Team Human is Over. Long Live Team Human

Hi All -

I’ve been going through a lot of changes here and on Team Human. I may as well tell you folks first: I’m ending the Team Human podcast. At least as “Team Human.”

I keep hearing the term being used by folks in all aspects of the AI conversation. Last night it was Zohran Mamdani and Anand Giridharadas and Naomi Klein and the other speakers at the AI Now Institute Assembly in NYC. But it’s also the way everyone from Bernie Sanders to Steven Bannon to Elon Musk are describing their relationship to AI. “I’m on Team Human!” There’s even a group of social media influencers, under the auspices of the Center for AI Safety, engaged in a campaign they’re calling Team Human, complete with a teamhuman dot org URL.

The original Team Human recording booth at Queens College, 2015

I’m getting a ton of sweet email from people offering to help me “defend the name,” but I’m going to do what I always do in these situations: Let it go!

(credit: Elsa)

Like the terms “viral media” and “digital natives”, Team Human’s success as a construct can best be measured by how far it has traveled from its origins. In this respect, we won. Team Human won. People used to laugh at the formulation, which I originally came up with during a panel with Ray Kurzweil. He was arguing for passing the evolutionary torch to our robot successors, while I was arguing that human beings deserve a role in the digital future. “You’re only saying that because you’re human,” Ray jabbed. “Fine,” I admitted. “I’m on Team Human.”

I started doing Team Human audio monologues and interviews in 2015 in an effort to champion human autonomy in a digital age, and to alert people to the threats to that autonomy. Some of these threats are technological, some are economic, and most involve some combination of the two. I’m not sure I realized how easily techno-capitalism would revive true ethno-nationalism and eugenics, but I hadn’t yet confronted tech billionaire paranoia and their hubristic version of transhumanism (which is really just another form of anti-humanism).

In any case, by now most of us are on high alert, aware of billionaires hoping to leave us behind. We are actively considering at the trade-offs with thinking machines, as well as what makes humans worthy of existence or even celebration. And the term “team human” is everywhere, doing its job of holding this set of values. The meme is out, and carrying itself onward.

So for me, that means it’s time to move on to the next challenge. After toying around with a TV show idea about technology, I realized tech was just moving too fast to make a season of episodes that don’t air until months later. So I wrote a book proposal on metabolizing collapse, based on a piece I published right here last month called Embracing Apocalypse. And it’s already sold and in progress. The success of the piece here, and the conversations in the comments, are what propelled this project forward.

I realized I kind of like that process. Using my Substack and podcast and talks to work out ideas in real time, and then sculpt them into bigger projects.

So, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m retiring the podcast title Team Human, but I’m going to use that channel for my conversations and research interviews for both the new book and my work going forward. Instead of recording an interview with someone who needs to promote the book they’ve just published, I will record the conversation I need to have to figure something out myself. Like my Team Human conversations with Grant Morrison, Sophie Strand, Brian Eno and Alan Moore this year, they will be the ongoing inquiry I’m doing — the research conversations for my work, or intensely personal inquiries about what the heck is going on here, and what should I do about it.

Like the taped conversations I did with Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, Sarah Drew, Terence McKenna, Brenda Laurel, Bob Weir for my earlier books, these are the conversations one can’t get anywhere else, conducted with an elevated sense of personal urgency. And because they are special, essentially “behind the scenes” participation in my ongoing process, they will only be available to people who subscribe on Patreon or Substack. The paywall isn’t just for the money, but to keep this stuff to a self-selected audience of intimates. I want to share ideas and conversations I’ll put preview clips on the public feed, just so people know these exist, and get exposure to a digestible bit of wisdom.

My longer written pieces and monologues, on the other hand, are suitable for the public. It’s my finished work. I’ll keep posting those longer pieces here, as well the “monologue” versions of those pieces on video (and cut up in short form for the kids on IG and TikTok).

The deal: If you subscribe at any level here or on Patreon, you get everything, ad-free. My research conversations, my monthly long-form essays, my monologues. You are supporting and getting access to my process, while supporting the public release of my monologues and essays in the unpaid Rushkoff feeds. You will also be invited to monthly discussions with me, in various live formats.

I’ll make everything as simple as possible, putting it all in regular posts so you don’t have to poke around various menus to find things.

Thanks for being on this journey with me, and giving me the courage to make it even more authentic to what I’m actually doing.