Capitalism is not a human invention, but a viral contagion, replicated cyberpositively across post-human space. Self-designing processes are anastrophic and convergent: doing things before they make sense. Time goes weird in tactile self-organizing space: the future is not an idea but a sensation.
……– Sadie Plant and Nick Land
Hyperorganisms and Zombie Society
As I was reading R. Scott Bakker’s blog this morning, he had an interesting post The Zombie Enlightenment . In it he mentioned the notion of “…post-Medieval European society as a kind of information processing system, a zombie society”. Like many things this set my mind on hyperdrive. I was reminded of my recent reading of Timothy Morton’s interesting work Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World where he describes a hyperobject:
the term hyperobjects to refer to things that are massively distributed in time and space relative to humans. A hyperobject could be a black hole. A hyperobject could be the Lago Agrio oil field in Ecuador, or the Florida Everglades. A hyperobject could be the biosphere, or the Solar System. A hyperobject could be the sum total of all the nuclear materials on Earth; or just the plutonium, or the uranium. A hyperobject could be the very long-lasting product of direct human manufacture, such as Styrofoam or plastic bags, or the sum of all the whirring machinery of capitalism. Hyperobjects, then, are “hyper” in relation to some other entity, whether they are directly manufactured by humans or not.1
Morton’s “the sum of all the whirring machinery of capitalism” brought to mind Nick Land’s adaptation of Deleuze and Guattari’s accelerating capital as a informational entity that is auto-organizing energy, matter, and information toward a technological Singularity (i.e., “There’s only really been one question, to be honest, that has guided everything I’ve been interested in for the last twenty years, which is: the teleological identity of capitalism and artificial intelligence” – here). We’ve seen how the debt system in D&G is part of an algorithmic memory or processing system to mark and channel desire or flows of energy-matter: here and here (i.e., “Society is not exchangist, the socious is inscriptive: not exchanging but marking bodies, which are part of the earth. We have seen that the regime of debt is the unit of alliance, and alliance is representation itself. It is alliance that codes the flows of desire and that, by means of debt, creates for man a memory of words (paroles).” and: “Man must constitute himself through repression of the intense germinal influx, the great biocosmic memory that threatens to deluge every attempt at collectivity.”). Of course they spoke in anthropological terms that seem quaint now in our computational jargon age which brings me to Ceasr Hidalgo.
We build against sadism. We build to experience the joy of its every fleeting defeat. Hoping for more joy, for longer, each time, longer and stronger; until, perhaps, we hope, for yet more; and you can’t say it won’t ever happen, that the ground won’t shift, that it won’t one day be the sadisms that are embattled, the sadisms that are fleeting, on a new substratum of something else, newly foundational, that the sadisms won’t diminish or be defeated, that those for whom they are machinery of rule won’t be done.
…..– China Miéville, On Social Sadism
Emergence, Solidity, and Computation: Capital as Hyperorganism
In Cesar Hidalgo’s Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies where he describes the basic physical mechanisms that contribute to the growth of information. These include three important concepts: the spontaneous emergence of information in out-of-equilibrium systems (the whirlpool example), the accumulation of information in solids (such as proteins and DNA), and the ability of matter to compute.2
Explicating this he tells us that the first idea connects information with energy, since information emerges naturally in out-of-equilibrium systems. These are systems of many particles characterized by substantial flows of energy. Energy flows allow matter to self-organize. (Hidalgo, KL 2448) The second idea is that the mystery of the growth of information is that solids are essential for information to endure. Yet not just any solid can carry information. To carry information, solids need to be rich in structure.(Hidalgo, KL 2465) And, finally, energy is needed for information to emerge, and solids are needed for information to endure. But for the growth of information to explode, we need one more ingredient: the ability of matter to compute (i.e., the final step is intelligence and auto-awareness, decisional and ecological). (Hidalgo, KL 2475) As he remarks:
The fact that matter can compute is one of the most amazing facts of the universe. Think about it: if matter could not compute, there would be no life. Bacteria, plants, and you and I are all, technically, computers. Our cells are constantly processing information in ways that we poorly understand. As we saw earlier, the ability of matter to compute is a precondition for life to emerge. It also signifies an important point of departure in our universe’s ability to beget information. As matter learns to compute, it becomes selective about the information it accumulates and the structures it replicates. Ultimately, it is the computational capacities of matter that allow information to experience explosive growth.(Hidalgo, KL 2477-2482).
Of course Hidalgo like many current thinkers never asks the obvious questions of what’s behind this if anything, is there a telos to this IP initiative of the universe, is it all blind accident and process, a sort of accidental start-up algorithm in matter that suddenly began with the Big Bang; a part of the nature of things from the beginning? He describes self-organizing matter, its need for more permanent and enduring structures to support its processes, and then the emergence of computation or intelligence: “these objects allow us to form networks that embody an increasing amount of knowledge and knowhow, helping us increase our capacity to collectively process information” (Hidalgo, KL 2518).
I’ve never like the “self” in self-organizing – just seems too human, all too human a concept. Maybe auto-organizing should be its replacement. Either way what needs to be elided is the notion that there is some essential or core being behind the appearances directing this auto-organizing activity. It’s more a blind process having to do with the actual aspects of quantum and relativity theory in our universe rather than some notion of a personality behind things (i.e., God or Intelligence). When does matter become purposeful, attain a teleological goal oriented ability to organize itself and its environment? Is this what life is? Is life that threshold? Or something else? Many creatures alive do not need an awareness of auto-distancing from their environment to appear purposeful; and, or not. Think of those elder creatures of the oceans, the predators, the sharks, their drive to hunt, select, kill etc. Is this a telos, or just the organic mode of information as blind process working in an environment to satisfy the base requirements to endure?
We as humans seem to think we’re special, situated as the exception rather than the rule. But are we? No. What if we are like all other durable organic systems just the working out of blind processes and algorithms of information processing as it refines itself and emerges into greater and greater complexity? But this is to assume that “us” will remain human, that this teleological or non-teleological process ends with the human species. But does it? Or we but the transitional object of some further emergence, one that would be even more permanent, more adaptive to self-organizing matter, more enduring, more viable computationally oriented? I think you know where I’m going here: the machinic phylum, the emergence of AI, Robotics, Nanotech, ICT’s etc. that we see all around us, or these not the further immanent self-organization of matter into greater and more lasting forms that will eventually outpace the organic hosts that supported their emergence? Or we not seeing the edge of this precipice in such secular myths as posthumanism and transhumanism? The Technological Singularity as a more refined emergence of this self-organizing information processing entity or entities: this collective or hive, even distributed intelligence emerging in such external devices?
Hidalgo mentions the personbyte theory which suggests a relationship between the complexity of an economic activity and the size of the social and professional network needed to execute it. Activities that require more personbytes of knowledge and knowhow need to be executed by larger networks. This relationship helps explain the structure and evolution of our planet’s industrial structures. The personbyte theory implies that (1) simpler economic activities will be more ubiquitous, (2) that diversified economies will be the only ones capable of executing complex economic activities, (3) that countries will diversify toward related products, and (4) that over the long run a region’s level of income will approach the complexity of its economy, which we can approximate by looking at the mix of products produced and exported by a region, since products inform us about the presence of knowledge and knowhow in a region. (Hidalgo, KL 2524-2530).
In this sense capitalism is an informational entity or hyperobject, a self-organizing structure for energy, matter, and information to further its own emergence through temporal computational algorithms. As Hidalgo reiterates this dance of information and computation is powered by the flow of energy, the existence of solids, and the computational abilities of matter. The flow of energy drives self-organization, but it also fuels the ability of matter to compute. Solids, on the other hand, from proteins to buildings, help order endure. Solids minimize the need for energy to produce order and shield information from the steady march of entropy. Yet the queen of the ball is the emergence of collective forms of computation, which are ubiquitous in our planet. Our cells are networks of proteins, which form organelles and signaling pathways that help them decide when to divide, differentiate, and even die. Our society is also a collective computer, which is augmented by the products we produce to compute new forms of information. (Hidalgo, KL 2532-2537).
Crossing the Rubicon?
Yet, is the organic base the most efficient? Are we not already dreaming of more permanent structures, more enduring and durable robotics, machinic, etc.? Hidalgo is hopeful for collective humanity, but is this necessarily so? It looks more like we are but a form of matter that might have been useful up to this point, but that is becoming more and more apparent as obsolete and limited for the further auto-organization of information in the future. What Kant termed finitude is this limiting factor for humans: the human condition. Are we seeing the power of matter, energy, and informational auto-organization about to make the leap from human to a more permanent form? A crossing of the Rubicon from which humanity may not as a species survive? Possibly even merging ourselves into more permanent structures to support information and intelligence in its need to escape the limits of planetary existence?
The questions we need to be raising now are such as: What happens to humans if machines gradually replace us on the job market? When, if ever, will machines outcompete humans at all intellectual tasks? What will happen afterward? Will there be a machine-intelligence explosion leaving us far behind, and if so, what, if any, role will we humans play after that?3 Max Tegmark* lists the usual ill-informed suspects on the blogosphere circuit that cannot and will not ever answer this:
- Scaremongering: Fear boosts ad revenues and Nielsen ratings, and many journalists seem incapable of writing an AI article without a picture of a gun-toting robot.
- “ It’s impossible”: As a physicist, I know that my brain consists of quarks and electrons arranged to act as a powerful computer, and that there’s no law of physics preventing us from building even more intelligent quark blobs.
- “ It won’t happen in our lifetime”: We don’t know what the probability is of machines reaching human-level ability on all cognitive tasks during our lifetime, but most of the AI researchers at a recent conference put the odds above 50 percent, so we’d be foolish to dismiss the possibility as mere science fiction.
- “ Machines can’t control humans”: Humans control tigers not because we’re stronger but because we’re smarter, so if we cede our position as the smartest on our planet, we might also cede control.
- “ Machines don’t have goals”: Many AI systems are programmed to have goals and to attain them as effectively as possible.
- “ AI isn’t intrinsically malevolent”: Correct— but its goals may one day clash with yours. Humans don’t generally hate ants, but if we wanted to build a hydroelectric dam and there was an anthill there, too bad for the ants.
- “ Humans deserve to be replaced”: Ask any parent how they’d feel about your replacing their child by a machine and whether they’d like a say in the decision.
- “ AI worriers don’t understand how computers work”: This claim was mentioned at the above-mentioned conference and the assembled AI researchers laughed hard. (Brockman, pp. 44-45)
Tegmark will – as Hidalgo did – speak of humans as information processing systems:
we humans discovered how to replicate some natural processes with machines that make our own wind, lightning, and horsepower. Gradually we realized that our bodies were also machines, and the discovery of nerve cells began blurring the borderline between body and mind. Then we started building machines that could outperform not only our muscles but our minds as well. So while discovering what we are, will we inevitably make ourselves obsolete? (Brockman, p. 46)
That’s the hard question at the moment. And, one still to be determined. Tegmark’s answer is that we need to think this through: “The advent of machines that truly think will be the most important event in human history. Whether it will be the best or worst thing ever to happen to humankind depends on how we prepare for it, and the time to start preparing is now. One doesn’t need to be a superintelligent AI to realize that running unprepared toward the biggest event in human history would be just plain stupid.” (Brockman, p. 46)
Inventing a Model of the Future? Hyperstitional Energetics?
What would be interesting is to build an informational model, a software application that would model this process from beginning to now of the universe as an auto-organizing system of matter, energy, and information into the various niches of complexification as it stretches over the temporal dimensions as a hyperobject or superorganism. Watch it ins the details of a let’s say Braudelaian input of material economic and socio-cultural data of the emergence of capitalism as a hyperobject over time and its complexification up to this projected Singularity. Obviously one would use statistical and probabilistic formulas and mathematical algorithms to accomplish this with sample data, etc. Either way it would show a possible scenario of the paths forward of human and machinic systems as they converge/diverge in the coming years. I’ll assume those like the complexity theorists in New Mexico university have worked such approximations? I need to study this… someone like a Stuart Kauffmann? Such as this essay: here:
the universe is open in being partially lawless at the quantum-classical boundary (which may be reversible). As discussed, the universe is open upward in complexity indefinitely. Based on unprestatable Darwinian exaptations, the evolution of the biosphere, economy and culture seem beyond sufficient law, hence the universe is again open. The unstatable evolution of the biosphere opens up new Adjacent Possible adaptations. … It seems true both that the becoming of the universe is partially beyond sufficient natural law, and that opportunities arise and disappear and either ontologically, or epistemologically, or lawlessly, may or may not be taken, hence can change the history of our vast reaction system, perhaps change the chemistry in galactic giant cold molecular clouds, and change what happens in the evolution of the biosphere, economy and history.
Sounds familiar in the sense of Meillassoux’s attack on sufficient causation (i.e., ‘principle of sufficient reason’), etc. when Kauffman mentions “the evolution of the biosphere, economy and culture seem beyond sufficient law, hence the universe is again open”. Of course Kauffman’s thesis is: “a hypopopulated chemical reaction system on a vast reaction graph seems plausibly to exhibit, via quantum behavior and decoherence, the acausal emergence of actual molecules via acausal decoherence and the acausal emergence of new ontologically real adjacent possibles that alter what may happen next, and give rise to a rich unique history of actual molecules on a time scale of the life time of the universe or longer. The entire process may not be describable by a law.” In other words its outside “sufficient reason”.
In his The Blank Swan: The End of Probability Elie Ayache is like Land tempted to see Capitalism as a hyperobject or entity, saying, “What draws me to Deleuze is thus my intention of saying the market as univocal Being”.4 He goes on to say:
The problem with the market is that it is immanence incarnate. It has no predefined plane. Much as I had first intended derivatives and their pricing as my market and my surface, I soon found myself making a market of the writings of Meillassoux, Badiou and Deleuze. They became my milieu of immanence. The plane of immanence on which to throw my concept of the market soon became a plane of immanence on which to deterritorialize thought at large. I soon became tempted to remake philosophy with my concept of the market rather than remake the market with a new philosophy. The market became a general metaphor for writing, the very intuition of the virtual with which it was now possible to establish contact. I was on my way to absolute deterritorialization, and the question became how to possibly deliver this ‘result’ otherwise than in a book that was purely philosophical. (Ayache, pp. 303-304)
Of course he’s dealing with specifics of trading in the derivatives market, etc., but one can extrapolate to a larger nexus of possibilities. As he suggests: “I soon became tempted to remake philosophy with my concept of the market rather than remake the market with a new philosophy. The market became a general metaphor for writing, the very intuition of the virtual with which it was now possible to establish contact. I was on my way to absolute deterritorialization, and the question became how to possibly deliver this ‘result’ otherwise than in a book that was purely philosophical.” This notion of both capital and thought making a pact of absolute deterritorialization seems to align with Hildalgo’s history of information theory and its own auto-organizational operations.
Ayache will like Land see the market as a unified entity: The market, as market, is one reality. It cannot be separated or differentiated by external difference. It is an intensity: the intensity of the exchange, presumably. It follows no stochastic process, with known volatility or jump parameters. It is a smooth space, as Deleuze would say, not a striated space. (Ayache, p. 325)
As wells as an organism: What gets actualized and counter-actualized (i.e. differentiated) here is the whole probability distribution, the whole range of possibilities, and the process is the process of differentiation (or distinction, or emergence, literally birth) of that put. The market differentiates itself literally like an organism, by ‘growing’ that put (like an animal grows a tail or like birds grow wings) and by virtually growing all the successive puts that our trader will care to ask about. (Ayache, p. 338) In his book Hidalgo mentions a curious statement: “As of today, November 11, 2014, “why information grows” returns four hits on Google. The first one is the shell of an Amazon profile created for this book by my UK publisher. Two of the other hits are not a complete sentence, since the words are interrupted with punctuation. (By contrast, the phrase “why economies grow” returns more than twenty-six thousand hits.)”(Hidalgo, KL 2645) So that the notion of the market as an entity that grows informationally seems almost apparent to many at the moment.
Hidalgo will also mention the father of neoliberalism Friedrich Hayek who famously pointed this out in a 1945 paper (“ The Use of Knowledge in Society,” American Economic Review 35, no. 4 [1945]: 519– 530). There, Hayek identified money as an information revelation mechanism that helped uncover information regarding the availability and demand of goods in different parts of the economy. (Hidalgo, KL 3060) This notion of money as a “revelation mechanism” fits into current trends of Bitcoin as an virtual apparatus for informational mechanisms and market growth of Capital as a Hyperorganism.
The Virtual Economy: Blockchain Technology and Bitcoin-Economics
Some say we are the Age of Cryptocurrency in which Bitcoin and Blockchain technology will move things into the virtual arena where energy, matter, and information are enabled to push forward this growth process in an ever accelerating manner. (see here) Part of what their terming the programmable economy. As Sue Troy explains it the programmable economy — a new economic system based on autonomic, algorithmic decisions made by robotic services, including those associated with the Internet of Things (IoT) — is opening the door to a range of technological innovation never before imagined. This new economy — and more specifically the concept of the blockchain and metacoin platforms that underpin it — promises to be useful in improving an astonishingly varied number of issues: from reducing forgery and corruption to simplifying supply chain transactions to even greatly minimizing spam. In her interview she states:
Valdes explained the technical foundations of the blockchain ledger and the programmable economy. He described the programmable economy as an evolution of the API economy, in which businesses use APIs to connect their internal systems with external systems, which improves the businesses’ ability to make money but is limited by the fact that the systems are basically siloed from one another. The Web was the next step in the evolution toward the programmable economy, he said, because it represents a “global platform for programmable content. It was decentralized; it was a common set of standards. Anyone can put up a Web server and plug into this global fabric for content and eventually commerce and community.”
The programmable economy, Valdes said, is enabled by “a global-scale distributed platform for value exchange. … The only thing that’s uncertain is what form it will take.” Valdes pointed to Bitcoin, which uses blockchain ledger technology, as a prominent example of a “global-scale, peer-to-peer, decentralized platform for global exchange.”
Ultimately Valdes states that the idea of programmability can be extended to the corporate structure, Valdes said. Today the rules of incorporation are fixed, and the corporation is represented by its employees and a board of directors. In the future, corporations could be “more granular, more dynamic and untethered from human control”.
Of course this fits into the notion that the future City States or Neocameral Empires will also become “more granular, more dynamic and untethered from human control” as machinic intelligence and other convergences of the NBIC technologies take over more and more from humans.
One want to take a step back and get one’s breath and say: “Whoa, there partner, just wait a minute!” But by the time we institute some ethical or governmental measures it will like most of history be far too late to stop or even slow down this juggernaut of growing informational hyperorganisms. As one advocated suggested there will come a time when everything is connected in an information environment: “You can put monitors in the anything to measure or quantify exchanges, the sensors are connected to smart contracts, the contracts are changing as the exchanges take place, so you have this dynamic process that’s taking place in the supply chain, constantly refreshing the economic conditions that surround it…” (see). In this information programmable economy as Troy sees it Organizations of the future will need a different organizational model, he said. “You see society changing in a sharing, collaborative environment. Think about it being the same internally.”
As one pundit Jacob Donnelly tells it Bicoin is in existential crisis, yet it has a bright future. What is increasingly likely is that the future of bitcoin is bright. It is the seventh year in the development of this network. It takes years to build out a protocol, which is what bitcoin is. As Joel Spolsky says, “Good software takes 10 years. Get used to it.”
“Bitcoin is comparable to the pre-web-browser 1992-era Internet. This is still the very early days of bitcoin’s life. The base layer protocol is now stable (TCP/IP). Now engineers are building the second layer (HTTP) that makes bitcoin usable for average people and machines,” Jeff Garzik, founder of Bloq and Core developer of bitcoin, told me.
Once the infrastructure is built, which still has many more years ahead of it, with companies like Bloq, BitGo, 21.co, and Coinbase leading the charge, we’ll begin to see solid programs built in the application layer.
But even while we wait for the infrastructure to be built, it’s clear that bitcoin is evolving. Bitcoin is not perfect. It has a lot of problems that it is going to have to overcome. But to label it dead or to call for it to be replaced by something new is naive and shortsighted. This battle in the civil war will end, likely with Bitcoin Classic rolling out a hard fork with significant consensus. New applications will be built that provide more use cases for different audiences. And ultimately, the Internet will get its first, true payment protocol.
But Bitcoin is seven years old. It will take many years for the infrastructure to be laid and for these applications to reach critical mass. Facebook had nearly 20 years after the browser was released to reach a billion users. To imagine bitcoin’s true potential, we need to think in decades, not in months or years. Fortunately, we’re well on our way.
Future Tech: Augmented Immersion and Policing Information
One imagines a day when every aspect of one’s environment internal/external, intrinsic/extrinsic is programmable and open to revision, updates, changes, exchanges, etc. in an ongoing informational economy that is so invisible and ubiquitous that even the machines will forget they are machines: only information growth will matter and its durability, expansion, and acceleration.
In an article by Nicole Laskowski she tells us augmented and virtual reality technologies may be better suited for the enterprise than the consumer market as these technologies become more viable. Google Glass, an AR technology, for example, raised ire over privacy concerns. But in the enterprise? Employees could apply augmented and virtual reality technology to build rapid virtual prototypes, test materials, and provide training for new employees — all of which can translate into productivity gains for the organization.
“The greatest level of adoption is around the idea of collaboration,” Soechtig said. Teams that aren’t in the same physical environment can enter a virtual environment to exchange information and ideas in a way that surpasses two-dimensional video conferencing or even Second Life Enterprise. Nelson Kunkel, design director at Deloitte Digital, described virtualized collaboration as an “empathetic experience,” and Soechtig said the technology can “take how we communicate, share ideas and concepts to a completely new level.”
For some companies, the new level is standard operating procedure. Ford Motor Company has been using virtual reality internally for years to mock up vehicle designs at the company’s Immersion Lab before production begins. Other companies, such as IKEA, are enabling an augmented reality experience for the customer. Using an IKEA catalogue and catalogue app, customers can add virtual furnishings to their bedrooms or kitchens, snap a photo and get a sense for what the items will look like in their homes. And companies such as Audi and Marriott are turning VR headsets over to customers to help them visually sift through their choices for vehicle customizations and virtually travel to other countries, respectively.
Vendors, too, see augmented and virtual reality as an opportunity — from Google and its yet-to-hit-the-market Google Glass: Enterprise Edition to Facebook and its virtual reality headset, Oculus Rift, to Microsoft and its HoloLens, which it describes as neither augmented nor virtual reality, but rather a “mixed reality that lets you enjoy your digital life while staying more connected to the world around you,” according to the website. All three companies have eyes on the enterprise.
Neocameralism or Governance of Information
Is this techno-optimism or its opposite, utopia or dystopia… we’ll we even be there to find out? In his book The Disordered Police State: German Cameralism as Science and Practice on the old princedoms of the Cameral states of Germany Andre Wakefield comments:
The protagonist of my story is the Kammer, that ravenous fiscal juridical chamber that devoured everything in its path. History, I am told, is only as good as its sources, and the cameral sciences, which purported to speak publicly about the most secret affairs of the prince, were deeply dishonest. We cannot trust them. And because many of the most important cameral sciences were natural sciences, the dishonesty of the Kammer has been inscribed into the literature of science and technology as well. There is no avoiding it.5
The German cameralists were the writer-administrators and academics who had provided a blueprint for governance in early modern Germany. Much like our current systems of academic and Think Tank experts who provide the base blueprints for governance around the world today.
When we read many of the books about our future it is spawned in part and funded by such systems of experts, academics, and governmental or corporate powers seeking to convince, manipulate, and guide in the very construction of a future tending toward their goals and agendas. A sort of policing of culture, a policy is a policing and movement of the informational context to support these entities and organizations.
In the future we will indeed program many capabilities that closely resemble those arising from ‘true’ intelligence into the large-scale, web-based systems that are likely to increasingly permeate our societies: search engines, social platforms, smart energy grids, self-driving cars, as well as a myriad other practical applications. All of these will increasingly share many features of our own intelligence, even if lacking a few ‘secret sauces’ that might remain to be understood.6
One aspect of this I believe people and pundits overlook is that the large datastores needed for this will need knowledge workers for a long while to input the data needed by these advanced AI systems. I believe instead of jobs and work being downsized by automation that instead it will be opened up into ever increasing informational ecosystems that we have yet to even discern much less understand. I’m not optimistic about this whole new world, yet it is apparent that it is coming and organizing us as we organize it. Land spoke of the hyperstition as a self-replicating prophecy. If the books, journals, and other memes elaborated around this notion of information economy and exchange are valid we are moving into this world at light-speed and our older political, social, and ethical systems are being left far behind and unable to cope with this new world of converging technologies and information intelligence.
More and more our planet will seem an intelligent platform or hyperorganism that is a fully connected biospheric intelligence or sentient being of matter, energy, and information, a self-organizing entity that revises, updates, edits, and organizes its information on climate, populations, bioinformatics, etc. along trajectories that we as humans were incapable as an atomistic society. Change is coming… but for the better no one can say, yet. Eerily reminiscent of Ovid’s poem of the gods Metamorphosis humans may merge or converge with this process to become strangely other… at once monstrous and uncanny.
(I’ll take this up in a future post…)
*Max Tegmark: Physicist, cosmologist, MIT; scientific director, Foundational Questions Institute; cofounder, Future of Life Institute; author, Our Mathematical Universe
- Morton, Timothy (2013-10-23). Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (Posthumanities) (Kindle Locations 106-111). University of Minnesota Press. Kindle Edition.
- Hidalgo, Cesar (2015-06-02). Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies (Kindle Locations 2446-2448). Basic Books. Kindle Edition.
- Brockman, John (2015-10-06). What to Think About Machines That Think: Today’s Leading Thinkers on the Age of Machine Intelligence (p. 43). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
- Ayache, Elie (2010-04-07). The Blank Swan: The End of Probability (p. 299). Wiley. Kindle Edition.
- Andre Wakefield. The Disordered Police State: German Cameralism as Science and Practice (Kindle Locations 379-382). Kindle Edition.
- Shroff, Gautam (2013-10-22). The Intelligent Web: Search, smart algorithms, and big data (p. 274). Oxford University Press, USA. Kindle Edition.
The Dark Fantastic: Literature, Philosophy, and Digital Arts 
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