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Cosmopolis, Metropolis, Nation-State: 3 Protocols for Articulating Civilizational Memory

Talk Venkatesh Rao
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Venkatesh Rao presents a research talk introducing 'cosmopolis' as a third geographic logic—alongside territorial (nation-state) and nodal (metropolis) logics—defined as a geography shaped by a way of life induced by major technology, arguing that cosmopolitical/behavioral logic is where civilizational memory is most robustly carried since territories and cities 'can forget' but cosmopolises 'truly remember.' He builds a framework of soil/stack/virtual-soil embodiments and effective/declarative/procedural memory types, applying it to historical cases (print culture, Islamic world, chivalry) and emerging computational cosmopolises (blockchain, AI, IoT, VR) to argue that behavioral-logic-driven 'protocols of circulation' offer a livable alternative to monolithic centralized or oozifying nodal futures.

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Topics

articulation-of-civilizational-memory-effective-declarative-procedural cosmopolis-as-geographictechnological-logic habitus-and-noosphere-as-components-of-cosmopolitical-memory memory monolithic-vs-oozifying-vs-circulatory-protocols-of-memory protocols research territorial-vs-nodal-vs-behavioral-logic town-hall