Um, so yeah, so this is what I'm going to, do you want me to wait for that? Yeah? So, um, hello, hello world. Um, I'm going to talk about this. So I, what I do is, um, I have a background as an artist, as a scientist, as I've been doing media art for about 10 years. I have an institutional background doing medical research in a number of different faculties and like pathology, environmental health, genetics. I'll tell you a bit about that. Um, and what I've been doing, um, started with this group. So I've got, that's kind of my art thing in the middle and then I've got this group here, the Open Science Network, which is sort of a public lab that we built in Vancouver, Canada, in the west of Canada, yeah? And, um, now that's been a physical lab for maybe three, four years, something like this, yeah? And a couple years back, I decided that, um, once that got up and running and I had the group together for maybe eight years, I decided I wanted to start, um, traveling and being, uh, trying to do this more and more in other places and thinking about the open science concept in different countries, in different locations. Um, that was Europe, North America, and then, uh, about eight months ago, I, I went to Japan and then I started doing the same with Asia, yeah? And I've been going sort of from city to city, hey. Um, and, uh, and exploring different places, um, in Asia. And most recently, that led me to Shanghai where there's a lot going on, a lot of activity, um, and that's, uh, that's a current lab that I am helping, helping out with at Tongji University in, uh, in Shanghai, yeah? Biobill Lab. Um, and so I wanted to, I thought Singapore would be a really nice place. Um, there's a lot of, I think, a lot of shared culture between Vancouver, a place like Vancouver and a place like Singapore. We have the Pacific Rim thing. We're, we're both, um, you know, cities that, that really live and think about multiculturalism, I think, on different levels, you know? Um, and think about doing it, I guess in a way that is, um, that is in touch with Anglophone culture but isn't necessarily on center stage with it, right? We're not in New York or, uh, or something, right? But we're very much in that dialogue. Um, and I think in an interesting way that, um, some cities, um, not every city is, you know, and the American model is sort of one model, so I think it's, for me, it's an ideal place to sort of bring up what one thing that's behind all this traveling is that there's kind of what I'll call a weak multicultural model in Canada, right? We have people from all around the world and then they all end up speaking English and just kind of being not quite American and doing, you know, all pretty similar things and the second gen syndrome is that you don't really want to know about your culture, you want to get to know this Anglophone culture because that's where the economy is, right?  Um, you have to learn the language, you have to learn, it's not just, oh, there's a Chinatown or something, right? So there's a stronger form of multiculturalism, I think that really forces us to think about what knowledge we're valuing, um, I think Singapore is in a better position than Vancouver in this sense because you are neighbors, you have multiple official languages that are very proximal. We have French, but if you're in the western Canada, in the western Canada, you don't really speak it, right? And then we have, like, lots of Punjabi spoken and lots of Mandarin and lots of all these Hindi, all these languages, but most people don't speak it. Everybody just speaks sort of English.  It's a bit like Europe, they're a little bit better and they're really getting deeper than that weak cultural engagement, yeah? My basic premise throughout this is going to be that what the hack space does and what the open science space does is enhanced by this, yeah? So good empiricism, good knowledge is multicultural, okay? It increases your viewpoints, it increases the perspectives from your looking at it, yeah? And I'll be returning to that. So this is the basic thing. I introduce you to these different groups. I'll give you a bit of background about me so like I said, I've been doing, I did the medical research, I did the media art and more and more what I've been doing is combining them. So I've been more and more becoming a so-called bio-artist and a scientist-artist and in my projects I have, I work with computers and I work with other media and then I'm doing this medicine stuff so I'm like, okay, how can I start to kind of try and bring these together? So those different poles I try to bring together in the practice that I think of as part doing what a scientist does and then part doing what an artist does and then things like education and the ideas behind things become more and more important because they're a way I can sort of gel it, right? Philosophy, you know, it becomes a way I can talk about it in the same frame. If it's a bit of a shift in the paradigm, that's a language I can sort of use, yeah? And yeah, like I said I've been up until a couple of years ago, I was more or less Vancouver based and now I've been in a number of different places. I was in Europe for a bit and now I've been here and I've been now in Shanghai for a few months, yeah? And that's me. That's me. Really? Yeah, that's me, yeah? Yeah? What's that? Oh, this, okay, well, you know, the beard it's like, you know, it's no, this is like two. You cheap shifter with the beard. Can you snapchat for the next one? Yeah, yeah, yeah, this. And the customs officer, I wouldn't let you pass, you know?  It's really true, actually, because all my photos are all without a beard and I'm like, oh, yeah, that's yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right. I need to look older though because I always look way younger than I am and I still, I think, look younger than I am, so I'm just, yeah. It's like, at least I'm closer, you know? Most people like I want to look younger, I'm trying to look older, you know? This is literally a couple of years ago and it's confusing because I have a projection on my face, Adeline. I don't have green and red skin. I know it's confusing, but this is the real me. Yeah, he also was like, oh, you look different because I have this weird photoshopped image with like green woman man skin and yeah, I'm like, yeah, okay, yeah. That's understandable. So, so this is the Open Science Network, yeah? So this is the group in Vancouver and as a group, as a collective, it's existed now for a long time. So this is the group in Vancouver and as a group, as a collective, it's existed now for a decade. Give or take, yeah? And it started when I was at UBC University of British Columbia, the sort of big university in Vancouver, British Columbia being the province that we're in and then I soon realized after a couple of years that it wasn't really working there, it just wouldn't there wasn't the people and it couldn't extend outside of the university. So I sort of put it on hold for a couple of years until I and then migrated outside and it sort of started to gain kind of more in the city. In the, in East Vancouver, which is our sort of artsy kind of alternative kind of space, you know, where you'd have spaces like this, right? That don't look so pretty but are amazing inside, right? And look really pretty too, as you get to know them, yeah. So that's where it started to pick up and then after a few years I met Scott, Scott was a key person. Really, this was built with me and another guy who Adeline knows as well. Very different approaches, very different things. He's a very methodical, organized person and I'm someone who just sort of can ramble in front of people, you know. And he's not, he's very quiet and you can't hear what he's saying. He has all these qualities I don't have, so it's perfect. We both have a science background because I had all these people who were like, oh science, that's awesome and they're like a poet or they're like programming Python. I'm like, okay great, but we need actually some content before we, you know. So this is a difficulty, a lot of these bio spaces and all kinds of dynamic energy coming from tech that I really appreciate, but you need a bit of the bio knowledge to actually make it happen. So finally I met him, this is already like five years in and then we start talking. We do a couple of maker affairs.  I give a talk, we invite the people back and then we build the board out of that and then we eventually build the space, yeah. So that's that and then I already told you what happened after that. Then I started traveling. This is the place now where I've been at for a bit and where I'm helping out. We're in the process of doing the considerable paperwork that you must do in China in order to work there and stuff. But the dean wants me and the head of this wants me so eventually I'll get there pending that everything goes okay with Xi Jinping. Yeah, that's what they want. So yeah, they said yes, we want you and now here's a pile of things to do, right? And I'm like okay, great. I'll see you in a few months, yeah. So it's in process. I'm already, yeah, I'm there in them but yeah, they express interest, the dean express interest and so I'm going through the steps for that. And I have to say, China is a place that as I'm sure you guys know much better than I do it's a place of real contrast where there's a dynamism there with Xi and a humbleness of the people. They're so genuinely interested they're really diligent about what they do and they're really interested in new things. And then there's a structure that really wants to maintain things that are to say it, to understate it that are at odds with the American model and the global capital model. There's tension and they don't know which direction to go and I think to give them completely the benefit of the doubt it's hard to deal with it. The whole world don't know how to deal with this sort of weird globalizing force that America brings to the table and China's really trying and they're really trying with their own model. So sometimes it's amazing because they'll grow at a pace that I've never seen before and other times it's sort of frustrating and stagnant and difficult. But it's an amazing experience for me culturally and in terms of learning about what open science can be globally and I'll return to them in other places I've been around Asia and we can talk about some of the details. There's a lot of places I could talk to and I just want to give you kind of some taste of the specifics. Before here I went to Tokyo, Hong Kong, to Phuket, to Manila, to Ho Chi Minh and there's different flavors to each place and I think the one thing I'll say is that I really tried to see will this model keep working and I'll talk in general terms about that what I found started to work better and what I think maybe are models that are too western that don't really translate well across economic boundaries across cultural boundaries. And this is just an example of the kind of exhibit I have. Here I have like a food based video game controller and then I create this sort of abstract interface. So I bring in some bio, I hook it up to electronics, I do that. I grow things in a lab, I bring them into a gallery context.  Anything that will sort of provoke the conversation around science within society, how it's working, how to democratize it and also how to maybe de-fatishize this sort of ivory tower top-down kind of science said this, I link this special article from Nature and now you need to listen completely. No, I think that we can each be critical if we don't do that then we lose any touch with science and that's a core point for me is that economy doesn't equal good knowledge. Economy equals economy. Economy might equal power but we really need to pay, if we have a model that is about empiricism, it's not necessarily a model that's about techno-capital. So what we have there I think is the MIT model we can call it to be very serendipitous with where Adeline is being or and you could pick any sort of institution where the money and the type of equipment that goes with that is key to this type of knowledge there's a lot of great things I've already said that technology is this dynamic space that brings about spaces like this it's not just a reaction against the Craig ventures of the world and the sort of ivory tower innovators of the world, it's also thanks to, so it's a complicated relationship that I think we need to constantly rethink at the same time though to just end at this idea that more money equals better knowledge or something is obviously focused to me and to find ways of working against that, to find what is valuable in the model, what is dynamic, what is leading to new questions and paradigms and what maybe is just ending in an economic question and that diversity I think is really key it's really key to being able to test how your model might work if I can't take my model to Ho Chi Minh and engage in dialogue I can't understand how this guy is weaving bamboo baskets and yet somehow I've got this molecular bio knowledge that everyone should have if they're doing biology properly and yet he's working with trees in this complex way that I can't engage in at all, right there our models fall apart and we need to reevaluate it this is one way I propose we can do that, he's got empirical knowledge that practically he's evolved over time to build that and I've got another empirical knowledge that maybe has more of the technical capital but I need to abandon that in favor of trying to redo his experiments, learn them from that perspective and then we gain what you might call a better knowledge of what the bamboo tree is maybe I have molecular knowledge and he has sort of this more constructive knowledge or something together there's a better scientific model of what that plant is what is techno capital so techno capital there's two parts to that one is techno or technology techno is a word that when Aristotle wrote about knowledge if we translate what words he used for knowledge he's got a bunch, he's got words that are close to wisdom or psychology and then he's got a couple that are really useful for this kind of discussion one is episteme and one is tecne and tecne was where we get this word yeah, skill, skill I think would be pretty close, it's applied it's applied knowledge so he calls tecne when a craftsman this guy builds the basket or when someone builds something they can make a thing with it so it's applied somehow it's a skill, it's a sort of a mechanic has it episteme for him so epistemology if you know that word and this is what translates when the Romans translate Aristotle they translate this as Sientia and this is science so our word for science comes from what Aristotle used was theoretical so it was philosophy really although philosophy, Sophia, there's another word that's more wisdom so for Sune is like practical ethical knowledge etc what is good knowledge in this case it's pretty complicated to figure out which is the best knowledge he kind of likes philosophy obviously and he certainly wouldn't put tecne on top but it's complicated he really depends on what you're doing whereas today I would make the argument that in the American model we tend to favor tecne over the other forms of knowledge so that's one aspect of it the other aspect is capitalism which is, I mean I understand what markets are and what commerce is about and America's kind of very commercial media driven, ad driven kind of thing that both Vancouver and Singapore are able to keep up with capitalism is a term that evolves from a certain historical moment in this commercial every culture has had trade but the history of capitalism when you get into economic thinkers in the west they start to say well there's a point which is a point of sort of abstraction and of almost political kind of presence that we need this new word we're not just talking about what they call mercantilism which they would store gold and they would trade and this was early colonialism or other market systems through history but now we've got an abstract system where things like a stock market and the abstract kind of value of things is really important to keep it going so one case we were talking about Holland before is that it starts in Holland and there's other European countries that have a stake, Britain obviously very early on Singapore's existence the Anglophone existence is really based on that presence, globalizing commercial presence of England so really there's a lot of capitalism at the core of how Singapore sort of has grown and evolved in relation to the west and in relation to countries around them so it starts somewhere in Europe but really the golden example is America when America starts applying the model and tweaking it and improving it in the 19th century this is the model that more and more has become what is everywhere in the globe Britain had one that had a lot of global presence not anymore, Britain doesn't really exist in the global stage, America absolutely does they have bases everywhere, they have media presence everywhere and their model of capitalism is sort of really crucial so that's sort of the broad stroke of what a model of politics that has and this is one way to think about this is that they start making you start making policies that allow corporations more and more rights this is key so a corporation more and more can behave like a person so you get less liability for people so people will take more risk because they're like well I won't lose anything I won't get blacklisted, the corporation will and then I can just get rid of the corporation so legal changes in America in the 19th century improving this and tweaking it is really important to them growing economically like crazy the state protects you yeah well this is the thing where does capitalism start, absolutely in Europe so they have these sort of legal precedents already in place and Holland, the golden age, the Dutch Republic this is sort of one of, most historians tend to go there as their first place but England picks up pretty quickly with the industrial revolution and after and again America doesn't really exist at that point but once America gets it absolutely happens in Europe absolutely and the LLC I think that is particularly Britain that comes up with that yeah now you see it all over the place in America but yeah absolutely it happens in Europe first scholars debate where and when but the point is that now it's not just trade is the thing that's always going on that you know the governments tend to favor like the priestly class or the warrior class or this kind of thing historically now they're creating more and more legal spaces for this commerce because they're seeing a value in how it can help grow the state this is a key sort of part of it so obviously it's a complex discussion but there's something about technology and capitalism that in a highly American model more and more now it's a global model one thing to say right away is that this whole are they really communist I don't believe it anymore because now they're just one thing that's absolutely certain is are they trying to do something different and in tension with the American model yes that's clear so is Singapore is Canada not so much right we're pretty much keeping open to not to say that there aren't minor differences but in China they really are trying to do something different in the Middle East they're really trying to do something different in Russia so within that complexity because is like what is China's political system well one thing's for sure when you say that you're communist whatever that means and in this case yeah it means something pretty similar to whatever it means to be a capitalist American to be free and to be loving individual parties whatever right what is clear is it's trying to say that it won't necessarily be completely open to whatever that model is so is China it's the same with the Marxist argument oh China didn't do real Marxism they did this other kind of okay it's obviously different right Russia did a different Marxism the real Marxism is when Marx does it in Europe right and there are people in his time that do a kind of social democracy that's very similar to like the Scandinavian model now and how a lot of western countries are when Russia gets it it's very different they're much poorer they're much more massive when China gets it it's like a humongous country right totally different system that they need and they have a very different amount of wealth to begin with so is capitalism different in China than it is in America absolutely is it still capitalism well it's more complicated right it's definitely taking a lot of elements of capitalism you know it's and it's but it's tweaking them and it's figuring them out in a new way and it's I mean well here's and here's the thing that's really interesting is that when you look at like like how did America globalize and America really coupled it was the Cold War that was really key and they coupled military bases with this kind of media activity right and in China's case it's your I think what you're saying is bang on because it's almost purely investments right 50 years we get this area and we build this bridge for you yeah okay just economics they don't come in with military right they're not coming with media mania they don't come in and you know tell a billion stories no no no just pure business deal right so yeah in that sense yes have they kind of purified it or made it more capitalistic or something yeah so what you bring up is an interesting thing I mean I think there's a limit to how much I think I can speak for China so I'll limit that because I try and learn from China but really my background is I'm a white well Jewish white Canadian whatever the fuck Danish too yeah but I'm certainly you know I certainly and yeah I try and learn and have a good dialogue but for you guys I think more than me especially if you're of Chinese descent and now you're in Singapore and what that history was really a key history to this right there's a lot of expat Chinese around the world why right what's going on do they want to return now is that like what is the details of that in Vancouver there's a huge Chinese population and one portion is people who want who like something of Chinese culture but don't like the political aspect of it other people is very pragmatic and they're happy to return when it's practical right there's a lot of reasons so I think that I think that perspective will be really interesting because I'm going to talk a little bit more about the sort of American model that I that really I grew up with and I think it's still the predominant model but I think it's going to shift to a place like China so this is really maybe the important question is to start asking what is the difference what is their version of technology and capitalism because certainly there's a ton of capital in there and there's a ton of techno right so and and I do think that certainly regionally it's it's very soon going to become the predominant model if it isn't already right and globally in a lot of ways I think more and more you know so yeah that's that's a question maybe for discussion that we that I can open up to you guys I'll give you a bit of this sort of background so what so we talked to this is a really good question because we got a bit of the meat of what that term could mean and what what it you what it means in literature and because you asked that I'll just talk briefly about empiricism empiricism comes from a Greek word and prayer which is just experience basically yeah so it's and then when the western European thinkers take it up it's it's this debate about what is good knowledge and where does it come from and the two basic schools which get synthesized in Emanuel Kant or German thinker is the rationalist and the empiricist and the basics of it is that good knowledge comes from rational thought from logic and from structures that we sort of linguistically and hypothetically invent and this is sort of Descartes does this and then there's empiricism which is sort of more of a British model which is no experience is sort of first yeah so I'm just taking it up in a limited sense within science scientific idea that experience is important and experiment is important you don't necessarily need it for technologies right you can sort of create technologies you don't need to stick with them and sort of empirically you know stay with them and for me both rationalism and empiricism play an important role but basically it's about it's about talking about experiential knowledge and knowledge that comes from you trying things and playing and what the hacker space does I think is at the center of this yeah it's kind of at the center of this as well but I think what the hacker space does it sits between and potentially starts to open it up a little bit more towards experiment and less about just sort of getting the right commodity for that economy right so techno capital model we can sort of say three things about the type of the type of activity it has in relation to knowledge it's product knowledge yeah labs for things and it's innovative right these are sort of basic tendencies within it whereas empirical model you could say instead of being product knowledge is experimental knowledge you might not make a product out of it and maybe here it's more important that you make a thing than you fully understand the thing right it's labs for understanding so it's about gaining experience around this bamboo tree that we were talking about as opposed to just creating a bamboo chair already and getting something else because we can't be sitting here you know understanding the life cycle of bamboo right and the focus is really on reproducibility I might put in something like sustainability here but I think of a robust sort of experimental model because you need to keep returning to it your focus really is on is it still true is it still true is it still true right it's almost like when you apply maybe that creation somewhere right whereas here it's about innovation think of another thing can you create a chair good for you you know I love you okay make something else right otherwise we don't have a business we can't keep a float right and or in the case of like university labs think of a new way to spin your research grant because if you're not doing that then we're going to sink and die right and this is my love hate relationship with the university science so yeah so those are sort of three basic things we can sort of say to map out what these poles might look like yeah um yeah yeah yeah do you mind going back to slides to the techno capital versus in person so I wanted to ask about the kind of base reducibility of those terms because they have brought up you know this kind of different schools of thought with regards to how it relates to a certain understanding of a product or understanding is there necessarily a tension that's kind of implied here because there's a kind of base crossover you kind of need to understand or rather you need to know the contextualization of that particular knowledge before you can start building so we said that there's a versus especially when you brought up that point about you know making the bamboo basket versus having the particular knowledge right necessarily so much of core difference as much as just different levels of examining the same topic right yeah no yes yes yes absolutely absolutely and I mean and the the funny thing is my example goes right along with your sort of self contradicting potential of this because my example really the techno capital person is probably the basket maker because he's making a practical thing for like his community and then the empirical person is studying some gene that maybe doesn't lead to any useful thing at all but he just wants to know about this weird molecular stuff right and that is completely in contrast with my idea that somehow this more westernized model brings this right and it just drives your point home that these cross over in a million different ways and in so many ways my claim really at the core here is just that it's one useful framework to ground a way to think about what direction we might go right yeah it's absolutely not saying that these don't cross over like crazy that I'm not that they're not dependent on each other in a million different ways and that maybe it's not the best framework right it's one that I found useful in starting to get at where I think science can go you know when I think of what disenchanted me about the ivory tower what were things that I found were lacking what are thought models that can have they can start start discussions really not solve them by any means but start discussions that can start to get at some of those ideas but I think for me also maybe looking at science is where you look at um as science as a like nature as a resource maybe like the idea that you do science like for me the title capital versus the criticism would be anything capital would be referring to looking at science as a money making sort of model um so and so for example for me if like if the basket weaver was making it and then it was functional but it was also artistic then maybe you know like so for me I think maybe when I think about what you put up here and the empiricism maybe it's more like you know maybe how why we're doing like the motivations for for the science yeah yeah yeah and then we flip it and then the basket maker it's about sort of this experience and continue it with the culture whereas the molecule might be some for some technology eventually maybe not yet but that's the idea learning and the journey doing science or the teaching and maybe you know then you could look at you know for me the time I would I would look at it but yeah I mean many different ways you can yeah yeah and I was thinking of it a bit in that way but then it's almost like you know sometimes as I'm talking I realized as you were saying that I was like because it kind of when I was talking about the basket before I was like oh yeah like he's like skill and I'm like oh yeah I like the basket and I'm like oh wait that's exactly sort of flipping you know um but that yeah like you said Adeline that's exactly the sort of complexity of it is that you'll find within this my big thing is that I think that it's useful to look at this because the overriding tendency you know and the tendency is beyond us to do anything in an immediate sphere I think that's where philosophy where discourse becomes useful because maybe the things that we sort of live with without having made explicit what is the structure of that what is the structure of how power is organized if you're trying to do science and it's getting devalued or you're not fitting into a certain cog in the machine model and like what are the reasons for that this is one version of a bunch of ideas that I think can lead to some ability to talk about you know like what might be going on you know but yeah it's I mean you know and the bottom line is that you know to offer a framework and then to have a discussion about a model of say knowledge I think that very process will lead to new models and I think that's another implicit sort of idea for me is just having that discussion like maker hacker movements or science labs or within commerce I mean philosophy is just like what what are you doing right and I think it's valuable and in some way I want to say well this is however you know it's like oh but you can't prove there's no facts in philosophy or yes but I think it's super useful maybe because of that maybe because it's continually about unearthing new perspectives and you know and I really think this is a key thing that we need to write philosophies but philosophy something discussion don't just make shit you know like let's actually fucking talk about it sometimes I mean it's about values right I mean like I think you know what I talk about model open science right and I think it's not about what you can prove but really why I mean for me like why why are we discussing open science it's about it's your value of why you need science right so I don't know if it's true I don't know hmm yeah yeah well I mean and and like you saying that as a scientist is great because a lot of the like the discussion of like do values have a place in science let's let's take a survey of hands what do you guys think do values have a place in science this is like one of these classical American media question you know like no and then you get fine and it's like whatever man I just like search for stuff and I want to discover and like no I don't you know I'm not doing ethics which is great I mean within that model I think there actually is an ethics you know but what do you guys think do values have a place in science yes who thinks no but no no but this is of course I do but finance value is that you do science to discover new things right yeah no and that is a value right I don't have to be good or bad right yeah not about whether science is good or bad yeah it's why you do it right that's why I mean by value yeah anyway clearly I think I mean so with the technical capital model the value of science is that you do science and in mining right right right fun versus good for you fit in one of those fun versus good for you fun versus good for you yeah or someone saying no science is good for you good for you like health wise which is good for you science has an implicit moral value yeah it's not does science have values it's the only value it's all values yeah yeah it's like better than like corn flakes you know fun may just be you know it's just you may not have that good you may not have that value in where you can quantify just just doing it because it's it's pleasurable is fun good for you yeah it's a good question I don't know they want a hedonistic treadmill right I mean I think so I think within this hedonistic treadmill I want can you get these in Singapore yeah I want I think they just sell utilitarian treadmills in China so I would love to just yeah this is just as good same route pleasure yeah I'm in good for you well yeah I mean yeah the key point that I mean I think like okay one thing I could say is that those are other frameworks that will fit in different ways within this right I think you could put both of those on either side in different ways right another thing is that I think they fit within you know like like the whole this is one thing about you know like the the American kind of let's do DIY bio is about awesomeness and about how much awesomeness you can like extract from every moment and make it more awesome you know fun yes it's it's good for you is yeah okay that's interesting okay so right so are you posing that then is you contrasting that with the sort of fun North American model versus this sort of more I would say America has that yeah okay let's stick with one point though at least at least we had a point there so no if we go with that for just a second I think that I think there's something to it I think there's something to it because I think in China it's even more pronounced right it's a little bit less it's about shoulds it's about this these are things we kind of need to do you know whereas in America often an entertainment value is enough right and I think this is really key thing when we think about America's influence and cultural presence in the world I mean the military obviously plays a key role but what's really key to I think is the entertainment kind of investment that's going on if you look at like economically how America pairs with the world a lot of things they're not even number one anymore and they're you know there's really a lot of competition okay after the war they dominate most things because everyone gets decimated every rich country gets decimated by the war right but 40 years 50 years later you know Japan and Korea like all these countries are growing all over the place and right and the one thing that's still dwarfing everyone is a military investment you add up the next 20 countries in the world and America's winning and media industry you know it dwarfs every other country so America's really really invested in entertaining the world in providing stories for the world in having fun right there's a huge economy and is Asia investing as much in that proportionally speaking absolutely not and this is something that you now like I showed you that lab it's okay made in China okay now innovated in China this is a shift that China really is set on trying to trying to make happen but I mean this is definitely something that will take time for other countries to really because America really really has a corner on the fund market you know um so behind that you know like what's good for you what's fun who's fun who's having fun and for whom and when right and at what expense and these kinds of questions right whose story you know are you only having fun if you're watching Hollywood movies because other movies just don't have the budget and they're kind of boring and what I'm just going to watch I know it's not cool I don't care right these are better movies because there's and they often are because there's more money and there's more attention there's more consumer attention and these kinds of things right um so my way of answering that is to start to show how that can lead to other questions right the value one is also really great too because it can kind of fit on either one you can have a business that ethic you can have a sort of lab ethic um you can also hate both of them you know there's lots of people in Vancouver that just want to hug trees right they don't want either of these things right um that's not me um but if I want to maintain friends there I need to you know at least respect that point of view um and uh and and also the what where I was getting at when you first said that the science value question is a really key question within science discourse and I think your view is very progressive if you look at um how how scientific uh um the scientific economy the scientific community has sort of evolved there's been resistance to that right science isn't about that but what's behind that often there's other values that come with that right like these ones like you say right they're already having values why not make them explicit um and I don't even think you necessarily need to say oh well you know you're always like your your hypotheses are always value-laden this is one uh like coonian way of putting it there's one one thinker that puts it this way I think even without saying that it's just what do you want to do right even the most scientific pure scientific thinker in European history is fighting for we should do experiment more right that's a value right when when you have the the enlightenment thinkers you know the um French enlightenment thinkers they're saying no we should be valuing experiment and not the taboos of Christian culture because this is more important for us right there's a value right behind that right and when you have oh you know you know the science isn't about values it's just about doing proper science and so on often you have a defender of sort of a big science model that has a whole institutional set of frameworks and maybe a salary and maybe some children or something behind that right um so they're implicitly defending maybe a technological model because that's the very context that's coming right um yeah so maybe bring it up later think about how that evolves maybe as we talk um because they're really good ways of intersecting I think with uh with the ideas that we can sort of engage with and you know and what is at the root of all this right over and over again without sort of stating it for me what is at the root of expanding empiricism moving to the empirical model is the idea of intercultural engagement right you look at this of course you can also say that techno capital is multi-cultural yes absolutely it is but if we're going to have um what what I hope I can sort of start to show now I think you get much more of what what I'll go back to the idea of weak and strong multi-culturalism right I think for instance in Canada we have a multi-culturalism that perhaps is a little bit more techno capitalistic than I would like to think uh it is empirical something like this this would be a way of framing it yeah um so it's a little bit more about bringing together people on business terms than on an actual cultural exchange that tries to negotiate between the cultures no usually it's the economically dominant culture will say what's up and then the other one will hopefully learn to adapt and if they don't they won't really be part of that multi-cultural conversation right so have your token festivals and food and stuff like that that's what we want economically otherwise whatever don't speak your language in public like we speak English here you know um so what are the concepts that I think bring about this multi-cultural kind of basis of a more empirical kind of space this is what I'll um propose in three different categories so uh a sustainable idea of science and I'll just jump ahead for this so multi-culturalism as implied empiricism yeah and that's sort of where we're going to end up um so as we get more multi-cultural we get more empirical uh with our knowledge these are three different concepts we can explore as polls uh from which to think about um uh how this knowledge is working right so we already talked about the first one you know this is this uh kind of Euro historical kind of idea where the empirical and the rational are the the leading kind of terms and categories for people who are fighting for science people whose value is we should experiment we should do these things I'm someone who is sort of a card-carrying member of something to do with this like I do agree with these things in in some sort of a way maybe not in how they've always evolved or maybe some people might use the terms or misuse them in my opinion today but in in general terms I'm interested in this in not being anti science and technology but maybe being critical of technology and trying to think about what we mean by science something like this right and what a community space like this can sort of play in that right um now the other two I'll talk a little bit about um so let's go through so first um what is the rational empirical um we talked about what empiricism means so it has an experimental uh element uh collective frameworks so this means that when I come up with a framework if I say you know this and this is true about the bamboo tree or something like that and the guy who makes all those baskets says well actually you know when I did this um this came out so the third point that you made isn't really relevant or you should talk about it in this way maybe it'd be more helpful to someone who actually knows how to work with bamboo which you don't um if that collectivity isn't there in making the framework then I think it falls apart right um and we you can think back a bit about how oh well if an economic factor is determining it then maybe we're not meeting that right so the collective element to making a framework um and when I say engagement in hypothetical engagement who can make hypotheses this is an important question right we know that hypotheses are things that will lead to experiments right but who can make them you know if that bamboo guy comes along to an MIT lab or whatever you know to Stanford and says hey you know National University of Singapore I think you should be doing this in your research and it's like what is your what are your you don't have a bachelor's like what like you know you just walked over here you read this in a paper or something and okay great you know and even if they were like really sympathetic there's nothing practical that would make them in any way find a reason to engage right what would it mean to oh they take them on and maybe they they'd be some media charity case like there's no scenario in which this would actually happen right because our political structure and our social structure is completely at odds with making that discussion useful right now is it useful somewhere like here I think so on some level can improve yeah sure but I think in a space like this you do have people with a science background you know people with kind of any background and it's the beginning of a different kind of model I think right of what I'll talk about in a bit about knowledge libraries yeah so you've got different spaces community spaces libraries we've got spaces like hack spaces maker spaces that I think start to actually provide a picture of what that might look like as opposed to university lab now do we want specialists yes I think we do in terms of making bridges or doing big projects but it comes to people's like environment and health and their food and things like this no I don't think so I think we need this this what I'm calling empirical you know we need a more interactive model we need a multicultural model testability so if you if something is truly testable there needs to be you know it's like like when China does an experiment and then and then or publishes a paper and like the media China is a complicated country but the media coverage of China is a whole other element in itself the American media coverage is this whole either it's this backward country that doesn't understand this and that or it's this yellow peril it's going to take over everything with this whole totalitarian communism and anything they do by weird proxy is somehow de-validated in that they can't really do science they can't really do this now it's more evil made in China kind of stuff and there's a mythology behind it right now sometimes it's warranted sometimes it's maybe you know you can approach it from other points of view and so on but how much is there a Chinese perspective in that right and we can reproduce this question for many many other countries and and sort of stories and we can look at science journals then and start to ask this question you know we we do a focus group we do a statistical kind of generalization what was the focus group you know it was like kind of affluent 20 something Berkeley kids you know generally white is that a good kind of sample group to extrapolate to the world maybe not right maybe we can do better right and what are the voices to actually begin that so independence in the testing like can a totally different group that is not accountable that actually has the independence to retest it we know we don't agree does that even exist and most of the time it does not within well within a lot of power structures but within you know the structure of capital and technology in our case that's that's a factor that will lead to that not being there right can they access it can they afford it can they you know buy the things necessary to reproduce the tests if they can't I'm not saying we shouldn't do that but we should really limit the amount of influence that it has and we shouldn't be generalizing it for the people who can't access it on their own terms you know and be testing it we certainly shouldn't call it good scientific knowledge on any sort of you know in any sort of a testable way because we can't actually begin to do those testable those those independent tests right and can they reproduce it so reproducibility is the only one out of these three that you'll see in the literature over and over again right but again it's within this Berkeley context right it's the context of okay who are the people can afford the equipment right we even look at something like the fabab model which is a great kind of space between maybe the institution and the maker hacker space and yet if you don't have that hundred thousand dollars to get that equipment you're cut off right so this is access yeah it's opening things up but to a point right now if people want to actually in this science context reproduce it while there's this economic limit right so reproducibility is discussed this is one of the three things that you'll find discussed in the scientific literature but within a micro context I would say right within this context of people that can afford it what is the what is the more thorough idea of reproducibility right can go outside of that and responsibility I was even thinking of saying like retestability or something the key to this is not so much the sort of moral value thing maybe but the response element can they actually not just test it and and actually have an independent perspective but actually be able to respond to it right to actually critique it right and for there to be an open forum for that right okay open science open hardware open technology we have these ideals we're fighting for these ideals who can get the technology where's the technology right who cares about the technology this is a key thing too like not everyone in the world cares about 3D printing right not everyone wants to do that so it isn't necessarily a universal thing that we all need to kind of democratize and worry about right but who wants to eat decent food who wants to live in an environment that's not poisoning their kids or friends kids if they don't have kids right or if they care about their friends kids too that's important or this is me like thinking a lot about me through that scenario I'm like can I apply myself to my example yeah I would care about my friends kids just for the record just I want you guys to know I would really care I would really care and things in your immediate environment things like this maybe the indoor environment where you live you know this I think absolutely has to evolve to a better scientific model a more diversely inclusive model continue testing you can test it can you continue will it continue to be true over time right the rate on levels in your building is okay now are they okay in a month are they okay in half a year right the air quality of you know the downtown portion of your city you know is that something you can have a continual monitor on continually discuss in a way that you know is sort of open to so yes we want to test it we want to be able to test it we want to have the access all these things right but we want also these responses to be open right continual sort of responses and democratic discussion so this kind of rounds it out in that you can respond to it you can talk about things the discussion is open and the ideal of democracy right this is another one of the great not evil communism but open free democracy right it's almost just like a political term say I like the states or something right or Canada or any of these democratic nations that know it's almost like if you're poor it's really hard to be democratic right and that's where I don't I don't know if I agree at all with how we use democracy there is an idea though I think that I do believe in with democracy outside of that it is simply that you can strive to include anyone who's subject to laws in the conversation about those right and I think most western models are not that great the voting model is almost completely meaningless I think by the time you get to the vote you're choosing things that to me I'm most of the time I'm like I don't want either at all like you know and I was involved in any other step right how do we do democracy it's really hard and I think we need a lot of structures that aren't democratic but especially in a smaller group or as an ideal and especially within science I think it's an important element because it is about can this discussion include as many people as possible which again for me means more cultural perspectives more backgrounds more context more environmental context medical context which really do change the data right that focus group isn't just oh I don't want these rich people having it no but if you're not white and you come from a different environmental context there are immunological things that will be different your microbiologically you will be different so the just impersonal scientific evidence won't be the same right this will change and so yeah so then that becomes important so then this is sort of the the general framework that I hinted at a little bit and when we have community centers they don't really include science and technology but they have something about how to socially think about this I think organizations like the UN that are supposedly multicultural but are politically like spineless or you know they don't really have a real global political presence it's really nation states that are doing everything if there can be a way in which maybe treaties can evolve to these points where we have social organizations that aren't just right now a lot of amazing the best things that are happening are coming from technical capital are coming from these international kind of semi-non-profits that have some kind of a weird business model that we can't figure out if we're not like you know like have a business degree now what is it the the moral social entrepreneur social business or something it's defined as a for-profit because it gives you more freedom but you can be even more like a non-profit and bet I don't know I don't know it's a but it's trying to do these things using the model which I think is great because that's the power structure we have right so a lot of the time it's these kind of independent organizations that are doing things that governments are not you know and the UN's not you know the UN's like making a new UNESCO list and it's like okay thanks thanks UN applying it nowhere except for their website you know and the thing is they don't have that sanctioning whereas the corporations do they have that sanctioning within nation states and when they build up a legal presence in multiple suddenly they're the new they're the new global power you know it's this legal precedent that allows them and if you've got you know like I don't know you think of like Nike how many states is it registered in how many states maybe you know there's like now you look at the GDP of countries and you compare them to global corporations and global corporations are like exponentially gaining right the pie of many many Asian states at once right so this is an opportunity for dynamism for gaining a platform right if I have these ideals and I want to engage I'm becoming more and more aware of this is like where we're talking about do you want to use open this or that and I think it's always a compromise between what people are actually using where the public actually is and then what you want to what you want to fight for right it's like going to the biosome is great because it's a great platform at the same time is are there are there things out of that that you want maybe as a Singaporean sort of scientist to reinvent in your own context or something like this right but suddenly you meet all these people by playing that game that you maybe wouldn't know right so I really you know it's not like oh fuck all technical capital be good empiricists and fight the system and said no no you need to fight the system you need to find ways of engaging in the system right where do these libraries of knowledge come from I think it's very complicated I do think that the how the corporation evolves whether it's the non-profit or these new profits or whatever they're going to play a big role they're the only thing beginning to give a model a lot of more active like are the group in Shanghai is a business an education business that couples with some of the ideals of the fab lab and the maker movement and it's given me you know like like like me going there and getting getting all my all my you know doing all the paperwork and stuff I'll have a platform I haven't had other places you know because they have backing and funding now for my open ideas and stuff coming from just a basic educational commercial model right that I wouldn't have had otherwise so the strategies for this I think are complicated I do think nation states need to play a role I do think that you know these international organizations like the UN need to play a role without question one of the biggest practicals will be played by corporations and how they evolved because they really are the people defining this discourse more and more and big institutions that are coupling with them like Tongji in Shanghai like you know MIT in Boston like you know NUS here right how you partner with them and how you strategically engage with that it's not going to be governments alone and governments aren't necessarily interested in in the international community anyways right but these are sort of the the basic ideas so if you have a community center you have a library and I use the library in this way of sort of reinventing it right I think there's a lot of great things in the library is there such a thing as a global library of knowledge you know can we have that can we take the book model that I think is great make it international and make it about not just books but other things that you can write and invent on culturally like we have videos we have video games we have all these things and we have now the whole panoply of maker things we have 3D printers we have laser we have all these things can we think about how there can be a library of that kind of lab knowledge you know goes beyond just maybe the theories that you can get out of books right which I think the library kind of covers interestingly and then if you marry that with a hacker space in the maker space I think they bring a lot of the model for how that would work right how do you bring in things well I think that's kind of there in a way when you look at hacker spaces is it about opposing technology no it's about demystifying it right it's about actually being more pro at and engaging with it more and finding ways in which that the diversity can engage in different ways so if we return back to this these concepts this is sort of the oh yeah that's just an extra slide that's not supposed to be there this is kind of the the key underlying thing multiculturalism as implied empiricism not as oh how do we work in different cultures to maintain our purified empiricism no we don't have it until we engage in these perspectives and we find a way outside of you know a sort of more economic bubble to think about it yeah that's it and I mean like now I would be interested in what you think where does fun fit and where does good for you fit in this and where did values fit let's say I'm interested in science and I want to do a performance enhancing you know whatever and I experiment with amphetamines in the trailer yeah couldn't you do it in an ivory tower it's like really expensive and you're wearing a business suit it's got to be a trailer you know do you guys know trailer park boys do you get that in Singapore trailer park boys I think it's on the internet but we don't get it alright so only intrepid savvy researchers find it it's Canadian alright you're welcome you want to see North American trailer trash the ultimate show we did it we did it in Canada not America I love that show but anyways it's what's that yeah yeah there's a lot of what American backdrops nice of a ton of these trailers with guys inside of it testing amphetamines on themselves right the trailer park boys are 100% for you in doing that they'll be like yeah man yeah he wants to test and put it on fucking yeah okay I'm just going to say that when I say values like that is a value right I mean why right so I mean like if you want to go and do that I say like hey you know how do anyone go ahead and do it you ask me so that's my value we think about science and why you know clearly you are doing for open science yeah yeah yeah we no longer have any reason I think in Singapore we don't know why we well sorry we don't know why we're doing science we do science because we wanted to invest in the industry as a whole philosophy the understanding of what it means from doing amphetamines you know the blue eyes and then it impacts culture in that sense or if I want to trade with them the country with hope and team and that affects and that's a philosophical argument that you could put in science isn't it that's where science and philosophy are but I even think like you implied Adeline I think even before you when I say philosophy I say in a very generic sense just any idea you have I think you already had a philosophy just when you said I want to put amphetamines in me in a trailer right and that's why I brought a trailer park boys park boy at heart at heart yeah yeah yeah yeah in your heart you're a trailer park boy shooting drugs and making them in your trailer white underwear yeah yeah yeah not a wife beater but wearing a wife beater yeah yeah yeah the good version of that you're not beating your wife you're just sensitive and like putting amphetamines in you but you're wearing a wife beater yeah that's right your pillow is a bong man you're an open scientist bro you made it um no I mean one immediate thing for me is that that is actually so like I think of the quantified self thing which fits in different layers I think on the one hand what you're talking about is a fight a very literal fight today which you could couple with what I'm saying pretty closely because the quantified self people and people think for instance of pharmacology 50 years ago you would pretty much test any drug on yourself today that is so overwrought with regulations and safety this and that it's unthinkable in most developed countries and developed labs now what do we think about that is that compromising our knowledge is that compromising the responsibility of the people that are putting these products out there they don't have to test it on themselves does that change what's going on does that basic empirical kind of process also change the knowledge you're in a sense implicitly fighting for not just the trailer park life but also that self testing is a crucial part of science almost always the baseline only in the last like half century has that become almost kind of an exception to this big statistical kind of technological model and now you get this quantified self movement and stuff I mean you know then there's also an element to that where there's like a whole app making community that create all these apps that monitor different stuff or people who like write down exactly what they're eating all day and whatever you know like so there's different versions of the sort of self testing paradigm right but yeah and I think that gets right to the core of it right and the economic thing one thing that I think of immediately is that I think a lot of the developing world is a lot more pragmatic and a lot more about good for you or good for economy or something like this arguably right I think Singapore leads this charge you know but I think your questions are quite different you know when you're in America or even Europe as much as Europe is a sinking ship but you know centuries of privilege to drown under the thing is a lot of the people ask questions that are totally impractical and I think it's almost like a new colonialism that we have this kind of value of colonialism that they come and say oh you should be doing all these impossible things that will use up all your money and then you won't be able to catch up at all with all the infrastructure that we have when we come here right so I almost you know like one thing is okay if you didn't pass through industrialism you need to pass through if you want to compete with if you are behind in certain ways and you want to catch up I think to find models to fault that is the fault is on the side of the model maker not on the person being overly practical you know Asia is acutely both extremely intelligent and acutely aware of the global position that they want and that they have you know there are other like Eastern Europe I think they're aware they just don't care right they're just like whatever you know we're shrinking our economy is dying that's cool you know there's some weird growth going on there and stuff now but there's not nearly an applied kind of response I think arguably then you get in other countries like some Asian countries so you know again going back to like what can we and I can say that because I'm Polish too I can say that I compliment the things I'm not and then I you know I can critique Paul Axe because come on you know Poland's doing okay now actually but yeah they're like generally speaking the Eastern Europe isn't exactly the leading economy of the future but to get back to what you were saying I think that needs to be added into the mix because you know it's not just oh you know you're overly pragmatic it's like well your choices are not the same you know and it's the same with China people critique China in a lot of ways where they need to get to stage A to do stage B and it's like all they're not fun and open and whatever and maybe culturally you know I think it's obviously going to be different than what America is as they gain more and more power but at the same time it's like well if you don't have money for good transit you know why are you making all these movies and is that what you should be doing or something creating a better image for yourself you know what I mean should Singapore be having more fun as opposed to being more practical when they're in a very complex economic environment you know to be as strong as you guys are within an environment where your neighbors are not strong you know like economically speaking you can't just trade with Myanmar and you'll be fine you know you need to be very strategic about it so your task is a lot more difficult they think but I mean yeah what do you think what do you think from Singapore I actually have to run for a call but I was going to say that like you know in terms of like I actually made a lot of great signs so I got to go for a call I'm leaving anyway right so I think when I say it back I just feel like we need to think a little deeper about like what we say about science is about education it's about why are we human beings and what are we doing I think these things are actually tied to each other so I think that's something that we seldom think about when we think about what we're doing and it doesn't have to be so lofty but I think that the people who set up spaces the people who are trying to run like education like for example like the open science model could easily become it's great like science democratization in China can make you a lot of money because you have thousands of more than thousands right all these people who don't have access to universities and then you think to them like hey I'm going to come in here I'm going to teach you a little bit of molecular biology like people will just pay me like five bucks each I mean I'm just saying that like a lot of these things can be turned into something that's just about profit making so you can get the seat of sort of intrinsic motivation and then you get that good for you out of the way and then fun wouldn't actually take care of everything else because pleasure of finding out you don't have that BBC yeah I mean other than you say from outside saying look science is where you want to be because you know society respects you you're good for society or you know you can invent a thing and then come in a lot of money and then it's just simply boring you don't know the trailer park life yeah you haven't lived here I got formaldehyde content in these walls that you don't even fucking dream about yeah let's say the one thing it's not fully true but let's just assume it is science evolved from fun right? has all science then as it's been applied been good okay that's pretty easy to respond so that's a bit where you were going so if you just focus on the fun then the values will know right I don't think we always need the good for you and the values but we keep hitting those walls we need to decide if we want to be a trailer park boy and inject ourselves or if we want to fight for limiting science and tabooing exploration if we want to buy whatever at any time you know what I mean I think the fun model or I stay in the fun realm there's a lot to be said for and I think behind a bit why you're interested is because there's a value maybe for me within experimentation another way of putting is focusing on play which might fit with what you're saying so one time when I talked about this empirical thing I focused it was more for kids and so I was like okay how am I going to talk about this and I thought well if you play and you try things and you kind of stay in the playground or something I think that's kind of similar right so then we'd be making a similar argument because we'd be saying if you saving whales is fun it's a little lame but okay you know saving the world and why they're going extinct or even the climate and what's happening and how it's the complexity involved and the the sophistication in how things work and it's fun, it's fun but when you put it you set the sort of environment expectations into no you have to do that because that's good for you and then maybe that takes you're going to the same objective but through different means and that particular mean may be more harmful maybe something that is easier to deal with than good for you but you wouldn't have that result wouldn't have an open set of thinkers I think the openness to experiment to play our cousins I think there's a similar do we want to let people in our society with crazy things and stuff and I do think that that's behind an element of the experimental thing and not just the people with the technical capital and the money but have that as an open ethic what were you going to... I was just wondering whether there is kind of a greater meaning to kind of this circling back to this fundamental definition of that very fuzzy term that we use as fun which is a complex social psychological behavior and motivation that has so many of these factors and a lot of which, if we want to consider the term fun now, has a lot of loaded American cultural parallelism implicit in it because of their dominion of the media apparatus and I'm just wondering whether there is something to be glimpsed from just continually kind of this sort of pedantry as opposed to having a great interrogation that's the thing that's informing whatever we think of the public moral code whether it is the kind that's embedded into a greater framework of the knowledge of the knowledge production economy or within practicing as a science itself so I was just wondering whether there is so I think that's the question to you do you want to have fun or are you trying to indoctrinize with American imperialism trailer park and all the time come on where is the distinction I guess whatever and that's perfectly functional but you don't want to eat something that's a salad with olive oil or whatever which is good for you but much more tasty than the practical it's good for you kind of food yeah it's funny because what I think of in that context is the amount of again how do we know to eat ever and if you look at the history of that that's an experimental feel how do we know that this is good and not that and we ate and we ate and we evolved cooking based on our senses and now the most and that transition is key because now it's like some kind of rational calculation or something anything that you feel if you were lost in the forest and you're survivor man and you're trying things and stuff you would start from ground zero for us because first you'd be like wow all I have is my senses you know so we've become totally non empirical in that way and your now this version of fun is a way of bringing it back that you're you know like I was talking I have this in this lab there's an Italian there's an American and the American is a calculator eater he's like God has this thing and this thing and this will go to this part of my body and this taste gross but he feels bad after but no it's good you know and then the other guys in Italian and he just he's just like whatever I just you know if it tastes good and he cooks and he like eats pasta whatever all these bad things right what is the basis for which you know you're even determining that and if pleasure is part of it I think there's a lot of cases in which yeah you'll actually ground yourself a little bit better one thing that pleasure absolutely does right great pleasure from so you can't define what pleasure is all yeah yeah yeah quantifying food is fun man come on Eric come on stop stop taking away my fun in quantifying food yeah yeah yeah no no but but if we look at absolutely absolutely absolutely it works like that as well but if you look at if you say that the sensual pleasure you derive from food is related to the knowledge of the food right as opposed to the sensual pleasure you derive from mathematics in relation to food or whatever you wanted to find the calculation part if that's true then there's a relation between what you're talking about and then again this experimental idea right because whatever you think about pleasures it's certainly related to something to do with your your your body and your senses and so on right so it's one way of returning to the idea of well how do I know this food is good or not right in a experimental way because what you're saying is absolutely true on the on the level of fun but in the you know and how it relates to sort of the experimental thing you're gonna say something I was just wondering you know going back to that finding foraging in the middle of nowhere with nothing but your senses I mean if you go back to the base the roots of things like perhaps some berries it tastes great okay good something to eat you just die that's the base reducibility of that kind of process is that if anything happens you just die you don't affect anyone else you just you know kind of die you decompose and maybe more things will grow from you and it's like it continues and I love that you went that far in the future yeah yeah yeah you decompose bugs grow and you know there's a population of people who have come up with a system of recording that particular knowledge and cataloging it and then you have signs you have okay I can't eat this berry because if I eat it I would become this man who died here whom the berry is now growing out of for whom I have to thank my beautiful trailer park garden but instead of we you grow mushrooms and no no but I mean and so then in your example the person who died to become a garden like the berry right so pleasure is in everything because then you died right but yeah it's like how do you know you know because it happened and you witnessed it and then if the person who died witnessed it it doesn't matter because he's dead or she you know women can die just as well as men and what's that yeah yeah yeah equal opportunity to die by eating shitty berries and and then it's the person next to that you know if no one witnessed it right if a tree falls in the forest and no one's around you know maybe it happened but we didn't learn that trees can fall you know that's the that's a variation I've never done on that yeah yeah a group of scientists or enthusiasts thinks that the world is 6000 years old and adamant of that fact how would you go about having a system of democracy in that sense and maybe the other portion of another group is angry yeah where they get killed off or something and they make a garden out of them put them in their trailer park use them as a source to inject into themselves to prove that the world is 6000 years old I think so there's two things I would say to that one is that I think in terms of in terms of the objective truth which I do believe in on a certain level that will be a bad model and that's I think where you're getting at right that this is not I think there's a value of big science I think there's a value for hierarchizing knowledge and I think it's in the case of this like if we want to build a bridge we don't want to democratize all the opinions on how to build a bridge we don't want to have everyone's cultural opinion on how they feel with their linguistic background on how bridges should look no no no we want people who have learned how to fucking build bridges right so we want hierarchy we want professionals we want ivory towers we want a few people who really know what they're doing and we want to segment that right so this this is when when socially it's something that that is not and this is debatable where this begins and ends but it's not impinging on people's personal lives and limitations right but who what what what 6000 year old yeah the okay well that's another version okay let me get to that I'll do that spin on it I'll do that spin on that okay but let me finish this one okay let's assume that there are there is one smart person in the world that's not one of these because if everyone's a 6000 year then it's moot because everyone's that and nobody cares anymore because they killed all of us right well I don't want to exclude anyone from being a 6000 year defender I think that's cool well cool you know cool like trailer park cool right no assuming that so we have certain ways of doing things right now as soon as again when it gets to people's personal freedoms their choice of religion right their choice of like they want to live in a certain place not just because of the the science behind it the environment the food and so on but because of their own cultural decisions like they want to live around people that believe that the world is 6000 years okay but then there needs there's a point where this is not impinging on that you just don't want to fall in the river on the bridge right and here we need hierarchical big knowledge we need a big team to do this because one person can't do it we can't turn it into a citizen science thing and there's many many examples of civic projects and technological projects that I think fit into that where I would defense big science and not some citizen science model now when it comes to that food and that environment and so on I think the the the extension of what you're saying is I would just say that yeah I would just within that community that's those are real possibilities but if they're basing their own communal lives on that and the food they eat I would rather there was like a classic debate within bioethics on like Mormons who are in a hospital who don't want to do procedure because of their Mormon background and I defended as you know medical researcher the Mormon perspective not because I agree with them not because I would do that not because I think we should ever generalize that but based on it's like I would defend you as Adeline bravely did injecting yourself with methamphetamines in your trailer park right not because I want to go to a trailer park and inject myself with methamphetamines but because you I'm I'm thinking about it yeah I'm thinking about it I didn't at the beginning of this talk but now I don't know it seems kind of cool but you obviously are into it right I mean you you said you want to and I'm like well yeah if that's what you want to do and it's the same thing for me with Mormons or with the 6000 year people if within their community that's what they want to do ultimately I do still you know I still have a bias in my view and for me to generalize that yeah so that would be same thing I would say the same thing absolutely okay well so then right and then okay so let's take a so most vaccines actually the and this is this is one of the things I did medical research in we developed adjuvants for new vaccines the the fact of the matter the science behind that is by and large their critical mass is far below anything that's even close to being threatened now there are a few substances there in the 90s in their percentile needed in order to be effective right mass majority are at like 70 60 50% we're far beyond we can have all the anti-vaxxers we want and we're not even close to that being a threat right and in that case I would definitely say do not because there's a lot of valid critiques there's a lot of scientific critiques about the way we're standardizing the excipients we're putting in the toxicity and so on these are important things we need to do the robust scientific picture again right but the so but so the the the example yeah well I don't know I don't know but that example case let's take one that is 95% that needs that and that people are uh that that's it that's a tense moment where I don't know yeah maybe I mean the thing is now if you if you took the 6000 person model on that level you've got a Christian community because I mean I think the multicultural thing alone will validate that how many non-christians believe that the world that aren't like even Christians like most Christians ever have it's like the subpopulation of like American Christians there was like a guy from like 150 years ago this is not a orthodox Christianity at all this 6000 year thing right it's very recent there's tons of Christian philosophers through history, scientists who are working in in a monastery and stuff like that the the source of science is so much to do with Christians with extra time on their hands and so on just as it was in the Islamic world where science was really developed and it was also believers in Islam you know that did that but let's say you have that 6000 person thing right and you um I mean to flip it around do you think that the that a state should not tolerate that that people should not be able to because I think I don't know the I guess the the what do you guys think I don't know I guess when you get to a point where the social group and the individual is at odds then it's a question it's a social question for that group right if the state is that social group okay but if the state is stepping in like some states do for minority groups that's a lot different right I don't think they should but if it's that minority group with autonomous um governmentality then you know that's that's an internal thing great open science come on yeah no no no this is no no yeah yeah no no we're good we're good we're good we that's that's yeah we're back to yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah multi we're exchanging knowledge yeah yeah no no yeah yeah well I mean each of your examples I'll say this and is a bit like your response to what you're saying I think underlying a lot of them are a media proposition that has been put forward that I think a lot of times isn't even a real proposition like it's another one you could bring up is anti GMO GMO or like I don't think the Vax anti Vax is a real scientific debate I think any scientist is actually working the field knows that as you standardize and you try to globalize these models you need to do like there's all these different um preservatives and additives that have been put in that haven't had good testing on them the few researchers who are doing that who aren't part of the techno capital model don't get funding I know one of them personally at UBC you know and he doesn't get any media coverage because the media doesn't know what to do with them because he's a scientist who's scientifically looking at the vaccines you know and I was part of making these and you know I mean like we just we didn't do any of those that testing we met the bar for what's required from this and that body and if that body doesn't exist then we don't give a crap I worked in environmental health you know and I tick boxes for explorations who wanted to meet government requirements and like the vast majority of chemicals they were working with didn't have requirements didn't have good scientific testing done on them you know this is there's there's a whole realm that deflates the entire false binary that's put forward by the media you know and I think that open science is an important part of that you know and having anti-vaxxers and vaxxers all together in a room and talking about well what is the problem well my kid went through this and this is a story that is just getting bracketed out because they're like well that couldn't happen well it did you know and if you're not taking that into account then you're a shit scientist you know you're a bureaucrat who wants to keep their medical job and you're using the power of that position to just silence this voice that is the anti-science in in its most basic definition what well if you go if you go hang out in in Peru with the Indians there before they hunt they sit in the trees and they eat the leaves the yeah but even I mean if you go to the dentist you get cocaine all the all the yeah all your all your benzocaine lidocaine they're all types of cocaine and cocaine started out medically as a topical it was a topical anesthetic and and these these versions of it are still to this day when you get like your your your benzocaine or lidocaine those are and and I mean yeah so so try you know here's the thing like for me and it's never another false binary is this idea that oh well it's synthetic so we need to do natural natural natural like your berry example there's a lot of natural shit that isn't so good for you right like berries that taste wonderful that are a lot of fun and then you die and become a trailer part garden right and nobody wants that most people don't want that yeah do you want yeah yeah yeah after metamphetamines I died become a garden why not um okay yeah um oh wait where am I going adeline you said I'm going to your uncles yeah you gotta go cuz I cuz I want to bed I love you guys but I want to know this is for the internet yeah long live communication science I go up on I go up on no no but okay I didn't even get like the one line okay nine it feels later single post a small place you can get from point A to point B in at most two hours yeah okay okay on public transport yeah this is my point this guy understands me this is open science you see you get part and then it fill it gets filled in it gets filled in um yeah what were we talking about um yeah what if the next thousand year old people talk your knowledge like change shall all get so again the six thousand thing again with I would put I think the first really important point in that is how it fits into the American media debate I don't think there's any other Christian group in history where that's actually a real debate at all right but I mean it's an example um but now the many examples which are all I think that's an important part to think about that this is these are faux problems created by technocapitalism ultimately by this cultural system of creating media kind of debates you know so they're not real problems because I think very quickly you get a group that's intercultural at all and that won't be a discussion at all whether the earth is six thousand years old you know the model of total control too is one that I mean this like open science I don't know it doesn't really have you know if you have a concentration of control within a group that already becomes a problem right this is exactly what open science wants to combat is this kind of a situation you think that's like a Russell but Russell's Russell's got this quote where he where he's something like I'm getting it wrong but that all the people in power are stupid the people who gain political power are stupid and know exactly what they're doing and talking about all the time and the people with wisdom don't have any power and they never know what they're doing or talking about if he is right then it's not the case right that actually the people who don't know I mean depending on which one the people pretend they know you need to act in politics right you need to yeah I think one of the open ideals I think is that if you keep opening up the conversation then the six thousand problem the totalitarian problem and a lot of the things you're talking about will eventually dissolve with information because you'll get more you'll get a perspective eventually that dissolves a pseudo problem right I think the media broadcast system creates a lot of the pseudo problems because it's a one way conversation right America creates all these industries that broadcast this and then people debate these problems because that's what arrives on their doorstep right whereas I think if you had a community arguing about whether the earth was six thousand years old there's a million things I could think of that would right away just dissolve that as a as a real issue the so many different archaeological natural different things you can start to talk about that it would just okay you know you need these really hardcore philosophical arguments of you're imagining everything like Elon Musk that we're in a simulation he's giving the ultimate ultimate Christian argument you know it's like the six thousand year argument because if everything's a simulation then we don't know anything and you know it's like okay great best model of knowledge exchange multiculturalism and open science man yeah I think yeah I think and I think implicit in that is that I think no there's not but I think the more perspectives that you have then and the less you have of these like recursive kind of micro communities you know with the six thousand years and stuff the closer we get to I don't know on the one hand we have functional knowledge where we're building things big science and building pyramids or whatever and then we have a kind of cultural knowledge it's it's more sustainable within that group right in that group's environment right right all of Europe you know or like I mean with GMO sorry not stem cells but America was doing that for a long time right until what is it now Obama changed that or something yeah okay but all these but is is is American example of open science no I think it's one of the best I think at least leading the world in the top 5 maybe now yeah I think they are I actually largely agree but I think because they're in a position of having the freedom to have these communities and these people with MIT for all its technology and capitalism is also one of the freest place to go and study because it's on top of the heap so it can make these lateral decisions right um yeah but at the core of that you know what is the model for what's going on I mean honestly for me China is way more open than what I found in Canada because it's growing so much and people are so interested in new things in Canada it's just like oh my god there's just this burden of all these things that you need to consider and by the time you do you don't even have a consumer population and you're just hoping to create a little franchise that America will buy out and you know and growth is very slow in the developed world and so openness in a certain frame is very you know limited I don't want to limit your next question but does anyone else have any other any any comments or questions um can you talk a little bit about the people involved in this network and how the process of you building that yeah so how many people are part of the hack space here two okay okay and but return guests some of them people you've seen before no I said literally members of the public I've never met are you are you guys so you're all first time yeah no you're not um but it's not too many right not too many anyways that illustrates my point um we I mean we have like a meet-up group that has I think now I don't know hundreds of members um we have a board that has maybe seven or something right now and then actual paying members we've got um maybe 30 20 30 paid members yeah subscriptions yeah you guys have this model yeah paid how many people okay yeah so but then how many of those people regularly show up 10 it's like kickstarter participation or something it's like at one one day they were interested you know and that yeah yeah and and like like one day a year they wanted to be part of it you know or it was enough to say okay and they don't enough to not cancel the subscription or something um right yeah yeah yeah if I hope those people aren't like believers in gold gyms like the golds gyms program or something like that you know right now I'd like to think that some of those people don't cancel because they're like this is cool even though I don't have time or something like that right or could just be that they don't get around to it right now I certainly have memberships like that um yeah but those numbers are pretty pretty I think common and and uh representative of what's what's going on there and even a little less I would say with the bio thing because the the it's it's newer you get more novelty kind of arrivals but less people sticking around because there is a difficulty in in in scaling up both economically and in terms of ideas science is just more and it has less of maybe less of the fun less of the results um and um so yeah but I think it's similar and biology will grow but in a different way from technology because it just doesn't scale the same it's more complicated and skills slower so the members reveal pretty much the bulk of our model I don't know what you do here but we also throw in some courses into that and we've gotten small grants and hopefully that will increase over time um my idea is to I think as I'm developing I'm developing so one thing I'm doing in this in this kind of traveling open science thing is I'm developing kind of modules that can be very small and do like a maker fair in Manila and then also can be added together to create some kind of a community course thing or something which I was already starting to put together in Vancouver and now I put together more and then like I was saying in Shanghai they're really interested in this sort of thing so I'm really going to get a space to sort of develop that and that's going to be something that I'm going to try and feed back to Vancouver, feed other places that I go um and that can become another model not just the courses themselves growing but then you could have kits within the courses or something um and like open hardware kits or something like this so that's something we don't do now that I can see as a potential, certainly other spaces do that a little bit. For you guys what is the what's the bulk of it? Membership? Yeah, primary membership. For like courses you know you know if someone does a course here it's free, it's fine but for somebody who charges money then I think we'll just take a cut by 10% or 15% of the course fees But if they say event is free like today's event but we have that primarily not to make money but more to make sure that the venue doesn't get abused for maybe not money making Yeah, yeah so I mean your goal in that is really to stay afloat and keep some values and not like because you're not really trying to create a robust business model or something right the idea is to create a yeah yeah yeah and I think it's similar in Open Science Network and I guess in China and other places I've learned a bit maybe what we want to go for is a little bit more of a business model so we can engage more in these things that we've brought up in a million different ways so that we can have more of that freedom that America has and that other places why because they play the business game a little bit more I keep changing my opinion on this because I think there are really important values to keep and you want these open spaces but there are just ways in which you get different forms and you get sort of power in a voice and you give other people a voice and how can we be strategic about coupling those we've had I think pretty similar models to what Luther's talking about and that is the stay afloat model we're still there we'll hopefully still be there but we're not really creating something that will help us grow I mean there's a lot of spaces that when they do that then they turn into something totally different and I mean maybe that's what they want to do okay that's certainly not what we want to do but I think if we were coupled with a little bit more productive kind of things and maybe we could expand a bit more and provide more stuff that would be free or would be you know yeah it's an interesting question I've now traveled to about 20 or something I don't know how many biolabs there are in the world in this style maybe 30 right and I've traveled maybe to half or something at this point I always press them on this I'm always interested in how are you doing this how do you stay afloat hackspaces in general but then again with the science and the bio just to start you need all this equipment and this is actually something in the details one thing that I've really added to the MIT model or the fab lab model is that you sort of like a genetic transformation or putting genes in another organism equivalent to maybe doing a hello world program or doing you know like a the boat and a 3D printer or something like this right and to me that the barrier to enter that is so much higher I think than these other ones that maybe it's not the best one because if you flip it around you actually see in this bamboo basket maker and a lot of folk knowledge and a lot of basic materials before the 20th century are pretty much all biological engagements you know and there's a real before we start drilling for oil making all these plastics and you know and creating this very not non biological it's still biological but it's pretty inhuman in that it goes to spaces that have been where we can't survive for a long time because it's organisms under the ground that are the fossil fuels but they've been in a very weird environment for a long time so the products that come out of that are really interact very weirdly with biological worlds right so it's a biology that's been mutated by pressure and heat and gravity and stuff like this and so but when we return to that eye level you know kind of material world it's an ecosphere it's biology you know so a lot of these basic kind of ephemeral more ephemeral technologies are these engagements and people cooking you know people learning how to just make basic things when they don't have the money to build they just want to build a wood thing you know it's a really common material or they'll use what's around them you know they have a forest around them coconuts coconuts are used all over the place in really interesting ways in places that have the coconuts right so that those two things I'm kind of trying to marry and when I go when I went to Manila I developed things I could do it wasn't just this DIY stuff because I don't often know all the local flora and fauna but it was also what can I get at the corner store for really cheap you know so yeah I can get you can get some pretty interesting chemicals and do some interesting stuff but you need to kind of do this weird consumer kind of research and research what is accessible in the market what has become so popular that it's very cheap right and those things combined with trying to slowly build up the equipment in as cheap a way as possible to do the higher level stuff which the DIY of our community has done great at because it's not just can we do the transformation but how can we rebuild all the equipment for maybe two thousand three thousand dollars or something as opposed to you know hundreds of thousands as it might cost if you order from a lab you know and that's something right and that's something I definitely strive for that's an investment over time right similar to building a hackspace maybe a little bit higher barrier but it's like if you got a space and a community and you're committed to half a year a year like we have been here then yeah you can slowly build that out right and you can take that elsewhere but it's not really something that I can take even if I had all the equipment three pieces of equipment to do some experiment to explain to really explain all the concepts in a way that would work like a maker fair you know I can I can do a DNA extraction I can do a quick transfer I can show one element of that right so you very quickly start working in a different space with Bio where you're talking more about concepts or principles or here's one part of this you know this kind of thing and again it lacks a bit of that sort of wow factor that oh yeah I'm going to join and I can do that tomorrow no you kind of like you can do that over time but going back to the the simpler model something like a bioplastic I've actually developed a lot of techniques now that I can you can do it pretty quickly and easily and maybe it's not the best you know to sort of but it's the beginning and you understand some of the principles you know and maybe working with you know biofuel or bio electricity or you know and so I'm just saying the concept I think it's something you can do pretty quickly with common materials and stuff like that so the Shanghai lab and actually you know I'll what I'll do so I kind of this is the the bio build lab on the on the right right so this is where I am now and I don't know if you guys use WeChat or not but feel free to if you want to follow now I've sort of been given domain over this so I'm trying to bring in Fablabs model really is a course commercial model he's taken Fablabs already are semi commercial or pre incubators or something but what I started to do is to create these community events and if you guys are interested in you know stuff to do with science and we start a conversation or you observe what's going on and you're interested in us interfacing maybe I come back with something more extensive right I can maybe do a little bit of a workshop series or something or maybe you guys are coming to Shanghai for some reason or you're you know interested in anything at all right what I have tried to bring is some element of this basically so I did a free event two weeks ago I don't even I haven't even heard of another event that they're doing but people want it because they know the Fablabs there and some people have talked to me a bit about how Jeff the head guy doesn't really do that he's more concerned about how to run a business which I've conversely learned a lot from because he's actually got these resources now that I never had the open science network right so between those two we've got what you might call an equivalent of a member right so we've got people who are following who are out as guests more or less to these things I'm starting to build I'm trying to build a new kind of community then we've got people who take the classes and stuff like that I don't think there are members we don't even have any members at all really in a classic sense because how the lab there is running is from education and the bulk of it is school education so there's all these rich parents in China who want their kid to have an edge and stuff like that and if they're in elementary school or they're in high school or they'll pay they'll pay a good amount and you know the fab academy course thing you know it's like five thousand dollars right so all the fab labs sort of have that as a baseline that they have the equipment to do that potentially and that they'll potentially participate now all not all of them do but that's kind of the unspoken kind of connection right or one of them and then a lot of them create these fab academy X's and these variations on it right and our Jeff has done that even another level he's created this whole fab oh academy thing that even extends even further but the basic model he's tweaked in all these different ways so it really is a model about getting the good markets behind science education and tech education and using that as the main focus you know in the lab okay so the the bio build up that you see here is um nothing I've currently nothing that's right yeah yeah yeah currently yeah you're currently a very small amount that I've managed to build in in a couple months and yeah yeah we'll have stuff um but how I'm going to do that will be complicated because there's so there's one on the one hand it was just it was a trailer park you know it was just like an empty room more or less and it's like this is the bio lab and I'm like no this is a is a room um and I've been thinking how to do that well once the DIY method that I'm talking about right but the other thing is that because of all these resources and stuff we're partnering with different institutions and building other labs that are actually really well funded so right now this is other place in Shanghai called Shanghai tech and they've got all these funds for this lab where I'm able to order a really high level expensive kind of things and then the what I'm going to do is find ways of feeding that back in to the lab so the ground up method that every lab can and you know can do and then I'm going to find ways of the other method that I did in Vancouver was I connected with as many science labs as I could and my time in UBC was all about that I realized pretty after after a bit that I didn't want to do stick with the full traditional science academic thing but what I did want to do was to do to do some of that research and to create that network so I could create an open lab that had access to a lot of that so I created a network of people that knew I wanted old equipment when they would get new equipment and stuff like that this is really key for the bio lab so the quick equivalent of that here is that I'm actually going to have a lab that I'm involved in myself but hopefully over time too I'll be connecting with more people so when I need a really often labs will order way more than they want and to get rid of a little is not but to order it at all the companies will only sell it's almost like B2B or something you know the only sell when they know they're selling to a place that will use a certain amount over time and you know that's tied to an institution like why bother with the dude in the trailer park sort of thing that's part of it there is also a bit of a a logistical thing behind different countries are very different on this I mean Taobao sells some things that are a real pain to get almost anywhere else on the planet and there's just like his order yeah so a lot of it's the same as I think what Luther's dealing with but there's I guess a material addition to that I would say you know and knowledge addition that make it a little bit more complicated but as you can see for me I kind of conflate them I think that they kind of can feed into each other you know because like to learn technologies is a similar thing and to extend that like what about learning about the materials this is what I do in the fab lab a lot I help learning about the materials so if you're using wood or like what if we actually wanted to grow that or we wanted to oh there's got to be there's got to be there's got to be I would predict that there's like a few could be something yeah right yeah that's true actually the government is very enthusiastic with funding yeah oh sorry I don't want to yeah sorry oops sorry I don't know how to Mac I just yeah I don't know what I know my PowerPoint is somewhere here yeah I think it's getting late right I think you guys have any questions you can engage Eric yeah thanks for your time guys yeah you're curious about Hacker space you're on a tour I'll be happy to give you a tour yeah