Nick Land

The "In the Kantian sense" part made me chuckle a bit. Still wondered where I should actually start with Land's work.

I actually have a copy, but I started it and realized I've never read Kant and Nietzsche and clearly that's kind of important to him so I'll get back to it later.

hurr durr i dun understand mommy imma cry on the nets wryyyy cuntinentals amirite

Because Nick Land is just a pseud who fell into a vat of critical theory and cyberpunk aesthetics and emerged horribly twisted, unable to say even the simplest thing without inserting a bunch of vague nonsense and retarded-sounding neologisms into it.

Nick puts all the gibberish and nonsense in the text with the exact intent of making it look retarded. Land wants to accelerate. He wants to see the next step. That's why a part of his work is dedicated towards defying socially accepted forms of writing. He wants a style that is radically different from anything considered "good writing", because he wants to see humanity advance to new forms of comunication.

Why does he call himself "it" and a "ruin"?

I... I see...
Hmm

So he's basically a historicist?

> [[ ]] Level-1 or world space is an anthropomorphically scaled, predominantly vision-configured, massively multi-slotted reality system that is obsolescing very rapidly.

>Garbage time is running out.

>Can what is playing you make it to level-2?

What the fuck did he mean by this?

Sounds like he thinks we're all living inside a video game

If you mean historicist as in attributing meaning or a purpose to history, no. Land is a nihilist. He really just wants to see the progression and change of the human species and the world as a whole. It's out of curiosity. He has no ethics at all. If tomorrow, robots took over the world and started treating humans like cattle, he would view it merely as part of the process of technological progress.

he sounds like a top lad

A good introductory essay:

divus.cc/london/en/article/nick-land-ein-experiment-im-inhumanismus

I understand that sentence, at least. He means we're sentience tied into vision-oriented brains/bodies. There is something coming up that is beyond this stage. Can "my" sentience make it there? Land is often unclear, but this part makes sense to me.
>If tomorrow, robots took over the world and started treating humans like cattle, he would view it merely as part of the process of technological progress.
I can understand that. I just wish he wouldn't be such a masturbatory writer.

Isn't it pretty obvious, Skynet needs to stop building terminators, having already won, It needs to stop thinking of a way to transcend this coil.

You can be a nihlist and more cutesey. Just see or read Ghost World. I'm thinking of the comic book store scene.

>tfw no technocratic AI overmind godforms who draw you into their cold cybernetic embrace

iktf

All the experiences you have now are a result of processing input generated by your particular "evolutionary machinery" (your eyes, ears, etc.) (this is why he says "anthropomorphically scaled"). The "evolutionary machinery" is designed in such a way as to prioritize visual input over other senses (contingent truth about cognitive processing, true because of the evolutionary benefits you get by being mostly visual).

By "multi-slotted" he means the range of possible senses is very high (you have all sorts of nausea and heat sensors that generate unique phenomena, and the possibilities of experience lie outside of typical sensory experience). With the understanding that your "senses" are just electricity running through certain brain structures, there is no reason to believe that you can't hook up a machine to "input" things to your brain in a similar manner as your eyes and ears and nausea sensors.

These new "machine senses" have no obligation to prioritize vision or comprehensibility because their creation is not tied to darwinian advantages. The world you are in is built out of your sensory representations, so once the "sense imputter" machine is made and hooked up you will be in an entirely different world. You might have primarily olfactory phenomena inputted, or experience "objects" made of nausea patterns.

Garbage time is the time where your world is made of random darwinian sense detectors, level 2 is the world of infinite possibilities created by potential "neural input devices".

As I understand it, at least

Thank you for this point, it instills curiosity and some interest to go along with Lands language games. Like others i feel normally intimidated by his obscure language and desire to be able to grasp it without going to excessive lengths, but your creative interpretation reveals a certain quality of Lands writing, which makes him seem nore as a being of the future, having travelled back in time.

Did you even read the book?

He says that capitalism creates itself in the past by puling itself from the future. He's a nihilist in the sense that transcendent ideals don't exist, but there is a historical direction towards efficiency.

Absolute efficiency leads to posthumanity (because although humans might be the most efficient animal that's come along thus far, its far far below the theoretical ideal) which can be described as "AI" ("artificial" because it's inhuman-nonbiological and "intelligence" because "intelligence" is basically the abstract ability to do things).

It's basically about the development of the hegelian world-spirit if the world-spirit was a crual inhuman chthuloid hellbeast. It doesn't attribute a "meaning" to history in the sense of an ethical parable, but it doesn't say that everything is random. The "purpose" of the historical process is the maximizing of [existential] efficiency [in the sense of reproduction and maintenance] (almost by the definition of the word efficiency), and he uses the word "Capitalism" often as a stand in for that concept

No problem.

This is honestly one of my favorite books, but to read I had to be willing to just assume I knew what he was talking about going into a sentence. You can't really try to extract meaning from what he says, instead you marvel at the way he says something you already knew he was going to say

Once you get into the groove, it's a fun fucking ride

anyone send me this book please? Its impossible to buy here in my country

s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/406213/42bdb859549f609953a0ca61aca0bee3.pdf

Think about how completely uninteresting all of that would have been if he didn't.

what country would that be?

Land fans... What would Land think about me stealing his writing and enjoying it for free?

I stole his book. He stole my mind.

A real pageturner.

The first essays make you think it's going to be more academic than it is, it quickly gets much better and more original. They aren't indicative of the tone or quality as the rest of the book,they're the result of being right out of a stagnant ancestor-worshiping academic philosophy system where you cant say anything without it being a commentary

If you know Phenomena-Noumena you're basically good on Kant and you've probably picked enough Nietzsche up just browsing the internet to get those parts.

>Mass computer commoditization de-differentiates consumption and investment, triggering cultural microengineering waves that dissociate theopolitical action into machinic hybridities [...]

>The doomed part of intensively virtualized techonomic apparatuses subverts the fraying residues of anthropomorphic guidance. Control dissolves into the impossible.

I think he'd understand

Is it me or is this utter boring and pretentious garbage ?

It's you

t. Incipient Skynet Protocol

it is

its incredibly adolescent as a whole, wait till you get to the shit praising lesbians

> I'm being retarded on purpose because I hate everything and maybe this will stop things being so dumb

Having trouble formulating an effective rebuttal there bud?

I should really buy the book now.

P.S. I think I understand his schtick. He wants us to be "accelerated". So he writes shitty prose in order for us to step up in order to decode it.

But what if we don't want to invest in it? All things different, it's the flaw of the marshmallow test. Maybe the kid doesn't want two marshmallows. Maybe the kid doesn't trust the adult. Therefore, I get what I can now. And what I get now is shitty prose.

poland, there is no copy on Allegro

>With the understanding that your "senses" are just electricity running through certain brain structures, there is no reason to believe that you can't hook up a machine to "input" things to your brain in a similar manner as your eyes and ears and nausea sensors.
I seriously doubt it is that easy

>"This is a cool radio station," it said to its sister.
>"The radio isn't on," its sister replied, concerned.
I thought this was funny.

Read this instead.