Rifkin's sale pitch is a leaky vessel (not a road map for the future)

Compelling at first, a neoliberal Baby Boomer unpacks the horrors of the first two industrial revolutions, then amazingly offers us a third, requiring even more extractions. This, Jeremy Rifkin claims, is a "sharing economy." The manipulation of 'sharing' here is interesting to note. Governments and big businesses are requiring their subjects to become greater actors for two reasons: to share the responsibility of maintaining endless growth on an evermore finite planet, and to share the responsibility for the consequences of such economic idiocy.

This beautiful essay, Magic and the Machine (prepared as a podcast), can be considered an apt critique of Rifkin's fantastical Third Industrial Revolution managed by an autonomous and tumorous Internet of Things. But unlike Rifkin's sell, David Abram's is not a simple fix, it requires deeper listening, contemplation and a radical decoupling from salesmen.

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Animals – us, them and usthem

Last Saturday morning I was woken by an ABC radio producer and a minute later I was on air spruiking for a series of lectures on animals that Melbourne Free University are hosting throughout May.

Here's the brief, rather sleepy radio interview with Hilary Harper regarding my Week 6 (May 30) talk concerning the accountable killing of animals.



The central question I am pursuing in my talk is how do we reclaim an ethico-animal accountability in an era of pacifist-sanctioned corporatism? In the way in which we kill or have others kill for our resources (whether we be vegan, vegetarian or omnivore) how do we move from mass-death industrialism to one-on-one ecological killing? How do we 'fess up to being creatures again; 'fess up to being both predators and prey in a highly abstracted and ecologically estranged culture?

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Eating wild fungi: fun or foolhardy?

In April 2012, in conjunction with Fungimap, the inaugural Australian Fungi Festival was held in Hobart. Here is the audio of the debate, Eating Wild Fungi: Fun or Foolhardy from my perspective, the second speaker for the affirmative.

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