Future Fossils

This week I chat with film-maker Michael Morgenstern about his latest transmedia project, I Dared My Best Friend To Ruin My Life, which takes young adults down a mind-bending and immersive narrative vortex about weaponized synthetic media to teach vital 21st Century literacies and the society-threatening implications of #deepfakes.While I’ve been speculating on the ominous (albeit numinous) social and psychological consequences of deepfakes since my 2017 sci-fi short “An Oral History of The End of ‘Reality’” and discussed the more hopeful possibilities in last week's episode with Stephanie Lepp, this conversation takes the futurist speculation to a whole new level to examine:• How convincing and deceitful information-age fictions pose a risk not just to the fabric of society but even our personal relationships;• How deepfakes will turn the logic of waking life from something sober and tangible to something more like a dream or shamanic journey;• How Michael and his team based the execution and roll-out of thi