manual reading club: the practice of machine reading

​Before technology became seamless and invisible, electronic objects arrived with manuals that revealed how each machine imagined its user and everyday life. Inspired by palm reading, participants will choose a secondhand manual and practice “machine reading,” interpreting its instructions, diagrams, warnings, and promises as clues to the future its makers imagined.

What can manuals from the past teach us as we enter a new era of intelligent machines?

This workshop is for anyone curious about technology, design, and the futures imagined through everyday machines.