RUSHKOFF

With the birth of the internet and advance of digital networks, we’ve been promised everything from creative cooperation and digital democracy, to the end of work and a new abundance of leisure time. It’s a promise of a techno-utopia that persists today. 

Playing for team human today, Dr. Richard Barbrook challenges this imaginary future by unearthing the neoliberal underpinnings of Silicon Valley’s vision of progress. Rushkoff and Barbrook engage in a conversation that both uncovers the economic forces driving the evolution of technology while simultaneously acknowledging the utility of our tech tools as evidenced in the recent organizing around Labour underdog, Jeremy Corbyn. 

Rushkoff opens with a monologue challenging his own initial enthusiasm for Universal Basic Income. Is UBI just another gaming of the system in order to perpetuate consumption in an vastly unequal society?

Team Human is supported entirely by listeners. Visit https://www.patreon.com/teamhuman to become a supporter and receive a variety of patron exclusives. 

Special thanks to Luke Robert Mason of Virtual Futures who facilitated this exchange and recorded this interview on location in London.

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This week on Team Human, the conclusion of Douglas's soul-searching conversation with friend and author Walter Kirn. Together, Kirn and Rushkoff explore how disingenuously promoted concepts such as “creative destruction” are used to replace human civilization with a business plan.

What would it mean to maximize human virtues of compassion or intelligence instead of machine virtues like speed and extraction? Is there a higher power, and do we need one in order to value one another?

Check out Walter Kirn's latest essay in Harper's, Apocalypse Always, out this week!

Thanks to our new supporters on Patreon. Visit patreon.com/teamhuman to join the team. The complete, uninterrupted conversation between Walter and Douglas is available to Patrons on the Team Human Patreon blog. Visit the patreon page for more exclusive content.

Music in today’s show: Mike Watt: beak-holding-letter-man , Joshua Sitron and the Team Human Band, R.U. Sirius: President Mussolini Makes The Planes Run On Time, Fugazi: Foreman's Dog

Part One of this Conversation: https://player.pippa.io/teamhuman/episodes/ep-45-walter-kirn-pt-1

 

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Playing for Team Human today, author and social critic Walter Kirn. Walter and Douglas engage in a two-part conversation that questions the so-called “evolution” of technology. Just how much of our humanity are we willing to surrender to our devices? Why do we deem our own replacement by computer programs to be the inevitable path of progress? And whose progress are we actually talking about?
We’ve broken this conversation into two parts. Tune in next week for Part 2. Visit walterkirn.com to learn more about his work including his latest book, Blood Will Out. Check out Kirn’s most recent column in Harper's. Douglas begins the conversation citing this recent interview with Kirn in Playboy.
Today’s show inaugurates our launch on Patreon. Visit patreon.com/teamhuman to support the show. Your subscription not only earns premium gifts, but also grants you access to the TeamHuman Slack channel, where we discuss the issues raised on the show, hold production meetings, and entertain ideas for new guests and features. Joining Team Human means participating as fully and directly as you would like to in the creation of this show, and having a direct channel for feedback and discussion of what we're doing. Whether you’re a long-time listener or just discovering the show for the first time, being a patron is a direct way to keep the Team Human conversation alive!
Music in today's show: Mike Watt: beak-holding-letter-man , Joshua Sitron and the Team Human Band play Growth Trap, and  Fugazi : Foreman's Dog


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This week, a special holiday episode featuring conversations with Astra Taylor and Thomas Gokey of the Debt Collective plus worker cooperative organizer Esteban Kelly.  We launched Team Human a little less than a year ago with little fanfare or promotion. Steadily we’ve assembled a formidable team of listeners via word of mouth, retweets, and person-to-person conversation. We’d like to take this week to introduce our more recent listeners to two conversations that set the tone for Team Human. Today’s show begins by going all the way back to very first Team Human interview with Astra Taylor and Thomas Gokey, co-founders of Strike Debt, Rolling Jubilee and most recently the Debt Collective. The Debt Collective is a direct action campaign that leverages the collective power of debtors, united together, against exploitative for-profit education and lending institutions in the US. Astra and Thomas give Team Human listeners a template for hacking real world systems and tapping into the power of solidarity. Join the collective at debtcollective.org. In the second half of today’s show, we revisit a conversation with executive director of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives, Esteban Kelly. Kelly offers Team Human a unique vision of solidarity that begins in the place where we spend 40 (or more) hours a week… the workplace. We’ll learn how democratic workplaces and cooperative ownership foster the conditions for openness, inclusion, and ultimately, economic justice.  Learn more about our first episode with Astra and Thomas here and episode #4 with Esteban here.  Music in this episode: Fugazi : Foreman's Dog Mike Watt: beak-holding-letter-man , R.U. Sirius: President Mussolini Makes The Planes Run On Time, plus a Team Human original in the outro.  Team Human is entirely supported by listeners. Click Support to donate.   

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Playing for Team Human today is permaculturalist Adam Brock, author of Change Here Now. Adam joins Douglas for a conversation about how humanity is integrally connected to natural ecosystems. “Nature is a textbook,” Adam explains, and so by paying close attention to ecological systems, we can better understand ourselves as part of a greater whole. It’s a theme that serves as the springboard into a conversation not only about the ways we grow food, but also about community, trust, and the deeper sense of connection that comes from a permaculture mindset.
Rushkoff opens today’s show with a monologue about Amazon’s recent purchase of Whole Foods and how scaling up in the digital economy threatens to leave humans behind. Rushkoff's most recent book Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity was just released in paperback with new expanded material last week.

• Adam Brock's new book Change Here Now is available at Amazon and Indie Bound.
• Adam founded www.thegrowhaus.org and works with The Wild Green Yonder. Also check out the Denver Permaculture Guild.

Music in this episode: Mike Watt: beak-holding-letter-man , Joshua Sitron and the Team Human Band play Growth Trap,  R.U. Sirius: President Mussolini Makes The Planes Run On Time, Fugazi : Foreman's Dog
Episode Photo: By Susanne Bollinger (Susanne Bollinger) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons

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Playing for Team Human is Ramesh Srinivasan, professor and author of Whose Global Village? Rethinking How Technology Shapes Our World. 
Today, information travels around the globe in an instant, and connection to far away people and places is merely a click away. Yet the prevalence of filter bubbles, the rise of political extremism, and the consolidation of network power into the hands of behemoth companies like Facebook and Google portend a growing disconnection in society. Ramesh Srinivasan looks beyond the slogans and "empty metaphors" often used to brand these technologies as inclusive, free, and liberating. On today's episode, Srinivasan and Rushkoff challenge the notion that technology automatically builds community as it is deployed globally. It’s a conversation that critically assesses the presumptions of Western technocrats who see growing data and digital connectivity as the end itself for building a more just world. 
For more information about Ramesh’s work and his latest book, Whose Global Village?, visit http://rameshsrinivasan.org/
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Playing for Team Human today, master of human connection and consensus, Loomio co-founder Richard Bartlett.Bartett, hailing from New Zealand, stopped by Douglas's home studio while on a community organizing workshop tour of the US. Bartlett and Rushkoff discuss the challenges of building consensus in an all too often top-down, winner-takes all society. Together we'll learn how Loomio, inspired by the general assemblies of Occupy Wall Street, strives to amplify collaborative power and foster more participatory democratic practice. It's a project that starts with small-scale, human-to-human connection and grows outward from there.
Rushkoff begins today's episode with a monologue premised on a similar theme. Being human is a "team sport" and the more we cave into the divisive fear of these hostile times, the harder it becomes to "occupy a reality" of mutual care and concern.
To learn more about Richard Barlett's work with Loomio visit his blog at http://blog.loomio.org/author/rdbartlett/ Loomio is part of the Enspiral Network. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out Team Human Ep. 23 with Enspiral Director Sylvia Zuur.
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Playing for Team Human today is Daniel Berninger. Berninger is a communications technologist who brings his unique, behind-the-scenes insight to a discussion about what distinguishes human-centered technological advancement from today’s all too prevalent machine-focused visions for the future. Berninger, who played an instrumental role in the creation of VoIP, or voice over internet communications technology, offers a critique of systems whose power is inflated by machine agendas. Berninger also takes aim at the bureaucratic glut of institutions and government and their self-serving structures that also threaten to alienate humans. Together, Berninger and Rushkoff find common ground in their celebration of solidarity and the irreducible nature of humanity as key to solving society’s intractable problems.
This show begins with a monologue from Rushkoff on how agendas, be it the "machine agenda" of the tech industry or the conspiracy-driven narratives of today’s establishment political punditry, serve to distort our sense of reality and direct our attention away from the most pressing threats we face today.
Production Note: Today’s show ironically suffered from VoIP and audio technical difficulties. We managed to save the content but the audio fidelity is less than ideal for Team Human. We apologize for the compromised sound and hope you enjoy the content. 
Team Human is 100% listener supported. Thank you for your contributions. Visit teamhuman.fm to support us.

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Just getting a thousand humans into a room together to sit and watch other humans act out something on stage is the miracle. Playwright J.T. Rogers understands why the very act of doing live theater is so hopeful, and applies this hope to intractable problems like the Middle East conflict - with surprising, and Tony-nominated results.
Also, a monologue from Douglas Rushkoff on the Manchester bombing, and what it means when a fatal stampede at a Who concert in Cincinnati can be considered the good old days.
More on J.T. Rogers, including tickets and info for his critically acclaimed work Oslo, at jtrogerswriter.com.

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On this week’s Team Human, we discover one of the reasons why knowing history matters. William Hogeland, author of Autumn of the Black Snake, tells the story of how and why the US Army was created - not to defend our borders, but to wipe out indigenous nations. And all that, in an effort to satisfy the growth mandate embedded in our economy by heroes of the neoliberal left like Alexander Hamilton. Make no mistake: Hogeland is a live wire.
The show opens with a related monologue from Rushkoff about why successful businesses should refrain from scaling up. How about staying local, and letting other companies just copy your model? Why and how has the need to scale and colonize new territory become our default?
Purchase Autumn of the Black Snake:  Indie Bound -or- Amazon
Read more from Hogeland on the book here.
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