#aesthetinet

[aesthetinet]

Welcome to the Net...

Hey Net-Heads!

We are so happy to be coming to you today with our inaugural post on the blog. aesthetinet is a special place built by us, Aestheticaste, where we will reflect on various genres that have either been erased, been massively overhauled as a result, or been given brand new definitions as a result of the creation of the Internet.

This week, we’re talking about the book Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future by James Bridle, more specifically, the first chapter of the book “Chasm.” This chapter speaks about the dangers technology can pose when it is used in ways we are unaware of. This chapter speaks about how technology has helped shape the planet, our communities, and ourselves but how it has not transformed our understanding of the issues we face. Bridle goes on to say that It has only been helpful in that it allows us to stop thinking, but that technology also works to promote some of the greatest challenges we face today.

For these reasons, Bridle calls on us all to be critical of technology, not only of its use but also of who made it, who it was made for, and what its intentions are. Bridle then brings up the cloud, which was invented in the 1950s?! and notes that it began as an idea among the developers as a way to reduce the complexity of explaining how it worked. However, it became much more important as the internet grew, to the point that clouds are so big that they have become a resource that can do various processes. This brings us to the present, where the cloud is more of a business buzzword. It goes further than this, though, as we know, the cloud doesn’t really exist in the sky but rather in various warehouses in various countries owned and operated by various companies.

All this to say that from where the cloud began, it has moved far beyond to the point that the creators of the cloud might not even recognize it. This is a very interesting and important piece from the reading to highlight because it brings us into aesthetinet. From its conception, the idea of the cloud has gone through various hands and experienced change through time interaction with the internet. It went from being something that was used as a shorthand into a buzzword, into various ecological and moral crises.

Here is where we come in: Aestheticaste, is here to investigate some of your favourite aesthetics to see how, throughout time and exposure to the internet, they have changed aspects, transformed in nature, or been given completely different names. This reading, while not pertaining to aesthetics at all, touches on the capacity that technology, and therefore the internet, can change and distort. This is one of the scariest parts of technology to Bridle, as it allows the technology to hide its intentions and harms that may be present within, such as the clouds that have all of everyone's information that we don’t often think about for the reason of it being “in the cloud.”

The reading ends with a reflection on where the internet is now and where the world could be heading as a result, into a new dark age. Various factors such as the insistence on simplistic narratives, conspiracy theories, and post-factual politics, Bridle believes will bring in the new dark age. One where the value placed on knowledge is destroyed by the abundance of profitable commodities. This reading was very interesting as This decline can literally be observed on your devices every day, think about what the internet has done irreparable damage to the idea of News. While the internet provides many opportunities to see different sources of News, it does not care which ones hold the most variety but which will work for their algorithms.

You'll here from us again soon,

Aestheticaste

Link to the reading of the chapter can be found below:

James Bridle, New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future Chapter "Chasm"

[aesthetinet]

Hi, my beautiful net-baes! This is [bubblegumprincess] here writing for the first time and I hope you’re as excited as me. 

Okay so getting straight to the point seems to be a common trend this week so I plan on doing just that.

My question is inspired from Mark Weiser’s paper The Computer of the 21st Century which considers how we make technology fade into the background of our lives in an ethical manner? For this question, I instantly thought of Solarpunk, an aesthetic genre my TA from last semester (shout out Bronte) told me about. Imagine a world fully powered by solar energy and without global capitalism that dominates society. Seemingly idealistic right now, but Solarpunk brings the hope that this is not impossible. If you can think it, there’s a chance to make it. 

More than for the art and visual, solar-punk is highly regarded as an important literary movement for our future.  The aesthetics of solarpunk mainly center on its beautiful greenery that makes up civilization with simple yet still advanced green technology. As Jay Springett says in his blog post SOLARPUNK: A Reference Guide, Solarpunk provides a creative space that gets creatives to think productively about our future asking, “what does a sustainable civilization look like, and how can we get there?”. I could spend hours talking about different technologies architects of this aesthetic have come up with, but we might have to save that for another day. In the meantime explore intriguing design ideas from the aesthetic I’ve found interesting here. 

A common trait in today’s generation is our detachment from the world around us and in turn ourselves by being too absorbed by our screen without even realizing. Technology with screens may be helpful in completing many tasks but as a negative side effect causes us to be separated from the natural world. In The Computer of the 21st Century, Mark Weiser explains how throughout history, "literacy technology" has always seamlessly integrated into our daily lives. However, as Weiser critiques, today's multimedia machine makes the computer screen into the focal point of attention rather than allowing it to truly fade into the background of the natural world. I agree with Weiser's team at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center that “the idea of a "personal" computer itself is misplaced and that the vision of laptop machines, dynabooks and "knowledge navigators" has not reached it’s real potential of information technology. ”

As a solution, I propose an incorporation of Solarpunk as an area of focus to invest in alongside Weiser’s idea.  The technological designs in Solarpunk, if achievable, will be sustainable and smoothly incorporated into everyday life. Now I am no engineer so I will need someone of that major to share their thoughts with me, but the idea of turning away from our waste heavy cities into a green and nature friendly one is worth the thought. By embedding future technology into the environment in sustainable ways seamlessly, we might develop technology that doesn’t hinder and disconnect humanity. We should aim to create a world where business, technology, and nature all work in harmony and balance. Capitalism hinders the ability to create for the betterment of the society by being consumed by just producing what will sell best (which is usually some extravagant combobulated bs).  Entrepreneurs such as Simon Blackler has already started proposing projects such as his work ‘Krystal’. They have already started with their first creation which is a web host and public cloud provider called Krystal Holding Ltd. They run on 100% renewable energy and pride themselves in running an ethical tech company rewarding all employees for their good efforts as well. As a company they claim they planted over 2.7 million trees and continue to invest in bettering the environment and world. 

Last year, as part of my SASAH final exhibition, I was proud to contribute to Western’s own Solarpunk-inspired project: the agrotunnel using agri-voltaics, led by Dr. Joshua Pearce. This project focuses on building an underground farming tunnel powered entirely by solar panels, allowing crops to be grown year-round in a sustainable and energy-efficient way.

Although still carrying concerns such as ownership, privacy, security, and surveillance, I believe the inspired technology from Solarpunk aesthetics align with the vision Weiser has for our future and serve as a productive next step. Instead of forcing humans to adapt to computers, computers should adapt to human needs. With growing concerns on AI, this is the type of ideas and optimism we need. 

Quote from A Solarpunk Manifesto: 

“In Solarpunk’s vision we’ve pulled back just in time to stop the slow destruction of our planet. We’ve learned to use science wisely, for the betterment of our life conditions as part of our planet. We’re no longer overlords. We’re caretakers. We’re gardeners.”

So it’s up to you to decide, will you choose to be comfortable staying a weed in the garden or choose to be a gardener of the world?

A video from Youtuber Andrewism who talks a lot on Solarpunk:

Stay hot and thinking,

Aestheticaste

[aesthetinet]

Get Animated, Get Real

Greetings faithful followers, I am one of Aesthetinet’s contributors, [Cor3!ander], and I would like to share my thoughts about a curious article:

Hyperbole is the order of the hour when Large Language Models (LLMs) are discussed, such that common parlance unanimously likens them to Artificial Intelligence (AI). Such a consensus calls all scribes of the digital age to hail coming times of prosperity when all our woes are dispelled of by our machines, or times of doom when those same machines have decided that they have outgrown us. If you ask us at aestheti/net, we are giving LLMs too much credit. We also find that Luke Stark, author of the article Animation and Artificial Intelligence, tends to agree with us. However, Stark proposes a different paradigm which we might adopt that neither embellishes nor downplays the capabilities of LLMs and their effects on our worldviews, and that is to interpret them as animated characters. By considering Stark’s arguments, we may develop a method of dialogue that decelerates our frantic efforts of trying to interpret and implement LLMs before we can understand and judge them more maturely.

Stark argues why LLMs should be understood as animated characters by first proposing a framework of theories which define them, followed by his arguments for his framework’s efficacy, and conclusions of what benefits it might provide. His framework incorporates anthropologist Teri Silvio’s “structuring type” which outlines how relationships of human-computer interactions (HCIs) function and supports it with a linguistic “grammar of action” theory to describe how LLMs’ expressions appeal to human attractions. That section essentially defines how the “human component” of LLMs work to proliferate themselves, which allows him to further liken their attributes to those of classical animated characters, e.g., Mickey Mouse. With that correlation argued for, Stark concludes that it is beneficial because we are thus enabled to appreciate how LLMs appeal to us while also conservatively considering their differences the same way as we would mark the distinction between fantasy and reality with animated characters.

We ultimately judge that Stark’s argument is a novel and needed provision to the current dialogue about LLMs, however, it still possesses weaknesses. To be more charitable to start, the emotional aspect of Stark’s thesis—that new paradigms over LLMs must be more reserved and ambivalent to produce more constructive arguments—is important by itself because of the unavoidable noise surrounding the current LLM dialogue. The steps he takes to get there, however, leave more to be desired because the language he uses is academic to the extreme, such that his points may not be as easily accessible to the people that could benefit from reading them. So, while the end result is certainly not merely a weightless academic curiosity, it does indirectly call for more proponents of his paradigm to experiment with new modes of expression to reach greater audiences.

Two questions stand out from our reading of Stark, which ask less in order to criticize but more in order to expand his work. The first is: who was the original intended audience for the article? Its content suggests it was for a more pedestrian readership to add more depth to common discussions about LLMs, but its language requires more prudence to dissect. The second is: may the pretense of interpreting LLMs as animated characters to reduce hyperbole have some fault, since animated characters, as cultural artifacts by themselves, impart so much influence on the communities that receive them?

We believe that those questions may inevitably fall to us and everyone else who will have to open up their stances regarding LLMs in the future, as they develop. As we see in our course, it is frequently found to be the most daunting kind of personal responsibility to “keep up with the times” as it were, especially as our nostalgia grows more potent with age while the days get shorter and the news stays on for twenty-four hours at a time. Yet, Stark reminds us that LLMs are a human innovation and cultural artifact as any other, such that we have always had more control and discipline to judge their relationships to us with, and we should now, more than ever.

Warm regards,

Aestheticaste

And here’s where you can find the article:

[aesthetinet]

Ghosts in the Digital

Hi again you internet mud-sloggers, it’s [Cor3!ander] with you in the trenches again, and I need to get straight to the point:

Do I hate the player, or do I hate the game? I have yet to decide after finishing Oliver Misraje’s article The Internet is a Graveyard, which discusses the different kinds of “ghosts” that proliferate in the Web3 era of the internet. Yet, we at Aesthetinet have to be good humanities writers and engage with texts we are challenged by, and now is my turn to carry the burden. So, I will prime you on phenomena such as HTTP ghosts, thanotechnology and ghost crypto, then propose how they might matter to you. Yet I will remain hesitant as I ruminate because I have not even figured out how they matter to me.

Misraje is a self described “hauntologist” who specializes in what he calls “ghosts” in the internet, which he presents in concise and accessible miniature case studies through his article, and provides limited opinions on them after. Now, there is a lot of them, so I have to run through them quickly to save for time. HTTP ghosts are pieces of content left up on the internet originally posted by people who are now dead; thanotechnology are programs and services that produce AI- or otherwise digitally-constructed simulacra of dead people; ghost crypto is literally memorial NFTs that are minted on the blockchain. You see the issue? There are so many sub-types of each phenomenon too, that they preclude a concise summary in this format, so I will instead try to put forth the implication they pose.

Luckily, Misraje spends the latter part of each case study talking about the implications and ethical issues of the proliferation of each kind of ghost, by sharing perspectives from other peoples’ experiences while keeping his criticism gentle. For example, he talks about how Project December, a thanotechnology powered by GPT-3 has been used to make AI text simulacra of deceased loved ones to help with grief. Okay, I remain open to reading this because he cites a real user who had a reportedly positive experience with it, but then he goes on to conclude that the user “Believes in the capacity for technologies like Project December to revolutionize the way people will grieve in the future”. This is where Misraje’s perspective and tone fail for me: that single sentence disregards generations of philosophy and literal grief, while we still have yet to seriously consider our relationship with AI in more mundane applications.

I wish I could talk more, because I legitimately appreciate Misraje’s article while I still have serious reservations about its position. To conclude, I think it is best I expand the point of his article and share how fictional narratives and aesthetics have handled the question of his digital “ghosts” before. I will cite one of my favourite media: director Mamoru Oshii’s animated film adaptation of the manga Ghost in the Shell, sharing the same name. The film by itself displays a cyberpunk-esque world where human consciousness are understood as “ghosts”, that can be hacked, invented, erased, transferred over the internet, bought and sold over and over. Memories have effectively become commodities as well as weapons for crimes such as corporate espionage and sabotage. The memory of digital things has already become a commodity with ghost crypto, as Misraje explains. Yet Oshii is much more of a challenger than Misraje, and frequently asks the viewer right in their face through his characters and scenes of what the worth of our human experience really is if it is reduced to bits.

Stay existential,

Aestheticaste

And the article, for your interest: