Michael Garfield

Host

Art & Spirit in the Age of Surveillance

Sep 18, 2013·184 visitors

Blake Ian

Cohost

Stage· 465 messages

Sep 18, 2013

Former paleontologist Michael Garfield now tours transformational festival culture speaking on how to live mindfully in our increasingly psychedelic age. This Tawk is an open conversation about how to move forward with healthy stories about our place in the world – stories that heal the split between nature and technology, self and society.

Blake Ian · 12:00 AM

Good evening Michael...

Michael Garfield · 12:01 AM

Ahoy, cybernauts!

Blake Ian · 12:01 AM

Excellent entrance

Blake Ian · 12:01 AM

★ Spotlighted from Brian Duffy

“things are happening!”

Blake Ian · 12:01 AM

They sure are Brian... they sure are

Michael Garfield · 12:03 AM

So here we all are on unencrypted internet connections exploring what the news media likes to call "The End of Privacy" (hyperbolic as usual), how our sense of self is changing in the 21st Century, and what this means...

Blake Ian · 12:03 AM

So Mr. Garfield I did a bit of digging and man I found a lot!

Michael Garfield · 12:03 AM

Do go on; I'm curious about your digging.

Blake Ian · 12:04 AM

Well normally I like to do a little prep before a Tawk, at least get to know something about my co-host...

Blake Ian · 12:04 AM

and my notes are MOSTLY URLS for you... haha

Blake Ian · 12:04 AM

you have a lot of content out there, nice work

Michael Garfield · 12:05 AM

Thanks - I'm in this generation that's learning the difference between overachieving hyperproductivity and careful chess-move deliberate creation.

Michael Garfield · 12:05 AM

(Which is better, thirty live albums or one excellent studio recording?)

Michael Garfield · 12:05 AM

Anyway, let's contextualize this talk, shall we?

Blake Ian · 12:06 AM

Sounds good... I am not used to being on this right side of the screen, your first Tawk and you already shifting paradigms

Michael Garfield · 12:06 AM

★ Spotlighted from Brian Duffy

“we want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes”

Blake Ian · 12:06 AM

So in the interest of order...

Blake Ian · 12:07 AM

Let's start with a recent project I found very interesting

Blake Ian · 12:07 AM

you took your Google Glass to Burning Man and gave folks a chance to send their future selves a message

Blake Ian · 12:07 AM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVZ4UYzkrL4#t=263

Michael Garfield · 12:07 AM

Yes indeed. People can check that link out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVZ4UYzkrL4

Michael Garfield · 12:07 AM

Oh, quick draw!

Blake Ian · 12:07 AM

heheh beat ya to it!

Michael Garfield · 12:08 AM

That's an ongoing project. I have a few objectives that have evolved out of what was originally just a kind of a game...

Blake Ian · 12:08 AM

well I see from your profile pic that you don't seem to take that Google Glass off much do ya?

Michael Garfield · 12:09 AM

I hardly wear it at all, actually.

Michael Garfield · 12:09 AM

That's the funny thing about the divide between how we appear online and in person...

Michael Garfield · 12:09 AM

You wouldn't believe the amount of criticism I've drawn by putting myself "Glass First" into the social mediasphere in the last few weeks...

Blake Ian · 12:10 AM

Oh I would believe it... remember how we first connected was because we were both Google Glass Explorers

Blake Ian · 12:10 AM

(I went for the Orange)

Michael Garfield · 12:11 AM

There's an interesting point in there about how our society is still largely illiterate/naïve about the distinction between persona/ego/appearance and the kind of digging and critical evaluation that Howard Rheingold spoke about in his Tawk with you

Michael Garfield · 12:11 AM

back in May...

Michael Garfield · 12:11 AM

And yeah, you're a Glass Explorer too. A worthy area of discussion for a little later on here. But I want to get to the video first...

Blake Ian · 12:11 AM

Please...

Michael Garfield · 12:12 AM

It's a good way to start the conversation, because it's a way for me to explore some of the themes of this chat in a new medium.

Michael Garfield · 12:12 AM

Here are a couple of quotes from an article I'm writing about this "Message To Your Future Self" series:

Michael Garfield · 12:12 AM

“The sloughed-off environment becomes a work of art in the new invisible environment.”n– Marshall McLuhan

Michael Garfield · 12:12 AM

“If we are transparent, with nothing to hide, the gap between language and Being disappears. Then the Muse can speak.”n– Stephen Nachmanovitch

Michael Garfield · 12:14 AM

Until very recently, surveillance was the "invisible environment" of the global electronic society. Even ten years ago when we KNEW it was going on most people refused to believe it. But Snowden et al. have caused an avalanche of insight...

Michael Garfield · 12:14 AM

Now we have at least some of the means of surveillance at our disposal as public citizens.

Michael Garfield · 12:15 AM

Aerial photography that was "need to know" information in the Cold War now seems like child's play compared to the free Google Earth app on my phone.

Michael Garfield · 12:15 AM

Glass is another example. I suspect that in twenty years everyone will have access to something approximating the Big Data flyover view that the NSA currently has with the Utah Data Center...

Blake Ian · 12:16 AM

So much of even that data is pretty accessible already no?

Blake Ian · 12:16 AM

The phenomenon at this point is how willingly people are handing over all of this data

Michael Garfield · 12:16 AM

For now, we're just getting our feet wet with instruments like Glass that add a new twist to the whole "cameras on street corners" cyberpunk paranoia of the 2000s.

Blake Ian · 12:17 AM

even the basic act of checking in gives a massive amount of people knowledge of where you currently are

Michael Garfield · 12:17 AM

There's definitely a tension between the technocratic rhetoric of "everyone will be sharing everything" and the old-school hippie libertarian "come and take it" attitude of people like my friends in the Electronic Frontier Foundation...

Michael Garfield · 12:18 AM

These are ecological counterforces, like the evolutionary arms race between predator and prey.

Michael Garfield · 12:18 AM

They want us to share everything, we want to continue to believe in personal sovereignty...

Michael Garfield · 12:18 AM

We saw this all play out in a different arena over the last twenty years with frictionless p2p filesharing and the RIAA.

Michael Garfield · 12:19 AM

The tension between artists needing to make money and people wanting to listen to everything for free.

Blake Ian · 12:19 AM

Well I dont know that people wanted to listen to it for free

Blake Ian · 12:19 AM

as much as have immediate access

Michael Garfield · 12:19 AM

To try before you buy...

Blake Ian · 12:19 AM

Right

Blake Ian · 12:20 AM

even in the napster days, polls showed that people who downloaded tracks for free bought more CDs than others

Michael Garfield · 12:20 AM

I definitely wanted to listen for free. And I have just enough perspective to remember believing that ALL music would be free eventually, and that artists could make their money on tour.

Michael Garfield · 12:20 AM

I was naïve.

Blake Ian · 12:20 AM

and now given legal alternatives like iTunes and Spotify

Michael Garfield · 12:20 AM

But what's happened since then,

Michael Garfield · 12:20 AM

is that the balance of power has definitely shifted away from the old models and the record companies.

Blake Ian · 12:20 AM

thats a good thing

Michael Garfield · 12:21 AM

and it's a much more chaotic terrain.

Blake Ian · 12:21 AM

thats the Universe balancing itself out

Michael Garfield · 12:21 AM

It's both good and bad. We haven't created a digital utopia for artists; some things have gotten easier and some have gotten harder.

Michael Garfield · 12:21 AM

Likewise I think with the whole privacy debate.

Michael Garfield · 12:21 AM

As soon as we get into supercheap gene sequencing and 3D printing, the gloves are off.

Blake Ian · 12:22 AM

I just had this discussion last night with a friend actually...

Michael Garfield · 12:22 AM

Any idea can be replicated at next to nothing...

Michael Garfield · 12:22 AM

Oh yeah? Did you guys come to any conclusions?

Blake Ian · 12:22 AM

Well he launched version 1 of Hulu

Michael Garfield · 12:22 AM

(What happens when people can make a pirate copy of YOU? Illegal clones? This could already be happening, for all we know.)

Blake Ian · 12:23 AM

and he was telling me how a lot of the networks were holding so tightly to their premium content

Blake Ian · 12:23 AM

and resisting putting it online

Blake Ian · 12:23 AM

but at the end of the day, Metallica logic doesnt win

Michael Garfield · 12:23 AM

(And in a sense already IS happening, with respect to what intel futurist Brian David Johnson calls our "digital simulacra" - the online shadows of ourselves, which companies like facebook are mining in exchange for use of their services.)

Blake Ian · 12:23 AM

you cannot tell consumers what they want or how they are allowed to access it

Michael Garfield · 12:23 AM

Yeah:

Blake Ian · 12:23 AM

you need to study how they want it and oblige in a way that you can make profitable

Michael Garfield · 12:24 AM

I used to work for a company in Boulder that was trying to do what Spotify does now, only it was 2007.

Michael Garfield · 12:24 AM

And only 2 of the 4 major labels agreed to it.

Michael Garfield · 12:24 AM

So they couldn't get the platform off the ground.

Michael Garfield · 12:24 AM

What a difference three years makes...

Blake Ian · 12:24 AM

Well the problem with Spotify (and I am a HUGE fan of Spotify)

Blake Ian · 12:24 AM

is that it isn't really a profitable solution

Michael Garfield · 12:24 AM

Not for artists, now.

Blake Ian · 12:24 AM

its an amazing user experience

Blake Ian · 12:25 AM

but as an independent artist, iTunes offers an infinitely better solution to make money from your work

Blake Ian · 12:26 AM

sell a song for a buck, pay the distribution fee

Blake Ian · 12:26 AM

its a model that has been around since tin pan alley

Michael Garfield · 12:26 AM

...So all of the problems we're having with what we call "intellectual property" are the kinds of problems we can expect to have with the right to privacy in a few year's time. In the sense that the self is the last frontier of what Google calls

Michael Garfield · 12:26 AM

"The New Digital Era."

Michael Garfield · 12:26 AM

When everything is reduced to information. At least from an economic perspective.

Blake Ian · 12:26 AM

I see what you're saying

Michael Garfield · 12:27 AM

As an aside, Charles Stross wrote a great book called Glass House a few years back...

Michael Garfield · 12:27 AM

privacy is dead

Michael Garfield · 12:27 AM

in which everyone is constantly backed up by the city as a civil right, so

Michael Garfield · 12:27 AM

murder is just a faux pas, not a capital crime.

Michael Garfield · 12:27 AM

But wars are still fought...

Michael Garfield · 12:28 AM

only by hacking people, instead of killing them. By reducing ourselves to information, we take the final leap across the event horizon of existential insecurity.

Michael Garfield · 12:29 AM

In that cautionary tale I think is a way to resolve the issue of personal privacy. It simultaneously accepts the end of privacy in the sense of publicly accessible digital simulacra...

Michael Garfield · 12:29 AM

and reclaims the inviolable sovereignty of the interior world, the inner life.

Blake Ian · 12:30 AM

I tend to feel pretty OK about the loss of privacy online

Blake Ian · 12:30 AM

because I see it as contradiction of terms

Michael Garfield · 12:30 AM

Go on...

Blake Ian · 12:30 AM

People go on public websites, FREE public websites, FREE AD SUPPORTED public websites

Blake Ian · 12:30 AM

and share share share

Blake Ian · 12:31 AM

and then want privacy, it's so ironic it's almost silly to me

Blake Ian · 12:31 AM

there is nobody sitting in on my lunch with a friend

Blake Ian · 12:31 AM

and selling that data

Michael Garfield · 12:31 AM

Yeah, well...let me layer what I think is a useful metaphor on top of this conversation:

Blake Ian · 12:32 AM

layer away

Michael Garfield · 12:32 AM

The electronic communications media are a fluid substrate, in which sound travels faster than it does in air...

Michael Garfield · 12:33 AM

Our separate selves are like islands in this oceanic collective unconscious, and we're in an age of Global Warming, and sea levels are rising.

Michael Garfield · 12:33 AM

As within, so without.

Blake Ian · 12:34 AM

OK, so let's take what you just said for a minute.

Michael Garfield · 12:34 AM

If Vint Cerf and Co. have their way, and there seems to be no reason to believe they won't, pretty much everything will be online in a few decades.

Michael Garfield · 12:34 AM

So we have to learn to swim.

Blake Ian · 12:34 AM

because I have experienced this thought many times, particularly during meditation.

Michael Garfield · 12:34 AM

Dolphins are an especially good teacher in this domain.

Blake Ian · 12:35 AM

So - We are these islands, or perhaps more like terminals plugged into this single collective unconscious

Michael Garfield · 12:36 AM

...insofar as they live in a multidimensional environment, embedded in resonant acoustic exchange.

Blake Ian · 12:36 AM

then isn't the internet and even it's breaking down the barriers of privacy helping us recognize and live this reality more truly

Blake Ian · 12:37 AM

It seems to be a digital representation of what we have always been, "users" plugged into one big tangle of thought, taking on different profiles and generating content

Michael Garfield · 12:37 AM

Definitely. However, as meta-historians like William Irwin Thompson have pointed out, this is essentially (in mythological terms acceptable to the secular modern mind) a resurgence of the spirit realm into the everyday illusion of the discrete egoic

Blake Ian · 12:37 AM

isnt this a very good thing

Michael Garfield · 12:37 AM

self-construct of modernity.

Blake Ian · 12:38 AM

★ Spotlighted from Paul Miller

“Expecting privacy online is kind of like expecting having personal space at a concert”

Michael Garfield · 12:38 AM

There are angels and demons swimming around in there. The internet is what information scientist Rich Doyle would call an "ecodelic" substance...

Blake Ian · 12:38 AM

Hahah @Paul - Exactly!

Blake Ian · 12:38 AM

and at the Beck show in Prospect Park this woman got upset that I was standing too close to her... we were in the front row!

Michael Garfield · 12:38 AM

...in that it forces us to re-evaluate our self-concept and the boundary between self and other as a continuum.

Blake Ian · 12:38 AM

and BECK was on stage

Michael Garfield · 12:39 AM

Ha ha ha!

Blake Ian · 12:39 AM

Michael - are you familiar with Jason Silva?

Michael Garfield · 12:39 AM

So if Beck is the "market forces" drawing us into the "attractor basin" of the front row as we gather round the spectacle of our consensual hallucination of the future...

Blake Ian · 12:39 AM

I saw him speak at SXSW in Austin this year and was quite inspired

Michael Garfield · 12:39 AM

...Yes, I know Jason.

Michael Garfield · 12:40 AM

I think he oversimplifies these issues and thus runs a real risk of leading people over a cliff.

Blake Ian · 12:40 AM

well he does like to entertain :)

Michael Garfield · 12:40 AM

For Jason technology and optimism will solve everything.

Michael Garfield · 12:40 AM

He totally buys into the rhetoric of progress.

Michael Garfield · 12:40 AM

Whereas I see things as getting both better and worse at once.

Blake Ian · 12:41 AM

as all things do

Blake Ian · 12:41 AM

always

Michael Garfield · 12:41 AM

I think it's very important to move beyond any individual perspective on this and try to articulate them.

Blake Ian · 12:41 AM

Reminds me of a quote I grabbed from your site...

Blake Ian · 12:41 AM

from someone we both adimre greatly

Blake Ian · 12:41 AM

"Our idea of unity and our way of solving conflicts is simply to eliminate one of the two parties...But this is the habitual dualist's solution to the problem of dualism: to solve the dilemma by chopping off one of the horns."n– Alan Watts

Michael Garfield · 12:41 AM

Techno-optimism is one lens...but if you only hold that one lens up to the Sun, you're likely to burn a hole in your eye.

Blake Ian · 12:42 AM

There is no top without a bottom, no left without a right

Michael Garfield · 12:42 AM

Indeed, Alan.

Blake Ian · 12:42 AM

and as Mr. Watts spoke about often... no sound without silence

Blake Ian · 12:42 AM

even a wave form of sound itself is made up of sound and absence of sound

Blake Ian · 12:42 AM

anyone who uses Pro Tools can tell you that!

Michael Garfield · 12:42 AM

Jason strikes me, with all due respect to the inspiring work he does, as a Flat Earth thinker.

Michael Garfield · 12:43 AM

He's missing an entire dimension - we're not moving in a straight line but around a curved surface.

Michael Garfield · 12:43 AM

Toward one horizon, and away from another.

Michael Garfield · 12:43 AM

It's important to know and understand what we're leaving behind as we move into the new...

Michael Garfield · 12:44 AM

Otherwise, we're not really "transhuman" at all, in the sense that "transhuman" INCLUDES and TRANSCENDS what we used to mean by "human."

Blake Ian · 12:44 AM

Interesting... I don't know his work well enough to agree or disagree.

Blake Ian · 12:44 AM

But I certainly agree with a lot of what you are saying in general

Michael Garfield · 12:45 AM

I think we have right to be concerned about people like Ray Kurzweil's influence on the future, because Ray is obviously motivated by his fear of death...

Michael Garfield · 12:45 AM

but seems not to understand that

Michael Garfield · 12:45 AM

his role in creating an accelerating technological environment is only making change the rule, rather than the exception,

Michael Garfield · 12:46 AM

and further challenging our primitive concepts of the self as stable and continuous.

Blake Ian · 12:46 AM

So what is the correct action in your opinion to head in the best direction?

Blake Ian · 12:46 AM

or do we have that option?

Blake Ian · 12:46 AM

Howard Rheingold spoke in our Tawk of mindful use of technology and progress

Michael Garfield · 12:46 AM

I don't doubt that we'll eventually find a way to live 1000 years...but to think that means that THIS GUY, THIS EGO is going to live 1000 years is ridiculous. Get ready to become what Terence McKenna called "self-transforming machine elves" if you

Michael Garfield · 12:46 AM

want to live for THAT long...

Blake Ian · 12:46 AM

using critical thinking and discernment

Michael Garfield · 12:47 AM

I agree with many of you guys in the comments that we're already over the rainbow as far as privacy is concerned.

Michael Garfield · 12:47 AM

I think there are better ways to invest our energy than by resisting change.

Blake Ian · 12:47 AM

★ Spotlighted from Paul Miller

“It is estimated that in a few short years humans born will have every second of their lives video recorded. So much for defining integrity when someone isn't looking.”

Michael Garfield · 12:48 AM

But I think the new literacy is neuroplasticity.

Blake Ian · 12:48 AM

Well resisting change is futile sure... but steering?

Blake Ian · 12:48 AM

learning to surf

Michael Garfield · 12:48 AM

Being able to surf the changes, to move with them, to not hold onto a particular way of seeing.

Blake Ian · 12:48 AM

or to swim as you said

Michael Garfield · 12:48 AM

That includes pessimism, optimism, and other isms.

Michael Garfield · 12:48 AM

Well, yeah, gills and wings both. Sign me up.

Michael Garfield · 12:48 AM

★ Spotlighted from Rich Hagberg

“Where we are coming from, what motivates us - is important to pay attention to, especially when we create something...”

Michael Garfield · 12:49 AM

Totally, Rich.

Michael Garfield · 12:49 AM

As our relationship with technology speeds up to the point that we're able to interact with it like a living force,

Michael Garfield · 12:49 AM

a malleable substrate,

Blake Ian · 12:49 AM

Second that Rich. (or third that?)

Michael Garfield · 12:49 AM

then it becomes a kind of Philosopher's Stone in which our imaginations are rendered into material existence at the speed of thought...

Michael Garfield · 12:50 AM

and then we had DAMN WELL better be mindful of our unconscious motivations.

Michael Garfield · 12:50 AM

Did anyone here read Sphere by Michael Crichton?

Michael Garfield · 12:50 AM

For a book written in the 1980s, he hit the nail on the head with this issue.

Blake Ian · 12:50 AM

Well in a lot of ways we are already there. The speed at which an idea becomes a reality

Michael Garfield · 12:50 AM

We're not ready for that much godlike power until we are willing to take more responsibility for what we create.

Blake Ian · 12:50 AM

compared to 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 1000 years ago!

Michael Garfield · 12:51 AM

Yeah, the future really resembles the present quite a bit. Only faster.

Michael Garfield · 12:51 AM

★ Spotlighted from Paul Miller

“LIving 1000 years will cause a fear of life”

Michael Garfield · 12:51 AM

Paul Miller I kind of agree with you...

Michael Garfield · 12:51 AM

Check out the last track of this talk when you have a moment: http://evolution.bandcamp.com/album/reflections-on-a-shift

Michael Garfield · 12:52 AM

My thinking on the matter these days is a little different than it used to be. I think life extension is going to make us care more about the long-term impacts of our actions.

Michael Garfield · 12:52 AM

★ Spotlighted from Rich Hagberg

“personal accountability & responsibility (whether we want it or not lol)”

Michael Garfield · 12:53 AM

YES Rich – I think the whole Cold War nuclear threat as it resolved in a stalemate through what mathematician John Nash called "Mutually Assured Destruction" can be considered a model for

Michael Garfield · 12:53 AM

how we will relate to one another with the democratized ability to spy on and annihilate one another in the century to come.

Michael Garfield · 12:53 AM

On one level that sounds awful, but

Michael Garfield · 12:54 AM

it means that we finally grow up. We finally start to acknowledge our responsibility.

Michael Garfield · 12:54 AM

★ Spotlighted from Paul Miller

“Increased lifespan creates alot of baggage :-)”

Blake Ian · 12:54 AM

Well it will certainly require more space!

Michael Garfield · 12:54 AM

There was no real cultural transmission of wisdom until we lived long enough to have grandparents...

Michael Garfield · 12:55 AM

Imagine how much wiser we might be collectively if we can stop making the same mistakes every four generations after the last round of people die off and can't communicate what they've learned.

Blake Ian · 12:55 AM

RIght so are we really facing anything new or just newer and greater levels of the same shifts in paradigm our species has experienced since we began?

Michael Garfield · 12:56 AM

Right now, according to the theory of Generational Dynamics, we repeat the same cycle of wars and economic booms/busts every four generations.

Blake Ian · 12:56 AM

How about a system of crystals through which our ancestors can answer our questions?? We can keep it up in the North Pole

Michael Garfield · 12:56 AM

My interest right now - in part due to my love of works like Erik Davis' book TechGnosis, which is a fantastic study of how consistent our spiritual relationship to technologies has been for thousands of years -

Michael Garfield · 12:57 AM

is in how the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Michael Garfield · 12:57 AM

Ha ha ha, Blake! Yeah, I think a lot of people would consent to being recorded in a digital tombstone where some AI reconstructed from their facebook posts issues wisdom from beyond the grave...

Michael Garfield · 12:58 AM

"Evolution drives a bulldozer disguised as a stationary bike. With history, it's the other way around." - Tom Robbins

Michael Garfield · 12:58 AM

★ Spotlighted from Brian Duffy

“What do you guys think of the idea of simultaneous global telepathy? If everyone simultaneously knew everyone else's hopes, fears and private thoughts, the very idea of shame, or even evil, could be made obsolete alongside the obsolescence of privacy”

Michael Garfield · 12:58 AM

Brian I think gets at the heart of the matter here, at least insofar as it relates to where we are right now, in this current transition.

Blake Ian · 12:59 AM

Truth is a good thing.

Blake Ian · 12:59 AM

In relationships, business, self improvement

Michael Garfield · 12:59 AM

I think the silver lining to a world without privacy is that power can only be abused in secret, and we only hate what we don't understand.

Blake Ian · 12:59 AM

it rarely comes without pain and discomfort

Blake Ian · 12:59 AM

but the end result is growth

Michael Garfield · 1:00 AM

I like the idea of ending hypocrisy.

Blake Ian · 1:00 AM

exactly, hate, fear, anger all comes from the misunderstood or unspoken

Michael Garfield · 1:00 AM

I mean, yeah, we all grew up in a world where privacy and anonymity have been highly valued because they were the best means to security.

Michael Garfield · 1:01 AM

But they're not the only means.

Michael Garfield · 1:01 AM

From an evolutionary perspective, there are other strategies.

Blake Ian · 1:01 AM

that's why reality TV was great in theory for a minute... but then of course TV producers got a hold of it and it became the opposite of reality

Blake Ian · 1:01 AM

Michael are you familiar with Albert Brooks?

Michael Garfield · 1:01 AM

The comedian?

Blake Ian · 1:01 AM

yes

Blake Ian · 1:01 AM

His first film was called Real Life

Blake Ian · 1:02 AM

it was made in 1979 and it's the very accurate prediction of reality television, and it shows a total breakdown of a family that is being filmed

Michael Garfield · 1:02 AM

I'm piqued...

Blake Ian · 1:02 AM

check it out, its very unknown and very brilliant

Michael Garfield · 1:02 AM

Well, the thing about stories like that, as well as ED TV, and the documentary We Live In Public,

Blake Ian · 1:03 AM

Truman Show, etc..

Michael Garfield · 1:03 AM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Live_in_Public

Michael Garfield · 1:03 AM

The thing about all of these is that they happen, either fictionally or factually,

Michael Garfield · 1:03 AM

in a world where privacy is still of the utmost importance.

Michael Garfield · 1:03 AM

They happen to people who believe they are separate discrete egoic actors.

Blake Ian · 1:03 AM

Right, only the subjects are the exceptions

Michael Garfield · 1:03 AM

Exactly.

Michael Garfield · 1:04 AM

And in those cases, yeah -

Michael Garfield · 1:04 AM

it's torture.

Blake Ian · 1:04 AM

as opposed to everyone being the show for everyone else

Blake Ian · 1:04 AM

AKA Facebook

Michael Garfield · 1:04 AM

Or for NOBODY else.

Blake Ian · 1:04 AM

even MORE accurately Faceboo

Blake Ian · 1:04 AM

haha

Michael Garfield · 1:04 AM

Because - again, looking at the music business - when everyone is shouting, nobody is listening.

Blake Ian · 1:04 AM

I honestly don't think anyone is looking at anyone else's posts anymore on Fbook

Michael Garfield · 1:04 AM

I wonder if in 50 years we won't pay artists; we'll pay people to listen to music.

Blake Ian · 1:04 AM

they are just posting hoping someone is looking at theirs

Blake Ian · 1:04 AM

and then complaining that people might see what they are posting

Michael Garfield · 1:05 AM

Ha!

Michael Garfield · 1:05 AM

So, I'm writing a series of essays about the evolution of perception and how it's related to surveillance...

Michael Garfield · 1:05 AM

Here is an excerpt from an upcoming section:

Blake Ian · 1:05 AM

"everyone is shouting, nobody is listening" is straight out of Tawkers first pitch decks! ;)

Michael Garfield · 1:05 AM

"With predation came herd behaviors. The collective is an adaptive response that confounds a hunter in several ways: beyond the simple benefit to animals moving in the center of the herd (or flock, or troupe, or school) and thus behind

Michael Garfield · 1:06 AM

a protective wall of flesh, great numbers of creatures moving as a single unit disrupt predatorial perception (think a swirling mass of fish to sharks trying to isolate an individual herring or sardine;

Michael Garfield · 1:06 AM

think an ocean of stripes as a thousand zebras pass the hiding lions). Another great advantage comes from multiplying eyes, combining attention, noticing from different places.

Michael Garfield · 1:06 AM

The herd, tied together in exquisite sensitivity to each member’s social cues, agitation amplifying through the group by resonance, out-thinks – on average – the tactics of a lone assailant and becomes the new complex environment that compels team

Michael Garfield · 1:06 AM

hunting behavior by a more sophisticated predator. (Schooling may confuse a shark, but whales with more intricate social brains can see the school as an individual entity and work together to corral it in a tube of bubbles –

Michael Garfield · 1:06 AM

the school’s own dizzying perceptual hack used against it in what amounts to the behavioral form of destructive interference, or a denial-of-service-attack.)"

Michael Garfield · 1:06 AM

★ Spotlighted from Paul Miller

“Transparency is always good in small groups. It would be interesting to experience in larger populations”

Michael Garfield · 1:07 AM

★ Spotlighted from Paul Miller

“With trust, things move with less resistance and a much faster pace. No hidden agenda, etc.”

Blake Ian · 1:08 AM

First... great points and well said.

Blake Ian · 1:09 AM

So you are saying it takes an evolved species or sub group to fully benefit from schooling

Blake Ian · 1:09 AM

Is that correct?

Blake Ian · 1:09 AM

If so I agree

Michael Garfield · 1:10 AM

I gave a talk at Burning Man a few years ago about what biologists call "Evolutionary Transitions in Individuality" - http://bit.ly/evolutionarytransitions

Michael Garfield · 1:10 AM

The gist of it is:

Blake Ian · 1:10 AM

So many times, especially in this country, the ignorant slow down what could be such beneficial change

Blake Ian · 1:10 AM

as a species

Michael Garfield · 1:10 AM

Every once in a while, the environment gets so complex that it requires a strategy in which organisms combine into new meta-organisms. You can see this in the 40 or so times that multicellular life has evolved on this planet...

Michael Garfield · 1:10 AM

...in the evolution of the city...

Michael Garfield · 1:11 AM

...and now, in the evolution of a planetary culture.

Michael Garfield · 1:12 AM

In his sci-fi novel Speaker For The Dead, Orson Scott Card mentioned the idea that the religious orthodoxy functions as a kind of skeletal system for society.

Michael Garfield · 1:12 AM

Rather than talk about how "the ignorant are slowing down beneficial change,"

Blake Ian · 1:13 AM

They are a necessary counterweight?

Blake Ian · 1:13 AM

Is that what you are saying?

Michael Garfield · 1:13 AM

I think it's more well-adapted to think of the various cultures that appear to be in conflict as opposing muscular and skeletal groups that are moving against one another to get this planet somewhere.

Michael Garfield · 1:13 AM

Joseph Campbell said every culture's hero is some other culture's monster.

Blake Ian · 1:13 AM

Sure, I would subscribe to that, it comes back to the Watts quote you had posted

Michael Garfield · 1:14 AM

Indeed.

Blake Ian · 1:14 AM

Another frequent point he references is that no point has a position without being in relation to another point

Blake Ian · 1:14 AM

If you aren't moving away or toward something else, you aren't moving

Michael Garfield · 1:14 AM

What I think the new complex planetary environment into which we all find ourselves awakening requires of us is a more developed appreciation of paradox and ambiguity.

Blake Ian · 1:15 AM

★ Spotlighted from Paul Miller

“Checks and balances are a good thing.”

Blake Ian · 1:15 AM

@Paul - Totally, that's why Tawkers has a forum! ;)

Michael Garfield · 1:16 AM

Opposing perspectives create one another. This gets into a kind of ancient Oriental attitude about respect for one's enemy...the notion Sun Tzu posits in The Art of War:

Michael Garfield · 1:16 AM

That in a zero-sum game, winning still merits grief.

Michael Garfield · 1:17 AM

★ Spotlighted from Paul Miller

“Pulling the plug after 500 or 600 years. LIfe without death will cause quite the moral dilemma”

Michael Garfield · 1:17 AM

I think people might volunteer to die after a while.

Michael Garfield · 1:17 AM

★ Spotlighted from Brian Duffy

“Are smartphones basically mitochondrial bacteria that we are absorbing as new organs of our bodies?”

Michael Garfield · 1:18 AM

Brian that's something that Bill Thompson and I will be talking about in our interview in two weeks...

Michael Garfield · 1:18 AM

He's a big fan of what Lynn Margulis calls "endosymbiosis," which is what you're talking about.

Michael Garfield · 1:18 AM

At least as it relates to the organic domain.

Michael Garfield · 1:18 AM

★ Spotlighted from Rich Hagberg

“They have been doing studies on something you might say is a living force. There have been tests measuring whether our intentions are able to affect machinery, wish I could remember the link...”

Michael Garfield · 1:18 AM

Rich you might be asking about http://noosphere.princeton.edu

Michael Garfield · 1:18 AM

And the work of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Lab. :)

Michael Garfield · 1:19 AM

So yeah, another possibly false dichotomy that I think it would serve us to integrate: "human" and "technology."

Michael Garfield · 1:19 AM

We define one another; we create one another.

Michael Garfield · 1:19 AM

In what sense are we not the same thing?

Michael Garfield · 1:20 AM

(Any more than how, since we cannot live without intestinal bacteria, can we be regarded as separate organisms from the planetary bacterial bioplasm?)

Michael Garfield · 1:20 AM

(Any more than plants and humans have co-domesticated one another and thus ought to be regarded as a single system?)

Blake Ian · 1:21 AM

This same friend I mentioned that I had dinner with last night, got into a discussion about how we are 90% bacteria

Blake Ian · 1:21 AM

and we laughed that we are basically a small percent human controlling a bunch of bacteria!

Michael Garfield · 1:22 AM

So...by now I think it's more apparent why I consider the end of privacy not exclusively bad or good, but just part of this larger evolutionary process that is constantly shifting the boundaries between individual and collective.

Blake Ian · 1:22 AM

Well I returned my Google Glass (GASP!) haha - and I bought a Go Pro Hero!

Michael Garfield · 1:22 AM

And how I can be both equally concerned about the erosion of my separate ego and excited about living in a world of greater transparency, accountability, and mutual understanding!

Michael Garfield · 1:23 AM

Ha ha ha...why did you decide to do that?

Blake Ian · 1:23 AM

Well, honestly I didn't find it to be useful to me just yet, I think it is a great experiment, but I had plans to wear it during live performances

Blake Ian · 1:24 AM

and the microphone was just unusable

Blake Ian · 1:24 AM

and the video quality was poor as well

Blake Ian · 1:25 AM

I felt like the thing I liked most about it was the first person experience video... and the Go Pro allows for that in incredible quality

Michael Garfield · 1:25 AM

I took a look at the teardown (https://www.facebook.com/events/154803324713251/permalink/162124443981139/) and it seems that there are two mics in there and some kind of noise-canceling function.

Michael Garfield · 1:25 AM

So yeah, designed to listen to you and not the speaker system...

Blake Ian · 1:25 AM

yeah

Michael Garfield · 1:25 AM

And also the video quality has improved since I bought it! Software upgrades.

Michael Garfield · 1:25 AM

But I hear you. I own a GoPro as well.

Blake Ian · 1:26 AM

I just felt this wasn't something I was going to use right now.

Blake Ian · 1:26 AM

and I am a gadget junky

Michael Garfield · 1:26 AM

To get back via a LONG loop to my explorations of Glass's creative potentials...

Blake Ian · 1:26 AM

I was thrilled to be part of the experiment and be one of the first to get my hands on it

Blake Ian · 1:27 AM

yes

Michael Garfield · 1:27 AM

...and this talk is proof of it:

Blake Ian · 1:27 AM

lets wrap up soon, and lets discuss your indiegogo campaign

Blake Ian · 1:27 AM

because what good is a Tawk without a plug...

Michael Garfield · 1:27 AM

It's less about what Glass the device actually DOES, especially in this early state, and more about the conversations it STARTS.

Michael Garfield · 1:28 AM

For example, Glass doesn't actually threaten our privacy any more than phones already do. But it puts the issue right up front!

Blake Ian · 1:28 AM

I did really enjoy the reactions from people

Michael Garfield · 1:28 AM

It's psychedelic in the sense that it makes the unconscious conscious.

Blake Ian · 1:28 AM

the WOW faces

Blake Ian · 1:28 AM

the expression of "oh wow we are really living in the future"

Blake Ian · 1:29 AM

Im a futurist so that stuff excites me for sure

Michael Garfield · 1:29 AM

It's a catalyst to society-level group therapy about how to handle our collective experience of ego death as we move deeper into the electronic age.

Blake Ian · 1:29 AM

Though I am a bigger supporter of a watch in the long run

Blake Ian · 1:29 AM

hardware on the face doesn't seem practical

Michael Garfield · 1:29 AM

★ Spotlighted from Brian Duffy

“Is it a desirable goal to remove all the boundaries that separate self from other? If we abolish privacy, do we abolish individuality or empower it?”

Michael Garfield · 1:29 AM

Brian, I'll quote Teilhard de Chardin here:

Michael Garfield · 1:29 AM

"Hypercollectivization leads to Hyperpersonalization."

Michael Garfield · 1:30 AM

The more complex the society, the more social niches available, the more we are required to be our freaky selves.

Michael Garfield · 1:30 AM

And as soon as everyone's sordid past and foolish teenage mistakes are online, nobody will have sh*t on anybody.

Michael Garfield · 1:30 AM

Blackmail will be an archaic term,

Michael Garfield · 1:31 AM

referring to an archaic state of consciousness.

Michael Garfield · 1:31 AM

We'll have new problems. HOPEFULLY better ones.

Michael Garfield · 1:31 AM

★ Spotlighted from Brian Duffy

“Sort of like how if we can get to a point where we abolish the concept of earning a living, the world starts to become more like one big Burning Man from then on”

Michael Garfield · 1:32 AM

Blake, what I like about "hardware on the face" is how it brings into focus the precise issue of how technology both connects us and divides us.

Michael Garfield · 1:32 AM

How a bridge can be a wall and a wall can be a bridge.

Michael Garfield · 1:32 AM

How a sword can both heal and wound.

Michael Garfield · 1:32 AM

The poet in me just eats this stuff up. "Glass" was a perfect name for it.

Blake Ian · 1:33 AM

Sure I see that, but I see it as a temporary experiment more than a lasting new addition like the phone

Blake Ian · 1:33 AM

but an exciting one no doubt

Blake Ian · 1:33 AM

which is why I participated and am so happy I did

Michael Garfield · 1:33 AM

One thing a watch can't do is read your brainwaves: https://www.facebook.com/events/154803324713251/permalink/163155017211415/

Blake Ian · 1:33 AM

and I find what you are doing with it extremely interesting and exciting

Michael Garfield · 1:34 AM

Looks like there'll be an accessory for Glass that'll do that, soon...

Michael Garfield · 1:34 AM

Yikes! And yay! Both.

Blake Ian · 1:34 AM

hahaah

Michael Garfield · 1:35 AM

I could talk about this all night but I want to be respectful of your time.

Blake Ian · 1:35 AM

Of course the other obvious thing here is that the aesthetic will surely change drastically

Blake Ian · 1:35 AM

and that could make all the difference

Michael Garfield · 1:35 AM

Oh and of course then there's the "Glass-Killer," Meta: http://meta-view.com

Michael Garfield · 1:35 AM

Which puts the lenses in front of you and paints the computer environment over EVERYTHING.

Blake Ian · 1:36 AM

Nice!

Blake Ian · 1:36 AM

even more to my point though

Michael Garfield · 1:36 AM

A very different design philosophy.

Blake Ian · 1:36 AM

think Camcorder in 1985

Blake Ian · 1:36 AM

a big bag over my dads shoulder that literally had a VCR in it!

Blake Ian · 1:36 AM

haha

Blake Ian · 1:36 AM

so if Glass is iteration 1

Michael Garfield · 1:36 AM

Whereas Glass is about getting the technology OUT of the way, ironically, Meta is about complete immersion in augmented reality.

Michael Garfield · 1:36 AM

They are divergent technologies/approaches.

Michael Garfield · 1:36 AM

In a way I feel like Glass is the less threatening of the two.

Blake Ian · 1:37 AM

*Appreciate the respect of time... and of our audience, though these guys seem to be sticking around! : )

Blake Ian · 1:37 AM

I do just want to go to one more point here

Blake Ian · 1:37 AM

what about the social implications

Blake Ian · 1:38 AM

looking down at your phone has gotten out of control, I myself am so guilty of it and Howard speaks of it Net Smart

Michael Garfield · 1:38 AM

Indeed.

Blake Ian · 1:38 AM

but a piece of hardware literally between you and the person in front of you

Blake Ian · 1:38 AM

its quite anti social

Blake Ian · 1:38 AM

glancing at your wrist to see a text that may have just vibrated in your pocket is the other direction

Blake Ian · 1:39 AM

it arms you with light and immediate access, but is actually less "rude" so to speak

Michael Garfield · 1:39 AM

I don't know if I agree...looking at your watch is super rude.

Michael Garfield · 1:39 AM

Glancing up into the corner of our vision is something we do a lot when we're trying to remember something...

Michael Garfield · 1:39 AM

Which is basically what we're doing here, when we access the mnemonic prosthesis...

Michael Garfield · 1:40 AM

But I doubt everyone will agree on stuff like this. Taboos are so culturally specific.

Blake Ian · 1:40 AM

Well ok I hear you, but I don't know, isn't having the glass on your face implying a certain importance to everything out there over what or who is right here with you now

Michael Garfield · 1:41 AM

Perhaps...UNLESS:

Michael Garfield · 1:41 AM

You're recording the person in front of you. And that's another reason why I've loved all of the inversions and reversals involved in this "Message To Your Future Self" project, among the others I'm exploring at http://igg.me/at/mgglass

Michael Garfield · 1:41 AM

(there's your plug)

Michael Garfield · 1:42 AM

Then the person across you becomes uncomfortably important.

Blake Ian · 1:42 AM

Do you meditate?

Michael Garfield · 1:42 AM

Where is their image going? For whom and to what end? Trust and permission move right up front to the center of the conversation.

Blake Ian · 1:43 AM

That's not as much of a non sequitur as it may seem!

Michael Garfield · 1:43 AM

Yes - but I'm more of a mindfulness guy than a zazen guy.

Blake Ian · 1:44 AM

Well my question is about detaching... it's important IMO to detach from all of this, not only during meditation but during personal interaction

Michael Garfield · 1:44 AM

I have spent much more time honing my mind in flow states during creative work - the precision of a perfect stroke while painting. Enzos.

Blake Ian · 1:44 AM

though I guess you aren't suggesting we wear Glass all day every day right?

Michael Garfield · 1:44 AM

Oh God no.

Michael Garfield · 1:44 AM

★ Spotlighted from Brian Duffy

“Presence is sacred.”

Blake Ian · 1:45 AM

HaHa we DOUBLE spotlighted Brian at the same moment!

Blake Ian · 1:45 AM

I got the error that it was already spotlight immediately

Michael Garfield · 1:45 AM

I've noticed a funny thing about detachment with respect to wearing Glass...

Blake Ian · 1:45 AM

Bravo Brian Duffy

Michael Garfield · 1:45 AM

I've started to see with a "camera eye." It's actually cultivated my Witnessing sensibility.

Blake Ian · 1:46 AM

yes

Blake Ian · 1:46 AM

the thing I enjoyed most was as I said the first person recordings... on Fathers Day I took a vid of my dad and playing a game with a tennis ball and having a funny convo...

Blake Ian · 1:46 AM

When I watched it was like one of those sci fi movies where you are watching videos of memories

Blake Ian · 1:47 AM

THAT was pretty cool

Michael Garfield · 1:47 AM

I hadn't realized how it would act as training wheels for Second Attention, the awareness of what I'm aware of.

Michael Garfield · 1:47 AM

The more I wear it the more I'm conscious of where my eyes are.

Blake Ian · 1:48 AM

Yeah that's pretty cool, that description reminds me of mediation actually

Blake Ian · 1:48 AM

being aware of thoughts happening, or in this case being aware of persepctive

Blake Ian · 1:48 AM

really observing

Michael Garfield · 1:48 AM

Exactly. I meditate enough to recognize what's going on here...

Michael Garfield · 1:48 AM

Here's another uncanny metaphorical overlay for you:

Michael Garfield · 1:48 AM

Owls can't turn their eyeballs in the socket.

Michael Garfield · 1:49 AM

They have to move their entire head.

Michael Garfield · 1:49 AM

The owl is the familiar of Athena, who in Pre-Hellenic Greek myth was the Crone, the goddess of old age...

Michael Garfield · 1:49 AM

She saw through the veil and into the underworld.

Michael Garfield · 1:50 AM

When I'm wearing Glass, I recapitulate the mythology by becoming an owl myself,

Michael Garfield · 1:50 AM

connected to the "underworld" of the technological collective unconscious,

Michael Garfield · 1:50 AM

pivoting my head in order to capture what I see.

Blake Ian · 1:51 AM

Michael "Athena" Garfield

Blake Ian · 1:51 AM

Zeus' favorite child

Blake Ian · 1:51 AM

Michael Garfield · 1:51 AM

The owl stands at guard between worlds, between the living and the dead...

Michael Garfield · 1:51 AM

And as we move into this erotic embrace where our categories of organic and machine, made and born, life and nonlife are challenged...

Michael Garfield · 1:52 AM

It's only appropriate to find a little bird on my shoulder that is also somehow simultaneously me, whispering in my ear the secrets of the Great Beyond...

Michael Garfield · 1:53 AM

I find it strangely perfect how these myths continue to reappear and apply.

Michael Garfield · 1:53 AM

The more things change...

Blake Ian · 1:54 AM

and lets end on this note... this morning I grabbed my guitar and started playing "The Great Beyond" by REM

Blake Ian · 1:54 AM

: ]

Blake Ian · 1:54 AM

True Story!

Michael Garfield · 1:54 AM

There you have it.

Blake Ian · 1:54 AM

Michael I can go on forever and this audience has been excellent!

Blake Ian · 1:54 AM

Let's do this again sometime

Michael Garfield · 1:54 AM

Totally! In the meantime...

Blake Ian · 1:54 AM

and Brian Duffy I think you need to get up here!

Michael Garfield · 1:54 AM

★ Spotlighted from ross dittman

“I'm not smart enough to figure out his philosophical ramblings. I should meditate more.”

Blake Ian · 1:55 AM

You too Rich

Michael Garfield · 1:55 AM

Ross! Ha ha, let's chat ourselves sometime.

Michael Garfield · 1:55 AM

I'm waxing poetic on espresso.

Michael Garfield · 1:55 AM

In the meantime, here is the FB event page that links to my Indiegogo campaign for all of the creative work I'm doing with Glass:

Michael Garfield · 1:55 AM

(not just videos but essays and conversations like this one)

Michael Garfield · 1:55 AM

https://www.facebook.com/events/154803324713251/157544261105824/

Blake Ian · 1:56 AM

Awesome... everyone be sure to check it out, Michael is doing some VERY cool stuff!

Michael Garfield · 1:56 AM

I post new articles about all of these topics there on a daily basis.

Michael Garfield · 1:56 AM

And here is the campaign page itself:

Michael Garfield · 1:56 AM

http://igg.me/at/mgglass

Michael Garfield · 1:56 AM

And here is my website where people can sign up for emails from me every two weeks, with new art and music and talks I've recorded: http://michaelgarfield.net

Blake Ian · 1:57 AM

Thanks for Tawking Michael, and thanks to all the folks in the forum for joining and for your thoughtful commentary. Poke around the site, if you search NSA there is a Tawk I think you will like

Michael Garfield · 1:57 AM

(I gave three talks on this stuff at Burning Man I'll be sharing soon through the email newsletter.)

Michael Garfield · 1:57 AM

And thank you Blake and everybody at Tawkers for having me!

Michael Garfield · 1:57 AM

We've all been memorialized for posterity.

Blake Ian · 1:57 AM

and here is the Tawk between myself and Howard Rheingold that Michael mentioned. http://tawke.rs/10hf8Wk

Blake Ian · 1:57 AM

Good times.

Blake Ian · 1:58 AM

Tawk soon!

Michael Garfield · 1:58 AM

I'll be sure to share this chat through the newsletter and FB page next week. Feel free to stay in touch, y'all! michaelgarfield at gmail dot com

Blake Ian · 1:58 AM

Wow Michael and I just plugged like crazy... please be sure to check out and support Michael's Indiegogo http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/through-a-glass-brightly-michael-garfield-on-google-evolution-art

Blake Ian · 1:59 AM

Good night... and good luck.

Michael Garfield · 1:59 AM

Forum · 91

Forum· 91 comments

184 visitors

Tawkers AdminSep 17, 2013, 10:31 PM

Welcome to the Forum! To get involved, click "Who's Here" and "Listen" to others in the Tawk. And don't forget to "Like" comments you want the Hosts to see. They only see the comments that get enough likes to become "Overheard"

Tawkers AdminSep 17, 2013, 10:31 PM

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Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 12:00 AM★ Spotlighted

things are happening!

Patrick DiGiovanniSep 18, 2013, 12:01 AM

Hey Michael!

Patrick DiGiovanniSep 18, 2013, 12:02 AM

Hey Duff!

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 12:02 AM

Whatup Pat the Gnome

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 12:02 AM

how's life?

Patrick DiGiovanniSep 18, 2013, 12:04 AM

Life is Beautiful

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 12:04 AM

glad to hear it

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 12:04 AM

we're already starting plans for next year's Agewood

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 12:04 AM★ Spotlighted

we want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes

Patrick DiGiovanniSep 18, 2013, 12:06 AM

HAHA NICE!

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 12:08 AM

still says "Starting Talk"

Patrick DiGiovanniSep 18, 2013, 12:08 AM

http://youtu.be/qMfgK7cn6Wg

Patrick DiGiovanniSep 18, 2013, 12:09 AM

hmm, duff, maybe you need to refresh

Patrick DiGiovanniSep 18, 2013, 12:09 AM

I can vouch for that

Patrick DiGiovanniSep 18, 2013, 12:13 AM

Getting ourselves out of the way

Liz WilliamsSep 18, 2013, 12:18 AM

Developing technology has always tested the bounds of privacy. We leave such traces of ourselves everywhere, in spite of knowing how easy it is to obtain information about us, that it seems that there is no such thing as privacy anymore.

Liz WilliamsSep 18, 2013, 12:19 AM

even our insides are available for viewing at the airport.

Liz WilliamsSep 18, 2013, 12:21 AM

When ice was introduced in the 19th century, it was given away at first until people felt that they had to have it.

Paul MillerSep 18, 2013, 12:37 AM★ Spotlighted

Expecting privacy online is kind of like expecting having personal space at a concert

Rich HagbergSep 18, 2013, 12:38 AM

Exactly Paul!

Paul MillerSep 18, 2013, 12:38 AM★ Spotlighted

It is estimated that in a few short years humans born will have every second of their lives video recorded. So much for defining integrity when someone isn't looking.

Paul MillerSep 18, 2013, 12:40 AM

Technology and optimism! Sign me up. Who is Jason Silva?

Paul MillerSep 18, 2013, 12:41 AM

I tend to believe the better is better than it used to be and worse isn't as bad as it used to be.

Paul MillerSep 18, 2013, 12:45 AM

How far are we from being "Borg" and resistance is futile

Paul MillerSep 18, 2013, 12:47 AM★ Spotlighted

LIving 1000 years will cause a fear of life

Rich HagbergSep 18, 2013, 12:48 AM★ Spotlighted

Where we are coming from, what motivates us - is important to pay attention to, especially when we create something...

Rich HagbergSep 18, 2013, 12:49 AM

A good point Paul, but what if this age brings about personally accountability?

Rich HagbergSep 18, 2013, 12:49 AM★ Spotlighted

personal accountability & responsibility (whether we want it or not lol)

Rich HagbergSep 18, 2013, 12:52 AM★ Spotlighted

They have been doing studies on something you might say is a living force. There have been tests measuring whether our intentions are able to affect machinery, wish I could remember the link...

Paul MillerSep 18, 2013, 12:52 AM★ Spotlighted

Pulling the plug after 500 or 600 years. LIfe without death will cause quite the moral dilemma

Tawkers AdminSep 18, 2013, 12:52 AM

Hey folks, remember to vote up the comments you like... the Hosts only see OH (Overheard) comments that get voted up.

Rich HagbergSep 18, 2013, 12:53 AM

the responsibility aspect is important Michael. "With great power comes great responsibility"

Paul MillerSep 18, 2013, 12:53 AM★ Spotlighted

Increased lifespan creates alot of baggage :-)

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 12:54 AM★ Spotlighted

What do you guys think of the idea of simultaneous global telepathy? If everyone simultaneously knew everyone else's hopes, fears and private thoughts, the very idea of shame, or even evil, could be made obsolete alongside the obsolescence of privacy

Rich HagbergSep 18, 2013, 12:54 AM

Paul - or gives you more time to free yourself from it....

Rich HagbergSep 18, 2013, 12:55 AM

Agreed!!!

Paul MillerSep 18, 2013, 12:56 AM

Unfortunately, knowledge doesn't guarantee better behavior. We know better and still make the mistake.

Paul MillerSep 18, 2013, 12:57 AM

If things don't change, they tend to remain the same :-)

Rich HagbergSep 18, 2013, 12:57 AM

Break the cycle, but maybe we first have to be honest and recognize the cycle, and so many are in resistance, because they are afraid.

Rich HagbergSep 18, 2013, 12:58 AM

minority report?

Paul MillerSep 18, 2013, 12:58 AM★ Spotlighted

Transparency is always good in small groups. It would be interesting to experience in larger populations

Rich HagbergSep 18, 2013, 12:59 AM

maybe we need to heal that Paul, globally, together.

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 12:59 AM

I wonder if it's related to the simultaneous development curves in virtual reality hardware and near-photorealistic computer graphics software. What kind of "behavior contexts" are we being prepared for?

Paul MillerSep 18, 2013, 12:59 AM★ Spotlighted

With trust, things move with less resistance and a much faster pace. No hidden agenda, etc.

Rich HagbergSep 18, 2013, 1:00 AM

I like what a teacher of mine said once... "the truth will set you free, but it may piss you off first."

Rich HagbergSep 18, 2013, 1:01 AM

Is it possible that we derive our choices from two main motivators.... Love & Fear? Which to choose then, what benefits us the most?

Rich HagbergSep 18, 2013, 1:02 AM

Real Life? I'll have to check that out...thanks Blake!

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 1:03 AM

Many societies take it for granted that they are watched by their ancestors at all times.

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 1:04 AM

If a person is to declare themselves as believing in "spirit", does it follow that they must believe in "spirits", always around us, living in everything?

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 1:11 AM★ Spotlighted

Are smartphones basically mitochondrial bacteria that we are absorbing as new organs of our bodies?

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 1:12 AM

Like bones have to be stubborn and unmoving in their existential position

Paul MillerSep 18, 2013, 1:13 AM★ Spotlighted

Checks and balances are a good thing.

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 1:14 AM

Grant Morrison's 'The Invisibles' is one of the most brilliant explorations of this concept.

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 1:14 AM

The Conspiracy and The Resistance depending on each other

Rich HagbergSep 18, 2013, 1:15 AM

Balance is key, even to nature

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 1:16 AM

Are they bones and muscles carrying us forward or the up and down of contractions pushing us through the birth canal?

Rich HagbergSep 18, 2013, 1:18 AM

@ Michael - that should be interesting...

Paul MillerSep 18, 2013, 1:19 AM

Engineering Anomalies? Any relation to the street light interference thing?

Rich HagbergSep 18, 2013, 1:20 AM

not the same link, but I am sure there it is relevant

Rich HagbergSep 18, 2013, 1:20 AM

thanks. I'll check this site out

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 1:23 AM★ Spotlighted

Is it a desirable goal to remove all the boundaries that separate self from other? If we abolish privacy, do we abolish individuality or empower it?

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 1:25 AM

Isn't privacy an experimental realm where we can push the boundaries of our self? Safe to try something we've never tried before and have the chance to decide wether to keep it as a part of ourselves or not, privacy as self-filtering and self-dvlpmnt

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 1:27 AM

Privacy is the freedom to do something without it becoming a permanent part of your identity. Did the Star Wars Kid deserve what happened to him? How can we prevent lack of privacy from ruining people's lives. What if it stays uneven?

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 1:30 AM★ Spotlighted

Sort of like how if we can get to a point where we abolish the concept of earning a living, the world starts to become more like one big Burning Man from then on

Rich HagbergSep 18, 2013, 1:30 AM

LOL

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 1:31 AM

It'll definitely still be an uneven curve for adoption, but hey, who better to take down a few pegs than rich westerners??!?!?!

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 1:33 AM

I'm curious about the names. People have accused the latest crop of web platforms as having infantilizing names, google, twitter, tawkers. It's all baby talk.

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 1:35 AM

The baby talk angle makes me think about McKenna's description of the DMT realm as a kind of comforting nursery space, we can't handle the truths of hyperspace yet. We're being extradimensionally "babied" for our own good.

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 1:40 AM

I think the cell phones while hanging out with friends thing has got to stop.

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 1:40 AM★ Spotlighted

Presence is sacred.

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 1:41 AM

If you're "not interested" in what someone else has to say, it's not an excuse to resign yourself from the human moment.

Rich HagbergSep 18, 2013, 1:41 AM

it's a topic that has surfaced more frequently lately... lot of videos...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX_pZTlERaI

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 1:42 AM

yeah this one is brilliant http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OINa46HeWg8

Rich HagbergSep 18, 2013, 1:42 AM

nice Micheal, interesting perspective...

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 1:43 AM

Michael I'd love to know your thoughts on this article http://www.cracked.com/article_15231_7-reasons-21st-century-making-you-miserable.html

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 1:45 AM

haha

Rich HagbergSep 18, 2013, 1:45 AM

That video is brilliant Brian....

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 1:47 AM

I wonder about the phenomenon of the "pointless recording". People don't want to watch that shitty video of the concert, they just want to make sure their friends know what a crazy good time they're having.

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 1:48 AM

Out of all the cameras that people compulsively shove into every human moment, how much of that footage is actually revisited as precious memories?

Rich HagbergSep 18, 2013, 1:49 AM

the phenomenon... maybe appealing to the narcissistic?

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 1:49 AM

Is the gesture of recording moreso reflective of an anxiety we carry that the moments are passing by beyond our ability to live in them? Recording as a placebo placeholder for truly living?

ross dittmanSep 18, 2013, 1:51 AM

I just wear glasses for shity eye sight.

Rich HagbergSep 18, 2013, 1:51 AM

:-)

ross dittmanSep 18, 2013, 1:53 AM★ Spotlighted

I'm not smart enough to figure out his philosophical ramblings. I should meditate more.

Brian DuffySep 18, 2013, 1:55 AM

anytime

ross dittmanSep 18, 2013, 1:55 AM

I'm free saturday.

Rich HagbergSep 18, 2013, 1:56 AM

Thank you to all of you, great tawk! Sounds like good plan Blake!

Rich HagbergSep 18, 2013, 1:56 AM

Got it!

Michael MicklowSep 18, 2013, 2:38 AM

... damn i missed this tawk. shucks.