The boring revolution humanity needs most | Indy Johar

Since 2011, anyone could have downloaded an open-source house design, cut out the parts and assemble it themselves. So why is building a new home still so hard?

In this episode, we talk with Indy Johar, founder of Dark Matter Labs. He argues that the real barriers are the hidden rules behind what gets built, like warranties and access to land, and his team is working to rewrite them.

We cover:

• What it really takes to give people the power to build their own furniture and homes
• Dark Matter Labs’ work with the Taiwan government to build a decentralized, digital identity system for its citizens
• The importance of keeping many possible futures open, and thinking at a very large scale to prevent things like climate change from closing off some paths
• How AI’s electricity demand could set off a chain reaction that ends up improving the way we produce energy
• How AI could help us reorganize society based on continuous learning instead of top-down control
• Why we should build AI that questions us instead of offering certainty

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

00:45 From open-source furniture to rewriting the rules behind it

03:56 How do you change the hidden rules behind society?

06:02 Why Indy stopped designing buildings and started building things

07:45 How do you cool the Arctic?

10:07 How to keep our options open as a civilization

12:55 How AI's hunger for energy could bring about an energy revolution

17:34 Are we building AI that commands, or AI that works alongside us?

19:00 What if AI questioned us instead of giving us answers?

20:33 Rethinking identity of people and ecosystems in Taiwan

23:31 Why Indy sees technology as an extension of nature

25:39 d/acc: why decentralizing power isn't enough

27:07 Who owns the carbon in your walls? The "boring revolution"

27:59 How can you join the boring revolution?

28:34 Should you start with experiments?

29:42 Open-source housing: an IKEA catalog for building a home

30:54 The most interesting projects by Dark Matter Labs

33:14 The best advice Indy ever received

On the Existential Hope Podcast hosts Allison Duettmann and Beatrice Erkers from the Foresight Institute invite scientists, founders, and philosophers for in-depth conversations on positive, high-tech futures.

Full transcript, listed resources, and more: https://www.existentialhope.com/podcasts

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