Well ok a lot of quality of life changes of recently; really been taking things up a gear. For one, the whole Obsidian implementation which I’ve been loving and have gradually started to shift other bits of writing, reading and thinking in to with the aim of one day having a massively interconnected supernet of my brain. Actually that post seems to have piqued quite a lot of interest. Half a dozen or so folks have followed up asking about Obsidian. If it wasn’t basically freeware I’d be thinking about a commission.

And then, I finally had time over Christmas to sit down and do a bunch of updates and changes that I wanted to to this blog and my website. The website was fine but feeling a bit tired and needed some tidying of old projects. I learned how to automate out gifs and fidgeted with typography for hours. I’ve been using Roboto religiously for over a decade and decided it was time for a change. This is Rubik. We use Rubik now. The other thing is this ‘highlight motif’ in the titles and quotes. I thought it was a neat reflection of what I spend so much time doing – reading and highlighting.

The blog on the other hand was an utter mess in need of a fix. Underneath the cover it was all sticky tape and lolly sticks. When I moved from blogger four or five years ago I just tried to thwack the same principles of design onto WordPress and it held together fine but was hardly flying straight. So I spent a few mornings doing a big template reset, getting the settings right and learning how to use it properly including setting up the newsletter to work properly which you can subscribe to at the bottom.

It also gave me time to think about how I use this thing. I think some people enjoy the ‘working with the garage door open’ stuff, and some people come for hot reckons. Some people just want the links and thought leadership and some people probably just tripped and fell into here. My own engagement has been rocky recently as I’ve tried to focus more on the PhD and the big thinking goes on there and in the day job. So, for now, blogs will be shorter and I’m going to try and change ‘Reading’ for ‘Five Things.’ (Slightly inspired by Jo’s ‘Four Things this Week‘ format – not to out-do Jo but just because I think primes are neater.)

Five Things

Ok this is slightly longer than it will be in future because it’s been a minute.

1. Two obvious things about AI that I never spotted before

I read Caroline Bassett’s essay The Cruel Optimism of Technological Dreams which explores the promises of AI through the feminist lens of Lauren Berlant. (QUOTE) I guess the concept of cruel optimism (which Bassett says is much used and stretched but which I had never heard of) is a kind of corollary to hyperstition; that hopes and anxieties of technology become self-fulfilling prophecies. In this case, the hope in better unleashes waves of worse by clinging to the hope. Anyway, it’s one of those things where in reading it, a lot of connections are made. First of all, it reconceptualised my thinking on the idea of progress. I had been focussing on the idea that ‘progress’ is something drawn on an recapitulated by mainstream technology – that novelty, speed, power, efficacy were all hallmarks of progress. Bassett actually indicated that even the debates over controversies in AI become social totems of the myth of progress.

A fevered adherence to progress is central to AI discourses of many kinds. Evidenced in scientific writing, marketing, journalism, and variously materialised, it circulates widely and informs public understandings. It stands as the other to a recurring and constantly refreshing topoi of technological anxiety (see Bassett 2022) and turns on many of the same axes; an increase in cognitive agency, the extension of automation, new forms of control, machine neutrality and machine in-humanity, rationality/inscrutability, transparency, and black-boxing, something beyond ‘the human’ that constitutes ‘human’ progress.

She doesn’t explicitly say it, but the idea that in getting into nuanced debate over controversies like the possibility of creativity in generative AI videos, we are doing the work of social constructivism for mainstream AI; we are progressing the debate beyond first principles (like, ‘should we build AI in the first place?’)

The second thing was around techno-optimism, which again I had hitherto been exploring as a concept deployed by mainstream AI people to support the utopian fantasies they sell but Bassett made me think about how, for many, society and its institutions are already unjust, so the ‘cruel optimism’ of justice finally brought about by automated decision making, devoid of those humans who are normally responsible for your suffering, would actually be appealing.

AI affords an investment in the hope of a more just order to come. It appears indeed to elevate itself above the turmoil that human desire as a motor for societal operation is said to produce. Promises of data neutrality and impartial calculation, which might be attached to, hold specific promise, or have specific allure to groups who have historically been and continue to be the victims of partiality and nonneutrality of non-automated systems of ordering and governance, and who also experience violence in the application of these systems by humans.

The whole piece takes as a starting point the idea that debates over the veracity of claims about AI and its speculative futures are not the point – the very existence of those debates and claims is driving hope and aspiration for people whether they are delivered or not and so shaping our experience of life and living.

2. There are two types of magic

There’s rules-based magic, like Harry Potter, Wheel of Time, The Witcher or Dungeons and Dragons; there’s algorithms and economy. The magic requires investment, practice and exchange and the magic itself is often a substance or is otherwise quantifiable. It is learned or taught explicitly and people can have their magic drained or taken away. As a result, these stories revolve around institutional or statist power and politics.
The other end of the spectrum is ‘vibes-based’ like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars. There’s no way to teach it explicitly, it has to be tacitly understood and often has a spiritual dimension. People can lose their magic if they become unworthy in some way. I think it’s interesting how there’s these different paths to power reflected in even stories of magic. And then there’s magick of course.

3. Dreaming beyond AI

Here‘s a database of critical AI projects that are challenging mainstream narratives using decolonial, queer and feminist approaches. I came across it in this paper. I suppose the question is; how to help these things become more well known so that people who aren’t even studying this stuff intentionally come across it.

4. Shakespeare in GTA is pretty clever

Although I play games (or currently try to avoid playing games) I don’t think I have the proper understanding of how much they are reorganising culture. This is smarter than it at first appears; Hamlet in GTAV Online. On the face of it, you’d assume a straightforward machinima but what actually happens is that the performance is constantly disrupted by the game itself: The game’s cops swing in in the middle of a scene, strangers barge through the actors and NPC run them over for no apparent reason. None of the dramatic tension or narrative building of a play is possible because the mechanics of the game are predisposed towards all-encompassing violent conflict at the very slightest interaction with the game. Anyone who’s played a Grand Theft Auto knows how you can go from walking around to having the entire military and police apparatus of the nation descend on you and equally, how straightforward it is to evade it. The narrative vernacular of Shakespeare and the most extreme excesses of Hollywood rub up against each other and the plot is constantly bulldozed by the plot of the game.

5. AI election tracking and an award

Rest of World won an award for their work this year, which is great. I’ve really enjoyed it as a source of non-western news on tech and politics. I only found out via this that they had an AI election tracker up for the year which I didn’t manage to come across all year. I hope the award allows them to expand their coverage and give it more nuance.

Recents

I also got around to putting up Five Stories from The Distant Future . This was a commission I took for a keynote at Orgatec 2024 which ended up turning into a big speculative storytelling exercise. I won’t say any more here, it’s all explained over there so please go and explore. It was a treat to put those together as a little creative spurt during an otherwise difficult summer.

Listening

It’s an oldie but a goodie and I ended up with it on repeat on our road trip north.

I’ve been working on my laptop all week while up with my folks and boy I miss my keyboard and desk and screen. We move house soon and I’m going to be itchy as hell until we’re set up again. Love you, speak to you next week.