The emerging philosophy of metamodernism offers crucial tools for grappling with technology's transformative impacts on self, culture and society. It charts a path beyond the polarized debate between techno-utopian accelerationism (the belief that rapid technological progress will solve all our problems) and despairing pessimism (the belief that our technological trajectory is fundamentally destructive and irredeemable).

This application is for research contributing to a Technological Metamodernism course in September 2024, which will invite participants to adopt a metamodern mindset - embracing both/and thinking, an awareness of allergies and a focus on reconstruction - as we explore tech's leading edges. How might metamodernism inform the development of AI, DAOs and transhumanism? Can it help us to bridge tech with the realms of nature, art and spirituality? What new and ancient narratives and mythologies might we call on to cultivate a metamodern relationship to technology and its role in our individual and collective evolution?

Research topics:

Foundations

• Current mainstream discourse around technology: e/acc, doomers and technofeudalism
• What is technology? Exploring definitions and the history of technology
• What is metamodernism? Origins and key ideas
• Technological metamodernism, and metamodern technology: Why the tech and metamodern communities need each other

Metamodern Takes on Technology

• Vitalik Buterin's d/acc
• Daniel Schmachtenberger's Axiological Design and Third Attractor frameworks
• Hanzi Freinacht's views on technology, and other explicitly metamodern takes

Technological Metamodernism, Myth and Magic

• Ritual and initiation in tech: From ancient traditions to modern rites of passage
• Hyperstition and the role of imagination in shaping our relationship with technology
• Technology through the lens of myth and magic: the work of Josh Schrei
• Sophie Strand's Flowering Wand: Reconceiving technological archetypes

Metamodern Tech Futures

• Solarpunk, lunarpunk and the role of art, design and speculative fiction
• Metamodern DAOs, metamodern AI
• Reality Switch Technologies: DMT, lucid dreaming and the jhanas
• Governance, ethics and wise innovation
• Building the metamodern tech community

Researcher and course leader: Stephen Reid

Stephen Reid is a transdisciplinary technologist, facilitator and Dharma student who has trained in the fields of AI/ML, complexity science, physics, transformative coaching and insight meditation. Current projects include hosting immersive residencies as a co-founder of Futurecraft, consulting for top organisations on AI projects, and leading the development of the Dandelion platform for regenerative events and co-created gatherings as part of not-for-profit worker co-op Symbiota.

Previously, he founded The Psychedelic Society, taught the Introduction to AI, Introduction to web3, How to DAO, Tools for the Regenerative Renaissance, The Promise of Decentralisation & Life as Practice courses, and served as the youngest ever board member of Greenpeace UK. Stephen has an MPhys in Physics from the University of Oxford, where he specialised in quantum field theory, an MRes in Complexity Science from the University of Bristol, and a Professional Certificate in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence from UC Berkeley. He lives with his partner Laura in Stockholm, Sweden.