Socrates

Technology is a Magnifying Mirror, Not a Crystal Ball

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“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the smartest species of them all?”

“You, oh Homo Sapiens, are smart, it is true.
But AI will be smarter even than you.”

***

The most popular myth about technology is perhaps the myth that technology is a crystal ball. A crystal ball because it allegedly allows us to see the future. And to evaluate if that is indeed true, or not, we have to understand the etymology of the word technology – what it means and stands for, or at least what it used to mean and stand for.

The word technology comes from two Greek words – techne and logos. Techne means art, skill, craft, or the way, manner, or means by which a thing is gained. Logos means word, the utterance by which inward thought is expressed, a saying, or an expression. So, literally, technology means words or discourse about the way things are gained. In other words, technology is merely “how” we do things and not “why” we do them or “what” we should be doing. Because it is not an end in itself but rather merely a means to an end.

So technology is not a crystal ball because it does not help us see the future. Instead, technology is a magnifying mirror because it merely reflects our present and, more importantly, who we are.

Technology is a mirror because it reflects the engineers, designers, and programmers who make it. But it is also a mirror to humanity in general and all of our collective dreams, hopes and fears, our knowledge and our ignorance, our strengths, and weaknesses, our good, and our evil. But it is not a normal kind of mirror because technology magnifies and amplifies things – so it always has unforeseen consequences. And the key point here is that technology doesn’t have an essence of its own because it merely reflects our own essence.

So, instead of focusing exclusively on polishing the mirror – i.e. improving technology, we might want to invest some time and resources on improving the image we ourselves project in it – i.e. who we are being, what we are doing and why we are doing it.

Therefore, ultimately, it is not about technology. It’s about us.

Because, as I’ve said many times before, you can have the best possible How but if you mess up your Why or What you will do more damage than good. That is why technology is not enough.

And there are many historical examples of how better technology did not make our lives better but worse. For example, historian Yuval Noah Harari called the Agrarian Revolution “history’s greatest fraud.” [Because in every way measurable – i.e. health, longevity, work hours per week, nutrition, infant mortality, etc, we were better off as hunter-gatherers.] And today, if we are not careful, we are running the risk that our current technological revolution may also turn out to be our epoch’s greatest fraud. And you can see that nowhere better than in Silicon Valley and Facebook.

Why Facebook? Because Facebook started as magic, then it became manic and, with the Cambridge Analytica revelations, we realized it has become monstrous. And it is not hard to see that most technologies we have invented since the industrial revolution either already follow a similar path from magic through manic to monstrous, or are in danger of doing that. Because humanity is magic, manic and monstrous. And technology reflects us. Examples abound but I can’t think of anything better than plastic.

You see, in the early 20th-century plastic was literally marketed as the magic material. Because you could do almost anything out of plastic but cheaper, faster and easier. And so we quickly became manic obsessive with plastic and did build almost everything out of it. But today it is not hard to see that we are neck deep in the monstrous stage because whole areas of our oceans contain more plastic pieces than fish. And, to give you a tiny example of just how bad it has become, check this out:

we now produce 1,000,000 plastic water bottles per minute on our planet.

What is worse is that, at best, only 9% ever get recycled. The other 910,000 plastic bottles per minute, end up in the environment. And, of course, water bottles are but a tiny fraction of the total plastic production on our planet. So it is no surprise that we are literally drowning in this originally magic, then manic and now monstrous technology. [Why would AI be any different?!]

So technology doesn’t help us see the future. It only helps us see ourselves. And if we put garbage in, we are going to get garbage out. Only this time it’s exponential. Ditto with stupidity, prejudice or evil.

Therefore, we can’t really fix technology unless we fix ourselves first. Because technology is a magnifying mirror, not a crystal ball.

Ex-Google Design Ethicist Tristan Harris on Technology and Human Downgrading

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Tristan Harris is one of my heroes. And I don’t know about you but I am much more demanding and harder on my heroes. I just expect them to hold themselves to a higher standard, to know more, to do more, to be more and, perhaps most of all, to live and breathe their own message every moment. So when a hero of mine falls short of my [unrealistic?!] hopes and expectations I am rather disappointed, even heartbroken.

It starts with simple things, like having a fantastic podcast presciently titled Your Undivided Attention yet failing to walk your talk and provide your own undivided attention when being interviewed yourself. Getting so distracted by technology and people around you that I end up repeating unanswered questions multiple times and having to edit a number of moments out the final video. How can you ask people to give you their “undivided attention” if you are not willing or able to give your own “undivided” attention when it’s your turn?

It proceeds with what seems to me is a clear lack of understanding of what ethics means or stands for. [No, it is not about the extreme, niche case of the trolley dilemma that predominantly computer scientists are concerned with and misbelieve that ethics is about.] It peaks with a common Silicon Valley misconception of the very definition of technology, which in my view is often at the root of our consequent problems. And it winds down with a Ted Kaczynski misquote while admitting to never reading him.

It is inconsistencies and gaps like that which say a lot in my view. And, unfortunately, I can keep going with a number of other examples. But my interview was never intended to diminish Tristan Harris or his work. Especially since I completely agree with him on both the urgency and the importance of our current technological crisis. I also believe that Tristan Harris is a genuine, honest, humble, smart, eloquent and well-intentioned guy who has identified a huge problem and decided to devote his life for solving it. He has also managed to garner more public attention and bring more focus to the issue than most anyone I know. And those are all commendable things. As well as a great foundation to build on. But, after dealing with Tristan’s team for nearly a year and after doing this interview, it seems to me that neither Tristan Harris nor his colleagues are yet the people they have to be in order to make the difference that they want to make. Of course, none of us is perfect, me least of all, and so I remain with the hope that Tristan and the Center for Humane Technology would, in time, become the people that they have to be to solve the fundamental problem they want to solve. Or else we may all be screwed.

It is also very likely that I simply did an extremely poor job not only at conducting this interview but also at connecting with and especially reading Tristan Harris. Which is why I recommend that you start by watching one of Tristan’s TED talks together with his most recent Humane: A New Agenda for Tech presentation that I have attached below before you watch my interview with him. I believe that those are much better examples of what he represents and stands for.

Who is Tristan Harris?

Called the “closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience” by The Atlantic magazine, Tristan Harris was the former Design Ethicist at Google. He is a world expert on how technology steers us all, leaving Google to engage the issue publicly. Tristan spent over a decade understanding subtle psychological forces, from his childhood as a magician to working with the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab, to his role as CEO of Apture, which was acquired by Google. He has been featured on 60 Minutes, TED, The Atlantic, the PBS News Hour, and more. He has worked with major technology CEOs and briefed Heads of State and other political leaders.

Tristan Harris on Singularity.FM

During my 70-minute interview with Tristan Harris, we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: Tristan’s magician background and the universal hackability of human nature; his studies at Stanford’s Persuasive Tech Lab; his journey to founding the Center for Humane Technology; high tech’s race down our brain stems and human downgrading; the definition and ethics of [persuasive] technology; Tristan’s biggest fear that tech is destroying our ability to see reality in shared ways, agree on the facts, coordinate and take action; why he believes that Silicon Valley is an existential threat; the dangers of being exponential; the possible solutions to our technological problems.

My favorite quote that I will take away from our conversation with Tristan Harris is this:

I want people to understand what’s happening and going wrong with technology as an interconnected system of harms. That we don’t have addiction or isolation happening separately from people believing in more conspiracy theories. There’s a relationship between people being more isolated and being more vulnerable to conspiracy theories on YouTube that are maximizing their attention. There’s a relationship between shorter attention spans and people only being able to say short brief things about an increasingly complex world that leads to more polarization. So there’s an interconnected system of harms that’s equivalent to social climate change that’s tilting the social fabric.

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation or become a patron on Patreon.

Andreas Antonopoulos: Just because you don’t need bitcoin, doesn’t mean it’s not needed.

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I first met Andreas Antonopoulos at the 2014 Bitcoin Expo conference in Toronto, Canada. At that time Andreas was already established as the most publicly recognized expert in the field of crypto-currency, not in the least due to his impressive capacity to take the geek out of bitcoin and make it relevant to and understandable by everyone. To top it off, Antonopoulos is extremely eloquent, has an impressively broad spectrum of knowledge and is an admitted disruptarian. No wonder that my 1st interview with Andreas was so popular. Unfortunately, it took five years before I finally managed to get him back on my show but I hope you enjoy it as much as I did because he is as brilliantly illuminating as ever.

During my 60-minute interview with Andreas Antonopoulos, we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: why he is first and foremost an educator and an author; his recent books Mastering Bitcoin and The Internet of Money; why we need stronger privacy in the bitcoin protocol; blockchain vs bitcoin; Mike Hearn’s claim that bitcoin has failed; power, influence and governance; crypto-exchanges, price manipulation and regulation; the Ethereum DAO hard fork; whether proof of stake is the future leading consensus mechanism; bitcoin’s energy consumption…

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation or become a patron on Patreon.

Who is Andreas Antonopoulos?

 

Andreas Antonopoulos is a best-selling author, speaker, educator, and one of the world’s foremost bitcoin and open blockchain experts. He is known for delivering electric talks that combine economics, psychology, technology, and game theory with current events, personal anecdote, and historical precedent effortlessly transliterating the complex issues of blockchain technology out of the abstract and into the real world.

In 2014, Antonopoulos authored the groundbreaking book, Mastering Bitcoin (O’Reilly Media), widely considered to be the best technical guide ever written about the technology. His second book, The Internet of Money, unveiled the “why” of bitcoin—and became a bestseller on Amazon— and led to the wildly successful follow-up The Internet of Money Volume Two. His fourth book, Mastering Ethereum (O’Reilly Media) was published in December of 2018.

He is a teaching fellow with the University of Nicosia, serves on the Oversight Committee for the Bitcoin Reference Rate at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and has appeared as an expert witness in hearings around the world, including the Australian Senate Banking Committee and the Canadian Senate Commerce, Banking and Finance Committee.

Nikola Danaylov at Devolutions HQ: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Technology

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Last week I got interviewed by Devolutions HQ. I enjoyed the interview a lot and thought Yann did a fantastic job editing it. So I decided to share it with you. This way, hopefully, you can enjoy it too. But don’t shy away from criticism 😉

Finally, towards the end of the interview, we explain how you can be one of 3 people to receive a free copy of my book Conversations with the Future.

Show Notes:

In today’s episode, I have the pleasure of having Nikola Danaylov, aka Socrates, to Devolutions HQ. He’s an international bestselling author, keynote speaker, futurist, strategic adviser, and philosopher. His book Conversations with the Future: 21 Visions for the 21st Century is a #1 Amazon Bestseller and his Singularity.FM is one of the most widely sought out podcasts in the niche. During the show, we discuss all sorts of interesting IT related information, whether it is a futuristic toothbrush or the importance of having a personal code of ethics when developing software. It’s a bit longer than usual, so feel free to minimize the screen and just listen to the audio.

Just so everyone is clear. We know that our audience comes from a wide variety of backgrounds, both religious and political so the views, information, or opinions expressed in this video are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of Devolutions Inc its employees.

Timestamps:

Introduction – What Socrates was all about [2:17]

Question #1 – Explain what you mean by Technology is the How, not the Why or the What? [4:05]

Question #2 – Are there any dangers in relying too much on technology? [5:28]

Question #3 – What advice or encouragement would you like to give to young people going into the tech field? [10:12]

Question #4 – How do you think AI will affect or influence the IT workplace? [12:54]

Question #5 – What is the basic concept of the singularity. [20:11] – 17 Definitions of the Technological Singularity: https://www.singularityweblog.com/17-… [21:08]

Question #6 – What can we do to stay human during these technological advances? [27:02]

Book Giveaway – Tell us what you thought about the show below and we will randomly pick three winners to get a copy of Nik’s book! [32:37]

Sir Martin Rees on the Future: Prospects for Humanity

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Today my guest is world-renowned cosmologist and Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees. Martin has written 11 books and more than 500 scientific papers on topics ranging from the Big Bang and cosmology to technology and the future of humanity. Sir Rees has also been concerned with the threats stemming from humanity’s ever-heavier ‘footprint’ on the global environment and with the runaway consequences of ever more powerful technologies. His new book On the Future: prospects for humanity addresses these issues.

During our 90-minute interview with Martin Rees, we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: why he is a scientist and teacher first and foremost; his interest in existential risks and policy; his journey from math to astronomy and cosmology; his environmental and nuclear concerns; the necessity for ethics in science; my interview with Lawrence Krauss; his greatest fear and biggest dream; AI and the Singularity; technological unemployment, UBI and taxation; the future of space exploration; the problem of consciousness; his bet with and differences from Steven Pinker; the major issues humanity is facing in the 21st century; the limits of science and a theory of everything.

My favorite quote that I will take away from Martin Rees’ book is:

“We need to think globally, we need to think rationally, we need to think long term, empowered by 21st-century technology but guided by values that science alone can’t provide.”

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation or become a patron on Patreon.

On the Future: Prospects for Humanity [Book Trailers]

Humanity has reached a critical moment. Our world is unsettled and rapidly changing, and we face existential risks over the next century. Various prospects for the future—good and bad—are possible. Yet our approach to the future is characterized by short-term thinking, polarizing debates, alarmist rhetoric, and pessimism. In this short, exhilarating book, renowned scientist and bestselling author Martin Rees argues that humanity’s future depends on our taking a very different approach to thinking about and planning for tomorrow.

Who is Martin Rees?

Martin Rees is a cosmologist and space scientist. He is based in Cambridge, where he has been Director of the Institute of Astronomy, a Research Professor, and Master of Trinity College. He was President of the Royal Society (the academy of science for UK and Commonwealth) during 2005-2010. In 2005 he was appointed to the UK’s House of Lords. He belongs to numerous foreign academies including those of the US, Russia, Japan and the Vatican and has received many international awards for his research, including the Balzan, Crafoord, Gruber and Templeton prizes. He writes and lectures extensively for general audiences and is the author of nine books. In addition to his involvement in international science and policy, he has been concerned with the threats stemming from humanity’s ever-heavier ‘footprint’ on the global environment, and with the runaway consequences of ever more powerful technologies. His new book On the Future: prospects for humanity addresses these issues.

Speaking as both an astronomer and “a concerned member of the human race,” Sir Martin Rees examines our planet and its future from a cosmic perspective. He urges action to prevent dark consequences from our scientific and technological development.

A post-apocalyptic Earth, emptied of humans, seems like the stuff of science fiction TV and movies. But in this short, surprising talk, Lord Martin Rees asks us to think about our real existential risks — natural and human-made threats that could wipe out humanity. As a concerned member of the human race, he asks: What’s the worst thing that could possibly happen?

Chapter 5: The Importance of Story [Narratives and MTP’s]

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ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future

an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov

 

Chapter 5: The Importance of Story

“It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.” Patrick Rothfuss

Stories are not just stories. Stories matter. Because, to paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche, if one has a sufficiently strong “why” one can endure any “how.” And the “why” comes not from facts or events. It comes from the story we attach to them. This desire to meaning is secondary only to the desire to survive: as soon as survival is not at stake, meaning becomes the primary motivation. But sometimes, even when survival is at stake, meaning can provide motivation for survival. That’s how important story is.

For example, if one is suffering greatly one can decide that it is meaningless to go on and give up on life. Or, like Viktor Frankl, one can choose a story that attaches positive meaning to their suffering and thus be motivated to endure even the living hell of Auschwitz. And this is true for individuals, or larger groups of people, such as corporations, religions or nations. As Frankl said:

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

So, we are free to choose the story even when we are not free to choose our circumstances. Thus, the story is our “why” while the circumstances are merely our “how.” And the story is what ultimately makes the difference. Because a story is something that helps us feel connected to a reason and, more importantly, to a purpose.

For example, in the case of larger groups of people – such as corporations, story is the glue that brings everyone together and motivates them to cooperate and overcome obstacles. And so, in the past couple of decades, the most successful organizations have come up with what has been called a Massively Transformative Purpose [MTP]. [Salim Ismail, Exponential Organizations, page 53]

An MTP is the distilled essence of a story that captures who this organization is for and what’s its mission or purpose. For example, Google’s MTP is “organize the world’s information.” TED’s MTP is “ideas worth spreading.” Deep Mind’s MTP is “Solve intelligence. Use it to make the world a better place.” Calico’s MTP is “solve death.” Mark Zuckerberg’s new charity foundation’s MTP is “cure all disease.” Doctors Without Borders’ MTP is “medical aid where it is needed most.” [Having an MTP is particularly important for Millennials for whom the story of money is often not a sufficient “why.”]

Larger groupings of people such as religions and nations also utilize the power of story to forge their respective religious or national identity. Thus Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism all tell their own mythical stories. And the more we believe in those stories, the more we identify ourselves as Jewish, Christian, Muslim or Hindu. But nations or ideologies such as Liberalism, Humanism, Feminism, and Capitalism do it too. So, a Japanese identifies with the story that Japan – i.e., Nippon, is the “land of the rising Sun” – i.e., “the land of the Gods.” An American identifies with the story of “the land of opportunity” where everyone is free to pursue the “American dream.” A capitalist identifies with the “invisible hand” of the “free market”. A humanist identifies with the story that humanity is “the pinnacle of evolution”, “the supreme intelligence” and “the ultimate authority.”

Chapter 4: The Power of the Storyteller

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ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future

an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov

 

Chapter 4: The Power of the Storyteller

“Stories constitute the single most powerful weapon in a leader’s arsenal.” Howard Gardner

Before we have a story, any story, we must first have a storyteller. And that storyteller is a god, because within their narrative they are all-powerful, almighty and omnipotent. That’s why religion is among the most powerful stories of our civilization. And, naturally, the storyteller of such a popular story is, of course, a god. Or the son of God. Or the prophet of God. Or in the image of God. And he sets the rules and the laws, what is good and evil, what is right and wrong, what is and what is not possible. He tells us how to dress, what to eat, how to live, how to relate to each other, who must marry whom, where we are coming from, why we are here, what is the purpose of life and where we go after death. If we believe his story, we are going to not only listen to but also obey his “commandments.”

It is for this reason that nations and even corporations are also made by mythical stories. Because myth-making is team-building is nation-building is world-making – stories told on a different scale. The myth helps us make sense of the world as well as establish our proper place in it – whether as individuals, corporations or nations. It gives us both meaning and purpose. So, as long as we all believe in the same story, we will cooperate. And we are likely to obey the people who tell those stories. This is true not only in religion and politics but also in business, entertainment, music, art, science, etc. Because those who tell the most popular stories are the most powerful people. And ultimate success in telling a story grants access to ultimate power.

Up until now, it was humans who told stories. Naturally, those stories end up with humans being the central entity. But let us examine how our place in the story has changed through time.

Historically, we started with the story of animism where the world around us was imbued with feelings, and everything had a soul. There was no barrier between humans, animals, trees, stones, and rivers, and we were not above them in any way. One day we killed a wild animal to feed and clothe ourselves. The next day an animal could kill us to feed itself and its offspring. We had respect for all living things and considered them as equals in the great web of life.

Then the story of Theism brought hierarchy, and centralization of power, in the hands of one or many Gods. Since we humans – the storytellers, were naturally in the image of God [or God was in the image of us ;-] we placed ourselves just a step below Him, and all other animals got pushed down the ladder. The world became our “garden,” and everything in it was ours for the taking, including all “soulless” animals.

Finally, we came up with the story of the centrality of the human being – of how we are the pinnacle of evolution, the supreme intelligence – i.e. the sole measure, beginning and end of everything, and the masters of nature. So we made quick work of God and replaced him with us. Then we downgraded the animals even further down to the rank of mere Cartesian automata – machines unable to think, feel or suffer. [Or “resources” to be “harvested.”] Consequently, we could enslave and kill them for our pleasure, food or sport, by the billions, and without guilt. [Every year we kill over 70 billion animals and 1.3 trillion fish and other aquatic organisms.]

The idea that humans are or will be gods is a natural consequence of the power of the storyteller. Given that we are the storyteller, we are, by default, the heroes. Because no one is the villain in their own story. And that is why those who write the story [or history] are always good, benevolent, generous, right and wise. [It is also why we called ourselves Homo Sapiens – i.e., wise man.] But now, with the rise of artificial intelligence, that may change again. And the day a computer can tell a sophisticated story – one that can make others laugh, cry and [most of all] believe, is the day humanity may lose control of the story. Because, as we already saw above, the storyteller inevitably ends up not merely as the hero but also as the most powerful species. [And if that turns out to be the case, can we blame the Godlike AI’s if they come up with the story of AI-ism and end up treating humans the same way we “human-ists” treat animals?!]

Chapter 3: The Power of Story

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ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future

an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov

 

Chapter 3: The Power of Story

“We suffer not from the events in our lives but from our stories about them.” Epictetus

The most powerful stories are stories about things that don’t exist. Because our fictive language gave birth to legal fictions, social constructs and imagined realities. So much so that today imagined things are more powerful than real things. Trees, rivers, fish, animals and even the climate depend on our imaginary constructs for their future survival. There is no money, law, justice, inalienable human rights, religion, love, friendship, capitalism, corporations, nations or humanity outside of our common imagination. Never-the-less it is such fictitious entities that will decide the fate of the world, ourselves included.

The more fictitious a story is, the more powerful that story is, provided it has a large enough number of people embracing it. Because stories that spread don’t just win – they change the world. This is true of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism as much as it is true of Communism, Capitalism, Humanism, Nationalism, Feminism, Brexit, MeToo or human rights. And while not everyone embraces those, the most popular story on our planet is money. Because almost everyone accepts and therefore believes in the story of money.

In human civilization, not only everything but also everyone is a story. And that is true at every level we can think of – individually, collectively or globally, because each of those levels requires a story. The same person can embrace many different stories that give her meaning, which also set the spectrum of what is and what is not possible for her. For example, someone can be a mother, daughter, vegetarian, lesbian, police officer, Muslim, black and American – all at once. And each of those stories provides such powerful meaning that the person may be willing to kill, live or die for it. Thus, our identities are little more than a hodge-podge of often contradictory stories. But if we change our story we change our identity. And if we change our identity we change our actions, and therefore we change our future.

Conversely, people who have not embraced or have lost their personal story feel lonely, unmotivated, lack meaning, feel depressed and may even commit suicide. While people who have discovered their “calling” have basically found a compelling story and decided to embrace it as their own. And when many people embrace the same story we can have large-scale cooperation among millions of humans, who are otherwise all strangers to each other. Thus, the power of our civilization is built on the power of stories – our belief in them, our ability to spread them and our ability to support and follow those stories, no matter the cost. Therefore, we ought to be very careful rewriting our story because if we destroy our story, we destroy our civilization:

“Human civilization is an intensely fragile construction. It is built on little more than belief: belief in the rightness of its values; belief in the strength of its system of law and order; belief in its currency; above all, perhaps, belief in its future.” [The Dark Mountain Manifesto page 5]

Media Theorist Douglas Rushkoff on Team Human

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Douglas Rushkoff has been named one of the world’s ten most influential intellectuals by MIT. He is an award-winning author, broadcaster, media theorist and documentarian who studies human autonomy in the digital age. Rushkoff is the host of the popular Team Human podcast and was among the very first guests I ever interviewed when I started my own podcast, nearly 10 years ago. Needless to say, it was way overdue to catch up with Douglas and see how his thoughts on the technological singularity and transhumanism have evolved and why.

During our 75-minute interview with Douglas Rushkoff, we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: who he is as a human; his path from theater to technology; the “society of spectacle” we live in; why futurists (still) suck; what he calls “the deeply embedded anti-human agenda”; capitalism, chartered monopolies, and centralized currencies; Team Human and why being human is a team sport; anthropomorphism and mechanomorphism; the rise of suicides among young professionals; the singularity as an industrial age fantasy of solving our problems; the limitations of blockchain; the meaning of being human and the downsides of our exceptionalism; the need for ReWriting the Human Story.

Just two of my favorite quotes that I will take away from this conversation with Douglas Rushkoff are:

“We have the power of cancer but really not much more awareness of our self-destructive trajectory.”

“It’s interesting to me to live in a world where liking people is radical.”

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation or become a patron on Patreon.

 

Who is Douglas Rushkoff?

 

Named one of the world’s ten most influential intellectuals by MIT, Douglas Rushkoff is an award-winning author, broadcaster, and documentarian who studies human autonomy in the digital age. The host of the popular Team Human podcast, Rushkoff has written twenty books, including the bestsellers Present Shock, Program or Be Programmed and Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus.

Rushkoff has written regular columns for Medium, CNN, Daily Beast, and the Guardian, and made the PBS Frontline documentaries “Generation Like” and “Merchants of Cool.” He coined such concepts as “viral media” and “social currency,” and has been a leading voice for applying digital media toward social and economic justice. Douglas Rushkoff is a research fellow of the Institute for the Future, and founder of the Laboratory for Digital Humanism at CUNY/Queens, where he is a professor of media theory and digital economics. He lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.

Chapter 1: The Definition of Story

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ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future

an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov

 

Chapter 1: The Definition of Story

We started our thought experiment with Kenneth Burke’s definition of story as “equipment for living.” Burke offers a great start but it is Jeff DeChambeau who really brings all the essential elements together in defining story as “information processing technology.” And, whether we realize it or not, it is among the oldest, most powerful and longest lasting technologies we have. But let’s break it apart and take a closer look to see how and why DeChambeau’s definition works so well.

The first thing we ought to note is that story is about information. It started around the Cognitive Revolution 70,000 years ago when we had no writing and story was the vehicle which carried information from one generation to the next. Then we invented writing and moved from the oral to the written word. But story got even more powerful because we could suddenly send information both across space and time. Even today, in the age of 24-hour-news, social media, YouTube videos, and audio podcasts, the most popular and powerful memes still come wrapped in some kind of story. Because story was and continues to be the best vehicle for capturing, carrying and transmitting information.

The second is that story is about processing – i.e. organizing said information in a way that provides new insight we did not have before. In other words, a story can take data and make sense of it. So it turns information into knowledge. Because there is a point to using story, a lesson to be learned.

The third part is that it is technology because story is a conceptual tool created by homo sapiens to make sense of the world. [For example, Kevin Kelly defines technology as “anything useful invented by a mind.”] That’s why Robert McKee notes: “Story is about trying to make sense out of the confusion, chaos, and terror of being a human being.” And as any good tool, we can apply story to many a problem to help us understand, make sense of and deal with it. No story, no way to organize information, no way to process it, no way to make sense of, remember or understand. Because story is ultimately about understanding. [More on that in Chapter 4 and 7.]

Story also has very specific features, characteristics, and structure that make it both powerful and unique. And it is neither simple narrative nor mere propaganda.

For example, story is different from narrative just like chronicles are different from history. Because chronicles and annals are but a sequence of often random chronological occurrences, without any connection, common theme or thread. Which is why they are so boring, tedious, hard to follow and hard to remember. Unfortunately, even today, too many mistake narrative for story and then wonder why they fail to connect with people and get support for their goals. To turn a narrative into a story we need a unifying theme, a greater point of view, a moral or a lesson that will allow us to not only remember and organize but also process and understand what has occurred, why, and what might be next.

That is why Hayden White argued that the moment we brought story to narrative is the moment we gave birth to history. In the words of David Campbell “history proper requires the narration of events so that they are ‘revealed as possessing a structure, an order of meaning, that they do not possess as a mere sequence.” For both White and Campbell, it is only after embracing a meaningful structure that history proper breaks from the ranks of the ancient annals and chronicles, and claims its modern day place among the other sciences.

Story is also different from propaganda because story is about the audience, not about the storyteller. This is a critical point to understand. A story is not about the storyteller’s ego or agenda. It is about the audience – informing, entertaining, enriching and teaching them something worthwhile. That is why your press release is not a story. Neither are your latest news, greatest achievements, biggest product launch, volunteer work and charity donations. Those are all about you. Those are all propaganda.

Source Google

A story also has a particular structure – i.e. it has a beginning, middle and end. So, while the characters, places or even the objectives can change, the structure remains mostly the same:

Beginning: Shit happens.

The beginning sets the problem and creates intrigue – i.e. it hooks the audience to the plot and whets their curiosity as per how the problem might be resolved. Who, what, why, when and where?

Middle: Shit happens to [good] people like us.

This is the struggle – where all the drama of the story unfolds, while our protagonists – who are in some important ways very much like us, struggle to overcome the problem. What was the struggle? What was done to overcome it?

End: What we learn from shit.

This is the resolution – what did we learn from this particular story.

In short, the structure of a story is basically a roller coaster where we go down and up and down and up again. As David Sloly noted in his TEDx talk:

“Stories are like roller coasters – they’re only any good if they’re coming up and down.”

Chapter 2: The Story of Story

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ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future

an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov

 

Chapter 2: The Story of Story

“The limits of my language means the limits of my world.” Ludwig Wittgenstein

Humanity has searched for meaning since our beginning. And we find it in story. The story that we tell ourselves. Thus, a world devoid of meaning becomes meaningful. But this meaning is given by and designed for us. And it is created in language.

The truly unique feature of human language is not its ability to transmit practical information – about animals, rivers, stones, and trees because this feature is present in the languages of many other species. What makes human language unique is its ability to transmit information about things that don’t exist in the physical world at all – like gods, money, law, ethics, corporations and so on. That’s why ours is a fictive language. And this fact is very important for the two key features of our civilization:

1. Large-scale cooperation: Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons rarely cooperated in groups larger than 150 [Dunbar’s number]. This placed a rather low upper limit on what they could accomplish. Homo Sapiens, however, when given a powerful enough story, can exhibit cooperation among millions of strangers working towards the same goal. And what we can accomplish is of unlimited scale. Both positive and negative examples abound in history from wars and genocides to sports events, through religious rituals, social movements, construction projects such as the Great Wall of China, or technological and scientific breakthroughs such as the Large Hadron Collider and space exploration.

2. Rapid Innovation of social behavior and faster cultural evolution: What this means is that when we change the story, we change the culture. When enough people switch the story they believe in we have a popular revolution. For example, in 1789 the population of France shifted almost overnight from believing in the story of the divine right of their king to the story of the sovereignty of the people. [“Liberté, égalité, fraternité.”] Now known as the French Revolution, this event shows how cultural revolutions, in contrast to genetic revolutions, are very fast. And that, in turn, is the main reason why humanity has outstripped all other species in evolutionary terms – because we are using our culture, not our genes, to evolve faster.

In short, without our fictive language, we can’t have a story. And without a human story, our human civilization will not exist. So, the story of story is the story of our language.

Part  I: Story

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ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future

an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov

 

Part  I: Story

“People always find it easier to be a result of the past rather than a cause of the future.” Unknown

Are we just billiard balls in a predetermined cosmic game of pool? Or are we free to choose our future?

My thesis in this thought-experiment is that our future is indeed determined. But not by some unbreakable and deterministic law of nature. No. Our future is determined by a story that we have created. Because ours is a civilization of story. So much so that today humanity lives and dies not by facts but by and for our stories. And this has gone so far that at present the fate of actual, non-fictional entities – such as animals, rivers, trees, mountains, oceans and even our planet, is determined by stories – such as money, religion, law, corporations, nations and international organizations.

In other words, in our civilization, what is real and we can touch, see, feel and smell, is ruled by what is fictional and doesn’t necessarily exist outside of the shared human imagination. All future possibilities – what is and what is not possible, are not determined by past events or facts on the ground. They are determined by the stories we attach to those because we are story-telling animals. And that is true for us individually – as persons, or collectively – as organizations, businesses, nations and even for our civilization.

I claim that our story determines our future. But I am not claiming that anything is possible. Geographical, biological, physical and economic forces do create constraints. But those constraints leave sufficient room for us to choose our future and not be bound by determinism. Yes, the past does exert a choke-hold on us all but we can break free if we can change the story. And it doesn’t matter if you are an individual, a company, a nation or an international organization – change your story, change your future.

But before we have a story, any story, we must first have a story-teller. Therefore, the most important story, that which all other stories are derived from, the story-of-all-stories, is the story of the story-teller: the human story.

The human story has been rewritten several times already. The last time was somewhere between the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution when we dethroned God as the central authority in the Universe and took his place instead. Since then our story has spread the myth of the supremacy and centrality of the human being – of how we are the pinnacle of evolution, the supreme intelligence and the masters of nature. And everything we have done since then, together with everything we are likely to do in the future, will stem from that story – the story of who we are, what’s our place in the universe, what we are here for and where we are going.

It is, therefore, this story that is the cornerstone of our stunning progress and fantastic accomplishments. It is also the same story that underpins our failures and current predicaments – be it climate change, nuclear war, terrorism or even artificial intelligence. For it is this story that gave us Auschwitz and took us to the Moon. And it is this story that will, in this century, determine if we are going to go extinct like the dinosaurs, or if and how we might populate the universe.

Now, the major challenges we are currently facing are mostly new kinds of challenges. And exponential technologies – such as genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, big data, synthetic biology, nanotechnology, are already causing disruptive change. But new kinds of challenges require new kinds of thinking. And, since we think in and are ruled by stories, we must rewrite the human story yet again. Because our current story is facing many new challenges. And recent events have shown it is starting to fall apart.

But before we can write a new story we must understand how the current story came to be. Only then can we hope to write a better one. This is not just a philosophical exercise but a question of survival for all life on our planet. Viktor Frankl, a Nazi Holocaust survivor, said it best:

“Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.”