This post is to archive this link to a recent Venkatesh Rao essay, and also pass on condensations of its main ideas done by Google Gemini and ChatGPT 5.2. (I could wonder where the extraordinary humans who will be able to perform Rao's 'new ways of being' are to be found - who will be capable of new behaviors incompatible and in conflict with our evolved nature, our desire for hierarchy, definition of roles, etc.)
From Google Gemini:
In "New Ferality," Venkatesh Rao explores the emergence of a "New Nature"—a technological landscape that has become as complex, unpredictable, and indifferent to human intentions as the biological wilderness once was. The core idea is that as our digital and robotic systems reach a certain level of autonomy and opacity, they cease to be "tools" under our control and instead become a new kind of environment. In this context, the traditional concept of "wildness" (the untouched natural world) is replaced by "ferality": the state of human-made systems that have escaped domesticity and are now evolving on their own terms.
The essay argues that to navigate this environment, we must develop a "New Ferality"—a way of being that mirrors the behavior of animals in a landscape. Rather than attempting to "solve" or "manage" the complexity of modern tech stacks and AI through top-down engineering, Rao suggests we must learn to inhabit them through instinct, scavenging, and adaptation. This involves a shift from being "users" who expect predictable interfaces to being "feral" actors who treat technology as a semi-wild habitat, finding "liveness" and opportunity within the gaps and glitches of the system.
Ultimately, Rao posits that the "New Nature" is not something to be feared or conquered, but a reality to be lived in. The challenge of the coming era is a psychological and behavioral transition: moving away from the "domesticated" mindset of the industrial age—which relied on legible, orderly systems—toward a more resilient, opportunistic, and "wild" engagement with a world that is no longer fully legible to its creators.
From ChatGPT:
The essay argues that “ferality” is not about returning to primitive wilderness but about learning to live effectively inside a technologically saturated “new nature” whose rules are engineered, persistent, and hard to escape. Modern systems—platforms, protocols, infrastructures, and economic arrangements—now function like environments rather than tools. They shape behavior the way physical ecosystems once did, producing a world where independence and domestication blur and older distinctions (freelancer vs employee, institutional vs independent life) lose meaning.
A central idea is that earlier waves of technological change temporarily opened spaces for autonomy and experimentation, but those spaces tend to get re-domesticated as institutions, markets, and cultural norms adapt. What felt like “wild” creative freedom becomes routinized, monetized, and normalized. The result is a recurring cycle: new techno-social frontiers generate feral modes of life, which are then stabilized into predictable, managed systems that reduce risk and novelty.
“New ferality” therefore means cultivating forms of agency suited to this environment rather than nostalgically seeking older kinds of freedom. It involves operating in systems whose constraints are embedded in code, protocols, and economic feedback loops—conditions that are as hard to ignore as physical laws. These regimes behave like ecosystems: they reward certain behaviors, penalize others, and gradually rewire identities and institutions.
The essay’s broader claim is that modern life demands new survival literacies. Instead of resisting technological domestication or celebrating it, individuals must learn to navigate a hybrid reality where the artificial is permanent and environmental. “Ferality” becomes a stance: adaptive, experimental, and opportunistic within engineered worlds—less about escaping civilization and more about developing wildness inside it.
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