Meltdown
An essay by Nick Land, Cybernetic Culture Research Unit website, dated 1997. Dated Winter 1997 (Abstract Culture, first swarm) as the publisher's reprint attributes it; the CCRU web copy is undated, and its wording is attested by an archive capture of 3 February 2004 that the cross-family check found byte-identical to the current copy.
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- Dates
- No date claim recorded yet. The source record gives the publication date as 1997.
- Exact source
- Meltdown Cybernetic Culture Research Unit website (ccru.net), 'swarm1' section reproducing Abstract Culture, swarm 1 · published 1997 · Retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-31 (SHA-256 1e2add2278bb1cc97ed6045f2db876c940b50d45163aa607ed32f32fd5636eef). CCRU web page, undated; the page carries no date and no statement of where the text was first given or printed. The cross-family check of 2026-11-01 found the archive capture of 3 February 2004 byte-identical to this copy.Archived copy, captured 2004-02-03: Meltdown. An archive copy shows only what the archive retrieved on 2004-02-03. It does not prove what the page said earlier, and it can differ from the copy checked on 2026-10-31.
Appears in
- Machine succession, scale and acceleration: propositions in located texts, 1979–2026 →4 records on this document
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Cites · 1
Explicit references in this document. Citation is neither agreement nor influence.
- Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of NanotechnologyLand's “Meltdown”, in the CCRU web copy, quotes Drexler by name and lists “K. Eric Drexler, Engines of Creation” in its references.1997 · publication · Stated in source · Supported Inspect claim & evidence ↗Drexler, Engines of Creation (1986): document page →
Cited by · 1
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Articulates · 1
Propositions whose criterion a passage of this document meets. The record says what the text states, in its register; it is not evidence that the proposition is true.
- Capital or the techno-economic process as machine intelligenceLand's “Meltdown”, in the CCRU web copy, frames as a story an Earth “captured by a technocapital singularity”, in which techno-economic interactivity runs into “auto-sophisticating machine runaway” and “markets learn to manufacture intelligence”.1997 · publication · Stated in source · Supported Inspect claim & evidence ↗Capital or the techno-economic process as machine intelligence: propositions page →
Bears on · 3
Propositions a passage comes close to without meeting the criterion; each record names what is missing.
- Machines succeed humans as the leading intelligenceLand's “Meltdown”, in the CCRU web copy, states that “Nothing human makes it out of the near-future” and that for capital “Man is something for it to overcome: a problem, drag.”1997 · publication · Stated in source · Supported Inspect claim & evidence ↗Machines succeed humans as the leading intelligence: propositions page →
- Accelerate rather than restrainLand's “Meltdown”, in the CCRU web copy, quotes under the heading “Hot revolution” Deleuze and Guattari asking “[W]hich is the revolutionary path?” and answering “Not to withdraw from the process, but to go further”, and names “meltdown acceleration” among the tags of a tendency it describes.1997 · publication · Stated in source · Supported Inspect claim & evidence ↗Accelerate rather than restrain: propositions page →
- Machine intelligence as a physical or cosmic processLand's “Meltdown”, in the CCRU web copy, describes meltdown as the “dissolution of the biosphere into the technosphere” and states that capital-history's “machinic spine” is coded, axiomatized and diagrammed by a technoscience of irreversible, nonlinear processes associated successively with thermotechnics through to artificial life.1997 · publication · Stated in source · Supported Inspect claim & evidence ↗Machine intelligence as a physical or cosmic process: propositions page →
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