NO GPS | JAMMING THE SYSTEM | Ep24

In this episode of NO GPS, Aharon and Mez throw the Uberized world into gridlock, pulling apart the topological thinking of Anna Kornbluh’s Circulation, the opening chapter of her book entitled 'Immediacy: The Style of Too Late Capitalism'. Kornbluh warns us about the flattening effects of disintermediation—the way late capitalism compresses space and time, eroding the critical structures that once made meaning possible. We no longer experience culture so much as we are immersed in it, drowning in immediacy, stripped of the distance necessary for reflection.

Aharon and Mez situate us in the murky waters of the post-to-the-postmodern moment—a time with no clear shape, no distinct historical texture. A horizon-less now, where everything—people, ideas, services, products—is reduced to raw exchange value. We don’t live in a society with an economy; we live in an economy that barely tolerates the presence of a society within it—an insight drawn from decolonial thinker Walter Mignolo.

But if the world has become one seamless, frictionless circuit, the guys propose a way out: the jam (a show stopping jam a la Michael Jackson & Michael Jordan). Whether physical or informational, they argue that disruption—traffic jams, logjams, algorithmic slowdowns—is the last available tool to fend off the anxiety, stress, and manic hyper-acceleration of contemporary life. The jam, they suggest, might be the only way back to something like a meaningful social life—a move away from Fred Moten’s blur and toward a space where mediation and thought can flourish again.

From psychoanalysis to political economy, geopolitics to future options trading, dream analysis to the gig economy, Juba, Sudan to hip hop’s origins in money-making Manhattan, and even Tenet’s time-twisting metaphysics—Aharon and Mez map out the contours of a world that is always moving and is always stuck in the now.

Produced by Soker

Music by TrethWest 

Cover art (as always) by Matt J.