Plutopia News Network

Recorded March 26, 2019.

Susan Engelking is a mobility disruptor, a tireless advocate for “Tiny Transit” and LEAN mobility. Her new book, Tiny Transit: Cut Carbon Emissions In Your City Before It’s Too Late, is a friendly how-to guide for cities and climate activists. She describes herself as sort of a Janie Appleseed, casting the LEAN mobility message — protected infrastructure for micromobility — around the country in search of people who resonate with this paradigm change and want to bring it to their cities.

She is founder and executive director of the nonprofit Institute for Community MicroMobility. Her mission is to educate cities and climate activities to develop protected networks for low speed, low cost, low emission modes like Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (NEVs), scooters of all kinds, pedicabs, electric assist bicycles, and active modes.

She’s had a consulting firm for twenty years. Over time, she became such an advocate for micromobility that she shifted her business to Tiny Transit Strategies.

Her background is economic development. She has the distinction of having served as project manager or senior editor for each of the three long range economic development plans for Austin from 1984 through 2000. She’s been named Austin Communicator of the Year.

Other links/resources:

https://www.rethinkx.com/transportation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neighborhood_Electric_Vehicle

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, and journalist. He is the author of RADICALIZED and WALKAWAY and other novels, short stories, and nonfiction. He works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is a MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate, is a Visiting Professor of Computer Science at Open University, a Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of South Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Los Angeles.

In this episode of our Plutopia News Network podcast, Cory discusses how Covid-19 is “pulling a lot of failure modes into stark relief,” how speculative fiction could be laying the groundwork for graceful failure, the availability heuristic, and how (re. copyright) a lever without a fulcrum is just a stick.

More Cory:

Blog: http://pluralistic.net.

Newsletter: https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

Books: http://craphound.com

Twitter: @doctorow

Tumblr: https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/

Brandon Wiley is President of Operator Foundation, an organization that promotes internet freedom, open communication and global internet security through technology development, deployment, and education. The organization develops technologies to enable access to credible and relevant information and open communication around the world. I.e. to CATS, credible and topical sources.

Dr. Wiley is a peer-to-peer pioneer who creates tools to circumvent Internet censorship. In 1999, he co-founded the Freenet project to create a censorship-resistant publishing platform. Since then, he has worked on core technologies, such as BitTorrent, Tor, and OpenVPN. He has a PhD in Information Studies, specializing in the use of machine learning and Bayesian statistics to create polymorphic network traffic encodings to defeat Deep Packet Inspection filtering techniques. He is a co-author of the book “Peer-to-Peer: Harnessing the Power of a Disruptive Technology”, a Google Ideas Research Fellow, and an Open Technology Fund Rapid Response Research grant recipient.

In this talk, at Actlab 2019, he discusses exfiltrating data from restrictive networks, a skill that every hacker can use. As firewall filtering techniques become more advanced, so must we advance the methods for defeating firewalls. This talk presents decades of research on network traffic obfuscation in a format which will be both accessible to beginners and illuminating for experts. Starting with a brief introduction on the history of the approaches of those that would build firewalls versus those that would circumvent them, the talk then proceeds into the specialized area of network protocol obfuscation techniques. After this introduction familiarizes and refreshes the audience on the topic, the core of the talk discusses a practical approach to defeating adversaries that would seek to break the Internet by restricting network traffic. An overview of the full methodology will be presented, from threat modeling on through to implementation and testing.

Gary Gach joins Scoop and Jon to discuss Buddhism, mindfulness, writing and translation. We also discuss his latest book, PAUSE BREATHE SMILE – Awakening Mindfulness When Meditation Is Not Enough.

Gary is currently a mindfulness coach, and has been hosting a weekly mindfulness practice group for 10 years. He’s also author of nine books including the bestselling Complete Idiot’s Guide to Buddhism. His work has appeared in a dozen anthologies and hundreds of journals and magazines, including Christian Science Monitor, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Huffington Post, The New Yorker, Yoga Journal, and elsewhere.

He was inspired by Alan Watts’ writing, and later connected in Los Angeles with Paul Reps, author of Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. He moved to San Francisco and learned zazen (Buddhist meditation) from Dainin Katagiri.

He eventually established his root lineage with Thich Nhat Hanh.

With his latest book, Gary presents a full framework of mindfulness instruction inspired by his long history and experience, which began with a mystic vision, a realization that everything is connected, when he was eight years old. He later learned that his realization had was described, in Buddhism, as dependent co-arising. He now calls it inter-being, about the interconnection and inter-penetration of all things.

Steve O’Keefe is an author, entrepreneur and educator. His recent book, Set the Page on Fire: Secrets of Successful Writers, is a great book for aspiring or established writers, drawing on Steve’s years in the book industry, and as a writer himself. Our conversation includes a lot of interesting history – about zines, the early Internet, online community, and the emergence of web publishing. We also talk about AI and singularity, cyber-activism, and (of course) setting the page on fire!

Toby Johnson is an activist, psychotherapist, and spiritual writer. A former Catholic monk, Toby was influenced by a profound mystical experience, after which he earned a master’s in Comparative Religion and a doctorate in Counseling Psychology. Working at a summer retreat, he met scholar Joseph Campbell, who influenced his evolving understanding of myth and spirituality.

Toby has written three autobiographical accounts of spiritual development: The Myth of the Great Secret: A Search for Meaning in the Face of Emptiness, about his discovering a modern understanding of religion; In Search of God in the Sexual Underworld, about his experiences — and interpretation of events as a religion scholar — in the study of teenage prostitution; and The Myth of the Great Secret: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell, which added substantial anecdotal material about his mentor. He has written other nonfiction (Gay Spirituality: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness and Gay Perspective: Things Our [homo]sexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the Universe) as well as three novels (Plague: A Novel About Healing, Secret Matter, and Getting Life in Perspective).

His latest book is a third edition of They Myth of the Great Secret, called Finding Your Own True Myth: What I Learned from Joseph Campbell.

His central idea central idea is that “as outsiders with non-gender-polarized perspective, homosexuals play an integral role in the evolution of consciousness — especially regarding the understanding of religion as myth and metaphor—and that for many homosexuals gay identity is a transformative ecological, spiritual, and even mystical vocation.” (from Wikipedia).

New Plutopia collaborator Suzy Shelor leads the conversation, along with Jon and Scoop. Suzy is with QI Radio ATX, Rag Radio.

Author Christoper Brown makes a return visit to the Plutopiaverse. Subject of discussion: his new novel Rule of Capture, set in the same world as his previous book, Tropic of Kansas, but slightly earlier. We think of Chris as a science fiction writer, but the new book is a fast-paced noir political legal thriller, and a great ride through a parallel dystopia. In this interview we talk about the context and (Houston) setting for the book, where it’s floodin’ down in Texas…

Joey Lopez, PhD is the Media Lab Director in the Department of Communication at Texas A&M University.

Receiving his B.S., M.A. and Ph.D. in New Media at UT Austin in the Radio, Television and Film’s ACTLab program, he’s been active in the new media field for over 20 years, starting with UT-Austin’s ACTLab, where he was teaching assistant for the preeminent new mediast Sandy Stone. Look at those linked sites for an idea of Joey’s background and inspiration.

Using project-based learning and the ACTLab concept of “Make Stuff, Take Risks and Be Awesome”,  Joey engages students in their passions and encourages them to take those provocations and enthusiasms outside the classroom and into the real world. His students have gone on to an array of careers and entrepreneurial endeavors – from stunt persons to Shark Tank winners to teachers, lawyers and newspaper publishers.

Joey’s research revolves around anthropology, action-based research, and community advocacy. His theoretical explorations include but are not limited to race, gender, entrepreneurship, advocacy, alternative pedagogy and civic engagement. His professional practice includes photography, video, audio, new media, technology consulting and STEAM based community programming. He has worked with the Institute of Texan Cultures, Bexar County, Launch SA, CBS Sports, GA Media, 24 Hour Entertainment, The Smithsonian, JMS Racing, Boost Logic, Spare Parts and many others.

Jon and Scoop interview Hugh Forrest, Chief Programming Officer for South by Southwest (SXSW). SXSW is perhaps the world’s largest annual media festival. The SXSW conference has over 70,000 attendees from 106 countries, and almost 5,000 speakers. The overall festival, including film and music, has over 230,000 attendees. The Austin Chamber of Commerce recognized Hugh (along with other SXSW directors) as “Austinite of the Year” in 2012. Ernst and Young recognized the directors in 2014 as Austin Entrepreneurs of the Year.

Before working with SXSW, Hugh published a small newspaper, The Austin Challenger. He then joined The Austin Chronicle. This led him into a relationship with SXSW, which had roots in the Chronicle. With the late Dewey Winburne, he organized the SXSW Multimedia conference, which later became SXSW Interactive. With digital convergence, Interactive became the festival’s glue, and Hugh became Chief Programming Officer.

In our interview, we make a deep dive into history and happenings at SXSW. Among other things, we discuss how media industries are melding together or converging, and that “one of the things SXSW does really well is bring together all kinds of very creative people, and mix them together, and there are unique connections that come out of that…”

“Joy Cunningham knows that theatre saves lives. She’s been creating original theatre for 20 years and working with young people all her life. She also knows folks want to have fun so her one-woman shows and workshops for youth are fun and funny.” – from Joy’s online bio.

Joy has worked as an actor, singer, director, producer, writer, manager, and teacher across the country. An Austin talent agent dubbed Joy a “self-contained theatrical unit.” She has played over 60 stage roles, and done film, commercials, print and voiceover work.

Scoop and I met Joy at the ACTLab 2019 festival, where she was workshopping an excerpt from her new show, “Welcome to Blackstone.” Our recording of that excerpt follows our interview. In it, she reflects the heart of the zeitgeist through a rural American lens.

Our interview with Joy is considers how we find and make meaning, and struggle to manifest our analog human being in the world.