# Best of e-flux.com on Kiwi News Page: https://news.kiwistand.com/source/e-flux.com 25 stories from e-flux.com have been shared on Kiwi News since 10 October 2023, with 38 upvotes and 2 comments in total. The latest was shared on 13 September 2025. They are listed below, most upvoted first. Summaries are AI summaries of the linked article. ## 1. The Art of Populism - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/The-Art-of-Populism?index=0x667198641ff86722d13a4d534779cd6bda7852943c38d88f7c043a2dc1d587dde51cbbb2 - Source: https://www.e-flux.com/notes/613238/the-art-of-populism - Shared 18 June 2024, 4 upvotes, 0 comments Boris Groys argues that artists and intellectuals are drawn to populism because modern culture is split into elite and mass culture, and both sides feel frustrated by that split. He says that serious artists, especially those experimenting with language, feel marginalized, while mass culture figures want to be taken seriously, so both seek a culture where the serious becomes popular. He also argues that Clement Greenberg was wrong to call populist culture kitsch, since it is boring and functions as a sign of ideological commitment. In his view, populism offers artists relief from the pressure to make work that is aesthetically recognized or entertaining, and every populism is therefore intrinsically religious. ## 2. Issue 147 - e-flux Journal - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Issue-147-e-flux-Journal?index=0x66dff1edda97307147d86a9cf53b652b96d5d98e90ff3e7eadc52971acac87748525cdcb - Source: https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/620035/issue-147 - Shared 10 September 2024, 3 upvotes, 0 comments Trevor Paglen's essay argues that US military psychological warfare, such as the disinformation Richard Doty spread about extraterrestrials, was a historical predecessor to today's AI-driven social media that targets emotions. Paglen cites a key tenet of the US Army Field Manual: it is easier to deceive someone by reinforcing their existing beliefs than by changing them. The issue also includes Jonas Staal on Ascension Island, Hunter Bolin on Günther Anders, and Luis Camnitzer on the overemphasis on STEM education. ## 3. Technological Futures: A Conversation - Notes - e-flux - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Technological-Futures-A-Conversation-Notes-e-flux?index=0x665855499c2c366df3347e7fefac0ee8246dc7583b795bde889e1021adde1b0fbd46c1b7 - Source: https://www.e-flux.com/notes/602152/technological-futures-a-conversation - Shared 30 May 2024, 3 upvotes, 0 comments This is a conversation between Agnieszka Kurant and Ted Chiang on technological futures, covering AI, labor, energy and culture. Chiang argues that large language models trained on their own output will likely prove a technological dead end, and that the bigger risk is that they degrade the web as a usable source of information. On AI and actors, Chiang says the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA won significant restrictions on generative AI, and that actors must grant permission before their likeness is used in a digital performance. On consciousness, Chiang suspects actual intelligence requires consciousness, and that living things experiencing blocked avoidance of negative stimuli is reasonably called suffering. ## 4. After Doomscroll: A Conversation with Chelsea Manning - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/After-Doomscroll-A-Conversation-with-Chelsea-Manning?index=0x66bb7ee468ac39b9aceca757c3ef8a9fa11988ca602ca4866390c6a9db288958f988082f - Source: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/146/609834/after-doomscroll-a-conversation-with-chelsea-manning - Shared 13 August 2024, 2 upvotes, 1 comment This interview with Chelsea Manning, conducted by journalist Janus Rose, argues that the internet's decline stems from platforms shifting from openness to extracting profit, and that digital journalism is being squeezed out. Manning says the early internet felt like it let anyone publish, but once Google and Facebook became established, they focused on holding power and keeping content monetizable. Manning also says that large companies and institutions now channel the information they want to spread rather than creating propaganda outright, and she describes a possible return to pamphleteering as a way to distribute ideas. ## 5. Society of the Psyop, Part 1: UFOs and the Future of Media - Journal #147 - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Society-of-the-Psyop-Part-1-UFOs-and-the-Future-of-Media-Journal-147?index=0x672683e31105dd228e9844c9d082296b392a38938fcbfdc1d6be345ced1b42a7be4baca8 - Source: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/147/623330/society-of-the-psyop-part-1-ufos-and-the-future-of-media - Shared 2 November 2024, 2 upvotes, 0 comments Modern media, driven by generative AI, recommendation algorithms and biometric sensors, now observes viewers' reactions and adapts to shape their beliefs and behavior, marking a new phase after spectacle and surveillance. Its history of perception manipulation is illustrated by Richard Doty's work for the US Air Force Office of Special Investigations at Kirtland Air Force Base in the late 1970s and 1980s. Doty staged a deception against military contractor Paul Bennewitz, using William Moore as a proxy and doctored documents, then briefed journalist Linda Moulton Howe with a similar dossier. Under the right conditions, hallucination and reality can become one and the same. ## 6. Spatial Computing - Lai Yi Ohlsen - How Tall is the Internet? - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Spatial-Computing-Lai-Yi-Ohlsen-How-Tall-is-the-Internet?index=0x667d926644033727cd95e1e90f1b475644c9e9835ed02c888aac0dc025452cb2812b2b32 - Source: https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/spatial-computing/602471/how-tall-is-the-internet - Shared 27 June 2024, 2 upvotes, 0 comments Lai Yi Ohlsen argues that internet measurement data, though rigorous, cannot by itself explain why problems like censorship and the digital divide arise, and should be combined with analysis from other disciplines. The essay points to the FCC's Broadband Data Collection program, which relies on self-reported ISP data, and to the 42 million Americans it says lack sufficient access, a figure that other estimates place at 14.6 million. It also cites Access Now's #keepiton coalition, which recorded eighty internet shutdowns in fourteen countries in the first half of 2023. The essay further argues that internet maps and measurements should be dynamic and longitudinal rather than static snapshots. ## 7. Decolonialism of the Far Right - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Decolonialism-of-the-Far-Right?index=0x66728c546567620cc20636147a669c0b30cad99e8ac47cbe5fb9ac4745f1b692a7648829 - Source: https://www.e-flux.com/notes/610730/decolonialism-of-the-far-right - Shared 19 June 2024, 2 upvotes, 0 comments The essay argues that far-right thinkers have adopted decolonial language, recasting Europe, Russia and Hindu nationalism as indigenous victims of a globalist, liberal or "colonial" order. Renaud Camus has praised anti-colonial texts, including those of Frantz Fanon, and claimed indigenous Europe needs its own FLN. Alain de Benoist and Alexander Dugin, the leading European New Right intellectuals, shifted from earlier white nationalism to defending "the right to difference" and a "pluriverse" of civilizations. The author contends this coexists with Carl Schmitt's contrast between a deterritorial, maritime imperium and a territorial Grossraum, which lets territorial expansion, including Russia's invasion of Ukraine, be framed as anti-colonial. ## 8. Ben Eastham on the 60th Venice Biennale - Criticism - e-flux - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Ben-Eastham-on-the-60th-Venice-Biennale-Criticism-e-flux?index=0x6623a0e0f9226ceb5944855b1cbd31234fa33d554d28ef886b96f3c79126bcdcfe88ce27 - Source: https://www.e-flux.com/criticism/603719/60th-venice-biennale-foreigners-everywhere - Shared 20 April 2024, 2 upvotes, 0 comments Ben Eastham finds that the 60th Venice Biennale's central exhibition, "Foreigners Everywhere," curated by Adriano Pedrosa, explains too much and leaves little room for the productive misunderstanding its title promises. He credits Pedrosa for the pluralism of his selection and for introducing many lesser-known artists, and he singles out works that escape categorization, such as Greta Schödl's inscribed stones and Gabrielle Goliath's Personal Accounts (2024). Eastham states that the exhibition's wall texts, which list each artist's birthplace and residence, keep works tied to identity and attribution. ## 9. An Essay on Liberation: Breaking Bad - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/An-Essay-on-Liberation-Breaking-Bad?index=0x6586d78772efba603b81a6122c75ef51a58c4b82f5bbe783ce5c672fa4318940e40dc76e - Source: https://www.e-flux.com/notes/581670/an-essay-on-liberation-breaking-bad - Shared 23 December 2023, 2 upvotes, 0 comments Breaking Bad is presented as a story of liberation under late-capitalist conditions, in which freedom is a process of becoming rather than a given property. Walter White's struggle starts when a televised image of seized money fascinates him, breaking his routine as a teacher and father, and when a terminal lung cancer diagnosis shocks him into acting. His first deed, leaving his job, is treated as his first act of freedom. The excerpt breaks off before the series' ending, which is read as successful. ## 10. Vectors Mutate - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Vectors-Mutate?index=0x66ca687e04a7fc1a8380195b6a1f4642c6250ec0d1ce08d1cd2ca4c29b4c320c235b662b - Source: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/146/612948/vectors-mutate - Shared 24 August 2024, 1 upvote, 1 comment Vectoralist power has mutated since McKenzie Wark's *A Hacker Manifesto*, shifting from intellectual property to large digital platforms as its main means of value extraction, so hackers should revise their counterstrategies. Wark's book, printed in 2004 after appearing online in 1999, identified IP as the property form through which a vectoralist class monopolizes information produced by hackers. Platforms now rely on permanently produced free content, algorithmic curation and surveillance, while IP has declined in importance except in content disputes, though hardware and software companies still fight hard over patents. ## 11. Séance: Technology of the Spirit - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Seance-Technology-of-the-Spirit?index=0x68c5217c43acc815824b800dbc8648b47319dc3adfbe92e95b62b612a9804501bacce7f1 - Source: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/156 - Shared 13 September 2025, 1 upvote, 0 comments The 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale, curated by Anton Vidokle, Hallie Ayres, and Lukas Brasiskis, starts from the premise that we are surrounded by other worlds that might be accessed through technologies including, but not limited to, art. The companion issue of e-flux journal includes essays by the curators and by contributors such as Ben Eastham, Johanna Hedva, Elena Vogman, and Maria Lind. Amid a profound transformation driven by digitalization, algorithmic automation, and artificial intelligence, many contemporary artists are turning to mysticism, spirituality, and nonhuman ways of knowing. ## 12. Value in, garbage out: on AI art and hegemony - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Value-in-garbage-out-on-AI-art-and-hegemony?index=0x678a4d0f33dd463c4000c7bd033e9cfd2c446b1ccb619000c8310f016080bc95b11d5e06 - Source: https://www.e-flux.com/criticism/650116/value-in-garbage-out-on-ai-art-and-hegemony - Shared 17 January 2025, 1 upvote, 0 comments Refik Anadol's AI artworks, including the 2023 "Winds of Yawanawa" NFT collection and the 2024 "Large Nature Model: Coral" shown at the UN, are presented as environmental projects, but the article argues that their energy costs contradict those claims. The article says AI-powered internet searches use around 100 times the energy of a standard Google search, and that training GPT-3 produces a carbon footprint equivalent to driving 112 gasoline-powered cars for a year. It also argues that Anadol's promises of future benefits evade present responsibility. When asked about this contradiction, Anadol said he is proud to use "renewable" technology and described his critics as "lazy, not well-researched people." ## 13. Society of the Psyop, Part 3: Cognition and Chaos - Journal #149 - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Society-of-the-Psyop-Part-3-Cognition-and-Chaos-Journal-149?index=0x672dd7ed3626063618e2827657b24adc1e6ddf793f45d83eedbc6e04b9ecfda08a723c10 - Source: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/149/639555/society-of-the-psyop-part-3-cognition-and-chaos - Shared 8 November 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments The article argues that digital media now observes its audiences and adapts to them, creating a targeted visual culture that shapes beliefs and actions, and it traces how this traces back to Cold War military deception. It describes the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the CIA used the Palladium system to create a decoy "UFO" that fooled Cuban radar and fighter pilots. The piece links Palladium to the U-2 and OXCART programs, which pursued invisibility and deception, and to what it calls "Cognitive Warfare." It also says human perception is slow and predictive, which makes it open to manipulation. ## 14. Society of the Psyop, Part 2: AI, Mind Control, and Magic - Journal #148 - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Society-of-the-Psyop-Part-2-AI-Mind-Control-and-Magic-Journal-148?index=0x672684364503659c636190ce69dc54564a36d5710f6248de2201b986e0f4eaefa2c08741 - Source: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/148/631017/society-of-the-psyop-part-2-ai-mind-control-and-magic - Shared 2 November 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments This essay argues that new media, from generative AI to recommendation algorithms, shows viewers what they want, measures their reactions, and reshapes itself to influence them, and it traces the techniques that exploit human perception to get there. It begins with the CIA's MKULTRA program, which Allen Dulles authorized three days after his April 10, 1953 "brain warfare" speech and which included at least 149 subprojects. One of these, Subproject 94, funded Woody Bledsoe's remote-control animal experiments from 1959 until the CIA halted it in 1962. ## 15. The Field of Contemporary Art: A Diagram - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/The-Field-of-Contemporary-Art-A-Diagram?index=0x671535245141f9a8b44d3f8d086a99438ed6d463c3b6df2d92b43a25971a1bdc3274af0d - Source: https://www.e-flux.com/notes/634540/the-field-of-contemporary-art-a-diagram - Shared 20 October 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments The contemporary art field has fragmented into relatively autonomous subfields, including the art market, exhibitions, academia, community-based work, and cultural activism, each with its own criteria for what art is and does. Expansion since the mid-1990s came in waves, from museums and exhibitions in the late nineties to galleries and art fairs in the early 2000s. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of cultural production, the diagram is offered as a hypothesis to help students and studio art programs navigate the field. It also reverses an earlier call for fragmentation as a route to artistic autonomy, now judging the subfields to be mutually dependent. ## 16. The Hacker Class Is Dead, Long Live the Hackers! - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/The-Hacker-Class-Is-Dead-Long-Live-the-Hackers?index=0x66c66fc63b3c461524fd4df1cadf7454588dbb1594f7f321c5c749a37933f8100dacedaf - Source: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/146/612149/the-hacker-class-is-dead-long-live-the-hackers - Shared 21 August 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments The article revisits McKenzie Wark's A Hacker Manifesto twenty years after its publication, arguing that the hacker class it envisioned has been defeated by the vectorialist class that captures information. It argues that information has been turned into abstract, digitized dividual elements, such as metadata and traces of online behavior, which now generate the vectorialists' profits. Drawing on Frédéric Neyrat and N. Katherine Hayles, it contends that the vectorialist class has neutralized hacking's possibilities by reconstructing representations along infra-subjective lines. ## 17. Life in Fifteen Gigabytes - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Life-in-Fifteen-Gigabytes?index=0x66c507a84e6285fe0ebf5db3e9a929968e585678e73ed6927b5fbec9aa6c4142232f6a58 - Source: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/146/610955/life-in-fifteen-gigabytes - Shared 20 August 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments Digital hoarding is presented as a product of political economy rather than only sentiment, and the essay suggests the hacker class should include those who hoard information as well as those who produce it. Drawing on McKenzie Wark's concept of the vectoralist class, the essay ties the ability to sell stored data to ownership of information. The essay also cites the 2021 Black TikTok creators' strike, in which the BBC reported Addison Rae made nearly $5m from TikTok in 2020, while Jalaiah Harmon, creator of the "Renegade" dance, estimated she earned $38,000 that year. ## 18. e-flux Journal #146 June 2024 - A Hacker Manifesto at Twenty - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/e-flux-Journal-146-June-2024-A-Hacker-Manifesto-at-Twenty?index=0x666b745ae542912cb2861600f9e391d579c86af9e08d32a6dcebf6be1b6915bf7f78690c - Source: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/146 - Shared 13 June 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments Contributors to e-flux Journal #146 revisit McKenzie Wark's *A Hacker Manifesto* twenty years after its publication, arguing that its ideas still bear on present conditions. The texts claim that flows now dominate, that "vectors have won," and that capital is the highest form of nomadism. Valérian Guillier asks whether a theory of information forged decades ago still applies, given the apparent victory of "free" content and software. The issue also includes A Hacked Manifesto, a net art tool by which users can manipulate Wark's text, and states that whatever is built next must be distributed, low cost, accessible, verifiable, and low in power use. ## 19. Daylighting Cryptocurrency’s Waterstreams - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Daylighting-Cryptocurrencys-Waterstreams?index=0x666b73f9e77a37aba34a18220b60249d894a3d789d634723cdbbd41fc23704c9ad1876db - Source: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/146/611854/daylighting-cryptocurrency-s-waterstreams - Shared 13 June 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments Cryptocurrency mining's reliance on water and energy ties the digital promise of abundance to material scarcity, a tension illustrated by Bathhouse in Brooklyn and Greenidge Generation on New York's Seneca Lake. Bathhouse heats its pools with two ASICs, with its Williamsburg location running twelve miners at a hashrate of twelve hundred terrahash. Greenidge, located in a former coal plant, draws nearly 140 million gallons of lake water daily and discharges it usually nine to thirteen degrees warmer, which activists argue will accelerate harmful algal blooms. ## 20. A Hacker Manifesto, Twenty Years On - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/A-Hacker-Manifesto-Twenty-Years-On?index=0x666b7383bbfb9c1cde4dc4302b5ac4e09e3b79bfed26f3ef2f5ecb10c90671b130513516 - Source: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/146/613241/editorial-a-hacker-manifesto-twenty-years-on - Shared 13 June 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments A Hacker Manifesto, first written in 1999 and published by Harvard University Press in 2004, set its writer on a path that has continued for about twenty-five years. The book is described as a critique of emerging digital power rather than a utopian vision, arguing that the mode of production might be mutating because the value chain could be controlled by owning the vectors of information. The text also frames avant-gardes as advanced forms of collaborative, creative, mediated labor, and introduces a special issue of contributors who engage the book and its context. ## 21. My Collectible Ass - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/My-Collectible-Ass?index=0x660ba6f134f556f0699a604653de05ffa7c79b7f02339c485fdb9d76038928513cc83812 - Source: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/85/156418/my-collectible-ass - Shared 2 April 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments McKenzie Wark argues that the value of collectible digital and artistic objects comes less from rarity of the object than from the information and circulation surrounding it. He cites Christian Marclay's The Clock, which is meant to be shown only in specific installations but has been copied and screened outside those settings, and Tino Seghal's works, which are never documented and exist through oral protocols and verbal contracts. He describes the collected artwork as a derivative of the information about it, and concludes that what collectors really collect is the act of collecting itself. ## 22. Will AI Remember the Days of Slavery? - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Will-AI-Remember-the-Days-of-Slavery?index=0x65fd53c883262b7ea05d56087d5a3e21aec418903b4c4fb1e5affc5c77f9a64e56959731 - Source: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/143/592571/will-ai-remember-the-days-of-slavery - Shared 22 March 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments Science fiction robot revolts, from Cybotron's "Clear" to Blade Runner, forget the history of slavery and aim their anxiety at consumer and military machines rather than the production machines that threaten workers. The text contrasts Blade Runner's android final words with the account of a mutilated enslaved man in Voltaire's Candide, holding that the revolts' roots are political rather than metaphysical. It then cites Dr. Joy Buolamwini's MIT research finding that AI visual programs recognized white faces more effectively than Black ones, and her statement that AI will not solve poverty or discrimination because those problems are not technical. ## 23. Poetics of Encryption - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Poetics-of-Encryption?index=0x65a7d0c429311647f4d09d1fd0a158d617251e18a7eabf07046bd65d048c7916abe39363 - Source: https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/583041/n-a - Shared 17 January 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments The KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin presents Poetics of Encryption, a group exhibition running February 17 to May 26, 2024, featuring more than 40 international artists across all floors. Curated by Nadim Samman, the show surveys art about technology's hidden inner workings through the themes of Black Sites, Black Boxes, and Black Holes, which the text says describe how technical systems capture users, operate in stealth, and distort cultural space-time. The exhibition is part of a year-long program supported by Volkswagen Group, which also includes a publication, a website with three web-first commissions, and a 2023 conference. ## 24. The Automation of General Intelligence - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/The-Automation-of-General-Intelligence?index=0x657c0947999c29b748c4219b0af456bbf3728ea96399ce7d430c8caffe191ecadb5ac549 - Source: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/141/577253/the-automation-of-general-intelligence - Shared 15 December 2023, 1 upvote, 0 comments This excerpt from a book on labor, rules and automation argues that the division of labor and its measurement have long shaped machine intelligence, and that machine learning models encode social relations. It reformulates Babbage's "labor theory of automation" for the age of AI, drawing on Marx's critique that social relations of production drive the development of the means of production, not the reverse. The text traces a lineage from assembly-line management and operations research to connectionism, and it describes Google's 1998 PageRank algorithm as an early large-scale use of big data. It also notes that Facebook, the US military, and gig economy platforms such as Uber and Amazon use network mapping and geolocation to track people and labor. ## 25. A Hacker Manifesto: Twenty Years After - Announcements - e-flux - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/A-Hacker-Manifesto-Twenty-Years-After-Announcements-e-flux?index=0x6525806ec8b560b14d5628095ec40b2289c9d4dc89a94b1dfbfddc91698b72cf4a13d0d1 - Source: https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/567733/a-hacker-manifesto-twenty-years-after - Shared 10 October 2023, 1 upvote, 0 comments e-flux journal, guest-edited by McKenzie Wark, is calling for proposals for a special issue on A Hacker Manifesto at twenty, planned for its June 2024 issue. Wark's book, published by Harvard University Press in 2004, has stayed in print in English and been translated into thirteen other languages, and 2024 marks the twentieth anniversary of the book and the twenty-fifth anniversary of its first online appearance in 1999. Contributors are invited to critique, adapt, revise, extend, modify, mutate, or modulate the text, and proposals are due January 12, with written submissions requiring a 200-word abstract plus 1–3 sample paragraphs sent to journal@e-flux.com.