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Appendix A: An Imagined and Incomplete Conversation about “Consciousness” and “AI,” Across Time

Every so often, I think about the fact of one of the best things my advisor and committee members let me write and include in my actual doctoral dissertation, and I smile a bit, and since I keep wanting to share it out into the world, I figured I should put it somewhere more accessible.

So with all of that said, we now rejoin An Imagined and Incomplete Conversation about “Consciousness” and “AI,” Across Time, already (still, seemingly unendingly) in progress:

René Descartes (1637):
The physical and the mental have nothing to do with each other. Mind/soul is the only real part of a person.

Norbert Wiener (1948):
I don’t know about that “only real part” business, but the mind is absolutely the seat of the command and control architecture of information and the ability to reflexively reverse entropy based on context, and input/output feedback loops.

Alan Turing (1952):
Huh. I wonder if what computing machines do can reasonably be considered thinking?

Wiener:
I dunno about “thinking,” but if you mean “pockets of decreasing entropy in a framework in which the larger mass of entropy tends to increase,” then oh for sure, dude.

John Von Neumann (1958):
Wow things sure are changing fast in science and technology; we should maybe slow down and think about this before that change hits a point beyond our ability to meaningfully direct and shape it— a singularity, if you will.

Clynes & Klines (1960):
You know, it’s funny you should mention how fast things are changing because one day we’re gonna be able to have automatic tech in our bodies that lets us pump ourselves full of chemicals to deal with the rigors of space; btw, have we told you about this new thing we’re working on called “antidepressants?”

Gordon Moore (1965):
Right now an integrated circuit has 64 transistors, and they keep getting smaller, so if things keep going the way they’re going, in ten years they’ll have 65 THOUSAND. :-O

Donna Haraway (1991):
We’re all already cyborgs bound up in assemblages of the social, biological, and techonological, in relational reinforcing systems with each other. Also do you like dogs?

Ray Kurzweil (1999):
Holy Shit, did you hear that?! Because of the pace of technological change, we’re going to have a singularity where digital electronics will be indistinguishable from the very fabric of reality! They’ll be part of our bodies! Our minds will be digitally uploaded immortal cyborg AI Gods!

Tech Bros:
Wow, so true, dude; that makes a lot of sense when you think about it; I mean maybe not “Gods” so much as “artificial super intelligences,” but yeah.

90’s TechnoPagans:
I mean… Yeah? It’s all just a recapitulation of The Art in multiple technoscientific forms across time. I mean (*takes another hit of salvia*) if you think about the timeless nature of multidimensional spiritual architectures, we’re already—

DARPA:
Wait, did that guy just say something about “Uploading” and “Cyborg/AI Gods?” We got anybody working on that?? Well GET TO IT!

Disabled People, Trans Folx, BIPOC Populations, Women:
Wait, so our prosthetics, medications, and relational reciprocal entanglements with technosocial systems of this world in order to survive makes us cyborgs?! :-O

[Simultaneously:]

Kurzweil/90’s TechnoPagans/Tech Bros/DARPA:
Not like that.
Wiener/Clynes & Kline:
Yes, exactly.

Haraway:
I mean it’s really interesting to consider, right?

Tech Bros:
Actually, if you think about the bidirectional nature of time, and the likelihood of simulationism, it’s almost certain that there’s already an Artificial Super Intelligence, and it HATES YOU; you should probably try to build it/never think about it, just in case.

90’s TechnoPagans:
…That’s what we JUST SAID.

Philosophers of Religion (To Each Other):
…Did they just Pascal’s Wager Anselm’s Ontological Argument, but computers?

Timnit Gebru and other “AI” Ethicists:
Hey, y’all? There’s a LOT of really messed up stuff in these models you started building.

Disabled People, Trans Folx, BIPOC Populations, Women:
Right?

Anthony Levandowski:
I’m gonna make an AI god right now! And a CHURCH!

The General Public:
Wait, do you people actually believe this?

Microsoft/Google/IBM/Facebook:
…Which answer will make you give us more money?

Timnit Gebru and other “AI” Ethicists:
…We’re pretty sure there might be some problems with the design architectures, too…

Some STS Theorists:
Honestly this is all a little eugenics-y— like, both the technoscientific and the religious bits; have you all sought out any marginalized people who work on any of this stuff? Like, at all??

Disabled People, Trans Folx, BIPOC Populations, Women:
Hahahahah! …Oh you’re serious?

Anthony Levandowski:
Wait, no, nevermind about the church.

Some “AI” Engineers:
I think the things we’re working on might be conscious, or even have souls.

“AI” Ethicists/Some STS Theorists:
Anybody? These prejudices???

Wiener/Tech Bros/DARPA/Microsoft/Google/IBM/Facebook:
“Souls?” Pfffft. Look at these whackjobs, over here. “Souls.” We’re talking about the technological singularity, mind uploading into an eternal digital universal superstructure, and the inevitability of timeless artificial super intelligences; who said anything about “Souls?”

René Descartes/90’s TechnoPagans/Philosophers of Religion/Some STS Theorists/Some “AI” Engineers:

[Scene]


Read more of this kind of thing at:
Williams, Damien Patrick. Belief, Values, Bias, and Agency: Development of and Entanglement with “Artificial Intelligence.” PhD diss., Virginia Tech, 2022. https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/handle/10919/111528.

Hello from the Southern Blue Mountains of These Soon To Be Re-United States.

I realised that, for someone whose work and life and public face is as much about magic as mine is, I haven’t done a lot of intention- and will-setting, here. That is, I haven’t stated and formulated with a clear mind and intention what I want and will work to bring into existence.

Now, there are a lot of magical schools of thought that go in for the power of setting your intention, abstracting it out from yourself, and putting it into the universe as a kind of unconscious signal. Sigilizing, “let go and let god,” that whole kind of thing.

But there’s also something to be said for just straight-up clearly formulating the concepts and words to state what you want, and fixing your mind on what it will take to achieve. So here’s what I want, in 2019.

I want more people to understand, accept, and actualize the truth of Dr Safiya Noble’s statement that “If you are designing technology for society, and you don’t know anything about society, you are deeply unqualified” and Deb Chachra’s corollary that “Whether you realise it or not, the technology you’re designing *is* for society.” So what’s that mean to me? It means that I want technologists, designers, academics, politicians, and public personalities to start taking seriously the notion that we need truly interdisciplinary social-science- and humanities-focused programs at every level of education, community organization, and governance if we want the tools and systems which increasingly influence and shape our lives built, sustained, and maintained in beneficial ways.

And what do I mean by “beneficial,” here? I mean want these systems to not replicate and iterate on prejudicial, bigoted human biases, and I want them to actively reduce the harm done by those things. I mean I want tools and systems crafted and laws drafted not just by some engineer who took an ethics class once or some politician who reads WIRED, every so often, but by collaborative teams of people with interoperable kinds of knowledge and lived experience. I mean I want politicians recognizing that the vast majority of people do not in fact understand google’s or facebook’s or amazon’s algorithms or intentions, and that that is, in large part, because the people in charge of those entities do not want us to understand them.

I want people to heed those who try to trace a line from our history of using new technologies and new scientific models and stance to marginalize wide swathes of people, and I want those people who understand and research that to come together and work on something different, to build systems and carve paths that allow us to push back against the entrenched, deep-cut, least-resisting, lowest-common-denominator shit which constitutes the way that power and prejudice and assumptions thereof (racism, [dis-]ableism, sexism, homophobia, misogyny, fatphobia, xenophobia, transphobia, colourism, etc.) act on and shape and are the world in which we live.

I want us all to deconstruct and resist and dismantle the oppressive bullshit in our lives and the lives of those we love, and I want to build techno-socio-ethico-political systems built on compassion and care and justice and an engaged, intentional way of living. I want to be able to clearly communicate the good of that. I want people to easily understand the good in that, and understand the ease of that good, if we take the strengths of our alterities, our differing phenomenologies, our experiential othernesses, and respect them and weave them together into a mutually supportive interoperable whole.

I want to publish papers about these things, and I want people to read and appreciate them. I want to clearly demonstrate the linkages I see and make them into a compelling lens through which to act in the world.

I want to create beauty and joy and refuge and shelter for those who need it and I want to create a deep, rending, claws-and-teeth-filled defense against those who would threaten it, and I want those billion-toothed maws and gullets and the pressure of those thousand-thousand-thousand eyes to act as a catalyst for those who would be willing to transform themselves. I want to build a community of people who are safe and cared-for and who understand the value of compassion, and understand that sometimes compassion means you burn a motherfucker to the ground.

I want to strengthen the bonds that need strengthening, and I want the strength to sever any that need severing. I want, as much as possible, for those those to be the same, for me, as they are for the other people involved.

I want to push back as meaningfully as we still can against the worst of what’s coming from what humans have done to this planet’s climate, and I want to do that from the position of safeguarding the most vulnerable among us, and I want to do so with an understanding that whatever we do, Right Now, is just a small interim step to buy us enough time to do the really hard systemic shit, as we move forward.

I want people to realize their stock options won’t stop them from suffocating to death in the 140°F/60°C heat and I want people to realize that there’s no money in Heaven and that even if there was, from all I read, that Joshua guy and his Dad don’t take too kindly to people who hurt the poor and marginalized or who wreck the place they were told to steward.

I want people to realise that the people who need to realize those things are the same sets of people.

I want a clear mind and a full heart and the will to take care of myself enough to keep trying to help make these things happen.

I want you happy and healthy and whole, however you define that for you.

I want Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to begin what will be a five-year process of digging deep into both the communities she represents and the DC machinery (It has to be both). (And then I want her to get a place in the cabinet of whatever left-leaning progressive is in the White House in 2020, and help them win again in 2024. And then I want her to win in 2028.)

I want every person in a position of power to realized that they need to consult and heed the people and systems over whom they have power, to truly understand their needs.

I want everyone to have their individual and collective basic survival needs met so they can experience what that does for the scope of their desires and what they believe is possible.

I want the criminal indictment of the (at time of this writing) Current Resident of the Oval Office and every high level politician who enabled his position. I want the people least likely to understand and accept why this is necessary to quickly and fully understand and accept that this is necessary.

I want a just and kind and compassionate world and I want to be active within it.

I want to know what you want.

So what do you want?

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.

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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-Human Dignity-

The other day I got a CFP for “the future of human dignity,” and it set me down a path thinking.

We’re worried about shit like mythical robots that can somehow simultaneously enslave us and steal the shitty low paying jobs we none of us want to but all of us have to have so we can pay off the debt we accrued to get the education we were told would be necessary to get those jobs, while other folks starve and die of exposure in a world that is just chock full of food and houses…

About shit like how we can better regulate the conflated monster of human trafficking and every kind of sex work, when human beings are doing the best they can to direct their own lives—to live and feed themselves and their kids on their own terms—without being enslaved and exploited…

About, fundamentally, how to make reactionary laws to “protect” the dignity of those of us whose situations the vast majority of us have not worked to fully appreciate or understand, while we all just struggle to not get: shot by those who claim to protect us, willfully misdiagnosed by those who claim to heal us, or generally oppressed by the system that’s supposed to enrich and uplift us…

…but no, we want to talk about the future of human dignity?

Louisiana’s drowning, Missouri’s on literal fire, Baltimore is almost certainly under some ancient mummy-based curse placed upon it by the angry ghost of Edgar Allan Poe, and that’s just in the One Country.

Motherfucker, human dignity ain’t got a Past or a Present, so how about let’s reckon with that before we wax poetically philosophical about its Future.

I mean, it’s great that folks at Google are finally starting to realise that making sure the composition of their teams represents a variety of lived experiences is a good thing. But now the questions are, 1) do they understand that it’s not about tokenism, but about being sure that we are truly incorporating those who were previously least likely to be incorporated, and 2) what are we going to do to not only specifically and actively work to change that, but also PUBLICIZE THAT WE NEED TO?

These are the kinds of things I mean when I say, “I’m not so much scared of/worried about AI as I am about the humans who create and teach them.”

There’s a recent opinion piece at the Washington Post, titled “Why perceived inequality leads people to resist innovation,”. I read something like that and I think… Right, but… that perception is a shared one based on real impacts of tech in the lives of many people; impacts which are (get this) drastically unequal. We’re talking about implications across communities, nations, and the world, at an intersection with a tech industry that has a really quite disgusting history of “disruptively innovating” people right out of their homes and lives without having ever asked the affected parties about what they, y’know, NEED.

So yeah. There’s a fear of inequality in the application of technological innovation… Because there’s a history of inequality in the application of technological innovation!

This isn’t some “well aren’t all the disciplines equally at fault here,” pseudo-Kumbaya false equivalence bullshit. There are neoliberal underpinnings in the tech industry that are basically there to fuck people over. “What the market will bear” is code for, “How much can we screw people before there’s backlash? Okay so screw them exactly that much.” This model has no regard for the preexisting systemic inequalities between our communities, and even less for the idea that it (the model) will both replicate and iterate upon those inequalities. That’s what needs to be addressed, here.

Check out this piece over at Killscreen. We’ve talked about this before—about how we’re constantly being sold that we’re aiming for a post-work economy, where the internet of things and self-driving cars and the sharing economy will free us all from the mundaneness of “jobs,” all while we’re simultaneously being asked to ignore that our trajectory is gonna take us straight through and possibly land us square in a post-Worker economy, first.

Never mind that we’re still gonna expect those ex-workers to (somehow) continue to pay into capitalism, all the while.

If, for instance, either Uber’s plan for a driverless fleet or the subsequent backlash from their stable—i mean “drivers” are shocking to you, then you have managed to successfully ignore this trajectory.

Completely.

Disciplines like psychology and sociology and history and philosophy? They’re already grappling with the fears of the ones most likely to suffer said inequality, and they’re quite clear on the fact that, the ones who have so often been fucked over?

Yeah, their fears are valid.

You want to use technology to disrupt the status quo in a way that actually helps people? Here’s one example of how you do it: “Creator of chatbot that beat 160,000 parking fines now tackling homelessness.”

Until then, let’s talk about constructing a world in which we address the needs of those marginalised. Let’s talk about magick and safe spaces.

 

-Squaring the Circle-

Speaking of CFPs, several weeks back, I got one for a special issue of Philosophy and Technology on “Logic As Technology,” and it made me realise that Analytic Philosophy somehow hasn’t yet understood and internalised that its wholly invented language is a technology

…and then that realisation made me realise that Analytic Philosophy hasn’t understood that language as a whole is a Technology.

And this is something we’ve talked about before, right? Language as a technology, but not just any technology. It’s the foundational technology. It’s the technology on which all others are based. It’s the most efficient way we have to cram thoughts into the minds of others, share concept structures, and make the world appear and behave the way we want it to. The more languages we know, right?

We can string two or more knowns together in just the right way, and create a third, fourth, fifth known. We can create new things in the world, wholecloth, as a result of new words we make up or old words we deploy in new ways. We can make each other think and feel and believe and do things, with words, tone, stance, knowing looks. And this is because Language is, at a fundamental level, the oldest magic we have.

1528_injection_splash

Scene from the INJECTION issue #3, by Warren Ellis, Declan Shalvey, and Jordie Bellaire. ©Warren Ellis & Declan Shalvey.

Lewis Carroll tells us that whatever we tell each other three times is true, and many have noted that lies travel far faster than the truth, and at the crux of these truisms—the pivot point, where the power and leverage are—is Politics.

This week, much hay is being made is being made about the University of Chicago’s letter decrying Safe Spaces and Trigger Warnings. Ignoring for the moment that every definition of “safe space” and “trigger warning” put forward by their opponents tends to be a straw man of those terms, let’s just make an attempt to understand where they come from, and how we can situate them.

Trauma counseling and trauma studies are the epitome of where safe space and trigger warnings come from, and for the latter, that definition is damn near axiomatic. Triggers are about trauma. But safe space language has far more granularity than that. Microggressions are certainly damaging, but they aren’t on the same level as acute traumas. Where acute traumas are like gun shots or bomb blasts (and may indeed be those actual things), societal micragressions are more like a slow constant siege. But we still need the language of a safe spaces to discuss them—said space is something like a bunker in which to regroup, reassess, and plan for what comes next.

Now it is important to remember that there is a very big difference between “safe” and “comfortable,” and when laying out the idea of safe spaces, every social scientist I know takes great care to outline that difference.

Education is about stretching ourselves, growing and changing, and that is discomfort almost by definition. I let my students know that they will be uncomfortable in my class, because I will be challenging every assumption they have. But discomfort does not mean I’m going to countenance racism or transphobia or any other kind of bigotry.

Because the world is not a safe space, but WE CAN MAKE IT SAFER for people who are microagressed against, marginalised, assaulted, and killed for their lived identities, by letting them know not only how to work to change it, but SHOWING them through our example.

Like we’ve said, before: No, the world’s not safe, kind, or fair, and with that attitude it never will be.

So here’s the thing, and we’ll lay it out point-by-point:

A Safe Space is any realm that is marked out for the nonjudgmental expression of thoughts and feelings, in the interest of honestly assessing and working through them.

Safe Space” can mean many things, from “Safe FROM Racist/Sexist/Homophobic/Transphobic/Fatphobic/Ableist Microagressions” to “safe FOR the thorough exploration of our biases and preconceptions.” The terms of the safe space are negotiated at the marking out of them.

The terms are mutually agreed-upon by all parties. The only imposition would be, to be open to the process of expressing and thinking through oppressive conceptual structures.

Everything else—such as whether to address those structures as they exist in ourselves (internalised oppressions), in others (aggressions, micro- or regular sized), or both and their intersection—is negotiable.

The marking out of a Safe Space performs the necessary function, at the necessary time, defined via the particular arrangement of stakeholders, mindset, and need.

And, as researcher John Flowers notes, anyone who’s ever been in a Dojo has been in a Safe Space.

From a Religious Studies perspective, defining a safe space is essentially the same process as that of marking out a RITUAL space. For students or practitioners of any form of Magic[k], think Drawing a Circle, or Calling the Corners.

Some may balk at the analogy to the occult, thinking that it cheapens something important about our discourse, but look: Here’s another way we know that magick is alive and well in our everyday lives:

If they could, a not-insignificant number of US Republicans would overturn the Affordable Care Act and rally behind a Republican-crafted replacement (RCR). However, because the ACA has done so very much good for so many, it’s likely that the only RCR that would have enough support to pass would be one that looked almost identical to the ACA. The only material difference would be that it didn’t have President Obama’s name on it—which is to say, it wouldn’t be associated with him, anymore, since his name isn’t actually on the ACA.

The only reason people think of the ACA as “Obamacare” is because US Republicans worked so hard to make that name stick, and now that it has been widely considered a triumph, they’ve been working just as hard to get his name away from it. And if they did mange to achieve that, it would only be true due to some arcane ritual bullshit. And yet…

If they managed it, it would be touted as a “Crushing defeat for President Obama’s signature legislation.” It would have lasting impacts on the world. People would be emboldened, others defeated, and new laws, social rules, and behaviours would be undertaken, all because someone’s name got removed from a thing in just the right way.

And that’s Magick.

The work we do in thinking about the future sometimes requires us to think about things from what stuffy assholes in the 19th century liked to call a “primitive” perspective. They believed in a kind of evolutionary anthropological categorization of human belief, one in which all societies move from “primitive” beliefs like magic through moderate belief in religion, all the way to sainted perfect rational science. In the contemporary Religious Studies, this evolutionary model is widely understood to be bullshit.

We still believe in magic, we just call it different things. The concept structures of sympathy and contagion are still at play, here, the ritual formulae of word and tone and emotion and gesture all still work when you call them political strategy and marketing and branding. They’re all still ritual constructions designed to make you think and behave differently. They’re all still causing spooky action at a distance. They’re still magic.

The world still moves on communicated concept structure. It still turns on the dissemination of the will. If I can make you perceive what I want you to perceive, believe what I want you to believe, move how I want you to move, then you’ll remake the world, for me, if I get it right. And I know that you want to get it right. So you have to be willing to understand that this is magic.

It’s not rationalism.

It’s not scientism.

It’s not as simple as psychology or poll numbers or fear or hatred or aspirational belief causing people to vote against their interests. It’s not that simple at all. It’s as complicated as all of them, together, each part resonating with the others to create a vastly complex whole. It’s a living, breathing thing that makes us think not just “this is a thing we think” but “this is what we are.” And if you can do that—if you can accept the tools and the principles of magic, deploy the symbolic resonance of dreamlogic and ritual—then you might be able to pull this off.

But, in the West, part of us will always balk at the idea that the Rational won’t win out. That the clearer, more logical thought doesn’t always save us. But you have to remember: Logic is a technology. Logic is a tool. Logic is the application of one specific kind of thinking, over and over again, showing a kind of result that we convinced one another we preferred to other processes. It’s not inscribed on the atoms of the universe. It is one kind of language. And it may not be the one most appropriate for the task at hand.

Put it this way: When you’re in Zimbabwe, will you default to speaking Chinese? Of course not. So why would we default to mere Rationalism, when we’re clearly in a land that speaks a different dialect?

We need spells and amulets, charms and warded spaces; we need sorcerers of the people to heal and undo the hexes being woven around us all.

 

-Curious Alchemy-

Ultimately, the rigidity of our thinking, and our inability to adapt has lead us to be surprised by too much that we wanted to believe could never have come to pass. We want to call all of this “unprecedented,” when the truth of the matter is, we carved this precedent out every day for hundreds of years, and the ability to think in weird paths is what will define those who thrive.

If we are going to do the work of creating a world in which we understand what’s going on, and can do the work to attend to it, then we need to think about magic.

 


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[Originally posted at Eris Magazine]

I recently watched and have been spending some time with the semiotics of the video and Super Bowl halftime performance of Beyoncé’s “FORMATION.” And if that statement makes you snicker, then YOU NEED TO SPEND SOME TIME WITH THE SEMIOTICS OF THESE PERFORMANCES.

There have already been thinkpieces on this in Vox, the Guardian, The Washington Post, and many influential unaffiliated blogs, and rightly so. They’ve all variously and collectively discussed the connection of the visuals and clips used to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the current work of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the deeply feminist message that Beyoncé has been working to build for the past several years. What most of them don’t do, however, is recognise that she’s not only invoking these images and themes to use for her own ends, she’s evoking them. She’s conjuring the truth of a particular perspective into being. Beyoncé has created an act of magic, here.

In order to have this discussion, we are going to have to reference certain kinds of magic, and religion, and voodoo, and hoodoo. I’m not necessarily going to give you individual treatises on these each of things, right now, but rather, we’ll do a quick primer.

Magic is generally understood as the process of causing something to happen, by mysterious or impossible means. Action at a distance, words of power, ritual formulations (and formations) to bring about particular ends. We can talk about the work of Crowley or Spare or Foisy or Any other prominent magicians who evoke and invoke powers beyond the “normal,” and who resonante with language and the manipulation thereof. One of the theories of Austin Osman Spare’s chaos magic is the Sigil—an intention written down, then abstracted into a piece of art. Many have taken this and evolved out of it the idea of the hypersigil. A play or television show or a song that carries the intention out into the world, and gains potency as it is viewed, heard, engaged. Think Chalmers’ The King In Yellow or Sorkin’s The West Wing.

The kind of religion we’re seeing, here, is deep south Black Christianity, of a specifically New Orleans variety, and we have to understand that that was always tinged with the Hatian, with the Creole, with Voudun. The dancing and drumming traditions West African Yoruba traditions (hear that beat, in the halftime Show?) melded and blended with the work of Christian Missionaries and became the immediate subject of white terror. It was always a way for the black population to remain familiar with the spirits and gods of their ancestors, while nominally capitulating and then actively incorporating the beliefs of their captors.

Hoodoo is of a similar lineage, but can be seen as more organic, in a literal sense; a system developed by the slow accretion of emotion and spirit and desire to survive through whatever means nature brings to hand. Hoodoo is often referenced as “rootworking,” or “conjuration,” and it ties the ideas of the Justice or Providence of the Christian God directly into the more practical, “down and dirty” aspects of doing what you have to do to make a life. Hoodoo is, in many ways, more akin to the kind of “messier” witchcraft, Western audiences are used to seeing, with it’s potions and herbs.

In “FORMATION,” Beyoncé has braided all of these elements and more into a single working. While the nature of the thing necessitated that there would be far more spectacle at play in the Super Bowl Halftime Show, at base, both of these performances constitute Beyoncé broadcasting an immediate reappropriation of power to her community—power from her ancestors and people, power from their struggle and overcoming—as well as a warding against all those who might try to ape, steal, or dilute that same power. The repeated scene on the plantation steps encompass a system of power that was specifically denied to the people of this place, for a very long time, and Beyoncé is reclaiming that system, manipulating it (see the section below about hands), and standing present as matriarch of this place. She is at once source and example of power. This working (because that’s the only way it feels right to talk about the song, the video, the Halftime Show, together) is a show of strength through particularly highlighted points of vulnerability, a casting of a protection that is felt to be needed, now.

Look at how hands move, in the official video. There’s the interplay of the Raised Hands: In the church scenes we see hands raised in praise and surrender to the God of that church; these are interspersed with shots of the extraordinarily sharp double edge of what appears to be a 12 year old black boy* dancing as hard and as well as he can in front of a row of white police officers decked out in riot gear. As the boy dances harder and harder, the praise in the church reaches a pitch, and as the congregation throws their hands up, again, in surrender, the police throw their hands up to the boy. Surrender and praise, intertwined. The recognition of something more powerful, more perfect, something worth surrendering to.

I can’t even deconstruct this scene without crying. And if you still didn’t get it, there’s a shot of graffiti at the very end of it all that says, “Stop Shooting Us.”

This working is also an expression of Self-Possession, in all possible senses of that term. Either explicitly or implicitly, in “Formation” Beyoncé calls out every criticism leveled at her in recent months and years, from the ridiculous to those that must have hurt her to read or hear. Member of the Illuminati, too white, too black, too slutty, too rich, too reckless. She takes every single one of these and she holds them up, turns them to the light of who and what she knows she is and can be—what we all can be (“We Slay”)—and focuses it back on any and all who would try to tear down her or her people. Beyoncé’s constant hoodoo hand and body movements are specific and intentional, meant to evoke the grasping of power, the constant, predatory awareness of all comers, the building and creation of her self, and an exhortation for others—specifically other women—to do the same.

There hasn’t been a series of lines as powerful to rally around as “Come on ladies, let’s all get in Formation/Prove to me you got some coordination/Slay, trick, or you get eliminated” in a very long time. In her specific articulation of these syllables, she simultaneously reinforces herself as Slayer while leaving open the possibility of being slain—either in the sense of impressed, or of taken down—by whatever women can work hard enough, dig deep enough, and come together to slay her and the whole wide world. And anyone who doesn’t, she warns, is lost.

Again, much has already been written about the powerfully pro-black, pro-feminist message of this song, the video, and Super Bowl performance, with several writers opining that they don’t feel that this was “for them.” And maybe it wasn’t. That is, this was not something that those writers were meant to feel as a deep shared connection of lived experience, in the way that it would be felt by those ravaged by Katrina, or disproportionately targeted by police action and the United States’ prosocutorial justice system, or who struggle to maintain a balance of what it means to be a “Negro.” Some may not be meant to “get” that; it may not be “for you.” But, if not, then what is for you in these presentations is to recoginze that the people who do feel this,have felt this for a long time; that entire communities are still strong and getting stronger—like broken bones are stronger after they heal, like forests grow back stronger after fires.

What is for you is to realize that Beyoncé has done something in this working that many many people have felt needed to be done for a very long time.

Everything about the “FORMATION” working is an act of evocation and conjuration. A reification of the truth and need born out of the lived experience of the people in the world that Beyoncé outlines and encircles, with her hands.

[*UPDATE 02/10/16, 12:55pm: On repeated viewings, that boy is much younger than 12. Eight years old, at the most.]


A large part of how I support myself in the endeavor to think in public is with your help, so if you like what you’ve read here, and want to see more like it, then please consider becoming either a recurring Patreon subscriber or making a one-time donation to the Tip Jar, it would be greatly appreciated.
And thank you.

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.