This summer Matteo MacDermant is teaching a course on Technoprogressive Worldbuilding for the IEET. We discuss the themes of the course, and some philosophical reflections about the technoprogressive project.
James Hughes and Matteo McDermant discuss their IEET “Technoprogressive Worldbuilding” summer course, tracing its intellectual roots from Enlightenment progress theory through Bogdanov’s proto-transhumanist “tectology” and the Bolshevik God Builders.
They debate biohacking and “right to try” ethics using Bryan Johnson as a case study, weighing bioliberal bodily autonomy against the FDA’s informed-consent rationale for regulation.
The conversation covers Sasha Costanza-Chuck’s Design Justice, examining how systems (subway elevators, dating-site dropdowns, census categories) encode assumptions about a “default” user and exclude marginalized groups.
They trace the historically constructed nature of racial/ethnic categories, using the U.S. census’s pre/post-2010 Hispanic classification and the “one drop rule” as examples of Foucauldian statistical governmentality.
Matteo explains his dissertation focus on tech worker organizing as a “socio-technical” labor movement, distinguishing it from the “click worker” and content-moderation labor performed largely in the Global South.
They discuss the class divides within tech labor (FTEs vs. TVCs/contractors) and how marginalized tech workers, not “class reductionist” purists, drove early solidarity with Silicon Valley service workers.
Automation’s limits are examined through Waymo remote operators and robot food-delivery services secretly controlled by workers in the Philippines and Colombia, tying this to John Scalzi’s Head On and a Tokyo robot café staffed by disabled teleoperators.
They contrast deterministic/accelerationist libertarian transhumanism with James’s “democratic transhumanism,” emphasizing epistemic humility, non-teleological history, and Bogdanov’s concept of “radical imminence.”
Drawing on Bogdanov’s “view from the peak” metaphor and standpoint epistemology, they argue technoprogressive knowledge requires actively incorporating diverse perspectives (race, gender, trans experience) to approach a more universal picture of reality.
The episode closes with reflections on constructed narratives (via the show Silo‘s memory-erasure plot and a Simone Weil quote on history), an invitation to join the course, and wry commentary on the surreal banality of Trump-era politics.
ment progress theory through Bogdanov’s proto-transhumanist “tectology” and the Bolshevik God Builders.
They debate biohacking and “right to try” ethics using Bryan Johnson as a case study, weighing bioliberal bodily autonomy against the FDA’s informed-consent rationale for regulation.
The conversation covers Sasha Costanza-Chuck’s Design Justice, examining how systems (subway elevators, dating-site dropdowns, census categories) encode assumptions about a “default” user and exclude marginalized groups.
They trace the historically constructed nature of racial/ethnic categories, using the U.S. census’s pre/post-2010 Hispanic classification and the “one drop rule” as examples of Foucauldian statistical governmentality.
Matteo explains his dissertation focus on tech worker organizing as a “socio-technical” labor movement, distinguishing it from the “click worker” and content-moderation labor performed largely in the Global South.
They discuss the class divides within tech labor (FTEs vs. TVCs/contractors) and how marginalized tech workers, not “class reductionist” purists, drove early solidarity with Silicon Valley service workers.
Automation’s limits are examined through Waymo remote operators and robot food-delivery services secretly controlled by workers in the Philippines and Colombia, tying this to John Scalzi’s Head On and a Tokyo robot café staffed by disabled teleoperators.
They contrast deterministic/accelerationist libertarian transhumanism with James’s “democratic transhumanism,” emphasizing epistemic humility, non-teleological history, and Bogdanov’s concept of “radical imminence.”
Drawing on Bogdanov’s “view from the peak” metaphor and standpoint epistemology, they argue technoprogressive knowledge requires actively incorporating diverse perspectives (race, gender, trans experience) to approach a more universal picture of reality.
The episode closes with reflections on constructed narratives (via the show Silo‘s memory-erasure plot and a Simone Weil quote on history), an invitation to join the course, and wry commentary on the surreal banality of Trump-era politics.
