Hubris, Nemesis, Whatever

Recommended: "Hubris/Nemesis/Whatever," a web essay by the artists AIDS 3D, in Paddy Johnson's IMG MGMT series. The piece recalls Mark Dery's writing in its mix of interest and skepticism about where new tech is taking us. Dery (who has written for Bookforum and many other mags, was briefly editor of artbyte magazine in the Dot Com era, and now intermittently blogs), is solidly a writer in the print tradition, whereas AIDS 3D takes advantage of the "good bad" graphics and YouTubage of the current Web (with excellent taste in same) to tell their story. This audio/visual/interactive content adds its own flavor or spin: it seems both the medium and message of the failed Singularity they adumbrate.

Update, put another way: The Singularity is supposed to be this big cosmic mind meld that occurs as more brains connect in cyberspace. Yet as we know the Internet is dancing hamsters and your parents on Facebook. By telling their tale in the debased language of tacky 3d graphics and links to old movie clips Keller and Kosmas show as well as tell what has become of utopian dreams for the Internet. (Adumbrated down after complaints by AFC commenters.)