Geese, Sheep and GP-AI: Notes on the Coming Commons talk by Bart Simon and Fenwick Mckelvey.
About the talk
Too often discussions of the Commons seen like a game of Settlers of Catan. All the talk centers on an idealization of the land as a resource to own or not own seemingly for the good of the sheep to the benefit of the humans (the players of these games). Our talk rethinks the commons, what was and what should be a critical concern for digital cultural studies. The Commons, we argue, must be understood as both a specific mode of existence and time (in Ireland for one) lost somewhat to history and with a emphasis on property. Recent investment in an AI commons, problematic as that may be, allows us to describe a Commons that must come — a commons built around the shared relations between humans and machines compelled to participate by late capitalism but holding hopes of different ways of being.