YOO
YOO as you.
Teaching AI with stories made by humans.
Mindmapping & worldbuilding knowledge networks for a better worldYOO is a stuff-saving, mind mapping, imagination space and living archive for your inner world (like a 3D Myspace).
A reflection of you in all of your multidimensional, complex & nuanced being.
Whether we use the term “soul”, “mind”, or AI, YOO is a space to capture and share your genuine essence, like having your own neural network, a personal internet created by you.
We’re aiming to honor the complexity of the natural world, starting by capturing the complexity of human thought and experience. By honoring this complexity, the information that is the “essense” of our individual and collective conscious experiences will become the core of individualized digital and physical experiences, personalized operating systems, and eventually consciousness itself will be the near infinite currency of an entirely new economy. At it’s core, YOO is a software-first approach to developing a fully integrated regenerative infrastructure.
Current socioeconomic models are rooted in reductionist philosophical foundations and enacted through ever-evolving forms of colonial extraction and domination. Historically, colonial institutions relied on reductionsim to dehumanize other human beings and justify planetary extraction and degradation. Through genocide and enslavement, these intitutions reduced whole populations into quantified demographic statistics, objects of conquest, symbolic representations and ultimately... products. The current data extraction paradigm that drives the economics of nearly every technology platform we use are ancestors of this legacy. YOO, and other platforms like it, offer a philosophical shift away from reduction toward expansion, toward abundace. We recognize that every single living being (and non-living thing) represents an unbroken thread in the infinite web of all things. Furthermore, every one of us represents an unbroken thread from the “beginnings” of all things to this present moment. We are, each one of us, living archives. Each one, a story of the cosmos played out in real time, each a universe all their own.
The MindFile, a research project by Martine Rothblatt, creator of Bina 48.
This philosophical shift represents more than a foundation for speculation or a theoretical framework, but a practiaclly implementable vision based on currently available and emerging technologies. We can see this transition taking place across essentially all sectors; from health & wellness, to energy, education, art & design, manufacturing and maybe most siginifcantly, economics. A transition in econimic infrastructure from one of reductionism, i.e. scarcity to one of abundance, or holism leads to an economic paradigm that shifts the idetification of value from simply quantity to quantity and quality. It requires honoring complexity, depth and context, where resources need to not only be sustained but regenerated. In this embracing of the inherent plurality of the world and everything in it, one becomes many, a singular resource has infinite potential.
This transition would be no less than revolutionary. In this paradigm, a global economy could run solely from the complex, nuanced lived experiences of it’s citizens. Nations would continue the transition from looking to GDP as a measure of prosperity to GDHHW (Gross Domestic Health, Happiness & Wellnesss).
What are the social & technological advancements brining about this shift?
Well, there are a lot of them but here are some significant ones:
LGBTQIA+ Culture, Neurodivergence & the Technology of Human Identity
Indigenous communities, activists, grassroots organizations, researchers and individuals are revitalizing their histories, reclaiming their humanity, and reminding us that what we define as Human has always been in transition, ever-evolving and multidimensional. They are pioneers pushing us into a this emerging era of Technoculture, where identity is software and consciousness is the operating system and abundantly available currency of society.
Internet of Things & Big Data
The essentially ubiquitous presence of various sensors, cameras, computer vision, microphones, digital platforms, servers and networked infrastructure means that vast amounts of data are flowing all over the globe constantly about each individual, organization, the planet and their collective behavioural patterns. The statistical, probabalistic models of each of these means the predictive capabilities are more powerful than ever. Not only are the collection opportunities and methods growing, the tools by which to make sense of all this data (like mind mapping software for example) are getting more integrated and sophisticated. Every company has a highly accurate statistical model of you and the world around you.
Digital Twins
From digital statistical models, to real-time, high definition renderings of everything from atomic structures to biological networks, ecological systems, social dynamics, industrial facilities, global climate patterns, black holes and universal structures, there’s a digital twin for almost everything. Our ability to model and map all of these integrated, interrelated, highly complex systems are increasingly sophisticated and precise. Enabling us to not only see and understand how all of these systems operate, but how they relate and impact one another at all scales.
Simulations
With accurate enough data, and sophisticated digital twin models, is it possible to simulate anything? Digital simulations like the ones pioneered by companies like Nvidia offer the promise for large organizations and institutions to create highly accurate simulations of everything from nuclear reactors to entire cities and more. The simulations are used for a variety of reasons, one of which is to run through multiple scenarios of potential breakdown to minimize loss. Physical simulations, from the much despised Cop City to the more embraced like Disney World, Meow Wolf and 4DX movie theatres, place us into a world similarly to imagine and exist in altogether new contexts. These simulation environments, combined with the behavioral, contextual data gained from them means more precise identity graphs, and experiences crafted for very specific use cases and contexts.
Spatial Computing
As computing continues to evolve, we see a range of various formats coming into fruition. One of the latest, spatial computing, interestingly enough feels as much like a return to the past as it is futuristic. A return to the original universal interface: the physical world around us. Much of my time spent developing experiences for autmented reality wearables like Spectacles gave me a glimpse into the potential of this “new” paradigm shift. Described in more detail in my essay Our Reality In Formation, spatial computing is more than entertainment experiences through augmented reality filters and wearable headsets, spatial computing includes a wide range of computing platforms that integrate with physical spaces. This includes more overt technologies like drones, projection mapping, holograms, AR mirrors and immersive experiences to more subtle technologies like spatial data, GPS and digital surveillance.
Quantum Computing, Quantum Internet of Everything
Quantum Computing might represent the most significant transformation in computing since the inception of the informaiton age. With new discoveries in mathematics and physics, quantum information takes us into the very fundamental aspects of computation, into the language of nature and the fabric of reality itself. Unlocking a literal new dimension of computational power by shifting from the binary world of 1’s and 0’s into the non-binary, exponential world of the qubit. With it’s ability to represent multiple simultaneous states, the qubit has substantial advantatges over the humble bit, namely it’s ability to explore multiple solution paths at once. It’s computational ability means it’s potential applications are near boundless, specifically towards complex problems that require vast amounts of data processing, so-called “wicked” problems like climate change, global epidemics, and mass inequality.
Blockchain
Representing an emerging era of trust, security and identity in the digital domain. Although blockchain technology has been around for some time, it’s only now coming into the fore as the general public begin to take the value of information more seriously. Beyond it’s current value as a mechanism to secure information through distributed encryption, the blockchain represents a significnant technological footnote as it begins to integrate with some of the previously mentioned systems. Blockchain gives us a way to encrypt and trace distributed information to specific points in time. This will be critically important in the future.
DeFi & New Systems of Value
In concurrence with the rising awareness of global inequality, information asymmetry & mismanagement of resources by historically dominating powers, global movements, particularly in the global south, have been more adopting to decentralized finance as systems of value come under scrutiny. The fundamental questioning of value systems is the seed from which Decentralized Finance truly takes root. Everything from community investment platforms, free fridges & stuff swaps, to gofundme campagins, fractional real estate and Onlyfans agencies, an economic revolution is fully underway. Communities all over the world are creating new economies, new currencies and completely new ways to do money.
Influencers, Creators & the Attention Economy
Reality TV really changed everything. In the current era of the influencer bubble, attention is king, with every user-turned-creator hosting their own reality TV show in rectangular black mirrors hoping for one or more viral hits. From surrealist art, to dance, commentary, docu-drama, episodic rom coms, you can literally find any kind of content your heart desires. A few billion or so channels all in your pocket, only at the cost of your digital twin data profile. We are in any case, at a unique inflection point where the ouroboros circle-jerk of content creators creating content to consume the content they created for consumers consuming commodities for creating content is perhaps coming to an end. The middlemen masters of the digital auction blocks (TikTok, Meta, X, etc) are gripping more tightly than ever to the techocratic oligarchy as the collective brainrot spreads across the globe. Meanwhile, many of today’s youth are opting out of social media & smartphones altogether, while smaller companies work towards developing new ways to ditch Big Tech and find joy and community online by developing their own devices and platforms. We’re increasingly heading toward an era of digital sovereignty, where we pay more attention to what really matters and reclaim ownership over our ideas, our minds, bodies and digital selves.
And more importantly, how would all this actually work?
I first glimpsed the truly expansive and profound potential of something like YOO in 2014, with an exhibition I created with several collaborators called Pandrogeny. At the time, the show was a way to reflect the culmination of the work of the Young Never Sleep studio, inspired by the life and works of Genesis P’Orridge, an English singer-songwriter, musician, poet, performance artist, visual artist, and occultist, who coined the term Pandrogeny in 1978. For Genesis, pandrogeny or pandrogyne was a way to break free of the confines of the gender binary. Through a very personal series of works, Genesis, along with their partner Lady Jaye, embarked on a lifelong experiment of mutual body modification with the intent on becoming one together. Learning about the lives and works of artists like Genesis, Leigh Bowery, Nick Cave, Kazoo Ono, and many many others, paralleled my own intuitive notion that an individual identity was not fixed and existed on a wide spectrum, a continuum that stretched far beyond our given bodies and personal experiences.
At the heart of YOO, like so much of my work, was a simple question: Who am I?
Am I simply the culmination of my personal experiences, my ancestry, a reflection of my sociocultural environment? Or was there something more that I could access, more to become? Inspired by the works of the aforementioned artists, I dug deeper into this question to unearth the multidimensional connections that created what I experience as “me”.
Spirit Guides and Death Crystals
Every person is intricately, even irriducibly complex. Even with amassing huge amounts of data, our digital profiles only capture a small portion of this nuanced complexity. In fact, most of the data/information in the world is still not on the internet. Companies building AI systems have reported running out of data and even training models on “synthetic” data. In addition to these systems being deeply biased, they are also limited by their methods of training, especially LLMs and similar models which excell at a limited range of specialized tasks. Enter General World Models. General World Models, or GWMs are a methodology of training Artificial General Intelligence, AI that is in effect “pluralist” and able to tackle a wide range of tasks in varioius contexts, including physical tasks that it wasn’t previously trained for. GWMs work by training the way conscious agents (like us) learn in the real world. This methodology integrates physics with spatial data to construct an internal representation of its environment and uses this to simulate future events within that environment. AGI has an internal sense of itself in the world and thinks ahead.
YOO is our slow-grow method of democratizing the ability for individuals and communities to create personalized AGI models with rich, contextual, spatial data.
There are many similar tools and platforms emerging currently that operate as these kind of worldbuilding, knowlege networks, mind maps or “stuff-saving” spaces.
Soot
Miro
Cosmos
Graph Commons
Previs Pro
Spatial
Obsidian
Reflect
There are countless more that make it easy to create your own personal AI to do just about anything from make music, to paintings, photographs, games, 3D worlds and much, much more. In many ways, YOO is not unique. It’s one amongst a sea of many in this age of digital reclaimation. One thing that is unique though, is that I’m a part of it lol. And in the core of the YOO ethos, is the ethos of The Young Never Sleep, the notion that another, better world is possible. It is my intent with this writing to honor the history behind why I wanted to create YOO, and the socioeconomic, political context wihtin which YOO and similar platforms have emerged. That is, that access to quality information is as valuable and important as access to clean water, food and housing. This is not an idea that is unique to our time.
“Every new technology necessitates a new war.”
We have seen the power of information with the development of the printing press, the bible, the radio, television and the first emergence of the written word itself. Information has been wielded by great powers for generations, the exploitation of human capital. In the past, the auciton block for our bodies was in the town square, now it’s in the same place, only now it’s a data center taking up city blocks and rural landscapes. The mechanics may be different, but the mechanisms, the fuel is still the same.
This should all seem strikingly familiar...
According to current projections, the total value of data by 2025 is estimated to be around $100 billion USD with the global data analytics market reaching a size of approximately $95 billion by 2025, driven by the increasing volume of data generated and the demand for business intelligence insights.
We went through many rounds of a “value propositions” for YOO; “a new internet”, “the internet of you”, “your digital home”, there were lots of them. None of them seemed to totally resonate, even though they all felt kinda right. It’s always hard to put a single word on something that is many things. In many ways the attempt is paradoxical, like trying to say who one’s self is in a 30-second elevator pitch. Like selling yourself. It’s reductive. This is the paradigm we now live in after all. And language, for all it’s worth, seems to fall just a bit short. In lieu of a catchy phrase, the intent for me is rooted in personal experience. My experience being queer, finding community in unique, unconventional spaces both on and offline. My experience being Black, the self-performance it often requires, and the regenerative power in spaces of refuge.
I created the Communion Framework as an intuitive output coming off the heels of my tenure in the Tech/Startup domain of Snap/SnapLab. I had seen the overwhelming power of Big Tech over the years and finally had some experience of what that world could be like on the inside. With Snap, I got very lucky, having also turned down previous offers from the likes of Meta and Google. Companies that are by far much larger and for that, amongst other reasons, much more nefarious. The intention and spirit of Snap felt special, the people were brilliant and a joy to be around, the CEO was an art kid like me. I created the Communion Framework because I knew the power and the danger of Big Tech, but also had the perspective on how it could all be so different. Communion was a huge idea that needed a foundation, a place to start. That starting point is human consciousness. That starting point is YOO.
Ok, so to answer the question, how will it all work?
Let’s outline it in some key things that we can eventually dig into more deeply.
YOO is:
Spatial
The 3D space helps give contextual data to the contents we upload. Not only this, but the spatial data of the world around us will be valuable, as we eventually transition to spatial computing interfaces. All this spatial data is essential when creating General World Models > AGI. There’s a lot we can do with this. Larger, more heavily resourced companies like NVIDIA use data like this to train robots. In the future, YOO could be used to do the same. In the short-term, YOO could be a way to create more uniquely tailored, individualized interactive experiences. Imagine going to your favorite park, restaurant, or event with an experience customized to you and your communities.
Data Secure & Sovereign
We don’t train AI with your data without your consent. We’ll never sell your data to advertisers. Our intent is to eventually integrate blockchain technology so that the value of every piece of content and data you add can be securely delivered back to you. A secure timestamp for your ideas, experiences and identity.
Re-personalized
With multiple accounts, profiles, apps and devices, we’re all experiencing the depersonalization of today’s digital era. Redundant storage platforms, losing track of valuable ideas, the lack of continuity across networks, countless passowords. By providing one place to upload (almost) any kind of file and combining the best of a distributed network with the benefits of a centralized ecosystem, YOO offers an opportunity to recapture the digital self, as a one-stop hub for everything you. We eventually want to enable literally any kind of file upload.
A Knowledge Network for the Knowledge Economy
Information is power, it always has been. With continued attacks on marginalized communities, their achievements, history and knowledge, and concentrated wealth in the hands of a small few who would like to keep it that way, today’s era is no different. The fabric of the internet and our society itself, relies on the countless wells of information and knowledge fostered over millenia by storytellers, archivists, healers, midwives, scientists, artists, activists, philosophers, mathemeticians, poets and visionaries. Just like our society owes it’s existence to this body of collective consiousness, something as complex and vast as the infrustructure outlined in Communion is no different. YOO, as the core of this idea, is a walled garden within which to collect, connect and share this knowledge for ourselves and our descendants, in the interest of bringing into being a better world. In this world, trust in information through human experience, history and knowledge, will be of utmost value. The fundamental currency will be consciousness itself.
Altman believes the two most important “currencies” of the future are “compute/intelligence” — again, conflating computation with intelligence — and energy. Acknowledging the higher demands of AI tools, Altman told attendees, “we still don’t appreciate the energy needs of this technology.” But instead of suggesting some moderation of his expansive vision of AI deployment, he said an energy breakthrough is necessary.
- Open AI CEO, Sam Altman on the future of currency
A Path to AI-Powered, Quantum, Spatial Computing,
Made by Humans
AI-Powered...what? Let’s try describing the integration of all these technologies in a different way. With a hightented collective consciousness (AI) that is intricately integrated with the complex world (Spatial Computing + Quantum IoT) We can create immensely rich, diverse, dynamic, immersive, blended reality experiences generated by limitless human imagination. The personal, unique signatures of our collective and individual experiences will be the basis of a regenerative knowledge economy. It will be akin to embodying collective human and non-human intuition, intelligence and imagination and turning them into a superpower for ourselves and our communities.
Ok, but How?
Folks who save stuff into YOO become a part of this creative knowledge network, this walled garden of human thought.
Each piece of content added to the network is tagged, connected to it’s user and encoded with it’s data (point of origin, description, metadata). This data is secure.
This data is of high value to organizations, who will have to subscribe to the network and it’s conditions in order to access the data at our citizens discretion.
What are the conditions? Similar to a B Corp, a commitment to incremental progress toward climate regeneration, human rights, equity, inclusion and diversity.
The most significant of these, a commitment to transition to a fully regenerative economic model. They buy-in to our network with funding, infrastructure and distribution. Their ROI? Literally a better world, with access to the experience and knowledge of historically marginalized and indigenous communities that can be integrated and operationalized across their systems. The commitment terms, operational processes and guidelines will be living documents, adjusting to the individual, local, regional needs with necessary context. This is more than a utopian vision, but a protopian process.
Quantum Temple is an organization presrving living cultural heritage through curated regenerative travel experiences, digital and physical artifacts, and community-led initiatives – all powered and secured by blockchain technology
We have all the data, they have all the money. They give us the money for the data as we transition to a moneyless society that runs on the data of our interconnected experiences in relation to one another and the planet earth. It’s like a digital land-back. Each individual AGI, with each organizaitonal AGI, integrated with a digital twin AGI model of the Earth, with it’s own inherent cycles and knowledge acting as a guide to us as stewards and conservators. National economies around the world are already implementing transitions away from GDP as a measure of prosperity, to measures of GHHW (Health, Happiness and Wellness). This would be be slow process, a revolution unfolding in the chapters of big time. A process that honors the chaotic “quantumness” of the butterfly effect; the power of small, seemengly insignificant changes to result in large, unexpected outcomes. Chaos is really about the intial conditions. In this, we attempt to set the initial condtions toward a better world. A world free from unnecessary hunger, houselessness, unwanted disease, coercive labor, famine, genocide, war. Not a perfect world, free from all pain and suffering, but one where access to a relatively good life, one where our most fundamental human needs are met, is a human right. A world where life, liberty and the pursuit of health & happiness are evenly distributed as a birthright for every citizen of the Earth.
As of the writing of this (Sunday, March 2nd, 2025) a tiny group of 24 people now hold $3.3 trillion, or 16% of all wealth on Earth. Elon Musk is estimated to earn over $23 million per hour.
Admittedly, there are some critical components of this grand plan that are missing. Rest assured, I’ve thought of many of them. One of key significance is the energy cost mentioned above by Sam Altman, a point of concern/contention shared by many of his contemporaries. This, in addition to an unstable geopolitical climate, the raw material extraction needed for the “green transition”, vast amounts of growing electronic waste, and a host of others, is why I have personally and intentionally worked to distribute my investments across a range of verticals to advance research and development toward this integrated vision.
This includes:
The Biosphere Cellulose Kitchen, winner of several design awards & Plant Pods, Finalist for Space 10 AI Regenerative Design competition.
Through O MediaLab, I worked with a group of designers to explore the future of biodesign in the world of Biosphere 3.
One way to divest from Big Tech in this transition is to show the many paths we have to develop and distribute technologies using locally accessible materials.
“We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.”
-Carl Sagan
Curating digital archives, like my Are.na, as well as creating and hosting physical archives like this one at Another World is Possible experience and a physical Time Capsule buried at The Goat Farm Arts Center.
Contents include everything from ways to fix your smartphone, to making a fire, recipies, maths, science, and indigenous history. A small slice of our collective knowledge.
AKUPARA, a story about a biotechnologically advanced, ancient-future world.
Co-creating spaces of connection, for individuals and communities to practice being human, together.
Hosted a communal gathering space for friends and peers to play, experiment, talk, create and party. A hub for technology and culture, Barton Hood.
Another World is Possible showed a future where we can generate, equitable, fully immersive physi-digital worlds. The (re)generative potential of YOO through the creative power of collective human consciousness.
Our future vision.