⚙️ Neo-Luddite Reading Group: ‘The Eye of the Master’ by Matteo Pasquinelli

Schedule

If you’re joining for the first time, I’d suggest you read this before anything else for brief context: What the Luddites Really Fought Against by Richard Conniff.

The only expectation is that you read the chapter(s) of the book that’s listed for that meeting. You’re still welcome to participate if you haven’t done the readings as long as you are mindful. For each chapter, I’ve also noted some optional readings for context, so I’d suggest checking those out rather than reading ahead in the book. And remember, if you ever find yourself struggling with any of the readings or concepts, reach out! Either directly to me over email or to the entire group over discord.

• Meeting 1 (Oct. 9th):📖 The Eye of the Master
  • Introduction: AI as Division of Labour
    • Will A.I. Become the New McKinsey? by Ted Chiang
  • 1. The Materials Tool of Algorithmic Thinking
    • 🗞️ Data center emissions probably 662% higher than big tech claims. Can it keep up the ruse? by Isabel O’Brien
    • 🗞️ Microsot’s Hypocrisy on AI by Karen Hao
    • 🗞️ AI is poised to drive 160% increase in data center power demand
  • 2. Babbage and the Mechanisation of Mental Labour
    • 📜 Origin Stories: Plantations, Computers, and Industrial Control by Meredith Whittaker
  • 3. The Machinery Question
    • Weizenbaum examines computers and society by Diana ben-Aaron
  • 4. The Origins of Marx’s General Intellect
    • 🗞️ The Silicon-Tongued Devil by Leif Weatherby
  • 5. The Abstraction of Labour
    • 📜 GPTs are GPTs: An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of Large Language Models by OpenAI/OpenResearch team
• Meeting 2 (Nov. 13th):📖 The Eye of the Master
  • 6. The Self-Organisation of the Cybernetic Mind
    • 🎙️ The Thinking Machine by 99% Invisible
  • 7. The Automation of Pattern Recognition
    • 🎥 Facial Recognition: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
  • 8. Hayek and the Epistemology of Connectionism.
    • 🎙️ Project Cybersyn by 99% Invisible
  • 9. The Invention of the Perceptron
    • 🎥 The Perceptron Explained by Alice Heiman
    • 🗞️ We’ve been here before: AI promised humanlike machines – in 1958 by Danielle Williams
  • Conclusion: The Automation of General Intelligence
    • 🎥 Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People by Maciej Ceglowski

Additional resources

• Outreach Resources & Guides
  • 📜 Digital Defense Playbook: Community Power Tools for Reclaiming Data by Our Data Bodies
  • 📜 A People’s Guide to AI by Mimi Onuoha and Mother Cyborg (Diana Nucera)
  • 📜 Algorithmic Accountability: A Primer by Data & Society
  • 🗞️ Prior to (or instead of) using ChatGPT with your students by Autumn Caines
• Potential Future Reads
  • 📖 Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor by Virginia Eubanks
  • 📖 Questioning Technology: Tool, Toy or Tyrant by John Zerzan & Alice Carnes
  • 📖 Technofix: Why Technology Won’t Save Us or the Environment by Michael Huesemann & Joyce Huesemann
  • 📖 Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor by Kim Kelly
  • 📖 The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation by Cory Doctorow
• Links to more links
  • 📋 Critical Lenses on AI by Iris van Rooij
  • 📋 Resources by Ruha Benjamin
• More on Luddites
  • 🗞️ I’m a Luddite. You should be one too by Jathan Sadowski
  • 🗞️ Byron Was One of the Few Prominent Defenders of the Luddites by Kat Eschner
• Poems
  • 🎵 A Luddite Lullaby by Don Bogen
  • 🎵 All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace by Richard Brautigan
  • 🎵 I Am the People, the Mob by Carl Sandburg
  • 🎵 They Say This Isn’t a Poem by Kenneth Rexroth
  • 🎵 Under Which Lyre by W.H. Auden
  • 🎵 When I Heard The Learn’d Astronomer by Walt Whitman