Bit-Player
The complexity of our world today, brings with it the problem of epistemic traction. How do we approach the world when it surpasses the capacity of the human mind? Complex reality requires that we think in a distributed way, that is through knowledge practices ‘beyond our own skin.’ [1] Given the need for computational modeling a better understanding of our world entails today, this knowledge distribution incites not just collaboration with other humans, but also with machines. The bit-player is a counter-heroic actor in this distributed game, who cannot claim to know the full picture, but embraces her (situated) partiality of knowing with an openness to stitch it into a larger configuration of shared knowledge.
Author: Patricia Reed
[1] Donald MacKenzie, Material Markets: How Economic Agents are Constructed, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) 16.