Digital tools inevitably entail some form of devolution of agency. Indeterminacy has long been a staple of digital design and postmodern thinking. However, recent technical, cultural and political developments have added a new spin, a new emphasis and a new urgency to more traditional theories on the power that some systems use to adapt, self-organise, and sometimes even fight against design itself.
Mario Carpo teaches architectural history and theory at Yale University’s School of Architecture and at the École d’Architecture de Paris-La Villette. His most recent books are The Alphabet and the Algorithm (2011) and The Digital Turn in Architecture, 1992-2012, an AD Reader.