Fernando Castrillion: Digital Teleologies, Imperial Threshold Machinic Assemblages and the Colonization of the Cosmos

the full title of this presentation is:
Digital Teleologies, Imperial Threshold Machinic Assemblages and the Colonization of the Cosmos: A Post-Structuralist Interpretation of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey

(This presentation was a part of CIIS Multiversity, Feb. 2008)

This presentation highlights how our increasing interaction with digital machines is impacting our psyches and our cultures, and demonstrates the enormous impact of the digital sphere on our human subjectivity and our relationship with nature. It is posited that the increasing digitization of our psyches has adverse effects on nature and our relationship to the ecosphere. Furthermore, it is argued that a more harmonious relationship with the earth can serve to heal many of the ills that result from the digitization of our psyches. This kind of analysis can serve both CIIS and the global community by specifying ecologically sustainable practices that can be put into place and identifying ecologically unsustainable practices that should be avoided. Hence, the work has great resonance with the current rise in environmental consciousness and helps promote harmonious human-nature relationships, which is perhaps the most difficult task facing humanity at this point.

Fernando gave two guest lectures at Roosevelt University in Chicago under this same title that were based on his dissertation research on US federal artificial intelligence, massive database analysis projects, and the “digitization of the psyche,” in October, 2007.

Fernando Castrillon earned a Masters in Sociology from the University of California. He is currently completing a doctorate in Clinical Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and is also a Candidate in Training at the Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis in Berkeley, California. He is adjunct lead faculty in the Interdisciplinary Studies Department at CIIS as well as a Pre-doctoral Clinical Psychology Intern at a San Francisco Department of Public Health Clinic. His clinical, teaching, and research interests include the production of subjectivity (both human and more-than-human), ecopsychology, radical psychoanalysis, post-structuralist social/cultural theory, Schizoanalysis, liberatory politics, cosmology, entheogens, the impact of hyper-velocity technological change on human psychology and intersubjectivity, the psychology of human-machine interaction, the intersection of critical social theory and psychology, contemporary approaches to the treatment of psychosis, community mental health, xenopsychology, violent political movements, war, terrorism, and revolution. His dissertation, entitled "Digitizing the Psyche: Human/Nature in the Age of Intelligent Machines," examines the psychological and intersubjective consequences of the hyper-digitization of contemporary Western culture. He is currently co-editing, with Doug Vakoch, an ecopsychology anthology titled "Ecologies of the Psyche: Transdisciplinary Migrations of Critical Ecopsychology."