my words

All posts tagged my words

(Direct Link to the Mp3)

On Friday, I needed to do a thread of a thing, so if you hate threads and you were waiting until I collected it, here it is.

But this originally needed to be done in situ. It needed to be a serialized and systematized intervention and imposition into the machinery of that particular flow of time. That day…

There is a principle within many schools of magical thought known as “shielding.” In practice and theory, it’s closely related to the notion of “grounding” and the notion of “centering.” (If you need to think of magical praxis as merely a cipher for psychological manipulation toward particular behaviours or outcomes, these all still scan.)

When you ground, when you centre, when you shield, you are anchoring yourself in an awareness of a) your present moment, your temporality; b) your Self and all emotions and thoughts; and c) your environment. You are using your awareness to carve out a space for you to safely inhabit while in the fullness of that awareness. It’s a way to regroup, breathe, gather yourself, and know what and where you are, and to know what’s there with you.

You can shield your self, your home, your car, your group of friends, but moving parts do increase the complexity of what you’re trying to hold in mind, which may lead to anxiety or frustration, which kind of opposes the exercise’s point. (Another sympathetic notion, here, is that of “warding,” though that can be said to be more for objects,not people.)

So what is the point?

The point is that many of us are being drained, today, this week, this month, this year, this life, and we need to remember to take the time to regroup and recharge. We need to shield ourselves, our spaces, and those we love, to ward them against those things that would sap us of strength and the will to fight. We know we are strong. We know that we are fierce, and capable. But we must not lash out wildly, meaninglessly. We mustn’t be lured into exhausting ourselves. We must collect ourselves, protect ourselves, replenish ourselves, and by “ourselves” I also obviously mean “each other.”

Mutual support and endurance will be crucial.

…So imagine that you’ve built a web out of all the things you love, and all of the things you love are connected to each other and the strands between them vibrate when touched. And you touch them all, yes?

And so you touch them all and they all touch you and the energy you generate is cyclically replenished, like ocean currents and gravity. And you use what you build—that thrumming hum of energy—to blanket and to protect and to energize that which creates it.

And we’ll do this every day. We’ll do this like breathing. We’ll do this like the way our muscles and tendons and bones slide across and pull against and support each other. We’ll do this like heartbeats. Cyclical. Mutually supporting. The burden on all of us, together, so that it’s never on any one of us alone.

So please take some time today, tomorrow, very soon to build your shields. Because, soon, we’re going to need you to deploy them more and more.

Thank you, and good luck.


The audio and text above are modified versions of this Twitter thread. This isn’t the first time we’ve talked about the overlap of politics, psychology, philosophy, and magic, and if you think it’ll be the last, then you haven’t been paying attention.

Sometimes, there isn’t much it feels like we can do, but we can support  and shield each other. We have to remember that, in the days, weeks, month, and years to come. We should probably be doing our best to remember it forever.

Anyway, I hope this helps.

Until Next Time

Last week, Artsy.net’s Izabella Scott wrote this piece about how and why the aesthetic of witchcraft is making a comeback in the art world, which is pretty pleasantly timed as not only are we all eagerly awaiting Kim Boekbinder’s NOISEWITCH, but I also just sat down with Rose Eveleth for the Flash Forward Podcast to talk for her season 2 finale.

You see, Rose did something a little different this time. Instead of writing up a potential future and then talking to a bunch of amazing people about it, like she usually does, this episode’s future was written by an algorithm. Rose trained an algorithm called Torch not only on the text of all of the futures from both Flash Forward seasons, but also the full scripts of both the War of the Worlds and the 1979 Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy radio plays. What’s unsurprising, then, is that part of what the algorithm wanted to talk about was space travel and Mars. What is genuinely surprising, however, is that what it also wanted to talk about was Witches.

Because so far as either Rose or I could remember, witches aren’t mentioned anywhere in any of those texts.

ANYWAY, the finale episode is called “The Witch Who Came From Mars,” and the ensuing exegeses by several very interesting people and me of the Bradbury-esque results of this experiment are kind of amazing. No one took exactly the same thing from the text, and the more we heard of each other, the more we started to weave threads together into a meta-narrative.

Episode 20: The Witch Who Came From Mars

It’s really worth your time, and if you subscribe to Rose’s Patreon, then not only will you get immediate access to the full transcript of that show, but also to the full interview she did with PBS Idea Channel’s Mike Rugnetta. They talk a great deal about whether we will ever deign to refer to the aesthetic creations of artificial intelligences as “Art.”

And if you subscribe to my Patreon, then you’ll get access to the full conversation between Rose and me, appended to this week’s newsletter, “Bad Month for Hiveminds.” Rose and I talk about the nature of magick and technology, the overlaps and intersections of intention and control, and what exactly it is we might mean by “behanding,” the term that shows up throughout the AI’s piece.

And just because I don’t give a specific shoutout to Thoth and Raven doesn’t mean I forgot them. Very much didn’t forget about Raven.

Also speaking of Patreon and witches and whatnot, current $1+ patrons have access to the full first round of interview questions I did with Eliza Gauger about Problem Glyphs. So you can get in on that, there, if you so desire. Eliza is getting back to me with their answers to the follow-up questions, and then I’ll go about finishing up the formatting and publishing the full article. But if you subscribe now, you’ll know what all the fuss is about well before anybody else.

And, as always, there are other ways to provide material support, if longterm subscription isn’t your thing.

Until Next Time.


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Here’s the direct link to my paper ‘The Metaphysical Cyborg‘ from Laval Virtual 2013. Here’s the abstract:

“In this brief essay, we discuss the nature of the kinds of conceptual changes which will be necessary to bridge the divide between humanity and machine intelligences. From cultural shifts to biotechnological integration, the project of accepting robotic agents into our lives has not been an easy one, and more changes will be required before the majority of human societies are willing and able to allow for the reality of truly robust machine intelligences operating within our daily lives. Here we discuss a number of the questions, hurdles, challenges, and potential pitfalls to this project, including examples from popular media which will allow us to better grasp the effects of these concepts in the general populace.”

The link will only work from this page or the CV page, so if you find yourself inclined to spread this around, use this link. Hope you enjoy it.

(Direct Link to the Mp3)

Last week I gave a talk at the Southwest Popular and American Culture Association’s 2016 conference in Albuquerque. Take a listen and see what you think.

It was part of the panel on ‘Consciousness, the Self, and Epistemology,‘ and notes on my comrade presenters can be found in last week’s newsletter. I highly recommend checking those notes out, as Craig Dersken and Burcu Gurkan’s talks were phenomenal. And if you like that newsletter kind of thing, you can subscribe to mine at that link, too.

My talk was, in turn, a version of my article “Fairytales of Slavery…”, so if listening to me speak words isn’t your thing, then you can read through that article, and get a pretty good sense of what I said, until I make a more direct transcript of my presentation.

If you like what you’re reading and hearing, then remember that you can become a subscriber at the Patreon or you can leave a tip at Cash.me/$Wolven. That is, as always, an inclusive disjunct.

Until Next Time.

 

Hello, there, old readers and new.

It’s been a pretty harrowing week, everywhere in this world, with many strange and terrible things happening all throughout. We are definitely going to spend some time orienting ourselves within those things, and integrating them into the world, but right now, I figure we can all use a little bit of a breather—a little headcleaner.

So with that being the case, here’s a little pop culture conversation between me and some of our fine friends over at Need Coffee Dot Com:

The 12 Monkeys Group Therapy Session

It’s a pretty freewheeling, stream-of-consciousness ramble about the first season of Syfy’s serialized televisual take on the time travel epic 12 Monkeys. This is the first of at least two conversations I’ll be having with various groups of people about this show, and I think acts as a nice mental palette cleanser, before we get into some heavier stuff, this coming week.

Hope you enjoy it, and if you do, please tell your friends.

There is huge news, so I’ll cut right to it: I have been given the reigns of Technoccult.net, and I will be integrating it with A Future Worth Thinking About. AFWTA will act as the overarching header for all things we do here, and Technoccult will service those specific ventures which blend science and technology with the perspectives of magick and the occult.

Klint Finley, founder of Technoccult, has written some extremely kind words, here, so I’ll let him take it:

…when I interviewed Damien a few months ago, something clicked. He writes about the intersection magic and technology, transhumanism, and the evolution of human consciousness. All the things that Technoccult readers keep telling me they want to read more about. I thought “why isn’t HE writing the site?” Then I realized: I should just let him take it over. It would give him a broader reach for his writing, give Technoccult readers more of what they’re looking for, and let me resign knowing the site is in good hands. Win-win-win.

Plus, his interest pop culture analysis brings things full-circle back to the original idea behind Technoccult. Oh, and the first time I met Damien, he was wearing a Luxt shirt. I had Luxt on heavy rotation while I was cobbling together the original Technoccult site all those years ago.

I’m aware that although I’ve brought in other writers in the past, my voice has been the one consistent thing on the site, and that some of you might be happy to have me keep writing here, regardless of what I write about. Some of you might even prefer it. But overall I think Damien’s voice will be more of a continuation of the spirit of the site than mine at this point. And while he’ll surely bring a different perspective on a wide range of topics, I think we have compatible world views.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Technoccult, I recommend going over to read both the full announcement, and to tool through the archives and get a sense for the place. We’ll be working on the transitional fiddly bits, for the next little while, but there will be content and discussion there, sooner, rather than later.

Thank you all so much for making this possible and for coming with me, on this. Now let’s see where we go.

“Mindful Cyborgs – Episode 55 – Magick & the Occult within the Internet and Corporations with Damien Williams, PT 2

So, here we are, again, this time talking about magic[k] and the occult and nonhuman consciousness and machine minds and perception, and on and on and on.

It’s funny. I was just saying, elsewhere, how I want to be well enough known that when news outlets do alarmist garbage like this, that I can at least be called in as a countervailing voice. Is that an arrogant thing to desire? Almost certainly. Like whoa. But, really, this alarmist garbage needs to stop. If you have a better vehicle for that than me, though, let me know, because I’d love to shine a bright damn spotlight on them and have the world see or hear what they have to say.

Anyway, until then, I’ll think of this as yet another bolt in the building of that machine. The one that builds a better world. Have a listen, enjoy, and please tell your friends.

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As most of you know from personal experience or from reading or hearing about it, it’s been a deeply intense few weeks. For me, alone, there were deaths and conference presentations and more deaths, and then more conferences.

The most recent of these deaths was my uncle– more like a brother to me– two weeks ago, and his funeral last week. I’ll talk more about the implications of that and the thoughts I’ve had in context with its timing, in a later post. For now, I want to talk about the most recent of these conferences: Theorizing The Web.

Because of the work we’ve been doing, here, I was invited to sit on a panel and have a fantastic conversation about Magick and Technology with four extremely impressive women: Ingrid Burrington, Deb Chachra, Melissa Gira Grant, and Karen Gregory; Anna Jobin was our hashtag moderator, keeping an eye on the feed, and passing along questions, and particularly pertinent comments. Spoiler Alert: The conversation was great.

In order to know exactly HOW great, here’s our Theorizing the Web talk, “Under Its Spell: Magic, Machines, and Metaphors”:

If you enjoyed watching or listening to that, please spread it around to your friends and colleagues.

In addition to this, I was offered several really amazing opportunities, this weekend, in terms of collaboration, creation, and the disposition of things that I’ve looked at and admired for a few years now. I need to do some serious thinking on all of these things, but the offers are there, and they’re huge, and amazing.

The after party for TtW15 was at the loft space for Verso Books. The picture at the top is the view from their window. The picture below is the view from underneath a chunk of bridge, in a place that used to be known as Stabber’s Alley. It’s a wonderfully liminal space in between several connected-but-not areas of town. We spent some time down there, when we needed a break from the party. Eight, then seven, then eight again magicians and technologists and artists hanging out and talking about architecture and space and time and magic and death.

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The rest of this weekend’s talks also all dovetailed with a number of research avenues about systematized bias and algorithmic intelligence, as well as a number of deeply magical moments of synchronicity and discussion. Click that link, and also check twitter for the hashtags #ttw15 and #a1, #b1, #c1, etc., to see the concurrent discussions. The full program listing is here.

We’ll be taking a wander down those roads, in the near future, including the start of a conversation about biased algorithmic systems of control, sometime tomorrow.

But that’s for later. For now: Enjoy. And if you do, please consider becoming a subscriber to the Patreon, and telling your friends.

(Direct Link to the Mp3)
Updated March 5, 2016

This is the audio and transcript of my presentation “The Quality of Life: The Implications of Augmented Personhood and Machine Intelligence in Science Fiction” from the conference for The Work of Cognition and Neuroethics in Science Fiction.

The abstract–part of which I read in the audio–for this piece looks like this:

This presentation will focus on a view of humanity’s contemporary fictional relationships with cybernetically augmented humans and machine intelligences, from Icarus to the various incarnations of Star Trek to Terminator and Person of Interest, and more. We will ask whether it is legitimate to judge the level of progressiveness of these worlds through their treatment of these questions, and, if so, what is that level? We will consider the possibility that the writers of these tales intended the observed interactions with many of these characters to represent humanity’s technophobia as a whole, with human perspectives at the end of their stories being that of hopeful openness and willingness to accept. However, this does not leave the manner in which they reach that acceptance—that is, the factors on which that acceptance is conditioned—outside of the realm of critique.

As considerations of both biotechnological augmentation and artificial intelligence have advanced, Science Fiction has not always been a paragon of progressiveness in the ultimate outcome of those considerations. For instance, while Picard and Haftel eventually come to see Lal as Data’s legitimate offspring, in the eponymous Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, it is only through their ability to map Data’s actions and desires onto a human spectrum—and Data’s desire to have that map be as faithful as possible to its territory—that they come to that acceptance. The reason for this is the one most common throughout science fiction: It is assumed at the outset that any sufficiently non-human consciousness will try remove humanity’s natural right to self-determination and freewill. But from sailing ships to star ships, the human animal has always sought a far horizon, and so it bears asking, how does science fiction regard that primary mode of our exploration, that first vessel—ourselves?

For many, science fiction has been formative to the ways in which we see the world and understand the possibilities for our future, which is why it is strange to look back at many shows, films, and books and to find a decided lack of nuance or attempted understanding. Instead, we are presented with the presupposition that fear and distrust of a hyper-intelligent cyborg or machine consciousness is warranted. Thus, while the spectre of Pinocchio and the Ship of Theseus—that age-old question of “how much of myself can I replace before I am not myself”— both hang over the whole of the Science Fiction Canon, it must be remembered that our ships are just our limbs extended to the sea and the stars.

This will be transcribed to text, in the near future below, thanks to the work of OpenTranscripts.org:

Continue Reading

Good morning! Lots of new people around here, so I thought I’d remind you that I have Patreon Project called “A Future Worth Thinking About.” It’s a place where I talk a bit more formally about things like Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy, Sociology, Magick, Technology, and the intersections of all of the above.

If you like what we do around here, take a look at the page, read some essays, give a listen to some audio, whatever works for you. And if you like what you see around there, feel free to tell your friends.

Have a great day, all.

“A Future Worth Thinking About”