Everything was forever, until it was no more
by Alexei Yurchak · first published 2005
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It was very weird to go the other way around and have read Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More before HyperNormalisation came out. I love Bitter Lake and The Power of Nightmares, but cannot stand HyperNormalisation for having almost nothing to do with the book's concepts, regardless of whether…
on “Adam Curtis’ “Bitter Lake”: A Review” ↗…person I was visiting in London when I bumped into Graber. "The Consequences of Modernity" is a bit dense and filled with jargon, but I love it. There was another post I commented on and mentioned "Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More," and while it's not a general-purpose discussion of how we model social systems, it is a great read. It's where the word "HyperNormalization" comes from and tells the story of the last generation of…
on “We Have Learned Nothing” ↗…"Hypernormal Science." It's also introduced without definition or reference. Collins, et al describe it as distinct from (though seemingly related to) the word "Hypernormal" as coined by Yurchak in "Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More." https://direct.mit.edu/posc/article-abstract/31/2/262/112751... https://search.worldcat.org/title/1572419463 Or if you're short on time, you can get an entertaining (though not as enlightening) description…
on “AI Risks "Hypernormal" Science” ↗…hypernormalisation was coined by Alexei Yurchak, a professor of anthropology who was born in Leningrad and later went to teach at the University of California, Berkeley. He introduced the word in his book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (2006), which describes paradoxes of Soviet life during the 1970s and 1980s. He says everyone in the Soviet Union knew the system was failing, but no one could imagine any…
on “OpenAI: Our Principles” ↗…this: > The word hypernormalisation was coined by Alexei Yurchak, a professor of anthropology who was born in Leningrad and later went to teach in the United States. He introduced the word in his book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (2006), which describes paradoxes of Soviet life during the 1970s and 1980s.[3][4] He says that everyone in the Soviet Union knew the system was failing, but no one could imagine…
on “How Not to Build a Country: Canada’s Late Soviet Pessimism” ↗…'hypernormalization': "The word hypernormalization was coined by Alexei Yurchak, a professor of anthropology who was born in Leningrad and later went to teach in the United States. He introduced the word in his book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (2006), which describes paradoxes of Soviet life during the 1970s and 1980s. He says that everyone in the Soviet Union knew the system was failing, but no one could imagine…
on “Pandora papers: biggest leak of offshore data exposes financial secrets of rich” ↗