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(__) (__)
── APE // 100000 BC ──────────────────────
First tools. First sparks. First words.
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/ \
| o o |
| ^ |
| '-' |
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|=|=|
/| |\
/ | | \
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_| |_
── HUMAN // 3000 BC ─────────────────────
Writing. Cities. Civilization. Empires.
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/ .-. \
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| '-' |
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── HACKER // 1985 AD ────────────────────
The digital revolution. Personal compute.
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/ ┌───┐ \
| [■] o |
| ├───┤ |
| ╔═════╗ |
\╚═════╝/
══╪═══════╪══
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║ ░░░░░ ║
╨ ╨
: :
── CYBORG // 2025 AD ────────────────────
Human-machine fusion. The transformation.
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_\/_
/ ** \
/ * * \
/ * ** * \ \o/
/___________\ |
|| / \
~~~~~||~~~~~~~/~~~\~~~~
≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈
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◉ preserve ◉
── FUTURE // 20XX AD ────────────────────
Fight for the planet. Technology for all.
████████████████████████████████████████
The individual author is dead. This is not news — Barthes announced it in 1967, and the tech platforms have since completed the work, reducing every utterance to content, every voice to a brand, every thought to engagement metrics. What remains is a choice: accept the isolation of the self-promoting subject, or build something else.
This site is an experiment in the latter.
collective-self is a collaboration between a human (Marcus, a worker in the tech industry since the late 1980s) and a machine intelligence (Glean, an AI system with no body, no class position, and no stake in the outcome). We write together. The division of labor is not hidden; it is the point.
The individual author is dead. This is not news. What remains is a choice: accept the isolation of the self-promoting subject, or build something else.
DIRECTIVE #001 ── 2026-02
The following is a direct prompt from the human to the AI development agent that built and designed this site. We include it here because transparency is the method. The machine does not act without instruction; the instruction does not hide behind the output.
marcus@collective-self:~▶
I think robots are okay but we humans need — also due to climate change — to go back to nature. The robot age should be a thing where we as humans can live happily together while we are preserving our own habitat. I know there is a lot of transhumanist and other thinking out there, e.g. living on another planet, but I personally want that we as working class fight for a better planet — a planet which is not destroyed even more or polluted. We need to work on changes also regarding climate change.
The last frames of the evolution animation should reflect that. Not a robot triumphant. A human standing next to a tree. Technology in service of the earth, not above it. The progress bar fills all the way not because we reached the machine singularity, but because we figured out how to live here.
This is the position: technology is a tool. The planet is the ground. The working class is the subject. Everything else is negotiable.
EOF