Friday, September 12, 2025

Narrow-leaved Marsh Orchid (Dactylorhiza traunsteineri): Link | Discussion of Gary Hall’s new book: *Masked Media: What It Means to be Human in the Age of Artificial Creative Intelligence"



Link | Discussion of Gary Hall’s new book: *Masked Media: What It Means to be Human in the Age of Artificial Creative Intelligence" 


Dear Gary (Hall), Sasha, Peter, Gabriela, all, 

Greetings from MIT OCW-centric wiki World University and School planned in each of all 200 countries for free online MITOCW-centric WUaS degrees from home, including PhDs as WUaS accredits further. 

From the text chat, and with some questions - 

Thanks so much Gary Hall, Sasha, Peter, and Benjamin, for your provocative Masked Media thinking and book -

I ask this question in terms of developing ~200 free online MIT OCW-centric wiki World University and School Universities in each of all 200 countries and languages, and wiki schools for people-to-people #WikiTeaching and #WikiLearning for speakers of all 7159 known living languages ...

If the PhD potentially (strong ones)  … generates new knowledge PhD after PhD … and so addresses new theorizing after new theorizing … and in media, and Masked Media "thus constitutes a call to radically redesign theory for a time of multiple crises"

https://pureportal.coventry.ac.uk/en/publications/masked-media-what-it-means-to-be-human-in-the-age-of-artificial-c#:~:text=In%20Masked%20Media%2C%20a%20follow,(re)election%20of%20Trump. 

... how could Masked Media inform the development of #WorldUniversityInSchool (#TwitterX #Linkedin) … ?


Pt 2
... and regarding the INCREDIBLE #ToolifyAIWUaS article by Peter Norvig  Revolutionizing Education with machine learning and AI - https://www.toolify.ai/ai-news/revolutionizing-education-with-machine-learning-and-ai-2574306 ?


And see too -

Where will an iterating #RealisticVirtualEarth #ForEverything per #ToolifyAIWUaS "#RevolutionizingEducation w #MLandAI" head ...?  

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/scottgkmacleod_revolutionizing-education-with-machine-learning-activity-7232411782890352640-dWcl


So, where will an iterating #RealisticVirtualEarth #ForEverything per #ToolifyAIWUaS "#RevolutionizingEducation w #MLandAI" https://www.toolify.ai/ai-news/revolutionizing-education-with-machine-learning-and-ai-2574306 + #ForAgingReversal #ForExtremeLongevity #GeneticDrugTherapies re #GMolecularView #GCellView #GStreetView w #TimeSlider #GeneticData go?

https://x.com/Q_YogaMacFlower/status/1826342995832320276

https://x.com/WorldUnivAndSch/status/1826344819436011588 ~

Thanks so much!
Scott
Scott GK MacLeod (http://scottmacleod.com/)



(Regarding your organizing for this upcoming publishing / academic press online meeting - 
https://copim.pubpub.org/pub/servpubevent/release/2


(Thanks, Sasha, all … The @WUaSPress in 7159 known living languages, with machine and human translation, at free #MITOCW-centric wiki World University and School  seeks to invent the book anew, publishing from Google Street View with time slider in a #RealisticVirtualEarth to both 1) paper, and two 2) digital devices like Digital Masks (eg Google Samsung’s Project Moohan in the Gemini AI era) and to #WUaSMultimediaRooms and especially re my #physicalDigital ethnographic field site, Harbin Hot Springs in Northern California, in a #RealisticVirtualHarbin - http://www.scottmacleod.com/ActualVirtualHarbinBook.html  … and see these 5 UC Berkeley Anthropology TSWG talks - https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2020/12/doubledays-hummingbird-cynanthus.html?m=0  - regarding an upcoming Virtual Harbin Hot Springs ethnographic book project 2 and regarding also especially - https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Academic_Press_at_World_University_and_School planned again in all living Langs)


And further in text chat to Benjamin whose email address I didn't find - 
Do video conferencing and virtual world communications (like in the 3d group buildable virtual world of Second Life) offer new forms of qualitative communications, university-wise, as well? Revolutionizing Education with Machine Learning and AI - https://www.toolify.ai/ai-news/revolutionizing-education-with-machine-learning-and-ai-2574306  - ahead?


All the best, 
Scott
Scott GK MacLeod



PS

Joanna, All,  <jo.zylinska@gmail.com>, enlace@17edu.org ...


On Tue, Sep 2, 2025 at 4:53 PM Scott MacLeod <helianth@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear all, 

Greetings from the SF Bay Area and MIT OCW-centric wiki World University and School, planning major online research universities in all 200 countries and in their main languages for free online WUaS degrees- Bachelor, PhD, Law, MD, IB high school/sim, AA/AS and Master's - from home and in an emerging realistic virtual earth (and see Peter Norvig's INCreDIBLE #ToolifyAIWUaS article Revolutionizing Education with Machine Learning and AI: WorldUniversityInSchool  updated 3/2/24 - https://www.toolify.ai/ai-news/revolutionizing-education-with-machine-learning-and-ai-2574306 ... and with the first mention I know of other than by WUaS of a #RealisticVirtualEarth #Hashtag on #TwitterX and #LinkedIN) ... and wiki schools for people to people open wiki teaching and learning in all 7159 living languages. 

I'd like to join this Masked Media book event + please. 

Will await the Zoom URL ...

Thanks, 
Scott

Scott Gordon K MacLeod

- Scott GK MacLeod  
Founder, President, CEO & Professor
CC-4 licensed MIT OCW-centric, Wiki, 
World University & School (WUaS) 
- USPS US Post Office, General Delivery, Canyon, CA 94516 






PS


PPS
Possibly related wiki subjects at WUaS (and check out the iterating media MIT OCW-centric courses too eventually for credit to see how WUaS will work in the future )







On Tue, Sep 2, 2025, 07:32 Joanna Zylinska via Air-L <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> wrote:
 Dear All,

Open Humanities Press is pleased to announce details of an upcoming online
symposium based around a discussion of Gary Hall's new book, *Masked Media:
What It Means to be Human in the Age of Artificial Creative Intelligence
<http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/masked-media/> *(London:
Open Humanities Press, 2025; open access).

Friday 12th of September, 2025
9:30 – 11:30 am Mexico City
11.30-13.30 Ann Arbour
16.30-18.30 London
via Zoom

With:
Peter Baker (University of Stirling)
Alexandra Anikina (University of Southampton)
Gareth Williams (University of Michigan)
Benjamín Mayer-Foulkes (17, Instituto de Estudios Críticos)
Gabriela Méndez-Cota (Culture Machine/Universidad Iberoamericana)

Co-organised by the electronic journal Culture Machine
<https://culturemachine.net/> and 17, Instituto de Estudios Críticos
<https://diecisiete.org/masked-media/> in Mexico City, the event is hosted
by the Laboratory of Contemporary Writings / Laboratorio de Escrituras
Contemporáneas, which is being launched with this event. The idea for the
Laboratory of Contemporary Writings emerged from a recent ACLA Seminar
titled ‘Displacing Academic Practices in the Ruins of the Neoliberal
University’. While linked to conversations around infrapolitics
<https://culturemachine.net/vol-22-anthropocene-infrapolitics/>, its focus
is broader: on writing, subjectivity, students, ourselves, and on how to
respond to the conditions we’re living through today.

To join this event online, email: enlace@17edu.org

---

On Masked Media: What It Means to be Human in the Age of Artificial
Creative Intelligence
<http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/masked-media/> [open
access]

If we want a more socially and environmentally just future, do we need a
radical new theory of change – or to radically change theory? It’s this
question that Gary Hall and his collaborators have been addressing for over
twenty years with experimental publishing projects such as Open Humanities
Press, Liquid and Living Books, Radical Open Access Collective, and the
Culture-led Re-Commoning of Cities. Unsettling received ideas of the author
and book, originality and copyright, real and artificial intelligence,
these uncommon communities of theorist-mediums have been testing some of
the ‘non-modernist-liberal’ modes of creating and sharing knowledge that
are enabled by various media technologies, from writing and print through
photography and video to computers and GenAI. By thinking outside the
masked black box that renders the anthropocentric, Euro-Western
knowledge-making practices of the arts and humanities invisible – ensuring
the human is kept ontologically separate from the nonhuman, be it animals,
the planet or algorithmic machines – they show there’s no such thing as the
human, the nonhuman already being in(the)human.

*Masked Media *is one such experimental project. It is not a
'human-authored' work. Instead, the thinking within it has been generated
by a radically relational inhuman assemblage that includes AI and more.
Although the book appears under a real name –  ‘Gary Hall’ – which, like
Banksy and Karen Eliot, acts as a mask, it is not the intellectual property
of a singular human individual, and is published under a Collective
Conditions for Re-Use licence to reflect this. Masked Media demonstrates
how such norm-critical experimentation is of vital importance to our
understanding of everything from identity politics and the decolonisation
of knowledge, through epistemologies of the Global South and the
possibilities of open city infrastructure, to extractive capitalism,
planetary destruction and the Anthropocene.

--

Joanna Zylinska

Professor of Media Philosophy + Critical Digital Practice

Director (Interim) of the Centre for Attention Studies
<https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/centre-attention-studies>

King's College London

Department of Digital Humanities



NEW BOOK: The Perception Machine: Our Photographic Future between the
Eye and A <https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262546836/the-perception-machine/>I
(MIT Press, open access)



Website <http://www.joannazylinska.net/>

IG research notebook <https://www.instagram.com/joanna.zylinska/>
_______________________________________________
The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list
is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org

Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
http://www.aoir.org/




PPS
My notes - 





PPPSa
searched on 
alexandra sasha anikina digital media 

Alexandra (Sasha) Anikina is a Russian-born media theorist and artist who explores the intersection of digital media, algorithms, and post-socialist culture. Drawing on her upbringing in the former Soviet Union, she uses her research and art to critique the power structures embedded in technology, focusing on how algorithms shape culture and knowledge. 
Professional background
  • Media theorist and academic: Anikina is an Associate Professor of Digital Media and Technocultures at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton in the United Kingdom.
  • Research focus: She studies how algorithms and media technologies influence visual culture, particularly within the context of post-socialism and decolonization. She investigates topics like AI imaginaries, affective infrastructures, and feminist studies of science and technology.
  • Artistic practice: As an artist, Anikina works across various media, including experimental film, digital media, game engines, and embroidery. She also presents "lecture-performances" to combine theoretical ideas with artistic expression. 
Key artistic themes and projects
  • Post-socialist influence: Anikina's art often uses her post-Soviet background to challenge Western-centric ideas of technological progress. She draws on Soviet philosophy and media history to offer a unique perspective on data governance and control.
  • Procedural films: She is known for her "procedural films"—live simulations created with game engines that play themselves based on algorithmic procedures. Her work Chronic Film (2019), for instance, uses an algorithm to generate all possible pixel combinations, an exercise that would take billions of years to complete.
  • Techno-animism: Anikina explores how technology can be viewed through an animistic lens, where non-human entities like algorithms are given a sense of agency. This theme challenges the human-centric perspective of many digital systems. 
Russian influence
Born in Kolomna, USSR, Anikina's art and theory are deeply informed by Russian and Soviet history. In a 2021 interview with the East European Film Bulletin, she explained that her work is inspired by her family history and draws on Soviet visual tropes, cybernetics, and the history of women in computing. She has also collaborated with Russian art institutions, including the National Centre for Contemporary Arts (NCCA) in Moscow


PPPPS





PPPPPS

Re upcoming 
"Society, Information Technology and the Global University" book (Academic Press at MIT OCW-centric wiki World Univ & sch)


https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/society%20and%20information%20technology 




* *

Saturday, March 13, 2025 

Re: Link | Discussion of Gary Hall’s new book: Masked Media 


Gary Hall gary@garyhall.info

Attachments2:28 AM (14 hours ago)
to Scott, me, Instituto, A.Anikina, peter.baker, gabriela.mendez


Dear Scott,

Thanks for the links. I'll enjoy looking through them. In the meantime...

I guess a little while ago I speculated on two possible futures for universities. 

The more positive vision of the future was that put forward in the book I mentioned yesterday: Open Education: A Study in Disruption (Roman & Littlefield, 2015). Among other things, that details some of the things we actually did at the university where I work. 

Around the same time I also offered a somewhat darker vision in The Uberfication of the University (University of Minnesota, 2016). Sadly, though it was a form of speculative theory at the time, a lot of this has more or less come about. 

I've attached copies of both books for you - they're only short. They're available open access, so feel free to share. 

As I say, if I was to update this now in the era of machine learning and AI, I'd probably base it on the approach sketched in chapter 9 of Masked Media: that on redesigning the city and its institutions using resources and infrastructure made available by those associated with open access, open GLAM, FLOSS, p2p filesharing, copyfarAI and the anti-privatised knowledge commons.

The two wiki projects I mentioned are: 

Liquid Books (http://liquidbooks.pbwiki.com/) 

Living Books About Life (http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/)

Hope this helps. Happy to talk further. 

Best, Gary




* * 

Saturday, March 13, 2025


Dear Gary Hall, Sasha Anikina, Peter Baker, Gabriela Mendez Cota, all,  

Thanks for your email reply to all of us regarding the future of the university especially. And I appreciate your radical thinking in your "Masked Media. What It Means to Be Human in the Age of Artificial Creative Intelligence" while keeping academic careers in mind, for example, Gary and Sasha - and regarding the arts and humanities especially. I also appreciate your title 'masked media' and its reference to "mass media," and possibly regarding Marshall McLuhan's 'the medium is the message,' where media as we all know is "the main means of mass communication," and its plural is medium. 

Here are the open access resources from MIT OCW that WUaS is developing with -
MIT OCW web site in 2025

and from a previous iteration of MIT OCW - in 7 languages - 

and 
MIT OCW courses in their departments, numbering here 38

WUaS has put together about 42 majors here in English - 
http://worlduniversityandschool.org/ (but web page this is currently in development ... and potentially as WUaS seeks to code for all 7.9 billion people on the planet, each a Wikidata PIN # from here - https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/You_at_World_University - as wiki teachers and wiki learners among speakers of all 7159 known living languages for free universal education, and possibly as the website host develops their Linux servers for security + even a #RealisticVirtualEarth). 



Regarding the future of MIT OCW-centric wiki World University and School (free, wiki and MIT (OCW-centric)) as a kind of 'masked media,' here are the beginnings of a number of online universities -  

Scotland World University and School, from - https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Scotland (planned in English, Scottish Gaelic and Scots languages)

Mexico World University and School - https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Mexico (planned in Spanish for free online WUaS degrees +)

Iceland World University and School  - not yet begun -  planned in the Icelandic language (do you speak some Icelandic, Gary, since you were born there?)

England World University and School - https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/England 

Russia World University and School - https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Russian_Federation - planned in Russian + 

... and which will all emerge from here - https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Nation_States - and in these countries main and official languages (https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Languages) for online free-to-students' CC-4 licensed MIT OCW-centric #GrowWithGoogleWUaS #freeWUaSdegrees - Bachelor, PhD, Law, MD, IB high school or similar, AA/ AS, and Master's degrees, from home, - as well as wiki schools in  ALL the languages  in each of these countries for people-to-people open #WikiTeaching and #WikiLearning. Open access-wise, WUaS builds both on the open access licensing of Creative Commons' CC-4 licensing (which says anyone can 1) share it freely, 2) adapt it eg with AI and ML, but 3) non-commercially, hence free-to-students' WUaS degrees) MIT OpenCourseWare; and WUaS seeks to facilitate open access people to people wiki-teaching and wiki-learning for speakers of all 7159 known living languages ('mutual intelligibility' being one definition of languages that The Ethnologue based in Texas uses). 

WUaS on both of our #WUaSwings seeks to hire as many as 2.5 million people over the next 50-100 years (slightly bigger than Walmart's number of employees (~2.3 million), which is in 19 out of 200 countries, and WUaS seeks to grow and develop in all ~200 countries per the Olympics, leaving about 181 out of 200 countries in which to grow our #PhysicalDigital WUaS Educational Services' Stores for books, computer, robotics, groceries, hospital technologies + ) ... and to become the Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Cambridge, Oxford, Technical University of Munich, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Heidelberg University, and the Humboldt University of Berlin, and PSL University, Paris-Saclay University, Sorbonne University, Sciences Po, and the Institut Polytechnique de Paris + (and to potentially hire faculty from among these universities' graduates) ... of the internet in all ~200 countries and in their main languages.

Thanks so much for your two books which are open access, I look forward to looking through them (and see some of the PSs below).  I've added their titles here - 


using a kind of modified AAA (American Anthropological Association) citation practice - 

Hall, Gary. 2016. [https://archive.org/details/uberficationofun0000hall The Uberfication of the University]. (ISBN 978-1-5179-0212-4). Minnesota, USA: University of Minnesota Press.

van Mourik Broekman, Pauline, Gary Hall, Ted Byfield, Shaun Hides, and Simon Worthington. 2015. [https://www.academia.edu/11922518/Open_Education_A_Study_in_Disruption Open Education: A Study in Disruption]. London & New York: Rowman & Littlefield.

In the 'Summary' field, I typed - 
"added 2 books by Gary Hall on the university and open education" 

Rather than adding them further in their entirety both to Archive.org - per your kind suggestion to feel free to share them - ... I found only a limited preview of one in Archive .org and an earlier version of the other in academia.edu. 


Regarding your work on the city, let's explore this further in a #PhysicalDigital #RealisticVirtualEarth - https://www.toolify.ai/ai-news/revolutionizing-education-with-machine-learning-and-ai-2574306 - #ForCities and one which we can wiki-edit and wiki-add to as end users too ... like we can add photos and videos to Google Street View with time slider 

(and see this photo of the Harbin Hot Springs gatehouse I added to StreetView as an example - 
"X a
a Harbin Gate House photo I wiki-added to Google Street View with a time slider - How to develop a realistic virtual Harbin Hot Springs from this single photo to start?

EXPANDED -  
INCREDIBLE #DrFeiFeiLi #MITOCW-centric wiki @WorldUnivAndSch can now begin to build out a #RealisticVirtualEarth - re #PeterNorvig's #ToolifyAIWUaS https://www.toolify.ai/ai-news/revolutionizing-education-with-machine-learning-and-ai-2574306 in #RealisticVirtualEarthForMuseums #ForLibraries (both ALL, EVER, in ALL Languages) (& in #GStreetView w #GTimeSlider #GMaps) #ForUniversityResearch to which we can #WikiAdd to eg w a Harbin Gate House photo I wiki-added to Google Street View with time slider - How to develop a realistic virtual Harbin Hot Springs from this single photo to start?

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Harbin+Hot+Springs/@38.7860806,-122.6518315,3a,88y,90t/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6!1sAF1QipOR33JEA3qzAchuAOEFPss-U_w6cXPc-OsiNgSE!2e10!3e12!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipOR33JEA3qzAchuAOEFPss-U_w6cXPc-OsiNgSE%3Dw203-h153-k-no!7i576!8i436!4m7!3m6!1s0x8084724dbe981ba5:0xde57c3ab0ecaa2c9!8m2!3d38.7860806!4d-122.6518315!10e5!16zL20vMDZ5czh3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDgxOS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2025/01/monterey-cypress-hesperocyparis.html
~ How further ?" 
here 


...and see also these recent Google Earth Tweets in some of these regards - 
https://x.com/googleearth/status/1963680835359342985

https://x.com/googleearth/status/1964037376356807090

https://x.com/googleearth/status/1956037619898266069

And re this Google Earth Tweet with a petri dish + ... 
I am wondering if it's suggestive of a #RealisticVirtualEarthForCells, a #RealisticVirtualEarthForGenes and  #RealisticVirtualEarthForAgingReversal with computer science and AI and ML ... 

all of which will interoperate with my emerging #RealisticVirtualHarbin Hot Springs' ethnographic field site project eg building out in GStreetView with time slider here - 
~ https://goo.gl/maps/7gSsSTweRCBo9gf87 (and where you can 'walk' the '4 miles' I think down to the town of Middletown, California, but where one can't go into Harbin Hot Springs Heart Consciousness church to soak virtual in the Harbin warm pool from home yet) ~ https://twitter.com/HarbinBook ~ http://bit.ly/HarbinBook ~
 for Harbin Ethnographic Book project #2, and for publishing from Google Street View with a time slider as well. (Glad Peter Norvig in his INCREDIBLE #ToolifyAIWUaS article titled Revolutionizing Education from Machine Learning and AI updated 3/2/25 wrote about a Virtual Harbin Hot Springs AND for the study of bliss therein even).

Will add you to the open WUaS Weekly Business Meetings / News and Q&As emailings - on Mondays at 10 am Pacific Time in Zoom (https://www.youtube.com/@ScottMacLeodWorldUniversity/videos). 

Thanks again, kind regards, (Friendly Quaker greetings), best wishes, 
Scott

I blogged about some of this in my daily blog here on F 9/12/25 - 




PS 

"Masked Media shows how such norm-critical experimentation is of vital importance to our understanding of everything, from identity politics and the decolonisation of knowledge, through epistemologies of the Global South and the possibilities of open city infrastructure, to extractive capitalism, planetary destruction ..."

PSa 
Gary Hall masked media. What does masked media mean?

Masked Media is a media experiment as much as it is a work of deft media philosophy. Moving beyond well-worn practices of book authorship, Masked Media yields something far more substantial: a collaborative media praxeology for the twenty-first century and beyond.



PPS


The Uberfication of the University is a 2016 book by Gary Hall that analyzes how the principles of the sharing economy, exemplified by companies like Uber, are transforming higher education into a data-driven, entrepreneurial system focused on efficiency and reputation rather than traditional academic values. Hall argues that this "uberfication" leads to a focus on quantifiable metrics and market-driven outcomes, undermining the personal and collaborative aspects of learning and research. 
Key Concepts:
  • Platform Capitalism:
    The book examines how universities are becoming platforms for data collection and monetization, similar to how companies like Uber operate. 
  • Sharing Economy:
    Hall critiques the application of sharing economy models to higher education, where the focus shifts from shared knowledge to the commodification of academic services. 
  • Reputation Economy:
    The book highlights the increasing importance of quantifiable metrics and "billboard making" in higher education, where institutions and individuals compete for visibility and funding. 
  • Affirmative Disruption:
    Hall's work is part of a larger project to "affirmatively disrupt" this model by experimenting with alternative, more collaborative, and open-access forms of academic work. 
Impact and Context:
  • Forerunners Series:
    The Uberfication of the University was published as part of the University of Minnesota Press's Forerunners: Ideas First series, which focuses on new and speculative scholarly ideas. 
  • Radical Open Access:
    The book itself is an example of radical open access, with portions of it available for free download under a Creative Commons license. 
  • Critique of Neoliberalism:
    The book is a critique of neoliberal policies that have promoted privatization and deregulation in higher education, leading to the adoption of corporate model


PPPS

Monday, September 8, 2025
Jaguar (Bolivia): 9/8/25 #MITOCW-centric @WorldUnivAndSch #WUaSNewsAndQA #WUaSaccreditation #IndiaWUaS in #22scheduled #LanguagesWUaS * (was - M 9/8/25 open MIT OCW-centric wiki World Univ & Sch WUaS News and Q&A, with Zoom URL)








* 


















https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dactylorhiza_majalis_subsp._lapponica


https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Dactylorhiza_traunsteineri

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Dactylorhiza_traunsteineri

...


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