Last year my business was crushed under by the global pandemic of COVID, leaving me with nothing but debts and angry creditors who once were friends. In contrast, I am lucky enough to have some work. I am taking this time to find out where I want to be before starting again.
So here is the final part, trying to answer the questions above and maybe from there, I’ll move onto a plan and finally a business venture.
My whole life I’ve been fascinated by what happens when you mix a traditional domain with something unexpected
The status quo, the traditional, the institutionalized, the norm. These things are often there not because they are good, efficient, or effective but because they are familiar, tried, and tested. Some of the institutions we work with and struggle with are dinosaurs, and their traditions are now holding back entire industries. Some of these are more obvious to see, school curriculums based on old textbooks training students for work that may not even exist when they enter the market. Language teachers training language teachers about intelligence types, when even the person who coined the term later said it wasn’t accurate.
Fair to say I’m not a big fan of things that have calcified and now hold us back. This isn’t usually any particular person’s fault; it’s the nature of the beast; the larger the institution, the more calcified and rigid it becomes. Governments and the systems of administration are obvious culprits. They tend to be huge established institutions where the people in charge have spent 40 years in that institution mastering its various systems. Why would they want to change or disrupt it? Those who arrive fresh-faced with ideas tend to be ignored, and so the cycle continues.
Also, the larger the beast, the slower and more difficult it is to make any changes. To change you need key players to get on board, you need to produce documents and arguments as to why the idea will help the institution. These organizations suffer not from a lack of intelligence or willingness from participants. Usually, it’s the massive gears of bureaucracy that grind the change-makers under. That’s also why you tend to find huge changes in an industry coming from the outside. Not necessarily someone ignorant of the domain but someone who independently pushes a solution. Something that would have been impossible from within.
Take Khan Academy1, creating a whole new MOOC approach for people to learn at home. It wasn’t that training videos like this hadn’t been suggested before YouTube had existed for ages. Teachers suggested it as a means to teach maths over traditional drilling. But the entire education system is a beast of tradition. Trying to suggest this to the government would warrant meetings and hearings, budget reviews, and of course, the training required. Technology is a key part of this disruption. Of course, tech is getting cheaper and cheaper, smarter and smarter, and it’s going to appear in some unexpected places in the upcoming years.
But it’s not just in the world of politics and institutions that I find this interesting. I love it when people take a well-known concept or industry and turn it on its head by doing something unexpected. The traditional fantasy genre tropes that were with us since Lord Of The Rings got torn up with the movie Bright on Netflix. Of course, people hated or loved it. It took what they were familiar with and upended it. In my youth, the tales of Drizzt, a noble Dark Elf who was the antithesis of his race. Essentially, and I think this is something I need to write more about, any institution or domain that has remained entrenched in its ways for more than 50 years is probably an area that should be looked at from an entrepreneurial standpoint.
Sometimes it is simply easier to see graphics in the games we play to realize the incredible progress we’ve made in terms of cheap accessible computing power. This is a bit of a homage to an image I saw 6 years ago. 38 years of computer graphics in one image
This picture represents nearly 40 years of progress in video game graphics. I am 41-years-old next month it blows my mind how far we’ve come in my lifetime. On one side, we have Indiana Jones in the video game version of Raiders of the Lost Ark on the Atari 2600. On the other side, we have Operative Frank Wood from Activision’s Call of Duty®: Black Ops Cold War on the PlayStation 5. I’ll let you guess which side is which.
Of course, Call of Duty: Black Op 4’s in-game graphics won’t always look that good. The picture above is taken under ideal conditions but still, the graphics in the video game are going to be pretty damn impressive. Check out the official launch trailer below!
Progress in Computer Graphics is not just about games
While games may not seem all that important to most people, the forms of entertainment we can have in our homes are a great litmus test of progress. We live in a period of history where technology progresses so fast that it’s hard to keep up. The more we can bring technology and improvement to the masses, the more we enable them. in a few years, the home computer will be capable of producing such astounding images and run such complex software that it will open a new chapter in creativity and invention.
Just a glance at Youtube, TikTok, and many other platforms will show you how computer graphics progress has allowed individuals to create stunning videos, VFX shots and even produce better images than significant production studios. Expect that trend to continue. When the next Spielberg, Lucas, or Jackson emerges onto the world stage of media, it will be from behind a fantastic imagination and computer in their home that allowed them to realize their vision. Like authors self-publishing, their productions will enter a golden age of entertainment creation, can’t wait to see it happen.
Last year my business was crushed under by the global pandemic of COVID, leaving me with nothing but debts and angry creditors who once were friends. In contrast, I am lucky enough to have some work. I am taking this time to find out where I want to be before starting again.
So here is part 3 of 4, trying to answer the questions above and maybe from there, I’ll move onto a plan and finally a business venture.
Never in history has there been a better time for finding or creating your tribe.
The first time I heard about the context of modern tribes was back in 2009 (holy crap where did 12 years go) when Seth Godin gave his TED talk on the subject. It’s such a great talk I’ll link it here so you can watch it now.
It’s a remarkably uplifting talk showing how many businesses are interested in tackling problems that will raise the standard of living, education, and the human condition to greater heights. Also, as it clearly says in yellow, it’s about Tribes. We all have, or at least want to have a tribe. A place where we belong and those around us support and reaffirm our place in the world. As he states in the talk above:
The Internet was supposed to homogenize everyone by connecting us all. Instead what it’s allowed is silos of interest. So you’ve got the red-hat ladies over here. You’ve got the red-hat triathletes over there. You’ve got the organized armies over here. You’ve got the disorganized rebels over here. You’ve got people in white hats making food. And people in white hats sailing boats. The point is that you can find Ukrainian folk dancers and connect with them because you want to be connected. That people on the fringes can find each other, connect and go somewhere.
Of course, this has a dark side, a glance at the Qanon community, anti-vaccine sentiment, and far right groups also can find each other and feed each other to fuel their hate. The exact force for good envisioned by Godin here is equally good at creating silos of extremism. With humans at the whim of such effects as cognitive-dissonance1, Dunning-Kreuger2 and confirmation bias3 the Internet is a place where our inner prejudices can be refined and sharpened as easily as our values and humanity.
However, despite the risks, finding your tribe has a lot of benefits, if you’re surrounded by optimistic, forward-thinking people, you tend to take on that mindset. If you have regular discussions with others about ways to improve the world around you and how things have improved that can be a real boost. If you cannot find people already in groups that share your ideas and goals, then the internet has made it an incredibly simple task to reach out to them. If your Tribe has a bonding goal whether it is running a better company or building mars colonies there is no harm in seeking out that group and leaving if it’s not for you.
Side note: Not all your Tribe will agree
While it would be great if you could find a group of ideal people to talk with you need to be prepared to understand that not everyone will share your point of view. In any group, you’ll have conspiracy theorists, crackpots, and trolls, who won’t follow your line. As Seth says about the schism in the Balloon Animal community. Don’t expect any group over the size of 1 to agree on all points. Even if everyone in a group is in agreement that GMOs are good, or that God doesn’t exist, that doesn’t mean you won’t have racists, homophobes, and bigots as well.
People are more nuanced than their tribe and even if everyone agrees on a broad topic “let’s save the planet” you’ll have a million different ideas on how to do that. So in light of all that, what do we do with the tribes we are building?
Making tribes, not tribalism
One of the greatest threats to the progress of humanity is one of its greatest strengths. We seek out a tribe but then we get caught in an “Us vs Them” mindset. We see it clearest in politics these days, where we vilify and demonize our “enemy” or hero-worship our “spokesperson” to the point where the group cannot accept anything said by the other as true or right. We dig deeper and trenches and then refuse to notice or consider them. These chasms of understanding are not always rational, many are based on prior convictions or worse outright manipulations by fundamentalists in any given tribe. If you feel that you don’t have any preconvictions or prejudices, I have some bad news for you, it’s almost impossible as a human being to not have them. It takes considerable effort to take a step back from something and really consider it, particularly if you have a long-standing belief to the contrary.
So while I deeply believe that we can all find our tribe out there I worry that without an accompanying caution of our nature and a study of critical personal reflection we may cause as many problems as we solve.
Last year my business was crushed under by the global pandemic of COVID, leaving me with nothing but debts and angry creditors who once were friends. In contrast, I am lucky enough to have some work. I am taking this time to find out where I want to be before starting again.
So here is part 2 of 4, trying to answer the questions above and maybe from there, I’ll move onto a plan and finally a business venture.
I deeply believe that the world needs to invest heavily in transformative technologies such as AI, robotics and Space exploration.
Many people have come to think of science and technology negatively while ignoring the massive benefits it has brought about globally. Yes, globally that’s a whole other topic, but you can read more about it the incredible progresshumanity has seen in the last 50 years in almost every conceivable metric. But as stated in the link “That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most.”
The objective facts show that the world has gone through a massive shift in the standard of living, reduced violence, and currently, more people die of obesity than famine. While it does seem difficult to believe considering the constant pain and suffering, we see every day on the news. Humanity is on the cusp of making the world a healthier and happier place for all its inhabitants. Not universally and not uniformly, that is sadly true. But technologies are emerging that will soon help reach millions of lives and enrich health, longevity, and the environment in ways that are hard to imagine.
The three main areas that interest me are AI, robotics and Spaceexploration partly due to my interests in these domains and partly because of the growth and potential in those domains to revolutionalise what humanity can do and become. AI is already making inroads into providing new insights into medicine1 and even identifying disease in scans2. This is only the beginning, as the technology has only really come into its own in the last ten years (after decades of research), the actual impacts of AI are only just beginning to emerge. They will impact every area of society over the next 15 years: better medical treatments, batteries, material designs, processes, and energy savings are all within our reach. Imagine a system that can find us better and faster ways to solve every problem from waste to power production.
Of course, such systems will be used for purposes both benign and nefarious. For every use of deep learning to produce a cure for something another group will use the same technology to patent a treatment, image processing Deepfakes, hacking into accounts or scamming people in more subtle ways without ever requiring a human in the loop. But that should not stop us from pushing hard and fast to get these technologies operating at maximum speed and efficiency, the economics of the world are going to undergo a radical shift if we can have near-infinite cheap energy, a global high-speed internet and the vast resources available in the asteroid belt around the solar system.
Last year my business was crushed under by the global pandemic of COVID. Leaving me with nothing but debts and angry creditors who once were friends. While I am lucky enough to have some work. I am taking this time to try and find out where I want to be before starting off again.
So here is part 1 of 4, trying to answer the questions above and maybe from there I’ll move onto a plan and finally a business venture.
So I did this once before, it’s an exercise from the book “Entrepreneur Revolution” by Daniel Priestly. The idea is that you can use the four questions to try and find what your theme or passion is in your life.
Last year by business was crushed under by the global pandemic of COVID. Leaving me with nothing but debts and angry creditors who once were friends. While I am lucky enough to have some work. I am taking this time to try and find out where I want to be before starting off again.
So here are my answers to the 4 questions above and maybe from there I’ll move onto a plan and finally a business.
1. For as long as I can remember I’ve felt there is something exciting at the intersection of technological progress and society.
The rate of change in technology is exponential, every day a new system, technology or breakthrough is opening the doors to a whole new potential place of innovation and growth.
Society and culture as a whole lag behind the rate of change. This is pretty standard for almost every form of tech, partly because it takes 20 to 30 years for a tech to really make it into mass usage.
Part of this is due to the problem of getting buy in from the majority which requires a typical a period of convincing (and collaborating with) Innovators and Early adopters. You can see this with cases of companies resisting moving to the Cloud or avoiding developing their sites for a mobile/tablet audience.
Of course while there are technical examples everywhere social change and legal fights follow similar trajectories. Battles for GLBTQ rights have been an ongoing struggle for years and are only starting to gain traction in what you might call the “early majority”.
But I really like seeing how technical change impacts society in a more tangible way. For example AI is in its nascent phase right now. But already it’s starting to make it’s impact felt in biotechnology whether it’s identifying cancer ((https://nypost.com/2020/01/02/google-ai-spots-breast-cancer-better-than-doctors-study-finds/)) or creating superior ways to understand the nature of our biology1.
Automated cars and trucks will be (already are) driving the streets long before the lawmakers are ready. Deepfakes and faceswaps create horrendous personal rights and authenticity issues. Spacetravel while a slow start has gone from prices at $10k per Kg to LEO in 2006 to $970 per Kg in 20202. Which is allowing the emergence of global satellite internet constellations.
While there are bad sides to every technology its transformative power is undeniable, we are liberating data, information and reducing labour at an unheard of rate. We, as a society, need to try and see where that impact will be in an active way rather than a passive reactive manner.
Current interests in this domain
Space, Robotics and Artificial Intelligence are set to revolutionise the world in the coming decades. Not just in what is possible but also in how it will impact our everyday lives. The confluence of high-speed, low latency, global broadband from satellite constellations combined with ever improving AI and the constant refinement and improving of robotics, will upend massive parts of our current labour, production and supply chain.
Thats a bit out of the scope of this blog post so I’ll leave you with Boston Dynamics New Years offering to wet your appetite.
This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Strictly Necessary Cookies
Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.
If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.
