A 12-part series by Martin Davies-Roundhill
I notice things we have learned to accept without asking what they cost, who they serve, or how they might change.
Some are ordinary and immediate, like paying for shopping bags. Others are questions about the world we are already making and inhabiting, including the digital world where a person's digital self may live alongside software agents.
The central question
I live in the physical world. I call my digital self Nitram. I am still looking for a word for the shared digital world Nitram inhabits. The name is unresolved; the question is the point.
Editorial approach
Each episode starts with a plain question. It separates what is documented now from my interpretation and from what I imagine could happen. It keeps a serious counter-question in view and leaves open what we do not yet know.
The proposed season
Episode videos will be linked here after each one is publicly available.
01 · Planned
At checkout, paying for the bag makes me feel like we're being ripped off blind. Is that feeling justified? What does the bag cost, what does the charge cover, and where does the money go? I want to trace it before I decide.
02 · Planned
Introduce Martin and Nitram, and the difficulty of naming an inhabited digital world. The name is still open; the first-person question is the point.
03 · Planned
Explore the gap between “us here” and “AI over there.” Are digital agents part of one shared, increasingly digital world?
04 · Planned
Ask about continuity, identity, privacy, memory, permissions and control. Keep current tools separate from future possibilities.
05 · Planned
Look at ownership and distribution when automation raises productive capacity. Abundance is a possibility, not an automatic result.
06 · Planned
Separate employment, useful activity, care, purpose and income instead of assuming they all rise or fall together.
07 · Planned
Ask how energy abundance might change efficiency, repair, conservation and consumption.
08 · Planned
Consider coordination, fair access, privacy, dissent and accountability. Agent-mediated governance is a proposal with unresolved problems.
09 · Planned
Look at intimacy, companionship, community and privacy without assuming digital relations replace embodied ones.
10 · Planned
Present my question as an ethical inquiry; keep nutrition, livelihoods, traditions, ecology and alternative foods in view.
11 · Planned
Return to shopping bags and other familiar arrangements. Ask how fees, rules, infrastructures and habits become background assumptions.
12 · Planned
Bring together agency, governance, distribution and everyday life. Whose experience counts when we design the future?
Languages
The series plan is presented in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese.
Contact
I am the host and the only contact for this series.