Forgotten Futures
Intelligence as Practice
Core Question
Are we building systems that practice intelligence
or systems that simulate it?
Intelligence = Agency
Active resistance to entropy
through purposeful practice
AI Winters as Selection Events
First Winter (1974-1980)
- ❌ Bottom-up learning
- ✓ Rule-based control
Second Winter (1987-1993)
- ❌ Human reasoning
- ✓ Statistical scaling
Each winter selected against emergence, for control
The Road Not Taken
Conway's Game of Life
3 Simple Rules → Universal Computation
Artists Understood
- Casey Reas - Code practices art
- Ian Cheng - Autonomous narratives
- Pierre Huyghe - Living ecosystems
- Hito Steyerl - Critical AI practice
- Refik Anadol - Data sculptures
The Doom Economy
Raise billions to protect us from
the systems you're building
Existential risk = funding engine
Two Futures
Intelligence as Service
- Passive consumption
- Atrophying agency
- Centralized control
VS
Intelligence as Practice
- Active collaboration
- Shared agency
- Distributed emergence
Building the Rhizome
RIZOM
The Future of Work is Play
∞ Decentralized ecosystems, not hierarchical control
⟳ Knowledge flows freely while preserving ownership
◈ Collective intelligence from individual autonomy
⚡ Human-machine meet in shared practices
We're not waiting for the winter—
we're building the alternative now
Living Infrastructure
🧠 Knowledge Brains
Personal → Team → Collective
Git-based knowledge that evolves
🔐 Algorithmic Trust
Outcome-based certification
Trust without gatekeepers
🌐 Open Protocols
HTTP, MCP, ACP standards
No platform lock-in
💎 Ownership Stakes
Franchise model with equity
Own what you build
Capture → Remix → Share → Scale
Intelligence that practices with you
The Question Ahead
Not "How do we build AGI?"
but
"What practices do we enable?"
The next AI winter isn't a crisis to avoid—
it's an opportunity to remember what intelligence actually is:
the practice of creating meaning