NAVIGATIONEN T E C H | IM A G IN A T IO N S TECHNO-NOMOS, ONTOLOGY, AND THE IMAGINARY. FROM CCRU TO LUCIANA PARISI F E L I X H Ü T T E M A N N 1.1 SHORT PRELIMINARY REMARKS This article deals with a perspective of software- and algorithm-theory that im- plies a techimaginary, which is characterized by disputes about technological sov- ereignty, and is focused on a nomos of technology. The problems are, firstly, the origins of this theory from decisionist topoi and secondly, its inherent apocalyp- ticism and cultural critique. In this context, an engagement with technology in terms of a pessimistic futurity is imagined and applied to a posthuman autonomy of technology. I would like to refer to this in the following discussion as techno- nomos. First, a brief classification of the term will be used in order to try to ap- proach the further topoi in the following sections, in Benjamin Bratton’s nomos of the cloud, in the teleoplexy and cyberpositivity of the Cybernetic Culture Re- search Unit (CCRU), and in Luciana Parisi’s examinations of algorithmic architec- ture and instrumentality. It should be noted at this point that my aim in this text is to make a start and therefore rather try to show argumentational affinities and references and less, which would be just as appropriate but will have to follow elsewhere, to provide an ideology-critical analysis of these theories. 1.2 NÓMOS OR NOMÓS? Approaching this historically significant word can quickly lead us astray and already indicates that, depending on the perspective, this term was used in different ways. The ancient Greek word nomos is given a different meaning depending on the ac- centuation. Νομός, Nomós with the stress on the second syllable, is used in the spatial sense of district and accordingly refers to a topological indication. With Νόμος, Nómos, stress on the first syllable, it is understood in the legal sense as a term for the law. These meanings of the term equally apply to words related to the root nemein “to restrict” and nemesis “allotment.” The derivation from this Greek word root with this specific focus on separations and demarcations is the one that continues to be used here from different perspectives, for example, by Benjamin Bratton. This became known and cultivated primarily through the 1950 book Der Nomos der Erde (The Nomos of The Earth) by the notorious constitu- tional lawyer and friend-enemy-theorist Carl Schmitt. “For Schmitt, the physical incision of the line into the earth precedes the empty abstractions of mathema- tized grids and naval liquidity and is essential to any proper sovereign form” (Brat- ton 2015, 19). The physical incision into the material, into the earth, characterizes FELIX HÜTTEMANN NAVIGATIONEN 42 T E C H | I M A G IN A T IO N S lawmaking. The basis of every legal norm, for Schmitt, is thus topological. He calls this “the structure-determining convergence of order and orientation”1 (Schmitt 2006, 78). He refers to the act founding order and orientation as land appropria- tion (Landnahme). Schmitt’s concept of land appropriation refers here to the constitution of the nomos, which is formed between solid land and the open sea or between land powers and sea powers. Land, as a symbol of the space to be ordered and delim- ited, must be taken possession of. Spatial order must be established by demarca- tion in order to have a legal basis. Schmitt distinguishes, as just indicated, between two different types of space: the land, the telluric, and the sea, the maritime, alt- hough he also outlines the third spatial order, that of the airspace: Thus, every seizure of land is not a nomos, although conversely, no- mos, understood in our sense of the term, always includes a land- based order and orientation. If we add the domain of the sea, then the relation between land and sea determines the spatial order of interna- tional law. If the domination of airspace is added as a third dimension, then still other new spatial orders arise. (Schmitt 2006, 80) In Schmitt’s terms, land, sea, and air denote different legal norms or different no- moi. Geopolitical spatial orders, how they change through territorial appropria- tions and losses, and how this affects questions of political sovereignty are central points of interest for Schmitt’s theory. Also of importance for the further discus- sion is Schmitt’s decisionist definition of sovereignty: “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception” (Schmitt 1985, 5). From the one who has the power to decide what does not conform to the rule or a pattern, everything else proceeds. Thus, the categorization of the political is genuinely about decision-making. This can also be stated in connection with algorithms. Is this to be categorized as an algorithmic rationality or merely a political def- inition of an authority-oriented focus on power? Can this axiom be categorized as merely political and not inherent to technology? Strictly speaking, and this will also be one of the quintessences of this text, these two categories of the political and the technical, especially if one includes the economic as well, cannot be separat- ed. If, for example, one follows Wendy Chun’s thesis that homophily and correla- tion not only cause and strengthen discriminatory factors of data analysis and evaluation, but are also genuinely political, then allusions to Carl Schmitt’s political analyses of authoritarianism are certainly recognizable. Chun writes: “Correlation is complicated. It is not simply a linear one-to-one relation. It condenses, displac- es, multiplies. Proxies both poison and cure. […] Homophilic spaces are often agi- tated spaces of comforting rage. To move beyond this, we need to acknowledge discomfort as a way to create new forms of connection and co-habitation” (Chun 1 “[D]as struktur-bestimmende Zusammentreffen von Ordnung und Ortung” (Schmitt, 1950: 48). TECHNO-NOMOS, ONTOLOGY AND THE IMAGINARY NAVIGATIONEN T E C H | IM A G IN A T IO N S 43 2021, 244). Schmitt’s notorious dictum on sovereignty places primacy on the de- cision as such rather than on the process of decision-making, which can be found in some areas of algorithm theory.2 As indicated, it is about demarcation, not only between friend and enemy, i.e., associations and dissociations, but also about in- terrelations. For Schmitt, however, these take place on a level prior to all further categorizations. Before any ethics or aesthetics, it is about the basically ontological realm of the political, in which the most radical distinction is to be made. The distinction of friend and enemy denotes the utmost degree of in- tensity of a union or separation, of an association or dissociation. It can exist theoretically and practically, without having simultaneously to draw upon all those moral, aesthetic, economic, or other distinc- tions. […] But he is, nevertheless, the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existen- tially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case con- flicts with him are possible. (Schmitt 2007, 26f.) Be it between friend and enemy, land and sea or cloud, platforms and social me- dia behavior. Is there such a data-decisionism as contrasted here from a Schmitti- an perspective? For example, is this the case when decision trees or personalized recommender systems drive the decision itself in such a way and the conditions and embeddings under which an algorithm makes decisions or performs calcula- tions are not included? If less attention is paid to which marginalizations, which re- sentments, for example, are perpetuated in the algorithm?3 If the decision of the algorithm is about reaching associations and dissociations via pattern recognition? If digital neighborhoods and similarities in the data layers create exclusions, as Wendy Chun has put it, then the reference to Carl Schmitt or rather the structur- al similarity of ideology is striking. Wendy Chun also sees this and likewise draws the comparison to Schmitt (Chun 2021, 236.) Does the decision about the excep- tion endow a techno-nomos, such as through the decision-making algorithm? The techimaginary can further be understood as a political geography or topography in Carl Schmitt’s sense. It is a space of possibilities for political imagination that shifts into the technological realm and, by imagining technical futures, formulates politi- cal consequences in reverse. As, following Schmitt, Benjamin Bratton has ex- plained it in The Stack, the megastructure The Stack, which can basically be un- derstood as a technological structure, consists of “smart grids, cloud computing, mobile and urban scale software, universal addressing systems, ubiquitous compu- ting, and robotics” (Bratton 2015, xviii). At this point in Bratton’s work, no mere territorial logic is perpetuated, as is the case in Schmitt’s; ultimately, as I would argue, the discussion of the question of sovereignty and algorithmic decision- 2 See Bogost (2015); Fuller and Goffey (2012); Goffey (2008); Manovich (2013); Paquale (2015); Zarsky (2016). 3 See Eubanks (2018) and Noble (2018). FELIX HÜTTEMANN NAVIGATIONEN 44 T E C H | I M A G IN A T IO N S making is about an imaginary or even speculative economy, and not so much about a fundamental question of jurisdiction and legislation of the nomos. It is therefore much more a matter of dealing with economically effective decision- making that is intended to anticipate and influence the future. Accordingly, what can be summarized as techno-nomos based on Bratton? 2 BRATTON: SOVEREIGNTY IN THE CLOUDS As a first approach, this complex can be understood as a political, theoretical as- sumption which is applied to technological conclusions in order to become politi- cal again as the Imaginary. It is questionable whether, in the argumentation with regard to technology, it ever ceases to be political. Bratton follows up on the divi- sion of land and sea by interpreting them as orders of physical and virtual and re- lating them to The Stack and its institutional logic of platforms (see Bratton 2015, 19). For Bratton, sovereignty works through software and forms differently situ- ated sovereignties. The point of reference besides Schmitt’s theory, as he himself points out, is Giorgio Agamben’s nomos of modernity as introduced in his text Homo Sacer4. For conceptual reasons, further remarks on Agamben must be left out at this point. The essential point from Agamben’s theory is his extension of the analysis of sovereignty as an exceptional decision to orders that do not only refer to nation-states. These orders, which constitute nomoi, can arise at other turning points and incisive places, as well. For Agamben, it is famously the camp as the nomos of modernity that unites order and orientation. Can technology or the Internet, the cloud, the platform also represent such a synthesis of order and ori- entation and thus establish their own nomos? Why does a certain argumentational position on algorithms assume a new nomos through technology? To what extent is a rupture being stated here through technology, which requires a different un- derstanding of technology through a nomos of whatever kind? To deal with the question of the nomos on the level of software studies means first and foremost to postulate turning points and watersheds. Today the continuing (if still incipient) emergence of planetary-scale computation may represent a similar break and a similar challenge to the political geographic order. It does so not only because the Cloud is a new continent to be colonized, but because, as a kind of space, it trespasses the Schmittian metaphysical distinction between solid ground and liquid sea as the essential poles of geopolitical space and theory. (Bratton 2015, 26) Bratton’s notion of cloud should be seen in a broader sense than merely in terms of data storage or a computer network. It stands paradigmatically for the world wide web as a third space, as well as for a planetary computer network in the ma- 4 See Agamben (1998). TECHNO-NOMOS, ONTOLOGY AND THE IMAGINARY NAVIGATIONEN T E C H | IM A G IN A T IO N S 45 terial sense, and for digital space as such. It is worth noting both the metaphorical level of cloud and airspace, which is invoked here in reference to Schmitt, and a subtle online/offline dichotomy, which of course plays a role in every division of space in the digital and analogue spheres as well. It may well also relate to the somewhat out of fashion term of cyberspace. This third, or actually, besides land, sea, and air, fourth space, elaborates its own nomos, which is established by Schmitt’s analysis: In the conglomerate of political philosophy, architectural theo- ry, and software studies, Bratton sees a planetary computational scale as new ge- opolitical reality taking place. Bratton states the following about this nomos of the cloud: Planetary-scale computation may need to be understood as a succes- sor to these other modes of geographic governance – land, sea, air – each with its own logics of partition. But unlike the US Department of Defense, which also recognizes cyber as the fourth spatial domain of war but describes it as necessarily subordinate to existing forms of state jurisdiction, I suggest that other shifts are at work, perhaps even a break, that will prove more difficult to accommodate and contain. (Bratton 2015, 27) Abbreviated, this gesture of theory in technology seeks to state an actuality of sovereignty theory in the context of software that relates to space of digital global networks (Bratton 2015, 31). To put it more pointedly, Carl Schmitt’s nomos of the earth appears in Bratton’s theory like a workaround for algorithm studies (Bratton 2015, 25). Nomos of the cloud characterizes a form of infrastructure that, on the one hand, considers the nomos of the earth with its implications in technical space as superseded. On the other hand Bratton does not entirely assign an independent agency to this new nomos to technology in this form, but rather still characterizes the nomos as a regressive, decisionist moment of political the- ology. Bratton writes “The modern nomos is fragmenting and perforating, it is distorted and deformed by both planetary computation, which produces new ter- ritories in its image, and by resurgent political theology which reconvenes pre- modern geo-jurisdictional domains” (Bratton 2015, 380). Nomos of the cloud as a subversion of Schmitt’s nomoi, equally turns out to be a consistent continuation. In view of underwater cables and precious metals dug out of the earth for the production of such cables, a collapse or synthesis of the old nomoi could certainly be stated for this new nomos from the perspective of a geology of media (see Parikka 2015). On the level of hardware, one could certainly argue further along Schmitt’s theoretical lines. Thus the techno-nomos, also another word for tech- nical apriori, can be understood as a materialistic apriori. The announced posthu- man perspective and the thesis of the autonomy of technology as techno-nomos remain open questions. Or put differently: Is there a nomos of software? FELIX HÜTTEMANN NAVIGATIONEN 46 T E C H | I M A G IN A T IO N S The geometries at work don’t simply reflect governance; they per- form it: from line into frame into topos into something else situated where we might once have put nomos. Whether deliberately or acci- dentally designed, a geopolitical architecture is cast. Information is transformed into shape, drawing an arc of algorithmic governance along braided topoi built of asymmetrical super impositions; less mo- dus vivendi than the mutual invisibility of overlapping sovereignties. (Bratton 2015, 38) These questions lead toward a form of techimaginary as a topology or even an ar- chitecture of algorithms, as we find it in Luciana Parisi’s work following the CCRU and its theories of futurity, as will be shown further below. Bratton explains The Stack as follows: I propose that we view the various types of planetary-scale computa- tion(e.g., smart grids, cloud computing, mobile and urban-scale soft- ware, universal addressing systems, ubiquitous computing, and robot- ics, and so on) not as isolated, unrelated types of computation but as forming a larger, coherent whole. They form an accidental megastruc- ture called The Stack that is not only a kind of planetary-scale compu- ting system; it is also a new architecture for how we divide up the world into sovereign spaces (Bratton 2015, xviii). Exactly this question of an algorithmic architecture as well as how problems of decision and distinction can be represented there will be indicated in the next section. 3.1 FROM CCRU TO PARISI: INSTRUMENTALITY AND TECHNOLOGICAL SINGULARITY In a 2016 interview, media theorist Luciana Parisi retrospectively reflects on her time at the University of Warwick and specifically within the official/unofficial re- search group of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit as follows: “It was very much about understanding the form of the medium, its structure and cold consti- tution. It was very much about entering the instrument” (Panayotov 2016). The entry into the instrument and the fascination for cold computations and what ex- actly this looks like is the perspective from which Parisi’s remarks are further dis- cussed. In the following, it is to be clarified what the algorithms and the question of anticipation of the future and acceleration have to do with the techno-nomos explained above. For this, some background of the origin of Parisi’s theory will be reflected upon here by relating her perspective to key concepts of the CCRU, such as cyberpositive, teleoplexy, and hyperstition. First, the CCRU will be briefly introduced, and then I will try to connect the previous remarks to the question of futurity, thus connecting to the algorithms in Luciana Parisi’s theory. TECHNO-NOMOS, ONTOLOGY AND THE IMAGINARY NAVIGATIONEN T E C H | IM A G IN A T IO N S 47 3.2 WHO OR WHAT WAS THE CCRU The CCRU was a quasi-institutional grouping grounded in counter-culture at the end of the 1990s and beginning of the first decade of the twenty-first century, which can be attributed to its founding figures Nick Land and Sadie Plant, who sought a connection to (continental) academic discourses. Their primary goal was to investigate and also affirm the effects, impacts, and potentials of cybernetics on (pop) culture and media theory. The fascination for continental philosophy from Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche to French philosophy of the post-sixties of Lyotard, Deleuze and Guattari, or Baudrillard, as it characterizes the CCRU texts, is complemented by a subcultural charging of their discourses by cyberculture, gothic horror, afrofuturism, and science fiction literature by J. G. Ballard or Wil- liam Gibson, but esotericism, numerology, occultism, and demonology are also thematic influences. The term cyberpositive derives from the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit’s engagement with these topics, especially with cybernetics (control and regulation science as the name suggests), as coined by Norbert Wiener. Central here is his concept of negative feedback. The actual state is in a sense deficient and is adjust- ed to the target state. One could also interpret this as a perspective of the future. A more positive future is applied to the deficient status quo and in order to achieve it, the future state is anticipated and the better future is brought forth. Against this negative feedback of the future as a self-stabilizing system, the CCRU sets the positive feedback as an indipendent, continuously processualizing, desta- bilizing system. This is described as a “self reinforcing cybernetic intensification” (Land 2014, 514). What is outlined here, in terms of theoretical history, is a form of Deleuzian intensification and thus, in a radicalized form, an intensity of technol- ogy that is driven by a machinic desire. This desire, which is characterized by a libidonous relationship to alienation as well as to capitalism, also refers to Jean- Francois Lyotard’s Libidinal Economy, or his evil book, as he himself called it. Lyo- tard summarizes this libidinal-economic desire as pleasurable alienation: How can we continue to speak of alienation when it is clear that for everybody, in the experiences he has (and that more often than not he cannot properly have, since these experiences are allegedly shame- ful, and especially since instead of having them, he is these experienc- es) of even the most stupid capitalist laborer, that he can find jouis- sance and a strange, perverse intensity, what do we know about it? (Lyotard, 1993, 112) One must note for further consideration: for CCRU’s accelerationism, stabiliza- tion through negative feedback, cybernetization, or even automation as a stabiliz- ing factor (of capitalism, of technology) is the (Schmittian) enemy. It is rather about an unleashing of already inherent acceleration and destabilization tenden- cies of such systems or structures. This imaginary assigned to technology craves FELIX HÜTTEMANN NAVIGATIONEN 48 T E C H | I M A G IN A T IO N S catastrophe, destabilization, derealization, and deregulation. Benjamin Noys summed it up aptly: “Reading this full-blown accerlerationism alongside discus- sions of the New Right and their aim to ‘dissolve’ the state led me, at the time, to coin the term ‘Deleuzian Thatcherism’” (Noys 2013, xi). From this perspective, for example, there should be no market regulation. To regulate capitalism despite its singularizing tendency is what Nick Land calls a teleoplexy. Teleoplexy de- scribes two, or more, opposing teleologies or nomoi, that are intended to accel- erate and reinforce each other and, of course, to achieve an overall destabilization of the future. Or in Land’s own words: Positive feedback processes are self-amplifying and more or less ubiq- uitous to all domains where there is directed development. In all those domains, they are however most likely to be “perceived” – or at least reacted to – as dangerous and countered by compensatory movements containing the explosive activity. In the socioeconomic domain, these compensatory movements come from social norms and political decisions, and not from the mechanism of capital itself, which would move explosively forward if unconstrained. The twisted complex of conflicting teleologies – natural self-amplification vs cor- rective compensation – is what the author calls teleoplexy. (Land 2018) Teleoplexy can be characterized with Deleuze and Guattari as an abstract ma- chine, as a disruptive ontological machine, that can be understood as a nomos gone wild. A catastrophic order and orientation for a longed-for apocalyptic future. This teleoplexy refers quite concretely, to make it less abstract, on the one hand to destabilizing consolidation or stabilization mechanisms through, for ex- ample, price formation. Above all, however, it also refers to regulation, for exam- ple, data protection regulations, and thus the usage rights of private data. Some- what cynically speaking, it is about the broadest vision of open access, which from the accelerationist standpoint is about being able to use data in a deregulated and deregulating way: “What can the earth do? There is only self-quantification of tel- eoplexy or cybernetic intensity, which is what computerized financial markets (in the end) are for” (Land 2014, 516). To take the extreme example of what this can be about even further, if one pushes the autonomy of technology, of capitalism and technological singularity, it is about nothing less than a posthumanist end-time fantasy. “The ‘dominion of capital’ is an accomplished teleological catastrophe, robot rebellion, or shoggotic insurgency, through which intensely escalating in- strumentality has inverted all natural purposes into a monstrous reign of the tool” (Land 2014, 513f.). Technology and economy in this context means an affirmation of, for example, technological singularity and the autonomy of technology, but al- so an absorption in the technical nomos. To combine it with Benjamin Bratton’s perspective, it is about becoming a part of The Stack, to participate in the nomos TECHNO-NOMOS, ONTOLOGY AND THE IMAGINARY NAVIGATIONEN T E C H | IM A G IN A T IO N S 49 of the clouds. It is the perverse longing, as Parisi suggested, to become an instru- ment of the market itself. Do we need to think of alienation as economic happi- ness? 3.3 ALGORITHMIC ARCHITECTURE AND SPECULATION The observations made above are related below to what Parisi calls the automat- ed architecture, or speculative reason in the age of algorithms. She calls the deci- sion of algorithms speculative reason because, coming from Whitehead, it makes the question of the unpredictability of the futurity the basis of decision-making. In doing so, she repeatedly circles around questions such as those also articulated above by Bratton, for example, with regard to the techno-nomos. For Parisi, the future is seen as anticipatable or imaginable, but in a fundamental sense, she de- scribes futurity as only speculable, probabilizable, and ultimately assumes, implicit- ly following results from CCRU, that the acceleration of algorithms ultimately forms the driving force of order and orientation. The point of this assumption is to relate calculability and unpredictability, as well as futurity and algorithm. Parisi writes: With the acceleration of automation, the explosive advent of algo- rithmic randomness within computational processing has become in- evitable. This means that instead of deriving dynamic patterns of in- formation from matter, patternless data are instead generated within computation itself, and have thus become intrinsic to automated rea- son. (Parisi, 2014, 417) For Parisi, the problem lies in the definition of algorithms themselves. An algo- rithm is an unambiguous instruction for the solution of one or more problems, consisting of finite, defined single steps. The description of the algorithm has a fi- nite length and thus has only a determinable number of characters. Where the al- gorithm begins in the computation and where it ends, thus giving the result, is ax- iomatically fixed. But, here she refers to Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness problem which states that there can be no axiomatic method by which the world can be read as true or false. There is no unambiguousness, but, one could conclude, only the decision about just such an unambiguousness. All problems which are axio- matically determined are computable problems, as was shown by Turing and his machine. Everything that cannot be decided with it is therefore incalculable and falls, in Carl Schmitt’s terms, either into the area of the enemy or into the pre- political area. What does this mean for the question of techno-nomos and futuri- ty? It boils down to existentialism or decisionism: What counts is the distinction as such. The problem of the incomputable thus shows that computational axi- omatics is inevitably infected with randomness, but also that random- FELIX HÜTTEMANN NAVIGATIONEN 50 T E C H | I M A G IN A T IO N S ness is each time turned into an axiom by means of rule-based pro- cessing, defining algorithmic reason as a nonlinear elaboration of con- tinuous infinities and transformation of its discrete parts. (Parisi 2014, 413) Randomness, unpredictability, is always part of the calculation, despite all axio- matics of the algorithm. Randomness is therefore inherent in it. It is about calcula- bility, statistics, probability, pattern recognition and not, for example, about truth, beauty, or morality. Without going into further detail, how does Parisi deal with the fact that al- gorithms can not only anticipate a part of the future, i.e., interpret it in terms of the high probability of events, and yet can also, for example, use learning algo- rithms to anticipate purchasing behavior in such a probable way that this future actually occurs? What is the relationship between the future, chance, and unpre- dictability? This is where the link back to the CCRU comes into play again: In the interview already mentioned, Parisi once again makes reference to the CCRU, re- ferring to hyperstition as a method of her theory: “We talked about reverse engi- neering of hyperstition. To engineer the time, the future, the present by other means” (Panayotov 2016). Hyperstition denotes the idea of shaping the future and anticipating the future that is very similar to the idea and theory of the meme. “Hyperstition is a neologism that combines the words ‘hyper’ and ‘superstition’ to describe the action of successful ideas in the arena of culture” (Carstens 2010). Reverse engineering characterizes the process of extracting the construction ele- ments from an existing finished system or an often industrially manufactured product by examining its structures, states, and behaviors. Thus, a plan is created again from the finished object. I believe here, at these seams of future and proba- bility, algorithm, and hyperstition, the role that chance and especially decision plays in Parisi’s algorithm theory of acceleration, this is where a critique must start, at the also implicit problems that it either inherits, consciously accepts, or even affirms, as it were, from Nick Land and others. 4. CONCLUSION This contribution has attempted to approach a kind of techimaginary of decision and techno-nomos via a brief conceptual classification. In Benjamin Bratton’s No- mos of the Cloud, decided points of connection to Carl Schmitt emerged, were articulated, and addressed questions of sovereignty in digital space in search of order and orientation. The teleoplexy and cyberpositivity of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU) revealed foundations of a fascination with deregulation and autonomy. Contrary to the rhetoric of destabilization and chaos, it is clearly about a techno- logical order that is in no way inferior to the authoritarianism of Carl Schmitt. 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Zarsky, Tal. 2016. “The Trouble with Algorithmic Decisions: An Analytic Roadmap to Examine Efficiency and Fairness in Automated and Opaque De- cision Making.” Science, Technology, & Human Values 41 (1): 118–132. Cover Title Page TABLE OF CONTENTS TECH | IMAGINATIONS – INTRODUCTION / CHRISTIAN SCHULZ AND JENS SCHRÖTER THE TECHNO-IMAGINARY BETWEEN MICRO AND MACRO PERSPECTIVES ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTIONS SECTION I: TECHNO-IMAGINATIONS SECTION II: FUTURES OF THE INTERNET EXTRA REFERENCES I. TECH | IMAGINATIONS ON (TECHNO)-IMAGINATION, SCHEMATA AND MEDIA : PRELIMINARY REMARKS / CHRISTOPH ERNST I. INTRODUCTION II. IMAGINATION AND SCHEMATA III. CULTURAL TECHNIQUES AND TECHNO-IMAGINATION IV. CONCLUSION – REIMAGINING TECHNO-IMAGINATION REFERENCES THE SPECTERS OF (SOCIOTECHNICAL) IMAGINARIES : OPPRESSED FUTURES OF THE PAST / MARTIN DOLL 1. INTRODUCTION: (SOCIOTECHNICAL) IMAGINARIES AND THE SOCIAL NO. 1 2. A MEDIA ARCHAEOLOGY OF MARGINAL SOCIOTECHNICAL IMAGINARIES 2.1. HISTORICAL SOCIOTECHNICAL IMAGINARIES AS PART OF COLLECTIVE MEMORY 2.2. SOCIOTECHNICAL IMAGINARIES IN RELATION TO FUNCTIONAL MEMORIES AND STORAGE MEMORY 2.3 METHODOLOGICAL DIMENSIONS OF A MEDIA ARCHAEOLOGY OF SOCIOTECHNICAL IMAGINARIES 3. CONCLUSION: A POLITICS OF RETRIEVING SOCIOTECHNICAL IMAGINARIES, OR, THE SPECTERS OF POLITICAL IMAGINARIES REFERENCES TECHNO-NOMOS, ONTOLOGY, AND THE IMAGINARY : FROM CCRU TO LUCIANA PARISI / FELIX HÜTTEMANN 1.1 SHORT PRELIMINARY REMARKS 1.2 NÓMOS OR NOMÓS? 2 BRATTON: SOVEREIGNTY IN THE CLOUDS 3.1 FROM CCRU TO PARISI: INSTRUMENTALITY AND TECHNOLOGICAL SINGULARITY 3.2 WHO OR WHAT WAS THE CCRU 3.3 ALGORITHMIC ARCHITECTURE AND SPECULATION 4. CONCLUSION REFERENCES TECHNO-IMAGINATIONS OF A NUCLEAR REGIME : HOW A POWER PLANT BECAME A PROXY BOMB / AGNIESZKA JELEWSKA AND MICHAŁ KRAWCZAK 1. INTRODUCTION 2. NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE 3. NUCLEAR-PROOF COMMUNICATION 4. AHEAD OF TIME 5. THE POWER PLANT AS A PROXY BOMB 6. CONCLUSIONS REFERENCES FROM MENTAL MODELS TO ALGORITHMIC IMAGINARIES TO CO-CONSTRUCTIVE MENTAL MODELS / CHRISTIAN SCHULZ 1. A BRIEF HISTORY OF MENTAL MODELS IN THE CONTEXT OF AI 2. THE IMPORTANCE OF ALGORITHMIC IMAGINARIES FOR ASYMMETRICAL CONCEPT OF MENTAL MODELS 3. OUTLOOK REFERENCES II. FUTURES OF THE INTERNET AN EARLY FUTURE OF THE INTERNET / JENS SCHRÖTER REFERENCES COUNTER-FUTURING THE INTERNET : A CONVERSATION / ÖZGÜN EYLÜL İŞCEN AND SHINTARO MIYAZAKI INTRODUCTION REFERENCES OVERCOMING MODERNITY? : HOW CHINA’S SPLINTERNET REINFORCES THE IMPACT OF GEOGRAPHY IN GLOBAL INTERNET GOVERNANCE / CORNELIA BOGEN 1. INTERNET GOVERNANCE AS A TECHNOLOGY RACE AND IDEOLOGICAL CONFLICT STRUCTURE 2. NATIONAL DIMENSION OF INTERNET GOVERNANCE: THE NETWORK POLITICS, LAW, AND ETHICS OF CHINA’S SPLINTERNET 2.1 CHINA’S APPROACH TO CYBER SOVEREIGNTY 2.2 NETWORK ETHICS: “HEALTHY” ONLINE ENVIRONMENTS AND SOCIALIST CORE VALUES 2.3 PROSPERITY FOR ALL: THE CONCEPT OF “MASS ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND INNOVATION” AND THE “INTERNET+” STRATEGY 2.4 INTERIM SUMMARY 3. THE INTERNATIONAL DIMENSION OF CHINA’S INTERNET GOVERNANCE 3.1 A FIREWALL OF VALUES 3.2 THE OVERSEAS EXPANSION OF CHINA’S HIGH-TECH INDUSTRY 3.3 CHINA’S POLICY APPROACH TO GLOBAL INTERNET GOVERNANCE 3.4 TECHNOLOGICAL UNCONSCIOUSNESS DESPITE THE EMERGENCE OF A HISTORICAL AWARENESS 3.5 INTERIM SUMMARY 4. OUTLOOK: A CONFRONTATION OF TWO SPLINTERING INTERNETS OR AN (ONTOLOGICAL) PLURALISM OF DIFFERENT COSMOTECHNICS? REFERENCES THE ENDS OF THE INTERNETS : A DISCUSSION : FEBRUARY 11, 2022 / BENJAMIN HEIDERSBERGER AND JAN CLAAS VAN TREECK FUTURES OF REALITY : VIRTUAL, AUGMENTED, SYNTHETIC / GALIT WELLNER 1. NOZICK’S EXPERIENCE MACHINE 2. POSTMODERN SIMULACRA 3. POSTHUMANIST VIRTUALITY 4. DIGITAL HERMENEUTIC RELATIONS 5. SUMMARY REFERENCES III. EXTRA ART AND DESIGN VIS-À-VIS THE DIGITIZATION OF VITAL EXPERIENCE / HERNÁN BORISONIK REFERENCES ABSTRACTS CORNELIA BOGEN: OVERCOMING MODERNITY? HOW CHINA’S SPLINTERNET REINFORCES THE IMPACT OF GEOGRAPHY IN GLOBAL INTERNET GOVERNANCE HERNÁN BORISONIK: ART AND DESIGN VIS-À-VIS. THE DIGITIZATION OF VITAL EXPERIENCE MARTIN DOLL: THE SPECTERS OF (SOCIOTECHNICAL) IMAGINARIES. OPPRESSED FUTURES OF THE PAST CHRISTOPH ERNST: ON (TECHNO)-IMAGINATION, SCHEMATA AND MEDIA – PRELIMINARY REMARKS BENJAMIN HEIDERSBERGER AND JAN CLAAS VAN TREECK: THE ENDS OF THE INTERNETS. A DISCUSSION FELIX HÜTTEMANN: TECHNO-NOMOS, ONTOLOGY, AND THE IMAGINARY. FROM CCRU TO LUCIANA PARISI ÖZGÜN EYLÜL İŞCEN AND SHINTARO MIYAZAKI: COUNTER-FUTURING THE INTERNET. A CONVERSATION AGNIESZKA JELEWSKA AND MICHAŁ KRAWCZAK: TECHNO-IMAGINATIONS OF A NUCLEAR REGIME. HOW A POWER PLANT BECAME A PROXY BOMB JENS SCHRÖTER: AN EARLY FUTURE OF THE INTERNET CHRISTIAN SCHULZ: FROM MENTAL MODELS TO ALGORITHMIC IMAGINARIES TO CO-CONSTRUCTIVE MENTAL MODELS GALIT WELLNER: FUTURES OF REALITY. VIRTUAL, AUGMENTED, SYNTHETIC BIOS LIEFERBARE HEFTE