Cybernetics and ghosts: the digital future of writing Guest edited by Michael Salu First published in March 2023 This guest edition is a thought experiment inspired by Italo Calvino’s 1967 essay Cybernetics and Ghosts, to reflect on the expansive role technology plays in our lives and in literature today. The list Tice Cin "There is an algorithm that starts to spike. The page begins to gain traction. She stops talking, and the bot carries on…" A hand a door Vanessa Onwuemezi "I noticed the greasy handprint of her fangs, feasts, phones, franking, fingers, fingers is what I meant, appeared on all doors and I was unable to follow her." Caught Sara Saab "The error caught us around the corner from the last pub that spat us out. The story he was telling about his father's racing greyhounds became one long syllable…" Alice Coltrane’s Journey in Satchidananda: Digital spaces as restoration Irenosen Okojie "The music becomes a meditation, a molten, silvery vehicle from an Afro-futurist past, an unknown destination requiring your pulse rate during REM." Human agency in the age of algorithms Abeba Birhane "A reductive, simplistic, yet relatively neat mathematical model is offered as a streamlined solution for dealing with messy complex human behaviour." Ultimate Aloe vera Iphgenia Baal "The scan misreads letters as other letters, imagines whole new glyphs. The alphabets that could've been…" Red Earth (2021-ongoing) Michael Salu “Red Earth is an interdisciplinary study centred on prose reflections, drawing attention to the precarious status of non-western cultural heritage, and knowledge practices in dominant western systems of digital data and AI technology.”
The list Tice Cin "There is an algorithm that starts to spike. The page begins to gain traction. She stops talking, and the bot carries on…"
A hand a door Vanessa Onwuemezi "I noticed the greasy handprint of her fangs, feasts, phones, franking, fingers, fingers is what I meant, appeared on all doors and I was unable to follow her."
Caught Sara Saab "The error caught us around the corner from the last pub that spat us out. The story he was telling about his father's racing greyhounds became one long syllable…"
Alice Coltrane’s Journey in Satchidananda: Digital spaces as restoration Irenosen Okojie "The music becomes a meditation, a molten, silvery vehicle from an Afro-futurist past, an unknown destination requiring your pulse rate during REM."
Human agency in the age of algorithms Abeba Birhane "A reductive, simplistic, yet relatively neat mathematical model is offered as a streamlined solution for dealing with messy complex human behaviour."
Ultimate Aloe vera Iphgenia Baal "The scan misreads letters as other letters, imagines whole new glyphs. The alphabets that could've been…"
