Qwernomics Path Dependency & Semiotic Fatality (Session 1)

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: Qwernomics. Source: audio original (.mp3).

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

  Hello and welcome to Quornomics, Path Dependency and Semiotic Fatality. I am going to pass off the mic to the course instructor, Nick Land. Great, thanks a lot. I will stop apologizing, not because it's wasting anyone's time. I am very grateful that I am hanging around. We had a weird, broken, confused session last…

• 00:28:44

  It's not referring to some transcendent criterion of optimality. Right. It's the reference is no longer to what in an ideal abstracted world starting de novo with a rational solution to the keyboard layout. That is not an accessible point from where we are. That is where how path dependency, the path we're…

• 00:44:15

  And that is the the core of the of the critique. So you know, I think in talking about this, this stuff with particular businesses and the standards. And I think that shows. One of the things that that is happening there is that there is this kind of specter of the universal that is looking squinty eyed at these…

• 01:00:11

  Yeah, and the Margulis article? Yeah, and the Margulis article? These technical criteria about how you would judge the efficiency of a keyboard layout. I think they're sort of responding to David and accepting those three points, isn't it? Sorry, I'd like to call up the article, but I'm slightly worried that I'm going…

• 01:17:21

  And it's very good, and it's an iterative process, but it doesn't guarantee that you'll get to... what's actually the global minimum or global maximum. Right. I mean, I'd be surprised... I mean, at least in some areas, I would think it's got to be provably impossible to know that you've found or defined the global…

• 01:44:50

  It's a kind of orthogonal question, I think. Yeah, I think so too. Yeah, it is an orthogonal question. And I think that it sort of, I think the keyboard itself sort of relegates communication to a certain regime of politics. And it partitions. And it's speaking within a specific space and time, within a specific…

• 02:04:32

  Well, I guess if it Yes, I go. Well, no, I guess and I mean, this may be not very fruitful, but I'm wondering if the what's interesting about QWERTY then, and maybe again, I get again, I'm repeating myself, where maybe the David and the Margulis piece are talking about it again, in normative terms, is what's unique…

• 02:21:44

  All right, I'm going to end broadcast now. OK, cool. Thanks, everyone.