What is Bright Age Beyond? Who is Ferdia O’Brien?
Bright Age Beyond is a project created by Ferdia H. O’Brien, a social cybernetician living in Ireland who began as an electrical engineer. He is a member of the Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25), the Participatory Economy Project, and Real Utopia.
The driving aim of Bright Age Beyond is the development and implementation of solutions to humanity’s great problems, such as poverty, war, and ecocide. The premise is that change will require more than effort; it will require new ideas. For example, how would a post-capitalist economy work? How would a democratic polity function? What would an ecologically regenerative society look like? And how do we get there?
Goals
The goals of Bright Age Beyond are:
- Do original research to develop solutions.
- Facilitate research and dialogue among researchers and practitioners.
- Communicate with a non-specialist audience.
- Facilitate discussion among wider populations.
Work
As such, Bright Age Beyond is project of ‘research in public‘, where in-depth research and popular communication are intertwined. This work has three main strands:
- Research
- Policy
- Communication
1. Research
Ferdia O’Brien writes articles and papers and is currently co-authoring a book with Anders Sandström detailing a democratic socialist society, revising and extending the Participatory Economy (Parecon) model. With Mitchell Szczepanczyk he is researching the computational requirements of Annual Planning in Parecon. Ferdia is very interested in Parecon but is not outright committed to it. He also writes on the philosophy of pragmatism and its relation to democracy.
2. Policy
In DiEM25 Ferdia O’Brien is Coordinator of the Task Force on Postcapitalism Policy, where he works on producing policy for the transition of Europe to a post-capitalist civilization.
3. Communication
Ferdia O’Brien interviews outstanding guests on the Bright Age Beyond podcast [coming soon 2023], and creates video lectures and essays for YouTube.
Practicality and critical thinking are prized above all. The communication style is civil, cool-headed, and productive. The methodology is pluralist, multi-disciplinary, and solution-focused. Ferdia O’Brien draws upon complexity science, cybernetics, engineering, political economy, psychology, philosophy, history, and constantly searches for prosocial applications of the latest technologies.
This project is intellectually stimulating, but it is borne of dire practical need.
Let’s face it: humanity is in terminal crisis. As Earth System collapse accelerates, new fascisms and technocracies are rising on a planet strewn with nuclear warheads. Wealth accumulates apace in a global oligarchy with unprecedented power, while their cameras, algorithms, and robots, monitor and control us sleeplessly.
We are living through the end of human civilization and the beginning of a new Dark Age.
At the same time, our species has never been better positioned to fulfil a different destiny. Over thousands of years of social evolution we have painstakingly developed complex institutions, norms, and artifacts, which prepare the way for an enlightened, highly advanced, peaceful and egalitarian global society. This new Bright Age is so close, we can almost reach out and touch it.
Humanity is not helpless, we have options. There are already serious proposals for social change in the short, medium, and long term, including for sophisticated new economic and political systems. Bright Age Beyond is dedicated to investigating – and devising – these pathways to the next epoch.
The goal is for Bright Age Beyond to be a resource for social innovators, including parties, movements, unions, community activists, business people, designers, civil servants, legislators, and concerned citizens.
