003: can mushrooms save the world?
mushrooms as technology. mushrooms as a metaphor for how to live.
In recent memory, life has felt more and more like a series of unusual and “once in a century” events that have left me wondering what we truly know to be true. Unprecedented heat waves, aliens, artificial intelligence, orca whale attacks just in this year alone: existence these days feels otherworldly, something out of a sci-fi movie rather than the orderly world outlined in grade school.
Mushrooms, in particular, are having a moment. A historically under-researched field, the kingdom of Fungi is often cast as an afterthought to western science’s preference for predator-prey relationships. In recent years, however, scientific studies have cross-pollinated (not a scientifically accurate allusion!!) into mainstream applications and mainstream news. For example:
Biotech innovators can now create compostable packaging from mycelium (the thready roots of fungi).
Vertical farms dedicated to the fruiting organisms now sell at Whole Foods.
Fungi of the “magical” form have been decriminalized in several cities and states following studies that it may reduce anxiety and depression.
My personal favorite shroom-related innovation: in 2010, Japanese researchers used brainless, single-celled slime mold to determine the optimal railway paths to connect train stations in Tokyo (video link):
What can a mushroom’s existence tell us about the world? After all, a mushroom’s way of being is alien to the animal-plant kingdoms we take for granted.
More animal than plant, fungi do not produce food from the sun like their soil sisters; instead, they eat. Fungi absorb dissolved and deceased food through their cell walls, secreting digestive enzymes to the environment in the process. In contrast to our very animalic methane by-products, fungi enzymes decompose the ecological system around them and provide nutrients for new growth1.
What’s perhaps more alien is that the mushrooms caps we see on the top of a fallen log are merely fruiting bodies, used for reproduction and spore spreading. Under the soil, certain types of fungi build complex networks of mycelia, interconnecting entire forests of trees, co-habitating simultaneously on the many rather than one. It has been shown — though this is not entirely uncontroversial2 — that mycorrhizal networks transmit water and nutrients between trees, supporting the plants they live with in an often mutually symbiotic way of being3. Some plants are even "mycorrhizal-obligate," meaning that they can’t survive without their fungal associate4. This can explain why a tree in a forest that is overshadowed by other trees is able to survive with no access to sunlight. Scientists affectionately call this the “wood wide web,” a description that speaks to the complex interactions happening below the surface and a nod to the decentralized network that the internet was intended to be.
This “mushroom movement” is happening in technology, but it’s also taking hold in our cultural lexicon. Increasingly, I believe, the fleshy stems are permeating our discourse as a reaction away from mainstream dogma and towards alternative modes of processing: symbiotic co-habitation, decentralization, complex interconnectedness vs. transactional cause-effects. As we grapple with the otherworldy events of today, I argue that this is why we’re seeing more shrooms in our rhetoric. It’s a value system as much as it is biology. The status quo isn’t working, and we’re looking for a new path forward. To wit:
In February, a man connected a synthesizer to fungi caps and created “mushroom music.” His videos, understandably, went viral on TikTok.
Sourdough had its moment in 2020, and fermentation as a food category has never been more popular.
Twitter, naturally, is a breeding ground for mushroom discourse, leading to a recent WIRED interview with a mycology professor to answer the internet’s burning questions about caps (video link):
New brands and projects also seem to emerge every week with a mushroom on its masthead or adjacently, nature-inspired demi-idolations. More an ideology than an exercise in science, these projects expound a mushroom way of being in contrast to the predator-prey approach of modern society (and perhaps a statement against capitalism itself). Some examples I’ve come across in my internet traversals:
The Mushroom SF - a mushroom-themed pop-up series that is oft lauded among in the know San Francisco food circles
A History of Frogs - an art studio and brand, not always explicitly building off the history of frogs as its name implies but usually incorporating elements of nature and references to the scientific method
Agaric Fly - an incense brand at the intersection of aliens, metamorphosis, hippie culture, and death metal
Mushroom People - a periodical covering its magical namesake. Their parent company also plays on other ‘icky’ forms of nature with a psychedelic twist: snails, forgotten flowers, weeds and weed…
Oakland Garden Club - zines and streetwear through the lens of “plants as portals”
The cult vintage dealer Lichen, named for the algae living among fungi in a mutalistic relationship
Fermentation and foraging pioneer Noma sells a mushroom shirt!
Generally, Digital Gardens - a concept described by Maggie Appleton as:
a collection of evolving ideas… inherently exploratory – linked through contextual associations. They aren't refined or complete - notes are published as half-finished thoughts that will grow and evolve over time. They're less rigid, less performative, and less perfect than the personal websites we're used to seeing.I maintain a currently unfounded hypothesis that the recent seasons’ brown, weathered streetwear is related to this trend.
source: digitalgarden.nu
We’re also seeing the emergence of “ecologically minded studios” — design or creative agencies that use The Elements as part of their branding, sometimes specializing in climate and nature-minded projects:
All Caps Studio - both a streetwear brand (another mushroom shirt!) and creative practice
Companion Platform - recently launched a seedling collaboration with Are.na’s gift shop
Seaborne - incubated by its parent company, Garden3d, which apparently invests in the intersection of ClimateTech and digital products (from their site: “Carbon Drawdown, Regenerative Agriculture, Healthcare, Mesh Networking, Decentralization, Formless Computing and pretty much any ideas that might incrementally improve the lives of all humans.”)
Is this nature-promoting performative? Perhaps; after all, a cultural movement does not make a renaissance until it stands the test of time (recent yet-to-ascertains: AI, crypto, Bidenomics). As with all revelations that become cultural movements, we risk taking our eye off the ball and solving the real thing i.e. climate change because, well, #capitalism5.
However, I assert this is more than just greenwashing with better lipstick. The people behind these brands are not faceless corporations nor conform to any mandate for shareholder value, as far as I can tell. The movements are emergingly grassroots; most often, they come from entrepreneurs and artists and creatives using their brands or practices as mediums to share things they care about, things they want to see exist in the world. In fact, this seemingly disparate set of internet projects is likely its own closely interlinked network, using digital connections to create an unplanned yet multiplicative ecosystem… not unlike what we find in nature herself.
To be clear, a mushroom-inspired t-shirt is not going to save the world. However, new wave projects promoting nature does speak to a set of values, a way of living that admires and champions nature’s beauty and complexity. It gets us out of our heads and our heads out of the metaphorical digital sand and revives us to the unadulterated wonders of the natural world we live in. That in itself, I believe, is worthwhile.
And what if this movement inspired us all to reimagine our ways of living — what if you lived in accordance to the spirit of a mycorrhizal fungus? Who would you reach out to? What networks would you cultivate? What communication lines would you transmit and be a conduit for?
Perhaps mushrooms offer us a new metaphor for being. In the same way that biodynamic farmers look to the moon for guidance, we can draw inspiration from the roots under our soil. Call it: a mushroomic way of living. □
Further reading and internet links if this piqued your interest: