Humans On The Loop

This week’s guest is Charles Eisenstein, author of five books that challenge our inherited stories of civilization and progress – but move beyond critique and into an articulation of the new paradigm emerging simultaneously through all fields of human inquiry and practice: new modes of inter-being in a living and intelligent world; humility and celebration of the mysteries that bridges science, art, and spirit; and new perspectives on how we determine value and how we can thrive amidst an age of transformation.Charles offers us a literate and savvy look at how we got to where we are and what we will require to move past the suicidal, ecocidal myths that got us here. He’s also warm and kind and makes it easy to unfold into this awesome conversation, in which he calls BS on the rhetoric of endless economic growth and scientific conquest, and invites us to co-dream the future that so many of us have become too cynical to hope for. Enjoy this bracing dose of cool, clear wisdom and bright insight:Subscribe on Patreon to watch the uncut interview:https://www.patreon.com/posts/20618842Our New, Better Life?https://charleseisenstein.net/essays/7061-2/Why I Am Afraid of Global Coolinghttps://charleseisenstein.net/essays/why-i-am-afraid-of-global-cooling/Discussed:What inspired Charles’ thorough history and critique of civilization, The Ascent of Humanity, and how it differs from “anti-civilization” texts.The independent convergent evolutions of civilization in Mesopotamia, China, India, and several other places, pointing to the inevitability and directionality of what we call “progress.”What new stories emerge at the intersection of the timeless attractors toward a whole and healthy, thriving biodiverse world of human inter-beings, and a fragmented post-ecocidal VR fully artificial landscape?When is it useful to think of humans as part of nature and when is it useful to think of humans as distinct from nature?“Participation begins with listening. And that listening is motivated by accepting that there’s something to listen TO. That there’s something that wants to happen. What wants to happen and how can we participate in that? How can we exercise our gifts in service to this larger thing?”What cultural appropriation gets wrong in its attempts to retrieve and revive indigenous rites (“It’s not the content of the rituals; it’s the spirit of the rituals.”)Money as a ritual: “One of the reasons money comes so easily to us is that it’s a kind of ritual. The human mind…ritual is its territory.”“Law, Medicine, Money, and Technology: those are the most powerful realms of ritual that we have.”Operating on a story that believes the world to be dead leads to a world that is, in fact, dead – whether or not it actually was dead in the first place. Treating nature as a resource rather than as a community of minded cohabitants and potential collaborators is a self-fulfilling prophecy and an act of self-sabotage.Charles’ critique of the New Age technologies of manifestation as oblivious of where the intention or vision comes from in the first place, how we’re enfolded into our environments……and how paradoxically similar that critique is to the disenchanting philosophies described by people like Yuval Harari and Timothy Morton, who make the case that it’s equally the case that the world is alive, or that humans are basically just machines. Or Erik Davis’ “re-animism,” in which we return to a pre-modern sense of a sentient environment through our encounter with AI-suffused devices.How the scientific quest for control over a purely mechanical cosmos pushed us all the way around into some truly weird revelations about the indeterminate, irreproducible, and contingent workings of our mysterious universe.Why machines don’t provide a sufficient metaphor for understanding consciousness, and certainly not for reproducing it.Is trying to fit the complexity of the world into a linear narrative structure the problem at the root of all this? Is it a form of violence to talk about time and evolution having a direction?“I’m not a story fundamentalist. If I say the world is built from story, I also recognize that that itself is also a story. I look at the story of inter-being, for example, as really just the ideological layer of an organism that is far deeper than story.”“There are many ways to know. And we’re conditioned by a story that says only the measurable is real. So we’re conditioned to give priority to ways of knowing that have to do with putting things in categories.”“Progress as currently formulated is not real progress at all. We’re not getting ANY closer to the fulfillment of human potential. Well, aybe we are getting closer on one very narrow axis of development. But there is so much more to a fully expressed human being…and we’re moving away from it in a lot of ways.”What metaphor for mind/life/nature is set to replace “the computer,” just as “the computer” replaced “the steam engine,” which replaced “the geared watch?”How black box AI solutions restore the mystery and magic to the technosphere, replacing reason with blind faith.Kevin Kelly, Stephen Pinker, William Irwin Thompson, Douglas Rushkoff, Arthur Brock,“The more empathic our participation, the better off we’ll be.”Can we be TOO empathic?“I think on some level, we all DO feel what all beings are feeling.”The boundaries we draw between our selves and the world, between one organism and another, also evolve.The healing power of grief.Purge-aholics Anonymous.The evolution of service as a continuously shifting, molting thing that changes, that requires careful listening. No moment is the same.The sacred disquiet that attends our new perspective as we learn to see a bigger (ever-bigger) picture.“We have to be cognizant of the inevitable reduction that happens when we assign values to things…one way to translate the humble awareness of the limitations of quantified value is to design currencies that do not need to grow in order to survive.”Did money invent science?“Property is an agreement. It’s not an absolute objective thing…as much as libertarians would like it to be.”Why cryptocurrency (wants to, but) can’t replace human agreement with code.Subscribe 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 YouTube:http://youtube.com/michaelgarfieldSubscribe on iHeart Radio:https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-FUTURE-FOSSILS-28991847/Join our Facebook Discussion Group for daily news and conversations:http://facebook.com/groups/futurefossilsSupport the show (and an avalanche of other mind-expanding media):http://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldBig thanks to our featured sponsor, transhumanity.net!7y8qr5yz 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

Former NASA-JPL Mission Architect and founder of the Exploration Institute, Armin Ellis helps people think big and execute visionary projects for a living. He’s also now the Mission Architect for the Arch Mission Project, a group committed to getting long-lasting civilizational archives carried into deep space by other missions. Armin is exactly the guy to talk to if you want to think the future’s somewhere you would like to live…Watch the entire uncut video on Patreon:https://www.patreon.com/posts/20404177Armin's projects:http://exploration.institutehttp://pioneerscircle.comhttps://archmission.org“I really do believe that the future is pretty bright for us.”A rallying cry to not let our amygdalae rule us, to not succumb to fear and desperation.How working on a Mars rover mission helped him develop a humility and appreciation for complexity.“Ego slows us down. It makes us stupider, you know? I’m not sure there are too many intelligent people out there. I think there are people who embrace intelligent practices; that allows them to have intelligent outcomes.”And also: in defense of egotistical people who perform a vital function in the ecosphere by making sure we Get Things Done.How the limitations of each of us as individuals can align with others’ limitations and assets to form a functioning team.Diaspora by Greg EganHow do you craft communications to reach everyone on a neurologically diverse team?“When opinions aren’t backed up by empathy, then you’re necessarily going to run into problems.”“I can’t remember a day in my life when space wasn’t this burning passion, something that REALLY mattered to me…I remember I was eight years old when I decided I wanted to work at JPL.”Idea To Implementation MethodHow to recognize when the processes in an organization are out of alignment.How he got involved in space entrepreneurship and space exploration as a young man.The vital importance of a frontier, of curiosity, of exploration…Why the quest for certainty leads us astray and the quest for meaning leads us true.“Being able to influence it is a fundamentally different premise than being able to control it.”IkigaiWould somebody please build an Ocean Roomba already?Trying to make Star Trek’s Federation happen.The Arch Mission Project, an awesome and ambitious endeavor to leave engraved nickel civilization archives at the ocean’s floor and on the Moon, and with every deep space mission…The importance of emotional mastery (again, not control…) if we are to become the kind of species we could be…And more!• Join the Future Fossils Podcast Facebook Grouphttp://facebook.com/groups/futurefossils• Support Future Fossils on Patreon for Exclusive Episodes & Morehttp://patreon.com/michaelgarfield• Subscribe on Apple Podcastshttp://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/future-fossils/id1152767505?mt=2• Subscribe on Google Podcastshttp://bit.ly/future-fossils-google• Subscribe on Stitcherhttp://www.stitcher.com/podcast/michael-garfield/future-fossils• Subscribe on Spotifyhttp://open.spotify.com/show/2eCYA4ISHLUWbEFOXJ8C5v• Subscribe on iHeart Radiohttp://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-FUTURE-FOSSILS-28991847/• Subscribe on Steemit/dSoundhttp://steemit.com/@michaelgarfield• Subscribe by RSShttp://feed.pippa.io/public/shows/5a85dc81756ad1eb46c66330Big thanks to transhumanity.net for being a featured sponsor! 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

One third of American adolescents are on medication – half of that number, on psychoactive prescriptions. We have an educational system that not only can’t prepare young people for the rapidly evolving future world we’re creating for them to inhabit – it traumatizes people by attempting to squeeze every kind of human through the same twelve-plus-year sentence of indoctrination and obedience training. Are damaged and addicted mind control slaves really who we hope we’re shaping? Obviously not! That’s where the radical (yet common sense and plainly reasonable) ideas of Michael Strong come in. Michael has devoted his life to establishing new education systems that prepare young people for a lifelong learning process, to think for themselves and find their self-esteem in cultivated excellence, not rote memorization or decontextualized performance. Civilization might mean domesticated people…but do want to live in the Calcutta Zoo?In this week’s episode, I speak with Michael Strong – about how he sees the future evolution of education and learning – starting with a “narrative collapse” about our consensus standardized testing hallucination and a departure from the “factory-worker factory” model that dominates the US public education system now – and growing into an ecology of different styles and possibilities more suited to the future: early-entry programs that restore apprenticeship, train young entrepreneurs, link “un-schooled” families into a learning network, and rebuild the independent and creative minds we’ll need to thrive through the next hundred years of exponential change.About Michael Strong:https://thoughtandindustry.com/abouthttps://thepurposeofeducation.wordpress.com/about-michael-strong/https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelstrong1/https://www.edreform.com/edspresso-shots/why-we-dont-have-a-silicon-valley-of-education-michael-strong/We Discussed:“I think creating better ways of living is the most exciting, fun task for the 21st Century…[and] middle and high school is more or less prison for 80% of students.”• How to create happy, positive, creative experiences for young people by reimagining the education system• How do we unwind a system that pressures everyone to conform, and establish a system that encourages the vast (and USEFUL) diversity of human personality types, talents, and learning styles?“School is a very narrow band for people who are good at tasks…that doesn’t do justice to the diverse count of moral beings, but also there’s this moral chaos, where I think a lot of the consumerism and addictive behaviors of young people is that there is no sense of virtue or excellence.”• Why mental health and behavioral disorders are at an all-time high, and getting worse, and what to do about it.• The tragicomedy of Socratic process versus fundamentalists in the schools, and taking a pragmatic stance to the chaos and complexity of our time.• Crafting your own sense of meaning and independent moral authority in stark contrast to our legacy of hierarchical thinking.• How to individuate in an era of increased networking – how to tell the difference between pressure to conform and desire to connect?• Technology addiction versus relational meditation and deep nature communion.“One of the things I love about the San Francisco Bay Area is that no matter how weird you are, somebody is weirder.”• Individualism versus political correctness.• The dissolution of established job categories and the beginning of totally unique, distinct purpose and meaning for individuals.• The proliferation of new aesthetics and the emergence of new freedom and openness in the human experience.• How grateful should we be for living in the modern era?• How do we prepare young people to think independently?• What integrated educational curricula look like, exploring ideas across subjects rather than demanding the learning of specific facts.• How to measure success for students in nontraditional systems so they can still win at the university admissions game.• And more…Subscribe 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 YouTube:http://youtube.com/michaelgarfield Subscribe on iHeart Radio:https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-FUTURE-FOSSILS-28991847/ Join our Facebook Discussion Group for daily news and conversations:http://facebook.com/groups/futurefossilsSupport the show (and an avalanche of other mind-expanding media):http://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

Lydia Violet Harutoonian is a badass Armenian-American violinist and folktronica artist who has played with some of today’s juiciest crossover acts, including Rising Appalachia and The Polish Ambassador, in addition to launching her own solo project this year. She also works with the supremely wise Buddhist deep ecologist Joanna Macy on The Work That Reconnects, and leads singing workshops in which she applies her lifetime of music and work with Macy to teach music as a form of collective healing.Links:https://lydiafiddle.comhttps://workthatreconnects.orgWe Discuss:• How being monogamous in San Francisco is practically a form of bondage – a delicious kind, one expression of love in a whole ecology of relational styles;• The collaborative and improvisational super powers of the unique musical instrument we call a violin;• How can we use music to metabolize our fear and grief as communities?;• The power of song in building resilience;• Working with Joanna Macy on The Work That Reconnects;• How the expanded, interconnected human identity of deep ecology informs our lives and moral actions;• Bodhichitta – the Buddhist virtue loosely translated as “goodwill” – and how the practice of deep ecology can help us cultivate it;• The silver lining of crisis and how it can elicit our best humanity;• Why Art Matters (especially when we’re most likely to abandon it because it has “no practical value”);• How music can effect change when conversation (data, analysis, logical arguments, diplomacy) can not;• Musical activism and the awesome experience of touring with Reverend Sekou and the Holy Ghost• “How do we heal racism as a community and what part does music play in that?”• “When did you stop singing?” (And why do so many European-Americans have such difficulty with singing, when the European musical heritage is so vibrant?)• “What would it look like if we all knew a song from our heritage and could teach it to each other?”• And more!Quotes:“When you’re upset about something in the world, that’s usually an indication that you give a damn.”“I really care what happens to people! I don’t know how to relate to the homeless man on the street because it confuses me that he’s on the street.”“Music is another fundamental way that we as people, and we as communities, find our resiliency in hard times, the way we share our stories.”“I think it’s important to not demand – especially with creativity and music – that when someone starts, that everyone chime in in the exact same way.”“I am empowered because I’m interconnected with so many other beating, pulsing people in the world who are working to help the planet.”“I think music is fundamental because there is nothing that a human being says or does that isn’t first seated of consciousness. And music helps work in the realm of consciousness. I think that’s part of why so many people and communities are talking about ‘shifts in consciousness’ as so important – because if we find a new way of tending the garden, how will that structure last unless we have had some kind of shift in our consciousness to sustain us through the ups and downs of what could happen with that garden? And I think music has an intelligence on multiple levels that helps us with that.”“No one can tell you we’re going to make it out of this. No one can tell you that we’re not going to make it out. That is real. And so, then, in that uncertainty, I have to ask myself – and I think we all have to ask ourselves – what do I want to do anyway? What do I want to do?”Related Episodes:Episode 74 with Terry Patten - A New Republic of the HeartEpisode 73 with Patricia Gray - Animals & MusicEpisode 50 with Ayana Young - Living for the WildEpisode 22 with Simon Yugler - Travel AlchemySubscribe 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 YouTube:http://youtube.com/michaelgarfieldSubscribe on iHeart Radio:https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-FUTURE-FOSSILS-28991847/Join our Facebook Discussion Group for daily news and conversations:http://facebook.com/groups/futurefossilsSupport the show (and an avalanche of other mind-expanding media):http://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 episode’s guest is Arthur Brock, currency design expert and lead visionary behind the Holochain project – which just might be the basis for the truly free, encrypted, peer-to-peer, surveillance-resistant, voluntary, non-exploitative Web we’ve all been dreaming about since the 1990s.Described by many as a “blockchain killer,” Holochain offers users an endlessly scalable and secure decentralized platform for our lives online, inspired by the fractal branching flows and emergent order we observe in nature.You don’t have to be a cryptocurrency enthusiast or economics wonk to appreciate the smarts and wisdom that Art brings to his work – or to understand why he’s spent the last ten years teaching people about a new paradigm of currency and governance.This is an introduction to a whole new way of thinking about what matters most to you – whatever that might be – as well as how Art and the Holochain team are working day and night to help us ditch the scarcity mindset, and to give us the tools for building a more human and generous society.Holochain Website Metacurrency Project Website "Building Responsible Cryptocurrencies" by Arthur Brock Quotes:“I think one of my particular gifts is interfacing with complex systems, being able to find leverage points for changing those patterns…”“Currencies are not just about money. That’s like a fingernail on the animal of currencies.”“There’s two fundamental fallacies that blockchain is stuck in. The first one is that data exists, and the second one is that time exists.”“There is no absolute time. To pretend that there is, is to create a fiction.”We Discuss:• Currencies as “current-sees,” ways to see, shape, and enable flows of value;• How does nature use signaling systems to create evolutionary “current-sees” that can guide our thinking on currency design?• Why most of the blockchain/cryptocurrencies space is thinking wrong about value and how to generate value in a thriving ecology.• How to design money for stability, compared to the intense volatility of nearly all cryptocurrencies.• Comparing Sean Esbjörn-Hargens’ “Metacapital Framework” to Art’s “Metacurrency Project” and how things shift when you shift your thinking from pools of resources to flows of resources.• How our CONNECTIONS are actually deeper and more important realities than our BORDERS.• How the transition to p2p money routing around banks is like the Protestant Reformation and its ensuing political chaos.• The balance between centralized and decentralized systems – how does Art think the ecology of different organizational structures will ultimately shake out?• How different system architectures encode completely different worldviews and ideas and how facts are made – and how assuming the independence of data we miss something vital.• Art addresses Nathan Waters’ questions about whether Holochain can handle “fungible assets” – land rights, artworks, etc.• Does time even exist?• The mathematical inevitability of the Deep State.• How capitalism is a Ponzi scheme and we’ll have to ditch it to survive.• Why crypto needs to be at least as easy as the Web if it is going to ever work.• And the future of real and symbolic value…Stay Tuned:• Join the Future Fossils Podcast 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 George Dvorsky, futurist, science journalist, and long-time contributing editor at legendary sci/fi blog io9 at http://gizmodo.com.http://twitter.com/dvorskyhttp://kinja.com/georgedvorskyhttp://www.sentientdevelopments.com/https://io9.gizmodo.com/20-crucial-terms-every-21st-century-futurist-should-kno-1545499202We Discuss:• Today’s explosive evolution of AI personal assistants, and where it’s heading…• Will children today, immersed in a world of AI dolls and smarthome devices that speak to them by name, grow up with a different idea of what entities deserve our moral concern?• The pressing cybersecurity and surveillance problems we encounter in the process of filling our lives with internet-connected devices.• Autonomous vehicles and weapons and the ethics of machine intelligence.• The history of our attempts to suppress or prevent the industrialization of warfare.• AI as proxy selves that we can deputize to act as us, on our behalf…• What kind of literacies will we need to have in a world of mature AI?• The future of human-AI collaboration in the arts and creative media.• This story he covered for Gizmodo:https://gizmodo.com/a-four-year-old-boy-used-siri-to-save-his-unconscious-m-1793584170• Is paper a “broken” non-interactive touchscreen?• Mapmaking and prosthesis, and how differently we orient ourselves in landscapes now that we use Google Maps (or Waze, or Apple Maps, or Mapquest, or or or).• And is it ethical to increase the intelligence of other animals? Is it wrong to create an Interspecies Internet that weaves nonhuman persons into our already-messy processes of electronic governance and culture? Or is it morally required of us to go “all together now” and bring the rest of the biosphere with us into the heavens we create?• The transformation of the biosphere into superintelligence – as an ethical necessity.“I always like to look at things around us today that we will laugh at years from now and then marvel at how stupid it was…”“My own gut instinct is that very, very few people would willingly plow their car through a bus stop filled with passengers. So why do we feel that we wouldn’t want to own a car that’s programmed with that same ethical sensibility?”“I’m on team AI. I’m all for it. I cannot wait to see what artificial intelligence may do…four to five generations from now.”Subscribe 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/Join our Facebook Discussion Group for daily news and conversations:http://facebook.com/groups/futurefossilsSupport the show (and an avalanche of other mind-expanding media):http://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 James Eggleston, research and business development at Power Ledger, a blockchain software company helping the world build a resilient decentralized electrical utilities networks that’s more resistant to the turbulence of our century – and lets all of us participate in and earn from distributed power production.Power Ledger:https://powerledger.io/https://twitter.com/powerledger_io?lang=enJames:https://twitter.com/jamesbychance?lang=enWe Discuss:• The history of dematerialization and the shift from things to data;• The logic and practice of decentralizing our infrastructure;• Why solar makes more sense than coal, no matter what you believe;• How we’re going to build a distributed global renewable energy market;• How we can have a tech-positive attitude and answer to existential risk (ie, the Yellowstone Supervolcano, super solar flares, massive cyberattacks, etc.);• How James integrates the principle of resilience into his whole life – in particular, his commitment to intense physical training and meditation, including “Hell Week” special forces training;• How to shape an “integral life practice” and the importance of balancing all of the areas of personal development in your life;• James’ academic research into an open source governance framework for energy-independent and hyper-locally managed apartment communities;• The role of industry and government in innovation;• How Power Ledger utilizes a two-token system to ensure fair market pricing for electricity and still provide a return for equity investors;• How are utility tokens are different from cryptocurrencies;• And the future of smart - even INTELLIGENT - cities AND villages!“You can have electricity without an economy, but you can’t have an economy without electricity.”“If you look at global spending on electricity, more money is going into renewables than any other source.”“When you push yourself to the point where you want to stop, that’s where it starts. And the way that you grow your resilience is by putting yourself in that uncomfortable situation. So from my perspective, I try to put myself in that situation every day.”“We [Power Ledger] see this as an evolution, not an extinction event.”7y8qr5yz 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

Visionary artist Archan Nair joins Future Fossils this week for an infectiously fun conversation about the new creative opportunities of the digital age.http://www.archann.net/• How learning to use new tools is a little like dying;• Archan’s history of using computers for art;• The feedback loop between evolving tools and evolving artists;• How to stay clear-eyed and full-hearted about the always-on awesomeness of the world, and not let the daily BS drag you down;• The role of the nondual philosophy of Advaita Vedanta in his life and creative process;• The exclusivity of the present when we investigate subjectivity (“The past and future don’t exist; only now exists”)• How is the all-encompassing now of eastern mysticism different from the “Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now” of our eidetic and prophetic virtual existences?• What does the practice of Vedanta teach us about how to receive rapid change as an opportunity for transformation rather than as an overwhelm and assault on what we hold dear?• The problem created when our educational system focuses exclusively on examining the world “outside” of us, to the neglect of what’s “inside”;• How never speaking the word “I” can diminish the experience of a self;• How do we lose the self in the city when we’re constantly reminded of it through social interactions?• Social media and inauthenticity…• Attaining beginner’s mind• And more!Mentioned:• Ramana Maharshi• Nisargardatta Maharaj• Ramesh Balsekar • Richard Doyle • Nura Learning• Adi DaSubscribe on Apple Podcasts:https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/future-fossils/id1152767505?mt=2Subscribe 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/Join our Facebook Discussion Group for daily news and conversations:http://facebook.com/groups/futurefossilsSupport the show (and an avalanche of other mind-expanding media):http://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

“The best anti-virus is common sense.”This episode’s guest is Dylan Curran, a cybersecurity specialist who recently went viral after his exposé tweets about the personal information Google and Facebook collected about him were shared by Edward Snowden. Strap in for an uncomfortable close look at just how little privacy we have online – it’s even worse than you already knew – but also, some straight, practical advice for how to navigate the “glass house” we all live in now, with safety, dignity, and savvy.Dylan:https://twitter.com/iamdylancurranhttp://dylancurran.netHere is his epic Twitter thread about how “The internet knows more about you than you do”:https://twitter.com/i/moments/977591863732527106Dylan works with two privacy-focused search engines:http://duckduckgo.comhttp://presearch.org• Why there isn’t any good way to hide who you are online anymore;• The difference between anonymity and pseudonymity, and why that matters to everyone investing in blockchain tech and crypto assets;• Why our notions of privacy should change, and how we’re better off with the “small town” co-veillance of John Perry Barlow’s Wild Westworld than we are with 19th Century ideas of self and secret;• Why it’s not really about data transparency, it’s about power inequality;• The NSA’s PRISM Program and your government’s backdoors to all your private information;• How privacy tech is only going to keep evolving if we ask for it, because the market drives invention;• How lucky Europeans have it with GDPR, and how less great we have it in the US, where we can’t just ask them to erase our data;• Does Cambridge Analytica scandal prove that we’ve reached the end of democracy and its replacement with black magic user-interface design for social behavioral engineering?• How do we get people to use privacy-focused services if they don’t work as well as the convenient data-harvesting services?• Why it’s important to let your political opponents speak (ie, Why Censorship Is Wrong, MmmK?);• The cultural significance of “Change My Mind” style posts in combatting the filter bubble issue;• Can we design a platform that rewards cultural synthesis?• The difference between how Ireland and the USA have adapted to constant internet surveillance, in part because of differing governmental systems and structures;• Dylan’s rant for individualism in the age of proliferating identity politics and obsessive membership mentality;• Hyper-collectivization leads to hyper-personalization (according to Teilhard de Chardin) = made-up job titles;• The decentralized future;• Don’t use Amazon Web Services!• The (totally shameful, unnecessary) UnderArmor hack;• Privacy Audits as a new low-level data standard;• Dylan’s personal digital hygiene regimen;• And, most importantly, if EVERYONE has everyone else’s nudes, isn’t that a Mexican Standoff and we’re good?Additional Media:My three-part essay on The Evolution of Surveillance, a psychedelic foray into the history of predator-prey co-evolution and our invention of weird new technological sense organs:Part 1 - From Burgess Shale to Google Glasshttps://medium.com/@michaelgarfield/the-evolution-of-surveillance-part-1-burgess-shale-to-google-glass-220fefb3a906Part 2 - Red Queens & Evil Eyeshttps://medium.com/@michaelgarfield/the-evolution-of-surveillance-part-2-red-queens-evil-eyes-79fcbce68d5ePart 3 - Living in the Belly of the Beasthttps://medium.com/@michaelgarfield/the-evolution-of-surveillance-part-3-living-in-the-belly-of-the-beast-2a42538ee2The song at the end of this episode is “Transparent” from my live performance at Mycelium Studios in Melbourne, Australia last year. You can grab it for free here:https://michaelgarfield.bandcamp.com/album/2017-02-03-mycelium-studios-melbourne-australiaSubscribe on Apple Podcasts:https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/future-fossils/id1152767505?mt=2 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/ Join our Facebook Discussion Group for daily news and conversations:http://facebook.com/groups/futurefossils Support the show (and an avalanche of other mind-expanding media):http://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

Self-aware machines, organs on a chip, brain-entangled meta-human military units, smart-sensor-gridded coral reefs, drone flocks, DNA-based computing, robots having baby robots…the line between the “made” and “born” is getting blurrier and blurrier each day. What does it mean to be alive in a time when we already treat the corporation as a legal person, fall in love with chat bots, and “possess” telepresence robots in virtual reality for work?This talk is a three-part argument:1 - The Internet is usefully understood as a psychedelic substance, in that it remixes what we ordinarily think of as “inside” and “outside,” “self” and “other.”2 - The psychological effects of the Internet are, then, usefully addressed through the methods of psychedelic harm reduction (like MAPS’ Zendo Project, techniques developed by the Women’s Visionary Congress, or KosmiCare in Europe).3 - Because the Internet remixes everything, it casts our categories of “made” and “born,” “alive” and “mechanical” into question – and suggests a more complex and nuanced understanding in which “intellectual property” has a life and a destiny of its own, and we have far more in common with machines and “corporate persons” than we’re used to thinking.Therefore, the best way forward in this crazy age may be to treat ALL things, the living AND nonliving, with compassion and respect. We’re almost certainly mistaken about what merits care, these days…so let’s be kind to our machine descendants, treat our great ideas like children that we can’t control but CAN encourage down the right path, and in general do everything we can to be remembered as good parents to/for/by Whatever Comes Next…Recorded at Palenque Norte, Burning Man 2017, Black Rock City, Nevada. Guest appearances by Mitch Mignano (guest of episode 57) For more along these lines, check out these related media:• The prologue to this talk, a short rap from the Commonwealth Bank of Australia Innovation Lab last year:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfjnWkDwYrc• An archive of nearly all of my public talks since 2009, including every talk I’ve given at Burning Man:http://evolution.bandcamp.com• Writings about the co-evolution of humans and technology:http://medium.com/@michaelgarfieldThanks and Enjoy!Subscribe on Apple Podcasts:https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/future-fossils/id1152767505?mt=2 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/ Join our Facebook Discussion Group for daily news and conversations:http://facebook.com/groups/futurefossils Support the show (and an avalanche of other mind-expanding media):http://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