Some Final Words
Unwinding worldviews to create new ones.
How would you describe 2023 in a word?
This year, Webster's chose 'authentic.' Oxford went with 'rizz.' Dictionary.com selected 'hallucinate.' If these aren’t weird enough, The Financial Times threw a non-word —LLM—into the word-of-the-year mix. Judging by these terms alone, we're not in Kansas anymore.
My year split between consulting on AI's business impact by day and penning a book on cultural effects by night. This duality forced me to go broad and deep. The first draft of ‘Perspective Agents’ was a hefty 120,000 words, edited down to 60,000 in the final. If I had to distill research informing it into a single term, it would be 'unusual.'
Dealing with new-age complexities calls for concerted effort. True to the adage, putting thoughts into words is a great clarifier. To frame events of the past year—and the new era we’ve entered—I wrote up 88 prompts that follow for reflection.
One thing is clear. We need new grammar to describe the gravity of change on the horizon. Pouring old wine into new bottles will not apply.
In no particular order…
Deficits in situational awareness create an abundance of risk.
Usual approaches applied to unusual situations amplify crises.
There’s a pattern in the chaos. History is a helpful guide.
Deficits in perspective eclipsed the scarcity of attention.
Like attention was, perspective will be a new economic frontier.
New sectors will emerge. Think discovery-as-a-service.
New technologies shape new sensibilities. This suggests AI is underhyped.
Tech moves at 200 mph. Orgs move at 20 mph. Policy at two mph.
Expect speed bumps.
Reaction to events > actuality of events.
Pundits still don't understand what powers MAGA.
The same goes for Taylor Swift.
Chasing new AI tools distracts from using them.
GenAI is a better tool to discover than to create.
The James Webb Space Telescope may change worldviews more than ChatGPT.
Seeing the universe like never before. Source: JWST, The Atlantic I worry about high-res renditions of humans.
There will be far more human simulations than actual humans. Are we ready?
We need a better term for human replicas than ‘digital twins.’
Disinformation is an inadequate descriptor of information threats we will face.
Better articulation—cyberattacks on human perception (tip Wasim Khaled).
Wars on perception warrant new forms of defense.
It takes a village. The complexion of the village will change.
Systems break down when the gap between ideal and real becomes too wide. (tip Barbara Tuchman).
One thinker. Venkatesh Rao always expands my perspective (pay for premium).
One essay. The Analog City and Digital City. See this historic moment with greater clarity.
One book. The Coming Wave. Read it to gauge the gravity of AI.
One video. Bill Maher on realism. Reflects reordering consistent in history.
One tweet: A moving picture worth a thousand words.
Forget Red vs. Blue. Pro-tech vs. Anti-tech will frame our future.
AI enables autonomy and tyranny at the same time.
News distorts. It doesn’t illuminate.
Moralizing deflects from investigating reality.
Single AI agents will morph into armies of AI agents.
Human nature will change when AI infiltrates human biology.
Life skills to navigate AI transitions have nothing to do with AI.
Cognitive energy separates winners from losers. Invest in it.
When people say social media, I no longer know what that means.
Discovery requires noticing what we can’t see. How to look is a way of inventing (tip Salvador Dali).
Walking 10,000 steps for healthy living is a made-up goal.
Lex Fridman went on a remarkable run. We need more conversations like this.
So did Barbie. Same applies.
Perplexity search is better than Google search.
X works better than haters say. Still lots of signals in the noise.
Strategy—as currently practiced by strategists—needs to be revisited.
What you need to know now, McLuhan covered it then.
AI + robotics. Expect to be amazed. And forewarned.
Gaps between how institutions and the public communicate grow by the day.
Marketers speak in channels. People speak in networks.
Media forms are no longer finite or familiar.
Mediated realities will change at warp speed. This medium will trigger it.
Spatial computing will ignite an Augmented Reality boom. Source: Apple Now—To live a better life, people emigrate to new countries.
Next—People migrate to virtual worlds.
We need greater capacity to find comfort in unknowns.
Ego is the enemy (tip Ryan Holiday).
Information pollution is the digital equivalent of climate change.
The public web may become an unviable information platform.
A website’s new purpose is training large language models.
The line between the real self and the unreal self will continue to blur.
Disembodied identity is a greater threat than global warming (tip Tracey Follows).
Loyal followings still require potent narratives.
Matra of the Year: Don’t Die.
The AI age will not be kind to industrial-age operators.
Caring for digital remains will become a growth category.
Exercise extreme caution befriending bots.
People will start dressing up again.
Emotional tax is best spent on things under our control.
Relying on Generative AI requires greater judgment, not less.
Go long on taste.
The fittest ideas trump the facts (tip Donald Hoffman).
Our kids shouldn’t be raised on TikTok.
Religion isn’t in decline. It’s in a period of reconstruction.
Free speech debates need to acknowledge AIs propagating free speech.
ChatGPT is one of the world’s best-known brands despite its name.
A YouTube toy un-boxer has a net worth north of $100 million. He’s twelve.
Most jobs entering the AI age haven’t been invented yet.
The next generation of workers will be nomadic (tip Darren Murph).
AI will force us to rethink what it means to be human (tip Mark Stahlman).
Technology scales, people don't.
The tetrad helps track the personal effects of new tech.
McLuhan’s Tetrad is based on the ‘Laws of Media.’ To make sense of things, make sense of the money behind the things.
Blockheads can’t see genius at work.
Calling GenAI ‘interns’ doesn’t capture the benefits GenAI brings to work.
Presenting a social network as a public square is shit-framing.
Smart minds are building new squares to bring us back together.
A favorite quote on adopting AI: “Run, don’t walk. Either you’re running for food, or you’re running from being food.” — Jensen Huang, CEO, NVIDIA.
The implications of AI are more important than the applications of AI.
You can only create maps if you know the territory.
Prepare to be surprised.
A final word. Maybe all the weirdness has to do with newness. This message by poet Cleo Wade below puts the present moment into perspective. The picture hangs over my desk here in New Jersey. It’s a reminder that opportunities to create new worlds are abundant.
Thanks for reading. Have a safe, eventful New Year.
