http://library.mit.edu/item/001550749
Paradoxes of interactivity / Uwe Seifert etc
Does the Body Disappear? A Comment on Computer Generated Spaces / Sybille Kramer

if the transition from orality to literacy in medial respects can be described as a spatialisation, then the transition from literacy to telematics lies in a temporalisation. [...] information which is accessible and processable via computers does not remain in the shape of 'documents' but takes on that of 'cyber bodies'. It is then organized like a 'life stream'. Approaches to a non-Cartesian conception of the body become visible here: a body is taken as an entity in flow which is not defined anymore by its position in space, but by its changing in time. (32-3)

-- No! It is defined now by its unchanging in time. The fact that it changes is still a challenge to its individuation. We have simply become willing to draw these changes into its definition, to accept it as current and past (and future) entity. We recognize the necessity and inevitability of change, and delimit our entities accordingly.

Where the Action is: Distributed Agency between Humans, Machines, and Programs / Werner Rammert

What are agents? From a technological view, agents are particular computer programs. They are written with the intention that software agents can execute actions like human agents. This means that actions are delegated to them. The agents divide and delegate the action among other agents. [...] the main characteristics are presented as relative 'autonomy', a particular 'reactivity' to the environment, 'pro-activeness', and 'sociability' (67-8)

He defines levels of agency (69):

1. Passive -- Instruments completely moved from outside (hammer)
   
2. Semi-active -- Apparatus with one aspect of self-acting (record player)
   
3. Re-active -- Systems with feedback loops (adaptive heating)
   
4. Pro-active -- Systems with self-activating programs (car stabilisation)
   
5. Co-operative -- Distributed and self-coordinating systems (mobile robots, smart home)
   

"when the parts of a technical system [...] can behave not only in one pre-fixed way, but more flexibly, when the interaction with other parts or the interaction with the environment changes the behaviour, and when some parts actively search for new information to select their behaviour and even more to change their pre-given frame of action, then and only then does it make sense to use the vocabulary of agency and interaction in the world of objects." (69)

"If one were to count the activities of people, only five percent could be classified as actions with reflected intentions. (Kaufmann 2008) [...] Giddens distinguishes three levels of an action: a first one where a difference of state is produced, a second one where a difference of options is possible, and a third one where actors can give an explanation for their action if asked. (Giddens 1984)" (75)

"the unit of technical agency is constantly changing and growing towards a highly combinatory and relatively autonomous technological system." (80)

"When a human action such as flying an Airbus or searching for a certain piece of information in hundreds of libraries, millions of books, and trillions of files can only be executed with the assistance and intervention of hunderds of other agencies, then it is urgent to develop a concept of agency that acknowledges all these agencies, though they are heterogeneous in substance" (82)

Time, Magma, Continuity: Some Remarks on In-Formation and the Fabrication of "Poiesis" / Christoph Lischka
--> Process philosophy, A. N. Whitehead
"The emergence of forms (in-formation) is the ultimate character of time. The 'before' and 'after', the irreversibility of poietic time, is 'given through the scansion of creation and destruction.' Poeitic time forces a self-deployment of new forms in ensidic space and time as receptacles of the first stratum, where they become organized through subjective - both social-historical and individual - construction." (166-7)

"Every form - in order to be - has to be identical to itself, it has to persist for a while'" -- describes the ensidic mandate...

"Fabrication of poiesis, then, means keeping open the surging forth of physis: alliosis. It works out to be simply waiting for the right moment, the kairos - with gelassenheit. / If you want -- an ethics of in-formation." (171)