TowardXR is proud to announce a new collaboration we’re doing with the Cybernetics Library - right here on DistillXRy!
What is the Cybernetics Library?
The Cybernetics Library is “an interdisciplinary browsing library and collective organization that gathers and recodes texts and ideas across various fields of inquiry in order to reposition cybernetics as a generative approach to understanding how we are embedded in pervasive technological systems and how we might create possibilities to critique and affect them.”
It has presences in New York City and Berlin, and if you’ve visited either space you know that you can get a rare, well-curated view of texts on technology, systems, and society - past, present, and future.
And that also means you can get perspective on technological change - and that’s getting pretty hard to do these days, as we sit in the early stages of AI’s coming changes to human civilization.
So what exactly will the collaboration be?
Good question! For starters, we’re going to work with the library to pick one book a month about technology; read it; and then write a detailed post about where it set our minds wandering in these tech-heavy times of ours.
The catch? Every book we read will be from April 29, 1993 or earlier. In other words, the day before CERN made the source code for the World Wide Web available to the public.
We’ll be looking for intelligent, controversial, or just-plain-goofy takes on technology from people who were living in what is almost now another universe. When these books were written, the average person had never even heard of an email address, and the first smartphone had not yet hit the market.
Talk, talk, talkity talk…
We’ll also be hosting quarterly talks in the library’s New York City home, Prime Produce, in which we will explore an interesting technological topic with representatives from TowardXR, the Cybernetics Library, and special guests. Stay tuned for more information!
What can we learn from old books about technology?
A lot. But of special interest to us will be notions about how people have changed their thinking in terms of problems, solutions, and human experiences, all within the living context of technology that surrounds us.
And for those of us who lived through those earlier years, we will be taking a moment to reflect on who we are now - who we have become - and what about us may change as AI, XR, and new technologies change the world.
The first post will launch at the end of this month. Stay tuned, and if you haven’t already, mash that subscribe button blah blah blah…
Thanks!