Episode 26: Living in a Glass Age, with Michael Garfield

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 19 September 2018

⏱️ 79 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Stone, bronze, iron... glass? In his recent thought and writing, transdisciplinary artist and thinker Michael Garfield defines modernity as an age of glass, arguing that the entire ethos of our era inheres in the transformative enchantments of this amorphous solid. No one would deny that glass plays a central role in our lives, although glass does have a knack for disappearing into the background, at least until the beakers or screens crack and shatter. Glass is weird, and like a lot of weird things, it can serve as a lens (so to speak!) for observing our world from strange new angles. In this episode, Michael joins Phil and JF to talk through the origins, the significance, and the fate of the Glass Age. Michael Garfield is a musician, live painter, and futurist. He is the host of the brilliant Future Fossils Podcast. REFERENCES Michael Garfield's website + Patreon + Medium + Bandcamp Michael Garfield, "The Future is Indistinguishable from Magic" (This is the essay we discuss that was unpublished at the time of the recording) Michael Garfield, "The Future Acts Like You" Michael Garfield, "The Evolution of Surveillance Part 3: Living in the Belly of the Beast" Artist David Titterington's Patreon page Richard Doyle, On Beyond Living: Rhetorical Transformations of the Life Sciences Corning, "The Glass Age" (corporate video) Jean-Paul Sartre, Baudelaire John David Ebert, "On Hypermodernity" John C. Wright, The Golden Age J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects Christopher Knight and Alan Butler, Who Built the Moon? Pink Floyd, The Dark Side of the Moon Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage Spinoza, Ethics Charles Taylor, The Malaise of Modernity Martine Rothblatt, Virtually Human: The Promise and the Peril of Digital Immortality John Crowley, Little, Big Jose Arguelles, Dreamspell Calendar William Irwin Thompson, Lindisfarne Tapes Jonathan Sterne, The Audible Past Karl Schroeder, “Degrees of Freedom,” in Heiroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future Michael Garfield, “Being Every Drone” Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution Special Guest: Michael Garfield. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Specter Vision Radio
0:03.3	Welcome to Weird Studies, an art and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martel.
0:21.8	For more episodes and to support the podcast, go to Weird Studies. I'm J.F. Martel. Today, Phil and I are happy to give you our conversation with Michael Garfield, which took place just a few weeks ago. Many listeners of Weird Studies will be familiar with Michael and his work. He's an artist, musician, psychonaut, essayist, podcaster. He's the host of the Future Fossils podcast which I've had the
1:14.4	honor to appear on a couple of occasions Michael is a real seeker I got to know his work
1:22.3	when we're both writing at reality sandwich and I was immediately struck by his
1:27.3	intelligence and his charm, and most
1:29.9	importantly, perhaps, his willingness to think dangerous thoughts and to draw on science, philosophy,
1:36.3	art, psychedelics, to try to make some novel sense of our world and our times. For instance,
1:43.7	over the last few years, Michael's been working out an idea of our world and our times. For instance, over the last few years, Michael's been working
1:45.8	out an idea of our historical epoch that I think is really interesting. He calls it the glass age.
1:53.2	So if you think of history as being divided into these vast eras, for example, like from the
2:00.1	Stone Age to the Bronze Age to the Iron Age.
2:04.7	Well, Michael's insight, and I think it's a valid one, is that modernity, you know,
2:10.8	the modern age that begins around the time of the Renaissance that is continuing to unfold
2:15.6	right now is defined by glass from the test tubes
2:21.0	of the alchemists and the first lenses that Galileo used to observe the celestial spheres
2:26.7	all the way up today with silicon and fiber optics and the ubiquity of screens you can really think of glass as the basic material
2:38.5	out of which we've constructed the modern world. So Phil and I talked about this and we were kind of
2:45.0	stoked to have Michael come on and talk about the glass age, what it means, implies for us what it tells us about human nature and human destiny
2:57.7	yeah so he came on we had a great discussion and well here goes Let's not pretend that we didn't do this already.
3:29.3	So we started by, you know, full disclosure that we've, the three of us have already,
3:35.4	I think we talked for a good two hours.
	...

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