Human Traits Newsletter - Edition 002

Edition 002 is published!

https://humantraits.beehiiv.com/p/connection-dune-ai

Generated by GPT4.0
Prompt: create an image that connects AI and Frank Heberts book Dune
Response: Let's create an image that captures the essence of artificial intelligence merging with the themes of Frank Herbert's "Dune." Imagine a scene where the vast, desolate landscapes of Arrakis blend with futuristic AI elements. In the foreground, a figure resembling Paul Atreides stands atop a dune, gazing into the horizon. He holds a device that projects holographic images of sandworms, symbolizing the blend of natural and technological. The sky above is a canvas of stars, among which subtle digital codes and neural network patterns shimmer, representing the pervasive influence of AI in this universe. In the background, the iconic sandworm of Arrakis is emerging from the sand, its form intertwining with digital circuits and glowing lines of code, symbolizing the fusion of the planet's natural elements with advanced technology. This scene encapsulates the mystical and technological aspects of "Dune," reimagined through the lens of artificial intelligence.

The Human Traits Newsletter - Edition 001

I just published the first edition of the Human Traits Newsletter. It can be found here:

https://humantraits.beehiiv.com/p/welcome-human-traits-newsletter-exploring-humanitys-relationship-ai

Apple's Bet on AR/VR Takes Humanity Backwards not Forward

Now that Apple’s long-awaited Vision Pro is out and in the hands of the exclusive few wanting to be on the cutting edge of Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality, or ahem, ‘spatial computing’ advancement, I can’t help but think we’re moving away towards a reality we really want. There is no doubt that there is some amazing technology packed into a computer we wear on our face. My favorite video I have seen is that of a F1 race course being projected on a surface with real-time results and statistics while the broadcast is being displayed above the virtual racetrack. Pretty amazing stuff.

The more disturbing images however, is that of users out in public places with the device on their face, disengaged from the actual reality around them, lost in whatever world they have chosen to be a part of. This is effectively what the book and movie Ready Player One predicted. We’re even seeing images of people driving with the Vision Pro. And for the truely meta apocalypse, the combination of a Tesla Cybertruck with the driver immersed in their Vision Pro face-wear.

The AR/VR/Spatial Computing tech scene is niche. Imagine if Apple would have placed another bet. Imagine if the money they applied to the Vision Pro would have been invested into advancing Siri with advanced AI capabilities. No doubt, that’s coming and these are in deed mutually exclusive investments that Apple can afford.

My point is that Apple is betting on the wrong technology. Meanwhile, OpenAI has amassed 180 million users in the fastest adoption of a new technology ever. How many Vision Pros will Apple sell in 2024? Will they even get to the 1 million mark?

We need a solid dose of GR advancement: Grounded Reality.

Making it or Faking it?

There is no question that we are embarking on an AI creation age that will be hard to decipher what is human created versus what is AI generated. AI will help humans scale in all areas most likely. What I am concerned about is humans passing off AI’s handy work as their own however.

Having embarked upon writing a novel about AI and a parallel work of a podcast about AI, I am using this badge to “certify” that this work is indeed created/authored by me, a human.

True, anyone can slap a badge on something. But this is my way of committing to a human principle of authenticity.

The Impact and Intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Human Learning

This post is inspired by today’s post by Seth Godin: The end of the high school essay

Perhaps my favorite thought/concept from this post:

“So, now that a simple chat interface can write a better-than-mediocre essay on just about any topic for just about any high school student, what should be done?
The answer is simple but difficult: Switch to the Sal Khan model. Lectures at home, classes are for homework.”

Up until the very recent past, the general public’s perception of Artificial Intelligence is a cute, if not rudimentary technology that is more hype than real promise. Now that we are living in a world where ChapGPT exists, if you weren’t paying attention before, you should be now. This is both exciting and scary at the same time. The implications are vast. If we focus on the intersection of AI and education for a moment, I can think of more than just essays that will be impacted:

College applications
Coding/Programming
Visual Design and Art
Math Homework

If our current models of how information is taught in school is on the verge of being completely broken, I like Seth’s suggestion here. We’re on the verge of a complete shift in almost everything. For better or for worse.

Cryptocurrency & the FTX Debacle

Hearing Michael Saylor breakdown the FTX scandal and collapse helped me to better understand just how diabolical and over the top this scheme was. If you are interested in understanding this, it’s a worthy 12 minutes of your time.

In my adult life, I have lived through three major bubbles that caused some pretty catastrophic economic damage:

The .com bubble in 2002/2003
The housing bubble in 2008
The Cryptocurrency bubble (2018 - 2021)

The common denominator in all of these is easily described as greed. Anytime any market heats up so incredibly fast, there will be bad actors that look to capitalize on the frenzy in the form of nefarious and illegal activity.

But in every bubble burst, there are winners that emerge. Everytime.

Why I still have lots of confidence in Bitcoin and Ethereum specifically, is that the most recent crash of the category as a whole has more to do with bad actors and greed than the fundamental macro economic reality of the instrument itself.

I don’t know what the recovery will actually look like, but I really am not concerned with the long term viability of these two blockchain based financial asset classes. I am not in it for the speculative market, but rather the long term cycles over the next decade or two.

Protopia: A More Hope Filled Future

Have you ever stopped to notice that most art that casts future vision, renders a dystopian perspective? There is no doubt that audiences are drawn to darker themes (I am certainly one that likes this art form). It’s almost as if the antagonist of any future told story is the future itself.

But then I heard a term that I’ve never heard before: Protopia. Even as I write this term, my spell-checker is telling me that it’s wrong.

I thought this video was so well done and explains a more hopeful vision and future. And of course I like the term future community that it uses.

Giving credit to where credit is due: Kevin Kelly (@kevin2kelly) is credited to have coined the term. I first heard the term from Grimes (@Grimezsz) in an interview with Lex Friedman (@lexfridman). Going down the rabit hole, good people doing good and thoughtful work here: Monika Bielskyte (@monikabielskyte) and Zoe Scaman (@zoescaman).

I’m here for it.

A Word On Expertise

Seth Godin is well known as an author and one of the early pioneers of Internet marketing. One of his signature traits: he publishes something everyday. Every day. One of his recent quips:

“In a competition between someone who knows the most and someone who is willing to learn the most, the edge usually goes to the curious and empathic professional, not the one who is simply protecting what’s already known.” (source: https://seths.blog/2022/12/expertise/)

This is an excellent reminder for those of us that are in leadership positions. Or parents. Or friends. Or romantic relationships. Stay curious.

The State of Cryptocurrency: My Perspective

Market Prices at the time of writing:

1 BTC: $28,900 USD
1 ETH: $1,774 USD

For context, I first jumped into the cryptocurrency market in March of 2019 when BTC was $7K and ETH was about $140. I certainly don't need to recap the euphoric rise and subsequent crashes over the last 3 years.

I want to separate the cryptocurrency market as a whole and isolate BTC and ETH. If you would rather not read this and just have the executive summary here, this is the headline: I'm long on BTC and ETH; everything else is speculative. My always-on caveat here is that this not advisement or investment advice as to how to direct your portfolio. This is simply the way that I am thinking about the market.

To be clear, I have very small positions in other alt coins that are not BTC and ETH. All in all, less than $2K of my crypto portfolio is outside of BTC and ETH. This is essentially a betting pool for me, much like Fan Duel or any other betting app. It's a roll of the dice. Sometimes the ivory lands in my favor and sometimes the house pulls my chips from the table. That's the speculative game.

For BTC and ETH, it's a long tail for me and if there is one message that I want to impart, it's this: BELIEF. I wish I was in a stronger cash position right now, because I would be putting as much ETH and BTC in my cart as possible. History might very well prove me wrong and cryptocurrency might just be seen as a flash of irrational exuberance in the rear-view, but that is clearly not my viewpoint.

I joined Interwoven in 1999, three months before an unbelievable IPO and a stock market that was frenzied with every dot-com startup seeing ridiculous valuations (Interwoven included). The history that unfolded is that the thousand of dot-com companies and subsequent overnight multi-millionaires being made was alluring to the broader market to jump in. Then the dot-com crash happened and most of this wealth just evaporated. But clearly, there were winners that came out of this: Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook. The Subsequent financial crash in 2008 and 2012, Tesla and a handful of others came out as victors. These stocks took their fair share of beatings as well, but ultimately stood the test of time.

The big difference in the above scenario is the tremendous profitability, market execution and consumer dominance that ensued as a part of the larger market forces. In other words, it was not just a financial stock chart dynamic and market cycles that made these companies into the juggernauts they are. They have real products, real customers and real revenue.

What does BTC and ETH offer the larger markets that will justify a massive valuation and worth? These are different value propositions just as Google and Amazon have different go to market strategies. BTC, I believe will be the gold standard for evermore during our lifetime as a the digital asset class and store of value. It's simple and somewhat easy to understand. It is easy to move, transfer and secure as a digital asset. Think about this analogy. There are lots and lots of Internet top level domain extensions. The gold standard is .com. But there are .net, .edu, .org and literally dozens and dozens of others. There is no technical difference in how the other domain extensions work. None. There is no technical advantage in how these others work. The value of .com is undisputed when building a new brand. I believe BTC to be the .com equivalent.

For ETH, it's more complicated and complex. But I will summarize it to be a first mover advantage as a blockchain that supports smart contracts. No matter how much NFT's become valued or devalued over time, NFT's are on the Ethereum blockchain. There are lots of businesses being built on top of the Ethereum blockchain, so I believe it to be a sound digital asset class.

The volatility of the cryptocurrency markets will continue and there will be many more "corrections" to come. My long-tail approach is simply this: accumulation is the name of the game for a ten year play. Hopefully, I will be in some position to take advantage of the down swings and buy opportunities. Even still, my plan is to continue to dollar cost average as much as possible.

Hope this has some inkling of value to your own perspectives.

Why Black & White Photography?

In 2022, 54,400 photos are taken every second, 196 million per hour, 4.7 billion per day, 32.9 billion per week, 143 billion per month, and 1.72 trillion per year. (Source: https://photutorial.com/photos-statistics/) — We hear the word “billion” a lot these days and have become rather desensitized to it. Let’s just agree that a billion of anything is a rather large number.

A couple of years back, I wrote a piece over on Medium about the state of picture taking in 2020. I explored the idea of “traditional” tools (dedicated cameras) vs computational photography (cell phones). As I re-read that piece two years later, the trend is holding pretty true that the two disciplines are on a trajectory to merge together. There will always be dedicated cameras and there will always be cameras on our cell phones. Better software and firmware will advance cameras and better hardware will inch along picture taking on cell phones, no doubt.

The meta point that I was trying to make is that there is a pretty significant difference to photography versus taking pictures. It has less to do with the tool and more to do with mindset and craft.

Then, photography as an art is something smaller in scale. If we take the genre of black and white photography as a subset, much, much smaller. That is one reason I like it. But more than its niche in the photography world, B&W offers something different.

When my son was in 1st grade, we were told he was “color blind”. Of course, he sees color; it’s just different than how the rest of us see color. But when he sees a B&W photo, this is exactly how everyone else sees it. Maybe that is yet another reason why I like it.

Last year, I acquired a Leica Q2 Monochrom camera — which is really a dream camera for me. Many are puzzled by this choice. Why would I choose a very expensive piece of kit that can only shoot in black and white? Every photograph ever taken can be turned into a monochrome version, so the question is constantly asked: Why?

I actually love the question. And I love that this camera even exists in 2022. I am guessing not everyone loves or even understands the answer and that’s okay. My body of work on the Leica Q2 Monochrom is very different than the rest of my photography. It has become more of a documentary type of tool in the way I approach the craft. Thinking in black and white is a different way to approach photography versus just converting it in post. There are some more technical reasons I could go into, but that’s not that interesting for most people — though I am always willing to discuss for those that are interested.

Here’s the thing: When I have my Leica in hand, I am in a different mode all together. Different thoughts, different composition. I don’t know what I like better: the process or the outcome? Both are of value to me.

puhala.com reboot #56

56 is an exaggerated number, but there have been many iterations over the years. If memory serves me correctly, I acquired puhala.com in 1999.

Why even have a personal website in this day and age? What’s the point? In a world where social media bows to the obsessions of influencers, flexing, promoting for fame or financial gain, I wanted a space away from all of that. I work in enterprise social media, so I understand brand building, community building, reach and all that comes with the megaphone (however large or small). But I have very little control of how content is displayed and the algorithms behind it. This site is not about followers, likes or reach. It’s really just a small corner of the world wide web that I can call my own. I own my content and how it gets displayed. There is something freeing about that. I am not after numbers. Just expression.

To that end, a little about how I intend to use this ‘personal website’:

A place to express my creativity with a focus on my B&W photography
Have fun with random pics as a sort of breadcrumb trail of my life
Share commentary and have controlled transparency through a more personal blog
A place to easily share my CV (resume) - LinkedIn is still a good tool, but it’s focus has change to a more professional social networking site with a lot of distractions
Share other creative projects and pursuits