This essay argues that the black box—both as cryptic device and as critique of illegibility—is not unique to modern technology and has deep roots in the medieval Mediterranean world. Technical opacity was frequently addressed in Latin and Arabic sources, often with a critical undertone. Then as now, technoskeptical writers saw the self-acting device as treacherous, due to its reliance on hidden labor and mechanisms. This critique arose especially in relation to unfamiliar or foreign devices, like animated idols; as such, it was often racializing, attributing opacity as well as deceit to the object and its makers. Modern critiques of technology that focus on invisible labor may reproduce similar biases by enforcing a privileged, first-world perspective. A transhistorical approach thus not only shows the enduring history of the black box; it also illuminates the religious genealogy of techno-skepticism, as well as the biases that inhere in the black box, especially when deployed as a critical discourse.
AliD. (2016). Bhoja’s mechanical garden. Translating wonder across the Indian Ocean, circa 800–1100 CE. History of Religions, 55(4), 460–493. https://doi.org/10.1086/685573
2.
al-JawbarīJ. (2020). Kitāb al-mukhtār fī kashf al-asrār (“The book of charlatans”), ed. In: DenglerM., trans. Humphrey Davies. New York University Press.
BalafrejL. (2022). Automated slaves, ambivalent images, and noneffective machines in al-Jazarī’s compendium of the mechanical arts, 1206. 21: Inquiries Into Art, History, and the Visual, 3(4), 737–774. https://doi.org/10.11588/xxi.2022.4.91685
6.
BenjaminR. (2019). Race after technology: Abolitionist tools for the new Jim code. Polity Press.
7.
Bānū Mūsā (1979). The book of ingenious devices, trans. Donald Hill. Reidel Publishing Company.
8.
BenjaminW. (2003). On the concept of history. In EilandH.JenningsM. W.JephcottE., et al. (trans.), Selected writingsVol. 4, 1938–1940 (pp. 389–400). Belknap Harvard University Press.
9.
BerrymanS. (2009). The mechanical hypothesis in ancient Greek natural philosophy. Cambridge University Press.
10.
BiddickK. (2016). Make and let die: Untimely sovereignties. Punctum Books.
Chude-SokeiL. (2016). The sound of culture: Diaspora and black technopoetics. Wesleyan University Press.
14.
CrawfordK. (2021). Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence. Yale University Press.
15.
CrenshawK. W. (1988). Toward a race-conscious pedagogy in legal education. National Black Law Journal, 11(1), 1–14.
16.
GalisonP. (1994). The ontology of the enemy: Norbert wiener and the cybernetic vision. Critical Inquiry, 21(1), 228–266. https://doi.org/10.1086/448747
17.
GeogheganB. D. (2020). Orientalism and informatics: Alterity from the chess-playing turk to amazon’s mechanical turk. Ex-position, 43(1), 45–90.
18.
GranjaF. de la (1968). Milagros españoles en una obra polémica musulmana (El “Kitab Maqami al-sulban” del Jazrayi). Al-Andalus, 33(2), 331–365.
19.
HarrisJ. G. (2010). Mechanical turks, mammet tricks and messianic time. Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies, 1(1), 80–87. https://doi.org/10.1057/pmed.2010.10
20.
HeideggerM. (1977). The question concerning technology. In LovittW. (Ed.), (Trans.). The question concerning technology and other essays (pp. 3–35). Garland Publishing.
21.
Hero of Alexandria. (1899). In WilhelmS. B. G. (Ed.)., Heronis alexandrini opera quae supersunt: Pneumatica et automata. Pneumatica et Automata. Teubner.
HuT.-H. (2017). Black boxes and green lights: Media, infrastructure, and the future at any cost. English Language Notes, 55(1–2), 81–88. https://doi.org/10.1215/00138282-55.1-2.81
24.
IraniL. (2015). Difference and dependence among digital workers: The case of amazon mechanical turk. South Atlantic Quarterly, 114(1), 225–234. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-2831665
JoyrichL. (2009). Preface: Bringing race and media technologies into focus. Camera Obscura, 24(1), 1–5. 70, special issue on “Race and/as Technology”. https://doi.org/10.1215/02705346-2008-012
28.
LoweD. (2016). Suspending disbelief: Magnetic and miraculous levitation from antiquity to the middle ages. Classical Antiquity, 35(2), 247–278. https://doi.org/10.1525/ca.2016.35.2.247
29.
MunnL. (2022). Automation is a myth. Stanford University Press.
30.
NgaiS. (2020). Theory of the gimmick: Aesthetic judgment and capitalist form. Harvard University Press.
31.
PetrickE. R. (2020). Building the black box: Cyberneticians and complex systems. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 45(4), 575–595. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243919881212
RubruckW. (2009). The mission of Friar William of rubruck: His journey to the court of the great Khan Möngke, 1253–1255, Trans. Peter Jackson. Hackett.
34.
SchafferS. (1997). Babbage’s dancer and the impresarios of mechanism. In SpuffordF.UglowJ. (Eds.), Cultural babbage: Technology, time, and invention (pp. 65–75). Faber & Faber.
