Fire Erowid & Earth Erowid
From Microdots to Bath Salts: The State of the Stone 2011
Where does science meet subculture? Earth and Fire will share their views on novel developments in the global underground recreational drug bazaar as well as reflect on the state of the visionary sphere. Psychedelic subcultures have complex relationships to science, spirituality, media, and the Internet. Now is the bridge between psychedelic history and future minds. With technologies of sharing at a historical peak and worldwide distribution of both products and thoughts being the norm, access to altered states of consciousness is mushrooming. What's novel is not any individual new discovery or product, but the rapid metamorphosis of products, packaging and marketing. This fast-changing marketplace has given rise to the need for developing new techniques for transmitting not just information, but knowledge and wisdom. Where does the evolution of psychedelic knowledge go from here?
Fire Erowid and Earth Erowid co-founded Erowid Center, a U.S.-based educational non-profit organization that collects, reviews, and publishes data about psychoactive plants, drugs, technologies, and practices. Their primary project is the Erowid.org website, established in 1995 as an independent public library of information about psychoactives. The site hosts more than 58,000 public documents and images and serves more than 90,000 unique visitors each day. Erowid Center also runs EcstasyData.org, an independent laboratory pill-testing program that analyzes anonymously submitted samples of ecstasy tablets and other recreational drugs and publishes the results online. Earth is Erowid Center's Technical Director and the Chief Software Engineer of Erowid.org. He designs and implements the custom software systems necessary for managing the large flow of information through the site and is the lead editor responsible for scientific information published by Erowid. Earth has worked in the field of psychoactive information distribution for more than 15 years and has written extensively on the topic. He has co-authored academic posters, been published in both large and small publications, and been interviewed by major news organizations about his work. Fire is Executive Director of Erowid Center and Head Archivist of Erowid.org. She is the site's primary information architect, designer, and editor as well as being responsible for fundraising and operations. Fire has more than 15 years experience studying psychoactive plants and drugs. She has written hundreds of pages of information about these materials, authored numerous articles, spoken at academic and professional conferences, and has had her work cited by newspapers, education programs, college classes, and seminars around the world.
Earth and Fire have spoken at conferences sponsored by groups as diverse as the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse, the North American Association of Clinical Toxicologists, Drug Treatment Limited in London, England, the Mycological Society of San Francisco, and the Gaia Media Foundation in Basel, Switzerland.