I listened to this:
while sitting out on the deck with Covid the other day, and it kicked off some many interesting tangents that I had to follow up:
- Bruno Latour and actor-network theory as an evolution of philosophy of science away from history+theory
- Cognitive estrangement
- Appropriate technology
- The Paleolithic want-list (what makes humans happy): throwing things, watching fire, the thrill generated by accomplishing something hard, esp. with a group
- stories around a fire -> going to a movie -> watching tv and talking about it with people -> binge watching Netflix, each being a more-hollow simulacrum of the primordial experience
- A book called “The Knowledge Machine”
- A seminar with the Dalai Lama in Tibet
So, altogether: work out what we want from first principles (social primate implications), and use technology in a sophisticated way to achieve it.
Overall, I’m impressed again with his gentle but insistent manner in presenting what he thinks. Like his writing. He doesn’t flail.
Not surprised that this guy grew up in the milieu of the Bay Area in the 60s and 70s, and is friends with Gary Snyder. I’m starting to think of that time (and to some extent, the time I was there in the late 80s/early 90s) and place as a sort of Renaissance idea generator that’s going to be historically significant hundreds of years from now, like mediaeval Florence.