Compose a lettre

What’s happening?

We’re in a tech-induced trance that evokes us to question: what does it mean to be human? Are we witnessing the technicolour chaos of life being hard-coded into brutal amalgamations of beige? Is unconscious computation endangering the intellectual and physical cosmoses we call home?

Never has technology touched so closely upon the human experience. Yet the ideologies that anchor emerging systems exist in shadows of electrified elusivity. Dialogue is thus imperative. 

Our expression is destined for more than being pulverised into data points. This position is not anti-technology, it’s a perspective that invites humanity to consciously proceed with care and caution. This is your call to post a lettre to communicate how you feel about the zeitgeist.

How to post your lettre?

1. (If this resonates) you post a lettre via an online form. 

2. Kathryn will consider your correspondence for publication. 

3. Your letter will be released into the wild via LES LETTRES.

Why compose a lettre?

We owe it to ourselves to alleviate the anguish of sitting still as our stories are uninvitedly incised and inputted into systems—increasingly (and arguably disturbingly) anthropomorphised models trained to generate outputs labelled as creations of “their” own. Our lettres won’t formally veto the furtive vectorisation, but they will amplify the volume of our human voices. 

'The whole issue of the credibility (to humans) of machine output demands investigation,' legendary computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum once wrote in a piece forCommunications of the ACM (Volume 9, 1966). Let’s investigate the current trajectory of tech (imaginatively and with abandon) together—led by curiosity—via LES LETTRES.

When it the right time?

‘Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present,’ Albert Camus wrote in his book The Rebel (1951). In honour of giving our all to this present, post a lettre as soon as and whenever (and as many times as) you like.

To explore what others have created already, go to LES LETTRES.

Video: Dress no. 13 worn by Shalom Harlow during Alexander McQueen spring/summer 1999 runway show. Copyright © Alexander McQueen. You can learn more about the collection via Victoria and Albert Museum, London.