Dancing Animals

There are robot dogs patrolling the US–Mexico border. This story starts somewhere gentler: with Kurt Vonnegut leaving the house to buy one envelope.His wife wanted him to buy a hundred and keep them in a closet. He refused. The walk was the point. "We're here on Earth to fart around," he said. "And of course, the computers will do us out of that… we're dancing animals."This is part one of a two-part investigation into the physicality of the internet and AI. The bodies it runs on, and the bodies it runs over. Pulitzer Prize–winning Wall Street Journal reporter John West (The Internet Will Die, and So Will You) makes the case for friction: for doorknobs, mixtapes, and every inefficient thing the frictionless web was built to eliminate. Then lawyer and anthropologist Petra Molnar (The Walls Have Eyes) takes us to the border, where the frictionless future is already deployed — robot dogs, AI lie detectors, algorithms profiling people before they cross. And what gets tested at the border never stays there. Just ask the American towns, red and blue alike, tearing down their surveillance cameras.Also: the rise and demolition of GeoCities, my sixth-grade punk band's privacy disaster, Walter Benjamin's ninety-year-old warning, and the panopticon we finally built. It even has a subscription model now.Part two, Dreaming Machines, arrives next week.We hope you enjoy this episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds. Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.comOur full long-form expert interviews are available ad-free on Patreon. Hear complete conversations with John West, Petra Molnar, Dr. Jeremy Heffner, Dr. Joel Gold, and more: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMediaA Wondermind and Agoric Media ProductionAgoric Media https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/ https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia https://agoricmedia.substack.com/www.agoricmedia.comWondermind https://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/ https://www.wondermind.com/Host and Creator: Sean King O’Grady https://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/ https://seankingogrady.substack.com/Guests:John West — Pulitzer Prize–winning computational reporter, The Wall Street Journal / Author, The Internet Will Die, and So Will You — https://amzn.to/4zIp97CPetra Molnar — Lawyer and anthropologist / Refugee Law Lab, York University / Author, The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence — https://amzn.to/4zIhN3MOther works and things mentioned:Kurt Vonnegut’s envelope story (“we’re dancing animals”) — from his 2004 PBS interview and A Man Without a Country — https://www.cbsnews.com/news/god-bless-you-mr-vonnegut/Kurt Vonnegut — The Sirens of Titan — https://amzn.to/4h6hcl2Andor — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andor_(TV_series)GeoCities (1994–2009, RIP) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoCitiesA family logging onto the web — https://youtu.be/A81IwlDeV6cBad Religion — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Religionand Rage Against the Machine — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rage_Against_the_Machine (we sounded like neither)Walter Benjamin — “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_Mechanical_ReproductionOlia Lialina — “Once Again, the Doorknob” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olia_LialinaDon Norman and frictionless design — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_NormanLiz Pelly — Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist — https://amzn.to/4iIrQQdCheapo Records, Minneapolis–St. Paul — https://cheapodiscs.comDHS announces robot dogs for the US–Mexico border (Feb 2022) — https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/news/2022/02/01/feature-article-robot-dogs-take-another-step-towards-deploymentThe NYPD’s Digidog (yes, one was painted like a Dalmatian) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigidogTodd Miller and the “border industrial complex” — Empire of Borders — https://amzn.to/3Urj9QsAimé Césaire — Discourse on Colonialism — https://amzn.to/4qQcX0sHannah Arendt — The Origins of Totalitarianism — https://amzn.to/4iIrZDfMichel Foucault and the boomerang effect — “Society Must Be Defended” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_Must_Be_DefendedFlock Safety cameras,