Cybergothic by Nick Land
Cybergothic by Nick Land
GET RID OF MEANING. YOUR MIND IS A NIGHTMARE THAT HAS BEEN EATING YOU: NOW EAT YOUR MIND
These notes were created during my reading process to aid in my own understanding and were not written for the purpose of instruction or summarization. With that said, I get super excited to discuss ideas contained within, but rarely (read never) do I encounter anyone reading the same stuff. I’ve decided to share these unedited notes on the off chance they attract a shared excitement to discuss or are perhaps helpful to other readers. Feel free to ask questions and interact. Enjoy!
Opinion
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What I’m stealing
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Dog ears, highlights, marginalia
The code said: GET RID OF MEANING. YOUR MIND IS A NIGHTMARE THAT HAS BEEN EATING YOU: NOW EAT YOUR MIND. (Page 103)
Note: Cybergothic (Acker)
The short-term is already hacked by the long-term. The medium-term is reefed on schizophrenia. The long-term is canceled. (Page 104)
Note: Cybergothic
A moment of relief. You had thought the goreflick effectively over, the monster finished amongst anatomically precise ketchup-calamity scenes, when — suddenly — it reanimates; still locked on to your death. If you are going to scream, now is the time. (Page 105)
Note: I feel like I’m reading a description of the video played in the trippy tunnel in the original Willy Wonka movie. Where they are traveling down chocolate river on the paddle wheel boat.
"[V]irtual is opposed to actual. It is not opposed to real, far from it" (Deleuze and Guattari). The virtual future is not a potential present further up the road of linear time, but the abstract motor of the actual, "an actual-virtual circuit on the spot, and not an actualization of the virtual in accordance with a shifting actual"
(Deleuze and Guattari). Time produces itself in a circuit, passing through the virtual interruption of what is to come, in order that the future which arrives is already infected, populated: "[I]t's just a tailored hallucination we all agreed to have, cyberspace, but anybody who jacks in knows, fucking knows it's a whole universe. And every year it gets a little more crowded" (Deleuze and Guattari). (Page 108)
We will need a more robust, flexible approach.... It seems that we can build nanomachines that act somewhat like the white blood cells of the human immune system: devices that can fight not just bacteria and viruses, but dangerous replicators of all sorts.
(Drexler) (Page 110)
Note: The ever-present battle of survival being waged within the closed circuit of each human body will eventually be externalized as we create new forms of adaptive intelligent life. The micro scaled up to macro. The internal complexity and chaos are externalized. Life force escaping the confines of mammalian flesh. Humanity will be forced into becoming a replica of our body’s natural immune system. Survival will once again be an all-consuming priority.
Count Zero rigorously formulates cybergothic interlock, condensing the digital underworld onto the black mirror. (Page 114)
Note: Curious if Nick Land’s writing is the basis for the show.