🕸️⛩️💻 213 - Amber Case & Michael Zargham on Entangled Technologies & Design As Governance
Humans On The Loop
Design as Governance and Restoring Agency
The speakers discuss the disempowerment of designers and users in the digital landscape and explore ways to restore agency and power through data opt-out projects and feedback channels. They introduce the concept of cybernetics and metastable systems to understand the importance of autonomy and steering in technology design.
✨ Subscribe and review at Apple Podcasts and/or Spotify. Unborn archaeologists thank you!
This week I speak with two of the most thoughtful people I know in tech, cyborg anthropologist Amber Case and systems engineer Michael Zargham (Founder & CEO of BlockScience) — who work together on tools for building trust between tech users and tech companies at the Superset DAO and each contribute diverse value to society through myriad creative projects in their own right (like Amber’s totally fabulous music group Glo Torch!). Thanks to the generous invitation of Regen Foundation CEO Gregory Landua, I met Amber and Michael for an in-person recording at the Regen Summit — easily one of the most inspiring Web3 events I’ve ever attended — in between jam sessions with a few dozen others working at the intersections of regenerative finance, ecosystem stewardship, distributed ledgers, and civtech.
This episode only catches a tiny sliver of the awesome conversations that we had while gathered face-to-face, but it’s a potent morsel nonetheless. We talked about the market’s perverse fascination with talking appliances as a failed attempt to reboot animism, how good design empowers and bad design deprives by making choices possible or not, and why it’s time for a new kind of terms-of-service agreement that allows users to migrate en masse from platforms that have violated people’s trust…along with much else. A very lucid and articulate, yet very playful, trialogue on matters that deserve sincerity but also benefit from childlike curiosity and warmth!
Enjoy…
✨ Support My Work As A Public Good:
• Subscribe on Substack, Patreon, and/or Bandcamp for MANY extras, including a insiders-only discussion group and extra channels on our public Discord Server.• Browse my art and buy original paintings and prints (or commission new work).• Show music: “Sonnet A” from my Double-Edged Sword EP (Bandcamp, Spotify).• Buy the books we mention on the show at the Future Fossils Bookshop.org page.• Make one-off donations directly at @futurefossils on Venmo, $manfredmacx on CashApp, or @michaelgarfield on PayPal.• Save up to $70 on an Apollo Neuro wearable from 12/1-12/31 with my affiliate code.
✨ Related Links For The Intellectually Voracious:
Amber’s Twitter, LinkedIn, and Medium.
Michael’s Twitter, LinkedIn, Medium, and Google Scholar.
Citation Statistics from 110 Years of Physical Reviewby Sidney Redner
How Design is Governanceby Amber Case
We Need More Control Over Our Own User Databy Amber Case
The Evolution of Surveillance, Part 4: Augments & Amputeesby Michael Garfield (on technology as an other-controlled prosthesis and the vulnerability of cyborgs)
“I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream”by Harlan Ellison
✨ SOME Upcoming Episodes:
• Jingmai O’Connor, Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the University of Chicago, on her singular life and work.
• J.F. Martel & Phil Ford of Weird Studies Podcast and Megan Phipps of The University of Amsterdam on Weird Cybernetics.
• David Jay Brown and Sara Phinn on their field guide to the entities of DMT hyperspace, published next year by Inner Traditions.• Brigham Adams of Goodly Labs on social science and collective intelligence tools for a memetic immune system.
• Michael Skye of VisionForce on his work to help confront the crises faced by contemporary boys and men.
• Neil Theise, professor of pathology at NYU, on complex systems science and his new book, Notes on Complexity.
✨ Related Archive Episodes:
211 - Adam Aronovich on A Cultural Anthropology for The Psychedelic Internet
204 - Jamie Joyce on The Society Library and Tools for Making Sense Together
197 - Tadaaki Hozumi on Japanese Esotericism, Lost Civilizations, and The Singularity (Part 1)
176 - Exploring Ecodelia with Richard Doyle, Sophie Strand, and Sam Gandy at the Psilocybin Summit
141 - Nora Bateson on Warm Data vs. The Cold Equations
106 - Stowe Boyd on The Future(s) of Work and How to Thrive Amidst Accelerating Change
80 - George Dvorsky on Strange Days Ahead: Ethics for Autonomous Machines
29 - Sara Huntley (Raising Robots Right)
✨ Thanks to Noonautics.org & Gregory Landua of The Regen Foundation for supporting both the show and pioneering research to make the world a better place!
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe
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