This is not another site about AI.
It's a history of fire,
a lesson in digital anthropology,
and co-thinking about how we can harness new technologies by revisiting the question of what makes us human.
Human agency and dignity is about designing a culture that leverages and incorporates AI, not simply makes and uses it. Humans are hard-wired to evolve alongside our technologies.
A return to the question of culture.
Rewire
When a tool reorganizes how we live, work, and think together.
Reframe
AI is a human problem long before it is a technical one.
Repace
Slow down enough to get it right.
Get to the heart of human-centered AI
Dr. Ali Maaxa, a 12-year AI product executive and 20-year professor of digital anthropology, storytells the human dimension of AI adoption.
Rather than project Silicon Valley visions of a robotic future, or stay in the weeds of everyday tools or use, Dr. Maaxa's thought leadership centers on the history of human technological innovation and its relationship to cultural development.
Keynotes
Inspiring insights on AI's cultural impact and adoption strategies.
Courses
Structured programs for teams on digital anthropology for AI.
Workshops
Interactive sessions to co-create actionable AI integration plans.
Consulting
Strategic guidance for leaders building AI-ready cultures.
AI Is the New Fire…
…after the wheel, gunpowder, printing press, TV…you get it. Humans are made to innovate technologies.
We just need to remember how to build a language, ritual, specialization, storytelling, systems, and…hard-won wisdom around them. In a word: technology is culture.
Fire did not make civilization happen by simply showing up as a technology.
It grew as a companion to humanity because we built practices around it: containment, teaching, rhythm, language, stewardship, and ritual.
Digital anthropology and media studies show us that throughout our time on earth, our survival is staked on this.
"The question is not whether we can use it. The question is how we will live with it."
Fire is not just power. It is organized power.
TRUSTED BY INDUSTRY, COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES, MEDIA, NONPROFITS, & PUBLISHERS:
Framing out:
understanding the technological present by revisiting our past
Fire changed energy, time, labor, protection, and gathering. It restructured the human day and the human social world. It was never simply discovered; it had to be learned, tended, contained, and shared. That is what makes it the right metaphor for AI.
"When our ancestors adapted to using fire, humanity began." — Richard Wrangham
No Technology Arrives Alone.
Fire, print, television, software, and AI do not simply add new functions. They reorganize the environments in which people perceive, relate, decide, and build institutions. The history of innovation is not just a history of inventions. It is a history of changed conditions of life.
Marshall McLuhan's studies of the printing press and television showed that major media technologies reshape consciousness, perception, and social organization as systems — not just as tools.
AI belongs in that lineage.
Capability Without Culture is a Deadstart.
Organizations are moving quickly toward AI capability. But capability is not adoption, and adoption is not alignment. AI appears in fragments: shadow tools, isolated experiments, uneven enthusiasm, unspoken fear.
The result is heat without a hearth.
Most AI Problems Are Human Problems.
- Tools arrive faster than language.
- Speed outpaces trust.
- Governance lags behind experimentation.
- Teams lack shared rituals for deciding what AI is for, when to use it, and how to contain its risks.
Ritual, Not Just Rollout.
Not just policy. Not just prompts. Not just pilots.
They need ritual: repeated, collective practices for interpretation, governance, escalation, learning, and care.
Victor Turner's work on ritual and liminality helps explain how groups move through uncertainty by building shared social processes.
How this research has taken root.
Tech & Industry:
Product Innovation, Research & Incubators
- Amazon Web Services AI product strategy
- Meta AI R&D
- New Relic AI Incubator
- Booz Allen R&D
- Various AI startups and enterprise product teams
Higher Ed Courses
Anthropology, STEM, Media, Global Culture
- UNC
- Duke University
- Virginia Tech
- Willian & Mary
- Willamette College
- Portland State University
- Pierce College
Keynotes, Panels & Talks
Featured Keynotes Workshops
- Startup Week
- Product World
- Developer Week
- Product Tank
- MoPop Seattle
- KILN Speakers' Series
Press & Publications
eatured Keynotes Workshops
- Oxford University Press
- The Atlantic
- Portland Business Journal
- NPR/Oregon Public Broadcasting
- SF Weekly
- Awkward Silences
Find.
Interpret.
Ritualize.
Evolve.
Find
We locate where AI is already burning — embers of official and unofficial use, where it's transparent, where it's helpful and harmful. Map current state.
Interpret
Ask what AI means here, in this organization, school or community, under these conditions. Understand the patterns, get to the "why" behind them.
Ritualize
Build shared practices for governance, learning, and care: grow skilled practitioners (ritualists),
Evolve
Adapt governance as tools, teams, and risks change.
A framework for strategic AI adoption
Find the Fire.
- Locate official and unofficial AI use across the organization.
- Surface shadow practices, off-label workarounds, local innovation, and high-risk workflows.
- Begin with observation, not assumption.
- Visibility comes before control.
This phase draws on anthropological methods and field-based attention to how people actually use tools in context.
Learn Your Hotspots.
- Ask what AI means here, for these people, under these conditions.
- Clarify values, incentives, risk appetite, and institutional purpose.
- Build a shared language for judgment.
- Strategy begins when observation becomes meaning.
"Representation is the production of meaning…" — Stuart Hall
Build the Hearth.
- Turn scattered use into shared practice.
- Create review rituals, training habits, decision forums, playbooks, and governance checkpoints.
- Lower anxiety by increasing legibility.
- Ritual is how a powerful tool becomes part of everyday life.
"There is no such thing as a machine that acts outside of relations with humans." — Lucy Suchman
Steward the Burn.
- AI governance is not a one-time control layer.
- It is an adaptive practice: measuring, reviewing, revising, learning.
- Mature organizations do not eliminate uncertainty; they build capacity to live with it.
- The goal is not stasis. It is stewardship.
Controlled burning and cultural burning offer a better metaphor than blanket suppression: intentional, situated, collective management.
Thinkers Behind the Work.
Anthropology Media Studies Cultural Studies Psychology Human Computer Interaction Philosophy
Victor Turner
"Liminality and communitas were the key to cultural creativity and change."
Ritual transforms uncertainty into shared form.
Donna Haraway
"Technology is not neutral. We're inside of what we make, and it's inside of us."
Humans and machines make each other.
Marshall McLuhan
"It is the framework which changes with each new technology and not just the picture within the frame."
Technologies remake the conditions of life.
Stuart Hall
"Representation is the production of meaning through language."
Culture makes technologies mean something.
Sarah Sharma
"Technological change reorganizes time, coordination, and whose pace counts."
Power lives in pace and infrastructure.
Lucy Suchman
"The dynamics of computational artifacts extend… to relations of people with each other and to the place of computing in their ongoing activities."
AI is social before it is technical.he
Meet Dr. Ali Maaxa,
Digital Anthropologist
- Professor of digital anthropology, strategist, and product leader working at the intersection of technology, culture, and governance.
- Researcher of off-label digital innovation, including fieldwork on how people use tools in ways their makers did not anticipate.
- Former enterprise AI and research leader studying adoption, non-adoption, and governance in real organizational settings.
- Creator of frameworks such as SAiAF and FIRE for leaders navigating AI as a human, institutional, and strategic challenge.
Bring FIRE Into Your Hearth.
Keynotes
On AI, ritual, adoption, and the human pace of innovation.
Workshops
For executive teams, product organizations, and cross-functional leadership groups.
Advisory
Strategic AI adoption, governance, and organizational alignment.
Thought Partnership
For institutions seeking a broader language for AI.
Writing & Media
Essays, interviews, moderated conversations, and public thought leadership.
This is not a site about AI. It is a movement to reclaim our agency and dignity as we innovate and contain our new fire with ancient frameworks.
Ready to Bring FIRE Into the Room?
Book a 15-minute call with Dr. Ali Maaxa to explore keynotes, workshops, advisory work, or thought partnership.
This is not a site about AI. It is a site about how we live with our new fire.