15-3[27]: AE_2024-2030

An experiment in world building...

07.22.2026 AE Updates

//In several projects recently I’ve been thinking about legacy. Not just my own legacy as an individual at a certain point in my life. But the legacy of families, people within social movements, communities—and even the legacy of our entire species.//

Dearest colleagues: I thank you once again for agreeing to help me with this venture. I think you will find the artifacts we are unearthing in this level quite fascinating…

//It may not be possible to think of one’s own legacy in any meaningful way. I’m thinking about one of the premises of one of the trippiest books I ever read, Gödel, Escher, Bach¹. We cannot understand a system from inside that system. Something like that. “Legacy” may be something that only those who come after us can determine. This is part of the thought process behind my project 15-3[27]: AE_2024-2030.

I sent out nine cards with an accompanying letter to nine subscribers of this Substack. I say “I”…but the letter-writer who sent the cards and created the video above is a character in a world I’ve started to build. I hope to further co-create this world with others—people who have received the first batch of these cards and folks who will receive cards from subsequent batches.//

As I mentioned in my initial communication to you, this artifact is from our most recent archaeological excavation and represents one of the finest artifacts uncovered to date, from a cache of polyvinyl chloride-based cards. Unearthed in the 15^th layer of the 3^rd unit (of a 27-unit grid), it represents approx years 2024-2030 of the Anthropocene Epoch…

//So many issues arise in this kind of world-building. How do I talk about the world from outside of the world, and how do I distinguish in-universe conversations? Right now I’m designating meta-world talk with double slashes and in-world with block quotes. I’ve looked into other arenas for examples: fan fiction sites, role playing games… There is no solution I’ve found so far that I like 100%.

I don’t want to over-explain this project. Partly because I don’t know all the answers yet. Partly because I’m hoping other people will join in. But the premise is that this character, in the course of some sort of archaeological excursion, discovered these cards. The cards are encrusted with various items found in the same level of earth.

In our world, these cards are mini collages I created on the surface of near field communication (NFC) cards—the same technology you probably have in your wallet right now on a debit or credit card or perhaps on a digital business card.

I’m calling these Artist (Near Field) Trading Cards, or A(NF)TCs (trademark pending…maybe). I wanted something that was kind of like Artist Trading Cards², but that enables an online component with affordances for collaborative engagement.//

Now that you have had some time to examine the artifact, I think you will agree that it contains some of the most pristine samples of preserved written text, fabric remnants + other decorative elements, as plus—most exceptionally—paper used as exchange media for services + goods.

I know that you, as plus, have collected similar artifacts. Of course, your expertise in your area of study of this time period of the Anthropocene Epoch will be much useful to the Collective in our continuing understanding of these beings as plus the times + places they inhabited.

//Recipients of this card can scan it with their cell phones and be directed to this post. If I continue this experiment, someday future A(NF)TC versions will go directly to a separate website that will have a better interface for collaboration. In the meantime, I hope that card recipients will engage in the conversation—in-universe, out-universe, or both—in the comments to this post.

When I first published this, none of this text was here and I didn’t send the post out via email to subscribers. It was a soft launch, I guess you could say. I had to have a destination URL in order to program the NFC cards before mailing them to folks, so I needed a placeholder site.

So my solution for the world was that the character would have a play at recreating the rudimentary location where such a card would have gone in our world and time, and would leave (or attempt to leave) a video message. That is one of the things I’ve been thinking about in terms of our legacy. Even whatever we think of today as our most cutting edge tech will be one day obsolete. Machines needed to read them will likely not be operational. But other of our stuff—especially stuff that we think of as ephemeral—may survive in some manner.//

I must reiterate that this is monumental + important work. Your Human Intelligence will help reveal discoveries that not only help us understand this Era, but plus provide insights into our own selves and times…

//Technically (whatever that means), we are currently living in the Holocene Era, a time period that began over 11,000 years ago. And that seems like a very very long time. But considering our planet is over 4 billion years old, this is but a blip.

Some folks want to say that we are past the Holocene and are now in the Anthropocene Era, which began supposedly around 1950. Some smart scientist folks who study this kind of thing even made a proposal to make the Anthropocene an official formal unit of geological epoch divisions. But other smart scientist folks said nah, get that ish outta here, and I guess because they were the guardians of geological epochs, the proposal died.

If you want to read another trippy book, try The Revolt Against Humanity: Imagining a Future Without Us³. It is a much shorter read than GEB (100 pages vs. 777 pages for the 1999 GEB 20th anniversary edition). Whatever your stance is on Holocene vs. Anthropocene,⁴ you may struggle with the possibility that we humans may be here for a good time but not a long time. This little book lays out a description of two different philosophical views, Anthropocene anti-humanism and trans-humanism. Both views posit that we humans are on the way out—in our fourth quarter of time, to use one of my favorite metaphors (but applied to our species and not us as individuals). But the first view is more like the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Thanos, while the second is more Trump Cinematic Universe’s Elon Musk.//

Now that you have successfully found this location, I request that you contribute your thoughts, analyses, + other expert opinions on this important historical find as plus others from previous digs you may have in your possession from this Era. I’ve sent to other colleagues other cards found in this same layer.

//Who are these being who are collaborating on this analyses of archeological finds? Are we their ancestors? Are they from another planet? From our planet in an alternate universe or timeline?

I don’t know.

I don’t know if it is possible to role play as them in order to get out of ourselves long enough and effectively enough to truly analyze ourselves. Maybe it is an unnecessary and ridiculous exercise. A waste of time. A silly game. (And one that I may be playing by myself!)

But this is one of the ways I’ve chosen to reflect on our shared humanity in this moment.

I’ll be sending out another batch of A(NF)TCs by September 1. Right now I’m only including paid subscribers, but hope to expand in the future. Whether you’re a paid subscriber or not, if you’d like to participate by making your own cards, email me and I can give you some tips. I’d love to set up some trades if enough folks would be interested.

In the meantime, I’ll update this post from time to time.

Speaking of time, is time just about up⁵ for our kind? Can we seek to understand ourselves better in order to stave off the circumstances (mostly of our own creation) that would result in our disappearance? Or, if it is too late, can we still engage in this self-understanding in order to ease our species’s transition to non-being?

Let’s explore together.//

1. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (1979) by Douglas R. Hofstadter

2. If you’ve never participated in an ATC swap, I highly recommend it. For me, there is something incredibly freeing about making AFTs. The small size leaves no room for my excuses. Paint, collage, draw, write, assemble…trying new-to-you techniques…thinking of creative ways to represent a theme…all just so much fun. And the process of giving the cards away and getting cards from other artists in exchange is satisfying in a way I did not expect. Note that my Artist (Near Field) Trading Cards are not “regulation size” for ATCs. But in every other respect, they fit the parameters.

3. The Revolt Against Humanity: Imagining a Future Without Us (2023) by Adam Kirsch

4. You may think you don’t have a stance on this. But consider your thoughts on whether or not this time we currently inhabit is truly drastically different—in category and not just in degree—from some earlier time. (And if you say yes, reflect on when that break occurred, and what are some of the markers.) Consider the proclamations of seemingly each generation of our species that whatever time we/they were then living in was truly a drastically “new” time. Consider, even, how you believe “time” operates…Is it “real”? Is it continuous, like a flow? Does it move in one direction only?

5. “Time is just about up” has different meanings in a basketball game, a human lifetime, and deep geological time. So “soon” could be 10 minutes, 10 years, or 10,000 years depending on the context…