📡 reporting from RADAR .003

our bi-weekly discord digest

Welcome to 📡 reporting from RADAR. Every other week, community curators will surface the best of the best — from the cultural constellations we’re watching emerge to behind-the-scenes build updates as we embark on our journey to discover, incubate, and deliver better futures.

Wavelength is a space for updates, member articles, ponderings & wanderings, fun experiments and — of course — more signals. So subscribe below to keep up with our signature brain massaging magic, straight to your inbox. 🔮💜 

Signals Spotlight

1_Buying into Group Buy-In

spotted in #education, #communities, and #relationships

DAOs aren’t the only collectives cooking up something special in the future. This week we spent some time looking at how small groups can impact long futures. In education, we’ve seen the rise of “anti” or micro-schools and thought about how the future of schools can be imagined. Often, it’s predicated on breakout groups, passion projects, and self-directed study–but however it’s being done, it requires individuals or families to come together and make community directed decisions. 

The future of home and grocery shopping is looking more and more like it’s going to become a community endeavor again as well. Chinese grocery apps have parlayed community leaders into becoming part of the supply chain, and now with collective buy-in these families–and the apps selling to them–can make online grocery delivery cost effective. 

While we’ve definitely seen a growing investment in local communities post (amidst?) COVID lockdowns, the most recent extremely stringent shutdowns in Shanghai have lead to some pretty amazing group actions. What’s next?

🔮💭 Is staying small scalable? Or is buying in to group buy-in just the next pyramid scheme?

2_Reuse, Recycle, Why Reduce?

spotted in #fashion and #lifestyle

Let’s face it, what’s old is new again is not actually new, but in fact quite an old saying. That said, we think there’s something new to how we’re doing it. In other words, circular economies are coming (and then they’ll keep coming). 

For communities, libraries have been places for knowledge transference via books–and as thus, pillars of society–for decades. Now, they’re becoming places for tool transference too. This opens up opportunities for community members in myriad ways, from making their houses homes to gaining critical skills for work and employment. 

In fashion terms, re-working garments has been avant garde and exciting forever, but now the brands want in on that clout. Pretty much every eco-conscious and outdoor brand is launching their own repair/rework/resale arm. And as member @VictoriaFutures puts it “from an aesthetic perspective there is so much potential as a vehicle for creativity. I’m thinking about the potential for repaired garments to reflect the history and heritage of its owners and with each repair, the garment becomes even more valuable.” So really it only makes sense. 

The circular economy is also coming to the tech world. In the UK (and potentially coming soon to the US) consumer electronics companies are going to be required to make spare parts–allowing the lifespan of individual appliances to be extended but also opening up the door to creating new products, recreating products, and modifying existing ones with the influx of extraneous parts. 

🔮💭 Is it enough? Recycling, circular economies, and modified futures might create more sustainable futures, but what do we do with all of the stuff we already have? How else might we get creative with it, and what can we learn from the programs that are already in place? 

3_How do we curate M3ntal H3alth?

spotted in #health-and-healthcare, #mentalhealth, and #social-media

The internet is all fun and games until we forget how to sleep. Or how to log off. We’ve seen a number of instances across our channels of people and communities trying to figure out how to log on and log off with equal measure. Or just how to curate a less toxic environment. 

From people ogling over the idea of sleeping to the rise of subreddits that are just built on good vibes, we’re seeing more and more evidence that we need to be making proactive and purposeful positive mental health decisions. And we’re seeing it in web3, big time: from something like Zaya, a web3 community from our very own @adina that’s trying to bring back nature and naturopathic healthcare to TwoPlus, a DAO that’s focused on the wellbeing of DAOers, mental health & wellbeing are hot topics within web3 circles, for good reason.

In Web2, when we couldn’t sleep, we ended up on Twitter or YouTube at 2am…and maybe that was bad enough; but discord and worldwide communities have pushed our access and our content & conversation diets to the next level, so much so that it’s easier than ever to be swept up into the non-stop energy of Web3. And even if we know it’s not good for us, what’s there to do about it?

🔮💭 Can you curate good vibes? Is creating purely positive spaces ethical? How do we code balance into our future? Will we count $SHEEP to fall asleep in the future?

The Best of The Rest

Film cameras as serendipity engines; from headless brands to headless bands; why we’re rooting for Niantic’s AR-centric vision of the Metaverse; what if we never flew again?; who doesn’t love a gorgeous diagram (accompanying a deep-dive into AI as an instrument of knowledge); and finally, a semi-late PSA to all millennials: we’re done with airpods, time to dig out your old wired headphones, lest ye be judged by gen Z

Pulse Check

• Squad Updates:

  • Comms is in working mode coming up with all kinds of fun stuff, but ICYMI, check out our latest Mirror post — a collab between @Eliot, @Fancy, and @Dwayne on building for Intentional Churn

  • Over in Research Squad…we’re figuring out all the final details of the process: from enrolling a micro-squad of SuperCurators and sorting out a scoring system for potential briefs, to working with Governance and Psi to solve for the best ways to integrate community input.

  • In Incubate, with initial building blocks in place, the squad is turning its focus to setting a crisp vision for RADAR’s futurethon so they can start mobilizing the community behind bringing it to life. Everyone’s invited to the next Incubate jam session (Wednesday June 15th at 12pm EST/4pm UTC) to weigh in on the collective vision and hear about opportunities to get involved.

  • Governance has been working to advance their mission to Make Governance Fun™ at RADAR, designing transparent and inclusive social dynamics in our community and, as a first step, working with research to define important aspects of the SuperCurator role and the decision making process for selecting which signals will become briefs. The squad is growing and soon will start having regular Governance Sessions on the RADAR Discord where everyone is welcomed to get involved.

  • And last but not least, over in Product Squad, our first RADAR product — the Signal Extension — will be beta testing soon; we’re exploring a V1 members x signals directory that will take us one step closer to Proof of Future; and we’re excited to nerd out on the ontology of signals with our friends at Diamond DAO in the coming weeks.

Community Asks:

• This community is full of super smart people writing super smart things online — and we’re so thankful for it. So this week, we’re asking everyone to read/like/subscribe/you-get-it to your fellow human radarz 💫

  • @Lore on how Julia Fox is making celebrity media joyful again 

  • @Petah on the death of trends

  • @BiancaMikaila on the future of education as a game 

  • @Kairon on de-financializing social tokens

  • @PatrickTanguay’s latest issue of Sentiers, featuring one of this past week’s #SOTD reads on the future of imagination

So much gratitude to @sam_af who curated today’s signals spotlight and to everyone else who inspired this week’s 📡 reporting from radar — @VictoriaFutures, @AndreaC, @clewis, @keels223, @adina, @livster, @devicee, and @kleinkleinklein

Not a part of RADAR just yet, but feeling the FOMO? Join us here.