Thoughts of a TechnoWizard

In this audiojournal entry, I update you all on my new contract at Futurus, applying for the Center for Civic Innovation in Atlanta, and participating in the OKR workshop for the Open Metaverse Interoperability community. I then get on my soapbox to talk about why banning 'politics' and similar things from work is not really possible. If anything, it actually standardizes the current political viewpoint of the organization and ostracizes people who come from very different backgrounds. I think we should instead be trying to figure out ways to have more meaningful discussions and instill psychological safety (ie how to have a more inclusive culture that encourages everyone to bring their 'whole self' and be the most productive/effective people they can be at work).

In this audiojournal entry, I share some updates on what I did over the weekend. I talk about what I learned from my mentors that talked about breaking down my idea into existing industries to learn how they do it. I then go on to talk a lot about company's vision and mission statement, going into detail about self-actualization, healthy transcendence, and why its important to have a solid foundation in good, humanistic psychology. 

SB Kaufman's Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization shows how humans are not inherently evil, lazy, selfish, greedy or bad; he shares a ton of research that shows how and why people become these things due to unfulfilled, deficient needs and unhealthy transcendence. 

This realization that people are inherently driven, helpful, explorative, and so on once their needs are met gives hope (ie actionable wisdom) for the cause of creating a better world by removing the barriers stopping people from meeting their needs and pursuing their growth.

In this audiojournal entry, I try to piece together and explain my understanding entropy, of how it is actually a good thing (or at least not always bad), and how we can better think about our role as entropic machines. 

Problematic (but interesting) definition of entropy - https://fs.blog/2018/11/entropy/

- Matrilocal society was the first major successful family structure 

- HGs had egalitarian society with biological-based specialization and roles     

- Perhaps we can have a more equal society with skills-based roles 

- HGs had no concept of scarcity, they didn't wander where they were going to get their food because they knew they could always find something     

- Similarly, what sets apart 'developed' nations and middle class families from poorer ones is the fact that they can find food and water... you don't have to plan out how to get your subsistence 

- HGs had highly involved child care in terms of education, play, character building, and self-sufficiency 

- We value all of these today, but comparatively, we do not have as good structures

 (Didn't get to talk about the following, maybe next time)     

I start this journal off talking about what we can learn and apply from hunter gatherer cultures: egalitarianism. I also ask questions about whether Google is net good for society. Though they have created massive value in the way of making knowledge more accessible, there is not much talk about the role they have played in the proliferation of 'alternative facts' and extremism; this is in addition to problems of data privacy, data collection, and data usage.  I eventually nerd out about water and the potential for *emergence* to be a better method of creating true artificial intelligence.

In this journal entry, I share some thoughts on what we can learn from hunter-gatherer societies in order to build a more egalitarian society.  I start off with some updates on my life so far: from learning more about interaction design and information architecture, to learning Axure, to designing complex datatables and tools for emotional intelligence.  I also talk about how/why I have been taking my time with developing my business plan. Going into depth about the importance of getting down to the fundamental issues behind the problems in our society today.