Plutopia News Network

Roy Casagranda joins Plutopians for a wide-ranging discussion of current events and red vs blue political meltdowns. We ask the question, to jail or not to jail he who must not be named. We explore Christian nationalists, China vs Taiwan, Fox vs Dominion, the credibility of elections, abortion rights, and beer bongs!

Roy: I think the problem is that something like 80% of Republicans still think he’s the man, and I don’t know how you overcome that. And I also think the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago brought the party around to him again… like maybe he was slipping and maybe DeSantis was in the picture. I think he’s out of the picture, at least for now. Two years is a long time, though – who knows? I don’t know if this has been confirmed or not, but one of the things I understood that he took was the nuclear codes. But the hilarious thing about that is that those changed on January 20th, 2021, and that feels like that’s a typical Trump thing, where he doesn’t understand the situation he’s in, so he just does something really boneheaded.

Our discussion touches on an issue of candidate harassment in Williamson County, Texas. Here’s Facebook a link to more info.

Photo by Joel Filipe on Unsplash

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Plutopians join Bijoy Goswami to talk about bootstrapping your business vs. venture capital funding, the human journey and the American journey, the great replacement theory, capitalism and greed, socialism, and religion as a product.

Bijoy Goswami: “The mindset is very different when you’re building to sell, when your product is essentially the company, you’ve already – that’s what they call the exit, you know, you give the five or twenty minute spiel to the venture capitalists, and then it’s all about “How are we going to exit this.” And so your whole notion is, you’re not really treating the business as a being on its own journey. You’re treating it as an asset that’s being bought and sold. That mindset brings a narrow focus which can be very liberating in some ways, because you’re just all here to go get the same thing done. But it takes the humanity out of it many times, and you end up with really horrible types of situations, like a WeWork, or an Uber – they’re just bulldozing over people, they’re megalomaniacs… that’s sort of where that model goes to die.”

From Bijoy’s website:

Raised in India, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, Bijoy moved to the US in 1991 to attend Stanford, where he studied economics, history and computer science. He was an Oxford scholar and completed an Honors program in Science, Technology & Society. In 1995, he joined Trilogy Software in Austin, TX, where he worked for five years in business development, sales, consulting, and product management. In 2000 he cofounded Aviri with Bruce Krysiak. This led to the MRE Model and The Human Fabric (2004), coauthored with Dave Wolpert.

In 2003 Bijoy started Bootstrap Austin, a community for entrepreneurs pursuing the bootstrap path of entrepreneurship. Over the next 7 years, the community became a learning lab for bootstrapping, resulting in the Bootstrap Method. It also resulted in a model to understand community and how it differs from other human organizations, such as companies. Collaborating with Heather McKissick, the question: what makes Austin, Austin? led to the ATX Equation Model.

The final(?!) 2 models – JOurneY Method and Human Fugue – arrived in tandem. The Human Fugue describes 4 houses of human endeavor – phenomena, rights, resources & meaning – and their attendant methods. The first 3 methods – scientific, democratic and entrepreneurial – were developed over the last 400 years. The JOurneY Method fills the method gap in the 4th House of Meaning, illuminating a process for personal and organizational meaning generation. Bijoy collaborated with Danny Gutknecht on Meaning at Work, which describes Essence Mining, Danny’s method for articulating a being’s meaning. The Human Fugue neatly encapsulates all the previously developed models & methods, bringing the journey full circle.

Bijoy evangelizes and teaches the models to individuals, organizations and beyond.

The post The Human Journey first appeared on Plutopia News Network.

Plutopians perform a deep dive into the Dark Brandon meme. We also look at Dark Maga… to woke or not to woke – that’s the question… Trump in ’24… Beto… Mar-a-Lago gate… and much more!

(Speaking about Darnold Trump:)

Jon: Apparently there is a law that says that if you, in public office, appropriate documents and misuse them or take them elsewhere, that you can no longer hold public office. So if they actually convict him for taking these documents, that might be it for him.

Scoop: There’s a whole problem with possessing and taking away things marked “Top Secret” and “Classified,” that’s known as espionage.

Suzy: Yeah, yeah. The fact that he… I mean, he just keeps lying, and getting caught lying. And the people who “work” for him keep getting caught in lies. Over, and over, and over, and I don’t understand at what point does this end and somebody pay a price.

The post Dark Brandon Rises! first appeared on Plutopia News Network.

Plutopians explore the search for meaning in our lives, especially in an era of pandemic and polarization. Jon, Scoop and Suzy explore the Goldwater rule, a world based on lies, Victor Frankl, Q-Anon and lie-based causes, Alex Jones, capitalism, and Christian Nationalists.

Suzy: I think it’s really interesting what people are trying to find to give meaning, or that is the meaning in their lives, since the pandemic started. I mean, I think it was really an opportunity for everyone to sit down with literally nothing else to do and confront themselves. And ask themselves why I’m in this job I hate. I don’t get enough money for this shit.

Jon: I think there’s been a lot of that consideration of, you know, am I really happy in this job. A lot of people have not gone back to their jobs.

Scoop: Yeah, there are a lot of jobs that just are not being filled, because people moved on, they realized they didn’t have to be doing that for ten dollars an hour.

Suzy: That’s a step toward a self-aware search for meaning.

“The construction of a world based on lies is a key component of authoritarians’ takeover of democratic societies. George Orwell’s 1984 explored a world in which those in power use language to replace reality, shaping the past and people’s daily experiences to cement their control. They are constantly reconstructing the past to justify their actions in the present. In Orwell’s dystopian fantasy, Winston Smith’s job is to rewrite history for the Ministry of Truth to reflect the changing interests of a mysterious cult leader, Big Brother, who wants power for its own sake and enforces loyalty through The Party’s propaganda and destruction of those who do not conform.

“Political philosopher Hannah Arendt went further, saying that the lies of an authoritarian were designed not to persuade people, but to organize them into a mass movement. Followers would “believe everything and nothing,” Arendt wrote, “think that everything was possible and that nothing was true.” “The ideal subject” for such a dictator, Arendt wrote, was not those who were committed to an ideology, but rather “people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction…and the distinction between true and false…no longer exist.”

~ Heather Cox Richardson

Photo by Austin Chan on Unsplash

The post Searching for Meaning first appeared on Plutopia News Network.

Plutopians explore the use and misuse of language. Jon, Scoop, and Suzy take a deep dive into political language, the voices of Christian nationalism, the January 6 hearings and Liz Cheney, Donald Trump’s language, and much more.

“Language is a virus from outer space.” – William S. Burroughs

In which Jon discovers that you can’t google googl, because it’s not really a word. The word he was looking for is googol, aka 10,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000:

Suzy: Google is now a verb and a noun, Webster has added it, and I guess other dictionaries have.

Jon: Google is actually a word for something, but not with the “e” at the end. Damn, I can’t even – it’s hard for me to look that up. What is a googl?

Suzy: Or tweet – you know, these kinds of things that we’ve come up with…

Jon: You can no longer look googl up – you can’t google googl, because it gives you google instead of googl.

Suzy: Can you say “What is a googl?”

Jon: Oh, there we go, let’s try that…

Scoop: If you google googl on Google, it creates a time warp or paradox. You just can’t do that.

Suzy: That’s creepy.

Scoop: In some areas, Google is an expletive, so… (muffled)

Suzy: Oh, careful, careful.

Jon: I thought that it was googl, but it’s GOOGOL. Not to be confused with Nikolai Gogol.

Suzy: Yeah, don’t do that!

Photo by Hannah Gibbs on Unsplash

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Plutopians wax poetic on food and drugs. We discuss low fat diets, vegan diets, hospital food, narcotic pain killers, psychedelics, hot sauce, and hot foods. No herbivores or apex predators were harmed during the production of this podcast!

Scoop: I’m from that school of thought where you’re only here so long, and if you avoid all these wonderful things, as you’re on your deathbed you go “I should’ve eaten that! And I didn’t.” So I’m trying to make sure that I don’t have any of those regrets.

Jon: I have an answer for that, though, which is that food has an impact on your quality of life. And if your quality of life is degraded by some problem that’s created by what you’ve eaten…

Suzy: Let’s define quality of life. For me quality of life is traveling and eating new things and, you know, if my health is degraded, that might not bother me so much.

Photo by Jon L.

The post Food and Frenzy first appeared on Plutopia News Network.

Suzy Shelor returns to Plutopia News Network’s livestream with an exploration of the current state of American politics. Never one to shy away from controversy, Suzy came prepared to offend those who deserve offending, and to support those who don’t. We discuss the January 6th Hearings, the 2022 Texas governor’s race, the Texas GOP party platform, the 1619 Project, Steve Bannon, and much more.

Recorded from our weekly livestream on July 14, 2022.

Suzy Shelor:

I think we all have to recognize our racism, our… everything we’ve ever been conditioned to believe, that we have to unlearn. How do you live in a world of white privilege and not become used to that which makes you think that you are on a different level, because you’re treated differently. So, yeah, I don’t think that was the only thing (laughs). I think there’s been a lot of soul-searching on my part about it, because I’ve never… that’s not something that is part of my character. But it’s definitely shadow stuff — you know, you look in, and you say, “Wow, I’m just as capable as everybody else of having these horrible thoughts.” And if this human is capable of breaking down and having a Karen moment, then I am, too, and I have to go through and confront that person.

Photo by Colin Lloyd on Unsplash

The post Plutopians on Politics first appeared on Plutopia News Network.

Jon and Scoop take a nostalgic trip to the early days of the computer and online communication. We discuss our first computers and their impact on our lives, our early online experiences, and programs and services that change the way we work and play.

We’re inspired by our recent conversations with Kevin Driscoll, author of The Modem World: A Prehistory of Social Media:

Jon and Scoop were both pioneers of various aspects of computer communication and the Internet, including online communities, Internet media, digital convergence, and digital cultures. But they both started with little knowledge of technology, and started learning on and off the job.

Jon: I don’t know if it was the first one, but kind of the most popular early browser was Mosaic, and you could get Mosaic and put it on your computer – assuming that you had a decent screen, you could see pretty good visual imagery. It was kind of limited.

Scoop: Yeah, those were the early days. Just waiting for stuff to display was – you could go and get a beer, make a sandwich and come back, and it’s still trying to render. The product that really changed my life… remember RealAudio? From RealNetworks. That was when I first was able to do radio on the Internet, in a really klunky sort of way.

The post Computer Chronicles first appeared on Plutopia News Network.

Dr. Roy Casagranda, Professor of Government at Austin Community College, and wise observer of politics, returns to the Plutopia podcast. Roy is also a political philosopher, aspiring feminist, author, internationalist, struggling revolutionary. We discuss the January 6th hearings, the Supreme Court vs. abortion, gerrymandering, angry and frightened voters, dog whistles, and 2024 presidential hopefuls.

Basically the United States has turned into an oligarchy, and it’s run by nine and a half people. Because the President still has some influence through executive orders, but for the most part, even Biden can’t rule. So it’s basically these nine people, with Biden occasionally doing an executive order. And that’s not what Madison intended. The Republicans are always like “we need to follow the Consitution,” and I’m at the point where I’m like, “It’s not a great document, but it’s a hell of a lot better than the garbage we have now.”

Roy on Twitter

Roy is also author of The Blood Throne of Caria, a historical fiction.

The post Roy Casagranda on Politics first appeared on Plutopia News Network.

Media Studies professor and “The Modem World” author Kevin Driscoll joins Jon and Scoop in taking a nostalgic and informative look back at the early days of online and Internet communication. Kevin explains the impact of early bulletin board systems, newsgroups, online services, and the coming of the web.

This conversation is a followup to our February conversation https://plutopia.io/kevin-driscoll-the-modem-world/ about Kevin’s work and his book, “The Modem World: A Prehistory of Social Media,” which has since been released by Yale University Press.

Kevin is also participating in a two week asynchronous conversation about “Modem World” and related subjects on the online community, The WELL, which was originally an online BBS that connected early on to the Internet.

You have these two pretty parallel stories, and some people that I talk to from the BBS side would say “Yeah, we knew about ARPANet, this isn’t a secret, but it’s not accessible to the everyday folks unless you’ve had a connection.” And so some people would have these kind of informal relationships, it’s like “Basically, I know a guy who gets me an account at the university,” or something like that, or you had an account at a job, or something, and you’re able to access it or carry it on. So there’s a lot of informal kinds of connections between them. The real moment of convergence is generally around the early to mid 1990s, which coincides, of course, with privatization of NSFNet and big components of what we would think of as the Internet. That’s a really good reason why we use the word Internet to talk about this big mess of communications systems.

Kevin Driscoll is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia. His research explores popular culture, political communication, and networked personal computing. Some of his recent work explores everyday and emerging uses of social media such as live-tweeting, joking about politics, and spreading rumors. In 2017, he published a technical and cultural history of the French Minitel with Julien Mailland from Indiana University titled Minitel: Welcome to the Internet. His latest book, “The Modem World,” traces the pre-history of social media through the dial-up bulletin board systems (BBSs) of the 1980s and 1990s.

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