Jason Silva and Douglas Rushkoff | Creative Session 

okaay

CrypticCalamari People who continue to push technology before we as a species have even learned how to use the technology we have currently responsibly are only going to continue to contribute to the trend of systems, and fictitious non-entities that only exist on paper, being more important that human beings and other living things. Don't get me wrong, technology is great, but we need to SLOW DOWN and learn what we're doing before we just jump to the next big thing.

Chris Revocateur Slowdown by what metric exactly, and at who's direction? Like all revolutions and progress, it's a self-dircted process that doesn't have anyone driving. Also the longer you slowdown, the more time you give to forces that do not want new technologies that are better, to devise strategies to lock in their market dominance. Every technological improvement has been better for the human race than what has come before. And even the ugly parts like nuclear weapons are still arguably superior to conventional weapons, in that they are so aweful, that peace between large countries is possible in a way that it wasn't before. Even Cars and burning carbon, with all it's negative effects, was better the horses, family farms and muscle power that they replaced. I'm betting that the next round of tech that is made will in fact better than the stuff we use now. I don't think that's a crazy idea. I'm not intrested in learning how to use combustion engines responsibly. I want to replace them. With regard to ficticous entities, I would say that since economic growth is actually just a proxy for technological growth, I'd say that really doesn't matter that much. People are being treated very well, much better than we have say 50 or 100 years ago. Both our economic systems and our political systems reflect this. And if a 'ficticous' entitiy is worth 500 billion dollars, representing trillions of economic output over the lifetime of the institution compounded, i would say since that amount of wealth can pull hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty for generations, that these institutions are pretty important, and maybe even more important than a single individual. Though experiment - if you had to kill apple computer or kill a person, which would you kill? I'd probally kill the person, and it would be the morally correct choice, because killing apple computer would put 200,000 people out of work, and wipe hundreds of billions of dollars of productive wealth off the map, resulting in more poverty. Just the charities paid by apple and apple employees justifies apples existance in lue of a single person, when you consider the lives they would save. So i'm not really worried about paper instutions destroying our moral fiber. sure, some institutions cause problems. Such is life. But i'm not so worried about what a few will do badly, that I fear the effects of an otherwise objectively positive technological improvement. Waiting for us to gather 'wisdom' , that we can't even define accurately without technology to enable more sensible replacements, is a fools errand. I'm going to assume that people in general are unwise, but selfish. So given those facts, technology generally makes things cheaper and cleaner over time, i'm leaning towards developing it now and learning as we go. The lessons are cheapest now when something is new.

+gavranarh Interesting comment, even if I don't entirely agree with you. ;) Fair criticism of Jason though. I like the guy; personally I prefer his brand of exuberance to total and constant cynicism. But, I'd like Jason's approach a _lot_ more...if he ditched the *_constant_* quote mining and extreme-ADD kid who drank too much Mountain Dew vibe. It can be...grating. Still, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't _jealous_ and in awe of Jason's seemingly unlimited reservoir of energy and passion. : P

+avedic The constant "quote mining" used to get on my nerves because it is a bit jarring. I still don't particularly like it (in an aesthetic sense) but it's kind of nice that he doesn't hide the trace of his thoughts, and that he is attributing the originality of them back to the people who inspired the idea in the first place. I mean, it could just be a purely rhetoric device, but I've decided to have faith in his enthusiasm and believe that he just wants to share.

+Jared Janes Yeah. Sometimes I want Silva to address something like refugees from war and drought swarming to Europe or Islamic State beheading an 81-year-old archaeologist and posting it to Instagram, but he would just go off on a tangent about the post-scarcity world and mainlining the transcendence or whatever.

+West996 Cynics are pretty frustrating

+West996 Cynics are pretty frustrating edit : not sure why this double posted. lol

+Matthew075 a lot of times if you spend time with both, cynics are not that cynical and even idealists are sometimes frustrating to deal with after a while. You need both kinds of people, I think for things to actually happen well.

I think they were both just constantly fighting to talk since they're both so passionate about what they're talking about. Jason often kept talking without giving Douglas a chance to respond which resulted in him interrupting.

Douglas is more objective and enjoys reality more it seems, I agree with him on why watching a movie to give you a cool experience instead of creating that experience with real people in real situations by yourself, reality is available at every moment and that's why I agree with him. Best things in life are free, movies may be cool but not as cool as creating that experience yourself.

Sebastián Jácome I too would agree that creating the experience in reality is more rewarding. I also believe that movies cannot do as well as our imagination. You often hear people say the books were better than the movies. The difference is that movies are easier to experience than books and take up much less time. Same is true for creating experiences in reality.

You wasted your comment to point out the irrelevant awkwardness that normally happens in discussions of two people expressing their ideas. It happens. This comment made other people judge Douglas and thus giving some kind of bias on the topic. It is very careless of you given that you had the opportunity to make this discussion more productive and relevant. Don't think that I hate you and I am being a snob and judging you for the comment. I'm just saying. And I hope my reply helped you in some way.

who are you brah

+Aravind Nair I feel that Rushkoff wanted to make that point but didn't explicitly do so. When Silva was talking about "reality" becoming a relative term, and likening it to Inception, I reckon the Rushkoff wanted to say that virtual reality (regardless of value judgements) is encapsulated in the more primal "natural" world. The virtual cocooning that Silva seems to want would mean a greater control over the experiential world, but Rushkoff says that we have to bring what we created/saw from within the cocoon back to the primal level to attack or modify the "several layers of bizarre shit that people don't even think about". Returning back from the virtual cocoon may give us the tools to investigate the layers of bizarre shit. I don't know if I would link this to the notion of an eternal consciousness that pre-dates the big bang, however (which Rushkoff brought up momentarily). Although, I feel like Silva may argue that it's cocoons all the way down, so we may as well create our own.

Kama Kazi *27:11* oh good, they're getting along again

1.5 for geminis lol

+Gen Speaking so this hit you up. Keep feeding your brain :)

There are SO many points from this I disagree and agree with. Douglas, you're a beautiful pessimist, lol. Jason, watch this daily (for medicine). I love you both. :) #keepdoingwhatyou'redoin #hashtagz #let'supgrade #beammeupscotty #jokes #humor #ihavelittleicanreference #skool #joinusforadrink #butwe'realreadyhigh

I also want to add that Douglas Rushkoffs comments on the last question on education was brilliant.

I only watched for a few minutes but it seems to me that the difference between the two is that one is more focused on the here and now, whereas Jason is kinda like constantly looking over the present moment's shoulders to see what lies ahead and dreaming about the endless possibilities of human creativity. While admirable, it leaves one in a constant state of dissatisfaction with the present or at least not paying attention to what's happening all around since the mind keeps fantasizing about the future. What bothers me with Jason really is that he keeps identifying our humanness with our technologies, the rover on mars, the Hubble telescope, smartphones..etc what about trees, mountains, clouds and rivers, constant reminders of what we really are. We are more than the products of our imagination for crying out loud.