Programmed Materials: An Archeology of Machinic Responsibility Scott W. Schwartz 47 Abstract The twenty-frst century is programmed. From machinists who automate lathes to grind out the cogs of industry to the feet of Experience Designers (UX) employed by Google to optimize digi- tal interactions, the emphasis is on reproducible and predictable outcomes—programmed output. The valuation of mechanized and machinic output has a history intricately bound with the economics and social relations of capitalizing Europe, specif- cally the insurance industry. This paper investigates the privi- leging of programmable output in machinery and now data over the preceding centuries in a society that pursues the per- petual growth of wealth. I argue that shifts towards automa- tion and programmability mark a signifcant transition in the concept of responsibility, both individual and social. Outsourc- ing responsibility to machines has engendered a dehumanized responsibility necessary to normalize detrimental and unjust socio-environmental conditions. To these ends, I examine en- coded materials—the Jacquard loom, IBM’s early punch cards, and today’s object-oriented programming languages—for in- sights into the mass-produced responsibility of the industrial- ized world. I further show how the technology of programming (from punch cards to silicon) is entangled with insurance’s need to value the future, which also structures our world. Scott W. Schwartz, “Programmed Materials: An Archeology of Machinic Responsibility,” IA: The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology 43, nos. 1 and 2 (2017): 47–57. Dept. of Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY, sschwartz@ gradcenter.cuny.edu. © 2020 by the Society for Industrial Archeology. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the Society for Industrial Archeology’s website: www.sia-web.org/ia- journal/siaia.html. This is a mass-produced sentence. This is a mass-pro- duced sentence. This is a mass-produced sentence. This is a mass-produced sentence. This is a mass-pro- duced sentence. This is a mass-produced sentence. This is a mass-produced sentence. This is a mass-pro- duced sentence. This is a mass-produced sentence. This is a mass-produced sentence. The above paragraph was composed utilizing the Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V commands on my keyboard. The devel- opers of Microsoft Word, working within the parameters of the standardized QWERTY keyboard, programmed these commands to perfectly replicate highlighted text. Any sentiments captured on the “clipboard” (such digi- talized physical metaphors abound in human-computer interaction) of a computer’s operating system can be repeated perpetually using this programmed conven- tion. Such is my faith in the precise reproducibility of this programmed output, that I need not bother proof- reading the opening paragraph after its first sentence. This article discusses the idea that responsibility (such as the responsibility for ensuring there are no typos in the opening paragraph) is a programmable function. Such an idea, it will be argued, is a prerequisite for the dehumanized social relations of capitalizing popula- tions. That is, in order to organize a society around perpetually growing inequality (and the attendant suffering this induces), it is necessary to outsource responsibility (for this suffering) to non-human mate- rials. This argument is pursued by weaving together the histories of the textile and insurance industries, investigating the overlapping media employed to pro- duce the respective commodities of these two indus- tries. The word “weave” is not used here arbitrarily. Rather, the tactile materiality of the textile industry serves as the warp and the relative intangibility of the insurance industry is the weft entwining the structure of automated mass-production (figure 1).