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This week I speak with New York Times best-selling author and creative technologist Robin Sloan about the themes of his inimitable novel Moonbound, one of those reads that wrapped me in a vortex of wonder and synchronicity, and raises questions like:

Where is the line between technology and magic?What is a computer, really, and do humans qualify?How wrong might we be about the future?How do stories shape reality, and what happens when we have to make room for the stories of the more-than-human world?

A crucial point of note: this is “hard science fiction”, but it’s not the kind you’re used to. At a time when even the most square, prosaic suits are quick to quote Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law, it is appropriate that sci-fi as a kind of thinking-through of our condition would reflect the cultural retrieval of premodern tropes like wizards, dragons, talking animals, and sacred swords.

What follows is a rich discussion of how Robin and I both enjoy traversing and interrogating those familiar boundaries between the lost and found, the sensible and the ineffable, wildness and city, born and created, sleep and waking, care and power…

Project Links

Learn more about this project and read the essays so far (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).Make tax-deductible donations to Humans On The LoopBrowse the HOTL reading list and support local booksellersJoin the Holistic Technology & Wise Innovation Discord serverJoin the private Future Fossils Facebook groupHire me for consulting or advisory work

Chapters

0:00:00 – Teaser0:01:38 – Intro0:06:50 – Robin’s Story0:08:35 – The Care and Feeding of AI0:13:38 – Magical Technologies vs. The (Other) Powers of Nature0:21:46 – Persistent Wildness in The Post-Apocalyptic Future0:28:57 – Mapping Everything & Getting Lost0:32:30 – The City of Transformation: Ephemeropoli from Burning Man to Rath Varia0:37:48 – Tuning Longevity to the Duration of our Interests0:41:49 – The Loss of Self in Data & The Metamorphic Self0:49:02 – Beaver Governance is Better Governance0:54:23 – Living Robots & Sleeping Institutions in Liquid Modernity1:02:16 – How Do We Keep Healthy Rhythms While Scaling?1:10:35 – Life at The College of Wyrd1:18:01 – Recommendations for Good Discussion & Book Takeaways1:23:09 – Thanks & Outro

Mentions

Eliot Peper (Re: FF 47, 115)Eliot Peper’s interview with Robin Sloan, “Binding The Moon”Gordon Bell’s MyLifeBitsTim Morton’s Hell: In Search of A Christian EcologyThe Long Now FoundationKevin Kelly’s “The Expansion of Ignorance” (Re: FF 128, 165, 204)Star WarsTyson Yunkaporta (Re: FF 172)Adventure TimeThe Legend of Zelda: Tears of The KingdomMichael Crichton’s Jurassic ParkJack VanceM. John HarrisonHerbert SimonJames C. Scott’s Seeing Like A StateRichard Doyle’s Darwin’s PharmacyKim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy (Red, Green, Blue)Neil Gaiman’s Long Now talk “How Stories Last”Jonathan Rowson/Perspectiva’s antidebateThe Templeton FoundationZygmunt Bauman’s Liquid ModernityAlexander RoseJohan Chu & James Evans’s “Slowed Canonical Progress in Large Fields of Science”Michael Garfield’s “The King Is Dead, Long Live The King: Festivals, Science, and Economies of Scale”Erik Hoel’s “The Overfitted Brain”JF Martel (Re: FF 18, 71, 126, 214)Phil Ford (Re: FF 126, 157, 214)Erik Davis (Re: FF 99, 132, 141)The WeirdosphereBell LabsMagic: The GatheringComplexity Podcast 42: “Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West on Calling Bullshit”Inna Semetsky’s “Information and Signs: The Language of Images”The I ChingPhilip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Trilogy (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass)Iain McGilchristClaire EvansJames BridleQuanta Magazine

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This week I speak with my friend Stephanie Lepp (Website | LinkedIn), two-time Webby Award-winning producer and storyteller devoted to leaving “no insight left behind” with playful and provocative media experiments that challenge our limitations of perspective. Stephanie is the former Executive Director at the Institute for Cultural Evolution and former Executive Producer at the Center for Humane Technology. Her work has been covered by NPR and the MIT Technology Review, supported by the Mozilla Foundation and Sundance Institute, and featured on Future Fossils Podcast twice — first in episode 154 for her project Deep Reckonings and then in episode 205 with Greg Thomas on Jazz Leadership and Antagonistic Cooperation.

Her latest project, Faces of X, pits actors against themselves in scripted trialogues between the politically liberal and conversative positions on major social issues, with a third role swooping in to observe what each side gets right and what they have in common. I support this work wholeheartedly. In my endless efforts to distill the key themes of Humans On The Loop, one of them is surely how our increasing connectivity can — if used wisely — help each of us identify our blind spots, find new respect and compassion for others, and discover new things about our ever-evolving selves (at every scale, from within the human body to the Big We of the biosphere and beyond).

Thanks for listening and enjoy this conversation!

Project Links

Learn more about this project and read the essays so far (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).Make tax-deductible donations to Humans On The LoopBrowse the HOTL reading list and support local booksellersJoin the Holistic Technology & Wise Innovation Discord serverJoin the private Future Fossils Facebook groupHire me for consulting or advisory work

Chapters

0:00:00 – Teaser0:00:48 – Intro0:06:33 – The Black, White, and Gray of Agency0:10:54 – Stephanie’s Initiation into Multiperspectivalism0:15:57 – Hegelian Synthesis with Faces of X0:23:53 – Reconciling Culture & Geography0:29:02 – Improvising Faces of X for AI0:46:34 – Do Artifacts Have Politics?0:50:04 – Playing in An Orchestra of Perspectives0:55:10 – Increasing Agency in Policy & Voting1:05:55 – Self-Determination in The Family1:08:39 – Thanks & Outro

Other Mentions

• Damien Walter on Andor vs. The Acolyte• William Irwin Thompson• John Perry Barlow’s “A Declaration for The Independence of Cyberspace”• Cosma Shalizi and Henry Farrell’s “Artificial intelligence is a familiar-looking monster”• Liv Boeree• Allen Ginsberg• Scott Alexander’s Meditations on Moloch• Singularity University• Android Jones + Anson Phong’s Chimera• Basecamp• Grimes• Langdon Winner’s “Do Artifacts Have Politics?”• Ibram X. Kendi• Coleman Hughes• Jim Rutt

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This week’s guest is my friend and inspiration, knowledge ecologist Christina Bowen. If I were to try and start a movement, I would call her first. Christina is CEO and co-founder of socialroots.io, an NSF- and Omidyar Network-funded software platform for cross-group collaboration that promotes aligned action and helps teams communicate legible impact metrics to stakeholders. Or, in the parlance of our times, she is a master of negotiating the complexities of human communication and community.

She has deep, lived experience of what it takes to subvert the toxic status quo, cultivate the health of teams, and rethink our “social” spaces so they actually work for human beings. She also introduced me to the world of “mycopunk”, an earthier and more distributed alternative to solarpunk that places more priority on our relationships and narrative construction as an inherently collective project.

This is a warm and grounded dialogue with someone I respect immensely as a force for betterment. Here is how her team describes their work and principles on their own website:

Our greatest challenges as a global civilization will require an unprecedented amount of cooperation and may have been caused in large part by unmitigated competition. We have founded Socialroots on a few key principles, summarized below, to support this shift into a more healthy future.

* Efficient coordination across groups enables more decentralized organizing and greater innovation.

* Data is a commons and must be treated as such. Platform users need to be empowered when it comes to their data.

* Power stays healthier when shared. We are dedicated to fair, transparent, and consent-driven work, enabling participatory communities to share values and approaches, and to approach teamwork informed by insights from healthy living systems.

There you have it. I highly recommend you reach out to her and her team if you are trying to do better work in groups.

Special Announcement: Join me for the first in a new series of live hangout calls for patrons on Saturday, January 18th at 2 pm Mountain Time! Let’s foster real and lasting collaborations in a safe place for collective inquiry.

Thank you and enjoy this episode!

Project Links

Learn more about this project and read the essays so far (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).Make tax-deductible donations to Humans On The Loop

Browse my reading list and support local booksellers

Join the Holistic Technology & Wise Innovation Discord server

Join the private Future Fossils Facebook group

Hire me for consulting or advisory work

Chapters

0:00:00 – Teaser0:01:31 – Intro0:06:58 – Meet Christina Bowen0:08:54 – Scaling Social Networks Without Burning Out0:14:00 – Working Out Loud in Small & Large Groups0:19:25 – Social Protocols of Coordination0:22:44 – Healthy Boundaries Online0:30:10 – Supporting Invisible or Illegible Labor0:40:50 – Subverting The Status (More-Than-Human) Pyramid0:51:44 – Salience Landscapes & Safe/Brave/Inclusive Spaces0:53:35 – AI-Augmented Communication & Spacemaking1:01:34 – Edge-Based Coherent Sensemaking vs. Toxic Hierarchies1:09:11 – Mindful Tech Use & Recommended Guests1:12:38 – Outro

Mentioned Media

Mycopunk Principles

Build Capacity: Scaling your network without burning outby Socialroots, Christina Bowen, Naomi Joy Smith

What is coordination and why is it so important to effective networks?by Ana Jamborcic, Christina Bowen, Socialroots

Intimacy Gradients: The Key to Fixing Our Broken Social Media Landscapeby Socialroots, Ana Jamborcic

Let's subvert the status pyramidby Socialroots, Ana Jamborcic

Working and learning out loudby Harold Jarche

Alyssa Allegretti on Sacred Domesticity and Hard Times in The Liminal WebFuture Fossils Podcast 225

Descartes’ Errorby Antonio Damasio

Seeing Like A Stateby James C. Scott

C. Thi Nguyen on The Seductions of Clarity, Weaponized Games, and Agency as ArtFuture Fossils 175

Amber Case & Michael Zargham on Entangled Technologies & Design As GovernanceFuture Fossils 213

Stephen Reid on Technological MetamodernismFuture Fossils 226

Nora Bateson on Warm Data vs. The Cold EquationsFuture Fossils 141

The Dawn of Everythingby David Graeber & David Wengrow

Generative Team Design: Innovation, Psychological Safety, and Empathyby Dara Blumenthal

Being Glueby Tanya Reilly

Identity Is Such A Dragby Luis Mojica and Sophie Strand on Holistic Life Navigation

The future is fungi: The rise and rhizomes of mushroom cultureby ASU Center for Science and The Imagination with Merlin Sheldrake, Kaitlin Smith, Jeff VanderMeer, and Corey Pressman

Other Mentions

• DWeb Camp• Responsive.org• Jeff Emmett• Plato• Bayo Akomolafe• Douglas Rushkoff• John Fullerton• Capitalinstitute.org• Cris Moore• Friedrich Hölderlin• Interspeciesinternet.io• Kumu.io• Joe Edelman• Pri Bertucci

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When technology gets byzantine, when the heady early years of cybernetic mysticism give way and our software engineers become the new priests of the Catholic institutions of Big Tech, maybe we can learn a thing or two from a Byzantine Catholic who’s made Responsible Technology their life. This week’s guest is just that person. Benjamin Olsen is the Head of Windows Responsible AI & Data Compliance at Microsoft, where he also pioneered their first AI & Ethics education programs. He’s also an advisor for AI and Faith and has worked as co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Responsible Learning & Education program and member of their Responsible Development and Deployment of Technology steering committee; the former Responsible Innovation Lead at Meta; and a part of the IEEE’s working group on Responsible AI. His online courses in Analytics, Data Science, and Responsible Technology have been taken by millions of students in more than 120 countries.

But it’s his writing at the intersection of religion, spirituality, technology, and human flourishing that caught my eye. I met Ben through Andrew Dunn of the School of Wise Innovation, where I was on the faculty for a course on Embodied Ethics in The Age of AI with Josh Schrei, and was immediately taken by the clarity and heart he brings to places I have always guessed were, frankly, soulless. Speaking with him gave me hope that maybe all this hype is actually the evidence of earnest and concerted effort — in some corners, anyway — to do the future right and not just big. I hope that you enjoy your conversation.

Links

“The Inner Life of Responsible Innovation” by Benjamin Olsen

“Monsters and Moderation in Respsonbile AI” by Benjamin Olsen

“Super-responsible AI” by Benjamin Olsen

“Mission Impossible: Perfectly Responsible AI” by Benjamin OlsenLearn more about this project and read the essays so far (1, 2, 3, 4).Make tax-deductible donations to Humans On The Loop

Browse my reading list and support local booksellers

Join the Holistic Technology & Wise Innovation Discord server

Join the private Future Fossils Facebook group

Hire me for consulting or advisory work

Chapters

0:00:00 – Teaser Quote

0:01:34 – Episode Intro

0:03:58 – Introducing Benjamin Olsen

0:08:20 – Toward Omni-considerate Corporate Ethics

0:17:18 – Practicing Super-responsibility

0:27:32 – Between The Scylla of Censorship and The Charybdis of Underblocking

0:36:26 – Doing The Lord’s Work inside The Leviathan

0:43:09 – Consent between Company & Customer

0:54:07 – How Do We Exercise Agency Within Social Constraints?

0:58:10 – Who Does Benjamin Recommend?

1:00:21 – Closing Remarks

Mentions

* Yolanda Gil

* Kevin Kelly

* Martin Luther King Jr.

* Henry David Thoreau

* William Gibson

* Stafford Beer

* James P. Carse

* Hans Moravec

* Father Walker Ciszek

* Catherine Dougherty

* Larry Muhlstein

* Danny Go

* Timothy Morton

* Carl Jung

* Amber Case

* Michael Zargham

* Chip and Dan Heath

* Bayazid Bastami

* Shannon Valor

*  Dan Zigmund

* Zvika Krieger

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When, suddenly, the barrier between “imagination” and “reality” evaporates as our familiar notions of here/there, now/then, in/out, and other/self twist up into a ball of non-Euclidean spaghetti, whom better to help steer the course through these “turbulent philosophical waters” than Richard Doyle, aka “M0b1ius”, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor at Penn State Center for Humanities and Information in the College of Liberal Arts?

After his postdoctoral research at MIT in History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, Doyle wrote The Wetwares Trilogy, a sequence of books on the history of information biology that reached its climax with one of my favorite reads of all time, Darwin’s Pharmacy: Sex, Plants, and The Evolution of the Noosphere. He is also the author of The Genesis of Now: Self Experiments with the Bible & the End of Religion and Into The Stillness: Dialogues on Awakening Beyond Thought (with Gary Weber), and has taught courses on “aliens, Philip K. Dick, nanotechnology, rebellion itself, ecstasy, Sanskrit rhetorical traditions, Burroughs, basic argumentation, The Non Dual Bible, and everything in between.”

I discovered Doyle through his appearances on my first favorite podcast, Erik Davis’ Expanding Mind, and in the thirteen years since he has shown up for me time and time again as mentor, friend, and inspiration. And since this project is, ostensibly, a way of training my own language model to reflect the wisdom of my friends and colleagues, I can think of no one else I’d rather prime the batch. It is my great privilege and honor to be able to have him as the first guest in this series, as a way of of helping set the tone for everything that is to come…

Links

Richard Doyle’s faculty web page and publicationsLearn more about this project and read the essays so far (1, 2, 3, 4).Make tax-deductible donations to Humans On The Loop

Browse my reading list and support local booksellers

Join the Holistic Technology & Wise Innovation Discord server

Join the private Future Fossils Facebook group

Hire me for consulting or advisory work

Chapters

0:00:00 – Teaser

0:03:36 – Episode Intro

0:12:44 – Introducing Richard Doyle

0:29:33 – The Ego as Inflammation

0:33:58 – Practicing Care in The Planet-Wide Makerspace

0:48:30 – Digital Connection vs. Embodied Connection

0:55:46 – Psychedelics as Training Wheels for Transhumanism

1:02:43 – “Storytelling” Isn’t A Professional Service (??)

1:05:25 – Techniques for Reclaiming Attention & Finding Peace

1:15:22 – Meditation as “The Halting Problem”

1:17:30 – Beyond The Limits of Science

1:22:17 – AI-Enabled Extraction vs. AI-Enabled Abundance

1:38:40 – Closing Remarks

Reflections

Much of tech ethics discourse concerns itself with whether humans are “in the loop” or “out of the loop” — whether people get to call the shots. But there is always more than one loop. Most of the things our fleshy bodies do are local decisions made before we ever become conscious of them, if we ever do…and yet evolution clearly found some value in reflection, self-awareness, reflex inhibition, and the will that quiets maladaptive impulse. Widening our frame to see the way that humans are always-already intertwingled with our ecosystems, we can see ourselves as made of interference patterns between nested feedback loops — as focal points of conscious agency dependent on and acting in a massive, endlessly surprising web of automatic processes. For as long as we’ve been people we have never really “called the shots” but rather cultivated our response-ability within a cosmos made of entities whose otherness and mystery remained persistently opaque…and ritualized ways to live amidst this mystery in full recognition of the unity from which we cannot isolate ourselves.

And this is only one of indefinitely many valid ways to understand the human. Like the telescope and microscope before them, language models reveal fresh perspectives on familiar landscapes. We do not need to leave our solar system to find “strange new worlds” awaiting us in places as familiar as our own minds and bodies. While most of the conversation lately seems to be about the power these new maps confer and whether it can be distributed more evenly, AI provides a new set of affordances for mystics for the transformation of our consciousness that can dissolve our wicked problems in a higher logical order. “What can I do?” becomes “Who am I?” and yields endlessly evolving and kaleidoscopic answers that provoke ongoing inquiry. To see the ways in which we are, as individuals, not just “connected” but precipitate as aggregates, in fields of constellated data, prompts a figure-ground reversal in which selves no longer hold their primacy as ground truth of our being, but show up last as we make inferences and draw stories from unbroken and inseparable experience.

Something fundamental changes when we shift to seeing “human” and “non-human” as two stable patterns of recursive self-perception emerging from a single fabric of unfolding possibility: we find the opportunity to question what we’re trying to achieve, to notice the ungrounded and conditional reality of narrative, to operate on our own “source code” and adjust our goals accordingly.

If we can find the curiosity to ask ourselves if our fears and inadequacies really help us live the lives we want, we can follow it upstream to where each moment offers fresh, distinctive landscapes in which to explore and play and learn. In doing so, we rediscover vast and potent creativity. Instead of asking whether we can do more, we can ask “What do we want to do, and why is that desire substantiated?”

This kind of meaning-making isn’t just a luxury but an essential aspect of all efforts to survive and to succeed. The best way to get unstuck is to orient ourselves and take a different tack. We all know something isn’t working. It’s time to ask if, maybe, this is due to “user error” and the answer doesn’t lie in new technologies, but in the simplest and most ancient truths available. We cannot control the world because we are the world — and, this entails a sense of radical responsibility to play our way into more well-adapted stories, models of the world we hold with humor and humility as they carve channels in the space of shared attention that coordinate us into futures good and true and beautiful.

In other words, the magical technologies inspiring so much religious fear and fervor are both Towers of Babel and fingers pointing to the Moon. They are weird, unprecedented, and sublime — and they are business as usual on Planet Earth, where we have always come awake in medias res amidst unfathomable changes and unknowable intelligence. Recognizing this, we gain access to deep continuity and the place from which we can, at last, engage the question of “What Now?” with discipline and limber rigor suitable to the profound complexity we face.

Digital technologies are psychedelic. We’ve been on a bad trip. It’s time for us wiggle out, dream better, and allow a more capacious, plural, and harmonious humanity to take the oars together in whatever novel wonders may arise — to neither “give way to astonishment” nor let our fears steer us into the rocks. Humans On The Loop is an investigation of how awesome it could be, right now, to fully give in to the paradox, and notice how its knots untie in hyperspace, and revisit all our looming crises with more presence, grace, and understanding — and more lucid (dare I say, productive?) questions.

One of those questions is how to apply the lessons of the living generations of psychonauts and psychedelic therapists to the vertiginous information and attention vortices in which we now found ourselves swirling. Maps of the World Wide Web look very much like brain scans of the amped-up functional connectivity between ordinarily inhibited brain regions in a psilocybin tripper. When the walls come down — when every node has edges with each other node, and average path length drops to one — how do we prioritize? What paths do we decide to cut through the emergent “intertwingularity”? Which apparitions do we honor, and which do we ignore? (And how?) Some familiar tropes that we might use to guide us: “test your drugs”, “get grounded”, “set and setting”, “integration counseling”…

Mentions

Generated by NotebookLM. Please let me know if you notice any errors or omissions!

* Richard Doyle

* Michael Garfield

* Gary Weber

* Shankara

* Trey Conner

* Nora Pandoro

* Erik Davis

* Joshua DiCaglio

* John Perry Barlow

* Naomi Most

* Nate Hagens

* Daniel Schmachtenberger

* Tyson Yunkaporta

* Martin Luther King Jr.

* Mahatma Gandhi

* John Von Neumann

* Subhash Kak

* Iain McGilchrist

* Timothy Morton

* Stuart Kauffman

* Dean Radin

* Brian Josephson

* Monica Gagliano

* Christoph Koch

* Gregory Bateson

* Elon Musk

* Robert Rosen

* H.P. Lovecraft

* Philip K. Dick

* Herbert Simon

* Douglas Rushkoff

* Sri Aurobindo

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✨ About This Episode

“The best academic lecture/slam poetry/sermon/magical invocation/attunement and invitation to engage I’ve experienced in a long while.”– Daniel Lindenbarger

Next week, after nearly nine years of development, this show grows up to become Humans On The Loop, a transdisciplinary exploration of agency in the age of automation. For long-time listeners of Future Fossils, not much will really change — philosophical investigations in the key of psychedelic futurism, voyages into the edges of what is and can be known, and boldly curious riffs on the immeasurable value of storytelling and imagination have always characterized this show. Many of the episodes I’ve shared in this last year especially were, effectively, preparations for this latest chapter and play as large a part in my ongoing journey to synthesize and translate everything I’ve learned from years of independent scholarship and institutional work in esteemed tech, science, and culture orgs…

But we are no longer waiting for a weird future to arrive. We’re living in it, and shaping it with every act and utterance. So in this “final” episode of Future Fossils before I we bring all of these investigations into the domain of practical applied inquiry, it felt right to ramp from FF to HOTL by sharing my talk and discussion for Stephen Reid’s recent online course on Technological Metamodernism. This was a talk that left me feeling very full of hope for what’s to come, in which I trace the constellations that connect some of my biggest inspirations, and outline the social transformations I see underway.

This is a rapid and dynamic condensation of the big patterns I’ve noticed in the course of over 500 hours of recorded public dialogue and a lively primer on why I’m focusing on the attention and imagination as the two big forces that will continue to shape our lives in the worlds that come after modernity.

It is also just the beginning.

Thank you for being part of this adventure.

✨ Support & Participate

• Become a patron on Substack (my preference) or Patreon(15% off annual memberships until 12/21/24 with the code 15OFF12)• Make a tax-deductible donation to Humans On The Loop• Original paintings available as thank-you gifts for large donors• Hire me as an hourly consultant or advisor on retainer• Buy (most of) the books we discuss from Bookshop.org• Join the Future Fossils Facebook group• Join the Holistic Technology & Wise Innovation and Future Fossils Discord servers• Buy the show’s music on Bandcamp — intro “Olympus Mons” from the Martian Arts EP and outro “Sonnet A” from the Double-Edged Sword EP• Read “An Oral History of The End of ‘Reality’”, my story mentioned in this episode.

✨ Chapters

Chapter 1: Reflections & Announcements (0:00:00)Chapter 2: Co-Evolution with AI and the Limits of Control (0:12:49)Chapter 3: Poetry as the Beginning and End of Scientific Knowledge (0:18:06)Chapter 4: The American Replacement of Nature and the Power of Narrative (0:24:05)Chapter 5: The End of “Reality” & The Beginning of Metamodern Nuance (28:58)Chapter 6: Q&A: Myths, Egregores, and Metamodern Technology vs. Wetiko & Moloch (0:34:52)Chapter 7: Q&A: Chaos Magic & Other Strategies for Navigating Complexity (45:59)Chapter 8: Q&A: Musings on Symbiogenesis & Selfhood (0:50:18)Chapter 9: Q&A: How Do We Legitimize These Approaches? (0:55:42)Chapter 10: Q&A: Why Am I Devoting Myself to Wise Innovation Inquiry? (0:61:01)Chapter 11: Thanks & Closing (0:63:22)

✨ Mentioned Individuals

A mostly-complete list generated by Notebook LM and edited by Michael Garfield.

* William Irwin Thompson - Historian, poet, and author of The American Replacement of Nature, which argues that American culture is future-oriented. (See Future Fossils 42 & 43.)

* Evan “Skytree” Snyder - Electronic music producer, roboticist, and co-founder of Future Fossils who departed after ten episodes. (See Future Fossils 1-10, 53, 174, and 207.)

* Stephen Reid - Founder of the Dandelion online learning program and The Psychedelic Society; host of a course on “Technological Metamodernism” in which Garfield presented this talk. (See Future Fossils 226.)

* Ken Wilber - Author of numerous books on “AQAL” Integral Theory. (See Michael’s 2008 interview with him on Integral Art.)

* Friedrich Hölderlin - German poet who famously said, "Poetry is the beginning and the end of all scientific knowledge.”

* George Lakoff and Mark Johnson - Authors of Metaphors We Live By, which explores the role of embodied metaphor in shaping thought.

* John Vervaeke - Philosopher who, along with others, uses the term “transjective” to describe the interconnected nature of subject and object.

* Sean Esbjörn-Hargens - Integral theorist who taught Garfield at JFK University. (See Future Fossils 60, 113, and 150.)

* Nathalie Depraz, Francisco Varela, and Pierre Vermersch - Embodied mind theorists and authors of On Becoming Aware, a book about phenomenology.

* Kevin Kelly - Techno-optimist Silicon Valley futurist and author on “the expansion of ignorance” in relation to scientific discovery. (See Future Fossils 128, 165, and 203.)

* Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, and David Bohm - Paradigm-challenging physicists mentioned who, by science to its limits, developed mystical insights.

* Timothy Morton - Philosopher who coined the term “hyperobjects” to refer to entities so vast and complex they defy traditional understanding. (See Future Fossils 223.)

* Caleb Scharf - Astrobiologist, author of The Ascent of Information, in which he coins the term “The Dataome” to refer to the planet-scale body of information that constrains human behavior.

* Iain McGilchrist - Psychiatrist and author of The Master and His Emissary, known for his work on the divided brain and the importance of right-brained thinking.

* Eric Wargo - Anthropologist and science writer who suggests that dreams are precognitive and the brain binds time as a four-dimensional object. (See Future Fossils 117, 171, and 231.)

* Regina Rini - Philosopher at York University who coined the term “epistemic backstop of consensus” to describe what photography gave society and what, later, deepfakes have eroded.

* Friedrich Nietzsche and Fyodor Dostoevsky - Philosophers and authors who explored the implications of the loss of a universal moral order grounded in religion.

* Duncan Barford - An author and figure associated with chaos magic.

* Lynn Margulis - Evolutionary biologist known for her work on symbiogenesis and the importance of cooperation in evolution.

* Primavera De Filippi - Co-author of Blockchain and the Law: The Rule of Code with Aaron Wright and technology theorist who theorized the "Collaboration Monster."

* Joshua Schrei - Ritualist and host of The Emerald Podcast who produced episodes on Guardians and Protectors and on the role of The Seer. (See Future Fossils 219.)

* Hunter S. Thompson - American journalist and author known for his gonzo journalism and the quote, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”

* Tim Adalin - Host of the VoiceCraft podcast, on which Garfield discussed complex systems perspectives on pathologies in organizational development. (See Future Fossils 227.)

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✨ Support & Participate

• Become a patron on Substack (my preference) or Patreon (15% off annual memberships until 12/21 with the code 15OFF12)• Make a tax-deductible donation to Humans On The Loop• Original paintings available as thank-you gifts for large donors• Hire me as an hourly consultant or advisor on retainer• Buy the books we discuss from Bookshop.org• Join the Future Fossils Facebook group• Join the Holistic Technology & Wise Innovation and Future Fossils Discord servers• Buy the show’s music on Bandcamp — intro “Olympus Mons” from the Martian Arts EP and outro “Sonnet A” from the Double-Edged Sword EP, coda “You Don’t Have To Move → 8:33” from The Age of Reunion

✨ About This Episode

In this penultimate episode of Future Fossils before we transform into Humans On The Loop, I bring two of my favorite guests and comrades in the so-called “Weirdosphere” back for their first-ever conversation together — and it’s a real banger! Probably the most inspired and provocative conversation I’ve ever had on the nature of time and human creativity.

Joining me for this trialogue are Eric Wargo, author of From Nowhere: Artists, Writers, and the Precognitive Imagination (previously on FF episodes 117 and 171), and J.F. Martel, author of Reclaiming Art in The Age of Artifice and co-host (with Phil Ford) of Weird Studies podcast (previously on FF episodes 18, 71, 126, and 214).

Our discussion centers on the concept of precognition — the ability to perceive future events — as the mechanism of all human creative activity. Both Eric and J.F. argue that art, like shamanistic practices, acts as a means of accessing and expressing precognitive experiences, often manifesting as seemingly coincidental events or uncanny correspondences between art and reality.

We talk about the role of trauma and dissociation in stimulating creative breakthroughs — why there seems to be a direct biological and psychological link between suffering, displacement, and the discovery of radical new insights and modes of being. Can we create without destroying, or are rupture and connection one thing?

We also examine how emerging media through the ages have shaped our experience of time. Starting with the earliest Paleolithic artifacts and the role of cave art in facilitating or encoding ecstatic experience, we trace the evolution of art through to how the development “the cut” in modern cinema led to new ideas of causality. Each new medium provides novel ways of thinking about leaps across space and time, and their study offers new points of entry into a unifying philosophy of rupture and discontinuity.

Lastly, we explore some of my own most potent and disquieting precognitive experiences in light of Eric’s argument that the UFO phenomenon may actually be the braided precognitive experiences of future human beings and symbiotic artificial intelligences — a thesis that sheds new light on everything from the lives and work of Philip K. Dick, Jacques Vallée, Carl Jung, Andrei Tarkovsky, to The Book of Ezekiel.

Where we’re going, we won’t need roads…

Speaking of art, UFOs, psychedelic experience, and time machines, here’s the standalone music video for the song we discuss in this episode that was inspired by my UFO (or were they time machine) experiences in 2007. I threw it back in as a coda to the episode but in case you want to view it in its original resolution and in the context of the entire album, here you go. The “8:33” section starts around 3:58:

✨ Chapters

Chapter 1: Introduction (0:00:00)

Chapter 2: Precognitive Imagination in the Arts (0:08:57)

Chapter 3: The Personal is Precognitive (0:13:34)

Chapter 4: The Cut and the Leap (0:22:15)

Chapter 5: The Brain as a Fast-Forwarder (0:30:38)

Chapter 6: Campfires, TVs, and Flickering Consciousness (0:38:57)

Chapter 7: The Trauma of Truth (0:48:04)

Chapter 8: Prophecy and The Trash Stratum (0:54:33)

Chapter 9: UFOs as Time Machines, The Disappointment of Destiny (1:14:39)

Chapter 10: Closing and News on Upcoming Releases (1:20:28)

✨ Other Mentions

An inexhaustive list of people, places, and key works mentioned in this episode.

* Morgan Robertson: Author of a novel that is believed to have predicted the sinking of the Titanic.

* Hunter S. Thompson: Author and journalist.

* William Shakespeare: Playwright who wrote Macbeth.

* Comte de Lautréamont: A French poet who talked about "the cut" in his work.

* Jean Epstein: Author of the book on the philosophy of cinema, The Intelligence of a Machine.

* Carl Jung: Psychoanalyst who developed the concept of synchronicity.

* Sergei Eisenstein: Filmmaker, and film theorist.

* Gilles Deleuze: Philosopher who argued that “difference is more fundamental than identity.”

* Cy Twombly: Artist whose work is discussed by Eric Wargo.

* Andrei Tarkovsky: Filmmaker who wrote a diary entry quoted in From Nowhere.

* Philip K. Dick: Science fiction author whose experiences with precognition and synchronicity are discussed in From Nowhere.

* Jacques Vallée: Scientist and ufologist, author of a book about the UFO phenomena called Passport to Magonia.

* Diana Pasulka: Academic who studies the UFO phenomenon.

* Johnjoe McFadden: Scientist who works on quantum biology.

* Henri Bergson: Philosopher known for his work on time and consciousness, is quoted as saying “the universe is a machine for the making of gods.”

* Octavia E. Butler: Science fiction author.

* Harlan Ellison: Science fiction author.

* James Cameron: Filmmaker who directed The Terminator.

* Max Simon Ehrlich: Screenwriter who wrote the Star Trek episode The Apple.

* Megan Phipps: Guest on the Future Fossils podcast (episode 214).

* Michelangelo: Guest on the Future Fossils podcast who discussed Paisley Ontology and precognition with Michael Garfield.

* Björk: Musician, whose song "Modern Things" is mentioned.

* Greg Bishop: UFO historian.

* Terence McKenna: Ethnobotanist and writer who coined the term "immanentize the eschaton.".

* Phil Ford: Co-host of the Weird Studies podcast.

* Richard Wagner: Composer who was arrested in 1837.

* Zozobra: a hundred-year-old effigy burn in Santa Fe, NM.

* Esalen Institute: the center of the Human Potential movement, in Big Sur, CA.

* The Fort-Da Game: A game observed by Sigmund Freud in which a child throws a toy away and then retrieves it, demonstrating an understanding of object permanence.

* The Third Man Factor: A phenomenon experienced by explorers and mountain climbers in extreme survival situations, involving the feeling of a presence accompanying them.

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This week I talk with Jamie Curcio to ask, whom do we serve? Who gives us power, and to whom do we give ours? Where does that power come from? To whom do we sell our stories?

We explore the world behind the world, linking Jamie’s writing and game world-building in the domain he calls myth punk, and the equally Eldritch complex systems wicked problem of climate action.

Studying that link, we can trace the outlines of emergent 21st Century religions — the reinterpretation of axial traditions suited to the digital era, the metamodern revival of land-based animistic traditions, and even weirder novel forms that arise at the end of one world and the effloresence of many others.

✨ Jamie's Links

Fallen Cycle Podcastmodernmythology.net“Investing In The Unknown”“The Cascade” Part 1, 2, 3Tales From When I Had A Face: B&W EditionTales From When I Had A Face info page

✨ Offer Support + Join The Scene

• Become a patron on Substack or Patreon• Make a tax-deductible donation to Humans On The Loop• Invite me to work with you as an hourly consultant or advisor on retainer• Join the Holistic Technology & Wise Innovation and Future Fossils Discord servers• Join the Future Fossils Facebook group• Buy the books we discuss from my Bookshop.org reading list• Buy original paintings and prints or commission new work• Tip me with @futurefossils on Venmo, $manfredmacx on CashApp, or @michaelgarfield on PayPal• Buy the show’s music on Bandcamp — intro “Olympus Mons” from the Martian Arts EP & outro “Sonnet A” from the Double-Edged Sword EP

✨ Chapters

1. Jamie's Background (0:05:46)2. Embracing the Unknown and the Role of Artifice (0:11:14) 3. Prometheus, Intentional Mystery, and the Nature of Agency (0:16:21)4. Introducing the Fallen Cycle and its Mythological Framework (0:21:57)5. Exploring Thematic Elements: Gods, Myths, and Consumerism (0:27:32)6. Climate Change, Hyperobjects, and Societal Inertia (0:33:36)7. Festivals, Dionysus, and the Value of Liminal Spaces (0:40:26)8. AI as a Creative Tool and Collaborator (0:46:05)9. Mythology, Role-Playing, and Enacting Change (0:52:16)10. Engaging with Jamie's Work and Final Thoughts (0:56:03)

✨ Other Mentions

FF 195 — A.I. Art: An Emergency Panel with Julian Picaza, Evo Heyning, Micah Daigle, Jamie Curcio, & Topher SipesA Thousand Years of Nonlinear History by Manuel DeLandaJoseph CampbellFriedrich NietzscheArthur SchopenhauerBuddhismWestern EsotericismEvolving Media NetworkWeird Studies Podcast (with Jamie, with Michael)Tom MorganGilles Deleuze“The Soldier and The Hunchback” by Aleister CrowleyPrometheus (Movie)Alien Romulus (Movie)Eric WargoJohn KeatsUnweaving The Rainbow by Richard DawkinsFF 53 — A Very Xeno Christmas with Evan SnyderStephen BatchelorSamurai Jack (TV show)Fern Gully (Movie)Jitterbug Perfume by Tom RobbinsAmerican Gods by Neil GaimanSandman by Neil GaimanJosh SchreiHell by Timothy MortonThe Book of ExodusThe Demon-Haunted World by Carl SaganCyndi CoonDavid Bowie

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This week on Future Fossils I welcome back Sara Phinn Huntley (help her fight cancer!), a multimedia artist, writer, and researcher who has spent the last two decades exploring the intersection of psychedelics, technology, and philosophy.

An intrepid psychonaut and cartographer of hyperspace, her current focus involves using VR to represent visual/spatial imagination in real-time. Using a multidisciplinary approach, she documents and maps the states revealed by dimethyltriptamime and other psychedelics, cargo culting higher dimensional artifacts through the intersection of chaos mathematics, Islamic geometry, and 3D diagrammatic performance capture.  

Her work has been published by the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies and featured in Diana Reed Slattery's Xenolinguistics. She is the art director for The Illustrated Field to the DMT Entities with David Jay Brown (forthcoming at Inner Traditions, 2025).

✨ Offer Support + Join The Scene

• Become a patron on Substack or Patreon• Make a tax-deductible donation to Humans On The Loop• Invite me to work with you as an hourly consultant or advisor on retainer• Join the Holistic Technology & Wise Innovation and Future Fossils Discord servers• Join the Future Fossils Facebook group• Buy the books we discuss from my Bookshop.org reading list• Buy original paintings and prints or commission new work• Tip me with @futurefossils on Venmo, $manfredmacx on CashApp, or @michaelgarfield on PayPal• Buy the show’s music on Bandcamp — intro “Olympus Mons” from the Martian Arts EP & outro “Sonnet A” from the Double-Edged Sword EP

✨ Main Points + Big Ideas

* The Entanglement of Language and Being: DMT entities reveal a profound connection between language and the construction of reality, echoing themes found in esoteric traditions and the emergence of AI.

* The Cartography of Hyperspace: The book serves as a guide to the vast and uncharted territory of DMT experiences, highlighting the challenge of classifying subjective encounters and the potential for mapping a multidimensional reality.

* The Reproducibility Problem and the Power of Big Data: While acknowledging the inherent challenges of studying subjective experiences, we point to the potential of emerging technologies like AI, blockchain, and large-scale data analysis to offer new insights.

* Embodied Bias and the Nature of Evolution: The nonlinear and multidimensional nature of DMT experiences challenges our understanding of time, evolution, and even anatomy, prompting a re-evaluation of our assumptions about reality.

* Attention as a Currency: We emphasize the importance of attention in navigating both the DMT space and the rapidly evolving technological landscape, posing critical questions about who or what deserves our focus.

* The Question of Human Survival: The episode ends by urging humanity to confront its self-destructive tendencies and leverage its collective wisdom to navigate the challenges and opportunities of the future.

✨ Chapters

Chapter 1: Sara's Psychedelic Journey and the Genesis of the DMT Entities Field Guide (00:00:00 - 00:10:00)

* Sara's fascination with DMT from a young age.

* Her exploration of DMT through various artistic media, including performance art and xenolinguistics.

* The inception of The Illustrated Field Guide to DMT Entities book, inspired by classic field guides to nature.

* The decision to leverage AI in the book's creation due to the vastness of the subject matter.

Chapter 2: Language, Being, and the AI Oracle (00:10:00 - 00:20:00)

* The role of language in shaping and interpreting DMT entities, drawing parallels to esoteric traditions like the concept of the Logos.

* Sara's process of interacting with AI, describing it as "talking to it" to curate the visual representations of DMT entities.

* The blurring of categories and the subjective nature of interpreting the raw data of DMT experiences.

* The challenge of reconciling diverse and often conflicting perceptions of the same entities.

* Language as a compression tool for expressing ineffable experiences.

* The increasing relevance of AI in understanding consciousness, particularly with future advancements in brain modeling.

Chapter 3: Navigating Ontological Shock and the Nature of DMT Entities (00:20:00 - 00:30:00)

* The challenge of reconciling DMT experiences with our "meat space" understanding of reality.

* Sara's personal experience of gaining knowledge through DMT, challenging James Kent's view on the limitations of such knowledge.

* The neurological basis for some common DMT hallucinations and its implications for understanding the experience.

* The interplay of cultural and personal projections in shaping DMT entity encounters.

* Exploring the possibility of psychedelics as a way to interact with a simulated reality.

* The existence of phenomena that defy current scientific understanding, pointing to the need for open-mindedness.

Chapter 4: The Cartography of Hyperspace and the Specter of Evolution (00:30:00 - 00:40:00)

* The possibility of DMT entity encounters revealing more about the observer than about independent beings.

* The existence of consistent archetypes across different DMT experiences and their overlap with other paranormal phenomena.

* The intriguing connection between DMT entities and cross-cultural mythological figures.

* Examining the role of genetic lineage and the intergenerational transmission of unusual experiences.

* The book as a tool for intellectual curiosity, humility, and exploring the vastness of hyperspace.

* The influence of culture in shaping our perceptions of both traditional and modern entities.

* Sara's personal stance on the reality of DMT entities - acknowledging their potential existence while remaining open to other interpretations.

Chapter 5: The Machine in the Ghost: Folklore, AI, and the Urge to Classify (00:40:00 - 00:50:00)

* The blurring lines between insectoid and mechanical entities in both folklore and modern UAP narratives.

* The impact of technology and the idea of a simulated reality on our perception of entities.

* Sara's view on the potential taxonomic shift in our understanding of entities due to technological advancements.

* Exploring the limits of AI in understanding consciousness and the potential for using it as a tool for self-reflection.

* The challenge and importance of maintaining a sense of awe and wonder amidst scientific inquiry.

Chapter 6: The Problem of Reproducibility and the Potential of Big Data (00:50:00 - 01:00:00)

* Acknowledging the inherent limitations of scientific inquiry into subjective experiences.

* The promise of machine learning and big data in identifying patterns and correlations across diverse DMT experiences.

* The potential for reconstructing visual fields from brain data to gain further insights into the DMT experience.

* The potential for utilizing blockchain technology, quadratic voting, and other advanced tools to address researcher bias and context in large-scale data collection.

Chapter 7: Embodied Bias and the Non-Linearity of Time (01:00:00 - 01:10:00)

* The idea of anatomy as an encoded representation of environmental features and its implications for understanding non-human entities.

* Challenging the linear concept of time and evolution in light of the multidimensional experiences offered by DMT.

* The vastness and complexity of "meat space" reality and its potential to hold hidden dimensions and Easter eggs.

* The potential for AI and advanced computation to unlock deeper understanding of reality in conjunction with psychedelic exploration.

Chapter 8: Sara's Breakthrough Experience and the Reverence for Mystery (01:10:00 - 01:20:00)

* A detailed description of the experience, including encountering cloaked entities, a 12-dimensional brain diagnostic tool, and a neurosurgeon-like being.

* The intensity and reality-shattering nature of the experience, surpassing previous encounters with DMT entities.

* Sara's decision to take a break from psychedelics after this experience.

* The importance of reverence and respect when engaging with the DMT space and its mysteries.

* The continuing potential for breakthroughs and the limitlessness of the DMT rabbit hole.

Chapter 9: Attention, AI, and the Question of Human Survival (01:20:00 - 01:30:00)

* The book as a shared tapestry of experiences, honoring the work of other artists and researchers.

* The importance of acknowledging both shared archetypes and individual variations in DMT experiences.

* The potential for AI to evolve beyond human comprehension and the need for humans to adapt.

* The question of AI's attention span and its potential implications for human-AI interaction.

* The need for humanity to overcome its self-destructive tendencies in order to harness the potential of technology and navigate the future.

* Sara's personal mission to inspire progress and wonder through her art.

✨ Mentions

* David Jay Brown - Author of The Illustrated Field Guide to DMT Entities

* Diana Reed Slattery - Author of Xenolinguistics

* Ralph Abraham - Chaos theoretician at UCSC who taught Sara about wallpaper groups

* James Kent - Author of Alien Information Theory

* Aldous Huxley - Author of the essay "Heaven and Hell"

* K. Allado-McDowell - Co-director of Google’s Artists and Machine Learning program

* Roland Fischer - Experimental researcher and pharmacologist

* Iain McGilchrist - Psychiatrist and author of The Master and His Emissary

* William Irwin Thompson - Historian and poet-philosopher

* The Tea Faerie - Psychonaut and harm reduction expert

* Terence McKenna - Known for his ideas on the Logos and the psychedelic experience

* Andrés Gomez Emilsson - Director of Qualia Research Institute focusing on the mathematics of psychedelic experiences

* Chris Bledsoe - Known for his family's experiences with entities in a waking state

* Stuart Davis - Host of "Aliens and Artists" and known for his encounters with mantis beings

* Graham Hancock - Author who encountered "big-brained robots" during a psychedelic experience

* Adam Aronovich - Curator of Healing From Healing

* Rodney Ascher - Director of the documentary "A Glitch in the Matrix"

* Ian McGilchrist - Author and researcher who studies hemispheric specialization in the brain

* René Descartes - Philosopher known for his mind-body dualism and views on animals

* Helané Wahbeh - Researcher at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, discussed the reproducibility problem in science

This week we speak to multidisciplinary independent researcher William Sarill, whose life has traced a high-dimensional curve through biochemistry, art restoration, physics, and esotericism (and I’m stopping the list here but it goes on). Bill is one of the only people I know who has the scientific chops to understand and explain how to possibly unify thermodynamics with general relativity AND has gone swimming into the deep end of The Weird for long enough to develop an appreciation for its paradoxical profundities. He can also boast personal friendships with two of the greatest (and somewhat diametrically opposed) science fiction authors ever: Phil Dick and Isaac Asimov. 

In this conversation we start by exploring some of his discoveries and insights as an intuition-guided laboratory biomedical researcher and follow the river upstream into his synthesis of emerging theoretical frameworks that might make sense of PKD’s legendary VALIS experiences — the encounter with high strangeness that drove him to write The Exegesis, over a million words of effort to explain the deep structure of time and reality. It’s time for new ways to think about time! Enjoy…

✨ Support This Work

• Buy my brain for hourly consulting or advisory work on retainer• Become a patron on Substack or Patreon• Help me find backing for my next big project Humans On The Loop• Buy the books we discuss from my Bookshop.org reading list• Buy original paintings and prints or commission new work• Join the conversation on Discord in the Holistic Technology & Wise Innovation and Future Fossils servers• Make one-off donations at @futurefossils on Venmo, $manfredmacx on CashApp, or @michaelgarfield on PayPal• Buy the show’s music on Bandcamp — intro “Olympus Mons” from the Martian Arts EP & outro “Sonnet A” from the Double-Edged Sword EP

✨ Go Deeper

Bill's Academia.edu pageBill's talk at the PKD Film FestivalBill's profile for the Palo Alto Longevity PrizeBill's story on Facebook about his biochemistry researchBill in the FF Facebook group re: Simulation Theory, re: The Zero-Point Field, re: everything he's done that no one else has, re: how PKD predicted ChatGPT"If you find this world bad, you should see some of the others" by PKDThe Wyrd of the Early Earth: Cellular Pre-sense in the Primordial Soup by Eric WargoMy first and second interviews with William Irwin ThompsonMy lecture on biology, time, and myth from Oregon Eclipse Gathering 2017"I understand Philip K. Dick" by Terence McKennaWeird Studies on PKD and "The Trash Stratum" Part 1 & Part 2Weird Studies with Joshua Ramey on divination in scienceSparks of Genius: The Thirteen Thinking Tools of the World's Most Creative People by Robert & Michele Root-BernsteinDiscovering by Robert Root-Bernstein

“How geometry expresses the Second Law of Thermodynamics” by Chris Jeynes”Testing the Conjecture That Quantum Processes Create Conscious Experience” by Neven et al.

✨ Mentions

Philip K. Dick, Bruce Damer, Iain McGilchrist, Eric Wargo, Stu Kauffman, Michael Persinger, Alfred North Whitehead, Terence McKenna, Karl Friedrich, Mike Parker, Chris Jeynes, David Wolpert, Ivo Dinov, Albert Einstein, Kurt Gödel, Erwin Schroedinger, Kaluza & Klein, Richard Feynman, Euclid, Hermann Minkowski, James Clerk Maxwell, The I Ching, St. Augustine, Stephen Hawking, Jim Hartle, Alexander Vilenkin, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Timothy Morton, Futurama, The Wachowski Siblings, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Leonard Euler, Paramahansa Yogananda, Alfred Korbzybski, Frank Herbert, Robert Heinlein, Claude Shannon, Ludwig Boltzmann, Carl Jung, Danny Jones, Mark Newman, Michael Lachmann, Cristopher Moore, Jessica Flack, Robert Root Bernstein, Louis Pasteur, Alexander Fleming, Ruth Bernstein, Andres Gomez Emilsson, Diane Musho Hamilton

This week on Future Fossils, I meet with the wonderful Tim Adalin of Voicecraft. Watch us get to know each other a little bit better on a swapcast (his edit here) that throws a long loop around the world. Tim is precisely the kind of thoughtful investigator I love to encounter in conversation. Enjoy!

✨ Support This Work

• Buy my brain for hourly consulting or advisory work on retainer• Become a patron on Substack or Patreon• Help me find backing for my next big project Humans On The Loop• Buy the books we discuss from my Bookshop.org reading list• Buy original paintings and prints or commission new work• Join the conversation on Discord in the Holistic Technology & Wise Innovation and Future Fossils servers• Make one-off donations at @futurefossils on Venmo, $manfredmacx on CashApp, or @michaelgarfield on PayPal• Buy the show’s music on Bandcamp — intro “Olympus Mons” from the Martian Arts EP & outro “Sonnet A” from the Double-Edged Sword EP

✨ Takeaways

* Wise innovation requires reconnecting with the purpose and mission of organizations and cultivating a field that allows for the ripening of ideas and contributions.

* The tension between exploration and exploitation is a key consideration in navigating large networks and organizations.

* Play, creativity, and the integration of holistic, playful, and noisy approaches are essential for innovation and problem-solving.

* Deep and authentic relationships are crucial for effective communication and understanding in a world of information overload.

* The need for wisdom to keep pace with technology is a pressing challenge in the modern world. Innovation is a crossroads between the need for integration and the obsession with novelty and productivity.

* Different types of innovation are needed, and movement in one dimension is not equivalent to movement in another.

* The erosion of values and the loss of context can occur when organizations prioritize innovation and novelty.

* A tripartite regulatory structure, consisting of industry, art/culture/academia, and government, is necessary to prevent the exploitation of power asymmetries.

* Small-scale governance processes and the importance of care and balance in innovation are key to a more sustainable and wise approach.

✨ Mentions

Alison Gopnik, Iain McGilchrist, Brian Arthur, Bruce Alderman, Andrew Dunn, Turquoise Sound, John Vervaeke, Naomi Klein, Erik Davis, Kevin Kelly, Mitch Mignano, Rimma Boshernitsan, Geoffrey West, Brian Enquist, Jim Brown, Elisa Mora, Chris Kempes, Manfred Laubichler, Annalee Newitz, Venkatesh Rao, Daniel Schmachtenberger, Nate Hagens, Yanis Varoufakis, Ferananda Ibarra, Josh Field, Michel Bauwens, John Pepper, Kevin Kelly, Gregory Landua, Sam Bowles, Wendy Carlin, Kevin Clark, Stuart Kauffman, Jordan Hall, William Irwin Thompson, Henry Andrews