[AI Skeptics] The Eye of the Master, Part I
Hi everyone, we're picking up the pace with The Eye of The Master by Matteo Pasquinelli.
This week's readings will be all of Part I: The Industrial Age.
- Chapter 2: "Babbage and the Mechanisation of Mental Labour"
- Chapter 3: "The Machinery Question"
- Chapter 4: "The Origins of Marx's General Intellect"
- Chapter 5: "The Abstraction of Labour"
This is going to be about 80 pages, so it's doable, but more than last week.
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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 Fridays. In the Monday updates, I'll point to what to read; in the Friday 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: Fridays at 3p ET we'll have a video chat on jitsi where we talk about the week's readings.
- group chat: if you want to chat with friends, we have a few pretty active group chats: We're using Fluxer, which is similar to Discord or Slack. We also have a signal group chat (but keep in mind that Signal group chats can get overwhelming, especially at large scales like this).
next books
Our next book will be Hyperscale: The Ambition and Excess of Big Tech's Data Empires by Paris Marx.
Hyperscale comes out October 20, in just a few weeks, so I'm aiming for us to start around then. It'll be kind of time-sensitive to order ASAP (like, today), to ensure you get your copy on time.
reading plans
My reading plan for The Eye of the Master looks like this:
| Week | Reading |
|---|---|
| September 28 | Introduction & Chapter 1 |
| October 5 | PART I: Chapters 2 - 5 |
| October 12 | PART II: Chapters 6 - 9 & Conclusion |
last thoughts
non-routine stuff
If you're in Austin, JS Tan and Clarissa Redwine are doing a book event in Austin for Against Tech Oligarchy. I went to their Trial of Elon Musk (and was a witness!), and tonight they're going to do a more conventional book event at BookPeople. I'll be there too, and will hopefully get them to sign a copy of the book. Come by if you're in town!
okay that's the end of that
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 Friday.