Calculator : Abacus :: Computer : ?
I have the privilege of teaching at NYU’s ITP, their “Interactive Telecommunications Program”, as an Adjunct Assistant Professor — a job that I absolutely love (except for the trips up and down the NE corridor on Amtrak). I get to teach people who are absolutely passionate about technology and art, but come from it from such a different background than those from my previous academic life.
Last semester I taught a class entitled “Every Bit You Make” where we read and discussed the choices technologists make, and how those decisions have inadvertent effects on people’s lives. Next semester, however, I’m trying out a studio class:
Computation didn’t always mean silicon, microprocessors, and electricity: flat stones and dust paved the way for the Babylonians and the Chinese to create the abacus, and Babbage used metal and gears to construct his hand-cranked Difference engine. This class’ raw materials will be wood, plastic, metal, and anything else a student can get his or hands on, sans electricity. Students will be expected to exercise their creativity while attempting to build “adders” and “memory units” without the affordances of modern computation. These weekly assignments will all culminate in a single working final project. Class participants will examine our reliance on modern technology, and to question whether we can create home-brewed computation in disenfranchised areas. As this class is meant to be an exploration of doing computation without a computer, students will be asked to build the answer to the question: “calculator is to abacus as computer is to what?”
I’ll post the syllabus and class schedule as I start to draw them up.
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