Episode 12: Alexander Bard This week ⁠Daniel⁠ and ⁠Chase⁠ are joined by ⁠Jack Ek⁠ and his friend, the legendary ⁠Alexander Bard⁠, who describes himself as a “philosopher who writes f***ing books" and who is according to his ⁠Wiki⁠: a Swedish musician, author, lecturer, artist, songwriter, music producer, ⁠TV personality⁠, religious and political activist, one of the founders of the ⁠Syntheist religious movement⁠, and member of the bands ⁠Army of Lovers⁠ & ⁠BWO⁠, amongst numerous other...

This week, Daniel⁠ chats about technology, governance and culture with Samuel Hammond, senior economist for the Foundation for American Innovation, a think tank focused on bridging the cultures of Silicon Valley and DC. Additionally, Sam has an outstanding substack where he writes about topics surrounding AI development & regulation, as well as the history and future of liberalism, secularism and pluralism. Topics include:  The day-to-day of working in a think tank What it means to...

To kick off our new weekly release schedule, we have Chase &⁠⁠ Daniel in conversation with designer, artist, NYU design/media professor & cyberethnographer Ruby Justice Thelot (@being_on_line)  Ruby’s output is thoughtful, extremely prolific, and multifaceted. His writing on virtual realms, digital communities and AI offers a unique perspective that overlaps with our interests at Vaporware in key ways. Chiefly, how crucial it is for people and small communities to truly own their own...

This week, Daniel Keller and Fred Scharmen talk about the cultural legacy of space colonization and its connections to contemporary movements like e/acc, longtermism, and network states. Fred is architect, educator, and researcher whose work focuses on the history and theory of architecture and urban design in outer space. His first book, Space Settlements (Columbia University Press, 2019) is about Gerard O'Neill's work with NASA and others to design large-scale cities in space intended to...

In a bit of a departure from our normal format, Daniel Keller⁠⁠ interviews Chase Van Etten⁠⁠, founder and CEO of Vaporware about his background and vision for the company.  We discuss:  Absorbing the California Ideology by osmosis growing up in Petaluma How custom car culture informs Chase’s approach to technology Gaming as CEO Mode trainer Vs. depressive real world agency drainer  Marketplaces as cooperation tech and the need to maximize informational flow rates How...

Chase Van Etten⁠⁠ &⁠ ⁠Daniel Keller⁠⁠ talk with Rob (@RobertHaisfield) and Sean (@infinitefun_) about their project Websim.  Websim is an incredibly cool project that invites users to browse and interact with a parallel world wide web, as hallucinated by AI. Even with such a simple UX conceit, (you type whatever you want to see into the url bar and it appears) websim community members have managed to create truly incredible stuff. Projects like websim really effectively demonstrate how...

This week, ⁠Chase Van Etten⁠ & ⁠Daniel Keller⁠ talk with renowned internet culture chronicler, Katherine Dee (@default_friend). Katherine is known for her provocative commentary and insights into the psychology of internet subcultures. She has bylines in numerous publications including Tablet, Unherd and Compact and is host of the podcast The Computer Room. In this wide ranging conversation, we discuss algorithmic feedback loops, alt-internet history timelines, pre-singularity...

This episode (⁠Chase Van Etten⁠ & ⁠Daniel Keller⁠) chat with Orion Reed (@OrionReedOne), a software engineer & researcher focused on the intersection of computing, human-systems interfaces, and emancipatory politics. Orion is engineer-in-residence at tldraw, researcher at Block Science, and contributor to the Liberatory Computing collective. His motto is “advocating widespread dissatisfaction with computing.”  Highlights: The need for alternative visions for computing and reasons...

Vaporware Episode 4: Charles (Cab) Broskoski This time, we (Chase Van Etten & Daniel Keller) have a conversation with Are.na co-founder and CEO Charles Broskoski (@broskoski). We chat about our early lives online, our respective net.art pasts and his experience starting what was initially a somewhat niche site for ex-del.icio.us refugees and surf club members, that has over the past decade-plus become a veritable online institution and essential tool for research and thought, with a...

This episode, we (Chase Van Etten & Daniel Keller) catch up with our friend musician and technologist Dexter Tortoriello, AKA Houses. In addition to his decade plus music career, Dexter is cofounder and former head of technology at FWB. He’s currently co-founder and CTO of MindPalace, an ambitious project aimed at building high-res, interactive AI models of the self, derived from decades of personal data, which will be in private Beta 🔜 Transitioning from the music industry into...

In Episode 2, Chase and Dan chat with product and marketing strategist Marisa Rowland about a wide range of topics including: Institutional mistrust AI wearables for dogs Agricultural infomarkets Small data Cultivating cults Real network states Methylene Blue Data portability Frog poison therapy So much more Marisa is a product and marketing strategist based in New York. She was the first hire at Arable Labs, an agricultural technology startup, and...

In our first Episode, we've assembled the entire Vaporware team (all four of us) to chat about our Chief Architect Jack Ek's talk "PLAN: Purely Functional Programming With Batteries Included" which he recently gave at ⁠Lambda Conference⁠, the site where Urbit founder Curtis Yarvin first presented the technical specifications for Urbit/Nock back in 2016. We discuss the differences between Urbit and Plunder, what makes Vaporware a Nock heresy and what's coming next. With Chase Van Etten,...