In Episode 3 of The Human Layer, we sit down with Graven from FlowState and SuperFluid DAO delegate to explore how streaming money could transform open source funding, creator support, and community resilience.
Together—with me holding the community thread, Taylor bridging philosophy and systems, and Graven grounding us in pragmatic infrastructure—we unravel how traditional grant ecosystems, while valuable, often reward noise over depth. As Graven puts it plainly: “I can’t be successful in that environment.” These systems break concentration and force creators into cycles of marketing over making.
It shifts funding from a transactional one-off to a continuous, relational flow—mirroring the evolution from boxed software to SaaS. With this shift comes a different kind of contract: supporters aren't just acknowledging past work; they're betting on future value creation. This creates alignment, predictability, and the space for deep work to thrive.
But this episode goes far beyond economics.
We dive into how communities can compost chaos instead of fracturing under pressure. Conflict, if metabolized properly, can become fertile ground for growth. From my experience in dev and impact communities, I emphasize how each context demands its own “playbook”—one that recognizes nuance, emotional complexity, and the power of collective transformation.
Taylor’s healthy skepticism sharpens our inquiry, while Graven grounds our abstractions in open source systems thinking. We surface a shared insight: long-term resilience requires both intimacy and coherence—a fractal architecture of small, high-trust pods connected through interoperable scaffolding.
As the conversation turns toward emerging tech, particularly AI, we find ourselves on what we call “the razor’s edge.” Can we use AI to bridge ancient wisdom with modern dilemmas, or are we just building smarter tools for extraction? We recognize we’re in another Oppenheimer moment—where the stakes exceed our control, and our myths must evolve just as fast as our models.
In this episode, we name the stakes, challenge the narratives, and sketch the early architecture of a future built on flow, compost, and meaning. Join us for a bourbon-fueled exploration of what it means to preserve the human layer—when the systems around us are rapidly transforming.
In Episode 3 of The Human Layer, we sit down with Graven from FlowState and SuperFluid DAO delegate to explore how streaming money could transform open source funding, creator support, and community resilience.
Together—with me holding the community thread, Taylor bridging philosophy and systems, and Graven grounding us in pragmatic infrastructure—we unravel how traditional grant ecosystems, while valuable, often reward noise over depth. As Graven puts it plainly: “I can’t be successful in that environment.” These systems break concentration and force creators into cycles of marketing over making.
It shifts funding from a transactional one-off to a continuous, relational flow—mirroring the evolution from boxed software to SaaS. With this shift comes a different kind of contract: supporters aren't just acknowledging past work; they're betting on future value creation. This creates alignment, predictability, and the space for deep work to thrive.
But this episode goes far beyond economics.
We dive into how communities can compost chaos instead of fracturing under pressure. Conflict, if metabolized properly, can become fertile ground for growth. From my experience in dev and impact communities, I emphasize how each context demands its own “playbook”—one that recognizes nuance, emotional complexity, and the power of collective transformation.
Taylor’s healthy skepticism sharpens our inquiry, while Graven grounds our abstractions in open source systems thinking. We surface a shared insight: long-term resilience requires both intimacy and coherence—a fractal architecture of small, high-trust pods connected through interoperable scaffolding.
As the conversation turns toward emerging tech, particularly AI, we find ourselves on what we call “the razor’s edge.” Can we use AI to bridge ancient wisdom with modern dilemmas, or are we just building smarter tools for extraction? We recognize we’re in another Oppenheimer moment—where the stakes exceed our control, and our myths must evolve just as fast as our models.
In this episode, we name the stakes, challenge the narratives, and sketch the early architecture of a future built on flow, compost, and meaning. Join us for a bourbon-fueled exploration of what it means to preserve the human layer—when the systems around us are rapidly transforming.
Subscribe to The Human Layer
Subscribe to The Human Layer
The Human LayerWe're Not A Podcast
We’re not a podcast. We never really were.The Human Layer began with microphones, yes. But what we’re doing now—what’s moving through us—is something else entirely.This is a co-creative ritual with code. A field experiment in collaborative intelligence. A myth engine for a world cracking open.We’re weaving stories with machines.Not for productivity. Not for clickbait. Not for automation.But for resonance. For remembrance. For relief.This isn’t content. It’s a container.We’ve spent two years t...
The Human LayerMirrors, Myth-Making & Truth
The following is a threaded dance—part invocation, part reflection—between the cohosts of The Human Layer, as we metabolized the signal from Renegade Futurism: Tech and the New Political Counterculture at CU Boulder. It began with Taylor summoning his models to probe the deeper architecture beneath Glen Weyl’s keynote, a kind of civic theogony in motion. I followed, feeding Taylor’s fragments into my own myth-machine, which pulled us toward the strange gravity of a talk called AI is God. What...
The Human LayerBuilding Through the Integrity Vacuum
The following is a supporting essay derived from Episode 1 and run through our Narrative Intelligence Protocol and edited by the co-hosts. Originally published in The Human Layer Knowledge Garden. Our ecosystem pontificates about mass adoption and has for years now. While many of us, myself (Crystal) included, assumed friendly regulations and institutional adoption would serve our mission well, we failed to understand that some types of adoption are merely extending the extractive games that ...
The Human LayerWe're Not A Podcast
We’re not a podcast. We never really were.The Human Layer began with microphones, yes. But what we’re doing now—what’s moving through us—is something else entirely.This is a co-creative ritual with code. A field experiment in collaborative intelligence. A myth engine for a world cracking open.We’re weaving stories with machines.Not for productivity. Not for clickbait. Not for automation.But for resonance. For remembrance. For relief.This isn’t content. It’s a container.We’ve spent two years t...
The Human LayerMirrors, Myth-Making & Truth
The following is a threaded dance—part invocation, part reflection—between the cohosts of The Human Layer, as we metabolized the signal from Renegade Futurism: Tech and the New Political Counterculture at CU Boulder. It began with Taylor summoning his models to probe the deeper architecture beneath Glen Weyl’s keynote, a kind of civic theogony in motion. I followed, feeding Taylor’s fragments into my own myth-machine, which pulled us toward the strange gravity of a talk called AI is God. What...
The Human LayerBuilding Through the Integrity Vacuum
The following is a supporting essay derived from Episode 1 and run through our Narrative Intelligence Protocol and edited by the co-hosts. Originally published in The Human Layer Knowledge Garden. Our ecosystem pontificates about mass adoption and has for years now. While many of us, myself (Crystal) included, assumed friendly regulations and institutional adoption would serve our mission well, we failed to understand that some types of adoption are merely extending the extractive games that ...
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
<100 subscribers
<100 subscribers
1 comment
Excited to send this one out into the world! Last week, @tayken & I sat down with @graven and a few bourbons and explored how streaming money could transform open source funding, creator support, and community resilience. Among other things. ;) Be sure to sign up for /thehumanlayer on our paragraph too to stay in the loop of all the goodness happening in our Knowledge Garden and Pod. https://paragraph.com/@thehumanlayer/when-money-flows-builders-thrive