Asher Kessler

 Acceleration and Control

Today, when we look to the horizon what do we see? For increasing numbers of people both inside and outside of the tech world, what they see is a horizon of technological acceleration, and it is hurtling towards them.

Originating from the centres of computation, AI research, and academia, the experience of historical acceleration has seeped out more widely: into the institutions and cultures that today constitute contemporary Western society.

I’ve just begun a new research project into what accelerationist thinking does to political theory and ideals. As part of this, I am examining the history and politics of computing and AI from the 1940s to the present.

Big Tech’s visions of the future

Our perspective of the future, of what lies ahead of us, has historically been shaped by an array of actors. For millennia, religious thinkers have offered vivid descriptions of an afterlife while certain Christian leaders have imagined that the end of the world is imminent. Marxist philosophers also, through their analysis of history and class struggle, have argued that the future was inevitable: revolution and socialism.

Yet, over the past few decades, alongside our preachers and philosophers, it is our technological leaders who have radically shaped what we anticipate as ahead of us. For many, the future does not appear to lie in revolution, let alone heaven or hell, but in some sort of science fiction. Whether it is the promise of artificial general intelligence (AGI), Elon Musk’s vision of colonising Mars, or the radical extension of human life spans, we are continuously confronted with visions of radically transformed techno-futures.

My work interrogates these contemporary visions of the future and asks what social and political norms are embedded within them, and how might they be influenced by past futures.

Intellectual History of Facebook/Meta

Drawing on platform studies and historical theory, my doctoral research examined how Facebook actors came to depict the world, its transformations, and the social infrastructure they were building.

This research charts the intellectual development of Facebook actors over two decades but it also historicizes Facebook’s ‘thinking’. It considers this contemporary history alongside broader histories of utopianism, cybernetics, colonial thinking, and contestation over the World Wide Web.