Virtual Futures

SUPPORT US IN CHALLENGING EVERYTHING THE FUTURE SEEMS TO PROMISE. patreon.com/virtualfutures #Technology #Science #Future #Events #Podcast

YOUNG MAN! TEAR DOWN YOUR DEPRESSIVE MIND SHIELDS.

I met Nick Land a few weeks ago. He mentioned that many people in his circles were anti-LLMs. Someone asked why he thought so many people were. His answer was better than anything so short I thought of: “People like to exist critically with respect to something.” This I think accurately characterizes a lot of people whose outputs and inputs primarily consist of “discourse” about rather than direct contact with the reality at hand. Existing critically with respect to something makes it easy to seem cool, sophisticated, above something, hard-to-impress and therefore worth trying to impress, especially to others who also don’t have contact with the phenomena itself. And for that reason I think it’s cheap. And to someone who has an inside view of what is being discussed, it’s always so transparent and boring and compressible. I’m far more impressed by someone who is capable of loving something and showing others why it’s beautiful or good. Doesn’t have to be LLMs, but anything at all.

In the spring of 1994, at a philosophy conference on a run-down modernist campus in the English Midlands, a group of academics, media theorists, artists, hackers, and d.j.s gathered to hear a young professor give a talk at a conference called “Virtual Futures.”

Pretty interesting that an obscure group of marginal philosophy academics predicted crypto and DeFi in Warwick, England around 1995.

Really wonderful to be talking with @harikunzru on the @VirtualFutures conferences and the incredible journeys that began there ...

Novelist @harikunzru recalls his time studying philosophy at @WarwickUni during the mid-90s, and his experience of the @VirtualFutures Conferences - the events where he first met #ManuelDeLanda & @ORLANofficial w/ @livingarchitect & @StelarcStelarc. pushkin.fm/episode/when-w…

We’ve refreshed the @VirtualFutures Website making it easier to access the archive of video, audio and visual materials related to our historical conferences, recent salons and fiction events. virtualfutures.co.uk

Just read another article (by Rebekah Sheldon) claiming the ccru were behind the first Virtual Futures conferences - they were not. I was there - gave a talk at the 1994 conference - and my recall is that it was people like John Broadhurst who made these events happen.

Eye-opening interview with Robin Mackay, director of @urbanomicdotcom, “about CCRU & the importance of jungle to that scene”. Everything you always wanted to know about Mark Fisher, Nick Land, Warwick Uni, Virtual Futures etc but were too afraid to ask! readthis.wtf/writing/toward…

Never read K-Punk?💫 All Mark Fisher ebooks are 50% off for this weekend only. repeaterbooks.com/remotereading-…

youtube.com/watch?v=L37uYJ… This is part of something which asked really interesting questions @VirtualFutures

My #scifi story Cinnamoni{com} Unravelling is online alongside mind-blowing stories from other authors. Read by the amazing Penn Smith at last spring's Near-Future Fictions by .@VirtualFutures. Enjoy! buff.ly/31yKjFt #brainhacking #future #flashfiction #sciencefiction

@Nalo_Hopkinson We have a whole playlist from our event ‘Another Loving’: youtube.com/playlist?list=…

"If you tell people you’re going to have this super-open, absolutely non-commercial, money-free thing, but it has to survive in this environment that’s based on money, where it has to make money, how does anybody square that circle?" - #JaronLanier youtu.be/aDRN_dZNJUM

From Life in Sci-Fi - all three of my @VirtualFutures #sciencefiction film shorts, curated & produced by @OramStephen @VaughanStanger @brifrischu @juleowen @LukeRobertMason - bit.ly/2N0HZRX #VFFiction #NearFutureFictions

Check out the hi-def rendition of my @VirtualFutures short #sciencefiction performance Frame Swingers: bit.ly/FrameSwing Curated by @OramStephen