Permacomputing is a nascent concept and a community of practice centred around design principles that embrace limits and constraints as a positive thing in computational culture, and on creativity with scarce computational resources. As a result, permacomputing aims to provide a countervoice to digital …

In recent years, in the context of sustained criticism and general fatigue that surrounds largescale corporate social media platforms,1 the desire to build alternatives has grown stronger. This has manifested through the emergence of a wide range of projects, driven by various motives. These projects …

Our letters pay homage to the 1890 novel News from Nowhere by William Morris, a major figure in the 19th century British Arts and Crafts movement. Morris’ novel tells the story of a protagonist who wakes up in a better society [the literal “nowhere” of his book title when “utopia” is translated from …

In 2011, a loose group of “grumpy futurists” wrote up an extensive list of “Alternatives to the Singularity” in a collaborative Google Document. “The Singularity”, in popular culture and para-religious belief, refers to the point where machine intelligence leaves humans behind. Against the techno-utopian …

Human prejudices reemerge in algorithmic cultures allegedly devised to be blind to them. Algorithmic identity politics reinstate old forms of social segregation—in a digital world, identity politics is pattern discrimination. It is by recognizing patterns in input data that artificial intelligence algorithms …

Research and publishing have always been closely related but are currently undergoing changes. Informed by technological and cultural developments, their practices and definitions are being debated. For new forms of interdisciplinary and artistic research, there is a corresponding need for new forms …

How do “human” prejudices reemerge in algorithmic cultures allegedly devised to be blind to them? To answer this question, this book investigates a fundamental axiom in computer science: pattern discrimination. By imposing identity on input data, in order to filter—that is, to discriminate—signals from …

Panel discussion on big data, algorithmic profiling, filter bubbles and political populism with Florian Cramer, Daniel Irrgang, Matteo Pasquinelli, Vesselin Popov, Peter Weibel and Siegried Zielinski. In: The political economy of data: on psychometrics, deep learning and net populism. Daniel Irrgang, …

The current Facebook farewell activism will likely end up being just as ineffective as the Post-Snowden crypto activism of the last few years and Linux install parties before that. Facebook-quitters will likely rejoin the network after a hiatus, if they haven’t stayed on Whatsapp and Instagram anyway. …

Zine for Pluriversale VII: Stealing from the West, Akademie der Künste der Welt, Cologne, Germany. This missalette was intended as a companion document to a conversation. It contains emails, texts, and images exchanged between Florian Cramer and Clara Lobregat Balaguer regarding the theme Stealing from …