Subscribe, Rate, & Comment on YouTube • Apple Podcasts • Spotify
If you value this series, please consider becoming a patron here on Substack or with tax-deductible donations at every.org/humansontheloop (you’ll get perks either way).
About This Episode
This week we speak with “strategic futurist and pattern navigator” Adah Parris, a London-based wizard and weirdo with whom I immediately hit it off over our shared interest in “cyborg shamanism” and an emphasis on being good ancestors. Forbes Brasil called her “one of the most important futurists in the world.” It’s hard for me to measure the impact she’s had on business leaders, tech startups, marketing and communications firms, arts schools, and in the lives of the countless other people.
We talk about the relationship between numbers, language, and the ineffable, ever-shifting human spirit. Adah’s work points past knowledge and history into the elemental nature of both human and machine, past our differences into the deep similarity worth celebrating and the mystery that we inhabit and embody. Join us for a yarn that is both silly and profound, present and far-reaching, about being uncategorizably creative, open, and curious amidst the wicked problems of our time…
Project Links
• Read the project pitch & planning doc
• Dig into the full episode and essay archives
• Join the online commons for Wisdom x Technology on Discord + Bluesky + X
• Join the open, listener-moderated Future Fossils Discord Server
• Contact me if you have questions (patron rewards, sponsorship, collaboration, etc.)
• Browse the HOTL reading list and support local booksellers
Chapters
0:00:00 - Teaser
0:00:49 - Intro
0:05:24 - Feeling Seen & Heard
0:09:54 - Adah’s Biography
0:17:21 - Poetry & Number
0:27:55 - Cyborg Shamanism & The Five Elements
0:37:03 - The Foraging Neurotype of “Extremely Online”
0:51:07 - Surrendering Agency to Systems
0:55:14 - The Incremental Reclamation of Agency
1:01:19 - Art after Modernity & Healing from Noise
1:13:01 - Beyond Narrative & Into Dance
1:17:30 - Thanks & Announcements
Adah’s Links
Website | Instagram | LinkedIn | Medium | Chartwell Speakers
Finding Our Future in Ancestral Wisdom @ TEDxSoho
What Kind of Ancestor Do You Want To Be? @ Think With Google
Cyborg Shamanism & The Case for Elemental AI @ Atmos
Mentioned Media
Refactoring “Autonomy” & “Freedom” for The Age of Language Models
by Michael Garfield
223 - Timothy Morton on A New Christian Ecology & Systems Thinking Blasphemy
Future Fossils Podcast
Attention deficits linked with proclivity to explore while foraging
by David L. Barack et al.
New Selves of Neural Media & AI as 'The Poison Path' with K Allado-McDowell
Humans On The Loop
Raising AI: An Essential Guide to Parenting Our Future
by De Kai
Technoshamanism: A Very Psychedelic Century! at Moogfest 2016
by Michael Garfield
Proteus (film)
Sonic restoration: acoustic stimulation enhances plant growth-promoting fungi activity
by James M. Robinson et al.
Ada Twist, Scientist
by Andrea Beaty & David Roberts
Oppenheimer (film)
Dante’s Inferno
by Dante Alighieri
Mentioned People & Institutions
Ford Motor Co.
Telefonica
Wayra
AT&T
Augusta Ada Byron Lovelace
Charles Babbage
Marshall McLuhan
Dr. Kate Stone
Ernst Haeckel
Tada Hozumi
Lewis Mumford
John Taylor Gatto
Paul Tillich
Alan Turing
Share this post