A letter from the labyrinth – Bristol, UK. Note the Quaker involvement in the early slave trade as ship owners and financiers.   March 18, 2023 Hi Alison, It’s Sea, from Bristol, UK. I thought I’d write and send a few links concerning developments around 4IR and smart cities from my corner of the labyrinth. […]

Last night I streamed the third installment in our “Flow Life” series examining themes related to the new collaborative venture of Adam Neumann (WeWork) and Marc Andreessen (a16z). I was joined by Lynn Davenport, a close friend and diligent advocate for children, who is based in Dallas. In this episode we discuss issues of education […]

The research below was put together by a friend, Daruchan, who shares my interest in slime mold.   This is a story about the Blob, also known as slime mold. Physarum Polycephalym Is it an alien who came to earth to end humanity? Or a space traveler who came here to start a (new) life? […]

I streamed the second installment of the “Flow Life” series last night with my friend Leo. Check out his recent work on natural capital sensor networks and data dashboards here! If you want to review the slides, here’s a link to the deck. Start at slide number 74.

Last night we streamed the first in a six-part video series examining the business model of We Work (data analytics) and how Adam Neumann’s new venture in the rental “experience” market is likely to intersect with a16z’s Web3 investment strategy. Future installments will feature discussions with Leo Saraceno, Lynn Davenport, Cliff Gomes, and Brandi Hartley. […]

Artificial intelligence needs “diversity.” Homogeneity won’t catalyze ecstatic “emergence.” But the diversity must be managed, that darn progressive “social efficiency” again. For that we need diversity dashboards, ostensibly for administering equity standards, but in reality used to to tag, track, and guide agents on the game board and direct the state of play. When I […]

Jeff Yass and his wife Janine, the Club of Growth, the Cato Institute are the ones setting up the mechanics of the “free market” game the masses are expected to play, ostensibly to pursue some imagined evolutionary imperative towards “progress” as a networked super-organism guided by effective altruism and collective self sacrifice. The vast majority […]

This week someone brought Naomi Wolf’s Sub Stack post, “Have the Ancient Gods Returned?,” to my attention. The narrative presented ran counter to my understanding of how we arrived at this point in history. After reading it, I felt like I needed to talk it out, and I’m grateful that my friend Cliff Gomes offered […]

This is part of a series: Part One – Mathematical Theories of Life Part Two – Governance Tokens and Training Kids to Bet Big Part Three – Civic Tech, the Wisdom of Crowds, and Offshore Sandboxes Part Four – The Language of Heartless Charity   There was at least one member of Sam Bankman-Fried’s circle […]

This is the first in what I hope will be a series of conversations where Jason Bosch, Leo Saraceno, and I share some of our research around Web3, the environment, complex systems, community governance, and ritualized behaviors. In this two-hour chat Leo talks about his new article, “Natural Asset Managers – How Decentralized Technology Will […]