why i am writing in public and now embarking on a lifelong pilgrimage to keep doing so using something I call ‘cathedral thinking’
I am writing this live in the squibler app so that i can keep my mind in flow and undistracted and if i have time at the end of this session i shall explain what that app is and why i use it
in short it can be regarded as a high impact lie detector or hesitancy test, right now it - no i feel - like a tube of toothpaste and these wordsd are being squeeezed from some place deep in my belly at a constant speed
so why would i do such a thing?
because in a writing class last week i got grumpy when the topic of writers block came up - because there is no such thing as writers block
there is only the BELIEF in writers block
when one turns up in front of the real time app like this and press start and the words start to flow like toothpaste and after the pips SQUEAK
then there is no writers block and just because the words are spelled spelt? wrong and the sentences are haphazard that is actuallly a feature and not a bug
so i am actually in two writers groups right now and that plus the fact that i am writing here in real time does deserve some explanation AND also profound gratitude to the citizens who turn up week after week and session after session to talk through our topics and review the toothpast that is squeezed across our face.
so some background - i have been obsessed with the topic of trust - and particularly the topic of silicon trust - since 2015 and have written papers on this and how in the future there will be such a thing as a ‘digital conscience’ that will whisper in our ears and guide us to become super ordinary and to to torture the toothpaste analogy
it will squeeze the very essence of humanity out of us and nudge every ad last one of us back into our lane
creativityt for these people wh AGREE to let themselves be squeezed in thatr way will be drained
so picture this
in a year or so there will be bots and silicon agents out there lurking at the end of the digital production line of amazon and you tube and substack and and and
etc and they will be able to guage exactly how interesting it is to other digital citizens and they will front run the work - they will be able to clone your lens and your voice and your stryle and
they will produce copies and vairations of your work with thousannds of tiny changes and guage gauge? the result and everything you do will be front run
and that is not even the hard part - pecause because if and when you are working in a company then your competitors will be doning the doing the exact same thing - if it is encoded digitally then it gets cloned
and when the efficiency rule is brought down hard on your knuckles then the colleagues across from you or in adjacent departments will use the
exact same cloning algorithms to front run your work also
in that scene you go from a 24 x 7 x 365 (.25) hour work schedule to
a minute by minute rat race
so that is quite a bleak outcome
UNLESS UNLESS UNLESS
you take a pilgrimage similar to the one i am on now - and you take a leaf from the masterclass that is Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David and live in ral time
you write in the open, you write live and you buiiold craft muscle so that creating and delivering in real time becomes a core competency - I am doing this write and and will hit publish right away and all those conformist blue and green underlines that scream at me to be the same as everyone else will simply disappear and become irrelevant
because the hard thing is actually the path to absolute joyous freedom!
YES it does take time - but if you knmow how to speak, and you know how to type then
you troo can learn to live in real time and then you become unique
you cannnot be cloned or copiied or front run
you become like a surgeon who turns up each day and does not know exactly what they are about to face into but they have put in the hard yards and they have even gone so far as to create an individualised style of suturing and i find that incredible!!!!
so go lear n how to live in real time, i can see at a glance that i am about 15 minutes or so into this session so excuse the typos but i do want to talk just a little (TALK) HA I mean write
yes, so i do want to write briefly what i mean by cathedral thinking
back in the middle ages - and in fact now, today in barcelona - there are generations and generations of seriously talented people who turn up and practice their craft and know that it will be sones or daughters or even grand sons and daughters who carry on the work so what i am at now is a pilgramage - equivalent to this kind of long term cathedral thinking - one tiny stone, one tiny step each day in honour of humanity and the crafts and the interworking that we all do collectively as humans because no matter how many wars and conflicts there are
there is ONE EXTRA human than our foe posseses and that extra huaman come along and sutures our wounds, who hugs us close, who works with us to put things back better and more noble than they were before
and I am a massive fan of AI - as a tool and as a servant but never as a master
so to summerise
Live in real time, now . before the front-running becomes so acute that it becomes almost impossible to ignore and it becomes a new social reality that will be almost impossible to escape from.
i actually felt this recently when i was getting over my fear of open spaces after a bad fall, i went on a train into town and got off at the central station and as i came near the exit turnstile i freaked out and stopped cold
I was harried and jostled and bumped by all of the commuters looking at their phones and then i turned around to face them and
oh
my
lord
it was incredible to feel the concentrated force of social pressure pushing me toward that tiny exis hole into the workplace
apart from the anxiety and panic the sheer physical force of that flow is where i decided, on the spot
fuck
that
i need a plan and so now i write in real time
I think in real time
I guage gauge ? I try to establish what is going on as I am writing or expressing or whatever so that i developa real time situational awareness
and wven now as my fingers get tired i know that it is time to slow
down
however that ability to execute and think in a situation where I am in awareness is what is essential if you if i - want to avoid the fate of the millions (m,inions?) all racing to get through a tiny exit.
OOF
the fture goes to the meek, not the weak , the meek who realise that i need to live with the doors open and strengthen my craft
learn how to think on my feet
learn how to be situationally aware
because you know what?
Jason Bourne, a fictional character, never made a mistake.
Why? Because he did not stop moving
Phew
memo to self.
Keep the timer to twen minutes the next time because I almost did not make it to the endo of this session.
You can find me on substack and on youtube
as @findinghumans
see you there!
Squibler relented and I can now copy the session. It is pasted above, unedited.
This is my demonstration of cathedral thinking, in real time: one stone a week, one step in my pilgrimage, finding humans along the way. If you’re on a similar path, please let me know.
On YouTube, at Finding Humans, I post documentaries and straight-to-camera thought pieces about living this way.
The idea started on Tom Bromley’s How to Write a Novel course, in February 2024. Over nearly a year, starting in late 2024, I wrote the novel, Genie Wars (as Ludo Vecchio), set in 2062. A Silicon Genie read Dante and decided he had left a splendid blueprint: nine citadels in which to research the hard problem that is humanity. I remain a Globally Ignored Author, which is fine. I’m not bitter, oh no, not at all.
So now I use those fictional citadels to chase and harry my characters, and to explore what life with a digital conscience will be like. In 1991 I registered .pg, Papua New Guinea’s internet domain. Later, at Intel, I co-wrote a paper with colleagues at Dell, Privacy and Data Confidence in Edge Clouds, on how machines can prove where data came from and whether to trust it. That work is why I take the idea of a digital conscience seriously: one is coming soon to an earpiece near you. The main protagonist, Lian, already carries a stolen one that argues back and may want him dead, as he and his companions are pursued through the citadels by an increasingly malevolent foe. Soon, a weekly piece will follow them, one citadel at a time.
One of the main drivers behind all of this is not fear. It’s something Kaguura Gichuru wrote:
You cannot compete with someone who is having fun.
That is at the core of what I’m trying to do here. My thanks to everyone in Kaguura’s Write Path and Taylin Simmonds’ multi-disciplinary writing groups. Without them, none of this would have seen the light of day.
Now, go find some humans.
Bravo!