Category: Criticism
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pause for a moment to reflect on the enormous significance of this
A work of science fiction is never about the time in which it is supposedly set; it’s about the time in which it is written. Which means that the question we should be asking ourselves is why this particular myth […] is the one that’s bubbling through right now.
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bear discovers fire: on the erroneous over-estimation of generative systems
Oh god, OK—yes, I’m sorry, more “#AI” discourse, and believe me, no one finds my repeated returns to the topic more wearing and ironic than I do, but we are living in A Moment, and I have been wrestling with that moment on the personal and artistic front, but I have also been looking at…
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the Torment Nexus and the death of satire
If you can look at the technological paradigm of which you consider yourself to be a celebrant, and tell yourself it feels like Douglas Adams, you should be running for the exits (having taken care to take your towel with you, naturally).
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mixing McLuhan and Marx (Butlerian coda)
Sometimes you write a thing in a fit of emotional response, and then the universe sidles up, says “oh, that pushed your buttons, did it?” and offers you another hit, and you demonstrate your own weakness to yourself once again, returning like a dog to its own vomit, because it’s just too damned perfect an…