{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"24410bf1-91f1-4e6b-9613-e64f0132d341","title":"The Stack On Software and Sovereignty","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780262029575","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"24410bf1-91f1-4e6b-9613-e64f0132d341","id":"24410bf1-91f1-4e6b-9613-e64f0132d341","uuid":"24410bf1-91f1-4e6b-9613-e64f0132d341","title":"The Stack On Software and Sovereignty","normalized_title":"thestackonsoftwareandsovereignty","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780262029575","isbns":["9780262029575"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":517,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/24410bf1-91f1-4e6b-9613-e64f0132d341","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/The%20Stack%20On%20Software%20and%20Sovereignty","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/24410bf1-91f1-4e6b-9613-e64f0132d341/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/24410bf1-91f1-4e6b-9613-e64f0132d341/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/24410bf1-91f1-4e6b-9613-e64f0132d341","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/24410bf1-91f1-4e6b-9613-e64f0132d341/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/24410bf1-91f1-4e6b-9613-e64f0132d341/search"},"page":{"printed_page":238,"pdf_page":254,"physical_index":254,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"d85b3be56f2705d0596a229ff1d78b68196c661f06468ed303793529b0c866e3"},"chapter":"Fheck The Stack |On Software and Sovereignty Benjamin H. Bratton","content":"Back to Serres ’ s parable, the App also transforms the ubiquitous device into a modulation of the hand, and so over time, it will also dissipate the hand as machines settle into another kind of User agency. The platform structure of App, device, plus Cloud locates global computing directly into the palm of the ambulatory User. The mobile device, not laptops or desktop machines, is the first and still primary computing experience for most Earthlings. In this natural motion, the App interface on the device (what some still insist on calling a “ phone ” ) is often a kind of extension of the hand. It points, grabs, selects, draws lines, pushes, and pulls. It may also extend the eye and the ear, the voice and even the skin, but the combination of a Cloud platform device that can alter its function to suit a near-infinite range of potential challenges (over 1.4 million Apps approved for the Apple App Store in early 2015) suggests comparison with Serres ’ s characterization of the hand as a technology that is “ never finished ” because it is so adaptable to new uses instead of being held to a fixed niche. The mobile device has a similar generic anatomy, as the App enables an endless array of techniques, simulating the palm, finger, or fist, and so the device “ at hand ” extends the work of the natural hand to inscribe and coax digital information into and out of the pathways of the world.\n\nBeyond the single device, the platform logic of the App can be, and is already, extended from the mobile deck into a wider range of machines and networks. Some doctors prescribe health care Apps in addition to medications as part of a therapeutic regime, and the race to design low-cost clinical tools (a “ tricorder ” ) redefines the administration of medical equipment. <sup>43</sup> Cars are already App platforms, but the real innovation in specific Apps for transportation hardware is still to come. Driverless cars (or cars that are simply more autonomous along a generic spectrum) would change what passengers are expected to do and not do while hurtling through the City layer and on what events they are expected to focus their attention. Apps that connect cars to work or play, some using windows as screens, will, for better or worse, further virtualize the experience of automotive drift. Some cars might be bound to an Android or iOS platform lock-in, or new manufacturer-specific operating systems might support neither or both, but cars already contain multiple software and hardware systems, and by extending these to control how cars navigate streets and how passengers interact with the world and one another, it ’ s not difficult to see how the redefinition of “ a car ” as a high-velocity computing platform, enveloping the user inside, initiates new genres of in-motion Apps. As it does for the mobile device, this would redefine the individual car, or a swarm of cars, into another kind of hardware-extended habitat of a wider Cloud platform. As the single “ car ” becomes a fast and heavy computer that you can sit down in, so do “ cars ” also become components of the larger computational network infrastructure. But here the anthropocentric bias of construing the User as necessary like a human, who extends his primate hand into the world, reaches an impasse. Cars with Apps, medical devices with Apps, or any machine with Apps also suggest design assignments for modular forms of bottom-up artificial intelligence. Any machine, whether general or highly specific, could be imbued with the narrowly focused intelligence of the App linked to a wider Cloud and could download any particular sensing, sensory, storing, calculative, or transmission function programmed for it. Each can do that without addressing humans or requesting our interference in the communication flow between machine User and Cloud. The most important, viable, and effective Apps and App market platforms may serve the nonhuman Users that interface across scales and systems — manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, transportation, agriculture, retail service — by linking and delinking modular functions of component machines working in interoperable concert. <sup>44</sup> In this economy, the universal flexibility of the “ hand ” dissipates into a more open field of tactical computation animating all programmable platform components more equally. As any piece of equipment, regardless of its shape or mammal origin, can be augmented by downloading a needed App function, it too can now serve any number of unexpected niches.\n\n238\n\nInterface Layer","previous_page":237,"next_page":239}