Political Solidarity in the U.S. | Jonathan Herzog, Badrun Khan, and Blair Walsingham in Conversation With Darren Sand

This is the audio version of RadicalxChange and Serpentine Arts Technologies' latest white paper titled Rethinking Art Ownership: Partial Common Ownership as a Step Towards a More Symbiotic Ecosystem.

Through a collaboration between Serpentine Arts Technologies and RadicalxChange Foundation, it was written by Paula Berman (RxC), Victoria Ivanova (Serpentine), and Matt Prewitt (RxC).

This episode was narrated, co-produced, and audio engineered by Aaron Benavides and produced by G. Angela Corpus.

This audio version is a RadicalxChange Production.

In this exciting and inspiring talk, Professors Charlotte Kent and Fred Turner discuss the great potential art holds in creating shifts in the public consciousness through examples of historical art movements, art’s impact on technology and society at large, and its effective way of communicating democratic ideals.

They also cover the background and process behind Fred's latest book "Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America", a collaboration with notable photographer Mary Beth Meehan. 

This episode was originally produced for the 2021 RxC Annual Conference RxC TV program.

Speakers

Charlotte Kent
Charlotte Kent, PhD (@Lucy2Scribbles) is the Assistant Professor of Visual Culture at Montclair State University and an arts writer. Her work theorizes how visual and linguistic rhetorical devices constrain what we see by exploring their historical and political context. Her current research investigates the absurd in contemporary art and speculative design. She writes for academic journals (Word and Image, Leonardo, Journal of Visual Culture, etc) and general audience magazines (Art Review, BOMB, Wired, among others), with a monthly panel and column on Art and Technology for The Brooklyn Rail, where she is also an Editor-at-Large. Prior to academia, she developed education for the eyecare industry and managed an art school located in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is a graduate of the CUNY Graduate Center, St. John’s College, and Philips Academy Andover. She currently lives in New York City.

Fred Turner
Fred Turner (@fturner) is the Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication at Stanford University. He is the author or co-author of five books: Seeing Silicon Valley: Life inside a Fraying America (with Mary Beth Meehan); L’Usage de L’Art dans la Silicon Valley;  The Democratic Surround: Multimedia and American Liberalism from World War II to the Psychedelic Sixties;  From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism; and Echoes of Combat: The Vietnam War in American Memory. Before coming to Stanford, he taught Communication at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and MIT’s Sloan School of Management. He also worked for ten years as a journalist. He has written for newspapers and magazines ranging from the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine to Harper’s.

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This entertainingly honest conversation between Tyson Yunkaporta and Jim Rutt discusses how indigenous learnings can help liberate the democratic institutions of today. They explore the notion of "humans as custodial species" (via Yunkaporta's book, "Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World"), and the role we serve tied to the earth around us on a spiritual and physical level. Jim and Tyson take you down an exciting path paved with history, tech, and new and old philosophies that will keep you thinking.

This was originally aired on RxC TV as part of the 2021 RadicalxChange unConference Online.

Speakers
Tyson Yunkaporta 
Tyson is an academic, an arts critic, and a researcher who is a member of the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland. He is the author of the book Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World. He carves traditional tools and weapons and also works as a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University in Melbourne. He lives in Melbourne.

Jim Rutt (@jim_rutt)
Jim Rutt is the host of the Jim Rutt Show podcast series. He is President and co-founder of the MIT Free Speech Alliance. He is the Executive Producer of the film "An Initiation to Game~B." He is also the creator of Network Wars, the popular mobile game. He is past Chairman of the Santa Fe Institute. He was CEO of Network Solutions, which operated the .com, .net, and .org domain namespaces on the Internet until its acquisition by Verisign in 2000. Jim was the first CTO of Thomson-Reuters. He was Chairman of the computer chip design software company Analog Design Automation until its acquisition by Synposis in 2004. Previously he either founded or played a key role in several significant information services and network companies: THE SOURCE, Business Research Corp., First Call, Pinpoint Information, Wall Street on Demand, and MarketSwitch.  He was Researcher in Residence at the Santa Fe Institute from 2002 to 2004, studying the application of complexity science to financial markets, and evolutionary artificial intelligence. He was Executive Producer of the awarding winning film "Zombiewood."  He is a co-founder of the Staunton Makerspace, a membership maker shop and hacker space.   Jim is currently an SFI Research Fellow working in the scientific study of consciousness and evolutionary artificial intelligence.  Jim is also a member of the Board of Advisers of the Krasnow Institute and of Virginia Tech's Fralin Life Sciences Institute.  Jim received his B.S. degree in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975 and is a member of MIT's Visiting Committee for the Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences.


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Data and the Data Economy are increasingly important issues affecting all of society. Hear from a panel of experts on responsible technology and public policy discussing mental models of how value accrues in the Data Economy, how to form protective legislation and infrastructure, and dealing with extreme concentrations of power and wealth plaguing the data economy. 

This was originally aired on RxC TV as part of the 2021 RadicalxChange unConference Online.

Speakers
Sushant Kumar (@sushants) 
As Director on the Responsible Technology team, based in India, Sushant is focused on Omidyar Network’s work on a new data paradigm, with a vision for technology that underpins greater individual empowerment, social opportunity, and user safety.

Previously, Sushant was part of the intellectual capital team, helping to define Omidyar Network’s strategy, research, impact, and learning agendas, with a focus on India.

Prior to joining Omidyar Network, Sushant was a principal at Accenture Strategy, where he led major initiatives across consumer goods and technology industries. In this role, he advised clients in Europe, Africa, and India growth strategy, operating model transformations, and international expansion. Before Accenture, Sushant worked as a strategist with the GSM Association, and Capgemini, driving thought leadership across policy, consumer technology, and digital media sectors.

Sushant earned his MBA from the London Business School and received a Bachelor of Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), Varanasi.

Diane Coyle (@DianeCoyle1859)
Professor Diane Coyle is the Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. Diane co-directs the Bennett Institute where she heads research under the themes of progress and productivity. Her latest book is ‘Markets, State and People – Economics for Public Policy’ examines how societies reach decisions about the use and allocation of economic resources. Her next book, 'Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is, and What It Should Be' is published on 12 October 2021.

Diane is also a Director of the Productivity Institute, a Fellow of the Office for National Statistics, an expert adviser to the National Infrastructure Commission, and Senior Independent Member of the ESRC Council. She has served in public service roles including as Vice Chair of the BBC Trust, member of the Competition Commission, of the Migration Advisory Committee and of the Natural Capital Committee. Diane was Professor of Economics at the University of Manchester until March 2018 and was awarded a CBE for her contribution to the public understanding of economics in the 2018 New Year Honours.

Matt Prewitt (@m_t_prewitt) 
Matt Prewitt is a lawyer, technologist, and writer. He is President of the RadicalxChange Foundation.

The audio version of RadicalxChange's latest blog post titled A New Chapter for RadicalxChange. Written by the RadicalxChange Foundation team. Listen to and/or read the article to learn and connect more about RadicalxChange's evolving mission.

Written by the RadicalxChange Foundation team.  

Voiced, audio engineered, and co-produced by Aaron Benavides.  

Produced by G. Angela Corpus.

Quadratic Voting offers hope to revitalize collective decision-making in a wide range of domains in society and the economy, e.g., corporations, governments, unions, games, ratings, research, et cetera. An increasing number of examples support that hope in this radical voting method. In this panel discussion, you hear from current practices by policy-makers in the Colorado government and academic researchers and their insights from working with Quadratic Voting in preference polling.

Speakers 

Charlotte Cavaille is an Assistant Professor at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. Before moving to Michigan, she was an Assistant Professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She was also a fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University. She received a Ph.D. in Government and Social Policy from Harvard University in November 2014. Some of her work appeared in The Journal of Politics and the American Political Science Review. Her research examines the dynamics of popular attitudes towards redistributive social policies at a time of rising inequality, high fiscal stress, and high levels of immigration.

Senator Chris Hansen represents Senate District 31 in the Colorado State Senate. He specializes in energy sector economics and data analytics, with 20+ years of experience in the global energy industry and five years in the Colorado General Assembly. He currently serves on the Joint Budget Committee, as well as Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Before his work as an elected official, he was Senior Director at IHS Markit, where he led a global portfolio of energy products, events, and partnerships. Dr. Hansen holds a BSc in Nuclear Engineering from Kansas State University; a Graduate Diploma of Civil Engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa; a Master of Science in Engineering Systems from MIT; and a Ph.D. in Economic Geography from Oxford University. In addition to his current role in the state senate, Hansen serves as Chairman of the Board of Western Freedom, a non-profit dedicated to integrating the power system and RTO in the West. He is also the Co-Founder and Director at the Colorado Energy & Water Institute and as Founder of the Colorado Science and Engineering Policy Fellowship. 

Sachin Mittal is stewarding KERNEL at Gitcoin.

Moderator 

Jake Interrante is Editor in Chief of the Chicago Policy Review and an MPP candidate ’21 at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. Previously, Jake worked as a policy professional in the community development finance field. During his time working with Massachusetts Housing Partnership’s ONE Mortgage Program, he helped working-class families buy homes in otherwise unaffordable parts of the State. Before that, he helped finance amenities in economically disadvantaged communities as Development Coordinator for Partners for the Common Good, a DC-based CDFI Loan Fund. His published work on comparative borrower outcomes in the ONE Mortgage program and FHA Mortgage Program appeared in the March 2020 edition of Cityscape. Jake also holds a B.A.s in Public Policy and Political Science from the University of Chicago.

Digital networks have centralized power over identities and information, creating problems for both markets and democracy. Does the solution require more shared agency over data? What might that look like? This panel discussion is structured around thought experiments to find solutions to this issue. 

SPEAKERS 

Matt Prewitt is RadicalxChange Foundation’s president, a writer and blockchain industry advisor, and a former plaintiff’s side antitrust and consumer class action litigator and federal law clerk. 

Nick Vincent is a Ph.D. student in Northwestern University's Technology and Social Behavior program and is part of the People, Space, and Algorithms Research Group. His broad research interests include human-computer interaction, human-centered machine learning, and social computing. His research focuses on studying the relationships between human-generated data and computing technologies to mitigate the negative impacts of these technologies. His work relates to concepts such as "data dignity", "data as labor", "data leverage", and "data dividends". 

Kaliya Young also known as the "Identity Woman" has spent the last 15 years working to bring about the creation of a new layer of the internet for people based on open standards. She co-founding the Internet Identity Workshop, which was recently profiled in the Wired UK. In 2017 she graduated in the very first cohort from UT Austin's iSchool with a Master of Science in Identity Management and Security. Her master's thesis The Domains of Identity: A framework for understanding identity systems in contemporary society is being published this month by Anthem Press. In 2019, she traveled to India for two months as a New America India-US Public Interest Technology fellow to study Aadhaar their national ID system. She co-founded HumanFirst.Tech with Shireen Mitchel, a project focused on creating space for diverse voices and building a more inclusive industry. In 2012 she was recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and Fast Company named her as one of the most influential women in tech in 2009. She consults with governments, NGO’s, startups, and enterprises on decentralized identity technologies. 

MODERATOR 

Jennifer Morone is the CEO of RadicalxChange Foundation and a multidisciplinary visual artist, activist, and filmmaker. Her work focuses on the human experience in relation to technology, economics, politics, and identity, and the moral and ethical issues that arise from such systems. Her interests lie in exploring ways of creating social justice and equal distribution of the future. Morone is a trained sculptor with BFA from SUNY Purchase and earned her MA in Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art in London with Dunne and Raby. Her work has been presented at institutions, festivals, museums, and galleries around the world including ZKM, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Ars Electronica, HEK, the Martin Gropius Bau, the Science Gallery, Transmediale, SMBA, Carroll/Fletcher Gallery, panke.gallery, Aksioma, Drugo more, and featured extensively on international media outlets such as The Economist, WIRED, WMMNA, Vice, the Guardian, BBC World News, Tagesspiegel, Netzpolitik, the Observer.

Artificial Intelligence is transforming every aspect of business and society. The usual narrative focuses on monolithic AIs owned by large corporations and governments that promote the interests of the powerful. But imagine a world in which each person has their own "personal AI," which deeply models their beliefs, desires, and values and promotes those interests. Such agents enable much richer and more frequent "semantic voting," improving feedback for governance. They dramatically change the incentives for advertisers and news sources. When personal agents filter manipulative and malicious content, it incentivizes the creation of content aligned with a person's values. Personal AI agents will dramatically transform economic transactions, social interactions, personal transformation, and the ability to contribute to the greater good. But there are also many challenges, and new ideas are needed. Join this fireside chat to discuss the possibilities and perils of personal AIs and how they relate to the RadicalXChange movement.

SPEAKERS

Steve Omohundro has been a scientist, professor, author, software architect, and entrepreneur and is developing the next generation of artificial intelligence. He has degrees in Physics and Mathematics from Stanford and a Ph.D. in Physics from U.C. Berkeley. He was an award-winning computer science professor at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and cofounded the Center for Complex Systems Research. He is the Chief Scientist of AIBrain and serves on its Board of Directors. AIBrain is creating new AI technologies for learning, conversation, robotics, simulation, and music and has offices in Menlo Park, Seoul, Berlin, and Shenzhen. It is creating Turingworld, a powerful AI learning social media platform based on AI-optimized learning, AI-powered gamification, and AI-enhanced social interaction. He is also Founder and CEO of Possibility Research which is working to develop new foundations for Artificial Intelligence based on precise mathematical semantics and Self-Aware Systems which is working to ensure that intelligent technologies have a positive impact. Steve published the book “Geometric Perturbation Theory in Physics”, designed the first data parallel language StarLisp, wrote the 3D graphics for Mathematica, developed fast neural data structures like balltrees, designed the fastest and safest object-oriented language Sather, invented manifold learning, co-created the first neural focus of attention systems, co-designed the best lip reading system, invented model merging for fast one-shot learning, co-designed the best stochastic grammar learning system, co-created the first Bayesian image search engine PicHunter, invented self-improving AI, discovered the Basic AI Drives, and proposed many of the basic AI safety mechanisms including AI smart contracts. Steve is an award-winning teacher and has given hundreds of talks around the world. Some of his talks and scientific papers are available here. He holds the vision that new technologies can help humanity create a more compassionate, peaceful, and life-serving world.

Puja Ohlhaver is a technologist and lawyer who explores the intersection of technology, democracy, and markets. She is an advocate of digital social innovation, as a path to rebooting democracy and testing regulatory innovations. She is an inventor and founder of ClearPath Surgical, a company that seeks to improve health outcomes in minimally invasive surgery. She holds a law degree from Stanford Law School and was previously an investment management attorney.

Vitalik Buterin is a Russian-Canadian programmer and writer best known as the Ethereum blockchain's inventor and co-founder. Buterin became involved with blockchain technologies early in its inception, co-founding Bitcoin Magazine in 2011. In 2014, Buterin launched Ethereum and is now leading research at the Ethereum Foundation. He is also one of the co-creators of Quadratic Funding and is a board member of RadicalxChange Foundation.

This keynote was taped at the RadicalxChange conference in Detroit, March 2019. 

Candidates for office and elected officials around the world are bringing RadicalxChange’s ideas to life. On this panel, a group of diverse, young candidates for office will discuss the values that motivate their campaigns and some particular policy proposals they hope to achieve. This wide-ranging conversation will cover the problems posed by concentrations of power (economic and political), technology, and the degradation of democracy. 

Speakers

Jonathan Herzog is a civil rights organizer, legal advocate, and Democratic congressional candidate in New York's 10th District. He has worked hand in hand with the Senior Adviser & Counselor to the Attorney General on New York's first-of-its-kind anti-corruption joint task force. He graduated first in his class at Harvard University, completed his MBA at NYU Stern, and served as co-President of Harvard Law School's student government, where he is a teaching fellow for legal and political philosophy. 

Badrun Khan is a candidate for Congress in New York's 14th District. She is a first-generation immigrant and the eldest daughter of Bengali-born parents who migrated to the U.S. in search of a better life. She is an active presence in schools and service to all in her Queens community and volunteered and served with honor as a member of Community Board 2. 

Darren Sands is the National Politics Reporter for BuzzFeed. In 2014, Darren joined BuzzFeed News as a national politics reporter, covering the White House, the US Congress, and four elections. In addition to profiling Democratic candidates such as Stacey Abrams, Ayanna Pressley, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Cory Booker, Darren also covered the internal politics of both the Democratic Party and the Black Lives Matter movement and its impact on the 2016 and 2018 elections. In between those years, he wrote one of the few definitive pieces profiling the movement for BuzzFeed in the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump's election. Darren’s writing has also appeared in The Boston Globe, Grantland, The New York Times Magazine, Black Enterprise, and Esquire Magazine. He and his wife, Jummy, live in Washington, D.C. 

Blair Walsingham is a Congressional candidate for U.S. House TN District-1 and is committed to putting people before politics. Endorsed by key community and national organizations, including Andrew Yang’s Humanity Forward, Humanity First Party, Black Coffee Justice, and Income Movement, Blair is an Air Force veteran, outdoorswoman, small business owner, and mother who has been named a Gun Sense Candidate by Moms Demand Action. Her campaign is laser-focused on helping the 1st District survive today and thrive tomorrow through policies built on compassion, personal freedom, and common-sense data-driven solutions. Blair walks the walk. She values our traditions, our rights, and contends that true leaders seek to build coalitions of compassion, not walls of divisiveness. In order to balance the effects of big money in politics, Blair is committed to lifting every American out of the despair that arises when faced with economic insecurity. She looks forward to the day when the American dream is not just a dream, but a reality made possible by a Universal Basic Income paid to every citizen as a dividend of the wealth generated by the labor of our ancestors, incredible gains in technology and automation, and the buying and selling of our personal data by private companies.