Orthogonal Bet: A technology vibe shift from utopian Star Trek to absurdist Douglas Adams?

This is the inaugural episode of an on-going mini-series for the Riskgaming podcast we’re dubbing the Orthogonal Bet. Organized by our scientist-in-residence Sam Arbesman, the goal is to take a step back from the daily machinations that I, Danny Crichton, generally host on the podcast to look at what Sam describes as “…the interesting, the strange, and the weird. Ideas and topics that ignite our curiosity are worthy of our attention, because they might lead to advances and insights that we can’t anticipate.” To that end, today our guest is Matt Webb, a virtuoso tinkerer and creative whose experiments with interaction design and technology have led to such apps as the Galaxy Compass (an app that features an arrow pointing to the center of the universe) and Poem/1, a hardware clock that offers a rhyming poem devised by AI. He’s also a regular essayist on his blog Interconnected. We latched onto Matt’s recent essay about a vibe shift that’s underway in the tech world from the utopian model of progress presented in Star Trek to the absurd whimsy of Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Along the way, we also discuss Neal Stephenson, the genre known as “design fiction,” Stafford Beer and management cybernetics, the 90s sci-fi show Wild Palms, and how artificial intelligence is adding depth to the already multitalented. Produced by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Christopher Gates⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Music by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠George Ko⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & Suno