[AI Skeptics] The Nerd Reich (Chapters 2, 3, and 4)
Hi everyone, we're continuing The Nerd Reich, by Gil Durán with chapters 2, 3, and 4 this week:
- Chapter 2: The Acid Story: Curtis Yarvin and the "Cathedral"
- Chapter 3: Exit: Balaji Srinivasan and the Network State
- Chapter 4: The New Reality: The Tech Right Rises
If you haven't already ordered the book, please order it and join in right away; there's still time to catch up, but we're making quick progress, so you'll need to act fast.
If you want to get yourself prepped to join us for the next book (or a future book), there's a section titled "next books" further down with our future plans and links to place some book orders.
You don't seem to be subscribed. Consider subscribing if you're interested in getting these emails in your inbox.
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).
reading plans
My reading plan for The Nerd Reich tentatively looks like this:
| Week | Reading |
|---|---|
| August 31 | Introduction & Chapter 1 |
| September 7 | Chapters 2, 3, & 4 |
| September 14 | Chapters 5 & 6 |
| September 21 | Chapters 7 & 8 |
next books
If you want to skip this book and be ready for the next ones, our next book will be The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence by Matteo Pasquinelli.
We'll probably start Eye of the Master on September 28.
After Eye of the Master, we'll read Hyperscale: The Ambition and Excess of Big Tech's Data Empires by Paris Marx.
Hyperscale comes out October 20, so I'm aiming for us to start around then. It'll be fairly time-sensitive to preorder, or put in a request at your library to acquire some copies, or we might get a little ahead of you while you're waiting for your copy to arrive.
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 Friday.