a campfire jam at the intersection of art, music & technology

A Perfect Circle

[NFT](ethereum://0xabEFBc9fD2F806065b4f3C237d4b59D9A97Bcac7/3815)

In the winter I tripped, fell down a rabbit hole, and unexpectedly found myself in some of the most exciting social circles I can remember. I’ve been in technology for over a decade at this point: long enough to have once been wide-eyed and optimistic, to have spent many years wandering through a period of alienation, and to have seen the light once more.

In every direction I turn I see kind, generous, collaborative, conscientious, visionary geniuses. Somehow I tricked them into being my friends, too.

Today I look into the future and see the glimmers of the utopian society I first hoped technology could bring about. “How naive you were!”, I’ve sneered at myself in the years since as a handful of exploitative & extractive corporations strengthened their domination of the industry.

Today that cynicism feels like an ancient memory, just like the period of deep burnout that seeded it.

Legacy Silicon Valley’s fatal flaw is its zero-sum competitiveness necessitating unbounded growth and the crushing of competition. We have an opportunity to learn from their mistakes.

All of the bleeding-edge web3 projects are powerfully aligned and inherently better as part of an ecosystem than in isolation. Rather than compete, we collaborate: a technical “Yes, and…” benefiting the whole world rather than trying to own it.

In this world there is so much alignment already, and yet so much uncharted territory we get to joyfully explore together in the years ahead of us as see how virtuous our circles might become.


Crafting Cohesive & Collaborative Spatial Social Software for Patrons' Permanent Pondering


[Token #3110](auction://0xabEFBc9fD2F806065b4f3C237d4b59D9A97Bcac7?network=mainnet&tokenId=3110)

A few weeks ago, in between watching talks at Figma Config, my roommate & I were reminiscing about the “good old days” of design conferences that we had independently frequented in Europe.

I was due to give my talk the next day and was in the process of rewriting the entire thing while trying to rethink the metaphysical format of what a “talk” even was & how that should _really_ manifest.

Conferences are weird: at their most surface level, they’re ostensibly just paying a bunch of money to travel somewhere and sit in an auditorium or banquet room drinking stale urn coffee, processing a hangover, and watching someone give a talk that would end up on YouTube by the time you’d returned home. Indeed, some were just like that - but the best ones I went to were transformational experiences. They were where I met & reconnected with hundreds of friends I’ve maintained across borders & oceans for a decade and where as a design student & new grad I first felt part of something bigger & more exciting than myself rather than an anonymous “designer” in London’s stagnant graphic design scene. They were more than just watching a future-video be delivered live: a magical form of collective energetic entrainment that could never fully translate by the time a video reached YouTube.

The chills, tingles & tears I experienced during the best conferences I attended left indelible marks on my perception of myself and the world. They were so much more than “just watching talks”; holistic moments of micro cultural zeitgeists.

The event producers at Config had also recognized that an online conference should be more engaging and interactive than “a streaming video embedded on a webpage”, and had arranged a whole program of experiences to bring attendees together between talks. You know how the process of finishing is though: before I could “finish my talk” I had to fully explore my own thoughts on conferences and connection.

***

As a musician it is my assertion that performers are only one component of the experience of a performance: an attentive & open audience is integral to co-creating the conditions necessary for really magical experiences. Public speaking is no different.

Performing to a webcam in your bedroom can be an isolating experience. Virtual concerts on Zoom—where I can see people’s faces, and unmute them in between songs so it’s not weird & silent—are infinitely more interesting to me than streaming to something like Instagram Live or Zoom. One-to-many streaming platforms may contain a flurry of metrics or comments, but broadly the interactions with my live audience are either quantitative & depersonalized, or distractions that take me out of the mental headspace I need to drop into what I’m trying to bring into the world. What I want in my digital events is to feel the presence of an engaged, thoughtful & present audience in just the same way as I might when performing in a whisper-quiet living room or “listening room” concert.

At Config, the speakers streamed from a different application than was used by the audience to watch the talks: that is to say, I didn’t get to see the attendees’ live comment sidebar as I was speaking. Friends sent me screenshots afterwards & I’m grateful for the kind words people had to say about my talk, but had I been scanning it in the moment it would have certainly taken me away from the focus I needed to speak.

Still, I wanted to know that I was not speaking into a void: that I was not in an empty auditorium doing a dress rehearsal but that there were real humans out in the front row if I squinted past the stage lighting.

I also wanted to prototype something of a less ephemeral experience than the chat box that my talk was paired with: a permanent trail of thoughtful breadcrumbs marking the experience of my community listening to my talk.

I was considering all of this as I laid awake all night (lit

Why I am optimistic again

[Token #3101](auction://0xabEFBc9fD2F806065b4f3C237d4b59D9A97Bcac7?network=mainnet&tokenId=3101)

When I became disenchanted with technology in the spring of 2018, it shattered the mythology that I had spent my 20s immersed in. 

Technology was extremely meaningful to me: a curious & super-powered primitive to allow us to explore the depths of the collective unconscious by skillfully interfacing human & machine. And yet I found myself in San Francisco: supposedly the global center of innovation, caught day-to-day in the mundanity of a large corporation & doing anything but inventing.

Looking around, the picture was bleak: at some point between 2011 and 2017 it felt like every exciting & scrappy early-stage startup in the Bay Area became subsumed by a corporate surveillance-technology company: every bright-eyed inventor I knew eventually spending 3 hours/day on a shuttle bus to be sad in meetings at a suburban office park.

In the world capital of invention the only things that I could see being invented were new ways to prey on attention, spread misinformation, and boost arbitrary engagement metrics for products that didn’t need to exist in the world. Technology, from my perspective, was making the world a worse place.

I was at the peak of my career as a designer and technologist, and yet I was resigned to think that the future of the technology industry had been stolen by a handful of predatory corporations. Looking around at hundreds of talented & burnt out friends around the industry, it was was hard to imagine anything changing.

In that resignation, I gave up my agency as a technologist. I got up from my seat at the table, and retreated to my own physical & intellectual Walden Ponds. In lieu of any available action that matched my values, I chose to withdraw from any action at all.

Here’s the thing: the technology industry is still important to me. I still believe that properly harnessing technology is the key to our future as a civilization. I still believe that it has the power to transform us: personally & communally.

With the explosion of energy & attention into this current crypto cycle, there is once against spaciousness to imagine futures divergent from the myopic dreams of the Attention Economy. It is open, and yet it is not a certainty.

Crypto is a non-specific amplifier: it has the potential to create a hypercapitalist libertarian nightmare, or a mutually-beneficial interdependent utopia. One thing I do know is that the only way we can influence which outcome we get is by radically participating in its creation.

This time, the stakes of sitting on the sidelines are too high: the imagined darkest possible timeline a certainty only with our inaction. The call to adventure for every burnt out technologist is, therefore, not to surrender to the mundanity of the Silicon Valley of the past or the imagined outcomes of the future, but to bring our full attention to co-creating meaningful and human-centric digital environments that we can be proud of.

My pessimism is radically giving way to unwavering optimism: the energy of the past few days, weeks & months in crypto-powered utopian technology is shining a pure light on a path forward that we can be proud of walking together.

Will you join us?

---

if you enjoyed this post, please consider becoming a patron of my writing by supporting this NFT

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Divine Multimedia Transmissions 0001

Divine Multimedia Transmissions 0001 is a stream-of-consciousness verbal essay about creativity, interdependence & self-expression as a spiritual practice; performed with a live soundtrack & visuals

Minted on Zora under the full moon in Virgo, February 02021

It was primarily designed as a spoken word audio-visual experience. I invite you to set aside 9 minutes and watch it full-screen. You might enjoy using headphones or your favorite speakers.

**To hear sound, hit the 'mute' icon in the bottom-right of the image**

[NFT](ethereum://0xabefbc9fd2f806065b4f3c237d4b59d9a97bcac7/1082)

Patron: [Yaniv Tal](https://twitter.com/yanivgraph)

The meta-story is that this is an experiment in patronage. Please enjoy the piece first: it was intended as an [audiovisual experience](https://zora.co/gold/1082) but for those who prefer text (or want to quote me), a full text transcription follows. When you're done, we'll talk about the meta-story surrounding it in the Afterword section.

### The version using text

What a moment we find ourselves in.

A moment where we are being presented with the opportunity to write a new mythology for our civilization. We're being granted the opportunity to do that together, with the role of art & music & creativity at the center point. We're getting the opportunity to ask what happens if we take seriously the role of art & artists & the people who make our culture.  

This isn't hypothetical wondering about what a utopia might be like; this isn’t a fantastical utopia that is out of reach. This is an opportunity for us to get to decide what we will build together in our lifetimes with no one to stop us but ourselves.  

And so this is the question: whether or not we value art and music. I can tell you the answer for myself. For myself, I wouldn't be here had I not reconnected with my own humble and vulnerable creative connection. We're not asking for celebrities, for people to put on MTV, for people to put on pedestals, or for people to throw awards at: that's not what this is about anymore.  

This is about recognizing that the human capacity for raw self expression is the biggest gift that we could have been given, and is the reason that we're on this planet in the first place. Our individual, humble, creativity is how God expresses themselves in the universe. Before I lose too many people by saying the “G” word: I mean God  as in the energy. I don't mean, an old white dude with a big white beard up in the sky wagging his finger at you. Although, if that's what you believe, I'm not going to stop you from believing that either.  

I mean, God as an extra dimensional, infinite form of the purest, purest love. Of the most powerful unity between everything in the universe; between every human on this planet; between every sentient being in every corner of the universe; in every molecule of carbon; between here and wherever those depths are. And that's just in this dimension! We're talking about creativity, love & unity that span, far, far beyond & far deeper than those affectations of time that we believe to be so permanent. That's the God I'm talking about. Let's get back to talking about creativity, we can go back into that some other time!  

I believe that God & source energy & love & unity & creativity are the same thing. These are my spiritual beliefs—you don't have to take them—but I know I'm not the only one who believes this: that creative energy; the energy that we feel when we're in the zone & making something we love to do is as close to God as we'll ever see. It is the same energy: of flow states & of peak experiences. That's what All Of This is.  

And so we have a responsibility, as I see it, to reconstruct our society in a way that honors this. In a way that says, "Yes! Your art is valid!"; that says, “Yes! Your music is valid!”; that says “Yes! Every hobby, every interest you have that capitalism has told you isn't a _real job_ is the most real thing you could be doing”.  

That's what this