Plutopia News Network

Ruth Glendinning and Kent Dahlgren discuss The Anti-Fragile Playbook and the power of soft capital. The Playbook outlines strategies for underserved people and communities to start an economic and social revival.

Ruth: What we’ve been talking about, and this is a big thing in Austin and everywhere, is affordability vs. ability to afford. Those on the surface might sound similar, but which one do you have control over? You don’t have any impact on affordability, but you can have the tools to have the ability to afford.

Kent: One of the terrible things you learn working in a place like Xerox is that it takes three years to build a copier, not because it takes three years, but because you’re spending that time finding gears that only last 18 months…. Because you know that people aren’t going to pay a warranty longer than 18 months, it’s not in your financial best interest to do so. But that’s not exactly true. In fact, it’s actually false.

Ruth Glendinning is the founder of FutureStory Lab, a platform identifying & activating sense making tools for the unfolding future. The core of her work is building ecosystems of relationships, connections and creative partnerships in projects that are mapped to real needs in the market, catalyzed by expanding technology and activated by personal relationships. As a natural product of the ecosystems built, she designs & implements platforms and systems to develop, produce & sustain local wealth. As part of her work, she has emerged the cultural strategy model which demonstrates the importance of creating a balance between community, culture and commerce for sustainable economy and trademarked the “SLOW Tech® Incubator” (Sustainable Local Organic Work + Technology) concept in which specific technology is added to no- or low-tech community-based human-scale businesses to better equip them to thrive.

Kent Dahlgren has pursued dual career tracks in both high technology and grassroots community advocacy.

A veteran of Xerox and several venerated information security companies, Kent has designed, managed and introduced various new technologies. In 2017 his technology team was awarded recognition from UNESCO for providing technology benefiting Syrian refugees. From a commitment to service to the community, Kent has participated in several landmark social experiments, including the Burnside Skatepark, now 30 years into a public/private community policing collaboration.

Kent served as Executive Director for Skaters for Public Skateparks, a 501(c)(3) dedicated to assisting grassroots advocates, and served on the board of the Tony Hawk Foundation. As CEO of 214 Alpha, Kent provides technology and professional services helping keep money and affairs local so communities can reclaim their dignity on their terms.

Both it’s better to be “anti-fragile” than merely resilient.

This conversation took place on March 18, 2021, on Plutopia Live.

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Members of the Plutopia team discuss social media (including Clubhouse and Facebook), streaming entertainment, cancel culture, cartoons, gurus, and cults. What is social media for? What is it good for? If data is the new oil, where are our mineral rights? Including the history of the term and concept “social media” and how user attention and data became the product.

The post Plutopia Team: The State of Social Media first appeared on Plutopia News Network.

“It’s not just robust, it’s not just resilient, but we will be stronger on the other side of adversity. So we went into the pandemic expecting to come out a more robust institution. If you went into the pandemic thinking you’d weather the storm, but that it was a storm, and it would pass – I had colleagues that thought this was like a long spring break … well, this was a hell of a long spring break, if that’s what you thought going in.”

“If you were prepared, you were in great shape. But most universities just didn’t have access to a robust technology stack for online learning. They didn’t have access to a great ed tech or teaching and learning center team that could do this. Folks that did, let me just say, they were real heroes, working tirelessly around the clock to do what was an unthinkable lift only a day before they had started.”

Christopher Rice is the Founder and Managing Partner of Refuturing, where he leads foresight, strategy and research activities. As a futurist, ethnographer, experience designer, educator and political theorist, his work over the last 20+ years has explored the intersections of society, technology, economics, the environment and politics.

Donna Kidwell is Chief Information Security & Digital Trust Officer at Arizona State University. She was formerly Chief Technology Officer for EdPlus, where she led a diverse IT portfolio and a team centered around digitally serving learners everywhere.

The post Christopher Rice and Donna Kidwell: The Future of Higher Education first appeared on Plutopia News Network.

Joseph Rowe is a musician, composer, writer, storyteller. He is also an author and translator, and a meditator and teacher. He performs sacred music and conducts workshop with Catherine Braslavsky. In this, his second visit to the Plutopia podcast, Joseph discusses Covid-19 and vaccines, postmodern madness, relativism and absolutism, moral perception, spirituality, beauty, the Tao, the overlooked evolution debate, and mysticism.

The post Joseph Rowe: Postmodern Madness first appeared on Plutopia News Network.

Scoop and Jon, both based in Texas, talk about their experience of extreme winter weather in the week following Valentine’s Day 2021, during Winter Storm Uri. The storm caused a power crisis in Texas. For more, see Jon’s blog post, “Heavy Weather in Texas.”

The post Scoop and Jon: Texas Snowpocalypse first appeared on Plutopia News Network.

Emily Gertz is Senior Editor at Drilled News. She is also a journalist who reports on the intersections of climate, environment, science, technology and society. Emily, a regular Plutopia News Network guest, discusses the state of climate change policy, with a new president recommitting the USA to climate change goals.

The post Emily Gertz: Climate Change Update first appeared on Plutopia News Network.

January 14 Plutopia Livestream with guest Tom Jennings! Jon, Scoop and Suzy talk to Tom about some of the history of network communications, as well as about current events.

Tom is a Los Angeles-based artist and technician, known for his work on FidoNet, the first message and file networking system for BBSes. He also built Wired magazine’s first internet presence, wrote the portable BIOS that led to Phoenix Technologies BIOS, ran an early regional internet service provider, The Little Garden (later incorporated as TLGnet, Inc), and maintains an informal archive of Cold War science and technology.

YouTube video of this conversation:

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In this recording of the October 13, 2020 EFF-Austin meeting, Ritika Gopal discusses the current state of copyright law, and its ability to address modern-day forms of artistic expression.

In a time when brick-and-mortar venues are closed, consumers rely on digital platforms for entertainment, communication, and human connection. Streamed content from DJs and other artists, through platforms such as Twitch and Facebook, play an increasing role in our consumption of media.

Can the current copyright regime address the collage art forms of the internet era — e.g., mixes, mashups and memes? Should it?

Ritika Gopal is an in-house lawyer at WP Engine. She specializes in transactional, IP, and privacy law. Her past work experience includes stints at the Wikimedia Foundation, The Walt Disney Company, and most recently, SXSW.

She is deeply fascinated by the uncharted growth of copyright, IP, privacy, and free speech law in the context of emerging technologies and online communication. She’s also interested in budding tech policy issues — particularly those stemming from the democratization of knowledge and open access to information. Outside of tech-law, Ritika enjoys disco/funk music, film photography, and diving into spicy ramen on a chilly night.

The post Ritika Gopal: Copyright Law and the Internet first appeared on Plutopia News Network.

Photo: Jordan Reznick

Sandy Stone is a cultural theoretician, audio engineer, computer hacker, filmmaker and performance artist; founding director of the Advanced Communication Technologies Laboratory (ACTLab) at the University of Texas at Austin; Fellow of the University of California Humanities Research Institute; a founder of the academic discipline of Transgender Studies; and recipient of the State of California Lifetime Achievement Award. She has been interviewed in various publications and films such as ArtForum, Wired, Mondo, Gendernauts, etc. Jon Lebkowsky has described her as “a force of nature.”

On becoming an academic: “I had a vision in which I saw my life pass before me like a circus train, and each car was painted as a different career that I’d had in my life. And they went by – you know, the computer person, the performance person – all of those things, the recording engineer, the fiction writer, on and on. And when the caboose went by, there was a clown, standing on a little platform on the back of the caboose with a red nose, and as that went by, the clown waved at me, and I waved back, and I said ‘Bye-bye, bye-bye’ to my previous life. This is my new life now. And the train went off into the distance, and disappeared. And I was an academic. That was my moment. And I never looked back.”

The post Sandy Stone: Varying the Frequencies first appeared on Plutopia News Network.

Robert Matney is Managing Director of Government Affairs at Yonder. Yonder was originally called New Knowledge, and was known for its role in developing the authoritative report on Russian influence operations targeting US elections from 2015 forward for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI). The report leveraged data from Alphabet (Google), Twitter, and Facebook.

In his role at Yonder, Robert has become a thought leader in disinformation analysis, online authenticity, and the influence mechanics of the internet. Robert has also worked as a social media analyst and practitioner, web developer, actor (stage, voice), theater director.

We asked Robert to speak with us following the January 6 siege on the US Capitol. In his role at Yonder, Robert had been keenly aware of social media disinformation and planning prior to the siege.

We operate within what is often called information warfare. And we’re in it whether we want to be in it or not. And the only way we can do something positive about it is to become aware of it. Just become aware that there is a complex set of dynamics within which we operate which are largely opaque that are intended to divide us against ourselves, and some of the problem is international, sure, but lots of it is domestic. And if we don’t start acting like vigilant information consumers, and always seek a path that is less fragmenting, then we’re going to be in a lot more trouble than we’re already in, and we’re already in a lot of trouble. The best we can do at this point is kind of earn the right to fight the next battle, and the stakes are high.

Photo: Nick Youngson

The post Robert Matney: Disinformation and Insurrection first appeared on Plutopia News Network.