Cosmic Utopia: Fedorov's "The Common Task" (introducing 'The Lost Cyberhighway')

We start our series, “The Lost Cyberhighway” with an exploration of an early proto-cybernetic text by Nikolai Federov, “The Common Task”. This work of cosmic politics articulates a humanity that is united in a production-driven expansionary project to transform “the solar system” into “a controlled economic entity.” We examine this speculative text’s relationship to the legacy of physiocratic economics, Darwinism, the government of population, colonialism, and its strange projections of neoli...