Super-Individuals
Discussion
Luo/Acc:
"“Punk Accelerationism.”
With the wave of AI agents triggered by ChatGPT, the concept of “super-individuals” has become popular. This concept can be seen as an advanced version of “digital nomads” and “slash youth” in the realm of AI.
“Super-individuals” can be defined as individuals who are proficient in multiple professional skills, detached from traditional employment relationships in companies, and independently engage in commercial activities for monetization. These individuals mostly master cutting-edge technologies, with AI tools serving as advanced productivity, Web3 tools shaping advanced production relations, and streaming media or the Metaverse acting as production domains. Super-individuals who establish profitable business models are then regarded as “one-person companies.”
From freelancers, slash youth, digital nomads, to super-individuals, all these are enticing but flawed promises for workers, as neoliberalism continues to construct increasingly extreme narratives of individual success. Completely free-flowing labor forces no longer strive for collective public welfare and social security. Instead, they rely on individual talent to drive profits, which is most favorable for the labor market under neoliberalism.
These narratives absorb the legacy of the 1960s youth cultural revolution and the resentment towards contemporary white-collar workers. Indeed, the majority of white-collar workers cannot seamlessly transition into digital nomads or super-individuals, as it requires the courage to face risks and the ability to stand alone. Quitting a job to chill for a while until savings run out, then returning to the office, is akin to a condensed version of the hippie history of the 1960s.
Decades of neoliberalism have led to the shrinkage of public welfare, extreme compression of labor remuneration rates, and a reduction in industry positions with excess profits. Being anti-office drone, anti-serf, quitting a crappy job become the prevailing youth ideology. “Lying flat” is a significant rejection of the biopolitics of capitalism. When politics no longer offers public solutions, work fails to sustain a respectable living, and the core family unit struggles to adapt to rapidly changing youth cultures. Breaking away from traditional institutions such as the state, corporations, and family, forsaking negotiation needs, losing publicness completely, also signifies the potential for establishing another form of publicness.
Digital Nomads — super individuals are keenly aware that neoliberal employment relationships constrain productivity and deplete vitality. Therefore, they cleanse themselves of the mundane and come ashore. Starting from Deleuze’s theory, digital nomads — super individuals are distinctly flag-bearers of de-territorialized individuals, seeking escape routes within outdated relationships, reassembling their own production relationships (web3) and production spaces (streaming media — remote work), utilizing the most advanced means of production (AI) to uncover creative potential.
Excluding the entrepreneurial path of capital reproduction, can this de-territorializing force lead to platform cooperation or anti-capitalist technological politics? In other words, how is it possible to reverse engineer the “super individual”?
Assuming that technologically conscious super individuals, through web3/AI technologies, hold exclusive data to avoid monopolization by tech giants and form entrepreneurial communities among diverse skilled super individuals, liberating creativity. By driving projects in a platform-cooperative manner while simultaneously establishing democratic autonomous digital nomad community networks worldwide, expanding individual data sovereignty into collective data sovereignty, and promoting universal Basic Income (UBI). Is this a potential pathway for the future?"