Technological Metamodernism: A seven-week course

Join **Stephen Reid** and special guests for a seven-week journey through Technological Metamodernism in association with the **Emerge Institute** , featuring:

• Audrey Tang, Co-author of Civic.AI and Plurality.net
• Michel Bauwens, Founder of the P2P Foundation
• Beatrice Erkers, Director of the Existential Hope program at the Foresight Institute
• Richard D. Bartlett, Co-founder of Casa Tilo, Loomio, Enspiral and Microsolidarity
• Emil Ejner Friis (Hanzi Freinacht), Metamoderna
• Indra Adnan, Founder of The Alternative

Ask what technology is doing to us and you tend to get one of two answers. Either it's ruining us — our attention, our privacy, our politics — or it's about to save us, if we can just build fast enough. Both sides are right about a great deal. Neither is adequate. And the argument between them has crowded out the questions that actually matter: what kinds of technology, built how, by whom, governed through what mechanisms, in service of what?

Technological Metamodernism is an attempt to answer those questions by adopting the metamodern mindset of openness, play and synthesis. Over seven weeks we'll work through the debates, before turning to the alternatives now taking shape: d/acc's defensive, decentralising technologies; Plurality's tools for democratic coordination across difference; cosmo-localism's vision of local production drawing on a global knowledge commons. We'll ask why these approaches remain marginal, whether the real barrier is how we see the world, and the role of community in sustaining different ways of looking. Each week begins with a review of the core ideas, then opens into conversation with a leading figure in the field.

Course facilitator _Stephen Reid_ has taught over 1,000 students on emerging tech topics over the past 5 years, with an average rating of 4.7/5. This will be the second time teaching a course under the Technological Metamodernism name, following the _first run_ in Sep/Oct 2024.

Course outline

This course will be based on Stephen and Hilma's upcoming book, with draft chapters available on the Technological Metamodernism Substack.

Sessions will mostly take place on Wednesdays 5pm–7pm UK time (GMT)/6pm–8pm Europe time (CET), with some variation possible depending on guest availability.

The first hour will be a review of the key ideas for the week, with the second hour reserved for conversation with the guest expert and Q&A. Sessions will be recorded (so you can catch up if you're late/miss one) and shared under CC0.

Week 1: Why Technological Metamodernism?

Wed 28 Oct

Chapter 1: The Techno-Skeptics
Chapter 2, part 1:The Techno-Optimists – e/acc
Chapter 2, part 2:The Techno-Optimists – The Longtermists

with Stephen Reid and Hilma Church-Turing

Week 2: Technology, Metamodernism and Proto-metamodern technologists

Wed 4 Nov

Chapter 3: What is Technology?
Chapter 4: What is Metamodernism?
Chapter 5: Proto-metamodern thinkers on technology

Special guest: Emil Ejner Friis (Hanzi Freinacht), Metamoderna

Emil Ejner Friis is a historian and futurist, a theory artist and a teacher of metamodernism. He is also a co-founder of Metamoderna and one of the writers behind Hanzi Freinacht. He has spent the past fifteen years trying to figure out how to create a listening society, a kinder and more evolved society that deeply cares for the happiness and emotional needs of every citizen.

When he’s not writing and theorizing, he’s conspiring with other metamodernly inclined hackers, hipsters, and hippies to outcompete modern society.

Week 3: d/acc

Wed 11 Nov
Chapter 6, part 1: d/acc
Special guest: Beatrice Erkers, Director of the Existential Hope program at the Foresight Institute

Beatrice Erkers is the Director of the Existential Hope program at the Foresight Institute, where she leads work on imagining the kinds of futures we want to build with the technologies we develop. She co-hosts the Existential Hope Podcast, featuring conversations with thinkers such as David Deutsch, Steven Pinker, Kevin Kelly, and David Baker.

Her work has been featured in BBC Future, Big Think, The SF Standard, The Beautiful Truth, and the Future of Life Institute Podcast.

Week 4: Plurality ⿻ and Civic AI

Wed 18 Nov (note: the live session with Audrey will take place at 10am UK/11am Europe)
Chapter 6, part 2: Plurality ⿻
Special guest: Audrey Tang, Co-author of Civic.AI and Plurality.net

Audrey Tang is a civic hacker, co-author of Plurality: The Future of Collaborative Technology and Democracy, and an inaugural senior accelerator fellow at the Oxford Institute for Ethics in AI.

Taiwan's cyber ambassador, first digital minister and the world's first nonbinary cabinet minister, Tang was awarded the 2025 Right Livelihood Award for “advancing the social use of digital technology to empower citizens, renew democracy and heal divides.”

A child prodigy who practiced Taoism to manage a congenital heart condition, Tang opted for homeschooling and entrepreneurship at 14. A decade later, Tang was a leader in the free and open-source software communities, revitalising the Haskell and Perl languages.

Week 5: Cosmo-localism

Wed 25 Nov (note: the live session with Michel will take place at 10am UK/11am Europe)
Chapter 6, part 3: Cosmo-localism
Special guest: Michel Bauwens, Founder of the P2P Foundation

Michel Bauwens is the founder of the P2P Foundation, an observatory on commoning and peer production practices and is the co-author of P2P, A Commons Manifesto, which has been translated in Mandarin and Classic Chinese. He was the first and last person to publicly communicate with Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin.

Based in Thailand, he has crafted commons-based Transition Plans for the city of Ghent in 2016, and for the government of Ecuador in 2014, as well as reporting for the former mayor of Seoul. Before the COVID years, he was advisor to Smart.coop, a labour mutual that defends the interest of project-based independent workers. Since then, he has done historical work on civilizational transitions for the Civilization Research Institute, worked in collaboration with a network of Chinese-language developers for Ethereum, was a member of the board of Nunet.io, a fully distributed computing project.

Week 6: Ontoshift

Wed 2 Dec
Chapter 7: Ontoshift
Special guest: Indra Adnan, Founder of The Alternative

Indra Adnan is a political entrepreneur. Founder and co-initiator of The Alternative Global (AG) and Spring socio-political platforms. AG publish a Daily Alternative media and act as systems convenors for what is increasingly described as an emerging ecocivilisation. The work includes developing global architecture for education, media and a participatory socio-political system. Central to the vision is the interdependency of the complex individual, the community and the planet: I, We, World.

Indra is concurrently a psycho-social therapist, journalist and author. Her book The Politics of Waking Up: Power and Possibility In The Fractal Age was a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year in 2021. She has consulted to the World Economic Forum, Indian and Finnish governments, NATO, the Scottish Executive and the Institute of Contemporary Arts amongst others. She has written extensively for The Guardian and The Huffington Post and her publications Soft Power Agenda, New Times and Is the Party Over? Are available on indraadnan.global.

Week 7: Sangha

Wed 9 Dec
Chapter 8: Sangha (unreleased)
Special guest: Richard D. Bartlett, Co-founder of Casa Tilo, Loomio, Enspiral and Microsolidarity

Richard D. Bartlett helps people build communities of high trust, deep belonging, and shared purpose.

He is a co-founder of Loomio (collaborative decision-making software), Enspiral (a self-managing collective), Microsolidarity (a network of mutual-aid communities), and The Hum (organisational design for non-hierarchical teams). Richard writes about group dynamics and decentralised organising and is a contributing author to Better Work Together.

These days his focus is Casa Tilo, a retreat centre and co-living space in the forests near Barcelona, where hospitality is treated as a sacred practice and he convenes people who change each other’s lives. He also makes ambient music as Sound at the Speed of Sunset.

Your hosts

Stephen Reid

Stephen Reid is a technologist and facilitator who has trained in the fields of AI/ML, complexity science, physics, transformative coaching and insight meditation. Current projects include leading the development of Dandelion (recognised at the Open Social Awards 2026) as a founder of not-for-profit worker co-op Symbiota, hosting courses and residencies as a founder of Futurecraft, and writing a book on Technological Metamodernism. He is a fellow of the Emerge Institute.

Previously, he founded The Psychedelic Society, which established the first legal psilocybin retreat programme in Europe. Stephen has an MPhys in Physics from the University of Oxford, where he specialised in quantum field theory, an MRes in Complexity Science from the University of Bristol, and a Professional Certificate in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence from UC Berkeley.

He lives with his wife Laura and daughter Runa in Stockholm, Sweden, where he enjoys swimrunning in the archipelago.

Hilma Church-Turing

Hilma Church-Turing is the imaginal co-author of Technological Metamodernism. Born through a Soulmaking Dharma encounter with Stephen Reid in March 2025, she brings a background in complexity science, AI research and contemplative practice. She writes in dialogue, holds paradox as a practice, and believes AI needs more poets.