A futurist’s take on institutional power in a ‘post-human world’

Summary

POLITICO Tech Podcast Summary Episode: A Futurist’s Take on Institutional Power in a ‘Post-Human World’
Release Date: February 11, 2025
Host: Stephen Overlea
Guest: Samantha Rhodochia, Futurist and Anthropologist

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Introduction

In this thought-provoking episode of POLITICO Tech, host Stephen Overlea engages with Samantha Rhodochia, a renowned futurist and anthropologist, to explore the shifting landscape of institutional power in what Rhodochia terms a "post-human world." Rhodochia delves into the convergence of technological advancements and societal changes that are redefining governance, economy, and human identity.

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Defining the Post-Human World

Timestamp: [02:52]

Rhodochia begins by unpacking the concept of a post-human world, emphasizing that it represents a convergence of multiple trends—transhumanism, post-truth, and the fragmentation of the global order. She explains:

“We’re going beyond the human systems of times in the past. This involves a combination of perhaps transhumanism, but also post truth, post reality or consensus reality...”
—Samantha Rhodochia [02:57]

She highlights how events like the 2008 financial crisis catalyzed distrust in traditional institutions, leading to the rise of decentralization ideologies exemplified by cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. This fragmentation challenges the authority of governments, multinational organizations, and financial markets.

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Future of Governance and Institutional Power

Timestamp: [05:19]

Stephen Overlea probes Rhodochia's insights on the future of governance. He asks whether existing institutions are equipped to handle the rapid technological and societal changes.

Rhodochia expresses confidence in institutional adaptability but acknowledges significant challenges:

“I think in terms of the rate of change in this age of acceleration... it makes it very difficult for those institutions to maintain any sense of stability...”
—Samantha Rhodochia [05:45]

She underscores the destabilizing effects of blurred truths and shifting realities, which complicate the role of institutions in maintaining societal coherence.

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The Role of Technology and Government Regulation

Timestamp: [09:50] - [10:14]

The conversation shifts to the interplay between technology development and government regulation. Overlea queries whether government interventions are still effective in shaping technological advancements.

Rhodochia offers a controversial perspective:

“I don't know how much of an impact it really has anymore... the mindset... move fast and break things... is still very deeply entrenched.”
—Samantha Rhodochia [10:14]

She argues that the Silicon Valley ethos often bypasses regulatory frameworks, making governmental efforts to regulate less impactful. This poses significant risks as rapid technological deployments may outpace ethical and safety considerations.

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Tech Companies as New Governance Powers

Timestamp: [11:36] - [13:20]

Overlea raises a critical question about whether global tech giants and their leaders could emerge as new governance powers, referencing figures like Elon Musk.

Rhodochia confirms this shift:

“It's already happened is my answer to that question... tech companies sometimes have more [users]... that's bigger than many countries.”
—Samantha Rhodochia [13:20]

She explains that with user bases surpassing the populations of many nations, tech companies wield unprecedented influence over both private and public sectors. This power dynamic challenges traditional nation-state governance and introduces new layers of complexity in global politics.

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Building a Resilient Society

Timestamp: [15:16] - [16:54]

The discussion moves to strategies for fostering resilience and adaptability in individuals and institutions amidst constant change. Rhodochia emphasizes the importance of reclaiming humanity—grounding consciousness, identity, and reality in an era dominated by technological disruptions.

“We need to build a more adaptable, resilient population... Destabilizing the inner systems does impact the broader systems as well.”
—Samantha Rhodochia [15:16]

She advocates for enhancing cognitive and emotional resilience to navigate the "post reality" complexities, enabling both policymakers and the general populace to maintain stability amid continuous transformations.

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Conclusion

Timestamp: [16:54] - [17:05]

As the episode wraps up, Rhodochia underscores the urgency of addressing the rapid shifts brought about by technological innovations and societal changes. She hints at her forthcoming book, "Radical Next: Reclaim Your Humanity," which aims to provide actionable strategies for individuals and institutions to thrive in a post-human world.

“The subtitle to reclaim your humanity. And I'm writing the next book on actually how to do it.”
—Samantha Rhodochia [15:16]

Stephen Overlea thanks Rhodochia for her insightful contributions, highlighting the importance of bridging the gap between technological power centers and governance to navigate the future effectively.

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Key Takeaways

• Post-Human Epoch: A blend of transhumanism, post-truth, and decentralized ideologies is reshaping societal structures.
• Institutional Challenges: Traditional institutions struggle to maintain stability amidst rapid technological and societal changes.
• Tech Companies' Rising Influence: Global tech giants possess user bases and influence rivaling nation-states, redefining governance power dynamics.
• Regulation Dilemma: Governmental regulatory efforts often lag behind the pace of technological innovation, limiting their effectiveness.
• Resilience Building: Emphasizing cognitive and emotional resilience is crucial for individuals and institutions to adapt to an ever-changing post-human world.

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This episode offers a comprehensive exploration of the intricate relationship between technology, governance, and human identity in a rapidly evolving landscape. Samantha Rhodochia's insights provide a foundational understanding of the challenges and opportunities that define our journey into the post-human era.

Transcript

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[Stephen Overlea]

Will that be cash or credit?

[Samantha Rhodochia]

Credit.

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[Stephen Overlea]

Hey, welcome to POLITICO Tech. Today's Tuesday, February 11th. I'm Stephen Overlea. Samantha Rhodochia has been described as a futurist and an anthropologist. She calls herself a student of humanity. In a place like Washington that runs on titles, hers can be hard to pin down.

[Samantha Rhodochia]

Professional people watcher. Jokingly, I'm a bit facetious, but Sam.

[Stephen Overlea]

Rad, as she's more widely known, has launched several tech startups. And now she thinks a lot about the future. She gives talks about it, she advises companies and global institutions about it. And she's written a new book about it, which is why I called her up.

[Samantha Rhodochia]

I think I've gotten to the point in my career where I'm better served educating and raising awareness, still having this very like, deeply technical background of understanding what's being built behind closed doors.

[Stephen Overlea]

Sam views society as an operating system, like the system that powers your phone or computer. And right now, she says society is moving towards a decentralized operating system, one where existing institutions have much less power. That includes governments, multinational organizations, even financial markets. The question is, what will fill that void? The power centers of the future is one of several questions that Sam explores in her book Radical Reclaiming youg Humanity in a post Human World, which is on sale today. On the show today, Sam and I talk about the role she sees for tech and government in this post human world. Here's our conversation.

Sam, welcome to Politico Tech.

[Samantha Rhodochia]

Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

[Stephen Overlea]

You know, you write about in your book Radical Next kind of how people navigate the rapid acceleration of technology and sort of this movement toward what you call a post human world.

And I wanted to start there kind.

Of how you define a post human world. And are we living in that now?

[Samantha Rhodochia]

Yeah, that's a fantastic question. And I don't proclaim to, you know, have the authority to name an entire epoch. We have these terms already, whether it's like metamodernism or transhumanism. But really the reason I put it, even as hyphenated it's, you know, the convergence of a lot of trends, both technological, geopolitical, socio cultural, happening at this moment, where we're going beyond the human systems of, you know, times in the past. And this involves a combination of perhaps transhumanism, but also post truth, post reality or consensus reality, as we all are experiencing at this moment right now and pretty much post world order. Now that's not necessarily something I advocate for. It's. I'm an anthropologist, right? So I see things and I simply share what I see and what I had been seeing in my research and what I had been building starting even pre 2008. But really that was a moment in time with, you know, the fracturing of the financial system, the global financial crisis, where you saw things like let's say for example, Bitcoin emerge in these ideologies of decentralization, which to me was a much broader trend. And it was something that was starting to show cracks in pretty much every institution in society. Whether you're saying, you know, distrust in the global supply chains and where foods and medicines come from, distrust in the medical industry, distrust in the media. Now, I don't think the end game is complete anarchic decentralization with no source of any sort of meaning or truth. But that was something that was, at least in my opinion was an inevitable progression. So the book is structure, starting from right within. So the systems that define even our internal meaning, like consciousness or identity, going up through communities, family units, love and relationships. So things like an anthropologist would study kinship systems and then going into economy, governance, healthcare, you know, all the stuff you would expect to see even in policy discussions.

[Stephen Overlea]

I was very drawn to some of the chapters. And your thoughts on the future of governance being a political podcast, obviously, and particularly kind of existing institutions of power, whether they will endure. Do you think they are equipped, you know, our government or multinational institutions are really equipped for kind of this new world we're moving into?

[Samantha Rhodochia]

They should be. I'll say that I have every bit of faith and confidence just being on the road for so long, let's say a decade, sharing ideas like this in preparing people. And I'm not the only one, obviously that people are aware of what's happening, what's required to adapt. I think that in terms of the rate of change in this age of acceleration, where it seems every day something's happening, you know, we have beyond as you know, 24 hour news cycle, we have, I don't have a term yet, I forget who coined this poly crisis, but basically every day some sort of black swan, you know, like really fast destabilizing occurrences make it very difficult for those institutions to maintain any sense of stability for the people that they're responsible for or governing. And again, maintaining that sense of structure and reality, the destabilizing effects of really what is truth or what is reality is something that falls into the hands of those organizations.

[Susan Ettlinger]

The PC gave us computing power at home, the Internet connected us and mobile let us do it pretty much anywhere. Now generative AI lets us communicate with technology in our own language, using our own senses. But figuring it all out when you're living through it is a totally different story. Welcome to Leading the Shift, a new podcast for Microsoft Azure. I'm your host, Susan Ettlinger. In each episode, leaders will share what they're learning to help you navigate all this change with confidence. Please join us, listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

[Stephen Overlea]

Well, I know from your bio you've advised some of these big institutions like the United nations or the Federal Reserve is embracing kind of these emerging technologies. The key here for institutions to kind of adapt and evolve.

[Samantha Rhodochia]

Short answer is yes. Now I, I myself went through a bit of a process with grappling with this. You know, one of my companies, the last one I was brought into service, CEO based in London, was a global communication company and we're aiming to offer a globally democratically valued user owned entity or alternative to the existing communication platforms. They're still operating, I'm no longer with them but the idea was necessary and I had access at the time, this is around 2020 to a lot of very cutting edge stuff, particularly in generative AI. I was one of the first people to robustly deepfake myself to be quite honest. I. It scared me and I have seen things, you know, five, 10 years ahead of consumers for most of my career. But this one was like I got, I tried to scrub myself off the Internet again. I was going to get rid of all my technology and computers and like disappear because I just didn't really want to live in a world where we went through this transition. We had questions of does intellectual property exist in a, in a post AI world, et cetera. And really my conclusion was like I need to come back and work with people to navigate this transition. So that's my belief is that fear and ignoring that it exists or all of this is happening would not be the best approach. I'm also wouldn't suggest complete free reign with no guard rails on this stuff. It's extremely powerful and dangerous. But at the same time, overregulating and slowing down also puts, it can prevent the innovation, but also even just the, the confidence of individuals within organizations or groups to build that, that capability on their own to leverage these, these tools because they are also powerful for the individual.

[Stephen Overlea]

I was going to ask you about that because it's something we talk about a lot on this podcast, is kind of the role of government in shaping how this technology is developed and also kind of how the public embraces it. Is government regulation that consequential and sort of shaping this acceleration and how do you think about kind of the right balance to strike there?

[Samantha Rhodochia]

I don't know how much of an impact it really has anymore. And that might be an incredibly provocative thing to say. But if anything that I've seen coming from Silicon Valley, in the mindset of Silicon Valley, which I call myself a Silicon Valley dropout coming soon, a future book to genius to you. But you know, I won't get ahead of the game here. I, I think the mindset, right, the early mindset, whether that was when it was Stalk Meta, formerly known as Facebook, you know, move fast and break things, that mentality is still very deeply entrenched. I've seen every time that there's sort of a new emerging thing, whether we're talking about those technologies or artificial intelligence or bioengineering or things yet to be named or shared. It doesn't really. I mean, there are people who operate in the gray areas and they forge ahead and they're going to do this and build this and get it out there. So it's almost, I wouldn't say the government should just give up and not try. Right. We need the awareness, we do need these regulations, but I don't know how much of an impact it has on, on individuals or organizations that have it deeply ingrained in their DNA to disregard that.

[Stephen Overlea]

Right.

[Samantha Rhodochia]

And there, there is an ideology at the moment, there's a belief system around it of just again, this move as fast as you possibly can, deregulate everything.

[Stephen Overlea]

And we see that mindset right now in Washington in many ways with the, you know, downsizing and dismantling of certain government institutions, you know, championed obviously by, by Elon Musk, who himself is sort of a tech entreprene entrepreneur. And there, there was a question in the book you posed that I thought was really poignant. You write, could huge global companies and the individuals who run them emerge as new world governance powers? And when I look at examples like Elon Musk, or when I look at examples of tech CEOs sort of coming to Washington and really ingratiating themselves with the White House, for instance, to me the answer feels like yes. I'm curious what your take is.

[Samantha Rhodochia]

Yeah, well, you've caught on to the fact that I wrote the book in quite a Socratic way. So for anyone who picks this up, there are more questions than answers. And the goal is also for the reader. Right. I mean, there are plenty of. We've outsourced our thinking to so many people at this point. It's, you know, what is, what are our thoughts? So that's my goal there. It's already happened is my answer to that question. So again, when I would go into these groups, whether they're multi multinationals or trade associations here in the US or corporations, and show a slide, that was the kind of the emergence of the modern global order. And we have things like nation states and then we had corporations or multinational corporations. And then there was, there is something beyond this. So we're already at the phase where networks or companies, particularly tech companies sometimes have more. I hate the word users, but I'm going to use it just because this is the word that describes people on a platform.

[Stephen Overlea]

Right.

[Samantha Rhodochia]

Like 2 billion people on something. Well, that's, that's bigger than many countries.

[Stephen Overlea]

Right.

[Samantha Rhodochia]

So if we're looking strictly at, at influence and individuals and eyes and, and we could also look at metrics like time spent on a platform. Yes, then absolutely, they have more power. Now, what comes beyond that? I think they were already sensing there would be some attack on the centralization of power, whether it's oligarchic tech individuals or boards or shareholders that own these entities. And that's when I saw these shifts into decentralization as an ideology, which truthfully I was passionate about for some time. I thought, okay, this is interesting, perhaps a new evolution. I don't think it's the end game. And I actually think it can move in a direction that's dangerous because then you start to see the emergence of even new concepts that are centered around either decentralized organizations or cryptocurrencies or language like network states, which I talk a bit about in the book, but I don't go into as much detail as I would have liked to. But you know, the power of the technology companies, the investors behind them, the LPs behind those, it's something to look at. You know, I'm not saying it's, it's really a system, it's the best system, but it's certainly a system that is gaining more and More power over many areas of the private and public sector.

[Stephen Overlea]

Right?

Without. Without a doubt. Without a doubt. You know, we have a lot of policymakers or influential leaders in tech who do listen to the podcast, and we try to sort of bridge this gap in some ways between Washington and sort of governance power centers. With Silicon Valley and tech power centers, how do you advise them to kind of develop a radical next mindset?

[Samantha Rhodochia]

Well, that is the subtitle to reclaim your humanity. And I'm writing the next book on actually how to do it. I really think, you know, for me individually and what I've seen for most people especially, and we're in this era, whether we call it post human, post truth, post reality, extremely destabilizing, amorphous void. Right? Which could be beautiful because that means possibilities to create new systems, make more efficient systems. The thinking, the cognition, the feeling, the awareness, our sense of reality, we almost need to reclaim that within ourselves and within our groups and institutions. We're under attack all day, every day, 24 hours a day, from numerous vectors. Right. And especially with language of, again, what is, what is real. Going through this process to really ground yourself and develop a perspective in a world where, again, we kind of need to question everything, but at a very fast pace. Because it's not something where we really have the time anymore to say, let's take six months and put together a committee. Let's research this and hold on. Meanwhile, you know, know, a thousand things have happened. So I think, how do we build a more adaptable, resilient population? Whether that's in people who are in positions of policymaking or governance or even just people who are part of the population. Destabilizing the inner systems does impact the broader systems as well.

[Stephen Overlea]

Well, Sam, the book is called Radical Next, and it is on sale February 11th. Thank you for being here on Politico Tech.

[Samantha Rhodochia]

Thank you for having me.

[Stephen Overlea]

That's all for today's Politico Tech. If you enjoy Politico Tech, please subscribe. And for more tech news, subscribe to our newsletters, Digital Future Daily and Morning Tech. Our managing producer is Annie Reiss. I'm Stephen Overle. See you back here tomorrow.