There’s no reason for this title, it just happens to be what the lyrics to this song sound like.

Five Things

1. The idea or the thing

A core position of my thinking, generally on futures and technology, is that the idea of things has more impact on shaping real-world experience than actual things themselves. I read this paper analysing the National AI Strategies (NAISs) of South Korea and France which situated them in their historical context where this important conclusion is drawn:

Whereas the technological progress and impacts of AI are unpredictable, NAISs have gradually unfolded with concrete consequences such as changes in governmental investment and education. In this sense, I contend that AI-essentialism and other discourses have transformed the world as much as, if not more than, the technological development in AI. (Kim, 2023, p. 723)

So what? In other words, the idea that AI is a) inevitable and b) will have ‘epochal’ consequences are more animating and transformative than actual AI itself. Nice to just see someone else write it down.

2. The Perfect Benchmark.

I must have re-read Gell’s Enchantment of Technology 4 or 5 times over the years. It is a remarkable piece which barely stands up to contemporary postcolonial thinking but has some striking and stridently obvious-in-retrospect ideas that immediately resonate. It’s also a great big personal benchmark. When I first read it, amidst the heady early days of Haunted Machines I honestly had no idea about most of it and so it’s a comfort to know I can now re-skim it and find it so much more easy to read. Which I suppose is evidence that I’m not getting stupider in my old age.

I was drawn this time to his idea that magic is the ultimate benchmark: All transactions, all technical processes require work, which is he currency of technical production; how much effort does it take. Magic promises zero effort, zero work. And so, as Gell says, we imagine all technical processes against the zero-effort magic benchmark.

The standard for computing the value of a harvest is the opportunity cost of obtaining the resulting harvest, not by the technical, work-demanding means that are actually employed, but effortlessly, by magic. All productive activities are measured against the magic-standard, the possibility that the same product might be produced effortlessly, and the relative efficacy of techniques is a function of the extent to which they converge towards the magic-standard of zero work for the same product, (Gell et al., 1994, p. 10)

Gell’s broader argument is that objects of great technical accomplishment are enchanting because they are products of techniques that are seen as so advanced as to be almost spiritual or certainly beyond the imagining of the observer. These objects in turn do the work of enchanting the society in which they sit because this sense of what is technically accomplished and what is not is a commonly-held belief. So when this society produces objects which are commonly-held as enchanted they also enchant the society, convincing members that their society itself is enchanted and ‘right.’

So what? You can fill in your own blanks on Andreeson’s ranting that capitalism is the best thing there is because it produced the GPU. I can’t believe that was three years ago! Anyway, there’s something to do here with GPUs as objects of enchantment because their technical accomplishment enchants people like Andreeson with social possibilities (not good ones tho).

3. Truly Unprecedented

I have, around three years too late, started to understand better the idea of ‘future essentialism,’ one of the components of which is the idea of epochalism or that a new thing heralds a break with historical precedent. This is often used discursively to ‘reset the stage’ for actors and so you often find it next to words like ‘disruption’ where invested parties a-historically redefine history for their own purposes. This piece from Schiølin, explores publications from the WEF but I love this little quote:

the frequency of words such as ‘unprecedented’ [is] almost nine times as high as it was 40 years ago (Schiølin, 2020, p.553)

It’s also about allowing new actors to stake their claim to being the most suitable parties to precedent the unprecedented.

Increasingly, corporate leaders, scientists, sociologists and journalists are putting themselves in the role of historians, zealously deciding, but often without historiographical and methodological deliberations, what stands out as unprecedented, and hence what is important, what we should pay attention to, what we should talk about, what we should decide upon. Not surprisingly, they often choose their own work or ideas as candidates for the unprecedented. Heuristically accepting the category of ‘the unprecedented’, it can be argued that what is unprecedented today is, paradoxically, the constant proclamation of the unprecedented and the fact that history has become an actor’s category in the battle of defining, designing and deciding the future. (Schiølin, 2020, p.553)

4. Be yourself but also be correct

Observing a strange contradiction that I sometimes struggle to balance. I’ve heard on two occasions recently a great bit of feedback that is along the lines of ‘be more yourself’ or ‘it would be good to hear more of your voice in this.’ Both in the context of things that I would have otherwise thought would need to be heavily evidence-led. One of these situations is obviously the PhD, the other I’m going to be opaque about. How does one balance this? The need to use evidence, examples, concrete data to support a point and the other to demonstrate your own expertise or perspective? They strikes me often as contradictory but I think it is an artefact at being late/mid stage career or wherever I am. That I’m not expected to be poorly informed, technically or intellectually incompetent and so I don’t need to prove my competence before offering my interpretation. On the one hand, great. On the other hand, I don’t feel competent. I suppose a PhD is also about making you feel small in the assemblage of knowledge you’ve gathered; you are a tiny part of a maelstrom that know one cares about. The other thing, well. ‘People don’t think about you as much as you think about them.’ I was reminded of one of my favourite maxims the other day, it’s quite reassuring.

5. Scenarios Suck

Well it was the perfect week to wrap-up 13,000 words on how speculative vision texts/manifestos on AI are motivated and work (Tl:dr; if no one knows anything, you can see anything and make yourself look clever) at the release of a viral piece on the future of the economy from shock, horror, gasp a share trading research company. The stupid thing is how it materially affected the stock market which shows you the information paucity in AI. Any, Johannes wrote a good bit on it here.

So what? Foresight and futures is more than just hot reckons, it’s about looking at today and the assumptions and baggage, you’re taking forward. One of those might be ‘AI is going to change everything’ and then arguing about exactly how. Maybe if there’s so much arguing about how, it won’t?

Recents

• I contributed some notes to Silvio and Giovanni’s Field Guide to Design Futures which you can buy or get as a PDF here. It has a bunch of better practitioners in it too. I always cringe at past Revell stuff but it’s a useful little tome I reckon.
• We’ve been getting some great feedback on Futur-ish and it feels like a dialog is developing between us and other folks which is really what it’s all about. However, Spotify tells me that though subscribers are going up, they’re not going up as fast as they could for the amount of listeners so can you go and subscribe please.

Short Stuff

• Not much coverage because of the general collapse of global order but the security-based assessment of biodiversity loss in the UK says that the country will start facing food shortages in about five years.
• China’s robotaxis are beating out America’s in global reach. Particularly in the Gulf.
• Guardian on the Superbowl ending with this leet line about ads: this year’s commercials advertised products that fit a dependable number of recurring categories: AI, gambling, food delivery and insurance. Here, in taxonomical miniature, was a brilliant summary of what culture has in store for us: slop, speculation, a retreat from the commons, and indemnification – if we’re lucky – against the disasters that await.
• The idea that AI could help solve the climate crisis is bogus confirmed.
• Charlie, Alex, Jon and Rob on design and futures. Like Fleetwood Mac but not.
• Speaking of, Alex wrote this amazing short history of design.
• Romania proves that you can separate emissions from growth.

We’re maybe five weeks off a full PhD draft. So it’s unlikely I’ll be back here before then. Best of luck to you in all of your endeavours. I love you, speak alter.