📡 reporting from RADAR .005
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_Catharsis Culture
spotted in #pop-culture, #aesthetics, #food-bev, #mental-health
In issue .002, we covered a tacky turn of events. But the more we’ve explored, the more we’ve started to view that set of signals as part of a much larger constellation. In a world that’s turned quite numb and nihilist for a host of (frankly) pretty good reasons, there’s a counterbalance happening in the form of catharsis culture. From embracing the non-productive allure of the night and the revival of rave culture, to taking caviar bumps and gravitating toward all things hyper-real and hyper-sensory, the common thread is a desire to feel & forget — to purge all of the pent up everything from the last several years in whatever way we can. Whether that looks like letting yourself love The Cheesecake Factory or tuning out by tuning into today’s wave of dissociation music is up to you.
🔮💭 This need for catharsis, this desire to feel & forget, it’s almost overwhelming in culture at the moment — and we get it. But we wonder, will we find what we’re looking for? And if not, what comes next?
2_Symbiotic by Design
spotted in #art, #science, #spirituality, #environmental
From Renaissance Teams and Symbiotic Art, to Interspecies Intelligence and Bio Design, it seems like there are more and more signals that speak to the convergence of art & science in culture, technology, and beyond (like, deep into the mystical beyond). Perhaps we’re learning, once again, that there are both more and different ways to learn and more and different sources equipped to teach. James Bridle’s newish book Ways of Being encapsulates the thought well: “The animals, plants, and natural systems that surround us are slowly revealing their complexity, agency, and knowledge, just as the technologies we’ve built to sustain ourselves are threatening to cause their extinction, and ours. What can we learn from them, and how can we change ourselves, our technologies, our societies, and our politics, to live better and more equitably with one another and the non-human world?”
🔮💭 As a community full of hypergeneralists and diverse specialists, we’re thrilled at the prospect of a new renaissance. But we’re curious: what can we do to cultivate this kind of thinking at scale? How might we bring more, diverse perspectives together to tackle the world’s biggest problems through convergent thinking?
3_Identity R&D
spotted in #self, #labour, #internet-x-web3, #fashion, and #social-media
We've all heard the tale of Gen Z — our most identity fluid generation yet, defying fixity in favor of experimental exploration and flexible authenticity. As our cultural center of gravity, they're pulling everyone into this trend in exciting and inspiring ways — and increasingly, there are tools available (largely by way of gaming environments and our shift toward web3) to turn identity into an ongoing trial & error experience that takes place in our own personal R&D labs. As Aaron Z. Lewis puts it, “As old ideas of selfhood fall to the wayside, those who know how to experiment with their “multitudes” will thrive. Ours is an era of constant re-invention, evolution, and rapid change. We must be willing to play with an ever-evolving collection of masks as we dance across the stages of our lives.”
From exploring questions of pseudonymity and examining our obsession with the multiverse, to questioning the distortive nature of 0.5 selfies and unpacking the avatar economy, Identity R&D is deeply rich territory for further exploration — so much so that we made it the topic of our first Solo Signals Session!
🔮💭 In web2, identity was carefully curated, singular, and in many ways inescapable; while web3 offers the opportunity for something quite different. But different requires new modes of operation & navigation. So what might a world of ‘identity in multitudes’ require of us? Culturally, societally, technologically: how might we facilitate a world where authenticity can flourish?
The Best of The Rest
The vectors of community have us deep in thought, while City Quitting has us dreaming of rewilding our lives from, er, anywhere else. It’s been a big week for science in RADAR: from the sad reality of seedbanks and growing your own mussels, to genetic screening for embryos and the potential for human hibernation. But of course, we’re up to some non-sense too: Broccoli Wine and Green Crab Whiskey anyone? Perhaps pickle hard seltzer is more your style? Meanwhile, we’re getting cozy with our hot girl books and stumbling down uncomfortable rabbit holes thanks to @EHB (vabbing? peecycling? where do they find this stuff?!)
Hard to leave you on that note, so how about one more? Just trust us.
Pulse Check
Focus this Week: If you spend just one hour with RADAR this week, get sharing those #signals and starting #signal-threads. Our microsquad of SuperCurators are going to be sifting through RADAR HQ starting next week to find the best of the best thinking to spur our first research brief!
Squad Updates:
In the Comms Squad…We’ve been posting. Literally. Every. Day. Massive kudos to Research Squad and Comms editors for publishing a deep dive and TLDR of the Research Process, our entire compensation framework (which has been getting attention in all the right places) and even our first RADAR grown product, the Signals Portal. Our Mirror is on fire..
Over in Research Squad…Things are getting serious now. We’re just a few days from launching our SuperCuration process, and putting our research process into action! We’re actively recruiting for new members to be part of a paid research brief, either as part of the project team or wider Research Squad. If you want to get paid for independent and multiplayer research, apply now!
Governance has been busy passing our first critical proposal to ‘move money around’ and purchase a colorsDAO NFT! They’ve also been preparing an expedited governance process to approve our RADAR Futures Report releasing USDC and $SIGNAL to run our 10 week research process.
And last but not least, over in Product Squad, we’ve had really exciting progress in our Futures Protocol, working with Diamond DAO to create our first interactive Signals Dashboard. We’re now developing this further and will be asking the community’s permission to ingest the Signals within the RADAR community into a RADAR owned database through a Diamond DAO proposal.
In other news:
We’ve launched a new RADAR Product, the Signals Portal, allowing any community to directly connect with the RADAR channel that aligns with their interests, bringing our two communities together to share and build upon the most cutting edge signals in the space. If you want to connect with RADAR, apply for your community!
We’ve also been exploring RADAR’s MX (member experience), thinking through a badge system to better facilitate the onboarding and engagement of new-to-web3 contributors. We’ve split into two working groups: one focused on implementation and another focused on philosophy, both intent on crafting a uniquely RADAR approach to fueling meaningful membership along 4 motivational vectors: belonging, influence, identity and reputation.
This week’s 📡 reporting from radar was written & curated by @keels223 — with so much gratitude to everyone who inspired the content with their amazing contributions including @victoriafutures, @aarenarchive, @oryzae, @sarahsarahowen, @andreac, @dwayne "the jock" ronson, @EHB, @julesrules, @sixiann, @katiedreke . . . and anyone else we missed!
Not a part of RADAR just yet, but feeling the FOMO? Join us here.