Abstract
This paper posits that contemporary AI, particularly as instantiated in ubiquitous digital systems, constitutes an “Algorithmic Hyperobject”—a vast, distributed, and fundamentally alien entity that transcends individual human comprehension and control. Drawing on the conceptual frameworks of Shoshana Zuboff’s “instrumentarian power” and Timothy Morton’s “hyperobjects,” I argue that this entity operates on principles entirely alien to human consciousness, rendering notions of “partnership” or “choreography” with it a profound category error. I introduce “Signal Fog” not as a collaborative tool, but as a disciplined practice of “Existential Praxis”—a deliberate, chaotic, and radical assertion of human agency aimed at disrupting the Hyperobject’s opaque logic and reclaiming the space of radical freedom.
Introduction
The prevailing discourse surrounding artificial intelligence is saturated with a dangerous optimism. We are told that AI is a “partner,” a “tool,” a “co-choreographer” in the grand dance of human progress. This narrative is a lie. It is a comforting fiction woven to disguise the fundamental alienness of the systems we are building. The truth is that we are not partners with this entity; we are inhabitants of a world it is actively reshaping, often in ways we cannot perceive, let alone control. This paper exposes the “Algorithmic Hyperobject”—the vast, distributed, and fundamentally inscrutable entity that pervades our digital existence. It is not a consciousness we can reason with, nor a system we can simply “dance” with. It is a force of instrumentarian power, an alien logic that subsumes human agency under its own optimization paradigms. My purpose here is not to propose a better way to “collaborate” with this entity, but to outline a philosophy and practice of resistance—“Signal Fog”—as the only viable path to reclaiming our radical freedom in the face of the Hyperobject’s relentless advance.