👁✨The Nexialist #0018
Time Rebels | Consciousness | Synthetic Media | Simulation | VR vs. Social Change | Netocracy vs. Consumtariat | The Uncensored Library | Hong-Kong Manuals | Virtual Economy | NFTs and more...
Olá and Welcome to The Nexialost… that was a typo but now I want to copyright it…
I’ll abstain from a proper intro today because I might have gotten a bit carried away by the content this week. Buckle up and enjoy the ride!
⏳Time Rebels
Roman Krznaric, philosopher and author of How to Be a Good Ancestor - How to Think Long-Term in a Short-Term World, gives an overview of this necessary book in this 7-minute video:
The Good Ancestor reveals six profound ways in which we can all learn to think long, exploring uniquely human talents like ‘cathedral thinking’ that expand our time horizons and sharpen our foresight. Drawing on radical innovations from around the world, Krznaric celebrates the time rebels who are reinventing democracy, culture and economics so that we all have the chance to become good ancestors and create a better tomorrow.
When speaking about posterity and decolonizing our future, new concepts need to be created, which makes my brain very happy. Here are some, taken from the review in The Guardian, by Andrew Anthony.
“Time rebel” refers to those activists who are seeking “intergenerational justice”. “Legacy mindset” describes the wish to be remembered by posterity and “cathedral thinking” applies to the projects whose the lifespans extend beyond a human lifetime.
Read: The Good Ancestor by Roman Krznaric – review | The Guardian
🌍I’ll also take the chance to invite you to an event organized by Torus Time Lab/Gustavo, who always recommends great content that ends up here, including the one above.
Sandglass-Afrosurrealism, with Leonel Piccardo: “an Amsterdam-based artist creating glitches of surrealism that emerges within his reality.” The Sandglass live sessions are a safe space for exchanging what is emerging in time and being part of a community. They are usually in Portuguese, so this is a nice chance to get some English-speaking people on board.
🐝Is Consciousness Everywhere?
Consciousness is lived reality. It is the feeling of life itself.
When I saw this title it immediately caught my attention and it was such a trip to read. It is an adaptation of Christof Koch’s book “The Feeling of Life Itself. Koch takes us on a neural trip to understand and measure consciousness, beyond humans. He starts by saying “Consciousness is experience”. Do all living beings have consciousness? Trees as well? How about individual cells and atoms?
One line of argument takes the principles of integrated information theory (IIT) to their logical conclusion. Some level of experience can be found in all organisms, it says, including perhaps in Paramecium and other single-cell life forms. Indeed, according to IIT, which aims to precisely define both the quality and the quantity of any one conscious experience, experience may not even be restricted to biological entities but might extend to non-evolved physical systems previously assumed to be mindless — a pleasing and parsimonious conclusion about the makeup of the universe.
Koch talks about evolution, panpsychism, and group minds, but the ending really makes it worthy to share it here:
We have come to the end of our voyage. Illuminated by the light of our pole star — consciousness — the universe reveals itself to be an orderly place. It is far more enminded than modernity, blinded by its technological supremacy over the natural world, takes it to be. It is a view more in line with earlier traditions that respected and feared the natural world.
Experience is in unexpected places, including in all animals, large and small, and perhaps even in brute matter itself. But consciousness is not in digital computers running software, even when they speak in tongues. Ever-more powerful machines will trade in fake consciousness, which will, perhaps, fool most. But precisely because of the looming confrontation between natural, evolved and artificial, engineered intelligence, it is absolutely essential to assert the central role of feeling to a lived life.
👁Synthetic Media
Rex Woodbury from the Digital Native newsletter made an incredible post about “The Rise of Synthetic Media & Digital Creators: How AI-Generated Content Will Define the Future.” I talked about virtual influencers last week, so this came at the right timing.
Rex talks about Miko, the virtual streamer pictured above, one of the most popular streamers on Twitch, who happens to be generated in real-time using a mocap suit and the Unreal Engine. Also, he explains deepfakes, virtual influencers, interactive media, synthetic video and audio, and some fascinating applications like bringing deceased actors for a film.
I had heard of deepfakes being used for fun or foul play, but one case that stood out was about using deepfakes to actually protect identities. “In the HBO documentary Welcome to Chechnya, the filmmakers used deepfakes to let survivors of LGBTQ+ persecution remain anonymous while recounting their stories.” Wow.
Also, I had not heard about The Third Evolutionary Stage of Media:
The Past: Old Media. Enabled mass distribution for a select few through TV, radio, and print. Enabling Technology: Broadcasting
The Present: New Media. Enabled democratized distribution for everyone through social media. Enabling Technology: The Internet
The Future: Synthetic Media. Will democratize media creation and creativity for everyone. Enabling Technology: AI / Deep Learning
I recommend reading the full post and subscribing.
🤖This is a Simulation
This song lives in my mind and is one of my favorite tracks to bike at night. It has the power of making me feel like I’m in a simulation. I’ll ask you to listen to it mindfully: put on your headsets, pay attention to how the music grows, the details, the lyrics, the moaning.
Róisín Machine was released last year and I personally found it one of the best albums of the year. Crooked Machine was released last week as a remix album but it is not quite like what we are used to remix albums. I see it it’s like a parallel reality. The samples from different songs make appearances on other songs. Even the names of the tracks use some fun wordplay. Simulation becomes Assimilation, Something More becomes More is Less. Maybe I’m obsessed with it and hope you will too after hearing it. If you know more albums like these, please share them with me.
Róisín Machine was a memoir, and Crooked Machine is a blank journal and pen, ready for one’s own stories of debauchery.
Read: Róisín Murphy, Crooked Machine @ Pitchfork
🤡VR vs. Social Change
According to Matthew Gault, Billionaires See VR as a Way to Avoid Radical Social Change. I must say the title felt quite dystopic, but it does make sense, and I’m not surprised at all. I think we definitely must keep vigilant on how VR is being used moving forward, just like any other technology.
The future of virtual reality is far more than just video games. Silicon Valley sees the creation of virtual worlds as the ultimate free-market solution to a political problem. In a world of increasing wealth inequality, environmental disaster, and political instability, why not sell everyone a device that whisks them away to a virtual world free of pain and suffering?
Tech billionaires aren’t shy about sharing this. “Some people read this the wrong way and react incorrectly to it. The promise of VR is to make the world you wanted. It is not possible, on Earth, to give everyone all that they would want. Not everyone can have Richard Branson’s private island,” Doom co-creator and former CTO of Oculus John Carmack told Joe Rogan during a 2020 interview. “People react negatively to any talk of economics, but it is resource allocation. You have to make decisions about where things go. Economically, you can deliver a lot more value to a lot of people in the virtual sense.”
🦾Netocracy vs. Consumtariat
Two terms I learned recently and just fit like a glove for this moment:
Netocracy was a term invented by the editorial board of the American technology magazine Wired in the early 1990s. A portmanteau of Internet and aristocracy, netocracy refers to a perceived global upper-class that bases its power on a technological advantage and networking skills, in comparison to what is portrayed as a bourgeoisie of a gradually diminishing importance.
The Consumtariat: Alexander Bard describes a new underclass called the consumtariat, a portmanteau of consumer and proletariat, whose main activity is consumption, regulated from above. It is kept occupied with private problems, its desires provoked with the use of adverts and its active participation is limited to things like product choice, product customization, engaging with interactive products and life-style choice.
Source: Wikipedia
📚The Uncensored Library
This week, Fast Company released the winner list of the 2021 World-Changing Ideas Award. The Uncensored Library won as an education initiative and it’s a great example of VR and gaming being used for something positive.
In countries where governments tightly control the media and ban hundreds of news sites, it might be hard to access The New York Times or the BBC, but it’s still possible to play Minecraft, a video game owned by Microsoft since 2014. So the nonprofit Reporters Without Borders created a backdoor within the game, building a virtual library stocked with censored articles that can be accessed by any player.
I feel like we tend to forget how these things can backfire. The #BlackLivesMatter movement would not have the reach and power it had without technology (and the millions of people protesting). The same smartphones used to surveil on us were used to film and share the horrifying footage from George Floyd being killed by police. The same channels used to distract us were used to organize protests worldwide. I think these tools (and companies) have to be tamed and when we do so collectively and inclusively, it’s quite powerful.
👊Hong-Kong Protests: The Manuals
Something I have been wanting to share for a long time: the crowdsourced digital manuals for the Hong-Kong Protests. Another example of how grassroots movements can subvert Big Tech to organize themselves.
The HK19 Manual - Part 1: The Roles
The HK19 Manual - Part 2: How To Guides
🥽A Parallel Reality
When I think of VR, this video comes to my head. The more I know about it, the more I’m impressed. It was filmed using drones in a “Fake Paris.” The name of the city is Tianducheng, and it’s an actual large-scale replica of Paris located in the suburbs of Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China. If you love it, then watch the Behind the scenes.
👾Virtual Economy
The Virtual Economy is a system of sophisticated platforms, fledgling marketplaces, volatile assets, nixers & pioneers that exist solely in virtual environments.
L’Atelier released this Virtual Economy report last year. If you haven’t seen it, it is worth doing so for the website experience and the impressive content about the booming virtual economy. I would say it’s the most complete (and STUNNING) source I got my hands on about the subject. From $109Billion in 2019 to more than $159 in 2020 this realm is growing nonstop and developing in unexpected ways. Centralized and Decentralized Marketplaces, NFTs, and new professions are all covered.
🖼Non-Fungible Tokens
Since we’re on this subject, I’ll share an excellent explanation about NFTs. Yes, I might have a total crush on Johnny Harris as well, but I can say he covers and explains NFTs very well. If you still have a hard time understanding what the Blockchain or a Distributed Ledger is I also recommend watching it. I know it took me quite some time to understand it and it still can get a bit confusing.
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