Many of you know that I’ve been working on a new book provisionally titled ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future. And so I thought it could be useful to me and interesting to you if I were to have a conversation with a few story experts and ask them questions such […]
Many of you know that I am a fan of Buddhism in general and Zen Buddhism in particular. So I’ve always wanted to get a Zen Master on the podcast. I never imagined, however, that there is a Zen Master who has listened to almost every episode of my show. But the universe is a […]
Prof. Angus Fletcher is a story scientist working at the intersection of story and neuroscience. Angus started as a neuroscientist at the University of Michigan but eventually decided to pursue a Ph.D. in Shakespeare at Yale. Then he went to Stanford University and worked with clients in Hollywood, DARPA, and the US special forces. Angus […]
This is the second interview of my series on story, and my guest is PJ Manney. PJ is the author of the Phoenix Horizon Trilogy and has already been a guest on Singularity.FM twice before. [See our 1st and 2nd interviews.] She is a friend, and I am a big fan of her books. Today, we […]
Some of you may know that I’ve been working on a new book. The provisional title is ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future. Struggling with this book is why it’s been a number of months since my last podcast interview. And so I thought it could be useful to me and […]
ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov Chapter 12: The Politics Story Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest – forces that look like […]
ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov Chapter 11: The AI Story Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. Edsger Dijkstra When looms weave by themselves, man’s slavery will end. Aristotle Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to […]
ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov Chapter 10: The Capitalism Story …by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led […]
I recorded this virtual keynote for a corporate client about 10 days ago and decided to share it publicly. Hope you enjoy it 😉 Technology is a Mirror, Not a Crystal Ball; It Reveals Who We Are, Not the Future The 1st atomic bomb was nicknamed “gadget.” Does this say something about […]
A few weeks ago, a client asked me to give a virtual keynote on futurism. The client was pretty happy with how it turned out, so I thought I’d share it publicly. This way, you can hopefully enjoy, share, and benefit from it too. 😉 How to Be a Futurist [Without Predicting the Future] […]
ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov Chapter 9: The Technology Story Technology improves the lives of people who can avoid being dominated by it and forced into debilitating addictions to it. Frank Kaufmann The 1st atomic bomb was nicknamed “gadget.” Does this fact say something […]
ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov Chapter 8: The Science Story The universe is made of stories, not atoms. Muriel Rukeyser *** About 13.5 billion years ago, matter, energy, time and space came into being in what is known as the Big Bang. The […]
ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov Chapter 7: The Human Story The Earth does not belong to man; man belongs to Earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does […]
ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov Part II: Our Story Gods always behave like the people who make them. Zora Neale Hurston, Tell My Horse Before we have a story, any story, we must first have a storyteller. Therefore, the most important story, that which […]
ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov Chapter 6: The Biology of Story Most people believe the mind to be a mirror, more or less accurately reflecting the world outside them, not realizing the contrary that the mind is itself the principle element of creation. Rabindranath […]
ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov Chapter 5: The Importance of Story It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story. Patrick Rothfuss Stories […]
ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov Chapter 4: The Power of the Storyteller The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come. Steve Jobs. Before we have a […]
ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov Chapter 3: The Power of Story We suffer not from the events in our lives but from our stories about them. Epictetus The most powerful stories are stories about things that don’t exist. Because our fictive language gave birth […]
ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov Chapter 2: The Story of Story The limits of my language means the limits of my world. Ludwig Wittgenstein Humanity has searched for meaning since its beginning. And we find it in story. The story that we tell ourselves. […]
ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov Chapter 1: The Definition of Story We started our thought experiment with Kenneth Burke’s definition of story as “equipment for living.” Burke offers a great start but it is Jeff DeChambeau who really brings all the essential elements together […]
ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov Part I: Story People always find it easier to be a result of the past rather than a cause of the future. Unknown Are we just billiard balls in a predetermined cosmic game of pool? Or are we free […]
It is harder and harder to make sense of life. Everything is changing, all the time, at a faster and faster pace. Our civilization is struggling to keep up with exponential technology and disruptive change. Our age-old institutions, politics, economics, ethics, religion and laws, even our environment, are so fundamentally challenged, that we risk collapse. […]
Dr. Gus Hosein is a 20+year-veteran of Privacy International. So to say that he knows a lot about privacy will be an understatement. But his knowledge is not merely academic. Gus and his scrappy team of privacy crusaders have fought the long and hard war while putting everything on the line, over and over again. […]
Though admittedly posthumanist, Francesca Ferrando‘s Philosophical Posthumanism is the best book on transhumanism that I have read so far. I believe that it is a must-read for transhumanists and non-transhumanists alike. In fact, one can argue that Ferrando’s book ranks right up there with the very best not only on the transhuman, but also on […]
Kim Stanley Robinson has an asteroid named after him. The reason for that is simple: Stan, as he’s often known among people who know him, is one of the best known contemporary authors of classic [hard] science fiction. He has written 20 books that have been translated into 25 languages and has won pretty much […]
Dr. Matthew Cole is the only vegan sociologist that I know of. His unique point of view on veganism, especially its implications with respect to ethics, transhumanism, and the application of technology, has already left a mark on the way I perceive the small challenges of being vegan as an opportunity for personal discipline and […]
Thomas Homer-Dixon is one of Canada’s most celebrated intellectuals. Luckily, he was also one of my Professors at the University of Toronto whose class on complexity has left an indelible mark on me. So when I heard that after a long break Homer-Dixon is publishing a new book on climate change I simply had to […]
Maria Farrell is the author of some of my most favorite op-ed pieces of 2020. She is very smart, gutsy, genuine, feisty, generous, and Irish. Her writing is sharper, it penetrates deeper and she’s not afraid to go further than most others. I have already learned a lot from her and have become a total […]
Glen Hiemstra has been a futurist for close to 40 years. But if you think his specialty is forecasting the future then you’d be wrong. No. Hiemstra’s focus has not been on the most probable, or even the possible future. Instead, Glen has chosen to focus consistently on what he calls “the preferred future.” This […]
Hans Moravec famously claimed that robots will be our (mind) children. If true, then, it is natural to wonder What to Expect When You’re Expecting Robots? This is the question that Laura Major and Julie Shah – two expert robot engineers, are addressing in their new book. Given the subject of robots and AI as […]
