I just watched this lecture performance that Mark Leckey gave in 2009 and I am in awe. The quality of the footage is not great, and it’s split in 7 parts, but it really doesn’t matter. It’s so powerful and prescient that no resolution issue can weaken it. It captures the essence of the internet in its more profound implications, telling a tale that starts with a dematerialized cartoon cat, dives into cybernetic theory, predicts the combinatorial vertigo of generative AI and ends up in pure psychedelic ecstasy, evoking angels and universal spirits.
I found the video thanks to this article written by Gia Festa on Do Not Research, which I can’t help quoting:

“He tells the crowd that, through the long tail machine, we can arrive at the future of desire. Smoke is flooding the stage, IDM is pumping through the speakers. Leckey speaks in foreboding monotone about how all of humanity is going to be united in ecstatic cybernetic equilibrium, a sort of Human Instrumentality Project-like singularity. The long tail will bend into a ouroboros and we “become one with the swarm”. This long tail machine would have a feedback loop so immediate and effectively self-regulating that it becomes almost prescient; our desires are informed by our content / our content is informed by our desires. The long tail know the contents of our dreams before we dream them“.