Reignition Tome I 1

Reignition 1 Nick Land's Writings (2011-) 1 Tome I 1 Urban Future: Views from the Decopunk Delta 1 Reignition 3 Nick Land's Writings (2011-) 3 Tome I 3 Urban Future: Views from the Decopunk Delta 3 Reignition 5 Nick Land's Writings (2011-) 5 Tome I 5 Urban Future: Views from the Decopunk Delta 5 Table of Contents 6 BLOCK 1 - URBAN FUTURE 9 Introducing Urban Future 9 Eternal Return, and After 12 If occult knowledge is unavailable, futurology must rely upon historical patterns. Ultimately, some variant of extrapolation is its only resource. 12 Beyond Urbanization 15 ‘Urbanization’ doesn’t capture very much of what cities are up to 15 An Introduction to Urbanomy 19 Event Horizon 24 People gravitate to cities, but what are cities gravitating into? Some strange possibilities suggest themselves. 24 Implosion 29 We could be on the brink of a catastrophic implosion – but that’s OK 29 Scaly Creatures 35 Cities are accelerators and there are solid numbers to demonstrate it 35 Edward Glaeser on Triumph of the City 40 that’s Shanghai interviews the world’s most topical urbanist 40 Our Cause 44 The Urban Factor 45 Urban Defense 47 London 48 London II 49 Parametrics and Provocation 49 Free Cities 51 Modernity’s Fertility Problem 53 BLOCK 2 - TEMPLEXITY 63 Time in Transition 63 There has to be a hexagram for this 63 A Time-Traveler’s Guide to Shanghai (Part 1) 70 When did it all change? 70 A Time-Travelers Guide to Shanghai (Part 2) 73 Dark intimations of the time-rift 73 A Time-Travelers Guide to Shanghai (Part 3) 80 Dieselpunk with Chinese characteristics 80 Calendric Dominion 87 How hegemony still counts 87 Calendric Dominion (Part 2) 93 Caesar with the soul of Christ 93 Calendric Dominion (Part 3) 98 In Search of Year Zero 98 Calendric Dominion (Part 4) 103 A Digression into the Reality Principle 103 Calendric Dominion (Part 5) 109 From Crimson Paradise to Soft Apocalypse 109 Calendric Dominion (Part 6) 115 Countdown 115 Twisted Times (Part 1) 121 Extropy 126 CHAPTER ONE - THE BIGGEST PICTURE 129 Big Bang — an appreciation 129 Cosmological Infancy 130 Space is Big 134 Climate of Uncertainty 134 CHAPTER TWO - THE ABSTRACT FORM OF TIME 136 Time Spiral 136 T-shirt slogans (#13) 139 Quote notes (#7) 140 The Shape of Time (Part 1) 142 The Shape of Time (Part 2) 149 The Shape of Time (Part 2a) 154 Greer 160 Time Scales 162 Perspective 169 CHAPTER THREE - NARRATIVIZATIONS 171 Tackling Templexity 171 Time Discipline 172 Templexity 173 Templexity is Out 174 Quote note (#245) 176 1930-Somethings 177 The Decopunk Delta 179 Gardens of Time (Part 1) 186 Anachronistic Oedipus 189 Time Cube 193 Interstellar 196 Templexity Matters 199 Edge of Tomorrow 201 Synthetic Templexity 203 SECTION A - APOCALYPSES 204 CHAPTER ONE - CUMMULATION OF FAILURES 205 Nemesis 205 Betting everything that the casino will burn down 205 Bonfire of the Vanities 212 The road to hell is paved with good intentions 212 Can’t kick the habit … 219 … but at least we can kick the can 219 Hubris 228 Kicking the Can 230 2017 231 CHAPTER TWO - SUSPENSION 233 Quote notes (#70) 233 Collapse Schedules 234 Suspense 236 Suspended Animation 238 Limbo starts to feel like home 238 Suspended Animation (Part 2) 243 Whatever happened to hell? 243 Suspended Animation (Part 3) 251 The dead hand of the state 251 Suspended Animation (Part 4) 259 Playing for time 259 Suspended Animation (Part 5) 264 Engines of Devastation 264 Apocalometer 273 CHAPTER THREE - 2012 276 Perfect Storm 276 Weather forecasts for winter 2012 are getting wilder all the time 276 New Year Cheer 280 There’s a lot of ruin in a global madhouse 280 End Games 283 CHAPTER FOUR - CASE STUDIES 290 Peak People 290 Could we be facing the ultimate resource crunch? 290 Hard Futurism 292 Are you ready for the next big (nasty) thing? 292 Kinds of Killing 296 How bad is genocide, really? 296 The God Confusion 301 A world on its knees, and at your throat 301 Wild Cards 307 Gibson’s Nightmare 308 CHAPTER FIVE - COMPILATIONS 311 Doomcore 311 Glide Path 312 SMOD 314 CHAPTER SIX - POLITICAL INSANITY 318 The Rights Stuff 318 Trash Space 318 Meanwhile, in Paris 320 Report from a Madhouse 322 Twitter cuts (#60) 324 It’s come to this 325 Current Mood 327 CHAPTER SEVEN - ECONOMIC COLLAPSE 328 Progress 328 Progress (II) 329 Downton on down 330 Doom Paul 334 Pedal to the Metal 335 Suspended Reality 336 Extreme Games 338 Soon 339 Meanwhile, in Venezuela … 341 SECTION B - ACCELERATION 342 A Quick-and-Dirty Introduction to Accelerationism 342 CHAPTER ONE - EXPONENTIALS 350 Moore and More 350 Doubling down on Moore’s Law is the futurist main current 350 Twisted into Being 354 Foundations of Acceleration 355 “2035. Probably earlier.” 356 There’s fast, and then there’s … something more 356 Statistical Mentality 360 Things are very probably weirder than they seem 360 CHAPTER TWO - HISTORICAL TRENDS 365 Anthropocene 365 Human history is geology on speed 365 Technological Determination 369 CHAPTER THREE - DISTRIBUTED THOUGHT 372 Connectivity 372 Two unusual little girls test the limits of identity 372 Brain-Net 375 Speed Reading 377 Bespoke Singularities 379 Twitter Mind 379 Twitter Mind (+1) 382 CHAPTER FOUR - IMPROVING MACHINERY 385 “Chiang Kai-shek of the Machine to Seek” 385 Politics in the Age of Artificial Idiocy 385 Quotable (#31) 388 Demonetization 389 Eter9 390 Secretaries 391 Game Over 392 Machine Poetry 393 CHAPTER FIVE - SOCIAL DISRUPTION 395 Internet Fragmentation 395 Cultural Speciation 397 Cultural Speciation II 398 New Media 399 Twitter cuts (#127) 399 CHAPTER SIX - ANTHROPOL 401 Decelerando? 401 Charles Stross wants to get off the bus 401 The Ultimate Deal 407 Social responsibility turns up in unexpected places 407 Impact Readiness 410 Make it Stop II 414 Political Humor 417 The things that really matter 417 Quotable (#184) 421 Out of Time 423 SEQUENCE i - ON LEFT ACCELERATIONISM 424 #Accelerate 424 Annotated #Accelerate (#1) 426 Annotated #Accelerate (#2) 432 Annotated #Accelerate (#3) 438 Quotable (#4) 451 On #Accelerate (#1) 452 On #Accelerate (#2a) 457 On #Accelerate (#2b) 461 On #Accelerate (#2c) 472 The Left Turn 476 Accelero-schism 477 Twitter cuts (#12) 479 Twitter cuts (#41) 482 Accelerationism in One Country 483 Quotable (#122) 484 Twitter cuts (#104) 485 Twitter cuts (#145) 486 BLOCK 3 - BITCOIN AND BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY 487 CHAPTER ONE - BTC FACETS 488 Bits and Pieces 488 P2P or not 2P, that is the question 488 The Internet of Money 493 Monetary Reality 495 Distributors 497 Bitcoin Backend 498 Trustless Convergence 500 On the Table 501 Bitcoin as SOCI 504 Countdown 505 CHAPTER TWO - BTC DEATH? 507 Bitcoin vs Leviathan 507 Bitcoin Horror Stories 508 Satoshi Nakamoto Night 510 The Future of Bitcoin 510 BTC End Times? 513 Will Bitcoin Survive? 514 Undead 517 Hype Waves 519 Hype Waves II 521 Dissociation 523 Quote note (#282) 525 CHAPTER THREE - BTC POLITICS 526 Bitcoin and Chains 526 Techno-Leviathan 528 Interesting Times 529 Anti-Cap 530 Crypto-Comedy 531 Crypto-Power 532 CHAPTER FOUR - OTHER BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGIES 535 Speaking Personally … 535 DAO 536 DAO in the dust 537 Urbit 538 Beyond IP Addresses? 539 21 Bitcoin Computer 540 Micropayments Marketplace 542 CHAPTER FIVE - CHINA, BITCOIN AND WORLD ORDER 545 Bitcoin on the Silk Road 545 Bitcoin’s Eastern Future 549 BTC East (again) 550 BTC East (again) II 550 Hegemonic Headaches 551 Petrodollar Provocations 554 Sinocoin 554 Bitcoin Geopolitics 556 China, Crypto-Currency, and the World Order 557 China, Crypto-Currency, and the World Order, Part 2 566 China, Crypto-Currency, and the World Order, Part 3 578 BLOCK 4 - SINGLOSPHERE 589 CHAPTER ONE - PRIMERS 590 Singlosphere 590 East-plus-West at the frontier of freedom 590 Pacific Rim 594 Quote note (#119) 599 Mackinder in Beijing 600 CHAPTER TWO - SYNTHETIC CULTURE 602 Reign of the Tripod 602 China’s rise and the future of threedom 602 Numbo Zhongo 613 Tianming 613 Scary Chinese 615 Sino-Robotics 616 Oppressionless 617 Twitter cuts (#10) 619 ‘Not Religious’ 619 Heavenly Signs 621 Gloom-Core 623 白左 625 CHAPTER THREE - ECONOMY AND POLICY 626 Chimerica 626 A new world order hits the buffers 626 Handling China 629 Emergent Properties 631 383 636 Market-Leninism 639 Quote notes (#91) 640 Phase Change 641 Twitter cuts (#16) 643 China and the Net 644 Digital Sovereignty 644 Drone Business 646 Quote note (#327) 647 Switch 648 Death Valley 649 Huge News (if true) 650 CHAPTER FOUR - URBAN DEVELOPMENT 651 Re-Animator (Part 1) 651 Can Expo live again? 651 Re-Animator (Part 2) 656 Expo transformers – the uninvited guests 656 Re-Animator (Part 3) 664 What makes a great city? 664 Re-Animator (Part 4) 672 What does the world make of Shanghai? 672 Re-Animator (Part 5) 679 The Call of Haibao 679 Arts of Re-Animation 685 Dotting the ‘I’ 687 Urbanization in Focus 690 City Limits 699 Modern Legacy 702 Shanghai Tower 705 Shanghai Tower 707 35 Today 713 CHAPTER FIVE - NICK LAND'S TRIPS 715 Out West 715 Out West (again) 717 Out West (yet again) 720 Guizhou 722 Hong Kong 726 Vietnam (scraps) 729 Angkor (scraps) 731 Cambodia (scraps) 735 Scrap snaps (#1) 738 Scrap snaps (#2) 740 Disconnection 745 Shenzhen 748 Scrap note (#14) 760 NZ Scraps 771 Singapore 772 Scrap snaps (#3) 775 Vietnam (scraps) II 780 NZ Stuff 782 Disconnection VI 783 SECTION A - NEO-TRADITIONALISM 786 Neo-Traditionalism 786 Yi Xiang 786 Neo-Traditionalism in Hong Kong 790 CHAPTER ONE - ARTWORKS 792 Ink-cantations 792 Ningbo 797 Ningbo Museum 799 Blow Ups 801 The Qin Model Army 805 Art Machined 813 CHAPTER TWO - CONFUCIAN RESTORATION 814 Confucian Restoration 814 Mou Zongsan 816 Cultural Restoration and Mou Zongsan 829 Exploration of the Outside 832 The Great Convergence 835 Legalism 840