by Sophie K Rosa
Capitalist ideology wants us to believe that there is an optimal way to live. ‘Making connections’ means networking for work. Our emotional needs are to be fulfilled by a single romantic partner, and self-care equates to taking personal responsibility for our suffering. We must be productive and heterosexual, we must have babies and buy a house. But the kicker is most people cannot and do not want to achieve these goals. Instead we are left feeling atomised, exhausted and disempowered.
Radical Intimacy shows that it doesn’t need to be this way. Including inspiring ideas for alternative ways to live, Sophie K Rosa demands we use our radical imagination to discover a new form of intimacy.
by QAA Podcast
What is AGI? Definitions vary. When will it come? Perhaps months. Perhaps years. Perhaps decades. But definitely soon enough for you to worry about. What will it mean for humanity once it's here? Perhaps a techno utopia. Perhaps extinction. No one is sure. But what they are sure of is that AGI is definitely coming and it’s definitely going to be a big deal. A mystical event. A turning point in history, after which nothing will ever be the same.
However, some are more skeptical, like QAA’s guest Will Douglas Heaven. Will has a PhD in Computer Science from Imperial College London and is the senior editor for AI at MIT Technology review. He recently published an article, based on his conversations with AI researchers, which provocatively calls AGI “the most consequential conspiracy theory of our time.”
by Heather Parry
In the future, we’ll all be having sex with robots… won’t we?
Roboticists say they’re a distracting science fiction, yet endless books, films and articles are written on the subject. Campaigns are even mounted against them. So why are sex robots such a hot topic?
Electric Dreams picks apart the forces that posit sex robots as either the solution to our problems or a real threat to human safety, and looks at what’s being pushed aside for us to obsess about something that will never happen.
by Nancy K. Baym
Playing to the Crowd explores and explains how the rise of digital communication platforms has transformed artist-fan relationships into something closer to friendship or family. Through in-depth interviews with musicians such as Billy Bragg and Richie Hawtin, as well as members of the Cure, UB40, and Throwing Muses, Baym reveals how new media has facilitated these connections through the active, and often required, participation of the artists and their devoted, digital fan base.
Drawing on her own rich history as an active and deeply connected music fan, Baym offers an entirely new approach to media culture, arguing that the work musicians put in to create and maintain these intimate relationships reflect the demands of the gig economy, one which requires resources and strategies that we must all come to recognize and appreciate.
In an era where seamless experiences dominate the digital landscape, Luna Maurer and Roel Wouters, the minds behind the ‘Designing Friction’ project, challenge the status quo. This project reimagines the role of friction in digital culture, advocating for its intentional integration into design principles.
‘Designing Friction’ stands as a call to action for designers, entrepreneurs and architects of digital culture to rethink their approach. Luna and Roel uncover the essence of friction, highlighting its importance as a catalyst for meaningful interactions. From discomfort to time delay, they explore various angles of friction and how these elements can enrich user experiences in the digital realm.
by Sherry Turkle
Published back in 2011, Alone Together was a groundbreaking book showing how technology is warping our social lives and our inner ones.
Technology has become the architect of our intimacies. Online, we fall prey to the illusion of companionship, gathering thousands of Twitter and Facebook friends, and confusing tweets and wall posts with authentic communication. MIT professor Sherry Turkle argues that as technology ramps up, our emotional lives ramp down. Based on hundreds of interviews, Alone Together describes changing, unsettling relationships between friends, lovers, and families.
by Laura Bates
Misogyny is being hardwired into our future. Can we stop it?
We like to believe we’re moving closer to equality, riding the wave of technological progress into a brighter, fairer future. But beneath the glossy surface of innovation lies a chilling truth: new technologies are not just failing to solve age-old inequalities. They’re deepening them.
In The New Age of Sexism, acclaimed author and activist Laura Bates exposes how misogyny is being coded into the very fabric of our future. From the biases embedded in artificial intelligence to the alarming rise of sex robots and the toxic dynamics of the 'metaverse', Bates takes readers on a shocking journey into a world where technology is weaponised against women.
by Ashley Shew
A manifesto exploring what we think we know about disability, and arguing that disabled people are the real experts when it comes to technology and disability.
Shew shows how we can create better narratives and more accessible futures by drawing from the insights of the cross-disability community. To forge a more equitable world, Shew argues that we must eliminate “technoableism”—the harmful belief that technology is a “solution” for disability; that the disabled simply await being “fixed” by technological wizardry; that making society more accessible and equitable is somehow a lesser priority.
by Xuanlin Tham
Sex on screen is unnecessary, gratuitous, and serves no purpose. This is the sentiment on the rise as cinema becomes less and less sexy.
Xuanlin Tham counters that sex scenes can open our minds and bodies to the possibility of new futures, and seduce us towards an expanded political imagination. Through The Matrix Reloaded, Lingua Franca and beyond, Revolutionary Desires explores how the form’s intimacies, transgressions, and dedication to pleasure can be uniquely poised to rupture dominant narratives of capitalism and the violences that flow from it.
Why is the sex scene, demonised as it is, therefore more politically important and subversive than ever? And how can it power a desire for something more?
by Sophie K Rosa
Capitalist ideology wants us to believe that there is an optimal way to live. ‘Making connections’ means networking for work. Our emotional needs are to be fulfilled by a single romantic partner, and self-care equates to taking personal responsibility for our suffering. We must be productive and heterosexual, we must have babies and buy a house. But the kicker is most people cannot and do not want to achieve these goals. Instead we are left feeling atomised, exhausted and disempowered.
Radical Intimacy shows that it doesn’t need to be this way. Including inspiring ideas for alternative ways to live, Sophie K Rosa demands we use our radical imagination to discover a new form of intimacy.
by QAA Podcast
What is AGI? Definitions vary. When will it come? Perhaps months. Perhaps years. Perhaps decades. But definitely soon enough for you to worry about. What will it mean for humanity once it's here? Perhaps a techno utopia. Perhaps extinction. No one is sure. But what they are sure of is that AGI is definitely coming and it’s definitely going to be a big deal. A mystical event. A turning point in history, after which nothing will ever be the same.
However, some are more skeptical, like QAA’s guest Will Douglas Heaven. Will has a PhD in Computer Science from Imperial College London and is the senior editor for AI at MIT Technology review. He recently published an article, based on his conversations with AI researchers, which provocatively calls AGI “the most consequential conspiracy theory of our time.”
by Heather Parry
In the future, we’ll all be having sex with robots… won’t we?
Roboticists say they’re a distracting science fiction, yet endless books, films and articles are written on the subject. Campaigns are even mounted against them. So why are sex robots such a hot topic?
Electric Dreams picks apart the forces that posit sex robots as either the solution to our problems or a real threat to human safety, and looks at what’s being pushed aside for us to obsess about something that will never happen.
by Nancy K. Baym
Playing to the Crowd explores and explains how the rise of digital communication platforms has transformed artist-fan relationships into something closer to friendship or family. Through in-depth interviews with musicians such as Billy Bragg and Richie Hawtin, as well as members of the Cure, UB40, and Throwing Muses, Baym reveals how new media has facilitated these connections through the active, and often required, participation of the artists and their devoted, digital fan base.
Drawing on her own rich history as an active and deeply connected music fan, Baym offers an entirely new approach to media culture, arguing that the work musicians put in to create and maintain these intimate relationships reflect the demands of the gig economy, one which requires resources and strategies that we must all come to recognize and appreciate.
In an era where seamless experiences dominate the digital landscape, Luna Maurer and Roel Wouters, the minds behind the ‘Designing Friction’ project, challenge the status quo. This project reimagines the role of friction in digital culture, advocating for its intentional integration into design principles.
‘Designing Friction’ stands as a call to action for designers, entrepreneurs and architects of digital culture to rethink their approach. Luna and Roel uncover the essence of friction, highlighting its importance as a catalyst for meaningful interactions. From discomfort to time delay, they explore various angles of friction and how these elements can enrich user experiences in the digital realm.
by Sherry Turkle
Published back in 2011, Alone Together was a groundbreaking book showing how technology is warping our social lives and our inner ones.
Technology has become the architect of our intimacies. Online, we fall prey to the illusion of companionship, gathering thousands of Twitter and Facebook friends, and confusing tweets and wall posts with authentic communication. MIT professor Sherry Turkle argues that as technology ramps up, our emotional lives ramp down. Based on hundreds of interviews, Alone Together describes changing, unsettling relationships between friends, lovers, and families.
by Laura Bates
Misogyny is being hardwired into our future. Can we stop it?
We like to believe we’re moving closer to equality, riding the wave of technological progress into a brighter, fairer future. But beneath the glossy surface of innovation lies a chilling truth: new technologies are not just failing to solve age-old inequalities. They’re deepening them.
In The New Age of Sexism, acclaimed author and activist Laura Bates exposes how misogyny is being coded into the very fabric of our future. From the biases embedded in artificial intelligence to the alarming rise of sex robots and the toxic dynamics of the 'metaverse', Bates takes readers on a shocking journey into a world where technology is weaponised against women.
by Ashley Shew
A manifesto exploring what we think we know about disability, and arguing that disabled people are the real experts when it comes to technology and disability.
Shew shows how we can create better narratives and more accessible futures by drawing from the insights of the cross-disability community. To forge a more equitable world, Shew argues that we must eliminate “technoableism”—the harmful belief that technology is a “solution” for disability; that the disabled simply await being “fixed” by technological wizardry; that making society more accessible and equitable is somehow a lesser priority.
by Xuanlin Tham
Sex on screen is unnecessary, gratuitous, and serves no purpose. This is the sentiment on the rise as cinema becomes less and less sexy.
Xuanlin Tham counters that sex scenes can open our minds and bodies to the possibility of new futures, and seduce us towards an expanded political imagination. Through The Matrix Reloaded, Lingua Franca and beyond, Revolutionary Desires explores how the form’s intimacies, transgressions, and dedication to pleasure can be uniquely poised to rupture dominant narratives of capitalism and the violences that flow from it.
Why is the sex scene, demonised as it is, therefore more politically important and subversive than ever? And how can it power a desire for something more?