/lit/ - Literature

>1/9
>9
>what in the time-and-space-bending capitalist lamprey-fucking fuckety-fuck is this
>well that guy asked for cliff’s notes
>yeah, in ‘plain academic english.’ not in a tidal wave of schizoblogging
>look i just work here ok i don’t make the rules

>>11865121
1/9

hyperstition in the age of computer code is the most interesting thing in the world to think about. it's self-reflective production, the human being wiring itself for automation. land’s basic question about postmodernity was a postmodernity more postmodern than criticism: autotelic machine production. as land says:

>The true genius of cyberpunk is to cash-out the utterly alien into commercially-driven bionics (without in any way domesticating it).

so, a basic thought experiment: what happens when you keep marx but subtract the communist revolution? when you swap the revolution for a slow-acting intelligence explosion? when you keep the dialectic, but extend it beyond the limitations of human sensibility? and how would it be that we got there, anyways? by the refining of codes, by becoming a self-aware, self-reflecting, automated intelligence. by simulation. which is what we do: that's capitalism.

irony - postmodernism - has at least two well-worn exits. one of them leads to historical judgment. this is standard 21C leftism, an unholy mashup of neoliberalism with marxism: what moldbug calls the Cathedral, sloterdijk calls the Crystal Palace, foucault called the Panopticon, and D&G called societies of control. the future endlessly deferred behind the new Kia, a rebooted Star wars, and the return of the McRib. an app stamping on a human face, forever. that's door #1. it's not limited to the West either; neo-confucian social credit may be the near-perfect form of this.

door #2 has Trump's face on it. no, really. it is the ironic twist on door #1. whatever Blue Team wants, Red Team says, we're not that. while it is true that ethnats and unironic Third Reich enthusiasts have a sensibility far from silicon valley, at bottom it's not so different. in common is the desire (read: demand) to subordinate a technological process to human cultural norms which always fail to represent their object. symbolic representation, however, is a very powerful thing, and a successful coding of reality is essential for political gain, that is, for giving the impression of knowing what one is doing with technology and intelligence.

door #3 - also known as Exit - is less a door than a tunnel that leads into the basement.

>>11204215
one more here btw:

>The true genius of cyberpunk is to cash-out the utterly alien into commercially-driven bionics (without in any way domesticating it).

i don't even know what book this is from but it's fucking on-point.