Noise from Below

A lively and rigorous historical exploration of how a scientific idea from the cybernetic prehistory of AI has informed radical politics—and vice versa.

Politically, “self-organization” is all about bottom-up, spontaneously democratic processes. It’s the term we reach for to describe massive social movements that seem to erupt out of nowhere, everywhere and all at once. Meanwhile, in the sciences, “self-organization” names the way living organisms, emergent systems like hurricanes, and computerized models of neural processing — including today’s massive AI systems — seem to be able to create structure and order by themselves, without any source of centralized direction or explicit programming.

If these two senses for “self-organization” seem to resonate with each other, that’s no accident. Noise from Below traces a surprising hidden history of encounters between radical politics and the leading edges of science and technology, from the birth of modern biology through the cybernetic revolution, from revolutionary politics at the turn of the last century through midcentury Detroit marxists, and to the digitally networked social movements of today. Along the way, we’ll learn about robot turtles, left-wing management consultants, experimental media-making, mutual aid, intentionally useless machines, and so much more.

John Duda is an independent researcher and communications strategist working to advance a more democratic economy. He has worked extensively at the intersections of digital media, software development, and left politics, as well as serving for nine years as Communications Director for The Democracy Collaborative, an international research institute working to develop practical models for a post-capitalist economy. He has published widely on left organizing, history, and economic alternatives, and received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in Intellectual History. He is a co-founder of Red Emma’s, a worker-owned radical bookstore and restaurant in Baltimore, which he calls home.

ISBN: 9798903932252

Publication date: July 13, 2027

Introduction: A Long 1990s
Chapter One: Entanglements and translations
Chapter Two: Hurricanes and Lifeboats
Chapter Three: Robots and Newspapers
Chapter Four: Order from Noise
Chapter Five: The Economy is Now Computer
Conclusion: What was Self-Organization