This week on Future Fossils, I meet with the wonderful Tim Adalin of Voicecraft. Watch us get to know each other a little bit better on a swapcast (his edit here) that throws a long loop around the world. Tim is precisely the kind of thoughtful investigator I love to encounter in conversation. Enjoy!

✨ Support This Work

• Buy my brain for hourly consulting or advisory work on retainer• Become a patron on Substack or Patreon• Help me find backing for my next big project Humans On The Loop• Buy the books we discuss from my Bookshop.org reading list• Buy original paintings and prints or commission new work• Join the conversation on Discord in the Holistic Technology & Wise Innovation and Future Fossils servers• Make one-off donations at @futurefossils on Venmo, $manfredmacx on CashApp, or @michaelgarfield on PayPal• Buy the show’s music on Bandcamp — intro “Olympus Mons” from the Martian Arts EP & outro “Sonnet A” from the Double-Edged Sword EP

✨ Takeaways

* Wise innovation requires reconnecting with the purpose and mission of organizations and cultivating a field that allows for the ripening of ideas and contributions.

* The tension between exploration and exploitation is a key consideration in navigating large networks and organizations.

* Play, creativity, and the integration of holistic, playful, and noisy approaches are essential for innovation and problem-solving.

* Deep and authentic relationships are crucial for effective communication and understanding in a world of information overload.

* The need for wisdom to keep pace with technology is a pressing challenge in the modern world. Innovation is a crossroads between the need for integration and the obsession with novelty and productivity.

* Different types of innovation are needed, and movement in one dimension is not equivalent to movement in another.

* The erosion of values and the loss of context can occur when organizations prioritize innovation and novelty.

* A tripartite regulatory structure, consisting of industry, art/culture/academia, and government, is necessary to prevent the exploitation of power asymmetries.

* Small-scale governance processes and the importance of care and balance in innovation are key to a more sustainable and wise approach.

✨ Mentions

Alison Gopnik, Iain McGilchrist, Brian Arthur, Bruce Alderman, Andrew Dunn, Turquoise Sound, John Vervaeke, Naomi Klein, Erik Davis, Kevin Kelly, Mitch Mignano, Rimma Boshernitsan, Geoffrey West, Brian Enquist, Jim Brown, Elisa Mora, Chris Kempes, Manfred Laubichler, Annalee Newitz, Venkatesh Rao, Daniel Schmachtenberger, Nate Hagens, Yanis Varoufakis, Ferananda Ibarra, Josh Field, Michel Bauwens, John Pepper, Kevin Kelly, Gregory Landua, Sam Bowles, Wendy Carlin, Kevin Clark, Stuart Kauffman, Jordan Hall, William Irwin Thompson, Henry Andrews