Hi! I’ve been hanging around here for a while and listening to the FoC Podcast, so I thought it’s time to finally introduce myself 🙂 I’m Daniel. I have a background in computer science and psychology, and over the years I’ve worked across Free & Open Source software (most notably with the GNOME project). I’ve been in the startup world, spent a few years in emerging tech consulting at Accenture, and these days I’m an independent consultant, speaker, and writer. My work and philosophy are deeply rooted in the insights of visionaries like Doug Engelbart, Alan Kay, Neil Postman, James Burke, Joseph Weizenbaum, and Bret Victor. Their pioneering spirit, especially the idea that technology should not replace humans, but amplify human capabilities, is what guides my work. Most recently, I founded the Big Idea Initiative - a playground for ideas that amplify our human capabilities and raise our collective intelligence. We’re always looking for ideas, contributions, and people who want to explore new ways of thinking, building, and connecting. If you’ve got a half-baked thought, an experiment, or just curiosity - you’re very welcome to share and shape it with us. You can find more here: https://www.bigideainitiative.org/

haha, I might just have an idea for this, but I'm probably not ready to submit something just yet. I've gotta work it out a bit first. However, I wanted to chime in a little because I've been obsessively going over the history of cybernetics and how its influence has shaped computing, robotics, ecology, anthropology etc., and yet most of its history and impact is lost or downplayed, even for people that are very aware of people downstream, such as Doug Engelbart, Margaret Hamilton, Ivan Sutherland, JCR Licklider, and Alan Kay. Cybernetics itself has a rich history of cross-discipline collaboration and visioning that made it incredibly potent, but also probably the keys to its own "destruction". People took the ideas back to their little specialized corners, while Wiener and Cybernetics itself were a little too dangerous and anti-authority for the governement and US military, and Wiener got kind of erased.

Funny, just started reading Wiener a few days ago :)

Oh rad, I highly recommend "A human use for human beings". I also highly recommend the M. Waldrop book The Dream Machine, which covers that era and how it sort of shaped Licklider's path and downstream events. I'm not quite ready to talk about the full scope of the project I'm working on yet, but one aspect we're exploring is a kind of implementation of the circles concept, that right now we're explicitly thinking about as trust circles, and access control, as well as creating a strong knowledge of providence of the connection - both owning your connections, as well as making sure they're the person you know. I would be interested in chatting about circles with anyone else who is focusing on that topic.

@Russell Leggett yeah, that's what I'm reading just now. The Dream Machine is also on my reading list, thanks :) Would love to chat about this!

@daniel g. siegel Yeah, sounds great. I have someone else who would be interested in participating as well. Is there a day/time that works for you next week?

@Russell Leggett I'll DM you