsquo;s dynamic vitality had introduced a kind of surplus or aberrant code into the machine, which in effect pushed the machine towards a state of chaos and breakdown. Its failure to act as desired, to perform the coding sequences of its programmed history suggests that even a seemingly inert or lifeless machine can become lsquo;more and other than its historyrsquo;. Hopperrsquo;s bug is thus a material witness to the creative co-evolution of the machine with the living matter of the moth. Moreover, as a cipher for machinic defect the bug reminds us that mutations are in fact necessary for systems to change and evolve. The crisis introduced into a biological system or machine through the virulence of the bug is terminal only to the extent that it becomes the source for another kind of order, another kind of interaction. This is used as a casenbsp;study to argue that chaos is not only an animating force in the constitution of new systems but is necessary for the evolution of difference. (shrink)

This essay argues that nano-images would be best understood with an aesthetical approach rather than with an epistemological critique. For this aim, I propose a ‘techno-aesthetical’ approach: an enquiry into the way instruments and machines transform the logic of the sensible itself and not just the way by which it represents something else. Unlike critical epistemology, which remains self-evidently grounded on a representationalist philosophy, the approach developed here presents the advantage of providing a clear-cut distinction between image-as-representation and other modes (...) of existence of images, such as the one of ‘ imaginaction ’ that I draw from a comparison between far-field and near-field microscopies. Once this regime of imaginaction is distinguished from representation, I focus on nanotechnological percepts and argue that they follow a transmodal logic. I then draw the implications of this enquiry in terms of a new sensible condition that changes the way we think of non-living objects. Finally, I conclude that if techno-aesthetics dares to posit and articulate sensibility beyond the privileged sphere of subject/object relationships, it simultaneously engages us to consider the political character of our responsibilities towards the design of nano-engineered sensorial spaces. (shrink)

Imagine your body is populated by billions of respirocytes capable of delivering 236 times more oxygen than your natural red blood cells. These mechanical, micron sized spheres are appropriately programmed by your physician to meet your personal requirements, be it the treatment of anemia or the enhancement of your physical abilities. Robert Freitas’ vision of such artificial blood cells comprised of nanometer-scale components was published in 1998 in a peer-reviewed medical journal, and was the first medical nanorobot design paper to (...) be published.The fact that this proposal for a future blood substitute was accepted as worthy of publication in a scientific journal, despite the inventor's explicit statement that such a device could not be built at the time, clouds the criteria upon which an informed opinion about the feasibility of such devices could be formed. In that respect, the idea of respirocytes formidably testifies to the current “blurring of fact and fiction” occurring in the field of nanotechnology. (shrink)