Out now: On Socialist Cybernetics, Accelerationist Dreams and Tiqqun’s Nightmares

Are cybernetics and computer technologies ‘machines of communism’, a potential path to emancipatory coordination that is capable of hyper-complexity, or are they just the next governing techniques for boosting capitalistic exploitation, surveillance and oppression?

We proudly present our latest longform On Socialist Cybernetics, Accelerationist Dreams and Tiqqun’s Nightmares by Paul Buckermann.

About the author:
Paul Buckermann is a sociologist interested in art and technology. (Since 2016) Research assistant in NCCR eikones at University of Lucerne (CH). (2014-2016) research assistant at DFG funded Research Training Group Automatisms: Cultural Techniques of Complexity Reduction at Paderborn University (DE). Paul is currently co-editing a book on technological understandings of emancipatory politics (March 2017 at Unrast).

Naked Logic: Lecture of Boldizsár Hordós at Metaforum X, Budapest

By Geert Lovink, November 12, 2024

I am happy to teach computer history at a fine arts university. Besides, I also work with small kids. Part of my job is to pry phones out of their hands—not the most pleasant part of the day. This is partly because (as with every mandatory intervention) it stirs up more chaos than it prevents. [...]

Infrastructure that Sticks: Digital Affect Within Sovietcore

By Salome Berdzenishvili, November 4, 2024

Жить тяжело и неуютно Зато уютно умирать (Living is difficult and confining, But dying is liberating) The words written above are an excerpt from the song Sudno (Boris Ryzhy) by post-punk band Molchat Doma from Minsk. These words also often loop over the reels on post-Soviet aesthetics found online – the ones of decayed brutalist [...]

Ágnes Básthy: Crisis? What Crisis? Taking a Suspicious Walk around a Fashionable Notion

By Geert Lovink, October 31, 2024

(Text of the speech by Ágnes Básthy on the first day of Metaforum X, Budapest, October 25, 2024) “‘Krisis’ was originally a medical concept which designated, in the Hippocratic corpus of texts, the moment when the doctor decided whether the patient would be able to survive the disease. Theologians reprized the term to indicate the [...]