Thankfully, video maker and self-described “philosophical performer” Jason Silva has a much more optimistic (and logically sound) mode of thinking about the future and all the technologically awesome possibilities it has to offer.
“From the moment we picked up a stick and used it to reach a fruit on a really high tree as early Homo sapiens, we’ve been using our tools to extend our boundaries of who and what we are,” Silva told Wired.com. “As technology has advanced, it acts as a buffer that shrinks the lag time between what we dream about and what we can create and substantiate in the world.”
Working with Marija Coneva from NotThisBody, Silva directs and produces independent videos that build on this positive theme (he likens them to “two-minute shots of philosophical espresso”).
Filled with evocative imagery, the clips are reminiscent of the scene in The Fifth Element where a recently resurrected Lilu downloads the history of the world. However, after watching Silva’s videos, instead of ending up in tears upon witnessing the destructive evils of war, you’ll wind up totally jazzed that technology is transforming humanity for the better.
That’s what “techno-optimism” is all about, according to Silva, who began collaborating with Coneva after spending the last four years as a host and producer on Al Gore’s Emmy-winning TV network, Current TV. I first encountered Silva at The Economist‘s World in 2012 Conference, where the first video in his “ecstatic meditation” series was shown. Later on, I talked to him to get the low-down on his techno-optimistic philosophies. Read the interview, and see more of Silva and Coneva’s videos, below.
Wired.com: What is techno-optimism?
Jason Silva: Techno-optimism is a belief in the power of technology to extend our sphere of possibilities, and ultimately a belief that technology helps us solve and transcend problems, limitations and obstacles. Technology sometimes gets a bad rap because of certain consequences that it’s had on the environment and unforeseen problems, but we shouldn’t use it as an excuse to reject our tools; rather, we should decide that we need to make better tools to solve the problems caused by the initial tools in a progressive wave of innovation.
If you were to look at all of technological human progress as if through a time-lapse, you would literally see that technology is the conduit through which our dreams become rendered in the meat space. Intellectuals like Steven Pinker have mapped this progress and showed that aside from improving our possibilities throughout the history of technology, it’s also actually made the world safer, made the world less violent, made the world — by every possible indicator you could measure — show accelerating progress and improvement across a variety of ways in which we measure human well-being. So that makes me optimistic.
Wired.com: Would you consider techno-optimism to be an ideology that you have adopted and that you would like other people to adopt?
Silva: We live in a world where, for whatever reason, the conversations that tend to stick are the ones where “if it bleeds it leads.” But we’ve always been afraid of new technologies in spite of the fact that they’ve helped improve our lives in countless ways. I believe it was Socrates who used to say that by writing things down we were going to atrophy our brains because we wouldn’t have to remember anything anymore.
The world’s best IT is the alphabet — it can be used to compose Shakespearean sonnets and transmit information through time and space in the form of speech. But you can also use the alphabet to compose hate speech. So you have to think of technology as something that extends the possibility. Then it’s up to the narrative to determine whether we use technology to extend the positive that’s within us.
For me as an artist, philosopher and cultural commentator of sorts, I’m interested in inspiring people to see the ways in which it has extended our possibilities for the better so that they may be inspired to conceive of how it may extend our possibilities in infinitely more sublime ways into the future.
Silva: I think that breakthrough innovations happen when you put smart minds together in a space in which creativity can thrive. I throw myself into that situation. I want to sit at that table because I want to be a part of that conversation. I also think there’s a role for the ecstatic poet to contribute to the conversation about technology and how we see technology philosophically and existentially, not just as a utilitarian set of tools, but as something that fundamentally reconfigures the way we see ourselves.
We used technology to go into space. This gave us the perspective of seeing Earth from the vantage point of space. The minute we saw it from that vantage point, we needed a new story of who and what we were from that perspective. Nowadays, being connected to 1.5 billion minds in this shared, interconnected space called the web, and that whole new galaxy of possibility that it opens up for us, I think that we’re in need now for a new story of who and what we are. Every time we expand our horizons and we have a new paradigm that transcends the previous paradigm, we’re in need of a new narrative. I see my place as somebody who wants to help craft that narrative.
Wired.com: What’s your process of creating these videos from inception to production?
Silva: Well, I sort of follow the Sagan Series model: These videos are nonprofit PSAs to infect people with awe.
I begin by deciding on a specific idea I want to ecstatically explore. Usually the idea is inspired by a recent book I came across, or a TED talk, or a series of articles. I follow the “slow hunch” that Steven Johnson writes about, and then one day I go to a park, a friend’s house or just somewhere where I can let go and “thought-stream.” After that, I pick the best take and choose the perfect song to go along with it.
Then I begin to scour the web for imagery, stock footage, etc. Because the videos are noncommercial, they are meant to be seen as mashups. Most recently, my friend Aaron Koblin said we could use some of his imagery in the videos.
Finally, I sit with my collaborator Marija from NotThisBody and we map out the vibe and the “feeling” we want. We discuss examples, certain placement and “moments” I want to create, and then she sits on it, gets inspired, interprets and plugs it in. Then we discuss and exchange until we’re happy with it.
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If you want to catch Silva’s techno-optimism in real life, he’ll be speaking at the LucidNYC event Jan. 11 (tickets cost $15 on Eventbrite) and at Digital Life Design in Munich on Jan. 22. Or follow him on Twitter (@jason_silva).
