Benjamin H. Bratton

Anna Greenspan

Bogna Konior

China and the History and Future of AI

Machine Decision Is Not Final

China is in the midst of the fastest and most intense process of urbanization the world has ever known, and Shanghai -- its biggest, richest and most cosmopolitan city -- is positioned for acceleration into the twenty-first century. Yet, in its embrace of a hopeful -- even exultant -- futurism, Shanghai recalls the older and much criticized project of imagining, planning and building the modern metropolis. Today, among Westerners, at least, the very idea of the futuristic city -- with its multilayered skyways, domestic robots and flying cars -- seems doomed to the realm of nostalgia, the sadly comic promise of a future that failed to materialize. Shanghai Future maps the city of tomorrow as it resurfaces in a new time and place. It searches for the contours of an unknown and unfamiliar futurism in the city's street markets as well as in its skyscrapers. For though it recalls the modernity of an earlier age, Shanghai's current re-emergence is only superficially based on mimicry. Rather, in seeking to fulfill its ambitions, the giant metropolis is reinventing the very idea of the future itself. As it modernizes, Shanghai is necessarily recreating what it is to be modern.

Modernity Remade

Shanghai Future

This thesis seeks to establish a connection between abstract thought and material practice. It does so by focusing on the relation between the transcendental philosophy of time and the socio-technics of timekeeping practices.

Capitalism's Transcendental Time Machine

This thesis seeks to establish a connection between abstract thought and material practice. It does so by focusing on the relation between the transcendental philosophy of time and the socio-technics of timekeeping practices. The thesis begins with a discussion of Kant's philosophy of time as outlined in the Critique of Pure Reason. It argues that Kant's discovery of the transcendental coincides with the development of an entirely new conception of time. This new conception overturns classical thought by making a distinction between the abstract form of time and the empirical phenomena of movement and change. The second chapter maps the transcendental philosophy of time on to the history of capitalist timekeeping. This history includes the invention and development of the mechanical clock, temporal standardization, and the increasing importance of the equation 'time = money.' The aim in bringing these two spheres together is to show both that Kant's philosophy of time owes much to his empirical surroundings, and also that capitalist time can only be understood through the temporal abstraction of transcendental thought. This link between Kant and capitalism is blocked, however, by a dividing line which separates the philosophical nature of time from the empirical changes of history. ﻿ In order to surpass this problem, the thesis turns to the work of Deleuze and Guattari whose 'transcendental materialism' connects the abstract production of time with empirical innovations. This is accomplished by replacing the classical conception of a transcendent eternity with the immanent materiality of an exterior plane. This plane-which they call Aeon and is composed of thresholds, or singular events-makes no distinction between time and that which occurs in time. The final chapter explores the dawn of the third millennium-or Y2K-as constituting one such Aeonic event

Future Mutation

Francesca Tarocco

Abstract: China is in the midst of the fastest and largest process of urbanisation in history. Alongside the dynamism of the region's hyperdense cities, however, are alarming levels of air pollution, recurrent stories of toxic food, contaminated waterways and intensifying popular protests concerning polluting factories and plants. Issues surrounding a sustainable urban ecology have thus become paramount in the construction of Asia's metropolitan future. This paper, which focuses particularly on the Shanghai region, suggests that the ideas and practices of "cultivation" might be of value in the creation and imagination of a future ecological metropolis. We examine self-cultivation concretely, as a set of situated embodied practices in specific places and specific historical conditions. We also explore the abstract conceptual idea, by looking at how the modern philosopher Mou Zongsan articulated the idea of "cultivation" as a guide for life. Ultimately, we are interested in how the embodied cu

An Enchanted Modern: Urban Cultivation in Shanghai

Jessica Skwire Routhier

Laila Stevens

Comprehensive book of the Jane Costello Wellehan Collection, a 2019 gift to the Bates College Museum of Art. Featuring illustrations of all artworks, essay by Jessica Skwire Routhier, catalogue entries drafted by Anna Greenspan '22 and Laila Stevens '21, preface and acknowledgments by Dan Mills; edited by Dan Mills.

An Adventurous Spirit: the Jane Costello Wellehan Collection

Anna Greenspan re-imagines the relationship between China and wirelessness by synthesizing contemporary media theory with modern Chinese thought.

Media As Wave Philosophy

China and the Wireless Undertow

India and the IT Revolution explores the contemporary emergence of cosmopolitan, high-tech India as marking the arrival of a truly global cyberculture. It argues against the notion that globalization is a process of "Westernization," which radiates out unilaterally from the core, imposing itself upon a passive, backward periphery. Instead, it conceives of global culture as a dynamic, innovative network, which proceeds primarily from its edges.

Anna Greenspan

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