Latest news with #ZeroPoint
Sydney Morning Herald
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
The ‘Elvis of cultural theory' on Trump, hope and history's lessons
Slavoj Žižek has many intellectual heroes. The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci is one. Arrested and imprisoned by Mussolini's Fascist regime in 1926, Gramsci died in 1937 in prison. Fredric Jameson is another. The American literary-cultural theorist wrote about futurism, tech utopia, science fiction, pop culture, postmodernity and late capitalism. Last September, Jameson died, aged 90, at his home in the US. Shortly after, Žižek published a glowing obituary. 'Jameson was the last true genius in contemporary thought,' the Slovenian philosopher wrote in a Substack post: 'He was the ultimate Western Marxist, fearlessly reaching across the opposites that define our ideological space: a 'Eurocentrist' whose work resonated deeply in Japan and China.' That poignant tribute could easily be used to describe Žižek's life and legacy. Often referred to as 'the Elvis of cultural theory', Žižek is the author of more than 50 books, which have been translated into 20 languages. Among his most famous are The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), Violence: Six Sideways Reflections (2008) and Christian Atheism: How to Be a Real Materialist (2024). He's written and presented numerous documentaries too, such as The Pervert's Guide to Cinema (2006) and The Pervert's Guide to Ideology (2012), which examine film in a philosophical and a psychoanalytic context. 'I'm a moderately conservative communist,' the provocative 76-year-old philosopher explains from his home in Ljubljana, Slovenia. 'I use the term ironically. But I think we need a radical re-arrangement of our way of life that moves towards global solidarity.' He is also a pessimistic realist. 'Optimists are always disappointed. But remaining pessimistic means when something good happens occasionally in life, the surprise brings unexpected joy.' Next week Žižek publishes Zero Point, a collection of essays. The title is borrowed from a term used by Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. Five years after grabbing power, Lenin wrote a short text called On Ascending a High Mountain (1922): it used the image of a climber who retreats to a 'zero point' to rethink old strategies that have proved politically ineffective. Žižek is fond of quoting other authors and idealists, distilling and reframing them in his own words with frantic urgency. In the opening pages of Zero Point, he borrows a line from Archaeologies of the Future (2005), in which Fredric Jameson observed that for some people 'it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism'. Žižek says many Western leftists are still stuck in this nihilistic mindset, but there are historical reasons for this. Specifically, he's referring to the left in the West, which, in his view, traditionally meant North America, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. From the 1960s onwards, he says, the left began to prioritise cultural freedom and individual liberty over collective economic and political freedom. He refers to this transition as 'the culturalisation of politics'. In his view, the left became distracted by political correctness and gave the right total control of global economic power, via neoliberalism. With its fixation on free trade, faith in markets, deregulation, globalisation, privatisation, and minimum state intervention, neoliberalism became the dominant political and economic philosophy in the West from the early 1980s, until the global economic crisis in 2008. The left, he says, spent decades 'babbling on about neoliberalism' but lacked the strength, unity, or courage to take sufficient action to combat it. 'It gives me no pleasure to say this, but the global economy that Donald Trump has recently introduced with tariffs, trade wars, and so forth, in effect, put an end to neoliberal, global capitalism,' he says. 'Capitalism has now transformed itself into a new post-capitalist order. Which is starting to look more like techno feudalism. We are entering a new era. The left just hasn't yet fully realised it or come to terms with it yet.' The new populist right, meanwhile, treats communism and corporate capitalism as two sides of the same coin. 'Trump pretends he is for total market freedom, but Trump is all about state intervention. He is constantly criminalising his ideological opponents, trying to control what people do, and even how they think,' says Žižek. 'This is classic communist logic. We have not seen this since the 1970s, when communism was still the dominant idea in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc.' Žižek spent most of his adult life living in a communist country. 'Without communist oppression in the mid-1970s, I would have probably ended up as a minor, local philosophy professor in Ljubljana,' he says. He was born in 1949 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The small central European nation had then recently become part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: a one-party, multi-ethnic federation, made up of six republics, led by Marshal Josip Broz Tito. 'Yugoslavia was in one sense a totalitarian communist country, where we knew who controlled power. But it was comparably more open and liberal than other communist countries,' says Žižek. 'From the early 1960s onwards, the borders were completely open for most of the population.' He completed a master of arts degree in philosophy in 1975 at the University of Ljubljana, and in 1981, earned his first doctor of arts degree in philosophy. That same decade he spent time in Paris, writing a second doctoral dissertation,a Lacanian interpretation of the work of Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, and Saul Kripke. A self-confessed workaholic, Žižek attributes his enormous output to the freedom that comes with being a globetrotting academic. Today, at 76, he holds several academic positions, including international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, a visiting professor at New York University, and a senior researcher in the University of Ljubljana's Department of Philosophy. 'I give talks here and there, and I am a permanent researcher, which means I have the freedom to do exactly what I want,' he says. This includes time for creative endeavours such as writing, reading, and speaking freely, without fear of censorship. The latter half of his new book provides an account of the speech he delivered at the opening ceremony of the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2023. A controversy began with Žižek's support of Adania Shibli. The Palestinian novelist was due to receive an award at the fair for her novel Minor Detail, a fictionalised account of the rape and murder of a Palestinian Bedouin girl by Israeli soldiers in 1949. But the ceremony was cancelled after October 7. In his speech, Žižek called the decision to postpone the ceremony scandalous. He also pointed to an irony that comes with Germany's unconditional support of Israel: it contributes to the growth of antisemitism. 'Today we are witnessing something terrifying,' he says. 'The old neo-fascist European right — which was traditionally antisemitic — is now taking the side of Israel. This is a mega tragedy. Especially for Jews.' Loading But does some hope loom on the horizon? To answer this, he cites a quote from a letter that the novelist Franz Kafka penned to his friend Max Brod in the 1920s. 'There is infinite hope – just not for us,' Kafka wrote. You can read that letter two ways, Žižek explains. One interpretation says we are all doomed. Another says: there isn't much hope for us, now, at least not in our present state. But there might be if we can change how we think and act. That, in essence, is the main argument of Žižek's latest collection of essays. He remains cautiously sceptical about the future. 'I don't think we learn a lot from history,' he concludes. 'We are condemned to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Today, history is radically open. But there is no guarantee that we will survive.'
The Age
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
The ‘Elvis of cultural theory' on Trump, hope and history's lessons
Slavoj Žižek has many intellectual heroes. The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci is one. Arrested and imprisoned by Mussolini's Fascist regime in 1926, Gramsci died in 1937 in prison. Fredric Jameson is another. The American literary-cultural theorist wrote about futurism, tech utopia, science fiction, pop culture, postmodernity and late capitalism. Last September, Jameson died, aged 90, at his home in the US. Shortly after, Žižek published a glowing obituary. 'Jameson was the last true genius in contemporary thought,' the Slovenian philosopher wrote in a Substack post: 'He was the ultimate Western Marxist, fearlessly reaching across the opposites that define our ideological space: a 'Eurocentrist' whose work resonated deeply in Japan and China.' That poignant tribute could easily be used to describe Žižek's life and legacy. Often referred to as 'the Elvis of cultural theory', Žižek is the author of more than 50 books, which have been translated into 20 languages. Among his most famous are The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), Violence: Six Sideways Reflections (2008) and Christian Atheism: How to Be a Real Materialist (2024). He's written and presented numerous documentaries too, such as The Pervert's Guide to Cinema (2006) and The Pervert's Guide to Ideology (2012), which examine film in a philosophical and a psychoanalytic context. 'I'm a moderately conservative communist,' the provocative 76-year-old philosopher explains from his home in Ljubljana, Slovenia. 'I use the term ironically. But I think we need a radical re-arrangement of our way of life that moves towards global solidarity.' He is also a pessimistic realist. 'Optimists are always disappointed. But remaining pessimistic means when something good happens occasionally in life, the surprise brings unexpected joy.' Next week Žižek publishes Zero Point, a collection of essays. The title is borrowed from a term used by Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. Five years after grabbing power, Lenin wrote a short text called On Ascending a High Mountain (1922): it used the image of a climber who retreats to a 'zero point' to rethink old strategies that have proved politically ineffective. Žižek is fond of quoting other authors and idealists, distilling and reframing them in his own words with frantic urgency. In the opening pages of Zero Point, he borrows a line from Archaeologies of the Future (2005), in which Fredric Jameson observed that for some people 'it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism'. Žižek says many Western leftists are still stuck in this nihilistic mindset, but there are historical reasons for this. Specifically, he's referring to the left in the West, which, in his view, traditionally meant North America, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. From the 1960s onwards, he says, the left began to prioritise cultural freedom and individual liberty over collective economic and political freedom. He refers to this transition as 'the culturalisation of politics'. In his view, the left became distracted by political correctness and gave the right total control of global economic power, via neoliberalism. With its fixation on free trade, faith in markets, deregulation, globalisation, privatisation, and minimum state intervention, neoliberalism became the dominant political and economic philosophy in the West from the early 1980s, until the global economic crisis in 2008. The left, he says, spent decades 'babbling on about neoliberalism' but lacked the strength, unity, or courage to take sufficient action to combat it. 'It gives me no pleasure to say this, but the global economy that Donald Trump has recently introduced with tariffs, trade wars, and so forth, in effect, put an end to neoliberal, global capitalism,' he says. 'Capitalism has now transformed itself into a new post-capitalist order. Which is starting to look more like techno feudalism. We are entering a new era. The left just hasn't yet fully realised it or come to terms with it yet.' The new populist right, meanwhile, treats communism and corporate capitalism as two sides of the same coin. 'Trump pretends he is for total market freedom, but Trump is all about state intervention. He is constantly criminalising his ideological opponents, trying to control what people do, and even how they think,' says Žižek. 'This is classic communist logic. We have not seen this since the 1970s, when communism was still the dominant idea in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc.' Žižek spent most of his adult life living in a communist country. 'Without communist oppression in the mid-1970s, I would have probably ended up as a minor, local philosophy professor in Ljubljana,' he says. He was born in 1949 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The small central European nation had then recently become part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: a one-party, multi-ethnic federation, made up of six republics, led by Marshal Josip Broz Tito. 'Yugoslavia was in one sense a totalitarian communist country, where we knew who controlled power. But it was comparably more open and liberal than other communist countries,' says Žižek. 'From the early 1960s onwards, the borders were completely open for most of the population.' He completed a master of arts degree in philosophy in 1975 at the University of Ljubljana, and in 1981, earned his first doctor of arts degree in philosophy. That same decade he spent time in Paris, writing a second doctoral dissertation,a Lacanian interpretation of the work of Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, and Saul Kripke. A self-confessed workaholic, Žižek attributes his enormous output to the freedom that comes with being a globetrotting academic. Today, at 76, he holds several academic positions, including international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, a visiting professor at New York University, and a senior researcher in the University of Ljubljana's Department of Philosophy. 'I give talks here and there, and I am a permanent researcher, which means I have the freedom to do exactly what I want,' he says. This includes time for creative endeavours such as writing, reading, and speaking freely, without fear of censorship. The latter half of his new book provides an account of the speech he delivered at the opening ceremony of the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2023. A controversy began with Žižek's support of Adania Shibli. The Palestinian novelist was due to receive an award at the fair for her novel Minor Detail, a fictionalised account of the rape and murder of a Palestinian Bedouin girl by Israeli soldiers in 1949. But the ceremony was cancelled after October 7. In his speech, Žižek called the decision to postpone the ceremony scandalous. He also pointed to an irony that comes with Germany's unconditional support of Israel: it contributes to the growth of antisemitism. 'Today we are witnessing something terrifying,' he says. 'The old neo-fascist European right — which was traditionally antisemitic — is now taking the side of Israel. This is a mega tragedy. Especially for Jews.' Loading But does some hope loom on the horizon? To answer this, he cites a quote from a letter that the novelist Franz Kafka penned to his friend Max Brod in the 1920s. 'There is infinite hope – just not for us,' Kafka wrote. You can read that letter two ways, Žižek explains. One interpretation says we are all doomed. Another says: there isn't much hope for us, now, at least not in our present state. But there might be if we can change how we think and act. That, in essence, is the main argument of Žižek's latest collection of essays. He remains cautiously sceptical about the future. 'I don't think we learn a lot from history,' he concludes. 'We are condemned to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Today, history is radically open. But there is no guarantee that we will survive.'
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
At least five killed in southwest Pakistan school bus blast
At least five people have been killed in a blast targeting a school bus in the Khuzdar district of Pakistan's southwest Balochistan province, the military said. Yasir Iqbal Dashti, a government official in Khuzdar, said at least 38 people were wounded in the attack on Wednesday. 'The school bus belonged to Army Public School as it was picking children in the morning when it was attacked by the suicide bomber,' he told Al Jazeera. Pakistan's military, in a statement, condemned the violence and accused 'Indian terror proxies' of involvement in the attack. It did not share evidence to support the claim. There was no immediate comment from New Delhi. At least three children and two adults were killed in the attack, the army said in a statement. Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi condemned the attack near Khuzdar's Zero Point area and expressed 'deep sorrow and grief' over those killed. 'The enemy attacked innocent children with barbarity. The attack on the school bus is a heinous conspiracy of the enemy to create instability in the country,' he said in a statement. Authorities said that the death toll could increase due to the severity of the explosion. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. Balochistan province, which is rich in minerals and natural resources, has been home to a decades-long conflict between the government and ethnic Baloch separatists, who demand secession from Pakistan. Wednesday's attack came days after a car bombing killed four people near a market in Qillah Abdullah, also in Balochistan. Many attacks in the province are claimed by the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), which Pakistan says enjoyed the backing of neighbouring India – a claim that New Delhi denies. In one of the deadliest such attacks, BLA fighters killed 33 people, mostly soldiers, during an assault on a train carrying hundreds of passengers in Balochistan in March. Earlier this week, the BLA promised more attacks on the 'Pakistani army and its collaborators' and said its goal is to 'lay the foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and independent Balochistan'. Armed groups are also active in Balochistan and though it is unusual for separatists to target schoolchildren in the province, such attacks have been carried out in the restive northwest and elsewhere in the country in recent years. Most schools and colleges in Pakistan are operated by the government or the private sector, though the military also runs a significant number of institutions for children of both civilians and of serving or retired army personnel. In December 2014, armed group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) targeted APS in Peshawar, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, in which more than 140 children were killed.
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
ZeroPoint Technologies Unveils Groundbreaking Compression Solution to Increase Foundational Model Addressable Memory by 50%
GOTHENBURG, Sweden, Feb. 20, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- ZeroPoint Technologies AB today announced a breakthrough hardware-accelerated memory optimization product that enables the nearly instantaneous compression and decompression of deployed foundational models, including the leading large language models (LLMs). The new product, AI-MX, will be delivered to initial customers and partners in the second half of 2025 and will enable enterprise and hyperscale datacenters to realize a 1.5 times increase in addressable memory, memory bandwidth, and tokens served per second for applications that rely on large foundational models. The full technical specifications of AI-MX are available here. "Foundational models are stretching the limits of even the most sophisticated datacenter infrastructures. Demand for memory capacity, power, and bandwidth continues to expand quarter-upon-quarter," said Klas Moreau, CEO of ZeroPoint Technologies. "With today's announcement, we introduce a first-of-its-kind memory optimization solution that has the potential to save companies billions of dollars per year related to building and operating large-scale datacenters for AI applications." "Futurum Intelligence currently predicts the total AI software and tools market to reach a value of $440B by 2029 and Signal65 believes that ZeroPoint is positioned to address a key challenge within this fast-growing market with AI-MX," said Mitch Lewis, Performance Analyst at Signal65. "Signal65 believes that AI-MX is currently a unique offering and that with ongoing development and alignment with leading technology partners, there is strong growth opportunity for both ZeroPoint and AI-MX." ZeroPoint's proprietary hardware-accelerated compression, compaction, and memory management technologies operate at low nanosecond latencies, enabling them to work more than 1000 times faster than more traditional compression algorithms. For foundational model workloads, AI-MX enables enterprise and hyperscale datacenters to increase the addressable capacity and bandwidth of their existing memory by 1.5 times, while simultaneously gaining a significant increase in performance per watt. Critically, the new AI-MX product works across a broad variety of memory types, including HBM, LPDDR, GDDR and DDR – ensuring that the memory optimization benefits apply to nearly every possible AI acceleration use case. A summary of the benefits provided by the initial version of AI-MX include: Expands effective memory capacity by up to 50% This allows end-users to store AI model data more efficiently. For example, enabling 150GB of model data to fit within 100GB of HBM capacity. Enhances AI accelerator capacity An AI accelerator with 4 HBM stacks and AI-MX can operate as if it has the capacity of 6 HBM stacks. Improves effective memory bandwidth Achieve a similar 1.5 times improvement in bandwidth efficiency by transferring more model data per transaction. The above benefits are specifically associated with the initial implementation of the AI-MX product. ZeroPoint Technologies aims to further exceed the 1.5 times increases to capacity and performance in subsequent generations of the AI-MX product. Given the exponentially increasing memory demands of today's applications, partially driven by the explosive growth of generative AI, ZeroPoint addresses the critical need of today's hyperscale and enterprise data center operators to get the most performance and capacity possible from increasingly expensive and power-hungry memory. For more general use cases (those not related to foundational models) ZeroPoint's solutions are proven to increase general memory capacity by 2-4x while also delivering up to 50% more performance per watt. In combination, these two effects can reduce the total cost of ownership of hyperscale data center servers by up to 25%. ZeroPoint offers memory optimization solutions across the entire memory hierarchy - all the way from cache to storage. ZeroPoint's technology is agnostic to data load, processor type, architectures, memory technologies and processing node, and the company's IP has already been proven on a TSMC 5nm node. About ZeroPoint Technologies AB ZeroPoint Technologies is the leading provider of hardware-accelerated memory optimization solutions for a variety of use cases, ranging from enterprise and hyperscale datacenter implementations to consumer devices. Based in Gothenburg, Sweden, ZeroPoint has developed an extensive portfolio of intellectual property. The company was founded by Professor Per Stenström and Dr. Angelos Arelakis, with the vision to deliver the most efficient memory compression available, across the memory hierarchy, in real-time, based on state-of-the-art research. For more information, visit For further information contact Klas Moreau, CEO at +46-725-268101 ZeroPoint Technologies ABFalkenbergsgatan 3412 85 GöteborgSwedenweb: phone: +46-725-268101 This information was brought to you by Cision The following files are available for download: Press release (PDF) View original content: Sign in to access your portfolio
