Plutopia News Network

“John is the guy who made the WELL into a community” -Howard Rheingold

John Coate has spent much of his life managing and building online communities, including the seminal online community, The WELL. John also created the first major online news site at SFGate.com. He’s currently doing community management as part of the European Commission Next Generation Internet initiative.

“My approach to online community building is to focus on the specific relationships of the people involved, both personal and professional, or both. The computers are just a medium that serves it.

“One thing I try to teach about the online environment, with all its built-in limitations is to ‘oversupply understanding.'”

“I couldn’t afford to do anything, really, except go to these fairs and whatnot. And I thought, “How am I going to market this thing, grow this thing?” And I wasn’t there very long when I could see – because I had access to some of the admin tools, where you could see who was online, what was the dynamic. You couldn’t see what they were saying, but you could see a dashboard in real time. And that these people were hooking up with each other in all sorts of ways. And it just hit me that the best thing that I could do would be to make this experience as meaningful as possible to everybody using it, so that they would be enthusiastic about it and get their friends to do it. I couldn’t think of any other way to do it. So when I realized that, then I very quickly saw that the key to the whole thing was the relationships of the individuals. Yeah, you want the software to work well, but at its core, it was really about the relationships between the people, and helping to build them.”

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“Sacred Data and AI: An Indigenous Perspective” was recorded May 11, 2021, at an EFF-Austin meeting featuring Michael and Caroline Running Wolf.

Michael Running Wolf was raised in a rural village in Montana with intermittent water and electricity with grandparents who only spoke their tribal languages, Cheyenne and Lakota. These languages, like many other indigenous languages, are near extinction. It is through this lens, combined with his Masters of Science in Computer Science and professional experiences with Amazon, IBM, AT&T Wireless and Lawrence Livermore National Lab that he found his true passion: endangered indigenous language revitalization using XR (AR/VR) technology. Michael now works to strengthen the ecology of thought represented by indigenous languages through the intersection of Virtual / Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence.

Caroline Running Wolf (Apsáalooke), née Old Coyote, is a multilingual Cultural Acclimation Artist dedicated to supporting Indigenous language and culture vitality. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Anthropology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Her research explores potential applications of immersive technologies (AR/VR/XR) and artificial intelligence to effectively enhance Indigenous language and culture reclamation. She is also passionate about Indigenous data sovereignty and AI ethics.

This talk is an introduction to the intersection of revitalizing sacred knowledge through New Media and exploitation of this data. For centuries Indigenous Peoples of the Americas have resisted the loss of their land, technology, and cultural knowledge. This resistance has been enabled by vibrant cultural protocols, unique to each tribal nation, which controls the sharing of, and limits access to sacred knowledge. Technology has made preserving and presenting this information in new ways easy, but there is a tension between reigniting ancient knowledge and mediums that allow uncontrollable exploitation of this data. New Media opens a new path for revitalizing and sharing heritage, but creating Indigenous cultural experiences requires special care to avoid exploitative behavior.

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In this episode, Jon and Scoop discuss their plan to channel Art Bell and Fox Mulder in future episodes, specifically discussing UFOs. UFOs are currently subject of serious discussion, with disclosure of more facts imminent. The New Yorker just published an article, How the Pentagon Started Taking U.F.O.s Seriously, and 60 Minutes just featured a report on UFOs:

The late physicist Stanton Friedman, in a 1975 seminar Scoop recorded: “People are ready, willing and able to accept UFO reality. I would certainly agree with a Gallup poll showing that a majority of Americans do believe in UFOs. The more educated, the more likely to believe. I find that people don’t believe the government’s told them the whole story. There’s nothing surprising about that, I guess. But that was even true eight or nine years ago, long before Watergate.

In fact, I am also convinced that we’re dealing with a kind of cosmic Watergate. I find that UFO sightings are really quite common. Everybody’s surprised, at the end of my lecture, when I ask how many people have seen a UFO, or something I would consider, and my standards are pretty tight. And invariably, you get anywhere from three to ten percent of the people attending, and that’s as many as 2,000 people, are raising their hands. Initially, they raise them very reluctantly, until I start counting out loud, and they realize they’re not the only one, as each one seems to think he is. But then I ask, “How many of you reported what you saw?” If I’m lucky, it’s one in twenty of those who have seen them.

The whole history of science, take the last 100 years, is full of pronouncements. In 1903, it was proven by a great astronomer that one couldn’t fly in an airplane, only a lighter than air craft could move in the sky. In the mid 20s, a professor proved that you couldn’t get to escape velocity, too much energy would be required. In the early 40s, the head of the Canadian astronomical association clearly mathematically demonstrated that if you want to get a man to the moon and back, the initial launch weight would have to be only a million million tons. We of course did it with three thousand tons. He was off a thousand million, that’s how much he was off in his weight on his weight factor.

In 1957, Dr. Lee DeForest, who invented the vacuum tube, father of American electronics, great man stated that the notion that man would go soon to the moon, would land, get back alive to earth with samples for analysis here – that notion was the wildest science fiction, worthy of a Jules Verne. He was bold enough to state that no matter what the discoveries of the future, that would never happen. It took twelve years.

So you’d think that we’d learn, by looking backwards, how to look forward. And, you know, if there were no other reasons for studying UFOs, the technological pragmatic ones are certainly worth the effort.”

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Pat Cadigan is an esteemed science fiction author, and one of the original contributors to the cyberpunk subgenre. She is sometimes referred to as the Queen of Cyberpunk. Pat writes fiction that deals with the the interaction between the human mind and technology.

Early on she was a writer for Hallmark Cards but soon transitioned to editing fantasy and science fiction magazines, including Chacal and Shayol. She became a full-time writer in 1987, producing many acclaimed works, including Mindplayers, Synners, The Girl Who Went Out For Sushi, Fools, Tea From An Empty Cup, and a novelization of William Gibson’s unproduced screenplay for Alien 3.

Pat joins Jon and Scoop from London for this episode of the Plutopia Podcast. She talks about her battle with cancer, the stratification of fantasy and science fiction , January 6th and the president “who shall not be named”, her novelization of William Gibson’s unproduced script for Alien 3, and much more.

Pat Cadigan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/cadigan

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Patrick Lichty is a conceptual artist, curator, and theorist. He explores how media shape our perception of reality, as well as the borders between the digital and the material.

Pat describes himself as “a culturally engaged human being who’s involved in art, writing, art curation, and technoculture.”

With Scoop and Jon, Pat discusses art, technology (including NFTs and AI), and cryptocurrency. He answers the question, “what the hell is a non-fungible token?”

“The one thing that the art world could not verify, because of its reproducibility, is digital art. You could go and take something and put it on bittorrent, and nine million people could get a copy of it, and it’s just as good as the original one. The thing is that the art market, and other exclusive markets, are based on scarcity. So in other words, I’ve got this thing that has value because other people say it has value, and they don’t have it. This is something that I can sell again. That’s where the art world really got interested in NFTs.”

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With Scoop and Jon, technology writer and broadband consultant Steve Stroh discusses broadband access, rural wireless Internet providers, satellite-based Internet, fiber networks, and much more.

“If you can get fiber, do it. Because it is the best, highest quality – not just fastest, but it’s the best option for broadband Internet access. Because, basically, it’s pure data. You’ve got a pair of glass fibers dedicated to you, typically straight between your house or business and the central office. Or wherever it’s going to be hubbed out of. It’s immune to electrical interference, it’s generally immune to everything – water doesn’t bother it, it’s not shared with other people, and about the only thing that can take out fiber is squirrels or backhoes.”

Steve writes about about Broadband Wireless Internet Access systems and technology. In 1997 he started a column about wireless for Internet Service Providers called Wireless Data Developments in Boardwatch Magazine in April, 1997. He’s currently thinking and writing about Independent Broadband Networks, small broadband networks usually in rural areas.

Image: Inside a broadband router, by Jean-Etienne Minh-Duy Poirrier

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With Dr. Michael Edward “Ed” Lenert, Plutopians discuss communications and democracy: the Fairness Doctrine, hate speech, cancel culture, and much more. Ed’s work is at the intersection of communication theories and democratic practices. He has 25 years of experience teaching law, communications, and journalism at the university level, including MA and PhD-level students. He is a licensed attorney in California with 30 years of experience and has taught communications law and other classes at the University of San Francisco since 2009. A graduate of UC Berkeley, he earned his Ph.D. from The University of Texas and his law degree from Georgetown Law School. From 2005-2009, he was a Professor, and the Fred W. Smith Chair in Critical Thinking and Ethical Practices, at the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada.

“In the case of the New York Times, vs Sullivan, the very famous libel case, the New York Times republished the libel and became standing in the same shoes as the libelous party. By republishing a libel, you have equal responsibility. And under Section 230, you have zero responsibility. The user generated content you’re indifferent to. So I think some happy medium needs to be found between this absolute immunity for harmful content and free expression. So, for example, my students work a lot with hate speech in the graduate class. One of their assignments is to develop a hate speech policy for an imaginary online company. And you look at Facebook’s hate speech policy as an example, and it’s just a horrible mismatch, a jumble of impossible to interpret rules.”

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Doc Searls joins the Plutopians to discuss social media’s impact on the Internet, mass media’s changes in the digital age, streaming music, movies, and much more.

“Social media enhances conviviality enormously. Suddenly you’re in touch with people from high school, relatives you haven’t seen in a long time, and I thought it retrieved gossip. Gossip is enormous there. In fact, it is about gossip, and gossip, as Yuval Noah Harari points out in his book Sapiens – he thinks human beings are built for gossip. In our early days as a sentient and nomadic species, we needed to know who are the good ones at making tools, who are the ones that would screw you over, who are the ones that climb trees, whatever else there was. And gossip is good for that. And [social media] retrieved gossip in a big way.”

A compelling discussion of digital age media. We start out with the question, “whatever happened to blogging.” Bloggers were, for the most part, diverted into social media. And what social media did to blogging, it also did to journalism – now it seems everyone is a journalist. And we’re all *with* each other, pickled in the Internet. This is a new world, without distance and gravity, and pretty much without cost. We’re being remade by being digital.

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Plutopian discussion with visionary culture hacker Jean M. Russell, focusing on thrivability, healthcare, twisting language for political gains, social media, and much more.

Jean engages in a social ecosystem design, culture hacking, and facilitation as a visionary but also a pragmatist. She acted as project lead for the Holo ICO, which raised 30,000 ETH (valued at $22M at that time).

In 2016 with Herman Wagter, she published Cultivating Flows: How Ideas Become Thriving Organizations, which explored, through leading edge practitioners, what patterns enable healthy emergence. In 2013, Jean published Thrivability: Breaking Through to a World That Works, also with Triarchy Press. In 2010, Jean curated 65 inspiring people to create: Thrivability: A Collaborative Sketch, which has been seen by over 50,000 viewers.

She has published articles on organizational design strategies, and her work on thrivability, innovation, philanthropy, and cultural shifts has been highlighted in The Economist, Harvard Business Review, and Stanford Social Innovation Review. As recognition for her work, Jean received an honorable mention on the Enrich List as one of the top 200 people enriching our path to a sustainable future. She is also listed as one of 100 Women Globally Co-creating a P2P Society.

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In this episode of the podcast, Scoop and Jon talk to author Carol Flake Chapman about politics, the religious right, Covid-19, grieving, and poetry.

Carol is a distinguished journalist and editor. She was a founding editor of Vanity Fair, horse racing correspondent for The New Yorker, rock critic for The Village Voice, and Texas stringer for US News and World Report. She was an editor and columnist for The Boston Globe. She’s written for Harper’s, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Vogue, Conde Nast Traveler, Connoisseur, The Nation, Texas Monthly, and The New Republic. She covered subjects from religion, culture, and politics to travel and nature. Her pioneering book on evangelicalism and the rise of the religious right, titled Redemptorama: Culture, Politics and the New Evangelicalism, has become a classic, and her book about the city of New Orleans, titled New Orleans: Behind the Masks of America’s Most Exotic City, has been cited by many as one of the best books ever written about the city.

Since the death of  her husband, Gary Chapman, she wrote  about her journey of grief and healing in her book Written in Water: A Memoir of Love, Death and Mystery. As her path of healing has progressed, she has returned to poetry, her first love.

Lately she’s written poetry about the Covid-19 pandemic. Maybe We Will All Become Butterflies: Poems from the Pandemic takes on our Covid-19 ordeal with dark humor, telling details, compassion, anger and vision.

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