Good local time, leaders and change-makers at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Let us begin with a big question. "What could UCSC be by 2050?" No need for predictive modelling or even crystal balls. This is an invitation to cast off the yoke of tyrannical predictions and deliberate deeply.
Because, if anyone tells you the future of education, democracy or the planet is inevitable, please reject. Or better still, smile and move on. The future is not something we forecast from above. It is something we learn to co-create and forge as one.
For me, this is the essence of Plurality: Collaborative diversity turning polarization into fuel. If we let it erupt like a volcano, the lava of division consumes everything in its path. But if we build a geothermal engine, that same pressure becomes momentum for democratic renewal. The design question is: Do our tools amplify outrage, or do they amplify overlap?
This is why what you are doing with Polis, World Cafe, Open Space and listening partners matters.
A Polis conversation is a group selfie of a community. It lets a campus see itself and hear itself, not just as loud individual voices, but as patterns of care, concern, imagination and uncommon ground.
That is very different from the usual social media space, where the highest polarization per minute, or PPM, often wins. There, the feed is a wildfire. It feels hot, but there is no relational nutrition. We see the shadows of others, but not the people themselves. There is no engagement, empathy nor understanding.
What you are making here can be the inverse of that: a campfire.
A campfire has warmth, but also smoke. So, we have to tend it together. We sit with people we did not choose and we come away changed, maybe slightly uncomfortable. That discomfort is not a bug. It is civic muscle being trained.
And here AI can help, but only if we put it in the right place.
Machines should not replace human judgment. That would be like sending our robots to the gym to lift weights for us. The robot gets stronger, and our muscles atrophy.
Instead, Civic AI can be the connective tissue: transcribing, summarizing, translating across vocabularies, helping quieter voices be heard, helping one table understand another table without losing context.
In other words, technology should be on tap, not on top.
So, as you gather, I would encourage each table and each circle to ask: Who is missing? Who can act? What would make this idea legitimate even for those who do not fully agree? And how will the loop close, so that people see their contribution returning as action, not disappearing into a report?
Because data should be our Kami-tilled soil, not tech-drilled oil.
If we treat people's words as oil, we extract them, refine them, and burn them for someone else's purpose. But if we treat them as soil, we tend the relationships, obligations, and histories that make new life possible. A citizens' report can then become compost for the next season of campus life, not a final answer handed down from above.
This is also where the fork and merge matters. Students, staff, faculty, alumni, community partners: you can fork new possibilities. New rituals, new curriculums, new ways of learning, governing, caring for land, and caring for one another. And then the institution can merge back what works, so the campus itself evolves.
Fork without merge is just exit into many beautiful small gardens.
Merge without fork is just captive complaining inside the old system.
But together, fork and merge can become an infinite garden, many communities rooted in their own soil, yet able to hear one another.
For 2050, I challenge you to consider whether the invisible infrastructure of campus life, the ranking, funding, advising, hiring, learning and listening systems, will become civic. Whether they will be transparent to the community, contestable by the community and repairable by the community.
That is what Right Livelihood means to me in this moment: Building institutions where people and planet can flourish together.
No democracy is an island, not even Taiwan. And no campus is an island, not even one as enlightened as UCSC. That is why universities can become places where democracy is practiced, not only studied.
So, please, use these gatherings to design a bigger, more welcoming table. Turn polarization into co-creation. Turn data into soil. Turn wildfires into campfires. Turn today's conversations into the civic muscles that future generations can inherit, strengthen and pass down.
And always keep this guiding thought in mind: We the people are truly the superintelligence.
Let us co-create, collaborate and free the future — together.
Thank you. Live long and … prosper!🖖