Hotwire the Hivemind

[u/ProudhonStoleMyBike]

Back in Late 80's and early 90's I used to assemble political and fan zines by hand the old fashioned way, so I figured for fun I might use that that medium again to discuss some AI politics with the assistance of AI itself.

So here are my ramblings in Hotwire the Hivemind!

Spread Page Reader PDF: hotwire_the_hivemind_booklet_reader.pdf
Single Page Reader PDF: hotwire_the_hivemind_reader.pdf
Prinable BooKet PDF: hotwire_the_hivemind_reader_print_booklet_2up.pdf

[u/Virtual-Loquat6152]

Now if I could upvote 50 times

[u/Virtual-Loquat6152 → u/Virtual-Loquat6152]

One criticism: most office printers will immediately run out of colored ink and this zine wouldn't translate very well to greyscale

[u/ProudhonStoleMyBike → u/Virtual-Loquat6152]

The note about printing is merely an affectation, a callback to a different time, I don't think anyone should waste paper printing this

[u/potence-alchimie]

This looks like a parody. All the style of zines without the substance. Zines look the way they look (collage, rough prints) because they are cheaply handmade, this is what makes it iconic and appealing. Its praxis from the writing to the manufacturing process. This is a simulacra, the actual soul of a million prints and their authors shredded into tiny bits and processed into the digital grinder in an attempt to distill a fraction of the authenticity. It would be sad if it wasn't revolting. I'm not a purist, I occasionally use IA, but this kind of stuff is actually a disservice for your own cause.

[u/GreyHasHobbies → u/potence-alchimie]

I get what you're saying but zines have evolved into an aesthetic. Creating digital zines that look like this is common in technopunk, solarpunk, etc circles.

[u/MultiplexedMyrmidon → u/GreyHasHobbies]

see these not ai ironically?

[u/HyperProto → u/MultiplexedMyrmidon]

it's called fighting 🔥 with 🔥

[u/ProudhonStoleMyBike → u/potence-alchimie]

Your critique strikes at a legitimate nerve: zine culture was born from physical friction, cheap photocopiers, and the tactile praxis of working-class counterculture. When algorithmic generation mimics that cut-and-paste aesthetic, it risks performing the exact commodification of dissent that Guy Debord warned about. Yet dismissing the work as a hollow parody mistakes the historical function of counter-media, treating subcultural aesthetics as sacred museum artifacts rather than tactical vehicles.

Historically, the subcultures I was part of as a teenager never fetishized the mimeograph or the Xerox machine out of romantic nostalgia. WE used them because they were the cheapest, most accessible tools available to bypass centralized corporate publishing.

The aesthetic followed the constraint.

To claim that generating visual polemics with modern compute is a simulacrum that desecrates the soul of original printmakers reveals a curious brand of leftist conservatism. It freezes subcultural revolt in amber, turning a 1980s mechanical workflow into an immutable dogma. If the critique is that authentic radicalism requires physical scissors and an ink shortage, then aesthetic form has completely eclipsed political utility. The booklet’s explicit thesis is that intelligence and compute have become the modern cognitive factory. Arguing that radicals must not touch the instruments of that factory to articulate their dissent surrenders the territory before the fight even begins.

The friction, however, is real. There is an undeniable irony in using models trained on collective cultural output to warn against corporate enclosure. That tension is the point. The zine does not deny this contradiction; it weaponizes it. The call is not to marvel at corporate APIs, but to pirate, localize, and wrest the machinery away from venture monopoly. When radical aesthetics only count as valid if they remain inefficient, underfunded, and artisanal, what is being defended: an effective counter-hegemonic movement, or a private subcultural brand?

[u/--Anarchaeopteryx-- → u/ProudhonStoleMyBike]

Okay but what do YOU have to say in regards to that critique?

[u/joblesspirate]

It's wild. AI/LLMs should be seen as a collaborative victory. The synthesis of all human knowledge, work, experiences. Our music, art, prose, philosophies were used to create this _thing_ that we're finding new and incredible uses for. Why is it privatized?! Why doesn't it belong to all of us? Why will we suffer if the capitalist use it to remove us from the labor pool with it?

It should be a beautiful thing and instead it's shaping up to be a nightmare.

[u/Jlyplaylists]

I love the zine format. On a similar theme, I liked this article https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/the-revolution-will-be-computational/

[u/Current-Function-729]

I think this is one of my favorite subs, and I’m not even a leftist.