September 12, 02023
Coco Krumme traces the fascinating history of optimization from its roots in America's founding principles, to its dominance as the driving principle of our modern world. Optimized models underlie everything and are deeply embedded in the technologies and assumptions that have come to comprise not only our material reality, but what we make of it. How did a mathematical concept take on such outsized cultural shape?
Krumme's work in scientific computation made her aware of optimization's overreach, where she observed that streamlined systems are less resilient and more at risk of failure. They limit our options and narrow our perspectives. Optimal Illusions exposes the sizable bargains we have made in the name of optimization and asks us to consider what comes next.
Upcoming Talks
Videos
Johanna Hoffman
Speculative Futures: Design Approaches to Foster Resilience and Co-create the Cities We Need
October 12, 02022
Creon Levit
Space Debris and The Kessler Syndrome: A Possible Future Trapped on Earth
April 26, 02022
Brittany Cox
Horological Heritage: Generating bird song, magic, and music through mechanism
August 20, 02019
Elizabeth Lonsdorf
Growing Up Ape: The Long-term Science of Studying Our Closest Living Relatives
April 30, 02019
James Holland Jones
The Science of Climate Fiction: Can Stories Lead to Social Action?
January 29, 02019
Kevin Kelly, Stewart Brand, Alexander Rose
Siberia: A Journey to the Mammoth Steppe
January 22, 02019
Caroline Winterer
The Art and Science of Deep Time:
Conceiving the Inconceivable in the 19th Century
September 4, 02018
Esther Dyson
The Short Now: What Addiction, Day Trading, and Most of Society’s Ills Have in Common
July 17, 02018
Hannu Rajaniemi
The Spirit Singularity: Science and the Afterlife at the Turn of the 20th Century
July 10, 02018
Shahzeen Attari
Facts, Feelings and Stories: How to Motivate Action on Climate Change
June 26, 02018
Renée DiResta
Disinformation Technology: How Online Propaganda Campaigns Are Influencing Us
April 10, 02018
Scott Kildall
Art Thinking + Technology: A Personal Journey of Expanding Space and Time
August 15, 02017
Miles Traer
The Geological Reveal: How the Rock Record Shows Our Relationship to the Natural World
June 27, 02017
Andrew Lakoff
How We Became “Unprepared”:
Imagining Catastrophe from the Cold War to Bird Flu
May 30, 02017
Jennifer Petersen
Why Freedom of Speech Is More Than Speech:
Expressions in Media and Code
April 18, 02017
Tara Behrend
The Psychology of Surveillance:
How Being Watched Changes Our Behavior
February 28, 02017
Ben Novak
The Next Flight of the Passenger Pigeon: Engineering Nature's Engineers
September 27, 02016
