Europarama

The "other now" described by Varoufakis could exist somewhere in a fissure of the time-space continuum. In this dimension, capitalism (as we know it) is dead, but a liberal and democratic society is thriving.Yanis Varoufakis is an economist, politician and a former Minister of Finance of Greece, member of the Greek Parliament, co-founder of the European Transnational Party "DiEM25", and science fiction writer.This episode is hosted by Giuseppe Porcaro, and co-hosted with Alberto Cottica, from the Science Fiction Economics Lab and sees the participation of Teresa O’Connell, acting chief editor at Are We Europe, and Samuel Doveri Vesterbye, director of the European Neighborhood Council. Edited by Stefano Montali. 

In this final episode, Giuseppe Porcaro, Alberto Cottica, and the Architect of Witness, Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, talk about to the history of Witness, and wrap up the whole season. For this season, Europarama joins forces with Edgeryders and their Science Fiction Economics Lab as they had an incredible idea. Instead of writing academic papers, they decided to channel out-of-the box economic research by building the world of Witness. Witness is a fictional city floating in a post-climate change Planet Earth, where people are organised by districts each experimenting a different social contract and a different economic model, but all of them connected by being constrained in that floating space. You are encouraged to contribute to its making or to freely use it for your artistic or research projects. Join in: https://scifieconomics.world/This podcast is brought to you by Are We Europe, a border-breaking media trying to bridge the gaps in European culture and identity. You can become an Are We Europe member and connect with storytellers across the continent starting at €4 a month. Just go to areweeurope.com/member and help Are We Europe build a new media for a changing continent. Follow Europarama on Instagram @europaramaGet in touch with Giuseppe Porcaro on twitter @porcaroramaEdited by Stefano MontaliWitness is a project by SciFi Economics Lab supported by EIT Climate-KIC and Nordisk Kulturfond 

We explore the fictional academic discipline of aethnography - the study of the behavior of humans engaged in mutual interaction - which has a solid tradition in the universe of Witness. Giuseppe and Alberto are joined by Amelia Hassoun, senior researcher and lead ethnographer at Edgeryders. For this season, Europarama joins forces with Edgeryders and their Science Fiction Economics Lab as they had an incredible idea. Instead of writing academic papers, they decided to channel out-of-the box economic research by building the world of Witness. Witness is a fictional city floating in a post-climate change Planet Earth, where people are organised by districts each experimenting a different social contract and a different economic model, but all of them connected by being constrained in that floating space.  About Aethnography in Witness Aethnography is the study of the behavior of humans engaged in mutual interaction. It explores the phenomena that those interactions give rise to, taking into account the point of view of the interactants themselves and maintaining a stance of openness to evidence of different kinds and coming from different directions, known as epistemic pluralism. While all social sciences are taught in the education establishments of Witness, aethnographic thinking plays a special role in informing much of decision-making, both in business and public policy.Aethnography is applied to the three domains of high theory, applied analysis and action.Aethnographers engaging in high theory are called theors. They reflect on general patterns and cross-domain intuition, invoking mostly the principle of the chemical wedding.Aethnographers deploying on the ground to understand a concrete, situated set of issues are called augurs. They immerse themselves into a river of observables, from which they extract intersubjective meaning. They invoke mainly the principle of the pluriversity.Aethnographers who leave their research institutions to engage in direct action take on the title of incanters. Invoking the principle of the broken tower, they shift to working in favour of a particular outcome: a reform, the starting up of a successful company, a military campaign.An accomplished aethnographer is expected to have covered all three roles at least once during her career. Witness is an open-source fictional world. You are encouraged to contribute to its making or to freely use it for your artistic or research projects. Join in: https://scifieconomics.world/This podcast is brought to you by Are We Europe, a border-breaking media trying to bridge the gaps in European culture and identity. You can become an Are We Europe member and connect with storytellers across the continent starting at €4 a month. Just go to areweeurope.com/member and help Are We Europe build a new media for a changing continent. Follow Europarama on Instagram @europaramaGet in touch with Giuseppe Porcaro on twitter @porcaroramaEdited by Stefano MontaliWitness is a project by SciFi Economics Lab supported by EIT Climate-KIC and Nordisk Kulturfond 

In this episode, Giuseppe and Alberto, together with guest Hugi Ásgeirsson, sail through a sector of the fictional world Witness known as Avantgrid. Hugi is one of the co-directors of Edgeryders and director of blivande - a participatory culture hub in Stockholm.For this season, Europarama joins forces with Edgeryders and their Science Fiction Economics Lab as they had an incredible idea. Instead of writing academic papers, they decided to channel out-of-the box economic research by building the world of Witness. Witness is a fictional city floating in a post-climate change Planet Earth, where people are organised by districts each experimenting a different social contract and a different economic model, but all of them connected by being constrained in that floating space. Avantgrid is a large archipelago Distrikt between Assembly and Libria. Originally a zone of Libria, built to cater to an exclusive, high-income clientele, it fractured after the collapse of a geoengineering company left the ownership of the archipelago in dispute. Avantgrid is the only Distrikt in Witness that is not connected to the Harvest grid. In contrast to the mostly urban other Distrikts of Witness, Avantgrid is a largely rural Distrikt which even contains patches of uninhabited wilderness. Of the 1.1 million inhabitants of Avantgrid, 150.000 live in Akur, its only urban zone. There are 149 islands in the archipelago; outside of Akur, boundaries are being made and remade all the time, and new islands are under construction by various parties within Avantgrid.The Avantgrid economy is highly cyclical, closer to zero-waste than anything else on Witness; in fact, some Cantons import waste from other Distrikts - especially electronic - to repair, rebuild, and to extract materials. Avantgrid attitudes towards waste have been compared to the water beliefs of the sand-nomads in the pre-Sundering religious text Dune. Witness is an open-source fictional world. You are encouraged to contribute to its making or to freely use it for your artistic or research projects. Join in: https://scifieconomics.world/ This podcast is brought to you by Are We Europe, a border-breaking media trying to bridge the gaps in European culture and identity. You can become an Are We Europe member and connect with storytellers across the continent starting at €4 a month. Just go to areweeurope.com/member and help Are We Europe build a new media for a changing continent. Follow Europarama on Instagram @europaramaGet in touch with Giuseppe Porcaro on twitter @porcaroramaEdited by Stefano MontaliWitness is a project by SciFi Economics Lab supported by EIT Climate-KIC and Nordisk Kulturfond 

The Covenant is religious institution Distrikt of Witness, tracing its history back to the grand powers of Roman Catholicism.For this season, Europarama joins forces with Edgeryders and their Science Fiction Economics Lab as they had an incredible idea. Instead of writing academic papers, they decided to channel out-of-the box economic research by building the world of Witness. Witness is a fictional city floating in a post-climate change Planet Earth, where people are organised by districts each experimenting a different social contract and a different economic model, but all of them connected by being constrained in that floating space. The Covenant is perhaps the least-understood among all the major Distrikts of Witness. Notable visitors have describe it alternatively as "a kind of feudal paradise" or a "fascist religious hegemony" or "a work of art". As always, the truth lies somewhere in between. The Covenant is indeed a religious institution, tracing itself back to the grand powers of Roman Catholicism. Broadly united under the Officium Auctoritatis Summae - loosely rendered as "the Office of the Highest Authority", and generally shortened to "Auctoritatis", it is possibly the single greatest concentration of material wealth on Witness. Magnificent churches stud the landscape, surrounded by carefully planned farms and estates; buildings of singularly brutalist art nouveau style line the streets of Hyborean, the 'center' sprawled around the Officium.A unique feature of The Covenant’s economy is the strong role played by monasteries and other religious institutions. While by no mean numerically prevalent, these institutions tend to be over-represented among the most advanced, most successful operations. This observation led economist Malivalaya Nut to describe The Covenant as a dual economy, where two sets of economic agents with completely different objective functions co-exist. In a series of empirical investigation of The Covenant’s economy, Nut discovered a pattern: the economic activity of religious institutions tends to be amplified by businesses that are legally part of the secular economy, but have evolved for taking advantage of the turbulence created by the existence of the religious institutions themselves – for example lifting innovations invented in the monasteries and re-engineering them for secular markets. Witness is an open-source fictional world. You are encouraged to contribute to its making or to freely use it for your artistic or research projects. Join in: https://scifieconomics.world/ This podcast is brought to you by Are We Europe, a border-breaking media trying to bridge the gaps in European culture and identity. You can become an Are We Europe member and connect with storytellers across the continent starting at €4 a month. Just go to areweeurope.com/member and help Are We Europe build a new media for a changing continent. Follow Europarama on Instagram @europaramaGet in touch with Giuseppe Porcaro on twitter @porcaroramaEdited by Stefano MontaliWitness is a project by SciFi Economics Lab supported by EIT Climate-KIC and Nordisk Kulturfond