Original CCRU member's new media theory - Anna Greenspan on Wave Theory, Megacities, and China!

Provenance

Self-transcribed from the recording's audio/video with Whisper ASR, then drawn from the frozen curation of the CCRU oral archive. The identifiers below fingerprint the exact source transcript files.

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Adjudicated APPROVED 2026-07-11 (basis: stage-1 acceptance ruling — lane open-web-talk approved for opus-only hosting; mp3 tier deferred pending a disk volume). Series: standalone. Source: video original (.mp4).

Timestamped map

These jump targets come from timestamps preserved in the source transcript, so they work as navigational anchors rather than editorially invented section labels. Timings are approximate — they mark where a passage begins, not exact word timing.

• 00:00:00

  What you're about to see was recorded a couple of months ago at this point. It is now being released as a standalone episode on the Theory Underground podcast, as well as here on the YouTube channel. I wanted to say a couple words up front, and that is that in our attempt to map the contours of the existing theory…

• 00:10:24

  I think that's just become clear to the rest of the world as well. So that's kind of what this book, in some ways, is about. Yeah, and at the beginning, there's a chart. There's these five waves that you see, and you've got a wave theory of at least modern history. And I'm curious to know more of the details…

• 00:21:27

  And so, you know, there. And so I'm concerned now that everybody feels on this concrete level, even in a warehouse, that we're in this new wave to talk in that in that terminology. And so everybody's in this looming sense of is AI going to wipe out all our jobs? How are we going to have how will we buy things? How…

• 00:30:38

  They're losing wars. They're being overwhelmed by this technology that's coming in from elsewhere. And the whole sort of intellectual community in China is trying to like grapple with that. In various ways. Right. And. You know, there's a lot to say. But I'm interested in these philosophers who. Who do that. And…

• 00:43:16

  You know, I think maybe America has a different feeling. But in England, I was like, that's ridiculous. You don't you're not optimistic about the future. Like that is not the vibe. And. You know. So I was very struck by that sense that. You know, the future is something that can be made, can be constructed…

• 00:54:54

  But the way I understand it is. You know, because any time you get into that, people go, well, what's the ontological status of the lemurs? It's almost like Aleister Crawley and the status of the the Holy Guardian angel. Is it an interpsychic thing? Is it really transcendent outside substantial entities on their…

• 01:05:39

  What's it like, the difference between philosophizing in these two different modes? I mean, I think like, for me, the legacy of CCRU is, as I said, it's like this, these ideas about time and about transcendental materialism, but the biggest legacy is about collective collaborations. I'm in all sorts of, I just think…

• 01:13:12

  Finally, just stay tuned for more information on the tour in Europe during the month of May 2024 and the conference in Mexico during the last weekend of October 2024. If you want to be there, hit me up ASAP. Let's get talking. It's happening very soon. All right. Bye bye. Special shout out to Nikolai, Sahil…