Plutopia News Network

Media Studies professor and “The Modem World” author Kevin Driscoll joins Jon and Scoop in taking a nostalgic and informative look back at the early days of online and Internet communication. Kevin explains the impact of early bulletin board systems, newsgroups, online services, and the coming of the web. This conversation is a followup to our February conversation https://plutopia.io/kevin-driscoll-the-modem-world/ about Kevin’s work and his book, “The Modem World: A Prehistory of Social Media,” which has since been released by Yale University Press. Kevin is also participating in a two week asynchronous conversation about “Modem World” and related subjects on the online community, The WELL, which was originally an online BBS that connected early on to the Internet. You have these two pretty parallel stories, and some people that I talk to from the BBS side would say “Yeah, we knew about ARPANet, this isn’t a secret, but it’s not accessible to the everyday folks unless you’ve had a connection.” And so some people would have these kind of informal relationships, it’s like “Basically, I know a guy who gets me an account at the university,” or something like that, or you had an account at a job, or something, and you’re able to access it or carry it on. So there’s a lot of informal kinds of connections between them. The real moment of convergence is generally around the early to mid 1990s, which coincides, of course, with privatization of NSFNet and big components of what we would think of as the Internet. That’s a really good reason why we use the word Internet to talk about this big mess of communications systems. Kevin Driscoll is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia. His research explores popular culture, political communication, and networked personal computing. Some of his recent work explores everyday and emerging uses of social media such as live-tweeting, joking about politics, and spreading rumors. In 2017, he published a technical and cultural history of the French Minitel with Julien Mailland from Indiana University titled Minitel: Welcome to the Internet. His latest book, “The Modem World,” traces the pre-history of social media through the dial-up bulletin board systems (BBSs) of the 1980s and 1990s.

Ufology: the study of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) by people who believe that they may have extraordinary (e.g. extraterrestrial or extra-dimensional) origins. Often derided by skeptics and science educators as an example of pseudoscience, ufology has can represent a field of legitimate scientific investigation, as practiced by Stanton Friedman, Jacques Vallée, Allen Hynek, et al. A ufologist is one who investigates UFO phenomena. The late Stanton Friedman was an American nuclear physicist and professional ufologist who resided in New Brunswick, NJ and Canada. He was the original civilian investigator of the Roswell UFO incident. As a nuclear physicist, he worked on advanced, classified programs on nuclear aircraft, fission and fusion rockets, and compact nuclear power plants for space applications. He left full-time employment as a physicist to pursue the scientific investigation of unidentified flying objects. His many books and public presentations were criticized by some of this fellow scientists and government officials. In May of this year, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, Ronald Moultrie, and Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence, Scott Bray testified before a House subcommittee. They revealed that the Defense Department is organizing reports of UAPs or “unidentified aerial phenomena” after a congressionally mandated report released last year found most of the incidents analyzed remain unidentified. The government’s seeming admission that UFOs may be real appears to vindicate Dr. Friedman. In 1975, Scoop interviewed Dr. Friedman prior to his lecture at the University of California in Berkeley. The major reason why no government in the world wants its people to know the whole story about flying saucers — aside from the primary concern of ‘how do you duplicate the flight propulsion system,’ which you aren’t going to tell your enemies about — is a very simple- minded one, that no government wants its people to start thinking of themselves as earthlings, instead of as Americans, or Russians, or as Chinese, or whatever. The whole way that this world is structured is predicated on a system of nationalistic competitions. I don’t care whether it’s the Olympics or the battlefield. The problem is the same. Or the development of nuclear weapons systems. So from an alien viewpoint, it’s clear we’re a primitive society whose major activity is tribal warfare. It’s further clear that despite all the jokes about “Take me to your leader,” that there is no leader to be taken to. Photo by Gianluca Carenza on Unsplash

Jim Rutt, host of “The Jim Rutt Show” podcast, joins Jon and Scoop for a wide-ranging discussion about business and technology. Jim details his start in business and tech, his time running Network Solutions, the evolution of the Internet, cancel culture, and AI censorship. Jim is also President and co-founder of the MIT Free Speech Alliance. He is the Executive Producer of the film “An Initiation to Game B.” He is also the creator of Network Wars, the popular mobile game. He is past Chairman of the Santa Fe Institute. He was CEO of Network Solutions, which operated the .com, .net, and .org domain namespaces on the Internet until its acquisition by Verisign in 2000. Jim was the first CTO of Thomson-Reuters. He was Chairman of the computer chip design software company Analog Design Automation until its acquisition by Synposis in 2004. The mother lode there in the just pre-internet period, AOL and its precursors… they actually created for Commodore first, and then for TRS-80, and then they had a deal to build Apple’s network, a private network branded and run by Apple, for Apple users. And Apple canceled the project, but as an escape valve to get out of the contract, they let AOL keep all the technology. And so AOL launched the AOL service on a technology base that was gonna be Apple’s private network private network. And the rest, as they say, is history. AOL became the big behemoth just before the Internet, and then they misplayed the transition TO the Internet. And you know what happened after that…

Before the Internet changed the way we experienced movies, dark theaters, and late night tv were the sole venues where sci-fi and horror fans could get a regular fix of cheap movie thrills. This time, on the Plutopia podcast, Jon, Scoop and Maggie discuss their favorite classic films, from the golden age of sci-fi and horror. Jon: They had Kid Shows then, on Saturday morning. So you’d go down Saturday morning, and take your milk carton, or whatever mordido that you used to get into the movie. Where, as Scoop will remember, all you had to have was your Gandy’s half-gallon milk carton (laughter). Empty half-gallon milk carton… Scoop: My Mom asked what happened to the milk on Saturday morning, when I was headed off to the movie. I just told her I drank all the milk! Jon: You didn’t pour it down the sink, did you? Scoop: Of course, I did! I wasn’t that big a milk fan. Jon: Yeah, I mean – this was a great thing about that era. I don’t know that there’s anyplace in the world that they do this now. Maggie: Well, you guys had that story of the theater… for me, I’m about ten-ish years behind y’all. You know, so it was late 60s or early 70s for me. And we didn’t have the theater thing, but we had a really great UHF station in the D.C. area. It was always this thing, like, in the morning you would have Saturday morning cartoons, which is great, and I could have my Quisp or my Quake cereal, and then in the afternoon, it was all the old sci-fi and horror movies. So I have this fondness for that time, it was so cool… scared the crap out of me! Also check out Jon L.’s blog post, “Monsters from the Id.” More or less weekly, Plutopia posts a Sci-Fi Saturday tweet: Plutopia News Network Sci-Fi Saturday: "Queen of Outer Space"! Interstellar energy beam destroys a space station and zaps a rocket to crash land on Venus, where women have killed most men, not good news for the four male earthling astronauts. https://t.co/GtZaV2GW2W — Plutopia News Network (@plutopia) May 14, 2022 Plutopia News Network Sci-Fi Saturday: "The Earth Dies Screaming" as aliens kill all but a few humans, sending malign robots to kill survivors and activate corpses as dead-eyed zombies. Score by composer Elisabeth Lutyens. The title was a joke that stuck. https://t.co/6yQGdZq4x1 — Plutopia News Network (@plutopia) May 21, 2022 Plutopia News Network Sci-Fi Saturday – "The Monster That Challenged the World": giant mollusks from beneath the ocean floor "out of the nightmare of time" raise a ruckus in the Salton Sea, attacking livestock, lovers, and rabbits. https://t.co/n8KNN2wbP4 — Plutopia News Network (@plutopia) March 12, 2022

Philosopher Charles Herrman interviews Michael Webb, an advocate for the practice of meditative inquiry. They discuss interviewing and questioning, stillness, truth, centering, and much more. Michael Webb: Truth isn’t necessarily instrumental. A lot of people might think that, ‘I want to know something because I want to use it in order to achieve something else.’ Charles Herrman: Instrumental? MW: Yes. Whereas I think we can almost look at truth as a motivator in itself. Almost like an end in itself, in away. CH: When people refer to truth, I would say that they directly imply that beyond the truth lies a solid foundation, a ground, some justification for it. I would say that when we think we’re telling the truth, that is essentially what we’re saying in the background. So ultimately, we can justify truth in terms either of facts or a priori common sense justifications. That is to say, those truths that are true in and of themselves, not requiring any further evidence. Charles Herrman is a published philosopher and author of four unpublished book manuscripts, four articles in the journal Eidos: A Journal for Philosophy of Culture, and four articles at openDemocracy, an internet journal of foreign affairs. Michael Webb has been a music teacher, a language teacher, a textbook editor, a tech writer, and a software engineer. He got a Masters Degree in Counseling Psychology in a program that emphasized integrating Asian perspectives, which dovetailed nicely with his several decades of experience studying and practicing meditation. He’s currently working to launch a podcast about the role of communication in evolution. Photo: Photo by Marek Okon on Unsplash

In this episode, Jon and Scoop talk to Alexandra Alvarez about her new company “Love x Alex,” her activity supporting the “Free Britney” movement, which was seeking an end to Britney Spears’ court-ordered guardianship. The movement helped jump-start her line of fashion and pop culture goodies. We talk about her move from major studio casting to independent designer, marketer, and entrepreneur. Alexandra Alvarez: I think the timing was with us, as well. I had the “Free Britney” stuff there, but – this is crazy – I went to the termination hearing on November 12. We had no idea if they were going to terminate the conservatorship that day, it was just another court hearing. But I had created an entire line that said, past tense, “We Freed Britney.” And I brought it with us. I brought, like, three sweatshirts and a hoodie, just in case. They were in my backpack. And then, I had my laptop with me, too, at this court hearing. And then probably like 45 minutes into the hearing we were all outside the Stanley Moss Courthouse, there was probably – MTV was there, all of the news stations were there, a huge deal at this point, because the documentaries had already come out. And they made the announcement that the conservatorship had been terminated. And I literally grabbed the t-shirts out of the backpack. I threw them at my friend, and I threw mine on, and I hit live on the website. And when I hit that button, the product was emailed out to everyone. And it said “We freed Britney,” a huge celebratory thing. And I remember the news stations running up to me, and they were like “How do you guys already have merchandise, how did you guys know?” That event catapulted my followership and my business.

Jon and Scoop do a deep dive into the land of free speech, which is what this country’s supposed to be – land of the free, home of the brave. We discuss current issues of free speech in the Internet/post-Truth era. Jon: Should you be able to ban people from a system like Twitter? Which is supposedly set up for conversation, and has increasingly had to find ways to manage and moderate those conversations in ways that have been troubling to people who advocate for a kind of free speech absolutism. Scoop: We have a neighbor here in the Austin area who has some views on that, and he took those views to the point of buying Twitter. And that has created a lot of uproar online and, in fact, in all communities. Because a lot of, not just personal communication, but business communication happens on Twitter now. And having someone who has a whole different approach take over and be the God of Twitter is frightening a lot of people. Jon’s notes on free speech. We’re in an era of user-generated content in media. Many people are focused on UGC combined in some ratio with mass media content. Much content is from organizations that claim to present “news.” A definition of news: “newly received or noteworthy information, especially about recent or important events.” News does not equal truth. Journalistic objectivity is an ideal that professional journalists often pursue, but commitment to objectivity has probably eroded, especially as we acknowledge how truly difficult it is to create a truly objective representation of reality. The Internet facilitated the creation of many channels for distributing information. Traditional news organizations have had to fight for mindshare. Some safeguards, like the Fairness Doctrine, have gone away. It’s hard to know what’s true and what’s not true. Many users lack critical thinking skills – to what extent can they be manipulated online? Doomscrolling: online news consumption and online fear consumption are addictive. “The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prevents the government from making laws that regulate an establishment of religion, or that prohibit the free exercise of religion, or abridge the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the freedom of assembly, or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances.” – Wikipedia The First Amendment does not apply to private companies and organizations – it’s strictly about what government can or cannot do. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act generally provides immunity for website platforms with respect to third-party content. No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. It basically says that the source of posted content is responsible for it, and the carrier of that content is not. Without Section 230, platforms like Facebook and Twitter would either have to fold or vet content more strictly. Oddly some people who argue for less restriction on social media platforms also talk about repealing Section 230 – which would have the opposite effect. Elon Musk and Twitter: he wants looser moderation. In the social media free for all we see today, moderation is essential. “The first step is to distinguish between different kinds of moderation. Doing so allows discussions to engage with specific issues of life online while avoiding simplistic games of tribal signaling. The critical distinction is between moderation of “decorum” (some might alternatively call it “behavior”) versus moderation of “content.” Concerns about personal attacks, harassment, threats, bullying, and so on fall under “decorum.” Think of it as a set of rules for how users of a platform or service communicate, irrespective of what they are trying to communicate. Examples of decorum rules include bans on profanity and racial slurs. Facebook’s somewhat ludicrous ‘no nipples’ rule is an example of decorum moderation.” – Jim Rutt, https://quillette.com/2022/04/27/musk-and-moderation/ Photo: The Free Speech Wall in Charlottesville, VA by Daniel Rothamel. Some rights reserved.

In this episode of the Plutopia podcast, AKMA Adam discusses his path to the priesthood, faith, interpretation and belief, doctrine, rock and roll, and postmodern thought. My work is interpreting the Bible and not teaching doctrine, and when I say this – my wife was a theologian – I’m envisioning her saying, “No, that’s not the way it is.” So I’m trying to be careful. But the way doctrine functions most effectively and helpfully in the Church of England is when it’s shaping the way we live. It’s a reflection and expression of the kind of people we are and the kinds of things that we do and believe in. AKMA is an ordained priest, currently a Tutor in New Testament at the University of Oxford; he’s also a blogger, technology-observer, and author especially about hermeneutics, the theory of interpretation. He tutors St. Stephen’s House’s ordinands, and Oriel’s undergraduates, in New Testament and Greek — after stints teaching in the US at Eckerd College, Princeton Theological Seminary, Seabury-Western Seminary, and Duke University. He and his wife Margaret taught in Scotland at the University of Glasgow before coming south to Oxford. He read Philosophy as an undergraduate at Bowdoin College, then trained for ordained ministry at Yale Divinity School, and wrote his doctoral thesis on New Testament theology at Duke University. He has written various books and articles about the Gospel of Matthew and the Epistle of James, but especially about hermeneutics — the theory of interpretation, and how we identify better and worse interpretations. He draws on fields as diverse as surrealism, comics theory, midrash, information design, psychology, rock’n’roll, and postmodern critical theory to explain how people arrive at their interpretive conclusions. He’s also given keynotes at the Society for Scholarly Publishing and Catholic Biblical Association; invited talks at the early Digital Identity World conferences and at David Isenberg’s Freedom to Connect conferences, as well as numerous academic talks. AKMA says “For a variety of no doubt complicated reasons (including, and this is a bit of a coming-out observation for me, my [late diagnosis] autism) I tend to encounter and consider problems a few degrees off the conventional ways of approaching them. Not so far as to make the conventional approach unintelligible to me, but far enough that my analyses usually strike regular participants in the discourses as odd or insufficiently in touch with what everyone knows or does. As a result, I have been a liminal academic, priest, technology-observer, philosopher, what-you-will. I have had few ardent supporters, but many intrigued acquaintances: ‘cult classic, not bestseller’ as Mike Skinner says.” AKMA’s website: http://akma.disseminary.org AKMA on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/akm.adam AKMA on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AKMA

People of a certain age will recognize the sound bites we play at the beginning of this episode. Specifically those who grew up between the end of World War II and the fall of the Soviet Union. This time on the Plutopia Podcast, Jon and Scoop take a walk down that scary part of memory lane known as The Cold War. The Cold War started in the late 1940s, and continued until 1991, when the Soviet Union dissolved. But it was never completely over, tensions never completely abated, waves of conflict continued to ripple throughout the globe. However since 1991, at least until the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine, we’ve had relative peace. But in the cold war era, baby boomers like Scoop and Jon grew up with the fear of nuclear war and mutually assured destruction. We laughed at “Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”… but it was very nervous laughter. In this episode of the Plutopia podcast, Jon and Scoop discuss life during the cold war, and the new era of apocalyptic thinking (search “Cold War,” replace with “Climate Disaster”). People don’t remember that during the Fifties and Sixties there was a Cold War, and kids were getting under their desks during school because they thought they were going to get bombed. So it wasn’t really that ideal at all. My parents remind me of that. “You think it was this way, and it wasn’t all Leave It to Beaver.” But for some reason, that’s what humans do: We romanticize the past because of our discontent with the current. ~ Brian Fallon

Author and futurist Jamais Cascio joins the Plutopia podcast as we explore the future of a world undergoing chaotic change. Selected by Foreign Policy magazine as one of their top 100 global thinkers, Jamais helps us understand a world in chaos – rapid global disruptions – climate change – and scenarios about the future, often with an environmental focus. Jamais Cascio: The goal of any kind of foresight work, any kind of scenarios or futures work, is to provoke you into looking differently at the world. The term that I like to use because it sounds fancy is: “scenarios and forecasts are epiphany engines.” They are meant to trigger in you, be a catalyst for you having an entirely new view of the world. To have that aha! I never saw it that way! moment. And the idea with all of these forecasts is not to tell you “this one has a 33.2% chance of happening,” it’s to say “This is something in the realm of possibility. How would you respond? What does this mean to you?” And that’s actually true for nearly every scenario project I’ve worked on over the past 25 years. Jamais’ work focuses on the importance of long-term, systemic thinking for building a more resilient society. In 2018, he developed the BANI framework for understanding a world in chaos. Analysts and academics around the world have embraced the concept as a tool for clarifying emerging crises. In 2010, he was named a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for the Future, and continues to work with them on a wide array of projects. In recent years, Cascio has developed scenarios and written analysis for the 2020 World Expo, a major European automaker (resulting in a significant change in strategy), the US Forest Service, and the US Agency for International Development, among many others. In 2018, he developed the “BANI” concept as a way of understanding rapid global disruptions, now in growing use around the world. In 2017, the University of Advancing Technology awarded Cascio an honorary doctorate in recognition of his ongoing work. Cascio’s written work has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic Monthly, and New Scientist magazine, among others. Cascio has been featured in multiple film documentaries and television science shows, and he speaks about future possibilities around the world. Recent appearances include the first Global Climate Engineering Conference in Berlin, the World Bank Understanding Risk conference in Venice, and the Arab Media Forum in Dubai. He was a featured speaker at the TED 2006 conference, “The Future We Will Create,” in Monterey, California. In early 2009, he released his first book, Hacking the Earth: Understanding the Consequences of Geoengineering. The subsequent year, he was invited to present on the subject at the National Academies of Sciences in Washington, DC. Twitter LinkedIn IMDB

This time on the Plutopia podcast, maker, writer and former editorial director of Make Media Gareth Branwyn joins Jon and Scoop for a wide-ranging discussion about makers and making. We examine small town life, the maker movement, makers on YouTube, and Gareth’s new book, “Tales and Tips from the Workshop, Volume 2.” Gareth is a freelance writer and the former Editorial Director of Maker Media. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books on technology, DIY, and geek culture. He’s just published Make: Tips and Tales from the Workshop Volume 2: A Handy Reference for Makers. The book collects wisdom and tips about measuring and cutting, gluing and fastening, clamping and joining, drilling, shop organizing, maintenance and repair, etc. Gareth Branwyn: What surprises me now – and I was just talking to somebody yesterday about this — is that makers who are YouTube makers — once you get to a certain level of YouTube success, machine companies just start sending you crazy amounts of… you know, you want a shopbot, you want a CNC cutter, you want a laser cutter. You start getting all of these machines. And now you see these videos where a person has a shop where they can fabricate pretty much anything. They can cut metal, they can cut wood, they can do 3D printing. I don’t know what the new — everyone always says the Internet of Things is going to be one of the next big areas for both commercial development and DIY development. But to me it’s just getting that level of desktop fabrication technology in the hands of more and more people. So if you can think it, you can make it. Gareth’s blog Gareth on Twitter Gareth on Instagram

Plutopian Maggie Duval interviews author, philosopher, and Burning Man champion Caveat Magister, in a wide-raging discussion about turning your life into art. Scoop and Jon are also on board in this conversation originally presented on the Plutopia Livestream. We discuss psychomagical experiences (a term first coined by Alejandro Jodorowsky), immersive art, how to engage and move the psyche, the role of magic and symbolism, the need for meaningful choice, and authentic engagement with the world. Caveat is Burning Man’s Philosopher Laureate. A founding member of its Philosophical Center, he is the author of The Scene That Became Cities: what Burning Man philosophy can teach us about building better communities, and Turn Your Life Into Art: lessons in Psychologic from the San Francisco Underground. He has also written several books which have nothing to do with Burning Man.

Last week Jon, while spending some time at SXSW 2022, took time to discuss the festival past and present with Scoop. We also took time to ponder Russia’s war on Ukraine 6,000 miles away. Jon: The Russian invasion of the Ukraine has been sort of put up or shut up for people. There was a vote in Congress, I think for calling off U.S. trade [relations] with Russia. They were going to pass a law to that effect, and it passed almost unanimously. But there were eight people who voted against it. And those were all Republicans, and they were what we sometimes refer to as Putin Republicans, the far right wing people. People like Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert – and, unfortunately, my representative in Congress, Chip Roy, was one of those people. Scoop: You know, the whole thing is that suddenly we have some bipartisanship, and I think that’s scaring a lot of the Republicans, seeing that there are places where the Democrats and the Republicans kind of have to agree, to band together and show a united front, because it’s suddenly wartime. You know, it’s not us at war – but it kind of is. We’re trying to keep a nation in Eastern Europe afloat, and Russia is trying to sink them. So that’s kind of warfare, and that’s what happened in World War II. There was a lot of dissension between the Republicans and Democrats before World War II – but when war broke out, they kinda had to all band together. Here’s a trailer for “THE MOJO MANIFESTO: The Life and Times of Mojo Nixon,” the Mojo Nixon documentary screened at SXSW and mentioned in this week’s episode. Meow Wolf at SXSW 2022, via KVUE: (Here’s the link; the video is restricted.) Also from KVUE: The Banksy Experience at SXSW 2022:

Michael Tobis is a climate scientist and software developer based in Ottawa, Canada. Michael has joined us twice before to discuss climate change. In this episode, he joins Plutopians to give us his Canadian perspective on the recent trucker protest in Ottawa, Putin’s quest for power, the two party electoral system, nutty politicians, climate change, and the Texas electrical grid collapse. About the trucker thing is, you ask yourself, “Why would you occupy Ottawa in January, I mean, what kind of crazy-ass thing is that to do?” This is a place which has serious winter. And it was a big logistic problem for them, they had to stay warm, they had to get a lot of propane. And they were miserable and uncomfortable a lot of the time. We actually had a pretty bad winter, global warming notwithstanding. And why are they doing it in January? If they had waited for spring, there wouldn’t be any mandates to protest. “Who Decides What is True?” by Michael Tobis, on Medium. Michael on Twitter

In this episode, Jon and Scoop discuss the subjects that have been keeping them awake at night, or irritating them during the day. We dissect medical care and doctor-patient involvement, news sources and newspapers, conflicted conservatives, nuclear war, and vegans vs. carnivores. Scoop: “You really have to be a partner in your care. I’ve been an inpatient a few times, and I’ve always wanted to know exactly what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. And you have a right as a human being to know that stuff. You’re not just checking into the hospital and saying, “Here’s my body, do what you want.” No. You need to ask questions, and you need to wait until you get the answers that tell you exactly what they’re going to do to your body.” Jon: “Healthcare professionals should see the patient as part of the healthcare team. And when you do that, everything goes much better, generally speaking. Sometimes people aren’t really up to being part of the team, but in general, the patient knows the patient’s body and condition better than anybody, because they’re having the experience. They can contribute to the discussions parts that would otherwise be missed.”

Kevin Driscoll is an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Virginia. His research involves alternative histories of the internet, the politics of amateur telecommunications, and the moral economy of consumer software. In this episode, we discuss the history of the Internet, media’s impact upon popular culture, and much more. Kevin is author of The Modem World, which explores how the internet became social, and why this matters for its future. Kevin Driscoll: Before we really start any work in the class, I give out a very simple survey to students, it’s just a few questions. It says “What is the Internet?” “Where did it come from?” and “How do you know that?” We use that as a launching point for the class. And it’s remarkable, the kinds of answers that you get, because like you’re saying, they do shift over time. Everyone has this notion of what the Internet is, but it’s very unstable. In a way, the definitions are always being argued out, so that’s a really interesting place to get into, if if you’re trying to do reesearch… which is, “Here’s the thing everybody talks about in a casual way. We all are on the same page.” But in fact, when you scratch at it just a little bit, you find out that there’s a lot of disagreement, and that disagreement is then tied to power and politics and cultural values, and things like that, that are really compelling in a bigger picture sort of way.

Net.activist, lapsed journalist, and content designer Todd Lappin joins Plutopians to discuss free speech, the Communications Decency Act, control of misinformation, his work at Wired Magazine, Facebook and the Metaverse, his tiny fire truck, and much more. Todd has for 30 years been fascinated by the Internet, its potential, and the impact it has on society and our lives. Starting as as editor at Wired Magazine in the 1990s, and most recently as a content designer at Facebook and Instagram, Todd has an inside perspective on the ways digital media reshaped our world — mostly, but not always, for the better. On the side, he also has a background in media history, the history of technology, the culture of both China and Japan, and a very deep, very geeky interest in transportation, infrastructure, and Japanese fire trucks. “Essentially Congress passed a law, and President Clinton signed it – I think Clinton signed it not so much because he wanted to sign that, per se, but because he wanted to pass the broader Telecommunications Act and this happened to be stuck onto it. Which basically said that that kind of speech would not be allowed on the Internet. That was obviously a huge problem. And suddenly I found myself kind of playing an activist role, trying to basically raise the alarm about this. And my thinking at the time was that I would primarily focus on essentially trying to educate journalists. Because one of the most disappointing things that I found – by the way, hopefully we’ll get to this at some point, this hasn’t changed at all – it turns out that journalists have some of the most hazy and ill-formed understandings of free speech of any cohort I’ve encountered.” Instagram: @telstarlogistics Twitter: @telstarlogistic

Gary Gach is an author, translator, editor, teacher and poet with a lifelong interest in Buddhism and meditation. He is the author of several books, including Pause, Breathe, Smile. Gary joined Jon and Scoop to talk about the life and work of Thich Nhat Hanh, who died on January 22nd. Hanh was a Vietnamese Thiền Buddhist monk, peace activist, prolific author, poet, teacher, and founder of the Plum Village Tradition. He’s recognized as the main inspiration for engaged Buddhism. Gary recalls his introduction to Hanh, and outlines his impact upon Buddhism. In this context, we also discuss the practice of mindfulness and the appearance and evolution of engaged Buddhism. Gary Gach: “He was born in Vietnam. He went to live in a monastery at an early age. But this is kind of the beginning of modernism coming to Vietnam. He was one of the first of six monks to ride a bicycle, so he always had this kind of progressive viewpoint. Vietnam, as we know, had French occupation, then the American. And when he was a monk at one point he looked at everybody in the monastery and said, ‘You know, we could stay in the monastery, or we could go out and help the villagers. Or we could do both.'”

Lex Pelger is a writer, scientist & lecturer on cannabis, psychedelics & the endocannabinoid system. Erik Davis has called him “a warrior of the weird.” Lex Pelger: “It was only racism that drove the war on drugs from its very beginning. The very first anti-drug laws were anti-opium laws against the Chinese in San Francisco, and the very first anti-cannabis laws were in El Paso, Texas, right on the border. You couldn’t make Latino people illegal, but you could make their drugs illegal. And then Harry Anslinger, who was the one who kind of first weaponized the War on Drugs in the 30s with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, he’s the one who’s behind the famous “Reefer Madness” campaign. But he has some quotes that are just hair-curling, about how weed makes low white women go for black men, and how it causes more mixing of the races. And he was actually censured for things he would say, they were too far out there even for the 40s and 50s. And then, by the time it got to Nixon, there’s an amazing money quote that Dan Baum found from Ehrichman, one of Nixon’s stooges. It’s a quote you can find all over the Internet now, because it says “We knew that we couldn’t make being black or being against the war illegal. But we knew that if we linked those groups to heroin and to cannabis, then we could beat them up every night on the Nightly News.” Lex grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, home of the Amish. He studied biochemistry and molecular biology at Boston University, then worked in a mesenchymal stem cell lab at New York Medical College. He assisted in the discovery of a novel binding protein for the E2A protein using the Yeast II Hybrid system, co-authoring three papers about that research. He then traveled in India, where he worked on the March to Tibet (a four month protest march of Tibetan monks, nuns and laypeople), but was ultimately deported because of laws against foreigners participating in political protests. Back in the USA, he spent the next years hitchhiking around the States, finding “the weird & interesting around this country: a burned out old hippy who preached a quiet & powerful two minute sermon on the love of the Virgin Mary, an ex-Marine who creates beautiful pieces of jade jewelry & of course, a Keourackian figure who shared his father’s homemade sausage biscuit along with stories from a long life on the road.” More recently, he spent four years on the road researching a graphic novel series about cannabis that eventually came to be based on Moby-Dick. It’s a work in progress. He currently works in the CBD world as a writer, scientist & lecturer on cannabis, psychedelics & the endocannabinoid system. And he has an interest in UFOs. Lex on Twitter Lex on Instagram Lex on LinkedIn The Moby-Dick Pot Books The Lex Files (podcast) Writings

In this week’s Plutopia podcast, poet Jane Hirshfield and writer Tiffany Lee Brown join Jon and Scoop to discuss creativity. Jane and Tiffany explain their individual creative processes and we discuss deadlines, blathering, confidence, fear of failure and Covid’s impact on Jane and Tiffany’s work. Jane Hirshfield: “I simply wait for something that needs to be said or for something that comes into my mind and carries with it the kind of magnet of this needs to be a poem, and usually almost always this comes out of some fracture, some difficulty, some question, some perplexity. As I like to say, for questions that can be answered, you don’t need a poem. You only need a poem for the questions that can’t be answered, that have no solution.” Tiffany Lee Brown: “On the WELL, in the writer’s group that Jane and I have been part of for many years, we sometimes talk about the not writing. And that’s part of my process as a writer, as well. So for me, I don’t know where and when it’s going to come from, and I have a lot of ideas and a lot of inspirations – so for me, that part is easy. The hard part is culling through all of that, figuring out what to work on, if anything, and trying not to completely overtax myself. Tiffany Lee Brown, a.k.a. T (she/they), is a writer and interdisciplinary artist from the woods of Oregon. Author of a book of prose-poetry, A Compendium of Miniatures, she is creator of the Burning Tarot podcast. As a community journalist, she writes for a small-town newspaper in the middle of Oregon. T enjoys being a mom, wanderer of the woods, and creative coach as well. Jane Hirshfield is an award-winning poet, translator, essayist, and editor. She’s written nine books of poetry. Her latest book, Ledger, “poses meticulous equations of the self coping with doubt, hunger, age, and death.” (Donna Seaman, Booklist). Maria Popova at Brainpickings.org describes her as “a poet of optimism and of lucidity.” In our Plutopia conversation, we discuss the transformative nature and purpose of poetry. A couple of books mentioned in the conversation:

Maggie Duval: “I’m writing a lot about sense of place – like everywhere I’ve lived, and I’ve been transient all my life, because of my Dad, his work, but also my own moving around. But I’ve lived everywhere from a town of thirty to Austin, which is like a bazillion now, or whatever. And then the Bay Area, too, and everywhere in between. But everywhere I’ve lived, I’ve made it a point to learn everything I possibly could about the geology – like, what made this place? And then, who’s lived here? You know, from indigenous to pioneers or whatever…” Our foreign correspondent Maggie Duval returns to the Plutopia podcast, updating us on her move from Austin to Taos, New Mexico. We discuss the differences in those two cities, also Covid, the invasion of New Mexico by Texas developers, and much more. Maggie Duval has spent 30 years at the intersection of arts and technology within the industry as a manager, as a web developer, and as an experience designer. She was a witness to the birth of the Web as we know it today and was involved in the early days of the Burning Man festival as a media manager. Maggie is also a board member for EFF-Austin, the Austin chapter of the nationwide independent non-profit civil liberties organization. A year ago, she moved from Austin, Texas to Taos, New Mexico. Relevant Links: La Coalición de Taos’ https://lacoaliciondetaos.com The New Mexico Trilogy by John Nichols: Book 1: The Milagro Bean War Book 2: The Magic Journey Book 3: The Nirvana Blues Enchantment and Exploitation: The Life and Hard Times of a New Mexico Mountain Range by William deBuys The Man Who Killed the Deer by Frank Waters Maggie: “Frank Waters is a “hero” of mine, a mystic, philosopher, and great writer. The Man Who Killed the Deer is based on a true story. When the NPS stole Taos Pueblo (known know as The People of the Red Willow) land, they took their sacred Blue Lake (Nixon!! returned it 50 years ago), and their hunting lands.” People of the Valley by Frank Waters “One of Frank Waters’s most popular novels, People of the Valley takes place high in the Sangre de Cristo mountains where an isolated Spanish-speaking people confront a threatening world of change.” And if you want to know my family connection (via the Santa Fe Railway and the Indian Detours) – R. Hunter Clarkson – my grandfather’s work in helping to create a tourist mecca Southwestern Disneyland, check out this book by D.H. Thomas: The Southwestern Indian Detours, the Story of the Fred harvey/santa Fe Railway experiment in “detourism” And this one: Appetite for America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built a Railroad Hospitality Empire That Civilized the Wild West, by Stephen Fried Relevant videos:

In this episode of the Plutopia podcast, Jon and Scoop check in with an obituary for 2021 and its politics. Our dynamic duopoly wax poetic about fascism, the election fraud fraud (aka the big lie), red pill versus blue pill, Covid, and cryptocurrency. No politicians were injured in production of this podcast (but we seriously tried)! Scoop: There were a lot of German scientists that worked for the Nazi party back during the war, that all of a sudden became good American citizens, working at NASA, of all places – and DARPA, and lots of other high tech government agencies. You could go into any building in Los Alamos, New Mexico and yell ‘Seig Heil,’ and you’d have a lot of people jumping up and saying, ‘Oh, sorry, I forgot what country I was in! Never mind!’ Jon: And you also had – particularly Werner Von Braun was associated with Disney, appearing in Disney documentaries. And it’s okay – people change. It could be that these guys put their fascist past behind them, and became good Americans, devoted to democracy. But it’s still a fact that we have people who really believe that democracy is just a bad thing. Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash

Ed Cavazos is an attorney who’s always focused on the cutting edges of technology law, including cyberlaw. He manages the Austin office of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. Ed negotiates complex technology-related transactions and routinely advises on corporate and general business matters, licensing, strategic partnerships, development contracts, data rights and privacy issues. He represents internet, e-commerce, software, hardware, video game and media/entertainment clients. He litigates complex IP disputes, including patent, trade secret, copyright, trademark, contract breach and internet-related claims. In our conversation with Ed, we discuss cyberlaw, including censorship, social media monopolies, the right of publicity, the Metaverse and the law, and much more. Ed Cavazos: “The earliest incarnation of these Metaverses – in the best ones, the most highly populated ones – are game environments. You look at what’s going on with some of these MMO games, where millions of people are interacting, and there the interactions are game interactions. It changes things a little bit if we’re playing a game, where your character is a thief, and your game role is to try to steal things from people. Even if those things have real world translatable value, I’m not sure you could call it theft in terms of going down to the DA and reporting and saying Jon’s thief character in this vanity game stole my shield and that shield’s worth $100 on eBay – I want him put in jail in the real world for that. It starts creating some real fuzzy weird lines about ‘are you changing the rules when you go and use it.’ And I think we’re going to have to face that in the Metaverse quite a bit.”

In this episode of the Plutopia News Network podcast, Jon talks to Joe Verona, a certified professional hypnotist specializing in brainwave entrainment (BWE) and biofeedback. The original neurohacker, Joe has explored hypnosis, meditation, energy practices, lucid dreaming and out of body experience as well as clinical uses for brainwave entrainment. Joe has been on a mission to not only learn all there is to know about brainwave entrainment, but also to encourage fresh research and product development. Since downloading his first binaural beat session back in the 80’s, Joe has been on a mission to not only learn all there is to know about brainwave entrainment, but also to encourage fresh research and product development. Since his years at Transparent Corp., Joe has made a living creating brainwave entrainment sessions for commercial BWE companies and meditation apps, as well as individual hypnotherapy clients. With the explosion of affordable technology, Joe is on the soapbox clarifying exactly what BWE can do and dispelling the abundant myths and misconceptions. The advent of psychedelic therapy and the legalization of marijuana products has brought a renewed interest in BWE coming full circle from its roots in the hippie culture. The wake of the pandemic hysteria has left many looking for alternative wellness methods. Will BWE finally get the recognition and respect it deserves? Joe on Facebook Joe on LinkedIn Guest Pass for Aura Health: “Find peace & get restful sleep with me on Aura”

This episode’s guest, Sam McChesney (aka Sam the Fungi) is dedicated to ending mycophobia, changing mycostigma and connecting people through the power of mycelium. Sam joins Jon and Scoop for a wide-ranging talk about all things fungi. Sam on Sam… I discovered my affinity for fungi when I got over-stressed around my 18th year in the existence of this body. I was unable to eat many of the foods I loved and was unhealthily dropping weight. I had recently had ‘Magic’ mushrooms introduced to me and discovered the power they can lend your mind and wanted to know more about this kingdom. “If these mushrooms can help my mind like this, what other mushrooms exist that can help my body.” So I delved into the field of Mycology and started to discover amazing things and other beings. One of them being Reshi (ganoderma lingzhi). I purchased a kit from Fungi Perfecti and that’s where my understanding and respect for fungi really kicked off. Making reishi tea for myself and my family allowed my body to settle back into balance while also bringing my family and I closer together. ~ https://www.centraltexasmycology.org/events/2020/12/3/myco-hangout-with-sam-the-fungi Sam is mycelium in human form! He’s a founding member and part of the leadership at the Central Texas Mycological Society. In that context he hosts ecology walks, creates edible mushroom beds, facilitates garden inoculations, and teaches about mycology and mushroom cultivation around Central Texas. From the intro… Fungi, particularly mushrooms, have influenced popular culture for centuries. In Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland,” the caterpillar said “one side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter.” “One side of what? The other side of what?” Thought Alice to herself. “Of the mushroom,” said the caterpillar, just as if she had asked it aloud; and in another moment it was out of sight. Fungi have also been a part the human diet for untold centuries. Sam on Twitter Sam on Instagram Sam on Facebook

Singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Kevin Russell joins Jon and Scoop in this episode of the Plutopia Podcast. Kevin talks about his days with The Gourds and his current band: Shinyribs. We also talk about violence at music venues, streaming music, Covid’s impact on the music business and a possible Gourds reunion. Stick around for the end of our session — Kevin plays a bit of music and talks about guitars. On Spotify: Plutopia Interview:

Jasmina Tešanović – “I thought it was a temporary state of mind, but the more that time goes by, especially now with the more the system is broken of information… and I really tried to read between the lines in the press, in different languages, and now I have the Spanish language and French – I know many languages, you know… but I am more and more an idiot. If somebody gave me power to govern something, I wouldn’t vote for myself.” Jasmina Tešanović is a Serbian author, feminist, political activist (Women in Black, Code Pink), translator, and filmmaker. She has a column in the Italian newspaper La Stampa, together with her husband Bruce Sterling. She blogs at Boing Boing, Huffington Post, and her own blog, Vita Virtual Nuova. Also with Bruce, she co-founded “Casa Jasmina” in Torino, Italy. It was an example of “the connected home of the future.” She is the author of “Diary of a Political Idiot,” a war diary written during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and widely distributed on the Internet. She has distributed essays, diaries, stories and films on blogs and other Internet media. In 1978, together with Žarana Papić and Dunja Blažević, she organized the first Feminist Conference in Eastern Europe bringing Italian feminists (Dacia Maraini, Anne Marie Boetti, Letizia Paolozzi, etc.) into Yugoslavia. The international conference was condemned by the ruling Communist party as attempt to import western ideology into the country. As a filmmaker, she made conceptual video performances at the student cultural center of Belgrade SKC (“Love is only a Matter of Words,” “An Unedited Being,” etc.) and shot short films together with Radoslav Vladić. She translated Italian authors such as Italo Calvino, Elsa Morante, Alberto Moravia, Sandro Veronesi, Andrea de Carlo, and Aldo Busi, and published an anthology of contemporary Italian literature within Yugoslavia. She worked as the assistant director and writer with Zivojin Pavlović in the movie “Zadah Tela” which won major prizes at the Pula Film Festival (Croatia) in 1983. At the beginning of the Balkan Wars in 1990 she became a pacifist and an active opponent of Slobodan Milošević’s regime. In 1994, together with Slavica Stojanović, she founded the feminist publishing house “Feminist 94.” Her first book of essays, “The Invisible Book,” became a manifesto for alternative Serbian feminist/pacifist culture. Since then she published several other fiction and essays books translated in several languages.

Plutopia goes on a ride along… our friend Spike Gillespie was literally on the road when she spoke to Jon and Scoop for this week’s Plutopia podcast. Spike takes us on a free-wheeling tour of her ranch, her businesses, and Bastrop County, Texas. We also talk about her new restaurant in Smithville, small town Texas and fitting in, glamping, weddings, creating happy communities and much more. So…..fasten your seatbelts and don’t forget to use your turn signals! Spike Gillespie: I have empathy for people who don’t want to get vaccinated, and there’s something that you just said – not known for vegetarianism. I don’t know – I think maybe what I was going to say was kind of like, “When in Rome,” which doesn’t mean that I’m going to go have my vaccination taken away, or anything. But I’m really learning how to adapt more, and I am not going to convince people to become a vegetarian by opening a vegetarian restaurant. (Laughs) But what I do is every day, almost every day, I make some insanely incredible vegetarian soup. And then sometimes I’ll make a bread. And the idea isn’t that I’m trying to convince people to eat differently, it’s just, like, “here’s some delicious food, it just happens to not have meat in it.” Spike’s AA sobriety story from Pink House Chronicles Spike on Facebook Spike on Twitter Spike on Instagram

Former political consultant, current mixed martial arts blogger, editor of SB Nations’s Bloody Elbow, and host of the “Let It Roll” podcast Nate Wilcox joins the Plutopian crew for a verbal cage match about politics. He takes a break from blogging about mixed martial arts to take a few swings and kicks at politics and politicians. Jon and Scoop get in a few sucker punches, in a discussion that originally aired on our YouTube livestream. Nate Wilcox: “The powers that be in the Pentagon were still of the mindset that, like, look, a peaceful transition of power is a core brand value of USA world police. This money train stops fast if there’s a gross, obvious coup in the United States. If you want to steal an election the way Bush did it in 2000, that’s on thing. When it’s all legal, and you’ve got Joe Lieberman, the other party’s VP nomination, helping you do it – that’s fine and dandy. But if you’re gonna do this crude, crass “let’s rile up a bunch of yokels, and send them storming into the Capitol building, and hang Mike Pence,” that is not gonna play. And so you had a few – from what we can tell, there were a few people in the Pentagon that were backing Trump wherever he wanted to go. But that most of the powers that be in the Pentagon, especially the ones like Milley who had been out there in Lafayette Square and felt very burned by Trump, were not having it.”

In this week’s Plutopia podcast, Jon and Scoop make a deep dive into death… also Halloween, sex, pagan celebrations, and Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). “Everyone is a beginner when it comes to death.” – Sallie Jiko Tisdale, “Everything Dies” in Lion’s Roar We don’t like to think about death in mainstream America. We hide it, and when we do have a death close to us, our grief is amplified by the unfamiliarity of the experience. It’s hard to let go. It’s hard to envision letting go. It’s especially hard to envision non-being. Other cultures have other approaches. We’re posting this on Dia de los Muertos 2021. The Dia de los Muertos celebration is an acknowledgement and a celebration of death. It’s a time to honor the deceased, and at the same time recognize that death is an inherent part of life. That impermanence is inherent in the Universe. Everything is changing and moving; what seems permanent has a lower rate of change – but change is inevitable. And in this sense, in changing, everything dies. Photo by Bala Manivasagam. Día de los muertos, Tlaquepaque, México. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Just in time for Halloween – scary stories from the world of big tech!! Thanks to our friends at EFF-Austin, we present a session with author and tech veteran Vahid Razavi. He shares some of his personal experiences – many of them bad – from his time working for some well-known tech giants. He also shares the most important question to ask a hiring manager before accepting a job offer! Vahid Razavi: “For a small business such as mine, even though we had a registered trademark, we got tangled up by Computer Science Corporation. CSC was just a notoriously horrible company to get tangled in, in any way. They were known as the rotten company in the UK, they failed a number of projects in North Carolina, they were responsible for these rendition flights of torture, which were basically CIA planes that were being used and supplied by CSC to take people from the various salt pits and torture sites in Europe. I don’t know why a tech company would be in that business, but that’s what they chose, and that’s what they did.” From EFF-Austin’s event: “Our speaker this month is Vahid Razavi. A technology veteran of Silicon Valley, Vahid has advised and worked in senior management roles at Amazon Web Services, Fast Search, Exodus Communications, Qwest Communications, and was the founder of the Cloud Computing Company BizCloud. He has published two books, The Age of Nepotism and Ethics In Tech and Lack Thereof. As a lifelong activist and humanitarian he has published hundreds of articles and videos on various social issues including tech industry and social injustice. “As the Founder and Managing Director of Ethics in Technology, Vahid will be sharing lessons he learned from 20 years of working in Silicon Valley. He will be sharing what is the most important question you should ask every hiring manager before accepting an offer of employment! Other topics of discussion will include what it’s like to work for Big Tech at companies such as Amazon Web Services, as well as the revolving door of Big Tech and the Defense Industry, along with highlights from his book Ethics in Technology and Lack Thereof.”

Hugo award-winning author Pat Cadigan joins Jon and Scoop to discuss her novelization of William Gibson’s first screenplay for Alien 3, the third movie in the Alien franchise. The final film wasn’t based on Gibson’s version, which had been discarded in rounds of rewriting and re-visioning. Sadly, critical response to the film was not good. Pat has created a novelization of Gibson’s first script , approved by Gibson and hailed in reviews as far better than the movie. In this interview Pat, aka the Queen of Cyberpunk, mentions how Alien is a good fit for the cyberpunk techno-dystopian ethos. Our May 10, 2021 interview with Pat is here. Synopsis (via Penguin/Random House): “The Sulaco—on its return journey from LV-426—enters a sector controlled by the “Union of Progressive Peoples,” a nation-state engaged in an ongoing cold war and arms race. U.P.P. personnel board the Sulaco and find hypersleep tubes with Ripley, Newt, and an injured Hicks. A Facehugger attacks the lead commando, and the others narrowly escape, taking what remains of Bishop with them. “The Sulaco continues to Anchorpoint, a space station and military installation the size of a small moon, where it falls under control of the military’s Weapons Division. Boarding the Sulaco, a team of Colonial Marines and scientists is assaulted by a pair of Xenomorph drones. In the fight Ripley’s cryotube is badly damaged. It’s taken aboard Anchorpoint, where Ripley is kept comatose. Newt and an injured Corporal Hicks are awakened, and Newt is sent to Gateway Station on the way to Earth. The U.P.P. sends Bishop to Anchorpoint, where Hicks begins to hear rumors of experimentation—the cloning and genetic modification of Xenomorphs. “The kind of experimentation that could yield a monstrous hybrid, and perhaps even a Queen.”

This time, we dig deep into the archives for a flashback to the final episode published prior to our seven-year “sabbatical”. “Miller is as quirky and delightful as ever, treating the Southwest as a vast midden from which he plucks many odorous but tasty treasures. The fun, as usual, comes from watching Tom digest.” – Larry McMurtry Based out of Tucson, Arizona, Tom Miller has traveled the World, capturing its cultures, its people, its good, bad and ugly for Smithsonian, The New Yorker, Life, The New York Times and his critically acclaimed series of books. Perhaps best known for his incisive studies of the US/Mexico border and Latin America, he has a unique view of that strip of land separating the two nations. “Our southern frontier is not simply American on one side and Mexican on the other. It is a strip two thousand miles long and no more than twenty miles wide. It obeys its own laws and has its own outlaws, its own police officers and its own policy makers…It is a colony unto itself, long and narrow, ruled by two faraway powers.” Miller also has chronicled, among other things, murderous cacti, the Chimichanga and Jack Ruby’s kitchen sink. Learn more about his literary output, which includes “On The Border”, “The Panama Hat Trail”, “Trading With The Enemy” and “The Revenge of The Saguaro” at http://www.tommillerbooks.com

Stephanie Vale, the pen name of a longtime WELL member, is a semi-retired attorney and part-time university instructor in the US Pacific Northwest. She has loved Jane Austen for more than 40 years, and has been reading and enjoying Austenesque fiction since 2008. In 2017 she finally became inspired to attempt writing her own JAFF or Jane Austen Fan Fiction. Her first book, THE COLONEL’S BROTHER was released in August. Stephanie guides us through the popular Jane Austen Fan Fiction genre and describes her journey from reader to author.

Johannes Grenzfurthner is a happily subversive artist, filmmaker, author, and performer. He’s based in Vienna, Austria. He’s founder and director of monochrom, an international art and theory collective. He’ll be premiering his latest film, “Masking Threshold,” at Fantastic Fest in Austin (coming soon to a brainstem near you!). In this interview, we discuss nerd culture, context hacking, sex and technology, cocktail robotics, and his new film. Johannes Grenzfurthner: “It definitely happened, I guess, sometime in the 1990s that suddenly the nerd was almost like a procreation of hate speech, in a certain way. You take a term, and wear it as a badge of honor, and turn its meaning on the head. I think that definitely happens. The term is also not that old. I mean, I did some research for ‘Traceroute,’ my film about nerd culture. And the first time that ‘nerd’ has been used by a wider population is in the late 70s and early 1980s.”

Chris Zappone works as a foreign news editor in Australian media. Chris has written about geopolitics, space, technology, ideology, and the future. He has consulted with universities, think tanks and businesses in the area of tech disruption, information war, and cryptocurrencies. And he has an interest in history and utopia (and Plutopia!). Chris Zappone: “I think part of the issue with the social media world is that you see something and it’s visceral, it’s in your disembodied mind. It’s overwhelming your mind. And then there’s the immediate desire to respond to it. And there’s not this sort of social construct around saying, ‘Wait a minute. If I lash out, if I just react to this, that would look bad.” As it would in the physical world, where if you’re standing with a group of people, and somebody’s saying something controversial, you might not have the desire to immediately launch back with some sort of fiery counter-argument. You might say, ‘Well, I don’t agree with you, but I’m just going to let it go.’ The social element of social media is almost a problem for democracy, because we have to be able to let our whole minds thrive, so not just sort of hot button response to something, but this more dispassionate, more reason-based, more consensus-based – that’s what we need, some sort of general air of consensus, that I think is starting to just crumble, because of the way the public is embracing social media.” Chris on Twitter

Suzanne Stefanac, aka Zorca, is an interactive media consultant and former journalist. As a journalist, she wrote about digital issues for Wired, Macworld, New York Times and Rolling Stone, among others. With the launch of MSNBC in 1996, Stefanac was executive producer for The Site, an hour-long, nightly television program and website that explored how technology impacts modern life. Lately she’s been hosting Radio Free Zorca on kbmf 102.5 in Butte, Montana. Suzanne’s KBMF.FM show, radio.free.zorca, streams every Saturday 4-6 mountain time at butteamericaradio.org. To view past musical themes and listen to shows, visit this link. Photo by Geri Wittig Suzanne Stefanac: “Butte itself is an incredibly staunch Democratic stronghold, and beyond – progressive, anarchist, and this is all because of the mining history. Labor unions became very very strong. Butte had some of the first actual unions. There are whole books written about it, and that has carried through. And so Butte’s very proud of its progressive standpoint. I did a show a while ago – each of my radio shows has a very specific theme, and it might be Arabic women singers or African guitar or blues covers or something kind of specific. Anyway I did one that was political. Of course it all leaned in one direction. And I got a couple of messages from people who listened from afar, and they were like ‘Are you still alive? Is it okay that you played all that?’ And I was like, ‘This is Butte. They all buy me drinks when I do these kinds of shows.'”

Rock and roll! Plutopia News Network cohosts Scoop and Jon talk about their internet radio show, Radio Free Plutopia. They also discuss their lifetime love of rock and roll, vinyl records, digital music, record shops, album covers, and much more!

Artist Eliza Evans returns with an update on her activist art project, “All the Way to Hell.” We also talk about fracking, the oil industry, nonprofit organizations, hybrid art forms, and much more. Eliza Evans: “When I launched the project last fall, not quite a year ago, I had this I thought crazy reach goal of giving away mineral rights to a 3 acre Oklahoma property – giving away to 1,000 people. I thought it was a big number, reachable with a lot of effort and a lot of luck. Well, as of today, we have 1,300 signups. I think we have proof of concept. At least in terms of encouraging people to participate in a temporally and geographically distributed art project that potentially could last for generations. And I think that’s really exciting.”

Tom Jennings joins Plutopians for a free-range, grass-fed conversation about programming and software, Afghanistan, racism, the Civil War, Tom’s FrankenRambler, and much more. Tom is a Los Angeles-based artist, tech, and AMC Rambler aficionado. He is known for his work on FidoNet, the first message and file networking system for BBSes. He’s also known for his work at Phoenix Technologies on MS-DOS integration and interoperability. Tom Jennings: “The Civil War is actually a technological war, and a communication war, and a commerce war. And there’s a map of 1870 United States – Maine, Florida, etc. – and then you take a map of 2020, 2021, of the bad health outcome Covid states – same map. It has not changed. We have never really ended the Civil War, and we don’t even talk amongst ourselves, from grade school onward, about anything honest about the Civil War.” Tom’s website at SR-IX.com Also check out The Anarchist, a 1996 article for Wired Magazine by Paulina Borsook

Climate scientist Michael Tobis returns to the Plutopia podcast. He discusses the conflict of fascism vs. internationalism, the right wing co-opting of the anti-vax movement, conservative resistance to climate science, and virtue signaling on social media. Also wondering if democracy can survive the right’s fascination with fascism. Michael is interested in the interface between science and public policy. He holds a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin – Madison in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences where he developed a 3-D ocean model on a custom computing platform. Michael has been involved in sustainability conversations on the internet since 1992, has been a web software developer since 2000, and has been posting sustainability articles on the web since 2007. Michael Tobis: “So now you see… incredibly stupid behavior about Covid. It’s like climate in fast forward. It’s just mind-bogglingly stupid to say, “Okay, I’m going to tie the hands of the individual cities and schools to implement their own measures. It’s just like, anti-Covid measures are intrinsically bad. Well, that’s just crazy!”

In this episode of the Plutopia News Network podcast, Jon and Scoop follow up our January 2021 interview with Sandy Stone. In this episode, we discuss her experience working as part of the Olivia Records collective, her authorship of “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto,” her role in originating the Transgender Studies discipline, and her experience establishing the Advanced Communication Technologies Laboratory (ACTLab) at the University of Texas at Austin. Sandy Stone: “I think most people who knew me in the 70s knew that I was running around avoiding being an academic. I was trying to avoid getting involved with academia in any way that I could. And for me, academia was the hound of heaven, which is a reference to, for those of you who may not remember, it’s a reference to a poem. I was being followed around by this thing that was saying, ‘This is what you are. This is who you are. Admit it – you’ve got to admit it. Everything you do in your life says This is what you are. And yet, you’re looking the other way.'”

Jon and Scoop have a conversation with author and consultant John Hagel about his new book, The Journey Beyond Fear, which explores the psychology of change, the passion of the explorer, and how to identify, face, and move beyond your fears to focus on opportunities and realize your full potential. John has more than 40 years’ experience as a management consultant, author, speaker and entrepreneur. He recently retired from Deloitte. Post-retirement, McGraw-Hill published the new book, and John founded a new company, Beyond Our Edge, LLC, that works with companies and people who are seeking to anticipate the future and achieve much greater impact. John Hagel: “I actually did a survey of the U.S. workforce – of the entire U.S. workforce – and I came across this notion – and again, it’s a very specific form of passion, the passion of the explorer. And what I found was at most 14% of US workers have this kind of passion about their work. 86% do not. And I don’t think that’s an accident. I believe all our institutions are actually deeply suspect, and even hostile to, this kind of passion. People with this kind of passion ask too many questions. They take too much risk. They deviate from the script and do things that weren’t assigned to them. And that’s not what we need from efficient workers. So the instruction is, if you have a passion, pursue it as a hobby after work. But when you’re at work, just follow the instructions. And I think it’s surprising that 14% still held onto this passion, even though they’re in an environment that’s very hostile.”

Rancher, author, activist and punk rock knitter Spike Gillespie joins Plutopians Maggie Duval, Scoop Sweeney and Jon Lebkowsky to talk about the challenge of small town politics in the crazy polarized 2020s. Spike has been raising hell since she was born with her fist raised in the air. She is, among other things, an author, influencer, secular minister, provocateur, serial entrepreneur, social justice warrior, avid knitter, aging punk rocker, dog addict, great friend and dedicated spinster. Some say she is a witch, and she’s cool with that. She’s also known for her scones. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times, National Geographic Traveler, Real Simple, Smithsonian, GQ, Playboy and many other publications. She is a former columnist for the Dallas Morning News and occasional commentator for Austin’s NPR affiliate KUT Radio. She is the author of nine books, including six memoirs and three in-depth books about quilting. After raising her son in Austin for 24 years, Spike bought an abandoned meth lab and junkyard out in the country and converted it into an events venue whilst simultaneously hoarding livestock. These days she still visits the ranch often, in particular to love on her sheep, but has moved residence to historic Smithville, Texas, where she shares her historic mansion with five dogs, all of whom are at least half Wackadoodles, and one of whom, Milo, is her service dog and constant companion. “The town decided that I had called City Hall and demanded that every flag in Smithville be taken down. Rumors spread – I mean, like wildfire. And I didn’t know what was happening at first, because I wasn’t on my computer. People are driving by my house in golf carts with Trump flags, American flags. And then I got a death threat. So these people have decided that I’m a piece of shit and they’re going to drive me out of town for something I didn’t do. I walked over to the police station, and I said “Look, I don’t want to tell you any names, I don’t want to file a report, I want to let you know I got a death threat. I’m new to town. Can you let me know will I actually be killed, or are they just trying to scare me? I just want to know.” And the guy wanted me to name names, and like, no. The whole thing culminated in… they had a parade on July 12. They got a parade permit. And it was a parade to drive me out of town, but they labeled it ‘a patriotic parade.’ I knew it was a parade to drive me out of town because 90% of the city government has come to my house. I’m not even going to tell you who, because this will just start another big ball of shit. But I would say no fewer than five city officials gave me the heads up that this was targeted at me.” Spike on Instagram Spike on Facebook

Nate Wilcox manages Combat Sports properties for Vox Media | SB Nation, running four of the most popular web properties covering MMA/UFC, boxing and pro wrestling. He also hosts the rock and roll podcast “Let It Roll.” In a past life, he was a political consultant. He joins Plutopians Jon and Scoop for a deep dive into politics. This session was originally broadcast live on our YouTube channel. Nate Wilcox: “The Republican Party’s a different situation where they’ve morphed into this proto-fascist party that’s way different from the Karl Rove/G.W. Bush party of fifteen years ago, that was totally in service of the donors and is now in service to Trump in this almost cult-of-personality way, and in this way, where Trump’s not necessarily trying to accomplish anything beyond keeping his profile high, and raising money – in really egregious scams. They’ve gone over to the prayer cloth model of fundraising. You know, like Robert Tilton and the televangelists or something. Where they’re just literally scalping their donors just to get a quick buck. There’s not any kind of long-term big business agenda there. There’s not agenda at all, than short-term profiteering. And this voter suppression stuff is sort of a parallel track.” Nate Wilcox on Twitter

David Gans is a musician, author, and radio producer based in Oakland, California. David writes and performs his own music. He also had a career writing about music, particularly the music of the Grateful Dead. He’s published 4 books about the Dead, and produced the nationally syndicated Grateful Dead Hour. In this Plutopian conversation, David discusses his music career, his long-running radio show, the Grateful Dead Hour, independent music, and his long involvement with the online community, the WELL. “The whole world is now operating on the Grateful Dead’s model. Because they never did very well in the record business, they made their living playing. And they would record, and they would play, and sell their records, and stuff. But it wasn’t their principle source of income. And they were running that model ‘way back in the 80s. And now, the whole damn business has to run that way. I remember, when Prince played at the Oakland Coliseum once, and everybody who bought a ticket to the show got a copy of the CD. Which is an absolute inversion of the way the music business had been ten years earlier.” Get CDs and SIGNED books: https://perfectible.net Download David’s music: https://dgans.bandcamp.com David on Twitter Books This Is All a Dream We Dreamed: An Oral History of the Grateful Dead Conversations with the Dead: The Grateful Dead Interview Book Tip jars: https://paypal.me/dgans https://gdhour.com/support https://Venmo.com/David-Gans-9 Photo by Fabrice Florin.

Scoop and Jon talk about the news! We start by talking about link rot and content evaporation on the Internet, referencing Jonathan Zittrain’s Atlantic piece. We talk about Dead Media, content filtering, algorithmic curation and filter bubbles, information anxiety, newsreaders, cancel culture, political classifications, racism, power, corruption, and the Alamo.

Writer and technology critic Paulina Borsook has written for Wired, Mother Jones, and Suck.com. She is perhaps best known for her 2000 book Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech She’s also an artist, with projects like “My Life as a Ghost” and “The Hindsight Institute.” In our Plutopia News Network interview, we discuss her writing career, Silicon Valley libertarians, traumatic brain injury, and her art project, “My Life as a Ghost.” “To pursue my artistic pretensions, I went first to the MFA program at Arizona, which was ghastly. And then I transferred to Columbia, which was the right program for me. I had the one good writing teacher I ever had in my life, the guy’s name is Philip Lopate. You may have heard of him, he’s an essayist. I tried out some story, and he yelled at me, and he said ‘Quit jumping around in time and space! You’re doing the pseudo Thomas Pynchon stuff. Knock it off!’ But he said, ‘You know, you really have captured the pseudo intimacy of the online world. I think you should write about that.'” Subscribe to Paulina’s writing via Patreon

Evelyn Jean Pine’s plays wrestle with moments when life feels so new your hair is electric. In May, PlayGround presented a staged reading of her latest play, 7 Secrets of Teaching Online. A June Ann Baker Prize winner, a PlayGround Resident Playwright, and a Djerassi Alum, she writes about Queen Isabella, the Lumiere brothers, and Bill Gates at 20. The Invisible Project, co-written with Katja Rivera, launched the Latinx Mafia’s Staged Reading series this March. Molecule LitMag just published her quick-fire climate change play, North Pole Bedtime. Fourth Wave on Medium publishes her poems. Her one-woman show, Freeloader in the House of Love, won “The Most Compelling Story” award at the Boulder Fringe. For 13 years, she’s taught performance studies at San Francisco State University. She managed Computer Programmers for Social Responsibility, directed the second iteration of The Community Memory Project, developed the Working Families Online Roundtables for HandsNet, and launched the first online community for California Community Clinics. She’s a proud member/owner of the world’s greatest online community, The WELL. Evy’s website: http://www.evelynjeanpine.com/ Instagram: @evyyes Twitter: @evypine

Angie Coiro is an award-winning radio journalist and on-stage interviewer. She’s done radio and TV work in the San Francisco Bay Area over the last 25 years. She just ended her syndicated radio show, “In Deep with Angie Coiro.” Angie is an acclaimed interviewer. She has recorded conversations with Al Gore, Roxane Gay, Anna Quindlen, Peggy Orenstein, Morgan Jerkins, Will Durst, Mary Roach, Salman Rushdie, Bernie Sanders, Barney Frank, Charlie Jane Anders, Gail Sheehy, Cleve Jones, and Martin Short. Angie worked fifteen years at KQED Public Radio, where she started as an announcer and traffic reporter. She finished with a two-year stint as a news anchor and the host of Friday Forum. She moved to the national airwaves with Mother Jones Radio on Air America. As host of the syndicated radio show IN DEEP with Angie Coiro, she worked with her hand-picked production team to deliver an immersive hour of political and cultural conversation. Angie’s many professional accolades include the coveted Public Radio News Directors’ Award for Best Interview, for her hour with Salman Rushdie. Angie hosts and co-produces the This Is Now with Angie Coiro series with the Kepler’s Literary Foundation. She hosts and moderates public events and discussions, appearing over the years with The Commonwealth Club and City Arts and Lectures and in private venues. Her work as a voiceover talent includes corporate demos, narrations, and commercial work. From the interview: “I’ve been saying this for decades. If I had access to just a ton of money, I would create age-appropriate critical thinking courses from kindergarten on. Maybe even preschool on. And if a school wouldn’t carry it, you could do private lessons that parents could maybe sign a consent for. Or teach it in summer camps. Or do whatever you can to let people access that from day one. I think, if you look at Q Anon, if you look at one third of people who identify as Republican, and think that Trump is going to re-take the office this year – my God! And I think that that’s a reflection of the fact that we don’t prioritize in the very beginnings of education teaching people how to think. Not what to think, how to think. How do you take information? How do you find the coloring in that information? How do you check out the sources of that information?”