Humans On The Loop

This week’s episode is the conclusion of a special two-part conversation with Dr. Mark Nelson, one of the eight “biospherians” who lived for two years inside the closed ecological network Biosphere 2 – one of the most ambitious experiments ever performed, the reproduction of five distinct biomes inside a building in the Arizona desert. Mark is the author of the newly-published history of his experience in Biosphere 2, called Pushing Our Limits – he’s also the author of The Wastewater Gardener, which applies the same closed-loop, full-system ecological thinking to more easily attainable forms of agriculture. I know Mark through my lucky acquaintance with Synergia Ranch just outside Santa Fe (where I am right now, editing this episode) – the home base for The Institute of Ecotechnics, the group that pioneered the discipline of “Biospherics,” and the hub for a planetary network of brilliant, passionate, eclectic individuals whose stories never cease to blow my mind. Mark’s tale of his two years living under glass with seven other brave souls is powerful, inspiring, and full of potent lessons – both for our present on Earth and our future in space…www.ecotechnics.eduwww.synergiaranch.comWe Discuss:“Learning to Live Intelligently, Coming of Age in the Anthropocene – This is the Challenge of Our Life.”– Why did Biosphere 2 get so much attention?– What is the legacy of Biosphere 2? Biosphere J and The Eden Project and Q Gardens…the proposed but never-built, polluted Russian Biosphere 3…“I think that optimism is a yoga. You want to do your hatha yoga and keep in shape. Despair is like screwing off and not meditating, and forget the physical exercise. Optimism is important psychologically, because it tells you, ‘I can make a difference and this is all going to work.’ Now it may be irrational, but if you give into despair, all of the hormones and emotions are going to tell you that it doesn’t matter. So forget about separating the recycling.”– Living in the small tight loops of controlled ecosystems.– Empowering ourselves with new senses so we can see the impacts of our actions at the planet scale.– Pollutants from different countries where they are not banned yet as a kind of “living fossil” in the flesh of world travelers.– The Anthropocene and The Noosphere. Human activity (and thus human cognition) as geological force.“It’s not rocket science to redesign our technosphere.”“There are consequences to the type of technology that we permit to operate on Planet Earth.”– Solacestalgia.– What’s wrong with Modernity and what Modern People suffer.– Wastewater gardening in Mexico in exchange for cultivated coral.– Using the soils to purify the air.“Our farm was the most productive half acre ever run by humans! Of course, we had some advantages.”– The four great taboos of science broken by Biosphere 2.“To get into space, we’re going to have to be superb ecologists.” 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 episode is the first of a special two-part conversation with Dr. Mark Nelson, one of the eight “biospherians” who lived for two years inside the closed ecological network Biosphere 2 – one of the most ambitious experiments ever performed, the reproduction of five distinct biomes inside a building in the Arizona desert. Mark is the author of the newly-published history of his experience in Biosphere 2, called Pushing Our Limits – he’s also the author of The Wastewater Gardener, which applies the same closed-loop, full-system ecological thinking to more easily attainable forms of agriculture. I know Mark through my lucky acquaintance with Synergia Ranch just outside Santa Fe (where I am right now, editing this episode) – the home base for The Institute of Ecotechnics, the group that pioneered the discipline of “Biospherics,” and the hub for a planetary network of brilliant, passionate, eclectic individuals whose stories never cease to blow my mind. Mark’s tale of his two years living under glass with seven other brave souls is powerful, inspiring, and full of potent lessons for both life on Earth and life in space.www.ecotechnics.eduwww.synergiaranch.comWe Discuss:– How theater can save a tight team from decaying into “kill the leader” reflexes and the importance of drama to living a full human life;– Gerard O’Neill and the Space Studies Institute, Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth Catalog, and how space exploration went in, then out, then back into fashion;– Biospheres are materially closed but energetically open;– The study of comparative biospheres;“If anyone’s running the show, it’s the microbes. It’s a reality that’s actually quite joyful to realize. You are NOT an island. We are totally enmeshed biologically in the biosphere.”– Carrying around the trauma from the Great Oxygenation Event in our intestinal microbiota;– Biomes as the building blocks of a biosphere;– The Research Vessel Heraclitus, the Institute of Ecotechnic’s rehabbed Chinese junk, exploring the World Ocean;– How they designed “lungs” for the building to enable pressure differences inside the building;“Life transforms the planet. And in fact, when we look out, we’re looking at the by-products of life. And even a lot of what used to be thought of as mineral deposits – these huge deposits of iron, for example, used to be considered to be ‘natural’ formations, ie, geologic ones. No! In fact, [it was the work of] ‘slime’…juicy, fecund with life.”“I think we need a whole new generation of creative people to give us the storylines for new outcomes. I kind of borrow from William Burroughs, who said, ‘We need a new mythology for the Space Age.’ And he further said that we’re going to judge heroes and villains by their intentions toward the planet.”– Synergy (popularized by Buckminster Fuller) and synergy in life and love;– Saving his sanity with “Hallucinogenic Outback Comedies” and using original plays and dances to communicate nonverbally around the world“In the negative news stories, they would say, ‘These aren’t scientists, these are recycled actors from New Mexico.’ Well, Biosphere 2 was an in-life production…I have some friends who say that Biosphere 2 was John Allen’s greatest theater production. We really thought it was going to be a quiet research facility.”“Thinking is hard. But PRETENDING to think, I can do that really well.”“The opposite of an actor is a RE-actor.”– Theater as a way of escaping the person you are at 7 AM“I’ve had the great pleasure of meeting quite a number of astronauts and cosmonauts…and they’re all changed men.”– The first and second Inter-Biospheric Festivals“Our culture, I think, and it may have a malevolent intent in doing so, tends to diminish people’s expectations of what they personally can do.” Support this show on Patreon Join the Facebook Group Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Subscribe on Google Podcasts Subscribe on Stitcher Subscribe on Spotify Subscribe on iHeart Radio 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 one of my favorite living musicians, acoustic guitarist Andreas Kapsalis. We linked up at the magical experimental city of Arcosanti, Arizona last year during their Convergence event, at which we both performed, and talked about life as itinerant musicians drawing on a wealth of world cultures and traditions. This is a humbler and more human episode of Future Fossils – hope that you enjoy it!http://www.akguitar.com/https://www.facebook.com/Andreaskapsalisguitar/Watch a video of Andreas playing his composition, “Ethnos”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnogdfXyWIoWe Discuss:Being raised in a musical family and how being musical changes one’s experience of time.The cultural influences of Greece and Andalusian musics and their vocabulary of odd time signatures and harmonies and energies.His love for the Old West and Arizona’s cowboy movie landscape…and the “freaking weird mutation” of Arcosanti’s aberrant European retro-future architecture in the desert.Why is the West Coast of anywhere like the West Coast of anywhere else?Living off-grid and the importance of getting away……but silence is awkward!Cultivating a relationship with plants.“You don’t really matter. Being reminded of that is really important.”The integration of nature and city living, architecture as biology, the legacy of Paolo Soleri and Arcosanti.Touring is amazing. People are amazing.“Well, yeah, there is something to be said about stability.”Nomads and nomadism.Empathy and Introversion.“Two handed tapping has allowed me to take a leak and fill a glass of water at the same time, and they say that that’s not good for you…”The spiritual practice of multi-tasking.The future of musical communication.Support this show on Patreon: https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldJoin the Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/groups/futurefossilsSubscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/future-fossils/id1152767505?mt=2Subscribe on Google Podcasts: http://bit.ly/future-fossils-googleSubscribe on Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/michael-garfield/future-fossilsSubscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2eCYA4ISHLUWbEFOXJ8C5vSubscribe on iHeart Radio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-FUTURE-FOSSILS-28991847/ 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 a treat – not one, but FOUR amazing guests, in Future Fossils Podcast’s first live taping at EFF-Austin, 10 July 2017. Heather Barfield (Head of EFF-Austin Digital Arts Coalition and Director of Development, Vortex Theater); Maggie Duval (Chief Experience Liaison, 7th Generation Labs & Senior Developer, Polycot Associates, LLC); Paul Toprac (Associate Director of Game Development at UT, RTF Department, and Senior Lecturer); and Kevin Welch (President of EFF-Austin, Fullstack Web Developer at Texas Legislative Council) joined me for one of the most visionary conversations this show’s ever published – and certainly the most politically aware episode to date, as well.Yes, this is about “The Pre- and Post-History of Virtual Reality, Surveillance, and Swarm Intelligence” – and a lot more else, to boot. Just strap in and enjoy…The whole event was streamed live if you’d rather watch:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AN2hNX9eM6kFull bios for each panelist and more info about EFF-Austin:https://www.meetup.com/EFF-Austin/events/240796194/We discussed:How for Maggie, growing up at Guantanamo Bay as a form of preparation for living in the 21st Century.The psychological and moral implications of living in a simulated reality.What is the humanest human? What are we aiming for?Challenging the colonizer narrative of space as a “frontier.”Narrative collapse!Pernicious, ubiquitous, intelligent and coercive, ambient AI manipulation as the nexus of this talk’s three topics.Guest spot from Jon Lebkowsky on emergent democracy.Guest spot from an audience member who grew up in communism.What is it about our internet as it is now that is keeping a global swarm intelligence from emerging?Let’s not just talk about making NEW things…let’s talk about MAINTENANCE.The side effects of automation.“I’m a technologist that makes social media software. So it’s all my fault…we knew when we created the net as a publishing medium that we did not think through the human connections or other values that should have gone into it. We broke the community; we broke the BROADER community. I think the fact that a Trump voter doesn’t think they can talk to me is part of my sin. The wrongness isn’t their Trumpism; the wrongness it that they don’t think they have a connection to me as a human. And the technology that I built has failed them. So I’d like the panel to talk about, ‘How do we fix it?’”- Random Audience Commentator“The future is messy technology that is aggravating to deal with. We don’t spend our days in paradise or dystopian hell; we’re trying to get the dang computer to work. And maybe the problem is in the stories we’re telling. Maybe we’re setting up false narratives and false expectations for how to live and how to communicate with each other. Maybe we need to be telling better stories again.”- Kevin WelchStable background levels of deceit in the system.The way we teach history is a mistake because it doesn’t make history palpable and thus unrepeatable.Topher Sipes of Sound Self chimes in.Heather challenges the assumption that virtual reality will solve any humanitarian issue.(Cover photo taken from http://www.iaacblog.com/programs/swarm-intelligence/)Support this show on Patreon: https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldJoin the Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/groups/futurefossilsSubscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/future-fossils/id1152767505?mt=2Subscribe on Google Podcasts: http://bit.ly/future-fossils-googleSubscribe on Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/michael-garfield/future-fossilsSubscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2eCYA4ISHLUWbEFOXJ8C5vSubscribe on iHeart Radio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-FUTURE-FOSSILS-28991847/ 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 episode is an experiment in science fiction storytelling – the author-read short story “An Oral History of The End of ‘Reality.’” Originally released to Patreon supporters (without the intro or musical soundtrack) last November, this story brings together many of the core themes of Future Fossils: the challenges of navigating overwhelming and contradictory information online; the new literacies that will emerge in response to AI-assisted “deep fakes” that make conventional evidence inadmissible in courts or scientific journals; the thinning veil between our physical senses and the ethereal realm of data; and the experience of time in a future when possibility, prediction, and recording stretch out in all directions (but unreliably).My first adult foray into the world of science fiction, this piece was inspired – nay, made necessary – by the recent news about new vocal synthesis AI that lets consumers edit audio and video and manufacture wholly new, convincing forgeries that sound and look exactly like "the real thing." We all grew up in an age when our recordings are the evidence of something. It was certainly a step up from the hearsay that we once relied on, but it's not enough these days – and as technology gets more and more sophisticated it may be impossible for us to tell the difference between "what's really there" and what is just a digital illusion. Trip with me down this vertigo-inducing psychedelic tunnel to a world in which invisible and discarnate agents speak to you in lovers' voices; in which algorithmic AI pop stars outcompete real artists and our thoroughly-mapped world returns to demon-haunted wilderness; in which we all become half-monks and half-forensics-experts as the new obsession is attempting to determine if we can believe our senses... This piece is planned as the epilogue to my forthcoming book, How To Live in The Future. It's a rare weird bird among its influences: one part literature, one part psychedelic beat screed, and the first time I have managed to combine the metanoia, vision, and poetic flourish that inspires me to write. (I also wrote it all by hand in a delicious Clairefontaine "Flying Spirit" journal that I bought in Montréal this summer, and took with me to the Global Eclipse Gathering and Burning Man. I have to say, that had no small effect on how this all came out. Real pen and paper leads to very different writing.) If you’d like the PDFs of the original handwritten manuscript, you can find them here:https://evolution.bandcamp.com/album/an-oral-history-of-the-end-of-realityRead all of my publicly-available draft chapters of How to Live in the Future, the companion essays to this story:https://medium.com/@michaelgarfieldAll of the music in this episode is from my album, Love Scenes & Field Recordings, which you can download for any price here:https://michaelgarfield.bandcamp.com/album/love-scenes-field-recordingsCover Image © Giacomo Carmagnola and reused with permission. Check out his work and help him support his aging mother: https://facebook.com/giacomocarmagnolaarthttps://instagram.com/Gore_XVSpecial thanks to Transhumanity.net for being a featured sponsor of this podcast! Their concerns about the ethical deployment of artificial general intelligence (AGI) are perfectly aligned with this episode’s rather chilling speculative futures, and I’m glad to know that there are people working on a world where AGI improves the lives of every person, not just the very rich.Support this show on Patreon:https://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldJoin the Facebook Group:https://facebook.com/groups/futurefossilsSubscribe on Apple Podcasts:https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/future-fossils/id1152767505?mt=2Subscribe on Google Podcasts:http://bit.ly/future-fossils-googleSubscribe on Stitcher:https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/michael-garfield/future-fossilsSubscribe on Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/2eCYA4ISHLUWbEFOXJ8C5vSubscribe on iHeart Radio:https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-FUTURE-FOSSILS-28991847/ 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 chat with science writer (and former laser physicist) Kate Greene, whose writing explores everything from Big Data to boredom to brain scans, and whose fascinating and eclectic life is brightly punctuated by the four months she spent living inside a Mars base simulation on Hawaii.http://www.kategreene.net/about/We Discuss:How she became a scientist, and then a science writer.The importance of good teachers and mentorship and encouragement along a person’s developmental journey.“Everything that I’ve done is the result of network effects.”Her time as a guinea pig in a simulated Mars colony on Hawaii…Why astronauts love hot sauce.Knowing your purpose - feeling the intuitive hit that lets you know you’re on the right path.Princeton Engineering Anomalies Lab and the scientific evidence for the influence of intention on the outcome of random events.Kate’s fascination with brain scans.“I often wonder, what the hell is my brain doing right now?”Terence McKenna’s vision of posthuman, cephalopod skin telepathy…and Twitter as a form of that same ambient telepathy.“Never in the history of humanity have we had such extensive communication prosthetics.”How do science journalists and scientists alike keep up with the “info quake” of modern life?Big data and AI – can we preserve and evolve critical thought and rigorous investigation when our research is done in collaboration with machine intelligences using logical processes we ourselves don’t understand?“Science is so HUMAN. It’s performed by humans that have all of these biases and blind spots…the fact that there’s so much information points to the fact that there needs to be new ways to sift through it.”“A lot of people think that AI is just going to replace people in a lot of ways, but I feel like it is going to be one of the most intimate symbiotic relationships that we have in the future. I mean, this technology will become as close to human as anything humanity’s ever created, and it’s not going to be able to do it on its own. It will be a symbiosis. We will be learning from each other and training each other.”The problem science journalism has with reporting real science, not just sensationalist headlines based on science…and how social media has made it worse.What you would miss about Earth if you moved to Mars.“Earth is SO wonderful. And I don’t think I knew it – I kinda knew it, but I didn’t ACTUALLY know it – until I couldn’t be a part of it for four months.”Cooking “on Mars” in a simulated colony on Mauna Loa.Aromatherapy in space!What Kate learned from teaching creative writing in a women’s prison.“This is modern day slavery: there are more people incarcerated in the United States than in any other Western country, and it’s because it’s profitable. Something needs to change…one thing that you can do is realize that people in prisons are still part of your community, and that you still have a responsibility to them. To give what you can, to make sure that their lives are better, that all of our lives are better.”Cory Doctorow’s short story “The Man Who Sold The Moon” in ASU’s Project Hieroglyph compilation.The crossover between the Burning Man crowd and the space exploration crowd.Other mentioned science journalists to follow:Ed Yonghttps://www.theatlantic.com/author/ed-yong/Kenneth Changhttps://www.nytimes.com/by/kenneth-changNatalie Wolchoverhttps://www.quantamagazine.org/the-octonion-math-that-could-underpin-physics-20180720/Join the Facebook Group:https://facebook.com/groups/futurefossilsSubscribe on Apple Podcasts:https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/future-fossils/id1152767505?mt=2 Subscribe on Google Podcasts:http://bit.ly/future-fossils-google Subscribe on Stitcher:https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/michael-garfield/future-fossils Subscribe on Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/2eCYA4ISHLUWbEFOXJ8C5v Subscribe on iHeart Radio:https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-FUTURE-FOSSILS-28991847/  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 have a roundtable discussion (which took place around an actual table in Santa Fe, New Mexico) with Joanna Harcourt-Smith, José Soler, and Jacob Aman, the hosts and producers of Future Primitive Podcast (600+ episodes and going strong!). Joanna, as you may remember from episode 0020, has been a psychedelic raconteur for her entire adult life, famously snuck LSD into prison for her lover Timothy Leary, and wears her age with an incomparable flair and zest that ought to be an example to all of us. She’s joined with her current partner and Future Primitive co-founder José Soler, as well as our mutual friend and Future Primitive co-host Jacob Aman (who is also close friends with Future Fossils guest and friend Bruce Damer).It’s a conversation about…well, everything, really. But mostly breakdowns and breakthroughs, and what it’s going to take for us to steer civilization toward the better of those options. Enjoy!https://futureprimitive.org/about/We Discuss:Intergenerational communication & listening.Documentary: Wild Wild CountryDocumentary: The Unforeseen“Anybody that wears all the same clothes…I mean…I’m sorry, but, WHY…”- Jacob“These days, I look at everything from the #metoo point of view.”- JoannaMansplaining and unconscious mammalian social power struggles.How social media rewards harmful and divisive behaviors.Book: Ralph Abraham’s Chaos, Gaia, Eros“If sweetheart doesn’t go with brilliant…by the time you get to seventy…you can go to a home for old people. I say, it’s either grateful or bitter.”- JoannaLack of intergenerational dialogue in the Occupy Movement…Protest fatigue.Richard Doyle on Third Eye Drops Podcast.Fascists and Gurus.How are the high school age protesters of school gun violence getting it wrong?Where does Joanna see us making progress, not merely recreating the mistakes of the 1960s, in this latest wave of upheaval and social change?Joanna (and also Charles Shaw on Future Fossils 0058) about child abuse by traumatized parents after World War II.“Do you know why the rich abuse their children? Because otherwise they would give all the money away.”Cognitive dissonance between drone pilot detachment and the violence of the modern world.Daniel Schmachtenberger on Future Fossils 0051 on the disconnect between our overwhelming input and our underwhelming ability to act.“As the years go by, you have to be more and more humble about the difference you are making. And the joy of that humble difference is enormous. The joy of that feeling of having a purpose…that joy is like the smoke of a wonderful incense.”- JoannaJose weighs in on the the Catalonian populist uprising.“We can do better. We can initiate a new narrative, a new dreaming."- JoseDisabusing ourselves of the notions of empire. Can human beings govern ourselves at scale?The nightmare of intersectional identity politics and Sam Harris putting his foot in his mouth.Documentary: Ai Wei Wei’s Human Flow“We have to be magicians. I don’t use the word ‘shaman’ anymore because it has been commercialized. I’m magic and I observe it every single day, and I believe there’s a reason why this Harry Potter thing attracted…look, she’s richer than the Queen of England, which is not a small thing. There’s a reason that erupted in your generations, because inside it’s there but history and the stories have suppressed that. It’s all over the place, in faerie tales and everything - the story of the suppression of what magical beings we are.”- JoannaPodcast: Weird Studies with JF Martel & Phil Ford, on Aleister Crowley (Episode 9)Real magic is connnection, not narcissistic control.“We’re downloading a different future than the one that is broadcast to us constantly.”- JoannaBook: The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu (recommended translation: Brian Browne Walker)“This body is an incredible spaceship. I mean, would you let your spaceship fall apart?"- Joanna“We need hot, ecstatic magic. The sun in our chest! We need to bring more burning in the chest and give that breath into the daily life.”- JoseBringing the practice of everyday ecstasy into our lives and relationships.Book: Michael Pollan’s How To Change Your MindTalking about psychedelics with your parents.Podcast: The Psychedelic Salon with Lorenzo HaggertyThe tragedy of Terence McKenna on anti-depressants.“I believe it’s possible to have the right relationship with any chemical that you take.”- JoannaWhat is transformational sobriety?Intuition is full-body listening.Joanna asks the whole group: “What’s next?”Comedy: Steve Martin & Martin Short on NetflixJoin the Facebook Group:https://facebook.com/groups/futurefossilsSubscribe on Apple Podcasts:https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/future-fossils/id1152767505?mt=2Subscribe on Google Podcasts:http://bit.ly/future-fossils-googleSubscribe on Stitcher:https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/michael-garfield/future-fossilsSubscribe on Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/2eCYA4ISHLUWbEFOXJ8C5vSubscribe on iHeart Radio:https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-FUTURE-FOSSILS-28991847/ 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 blessed to chat with living legend, ethnobotanist Dennis McKenna – one of the most rigorous scientific intellects working with psychedelics in the modern era, responsible with his late brother Terence for popularizing the techniques for cultivation of psilocybin (“magic”) mushrooms, co-author of numerous books on psychoactive plant and fungal medicines and their curious effects on consciousness, and an outspoken advocate for cognitive liberty psychedelic research.(Dennis has appeared, subliminally, on nearly every episode of Future Fossils – one of his talks was sampled by my original co-host Evan "Skytree" Snyder for his track “God Detector” – in which I also appear as a guest guitarist – which I still use as the intro and outro music.)In this conversation we push into a DIFFERENT kind of conversation about psychedelic science – not the science of psychedelics as a tool for therapy, but science using psychedelics the way we use telescopes or MRI machines – to let us see in ways we ordinarily cannot, and maybe answer some of the most pressing and persistent questions about human consciousness and the nature of reality.I hope this episode will magnetize the worldwide community of people interested in the possibility of psychedelic science…if you have a story you would like to share in confidence, feel free to email me at futurefossils@protonmail.com where we can talk encrypted! I’ve been thinking about this stuff for my entire adult life – we discuss some of that in this episode – and would love to have more conversations with people who have been thinking similarly…Dennis McKenna’s Links:https://espd50.comhttps://twitter.com/dennismckenna4https://facebook.com/dennisjonmckennaWe Discuss:How can the psychedelic experience in all of its weirdness inform deeper, more rigorous experiments and scientific paradigms?Meet (and then disrupt) the source of all your problems: the default mode network.“The ego…thinks it’s controlling everything, which of course it’s not, but it helps the delusion to think that it is.”Disabling the filters to find aspects of reality you’ve never noticed.The necessity of GROUP psychedelic research from within the altered subjectivity of non ordinary consciousness.The ontology of entities, as studied by the scientific method.What kind of QUESTIONS and what kind of FACTS come out of a psychedelic science for which “real and unreal” is insufficiently nuanced?Crossing the boundary between the easy problem of consciousness and the hard problem of consciousness.Book: On Becoming Aware by Varela, et al.Michael’s initiation into psychedelic science.UFOs.Synchronicity & Coincidence.The Internet is a psychedelic substance.Book: Hyperobjects by Timothy MortonAre waking life and psychedelic consciousness closer now than they used to be?Novelty.The Simulation Hypothesis, The Drake Equation, The Copernican Principle, Occam’s Razor (is fractal)How do you step outside the box?Telepathy & Meta-IndividualityBook: Nexus by Ramez NaamEgregores.“Our cleverness is out of synch with our wisdom.”The wise deployment of technologies.The difference between the past and the future. (???)Concerns about the specter of the collapse of the biosphere.“I’m a science fiction fan, so I assume our destiny is in the stars, right? If we leave the Earth, it would be nice to leave a garden and not a toxic waste dump. There’s no reason why that can’t be so.”The history and future of the ESPD, the Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs. (!!!)Join the Facebook Group:https://facebook.com/groups/futurefossilsSubscribe on Apple Podcasts:https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/future-fossils/id1152767505?mt=2Subscribe on Google Podcasts:http://bit.ly/future-fossils-googleSubscribe on Stitcher:https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/michael-garfield/future-fossilsSubscribe on Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/2eCYA4ISHLUWbEFOXJ8C5vSubscribe on iHeart Radio:https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-FUTURE-FOSSILS-28991847/ 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 continue the ecstatically futural mind-jazz duet with cyborg performance artist and body-machine interface master hacker Onyx Ashanti, exploring the frontiers of new meta-languages emerging at the intersection of the born and manufactured, and creative possibilities thereof. Onyx Online:http://onyx-ashanti.comhttp://youtube.com/onyxashantihttp://twitter.com/onyxashantiAnyone who enjoys this episode will also like these essays from my upcoming book:“The Future is More of Everything”https://medium.com/@michaelgarfield/how-to-live-in-the-future-part-2-the-future-is-entropic-2faa4aa6f433“The Future Is Disgusting”https://medium.com/@michaelgarfield/the-future-is-disgusting-911379af30fe“Being Every Drone: The Future of XR & Robotic Telepresence”https://medium.com/@michaelgarfield/being-every-drone-the-future-of-xr-robotic-telepresence-19f12889da78In this episode, we discuss:Fractal Sonocybernetics & The Future of LanguageThe neurological and experiential differences between speaking and singing, between continuous movement and discontinuous speech.“The English alphabet is created of embedded Fibonacci relationships…there are five vowels; all five of those vowels are odd numbers…between A and E is three letters; between E and I is three letters; between I and O is five; O and U is five; and between U and the end of the alphabet, wrapping around to the A, is five letters…two 3s and three 5s is also one of these relationships. There are twenty-one consonants in the alphabet, and twenty-one is one of these Fibonacci values.”Book: Darwin’s Pharmacy by Richard DoyleReaching beyond language to communicate the ineffable psychedelic experience…only to create new (insufficient) languages.Violent counter-reactions to the sudden is-ness of black swan events (like the election of Barack Obama OR Donald Trump).“Those of us that get it and CAN talk about it, it is necessary for us to talk about it. But then to reinforce what we’re talking about with action.”The moral imperative of people with a vision to communicate it. The ethical necessity of artists to create and share.Music as an irreplaceable core module of an n-plus-one-dimensional future language.“We’re like some kind of ant, or bee, and our honey is technology.”With respect to the Singularity: The end of the world? The end of WHAT world? WHAT DOES “END” EVEN MEAN?What happens to identity politics in an age of exponential change and its metamorphosis of “baseline” human identity into something plural, mutable, and ineffably always-evolving?“We have to burst out of identity politics in a way such that it is BORING, that it is MUNDANE, that our perception of identity politics is that it is no longer [the house-sized thing that I am within], it is [identity politics, this thing I am holding in my hand and I can examine like I would examine a grapefruit].”“One’s reality is limited by their ability to comprehend complexity.”If we act from the understanding that our brains are harmonically organized, our thoughts and actions can begin to take on that harmonic organization…Gamma brainwaves as the lubricating medium of harmonically coherent brain activity, just as blockchain-enabled microtransactions enables a fluid economy and liquid democracy in the global brain…How to become resilient in a networked society by using failure to inform the design of new evolutionary systems.“Bitcoin…it’s unstoppable. Right now. And when it IS stoppable, we will have a new version that is vastly less stoppable than this one. And then it will get attacked mercilessly…and then maybe someone brings the quantum chain down. And then we create something we can’t even imagine at this point…”“I feel that Bit Torrent begat Bitcoin.”“The interesting thing with the Bitcoin community is that we’re all working for a company that…there’s nobody working for that company!”Is crypto the cathedral of planetary culture we’ve been waiting for?Onyx waxes rhapsodic about the blockchain.Open-source space program.Book: Project Hieroglyph (containing Cory Doctorow’s short story, “The Man Who Sold The Moon”)Onyx uses Sun Ra and the afro-futurist mythology that he created repeatedly to make a point about legendary creative badassery.“You have to share it in such a way that each person feels that they are absorbing it. And want to. ‘How can I get involved?’”Pay No Attention to The Realm of Loud Dumb ShitWhat a bad example of a good future cyberpunk is… (Tyrell Corporation in Blade Runner, etc.)Story/Film: Johnny Mnemonic by William GibsonImagining a Crypto Pride Parade with everyone wearing reflective Face ID spoofing masksWhat it takes to turn a work of art into a movement: resonance.“If you [lawmakers and IP holding companies] can’t stop a five megabyte file [mp3s], good luck stopping crypto.”And more for those with time to listen!Join the Facebook Group:https://facebook.com/groups/futurefossilsSubscribe on Apple Podcasts:https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/future-fossils/id1152767505?mt=2 Subscribe on Google Podcasts:http://bit.ly/future-fossils-google Subscribe on Stitcher:https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/michael-garfield/future-fossils Subscribe on Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/2eCYA4ISHLUWbEFOXJ8C5v Subscribe on iHeart Radio:https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-FUTURE-FOSSILS-28991847/ Support the show on Patreon:https://patreon.com/michaelgarfield 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 the one-of-a-kind, ever-evolving Onyx Ashanti, a cyborg performance artist of world renown, who is as busy as anyone I know (in the words of Terence McKenna) “immanentizing the Eschaton” with his intensely futuristic machine interfaces as an extension of his cymatic, fractal, exponentiating, indomitably cool and strange philosophy. Onyx is one of the most inspiring and creative people in my network and even though this episode was recorded in December 2017 – and is in some ways just a little dated – it’s still 99% WAY, WAY in our future. A paradox! Just how we like it, around here…http://onyx-ashanti.com/https://www.youtube.com/user/onyxashantihttps://www.facebook.com/onyxashanti“We have access to technologies and information that are only limited by our abilities to comprehend them.”The creative potentials of encrypted distributed ledgers “that aren’t just about holding until I’m a millionaire.”Marshall McLuhan: “The future of the future is the now.”The uncontrollability of new technologies.When we talk about “THE” future, whose future are we talking about?“The past and the future all exist as constructs in your mind. The past is no more real than the future.”How choosing our story of the past determines what possibilities become probabilities in our future.“When I think about polarities like good and bad, I think about it in an electronic sense. It’s modulation of the relationship between positive and negative that gives you computers.”Physical and spatial computing exercises and how movement in space can help dislodge us from stuck perspectives.“We have to have more art that plays with the malleability of exponential expressions.”Book: Finite & Infinite Games by James P. Carse“There’s a lot of people who think that if they get the right president, or they get the right representative, or they buy the right car, then it’s all going to be alright. That is not the case. It is very, very not going to be alright. There are evolving and exponentially complying streams of possibilities that can collapse into probabilities – IF you understand that possibility collapses into probability.”We spoil the movie AI.“American media culture likes to wrap everything up in a happy ending, a happily-ever-after scenario. And I think that makes us retarded.”Book: Accelerando by Charles StrossTutting (for those who don’t know what tutting is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbBqtuYvags) vs BreakdancingVitalik Buterin, inventor of Ethereum, as an example of the crazy wizard kids these days, “spoon benders”Berlin and Detroit and the collapse of industrial centers as the mulch in which great artistic movements bloom…“If everybody were able to express themselves properly, we would be something else, and it wouldn’t be controlled by the people it’s controlled by. And that something else would be, I think, grander, but at the same time would have a whole other set of problems.”How do you keep the golden moment of a temporary autonomous zone or a bohemian urban revival going for as long as possible before it’s gentrified, coopted, integrated, and extinguished?“Innovation and institution: I won’t say that they’re oxymoronic, but the modulation is going to be different between them. I don’t look to institutions [for innovation]. I don’t believe the college education system is relevant anymore.”“The first thing that should happen is, everyone learns how to learn.”“There is no limit to synaptic connectivity that anyone has observed. There is no brain that is so full that it cannot process one more thing.”Onyx’s favorite nootropics (racetams).Co-evolving brain-machine interfaces for a constant flow state of cyborg immersivity.How would AI perceive information? Likely as music…Book: Starmaker by Olaf StapledonBook: Xenolinguistics by Diana Reed SlatteryJoin the Facebook Group:https://facebook.com/groups/futurefossilsSubscribe on Apple Podcasts:https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/future-fossils/id1152767505?mt=2 Subscribe on Google Podcasts:http://bit.ly/future-fossils-google Subscribe on Stitcher:https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/michael-garfield/future-fossils Subscribe on Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/2eCYA4ISHLUWbEFOXJ8C5v Subscribe on iHeart Radio:https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-FUTURE-FOSSILS-28991847/ Support the show on Patreon:http://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldBig thanks to our featured sponsor, http://transhumanity.net! 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