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The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction proposes a new story of evolution by redefining technology as a cultural carrier bag rather than a weapon of domination. In The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, visionary author Ursula K. Le Guin retells the story of human origin by redefining technology as a cultural carrier bag rather than a weapon of domination.Hacking the linear, progressive mode of the Techno-Heroic, the Carrier Bag Theory of human evolution proposes: ‘before the tool that forces energy outward, we made the tool that brings energy home.’ Prior to the preeminence of sticks, swords and the Hero’s long, hard, killing tools, our ancestors’ greatest invention was the container: the basket of wild oats, the medicine bundle, the net made of your own hair, the home, the shrine, the place that contains whatever is sacred. The recipient, the holder, the story. The bag of stars. This influential essay opens a portal to terra ignota: unknown lands where the possibilities of human experience and knowledge can be discovered anew.

In the twelfth century since the appearance of the prophet Jesus Christ on the now-evacuated planet Earth, Hildegard of Bingen discovers grace in the moral and spiritual ruins of her medieval world. She inscribes her visions into Scivias, an indescribably beautiful codex of writing and illuminations, thought to be lost during the collapse of the Information Age. On the planet Avaaz, in a sea cave with cracked amethyst walls, Pinky Agarwalia discovers fragments of this beguiling text: a mystic toolkit including a cosmology, medicine, a morphology of crystals and recipes for survival – in strange, illegible symbols. How to decipher this unknown language? As Pinky traces the diagrams with her finger, a vision appears revealing that water – a guarded substance – is the alchemical agent: in water, the mysterious script transforms into feeling and light. Unlocking the secrets of viriditas, Hildegard’s mythic quantum energy threaded throughout her communiqués, provides the seeds for humanity’s rebirth on Avaaz. Lingua Ignota, Hildegard's visionary ‘unknown language’, arrives just in time for a world in flux, one whose coordinates are being recast.

This fascinating study of chaos and order in the universe marks a new direction in scientific approaches to these areas. Rejecting Laplacian notions of `meaningless', coincidental order and of a ruling tendency towards dissolution and chaos, Layzer draws physics, biology, chemistry, and astronomy into a fluid philosophy of order, able to accommodate the individual act and random event without causing structural breakdown.Layzer manages to be both entertaining and very convincing at the same time. Among the intriguing side issues he brings up are a new theory for the origins of the universe and a physical explanation for why off-key musical notes jar.

What is a World? How do I create one? How do I keep it alive? And when should I set it free?There is an unnatural art emerging, ripe for our strange and complex times: Worlding — the practice of creating dynamic systems that take on a life of their own.Now in print for the first time, WORLDING is an essential handbook for artists, gamers, entrepreneurs and creators navigating uncertain times.Expanded and updated from prior incarnations, this contemporary cult classic draws on the author’s experience developing complex multi-agent video game worlds. It offers practical methods for building and sustaining Worlds through four creative personas: the Director, Cartoonist, Hacker, and Emissary. Part philosophical reflection, part creative guide, WORLDING explores ways to navigate darkness and sustain agency in a time of unraveling old realities and emerging weird ones.

What is a World? And how does one bring it to life?Emissaries Guide to Worlding is both a behind-the-scenes chronicle and a philosophical companion to one of the most ambitious experiments in simulation art of the 21st century.This richly illustrated, full-colour hardback brings readers into the conceptual and technical process of creating Emissaries (2015 – 2017) — a trilogy of simulations about cognitive evolution and ecological emergence. As Cheng built his agentic beings, he also began a theory of Worlding: the unnatural art of designing systems that grow, change, and take on a life of their own.Now returning in a revised collector’s edition with a new preface and updated materials, this is the foundational artifact of Cheng’s thinking on Worlding—where theory and practice emerge side by side. Released alongside WORLDING: A Guide for Creators in Changing Times, its distilled and expanded successor, this edition offers the origin: a record of Worlding as lived process.

Prophetic Dreaming is a major survey of Suzanne Treister, a pioneer of digital and multidisciplinary art whose work connects technology, power, belief and imagined futures. Coinciding with her first major UK retrospective at Modern Art Oxford, the book follows Treister from early paintings and Fictional Videogame Stills to the complex cosmologies of HEXEN 2.0 and HEXEN 5.0. Spotlighting major seminal artworks HFT The Gardener, SURVIVOR (F) and TECHNOSHAMANIC SYSTEMS, and the long‑running Time Travelling adventures of Treister's alter-ego Rosalind Brodsky. Richly illustrated, with new essays by Lars Bang Larsen, Patricia Domínguez and Val Ravaglia, Prophetic Dreaming maps the occult life of computation and offers tools for thinking beyond the chaotic present.

How can humans and non-humans come together to save the planet in an age of climate crisis? In recent years, we have seen a rise in the popular understanding of non-human intelligence, from octopi to mushrooms to AI. At the same time, man-made systems are under increasing pressure on a warming planet. What must be done to remake our future? In Air Age Blueprint, K Allado-McDowell, with their writing partner GPT-3, tells the story of a future where artists, shamans and AI researchers collaborate to preserve the ecosystem. Weaving together fiction, memoir, theory and travelogue, Air Age Blueprint grapples with the legacies of colonialism, ecological destruction and rapacious techno-capitalism, to present a blueprint for surviving the 21st century, drawing lessons from Indigenous knowledges, neuroscience, art, psychedelic research and other-than-human intelligence.

What do the divinatory practices of Ancient Greece’s Oracle of Delphi, the Incan knotted quipu counting device, the I Ching, the nine billion names of God and Elizabethan mathematician John Dee have to do with artificial intelligence? The Atlas of Anomalous AI is a compelling and surprising map of our complex relationship to intelligence, from ancient to emerging systems of knowledge. A wildly associative constellation of ideas, stories, artworks and historical materials, the Atlas draws on art historian Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas — an image map of the “afterlife of antiquity” — to approach the defining concepts of AI from an imaginative, artistic and revitalising perspective.The Atlas presents a hyperdimensional view of the world, through a broad range of perspectives that explore the question of what AI has been and what it is becoming. Key texts on modelling, prediction and automation are brought together with stories of science fiction, dreams and human knowledge, set among visionary and surreal images by Emma Kunz, Pablo Amaringo, Carl Jung, Hilma af Klint, William Blake.The Atlas expands our common understanding of AI and raises new questions beyond a illusory fixation on linear progression, towards a new horizon of infinite play in the construction of artificial intelligence today.

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto published a revolutionary white paper that described a simple peer-to-peer electronic cash system that would later become Bitcoin, laying the foundations for the technical innovation known as the blockchain. In the decade since its publication, the nascent technology behind cryptocurrency has become recognised holding the same transformative potential of the printing press or the internet, set to impact our sense of identity and provenance as much as finance. It has disrupted traditional financial markets with a spectacular explosion in value, paved the way for thousands of similar digital currencies and laid the groundwork for a decentralised future of the web. But what does it mean for everyday life? The White Paper returns to the document that started it all, taking Nakamoto’s text as a Rosetta Stone to decode the meaning of blockchain for contemporary society. This guide to the innovative technology shows how it holds up a mirror to our understanding of the world, both timeless and mutating: from the archetypal origin story, to concepts of trust and value, and the changing shapes of power and privacy. In an acute and definitive Introduction, James Bridle, leading technologist, artist and author of New Dark Age, charts the rise of blockchain from its roots in clandestine online cultures. Delving into the first conversations between initial members of the Bitcoin community - a disparate group of cyber ideologues ranging from right-wing Libertarians to radical Web 2.0 utopian, Bridle shows how they shed light on the cryptographic imagination that points towards the future of the Bitcoin dream. Through the lens of encryption as philosophy and practice, Bridle examines the continuing debates around the meaning of money, democratic values and security in an era of surveillance capitalism. Fully annotated with key secondary texts, The White Paper presents new perspectives on the radical paper.

Arriving at a moment when the planet itself hangs between collapse and renewal, Suzanne Treister’s HEXEN 5.0 emerges as the long-awaited sequel to her cult classic HEXEN 2.0.Its 78 luminous alchemical drawings braid together terrestrial and interplanetary technologies, synthetic genomes and geoengineering schemes, corporate technocracies and post-capitalist cooperatives, mass-extinction tipping points and animist awakenings. Each card presents the possibility of novel convergences across established and emerging streams of thought—from Earth System Science, Spiritual Ecology and Nexus Thinking to technoshamanism, Solarpunk, and speculative biopolitics.By reanimating medieval hermetic diagrams as a living atlas of present crises and nascent hopes, HEXEN 5.0 opens a lucid, liminal space where collaborative readings can interrogate unfolding techno-futures and envision regenerative pathways for life aboard spaceship earth and beyond.HEXEN 5.0 includes: - 78 Large Format Full Colour Tarot Cards - Collection of diagrammatic posters - Essay by Lars Bang Larsen - Guide for Group Tarot Readings

What are altered states of consciousness? Can altered states produce altered worlds? Altered States brings together poetic journeys that explore the varieties of revelatory experience. These poems expand our sense of selfhood and place in the cosmos, complicating the boundaries between alterity and the ordinary, to propose a new psychedelic style for the 21st century.With contributions from K Allado-McDowell, Will Alexander, Rachael Allen, Khairani Barokka, Jen Calleja, Jesse Darling, Paige Emery, James Goodwin, Hannah Gregory, Johanna Hedva, Caspar Heinemann, IONE, Lucy Ives, Bhanu Kapil, Daisy Lafarge, Dorothea Lasky, So Mayer, Lucy Mercer, Precious Okoyomon, Irenosen Okojie, Nisha Ramayya, Mark von Schlegell, Erica Scourti, Yasmine Seale, Emily Segal, Tai Shani, Merlin Sheldrake, Sin Wai Kin, Himali Singh Soin, Janaka Stucky, Jenna Sutela, Rebecca Tamas, Ayesha Tan Jones, Bett Williams and Flora Yin-Wong.

Early human relationships with water were expressed through beliefs in serpentine aquatic deities: rainbow-coloured, feathered or horned serpents, giant anacondas and dragons. Representing the powers of water, these beings were bringers of life and sustenance, world creators, ancestors, guardian spirits and law makers. Worshipped and appeased, they embodied people’s respect for water and its vital role in sustaining all living things. Yet today, though we still recognize that ‘water is life’, fresh- and saltwater ecosystems have been critically compromised by human activities. This major study of water beings, and what has happened to them in different cultural and historical contexts, demonstrates how and why some – but not all – societies have moved from worshipping water to wreaking havoc upon it, and asks what we can do to turn the tide.

In this enlightening and provocative exploration, Dave Pruett sets out a revolutionary new understanding of our place in the universe, one that reconciles the rational demands of science with the deeper tugs of spirituality.Defining a moment in human self-awareness four centuries in the making, Reason and Wonder: A Copernican Revolution in Science and Spirit offers a way to move beyond the either/or choice of reason versus intuition—a dichotomy that ultimately leaves either the mind or the heart wanting. In doing so, it seeks to resolve an age-old conflict at the root of much human dysfunction, including today's global ecological crisis.An outgrowth of C. David Pruett's breakthrough undergraduate honors course, "From Black Elk to Black Holes: Shaping Myth for a New Millennium," Reason and Wonder embraces the insights of modern science and the wisdom of spiritual traditions to "re-enchant the universe." The new "myth of meaning" unfolds as the story of three successive "Copernican revolutions"—cosmological, biological, and spiritual—offers an expansive view of human potential as revolutionary as the work of Copernicus, Galilleo, and Darwin.

This book explores the ways in which the origins of time, of the gods, and processes associated with time were conceptualised in antiquity, examining a variety of ancient sources from across the ancient world and addressing issues surrounding the sources themselves.Time is a key framework through which we understand the world around us. Shared structures to measure the passage of time reveal certain cultural and societal values, while time’s less concrete forms are evident across art and literature. This volume examines how the tangible and intangible, direct and complex representations of time are used in ancient sources. The chapters in this book are written by scholars whose work focuses on India, Assyria, Greece, and Rome. Their analyses explore poetic and mythological narratives, philosophical discourse, and representations of the divine, allowing us to see how ideas about time and chronology reveal various cultural understandings of our world. Accessibly written, this volume enables scholars from a variety of disciplines to engage effectively with each chapter.Time and Chronology in Creation Narratives offers a fascinating interdisciplinary collection suitable for scholars working in ancient literature, philosophy, and religion across Classics, Ancient History, Indology, and Near Eastern Studies.

This volume brings together thematically arranged articles on the relationship between Islam and science and how it has been shaped over the last century. The articles represent a broad variety of approaches and perspectives as well as reflective and analytic views and include some of the most important voices in the Islam and science discourse. This collection, which includes a special section devoted to studies that explore various aspects of the relationship between the Qur'an and science, is a valuable resource for researchers interested in gaining a greater understanding of the broader relationship between religion and science.

This volume brings together thematically arranged articles on the relationship between Islam and science and how it has been shaped over the last century. The articles represent a broad variety of approaches and perspectives as well as reflective and analytic views and include some of the most important voices in the Islam and science discourse. This collection, which includes a special section devoted to studies that explore various aspects of the relationship between the Qur'an and science, is a valuable resource for researchers interested in gaining a greater understanding of the broader relationship between religion and science.

This book explores the ways in which the origins of time, of the gods, and processes associated with time were conceptualised in antiquity, examining a variety of ancient sources from across the ancient world and addressing issues surrounding the sources themselves.Time is a key framework through which we understand the world around us. Shared structures to measure the passage of time reveal certain cultural and societal values, while time’s less concrete forms are evident across art and literature. This volume examines how the tangible and intangible, direct and complex representations of time are used in ancient sources. The chapters in this book are written by scholars whose work focuses on India, Assyria, Greece, and Rome. Their analyses explore poetic and mythological narratives, philosophical discourse, and representations of the divine, allowing us to see how ideas about time and chronology reveal various cultural understandings of our world. Accessibly written, this volume enables scholars from a variety of disciplines to engage effectively with each chapter.Time and Chronology in Creation Narratives offers a fascinating interdisciplinary collection suitable for scholars working in ancient literature, philosophy, and religion across Classics, Ancient History, Indology, and Near Eastern Studies.

Can belief in God be rational? David A. Pailin identifies the reasons behind this questioning of theistic faith in his book God and the Processes of Reality (originally published in 1989) and demonstrates how the supposed incoherences in the concept of God are due to the generalization of partial insights. He establishes the basic character of the concept of God, and examines the nature of the major attributes of the divine and of the relationship of God to the processes of reality, looking at God as creator, the relation of God to historical events, and the role of God as the basis for individual fulfilment.The book takes up many of the insights developed by Whitehead and Hartshorne in what is commonly known as process thought. Pailin explains these insights and counters common misapprehensions about them critically, sometimes radically so, to present a credible understanding of the God of theistic belief and a coherent understanding of the relationship of that God to the processes of reality. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of religion and philosophy.