Robert Suits

@robertsuits.bsky.social

Asst Prof/Lecturer in environmental history at University College London. Researching climate, energy, capitalism, and labo(u)r; author of The Hobo: A History of America's First Climate Migrants (Princeton University Press, 2026). Also novelist, musician.

@haydenlnelson.bsky.socialReposted by @robertsuits.bsky.social

October 8, 2026 marks the 155th anniversary of the worst fire disaster in recorded world history: the Peshtigo Fire. Peshtigo was the culmination of a terrible fire season that swept through much of the drought-stricken Great Plains through the Great Lakes. (1/3)

@robertsuits.bsky.socialReposted by @robertsuits.bsky.social

I'm delighted to share our schedule for the autumn for the Anthropocene Histories seminar at UCL. Poster attached, but I will put details and links to specific event pages below. Please share widely!

poster image: black with white text and the iconic photo, "Earthrise". The Eart is offset slightly to the right. Dates and details for three seminars are on the Term 1 schedule, but it makes much more sense to share them in the subsequent posts than to duplicate them all in the alt text here!
@robertsuits.bsky.social

I've seen very different evaluations. Some of them suggest that the only serious claims by experts suggested AGI by 2025ish or 2050 (which theoretically could be possible), but I've seen a ton of sources suggesting that the initial AI conferences (~1960s) thought on the order of ~couple decades.

@robertsuits.bsky.social

And look forward to our winter and spring terms, with topics including "The Captive Animal," a book launch, "Subterranean Anthropocenes," "Anthropocene Subjectivities," and more!

@robertsuits.bsky.social

I'm delighted to share our schedule for the autumn for the Anthropocene Histories seminar at UCL. Poster attached, but I will put details and links to specific event pages below. Please share widely!

poster image: black with white text and the iconic photo, "Earthrise". The Eart is offset slightly to the right. Dates and details for three seminars are on the Term 1 schedule, but it makes much more sense to share them in the subsequent posts than to duplicate them all in the alt text here!
@ncardon.bsky.socialReposted by @robertsuits.bsky.social

My new book has a cover! The folks @columbiaup.bsky.social did a fantastic job. It captures one of the book's key arguments on the relationship between an 'everyday technology' of American mobility, the US frontier, and empire.

Look for it on store shelves just in time for Bike Month 2027.

A historical painting from Remington bicycles showing a cycling scout on the American frontier, rifle attached to bicycle.
@robertsuits.bsky.social

As for historical people who have done this, i think the designer of, say, the Perceptron was seen as a bit of a crank. But machine intelligence being imminent; absolutely that was a thing.

@robertsuits.bsky.social

I think it's quite easy to find prominent people who add "and the models will continue to improve" -- even skeptical people add it as a caveat habitually! As for the historians who are doing it, I admittedly don't want to put any one person on blast.

@robertsuits.bsky.socialReposted by @robertsuits.bsky.social

If you are in London on the 26th of October, consider coming to this lecture by Princeton's Emmanuel Kreike, hosted by UCL Anthropocene! It looks to be a fascinating discussion of the Great Acceleration in Africa and the use of machine learning for historical imagery.

www.ucl.ac.uk/social-histo...

@robertsuits.bsky.social

(Maybe more helpfully, for the introductory seminar for my upper year class on the Wild West, I use Limerick, Legacy of Conquest, introduction; and White, The Republic for which It Stands, ch 16.)

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