Worked from home. Got distracted by a favorite movie. Decided to write about it in order to salvage my distraction. It's about the prescience of the movie Hackers and how we can still make the world better with the tools at our disposal.
philosophy
And another new preprint: the second of my two recent collaborations with Marcus Neustetter that we submitted to the #ArtScience journal #Leonardo (special issue: "Designing Myth").
"Galactic Brains, Zombie Apocalypse, and the Poiesis of an Ecology of Metamodern Myths"
https://zenodo.org/records/21778707
#mythopoiesis #art #philosophy #metamodernism #sincere_irony #ecology_of_practice
Hey everyone, hope the weather's as nice wherever you are as it is in NYC. I'm writing this post to pin it- just want to say that I somtimes use Masto to promote events & content. Mostly public philosophy, almost always free stuff. I'm fully independent & financially precarious- this is part of a necessary work hustle for me. I'm also very left-leaning: I don't like using Big Tech platforms, but if I didn't, I wouldn't be able to work at all. Thanks for understanding
What I’ve been reading (and watching) week ending 16 August https://jchyip.medium.com/what-ive-been-reading-and-watching-week-ending-16-august-722524ba1f76 #philosophy #culture #management #lean #AI #SoftwareEngineering #economics #science
"Speak not of liberty, poverty is slavery!" Pëtr Kropotkin, Anarchism: its philosophy and ideal #anarchy #poverty #liberty #philosophy
Rated The Reluctant Fundamentalist 6/10
A moving film about allegiances at the social, national, and personal levels, The Reluctant Fundamentalist has high aims but fails to fully render its many messages. Because of this, a beautiful film about the origins of culture clash and the role patriotism and fear play in producing these inevitabilities, comes across heavy-handed. This is a bit of a disappointment as the casting is spot-on--Riz Ahmed, Kiefer Sutherland, and Om Puri give some incredibly magnetic performances--and there is no dearth of technical skill.Typically I'm a fan of overambitious films, but this manages to somehow telegraph a variety of positions while never quite putting its foot down. It is perhaps too comfortable with ambiguity, certainly more comfortable than its audience is. At the film's opening this makes for compelling and interesting material, but the fact that few concrete answers or explanations are offered on the ontologies of its characters' motivations ensures that the congealed product is unrewarding. It comes as no surprise, then, that many of the supporting cast exist solely to add context and are themselves underdeveloped.All said, the film IS vibrant. When not dominated by the rich sounds and visuals of Pakistan, ethereal vocalizations and sheer and embroidered textiles, the film is arguably at its most uninteresting. One of the things I loved, in particular, was how the soundtrack was used to inspire feeling or to accompany the feelings being created and shown on screen. The sound profile of the film is itself incredibly diverse and enjoyable; the soundtrack contains oral chants, hip hop beats, and melodious instrumentations, all of which are creatively and effectively woven into the narrative.Through this film we come to realize that militancy is rarely a mask of our making or choosing, that sometimes it is chosen for us. This is the kind of film that brings cerebrality and moral philosophy to characters we often hear about but never see. While a smaller scale might have provided for more powerful meditations on the social constraints of identity, this remains a film to be seen because it manages to be both race and class-conscious, all while subverting the popular characterizations of peoples and groups in the middle east. It doesn't do it well, but it does it. And that is saying something.
Edited 23d ago
I am a guest on the inimitable Disintegrator podcast with filmmaker E. Elias Merhige. Hear us talk about this machine that we are eating that is eating us.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disintegrator/id1716416573?i=1000775998168
#disintegrator #podcast #ai #eliasmerhige #cinema #music #philosophy #alchemy
Edited 70d ago
"Does Expertise Matter?: Authority in the Age of Infinite Information" is an event I’m hosting Thurs Sept 24th, 7-9pm, IRL at Index Chinatown. I’ll use frameworks from epistemology and political theory to explore how standards of intellectual authority have been shaped by the evolution of tech. It’ll be very interactive - structured thought experiments, back-and-forth, etc.. and no deck, we do it live 🙂
Link:
https://luma.com/index-49m5
hope to see you there!