“Paranoid Machines” talk in NYC

Off the beaten path: Jason Brown is giving a talk called “Paranoid Machines”.

When: Sat, April 4, 7pm – 9pm
Where: 300 Nevins St, Brooklyn
Free. Organized by Machine Project, Los Angeles

Jason Brown’s talk will examine contemporary gnostic mythologies of technology and paranoia, focusing on Vannevar Bush as a self-embodied allegorical emblem of information perversity. Bush’s famed “memex” and the modern UFOs are both hypothetical machines—devices which use association and performativity to spin information out of noise. In modern techno-myths, this process is often represented as an alchemical self-destruction resulting in god-like power. Not coincidentally, all these issues are illustrated with disturbing density and prescience in the 1981 Disney film “Tron.”

This is just old-school enough to be interesting to some readers, and I like to think I find things you won’t see on Reddit or Slashdot. (via my second favorite magazine)