[AI Skeptics] Techno-Negative (week 1)
Hello! This week we're starting Techno-Negative: A Long History of Refusing the Machine by Thomas Dekeyser.
I'm sharing a tentative schedule at the bottom of this email; the gist is that we're reading about a chapter each week, but I might have something else to share from the past week, or just something that seems really relevant to the chapter we're reading that week. For this week, let's just read the introduction and think about what we're in for.
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Ok, let's get back to the rest of the thing.
routine stuff
As a reminder, there are a few good ways to keep up with the reading group:
- newsletter: I send updates on Mondays and Thursdays. In the Monday updates, I'll point to what to read; in the Thursday updates, I'll send some reflections and an icebreaker question to think about, and a reminder of where & how to join the video chat.
- video chats: Thursdays at 8pm ET we have a video chat on jitsi where we talk about the week's readings.
- group chat: if you want to chat with people, we have a few pretty active group chats: You can join our signal group chat (but keep in mind that Signal doesn't have some features for big group chats that make projects like Discord and Slack popular). I'm also experimenting with Fluxer, a service pretty similar to Discord and Slack, but without ID verification requirements and all that stuff. There are a number of channels there, and in my opinion it's much better-structured for conversations to branch off manageably. If a Signal chat with 300+ people sounds overwhelming, I think you might find Fluxer more appealing.
reading plans
Here's my reading plan for Techno-Negative:
| Reading | Week of... |
|---|---|
| Introduction: "Burning Down Artifice: Technology, Negativity, and Ontological Policing" | June 29 |
| Chapter 1: "Delay: Homo Humanus and the Ontological Horror of Technē" | July 6 |
| Chapter 2: "Prohibition: Medieval Demonology of Machines" | July 13 |
| Chapter 3: "Breaking: State Luddites, Predators, and a Capitalist Theory of Law" | July 20 |
| Chapter 4: "Indifference: Techno-Colonialism, Onticide, and the Limits of Posthumanism" | July 27 |
| Chapter 5: "Extinguishing: Vandals and Epistemics on Black Boulevard" | August 3 |
| Chapter 6: "Exodus: Phobia and (Techno-)Rationalism in an Epoch of Planetary Technicity" | August 10 |
| Chapter 7: "Arson: An Entropic History of Computation" | August 17 |
| Conclusions: "Against a Humanist Politics: Techno-Abolitionist Beginnings" | August 24 |
I have ideas for what we'll read after Techno-Negative, but if you have suggestions, I'd love to hear them.
last thoughts
If you come across something you think we'd like to read, I'd love to hear about it; contact me.
Okay, that's it for now; see you Thursday.
PS: Sorry for not sharing reflections from the Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency conference last week - I admittedly bit off a bit more than I could chew with the conference and a workshop on refusal and resistance to AI that I was organizing and doing a panel and stuff, and couldn't share my thoughts about the papers I shared last week. I'll probably do a short "trip report" or something either this Thursday in my email or informally during the video chat on Thursday night.