Plutopia News Network

With Scoop and Jon, technology writer and broadband consultant Steve Stroh discusses broadband access, rural wireless Internet providers, satellite-based Internet, fiber networks, and much more. “If you can get fiber, do it. Because it is the best, highest quality – not just fastest, but it’s the best option for broadband Internet access. Because, basically, it’s pure data. You’ve got a pair of glass fibers dedicated to you, typically straight between your house or business and the central office. Or wherever it’s going to be hubbed out of. It’s immune to electrical interference, it’s generally immune to everything – water doesn’t bother it, it’s not shared with other people, and about the only thing that can take out fiber is squirrels or backhoes.” Steve writes about about Broadband Wireless Internet Access systems and technology. In 1997 he started a column about wireless for Internet Service Providers called Wireless Data Developments in Boardwatch Magazine in April, 1997. He’s currently thinking and writing about Independent Broadband Networks, small broadband networks usually in rural areas. Image: Inside a broadband router, by Jean-Etienne Minh-Duy Poirrier Published under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

With Dr. Michael Edward “Ed” Lenert, Plutopians discuss communications and democracy: the Fairness Doctrine, hate speech, cancel culture, and much more. Ed’s work is at the intersection of communication theories and democratic practices. He has 25 years of experience teaching law, communications, and journalism at the university level, including MA and PhD-level students. He is a licensed attorney in California with 30 years of experience and has taught communications law and other classes at the University of San Francisco since 2009. A graduate of UC Berkeley, he earned his Ph.D. from The University of Texas and his law degree from Georgetown Law School. From 2005-2009, he was a Professor, and the Fred W. Smith Chair in Critical Thinking and Ethical Practices, at the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada. “In the case of the New York Times, vs Sullivan, the very famous libel case, the New York Times republished the libel and became standing in the same shoes as the libelous party. By republishing a libel, you have equal responsibility. And under Section 230, you have zero responsibility. The user generated content you’re indifferent to. So I think some happy medium needs to be found between this absolute immunity for harmful content and free expression. So, for example, my students work a lot with hate speech in the graduate class. One of their assignments is to develop a hate speech policy for an imaginary online company. And you look at Facebook’s hate speech policy as an example, and it’s just a horrible mismatch, a jumble of impossible to interpret rules.” Edward M. Lenert on Twitter Michael Edward Lenert at USFCA

Doc Searls joins the Plutopians to discuss social media’s impact on the Internet, mass media’s changes in the digital age, streaming music, movies, and much more. “Social media enhances conviviality enormously. Suddenly you’re in touch with people from high school, relatives you haven’t seen in a long time, and I thought it retrieved gossip. Gossip is enormous there. In fact, it is about gossip, and gossip, as Yuval Noah Harari points out in his book Sapiens – he thinks human beings are built for gossip. In our early days as a sentient and nomadic species, we needed to know who are the good ones at making tools, who are the ones that would screw you over, who are the ones that climb trees, whatever else there was. And gossip is good for that. And [social media] retrieved gossip in a big way.” A compelling discussion of digital age media. We start out with the question, “whatever happened to blogging.” Bloggers were, for the most part, diverted into social media. And what social media did to blogging, it also did to journalism – now it seems everyone is a journalist. And we’re all *with* each other, pickled in the Internet. This is a new world, without distance and gravity, and pretty much without cost. We’re being remade by being digital. Doc Searls on Twitter FLOSS Weekly Podcast Reality 2.0 Podcast Doc Searls’ weblog at Harvard

Plutopian discussion with visionary culture hacker Jean M. Russell, focusing on thrivability, healthcare, twisting language for political gains, social media, and much more. Jean engages in a social ecosystem design, culture hacking, and facilitation as a visionary but also a pragmatist. She acted as project lead for the Holo ICO, which raised 30,000 ETH (valued at $22M at that time). In 2016 with Herman Wagter, she published Cultivating Flows: How Ideas Become Thriving Organizations, which explored, through leading edge practitioners, what patterns enable healthy emergence. In 2013, Jean published Thrivability: Breaking Through to a World That Works, also with Triarchy Press. In 2010, Jean curated 65 inspiring people to create: Thrivability: A Collaborative Sketch, which has been seen by over 50,000 viewers. She has published articles on organizational design strategies, and her work on thrivability, innovation, philanthropy, and cultural shifts has been highlighted in The Economist, Harvard Business Review, and Stanford Social Innovation Review. As recognition for her work, Jean received an honorable mention on the Enrich List as one of the top 200 people enriching our path to a sustainable future. She is also listed as one of 100 Women Globally Co-creating a P2P Society. Jean Russell on Twitter Jon L.’s 2009 Worldchanging Interview with Jean Thrivability at P2P Foundation

In this episode of the podcast, Scoop and Jon talk to author Carol Flake Chapman about politics, the religious right, Covid-19, grieving, and poetry. Carol is a distinguished journalist and editor. She was a founding editor of Vanity Fair, horse racing correspondent for The New Yorker, rock critic for The Village Voice, and Texas stringer for US News and World Report. She was an editor and columnist for The Boston Globe. She’s written for Harper’s, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Vogue, Conde Nast Traveler, Connoisseur, The Nation, Texas Monthly, and The New Republic. She covered subjects from religion, culture, and politics to travel and nature. Her pioneering book on evangelicalism and the rise of the religious right, titled Redemptorama: Culture, Politics and the New Evangelicalism, has become a classic, and her book about the city of New Orleans, titled New Orleans: Behind the Masks of America’s Most Exotic City, has been cited by many as one of the best books ever written about the city. Since the death of her husband, Gary Chapman, she wrote about her journey of grief and healing in her book Written in Water: A Memoir of Love, Death and Mystery. As her path of healing has progressed, she has returned to poetry, her first love. Lately she’s written poetry about the Covid-19 pandemic. Maybe We Will All Become Butterflies: Poems from the Pandemic takes on our Covid-19 ordeal with dark humor, telling details, compassion, anger and vision.

Ruth Glendinning and Kent Dahlgren discuss The Anti-Fragile Playbook and the power of soft capital. The Playbook outlines strategies for underserved people and communities to start an economic and social revival. Ruth: What we’ve been talking about, and this is a big thing in Austin and everywhere, is affordability vs. ability to afford. Those on the surface might sound similar, but which one do you have control over? You don’t have any impact on affordability, but you can have the tools to have the ability to afford. Kent: One of the terrible things you learn working in a place like Xerox is that it takes three years to build a copier, not because it takes three years, but because you’re spending that time finding gears that only last 18 months…. Because you know that people aren’t going to pay a warranty longer than 18 months, it’s not in your financial best interest to do so. But that’s not exactly true. In fact, it’s actually false. Ruth Glendinning Ruth Glendinning is the founder of FutureStory Lab, a platform identifying & activating sense making tools for the unfolding future. The core of her work is building ecosystems of relationships, connections and creative partnerships in projects that are mapped to real needs in the market, catalyzed by expanding technology and activated by personal relationships. As a natural product of the ecosystems built, she designs & implements platforms and systems to develop, produce & sustain local wealth. As part of her work, she has emerged the cultural strategy model which demonstrates the importance of creating a balance between community, culture and commerce for sustainable economy and trademarked the “SLOW Tech® Incubator” (Sustainable Local Organic Work + Technology) concept in which specific technology is added to no- or low-tech community-based human-scale businesses to better equip them to thrive. Kent Dahlgren Kent Dahlgren has pursued dual career tracks in both high technology and grassroots community advocacy. A veteran of Xerox and several venerated information security companies, Kent has designed, managed and introduced various new technologies. In 2017 his technology team was awarded recognition from UNESCO for providing technology benefiting Syrian refugees. From a commitment to service to the community, Kent has participated in several landmark social experiments, including the Burnside Skatepark, now 30 years into a public/private community policing collaboration. Kent served as Executive Director for Skaters for Public Skateparks, a 501(c)(3) dedicated to assisting grassroots advocates, and served on the board of the Tony Hawk Foundation. As CEO of 214 Alpha, Kent provides technology and professional services helping keep money and affairs local so communities can reclaim their dignity on their terms. Both it’s better to be “anti-fragile” than merely resilient. This conversation took place on March 18, 2021, on Plutopia Live.

Members of the Plutopia team discuss social media (including Clubhouse and Facebook), streaming entertainment, cancel culture, cartoons, gurus, and cults. What is social media for? What is it good for? If data is the new oil, where are our mineral rights? Including the history of the term and concept “social media” and how user attention and data became the product.

“It’s not just robust, it’s not just resilient, but we will be stronger on the other side of adversity. So we went into the pandemic expecting to come out a more robust institution. If you went into the pandemic thinking you’d weather the storm, but that it was a storm, and it would pass – I had colleagues that thought this was like a long spring break … well, this was a hell of a long spring break, if that’s what you thought going in.” “If you were prepared, you were in great shape. But most universities just didn’t have access to a robust technology stack for online learning. They didn’t have access to a great ed tech or teaching and learning center team that could do this. Folks that did, let me just say, they were real heroes, working tirelessly around the clock to do what was an unthinkable lift only a day before they had started.” Christopher Rice is the Founder and Managing Partner of Refuturing, where he leads foresight, strategy and research activities. As a futurist, ethnographer, experience designer, educator and political theorist, his work over the last 20+ years has explored the intersections of society, technology, economics, the environment and politics. Donna Kidwell is Chief Information Security & Digital Trust Officer at Arizona State University. She was formerly Chief Technology Officer for EdPlus, where she led a diverse IT portfolio and a team centered around digitally serving learners everywhere. Christopher Rice on Twitter Donna Kidwell on Twitter

Joseph Rowe is a musician, composer, writer, storyteller. He is also an author and translator, and a meditator and teacher. He performs sacred music and conducts workshop with Catherine Braslavsky. In this, his second visit to the Plutopia podcast, Joseph discusses Covid-19 and vaccines, postmodern madness, relativism and absolutism, moral perception, spirituality, beauty, the Tao, the overlooked evolution debate, and mysticism.

Scoop and Jon, both based in Texas, talk about their experience of extreme winter weather in the week following Valentine’s Day 2021, during Winter Storm Uri. The storm caused a power crisis in Texas. For more, see Jon’s blog post, “Heavy Weather in Texas.”

Emily Gertz is Senior Editor at Drilled News. She is also a journalist who reports on the intersections of climate, environment, science, technology and society. Emily, a regular Plutopia News Network guest, discusses the state of climate change policy, with a new president recommitting the USA to climate change goals.

January 14 Plutopia Livestream with guest Tom Jennings! Jon, Scoop and Suzy talk to Tom about some of the history of network communications, as well as about current events. Tom is a Los Angeles-based artist and technician, known for his work on FidoNet, the first message and file networking system for BBSes. He also built Wired magazine’s first internet presence, wrote the portable BIOS that led to Phoenix Technologies BIOS, ran an early regional internet service provider, The Little Garden (later incorporated as TLGnet, Inc), and maintains an informal archive of Cold War science and technology. YouTube video of this conversation:

In this recording of the October 13, 2020 EFF-Austin meeting, Ritika Gopal discusses the current state of copyright law, and its ability to address modern-day forms of artistic expression. In a time when brick-and-mortar venues are closed, consumers rely on digital platforms for entertainment, communication, and human connection. Streamed content from DJs and other artists, through platforms such as Twitch and Facebook, play an increasing role in our consumption of media. Can the current copyright regime address the collage art forms of the internet era — e.g., mixes, mashups and memes? Should it? Ritika Gopal is an in-house lawyer at WP Engine. She specializes in transactional, IP, and privacy law. Her past work experience includes stints at the Wikimedia Foundation, The Walt Disney Company, and most recently, SXSW. She is deeply fascinated by the uncharted growth of copyright, IP, privacy, and free speech law in the context of emerging technologies and online communication. She’s also interested in budding tech policy issues — particularly those stemming from the democratization of knowledge and open access to information. Outside of tech-law, Ritika enjoys disco/funk music, film photography, and diving into spicy ramen on a chilly night. Ritika Gopal on Twitter

Photo: Jordan Reznick Sandy Stone is a cultural theoretician, audio engineer, computer hacker, filmmaker and performance artist; founding director of the Advanced Communication Technologies Laboratory (ACTLab) at the University of Texas at Austin; Fellow of the University of California Humanities Research Institute; a founder of the academic discipline of Transgender Studies; and recipient of the State of California Lifetime Achievement Award. She has been interviewed in various publications and films such as ArtForum, Wired, Mondo, Gendernauts, etc. Jon Lebkowsky has described her as “a force of nature.” On becoming an academic: “I had a vision in which I saw my life pass before me like a circus train, and each car was painted as a different career that I’d had in my life. And they went by – you know, the computer person, the performance person – all of those things, the recording engineer, the fiction writer, on and on. And when the caboose went by, there was a clown, standing on a little platform on the back of the caboose with a red nose, and as that went by, the clown waved at me, and I waved back, and I said ‘Bye-bye, bye-bye’ to my previous life. This is my new life now. And the train went off into the distance, and disappeared. And I was an academic. That was my moment. And I never looked back.” Website: sandystone.com Wikipedia article on “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto” Allucquere Rosanne Stone interview for Mondo 2000: This is the version that MONDO 2000 didn’t publish.

Robert Matney is Managing Director of Government Affairs at Yonder. Yonder was originally called New Knowledge, and was known for its role in developing the authoritative report on Russian influence operations targeting US elections from 2015 forward for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI). The report leveraged data from Alphabet (Google), Twitter, and Facebook. In his role at Yonder, Robert has become a thought leader in disinformation analysis, online authenticity, and the influence mechanics of the internet. Robert has also worked as a social media analyst and practitioner, web developer, actor (stage, voice), theater director. We asked Robert to speak with us following the January 6 siege on the US Capitol. In his role at Yonder, Robert had been keenly aware of social media disinformation and planning prior to the siege. We operate within what is often called information warfare. And we’re in it whether we want to be in it or not. And the only way we can do something positive about it is to become aware of it. Just become aware that there is a complex set of dynamics within which we operate which are largely opaque that are intended to divide us against ourselves, and some of the problem is international, sure, but lots of it is domestic. And if we don’t start acting like vigilant information consumers, and always seek a path that is less fragmenting, then we’re going to be in a lot more trouble than we’re already in, and we’re already in a lot of trouble. The best we can do at this point is kind of earn the right to fight the next battle, and the stakes are high. Photo: Nick Youngson License: Creative Commons 3 – CC BY-SA 3.0

In this episode, we discuss complexity, post-Covid foresight, climate change, and building capabilities to evolve and survive with Zaid Hassan. Zaid is a strategist, facilitator, social innovator and writer. He is the co-founder of several ventures, most recently 10-in-10 and Complexity University. Zaid has 20 years of experience tackling complex social challenges, working all over the world. His experiences range from working in rural India on reducing acute child malnutrition to tackling racism, violence and youth unemployment in inner city Chicago. He has helped pioneer a new approach to tackling complexity involving people learning how to tackle their own challenges in partnership with experts. He is best known for his work building a practice for effective response to complex social challenges. He’s currently working on Complexity University and specifically the Gigatonne Challenge, a bold bottom-up, at-pace and at-scale response to the climate crisis. He has supported and advised many organizations over the years including the World Bank. the UN, the Climate Action Network, WWF, Oxfam, as well as several governments. Zaid regularly teaches, guest lecturing at universities across the world including the New School in New York, the University of Bergen in Norway and the University of Oxford. He is the author of The Social Labs Revolution: A New Approach to Solving Our Most Complex Challenges, as well as numerous published essays and papers. He lives in Oxford. Links: 10-in-10 Complexity University Instagram Medium

Justin Hall has a two decade history pushing the limits of networked media. His website Justin’s Links from the Underground launched in 1994. The site grew to thousands of hand-coded pages. The New York Times referred to Justin as “perhaps the founding father of personal weblogging,” and he was the focus of the Doug Block documentary “Home Page.” He’s worked on web and game projects. As a journalist he’s written for the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Wall Street Journal, New Yorker, Vanity Fair, South China Morning Post and other leading international publications. Find Justin: twitter.com/jah facebook.com/justinreach instagram.com/justinreach The Justin Hall Show/http://justinhallshow.com/ Featured photo by Jon Lebkowsky (2006) In 2015 Justin made a documentary about himself making a web page about his life, it’s called “overshare: the links.net story.” He’s currently cofounder of bud.com, a business that facilitates access to and delivery of legal cannabis. Here’s “overshare”: Stream audio of our interview with Justin, below:

Dr. Sharon Strover discusses how disinformation has mushroomed in the U.S. around a variety of subjects and from a variety of sources. Her research group at TIPI has looked over some of the Russian-placed social media disinformation and investigated the possible tactics behind it. They have analyzed why some people in the U.S. responded to propaganda messages, and how the press has dealt with those same messages. She shares those results and more in this talk at EFF-Austin’s monthly meeting on December 8, 2020. Sharon is the Philip G. Warner Regents Professor in Communication and former Chair of the Radio-TV-Film Department at the University of Texas, where she teaches communications and technology courses and directs the Technology and Information Policy Institute. Some of her current research projects examine local and statewide networks and broadband services; the relationship between economic outcomes and the Internet; misinformation; the digital divide; and rural broadband deployment. Dr. Strover has worked with several international, national and regional government agencies on telecommunications policy matters, including the U.S. Department of Agricultureís Rural Utilities Service, U.S. Federal Communication Commission, the government of Portugal, the Center for Rural Strategies, the European Union, The Appalachian Regional Commission, the Office of Technology Assessment, the Rural Policy Institute, the Ford Foundation, the European Union, the Texas Public Utility Commission, the Department of Information Resources and Department of Health and Human Services, and the Aspen Institute. She has published several articles and chapters on subjects related to technology and telecommunications, and has been the editor or co-editor of three books, edited journal issues for The Information Society and Government Information Quarterly, and serves on the editorial boards of several major publications. She is currently working on a book addressing economic development and the spatial distribution of telecommunications resources.

Alexandra Alvarez, also known as Alex, found she has a talent for finding talent. She’s from Austin originally, but she currently lives in Los Angeles and works as a casting coordinator for Walt Disney Studios and 20th Century Fox. She’s also an independent casting director for CBS television. Her previous work includes extras casting and both studio and post production. In her Plutopia interview, Alex discusses how she realized her movie buff’s dream of working in the film business. We also get a glimpse inside the process of casting films and television. Alex thinks the most important things about casting are having an open mind, and considering all races, ages, and types of people even for roles that are predominately stereotyped. Breaking stereotypes in the industry is really important, as is exercising nontraditional ways of finding new talent. She says some of the most talented people can be found on social media. She and her colleagues recently found a very talented set of twins on Tik Tok and Instagram that had exactly what they needed. They didn’t have an agent or a manager, which in the past would have been a pre-requisite for being “discovered.” Alex on Instagram

“We live in a paradox in which digital tech alleviates social isolation in some ways even as it worsens it in others. It may be fashioning wholly new brain pathways for good or ill in ways we neither notice nor can predict. While we are technically more connected to one another than ever before, we bond on media platforms engineered to make outrage and indignation infectious. They exploit the psychological principle that emotion, like yawning, is highly contagious.” ~ Richard Cytowic, “Digital Distractions: Energy Drain and Your Brain on Screens” Plutopia’s Maggie Duval interviews Richard Cytowic. Richard is best known for having rediscovered synesthesia — the automatic cross–coupling of the senses — and returning it to mainstream science after decades of obscurity. His work bridges the gap between art and science. His book Wednesday Is Indigo Blue received the Montaigne Medal and is a book Oliver Sacks called “a unique and indispensable guide for anyone interested in how we perceive the world.” Dr. Cytowic is Professor of Neurology at George Washington University in Washington DC. This Plutopia interview is a fascinating discussion of the brain, including the impact of contemporary communications technologies on thinking, perception and attention. Other Resources: Website “The Night I Danced with Liberace (LA Review of Books) Ted Talk: “What Percentage of your Brain Do You Use” Other books: Synesthesia The Man Who Tasted Shapes The Neurological Side of Neuropsychogy

Joe Nick Patoski has been writing about Texas and Texans for 40 years. He’s written about Texas music, and hosts the weekly Texas Music Hour of Power on Saturday nights. In this episode of the Plutopia podcast, we talk about the Fort Worth 60s-70s blues scene and his latest book, The Ballad of Robert Ealey and his Five Careless Lovers, an oral history of Fort Worth blues in the 70s. Joe Nick has authored and co-authored biographies of Willie Nelson, Selena, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and the Dallas Cowboys, and collaborated with photographer Laurence Parent on books about the Texas Mountains, the Texas Coast, and Big Bend National Park. He wrote essays for the 2015 book Homegrown: Austin Music Posters, 1968-1982 and Conjunto by John Dyer with Juan Tejeda. He has covered conservation in the book Generations on the Land: A Conservation Legacy and the state religion of Texas in the book Texas High High School Football: More Than the Game. Patoski’s byline has appeared in the New York Times, National Geographic, the Texas Observer, Oxford American, TimeOut New York, Garden and Gun, and No Depression magazine, for whom he was a contributing editor. He recorded the oral histories of B.B. King, Clarence Fountain of the Blind Boys of Alabama, Memphis musician and producer Jim Dickinson, Tejano superstar Little Joe Hernandez, and 15 other subjects for the Voice of Civil Rights oral history project sponsored by AARP and the Library of Congress, some of which appeared in the book My Soul Looks Back in Wonder by Juan Williams. In 2015, Patoski directed his first film, the music documentary Sir Doug & The Genuine Texas Cosmic Groove, which premiered at the South By Southwest Film Festival. He hosts the Texas Music Hour of Power, broadcast on KRTS FM Marfa www.marfapublicradio.org Saturdays 7 – 9 pm central, and lives near the Texas Hill Country village of Wimberley where he swims and paddles in the Blanco River.

Participatory Medicine is a movement in which networked patients shift from being mere passengers to responsible drivers of their health, and in which providers encourage and value them as full partners. In 2006 Tom Ferguson, MD asked Plutopia’s Jon Lebkowsky to attend a retreat with a group of physicians and others. This group, referred to as the e-Patient Scholars Working Group, had been working with him on a white paper, published in 2007 as “e-Patients: how they can help us heal healthcare.” Tom died not long after that retreat, and Jon continued to meet with that group. They went on to found the Journal of Participatory Medicine and the Society for Participatory Medicine. The group continued to meet regularly over the years, and to stay in touch via an email list. Plutopia News Network invited several members of the group to introduce themselves and talk about how they became involved with participatory medicine. We also talked about participatory medicine in the era of Covid-19. Society for Participatory Medicine Founder’s Circle Cast of Characters Joe Gradeon, President at Graedon Enterprises, Inc. and Cohost of The People’s Pharmacy Terry Graedon, Treasurer at Graedon Enterprises, Inc. and Cohost of The People’s Pharmacy Gilles Frydman, Chief Strategy Officer at American Sleep Apnea Association, founder of the Association of Cancer Online Resources John Grohol, Psy.D., Founder of PsychCentral.com Alan Greene, Pediatrician, Author, and Speaker Co-founder at DrGreene.com Cheryl Greene, Co-founder & Executive Producer at DrGreene.com Charlie Smith, MD, Dr. Smith Direct Care Danny Sands, MD, MPH, CMO, Backpack Health at Invicro, A Konica Minolta Company Dave deBronkart, Chief Patient Officer at PocketHealth; Keynote Speaker Notes Dave deBronkart : Tom Ferguson’s triangles Dave deBronkart: patient researcher Hannah Wei kicks off FHIR DevDays John Grohol : Also 60 Minutes on Covid Long Haulers Photo by Jon Lebkowsky: Tom Ferguson with Danny Sands at a the 2006 retreat and meeting of the e-Patients Scholar Working Group.

Cory Doctorow returns! Cory is a science fiction author, activist, and journalist. His latest book, which we’ll be discussing today, is Attack Surface, a standalone adult sequel to Little Brother. He’s written many other books, including Radicalized and Walkaway, science fiction; How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism, nonfiction about monopoly and conspiracy; In Real Life, a graphic novel; and the picture book Poesy the Monster Slayer. He’s also a special consultant to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit civil liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards and treaties. In our discussion of Attack Surface, we consider it as a Trojan horse for delivering information about surveillance and counter-surveillance, and as a consideration of the ethics of privilege vs dissent. From the book: “Information doesn’t want to be free… but people do…. People use technology to make themselves free, by using it to share and organize and connect. Freedom isn’t something technology gives you, technology is something you use to get freedom.” Photo: At Borderlands Books, San Francisco, CA. Photo by Alex Schoenfeldt Photography, www.schoenfeldt.com , CC-BY)

Plutopia News Network’s Jon Lebkowsky gave this talk on “truth in the time of the Internet” on November 3, 2020, at a virtual EFF-Austin meeting. Jon had been thinking about the 1960s slogan “question authority,” and how in the 21st century era of mainstream internetworking and proliferation of media and news sources, we don’t know where to look for an authoritative perspective for a consensus about what’s real. In his talk, he discusses the evolution of media and the impact of the Internet. He also talks about the rise of cable news “infotainment” and the growing emphasis on opinion over fact. Finally, he talks about potential solutions, and considers possible myths about misinformation. EFF-Austin’s description of the event: Jon is currently co-founder and co-host at the Plutopia News Network. He is well known as an activist and writer/blogger focused on strategic foresight, Internet evolution, digital culture, cyber liberties, media, and society. In addition to this, he managed technology projects and companies for over 25 years, and was formerly President of EFF-Austin. Jon Lebkowsky considers the 1960s phrase “question authority” in light of the 21st century evolution of the Internet as a platform for all media. What is the state of truth in the time of the Internet? Are we still questioning authority, or have we lost all sense of an authority for truth? What’s been the impact of blogging and disruptive social media on our perception of the world? How do we find consensus about what’s real? And why would that be important? Jon’s website, weblogsky.com Jon on Twitter

Covid-19, as a novel coronavirus, has been known to cause various degrees of illness, diverse symptoms, and long recoveries. Last summer, we discussed “E-Patients and Covid-19” with e-Patient Dave deBronkart and Dr. Marge Benham-Hutchins.. In this episode, we talk to Austin-based consultant, strategist, and investor, Matt Cohen, about his long-haul Covid-19 experience. Matt became ill on June 12, 2020, and is still in a process of recovery. He had a mild fever and flu-like symptoms for less than 24 hours, then developed pneumonitis (fluid in the lungs) a week later. He’s since tested negative, but he’s been in a process of slow recovery that still continues. In our talk, Matt mentions Survivor Corps, a grassroots movement connecting, supporting, educating, motivating and mobilizing COVID-19 Survivors to support all medical, scientific and academic research, help stem the tide of this pandemic and assist in the national recovery. He also mentioned a video available via YouTube, “How Does COVID-19 Testing Actually Work?”

David Weinberger joins Jon and Scoop to discuss how the Internet and machine learning impact our lives and beliefs. We discuss the current state of the Internet, the web, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and more… David is an insightful author, speaker, and influencer. He explores the effect of the technology on our lives, businesses, and ideas. He has written about new rules for organizing ideas and information, and how those rules transform business and culture. His latest book, Everyday Chaos: Technology, Complexity, and How We’re Thriving in a New World of Possibility examines how AI, big data, modern science, and the Internet are enabling us to embrace the chaos from which the future arises. He looks at how machine learning, combined with computer networks, is changing our ideas about how the world works and how to flourish in it. He was also co-author of the influential book, The Cluetrain Manifesto. David is also the author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web, Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now that the Facts Aren’t the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room. Photo by Alberto Mingueza @AMingueza

Gareth Branwyn contributes regularly to “Boing Boing,” “Adafruit,” and “HackSpace Magazine” and publishes a weekly newsletter, “Gareth’s Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales.” He is also working on volume 2 of his best-selling 2018 book, Tips and Tales from the Workshop. Gareth is a well-known writer and editor, and a pioneer of both online culture and the “maker movement.” Other gigs: he is the former Editorial Director of “Make:,” was a contributing editor to “Wired” for twelve years, and a senior editor of Boing Boing print. Gareth is author or co-author of over a dozen books, including The Mosaic Quick Tour (the first book about the Web), The Happy Mutant Handbook: Mischievous Fun for Higher Primates (with the editors of Boing Boing), and the “lazy man’s memoir,” Borg Like Me (& Other Tales of Art, Eros, and Embedded Systems). Beyond Cyberpunk! The Web Version Gareth on Twitter Gareth on Medium Gareth at Cool Tools Photo by Jon Lebkowsky

Patrick Lichty is a media artist, writer, futurist, curator and designer of over 30 years. He’s currently a professor of media design at Zayed University in Dubai, where he is the Director of the Immersive Media Research Cluster. As an activist and artist, he was part of or worked with the collectives RTMark, Pocha Nostra, The Yes Men, Terminal Time, Second Front, Shared Universe, and Critical Art Ensemble. After getting his Bachelor of Science degree in Electronic Engineering and working in the discipline, he began an art and design studio in 1990, and created work for Accenture, Allstate Insurance and the X-Prize. He is one of the co-creators of the Shared Universe climate fiction universe with Alaskan Nathan Shafer. Shared Universe is a collective indigenous-anglo climate fiction universe set in the 22nd Century, based on lost plans for dome cities proposed for Anchorage Alaska in the early 70’s. His writings on VR, AR, and media culture are widely published. For 10 years he was Editor in Chief of Media Arts Journal Intelligent Agent, published by Christiane Paul, Adjunct Curator of the Whitney Museum of American Art. He lives in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Twitter: @patlichty Instagram: @patlichty Pinterest: @patlichty Facebook: @patlichty “I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe.” – from the Tears in the rain monologue, in “Blade Runner.”

Margot Mifflin is an author and journalist who writes about women’s history and the arts. She’s a professor in the English department of Lehman College/CUNY and teaches arts journalism at CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. She wrote the first history of women’s tattoo culture, Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo, and The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman. Her new book, Looking For Miss America: A Pageant’s 100-Year Quest to Define Womanhood, is the first feminist cultural history of the Miss America pageant. Margot’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Vogue, Vice, Elle, ARTnews, Bookforum, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Believer, O, The Oprah Magazine, The New Yorker.com, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Washington Post, and other publications. Photo by Thea Dery.

In 2014, Plutopian Maggie Duval produced a great EFF-Austin party and event called Cyberpunk 2014 Retrofest during SXSW. A highlight of the event was an ambitious panel about cyberpunk as a literary subgenre and, even more so, as the movement that followed. It featured science fiction authors Bruce Sterling, Cory Doctorow, and Christopher Brown, and editor Gareth Branwyn, who in the 1990s assembled the hypercard stack “Beyond Cyberpunk.” Plutopia’s Jon Lebkowsky was moderator. Bruce was an important author in the cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction. Cory and Chris came later, but like so many more recent sci-fi authors were both influenced by the “high tech low life” ethos of cyberpunk. Gareth was a consumer and critic of cyberpunk fiction. This panel threw a lot of sparks, and we’re happy to present this record of it. Moderator: Jon Lebkowsky Panelists: Gareth Branwyn Christopher Brown Cory Doctorow Bruce Sterling

John D. Marks was the unlikely featured speaker at the 1977 Libertarian Party National Convention in San Francisco. Marks, the former staff assistant to the Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research in The State Department and Victor Marchetti, a former special assistant to the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency wrote the controversial 1974 book, The C.I.A. and The Cult Of Intelligence. Marks and Marchetti’s book was responsible, in part, for the 1975 Congressional investigation of intelligence agency abuses by the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations a.k.a. The Church Committee. That landmark investigation led to substantial changes in the way the U.S. government handled it’s various intelligence agencies. In this program, Marks discusses the numerous abuses of power he and Marchetti uncovered in their research. Central to his speech is the fact the C.I.A. and F.B.I., under various administrations, had become tools of political power, often used against legally elected foreign governments and citizens of the United States. In this program, John Marks details how his book was the first to ever be censored by the government PRIOR to publication. Why are we going so far back in history? Given the recent political changes in the United States and the possibility of many more changes to the way things are done in Washington D.C., it may be helpful to be reminded what can happen when a U.S. President decides to step outside the legal limits placed upon the intelligence agencies. The current administration insists the F.B.I. and intelligence services should be loyal to the President and support his policies. Philosopher and author George Santayana warned, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Are we about to have a deja vu experience?

Jon and Scoop interview science fiction author and attorney Christopher Brown about his latest book, Failed State, his second “dystopian lawyer” novel. The book is set just after the Second American Revolution. Protagonist Donny Kimoe, a good lawyer in a bad time, looks for a kidnap victim while trying to broker a truce between bright green rebels and their capitalist adversaries. If he fails, violence is almost certain to follow. This is our 4th interview with Chris. Previous interviews:Tropic of Kansas – Buy the BookRule of Capture – Buy the Book2001 50th Anniversary

Maggie and Scoop interview Jeanne Mozier, a popular astrologer and speaker. Her understanding of both politics and astrology inform her wide-ranging predictions. Jeanne holds degrees in political science from Cornell and Columbia universities. Her professional background includes research, planning and electoral politics. She has worked through the years for both Republican and Democratic candidates at every level from city, county and state to national. “I support the person not the party,” she says. Jeanne comes by her passion for American history through her family roots: she is a direct descendant of John Morton, Signer of the Declaration of Independence. Jeanne lives in her adopted hometown of Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. She is one of the best-known people in the small city, and commands recognition throughout the state of West Virginia thanks to her decades-long efforts in arts, tourism, and history. In our discussion with Jeanne, she discusses how she predicted the current turmoil, and her hope that we’re heading into a period of progressive energy.

Eliza Evans experiments with sculpture, print, video, and textiles to identify disconnections and absurdities in social, economic, and ecological systems. She carefully researches initial parameters of each work, which evolve as a result of interaction with people, time, and weather. Her latest environmental art project, “All the Way to Hell,” has appeared in the New York Times, Art in America, Hyperallergic (leading contemporary art site), The Brooklyn Rail, and other art publications. In a previous life Eliza was an academic focused on economic development and entrepreneurship via her research role at the IC2 Institute at UT Austin, and later in a nonprofit that forged private/university relationships. I took my first art class, Drawing 101, at Austin Community College in summer 2012. Since 2014 she’s been what she describes as an itinerant artist, living in more than 20 locations, including New Mexico, New York, and Tennessee. All the Way to Hell From the website: “‘All the Way to Hell’ converts 1000 individual gestures into a new form of environmental resistance at the intersection of property law, fossil fuel business practice, and bureaucracy. “All the Way to Hell LLC is transferring its mineral rights to 1000 people. Because it costs developers just as much to acquire 500 acres as it does small properties—they have to track down owners, negotiate leases, and file documents with the county clerk—this aggressive fragmentation of the property will inhibit fossil fuel interest in it. The aim is to make mineral rights as inconvenient and expensive to acquire as possible.”

In this episode, we talk about e-Patients, participatory medicine, and Covid-19. We also talk about “long haulers,” people who have Covid-19 as more of a chronic condition. Their symptoms extend long after recovery. Our guests are e-Patient Dave deBronkart and Dr. Marge Benham-Hutchins. Dave is a cancer survivor and international speaker on healthcare. He focuses especially on patient empowerment, engagement, and experience. Marge is Interim Chair of the Biobehavioral Health Science Department at the College of Nursing and Health Sciences at Texas A&M Corpus Christi. e-Patients: How they can help us heal health care (a white paper) Covid-19 Support Group via Body Politic Laugh, Sing, and Eat Like a Pig: How an Empowered Patient Beat Stage IV Cancer (And What Healthcare Can Learn from It) by Dave deBronkart Let Patients Help! by Dave deBronkart and Danny Sands

Joseph Rowe joins Scoop and Jon in a discussion of spiritual community, evolution, and awakening. Joseph is a musician, composer, writer, storyteller. He is also an author and translator, and a meditator and teacher. He performs sacred music and conducts workshop with Catherine Braslavsky. Before our session, Joseph wrote in an email “I have this notion that there are vastly unexplored skillful means to use online technologies to enhance our soul-connections, and thereby enhance synergistic possibilities of new kinds of spiritual community. I feel that there is an entire category of spiritually-oriented conversation that is missing in our public life.” Joseph has studied philosophy of religion, transpersonal psychology, and classical guitar. He also studied classical Middle Eastern oud with Hamza El Din, a master whose unique marriage of voice and oud, and of Nubian and Arab influences, was one of the pioneers of what is now called “world music.” During the 1980’s he worked as a radio producer for National Public Radio stations, and was among the first designers of programs combining classical, jazz, world, and new music, and interspersed with cultural and public affairs interviews. He now lives in Paris, where he has turned more and more to music and theater, working as musician, writer, composer, and actor. Besides his extensive work with Catherine Braslavsky, he has collaborated with Marc Zammit at the Théâtre Molière in Paris, and with Alain Kremski and Michael Lonsdale at the Cluny Museum (Paris Festival of Sacred Art). He has composed music for a number of theater pieces by authors such as Samuel Beckett, T.S. Eliot, Jean Giono, and Roland Dubillard. He has also composed and recorded music for French television and documentary films. A writer and storyteller, he writes texts for theatrical performance pieces with music. He has published a number of short stories, poetry, book reviews, and magazine articles.

Renshin Bunce is a hospice chaplain and Zen priest. She was ordained at San Francisco Zen Center in 2003, and received dharma transmission in April of 2013. She later began training as a chaplain at the Sati Center’s Buddhist Chaplaincy Training in Redwood City in 2007. A one year hospital residency in Clinical Pastoral Education followed. She moved out of Zen Center in 2008 and has been employed as a hospice chaplain since 2010. She’s author of Love and Fear: stories from a hospice chaplain, a beautiful and moving account of some of her experiences as hospice chaplain, and how she has grown through those experiences. Renshin Bunce on Twitter Books by Renshin Bunce, available from Amazon: Love and Fear Entering the Monastery Image by Shundo Haye

Mark Frauenfelder, Research Director of Institute for the Future, discusses his life as editor, blogger, maker, and influencer. Mark has been a vital part of the mainstreaming of the Internet. He was associate editor of Wired Magazine, and he was editor-in-chief at Wired.com and Make Magazine. He was aslo founder of the popular boingboing zine and blog. . Mark has illustrated a number of books for major publishers. His paintings have been shown in galleries in Los Angeles and Seattle. He also designed Billy Idol’s CD covers. He’s written for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Popular Science, Business Week, The Hollywood Reporter, Wired, and other national publications. A popular public speaker, he has appeared on national radio and television shows to talk about technology and culture, including The Martha Stewart Show and The Colbert Report (twice). He’s the author of nine books, including The Computer: An Illustrated History. He wrote, produced, and animated an explainer video about Bitcoin which has over 2.8 million views on YouTube. He has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Colorado State University and worked as a development engineer in the disk drive sector for five years. Also by Mark Frauenfelder: Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World

Nate Wilcox is host of “Let It Roll,” a podcast with a series of in-depth interviews with music writers. Nate and his collaborators are assembling a history of popular music in America with a focus on the social, technological and business forces that drive the culture. Rock journalist Ed Ward’s History of Rock and Roll inspired the podcast, and Ed has been a regular guest and key collaborator. The second volume of the History was published recently, and Nate and Ed are just wrapping up a series of discussions inspired by that volume, which covers the late 60s and early 70s. In this discussion, we talk about the past, present and future state of rock and roll. Buy both volumes of the History of Rock and Roll on Amazon: The History of Rock & Roll, Volume 1: 1920-1963 The History of Rock & Roll, Volume 2: 1964–1977: The Beatles, the Stones, and the Rise of Classic Rock

Bijoy Goswami and Robert Matney work with Jon and Scoop to create a “cult of punditry.” This freewheeling conversation covers cults, conspiracies, gurus, toxic soup, science (and the lack of scientific thinking), Buddhism and the power of positive freaking.

Robert Matney is Managing Director of Government Affairs at Yonder. Yonder is a company that discovers who controls and amplifies narratives across the internet. It uses AI to identify influential groups, called factions, making them visible to Yonder’s clients. Rob has his finger on the pulse of emerging online narratives, which puts him in a great position to understand conspiracy theories and how they spread. In this episode, we explore the current prominence of conspiracy theories, such as Q Anon, in public discourse.

Jasmina Tešanović is a Feminist and political activist, originally from Serbia. She is also author of 15 books, a journalist, musician, translator and film director. More recently, she was one of the founders of Casa Jasmina, smart home of the future, in Turin, Italy. She is the author of the manifesto and movement “Internet of Women Things.” She writes in three languages and lives between Turin, Belgrade, Austin and Ibiza.

Jon and Scoop discuss the state of the news industry with Emily Gertz. Emily is a New York-based journalist, and Senior Editor at Drilled News. We consider what’s working and what’s not, especially with Internet-based journalism and news organizations. We also discuss the question of authority in a world of proliferating sources of news and claims of bias. She was Plutopia’s guest for the June 23 edition of our livestream happy hour on Facebook. Emily on Twitter Emily at LinkedIn Emily at TED

Gary Gach returns to the Plutopia Podcast to discuss mindfulness and joy in the era of Covid-19. Our conversation was inspired in part by Gary’s March Lion’s Roar essay, “Practicing Equanimity in a State of Emergency.” Excerpt: To flex your mindfulness muscle, you might try this brief exercise. Visualize the now-familiar COVID-19 virus for a moment. As you see it, what comes to mind? Notice if your body signals fear. If so, where does your body express it? Is your breathing shallow? Heart skipping a beat? Are there tingly sensations? A stab of cold? Since our body is often the first-responder at the scene of emotional difficulty, it’s wise to discern, accept, and understand these patterns before they proliferate.

Honoria Starbuck is a professor of practice in the School of Design and Creative Technologies in the College of Fine Arts at The University of Texas. She’s also an artist known for her vibrant watercolors, and especially for her Zen Chicken series. Honoria studied art and art history at the University of Texas. She holds an interdisciplinary PhD in Fine Arts, Communications, and Education. She is influenced by art history stretching back to prehistoric cave art. The Zen Chicken series is specifically influenced by contemporary calligraphic artists and the asemic writing movement. Zen Chickens also stem from the abstraction of Ikebana, the flowing flowers of Emile Nolde, the frottage of Max Ernst, the eye of Man Ray and Dada, the diffusion of ink by George Grosz, as well as current events. In addition Honoria’s artwork is a form of moving meditation closely related to her 12 year practice of tai chi. Honoria has decades of diverse experiences as a Mail Artist in the international Correspondence Art Network through which her work has been exhibited in over 400 exhibitions including three times in the Venice Biennale. Honoria has also worked in Internet art creating the first Internet opera (1995) which was recognized by the Global Bangemann Challenge for innovation excellence. Honoria’s theme is flow. Flow connects the molecules of pigment into patterns on the paper and intellectual themes flow from one individual artwork into the next. The Zen Chicken theme has a strong current of humor and flexibility as the dilettante rooster roams through a wide range of entanglements from Japanese flower arranging to modern art. Honoria is a professor of practice in the School of Design and Creative Technologies in the College of Fine Arts at The University of Texas. Honoria on Twitter: @honoria Honoria on Facebook: honoria.starbuck Honoria on Instagram: honoria.starbuck Honoria on LinkedIn: Honoria

Jack McFadden, Senior Talent Buyer at Austin City Limits Live, joined the Plutopia News Network livestream on May 12. This episode is a rebroadcast of that session. We discuss rock and roll, music venues, and the public performance challenges presented by Covid-19.

Plutopians Jon Lebkowsky and Scoop Sweeney discuss the history of Plutopia, the Chuckwagon riot, protests, COINTELPRO, sensemaking, narrative wars, information overload, filter bubbles, and the Plutopian non-conspiracy! Sign up for Plutopia News!

Technology muse and influential connector Jerry Michalski joins Jon and Scoop to discuss his latest project, Open Global Mind, “a project to build communities and platforms that will help us make sense of the world — together.” A favorite Jerry quote sums up his trajectory: “People want to connect. They also want to make a living. Pretty simple. If they can do both at the same time, even better. How do people form community or a communion; how do they get this feeling of connectedness to other people? What kind of technology does it take; does it even work through technology? The answer is yes.” (via The Edge)

Recording of an April 14, 2020 talk by Dan Reecer, Community & Growth Manager for Polkadot, a next-generation blockchain network founded by the former co-founder and CTO of Ethereum, Gavin Wood. Polkadot will begin its phased launch process in Q2 2020, aiming to solve many of the current issues hindering blockchains from adoption at a global scale, including connection between blockchains, scalability, and rapid upgradability. Dan graduated with a bachelor and master degree from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business in Information Systems and International Business. He has had a marketing and operations-focused career, with four years at Eli Lilly & Company working in pharmaceutical brand marketing in Oncology, Immunology, and Alzheimer’s. He transitioned his career to blockchain out of curiosity for the technology’s potential, which led him to Austin for his first job with another blockchain project called Wanchain. He led Marketing and Business Development globally for this organization, before opting to join Polkadot’s historic launch under the Web3 Foundation based in Zug, Switzerland. Dan lives in Austin, is an avid traveler, and is a competitive tennis player. The “tech boom” became the “advertising boom” in the 2010s. Our online privacy has been sacrificed in the process. Web 3.0 is a movement and next phase of Internet development where control, privacy, and power will be restored back to the individual and away from Big Tech. In this talk, Dan discussed what Web 3.0 is, why it’s important, how you can participate and contribute, and the role the upcoming launch of Polkadot will play. He will also briefly discuss Polkadot’s live experimental network, Kusama, and Substrate, a software development kit for building bespoke blockchains that can be standalone or easily plug into Polkadot’s network. EFF-Austin is sustained via the contributions of supporters like you. Donate via the Paypal link on the EFF-Austin website at the top of the main page. Relevant links: Polkadot 2019 year in review by Gavin Wood – https://polkadot.network/polkadot-2019-year-in-review/ Follow Polkadot on Crowdcast for ongoing webinars – https://www.crowdcast.io/polkadot Follow Polkadot on Twitter – https://twitter.com/polkadotnetwork Polkadot Lightpaper – https://polkadot.network/Polkadot-lightpaper.pdf

Tiffany Lee Brown (aka magdalen, aka T) is a writer and interdisciplinary artist who lives off in the woods somewhere in Oregon. T has been a Tarot card reader for thirty years, and created the collaborative Burning Tarot deck starring the denizens of Black Rock City, Nevada — at the Burning Man festival. In response to the Covid crisis, she has opened her Tarot reading practice to the public. See tiffanyleebrown.com for the Burning Tarot “fake podcast.” And how about Plazm!?