As part of my MA, I am instituting a network of academic collaboration on the topic of digital utopianism with a particular tuning towards ‘digital eugenics’.

Essential to the format of this network is that it is as rhizomatic and free/open as possible, so my status as project initiator will be irrelevant as it will be centred on complete omission of regulation. In other words, the discernible conceptual assemblages and even conclusions that arise are completely driven by the interactions that take place on these platforms (the open connection of nodes/multiplicities and the intensities they engender). Therefore the network/node(s) will not be constrained in any way by some sort of bias or expectation towards a desired outcome – it will simply follow whatever course the discussion takes it.

What we are focusing on is a shift towards a ‘new type of human’—cultivated and engendered by the incision of the digital into the natural world. What traits are auspicious for integration into this emerging new world (for which I believe there is no ambiguity toward our inevitable destination)? Who is permitted entry? Are the youth being moulded by forces outside of the usual worldly institutions (such as schools and parents) in an unprecedentedly auxiliary manner? What are the governing forces (concealed or not) in the digital world? (just a few starting things to consider)

Let us produce some great collaborative discourse in an untouched academic area in the DH. I am hoping we can produce some great ideas, debates, and discussion while providing a framework and/or base for further analysis.

Hari Kunzru Transmission – digital eugenics

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    • 9 December 2016 at 7:22 am EST #823

      Ross Cunliffe
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      @rosscunliffe

      I am working on a new post in the digital eugenics category using Hari Kunzru’s Transmission as a framework. This novel is densely packed with provoking implications and philosophemes that cater to our DH orientated sensibilities. Among the conceptual felt that can lead any analyst down a multitude of paths, I have found a lot of stuff suitable to the notion of eugenics in this text. We have a focus on autism spectrums, which is somewhat revered, as a prerequisite for technological finesse (we can also see this in The Circle by Dave Eggers, as Ty Gospodinov–the most inventive and ingenious member of the ‘Three Wise Men’–is described in such a way). A corporate tripartite that all hold names signifying a movement towards a utopia on the horizon: ‘Tomorrow’, ‘Virugenix’ and ‘Transcendenta’. Virugenix is almost an homophone or a malapropism for eugenics, and they somewhat proselytize an importance of Asperger’s syndrome into their corporate ethos, wearing it as ‘a badge of honour’ (Kunzru, 2005:59). A group of youthful tech-savvy geeks with a destitute of social skills and ‘real’-worldly presence is Virugenix’s workforce base. Tomorrow and Transcendenta evoke notions of a transcendental epoch that is baby-steps ahead from being realised; and Tomorrow’s CEO Guy Swift serves, albeit it satirically, as the prototype for the eugenically moulded subject for success in a hyper-provident world. All together, encapsulated by the concept of the novella’s name, Transmission, is a framed digital dynamic that attempts to break the physical threshold, by transmission, into a utopian world. All progress, however, is drastically thwarted by the transmission of the ‘Leela virus’: a devastating inclusion into the novels rhizomatic frame, deterritorialising and decoding everything that it connects to.

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