đ¤đłđ 220 - Austin Wade Smith on Convivial Ecological Institutions and Open Source Commons for Sensemaking
May 8, 2024
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Austin Wade Smith, designer and ecologist, discusses convivial ecological institutions, extending legal rights to non-human entities, and reimagining economic systems for regenerative stewardship. They explore the importance of open source commons for collective sensemaking and challenge human-centric views by advocating for a more holistic approach to technology and ecological governance.
Expanding agency involves integrating non-human entities into social systems for holistic influence.
Exploration of niche construction enables playful integration of nature with social technologies.
Utilizing oracles and decentralized governance fosters convivial ecological institutions for sustainable value creation.
Deep dives
Reframing Agency through Legibility
Agency is viewed as the ability to be legible within the contexts in which one operates, leading to alterations in the environment. By expanding the notion of social systems to include non-human entities, such as bioregions and ecosystems, the scope of agency broadens. This reframing of agency as dynamic and medium-dependent allows for exploration and maximization of agency through various forms like legal standing, emphasizing the interconnectedness between human society and the natural world.
Challenging the Notion of Legibility and Expanding Social Technologies
The discussion tackles the dual nature of legibility, where being recognizable within systems can expose individuals or entities to exploitation. However, the exploration of niche construction in economic, legal, and political realms allows for the integration of non-human entities and the reimagining of social technologies to include nature. The aim is to break down the separation between humans and nature, endorsing a playful and exploratory approach to integrating the living world into social technologies.
Decentralized Systems for Local Governance and Value Definition
The foundation's focus on local governance and decentralized ledgers ensures that the definition and enforcement of regeneration occur at grassroots levels, preventing external impositions. By utilizing data oracles and social oracles through decentralized protocols, the design aims to secure autonomy for ecosystems while promoting conviviality rather than pure autonomy. This approach facilitates a reintegration with the natural world, paving the way for a renaissance where autonomous ecological institutions pressure human society positively.
Oracles as Tools for Collective Sensemaking
Utilizing oracles and ecological institutions to merge data inputs from sensor networks and traditional ecological knowledge systems enables a heterogeneous and interconnected system of value creation. By combining autonomous and convivial approaches, these institutions support a relational and transactional system of value, challenging the binary narratives often imposed. The focus is on driving coherence and consensus through thickening the interaction between data-driven analytics and human-centered deliberation.
Incentivizing Accountability and Regenerative Practices
Proposing a shift in economic and legal leverage towards valuing and stewarding non-human ecosystems, the podcast advocates for creating structures that make the consequences of environmental degradation impossible to ignore. Implementing frameworks like ecological institutions and oracles offers a means to address structural ignorance and blind spots in resource management. By integrating collective sensemaking and durable attestations into governance models, society is pushed towards sustainable practices and enhancing accountability.
This week I riff with Austin Wade Smith (they/them) â 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. Austinâs 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 âa simple framework designed to expand the legibility of the âmore than human worldâ (such as âNatureâ, Non-Humans, âMore-than-Human Ecologiesâ, etc.) to various anthropogenic infrastructures and technologies, with the aim of increasing the âsurface areaâ through which non-humans directly exert influence on human-made systems.â
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 â Iâm trying to launch a NEW podcast, Humans On The Loop, about how to use our new AI superpowers wisely. Hereâs more info in case youâd like to help support this project or know someone who might!
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