Benjamin H. Bratton (born 1968) is an American philosopher of technology known for his work spanning social theory, computer science, speculative design,

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

, and for his writing on "planetary scale computation."

Career

He is Professor of Visual Arts at

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego in communications material, formerly and colloquially UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California, United States. Es ...

(UCSD), and author and editor of numerous books and essays. He has taught at the

European Graduate School The European Graduate School (EGS) is a private graduate school that operates in two locations: Saas-Fee, Switzerland, and Valletta, Malta. History It was founded in 1994 in Saas-Fee, Switzerland by the Swiss scientist, artist, and therapist, ...

Saas-Fee Saas-Fee () is the main village in the Saastal, or the Saas Valley, and is a municipality in the district of Visp in the canton of Valais in Switzerland. The village is situated on a high mountain plateau at 1,800 meters (5,900 feet), surrounded ...

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

and was visiting professor at NYU Shanghai (2019–22). Prior to teaching at UCSD, Bratton taught at the

Southern California Institute of Architecture Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) is a private architecture school in Los Angeles, California. SCI-Arc was founded in 1972 when it was initially regarded as both institutionally and artistically avant-garde. It consists o ...

in Los Angeles from 2001 to 2010 and is now a distinguished visiting professor. He taught in the Department of Design Media Arts at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...

(UCLA) from 2003 to 2008. He founded University of California, San Diego's Speculative Design undergraduate major. He holds a PhD in the sociology of technology from the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Tracing its roots back to 1891 as an ...

. In 2016, he succeeded

Rem Koolhaas Remment Lucas Koolhaas (; born 17 November 1944) is a Dutch architect, architectural theory, architectural theorist, urbanist and Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Graduate School of ...

as program director of the Strelka Institute, a Moscow-based

think tank A think tank, or public policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governme ...

and post-graduate program in architecture, media, and design. He directed two three-year programs
The New Normal
and The

Terraforming Terraforming or terraformation ("Earth-shaping") is the hypothetical process of deliberately modifying the atmosphere, temperature, surface topography or ecology of a planet, moon, or other body to be similar to the environment of Earth to mak ...

. At the outbreak of the

2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...

the institute indefinitely suspended all programs. As of 2022, Bratton is the Director of a new research program on the speculative philosophy of computation calle
Antikythera
incubated by the

Berggruen Institute The Berggruen Institute is a Los Angeles-based think tank founded by Nicolas Berggruen. History Berggruen Institute was formed in 2010 by founder Nicolas Berggruen and co-founder Nathan Gardels as a global network of "thinkers" dedicated to ...

. He is Visiting Faculty Researcher in the Paradigms of Intelligence Research group in Google Technology and Society.

Major concepts

Planetary Computation ("The Stack")

Benjamin Bratton developed the concept of Planetary Computation which refers both to the global scale of digital infrastructures and also how contemporary scientific and philosophical concepts of the Planetary emerge in relation to computational perception and modeling. He argues the computation was discovered as much as it was invented. In the form of

The Stack The Stack is a colloquialism used to describe the symmetrical, four-level stack interchange in Phoenix, Arizona that facilitates movements between Interstate 17/ U.S. Route 60 and Interstate 10. Description In 2006, the Stack interchange saw a ...

, planetary computation has important philosophical and geopolitical consequences. Drawing on the language of

Stanislaw Lem Stanislav and variants may refer to: People *Stanislav (given name), a Slavic given name with many spelling variations (Stanislaus, Stanislas, Stanisław, etc.) Places * Stanislav, Kherson Oblast, a coastal village in Ukraine * Stanislaus County, ...

, he considers planetary computation a kind of “epistemological technology.” ''The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty'' was published by

MIT Press The MIT Press is the university press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The MIT Press publishes a number of academic journals and has been a pioneer in the Open Ac ...

in late 2015. The book challenges traditional ideas of

sovereignty Sovereignty can generally be defined as supreme authority. Sovereignty entails hierarchy within a state as well as external autonomy for states. In any state, sovereignty is assigned to the person, body or institution that has the ultimate au ...

centered around the

nation-state A nation state, or nation-state, is a political entity in which the state (a centralized political organization ruling over a population within a territory) and the nation (a community based on a common identity) are (broadly or ideally) con ...

and develops a theory of

geopolitics Geopolitics () is the study of the effects of Earth's geography on politics and international relations. Geopolitics usually refers to countries and relations between them, it may also focus on two other kinds of State (polity), states: ''de fac ...

that accounts for sovereignty in terms of planetary-scale computation at various scales. Its two core arguments are that planetary-scale computation “distorts and deforms traditional Westphalian logics of

political geography Political geography is concerned with the study of both the spatially uneven outcomes of political processes and the ways in which political processes are themselves affected by spatial structures. Conventionally, for the purposes of analysis, ...

” and creates new territories in its own image, and that different scales of computing technology can be understood as forming an “accidental megastructure” that resembles a multi-layer network architecture stack, what Bratton calls “

." The Stack is described as a platform. Bratton argues that platforms represent a technical and institutional model equivalent to states or markets but reducible to neither. Bratton refers to the book as “a design brief” suggesting that the layers of this structure are modular available to innovation and replacement.

The Terraforming

He argues that the Anthropocene should be understood as a kind of accidental terraforming and the long-term project at hand is more deliberate and comprehensive composition of Earth systems for the extension of complex life in the future. “To terraform Earth to ensure that Earth can support Earth-like life.” With a view of biochemistry and planetary timescales, Bratton contrasts the terraforming to Environmental Humanities which, he argues, rely on social reductionist and cultural determinist views. Bratton published the short book, The Terraforming, and directed a three-year research program based on these ideas. Themes of the book and program included planetary technologies, automation as ecology, artificial metabolisms, planetary governance, and the Fermi paradox.

Artificialization

According to Bratton, the

artificial Artificiality (the state of being artificial, anthropogenic, or man-made) is the state of being the product of intentional human manufacture, rather than occurring naturally through processes not involving or requiring human activity. Connotati ...

is not contrasted to

nature Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the Ecosphere (planetary), ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the Scientific law, laws, elements and phenomenon, phenomena of the physic ...

but rather than the evolution selects for forms of life adept at artificializing their environments for purposes of “energy, matter and information capture.” He situates this in the dynamic between

autopoiesis The term autopoiesis (), one of several current theories of life, refers to a system capable of producing and maintaining itself by creating its own parts. The term was introduced in the 1972 publication '' Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realizat ...

and

allopoiesis Allopoiesis is the process whereby a system produces something other than the system itself. One example of this is an assembly line, where the final product (such as a car) is distinct from the machines doing the producing. This is in contrast wi ...

. He argues that through artificialization, it is possible to better understand naturally evolved forms, for example,

synthetic biology Synthetic biology (SynBio) is a multidisciplinary field of science that focuses on living systems and organisms. It applies engineering principles to develop new biological parts, devices, and systems or to redesign existing systems found in nat ...

and

Synthetic Intelligence

Drawing on cybernetics and evolutionary biology, he refers to synthetic intelligence as the process by which machine signal processing and

biosemiotics Biosemiotics (from the Ancient Greek, Greek βίος ''bios'', "life" and σημειωτικός ''sēmeiōtikos'', "observant of signs") is a field of semiotics (especially Neurosemiotics) and biology that studies the prelinguistic meaning-makin ...

including human language produce amalgamated forms of analytical and creative cognition. This includes but is not limited to contemporary artificial intelligence. Bratton has argued that as natural intelligence evolved through the interactions of multiple minds, so too for artificial intelligence. This is contrasted with one-on-one mind vs. mind paradigms exemplified by Turing's Imitation Game. This evolutionary and ecological theory of machine intelligence has been developed in numerous articles, lectures, and research projects. In an article Benjamin Bratton wrote for New York Times in 2015, “Outing AI” criticized overly anthropomorphic views of AI. "The Model is the Message"(2022) co-authored with Blaise Aguera y Arcas, a VP of Artificial Intelligence at

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

, examined recent controversies over

large language model A large language model (LLM) is a language model trained with self-supervised machine learning on a vast amount of text, designed for natural language processing tasks, especially language generation. The largest and most capable LLMs are g ...

s and the problems of recognizing sentience in machines. The essay inspired an edited volume of the same name published by New Centre for Research and Practice and &&&. The lecture film “After Alignment” argued that mainstream ideas of AI alignment are potentially misguided. The essay “The Five Stages of AI Grief” considers contemporary AI discourses in relation to Elizabeth Kübler-Ross stages of grief. The Antikythera research studio, Cognitive Infrastructures, explored how synthetic intelligence evolves in real world contexts, and presented in the lecture film “57 Ideas About Cognitive Infrastructures.”

Planetary Sapience

Planetary sapience refers to the often violent process by which complex life and intelligence evolves through the interactions of

planetary system A planetary system is a set of gravity, gravitationally bound non-stellar Astronomical object, bodies in or out of orbit around a star or star system. Generally speaking, systems with one or more planets constitute a planetary system, although ...

s and eventually becomes the medium through which a planet partially comprehends its own processes. Examples include

encephalization Encephalization quotient (EQ), encephalization level (EL), or just encephalization is a relative brain size measure that is defined as the ratio between observed and predicted brain mass for an animal of a given size, based on nonlinear regress ...

, computational climate science, and model

simulation A simulation is an imitative representation of a process or system that could exist in the real world. In this broad sense, simulation can often be used interchangeably with model. Sometimes a clear distinction between the two terms is made, in ...

s. He argues that once complex intelligence evolved, certain macrohistorical events may have been inevitable, but that the ecological costs of that evolution may undermine the future of planetary sapience. The essay "Planetary Sapience"(2021) published in

Noema The word noema (plural: noemata) derives from the Greek word νόημα meaning "mental object". The philosopher Edmund Husserl used ''noema'' as a technical term in phenomenology to stand for the object or content of a thought, judgement, or per ...

compares the violent evolution of natural intelligence with the emergence of synthetic intelligence and considers their interrelation in terms of an understanding of intelligence as part of geological history and planetary formation. He contrasts this with the popular notions of

Gaia In Greek mythology, Gaia (; , a poetic form of ('), meaning 'land' or 'earth'),, , . also spelled Gaea (), is the personification of Earth. Gaia is the ancestral mother—sometimes parthenogenic—of all life. She is the mother of Uranus (S ...

and the

Noosphere The noosphere (alternate spelling noösphere) is a philosophical concept developed and popularized by the biogeochemist Vladimir Vernadsky and philosopher and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Vernadsky defined the noosphere as the new s ...

. Planetary Sapience was the topic of a conference at MIT Media Lab.

Speculative Philosophy of Technology

Bratton situates his philosophical investigations of technology in direct contrast with those founded in the Continental Philosophical tradition exemplified by

Martin Heidegger Martin Heidegger (; 26 September 1889 – 26 May 1976) was a German philosopher known for contributions to Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. His work covers a range of topics including metaphysics, art ...

. He criticises Cosmotechnics’ reliance on Heidegger and what he regards as its anti-realism and conservative multiculturalism. Instead he emphasizes the role of “allocentric” perspectives exemplified by the “trauma” of the Copernican Revolution. He argues that philosophy must build on the raw insights of science and engineering, not merely critique them. In concert with the ideas of

Lem Lem may refer to: Places * 3836 Lem, an asteroid named after Stanisław Lem * Lem, Denmark, a municipality in Jutland People Given name or nickname (Alphabetical by surname) * Lemuel Lem Barney (born 1945), American football player * Lem Bill ...

Manuel de Landa Manuel DeLanda (born 1952) is a Mexican- American writer, artist and philosopher who has lived in New York since 1975. He is a lecturer in architecture at the Princeton University School of Architecture and the University of Pennsylvania Scho ...

, Sara Walker, Brian Arthur, and others, he argues that technology evolves in ways not wholly dissimilar to biological evolution. Bratton directs th
Antikythera
think-tank “reorienting planetary computation as a philosophical, technological, and geopolitical force.” Affiliate researchers include Computer Scientists, Philosophers, Astrophysicists, Architects, Filmmakers Historians and Science-Fiction authors. The program is incubated by

and hosts research studios, lectures and salons and publishes a book series and online journal with MIT Press. In 2014, his talk “We Need to Talk About TED” went viral after being given at San Diego TEDX. The lecture was highly critical of what he called TED's evangelical approach to innovation, calling the conference series “Middle Megachurch Infotainment.” The talk was re-published in ''The Guardian'' and drew responses from TED founder, Chris Anderson.

Publications

''The Revenge of the Real: Politics for a Post-Pandemic World''

In 2021,

Verso Books Verso Books (formerly New Left Books) is a publishing house based in London and New York City, founded in 1970 by the staff of ''New Left Review'' (NLR) and includes Tariq Ali and Perry Anderson on its board of directors. According to its webs ...

published Bratton's book on the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

based on his essay "18 Lessons for Quarantine Urbanism". The book argues that the pandemic demonstrates on ongoing crisis of governance in the West, and that technological capacity to respond to planetary crises outstrips the social and cultural capacity for collective self-organization. The book discusses concepts of the epidemiological view of society, cultural controversies over masks, and points toward a positive biopolitics in sharp contrast with the work of

Giorgio Agamben Giorgio Agamben ( ; ; born 22 April 1942) is an Italian philosopher best known for his work investigating the concepts of the state of exception, form-of-life (borrowed from Ludwig Wittgenstein) and '' homo sacer''. The concept of biopolitic ...

''The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty''

''The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty'' was published by

in late 2015. The book challenges traditional ideas of

centered around the

and develops a theory of

.” The Stack is described as a platform. Bratton argues that platforms represent a technical and institutional model equivalent to states or markets but reducible to neither. Bratton refers to the book as “a design brief” suggesting that the layers of this structure are modular available to innovation and replacement.Jeff Kipnis, “A (P)review: Review of The Stack” LOG 35. October 22, 2015, p. 121

''Dispute Plan to Prevent Future Luxury Constitution''

His 2015 book ''Dispute Plan to Prevent Future Luxury Constitution'' was published by

e-flux e-flux is a publishing platform and archive, artist project, curatorial platform, and e-mail service founded in 1998. The arts news digests, events, exhibitions, schools, journal, books, and art projects produced and/or disseminated by e-flux ...

Journal and Sternberg Press in 2015. It launched publicly at the 2016 edition of the

Transmediale Transmediale, stylised as transmediale, is an annual festival for art and digital culture in Berlin, usually held over three to five days at the end of January and the beginning of February. transmediale takes the form of a conference (sometime ...

festival in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

. In the description by Sternberg Press, the book is "kaleidoscopic theory-fiction" which, "links the utopian fantasies of political violence with the equally utopian programs of security and control."

Essays

"On Geoscapes & Google Caliphate: Except #Mumbai" examines the correspondence of

political theology Political theology is a term which has been used in discussion of the ways in which Theology, theological concepts or ways of thinking relate to politics. The term is often used to denote religious thought about political principled questions. Scho ...

and planetary computation as modes of political geography. His lecture "Surviving the Interface: the Envelopes, Membranes and Borders of Deep Cosmopolitics" considers the emergence of new forms of sovereignty derived from shared digital and urban infrastructures, and the challenges they pose to conventional understandings of architectural partitions and national borders. In his article, "iPhone City (v.2005)" Bratton was early to demonstrate the impact that cinematic user interfaces for mobile social media would have on urban design. His current work develops a political theory of planetary-scale

computation A computation is any type of arithmetic or non-arithmetic calculation that is well-defined. Common examples of computation are mathematical equation solving and the execution of computer algorithms. Mechanical or electronic devices (or, hist ...

and draws from disparate sources, from

Paul Virilio Paul Virilio (; 4 January 1932 – 10 September 2018) was a French Culture theory, cultural theorist, Urban planning, urbanist, architect and aesthetic philosopher. He is best known for his writings about technology as it has developed in relation ...

Michel Serres Michel Serres (; ; 1 September 1930 – 1 June 2019) was a French philosopher, theorist and writer. His works explore themes of science, time and death, and later incorporated prose. Life and career The son of a bargeman, Serres entered France ...

, and

Carl Schmitt Carl Schmitt (11 July 1888 – 7 April 1985) was a German jurist, author, and political theorist. Schmitt wrote extensively about the effective wielding of political power. An authoritarian conservative theorist, he was noted as a critic of ...

, to

Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist. He was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer ...

Google Earth Google Earth is a web mapping, web and computer program created by Google that renders a 3D computer graphics, 3D representation of Earth based primarily on satellite imagery. The program maps the Earth by superimposition, superimposing satelli ...

, and IPv6. In 2017, Bratton completed ''The New Normal'' an ebook for Strelka Press, which outlines the radical effects that technology is having on our world and describes the emerging forms of city that we should now be designing for. The essay "Planetary Sapience" (2021) published in ''

'' compares the violent evolution of natural intelligence with the emergence of synthetic intelligence and considers their interrelation in terms of an understanding of intelligence as part of geological history and planetary formation. He contrasts this with the popular notions of

and the

. "The Model is the Message" (2022) co-authored with Blaise Aguera y Arcas, a VP of Artificial Intelligence at

, examined recent controversies over

s and the tendency to misattribute sentience to machines.

Personal life

Bratton was born in

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

in 1968 and grew up in Santa Paula, a small agricultural town in Southern California. He lives in

La Jolla La Jolla ( , ) is a hilly, seaside neighborhood in San Diego, California, occupying of curving coastline along the Pacific Ocean. The population reported in the 2010 census was 46,781. The climate is mild, with an average daily temperature o ...

and has a son, Lucien, with writer Bruna Mori. He was adopted at an early age, and is the half-brother of Jamie Stewart of the band

Xiu Xiu Xiu Xiu ( ) is an American experimental rock band, formed in 2002 by singer-songwriter Jamie Stewart in San Jose, California. Currently, the line-up consists of multi-instrumentalists Stewart (the only constant member since formation), Angel ...

Bibliography

Monographs

* ''The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty''. MIT Press, 2016. ** ''Le Stack: Plateformes, logiciel et souveraineté'', UGA Editions, 2016. . (French) * ''Dispute Plan to Prevent Future Luxury Constitution.'' Pref. Keller Easterling, Sternberg Press, 2015. . ** ''Plan De Choque Para Derrotar El Exceso Futuro'', pref. Keller Easterling, trans. Federico Fdez. Giordano, Holobionte Ediciones, 2024. . (Spanish) * ''The Revenge of the Real.'' Verso, 2022. . ** ''Die Realität schlägt zurück: Politik für eine postpandemische Welt.'' Translated by David Frühauf. Matthes & Seitz Berlin Verlag, 2022 (Kindle Edition). . (German) * ''The Terraforming.'' Strelka Press, 2019. . ** ''La Terraformation''. Translated by Yves Citton and Aurélien Blanchard. Presses Du Reel, 2021. .(French) ** ''La terraformación''. Translated by Toni Navarro. Caja Negra, 2021. . (Spanish) ** ''Γεωδιαμόρφωση.'' Translated by Yannis Fragos. Topovoros Exarcheion Publications, 2023. . (Greek) ** ''Teraformiranje''. Translated by Marko Bauer, Založba Sophia, 2020. . (Slovenian) ** ''The Terraforming''. Translated by Varvara Babitskata. Strelka Press, 2020. . (Russian)

Edited Volumes

* ''Machine Decision is Not Final: China and the History and Future of AI''. (co-edited with Ana Greenspan and Bogna Konior) Urbanomic, 2023. . * ''The New Normal'' (co-edited with Nicolay Boyadjiev and Nick Axel) Strelka/Park 2020. .

Articles

*
Logistics of Habitable Circulation
" Introduction to ''Speed and Politics'', by Paul Virilio. Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Series, 2006. . *
The Black Stack
" ''e-flux Journal'', no. 53, March 2014. * �
iPhone City
” ''Architectural Design'' 85, no. 1, 2015: 102–107. * �
Outing AI
” ''New York Times,'' February 23, 2015. * �
Outing Artificial Intelligence. Reckoning with Turing Tests
�� in Pasquinelli, Matteo: Alleys of Your Mind. Augmented Intelligence and Its Traumas. Meson Press E.g. 2015, p. 69-80.. *
On Anthropolysis
" ''e-flux Architecture: Superhumanity'', January 2017. *
The City Wears Us: Notes on the Scope of Distributed Sensing and Sensation
" ''Glass Bead''. 2017. * �
Planetary Sapience
” ''

,'' June 17, 2021. * “Synthetic Garden: Another Model of AI” ''Atlas of Anomalous AI''. Edited by Ben Vickers and Kenric McDowell, Ignota Books. 2021. . * Bratton, Benjamin, and Blaise Agüera y Arcas.
The Model Is the Message
" ''

'', July 12, 2022. * �
On Hemispherical Stacks
”
Vertical Atlas
'. Edited by Leonardo Dellanoce, Amal Khalaf, Klaas Kuitenbrouwer, Nanjala Nyabola, Renée Roukens, Arthur Steiner and Mi You. pages 168–175, March 2022.
“The Stack at the Edge of Planetarity: Convergence, Divergence, and War
”
Vertical Atlas
'. Edited by Leonardo Dellanoce, Amal Khalaf, Klaas Kuitenbrouwer, Nanjala Nyabola, Renée Roukens, Arthur Steiner and Mi You. pages 270-278, March 2022. *
Not Right Now: On Immediacy and the Ironies of Life in a Hypermediated World.

TANK Magazine
', Issue 98. 2024. * �
Stages of AI Grief.
�� ''Noema''. June 20, 2024.

References

External links

Bratton.info
– Benjamin H. Bratton's personal website
Antikythera
Think-tank on speculative philosophy of computation
Academia.edu
Bratton books and articles
Bratton's page at the Department of Visual Arts, UCSD
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bratton, Benjamin H. 1968 births Living people American sociologists UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture faculty University of California, Santa Barbara alumni Southern California Institute of Architecture faculty University of California, San Diego faculty Writers from Los Angeles Accelerationism American philosophers of technology