Porosity and Computation
Asja Lācis (1891—1979) In this article I look at the idea that contemporary computational systems demonstrate what I call computational porosity , that is, the interpenetration of human and machine agencies through layered infrastructures of code, data, and automated decision-making. This concept draws upon Walter Benjamin and Asja Lācis's analysis of Naples' urban architecture in their 1925 essay, Naples. [1] As Smith (2021: 242) writes, "in 1924, Walter Benjamin spent six months on the island of Capri in the Bay of Naples. Throughout the 1920s, Naples and the surrounding area hosted a floating population of German thinkers" (see also Lilla 1995). These included Benjamin, Ernst Bloch and Alfred Sohn-Rethel, "while Siegfried Kracauer and Theodor Adorno were to make the same trip the year after Benjamin." As Smith describes, "many of the figures associated with the Frankfurt School of Western Marxism spent time in and around Naples in the course of the ...
