Ed Finn - Thoughtful optimism, intellectual voyaging, and a Center for Science and the Imagination
11/01/22 • 77 min
Ed Finn might be best described as an imaginer. The rest of the many things that he is and does kind of fall into place with that foundation. He started and for the past decade has been Director of the unexampled Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University.
Origins Podcast Website
Flourishing Commons Newsletter
Show Notes:
- Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter (06:20)
- Specialization vs generalization (07:00)
- N Katherine Hayles (12:00)
- We have never been modernby Bruno Latour (19:00)
- Franco Moretti (24:15)
- Center for Science and the Imagination (26:15)
- "Innovation Starvation" by Neal Stephenson (28:00)
- Meeting Neal Stephenson (31:40)
- Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future co-edited by Ed Finn (33:30)
- Thoughtful optimism and hope (36:30)
- Adjacent possible (38:00)
- David Foster Wallace "This is water" (41:00)
- Collaborative Imagination: A methodological approach (42:30)
- What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing by Ed Finn (48:20)
- Effective computability (50:00)
- Halting Problem (50:30)
- Turing Machine (50:30)
- Curriculum of the future (57:30)
- "Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid" by Jonathan Haidt (58:20)
- Flourishing Salons with the Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences (01:03:00)
- Lightning Round (01:04:00):
- Book: The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
- Passion: travel and the fine art of hospitality
- Heart sing: veteran's imagination project and K-12 futures literacy
- Screwed up: conference calls
- Find Ed online:
- 'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series
Ed Finn might be best described as an imaginer. The rest of the many things that he is and does kind of fall into place with that foundation. He started and for the past decade has been Director of the unexampled Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University.
Origins Podcast Website
Flourishing Commons Newsletter
Show Notes:
- Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter (06:20)
- Specialization vs generalization (07:00)
- N Katherine Hayles (12:00)
- We have never been modernby Bruno Latour (19:00)
- Franco Moretti (24:15)
- Center for Science and the Imagination (26:15)
- "Innovation Starvation" by Neal Stephenson (28:00)
- Meeting Neal Stephenson (31:40)
- Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future co-edited by Ed Finn (33:30)
- Thoughtful optimism and hope (36:30)
- Adjacent possible (38:00)
- David Foster Wallace "This is water" (41:00)
- Collaborative Imagination: A methodological approach (42:30)
- What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing by Ed Finn (48:20)
- Effective computability (50:00)
- Halting Problem (50:30)
- Turing Machine (50:30)
- Curriculum of the future (57:30)
- "Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid" by Jonathan Haidt (58:20)
- Flourishing Salons with the Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences (01:03:00)
- Lightning Round (01:04:00):
- Book: The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
- Passion: travel and the fine art of hospitality
- Heart sing: veteran's imagination project and K-12 futures literacy
- Screwed up: conference calls
- Find Ed online:
- 'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series
Previous Episode
Alex McDowell - A master class in worldbuilding and designing holistic spaces
Alex McDowell is a worldbuilder. He builds future realities to envision worlds that don't yet exist. By working across disciplines to imagine the future, his worlds inform and inspire stories and open eyes to new possibilities.
Origins Podcast website
Show Notes:
- Quaker meeting (09:40)
- Empowerment
- The skills of listening and gathering (11:40)
- The politics of your social experience (12:10)
- Worldbuilding
- "Storytelling Shapes the Future"
- Every world is a holistic system at multiple scales
- Minority Report (22:00)
- Triangle of narrative design (27:00)
- Relationship to complex systems (27:30)
- Counterfactuals to explore a world (27:50)
- Cultivating interdisciplinary collaboration in teams (28:00)
- Scenius (29:00)
- Building enough of a framework to know what we don't know (31:00)
- Teaching (40:00)
- The literacies of worldbuilding
- Work collaboratively in the space of uncertainty
- Experimental Design company (44:30)
- Great 'Askers' (49:00)
- Balancing curiosity and boredom (51:00)
- MIT Media Lab (52:00)
- Scott Fisher (52:30)
- Falling forward (55:00)
- Lightning round (55:15)
- Book: Neuromancer by William Gibson
- Passion: Guitar
- Heart sing: New language for molecular biology
- Screwed up: Graphic design for record labels
- Find Alex online:
- Twitter: @worldbldg
- Website: https://alexmcdowell.design/
- 'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series
Next Episode
David Sloan Wilson - Archipelagos of knowledge, commons, and the science of cooperation
David Sloan Wilson is one of biology’s most prolific and impactful scientists. He is author of paradigmatic contributions to evolutionary theory and how organisms behave, such as multilevel selection and core design principles for the efficacy of groups. But the reach of his work is far beyond the domains of biology and sociology, in whole a toolkit for improving how we live together and weaving between areas of thought.
Origins Podcast Website
Flourishing Commons Newsletter
Show Notes:
- Atlas Hugged (06:30)
- Sociobiology by EO Wilson (12:00)
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Steven C Hayes (21:00)
- Science proceeds by seeing really good reasons for not believing the current model for reality Lindon Eaves (25:40)
- Elinor Ostrom (26:15)
- EO Wilson (26:15)
- Elliott Sober (27:00)
- Ostrom design principles for governing the commons (31:00)
- The Tragedy of the Commons [Hardin, 1968] (34:20)
- The Neighborhood Project by Sloan Wilson (41:30)
- Richard A Kauffman (David's graduate student)
- Core competencies of prosociality (48:50)
- The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn (49:10)
- The knowledge commons (51:00)
- The Noosphere and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
- Lynn Margulis (53:50)
- Dual inheritance theory (55:00)
- Lightning round (01:01:00):
- Book: Origin of Species by Charles Darwin and The Secret of our Successand The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich
- Passion: being stewards of the natural world
- Heart sing: stewarding prosociality
- Find David online:
- Website: https://davidsloanwilson.world/
- Twitter: @David_S_Wilson
- Prosocial Commons: https://thisviewoflife.com/introducing-the-prosocial-commons/
- 'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series
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