team human (book)
(2019) by Douglas Rushkoff .. (team human podcast)
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notes/quotes:
in 100 lean and incisive statements, he argues that we are essentially social creatures, and that we achieve our greatest aspirations when we work together – not as individuals.. yet today society is threatened by a vast antihuman infra that undermines our ability to connect
team human
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social control is based on thwarting social contact and exploiting the resulting disorientation and despair
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thinking, feeling, connected people undermine the institutions that would control them..
our institutions/techs aren’t designed to extend our human nature, but to mitgate or repress it..
not to mention we don’t really know what our authentic human nature is.. ie: not whales in sea world
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it’s time to reassert the human agenda. and we must do so together – not as the individual players we have been led to imagine ourselves to be, but as the team we actually are..t
has to be everyone
not part\ial.. for (blank)’s sake…
social animals
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developing bigger brains allowed human beings to maintain a whopping 150 stable relationships at a time.
the more advance the primate, the bigger its social groups. that’s the easiest and most accurate way to understand evolution’s trajectory, and the relationships of humans to it
?
even is we don’t agree that social org is evolution’s master plan, we must accept that it is – at the very least – a large part of what makes humans human
what makes humans human ? or what humans do via coercion
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prosocial behaviors such as simple imitation – what’s known as mimesis – make people feel more accepted and included, which sustains a group’s cohesion over time..
? true cohesion (as in meadow’s undisturbed ecosystem)..? or compliant cohesion..?
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human beings connect so easily, it’s as if we share the same brain.. limbic consonance, as it’s called, is our ability to attune to one another’s emotional states.. the brain states of mothers and their babies mirror each other..
limbic consonance is the little known process thru which the mood of a room changes when a happy or nervous person walks in
we long for such consonance,.. it’s why our kids want to sleep w us.. their nervous systems learn how to sleep and wake by mirroring ours..
Jean Liedloff et al
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the more spectacular achievement was not the division of labor but the development of group sharing
common ing ness
early humans had a strong disposition to cooperate w one another, at great personal cost, even when there could be no expectation of payback in the future.. members of group *who violated the norms of cooperation were punished..
great until *punish ness
evolution’s crowning achievement, in this respect, was the emergence of spoken language.. it was a dangerous adaptation that involved crossing the airway w the foodway, making us vulnerable to choking..
?
while language may have been driven by the need for larger more complicated social structures..
?
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language changed everything. once people acquired speech, cultural development and social cohesion no longer depended on increasing our brain size.. evolution shifted forma purely biological process to a social one.. w language, humans gained the ability to learn form one another’s experiences.. the quest for knowledge began
?
diff between plants, animals and humans comes down to what each life form can store, leverage, or – as the concept has been named – ‘bind’..
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the plant must wait for rain.. the animal can find water anywhere in its roaming range.. while the plant binds energy, the animal binds space..
humans’ social, imitative, and language abilities gives us even more binding power.. what makes humans special is that we can also bind time.. we don’t need to experience everything for ourselves over the course of a single lifetime.. instead, we benefit from the experiences of our predecessors, who can tell us what they’ve learned.. because we have evolved to imitate one another, a parent can show a child how to hunt, or how to operation the television remote.. the child doesn’t necessarily need to figure it out from scratch.. we can use language to instruct others..
animals learn from modeling too.. so don’t have to figure out from scratch..? so can also bind time..?
thru language an instruction, humans create a knowledge base that compresses or binds many centuries of accumulated wisdom into the learning span of a single generation..
learning to lie
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socialization depends on both autonomy and interdependency; emphasizing one at the expense of the other compromises the balance..t
maté trump law.. 2 basic needs.. almaas holes law
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when we look at the earliest ie’s of the written word, however, we see it being used mostly to assert power and control.…for first 500 years after its invention in mesopotamia, writing was used exclusively to help kings and priests keep track of the grain and labor they controlled.. whenever writing appeared it was accompanies by war and slavery.. for all the benes of written word, it is also responsible for replacing an embodied, experiential culture w an abstract, administrative one..t
gutenberg printing press extended reach/accessibility of written word and promised a new era of literacy and expression.. but the presses were tightly controlled by monarchs, who were well aware of what happens when people begin reading one another’ book. . instead of promoting new culture of ideas, the printing press reinforced control from the top
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once under the control of elites, almost any new medium starts to turn people’s attention away form one another and toward higher authorities.. this makes is easier for people to see other people as less than human and to commit previously unthinkable acts of violence..t
thurman interconnectedness law: when you understand interconnectedness it makes you more afraid of hating than of dying – Robert Thurman (@BobThurman)
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tv commercials depended on alienate individuals. . not socially connected communities.. tv culture further fostered loneliness by substituting brand imagery for human contact
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traditional media co’s and advertisers, who had decidedly less interest in planetary consciousness than they did in quarterly profits, became gravely concerned when they learned in 1992 that the avg internet connected family was watching 9hrs less commercial tv per week than fam’s w/o the internet. so they took a two pronged approach, vilifying the net in their broadcasts and publications while also steering the internet toward less interactive and more ad friendly uses..
the www was originally intended as an easier way to find/hyperlink research docs.. but its visual clickable interface felt a lot more like tv than the rest of the net, and attracted the interest of marketers.. web quickly became more of a shopping catalogue than a convo space.. t
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the platforms were no longer in the business of delivering people to one another; they were in the business of delivering people to the marketers.. t.. humans no longer the customers of sm.. we were the product.
begs reset.. ie: 2 convers as infra
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memes don’t compete for dominance by appealing to our intellect/compassion/humanity.. they compete to trigger our most automatic impulses..t
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it’s not the meme that matters, but the culture’s ability to muster an effective immune response against it.. techs transmit memes so rapidly that it’s impossible to recognize new forms.. we must build out collective immune system by strengthening our organic coherence..t
ie: cure ios city.. to get us back/to meadow’s undisturbed ecosystem
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the internet doesn’t have to be used against a person’s critical faculties any more than we have to use language to lie or written symbols to inventory slaves. but each extension of our social reality into a new medium requires that we make a conscious effort to bring our humanity along w us..t
mufleh humanity law: we have seen advances in every aspect of our lives except our humanity – Luma Mufleh
we must protect our social human organism from the very things we have created.
figure and ground
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we end up in a world where success in business, politics, or even dating appears to depend on our ability to control others..t
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unfortunately, the people and co’s that were still heavily invested in industrial age values sought to undo the liberating impact of the remote control, the joystick, and the mouse.. keeping users passive
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as the number of amphetamine prescriptions for young people continues to double every few years, we must at least consider the environ factors that have contributed to widespread attention deficit, and whether we have been indiscriminantly drugging some young people into compliance
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the higher goal (social contact) was entirely unprofitable, so convos between actual humans were relegated to the comments sections of articles or, better, the reviews of products.. t.. if people were going to use the networks to communicate, it had better be about a brand.. online communities became affinity groups, org’d around purchases rather than any sort of mutual aid..
digital media environment
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whoever controls media controls society.. so far.. the people/masses have always remained one entire media revolution behind those who would dominate them..t
social control et al
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today, people are finally being encouraged to learn code, but programming is no longer the skill required to rule the media landscape.. operation/distribution are entirely dependent on access to walled gardens, cloud servers and closed devices.. under control of 3-5 corps.. the real activity on these networks.. the hoarding of data about all of us by the co’s that own the platforms.. we too easily lose sight of what it is that’s truly revolutionary
let’s leap via diff data.. ie: self-talk as data
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ie’s: punk rockers reduce it to mohawks/piercings.. lose touch w antiauthoritarian ideology; ravers reduce it to drugs/dance.. lose sight of reclaiming public space.. separating recreation/profit; digital tech reduce to following shiny.. let go of empowerment
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the choices are not choices at all, but a new way of getting us to accept limitations. whoever controls the menu controls the choices.. t
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marketing psychologists in the 1950s discovered that human beings are *desperate to figure out the pattern behind getting rewarded..t
*not legit human nature.. rather.. for whales in sea world..
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user experiences are also designed to trigger our *social need to gain approval and meet obligations..t – ancient adaptations for group cohesion now turned against us..
*not legit human nature.. rather.. for whales in sea world..
approval/obligation ness
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instead of designing techs that promote autonomy and help us make informed decisions.. the persuasion engineers.. thwart our cognition and push us into an impulsive state.. where thoughtful choices.. or thought itself.. are nearly impossible..t
perhaps humanity is more about daily curiosity than informed decisions/thoughts..
imagining eudaimoniative surplus (cure ios city) would render our current focus on ‘informed decision making’ as irrelevant
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algos use our past behavior to lump us into statistical groups and then limit the range of choices we make moving forward..
predict\able ness
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we are using algos to eliminate that 20%: the anomalous behaviors that keep people unpredictable, weird, and diverse..t
nothing new.. of math and men
the Latin word was altered to algorithmus, and the corresponding English term ‘algorithm’ is first attested in the 17th century; the modern sense was introduced in the 19th century. In English, it was first used in about 1230 and then by Chaucer in 1391.
we develop algos .. to make human beings more predictable and machinelike
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engagement thru digital media is just a new way of being alone
? it can be
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if plants bind energy, animals bind space, humans bind time.. algos bind us.. in iot.. people are the things
mechano-morphism
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seeing a human being as a machine or computer is called mechanomorphism.. not just treating machines as living humans; it’s treating humans as machines
having accepted our roles as processors in an info age, we strive to function as the very best computers we can be..
ie: multitask.. when unlike computers.. human beings do not have parallel processors.. we have single, holistic brain.. computers have several sections of memory, working separately but in parallel..
ie: drone pilots.. higher ptsd than real pilots.. because trying to live in 2 worlds.. after day of bombing drive home to fam
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tv connected us as a planet.. internet was supposed to break down those last boundaries.. but did opposite.. building walls
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the yearning for boundaries emerges from a digital media environ that emphasizes distinction.. everything is discrete
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memory is what computers were invented for in the first place. 1945 vannevar bush imagined the ‘memex’.. a digital filing cabinet.. and external memory.. of all their functions.. everything computers can do no.. simply involves moving things form one part of their memory to another.. computer chips, usb sticks and cloud servers are all just kinds of memory
tech as it could be.. listening to every voice.. everyday
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in digital media environ there is no resistance, only one or off, only opposition
we begin acting in ways that accommodate or imitate our machines, remaking our world.. ie: cars changed how we move about.. created label ‘jaywalker’.. what more will automated cars do
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on music – the market has exercised such control over music since advent of recording studios and their appropriately named ‘control rooms’.. but today .. amplified by tech.. mixing board.. sync to a computer generated metronomic beat.. force performance to inhuman perfection..t.. sounds ‘better’.. or at least more accurate to the pitch and rhythm. but what is the perfect note/pace, really? the one mathematically closest to the predetermined frequency?
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diff musicians might interpret not differently depending on context, or slide up to the note – intentionally emphasizing the effort required.. or slide down after hitting it, as if diminished in conviction..
love
ringo starr, famously lagged ever so slightly behind the beat – as if to express a laziness or ‘falling down the stairs’ quality of playing..t
love – improv ness
ringo’s delay is human, t .. and so close to the ‘normal’ beat of the song that it would be immediately corrected by production techs biased toward making humans sound just as ‘good’ as computers
our mechanomorphic culture is embracing a digital aesthetic that irons out anything uniquely human.. any quirks of voice/intonation – gravel, wobble, air, or slide – are reinterpreted as imperfections.. t..
the idea is perfect fidelity – not to the human organisms actually performing the music, but to the mathematics used to denote the score.. we forget that those notations are an approx of music, a compromised way of documenting an embodied expression of human emotion and artistry as a system of symbols so that it can be re created by someone else..t
the figure and ground are reversed when the human performance is seen as an impediment to the pure data, rather than a way of connecting people on both perceived and unconscious levels.. the noises that emanate from the human beings or their instruments are not expressions of autonomy but samples to be manipulated; raw material for digital processing or labor to be extracted and repackaged.
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human interpretation no longer matters, and any artifacts of our participation are erased.. #42..t
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the quirks that make us human are interpreted, instead, as faults that impede our productivity and progress.. t
economics
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this operating system is called capitalism, and it drives the antihuman agenda in our society at least as much as any technology.. very purpose is to prevent widespread prosperity
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an economy geared for the velocity of money, not the hoarding of capital.. it distributed wealth so well that many former peasants rose to become the new merchant middle class.. money was biased toward spending.. who would hold onto money that was going to be worth less next month..
nicer than what we have.. way less (equity wise) than what were capable of today
we can do money less ness
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w each new fund of growth, more money and value is delivered up from the real world of people and resources to those who have the monopoly on capital.. that’s why it’s called capitalism
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is this the fundamental fix we really need? a better ledger?..t.. (referring to blockchain)
not as a ledger.. (that entails measuring and tit for tatting and too much ness ..et al).. but perhaps as an archive.. (via a mech to listen to and let’s just facil/archive daily curiosities ie: cure ios city).. ie: hosting-life-bit
the problem the bc solves is the utilitarian one of better/faster account and maybe an easier way to verify someone’ id online. that’s why the banking industry has ultimately embraced it.. quicker to find us and drain our assets..t
that’s one use of bc.. imagining a diff use
progressive, meanwhile, hope that the bc will be able to record and reward the unseen value people are creating as they go about their lives – as if all human activity were transactional and capable of being calculated by computer
that’s another use of bc.. imagining a diff use.. sans measuring and validating..
i wish you could hear me.. saying.. we need a means to hear everyone.. everyday
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the most energetic billionaires are busy developing aerospace and terraforming techs for an emergency escape to a planet as yet unspoiled by their own extractive investment practices
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a better, more human way .. instead of determining the investment required to insulate oneself form the world.. look at how much we need to invest in the world so it doesn’t become a place we need to insulate ourselves from in the first place
the economy needn’t be a war; it can be a commons. to get there, we must retrieve our innate good will #50..t
via ie: cure ios city
the commons is a conscious implementation of reciprocal altruism..t
no.. no reciprocating ness..
humanity is too messy and alive to work in the ways of reciprocity
reciprocal altruists, whether human or ape, reward those who cooperate w others and punish those who defect. a commons works the same way
no.. reward/punishment.. and incentive.. has no place in common\ing.. and no place in getting back to our innate nature..
this is a huge miss here
the pastures of medieval england were treated as a commons. it wasn’t a free for all, but a carefully negotiated and enforced system..t
that’s not a commons.. not an undisturbed ecosystem
and that’s why it didn’t work (otherwise we wouldn’t be where we are today).. we keep looking at the history of whales in sea world.. we have no idea what we’re capable of if truly free
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if one’s business activities hurt any other market participant, they undermine the integrity of the marketplace itself.. for those entrance by the myth of capitalism.. this can be hard to grasp.. *they’re still stuck thinking of the economy as a two column ledger where every credit is someone’s else’s debit..t
same is true (albeit a seemingly nicer version) for your description of commons – with rewards/punishments.. incentives are killers
it won’t work unless we trust all of us.. to be .. w/o meausre
ie: undisturbed ecosystem: ‘in undisturbed ecosystems ..the average individual, species, or population, left to its own devices, behaves in ways that serve and stabilize the whole..’ –Dana Meadows
*we’re all still stuck not believing this could happen.. even dana.. so we keep partial ing the whales and saying.. i guess we have to measure/incentive-ize/whatever.. just a little..
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if we act like there’s a shortage.. there will be a shortage..t
thinking we have to reward/punish/incentive-ize/regulate people in any way.. is acting like there’s a shortage.. doesn’t matter how small a cancer you impose.. it will kill us in the end
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co op talk
there’s a ton of wasted energy there.. stop measuring and validating
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while one can pluck a reassuring stat to support the notion that the world has grown less violent – such as the decreasing probability of an american solider dying on the battlefield – we also live w continual military conflict, terrorism, cyber attacks, covert war, drone strikes, state sanctioned rape, and millions of refugees. isn’t starving a people and destroying their topsoil, or imprisoning a nation’s young black men, a form of violence?..t
or making school compulsory .. et al.. structural violence
capitalism no more reduced violence than autos saved us from manure filled cities (from manure to pollution et al).. we may be less likely to be assaulted randomly on the street.. but that doesn’t mean humanity is less violent.. or that the blind pursuit of econ growth and tech progress is consonant w increase of human welfare – no matter how well such proclamation do on the business bestseller lists or speaking circuit (businesspeople don’t want to pay to be told that they’re make things worse)
so w the blessing of much of the science industry and its collab futurists, corps press on, accelerating civilization under the false premise that because things are looking better for the wealthiest beneficiaries, they must be better for everyone.
civilization ness
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the models would all work if only there weren’t people in the way.. that’s why capitalism’s true believers are seeking someone or better.. something to do their bidding w greater intelligence and less empathy than humans..
artificial intelligence
ai humanity needs..augmenting interconnectedness
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today, workers are hardly aware of the way digital surveillance techs are used to teach their jobs to algos.. (training our replacements)
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the employment model has become so prevalent that our best organizers, reps and activists still tend to think of prosperity in terms of getting everyone ‘jobs’ as if what everyone really wants is the opp to commodify their living hours..t
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it’s not that we need full employment to get everything done, grow enough food, . we already have surplus food and housing.. the dept of agri regularly burns crops in order to keep market prices high ..banks tear down houses in foreclosure..
food waste.. unauthorized homeless ness.. et al
but we can’t simply give the extra food to the hungry or the surplus houses to the homeless.. why? because they don’t have jobs.. we punish them for not contributing even though we don’t actually need more contribution..t
as if we are contributing anyway.. ie: bs jobs; inspectors of inspectors; et al
jobs have reversed from the means to the ends, the ground to the figure.. they are not a way to guarantee that needed work gets done, but a way of justifying one’s share in the abundance..t
by solving other people’s problems.. (work..)
if we are truly on the brink of a jobless future, we should be celebrating our efficiency and discussing alt strategies for distributing our surplus, from a global welfare program to ubi.. but we are nowhere close
well.. we are close.. very close.. we are spending our days on things that don’t matter.. if we could just let go.. of all the supposed to’s.. ie of school, work..
have/need ness
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by hiring more people rather than machines, paying them livable wages, and operating w less immediate efficiency, co’s could minimize the destruction they leave in their wake
what we need most: the energy of 7bn alive people.. then we wouldn’t even be doing those jobs.. talk about minimization
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we’ve got a greater part of humanity working on making our social media feeds more persuasive than we have on making clean water more accessible. we build our world around what our techs can do..t
rather.. around what we’ve been manufactured to think they should do..
mufleh humanity law: we have seen advances in every aspect of our lives except our humanity – Luma Mufleh
ie: humanity needs a mech that listens to every voice everyday.. (tech as it could be).. & uses that self-talk as data for augmenting our interconnectedness..
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in a world of text, illiteracy is the same as stupidity.. in a world defined by computers, speed and efficiency become the primary values. refusing a tech upgrade may as well be a rejection of the social norm, or a desire to remain sick, weak, and unrepentantly human
to many of the developers and investors of sv.. humans are not to be emulated or celebrated, but transcended or – at the very least – reengineered.. see anyone w diff priorities as an impediment..
that’s what we’ve been doing with supposed to’s.. ie of school, work.. for forever
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this is the true meaning of ‘the singularity’: the moment when computers make humans obsolete
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the turing test determines only whether a computer can convince us it’s human.. the day computers pass the turing tests may have less to do w how smart they have gotten, than with how bad we humans have gotten at telling the diff between them and us..t
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machine learning may be complicated.. but not complex.. complex systems establish flows spontaneously thru the interaction of their many participants..t
fromm spontaneous law and an undisturbed ecosystem: ‘in undisturbed ecosystems ..the average individual, species, or population, left to its own devices, behaves in ways that serve and stabilize the whole..’
no matter how many neurological sounding terms are coined for what computers do, the are not on the path to consciousness.. ai are not alive.
neural nets (have to see hundreds/thousands of ie’s) are not like human brains (can just see one ie) .. how? we’re not sure
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the human mind is not computational, any more than reality itself is jut info.. we must not reduce human awareness to raw processing power.. that’s akin to reduce human body to weightlifting.. our calculation speeds can’t compete w those of a supercomputer, and we will never lift as much as a crane. but humans are worth more than our utility..
most important of those is consciousness itself.. as best we know.. based on totally non computable quantum states in the tinies structure of the brain, called microtubules.. so many billions of these.. that a machine harnessing every computer chip ever made would with under the complexity of one human brain..
notice ing et al
what computers can’t do .. embodiment (process of).. et al
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confounding and paradoxical.. the only way to solve conscious ness is thru firsthand experience and reverence for the world in which we live, and the other people w whom we share it.. we’re alive.. computers are not..t
in the city.. as the day.. 2 convers as infra
from paradox to awe
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the stuff that makes our thinking and behavior messy confusing or anomalous is both our greatest strength and our greatest defense against the deadening certainty of machine logic..t
we are mistaken to emulate the certainty of our computers.. they are definitive because they have to be.. their job is to resolve questions, turn inputs into out puts.. choose between 1 or 0.. no ambiguity is permitted..
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the brain doesn’t capture/store info like a computer does. it’s not a hard drive. there’s no one to one correspondence between things we’ve experienced and data points in the brain.. .. perception is not receptive, but active..
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art.. at its best.. mines the paradoxes that make humans human.. it celebrates our ability to embrace ambiguity.. commercial entertainment by contrast has the opposite purpose.. the word entertain.. literally means ‘maintain’ .. reassure that there is certainty..t
art et al
let’s do this first: free art-ists
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(on apps/platforms not having features that allow workers to converse w one another about experience) crosstalk breeds solidarity and solidarity breeds discontent
(on tactics to control..learning secrets.. and then threaten to shame) these techs are just updated versions of the confessionals once used by churches to black mail their wealthy parishioners, or to shame the poor ones into exploitative compliance
*shame does have a social function. shaming those who deviate from the norm helps galvanize unity among the groups and enforce adherence to the rules.. the problem is that people and institution behaving destructively are not so vulnerable to shame. bullies are proud of their conquests and corps experience no emotions.. .. social stigma only truly hurts humans who are being human
*that’s a bad function.. regardless of .. the problem is that ..
shame and .. social control
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the things people do become normal when they can’t be shamed into silence about doing them.. once we dispense w shame, we are liberated to experience the full, sacred, unlikely wackiness of being human..t
the state of awe may be the pinnacle of human experience. if humans’ unique job in nature is to be conscious, what more human thing can we do than blow our observing minds?.. view from mountaintop, witnessing birth of child, starry night, or standing w thousands in march/celebration, all dissolve the sense of self as separate and distinct..
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new experiments have revealed that after just a few moments of awe, people behave w increases altruism, cooperation and self sacrifice.. the evidence suggests that awe makes people feel like part of something larger than themselves.. makes them more attuned to needs of those around them..
unfortunately..opps to experience awe in modern society are becoming more scarce.. and/or *exploited..
*shiny ness
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true awe comes w no agenda .. it’s not directed toward some end/plan/person; there’s no time limit or foe to vanquish. there is no ‘other’.. true awe is timeless, limitless, and w/o division. it suggests there is a unifying whole to which we all belong – if only we could hold onto that awareness….t
thurman interconnectedness law: when you understand interconnectedness it makes you more afraid of hating than of dying – Robert Thurman (@BobThurman)
spirituality and ethics
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unlike today, the vast majority of humankind’s experience was spent understanding time as circular.. in a cyclical understanding of time.. time and history are nonexistent and the individual is living in the constant present.. as a result, everything and everyone is interdependent and emanating from the same, shared source of life..
the invention of writing gave people the ability to record the past and make promises into the future.. historical time was born, which marked the end of the spirituality of an eternal present, and the beginning of linear religion and monotheism.. t
write ing ness
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some positives.. provoked an entirely new approach to ethics/progress.. humans could make the world a better place..religion went from set of timeless rituals to a directed behavior code..
not really positive..
on the other hand.. focus on future enables our intended ends to justify almost any means.. inhumane disasters like the crusades et al.. we become able to do violence now for some supposedly higher cause and future payoff..t
so tied to the positive above
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a belief in reincarnation or karma would make it hard to engage in such inhumanity w/o some *fear of repercussion
*wrong reason to not engage in inhumanity.. cancer all the same
a circular understanding of time is incompatible w such extraordinary, singular moments as an apocalypse.. everything just is, and has always been.. no such thing as progress..just seasons/cycles.. humans can’t take a genuinely original action..
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people used to believe in circles. they came to believe in lines..
perhaps it’s neither..
ie: good bye cycle.. grab x-d glasses
on encountering the destructiveness of european colonialists, native americans concluded that the invader must have a disease. they called it wettiko: a delusional belief that cannibalizing the life force of others is a logical and morally upright way to live..t
thurman interconnectedness law: when you understand interconnectedness it makes you more afraid of hating than of dying – Robert Thurman (@BobThurman)
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the native americans believed that wettiko derived from people’s inability to see themselves as enmeshed, interdependent parts of the natural environ.. once this disconnect has occurred, nature is no longer seen as something to be emulated but as something to be conquered.. t.. women, natives, the moon, and the woods are all dark and evil, but can be subdued by man, his civilizing institution, his weapons, and his machines..
control.. civilization.. structural violence.. et al
wettiko can’t be blamed entirely on europeans. clearly, the tendency goes at least as far back as sedentary living, the hoarding of grain, and the enslavement of workers
testart storage law.. descola control law
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while europeans took their colonial victories as providential, native americans saw white men as suffering from a form of mental illness that leads its victims to consume far more than they need to survive and results in an ‘icy heart’ incapable of compassions..t
clearly, the wettiko virus prevailed, and the society that emerged from this aggressive extraction.. still uses the promise of a utopian future to justify its wanton exploitation of people and nature in the present..
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many westerners have come to understand the problems inherent in a society obsessed w growth, and have struggled to assert a more timeless set of spiritual sensibilities. but almost invariably, such efforts get mired in our ingrained notions of personal growth, progress and optimism.. t.. ie: wizard of oz; nvp’s positive thinking; movements of 60-70s; new age; social justice; maslow hierarchy; watts; .. transhumanism… wasn’t really a retrieval of ancient holism, timelessness, .. as much as an assertion of good old linear goal based, ascension..
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the transhumanist movement is less a theory about the advancement of humanity than a simple evacuation plan..t
techno utopians like to think of themselves as orchestrating a complete break from civilization -a leap into outer space, cyberspace, machine consciousness, or artificial life. but their ideas just extend our same blind addiction to consumption, destruction, progress, and colonization. cyber wettiko..t
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if we’re not going to follow the commands of a kind, a ceo, or an algo, then we need unifying values in order to work together as a team toward mutually beneficial goals..
almaas holes law – the holes we need to fill – to get back to our essence: 2 needs/desires
even that idea – the notion that things should be mutually beneficial – is itself a higher order value. it’s an assumption about what’s right, baked into not just our evolutionary history but also into structure of a moral universe..
baked into meadows undisturbed ecosystem: ‘in undisturbed ecosystems ..the average individual, species, or population, left to its own devices, behaves in ways that serve and stabilize the whole..’ –
baked into a nother way
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this innate, natural, effortless connection to ideals was surrendered to the market, to colonialism, to slavery, to extraction, and to tech, then justified w applied science, utilitarianism and public relations.. t
natural science
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team human includes everybody..t
has to be everyone.. everyday.. as the day.. or it won’t work
if we respond to crisis in a polarized way, we surrender to the binary logic of the digital media environ. we become the thing we are resisting.. t
we can be utterly in charge of the choice not to be utterly in charge..t
we can’t go back.. we must go thru..
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we shouldn’t get rid of smart phones.. but program them to save our time instead of stealing it..
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agri became the means to an end that had nothing to do w feeding people and everything to do w amassing power
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the problem w relying entirely on industrial approaches to the land, or anything, is that they oversimplify complex systems. they ignore the circulatory, regenerative properties of living organisms and communities, and treat everything in linear terms: inputs and outputs
org as fractal ness
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we humans are capable of leaving a place more fertile than we found it..t
permaculture.. coined in 78.. to combine ‘agri’ and ‘permanent’.. but it was expanded to mean ‘permanent culture’.. acknowledging that any sustainable approach to food, construction, econ, and the environ had to bring our social reality in to the mix.. working w rather than against nature..
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progress isn’t the enemy, so long as it’s being used to embrace and support complexity, rather than attempting to eliminate it
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the narratives (inspirational talks by well meaning techno solutionists) all depend on linear, forward moving, growth based progress rather than the recognition of cycles or the retrieval of wisdom
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science’s great innovation and limitation was to break things down into their component parts. science, form root sci, meaning ‘to split or cleave’ dissects things in order to understand them.. science must again become a holistic, human pursuit
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our common sense and felt experience contradict too much of what we’re being told by scientific authorities. that’s a problem..
by disconnecting science form the broader, systemwide realities of nature, human experience, and emotion, we rob it of its moral power. the problem is not that we aren’t investing enough in scientific research or tech answers to our problems, but that we’re looking to science for answers that ultimately require human moral intervention
mufleh humanity law: we have seen advances in every aspect of our lives except our humanity – Luma Mufleh
let’s focus on a problem deep enough..
when science is used as a defense against nature rather than as a way of engaging more harmoniously w it, we disconnect ourselves form our moral core.. we lose connection to the flows of vitality that animate the whole of life..
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just like corporatism, religion, and nationalism, science fell victim to a highly linear conception of the world.. everything is cause and effect, before and after, subject and object..t
this worked well for newton and other observers of mechanical phenom.. they understood everything as having a beginning and an end, and the universe itself as a piece of graph paper extended out infinitely in all directions – a background w absolute measure, against which all astronomical and earthly events take place..
everything in material reality can be isolated and measured against these invented backgrounds, but the backgrounds don’t actually exist.. they’re a convenient way for applied scientists to treat diff parts and processes of the world as separate an independent. but they’re not.. there is no back drop against which reality happens.. t.. an object doesn’t sit anywhere absolute in space; its position is entirely a matter of its relation to every other object out there.
everything is happening in relationship to everything else.. it’s never over, never irrelevant, never somewhere else.. and humans are an inseparable part
renaissance now
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revolutionaries act as if they are destroying the old and starting something new. more often than not, however, these revolutions look more like ferris wheels .. only thing revolving is cast of characters at top..t
good bye cycle.. grab your x-d glasses.. for a quiet revolution.. ie: revolution of everyday life
let go of all the irrelevants
a renaissance on the other hand is a retrieval of the old. unlike a revolution, it makes no claim on the new a renaissance is, as the word suggests, a rebirth of old ideas in a new context..
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most significantly, a renaissance asks us to take a dimensional leap.. from flat to round.. 2d to 3d
rather.. x-d
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the world can be understood as a fractal, where each piece reflects the whole. nothing can be isolated or externalized since it’s always part of the larger system.. the parallels are abundant (to european renaissance).. this is our opp for renaissance
beyond renaissance ness.. opp to ie: get our shells back; get out of sea world;.. but.. only if we leap.. won’t work unless it’s everyone in sync
the digital revolution was no more than a superficial changing of the guard..t
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what values can be retrieved by our renaissance..t
almaas holes law – the holes we need to fill – to get back to our essence: 2 needs/desires
our general lack of awareness about the values being retrieved by digital tech made it easy for status quo powers to co opt our renaissance and reduce it to just another revolution..
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each time we bring forward a fundamental human value, we are ensuring that we bring ourselves.. *as humans .. into the next environ
*not as whales in sea world
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(on moving beyond individualism from last renaissance)..we don’t yet have great ways for talking about this new spirit of collectivism.. t
the relationship between individuals and society has always been framed as a necessary compromise: we are told we must sacrifice our personal goals for the sake of the many
maté trump law.. meets undisturbed ecosystem: ‘in undisturbed ecosystems ..the average individual, species, or population, left to its own devices, behaves in ways that serve and stabilize the whole..’
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a newly retrieved collectivism as a way of being both figure/ground at same time.. this is the idealized artistic community envisioned by *burning man; it’s the politics of consensus that informed **occupy; and it’s the distributed econ aspired to by the open source and bc movements.. to name a few..
*has to be everyone.. everyone.. everyday.. as the day.. or it won’t work
**public consensus always oppresses someone(s)
***complexity (therefore our fractal) can’t be measured.. bc for archiving curiosity (hosting life bits).. ok.. but not for measuring/validating transactions/people
these three ie’s fall into your reasoning.. that all we’ve tried so far keep keeping that linear/commodified/competitive/exclusionary/oppressive/poisonous element
each of these movements depends on our comfort w what we could call ..
a fractal sensibility.. each tiny part echoes the shape/structure of the whole.. key to experiencing one’s individuality is to perceive the way it is reflected in the whole and in turn, resonate w something greater than oneself..t
ie: undisturbed ecosystem: in undisturbed ecosystems ..the average individual, species, or population, left to its own devices, behaves in ways that serve and stabilize the whole..’
organize
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each of us can’t do everything.. rep democracy gives us the chance to choose other people to speak on our behalf
see.. i don’t buy that.. i think we created/manufactured all these issues/decisions.. while we were seeking to fill holes or whatever.. but if we filled the holes first.. i don’t think we’d have those other things.. we need people to speak on our behalf for.. anything
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once we really see where they are coming form, we can empathize w their fear, follow them into that dark scary place, and then find a better way out w them. we give our potential antagonists a solution other than violence or retreat:
easy/natural.. imagine we first figure out something that resonates with all of us.. today.. build the infra on that.. (ie: 2 convers as infra) and then free people up (for the rest of the 23 hrs a day) to do whatever they want to do
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our new renaissance must retrieve whatever helps us reconnect to people and places.. t
daily curiosity ie: cure ios city
the largest organic association of people is the city.. org’d around resources, the commons, and market places, cities grow form the bottom up.. as a natural amalgamation of humans, they take on the qualities of any collective organism
rather.. org’d around daily curiosity.. sans market.. ie: in the city.. as the day..
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money, debt, jobs, slavery, counties, race, corporatism stock markets, brands, religions, govt, and taxes are all human inventions.. we made them up.. but we now act as if they’re unchangeable laws.. playing for team human means being capable of distinguishing between what we can’t change and what we can
and/or what we can render as irrelevant: it’s not hard to assess whether what you are doing matters.. it is hard to choose to make that assessment and to disengage with what is irrelevant – Vinay Gupta
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we participate when we can, and change the rules when we can’t
you are not alone
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we need another way to express and execute the human agenda
ie: a nother way
#95 – co ops as model
ugh.. have to let go of measuring
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humans still like to compete.. there’s a place for aggression and entrepreneurialism, winners and losers..
are you sure?.. i don’t think so..
competition as cancer ..et al
a humane civilization learns to conduct its competitive active w/in the greater context of the commons.. our courts, democracy, markets, and science are all characterized by competition, but their competition takes place on highly regulated plain fields. the free market is not a free or all, at all, but a managed game w rules, banks, tokens, patents and stock shares
dang.. what a sad way to end the book.. let go.. or at least don’t call it commons.. actually.. nevermind the semantics.. just let go..
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if we want to steer our society back toward reality, we have to stop making stuff up..
like ie: courts, democracy, markets, and science,.. banks, tokens, patents and stock shares ..
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#100 -find the others
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#MLTalks with @rushkoff and @grok_ starts now! Watch live: https://t.co/SwP94mR5CQ
#TeamHuman https://t.co/HhiYAwX2LR
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/medialab/status/1093584907899682816
‘the noise (to an algo), the 20% unpredictable quirkiness, that’s humanity.. if we intentionally stamp that out’ @rushkoff #MLTalks
‘i would go all the way back to language & text..digital is just one of latest..have to ask biases of medium & how to compensate..need to retrieve the human essentials & embed that’ @rushkoff #MLTalks
‘the Reason we do things rather than being reasonable’ @rushkoff #MLTalks
‘who really wants a job.. selling your hour’ @rushkoff #MLTalks
‘if we’re just trying to program a fix to the existing system.. tech will come to the rescue.. we need to interrogate the assumptions of the problems we want to solve’ @rushkoff #MLTalks
‘how do we get people to care more about the commons’ @rushkoff #MLTalks
‘keep interrogating the operating systems that are beneath what we’re doing’ @rushkoff #MLTalks
‘amount of vc you get not a good metric.. get a human need and make something for that’ @rushkoff #MLTalks
‘i think we come in with value.. that we don’t have to prove our value’ @rushkoff #MLTalks
‘i think we have a unique role in nature’ @rushkoff #MLTalks
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“With the “Team Human” book and tour, @rushkoff draws a line in the sand that says enough… We should stop replacing ourselves with robots, algorithms, and platforms that strip mine our minds, relationships, and communities,” writes @gorenflo https://t.co/gf1gUUYVNwhttps://t.co/OLyQCD5n4s
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/Shareable/status/1093249220625223680We have inherent value, period. We don’t have to earn it..t
forget .. earn a living ness.. and .. validate us ness .. rather.. trust us
And if we insisted on that, we wouldn’t create technologies that use us at every turn, that learn about us only to use that information against us.
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douglas rushkoff (@rushkoff) tweeted at 6:21 AM on Mon, Mar 18, 2019:
“Whether we’re speaking of capitalism and marketplaces, media programming, AI, corporations or systems of government, they are all abstractions we’ve invented to better organize and understand life, whereas we are real.” https://t.co/wQqMxx5pFF
(https://twitter.com/rushkoff/status/1107617970505875456?s=03)
and now.. the need to let go of that hard won order
ie: carhart-harris entropy law
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site: https://teamhuman.fm/
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nationality: human ness
mufleh humanity law: we have seen advances in every aspect of our lives except our humanity – Luma Mufleh
thurman interconnectedness law: when you understand interconnectedness it makes you more afraid of hating than of dying – Robert Thurman (@BobThurman)
undisturbed ecosystem: ‘in undisturbed ecosystems ..the average individual, species, or population, left to its own devices, behaves in ways that serve and stabilize the whole..’ –Dana Meadows
ai humanity needs..augmenting interconnectedness
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douglas rushkoff (@rushkoff) tweeted at 5:42 AM on Wed, May 01, 2019:
Yay! Manoush’s interview with me about TeamHuman is finally up! Wanna hear an interview by someone who really read the book? Makes quite a difference! https://t.co/qIZwXOBnkp
(https://twitter.com/rushkoff/status/1123553280339083269?s=03)
have to join luminary 7.99/mo .. to hear it
1 min trailer: douglas’ only comment: don’t feel obligated to buy into (anything) ..
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douglas rushkoff (@rushkoff) tweeted at 5:23 AM on Wed, Oct 30, 2019:
There’s an anti-human agenda in our tech and markets – but it doesn’t have to be this way. It’s time for humans to take back our world from the systems we, ourselves, created. https://t.co/1MtBOVdINC
(https://twitter.com/rushkoff/status/1189503117706039296?s=03)It’s time we reassert the human agenda.
ie: 2 convers as infra via tech as it could be
mufleh humanity law: we have seen advances in every aspect of our lives except our humanity – Luma Mufleh
These are sections 1–7 of the book Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff, which is being serialized weekly on Medium.
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be you. 