The Liquefaction of Manuel De Landa

In War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, Manuel De Landa cuts through humanism and adopts the position of “robot historian.” Like a techno-Foucault, he traces the evolution of self-organizing machine consciousness under the selective pressures of human warfare. Even more interesting is that he combines three theoretical influences: non-linear dynamics, the “nomad thought” of French post-structuralists Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and the psychedelic experience (DeLanda returns yearly to ritually trip with a shaman in Oaxaca). Crosslinking these already...