 So, welcome to our next session, I would say, Utopian Hacker Group Therapy Learning to Retain Hope and Work Towards a Brighter Future, featuring Silic, Dakora and Naaman. And I guess you will introduce yourselves and yeah, have a great session then. Hello and I know what lifeforms are in this room. It's nice to have you as Khaleesi already introduced us. We are the Utopian hackers who are being set, actively being set about the state of the world and we want to work towards kind of making it better and assemble and deal with that in a positive constructive way. How do we retain hope? How can we still do something and work towards a brighter future without using hope? Right, and that's the topic of discussion today. Just for you and the audience who are here locally, this is kind of a discussion group that you can at any time join in and ask questions. You can also ask questions in the chat. As Faxpreet just said, you can just ask and then we'll read them or you can open your mic and partake in the discussion yourself and you should know that this event has been recorded. There's an audio recording but not a video recording. And maybe we'll publish that later if you want to join into the discussions with your audio feed. You should know about that. I'm Bakora and I'm here with Salix and Neyman. You both are Utopian hackers. Salix, do you see yourself as more of a Utopian hacker or more of a Utopian artist? That's a good question. I think I would say artist just because my output doesn't always concern typical hacking spaces. It's not always technical but it's not always breaking and reordering things as well. Sometimes it's just creating. Yes, I think more artists but it's a spectrum. It's the first of always is and we've decided to do this panel because I heard he wrote a book about Utopias, right? Yeah, I am sorry. Can you hear the soaring noise in the background? I'm sorry for not that. I know. Okay, that's good. It's your neighbors working positively towards the future. They're using very artisanal, I think. Yeah, I wrote a book two years ago about a time traveler and he is dropped into contemporary Berlin by accident and writes a diary about her observations of our time but also compares it to her time. And the reason why I started writing that book was because I was annoyed by all this dystopian pop media and everything is full of zombies and I like zombies but I think it was just too much negativity so I thought I wanted to for myself try and think of a future that is still facing challenges but it's not afraid to face those challenges and has not given up on itself. We can actually affect something. I think we're very often like kind of celebrating the sort of problems we have and the sort of problems our societies are facing but then there's very often focus and what kind of bad things will the future bring and usually not on what can we actually do to make and spend on what can we do as a community and not just like as an individual consumer. So I always thought that, I mean, dystopian stories which are very popular in the past with science fiction are nice but sometimes they just look reckless because they show all the good of the technology and without any of their risks but then it is almost obsessive dystopia science fiction that has a few dozens of years is also a bit annoying because it does the exact opposite thing it shows all of the bad things and none of the good things and it affects you psychologically wise and I like nowadays like kind of science fiction stories which are, I mean they have cautionary tales so they don't say everything is good the technology only bring good things if they say anything bad it's like a cautionary tale like don't do this, this or that but they also don't live to dystopia and that's much nicer to read and besides the future you also have to think about the present and when I read all the dystopias it's really difficult emotionally. I mean, I always kind of want to, I don't want to see how things could turn out differently I mean, often these sort of stories are telling you this is how it's going to turn out like climate change is going to make the world terrible or it's like no it's not going to be that bad and they're like kind of making predictions and personally I don't think there's just one future, there's futures and what I really try to focus on is how to get there instead of like what is the possible space of futures because I think that's just huge. I also am a very small believer in the ability to focus an accurate future for more than one hour ahead I have no idea how this panel will end. It's very tough. Well, I think one idea or one thing that I find helpful is to not imagine a dystopia as like a prediction but more of a goal to strive forward to so that it's not something passive but more something that we can do our little parts to get there like making a congress for example. Yeah, that's true. Also, the dystopias give you hope and hope is a power that drives people in the present so it's not only a goal, it's also like motivation, at least for me. Yeah, that's what I hope this morning. I think it's a tool like everything else, right? If you use it in like a passive way then it makes you complacent because you think oh everything is going to turn out eventually but that is not what hope should be, right? It should be something like you said, like it motivates you to actually do something. Yeah, I mean eventually everything you do is in the present and the question is what do you do now? So hope is something that motivates you to make actions now. For some people dystopia is something that motivates you to do action now but for me it's the hope. I do things out of a happy place. I mean it's being motivated by fear versus being motivated like as you said hope. I mean because when you know how bad exactly it's going to get then all you're doing is trying to avoid something. I think it helps to like actually hold in your head when you want to be like what is the space that you want to be in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years and how you can get there instead of just knowing what you want to avoid. I mean fear is useful to escape but personally I don't find fear a very useful emotion to build. I mean for me fear is at least very much in the now. Like fear is something I'm experiencing right now and I might do something about right now like for instance getting away or having an argument with somebody something like that and it's not something I'm going to turn into some sort of long-term efficient. Yeah fear is a good motivator maybe again it really depends on the person but for me for a very short period, for an hour, for 10 minutes for you know a car is about to hit me and I'm afraid so I do the right thing. But for the long term fear is bearing you and what we'll hope and good feeling is something that I can build upon to work every day many hours. It's obviously depends on psychologically. So I had a thing, it's just an almost irrelevant comment like when I was inviting people to this panel I thought maybe this is a panel about the Topian Hacker's group Ferrati learning to retain hope and work towards a brighter future and this name turns out is a bit less catchy than you would imagine. So eventually I just showed it and said hey it's a Hacker's feel good group about the future so. That's great you should have told me I would have changed it. I mean I think all of us are on some level doing something to work towards the future but you're trying to use the internet and like online spaces to like work towards a mission and like building decentralized online communities. What is the image of online communities? What should there be like in 20 years? What is that image that you're working towards? What is your personal image up here? Okay I will try to say it without any words with triggers because lots of the words which we normally use in my ecosphere can mean so many things in different contexts and many people get triggered by that. So first the main thing that I do right now the last two and a half years is working on the web so the centralized web and I'm trying to So the almost obvious place to work on it is kind of a reaction to the current web which many people including myself would like but I try to work on it from the place that it's nice to have a web which is more democratic and more people actually doing stuff in it besides being users of platforms it's nice to have a web where lots of people can create together a platform. And that's my main motivation for what we do now. We try to create tools for creating, we are making tools for the center as well but the real goal is to have like democratic web in the future and democratic is one of the words that actually triggers people sometimes because democracy has kind of different limitations some of them are amazing and some of them are less good and we are in an infant stage you don't know exactly how is the democracy of the online platforms should be something that we experiment and find with time. I mean democracy is also an ideal that no practical attempt implementation probably reaches so I think that's a lot of I mean I mean people think democracy and substitute something that everyone of us that like some state as it exists in practice like Germany or obviously like any of these practical states does have issues I mean starting with something like climate change so substituting that to be an ideal is kind of possible because it's not ideal. Exactly. There is something more ideal in your democratic online governance project. Like especially we want to make tools and see and let we don't want to come and tell people who will join us this is how the democracy democratic structure of our platform is this is how democratic structure structure of a platform should be. I saw I mean there's lots of democratic like the central organizations now does and I saw it happen a lot and I am not a huge fan of it. We are more trying to build tools such that eventually when a community that has a platforms and governs that decides which democratic process they are interesting in they would be able to easily implement it. The main the main goal is to have an individual have more voice in the internet and mostly to have internet where the incentives are a bit different like not maximized profit but maximized benefit of the users something which I feel when I use all the CCC tools but I hardly ever feel when I go out of the hackers world. Yeah I mean it's like interesting because I mean there was a lot of hope for the internet 20 years ago when it was when it like emerged and now it's this corporate thing where we're like most of the big platforms are run by corporations but then on the other hand I personally always think there's still spaces like this one we're in right now where the corporate thing is not dominant. I mean the space we're in like people here they're all not corporate they're just like private people and we're on a platform that is run by individuals by organizations that are not not corporates so I think there's some space for that utopia that still exists but of course like the large internet that there's companies but the other stuff still exists. Yeah I completely sorry I was a bit distracted because there was a question here I tried to read the comments. I can read it. Maybe could you come at some point to where and how one got to act utopian it feels a bit like the whole world is higher in different sense and everywhere they have to be things to do or to be done I guess. So the question is about how do we get away from from like the big picture and from focusing on all the bad stuff and how do we get parts more focusing how do we go about focusing away from that. Alex do you want to answer that? I cannot answer that I can make suggestions though. I think or I can say how it works for me. Yeah exactly. I mean I don't think none of us has complete has complete answers to any of the issues. And then next week we do this and then after that we have utopia that's how it works. I think for me it helps to have little ideas in mind as to what is my personal utopia and to find people that share a big part of it as a point of view or maybe just a little part. So for example I volunteer in a group and there are a lot of people in this group that have different points of views and some are a lot more conservative than I am. However because we volunteer together I can see that my paradigm or my activism has an influence on their mindset so it makes them think more about inclusivity and about I don't know progressive ideas than they maybe normally would but it starts out with all of us wanting to help people. So we already found like a common ground there and then continue from there to work. I think my personal utopia yeah I think that you know like find your personal piece of little tiny activism and surround yourself with people that are active there. That's I think something that helps because yeah the world is on fire for sure. I think most of us would agree with that. So you are basically saying focus on the individuals and the individuals that you want to surround ourselves and the individuals that you want to help. Yeah people and ideas and make them into a nice mix. I mean so I would agree I have like three ways. So I'm a bit repeating myself but for me to have two topians basically means that in the presence to act out of a place of building things that I think which are good and building from a good place and the question for me is you know how do I reach this place in the present that I walk out of this motivation. So why is exactly what Silek said I have a friend who is the most optimistic person on earth and I have the Korra who is optimistic and such people you speak to them and they take everything in such a good optimistic way and it rubs on you which is amazing. The other thing for me specifically is when I do stuff I try not to do it like in a, at least when I describe it because words have influence I try not to say it's against something so that's why I don't like to say decentralized web because it means against decentralization I like to say nowadays democratic web. And for me it makes it like you know I'm building towards something not against of something which is already makes me feel less with the walls on fire and the last thing that I guess is a cliche but it does work for me in the information age I try to not watch the news and limit my social media who I follow because tombscrolling is definitely one of the things that take you to dystopia and I think that I reached a state that if something important happens I will hear about it so one of my friends will tell me I don't know I will hear about it I don't need to chase it and some people maybe think that this is a bit of closing my eyes to the wall but I just think there is so much noise that bothers me from thinking clearly and also maybe I'm emotional sensitive but every time I see there's something in the social media or in news even if it's not important it helps me somewhere here a bit and it just adds up so I try to minimize it here those are my three things but people are the most important influence I would like to reject the idea that I'm an utopian influence on you I would like to say that you're a very utopian influence on me you're much more cheerful than I am at least I think so maybe perception is different I think you said some very important thing there that it's like to also surround yourself with input that is positive but personally I think when you run a bar on something then you actually pull that information in and when you actually want to do something but maybe there's some time and space to just ignore some of that bad that happens like in the moment and then set aside times when you want to work on that or when you bar on something that is actually in your sphere that you can actually affect within the groups that you're part of and then also take time to enjoy and to take the proverbial walk or in nature or in the city for me personally it's always one step at a time so I try to not approach like I try to not solve a big problem I try to find a little problem that I can solve and that I can actually do something about and that like I try to find the things that are are close to me that are like happening in communities that I'm actually a part of that are right in front of my doorstep and that are actually kind of in my personal sphere of influence and that doesn't work I mean personally I've decided at some point to not do anything that is morally bad and just do adverse things that are morally grave with my work and I mean personally I think it would help a lot if people just refused or if they have the privilege to be able to do so just refuse to work for anybody that's not at least doing something that is ethically neutral and if they have the privilege and the resources to do so reject working for anyone that's actually on in the world because I mean that's real most people who are actually employed by somebody doing doing a lot of harm to the world they're usually the ones who are quite privileged actually nowadays yes nowadays yes I guess in the past it was probably different but nowadays yes I think I would like to challenge the notion of optimism not completely disagreeing but I think there can be different motivations to act towards utopian ideas and when you said you have a friend who is very optimistic I had to think about a very good friend of mine who was very optimistic also and we tend to discuss or find a lot about that because I feel like I'm very pessimistic just in comparison to him so I do not feel things are hopeless but I am very, I would say realistic and I get most of my energy from this very happy angry place so I see things that I think are unfair and do not make sense so I get angry and then I get busy that helps me to get up so I actually do have a high news consumption I don't do the doom scrolling I think but I do have a huge RSS feed and that gets checked a lot RSS feed I also have huge but it's different for me at least because it's of geek websites and blogs it's stuff that I'm waiting to see what's new but of course it depends on the resources it's the social media that I do the doom scrolling I think one big difference between social media and news there's a bunch but in terms of what is important to us here is most of the social media posts just give you a tidbit of information they make one point because it has to get across you in a limited amount of time and when you have a lot of different news sources I'm saying really diverse news sources different languages, different cultures, different topics you get a much broader picture of how complex the world is and I like that, I like that there are many doors and there are many obstacles and a lot of them interact in different ways and I think the complexity is something that we're going back to this idea of being an artist or being a hacker I think this is a very hacker idea that to dive into a problem of huge complexity and diving into a puzzle and that is kind of fun I mean to talk about the problematic aspects of optimism when I prepared this session I was talking to one person who ended up didn't really want you to attend because they basically said there's something very toxic to just being optimistic all you're doing and if that's the level you're staying on just being optimistic, you're not being realistic and you're just painting over reality you're painting a happy face over reality and that's not a good thing to do I mean when they said that I thought they were right you kind of want to stay optimistic and hopeful but you still want to see reality I think that is where you come in to actually get an accurate picture of reality instead of maybe the one that social media is trying to emotionally activate I mean that's what social media does I mean to retain your ship or to retain attendance basically social media algorithms tend to be optimized to multiply the posts that are most inflammatory that will get the greatest greatest reaction and the easiest reaction to get is fear and anger so that's what these platforms are here for and I mean maybe you're right that it's actually necessary to get a proper overview of like a field and properly study it instead of just studying kind of the social media input I have a question that I think everybody thinks right now how many sources of silence do you have in your RSS feed no it's a job but I guess it's really a lot no man how many do you have sorry I probably like 50, 60 so not that many I can hardly follow I'm just trying to check my podcast feed and I'm just scrolling there must be more than that I don't think too many, I think 50, 60, 100 like without the podcast that just wants to read but they are broad spectrum, I think that's the point because a bunch of them, you know, like if you get PPA and Reuters then it's the same news but they're from a different platform that doesn't really count but yeah, like try to, I don't know sometimes I read RG because I went a laugh just for the amusement of it like Postal Young like I said earlier then the sun and then Masha today yeah yeah, non-news podcast but also some news podcast, I don't know, do you know what they call non-news podcast go ahead, talk personally at some point I just tried to like, my medium is actually podcast and when I said I listened to hundreds of podcasts that was of course jerky, I'm not actually listening to much most of them are like that and I just haven't decided to eject them from my feed but I mean, I did go out and try to just see okay, like what kind of podcast can I listen to from the US, that's kind of like I mean, I'm bound to listen to more like leftist perspectives from the US because I don't think they are right but then I checked there are some podcasts there that are interesting but then from a lot of podcasts some Eastern European podcasts they're very interesting Eastern European podcasts yes, how do you find I didn't know it I just told you that there was like something for some it's actually very hard, I didn't prepare it do you guys want to start a pad, because I feel like I can always use new podcast recommendations maybe people will appreciate so the first thing that comes up from scrolling down is just the Otman History Podcast which I just basically gave me a world I mean, I just googled world podcasts and then I clicked National Podcast and then it was right down there and saw what podcasts were interesting Top Eastern Europe is what I found Okay, cool I'm much as a podcast of a new both and the little podcast that I listen to are in Hebrew so they're not relevant to anyone here it's my mother tongue I mean, Haritz has an English version so that is more interesting to listen to that's true I listened to this that I said as Samuel said here, I listened to lots of non-news podcasts about esoteric topics which I would never would get into because it's my escape time True so we wrote down some questions to change the subject here like when you have three questions, three pieces of homework because if you're like me, you found homework always particularly uplifting obviously not being serious but whether you've done your homework I know somebody who liked doing homework but maybe some people here are more inclined so one thing I at least asked myself to bring is good news some good news and for me like some very good news these past few years is there's a lot of online things like for me personally and it has given me the opportunities to see some people to partake in some events that I could have never taken part of pretty soon to that because of disability but also just because these things were easily accessible you can just like pop in some conference or something if that is just open and happening that you couldn't otherwise and you can start working with people from all over the world from the US, from other continents that would have been very hard 10-15 years ago and I didn't think that would have been usual just two years ago before the pandemic to do that that's very good news for me actually what sort of good news did you bring audience if you want to respond to that you would be happy about it if I could just comment about what you said I gave like a lightning talk in internet archive like a month ago and this is possible because of the pandemic otherwise I would never be able to do it so this is the good thing I'm definitely not happy with the last two years but this is one of the good things we care about Is there like some internet archive probably that you can go into or is it online I'm like picturing the internet archive office that probably doesn't even exist does it I think that we had physical meetups before the pandemic especially because in the online meetups we think how before that they used to go to physical meetups and go get drunk afterwards but right now it's definitely like once enough a dweb meetup of the internet archive is online I mean it's not my thing so I think that I can promote it with feeling good if you want to know the dweb I am the person who does the dweb came here to study from this meetup so many cool things what's the dweb can I explain dweb for a second okay but I didn't want to belgian and take the question of you've mentioned the term I have to explain it give it a second dweb is decentralized web and it's a movement that probably goes since many years I think that the first version of it that I know of is FreeNet which tried to do decentralized websites like many many years ago and afterwards I think it's called FreeNet right afterwards there was a zero net and that and all kind of stuff and the internet archive really got internet I'm not sure if we said it was dead but I know that we had like a dweb camp a few years back from 17 or 18 and the idea of the dweb is that the internet was supposed to be decentralized those of the internet protocols are decentralized like email and DNS that's what I want right now lots of people not decentralized I mean even email basically I had a non-gmail server and my emails keep on going to spam folders of people the dweb idea is to use is to build a deal web which is basically technically built upon peer-to-peer networks and practically is more democratic than the current web there are many different flavors of it there are flavors that use blockchains like especially decentralized services there are flavors that don't use blockchains at all there is Aragon which is like a dweb browser there are versions which are websites based on biturant most of it is in an ongoing experimental change meaning that I don't think anybody found yet right now what is the best way to do dweb but we have our own version from my project which is based on IPFS and EMS so dweb basically distributed web like technology used to make the web less centralized yes to make the web less centralized and in my point of view also to just make it more democratic more that people are not more than users but if you think maybe Wikipedia is a good example of what the dweb should be I'm saying it like with cautious because I know that I am not fully aware of the Wikipedia governance process I know that some people are in love with it and some people hate it and I didn't dive in to form an opinion but Wikipedia is basically something where people do a lot, does a lot of editing at least in the Hebrew Wikipedia they get a vote on favor decisions and the more you are involved as a user the more vote you have and Wikipedia treats everyone equally as far as I know so you can be a billionaire but you cannot it hardly helps you to modify your Wikipedia entry and so I think Wikipedia is kind of the vision it's not an infrastructure but it's kind of the vision as an example of what the dweb is that's pretty cool so there is one pretty big dweb thing I never thought of it like that I mean it's nice to know that it's actually happening so that should have given you all some time to think about the good news question Salix did you bring some good news yes but I was distracted because somebody posted the physical office of the internet archive and I looked it up on Google Maps and it does not look like it's it's not an office yeah but it looks nice all right anyway my good news yes we talked about this I am so so hyped that we have vaccines and that they are actually you know getting so much spotlight and that the development towards the use for other things than just the pandemic like cancer and HIV are progressing so fast I think that's so uplifting and gives me so much hope I mean having an HIV vaccine would be huge absolutely that's pretty damn cool did anybody else bring good news do you have personal good news or other good news what good news about the world I mean my good news is that so in this dweb3r building which is based on ENS and IPFS there are already a few thousand websites and right now we have like a simple search engine but we are building for it and we are doing the moderation of it and we had to block only two websites there is no porn there is no I mean there are some things which are controversial but nothing really evil and I think it's amazing that all right what do you think you can discuss about you can reasonably have a discussion about yeah sorry but all things that you can have reasonably a discussion about yes a reasonable discussion or even you know there is real evil evil and there is just stuff which is completely opposite opinion of mine but it's not racist crime criminal stuff yeah I think that's pretty fantastic news yeah this will change and we reach a hundred thousand websites with it I mean hopefully that stays the way as it grows which might be tough because when things get bigger maybe it's started John there are more people who are who are not really who are not really there to be constructive there are more I've asked some other questions and one thing that would interest me is what are things that actually didn't end the world because when you think about like we have all these all these things that are supposed to end the world I mean the big one for the last years was atomic weapons and up to now it hasn't happened at least I think so I think somebody would have informed me and then there are slides of really esoteric stuff like the 2012 the 2012 superist end of the world from the Mayan calendar which is I mean that's the real it wasn't going to happen in any case but we didn't know that we didn't know that for sure I mean there could be a pink elephant outside my window right now flying and flipping its wings it's just very unlikely but I mean when I wondered the question personally I also thought there are some ends or faults that actually did happen because I mean when we think about the end of the world we always think about our own end of the world and like when you think about it there have been a lot of civilizations that have stopped that stopped being what they were before due to I mean due to just stopping or due to being replaced by something else or due to things like colonialism so I mean that I think there's also something to think about that actually some ends of the world did happen but is there anything in your lives or in your that drew particular attention for you that didn't end the world or things that turned out better we talked about podcasts before and I think a lot of you know the flash forward podcast they they did an episode on the millennium problem and you know if you are old enough you remember like it's the computer was going to stop counting after 2000 because of digits you know and then that didn't happen and everybody laughed about it and was like oh you know it's never was a big problem but she actually pointed out that a lot of people foresaw that it could be a problem and worked on it a lot to prevent it from being a problem and so they did so that's actually really a catastrophe that was worded by what's the episode of hindsight like foresight you know yes so you have the same thing now I think with quantum computers like if quantum computers really are implemented all of our cryptography I mean lots of our cryptography will be absolute but there are so many people who work on it with foresight on quantum computer like post-quantum computers encryption and it's exactly from the same motivation that you said and if eventually quantum computer will be invented or implemented in a solid way and nothing will happen it will be partly thanks to that I know an interesting aspect that was often done to end because we prevent that from happening here's one contribution from the other attendees one good news is people most of them are good and nice like the people taking part on RC3 it's so nice to see many people who are so different and have the same ideas about the world and how it should be and there's another contribution I just wanted to let you finish your sentence perhaps exceeding the obvious good news RC3 is happening so many of us will get to interact with or just watch people we enjoy not nearly as significant as the good news like vaccines but good also so RC3 is happening I mean we didn't exactly expect RC3 to be an end of the world I've been told there will be one tomorrow but I don't think it's going to be as bad on vaccines and vaccines are a good point I mean I think vaccines stopped a lot of faults from ending yes we didn't thought RC3 will end the world but some people thought that the consolation of the Congress will end the world so it's good news I've been told there is a sort of world that you can't run around you need to stop that but it will survive in our memories even after the savers are stopped I mean personally I think there's really a lot of examples of like I mean there was I had a panel discussion with a person who talked to 9 months ago and he made the point that problems and problems are something you solve and then there's catastrophes and catastrophes actually changed about urine and I mean one thing I personally tend to think about is that catastrophes they're usually sent after like something big changes in your life or on a more grand scale and there's people to remember that and there's some continuity there are things changed that are over us sometimes they're just different but there's still some continuity there and if a world has ended I mean there's some other world I mean I think in some ways like the world we currently live in I mean that has to end there's a lot of things about this world that have to end and in the next 20-30 years this world is going to change a lot in a way that makes it completely different but that doesn't mean that won't be a good world I think it will be a better world so maybe sometimes it's even a good thing that a world actually ends I think another way to rephrase your question which would bring to optimism optimism which is such a job but to top your thinking or something things that you thought that will be super bad but eventually turned out good which I had such things in my life a lot because I'm so mad at actually focusing the future so for me the best example is when I was a young teenager somebody told me about I was living in the IRC lots of people in the congress and then somebody told me about ICQ and this was ICQ came from Tel Aviv and I'm from Tel Aviv and this was like a super initial level that they were starting at and the person told me that those guys developed that my first thought and my friends were like who the hell needs it, we have IRC this will not bring anything good but then I am we were super wrong I am came to life and I think that we are super good I have so many more communication with people because of it Sir, let me just explain this term for the un unenlightened IRC is internet relay chat it's like a very old protocol for just chatting with people chat and that was the predominant thing on the internet for some time and then it was replaced by Neo chat protocols like ICQ or AI and today personally I'm using matrix and signal a lot and so that of course always was that ended in this case maybe not was more chat protocols but it's still like there's a community attached to that that goes away or changes Yes, thank you for explaining, I'm using too many old words I guess No, it's all right I'm just trying to think of people under 30 we're not insane and still using IRC today like I am because personally I still it's a bit of a drag still using it but it's useful for some things and there is a third question we prepared and maybe Salix wants to give us some background about that question because the question is what is a good reason for traveling to the year 2107 for years to come Salix do you want to say something about that? Yeah, I still couldn't think of a reason I think curiosity it's just it's the best as long as you say curious you always got things going on I am super curious what predictions come true if what problems still exist that exist today but also what new problems maybe there you know like what didn't we even think about like maybe there are more different species in the ocean that now eat plastic because evolution is like school you we're just gonna eat the plastic or whatever you know like we there's so many things that we cannot even and I would love to see those so I was about to say that if anybody can answer this question is you but apparently I was wrong because it's a very difficult question I just wanted to add that the reason it's 2107 is that the time parallel from your book is coming to represent and you just neglected to say that which is of course very humble but I thought I just add that I mean I again would like to invite everybody else attending to like add their thoughts and maybe start a discussion and we can just get into some discussion personally I just really want to see what I mean I think there's a lot happening right now I think there's a lot a lot happening right now I think with the introduction of the internet there was a kind of end of the world down to you because it was like the world as it was before the internet I think we generally notice that because a lot of us lived in that world I lived in that world for a very short time but but I felt it being different and now we remember back to that and that was just to pass but I think the way we do things today is very different I mean we can just look at everything we want to on our phones on the bus waiting for some other bus so that is I mean that is absolutely amazing that we can do that and I just want to read the analysis of what that is like what happens now I mean it's kind of a ridiculous answer because it just circles back to understanding the present but like that is what I do I freeze myself to the year 2100 or later and then open the search engine then there will be the search engine of jobs in the future and look for analysis of what happened today and it won't be the metaverse I mean not the facebook metaverse but the metaverse in general I'm joking that's bad don't explain the metaverse oh yeah I said it it's the facebook thing that's going to die immediately yeah it's going to be the myspace of the future but there was metaverse before facebook and there is metaverse which is not facebook like I mean I know sorry it's just because they steal names and terms it's not theirs yeah exactly so I'm not a strong metaverse person but I know there is this centerland which is yeah I guess it is like myspace of second life but just in a modern thing where you are supposed to get your own so you enter a different world and you live there it's a bit like the 2D world of the congress actually with more ads with more ads yes but I like the concept because I try to skip the real it's really tight so I guess it's not it's a good way to do it so by the way you said about the internet one thing that I thought would end the world when I was 12 was the internet because between 8 and 12 I was using bbs and I was addicted to it and then the internet came and destroyed the bbs ecosphere and for about a month which is eternity when you are 12 it would end up my life what is bbs can you explain that it's like the internet before the internet so people could set up their computer such that other people could connect to it and again I had a very narrow view of what's happening in Israel but there were people and groups who set up like a computer with 20-30 phones and then you could go into and have chats and these kind of things there was a mailing list called ultimate in Israel which I think all the geeks in my age were there in one way or another and then the internet came and this was my social area and changed it it took me a month to understand the IOC is better it took me a month I took it quite quite hard Kaleesi would you like to read the comment that just came in in the chat yes I was about to suggest a parallel between bbs and a plain text telnet user interface then I realized that's just as unlikely to be known thank you for that comment I now have a place playing telnet telnet is a protocol for sending text over the internet and you can do anything you like in it and what it's been like when that was actually used to do stuff I didn't know because I wasn't born yet just to be clear I'm the young one here I mean personally I very much enjoy getting lost in worlds I mean for me personally that has a big pastime as a child and teenager just exploring different worlds and I mean that's part of the reasons why something like the RC3 world a lot is because just you can enter you can enter a different realm and explore I mean I'm kind of optimistic because I often just use computer games like I literally took a walk in Minecraft I can't be the only one but sometimes I just open Minecraft and there's like a nice shader pack installed and I just scared to go on a walk and I kind of enjoy that as a world yeah I agree there were so in the centerland I got exposed to it recently because there were a few people who made a project which connects to the center as well so that's how I find out things and it was like a fun project they basically gave a prize for anyone who solved a simple quest which took you to some coordinates in this decentralized world I mean this coordinates you had like a small ball which a rainbow coming out of it and if you went in with your character you got like a small prize that you can keep there and this was fun I mean I got to explore some areas of this fictional world and I had a quest I got a prize which I already lost what kind of prize did you get? I I think they gave some kind of item I don't know which one because it was not the goal but like some kind of item in this in those metaverses you can have like in video games your games can have it's on a inventory and then they created some kind of item that you get to inventory which showed that you did the quest but it was not about the exploration really I mean it's very nice to know just in these worlds there are people there like like I mean a prize like that is brought I mean like the badges we get in the answers I mean they are like little graphics but I mean one thing they do show and they do say is that there was some way that an actual human built that on a way interacted in this world so it's not like just this realm that is kind of static it is defined by what humans do in it so that's another example of something that I thought would end the world but it turned out to have good usages which is gamification it was like really trendy decade ago a bit less and I hated it when it started because I felt that all kind of people try to motivate me to do things that I don't want by making a game out of it but the badges of the art of the after world are fantastic gamification it's really fun I love gamification I have a almost a year streak on Duolingo and it only works because it's constantly rewarding you for everybody French word that you can manage to other it's great yeah I agree it took me like a year to admit that I was wrong but yes I agree now I still haven't tried I have a friend who so when I'm visiting them I'm almost visiting and visiting and at some point they'll take out the phone say apologies I really need to learn Swedish now which is which is a bit absurd which is also like a nice way to do advertisement because your friends take out their friends learn Swedish in the middle of a conversation because they're compelled to do their work I mean that's great advertisement I mean I just have to say kudos to the developers of that app as far as far as it's if you go through you know if you take a walk and do like a speaking lesson and you start to use like nonsense people won't bother you you can speak nonsense sentences is great I sometimes talk to myself by meowing just for the head okay I don't think they have that as a language yet they do have Klingon but they don't have cap so what's your latest another thing for is to be said for identification when you think about Pokemon Go and how that brought people you know together but also outside and explore the world like the IRL world that worked really well I mean gamification almost every sport has gamification I like to play basketball and gamification that was made I mean not made but it's a way to make me do physical activities because otherwise I wouldn't leave the computer so yeah Pokemon Go is similar I mean a lot of these I mean there's a couple of these like social technologies like gamification and nudging I mean I'm sure these concepts existed in some way 20 years ago but I don't think I might talk about this much as day after day I mean it's interesting because we tend to right now use these concepts in a very corporate way and like they use them for some weird arbitrary goals like this company making money and then usually for anti-patterns or things that are really not that good of an idea but I mean you could always you could also use nudging and gamification for good and I mean arguably learning a language is like certainly good in some ways but also useful but I mean you can also gamify a lot of other things you could gamify like just helping your neighbors you could build a platform around that where you just like every time you say hi to your neighbor you could like five points and then you certainly have social interaction like in this weird utopian I don't know if it's utopian but definitely futuristic cyborg where you have just started to talk to your neighbors again in the city I don't know if I want to gamify social interaction I think that's I see potential problems I mean that's pretty isn't it? yeah that is a potential problem that is an actual problem but I think that actually what the Kora said I would I mean yes I agree with that it's completely I maybe don't want now and things are relatively normal to gamify my social interactions but during the lockdown the long lockdown this would have helped me to do things which I should have done and push myself to do within the little limitation that little possibilities were well maybe there will be another lockdown hopefully not maybe it would be a really cool small positive to do to gamify something that keeps people saying the lockdown like for me I started to people speak with sellers in the bakery and I get friends with them because I was I needed something I think what you said before that we talk more about things like nudging and gamification is because there is a lot more awareness as to what is a possible tool and we also are a lot more as a whole as a society a lot more skilled in understanding not only visual media but like media in general because it surrounds us so much so it's interesting to explore that and it's interesting to see what kind of parameters we deal with and how we can use them and I think it's very important to understand nudging gamification but also like the punishment punishment punishment yeah well fine can be one of those punishments but all these different things to understand them as tools and again a tool and a weapon is the same thing right as you said any tool is a weapon usually you can use a tool but a good way and a bad way always the tool itself is ethically neutral it's like how you use it yes like the internet I do wonder circling back to the point about about Twitter being gamified social interaction I mean personally I tend to think that the way Twitter like the way these algorithms operate that's probably not a good way to use it but I mean you could use the same tools the same tools of analysis of technology to actually actually have a process where we try to really iron out what do we want from a technology like Twitter as a society what are our goals what should happen in a platform like that and how can we actually use our algorithms in an open and transparent way to do that for a society instead of just fulfilling that need some random company of being used the way these companies optimize is like they just want attention so what they're going to do is always maximize for being more and more addictive I think it would be possible to have different optimization goals that could be really interesting to have an online platform like that so I mean like one of the original ideas of hope for me for social media was that it would give you lots of independent journalism but instead of at least what I got was less independent journalism and lots of fake news like it's very difficult for me when I see stuff in social media in my professional even in my professional area to know if it's factor, if it's true or not if it's something which was researched or not I'm not sure how to I don't know how to use the tools to to implement this goal so if I would have known I would have done that I mean there's a lot of effort that is involved like because you actually have to do all the analysis I mean it's very hard as a developer to also do that because just kind of like even just finding out what you want to do that is kind of a different job description isn't it? Yeah it's two roles in one it's difficult to do I mean we're in an odd position as like these technologists of basically I'm watching this I mean we're engineers who are like in the hacker community I think engineers who decided to like also do social consciousness in some respects and like have a hacker ethics part but like I mean there should be delegated people for that so I think from what I'm hearing like our conversation circling to an end I would ask you both a few Salix do you want to plug anything? I want to plug anything well tomorrow night I'm going to be DJing at 10pm at X-File the set is going to be German based and it's called Maskenware so if you I think you need like a minimal ceiling because you're jumping a lot to this music or wear hard helmets or something we would love to have you there I'm listening to the stream on your mobile phone outside like that's something that's possible to you today yeah sounds good I actually try to get a Greek and attend the party I'm going to plug into the comments the website of this project that I'm doing now it's called the Astroids it's supposed to be Ethereum Astroids but then we also find out that Astroids in Spanish means like Astroids the drugs and but now maybe it's a bit too late to change it already the name and if you hear us about the deal that we are doing we want to we want to have different voices who discuss how to create democracy for an online platform in a way that benefits the people living in this platform we don't know about technical ideas and yeah we already have a small community of about 100 people so it's fine it's a good stage to check it out so the website you just based it on in the chat is easteroids.eth on limo and sound-exposed ulteriorflux.com you started your websites yeah ulteriorflux.com is divided it's one part link store with the book and the other one is for the AI band that was screened two days ago at the conference already there will be a recording of that I think yeah it should be it was part of your regular program cool so the AI band project is awesome sorry so you can check out both the book and the AI band project the artificial intelligence band project on ulteriorflux.com Salix, thank you very much for attending for spending time with us on utopic thoughts and thank you very much for attending too it was a true pleasure talking to you thank you for inviting us thank you thank you so much to Khaleesi for being our hero today and reading all the other attendees questions and thank you to all the other attendees for taking part in being a part of this yeah thank you it was really great I think it was super interesting