Cosmo-Localism

Transcript

No, no, no, no, no, la. [sighs] I just I just thinking what to sing. What do I need to [laughter] It's It's pretty hard. Uh I I I had absolutely nothing prepared. This is um beautiful compounding compounding motion of many different wheels which I really deeply deeply appreciate to everybody that has held space taken the time to take care of oneselves and the other. It's been quite a journey the past week. This is uh quite a moment

of celebration for many different reasons and yes I just invite you all to be in the moment and yes take this in. Who do I pass this? >> This gentleman. [applause] >> Oh boy. So, and I was so I was really convinced that Jeff and Brian would do the presentation. So, I was like, and then like yesterday evening, no, no, it's you. Oh, okay.

So, um >> do the homework. >> Yeah. So, and then the the other anecdote is like we think we're going to have four people because everybody's going to be on the river and the beach because it's Saturday. Look at this. This is amazing. So, yeah. Thank you everyone for coming. This is uh it's great. Uh [applause] yeah. Yeah. So, I just want to give a little background uh why this is so important for us. Um so, as you know, something not so good happened to me in 2018, you know, cancellation stuff, but it's and you

know, and of course, I'm not in the center of the world. I know that. But I do think that it was kind of symbolic of what happened to the whole movement because we had a really like big wave in the 2010s around the commons and it was being polit you know it was becoming political theoretical people were talking about it and about at the same time when I had these troubles I think actually the movement also kind of like something happened to it. uh it didn't disappear but it kind of fragmented in many different sub uh movements like platform cooperativism and all of that and they didn't talk to each other. It was like like the it was

like the the binding element was kind of like going unders for some reason. Um and so what I did was like retreat in a way and I started studying uh macro history in a very systematic way. Um and spent some time in web 3 to understand how that worked and and what that brought to the table. And then I can't explain this but uh after you know some years of being so suddenly all these invitations starts coming in this year and unfortunately I had to cancel five of them because of the war in Iran.

That was annoying you know the first five invitations since quite a while and then I can't go. Uh but so I'm deeply feel like I don't maybe I'm just dreaming this but like I'm back right that's that's so yeah uh [applause] and I also want to say I'm not back alone right >> and and you know these are just words but like Jeff tells me I have your back that really counts for me like and some other people have been saying that and so yeah >> yeah yeah and by the way again not to

say I'm the center of the world but I'll just say that also I was reading tobby for example you know he has a study of history 12 volumes though I don't recommend reading the 12 volumes but there is a really good two volume synthesis of it and he says there is a pattern of people who leave the world and come back to change And he gives several examples like St. Benedict, you know, who with the Benedicting monasteries like changed the whole history of Europe. He he put Europe back on his feet after the fall of Roman Empire, restoring the food supply chain and all of this. So this is not the first time that this happens that people like leave the system you know do something the dark knight of the soul

maybe I don't know what it is exactly and then they come back and yeah something happened when so that I think that pattern fits actually all right so uh but again this is not my stuff alone this is uh uh so so I I think there's an acceleration going on I I hope you feel the So on the one hand things are getting really really bad right we have more wars we have a disintegration of the international legal system uh we have supply chain issues you know we had COVID so it's it seems like I think many people will agree with this this is not special that the kind of

world system that was crafted in 45 and then kind of reformed in ' 89 91 one like we're done. It's finished. It doesn't work anymore. And people feel this in their lives. They it has like it dampens their expectations, right? Our our young people don't want to make children anymore. Like there is, you know, it was it was going down like this, but now is like a steep fall in the willingness to have children. So that's looks like a pretty suicidal civilization to me. But of course the paradox is that that then creates more and more people say we need to do

something about it right it's it creates an exodus out of the old system which is no longer working and basically this is what we've been doing with the P2P foundation just observing for 20 years now what these people are doing you know what kind of seat forms are they creating for the future and so I think we we are in this moment and I think it's Benjamin life uh who is in Boulder I think right uh who's writing really great stuff in the last few half year two one year maybe uh he calls it regenerative accelerationism right so what's it so maybe you have heard about accelerationism

which is like a really nhilistic theory like stuff are bad things are going bad so let's make it even worse so that it can change. No, I'm sorry that that's not good. Right. But what we are saying is while the things are getting worse and worse, there's many people doing absolutely great things and this is what we need to accelerate. So this is regenerative acceleration. I really like this uh formulation. Um and so maybe two elements in the in the general reasoning that we have. So one is we live in a system that believes that scarce things are

abundant and that the abundant things are scarce. So it's so we like literally walking on our heads, right? So we believe uh things that are in the ground that are clearly limited we can use it forever more and more and more and more and then stuff that the bits that flow at marginal cost of production that are fairly abundant. Oh no this we have to keep and control and put strong IP on it and certainly not share.

uh this is bad right and this is actually the design of our system today and we need to flip it so that's one thing and the second thing I want to mention is that we use three times more matter and energy on transportation than on making so think about it if we can change that this is like 75% of energy have to use so this is the rationale account for localization, right?

Obviously, if we just localize, we're going to lose an enormous amount of complexity and I don't think most people are ready to live without penicellin, uh die when they're 35, lose half of your children. So, I don't think so, right? But the good news is that we can actually combine that localization which is a real desire to live a good life with people that you trust and that you know that's like it's in our genes. We want this very deeply and to combine this with the best of technologies adapted to this new need and to create a new civilization by combining those elements. So that's one more thing

sharing is really good. Seriously, like you how do you create abundance? One way to create abundance is to use everything and not think about it, right? But there's another way to create abundance is by sharing, right? Um so just an example, car sharing. I'm not talking about Uber. I'm talking about real associative of corporate cooperative car sharing like a neighborhood that decides to get rid of some private cars and make a system so that it can share the the car. So one private car one shared car can replace 13 shared cars. So imagine if we do this systematically.

We relocize production. We use global sharing of knowledge so that every innovation anywhere in that network becomes available in every node of that network. So that's regenerative accelerationism and then we start sharing resources. We use them uh not so that we we for example think about public transportation is great but it doesn't bring you pointtooint. So if we just do public transportation, we would lose a lot. But if we do public with car sharing, then we have the best of both worlds. We have the collective and we still have the ability to go

pointto-point when we need it. So that's kind of the idea. Um this is by the way I think I mentioned somewhere maybe not factor 20 reduction. So, you know, this has been tried in several cities and it's really possible to keep a complex service going at the same level with 20% less energy and and substantially less use of material resources without losing. But of course, it requires a lot of, you know, thinking and experimentation to to do that, right? Okay. Do I just go? All right.

Um, okay. So, maybe I'll I'll go quickly over that because and I talked about it in my first speech a week ago. So, mode D. So, mode A, reciprocity, commoning, sharing, gifting. Then we go to civilization, markets and states, classes, institutions. And what we see is that humanity always wants to get back to this mode. A we love it. We want conviviiality and civilization makes that very difficult. And so mode D that's the language of Cojin Karatani is our permanent attempt to recreate mode A at a higher level of complexity. Mode D right this is what we want at least you

know this is what I want and what the people who work with me want. So we don't want just like a regression to a localized civilization. We want a localized civilization which has retains a high level of capacity that we have acred over time throughout technological innovation and organization. That's that's kind of the key um thing that we that we want. All right. Um so maybe I'll just read it here. Cosmoloism is an approach that aims to combine resilient and regenerative forms of localized production.

One with access to a globally shared knowledge commons that has translocal protocols of cooperation and and and and then three access to forms of capital that are compatible with commonsoriented approaches of local production. So this is I sometimes call it reverse co-optation. Yeah, you have a lot of people just genuine feeling people on the left who always Yeah. Is it going to be recuperated? Yes. And Yeah. And that's say no. That's not the end of the story. So engineer it in the other way, right? So that you cannot have access to capital and transform it into commerce. That's what we want. So that's reverse

co-optation, right? So we have to be clever about this. This is this is issues of design and so we want to find the forms of capital that are compatible with the common. So again look at traditional dream factory. I think maybe they're coming or at least they plan to come at some point they will. Yeah, great project. Use global crowdfunding, buy land, take the land out of the market and preserve it forever in a commons and then mix it with all the modern technologies that you know lift that up to like being a global player in the in the world. So that's what cosmoloism is about.

I have this really long article which I actually recommend. Uh it's called breaking the third information barrier. You'll find it on my wiki but also I can send you a PDF. Uh it's in a weird book called Rosie Cross. So maybe you won't buy that but so ask my uh uh ask my PDF instead. So basically the first information barrier was hunter gathering and then you have a breakthrough which is civilizational coordination.

Right? And so this is my contention and those are my uh collaborators is that this is ending. markets and states are not able to solve our fundamental uh thermodynamic uh resource crisis, climate change, resource issues. We can see it they're not able to solve it and so we need something else and this is what we call the third uh way. So it's a breakthrough through civilization to something else.

So what we have here on the bottom stick mergy. What is stick mergy? Our capacity for mutual signaling that we have today. How do you know what to do on Wikipedia or Netflix or Arduino? It's visible to you, right? The whole thing it's whole optical. Whole optical means that you can see everything from any perspective. You see the whole system. Panoptics is you see only when you're above. But in these new systems, everybody can see what's going on and so you can adhere to a common project. That's called stigma. That's number one. Number two, share digital comments. We can now

pull knowledge in an easy way. It cannot be monopolized by the state or by corporations. We can create our own shared knowledge comments and everybody can learn from the shared pool all the time and advance very rapidly. Third, this is I'm I'm getting for Michael Hoped. So he says there's always a node of coordination and the node of coordination let's say before capitalism might have been the monarchy right where the all the elements of the society came together and then you had a king deciding what do we do with this and where do we fight uh what do we grow and then it became the

market institutions basically yeah the wall street and those things where you know we decide where where capitalis is going it's a node of and he claims and I agree with this the new node of co region is the bio regional hub right this is where no you can go go no further down this is the place where you can no longer have externalities right so you cannot destroy your own bio region this is like the limit you can't destroy your own bio region or you're dead.

Right? So this is the place where I think but using these global things that are Sigma G and digital com this is where they kind of hit the ground and where people will have to decide in our region this is what we can do and I think if you came to my last lecture I think the shift of wealth creation is going to be bio capacity right so now it's extraction we take it out of the account that's value. Then we make profit. We tax the profit. We distri we distribute it. That means that regeneration is always the minor brother, right? It's

always like following extraction and never and never good enough because we have more extraction than regeneration. And what cosmolois is about is breaking through to what some people have called a type one civilization. extraction and regeneration are in balance. So this is our task. This is what I invite you to do. This is what we're trying to do with with this new idea of how to organize society and production at a planetary level using these uh new categories.

All right, so let's continue. Um yeah, I think uh we kind of said that, right? what's what is heavy should be local and what is light be global and shared the definition that we use of cosmoloism. Um yeah, I think we've said that. Um now I might want to make a bit of uh advertising I guess because why why are we in a good place to do this as P2P foundation? uh and I think the reason is the following uh 20 years of research right for 20 years starting in 2005 we have been documenting systematically

every day of the like I'm my wife might not be happy with this but I work every day like every day if I don't have a stroke which I had three of I work every day like one week After my stroke, I was at it again. I can't help it. Right. Monoomaniacs. You need monomomaniacs to to change the world. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Uh otherwise, uh I'm I'm making my wife famous because she said like this, why do people keep inviting you everywhere? You can't do anything.

Right? this is it. [laughter] Um, yeah, I can't do anything. She's right. Uh, so don't give me a bike to repair. I can guarantee you that bike is going to be worse off after I take care of it, right? Uh, but I think I still have a good mind. So, that's what I'm doing. using uh my brain to you know basically absorb a lot of things and trying to synthesize integrate understand and then make it available for other people. So I'm a librarian as well you know just every

day it's not books I use I used to use the word cybrarian right a librarian of cyerspace I think I invented the word um yeah and that's yeah so synthesizing years research and I have to say I think AI is going to be really uh important in that so that's the way I see AI is we had a scarcity of knowledge until 20 years ago was really hard to find things. And [snorts] then we created this technology which creates an overflow of knowledge that we can no longer cope with. And we needed to def we needed to invent a universal synthetic enzyme and that's what we did.

You know it has a lot of like everything it's has good aspects and bad aspects but this is vital. And so this is a lot of what we're going to do is use our record of 20 years of activity by seed forms by all these people doing all these things and create like a state-of-the-art record and this my friend believe me this is a big issue you know I I'll just give you an example I'm in funding the commons in Bangkok [snorts] and actually I'm thinking of Jason so because that's where I learned this uh and they say why don't we make a software to connect organic consumers and organic producers and organic consumers. Great

idea, right? Yeah. Except I went to Tuskanyany 12 years ago and they had like 25 of them just for the solidarity economy. Just for Tuskanyany, right? And so this is a drama. This is what we want to address, right? Is that everybody is reinventing the wheel. And if you keep reinventing the wheel while capitalism is learning and learning faster and faster to do things, we know we're never going to get anywhere. This is really really important, right?

And this is what I've been doing. But you know it's it's like almost handiccraft the wiki you know it's an encyclopedia and then I create section pages but who's going to read 500 items about the comments in transportation or the comments in housing that's the problem we had until now and that I think is where AI will be really useful to create you know more so so that you can so and I would say you know before you do anything check the wiki Right? Because you're not as much a genius as you think you are. Right?

Other people have done it before you. Sometimes a lot of people have done it before you and we don't learn from each other. So this is important to address. Um yeah and um yeah okay create integrative capacity. So I think that's what we've been doing. So we've been looking at all the stuff that's happening and trying to see the underlying patterns and then binding the patterns together. So I think we really are in a unique position at P2P Foundation to bring something to the table that very few other people and other groups have done. So that's like I think I you know even I would like self-conidence in in many days in many

ways I think this is the thing that I'm actually pretty sure of like this is a unique contribution and why we're well placed to do this. Um, and so if you know the history of the the P2P Foundation, we had like a really good run until 2018. Then we had some issues around identity politics and we kind of kind of had some yeah some splits and stuff. So it was a bit of on hold and so now we're coming back and this is going to be our priority. So this is going to be um and so I think you said Jeff. So this is the idea that this is my big critique of web 3 and of technology people in general like they talk to each other they look at each other but they

don't go down to the nitty-gritty the production like and here I'll be frank with you in that sense I'm still a kind of a Marxist which I was like 40 years ago and then gave up but where is value coming from who keeps the surplus I'm sorry to say this is still a very valid insight side, right? If we don't keep the surplus, if we don't redistribute the surplus and invest the surplus ourselves, we're nothing. This is this is what we need to do. This is very important. We have to acrue acrewue knowledge. So, sorry for the hippies like no, we can't redistribute everything all the time. We need to put

things aside to invest in the future, right? And we have to be strategic about this. This is I think very very important. Um all right. Um yes maybe mention uh here on the bottom. Uh so my view is the following. Our view is the following. The archipelago of regenerative villages. This is a strategy. What's what's the difference? So you local and you actually regenerate your locality. You improve the soil, the water, the air, whatever it is that you're doing. This is the basis, right? You work with your mayor if you can with your governor, you

know, you work with the local authorities if you can. But what if you can't? You don't wait. We can't wait. So you at that moment what you do is you connect with other people doing the same elsewhere and you get your money your capital from everywhere it comes to your locality and etc etc. This is this is the important change right we don't wait we don't wait for the market we don't wait for the state we just do it maybe it's not easy in the beginning you know think about the beginning of the monasteries you know a few crazy people going to the desert right and then two 300 years later they're everywhere in Europe the richest institution

in on on the continent this is what we want to do it's very ambitious but this is what we want to do we don't want to be marginal We don't want to be alternatives. We want to build a new civilization on on these new principles. This is this is all right. yeah, so this is what we want to do. You know, local people, they know what they're doing. We don't know, right? So, you know, if you're doing anything regenerative, you're you're rooted. you we don't know but we know maybe better than you what other people are doing. So that's the

integrative role you know like do you know that these people have been doing the same thing and this is what works and this is what doesn't work right this is what we want to bring to the table this kind of collective knowledge and accelerate the learning um here I want to mention I don't know if NA is here it's the test okay you're here good uh uh you work with Austin Wade Smith I really love his work is um you know he has his book I think it's called ecological institutions and you know one of the things he's the new the the new characteristics of the new era are making nature visible to the human

because for since the neolytic we have made nature invisible to the human we don't care it's externalities and by doing this we have destroyed the the planet we are in the process of destroying our own planet and so we have to bring these signals into our view and we have to make decisions knowing the impact of our on the web of life the state of resources and on the climate etc etc so this is basically uh very important he has a really good idea I think so he says we need bio regional guilds so these are people are locally rooted

and want to stay local, you can go on holiday, don't worry. But, you know, this is your your thing. You're local. But we also want people who travel around absorbing lessons from different places and share them. And don't think this is a luxury. There studies about this, right? You know, most innovations come Thanks for dramatizing my my point. uh most innovations come from people who are do not belong to the region, right? So local people, you know, they're they're set in their ways like we are you we are good the way we're doing, right? And the real innovations

are even like new crops and stuff. They come from people who come from the outside, right? So think about the priests and the bishops. They're local. And then think about the prophets and the apostles. they're moving around right you need both so this is kind of I think a very interesting way to look at this and you know these are all suggestions that we will make how the people can organize right how they can uh basically connect the geosphere and the nuosphere right you know about this so this is this is the this is the geosphere right hard matter

the biosphere breeding biological principles. But here inside the skull, the nuosphere, right? If uh I talk on on Zoom or whatever it is that you have invented on top of your uh P4 thing. >> Yeah. Yeah. Uh and I use this with Jeff Yeah. >> Yeah. I use this with Jeff. We're in the newosphere, right? And this is the challenge of our civilization is binding together all the functional differences in the geosphere, but we don't grow the same in different

places. And the functional difference in the neurosphere, we have different skills that we can impart to each other over the new. And it's a combination of the two that is the condition for success. Uh yes, I just want to say this maybe we have all the tools but seriously like this is for the tech people. We have it already. Yeah. Seriously, we have everything we need. You know, we need some adaptations for this and for that. But we have uh this is where I think web 3 is useful. We now have universally universally programmable currencies that we can

design for ourselves. We can declare value sovereignity like this is how in my community I think how what value is. You can communicate and interact with other communities and you can decide how value can be distributed. We have that. We have accounting rea. We have threedimensional ecosystemic accounting. We have a universal ledger.

We have everything we need. There's nothing more that we need today. It's a matter of designing them integrative together for the benefit of a local community and how it can fit at the different scales by regional national. I think it will continue to exist for a while. Planetary and cosmolo is how we integrate all the levels together. Right? So planetary is not the same as cosmolo. Cosmolo is how we integrate all these different levels in a way that makes sense and that reinforce each other. So yeah, you just look at I'm not going to go through all the things, but imagine this because this is important.

So especially for Europe, right? Right now the Chinese are having a very good run, right? They are they have planning they have markets they have cybernetics and they engineer it in such a way that it's really working right now [snorts] and Europe is in a terrible mess we are disintegrating we not going forward is the question that I'm asking can we compete with the Chinese with that kind of technology No, it's too late and we don't have these capacities. So, we are going to need to uh transition to a new form of

industrialization and it's going to be cosmolo industrialization. It's going to be distributed manufacturing. I'll give you an example of something that actually didn't work out which is arrival but I it's a very good example of what can happen in the future. So they uh looked at car manufacturing and they reduced from they reduced it from 750 processes to like 50, you know. Then you have a place like this with some robots and they can make any van, any truck, any bus that you need

on demand. And think about this. This is what we have in mass manufacturing. We make everything in big places, right? And then we have over production and we need to mass market it. We need to push you, push you, push you to consume, to consume, to consume. So we moving to a different mode which is on demand production. We make it when you need it. We make it with biodegradable degradable material. So if you take off uh the chassis of the car, it's biodegradable. you replace it.

Every part is modeler and interoperable. So you don't have to throw away your car. You just change a p a piece of the car. Uh imagine this model for everything and particularly since we are here rural reindustrialization. This is going to be very very important. And think about everything that solves for example why do we have migration? Because people can't live in their locality. They can't live well in their locality. If they have this local production capacity, they can stay. And most people want to stay where they are. You know, they're happy in their culture, in their family, the way of life. They don't want to move, but they have to move. So, this

is going to be something also that's going to be very interesting for like a new kind of geopolitics that is not based on core periphery extraction, right? So and if it's open source that means that bit every region in the world potentially can use that technology in their own way adapt it etc etc. So think about all the waste material you have in a region like this. These are all industries that we can create in this new model. Right? So this is like the more strategic level uh rethink how we do industriization.

yeah. Okay. So you know we're doing a research we're going to do more research. Uh we want to strategize what we call road mapping. Uh convening is very important. Um I was working before 2018 with uh David Bolier and Silka Helfridge common strategies group and we did it about a dozen times and what did we do every six months? We invited people from two or three different groups. For example, open hardware and free software.

You would think it's the same, right? No, these people didn't talk to each other. They don't talk to each other. So, we would bring them together. And then, for example, the commons and the cor [snorts] you would think they're related. No, they don't talk to each other. Uh the commons of finance. And here's the secret uh sauce. Very simp. Oh yeah, that makes sense. Right. This is this is the future by the way because with the new media that we have, I can no longer assume that we come from the same world. Even if we're born in the same village, we don't have mass media

anymore, right? We don't watch the same TV programs. we don't we don't listen to the same radio programs. So we we're becoming highly differentiated through these social media and the the solution is not of course to make everybody think again the same that's not going to work but is is like worldview negotiation and discovery. This is the way I call multiscale universalism. Uh why am I saying this again? Let me see. Uh oh yeah convening, right? Convening. Um so convening is really like you know bringing groups together like capital

and let's say permaculture right let them talk to each other let them understand each other and so what happened when we did that is that 18 months later there were always collective projects combining these groups I can tell you this really works And it's so this is something that I really hate in our current culture. You have to do something you know you has to be productive. What where are the KPI? No. No.

Talk to each other and create the conditions for the for all these projects to emerge out of that. It really works. You know why we have rock and roll? you know 60 you know is because we had a lot of young people with no jobs and unemployment money that happened in 60s right so they didn't have to job right away and they became creative and they created rock and roll this is called a seniors seniors creates the conditions for genius right if you have a genius is because there was a senior so we have to design these geniuses and we'll create a

lot of geniuses. Some people they don't need the seniors. They just that's just genius on the start, right? Uh yes. And then okay, pilot projects, incubation. Uh I think I'm about the end of my rope here. Um yeah, I think we said all of this. Do you want to say anything about P4P again just for the people who might not know what it is? So I'm just saying that in technology wise of course we observe what's there we try to you know integrate it bring it to each other but we also doing our little own source secret sauce source as you call it so maybe you just speak two three minutes

about the secret sauce >> all right [snorts] yeah this is the secret sauce right here the secret sauce >> secret sauce Um, >> very secret. Um, so I mean I think you know uh what's her name? Mariana Maticado wrote the the m moon mission or she's talking about the benefits of the um side effects. You know we invested heavily in the moon race and we got all sorts of these benefits. I mean GPS for better or worse. um uh the internet, all of these sort of fell out of massive

investment and was not on the plan to getting to the moon, but all fell out as extremely useful technologies for the world. Uh and I think this uh convening of, you know, I met Michelle, I mean, I've known him for years, but met him again in February and uh at Davos or the World Systemic Forum and he said, "Oh, the P2P wiki is down." And I was like, "What?" uh a few the team's been working on it for a few weeks. I'm like, "I think we can get that up tonight." So I went home and scraped it and put it back up and he was like a is there more we can do and I was like yeah we can do anything. Um so this kind of uh you know came out from that reconnection and collaboration um reconnecting with um other collaborators from decades ago um

and just getting into sort of you know solving our own problems. We realize there are some of these like holonic or fractal patterns even down into like your data ontologies. So I think we are like on the cusp of new commons-based data structures that are outside of corporate and and sort of like computing as we think of it today. Um a lot more info to come but uh so far this has been one of the most I think fruitful and interesting discoveries was you know not just the application of cosmolocal technologies but the discovery of perhaps new cosmolo data ontologies that could who knows revolutionize computing or

bring it back from this top-down sort of uh prescriptive um dealt by the corporate monopolies and more from people who create systems that work for themselves and then share those patterns in a much more like biological manner like how mycelium or how actually yeah I guess that's um another thing we've been working on is is the sort of antithesis of AI if AI is the the yang it's masculine it's driven it's powerful it's directed um but the other side of that is the yin is the mcelial intelligence uh and I think we have an opportunity for contextually aware data data to reduce our computation requirements from

AI because your data is just so much more intelligent and this actually tracks with what's going on in the tech track uh and what Deca is saying about your context and about how your files are organized like now that we have AI it's like oh we can do anything um but really it's comes down to computation efficiency token efficiency like someone was coming by my computer earlier and saying well have you spent $13,000 in tokens in tokens yes but not in the subscription. But if we're going to start self-infrastructuring these things, those are the costs for the like level of AI compute we're doing. So if we can reduce that by an order of magnitude or two with new, more efficient computational formats, that's revolutionary. Uh and I think it means

we don't need to rely on these frontier models. We can have much less powerful AI and much more powerful MI. Uh your myelial intelligence, the contextual awareness of your data. >> [applause] >> I like to stay in the center of attention. So that was enough. That was enough. >> [laughter] >> Um yeah and maybe one thing that you didn't say is uh we we work a lot around reticulum uh which is a new meshwork that is able to continue to exist when the internet stops existing and so we

are building stuff on top of that. So of course we don't have expertise let's say in supply chain for cars right so we're working at a kind of like a higher level of abstraction that can be used uh in these different uh more specialized technologies um and yeah I mean I I do want to say that you know working with Jeff and Mikuel and Brian we have really smart people Steph sorry I forgot about you because I didn't know you I didn't even know you were working with us Uh, so that's, you know, maybe you didn't know it either.

Uh, so we, yeah, and the biggest mistake I made is putting Brian and Jeff together because then they stop working for me and they're doing this genius technologies. Uh, that was a mistake. Uh, but it's like this. Okay. So just a bit wider, right? So I consider these are the people on the ground here and these are the people that we want to mobilize to help these people. So and this is really like different than web 3, right?

We I know okay I I I'm old. I have to come up with really old references. Barefoot doctors. Does anybody know what barefoot doctors are? Yeah. Uh so this is a Mauist reference. I'm sorry. uh but you know there were a lot of poor people not enough doctors so they trained millions of people with basic medical information and send them out in the villages right so what I mean to say with this we need technologies who are the service of the people who do the production and the creation of value instead of like staying in this separate sphere and only talking to each other and then saying oh we have this solution

please use it I think we we need to turn that around. So we need to talk to uh eco villages, permaculture and we need to ask them what do you need to scale to to do better to get more social and political power. So this is the kind of reversal that we have in mind. Um yeah, so this is the people that are working for the moment. So, it's a small and I'm really sorry. Uh, Steph, I I didn't put you on. This is bad. This is really bad. But Steph, I don't even know your last name. I don't even know your last name. Uh, but the lady with another dress every day uh

from uh Mexico. Great. Yeah, it's uh great to to have you on board. Um Yeah. So, One more slide. >> Is there one more slide that I didn't know of? >> Yes. >> Okay. And >> yeah. Okay. Okay.

so Let me tell you tell you a little bit of an anecdote how this picture came to be. Uh 15 15 years ago I was invited by the mayor of Shanghai Boxil of course not personally but like through this through this network uh to do a panel on distributed manufacturing in China. So really top down you know major we I was staying sevenstar hotel apparent.

Uh when we went out there were like seven policemen clearing the street and then one day they said, "Oh, you have to take a picture." So this is the picture taken by the exclusive photographer of the Chinese police bureau. So this is the guy. Yeah. This is this is the guy who does go by chef and you know uh and you know I wasn't ready. I had this like gobo shirt on and but oh we we're going to take your picture. Okay.

So wait wait wait it's not finished yet. Uh then my wife changed my Facebook picture. >> Yeah. And I [laughter] and I had 30,000 views in two days. This This works. This works. Yeah. This is a This is a power picture. Yeah. So, when I lack confidence, I look at my pictures and I say, "Okay, >> you're the man, right? [applause] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. [applause] As I told you, I'm coming back. Uh I'm

I'm coming back. Uh we are coming back and I do think that Zachary was supposed to be here to like Oh, you are there because this is one thing. Do you do you but do we do Zach first or do you want Okay, I just wanted to throw in a thank you for Pablo who helped with the visual identity. And there's Yeah. [applause] uh you can see that we're sort of loosely stringing this together, but it's based on a lot of deep work, but the the plus side of that is that almost everybody in the room to some degree has contributed through some indirect special mycelial way. Um, so I wanted to

thank you and yeah, I think if you had anything further to say, I'll pass the mic back, but we'll have Zachary and potentially Mikuel come up to >> throw something to warm up the So, I have to tell you a secret, which is I cannot ask for money and for some to some miracle to some miracle I've survived seven years uh after 2018. 18. Uh, so money came to me and then it stopped coming to me. So I think we need somebody who is better at that than me.

And that's what sack is doing. >> Happy to be here. We need more than your money. >> To quote a preacher I saw years ago, I want more than your money. I want your soul. So, first I want to tell you a little story if that's okay because I've got gotten to know Michelle Bowens, I'd say quite well over the last few years. We just went really deep into the meta myth of Michelle Bowens and the Cosmo Local Foundation or initiative. And this man has truly lived an amazing life. This is one human being who has lived the cycles of history. He has gone from a child screaming in an insane asylum abandoned by his mother to a communist

news boy on the street to living in a sex cult to spiritual cult collapsing to getting high up in the business world, cooking the books for the for the corpos to uh let me see then to uh to to the regenis of being truly embraced by the world becoming the the rare good guru giving the blessings to people to getting cancelled to continually recurring into this historical cycle of identity formation and collapse.

And that is what we're all going through here today as a civilization. We are going through a cycle of history that is very predictable. We see it. We understand how it works. And we're in the phase of collapse. And so we're faced with a choice here and a quest, an amazing question. If we see this, if we've lived it, can we transition historically into a new mode of production, into a new political economy, into a new global identity without an identitarian collapse? So, the cosmolo initiative is a great word. It's going to take initiative from each of us here.

Building a new civilization, growing it is not going to be easy. In fact, it's going to be the most difficult thing that any of us ever does as it gets easier and easier and easier. And so, our quest is really to scale family to civilizational scale. And that's going to take all of us really coming together and connecting and sharing and living these values. We've got to level up. We've got to transition. And that's a personal cycle that each of us are here to walk. And that's an amazing adventure ahead of us. But it's going to take serious commitment. It's going to take serious investment. And there's so much wonder and possibility here.

There's so much excitement. There's so much to do and to build and to create and to dream. And right now, as pedantic as it might seem, I think it's quite fitting that it's that it's time that people like Michelle Bowens get what they're due because you weren't giving your work away for free. You didn't ask for money because you were investing in the future of humanity. And it's about time that the returns start coming in. So I'm here to invite you into this journey with us to invite you to become knights of the commons and protect this beautiful planet and make possible this dream of a of a cosmolo civilization, a a convivial

a convivialization beyond civilization. and to support this project because this man and this beautiful team, these brilliant people as so many other people out there in the world who are waiting to join this mission are critically underresourced and need the support. And it's like if we want others to invest in our system, in our utopia, not a failed, another failed utopia by the way, a protopia, we have to go first. And that gives us the option to lead. We lead by stepping into this new world and putting our money where our mouth is, putting our skills where our bare feet are and walking forward boldly. And so that's an invitation to everyone in this room, to everyone watching to support this

project to bring your initiative, which means funding. I mean, we're starting with the crowdfunding round and we're going to go toward a much larger round because ultimately we want to construct new structures for capital to common for us to create a massive initiative of projects all over planet Earth coming together and connecting and creating this to create a whole new technological substrate like do we not think that's valuable? Do we not think that that can make money? Do we not think that that's going to produce brilliant returns if we can get in on the ground floor of a new civilization? what could be a better investment opportunity into all of our futures. And so that's not just a call for funds, but but it is a call for funds and I expect everyone in here to support because we've all gotten benefit

from this beautiful vision and we're all a part of it and we're investing in our own comments of our own future. But this is also an invitation for the initiative for us to come together and give our skills and and show that money is not the only form of wealth. money is not the only capital and that each of us in this room are far more valuable and far more wealthy than we think we are. We're just undervaluing our contributions. So, this is an invitation to join the quest. Pardon my French. To contribute with our skills, our resources, our time, our energy, our dreams, our visions, and to I just want to say something because I I I hate forgetting. I want to

thank Felix and the Commons hub, you know, creating this atmosphere with so bright people. So, I really hope you're successful in continuing here. And I I told somebody if I was young today, I would buy a house here just to be around the people. So, yeah, I think you know if we look at our coalition and our partnerships that certainly in my view this is this is part of the ecosystem. Just before I forget, I wanted to say this La last word. Our greatest capital is our relationship capital is our connections. We know people. We are the mcelium. It's not about a lack of money.

It's about a lack of connection. So get out there and start weaving like Leo over here legally blind weaving his ass off all over the web spreading this. Like come on now. Get it together. >> Um yeah. So I I think now we can have a conversation. Uh I wasn't supposed to facilitate this but uh uh Stefan uh you have a question. Do we need another mic? >> Ah okay.

>> Okay. All right. I do at times also move in quite conservative circles and they are aware of the term gloal meanwhile everybody is aware that his car has like parts from all over the world in it or the handy or whatever but if I would drop this term cosmol local there I I I imagine that there's the oh it's an esoteric thing and this shut down so no I want it don't want so how would you or how can we bridge between global and cosmolo or or

may I continue using like local as a kind of step towards that? You have ideas on that? Um so generally speaking I think uh we we have to use our language and explain to people what we mean uh you know because you always get uh oh people we don't understand it or it will be recuperated. Yes it will always be recuperated like already now people are using cosmolo in like very weak uh definitions. So what we mean is this global layer of shared knowledge, right? That's what we mean when we say the co the cosmo. So local is is much just saying you know we make

things everywhere and and uh and so what what I get upset is uh you know web three people and they type in their computer and they say I'm Cosmolo. Uh no it's not it's not enough right? It's it's about production, creating value and learning together on a global scale. So if you want to call that gloal and explain that way, I'm fine with it. I mean, I'm not controlling your language use, but also at some point we have to teach people, you know, think about the Quran or the Bible or capital for marks.

It ch they changed the world and they didn't speak to 80year-olds. These are extremely complex. you don't barely understand what they're saying and yet they conquer the world. So I don't think it's a question of always like you know going down going down you know like newspapers in the west they they when I was young they they always said you have to write for a 16 year old now you have to write for 80 year old >> so we're making people stupid they have to make an effort too right like learn the stuff make an effort that's my view >> yeah um all right after this Michael you

>> I got a practical way where I guess I could see envisioning funds getting funds like first off just if I saw USDT deposit address or Bitcoin you already had money but I didn't see it [laughter] I'm just throwing it out there because I didn't see it there and >> yeah yeah >> I'm just saying I'm like >> so that's just one little observation there more proof that we're not that good at doing that yet. >> And then um and so you know how when you go to liquor store a store says you want to round up the cents for the children in Africa. So like for example in my platform where I'm API aggregator I got a lot of vendors all kinds of stuff. I was already architect a section where I

put a certain community you know and I guess you can call it the commons parallel society. Yeah, I don't know. We need a word that we could all agree to where all this fits. I could profile all the companies and when anyone ever sends a transaction, you could say, I want to round up, put a penny, and they put the drop down and all the volume that goes through the platform, you'd get microtransactions just going to your wallets, but I need a name of what you call all of this that normal people would understand. And then a profile in the page and it'll just be like when they go to the supermarket, round up the cents to this, >> I think.

>> I don't know. I'm just throwing that. I think we just found our financial advisor [laughter] and so [cheering] and just just a little anecdote. So you maybe know that Satoshi I was the first and the last person he wrote to outside of the crypto mailing list. He published his white paper on my on my site and he wrote to me and he said, "Shall I send you a few bitcoins?" and I answer his letter, but I didn't answer to that. So, this is bad karma, man. It's uh but I've been rich. Been rich.

>> Yeah. >> Yes. I I just >> Yeah. Along along this line, Ernesto, I just wanted to add you Um sorry I just wanted to add you that yes the funding mechanism are going to be key and uh they are of course funding the initiative but also helping the community in a mial way like of course Jeff described many times and the point is that this is capital is not going to be control on anything of the organization or on any communities is basically an investment in resilience that's what I wanted to add that's Thank you, Mikuel. Um, I just wanted to

also throw open the floor to Roberto. I think something that's very obvious from the feeling in the room at the moment is how convivial our spirit of working is. Um, Roberto has been a collaborator of mine in the past and he's worked on a project called Hollands and he had some very interesting ideas for how this could be applied to the mutual aid network, the mutual redistribution between the technologists projects and the on the ground projects. So, if you want to speak a little about that, that would be great.

>> Can read my mind. >> Go ahead. Yeah, not 100% sure which part you want me to talk about. Uh but um by listening at the presentation and and seeing all the how this is structured, I was like yeah oh yeah we are a by regional node at Limino village. We are spreading into the b region with the network. We have developed the technology that is supporting the understanding of where the resource flow where the needs are and basically what it needs is a tap to actually get to the higher level where we can actually get the funding to

actually doing what we're what we're doing and the same technology can be used anywhere. So I was thinking this is a perfect fit for the Cosmological Foundation. And so I'm thinking like yeah um in terms of regenerative nights uh you got my sword, >> right? Yeah. I have to tell you what we don't talk about publicly but we talk a lot about privately is like medieval stuff. [laughter] >> Yeah. And by no but seriously you know if you want to look at the distributed society the European middle ages were distributed society like a decentralized everything was based on contracts on m

mutual agreements you know very distributed governance methods um and the nice thing just maybe the anecdote um uh you know how do you keep a society like in the middle ages working you know with these brutal warriors is you you you need to transmute that negative energy into something positive, right? So they did that with the samurai through Zen and we did it in Europe with the knights. Knights they have to defend the orphans and the uh and the widows. uh so I mean that's in that spirit that we talk about this is that we need to create a group of people that is really committed to changing the

world and and you know for a higher purpose not just like selfishness. So just saying given the background to these uh things. >> I just want to add that you just told me this the other night that it takes night. It takes 100 commoners to fund one night. So I think we have about half right here in this room. So you know uh I did want to add actually a little more specificity to the ask. I think money likes specificity. I think what we've been sort of talking about here is a multi-stage round starting with our actual networks kind of a foundational crowdfunding the local side of the Cosmo fund which is raising around $300,000 to get the core team funded and resourced so that we can actually build the design

of this larger structure which is really going to be seemingly moving into a a distributed sort of um well really I mean it's it's it's a whole new mode of production right it's a whole new way of producing technology of funding projects and we want to create this new model, this cosmolo initiative, this federated way of chaining projects together all over the world eventually into a fund that can be creating an investment commons where imagine we're stewarding the resources of thousands maybe millions of projects, initi uh innovations, technologies all over the world coming together to support humanity collectively. So this is an enormous opportunity. It's going to take a tremendous amount of capital in all

forms and it starts right here and right now. This this by the way is our first sponsor. Haha. So the way [applause] >> we go to questions. >> Yeah. We're alreadying the question. >> Uh we have a newsletter sign up on cosmoloc.world. So if you want to go there, there should be a newsletter sign up. There will be a QR code on this screen in the next few minutes, but

it'll also be on the website uh perhaps to an older fundraiser. We didn't set up a proper GoFundMe for this, but we want to figure out the proper channels for the funding that's going to come in because uh there's a lot of work to be done. Um QR code will be up on the screen shortly. Sign up for the newsletter and Michelle's going to close us out. >> All right. Any any last uh interventions? >> It's Saturday. We don't want to take you too long. You know, it's uh we need a break today.

>> I just wanted to ask um I I have a poem that might fit to this maybe a little bit of a celebratory moment. Are you guys keen? >> It's the ever spiraling song. >> The ever spiraling song. >> Yeah. [clears throat] It's great. Passion screams fruitless lies in the endless pit of mundanity.

Modernity leads a truthless life caged by careless conformity and a thousand new tongues sing in unison. Will our purpose ever be revealed? Will our predicament ever be resolved? Will we ever stop the search for meaning? Will there ever be an end to all this dreaming? Trying to to bite the divine bullet, it crashes. It crashes through our skull, paint violently, painting the world weird with the unrealized visions of our splattered brains. Our eyes dangle like overripe fruit from tired nerves ready to be

harvested, ready to see the limits of reality tested. How did we end up here between running and barely breathing? The feet had tricked the mind into leading with no past nor end in sight. Our tired our tired dangling eyes had tried to provide the last of all remaining light. What happens if their final spark has been spent? What should come of our glorious visions of the end? The world would turn dark. It would all become clear that yes, care has always been the ground of all fear.

The eyelids lift. The ground of reality shifts. The cosmic clocks start spinning. And a thousand lit eyes finally sing in unison that dreaming is indeed the substance of meaning. Let us dream up to wake deeper. Let us let us dance as light and darkness intertwined. Let us grow as children and parents of our time. A time to pierce the veil between body and mind into a space where we shall come to find that mute tongues can't sing of beauty if they don't take part in the sacred duty.

That is to speak of the world as a dream yet to come. That is to create as we speak as an ever spiraling song. >> Thank you, Daniel. That was beautiful. I'm going to pick up from there on a on a much more uh bureaucratic note.

>> The serious guy. Um Lorenzo had a great comment and question about transparency, financial transparency. This has all been very ad hoc and wonderful to my mind. But uh once we get the donation portal live, we will definitely have up on the website uh a deeper explanation of what the what the ask is for, where the funds are going. But in broad strokes um as per the presentation we see research as the initial phase and generating uh a redistributive mutual aid network and pilot projects incubation perhaps as further down the track. So we'll get that live and we'll we'll formally provide that level of

transparency so that people can participate in in the initiative in the way that excites them potentially with their excess funds. uh in a way that's by the book and proper channels. Um but if you want to donate because you're excited and that doesn't matter to you, I'm not going to stop you. [laughter] So I'll hand it to Michelle for closing notes. >> Um yeah, one one of the beauties of web 3 uh is that I always discover secret donations in my wallet. like I don't know where they're coming from. Uh but like every time I'm just like at the end of my rope financially speaking because as you can see my my morale is pretty

good. Uh yeah it's so anyway um yeah anybody who has like uh you know if you have a beautiful software that makes it easy for people to see how we get and how we spend our money come to find us. We are open to these type of solutions. uh you know basically we're going to pay ourselves wages when we can and then everything else will go uh in in the movement. Um you know also if you have funds and you don't want to give them to me if you want to like an advisor you know to redirect some of your funding into productive projects that's also thing I I would be happy to do. So we don't need to control anything. Um also

courses I give pretty good courses on civilizational transition uh either alone or with some people I work with. I can do this uh like a week in some place you know Monday, Wednesday, Friday give people time to digest because it's kind of intense. Um so there's plenty of possibilities but certainly also I think our knowledge needs to be spread. So I'm talking to a few people about publications program like every four months a little pamphlet. Uh we need to get these ideas out. That's that's also very important and any we can we accept any help any collaboration just find us and talk to us and okay ah

>> and also consultation I mean a big part of the convening is that we need to learn from existing uh mutual aid redistribution networks exactly how we should be structured to fit with your existing grant redistributions or people like Graeme have already asked us like if I want to present cosmolocism to my municipality for potential projects, what can I say practically and we need you to come and talk to us and help us to better serve the network? just mentioning if you're a powerful person I also did a lot of policy work I worked with Pope Benedict twice the mayor of Gent the mayor of SE the

president of Ecuador so we do like advice on policy transition commons transition policies uh you know our work is very wide we we have there's actually a page on publications that I should look up in the wiki but we we've we worked on accounting the evolution of accounting thing. So I mean the body of knowledge that we have is really broad and deep at the same time. So yeah, I think the the universe is uh big and opportunities are numerous. So just come to find us and see how we can advance this agenda. We would love to work with the people who are here especially.

>> Great. All right. So I I want to close but >> if you feel inspired look at the screen there's a beautiful cure code >> you can directly >> walk the talk with your money where your heart is speaking. >> Oh >> good to see you. >> That was me redirecting some value towards you. I I really thought this was a divine intervention or that or that uh Jeff had programmed some like voice in the machine. Uh so Zachary as well as >> I just wanted to say um >> the the link on the screen goes to a fundraiser for uh Michelle's health

cost. This was from he suffered three strokes he mentioned kind of but um it's actually been incredibly inspiring working with Michelle and you know the day or two after a stroke I mean we're on the phone with his family and the next day he's like okay I'm ready back to work and it's like take it take a few days and he's like no no I can't I can't do anything else here we've got to let's keep going. Um so if anyone has uh we will get a Cosmolo proper fundraiser up but this basically goes to the same place. What we're trying to do is support this movement. Um pay these very lovely people some wages and then have more to share through the network and and build these initiatives together. Um so if you feel like it's on the QR code and we'll make sure to get something on

the website as well. I want to speak to the the just real quick that the the the stroke was what inspired me to reach back out to Michelle. I immediately saw this is an incredibly important moment. It's a fin it's a threshold, you know, and it's a moment of transformation. It's a moment to turn things around because, you know, you're not going to live forever. Michelle is not going to live forever. You know, none of us is. But this this threshold is really humanity's threshold that we're facing down our mortality and this is an opportunity to really secure a legacy. I think this that's the word that I keep coming back to here that this is this is what this project is all about. It's about a legacyoriented system. It's not about short term. It's about long term and

it's about taking incredible knowledge and wisdom that Michelle and the a huge myilated body of work that he's been assembling convening over the last 70 years into something something like that 80 years 100 years [laughter] into something that actually spread and trans. So going beyond just saying like oh well coaching and consulting and you know there's a whole meaning economy that we're really working to build here and to create scalability transformation we can scale cheeseburger trans all across the planet thousand locations in a year why can't we scale an uple our consciousness into a cosmolo civilization scale understanding so

that's yeah it's all about legacy >> so just one more thing so one more thing so you know a lot of intellectuals They research, have ideas, and then they have an utopia. Everything I've done is actually listen to people. So my wiki is 25,000 articles. I didn't invent any any of these concepts. They they come from people like you who've done stuff. And I think that's a new way of working that is really important. Also look at my wiki.

I don't write my articles. It's is I construct articles through contributions of various people. We are the only multiperspectal wiki in the world. I think I've never seen anything like it. Everybody, you know, neutral point of view means there's one point of view. You go to the wiki and you see people forward against the blockchain for the Bitcoin and you make up your I think this is the way to go. So now I'm going to be forever quiet here and uh Felix is >> I sincerely hope not forever quiet. Michelle, >> thank you. Um [applause] I didn't want to take much space in this but I do feel uh that uh

heartfelt thank you Michelle for being here with us for having our back collectively civilizationally know that we have your back as Great. >> I think this is the end. Thank you for coming. I I'm very heartened by your enthusiastic response. I'm very honored to be amongst, you know, people who've been working like me uh on changing the world and yeah, keep

it going and connect with us and maybe we can converge and and do something together. Thank you. [applause]