We discuss with Joshua Dávila a.k.a. The Blockchain Socialist with respect to carving out alternative avenues for the application of Blockchain that wrest it away from the strands of deterministic techno-libertarianism, his critique of The Network State, and seeding the prospects of Coordi-Nations.

Joshua Dávila has been working in the blockchain space for the past five years in Europe and has been anonymously moonlighting as the one behind The Blockchain Socialist blog and podcast. He is also the co-director of the upcoming documentary Crypto Futures which explores the alternative economic imaginaries of the crypto ecosystem that the mainstream media doesn’t cover.

Tracks: 
Nahash: https://svbkvlt.bandcamp.com/album/a-snake-in-your-house
mmph: https://svbkvlt.bandcamp.com/album/harvest
Gorgonn:https://svbkvlt.bandcamp.com/album/six-paths
33EMYBW-Arthropods: https://svbkvlt.bandcamp.com/album/arthropods

Blockchain Radicals w/Joshua Dávila a.k.a. The Blockchain Socialist

We discuss with Alexandre Monnin concerning his work that explores Dark Actor-Network Theory, Negative Commons, Inheritance of Ruined Worlds, and interest in Non-Human entanglements.

Music by:

Perila-How Much Time it is Between You and Me?
Flora Yin Wong- Sacro Bosco
KMRU - Solace

Alexandre Monnin is Scientific Director of Origens Media Lab, co-founder of the Closing Worlds initiative and associate professor at ESC Clermont BS business school. He heads the "Strategy & Design for the Anthropocene" Master of Science program, run jointly with Strate Ecole de Design in Lyon (France).
Prior to this, he was a researcher at Inria (2014-2017), a junior fellow at IKKM (Bauhaus University, 2013) and Web Research Manager at the Institut de Recherche et d'Innovation du Centre Pompidou (2010-2013).
A.M. holds a PhD in Philosophy from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, his thesis focused on the philosophy and architecture of the Web. He co-edited a book on the subject, Philosophical Engineering. Towards a Philosophy of the Web (Wiley Blackwell, 2013) as well as an issue of the journal Intellectica (n°61, "Philosophie du Web et Ingénierie des connaissances"). He is one of the co-authors of the report Pour une sobriété numérique published by the Shift Project in 2018. He has also co-edited special issues in the journals Multitudes (n°76 with Laurence Allard and Cyprien Tasset, "Est-il trop tard pour l'effondrement?"), Sciences du Design (n°11, "Anthropocène et effondrement", with Laurence Allard), Passerelle (n°21: "Low-tech: face au tout numérique, se réapproprier les technologies") and the journal SociologieS ("Du pragmatisme au méliorisme radical", with Antoine Hennion).
With Diego Landivar and Emmanuel Bonnet, he published Héritage et Fermeture with Éditions Divergences in May 2021, edited Écologies du Smartphone with Laurence Allard and Nicolas Nova (Bord de l'eau, 2022), and wrote on his own Politiser le Renoncement, also published by Éditions Divergences (2023).

Inheriting Negative Commons w/Alexandre Monnin(Updated)

We discuss with Landscape architects Bradley Cantrell and Zihao Zhang the marriage of Speculative Design, Machine Learning, Landscape Architecture, Xenopatterning, and Modeling.

Bradley Cantrell is a landscape architect and scholar whose work focuses on the role of computation and media in environmental and ecological design.He has held academic appointments at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, The Rhode Island School of Design, and the Louisiana State University Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture. His work in Louisiana over the past decade points to a series of methodologies that develop modes of modeling, simulation, and embedded computation that express and engage the complexity of overlapping physical, cultural, and economic systems. Cantrell’s work has been presented and published in a range of peer-reviewed venues internationally including ACADIA, CELA, EDRA, ASAH, and ARCC.

Zihao Zhang, PhD is an assistant professor of landscape architecture at the City College of New York. By building transdisciplinary, critical analyses at the intersections among design, engineering, and environmental humanities, he investigates interspecies entanglements and interrogates conceptions of humans, nature, and technology in contemporary culture. He studies emerging cybernetic technologies and their ramifications on the constructed environment to expand designers’ understanding of the co-production between machines and ecologies and inspire innovative landscape strategies. Zihao holds a PhD in the Constructed Environment and an MLA from the University of Virginia, as well as a Bachelor of Engineering in Landscape Architecture from Beijing Forestry University.

Cultivated Wildness & Xenopatterning w/Bradley Cantrell & Zihao Zhang(Updated)

Orit Halpern discusses her latest book, co-authored by Robert Mitchell, the Smartness Mandate, which surveys the confluence of the logic of smartness tied to catastrophe, demoing, temporality, populations, and ubiquitous computing.

The Mandate Dem(o)ing of Catastrophe w/Orit Halpern

Adam Jones from Acid Horizon join us to discuss the work of insurrectionary philosopher Max Stirner, Acid Horizon's book Anti-Oculus: A Philosophy of Escape, and his new introduction for a republication of Mark Fisher's Flatline Constructs.

The Unique Awakens w/Adam Jones from Acid Horizon(Updated)

David Roden takes us through the viscous labyrinth of Speculative Posthumanism, Disconnection Thesis, Sonic Ontology and Agency, and his recent work, Xenoerotics.

David Roden's published work has addressed the relationship between deconstruction and analytic philosophy, philosophical naturalism, the metaphysics of sound, and posthumanism. His works include Posthuman Life: Philosophy at the Edge of the Human(2014), Snuff Memories (2021), Xenoerotics(2023).

Cold Reading

Posthuman Xenophilia w/David Roden

Miguel Prado Casanova surveys the prospect of different “contextures” of a present made volatile by noise. Informed by many different fields of contemporary science in order to surveys the role of randomness and noise through domains such social, biological, computational and physical systems as well as the control of uncertainty and prediction.


Miguel Prado Casanova is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy in the Department of Social Sciences at UWE. His main work resides at the intersection of philosophy, sound art, science & technology. He responds to the technoscientific and social conditions around the notions of control, uncertainty and information theory, about how noise brings into crisis the division between activity and passivity, between knowing and feeling. He researches the problems of the metascientific and ideological foundations of diverse projects of prediction and control of uncertainty. From algorithmic surveillance back to cybernetics and how these render noise “informationally heretical”.

Noxiogenesis: Noise in Noise w/Miguel Prado Casanova

Anna Greenspan, a former member of CCRU and a media scholar, has written a thought-provoking book titled "China and the Wireless Undertow: Media as Wave Philosophy." In this book, Greenspan explores the intricate relationship between China and wirelessness, combining contemporary media theory with modern Chinese thought. By doing so, she sheds light on the philosophical, techno-social, and temporal implications of wireless communication within an evolving geopolitical landscape.

Anna Greenspan is Assistant Professor of Global Contemporary Media at NYU Shanghai. She is the author of Shanghai Future: Modernity Remade (Oxford University Press, 2014), India and the IT Revolution: Networks of Globalization (Palgrave, 2005). She also writes for a non-academic audience including these three books: Ccru: Writings 1997-2003 (Urbanomic, 2015), Future Mutations: Technology and the Evolution of the Species (Time Spiral Press, 2014) and Urbanatomy: Shanghai 2008 (China Intercontinental Press, 2008).

The Wireless Undertow w/Anna Greenspan

Science Fiction author Peter Watts, who is the author of the Rifters novels (Starfish, Maelstrom) and the Firefall series (Blindsight, Echopraxia), joins us. He surveys the frontiers of the accidence of consciousness, free will, organoid intelligence, evolution, and artificial intelligence in this discussion.

Peter Watts is a former marine biologist, flesh-eating-disease survivor and convicted felon whose novels—despite an unhealthy focus on space vampires—have become required texts for university courses ranging from Philosophy to Neuropsychology.

His work is available in 21 languages, has appeared in over 350 best-of-year anthologies, and been nominated for over 50 awards in a dozen countries. His (somewhat shorter) list of 20 actual wins includes the Hugo, the Shirley Jackson, and the Seiun.

Survival Engines w/ Peter Watts

We are joined by philosopher and theorist Vincent Lê whose work explores the conjunction of artificial & synthetic intelligences, Cyberfeminism, Accelerationism, Austrian economics, and cuteification in the wake of catastrophe.

The Discreet Charm of Machinic Will w/Vincent Lê

Thanks to everyone who listened to // DIFFRACTIONS // Podcast over the years. There will be no further podcasts, nonetheless, please follow us here:
https://diffractionscollective.com

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