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  2. HIS 4535

After Urbanism: Political Ecologies of Collective Space
HIS 4535

Course Information

Description

What is now ubiquitously referred to as “artificial intelligence” is in fact a diverse and quickly expanding field of technical realities and speculative possibilities. This expansion raises two pressing theoretical issues. First, as a hyperextension of its cybernetic origins, AI is establishing cultural and existential realities that do not so much challenge philosophical traditions as simply evade them; basic philosophical categories—ontological, epistemological, ethical—are neither questioned nor challenged, but simply rendered obsolete by technical processes anterior to perception. Second (and by consequence) AI has also rendered obsolete any political framework for navigating the realities it gives rise to.  Establishing any sensible politics for the age of computational intelligence requires first an archaeology (or technical philology) of the very concepts and language we anachronistically cling to in the present.

 

School Graduate School of Design
Credits 4
Cross Reg

Available for Harvard Cross Registration

Department Architecture
Course Component Discussion-based Seminar
Instruction Mode In Person
Grading Basis GSD Graded
Distributional Electives MArch Advanced History Distributional Elective
MDes Publics Domain Distributional Elective
Limited Enrollment Limited enrollment, GSD students given priority