Urbanatomy's Nick Land gives us his take on the prompt: "Future Now: Making the Machines of Tomorrow". This excerpt is part of the Hacked Matter workshop from the 2013 Shanghai Maker Carnival.
3:03 - To quote Bruni Latour: "[cybernetic] black-boxing is the way scientific and technical work is made invisible by its own success. When a machine runs efficiently one need focus only on its inputs and outputs and not on its internal complexity. Thus, paradoxically, the more science and technology succeed, the more opaque and obscure they become."
*_«If ever a human invention were to be called magic, it would be computers. I've been using, building, fixing, programming, and studying computers since I was a little kid, and I'm still amazed that they work at all._* *_I mean, I get the basic idea that the components are all "black boxes" with documented interfaces, and inside those black boxes are more black boxes that connect together. Timing the signals with clocks allows components to communicate. Teams work on their own little black boxes, and then they connect them to make components that communicate along well-documented busses with the rest of the computer. I get it. I've seen the diagrams of how ICs work and how memory chips hold their bits. I understand in theory how computers were invented and how they work. I'm still amazed that it actually works, though._* *_I'm still amazed by it. I'm amazed by how vast and complicated computer architecture really is._* *_So the most "computers are magic" statement I've heard is the one I made. Computers are the closest thing we have to magic.»_*
interesting talk. shame that political tribalism seems to take over in any forum where land ventures outside of his reactionary cave, because he has quite interesting things to say regardless of one's views on the virtue of representative government. i have to say though, given all that one reads about what a captivating and intense presence nick was in the warwick/ccru years, he seems... almost nervous? i guess amphetamines, hallucinogens and too much bataille can do a number on the human nervous system
I missed Nick by a few years at Warwick, but spoke to someone who had worked with him. Said he was quite a presence, but also kinda rolled her eyes. His work on replacing the death drive with vitality has a resonance today, I think, so yeah it's a shame he seems to be have been deployed as a philosopher of the alt right or whatever. The question of politics in a lot of his best stuff is precisely never answered, other than "intensification" - that has to be politicised when put into material performance, but does it have to be rehashed libertarian-capitalist dogma?
Intensification by dismantling existing capitalist social support structures and intensifying exploitation, both of which are core to neoliberal capitalism. Land's rightward turn makes quite a lot of sense.
@@nineteenthly ha! Since I posted the comment above I've read a lot more about who & what he now deems to be significant. Exchanged a few emails on the subject. Whatever interest I have in his ideas is now matched by an aversion to his politics. Please tell more about your experience!
Sad to see people brushing his work off for silly reasons like “too obscure” or “he looks weird” … these are light hearted at times but it’s important too look deeper into these figures, because they *are influential”
His ideas are perhaps relevant if there was a place of unbounded low-entropy energy. I find most of the output of CCRU during his tenure as a leader was wasted and has to a large extent lead us astray while we accelerate. High acceleration requires greater precision in *navigation* through lower latency negative feedback cycles. Classical cybernetics examined islands of stability being kept coherent and whole because of nature (latency and amplification) of its negative feedback systems. Nick by-passes all of this. It's pure philosophical onanism (masturbation) that ignores cybernetics, physics and unfortunately, deep human needs (not wants).
In his writings,he expressed hatred for Platon calling him a logocentrist fascist.I haven’t found nothing about him talking about Aristotle.Land is the Type of guy that despises most ancient philosophers due to them setting up idealistic logocentrist views on existance which he thinks are outdated
Dependent origination is the Buddhist idea that nothing itself is independent, all (except nirvana) exists in causal relation to something else. Therefore, the more you know about something the more you see these infinite origination networks, and thus you see how little you know about the thing in particular.
Get yourself a copy of The Selfless Mind by Peter Harvey ~ it's a detailed read but dispells alot if not all of what is (mis)understood here. The thought errancy that saturates countless sites is born of ignorance. The cessation of suffering is central to buddhist and bhramanic thought-forms. The cessation of thought through buddhist constructs also illusionary (there's levels~the 7th Jhana being nirvana and the 4th Jhana being similar to Gadamer's fusion of horizons in hermeneutics and the 7th Jhana similar to noumenon as distinct from phenomenology in Kant; which both Hurrsel and Heidegger struggled with, and evident in the distinction made by Sartre of being-in and being-for. As with the treatments of ancient texts, like those from the middle ages and the rosicrusions or as Land hints from the germanic hermetic of the Kyballion, all must be treated with care and respect ~ for my reading of such it's never about what it's about! I hope this is helpful although being-helpful often isn't ie dependent origination and all that jazz. For a serious look at stuff see Xin Wei Sha on Navigating Indeterminacy.
I like far-right people whose personality gives off an extremely non-far-right vibe! That’s Nick Land. He sounds exactly like a left-wing academic while being a neoreactionary!
@@exmodule6323 No, because the latest academic circles in the last 5 years have produced nothing but obscure esoteric garble that's completely incomprehensible to everyone except the academics themselves and a very small number of intellectual people who have devoted years of their lives in order to keep up with these ideas.
@@georgepantzikis7988 you're completely right. It reminds me of Marx's phrase: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it". It seems to me that academia only wants to play with interpretation as they are not interested in producing expositions in a way that can be understood and actually provoke changes in reality
@GoogleisgaE 1556 You have misunderstood my point. It wasn't really a criticism as such, more of an observation that as the logic of modernity progresses, the resulting post-modern condition in which academia finds itself today, is entirely sequestered from any practical concern, let alone comprehension, of ordinary citizens. Of course, as you mentioned, this gap between the educated and plebeian class existed for as long as academia itself; however, the power structures of those times (nationality, religion, etc) which were informed by said academics, and were able to elevate the common man through a sort of education-through-association, have been almost entirely eroded -- eroded in the culture and, for the most part, unfortunately, in the eyes of the intelligentsia. In this given climate, the extreme obfuscation post-structuralist cybernetic jargon produces, is not conducive to a healthy society nor of a good method of healing a sick one. As far as Nick Land, specifically, is concerned, he is one of the worst examples of impenetrable language. At the same time, I understand that it is not fair to hold people discussing abstract ideas to use simple language all the time without reducing the quality if their work, but such is the somber condition of man in our times: he comprises the same unthinking mass as he did before, only he now has the presumption of being competent enough to reorganise society according to his maxims and ideals. A disastrous situation, and one not helped by academics who are seemingly unable to even attempt some kind of communication.
