Directness is the process of learning which involves you doing the thing that you want to learn. You need to practice – this then leads to skill development.

There are 9 principles of ultralearning.

Principal 1: Meta-learning: first draw a map.

Before beginning an Ultralearning (UL) project answer these three questions for your learning topics: Why – What – How

Why is the motivation. There are two types of why; instrumental and intrinsic. Instrumental leads to you achieving a non-learning result e.g. promotion, a new career; do your research here and find out will learning this new thing get you what you want. Intrinsic has no outcomes intended. A good place to start your research here is on people whose field you want to enter.

What is the knowledge that you will need to succeed. Write down on a piece of paper concepts, facts and procedures then brainstorm ALL the things you will need to learn in each of these three areas.

How are the resources, environment and methods that you will use when learning.

Principal 2. Focus: sharpen your knife.

The first problem is failing to start. The first step in overcoming this problem is to recognize that you are doing it. Use the Pomodoro technique. Use Cal Newport’s time block planner. The second problem is failing to sustain your focus. Aim for flow. When learning, don’t focus on one topic, instead cover a range of them. Choose and be very particular about the environment that you work in. Finally, become (non-sexually) aroused to maintain your focus.

Principal 3. Directness: Go straight ahead

This is simply about learning things in the area you want to get into. Eg you want to become a PYP teacher, then find out the requirements in a Job Description and learn how to do them. Young says that one of the most important things you need to learn is access to real-world problems.

He highlights that transferring what you have learned to what you need to do is the holy grail. When you learn something new you must be able to tie it to real life. The solution is to spend a LOT of time doing the thing you want to get better at. Is much more difficult than indirect learning, which is why most people maybe aren’t doing it. Young suggests the following tactics to achieve direct learning:

• Tactic 1 – project-based learning; e.g. building a full LMS
• Tactic 2 – immersive learning; surround yourself in the target environment
• Tactic 3 – the flight simulator
• Tactic 4 – the overkill approach; increase the skill level of the challenge. E.g. challenge yourself to pass an exam in that area HSK3.

Principle 4. Drill: Attack your weakest point

To calculate a drill in a given topic you need to simplify or boil it down to its component parts. This allows you to focus on a single aspect of it. Use the direct (broad) and then drill (specific ) and then direct approach.

When choosing a skill, trial and error is a recommended approach. Think about which skill will bring you closer to your goal or what is holding you back e.g. pronunciation of a particular word in Indonesian. The second issue is deciding. Young comes up with the following drills:

• Drill 1 – Time Slicing. Practice your weakest area and repeat until you get it! E.g. repeating key phrases in a new language, or creating while loops in JS.
• Drill 2 – Cognitive components. These are separate entities and not part of a whole. E.g. practising the no sound in Indonesian.
• Drill 3 – The copycat. Copy parts of a skill that you don’t want to drill e.g. writing basic queries in SQL.
• Drill 4 – The magnifying glass method. Spending a lot more time on a particular part of a skill than most others. This could be writing the introduction in academic essays, this helps signpost and plan your writing.
• Drill 5 – Prerequisite Chaining. The ingenious idea here, start with a skill that you nothing about, then backward engineer or dissect it to find the component parts. Rather than start from the ground up and combine those skills. The learning curve here will be much increased.

Principle 5. Retrieval: Test to learn

This essentially involves you constantly testing yourself. Retrieval beats concept mapping and reviewing your notes by a mile. It would appear that doing this as often as possible will be beneficial. Don’t use multiple choice AND don’t text yourself immediately after learning the material, but don’t wait too long! Young suggests the following tactics:

• Tactic 1 – Flashcards (spaced repetition systems tech) are good for simple things to memorize
• Tactic 2 – Free recall. After reading something, close the book and then write down the main points
• Tactic 3 – Question book method. Instead of taking notes about what you just did e.g. summarising the points. Write down questions about what you just studied instead.
• Tactic 4 – Self-generated challenges. Better for more than simple retrieval e.g. concepts as you read through the material set yourself up with mini challenges.
• Tactic 5 – Closed book learning. Generate concept maps without looking at the book.

Principle 6. Feedback: Don’t dodge the punches.

The process of receiving feedback is the most commonly used of all the principals. Note that quality feedback is much better than receiving a whole bunch of it. Feedback should inform you where you are going wrong. Be careful whom you get the feedback from and how you react to it. Young identifies 3 types of feedback:

• Outcome feedback. This may come in the form of grades. But you might not show you how to improve. Think about getting applause at the end of a speech – this is outcome feedback. This type is very easy to get.
• Informational feedback. This type tells you what you are doing wrong or right BUT it does not tell you how to fix it. For a comedian telling a joke but getting zero laughs from the audience is a type of informational feedback.
• Corrective feedback. This is the best feedback, as it tells you what you are doing wrong and how to fix it. The best source of this type of feedback is from a coach, mentor or teacher. Flashcards work as well. AI chatbots would certainly come in handy here.

Feedback timing. Immediate feedback is better than delayed, however, ensure that you have given your best efforts with the application of that skill before chasing down the feedback as this can rob you of the learning process.

Tactics to improve the feedback received:

• Tactic 1 – Separate the signal (useful) from the noise (non-productive).
• Tactic 2 – Find the difficulty sweet spot. If you are failing too much then perhaps you have set the difficulty rating too high, conversely, if you are not succeeding too much you may be wearing your comfortable slippers!
• Tactic 3 – Metafeedback. Feedback about your learning strategies. Not learning enough? Then change up your learning strategies.
• Tactic 4 – High-intensity frequent feedback. Exposure to this type will most likely keep you on your toes.

Principle 7. Retention: Don’t fill a leaky bucket.

Active recall lists when you are out for a walk or at the gym. After learning something, we can forget the facts quite quickly, but the loss of knowledge slows over time. New knowledge can also overlap old, making it harder to recall. Some terms may be difficult to remember because they conflict with our existing understanding of them. Finally, when we recall something we are reconstructing it from memory. E.g. This can lead to incorrect eyewitness testimonies. Young puts forward 4 mechanisms to prevent loss of learning – SPOM. Spacing, Procedureization, Overlearning and Mnemonics.

Spacing
Don’t cram, instead space out the learning over some time. Eg. Rather than spend 8 hours at the weekend cramming Indo, do one and a bit hours each day over a week. Use SRS systems e.g. anki droid to help with this – useful for vocabulary and simple facts. However, for larger concepts consider small refresher projects e.g. writing SQL queries or loops in JS.

Proceduralize
This is when you begin doing something automatically. You don’t even need to think about it. Unlike declarative which can be abstract at first, e.g. dividing mixed numbers. Research suggests that most new skill learning starts as declarative before moving on to becoming procedurized. The best way to do this is through the deliberate repetition of the skill. Very useful for something that you will need to do a lot of. Another way of looking at this mechanism is to make habits out of the critical skill elements.

Overlearn
Once you have learned a new skill, extend the time practicing it as this has been shown to increase that skill’s durability. You can take this one step further and go to the next step with the same skill involved but in a different task – this will further increase how well you perform the skill.

Mnemonic
Think about Josh Foer’s book “Moonwalking with Einstein” e.g. The Memory Palace. Young does not favor this particular tool at all. He admits that is amazing for memorizing very long pieces of information, and can be bundled with other tools such as SRS. But they are not practical in the real world – I agree. I see them more as a party trick than a true learning strategy, but a fairly impressive one! I also loved Josh Foer’s book.

Principle 8. Intuition: Dig deep before building up

When solving new problems you need to work from a principles-first perspective. To do this you need to strengthen your intuition. Young puts forward the following rules:

• Rule 1 – Challenge yourself with problems that are just beyond your reach. And, don’t give up quickly. Young suggests using a struggle timer. Essentially when faced with something too challenging, rather than give up immediately, give yourself an additional 10 minutes or so to try and solve it. Then will strengthen your resolve.
• Rule 2 – If you want to understand something deeply, then you need to prove it. E.g. draw a picture of a bike with all of the correct parts, then explain how it works. Don’t be fooled by the so-called illusion of understanding; which is that you think you know how something works.
• Rule 3 – When learning something new for the first time, build up a concrete example in your head.
• Rule 4 – Don’t fool yourself. E.g. don’t tell yourself that you know something that you don’t. The Dunning-Kruger effect happens when you are learning something for the first time and you overestimate your ability to comprehend it. Because you have built up the required understanding to realize you know nothing! Also, ask all of the stupid questions as this helps you, and others, in proving your understanding.

Use the Feynman technique when; learning something new/don’t understand; when faced with a problem that you cannot solve and; when learning a core concept for that particular subject.
What are the steps suggested for the Feynman technique?

1. Write down the name of the concept at the top of a new piece of paper.
2. Now write down how you would explain and teach this concept to someone below the heading.
3. When you get stuck on the concept go back to the book/resource to improve your understanding.

Principle 9. Experimentation: Explore outside your comfort zone.

When learning a new skill be tenacious, relentless, and try as many different styles as you can until you find something that fits.
Through this experimental style, you need to be your own person. Young provides 3 ways to experiment:

• Experiment 1 – Pick one resource at a time, and be thorough in experimenting within that resource BEFORE moving on to something different
• Experiment 2 – Choose your own learning pathway/technique
• Experiment 3 – Research masters in the skill, then start to create your unique style.

Young then suggests the following experiment tactics:

• Tactic 1 – Copy and create different people/exercises
• Tactic 2 – Compare and contrast two different learning styles and then use the scientific method to see which is most effective.
• Tactic 3 – Introduce constraints to enable your innovative practices
• Tactic 4 – Combine your unique hybrid styles to create something that sets you out from the crowd
• Tactic 5 – Experiment at the edges of the subject, don’t stay in the middle.

Picking your Project/s

• Step 1 – Be very constrained. For example, don’t learn data analytics instead learn how to use data analytics to improve learning opportunities for students. Pick the one main resource that you will use as well as identify the direct learning activities e.g. conversing with people or mini coding projects.
• Step 2 – Time. How long will you study each week? When will you study? How long will you give yourself to complete the project? Create a project calendar.
• Step 3 Principles. Did you plan all 9?
• Step 4 Review. Once a project is done, you will need to review the results. Be honest and critical. Spot what went well and what could be better.
• Step 5. Maintain or Master. Yup, you need to choose a maintenance schedule for your new learning achievements if you want to hold on to all of that hard work. Or choose the mastery route and specialize like an insect!

Started reading on 18.12.23
Finished reading on 20.12.23

This is a book on leadership.

By giving someone the opportunity to own a problem and their solution to it, they will consider themselves as vital to its success.

As a leader, it is your mission to get your people to see their own worth and potential. 

The old model of leaders and followers is dead. If you treat someone as a follower, that’s how they will act. To get around this, we are taught about the empowerment model – but it has its problems. In that it takes a leader to empower a follower – it doesn’t. It takes the so-called followers to do that for themselves. Marquet’s solution is leader-leader instead of leader-follower. He states that he has a four-part process for this.

Part One: Starting Over

Initially, Martquet tried to empower his people with the traditional empowerment method, eg. Asking them to prepare lists of what should be done and then asking them to do it, but this failed. His people were taking shortcuts, and the end product was not adequate. Empowerment doesn’t work in a leader-follower environment. Empowerment only exists as we have disempowered others in the leader-follower status quo.

Give people specific goals, but let them decide how to get there. This is crucial. At my last school, the director and principal I worked for would give me a goal but did not micromanage with how this should be done.

Upon starting Marquet’s new position on the Santa Fe, he didn’t have enough time to become an expert on the submarine’s equipment. This had a profound effect on how he interacted with his team – he focused on them first, rather than the task. He recommends walking amongst your people and letting curiosity lead you. I’ve seen this in practice more than once at my old school, SCIS, and read it recently in the 15 Commission. The infers that trust comes from this, only then should you start to ask critical questions. Another way of looking at it is that you should ask questions so that you get to know the answer, not to check that they know the answer. To reiterate this point – you really do need to listen to your people. Don’t ignore their talents or waste their time.

A tell-tale sign that you have lost someone is if You ask them “What do you do?” And they reply with whatever I’m told to do. It shows that they are not motivated and feel oppressed. Moreover, you are not getting those people out their best. They almost become robotic and do not use their initiative. I have certainly faced this, and found it more prevalent with elementary education leaders; although not all.

Completion of work should lie with the person doing it, not their supervisor.

The challenge is to motivate your people to achieve excellence, not avoid errors.

Part Two – Control 

Divest and distribute control to your team. Push down control to those who will enact it. Marquet breaks this down into 3 categories: control, competence and clarity.

For leader-leader to work, your people have to want to take charge. You can’t make them take charge. So, what do you do as a leader? You ask your people if they want to take charge, and then start talking about what that means and what do they think it looks like.

He started by giving his chiefs increased responsibility for their people. E.g the chiefs decided when people could go on leave. I do have one question for Marquet here, that is what does leadership look like on a daily basis for his chiefs? It is not covered in the book, other than anecdotal stories and inferred through the success of the submarine and its organisational behaviour.

He says that you need to find out your organisation’s genetic code for control, the very basics, and then change it; if it is ossified in the leader-follower paradigm. Get your people to write down their worries about what would happen when the change was implemented (change management) and then, as a group, attack the worries!

The reason why empowerment programs fail is because you can’t direct people to be empowered. You have to get at the genetic code of the organisation, or start from the ground and work your way up from there. You have to identify where changes with the biggest impact can be made. Moreover, these changes will last much longer because they go to the first principles of an organisation. 

Marquet then identifies putting the chiefs (middle managers) in charge of different tasks – i.e. during the task evolution process. He makes an interesting point about putting someone in charge of decisions- in that when a decision is made, they are done so against a set of criteria. Ergo, he required that his decision-makers obtain a higher level of knowledge.

On changing organisational culture he says, when bringing about change, care first about your people NOT about the organisation. He puts it another way, stop putting your reputation first.

An awesome question he proposes is to ask your team:

“How would we know if our people are proud of the organisation?” 

From here you can ask additional questions.

Now, controversially ( Ed Schein and Lewin fanboy here), these are the steps that he suggests for embedding cultural change. It’s similar to a Kagan learning structure – jot thoughts. Get your people to write down what change they want to see. Post up on the wall and then sort the answers and discuss how to implement the change you want to see. He goes on to say that you can then change culture by either changing your way of thinking or by changing your behaviour. Finally, he points out something that I intrinsically agree with, which is that people on board his ship were not suffering from low morale because of the long hours, they were suffering from low morale because they were in a culture that focused on avoiding mistakes. For me, there are implications of people being reactionary rather than being proactive. This reactionary culture reflects a lack of autonomy because if you are in a culture where you’re not free to make a mistake it is because someone’s always looking over your shoulder!

By having short conversations (as short as 30 seconds) at the beginning of a project you can give feedback, highlighting any problems without actually telling people what to do. A form of coaching, except with more direction. The downside is that some people may think you don’t trust them.

He says to avoid an inspection mentality, as you only focus on the next inspection, and that it results in low morale. This reminded me of the broken OFSTED system in England, and I totally agree with the low morale; and absurd hierarchy in schools there.

Get your people to ask you “I intend to…,” to help them grow from followers to leaders. Other verbiage you could use might be: I plan to, I will, we will… NOT could we, or can I. THEN ask follow-up questions regarding their intentions.

He discusses the importance of not providing solutions because it means that your people become reliant on you to come up with the solutions. Moreover, your people stop thinking as you are doing that for them. If you have to make a decision quickly then make it, but they need to critique it later. Otherwise, if it’s in the near future ask for team input then decide. If there’s plenty of time to make the decision, get them to make it – empowerment in action!

He criticises tracking other people’s work in a so-called tickler (Navy term), as this reinforced the top-down narrative e.g. you are always checking over someone’s shoulder – note that this particular process was essentially senior leadership checking all the other leaders’ work was done. The proposal was for each department to be fully responsible for their work ultimately the department head. To sum this up, you have to implement systems that create responsibility.

He encourages a thinking-out-loud environment, where his people are constantly thinking out loud about the processes they’re following. As a leader, this then allows you to hear what your people are thinking.

Part Three – Competence

Your people also need to be technically competent.

Don’t accept that mistakes will happen, actively find a way to reduce them. For example, when someone had done something wrong Marquette acknowledged their honesty and then let them carry on. Rather than blame them, he and his other officers asked what they could do to prevent something like that from happening again in the future. Their solution for avoiding mistakes is a procedure called deliberate action. Marquette points to this being used in the hospital operating room for example or other businesses where they are interacting with machinery that is significant.

A key ingredient for pushing authority down to your people is that they also have enough competence to carry out the tasks they are doing. Competence naturally reduces if your people had previously been living in a top-down culture – because they wait until they are told to do something. Control without competence = chaos. To accomplish a shift in his organisation he changed it into a learning organisation where people took responsibility for their learning.

Another method he used was to remove briefing with certification; like what I do with my students. As it shows them to show they understand. Moreover, you just state a brief and move on. For certification, you don’t start until you know everyone is ready. For me, if I give my students a task, I will ask them to paraphrase/summarise what I have asked them to do, or what they plan to do. 

He raises the important point of making sure that your leaders look after their people first, and that there is equity amongst all of your people. If your people slip up, it is important to constantly repeat the message – you have to be consistent with this. For example, you keep repeating that like we’re all in this together. I am sceptical of this rhetoric, I suppose I will need to give this a go.

Remember that when you want to raise competency levels, specify the GOALS, not the methods 

Part Four – Clarity

He defines clarity as having your people know exactly what the organisation is about. You can achieve clarity when you keep putting your team first, look after their needs and get them to push their learning to achieve their full potential. It doesn’t mean letting them avoid responsibility for their actions.  Ask them what their goals are.

First up in clarity is taking care of your people. Get your people to identify their own professional goals.

Marquet lists his organisation’s principles and states that they are not just up on the wall for people to see, but are enacted by the crew every day. When I reflect on all of the schools I worked at, not for a moment can I picture them – because they simply do not exist. Most schools are obsessed with what these are for the students without thinking about their people. This is a mistake and needs to be rectified. The closest I came to this was at my previous school, but it was not explicit.

Interestingly, he brings up the vital importance of acknowledging and rewarding people ASAP after the event in which they demonstrated exemplary behaviour or action (see Karen Pryor and Don’t Shoot the Dog). Do not have rewards that encourage competition but ones that support collaboration – to achieve this you should have as many rewards as possible. He calls these rewards man(person) versus the world (environment). He also recommends trying out gamification- providing data to your team on their team https://www.gamification.co/about-gabe-zichermann/

He encourages critical questioning, but only briefly.

My favourite futurist…Kevin Kelly.

Opening Quotes

Our ability to invent new things outpaces the rate we can civilise them.

Often people push back against new technology, as it brings something that’s outside of our control.

Technology is at the centre of every single significant change in our society.

The greatest invention is not a thing but a process – the scientific method, as it shows us to improve.

These are Kelly’s 12 Inevitables.

1. Becoming

This chapter is about what we can become. We could not predict what the internet could become, and look at what it is today.

He highlights the need to never stop upgrading devices and software. This constant upgrading results in you being a noob every time you open a program (hyperbolizing).

He says that we need problems to solve in order for our lives to be fulfilled.

He says that we are in protopia; the pro is for progress. Every day is a little bit better than the day before. The problems that we face today are caused by the technology solutions of yesterday. One of the problems in becoming is that we see things from an old perspective.

Kelly talks at length about how we, the ordinary people, have been the main drivers of the internet, not Amazon, Google etc, to grow the internet to what it is today. I agree. The growth has come through user-generated content.

He concludes that any time (specifically now) is the best time to try to enact technological change. You just need to turn up and try and predict which direction tech is going…

2. Cognifying

This is the process of making objects smarter – ergo, AI.

Cognified is an adverb when used to describe something else.

It’s useful to picture how machines will be more intelligent than us. This will enable us to manage them, as we know which direction they are headed in. The best AI will not be the one that does what we do faster, but the one that does what we cannot. Currently, there are a ton of these jobs, mostly in automation e g. Semiconductors

Now that we have AI, we need to reevaluate our roles, identities, beliefs and goals. Every major technological shift creates new expectations of what humans can do.

Success will go to those who meld and augment their daily tasks with robots/AI.

A fascinating 7 stages of denial are identified:

1. Tech cannot possibly do the tasks I do.
2. OK, it can do a bunch of the tasks, but not all of them.
3. Fair enough, it can do them, but it malfunctions a lot.
4. Actually they can do everything, but I need to retrain them for new tasks.
5. I guess it can do My job after all, but that job was never meant to be carried out by humans.
6. Tech is doing my old job entirely, but now I have a much better job.
7. Where would I be without tech!?

3. Flowing

The internet operates on the free following of information being copied and shared. Kelly says that the internet is like one large copying machine – and I don’t disagree. He defines vitality as when the copies are shared constantly.

Interestingly, he makes the argument for information flow. It flows past us in the form of Tweets and TikToks, not the traditional way of accessing information from links organised in a flat hierarchy. There are some questions I have about this. Primarily, who created these flows and why? A cynic might say big tech does this in order to get our clicks. The flow serves everything in real-time, not once a day, but every second of every day. However, we live in a world where we expect everything now, not later, regardless of the impact on the environment and dopamine levels. Again, I would question whether is this a good thing. To give into our every want, replacing our needs.

Kelly states that whatever cannot be copied is made valuable i.e. trust, or to assign it a capitalist name branding. Ask yourself, why would someone pay for something, that they can get for free? If you can answer this, exploit it. He identifies these as generatives, and people are prepared to pay for them:

1. Immediacy – getting whatever it is, today. I wonder does this stems from FOMO.
2. Personalization – a product you have input on designing; Apple devices where you can adjust memory, colour etc
3. Interpreter – someone’s translating for you.
4. Authenticity – aligned to quality.
5. Accessibility – the cloud
6. Embodiment – experiencing in real life not virtual. Just look at in-class learning vs Virtual during the pandemic, or live concerts vs streamed
7. Patronage – fans want to pay creators, under these 4 conditions 1: easy to pay. 2. Reasonable amount. 3. Benefit to paying 4. It’s clear the $ will benefit the creator. Radiohead tried this and earned more than all of their previous albums, combined!
8. Discoverability – your work has no value unless it’s seen. Social media? Also, think about Amazon reviews.

Think about tasks that were not possible even 1 year ago, such as AI art using Stable Diffusion.

This flow state will replace fixed states in all industries. I think of education, and how slow this can be to become a flow state.

4. Screening

He categorizes two sets of people. People on the screen, like their information flowing to them, and in small chunks. They are flexible and favour tech. People of the book favour solutions by law. Notably, rather than people reading fewer books today, reading has tripled since 1980.

Kelly defines screening as reading anything on a screen from subtitles to reading images. A new way to ingest information. It’s just an improvement on plain old text.

The chapter finishes with an outlandish take on screens being everywhere, similar to the scenes of the mall Tom Cruise walks through, with personalized ads just for him.

5. Accessing

It’s no longer about possession, it’s about the ability to access content.

There are 5 tech trends driving this.

1. Dematerialization – things being made more efficiently, less material. Kelly implies that is also embodied by streaming and subscription services. Kelly states that most industries or institutes have become.
2. Decentralised, except for money. The recent downturn in crypto would suggest FIAT currencies are here to stay for a little while longer.
3. Everything will run simultaneously.
4. Platforms are up next. Essentially there are places such as Facebook, YouTube, App Store, where third parties sell their products and services.
5. Clouds This is where a lot of the data lives. They are mostly free, efficient, and accessible anywhere. He predicts that all the commercial clouds will merge into one and that we will create our own user clouds as well

6. Screening

Much of this is about sharing your work. Kelly defines it as digital socialism. He goes on to explain that this sharing economy results in free labour, as more often than not people are not paid. He refers to Clay Shirky’s hierarchy for social media arrangements.

7. Filtering

There is an insane amount of content to consume, therefore we need some way to filter this. We create our own filters. E.g. what excites us, what can we learn, and what can we veg to. This already exists through algorithms developed by social media platforms. One criticism that I have is this can often lead to the creation of echo chambers, where we are fed content that reinforces our opinions and solidifies them. Kelly identifies this as filter bubbling. Therefore an additional piece is needed to suggest content that is contrary to what we believe in. This will foster an open mind and develop our sense of empathy.

He moves on to say that technology has provided things in abundance. This abundance of material items drives the price towards zero. However, Kelly points out that human experiences are valuable – because they are inimitable; recently highlighted by Scott Galloway.

8. Remixing

Take something that already exists and make it more valuable. Even new technologies are remixed forms of old tech. Kelly argues that legalities around copyright and digital material are outdated and based on principles of physical items. It will be interesting to see how the current lawsuits against AI companies are settled.

9. Interacting

Using VR to interact with the world. Kelly goes on to tell us that the current state of technology means that we mostly interact with it, but in the future, it will, using sensors, including cameras, interact with us as well. Think Apple’s Vision Pro. He offers other predictions of how we will interact with technology. Say goodbye to the keyboard and hello to a device that will not just record what we say but how we say it – no more misinterpreted emails. In other words, a bunch of sensors and motors will be around us, allowing us to interact with pretty much everything. He progresses to suggesting that sensors get attached to our bodies, aka the matrix and the plug in the back of Nero’s head…

10. Tracking

We will track everything that we can generate data for. The tech that tracks us is already here. Just think about an Apple watch or Aura ring, that currently tracks EPG and steps walked in a day. This way you can get a diagnosis for problems you didn’t even know existed.

He argues that we will live in a world where we constantly record everything. I would postulate that we are seeing it today with Oculus 3 from Meta, its AR headset.

The point of all of this is to achieve total recall.

He addresses the Orwellian-induced fear of everyone being tracked – something that we became aware of during the pandemic. It is very critical those charged with tracing, tech or government, do so ethically… They need to move to a system that is transparent, not one that operates in the shadows. He argues that the individual will share more openly than the organization, driven by vanity and dopamine addiction.

There is a problem with anonymity with it comes to tracking i.f. commenting online. It increases the likelihood of harassment. Kelly argues that it should not be eliminated but be kept as close to zero as possible. For me, I think this is the most complex of issues he addresses. I say complex because we clearly have a problem with the online behaviour of many netizens. Currently, I do not have any solutions.

11. Questioning

The best way I can sum this chapter up is that questions are better than answers.

12. Beginning

We are just at the beginning of the age of being globally connected. All the inevitables identified by Kelly leading up to this will become the decentralized norm. Rest in peace FIAT currency and centralization.