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A Discussion about the Computational Logic of Late Capitalism. A Seminar with Phillippe Morel

EZCT Architecture & Design Research. Universal House and Assembly Element, 2009-2011The first seminar of the 2011-2012 series, titled “The Project: the Rise and Fall of a Political and Artistic Paradigm.”

October 20th – 16.00-19.00 – Berlage Institute, Rotterdam

Philippe Morel
A Discussion about the Computational Logic of Late Capitalism

After a general presentation of the main theoretical hypotheses that I exposed in my recent essay Sense and Sensibilia (in Architectural Design, July 2011), in which I evoke a search for an understanding of the “computational logic of late capitalism”, I will describe more precisely with the help of examples such an important aspect of my work. As it can be noticed, the expression “computational logic of late capitalism” refers to the “Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism”, a theoretical analysis of Postmodernism that Fredric Jameson exposed in a famous book first released in 1992. While the logic described by F. Jameson is mainly related to our visual culture (the images of our world), the logic of capitalism I am calling computational is related to the intrinsic mechanism of the production of economical value in all aspects of the everyday life, as long as it is mediated by the use of a computer. It is therefore deeply related to the advent of a kind of capitalism that I first called in 2000 “Integral Capitalism”, capitalism which not only refers to the fact that it now controls the entire life from birth to death (and before and after), but that also refers to its own “technical logic”: its intrinsic mechanism. Such a mechanism is based on the capacities of integration that computation offers us through integrative computer simulations, simulations that are now strictly necessary in a general economy.