Episode 091 - Tobias Revell and The Product Imagination of Philip K. Dick

Transcript of Episode 091

[00:00:00] Tobias: Yeah, absolutely. I mean last time last time we spoke we talked about um, we talked about your ai newspaper and I think we talked about one of the Sessions like what rada did

[00:00:12] Julian: Yes.

[00:00:13] Tobias: Do one of those, yeah.

[00:00:14] Julian: Yep. So, uh, going to start season three of that super seminar, uh, in the fall. So

[00:00:20] Tobias: numbers

[00:00:20] Julian: great to get you on that, um, Um, So, Joe Lepore from McDonald’s is going to do one. Kevin Bethune, new book should be coming out around then. It’d be great to have, I do them like kind of two people. So, it’d be good to have you, um, doing that as well.

[00:00:39] Julian: Let me write myself a

[00:00:40] Tobias: Sure. Absolutely.

[00:00:43] Julian: That’d be amazing. Um,

[00:00:51] Julian: yeah. So, so, so that’s, there’s a lot going on. I’m trying to just, you know, just keep, just keep filling space with interesting, cool kinds of things. But this came in the mail.

[00:01:03] Tobias: Oh yeah. Look at that.

[00:01:05] Julian: it came shrink wrapped, which was kind of like, kind of cool. So I had to do a video for the ASMR people of unwrapping the shrink wrap.

[00:01:12] Julian: Um, Yeah. Yeah. It’s, this is fascinating. And I’ll tell you why, if we, do you want to do just like 10 minutes on it? Super casual.

[00:01:23] Tobias: I could. I could try, man. I can try, yes. Yeah, I know the spirit of it. I remember, I mean, I wrote it like a year and a half ago, so

[00:01:29] Julian: Yeah. Just, just to talk about it. Cause so the, the, the thing that tickled me was, um, I guess I probably saw it, saw it, maybe it was sawed in your feet. I can’t remember where I saw it, but it was like immediately, you know, order it super intrigued because it’s like, had to come from Poland or something.

[00:01:44] Julian: I don’t know where it came from. Um,

[00:01:47] Tobias: or Italy. Yeah.

[00:01:48] Julian: Yeah. Um, and the thing that, so there, there were a couple of things going on. Um, So this arrived, and um, I guess last year I did this book, which never shows up in the video well, called Android’s Dream of Electric Sheep.

[00:02:06] Tobias: Yes.

[00:02:07] Julian: And I did, this was my first kind of like, I need to, in order to understand all the AI stuff that was going on at the moment, I needed to do an artifact.

[00:02:16] Julian: And I just, I just, I was talking to a friend, I love the idea of an adjacent timeline in which P. K. Dick He doesn’t write the fictional novel, he actually writes a handbook. Because at some point, the Sony AIBO, remember the robot dog,

[00:02:34] Tobias: Yeah, of course. Yeah.

[00:02:35] Julian: off in the same way that the Sony Walkman did, and the Sony Walkman failed.

[00:02:40] Julian: So now we’re in a world where, you know, whatever you can imagine the Sony Walkman did to listening rituals and habits and the music industry and etc, etc, etc, portable music. Um, yeah. The expansiveness of that has, is now reflected in, in the form of, um, you know, automatons. So all the energy invested in all the, all the, you know, the billions of dollars and enthusiasm and excitement and the shaped music that didn’t happen, but people invested that that same level of energy into making autonomous vehicles.

[00:03:19] Tobias: so like a, a sort of a digital, a mechanical familiar is what sticks rather than portable music.

[00:03:26] Julian: Yes. And so, so in that world, PK Dick writes more like a book that’s kind of like a psychology book or the kind of, in my mind, it was like the self help book that you find on the rack at the airport when you just need something. And you’re like, I read about the, I read a review of this book in, in the Guardian.

[00:03:41] Julian: This will help me understand my now 13 year old Android, uh, you know, helper. And it could be, you know, so in the same way that you, you know, you’ve got a, you’ve got a kid, like when they turn a teenager, you’re going to get that book and be like, just help me understand what the fuck’s going on with this kid. You know, just

[00:03:59] Tobias: Why are they saying these things to me?

[00:04:02] Julian: pop, pop, pop psychology, just kind of like, you know, simple stuff. And so, so we did this book. I just thought it was, I liked that conceit. And so then, then this shows up, which is like from, from the blurb. The Dickeian universe, that’s very difficult to say, the Dickeian universe is more than just its characters, it’s a realm intricately built with technological devices, machines, and objects entirely conceived by this brilliant mind.

[00:04:31] Julian: And so it’s almost like, you know, this, is an expression of the Dickean universe through the objects. Now this just showed up, so I haven’t read a covered cover, but I’ve slipped through it. And anyway, that’s what got exciting. Cause then I was like, Oh, I can put these two books alongside each other. Look, there are these other ways of looking at.

[00:04:55] Julian: Um, you know, the, the, the constructs, the, you know, the, the Tickian universe and, and it’s alternates, it’s adjacencies, it’s potential quantum entangled, uh, realities. It just got exciting. I don’t know where that goes, but I was excited

[00:05:10] Tobias: But I think that the stuff with, I haven’t read the book in depth either. And obviously I wrote that like a year ago. I mean, the stuff that’s always interesting you got. Dick science fiction, and I’ll confess to actually having not read the Minority Report, the story around which most of, most of my text in there was about the film adaptation, um, and the impact that had and what it says about our culture and technology, but he focused on like the gadgetry of every day.

[00:05:35] Tobias: That was like most of his technological vernacular. It wasn’t, you know, it’s not spaceships and, you know, fast and light travel and like the E and M banks world, right? It’s like, it’s, it’s, you know, janky, like AR, MR things or brain reading devices or whatever it is. So it has like a, a quality to it. And it’s not imagining something.

[00:05:55] Tobias: Radically other but something different to what we’ve already got in our sort of material vernacular It’s just it’s breakfast cereal but different. It’s um, yeah, like like, uh A familiar or a companion but different, you know so that’s why designers I think have always been into the philip k dick thing because it’s Speculating on the material experience of the everyday rather than just proposing.

[00:06:17] Tobias: Oh, we’ve solved aging. We’ve solved travel We’ve solved everything, you know, we’ve invented teleporters or whatever it is

[00:06:24] Julian: Yeah. That’s a, that’s a really good point in that, in that regard. Um, what was the, what was the kind of call for the, for your contribution? What was the, do you remember?

[00:06:37] Tobias: Yeah, they actually had a talk series originally. It was one of those things where they did a talk series and then they ask you to write an essay. Um afterwards similar to what we did in austria actually um, and yeah, I did I did the talk so so basically the minority report interface the gestural interface that featured in the 2001 ridley scott adaptation of minority report designed by alex mcdowell He’s a brilliant, um production designer and does a lot of work like speculation and speculative design as well And it’s completely fascinating as like a weird Zeitgeist, the nadir of computation in the sense that not only was it a really well researched and informed, um, and then designed, uh, uh, diegetic prototype that reflected what people thought the future of computation would be at that time in 2001.

[00:07:29] Tobias: But it actually then. Has a complete feedback loop of of financially and materially driving that vision to become real. So then, you know, John Underkoffler, who designed the interface for the film, ends up with investors falling over themselves to give him money to make it real, right? So he ends up setting up a company to make it real, um, called Oblong Industries.

[00:07:49] Julian: Yeah.

[00:07:52] Tobias: success in sort of like conference domains with that sort of interface, but obviously it’s kind of impractical for everyday use. Um, so there’s that bit of it where it’s like, it, it is a, as a complete, as an imaginary, there’s a product of a tendency then and reinforces and drives that tendency, which is very much like what my PhD is about in regards to AI anyway, so that’s why it connected nicely, but also it, as it unit, it is.

[00:08:15] Tobias: The talk I did, the person who spoke next was actually the set designer who designed the set in which that appears in the film, right? And they were drawn, um, drawing off an influence by all these things like cybersign and control rooms and police control rooms and things like that. So there’s this like visual vernacular of command and control and prediction and power and things like that that have sort of been reified and refined in the film.

[00:08:41] Tobias: For the design of that interface. And so I guess what I was trying to get in, in that talk and in the essays, how does that particular scene in that film, you know, if you were to, if aliens would come down today and say, can you explain why humans are so into computers and why they put so much faith in technology?

[00:08:57] Tobias: I’d be like, just watch this. One and a half minute clip because that’s like everything that’s like everything from cyber sign in the 50s through to like You know, there’s still the ever off put future of gestural interfaces and predictive policing and everything else, right? It’s all in one Meet yeah I think it’s like a minute and 45 clip a second clip where they they perform the interface and introduce it and you know even that moment where Tom Hanks is using it.

[00:09:22] Tobias: No, is it Tom Hanks? No, not Tom. Tom Cruise, of course. Tom Cruise is using it and he’s swiping around and he’s moving all the windows around and stuff. And then Colin Farrell comes in, who at this point in the story we think is the antagonist. And he comes in, he’s like a government auditor, sceptic of this operation of predictive policing.

[00:09:40] Tobias: He moves in to shake Tom Cruise’s hand. And the impact of him doing that is the windows are closed. In the gestural interface, gravitate to Colin Farrell’s hand because they think he’s about to interact with the interface. And that’s such a brilliant thing to actually design in. This glitch into a science fiction film.

[00:09:56] Tobias: It doesn’t work, right? And Tom Cruise gets frustrated and has to push him away and pull the windows back and things like that. All those details and thoughts are like, oh, yeah, that’s how computers are. That’s like collaborating in a Google Doc. Where’s my text gone? Someone’s tabbed it away or whatever it is, you know.

[00:10:10] Tobias: So it’s like, it’s really real. It’s really reflective. It reifies everything about the last 50 years of computation and what a lot of The mainstream imagines the next 50 years to be, it’s had this incredible hold. And what was, what’s interesting in the essay. And I, I sort of talk about it still a lot is I think the same year or maybe the year before Cronenberg’s existence comes out, right?

[00:10:31] Tobias: So existence famously, the interface and existence is like the game pod, which is like a biological computer that you plug into and you go into a virtual reality world through this bio yeah. Like it’s gooey and biotechnical, but why is that? Why was that sort of a fantasy while the Minority Report interface is somehow given a credibility such that it drives investment such that the media, you know, if you Google search in Google News, like Minority Report, you will find articles from the last month that are still comparing news from today about AI or interfaces to Minority Report that is a, is now a, uh, 2001.

[00:11:10] Tobias: How old is that? Like a 20, Okay. Three year old film right and so it’s had this incredible power of a culture and i’m interested in why that is and that’s what that Essay is about my talk was about really?

[00:11:21] Julian: Yeah. That’s fascinating. And then, um, so yeah, I totally get it. And also wondering, you know, the next question is for, for folks like you and me and many others is, is there something there to operationalize? So no, so in other words, I am, I’m guessing it for me. Maybe for you too. It’s like, I, I would love to do that kind of stuff all day and all night.

[00:11:44] Julian: And by that stuff, I mean, create, you know, these kinds of experiences to help as ways of, you know, essentially doing, um, you know, trying to, trying to create you know, uh, worlds. That’s a, that’s a big topic. But even just those little moments, like, what are, what are other ways in which we can, um, associate with these computational collaborators that we call computers and as we call them the machine, um, or, um, language models nowadays, um, that interface is something that I think there’s a, there’s an underlying deep fascination with the potential and possibility that’s intimated by these.

[00:12:25] Julian: Um, these, these companion species, whatever we’re going to call them nowadays, these, these things that we are around us that seem to suggest that they afford possibility for doing things that are just, just out of our reach. And it might be doing it better, you know, quicker. It might be, I can explore more faster, whatever, but we want, we’re, we’re fascinated by this unspoken implied potential for something else, something, something new or something different, something more expansive.

[00:12:57] Julian: Um, and we have this fascination and curiosity to explore that, you know, folks like, you know, you and me and, and, and a billion other people. And so how, is there something, is there a lesson? Is there, if you take away something, it’s like, would you have declined Steven Spielberg’s letter to you saying like, Hey, I’d like to get you involved in helping me imagine this world.

[00:13:18] Julian: It’s like, you’d be like, I’m getting on a

[00:13:20] Tobias: No, of course not. Yeah, how much do I have to pay you? Yeah

[00:13:26] Julian: Um, um, you know, more routinely like

[00:13:29] Tobias: But this is yeah

[00:13:30] Julian: and you know, you’re an Arab and

[00:13:33] Tobias: Yeah, well, so I take away a different sort of lesson from it, I guess, which is that, so, so one is that the thing that’s often glossed over in designers thinking about minority report is the whole thing is powered by psychic technology, right? That’s the underlying thing is that there’s these gifted, gifted human beings who have psychic powers that then can predict the future.

[00:13:53] Tobias: Which which in the context of 2001 when the matrix was already around feels a bit remiss And I don’t know if that’s just true to the novel But I would have thought that always felt like the bit that didn’t stick like why is everything else in this film? So well designed and believable and feasible and feels real whereas that’s just like well, that’s just magic Um, not that i’m dismissing magic, but the lesson I take away and it it does go to how I work and we work the team here is how do you make the abstract? How do you make it real and meaningful to people? I don’t know another way to put it, right? The the staying power of that is the design of something that took the abstract idea of like being able to predict the future and made it feasible through a series of plausible kind of interactions interfaces technologies problems glitches interfaces materials textures everything else So you’re like, oh, yeah, that’s pretty good Probably how it would be.

[00:14:45] Tobias: And so if you think about, you know, I’m not super interested in building a predictive future, but I am interested in how do we get to just talking to a colleague about looking about, okay, I’m going to backtrack a bit and you can edit this out. So please forgive me. You know, you ever read Francis Pollock’s image of the future?

[00:15:03] Tobias: You know, this book? Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. So, so it’s really good. And I mean, it’s obviously got its limitations because it’s from the 70s, but it is interesting in that, um, You know, the, the, one of the things I took away from that is this idea of the future as the better place is just super recent, right?

[00:15:19] Tobias: Like until the 1950s, really before that it was somewhere else, you know, another part of the world. And that was colonialism and, and the age of exploration, or it was in heaven. And that was sort of most of human history and this eschological idea of it. Being a higher plane whatever it is And so the idea of the future and the fact that technology is the thing that interfaces us with the future is sort of this Relatively recent glitch and she was saying well, what do you think comes after and I was like, I think genuinely this sort of You know, whatever we’re calling it degrowth regeneration solar pump world where it’s not about Accelerating through technology into the better but finding the better that’s already here and just learning how to Touch it properly if you want a better phrase is like the next bit So so so future is a sort of abstract concept of betterness The future doesn’t have to be because the thing with technology is the future is always receding, right?

[00:16:10] Tobias: It’s always going to be the next thing that does it the next Llm is going to be the one that fixes these problems the next social Network is going to be the one that has no biases in it. You know, it’s always a receding thing Whereas that version of a better future is already here in the material around us We just haven’t figured out the way to articulate it in a way that makes it meaningful to most people who have Mortgages, you know food bills kids, etc, etc, etc So it’s people like jace bring it and and that they you know me as well And and all the people involved in that we can get it and understand the value of it and how to start to touch it So, how could you take those ideas of what?

[00:16:44] Tobias: You know, McDowell, Underkoffler, Spielberg did Minority Report and infused a generation of Silicon Valley people with the future of predictive technology and AI and gestural interfaces to invest billions into those technologies, but do the same for, like, soil health, right? Like, imagine if you could really, really interact with your soil, like, and really understand it in a way, like, and how do you then, you know, Hell that future.

[00:17:12] Tobias: That is, the better is already here. We don’t have to wait for the right technology to be invented. We just have to find a way to interface with it in a way that people go. In the same way that the invention of the keyboard and the mouse made the PC make sense. Suddenly the PC made sense when you’ve got the great, you know, the, what is it called, the greatest demo of all time.

[00:17:29] Tobias: It just made it make sense for people. We haven’t yet got that. I don’t I mean the solar panel I feel like does a bit of that because it interfaces this abstract idea of solar energy with The real impact it can have on you as a person in your life, but for everything else again biodiversity Carbon in the air.

[00:17:46] Tobias: We haven’t figured out what’s that thing that clicks that goes? Oh, I can do better future right here with what i’ve got in the same way that the keyboard the mouse did for the pc

[00:17:56] Julian: Yeah, I, I think, I, so I think part of that is, is why, you know, connecting it to the, um, uh, you know, this, this remarkable kind of collaboration amongst, you know, the people you mentioned like McDowell, Undercoppler, and there were a whole bunch of people involved in that, that, um, I’ve, I’ve talked to Alex about this, about that, you know, when they gathered together, and he said there was actually a book done, Um, that they, that they kind of published.

[00:18:23] Julian: Um, and he’s always sort of said like, Yeah, I should try to find out about that. I was like, you fucking need to, man. Um,

[00:18:29] Tobias: that would that would be that would be an absolute hit that would be like Ian Banks’s drawings or Jodorowsky’s drawings for Dune, that would be like huge. Yeah.

[00:18:38] Julian: yeah. Actually, I’m supposed to, I’m supposed to have a, um, We’re texting, I’m supposed to, uh, go over to his studio to, to do a podcast, which we’ve been trying to do for the last, like, four years. But the, um, I, I guess the, The conclusion that I kind of came to around that is probably has to be refined, but it’s like that minority report created that, you know, that conversation that you’re saying, you know, you do a Google search now, and it’s still there.

[00:19:07] Julian: It’s still in the popular imaginary at all these different levels. You know, this is like minority report. It becomes that anchor to, you know, that referent. Um, and I think I think if one could do that. For, you know, a plant intelligence, if one could do that for, for, for soil interactive systems, if one could do that for, uh, plant processing units as a, as a potential form of competition, whatever,

[00:19:35] Tobias: exactly. Exactly

[00:19:36] Julian: you know, it starts becoming like, Oh, I need to be, you start creating that dream that other people can kind of like tumble into.

[00:19:44] Julian: Um, and I think, you know, is that, I don’t want to like over index on the, um, you know, what did they call it? The reality distortion field of Steve Jobs, but part of it is he was able to create this dream that other people like. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I see that world that you’re trying to that you’re that you’re describing to me.

[00:20:04] Julian: Um,

[00:20:05] Tobias: exactly so and and the like minority report question is also probably a bit Void now because you know We’re in a different world cinema big hits aren’t the thing right? So so what is it that just goes? So, so, I mean, there’s a lot of this in my PhD work, but like, what is the, how do you build a common cultural reference point so strong that it not only reflects the existing tendencies, but drives the next 25 years of tendencies?

[00:20:32] Julian: that’s the work. That’s the work.

[00:20:34] Tobias: that’s the work. Exactly. So, yeah,

[00:20:36] Julian: and and then exploring, experimenting with the different, um, You know, mediums, mechanisms, mechanics, and like you’re saying, it’s an astute point worth mentioning. It’s like, it might not be a feature like film. It might be some other modality of world building that includes, I don’t know, I hate to say this, but what are the kids into?

[00:20:58] Julian: How do they read and how do they make sense of things in the world? I

[00:21:04] Tobias: This is like, and also don’t forget that, that, Minority Report, the film, conformed with the Zeitgeist already, right? So it wasn’t a challenge. It was a very good articulation of what the rising dominant class was, which was sort of Silicon Valley and technology, was thinking about. It just articulated in a way that then everybody else could

[00:21:25] Julian: eye scanning for the advertisements, all that

[00:21:28] Tobias: Exactly. All that stuff. Yeah, exactly. So it made everyone happy in a way in that it conformed with what people wanted to do and sort of excited people about it and and then Uh who wrote lab coats in hollywood again david kirby? Um, yeah, he I mean all these folks were in austria when when you were online It would have been good to get us all together actually.

[00:21:49] Tobias: But yeah, so david kirby wrote About the fact that part of the cleverness of minority report is that mcdowell and undercover, you know, have a very good understanding of how the sort of the cycle between popular culture and innovation works and how they drive each other. Right? And so that, you know, if investors are seeing, you know, You know, their kids or hearing in the papers that this film has been a huge hit and is really connecting with people, they’ll be interested in funding the technologies that feature in that film, right?

[00:22:21] Tobias: So there’s a cycle there that is self reinforcing. So it’s a super, on the face of it, it looks quite straightforward. You just design a really great piece of media that talks about regenerative future, but actually The reality is you have to do it in such a way where everyone gets what they want out of it in order for it to sort of land into the, uh, what gills curve into, into the top of culture, right?

[00:22:44] Tobias: So it starts at the bottom and then comes to the top of culture. And that’s really difficult, I think, because the cult, because now culture is compared to 2001, so divided and different and, you know, structured. We’re not all following the Silicon Valley dream.

[00:22:57] Julian: I think this is such exciting potential for, for, you know, trying to, you know, trying to figure that out, you know, cracks the culture code, at least at this particular moment in order to,

[00:23:08] Tobias: to be going anywhere. That’s

[00:23:09] Julian: you know, insert,

[00:23:10] Tobias: not driving

[00:23:12] Julian: you know, I guess I think what you and I are, you know, Sympathetic to, it’s like a more habitable world.

[00:23:16] Julian: And we, you know, you could describe what that is. And so how, so that, you know, that’s the, there’s no answers to the question except, except to experiment with the forms of, um, culture creating and,

[00:23:28] Tobias: GATT if it’s the one that we’re working

[00:23:31] Julian: luxuriate into the

[00:23:35] Tobias: GATT if it’s the one that we’re working on. Yeah. It’s a, you can send thumbtacks as

[00:23:40] Julian: Like, um,

[00:23:41] Tobias: Um, I’m going to edit it, but I just, like, put it in and out, it makes no difference. I think, yeah, it’s easy. It’s, uh, by, uh, my project director.

[00:24:00] Julian: Like no one knew what it was. It was something that was like still liminal,

[00:24:05] Tobias: I’m not, I do, I do, but I, uh, edit

[00:24:08] Julian: edge. It feels slightly, you know, is this okay? Is it legal? You know, it’s just, it’s, it’s very vanguard. You know, and

[00:24:15] Tobias: yeah, it’s a bit like the anarchist cookbook.

[00:24:17] Julian: Yes. Yeah.

[00:24:18] Tobias: Yeah. Yeah. I wonder what it is I don’t know. I feel like the solar panel is interesting As a sort of maybe in years that yeah I’m sure lots of people have thought well, the economist did a whole article about solar recently, right?

[00:24:29] Tobias: It’s quite a charismatic Object of the green transition because it works. It’s cheap. Everyone understands it. It’s sort of got no enemies You know, it’s it’s sort of like quite a straightforward Thing that explains what this future starts to look like in a single artifact, right? It’s just that’s why solar punk I think has taken off as opposed to like nuclear punk Which is like complex big heavy dangerous expensive not straightforward You know

[00:24:54] Julian: Yeah.

[00:24:54] Tobias: Or even wind.

[00:24:55] Tobias: I mean, I know i’ve been trying to get breeze punk going. Have I told you about breeze punk? We spoken about breeze punk And breeze punk was my was genius. I’m at jones is really into it as well because it really vibes with him So so obviously most green tech even solar to a degree requires like infrastructural change like even if it’s just changing the grid and the way the grid functions in order to make the most of Decentralized solar right because you if you’re selling to the grid it requires certain Changes to business arrangements and everything else and there was a an amazing thing Um from a university in singapore where they basically invented like a really tiny You Um wind turbine There was like matchbox eyes that could generate energy right really small amounts of energy But it could generate them and I just had this great idea that like all over the place like mini Like wind turbine so it’s not like big old massive ones in the middle of a field or the ocean But like on the top of every lamppost or every like parking bus.

[00:25:50] Tobias: It’s like a tiny little turbine. There’s just

[00:25:51] Julian: buildings. It’d be

[00:25:53] Tobias: Exactly. Yeah, because you’ve got little solar panels everywhere, but obviously we live in the UK and that’s an unreliable like unreliable energy source Whereas like especially because we’ve got like solar panels on top of lamp posts that power the light Or saving up energy through the day to power the light But if you’ve got a couple of gloomy days, it doesn’t work anymore But I like the idea that you’d have a tiny little wind turbine there as well Just like spinning away in a little matchbox gathering it and so I called it breeze punks.

[00:26:17] Tobias: It’s not solar punk and it’s not like wind it’s not like the The ferocity of the ocean, it’s just like a little breed gathering a little bit of energy. I just sort of like that idea that we, you know, this, the fear of the green transition, I speak in it, I’m speaking from an engineering firm where we talk about this a lot is.

[00:26:34] Tobias: The massive transaction cost of shifting whole piece of infrastructure and grids to this new world, right? And, and, but just doing it in little small bite sized pieces sort of really appeals to me. I like cutesy breeze punk. I like it.

[00:26:48] Julian: Beautiful. Um, cool. Well, thank you. Appreciate, appreciate you taking the time to have this conversation.

[00:26:54] Tobias: That’s all right, man. It’s always lovely to chat with you. Um, and yeah, uh, I mean, I, I feel like I should have something to ask you, but I, my head is full of garbage.

[00:27:05] Julian: That’s all right. No, no, no. That’s all right. That’s totally right. That’s fine. Um,

[00:27:10] Tobias: I’m going to, I’m going to apologize again for just like rarely looking at the discord because I just look at it and go, this is really busy. And I’m super overwhelmed.

[00:27:19] Julian: that’s totally, I I don’t even, I don’t even think about that. I don’t even wonder. I, I know, you know, it’s just, just having, having people, you know, it’s more, it’s a, I don’t know. It’s a,

[00:27:28] Tobias: I don’t

[00:27:30] Julian: I’m trying to figure out how to, um, Hey, I am actually, you

[00:27:34] Tobias: the like, you

[00:27:36] Julian: probably probably gonna

[00:27:37] Tobias: final design, do you let me

[00:27:41] Julian: it’s not, that is, um, is bigger than what.

[00:27:44] Tobias: Before you actually submit the form,

[00:27:48] Julian: level. I’ve been,

[00:27:49] Tobias: anybody about it. Yeah.

[00:27:51] Julian: know, just other people about what it could be. I don’t even know what I’m saying. Um, but I

[00:27:59] Tobias: not going to ask

[00:27:59] Julian: it’s a platform for the kinds of things that we’re talking about. than just a community. We’re kind of, kind of getting closer to like world building. And, and, but doing it in kind of, in kind of more of a playful way. Um,

[00:28:17] Tobias: I might get, I might get you a number. And then really, I’m sure we talked about the Moving Castles thing before. Did we talk about that before?

[00:28:25] Julian: I don’t think so.

[00:28:27] Tobias: I, I, I, I, I probably would’ve done it, I think, but I’ll say, I’ll think if we can do that. So Moving Castles is this idea from this like ultra hip Berlin group.

[00:28:38] Julian: Movingcastles. world? Hmm.

[00:28:41] Tobias: be something else now.

[00:28:42] Tobias: It’s called trust. support. Trust, trust is this like ultra hip Berlin gang. Um, and they came up with this idea of moving castles, which are like these new forms of organization that sort of are constantly moving, but they’re constantly reassembling themselves and changing their shape and things like that.

[00:29:00] Tobias: And they, they were sort of thinking about, you know, They’ve got this great like two by two on that on that link. I just sent where they’re looking at what what are the sort of different parts of the internet, you know, between centralized collective public and private and you’ve got, you know, the dark net down there.

[00:29:15] Tobias: You’ve got the the sort of the clear net stadiums as they call them with things like tick tock and instagram where it’s all blast. You’ve got sort of dark forest clubs, which is probably you. Sort of where things like discords and whatsapp groups are where it’s like, you know There’s a community there, but it’s not visible from the outside necessarily And then you’ve got this idea of moving castles by the light.

[00:29:33] Tobias: What is it? What does a genuinely open publicly open and adaptable collective organization look like, you know? There’s a different thing that we haven’t really seen yet And then they speculate a bit about collective. One second, I’ve got to say something to this guy. George, are you off? I am. I’m going to chat.

[00:29:54] Tobias: Julian, I’m going to have to go. I think I’ve got to chat to this guy here. This is George. George, Julian. Hi, Julian.

[00:30:00] Julian: Hey, George. Uh, yeah, I gotta

[00:30:03] Tobias: Thanks for all the help I’m seeing. Alright.

[00:30:06] Julian: we’ll continue.

[00:30:08] Tobias: Yeah, yeah, let’s chat again soon, man. Good to see you, and let me know what we’re doing next.

[00:30:12] Julian: Okay, good. Take care, my friend.

[00:30:14] Tobias: Bye, Julian.

[00:30:15] Julian: Bye.