Over the centuries, human culture expanded from traditional modes of artistic expression to include innovative artistic movements and individual creative exploration of all the elements of culture. Now, we can see infinite potential for new intersections of those elements, and we're entering an Age of Infinite Culture. But as we envision innovative works, we also see how easy it is to turn to AI to cook up new combinations of elements. So, we must ask, who will manifest our infinite cultural potential, humans or machines?

As a visual artist, I'm inspired by the infinite possibilities. I've designed a set of 11 Art Wheels that each cover a distinct aspect of 2D art, each showing a full spectrum of approaches to color, form, texture, aesthetic, etc. On TheArtWheels.com, you can plan new works by choosing an art element from each wheel. With 62 billion possible combinations of elements, a billion artists could each explore 62 unique approaches. And, since multiple artistic approaches can be juxtaposed, it's clear that we have practically infinite opportunities for innovation.


For generations, we've been moving toward infinite culture. Artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, etc. have been employing the widest array of aesthetics, freely exploring a world of subject matter. We're taking on creative points-of-view that range from surreal fantasy to objective representation, from pure emotional expression to abstract design, and we're making works that use endless combinations of these perspectives. Within each cultural field, we understand the constituent elements of that field, and we see that we can recombine them in myriad ways. Perhaps, that's why we've come to expect each artist, composer, and author to offer something new instead of just mimicking someone else's work.

Now, our nascent Age of Infinite Culture has met the Age of AI, and machines are generating countless cultural mash-ups, offering us tastes of artificial infinite culture. An AI company could easily take the Art Wheels and turn them into dials you could spin to instantly surf an infinite world of artificial art. People would be dazzled by the “genius” of AI's innovative powers, projecting onto AI all the human creativity that's been consumed and recombined by it. Considering that AI companies will inevitably build ever more enthralling artificial infinite culture experiences, covering all the arts, we need to beat AI to the punch. We urgently need a media platform that highlights human-created works and prompts humans rather than machines to create new works that explore our infinite cultural possibilities.

Despite the amazing breadth of works already created by artists and thinkers in all fields, we've not yet built platforms designed for coherently surfing and inspiring Infinite Culture. Instead, we've built algorithmic feeds and search engines that limit what we discover, showing us what's already of interest to us, reinforcing our points of view, auto-generating cult-like social/political groups and outrage at other groups. And, of course, search results and content on social media are increasingly AI-generated. As we all consume works cranked out by machines to fill every possible cultural niche, human content creators will find it harder and harder to make ends meet. If we do not act, it will only get worse for humans wishing to contribute to human culture, and everything we see and hear will have the strange taint of artificiality.

Social media silos have succeeded in part because the world and human culture can seem chaotic and overwhelming, and these platforms have offered an escape from complexity. Infinite Culture platforms could bring coherence to complexity by allowing you to surf common cultural elements sensibly arranged on navigation dials/wheels/sliders. Presented this way, infinite complexity would seem natural, inevitable, and comprehensible.

Basic artificial infinite culture experiences are here, and they'll only get more compelling. Soon anything else will seem terribly narrow. Social media algorithms that build personalized silos, feeding you more and more of the same, will feel constrained when we've experienced platforms designed for freely surfing Infinite Culture. It's up to us whether these platforms are designed to empower AI companies or to endlessly inspire new works by humans.

We're long overdue for an overhaul of our content delivery systems...

• We need non-algorithmic and coherent means to navigate and inspire Infinite Culture.
• We need the means to highlight verifiably human works and segregate AI content.
• We need better means to financially reward great human creativity and thought.
• We need better means to rate the best human-created works in all fields.

(Note: I'm licensing the following patent-pending concepts for an Infinite Culture platform to a new public-benefit, member-owned company with a board of directors to be elected by active members.)

For navigation of Infinite Culture, we can offer dials for selecting genre, style, media type, subject matter, emotional tone, etc., allowing you to easily discover new intersections of culture and quickly access anything. One might present cultural elements alphabetically, but alphabetical arrangement is conceptually disorganized, whereas wheels and dials can show relationships between elements, making them easier to find. I've designed a set of dials and currently thousands of sub-dials, each with a 360 degree continuum of cultural elements. By selecting elements on the dials, you can easily tune-in to anything or tag anything you would like to post. Librarians and scholars are invited to collaborate in the refinement and expansion of “The Everything Dials” on Wikipedia.

Dials and sub-dials for Subject, Genre, and Media show categories within 360 arrays that provide intuitive navigation, making it easy to discover related topics and points of view. Fine-tuning dials for Style, Tone, Creator, Audience, and Sorting allow you to filter and shift at any time what appears in your feed. With each new setting of the dials, you'll discover highly-rated human-created works. If no such works can be found, you'll be encouraged to create new works for that “HyperChannel.”

Modes for surfing the Everything Dials include...

• Mobile—swipe up for the next piece of content, then swipe right to open and tune the dials to filter what appears in your feed. Whenever you want to explore something new or find a different take on the same subject, swipe right to open the dials. Then, swipe left to return to a feed that you control.
• Search mode—enter search terms, get links to relevant content, then filter results and explore related content by tuning dials for Subject, Genre, Media, Style, etc.
• VR/AR—gesture to spin 3D dials with 3D icons for each channel and quickly tune-in to anything you'd like to see, read, hear, or experience.

With self-guided navigation using The Everything Dials, there's no need for algorithms that push content to individuals. So, rather than relying on tracking and profiling users, advertising can be much less invasive. Recognized sponsors can offer cash or prize awards for the most highly-rated works on any HyperChannel. Companies can announce awards on HyperChannels that are relevant to the goods and services they offer. Regionally sponsored awards can be placed, and local newspapers, radio stations, and TV stations, as well as ad companies anywhere, can earn 50% of placement fees for lining up sponsors.

In order to financially support the most highly-rated creators, a nonprofit system is needed for tipping or automatically micro-tipping the creators of works we like...
“TipStar” icons could be placed alongside any piece of online content. A single tap on the TipStar could automatically give a standard micro-tip—any amount you choose—while simultaneously saving to your favs and boosting the ratings of the piece of content. Slide the star upward to quickly choose a larger tip amount than your standard. At TipStar.org, you'll be able to set up accounts for giving and receiving tips. All tips will be transferred via ledger at the end of each day with minimal cost. The number of tips given to each piece of content will be made available anonymously on a public block chain, and any platform could use this information as a means to rate content. Tips given by highly-rated content creators and experts within any particular field could be used to boost ratings further. Number of TipStars received within a certain time period will determine winners of all awards.

As we build a platform for navigating infinite human culture, in order to prevent AI companies from overrunning the platform, we need a system for local verification of personhood. Local organizations could issue Personhood Passcodes that give temporary access to an account verification page that adds a Personhood Badge to your account. (Note that creators could choose to work under pseudonyms.) High schools, colleges, universities, libraries, civic organizations, city and state governments, etc. will be invited to participate in verifying people and groups that create content. To sustain this effort, everyone requesting a passcode will be required to make a donation—any amount they choose—to be split between the local organization that is providing Personhood Passcodes and the Infinite Culture member-owned platform.

We must work quickly to launch an Infinite Culture platform that highlights works by verified humans, before AI companies dominate the space and cut humans out of our own culture. It will be all too easy for AI companies to create seamless artificial infinite culture experiences, instantly generating works as people surf the endless cultural possibilities. If we allow this to happen, people will project the ability to innovate onto AI, and we'll slowly lose the ability to recognize or appreciate authentically-human works inspired by the depth of actual lived experience. Furthermore, in the back of our minds, we will know, or at least suspect, that most of the content we're taking in is artificial, and we'll feel like outsiders observing a sci-fi dream world, alienated from the culture we've allowed to replace us. Now is the time for an Infinite Culture platform that keeps humans at the center of human culture.

The Infinite Open Co-Op LLC is building such a platform on Bluesky, using Bluesky's open protocols, which will allow other platforms who license the Everything Dials and Infinite Open IP to access all content and offer non-algorithmic navigation of everything.