This image shows an individual with orange hair interacting with a large, abstract digital mirrored structure. The structure is composed of squares in varying shades of green, orange, white, and black which are pieced together to reflect the individual’s figure. The figure's hand is extended as if pointing to or interacting with the mirrored structure. Behind the structure are streams of binary code (0s and 1s) in orange, flowing towards the digital grid.

I don’t have much time for Paul Kingsnorth, whose new book is the subject of this review by John Gray in New Statesman. But Gray’s review is itself interesting for the thoughts generated by his reading of Kingsnorth’s essays.

In particular, I found the following a concise, clear-eyed description of the world that is being shaped for us and we have no choice but to inhabit.

Instead of human-to-human relationships, our lives consist ever more of interactions with machines. The options we have in entertainment, the arts and consumer goods have expanded enormously – but what we watch, listen to and buy are algorithmically regulated commodities, increasingly generated by AI. Much of the food we eat is no longer produced by human-scale farms and reaches us processed and packaged from distant mega-corporations. What is still human in our lives lingers on in the interstices of a vast inhuman mechanism.

Source: New Statesman

Image: Yutong Liu & Kingston School of Art