Petervan Delicacies #177
May 2025 - June 2025
“Delicacies” is my incoherent, irregular, unpredictable collection of interesting sparks I came across online. Handpicked by a human, no robots, no AI. A form of tripping, wandering, dérivé, with some loosely undefined theme holding them together. Delicacies have no fixed frequency: I hit the publish button when there is enough material. That can be after a week, or after 3 months. No pressure, literally.
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The very best
About Andus, a new company initiated by Chris Perry and Douglas Rushkoff to provoke Team Human insights into empowerment, agency, and identity in a world of AI and us.
About the experience economy, and why immersive means audience first. Very thoughtful piece by Ana
“People are desperately in need of togetherness. We are looking for hope in every corner of the landscape that isn’t work or news. And the internet is the only space we really have to get any training in togetherness these days.”
The Wirecutter Leaks. A worldbuilding/narrative prototyping (or design fiction) experiment by Paul Graham Raven
“May 2044: an evidence file and a voice memo are leaked from MI5, the UK’s domestic intelligence agency, to the general public.”
Gorgeous Antikythera Journal - part 1 2025. Great content and wonderful packaging. By Benjamin Bratton, Stephanie Sherman, et al. All essays are downloadable as PDFs.
“This inaugural volume explores the scope of planetary computation: the evolution of intelligence, global dynamics of simulation, existential technologies, diverse expressions of modular cognition, natural history of automation, informational theories of life, challenges of inhuman thought, emergence of physical AI and the deep history of planetary sapience. The second part of Volume 2025 launches in the Fall.”
Data & Society
About a pro-Russian influence operation targeting Australia in the lead-up to the election, with an attempt to 'poison' AI chatbots. Via Josie
“Pravda Australia presents itself as a news site, but analysts allege it's part of an ongoing plan to retrain Western chatbots such as ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and Microsoft's Copilot on "the Russian perspective" and increase division amongst Australians in the long-term.”
“It's one of roughly 180 largely automated websites in the global Pravda Network allegedly designed to "launder" disinformation and pro-Kremlin propaganda for AI models to consume and repeat back to Western users.”
Innovation
Will your next iPhone have brain-implants?
Innovation is about imagination - Social Imagination in Times of Panic - By Liliana Arroyo
“A lot of things people say cannot be done have not been meaningfully attempted in the context of our lifetimes. It’s easy to maintain myths of impossibility when you crush all experiments.”
Larry Page is 5 steps ahead of the AI hype. Already working on the automated supply chain.
“So while the world keeps refreshing their feeds for the next AI chatbot update, I’ll be keeping an eye on Larry Page — because I believe he’s not just building a company. He’s building the future.”
AI, Robots, Algorithms
About AI in 2027. This AI 2027 scenario is the first major release from the AI Futures Project, a new nonprofit organization that forecasts the future of AI. Via Ham. Also, try the fork at the end: Slowdown or Race. Opening sentence:
“We predict that the impact of superhuman AI over the next decade will be enormous, exceeding that of the Industrial Revolution.”
Sadie Clayton has been creating robot fashion designs since 2018. Via Swag Vallens
Remarks (Talk) by Eryk Salvaggio on AI, Noise, and Creative Misuse as written for the Artificial Intelligence and Contemporary Creation conference at the Jeu de Paume, Paris
Nova Spivack thinks math might hold the key to understanding minds and machines > The Geometry of Intelligence
“I’ve spent the last several years developing what I believe could be a fundamental breakthrough in how we understand intelligence—both biological and artificial. It’s an ambitious claim, and I want to share with you why I think the mathematics of curved spaces might hold the key to unlocking the deepest mysteries of mind and computation.”
And
“Think of it this way: Einstein showed us that massive objects curve spacetime, and this curvature explains gravity. I’m proposing that intelligent systems curve “information space,” and this curvature explains learning, efficiency, and the emergence of complex cognition.”
Post Capitalism
About the “Playability” of systems, also mentioning Exocapitalism. Interesting take by TheJaymo
“It’s hard to resist the casino, capitalism is even harder, but recognising that a system is playable is the first step toward navigating it with intent rather than just reacting to it. But it also makes us realise that the rules of the game can be changed at any time. By the players or the worldrunners.”
New New Babylon
About “A Sense of Rebellion”, Evgeny Morozov’s second podcast installment of his trilogy on the “tech rebels who failed”. This installment is about the Environmental Ecology Lab, leading to the MIT Media Lab. Via Nick Kaufman. To quote Nick:
“It reminded me a lot of the new new babylon stuff-- about some cybernetics hippies in Boston messing with responsive environments theories-- who ended up inspiring a lot of tech and architecture work at MIT and Silicon Valley but whose ideas were more complex: episode 4 and 5 is where it really gets interesting theory wise. Would be fun to remake some of their stories in XR”
Art related
Why there are no AI masterpieces. By Alberto Romero
“What do you make of the fact that these things have basically the entire corpus of human knowledge memorized and they haven't been able to make a single new connection that has led to a discovery?”
Installation “The Clean Room” by Sofie Mullers - now till end Aug 2025 in Dr. Guislain Museum Ghent
I stumbled on the website of the amazing artist Roberto Alonso Trillo and found this…
Aesthetics
About the last show of Dries Van Noten
Yves Saint Laurent Men’s Summer 26 Show
Music/Sound/Dance
Another great mix by Astrid Sonne. Because I can.
Dr Who - Delia Derbyshire - The Myths and The Legendary Tapes > can only be watched on YouTube directly
Outworld Madrid 2025 | Klangkuenstler - All Night Long > how to transform a hall into a dance club for 10,000 people > because you can…
Performance
Another iteration of the New New Babylon performance, aka Dream My Dream, aka The Forbidden Question. The trailer shows snapshots of a simulated performance room. Made as part of my end-of-year Howest XR-in-Industry course.
Books/Publications
About Exocapitalism > to be released in August 2025. Sounds like an interesting book by Marek Poliks and Roberto Alonso Trillo with brainmelt potential. The video below has some intros to Exocapitalism
For real nerds
About visualizing the 4th spatial dimension.
Smile
About the Tiny Desk Concert by Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso > the kind of weirdness that puts a smile on my face
A fabulous collection of "future in the now" thoughts. Some of these give been following and yet many new. Thank you, Petervan, for collating, commenting and sharing these. A curved world, that's where I'm headed!