I’m a bit more settled than last time. After a final push and rush I have managed to secure my home working space from which I am writing this. If you aren’t over on Instagram, then you’ll just have to imagine. I think winter is affecting me more as I get older. The universe doesn’t want us out and about when it’s like this. There’s a line in some film like ‘If nothing surprises you then nothing about you can be surprising.’ (Don’t ask me which.) We must try and resist cynicism I suppose and be open to surprise and joy in life as it tries to find its way in.

Five Things

1. Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies Emerging Technology Report

There’s, of course, a huge focus on AI here but an interesting ring diagram that shows the different ways that AI might interact with existing systems. CiFs do great work and it’s always tastefully presented. Because of my job I spend so much time thinking about back-end infrastructure and design and the PhD work is more about stories and ideas. Sometimes I forget about the software and interfaces for people.

2. Voice notes are essays

I think Wes got me into voice notes. However, he has expressed his discontent at my often lengthy rambles that arrive for him. It’s likely that you and I too have a long voice note correspondence. I really enjoy voice notes and it’s a pleasure of my commute to listen to them. In fact my Christmas present was a pair of headphones which I thought might sort out the wind problem when cycling and dictating but really haven’t.
I remember learning about Montaigne and the original ideas of the essay and romanticising that intellectual/personal explorative space somewhere and I think I found it in voice notes.
Like everyone, I talk to myself, especially when I need to work through something but then that working out gets distracted and loses itself because there’s no accountability. And of course, I have conversations but rarely are these Socratic. More like fast-moving between platonic and instrumental. Voice notes are great because they give you time to chew properly through an idea without having to keep up with someone else but they’re also accountable because, like essays, they have to be communicative in intent to someone else. Anyway, sorry about the rambling voice note.

3. Mushrooms playing synths

Don’t know what else to tell you. Cordiceps might mean the end of the world or it might mean whacky synth music. That’s the thing with all this more-than-human stuff. It sounds kind of whacky.

4. Putting a bear trap on your head.

Look, no one loves reading takedowns of the hubris of technology as much as I do. Or indeed writing them. But you might. Here‘s this year’s best takedown of CES with some great observations about how disappointing and underwhelming the future is.

something amazing is happening very quickly just out of sight, and will be here soon despite always being exactly 18-36 months away, and you will need to be protected from it, but also it will improve your life—is as much the product as anything else. It is pitched less at the general public, to whom it might reasonably sound like The Jigsaw Killer explaining why he had placed a bear trap on their head, than at the investors and politicians whose faith keeps the industry afloat. Those dire promises will stand in for the product until such time as there is a product worth selling; the speculative stuff will continue either way.

5. The ideological showdown at the start of the middle of the end

Riel came into work the other day and was talking about ‘monumentalism‘ – that our desperation to preserve (food, buildings, infrastructure, politics etc.) was leading to us putting these things in the ground (plastics, concrete etc.) that will be monuments for thousands of years.
I think he’s right but it actually sharpened my contention that the core belief underlying the most dominant form of power in the world right now (VC-backed western high technology) is nihilism. In order to pursue AGI, a part of you needs to believe that everything already is computable; that all of human experience is reducible and you just need the necessary computation to replicate it. In the same way the idea of the Turing Test pre-supposes AI, the concept of AGI pre-supposes a philosophical position that the world can be disenchanted and re-enchanted through computation.
On the other side of this is the burgeoning concern of ‘more-than-human’ philosophies and approaches that see the world beyond the human as a site of enchantment, whether because the intelligence we are seeking to replicate fails to account* for the myriad intelligences already in the world or because there are gestalt properties to the world (and consequently human experience of it) that can’t be taken into account by computers.
Sure, this is sort of an extension of modernism and normative scientific rationalism but it’s taken on an arms-race flavour as governments are now wholeheartedly backing the former idea and throwing hundreds of billions of dollars at it.

Recents

• I had a wonderful evening with Hurry Up We’re Dreaming in London last week discussing AI, magic and imaginaries. Large panel so the time flew by but an interesting curation of people coming more from design / social science (like me and Ella) and folks from that ultra-cool sort of Berlin-y transcendental technology vibe.
• Also last week was beaming into Melbourne for Chris Speed’s No Harm Done where, with friend and colleague Bree‘s help, I attempted to give a whistle stop tour of some of the ideas in the PhD work to give some impetus for an evening of playful experiments on the other side of the world.
• Finally, the recording from my session with Dave for Creative Education Online has been shared. I always love talking with Dave (was in fact doing so last night) about creativity, technology, education and so on and it was great to open that discussion to a few dozen other folks from the education sector and think about the assumptions we take into conversations about ‘digital’ and education.

Listening

A lot of Nathy Peluso

Look, I don’t know what any of this means. I suppose we’re exhausted by despair and my freneticism of the last few weeks has actually been a distracting mechanism. It’s easy to constantly wonder ‘am i doing enough?’ but if you go to bed exhausted then you are doing more than enough. It’s so hard to look at the world now and recognise it. But I love you, and if you need my help, just ask.

*Last week, three separate people asked me if I heard of this book.