A central processing unit (CPU) is the hard-ware within a computer that carries out the instructions of a computer program by per-forming the basic arithmetical, logical, and
input/output operations of the system.
figure #6
Accelerationism
Accelerationism is the belief that in order to generate radical change, the prevailing system of capitalism should be expanded and its growth accelerated so that its self-destructive tendencies can be brought to their conclusion.
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— in more recent years the moquette designer’s role has been transformed by the introduction of computer aided design (cad), greatly improving the efficiency in production and the style of the designs. To update the debates about design and industry in the present day, i visited the moquette factory in Huddersfield. Here I was able to draw on further historical resources and see production in action. i was also able to discuss with the designers at holdsworth ltd the ways in which modern technology has changed moquette and how financial restraints in the recent economic climate have altered manufacturing and design priorities.
In the essay I close by exploring London Underground’s plans for the future design of moquette, in particular how design decisions are now being reached. A competition launched in 2009 gave members of the public an opportunity to design a moquette which will eventually be used on all the lines of the London Underground. Furthermore, in 2012 Heatherwick Studio was commissioned by Transport for London to design a new moquette for the redesigned Routemaster Bus. My essay considered the context and significance of this new approach
to design for public transport, and concluded by discussing the need for London Underground to continue to
employ the best contemporary designers so that the network maintains its position as an iconic
design symbol of modern London.
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M O Q U E T T E
— The underground rail ser-vice is an iconic design symbol of london. This success can partly be attributed to its strong modernist identity, initiated by the chief executive of london Transport, Frank pick (1878-1941) in the early 20th century.
his aim was to integrate modern design with industry to create a distinct corporate style for the network. The Underground was to be a showcase of the very best of contemporary designers for an audience which today amounts to over one billion
passengers per year.
— most people are familiar with the roundel signage by edward Johnson and the tube maps of harry Beck, however my prize-winning essay focused in parti-cular on the design of moquette, the often overlooked textile used to cover seating throughout the network.moquette, the French word for carpet, is a woollen material woven on large looms, which is ideal for use on public transport due to its hard-wearing properties. The colour-ful repetitive patterns often seen on moquette function to camou-flage dirt. The moquette used by london Underground is currently woven in two factories, one in Huddersfield and the other in lithuania, where manufacturing costs are considerably cheaper.
Both the manufacture and design of the moquette have been transformed since it first appeared on the Underground networks in the early 1920s. Frank Pick’s aim was to bring modernist design to the everyday commuter. He employed the best contemporary textile designers of the time, such as Enid Marx and Marion Dorn, whose designs displayed a strong modernist influence.
The London Transport Museum Library and Transport for London’s archive contain revealing correspondence between these designers and the London Transport management team during the 1930s. The documents demonstrate the importance that was placed on a close collaboration between designer and manufacturer. They detail many important design decisions which ensured neither the style nor quality was compromised at any stage of the design process. The network un-derwent changes when Frank Pick’s influence faded after his death in 1941. My essay examined the founding principles and the debates between designers and manufacturers to consider how these changes affected the overall feeling of design unity within the network.
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Could memory traces be discovered? Wittgenstein sought to undermine our confidence in the empirical nature of representationism, asking “Why must a trace have been left behind?”
(1980, paragraph 905). Do trace theorists misguidedly seek, on a priori grounds, to “dictate to science what to discover in the brain” (Zemach 1983, pp. 32–3)?
Some defenders of the trace in response drain it of empirical content. Debo-rah Rosen, for example, develops a “logical notion of the memory trace”, dis-tanced from the “scientific notions for which the logical notion provides only a philosophical underpinning” (1975, p. 3). But giving up the ideal of an inde-pendent characterization of the trace may not be necessary. The postulation of traces is empirical, but the relevant domain is not psychology. What’s doing the work is the physical assumption that there is no macroscopic action at a temporal distance, that mechanisms in fact underlie apparent cases of direct action between temporally remote events. This assumption may be mistaken, but challenges to it must offer some positive alternative theoretical framework.
The mere logical possibility of a unique “mnemic causation” which does oper-ate at a temporal distance (Heil 1978, pp. 66–69; Anscombe 1981, pp. 126–7) is insufficient, as is the simple denial of any temporal gap between past and present (Malcolm 1963, p. 238).
Critics deny that the retention involved in memory requires any continuous storage (Squires 1969; Malcolm 1977, pp. 197–9; Bursen 1978). This worry rightly requires trace theorists to be explicit on the relation between occurrent remembering and dispositional memo-ries. We do need models of the mechanism by which enduring dispositions are actualized. But the criticism does not show that there is anything deeply mysterious in the notion of under-lying causal processes which ground memory abilities (Warnock 1987, pp. 50–2; Deutscher 1989, pp. 58–63). The kind of ‘storage’ invoked by trace theorists need not be the storage of independent atomic items localized in particular places, like sacks of grain in a storehouse.
how does the postulated trace come to play a part in the present act of recognition or recall? Trace theorists must resist the idea that it is interpreted or read by some in-ternal homunculus who can match a stored trace with a current input, or know just which trace to seek out for a given current purpose. such an intelligent inner executive explains nothing (gibson 1979, p. 256; draaisma 2000, pp.212–29), or gives rise to a vicious regress in which fur-ther internal mechanisms operate in some “corporeal studio” (ryle 1949/1963, p. 36; malcolm 1970, p. 64).