On the Bias

This talk will consider the diagonal line as a technique within thought. Inherently formal and spatial, if not also graphical, the diagonal or oblique line has played any number of important roles: from the diagonal of the unit square (which nearly destroyed Pythagoreanism and, later, played an important role in Plato’s “Meno”), to the clinamen or oblique swerve in Lucretius, to the modern intervention of Georg Cantor’s “diagonal argument” (where in 1891 he demonstrated that the real numbers are uncountable), to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s postmodern “machine,” defined as a diagonal that cuts through an assemblage. What does it mean to think and act “on the bias”?

Alexander R. Galloway is a writer and computer programmer working on issues in philosophy, technology, and theories of mediation. Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, he is author of several books on digital media and critical theory, including Uncomputable: Play and Politics in the Long Digital Age (Verso, 2021).

Spyros Papapetros is an Associate Professor at Princeton’s School of Architecture. Forthcoming book publications include Pre/Architecture (Critical Spatial Practice series edited by Nikolaus Hirsch/Sternberg-MIT Press, 2022) and Frederick Kiesler’s Magic Architecture: The Story of Human Housing (The MIT Press, 2023).

Visit the Program in Media and Modernity website for more information.