Disintegrator copertina

Disintegrator

Disintegrator

Di: Roberto Alonso Trillo Marek Poliks and Helena McFadzean
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A proposito di questo titolo

 What does it mean to be human in an age where experience and behavior are mediated and regulated by algorithms? The Disintegrator Podcast is a limited series exploring how Artificial Intelligence affects who we are and how we express ourselves.

Join Roberto Alonso Trillo, Marek Poliks, and Helena McFadzean as they speak to the artists, philosophers, scientists, and social theorists at the forefront of human-AI relations.

Disintegrator is produced by Rubén Bañuelos.Copyright Marek Poliks, Roberto Alonso
Episodi
  • 45. El Apocalipsis Ya Está Aquí (w/ no.investigues)

    45. El Apocalipsis Ya Está Aquí (w/ no.investigues)
    Apr 23 2026
    This episode is entirely in Spanish. English translation is here: https://marekpoliks.com/noinvestigues_transcript.

    We are delighted to be joined by the algorithmically contagious memetic research project no.investigues. If you are chronically online, especially if you are familiar with the Spanish-speaking corners of the internet, you must have already interacted with one of the echoes of no.investigues —probably through their wonderful Substack, or in conversation at their Discord book club, or through the 28.research cluster, or most likely through monumental Instagram meme carousels.

    Their voice flows through online algorithmic inertia, yet the substance of their discourse exists in the shadow of virality.

    In this conversation, we talk about what it means to understand the apocalypse as an asymmetrical phenomenon: no one experiences it at the same time, and clearly not with the same intensity. This polyphonic nature of the apocalypse is amplified by the increasingly atomized and homogeneous global distribution of violence.

    Even so, the apocalypse is already here, and we might be better off learning how to inhabit it. Through an extrapolated reading of Ernesto Oroza’s visual archive Desobediencia Tecnológica (Technological Disobedience), documenting repurposed technology in Cuba, we talk about repurposing salvaged discourses into newly assembled modes of thinking that would allow us to confront the roughness of our apocalyptic situation. This invitation resonates with a thread that runs through our conversations ever since Exocapitalism came out: the premise that perhaps the apocalypse and capital are forces not to be treated as enemies, but as inertias of History. Both demand a nuanced engagement with their diverse local articulations of violence. Under this framework, the apocalypse feels like an ineluctable situation, one that cannot be won by fighting.

    Instagram: https://instagram.com/no.investigues/
    Selected no.investigues substack posts:
    Pensamiento apocalíptico, una aproximación: https://substack.com/home/post/p-192881638
    La Torre: https://substack.com/home/post/p-191289547
    Desobediencia Tecnológica de Ernesto Oroza: https://substack.com/home/post/p-179603849

    References: Valencia, Sayak. Capitalismo gore. Barcelona: Melusina, 2010. ISBN: 978-84-96614-87-1. Oroza, Ernesto. Desobediencia tecnológica: La permanencia de lo temporal en Cuba. Ciudad de México: FIEBRE Ediciones, 2025.
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    1 ora e 14 min
  • 44. The Grid (w/ Molly Taft)

    44. The Grid (w/ Molly Taft)
    Apr 8 2026
    Molly Taft, Senior Writer at Wired, joins us to talk datacenters, AI, US power infrastructure, and big energy. You've almost definitely read her work, especially if you live in the US. This episode absolutely ROCKS and is maybe the most grounded and realistic assessment of the role that all of those above forces play together in our social and political moment.

    A couple really relevant pieces, including some very very recent pieces.
    https://www.wired.com/story/a-new-google-funded-data-center-will-be-powered-by-a-massive-gas-plant/
    https://www.wired.com/story/senators-demand-to-know-how-much-energy-data-centers-use/
    https://www.wired.com/story/new-bernie-sanders-ai-safety-bill-would-halt-data-center-construction/
    https://www.wired.com/story/karen-hao-empire-of-ai-water-use-statistics/
    https://www.wired.com/story/data-centers-are-driving-a-us-gas-boom/
    https://www.wired.com/story/trump-energy-industry-ai-fossil-fuels-pittsburgh-summit/
    https://www.wired.com/story/ai-carbon-emissions-energy-unknown-mystery-research/

    Seriously, like, this is the only person I've found to be consistently trustworthy with respect to the intersection of energy reporting and tech. Follow her on X: https://x.com/mollytaft.

    She also reccomends a few other pieces that we touch on a little bit:
    Tina Nguyen's recent piece on the Pro-Human Declaration (right-wing populism X AI backlash) https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/888841/pro-human-ai-declaration-fli

    Gaby del Valle on the forefront of environmentalism and the right: https://harpers.org/archive/2026/04/state-of-nature-gaby-del-valle-acc-conservative-environmentalism/

    Anti-renewable energy protests and anti-data center movements: https://heatmap.news/plus/the-fight/spotlight/data-centers-renewables-opposition
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    1 ora
  • 43. The Soft (w/ Laura Tripaldi)

    43. The Soft (w/ Laura Tripaldi)
    Mar 11 2026
    We're joined by Laura Tripaldi: material scientist, writer, and researcher at the Center for AI and Culture at NYU Shanghai. You probably know her from Parallel Minds: Discovering the Intelligence of Materials (Urbanomic, 2022), an essay in book form that became a phenomenon in theory and art circles.

    Tripaldi's work challenges one of the strongest contentions within the philosophy computation: that intelligence is substrate-indifferent, that it can scale and migrate independent of what carries it. She argues the opposite, that you cannot separate intelligence from the materials through which it is conveyed.

    This becomes experimentally clear in her recent essay Substrates Unbound (Antikythera, 2025), where she tracks biocomputing systems like DishBrain — living neuronal cultures interfaced with silicon chips that don't execute pre-given code but reorganize, learn, and adapt. Mouse neurons and human neurons perform differently under the same training conditions. This reframes a central question of the moment: not 'can we scale intelligence,' but which matter are we asking to think, under what energy regime, and at what cost?

    References:
    • Tripaldi, Laura. Parallel Minds: Discovering the Intelligence of Materials (Urbanomic, 2022).
    • Tripaldi, Laura. "Substrates Unbound" (Antikythera, 2025).
    • Tripaldi, Laura. Soft Futures (newsletter, Substack).
    • Haraway, Donna. A Cyborg Manifesto (1985).
    • Parisi, Luciana. Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Biotechnology and the Mutations of Desire (Continuum, 2004) — source of the concept of hyper nature.
    • Hui, Yuk. The Question Concerning Technology in China (Urbanomic, 2016) — source of the concept of cosmotechnics.
    • Barad, Karen. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Duke, 2007) — onto-epistemology and intra-action.
    • Irigaray, Luce — referenced as an influence on Tripaldi's feminist materialism.
    • Pasquinelli, Matteo. The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence (Verso, 2023) — discussed in relation to technology as captured labor; Tripaldi pushes back via the history of automata.
    • Laschi, Cecilia. Soft Robotics Lab, National University of Singapore — pioneer of octopus-inspired soft robotics.
    • Hookway, Branden. Interface (MIT Press, 2014).
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    56 min
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