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What is AI? A dominant view describes it as the quest "to solve intelligence" - a solution supposedly to be found in the secret logic of the mind or in the deep physiology of the brain, such as in its complex neural networks. The Eye of the Master argues, to the contrary, that the inner code of AI is shaped not by the imitation of biological intelligence, but the intelligence of labour and social relations, as it is found in Babbage's "calculating engines" of the industrial age as well as in the recent algorithms for image recognition and surveillance. The idea that AI may one day become autonomous (or "sentient", as someone thought of Google's LaMDA) is pure fantasy. Computer algorithms have always imitated the form of social relations and the organisation of labour in their own inner structure and their purpose remains blind automation. The Eye of the Master urges a new literacy on AI for scientists, journalists and new generations of activists, who should recognise that the "mystery" of AI is just the automation of labour at the highest degree, not intelligence per se.
What does thinking mean in the age of Artificial Intelligence? How is big-scale computation transforming the way our brains function? This collection discusses these pressing questions by looking beyond instrumental rationality. Exploring recent developments as well as examples from the history of cybernetics, the book uncovers the positive role played by errors and traumas in the construction of our contemporary technological minds. With texts by Benjamin Bratton, Orit Halpern, Adrian Lahoud, Jon Lindblom, Catherine Malabou, Reza Negarestani, Luciana Parisi, Matteo Pasquinelli, Ana Teixeira Pinto, Michael Wheeler, Charles Wolfe, and Ben Woodard.
During a time when pop stars become famous thanks to sex tapes that have been leaked online, it is clear that the Internet is not immune to the draw of the media. Yet art, academia and activism continue to promote the Internet as an untouched utopia. Animal Spirits: A Bestiary of the Commons addresses the double standard dominating contemporary media discourse and shatters the myths of creative commons, free software and open-source movements, suggesting that free culture is an economic parasite siphoning money through peer-to-peer networks. Theorist and digital fetishist Matteo Pasquinelli uses the metaphor of the animal body--which Paul Virilio has characterized as instinctual and reactionary--to counter what he sees as a capitalist exploitation of collective imagery, calling for a radical new understanding of the forces at work behind the digital economy and cultural production.
‘A rare and remarkable book.' Times Literary Supplement Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris VIII. He is a key figure in poststructuralism, and one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. Félix Guattari (1930-1992) was a psychoanalyst at the la Borde Clinic, as well as being a major social theorist and radical activist. A Thousand Plateaus is part of Deleuze and Guattari's landmark philosophical project, Capitalism and Schizophrenia - a project that still sets the terms of contemporary philosophical debate. A Thousand Plateaus provides a compelling analysis of social phenomena and offers fresh alternatives for thinking about philosophy and culture. Its radical perspective provides a toolbox for ‘nomadic thought' and has had a galvanizing influence on today's anti-capitalist movement. Translated by Brian Massumi>
A “gripping, inspiring, and politically revolutionary” novel about loneliness, inadequacy, and connection, set against the backdrop of the Norwegian postal service—for fans of Nicole Krauss and Sheila Heti (Vanity Fair). From the prize-winning Norwegian author of Will and Testament, longlisted for the National Book Award. Ellinor, a 35-year-old media consultant, has not been feeling herself; she’s not been feeling much at all lately. Far beyond jaded, she picks through an old diary and fails to recognize the woman in its pages, seemingly as far away from the world around her as she’s ever been. But when her coworker vanishes overnight, an unusual new task is dropped on her desk. Off she goes to meet the Norwegian Postal Workers Union, setting the ball rolling on a strange and transformative six months. This is an existential scream of a novel about loneliness (and the postal service!), written in Vigdis Hjorth’s trademark spare, rhythmic and cutting style.
No one personified the age of industry more than the miners. The Shadow of the Mine tells the story of King Coal in its heyday – and what happened to mining communities after the last pits closed. The Shadow of the Mine tells the story of King Coal in its heyday, the heroics and betrayals of the Miners’ Strike, and what happened to mining communities after the last pits closed. No one personified the age of industry more than the miners. Coal was central to the British economy, powering its factories and railways. It carried political weight, too. In the eighties the miners risked everything in a year-long strike against Thatcher’s shutdowns. Their defeat doomed a way of life. The ling...
A unique book, tracing forty years of anti-racist feminist thought In a moment of rising authoritarianism, climate crisis, and ever more exploitative forms of neoliberal capitalism, there is a compelling and urgent need for radical paradigms of thought and action. Through interviews with key revolutionary scholars, Bhandar and Ziadah present a thorough discussion of how anti-racist, anti-capitalist feminisms are crucial to building effective political coalitions. Collectively, these interviews with leading scholars including Angela Y. Davis, Silvia Federici, and many others, trace the ways in which black, indigenous, post-colonial and Marxian feminisms have created new ways of seeing, new th...
Published on the occasion of the Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICI) conference in 2013, this volume collects papers presented at the first Psychopathologies of Cognitive Capitalism conference in Los Angeles (2012). Philosophers, critical theorists, media theorists, art historians, architects and artists including Jonathan Beller, Franco Bifo Berardi, Arne de Boever, Jodi Dean, Warren Neidich, Patricia Pisters, Jason Smith, Tiziana Terranova, and Bruce Wexler discuss cognitive capitalism as it relates to the conditions of mind and brain in the world of advanced telecommunication, data mining and social relations.
In recent years, a little-known research group named Forensic Architecture began using novel research methods to undertake a series of investigations into human rights abuses. Today, the group provides crucial evidence for international courts and works with a wide range of activist groups, NGOs, Amnesty International, and the UN. Beyond shedding new light on human rights violations and state crimes across the globe, Forensic Architecture has also created a new form of investigative practice that bears its name. The group uses architecture as an optical device to investigate armed conflicts and environmental destruction, as well as to cross-reference a variety of evidence sources, such as ne...
Leading artists, theorists, and writers exhume the dystopian and utopian futures contained within the present “I am the supercommunity, and you are only starting to recognize me. I grew out of something that used to be humanity. Some have compared me to angry crowds in public squares; others compare me to wind and atmosphere, or to software.” Invited to exhibit at the 56th Venice Biennale, e-flux journal produced a single issue over a four-month span, publishing an article a day both online and on site from Venice. In essays, poems, short stories, and plays, artists and theorists trace the negative collective that is the subject of contemporary life, in which art, the internet, and globalization have shed their utopian guises but persist as naked power, in the face of apocalyptic ecological disaster and against the claims of the social commons. “I convert care to cruelty, and cruelty back to care. I convert political desires to economic flows and data, and then I convert them back again. I convert revolutions to revelations. I don’t want security, I want to leave, and then disperse myself everywhere and all the time.”