[Music] okay good evening it's really really great pleasure and it's fantastic to be finally in front of live people and not in front of some black boxes on zoom and other platforms so i will try to be fast uh today maybe it's going to be some kind of floor a roller coaster now i'm doing this same video as a whole semester usually like three hours sometime like we squeeze into two but i never did like 45 minutes or one hour so it's going to be tough but but but let's try new extractivism an assemblage of concepts and allegories the word assemblage is usually understood as a collection or gathering of things or people a machine or object made of pieces fitted together or a work of art made by grouping together found or unrelated objects this map and accompanying footnotes are precisely that one big messy assemblage of different concepts and ideas assembled into one semi-coherent picture or let us say a map a worldview so this map basically it's completely different not completely but it's different than my previous maps usually i'm i did some kind of big black maps trying to investigate different kinds of invisible infrastructures trying to investigate ai or or like some planetary scale systems or this invisible factory like facebook factory or trying to to find a way how to understand those complexities and those like uh different layers hidden behind our screens and and this map and and this visual essay it's kind of side effect of that because in one moment i realized in the beginning i really believed in like you know you can do like some kind of technical investigation and then visualize data and then get something and but then after like a few first drawing i realized that okay i have a picture but i don't understand what is the meaning of that and then i turn into more into some kind of media theory and philosophy and trying to to understand the meaning of of those like images that i am seeing the meaning of those maps and what kind of power is hidden behind those systems and and and so did this map it's kind of side effect of that because i tried to when i was doing that i really love to to visualize different uh concepts and philosophical ideas or or like media theory thing is and in in some kind of visual form so this craziness that you are going to see tonight it's like some kind of mismatch of all of those things it's some kind of assemblage of of different concept different allegories i know it's a bit bit dense and and and too much but i will try to explain some of them and maybe we will survive together this one gravity like einstein's theory of relativity massive objects curve the space and time of the topography of the internet proportionally to their weight defined by the number of their users and content so we can think of massive monopolies and conglomerates such as google and facebook as enormous black holes that with their gravity create a field so intense that it attracts and swallows the content and users so the first idea is this idea of gravity so like you know thinking about internet is a space it's it's always kind of kind of challenging no but then i found out this idea about gravity and an idea that like you know like all of those big platforms that we use they have a mess and then we can think about that in some kind of uh einstein theory that how they basically like like shape the time and space and how when we are browsing and using internet following from falling into one hole in another hole feeling this kind of heavy weight of plus forms two forces many other potential vectors and social forces contribute to that gravitational force the fear of social isolation economic and professional insecurity unrealistic expectations of efficiency and productivity in the adapt or die environment tailored addictions depression and anxieties these are just some of the other vectors that constitute social forces that keep us with or without our wish attached to those platforms the social cost of opting out has become so high that opting out is essentially a fantasy 3. black holes our imaginary hero is swimming against one of those platforms gravitational force as they glide towards the singularity defined by the mass of these giants users and content pass beyond the event horizon the imaginary boundary in time and space beyond which there is no return to the outer part of this universe the event horizon defines the line after which the social and economic price of leaving those platforms is becoming too high no matter how fast they try to swim now the stream will pull them towards the centre of the black hole without even noticing this story's actor is now falling towards the whole dramatic pose so it's not it's not just about the mass and it's not about of course number of users we then i was thinking okay what else it must be some kind of like uh different vectors and and and then like we have like different relations with those like uh platforms so sometimes it's like addictions and some of them are like made to be addictive sometimes it's about like our own security sometimes it's about economic aspects you know like if you want to to find a new job you need to have a really nice profile on facebook or linkedin and so on so so it's like several different factors that that in a way constitute this gravity and then i was thinking okay this gravity is sometimes too big you know so you know i try to imagine you know life without google or without all of those like social media and stuff like this so in a way it's some kind of black holes and then i really like this this metaphor of of like this point of no return and this moment in which this like social price that you need to pay to to to to to to get out of there it's becoming too big so what that means it means like try to live without mobile phone try to live without you know gmail or whatever or maps and it's it's becoming harder and harder to to to you know like stay out of that and this is this like imaginary point of no return if in the moment we we are you know not even sensing the moment we are felling over this line and falling into the into the next metaphor that is the case whole into a new allegory the cave four allegory of the cave what takes place at the bottom of this metaphorical black hole can be described through plato's allegory of the cave plato describes a group of people who spend their entire life chained to cave walls looking at a blank wall these people are watching the shadows of real objects projected on this wall giving them names and meanings in our story the script and directing of this performance of shadows are entrusted to human algorithmic machines that regulate filter sensor and moderate the projected content on the walls of the cave the existing elements and content that exist outside this cave and horizon of events create an information flow a theater of shadows here the stories are to be really depressing but okay you will get it so we are in the cave no and then really you know this is probably the the story about the plateaus allegory of the cave it's the most used allegory probably ever in the original story there is like you know several people chained there an interesting part of this story it's that the the images that are projected there on the wall of the cave are basically you know behind the cave you have a light and then they're like other people who are outside of the cave making some kind of theater play with the with the puppets and then people inside of the cave they are kind of giving some kind of like meaning and and different ontologies and different meanings to to to those pictures on on the wall and and here in this our allegory what is really interesting it's also what is going on who who are the people who are like making this uh you know theater play and in a way this is something that we will discuss here as well but but you know like it's it's mostly this kind of like director of this reality show it's uh it's basically algorithms and different kinds of mathematical functions the different kinds of ai statistical functions and so on so so basically they are directing this reality show that is like being screened uh in front of our faces five walls the cave and tower walls are constructed of multiple opaque layers and built mostly by ghost work or invisible labor the bricks of this structure are made of black boxes closed code and hardware glued together with the invisible network infrastructure they are covered with layers of corporate secrets patents and copyrights so the walls why we are not able to see outside of the wall and i think i'm here really biased because i spent like five six seven ten years i don't know in investigating those layers those layers and in in this context those layers are are different kinds of materials or layers that are constituting this wall so we can start from our you know devices that we are not you know it's not possible to open them anymore you can go further and you know try to understand the networks behind they try to understand like you know those data centers then if you that are also barbed wire so it's kind of like layers of layers of diff different time transparencies but also within those like uh data centers we have now completely some kind of crazy abstraction of different layers of algorithms statistical ai and you can even deeper you go it's it's more crazy it is you know like you cannot penetrate inside of those like neural networks and try to understand what is behind them so all of those layers are kind of constituting this wall and not allowing us to see the the reality what is also like really interesting in thinking about the cave it's especially in this these times of pandemic we are completely into our caves we spend like two years in our caves and the only window outside of this cave was like projection of on the wall of our cave or projection on the screens of our mobile phones and computers six the interface interfaces are framing and structuring the projected algorithmic spectacle of images even though they are a direct manifestation of rules regulations and taxonomies they successfully obscure what is hidden beneath them they define directly or indirectly what we can or cannot do they are both cools and discursive frames they are instituted as an order of discourse and embodiment of the discipline power of the platform this cave is not only a prison cell but it carries out the function of a factory hall and a resource extraction apparatus the prisoner performs their three-fold function as a worker a resource and a product so interface is really really important because like uh uh uh to understand that you know like they define exactly what we can do or cannot do in a sense of if it's a square instagram just squares and all they they influence what kind of pictures we are making they are influencing you know like visually how the things look but they also uh define the rules of the game if the rules of the game it's to to have more hearts with a bigger number or whatever this like reputation economy or whatever it's completely defined by the interface so in in that sense the interface is something that we need to obey the interface it's also hiding like also what is happening behind but interface it's also our office space you know like it's also defining what we will produce what kind of file how long the tweet can be how long you know what is the size of the picture can we insert hyperlink or not so it's kind of really a really powerful way of control and and this triangle beneath this cave it's something that i mean in anatomy of an ai system and also before this triangle have a main meaning to me because like it's always like i was mostly into investigating factories you know invisible factories and if you think about the process of production the usual thing what you you know you start from marx and and so on and and then you know it's always this relation between resource labor and the product and and in this new space that is also like a cave prison and and and the working space we perform the all three uh uh sides of this triangle so we are being a resource from where the the data is being extracted and whatever you know everything is extracted from us no then we are doing also some kind of labor we can start with immaterial labor or or even emotional labor or we even when when we are breeding or doing whatever we are doing some kind of labor that is kind of creating again resource or creating content or whatever and then at the end we are also sold as a product so it's this kind of new for me i think this change is a really crucial this kind of that we are playing all roles in this like magic triangle between resource labor and the product seven shadows and capture ages this is my favorite one the spectacle of a constant flow of information projected through the interface creates a digital shadow on the opposite wall of the cave the projected digital shadow on the wall is a resource field where thousands of capture agents tentacles of the rhizomatics rhizomatic surveillance complex extract information every movement or emotional reaction is being recorded continuously these capture agents can take many forms and sizes from the tiny pieces of code crawlers that wander the web over the sensors catching heartbeats and surveillance cameras capturing our faces to the complex network of satellites orbiting earth they can see our shadows through a full range of the electromagnetic spectrum they can be invisible or massive like a 500 meters wide radio telescope the process of quantification is reaching into the human effective cognitive and physical worlds every segment of our existence reflected on our digital shadows can be seen as a form of direct or indirect labor producing data as a behavioral surplus when we breathe walk or sleep every single emotion that we feel our attention our body temperature or diseases that we have everything can produce a behavioral surplus if being captured by surveillance apparatus in that sense even our bare existence within the walls of the cave can be seen as labor prisoner workers need to spend more and more hours maintaining their profiles in a similar fashion to sex workers in the windows of red light districts digital identity labor is the forced labor of the 21st century this creates an auto-disciplinary society where each anomaly and misbehavior is detected and quantified okay the shadow center on the wall so on one side we have a device and there is this light out going out from this device but then this light is creating the shadow on the back of this cave and in this shadow it's really important to to understand so this is this position of us as a resource this is our digital footprint that is being then like uh completely like extracted and and so you can think about like thousands and thousands of of different companies that have millions and millions of different sensors and different ways how to extract data how to instruct information out of this shadow if we start from this idea of immaterial labor in which we needed to create the blog and then we were thinking like okay then you have like you know you are making comments and then you think okay when we are making comments on facebook we are working for facebook and so on but now it's going deeper and deeper and deeper it's going deeper in a way that we don't need to do anything anymore because we are constantly being our shadows are constantly being extracted so every breath every you know our our like blood pressure our oxygen percentage of oxygen in our blood or or our movement or when we wake up so each segment of our life how we smile when we smile how long we are see looking into something so it's this kind of attention economy you can also track this like how many names you have for different things you have attention economy you have like emotional economy you have many new forms of economy that means that they are each economy is basically new forms of of resource new forms of labor so at the end we don't need to do anything our bare existence is a a form of labor now in this case because we are constantly being observed eight plutopticon the gravity of these techno giants hold billions of users workers products at the bottom of those caves in this assemblage of allegories millions of caves or prison cells form the unique and invisible panopticon structure the central tower of this structure has two main functions one to project the content on the walls of the caves and too to surveil and capture the digital shadows of the prisoners reflected on the opposite wall so this one is a classic and i don't want to speak about this like how wonderful this uh you know architecture in which you don't need even to have anyone in the middle and so on so but what i really like here it's also like really related to our existence in in the cave it's that we don't see the other caves we are just like seeing the projections and then then in that sense this tower in the in the in the middle it also have like now dual function it's also projector so this this this tower it's projecting the content on the wall but also like sucking all the information out of our shadows 9. information retrieval from each cell cave and through the core of the panopticon tower streams of information are flowing into one of the central structures of this image the data bank the data bank is not just the engine room but the power itself from here we are examining three processes crucial for this story on one side extracted stored and analyzed personal data is shaping the multi-dimensional portrait of the individual on the second all the products of the user's labor are being stored analyzed and ranked to form the information spectacle of images meanings and reputations furthermore in the third one this structure lies upon the top of the exploitation of human minds bodies and nature 10. creation of data body our online behavior is captured processed and deconstructed into statistical vectors clusters patterns and anomalies each move we make is carefully analyzed by thousands of mathematical functions algorithms and machine learning systems this system does not see us through linear narratives emerging from our browsing behavior metadata or movements in physical space but as n-dimensional statistical projections each and every one of our clicks sharpens the resolution and complexity of this abstract and constantly changing statistical portrait or data body so this n-dimensional statistical space it's super important for me and and i i dedicated some time in making uh uh you know like for example this map uh it's called inside facebook algorithmic factory it's kind of like the the explanation of of this part that that were like played here so so in a way but what was the key super interesting for me here we spent like you know a year or two just to map all the data that is coming into into into this factory and then you can try to think about each type of data as a one dimension of this multi-dimensional portrait that they are building out of us and uh and the the thing is like for us it's kind of hard to think about like more dimensions than five or three or whatever but but when we think about in in in like ai and and and data analysis this is completely normal and each signal about like our you know parts of this this shadow coming out of the shadow it's like one dimension of of this picture and then what is like super interesting in in this sense all of those information together are creating a new territory and and this is for example in case of facebook you have this social graph that is the heart of of this machine of this like system in a sense of like now all of those bits of data each of those bits of data it's one point in some kind of new territory in some kind of new map and all of them are connected with different kinds of links that have a different meanings but they they constitute one new territory so this is some kind of second layer second level territory so the first territory it's our shadow you know that is being extracted the second level uh territory there it's now all of those information forming a new space new new form of of resource like one one territory that is now being being uh uh extracted and how this territory is being extracted by thousands and thousands of different mathematical functions statistical function ai that are basically crawling now over this territory and trying to to to extract pieces of information and to create new value to create some kind of n-dimensional statistical spaces in which we are kind of mixed with other people creating relation between us objects events places and and everything eleven individuals these multi-dimensional data portraits of the individual consisting of millions of data points in hundreds of dimensions can be seen as what to lose will name individual a physically embodied human subject that is endlessly divisible and reducible to data representations via the modern technologies of control the critical art ensemble is describing this data body as the fascist sibling of the virtual body a much more highly developed virtual form and one that exists in complete service to the corporate and police state 12. condividuals individual is always open to interaction always ready to be detached from and attached to other individuals that share some properties with it creating collective agents as condividuals or super subjects the mountains and valleys of multi-dimensional ever-changing invisible algorithmic landscapes are clustering individual individuals and creating new relations taxonomies and ontologies so if we are in in kind of like now this our individual being or whatever it is okay i really love to think about all of those like different algorithmic uh landscapes in which you have a valleys and and mountains of this landscape and and our bubbles are are basically there within this landscape and falling into different kinds of you know joining together and and creating some kind of new co-individual individuals as as matteo quinelli explained in in a way like now we are forming some kind of really uh uh uh strange uh uh overlapping between our bodies our locations in some kind of statistical space 13. surveillance assemblage the full picture of our individual being is not centralized in one place but is spread across hundreds of data centers in the rhizomatic assemblage of the surveillance economy and government actors this non-heterogeneous and dispersed assemblage portrait exists through the system of data dealers the official and unofficial exchange of data in constant flow forming one functional entity 14. content extraction each web page or other piece of content that is being captured in the wild is rendered and analyzed this content is being extracted into hundreds of different signals collected content and extracted data become a permanent corporate resource for creating multi-dimensional dynamic complex topologies in which every piece of data becomes an object that is contextually linked to other objects on one side this is like those two two different sides of this this process on one side is this creation of data body it's like who we are what we like or what we do now on the other side it's like huge collection of everything that we create everything that that is created being like quantified and and stored in you know google quantified all the books like on the world all the every word that it's ever written it's it's part of this like huge collection of of content and endings and and everything so in one moment uh uh you have like you know this stream of of our digital you know representation as a data body it's kind of mixing with this and two of them are creating this kind of our bubble of information creating this reality show that is being presented on our walls of our cave within this map this new meta territory crawl hundreds of different mathematical functions algorithms and neural networks that we can call instruments of measurement and perception 15. instruments of measurement and perception those instruments of measurement and perception always come with inbuilt aberrations the shape of the algorithmic lenses is carefully crafted to project the image that is in accordance with the platform's financial interest and political goals and values platforms often imply direct rules and regulations they have direct power of regulation of what can be seen or said what kind of content can and cannot exist in their universe here we are visually representing those rules and regulations as filters similarly to the algorithmic lenses the fabric of those filters is crafted according to the platform's financial interests and political goals and values so this process this uh chapter is speaking about this process that is com of course not natural and and this is like this one person going around and basically shaping this filter and the way he he want to and this like person hanging on this uh lens it's basically some kind of biased human bias that is like moving those lenses and creating different pictures so uh if we go back to this like picture of facebook algorithmic factory you know even them they don't know how these things really work and what are the effects but the effects of this are being fine-tuned in in towards like creating more capital it's they're not fine tuned to be some kind of perfect you know like help to humanity or or any kind of thing so this is this in a way we should always understand that that each of those things that even looks like a machines there are always people there who are shaping those those processes and those machines in a way to to for their own uh goals 16. projection of the world instruments of measurement and perception are ranking and defining hierarchies and relations between content users and meaning they define the digital regime of truth and order this regime is a prison through which the world is projected in the form of the constant stream of spectacles on the walls of the caves 17. engines of extraction empowered by the digital extractivism tools of the information age everything becomes a potential frontier for expansion and extraction from the depth of dna code in every single cell of the human organism to vast frontiers of human emotions behavior and social relations to nature as a whole everything becomes the territory for the new extractivism at this moment in the 21st century we see a new form of extractivism that is well underway one that reaches into the furthest corners of the biosphere and the deepest layers of human cognitive and effective being 18. enclosure and affinity to infinity in the transition to the information age capitalism was given a chance to satisfy its affinity for infinity to form and conquer an infinite number of new territories to create new mechanisms for the accumulation of capital within these new spaces and to formulate new forms of exploitation once the territory is invaded the process of enclosure and exploitation is established every time when when they find a new way to extract some type of data like for example when google uh get into their hands like all the the scans of like cancer patients and and and and run some kind of like ai to learn how to recognize you know different types of cancers that's a form of enclosure you know even even that sounds really good and benefit us it's enclosure in which like they now have a product they now have have a tool that they will commodify and use for different means so that means each type of data each new type of territory that is being conquered it's being basically then enclosed and and and privatized in a sense new forms of extractivism are expanding into the territories far behind the biodiversity and knowledge enclosure this is why we are not speaking any more just about the knowledge economy but about the attention economy emotion economy and many other new economies being born from the invasion of new territories of extraction 19. fractal supply chains supply chains hidden behind the engines of extractivism are black boxes as much as neural networks or algorithms hidden behind interfaces each triangle of this fractal represents one phase in the production process from birth in a geological process through life as a consumer product and ultimately to death in an electronics dump within the fractal supply chain we see a perpetual dance between human labor non-human labor earth labor and automatization 20. blood sweat and toxic lakes every click or swipe we make online creates one little hole in the ground filled with toxic waste and covered by toxic clouds every movement of materials and data within the planetary scale factory has its own hidden price supply chains are optimized towards maximizing profit for a few while the real costs of the destruction that follows are shared among all the living entities on the planet in the present and the future one molecule after another is extracted by labor and technique to make things for humans but the waste products don't return so that the cycle can renew itself so this this segment was like really deeply you know explored in this map that it's called anatomy of an ai system when we try to to understand like how this supply chain try to understand basically digital labor in the widest possible way so to start from the the mines in congo or in lithium ion in serbia and to finish up in your room this is this like third let's say segment of extractivism it's not just this kind of new fancy ways of extracting data extracting human labor immaterial labor and so on it's also like based on like traditional uh extractivism of like extracting materials minerals and and and and basically different forms of hundreds and hundreds of different forms of labor that it's sometimes called ghost labor because we don't don't want to think about that we don't when we are pressing our phones and doing stuff we don't have this perception of either energy consumption either ecological either like labor that is being being like put into those uh devices and and in a way the the three-quarter of of like a co2 footprint of devices are being basically created through doing creation of of those devices 21 triangular trade slavery was at the heart of the development of the modern planetary scale global economy from those days the same model of constant flow within the vast fractal production chains expanded in time space and complexity the transatlantic slave trade evolved into the contemporary planetary scale factory 22 chains of digital colonialism traditional colonial practices of control over critical assets trade routes natural resources and exploitation of human labor are still deeply embedded in the contemporary supply chains logistics and assembly lines of digital content products and infrastructure in that sense chains of digital colonialism are made both on the extraction of digital surplus and the traditional exploitation of labor and resources the concepts presented are mostly represented here visually in the form of allegories dictionaries define allegory as a story poem or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning typically a moral or political one all of these allegories and concepts together joined in the form of an assemblage create together a blueprint of a machine like superstructure or a super allegory in that sense what we have here is an almost fractal allegorical structure an allegory within an allegory within an allegory it's a my attempt and and it really didn't meant into like you know you know creating some kind of big theory about everything this is mostly some kind of assemblage of already existing things that i kind of like put some kind of salt of craziness on this and and try to see this as some kind of one one big picture and in a way it's my this map it's kind of it's really close to my heart in a sense because it's like my my take on this and i i completely understand that like those attempts are you know uh you know they're going to fail in a sense of so many levels but this is my attempt to to create some kind of big picture and maybe to to try to visualize those processes and those concepts of that i was able to to find and to to think about and i think like visualizing uh uh those concepts and and mega structures even they're completely this one it's completely on some kind of like really high level of abstraction i think it's important that we try to find the new ways to to to understand this reality and to understand complexity and to understand new forms of extraction and new forms of labor and to try to finally understand the factory to try it finally to understand how come we finish in this situation in which like we have such a huge you know a concentration of power and wealth in few different companies and how this idea beautiful idea of internet as an open decentralized mantra whatever it is turn into into this kind of like machinery of exploitation and so this is my take on this and and i let's look at the lines there is one joke here [Music] starting so those are the stars basically all them [Music] okay we don't need to go towards the german flag so thank you i i i i it was tough no you