This week I riff with Austin Wade Smith (they/them) ā an animist, designer, ecologist, and creative technologist based in Brooklyn, New York and the Executive Director of Regen Foundation, a US-based non-profit working with distributed ledgers and AI to design sovereign regenerative economics. Austinās work explores opportunities for social, legal, economic, and information technologies to foster greater interdependence between individuals and our living world. They teach design and engineering courses related to their research at universities in New York.
In this conversation we explore what Austin calls āa simple framework designed to expand the legibility of the āmore than human worldā (such as āNatureā, Non-Humans, āMore-than-Human Ecologiesā, etc.) to various anthropogenic infrastructures and technologies, with the aim of increasing the āsurface areaā through which non-humans directly exert influence on human-made systems.ā
How can we make ecosystems more legible to the economic and political contexts in which they now exist?
Get ready for a conversation that up-ends conventional categories to hack open a new possibility space for human-machine symbiosis and technologically-assisted biospheric stewardship!
PS ā Iām trying to launch a NEW podcast, Humans On The Loop, about how to use our new AI superpowers wisely. Hereās more info in case youād like to help support this project or know someone who might!
āØ Relevant Links:
AustinWadeSmith.comTwitterLinkedInEssaysRegen FoundationāLegibility for Our Living World with Austin Wade Smithā on Ma EarthāCorporate Metabolismā by Xander Paco NathanāThe Singularity in Our Past Light-Coneā by Cosma Shalizi
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ā¢ Subscribe on Substack or Patreon for COPIOUS extras, including private Discord server channels and MANY secret episodes.ā¢ Make one-off donations at @futurefossils on Venmo, $manfredmacx on CashApp, or @michaelgarfield on PayPal.ā¢ Buy the music on Bandcamp! This episode features āOlympus Monsā off the Martian Arts EP.ā¢ Buy the books we discuss at the Future Fossils Bookshop.org page and I get a small cut from your support of indie booksellers.ā¢ Browse and buy original paintings and prints or email me to commission new work.
āØ Select Related Episodes:
ā¢ 217 - Gregory Landua & Speaker John Ash on Regenerative Accelerationism & How To Heal A Broken Internetā¢ 215 - Social Science & Collective Intelligence with Brigham Adams of Goodly Labsā¢ 213 - Amber Case & Michael Zargham on Entangled Technologies & Design As Governanceā¢ 212 - Manfred Laubichler & Geoffrey West on Life In The Anthropocene & Living Inside The Technosphereā¢ 180 - Web3 & Complex Systems with Park Bach, Sid Shrivastava, Shirley Bekins, & Avel GuĆ©nin-Carlut at Complexity Weekendā¢ 178 - Chris Ryan on Exhuming The Human from Our Eldritch Institutionsā¢ 176 - Exploring Ecodelia with Richard Doyle, Sophie Strand, and Sam Gandy at the Psilocybin Summitā¢ 76 - "Technology as Psychedelic Parenting at Palenque Norte, Burning Man 2017
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