Path & Purpose

What does it mean to be human? Where do we draw the line between human and machine? Meet Dakota Decker, a mechanical engineer who spent 5 years at SpaceX and is now playing a role in human evolution through Brain Machine Interfacing at Kernel.

Join us as we walk the outer edges of where this insider sees technology leading us, from fascinating possibilities to foreboding probabilities. Glimpse the role humans are playing in our own evolution, realtime.

His mission is to make the world a better place by playing a role in human evolution through its convergence with technology. Will it work? Ready or not, we're gonna find out.

This episode explores the...

- Motivations fuelling emerging tech like brain machine interfacing

- Type of humans most often working in these fields - on the spectrum?

- Inevitabilities of augmenting human cognition and potential threats

- Ethics and philosophy inherent in steering evolution

- Future realms of neuroscience and biology

- Role of diversity or current lack there of in high-tech spaces

- Goals of communication - human vs. machine

“When you can measure something, you can then optimize that thing. But most things in the brain we just can’t measure. So that alone would be massively beneficial to humanity as a whole.”

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dakotadecker/?trk=public-profile-join-page

https://www.kernel.co/

Today we’re here with Keith Mesecher, successful socially responsible investment advisor, exponential technologies geek, vegan, devoted husband and mindfulness teacher. He also happens to be my uncle. If you’re interested in how to create a meaningful, financially independent and joyfully present life, I think you’ll appreciate Keith’s story and glean some wisdom to apply to your life and work right now.

This episode evokes story and tips about…

- Building a meaningful life through values-based spending and earning (as outlined in the book, “Your Money or Your Life”)

- The winding path the leads to unexpected success and being open to new roles and work

- Mindfulness and meditation and how to integrate it in the tech-centered reality we are living on Zoom during the time of the Corona virus

- Philosophies and perspectives for a bright future that incorporates body, mind and heart

- How do we listen to brings us most to life?

Rose: What would you share with Elon Musk if you could tell him anything?

Keith: Do what you love.

https://www.keithmesecher.com

Quick credits: Before ever becoming stock-market savvy, Keith lived the life of a typical nomadic California hippy back in the 60s seeking enlightenment through Zen Master Shunru Suzuki at the San Francisco Zen Center. Other key influences included luminaries like Alan Watts, Gregory Bateson, and Brian Swimme. After working 15 years as a green-energy consultant, Keith backed his way into a career as an investment advisor. When he’s not at his treadmill desk analyzing and moving stocks, he’s likely in the garden listening to podcasts or audio books on the emerging future, exponential technologies and insight from leaders like Elon Musk and Peter Diamandis. We don’t always agree on the direction of tech, but I have always admired his optimistic fervor for learning and savoring life.

Kelly Robinson is an acclaimed interior design entrepreneur, yoga instructor and frankly, modern-day goddess. As the first Office Manager at Airbnb, Kelly became the visionary behind their famous San Francisco Headquarters--opening big doors to designing for other tech love brands like Soundcloud and Headspace. She understands the importance of physical environment and its impact on everything - from how we work to what we imagine, and how we relate to each other. By designing for human wellness, company health shines through the triple bottom line (people, planet, profit).

She has a gift for bringing engineering minds into their bodies through delighting the senses. But her contribution to creating a balanced, sustainable and beautiful world extends beyond interior design. This conversation touches on Kelly’s design philosophy but moreover explores the synchronicities that helped reveal her purpose. We dig into questions like: how do you turn pain into power? From where in the body is creativity born? It is Kelly’s authentic light, business savvy and fluency in the tech world that has inspired me since we met some 5 years ago in the Financial District in San Francisco. Here’s Kelly's journey discovering and making meaning in the modern world through seizing opportunity, embracing challenges and honouring beauty in the new age. Heads up: we get real folks.

We'll discuss

• Turning pain into power

• Honoring and discovering our inner purpose through life experience

• The early days of the Airbnb adventure

• How men are an integral role in her empowerment as designer of big tech spaces

• Tips for getting in touch with personal life calling

• A story through inner crisis and the rituals to move through; as well as normalising discomfort and grief

• Tapping into the creativity of the "womb space" both biologically and symbolically

• Prayers for our future as living beings on earth

“The heart is the compass for the mind... This is the difference between innovating for the sake of innovating versus innovating with a purpose. It’s just better.” - Kelly Robinson

Learn more about Kelly, her workshops and events here: http://www.kellyarobinson.com

https://www.instagram.com/kellyarobinson/

To benefit from her latest creation – a digital design guide to help you align your inner world with your outer world through intentional home design - you can register for her monthly online workshops or download the e-guide, Where Sprit Meets Space.

http://www.kellyarobinson.com/wherespiritmeetsspace

Dylan Donkin is one of my dearest friends from University where we both pursued degrees in Cultural Anthropology. 12 years ago, he was excited about the potential of self-driving vehicles and how Virtual Reality (VR) would make it possible for people to live and work more comfortably outside of city centers, bringing us closer to nature.

Dylan is one of those” cool nerds” with a double masters from USC and London School of Economics who then worked at Marvel, designed product for GoPro and is now helping to shape our emerging technically enhanced reality as a UX Designer at Google.

I invited Dylan to share with us because I believe his unique blend of optimism, realism and technical savvy will help ground me and hopefully us in the groundless space of VR and augmented possibilities. It’s time we have a little talk about what we thought today would be like, how it really is and where he hopes we go from here. We’ll talk about the light and dark sides of the psyche-reshaping potential of gaming and remote work, the healing and empathy boosting powers of VR, and the visceral risks of the techy-future we’re all apart of whether we like it, get it or not. We’ll explore the edges while having fun and keeping close to what matters most.

A few specific questions we explore…

• What animal would Google be?

• What are you a stand for?

• What is it like to spend hours on end in a VR environment?

• How do the effects of VR compare to an experience on mushrooms or other psychedelics?

• What world do we want to live in and pass onto our grandchildren? How will we be a part of creating it?

• If you could blink your eyes and there would be one change in the world, when you’d open them what would you see?

• What are the dangers of going too far in one direction without bringing in the wisdom of this body?

Quotes

“The hipsters will move to Iowa.”

“With more virtual living we will hunger for greater natural connection.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylan-donkin-579707b/

https://music.amazon.com/albums/B00AH62BEA?

Today we’re around the proverbial fire with Chris Schreiber, a transition specialist and founder at Tributary West. Chris bridges teams, operating processes and tools to meet strategic goals in fast-paced, change-adaptive times. But that's not the half of it.

Chris is also a poet whose writing reflects upon subjects like the emerging economy, social adaptation and human relationship. Most compelling is the intersection of these systems - like a tributary - and how, to Chris, they all come back to a kind of spiritual appreciation of nature.

But what could a poet know about business? Chris spent 30 years collaborating in corporate in global supply chain and tech services for brands like Quicksilver and Roxy. Once that ended, she changed paths to blend her principles, purpose and practical experience to support the success of female-founded small businesses. She now works in the X-space (not to be confused with Space-X): though she too explore the liminal place of the unknown and pure human potential. These skills and this kind of wilderness-mastery mindset are needed dearly in this moment of profound paradigm shift.

Tune in if you're curious about:

* How businesses are adapting in this emerging world/economy

* What does it mean to have "everything you've always wanted but nothing that truly mattered"? And how you renavigate to meaning

* How do you move from point A (an outdated socially-imposed definition of success) to a life that is authentic and holistically meaningful?

* Chris' poetry... enough said (worth the episode - it's the last 10mins if you want just that sweetness)

Way off Trail

I am where no map is...

we are each today

where no map is.

and each day

we are creating a new path,

intentionally,

ours.

X

X is the first letter of my alphabet.

I employ this letter in creating business plans with clients, and all “plans” whenever we are at a spot where the answer isn’t quite clear, the next step not quite known.

It is a placeholder, to create space for what’s to come.

A symbol to make peace with uncertainty. Allow it.

It was something my corporate bosses never understood.

But entrepreneurs understand innately.

And, it seems to me, now is the time to employ it.

X..."

http://www.tributarywest.com

https://www.instagram.com/tributarywest/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrishschreiber/