Ep 18: Self-Driving Cars & Animated GIFs save the world

The Christian Transhumanist Podcast

Amy and Micah tackle self-driving cars, the rise of nomadic culture, how stories create technology, and why animated GIFs are saving the world.

• The challenge and danger of a networked world, now becoming part of our driving experience!
• The sad admission that Micah has not yet seen Battlestar Galactica
• Tesla autopilot and Tesla Summon, which is basically like Knight Rider
• Tesla driver caught sleeping at the wheel of self-driving car. Unrelated: The first self-driving car crashes.
• Personality “paleo” — Micah and Amy’s weird reversion to primordial state
  • Filmstrip projectors, Betamax, and renting VCRs
  • How Micah grew up watching black&white TV while thinking it was in color
  • Being really ticked off when watching wide-format movies on TV
  • How Micah’s dad’s bedtime stories foretold TiVo decades before it showed up
• How stories provoke technology, as told by Mark Hamill in a gold velour suit
  • Disney’s Tomorrowland makes another appearance
  • Why the scientific process and the creative process are the same thing. A scientific hypothesis comes from creative leaps, just like experiments in art. Einstein was an artist.
• The Unwritten — the only comic series Micah reads
  • “Just a story? Tell that to the Greeks who fought at Troy. Tell the women burned as witches. Tell the martyrs of all the religions... Stories are the only thing worth dying for!” - quote from The Unwritten
• Fascists are terrible artists, but they’re great designers
• Extemporaneous interpretation of John 1. Who is the Word? Hint: it’s not the Bible.
• Technology is a way we engage our creative process, as beings made in the image of God, and partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4)
• Successful people, psychopaths, and creative individuals
• Self-driving cars and the return of the nomadic lifestyle:
  • Long Long Trailer, Lucille Ball’s attempt at a self-driving car lifestyle
  • Instead Of Renting An Apartment, Sign A Lease That Lets You Live Around The World
  • Digital mailboxes let you get mail online
  • Micah’s experience growing up as a nomad
• How we’re actually living in the 1500s
• Amanda Palmer, the art of asking
• How animated GIFs are changing the way we communicate
• Star Trek, Darmok episode about metaphors and how we communicate
• Greg Egan’s Diaspora about a translation project to bridge the worlds
• Paul’s speech on Mars Hill, to unify humankind
• Fundamentalism is a new invention