Rewilding Reality in the Age of Deepfakes, AI, & Epistemic Collapse - Michael Garfield | Rapid Response #16
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Deepfake
15 min read
Central to the article's theme of 'epistemic collapse' and synthetic media - provides technical background on how AI-generated fake media works and its societal implications
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Santa Fe Institute
13 min read
Michael Garfield worked here researching complex systems science - understanding this pioneering interdisciplinary research center illuminates his intellectual framework
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Media ecology
14 min read
Explicitly mentioned as a bonding point between host and guest - this field of study examining how media shapes perception is foundational to understanding their discussion of reality in the digital age
Welcome to the Urgent Futures podcast, the show that finds {signals} in the noise. Each week, I sit down with leading thinkers whose research, concepts, and questions clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.
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Audio versions of this episode can be found here on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.
My guest today is Michael Garfield.
Artist, author, and philosopher lives to foster the imagination we need in our age of exponential weirdness—and inspire the curiosity and play required to thrive in it. Drawing on over twenty years of independent scholarship and volcanic creativity, he wields a singular perspective on the past and future, a renowned capacity for synthesis, and a global network of top-tier collaborators.
Michael is the Founder of Humans On The Loop (an award-winning transdisciplinary series exploring wisdom in the age of exponential technologies) and the Communications Director for The AI Capabilities and Alignment Consensus Project (an international partnership to foster sane AI discourse between academia and the tech sector supported by The Survival and Flourishing Fund). His nonlinear career has woven through years of research, creative, and community development at The Santa Fe Institute, The Mozilla Internet Ecosystem program, The Long Now Foundation, and The Integral Institute, and secured grants and fellowships from Cosmos Institute, O’Shaughnessy Ventures, and the ASU Center for Science and The Imagination. An internationally-charting science communicator and experimental musician, a prolific artist and writer, and a public speaker who has inspired audiences everywhere from The Commonwealth Bank of Australia Innovation Lab and Cynefin to The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors and Boom Festival, his work threads insights from complex systems science with years of experience at the frothy edge of creative technology and consciousness research. As a teacher and essayist, he has been featured at Aeon Magazine, HPlus Magazine, Reality Sandwich, Mutations, Weirdosphere, and The School of Wise Innovation.
Michael is somebody I’ve learned a lot from over the years—primarily through his ...
This excerpt is provided for preview purposes. Full article content is available on the original publication.
