Join Stephen Reid and special guests Hanzi Freinacht (Emil Ejner Friis), Ellie Hain, Alexander Beiner, Michael Garfield & Rufus Pollock for a four-week deep dive into Technological Metamodernism, 17th Sep – 8th Oct 2024

The emerging philosophy of metamodernism offers crucial tools for grappling with technology's transformative impacts on self, culture and society. It charts a path beyond the polarized debate between techno-utopian accelerationism (the belief that rapid technological progress will solve all our problems) and despairing pessimism (the belief that our technological trajectory is fundamentally destructive and irredeemable).

Through provocation and dialogue, this course invites you to adopt a metamodern mindset - embracing both/and thinking, an awareness of allergies and a focus on reconstruction - as we explore tech's leading edges. How might metamodernism inform the development of AI, DAOs and transhumanism? Can it help us to bridge tech with the realms of nature, art and spirituality? What new and ancient narratives and mythologies might we call on to cultivate a metamodern relationship to technology and its role in our individual and collective evolution?

Led by experienced educator and technologist Stephen Reid, this course offers a unique opportunity to take a philosophical deep dive into the heart of our technological age. No previous knowledge of metamodernism is required.

Course outline

Sessions will take place 4pm–6pm UK time (BST/GMT)/5pm–7pm Europe time (CEST/CET) on four consecutive Tuesdays via Zoom:

• Tuesday 17th September 2024

• Tuesday 24th September 2024

• Tuesday 1st October 2024

• Tuesday 8th October 2024

The first hour will be a presentation of the key themes of the week, with the second hour reserved for conversation with a guest expert and Q&A. Sessions will be recorded and shared (so you can catch up if you're late/miss one).

Week 1: Introduction (Tuesday 17th September 2024)

• Current mainstream discourse around technology: e/acc, doomers and technofeudalism

• What is technology? Exploring definitions and the history of technology

• What is metamodernism? Origins and key ideas

• Technological metamodernism, and metamodern technology: Why the tech and metamodern communities need each other

Week 2: Metamodern Takes on Technology (Tuesday 24th September 2024)

• Vitalik Buterin's d/acc

• Daniel Schmachtenberger's Axiological Design and Third Attractor frameworks

• Hanzi Freinacht's views on technology, and other explicitly metamodern takes

Week 3: Technological Metamodernism, Myth and Magic (Tuesday 1st October 2024)

• Ritual and initiation in tech: From ancient traditions to modern rites of passage

• Hyperstition and the role of imagination in shaping our relationship with technology

• Technology through the lens of myth and magic: the work of Josh Schrei

• Sophie Strand's Flowering Wand: Reconceiving technological archetypes

Week 4: Metamodern Tech Futures (Tuesday 8th October 2024)

• Solarpunk, lunarpunk and the role of art, design and speculative fiction

• Metamodern DAOs, metamodern AI

• Reality Switch Technologies: DMT, lucid dreaming and the jhanas

• Governance, ethics and wise innovation

• Building the metamodern tech community