One radical strand of modern historical thinking could be termed “potentialism”—a form of historicism that is open to unprecedented actualizations and long latencies, to events transcending their conditions, and to processes of becoming that are not always reducible to classical conceptions of class. Now that it has been recaptured and refunctionalized in the service of algorithmic governance by a planetary elite of AI-pushing space invaders, what potential does the concept of potentiality still hold? How to propagate a potentialism of deviation and divergence, of the improbable-but-necessary, in opposition to the techno-dystopian future that is being made today in Silicon Valley?
If centralized AI makes the world a smaller place, tunneling AI will make it larger and more fragmented. In terms of a project for an opacity from below, tunnels are the structures that afford us the condition of opacity. They have limited access points but often lead to a sprawling and decentralized network. To maintain, build, expand, and protect tunnels, one can operate on many planes—from building and adapting new tools that destitute the centralized AI platforms, to nudging national and philanthropic investment programs towards directing funds into the techniques of “private” and decentralized AI.
The overwhelming emphasis on science in Chinese society and its education system means that analyzing and discussing science and technology has become central to the culture today, much as explorations of urbanism and cultural change were a generation ago. If a decade ago the Chinese economy manufactured products for the West, and elites sought to join or access the West via emigration, education, and real estate, today the dynamic parts of Chinese society are aimed at creating popularly accessible technology to improve the lives of Chinese people—and then export it to the Global South.
Our mind makes predictions about what it thinks we will see, and shows us hallucinated projections of the near future. When a baseball batter sees a ball traveling towards them, they’re not seeing the actual ball, but a hallucinated projection of where the mind thinks the ball will travel. The batter swings at the hallucination. If all goes well, the hallucinated ball is temporally synched to where the actual ball should be. When we zoom out from the mechanics of motor function and temporal synchronization, the story of visual perception becomes even more unstable.
James Hoff, in collaboration with Ben Kudler
Trevor Paglen, “You’ve Just Been F*cked by PSYOPS: UFOs, Magic, Mind Control, Electronic Warfare, and the Future of Media”