algorithms

The Kill-Freak Syndicate!

“The philosophers’ inventive theories of time and money directed and guided the managerial class towards the ways by which they could change the world to suit themselves.” — Steven Simpson, Blinded by Science

In the old mansion house in the swamplands where the cops would never find him, the occupant paced the dining room. Anikulapo-Kuti was possessed of an unusual, chaotic intelligence. Dinner was at seven.

Psycho-gulls ate from the pre-conscious archives and regurgitated scones and tea in the afternoon. Fearful they were not, yet with fear and terror were they deplored as they cut a finger slicing a side of beef or cracked an Arabian plate.

Description lost out to prescription. Pushed with a haste that could only be stalled by informational products, marvellous new vices were engineered in leaps and bounds and spread abroad by the forces of evil.

Poverty Inc moved into new territories, solving problems with a new spin on an old dogma, promises of betterment, a way to bridge the gap. Condescending to point at a picture of a pauper in a cloth cap holding a noose round the neck of a woman accused of witchcraft, and pointing out the barbarism, the faulty metaphor was recycled against a backdrop of leisurely hours spent haranguing the natives about how lucky they were to till the soil.

“Turn the ghost up in here.”

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Beacon & Vessel

“Allow me the pleasure of your destruction.” — Agapios Stojanov, Bonds

The world inhabited by Nasrul was one in which the rationales of quantification and categorisation were dominant throughout all forms of human action and interaction. His life was experienced by its readers both within and outside this novel, but less via his character than his status as transmitter of the novel’s primary superstitions, yet his absence as a coherent character and his mysterious presence as an anomalous cipher meant that the novel had no conceptual form. Rather than possessing a core integral message as a communicating vessel, whatever was communicated was unknown / anomalous.

One accurate impression that was conveyed was of N as the last man standing. The one who best portrayed N was YOU, but YOU could not realistically expect to fulfil all the requirements of the main character by recourse to facts.

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At the Zero-Core

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“Without touching each other we lay on the quilt and watched the dawn. The blissfulness I felt might overwhelm me. Nothing I could say would be with words.” — Rick Lindsay, The Lapis Daybook

When the impulse occurred to write sensibly there was always a certain risk involved because many people tended to look at writing as if it were information or a set of instructions. This was before the discovery of its unknown properties when writing was co-opted by narrative.

Maybe freedom was a carrot or an apple, but its most sacred duty was to trust the truth of fiction which is the spinal fluid of poetry. There was plenitude and substance at the Zero-Core, deep underground, where deadly impermanence was reversed by the negative theology of the anti-narrative.

In the following passages are recounted days and nights that flourished in the wonder of uncontrolled joy. (more…)

The Removal of the Logos

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“Preconceived ideas and buzzwords are represented by hypnotic devices for the cognition of purpose which coerces and fixes the senses of things and the connotations of actions within the narrow limits of closed and absolute systems of rationalization.” — Julianne Fortuin, Cognitive Markets

As the subjective world impressed itself Nas found himself unimpressed. It was as though he had been afforded the privilege of that special allotment known as “inner space” as a sanctuary or consolation away from the intimations of power. But it was all so unconvincing. The more he contemplated the nature of subjectivity it showed itself up time and time again as fictitious, as did power.

While floating in the algorithmic floatation sphere it became apparent that no-one could ever hope to achieve much with algorithms, except maybe in non-fiction stories calculated to ground the self-narrativising subject into the ground, which might have been of some use or other, but it was either a quarter past six in the evening or the morning and already the cloudless sky was as still and clear as day. (more…)

How to Break Algorithms

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“Under the rule of the algorithm, all modes of cognition and communication are manipulated, categorised and quantified to promote the dominant ideology of financialization. There is currently no parallel or alternative system to undermine or replace it.” — Yakim Janović, Dystopia Ltd

Art was pregnant with artificial intelligence. But intelligence had always been artificial anyway, despite its humanity.

The seven sensors raised their ugly heads. They’d been trans-mutated by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria, but the rationalist purveyors of ideology served education. (more…)