Humans On The Loop

Michael Garfield
  • 4.9 (241)
  • PHILOSOPHY
  • UPDATED BIWEEKLY
Humans On The Loop

Let's dream better! Join paleontologist-futurist Michael Garfield for bold, far-ranging explorations into the nature of agency in the age of automation, wisdom and innovation, responsibility and power, and the care and feeding of the new superpowers conferred to us by magical technologies. Weekly dialogues at the edge of the knowable, learning to navigate Global Weirding and exponential AI with the curiosity and play required of us. Building on twenty years of independent research plus firsthand experience of the tech, arts, and science worlds, Humans On The Loop is a show to transform you and help us make better use of our greatest natural resource: our attention. michaelgarfield.substack.com

  1. Ep 09 - Adah Parris on Neurodivergent Cyborg Shamans & Elemental Tech Ethics

    2 DAYS AGO

    Ep 09 - Adah Parris on Neurodivergent Cyborg Shamans & Elemental Tech Ethics

    Subscribe, Rate, & Comment on YouTube • Apple Podcasts • Spotify If you value this series, please consider becoming a patron here on Substack or with tax-deductible donations at every.org/humansontheloop (you’ll get perks either way). About This Episode This week we speak with “strategic futurist and pattern navigator” Adah Parris, a London-based wizard and weirdo with whom I immediately hit it off over our shared interest in “cyborg shamanism” and an emphasis on being good ancestors. Forbes Brasil called her “one of the most important futurists in the world.” It’s hard for me to measure the impact she’s had on business leaders, tech startups, marketing and communications firms, arts schools, and in the lives of the countless other people. We talk about the relationship between numbers, language, and the ineffable, ever-shifting human spirit. Adah’s work points past knowledge and history into the elemental nature of both human and machine, past our differences into the deep similarity worth celebrating and the mystery that we inhabit and embody. Join us for a yarn that is both silly and profound, present and far-reaching, about being uncategorizably creative, open, and curious amidst the wicked problems of our time… Project Links • Read the project pitch & planning doc• Dig into the full episode and essay archives• Join the online commons for Wisdom x Technology on Discord + Bluesky + X• Join the open, listener-moderated Future Fossils Discord Server• Contact me if you have questions (patron rewards, sponsorship, collaboration, etc.)• Browse the HOTL reading list and support local booksellers Chapters 0:00:00 - Teaser0:00:49 - Intro0:05:24 - Feeling Seen & Heard0:09:54 - Adah’s Biography0:17:21 - Poetry & Number0:27:55 - Cyborg Shamanism & The Five Elements0:37:03 - The Foraging Neurotype of “Extremely Online”0:51:07 - Surrendering Agency to Systems0:55:14 - The Incremental Reclamation of Agency1:01:19 - Art after Modernity & Healing from Noise1:13:01 - Beyond Narrative & Into Dance1:17:30 - Thanks & Announcements Adah’s Links Website | Instagram | LinkedIn | Medium | Chartwell Speakers Finding Our Future in Ancestral Wisdom @ TEDxSoho What Kind of Ancestor Do You Want To Be? @ Think With Google Cyborg Shamanism & The Case for Elemental AI @ Atmos Mentioned Media Refactoring “Autonomy” & “Freedom” for The Age of Language Modelsby Michael Garfield 223 - Timothy Morton on A New Christian Ecology & Systems Thinking BlasphemyFuture Fossils Podcast Attention deficits linked with proclivity to explore while foragingby David L. Barack et al. New Selves of Neural Media & AI as 'The Poison Path' with K Allado-McDowellHumans On The Loop Raising AI: An Essential Guide to Parenting Our Futureby De Kai Technoshamanism: A Very Psychedelic Century! at Moogfest 2016by Michael Garfield Proteus (film) Sonic restoration: acoustic stimulation enhances plant growth-promoting fungi activityby James M. Robinson et al. Ada Twist, Scientistby Andrea Beaty & David Roberts Oppenheimer (film) Dante’s Infernoby Dante Alighieri Mentioned People & Institutions Ford Motor Co.TelefonicaWayraAT&TAugusta Ada Byron LovelaceCharles BabbageMarshall McLuhanDr. Kate StoneErnst HaeckelTada HozumiLewis MumfordJohn Taylor GattoPaul TillichAlan Turing Guest Recommendations Emalick NijeAnjuli BediCharlie MorleyAmichai Lau-Lavie 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

    1h 19m
  2. Ep 08 - Howard Rheingold on Lucid Life Online & Attention As A 21st Century Literacy

    FEB 12

    Ep 08 - Howard Rheingold on Lucid Life Online & Attention As A 21st Century Literacy

    Subscribe, Rate, & Comment on YouTube • Apple Podcasts • Spotify If you value this series, please consider becoming a patron here on Substack or with tax-deductible donations at every.org/humansontheloop (you’ll get perks either way). Our next members hangout will be Saturday Feb 15th at 3 pm Mountain Time and I would love to see you in the mix! Expect details on how to join the call by Friday. About This Episode We live in a time defined by the agency of what author, critic, and teacher Howard Rheingold famously described as “tools for thought” — media that expand our minds and enhance our ability to learn and collaborate, both for good and ill. But just because we’re on the Web doesn’t make us “net smart”, another term from Rheingold’s extensive catalogue of pithy idioms. As anyone with a pocket supercomputer can attest, having information on tap doesn’t necessarily result in better attention management, boost our critical thinking, or confer a greater capacity to engage in prosocial collective action…but we can choose to allocate ourselves to developing the skills we need to thrive on this electronic frontier. And who better to help us than Rheingold himself, a legendary figure whose reporting and counsel from the frothy edge can teach us all great volumes about how to deepen our humanity in technologically-augmented worlds. Disclaimer: the audio and video on Howard’s end of the recording drifted unevenly and sometimes minutes away from each other…and while I put in several extra days of effort to repair it all, you will notice moments where they don’t line up. Project Links • Read the project pitch & planning doc• Dig into the full episode and essay archives• Join the online commons for Wisdom x Technology on Discord + Bluesky + X• Join the open, listener-moderated Future Fossils Discord Server• Contact me if you have questions (patron rewards, sponsorship, collaboration, etc.)• Browse the HOTL reading list and support local booksellers Chapters 0:00:00 - Teaser0:01:50 - Intro0:07:15 - Howard’s Story0:15:59 - Technology as Psychedelic & The New Selves of The Web0:26:42 - Attention Management as A 21st Century Literacy0:39:29 - Making Life Online a Lucid Dream0:52:17 - New Architectures of Participation1:01:51 - The Importance of Art & Play1:12:16 - Making Room for Innovation1:17:05 - Howard’s Guest Recommendations1:18:24 - Thanks & Announcements Howard’s Links Website | Patreon | X | Mastodon | WikipediaAttention: And Other 21st Century LiteraciesNet Smart @ Google Tech Talks (video)Tools for Thought: The History & Future of Mind-Expanding Technology (also on Digital Library for The Commons)Net Smart: How to Thrive Online (also on JSTOR)The Peeragogy Handbook (also public domain)Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution (PDF here)Virtual Reality (also on Internet Archive)The Virtual Community: Homesteading on The Electronic Frontier (also on Internet Archive)Pataphysics.us Mentioned Books & Papers Douglas Engelbart - Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual FrameworkLinda Stone - Beyond Simple Multi-Tasking: Continuous Partial AttentionJacques Ellul - The Technological SocietyRegina Rini - Deepfakes and The Epistemic BackstopPuja Ohlhaver, Vitalik Buterin, Glen Weyl - Decentralized Society: Finding Web3’s SoulJoseph Henrich - The Secret of Our SuccessElinor Ostrom - Governing The Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective ActionJ. Stephen Lansing - Perfect Order: Recognizing Complexity in BaliAnanyo Bhattacharya - The Man from The Future: The Visionary Life of John von NeumannGarrett Hardin - The Tragedy of The CommonsManuel Castells - The Rise of The Network SocietyAnnie Murphy Paul - The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain Mentioned People & Institutions Timothy LearyJoe KamiyaAlan KayClay ShirkyRichard DoyleRay KurzweilLinda StoneIain McGilchristClifford Nass Stanislas DehaeneTim O’ReillyCory DoctorowAndreas WagnerDavid PasiakDave SnowdenMircea EliadeEd CatmullJohn LasseterAlan TuringXeroc PARCScientific AmericanThe WELLThe Whole Earth ReviewThe Institute For The FutureThe Macarthur FoundationNapsterBurning ManHewlett PackardPixarIndustrial Light & MagicLucasfilmStanford Institute for Innovations in Learning Guest Recommendations Joe HenrichAnnie Murphy PaulBrian AlexanderAthena Aktipis 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

    1h 19m
  3. Ep 07 - Jessica Clark on Making New Realities with New Media

    FEB 6

    Ep 07 - Jessica Clark on Making New Realities with New Media

    Subscribe, Rate, & Review on YouTube • Spotify • Apple Podcasts This week I speak with author, futurist, and strategist Jessica Clark of Dot Connector Studio. Jessica has honed her skills for decades on a path that’s carried her from AAAS to The Library of Congress to The Encyclopedia Britannica to the Center for Media and Social Impact to The New America Foundation to The Association of Independents in Radio and beyond, and now she oversees a refuge for social innovators working at the intersections of philanthropy, media, arts and culture, and futurism. We need dot connectors more than ever if we are to trace the shape of what’s emerging, and I look to Jessica as an example of how to weave research, experience design, production, strategy, and culture-building into something like the raft we need to make our way through vast uncertainty to thriving futures just over the horizon. In this episode we discuss the ideas shared in her book with Kamal Sinclair, Making A New Reality: A Toolkit for Inclusive Futures and how to rethink storytelling in new media. Project Links Pitch and planning documentHire me to help you make senseMake tax-deductible donations to Humans On The LoopBrowse the HOTL reading list and support local booksellersJoin the Wisdom x Technology Discord Server + Bluesky List + X Community Chapters 0:00:00 - Teaser0:01:40 - Intro0:07:51 - Who is Jessica Clark?0:10:42 - “New Media” Means New Kinds of “Reality”0:15:18 - Storytelling & Social Power0:25:07 - Overcoming Groupthink / Problems in The Creative Economy0:32:39 - Fairness in New Media0:40:38 - What Do We Measure While Incubating Creativity?0:48:32 - Post-Institutional Credentials0:55:01 - How Do We Support “The Interstitionaries”?1:02:14 - Intergenerational Wisdom & The Value of Conflict to Truth1:08:59 - What Biases Do We Want?1:14:29 - The Future Voice of Fandom1:18:03 - Acknowledgements & Next Guest (Most) Mentions Making A New Reality’s Toolkit for Change ResourcesKamal Sinclair & Jessica Clark discuss Making A New RealityVictor Pickard’s “We Need a Media System That Serves People’s Needs, Not Corporations’”William Deresiewicz’s “The Death of the Artist—and the Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur”Ward Shelley’s Who Invented The Avant Garde Redux, 2020Michael Garfield’s “An Oral History of The End of ‘Reality’”Doug RushkoffSep KamvarJulie Ann CrommettStephanie LeppAri KuschnirMaureen FanEugene ChungZebras UniteMetalabel Maureen GiovanniniShannon GilmartinNicole AnandEd CatmullLeslie Fields CruzDavid JayCenter for Humane TechnologyWilliam Irwin Thompson’s The American Replacement of NatureC Thi NguyenThomas FrankJennifer BrandelBrian EnoTracy Van SlykeThe Center for Media & Social ImpactMIT Open Documentary LabTrista HarrisPatricia AufderheideInternet ArchiveWikimedia FoundationMalka OlderGlobal VoicesDark Trek 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

    1h 19m
  4. Ep 06 – New Selves of Neural Media & AI as 'The Poison Path' with K Allado-McDowell

    JAN 30

    Ep 06 – New Selves of Neural Media & AI as 'The Poison Path' with K Allado-McDowell

    Subscribe, Rate, & Review on YouTube • Spotify • Apple Podcasts This week we speak with K Allado-McDowell, artist, musician, and co-founder of the Artists & Machine Intelligence program at Google. K pioneered human-computer co-authorship with the book Pharmako-AI, as well as Air Age Blueprint, Amor Cringe, and the graphic novel Outside, plus works in opera and ritual. Their work reveals the human as inherently relational and ecological, technology as something nature’s doing, and the new vistas made legible by technology as a fertile zone within which we can redefine identity and story from a radically transformed awareness. Pharmako-AI, the first book to be co-written with GPT-3 in 2020, sets the tone: mutually interdependent co-arising of selfhood through linguistic interactions between animal, vegetable, and mineral intelligences, AI as an adjunct to our awakening sense of co-imbrication in and as a plural and evolving world. Project Links Plans, invited thinkers, and needsHire me for consulting or advisory workMake tax-deductible donations to Humans On The LoopBrowse the HOTL reading list and support local booksellersTend a community knowledge garden in the Wisdom x Technology Discord serverMeet delightful fellow weirdos in the private Future Fossils Facebook group Chapters 0:00:00 – Teaser0:01:34 – Intro0:06:54 – Who is Kenric Allado-McDowell?0:13:12 – Entering Linguistic Hyperspace0:31:36 – Neural, Network, Immersive, Broadcast Media0:48:10 – The Poison Path of Machine Intelligence1:05:10 – Post-Cyperpunk Love & Nonduality1:17:55 – Recommendations1:21:02 – Outro Mentions K’s “Neural Interpellation”K’s “Designing Neural Media”Dale Pendell’s Pharmako/Gnosis: Plant Teachers and The Poison PathPharmako-AIK in conversation with Erik Davis at The AlembicJacques Vallee’s The Invisible CollegeJohn KeatsRichard DoyleEduardo KohnSETIDavid Abrams’ The Spell of The SensuousRobert RauschenbergJohn CageBell LabsFred Turner’s The Democratic SurroundStanford UniversityThe Committee for National MoraleMargaret MeadGregory BatesonCharles & Ray EamesEdward SteichenStan VanDerBeekTerence McKennaReplika AIRay KurzweilMidjourneyJoseph SchumpeterJakob Johann von UexküllJean BaudrillardMiike SnowJohn DanaherSpikeRudolf SteinerTimothy MortonKrishnamurtiAlexander Von HumboldtAndrea WulfNick LandNora Khan Paul Preciado 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

    1h 22m

  5. JAN 22

    Ep. 05 – Futures Indistinguishable from Magic with Robin Sloan

    Subscribe, Rate, & Review on YouTube • Spotify • Apple Podcasts 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 B******t”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 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

    1h 25m

  6. JAN 16

    Ep. 04 – Transcending (and Including) Partisan Debate with Stephanie Lepp

    Subscribe, Rate, & Review on YouTube • Spotify • Apple Podcasts 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 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

    1h 10m

  7. JAN 8

    Ep. 03 – Mycopunk Community Coordination with Christina Bowen of Socialroots

    Subscribe, Rate, & Review on YouTube • Spotify • Apple Podcasts 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 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

    1h 14m
  8. Ep. 02 – The Inner Life of a Responsible Tech Practitioner with Benjamin Olsen

    12/25/2024

    Ep. 02 – The Inner Life of a Responsible Tech Practitioner with Benjamin Olsen

    Subscribe, Rate, & Review on YouTube • Spotify • Apple Podcasts 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 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

    1h 2m
See All (241)

4.9
out of 5
241 Ratings

About

Let's dream better! Join paleontologist-futurist Michael Garfield for bold, far-ranging explorations into the nature of agency in the age of automation, wisdom and innovation, responsibility and power, and the care and feeding of the new superpowers conferred to us by magical technologies. Weekly dialogues at the edge of the knowable, learning to navigate Global Weirding and exponential AI with the curiosity and play required of us. Building on twenty years of independent research plus firsthand experience of the tech, arts, and science worlds, Humans On The Loop is a show to transform you and help us make better use of our greatest natural resource: our attention. michaelgarfield.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Michael Garfield
  • Years Active
    2016 - 2025
  • Episodes
    241
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Michael Garfield
  • Show Website
    Humans On The Loop

You Might Also Like

To listen to explicit episodes, sign in.

Stay up to date with this show

Sign in or sign up to follow shows, save episodes, and get the latest updates.
Select a country or region

Africa, Middle East, and India

Asia Pacific

Europe

Latin America and the Caribbean

The United States and Canada