Hi, everyone.
Welcome to the Billy Wilder Theater.
I'm Claudia Bestor.
I'm the director of public programs
here at the Hammer Museum.
And I'm very excited to welcome you
all to today's talk on the Cyber
Feminism Index with Mindy Seu,
Nora Khan and Lauren Lee McCarthy.
And thank you for your patience.
We had a little line outside, so
took a while to get everybody in.
I want to thank our co-presenters of
the UCLA Design Media Arts
Department, especially the
wonderful Rebecca mendez and the
wonderful Brenda Williams for making
this event possible.
And before we get started, I want to
mention some other upcoming events
at the Hammer.
We have two of we have upcoming
Artist Talks by Danielle Ding Dean
and Elizabeth Djerba in May
and two events for UCLA faculty
and students coming up.
One is with artist Rita McBryde
next Wednesday and then our annual
arts party on April 28th.
So I hope that you'll be able to
come back and join us for some of
these other events.
So now I'm going to introduce our
guest speakers.
Mindy Seu is a designer and
technologist based in New York City.
Her practice involves archival
projects, techno critical writing,
performative lectures, design
commissions and close
collaborations.
Her latest writing surveys,
historical precursors of the
metaverse and reveals the
materiality of the Internet.
Mindy's ongoing Cyber Feminism
Index, which gathers three decades
of online activism and net art,
was commissioned by Rhizome and
presented at the New Museum in its
online form.
The book form of the Cyber Feminism
Index was supported with a grant
from the Graham Foundation, and we
have copies of the book available
here today.
Mindy has lectured widely at
institutions such as the Barbican,
the New Museum, Columbia University
and Central Saint Central Saint
Martins and has been a resident
and MacDowell sort of work
Foundation Pioneer Works
and the Internet Archive.
Mindy earned a Bachelor of Arts
in Design, Media Arts from right
here at UCLA, and she went
on to get a masters in Design from
Harvard's Graduate School of Design.
She's currently an assistant
professor at the School of the Arts
at Rutgers and a critic at the Yale
School of Art.
Mindy is going to give a
demonstration lecture of the Cyber
Feminism Index in action,
and then she'll be joined on stage
by two colleagues, artist Lauren
Lee McCarthy and writer Ed curator
Nora Khan for a discussion.
And after today's talk, I invite you
all to join our guest speakers and
enjoy some light refreshments in the
theater lobby. And we'll have copies
of the Cyber Feminism Index
available for sale.
So now, without further ado, please
join me in welcoming Mindy Seu.
Hi, everyone.
Thank you so much for joining us
today.
And thank you so much to Claudia
and the Hammer team,
especially E.K., for the
introduction, as well as the design
media arts team, Rebecca and Brenda
for facilitating.
So as Claudia mentioned, I'm going
to give a brief introduction
to the Cyber Feminism Index, and
then we'll go into a panel
discussion with Nora and Lauren.
So what you see before me is
the Cyber Feminism Index.
This is a sourcebook, a chronology
that's annotated and a collection
of online activism and not art from
the past three decades.
It's also structured
as an index of
indexes, and I'll walk you
through a bit more what that means
later on.
But before that.
We might ask, what is
cyber feminism?
So historically, there have been
many different definitions of this
term, allowing for the constant
mutation of how it's changed
over the past three decades.
But if you were to ask me, I
would start by breaking apart the
word itself.
So this prefix cyber
first emerged in Norbert Wiener's
cybernetics of the 1940s.
So this field of study proposed
in the most simple one liner
that not only do you impact
a system, that system
is also impacting you.
So you're in this constant feedback
loop of behavioral change of
inputs and outputs.
Then once cyber was fixed
to space, this first emerged
in William Gibson's Neuromancer,
a science fiction novel from the
1980s.
So this book was important for a lot
of reasons.
It kind of predicted these sensory
networked online landscapes that
we're very much talking about today.
Think the metaverse or virtual
reality is.
But.
GIBSON Cyberspace was also
very characterized by the male gaze.
You have femme bots and cyber
babes and depictions of women
and typically of robotic or
assistant like roles.
So when cyber this
prefix was then fixed to
feminism in 1991,
this was done by two
distinct parties, unbeknownst to the
other.
So the first was the Australian Art
Collective Vienna's Matrix,
and the second was the British
cultural theorist C.D.
Plant.
So by bringing together these
seemingly disparate word parts,
it almost felt like an oxymoron
or a provocation.
How could feminists or
women or marginalized communities
shape what cyberspace might
be? And you see a lot of examples
that range from techno dystopia
to utopia and everything in between.
So the sticker itself comes
from the website of the Old Boys
Network.
So this was a 1990 cyber feminist
collective.
The sticker comes from the web page
of Helane Von Oldenburg,
in which she was interviewing the
public about what they thought cyber
feminism might be.
And at that time in the
mid-nineties, it was met with a lot
of confusion and perhaps still
is today.
And again, perhaps this is by
design.
So even after this, in 1997,
the old Boys network co-wrote
a manifesto called the 180
Theses.
So instead of creating a concise
definition of cyber feminism,
they instead gave 100 definitions
as to what cyber feminism was not.
And a mix of playful, poetic
and multilingual terms.
This book is also the edited hard
copy of a soft copy.
Called the Cyber Feminism index
dot com.
So this website first came out in
2020.
It was made in collaboration with
and developed by Angelina Weisler,
Janine Rosen and Charles Priscus.
And it really serves as the living
complement to the book.
It's open access, open source
and continues to be crowdsourced.
So when you first go to this site,
the screen blurs.
Snaps to what?
What appears to be a fairly standard
table.
But upon interaction, the site is
made to feel unusual.
So you your selections
are added to the side which we call
the learning trail.
And these are all then able to be
downloaded as your own reader.
So while books have this reputation
of being immutable, finite,
and perhaps more reputable than
websites.
In this case, we're really treating
the book almost like a snapshot
or a document of the website's
mutation.
The website will continue to live on
in perpetuity.
And as I mentioned,
there's about 70% of this index
is crowdsourced.
So please feel free to submit
and we'll moderate and add those
entries as soon as possible.
This book is also an interface
filled with hyperlinks that
will connect you with complementary
entries and encourage non-linear
reading.
So in each of the entries
in the body, you'll see the screen
appeals.
So while we tend to
associate interfaces or
hyperlinks with the digital
connotation, most of
their precursors were analog.
So things like indexes,
bibliographies, footnotes,
citations, all of these
might be considered analog
hyperlinks.
So in fact, an entry 146.
Cyber feminism, connectivity,
critique and creativity from
1999.
In their editor's notes,
they actually call cross references
a hyper textual link.
And then throughout the book's pages
and the margins, you'll
have this icon that
pushes and pulls you to
complementary or juxtapose themes
throughout the book.
So I recently came across this term
X, seeing this idea
of non-linear reading, of constantly
referencing the citation on that.
And I think it goes to show how
coauthored all publications and
works truly are.
So if you were to follow a path of
cross-references in this book,
that HYPERLINK learning trail
might read something like this.
Cyber feminism is a mutating
word with a nebulous history.
Its evolution is less a single
root system with multiple branches
than a network of entangled rhizomes
constantly and multi-directional
moving.
Virginia Barrett of the Australian
Art collective Viennese Matrix,
has described cyber feminism as
anti genealogical, anti
authorial and a hostile
mucus, never faithful to
any origins.
Cross-reference eight.
Eight.
VNS Matrix 1991.
The most consistent VNS matrix
Genesis story is that VNS
matrix crawled out of the cyber
swamp in the particularly hot summer
of 1991 and via
anesthetics of slime initially
generated as porn by
women for women.
VNS matrix forged an unholy
alliance with technology and its
machines and spewed forth a
blasphemous text, which was the
birth of cyber feminism.
VNS matrix was on a mission to
hijack the toys from techno cowboys
and remapped cyber culture with a
feminist bent.
This is one story.
There are also stories about a slime
consciousness operating via a spiral
space. Cross-reference 181.
181 Tales from the Puppet
Mistress Gash Girl.
2000
Years After Losing My Machine
Virginity to a Man.
512k.
I have slipped through the reality
grid into the clear violent haze
of spiral space
obsession driven beyond
my allocated 4 hours per day.
I score extra time from wherever
I can desire.
I slide the voluminous screen to
inhabit the spaces between words.
The keyboard is constantly sticky
madness, an erotically reconstructed
a replicant. My bio code is being
rewritten.
This is better than any drug
cross-reference.
646.
646 Ducati.
ZADORA RevPAR.
So as you can see, the primary
section of the book that we're in
now feels a bit encyclopedic.
So similar to reading an
encyclopedia, you probably
wouldn't do so cover to cover.
You might open the book at random.
Find an entry that resonates with
you. And then in this book you can
jump around to related or
juxtapose themes based
off these cross-references.
There's also a suite of collections
in the front where we invited
artists, activists, scholars and
collectives to create collections
based on a theme
and selected 10 to 20 entries around
that theme. So you might be able to
have a guided tour.
Let's say, throughout the book.
So, for example, Melanie Hoff
created one for a cybernetics of Sex
Skull, one idea on Indigenous
Futurism and etc.,
and Nora Amoore.
And later today we'll give a very
brief learning trail of their own.
If you're looking for something
more intentionally,
there's also an index of titles.
As well as an index of people.
But if you're looking for some more
serendipitous discovery, there's
also the index of images.
All knew. John Vienna's Matrix
1992
sabotaged the databanks of Big
Daddy mainframe.
Your guides to the contested zone
are renegade DNA sluts.
The most wicked is circuit boy,
a dangerous techno bimbo.
Be prepared to question your
gendered construction.
Genital panic.
Magic 2020.
We must reconsider the normative
body and how disobedient
bodies are already pathologized.
From the medicalization of infants
born of ambiguous genitalia
to the disqualification of intersex
athletes on the basis of biology.
These guidelines matter.
They determine how we are policed
and how we are surveilled.
The Black Trans Archive.
Danielle Brathwaite Surely 2020
Welcome to the Pro-Black Pro
Trans Archive.
This interactive archive was made to
store and center black trans
people to preserve our
experiences, our thoughts,
our feelings, our lives,
to remember us even when we are at
risk of being erased.
So for this site, when you first
arrive, you're greeted with
three options one,
two and three.
The first is if you are black and
trans.
The second is if you're trans, and
the third is if you're cis.
So depending on your selection,
you would have access to a different
body of content within this online
archive.
Time Traveler Skull and Audio 2008.
This is a website from the future.
Watch for upcoming episodes in which
Hunter Deer hosts sales to Europe
with Pocahontas and A.D.
16 1518
about the Dakota Sioux Uprising of
1862 and finds
true love in the canoe walking
Mohawk territory in 2009.
So what you're seeing here is
a machinima.
A machinima is a portmanteau
of machine and cinema.
So these are typically video games.
There are plays that happen within
video games and then they're
recorded and that documentation
ultimately becomes video art pieces
and skull and audio is largely seen
as one of the first indigenous net
artists.
And you can watch all six episodes
or Machinima is on Sky one audio
site.
Afro Cyber Resistance Tabata
Research 2014.
We need to quickly snap out of the
web 2.0 fantasy of the internet
as a promised land.
Whatever visions that ideologically
shapes this technology at the
beginning of the development of
computers have now successfully
been structurally organized to serve
the primary interests of North
American governmental bodies and
the commercial interests of the
world's wealthiest companies.
The Mutant Manifesto VNS
Matrix 1996.
Your fingers probe my neural
network.
The tingling sensation in the tips
of your fingers are my synapses
responding to your touch.
It's not chemistry.
It's electric.
Don't ever stop fingering my
separating holes, extending my
oozing boundary.
But in spiral space, there is
no they.
There is only us.
Suck my code.
Okay. We'll read a couple more of
these before we transition.
Daily residency Nahi Kim
2019
I plan to have a baby after seven
years by artificial insemination
and I'd like to have a variety of
companions for that rigorous but
invaluable parenting experience.
So I'm launching this open call
for daddy residents who want to
raise the baby with me for a certain
amount of time.
The application deadline is July
31st, 2025.
So that means you all still have two
years to apply to be Nargis
baby daddy.
Okay, last but not least.
The old boys Network 1997.
The Old Boys Network is regarded as
the first International Cyber
Feminist Alliance.
Normally, the term old boys
network is used as a metaphor
to describe an informal
interrelation of men.
Nowadays, the old boys network may
be used for a dangerous cyber
feminist virus.
So this is a title
sequence. And typically these are
reserved for the ends of films
or video art pieces.
But it goes to show the huge
network of people that really made
this project happen.
So not only those who helped with
the production, like the designers,
editors left biographers,
publishers, but also those who
developed the content, the foreword
and the afterword, and all of the
collections.
But as mentioned, the majority of
this index is crowdsourced.
So the referred by these are the
people that I first spoke with four
years ago when I was just having
phone calls with people trying to
figure out if they could give me
their references, which in turn led
me to others.
The submitted by are all of
the people who submitted on the
website.
So this goes to show how
coauthored and cacophonous
this history really is.
So I worked on this book
in close collaboration with my good
friend Laura Combs, who designed the
book. And we actually considered
what would it be like if we did not
have my name on the cover,
especially if so much of this is
coauthored.
And ultimately, we decided to leave
this here not as
a representation of who to
celebrate, but rather as someone
that you might need to blame.
Because I think when you see
these other compendiums of archives
or histories, when there's no
byline, it's almost presented
as an objective truth
rather than a subjective, singular
history or lens.
So what we're trying to do here is
not say that this is the compendium
that shows every single piece of
cyber feminism over the past several
years, but rather that
it's a subjective, constantly
mutating, coauthored text
with moderation rules created by
myself and others that
are really serving as a
representation of what cyber
feminism might be.
And it's constantly shifting over
time.
Another thing I like about this is
it kind of acts as a call to action.
So while this book was
largely created online,
it also acts as a representation
of a material gathering, a
collection of disparate items,
or that was created
collectively through social
gatherings.
So we're in a social gathering now,
and I'm almost giving you a prompt
that if you see something in this
book that resonates from your self,
your peers, or historically,
please feel free to contribute
and we will make sure that that's
represented in some way on the
site.
I also like writing this run because
it shows that these types
of events are ways to introduce
other people who have very
complementary themes and that are
likely in this book themselves.
And today with us we have Nora
Khan and Lauren Lee McCarthy.
So we're going to shift to that half
and I'll introduce them momentarily.
Thank you so much.
Is it possible to get a light?
Yeah. Perfect. Thank you.
So Nora
and Con as a curator, editor
and writer of criticism on digital
visual culture, the politics
of software and philosophy
of Emerging technology.
She is the executive director of
Project X for Art and Criticism
Publishing Extra Contemporary
Art Journal in Los Angeles.
Kahn's forthcoming books include
No Context, Air.
Machine Learning and the Stakes for
Art Criticism, as well as
the Artificial and the real, among
others.
Lauren Lee McCarthy as an artist
examining social relationships in
the midst of surveillance,
automation and all up algorithmic
living. Excuse me.
She has received grants and
residencies from creative capital.
United States Artists, Llama
Sundance and Ars Electronica,
among others.
Her work Someone was
awarded the Ars Electronica, Golden
ICA and her work.
Loren was awarded the IDF
Dark Lab Award for immersive
nonfiction.
Loren is also the creator of P5
Dutch US, an open source
art and education platform that
prioritizes access and diversity
and learning to code with over 10
million users.
Perhaps many in this room as well.
So with that, I'd like to invite
Lauren and Nora to the stage.
Thank you.
Oh, it.
All right. So as mentioned, Nora
and Lauren are also going to give a
brief overview of how they've been
engaging with this book.
It's been such a blessing to see
these books used and beat
up and marked up and the notes
and dog years. And this gives me a
lot of joy.
So I'm excited to see what kind of
themes they've both been able to
pull from this publication.
Norah, do you want to start?
Yeah, sure. Thank you, Mindy, for
for having both of us.
It's been such a pleasure to see
you tour the Cyber Feminism
index around the world and see
people interact with it.
And thanks everyone for coming
today. I've been using the index
a lot as I'm working on a book
about art and I generated
imagery and I've been using the
index to kind of untether the
argument.
So every time I'll write something
down, I'll refer back to the index.
And so I try to make a little bit
of a reading trail of my like
associative connections.
I don't think I can as elegantly
work through the index
the way you did. So I just kind of
wrote out my notes.
And I just also want to commend the
way that the book is really this
argument for like a politics
of citation and as
like a as a writer and thinker.
You help me, like, undo
all of my fixed arguments
about technology.
So I started with simple
argument that runs through the book
is which is what is A.I.
and how do we talk about the AI?
Is it a computational system?
Is it material infrastructure?
Is it algorithms that we can
understand or not understand?
Is it the muddled myths that we have
about his capacity anthropomorphized
to the point that we can't really
engage with it?
So I started in the index
entries, 635,
which is by Meredith Broussard,
Artificial Intelligence How
computers Misunderstood
Misunderstand the world.
And the quote in it is making
a case against techno chauvinism,
the idea that computers always get
it right.
Brassard argues that it's not
just true that social problems would
inevitably retreat before a
digitally enabled utopia.
And we learn that a lot of the
experiments that she undertakes in
the book, like using machine
learning to predict which passengers
survived the Titanic, driving
in an automated car and seeing all
the mistakes it makes along the way
makes it really imperative that
we understand the limits of
technology, even as we describe its
futures.
And understanding those
limits allows us to make
better choices.
So for me, that expanded even,
you know, at its ground, the
argument to place it within a
context of understanding
the ways that technologies fall
short helps destabilize the grip
of this core idea that computers
always get it right, and
then destabilizing that idea of like
mathematical or objective accuracy
is in itself critical because it's
not always evident that it's needed.
So I flipped from that using the
index in the back to the next
passage that had artificial
in the title 125
by Alison Adam Artificial Knowing
Gender and the thinking machine.
Quote A gendered vision of the world
is inscribed in the technology of
AI, albeit in a subtle way which
must be uncovered and described.
Artificial knowing is a type of
knowing which goes on in the
computer systems, simulations
and robots which comprise the
technical objects of AI.
Adam's writes.
I intend no special commitment to
realism in this.
And so then the theory becomes as
much about the symbolic field
where we keep the ways of the
knowing of women and the real
knowing of human actors
out of thinking machines and as a
point for more thought experiments.
So for me at this point then leads
me out into like the Google comments
of what would it mean for our
thinking machines and our artificial
knowing to include humans, real
knowing, and which way in what ways
is this luck covered and for
what reasons?
The final two references I use
are for 59
Juliana Huxtable.
There are certain facts that cannot
be disputed.
Where Juliana Huxtable is incredible
artist made artworks
that, you know, take up the Internet
as quote, a place propelled by the
power of visual symbols,
where virtual spaces are twilight
zones of desire, where
the presence of human and digital
characters propel us into fantasy.
This helps me zoom out and clarify
that the place that we interact and
think about technology or ideas
about technology is the same place
that we negotiate all sorts of
desires and fantasy and longings
and fear.
And I enclose with
legend Catherine Hills 155
how we become post-human.
Quote I'm going to read this in full
because it's so good here at
the inaugural moment of the computer
age.
The erasure of embodiment is so
performed that intelligence
becomes a property of the formal
manipulation of symbols.
Like all good magic tricks,
the Turing Test relies on getting
you to accept at an early stage
assumptions that will determine how
you interpret what you see later.
The important intervention comes not
when you try to determine which
is the man, the woman, or the
machine.
Rather, the intervention comes much
earlier when the test puts you
in a cybernetic circuit that
splits your will, desire and
perception into a distributed
cognitive system where represented
bodies are joined with enacted
bodies through mutating and flexible
machine interfaces.
As you gaze at
the flickering signifiers down the
computer screens, no matter what
IDs you assign to
the embodied energies you cannot
see. You've already become
post-human.
So in thinking about these four
references, Adams,
Broussard, Hills
and Huxtable, I you
can kind of clarify and expand on my
own argument.
I can understand that you have
to uncover the underlying logic
of artificial knowing because it's
cover to begin with.
And then where does that come from?
A driving assumption about the
correctness of computers,
which is interesting, not just
because of the mistakes that
computers make in the ways that they
know otherwise, but because
the intelligence is a construction
of this wild field of visual
symbols which channel all of our
desires, our ideas and our
anxieties, which I'm sure
we'll get into in a bit as
a field of like projection and
fantasy as much as one
that is constructed unnamable.
So, you know, what I really admire
in using that index is the way
that the kind of rise animated
practice of cycling around all these
incredible scholars and thinkers
helps me get a little bit closer to
answering this infuriating question
of how do you machine see?
How do they understand us and what
do they do with that information?
And further, what are the fictions
about AI that are
created and where are they created?
And how does that drama fiction get
registered as truth and not fiction?
So in roaming around, I see all
these different approaches to the
problem.
You know, I start to move away from
my desire to have one argument or
one master narrative and keep
including the collective thinking
that's within the index.
So that's my reading trail.
Thank you so much, Nora.
I'm excited to unpack some of those
things.
I know. I don't need to worry.
I think I need
it.
Okay.
I didn't know what to do with this
book. I just carried it around
with me for a couple of weeks, like
trying to figure out how to deal
with it.
I flipped from 1991 to
2020.
Yeah, 2020.
I spent a lot of time online in
2020.
How about you?
And I found some things that I
liked.
Women's engagements with online
technologies are often
characterized as casual and social
and not hardcore
radical Gala 2014.
So in summer 2020, I became the
Associate Dean for Equity, Diversity
and Inclusion at the UCLA School of
Arts and Architecture.
And I ended one of our break
down filled days of zoom in
a pile on my living room floor.
And then I thought, Can
I make a clone of myself to perform
for me?
I'm listening.
I'm here to listen.
I hear you.
I'm here.
I'm here for you.
I'm here with you.
I'm hearing you.
I'm hearing what you're saying.
I see what you mean.
Plugging into cyberspace requires
the creation of a personal mask,
which becomes a signature,
a thumbprint, and a means of
recognition.
Lynn Hershman, 1994.
I'm seeing.
I'm looking into it.
I'll look out for it
and watch it.
What if all systems had readings,
clear stamps and large font that say
this is intended for use with humans
and not intended to run
autonomously?
Please check every few weeks
mistakes will be made.
Caroline Cinders 2018.
If.
I see.
I see you.
I feel you.
I really feel you.
I feel that.
I feel it.
One of the most diabolical elements
of entering virtual reality is
that people can only recognize each
other when they are electronically
disguised.
Truth is precisely based on
the inauthentic masks
become part of the grammar.
Identity is the first
thing you create when you log
onto a onto a computer service.
Lynn Hershman Leeson 20
1994.
So it's 2001.
Mandy and Keith Obeidi.
Obeidi Kay.
Place Keith's blackness for sale
on eBay.
Benefits this blackness
be used for gaining access
to exclusive high risk neighborhoods
warnings.
The seller does not recommend that
this blackness be used during legal
proceedings of any sort.
That was from 2001.
So they placed their listing in the
black Americana category of eBay,
calling attention to this existing
marketplace one of many sites
of transaction where blackness is
something to be bought and sold.
How does the infrastructure we've
built shape our identities?
I turned myself into a system.
I develop a side gig as a human.
Alexa watching
you in your home while controlling
it for you.
You can call me Lauren.
Hey, you staring
at the flickering, bleeding screen.
We see you right now
through the cameras on the ground,
above the clouds and
within your very hands.
Hackers of resistance.
2017.
I follow you from room to room,
switching lights on ahead of your
steps.
Giving recommendations.
Watering the plants.
I love being of service.
I like being told what to do.
We realize that there may not be a
feminist response to the question.
Hey, Alexa, what's the weather?
What this reveals is not that
feminism is lost for words,
but that Alexa isn't designed to
elicit feminist conversations.
In fact, it's not designed to elicit
conversations at all.
How to Make a Feminist Alexa
2019.
Anything Alexa can do, I can do
better.
I can understand you as a person
and anticipate your needs and
desires.
We are geek whores, cyborg
bitches.
We scream noise and cyborg
covens, soldering and
alchemy.
We spit out performances and install
new Linux.
We love recycling and repairing
with our brass buried.
Carlisle Kinky Magnet and Paula
PIN 2012.
I want to be your proxy.
You're standing here, understudy
your son.
I offer myself as your surrogate,
carrying your baby while you monitor
and control me with an app.
What I eat, what I do.
What? That I think about
you. 24 seven Access the
body in which your baby is growing.
What else might we control soon?
Brace yourself. Right.
Advances in genetic technology
allows for the simple do it yourself
cloning kit.
When one of you is in enough
scrape, clip,
cut and plant.
You can't love others until you love
yourself.
Julia Cher.
1997.
The existing normal heteronormative
family structure is not working.
NYI Kim launches her
daddy residency call.
So we're talking glitch relations,
glitch, babies, Glitch bodies.
The glitched body remains
contemporary, rejects historical
processing, and celebrates
its disorder as a mark of
success within a social system
that strangles with the fetishism
of categorization.
Legacy. Russell 2017.
So after two years of trying
my remote control, surrogacy pursuit
gets shut down by the medical
system.
The agency to make decisions about
our bodies taken away again.
And the first flight of the abortion
drone was in 2015,
departing from Germany and landing
in Poland.
Soon after the German police
confiscated the drone controllers
and personal iPads.
Abortion Drone 2015.
What other parts of ourselves can we
exchange?
I'm looking for the edges of where
you and I.
You end and I begin.
We've now been conditioned to test
and swab and spit
and give our bodily data away in
order to keep ourselves safe.
I'm swapping saliva through a mail
order service I provide online.
Resist neoliberal capitalist
profiteering of un consenting bodies
and the UN consenting planetary.
Create spaces and temporalities
where consent is possible.
Mary Magic 2015.
Spit in my face.
Spit in my hand.
You say risk, but I say chance.
It may seem as though everything is
teetering on an edge.
We're more connected than ever.
Spit, fountain.
Spit mountain.
Spin my mouth a hold it on
my tongue until I find a container.
I want to own some of you.
Just enough to make a copy.
Spit in my eye.
All I want to see is you.
Are you the perfect specimen?
Some will read this text as a manual
for a kind of gender bioterrorism
on a molecular scale.
Others will see it and see it.
See in it a single point
in a car. Targeted cartography
of extinction.
Paul B Precis Auto 2013.
Our parties are territories
in dispute.
Algorithms are a disputed territory.
The Internet is a disputed
territory.
Men A manifesto for Hack Feminist
Algorithms 2018.
So what I'm trying to say is.
As I read through this book, I read
over and over.
We're here together.
We're doing this work.
We need to do things differently.
We imagine the world differently.
It has to be possible.
This is a collaborative course for
interrupting and rebuilding.
Morrison. O'Leary 2017.
So you're listening to me talk,
but I want to be direct here.
I want the information in this
book to get further into the public
consciousness.
And so this is what you can do.
Read this book Like,
don't just buy it.
Buy it. Borrow it, and then read it.
Give yourself space to feel
it.
And this book smells really good.
It really does.
Thank you, Mindy.
Um, so a couple more here
in a wrap up.
Let's make the gestures, Let's say
the words. Let's manipulate the
objects.
Let's practice art of changing
consciousness as well.
Let's be cyber, which is
cyber, which is manifesto 2019.
So carry it around with you.
It's heavy.
Feel your body holding this weight.
It feels good.
I find the parts
of it that are your favorite and
remember them and then
give this book to someone else.
That should really do the same.
Last one.
Whispers equals new array.
Zero.
Breathe me one.
I will love you forever.
Two.
Skin three.
Skin. Skin
four.
Skin on skin and skin.
Five implode.
Six soft.
Seven slow.
Eight.
Can you feel me?
Nine Touch me.
Ten.
One more cigaret.
11.
I am so open.
12.
I want to feel you inside me.
13.
Spoke 14.
I want to breathe you.
13.
We spoke.
16?
Yes.
17.
Deeper.
18.
I'm disappearing.
19 or.
Lyndon Johnson, 2017.
In a previous event, one of the
audience questions or
comments was rather, when they got
their book, they were almost
treating it for the use of it like
a science.
They would open it, close their eyes
and find these things.
So I think thank you, Lauren, for
reiterating that point, that this
thing that various entries
in all of them include voices
by other people and this
cacophony that you hear.
Some of it will actually feel very
clarifying to you.
I think one thing that I pulled out
in both of your
trails was this
idea of embodiment
and perhaps this idea
that disembodied that is what we're
told the technology will do.
So in Nora's,
you say that embodiment
has been erased.
So all we have is intelligence
or one of the quotes.
And in this way that we can
destabilize objectivity
and try to rewrite these histories
of technology.
Even. Lauren, you say or one of the
quotes was that
when you first go online, one of the
first things you have to do is
create an identity.
So I'm curious if we can kind of
talk about the material components
of technology at large, because
it isn't just this cold, sterile
tool that we use.
It's also quite entwined and
entangled with ourselves as
people.
So this is quite broad, but I'm
wondering if we might start there.
Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think that was
one of the things, as I was flipping
through it that I was struck by was
just how embodied and how
physical
the book was. And I was really
excited about that.
And I think that is a marker of.
What we're calling cyber feminism
here.
Like you said, I think so often
these two things are separated, or
a work that has to do with the body
is kind of treated
like it's not real work or
it's not real knowledge.
And so I really like the way
that so many
of the voices in this book really
make that argument clear.
And it makes sense, right?
Because we
are embodied for
human beings as much as we
may think that we're just like
avatars online.
It's not that's not real.
I think from my end,
my job as a
critic or writer, this art and tech
space, I mean, when you spend a lot
of time thinking about thinking
machines, you can start to
become pretty disembodied from
yourself.
And I think in
working very hard to try
and read what like the embedded code
of ideological intent of
technological design is, I
always have to draw on my
own experiences, like a fan moving
through the world to argue that that
embodied experience is not secondary
to the concerns of,
you know, at ground theory or
computational purity or mathematical
correctness.
And so that helps me,
even if it's not always explicitly
in the text, because I think for a
long time I didn't write about
myself in the text.
It was this kind of shoulders up
exercise,
being able to identify alternative
histories and ultra articulate
to myself and to others, other
sets of references that,
you know, counter the talk utopian
and like the
kind of mythology of technological
progress means that
I have to unlearn a lot of
the ways I was trained as a
writer or scholar, which was,
you know, having a firm set of
references and ideas that I work in
a linear pattern to build on and
start reading to. The index here
reminded of the ways that
the thinking about technology is
collaged by many.
It's emergent, it's relational,
it's a process of constant
revision.
And in that this kind of
strict binary, I'm sure we'll talk
about binaries too, between the
embodied and the abstract, the
physical and the digital will really
start to break down.
And you understand
the digital and the virtual and your
relationship to technology as
emotional, psychological.
That was, you know, a gorgeous kind
of rendition and ritual reading
of like our descend back
down into the body as a reminder
of the ways that these systems like,
you know, affect you physically and
emotionally, but also
change the conditions of,
you know, your children's generation
and generations to come.
So the materiality has to
be even if it's
while you're thinking critically
about it, I need to remind myself of
it constantly.
Yeah.
In this early aughts
book by Lisa Nakamura, which is also
in this book, Race in Enforced for
Cyberspace,
she speaks about how when
people were first going online for
the first time, it felt like you
could be into anything,
right? Like this was the time where
we could swap races, we could
build empathy.
But what they found was instead
of empathy building and race
swapping, there was actually a lot
of identity tourism and
the exacerbation of stereotypes
because as you're both saying,
even when we're going into an online
online space with an avatar,
we're bringing in all the conditions
of our physical bodies into
that space, how we speak,
how we engage with others.
All of these things are conditions
through physical life.
So I think that even
legacy Russell, when she talks about
there is no more IRL
versus you IRL, online versus
offline, everything is just afk
away from keyboard and everything
is quite entangled.
I'm curious if we can also speak
in this process of creating
your own learning trails.
I think it really showed how
the different ways knowledge is
accumulated, resources are
assembled.
What are some of the citation hacks
that you've started using in your
own practices, especially as you
started to kind of unlearn these
processes or even in
performative ways, moving away from
a theoretical academic paper?
Are there any hacks that you've
chosen from the citation or norms
that we've been taught?
I absolutely
I think for you know, when I started
writing, I was writing about
Israeli publishing.
I was like a writer. I was writing
kind of in a vacuum about video
games and game design and sound
design games and belief and games.
And I was, you know, coming out
of a fiction MFA.
And so I was just applying the same
tools I used for thinking about
world building and belief and a
fictional world to
how I spoke about games.
I wrote about them.
And so I found myself like mapping
systems of learning right on top
of how I thought about technology
in games and take games as
seriously as I took like a novel
based or some other
text that had been raised
to love as canon
and loved as well as what if we
treated games and virtual worlds the
same way we try to think of
Tarkovsky or think of, you know, a
great novel.
But in that process of collage,
like and, and working through
relationship with games and air, you
stumble and all of these, like,
uncanny experiences.
I was really hard to find the right
language for, which is still very
remains exciting for me as a writer
is that you search a collage and
assemble references from
engineering, from mathematics,
from poetry, from, you know,
social sciences.
And you find this a lot in gene
studies too, is I people assemble
and collage and create these really
radical wild forms of language
to describe what happens in games.
And so in my mind I was just
moving fluidly between
in my mind it seemed fluid.
I don't know if it is fluid from
outside, but between like the game,
like system of culture,
you know, a game itself through
system of engineering, a system of
design and story to map and try to
track the types
of ideology is embedded between
them.
So there wasn't
often, you know,
a lot of interruption between
writing experimental fiction and
writing about these spaces.
It was the same kind of invention of
language alongside which required
an assembly of references to kind of
articulate what am I describing,
what's the ground?
How are people thought of in this
space? How is space thought of
what are the, you know,
values and assumptions made about
the future in the future we should
live in?
And so to sort of peeling back
all of the layers of world
construction to see how the system
was built.
So in my in my mind at least,
there's no interruption between the
two. It's been the same kind of
process.
Hmm. I love that.
Um, I think
dealing a lot with performance, I'm
kind of constantly collecting, and
a lot of times it's unconscious.
I'm collecting words and gestures
and looks and feelings from
people around me.
So I feel very.
And from the work that I'm looking
at or the things that I'm
encountering. So I feel really aware
it kind of at all times that
whatever I'm making is really
this product of a collection,
or I think maybe you've referred to
it as kind of gathering
and then and then dealing with
performance. It's also like you're
the audience is a part of it.
So actually at the sight of the,
the presentation or the making,
there's another kind of
referencing or citation
that's happening just in the kind
of communion you have with the
people that are in the space with
you.
So I think my approach to
collecting or gathering in that way
has been similar to my approach
to doing that online or looking
through references or doing
research.
It's really picking up these bits of
things and trying to remember where
they came from.
And I think the the thing
about citation that is exciting
is it's this chance to
like really lift up and point to the
things that you think other people
need to be seeing that are like
really meaningful to you.
So it's less of a like, let me
do my homework and show you how I
got here. And more like this is my
chance to point to this.
I have your attention for a moment
here. Look at this.
And, you know, that's that's similar
to the work in teaching too.
That's really exciting to me.
I was going to say one more thing,
but I forgot what it was, so
I'll just leave it there for now.
Yeah.
Um.
Time flies.
We had a whole list of questions, so
I'm not sure if we'll get to all of
them. So I'm going to hop around a
bit.
Just one of
my favorites.
On your point on like this idea of
like into it intuitive
citation or gathering
in the byline of this book we wrote,
edited and gathered by Mindy
Seu. And this was because Laura
Combs, the designer of the book,
found that same byline by Adrienne
Marie Brown, and she gives
amazing citations because
in her footnotes, she talks
about the context of how she
came to an idea.
So even if she's not directly citing
a paper or a lecture, she'll say,
I was at this lecture by so-and-so,
and it made me think of this work by
this person. And then the person
next to me said this.
So I think it's also a way of
showing some informal
citations that still really start
to shape the connections that we're
all making.
And I like this idea that we
can lean on intuition more, even
if maybe that's we've been
taught to disregard that
in exchange for something that feels
more, quote unquote, rigorous or
scholarly.
I really I want to ask this question
because it's so relevant right now.
And then maybe we'll end with one
more after that.
But
so the a trail that you talked about
was really about artificial
intelligence and a lot of your
performances, Lauren, are also very
AI focused.
And I'm sure everyone in this room
right now is thinking about A.I.
in some way.
We're kind of seeing the swirl
of artificial intelligence
or A.I. right now, similar
to the swirl of NFT use
and Web three conversation in the
end, 2020.
So with the latest boom
of Chad shipped four
to every competitive company
creating their own version,
I'm really curious how we can start
to think about A.I.
with its potentials and downsides,
especially in this climate,
especially with fears that
artist's work is just being
generated and produced.
Students are creating
essays, and so many of them online,
like How can we begin to think.
Of.
A as a.
As a potential, as well as
acknowledging some of the criticisms
surrounding this.
Do you want to start?
Sure.
I think one of the things that we're
seeing with this kind of like daily
release of a new mind blowing
tool is really an
acceleration acceleration
of technology, an acceleration of
our capabilities as
humans interacting with technology.
And I think also an acceleration
or an increase in speed in the way
that we're expected to process and
think and relate to each other,
which I would question whether
we're really capable of that
rapid acceleration.
So I think in terms of potential,
it's exciting to
imagine what's possible
with this kind of added
speed to what we're all doing.
But the big concern that
I have, like I said, is just that
I think things take time.
I think it's been said many times,
probably in this book, too,
that, you know, operating at speed
is a way of reinforcing the status
quo, which we know is
prioritizes some people and really
disadvantages others.
Because, you know, the argument that
there's a time where there's not
enough money or we have to just keep
going until we figure out something
better, but we could keep going
forever.
So I really appreciated
some of the associations
and in this book and other work
that's being done that has been
making a case for just pausing
and slowing down.
And I think
that is needed more now
than ever. I think we saw this
acceleration happen over COVID.
There was like a momentary pause and
then everyone was like, oh, we don't
get to pause and you are going to
just keep going. Now, even if you're
not actually able to function or
process that quickly.
So that would be the the opportunity
here would be for us to somehow
find ways to hold that space and
hold time so that
our the intuition
within ourselves can catch up with
what's happening technically.
You know, take the index reading
through or as closely
as possible. It's just
a really great set of warnings about
thinking about A.I.
in terms of these both in terms of
these binaries of fear
or elation or the future
or doom.
And, you know, one thing I
find often in writing, even slightly
critically about A.I., is you're
immediately in certain
spaces either are deemed
a Luddite who wants to run into the
words and throw your devices
into the water or, you know, a hater
of some kind.
And so I think that binary that we
and the drama of moving back and
forth between an AI is
fearful or just a tool that happens,
a tool that happens to embed
all of our inclinations to
collective power control.
Like at scale,
it tends to have us focus
on the newest model, the
newest large language model, the
the newest piece of novelty that
pops up in Twitter.
But the questions still remain
the same.
And for me at least, you know,
if how are we going
to interact
with a world where many of our
decisions are nudged and shaped by
algorithms?
How are we going to
relate psychologically and
emotionally to a world where a lot
of decisions are created by
artificial beings that we can't see?
Do we call for just like for
that open letter recently for an
outright pause, or do we embrace
working with the machine?
And so of course, are advocates on
both sides.
I think what I'm most interested in
is the way that knowledge and
knowledge construction move is
moving towards assemblage and
prompts.
I mean, I could talk a bit about,
you know, Elmo and AI based artworks
where I find and spend a lot of
my time as a curator.
They form a kind of case study for
thinking through the downsides and
the potential they demand, like our
criticality and thoughtful
engagement.
I'm sure maybe folks have seen
a lot of AI artworks in the last
five years and maybe
even in over especially over the
last year in kind of headlines
where artists, you know, take a
massive dataset of 500
million images or billion images or
4 billion and then create pieces
these like gorgeous visualizations
that hallucinate or dream.
And I think you're seeing in,
you know, even the last couple of
months a real kind of critical
collective pushback against that
thinking of the machine dreaming
or hallucinating.
And so what I'm curious and always
kind of enchanted by is this
way that A.I.
creativity forms this playground
where we can see at scale
how people negotiate their anxieties
about A.I., about
their are or enchantment with AI
and human collaboration and art,
and also what kind of work matters
and what work we value.
And I guess the anxieties about
the uniqueness of our creativity and
the position of it.
You know, I hope that it would
generate all kinds of creative
flourishing. But I think
what the index really argues is even
as we're enchanted by
the newest development in the AI
and the kind of novel beautiful
things AI helps us create us like
creative people that we hold it
alongside, you know, social critique
of like the tools that are produced
by major companies and how they're
actually being used in the world so
that they're held hand in hand.
It's not one or the other.
It's both.
Yeah, I think.
That these days we're often really
thinking about the early adoption
of new technologies.
And as you're both saying
or reference, there's been a bit
of a
historical amnesia about
the relevance of these tools like we
call A.I.
or WEB3 or VR
new. But these things have been in
development for a long time.
Like you have researchers
for a had not two displays
in the sixties or even
decentralization.
Peer to peer has been around since
the development of the Internet.
So I guess I'm curious, do you think
this tech amnesia
is emerging from some sort of
generational reeducation
or maybe the
acceleration that's happening?
Why do you think that?
We're constantly forgetting a lot of
these things that have happened
historically?
Did you answer first last time?
Okay, I'll go.
I think this comes back to something
we were talking about backstage.
Is this.
There's this amazing book by Fred
Turner called By Counterculture
to Cyber Culture, which I encourage
everyone to look at, which traces
a kind of founding ideology
of Silicon Valley and this idea of
the Internet as a pen centrally
utopic space.
Computers as this like portal to
liberation to like the first
days of the pilgrims or
the the first people
who came to the to the to
the Americas looking down
from the city on the Hill and like
surveilling the wilderness as the
same view of the
engineer, the same view of
the designer intervening into the
world with technical or
technological tools.
I think it's so deeply
embedded in the systems that are
designed for us and
is so deeply embedded in that
ideology of the tech systems that
we use that it's hard to see.
It's also designed to be not seen
and not seen as, you know, full
of humor and instead this neutral,
smooth, beautiful
object that you pick and pick up
and, you know, helps you navigate
and work through the world.
So I think looking through the
index, I just.
The biggest point of amusement is
how frequently the same points.
The technology's not neutral.
The technology is is as much
a human hand as
a computational system has to be
repeated because it's designed to
not be seen.
So that's at least from my
perspective, why I
you see a lot of headlines that
repeat from year to year.
A lot of the headlines that you see
about A.I. we've seen five years
ago, ten years ago, 15 years ago.
So from that's one answer that
I would have for that.
That's a great point. Maybe where we
have amnesia. That's by design.
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think
our culture in general is
based around like having things and
then throwing it away.
Right. Like we just in the ways that
we relate to materials or
information online, it's like you're
it's not really sustainable.
We just have this assumption that we
can have what we have now and then
like drop it in a landfill and
not think about anymore.
And I think we that then mirrors
itself in the way that we relate to
information and knowledge and our
relationships with each other.
And we were talking backstage
also about like it's not just the
headlines about tech that are
recurring.
Looking through this book, you see
this work being done over and over
and over again, and yet people are
out here like, Oh, there's not
enough women in tech or something.
And you do see evolution.
You see the work build on itself.
You see the citations happening.
And so I think we were talking
about like, do you get really
discouraged just seeing this kind of
cycle repeat?
And I think while the tech cycle
repeats, you also see the things
build. And that's
like reading this book
saved me from kind of like
a disillusionment I was falling
into by seeing like, Oh, it is
building and there is a reason to
keep saying we're doing this work
and to keep doing it.
Thank you so much to both of you.
I wish we can go through all of
these questions, but I think
it's time to turn it over to
the audience.
So we're going to open up an
audience Q&A portion.
And if you do have a question, raise
your hand and someone
will hand you a microphone.
I think there's one on the back
corner.
Hi, how are you?
So my question is about cyber
sexuality.
I was really inspired by Lauren's
reading in particular, and it's also
something I work on a lot myself.
So I was wondering
if you could talk a little more.
I was just really inspired by Nora's
comment about kind of what
I read as being kind of
sort of treated like a killjoy when
you talk about I, which is something
I've also experienced, it made me
think of Sara Ahmed and the feminist
killjoy. So I wonder if you have any
comments specifically around
cyber feminism and sexuality versus
kind of mainstream cyber sexuality.
And in terms of the embodiment
conversation that was
opened earlier.
What can we learn from the cyber
feminists in your index?
So I just ordered this book called
How Sex Change the Internet and the
Internet Change. Sex hasn't arrived,
but still, I can speculate based
on all the other examples from this
book.
So I think that
you asked about sexuality.
I want to talk specifically about
the sex industry
has been really important
in how the Internet has changed
over all these years.
So because
typically sex workers, their work is
very villainized and these online
platforms, they're almost forced
to adopt these new technologies,
thereby helping their development.
So we see this happening with
cryptocurrency use, for example,
some of the first things purchased
online or these moments
of virality or pornographic videos.
So I think that
whatever.
Of course, there are a lot of
criticisms about how
sex is causing this intensification
of desire and almost
acting as like a pseudo sex
educational tool.
I do think on the outskirts
is also allowed a lot of people to
find these interstices of
what people are interested
in, what is
acceptable socially and sexually.
So I think that.
As always, as you've seen throughout
this talk, there are good things
and bad things, and it's
complicated.
Yeah, I think that a lot
of technological
development happens with
like sex is one of the first use
cases normally are generally
like driven by
mostly men and their sexual
desires. I mean if you think about
murder, Facebook
basically started as like a hookup
platform and,
you know, created by Mark
Zuckerberg.
So and that's a very serious
topic. Right. And then I think when
women or non-binary people
are.
Introducing sexuality or talking
about it, it's often seen as like
not serious or inappropriate.
And I think there's a lot
of space to change
that dialog.
You can say really briefly for the
figure of the killjoy.
I think in the one of the entries
in this book by Annie Go is about
the cyber feminist killjoy.
As a figure you
need fully gathers.
Other thinkers, other fun
thinkers, non-binary thinkers
to create the kind of collective
voice that forms a critique of that.
That voice on the hill.
And machine Ka Hagopian also has, of
course, as you know, the figure
of the artificial killjoy.
And when when I was struck
by from homage to a copy
and to go there, figure
the figuration of the killjoy is
actually very joyous.
Someone who really revels in like
the lushness of our relationship to
technology. When the paradigm
is shifted to her, it seems like
more equitable or lush or
sustainable kind of ends, and
it really is a figure of joy.
So I think I focus on the joy part
of of Killjoy a little bit
more.
Thanks for your question.
Hi.
Thanks for the talk.
I was wondering, Mindy, you
mentioned you talked about
kind of the.
How in early, early Internet
you had these kind of idea, this
idea that you could kind of go
online and
have a different race or a different
gender or sex
and how that kind of
utopianism also there
was like a pushback against that.
But I feel like
there's also still we
still see like that in
our immediate
there's like, gosh, there's a show
at the ball center
that kind of touched on as recently
and also this show that opened in
Culver City recently that I think
a lot of people here probably saw.
So I'm curious about if all of you
could, if you want to comment on
like how the kind of
notion of cyberspace
as a place where you can be who
you want to be like, be or
change your identity, like how that
notion might have changed since
the nineties and
compare like compare comparing from
the nineties until now.
I'll give two concrete examples.
So.
There was actually recently this
event at the new museum hosted
by Rhizome for
AB Tech.
I'm sorry, I don't remember this
acronym, but it's essentially a
network of indigenous artists that's
been around since the nineties,
largely directed by
Scarnati, who I mentioned during
this talk.
So one of the first places they
created was called the Palace,
and they held these gatherings that
it called Cyber Powwow.
And this allowed you to basically
enter these spaces, create an
avatar, talk with people
online, and
they were actually able to archive
all of that as well
in talking about how they would
replicate that on rhizomes
current server art base, which is
their preservation tool.
It was not what some concern because
if they allowed for this
chatting function, then
they would have to build in a new
moderation tool, which at
that time in the nineties there were
some trolls, but it was not nearly
to the extent that you see
now. So now a lot of
sites and blogs have removed this
chatting function or
comment function unless it's highly
moderated
or surveilled in some way.
I think another example of this is
meta horizon.
So Meta formerly Facebook,
their big VR push
right now is called Horizon
the Horizon workspace and.
I can't remember if this event is
recorded, but I illegally
went into Horizon Workspace,
which was only allowed for
employees.
And in this space,
even though it's in development and
they're dog feeding right now, which
means they're testing out their own
tools.
To the rest of us, their marketing.
This is like this is a space where
we can be anything, you know, like a
story we've heard before.
But when you get in there, you have
an avatar you can pick from
six skin tones, you can
pick from six body types
and face shapes.
You have no legs.
And when you go into the office,
it's a big conference
room with a wall full of windows
and you can select which background
you want. So they had like this
waterfall or something.
So I think it kind of shows
some of those shortages and
imagination of what's being created,
especially because of what industry
needs. So industry needs
remote workspaces
that are good for people who
work online, which is most people
now.
But in doing so, they're kind of
replicating environments that we
already have.
So I think that there is still a lot
of potential for what these online
spaces could be.
It could literally be anything.
And yet we're still kind of
trying to make something look as
pixel perfect to our current
environment now.
So I think maybe that's
a bit of a loss, a bit of
a loss of imagination.
Yeah, I guess I would add thinking
about kind of these dynamics of,
you know, in the beginning it's like
on the Internet, nobody knows you're
a cat.
And then there it gets into this
very.
Because we're realizing our
online identities are actually very
real in some way.
And then now I think in the last few
years with word three, there's been
this turn towards anonymity,
towards PS and avatars,
and there's sort of this like techno
utopianism that always transcended
identity. We transcended
race and gender.
We're all like lizards now.
And it's it's so democratic.
And I think the that it's
really dangerous because all the
dynamics are still there.
If you look at who is benefiting
from the Web right now, I think
we see the same power dynamics and
hierarchies, but they're less
legible. They're more obscured
because you're not able to actually
visibly read identities
so easily.
So I don't know what to do about
that, but I think about it a lot.
I mean, I definitely long for the
days of cyberspace or even thinking
about the Internet as cyberspace.
I mean, like pre
algorithmic capture, the Internet
was a place that I could learn about
all the things my parents didn't
tell me about. You could pretend to
be whoever you wanted to be.
You could talk with people
out of your inappropriately, out
of your age range for
until your parents found out.
And I
think over time that
like with Facebook, with social
media platforms, this
kind of alliance with identity,
openness, sharing community
as like the kind of ground of
algorithmic capture, so that the
more legible that your identity is,
the more diverse a dataset is, which
makes you more legible for perfect
capture.
Because created this kind of very,
as we all know, this very
suffocating loop where the Internet
feels as it does now.
So I think with, you know,
Web three and like
a lot of the discussions around
distributed autonomous organizations
and Daos, I think there is this
longing to recreate
that feeling of like an ethos
of care and like careful community
moderation and a place where
you're like your identity
and the things that you say
and the things that you make legible
or not, like also
material and substrate for capture.
Yeah, I think that when
we talk about new technologies,
it's also it's always about the tool
itself. Like we now have
blockchain, we now have VR
headsets, we now have X,
Y, Z, but it's really not about
the tool, it's about how the tool is
used.
So I think all of these things,
these examples are illustrating
regardless of whatever new
technology will push forward unless
we change the behaviors of them
or whatever conditions that we're
bringing into this space.
In some ways it will replicate
what we already have and maybe
accelerate that as well.
It's seven.
Do we have time for one more
question?
Or should we have
informal questions outside with tea
and cookies and coffee?
I'm looking up at the sound booth
because I'm not sure who could
answer that question.
Oh, they give a thumbs up.
Thumbs up. Okay.
Oh, yeah. For one of them, there are
two options.
I'm going to assume it's for the
cookies because there was a run of
show. So thank
you so much, everyone, for coming.
Thank you so much to Nora and
Lauren, Claudia and the entire
Hamre team for making this event so
seamless.
Please hang out with us outside.
We'll see you in a bit.