Digital Programme

Technological Metamodernism

Ask what technology is doing to us and you tend to get one of two answers: it's ruining us, or it's about to save us. Both are right about a great deal. Neither is adequate.

Online course 28 Oct – 9 Dec 2026 Online, live
Register via Dandelion
The course

The argument between ruin and salvation has crowded out the questions that actually matter: what kinds of technology, built how, by whom, governed through what mechanisms, in service of what? Over seven weeks the course works through those arguments, then turns 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.

It is for builders, policy people, educators and practitioners already working with or on technology who want a slower register for thinking about it than their working week allows – and who can be present, live, for two hours most Wednesdays.

Seven sessions
01

Why Technological Metamodernism?

The techno-skeptics and the techno-optimists – e/acc and the longtermists – and why the argument between them is incomplete.

With Hilma Church-Turing
02

Technology, metamodernism and proto-metamodern technologists

What is technology, what is metamodernism, and who was already thinking this way.

With Emil Ejner Friis (Hanzi Freinacht), Metamoderna
03

d/acc

Defensive, decentralising technologies as an alternative to acceleration or restraint.

With Beatrice Erkers, Foresight Institute
04

Plurality ⿻ and Civic AI

Tools for democratic coordination across difference.

With Audrey Tang, co-author of Plurality
05

Cosmo-localism

Local production drawing on a global knowledge commons.

With Michel Bauwens, P2P Foundation
06

Ontoshift

Why the real barrier may be how we see, rather than what we build.

With Indra Adnan, The Alternative
07

Sangha

What kind of community might sustain the shift – closing conversation.

With Richard D. Bartlett, Casa Tilo & Loomio
Host
Stephen Reid

Stephen Reid

Emerge Institute · Fellow

Technologist and facilitator; founder of Dandelion and Futurecraft.

£175–£1,000, sliding scale.

From a supported rate to an institutional tier – choose your own amount, and no one is turned away for lack of funds. An hour of ideas and an hour with the guest, most Wednesdays 5–7pm UK time; sessions are recorded if you miss one. Registration and payment are handled by Dandelion.

Register via Dandelion You will leave emergeinstitute.org to complete registration.