ISSN 1071-4391 ISBN 978-1-906897-11-6 This Issue of LEA Is a Co-Publication Of

ISSN 1071-4391 ISBN 978-1-906897-11-6 This issue of LEA is a co-publication of

Leonardo Electronic Almanac Volume 17 Issue 1 August 2011 ISSN: 1071-4391 ISBN: 978-1-906897-11-6 The ISBN is provided by Goldsmiths, University of London

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editor in chief editorial address Lanfranco Aceti [email protected] Leonardo Electronic Almanac Sabanci University, Orhanli - Tuzla, 34956 co-editor Istanbul, Turkey Paul Brown [email protected] email managing editor [email protected] John Francescutti [email protected] Web art director » www.leoalmanac.org Deniz Cem Önduygu [email protected] » www.twitter.com/LEA_twitts » www.flickr.com/photos/lea_gallery editorial manager » www.facebook.com/pages/Leonardo-Electronic- Özden Şahin [email protected] Almanac/209156896252

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Leonardo Electronic Almanac Volume 17 Issue 1

4 EDITORIAL Lanfranco Aceti ACADEMIC VANITAS: MICHAEL AURBACH COGNITIVE LABOR, CROWDSOURCING, 8 AND CRITICAL THEORY 118 AND CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE Dorothy Joiner MECHANIZATION OF THE MIND Ayhan Aytes SOME THOUGHTS CONNECTING DETERMIN- 14 ISTIC CHAOS, NEURONAL DYNAMICS AND INVERSE EMBODIMENT: AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE 128 AN INTERVIEW WITH STELARC Andrea Ackerman Lanfranco Aceti

HACKING THE CODES OF SELF-REPRESEN- ORDER IN COMPLEXITY 28 TATION: AN INTERVIEW WITH LYNN HER- 138 Frieder Nake SHMAN LEESON Tatiana Bazzichelli TEACHING VIDEO PRODUCTION 142 IN VIRTUAL REALITY ELECTRONIC LITERATURE Joseph Farbrook 34 AS A SWORD OF LIGHTNING Davin Heckman ATOMISM: 152 RESIDUAL IMAGES WITHIN SILVER PROFILE: DARKO FRITZ Paul Thomas 42 44 Lanfranco Aceti, Interview with Darko Fritz 50 Saša Vojković, Reflections on Archives in COLLABORATING WITH THE ENEMY Progress by Darko Fritz 156 Shane Mecklenburger 52 Vesna Madzoski, Error to Mistake: Notes on the Aesthetics of Failure THE AMMONITE ORDER, OR, OBJECTILES NEXUS OF ART AND SCIENCE: THE CENTRE 172 FOR AN (UN) NATURAL HISTORY 56 FOR COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE AND Vince Dziekan ROBOTICS AT UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX Christine Aicardi THE CONTEMPORARY BECOMES DIGITAL 184 Bruce Wands MISH/MASH 82 Paul Catanese LEONARDO ELECTRONIC ALMANAC - 188 HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE SIPPING ESPRESSO WITH SALMON Craig Harris 92 Carey K. Bagdassarian ARS ELECTRONICA 2010: THE MAKING OF EMPTY STAGES BY TIM 196 SIDETRACK OR CROSSROADS ? 102 ETCHELLS AND HUGO GLENDINNING: AN Erkki Huhtamo INTERVIEW WITH HUGO GLENDINNING Gabriella Giannachi

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COGNITIVE LABOR, CROWDSOURCING, AND CULTURAL HISTORY OF mainly UsA based businesses by providing a worldwide that myth. As in every technical media, it carried the workforce. inscriptions of discursive traditions and formulations that defined its cultural system of significations. This THE MECHANIZATION OF Amazon branded this service as the Mechanical Turk, Automaton Chess Player, for the most part, con- borrowing one of the names of the Automaton Chess veyed a reflection of the desire to imitate and expand Player invented in the 18th century by Wolfgang von the human mind, which has been the main project Kempelen as a metaphor for the kind of relationship throughout the history of the mechanization of the THE MIND the service establishes between the cognitive labor mind pursued by many notable figures including force and the seemingly automated complex tasks. Pascal, Leibniz, Babbage, Wiener and Turing. This In both cases, the performance of the workers who attribute would suggest the reading of the chess play- animate the artifice is obscured by the spectacle of ing automata as a text that is constitutive of its visual, the machine. Kempelen’s Turk was constructed and mechanical and performative system of referents that presented in 1770 at the court of the Empress Maria are centered on the major philosophical debate of its Theresa of Austria. The machine gave the impression time: the Cartesian mind/body duality. that the pipe-smoking Turk mannequin, controlled by a sophisticated mechanism under the cabinet, could Cultural ambivalence toward the Cartesian duality was In November 2005, Amazon Web Services started play serious chess against human opponents. However, the common motivation for most automata projects Ayhan Aytes a web-based labor market where workers from the machine was actually manipulated by Kempelen’s of the 18th century. 2 Mainly fueled by the materialist, across the world can choose and complete human chess master assistant who was hidden beneath the mechanist rejection of the Cartesian separation, its Communication and Cognitive Science intelligence tasks (hits) designed by corporate pseudo-mechanism. The Turk was exhibited for over critics claimed that the functions of the mind and the University of California San Diego developers. Labor required for fulfilling HIts varies: 84 years in Europe and the Americas and attracted soul dwelled in the body, and they emerged as a result [email protected] finding and matching information and images, translat- famous challengers such as Napoleon Bonaparte, of the interactions between the parts of the human ing text, transcribing audio, tagging images, answering Charles Babbage and Benjamin Franklin. body, which was imagined as animal machinery. This surveys or visiting a blog. The amount of pay for each mechanistic view transformed not only the cultural HIt ranges from one cent to several Us dollars. attitude toward living creatures, but also machines, as AUTOMATA, AUTONOMY, ALTERITY it suggested that machines were also living beings. Amazon’s virtual workshop emulates artificial intel- The reciprocal relationship between the animation of ligence systems by replacing computing with human Kempelen’s Turk is a significant representation of the machinery and the mechanization of life was explored brainpower. This human/machine assemblage pow- techno-mythological idea of autonomous machines through the experimental apparatus of humanoid and ered by an “artificial artificial intelligence” platform as it is a “mythic distillation of technical processes animal automata and popularized through the debates represents a crucial formation on a global scale as and machines.” 1 The Turk was not just a machine but instigated by their public exhibition in Europe. it facilitates the supply of cognitive labor needs of also the language that made it possible to explicate The 18th century automata performed their role

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Since the introduction of Byz- antine and Muslim clocks and

mostly as simulations of the anatomy and physiology universe of the chess game was partly enabled by of living beings. For example, one of the most promi- the cultural alterity utilized in its performance. Until automata during the medieval nent automata exhibited in European courts was The the 19th century, in Europe, the term Turk was used Writer, which was constructed with life-like materials interchangeably with Muslim, referring to the subjects period and until early moderni- such as leather, cork, and papier-mâché. Even its skel- of Ottoman Empire, while the Ottomans never con- etal structures were designed with the assistance of a sidered themselves as Turks as the term was used ty, the European conception of surgeon. 3 The idea behind this creation was to impart to denigrate the nomadic tribes in Anatolia. On the an impression of the tenderness of living things. Built other hand, in the European imagination, chess as the by Jacquet Droz, a Swiss watchmaker, The Writer was proto-war simulator was introduced and mastered oriental automata functioned able to inscribe any message of up to 40 characters. by the Orientals and epitomized their military power, It once wrote Descartes’ pronouncement, “I think until the spectacular halt of the Ottoman army in the as a composite alterity by com- therefore I am,” continuing with “I do not think…do Battle of Vienna in the preceding century. Therefore, I therefore not exist?” 4 Kempelen’s Turk, on the the simulation 6 of the simulator in the example of the bining the unknown world of other hand, formulated his question with a different chess-playing automaton had a double significance in emphasis, “Can I (the mind) exist without the body?” the articulation of the idea of the Cartesian autono- To this question, it gave two answers simultaneously: mous mind: first, by the possibility of the abstraction automata with the unknown “yes” and “not yet.” The actual answer was “not yet,” as of the key functions of the mind from the body, and, The Turk was indeed controlled by a human operator. second, by the potential of putting that into the ser- world of the Oriental. However, the deceptive “yes” response was still valu- vice of European colonial powers emancipated from able as a philosophical game. This particular function the perennial threat of the Oriental. of the Turk clearly mirrors Descartes’ utilization of the idea of animal-machine as a philosophical war simula- The first layer of this experimentation is related to the tor. 5 As a mirror image, however, it reverses the Car- peculiar coupling of the concept of autonomous mind tesian idea of animal as machine and transforms it into with the body of Europe’s “other” that mobilizes the machine as animal. As a result, Kempelen’s automaton negating potential of the automaton behind its mask, pre-modern ontological dichotomies as they were ticular, who had not forgotten the tales she had been constructs a full conceptual circle out of the Cartesian or the cultural alterity, thus harboring the heretical projected onto the outer margins of the European cul- told in her youth…went and hid herself in a window duality, machine as animal as machine. attempts of rationalist ideas under the alien turban tural universe. 9 10 This projection provided a fertile seat, as distant as she could from the evil spirit, which of The Turk. This trickery indeed has its own history. conceptual ecology that helped sustain the founda- she firmly believed possessed the machine.”11 On The Turk’s apparatus, in contrast with other automata Since the introduction of Byzantine and Muslim clocks tional ontological dualities such as known/unknown, the other hand, the idea that this spirit may as well be of the 18th century, did not act like a mere clockwork and automata during the medieval period and until sacred/profane, natural/unnatural, moral/immoral, a mechanical operator was already among probable but gave the impression of a self-regulating system early modernity, the European conception of oriental human/inhuman or life/death, but without corrupting explanations. The 17th century saw Leibniz’s proposal that could counter external actions within the sym- automata functioned as a composite alterity by their separate lines of categorical contestations. of a universal symbolic language or algebra of thought. bolic logic of chess. As historian of technology Otto combining the unknown world of automata with the In fact, since the expansion of the commerce in Leib- Mayr suggests the mechanical, political and economic unknown world of the Oriental. 7 Similarly, Kempelen’s chess-playing automaton and niz’s time there was a search for a universal language ideas of self-regulating systems influenced the En- its mysterious source of mind power carried varying that would allow European traders to communicate lightenment ideas of liberal autonomous subjectivity Medieval Christian theology utilized this association in meanings. Mainly, the ontological alterity of The Turk with the people in the new colonies. Lebniz’s universal and democracy, in contrast to the idea of clockwork order to symbolically annihilate Islam by assigning the for its credulous audience operated between two op- language could be manipulated by a logical calculation universe, which was the political universe of auto- religion and its subjects to the “mindless” mechani- posite ends, the mathematical and the metaphysical framework that was called calculus ratiocinator; the cratic feudalism. The Turk’s articulation of the idea of cal world of gears. 8 However, this connection also explanations of its intelligence. Some members of the precursor model of modern computing. Chess is a the self-regulating system by means of the symbolic became a secure interface for the investigation of the unsuspecting audience such as “One old lady, in par- perfect example for such symbolic systems, and when

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STERILE ARTIFICE

The Turk spoke the language of the symbolic via chess, The techno-mythical object that replaced mechanical MTurk has recently gained some attention in the UsA tasks were rejected by the requesters. According to it entered “the world of the machine.” 12 automata in the 20th century is based on a differ- media, particularly after the economic crisis, through Mago, requesters do not give any credible reason ent formulation of the human machine assemblage. the stories of people who use MTurk in order to re- for their rejection. In addition, even the payments Not surprisingly, the chess-playing automaton faced Robots, in contrast to automata, do not perform by place income from a recent unemployment. Although for accepted works are most of the time delayed, a the first major challenge to its coveted secret of means of their outside appearance but mainly by their the kind of income that could be produced in MTurk matter that appears to affect many other Indian Turk- modus operandi in its encounter with a real calculat- utilitarian functions in accordance with their role in may not entirely compensate for an income lost from ers. Rajesh Mago does not work for MTurk anymore ing machine. Edgar Alan Poe argued that the chess- the industry for highly automatized production condi- a traditional full-time job, many Turkers still see it as and, in retrospect, he concludes “MTurking was kind playing automaton could not operate without the tions. 15 Through the concept of robot, the automa- a convenient and flexible work that could pay $8-$15 of addictive as I always challenged myself to test and manipulation of a human agent, based on a thorough tion has become a social and economic idea, because a day. For example, Tamara Wilhite, a technical writer experiment and work for low-paying HIts thinking comparison of Charles Babbage’s calculating ma- the automatic machines are designed to imitate or and science fiction novelist living near Dallas, Texas, that I will be able to make decent money. But, MTurk chines with The Turk’s performance. Poe concluded replace human functions. The artificial intelligence started working on MTurk after her husband lost his requesters are pretty smart; they had done more R&d that “(t)here is then no analogy whatever between the project has been a significant part of this project but job. In a radio interview conducted by Marketplace than me and were sure that they would get the work operations of the Chess-Player, and those of the cal- has not been very successful in replicating a variety of (produced by American Public Media), she says MTurk done at the lowest rates or for free!” culating machine of Mr. Babbage, and if we choose to tasks that can easily be completed by humans. Ama- “(…) is very useful as a supplemental income. That’s call the former a “pure machine” we must be prepared zon’s Mechanical Turk is a product of a recent instance something that I do after I put my own children to bed, to admit that it is, beyond all comparison, the most of such failure. who are 3 and 6 years old. I would not use this as a CROWDSOURCING AS AN UNREGULATED GLOBAL wonderful of the inventions of mankind.” replacement to a job.” 17 Mark King (Manchester, nY) LABOR MARKET After several futile and expensive attempts of the also uses MTurk for an extra income while looking for Poe’s rejection of the possibility of a “pure machine” artificial intelligence (AI) programs enlisted by Amazon. a full-time job in construction: “Most people sit and Mago’s case highlights the unregulated nature of the enabled him to imagine that the solution to this puzzle com to find duplicate product pages on their web- play around on the computer, play different games all emerging global cognitive labor market and evokes included a very particular type of human machine site, the project engineers turned to humans to work day long, and they get nothing for it. At least this, you the Gastarbeiter (guest worker) program of the assemblage, which was also a direct challenge to the behind computers. This was the first motivation to get a little bit in return.” 18 economic wonder years of postwar Germany in terms idea of autonomous subject. As James Berkley argues, build Mechanical Turk (MTurk) before opening it up of its interest in temporary global workforce. The Poe’s “vision of subjectivity hence implied a quite to private developers in return for a commission from On the other hand, workers from countries such German Gastarbeiter program has been a prominent different relationship between organism and environ- each completed Human Intelligence Task. as India or China appear to be mostly interested in model for establishing immigration without rights ment than had the subject of liberal humanism” 13 MTurk as a primary income source, although some of legislative system and it has recently inspired UsA law- and, hinted at “the possibility of transcending the con- Amazon’s virtual workshop maintains a transient, them find MTurk undervalues their labor. For example, makers during the fiery political debate on immigrant ventional limits of the individualized human subject.” 14 task-based and limited-time relationship between Rajesh Mago, a computer freelancer from New Delhi worker program (H-1 visa) for the UsA Information Berkley’s argument suggests that becoming post hu- the worker and the requester and does not support a criticizes MTurk in his blog as follows: “…they call the Technology (It) industry. 20 The German Gastarbe- man is a function of a mimetic behavior; however, he direct communication between the parties. Approxi- assignments posted by their requester as HIts (Hu- iter program initially allowed only male workers from seems to ignore the role of the Orientalist depiction mately half of the workers, or “Turkers”, are from the man Intelligence Tasks). So, is the human intelligence Yugoslavia, Greece, Spain and Turkey on a temporary of the Turk as the interface of this mimetic transfer. UsA with the other half from over 100 different coun- worth cents only? LOL! I know no one is forcing any- immigration status. These men were required to work Nevertheless, Poe’s essay is significant as a reflection tries. A majority of the non-UsA Turkers are from India, one to do these assignments but yet it doesn’t justify up to 80 hours a week, supplying the labor needs of on a prominent theme in the American psyche, espe- representing 33% of the overall workforce. 16 the usage word “intelligence”– a mockery of human the booming post-war German industry at a much cially with the evocation of terror and anxiety caused brain.” 19 lower minimum wage than that of the domestic labor, by the emergence of post human embodiment and The Turker community seems to have varied respons- exploited in a state of exception outside of the normal subjectivity. es to the claims of exploitation through this crowd- Mago states that he completed more than 10,000 legislations, rights and union protections. sourcing system. Some UsA based Turkers oppose HIts working for a few hours a day for MTurk through those claims as they state that their interest in MTurk 2008. He earned $572.62. His HIt approval rate was A similar kind of state of exception through the is solely motivated by the novelty of the experience. 98.2%; in other words, about 2% of his completed formulation of an unregulated labor market as a main

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constituent of the network economy is currently has become much more attractive to the neoliberal of variety in the responses of participants. These efficiency of their labor and thus their livelihood. We under way for cognitive labor, enabled by the process agenda within the context of the post 9/11 risk society two factors, the standardization of cognitive tasks also need to consider the fact that the processes of disembodiment of information, which is a creation and its fear rhetoric. As a result, the crowdsourcing ap- and their significance as collective data, are crucial that inform MTurkers’ tasks are the culture producing of postwar cybernetics. One of the main products of paratus, I would argue, clearly presents itself as an im- for the crowdsourcing paradigm as it transforms the algorithms that feeds the production and consump- the cybernetic discourse is the decontextualized con- mediate solution with its sterile cyber sweatshop that consideration of the value of a task by the skill level of tion cycle of the networked economy. However, the struction of information with significant presumptions filters cognitive labor from the culturally, politically and individual workers into value created by the variance inherent effect of this application is to create neatly that can perhaps be seen as ideological, for example, biologically contaminated bodies of the global south. produced in the kind of solutions within a particular classified, systematized bits of culture. This is the an Anglo-American preference for digital informa- cognitive task. From the requester’s perspective, the source of the innermost paradox of the system, a tion over context dependent analog information. 21 The MTurk outsourcing model is also an expression of uniformity of responses is not a desired quality and gradual reduction of the difference that defines the Carolyn Marvin has suggested that this preference the global labor market as a platform for determining something to be avoided. This aspect of crowdsourc- economic value of its products by approximating the mainly means an “ideological call for born-again unity the value of standardized cognitive tasks. However, ing concurs with the ideological premise of digital unpredictable variety of tastes, expressions, meta- in a clean and rigidly uniform world, a world more like some of these tasks create value only when they are information with its emphasis on sterile and uniform phors and conceptual affinities into singular ontologies. ours than anyone else’s.” Precisely because of such fulfilled by a multitude of people, such as surveys environment because MTurk maintains a lab like steril- Although this convergence into a singular ontology ideological implications, the network Gastarbeiters where the statistical accuracy requires a certain level ity of the requester control room by means of rigidly is a reflection of one of the main goals of the MTurk defined algorithmic tasks designed to valorize the system, that is, teaching machines to accomplish tasks mapping of the variations of the paths taken in that the way humans do, MTurk apparatus also teaches hu- algorithmic labyrinth. This process transforms cultural mans how to think within an algorithm. The net effect diversity into a factor that enriches the data and cre- of this would be the approximation of the natural and ates the core value of the mapped information, i.e., in- the algorithmic languages into a homogenous third formation as described by the anthropologist Gregory space. One way to consider this third space would be Bateson, “the difference that makes the difference.”22 in terms of the Marxian concept of alienation. Bateson’s argument in his influential work, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, was crucial in reformulating the Car- MTurk divides cognitive tasks into discrete pieces so tesian mind-body duality into an embodied cognition that the completion of tasks are not dependent on the framework. Bateson’s view has an emphasis on the cooperation of the workers themselves, but organized tools we use as extensions of our bodies and thus our from the outside by the interaction modules that are cognitive processes and establishes the mind as the compatible with MTurk’s operation platform. By the innermost core of the cognitive process and the body elimination of the cooperation aspect of the cognitive and the surrounding artifacts as the externalities that work, the labor power becomes a “variable capital” in Crowdsourcing reverses this relationship define the demarcation lines. Crowdsourcing reverses the Marxian sense because the labor power needs the this relationship if we maintain the object/subject activation and organization of the capital in order to if we maintain the object/subject di- dichotomy; the machine becomes the processing create value. center of the system extending toward individual hu- chotomy; the machine becomes the pro- man minds. I think the atomization of the cognitive labor environment is only one aspect of the alienation that needs As a result of this integration, workers of the appa- to be considered in the case of MTurk. Another effect cessing center of the system extending ratus not only produce information for the desired of MTurk’s particular cognitive task flow design is its algorithm, but are, in turn, produced by the algorithm, algorithmic nature that could be considered in relation toward individual human minds. disciplined by its process flows into a particular mode to the externalization of reasoning through mental of problem solving that eventually determines the representations and operations taking place on the

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REfEREncEs And notEs

human/machine interface. Since the algorithmic 1. Jean-Claude Beaune, “The Classical Age of Automata: Lord Capulet, the father of Juliet after she opposes marry- part-time-as-worker-for-few-months/. language that is used to define human intelligence An Impressionistic Survey from the Sixteenth to the ing with Count Paris against her father’s wish: 20. Jacoby Tamar, “Guest Workers Won’t Work,” http://www. tasks operates on the interface of this intelligence Nineteenth Century,” in Fragments for a History of the And then to have a wretched puling fool, washingtonpost.com. March 26, 2006. translation process we also witness the extension of Human Body: Part One, ed. Michel Feher (New York: Zone, A whining mammet, in her fortune’s tender, 21. Carolyn Marvin, “Information and History,” in The Ideology the protocol, the paradigm of the network control ap- 1989), 431. To answer ‘I’ll not wed; I cannot love, of the Information Age, eds., Jennifer Daryl Slack and Fred paratus into human cognitive processes. 2. Jessica Riskin, “Eighteenth-Century Wetware,” Represen- I am too young; I pray you, pardon me.– Fejes (Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing, 1987), 49–62. tations, no. 83 (July 1, 2003): 97–125. (Romeo and Juliet Act 3 scene 5, lines 184–188) William 22. Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (Chicago: 3. Ibid., 102. Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, (Murrietta, CA: Classic University of Chicago Press, 2000), 459. CONCLUDING REMARKS 4. Gaby Wood, Edison’s Eve: A Magical History of the Quest Books Company, 2001). 23. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, for Mechanical Life (New York: Knopf, 2002), 8 11. From the 1784 book Inanimate Reason about the Turk and Mass: Harvard University Press, 2000), 294. If the network is the assembly line of cognitive labor, 5. Georges Canguilhem, “The Role of Analogies and Models artificial intelligence as suggested by Hardt and Negri, then the Mechanical in Biological Discovery,” Scientific Change: Historical Stud- 12. Jacques Lacan, The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Tech- Turk is its model labor market. As the network shifts ies in the Intellectual, Social, and Technical Conditions for nique of Psychoanalysis, 1954–1955 (Book II) (XX: W.W. the object of control from the bodies to the collective Scientific Discovery and Technical Invention, from Antiquity Norton & Co., 1991), 47. AcknowLEdGEmEnts mind, the Mechanical Turk achieves this objective by to the Present, ed. A. C. Crombie (New York: Basic Books, 13. James Berkley, “Post-Human Mimesis and the Debunked foreclosing the collective cultural production to cogni- 1963), 510. Machine: Reading Environmental Appropriation in Poe’s I would like to thank Nick Dyer-Witheford, Lisa Nakamura, tive workers by atomizing them in the assembly line 6. Here, I consider the concept of simulation not as mere ‘Maelzel’s Chess-Player’ and ‘The Man That Was Used Up’,” David Golumbia and Trebor Scholz for their encourage- and by confining them to the algorithmic language of imitation “but rather the act by which the very idea of a Comparative Literature Studies 41, no. 3 (2004): 357. ment and guidance in the early stages of this project. the machine. model or privileged position is challenged and overturned” 14. Ibid., 358. as defined by Deleuze. In other words, the simulation of 15. For the playwright, Karel Capek who popularized the The two aspects of alienation designed into MTurk automata inheres in its materialization a crucial volatility, a concept in 1920, the Czech word robota, which means clearly undermine the cooperative aspect of imma- perpetual effort to test the perceived stability of the pres- drudgery, serf labor or servitude, was more preferable terial labor as claimed by Tiziana Terranova, Hardt ent status of the known universe. over the word labori, or worker. Robot is a cognate word and Negri 23 and many others. However, there have 7. E. R. Truitt, “ ‘Trei poëte, sages dotors, qui mout sorent di with arbeiter, the German word for worker. Their Indo- been very interesting projects addressing the lack of nigromance’: Knowledge and Automata in Twelfth-Century European root Orbh means deprived of free status or cooperative action on MTurk. For example, Irani and French Literature,” Configurations: a journal of litera- bereft of father. Silberman’s Turkopticon is a program that aggregates ture, science, and technology 12, no. 2. Literature Online 16. Non-USA workers do not need to pay tax to U.S. govern- the feedbacks of workers on the tasks and fairness of (2004): 167. ment for their income. Incomes of the USA based workers requesters and ranks them based on a scoring system. 8. Kathleen Biddick, “Dead Neighbor Archives: Jews, Muslims, are taxed if the total annual amount earned from a TurkersTalk is another MTurk talkback apparatus and and the Enemy’s Two Bodies,” in Points of Departure: Po- requester exceeds the IRS tax-reporting threshold, which a very promising platform for cooperation which is litical Theology on the Scenes of Early Modernity, ed. Julia was $600 in 2008. hosted by Talkshoe, an online community call service Reinhart Lupton and Graham Hammill (Chicago: University 17. http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/ that provides tools for groups of people to interact by of Chicago Press, 2011). web/2009/06/30/pm_turking/ Joel Rose, n.d., audio recordings, chats and video conferencing. ■ 9. Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the “Some turn to ‘Mechanical’ job search | Marketplace From Order of Nature, 1150–1750 (New York: Zone Books, American Public Media.” http://marketplace.publicradio. 1998), 92. org/display/web/2009/06/30/pm_turking/. 10. These automata were also called mammets whose 18. Ibid. etymology is traced to Mahomet or Muhammed. The term 19. Rajesh Mago, n.d., “Review of Mturk after working with was also used as a humorous term of rebuke to young them as Worker | PC tips and tricks.” http://www.pctip- women in English Renaissance drama as in the words of stricks.com/my-review-of-amazon-mturk-after-working-

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