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A Mechanology
Engines
of Algorithmic
of
Techniques
Order

BERNHARD RIEDER
Ams te rdam
Uni ve r sit y
Press
Engines of Order
The book series RECURSIONS: THEORIES OF MEDIA, MATERIALITY, AND
CULTURAL TECHNIQUES provides a platform for cuttingedge research in the
field of media culture studies with a particular focus on the cultural impact of
media technology and the materialities of communication. The series aims to
be an internationally significant and exciting opening into emerging ideas in
media theory ranging from media materialism and hardware-oriented studies
to ecology, the post-human, the study of cultural techniques, and recent
contributions to media archaeology. The series revolves around key themes:
– The material underpinning of media theory
– New advances in media archaeology and media philosophy
– Studies in cultural techniques

These themes resonate with some of the most interesting debates in international
media studies, where non-representational thought, the technicity of knowledge
formations and new materialities expressed through biological and technological
developments are changing the vocabularies of cultural theory. The series is also
interested in the mediatic conditions of such theoretical ideas and developing
them as media theory.

Editorial Board
– Jussi Parikka (University of Southampton)
– Anna Tuschling (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
– Geoffrey Winthrop-Young (University of British Columbia)
 Engines of Order
A Mechanology of Algorithmic Techniques

Bernhard Rieder

Amsterdam University Press

This publication is funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

Chapter 1 contains passages from Rieder, B. (2016). Big Data and the Paradox of Diversity.
Digital Culture & Society 2(2), 1-16 and Rieder, B. (2017). Beyond Surveillance: How Do Markets
and Algorithms ‘Think’? Le Foucaldien 3(1), n.p.

Chapter 6 is a heavily reworked and extended version of Rieder, B. (2017). Scrutinizing an

Algorithmic Technique: The Bayes Classifier as Interested Reading of Reality. Information,
Communication & Society 30(1), 100-117.

Chapter 7 is a reworked and extended version of Rieder, B. (2012). What Is in PageRank? A Histori-
cal and Conceptual Investigation of a Recursive Status Index. Computational Culture 2, n.p.

Cover illustration: The full text of this book, represented as a feature vector. © Bernhard Rieder

Cover design: Suzan Beijer

Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout

isbn 978 94 6298 619 0

e-isbn 978 90 4853 741 9
doi 10.5117/9789462986190
nur 670

Creative Commons License CC BY NC ND

(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0)

B. Rieder / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2020

Some rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, any part of
this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise).

Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations
reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is
advised to contact the publisher.
 Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 7

Introduction 9

Part I

1. Engines of Order 25

2. Rethinking Software 51

3. Software-Making and Algorithmic Techniques 81

Part II

4. From Universal Classification to a Postcoordinated Universe 145

5. From Frequencies to Vectors 199

6. Interested Learning 235

7. Calculating Networks: From Sociometry to PageRank 265

Conclusion: Toward Technical Culture 305

About the Author 347

Index 349
 Acknowledgements

This book has been long in the making and has benefited from many differ-
ent inputs. I would first like to thank the Recursions series editors – Anna
Tuschling, Geoffrey Winthrop-Young, and, in particular, Jussi Parikka – for
their many valuable remarks and suggestions. Maryse Elliott from Amster-
dam University Press has been an invaluable help in guiding me through
the whole editorial process. Eduardo Navas’s constructive comments on the
manuscript were much appreciated. I am also grateful to Carolin Gerlitz,
Sonia de Jager, Janna Joceli Omena, Niels Kerssens, Emillie de Keulenaar,
Thomas Poell, Gernot Rieder, Guillaume Sire, Michael Stevenson, and
Fernando van der Vlist for reading drafts at various stages of completion
and providing critical feedback.
I want to thank Thomas Brandstetter, Dominique Cardon, Mark Coté,
Nick Couldry, José van Dijck, Nigel Dodd, Matthew Fuller, Paolo Gerbaudo,
Paul Girard, Andrew Goffey, Olga Goriunova, Sanne Kraijenbosch, Camille
Paloque-Berges, Jean-Christophe Plantin, Thomas Poell, Barbara Prainsack,
Theo Röhle, Anton Tantner, Leon Wansleben, and Hartmut Winkler for
conference and workshop invitations that allowed me to develop the ideas
that run through this book. My thanks also go to my colleagues at the
Mediastudies Department and the Digital Methods Initiative at the Uni-
versity of Amsterdam as well as my former colleagues at the Département
Hypermedia and Laboratoire Paragraphe at Paris VIII University for the
many stimulating conversations that shaped the following chapters.
Particular thanks are due to Richard Rogers and the Dutch Research
Council (NWO) for making it possible to release this book through open
access.
I dedicate this book to the memory of Frank Hartmann, whose passion
for thinking technologies as media echoes through these pages.
 Introduction

Abstract
The introduction chapter positions algorithmic information ordering as a
central practice and technology in contemporary digital infrastructures, a
set of techniques that serve as ‘levers on reality’ (Goody). While algorithms
used in concrete systems may often be hard to scrutinize, they draw on
widely available software modules and well-documented principles that
make them amendable to humanistic analysis. The chapter introduces
Gilbert Simondon’s mechanology and provides an overview of the structure
and argument of the book.

Keywords: algorithmic information ordering, information search and

retrieval, mechanology, software-making

Over the last decades, and in particular since the widespread adoption
of the Internet, encounters with algorithmic procedures for ‘information
retrieval’ – the activity of getting some piece of information out of a col-
lection or repository of some kind – have become everyday experiences for
most people in large parts of the world. We search for all kinds of things on
the open web, but also for products, prices, and customer reviews in the
specialized databases of online retailers, for friends, family, and strangers
in social networking services or dating sites, and for the next thing to read,
watch, play, listen to, or experience in quickly growing repositories for
media contents. There are at least three remarkable aspects to this spread
of information seeking. First, computer-supported searching has sprawled
beyond the libraries, archives, and specialized documentation systems it
was largely confined to before the arrival of the web. Searching, that is, the
act of putting a query into a form field, has become such a fundamental and
ubiquitous gesture that a missing search box on a website becomes an almost
disturbing experience. Second, what retrieval operates on – information –
has come to stand for almost anything, from scraps of knowledge to things,
people, ideas, or experiences. Digitization, datafication, and the capture of

Rieder, B., Engines of Order: A Mechanology of Algorithmic Techniques. Amsterdam: Amsterdam

University Press, 2020
doi 10.5117/9789462986190_intro
10  ENGINES OF ORDER

always more activities in software are, in the words of Netscape founder

and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen (2011), ‘eating the world’. Search has
become a dominant means to access and order the masses of digital and
datafied bits and pieces that clutter the environments we inhabit. Third, the
deliberate and motivated act of formulating a query to find something is only
one of the many forms in which information retrieval nowadays manifests
itself. Automated personalization, localization, recommendation, filtering,
classification, evaluation, aggregation, synthetization, or ad hoc generation
of information are similarly pervasive practices that do not require explicit
user input to select, sequence, arrange, or modulate some set of digital
items. And retrieval techniques are no longer limited to producing result
lists: they generate scores, suggest items, discard or promote messages, set
prices, arrange objects and people in relation to each other, assemble texts,
forbid or grant access, fabricate interfaces and visualizations, and even steer
objects in the physical world. In short, various activities or gestures this book
addresses under the broad notion of ‘information ordering’ have become
both pervasive and subtle in terms of how they operate in the thickening
layers of digital mediation.
The proliferation of these algorithmic practices has been accompanied
by considerable efforts in the humanities and social sciences to investigate
techniques and applications in terms of power and social significance. Early
analyses of search engines already highlighted their political dimension,
claiming that ‘there is no such thing as algorithms without their own weight’
(Winkler, 1999, p. 36). This meant that one could examine ‘the wide-ranging
factors that dictate systematic prominence for some sites, dictating sys-
tematic invisibility for others’ (Introna and Nissenbaum, 2000, p. 171) from
a point of view concerned with social impact and public interest. Beyond
search, authors have called attention to ‘moments of algorithmic judgement’
(Graham, 2005, p. 576) that abound when ‘code-based technologized environ-
ments continuously and invisibly classify, standardize, and demarcate rights,
privileges, inclusions, exclusions, and mobilities’ (Graham, 2005, p. 563).
Terms like ‘automated management’ (Kitchin and Dodge, 2011), ‘algorithmic
ideology’ (Mager, 2012), ‘algorithmic governmentality’ (Berns and Rouvroy,
2013), and, more recently, ‘algorithmic accountability’ (Diakopoulos, 2015)
all subscribe to ‘the central premise that algorithms have the capacity to
shape social and cultural formations and impact directly on individual lives’
(Beer, 2009, p. 994). This broad recognition of the ‘relevance of algorithms’
is not, however, a symptom of a sudden curiosity for the fundamentals of
computational theory. It stems from a more specific interest in the particular
instances where algorithms serve as ‘a means to know what there is to know
Introduc tion 11

and how to know it, to participate in social and political discourse, and to
familiarize ourselves with the publics in which we participate’ (Gillespie,
2014, p. 167). Most of the techniques that sit at the center of these questions
and concerns directly relate to the field of information ordering.
Search engines remain the most instructive illustration for the issues at
hand since the tensions between their remarkable practical utility, their
technical prowess, and their political relevance are so clearly visible. We
intuitively understand that ranking web pages – and thus the services,
contents, and viewpoints they stand for – is delicate business. But, as Grim-
melmann (2009) argues, search engines face the ‘dilemma’ that they must
rank in order to be useful. This imperative collides with the uncomfortable
observation that there is arguably no technical procedure that can lay serious
claim to producing assessments concerning ambiguous and contested
cultural matters in ways that could be broadly accepted as ‘objective’. In
fact, whenever data are processed algorithmically, the transformation
from input to output implies a perspective or evaluation that, through
the coordination between data and what they stand for, is projected back
into spheres of human life. Techniques for information retrieval become
engines of order that actively intervene in the spaces they seek to represent
(cf. Hacking, 1983).
The need to better understand the specificities of these processes becomes
even clearer if we broaden the scope beyond everyday online experiences
to activities where algorithms evaluate and inform decisions that can have
dramatic effects, for example, in hiring, credit assessment, or criminal
justice (cf. O’Neil, 2016; Christin, 2017; Eubanks, 2018). These emblematic
and troubling applications point to a myriad of instances in business and
government where procedures from the broad field of information ordering
are used to inspire, choose, or impose a specific course of action.
The technical procedures involved are loaded, often implicitly, with
specific ideas and attitudes concerning the domains they intervene in.
Search engines evaluate the ‘relevance’ of information, news aggregators
generate front pages according to various measures of ‘newsworthiness’,
dating sites calculate ‘compatibility coefficients’ between members and
order them accordingly, social networking sites filter friends’ status updates
based on quantified ideas of ‘interest’ or ‘closeness’, and microblogging
services give prominence to ‘trending’ topics. In each of these cases, there is
a framing of the application domain that implies various kinds of conceptual
and normative commitments. This can involve a general allegiance to the
broad epistemological ‘style’ (Hacking, 1985) of computation as a means
of knowing; but it can also take more specific forms, for example, when
12  ENGINES OF ORDER

psychological research on partnership satisfaction flows into the design of

a matching algorithm or when the optimization objectives for a machine
learning system are being selected on the basis of business considerations.
At the same time, technical procedures are more than just a means to
efficiently enact values and ideas that are themselves nontechnical. Jack
Goody (1977) argued that list-making, from the start an essential part of writ-
ing, ‘gives the mind a special kind of lever on “reality”’ (p. 109) by supporting
mnemonics and, more importantly, by facilitating different operations of
ordering and reordering pieces of text and, by extension, the things these
pieces refer to. As Goody knew all too well, the advent of list-making meant
not just a quantitative extension in cognitive capacity. More fundamentally,
it stimulated the production and recording of knowledge, spurred modes
of classificatory and hierarchical thinking, and supported more complex
forms of social organization. As Peters (2015) argues, ‘[i]n list writing, se-
rial order loosens its hold’ (p. 290), with wide-ranging consequences. The
information ordering techniques that have become so pervasive today share
the transversal character and broad applicability of list-making and may
prove to have equally fundamental repercussions for how we construct and
relate to the world around us.
Like list-making, algorithmic ordering comes with a genuine operational
substance that rarely boils down to a simple transposition of a manual
method into computational form. A web search engine, for example, orders
documents through iterative processing of vast amounts of distributed
signals and the specific way it produces an aggregate appreciation of these
signals defines an epistemic substance and character that has little to do
with the knowledge practices that have defined libraries, encyclopedias, or
archives over the last millennia. As Edsger Dijkstra, one of the central figures
in the history of software, remarked about computers over 40 years ago:

[T]he amount of information they can store and the amount of process-
ing that they can perform, in a reasonably short time, are both large
beyond imagination. And as a result, what the computer can do for us
has outgrown its basic triviality by several orders of magnitude. (Dijkstra,
1974, p. 608)

Computers’ capacity to run billions of data points through billions of

iterations of small calculative steps means that they ‘think’ (Burrell, 2016)
in ways that are not only opaque, but potentially strange and hard to fit
into established categories. Techniques like machine learning, network
algorithms, or relational database management systems are not just powerful
Introduc tion 13

means to produce and apply knowledge, to enact value preferences, or to

control practice; they participate in the very definition of what knowledge,
value, and practice mean and can mean, both through the conceptual
resources they propose to think with and the actual interpretations and
orderings they generate when applied in practice. We should consider the
possibility that they challenge cultural modes and social institutions in
more fundamental ways than the necessary discussions of algorithmic
opacity or bias can lead us to believe.
The methods and procedures involved in actual practices are often hidden
from our sight by technical and legal means, latched not even in black boxes
but somewhere in the ‘black foam’ (Rieder, 2005) of systems whose contours
are hard to delineate. But, paradoxically, they have also become highly
accessible, in the sense that concrete implementations draw heavily on open
reservoirs of technicity and knowledge that find their expression in scholarly
publications, software libraries, and communities of practice gathering on
websites like Stack Overflow. These reservoirs are neither hidden nor closed
off and we are free to examine a steadily growing archive of techniques that
enable computers to accomplish tasks that seem increasingly ‘cultural’ or
‘intelligent’ in nature. This book is an expedition into this archive and more
specifically into the areas that deal with information ordering.
The actual makeup of Google’s search ranking may indeed be ‘unknow-
able’ for a number of practical, commercial, and legal reasons, but, as shown
in Chapter 7, the content, history, and substance of its most famous algo-
rithm, PageRank, stands wide open. We may never get access to the concrete
specifications of the machine learning methods behind the personalized
filtering Facebook applies to its users’ News Feed, but we can ask, as in
Chapter 6, where machine learning comes from, what concepts and ideas
it builds on, and how it operates in general terms. The second part of this
book is thus dedicated to a series of investigations into specific ‘algorithmic
techniques’, that is, into the defined-yet-malleable units of technicity and
knowledge developers draw on when designing the function and behavior
of computers acting in and on the world. Offering many different ways to
order and organize information, they serve as levers on the ‘reality’ of a
world eaten by software.
While this book draws heavily on work situated in the ‘cultural techniques’
tradition, an approach coming out of German media scholarship, there is at
least one important difference. Unlike Young’s (2017) inspirational take on
the list, which follows a particular cultural form through various societal
settings, I examine a set of techniques as they traverse what is maybe not
a single cultural domain but nonetheless a somewhat demarcated practice:
14  ENGINES OF ORDER

software-making. The broader theoretical perspective guiding these probes

will be discussed at length in part one, but the particular focus on technical
creation calls for some background and clarification.

Toward Mechanology

This book is largely motivated by the remarkable spread of algorithmic

information ordering but also translates a feeling of hesitation or uneasi-
ness toward the way software is often presented and discussed in media
studies and associated fields, or, more specifically, toward the emphasis
on code as software’s quintessential technical quality or substance. To be
clear, understanding how written instructions produce machine behavior
is fundamental to understanding software, but it is also a comparatively
small step into the massive world of technicity software constitutes. Code
is neither trivial nor transparent, but for any experienced developer it is a
familiar means to access a domain of function that is vastly more complex
than the term is able to address. Building a program or system is to craft a
composite technical object, ‘a being that functions’ in the words of French
philosopher Gilbert Simondon, who plays a central role in what follows.
This may entail, today more than ever, the assemblage of many preexisting
chunks of software. Code serves as the means to draw on an archive, to
‘build-with’, and to create in ways that are deeply relational and embedded.
As I will argue over the following chapters, the world of software-making
is structured around ‘techniques’, expressions of knowledge and technicity
that enable developers to make computers do things that are more involved
or complex than their ‘basic triviality’ suggests. This book does not presume
any practical technical knowledge or experience, but it addresses algorithmic
information ordering from the perspective of technical creation.
My own background plays an important role in this setup. While I have
little formal training in any technical discipline, I have been developing
software on a regular basis for a long time. I started to program when I was a
still in high school, worked as a web developer during my university studies,
and taught programming to students ranging from beginners to computer
scientists at master’s level for about a decade. I continue not only to code
but to make software, nowadays mostly in the domain of digital methods
for Internet research (Rogers, 2013). The part of the software landscape
under scrutiny in this book, algorithmic information ordering, is not only
socially relevant but also closely connected to the technical practice I
have been pursuing over the last 20 years. As a web developer, I worked
Introduc tion 15

extensively with relational database management systems (Chapter 4) and I

encountered advanced information retrieval techniques (Chapter 5) during
my PhD in information and communication science at Paris 8 University
when I was investigating the possibilities for ‘society-oriented design’
(Rieder, 2006). This work led to a system, procspace (Rieder, 2008), which
used a variety of algorithmic methods to generate navigational pathways
between documents to support a logic of connection, enrichment, and
overview that breaks with the serial forms of order dominating search. The
encounter with information retrieval, an established technical field that
comes with a large body of well-documented methods, came as a shock: as
an autodidact programmer I felt very comfortable when it came to writing
code, but I was not fully aware how much I was missing. The techniques
I discovered gave me a new sense of possibility and opened the door to
forms of technical expression that have stimulated my imagination ever
since. Although often more heavily mathematized than what I was used to,
these techniques were relatively simple to implement and, like clay, could
be modeled in countless ways. The entanglement between information
ordering and the politically, culturally, and economically significant matters
it is increasingly involved in became my principal research interest. This
eventually led to work in digital methods, where I focused on studying
online platforms that rely on algorithmic techniques in fundamental ways
and, paradoxically, to a situation where I would apply similar techniques
as analytical instruments to make sense of large sets of empirical data.
The chapters about machine learning (Chapter 6) and network algorithms
(Chapter 7) draw on this work.
The reason I mention these details is not to claim technical authority but
to introduce and situate a perspective that has been fundamentally shaped
by these experiences. This perspective is still uncommon in media studies
and in the broader discussions of software or, to use the buzzwords of the day,
of ‘algorithms’ or ‘artificial intelligence’. Following Johanna Drucker’s (2013)
suggestion to give ‘[m]ore attention to acts of producing and less emphasis
on product’ (n.p.), my conceptual vantage point is software-making, a series
of practices that increasingly revolve around the use of packaged function
as a means to extend programmers’ capabilities. It takes hardly more than
an hour to install and set up PyTorch or TensorFlow, powerful open-source
libraries for machine learning, and to have a first classifier trained. While
some people will want to peek under the hood of these artifacts to make
adaptations or simply out of intellectual curiosity, developers often draw
on technicity and knowledge that they understand only in broad terms or
not at all. What programming languages, software libraries, and similar
16  ENGINES OF ORDER

artifacts do is to enable software-makers to step further faster, not merely

regarding resource efficiency but in terms of what can be considered pos-
sible in the first place. Such packages widen the spaces of expressivity,
broaden the scope of ambitions, but also structure, align, and standardize.
Spelled out, stabilized, and ‘frozen’, algorithmic techniques spread through
technical imaginaries and artifacts, and further into application logics and
business models. They are means of production, not simply outpourings of
computational principles or scientific ideas.
Algorithmic techniques are ways of making computers do things, of
creating function, and their history is characterized to a greater extent
by accumulation and sedimentation than by paradigm shifts or radical
breaks. Certainly, methods and approaches are regularly superseded
or fall out of fashion, but it is clear that the archives that inform and
constitute software-making have grown vastly over time. While this book
entertains a somewhat complicated relationship with the field of media
archeology, another prominent approach coming out of German media
theory, it indeed follows a selection of techniques into their historical
trajectories to excavate some of the fundamental ideas that resonate
through our technical present. But throughout these historical probes, I
strive to keep an eye on the possibilities for variation, combination, and
divergence that invariably emerge when a technique becomes part of a
concrete technical object. The developer, in contrast to the computer
scientist, philosopher of science, or science historian, neither looks at
the reservoir of techniques from below, as an emanation of foundational
mathematical principles, nor from above, as outpourings of scientif ic
progress. The developer is right in-between, surrounded by technicity
coming in all shapes and forms, and thus ‘among the machines that
operate with him’ (Simondon, 2017, p. 18).
To interrogate technology both in terms of its fundamental nature
and from the perspective of technical practice is the task Simondon
laid out for ‘mechanology’, a discipline or mode of thinking that would
serve as a ‘psychology’ or ‘sociology’ of machines (Simondon, 2017, p. 160),
capturing their ‘interior life’ and ‘sociability’ in terms that do not reduce
them to an exterior f inality or effect. As a general science of technology,
mechanology would approach technical function as human gesture,
examine technical creation as mediation between human beings and
nature, and interrogate the values implied in mechanical operation
itself. This book, suff ice to say, is an attempt to develop a mechanologi-
cal perspective on software and to apply it to the engines of order that
increasingly adjudicate (digital) life.
Introduc tion 17

Organization and Overview

The book is divided into two parts. The f irst part is dedicated to the
theoretical and methodological foundations that inform and support the
examination of four clusters of algorithmic techniques for information
ordering in the second part.
The first chapter discusses central terms like ‘information’ and ‘order’,
and it proposes the concept of ‘engine’ to point toward the infrastructural
embeddings that have allowed techniques initially conceived for document
retrieval to become pervasive mediators in online environments. While this
book constitutes a humanistic exploration of technical substances rather
than their practical application, the chapter pays tribute to the fact that the
techniques under scrutiny have become prevalent in a specific situation,
in this world and not another.
The second chapter then formulates a conceptual perspective on software,
starting from an attempt to situate the project in relation to existing takes on
the subject. But it is mainly dedicated to the presentation and appropriation
of Simondon’s philosophy of technology, which reserves a central place
to technical creation and evolution. Here, we find an understanding of
technicity as a domain of life that constitutes its own substance and regular-
ity, whilst remaining a fundamental form of human gesture. Simondon’s
inductive view, which frames technology as multitude of technical objects
rather than idealized techne, grounds the conceptual and analytical ap-
paratus I then bring to the analysis of algorithmic techniques.
Chapter 3 builds on central ideas from Simondon’s work, such as the
distinction between invention and concretization and the delineation of
technical elements, individuals, and ensembles, to conceptualize algorithmic
techniques as the central carriers of technicity and technical knowledge
in the domain of software. In dialogue with the cultural techniques tradi-
tion, it addresses them as methods or heuristics for creating operation and
behavior in computing and discusses how they are invented and stabilized.
Algorithmic techniques, in this perspective, are at the same time material
blocks of technicity, units of knowledge, vocabularies for expression in the
medium of function, and constitutive elements of developers’ technical
imaginaries.
The second part of the book then launches a series of probes into the
history of algorithmic information ordering. These probes do not follow a
single lineage or logic and cover different periods of time, but they come
together in staking out an ‘excavation ground’ (Parikka, 2012, p. 7) that marks
the 1960s and 1970s as the period where the fundamentals of contemporary
18  ENGINES OF ORDER

information ordering were laid out. While Simondon’s understanding of

technology as human gesture and my emphasis on adaptation and variation
lead away from certain core tenets of media archeology, I seek ‘to investigate
not only histories of technological processes but also the current “archaeol-
ogy” of what happens inside the machine’ (Parikka, 2012, p. 86). The goal is
to excavate select roots of an increasingly technological present. The four
clusters of algorithmic techniques examined share the characteristic that
they are highly relevant to contemporary information ordering while remain-
ing fundamentally understudied, both in their historical and conceptual
dimension. Looking at the inception and evolution of algorithmic techniques
allows us to examine them in a state of relative ‘liquidity’, where they have
not yet been fully stabilized or ‘frozen’ into the canon, remaining precarious
propositions that have to be explained and justified in terms that are absent
from contemporary publications in the computing disciplines.
Chapter 4 serves as a topic-focused introduction that situates contempo-
rary information ordering in a historical lineage that is largely absent from
dominant narrations. Although the story starts off from standard takes on
knowledge organization and classification in libraries and encyclopedias, it
zeros in on the field of information retrieval, which develops in fundamental
opposition to even the most visionary of library techniques, not merely in terms
of technology and method, but regarding the idea of order itself. Coordinate
indexing, the first and defining technique in this lineage, is explicitly designed
to eliminate the influence of librarians and other ‘knowledge mediators’ by
shifting expressive power from the classification system to the query and,
by extension, to the information seeker. Order is no longer understood as a
stable map to the universe of knowledge but increasingly as the outcome
of a dynamic and purpose-driven process of ordering. Although equally
foundational for the statistical tradition in information retrieval, the chapter
closes by discussing coordinate indexing as a precursor of the relational model
for database management, which underpins large swaths of contemporary
information handling, from enterprise software to web platforms.
Chapter 5 investigates the early attempts in information retrieval to
tackle the full text of document collections. Underpinning a large number of
contemporary applications, from search to sentiment analysis, the concepts
and techniques pioneered by Hans Peter Luhn, Gerard Salton, Karen Spärck
Jones, and others involve not only particular framings of language, meaning,
and knowledge, they also introduce some of the fundamental mathematical
formalisms and methods running through information ordering, preparing
the extension to digital objects other than text documents. The chapter
specifically seeks to capture the considerable technical expressivity that
Introduc tion 19

comes out of the sprawling landscape of research and experimentation that

characterizes the early decades of information retrieval. It also documents
the emergence of a conceptual construct and ‘intermediate’ data structure
that is fundamental to most algorithmic information ordering at work
today: the feature vector.
Chapter 6 examines one of many areas where feature vectors play a
central role. Machine learning is currently one of the most active domains
in computer science and the wide availability of datasets and increasingly
robust techniques have led to a proliferation of practical applications. The
chapter uses the Bayes classifier as an entry point into the field, showing how
a simple statistical technique introduced in the early 1960s is surprisingly
instructive for understanding how machine learning operates more broadly.
The goal is to shed light on the core principles at work and to explain how
they are tweaked, adapted, and developed further into different directions.
This chapter also develops the idea that contemporary information ordering
represents an epistemological practice that can be described and analyzed
as ‘interested reading of reality’, a particular kind of inductive empiricism.
Chapter 7 ventures into the field of network algorithms to discuss yet
another way to think about information ordering. While Google’s PageRank
algorithm has received considerable attention from critical commentators,
the vast intellectual landscape it draws on and contributes to is less well
known. Graph algorithms are used in many different settings, not least in
the social sciences, yet the technical and epistemological commitments
made by graph theoretical formulations of ‘real life’ phenomena are hardly
a subject of discussion beyond specialist circles. The chapter shows how
algorithmic ordering techniques exploit and integrate knowledge from areas
other than information retrieval and demonstrates how the ‘politics’ of an
algorithm can depend on small variations that lead to radically different
outcomes. The context of web search means that the various techniques
covered in the second part of the book can be brought together into a shared
application space, allowing for a more concrete return to earlier discussions
of variation and combination in software.
The conclusion, finally, synthesizes algorithmic information ordering into
a denser typology of ordering gestures, paying particular attention to the
modes of disassembly and reassembly that inform the underlying techniques.
The attempt to distill an operational epistemology from the cacophony of
techniques begs the question whether we are witnessing the emergence
of a new épistémè (Foucault, 2005), a far-reaching set of regularities that
characterize how we understand and operationalize the very notion of
order at a given time and place. Independently from how we answer this
20  ENGINES OF ORDER

question, it is clearly impossible to avoid the more immediately pressing

need to understand how the capacity to arrange individuals, populations,
and everything in-between in highly dynamic and goal-oriented ways relates
to contemporary forms of capitalism. To face this challenge, I come back
to Simondon’s mechanology and its broader cousin, technical culture, as a
means to promote a ‘widening’ of technical imagination and appropriation.
While certainly not enough to solve the many concrete issues surrounding
advanced algorithmic techniques, an understanding of technicity as human
gesture – albeit of a specific kind – can sharpen our view for the many
instances where technology has become complicit in domination, for the
reconfigurations of power relations that occur when new levers begin to
operate in and on society, and for the increasing interdependence between
technical critique and social critique.

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Part I
1. Engines of Order

Abstract
The chapter discusses central terms like ‘information’ and ‘order’, and
it proposes the concept of ‘engine’ to point toward the infrastructural
embeddings that have allowed techniques initially conceived for document
retrieval to become pervasive mediators in online environments. While
this book constitutes a humanistic exploration of technical substances
rather than their practical application, the chapter pays tribute to the fact
that the techniques under scrutiny have become prevalent in a specific
situation, in this world and not another. To this end, the chapter discusses
three critical trends: computerization, information overload, and social
diversification.

Keywords: information ordering, computerization, information overload,

social diversification, digital infrastructures

Although the various practices described as ‘information ordering’ have

become ubiquitous parts of online experiences, the two notions making
up the term are far from self-evident. Instead of providing strict defini-
tions, however, I take ‘information’ and ‘order’ as starting points for an
investigation into a domain of techniques that intervene in deeply cultural
territory in ways that come with their specific framings and epistemologi-
cal perspectives. Instead of asking what information and order are, I am
interested in the operational answers enacted by algorithmic techniques.
This means remaining at a certain distance from common uses of the
vocabulary and concepts that characterize the f ields associated with
information ordering, itself already a somewhat uncommon term. Infor-
mation scientists and readers familiar with volumes such as Svenonius’s
authoritative The Intellectual Foundation of Information Ordering (2000)
or Glushko’s recent The Discipline of Organizing (2013) will notice that my
interpretative lens can differ substantially, despite the shared subject
matter. This begins to manifest in seemingly small gestures, for example,

Rieder, B., Engines of Order: A Mechanology of Algorithmic Techniques. Amsterdam: Amsterdam

University Press, 2020
doi 10.5117/9789462986190_ch01
Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
 ARENA TOWNSHIP. 387 The force of men employed at this
station consists of one keeper, at present Mr. G. P. Brennan, and
three assistants. The first watch begins at one-half hour before
sundown, and the watches are relieved every four hours. The lamp
is lighted at sundown and kept burning until sunrise. The keeper's
house is large, roomy and comfortable, and quite well furnished.
This is not a " ration station," and the employes have to furnish their
own supplies. A very "' penny-wise pound-foolish " policy of
economj' has recently been adopted by the Government, by which
the salaries of these men have been cut down to a mere pittance,
these now varj^ing from S800 for the keeper to $500 for the third
assistant per annum. When it is considered how these men have to
live, far removed from society and neighbors, subjected to the
dangers and fatigues incident to their vocation, and the great
responsibility which rests upon their shoulders, it would seem that
the Government could well aflbrd to be far more liberal in
remunerating their services. The fate and destiny of valuable
property and precious lives are in their hands. When the winds of
ocean sweep with fiercest fury across the trackless main, lashing the
water into seething billows almost mountain high, when the black
pall of night has been cast over the face of the deep, and ships are
scudding along under close reef and storm sails, not knowing where
they are or how soon they may be cast upon the rocks or stranded
upon the beach, when the storm king seems to hold full sway over
all the world, suddenly a flash of light is seen piercing the darkness,
like a ray of hope from the bosom of God. Again and again is it seen,
and the sailors rejoice for they know then that port is near and that
danger is nearly passed. But whence that ray of light that so cheers
the heart of the lonely mariner? In the lonely watches of the dreary,
.stormy night, with the fuiy of the wind about him, with the roar and
rush of the breakers dashing against the rocks below him, sounding
in his ears, with no human soul near him, sits the keeper, true to his
trust, faithful to his charge, doing well and honestly his duty, keeping
his lamp trimmed and burning, sending forth the ray to guide and
make glad the storm-encircled sailor. Then let honor be given to
whom honor is due, and to these brave, sacrificing men let us render
a just tribute. We cannot close this subject more fittingly than by
quoting a few lines from one of Henry W. Longfellow's beautiful
poems, as follows: — The rocky ledge runs far iuto the sea. And on
its outer point some miles away. The light-house lifts its massive
masonry, A pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day. » Even at this
distance I can see the tides Upheaving break, unheard along its base
A speechless wrath, that rises and subsides In the white lip and
tremor of the face.
 HISTORY OF MENDOCINO COUNTY, CALIFORNIA. And as
the evening darkens, lo! how bright. Through the deep purple of the
twilight air, Beams forth the sudden radiance of its light, With a
strange, unearthly splendor in the glare! Not alone; from each
projecting cape And perilous reef along the ocean's verge. Starts
into life a dim, gigantic shape. Holding its lantern o'er the restless
surge. Like the giant Christopher it stands Upon the brink of the
tempestuous wave, "Wading far out among the rocks and sands,
The night-o'ertaken mariner to save. And the great ships sail
outward and return, Bending and bowing o'er the billowy swells. And
ever joyful, as they see it burn. They wave their silent welcomes and
farewells. They come forth from the darkness, and their sails Gleam
for a moment only in the blaze, And eager faces, as the light unveils.
Gaze at the tower, and banish while they gaze. The mariner
remembers when a child On his first voyage he saw it fade and sink;
And when, returning from adventures wild. He saw it rise again o'er
ocean's brink. Steadfast, serene, immovable, the same Year after
year, throtigh all the silent night, Burns on forevermore that
quenchless flame. Shines on that inextinguishable light! It sees the
ocean to its bosom clasp The rocks and sea-sand, with the kiss of
peace It sees the wild winds lift it in their grasp. And hold it up and
shake it like a fleece. The startled waves leap over it; the storm
Smites it with all the scourges of the rain. And steadily against its
solid form Press the great shoulders of the hurricane. The sea-bird
wheeling round it, with the din Of wings and winds and solitary
cries, Blinded and maddened by the light within, Dashes himself
against the glare, and dies. A new Prometheus, chained upon the
rock. Still grasping in his hand the fire of Jove; It does not hear the
cry nor heed the shock. But hails the mariner with words of love.
"Sail on," it says, "Sail on ye stately ships, And with your floating
bridge the ocean span; Be mine to guard this light from all eclipse.
Be yours to bring man nearer unto man !"
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 BIG RIVER TOWNSHIP. 389 BIG RIVER. Geography. — This
towu.ship is bounded on the north by Ten-mile River township, on
the east by Little Lake, Calpella and Anderson townships, on the
south by Arena township, and on the west by the Pacific ocean. The
boundary lines of the township are very sinuous, as is the case with
all the townships in Mendocino county, thus making its contour very
irregular. There are no navigable streams in Big River township,
although an Act of the Legislature, approved May 2, 1861, declares
Big, Noyo and Albion rivers to be navigable for a distance of three
miles from their mouths, but this is for purposes of franchise only,
and not that any vessel or craft larger than a canoe was ever
expected to pass along them clefting their waters with its prow.
Topography. — The topography of this township is wonderfully
varied, and yet there is a close resemblance between it and all the
other coast townships. Along the ocean there is quite a strip of mesa
land, and back of that it is all mountains, intersected by rivers and
streams putting back from the sea, which course along thi'ough
deep canons with steep and abrupt sides, varying from less than a
hundred to more than a thousand feet in depth. Streams. — As
stated above, there are no navigable streams in the township, but
there are several of considerable importance for the purposes of log
driving, etc. Beginning at the south there is Elk creek, Greenwood
creek, Nevarra river, Salmon creek, Albion river, Little river. Big river,
Caspar creek, Noyo river, Pudding creek, and on the northern
boundary line Tenmile river. Of these only those that are designated
as rivers have enough water in them to be of any practical use in log
driving, but some of those have a good depth of water extending far
back into the woods, and the body of the water has been increased
materially by dams, so that in some of them logs may be driven for
a long distance even in the summer season, and of course for a far
greater distance during the winter. On the banks of all these
streams, and adjacent to them, are immense bodies of redwood
timber, and at or near their mouths the great milling industry of
Mendocino county is prosecuted. These streams have their sources
far away up among the mountains many miles from the sea-coast,
and one wonders at the fact that an oj^ening is found through all
these mountain ranges for a stream to pass down to the sea. The
contortions of their courses are something wonderful to behold, and
a study for the geol 
 390 HISTORY OF MENDOCINO COUNTY, CALIFORNIA. ogist
and topographer, and a sore puzzle for the casual observer, and to
him who reads the emblems of the handiwork of the great creator,
God, in all his works there is a fund of study and thought which will
furnish food for meditation and admiration for many days. Surely
chance could not have arranged the hills and dales, mountains and
valleys of that section so that the far reaching arteries of the
streams could tap the drainage of the far away interior valleys and
bear it through solid walls, as it were, of adamantine rock which has
had its existence " since first the morning stars sang together" on
creation's early morn, ere aught that we see now had existence save
in the conceptive will and purposes of God. No; but rather a master
intelligence has planned and arranged it all, and we see in it one of
the most striking and wonderful displays of His power and wisdom,
excelled only by the dividing of the waters from the dry land. What
beautiful streams these are flowing from the very heart of the
mountains, their fountain heads bursting, as it were, from the living
rock. Then in tiny, prattling, bubbling brooklets it is gathered into the
more stately stream, and as it passes sea-ward it receives recruits at
every mile-post until it becomes a broad ribbon of silver, on whose
bosom is reflected the bright rays of a California sun, which serves
also to throw the dense shadows of the great forest upon its waters.
Thus it passes onward, downward, from the brOok laughing on the
mountain side to the sombre river which kisses the hem of its
mother ocean in all meekness. Soil. — The soil along the coast on
the mesa is universally rich and productive in this township; but back
in the mountains, not so much can be said for it, although it is very
rich along the streams. It is well adapted to the growing of grain,
vegetables, fruits, and vines, and in many places on the onesa it is
so rich that grain grows too rankly. Here it is a rich, black sandy
loam, to which, in many places, a goodly amount of calcareous
matter is added, much to the advantage of the soil, by decaying
shell deposits, or mounds. A.s there are a number of these shell-
mounds in this township, we append the following article, taken
from the Overland Monthly of October, 1874, entitled "Some
Kjokkenmoddings, and Ancient Graves of California," by Paul
Schumacher, which will give the reader a fair understanding of these
wonderfully curious collections of shells. It is evident that these
belong to a race which long antedates the Digger Indian of to-day,
and hence, no information concerning them can be gotten from the
present races. It is, however, doubtful whether they were used solely
for places of sepulture, although Mr. Schumacher's theories
harmonize very well with the prevailing facts, as revealed upon
investigation : — "During my last visit to that'partof the Californian
coast between Point -San Luis and Point Sal, in the months of April,
May and June of this year, I had occasion to observe extensive
hjoklcenmjjddvngs, like those I found.
 BIG RIVER TOWNSHIP. 391 about a year ago, so numerous
along the shores of Oregon. These deposits of shells and bones are
the kitchen refuse of the earlier inhabitants of the coast regions
where they are now found, and, though differing from each other in
their respective species of shells and bones of vertebrates —
according to the localities and the age to which they belong — they
have yet, together with the stone implements found in them, a
remarkable similarity in all parts of the North American Pacific coast
that I have explored — a similarity that extends further to the
kjokkenmoddings of distant Denmark, as investigated and described
by European scientists. '■■ In Oregon, from Cheteo to Rogue river,*
I found that these deposits contained the following species of shells:
Mytilus Californianns, Tapes staminea, Cardium Nuttallu, Purpura
lactuca, , etc.; eight-tenths of the whole being of the species first
mentioned. In California, on the extensive downs between the
Arroyo Grande and the Rio de la Santa Maria — the mouth of which
latter is a few miles north of Point Sal — I found that the ■shells, on
what appear to have been temporary camping places, consist nearly
altogether of small specimens of the family Lucuia ; so much so that
not only can hardly any other sort be found, but hardly even any
bones. My reason for supposing these heaps to be the remains of
merely temporary camps is the exceptional paucity of flint knives,
spear-heads, and other implements found therein, as also the
absence of any chips that might indicate the sometime presence of a
workshop where domestic tools and weapons of war were
manufactured — a something that immediately strikes the
accustomed eye in viewing regularly well-established settlements.
On further examining this class of heaps by a vertical section, we
find layers of sand recurring at short intervals, which seem to prove
that they were visited at fixed seasons ; those moddings exposed
towards the north-west being vacated while the wind from that
quarter was blowing sand over them, and mutatis mutandis, the
same happening with regard to camps with a south-west aspect
while the south-west wind prevailed. It is fair, then, to suppose that
these places were only the temporary residences of the savages to
whom they appertained, and that they were tenanted during
favorable times and seasons for the gathering of mollusks, which,
having been extracted from their shells by the help of the flint knives
found here, were dried in the sun for transportation to the distant,
better sheltered, permanent villages — the comparatively small
quantities of shell i-emains now found at these regular settlements
going also to support this theory. No graves have been found near
those temporary camps of the earliest known Californian pioneers. I
discovered, indeed, one skeleton of an Indian, together with thirteen
arrowheads, but it was plainly to be seen that the death of this
person had liappened during some short sojourn of a tribe at this
place, as the burial had * Of the collections made by Mr.
Schumacher at that place, the complete and illustrated description
will be found in the Smithsonian Eeport for the year 1S74.
 392 HISTORY OF MENDOCINO COUNTY, CALIFORNIA. been
effected in a hasty and imperfect manner, and the grave was without
the usual lining which, as we shall see, is found in all the other
tombs of this region. " On the extremity of Point Sal, the northern
projection of which is covered by large sand-drifts, we find down to
the very brink of the steep and rocky shore other extensive shell
deposits, which, with few exceptions, consist of the Mytilus
Californianus and of bones, flint-chips being also found, though very
sparsely, in comparison with the mass of other remains. The sea
having washed out the base of this declivity, and the top soil having,
as a consequence, slid down, we can see on the edge of the cliff
shell-layers amounting in all to a thickness of four or five feet ; that
part closest to the sub-lying rock appearing dark and ash-like, while
the deposit becomes better preserved as the surface is neared. At
other places, for example on the extreme outer spur of this Point
Sal, the shell-remains have so conglomerated and run together with
extreme antiquity as to overhang and beetle over the rocks for quite
a distance. " Leaving now these temporary camps, we shall visit the
regular settlements of the ancient aborigines. Traces of these are
found near the' southern Point Sal, at a place where it turns
eastward at an angle of somethingless than ninety degrees behind
the first small hill of the steep ridge which trends easterly into the
country, and which up to this spot, is, on its northern slope, covered
with drift-sand and partially grown over with stunted herbage.
Further traces of a like kind are to be seen on the high bluff between
North and South Point. Sal. Here the shells are piled up in shapeless,
irregular heaps, as they are met in all localities on the coast where
there were the fixed dwelling-places of people whose principal food
consisted of fresh shell-fish ; for, in the neighborhood of these
permanent homes the shellremains were always put away in fixed
places, while in the temporary camps they were carelessly
distributed over the whole surface of the ground. Very vividly did
these bleached mounds recall to my mind the immense remains of
such heaps that I had seen in Oregon on the right bank of the
Checto, as also near Natenet, and near Crook's Point, or Chetleshin,
close to Pistol river. I remembered also how I had watched the
Indians in various places — near Crescent City on the Klamath and
on the Big Lagoon — froming just such shell-heaps; two or three
families always depositing their ]-efuse on the same modding. " To
return to southern California. A deposit similar to those of Point Sal,
although much smaller, stands on the left bank of the Santa Maria
ri\er, near its mouth. Both at the first described fixed camps, and at
this place, there are to be found tons of flint-chips, scattered about
in all directions, as also knives, arrow-heads and spear-heads in
large quantities. I was somewhat perplexed, however, by being
unable to find anj' graves; such numerous moddmys revealing the
existence of important settlements
 BIG RIVER TOWNSHIP. 393 that should have been
accompanied by burying-places. I therefore moved further inland,
seeking a locality where the soil could be easily worked, where a
good view of the surrounding country could be had, and where^
above all, there was good fresh water — all of which requirements
appear to have been regarded as necessary for the location of an
important village. I soon recognized at a distance shell-heaps and
bone-heaps, the former of which gets scarcer as one leaves the
shore. Approaching these, on a spur of Point Sal upon which a pass
opens through the coast hills, and on both sides of which are springs
of fresh water, though I did not succeed, after a careful examination,
in distinguishing single houses, I believe I found the traces of a large
settlement on a kind of saddle on the low ridge, where flint-chips,
bones and shells lie in great quantities. Further search at last
revealed to me in the thick chaparral a few scattered sandstone
slabs, such as in that region were used for lining graves. Digging
near these spots, I at last found the graves of this settlement — a
.settlement that the old Spanish residents called Kesmali. " Here I
brought to light about one hundred and tifty skeletons and various
kinds of implements. The graves were constructed in the following
manner: A large hole was made in the sandy soil to a dejith of about
five feet, then a fire was lit in it until a hard brick-like crust was
burned to a depth of four or five inches into the surrounding earth.
The whole excavation was then partitioned off into smaller spaces by
sandstone slabs, about one and a half inches thick, one foot broad,
and three feet long, in which smaller partitions the skeletons were.
One of these slabs generally lay horizontally over the head of the
corpse as a kind of protecting roof for the skull, j ust as I had found
them at Checto river, although in the latter instarrce the graves were
lined with split redwood boards instead of stones. Such careful burial
is not, however, always met with, and must evidently be taken as
the sign of the respectability or the wealth of the deceased ; the
more so, as in such graves I found usually many utensils, something
not the case with the more careles.sly formed tombs, which were
only very slightly lined, and in which the heads of the dead were
covered with a piece of rough stone or half a mortar. The slabs
above mentioned were generally painted, and a piece which I carried
ofT with me was divided lengthwise by a single straight, dark line,
from which radiated on either side, at an angle of about sixty
degrees, thirty-two other parallel red lines, sixteen on each side, like
the bones of a fish from the vertebra. In most cases the inner side
of the slab was painted a simple red. " Tn these graves the skeletons
lay on their backs with the knees drawn up, and the arms, in most
cases, stretched out. No definite direction was observed in the
placing of the bodies, which frequently lay in great disorder, the
saving of room, having been apparently the prime consideration.
Some skeletons, for example, lay opposite to each other, foot to
foot, while adjoining ones again were laid crosswise. The I'emale
skeletons have, instead of the protecting head-slalj, a stone mortar
placed on its edge so as to admit the
 394 HISTORY OF MENDOCINO COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.
skull, or a stone pot, which latter, if too narrow in the neck to admit
the skull, is simply buried underneath it. Cups and ornaments, both
in the case of men and women, lie principally about the head, while
shell-beads are found in the mouth, the eye-sockets, and in the
cavity of the brain, which latter is almost always filled with sand
pressed in through the foramen magnum. The skeletons were in
some cases packed in quite closely, one over another, so that the
uppermost were only about three feet below the surface of the
ground. The stain of poverty is very evident on these, except,
perhaps, where they are females, as they are in the majority of
eases. I cannot accept the hypothesis that these were the slaves of
some rich man and buried with their master; for the lower skeletons
were generally found to have been disturbed in a very singular
manner, such as could only have been occasioned by a reopening of
the grave after decomposition had set in. I found, for example, a
lower jaw lying near its right place, but upside down, so that both
the upper and the lower teeth pointed downward; in another case,
the thighbones lay the wrong way, the knee-pans being turned
toward the basin; and, in other instances, the bones were totally
separated and mixed up — all going to show that the graves had
been repeatedly opened for the burial of bodies at different times.
Once I even found, upon piercing the bottom crust of one sepulcher,
another lying deeper, which perhaps had been forgotten, as the
bones therein were somewhat damaged by fire. Plenty of charcoal is
found in these tombs, usually of redwood, rarely of pine; and I could
not determine any third variety. Sometimes there were also
discovered the remains of posts from three to six inches in diameter,
and of split boards about two inches in thickness. These are
probably the remains of the burned dwelling of the deceased, placed
in his grave with all his other property, after a fashion I observed in
Checto last year. " I examined other graves re.sembling those
described of Point Sal. These others are known by the name of
Temeteti. They lie about fourteen miles north of the Point Sal graves,
and are situated on the right bank of the Arroyo de los Berros,
opposite to the traces of former settlements about seven miles
inland. These tombs only differed from those of Kesmali in not being
lined with the thick burnt, brick-like crust mentioned above, but with
a thin, light-colored crust, slightly burned, and not more than a
quarter of an inch thick. " In company with the well-informed and
industrious antiquaries. Doctor Haj's and Judge Venabel, I explored
another aboriginal settlement known by the name of Nipomo. It is
situated on a large rancho of like name, and distant about a mile
and a half from the Nipomo Ranch House, occupied by the
hospitable Dana brothers. Lastly I examined the AValekhe
settlement. About twenty-five miles from the mouth of the Santa
Maria river, there empties into it the Alamo creek, bringing down
rather a large amount of water. Following the wide bed of the Santa
Maria for about seven miles
 BIG RIVEK TOWNSHIP. 395 farther up stream, one reaches
a smooth elevation, which at this place rises about sixty feet above
the bend of the creek, and which trends in a curve toward the
mountains on the right bank. At the farthest end of this, at a place
where a fine view over the whole valley is had, we find the traces of
the ancient village now , known as Walekhe. A short distance from
the former dwellings on the highest point of the ridge, a small
excavation marks the spot where once a house stood, probably that
of a chief. And here, indeed, I voluntarily imagined that I saw with
my bodily eyes the strange primeval race that once called this place
home. I saw the mothers of the tribe, lying with children at their
breasts, or bending above the wearying mortar, while the sweat
rolled over their dusky skins, painted with the colors and decked
with the pearls that we at this day find lying beside them in those
silent graves whose secret we have caught. Under the neighboring
oaks — old oaks now, but young enough then — I saw the squatted
men smoking their strange stone pipes; while, in the creek below,
the youth cooled their swarthy bodies, or dried themselves in the
sun, lying sweltering on its sandy banks. I heard the cry of the
sentinels, as they, ever watching warily for an approaching possible
enemy, caught sight of the returning hunter, loaded with elk and
rabbits. And now — their graves lie there. " With regard to the
general character of the domestic utensils, arms and ornaments
which I found in the digging down to, and examining of, about three
hundred skeletons in the graves of Kesmali, Temeteti, Nipomo and
Walekhe, these things from the different localities named resemble
each other very closely, seeming to show that all their possessors
belonged to the same tribe. First of all, the large cooking-pots draw
one's attention — hollow globular or pear-shaped bodies, hollowed
out of magnesian mica. The cii-cular opening, having a small and
narrow rim, measures only five inches in diameter in a pot with a
diameter of eighteen inches. Near the edge of the opening, this
vessel is only a quarter of an inch thick, but it thickens in a very
regular manner toward the bottom, where it measures about one
and a quarter inch through. Made of the same material, I found
other pots of a different shape — namely, very wide across the
opening, and narrowing as they grow toward the bottom. With these
I have also now in my possession many diflerent sizes of sandstone
mortars of a general semi-globular shape> varying from three inches
in diameter and an inch and a half in height, up to sixteen inches in
diameter and thirteen inches in height — all external measurements
— with pestles of the same material to correspond. There were,
further, quite an assortment of cups, measuring from one and a
quarter to six inches in diameter, neatly worked out of polished
serpentine. The smallest of these that I found was inclosed, as in a
doubly covered dish; by three shells, and contained paint; traces of
which, by the by, were found in all these cups, from which we may
suppose that they were not in use for holding food.
 39b HISTORY OF MENDOCINO COUNTY, CALIFORNIA. "
Neither spoons nor knives were found in these graves. I got,
however, three beautiful cigar-holder-like pipes of serpentine, much
stronger than, but similar in shape to, those dug out in Oregon. But
few arms were picked up here — only a few arrow-heads and spear-
heads; these, however, mostly of exquisite workmanship. A spear-
head of obsidian, five and a half inches long, was the only object I
found of this material; another lance point of chalcedony, nine and a
half inches long, and one and a quarter inch wide, was beautifully
shaped and carefully made. " Many of these objects were found
perfect, and those that were broken had been broken by the shifting
and pressure of the soil, as could easily be seen from their position.
It is, therefore, certain that the bulk of the property buried with a
person was not purposely broken or destroyed — the same thing
holding true in my investigations in Oregon. I even found mortars
and pestles which had been repaired and cemented with asphaltum.
The richer occupants of these graves had shell beads in great
numbers, sickleshaped ornaments of the abalone shell, and an
ornament resembling the dentalium but made of a large clam-shell
within or strewed about their heads — striving, though they brought
nothing into the world, at least to carry something out." Climate. —
There is but little variety in the climate in the different sections of
this township, as it alleles on the westei'n slope of the Coast Range
mountains facing the ocean. The ordinary climate is foggy and cold,
even in the heart of the summer season, but there are days of
unparalleled beauty and brightness here, which are only the more
appreciated on account of the contrast with the damp, sunless days
which are so frequent. A writer from Mendocino City in 1866 thus
graphically and beautifully describes the close of one of those
delightful days: — " Just now the clouds are tinged with the lovliest
crimson. The sun has set, leaving the pathwa}' he has so lately
traversed lined with heaven's varied hues. Sparkling beneath those
golden clouds lies the ocean, its bosom now calm, as if subdued by
the beauty of God's handiwork; as if, by one common impulse, all
nature is sinking to repose. " See the glowing sunset now Tinge the
mountain's misty brow, Over field and meadow bright Spread a flood
of golden light. " Over vale and crystal stream, Shedding now its
level beam. Soon the night, with sable wing, Kest to weary ones will
bring." But for pure, unadulterated sea air, full of fog and oxygen,
charged with ozone, salubrious and salsuginous, invigorating and
life-giving air, that will make the pulses leap and bring the roses to
the cheek, one should go to
 BIG RIVER TOWNSHIP. 597 Mendocino City, where it can be
had at first hand, bereft of nothing. Every breeze that blows, except
the east wind, is fraught with the odors of the sea; but the wind of
all winds, the one which seems to come directly from the cave of
Erebus, is the north-west breeze. It swoops down across this
section- with all the fury of old Boreas, but fortunately it is shorn of
his icy breath; still, retaining enough of it to make one need flannels
during all the days and nights of its reign. In short, the climate is
very cool and invigorating during the summer months, and very
pleasant and mild during the winter, and when one has become
accustomed to the fogs and the winds it is hard to find a place which
will suit better than here. The extremes both of heat and cold are
unknown. Products. — The soil and climate of this township adapt it
specially to the growth of vegetables, while the cereals and fruits
thrive well, except that the fogs darken the grain, and mildew the
fruits. The small fruits and berries are especially thrifty here, and the
latter grow in large quantities wild in the woods, and afford ample
opportunities for picnic excursions during the summer season. Of the
vegetables grown here, it is evident that the potato is the most
productive, and grows to the greatest advantage, of which large
quantities are grown yearly and shipped to the city, affording an
article of export, and yielding in the aggregate, a handsome return
of golden dollars. Timber. — Here, as all along the Mendocino coast,
the prime conception of the idea of timber is redwood. There are
great forests of this timber along the entire length and breadth of
this township, and it is such an extensive industry, and so closely
allied with the prosperity of the citizens of this section that it comes
naturally first upon the catalogue in summing u]i and describing the
timber of the township. It was here that the redwood forests first
attracted attention ; and here that the pioneer mill of Mendocino
county was put in motion, and the hum of the first saw blended with
the roar of the ocean to make harmonious melodies. These trees
grow much larger in the deep canons and along the streams putting
back from the coast, where the fog has banked up amid their
clustering foliage for ages during their growth; and right royally they
have grown, so that now the.se grand old forests primeval are the
peers of any of their congeners in the State, always excepting, of
course, the "Big trees of Calaveras." On the ridges they grow more
sparsely, and on the spurs of the mountains they hardly groAv at all,
but the few which did have the hardihood to spring up in such
forbidding places, were stunted in their growth by the bleak winds
from the north-west and warped into unseemly dwarfs of a monster
race. Their leaves and limbs have long since succumbed to the fierce
blasts of old Boreas and their trunks now stand mere bare poles,
looking much like .skeleton sentinels guarding the destinies of the
race of men who have so fully sup 
 398 HISTORY OF MENDOCINO COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.
planted the people which knew and, perhaps, loved them in their
quasi and quondcum glory. Of the other woods the oak is the most
plentiful, while iir, pine, and alder are common. The chestnut oak is
the most profitable as its bark yields a handsome return, and its
wood is good for burning. Early Settlement. — It is impossible to fix
the time now, when the first white men began going up and down
tlie coast, and passing through and tarrying temporarily at least in
this township. It is quite certain that Captain William Richardson, of
Saucelito, Marin county, was here as early as 1845 or 1846, for he
applied to the Mexico-Californian Government for a grant to the tract
of land known as the " Albion," before the surrendering of California
to the United States by Mexico, and as the disseno is almost a
perfect map of the country, it is evident that the old veteran passed
over the ground himself and examined it thoroughly. It was not,
however, till 1852 that any real settlement was made in the
township, although previous to this, probably in 1850, a man by the
name of William Kasten, had squatted upon the site of Mendocino
City. This man was on his way up the coast in some sort of a sailing
craft, and hard weather caused him to seek the shelter of a port,
and chance brought him into this one. It is not known whether he
had companions or not, or what became of his craft, or what
induced him to remain on what must then have been a very bleak
and inhospitable headland, so far removed from all association with
his fellow-mortals. But be all this as it may, the fact stiU remains that
he resided here from the time of his landing at the port until about
1854, when he went to Mexico and died there. During the winter of
185 1-2, a vessel laden with silk and tea from China and Japan to
San Francisco, was driven ashore at the mouth of the Noyo river.
Reports of this wreck extended down the coast till it reached the
settlement at Bodega, whence a party went for the purpose of
salvage. In passing up and down the coast the large and available
redwood forests on Big river attacted attention, and wonderful
reports concerning these woods, and their resources, were carried
back to Bodega. At this time the price of lumber had declined so
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