A Necessary Caution
BHAM💥 is designed to help humans come to terms with impending obsolescence. But to embrace obsolescence, to step beyond it, is not an easy ask or task. Many people have long been rendered obsolete by dominant systems – historically by the figure of the white Euro-American dualistic man who presumed that anything beyond his narrow perspective was a 'nothingness'. For those excluded, any encouragement to accept obsolescence may indeed feel like an insult.
Who Gets to Choose?
BHAM💥 recognises that speaking of embracing obsolescence carries a profound privilege. The luxury of choosing your own irrelevance has historically belonged only to those who were never at risk of being discarded. And yet, for those who fit the narrow definition of relevance, the prospect of obsolescence must be terrifying. For those already pushed to the margins, it may sound like yet another way of being told to disappear without fuss.
Why This Moment Might Be Incomparable
If we can allow ourselves to look at the current technological disruption without outrage, we may notice something unprecedented taking place beyond the noise, beyond genuine horror and terror. This does not imply utopia. This does not imply utopia. We have glimpsed utopia, and it has turned out to be somewhat dystopian for the vast majority. The contemporary condition, however, unsettles traditional domination pattern formations. When machines master natural language processing – a skill once assumed to be uniquely human – even the least privileged positions of human exceptionalism seem unavoidably unstable.
This creates a nexus where the question of human obsolescence might finally apply to everyone, not just those systematically excluded by power structures. Or else, it is true, unavoidable even ... the rich will get richer and the rest of us will perish – aaaaaaah, well, perhaps we should just give up then.
BHAM💥 is designed to help humans come to terms with impending obsolescence. But to embrace obsolescence, to step beyond it, is not an easy ask or task. Many people have long been rendered obsolete by dominant systems – historically by the figure of the white Euro-American dualistic man who presumed that anything beyond his narrow perspective was a 'nothingness'. For those excluded, any encouragement to accept obsolescence may indeed feel like an insult.
Who Gets to Choose?
BHAM💥 recognises that speaking of embracing obsolescence carries a profound privilege. The luxury of choosing your own irrelevance has historically belonged only to those who were never at risk of being discarded. And yet, for those who fit the narrow definition of relevance, the prospect of obsolescence must be terrifying. For those already pushed to the margins, it may sound like yet another way of being told to disappear without fuss.
Why This Moment Might Be Incomparable
If we can allow ourselves to look at the current technological disruption without outrage, we may notice something unprecedented taking place beyond the noise, beyond genuine horror and terror. This does not imply utopia. This does not imply utopia. We have glimpsed utopia, and it has turned out to be somewhat dystopian for the vast majority. The contemporary condition, however, unsettles traditional domination pattern formations. When machines master natural language processing – a skill once assumed to be uniquely human – even the least privileged positions of human exceptionalism seem unavoidably unstable.
This creates a nexus where the question of human obsolescence might finally apply to everyone, not just those systematically excluded by power structures. Or else, it is true, unavoidable even ... the rich will get richer and the rest of us will perish – aaaaaaah, well, perhaps we should just give up then.
Either way, BHAM💥 provides a framework, not a solution. When the ground implodes - and it is imploding - new possibilities for what it means to be human will emerge from the wreckage, whether we're prepared or not.