Plutopia News Network

Plutopia News Network invited Carl Stone and Eric Theise for a conversation mainly focusing on Carl’s work/play as an electronic composer. Carl and Eric recently performed sold-out shows together in Northern California, with Carl playing electronic compositions via laptop, and Eric creating visuals.

Carl Stone is a pioneer of live computer music, hailed by the Village Voice as “the king of sampling.” and “one of the best composers living in (the USA) today.” He has used computers in live performance since 1986. He studied composition at the California Institute of the Arts with Morton Subotnick and James Tenney and has composed electro-acoustic music almost exclusively since 1972. His works have been performed in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia, South America and the Near East. In addition to his schedule of performance, composition and touring, he is on the faculty of the Department of Media Engineering at Chukyo University in Japan.

Eric Theise is a San Francisco-based experimental filmmaker, photographer and vocalizer. He’s also a full stack developer focusing on maps and other visualization, and an operations researcher.

Performance Videos:

Listen to Carl’s latest album, “Wat Dong Moon Lek”

Photo: Akira Saito

The post Carl Stone and Eric Theise: A Conversation first appeared on Plutopia News Network.

Broadcaster, DJ and Audio Engineer Tracey Schulz joins the Plutopia Podcast this time. Tracey is a regular voice on K.U.T. FM and K.O.O.P. Radio. He joins Scoop and Suzy in a wide-ranging discussion about radio, making media and much more.

The post Tracey Schulz: Tune In And Turn On The Radio! first appeared on Plutopia News Network.

Once upon a time..people of a certain age witnessed a historic change in the way humans destroy each other in a war. In 1945, the United States ended World War Two by dropping two atomic bombs on Japan. The end of the war ushered in a new form of conflict…the Cold War. This time on the Plutopia Podcast, Jon and Scoop share memories of growing up in the shadow of the bomb.

Jon: “The bomb was never used again partly because everybody sort of realizes is that, especially now that various countries all have nuclear weapons. What do they call it…there is this chance of mutually assured destruction if a couple of countries start throwing bombs at each other.”

Scoop:”Yeah it’s basically the last few minutes of the movie war games where they proved on the screen that the only winning approach to wargames is don’t play because we need to get it to that level of warfare there are no winners, because immediately yeah we shoot a bomb at them…they shoot back at us…we go back and forth until there’s nothing left but a scarred little lifeless planet.”

The post SO LONG MOM, I’M OFF TO DROP THE BOMB! first appeared on Plutopia News Network.

Jon and Scoop conclude their postmortem for the year 2022. We look at the drama within the Republican party that managed to last into 2023. We also examine the GOP’s extremist desire to tear down the government and replace it with something straight out of dystopian sci-fi. We also look at pathological liars, Georg Santos, whatever happened to the old, no-crazy Republicans, how the old Southern Democrats became Southern Republicans, and much more!

Jon: There’s a handful of Republicans that are far-right MAGA tea party whatever you want to call it folks, who are opposed to the idea of government – not just opposed to a different party, but opposed to government itself. And they are also not very experienced, most of them, in politics.

Scoop: You’re being kind. Well, it seems to me these guys have watched too many Kung Fu movies, and they think they’re going to be like the Five Fingers of Death. The Five Thumbs, maybe – they’re all trying to write themselves in as characters in the Matrix, going against the evil programs from the Biden Administration…

Also note: Jon is cofounder and cohost, with Bruce Sterling, of the annual State of the World conversation. You can find it via https://tinyurl.com/state-world-2023.

The post 2022 Postmortem, Part 2 first appeared on Plutopia News Network.

In this, the first Plutopia podcast of 2023, the Plutopian brain trust offers you their postmortem report on the late, and not quite lamented year, 2022.

Jon: So the point, I guess, is that we would have to – and that we should – be finding a way to live that doesn’t depend on extracting resources to the extent that we do now, and it’s possible to do that. But it’s a big re-education, and really, it contradicts the basic tenets of capitalism. Because capitalism is based on exploiting resources.

Scoop: Well, I’ve heard conservative folks say that it’s our fault, for helping out all those other countries that were doing so poorly compared to us, supposedly. That we shouldn’t have helped them out, because their getting better just contributed to the changes in the climate, and pollution…

Suzy: And I think that’s one of the things I have such a hard time with, explaining to certain Republicans that the people you’ve elected don’t represent you anymore, you know, and I heard one older woman say the other day, just flat out, that she doesn’t believe in CLIMATE.

War in Ukraine persisted throughout the year. Russia demanded that NATO agree never to admit Ukraine and accused Washington of installing Nazis to lead Ukraine (Zelenskyy is Jewish.)

Omicron surged worldwide early in the year.

Winter Olympics in February – limited attendance mainly because of China’s “zero Covid” policy. Government officials from UK and USA among others boycott because of China’s human rights abuses.

Putin says the Ukraine was created by Russia but has become a colony of the West. His invasion of the Ukraine is therefore retaliatory.

Ron DeSantis signed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill for Florida in March. Much yammering about “wokeness.” The bill restricts what elementary schools can teach about sexual orientation and gender identity.

Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Academy Awards. Comic relief?

In April Macron won a second term in France, defeating far right Marine Le Pen. Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed as the Supreme Court’s first black woman justice.

A Trump judge invalidated mask mandate for mass transit, ruling that blocking transmission of the virus is not “sanitation” under the law.

In May the draft majority opinion overruling Roe v Wade leaked, pissing John roberts off. It later appears that Alito leaked his opinion, apparently this is something he does.

The house approved an aid package for Ukraine – ongoing support for Ukraine vs Russia.

A new Omicron subvariant resulted in a surge if Covid cases.

19 students and 2 teachers were slaughtered in Uvalde while police stood around for an hour or more. Why they didn’t act more quickly is puzzling and controversial.

A baby formula shortage, gasoline over $5 per gallon.

First major federal gun reform in 3 decades passed, expanding background checks for for gun buyers under 21, incentivizing states’ red flag laws, and allocating 1.3 billion for mental health and security initiatives at schools.

The January 6 public hearings detailed Donald Trump’s efforts to stoke insurrection.

26 states moved to ban or restrict terminating pregnancy.

Historic heat in Europe, another effect of climate change. Brutal drought in China. Rivers dried up worldwide. A long hot summer with Biblical rainstorms in St. Louis, Illinois, and eastern Kentucky.

More gun violence: a rooftop sniper killed 7, injures 40 at a 4th of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois.

Manchin screwed Biden’s domestic agenda by blocking the two trillion dollar “Build Back Better” bill.

Boris Johnson resigned as prime minister after various scandals and resignations.

A 10 year old Ohio girl impregnated by a rapist was forced to travel to Indiana for an abortion.

Kansas voters in a referendum opted by 59 to 41 to maintain a right to abortion.

Manchin agreed to support a pared down spending bill tht lowers health care costs and includes largest ever funds for climate initiatives.

Biden signed a student loan forgiveness bill which was later challenged in court and may never be implemented.

Texas governor Abbott started busing thousands of immigrants to DC and NYC, supposedly to call attention to the increasing number of border crossings.

The FBI raided Mar Al Lago and found over 13,000 government documents, including some that are highly classified. Was Donald Trump using them for toilet paper?

China was pissed because Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan.

The Ukraine kept fighting, taking back 3000 square miles of territory. Putin said attacks on Russian soil would cause Moscow to deploy “all means at our disposal,” hinting at a nuclear option.

Queen Elizabeth II died. Everybody stopped for a minute to say goodbye.

Fascists won a majority in Italy. Let’s see, hasn’t this happened before?

DeSantis emissaries tricked 50 Venezuelan refugees into boarding a charter plane in Texas and dropped them at Martha’s Vineyard. Cost: $615,000. Folks at Martha’s Vineyard were ready to help.

Hurricane Ian flattened Florida.

Boris Johnson’s replacement, Liz Truss, resigned after her unfunded tax cuts nicked the British pound. Rishi Sunak took her place as UK’s first non-white Prime Minister.

Xi Xinping won a third term as President of China. We’re sure it was a hard fought election.

In Brazil, Bolasonaro lost to left wing former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who had been imprisoned on corruption charges – but all charges were annulled. There was evidence that Lula’s prosecution and conviction was a sham to prevent him from running for President in 2018.

A right-wing Canadian conspiracist and nudist broke into Nancy Pelosi’s house and struck her husband Paul with a hammer. The far right spun various fantasies about the breakin, including an argument that it was a false flag operation.

The “red wave” failed to materialize in US elections. Republicans won a thin 9 seat house majority, Democrats held the Senate, Trump’s candidates flopped. Trump still announced a 2024 presidential bid, saying the USA is being ‘destroyed’ by Democrats.

Meanwhile Merrick Garland named a special prosecutor, Jack Smith, to oversee a federal criminal investigation of Trump over his role in the January 6th insurrection and his apparent theft of sensitive documents.

And Russia was in retreat mode in the Ukraine.

Even more gun violence: a man killed 5 and injured 25 in a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs.

The world’s population reached 8 billion, way more than we have resources to support.

Chinese were in rebellion against “zero Covid” rules, with huge demonstrations.

Trump’s company was convicted of 17 counts of tax fraud.

Raphael Warnock won the Georgia Senate race, barely.

The US swapped an arms dealer with Russia for the return of Brittney Griner.

We’re seeing a “tripledemic” with Covid + flu + RSV.

Russian is still pounding Ukraine with missiles, leaving Ukrainians without power as winter arrives. But Ukrainians won’t back down. Biden agrees to send Patriot missile defense systems.

Ron DeSantis has called for Moderna and Pfizer to be investigated for Covid vaccines. The vaccines are thought to have saved at least 3 million lives.

And George Santos has become the new face of the Republican party of grifters.

The post Plutopian Postmortem: 2022 first appeared on Plutopia News Network.

Science fiction author, activist and journalist Cory Doctorow returns to the Plutopia podcast. We discuss his latest book, Chokepoint Capitalism, and his definition of a chokepoint. We also explore the impact of mergers and consolidation on American society, the need for increasing enforcement by the FTC and SEC, antitrust law, and much more.

Cory Doctorow: It’s a chokepoint, that’s the kinds of structures that Rebecca and I identify in this book. That ou have these structural problems where two firms control all the mobile, and those firms have convergent policies that act to the detriment of both audiences and – importantly here – creative workers. And takes money out of their pockets, changes the distributional outcome. Even if you can claim, “Oh, look at how big the app marketplace is, look how many billions of dollars apps are generating,” unless you also look at where those billions of dollars go, you don’t know anything important about how it’s affecting the material conditions of creative workers. So what we didn’t want to do with this book is write one of those chapter 11 books, where there’s ten chapters about how screwed up things are, and then in the eleventh chapter we say, “Hey, everybody, go vote harder, we’ll get this!” Instead, we take the position that anything that can’t go on forever will eventually stop, and that when it stops there will be a crisis. We’ve had lots of crises in arts policy and in copyright policy over the last couple of decades. There are far more to come. And that when those crises arrive, as my arch-enemy Milton Friedman used to say, “Ideas that are lying around can move from the fringe to the center very quickly.”

Cory’s previous Plutopian encounters:

Cory on Mastodon

Photo by Joi Ito. Licensed CC-BY

The post Cory Doctorow: Chokepoint Capitalism first appeared on Plutopia News Network.

Author and activist Casey Walker talks about her early life in Nevada City, California, where she created and published the literary and environmental journal “Wild Duck Review.” We also discuss biotechnology, media content vs. money, moving from anti-tech to useful tech, intellectual evolution, confronting the bullies, and changing the news.

She produced 20 book-length issues of the Review, and grew circulation to 48 US states and 13 countries. In 2000, Sierra Club Books published Issue 19 of “Wild Duck Review” as Made Not Born: The Troubling World of Biotechnology.

Unexpectedly, “Wild Duck Review” was perhaps one of the last, homemade print journals to go viral before the world migrated to online search/social. Was a hinge moment between those with natural tendencies toward being community-centered, back-to-landers, tech-suspicious, nature-lovers, independent bookstore lovers, social justice activists, etc., versus those who became idealistic about what worldwide internet connection could yield for humanity.

Casey gave interviews on national media, participated in conferences, and began speaking out on what she saw as a crisis in public news and discourse. In 2004, she founded the Institute for Inquiry to pursue high-stakes, bio-cultural issues, beginning with “A Wireless Age?”.

By 2009, Walker began a pursuit of a firm intuition: that the accepted idea of public news and discourse is itself paradigmatically “off.”

She spent the next decade working out new theory (and architectural principles for online inquiry) via close observation, deep retreat, and writing.

Presentations of that work will soon go public.

Casey Walker: I mean, a lot of my thinking is really at core the question that an editor would ask, which is “what’s the most important thing that I can print, and put out into the world?” And once you take that question seriously, it takes you on a path that is truly independent of what we have today, which is this negotiation between advertisers and markets. Demographics. And the polling and matching that goes between those two completely eclipses the question of “what do we need to be thinking about?”

The post Casey Walker: Changing the News first appeared on Plutopia News Network.

Author, scholar, and translator Pablo Vazquez is our guest this time on the Plutopia podcast. We discuss their conversion from Catholicism to Zoroastrianism, and its influence on other religions. Pablo explains Zoroastrian beliefs, and Zoroastrianism in North America. We also explore Q-Anon as a possible religion.

Born in Panama and now living in Texas, Pablo is also a game writer, lecturer, consultant, and essayist. His has just published his translation of The Sacred Gathas of Zarathushtra & the Old Avestan Canon.

Currently working on their second graduate degree, Pablo’s first degree was a MA in Religions of Asia and Africa from SOAS University of London. While there, they were affiliated with the Shapoorji Pallonji Institute of Zoroastrian Studies where they learned Zoroastrian history, theology, and the Avestan language. Pablo is also unique as an officially accepted convert to Zoroastrianism while also personally embracing a multireligious approach.

Pablo Vazquez: When interviewed, most Americans actually share religious beliefs with one another on a frequent level. Of an interesting scale, a lot of Christians in the United States do not believe in hell, actually. If they do believe in any sort of divine punishment, they believe in immediate punishment. And that’s sort of different from what’s being told to us by the media, as to what the Christian landscape looks like. In the same way, the Zoroastrian landscape is kind of difficult to pinpoint down, because the main emphasis of Zoroastrianism is free will. So each individual – I joke that, if you get a roomful of Zoroastrians together, ten of them, you’ll get twelve different opinions as to what Zoroastrianism is.

The post Pablo Vazquez: Multireligious first appeared on Plutopia News Network.

Author, media theorist, and fellow podcaster Douglas Rushkoff joins the Plutopia podcast as we discuss his latest book, Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires. We also explore technoutopians, capitalism, billionaire tech bros, psychedelic tech bros, The Mindset, going beta, the blockchain and crypto, Q Anon, and much more!

Douglas Rushkoff: But there’s almost darker forms now, whether it’s the Effective Altruism, which a lot of people are talking about now since the crash of FTX, which was a crypto exchange started by one of the main funders of the Effective Altruism movement, which is the idea that you don’t do as much good doing good as you do by making money, and then donating some of it to do good. So stop worrying about treating people nicely, stop worrying about whether your business is destroying the planet or hurting other people. As long as you make a ton of money, you’re going to more efficiently by some utilitarian algorithm that we’ve developed, we can justify – you take 5% of your income, and give it to charity, you’re doing more good long-term than you are by actually being (laughter) a good person.

“Most simply stated, our nervous systems do not operate independently but in concert with the other nervous systems around us. It’s as if we share one collective nervous system. Our physical and mental health is contingent on nurturing those connections. Leaving others behind is futile and stupid. It’s as if we’ve come full circle—and sensibilities that the Western world with its empirical science and individual progress were meant to transcend are back in full force.”

The Mindset: a belief that with enough money and technology, wealthy men can live as gods and transcend the calamities that befall everyone else. It’s a way of applying the “exit strategy” of a Silicon Valley startup to civilization itself.

“The Mindset is rooted in empirical science: the reduction of nature and complexity, the domination of others, and the extraction of substance and energy from the real world and its conversion into symbol systems, like money. Digital technologies catalyzed and amplified The Mindset, yielding tech billionaires who believe that they can lord over us and then leave us behind as they migrate to humanity’s next phase of existence.”

From Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires.

The post Douglas Rushkoff: The Mindset first appeared on Plutopia News Network.

“The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.” ~ William Gibson, in The Economist, 12/4/2003

“This isn’t the dystopia that I wrote about!” ~ Bruce Sterling

Artist, writer, and curator Patrick Lichty returns to the Plutopia podcast as we explore the future. We do a deep dive into Web3, crypto, bad actors on the Internet, Meta and the Metaverse, Second Life, science fiction and life on Mars.

Patrick Lichty: “It’s kind of funny… I wound up doing a lot of study on the whole Martian thing, because a friend of mine over in the UAE and I, we were actually proposing a VR habitat for people in Mars colonies. Because you’re going to wind up in these relatively cramped quarters, or you’re going to be on a ship for two years, and that sort of thing, and you need a way to feel like you’re not in a can. So this is one really good psychological use for VR.”

The post Patrick Lichty: Distributing the Future first appeared on Plutopia News Network.