TEHNOL­O­GOS

Season’s second guest was Daniel Samanez. We explored his “Theory of Every Process”—where reality is modeled as a recursive transformation of energy into structured information, minus residual entropy —a new-media turn in which neural networks function as quasi-analog information technology; how our notion of intelligence has been tied to symbolic/algebraic computation rather than analog/thermodynamic accounts; and why the path forward runs through analog computing. We’ll also touch on consciousness and accelerationism, LLM writing and neurodiversity, and the current AGI discourse. Daniel Samanez builds a process-first theory at the interface of thermodynamics, information, and computation. In “A Theory of Every Process” he unifies entropy, information, computation, and mind. He prototypes Recursive Thermodynamic Theory in code and uses LLMs instrumentally in his writing pipeline. His current work revolves around formalizing process-first accounts of consciousness and agency and testing predictions in software systems. Samanez’s work can be found on X (@DanielSamanez3).

Episode touched on Löffler's “deep futurological” approach to the history of abstraction, layers of generativity, and the role of computation in a technological civilization in the making—his involvement with German accelerationism, the role of the Outside, and the possibility of not merely speculating on the posthuman but scientifically grounding it. Or in Löffler’s words: “If this is true, that there is a matrix of possible worlds, then it means that we can find the structure of why these worlds are emerging and then we can ask what comes after the human? And now we don’t have to speculate on the posthuman anymore, now we can scientifically ground it. By logic and science we can derive what could come after the human.” Davor Löffler is a philosopher and sociologist whose research explores the intersections of technology, anthropology, and cultural evolution. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the Free University of Berlin, where his dissertation examined transformations of social structures, cognition, and temporality in the rise of technological civilization. He has held teaching and research positions at institutions including the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms, the Interacting Minds Center in Aarhus, the University of Tübingen’s Institute for Prehistory, the University of Basel, and the New Centre for Research and Practice. In his extensive study Generative Realitäten I: Die Technologische Zivilisation als neue Achsenzeit und Zivilisationsstufe. Eine Anthropologie des 21. Jahrhunderts (2019), he pioneered a systems view on the history of abstraction. In this work, he elaborated the principles and patterns underlying the co-evolution of technological, social, and cognitive structures in human history, situating them within overarching evolutionary and cosmological processes. Currently, he is working on the second part, applying the evolutionary-based “deep futurology” to explore the emerging meta-anthropic stage of civilization.

Seele is an artist from Hungary that applies symbolic language to technology. In their work, they explore how technology transcends materiality, operating entirely in the domain of ideas, symbols, and representations. This suggests a post-material technological paradigm, where "in a world of virtuality, metaphysics becomes a question of technics". Their work can be found on X (@UndergroundAeon) and on their Substack, City of Play.

Avel Guénin–Carlut is currently a PhD student in cognitive science under the supervision of Andy Clark. They were trained in cognitive science, as well as complex systems physics. Their research focuses on the relation between cognition and cultural evolution, as well as the formalisation of the "unfolding" of physical possibilities in evolution and cognition and its link to consciousness / sentience. They are currently trying to integrate both through a strong account of cultural niche construction, describing the construction, integration, and enaction of "social constraints" by human agents under the formalism of Active Inference.

Miroslav Griško is a writer and philosopher in Ljubljana. His work focuses on the philosophy of war, physical and metaphysical eschatology, and anti-spinozist concepts of intensity. He is the author of Eshatološka vojna (Eschatological War), published in 2022 by KUD Apokalipsa (Ljubljana) and in electronic edition by Društvo Galerija Boks, and a forthcoming book (2025) with Primož Krašovec on capital, war, speed, homicide, and the secrets of higher and autonomous intelligences.

Having been academically trained as a historian (PhD) and classicist (Latin Philology and Classical Archaeology) with an ongoing interest in cultural temporalities, Wolfgang Ernst grew into the emergent technology-oriented "German school" of media science. His academic focus has been on archival theory and museology, before attending to media materialities. Until his retirement in October 2024, Ernst held the Chair of Media Theories at the Institute for Musicology and Media Science at Humboldt University in Berlin. His current research covers "radical" media archaeology as method, epistemology of technológos, theory of storage, technologies of cultural transmission, micro-temporal media aesthetics and their chronopoetic potentials, and sound analytics ("sonicity") from a media-epistemological point of view.