📡 reporting from RADAR .007

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_The Age of the Centaur
spotted in #music-audio, #art, #gaming, #health-wellness, #ideology, #labour

AI in the workplace, AI on the streets; AI in our social feeds, and even in the art that moves us. The rise of augmented, artificial and overall more-than-human intelligences crashed into our everyday lives like the Kool-Aid Man, seemingly out of nowhere.

Sure, plenty of us have prophesied its arrival for decades, but no one could've expected just how fast these emergent technologies would become so ubiquitous as to hijack our content-addled minds and enter the mundane, as if we didn't just experience a once-in-humanity moment.

Forget about the Metaverse, we're talking tech in every aspect of our lives whether we want it or not. It's not all bad though, there is some amazing potential at the meeting point of human creativity and machine intelligence. Plus, there's some very real opportunity for us to come out smarter and more capable when the singularity is said and done.

🔮💭 What revolutionary uses for AI are you seeing that seemingly no-one has noticed? How can human and machine work together for good? Are you comfortable with the lines between human and AI being blurred so suddenly?

2_The Rising Tide of our Future
spotted in #environmental-climate, #food-drink, #health-wellness, #fashion-beauty, #education

Have we gone over the edge? 'Cause it sure seems like it. A large chunk of society seems to have accepted a post-climate change world as inevitable, and are looking at ways to navigate this sad, sad future of ours.

With a rise in accountability and sustainable practices across the board, things do seem more optimistic than ten or twenty (or a hundred) years ago, yet it's apparent some of us think it's too little too late to save our way of life. Even the brands are on board for Pete's sake! And it seems like every day we're unearthing new discoveries because of our irreparable damage to the environment, and people call it a success.

*sigh*

You'll find us trying to rally whatever troops we can to fight this incoming catastrophe while we still can (and getting some climate change proof apparel just in case).

🔮💭 Why are people* (read, Doomers) giving up on saving our planet? Is there really nothing we can do to curb the brunt of the climate's impact? Should we get our bunkers ready?

3_Disenfranchised Altruism
spotted in #community-culture, #education, #health-wellness, #identity, #money, #politics, #ideology, #heritage-legacy

Our world has a gnarly history of repressing voices, especially those that haven’t fit its short-sighted norms. But thankfully, that seems to be changing, step by step, and intentionally so. 

From a complete overhaul of our education systems, to mass media recognition of different life experiences as equally valuable, our globalized society is steadily taking steps towards reparation, as well as a bright new inclusive future in all aspects of life.

Can this bias-free understanding of our globe change our approach to the sciences? And how will we make it stick this time? All of these and many more questions are sure to be answered should this (multi)generational effort reach its altruistic goal.

🔮💭 How is this open and inclusive future manifesting in your culture? What harms or repressions of the past are being corrected in your neck of the woods?

The Best of The Rest

We’ve been deep down the Catholicism as Meme rabbit hole (I mean really, does the Pope typically stand in front of things like this?!) Though, it’s pretty on trend given all of the weird, ugly, surreal, and chaotic vibes going around. Things we’ve also been pondering include: reviving rural traditions, branded produce, all niche everything, productivity porn, inflationary implications, and new forms of token-gated media.

Diving into the latter led us to this week’s Just Trust Us, a phenomenal read on Space Making and what’s missing in so many built environments today. Thanks, @rafathebuilder.

Pulse Check

• Squad Updates:

  • Over in Research Squad…after weeks of wide-ranging and community-powered research into a Future In Sync, the Project Team is starting to converge. With reporting in mind, they’ve built out a “one-pager” that starts to hint at the final output in what we can only call a Miro Masterclass.
    
    Next week, we’ll be moving into our Future Mapping phase, pushing, pulling and plotting our way to a vision of the future based on all of the research done to date. Working together, we’ll find our ‘Center of Gravity’ and map our path to get there through imaginative writing, visceral moodboarding, and rapid ideation.
    
    This is where incubate jumps into the mix too, so get ready for a 🔮🥚 collab — it’s all coming together!
    
    We’re also hard at work thinking through and prototyping our final output: something immersive, interactive, and with the idea of living legacy built in. It’s going to be special.
    

  • Governance is deep in process mode, designing the two key votes that will take place in Incubate’s Futurethon. How will we get from (hopefully) hundreds of ideas, to a working 10, and finally down to the 3 that will receive small grants? More to come!
    

  • In Data Squad…Diamond DAO’s first MVP of our Futures Protocol is ready for community testing — featuring key word search, visualization, and a snazzy timeline viewer. Stay tuned for more!
    

  • Feeling inspired by an awesome first foray into longform signals content (ICYMI: check out Identity Debt, Nihilism, and Finding Meaning in the Multiverse here), a newly formed Editorial Team within the Comms Squad has emerged to create the Signals Series, where we’ll be turning our most interesting and insightful threads into thoughtful articles all their own.
    

  • And last but not least, Incubate is back in action: In the lead up to mid-October’s Futurethon, the squad is getting into delivery mode: planning and operationalizing 2 days of inspirational events, 2 days of ideation, 2 days of deep building, and a final vote & celebration — all inspired by the incredible thinking done by the community over the last several months. If you ask us, it’s going to be pretty, pretty epic.
    
    We’re currently looking for partners to sponsor the event, including those who wish to take place in tailored Futures Mapping workshops that will inspire our builders. If you’re interested, reach out via Twitter.

This week’s 📡 reporting from radar was curated by @kairon — with so much gratitude to everyone who inspired the content with their amazing contributions including @livster, @sixiann, @getoffdeez, @izzy, @kaboomxpow, @amanders, @devicee, @sarahsarahowen, @victoriafutures, @alpal768, @EHB, @dwayne“thejock”ronson, @keels223, @ampersandrea, and anyone else we may have forgotten!

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