Proxies

How those with the power to design technology, in the very moment of design, are allowed to imagine who is included--and who is excluded--in the future. Our world is built on an array of standards we are compelled to share. In Proxies, Dylan Mulvin examines how we arrive at those standards, asking, To whom and to what do we delegate the power to stand in for the world? Mulvin shows how those with the power to design technology, in the very moment of design, are allowed to imagine who is included--and who is excluded--in the future. For designers of technology, some bits of the world end up standing in for other bits, standards with which they build and calibrate. These proxies carry specific values, even as they disappear from view. Mulvin explores the ways technologies, standards, and infrastructures inescapably reflect the cultural milieus of their bureaucratic homes. Drawing on archival research, he investigates some of the basic building-blocks of our shared infrastructures. He