Computational Porosity

Benjamin, Lācis and Algorithmic Life

Abstract

This article develops the concept of computational porosity to understand how contemporary computational systems blur distinctions between human and machine agencies through layered infrastructures of code, data, and automated decision-making. Drawing upon Walter Benjamin and Asja Lācis's 1925 essay, Naples, we argue that their analysis of urban architecture and social life offers a productive theoretical framework for analysing computational systems. Benjamin and Lācis identified porosity as a critical concept to describe Naples, where boundaries between private and public, sacred and profane, work and leisure became fluid through the material structure of the city. We extend this concept to examine how computational infrastructures similarly create porous conditions through three key dimensions: (1) infrastructural porosity, where computational layers interact across hardware, software, and networks (2)  temporal porosity, where computational time operates non-linearly through caching, prediction, and asynchronous processes and (3) agential porosity, where human and algorithmic decision-making become entangled in ways that resist clear agential identity. Rather than treating computation as a closed system of discrete operations, we demonstrate how porosity reveals the improvisational, threshold-crossing character of contemporary computational practice. This perspective challenges deterministic accounts of computational agency and opens space for understanding how computational systems might be sites of unexpected possibilities and unforeseen constellations, much as Benjamin and Lācis observed in Neapolitan street life.