Systems Ultra: Making Sense of Technology in a Complex World is a road-trip through the complex systems which surround us and shape our lives, often in ways we don’t see or think about. Taking in enormous ships, deviant industries, old software, new types of car-crashes, and more, Systems Ultra goes beyond narratives of technological exceptionalism to tell the story of what ‘systems’ have come to mean, how they have been sold to us, and the real-world consequences of the power that flows through them. Told with humour and guile, this is a book about finding ways to experience these strange systems and to refuse their power, if we want to. “[Systems Ultra] is a delight to read” - Bryan Gardiner, MIT Technology Review.
Systems Ultra was published worldwide by Verso in 2024
Praise for Systems Ultra
“[Systems Ultra] is a delight to read. Voss manages to skillfully unpack the power structures that make up, and reinforce, the large-scale systems we live in. Along the way, she also dispels many of the stories we’re told about their inscrutability and inevitability [and] she does all this with humor, intelligence, and a boundless sense of curiosity.“ Bryan Gardiner, MIT Technology Review.
“Systems Ultra fosters an undervalued attitude toward systems by enlivening the potential to take the essential differences of experience seriously. The intimacy Voss brings to the day-to-day affective experiences of diverse systems moves her—and by extension the reader—away from the position of academic voyeur. A valuable companion for critical thinking about design’s histories and futures”. James Dyer, Journal of Design History
“Georgina Voss thoughtfully explores the dizzying operations and implications of the vast machineries that dominate contemporary life, without ever losing sight of their everyday physicality: their meat and flesh, silicon and steel. A brilliant and hugely enjoyable read” - James Bridle, author of Ways of Being
“With an ethnographer's eye, a comedian's wit, and a travel guide's sense of adventure, Georgina Voss steers us through the docks and control rooms, the convention halls and design studios, the interfaces and archives from which we can glimpse the global systems that constitute and actuate our contemporary world. Along the way, we gather a set of critical tools for looking at, listening to, mapping, diagramming, scaling, sensing, and feeling our place within these sublime structures - not merely to understand them, but also to equip ourselves to resist, break, hack, and hustle when things need to change.” - Shannon Mattern, author of The City Is Not A Computer
“Step inside this book and suddenly, you've got a golden ticket to a Willy Wonka wonderland where everything is connected to everything else. You'll never see systems - of any kind - the same way again” - Fred Turner, Harry & Norman Chandler Professor of Communication, Stanford University
“Unpacks the hidden complexities of the way we live today, and shows why it is essential for us to understand their means and characteristics. From the networks that control payments systems, vast global shipping routes as well as the ways our cities are designed, she explores their history and why they matter. Too often, we only realise these extraordinary powers that dictate our everyday lives when they go wrong, this is an essential manual to modern life.” = Bruce Schneier, author of A Hacker's Mind: How the Rich and Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend Them Back
“It can be surprisingly hard to articulate what a "system" actually is, but thank goodness we have Georgina Voss whose humorous and thought-provoking book vibrantly unpacks the nuances of systems and system thinking. As we follow her through a gargantuan electronics fair in Vegas, one of the largest shipping container ports in Rotterdam, a slick makerspace in Silicon Valley, and a pornography industry trade show, Voss draws on her unusual expertise as both creative practitioner and a researcher to distill what a systems worldview does, what it overlooks and where it breaks” - Tega Brain, author of Code as Creative Medium
Interviews and podcasts:
‘The Terrifying Mystery of the Cave: Interview with Georgina Voss’ diid – disegno industriale industrial design 84. [Forthcoming].
‘Interview with Georgina Voss’. Digital Fatalism.
‘Systems’. Disintegrator.
‘World-fleshing / Computer Says Yes: An interview with Georgina Voss’. Worldbuilding. [Part 1] [Part 2],
‘Infrastructure and Systems’. Hallway Track.
‘Systems and Tokens, Rules and Transgressions’. transmediale.