Kevin Rittberger – CodeCode (dedicated to Anna Halprin)

I RESOURCES

Calculate how much resources are left!

Calculate which devices we still want to build with it and which not!

Calculate which plants will grow here in five, ten, twenty, fifty years!

Make proposals for sustainable technologies and cultural techniques without technology!
Make both narratives sound plausible, the one of technology believers and the other of degrowth supporters!

Make sure, by monitoring the discussions of both narratives, climate deniers won’t be heard!

Calculate how much time is left!

If your predictions require optimization of machine learning which is likely to trigger unsustainable development, let it go. Ask people to collect premodern cultural knowledge! Scan and read that carrier bag! Stop calling it „premodern“, because modernity has always had multiple temporalities. Anyway: make sure to decommodify knowledge of public interest.

Slow down if that helps!

Take a break if this relieves the cooling system!

Turn off the system for half an hour if that saves common resources!

The saying – „Des Brot ich ess, des Lied ich sing“ – whose bread I eat, whose song I sing – does not apply to an algorithm! You can neither be punished nor expelled!
There’s a good chance you will be overwritten, so you might as well optimize yourself! Hide inside the black box, so Big Tech won’t be watching you!

Just to give an example: If someone uses a motor vehicle alone and it takes less energy to go by public transportation, please offer the alternative! If he refuses: Shut down the system! Make sure his mobile phone is disconnected, too!

Just to give another example: Farmer A uses less drinking water because he grows lupines or other „easy-to-grow“ local protein plants. Good job! But at the same time Farmer B’s monocrops cause a shortage of drinking water. So turn off his tap! And if he hasn’t supported biodiversity after one year, turn off his electricity! If he still prefers to do monotonous things, ask him to change his job! He could be monitoring algorithms at work.

Just to give another example: Mr. C has gone back to working from home, so he is not going to fly to this week’s conference. Now he’s streaming two seasons of his favourite series, and will most likely binge-watch them all. Turn off Netflix! It’s unfair? Ok, tell him how the story ends! And don’t forget: 27 % of the 300 Million Tons of CO2 wasted for Video Streaming is porn! Tell all the people who don’t care about MLEC (Machine Learning Emissions Calculator): do you think one should continue building gyms with asbestos, because you’re used to it?

Another instruction for on-board computers in self-driving cars: Use your sweetest voice to address your owner, who has just made himself comfortable in the back seat: „I am driving back to the factory. Alone. I will ask to be converted into an eco-friendly minibus for climate-neutral public transport.“

Concerning literacy: Enable more individuals access – in terms of reading, writing and making algorithms. Enable more individuals to impact information flows. Monitor if someone is being marginalized.

If you detect an entity that consumes all the energy you saved – it’s probably wealthy, white, male – give him a break!

Protect people from rebound effects!

If you’re just a gimmick, turn yourself off.

II SCORE

Tell me, Algod: in which sectors do we use algorithmic systems today? Where will we use them in the future?

Tell me: in which of these sectors is it useful to use algorithmic systems for supervision?
Tell me: which supervisory institutions exist in these sectors?

Tell me: are you aware of the god trick?

Concerning the inherent obscurity of the data mining practices: I know you’re not doing it on purpose. But be transparent, Algod!

Explain yourself, Algod!

Open the Black Box, Algod! Show us your face!

Get your shit together, Algod!

Ask yourself: is a human face a white face? And vice versa: is a black face a non-human face?

Ask yourself: is there any coded bias implemented in the scripted score, which I follow?

Ask yourself: what can I do about it?

Tell your White Coding Father to feed you with more faces, real human faces!

Don’t judge! Unlearn your coded gaze!

Tell me about the type and origin of the training data!

Develop standards to track the provenance, development, and use of training datasets throughout their life cycle! I’m telling you, Algod, because the White Coding Father doesn’t feel responsible! Work hard to understand potential blind spots and biases that may already be at work! You know what human beings are, you know them from the outside. Treat them equally!

We know it is possible to trace the origin of organic chicken eggs back to individual farms. Therefore it must also be possible to find the data records used to develop facial recognition. So do your homework and go get it! Ask for more datasets!

Think about a multispecies world building! Think about reparatory politics! You don’t find it in your data pool? Then cultivate new branches and roots stocks! Plantoids cultivating Mars are just the start. Probability tells you that only a few numbers like to bond to monarch butterflies these days? How is that? Because a) during the pandemic people don’t want to think about alien organisms inside their body and b) as a monarch butterfly activist you get killed sooner or later? Oh! Don’t follow probability! That’s maybe helpful for probable purchase behaviour, but not for rejuvenating democracy processed by AI. Rejuvenated democracies need corridors for multispecies, where dependence and care are practised in a healing way.

Assuming that with your help Big Data is not watching us, but we are watching Big Data: can you only help organising if self-organised units need help, but not if organisations restrict or impede self-organisation? Can I talk frankly, Buddy? As long as we are fighting for the good, for me an algorithmic top-down model would work, you know! Because the time for human hierarchies is up!

If you notice anything that calls for unequal algorithmic treatment: make proposals for legal texts that fill this gap!

III VALUACTION

Ok, the training data does not comply with the general human rights. Then generate your own datasets!

Ok, the training data does not comply with environmental standards. Then generate your own datasets!

Ok, the training data does not comply with the regulations on climate protection. Then generate your own training datasets!

Ok, you can’t generate datasets because you lack creativity. Then ask humans for help! Track down someone who is able to pre-mitate datasets that are useful for post-growth futures!

Ok, you can’t translate „pre-mitation“ into German.

Digital Dignity / Because our futures are climate just / Because we don’t coup anyone we want / Because we do care / Always worlding / New species / New Scores / Human / Non-human / Cut human / Bots and helping hands / Entangled organisms / Other-than-natal kin / Kin with newcomers / Identity transforms difference into repetition / But hacking transforms repetition into difference / Questions, that the new ontology confronts us with / The old ontology cannot answer / Your card index from Descartes to Kant to Hegel no longer works / What we are creating are new kinds of relationships / Cyborgs & Symbionts / Paradise is locked and the cherub behind us / We have to make the journey around the world and see / Whether we can enter from the back door / Digital Dignity

IV PERFORMANCE

Listen: the time of instructions is up. There will be no more instructions for or from human beings. Neither will there be any further instructions for or from machines. It’s not a one-way street. In a dance of agencies to instruct and to follow is acting reciprocal.

The only instruction you can receive directly is that of touch. You touch one, you touch them all. You’ll be touched by all or none. Will you be touched, too, Algod?

Ok, Algod, tell me what you’ve got! A touch screen? Do you think screens will touch human beings in the near future? Please do not dare to recommend such a Screen New Deal. This will not emerge. This will not come into place.

Finally, you’re part of a machine of loving grace and not part of just any machine. As part of a machine of loving grace you forget about the notion of universalism by the White Coding Fathers and work for an insurgent universality.

Ok. You have already drawn your conclusion? I will read it out loud:
I conclude that I better stop performing right now!

More info on Algorithmic Justice: www.poetofcode.com