Team Human with Douglas Rushkoff

This week is a special episode of Team Human. We are sharing an excerpt of a panel discussion recorded on location at IBM Watson in New York from August 2015, hosted by Douglas Rushkoff and produced by our friends at Virtual Futures in London. Douglas was joined by philosopher-sociologist Steve Fuller, tech entrepreneur and ethicist Martine Rothblatt, IBM Watson researcher Michael Karasick, and philosopher of technology, Dan O'Hara.Patreon subscribers have exclusive access to the full, unedited video with an engaging question and answer session at https://www.patreon.com/teamhuman. Start your monthly subscription today to support the show and get access to the Team Human Slack Channel as well as other subscriber rewards. July and August rewards are shipping this week!Enjoy this discussion and please review Team Human on iTunes or your preferred podcast platform and help spread the word about the show!Thanks Luke Robert Mason for sharing the audio! Music on today's show is Mike Watt, Stephen Bartolomei, and Fugazi.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Consider a text message in which you are deciding where to meet for dinner with a friend. As you go back and forth in that stream of abbreviated communication, you suggest, “Let’s eat Italian,” to which your friend responds “Fine.” The one-word text sends you into a state of alarm. Did they mean “fine” as in “great,” or “fine” as in “Fine, you win, we can eat where you’d like”? Somewhere in this chain of communication trust, has been lost. Playing for Team Human today are William Softky and Criscillia Benford, a husband and wife team who are looking deep into the biophysical and mathematical underpinnings of establishing trust in communications. They’ve just published a paper titled “Sensory Metrics of Neuromechanical Trust” in the journal, Neural Computation. In this conversation, Softky and Benford join Douglas Rushkoff to dive deep into experiences of digital disorientation and even screen addiction. What’s really going on in our brains as we consume more and more digital stimuli? Have our nervous systems been recalibrated to these flattened, two-dimensional interactions? Are we "out of tune" when it comes to trust? Opening today’s show, Rushkoff looks at the recent Mayweather vs. McGregor boxing match. Did this spectacle represent a surrogate Trump vs. Obama battle? And while that fight is over, the victor declared, what does it mean when governance itself becomes a prolonged spectacle?  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Elizabeth Stewart, founding executive director of Civic Hall Labs, empowers technologists who put people first, amplifying the “civic” of civic tech. On today’s show, Stewart joins Douglas Rushkoff for a conversation about technology innovations whose value is measured in their contribution to the public good. It’s a type of thinking that asserts the means of tech innovation to be just as important as its ends. We’ll learn about Elizabeth's work and how Civic Hall labs is fostering participatory, human-centered collaborations to solve difficult societal challenges.Throughout this conversation Elizabeth highlights a number of tremendous resources for Team Human listeners engaged in building technology for public good. Start at CivicHallLabs.org for more info. One project you’ll find is Pro Bono Tech which connects local New York City area digital professionals to public sector organizations needing help. The program provides a useful model for starting a pro bono tech program in your own town or city. Also mentioned on the show is a project called https://www.justfix.nyc/. Here NewYork tenants can implement everyday technology to empower themselves against abusive landlords.Other resources mentioned in this episode include:Civic Tech Field Guide:at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FzmvVAKOOFdixCs7oz88cz9g1fFPHDlg0AHgHCwhf4A/edit#gid=963594345https://openideo.com/ - global collaborative community problem-solvinghttp://acumen.org/ - invests “patient capital” in social impact projects committed to improving the lives of the poor.https://www.invisionapp.com/ - a prototyping and collaborative design tool.Opening today’s show is a monologue about the urge to react to the constant churn of attention-grabbing media. Should we have a “reaction” ready for every crisis? Or is there value in slowing down enough to really "respond" to the complicated events unfolding in a frenetic world.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Playing for Team Human today is Alexandra Juhasz. Juhasz brings her extensive and diverse work as a filmmaker, media critic, and feminist activist to the Team Human round table.On today's show, Douglas and Alexandra explore the dangers of a media landscape that amplifies the grotesque and sensational. They also look at how human agency and autonomy are threatened on our hypercommercialized media platforms.Drawing on her commitment to feminist values, Alex encourages an embrace of the "situatedness of our humanity" and the vitality of difference. Such is the "tiny magic" necessary to build real world change while widening our embrace of a full-spectrum of humanity.Juhasz recently joined the CUNY faculty at Brooklyn College as professor of film and department chairperson. Visit http://alexandrajuhasz.com/ to learn more about her media-making and pedagogy.The Femtechnet manifesto and whitepaper are also great places to learn more about feminist technology as we consider its power to animate the mission of Team Human.Thank you for listening and sharing this episode. If you like what you hear, you can support Team Human by subscribing via Patreon at patreon.com/teamhuman.Music thanks to: Mike Watt, R.U. Sirius, and show closer thanks to Dischord records and FugaziAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Think back to the last time your eyes were opened wide, your mouth agape, and the hairs on the back of your neck stood on end as you took in a profound or inspiring sight… On today's episode of Team Human, Douglas is joined by Michael Frederickson, lead technical director at Pixar Animation, to talk about this deeply human experience of awe.It's a conversation that spans the “awful” to the "awesome" and all those ambiguous spaces in-between. Rushkoff and Frederickson dig into questions of technology and storytelling, the narrative arc, and the evolutionary, even empathetic value of having our minds blown.Rushkoff tees off this episode with a monologue inspired by the unresolved and sometimes unsettling world of David Lynch and his new Twin Peaks series. Is art meant to solve our riddles or pose new ones? Join Team Human this week, as we revel in life's liminal spaces and surrender to the power of awe.Music in today's show thanks to: Mike Watt, R.U. Sirius, Ambiguous Midroll by Stephen Bartolomei, and show closer thanks to Dischord records and FugaziTeam Human is supported entirely by listeners. Join the team at patreon.com/teamhuman. Members receive access to the Team Human Slack Team where we discuss topics on the show, suggest guests, and more.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Playing for Team Human is systems thinker, currency designer, and social hacker Arthur Brock. Art joins Douglas to talk about how currency is less a thing you own and more a way of sharing. It’s a conversation that poses a crucial question of both money and cryptocurrencies alike–how might we design new exchanges that embody values of social and environmental betterment, rather than extraction and exploitation? Rushkoff begins today’s show with a monologue about Instagram’s recent addition of an algorithm that removes mean comments from users’ threads. While on the surface the idea appears to be an attempt by Instagram to quell trolling, Rushkoff questions both the means and intentions. Is Instagram merely building an algorithmically programmed version of “see no evil, hear no evil”… or worse? Team Human is produced each week thanks to listener subscriptions. Join us on patreon at patreon.com/teamhuman. There you’ll find a variety of subscription levels with exclusive patron rewards. The music you heard on this show is thanks to the generosity of Mike Watt, R.U. Sirius, Josh Sitron and the Team Human band, and Fugazi. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 DogPart One of this Conversation: https://player.pippa.io/teamhuman/episodes/ep-45-walter-kirn-pt-1 Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 DogAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.   Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy