Calculating Empires is a "a genealogy of technology and power since 1500" — a beautiful and interactive monochrome chart you can zoom in and out of to trace the connections between all such things in the modern age. I immediately crash zoomed in and found myself face-to-face with a Debord quote: "In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation."
It's the work of Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler.
How can we understand the operations of technology and power in our era? Our technological systems are increasingly complex, interconnected, automated and opaque. Social institutions, from schools to prisons, are becoming data industries, incorporating pervasive forms of capture and analysis. Even places that were once off-limits to capital, from our emotional expressions to outer space, are now subject to computational control and extraction. Meanwhile, the industrial transformations in AI are concentrating power into even fewer hands, while accelerating polarization and alienation. If we are to address the urgent challenges of the contemporary time – including technocratic fascism, climate catastrophe, colonial wars, and wealth inequality – we need to contend with the interwoven nature of their histories. In order to have a future, we must first confront our past.
