Finding one’s way in media and AI: metallurgy and mapping

That which is most palpable of media devices – a uniform tactile screen or the sleek casing of a smartphone – often renders less visible the complex materiality of that technology. Similarly, when speaking about artificial intelligence (AI) and its apparent ability to learn, buzzwords and phrases gloss over a careful understanding of how AI works and how it arose. Jussi Parikka and Kate Crawford concern themselves with ostensibly distinct matters: the former explores what it means to think of media geologically in A Geology of Media, while the latter investigates the history and discourse surrounding AI in Atlas of AI. Nonetheless, Parikka and Crawford coincide in the thrust of their projects: there is a particular theoretical potential in media devices and artificial intelligence that is not obvious in their final, packaged form. Parikka proposes a “metallurgical way of conducting theoretical work” that foregrounds nonhuman, geologic agency in the production of modern media technology. He calls attention to the geologic materiality of media through literature, art and theory: transdisciplinarity is central to the metallurgic method. Crawford adopts a cartographical approach, cutting through the mystique of AI by mapping out what AI is, what it is not, and how it has come to wield an air of unknowable abstraction. Through their respective methods, both books seek to (re)-ground media, intelligence, and discourse and begin anew.