Machine Decision Is Not Final Reading Group
Linggan Divinations (Weird Economies / Cosmo-Financial Study Group) has arrived to convene fresh perspectives on a topic that refuses to leave everybody alone right now - Artificial Intelligence. We are looking forward to working through a selection of readings from Machine Decision is not Final, Urbanomic’s compilation of essays about Artificial Intelligence in China, in an attempt to unpack tensions inherent between Western and Chinese conceptions of this technology, from cybernetic dreams of yore and their cultural underpinnings to emerging speculations and problematics. We hope that this opportunity for collective sensemaking will provide a fresh dose of plurality to counteract the planetary-scale hype & tendency towards reductivism in these slop-aganda times.
We will be gathering on April 2 and April 15 IRL at Well Read in Lisbon at 19h / 7pm GMT +0, with online attendees joining in via jit.si videoconferencing (link to come).
Readings will be shared via Notion to attendees in advance (RSVP to receive). It is recommended to grab your own copy of the book if possible.
First session (April 2nd) will be dedicated to texts that directly concern the Chinese AI tradition: Shuang L. Frost: Translating Chinese AI: From 'human Intelligence to 'Black Tech' (pp.39-53); 3 texts from the Linggan section around the visionnary figure of Qian Xuesen and cosmotechnics (Bo An, You Mi and Wang Hongze, pp..89-127 : https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-54695598 ; and Xin Wang's Machine Envy (pp. 249-264)
Second session (April 15th) will cover the "rest" of the book (Negarestani, Bogna Konior, Yvette Granata, Vincent Garton, S. Goodman, Lawrence Lek, Anna Greenspan, and NOT B. Bratton! )
Organized by Erik Bordeleau (Lisbon NOVA University), Laura Lotti and Pearl Wong
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灵感 (línggǎn): numinous sensing, "inspiration"
灵 (líng) is one of the richest characters in Chinese: spirit, numen, efficacy, cleverness, the soul's spark. It names something alive, responsive, charged. In Daoist contexts, 灵 is the quality of things that are spiritually potent or uncannily efficacious. So 灵感 is not "inspiration" in the Romantic genius sense (the Muse descends upon the solitary creator). It's more like: the moment when your sensing capacity (感) becomes numinously charged (灵), when receptivity itself becomes efficacious. You're gǎn-ed by something that exceeds the ordinary field of perception. There's an important depersonalization here: línggǎn happens to you, through a heightened porosity. The subject doesn't generate it; the subject is the site where resonance becomes spiritually active.
In contemporary Chinese usage, 灵感 is commonly used for artistic or creative inspiration, but the philosophical undertone persists: it implies that the creative act originates in a mode of receptivity, not will.