Aural Pleasures for the Ride to BRC

5. Staircase to Exordium by Burning Man Project

9. The Biggest Ball of Twine in Nevada by Burning Man Project

1. Introduction -Burning Man Audio Art Tour 2025- Tomorrow Today by Burning Man Project

4. When We Were Young by Burning Man Project

Burning Man Project Communications Director Megan Miller interviews Mayor Stephen Benjamin of Columbia, South Carolina and Mayor Hillary Schieve of Reno, Nevada during their visit to Black Rock City in 2018. They came as part of a delegation of 11 mayors from the U.S. Conference of Mayors who came to learn what their cities could learn from our city.

(Photo by Robert Burnett)

It's often said that Burning Man and the internet grew up together: both started emerging at around the same time in the late 80s, went through a "wild wild west" phase in the 1990s, when they were seen as counter-cultures. Both started to get really big around the turn of the century, and both became massive cultural phenomenon after that (though, granted, it's a hell of a lot easier to find someone who's never heard of Burning Man than it is someone who's never heard of the internet.) Many of the people who made the internet what it is went to Burning Man - and both imply new forms of social organizing.

Anselm Engle, a member of Burning Man's IT team, thinks the similarities go deeper. Both Burning Man and the internet were born out of the same social forces and cultural movements, and thus have been moving in parallel - one emphasizing pure information, the other grounding us firmly in the immediate physical moment, but both still riding the crest of the same wave.

Which is why he thinks Burning Man can be described as an open=source, cloud based, culture — Burning Man and AI have co-evolved.

It's often said that Burning Man and the internet grew up together: both started emerging at around the same time in the late 80s, went through a "wild wild west" phase in the 1990s, when they were seen as counter-cultures. Both started to get really big around the turn of the century, and both became massive cultural phenomenon after that (though, granted, it's a hell of a lot easier to find someone who's never heard of Burning Man than it is someone who's never heard of the internet.) Many of the people who made the internet what it is went to Burning Man - and both imply new forms of social organizing.

Anselm Engle, a member of Burning Man's IT team, thinks the similarities go deeper. Both Burning Man and the internet were born out of the same social forces and cultural movements, and thus have been moving in parallel - one emphasizing pure information, the other grounding us firmly in the immediate physical moment, but both still riding the crest of the same wave.

Which is why he thinks Burning Man can be described as an open=source, cloud based, culture — Burning Man and AI have co-evolved.

Vanderbilt Professor of History Michael Bess is the author of the forthcoming book What makes us human? From neurons to the Sistine Chapel, and is studying the technologies that may destroy us, including artificial intelligence and genetic engineering.

The risks of catastrophic failures, he says, are significant — basically our newest technologies are a car without a break, and if you drive one of those too fast, you're probably going to crash. Anyone interested in the survival of our species should be asking ourselves: how do we slow down enough to understand what the problems we're really facing are?

Vanderbilt Professor of History Michael Bess is the author of the forthcoming book What makes us human? From neurons to the Sistine Chapel, and is studying the technologies that may destroy us, including artificial intelligence and genetic engineering.

The risks of catastrophic failures, he says, are significant — basically our newest technologies are a car without a break, and if you drive one of those too fast, you're probably going to crash. Anyone interested in the survival of our species should be asking ourselves: how do we slow down enough to understand what the problems we're really facing are?

In his previous work, leading Existential Psychologist Kirk Schneider has put the experience of "awe" at the center of human psychology. Without experiencing awe, life tends to become flat, mechanical, and unhealthy — a prison to be broken out of, rather than a possibility to grow into.

In his new book, The Spirituality of Awe:  Challenges to the Robotic Revolution, Schneider points out that awe itself is paradoxical: it generates fear and hope, a sense of grandeur and insignificance, of strength and weakness, the imminent and the transcendent ... not one right after the other, but all at once. And it is our ability to have these simultaneous experiences, these experiential paradoxes that cannot be resolved rationally, and be present to them, and integrate them into our lives, that is the essence of our humanity.