The Cybernetic Unconscious (5)
The final part in a five-part series.
4. Conclusion
Philosophical models depend on significance just like all others: they must define what any object in the model arbitrarily represents, and where that representation ends. In Das Kapital, the dialectical materialist model of history ends with a dictatorship of the proletariat; in neoliberal treatises such as The End of History and the Last Man, The Better Angels of Our Nature, or Factfulness1, it ends with a democratic free market in a constant state of innovation2. In Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari model history through a series of social machines of representation—a territorial machine which directly inscribes symbols, a despotic machine which allows a single leader to own all symbols, a capitalist machine which dematerializes symbols—ending in the “full body without organs,”3 a point at which a single immaterial system assumes all possible symbols.
Now, the material subject has caught up with the philosophical models, and we experience the present manifestations of past theoretical simulations, a transitory state between the capitalist and the post-capitalist. With more data, the model for what happens after capitalism gets more complex and realistic. The ostensibly optimistic predictions of a metaverse4 or negative predictions of the appropriation of all resources to AI expansion actually share a common hypothesis5: they predict the exclusion of the material world from the new society and the establishment of a fully automated and isolated simulation in its place. The only difference in the predictions is whether humans experience this society as pleasurable, unpleasurable, or not at all.
The eschatological model has nothing to do with the transitory, procedural reality. We are not approaching the end of the world, but the production of a new world and the destruction of the old, a future equally horrific.
“When the historians find us we’ll be in our homes
Plugged into our hubs
Skin and bones
A frozen smile on every face
As the stories replay
This must have been a wonderful place”6
Total simulation, total automation, total annihilation.
This is the conclusion of “The Cybernetic Unconscious.” I alleged I would include a bibliography list in the conclusion; unfortunately, my bibliography is so long I will have to just post the essay as HTML to my normal portfolio website and link to that later. Thanks for reading.
Christian Berggren, “Good Things on the Rise: The One-Sided Worldview of Hans Rosling,” trans. Christian Berggren, Kvartal, 20 Sep. 2018. https://kvartal.se/artiklar/bra-saker-pa-uppgang-roslings-varldsbild-ar-ensidigt-positiv/.
Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri, If Books Could Kill, 2 Nov. 2022. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/if-books-could-kill/id1651876897.
Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 281.
“What is the Metaverse?”, Meta, accessed 10 Feb. 2026. https://www.meta.com/metaverse/what-is-the-metaverse/.
Kokotajlo et al., “AI 2027.”
Josh Tillman “Total Entertainment Forever,” by Father John Misty, Track 2 on Pure Comedy, released 7 Apr. 2017, Bella Union, Vinyl LP.