Michael Garfield is a futurist polymath who has worked everywhere from the KU Natural History Museum to the Sante Fe Institute to Mozilla to the Long Now. He’s currently with the AI Capabilities and Alignment Consensus Project. Oh, and he also has twenty years experience as an artist and musician. This conversation is a bit of a song exploder, looking into one of Michael’s songs (the Big Machine) through the mesh of his more academic interests.
Listen to the Big Machine (warning: it’s a bit trippy and you may find yourself humming it for the rest of the day).
Summary: A Song Exploding Episode
Andrea & Michael delve into the themes behind Michael's song 'Big Machine,' tackling how love, family, mysticism, science and technology intersect in this wild world. Michael shares his nuanced understanding of information, attention, and what it means to explore learning and teaching both within and beyond the traditional academic and scientific bounds.
A deep, multifaceted conversation with kaleidoscopic minds.
Michael Garfield is known for creating the Complexity podcast at the Santa Fe Institute, Future Fossils, and Humans on the Loop. Andrea & Michael traverse terrains of threes, paleontology, ontology, music, complexity science, and the great Fractal Rubik's Cube that may be Michael’s balm for the challenges of our times.
Check out Michael's latest essay for Aeon.
Listen to the Big Machine:
Michael's Substack and Foraging Video
00:00 Introduction to Michael Garfield
01:37 Exploring Michael's Multifaceted Talents
02:48 Unpacking the Song 'Big Machine'
05:19 Michael's Journey and Inspirations
06:06 The Evolution of Michael's Musical Path
10:46 Complexity Science and Personal Growth
23:24 Challenges in Academia and Complexity
54:34 The Role of Psychedelics and Language
58:14 The Importance of Communication and Curation
01:00:18 The Evolution of Social Media and Podcasts
01:02:08 The Importance of Internal Culture in Organizations
01:05:59 Navigating Modern Uncertainty and Strategic Thinking
01:07:21 The Role of Games in Understanding Complexity
01:09:33 The Intersection of AI, Podcasting, and Education
01:10:24 The Concept of Future Fossils and Precognition
01:13:06 The Philosophy of Finite and Infinite Games
01:17:17 The Age of Entanglement and Emergent Engineering
01:24:55 The Practice of Noticing and Consciousness
01:41:39 Love, Synchronicity, and the Future of Work
And here is a short talk Michael gave this summer.
Lyrics
Lyrics to the Big Machine
🎙How long can you go without looking at your phone?
How long does it take before your concentration breaks?
How sure can you be that your mind is really free?
How much would you stake that your reality's not fake?
Where do your desires arise in fields of wireless privatized
and pirated attention? In enclosed incomprehension?
How much is your agency and how much is the will of other
entities entirely?
Or is that even how to see this sea?
Doom scrolling (Like subscribe)
You're trolling (Find your tribe)
Everybody wants to be seen
By the Big Machine
Fan polling (Leave reviews)
Rage swollen (Count your views)
Everyone's volition is squeezed
by the Big Machine
Everybody wants to be pleased
How much would you spend to stay in touch with your own friends?
How relieved are you the algorithm offers the convenience
Of staying in a bubble of your spoon-fed preferences?
How much of your self is really what your heart intends?
And where do you define the line you draw between your mind
and the global operations of unconscious just-in-time
Logistics markets states and great unfolding fated intertwined
Machinic processes; you're hospiced in a matrix planet wide
Doom scrolling (Like subscribe)
You're trolling (Find your tribe)
Everybody wants to be seen
by the Big Machine
Fan polling (Leave reviews)
Rage swollen (Count your views)
Everyone's volition is squeezed
by the Big Machine
Everybody wants to be pleased
by the Big Machine
Everybody's choices are screened
by the Big Machine
Ask yourself just who you are feeding
When you play to rhe Big Machine
Now if you aspire to be free
From the Big Machine
Just how long can you go without looking at your phone?🎙
QBD for Episode #70
In a week full of new paths, the L&P project takes another intriguing turn, looking at complexity through the lens of a song called The Big Machine that Michael recently wrote, a sort of anthem for our times.
Michael embodies the intersection of art, mysticism, and hard science. This conversation explores a song and in so doing unpacks the complex systems of his journey through music, creativity, and the questions that drive him to persist.
The Big Machine serves as the linchpin for this exploration, unraveling themes of connection, complexity, and ultimately opening into the space of love.
Michael’s song (and this conversation) stretch across dimensions of self and society, pushing us to turn the fractals inside out and find the interwoven fabric of planetary existence that continues to hold us.
Through his journey, Michael has taught many to think beyond traditional academic boundaries. His discussion with Andrea wanders through those metaphoric landscapes of finite and infinite games, systems of organization, and the ever-changing tides of knowledge as pushed in technology.
Michael’s been staking out new paths, helping others find theirs, and communicating the complexity of it all in whatever ways he can for decades. His passion for complexity science stems from a deep-seated desire to understand the evolution of intelligence, consciousness, and all that goes into understanding dinosaurs. Michael’s main medium may be conversation, but he has opened up communities and connected dots in what could only be described as fractal Rubik’s Cubes. Enter if you dare.
This article and podcast is informational only and not meant as professional guidance or advice.
Oh! Did you see this guest post from Yogi (Johannes Jaeger)?
It’s definitely worth a read. Click below.
Also, in the spirit of discussing attention, here’s a post on attention from Way-making:
Also, in case you’ve never heard of Jenny Lewis, here’s a link.
