What I’m doing now
In June 2024, I finished an 18 months corporate gig as philosopher in residence. Since then, I’ve been stretching a few muscles that got neglected during that time. Meaning, it’s been a period of manic dispersed energy, with a lot of exploration around fresh projects, collaborative writing, emerging opportunities, and community building. In a nutshell, it’s been all about tech, innovation, community - and supporting a few good people.
Thinking and writing about tech
FOGA - the Future of Governance Agency - is ramping up. My co-founders Corin Ism & Markus Amalthea Magnusson recently published the super cool Slow Internet Manifesto, for which I wrote a French Translation. I’m working with Corin on a series of op-eds to drive public engagement. All this is part of a broader lead up to the release of our two major projects - Liberation Technology & How to Rule a World - hopefully by the end of 2025.
At the more local level, I’ve been working with ex-colleague and now partner in crime Dr Greg Bowtell on a digital literacy program. In short, it’s a sort of bottom up approach to help high school teachers articulate their understanding of AI and digital tech, identify spaces of opportunity and increase agency. All this inspired by another wonderful ex colleague, Dr Kimberley Wilson, who’s now exploring AI for the Queensland Curriculum Authority. So many Doctors hey!
I’ve also been chatting with my friend Jean Dong, who’s on a fellowship at Harvard, about a series of China/US AI workshops. She’s very much leading that: roughly, it’s about getting people to think about cross-cultural and geopolitical aspects of AI development, details TBD.
And, I’ve been mulling over ways to share bits of my own PhD - reflecting on distributed global public goods and digital ecosystems.
Thinking and writing about innovation
I’m always doing something with Patrick Laudon these days. In July, we submitted a joint piece to the Berggruen Essay Prize titled ‘How Things Happen’, where we look at East Asian inspired models for organisational change, We’re now exploring a new writing project, somewhere between fraud, bullshit, and original consensus building.
With new partner in crime Greg Bowtell, I’ve exhumed an old project of ours - an index of 9 metrics to to measure fertility in an organisation - and we’re looking at making it into a poster.
I started a fun project with Future Value co-advisor Michaela Emch. It’s a series called ‘Beyond Butterflies’, where we look at innovation with a biomimicry lens - looking at models other than metamorphosis. We’ve been looking at opportunistic feeders that cross ecosystem boundaries - foxes and ravens - as inspiration for a trickster approach to careers across sectors. We’re now looking at gels and mucus, and more generally things that are viscous, elastic and porous, as sources of inspiration of better goo-vernance. And we’ll be looking at pioneer species and forest edges as ways to better model startup ecosystems. .
In parallel, I’ve been meeting weekly with old friend Liu Yan, to reflect on rom-coms as a story model to think about innovation. It’s essentially rom-com film club for nerds: watch a movie, then discuss what the characters can teach us about dealing with complex problems. We’re not sure yet where to share notes of our conversations, or in what form - but that will be coming.
In the background, I’ve been working on the early draft of a rom com of my own. Blockchain bro meets climate bro. Romance ensues. Stay tuned.
Oh, and I published a piece with Meanjin - it’s called ‘From the MidField’ and it’s a series of aphorisms. Other writing things to come: there’s a pile of drafts and planned series on my backburner, which I’m gradually bringing to the front!
Community weaving
In August, I was invited to join a Winter Retreat for the Enspiral Kumara node. Enspiral is a global community (Aotearoa-born) gathering people who look to do more meaningful work. It was a stunning experience of community, learning, nurturing. I’ve been obsessed ever since. joining potlucks, and a small group building a change maker community in Narrm, inspired by the South Australian Grassroots Ecosystems (SAGE) MeetUps in Adelaide.
In parallel, I’ve been scheming with man-about-town Alexar Pendashteh from Electron Workshop and all things open-source, about a concept we both strongly relate to: exopreneurship (he coined the word), In essence, it’s about acting entrepreneurially on a system, by being involved in a range of communities and projects, and acting opportunistically. We’re looking to do a podcast on it. I might also help with an open-source community governance project, as a sort of ‘bond-by-doing’ community weaving project for the Australian tech scene.
And then, for about a year, I’ve been working with Luea Ritter on another book, exploring ecosystem stewardship - a related concept to that of exopreneurship. We’re looking at demystifying aspects of facilitation, connecting inner and outer work, and other ways to increase coherence in social groups. Hoping to bring it to the world some time in 2025.
Supporting awesome people
I’ve ramped up my support (just a little) for Dr Delton Chen and the Global Carbon Reward. Delton is currently travelling around the world to build partnerships in the lead to a proper demonstration of the policy. We’re raising money and looking for partners. If you have a few spare coins, and would like to see them go towards a high impact philanthropic project for climate, please reach out!
I also met up with the team at Future Value recently, and those people are on fire! They’re electrifying a village in PNG, and gearing up for the next phase - essentially building a global interface to connect communities in PNG with global carbon markets, assist in community-led development, and channel rewards to the community for stewarding the rainforest. So beautiful to see a bold venture move from idea to on-the-ground action. I’ll be doing a bit of governance work with them in the background.
Oh, and speaking of people on fire! I recently finished copy-editing Wesa Chau’s PhD on political skills (so much cool stuff might come out of it: imagine the possibility of properly training diverse people in political skills), and I’m co-editing a book on Systems sensing through Collective Transitions. This is coming to an end in October - so if you’re looking for an editor, reach out!!