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The Conversation #15 — Cameron Whitten

presented by Aengus Anderson, Cameron Whitten, Micah Saul

Any time that you lessen lev­els of dis­par­i­ty you’re going to have more progress. And you can’t look at it as an own indi­vid­ual term. Progress in your own life, progress in tech­nol­o­gy. But I believe that you have to look at progress through the con­nec­tion of every­thing. That’s what sus­tain­abil­i­ty is real­ly about. It’s about the rela­tion­ship of our econ­o­my, of social jus­tice, the qual­i­ty of life of peo­ple, and then the last part is the environment.

The Conversation #14 — John Zerzan

presented by Aengus Anderson, John Zerzan, Micah Saul

I always won­der about peo­ple that are very pro-tech on the Left, for exam­ple. ​“Oh, we’ve got to keep all this. Of course. That’d be crazy.” You know, you want to pre­serve all of the lev­el of tech­nol­o­gy. The ques­tion that occurs to me is, oh so you want to keep how many hun­dreds of mil­lions of peo­ple in the mines, in the smelters, in the foundries, in the assem­bly lines? I would like to see them be able to do some­thing else. But you’re going to have to keep them there one way or anoth­er if you want to have all this stuff.

The Conversation #13 — Ariel Waldman

presented by Aengus Anderson, Ariel Waldman, Micah Saul

I think the sad­dest thing is if you ever stop want­i­ng to learn new things. And it can be about any­thing. That’s just real­ly heart­break­ing. I don’t know. It’s just so much part of like who you are as a human to learn new things con­stant­ly. And so to not be curi­ous, not want to learn new things and not cre­ate new pat­terns and connections…you’re pret­ty much giv­ing up your human self.

The Conversation #12 — Gabriel Stempinski

presented by Aengus Anderson, Gabriel Stempinski, Micah Saul

In the future, we have to change the way we look at con­sump­tion. That’s why I’m such a big pro­po­nent of the shar­ing econ­o­my. Because it’s not an issue of if it’s going to hap­pen, it’s when it’s going to hap­pen. And I’d rather peo­ple vol­un­tar­i­ly adopt it now and start real­iz­ing the ben­e­fit of it now while we’re still in this kind of rel­a­tive land of plen­ty, than be forced into it lat­er when all of a sud­den there’s not enough water to cov­er Phoenix any­more because it’s a huge city in the mid­dle of a desert and they have to go on water rationing.

The Conversation #11 — Lisa Petrides

presented by Aengus Anderson, Lisa Petrides, Micah Saul

Obviously there’s human rights that have to do with water and air and safe­ty and shel­ter, but I think edu­ca­tion is right there with it because it real­ly is a pub­lic good. I have such a hard time with peo­ple who say, for exam­ple, who don’t have chil­dren and say, ​“Well why should I pay those tax­es. I don’t have any­body in the schools. It’s not ben­e­fit­ting me.” And I think how can you pos­si­bly say that? Those are the peo­ple that are ser­vic­ing you, whether they’re ser­vic­ing your roads or your super­mar­ket or your med­ical offices.

A Brief History of Industrial Revolutions: Ian Goldin

presented by Ian Goldin

Our con­nec­tiv­i­ty not only spreads good ideas, it spreads bad ones too. Our con­nec­tiv­i­ty not only allows us to make finance trav­el around the world and help peo­ple, it means that a cas­cad­ing risk that orig­i­nates in the South of the US can be every­where with­in a mat­ter of hours. And this hyper­con­nec­tiv­i­ty, this but­ter­fly defect of glob­al­iza­tion, requires new management. 

A Brief History of Industrial Revolutions: Hannah Dawson

presented by Hannah Dawson

The ques­tion that philoso­phers have asked since antiq­ui­ty is how should you live? What is the good life for a human being? And the two answers that have repeat­ed­ly come back time and time again are that there are two things that mat­ter. One is agency. That’s to say being in con­trol of your life, active­ly, cre­ative­ly engag­ing with the world. And the oth­er is community.

AI Policy, Is It Possible? Is It Necessary?

presented by Min Li Marti

When we talk about tech­nolo­gies such as AI, and pol­i­cy, one of the main prob­lems is that tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment is fast, and pol­i­cy and democ­ra­cy is a very very slow process. And that could be poten­tial­ly a very big prob­lem if we think that AI could be poten­tial­ly dangerous.

The Conversation #10 — Timothy Morton

presented by Aengus Anderson, Micah Saul, Timothy Morton

I don’t think eco­log­i­cal aware­ness is a sort of ​“hap­py hap­py joy joy, we are all earth­lings” thing. I think it’s actu­al­ly a kind of uncan­ny real­iza­tion. On the one hand there’s no away, on the oth­er hand what the hell is this? ​“This is not my beau­ti­ful waste. This is not my beau­ti­ful toi­let. This is not my beau­ti­ful Pacific Ocean.” You know, all of a sud­den these things become some­how not exact­ly what we thought they were.

The Conversation #9 — A Brief Status Update

presented by Aengus Anderson, Micah Saul

We want to sort of bring you all up to speed on some of the things that we’ve been think­ing about, some of the con­ver­sa­tions we’ve been hav­ing that I’ve had to edit out of the tail ends of episodes, link a few con­cepts and also be… Well, first because we think it’s real­ly impor­tant to be sort of trans­par­ent about where we’re going with the series and the con­ver­sa­tions we’re having.

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