PodQueue

Episodes Series Video Send in Question/Topic Patreon/Discord ↗ Search December 19th 2022 Ryan Dahl stops by to talk about Node, Deno, JavaScript, testing, V8, and thoughts around getting started with Deno. Deno, Javascript, node Web // Twitter

This month we are super excited to be joined again by friend of the podcast Alexander Dunlap, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo. This conversation is a high energy journey through Alexander’s own trajectory into academic spaces, and the realities on the ground he has encountered in the course of his work. We talk about the violence that accompanies extractivism and reflect on direct impacts to those living at extractive frontiers. Unexpectedly, during the podcast recording there is a real-time reaction to a disappointing production mistake in an academic publication, where the most important word in a conclusion title of a large edited volume was deleted! This is an interesting insight into some of the behind the scenes struggles that academics encounter in trying to get their intellectual work communicated. Want to connect with Alexander? Find him on Twitter @DrX_ADunlap. Here is a list of the big resources that were discussed during the pod. Want to hear more of Alexander? Check out his earlier appearances on the EXALT Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/fi/podcast/alexander-dunlap-is-green-energy-really-that-green/id1499621252?i=1000506999251 and https://podcasts.apple.com/fi/podcast/bonus-alexander-dunlap-what-is-the-world-eater/id1499621252?i=1000507806229. Renewing Destruction: Wind Energy Development, Conflict and Resistance in a Latin American Context by Alexander Dunlap https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781786610652/Renewing-Destruction-Wind-Energy-Development-Conflict-and-Resistance-in-a-Latin-American-Context# The best link to the conclusion  which was discussed: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/363157987_Conclusion_A_call_to_action_toward_an_energy_research_insurrection Book chapter “Does Renewable Energy Exist? Fossil Fuel+ Technologies and the Search for Renewable ”: Energy: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354125885_Does_Renewable_Energy_Exist_Fossil_Fuel_Technologies_and_the_Search_for_Renewable_Energy Green Extractivism & Violent Conflict conference recordings https://blogs.helsinki.fi/exaltconference2021/green-extractivism-violent-conflict/ An early release pamphlet discussing ecological authoritarianism and Leninism:  https://forged.noblogs.org/files/2022/10/dunlap-ecological-authoritarian-maneuvers.pdf To see more of Alexander’s extensive body of work, see here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alexander-Dunlap  or here: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=bXsLn9UAAAAJ01:13:32November 25, 2022Ksenija Hanaček is a researcher at the Autonomous University of Barcelona’s Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA, UAB), Spain. Ksenija works for the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice (EJAtlas). Recently, she has collaborated with Markus Kröger at the University of Helsinki, looking at extractive projects and resistance to extractive projects in the Arctic. We talked about extractive economies in the Arctic, particularly investments that are coming from outside the Arctic itself, in particular China. Ksenija told us about the Arctic Silk Road and the types of commodities that are being taken out of the Arctic. There is a huge variety in the types of resources that are being extracted from the Arctic—it is not only about oil and natural gas! Ksenija reminds us to continue to question the solutions that powerful actors suggest and to keep a critical eye out for the false solutions. 

Check out her bio at ICTA, UAB http://www.envjustice.org/2020/03/ksenija-hanacek/ 

Global Atlas of Environmental Justice (EJAtlas) https://ejatlas.org/ Correction note: Ksenija Hanaček would like to add a correction note to her answer about the Polar Silk Road (minute 10:39): Yamal LNG project and shipments via the sea transportation corridor "Polar Silk Road" are different from Yamal natural gas projects and distribution via pipeline system. Still, the commodity is extracted from many gas fields on the Yamal peninsula. All projects related to gas extraction and distribution are known as "the Yamal megaproject" (LNG or otherwise).32:38October 28, 2022This bonus episode of extractivism in pop culture is in honour of the three-year anniversary of the EXALT podcast. We are very excited to be joined again by Jesse Barber from the University of Helsinki Folklore Studies. In this bonus episode we explore J. R. R. Tolkien’s series, Lord of the Rings (LoTR) and how it relates to themes like modernity, industrialism, capitalism, war, and of course extractivism. We talk across the various iterations of LoTRs, including the books, Peter Jackson’s movie series, and the more recently released Amazon Prime series, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, which takes place in the same universe, but several thousands of years before the events depicted in the LoTRs books/movies. We are not experts, but we have all interacted with the LoTRs to differing degrees over a long period of time. We talk about how we got into the series, what they mean for us, and then relate them to themes in the realm of extractivism. So, if you have ever wanted to think about how the rise of Sauron relates to the rise of industrialism and how the Ents represent wider nature—then this episode is for you!!

Disclaimer!!! This episode is full of spoilers—so if you are not already familiar with the Lord of the Rings universe and you do not want to know about the story—turn off the pod now!!

Interested to learn more about the LoTRs? Check out this fandom page which lays it all out clearly. https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings54:40October 28, 2022This month on the podcast we are excited to present a conversation that is a bit outside our normal topics! This conversation is with Jesse Barber, a doctoral researcher in Folklore Studies in the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki. His research explores the continuity between pre-Christian Scandinavian religions and the folklore written later in Scandinavian countries. He specifically pays attention to similarities in cosmological timelines, i.e., conceptions of the past, present, and future of the world. He gives us some insight into the folklore itself, how it came to be, and what it says about the worldview. We explore how these myths and folk legends have had a role in developing a national cultural identity, and even in the process of nation building. We discuss the Christianization of Scandinavia and some of the trade reasons that the Kings of Scandinavia would be interested in imposing a top-down conversion. We even touch on these stories and their ultramodern adaptation (appropriation?) into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Check out Jesse’s profile here.01:08:22September 30, 2022This month we were delighted to be joined by fellow University of Helsinki, Global Development Studies doctoral researcher, Usman Ashraf. Usman moved from the natural sciences to the social sciences and his research focuses on Chinese investment in Pakistan’s forestry sector. In particular we talked about the Billion Tree Tsunami Afforestation project and the subsequent 10 Billion Tree Tsunami Afforestation project. We touched on the landscape changes that attend this kind of project and the impacts that these projects have on the human and other than human beings in the affected areas. He gives us insight into how the implementation of the plantations this project has specifically impacted the herding families in the area and other landless families. Our conversation undercovers the political implications of this “environmental” project and how the current narratives/processes are historically connected.

Find and connect with Usman on Twitter @PEusman

Usman’s recommended reading The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis by Amitav Ghosh (University of Chicago Press)

Check out the IIED Country report Usman recently wrote on this project. Ashraf, U. (2022) 'Participation and Exclusion in Mega Tree-planting Projects: A Case Study of the Ten Billion Tree Tsunami Programme, Pakistan,' London: IIED. https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/1751158:42August 26, 2022This month we are excited to present an in-depth conversation with Professor Sérgio Sauer, who works at University of Brasilia in Brazil and is a visiting scholar at University of Helsinki in Finland. We explored the landscape of land struggles in Brazil and how extractivism and social conflict has shaped Brazil. He started his career on the ground at an agricultural frontier and has worked extensively with the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST) and questions of justice for rural inhabitants. Sérgio gives us a historically informed view of how Brazil’s agricultural geography has developed over the last 60 years. In addition, he traces out the interplay of scholarship and activism and how this plays out in resistance to extractivism.

You can also find Sérgio on Twitter @SergioSauerUnB, and please also check out the Observatório Matopiba.

Sérgio recommends that if you are interested in the themes discussed in this episode to check out the film “The Burning Season”, which tell a story of real-life activist Chico Mendes, who was murdered in the 80s for his work.57:13July 29, 2022This month we were joined by two exciting guests, Syed Mustafa Ali from The Open University in the UK and Dan McQuillan from Goldsmiths, University of London. They are both interested in AI, technology, and applying a critical lens to the development of digital infrastructures and applications. They met at the Histories of AI Seminar at Cambridge University and found common ground through what could be described as Luddite orientation. It was this connection over Luddism that brought them together to have a cup of coffee and share ideas and a bit of subversive thought about the history and trajectory of AI. This conversation teases out what Luddism is in a historical sense and how it continues to play out today. We talk about the physical extractivisms associated with the architecture and infrastructure of digital space and the mental and power relations of algorithmization. We explore the form of resistance and intervention to digital extractivisms and the rollout of layers of digital infrastructures that extend and expand the colonial project.

Dan’s book Resisting AI: An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence will be release officially on July 15, 2022, preorder your copy today!

Find and follow Dan (@danmcquillan) and Mustafa (@DrSyedMustafaA1) on Twitter01:17:12June 24, 2022This month we are thrilled to be joined by Tim Oakes, who is a Professor of Geography at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is a human, social, and cultural geographer and his research focuses on Southwest China and the techno-political effects of infrastructural urbanism in China’s ‘new area’ urban zones. Needless to say, there have been a lot of developmental changes in China since Tim visited for the first time in the 1980s. Tim gives us insight into his career trajectory and his roots in rural geography and the ways in which the countryside has come into the 21st century. A huge facet of the countryside development is through infrastructure, and he realized that urbanization does not just happen in cities as urbanization occurs also in place. We explored many aspects of capitalist development and how it affects and is affected by the Chinese countryside. If you are interested to learn more about Tim’s work, check out the website of the China Made project and his amazing keynote speech at the Finnish Society for Development Reseacher’s Development Days Conference. You can also find Tim on Twitter @TS_Oakes.01:12:29May 27, 2022This month we are joined by Gediminas Lesutis, a Marie Curie Fellow at University of Amsterdam. This rich and wide-ranging conversation starts with how Gedis got started in fieldwork driven research in Sub-Saharan Africa, and especially in Mozambique. We discussed land-grabbing, precarity, and the destructive, real-life impacts of dispossession in the epicenter of the extractive boom in contemporary Mozambique. Specifically, we got insights into the on the ground experience of being with people who are so intimately affected by the actions of extractive expansion. Recently, Gedis also joined EXALT to launch his newly published book, The Politics of Precarity: Spaces of Extractivism, Violence, and Suffering. If you would like to check out that great launch, it is available on the EXALT YouTube channel. If you would like to connect with Gedis and stay up to date on his research, please find him on Twitter @GediminasLe.54:29April 29, 2022This month we were delighted to be joined on the podcast by Tania Murray Li. Dr. Li is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto (). Her work explores questions of land, labor, class, capitalism, development, resources, and indigeneity. In this episode she gave us insight into her most recent co-authored book, Plantation Life: Corporate Occupation of Indonesia’s Oil Palm Zone, which was published in 2021 by Duke University Press. The conversation centers on the impacts to existences when plantations are established over existing landscapes. We got insights into the feel of the space on the plantation and the rhythms of life under plantation rule.

If you would like to hear more from Dr. Li and the impacts of infrastructural violence, she was recently a keynote speaker at the FSDR Development Days 2022 conference. Here is a link to her keynote speech. You can read more about Dr. Li’s work on her blog.45:16March 25, 2022This month we are super excited to be joined by University of Helsinki World Politics professor Teivo Teivainen (researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/…i-teivainen). In this vibrant and wide-ranging conversation, we talked with Teivo about his recent turn as a documentary film maker. Teivo has recently been in the Finnish Arctic and in Uruguay traveling along planned railway lines while reflecting on the concept of Finnish colonialism. The broader world might not immediately connect Finland and the concept of colonialism, however, Teivo brings forward some compelling arguments about Finnish actions on the world stage. Teivo’s work uncovers some of the differences between imaginaries and practice, especially in Finnish forestry and foreign investment in pulp milling. He urges people to pay more attention to corporate politics and the constellations of power that are found in corporate spaces, especially in relation to observing corporate elections. We should know who are running these companies because they have so much influence in the world.

If you want to interact with Teivo you can find him on Twitter and Instagram (both @TeivoTeivainen).01:05:02February 25, 2022This month on the EXALT podcast we were joined by Janne Salovaara from the Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies Programme (DENVI) at University of Helsinki. His research looks at the discipline of sustainability science from the perspective of how it is educated at the University level. Janne’s first degree is in graphic design and his idea of design was that it was the path to change the world. He thought a lot about what are moral, ethics, and societal responsibility of a design. His frustration with design as a profession led him to the Creative Sustainability program at Aalto University. Our conversation was wide ranging and exciting. The big question we tackled is what is sustainability? It is such a buzzword today, but what does it mean in practice? What is the imaginary of sustainability actually supposed to be? What are we trying to sustain and how do we keep sustainability safe from corporate capture?  We explored some of the ontological, epistemological, and practical problems of sustainability. We discussed how it is being taught and what are some of the big failings of sustainability as a concept and a practice.

If you want to learn more about Janne’s research, please check out his UH research profile and recent publications. Salovaara, J. J., & Soini, K. (2021). Educated professionals of sustainability and the dimensions of practices. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSHE-09-2020-0327 Salovaara, J. J., Pietikäinen, J., & Cantell, H. (2021). Perceptions of interconnected sustainability: Students’ narratives bridging transition and education. Journal of Cleaner Production, 281, 125336. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.125336 Salovaara, J. J., Soini, K., & Pietikäinen, J. (2020). Sustainability science in education: analysis of master’s programmes’ curricula. Sustainability Science, 15(3), 901-915. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-019-00745-1

54:32January 28, 2022This month the EXALT podcast was delighted to welcome University of Helsinki, Global Development Studies doctoral researcher Anna Marjaana Heikkinen. In her doctorate Anna Marjaana focuses on the role of water and climate change in the Peruvian Andes. She works with communities of peasant farmers, who are trying to hold onto traditional ways of working with their land and water in the face of pressures from globalized supply chains and the incursion of extractive industries. She highlighted a case she is working on that shows the deep entanglements between humans, other than human beings, mining, and water. Anna Marjaana also shared some great resources to help the listeners think about water and gave us insight into the ways she communicates science.

Links:

Book: Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta (https://www.emmiitaranta.com/memory-of-water)

Movie: Even the Rain (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Even_the_Rain)

Dance your PhD contest by Science (correction in the episode we said this was sponsored by Nature) (https://www.science.org/content/page/announcing-annual-dance-your-ph-d-contest). Check out the entries on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=dance+your+phd+2021

Some of Anna Marjaana’s popular science articles (EN/FIN/ESP) https://blogs.uef.fi/envirolatam/2020/04/20/not-everyone-has-the-privilege-to-wash-the-hands-covid-19-and-unequal-access-to-water-in-latin-america/ https://www.helsinki.fi/fi/uutiset/ilmasto-ja-luonnon-monimuotoisuus/aarisaat-ajavat-andien-asukkaita-ilmastopakolaisiksi-ja-maaemo-murehtii https://www.noticiasser.pe/la-vulnerabilidad-de-las-poblaciones-andinas-va-mas-alla-del-cambio If you would like to follow Anna Marjaana on social media, please find her on Twitter @AnnaMHeikkinen and on Instagram @anna.maryaana.51:16December 31, 2021This month we were delighted to be joined by Antti Tarvainen, a fellow doctoral candidate in Global Development Studies at University of Helsinki. His work examines the innovation economy (think Steve Jobs, apps, smart everything, etc.) and the colonial violence that that underpins its expansions. We started the discussion talking about the colonial utopia history of California and by extension in Silicon Valley. We explore some of the myriad colonial imaginaries that play out in the mythology and material culture of Silicon Valley. Antti points out that “tech” does not exist only on a digital or immaterial layer but is deeply connected to physical place and space. The effect of tech on the polis is not just gentrification, but rather more akin to settler colonialism. However, it is not just the polis that is made by this tech expansion, but rural spaces and nature itself are also made. We uncover the global geography of the resources that are extracted to build the physical infrastructure and components of the tech industry. This takes us to a broader discussion of the continued spread and influence of the tech sector. Antti shares with us his experiences doing fieldwork in the Silicon Wadi and how and where settler colonialism is present as the tech industry expands in Israel and Palestine.

Links:

Anti-eviction mapping project – urban effects of the tech sector in California

Antti’s Academic Profile and for our Finnish speaking listeners Antti’s most recent article (in Finnish).01:01:23November 26, 2021In honour of the 2-year anniversary of the EXALT podcast we brought back our very first guest, Professor Barry Gills from Global Development Studies at the University of Helsinki. We talk about the development and activities of the EXALT Initiative over the last few years. We touch on how the COVID crisis has raised awareness of the global system as a whole, which has highlighted the impact and knock-on effects of the extractivist logic. In this the changing consciousness around human relationship with other than humans in the web-of-life. We have been lacking in an understanding in the violence we do to other beings, which is ultimately violence to ourselves. Barry gave us insight into organizing concepts and the continued development of extractivism and particularly global extractivisms as an organizing concept. Global extractivisms as an organizing concept is a concept for our times of concurrent crises. However, that is not to say there is not hope for the future as we are living in a time of unprecedented information, reflectivity, and the ability to respond differently.

Links:

Special issue Globalizations Economics and Climate Emergency, Volume 18, Issue 7 (https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rglo20/18/7)

“What does degrowth mean? A few points of clarification” by Jason Hickel (https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2020.1812222)

“Economics and Climate Emergency” by Barry Gills and Jamie Morgan https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2020.1841527

“Postscript, an end to the war on nature: COP in or COP out?” by Barry Gills and Jamie Morgan (https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2021.1973273)

TNI Report – States of Power (https://www.tni.org/en/publication/state-of-power-2021)

Extractivisms, Existences, and Extinctions: Monoculture Plantations and Amazon Deforestation by Markus Kröger (https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mono/10.4324/9781003102977/extractivisms-existences-extinctions-markus-kr%C3%B6ger)01:04:47October 29, 2021In honor of the TWO YEAR ANNIVERSARY (!) of the EXALT Podcast (and also the release of Dune: Part 1 in the US), we decided to do a special bonus episode in a new format! Rather than an interview, Sophia (a Dune neophyte) and Christopher (a self-proclaimed Dune nerd) decided to sit down and talk about the expressions and examples of extractivism(s) in Denis Villeneuve's blockbuster Dune: Part 1. Naturally, it is chock-full of SPOILERS for the movie, so if you haven't seen it, you might want to wait (though, the conversation does try to avoid spoilers for later in the Dune series). If you like the episode, let us know! Visit our Facebook or @ us on Twitter (@ExaltResearch). This is a lot of fun, and a format we have discussed for a long time, but would love to hear what you all think. Long live the fighters! Also, just to be clear, this is not a replacement for our normal interview episode for October this is just a bonus! The regular episode, bringing back Professor Barry Gills, will be released on this Friday (October 29, 2021) as usual.46:44October 25, 2021This month we were very fortunate to be joined by Robin Broad and John Cavanagh. Robin is a professor at the School of International Service at American University and John is a senior advisor and the former director of the Institute for Policy Studies. They joined us to talk about their recent released book The Water Defenders: How Ordinary People Saved a Country From Corporate Greed from Beacon Press. In this conversation we jump into the dangerous world of environmental activists trying to defend their communities and health against the incursions of international extractive corporations. We talk about how the fate of communities and lands can be impacted by decisions made in the shadowy and extremely pro-business ICSID courtroom. Robin and John spent a decade working closely with these water defenders in Northern El Salvador in their fight and victory against a global mining corporation.

Links:

Mining Watch Canada - https://miningwatch.ca/

The Institute for Policy Studies - https://ips-dc.org/

If you want to learn more, please check out Robin and John’s book The Water Defenders: How Ordinary People Saved a Country From Corporate Greed. There were also some great recordings from their book launch events available online, for example this one in collaboration with Mining Watch Canada or this one from the American University SIS Office of Research. Robin will also be joining the October 2021 EXALT conference as a plenary speaker. Registration and attendance via Zoom are 100% free of charge!01:00:18September 24, 2021In this episode we talk to Victoria Kiechel, a professor from American University. She is an architect and teaches in the School of International Service. Her focus is on the relationship between the built environment and extractivism. This conversation is premised on Victoria’s contribution to the open access book Our Extractive Age (link below). We talk about building as they contribute (or don’t) to urban and social life. We discussed the lifecycle of buildings and the extent of the extraction in all forms that accompany the built environment. The extraction which accompanies the built environment spans from literal extraction from the Earth in the form of building materials, to the displacement of communities, to financialization (via profit driving more extraction), to the construction labor. This discussion highlights the complexity of the built environment and how to be aware to minimize the most negative impacts of the extraction which occurs with making buildings. It is inevitable that humans will continue to develop built environments, but it is important to avoid hyper-building and the rush to demolish. A key to countering extractivism in the built environment is fostering the development of a built environment that brings joy, flexibility in use, and can be long lasting.

Our Extractive Age: Expressions of Violence and Resistance, edited by Judith Shapiro, John-Andrew McNeish – Link to Open Access Edition. See Victoria’s chapter - Extraction and the Built Environment: Violence and Other Social Consequences of Construction (Chapter 6, page 114-132)

Other Resources:

Urbanist and Danish Architect Jan Gehl (https://gehlpeople.com/)57:13August 26, 2021Mira Käkönen is currently a post-doctoral researcher in Global Development Studies at University of Helsinki. She is an environmental social scientist with a focus in political ecology and water infrastructures through the lens of infrastructural politics and the intersection of water and climate. Her work focuses on the Mekong region and the impact of hydropower development. This exciting conversation was a deep dive into the history of water infrastructures and the impact of these development schemes. We talked about the concept of resource making and how river waters are developed and objectified to be turned from naturally flowing rivers into resources that can be “tamed”, commodified, and extracted. We delved into the logic of hydroelectricity and the violent reductions that accompany ordering riverine resources. Hydropower can itself be extractivism and it serves to support other extractivisms, like mining and forestry. Mira highlights some of the false promises of renewable energy when one considers the large scale landscapes changes wrought by the introduction of hydropower dams, their accompanying infrastructures, and knock-on effects.

Readings mentioned: Mira’s Dissertation: Fixing the fluid: Making resources and ordering hydrosocial relations in the Mekong Region

Christopher Sneddon: Concrete Revolution: Large Dams, Cold War Geopolitics, and the US Bureau of Reclamation

Scholars Mentioned: Carl Middleton, Keith Barney, Ian Baird, Sango Mahanty, Sarah Milne

Organizations Mentioned: International Rivers, Save the Mekong Coalition

If you are interested in learning more about Mira’s research, please check out her University of Helsinki research profile.56:14July 30, 2021Arturo Escobar is a Professor emeritus of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. He also works in Colombia as a Research Associate with the Culture, Memory, and Nation group at Universidad del Valle in Cali and the Cultural Studies groups at Universidad Javeriana in Bogota. He has published widely on political ecology, ontological design, and the anthropology of development, social movements, and technoscience. This exciting conversion ranged extensively over so many rich topics. We started the discussion with who are you and got some reflection and insight into how Arturo sees himself in world and the journey he has taken to get to his current academic work as an intellectual activist. We also discussed the role of academic knowledge and activist knowledge in addressing the pressing concerns of our times. In particular we explored the interconnectedness of all beings in the world and the idea of radical interdependence. He highlights 6 axes or strategies for enacting transformative alternatives, with a highlight on the role of communities in transformation and learning how to stop outsourcing the making of life.

Links:

The Global Tapestry of Alternatives seeks to build bridges between networks of Alternatives around the globe and promote the creation of new processes of confluence. https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/52:30June 25, 2021The May podcast is a delightful dive into looks at extractivisms through an artist lens. We were joined by mirko nikolić, an artist and post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Culture and Society (IKOS) at Linköping University (LIU). mirko’s work occupies a post-disciplinary space that falls between art and environmental humanities and explores the many entanglements of climate and social justice in areas affected by extractivism and the intense exploitation of ‘natural resources.’ Our conversation went many different places, including how mirko got into this work and extractivisms occurring at the peripheries of southeastern Europe and in the Nordics. mirko’s work roots in the arts, and explores extractivism from the starting point of culture moving toward the environmental humanities and the social sciences. mirko’s work is really rich and interesting and captures place and extractivisms outside of the Latin American context. We look at issues of materiality, consent, just transitions, and the false promises of the Green New Deal/Greenwashing and the coming wave of extractivism on the European continent.

If you are interested to engage with more of mirko’s work, mirko joined EXALT in 2020 at our digital symposium, you can check out mirko’s performance at the Symposium on the EXALT YouTube. In addition, ‘arcane of terran reproduction,’ published in both Finnish and English in Mustarinda magazine, is the text which was the base for mirko’s EXALT presentation If you’re interested in learning more about the Right to Say No, you can follow the activity of Yes to Life No to Mining network.01:01:26May 28, 2021This month on the podcast we were honored to spend some time with the renowned Saskia Sassen, who is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University in New York City. Her research and writings focus on globalization, global cities, states in the world economy, and international human migration. The three key variables that have run through her work are the exploration of inequality, gendering, and digitization.

Dr. Sassen shared with us her approach to her work and how she like to break disciplinary silos and bring disparate conversations together. Our conversation was wide ranging as we explored the connections between health, commuting, and urban inequality – especially the role of unjust outcomes and why our societies accept the extreme conditions brought on by the concentration of wealth. We discussed how the financial sector has used increasingly complex methods to squeeze profits out of the poorest people. In addition, we pondered why owning a car has become less important in popular consciousness (among many other things!!)

If you would like to follow Dr. Sassen, please find her on Twitter @SaskiaSassen. If you want to get into her work check out her book Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy. Her webpage http://www.saskiasassen.com/ also has lots of resources and links to her work.01:00:32April 30, 2021This month on the podcast we were joined by Beril Ocaklı to discuss extractivisms through the lens of post-soviet spaces. Beril is a critical institutional economist and commons researcher with a track record of leading international transdisciplinary cooperation projects in resource governance. Challenged by the realities on the ground, she has returned to academia in 2015 for pursuing her doctoral research on resource conflicts in Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia. Currently based at IRI THESys,  Humboldt University of Berlin, she explores processes and practices that make and unmake Kyrgyzstan’s gold rush.

Our conversation was wide ranging, and we learned about the role of mining in Kyrgyzstan both under and after the Soviet Union. Beril gives us insight into the experience in two different case sites, one that was a mining town during Soviet times and one that was not. This is an interesting dive into the iterations of extractivisms that are far removed from the Latin American context.

Find Beril on Twitter @BerilOcakli and on her ResearchGate and LinkedIn profiles.

If you are interested in Beril’s research, check out her recently published co-authored article: “Shades of Conflict in Kyrgyzstan: National Actor Perceptions and Behaviour in Mining”

The documentaries mentioned:

“Flowers of Freedom” by Mirjam Leuze

http://flowers-of-freedom.com/pages/en/about-the-film.php

“Meken” by Medetbek Jalilov

https://eurasianet.org/kyrgyzstan-drama-about-mining-protests-banned-from-cinema-screens

https://www.calvertjournal.com/articles/show/12018/kyrgyz-film-meken-mining-protests-banned-cinemas-watch-online-for-free

“A tunnel” by Nino Orjonikidze, Vano Arsenishvili

https://german-documentaries.de/en_EN/films/a-tunnel.1363101:06:21March 26, 2021This month we talked with Yafa El Masri, who is getting a doctorate in Geography in a joint research program between the University of Padova, University of Venice, and University of Verona. She was also a visiting researcher at the Global Development Studies Unit at the Social Sciences Faculty of the University of Helsinki. Yafa is also a stateless Palestinian refugee who was born and raised in refugee camps in Lebanon. She does autoethnographic research on solidarity among refugees in refugees camps. She has worked extensively with grassroots organizations and development projects within her community.

Growth centered development has been very devastating to life on our planet, including the erosion of solidarity in favor of individualism. Solidarity is a social norm wherein one acts in the interest of others, even if sometimes that may contradict your own best interest. One acts in the benefit of the community even if each individual has fewer resources for their own use. Maybe it is solidarity that is the missing ingredient to save to the world in the face of our multiple concurrent crises. Yafa has found that solidarity is alive and well in the refugee community and that the refugee community can teach the world a lot about how to practice solidarity. To learn more about Yafa’s work please visit her academic profile. Yafa’s recently published article, “72 Years of Homemaking in Waiting Zones: Lebanon's “Permanently Temporary” Palestinian Refugee Camps” Here is a link to the Thomas Morgan documentary, Soufra Here is a link to learn more about the book The Ungrateful Refugee by Dina Nayeri If you are interested to learn more about the Pluriverse concept, here is a link to Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary 57:05February 26, 2021We have a treat for you! Our conversation with Alexander Dunlap was so wide-ranging and entertaining that we ended up talking a little longer than normal, which means you get a bonus episode!! This extension of our discussion further explores the violent technology of extraction, total extractivism, and the major systemic issues that plague our world system. We delve deeply into the conceptualization of the capitalist worldeater. We think about what is really happening to the world and the delusion that is maintained when we call this “green” or “sustainable.” We look at the ideology of progress that is premised on extraction that seems like it can’t be stopped or slowed until the world is consumed and has moved onto another. This all connects back to how we as humans want to relate to the world and how to get out of patterns of drudgery and addiction. How can we stop poisoning things and start living in harmony with our world. In addition, for anyone who missed it in the regular episode Alexander will answer “THE QUESTION.”

Find Alexander on Twitter @DrX_ADunlap

If you are interested to learn more about the worldeater, please check out the recently published book, The Violent Technologies of Extraction: Political ecology, critical agrarian studies and the capitalist worldeater by Alexander Dunlap and Jostein Jakobsen

More information about Freddy Perlman’s Against His-Story, Against Leviathan!31:52February 05, 2021This month on the podcast we were joined by Alexander Dunlap. Alexander is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Oslo, Centre for Development and Environment. His body of work tackles critical examinations of police-military transformations, market-based conservation, wind energy development and extractive projects, including coal mining in Germany and copper mining in Peru. His current research “investigates the formation of  transnational-super grids and the connections between conventional and renewable  extraction industries.” His work is fresh and insightful, drawn from fieldwork and lived experiences on the frontlines of extractive projects. In this conversation we explored some of the ways that renewable energy can also be extractive and highlighted the greenwashing that happens with renewable energy projects (or should we say fossil fuel plus?!)

Our conversation was so compelling that we have a treat for you! We covered so much ground that we have decided to release this month’s pod in two episodes! Please keep your ear’s open for a bonus episode that will be release on ___________. This episode focuses on greenwashing and how green is renewable and “green” energy. The bonus episode will cover a discussion of the concept of the Worldeater and Alexander will answer “THE QUESTION.”

Check out Alexander’s research profile and some of his recent publications: The Politics of Ecocide, Genocide and Megaprojects: Interrogating Natural Resource Extraction, Identity and the Normalization of Erasure The direction of ecological insurrections: political ecology comes to daggers with Fukuoka ‘Agro sí, mina NO!’ the Tía Maria copper mine, state terrorism and social war by every means in the Tambo Valley, Peru 47:37January 29, 2021This month we talked with Josua Mata, the Secretary General of SENTRO (Co-operative and Progressive Workers' Center) in the Manila, Philippines. He shared with us his on the ground experiences at the forefront of the labor movement in the Philippines. Globalization has had a massive impact on the labor market in the Philippines, partially due to the rise of temp work contracts replacing regular work contracts. In the 1980s, when Josua enterd the workforce, most workers had a “regular” job. Today, most workers are considered “non-regular” because they have only 3-6 month temporary contracts. This has weakened the labor movement significantly as non-regular employees are not able to participate effectively in the Union due to fear of having their contracts terminated. Contractualization has denied a huge portion of the working class from accessing their constitutional right to collective bargaining and going on strike. This has also had political implications as it has widened the gap between the rich and poor, which has opened the possibilities for right wing governments to rise. He gave us insight into the frustration and political psych of the working class in the country and the danger of being an activist in the socio-political context of the Philippines. We talked about how the labor movement has survived under such perilous conditions. Josua says the only way you can change the world is to change it together, even if that only starts with your friends.

Links:

The People’s Sovereignty Lab(aka The Siena Process)

Another interview Josua did for the People’s Sovereignty Network01:07:39December 24, 2020This month we talk with Katherine Trebeck, the Advocacy and Influencing Lead for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll), Co-founder of the Wellbeing Economy Governments partnership (WEGo), Senior Visiting Researcher University of Strathclyde, and Honorary Professor University of the West of Scotland. She is an advocate and pioneer for the wellbeing economy approach to economics and the world. The concept of the wellbeing economy grows out of the recognition that the economy is embedded within society, and society is embedded within the environment. However, under the current system, social wellbeing and environmental wellbeing are secondary to, and sacrificed for, the wellbeing of the economy. A wellbeing economy is based on the idea that the economy should take into account and work to ensure social and environmental wellbeing. The concept is universal, but it is not prescriptive –the implementation is very multifaceted and based on local priorities – and it is possible to see how many countries are putting this concept into practice via WEGo. Links: Katherine’s Personal Website: https://www.katherinetrebeck.com/

Tweet at Katherine: @ktrebeck

The Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll): https://wellbeingeconomy.org/

Info on the Wellbeing Economy Governments partnership (WEGo): https://wellbeingeconomy.org/wego

PM Nicola Sturgeon’s TED talk “Why governments should prioritize well-being”: watch on WEGo or here45:40November 27, 2020October 2020 is the FIRST ANNIVERSARY of the EXALT Podcast! So, we decided to commemorate it with a quick bonus episode. We sit down and look back on how we got here, the great guests we've had, what's coming ahead for year/season two, and a few outtakes from our first year.15:19October 30, 2020This month we talk to Markus Kröger, Associate Professor in Development Studies at the University of Helsinki, an Academy of Finland research fellow, and one of the founding members of the EXALT Initiative. His work looks at political/economic analysis to explain the where we are in the development of systems, and where we are going. He has focused on industrial forestry, and the conflicts related to the expansions of these plantations. He has done work in many countries including Brazil, India, and the Arctic. His more recent work has focused on resistance to iron ore mining in Brazil and India. This work is shared in Iron Will: Global Extractivism and Mining Resistance in Brazil and India, Markus’ forthcoming book from University of Michigan Press. In this book he compares the dynamics across cases where the mining expanded, where it discontinued, cases of armed resistance and cases of peaceful resistance. He looked at the causal condition complexes that explain the causal path from the start of activism to the different investment outcomes. He identified 5 key strategies and explored the strategies that did not work so well in resistance movements. Markus shares with us some of his stories from being on the ground as a participant observer on the front lines of mining resistance.

Links:

Markus’ forthcoming book Iron Will: Global Extractivism and Mining Resistance in Brazil and India

Markus’ earlier book Contentious Agency and Natural Resource Politics

Markus’ profile page at University of Helsinki, including a listing of his academic articles.35:44October 30, 2020This month we talk with Nick Couldry and Ulises Mejias. Nick is a professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory in the Department of Media and Communications at London School of Economics. Ulises is a professor of Communication Studies and the director of the Institute for Global Engagement at SUNY Oswego. They recently co-authored a book called ‘The Costs of Connection: How Data is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating it for Capitalism.’ This book explores the role that data and data production plays in the modern world and the concept of data colonialism. Data colonialism is a form of appropriation of human life set up so data can be continuously extracted profit that benefits companies operating in the capitalist system. They are not using the word colonialism metaphorically – this is an emergent order based on the same extractivist logic that has enabled the colonial project over the last 500 years. We discuss how data colonialism operates on multiple levels and has effects further reaching than most imagine. We discuss how we (humans) are simultaneously producing the data through our actions (e.g. swiping our smartphone, cruising social media, or even in some cases through opening our fridge) and falling victim to the consequences of big business owning our data en masse.

Here is more information about their book: https://colonizedbydata.com

Tweet at Nick: @couldrynick

Projects:

Here is the home page for the Tierra Común network (jointly founded with Paola Ricaurte): https://www.tierracomun.net

The wiki page for the Non-Aligned Technologies Movement: https://nonalignedtech.net

Other:

Sorry We Missed You - film directed by Ken Loach: https://sorrywemissedyou.co.uk/

EXALT Symposium October 2020:

https://www.helsinki.fi/en/conferences/exalt-2020/exalt-symposium-2020 50:27September 25, 2020This month we are joined by Anja Nygren a professor in Development Studies at the University of Helsinki. She is also a docent of political ecology at University of Tampere in Finland. She has done intensive empirical frontline research in many countries, including Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Mexico. We discuss her first hand experiences seeing the ravages of extractivism on the lives of average people and the environment over her experience living and working in Central America.

Anja’s interests lie in social/environmental justice, access to resources, and environmental conflict. She pairs macro scale data, for example satellite data tracking land change, with ethnographic inquiry that captures the lived experience and the impact on livelihoods. Her work intersects with extractivism through oil and the long-term effects of extractive activities on the land and the extraction and resource grabbing which happens at frontiers. She is very interested in the different dimensions of extractivism, especially looking at some of broader definitions of extractivism for example the effects of agroextractivism, green-grabbing, and even the mental or intellectual extractivism that happens in eco-tourism and the pharmacological industry. The role of profit-making is a defining feature of these extractivisms at frontiers. Anja shares with us the different types of frontiers and the different ways extractivism can play out at these frontiers, including commodity, commoditizing, and resource frontiers. 

If you are interested in this subject and would like to learn more, Anja welcomes you to contact her. She is happy to send people her publications, recommendations for other reading, and help in connecting to broader networks. 

Please visit Anja’s research profile at University of Helsinki, there are links to over 80 publications (the majority of which are open access!) https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/anja-nygren

45:18August 28, 2020This month we had a conversation with Gutu Olana Wayessa a University Lecturer in Development Studies at University of Helsinki. He is a member of the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science (HELSUS) and the Helsinki Inequality Initiative (INEQ). His scholarly work has looked at resettlement and displacement, and livelihood implications of government sponsored movement from place to place. More recently he has been interested in social movements and scholarly activism.

His recent research examines large-scale land leasing in Oromo Region, Ethiopia. Land has been one of the few questions that has shaped the political economy of the country for the last fifty years. In Ethiopia the land belongs to the state and the people, but in practice the people using the land can be nominal in the face of large-scale land leasing. The lands are often characterized as “under-utilized” on paper, but often they are in alternative or customary uses. These are usually long-term, large scale, international companies that are participating in these land deals, and the people using the land are not able to effectively assert their rights to the land. Often these foreign investors are trying to develop industrial agricultural projects on the land that are ill-suited to the land and the land ends up degraded and unusable for the alternative and customary use. Gutu walks us through the case studies from one of his recent articles, which are a living example of the impacts and effects of agricultural extractivism happening on these leased lands.    Shortly after the recording of this conversation, Oromo activist and pop singer Hachalu Hundessa, whose songs were anthems of anti-government protests, was assassinated. This sparked off waves of protests in which at least 166 people have been killed. It is angering and upsetting to learn that such an important figure to Ethiopian and Oromo culture and politics was killed, and of the ongoing violence by the state against the people protesting this injustice.  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-53238206

If you would like to learn more about these topics, Gutu invites anyone who is interested to send him an e-mail (gutuolana (at) gmail .com) or through his University of Helsinki e-mail ([email protected]). Please find his profile through the University of Helsinki portal https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/gutu-wayessa52:47July 31, 2020This episode we are joined by Will LaFleur, a doctoral researcher at University of Helsinki in the Doctoral Programme in Political, Societal and Regional Change. Will is also a student affiliate of the Helsinki Institute for Sustainability Science (HELSUS) and a member of the Global Extractivisms and Alternatives Initiative (EXALT). This episode builds on our May episode on Food Systems with Rachel Mazac (if you have not heard that episode, please click here to check it out!) Will leads us through a food centered conversation and helps us learn about sense-making and its relation to food. In particular we talk about a lot about taste and its relation to the experience of food. Will shares with us his experiences in Arizona, Japan, and now Finland. He shares with us his personal experiences with food and the senses and his post-positivist views on approaching research. We discuss the difference between food as fuel and food as social experience that occupies a special time and position in ones’ life. Will shared with us some insight into the everyday practices that bring one away from the industrial practices of the dominant food system.

Find him on Twitter @scent_ala_fleur

Resources shared by Will: Commensality, society and culture by Claude Fischler https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0539018411413963 (check Google Scholar for PDF version) Book recommendation: Food and culture: A reader, specifically recommending the chapter by Jack Goody, Industrial Food Towards the Development of a World Cuisine. Another book recommendation: Katz, S.E., 2016. Wild fermentation: The flavor, nutrition, and craft of live-culture foods. Chelsea Green Publishing. Burning Questions Conference: https://www.burningq.com/ REKO Finland short introduction (video) 41:41June 26, 2020This month we dive deep into the tangled web that is the food system. We talked with Rachel Mazac, MSc, who is a doctoral researcher in the Interdisciplinary Environmental Sciences Doctoral Programme (DENVI) at University of Helsinki. Rachel led us through some of the depth and complexity of the food system. In particular, we discussed some of the externalities that affect the functioning of the food system and how extractivism plays a huge role in the makeup of our modern foodscapes. In addition, she highlighted some of the alternatives to the globalized industrial food system. In particular we talked about the future of food systems and the role diet can play in the Anthropocene. One of the main takeaways from this month’s episode is the need for developing a deep understanding of context when striving for sustainable solutions to the problems in the global food system.

In addition, please note that due to the pandemic and shelter in place orders we are not recording on our normal equipment and there are some fluctuations in the sound quality. Thanks 2020!

· Rachel’s webpage: https://rachelmazac.weebly.com/ · Rachel’s Twitter page: https://twitter.com/cazamazac · The Future Sustainable Food Systems Research Group at the University of Helsinki:

     o Webpage - https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/future-sustainable-food-systems

     o Twitter - https://twitter.com/futuresustfoods

· The Agroecology Research Group at the University of Helsinki: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/agroecology55:17May 29, 2020Maija Lassila is an artist and a doctoral student at the University of Helsinki in Development Studies. This conversation explores the relations between humans and nature and the understanding of what is nature. We broke down assumptions about what is nature and our role as humans within nature, especially looking at this relationship from different cultural perspectives. We also explored different types of knowledges and specifically the knowledges related to the creation of art and research. Especially looking at art as an entry to different ways of existing with the world and resonating with the world and the common consciousness which can be accessed through painting. The conversation also touched on the use of art based methods to access viewing the world in non-human time scales. Art is an alternative and a way to transmit knowledges and lived experiences around the impacts of extractivisms and the role of alternatives.

Links:

Maija’s Art Webpage - http://maijalassila.com/portfolio/

Maija’s Research Page - https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/fi/persons/maija-lassila

Photographer Will Wilson - https://willwilson.photoshelter.com/index

Vaara Kollektiivi - http://www.vaarakollektiivi.fi/node/127

Suohpanterror Artists Collective - https://suohpanterror.com/?page_id=558

Pluriversal Radio - http://pluriversal.radio/radio/

If you are interested to view Maija’s short film please send her an e-mail, her address is on her artistic webpage.37:42April 24, 2020This episode we are joined by Dr. Tom Maraffa a retired professor from Youngstown State University which is a public university in Youngstown, Ohio. We explore Extractivism and sense of place from small town USA and how extractive activities have influenced the history and lived experience in Columbiana County in Ohio. This county serves as a case study of a place that has undergone change as extractive activities and the global economy have evolved around it. Many of the local companies that were foundational to this area have been absorbed by international companies, reducing them to easily movable pieces in a game of globalization. The people and counties left behind were forced to find alternatives . However, sometimes the alternatives are other forms of extractive activities, for example, moving from coal mining to natural gas. It is easy to cast judgement on areas where these types of extractive activities are taking place, however, we explore the role of place and place attachment and the value systems which might be at play in Columbiana County. We think about the role of people who feel “placelessness” v. “placed” and the impact these worldviews have on an area and the bigger picture of the world to which they connect.

Links shared by Dr. Maraffa (please note some of the newspaper links do not work in Europe due to GDPR).

Chris Arnade—Front Row/Back Row (exploring “placedness” and “placelessness”) https://www.firstthings.com/article/2019/06/back-row-america https://medium.com/@Chris_arnade/divided-by-meaning-1ab510759ee7 Stories about Columbiana County to contextualize the place. https://www.salemnews.net/news/local-news/2019/05/south-field-energy-breaks-ground-on-multi-million-dollar-project/ http://archive.businessjournaldaily.com/company-news/kensington-gas-processing-plant-begins-operations-2013-7-30 https://www.cleveland.com/business/2012/12/1_bilion_ohio_natural_gas_proc.html https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/leetonia-beehive-coke-ovens https://architecturalafterlife.com/2019/07/09/beehive-coke-ovens/ https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/East_Liverpool,_Ohio Extractive activities and the community in Ohio. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPKphjRwmng https://www.reviewonline.com/news/community-news/2019/02/the-pros-and-cons-of-the-cracker-plant/ 46:50March 27, 2020This podcast episode is groundbreaking for the EXALT Podcast. It is our first episode with two guests, but also our first multi-lingual podcast – whether you are listening to the English version, the Spanish version, or the original – we hope that you enjoy! This is the English version with the translation imposed over the original Spanish segments.

We talked today with Katy Machoa and Paola Minoia. Katy is a Clinical Psychologist from the Kichwa Community of Shamato, part of the Amazonian Kichwa nationality. Paola is a Senior university lecturer in development studies in the Faculty of Social Science, and an adjunct professor in development geography at the Faculty of Sciences, both at the University of Helsinki. We talked to these guests together because they are co-collaborators on an Academy of Finland funded project based in Ecuador on called Goal 4+: Including Eco-cultural Pluralism in Quality Education in Ecuadorian Amazonia. “This project expands on Sustainable Development Goal 4, which aims to ensure quality education for all through an attempt to promote recognition of eco-cultural pluralism and inclusion of indigenous pedagogies and knowledges as part of quality education in Ecuadorian Amazonia.” If you are interested in learning more about this interesting and important project please visit their project website and blog https://blogs.helsinki.fi/ecocultures-ecuador/.

In this conversation we talked about Katy’s lived experiences in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Through this conversation we talk about indigenous communities, the trajectory of “development” in this region, the types of extraction which are happening in these lands, and the role of epistemological plurality in creating space for indigenous knowledge.

The resources which Katy highlighted in the episode:

https://conaie.org/

https://confeniae.net/25:42February 28, 2020This podcast episode is groundbreaking for the EXALT Podcast. It is our first episode with two guests, but also our first multi-lingual podcast – whether you are listening to the English version, the Spanish version, or the original – we hope that you enjoy! Esta es la versión en español, sin traducción al inglés.

We talked today with Katy Machoa and Paola Minoia. Katy is a Clinical Psychologist from the Kichwa Community of Shamato, part of the Amazonian Kichwa nationality. Paola is a Senior university lecturer in development studies in the Faculty of Social Science, and an adjunct professor in development geography at the Faculty of Sciences, both at the University of Helsinki. We talked to these guests together because they are co-collaborators on an Academy of Finland funded project based in Ecuador on called Goal 4+: Including Eco-cultural Pluralism in Quality Education in Ecuadorian Amazonia. “This project expands on Sustainable Development Goal 4, which aims to ensure quality education for all through an attempt to promote recognition of eco-cultural pluralism and inclusion of indigenous pedagogies and knowledges as part of quality education in Ecuadorian Amazonia.” If you are interested in learning more about this interesting and important project please visit their project website and blog https://blogs.helsinki.fi/ecocultures-ecuador/.

In this conversation we talked about Katy’s lived experiences in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Through this conversation we talk about indigenous communities, the trajectory of “development” in this region, the types of extraction which are happening in these lands, and the role of epistemological plurality in creating space for indigenous knowledge.

The resources which Katy highlighted in the episode: https://conaie.org/ https://confeniae.net/29:36February 28, 2020This podcast episode is groundbreaking for the EXALT Podcast. It is our first episode with two guests, but also our first multi-lingual podcast – whether you are listening to the English version, the Spanish version, or the original – we hope that you enjoy! This is the original version with the full Spanish responses immediately followed by the translation.

We talked today with Katy Machoa and Paola Minoia. Katy is a Clinical Psychologist from the Kichwa Community of Shamato, part of the Amazonian Kichwa nationality. Paola is a Senior university lecturer in development studies in the Faculty of Social Science, and an adjunct professor in development geography at the Faculty of Sciences, both at the University of Helsinki. We talked to these guests together because they are co-collaborators on an Academy of Finland funded project based in Ecuador on called Goal 4+: Including Eco-cultural Pluralism in Quality Education in Ecuadorian Amazonia. “This project expands on Sustainable Development Goal 4, which aims to ensure quality education for all through an attempt to promote recognition of eco-cultural pluralism and inclusion of indigenous pedagogies and knowledges as part of quality education in Ecuadorian Amazonia.” If you are interested in learning more about this interesting and important project please visit their project website and blog https://blogs.helsinki.fi/ecocultures-ecuador/.

In this conversation we talked about Katy’s lived experiences in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Through this conversation we talk about indigenous communities, the trajectory of “development” in this region, the types of extraction which are happening in these lands, and the role of epistemological plurality in creating space for indigenous knowledge.

The resources which Katy highlighted in the episode: https://conaie.org/ https://confeniae.net/44:28February 28, 2020Sanna Komi is a doctoral student at the University of Helsinki in Development Studies. Her research is part of the CONVIVA project which explores the concept of convivial conservation which offers an alternative to the model of conservation through capitalism. Sanna’s work within this project is specifically connected to wolf conservation in Finland and the attitudes towards wolf conservation. In general, her work concentrates on moving beyond the nature/society dichotomy and the model of conservation by commodification (i.e. conservation coming from a neoliberal point of view that seeks to extract something from nature by conserving it.) In this conversation we talk about apex predators, capitalism, values, and the role of extractivism in conservation.

Links:

Convivial Conservation: https://convivialconservation.com/

Büscher, Bram, and Robert Fletcher. "Towards convivial conservation." Conservation & Society 17, no. 3 (2019): 283-296. http://www.conservationandsociety.org/article.asp?issn=0972-4923;year=2019;volume=17;issue=3;spage=283;epage=296;aulast=B

Luonto-Liitto (The Finnish Nature League): http://www.luontoliitto.fi/en

Luonto-Liitton Susiryhmä (The Wolf Action Group from the Finnish Nature League): http://www.luontoliitto.fi/susiryhma/in-english

The webpages of the Finnish Game Institute: https://riista.fi/ (homepage – in Finnish); https://riista.fi/riistatalous/riistakannat/hoitosuunnitelmat/susikanta/ (wolf opinion page – in Finnish); other resources available in English via the search function at https://riista.fi/en/30:54January 31, 2020This month we are joined by Maria Ehrnström-Fuentes, postdoctoral researcher from Hanken School of Economics. Together we take a deep dive into the pluriverse and how Maria has explored this concept in her research. This conversation covers ideas of decoloniality, degrowth, and turning a critical eye to some of the established notions of how research is conducted. Maria shares her experiences in conducting research in Latin America and the Finnish countryside. The conversation comes around to the deep importance of finding like-minded people in your community as a step toward change.

If you want to find out more about Maria and her work here is a link to her researcher profile. 

Here are two of her most recent articles:

Ehrnström-Fuentes, M & Leipämaa-Leskinen, H 2019, 'Boundary Negotiations in a Self-Organized Grassroots-Led Food Network: The Case of REKO in Finland', Sustainability, vol. 11, no. 15, 4137, pp. 1-22. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11154137

Ehrnström-Fuentes, M 2019, 'Confronting extractivism: the role of local struggles in the (un)making of place', Critical Perspectives on International Business. https://doi.org/10.1108/cpoib-01-2018-0016

And a link to her doctoral thesis Legitimacy in the Pluriverse: Towards an Expanded View on Corporate-Community Relations in the Global Forestry Industry32:07December 27, 2019This episode we sit down with Dr. Aili Pyhälä, lecturer in Development Studies at the University of Helsinki. She takes inside her more than 20 years of work as an activist and a researcher in indigenous and other communities facing the threat of extractivist practice. She shares with us her stories and lived experiences from the field. We explore the gray area between extractivisms and alternatives and look at extractivism as an alternative when it is in the right hands. She also shares with us her thoughts on decolonizing academia and how research projects can and should be designed.

Read more about Aili’s academic work https://www.helsinki.fi/en/people/people-finder/aili-pyhala-9131642

The organizations Aili highlighted:

· The ICCA Consortium - https://www.iccaconsortium.org/

· Centre for Indigenous Conservation and Development Alternatives (CICADA) - http://cicada.world/

· Global Ecovillage Network - https://ecovillage.org/42:30November 29, 2019In the third and final part of our conversation with Professor Barry Gills from University of Helsinki and one of the founders of the Global Extractivisms and Alternatives (EXALT) initiative, we talk about the need for action on a personal and political level to face the challenges presented by the climate emergency, trying to find balance between the comforts of modern society and environmental conscientiousness, the impact and evolution of community in the digital age, and examples of alternatives.  

If you are interested to read more about the academic conversations we explore in this episode, please check out Globalizations, which is the journal that Prof. Gills founded and is the current editor-in-chief.27:08October 23, 2019In the second part of our conversation with Professor Barry Gills from University of Helsinki and one of the founders of the Global Extractivisms and Alternatives (EXALT) initiative, we discuss local and indigenous approaches to solving problems, the issue of "externalities" in economics (a cost of producing something that is taken from external parties that did not choose to incur that cost - for example, a lithium mine might severely poison a body of water, creating knock-on effects for local people and wildlife, those costs are not factored into the cost of a lithium battery), and vulnerability and global justice as they relate to global scale extractivist practice. Finally, we explore three concepts to live by - be radical, be responsible, be restorative.

If you are interested to read more about the academic conversations we explore in this episode, please check out Globalizations, which is the journal that Prof. Gills founded and is the current editor-in-chief.35:05October 23, 2019Professor Barry Gills from University of Helsinki joins us for a conversation about the Global Extractivisms and Alternatives (EXALT) initiative, the meaning of extractivism and the role of alternatives, the conceptualization of nature, values as connected to modernity, and the crisis of our global civilization. We have divided this conversation into three parts. This is a rich intellectual journey and serves as a robust introduction to the thinking which inspired the EXALT Initiative.

If you are interested to read more about the academic conversations we explore in this episode, please check out Globalizations, which is the journal that Prof. Gills founded and is the current editor-in-chief.27:28October 23, 2019In this episode hosts Sophia Hagolani-Albov and Christopher Chagnon introduce themselves, the Extractivisms and Alternatives (EXALT) Initiative, and where the podcast is going to go in upcoming episodes.10:22October 20, 2019

Today we're looking at an ongoing organizing campaign by students and faculty at Salem State University, a Massachusetts public college, to expose campus debt and resist austerity measures being imposed by the school administration. We interview two faculty members, Joanna Gonsalves and Rich Levy, who have been involved with the Campus Debt Reveal Project.

Interviewee Bios:

Joanna Gonsalves is a Psychology Professor at Salem State University and Vice President of the Massachusetts State College Association.

Rich Levy is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Salem State University and a member of the Coalition against Campus Debt.

Note: Multiple times in the interview we reference Biden's student debt cancelation. Unfortunately the interview was recorded before the recent court ruling that blocked the cancelation, so our discussion is a little bit out of date. For more on the status of debt cancelation, you can read this article: https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-court-extends-block-bidens-student-loan-forgiveness-plan-2022-11-14/

Find more info about the project: www.theothercollegedebtcrisis.org

Artwork by Arthur K. Check out their work at: https://rotradio.tumblr.com

Alessandro Cortini, who started out as a multi-instrumentalist for Nine Inch Nails, is also known for his ghostly, narrative-driven synth music. Visuals inspired by “Iniziare.”Critic’s NotebookIn the face of crisis, our critic turned to music that demanded that she relinquish control.Alessandro Cortini, who started out as a multi-instrumentalist for Nine Inch Nails, is also known for his ghostly, narrative-driven synth music. Visuals inspired by “Iniziare.”Credit...Send any friend a storyAs a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.Give this articleGive this articleGive this articleBy Isabelia HerreraVideos by Sofia CrespoTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.When I heard the news that my mother had suffered a stroke, the feeling that surfaced wasn’t despair, but an impulse to problem solve.First, the doctor’s medical jargon flooded into my brain like ticker tape: a cerebrovascular accident due to embolism of the left middle cerebral artery. Five milligrams of Eliquis and 50 milligrams of Losartan and 50 more of Metoprolol, in addition to four other pills at morning, noon and midnight. My brother and I compiled passwords to medical insurance platforms, patient portals and bank accounts in a shared Notes app entry. We filled out paperwork for long-term disability payments. We consulted lawyers, wondering how to handle my mother’s employer, who had threatened to fire her if she did not return to work. A month after the stroke, the night before my 29th birthday, we were in an accident that totaled my mother’s car. In the hopes that she would eventually be able to drive again, I gave her a few thousand dollars of my savings toward buying a new one.The stroke wasn’t the only crisis. There was the dread of the upcoming presidential election; the ceaseless drag of the pandemic; the expectation to complete my master’s degree while I cared for my mother; and the reality that, as an immigrant family, our full support system was back home in the Dominican Republic. For the most part, my brother and I were on our own.So, I Googled. I made playlists.I called one “if you need to breathe,” all lowercase. I populated it with the soft-focus synth tones and obliterating loops of ambient music. I scrolled through Spotify and stumbled upon dozens of playlists engineered for mood regulation and self-care: “Peaceful Indie Ambient,” “Lo-Fi Cool Down,” “Ambient Chill.” On Headspace, the meditation app that costs $69.99 a year, I found curated soundscapes by the savant producer Madlib and the songwriter John Legend intended to conjure soothing atmospheres and facilitate productive workdays.It was clear that I was not alone. In recent years, ambient music has become an escapist salve for a planet coping with mass death, political instability, climate anxiety, the incessant culture of overwork and the dissociation these conditions cause. The tech world has been quick to cash in: In 2017, the critic Liz Pelly wrote about the proliferation of Spotify’s “chill” playlists, referring to it as “an ambition to turn all music into emotional wallpaper.” This is late capitalist Muzak, smooth-brain anesthesia to pacify the mind.But in the months following my mother’s stroke, after I rematriated into her one-bedroom apartment in Chicago, ambient music was not just some commodified act of self-care. Listening to it demanded that I relinquish control. It asked me to dispense with progressive time. It forced me to slow down and confront collapse.VideoLaraaji has been releasing music since the late 1970s. Visuals inspired by “Being Here (Flow Goes the Universe).”At the top of “if you need to breathe” is Alessandro Cortini’s “Iniziare.” Cortini, the Italian musician who started out as a guitarist, keyboardist and bassist for Nine Inch Nails, is also known for his ghostly, narrative-driven synth music. On “Iniziare,” Cortini arrests time. A single synth tone, at first bound to the earth, floats 40,000 feet in the air, spiraling into astral fragments. Ripples of electronic feedback crest into peaks and valleys of stretched echoes, decayed into hollowed abysses. Time becomes supple, pliant, disobedient. Listening to it, I am forced to close my eyes, to feel the way that sound travels over the body, shape-shifting into nonlinear drift. I am detached from any deterministic version of the future. In this place between lightness and darkness, pleasure and pain exist in equal measure. I experience all the fragmentation of life, the reminders of trauma and uncertainty I have woken up to for the last four months. Here, I refuse to let grief become self-definition: I live unfettered from the speed of emergency.Ambient music has always contained a kind of subterranean knowing. The British musician and critic David Toop, who wrote “Ocean of Sound,” the defining 1995 text on the music, recently argued that it has become severed from the philosophical qualities suggested during its genesis in the 1970s. Back then, ambient represented an alternate protocol for listening and music making. In a 2019 essay, Toop refers to it as a musical form “committed (implicitly or explicitly) to an engagement with interpretations and articulations of place, environment, listening, silence and time.” In his view, it is music that inspires “a state of mind attuned to inclusivity,” rather than “withdrawal.”And yet, the dominant vision of ambient music today is a cartoonish inversion of these aspirations. In a multibillion-dollar wellness industry, streaming platforms and meditation apps frame ambient as background music — something for detached listening and consumption. It is spa and yoga music, or field recordings for undisturbed, restful sleep. Instead of embracing ambient’s potential — its capacity to soften barriers and loosen ideas of sound, politics, temporality and space — the music has become instrumentalized, diminished into sound-as-backdrop.It is a funny thing to think about ambient music as utility, as if it is something that allows for selective engagement. Like the musician Lawrence English wrote, “To ignore music is not to listen to it.” Rather, experiencing ambient music — to allow its political, philosophical and oppositional knowledge to become visible — requires a full use of the senses. It means tapping into the sensorial vitality of living: the tactile, spatial, vibrational and auditory experiences that being human affords us.The experimental music pioneer Pauline Oliveros foresaw how a sensorial approach to music and listening could cultivate politically dynamic thinking. She spent her life developing a theory of deep listening, a practice that promotes radical attentiveness. In this approach, there is a distinction between hearing versus listening; the former is a surface-level awareness of space and temporality, and the second is an act of immersive focus. “Deep Listening takes us below the surface of our consciousness and helps to change or dissolve limiting boundaries,” she wrote in 1999. “Listening is directing attention to what is heard, gathering meaning, interpreting and deciding on action.”In 1974, in response to the tumult of the Vietnam War, Oliveros published a series of text-scores called “Sonic Meditations,” a precursor to her deep listening theory. The project explores how body-centered sound exercises can foster focused perception. Oliveros developed “Sonic Meditations” from gatherings of women she organized at her home. In these meetings, the group, which emerged in the context of the women’s liberation movement, would do breathwork, write in journals and practice kinetic awareness exercises each week. The experience was designed to be collective, using intimacy and introspection to nurture a sense of healing.I practiced deep listening with my “if you need to breathe” playlist, especially with the new-age innovator Laraaji’s composition “Being Here.” It is hard to pinpoint exactly when “Being Here” clicks: maybe it’s at the 10-minute mark, or the 15-minute mark or even at its beatific, 25-minute close. Laraaji, who has been releasing music since the late 1970s, produces aural glossolalia — divine, luminescent melodic debris. Listening to his music, I am held in an unspoken embrace with his vision of the present, notes refracting like sunlight caressing the azure waters of the ocean. This is music that curls into the ears, mutating into an imagined Elysium, stopping time and space. It’s not just scenery, not a simple balm for immeasurable pain.For some, the lessons of “Being Here” might recall some sort of empty practice of mindfulness, a concept so often misappropriated as a wellness buzzword. That enterprise often tells us to “be present” so that we can self-optimize and better function as workers and individuals, rather than as human beings who are part of a community. But “Being Here” is not a demand to recharge for productivity. It asked me to forget the looping of time, to disengage with any kind of predictive chronology — about my mother’s recovery, but also about surviving a continuous state of hardship. Being here, slowing down, was not about inactivity or lack of energy. It was about releasing myself from the imperative to withdraw in the face of precarity. It was an insurgent break in time — a call to drench myself in the reality of a catastrophic present and to equip myself to do something about it.VideoJefre Cantu-Ledesma is ambient multi-instrumentalist and chaplain who provides spiritual guidance to patients and families in hospitals. Visuals inspired by “Tracing Back the Radiance.”The lived experience of diaspora is an entangled state of resilience. There is an assumption that we carry innate endurance, a superpower that enables us to perpetually surmount inherited trauma and injustice. It even lives in our speech: In the Dominican Republic, a simple “How are you?” is often returned with the phrase: “Aquí, en la lucha.” Here, in the struggle. Struggle is an embodied condition, a quotidian truth.In the months after my mother’s stroke, I often received messages of resilience from family and friends. “Tú eres una guerrera, como tu mamá,” they said. You’re a warrior, just like your mother.Back then, I often thought about what it’d be like to be freed from the expectation of resilience. I turned to “if you need to breathe,” wondering if there would be some untapped reserve of strength there. Its most played song was “Palace of Time” by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, an ambient multi-instrumentalist and chaplain who provides spiritual guidance to patients and families in hospitals. Listening to its 21 minutes of suspended vibraphone, piano and snare brushes, I released the pressure of everlasting tenacity. I wondered how anyone could hear this music as a self-absorbed retreat to the mind. Held in the reverie of “Palace of Time,” a portal opened to something different: thoughtful, dedicated attention.I won’t pretend ambient music is some kind of comprehensive solution for a world contending with death, war and devastation. But I do wonder how, on an infinitesimal scale, listening closely might free us from the logic of hasty, individualistic action. When I force myself to listen closely, I hear a refusal to analyze, judge and act with immediacy. In its call to suspend time, the music carries the potential to press pause on the punishing velocity that attends disaster, that robs our attention and predetermines a fixed future. I hear the promise to act deliberately, collectively and with care, to embrace intentional observation and action — the durational practice of a lifetime.Audio produced by Parin Behrooz.

About the Author

Brian McCullough

Brian McCullough has been in the Internet game since 1998. He was the founder or co-founder of the following companies: WhereAreTheJobs.com, WhoToTalkTo.com and ResumeWriters.com. He was named to a 2016 TED Residency.

A book loosely based on these podcasts will be coming out in Spring 2018. It is currently titled HOW THE INTERNET HAPPENED, and will be published by Liveright, a subsidiary of W.W. Norton.

He is an Arsenal fan; Gator fan; England fan. In that order. In 2014 he was the co-founder of a startup human named Penelope, and in 2016 he launched Maxwell into beta.

Hello, anthro-enthusiasts! In this episode, we present a pre-COVID conversation that David Giles recorded with the esteemed anthropologist Anna Tsing, a professor in the Anthropology Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz and director of the AURA: Aarhus University Research on the Anthropocene at Aarhus University. Dr Tsing likely needs little introduction, as someone whose research and writing on globalisation and capitalism has travelled far outside of anthropology and academia. She is the author several books including 'In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: Marginality in an Out-of-the-way Place' (1993)and 'Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection' (2004), both based on fieldwork in South Kalimantan, Indonesia. More recently, she published an ethnography of the Matsutake mushroom and its entanglement in diverse human worlds and economies - 'The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins' (2015) - which won both the Gregory Bateson Prize and the Victor Turner Prize. In this conversation, David and Dr Tsing discuss her training in anthropology, working for things you believe in, telling terrible stories beautifully, and the possibilities of ethnography in the Anthropocene.

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Conversations in Anthropology is a podcast about life, the universe, and anthropology produced by David Boarder Giles, Timothy Neale, Cameo Dalley, Mythily Meher and Matt Barlow. This podcast is made in partnership with the American Anthropological Association and supported by the Faculty of Arts & Education at Deakin University. Find us at conversationsinanthropology.wordpress.com or on Twitter at @AnthroConvo

Audio also available by searching Stitcher, Spotify, Google Podcasts, etc. for "Cold Takes Audio" This piece starts to make the case that we live in a remarkable century, not just a remarkable era. Previous pieces in this series talked about the strange future that could be ahead of us eventually (maybe 100 years, maybe 100,000).

Summary of this piece: We're used to the world economy growing a few percent per year. This has been the case for many generations. However, this is a very unusual situation. Zooming out to all of history, we see that growth has been accelerating; that it's near its historical high point; and that it's faster than it can be for all that much longer (there aren't enough atoms in the galaxy to sustain this rate of growth for even another 10,000 years). The world can't just keep growing at this rate indefinitely. We should be ready for other possibilities: stagnation (growth slows or ends), explosion (growth accelerates even more, before hitting its limits), and collapse (some disaster levels the economy).

The times we live in are unusual and unstable. We shouldn't be surprised if something wacky happens, like an explosion in economic and scientific progress, leading to technological maturity. In fact, such an explosion would arguably be right on trend.

For as long as any of us can remember, the world economy has grown1 a few percent per year, on average. Some years see more or less growth than other years, but growth is pretty steady overall.2 I'll call this the Business As Usual world.

In Business As Usual, the world is constantly changing, and the change is noticeable, but it's not overwhelming or impossible to keep up with. There is a constant stream of new opportunities and new challenges, but if you want to take a few extra years to adapt to them while you mostly do things the way you were doing them before, you can usually (personally) get away with that. In terms of day-to-day life, 2019 was pretty similar to 2018, noticeably but not hugely different from 2010, and hugely but not crazily different from 1980.3

If this sounds right to you, and you're used to it, and you picture the future being like this as well, then you live in the Business As Usual headspace. When you think about the past and the future, you're probably thinking about something kind of like this:

Business As Usual

I live in a different headspace, one with a more turbulent past and a more uncertain future. I'll call it the This Can't Go On headspace. Here's my version of the chart: This Can't Go On4 Which chart is the right one? Well, they're using exactly the same historical data - it's just that the Business As Usual chart starts in 1950, whereas This Can't Go On starts all the way back in 5000 BC. "This Can't Go On" is the whole story; "Business As Usual" is a tiny slice of it.

Growing at a few percent a year is what we're all used to. But in full historical context, growing at a few percent a year is crazy. (It's the part where the blue line goes near-vertical.)

This growth has gone on for longer than any of us can remember, but that isn't very long in the scheme of things - just a couple hundred years, out of thousands of years of human civilization. It's a huge acceleration, and it can't go on all that much longer. (I'll flesh out "it can't go on all that much longer" below.)

The first chart suggests regularity and predictability. The second suggests volatility and dramatically different possible futures.

One possible future is stagnation: we'll reach the economy's "maximum size" and growth will essentially stop. We'll all be concerned with how to divide up the resources we have, and the days of a growing pie and a dynamic economy will be over forever.

Another is explosion: growth will accelerate further, to the point where the world economy is doubling every year, or week, or hour. A Duplicator-like technology (such as digital people or, as I’ll discuss in future pieces, advanced AI) could drive growth like this. If this happens, everything will be changing far faster than humans can process it.

Another is collapse: a global catastrophe will bring civilization to its knees, or wipe out humanity entirely, and we'll never reach today's level of growth again.

Or maybe something else will happen.

Why can't this go on?

A good starting point would be this analysis from Overcoming Bias, which I'll give my own version of here:

Let's say the world economy is currently getting 2% bigger each year.5 This implies that the economy would be doubling in size about every 35 years.6 If this holds up, then 8200 years from now, the economy would be about 3*1070 times its current size. There are likely fewer than 1070 atoms in our galaxy,7 which we would not be able to travel beyond within the 8200-year time frame.8 So if the economy were 3*1070 times as big as today's, and could only make use of 1070 (or fewer) atoms, we'd need to be sustaining multiple economies as big as today's entire world economy per atom.

8200 years might sound like a while, but it's far less time than humans have been around. In fact, it's less time than human (agriculture-based) civilization has been around.

Is it imaginable that we could develop the technology to support multiple equivalents of today's entire civilization, per atom available? Sure - but this would require a radical degree of transformation of our lives and societies, far beyond how much change we've seen over the course of human history to date. And I wouldn't exactly bet that this is how things are going to go over the next several thousand years. (Update: for people who aren't convinced yet, I've expanded on this argument in another post.)

It seems much more likely that we will "run out" of new scientific insights, technological innovations, and resources, and the regime of "getting richer by a few percent a year" will come to an end. After all, this regime is only a couple hundred years old.

(This post does a similar analysis looking at energy rather than economics. It projects that the limits come even sooner. It assumes 2.3% annual growth in energy consumption (less than the historical rate for the USA since the 1600s), and estimates this would use up as much energy as is produced by all the stars in our galaxy within 2500 years.9)

Explosion and collapse

So one possible future is stagnation: growth gradually slows over time, and we eventually end up in a no-growth economy. But I don't think that's the most likely future.

The chart above doesn't show growth slowing down - it shows it accelerating dramatically. What would we expect if we simply projected that same acceleration forward?

Modeling the Human Trajectory (by Open Philanthropy’s David Roodman) tries to answer exactly this question, by “fitting a curve” to the pattern of past economic growth.10 Its extrapolation implies infinite growth this century. Infinite growth is a mathematical abstraction, but you could read it as meaning: "We'll see the fastest growth possible before we hit the limits."

In The Duplicator, I summarize a broader discussion of this possibility. The upshot is that a growth explosion could be possible, if we had the technology to “copy” human minds - or something else that fulfills the same effective purpose, such as digital people or advanced enough AI.

In a growth explosion, the annual growth rate could hit 100% (the world economy doubling in size every year) - which could go on for at most ~250 years before we hit the kinds of limits discussed above.11 Or we could see even faster growth - we might see the world economy double in size every month (which we could sustain for at most 20 years before hitting the limits12), or faster.

That would be a wild ride: blindingly fast growth, perhaps driven by AIs producing output beyond what we humans could meaningfully track, quickly approaching the limits of what's possible, at which point growth would have to slow.

In addition to stagnation or explosive growth, there's a third possibility: collapse. A global catastrophe could cut civilization down to a state where it never regains today's level of growth. Human extinction would be an extreme version of such a collapse. This future isn't suggested by the charts, but we know it's possible.

As Toby Ord’s The Precipice argues, asteroids and other "natural" risks don't seem likely to bring this about, but there are a few risks that seem serious and very hard to quantify: climate change, nuclear war (particularly nuclear winter), pandemics (particularly if advances in biology lead to nasty bioweapons), and risks from advanced AI.

With these three possibilities in mind (stagnation, explosion and collapse):

We live in one of the (two) fastest-growth centuries in all of history so far. (The 20th and 21st.) It seems likely that this will at least be one of the ~80 fastest-growing centuries of all time.13 If the right technology comes along and drives explosive growth, it could be the #1 fastest-growing century of all time - by a lot. If things go badly enough, it could be our last century.

So it seems like this is a quite remarkable century, with some chance of being the most remarkable. This is all based on pretty basic observations, not detailed reasoning about AI (which I will get to in future pieces).

Scientific and technological advancement

It’s hard to make a simple chart of how fast science and technology are advancing, the same way we can make a chart for economic growth. But I think that if we could, it would present a broadly similar picture as the economic growth chart.

A fun book I recommend is Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery. It goes through the most important inventions and discoveries in human history, in chronological order. The first few entries include "stone tools," "fire," "religion" and "art"; the final pages include "Halley's comet" and "warm superconductivity."

An interesting fact about this book is that 553 out of its 654 pages take place after the year 1500 - even though it starts in the year 4 million BC. I predict other books of this type will show a similar pattern,14 and I believe there were, in fact, more scientific and technological advances in the last ~500 years than the previous several million.15 In a previous piece, I argued that the most significant events in history seem to be clustered around the time we live in, illustrated with this timeline. That was looking at billions-of-years time frames. If we zoom in to thousands of years, though, we see something similar: the biggest scientific and technological advances are clustered very close in time to now. To illustrate this, here's a timeline focused on transportation and energy (I think I could've picked just about any category and gotten a similar picture).

So as with economic growth, the rate of scientific and technological advancement is extremely fast compared to most of history. As with economic growth, presumably there are limits at some point to how advanced technology can become. And as with economic growth, from here scientific and technological advancement could:

Stagnate, as some are concerned is happening. Explode, if some technology were developed that dramatically increased the number of "minds" (people, or digital people, or advanced AIs) pushing forward scientific and technological development.16 Collapse due to some global catastrophe.

Neglected possibilities

I think there should be some people in the world who inhabit the Business As Usual headspace, thinking about how to make the world better if we basically assume a stable, regular background rate of economic growth for the foreseeable future.

And some people should inhabit the This Can’t Go On headspace, thinking about the ramifications of stagnation, explosion or collapse - and whether our actions could change which of those happens.

But today, it seems like things are far out of balance, with almost all news and analysis living in the Business As Usual headspace.

One metaphor for my headspace is that it feels as though the world is a set of people on a plane blasting down the runway:

We're going much faster than normal, and there isn't enough runway to do this much longer ... and we're accelerating.

And every time I read commentary on what's going on in the world, people are discussing how to arrange your seatbelt as comfortably as possible given that wearing one is part of life, or saying how the best moments in life are sitting with your family and watching the white lines whooshing by, or arguing about whose fault it is that there's a background roar making it hard to hear each other.

If I were in this situation and I didn't know what was next (liftoff), I wouldn't necessarily get it right, but I hope I'd at least be thinking: "This situation seems kind of crazy, and unusual, and temporary. We're either going to speed up even more, or come to a stop, or something else weird is going to happen." Thanks to María Gutiérrez Rojas for the graphics in this piece, and Ludwig Schubert for an earlier timeline graphic that this piece's timeline graphic is based on. Next in series: Forecasting Transformative AI, Part 1: What Kind of AI?

Use "Feedback" if you have comments/suggestions you want me to see, or if you're up for giving some quick feedback about this post (which I greatly appreciate!) Use "Forum" if you want to discuss this post publicly on the Effective Altruism Forum.

Footnotes

Audio of this conversation is available via your favorite podcast service. By all accounts, Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter is not going well. And yet many have the real sense that something important may be lost if the platform collapses; or if there is a substantial migration away from it to alternatives like Mastodon, the open source, decentralized platform that has grown from three hundred thousand monthly active users to nearly two million since Musk bought Twitter. In this episode, I had the chance to discuss Musk’s takeover with Dr. Johnathan Flowers, who studies the philosophy of technology, and to learn more about some of the exclusive norms he’s observed that may create obstacles to communities of color when contemplating the switch to Mastodon, or potentially to their safety in the ‘Fediverse.’ What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the discussion. Justin Hendrix: Dr. Flowers, can you tell me a little bit about your academic work, your research? What do you get up to? What are your curiosities? Dr. Johnathan Flowers: My primary areas of research are East Asian philosophy, philosophy of technology, American pragmatism and philosophy of race, disability, and gender, as well as aesthetics. Broadly, I think about the ways that identity can be understood as one affective or felt. I think about the ways that race, gender, and disability intersect with technology such that not every user has the same experience through technology, and through technology is important here because it’s not simply that users engage with technology, they engage with other people through technology, so not every user has the same experience through technology. I think through the ways that our lived experience is primarily grounded in the affect of the felt sense of the world through American pragmatism and Japanese aesthetics, as opposed to a primarily a cognitive experience of the world. So it’s less, “I think, therefore I am,” and more, “I feel, therefore I know.” Justin Hendrix: That seems to offer an insight into our modern social media environment. Dr. Johnathan Flowers: Yeah, because if we think about, say, users connecting with other people through technology, then we start thinking about the ways in which identity is made possible online by means of technology. Here, when I say by means of technology, I’m drawing on John Dewey who says that communities, individuals, organisms emerge by means of their environment that is in transaction with their environment such that both the individual and the environment are changed. Moreover, again, drawing on Dewey, when I say individuals emerge by means of the environment, I mean that they incorporate some element of the environment into how they make their personhood and their individuality present within a variety of spaces. So when we’re talking about something like social media, which I take to be an environment in the truest sense, a digital environment, people make their identities present by means of the affordances or the various tools and resources present within a digital space. This is something that pairs with some of the work that André Brock has done in Distributed Blackness. This pairs with some of the work that Catherine Knight Steel has done in Digital Black Feminism, and this pairs with some of the work done in Hashtag Activism. Justin Hendrix: I’ve been observing how you are putting this set of ideas and perhaps framework to use in your critique of Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter and how that is impacting that particular environment. I suppose I’ll give you just an open-ended opportunity to say what’s on your mind with regard to the changes that Musk is making and the general vibe in this transition. Dr. Johnathan Flowers: As you note, I have been fairly critical of both Musk’s takeover and the response of Twitter users to Musk’s takeover, as well as the emergence of Mastodon as an alternative to Twitter. So Musk’s takeover is, I’d like to start there because that’s probably the thing that I have said the least about. In general, my broad philosophical approach to Musk’s takeover is that it reveals the ways in which our commons, our gathering places are under the control generally of corporate interests. In considering the ways that our gathering places, our commons, are under the control of corporate interests, we can think through the ways that not everyone has equal access to participation in the commons. Given the fact that we live in a society broadly structured by white supremacy, broadly structured by patriarchy, broadly structured by homophobia, transphobia, and anti-LGBTQ sentiment in general, to have our commons under the control of corporate interests, of capitalist interests, means that those folks most marginalized in our society, either through legislation, through social perspective, through deprivation of resources will have the least amount of access to these commons. So far as these populations have the least amount of access to their commons, these commons are never truly the open fora that they are argued about, which gets us into some ironies about our current discourse about social media because one of the ongoing claims that drives right-wing critiques of big tech is that they stifle participation by right-wing adherence. They engage in selective censoring to minimize right-wing voices. This critique is generally something that we’ve heard for the past four or five years, given the ways that social media has been used by right-wing individuals, both politicians and their adherence to circulate particular kinds of disinformation and misinformation. Now, there are two kinds of things that I want to say about this. One, given the nature of the private ownership of the commons such as Twitter and Facebook, these complaints are not something that one could lodge or level against a government. These are private platforms. It is not as though the government is engaging in censorship. It is as though there is censorship of a public commons where everyone has an equal expectation for participation. They are literally complaining about the nature of a private platform as engaging in its own internal moderation. I could just as soon complain about the rules of the library.

Dr. Johnathan Flowers. Twitter If I were to make too much noise in the library, the library has the responsibility, or the option, to throw me out. But that’s an imprecise metaphor insofar as libraries often receive funding from public or governmental spaces, so they can’t necessarily engage in censorship that right-wing adherents are complaining about. A better analogy would be a private home. I invite people into my home for a meeting, one of the participants gets out of hand or one of the participants begins saying things that I don’t like as a homeowner, I can throw them out of my home and not risk reprisal. The private nature of our digital commons means that the corporate interests that control them can do similar things. They can evict me, they can silence me, they can stifle my voice on the basis of their own value systems, and I generally have limited recourse to engage with it. Now, having said all of that, this is why many of the right-wing critiques make very little sense because marginalized folks have been subject to this for years. We need to only look at the history of sex workers on Twitter or on Facebook or on Reddit or on any of the other social media fora that we take to be valuable. Sex workers have experienced multiple instances of their voices being suppressed in the context of Twitter, of being shadow banned wherein, one’s account still exists, but one cannot use all of the affordances of the space to engage with other people, so on and so forth. All these things are typically grounded in anti-sex work sentiment or alignment with the case of the Tumblr fans of sex workers alignment with the ideals of a given corporation. So I say all this to say that Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter and the promise to civilize say the digital commons is a misnomer because all he’s doing is instituting his own vision of what or corporate-controlled digital commons should look like, and the metaphor of civilizing a digital commons is particularly problematic given Musk’s enduring history. He is a white man bringing “civilization” to a platform that is heavily used by marginalized populations. Our history tells us that white people trying to bring “civilization,” and I’m putting civilization in scare quotes here, to marginalized people historically has not worked out well for the marginalized subject. That’s generally my broader critique on Musk. Now, the response of Twitter users to Musk’s takeover is problematic in a couple of senses. One, the first way that I think about this is in terms of the damage done by Twitter users migrating to other platforms or to their existing networks. So some of these networks are more fragile than others because of the ways they use the affordances of the website. Here again, by affordances I mean the resources, the tools, the very structure of the website, things like hashtags, retweets, quote tweets, and so on. The ways that a given community forms by means of the affordances of a digital platform structures some of the nature of that community. As André Brock notes in his book, Distributed Blackness, Black Twitter as a phenomena emerged by means of the affordances of Twitter, through how things like quote tweets, retweets and hashtags allowed Black users to engage in Black digital practices, which are the performances of Black offline culture by means of the affordances of the digital platform of Twitter. So things like call and response, playing the dozens, which are culturally-mediated practices within the Black community, to engage in information sharing, in community building, were all enabled by the features of Twitter such that Black folks could engage in digital practices that made present their identities as members of a community. This coupled with the ability of the hashtag and the quote tweet to one participate and add onto a conversation through a call and response enabled Black Twitter to form as this broad interconnected network of users who made themselves present to one another through their digital practices. So in explaining this right, the affordances, the very structure of Twitter is what enabled Black Twitter to emerge. Similarly, with disability Twitter insofar as many disabled persons are, especially in the time of COVID, unable to fully participate in their offline lives. One of the things that Twitter enabled was this flourishing of a meeting space, a common resource for disabled persons to come together and talk about their experiences such that they could find community in a world that had become immediately hostile to them. By immediately hostile to them, I don’t simply mean by the fact of the ongoing pandemic and the multiple other kinds of viral outbreaks that it spawned, I meant immediately hostile by revealing the ways in which resistance to the pandemic meant condemning many disabled people to death or social isolation. Insofar as this is the case, Twitter’s affordances, again, the hashtag functionality, the quote tweet functionality both enabled the emergence of a community or among a group of people whose identity could be made salient through the affordances of the platforms. Now, disability Twitter uses the affordances a little bit differently than Black Twitter insofar as call and response isn’t necessarily a fomenting element of the disability community in the same way that it is for the Black community. But the ability to align a conversation with a hashtag, things like #NEISVoid, things like #CripTheVote serve to enable members of the community to one, find each other through narrative, and two, participate in the narrative through the quote tweet functionality such that they became visible through how they participated in certain conversations. It also enabled the sharing of information and the organization of communities around particular kinds of knowledge production such that disabled users became legible to one another and legible to other users within the broader space of the platform. So these are two different ways that two different communities use the same affordances to give rise to a community that sustained them within digital space. For Black Twitter it was the extension of offline digital practices and cultural practices into the online space. For disability Twitter, it was the creation of a space that enabled the formation of networks of support and community in the face of a hostile offline environment such that resources could be shared in community could be formed. To this end, insofar as this is the case, a Twitter migration, the migration off the platform, and I’m not speaking specifically migrating to Mastodon or any site in general, we’ll get to Mastodon in a moment. Twitter migration damages these networks in different ways. So for Black Twitter, a Twitter migration is simply unlikely because other sites don’t have the affordances that enable the formation of a community like Black Twitter. As I said, Black users make their identities legible by means of the affordances, the resources of the digital environment. In doing so, a different platform would not allow Black Twitter users to make themselves legible in the same way. So we would have to engage in a process of transaction with the new platform to determine how best to make our identities legible, which as when I get to Mastodon will be a key point for why Mastodon is problematic. But for disability Twitter, a migration irreparably damages these networks because on disability Twitter each user functions as a specific kind of node, not just through their experience with disability, but through the ways that they use the retweet and quote tweet function to circulate information and to circulate narratives about disability. So insofar as each user functions as a unique node and some nodes are larger or smaller, given their follower count, given the kinds of ways they engage in both online and offline activism, the loss of a node means the loss of a point within the community wherein information circulates. That loss means that other individuals connected to that node no longer have access to the information, the experiences that are being circulated through that node. When those members lose access to that node, the information does not spread through the network. Think about it in terms of the map of a city. If you look at a city from orbit, you see a whole bunch of interconnected lights. When a power station goes down, you see the city go dark in a ripple effect that stops at the boundaries of say, one power transmission station or another. This visual analogy I think will help us understand what happens with a space like disability Twitter, when a person migrates, so all of the connections that they have go dark, and there’s this void in the network where information is no longer circulating, and so the network contracts. It’s not simply that this hole remains there, it’s that the network contracts and gets smaller. The more people leave, the smaller the network becomes and the less connected users are to one another through the circulation of information and experiences. Insofar as this is the case, even the act of migrating away from Twitter just to see what’s out there and going silent damages these networks. Part of this is due to the algorithmic nature of Twitter, but part of this is due to the fact that these people are simply no longer circulating the information through their communities and no longer acting as a node within the broader network. One of the hazards of a migration, at least in my view, where disability Twitter is concerned, is the loss of the ability to circulate information, particularly insofar as many disabled persons rely on Twitter to maintain their sense of community. To be clear, I’m not the only disabled person who’s been talking about this, and Imani Barberin has a blog post that outlines some of this, at least not with in terms of the network effect that I’m describing, but in terms of the overall cultural and communal effect on the disability community that the, I guess, demise of Twitter. I think that’s a little bit hyperbolic, but let’s put it in those terms, that the ‘demise’ of Twitter is having, right? Because disabled people rely on Twitter for community, for sharing information, for navigating a world that is hostile to us, the loss of even one person within our broader network has an irreparable effect on the network itself. That’s generally my two major perspectives on Elon Musk’s effects on Twitter. One of the things that I want to be clear about is Musk hasn’t really done too much to the moderation reporting and content management systems of Twitter. Aside from firing a whole bunch of people, which imperils the infrastructure of the platform, one of the things that I have noted is that there hasn’t really been a failure of the reporting and moderation systems, the systems that are designed to prevent abuse. There have been individual failures of, say, the capacity to lock an account or to prevent retweets or to add comments and other microsystems on Twitter, but the overall reporting structure seems to be intact. Whether or not there are personnel still available to review these reports is another separate question, but the systems are intact. One of the interesting things is most migrations are driven by the fear that Elon Musk will open the floodgate to trolls and general bad actors, which would accompany say, a weakening of the moderation technologies available on Twitter, and by moderation technologies that don’t simply mean the reporting functionality, I mean the ways in which moderation is accomplished as a human enterprise, a technique of sorting and filtering and understanding the harm caused by a given reported object. So these moderation technologies are still intact. What has happened in response to Elon Musk’s takeover, however, is the revelation of what happens when bad actors are no longer restrained by the fear of, say, consequence. So the initial thing that many folks were worried about was that Donald Trump and his ilk would be allowed back on Twitter. Insofar as this was the case, one of the things that happened was a whole bunch of existing users, existing right-wing, belligerent users took Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter as a sign that the rules no longer applied to them. So we saw a 500% jump, I believe it was in the use of racial slurs. We saw a massive increase in anti-Semitism, in anti-LGBTQ sentiment. I want to be clear about this. It wasn’t the fact that there were new people coming in and doing this, it was the fact that existing accounts were no longer subject to the threat or to the potential threat of being banned, of being moderated, of being reported, which was not the case. You could still report somebody for using racial slurs, you could still report somebody for intimidation or impersonation or other kinds of online violence. These functions didn’t go away. What happened was people were simply not afraid of being punished for their rule violations because they felt that the new boss would have their back. They felt that Elon Musk would overturn such reports or prevent them from being permanently banned if they engaged in problematic behavior. So far, at least to my understanding, this is not the case. But one of the things that I would like to point out is Musk’s mere stating that he would say, revise the moderation or other content kinds of functions on Twitter enabled these belligerent actors to take the mask off and reveal what their intentions actually were. Musk didn’t actually have to change anything to produce this influx of violence against marginalized subjects and then drive people off the platform. This is the other thing that I’m observing about the Twitter migration. It is in response to something that has not happened yet. It is in response to a perceived fear, and that perceived fear has created an opening for these belligerent actors to drive people off of the website, to drive people out of what is increasingly treated as a digital public commons, and to cede that commons to these kind of belligerent actors, and in doing so, emboldens them, at least in my view, in other ways offline. If they can force you out of a digital commons online, that gives them a good reason to assume that they can force you out of a commons in public using the same tactics. For my money, I think that’s one of the scariest things about Musk’s takeover is the ways in which it demonstrates how one need not change the rules of the common, one need not do anything to the broader forward-facing moderation policies to embolden people to force other people out of the commons, and I think that’s massive. That is incredibly scary because my general thesis is that what happens online is continuous with what happens offline. If folks can simply force you out of a commons online, then they’re more likely to engage in similar activities offline, and that spells disaster for any kind of public discourse. Justin Hendrix: I just want to maybe try to summarize what I hear you saying, which is firstly, there are obviously significant concerns about the general social media ecosystem, the private nature of these platforms, and of course, the ability of one individual to come in and either purposefully or tacitly essentially change the culture of a platform with simply their own presence or their own ownership. But at the same time, I hear you almost mourning something that you do see as legitimate and worth preserving inside of this flawed environment, which is that, of course, these networks that have been built up sometimes in– well, I don’t want to use the word spite– but sometimes in opposition to the dynamics of that platform. Is that a fair assessment of your argument? Dr. Johnathan Flowers: Yeah, that’s a fair assessment of my argument, I would say that ‘in spite of the platform’ is actually a pretty good way to put it. When we start talking about Mastodon, one of the things that I’m going to try to make clear is how this’ in spite of’ nature functions as a result of the ways that platforms inherit whiteness or inherit structures of oppression. But ‘in spite of’ is actually a fairly good way to put it, because it is in spite of the privately-owned nature of the platform, that it has become a digital commons. It is in spite of the ways that private interests, at least in a white supremacist society, are often opposed to the public or private interests of the Black community. I say public or private interest because there’s a public interest in having good things like equal rights or the capacity to participate in public discourse, and there’s a private interest in being in community. So ‘in spite of’ is actually a pretty good way of putting it. The same thing with other marginalized communities is in spite of the attempts, the longstanding attempt to exclude disabled persons from participating in public spaces. You can read Foucault’s history of the asylum. You can read Shelley Tremain’s Foucault and The Government of Disability. You can read a number of histories that point to the ways that disabled persons have been sequestered away from participation in public space. You can even look at the ableist backlash against Fetterman’s campaign in Pennsylvania, the argument that he is unfit to serve due to his disability as another example of the ways that disabled persons are forced out of participation in public spaces. So in spite of, is actually a very good way of putting it, disabled persons participate in public spaces. The #CripTheVote hashtag is actually a pretty good one, in spite of the rampant ableism of the society around us, and in spite of the attempts to hide us away from public engagement. Justin Hendrix: So let’s talk about Mastodon, because one of the things that you’ve been, well, tweeting about quite a lot, is some of the problematic aspects of that platform and some of the norms that are at least present on it at the moment. Probably fair to say that just as the Musk ownership of Twitter is a new circumstance, this migration is a new circumstance, and so the conditions may very much change and they may change somewhat in response to criticisms like the ones that you are levying. Dr. Johnathan Flowers: So, Mastodon. So there are a couple of things that we can say about Mastodon, right? One, Mastodon is a fundamentally different platform than Twitter. It has different affordances, and those affordances result in different communities forming by means of the platform. Mastodon’s federated nature, its disconnected nature means that it is possible for communities to form their own instances within the federated network. These instances can have different rules for moderation, for content, for how users are expected to use the affordances of the platform within the space. These different kinds of rules about using the affordances of the platform means that different identities will be made present differently across different instances. Unlike on Twitter where one can use the affordances of the platform to make present a consistent identity across the entire website, on Mastodon, if a user signs up for multiple instances, that user will appear differently within those different instances, but on the basis of how a given instance structures the use of its affordances. Now, given the federated nature of Mastodon, when a user follows another user on a different instance, some of the hosts from that user will appear in the timeline of other users on that instance. So if a user on one instance has a different kind of standard for how to use the affordances than a user on another instance, then you run into some friction in how users work. Now, having laid all of that out, there are actually some very good explainers for how Mastodon functions. To be clear, I’m using Mastodon as a metonym for the Fediverse in line with the documentation provided by Mastodon, which itself acknowledges the conflation of Mastodon with the Fediverse. While Fediverse is technically probably the more accurate way to talk about this, Mastodon as a shorthand has left into the cultural consciousness so much so that even Mastodon’s own documentation has a line that acknowledges this is happening. So that’s how I’m using Mastodon for the purposes of this conversation. Now, when we’re talking about Mastodon, first, we need to acknowledge that there is a history on Mastodon of instances of color being marginalized, being discriminated against. There is a history users of color being subject to racist, to anti-Semitic, to homophobic kinds of abuse. There is a history of the kinds of similar kinds of violence against users of color, against disabled users, against marginalized users on Mastodon that there is on Twitter; however I say, similar, similar at least in the effect of sense of doing kinds of oppressive violence to these users, but not similar structurally because the affordances of Mastodon means that while any identity must be made present differently because the resources available to make present that identity are different, any kind of harassment must be articulated differently on Mastodon. So the first thing that I want to make clear is that Mastodon has a history of being inhospitable to marginalized users. This history is born out, as I’ve learned, through the marginalization and eventual shuttering of instances of color, of instances that were dedicated to hosting and supporting sex workers, of harassment of disabled users and so on. So Mastodon– while its federated model was premised on, well, the activity protocol, if I understand the history correctly– it was built in some ways to produce affordances that would avoid the kinds of harassment on Twitter. Things like quote tweet pile ons, things like other kinds of usage of the quote tweet or the comment or the reply feature to do violence. What that hasn’t done is prevented the violence. In fact, it’s given the kinds of bad actors who would do violence an opportunity to say, adjust to the new affordances because it’s not simply identities that are enabled by means of a digital environment, it is oppression that is enabled by means of a digital environment. So the oppression that one experiences on a platform like Mastodon will necessarily be different than the oppression that one experiences on a platform like Twitter, because of the different affordances of the platform.  Now, having said all of that, right, Mastodon is a very white space. It draws upon some of the values and some of the interests of indie web producers, of the DIY tech community, wherein there’s this sense of rugged individualism. The open source nature means that you can make your own stuff, and this motivates some of the kinds of responses that Mastodonians will make to users who say that there are certain features that aren’t available, that there are certain content guidelines and moderation policies that tend to act as social norms on Mastodon itself. The argument would be, make your own instance. Now, as I have said on Mastodon, and less so on Twitter, the argument that you can make your own instance ignores particular resource costs of doing so. Putting aside the monetary cost of starting up and maintaining one’s own instance– which again, if you’re a marginalized subject and you are living in a white supremacist society, this is an additional financial burden on yourself. We need to think about the moderation and personal costs of running your own instance. So an instance of color, for example, would have to have a robust moderation team to merely catch the racists. So this moderation team, be it members of color or other folks, would have to subject themselves to racist violence over and over and over again to filter out the racists and protect their community. You would essentially need, and I’m going to put this in scare quotes, “a warrior caste” to police the boundaries of your instance so that your community is not subject to the worst kinds of racist abuse. To be clear, there are users who are interested in visiting the worst kind of abuse on users of color, I have experienced myself. It took me eight hours to get a pile of racist vitriol in response to some critiques of Mastodon, something that I needed an entire week of critiquing science, technology, engineering and mathematics in higher education to have a similar result. So it is not the case that there aren’t users on Mastodon who are engaged in this behavior, but this gets me back to my point about moderation. The reason why I didn’t just pack up and leave Mastodon or the server that I’d moved to is because the moderation team on my server responded incredibly fast. They responded quickly to both ban the instance and ban the individual users engaging in targeted harassment, and they’d done so even almost as soon as I got there. As I looked through my DMs, there was a couple of messages letting me know that they had banned or blocked some users who had already been engaging in this kind of harassment, and I didn’t even know it. The only way I recognized it was by several posts on my timeline being filtered when I had set up no filters, so this brings us back to moderation. For instances of color, you would need a robust moderation team to do exactly that. That involves asking people to take on the burden of filtering through, sifting through, engaging with the worst kinds of racist vitriol for the sake of having a space where they could be themselves. The alternative being, as many Mastodonians seem to be suggesting, you need to leave parts of yourself at the door when you get onto a given instance. So when people tell marginalized subjects to make their own instances, they grossly underestimate the resource intensity of doing so. It is not simply the case that we can make an instance and then suddenly be free of all of the things that we’re trying to get away from. But it is the case that when we make an instance, we have to police it thoroughly, given the broader context of white supremacy in which these platforms grow up. I wanted to get that out of the way first because many of the replies or responses of Mastodonians to my critiques of Mastodon is, “make your own instance,” and it’s simply not that easy. That’s not simply a thing that marginalized subjects can do and expect to be able to build a safe community, you have to make the community safe, which gets me into the nature of Mastodon as a platform. As I said, Mastodon is a very white platform, and insofar as I’m saying it’s a very white platform, here I’m drawing on the work of Sara Ahmed in her piece A Phenomenology of Whiteness, who argues that spaces inherit the orientations of the people within them. So if you have a space that is predominantly populated by white persons regardless of their other identities, if you are in a space primarily populated by white persons, the norms, the habits, the very structure of that space will take on a likeness to whiteness by virtue of how the majority of people participate in that space. As I said, Mastodon is a very white space. It is not unlike other tech spaces where whiteness is predominant. Insofar as this is the case, the norms, the habits, the affordances of the platform will inherit whiteness. So we can think about the ongoing argument over the use of content warnings on Mastodon for certain topics as an example of this whiteness. To be clear, this I say ongoing because as I have learned in speaking with other Mastodonians of color and actually doing some research on the platform, this is not a new thing. Mastodonians of color have been fighting about the use of content warnings specifically for racism for a very long time. Part of the conflict over content warnings has motivated some of the responses of “move to your own instance where you can use content warnings however you see fit,” which as I have said, is not necessarily the solution that many think it is. But to get back to the use of content warnings, some of the arguments for content warnings, or at least the majority of them, at least in my view, come down to an attempt to preserve a particular white entitlement to comfort or freedom from racialized stress through the ways in which whiteness is held center as an inheritance of the platform. Again, when you have a majority of the individuals in a space being white, that space will take up the habits, the norms, the perspectives, the orientations of the users or bodies within it. Insofar as the majority of the users on Mastodon are white, then they take up the kinds of ways that whiteness organizes space, including an entitlement to freedom from say, understanding one’s complicitness and racism or freedom from engaging with experiences of racism as made present by users of color. The conflict over content warnings is symptomatic of a broader orientation or organization of the platform around whiteness. In my view, the arguments that conversations about race, and I say conversations about race because this conflict is not simply about whether you should content warn obviously racist things. So one of the things that I think is fairly valuable about Mastodon is the ability to say, content warn something that graphically depicts the death of a Black person. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the ways that the whiteness of the space conflates conversations about race and racism itself under demands to use the content warning functionality. So this conflation results in a theoretical discussion about racism as so the conversation we’re having right now on some instances would have to be flagged with a content warning or a discussion about the role that race plays in a variety of experiences of Black folks and people of color would, on some instances, have to go under a content warning on more scholastically-focused instances. Research on race might be also subject to content warnings or similarly selected out of or moderated away from the instance because it’s not taken to be scholastic or part of the, say, mission of the scientifically-oriented or scholastically-oriented instance. So all of these things are the ways in which instances inherit whiteness. Insofar as instances inherit whiteness, the content warning conversation, at least in my view, is an argument over whether or not Mastodon should continue to maintain its inheritance of whiteness because as Ahmed says, “One of the challenges for white people is rejecting this inheritance.” One of the challenges of Mastodon, at least as I see it, is rejecting its inheritance or is rejecting the inheritance of whiteness through how the norms of Mastodon demand the use of its affordances. Insofar as most Mastodonians refuse to do this, and it’s default to make your own instance, one of the things they’re implicitly saying is, “you can only make present your identity in the ways that we approve of. You can only use these affordances or you can only be Black by means of the affordances of the platform in the ways that we approve of.”  To be clear, while Mastodonians of color have been fighting this fight for a long time, and this fight has recently been reinvigorated by the influx of folks from Mastodon, this is not just an issue for Black folks or Black Twitter ex-patriots, this is an issue for folks in the disability community, folks in the Jewish community, folks in the queer community, particularly queer folks of color, because whiteness functions within queer spaces, which is interesting given one of the arguments against the whiteness of Mastodon is the presentation of the history of the protocol as being developed by predominantly queer developers. That is fine. I grant that history, but it is also the case that whiteness is a large problem within the LGBTQ community. Being queer does not insulate one cell from the inheritance of whiteness, although one can use one’s queerness as a shield from critique, as many Mastodonians have used by presenting the history of Mastodon as grounded in queer folks attempts to avoid the harassment on Twitter. That’s generally my overarching thesis here. Because of the norms around how affordances the platform are used, Mastodon, unless they’re like particular kinds of changes made, will never be able to support a robust community of color like Black Twitter. It might do so by virtue of creating, say, a Black instance. But that brings with it its own particular kinds of harms. One, it risks ghettoizing the Black community in a federated space. All of the Black people go here and instances have the option of engaging with them or deeding from them. You could block the entire Black instance and then see nothing, which is a problem for a variety of reasons, but would also mirror the social dynamics of racism in America. So white flight, for example, this would be a kind of inversion of white flight where Black users go to an area where they feel comfortable, white users view that area as dangerous and then defederate from it or put up digital fire breaks around it such that the conversations within that instance do not escape from it and disturb the white suburbia of the other instances. That’s a problem. That is a problem that many Mastodonians don’t seem to think of as a problem when suggesting “make your own instance.” There’s also the case that the whiteness of Mastodon is felt affectively. It is recognized as a sense of a space, and I described it on Twitter like going into a predominantly white work environment and recognizing that there are some elements of you that you have to leave at the door. That feeling, that sense of whiteness as a felt space is off-putting to many users. We don’t get online to deal with the same kinds of things that we do offline. Even the process of navigating, swimming through the sea of whiteness that is Mastodon is made more difficult for any potential migration. That, and to be honest, if we look at everything that Elon Musk is doing with Twitter, there is no reason for Black Twitter to migrate to Mastodon. We endure things like Elon Musk all the time, and Black Twitter can endure on Twitter regardless of many of the changes, although some may affect the ways that we build community, the verification thing, for example. Although as an aside, one of the things that I predicted with the use of the verification feature would be folks taking up the verification feature to impersonate individuals and then parody them through impersonation. My prediction would be that had the verification feature remained what it was beyond the initial test phase, you might have seen some users from Black Twitter taking up the verification feature to parody known racists in the similar ways that Black Twitter chews them up in the quote tweets, for example. You would’ve seen the use of that affordance in a culturally-specific comedic way that I probably would’ve found amusing, but that’s one of the ways in which communities use these affordances differently. The parody would’ve become yet another way that folks take up the affordances of Twitter to engage in community, which to get back to Mastodon, these affordances aren’t available on Mastodon, which will make community building that much more difficult. My last point about Mastodon here is, given everything I’ve said about the overwhelming whiteness of the platform, the lack of affordances, one of the things that Mastodon makes more difficult is actually forming a community. So if your space is organized around norms of whiteness that determine how you use the affordances, and if these norms police users who don’t use the affordances “appropriately,” and I’m putting appropriately in quotations, then yo users will be disincentivized from exploring unique ways to use these affordances. So one of the things that the history of Black Twitter teaches us is that Black users, when they encounter a new platform, play with the affordances. They use them creatively to create community, to engage in unique digital practices, to develop a habitus in a phenomenological sense, which is one’s disposition towards action within an environment by means of the affordances of the platforms. This requires experimentation, this requires play, this requires interacting with the community. Mastodon has entrenched norms that, as I have said, inherit whiteness, which inhibit the ability for users of color to play with and experiment with the affordances such that their unique identities can be made present. If you’re on an instance that has specific rules about content warnings, about the ways that you can make yourself present, then you are limited in how you can experiment with the affordances of the platform such that your identity can become salient. In fact, your identity becomes pre-determined upon entry into the space, so you come to recognize how you can and cannot be Black on Twitter. As one of the Mastodonians that I have come to rely on for the history of users of color on Mastodon has said, trying to do “this you”– that is the Black Twitter call and response methodology where we point out a problem, the contradictions in a person’s statement by bringing up another statement that they’ve made and saying “this you,” right– that’s a narrow way of defining it. But doing something like “this you” on Mastodon invites a torrent of racist and sexist kinds of violence from other Mastodonians. Your mentions become what Twitter users call a block party, where you have to go through and report every instance of the kinds of racist vitriol for engaging in a Black digital practice. If that is the case, if doing something like that risks massive reprisal in the form of racist vitriol, then you’re going to disincentivize users from experimenting with the affordances of the platform and figuring out unique ways to be themselves. This, I think, is one of the biggest things that is overlooked by Mastodonians who argue that the influx of new users will bring changes to the platforms. If you have an influx of new users and then you punish them for being themselves or trying to figure out ways to be themselves on the platform, then you will disincentivize users from recommending transformation or changes in the platform, even in open source platforms. They simply will not want to engage. This disincentivization is in contradiction to the assumption of long-time Mastodonians that the influx of new users will prompt a growth and transformation of the server. As you know, many scholars have noted from George Yancy to Angela Davis, to Audre Lorde, to Cornell West, to Sarah Ahmed, to even W.E.B. DuBois and Ida B. Wells-Barnett, whiteness is resilient, it is adaptive, and it will fight to keep itself center in ways that at least on Mastodon will deny users of color the opportunity to enact the changes that many Mastodonians argue for. Justin Hendrix: On some level you’re trying to balance in your mind right now, of course, the challenge that Elon Musk’s change in culture and potentially change to platform and affordances represents on Twitter with the challenge of getting the operators of all of these instances within the architecture of Mastodon to perhaps recognize some of the problems that you’re describing. If there was some Congress of, I think there are now thousands of instances, I think I saw the number 3000 the other day, if there was some congress of incense operators, is there one thing that you’d say to them that might ameliorate some of your concern if they were to follow your advice? Dr. Johnathan Flowers: This is not a technical problem, and it doesn’t have a technical solution. So when I say this is not a technical problem, I mean to say that this isn’t a problem that can be solved by simply adding new features or building new instances and so on. This is a problem at the intersection of technology and culture; that is, even if you were to resolve the technical issues, you still have the problem of the culture of Mastodon as inheriting whiteness and inhibiting the very kinds of experimentation, the very kinds of play that drives the development of open source platforms. So when Mastodonians suggest technical solutions like, “Move to another server, or how about this variation of the quote tweet,” my response is, “You are missing the fact that technology enables identity in a digital space, and insofar as technology enables identity in the digital space, the very norms of that space constrict how we can use the technology to make our identities present.” What I would say to this hypothetical congress of Mastodon is you need to take a moment and reflect on the ways in which your space reenacts the oppressive structures that you are trying or that you claim that Mastodon was created to escape, right? You need to think about the ways that the norms around the affordances, the very tools of your structure are organized in such a way as to inhibit the ability of marginalized users who find a home on the platform. You need to think about the very real dangers of a federated structure in a society organized around white supremacy. You could easily have an entire instance of right-wing white supremacists pop up that would engage in targeted harassment of users of color. If the Fediverse or this hypothetical congress doesn’t decide en masse to ban that instance for whatever reason, they open up their users of color to racist violence. This is one of the weaknesses of the federated model, and this is one of the things that I think Mastodonians need to take seriously, right? In as much as something like the quote tweet enabled pylons and violence, so too does the federated nature of Mastodon. There are ways that the affordances of Mastodon can be weaponized to maintain structures of oppression. Again, if there’s one thing that I would say to this hypothetical Congress, they need to be sensitive to the ways that oppression online emerges at the intersection of technology and society. It’s not simply something you can resolve by offering a technical solution. You have to think about the norms that organize how you expect people to use your technical solution. Justin Hendrix: I think that’s a good place for us to end. Dr. Jonathan Flowers, thank you so much for speaking to me today. Dr. Johnathan Flowers: Yeah, no, it was my pleasure. Thank you.

Justin Hendrix is CEO and Editor of Tech Policy Press, a new nonprofit media venture concerned with the intersection of technology and democracy. Previously, he was Executive Director of NYC Media Lab. He spent over a decade at The Economist in roles including Vice President, Business Development & Innovation. He is an associate research scientist and adjunct professor at NYU Tandon School of Engineering. Opinions expressed here are his own.

Episode Two revolves around a question of what do you love when you love your machine? Joinedby an all-star cast of musicians and collaborators, hosts John and Libby Modern explore themechanics and metaphysics of technophilia in these viral times. All manner of machines are held upfor loving appreciation: Beautiful glitches and block chain deities. Social media embraces and thetingling textures of 16mm film. Fountain pens and the future of civilization. A child’s imagination ofthe iPad. The whip of the wind and its measurement. Insulin pumps. Automatic transmissions andcassette tapes that defy logic and entropy both. So put on your headphones on and you will hear alush array of samples, original beats, and immersive stories that address our frenzied infatuations andour nostalgia, our anxieties and our standing awestruck, and whether machines can ever truly lovethemselves. With appearances from Mark Taylor, Judith Weisenfeld, Elizabeth Wilson, Hillary Kaell,Sylvia Alajaji, Nathan Schneider, Tim Ingold, Maeva Kroll, and Holly Andrew, each episode ofMachines in Between beta tests a new application of the Rosary 1653, an experimental sonic-emotional-spiritual technology provided by series sponsor Infinity 88.It is a question that invites both pious longing and dark cosmic musing.‍

Sarah and Omar join Cecilia Vicuña as she travels through ancestral memory via tenderly-told stories of her childhood in Chile. From a young age, Vicuña came to define solidarity as the combination of love and creativity occuring in kinship, and so deeply mourns the connection lost to the pandemic and to racial injustice. Separated from people with whom we create art and movements, how do we go on? It is mountingly necessary for Vicuña’s continued poetry and art practice, which builds links out of a history that has been violently, deliberately obscured. She suggests that when our entire universe of knowledge is “forcefully removed” by colonization, our only recourse is through a memory not of linear record, but of sensuality, tactility, feeling, and heart. In this way, we build what is not only possible, but which memory tells us is precedented. Recorded via Zoom on May 25, 2020.