Society of the Psyop by Trevor Paglen
BCNM alum Trevor Paglen discusses top-secret UFO projects, brain warfare, magic, and government deception in his Society of the Psyop series published in the e-flex journal.
Part 1: UFOs and the Future of Media (Issue 147)
From the essay:
If the postwar media landscape was characterized by spectacle, and the late twentieth and early twenty-first century by an age of surveillance, then we are entering a new phase. One marked by affective computing, machine learning–enabled optimization, neuroscience, and cognitive psychology. A mediascape that has little use for distinctions between real and fake, signifier and signified. That assumes no distinction between perception and reality even as it attempts to intervene as directly as possible into the brains and emotional makeups of its experiencers.
Read more here!
Part 2: AI, Mind Control, and Magic (Issue 148)
From the essay:
Generative AI, Adtech, recommendation algorithms, engagement economies, personalized search, and machine learning are inaugurating a new relationship between humans and media. Pictures are now looking at us looking at them, eliciting feedback and evolving. We’ve entered a protean, targeted visual culture that shows us what it believes we want to see, measures our reactions, then morphs itself to optimize for the reactions and actions it wants. New forms of media prod and persuade, modulate and manipulate, shaping worldviews and actions to induce us into believing what they want us to believe, and to extract value and exert influence.
Read more here!