New Models

This is a preview — for the full episode, subscribe: https://newmodels.io https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com Our guest is American media theorist Douglas Rushkoff. He is the author of such seminal books on digital culture and networked communication as Cyberia (1994), Media Virus (1995), and Coercion (1999); and numerous further titles including, Program or Be Programmed (2010/2025) and Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires (2022). He is also the host of Team Human and a professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics as CUNY/Queens. On this episode, Doug speaks with us about the evolution (and devolution) of digital culture across web 1, 2, 3, and beyond via a synthesis of media theory, psychedelic thinking, and practical wisdom for navigating our contemporary networks. Names cited: Adam Curtis, Alex Garland, Allan Kaprow, Amazon, Art Bell, AT&T, Bernie Madoff, CNN, Cyberia, CVS, Dan Rather, Daniel Dennett, David Bowie, David Hershkovitz, David Lynch, Donna Haraway, Douglas Rushkoff, Elon Musk, Emmanuel Levinas, Francis Bacon, Genesis P-Orridge, Jake Tapper, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, Jesse Armstrong, Joe Rogan, John Brockman, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Chaikin, Kamala Harris, Lauren Sanchez, Louis Rossetto, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Madonna, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Buber, Martin Heidegger, Media Virus, Michael Jackson, Milton Friedman, Naomi Klein, Naomi Wolf, Neil Simon, New Models, New York Times, Norbert Wiener, Orit Halpern, Paper Magazine, Peter Thiel, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Present Shock, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Dawkins, Robert Anton Wilson, Ross Douthat, Skinny Puppy, Spinoza, Star Trek, Team Human, Temple of Psychic Youth, The Long Boom, The Process Church, The Simpsons, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, Walter Benjamin, William S. Burroughs, Wired Magazine

This is a preview — for the full episode, subscribe: https://newmodels.io https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com Our guest is Orit Halpern: co-author of The Smartness Mandate (MIT Press, 2023); author of Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason since 1945 (Duke, 2014); and Full Professor and Chair of Digital Cultures at Technische Universität Dresden. Often in discussions about machine learning and smartness, AI is presented as the natural path of human progress, an evolutionary – almost biological – development that emerged out of human communication systems and that has the potential to far exceed them. But as Orit argues, these technologies are neither inevitable nor inhuman. Rather they are the result of a particular intersection of neoliberal theory, psychology, and computer science that generated the economic incentives, political will, and public desire for AI to exist in the specific form we have now. On this episode, Orit animates the technological imaginary that gave rise to our culture of AI, asking, among other things, how a highly adaptive, machine-learning enabled world changes the terms of political possibility and human revolution. For more: https://orithalpern.net “Financializing Intelligence: On the Integration of Markets & Machines“ https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/on-models/519993/financializing-intelligence-on-the-integration-of-machines-and-markets/ “Futures of Cybernetic Urbanism” in "Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective" catalogue of the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale (2025) Counter-Practices and The Image of Thought https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/29768640251335679 Planetary Infrastructure https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-658-38128-8_1-1 - Episode image adapted from: Marco Zorzanello photo of the installation TERMS AND CONDITIONS by Transsolar, Bilge Kobas, Daniel A. Barber, and Sonia Seneviratne at La Biennale di Venezia, 2025

This is a preview — for the full episode, subscribe: https://newmodels.io https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com On this ep, NM is joined by filmmaker Eugene Kotlyarenko, who you may know as the director of films such as 0s and 1s, Wobble Palace, Spree, and most recently, The Code, which stars Peter Vack & Dasha Nekrasova and is currently streaming on Mubi.  Like much of Eugene’s work, The Code understands itself both as entertainment and as cinema — cinema-in-a-time-when everyone is an editor, cinema-in-a-time-when content has become infinite, which is to say empty, a site of projection for viewers-turned-users. We talk about The Code on this episode and about the industry, about virality, idenity, authoritarianism, slop, empathy. comedy, and success. For more: https://www.instagram.com/madabouteug (IG) Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/directorscommentary Site: https://www.everybodyloves.me   Watch “The Code” MUBI: https://mubi.com/en/de/films/the-code-2024 LA: https://lumierecinemala.com/film-the-code-2024/ NYC: https://www.roxycinemanewyork.com/screenings/the-code-3-2-3-2/

This is a preview — for the full episode, subscribe: https://newmodels.io or https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com In town for an event with Matt Copson at Berlin’s KW, Dean Kissick stops by the show to talk about art, criticism, and self-performance as well as fire punks, AI monsters, vulgarity, Ye, and the death of the hot take. Now based in London following a decade-long tenure in Downtown New York, Dean is a writer with recent and forthcoming work in Spike, Heavy Traffic, and Civilization. His essay, “The Painted Protest: How Politics Destroyed Contemporary Art” appeared in the December 2024 issue of Harper’s. For more: @deankissick IG & X

This is a preview — for the full episode, subscribe: https://newmodels.io https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com Gideon Jacobs joins NM to discuss his latest piece for the LA Review of Books, “Player One and Main Character,” which explores the logic of power in a time when some of its key agents are no longer operating in base reality. Related: Lil Internet’s “Hallucinator’s Dice” (unlocked) https://soundcloud.com/newmodels/hallucinators-dice See also: "Player One and Main Character" (LARB, Apr 2025) https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/player-one-and-main-character/ “Trump l’Oeil,” (LARB, Nov 2024) https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/trump-loeil/ NM Talkcore w/ Gideon Jacobs on Trump as Image (Nov 2024) https://on.soundcloud.com/kC8NzddUcGynZyZj6 Episode image adapted from photo by Daniel Arnold for Document Journal of Gideon Jacobs as the character Father Bartholomew Mary, 2025.