Don's Reviews > Systems Ultra: Making Sense of Technology in a Complex World

We are used to thinking of capitalism as a world of commodities - motor cars, dishwashers, carrots, golf clubs, etc - which, in exercising our sovereign will as consumers we accumulate in great piles all around us. Voss's argument invites us to supplement this view of the world by acknowledging that these things acquire their use value by being a part of a system that transcends their atomised state of being. Moreover, the system element of their utility has increased as capitalism has matured into its late stage.

She cites the example of an aeroplane - once just a thing constructed out of plywood and wire,was piloted by a person with no aids other than a joystick and a couple of foot pedals. Navigation was undertaken by peering over the side of the cockpit and attempting to make sense of the terrain unfolding below. At some point assistance in landing the thing might be required, but that was accomplished by low tech means - a person waving a flag on the ground to indicate where it was safe to come down.

This is no longer the case. The flight of a modern day aircraft requires a melding with a technology that maps across national and international territories, with different sets of complex rules depending on whether you are flying at 5000, 10000 or 30000 feet. This is a dynamic system, requiring the plane to be continually broadcasting information about itself to technologies which operate at ground level, and in return to adjust your journey in line with the instructions you receive. The value and utility of flight is conditioned by the extent to which your flying machine fits in with this complex system.

The same can be said of motor cars and seafaring. Voss sets this out in chapters that consider the place of road vehicles and ships in her view of the systems that set the conditions for their operation. If planes, cars and ships have something obviously in common - ie they are all modes of transport - her argument is not limited to these examples. In a chapter of the digital payments systems that have been conjured into existence in order to meet the special needs of the adult entertainment industry, she is shows how even pornography couldn't function today without a special system that enables it to rake in a profit.

All of this is intriguing and Voss sets out her take on systems with anecdotes that are frequently amusing. But her argument seems limited to an appeal that we need to be more aware of the systems in which our lives are slotted into, but is in danger of this 'awareness' becoming an end in itself: or perhaps the point of inspiration for an art installation, which is another stronger to her bow alongside being a researcher and writer. Does her analysis point to a path dependency with regard to the direction of technology, which limits what can be designed and invented to the role that is plays inside the ever-extending systems? She suggests that this is the case, and that anyone interested in creating technology that moves beyond fitting into the prevailing system, perhaps to subvert the exploitation and oppression of a hierarchical capitalist system, has to start thinking deeply about systems and how they configure our lives.