Humans On The Loop

…in which I talk about Jurassic Park, Terminator, Pokémon, cat videos, Radiolab, Google, DARPA, Charles Stross, the Singularity, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Martine Rothblatt, Genesis P Orridge, neo-advaita nondual philosophy, and angels. (“Do you guys believe in angels?”)  DISCUSSED:Bringing Heart Back To Futurism. Technological Acceleration As Psychedelic Yoga. It Doesn’t Have To Be Either/Or. Scan Lovers. Can We Have Identity Politics In A Posthuman Society? Control or Liberation?Recorded at Boom Festival's Liminal Village, 16 August 2016 — here’s the official Boom Festival video of the talk.Originally published on my archive of public talks at bandcamp, this lecture became the basis for the essay series with the same name, which you can read on my Medium blog.Support The Show: patreon.com/michaelgarfieldTheme Music: “God Detector” by Evan Snyder feat. Michael GarfieldQUOTES:The future is an idea that is constructed socially, just as insanity is constructed socially.Most people spend most of their time thinking about what the world we’re moving into is going to look like, and very little time thinking about what it’s going to FEEL like. Who we are going to be, once all this transformative change has settled into a newly-constituted world age?It’s very telling that so much of the conversation around artificial intelligence is this notion that there’s some kind of demon emerging through the machine for us to encounter and to reckon with. That there is something we have to confront…something that may destroy us even as it transforms us. And I think that the problem here is that this is a half-chewed sandwich. We’re right there on the precipice of recognizing that we too are implicated in this global conspiracy, that we too are participating in the evolutionary process, and it falls upon us all to heal this alienation from the natural world – especially as it appears in non-human living systems and as it appears in non-human machine intelligences. And to recognize, first of all, that we are a function, we are an action, of Earth’s geology.It’s by failing to identify our own transcendental nature – our own identity beyond the opposites of subject and object, self and other, nature and culture, the made and the born – that renders the transcendental as something against which the limited identity of the egoic self has to be defended. And so we experience what could be regarded as the emergence of a planetary Christ child – as the internet swallows us and we awaken together into this planetary identity, we experience this as the intrusion of a Borg mind or Terminator: Rise of the Machines. We are capable in our understandably anxious paranoid delusion of seeing only the demonic manifestation, because it’s so much easier to reject this kind of radical transformation than it is to embrace it and to steer it. And I’m hoping that by the end of this talk you all feel slightly more empowered to participate in this future, and to participate in the growing number of people worldwide that recognize that it falls upon us as we birth a new age, to love what we create. And to infuse it with love and creativity, and not to reject this baby, but to raise it right.The mirror was believed to have terrifying spiritual properties: that a mirror can steal your soul, or that a vampire couldn’t be seen in a mirror because it had no soul. And likewise with the camera: anything that renders the previously unconscious as the conscious, anything that shows our selves to ourselves in a new way and thus creates an object out of what was originally the subject, a new “it” out of what was “I,” is going to appear to us as the monstrous.As we become more transparent to one another, we become more accountable to one another. And the accountability is in some sense the masculine structure that we see growing as the companion to the desire to share with one another as a sort of feminine urge for intimacy.As a river runs all possible ways down a mountain, the future will have more options for how to be a human being than before. It will have more ways for us to become partial and non-inclusive of the future than ever before.We are becoming more and more compatible with the machine and it is becoming more and more compatible with us, in the same way that we domesticated corn and corn domesticated us.We have this profound opportunity to invest as much beauty and love and creativity into this new space as we possibly can.  Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. 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

We live in an age of increasingly lively, intelligent, and responsive technologies, and have a lot of adjusting to do. This week’s guest is one of the major inspirations animating Future Fossils Podcast: Kevin Kelly, co-founder of the WELL, Senior Maverick at WIRED, author of numerous books that profoundly shaped my thinking about our coevolution with technology. After reading Kevin’s latest essay on the imminent challenges and opportunities of augmented reality – a superb rendering of the bizarre and wonderful new possibilities of a “mirrorworld” in which everything has an annotated digital double, constantly rewritten – I asked him to join me for a discussion of how our relationship to change is changing, what choice means in a world beyond control, how history becomes a verb amidst the metamorphosis, and how to properly engage these potent evolutionary tools we’re building…Kevin’s Website:https://kk.orgSupport Future Fossils on Patreon for over a dozen exclusive episodes, book club membership, original art and music, and more:https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldShop through my Amazon storefront and support the show indirectly with your purchases:https://amazon.com/storefront/michaelgarfieldlntro music by Michael Garfield, “Undefeatable Optimism Gets Up After KO”https://michaelgarfield.bandcamp.com/album/love-scenes-field-recordingsOutro music by Evan “Skytree” Snyder feat. Michael Garfield, “God Detector”https://skytree.bandcamp.com/track/god-detector-ft-michael-garfieldWe Discuss:• How evolutionary technologies restore us to a kind of pre-modern relationship to living systems we use and depend upon, but do not control (growing tomatoes, raising livestock, having children).• How do we understand choice and agency as cybernetic selves, all of our behavior informed by invisible or opaque entitities (like Cambridge Analytica, or simple GUI design)?“We are both the creator and the created. We are both the parent and the child of ourselves. We are the masters of technology, and the slaves to it. And we will always be in that conflicted, two-faced relationship. That’s why we wring our hands, and we’ll be wringing our hands in a thousand years, because we can’t escape from the fact that we make our tools and our tools shape us.”• If we are going to spend the rest of our lives as noobs in an ever-accelerating metamorphic world, what does that mean for our conceit of continuous identity?“The question is not, ‘What does it mean to be human?’ but, ‘What do we want humans to be?’”• How do we have the metaphysical conversations we need (about what we are, what matters) if we can’t agree on the objective ground truth?“We have only one way to detect lies, which is retrospectively. So it’s almost impossible to ascertain, infallibly, the truth in the present. We can only trust sources that have proven to be reliable in the past, and that’s ultimately where the truth resides.”“We can’t think our way out of these problems. We should think about them. We should try to forecast and analyze and quantify. But these things are so complex, they’re life life and a child growing up, that we have to experience our way through them. We have to engage with them through use to figure out what works and what doesn’t work.”• The new superpowers and profound challenges (both practical and philosophical) afforded us by augmented reality and its attendant “mirrorworld” of spatial computing.“The big problems that we’ll all be pulling our hair out about in twenty years will be ones we never thought of.” “I’m for steering technology through engagement, through using it. I think if you don’t use something, you don’t get to steer it. That’s why prohibition, outlawing, regulating to a standstill are bad ideas. Because then you don’t get to steer.”• The past and future of history-as-a-verb. Contingency vs. inevitability. How does Kelly situate himself in time?“Most of my favorite people talking about the future are historians… The more I want to look into the future, the more I need to look into the past.”“1% per year is all we need: if we create 1% more than we destroy every year, that’s all we need for civilization.”• What is Kelly most concerned with communicating to the unborn future?“The statistical destiny for most time capsules is to be forgotten. They’re buried and nobody remembers them. 95% of them are forgotten within 5 or 10 years. But the ones that are opened, you get to see this message from the past into the future. And almost invariably, the contents are not interesting to us now.” Go Deeper:Out of Control, New Rules for The New Economy, What Technology Wants, The Inevitablehttps://kk.org/books/The Expansion of Ignorancehttp://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/10/the_expansion_o.phpAR Will Spark the Next Big Tech Platform – Let’s Call it Mirrorworldhttps://www.wired.com/story/mirrorworld-ar-next-big-tech-platform/The End of Video as Evidence of Anythinghttps://kk.org/ct2/the-end-of-video-as-evidence-o/Great Kevin Kelly interview with Smithsonian Magazine https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/wired-founder-kevin-kelly-on-technologies-that-will-dominate-our-future-180959708/[video] HyperReality by Keiichi Matsudahttps://vimeo.com/166807261The Future is Indistinguishable from Magic (by Michael Garfield)https://medium.com/@michaelgarfield/the-future-is-indistinguishable-from-magic-5b9596a4eaBeing Every Drone (by Michael Garfield)https://medium.com/@michaelgarfield/being-every-drone-the-future-of-xr-robotic-telepresence-19f12889da78Future Fossils Episode 97 with Zak Steinshows.pippa.io/futurefossils/97Future Fossils Episode 91, An Oral History of the End of Reality (#deepfake #scifi)shows.pippa.io/futurefossils/91The Long Now Foundationhttps://longnow.org Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. 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

This week’s guest is Cory Allen – mindfulness instructor, audio engineer, host of The Astral Hustle Podcast, binaural beats factory, and now the author of Now is the Way: An Unconventional Approach to Modern Mindfulness. We talk about cutting through the noise and insanity of our overwhelmed digital transition age with simple presence, the rewards of even minor and incremental acts of awareness, and the richness of expressive work created from a place of calm alertness.Grab yourself a copy of Now is the Way from my Amazon storefront:https://www.amazon.com/shop/michaelgarfieldI’m on Cory’s show in episodes 72 & 92:http://www.cory-allen.com/theastralhustleCory’s on my show on episode 16:http://shows.pippa.io/futurefossils/16Discussed:• What is the now?• Is mindfulness about getting better at achieving goals, or is it really about something else?• How has meditation practice changed in the age of always-on digital insanity? • The collapse of past, present, and future into NOW and living in the bardo afterlife of the 21st Century.• Getting over the infinite to-do list.• Music as meditation vs. The Concept Album. Songwriting vs. temple music.• Impermanence and cycles of creation/destruction in music.• Create from where and what you are.• Notes on the media diet for original thinking.Support Future Fossils on Patreon for over a dozen exclusive episodes, book club membership, original art and music, and more:https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldlntro music by Michael Garfield, “Undefeatable Optimism Gets Up After KO”https://michaelgarfield.bandcamp.com/album/love-scenes-field-recordingsOutro music by Evan “Skytree” Snyder feat. Michael Garfield, “God Detector”https://skytree.bandcamp.com/track/god-detector-ft-michael-garfield Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. 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

This week Future Fossils gets even weirder with guests Phil Ford and JF Martel, cohosts of the Weird Studies podcast. Weird Studies is one of my favorite shows, hands down. Phil and JF’s marvelous threading together of the joyful and the bleak, the transcendent and the hangdog, the gems of literature and the tentacles of the ineffable real, is a sorely needed tightrope walk in an era insistent on clean answers and decisive resolutions. The modern world is a VERY weird place, and these two gentlemen are some of my most trusted curators of places to look and ways of seeing for thriving amidst that weirdness. In this episode, we explore (among other eldritch horrors) the irreducibility and always-ness of the weird; the historical and metabolic forces that join beauty and trauma; and the value of the stubbornly unassimilated fact and its adherents.Dig into Weird Studies and become transformed:https://weirdstudies.com Support Future Fossils on Patreon for over a dozen exclusive episodes, book club membership, original art and music, and more:https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldFind all of the books we mention and support the show at no cost to yourself:https://www.amazon.com/shop/michaelgarfieldA very thin slice of the topics we discuss:JF on Future Fossils (episode 18 & episode 71)MG on Weird Studies (episode 26)Weird Studies on Marshall McLuhanWeird Studies on William JamesErik Davis - High Weirdness (Future Fossils episode 99; Weird Studies episode 48)Leonard Cohen - “Waiting for the Miracle”Phil: “The seawall we build against the seething Lovecraftian whatever.”Eric Wargo - Time Loops (episode 117)Global WeirdingThe Replication CrisisLady Chatterly’s Lover: “The cataclysm has happened. We are among the ruins.”Richard Doyle - Darwin’s PharmacyDouglas Rushkoff - Present Shock (episode 67)William Burroughs - Naked LunchAleister CrowleyJonathan ZapFurtherrr CollectiveBeauty & DangerTheodor AdornoWeird Consultants to help you organize for the unexpectedDavid Weinberger - Everyday Chaos (episode 123)lntro music by Michael Garfield, “Undefeatable Optimism Gets Up After KO”https://michaelgarfield.bandcamp.com/album/love-scenes-field-recordingsOutro music by Evan “Skytree” Snyder feat. Michael Garfield, “God Detector”https://skytree.bandcamp.com/track/god-detector-ft-michael-garfield Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. 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

This week’s guest is living legend, transdisciplinary scientist-philosopher Stuart Kauffman, whose pioneering work on self-organization and the emergence of order helped launch the field of complex systems science and has brought us to the very edge of understanding the origins and nature of life. Over his 50+ year career and six books, including this year’s The World Beyond Physics, Stu has done more than almost anyone to restore the historic union of science and philosophy, articulating a new spirituality for our secular age of systems thinking, and filing numerous patents on technologies of chemical synthesis and quantum mechanics.It's an epic conversation with a bold and boundary-less mind. In this episode we drive right to the heart of one of humankind’s biggest and most persistent mysteries: What is life?Stuart Kauffman’s EXTENSIVE & ILLUMINATING Google Scholar Page:https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=yoPM0F8AAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdateThis week’s vocabulary word: “ergodic”https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ergodicBecome a Patreon supporter to listen to Part 2 of this conversation, on quantum physics and consciousness:http://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldWe Discuss:the adjacent possiblethe origins of lifeniche construction & niche propagation (which i initially conflate, but he re-differentiates)exaptationthe incomputability of the list of all possible uses of a thingwhy are there hearts in the universe?“the universe is non-ergodic and most complex things will never exist”“there are no laws whatsoever for the evolution of the biosphere”contingent, or inevitable? enabled, or caused?the economy creates the possibilities into which it is suckedTerence McKenna’s strange attractor at the end of timeconstraint closure and the release of energy in fewer degrees of freedomabiogenesis and the protocell as a model of its environmentare there constraints without work?the number of cell types in an organism is roughly the square root of the number of genes“information is precisely the release of energy into fewer degrees of freedom”Paul Davies & Sara Imari WalkerJohnjoe McFaddenGiuseppe Longothe system will spend more time in macrostates in which there are more microstates (Boltzmann)Supplemental Materials:Stuart Kauffman’s essay, “No entailing laws, but enablement in the evolution of the biosphere”https://arxiv.org/pdf/1201.2069.pdf;alsoseeGiuseppeLongoStu’s co-author Wim Hordijk on autocatalysis at Orbiter Mag:https://orbitermag.com/how-did-life-begin-part-3/Michael’s essay, “The Future is Exapted/Remixed”https://medium.com/@michaelgarfield/how-to-live-in-the-future-part-4-the-future-is-exapted-remixed-35ea5ca9d877Michael’s extensive notes on the ideas of this episode, “Toward A New Evolutionary Paradigm”https://www.patreon.com/posts/toward-new-1-0-24798022Original intro music by Michael Garfield, “Birds Waking Up In Trees”https://michaelgarfield.bandcamp.com/album/love-scenes-field-recordingsShow outro music by Evan “Skytree” Snyder feat. Michael Garfield, “God Detector”https://skytree.bandcamp.com/track/god-detector-ft-michael-garfield Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. 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

This week’s guest is Norman Katz, aka Dr. Blue – a lifelong practitioner of hypnotherapy and the impresario of 3SidedWhole, nine acres of magical weirdness in the desert outside Albuquerque, New Mexico. I’ve known Dr. Blue for nearly a decade and he’s deeply enriched my life over the years with his amazing stories, empowering mind hacks, and community of soulful southwestern weirdos. In this episode, he regales us with stories of psychological research into UFOs, past lives, fractals, and flow states; the history of hypnosis, his study under hypnotherapy pioneer Milton Erickson, the psychophysiology of laughter yoga, and – more broadly – the importance, and the surprising ease, of choosing the trance you want to be in…Dr. Blue’s Website:http://www.normankatzphd.com/curricula-vitae.html3SidedWhole Website:http://www.3sidedwhole.com/“We were doing LSD as the patient and the therapist simultaneously…it was quite interesting.”“There still is no study that verifies that hypnosis is a particular brain state or neurological constellation. Hypnosis is not a brain state. It turns out to be a skill and an aptitude that’s based on combining attention, and fantasy, and a predilection for dissociation.”“Our perception of reality is at least half constructed by what we expect, what we imagine, and what we pretend. In fact, it’s really hard to teach people new things, because most of the time they’re trying to match new things to their old models.”“It was the only lecture I’ve ever seen where 300 psychotherapists stood up afterward an gave him a standing ovation. And his theory was, bascially, individual psychotherapy is not only ineffective, it’s wrong, and it disconnects people from their community. He said, the biggest mistake in Western Civilization was when Descartes said, ‘Cognito ergo sum,’ ‘I think, therefore I am.’ And what he should have said was, ‘Convivo ergo sum.’ ‘I celebrate in community, therefore I am.’”“At any point in time, ask yourself this question: ‘If I had been hypnotized to be doing what I’m doing right now and having this experience, what would I have been told?’”“Erickson used to tell his students, ‘Pretend, and pretend you’re not pretending.’”“In the West, most people breathe too much.”“I had a formal psychology training at Harvard. Most of that turned out to be nonsense. Learn to unlearn. Learn to forget. Learn to be innocent. Let yourself continue to reinvent yourself and discover who you are, because you are more than any of us think you are.”Support this show on Patreon to join the book club and for secret episodes:https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldIntro Music: “Undefeatable Optimism Gets Up From K.O.” by Michael Garfieldhttps://michaelgarfield.bandcamp.com/album/love-scenes-field-recordingsOutro Theme Music: “God Detector” by Evan “Skytree” Snyder (feat. Michael Garfield)https://skytree.bandcamp.com/track/god-detector-ft-michael-garfieldAppendix: 51 blackbelt hypnosis skills, a partial list of course (the master skill is to perceive a coherent reality in one frame ignoring the 27 other timelines)instant time travel, to past, present and future. multiple timeline realities possible like in string theory in quantum physicshumor, ability to tell self joke and beginning laughing, and see humor and paradox in all situationsincreased creativity as needed, transcend functional fixedness, and create new uses for objects, tools, situations ability to reframe anythingability to create synthesis to create positive action altered states of consciousnessability to make pain disappearability to increase pleasure to ecstatic levelsability to shift mood instantly ability to tap into higher consciousness, both neurologically and to source (the universe)ability to become WISE without thinking (i.e. go into no trance trance in which wisdom flows)abilities to see life as movie within movie within movies and change the storiesability to profoundly relax and melt, both physically and mentallyto be comfortable both inside and outside shared realitiesability to balance two nervous systems, sympathetic and parasympathetic, i.e. hypno-autogenics masterability to come out of shell and act immediately, go fast or slowability to tell stories within stories within stories with threaded key meanings or conceptsability to create useful symptoms as necessary e.g. lust for reading certain materials, exercise, etc.ability to create amnesia or hyper recall memory (memory palace)ability to be in the now in slow motionability to enter mystical states of oneness or everything-ness and transition through the infinity loopability to create and radiate happiness, joy and energyability to avoid the DARK SIDE of hypnotic hexes, vengeance or negative energy and to recognize when others are doing such and interveneability to do hypnotic shamanic ceremonies to invoke sacred spaceability to intervene in disease or create diseaseability to discern the "truth" or "lies" of self and others trance stateshypnotic protection of self and others, use of attention filterssensory awareness enhancement (Charlotte Selver) both internal and externalmastering use of breathingpeak performance, for self and others – golf example, 2 holes in one in a rowability to direct and choose trances for self and others (magic number in psychology 87 plus or minus two)ability to completely let goability to experience and create compassion through mirror neuronsability to alter blood blow: for healing work, pain control, sex therapyability to have too much funability to create and use posthypnotic suggestion for self and othersability to create health through medical interventions for surgery,psychoimmunology and general well beingability to will to live and to enjoy lifeability to find meaning and purpose in any situation, circumstances, and life challengeability to control altered states of consciousness both from plant guides, extreme circumstances and as training and for emergency interventionsability to tap into special energiesability to erase self and know nothing and be the foolability to deal with death, dying, and transitionsability to hallucinate and now what is not real simultaneouslyability for extreme selective attentionability to shift identity, archetypes AND PERSONALITY CONSTELLLATIONSability to deal with change, both small and largeability for discernment: what to pay attention and listen toability to keep evolvingability to recognize that we not are the healing force, only the gatewaysability to have supreme confidenceability to balanceability to recognize synchronicity and act on itability to shift energy, both physically, metaphysically and also medicallyability to recognize when less is more (homeopathy) – see Andrew Weil, The Marriage of the Sun and Moonability to see through culture and its assumptions in different culturesability to contact the ancestors and invite their presence and wisdomability contact DNA wisdom and ancestral memoriesability to do fractal healingability to stay open and curious(note this does not include classic hypnosis suggestions on the Stanford hypnosis scales, which are elementary) Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. 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

This week we’re joined by David Weinberger, Senior Researcher at the Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Technology exploring the effects of technology on how we think. David’s led a fascinating and nonlinear life, studying Heiddeger as a young philosopher, working in marketing for high technology, working as a journalist, and authoring four books on technology, creativity, and knowledge. His new book, Everyday Chaos: Technology, Complexity, and How We're Thriving in a New World of Possibility, explores what changes for us in the age of machine learning.I have to admit, I was worried this was going to be just another technocratic puff piece when I started. Certainly it’s a Harvard Business Review Press volume, speaking largely to a business audience; but this is a book that doesn’t flinch at the weirdness of a world in which we know things we don’t know how we know. David’s argument is for a creative embrace of the complexity and mystery that has always surrounded us – that we are in fact made of – and that is becoming much more obvious in light of superhuman but opaque machine intelligences that rehab us from the delusions of our modern pretense that the world is knowable, transparent, and controllable. But unlike the doomsayers of the AI conversation, David has an enviable peace about the fact that we never actually had a lock on what is really going on – and argues eloquently for a fresh encounter with a world of wonder, possibility, and the unknown.David at Harvard:https://cyber.harvard.edu/people/dweinbergerDavid on Medium (“Machine Learning Might Render The Human Quest for Knowledge Pointless”):https://onezero.medium.com/machine-learning-might-render-the-human-quest-for-knowledge-pointless-5425f8b00a45With open APIs, open access journals, game modding, and other empowering information technologies, we are purposefully making the world less predictable.Laws are not necessarily the most accurate way of describing reality.The death knell for the theory of everything - letting go of unifying universal frameworks.“It’s not really a three-body problem. It’s an every-body problem, because everything with gravity effects everything else.”“Everything - EVERYTHING in our lives we basically don’t know, and can’t predict. But the picture of our lives has been, until recently, ‘It’s simple and law-like.’ The chaos, this is our lives. The laws, they are real, they are helpful, but they don’t govern as much as we like to think.”“We think out in the world with tools. There’s no shame in this, but it does mean we’re not locked in our own heads. And now we have new tools.”“…it depends on what you count as an explanation.”“We need to leave room for the accidental, because that is the stuff of our lives.”“I don’t know what a transparent algorithm is.”Are we willing to trade a thousand auto deaths a year for the explicability of autonomous vehicle safety algorithms? Or fuel efficiency?“An explanation is a tool. It’s not a state of the world.”• Relatedly, we just read Liu Cixin’s The Three Body Problem in the Future Fossils Book Club:https://www.patreon.com/posts/book-club-3-body-29353389?cid=26063131• Theme Music: “God Detector” by Evan “Skytree” Snyder (feat. Michael Garfield).• Additional Music: “Single & Feeling” by Michael Garfield. Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. 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

This week’s guest is Magenta Ceiba, Executive Creative Officer (ECO) for the Bloom Network, a worldwide constellation of regenerative design hackers working in ecology, economics, civil engineering, software design, restorative justice, organizational development, and more. Bloom is hosting Pollination, an “unconference” or immersive in-person hack-a-thon, this coming weekend in San Francisco – a place for this amazing extended international network (including you, potentially) to convene for design sprints for new practices and systems to restore the health and value of our world.I hope you’ll treat this episode as a gateway into an amazing profusion of awesome ideas and people, just the very tip of a very deep and well-furnished rabbithole.Here are some leads to get you started: • See the Pollination 2019 program on Bloom Network’s website.(If you have friends in the Bay Area who might like to come, here’s a promo code for a $50 discount: BLOOM50 so they can join for just $195. The Bloom Network also has low income/scholarship tickets available: please fill in the form here. I am not an affiliate and get no reward from this, other than knowing that you attended and got to participate.)• Magenta’s personal website.• Another excellent conversation with Magenta (plus copious resource links) at Abundant Edge Podcast.• Mark Heley interviews Pollination 2019 MC (and Future Fossils guest) Maya Zuckerman.These three quotes came in Rob Breszny’s email newsletter today and couldn’t be more appropriate:“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”—Buckminster Fuller“We have to encourage the future we want rather than trying to prevent the future we fear.”—Bill Joy“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”—Dan MillmanRelated Episodes:• Episode 46 - Magenta Ceiba’s first appearance on Future Fossils.• Episode 56 - Sophia Rohklin on the inter-relationship of ecology & economy.• Episode 61 - Jamaica Stevens on crisis, rebirth, and transformation.• Episode 98 - Decentralization Panel at Arcosanti w/ members of NuMundo Project, Unify, & The Institute of Ecotechnics.Credits:• Theme Music: “God Detector” by Evan “Skytree” Snyder (feat. Michael Garfield).• Additional Music: “Single & Feeling” by Michael Garfield.• Episode Cover Image: Concept Art for The Fifth Sacred Thing by Jessica Perlstein. Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. 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

This week we dive into the troublesome, urgent, and underdiscussed issue of space ethics with planetary scientist and artist Divya M. Persaud. Can we transcend the traumatic conflict and exploitation that characterize human history, come together in compassionate mutual understanding and respectful discourse, and leave our children with better and more interesting problems? Or are we doomed to transmit the legacy of violence we inherited into fractured futures even more disparate, tragic, and unequal than our own time? A deep dive into the real stakes of space, and a preliminary exposition of the ethical discussions we will need to get there…Divya’s Website:https://divyampersaud.wordpress.com/about/Selected Writings:https://phdvolcanology.wordpress.com/2018/10/08/space-and-time-for-diversity/https://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2018/02/talking-about-tesla-by-emily-lakdawalla.htmlhttps://twitter.com/Divya_M_P/status/1080310839465467909Intro Music: Evan “Skytree” Snyder feat. Michael Garfield, “God Detector”https://skytree.bandcamp.com/track/god-detector-ft-michael-garfieldOutro Music: Divya M. Persaud, “Orogenesis” for Voice, Violin, Saxophone, and Pianohttps://soundcloud.com/divyamp/orogenesis-for-voice-violin-saxophone-and-piano`Additional reading on the ethics of space exploration:https://www.bmsis.org/the-ethics-of-space-exploration/https://theconversation.com/eight-ethical-questions-about-exploring-outer-space-that-need-answers-98878https://www.scu.edu/ethics/focus-areas/bioethics/resources/articles/articles-on-the-ethics-of-space-exploration/https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/conferences/2017-business-and-economics-of-space/Documents/John%20Rummel.pdfSupport Future Fossils on Patreon to get access to our science fiction book club calls, secret episodes, and more:https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldJoin the daily conversation in the Future Fossils facebook group:https://facebook.com/groups/futurefossils  Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. 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

This week we surf the fun-gularity with the brilliant artist, standup comic, and podcaster Ramin Nazer! This episode is significantly less a heady philosophy-of-science discussion than usual and significantly more a wank-fest of two people who love each other’s shows going on about all the mind-blowing visionary notions contained therein. Kick back, light some incense, and prepare for a juicy conversation about where we stand in the Cosmic Order and what to do with all of our creative possibility…covering everything from universal basic income to celebrity schadenfruede, visionary art and science fiction to to the psychological impact of trying to stay original in the midst of a tech singularity. If you’re anything like I am, Ramin is going to inspire the hell out of you. Enjoy…Ramin’s Website:https://rainbowbrainskull.com/collections/printsMichael on Ramin’s podcast, Rainbow Brainskull:https://www.raminnazer.com/blogs/rainbow-brainskull-hour/michael-garfieldMentioned:Archan Nair, The Teafaerie, Nikola Tesla, Onyx Ashanti, King Raam, The Rock, Andrew Yang, Yuval Harari, Bill Gates, Star Trek Discovery, Charles Stross’ Accelerando & Glasshouse, Black Mirror, Esperanza Spalding, Duncan Trussell, Richard Florida, Jeff Bezos, William Irwin Thompson, Terence McKenna, John C. Wright’s Eschaton Sequence, Peter Watts’ Blindsight, Eric Wargo’s Time Loops, Colin Frangicetto, Who Built The Moon?, No Man’s Sky, An Oral History of the End of Reality, Ariana Grande, Jimi Hendrix, Amazon Alexa, Life in the Glass Age at Burning Man 2013, Dadara (Daniel Rozenberg), The Mirage Men, Jason Silva, Randal Roberts, Morgan Manley, Alex Grey, Allyson Grey, Michaelangelo, Slavoj Zizek, Marshall McLuhan, Chuck Palahniuk, Jordan Peterson, Aziz Ansari, Louis CK, Julia Cameron, Alan Shelton, Buckminster Fuller, Frank Zappa, Mortal Kombat, Roko’s Basilisk, Norman “Dr. Blue” Katz, Joe Biden, Awake Aware Alive Podcast, Expanding Mind with Erik Davis, Rak Razam, Adam Dipert, Giant Leap Dance Company, Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, Greg Parkins, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Weird Studies, Brave BrowserSupport this show on Patreon and score a zillion awesome perks:https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldSubscribe to our monthly creative explosion of a newsletter:https://michaelgarfield.substack.com Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. 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