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Welcome to 📡 reporting from RADAR. In this series, community curators 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. Subscribe below to keep up with our signature brain massaging magic, straight to your inbox. 🔮💜
Signals Spotlight
1_Micro-impulsions
Spotted in #labour #community-culture #aesthetic #fashion-beauty #identity #commerce #lifestages-psychographics
Between social media and our 24-hour news cycle, instantaneous information about everyone is everywhere, every time and anytime. It’s a speedy, ephemeral environment to exist in – where spur of the moment, culturally-specific impulses are both encouraged and amplified by a reactive audience. Egged on by algorithms that reward response, we’re following our instincts, and seeing these experiments take off online as they’re reproduced socially.
In work and labour, things have taken a turn with a reaction showcasing anti-establishment sentiment. Rage-quitting is emerging as a new way to honor your instincts when calling it quits, giving into our inclinations towards anti-ambition. Following our desires for wandering and taking it slow could be bringing about a new phase of mindfulness around the things that take up much of our time and energy - putting in less work for work.
We also see these come to life in ways that are a little kitschy and tongue in cheek. Away from strife and hustle culture, the Soft Girl's guide to life promises that following your inclinations towards pastels may bring you more than just a visual aesthetic. Pair this up with effusive tutorials to exude the Y2K aesthetic, and you’ve got an embodied ability to live out the season’s micro-impulsions. At the center of these socio-psychographic impulses, we’re seeing compulsion to label all our cultural inventions so they can be adopted and reinvented, again and again..
We’re embracing our instincts for play and fun, offering a resounding universality in shared experiences of being kids again, and just having fun. There’s an undeniable, collective effervescence around these impulses. As we follow our guts, we’re creating communities who share in these pursuits.
🔮We believe in trusting our guts and following our instincts, but how do we ensure there’s a place for rationality, too? When everything and anything that’s done gets reported, classified and categorised, how do we balance our instincts to jump on a trend, with those that are more true to us?
2_Technology, dichotomy
Spotted in #education #environmental-climate #labour #tech #commerce #the-future-we-dont-want #art
At the breakneck speed that the tech world moves, we’re constantly facing a barrage of new technologies, innovations, and just well, new *things*. Often equal parts fascinated and surprised, there’s much to love and even more to question. As things move ever more quickly, we’re watching the chasm deepen between optimism and rejection, as people seek to evaluate, understand, and respond to new developments as the pace of innovation ever quickens.
In the on camp, we’re watching technologically-driven solutions drive lofty ambitions for sweeping systems change. First lauded as an instrument for accessible equity, DAOs have now been modeled as university replacements, and it seems like we’ve been given opportunities for a redesign of more inclusive academic experiences. Iterating on world-building simulation to fight climate change, it almost feels promising that there are possibilities for a do-over.
In the off camp, “why the hell not” seems to be the test-and-learn philosophy du jour as AI interns have completed onboarding. We can’t seem to scope how these machine-employees could have a competitive advantage over the legions of talent ready to enter the workforce – maybe it’s just a glitch in the simulation? And new advances hold eerie dark sides, as we attempt to extend our relationships post-life. With all this promised magic, why are our things sucking more?
🔮Where do you fall on tech – are we getting disenchanted or do we remain enthralled? In this situationship do we simply bear witness, or take ownership over drivers of change that we want implemented?
3_ Self as axis mundi
Spotted in #health-and-wellness #ideology #food-and-drink #religion-spirituality
The self is at the core of what we think, feel, and do – an axis through which we understand, navigate and shape the world. Our identity-forming impetus is always at play. Where once there was a phenomenology of the body, today we look inwards to find the answers to a life well-lived. We rely on language to both understand and speak truth, and increasingly are recognizing the immense power of words. Wielding this power of self-talk, we engage in trending practices like romanticizing life – but as self-focused trends tick up, we also have to interrogate the line between hope and delusion.
Consumption and commerce have always played a major role dictating what we want and understand to be good for us. What we eat, drink, read, watch, and participate in shapes our lived reality. And as this self-focus enhances, brands are along the way to continually sell us on a mobius strip of our desires and the products they need – just take the reimagination of functional foods, in our eternal search for “better”. Brands are increasingly weighing in on mental health and wellbeing, and in our search for “good”, we’re letting them in without vetting or critique. Where does that leave us? Toxic wellness, that poorly conceals a cashing in on our desire for a eudaimonic life.
We’re wondering when the other shoe will drop - when we just want to be?
🔮With the self at the center of how we think about the world, and ourselves, what methods, beliefs and systems can we evolve towards? How can human flourishing be led by individuals and communities rather than capital-driven commerce?
Best of the rest
As the start of February comes with a sober re-look at January’s resolutions, word on the street is that learning to cope with habitual loneliness, may have an antidote by way of Bumble. Things look good ahead in this new world, where gaming is an educational tool, and a daily dose of art keeps us going. So here’s to a lingering spirit of hopepunk, smelling good, and having an anonymous hype team.
Pulse Check
Focus this week: SuperCuration voting! Our squad has emerged from their caves, debated and dissected their top constellations, and now – it’s up to the RADAR community to identify the ones most worthy of exploration in our upcoming cycle. Voting opens today and runs through Tuesday. More info in #announcements!
Governance goodness: We have an upcoming governance proposal to unlock RADARs 2023 expenditure budget – keep an eye on the server for actions here, we’re hoping for as many RADAR members as possible to participate! Yesterday, Sergio and Fancy hosted space for questions, challenges and clarifications as we move towards the vote on Feb 7.
A call for co-conspirators. ICYMI, we’re putting together our project team for Cycle #2. This is the research squad that will investigate our next report topic, A More Play-Full Future. We’re looking for writers, researchers, visioners, organizers, deep-divers and more – and if that sounds like you, you can learn more about Cycle #2 here and apply here.
Upcoming events:
Today: Keels is hosting an Open Office on SuperCuration – come by to ask questions, discuss the process and just, you know, have a low-key Friday hang before voting kicks off.
Wednesday, Feb 8: If you’ve been keeping up with all the energy in the #concept-store-chat (Iluma tells us it’s been one of our most popular channels), pop into the Concept Store Workshop with Kairon for a live jam.
Tuesday, Feb 7: Sergio teaches us all things tokens as Proposal #9 opens – if you’ve been wondering how to withdraw into your wallet, how Snapshot works, what’s the deal with token-voting and more, you don’t want to miss this one.
And finally – watch this space carefully because we’ve got a big announcement coming next week. We’d recommend you just go ahead now and mark your calendars for February 15th, because this is a release you’re not going to want to miss.
This week’s 📡 reporting from RADAR was curated by @miko1234 — with so much gratitude to everyone who inspired the content with their community contributions: @akash.das, @bianca.mikaila, @charleeZ, @dwayne”thejock”ronson, @EHB, @Emmanuelle, @joecarpita, @keels223, @petah, @olgashaeva, @robertcain, @samaritual, @sarahsarahowen, @victoriafutures and anyone else we may have forgotten.
Not a part of RADAR just yet, but feeling the FOMO? Join us here.