Artist and theorist Warren Neidich, known for text-based neon sculptures and as founder of the Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art, discusses the fourth edition of his Glossary of Cognitive Activism with Pinchbeck. Neidich explains that the glossary began in 2015 as a guide for visitors to a Berlin exhibition on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz that included his Statisticon and Pizzagate neons, and has since become a work in its own right, revised as its vocabulary ages: terms tied to the 2016 election such as fake news and meme magic have given way to algorithmic governance and algorithmic bias. He traces cognitive capitalism to Italian post-operaismo thinkers including Antonio Negri, Franco Berardi, Silvia Federici, Paolo Virno and Maurizio Lazzarato, and to Yann Moulier-Boutang's book of that name. Pinchbeck raises Google mapping and the hippocampus.
Guest: Warren Neidich
In brief
- Neidich says the Glossary of Cognitive Activism started as an exhibition handout explaining the terms in his neon works and became an independent, iterative text by its third and fourth editions.
- Neidich argues that the glossary's vocabulary must be revised as political conditions change, dropping 2016-era terms like fake news and meme magic in favor of algorithmic governance and algorithmic bias.
- Neidich attributes the concept of cognitive capitalism to Italian post-operaismo philosophers including Antonio Negri, Franco Berardi, Silvia Federici, Paolo Virno and Maurizio Lazzarato.
- Neidich summarizes Yann Moulier-Boutang's argument that integrating cybernetics into labor drove the shift from Fordism's assembly line to post-Fordist feedback loops and a nomadic workplace.
- Pinchbeck and Neidich discuss the possibility that reliance on Google mapping is reshaping the hippocampus and brain architecture.
- Neidich says he refuses to invest in companies such as Neuralink on the same grounds that he refuses to invest in arms stocks, and describes changing minds one conversation at a time.
Full text
everybody today I am here with my old friend War nidek I don't even remember how far back we go but back into the 2000s or 90s or something like that uh and Warren is a artist who's had a long August career and uh recently he's gotten interested in uh kind of cognitive activism I mean not recently cognitive capitalism and he is putting out a new edition of his book uh uh the glossery of cognitive activism and we met recently and started a discussion around it and I was excited actually by how many of our interests kind of overlap and uh kind of fascinated by the book sort of like it's almost like a novel in the form of a gloss or or thetical tretis uh in the way it uses of glossery form to kind of develop a whole um yeah kind of like um perspective on what's Happening to us as technology evolves and and capitalism evolves so I thought it'd be really fun to just yeah to talk with Warren about the book uh jump into some of the um kind of the the different categories and ideas and uh kind the theoretical framing uh and yeah Warren when we were speaking at lunch I think what really um you know kind of like made me feel that I really wanted to have this discussion with you is when we were talking about the the the the Google mapping and the impact it might be having on people's hippocampus and its brain and then you kind of launched into some um syes around like sort of brain architecture and so on which was um you know a little above my pay grade but I was really excited to see the way you were thinking about this stuff so so let's start a little what was kind like the Genesis for this for this project for you uh we're talking just to get back we're talking about the glossia of cognitive activism what was the uh the Genesis of that well um you have to understand that this glossery of cognitive activist is the fourth edition uh of the glosso cognitive activism and it started in 2015 and what it was was really a guide to an artwork that I had was showing at the Karine Rosa Luxembourg plots or sometimes called l40 in Berlin in which I had a piece called the statistic on neon and I also had the pizzagate neon so I was showing two large pieces one was called the statistic on neon and the other was pizz gate so the original um glosser cognitive activism was a guide given to Spectators who came to the show and wanted to know what the words meant uh that were they were looking at so uh that's how it started and it was it was much smaller it was a thin volume um and uh in that in that glossery I I explained the words that were um you know in in on the statistic on uh uh diagram so as you know but maybe some of your listeners don't know but they can go to my website or Instagram and they can see uh that I'm a i i in the last five or six years I've been working with large neon sculptures sometimes they're on the wall like a fresco and sometimes they're hanging uh like a chandelier and like a like a suspended uh sculpture they're all in neon so they're all about light and uh they're text based and um and and uh there are white arrows going in between the words that kind of create a web like or network function that allow everything to be connected so that's basically how it began as a a guide for spectators coming to see my exhibition and then it it continued from there it it's a um it's an iterative proect like I'm even thinking I'm I'm having nightmares that I forgotten certain words in the last uh for the last venue so it's iterative it's changing it's it's growing it's also some of the words that were important 19 uh 2015 are no longer important so I had it was very much 201 2015 2016 I should say 2016 was very much about um the uh presidential election between Hillary Clinton and and Donald Trump and some of the things that had happened like so fake news was huge uh during the 216 U you know the first glossery things like kek things like um uh um you know um meeme magic these kinds of words which were part of the general elocution of political philosophy in the 2016 are know no longer important for the present volume so it's iterative and there are words like Chachi PT which is much more important algorithmic governance algorithmic bias these are the some of the words that are much more important uh today uh but weren't included in the first volume mention I should also mention that the glossery became an entity in itself so at first it was entangled or linked with my sculptures uh as a as a guide uh but in the fourth uh in the third and fourth edition they became something on their own uh without a direct reference so was kind of an organic development uh so I mean but let's I mean okay so that's kind of you know the art you're involved with but I mean I'm trying to get more into like the the meaning of it like um you know what what is what for you is cognitive capitalism and what is cognitive activism okay well Co let's go through cognitive capitalism so uh cognitive capitalism is um it's a designation of Phil political philosophy that uh was an outgrowth really out of a certain uh group of Italian uh what we call postoper rismo um political philosophers that were living in and around Milan uh and trento and bolognia and they would be people like Tony NE and uh Franco barardi and um uh you know people like that Sylvia federici was very important uh to that Pao Verno and they were they were basically uh developed this concept of cognitive uh capitalism I should also me Yan muler bhang in France who wrote a book as beautiful book um called cognitive capitalism who argues that cognitive capitalism em this is Muller's argument not mine but mulier argues that that uh there was um that as a result of the uh the um integration of cybernetics into labor that also was part of the transition between fordism and post fordism the idea in fordism of of an assembly line the idea in post fordism as an idea of feedback and feed forward and feedback loops within the workspace the multi the the nomadic workspace rather than the one uh incarcerated to the uh assembly line um these kinds of ideas were going to affect how we understood labor and what labor and the politics of Labor and what what it would mean and they were the they were the pre prequel to all of all of the things that we're talking about today like performative labor the knowledge economy information economy all these things were emerged out of the discourses of people like M um Macio lerado for instance he was a number another member of that group and in 1980 he wrote one of the most important essays about immaterial Labor that immaterial labor would become the most consequential performative labor labor that doesn't that didn't leave a trace labor that was about the growth of knowledge would would become more important than than the labor that produces objects and that was that was the moment in 1980 of course mulank says 1975 but I would argue the maricio lazer's famous article much the weed let's let's you know probably excuse a lot of just like let's try to you know stay um yeah I don't and your book is very good I mean you have a lot of theorists and it's fascinating uh but but um I think people can get lost in in the week material labor is super interesting I mean I read about that in N green Hart's work they talked about it as like um what's ultimately being produced so immaterial labors everything that's like digital virtual like media design you know where you're not like making a car like a like a do it doesn't leave a trace the beautiful example of immaterial Labor is a going to a rock concert and the labor the virtuoso pianist or the virtuos guitarist is is laboring And yet when the crowd leaves the only thing that might be there Co empty C empty Coca-Cola cups or and cigarette butts but there's nothing produced you know and I'm arguing that that immaterial labor is actually material because it's affecting the brain it's affecting the material connections that are occurring in the brain it does leave a trace in fact that immaterial labor even though it's not about objects it's not built on an assembly line it's it's performative it's about theater it's about public relations it's you know like the public relations the I mean I mean for forri I guess their whole perspective was that it's about the production of subjectivity right that like modern society where immaterial production has become like the hegemonic form of production it's the the production of subjectivity is the most important thing that's being produced and we're all part we're all cognit ariats we we go from being proletariat working on assembly lines to cognit ariats working doing performative labor in front of screens and clicking and swiping screens creating data and that data is not passive so that's also a transition so so the idea of immaterial Labor um has changed from 1980 to today so but let me put it in perspective and I'm sorry I would like to clarify there is an ear early stage of of cognitive capitalism and an early a late stage so the most important thing about cognitive capitalism is that we are no longer proletariat working on AEM line but we're cognit ariats we are mental laborers that's a key component we're no longer physical laborers working with our bodies on assembly lines or you know whatever we are and you know that could goes all the way back to the early 19th century with uh yui uh I don't want to I want to stay focused okay otherwise I could go deeply into this but anyway the bottom line is that the cogniter replace or the mental Labor uh CH exchanges places with the proletarian or the um laborer using their body now that's not to say that physical labor is gone physical labor has just been subsumed by Al labor in other words we are still in for instance in in Brazil making cars and in Eastern Europe uh BMW makes it cars and you know still physical labor is still happening and although it's happening very very different in a most in a more postmodern way where the worker has a say and the worker gives feedback to the managerial and all of that but it's still physical labor but now mental labor has subsumed and you know that because all of the Investments that are being made today are in you know Google and Microsoft and all these chat chat uh uh you know all the chat GPT and all these kindi so yeah it's all about that so we know that now there are a number of other characteristics of of of early cognitive capitalism so there's a early stage and a late stage and the early stage is like you've mentioned Tony Hart Tony negri Michael har Michael Hart uh lazarat and all these other people and they argue that there are five components to that and this is a summary first is that the labor is precarious that in in in the past labor that you people work for one company their whole life there was a sort of stability there were there were safety nets there was you had Insurance you had 41 41k you there was basically you you know you you had more uh stability in your life and there was more shess now we're on the end end of a precipice your job could end at any particular time but people are also changing their jobs quite consistently they're moving from one job to another so there's this idea of precariousness precaria Labor and uh that is something that maybe we'll talk about a little bit later then there's the idea of 247 labor we don't have weekends anymore there everybody's working all the time and that's called the third element which is called real subsumption and by the way Jonathan crer wrote a book called 247 which which really goes into it much deeper and he actually talks about 24/7 as a as a kind of the commodification of sleep but I'm not getting into it that way I'm just saying that you know we're working all the time you know uh on the weekend we met our first time on on a Saturday but what did we do we some people would say that we were working we were talking and here we are today but it was on a Saturday that we met right so there's no such thing as a weekend anymore and also part of that 247 is that you know I I had a meeting this morning with uh curators that live in stock so they're on six-h hour difference and there there might I might and then the other day I was having a talk with somebody in Korea which is a 12-h hour difference so there's this idea of this kind of uh of of delinking of time and labor that labor can happen any time now it's not it's not uh formal it's not formatted to a specific 8 to 10 8 AM to or 9:00 am to 6:00 pm or what 8 hour day or whatever you want to call it it's it's it's it's it's it's part of our real life it's it's labor is life you know okay that's the third thing so this real subsumption that labor is life in life isum then we already talked about immaterial Labor that labor today is performative we already mentioned that already it doesn't leave a trace and I argue of course that it does leave a trace then there is uh the idea of uh communicative capitalism that so much uh of um of our uh Industries have to do with technology and media uh so these are the these are and then there's also another one uh called the financialization of capital and that has two meanings depending on who you read on one hand financialization of capital means that that the economy is psychologic it it it go it comes and goes based on feelings and attitudes that a a a group of people have and that's what's pushing the market uh this kind of different kinds of psychology the other idea is that there is the the labor the labor the person working is actually investing in the same uh funds as the as the owner so that there's no longer that breakdown so that's pretty much early cognitive capitalism know you know you know but then there's a late one too okay go on tell me what what is the what's the time frame associated with these stages well the stages would be that's what I'm saying so um yamang argue that 1975 is the beginning of cognitive capitalism but I'm arguing that mercil lerado in 1980 that fundamental article that he wrote would be for me the beginning of uh cognitive capitalism when it really comes into being and then the late stage is something that I have been writing about uh since 2015 um and I think uh other people now are accepting this later stage so therefore so 1975 but of course you know one more little you know little subtle tweet sidebar is that there that that uh cognitive capitalism emerged out of a group of uh uh a group of political activists called oper rismo which was a result in 1965 even so so you could even say the roots start in 1965 with uh the oper ismo group uh and their relationships to the Fiat plant and the olivetti plant so it depends on how you want to look at it but basically uh um you know there's there's a different it's like the anthropos scine when did the anthropos scine start everybody has their you know different date to when the anthropos start I guess when you say late stage it kind of suggests that there's going to be a transition into something else there was it's already started it's already stage has already happening and there was postmodernity so what happens after late stage cognitive there is a late well the the early stage transitions into the late stage because we are moving into what I call a neural economy so that what happens and where the uh what happens is is that this immaterial labor there's a number of things that happen to these definitions let's take immaterial labor so immaterial labor is where is now not so immaterial because I'm arguing that it in fact does leave a trace it does that the that the new Commodities of this moment we're living in probably after 2015 but certainly continuing today are neural based and that and that the M immaterial labor is actually changing the the the course of uh or changing the reactions that are occurring in the brain itself uh at the neural synaptic Junction but also its extracranial aspect too so the brain for me is not just something that's um incarcerated in the Bony skull and is something that's crystallized and doesn't change and is a a product of genetic uh genetic changes in the course of of a species uh it is also a result of an extracranial a situated in an extracranial component meaning that uh it interacts with uh the world around the social political economic historical cosmological conditions of which it it is mirroring uh and it's a mirror and that since two million years ago with homo habas that these that technical changes that changes in the evolution of techniques this is Bernard stigler's argument that the history of of of changes of the techniques and I what I mean that by that is not just simply uh techn Technologies like you know spear points and and and and Spears and fire and uh social uh hunting and slash burning agriculture all these kinds of things that it's not just those Technologies but it's the social social Technologies as well as as you might know we have the social networks and social media today and um you know and we have um uh you know Facebook and Instagram and all these other social there there is their Technologies as well they're not just you know the the interaction of human beings and and and their and their uh and and the way that they evolve it's it's it's very entangled with technology so those changes that occurred in the last two million years are having fundamental changes in the brain too the this is all again laag goong and it's also Bernard Stigler the um the the frontal lobe has expanded as well as the temporal lobe with language one and also the parietal Lo and and and their connections to each other whatever so that expansion is a result of uh epip phylogenesis or exosomatic organogenesis as as he calls it not it's not those are those are stigler's terms so this is all very important um for late stage cogni capitalism because this immaterial labor which was the fundamental aspect of of of the early cogn capitalism now changes and actually we understand it to have effects uh on the brain and and material effects it's material and that we understand that the neural common the Comm common of the neuroplasticity that was something that given is god-given and and given to all of us um like water and breathing and air and all that stuff is also a a fundamental place for commoditization and capitalist expansion and that is what's called neuroc capitalism and that's one of the key aspects of um of uh of late stage cognitive capitalism the other aspect of it is called neuropower so you know you everyone knows what biopower is the famous you know expression of Fuko about uh about power over the body of course Fuko was was the person who really understood that this biopower was was you know uh really geared towards um making human social interactions better it was actually something that he he he tried to understand in a positive way but it does have its it does have its negative implications and that biop power populations of bodies and how they're instrumentalized how subjectivity is organized how processes of governmentalization in impose themselves on the body like a woman's right to choose as a perfect biopolitical uh uh uh statement of course it's today we understand it uh in a much different way as it's it's now under threat again uh Alabama Supreme Court AR doing today on the news that an embryo used for artificial insemination is uh is protected by law and that it is um a human being already even at that point so there you have that's that's what biopolitics means when you know Pol politics affects the the body and what the body can do um and I'll go get into that later again I want to talk more about that but U neuropower which is part of late stage cognitive capitalism is about populations of brains and how process of governmental mental is in the middle of that word governmentality is in charge of how that the the the pharmacon the positive and negative the emancipatory and the despotic aspects of of how new technologies are affecting the neuroplasticity of the brain what I call the neuroc common does that make sense yeah I mean I guess I still see a little bit of a distinction between um you know precognitive capitalism and cognitive capitalism I mean you know there's still a distinction between making chairs or umbrellas and kind of rewiring uh the inner dimensions of of of brain function um I I I was curious about neural eom course I mean for instance in Marx's idea uh of things like um abstract abstract knowledge and the connection uh the way that the the assembly line or organizes human beings into Set uh regimes of of of of physical activity and that there's a connection between the general intelligence the basic knowledge that is available to everyone at any particular time and the labor how that changes yeah I mean there are definite I mean the idea of the brain and this idea of the Mind ug of capitalism has its roots you know back in the 19th century absolutely if that's what you meant I'm curious I wanted to get into this uh idea of neural economy you said that that you're saying that we're transitioning from the late stage of cognitive capitalism into something different and then you use the term neural economy to kind of describe that so can you explain what that means exactly I mean what I was trying to say and this is another thing that I'm talking about in the uh in the journal in the uh not the journal but yeah the journal recent article I wrote in a journal but in the glosser of cognitive actives is that we are going we are transitioning into a neural economy or what I call Neural capitalism in which um in which new technologies that have far-reaching uh effects on our brain and its mental uh it's its mental component are are making uh their appearance and right now they're you know they're very um their effect is just beginning but in the future they will be become uh predominant so one example what are some examples um of that uh brain computer interfaces is is one thing that right now it seems very very uh uh you know temperate temper temperate temperate temperate excuse me uh but it has far-reaching consequences that are make me shudder so for instance what is let me for those out there who don't know what brain computer interfaces are or don't have a you know a really strong idea of what it is there are brain computer interface or such as the company called uh uh um you know the neurolink by neurolink uh there are other companies as well but neurolink is a good example allow uh for a a person for instance who's paraplegic in a wheelchair to be able to use their brain waves uh to move a wheelchair or to move a robotic arm to feed them and to give them a sense of indep a slight sense of Independence now it turns on turns out that the brain wave is goes into an algorithm and the algorithm turns it into a series of commands and that you can train someone to use these waves brain waves uh to do such things well if right now we are capable of doing that and we understand uh the rapidity at which technology changes uh we can we know that 10 years from now I'm just throwing that out I mean I don't I'm just saying 10 years is a possibility that 10 years from now an external agent will be able to use those codes those same codes that change that allow the brain wave to be decoded and turned into a sort of work which is the robotic arm moving to feed somebody those same algorithms the same decoding mechanisms could be uh could be originating from an external brain or external what call an artificial connectome or a chat GPT connected to a neurolink or whatever you want to call it we don't know really what that is but it's you know and then could um could generate code that could penetrate the skull and intercede in the normal neurophysiological functional rhythms of the brain modifying them changing them in such a way uh that you know that hearkens back to a saga even more fear more fearing than 1984 and then of course what would happen if that same external entity whatever it is that we're imagining it it's like science fiction but we live in science fiction How about if that that entity now um was used in a child or an adolescent during critical periods of learning in which the neuroplasticity is the most sensitive and called critical periods also sensitive periods of uh of height neuroplasticity when different parts of the brain are Evol you know are developing one could argue that this this entity could in fact change the architecture of the brain so that's the kind of thing that I'm talking about then I was also talking yeah sorry that's one example no I I I liked your example and it really stuck with me when we had lunch around the um hippo campus I mean so essentially if you look at capitalism historically uh we can see that all these things that people just used to be able to do for themselves or in their communities are ultimately outsourced and turned into markets then sold back to them right this is the the idea that I gave you about GPS's so people used to obviously like you know make food together now they go to restaurants used to go to the spring which is now Spring Street and dip their you know cups in the water and drink fresh water now they have to get Evan or Fiji Water uh they used to tell stories around the fire you know now they watch Netflix or uh you know TW T Tik Tok stories so there's been this Progressive kind of like alienation where we you know and going deeper and deeper over time so it feels like we're now at this next threshold where capitalism has kind of exhausted all these exterior markets the same logic is going deeper into the um yeah the the the realm of subjectivity and the realm of sort of cognitive abilities that really Define kind of the you know individual self at least of the last centuries if not for far longer so we're looking at things like AI which is going to like you know supplement or supersede people's reasoning capacities like instead of and creative capacities yeah so instead of writing a paper comparing Walter Benjamin and Shakespeare's ideas you're just hit a button and it'll spew out something that's that's like that which you'll hand in you know and um you know similarly as you said the uh the hippocampus I guess forms when we between like 10 and 15 or reaches its full functioning and kids are kind of supposed to get lost right like they play together they go to the forest they get lost in the forest and they have to be like how do we get home it's like that tree and that that flower and they find their way back and they learn how to orient spatially but if you have these kids from a very early age who are just doing everything with Google Maps their hippocampus may never really develop properly I think that's the um well yeah I what I had what I was uh saying to you that morning at breakfast is that what's happening is that I had noticed personally and you would agreed with me that a greater and greater population of of adolescents and young people are you know don't forget they're not with their parents anymore they're on their own they use their GPS's to go everywhere and they don't they never learn wayf finding now wayf finding is a very complicated um U it's a very complicated uh cognitive ability and it relates not just to the hippocampus but also to the frontal lobe and the parietal lobe and it's a whole network and it and it and it's a kind of um it's a kind of um um skill that is you you learn basic skills and then on top of that you learn other skills and on top of that you learn other skills but but what I was saying is that certain aspects of wayfinding uh adolescents never really engage with because they are using their cell phones and they become dependent on their cell phones to the extent especially during critical periods of development there's actually two periods of development but the the this the kid most children are not having I mean they may have their i Phones but they you know between two and five which is their first development of uh their neuroplasticity but they're not they don't have i Phones and they're not going to places by themselves but teenagers are and there is another another developmental window another critical period between 12 and 15 years old and then during that critical period of of development they depend are depending heavily with on their i Phones to the extent that they never learn uh how to wayf find they don't learn that skill and then what I was and not only do they not learn it but but they don't NE they don't learn that they don't they don't develop the the the neural networks themselves uh they don't develop this well so for instance to give you just to make a slight aside before I finish up and say what I'm the final what is the you know the idea of that statement I will say that um there's been a lot of um research done on London cab drivers who some who use GPS and some who don't and it turns out that those who use the GPS never have much smaller um uh posterior hippoc campuses than those who who do not use them okay so that was just a little the side so what happens is that these kids they never develop the correct connections and uh it's and the critical period goes you know between 12 and 15 they grow beyond that and they don't really have the chance to really develop those uh network connections and then just like when I went on I went on the guardian's website about three days ago because a friend of mine said to me uh you need to read this article it's incredible so I went over to the guardian and on my internet and said sorry I've already read 10 articles and that I have to start paying for them now just ass so I assume that in the next uh five years within the next five years uh the same will be true for GPS so that these kids will be dependent on this device that's what I was saying and then another issue I guess as I after we spoke I did some more research I some people who wrote about this issue were saying that the hippocampus is not only responsible for like spatial uh you know wayf Finding but also for memory in general like there was the whole thing about the memory palaces in the Renaissance where when people wanted to really learn how to remember a lot of stuff they would create an internal spatial architecture um so that somehow there's a relationship between you know memory and kind of the capacity to navigate in space so I just find this very interesting because it's like you you you do you kind of feel that there are all these sort of like uh subtle sometimes not so subtle kind of deteriorations going on in the sort of collective Consciousness field right now uh which is tough for me because I was like I wrote a book about you know the Mayan calendar and Hy prophecies and I was kind of hoping that there would be a sort of you know there were people like Ken Wilber I don't know if you know Works spir Dynamics these ideas that we were going to see this evolution of Consciousness instead it feels we're seeing the opposite there's this like you know sort of regression happening and and we're losing um kind of our Moorings in a way with you know the uh the social you know the sort of onslaught of fake news and Ai and all that stuff um but yeah so I mean it does feel like it's a more it's becoming a more of amnesic society in a way although anything that anybody ever says on social media or any mistake they ever make is like permanently embedded in the sort of in the sort of cultural system so there's also not like there used to be you could sort of like you know make mistakes in your life then get past them like like now they you'll always be like you know pointed back to that it seems like so yeah none of these things seem very uh positive uh I'm kind of curious so let's talk a little bit about so it is before you go on to that um not that not to be poish um I would like to say that I did write a text about uh te telepathy in which I argued that in the future we may develop organs of telepathy we have we have many of us have inklings of telepathy now and we have uh there are some people who are one might say are telepathic uh more than other people there's a variety of that skill it's on a Continuum so I wrote a paper um and I was very interested in the work of a neuroscientist named step stenis Deen who's at the past Institute in Paris and he came up with this very interesting Theory called the neuronal recycling hypothesis and that neur recycling hypothesis is a very sarian idea or Stigler knew the work and they each know which other's work very very much part of a French philosophical tradition and BAS basically what uh what uh what he was saying was saying was that if you look at somebody today and they are reading or writing underneath a uh fmri machine you will see an area in the left fusiform gyrus which is in the temporal posterior temporal low at the junction of the occipital and temporal rope you will see activation in that area and he was arguing that something like this something of this thing of this of this phenomena given that we have only had we've only had writing and reading for the past 5,000 years since the beginning of the uniform text in in the Tigers Euphrates area Babylon how could it be possible if you talk to any molecular genetic geneticist they would argue it would take millions and millions of years for that kind of change to take place in the brain where you would have a module uh a module dedicated to reading and writing now of course it's not only in that fuse for gy it's it's a network as well it's just so happens that that seems to be the area where uh the preponderance of that ability is but it's it's it's spread out to the frontal eye fields and again the paral Lo but but generally speaking there is an area and so he came up with this idea which I I used to for my idea of telepathy but I wanted to explain it a little bit more he came up with this idea of uh this uh neuronal recycling hypothesis and he argued that in the brain or the brain itself does not have to create new areas of specialization from scratch that it in fact can use under certain kinds of accumulation this is where the kind of marxian idea you know ideas of Marx and comes into play as a philosophical idea rather than about economy that as a pro as a result of accumulation of accumulation of extensive reading materials so at first yes they were reading and writing was just used to as a part of the uniform tablets to do taxes but then it spread out it spread out to the fact that there was more language was and reading and writing was used in more and more like governmental documents then people started writing books and then of course we have the Gutenberg Galaxy you know the the Gutenberg Press and the whole idea of the Gutenberg Galaxy and this whole idea of literature and books and everybody having a book anyway it all of this accumulation of of uh of writing and reading material put pressure on an area of the brain called the fusor gyrus and transformed it from a previous uh module and that was used by mocks to read each other's facial grimaces so the many of the the components of facial gesticulations that are used to um communicate uh emotional and uh you know aggressive postures and things like that many of them have in certain ways certain uh basic components of the way the letters look so anyway through all this pressure this is his theory not mine the uh the the area the fusiform gyus was transformed into an area for reading and and writing so I was arguing I'm arguing going back to neurolink and brain computer interfaces that we will that you know when you think about for instance uh you know Google's new um uh new uh device for um uh not virtual reality but uh you know uh augmented reality you realize it's like everyone hates those goggles you know so there's a pressure to to go to the next level and Elon Musk and other people have argued that uh that you know when they were trying to develop these uh reading and writing machines that the only thing that was holding back uh uh thinking was the speed of technology so basically there's a lot of desire to create these new uh augmented uh neurological neurotechnology so anyway getting back to to telepathy and why there might be positive things why there it's a pharmacia that yes it's it's there's a lot of negative possibilities but there are could be hypothetically some positive capacities so that in the future there neural link and ideas like that will be used for all kinds of things it's won't be just used for a person who's in a wheelchair but it's going to be used for uh communication it's it's already being used on the battlefield there are special telepathic helmet that allow um different kinds of messages to be communicated uh to between soldiers on the battlefield there are already uh neuralink devices being used in gaming already as part of it and um so all these things are evolving and and soon there'll be an accumulation there'll be I believe that neurolink and things like it will be preponderant it'll be every everything that we uh that we do will be telepathic using using these at first telepathic Technologies but then the Technologies just like language and reading and writing in the case of Theus War gyrus there'll be a pressure an accumulation of these technology such an extent that they'll change a particular part of the brain what that brain part of the brain is I'm not so sure but there could be well a similar phenomena so we we all I always joke we all become telepathic so there's an something a little different that's all I mean I guess the push back would be that we already are telepathic you know we just we just don't quite know it you know I'm saying that we that some of us have great no I I don't know I mean we don't know how to well let me put it this way science doesn't know how to measure it yeah it but we don't know how to measure it but I mean you know I guess there's suspicion among you people sort of Neos shamanic you know know crowd that um creating these technological protheses which you know act as if like you know a virtual reality could be like taking iasa you're suddenly plunged into this other world but it's all a digital reality it's I mean um that this is actually unhealthy it's an unhealthy Direction and and actually it's more like the direct phenomenological mediated um kind of investigation that that that it would be better for for people you know um yeah if we took that direction if our if capitalism went the direction of the shaman we would probably be better off but it hasn't that's what I wanted to ask you can't be commodified you know you can't make as much money on that yeah I mean it could be around we might to that gank right now to be honest but um but I just want to like um yeah sort of focus on that a little bit so what's kind of um so there's analysis interpretation you know kind of like uh prophecy or for for forecasting but I'm also kind of wondering so I you know when when you know when we discussed this I feel it kind of like um you know you know you're you're you're you're not pleased you feel you feel a kind of like heaviness or sadness around the the the sort of extent of these developments and the rapidity of them and and you know you you called your your you know the book The glossery of cognitive activism yeah you see an activist moment or an opportunity uh available for people to kind of um kind of interrogate what's happening or maybe inter in it or or stop some of it or something and how do you see that could happen well first of all I think it's I want to make uh I want hope everybody understands that I'm completely against all this stuff I'm I'm uh you know I'm a I'm a an activist um who is very much um uh you know trying to create a critique against all this not a um I'm not a techn what was the word you used the other day technological Optimus is that what you said I was quot of the Techno optimism Manifesto for Mar Rec yeah I call that uh right-wing accelerationism I'm much more related to you know Mark Fischer's idea of leftwing accelerationism and I'm trying to create what I am what this book was first of all uh for me was a way of as I said it's started with my own artwork but my own artwork had the same value which is a idea of Consciousness raising it's amazing how few people really know what's going on and don't have have these don't they hear words like anthropocene or they hear words like accelerationism and they hear words like uh you know um I don't know yeah like uh we were just talking about uh neuroplasticity they hear all these words but they really neural Divergent uh They Don't Really uh Chachi PT they don't really know what they are and they don't really understand the political consequences of them so they're allowed to and and acceleration of technology is so fast that it's beyond even a society's ability to learn what they are and to know you know you know there's the just look at the difference between the um digital immigrant and the digital native I mean it's incredible uh just just looking at that as an example of something that's really real as far as uh how fast the acceleration of technology is and what it does so the other thing is I would like to say is that I see there's three different kinds of activism and Glasser of cognitive activism is the third which I call Future activism so the first kind of activism is the activism of the past like for instance um rewriting American history so that African-Americans people of color are involved and are engaged and have their history told and you see all the push back against that but that is that is what I would call you know activism in the past and then there's activism present which is you'll I I'd be surprised if we don't see a lot of women um on the streets If U if you know the if roow versus Wade is not uh maintained and we we go back to the Middle Ages uh uh in relationship to a woman's right to choose they or or recently uh a strike uh by uh the police you know the teach Union in certain communities you know in California looking for a high a prey race that's present activism that's you go on the street you know it's very difficult to go on the street I mean that's one of the problems of incognitive capitalism is that it becomes very very difficult except you're maybe hacking but it becomes very difficult to to manifest the sensus uh we can talk about that also but then there's future activism and future activism is what I I I understand is the glosso cognitive activism to be all about I it's it's like looking into the future peering into the future seeing where we are today seeing how these Technologies could evolve seeing how you know they could affect our brain seeing how they could affect you know what that digitality no longer is just digitality it's a neural digital entanglement and that we you know and that our brains are intracranial extracranial uh you know uh continuums or complexes that are complexed with this tech technology yeah so that we have to understand that uh I I I'm trying to uh to talk about that and to make it make it available to people so that's what cognitive activ and hopefully I don't even think I'm I don't even think I'm going to be the person that can make the changes I'm hoping um that um I'm hoping neur your neural link is beeping all of a sudden I yeah my my yeah I'm gonna not pay attention to that for the next because I have a phone call but this is going a little bit longer than I thought but I will let her I'll call her right back yeah yeah so that that's what the my purpose is my purpose is to give people the language for which to confront these um these future problems which I think are real when we met a few weeks ago I'd already been going on a fairly Deep dive um honestly I didn't really understand that your book was so related to to what I'd already been looking into I'd read doppelganger which is the new n Nomi Klein book uh talking about how she has this sort of virtual you know evil twin double the form of Naomi wolf and then from there going into the whole world of uh you know fake news and conspiracy and how um you know there's been this kind of like um divide you know created between so many people in the United States based on confusing information promulgated by people for um you know kind of um for their own purposes and um she then I also looked at an internet for the people uh which basically is an interesting book have you have you checked it out no i' love to know about it Ben tarnoff me so you know he basically looks at how originally the formation of the internet uh was due to um yeah kind of Public Funding scientific research and so on um and uh but eventually they kind of handed out the internet the governments who just gave the internet over to corporations oh yeah I I know that story of course so he kind of basically argues that there could be a kind of movement uh of deprivatization uh you know kind of um you know breaking up the monopolies of the internet companies and uh you know creating some type of um public trusts for social social network perhaps based on the the library system uh then I also read jannis ruk's excellent book Tech techn feudalism that's amazing he's a genius I love his work yeah so very similar he argues that we're no longer in capitalism anymore we're in this kind of like techn feudalism yeah and um you know but I I I actually felt um like I was very much aware back in like 2006 I started a company called evolver and one of the main things we wanted to do is my my my my co-founder was involved with a think tank in in San Francisco Planet work and they had identified way back when that digital identity was like the core issue that essentially when they when they built the internet you know the scientists and research didn't really think about necessity for having a holder of your own identity so the way it works now is you know Google has a part of identity Facebook your bank you know Amazon and so on uh rather what what it should have been designed in such a way that you hold all your data in some kind of secure fashion and then you choose what aspects of yourself you want to or your identity or data you want you want to share with any organization so um so that allowed for this whole um extractive model where our attention is minded our kind of um you know our data is continually minded is like the most preci resource of this new economy um so yeah so you know I'm still curious about if it's possible to kind of go back and if this could actually be a theme or kind of a plank let's say for like a you know a new kind of broad-based social movement kind of reclaiming the digital Commons um um you know re rebuilding a uh information ecology that is non destructive you know because it's not well yeah I mean I just got interviewed by um EC and for those who don't know him he's a media theorist in Paris and it's for a magazine called Zero D and um I have been kind of talking about you see what's you know what's really interesting about what you just said is the ethics that surrounds that and you know I think that we have and and uh Lor has talked all about uh climate denial and I think climate denial and what I call um Eco agnosia which I don't not going to go too deeply into but just to say that are a result from the same kinds of things and that they are connected to a whole host of ethical and moral decision-making processes of which the evolution of the internet of which you just talked about the parsing the parsing of individuation the par parsing of of of of a digital consciousness of a of externalized Consciousness that becomes becomes manifest in digital form so that we have digital signatures we all know this we have digital sign whatever you want to call it I just like we each have an individual handwriting which is a signature we each have a digital signature and we can go I I another time when we have more time I'd love to talk about that because it's really interesting in terms of the work of Geral Edelman uh in his ideas uh but I he's a neuroscientist from the sock Institute uh I'd love to talk to you about that but I don't I don't think it's time for that but anyway so in my interview with if I was talking about my idea of the EOS scene which I think addresses this kind of a problem in a very very simplistic way and I realize that I mean what I'm talking about is just the beginning that I hope other people hearing this will think who have much more knowledge than I uh will take and really uh make make it something real but anyway I argue that we keep on talking about the anthropos scene well you know some people just heard about the anthropos scene but you know for us who are a little more initiated you know I've been thinking and hearing about the the anthropos scine since like 2007 and in Berlin where I was living from 2007 to you know to 20 I'm still in Berlin but I was really living there until right before co uh there are so the hak was doing a whole uh three or four year project on the anthropos so anthropos is something that I'm very very aware of but I'm arguing now that we have to stop now that it's become part of the general intelligence this idea of the anthropos I'm I'm already at this point where I think we can't stop we have to stop talking about the anthropos anthro meaning human human cause destruction of the of the earth and we have to start start talking about what I'm calling the EOS scene this idea of Technologies rather remember the talk what I was just talking about with this two milliony year development that Bernard Stigler was talking about uh of the development the mirroring between technology and the co-evolution of technology in the brain where I the expansion the frontal Ce X remember I was talking about all that but when you look at those uh look at the the dominance of certain kinds of anthropocentric technologies that infect those Technologies like slash burning and fire and Spear and social hunting all of these kinds of uh Technologies and these kind of knowledges they're all about destroying nature they're not about loving nature and they they are the the they are resulting again this is very hypothetical and very speculative but they are a motivating force for that co-evolution into a brain in which the architectonics of the brain is anthropocentric it's an anthropocentric brain so and that process of epip phylogenesis or exosomatic organogenesis or neural um or U what I was talking about with uh uh this kind of uh neural U developmental processes talked about by U um Stanis neural neural um whatever I forgot their name uh those kinds of meth methods and manifestations they are still with us we our brains are still changing our brains are still changing and as a result I'm arguing for developing ecocentric technologies that love nature that are that are engaged with nature that are simp so and and you know symo sympotic with nature that uh believe in the symbiosis is that human beings aren't at a higher level than plant and animal species that we are all integrated together and Link together that if we can develop these kinds of Technology we can change our brain to become an Ecentric brain rather than anthropocentric brain and that's what I'm kind of uh trying to do in my so I just yeah I guess there's another term similar to that called symbios about that yeah simp is is a term that I'm using but symb yeah that sounds great what does it mean tell me well symbios would be beyond the anthropos scene would be when you know we reintegrate back with the sort of natural organic ecosystems of the planet you know using our Technologies in you know holistic ways you know properly yeah so that I call that whole process the brain without organs after Del losing atari's body without organs it's a brain that is Chang it's romatic it's not it's not incarcerated in the skull but it's something that is is romatic integrated with the world the history the from the moment of the uh the beginning of the universe and the cosmological dust to the development of Technology social dist social and political issues microbiome of the gut the situation situated kind of embodied type of of knowledge so yeah yeah so that's uh yeah we're on the same wavelength and and I know you're very involved with psychedelic drugs as everyone knows that about you um I actually have not been very involved in psychedelics for quite a while okay sorry but you were one of the pioneers of that you know study the car is driving itself that doesn't need me anymore it's like a Mac truck right now okay um so I think that's a kind of a nice place to round up we're talking about now uh I I I guess my last question for you is people hearing this they hear about the changing of the brain and technology and you know cognitive you know labor and cognitive capitalism we didn't really talk that much about the precariat the superordinate precariat what's kind of more like your you know what can people do at this point with all of this let's say they go and they read your glossery and they get all fired up you know where where do you feel people can make a productive kind of intervention or is it more just having the theoretical tools at this point well like for instance I mean I know this sounds crazy but like the other night was at a a dinner party and there was this you know this big this investor who uh plays the stock market and it's involved with all of these different te you know stocks technology stocks and some of them are the ones that I'm very very um uh you know very um you know not so sure about so I was talking about this stuff about neuralink and he said yeah well you should invest in it right away because it's you know when I just tell you that kind of I think it's going to be so important and I said no it's just like I would not invest in arm stocks I don't just I knew that with Ukraine more any idiot in America knows that you know the military stocks are going to go up you don't but whether you actually invest in those military stocks is another question so I would never invi never invest myself in military stocks even though you know you can make a lot of money and I would never invest in these kinds of stocks because of the fear so I basically was at a dinner table and I was able to convince not that gentleman but like three or four uh other people how how what the situation that we in now and they were very very uh excited and you know want to follow up with me and you know so maybe that's how we do it we do it one conversation at a time cool man well thanks for having this conversation with me Warren and yeah let's let's go deeper and talk more happy to have you involved with this upcoming online seminar that we're organizing called the future of Consciousness I'd also be very curious if you have other you know people to suggest or bring in to to the mix for conversations I would love to thank you very much uh all right cool have a great day and we will anybody who wants to email me I'm or connect me on Instagram on Instagram I have two
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.