FUTURE FOSSILS

This week on Future Fossils, we sync up with globe-trotting (Singapore-based) futurist Parag Khanna, author of several internationally best-selling books on the shifting landscape of human geography and technological evolution. My acquaintance with Parag dates back all the way to 2011 when I found his Hybrid Reality Institute, and started writing for his BigThink blog, thanks to the writing of Jason Silva — I knew this was a party I couldn’t miss, even though I was then, as now, deeply ambivalent about the contours of the futures he and his colleagues were making visible with their rigorous research. This spirit has defined my entire adult life: if you want to help steer something in a better direction, you might just have to get your hands down into the murk and engage with it deeply enough to be in the position to make a difference. So when his agent contacted me about interviewing him about his latest book, 2021’s Move: The Forces Uprooting Us, I knew it was an offer I couldn’t refuse. But let me be clear that Parag sees things very differently than I do, and I appreciate that about him: he has a keen sense of the risks and dangers of our times but emphasizes the opportunities because the facts are there to support it. If you move around as much as he does, and always has, you get a kind of synoptic view of the planet and the tension between individual destiny and collective momentum comes into a new tuning. This is a beast of a conversation. It was hell to edit. I’m glad it happened. Here you go!

Complete, extensive show notes at Patreon.

✨Housekeeping:

•Intro music is "You're In My Self-Portrait" from my 2012 album Golden Hour. Outro music is "City of Jewels" from my 2013 EP of the same name. For something completely different, check out my latest live album, recorded at Meow Wolf Santa Fe while opening for DeVotchKa.

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Complete, EXTENSIVE show notes at Patreon.com/michaelgarfield!

As guest 0xZakk says at the very end of this conversation, most of the construction projects throughout the history of civilization have been coercive. What does it look like when we actually build things in a really cooperative way? This episode was recorded in November 2021 when the cryptocurrency markets were insanely bullish and the world relatively stable…but releasing it now, in July 2022, seems more aptly-timed than I could have anticipated.

The United States Supreme Court has failed the great majority of American citizens not just once but several shocking and historic times in one week, hacking away at women’s reproductive rights, the EPA, and gun safety all at once. The Supreme Court majority was largely appointed by presidents that lost the popular vote, our nation is embroiled in hearings about a violent coup attempt spearheaded by the former President, and people on both sides of the constructed political divide seem more desperate than ever before in living memory. At the same time, both stocks and digital currencies, and the economic possibilities they support, are suffering through what seems like it will be a protracted winter. So it’s a PERFECT moment to talk about the visions we commit to building through the hardship, and the new responsibilities we must assume as citizens — not just of nation-states, but of the digital communities and cultures that we voluntarily participate in, the neighborhoods and cities that we live in.

When a big tree dies in the forest, its falling lets in light that stimulates a contest between saplings — and we’re seeing something similar now in this rapid blooming of experiments in governance and finance, legal regulations and privately-organized society. Suddenly projects like the CABIN DAO seem prescient and urgent, so I’m glad to share this potent conversation with Jon Hillis and @0xZakk of CABIN DAO and Christian Lemp of Diamond DAO —three of the many people working hard at the frontiers of blockchain-based social innovation. In this episode we talk about what it means to live-action roleplay as a city-state, how physical geography and online culture overlap in their experiments, and what should stay illegible and wild amidst this wave of techy change…

If you enjoy this show, please take a moment to subscribe, rate, and review wherever you prefer to listen. I’ve been extremely busy backstage working on a suite of Future Fossils projects that extend beyond the podcast, some of which you can glimpse on my Instagram and Twitter feeds…big changes coming soon, and inspiration’s flowing. If you want the inner track on all the music, art, and writing I am cooking up — or if you simply see the value in these conversations and my work at large, I hope you’ll join the other awesome people chipping in with listener support at Patreon.com/michaelgarfield— where I’m sharing an enormous folder of new A.I. artwork, updated every day.

Lastly, I just re-launched my now thirteen-year-old blog on Substack — for roughly monthly digests of new work, join 7,500 other readers at michaelgarfield.substack.com. More soon.

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Find the complete show notes for this episode on Patreon. This episode was recorded live in Austin, Texas at the West China Tea House in partnership with EFF-Austin, a non-profit committed to the establishment and protection of digital rights and defense of the wealth of digital information, innovation, and technology. Founded in 1991 as a local sub-chapter of The Electronic Frontier Foundation and run as an independent organization, EFF-Austin promotes the right of all citizens to communicate and share information without unreasonable constraint— as well as the fundamental right to explore, tinker, create, and innovate along the frontier of emerging technologies. In this episode, I talk with Kevin Welch and David Hensley about why digital rights matter to our analog lives; whether and how the genies of rampant technological innovation can be forced back into the bottle; how to think about the inherent tensions between individuals and institutions; what esoteric traditions and superhero movies may have to teach us about living in the 21st century, and considerably more. I also make entirely too many references to Michael Crichton novels.

I’ve collaborated with EFF-Austin on previous episodes of Future Fossils you may also enjoy:

33 - Jon Lebkowsky (Pluralist Utopias & The World Wide Web's Wild West)

92 - Panel: The Pre- and Post-History of VR, Surveillance, and Swarm Intelligence

Again, Patreon is really the place you want to be checking out the resources for this show (and, of course, it's the place to go to take a shower in the awesome stuff I reserve for supporters).

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or, “Why Isn’t There A Science of X?”

or, “Alchemy is to Chemistry as Astrology is to…?”

“If people don’t believe us after all the results we’ve produced, then they never will.”

“It’s time for a new era, for someone to figure out what the implications of our results are for human culture, for future study, and — if the findings are correct — what they say about our basic scientific attitude.”

– Robert G. Jahn

“We have been very open with our data. But how do you get peer review when you don’t have peers?”

– Brenda Dunne

“The culture of science, at its purest, is one of freedom in which any idea can be tested regardless of how far-fetched it might seem.”

–Benedict Carey, writing on the PEAR Lab for The New York Times

Full show notes available at Patreon.com/michaelgarfield

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Don't waste another minute here. Go read the full show notes on Patreon!

Be forewarned: This latest episode is some extremely heady stuff. But thankfully, it's also full of heart and soul...

Back in February, Jonathan Rowson posted two clips (here and here) from his latest in-progress writing tlimito Twitter, where it succeeded in baiting a bunch of the folks with whom I regularly interact as members of the so-called "Liminal Web" into reflecting on the value of partitioning a global boil of loosely-associated "sensemakers," "meta-theorists," and "systems poets" into well-meaning but ultimately dubious cultural taxonomies.

I had plenty to say about this (here, here, and here) from my awkwardly consistent stance of being both enthusiastic and skeptical about apparently everything. But so did numerous other brilliant and inspiring people, including Bonnitta Roy, Stephanie Lepp, Ashley Colby, and Jason Snyder –all of whom I've wanted on the show for a while (with the exception of Stephanie, with whom I had a great chat back on episode 154). So I took it upon myself to press for an on-the-record group discussion about the virtue and folly of putting labels on sociocultural processes and networks that are defined by their liminality: Is this ultimately a good thing, or does it just kill the magic in a foolish servility to economic pressures and the desire to be recognized as A Movement?

When we finally met at the end of March for our call, the conversation turned to issues with more urgency and gravitas —namely: Is it even helpful to spend all of our time talking about crises and metacrises when there is so much work to be done?

What transpired was easily one of the more profound and inspired conversations I've ever had the good fortune to host on this show, although it was also more beset with insane and infuriating technical problems that getting it ready for release took over thirty hours of excruciating editing. I am so immensely glad I am finally done and can get on with my damn life! But also that I get to share this with you and hear what the rest of our scene(s) have to contribute to this discourse.

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I don't even know where to start with this amazing episode. Henry Gee is the Senior Editor of Nature, the author of many cool science books including his latest, A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth; an accomplished musician; a riveting storyteller and humorous fellow; the Founding Editor of Nature's Futures sci-fi series; and a total joy in conversation. We met to discuss his brilliant tour of evolutionary history past and future, and did, but also occupied a fair bit of our two hours together sharing stories about paleontologists, talking music, gabbing about our love of science fiction, and being ridiculous.

I've decided to not bother editing this one because (1) I'm finally getting bold enough to give not-editing a shot; and (2) it was SO VERY ENJOYABLE that I am not sure I could survive a second listen without a second conversation already on the calendar. Consequently, you don't get the normal intensely-detailed show notes, but among the many things we discusses are: synthesizers; feathered dinosaurs; symbiosis as the defining feature of the future of the biosphere; the relationship between good science and good science fiction; why Olaf Stapledon is one of the most important sci-fi authors of the 20th Century; and as I've already said, much else.

Visit the episode page on Patreon for a heap of related episodes if this one lights a fire in your mind...

✨Housekeeping

•If you want to see these conversations thrive,support Future Fossils on Patreonand pleaseleave a good review on Apple Podcasts! As a patron you get extra podcasts each month, book club calls, early access to new writing, art, and music, and special access to our exclusive (and very active) Facebook group and Discord server.

•Find and obtain all the books we discuss on this show at the Future Fossils Bookshop.

•When you’d rather listen to music, follow meonBandcampand (if you must)Spotify.

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Find the complete show notes and support the show at Patreon.

This week on Future Fossils, Orpheus is in the building for a soulful and visionary conversation with Grammy-winning blues singer-songwriter Mike Mattison and inveterate English professor Ernest Suarez of Catholic University, co-authors of the new book Poetic Song Verse: Blues-based Popular Music and Poetry. Their book explores the history of the complicated love affair between literature and rock, tracing the tangled roots back through slave work songs and Beat poetry into the age of the mythic rockstar through the definitive contributions of acts such as Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Joni Mitchell, The Doors, The Rolling Stones, Marvin Gaye, and Stevie Wonder, and with inspiration from The Merry Pranksters, Walt Whitman, and many more.

This is the story of the cultural air we're all breathing and taking for granted. As a lifelong disciple of songwriting and poetry, I DEVOURED this book and this DELIGHTED in this conversation; and in the tense atmosphere of current events I can't think of a better way to emphasize what makes life worth living and what beauty grows from hardship than by turning our focus to the fruits of human creativity across and between cultures.

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Microbiologist, independent scholar, ritualist, equestrian therapist, and overall badass Siv Watkins joins the show this week to discuss right relationship with the world of the invisibly small: mood-altering gut flora, the COVID-19 pandemic, Lyme disease, AIDS, and other chronic ailments…as well as with the all-encompassing tapestry of microbial life from which we evolved and within which we exist from birth to death. It’s turtles all the way down! Tag an anti-natalist friend and have them give it a listen…

Learn more about and register for Siv's 2022 course on Thinking Like A Plague.

Find the complete, extensive show notes —and support the show for superb extras — on Patreon.

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Get the AMAZING full show notes on Patreon (free public post).

Jim Rutt joins us this week to explore the pre- and post-history of “GameB”, an antidote to the social script of rampant ecocidal profit maximalization. Of course, Jim himself is an optimizer par excellence, a true Boomer if there ever were one who saw the wave of personal computing coming in and rode it like a champion surfer from one tech company to the next. What is the relationship between making it big by connecting people and fighting the entropic onslaught of externality production? We take it back to the middle of the 20th Century to find out: from kid gangs in the DC Beltway to MIT to writing computer models of the atmosphere of Jupiter, car salesman and college textbook peddler, suddenly we’re talking about building planet-wide networks of gravity wave detection telescopes and mutually non-commensurable village sex cults? Rivalry and non-rivalry in companies and governance. Holocracy and sociocracy. Are we prophets or fools? Or perhaps more importantly, How do you steal back the train from GameA? The code is simple: intellectual honesty and “a war on politics”. I had a blast talking with Jim and hope you have as much fun listening. Can’t wait to hear what conversations come from this…

Yours in systems poetry,

Michael

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This week I talk with four brilliant people working in and around the study of complex systems about the World Wide Web’s co-evolution with cryptocurrencies and other distributed ledger technologies: the promise AND the peril; the good, the bad, and the ugly. It’s a hugely complicated topic and there wasn’t enough time in this panel for Complexity Weekend (recorded on 14 November 2021) for everyone to get on the same page, much less come to a final agreement about anything —but the real value of discussions like these lies in the tension between perspectives, and the intertidal zone is fertile, here, indeed.

You can watch the unedited panel recording on YouTube (but I recommend listening instead, as the work that went into editing this was immense).

For the COMPLETE show notes, including copious additional learning resources, find this episode on Patreon.

More About Our Guests:

Park Bach

RESEARCHER AT FIGMENT.IO; LIBRARIAN AT GITCOIN

Coordination Problems • Initial Conditions • Emergent Intent • Group Priority

Siddhant Shrivastava

RESEARCHER AT SINGAPORE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND DESIGN’S iTRUST CENTRE FOR RESEARCH IN CYBER SECURITY

Cyber-physical Systems Security • Extended Reality • Distributed Teams • Workforce Training • Telerobotics

Avel Guénin-Carlut

FOUNDER AT KAIROS RESEARCH; RESEARCH COORDINATOR AT ACTIVE INFERENCE LAB

Physics of Life • Cultural Evolution • Epistemology • Active Inference • Consciousness

Shirley Bekins, MPA

INDEPENDENT WRITER AND RESEARCHER

Systems Feedbacks • Path Dependence • Poverty • Homelessness

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