Branston

fictional · 6 mentions across 1 reading

In this course

Branston appears as a semi-biographical figure in what seems to be a speculative narrative about extreme cognitive augmentation and the aestheticization of machine consciousness. He represents an archetype of the engineer or technologist who pursues radical self-modification through pharmaceutical and technological means, embodying anxieties about the dissolution of human agency into inhuman perception and computational thinking. The readings use Branston to anchor discussions about the blurred boundaries between tool use and bodily autonomy, and between the pursuit of enhanced cognition and loss of social grounding—suggesting how transhumanist ambitions can manifest in actual lab practices and operational hierarchies.

Mentioned in 1 reading

Zero HP Lovecraft

The Gig Economy

Branston had seen me reading the Liber Ivonis, and struck up a conversation. To be honest, he had made me feel uncomfortable, not in the socially incompetent way of many software engineers, but in the way his attention seemed to be drawn by…(That’s right, Toshiro. Through Herculean effort, tear your eyes away from Beautiful Office Ladies Of Marunouchi Always Fucking and take a look at this MACD.) I came into the office early one morning to take a call, and I found Branston st…The next day we began to expand our operation. We started leaning on our social networks to recruit engineers and production managers. Within a quarter we had a staff of forty-five. I was always vague with the staff about our ultimate goals…

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Appears alongside

People mentioned in the same passages — sorted by co-occurrence weight.

Armstrong 5 Toshiro 1