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Technology and Culture 45.2 (2004) 470-471



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Artificial Love: A Story of Machines and Architecture. By Paul Shepheard. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003. Pp. xiii+296. $42/$15.95.

"Architecture is rearranging of materials for human purposes," writes Paul Shepheard in this book (p. 79), but that is only one of many definitions of architecture he offers. It is other things as well, he thinks: landscapes, machines, sculpture. Shepheard, an architect living in London, has a passion for thinking and writing about architecture in nontraditional ways. He makes little use of the typical parameters of architectural discourse—proportion, context, typology. He rarely even analyzes buildings. Instead, he shares stories of the people in his life and their personal interpretations of technology and machines. Many of his characters seem as obsessed as he is with defining or classifying the "machines" they use or encounter in their daily lives, from remote-control toy cars to airplanes. Artificial Love overflows with Shepheard's speculations on architecture, technology, and the human condition, marshaled in an effort to pin down the meaning of technological life. Can a human emotion be applied to a machine, or to "artificial life?" If so, Shepheard muses, there must be "artificial love."

The book is organized into three interrelated parts or, as Shepheard might say, "components." The first consists of four "seminars" presenting his thoughts on architecture and machines as developed in conversations with architecture students. More stories follow in the second part, centered on his family as they gather for a Thanksgiving celebration in Houston, where he holds a visiting professorship at the University of Texas. The third part is an annotated index of almost one hundred pages. The first two parts of this "meal" of speculations are interwoven as the characters of students and family mix, and here the writing flows fairly well. The characters' ruminations serve as a de facto plot. The index, not surprisingly, is a litany of entries equally split between expanded explanations and random citations ranging from airliners to ziggurats. Here Shepheard provides further explanations [End Page 470] of some of the theorists he quotes as well as noting, for example, the page on which he mentions tacos. Only zealous readers will find this useful.

The titles of the first two seminars, "Right Bam Now!" and "What Did They Do With My Future?" hint at how time influences perception of evolving technology. Shepheard tries to make sense of the modern world of machines and architecture by using traditional classification systems, such as those of the natural sciences: genus, family, species. One of his characters is hooked on the idea of writing a "Field Guide to the Machines," yet he realizes that machines defy classification because of their complex evolutionary history. The second pair of seminars, "Quadrigas" (an alternate title for the book) and "Fields and Visions," continue Shepheard's attempts at ordering the world of machines he encounters. He uses terms such as "quadrigas" and "the three objects of desire" as analogous ordering systems, yet we never learn why this is appropriate. Many of these passages seem intellectually capricious.

The "story" portion of the book tells about the family reunion in Houston at Thanksgiving. One can almost hear the hum of the giant mechanical equipment serving the glass office towers of that city and feel the presence of NASA throughout his narrative. Shepheard even classifies his family members, using Shakespeare's "seven ages of man" motif from As You Like It. From his infant son to his aging father, each male family member represents a phase of the human condition. Their combined presence provides a vivid image of the passage of time and evolution. The contrast to human evolution through growth versus technological evolution as an accumulation of parts or functions is striking.

When presented as a story, the intensity of Shepheard's ideas on technology and our relationship to it is somehow lightened. Yet the reader is forced to pick out Shepheard's theories from the story line and draw his or her own conclusions. Shepheard calls all this material a...

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