Team Human

Playing for Team Human today is musician Tessa Lena. Tessa's music explores the tension between technology and human agency. In her songs and in this interview, Tessa playfully challenges robotic conceptions of humanity. Tessa offers a compelling argument for power of music to call us out of those automatic, quantified notions of self and society.Both Lena and Rushkoff pose essential questions; Is technology being used to extend our human potential? Does the embedded economic agenda driving technology inevitably thwart ambitions that focus on people over profit?Tessa's brand new record Tessa Fights Robots serves as the launching point for a true Team Human conversation about the power of art, music, and play in an increasingly robotic society.Team Human is supported by listeners. A special thanks to our new supporters as well as all of our monthly sustainers who make each episode possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Playing for Team Human today is Pia Mancini. Pia is a visionary democracy activist who co-founded the Net Party in Argentina and DemocracyOS. Today Pia joins Douglas to talk about her new project Open Collective. Open Collective is platform that helps small, non-traditional organizations to collectivize, raise funds, and manage expenses in a networked and transparent fashion. Open Collective is a useful resource for listeners who are trying to build sustainable funding for their local community group, political organization, and even school club. Pia explains how Open Collectives not only is helping to fund a growing number of unique organizations, but signals a future where transparent, collective partnerships might foster new models of democratic participation and exchange of resources.Douglas begins today's show with a monologue on shame. How is shame used as an instrument of social control? Rushkoff advances a thesis on how open, transparent social organizing, like what is being fostered by Pia and Open Collective, counters shame and enhances our ability to forge solidarity. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Playing for Team Human today is author and Bloomberg Businessweek and New Yorker columnist David Sax. Sax’s latest book Revenge of the Analog, Real Things and Why They Matter explores the resurgence of the tactile, human-to-human, brick-and-mortar encounters that characterize the analog experience. How might our rekindled love of vinyl LPs, local book stores, and face-to-face interaction help reground society to the physical realities of land, labor, and our fellow humans? Sax and Rushkoff explore the real world experiences and “flesh and blood consequences" that lie just beyond the glow of our screens and mediated environments.In today’s show monologue, Rushkoff looks at the extreme political and policy binaries being pushed by the Trump administration. He argues for an embrace of liminal spaces; the continuous, ambiguous, and messy analog work of building peace in these turbulent times. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Playing for Team Human today, memeticist and social change agent Laszlo Karafiath Ph.D.Laszlo, memetic engineer for Culture 2, shares his analysis of the weaponized media now paralyzing so much of our thought, and tells us what we have to do - collectively - to build our immunity to thought viruses. Together Karafiath and Rushkoff look at the ways we might redeploy memetic power to foster positive social change. You can learn more about Karafiath's work at www.purposeandplay.com or follow him on twitter.Also on today's show - Rushkoff on avoiding the rabbit holes of speculation and distraction in the context of war and the volatile Trump administration. How might we get back to the work of rebuilding society rather than being pulled deeper into the sensationalized narratives unfolding on our screens? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A unique episode of Team Human, on today's show Douglas Rushkoff is joined by longtime friend and counterculture legend R.U. Sirius (aka Ken Goffman), founding editor of Mondo 2000. R.U. will help us evaluate the place of the counterculture in the digital landscape. Is counterculture even possible today? Is humanity itself the counterculture as we resist increasingly quantified and abstracted lives? Together R.U. and Rushkoff playfully and thoughtfully examine these questions while asserting those quirky yet challenging expressions of humanity not so easily reduced to code or marketing demographics.The music on today's show comes from a variety of R.U. Sirius's musical projects. Visit https://rusirius.bandcamp.com/ to listen. Follow Sirius's work at https://stealthissingularity.com/. Musicians are encouraged to connect with R.U.Sirius to collaborate. Needle drops in this show:Glad-Handed I PoliticianPunching A Nazi Be My Valerie SolanisLove is the Product President Mussolini Makes the Planes Run On Time Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Playing for Team Human today is Bas van Abel. Bas is the founder of Fairphone, which began with the radical idea that technology should be built without exploiting human laborers and destroying the planet. Van Abel's experiment of building a "fair" phone has taken him around the world to witness first-hand the lives made invisible in the digital supply chain. Bas and Douglas talk about how putting people first requires both a redesign of economic systems and a reshaping of our individual perspectives as consumers in an age of hyper-materialism.Learn more about Fairphone here. Watch this VPRO documentary on producing the fairphoneOn today's opening monologue, Rushkoff on his weekend viewing of the Broadway sensation Hamilton and the tension between retreating into fantasy versus committing to fix our reality.Photos thanks to Fairphone's Flickr Photostream Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Playing for Team Human today is media historian and theorist Caroline Jack. Caroline is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Data + Society Research Institute. In today's episode Caroline and Douglas explore how powerful people and institutions shape networked civic life through media and communications technology. Caroline has us think deeply and broadly about corporate personhood, imagined machines, epistemological chaos… in other words–media and persuasion.You can find more of Caroline Jack’s work on her Medium Blog including this recent piece entitled “What’s Propaganda Got To Do With It?”In today's monologue Rushkoff offers a thought-provoking take on the exhausting and overwhelming news cycle. Rather than be defeated by cynicism, how might we foster both internal coherence and focused collaborative action? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Playing for Team Human today is digital media artist, activist, and filmmaker Alex Rivera. Known for his acclaimed 2008 feature film, Sleep Dealer, Rivera's work explores the contradictions of a free-flowing globalized economy and the simultaneous stigmatizing of immigrant laborers and erecting of border walls. Together, Rivera and Douglas Rushkoff interrogate the rhetoric of the digital "global village." We'll learn about what Rivera calls "Dronification," a highly connected, yet ever-more alienated digital subjectivity. Rivera and Rushkoff then discuss how we might restore true human connection and build bottom-up solidarity, or what the Zapatistas call "globalization from below."In today's intro monologue Rushkoff considers the need for both empowering local, grassroots organizing as well as fortifying public structures that bring the benefit of mutual aid and collectivity up to scale.This episode closes with a song from Team Human co-producer/editor Stephen Bartolomei, entitled Kill Floor Rebellion. It's a song "that celebrates border crossers and migrant workers, inspired by the true story of the Kill Floor Rebellion."Inspired by this episode? Check out the National Day Laborer Organizing Network for resources to get involved. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Playing for Team Human today is activist trainer and executive director of theRules.org, Alnoor Ladha.Ladha will help us understand the interplay between political organization, system thinking, storytelling, technology, and the decentralization of power. In a conversation spanning a wide range of topics including anarchism, collective organizing, local economies, psychedelics, and even spirituality, Ladha and Rushkoff underscore the multifaceted and necessary work of building a resilient and just society.Learn more about Alnoor and his work at http://therules.org/In today's monologue Rushkoff addresses the deleterious effects of our algorithmically programmed cyber experience. Are Facebook and Google a threat to the health of civil society? How can we restore human agency and critical thinking to our digital lives? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Playing for Team Human today is Jason Van Anden. Jason is an artist, inventor, and software developer who builds apps to promote social justice. In 2011, Van Anden invented I’m Getting Arrested, software that enabled Occupy Wall Street demonstrators to alert friends and family in the event they were arrested. In 2012 Van Anden developed Stop and Frisk Watch , a tool used to monitor the New York City Police Department’s controversial practice. Van Anden has since has gone on to head Quadrant 2, developers of Mobile Justice, a police video taping app and part of the Bystanders Rule! platform. Quadrant 2 is also currently developing Workit, designed to offer networked support for 1.3 million non-unionized Walmart employees.In this episode, Van Anden and Rushkoff talk about flipping handheld digital technology toward human ends. How can technology be re-centered to effect real world change? How might technology promote proactive, activist efforts on the ground? Van Anden and Rushkoff, look at these questions and more.In today’s monologue, Rushkoff looks at the spectacle on display at this year's Academy Awards. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.