RUSHKOFF

Playing for Team Human today is interactive artist Lauren McCarthy. Lauren’s thought provoking work brings a unique and creative perspective on social interaction and the intersection of humans and technology.

In this episode, Lauren’s app Crowdpilot becomes the first “advertisement” to be featured on Team Human. Crowdpilot is an app in which real time conversation advice is crowdsourced from online third-party monitors. 

In another crowdsourcing experiment titled Social Turkers, McCarthy hired Amazon Mechanical Turks to participate with her on her own OkCupid dates. The Turks, connected via stream, give Lauren dating advice while she meets strangers in real life.

Lauren also discusses Follower, a service that puts humans into the role of real-time surveillance. Users sign up to be followed for a day, answering two questions: Why do you want to be followed? Why should someone follow you?

And finally, in her most recent project Lauren: A Human Smart Home Intelligence, Lauren attempts to become the human version of Amazon Alexa. What happens when our robot smart home devices are replaced with a real human?

In this conversation with Douglas, the third in our series of live Team Human events at Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, Lauren helps us reconsider our relationship to social technologies, convenience, privacy, intimacy, and autonomy. 

Next week we’ll conclude our live series of shows from Gray Area with the part two of this show, featuring Erik Davis, author of Techgnosis, Nomad Codes and host of The Expanding Mind podcast. Gray Area founder Josette Melchor will also join the team to share her inspiring story on building a home for digital arts and supporting the local community.

Patrons of Team Human got into these events free. Sustain Team Human by subscribing via patreon.com/teamhuman.

If you are enjoying this live series, please consider giving us a review on iTunes.

This week we continue with part two of our special live recording of Team Human at Gray Area Foundation for the Arts in San Fransisco. Joining Douglas on stage is cyberculture pioneer, educator, artist, author, visionary, and shoe painter, Howard Rheingold. 

“Mind amplifiers,” “psychedelic signifiers,” and “the instrumental vs. the sacred” are just the tip of the iceberg in a conversation that explores how we got to this moment in technology and society... and ultimately where we hope to go. Following Rushkoff and Rheingold’s conversation, Sci-Fi author and technology journalist Annalee Newitz (hear Newitz's conversation in part 1) rejoins the team for a roundtable discussion and audience Q & A. 

If you are just discovering Team Human, check out last week’s Episode 75, featuring the first hour of this of this live show with guest Annalee Newitz. Patreon supporters have access to the complete uncut interview at patreon.com/teamhuman. 

Music heard on today’s show; “Walkabout” by Throbbing Gristle (hear Genesis Breyer P-Orridge on Episode 67) Also heard on the show, music by Team Human Ep. 68 guest Stacco Troncoso plus intro and outro music from Fugazi.

If you enjoyed these live shows, Please share a review of Team Human on iTunes. Your recommendation helps Team Human to “find the others.”

This week's Team Human comes to you recorded live at the historic Grand Theater in San Francisco's Mission District, home to Gray Area Foundation for the Arts. We'll be sharing four installments of this live event, kicking it off with a conversation with Annalee Newitz, author of the mind blowing sci-fi novel Autonomous, as well as prior work Scatter Adapt and Remember: How Humans will Survive a Mass Extinction, founder of I09, and journalist for outlets such as Ars Technica among many others.

Annalee joins Douglas on stage to talk about artificial intelligence, autonomy, tech ethics, robot sex, saving the planet and more. It's a lively discussion, energized by the presence of a wonderful and welcoming audience.

Rushkoff kicks off this live series with an excerpt from his Team Human Manifesto, an excellent primer on the motivation driving this podcast and the connections being forged through its members.

Next week we'll pick up with part two of this live show, featuring cyberculture pioneer, educator, and artist Howard Rheingold.

During this live performance we featured Intro music from Fugazi, plus excerpts from Throbbing Gristle (Listen to Genesis Breyer P-Orridge with Douglas on Episode 67)

You can sustain Team Human by subscribing via Patreon. Patreon members received free access to these San Francisco Events. Visit patreon.com/teamhuman to join.

Playing for Team Human today is interdisciplinary thinker and technology philosopher Damien Williams. In this episode, Williams and Rushkoff look at the embedded biases of technology and the values programed into our mediated lives. How has a conception of technology as “objective” blurred our vision to the biases normalized within these systems? What ethical interrogation might we apply to such technology? And finally, how might alternative modes of thinking, such as magick, the occult, and the spiritual help us to bracket off these systems for pause and critical reflection? This conversation serves as a call to vigilance against runaway systems and the prejudices they amplify.

Learn more about Damien’s work at http://www.afutureworththinkingabout.com/

Rushkoff begins today’s show with a story from home. A well-meaning school administrator begins using social media to promote his school, posting pictures of students and classroom activities. As parents become upset, the question arises: Why is it so easy to lose sight of the design and purpose behind these platforms?"

This show features our usual intro and outro music thanks to Fugazi and Discord Records. Mid show you heard Throbbing Gristle (Listen to Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Douglas on Episode 67)

A very special thanks to our new patrons who support the show via Patreon. Go to patreon.com/teamhuman to subscribe and receive patron exclusives. 

Playing for Team Human today, cyber security expert Eleanor Saitta. Eleanor shares her deep knowledge on building secure and robust digital ecosystems. As Eleanor and Douglas converse on issues of privacy, encryption, and surveillance, a set of thought-provoking insights about online identity and human to human connection emerges. Does empathy scale across our cyber connections? Or is it confusion and distrust that are most apt to scale? 

Conversing over a shaky and intermittent VoIP connection, the question at hand seems to materialize within the interview. Luckily Saitta and Rushkoff overcome technical hurdles and find rapport and connection in a unique conversation that ultimately asks;

What is real? How do I know I am me? Is it safe? 

Opening today’s episode, Douglas looks back on the life of friend, cyber culture pioneer, and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation John Perry Barlow. Rushkoff remembers Barlow and their shared optimism for cyberspace back in that hopeful moment before the commercialization and corporatization of the internet. 

Team Human features intro an outro music clips thanks to Fugazi and Dischord Records. Mid-show you heard music by Episode 68 guest Stacco Troncoso 

Join the team at Patreon to sustain this show in get access to live events, rewards, and access to the Team Human Slack Channel. 

Playing for Team Human today is journalist, Boing Boing editor, Institute for the Future research director and recent Grammy Award Winning record producer David Pescovitz. Douglas spoke to David just days before he won the Grammy, with collaborators Tim Daly and Lawrence Azerrad, for best boxed or special limited-edition package for The Voyager Golden Record: 40th Anniversary Edition. The Voyager vinyl is an incredible artifact to hold and hear. The original Voyager Golden Records were launched on board the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft in 1977. Today these phonograph records are floating in interstellar space on Voyager 1 and at the edge of our solar system on Voyager 2. The records contain greetings, messages of peace, recordings of the “Sounds of Earth,” as well as an arresting collection of music from across the globe. The Voyager project continues to resonate as both a time capsule and a beacon of hope. Pescovitz, Daly, and Azerrad's meticulously sourced and documented 40th Anniversary vinyl release pays homage to the wonder and hopeful spirit that animates this space project. On today’s show, Pescovitz and Rushkoff talk about the creation of these incredible artifacts. 

Find the Voyager Golden Record 40th Anniversary Edition at Pescovitz’s Ozmarecords. You can also learn more about the Voyager project here. 

Check out these amazing photos of the making of this 40th Anniversary Edition:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ozmarecords/voyager-golden-record-40th-anniversary-edition/posts/1755549

Team Human is entirely listener supported. Thanks to our new January supporters who have subscribed to this show via Patreon. 

And don’t forget that you can find us on the road this month in San Francisco! Douglas will be hosting the first Team Human live event on February 16 and 17 at Gray Area Foundation for the Arts. Patreon subscribers get free access to the shows. Come find the others!

Playing for Team Human today is world renowned social scientist and systems thinker, Merrelyn Emery. Emery, with her partner the late Fred Emery, advanced Open Systems Theory and applied it to management of organizations and government. Open Systems Theory, or OST is the idea that autocracies make for bad governments, companies, and organizations. In this conversation, Merrelyn and Douglas discuss the power of community and collective organizing. They also discuss the social environments conducive to true grassroots, systemic change. As Merrelyn explains it, “By working together with collective responsibility, people can regain control over their own affairs, in their own communities and organizations, by cooperating to meet shared goals rather than competing or peeling off as individuals to do ‘their own thing’.”

Douglas begins todays show announcing the first of exciting new Team Human live events in 2018. Rushkoff will be hosting two evenings of no-holds-barred Team Human discussions in San Francisco at GrayArea.org. On Friday, February 16, Douglas will host a conversation with guests Howard Rheingold and Annalee Newitz. On Saturday the 17th, Douglas will be joined by Erik Davis, author of Techgnosis, artist Lauren McCarthy, and Gray Area founder Josette Melchor. Get your tickets here.

Team Human Patreon supporters have special access to guest passes for both nights, so if you’re in the San Francisco area and considering supporting the show via Patreon, now is the time to sign up! 

You can also help by sharing a review on iTunes. 

Today’s music is thanks to Fugazi and Dischord Records and Stacco Troncoso of the P2P foundation.

Playing for Team Human today is Danielle Butin, founder of the Afya Foundation. Afya collects and sends surplus medical supplies from the US to those who need them around the world. In today’s conversation with Douglas, Danielle shares not only stories of the good accomplished through Afya, but also a broader strategy for human intervention. How did Danielle, an occupational therapist and geriatric care provider, come to launch an organization that has shipped more than six million pounds of medical and humanitarian supplies into areas of crisis? Danielle describes the change that can come by the simple act of listening and then responding to need. She shares her zeal for deep human encounters and teaches that great ideas are "dancing among us” if we choose to be awake and aware enough to take notice.

Douglas begins today’s episode with a monologue about the “might makes right” mentality that may just be the key to deconstructing the underpinnings of the racist rhetoric and policy so prominent under this administration. 

Team Human is supported entirely by listeners. Visit patreon.com/teamhuman to sustain the show. You can also help by sharing a review on iTunes. 

Today’s music is thanks to Fugazi and Dischord Records, RU Sirius, and Stacco Troncoso of the P2P foundation.

Stay tuned for info on Team Human Live events and meet ups this Spring. 

Playing for Team Human today is immersion experience artist and pioneer, Ghislaine Boddington. Ghislaine joins Douglas for a conversation about the nature of immersive technologies and how we might bring our bodies with us into the digital realm. Rather than diminish the role of the physical body, Ghislaine’s work celebrates the body as an integral part of enhanced immersive experience. As Creative Director at body>data>space Ghislaine’s art and practice embraces technologies that amplify connection, collectivity, and togetherness. In the course of their conversation, Ghislaine and Douglas discuss the virtues of such body-positive, community-minded use of tech while simultaneously questioning how we might we explore digital immersion in a way that avoids paving the way for those who would exploit us. Thus emerges the question, in the process of embedding digital devices within our physical selves, do we risk becoming the raw materials for the next frontier of technology-driven extractive capitalism? How might we steer this ship toward team human values?

Douglas begins today’s show with a monologue about the threat of technology usurping human agency. It’s a personal story about his neighborhood UPS driver who refused to conform to the GPS route, opting instead to become part of the local community rather than be a mere delivery “robot.”

This week’s episode features our usual intro and outro music thanks to Fugazi and Dischord Records. At the midroll music was composed and recorded by last week’s guest, Stacco Troncoso of the P2P foundation. 

Thanks to all our supporters on Patreon for making this show possible. If you enjoy Team Human consider becoming a subscribing Patreon member. You can also help us by sharing a review on iTunes and telling a friend about the show. 

Playing for Team Human today is Stacco Troncoso of the P2P Foundation. Stacco brings with him deep knowledge and enthusiasm for the power of the commons. Stacco and the Commons Transition team put their faith in people, believing in the potential of diverse, empowered communities to address complex problems. Far from a utopian fantasy, P2P offers a wealth of resources including models from groups who have already successfully transitioned to a commons approach in governance, finance, and culture. Stacco and crew have just launched a new Commons Transition Primer, loaded with case studies and beautifully designed research on ways to make the commons transition a reality in your community.

Today’s show features music interludes composed, recorded, and performed by our guest, Stacco Troncoso. Overlaid are excerpts from a talk Stacco gave at Prix Ars in 2016. The page header illustration is from the Commons Transition Primer website, by Mercè Moreno Tarrés. Our opening song is Foreman's Dog by Fugazi.

Opening today’s episode, Rushkoff looks at the Trump-Russia collusion narrative. In his “by any means necessary” moment, why does Trump even bother to deny collusion with Russians? And is media’s obsession with the Russia story distracting us from Trump's dangerous policies and appointments?

If you enjoyed this episode, dig deeper:

• How can I take part in the Commons Transition
• Commons in the Time Of Monsters: How P2P politics can change the world, one city at a time.
• ​​Short: Q&A-style illustrated articles presenting some of the P2P Foundation’s main positions
• ​​Long: In-depth, longer articles
• ​​Library: Downloadable PDF versions of P2P Foundation research publications
• ​​More: Video, audio and other content, plus site information and other links
• http://www.guerrillatranslation.org/

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