AnarchoTech Curriculum and Origins of My TechnoWizardry
Sharing updates on what I've been up to this past month
This has been a busy month! Many birthdays (including my own), day job work, and side projects as well.
I was planning on writing about imagining better futures, but I may have some exciting news in terms of collaboration with that topic, so I’m leaving it for the next issue.
AnarchoTech Curriculum
Instead, I want to share my application/ideas for a learning curriculum I created for a local homeschooling program based on a popular Haitian idea of ‘Lakou’ which was meant to be a communal way of living outside/beyond the state, amidst a number of other things. I may have to dive into the history of this term/idea in another newsletter!
Anyways, my partner told me about this a while ago, and has been insisting I apply, but I was hesitant to commit more time to yet another thing when I was already struggling to manage my commitments. Plus I’ve never really seen myself as a teacher, and was worried about being able to do the students justice!
But after much cajoling and feeling particularly inspired, I sat down and just let myself imagine what I’d even want to teach. Here’s what I came up with:
Creating Better Futures - How to learn from our ancestral past to create a world of worlds where all flavors of inclusive, ecological, sustainable, equitable, and more magical futures can be achieved.
Learn about the past - Discovering our ancestors
The long human history of egalitarianism
What decolonized anthropology tells us about the evolution of humanity (ie how human intelligence was likely born out of equality and pro-social, matri-local societies)
Debunking ‘human nature’
The rich history of ‘pre-historic’ Indigenous cultures throughout Africa, Americas, and Asia
The power of foraging cultures
Debunking the ‘hunter-gatherer’ mythos
What life was really like (probably) 100,000 - 12,000 years ago
What we can learn/apply today
The inevitable death of hierarchy
How ‘civilization’ was born
How and why all hierarchies die
How and why we can hasten the process, ie when change happens quickly
Learn about the present - What’s going on now, how to not get lost in the sauce
Clawing through the propaganda
The truth about America and its ‘Democracy’
The problem with nation-states and capitalism
Decolonizing Gartner’s hype cycle of technology
Not just surviving, but thriving despite the system
Seeing in systems (education, economy, technology, real estate, food, government, etc)
How to find a job that doesn’t suck your soul (design, coding, marketing, teaching, creating, art, writing, project management, music, and more… but ethically and sustainably)
Building community (friendships, vulnerability, and love)
How to network
How to make friends
How to foster love
Embracing the radical and the revolutionary
Radical optimism (how to not fall prey to doomerism or naivete…)
Becoming the revolution (grassroots, activism, community)
Aim, Build, Fire (have a clear goal, build towards it everyday, be ready to protect what you’re building)
Learn about the future - Creating opportunities for better futures to exist, sooner than later
Who gets to create the future(s)… and why there is more than one
The myth of Progress
The importance of stories (fables, religion, fantasy, and scifi)
The power of media (news, movies/shows, and social media)
What it means to dream big
What’s your dream? How can it be bigger, better, and broader?
Not giving up on the dream
Making your dream a reality
Creating the future in the now
Using your tools and talents to create
Finding other futures to co-create with
Building community to create alongside
As you can see… I had a LOT that I wanted to share.
I eventually came up with a common thread to link this all together: Technology through the ages.
I realized that all of this is connected in my mind through the concept of technological impact throughout human history. Focusing on how different forms of technology influences how we see ourselves, the types of societies we build, and the ways in which we imagine the future.
Technologies being any tools we’ve created to (ostensibly) better our lives, which can range from fire and rock-based multitools, to the very concept of ‘civilization’ and society, on to what we see it as today in terms of computers and media.
Here’s the actual application I ended up sending:
I'd like to offer an anarchistic course on technology through the ages, where students will look to the past to build better futures. Students will be able to decide which technologies we focus on in the first class from a curated list; for each ensuing class, I will share what I know about that technology and its impact for about 10 minutes, then invite a discussion for the next 10-20 minutes. Finally, we will attempt to recreate (a model of) the technology for the last 10-20 minutes in a medium of their choosing.
For the last class, we will shift from the past and present to the future, calling students to visualize their ideal future(s) in whatever mediums they prefer. For the mediums, I will endeavor to expose them to different tools to try; from pen and paper, to digital art, to crafting, to virtual reality prototyping, and more. I may bring guest speakers to help teach any skills I do not have (such as coding and visual art).
(Honestly, I’ve never done anything like this and am not sure if this timing will work out, so I am open to suggestions! Perhaps we may focus on a time span for each class, and/or have a discussion in one class, and crafting in the next class.)
The list of technologies will be curated to focus on the often overlooked and mis-informed idea of ‘prehistoric’ and ‘primitive’ foraging cultures. I want to show how many of them used technology in a largely holistic and egalitarian way. This will be contrasted with the colonial perception of technology as something separate from and antagonistic of nature. Ideally, students will thus see how we can create technologies that are ecological, sustainable, equitable, and accessible.
By the end of the course, students will be expected to:
Describe the various lifestyles of ‘pre-historic’ foraging cultures
Understand the structure of ‘civilization’ (i.e. what they are, how they’re built, and how they fail)
Analyze the current state of civilization (i.e. compare current nation-states, especially America, with extant and existing foraging cultures to see what has been gained and lost)
Evaluate the paradigm of technological progress on media and societal change
Identify ways to use ones potential careers, skills, and interests to build the type of world they’d like to live in
Create visualizations of ones ideal future(s) that incorporate holistic technologies enlightened by lessons learned from ancestral wisdoms and contemporary hubris alike
This is very much a work in progress. Feedback is always welcome!
Unfortunately my course was not chosen by the students…Turns out the core students so far are mostly elementary-middle school age. I think it came off a little too ‘advanced’ and ‘lectury’ even though I do fully intend to scale this up/down/sideways to the age groups and audience I’d be working with, plus have plenty of activities, and only spend a small time actually ‘lecturing’ (which in itself would be more like my signature Epic presentations with music, visuals, and impassioned speeches). But alas…
Nonetheless, the team would like to work with me to modify this for a wider audience and a more focused set of courses spread out over a year! (The original course was intended for 10 weeks).
I’m excited to see where this goes!
Origins of my Obsession with Magic
I did some long ass podcasts about my journey into technowizardry… where I analyzed my history with magic systems and such.
Check them out here!
Origins of my magical thinking
Exploring my Foundations of Technowizardry
I do want to keep this relatively short, so I won’t rehash all of that, but I do want to crystalize the main takeaways I got from the exercise.
(Note: I use Branden Sanderson’s definition of ‘hard vs soft magic systems’ throughout my explanations. Though I didn’t know about these back in the day, I did often think about the internal consistencies with these systems, which is essentially the same thing)
Religion - particularly monotheistic religion, acts as a sort of faith-based magic system that's not quite hard, but not quite soft. There are rules and patterns to the 'magic', but it's incredibly inconsistent. The magic may take the form of miracles, blessings, wonders, angels and demons, etc… but it's still magic.
Nonetheless, it really encourages, demands even, a belief in something far greater than the self.
Unfortunately, it's greatly prone to being monopolized by people in power due to its inherent hierarchical format.
Polytheistic religions were more transactional, where people understood that though the gods were fickle, they were also aware that the gods depended upon them as well. So there was a mutual relationship, thus a little less prone to monopolization.
For me, religion fostered a respect, and even yearning, for greater mysteries and deeper meaning, but it also created in me a huge skepticism against authority and institutions. It showed me the power of believing in something bigger, and the danger of having that belief be controlled by doctrine.
Harry Potter - This was one of the first actual fantasy books I've ever read. It taught me the majesty of magic designed as such. It inspired in me an unquenchable thirst for wizardry… the ability to manifest one's imagination directly into the world.
Beyond the many plot holes and issues with the magic system as written, the idea of magic being something accessible to people with far more consistency than religion was incredibly attractive (even if it seemed to be genetic). It's a system where miracles and such can happen with regularity.. where it can be understood, studied, and replicated reliably. Harry Potter showed me that you can believe in something bigger than yourself without it being necessarily personified into some all powerful being… it can be the very nature of the universe itself.. a nature bigger than even the mundane world can currently understand.
Urban Fantasy (Vampires, fairies, et al) - I’ve read countless books where the magical world existed alongside the modern, mundane world. Many of these books shared the idea that regular people could, in theory, discover these magical worlds (or that you might secretly be special and belong to said world). Beyond mere escapism, these books inspired a (naive) hope that I'd be able to stumble upon, or be chosen to, discover a whole new world and gain supernatural powers!
Regardless of that naivete, I greatly value my ability to switch perspectives in order to see the inherent magical qualities of various worlds; from the micro to the macro, from the historical to the futuristic, from the technological to the spiritual… I'm still able to identify elements of said worlds to wonder at and be inspired by.
Scifi (Especially Clarketech type) - As my familiarity and love of science grew, so too did my appreciation for scifi literature. Unfortunately for me, a LOT of scifi is just military fantasy of some sort. And even before I identified with anarchism, that never interested me much. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated my Ender’s Game and other scifi space sims with clever action sequences that went beyond ‘future guns go boom boom’; but it was always the worldbuilding that was far more interesting to me. Being able to see how other people imagined what the world could be in the future was super freaking awesome.
Though I haven’t read many Arthur C Clarke books, I did greatly enjoy the quote “Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. That was always my favorite aspect of really great scifi: technologies that felt arcane, yet possible, someday, somehow.
Virtual Reality - I’m only making this its own genre because, even though it is based in scifi, these books (Snowcrash, Epic, Sword Art Online, Ready Player One, etc) all create worlds where magic was ‘real’ in the virtual world. It’s this aspect that made me especially excited about the technology! More than pretty much any other futuristic technology, it was the most clear and accessible way to make a more magical world. By doing so literally!
One of these days I may go back and read, or at least skim all the books I remember really enjoying and try to pull out the specific elements of those stories that may have fed my imagination.
But for now, we’ll move on.
Something that came to mind while writing this (particularly while watching another Folding Ideas banger) is the realization that the Economy itself is also a sort of magic system…
Economics - Though I don’t think I ever consciously thought this thought, I certainly subconsciously assumed as such. One of the biggest reasons why I even wanted to become a ‘trillionaire’ in the first place is because that’s what I thought I had to do to invent magical technologies! I thought I could ‘fix’ the world's problems by making enough wealth to just pay for all the things that economists say we don’t have money for… poverty, hunger, space travel, etc… I’d just make enough money to directly pay for it or otherwise to invest in technologies that will directly solve those problems.
I saw it as a sort of hard magic system that I merely had to study to learn the spells and master… my idea of a billionaire was that of an archwizard. Someone who deserved their position because of their dedication to the craft… because they created new magics and could do amazing wonders thanks to their knowledge on how to best utilize their magic system of choice.
But then I realized that, even if elements of that were true, it was more true that the magic system in question was inherently evil. The economy was not some neutral magic… It was a dark art. It was inherently destructive, exploitive, and manipulative. It does not simply ‘create value’ out of thin air, it facilitates the very real extraction of ‘value’ from one place or peoples for the benefit of others. It justified the use of forbidden spells and abominations, of cursed items and demonic sigils, of coercion and corruption and chaos. The capitalist, nation-state economy rationalized the worst parts of religion and normalized it as ‘human nature’. It was evil institutionalized.
I realized that if I wanted to create a better world, I couldn’t do so by becoming a master of said evil. I instead had to become a champion of good magics. Of creative, rejuvenative, egalitarian, and net positive systems. If the economy was a real world ‘magick’... it didn’t necessarily have to be as evil as it was… it would have to be re-imagined.
Next issue, we’ll imagine what a better economy could look like!
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More Creative Challenges
Lastly, I want to update on my efforts to create more!
I … haven’t done a whole lot.
As I mentioned before, the creative challenge I was doing did not pan out well… at all. I tried creating a very simple version of Flubbi. Based on this pretotype I designed years ago:
But I wasn’t even able to get a simple drag and drop working 😭!!
I think I should be able to figure it out given more time, but I was all out of that resource for this challenge, so I ended up just doing a song… of songs.
I turned each of the prompts/rules into a verse to a different song. And I did it all in like the final day or so. It was stressful, but actually kinda fun.
I didn’t record it, and I’m not going into (anytime soon), but here’s the lyrics if you wanna subject yourself to my madness:
An Ode to Creation: A Journey Through Failure
Besides that, I also submitted a few things for my company’s annual T-Shirt design contest. Once again, I had an ambitious idea that I was not able to even begin to really tackle, but I did make a few interesting pieces:
That last one kinda shows what I wanted to do. I wanted to create a 3D-looking environment with doors that doubled as portals previewing a few of the simulations we created. I was going to throw in a few extra stuff in the background too, but I just did not make the time to really build this out. However, I do plan on experimenting with this concept just for funsies in the coming weeks.
I also had fun messing with colors and such, but that was after I submitted the black and white version.
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I also began thinking about my Halloween costume for this year! I think I’m going to try and one-up my TechnoWizard costume I hastily threw together last year by creating a ‘Solar Shaman’ or ‘WizardPunk’ type of dealio. I want to create a nice lil punk vest or even a wizard robe out of plastic bottles and other recyclables I have around the house…. I have no idea how this will turn out, and I’m hoping this isn’t too ambitious, once again… but I do want to try! I’ll do my best to actually work on it every week, if not every day. And post updates as I go. Here’s to hoping!
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Finally, I started building with lego (sort of) again!! My brother got me some awesome sets for my birthday. I finished the first one, a steampunk-ish looking train with its own LEDs!
Here’s a lil video of it in the dark (I just like that song, lol)…
Next, I’m going to tackle the train station, which has far more pieces!
I was pleasantly surprised to still feel so much joy putting this together! I can’t sit on the floor and do it like I used to… my poor back can’t take it, but I greatly enjoyed reliving one of the best parts of my childhood again. However, I couldn’t help but think how I could probably build these same designs better! May perhaps even attempt to recreate these, especially the train, but with little motors, more features, and a better build quality someday in the not too distant future.
And that’s all folks… for now. There was a lot more I could have said, and want to say… as always. But I was already one day late with this, and I’m trying to release these more regularly.
For the next issue (this month, most likely) I’m going to finally delve into imagining better futures! Until then, feel free to check out my podcast episode on the topic.
Here are some of those other topics that I didn’t make the time to talk about:
The Olympic Mental Gymnasts
AI as a cambrian explosion of productivity and flourishing, and yet the biggest risk to productivity and human existence?
How (American) patriots actually hate america
How many misogynists actually just hate themselves, patriarchy, and capitalism, but instead blame women?
Evolutionary Psychology: one of the most unscientific sciences... Right up there with economics
Interesting Media
Blue Beetle
The Button
Star Citizen vs Starfield vs No Man’s Sky
The magic of hiking
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Thanks as always for reading!!
~ Your friendly neighborhood technowizard/shaman :P
This issue was amazing; the course you came up with can definitely be scaled all types of ways and the message is greatly needed. I'm glad they're willing to work with you to implement it in the future. Keep up the great work!