multiplayer futures

These aren't revolutionary ideas. They're ancient patterns: small groups of humans doing hard things together repeatedly. We just forgot they were necessary because institutions used to provide them. The institutions are gone. Time to build our own.

The infrastructure won't be rebuilt by institutions or apps or government programs. It will be rebuilt by small groups playing New Games until Old Games become irrelevant

Success in New Games looks nothing like success in Old Games.

You won't have a prestigious job at a famous company. You'll have equity in something you built with friends.

The world into which we are born was shaped by a capacity to generate the new through billions of years of evolution. Now, for us, a comparable capacity to imagine, together, is a vital aspect of what it means to be free and alive. Imagination liberates us from the illusion that the way the world is now is the only way it can be. In this sense,

The world into which we are born was shaped by a capacity to generate the new through billions of years of evolution. Now, for us, a comparable capacity to imagine, together, is a vital aspect of what it means to be free and alive. Imagination liberates us from the illusion that the way the world is now is the only way it can be. In this sense,

In a densely interdependent world, our imagination must be shared as well as individual, and it must reach out into the deep future, not just the immediate future. Freedom in the moment is not a true freedom. Without alternative options, we cannot plan or choose. We become slaves to the ideas of others.

From mythmaking to legal treaties to weaving to movement building, what knits these various examples together is their avoidance of single solutions to complex problems, instead enabling a pursuit of multiple different actions and wider systemic changes with long term, positive transformations

Meanwhile, the majority of “normals” (to borrow a term from the sci-fi film Gattaca) are expected to take orders, complete tasks, stand in line, clock in and out . . . punctually, obediently, subserviently. No dancing in the halls, and certainly no daydreaming about a world put together differently.

What they don’t see, and what we continue to experience, is that while collaborating can be hard, it’s also a more rewarding, fruitful, and uplifting experience than doing things on our own. Yes, it’s true that groups of people collaborating will run into some well-known problems, but it’s also true that we see ways to make that experience better,