#Accelerate; The Accelerationist Reader I (Session 1)

Hello everyone. Welcome to the first session of the first seminar of the first season of the new Center for Research and Practices program. We're here tonight to start something new in a sense that a form of educational institution that is not necessarily an alternative to the existing educational institutions, but at the same time does not really follow the script in terms of how it operates.

We sort of began this idea a few months ago with my friends, Jason Adams and Tony Yannick. And our goal is to somehow create something that would enable not necessarily new ways of doing knowledge production, but facilitate forms of knowledge production that are not necessarily being embraced by the existing educational institutions and work alongside them to achieve this. Now I would like to introduce to you my friend and colleague Jason Adams and if you give me a second I would like to

read a little bit about his bio. Me and Jason began working together basically in January as I was planning to start an incredible machines conference in Vancouver. And Jason showed interest in sponsoring the event as part of the Global Center for Advanced Studies where he was a co-founder and one of the organizers of seminars there and then we began our work together back then and then it kind of evolved into sort of like starting the new center with Tony Anik.

And Tony also works with us in the Incredible Machines conference. Jason is a cultural and political theorist. He served as a managing editor for the Johns Hopkins University Press Journal Theory and Event prior to being a visiting assistant professor in political theory at Williams College and a co-directorship at the Global Center for Advanced Studies, like I said. He is co-editor of Deleuze and Race with Aaron Saldana, an author of Occupy Time, Technoculture, immediacy, and resistance after Occupy Wall Street. He has published numerous essays and articles in journals and magazines, including Radical

Philosophy, In These Times, Boundary 2, The Magazine, Critical Inquiry, Truthout, and Borderlands. And currently he is revising the manuscript for a new book entitled Remediating Belonging a media archaeology of the post-war citizen subject. Okay, and now I'd like to introduce Mohammed. And Mo mentioned how we got to know each other and we worked on a number of different things together during GCAS and then things... We started working... well, we were all working with Tony as well I'm during the G cast time and

and then we created this out of that I'm so Mohammed so let me is a he's an independent New York City and Vancouver based critic and curator I originally from Iran on and is curated exhibitions at the Kerner gallery and the AMS gallery at the University British Columbia as well as the satellite gallery and database he co-curated the faces exhibition at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and in 2014 Salemi organized the incredible machines conference in Vancouver. Salemi holds a master's degree in critical and curatorial studies from the University of British Columbia. So that's Mo. Welcome.

At this point it will be good maybe if you guys can give a short brief introduction of yourself. So for all of us, but also for people who will be accessing these videos later as part of the archive, who you are and just a little bit about yourself, having in mind that we have also a lot of stuff to go through. But we discussed this and decided that even though it takes a little bit of time, it's very important for us to know each other and sort of like know where we're coming from. So I don't know how you want to start. Maybe from, I don't know the order you see things, but maybe I'll just call out names one by one. So maybe Carlos, you want to go first. I always start first because my last name is at the beginning of the alphabet. So I'm going to – my name is Carlos Amador. I'm an assistant professor of Spanish and Culture Studies at Michigan Technological

University here in Houghton, Michigan, Upper Peninsula, sort of far from any accelerated lifestyle but nonetheless a technological university. And my personal research is mainly on ecological criticism and extinction, but also I'm working on acceleration and decolonial practices. So I'm interested in bridging the gap between Global South practices and different sort of epistemic centers and accelerationism. So I'm grateful to be here and thank you guys for your work in this respect. Sean, do you want to go next? Can you hear me?

Yes. Okay. My name is Sean Williams. I went to UBC. I graduated in 2013. I studied history and philosophy of science. Before that, I did a year studying philosophy of economics. and then I met Mo two exhibits that he had done, one at UBC or shows that he had done and then one through Access Gallery and that's how I got linked into the Incredible Mown Machines Conference and like since then. Oh, interesting.

Okay, thank you, Sean. Yvonne, do you want to go next? Can I just request that people not use the camera app because it uses a lot of bandwidth and slows things down? If you want to take a screenshot, though, you can just use, you know, you just take a screenshot. But no problem at all, it's just a bandwidth thing. No problem Carlos. Okay Ivan, do you want to go next? Okay, maybe we wait for Ivan. Laura, do you want to go next?

You have to unmute yourself. I'm in media communication in Sydney, Australia. So here it's 9 in the morning actually. I'm drinking coffee. And my main research is related to economic dynamics and agreement networks. works so I'm interested in looking financial markets and mainly in like monetary like innovation mentioned we call and alternative thank you how about Yvonne can you go on Yvonne now okay maybe Yvonne is having difficulty right

Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Yes, it's going to kick me off. My name is Ivan Nikolai. I'm living in Melbourne, but I'm originally European. I'm not from a traditional academic background. I'm in management technology. However, exactly what interests me in excellence is that kind of link. All sorts of sort of paracademic institutions which sort of but it should really be across the board.

So big kudos to you guys for doing this. I think it's a great study political economy at the University of Sydney next year and I'm really interested in how a description of praxis can be developed from the manifesto and from the various movements of accelerationism. Thank you. I would say Manuel, if you can turn on your mic and give a little description of yourself. Manuel, are you speaking? Hello?

Hello. Yes, go ahead. My name is Manuel Correa, and I am a documentary filmmaker. I'm very interested in where art meets technology and the influence that technology has had on art, and that is the research project I've been doing for the last two years. Thank you very much. Okay. Hey, Morgan, if you can turn your mic on. Hey, how's it going? I'm Morgan Sutherland. Can you hear me? Yes, Morgan, are you in New York right now? I am. That's good. Lovely. But it's so bright over there. Here it's so dark. But go ahead. Yeah. Yeah, there's a beautiful sunset outside. Go ahead. I guess I'm a designer and programmer with an art degree.

I'm principally interested in acceleration as a way of continuing to work in technology with some sort of positive political goal. Reading theory and working in technology can be quite depressing because almost, well, and also paying attention to contemporary art, because almost all contemporary art and theory is highly anti-technology. And right now I work on a platform called Arena. Yes, I'm a member of Arena. We should really talk about Arena. The reason why, not maybe today, but I really wish you would somehow engage the new center with Arena

because we really like what you're doing. And we'll talk about it later. Yeah, I would love to. I just posted a link in the chat if anyone's interested. Thank you. So now that everyone kind of like introduced themselves, I want to continue on with talking a little bit about the seminars methodology and how we're going to be conducting these and moving forward. Some of you are. Well, before we get into that, I I was going to talk about the new center? Yes, yeah, go ahead, actually. OK, OK. So I just want to give just like a basic introduction to the new center. I'm sure that most of you have already seen this before.

But I wanted to go through the mission statement just a little bit and kind of read it and give just a brief overview, and then we'll get into the course. But basically, the new center for research and practice is conceived upon the idea that the space of knowledge is a laboratory for navigating the links between thought and action. Our pedagogical approach bootstraps the conventional role of the arts and sciences to construct new forms of research and practice alongside, within, and between the existing disciplines and technologies. So just to give a brief ad-lib on that first part of the mission statement, basically what we're saying, basically what kind of sets us apart is that we're really not trying to be, you know, like an alternative to the university

or the alternative to the university. We're not trying to be a university of any kind. We're really trying to kind of work kind of in the interstices of what exists right now and to try to play some kind of role in strengthening it and maintaining the value and interest in thought and in the arts and philosophy and other areas. The New Center's aim is a constructivist one to assemble an environment, both virtual and actual, that inspires our members to invent alternate understandings that can be put into collective practice. So with this, basically what we're saying is that we're,

I mean, right now we are primarily online. We're also going to do some in-person events. The main way that we're going to do that at first really is by... is through partner institutions that would, for example, take a course such as this one and then make it available in a local physical space, and then there would be sort of like a group access to the Hangout and to the course. So in that sense, it could be like kind of in-person but it would be very hybrid in that sense. But the really crucial thing is that we don't want to just do philosophy or like in a theory abstractly. We want to really think about how it relates to practice. And we want to have a pretty significant research focus

in addition to just like lectures and teaching and that kind of thing. So you can kind of think of it as kind of a research community. the new center is a non-profit higher education Institute offering graduate level certificate programs workshops seminars exhibitions residencies and conferences in critical philosophy social and political thought curatorial practice and transdisciplinary research and practice so this is the certificate programs we're going to make an announcement about that pretty soon I'm not going to really go into that right now because one thing we're trying to do is only kind of like talk about things once they really exist, and we will be announcing that shortly.

So that will be then. As far as workshops, seminars, exhibitions, residencies, and conferences, I can tell you that we have plans for a summer school, but again, we want to kind of not go into that until those are really happening. But we do have programs in critical philosophy, social and political thought, curatorial practice and transdisciplinary research practice. And we have the new books program, which is kind of what this one falls under, although you can use this course in pretty much in basically any other program that you might want to use it in if you want to pursue that. And okay, our carefully selected network of thinkers and scholars advise and assist those who are seeking to make the transition between undergraduate and graduate

schools as well as from graduate school to the professions so this is another way that were that were different from a lot of other institutions in that we're really trying to create a space that is like I said per academic that's kind of between alongside within in some ways also really the crucial thing is that by by working with us you you become part of a a larger research community And hopefully through access to the guests, through becoming more familiar with the readings and various things like that, that might help you to make the transition from undergraduate to graduate school. Or if you've already finished graduate school, into the professions or if you're already in the profession you want to be in, maybe it can just provide you with a community of people who are kind of new currents within critical academic work and practice.

Through studying at the new center, students practice graduate level research in a manner graduate and postgraduate level research in a manner that does not interrupt their existing academic aspirations, but instead complements, enhances, and intensifies them. So if you know Deleuze's concept of imminence, meaning beginning from within and sort of disrupting from within or altering from within, that's kind of the philosophy we're with as opposed to one of having a complete outside that is then like at war with everything that exists which is kind of arguably not always that effective. So all right sorry about that Mo. Go ahead. I'm glad that you followed through because this was very important.

Now I want to talk a little bit about the seminar methodology. This is not necessarily going to be the case for every seminar because each different instructor might want to structure their seminars according to their plan. But the way me and Jason have decided to run or facilitate this seminar and the second part of that Accelerate seminar is to sort of pretty much enhance version of a classic graduate seminar in which the reading material that we're supposed to do together, which in this case is the first two chapters of the book, will be divided between people in

the seminar. Each person will sort of like volunteer to focus on one piece and then do a presentation on it to the class. We ourselves also will take part and take on a particular piece to focus on. We actually have already done that for today, but we're going to also do another one throughout the next three sessions. And basically we will read these pieces and do presentations. And these presentations will be part of the type of application or relation you make between between the text and your actual in the real world or the practice that you have or the

kind of research you're doing. So it will be interesting if you pick a piece or relate the piece you picked to what you're actually interested in. I'm going to use Morgan as an example, like if he can somehow relate it to his concept of this project he's working on, like sort of like that. Like he's got something concrete at hand and he can try to see if some of these ideas work or not. And basically we're going to conduct the seminars that way and then for each seminar we're asking you as a form of assignment to write a short piece and sort of like it would be also great to think of it as different sections of a longer essay. Again if you can hopefully relate it to your own practice or your own research it would be lovely.

And then hopefully all of them will be high quality enough to be worked on and be published. And sort of like some of these papers hopefully will be presented at the summer school alongside other guests, academic guests that we bring. So that will become another way of sort of like creating a network of like established academic people who are also doing new work and us and our students who are doing new work. This is the way we are going to conduct this particular seminar together. For each seminar, we will try to do a period of us just doing kind of like lecturing or talking about what that particular session is. And then we will break into presentations and then discussions.

And then for the next three seminars, we also will have guests who will join us either in very beginning or one hour into the seminar because of the time differences. Some more guests are going to have to come in right in the beginning and then but some of them an hour into the discussion. They also try to relate their presentation to that particular week's reading. And then they will be also up for questioning and scrutinizing. And if we have guests, the way it's going to work is that we first do our presentation, Then we'll do the guest presentation or we do the guest presentation then we do ours and then we do the student presentation and then we discuss and talk. You guys are welcome to make notes. You can make public notes on the classroom.

You can make private notes and then paste whatever you want there for everybody else to use. Basically, you will proceed to make those blog posts or whatever you want to call them. We're going to keep them private for now because our experience is that most people don't like their immediate production of knowledge be available publicly to the world. But then at some point you might become very proud of what you're doing, you want to share it and we will have blogs for you to post your stuff on. Or it can just be buried in our private classrooms and just remain there for the use by us and other students. So that's sort of like the methodology of the class. If you have any questions about it, let's deal with it right now so things don't get accumulated to the end of the class.

You can just turn your mic on and then ask a question if you, and I'm going to wait 20 seconds and then move on. Okay, yeah, I had a question about, so there's the mini essays too, and then yeah, you're saying about presentations sort of typical seminar style. So we're going to decide today, we're going to sort of divvy up the readings for the week. Yes, yes, we're going to, at the very end, we're going to divide it up. But we are hoping that you would do your writing also on what you're presenting so it's like, I mean, you know what I mean? One of your writings should be your presentation in a way, right? You understand what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah, so you kind of like blend it together. And really it's great to have in mind and write those pieces so you can now, now for

those who want to get, for those who are enrolled fully in the classroom and they're going to like get their work evaluated and accumulate like credits towards certificate, this is a mandatory thing to pass the class. For those of you who are auditing, of course this part of it is optional. The part that you're doing is participation in the class and discussion and presentation is mandatory but like the writing is optional and then of course the mark, getting mark and getting credit is only reserved for those who are fully enrolled in the class. So I want to also be clear about that. Now the technical note, if there's no other question maybe I can move on to you. I have one question. Yes, go ahead. Mo, Mo. You can call me Mo or Mohamed.

I'm sorry? You can call me Mo or Mohamed. Okay, Mohamed, if we are auditing can we still volunteer? Yeah, definitely. If you're auditing and if you're in this session right now, we would get your name and then you will present on that piece of text definitely. That's for sure. Okay, great. Thank you. Okay, so let's move on to technical notes. Okay, the technical notes we have is that first of all you want to be as close as possible to your modem to facilitate transmission of video and audio signal from your computer to the network because all the like disruptions and all that could be eliminated if you're

closer to the modem and make sure you have a good solid high-speed internet. The other thing is to remember to turn your microphone and maybe even your camera off when you don't want your little animated character to be seen at the bottom of the frame. And it's crucial for you to turn your microphone off so then you kind of like reduce the noise because these recordings get compressed for our video archives later and as we reduce the room noise, it gets easier for people to use the audio track later on if they want to sign up and use the archives. So yeah, I would totally like you guys to constantly keep putting yourselves on mute and on when you want to talk and you're going to get used to it after a while. So these are the tech and then if your camera is on, you want to be well lit if you're presenting

so we actually get to see you and your face during your presentation gets documented well. Another thing is that not all the auditing students will end up being in class for all four sessions because you're auditing, right? And we also have auditing people right now that are watching this live on video. So we're going to try to accommodate as many people. And there's lots of pieces of text in the book to present on. So then I would encourage people who are watching live to sort of like go over the text if you have the book. And if you want to participate, please send one of us, me, Jason, Tony, or Registrar, a note in terms

of wanting to present and tell us which essay you'd like to present so we make sure you're in actual Hangout for your presentation. And you guys, if you sign up to present on the week that the text corresponds to, we're going to ensure that you're in the Hangout to do your presentation and participate in sort of discussion about your presentation and the guests and everything. So I think it's a little bit complicated, but I hope you kind of understand the way we're going to go about this, right? Is it clear? For those of you who are like here and are paid to be in the classroom, you're always going to be in all classes, hopefully, and you will have to do your presentation and participate in most of the discussion. The second part that I explained really deals with the audit people.

You have a few audit students in the classroom today too. So you guys, I would totally encourage you to sign up like Carlos just asked. And we're going to ensure that you're in the Hangout on the day that you're presenting. So if we're done with this technical notes and stuff, I would like to pass it on to Jason to talk briefly about the books program. Okay, so I just wanted to clarify a little bit about the program that this course is occurring within. So this is the new books program, and kind of the idea behind the new books program is for it to be like a series of seminars in which students and members and auditors

editors and whoever is involved, encounter recently published books as well as say, you know, special journal issues. The idea is to be kind of consistently about sort of timeliness, new ideas that are coming out that are being brought out in book format or in a special journal issue and that kind of thing. And you know, with an edited collection it's a little bit different but you know, probably like the pure form of kind of the idea would be sort of like, say, like, I don't know, like Jonathan Crary's 24-7. Imagine that this book just came out. Some of you may recall that there was a lot of excitement around that book when it very first came out. And

what would it have been like at that time when everybody was kind of talking about this book and it was very influential if Jonathan Crary himself could, you know, come on and actually teach each of his chapters in a different session or maybe two chapters a session or whatever and actually be there face to face with his readers kind of thing. There's a lot of different forms it could take. It could also take the form of an instructor. It could take the form of, say, an instructor, somebody very familiar with a book or the theme of a book, kind of facilitating the discussion and then bringing in a number of guests That makes a lot of sense for a collection like the Accelerationist Reader because the one person, really.

It's kind of a thematic in intellectual history that is especially, you know. So that's kind of the basic idea. I guess I should clarify. I mean, there is no one right way or pure way. I shouldn't have said the word pure. But just to, you know, the general theme is the idea that instead of reading books alone and that sort of thing that we're processing them together, processing them collectively, and we're kind of becoming collectively aware of kind of what's going on in thought and analysis today. So the other thing about the new books program is to not just read the book, but actually

sort of like instantly respond and create new knowledge about an important volume that has just been published. You know, because reading is sort of like a passive, sort of a passive activity. So we want to combine the sort of like the idea of a reading group with actually something else which is like a group that is able to immediately respond and produce new ideas and new application of ideas in a book as a form of knowledge. Sure. Yeah, and this is different from all the other programs because there will never be, I don't believe there will ever be a certificate attached to this because this is not really about gaining competency in one specific theme really. it's this is this is this this is about kind of timely and and new new books so

it's you know that's that's the main focus overall and you can just read a little bit of the description the new books program aims to contribute to the broad comprehension of recent relevant impactful titles so it says to collectively produce the work beyond the work so this is meaning for example you know when a new book comes out that has some kind of impact obviously you know people start writing blog posts about it they start writing Facebook posts about it they start writing you know official academic journal articles about it maybe it inspires somebody to do some new kind of new kind of angle on artwork that they're doing or something like that so the work beyond the work meaning the book beyond the book would be one way to one way to think of it and in the process

participants and authors are enabled to meet and exchange insight and understanding in a mode that has rarely been possible previously, thereby becoming a part of the works exegesis. So instead of this just happening, you know, way after the fact, because, you know, you think of the old, the temporality of old media, of old broadcast and print media, usually there's quite a bit of delay before any kind of exegetical work occurs. But in the time that we live in, we can just all meet in a classroom and discuss the accelerationist reader, which just came out. And that can happen right now. And we can already start to contribute to that process. We don't have to wait for the next journal article or the

next journal issue to come out or something like that. Not to say that there's anything wrong with that, it's important too, but it's a different kind of mode. So by allowing participants to engage the authors of the titles they read and authors to have their work considered publicly, the program brings the delayed individualized temporality of the printing press to the live collectivized time of the online seminar. So that's another really crucial thing. Instead of first you get rid of the delay, you also get rid of the fact of that most book reading in the past and processing, unless you like organized a reading group or something like that, you would be just doing that kind of on your own. And something is very different in today's kind of techno-cultural structure, which is that we're all kind of co-present

to one another. We live in an era of simultaneity and so why not take advantage of that and and make that something that's evident. People say that it's distracting but it can also be helpful. Okay, so let's talk just briefly about, I just want to introduce the course very briefly. We were interested in the book beyond the fact that me and Jason both had an interest in accelerationism even prior to the publishing of the book. But also because we consider what we're doing or we're starting with today's seminars in

the new center itself as an accelerationist practice. And it was important for us to start our whole season with this class. And yeah, so I just wanted to like introduce the course by connecting what we're going to be doing in the News Center to the actual volume and ideas behind it. So the course itself is basically, we're not here to sort of like advocate for ideas put forth by Nick Sernicek and Alex Williams and Robin McKay and people involved, people around urbanomic collapse, people who have been responsible for sort of like advocating these things, but rather join in to shape and form what accelerationism will become.

So not necessarily the second generation, but be part of the first generation because accelerationism is a new concept and as a new concept it is not really fully formed. So by participating hopefully we can help shape it and make a mark on it. So this is really our purpose here is not to sort of like reify accelerationism or be part of the reification process that is kind of inevitable but to actually sort of like open it up. And because of that we're also like including people as guests who have been kind of like critical of it. And once in a while we're going to dive into sort of like different critical approaches

towards accelerationism. And also, me and Jason, as people who are going to be doing the instruction, have some form of problems and criticism here and there with some of the details put forth by people associated with the ideas and ideas presented in the book, which hopefully we'll get to later. So this is sort of like what we'll be doing qualitatively in the class. I would have liked to say that in the beginning. And also, another thing about the... Actually, I will wait for that because I was going to talk about my background and how I'm connected to the idea of accelerationism, but I think Jason has a few things to say before we do that. Go ahead, Jason.

You mean in regards to the intro to the course? Yes. No, actually, yeah, intro to the session. particular one, are we going to mainly focus on Marx? I'm going to say a few things too, but I thought maybe you should start that. Okay. Well, yeah, I mean in this course session, you know, we're looking at kind of, you know, you could say the origins of, and that's, anytime you talk about origins there's always a lot of questions that go along with that of course. And this book largely starts pretty much with Marx and Marx's kind of theory of what might set the conditions that would make communism a possibility. And so we'll be looking at Marx, we'll be looking at Fedorov, we'll

be looking at Butler, and then also at Thorsten Veblen. And so the general idea of this part of the session is basically to look at what are some of the most influential kind of root ideas that were out there well before Nick Land, well before Deleuze and Gutari, well before Lyotard, and certainly well before Shurnacek and Williams that could be considered kind of forebears to what we see happening in acceleration of thought today. And so that's our basic approach.

And what we'll be doing today is Mo and I will both talk about, well, actually, the first reading that Mo will talk about, and by the way, I don't want people to feel like you just have to kind of like passively listen. So if at any point you want to interject and raise a question or something like that, you could do it two ways. I mean, one way would be to make a comment in the sidebar, and then, you know, either Mo or I will make sure there's a time to open that up. Or another way would be to just unmute your mic, but just keep in mind the kind of, the like flow of the course and that kind of stuff. but the basic structure that we have set up is is that

Mo's going to introduce the introduction by McKay and by Robin McKay then we're both going to kind of cover Mark's and then I will present on Butler and Fedorov and Mo will close it out with Bevelin and we're doing it that way because there just wasn't enough time ahead of time for us to prepare student presentations and to get all of that together ahead of time. So in future sessions, students will do those presentations and, you know, we might take a couple readings too, depending. Yeah, so one thing I want to add basically here to what Jason said is that Jason presented

it sort of like looking from the past to the future, which is sort of like a one way of looking at the trajectory of the volume. But there's something in Robin McKay's introduction, which I'll get into a little bit later, which also is about sort of like looking for the seeds of manifesto for accelerationist politics in Marx, in Veblen, and in all other pre... So like prior to acceleration becoming aware of itself, which you can call it like when the manifesto came out in 2012, right? Or late 2012, early 2013. There is a seed of it that we go backwards actually from the future.

So it's sort of like a Terminator style of going back and looking for it in Marx, looking for it in other works, and sort of like realizing how it could be argued that these texts have been kind of like pointing to this self-realization. So that's an important part of the process. And if one way to put this book together was sort of like do a crazy way of like actually not starting with Marx and starting with a manifesto and then building backwards towards Marx or sort of like put the manifesto right in the middle and work backward and forward to it. But I guess at the end the editors decided to sort of like build it up from Marx forward towards what they call sort of like the manifesto and then the post manifesto, sort of like

people who after accelerationism was made conscious of itself, sort of like people like Negar Estani and Ray Bracier and others who've commented on it or expanded it. So that's sort of like part of also how we're going to like move forward with the book and the course. Another thing is that, another technical note here where I forgot to talk about is that sometimes if your speakers are loud, we may be able to hear some form of an echo. And I hear a little bit of echo coming from one of the machines, but the best way to eliminate that is to have headphones on or put the volume of your speaker low so this does not happen.

I mean it's not really bad right now, but the best way sometimes to get rid of it is to leave the room and come back. But I think it's fine for now. I don't think we're having any trouble. So to move forward, I'm going to also talk about my background and how I became sort of like, how I am connected or interested in accelerationism. And basically we were talking about this with a couple of other friends and it's like people who had an interest in design and had an interest in technology sort of always knew that this sort of like romantic notion of giving up on technology or blaming everything on industrialization and mechanization and technology. There's something wrong at the roots with it and there's

a way to utilize technology towards social progress. So my interest in accelerationism sort of comes from doing years of design and being around the internet for the longest time and never really believing that there's essentially something wrong with technology and usually trying to find a way to look for the problem elsewhere but not in the ontology of technique but in sort of like it's political appropriation or it's wrong social use or adaptation. So my connection to the acceleration also comes with my own curatorial research which I began in 2012 right after obtaining my degree in curatorial studies which was sort of like

along the line of what Manuel is doing, what he explained in his introduction which was I was interested to see how intense use of computers in what later on in my research was called telecomputation, which is the synthesis of mass communication and mass computation has influenced or shaped not only the human subjectivity but the production of knowledge itself. So that's how I sort of became interested and I became interested first and foremost in speculative realism because to me speculative realists were sort of like people who really came out of this, that was the first philosophical movement that came out of this synthesis.

And this is something I've argued with a lot of people including Reza and others that like internet and internet connectivity create the conditions for the emergence of spectacular realism therefore acceleration why because both Nick and Alex used to be bloggers and they consider themselves specular realists back it back in the day especially Nick who had the most awesome Nick with with Benjamin Woodard who also going to be teaching a course this this semester or this season for us they maintain the most well-known specular realist blog called speculative heresy. So, yeah, so for me that's my connection to it and my interest was like how this intense use of network computers sort of like create a condition for the emergence

of things like speculative realism and acceleration. Now I'm going to let also Jason talk about his interest in sort of like acceleration that goes beyond the manifesto. Okay, so the way that I came into it was I also lived in Vancouver just like Mo did, and this was in the early 2000s, and I did my master's thesis over there on Paul Virilio, and so that's where I first became introduced to these concepts of speed and acceleration, which are different things, but I've always been interested in the general question of I guess a pace you could say and and and in some of those those types of questions of celerity and and also just the question of technology technologies relationship to power

and culture and in media and things like that and so I've been writing on Paul Virilio since 2002 my most recent book is called Occupy Time Technoculture Mediacy and Resistance Act by Wall Street and in that one I was largely looking at how network computing as Mo was saying how that relates to potentials for resistance and social transformation and various things like that. So when I saw the accelerationist manifesto come out I was kind of excited because it seemed like Paul Verilio's star had kind of fallen quite a bit probably because he was so pessimistic and he was seen as being kind of a very pessimistic and dark critic

of speed and technology and that kind of thing. And the way that I had approached him was always to take him seriously on this quote that he has where he says that he's an art critic of technology and he says that those who really love technology do not love all technology. Just like you wouldn't love every artwork, you don't love every technology. you really love technology, then you are a fierce critic of it enough that you can influence hopefully the direction that it takes. So I was always trying to do a kind of affirmative reading of Borrelio despite him being seen as negative. So when I found, when I saw the Accelerationist Manifesto come out, I was really excited about

that, because I had also taken a kind of Deleuzian turn when I was doing my PhD at the University of Hawaii. And I could see quite a bit of Deleuzean influences in those ideas, and so I found it really interesting. And I brought Stephen Shaviro, this is before I got involved in the Global Center for Advanced Studies, I brought him over to Grand Rapids to give a talk, to talk about just a basic introduction to the concept of accelerationism in November 2013. There's a video of that on YouTube that you can see that's archived. And yeah, so just various things like that. And I had been involved in attempts to put together text and things like that.

But this book is really the first real collection that's out there that I'm aware of. Okay, thank you, Jason. So without further delay, let's delve into the book. So I assume that most of you have had a chance to read the introduction since it's been available for free ever since the book came out in different forms including EPUB and PDF. And I shared a copy of it earlier on, on both Facebook and in the classroom. So I don't know if you have or not, but I'm going to assume that you're familiar with it a little bit. I really like how the introduction begins, where Robin declares that acceleration is

a political heresy. And here, the subtext to this is that it's not really or necessarily an aesthetic one. It's not an aesthetic insurrection. And it's a real political one. that this is what separates accelerationism from other sort of like fascinations with technology or advocacy of technology or even any other kind of like break, like epistemic break that has happened in 20th century. And why is it a heresy? Because it rejects much of both the 20th century's understanding of Marx going back to pre-Frankfurt School.

So it kind of rejects that basic understanding of left through Frankfurt School. And rather what it does, it traces another trajectory from fragments on a machine and it rejects poststructuralism, the legacy of Foucault and forward, even though it borrows from both to bootstrap its own epistemology. So this is what makes it a political heresy. Why? Because it stands against the established norm in the academic world, if not the general society. We've had basically since like at least since like 60s and on, we've had a sort of like

a form of cultural Marxism and or post-structuralism sort of like advocating a certain set of ideas that kind of like acceleration sort of like tries to reject a large group of them. And that's what makes acceleration a political heresy. Now I'm going to maybe name a few of these to be a little bit more clear. Acceleration rejection rejects horizontal politics and advocates a form of return to

universal. Accelerationism rejects identitarian politics, which emphasizes the local identity over a universal global identity. Accelerationism sort of like finds the localist political projects, doesn't reject them, but finds them insufficient in sort of like acting upon the larger problems that humanity faces, larger planetary problems. Accelerationism finds nothing really wrong in the essence of science and technology and finds them not only okay topics but integral part of social progress.

Accelerationism doesn't really support the separation of methodologies in sciences and in natural sciences or what we call the humanities or human sciences. And really the big project will be to come up with a set of methodologies that are applicable to both. These are all entrenched beliefs that are not easy to challenge. When you bring them up, you're going to create a lot of opposition like acceleration has created within the academic world. So this is why the book begins with acknowledging that acceleration is a political heresy.

Acceleration also stands against a wholesale and general rejection of capitalism. And instead it demands a piece by piece reconsideration of capitalism's contradictory constitutive elements. It considers the fundamental dialectics of capital between the forces of production and relations of production both the trap or the prison that contains the tool and the map for the jailbreak. So rather than trying to find an outside, whether it's the commune or it's any kind of outside, it wants to deal with capitalism, but not in a sense, in a way that both poststructuralism or 20th century Marxism, Western Marxism has dealt with it, which is sort of like acknowledging

that capitalism is a form of a prison. But the prison, like we will see with the Marxist essay, gives us the dynamics to find a map and the tools needed to break out of the prison. So capitalism itself, not necessarily, which is kind of like vulgar Marxism, right, it doesn't necessarily lead to a post-capitalist society, but includes enough that if we plan and think rigorous enough, we might be able to break out of it. So that's sort of like a break of accelerationism with other forms of utopian thought. But this political heresy that Mackay declares does not lack a philosophical orientation.

Why? Because the very same project of jailbreak that I just talked about can be scaled to include surpassing the limits of the physical, chemical, corporeal, and even psychological worlds. Also the limits of the earth as the only habitat for life and more importantly human life. And this is something that Fedorov kind of like begins his essay with, right? This desire to go beyond limits can also be seen in the relationship of accelerationism with computers or again my term, telecomputation. On the one hand, accelerationism has generated some of the fiercest criticisms of the dominant computational mode.

An example of it will be Reza Negarestan's lecture two years ago at the Miguel Abro Gallery, which I used as the basis for my exhibition in Vancouver. And the tape for that is available, and if you guys are interested, I will ask Reza and upload it to the classroom so we can hear it. But at the same time that it's been the fiercest critic of technology, it has declared with great desire and determination its intention to use this technology towards better future machines that are not here with us today because the machines of today are sort of limiting. But the future machines are not necessarily or essentially similar to these machines. So it's the same idea of jailbreakers.

We're going to break out of these machines, hopefully, if we can, towards better systems and better machines. Or we're going to start right here with the machines we have right now, and not going to shy away from taking them apart and using parts of them. And speaking of the future, similar to revolutionary ideologies of the 20th century, but only similar, acceleration has a wager on the future, but with a major difference. Because unlike most strands of utopian thought, future for acceleration is not all play and fun. And that comes up in a Marx essay when he takes issue with early socialist ideas that are like, oh, future is just going to be fun and play. The acceleration's future is one in which resources, both material and intellectual,

need to be utilized and organized and planned without rejecting the possibilities, the risks, hype and the production of or even enforcement of hegemony. So these are all parts of this future. You cannot have this future by sort of like wanting just absolute freedom or just thinking about what a future we're going to have. Future starts with planning and with rigorous thinking. And that sort of like separates the approach to future. That's what separates accelerationism in their approach to future compared to the utopian thought of the 20th century or like the modernist utopian thoughts that we've all come across

in our studies sometime. And these are all points I'm making that I'm hoping that you guys would break apart, especially Ross. And I talk about risk and hype because risk and hype are sort of like the two sides of the same coin. The hype side is the side of making claims and generating hegemony and then to minimize the risk that you're taking. So fully understanding how in capitalism risk and hype work together. For capital to continue on accumulating, it needs to basically wage two different battles. One is by taking risks and one by hyping, hyping the future success of these risks in

in order to succeed. And hype will cancel out the risk. So acceleration is aware of that and is willing to employ the same type of procedures in order to secure a future. So this is to say actually capitalization itself can be separated from money and social power. Its current social base which is money and power and applied for advancing social progress. So acceleration is not ashamed of capitalization, but not capitalization with a goal of accumulation of power and money, but capitalization in the form of capitalizing on something else which in the Marx essay, Marx clearly talks about this capitalization of social intellect

which comes out of what? The free time that opens up by the introduction of a machine. Now Jason will talk about that further when he gets into the Marx essay. And even I would dare to declare that acceleration is not even afraid of the idea of debt as a constitutive element of a future because we know how capitalism uses debt to build this future. It lends you money and then the debt forces you into a type of future. That's how sort of like one of the mechanisms of capital for controlling the future is debt. But again, if we find a way to separate debt from its material base, acceleration should be able to use debt even.

But again, a different type of debt, a debt that is not about borrowing money or towards accumulating money later. And this I'm very interested in because Suhail Malik is working on a project to sort of like relate debt to acceleration and how it is possible to sort of like rescue debt, rescue the idea of debt from how it's been sort of criticized and shunned for many, many centuries as a bad element of social life. I was going to say maybe we could open it up just a little bit for other people's interpretations.

Ross Wolf had a great post in the sidebar here about the Paris Commune, which I'm assuming is from the Civil Wars in France. I don't quite remember. Do you want to articulate that, Ross? I can check your microphone. Oh, your mic doesn't work at all. Okay. All right, I'll read that out loud, and maybe we can talk about it. So Ross says, I tend to see the commune or its locus classicus, the Paris Commune, as not outside of capitalism but merging within and through it. As Marx wrote in 1872, the working class did not expect miracles from the commune. They have no ready-made utopias to introduce part de crée du peuple.

I don't know French that well. They know that in order to work out their own emancipation and along with it, that higher form the higher form to which present society is is everything by its own economical agencies this is really crucial I think I think right here I'm sorry along with it that higher form form to which present society is irresistibly pending by its own economical agency so it's imminently coming from within the current economic structure is he's kind of suggesting it's tending towards some kind of communist future. They will have to pass through long struggles, through a series of historic processes. If people could stop typing in the sidebar for just a minute

while I'm reading this, because it makes it go up, and then I can't keep reading it. They will have to pass... They have no ideals to realize but to set free the elements of the new society with which old, collapsing bourgeois society itself is already pregnant. In the full consciousness of their historic mission, and with the heroic resolve to act up to it, the working class can afford to smile at the coarse invective of the gentleman's gentleman, with pen and ink horn, and at the didactic patronage of well-wishing bourgeois doctrinaires, pouring forth their ignorant platitudes and sectarian crotchets in a racular tone of scientific infallibility. Yeah, that's a beautiful, just the way he phrases it there. Yeah, but the point there is that it's already, you know, this is already something that is within capitalism.

So it's not some pure utopian outside. And for Marx, communism was never seen that way. I think it's in the Grandrisse where he says that communism is nothing but the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. There is no pure form of communism. at least not that he fully articulated maybe gave some trace outlines but not in any really from the various manuscripts, Russ Wolf says some other people here are dialoguing with Russ so maybe some of those people could come in and Jason, if you don't mind let's bring Yvonne in

and also Carlos actually to be sort of like Yeah. Both of them have stuff to say, so maybe you guys want to turn your mic on and have your conversation because all the text will be lost if you don't copy it and paste it somewhere else. Okay, sure, sure. Yeah, that's a great quote from Ross. I absolutely agree with it. Perhaps the notion, even the term commune, sure Paris commune has the famous historical name and just a lot of 60s and 70s movements. I mean, I know because I was born and raised in a sort of communist, escapist, new age cult from the 60s. The new age, there is a form of upper middle class rich people who look for fantasies of

escapism, whereas that is only sort of middle class subjectivity that can emerge if you You can possibly have the idea of purchasing a plot of land somewhere and escaping. So you do that to an extent, what's the problem you're meaning by... There's a commune, no? Sort of as an idea of political resistance, a form of escapism. Right. Is that what you meant when you were discussing the commune as opposed to the historical, the original historical Paris commune?

I think some of it got cut out just a little bit, if you could just restate the last part of what you're saying. I was saying that, yeah, just I wanted to maybe clarify what perhaps Mohr meant when he was saying communes have emerged in the past 30, 40 years as an attempt at escape, as an attempt at political strategy of escapism. I wish Ross was. Yeah. There was a nice movement, which was very different. The chat he was bringing up was about the Paris commune. Yeah. Yeah, there's definitely huge differences. Because Ross brought that up in relation to something that Mohit said when he was talking

about sort of what has, how the left has become localized escapists. I would, you know, Carlos is not here, but I think it's important to, I wish he could join us because Carlos is trying to sort of like talk about how acceleration relates to post-structuralism by talking about the idea of how acceleration relates to Delusian imminence. That was me actually. Oh that was you. Oh okay great. So you want to like, let's talk about that because if you present it I can respond to it. Okay.

Yeah I mean apart from the fact that you know as usual even like the term speculative realism is a whole heterogeneous grouping of people and you know lots of people like Ray Banzier they reject the term they think it was just good for the time so from my understanding as well post-structuralism also was this Anglo term that had just been put a bunch to a bunch of French philosophers in the 60s and 70s and it's always seemed to me that the term the very deconstructionist term there is no outside very much relates even in a Deleuzium term to, there is no transcendent outside to capital so we have to go through it to an extent. So I'm interested in that, in understanding the relationship or what acceleration explicitly

rejects in the post-structuralist thinkers and what instead they do take from it. I even see a critique of the immediacy, you know, the speech versus texting as a big thing because that is a big fantasy in today's disavowed world where we like technology, but we still think that there is greater value in natural, unmediated experience as well. I would let Jason also to comment on this. But to me, who's obsessed about theoretical genealogies, For me personally, I don't necessarily see Deleuze and his idea of eminence as sort of like a core concept of poststructuralism.

For me poststructuralism is sort of like what happens with the break, with the Foucauldian break right between order of things and archaeology of knowledge. And then you see that sort of like picked up by, you know, with what Roland Barthes is doing, what Barthes is doing, and then with Derrida. to me and sort of the emphasis of discourse and language. So there's nothing outside of language, right? And then what happens with Deleuze is that Deleuze cleverly, in sort of like white-headian type of understanding, he's sort of like Spinozian type of like imminence into the picture by sort of like not really challenging the presumptions of

post-structuralist, but by adopting their language and kind of like camouflaging the sort of like rationalist core and vitalist core of his own sort of like rationalist, vitalist core of his beliefs to not really be challenged on them and kind of like rides the wave of poststructuralism and really, but I don't necessarily consider the Deleuzian eminence part of poststructuralism, even though on the surface it might look like it. And then with acceleration what you have is the outside is, you know what I mean, the way they break with Deleuz is like how Negarestani puts it.

It's like, yeah, ontologically everything is the same thing. And at different levels you can argue that, at different epistemic levels you can say, okay, everything is made up of molecules, or everything is made up of atoms, right? So ontologically we're dealing with an imminent world. But epistemologically, in order to understand this world, you need to sort of like make arbitrary bifurcations, trifurcations, to use these things as models to understand this eminent world. You know what I mean? And also politically then, accepting that everything happens within the realm of capital is sort of like debilitating because even though everything currently in this moment

happens within the domain of capital, it's only by bifurcating and imagining a world outside of capital that you can actually break out of capitalism, even though in the present moment everything is part of capital. So it's sort of like that type of epistemological strategy applied to politics becomes what? Becomes this demand for a future different than capitalism, even though that future is not here because in this moment and imminently, everything is somehow seems to be operating under the domain of capital. So this is how I distinguish them. Now I don't know if Jason wants to chime in. That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for that application.

Maybe you are the voice of Ross. Maybe you want to read Ross because Ross just posted something. Well, we also have Carlos's – well, yeah, do you want to respond to what Ross just said? Actually, Carlos is ahead of Ross. Why don't we just let Carlos go and then we get to Ross? Go ahead, Carlos. Well, I didn't want to respond to Ross necessarily because I think he's bringing up a good point, but I think in many ways the points that are presented by both the reader and what we're saying here are – I mean, they're obviously connected by the rubric of acceleration, but I also think that there's a, for me, there's an elephant in the room from a Marxist perspective, which is what is, and Ross brings it into the room by using the quote from the Civil War in France,

which is what part of accelerationism is actually novel to the Marxist progressive tradition of advancing capital in some way, in order to either gestate or accelerate the path to communism. And for me, the thing, and maybe this is just my training, I trained with a lot of Maoists and a lot of Trotskyites, is some of this sounds to me like a kind of manifesto for productive forces determinism. You know, the old idea that we have to have a particular kind of advance, whether it be in the epistological or whether it be in the forces of production,

that will allow us to bring up the proletariat, to combine different movements, and I think that's all really cool. My question for accelerationism, and I'm looking at the book right here, thank you Amazon, is what does it mean to present the history of a philosophical tendency that exists only in the form of isolated eruptions? This is page 7, which each time sink without a trace under a sea of unanimous censure and or dismissive scorn. And I'm not sure that's actually the case. But that's okay. That's a different thing. Why don't you think it's the case? Because... I don't think it's the case. No, go ahead, Mo. I'm sorry. No, no, no. The reason why I ask that question is not a cynical question.

The question is, if you think it's not the case, in fact, we understand how Camte, how Veblen, how these figures have not been taken seriously in sort of like the canon. Even Marx's own fragments that are quoted here, if you don't tell a lot of young readers of Marx that this is Marx, they won't even believe it's Marx because this is not the Marx we know. I think that's a legitimate point. You know what I mean? What Robin is trying to argue is that yes, you are absolutely right and Ross is right. There's been this type of approach to how we can get out of capitalism prior to acceleration,

but nothing has really put them together like a rosary to get somewhere with it. It's always erupted and then suppressed for another project which is what? We know what it is, liberal humanism, separation of politics from culture, advocacy of cultural production over political organization. These are all problems that we know how ideas will trickle down from cultural production. We don't need to worry about planning. We outsource all the dirty work to scientists and politicians and capitalists and then we just go create culture. So this is why it's important to string together these pieces in order to come back backwards to a history of acceleration. I think that's a beautiful analogy.

The analogy of the rosary is excellent. I guess there's a sort of embedded teleology that they have, as if somehow the strength of Marx's ideas, the strength of Veblen's ideas, would naturally lead to a kind of organization under this rosary. And what I see from the perspective of a Latin Americanist if we take certain critical thinkers in our tradition or even in the global south, when we start talking about the way the Bandung Conference articulated its relationship to, quote-unquote, Cold War modernities, I think what you have is much more a punctuated and inconsistently applied instrumentalization of certain ideas of Marx.

I'm just not sure that accelerationism – like you say Cold War modernity. Accelerationism is something that has ever been – can be strung together because of the way capital has developed in certain areas. This is like my – this is my nighttime, so I'm starting to like fade to black. But that's a big question for me, and I don't think we're going to answer it today. I think we need to look at the text with more depth. But that was sort of what I was getting to, is like, for me, the table. Iranian capitalism. The impossibility of stringing this together also comes from the fact that you really can't string them together in a linear way that a book does.

But at the end of the day, we're dealing with a book, and we're not dealing with clusters of information that only partially relate to each other. So part of this sort of like sense of, this synthetic sense that you see and you express has to do with like putting together these ideas doesn't necessarily fit the linear format of a book. Yet at the same time, everybody wants a volume, a book called Acceleration to put it back, to put it back and start somewhere and finish somewhere. I would have personally, I would have probably, as I said earlier, I would have rearranged this book maybe to address some of these impossibilities that you're talking about, right? but at the same time it's like it's nice to to have an easy way of going through the material from marks forward I agree let me let me in with this I think what you're saying

is what we're hopefully doing with the new center yeah totally we're not encumbered by the mechanics of bibliography so we have an opportunity to do these things in a way that they don't so I'm I'm totally in favor I'm I really are also burn him at the first meeting and we have so many readings that we can get through be such a rich Conversation to get everybody on board with reading, but there's that's my that's my professor side I want everybody to do the reading so that's me. Yes, definitely so Anybody else wants to jump in at this point because I still have lots of notes, but I'd rather hear conversations as well, you know Morgan, do you want to like, no, I'm not going to put people on spot.

Yeah, Morgan has something to say, go ahead. I just had a small point which is, I, I, I, I, not knowing his remarks isn't that well, it's typical for me to follow the actual, you guys in the media. If you get closer to the microphone it will be lovely. Do you want me to restate what I said? No, no, I heard it, but now I hear you way better right now. Okay, great. Just the point that Carlos just made, that maybe there's an assumption that when you sort of automatically put these ideas together that it will, it might do something. I find that quite interesting. I guess my main interest in this course is figuring out whether, like this is the first, you know, I've been very interested in theory in general

for a number of years, but it's always struck me is sort of inapplicable. And this is one of the first times that I see a theory that that sort of wants to do actual work. And so I mean, I'm at least interested to see what the potential is, at least from my perspective. I don't know if that's really what you even meant, Carlos, but... No, that's really... Jason, do you want to chime in? Well, one thought that I've had here is also,

I mean, if we're thinking about the kind of, like, trajectory that has led to this, one thing I've really noticed is, is, you know, if you go back to, like, Nick Land and some of the original ideas of accelerationism, there's always been this tension between a somewhat kind of nihilistic or nihilist version of accelerationism that doesn't really have any particular direction or, like, navigational compass of any kind, really. And then there also being another one that is more, like, pretty explicitly, a little more pretty explicitly, you know, either communist or at least, you know, progressivist, democratic socialist or something like that.

And I was actually thinking, the way they put together the reader, they could have started actually with Nietzsche and Marx, because, you know, at least in the way that Deleuze and Guattari talk about it in Anti-Edithus, they're directly invoking Nietzsche. I think the quote, accelerate the contradictions, I might be wrong, I might be misremembering it, but I think that quote comes from Nietzsche. Nietzsche definitely had this sort of Promethean, you know, Ubermensch concept. And so, you know, I just find it interesting that there's this kind of interplay. You could say in the earliest sort of seeds, if you want to look at it like that, between Nietzsche and Marx, one that is sort of kind of an open Prometheanism going in

many possible directions, another that has a bit more of a compass, and then with Nick Land, I mean, sorry, with Deleuze and Guattari, where I would find that with Deleuze and Guattari is that Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus was somewhat more, I wouldn't say it was nihilist, but it was somewhat more nihilistic compared to what they ended up doing with A Thousand Plateaus. And that's one of the things that Ray Brassier refers to, and that Nick Land himself in his footnotes and some of his early articles complained about was that what they did in Anti-Oedipus and some of these ideas that were later called accelerationism,

those ideas were great, but then they met Paul Virilio, and then they wrote A Thousand Plateaus, and Paul Virilio was a critic of speed and was saying, you know, de-territorialize, but maybe don't de-territorialize too fast, and so then Deleuze and Guattari invented this version that is a little closer to Marx. and then finally recently you know you still have the kind of legacy of Nick Land but then you have Shurnacek and Williams and I think Shurnacek and Williams version you know the way that they emphasize navigation is definitely you know and they even bring up very specific proposals such as a universal guaranteed basic income and I don't think you would ever hear that

from Nick Land even today although now Nick Land has a version of where he thinks things should go. Jason, also, like, I want to, like, go back to Carlos, if I'm not wrong, and about sort of, like, the credibility of stringing these things together. And maybe we can bring in Tony for, like, a little bit, because this really relates to Tony also. So, Tony, maybe you want to get ready to explain hyperstition a little bit, because I know you're doing work around that. And that, I mean, the book is clear about how this putting together of these texts is a construction. It's like a building of a new thing. It's creating associations that probably doesn't even exist.

It's sort of a set of assertions, claims, right? So the book says, this book therefore aims to participate in the writing of philosophical counter-history, the construction of a genealogy of acceleration. So it's like accusing it of being constructivist is knocking on an open door. And then it says, not the only possible one. Other texts, like Jason said, could have been included. Other stories will be told. at the same time, producing accelerationism itself is a fictional or hyperstitional anticipation of intelligence to come. So see, at the same time that it puts it together, it's willing to show you the arbitrariness

of the stringing together. Now, Tony, can you explain a little bit about hyperstition? Well, yeah, hypersetition is, I mean, it's one of the main things that the CCRU is talking about is that it's fictional quantity functional. I don't know, it's that it's something that's effectively cultural. It's a semiotic production that can make itself real. So a lot of the people, a lot of the CCRU researchers were talking and they were interested in fiction based on the fact that they want to know that there's sort of these sort of cryptic communications, signaling returns, or these can, I mean, what I would end up

doing, I would end up resummarizing what you said, is that these sort of semiotic productions then all of a sudden start to make themselves connect in a certain way. So yeah, so basically, I think somebody, maybe it's you, Tony. Maybe it's you, Tony. You're echoing. You're echoing. Yes, thank you. Yeah, so basically, hyperstition means inserting fiction into nonfiction and claiming it as nonfiction, sort of like Reza's Cyclonopedia. So in that sense, the book admits to its high prestigional qualities. Jason? Yes.

I ask you because I think maybe we should get to Mark's sooner than later because you have a lot to cover in terms of like breaking up the text and like talk a little bit about assignments maybe or and and also Tony wants to demonstrate the classroom for five or few minutes because I think we're at 820 right now and I think we started about 30 minutes late and if we had had a normal class session we would have been done at 9 so I'm guessing we have till 930 is that about right yeah totally but still I think I think we're gonna use up all that if you're going to like oh yeah absolutely it's just things more and and the marks marks thing is It's just so fascinating, so. Yeah, no, I'm just trying to navigate. So, so yeah, so what,

do you wanna start on that? We said we were gonna do it together, so if you want. Well, the thing is, I just did Robin's intro, so you might wanna start and then I jump in, because I don't wanna dominate the class. Okay, well, this fragment on machines is from Grandresa, And basically what it's dealing with is, you know, what is the role in the division of capital the way that Marx frames capital? There's two, I mean, there are many forms, but one of his main, or two of his main categories are fixed capital, also referred to as constant capital, and then also variable capital. And variable capital refers to living labor, refers to individual, you know, living bodies that go into a factory or go into a call center or whatever they may do.

and use the physical infrastructure, use the buildings, use the technologies, use what Marx called fixed capital, which is capital that is kind of constant and that is always there and doesn't get tired and fall asleep, although machines can break down and that kind of thing. But basically, he's constantly in the fragment of the machines and other places that he refers to this theme, he's always raising the question of what is the relationship between the worker, the capitalist, and the capitalist's capital. So the capital could be the money, the reserve money that the capitalist has on hand to create

whatever they want to create. It could be cultural capital, it could be knowledge capital, and it can also be technological fixed capital. And so the fixed capital is primarily, I think the way that it's kind of being used in the accelerationist reader is to refer mostly to machines, to machinery and technology, and thinking about what is the relationship between the two. So what I take from this fragment is that fixed capital is becoming more important, at least the way that Mark sees it and certainly people like Matteo Pasquinelli and others

who have – in my book I take the same argument, I have a chapter called Constant Capitalism and the idea is that constant capital or fixed capital, meaning the basic technologies, that that that form of capital is replacing variable capital. It's replacing the need for living bodies to produce more capital. And the more that this happens, if you look at it from the perspective of time, one of the themes in here is that there's actually less and less need for physical bodies to reproduce capital or to expand capital.

So the more that that happens, what happens to these sort of cast off populations that are no longer as necessary? So you have two kind of tendencies. One tendency is for large numbers of people to become superfluous or if you want to use the governance terms, homo soccer in some way, but just become irrelevant to the reproduction of capital. And another tendency is that we have that is throughout this also is that we have more and more technologies, we have more and more machines, we have more and more capacities to be productive, but they're not actually reducing our labor time.

In fact, what they're doing is they're making it so that we're constantly producing, so that we're constantly working. You could relate that to Deleuze's concept of the control society or maybe to Jonathan queries 24-7 that you know you're always you're kind of always contributing now to you could say that fixed capital has been created in such a way that you are always in some way or another even in your sleep contributing to the production of more capital but the real point here is that the way it relates to accelerationism in my view is that is basically that is that we have more and more technological capacity than we ever had before.

But really what's happening is that it's actually capitalists are doing a much worse job with those new capacities than they have ever done before in the specific sense that all those technologies could be used to do a whole lot more than they're doing right now. Just like to interject this is like the part that sort of like highlights what you just said. You know, the page numbering is very hard to send you to a page because I'm actually reading my digital copy because it was easier to like, I don't want to like mark my print copy. So like, I can't send you to a page number but if you're dealing with a digital copy and write down a few words, you should be able to pull it up. And now my machine

is like acting up. It was just right in front of me and now I have to wait for it to reappear. I'm so sorry. We're still not there yet. Just one sec, I'll find it. There we go. It It says, machinery does not lose its value as soon as it ceases to be capital. While machinery is the most appropriate form of the use value of fixed capital, it does not at all follow that therefore sumption under the social relation of capital.

It is the most appropriate and ultimate social relation of production for the application of machinery. So even though machines are basically are part of the regime of Samsung, but there's something in them that exists outside of Samsung. And to continue on, I had this other part highlighted, but somehow all my pagination kind of got mixed up on the Nuke. I'll leave it to you. I'll bring it up later. Go ahead, Jason. Sorry about that. No, no, it's totally fine. So Ross brings up something about constant capital versus variable capital and fixed versus variable.

Can you add a little more to that, Ross? Let's just read what he said, maybe. Okay, so here's what Ross said. He said that, hold on, fixed capital should not be equated with constant capital though it's a common conflation and a and then he said that constant capital or dead labor versus variable capital living labor fixed capital as opposed to circulating capital yeah so that's a that's a third type of capital that is brought up in I'm in circulating leading capital is another type of capital that's brought up in it in this piece which is on how it works throughout the whole kind of money system and in what role that plays so with that you could refer to you know

the kind of classic you know Keynes Hayek idea which is with for Keynes you know obviously there has to be money in circulation otherwise nobody has any money to spend and that sort of thing whereas for Hayek you know neoliberal kind of cutbacks and things like that are not a problem and I'm there's nothing to worry about okay so Ross ads here it's a recording distinction constant variable capital is the determining relation what marks calls the organic composition capital whereas fixed capital refers to capital that can't be moved around easily okay alright I'm I've read a couple different interpretations that but I'll definitely be interested to to go check that out Ross I really wish that you had a microphone be called it

have more of a dialogue. Hopefully you'll have one too. He says it's in volume two and it's technical and confusing. Okay cool. Alright so yeah there are all kinds of quotes that...oh wait so here we have something from Sean. Sean do you want to just turn on your microphone? Sean, do you want to just turn on your microphone? Let me see if I can turn it on for you. There you go. We can hear you now if you want to articulate it. Well, I mean, I don't know the advantage of looking at constant variable capital as the same thing,

but either way, I was going to say in using different types of capital towards more accelerationist ends, because Mo started to talk about that a bit with debt at the beginning, and he was mentioning how Suhail was in some way starting to talk about something like that. So my question then was on that point, can anyone elaborate then on the appropriation of financial markets as a major part of existing capitalism, but in use as instruments of acceleration? Because they are, I mean, it just seems so archaic to only talk about machinery, right? Mm-hmm. Not that it's not relevant, but... Right, right, right. Could you say a little more what you mean about appropriation of financial markets?

Just like debt and monetary instruments as forms of capital that are already abstract. Oh, right. You know, what are some ways in which those kinds of things are used versus them being acceleration this way? I see. I'm going to turn that over to Mo because I thought he had a good response on the question of debt earlier. Well what is debt? If you separate debt from its sort of like material base which is financial obligation, if you take the financial part and financial here we mean like finance and it's like classical understanding being like money and all that.

Object is a set of personal obligations towards something larger than the person. So you basically oblige yourself to a certain type of constant recurrence of payments towards a goal. So that can easily turn into something, I hate to say positive, but that can be separated from its monetary basis and be used towards social construction. I don't know if I'm here. I'm trying to find a quote.

I have Sohail's document in front of me and I'm trying to find something to read out for you. But does my answer so far help? A bit. I mean, we can talk about it later. See, let me read some of Sohail's writing here. I think I hit something that might help. So basically, the negative side of it is like through taxation and the forced reduction of social welfare systems, the general populations of any given country are paying to support

privatized credit lines. That is to maintain ourselves in debt. The gains from such debt are not returned to the general population, even in the attenuated form of state provision, but rather to private creditors, more accurately the executives and owners of the private corporations. So now imagine if you use the same type of general population's obligations towards debt, but imagine if that money, rather than financing a bank's credit, would finance other sorts of common obligations that are good for everyone. I don't know if that makes any sense or not.

It's very hard to try to salvage the idea of debt from its material reality. And I didn't really like... I mean, one thing I would add. Let me just read this also. A collective must always be indebted to itself in order to carry out any kind of production. Indeptedness makes the real of solidarity in several district senses. in the way it sustains material production, in the way it signifies a domain of dependency and sharing otherwise inaccessible, and in a way it seals our belongings to the world through our being with others. That quote is from Maurizio Lazzardo, for whom political action within and against politics

of capital must be resumed on the basis of, citing Nietzsche, a second innocence with respect to depth. That is leaving behind depth morality, the making of indebted man translation dah dah dah dah. I make this paper available for you guys. For David Graeber, depth assumes exchange and hierarchical inequality, themselves predicated on a number relation born out of violence. Graeber advocates the counter principle of a homely, practical communism of effectively organized shared everyday responsibilities as a form of depth. This is anyway the foundation of all societies irrespective of their macro ordering responsibilities

that are for Gerber naturally distinct to number and depth. Now, if you want more about this I don't mind making the paper sort of like available only like privately to us online. Carlos wants to come in too. One final note that I'll just drop in real quick is from Nikos Polansis. It's not specifically about debt, but it's about some of the things that tend to lead to debt for working classes, which is, you know, Polansis has this whole theme where he talks about sort of the desire to be middle class or to even be like petty bourgeoisie, like a small business owner or something like that on the part of workers.

And he actually sees this as a potentially revolutionary impulse in the sense that that will probably be frustrated. And if you extend credit to a lot of people and put them in debt and give them McMansions and give them college educations and then suddenly take away all their McMansions and make their college educations not really worth anything in terms of a career, that could be a recipe for some kind of revolt, maybe a middle-class revolt when it comes down to it, but nevertheless, still something significant. So I'm going to turn it over to Carlos now. Oh, there we go. I didn't want to interject for too long, in fact, because Mo said exactly what I was

going to say. I was going to come up with that Lazzarato reading. I was just looking for it, and things are a little bit chaotic here. The thing that I wanted to come back to is not just debt, but what Sean asked was the appropriation of financial markets as instruments of acceleration. In other words, is that what I take that to mean is sort of the technological apparatus of financial exchange as an instrument of acceleration. And that, we could come up to that. is we can talk about that from the point of view of, and I'm trying to think of who is, I think it is, not Lazzarato, but I can see the name of the other thinker and it will come to me.

But he does talk about that. Christian Swiss, I'm blanking out. but in any rate though I did want to ask a question about the readings and also it was that was that Christian Maserati yeah there we go I couldn't think I'm I'm not gonna lie when I can't remember a name we type their name so we can copy paste this conversation into a classroom because there's a lot of good information by Ross and everybody being shared there on the sidebar now once we close the window probably would just go away yeah That's actually what I wanted to get. I wanted to get to the technical question because I do need to cut that short, but also volunteer for the readings.

Sorry to bring you back. Because you want to leave, right? Is that why? I'm sorry? Are you leaving? That's why you want to tell us which text you would like to present on? Yeah, I know. I'm being an utter prick, but I think for the first class, it's always good to get this stuff out of the way. So are you suggesting that we should all decide what text are we going to read and then break or and then continue on or you want to just tell us what you want to work on and then we continue on and then we break with it? I'm going to just tell you what I would work on. Okay. I'm not going to suggest anything for the collective if we do it. You know what? If we get into it, maybe it's a good idea that we all pick our pieces. Yeah. because that's why I suggested that because we're going to get into that kind of like

mode. Might as well everyone, so all of you guys maybe you want to like while Carlos and me and Carlos, me and Jason and Tony go in this order and tell you which pieces we would like to cover. You guys pick your pieces too. And then it's also good to have two people doing the same one so don't think that your option is being taken. It just means like we're going to have varying or differing ideas about the same piece of text. So go ahead, Carlos. So what's the initial choice in this next upcoming selection? Is it just the ones in the reading for the next meeting or is it... Yeah, if you pick a reading, you probably will end up presenting it in a week that that reading comes up. And then the syllabus has all of them sort of like... Yeah, I can see them in the syllabus, yeah.

So these ones should just be for the next week's reading. So that sub-selection, that subset of readings. Which one do you like to do? I'm sorry, are you speaking to me? Yes, Carlos. I'd like to do inner-gummin capitalism by Leo Kark. So what pages in the book is it? That is... Sorry. It's on October 1st. It's sort of the end. But if we don't have volunteers for earlier stuff... No, that's okay. That's totally fine. We go with your choice. Cool. Excellent. Yes, and that is for October 1st, I believe. Okay, so which one was it again?

It is Energoomin Capitalism, 163. Oh, Energoomin Capitalism. That's a Robin McKay translation. Great. Cool. Thank you. So that's the one you were going to do? Yeah. Yes, and do you know which one would you like to do? Me? Yes. Let's start with the students. I thought while they're looking, maybe you and me and Tony can pick one up, and then they can, like, use that time to make up their mind. I mean, I want to do the Deleuze and Guattari. Well, then just let's write it down. Okay. Which one? I think there's a few

the Los Inglateres, right? The Civilized Capitalist Machine That's a big one Tony, you should totally do Kamat, unless there's somebody else here who has like some background in kind of eco-anarchism slash eco-Marxism So you're not only deciding for yourself but also for Tony I mean do whatever you want He just knows me well enough because he picked Luis and Guattrisa needs to give me one. No, but that's the one I want if nobody else. OK, so I think it's . Oh, it's Jason. It's Tony. Tony's got . OK, so I basically Carlos Rose Komet is. OK, so Tony does Komet, right?

Yeah. And then Jason does, Jason which one do you want to do? Deleuze and Guttari, the civilized capitalist machine. We're going to make this into a cohesive like thing by tomorrow, this list should be all up and running. I would like to do Ray Bracier's piece if you guys don't mind. I would like, because I'm very familiar with it, and I would like totally love to present on that. So I would do that. That's in the next section. That's in part two. Oh, my God. I'm really sorry. Yeah, I would like to do that one as well. I also just thought, oh, it's not in this section. Okay, you know what?

I will do the Firestone piece. So I'm also doing next week, so we just get it out of the way. I'd like to do Vaveland. Vaveland? Excellent. Ivan is doing the Vaveland piece, right? Okay. Great. And when is that presentation going to happen then for all these you've just selected? I mean, well, you know, Vaveland was today, but you will do your Vaveland tomorrow. We already thought about that with Jason, that some people still may want to take marks. We're not going to exclude you from this, taking anything that we read today. So Ivan's going to do wavelength, and that will be tomorrow though, right? Is that okay? Is that okay?

Wednesday. Pardon me? No, tomorrow I mean Wednesday. I'm really, really sorry. Wednesday. But there is one scheduled for tomorrow as well, right? There is a Hangout schedule. For Wednesday. For Wednesday, not tomorrow. Oh, it's Wednesday, right? Okay. It's Wednesday. You have one day to prepare. Okay, so let's see. Okay, yeah. So, Laura, you haven't said much and I would like to know if you'd like to tell us what would you like to do? Is it only from the readings for these… For the first two sections, yeah. For these first two sections, right? Well, I haven't gone through the Accelerate Reader actually, like, yet, fully.

So... Do you have the book? What? Sorry? Do you have the book? No, I don't have it yet. I managed to go through it and that's why I think you wanted to go through it mainly. Okay, so maybe, maybe, maybe I shouldn't try to fix you to something right now and put you on the spot. So maybe you can just be a great audit person. But the minute you're ready to tell us what do you like to do, you still have three more sessions to jump in and present on anything. And also remember... Go ahead. Go, go. I just wanted to say that all texts for today's class, I found them and I posted them to the classroom. So you can always present on one of the pieces that me and Jason are covering today. Great. Okay, thanks.

OK, so that's Laura. Let's go with Manuel. I'm actually in a similar situation. I ordered a book, but I haven't gotten it yet. OK, never mind. You can always join us later. Morgan, you. I'd love to say a little . Pardon me? You went back on mute. the video button. Okay, go ahead. Let's talk a little bit about the J.G. Ballard text. Lovely. So you'll be doing the Ballard. Morgan Ballard. Okay, so if you continue on, Ross, just type what you want to do and then if you're going

to do one. Ross, do you want to do the marks? Nobody's chosen that yet. Will they have it in Brooklyn Night? Yes, they do have it. So would you like to do a Marx? Because you're like, I'm talking to you, Ross. I know you can't speak, but you can type. Do Marx because you'll be the dissenting voice, hopefully, on Marx. Is that good? Lovely. Okay, so Ross will do a presentation. So that will be Wednesday for you. And then Tony's decided, and then Jason, you decided to.

Okay, now we're dealing with people that are watching online and like watching it live on YouTube. So please email us your suggestion as soon as you can so we can add you to the list of presenters. And then that would also give us a map as to know on what day we'll invite you to the Hangout. So yeah, so I guess I covered that. So now that we're done with that, let's continue on with... Go ahead, Jason. You were continuing on Mark's. I was...no, I'm...I don't remember where we were, to be honest. Well, I'll tell you, we...you know, like, Sean asked a question, and then that's how

how you got interrupted. I do have a question here about which one Sean wants to do. Oh yeah, Sean. He left the room though, right? No, he's here. Sean. What's left? Power of repetition? What's left? Doesn't matter what's left, my friend. You can pick anything you want. Are you there, Sean? I'm looking at the syllabus now. Okay, sorry. Okay, I can take the Lipovetsky. Okay, you're Lipovetsky.

I'm gonna type it here. Okay. Thank you for remembering that. Now, let me just get back to Marx, maybe, because what I really enjoyed reading in this Marx piece was sort of like the ambivalence of Marx about the labor theory of value. And this has been one of the bones of contention among, so like acceleration is proximity to Marx. It always comes down to some form of like issue or problem with like what are we going to do with the labor theory of values.

And I found in this text sort of like, I posted it on Facebook today too as a sort of precursor. So Marx's own sort of like, Marx's own sort of complex attitude toward primacy of labor. And I'm going to read again, I don't know page number. The text says, the theft of alien labor time on which the present wealth is based appears a miserable foundation in face of this new one created by large scale industry itself. So there's these two types of labor time that Marx kind of bifurcates. The theft of alien labor time on which the present wealth is based appears a miserable

foundation in face of this new one created by large scale industry itself. And then he goes on by saying, as soon as labor in the direct form has ceased to be the great wellspring of wealth, labor time seizes and must cease to be its measure. And hence, exchange value must cease to be the measure of use value. The surplus labor of the mass has ceased to be the condition for the development of general wealth, just as non-labor of the few for the development of the general powers of the human head." So I thought, here it comes, Marx's own sort of complication of labor theory of value and its relationship to sort of like late capitalism or technologized capital.

Yes, yes, it was. Jason? Sorry, I'm muted. Did somebody say it was Maserato? Yes. Carlos says that it was Maserato after all. Okay. And I'm particularly interested in the issue of labor theory of value because two of my favorite political economists, actually my favorite political economists, Nitzan and Bichler have sort of like made a claim as to critique and reject the Marxist

understanding of the labor theory of value and have proposed another type of power theory of value which in a sense is much closer to this sort of like condition that Marx create here that like as soon as we enter this new new technologized type of work, pure labor itself ceases to be the basis. So I don't know if anybody wants to discuss this or not. Sure. Pure labor ceases to be the basis of what? Can you say it again? Yeah, here it is. I lost my page. Must cease to be the basis, right?

Here we go, I lost it again. The basis of our understanding of how capital works, in my opinion, that's what he's suggesting. I mean he doesn't reject labor theory of value but he says there's two types of labor. There's the labor prior to the machine technology taking over, the miserable labor and then there's this new type of labor. And then you know how the Marxist text is basically about the possibilities that this new type of labor offers, right?

In terms of free time and then real versus formal subsumption. Right, and there's, you know, the congealed labor that the machine represents, that the fixed capital represents, is also the product of labor, but it becomes a laboring machine that doesn't require anyone to be paid anymore. So then you have this huge body of unemployed people with a lot more time than they had before, but they also at the same time cannot go purchase anything because there's no circulating capital. Yeah, but see, this is where I guess I converge with you, but I think there's a, I mean, you sort of like read this text in terms of like, we either end up with like people that

are that capital has no use for, or we end up with this immaterial type of work that will consume our 24-7, right? But I think Marx leaves room for how this extra time will contribute to the development of what he calls, and I just can't find it, a higher form of production. And he mentions science and art. I don't know if you know the part I'm talking about, right? Yeah, yeah. For him, it's not just, okay, Ross, thank you so much for your participation. It's 9 o'clock. So for him it's not just this, it's not just like either way is negative, there is a third kind of time that opens up for what he calls higher activity.

And I didn't see that mentioned in your characterization. Yeah, yeah absolutely. Well also the role of science becomes, you know, because the better machines you create, You know, the less time it takes to create, the less actual investment of money or of capital that it takes to create more capital. Yeah, yeah, that's a really crucial part of it too. Can I make another brief interjection on that point? Yes, yes, go ahead anytime. And also Sean wanted to say something that... Oh, I'm sorry. No, no, go ahead, go ahead. Go ahead. I just wanted to mention is I think the distinction, you know, I don't think we're forgetting,

But part of the thing we can talk about in later manifestations, of course, is the idea of where the lumpen proletariat fits into the general scheme of Marxist labor and how one of the things that accelerationism might propose – or let me step before accelerationism, and we can talk about Lazzarato. So now my brain is working and immaterial labor and how where – the lumpen proletariat was always this excess of capital, right? But it had these social functions, the rag pickers, the thieves, the drug dealers, anything that operated in what we would call either precarious labor or criminalized labor. Now accelerationism has – or technology and technical development is seen to make us more and more immaterial and occupy a different space, laboral space, that is much more like the Lumpen Proletariat.

And that's just something that I think that you're getting to, Marlon, you're reading, is that this is something that's being produced here, and we're not yet aware or we're still working out the bugs on how this kind of situation is developing. So I think that's a really good point. I just wanted to – shades of 18th Brumair of Louis Napoleon came into my head. Sean, you were talking about the wellspring of wealth. When it ceases to be the wellspring, right? Do you want to, like, discuss this with me? Because I have some interesting stuff to talk about. I highlighted that part because... Okay, you're on. It looks like you're driving. Are you sure you can talk? I'm kidding. I mean, I guess I was just hoping you would talk a little bit more about that.

Yes, well, you know... But, like, it seems that everybody... You always hear about accelerationism, like this idea that nobody is or that we can use or what it really is is the Buckminster Fuller kind of cliche about people no longer having to work in mass because we have the managerial expertise or the technological capacities to support thousands more people than we are by augmenting the way that things are produced. But I feel like that point isn't actually always that well qualified in terms of leisure time because so much of the really voracious parts of capital, it seems to me like the most repressive ones are about its scarcity and the lack of availability of resources

and that being the kind of uncomfortable block that doesn't seem to fit into the excinerationist picture, if that makes sense. I don't think I disagree with you, but the way I interpret this particular text that I read, as soon as labor in the direct form has ceased to be great wellspring of wealth, labor time ceases and must cease to be its measure, I think it, to me, it talks about the movement from sort of like productive labor to either intellectual labor, labor, but also to sort of financial labor, right? Financial creativity where like wealth creates wealth without the necessary involvement of

labor. You know, imagine the production of, and you know this is even prior to the utopia that Buckminster Fuller referred to. This is dealing with like sort of like the type of late capitalism where you create wealth by selling debt, sort of like the derivative markets, right? And all sorts of ways of generation of wealth that has nothing to do with labor, right? So to me, this is what made me kind of go like, wow. And also, knowing the interest of Nick Cernicek in high-speed trading, you know what I mean? It made me also think about how sort of like algorithmic finance also contributes to this sort of like generation of wealth even far beyond the human reach which is all even automated. You don't even have to have the brain and the expertise of the trader to generate wealth.

Machine can, with the speed of light, kind of like generates wealth. So that's what was kind of like wow about it to me and how I interpreted it as a sort of like Marx's own prediction about the time in which labor is not the basis. Say ceases to be the measure and that answer Jason's question when he's asked ceases to be what? Yeah, sees us to be the measure of wealth. I don't know if that satisfied or helped you with anything. Yeah, a little bit. I mean, I don't know that I believe that high-speed trading or something is such a fully automated

practice that it can just go on autopilot without the presence of humans. I mean is that what you're suggesting? I'm not saying that it's completely auto-piloted, but you can't deny that machines are not involved in the generation of wealth in ways that have almost nothing to do with the classical categories of production. Absolutely. But that also does not contradict what you were saying in terms of scarcity, because we're not dealing with utopia. This is not utopia. This is just late capitalism. Right, I mean, so maybe it's reading the kinds of productive forces that exoticize

actual financial assets and actual productive forces, you know what I mean, like really bizarre like derives or things like that. Okay, Jason, do you think we should dwell longer on marks or should we move on to? I was just to… Oh, Manuel, do you want to say, just one sec, because Manuel seems to be wanting to say something. Both Manuel and Manuel, do you want to go on? Hello? Yes, go ahead. Yes, go ahead. No, I just wanted to say that through some research that I've done, I've came to the information that a lot of the high-speed trading

takes time from real-time risk analysis of stocks, and that there has been a general idea that this kind of trading has led corporations to have more higher-risk investments that are guaranteed a higher return generally. Okay, and what about Morgan? Do you want to bring up your point? Sure. Yeah, I just, I don't know, in the business world that I'm familiar with, I don't think people would make the argument that trading produces well directly because it doesn't create anything that has a productive usage in the economy.

My understanding of the economy is pretty limited, though. I don't know if you would make the argument that moving money around is in itself wealth insofar as it allocates capital where it's needed or something like that. I mean why not? If I have a million dollars and I invest it and then I go on to like Montag for the summer and then I come back from the summer and my money has could drop hold, the wealth has been generated. But I mean if you go to another level you can argue that yes, really nothing was generated, something was taken from somebody else by turning other people's risk into profit for you. It doesn't matter because for that particular capitalist, right, wealth was created because

they now have three times more. Yeah, so I would just argue that that's not wealth, that's just money. Like, there's a difference. Like, wealth, at least in my understanding, is defined as value. So, like, yeah, I mean, like, you know, ownership of anything of value would be wealth. But in that particular case, it was the person that the capitalists invested in who created the wealth. But the capitalists didn't themselves create the wealth, nor did they have any of the wealth. They just have… Well, then the argument is that the machine actually created the wealth. My original argument was that the machine created the wealth, not the human, because he was on his yacht. And usually this wealth…

If you invest in something, you're investing in things that humans do traditionally. I mean, you could argue that the, you know, investment is always in business in some respects. So you could argue that the business itself was done by machines, in which case the wealth was created by machines. You know, a tractor in a certain way amplifies wealth. But, I mean... You know, financial instruments are presented as both like a product, like a commodity that you buy, but also as business ventures and opportunities for the generation of wealth. I mean, if you go to a banker and you say I have a million dollar or ten million dollar

and I want to invest it, they basically tell you to break it down and buy different types of financial instruments, right? and then they put a portfolio together for you, and then you go back and you see how these portfolios work against each other. And then, I mean, I guess we're arguing about semantics, but to my understanding, in today's understanding of capitalism, that is unfortunately called wealth. But, I mean, you can also argue that that's not really wealth. But anyways, there's other, like, to be honest. That money goes to participate in things that human beings do in the world.

And that's where the wealth is generated. And I mean, everything, all of the investment on top of that is just sort of like a movement of money. Unless you're directly investing in a venture, in which case there's usually like a bit more of a, you know, there's like more than a monetary transaction going on. Well, we're definitely dealing with different worldviews in terms of how economy, I guess, works because now that you're talking about real, it reminds me of the notion of Marxism that Nixon and Bech could reject, which is like there's this real economy, and then there's financial world, which is still like an image of the real economy or its representation in the form of numbers and paper and other forms of stuff.

And one is always indebted or based on the other one. And that's precisely what they reject. And I was just trying to do that backward reading of history and see seeds of that in this. And actually, my next act was going to be to email Nitsan tonight and say, hey, have you read this part? and what do you think about all this stuff that because he's aware of Robin and he's aware of the urbanomic and so Haley is like doing a major piece based on Nitzan and Bichler for the next issue of Collapse. So but I'm not sure that I've ever heard Grundris and fragments of Machine mentioned by Nitzan. So I'm very excited to like present him this and see what does he think. So but

I can totally respect like the difference of opinion you and me have in terms of what is real economy and what Marx called fictitious capital and real capital. So you're kind of like talking about this financial stuff being fictitious capital, I guess. I suppose I'm not coming at this from a theoretical perspective. I'm coming at it from a business perspective. So I'd love to hear the actual... I don't actually know what you're going to use. Well, I'm going to put the link of capitalist power on the classroom because it's really like essential reading because the way Nitzan and Bishler summarize Marx's main points of sort of like what constitutes labor theory value and what constitutes a real and fictitious capital will be very useful,

not just for this seminar, but for other stuff. So it's on the Fixing the Future website already, the link, but I'm going to also add it here. But anyways, Ivan wants to say some stuff. Well, actually, I was going to say other stuff, but relating to this distinction of real fictitious, it's only a small jump to make from the supposed fictitious algorithmic driven HFT high frequency trading to actually linking the going of the stock market to sort of just in time producing and machinic assembly line. So that linking is actually very small. The value that machines create, ultimately that distinction doesn't seem to have much meaning if then you can link high frequency algorithmic training to then

real-time commands to a factory to then begin machining production of which a human is just you know guy who pushes a button start and stop so yeah I agree with you on that distinction not really making a lot of sense in the sense it's probably already happening today that you know Apple and the like are getting real-time markets data and then based on that they're organizing this by chance around it. You know, one thing that is still real about it and you read this in like financial press here in New York is like proximity, proximity, like high speed trading has sort of like made the lower Manhattan important again because the physical space to midtown is a limit for

these machines. So a lot of like financial firms are moving back to lower Manhattan. Why? Because for a while, internet made it like you can be anywhere and trade, right? But now with high speed trading becoming more and more of a trend, the literal actual physical space that exists between a firm's office and Wall Street matters. So they're all moving back and then it just makes the cable shorter, which means the high speed, like it gives a real advantage for like high frequency trading. So in that sense, maybe there is still some form of like, Morgan has a point about a real world and a fictitious world because these are still the physical limits of networks and computers. But beyond that, I don't know, I would like to respectfully and politely

disagree with Morgan. I just want to say I think you mischaracterized my point, which is not that I wouldn't argue that this is a real and fictitious at all, just that trading as an activity, whether machine is doing it or human is doing it, is not itself generating what you may call of business value, and that trading is entirely based on information about things that businesses do. So, like, I would just make a distinction between trading, which is not actually doing anything, it's just allocating capital, and then businesses, or, I mean, even Apple. I mean, like, it's one thing for Apple to modulate the number of phones that it produces on its assembly line, but the numbers on the market don't really have a huge effect on

what Apple decides to do. In the end, it's a bunch of human beings in a building with machines. But precisely. Actually creating a product. This is precisely the argument of real and fictitious capital. In fact, what you're presenting here is a precise characterization. And what Nitzan and Bichler say is actually the opposite of what you say. They say, actually, the fake numbers that Apple put on the paper will have a direct effect on the actual work. it sabotages or enhances the actual work that happens in a factory. So these fake numbers actually are totally implicated in this real-world production and real-world business that you're talking about. So I would like to see what you have to say after taking a look at the book. Okay.

Yeah, I would just say it modulates it. It's not the same thing. I want to bring in something that... I want to bring in Tristan Lang. who's a member of the News Center also, and he's not in the Hangout, but he wanted to bring these quotes up for us to just consider real quick. Is that from the book? Yeah, from the book, yeah. So this quote is from Fragment on the Machines. Free time, which is both idle time and time for higher activity, has naturally transformed its possessor into a different subject, and he then interests into the direct production process process as this, then brought into the production process. That's what I was talking about.

Yeah. That's where he talks about higher and it was just like, it's amazing to see Marks kind of like become an idealist all of a sudden. He'll talk about like higher activity which is art and science, right? Yeah. It's just fascinating. But go ahead. Yeah. And then he goes on, this process is then both discipline as regards to human being and the process of becoming and at the same time practice, experimental science, materially creative and objectifying science as regards to the human being who has become, in whose head exists the accumulated knowledge of society. Yes, this was when I was trying to say that you sort of like there is another third category, that this free time, that this free time, that another category of activity that the free time allows, which is for like arts and humanities and culture to actually create

a different working subject, right? Right, and that is maybe where, I mean, Carlos was bringing up, you know, what about the role of the proletariat? Because historically, or the lumpen proletariat, those who do not have the power to, for example, go on strike and therefore make demands that capital, you know, treat it differently or things like that, or to create communist parties, they could do that. And so where does agency come into this? Like where is the agency in an analysis of kind of abandonment or if you want to put it in a more positive light, free time?

Where is the agency in that? Maybe the agency is that now there is finally more time to do other things. But that's especially the case if you have access to a guaranteed basic income like Nick Shurnashek advocates. If not, then maybe not. But yeah, thanks for that Tristan. Well the beauty of it is that he actually kind of like sees, I mean he doesn't get into detail right, but he sees this possibility that exists right? That the free time created by the introduction of machine like opens up this possibility. Right. Okay, so guys, we have about 10 minutes left, and we're going to return to WebLend, if not also to Fedorov and to Butler, maybe in the next sessions.

I think we should let Tony go over the classroom, because that's way more essential to the working of the seminar, to know what we're doing with it. I hope you have a pair of headphones, or you bring your volume down, so it doesn't echo, Tony. Can you? Could you send out a meeting request via Google because I always get confused with time zones and if it's sent via Google then my phone does the magic for the next meetings. Next meeting, 6.30 Eastern Standard Time. Okay. Wednesday, so the 25th. It's like a 6.30 Eastern Standard Time.

Thank you, Tristan. I wanted to look for that code and it's like amazing that Tristan found it. Go ahead. Go ahead, Tony. Tony can hear us, but it's also echoing. You guys hear an echo? You do, right? Okay. So I can hear you. I don't hear an echo at all though. Yes, I know. Yes. But you... Okay, but if I not talk, nobody hears echo, because when you talk, everything is cool.

So I'm just going to turn my microphone off and leave it to you to speak. Okay, and then it will be fine? No echo? Okay. Yes. Yes. Okay, so we're just going to give the basic tutorial of the classroom, correct? So I'm going to share my screen with you. Did everybody that's in the group right now, do you have access classroom right now? You can just like yes, but say yes. If you have not a way to access the classroom, once you log into the institutional account, you just go to classroom.google.com. Yes, I'm finding that you guys have been able to access. All right, so...

Sorry, one second. Let me make it this. All right. So it's going to take a very short time to tell you guys about the navigation here because there's just a few things that it works with. Basically what this does is it works with Google Drive. So we can manage assignments and manage all of our resources very easily. So any assignment that Moe Jason assigned is going to be here, and you can see that the four are already there. Their due dates are here. As you guys do them and turn them in, I will tell you how many are being done. Also, announcements will be shown here. And the announcements is a way for all of you guys to start threads.

So if you have threads or interests or topics of conversation that came up from today, and you want to post a question to the group, then you guys can basically, it's a lot like Facebook thread. You can use these for this. Let's keep going. Mo? Okay. I was going to say that. You want to put yourself on mute? Okay, thank you. Once I get the list of all the presentations, I'm going to basically add them to the announcement. So you can always go there and see what you've committed to. so you don't forget your commitment. Because this text here is going to disappear. So I'm going to translate all your commitments for presentation over to announcement. And then hopefully, they can become

the main topic of any discussion that happens later about that particular presentation or part of the book. And then we can all access it there. That's it. I'm going to put myself on mute again. Thank you, Will. So then the only other thing is there's this about, sorry, So there you can see there's an About section. The About section has the syllabus. So if you guys don't know, if you don't have this, the syllabus and the other, this is the email for the instructors. And then all of the resource material. Mo and Jason went and put together a really good list at the end of the syllabus of all the optional reading

lists material that you can do. So in the About section at the bottom is where you can actually access all of these links. And if you can see here, these are the four that we're beginning to talk about today. But yeah, here's Sean. Can I ask a question? Can I ask a question? Sure. OK, my question is, are students able to add to this, or this is just for resources that the instructors add? JOHN MUELLER- The resources is for instructors to add. If the students want to add to a list, let me show you one second. Just give me one second, OK?

I'm plugging into a classroom really quickly. You're trying to go in at the student's mind. Right. this is your other others you you okay I'm just sure that now on your slow down on well I would love to but

some reason Okay, so this is as a classroom. Okay, so again, same thing. These are the mini essays where I can open the document. This is where I will add and link any file when I'm done with my assignment. I can turn in the assignment. Any of these here. I can also hear, I can comment. Students can comment on any assignment if they have any questions. and post to the assignment. We can also share with the class here on stream at the top. This is, you can share any kind of link, any Google Drive item, any YouTube video.

If you find a YouTube video that makes sense, or so any attachment, any link, any YouTube video, any drive. But also you can just start a thread. It just says like, hey, what Mo brought up today was really cool, and then everybody else can post to it, including the instructors. You can view all the classmates here just to see the list of the classmates. And again, the About section, we have all the resources. So that's the student page. But if there are any questions, you can just post on there and ask. Thank you, Jason. Sorry, thank you, Tony. I'm just like mixing up people. Now I just wanted to like probably like at the end of the class is 9.20.

It actually went a little bit over time because we started like at 6.53 or something. It was not really like 7 when we started. But what I wanted to like, what I wanted to bring up is that we're really doing our best to sort of like extend the capabilities of regular academia. Like for instance, this classroom technology has only become available like since Labor Day and we just like we reached and we said let's adopt it. We're one of the probably the first educational institutions who have like committed to classroom and really for us, like I said in the beginning, this is itself is a practice of accelerated pedagogy.

So I would really like encourage you guys to sort of like get out of your comfort zone of education and try to post links, put stuff up and let's really try to see how far we can push the existing semi-commercial software and hardware capabilities here and see what we can do because we're really experimenting here with stuff and hopefully by the time sort of like Nick Cernacek and Benjamin Noise will join us, we have some good stuff to show for our own practice and our own research. So I really, really, again, encourage you to take advantage of all this stuff. And maybe forgive us a little bit for being a little bit late today and for not really being comfortable with all

this platform. Because like I said, some of them are brand new. And they're learning it, Google learning it. Like for instance, the picture on top of the classroom, I can't even change that. Because Google hasn't even allowed for us to change it like a Google Plus banner or something. I just have to live with those images that they provide. So yeah, so very glad to have you guys here. And thanks again for your participation. And all your questions and concerns, please either if you feel comfortable, post it publicly to the classroom, or message me, Jason and Tony, with any kind of question or concern you have. And then we will be in touch with you. And let's reconvene again at 6.30 on Wednesday. Jason, do you have a few words? We also have an issue about the assignments, which is that, I mean, if we go over the requirements

that we have in the syllabus, I'm not sure, we might have to revise this, but basically it says the seminar will be composed of four 2.5-hour sessions, and then it's broken down where we'll have presentations. We already talked about that. The one thing that I was wondering, maybe Mo and I can talk about this afterwards, but we were saying that students would write four mini essays of 500 to 1,000 words due at the end of each week. So how many mini essays are we asking for at the end of this week? Because we only have two weeks in this class. So the way that it's up there is that the first one is due on Wednesday, the second

one is due four days after that one, the third one is due the 30th and the fifth one, the third and fourth one are both due on the 30th. No actually one of them is due the next day. Okay so 24th, 28th, 30th and the 1st. Oh that's what you have in the classroom, okay. Yeah, I don't think there's any need for revision because we got four classes and students will produce text for each class and then these texts will hopefully be put together with the help of the instructors to turn into a cohesive essay for some form of a publication or presentation. Okay. Those are like requirements for full enrollment students.

And then audit people can also do it optional if they want to. Right. OK. So are we done? Anybody have any questions? I just want to make sure we have a schedule for that. Yeah. Any other questions? No. Sean, thanks again. We saw you running through the landscape of Vancouver to make it to the class. Where were you running? Do you want me to even stop the book? The condo land. The condo land. I thought it was nice. It was really nice, yeah. Yeah. So was it downtown Eastside, right?

I guess it was downtown Eastside. That's right. Yeah. Okay. So see you guys Wednesday at 6.30. Okay. See you then. Bye-bye. See you guys. See you then. Thank you. Bye. Bye.