Sensing the

World
New Media Writing

How to do things
with sensors
Jennifer Gabrys
Ontology
being
Epistemology
knowing
Meeting the Universe Halfway
“The nature of the difference between their
[Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr] views is not
clearly laid out in the play, but it can be
summarized as follows: For Bohr, what is at issue
is not that we cannot know both the position and
momentum of a particle simultaneously, but rather
that particles do not have determinate values of
position and momentum simultaneously. While
Heisenberg’s point—that in measuring any of the
characteristics of a particle, we necessarily
disturb its premeasurement values, so that the
more we know about a particle’s position, the
less we will know about its momentum (and vice
versa)—seems at least believable, Bohr’s point is
utterly counterintuitive and unfamiliar. In
essence, Bohr is making a point about the nature
of reality, not merely our knowledge of it.”
“What he is doing is calling into question an
entire tradition in the history of Western
metaphysics: the belief that the world is
populated with individual things with their own
independent sets of determinate properties. The
lesson that Bohr takes from quantum physics is
very deep and profound: there aren't little
things wandering aimlessly in the void that
possess the complete set of properties that
Newtonian physics assumes (e.g. , position and
momentum); rather, there is something fundamental
about the nature of measurement interactions such
that, given a particular measuring apparatus,
certain properties become determinate, while
others are specifically excluded. Which
properties become determinate is not governed by
the desires or will of the experimenter but
rather by the specificity of the experimental
apparatus.”
Karen Barad | 19
How to do things with sensors

Part one
Jennifer Gabrys
Gabrys

“Tool kits offer ways not just to make sensors but also to
construct social–political worlds” (6).
 “I consider how protocols and tool kits, practical
manifestos and political programs, inform and
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materialize as citizen-sensing projects and practices

[…]  I suggest that engaging with tool kits and guides is
also a way of working through, reworking, and
transforming the possibilities of technical, political,
and environmental practice” (7).
Tenji Blocks, invented by Seiichi Miyake.
 “‘How-to’ here becomes an invitation to make, organize,
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orchestrate, conjure, and sustain people, technology, and

worlds toward openings rather than prescribed
ends” (9).
 “By working with and through practice, it is possible to
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query the promised effects that sensors are meant to

have and to test the forms of political engagement that
take hold” (14).
 “Yet the very act of constituting problems is also a
way of constituting worlds. To identify the making of
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sensors, the writing of code, and the collection of data as

key ways to skill up and undertake environmental
monitoring is to commit to  and become informed by a
particular way of acting on the problem of pollution” (32).
Uber's Self-Driving Car
Saw the Woman It Killed,
Report Says
The report says that the Uber
vehicle, a modified Volvo XC90
SUV, had been in autonomous
mode for 19 minutes and was
driving at about 40 mph when
it hit 49-year-old Elaine
Herzberg as she was walking her
bike across the street. The
car’s radar and lidar sensors
detected Herzberg about six
seconds before the crash—first
identifying her as an unknown
object, then as a vehicle, and
then as a bicycle, each time
adjusting its expectations for
her path of travel.
Wired | 05.24.2018 03:38
Uber Not Criminally
Liable In Death Of
Woman Hit By Self-
Driving Car, Prosecutor
Says
In the six seconds before
impact, the self-driving system
classified the pedestrian as an
unknown object, then as a
vehicle, and then as a
bicycle, a preliminary
report from the National
Transportation Safety Board
explained. While the system
identified that an emergency
braking maneuver was needed to
mitigate a collision, the
system was set up to not
activate emergency braking when
under computer control.
NPR | 03.26.2019 02:49
Software flaws found in
Uber car that killed US
woman
In the actual accident, the
test vehicle did not correctly
identify the bicycle as an
imminent collision until 1.2
seconds before impact. It was
too late for the Uber car to
avoid the crash.
"The system design did not
include a consideration for
jaywalking pedestrians," NTSB
said.
The Uber car also initiated a
one-second delay of planned
braking while the vehicle
calculated an alternative path.
Uber has since discontinued
that function as part of its
software update.
Aljazeera | 11.19.2019 12:00
NTSB. “At 1.3 seconds before
impact, Uber's car decided
emergency braking was necessary—
but didn't have the ability to do that
on its own. The yellow bands show
distance in meters, and the purple
indicates the car's path” (Wired).
 “Many theorists have discussed the ways in which
instruments generate more-than-descriptive
engagements that enact worlds. In other words,
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instruments are world-making […]  But the imperative

mood designates explicit actions along with observations
that might be achieved. It constitutes the methods by
which such constructions and performativity take
place, or falter” (37).
 “it is important to consider how these instructions are
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organizing a particular way of encountering the

problem of monitoring environments as well as
establishing technopolitical relations.” (37).
Elon Musk
unveils Tesla’s
Cybertruck
(Ringo H.W.
Chiu | AP).
Interior of
Tesla’s
Cybertruck
(Motor1).
 “Yet if, as [John] Dewey has suggested, the ‘invention of
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new agencies and instruments create[s] new ends,’ then

how do these new instruments ‘create new
consequences’ and ‘stir ’ us to ‘form new
purposes?’” (38).
“Google Maps
Hacks” by
Simon Weckert
Gabrys

“Cosmopolitics, then, describes how these systems of

technoscientific relations have political effects, and
how they come down to earth” (21).
How to do things with sensors

Part two
Jennifer Gabrys
 “When Whitehead asserts that ‘every science must devise
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its own instruments,’ he is referring in part to the need for

distinct tools to be formed in relation to modes of
inquiry” (53).
Pedocomparator. From Bruno
Latour’s Pandora’s Hope (1999).
 “Instead, a universe is required for instruments to be
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put to work, making both the tools and the universe

somewhat indeterminate in the inquiry to be undertaken,
because they are both in process” (58).
 “You might find that ‘getting practical,’ then, requires a
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greater engagement with the sprawling relations,

networks, and worlds that materialize along with
instruments” (73).
 “Instruments do work in the world. They can make
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undetectable phenomena evident. They tune us into

other registers of experience, and they attach us to
perceptive practices that remake our sensory worlds” (54).
Workers maintain the Super-
Kamiokande neutrino
detector in Hida,
Japan (Kamioka Observatory,
Institute for Cosmic Ray
Research, University of
Tokyo).
The umwelt of a scallop.
Jakob von Uexküll.
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“Open air  pertains to lived experience, to processes of

inquiry as they are unfolding, rather than to doctrines to
which inquiry is made to conform” (63).
“Ornitographies
arises from [Xavi
Bou’s] concern
for capturing
those unnoticed
moments and
from the interest
in questioning
the limits of
human
perception.”
 “Transformation, nevertheless, encounters resistance
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and requires struggle. Testing resistance, then, is an

important way in which to keep your tool kits well tuned
and ready for diverse modes of action, and even
activism” (90).
Resistance Testing Device
for watches (UNIMEC).
 “How is the world-making process that traverses ways
of life, modes of politics, registers of experience, and
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integrities of relation. It forms subjects and

environments in its indication toward engagements. It is
both a theoretical orientation and an embodied
collective practice” (78, emphasis added).
James Webb Space
Telescope (The Verge).
 “These are not technical solutions but rather provisional
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practices that generate new approaches to

technologies and new engagements with politics.
Hence the relevance of this discussion for understanding
what a citizen is and might become” (69).
Issue Survey

Due February 13
[Google Drive]
 Sensing the
World
New Media Writing

How to do things
with sensors
Jennifer Gabrys