Problem: The journey was not being taken.
Solution: Cut a path back into the journey, intentionally, rooted in now.
The Context
My writing is meant to summarize, in story format(s), intertwined thoughts of philosophy, learnings of technology, personal experiences, and professional work. The hope is for the reader to connect with generalized ideas, from a "human" side. All years & words connect with each other, some-why in what-way.
These stories are backward looking, deeply refined, with a desire to be carried forward for future work.
For this particular post, the format is, summarize 2018-2022 into 3 pivotal "words" from prior writings. Take those recompressed and recomposed "words", project them into 2023 and beyond, with a new (1) family of "words". A cycle, in perpetuity.
This will also serve as a personal reference guide for my professional work.
Let's spar.
(Ascending list, if you prefer to start in the "future" scroll further down, the Iist becomes inverted at the middle.)
2018
Bitcoin: Money is nothing more than a tool for general consensus, digital or not.
(12) Abyss: Darkness has a voice, it's the sweetest voice from the other side.
Family: Becoming lost is the only way to be found.
2019
(11) Build: The body can do it all, the mind can do it all, when they do it together, they dance, they flow.
I captured this idea best here.
When building, always commit to fall into the abyss. Once you commit, you owe.
Birth: A daughter, "never-ready", for anything, accept it.
Family: Self-sacrifice, more necessary than ever, never more rewarding.
2020
(9) Writing: Make contact with the voice in your head, listen, transcribe the AI's thoughts, not yours.
AI is a magical tool, in the shed. Useless until you interact with it, through writing.
Writing is messy. As a matter a fact, I would go as far and say, writing is the equivalent of scooping shit. Everyone needs to do it, no one wants to handle it, and everyone wants it out of them. The real magic is after you get it out and handle it.
The written words, of course.
Once you begin to interact with the same idea, getting them out, your ideas and thoughts become clay. Big brown nothing-ness turns into the Terracotta Army.
Write early, write often, even if it's "shit". Worst case scenario it becomes data for AI.
(10) Data: Data is the new oil. cc: Please forward this one to Dan Romero at address: https://fcast.me/dwr
There was a friction I lived with most of my life, a world of incomplete data, constantly. I have my reasons.
Worst than incomplete data, the misunderstanding that I needed data, all the time. In truth, I needed to understand relationships existing between data. Having the data is fraction of the problem. Another, analyzing with data. Another, synthesizing without data. Another, assume and disprove without data.
Data is a lagging indicator, as much as I enjoy data science and statistics (have a love/hate relationship with Taleb) every problem solved through data is a problem of the recent past for the recent future. Nothing bad about this, just another solution to another problem. Not a solution to every problem.
The significance of this, when you visualize data, distributions, user behavior, and demographics, in your head, you can project your problems further out into the future with probabilistic scenarios with primed ideas, mixed with random-chance, well, living becomes slightly more exciting, a game of sorts.
Reviving my love for statistics through data, at a very intuitive level, made the digital world fun for me, allowing to connect my building in the physical world, to "building" in the digital world.
Yes, the future is about digital experiences enhanced by open, accessible, privacy-preserving data. "For Sale By Owner".
Family: Don't ever give into the sunk-cost fallacy, family suffers.
2021
(7) Identity: Nothing matters in the world, except how you identify. But, your identity is only as good as its peg.
Take a deep breath, as you exhale say, "Identity". Go.
It's so elusive, as elusive as the breath that comes in and out of your lungs. When you inhale it is one thing, when you exhale it is another thing.
Upon inhale, value is pegged to oxygen, a singular necessity of "life". When you exhale, value can be pegged to carbon dioxide.
If your "identity" were a tree, "inhaling", the oxygen peg would be useless, but if you identify as a human, you remain "alive". The peg is everything.
Why this obscure reference of identifying as a tree, and oxygen?
The world is currently going through an identity crisis, it has been such for some time. I have learned much of it, in the most optimistic fashion, with reputation and technology.
My opinion, we have forgotten we are not trees, not needing oxygen. Instead we are humans, breathing oxygen, so that we can live with trees, staying alive, to educate the next generation of trees and humans.
(8) Education: Curiosity is the optimizing function, not knowledge, no matter your age.
How much do our identities suffer through the education process? At the ripe old age of ~1, you begin the knowledge stuffing. Are you a shape, are you number, are you color, what are you?
At least those are the questions I tried to answer on behalf of my child, before it ever had a voice for itself.
My lessons in education came after having children. Learning that I did not have to pack knowledge, instead I had to become a curiosity strategist, flowing with the natural tendencies of human consciousness, allowing thought to arise and conquer the moment.
A 2-year old taught this to a 30-something-ish adult, while trying to discover his way through writing.
Family: Mother's are insanely undervalued. I'm sorry for this.
2022
(5) Farcaster: Humans are amazing & real, surrender to them, even if only digital construct(s).
Society, and communities, hang in balance, leveraging technology, from a space of optimistic possibility -- enabled by human conversation (till AI arrives of course).
Till then, we cast far into the universe.
Experiencing digital communities never felt as alive as this one. No bots, flesh and blood behind the keyboard, so I think. This is Farcaster.
Societies, and communities, are built from a set of principles and belief. I imagine this is likely why traditions are very "lindy".
The Farcaster community, resembles ideas more akin to a family attempting to develop a deep set of web3-ish traditions for the next generation(s). Traditions that set societies, or communities, apart - A Network State.
(4) Technology: Surrender, it's everything, we are a society rooted in progress, till we aren't.
The average may not associate fun and technology, often. Although there are more optimist, than the pessimist in me, ever imagined. Talk about lack of imagination. No a sense of fun.
The average may not associate surrender and technology, often. Although there are more opportunities in the digital-space, than my meat-space tribe wants me to believe, I attend every Sunday, I swear.
Every component of the world around us, digitally or physically, is a technology to co-create and experience, together. Might as well use that technology, digital or physical, for mechanizing fun co-creation, deeper into niche communities, through fabrics that drape our human skin, micro-secondly.
I had to surrender my own beliefs, in favor of the Farcaster "mob", suspending-belief to iterate, learn, and progress, in technology.
(6) Family: Surrender to them, it's the only way to live aware.
A family driven by compassion, sympathy, empathy, a general sense of life and purpose, is a very rich family. Arriving to these understandings required a level of listening, in every aspect of my life, I previously never achieved.
Listened intently to the words in each cast.
Listened intently to the words not in each cast.
When you stop and listen for your family, you unknowingly surrender to the most beautiful identity you will ever bear witness.
2023 and Beyond
(3) Fun: Never say never, but please never do anything, not fun.
This is so hard, as hard as saying "never say never". Fun has a dizzying amount of subjective and objective juice, one would dizzy trying to get two people to have fun together.
In fact, our brains do this exact thing. Dizzying ourselves in pursuit of consensus on, who's fun is better. Forgetting our sense of fun. Then, losing light to the most important feature.
Co-create. Emergent-made. Dance. Flow.
Sound boring? Well, let's wait, and see what happens in technology.
(1) Family: Find your community, at different levels, everything else is secondary.
Families require deep, sacrificial, commitments. Without commitment, you have no penance, without penance you have no progress, and without progress, your family decays into oblivion. And the truth is set, no family ever deserves decay into non-existence.
Ask any database sitting behind a tech company. Ask any employee that sacrificed their body for a coal-mining facility. Or ask the Chinese Dynasties. Castro & Chavez, too. It doesn't exist. Nothing wants to be nothing, only. They all want to be nothing and everything, all the time.
Besides, the only debt ever worth blood or repayment are those pegged to a nucleus of familial ideologies.
Therefore, I have committed the rest of my life to a family of founder (the ones associated with sailing).
(2) Found: Embrace your internal voice, the voices in your head, or the voices around you, they will find you, and they come, with reason, as one.
Fun, family, fashion, fear, friction, farcaster. I have accumulated many F words lately, I'll spare the reader.
The reason for mentioning a random pile of words, that happen to start with the letter F, is simple. I am "founding" a deep condensation of words. Words meaning nothing to the average reader. To me, they cover a dimension of time and space, in mind. That time and space is the future I look to build.
The idea for the reader, and future me, not to know the meaning of the words. It is to remind, find the deepest level of value of any given word, at a point in time, and carry the word as far into the future as possible.
Kinda like packing your suitcase for a trip. Don't cram it all in, things like space.
What does this have to do with voices? Well, each word has it's own voice, you must respect what each voice whispers, if not, you'll never have fun. Besides, they all always converge into that 1 voice, family.
I feel found, I want to have fun, with the family.
Prediction: I will be right on everything I work on. Especially the things you will never know I didn't finish or publish. Until I die. I will become right on everything once again.
(INVERT THE LIST BELOW, AS I ADD
I guess the real intent in writing this, is so that it is not left to oblivion. It lives to see another day. For it to be timeless, as I have become inspired by the recent learnings of Venkatesh Rao
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