ABSTRACT
The ultimate goal is “safety,” which drives the new control systems: the realignment of roads and cars, protocols and signals becomes lucrative business. The array of spotlights mounted above the conference table, as comprehensive as that of a theater, is arranged such that a single pinpoint beam falls upon each of the seats. The task of accommodating this mortal element is one that the logic of systems optimization is primed to reject. The body remains extricable from the machine, cognition from matter. The advantages of massively distributed computation and control—from the interoperation implemented by control units for various internal subsystems to the larger urban coordinations actioned by traffic optimization agents—are so conclusive as to be absolute. The Chair’s enormous presence at the lower end of the table seems to amplify the sense of tilt, as if at any moment the items on the surface might roll downward along the declivity.
