There is a moment in every great product presentation when explanation becomes unnecessary. The audience leans forward. Questions dissolve. Skepticism softens into something closer to belief. This is the power of the demonstration — not merely a communication tool, but a fundamental shift in how understanding is transferred from one mind to another. In a world drowning in abstractions, bullet points, and breathless promises, the demo remains the most honest and persuasive act available to anyone with something meaningful to share.

The case for showing over telling is not a matter of preference. It is grounded in how human cognition actually works. When we hear a claim, we process it through layers of suspicion and interpretation. When we see something happen, those defenses lower. The brain's mirror neuron systems engage. We experience a pale but genuine version of the thing itself. This is why Steve Jobs did not describe the iPhone's scroll feature in January 2007 — he ran his finger across a screen and let the physics of it do the arguing. No sentence he could have constructed would have landed with equal force.

History reinforces this pattern relentlessly. In 1854, Elisha Otis did not circulate pamphlets about elevator safety. He stood on a platform high above a crowd at the New York Crystal Palace Exhibition and ordered the hoisting rope cut. The platform dropped inches, then caught. The safety brake worked. In thirty seconds, he created an industry. Written assurances about cable strength and engineering tolerances had existed for years. None of them moved freight — or people — skyward at scale. The demonstration did.

Some will argue that not everything can be demonstrated — that complex systems, abstract services, or long-horizon outcomes resist the format entirely. This is a reasonable objection, but it undersells human creativity. What cannot be shown in its final form can almost always be shown in miniature, in simulation, or through analogy made visceral. When Richard Feynman wanted to explain the Challenger disaster to a skeptical commission in 1986, he did not lecture about thermodynamic properties of rubber compounds. He dropped a piece of O-ring material into a glass of ice water and let the audience watch it stiffen. The entire causal chain of the disaster became legible in seconds. Complexity is rarely the true obstacle; unwillingness to do the creative work of translation usually is.

Others contend that telling carries its own irreplaceable value — that narrative, context, and explanation build the intellectual scaffolding necessary for a demonstration to mean anything at all. This is true, and worth taking seriously. A demo without framing can confuse as easily as it clarifies. But notice what this objection actually supports: not the superiority of telling, but its proper role as a servant to showing. Words work best when they prepare the ground for a demonstration, not when they substitute for one. The sequence matters. Explain just enough to create anticipation, then get out of the way and let reality speak.

The stakes of getting this wrong are not trivial. Businesses fail to close deals because they spend an hour on slide decks before offering a five-minute trial. Scientists lose public trust because they publish findings rather than making them felt. Teachers lose students because they define concepts rather than letting those concepts collide with the physical world. In each case, the cost is not merely a missed opportunity for elegance. It is a failure of genuine communication — the kind that changes behavior, builds conviction, and moves people to act.

The best practitioners of the demo understand something almost counterintuitive: a great demonstration requires more preparation than a great speech, not less. Jobs rehearsed for weeks. Otis engineered a fail-safe before he invited a crowd to watch it fail. The apparent spontaneity of a powerful demo is the product of exhaustive work conducted in private. This is precisely what makes it trustworthy. Anyone can construct a compelling argument on short notice. Only someone who has done the actual thing can show it.

To show is to commit. It is to say: I believe in this enough to let you judge it directly, without the mediation of my words. That vulnerability — that willingness to be evaluated by reality rather than rhetoric — is exactly what audiences respond to, even when they cannot articulate why. In a culture increasingly skilled at manufacturing persuasive language, the demo is among the last remaining signals that something is genuinely true. Guard it accordingly.

Another test

The greatest misconception about progress is that it arrives through sudden inspiration — the lone genius struck by lightning in the shower, the visionary who simply sees what others cannot. It is a romantic notion, and it is largely wrong. Beneath nearly every breakthrough, every elegant solution, every product that feels inevitable in hindsight, lies something far less glamorous: a relentless cycle of testing, learning, and repeating. This iterative engine, quiet and unglamorous, is the true driver of human advancement.

Consider how Edison approached the lightbulb. History remembers the invention; it conveniently forgets the approximately ten thousand failed experiments that preceded it. Edison did not stumble upon success — he systematically eliminated failure. Each dead end was data. Each broken filament was a lesson. The process was the invention as much as the bulb itself. Modern science has simply formalized what Edison practiced intuitively: the scientific method is, at its core, a structured permission to be wrong repeatedly in service of eventually being right.

The business world has absorbed this truth, though often reluctantly. Silicon Valley's celebrated mantra of "fail fast, fail often" is not a celebration of incompetence — it is an acknowledgment that the fastest path to a working solution runs directly through a graveyard of discarded attempts. Spotify, Airbnb, and countless other companies that now appear inevitable once looked, in their earliest iterations, like confident mistakes. They survived not because their founders were infallible, but because those founders treated every stumble as a question worth answering.

Some will argue, reasonably, that this framework privileges industries where failure is cheap — software can be patched, prototypes scrapped, marketing campaigns quietly retired. In fields like medicine, aviation, or civil engineering, the critics contend, iterative failure carries consequences measured in human lives, making "test and learn" an irresponsible luxury. This objection deserves respect, but it misidentifies the problem. The answer is not to abandon iteration but to shrink the stakes of each test. Clinical trials are themselves a masterpiece of structured iteration — phase one, phase two, phase three — each stage designed to extract maximum learning while minimizing exposure to risk. The Boeing 737's tragic failures were not caused by too much testing; they were caused by institutional pressures that short-circuited the iterative process before it could complete its work. The lesson aviation teaches is that skipping cycles kills; the cycle itself saves.

Others argue that constant iteration breeds a culture of perpetual incompleteness — that organizations addicted to "version 2.0 thinking" never commit deeply enough to any single vision to achieve true excellence. There is something to this. A painter who endlessly repaints the same canvas never produces a finished work. But the counterpoint is decisive: the painters who have produced the most enduring masterpieces — from Leonardo, who carried the Mona Lisa for years and returned to it repeatedly, to Cézanne, who painted Mont Sainte-Victoire over sixty times — were themselves devoted iterators. The goal of iteration is not to avoid completion but to ensure that what is completed is worthy of permanence. Commitment and iteration are not enemies; premature commitment is.

The evidence across disciplines is striking in its consistency. In education, schools that employ rapid feedback loops — frequent low-stakes quizzes rather than infrequent high-stakes exams — produce measurably stronger long-term retention, a phenomenon psychologists call the "testing effect." In athletics, the coaches who have built the most decorated programs, from New Zealand's All Blacks rugby team to the Golden State Warriors' dynasty, are obsessive analysts of marginal errors, treating each performance as a dataset rather than a verdict. Even in creative writing, the authors who produce the most celebrated prose — Joan Didion, who reportedly rewrote her first sentence until the rest of the piece revealed itself, or Hemingway, who claimed the first draft of anything is invariably bad — are devoted to the ruthless honesty that only iteration demands.

What unites these examples is not talent, though talent matters. It is not resources, though resources help. It is a particular relationship with imperfection — one that refuses to treat a failed attempt as a judgment and insists on treating it as information. Progress, in this view, is not a destination you arrive at through brilliance. It is a discipline you practice through courage: the courage to try, to be wrong publicly, to learn without ego, and to try again.

The hidden engine runs on honesty. Feed it that, and it will take you almost anywhere.

So..

What a day I had today.

Now I'm closing it out by "vibe coding" this app I'm building — the app I wish I'd had every time I got the sudden urge to write something down.

For starters, I'd love this to be the reintroduction of some of my older, more creative work.

So,

1. This is a restart of my paragraph.xyz blog. Writing for The Through-Line, this could be my soft opener.

2. ….

Oh — a bug. I can't see what I'm typing because the window doesn't scroll behind the keyboard.

And just like that, I fixed it and picked up right where I left off.

I mean, this is just bananas. The speed and depth we are unlocking in the world today.

2. Now I can get into what actually compelled me to write tonight.

But first — a quick mention of the app icon that got created in the middle of fixing that bug. Just like that. Generated from an SVG prompt and ready to go live.

That small moment is worth sitting with. A decade ago, that icon would have required a designer, a brief, two rounds of revisions, and a week of calendar time. Tonight it happened as a footnote. The footnote is the story.

So.. the things I felt moved to write about.

1. Tesla "I don't trust it" drivers — and how remarkable it is that someone would own the consumer car closest to full self-driving, yet believe their own abilities surpass it. Most aren't speaking from a reaction time or road awareness perspective. Most haven't wrestled with the deeper question of what it means for a human to trust a machine. There's a bias there that many people can't see in themselves.

When I try to explain it as clearly as I know how, most people can follow the logic. They can visualize how a machine with the right hardware and software can be multi-modally aware and reactive. But even then, many get stuck on the "human element" — as if presence alone makes us more capable.

The counterargument worth taking seriously is this: machines fail in ways humans don't. Edge cases. Sensor blindness. Software that confidently misreads a faded lane marking at 70 miles per hour. These failures are real, and they've happened. The difference is that human failures are diffuse and constant — thousands of deaths per year, distributed quietly across time — while machine failures are concentrated, visible, and loudly scrutinized. We hold the machine to a standard we've never held ourselves to. The statistic that should recalibrate anyone still on the fence: human error is the primary factor in roughly 94% of serious crashes. The machine doesn't need to be perfect. It needs to be better than us. By almost every measurable account, it already is.

2. What AI is doing to the world right now is genuinely wild. My mind floods when I pull on this thread.

• The family that uses AI to create more family time

• The developers who dismiss all AI-generated code as "vibe coding," underestimating how quickly it's crossing into production-ready territory

• College students still skeptical of its real use cases

• Young middle-class people who've heard of AI but have never used it and don't know where to start

On the skeptics — developers especially — I understand the instinct. There's something legitimate in the concern that leaning too hard on generated code produces brittle systems that no one fully understands. That's a real risk. But the dismissal often comes from comparing today's AI output to senior-level craftsmanship, when the more honest comparison is to what gets shipped without it. The bar isn't perfection. The bar is what actually makes it to production. And the gap is closing faster than most people in the conversation are willing to admit, because admitting it costs them something.

The people who fascinate me most aren't the early adopters or the resisters. They're the ones in the middle — the young professional who's vaguely heard of ChatGPT, assumes it's a novelty, and has no idea that someone one tax bracket above them is using it to do in an hour what used to take a week. That gap is going to become one of the defining economic fault lines of the next decade. Not AI versus humans. AI-literate humans versus everyone else.

I had more, but I'm running close to the end.

I did want to touch on something — the physical connections I made today, running into old friends, revived something in me. It brought a flood of thoughts about how innovation is being adopted across so many different slices of human life. The in-person moments still carry something the digital ones don't. Not because the digital ones are lesser, but because they're building on a foundation that was always analog first. Love included.

3. I had this shower thought:

"Ray Dalio is a fraud."

For context — I respect his work. I think he offers genuine historical knowledge and a sharp lens on the global order of things. His mapping of debt cycles, of how empires rise and decline, holds up. The diagnosis is serious.

But I think that thought surfaced as a kind of test. A stress test of the moment we're in. Dalio is right that things are breaking down. But his work largely stops at identifying what's ahead, pointing in abstract directions without walking through the door.

The obvious pushback is that diagnosis is a form of contribution — that naming the shape of a crisis clearly enough for others to act on it isn't a small thing. Fair. But there's a version of diagnosis that becomes its own shelter. A way of being right from a safe distance. Of building a reputation on pattern recognition while leaving the actual door-opening to someone else. That's where the fraud lives — not in being wrong, but in the posture of perpetual observer dressed up as wisdom.

What I actually care about is how "________ is a fraud" applies to all of us, in any given context, window of time, conversation, or disagreement. The moment we stop at naming the problem — we become the fraud in the frame we set for others.

So Dalio is a fraud in the sense that we are all, at some point, Dalio. Describing the burning building in precise detail while staying on the sidewalk.

Maybe that's where the AI earns its place — finishing what I start, cleaning it up without losing my voice. Not replacing the thought, but helping me not abandon it at the edge of exhaustion.

This could also be a way of building out my own knowledge base through iteration. My lens on the world, refined over time, in my own words.

Lastly — The Through-Line is about building context through the connections between love, life, and technology.

Tonight those three things showed up together: in a bug I fixed mid-sentence, a conversation with old friends that cracked something open, and a half-finished thought about what we owe each other when we see what's coming.

That's the line. I'm just following it.

Over the last 6-months, closer to a year, I've had the pleasure of building, benefiting, and discussing the advancements of AI-assisted workflows. It's likely not a surprise to many keeping an eye on the market, AI is either touching and/or disrupting practically every industry and role. If this catches you by surprise, it's likely because you're safe from this technology or will be replaced by its shear utility.

AI-augmented workflows change the entire production cycle of product development. Even the sales cycle. Yet, I don't think the change is happening fast enough. The reason, human-biased systems are the predominate bottleneck, for understandable reasons. However, I don't think AI-augmented workflows displace human work, they accelerate them.

Allow me to explain.

If you desire to develop a product idea, depending on the size of your team and organization, you'd apply some sort of timeline placing the viability of testing or launching this idea somewhere in the future.

For example, a simple feature to include a certain type of data point, from a new data source, in an existing product may take 1-6months depending how much your engineering team has on their backlog.

Other variables impacting time:

• idea origin eg. client-conversation, business-team, product-team, etc.

• product scope eg. why are we adding the feature, who is it impacting, what benefits is it providing, etc.

• data scope eg. what are the data structures, how is data privacy and security impacted, does the data provide generous benefits, etc.

• engineer scope eg. are there new technical complexities introduced, does it fit into current systems, the typical performance, security, and scalability concerns, etc. And many more domains which can impact the speed, cost, and production of a simple idea.

In a traditional team structure, these domains are outsourced to individuals, and teams, with "specialized" knowledge of the scope to be measured. At least, we hope they are specialized as many writings have shown this may not be the case. In this setting the hierarchy of information is very noticeable. Development many times happens in a somewhat linear process. Many times, a bottleneck in one domain holds back the testing and launch of the next great product.

These silos of domain is what AI is attacking and breaking down. Flattening the illusion of "specialization" and allowing organizations to operate in a more flat-structure, something closer to NVIDIA. More easily allowing people to gather around the development of ideas and not the development of specialization or domains.

This leads us back into why AI-workflows don't replace human work, instead, accelerates them.

The new product development cycle allows for cross-domain integration to happen more seamlessly as the capabilities of all individuals become generalized by AI. Flattening the product development cycle.

These capabilities in acceleration should allow for companies to launch more products, with greater quality, with less time and cost.

For example, a simple feature to include a certain type of data point, from a new data source, in an existing product may now take 2-4weeks depending how much generalization any team is able to handle. We are no longer bottlenecked at domain specialization, we are now only bottlenecked around communication. Communication is actually a bigger hurdle when humans feel like their work is under attack or egos get in the way, as I have encountered many times.

The more important outcomes is that product teams can now dig into data, legal, engineer scoping, or any other combination of a traditional team structure. Cross-checking with specializations as needed but not holding up the cycle of idea-launching.

Idea-launching is the life blood of a successful company.

The main factor getting in the way of most teams today is the trust structure that is built within the organization. Something I can dive into more deeply at a future time. The root of the idea of AI-augmented product launch being the new product development cycle, lies with individuals or teams communicating within high-trust environments with the desire to launch ideas, not gate-keep their role, title, domain, or ego.

We need more companies to invest their time and money into the individuals wanting to adopt this AI-augmented workflows. I predict the orgs adopting these strategies will see drastic increase in their top-line, bottom-line, and a growth of a positive-sum culture, internally and externally.

Steps organization can take today:

1. Enforce ChatGPT, Cursor, Claude, or other similar products as integral tooling

2. Have cross-function team meetings allowing generalized ideas to become "fact-checked" with specialized functions, careful not to debate based on seniority

3. Deeply communicate the culture shift towards flat-structure communication and work, to mitigate ego-bruising, and maintain respect

4. Keep meetings extremely short (<20mins), or very-long (45mins+), only communicating idea-specific topics originating from the process of AI-workflows

5. Maintain conversations within an explore function vs. exploit function separate, explore deals with a lot of uncertainty, exploit deals with deep specificity "the details", if you don't know which one you're in, default to explore, pin, and move on.

6. Empower everyone to think through the entire cycle of what they are working on, note-take where they feel stuck, "stuck-ness" is domain-specialization kicking in, use AI-workflows to unstuck

7. Enable an adoption strategy, ladder-adoption of teams or individuals, to being the transition of flat-structure development with AI-workflows

8. Err on the side of 'everyone is doing their best and has the best intentions' till you reach the other side, when you reach the other side, you'll know who needs to go or not.

God-speed to all in the accelerated future.

(This essay was entirely written by my own 2 hands)

Note: I wanted to get something out the door so forgive me for any errors or typos.

This turned out to be a long thought so I offer a tl;dr:

• don't fool yourself/ourselves into thinking web3 is the savior to all, or any for that matter.

• theres never been a greater time to get in the web3 landscape, at any level

• blockchains are the infrastructure where the worlds economic center will hover around, the internet-adjacent

• crypto is money and suffers only from belief, not function, which has preceded all great money, and money no longer requires centralized power and interest

• identity and "zero-knowledge" are the backbone of all ledger based societies, bearer notes, privacy, etc.

• decentralized social, the greatest civilizations have figured out how to 'get along' and socialize for coordination, through freedom frontiers, and it needs new leaders with greater strengths.

• ai, natural language, may be the greatest abstraction tool to include the majority of civilization into an inclusive internet-onchain society

• writing this has caused me to reflect of my positioning in all of this and how I want to pursue a path for 2025, god-speed to all, may the meme-lords be with you.

I wanted to write an end of the year post on what I think is right, wrong, and the future of our industry, "web3".

I use "web3" as an abbreviation for crypto, blockchains, decentralized social, zk, and all the crazy tech we touch and work with that makes the future so wildly exciting. Even AI.

To start, let's address the simple stuff. Where we are most likely wrong.

Our solutions aren't the things that make the future 'better'. The tech isn't the 'right' tech for all the problems in the world.

All the problems in the world are mostly self associated and described. Meaning that society, in collectives, divided by imaginary borders with regulatory capture, decide which problems are real and not.

Web3 is still statistically insignificant because not enough of those living within the 'borders of regulatory capture and their heads of state' deemed their problems a problem (a lot of commentary can happen here).

Where we are likely wrong is that web3 does not solve all societal problems, no matter how right we technically can be. Humans and their button pressing of phones and tech mostly happens on the other side of the curve.

This image captures us succinctly I believe.

Moving onto where we are likely right.

All the tech, is truly exciting. It's hard not to feel excited for us 'insiders' - those working in the web3 space. We are at the cusp of something emergent and big. On a massive collision course with the future.

However, as the above meme describes, most of the world operates within this middle ground. Which is a 'frictionless' economic center of gravity built over the last a century.

Where we are right, we are going to replace this old economic center of gravity, through the tech we touch and work. Generating a new economic center with distinct imaginary borders with new regulatory capture mechanisms.

As most of us insiders likely already know, it won't happen in one quick step, but for outsiders it will definitely feel like that. Because it happens in step-functions. Like climbing stairs. Each new step brings in this new euphoric high of, 'omg i'm on the edge', in reality it's already been twelve (12) plus years in the making. I felt this way when I first entered the space in 2020.

So I'll recap and provide opinions on some of the steps.

Blockchains, in the simplest form, provide the internet provenance and ownership.

Provenance is the ability to do record-keeping, accurately, and online. And as regulators, kings, and accountants would tell you, record-keeping is the essence of a well functioning society. It's been the 'mid-curve' since humans began to aggregate and stop being a nomadic species.

Record keeping of what?

The things we exchange, trade, and own. The internet and all of it's byproducts never had the proper allowances for ownership as we know in the physical space. Blockchains brought the allowance of "real" ownership online, paired with monetary exchange.

Most web3 insiders likely take the two characteristics for granted. I'd venture to say, outsider still struggle to wrap their head around these two drastically simple ideas. I don't blame them, it's a truly technical idea still.

The evolution of this layer (blockchains) and all of it's moving pieces of consensus, validators, MEV pools, smart contracts, chain-syncs, bridges, and all the nuances required for the hum-drumming of hundreds of chains still goes well beyond the heads of the some of the most technical people. Where L1, L2, L(nth), need to communicate and seem 'seamless' for end-user goes. And this is fine. We don't need to understand it all, so long as blockchains aren't going to 'rug' us.

At this stage, it's safe to say blockchains ARE NOT going anywhere except up. Especially those moving billions, if not trillions, of economic value.

Congratulations to all of you that got us here.

Leading us into crypto.

I normally like to describe crypto in a very short sentence.

"The ability to move money at the furthest edges of a network at speeds unknown to humanity."

The issue with the word money, it requires people to believe in crypto as money. Which is an okay problem to have. Every regulatory captured borders had this problem before they rose to prominence. Read Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money and you'll quickly see how chaotic and full of havoc the ascent of money has been throughout history. Practically, the only constant in the new formation of all money.

And with the continued rise of 'meme coins', which I strongly believe in the ideals of, the havoc and chaos seems to be the best predictor of the rise in the next super power of money.

Crypto is currently the biggest in-house battle.

From the outside, the narrative continues to be crypto is a sham or scam. With new believers forming with the new rise in price. From the inside, it's a battle of the casino house, against the gamblers, against the speculators, against the investors, against the builders, against the hopefuls.

Once again, not much different than any previous time in history.

At this stage, it's safe to say, and or assume the following of crypto:

• Crypto is the fastest payment rail.

• Crypto is used in exchange of goods and services.

• Crypto has exchange markets.

• Crypto has price movement.

• Crypto is backed by belief structures.

In the end, mostly all crypto assets have the characteristics of modern day money, even the meme coins.

The last thing I'll say about crypto and where we are.

GDP is a metric used to understand how regulatory captured borders are performing in output with relation to a single visible number ie. USD, GBP, EUR, CNY, JPY, CAD, and so many others.

There are currently 180 legal tenders recognized around the world. Apparently around 1900, there were around 50 currencies around the world, a 3.6X growth in 100+ years.

Out of these 180 globally recognized legal tenders, 4 currencies make up 80% of the international swift system volume, for reasons that are mainly 'cost-prohibitive'. Many for valid reasons, others, due to deep centralization of power and interest. (I succumbed to outside stats)

It's the deep centralization and interest that crypto is up against.

In 2008, we had the first crypto-currency, Bitcoin. Since then, we've had over 9,000 crypto currencies generated, 50X growth. In just 2024, one team, which I think has two developers, facilitated over 27,000 crypto-coins, or meme-coins, launched.

The ease in which any currency can be launched and transferred around the world is no longer restricted by deep centralization of power and interest.

Regardless if one believes in the value, which makes you just like everyone else disbelieving in the creation of new money, you should 'ah and ooh' at the fact that it no longer takes nation-states to wield this kinda of power and ability.

Congratulations to all of you that got us here.

One of the core ideas of 'cost-prohibitive' money creation and movement is identity.

Identity is such a complex topic, it can lead in so many ways.

Personally, I have worked in this space. First, validating identities in the international banking world (yup, I've rejected PEP accounts). Then I moved into validating identities in the digital commerce and auth validation space.

Today, much of the artistic value in web3 identity is figuring out the zero-knowledge space. How do I validate and approve 'you as you' by knowing zero, or near-zero, about 'you'. Since blockchains are ultra-transparent mechanisms, and money is the underpinnings of a coordinated society, how we solve identity online is of the highest priority.

Why?

In all aspects of my work, and it's importance as the backbone of a ledger based societies, the easiest way to divide identity is to clearly identify the "good" and "bad". It's these two buckets that make up the entire financial system.

Why?

Let's call it the "99/1 Game". 99% of the world is mid and good. 1%, or less, of the world is edge and bad. 1% of bad can wipe out 99% of societies and corporations.

This essentially falls into the ideas of value-at-risk (a term coined by JP Morgan Chase pre-2008, but valuable here). Because of 'value-at-risk', regulatory captured borders go to great lengths at validating identities to ensure risk is managed properly. (Taleb is one of my favorites on the topic of risk.)

Throughout most of civilizations ascension, the creation of money starts as a 'bearer note' and matures into a society of 'validated identities', becoming registered. All currencies, Pounds, Dollars, and now crypto have, or had, the same arc.

What I find most interesting is how history repeatedly moves from a fringe anonymous economic society into a mature verifiable economic society. This is at stake with zero-knowledge and the art of web3.

Part of the reason, I believe, we must move into better zero-knowledge proofs is due to the overarching theme -- governments become corrupt with too much knowledge over time. It's this pattern that makes zero-knowledge paired with crypto the anti-pattern to a better balanced society, managing the '99/1 Game'.

Zero-knowledge only has to be GREAT at identifying 1%, which is no small feat, since it has to the ability to wipe out corporations or societies, and even rug an entire project.

I'm not sure how far we've come since I'm no longer working in the identity space. Overall, the state of zero-knowledge seems to be improving. Once crypto belief structures are more reinforced, creating a forcing-function on identity and zero-knowledge, our web3 space will have the necessary breakthroughs preventing corrupt entities, like governments or corporations, from blocking the good identities from operating within a properly free economic society.

At least until the next evolution of power, money, identity.

Congratulations to all of you that got us here and god-speed to all those still working on this problem

If power, balance, and money hinges on individual identity, what hinges on coordinated societies?

Social networks.

And boy, or girl, have we proven the importance of social networks in the last decade. We have also proven how terrible it is for any single entity to hold the keys to the kingdom of social networks. Especially when special interest is at stake ie. deplatforming and shadow-banning.

"Decentralized Social entered the chat."

I don't think there is a more important topic happening in our society today. Online social networks is the new frontier for 'freedom of speech'. As America once was the battleground.

To take this a step further, this problem is not just effecting the adults in the room dominating the conversation, it's also effecting our youth. As the book Anxious Generation argues, however my belief that the book is flawed in how it introduces the argument. The valuable component is the definite high-price we pay with social media and our mental health, both negatively and postively. But this has always been the case in society.

As a personal anecdote, when I tell people about homeschooling my kids, the most immediate argument raised is 'oh but what about having the kid experience social interactions?'. One can argue for or against how this takes place in physical or digital interactions. The point is simple, social is vital to a thriving society. Especially a society that requires coordination through communication to thrive.

So how does decentralized social play a part in our future?

I think the divisive nature of this topic leads it into the most interesting opportunity for society. My opinion is that we won't see the multi-billion or trillion social networks. Those are predominately already here, and they aren't what you think. It's not Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

It's actually the mediums that provide the protocols for which our social landscape can happen, unhindered by big corporations. Farcaster, Lens, Mastadon, Nostr, and all the others existing.

The opportunity is the clients that can be built to serve digital communities.

The problem?

Not enough leaders with the will or know how to lead communities. Even less leaders with the will and know how to lead digital communities. Much less leaders with the will, know how, and capabilities to build and lead digital communities.

These digital communities should serve highly moderated communities, equivalent to those within our physical communities eg. churches, golf clubs, etc. Highly gated, as gated as having to live, or visit, the physical constraints in which communities reside.

The state of decentralized social is, the technology is here and available. It's not as accessible and user-friendly as we need it to be. The last decade of social interactions have create a rot of community leadership with self-interested content creator community silos (this includes me to a certain degree). Current social too deeply meme's the old way of doing social. This is okay because we need to port the behavior but we need new leaders to step out of the shadows and either build their own clients or pick a 'city', Farcaster, Lens, etc. to begin curating.

The issue with building under someone else umbrella of clients, eg. Warpcast, is that your community is exposed to all the other noise and that defeats the entire purpose of decentralized social, highly gated community, and culture specific moderation needs.

The last point I'll raise, our youth also needs their social networks, and parents shouldn't have to worry about the exposure they would get from being online. The same way our children used to interact and be social in the physical world. We need to build a more societal friendly social internet, this is only possible through decentralize social networks like Farcaster et. al.

Congratulations to all of you that got us here and god-speed to all those still working on this problem, a special thanks to the Farcaster & Warpcast team for having such a great product vision.

So, where do we end? If you've made it this far, you're a trooper. 2,615 words in.

Although it may seem like a tangential idea to web3, AI, or as I like to call it, natural language tools, will be the medium in which most of world onboards and interacts with web3. This is a strongly held opinion.

As I have looked at mids, or normies, interact with technology, I can't help but feel hopeless on getting them to adopt the current state of web3.

On one side, we have normal citizens holding the most powerful device they have ever known in a single hand. On the other, they only use these magical devices to call, text, read the news, login to social media, or play games.

Of course there is much more functionality in them. I normally like to think, in a roundabout way, 80% of users only use 20% of their devices capability. And 20% of people use tech at 80% its capability.

So what happens with all this unused capability if the majority of memory becomes stale information, with little need for compute?

I think this is AI's opportunity.

Thank you for everyone that has worked in this space, according to some stats there are ~40k developers in web3. I'm sure there a lot more.

And whether we like it or not it comes on the backs of bots.

Bots online.

Bots onchain.

Bots in space.

If we get down to the bottom of it all. The worst crime committed against the human species, was convincing ourselves that we must do all the activities propping up industries.

Instead of convincing ourselves that we must do all the activities that spread human consciousness, creativity, and expression.

This is not some mumble-humble talk. I believe this is deep characteristic of what we as humans have basic fundamental rights from birth to death. Until we figure out the ‘Don’t Die’ component.

In a future of abundance, those basic human rights serve as key pillars in accepting a future of bots.

When we accept this I think the following may occur:

• Massive expansion on worldwide GDP

• New industry will be propped up with bot augmentation and human intelligence.

• Massive hysteria that even AGI can’t replace us

• Poverty will shift from homelessness to botlessness

• Hunger will shift from junk food to bot grown food

• Old way of life would be deemed unthinkable

By the way this is exactly what happens in every single expansion plan of the human species.

Expansion

Industrialization, wars, globalization, and everything has causes worldwide expansion one way or another, this time won’t be any different, even the universe does this, get over yourself. If bots can take over the useless wasted aspects of the human condition while we continue expanding, eg. Useless deaths, etc., we can have more positive sum, optimistic expansion.

Industry

New industries always pop up, a boring but bare-bone reality. The bots need to be build, trained, you know the deal. The supply chain will need reworked. Have you ever seen a change in human thinking that didn’t bring with it a corresponding expansion of a new supply chain? I haven’t.

Hysteria

This will be a new one, “AGI can’t replace humans”. In the end they will always seem lifeless and foreign to us because they can’t exhibit the randomness that creates life and emotion inside us, likely a different Seed Number. That will always be in full display and remind us, ah, just a bot, another super useful bot that I’m grateful to have around the house, and time and space.

Poverty

Poverty is really a mental sickness vs a physical one. Homelessness provides shelter for a physical space, and what we see on the TVs today of ‘tent cities’ described as people being homeless is not entirely accurate. Yes they need help, but they’ll get better help from bots. The future is not going to be scarce with food or homes. I don’t even think they suffer from those today, since junk food and street living is so easily accessible. ‘Homeless’ today carry some of the most insane street smart, they know which buildings don’t have bodies in them, they know how to get around cities better than anyone and at what times. Yeah, getting arrested ain’t so bad if they give me comfort living conditions and food. But the police stations likely know this and throw them back on the streets.

Hunger

As I said above, food is so easily replaced today with junk food. In a world where bots can produce food, and people in poverty can work with bots, I don’t think hunger will be an issue. It’ll be a crisis of mental illness, nothing else.

And as true as time itself.

Do you see yourself being able to live within the conditions of, let’s say around 2001, I think the answer for most will be yeah, I can. If you were alive.

How about 1991, yeah I can.

1776, oh damn that’s some crazy stuff happening there, I don’t know.

1300, mmh, the renaissance era, I don’t know didn’t all this crazy stuff happen there? Printing press and stuff like that.

Well instead of points in time, how about if we replace time with products or quality of life changes.

Live in a world before cell phones were a thing, that’s kinda hard to imagine today but I think some small part of brain says yeah I can do that.

Before there was electricity, mmh, I have to turn on a candle every time? Walk around with candles, the fumes, have all the windows open, oh but that also means there isn’t any AC. Wait, no electricity at all?

Or how about a location like the front-lines of Ukraine & Russia war, or be sitting in some major conflict zone.

The things of yesterday will always be unimaginable as "how did we ever did things in that fashion", this pattern will not change. Especially when you get industry defining expansion that improves the quality of human life.

Bots are going to be the same thought in a couple hundred, if not dozen, years.

We just need to stop being so hard on ourselves, and the bots.

Find the optimistic side of it all and you'll see we can get more in this world than we thought.

Since the beginning of time, the particle knows nothing other than higher. Inflating into the event horizon, expanding higher, beyond imagination.

As each particle attached to the next, planets grew, creating a revolving door of higher. The revolutions gave birth to higher atoms, those atoms to higher bytes.

In-between, civilizations grew. Creating humanity to its highest form. Each civilization seeking a higher form of itself. Each individual seeking a higher form of self. Evolving, higher.

In this meme of ‘higher’, we create provenance, with the inheritance of fractals.

Higher is not a lifestyle, it’s not brands, it’s not ideas, it’s not space, it’s an inherited characteristic of the universe.

Higher is abundant. As abundant as the universe.

To go higher we must accept the constraints of a new abundance. Each constraint feeding into, and from, the next higher.

These constraints exist in the ideas of beliefs, beliefs in;

Time → Family → Money → Hierarchy → Identity → Technology → Higher

I won’t cover all of these in this essay, and each of these bleed into each other, but the lens I apply today is a direction to move into states of ‘higher’. And this is not exhaustive.

The goal is to begin identifying patterns, create language, and design, to enter higher states through time.

We will find ourselves in higher lows, at any point, or within any category, but we have never had a higher sense of self. Through this higher sense of self we can create new belief structures, patterns that bring about the next higher civilization.

We must go higher to adopt new abundance.

COVID was a catalyst for time. There are few global events in history that capture and change perception of time. In these events time spent suffer immediate changes. Locations and activities happen at different times abruptly. This change creates a focus on new needs, new wants, new cracks. In these events we reach a higher sense of time.

Asking how we spend time at work, with family, with ourselves. Leaking into our interpretation of time, consciousness of time, and recording of time.

The things we do today, in one day, could be the equivalent of things we did one week, years ago. There are many reasons for this, at the heart of it all, it is time. Using it in new ways, making it mutable, relative to its past.

How we measure ourselves against this mutable form of time, makes the world more abundant, more in favor of human existence, across galaxies, higher into the event horizon.

This is a pattern throughout the universe.

How time is spent is relative to the progress of time, spending it higher the more aware of the moment we become.

So how do we spend our time with family?

Because we are grappling with a new sense of time, we are also grappling with how time changes our family beliefs, just in time for a higher family structure.

There are many depressing headlines, I’d imagine an equal number of happy headlines exist – if they were only attention grabbing. Instead, this happiness gets suppressed into society, left there for the next generation to uncover. This is another pattern, for families, in time, maybe through therapy.

Kids, I’m not sure what to believe, less kids, more kids, stagnation. Overall, my observation traveling around the world with 2 kids under 5 has been, my family is crazy. This is anecdotal, most think I’m on vacation or that I have a ton of money. When in truth, we’re experimenting and learning anywhere around the world. As a family.

This is a testament of the higher fabric that now exists in human society, and economies. To have kids and not be tied down through the physical constraints of modern economies, technology, or liberated from the old constraints of an antiquated society.

If we’re having less kids, it’s because we have trauma from our past, because there’s never been a greater time to have more kids.

There is abundance for them in higher amounts..

There are many belief structures that exist within families that prevent a higher version of kids.

Lower income families rarely see abundance of options and opportunity, yet they may not see them because the good options aren’t attention grabbing. They are simply complex. Complex because they go against the fabric of society, against the beliefs of our own. Never spoken of.

What worked for them will not work for us. The approach is different, the end is the same.

A happier family. A higher family.

But, how do you have a happier family by reframing our beliefs of family structure, and new interpretations of time, if you’re not producing money?

Higher money.

Every technological unlock has moved from speculation of money into adoption of money.

Adoption is a higher form of speculation. Speculation is fleeting, and fleeting things are necessary for innovation. Fleeting precedes a higher state, adoption. Each a higher form of the last.

At its very core, money is a belief structure with a peg between nodes. Other words to describe the idea, an edge with nodes, two dots and a line. Today the highest form of liquid money is called USD, US Dollar. The reason is simple, it garnered the most adoption. It has more edges than any other money in circulation. The way it got there, or reasons, is the least of matters. The quantity of edges and nodes represent its value.

Today we have new edges and nodes. Nodes that extend deeper into human society, and economies, allowing new edges to form, faster, easier, bringing a higher form of money.

Cryptocurrency.

If a country, or corporation, is a centralized regime to create more efficient nodes and edges, to help circulate money with higher value.

Blockchains are a centralized regime to create more efficient nodes and edges, to help circulate money with higher value.

Money reaches higher; speculation precedes adoption, countries precede networks, networks precede economies, economies precede money, money precedes cryptocurrency.

This is a cycle, or pattern, of recirculation. Entropy. Waste management. Renewable energy. Money is energy.

Cryptocurrency is the higher form, reaching a new lower entropy, where money can be more representative of human behavior, energy.

If crypto is the higher form of money, how do we circulate its value?

I’m giving up my path as a “founder”. I have learned to respect all titles, yet I found myself wanting to ascribe, new, ‘higher’ language to the term, founder.

Business has become a narrative. A story. And how we tell those stories matter. Especially as value can be captured earlier in time, earlier in the value chain of commerce, through higher money, cryptocurrency, on blockchains.

If founders are the ‘do all’, CEO’s the ‘manage alls’, who is the founder that is also creating the onchain story, so early in the process, that when history becomes told through onchain analysis, the narrative is more granular than ever before?

Introducing family businesses, the small business owner, the onchain creator.

A higher form of ourselves, to drive the narratives of tomorrow, through the products of today, onchain, higher.

Because we will speak to the clouds and religion requires us to go higher into ourselves.

To wrap this infinite loop of patterns, we are always going higher, no matter the headline. Inflation is to go higher. Deflation is to go higher. Stagnation is to go higher.

We always go higher, it’s a universal law.

Will you go higher?

______________

Part 1

I kinda fell in love.

To summarize what I saw, in my head, bridges. Bridges the likes of those built to connect floating islands, spanning over bodies of water or over thousands of feet of air.

I also envisioned steel-workers standing on half-built sky-scrapers. The likes of early bridge work at the start of the industrial revolution.

The iron bridge is sometimes regarded as the symbol of the industrial revolution. The case for this can be fairly simple, as machine powered production took hold, the importance of connecting civilization to handle new production capabilities increased in priority.

The horses, carriages, trains, cars, trucks needed new reinforced paths between emergent bodies to increase profit and decrease cost.

A new abstraction, steel bridges, created a new meme of production. And so forth it goes.

And as early settlers adopted a country, new states emerged. First building bridges for the village, later building bridges for the country, and last for the state.

Today.

We have new "land masses" emerging -- chains.

And as early settlers adopt these chains, new states will emerge. Needing reinforced paths between these emergent bodies, to increase profit and decrease cost

As this need continues to increase, the case for better bridges grows, to handle new production capabilities, and create a better interconnected onchain society. Potentially needing a symbol for our "blockchain revolution".

I saw Optimism.io becoming this symbol -- the iron bridge.

Closing note: This was to get some thoughts out of my head. Follow ups will lean towards more technical components of what I read/saw, including links and references, and how they tie into the evolution of our industry, at least how I see it.

Preface

Goal: to land on one word that summarizes the ideas in this article by visiting an intersection of history, technology, and storytelling. 

Introduction

Onchain is not the word.

It's cool. I like it. I love it. Even want some more of it. I have written with it "From Online to Onchain". Yet, it doesn't resemble the cleanest idea of what the future behavior will be. Even web3 is not the right word.

Web3 does an okay job at announcing our entrance into a new aggregation of a technology stack, yet we have never used the lingo web0,1,2, surely 3 will not stick. If you have not, I highly recommend reading Read, Write, Own by Chris Dixon as a way to wrap your head around why "web3" is a new technology stack.

What is the better word describing where we will spend the next several decades working in?

To come up with this word I will explore the history of "online", how online maps to a life onchain, to hopefully land on, what's the word describing our industry? (originally proposed by Ben Roy, here)

To start unpacking some thoughts I think it is worth;

1. visit where the word "online" comes from and some of the behaviors that drew us to coordinate online.

2. breakdown the components of online and map them to web3, crypto, blockchains, and other names we use to bring our society into a new coordination ecosystem.

If anything, this is to expand our lexicon, language, or heritage of where our onchain behaviors will take us, online.

Online: An Quick Introduction

Where did the word "online" come from?

The phrase "on-line" was used as early as the 1950s, referring to systems or devices in a state directly connected, communicated, or controlled within a network. As computers and internet technologies evolved, the term "online" expanded to refer to activities and services accessed over the internet, becoming commonplace in the digital age to describe being connected to or present on the internet.

The word stems from the telecommunications, railroads, and computing industries. Where linemen would throw lines down, or rails, to connect humans across lands. When humans would connect they were "online", when they weren't connecting they were offline.

To my surprise being online dates back further than expected, yet it makes a lot of sense when describing the meta behavior of connecting.

Here is what Wikipedia has to say:

During the 19th century, the term on line was commonly used in both the railroad and telegraph industries. For railroads, a signal box would send messages down the line (track), via a telegraph line (cable), indicating the track's status: Train on line or Line clear.[5] Telegraph linemen would refer to sending current through a line as direct on line or battery on line;[6] or they may refer to a problem with the circuit as being on line, as opposed to the power source or end-point equipment.[7]

Since at least 1950, in computing, the terms on-line and off-line have been used to refer to whether machines, including computers and peripheral devices, are connected or not.[8]

I find it fascinating that online stems from an idea of energy. But that's not a rabbit hole for this article, maybe another. Within this context, I want to attempt to break down some of the behaviors leading into our current "online" state.

Mapping: Generalized Lay of the Land

What behaviors may be worth understanding and mapping?

The world requires many basic behaviors (pre/post-Internet) to function in the manner it does today, for simplicity I will use three very general umbrellas to aggregate behaviors:

1. Coordination - the ability to communicate and plan for resource allocation.

2. Socialization - the ability to belong and connect with others and communities.

3. Commerce - the ability to transact and pay for goods and services.

Under the umbrella of coordination, socialization, and commerce, it is worth mapping the behaviors between pre-internet to post-internet, and seeing which behaviors are more novel that allow us to coin a word that more readily describes our world -- our crypto, onchain, online, world.

Pre-Internet

In a pre-internet era, the absence of digital communication and online platforms shaped distinct ways of managing coordination, socialization, and commerce. Here's how these aspects manifested:

Era Definition: The pre-internet era refers to the period before the widespread adoption of the Internet. While the foundational technology of the Internet began development in the 1960s and the Internet itself became more accessible to the public in the early 1990s, the era most commonly associated with "pre-internet" would be before the early to mid-1990s. Therefore, you could consider the pre-internet era to encompass the years up to around 1990-1993, before the World Wide Web became commercially available and started gaining popularity among the general public.

Coordination: the ability to communicate and plan for resource allocation.

Bodies - centralized, nodes, stated-preference, mid
- Government Agencies: Played a central role in organizing societal functions, from infrastructure to defense.
- Postal Services: Were essential for communication across distances, facilitating coordination between individuals and organizations.
- Local Community Organizations: Including clubs and civic groups, which organized local events and volunteer efforts.

Behaviors - users, decentralized actions, revealed-preference, edges, tail
- Physical Meetings: Face-to-face interactions in offices, community centers, and homes were necessary for planning and decision-making.
- Telephone Communications: Landline telephones allowed for real-time discussions without needing physical presence.
- Written Correspondence: Letters and memos were standard for formal communication, record-keeping, and coordination efforts.

Socialization: the ability to belong and connect with others and communities.

Bodies - centralized, nodes, stated-preference, mid
- Social Clubs and Interest Groups: Provided venues for people to gather and share common interests or hobbies.
- Religious Institutions: Churches, mosques, temples, and synagogues were central to community life and social gatherings.
- Schools and Universities: Facilitated social interaction among students and between educators, forming lifelong networks.

Behaviors - users, decentralized actions, revealed-preference, edges, tail
- Community Events: Fairs, dances, and town hall meetings were crucial for socializing and building community ties.
- Family Gatherings: Regular visits and reunions held to maintain family bonds and celebrate traditions.
- Local Sports and Recreational Activities: Organized team sports and leisure activities promoted social interaction within communities.

Commerce: the ability to transact and pay for goods and services.
Bodies - centralized, nodes, stated-preference, mid
- Brick-and-Mortar Stores: Physical retail locations where customers could browse and purchase goods.
- Banks and Financial Institutions: Conducted all financial transactions, including savings, loans, and currency exchange, in person or via mail.
- Trade Fairs and Markets: Periodic events that allowed traders and artisans to sell their goods and services directly to consumers.

Behaviors - users, decentralized actions, revealed-preference, edges, tail
- Cash and Check Transactions: Predominant methods for payments for goods and services.
- In-Person Negotiation and Sales: Face-to-face interactions were essential for negotiating prices and finalizing sales.
- Catalog Shopping: For remote purchases, catalogs were mailed to consumers who would place orders by mail or phone.

Post-Internet Behavior
In a pre-internet era, the omni-presence of digital communication and online platforms has, and continues to shape distinct ways of managing coordination, socialization, and commerce. Here's how these aspects manifested:

Era Definition:
The post-internet era refers to the period following the widespread adoption and integration of the Internet into daily life and global systems. This era effectively began in the early to mid-1990s, with the commercialization of the World Wide Web and the subsequent rapid expansion of Internet access and services. While it's difficult to pinpoint a specific start year due to the gradual nature of this technological adoption, a significant marker is the introduction of the first web browser, Mosaic, in 1993, which made the Internet more accessible to non-technical users.

Therefore, you could consider the post-internet era to start from around 1994 onwards, when the Internet began to significantly impact commerce, communication, and social interaction. This era continues into the present day, marked by continuous innovations in digital technology, social media, e-commerce, and the increasing centrality of the Internet in both personal and professional contexts.

Coordination: the ability to communicate and plan for resource allocation.
Bodies - centralized, nodes, stated-preference, mid
- Online Platforms and Social Networks: Facilitate widespread communication and coordination across global networks.
- Cloud-based Collaboration Tools: Enable teams to work together seamlessly, regardless of geographical location.
- International NGOs and Virtual Communities: Leverage the internet to coordinate global initiatives and mobilize resources.

Behaviors - users, decentralized actions, revealed-preference, edges, tail
- Virtual Meetings and Conferences: Replace traditional in-person gatherings, allowing for real-time collaboration across distances.
- Crowdsourcing and Crowd-funding: Utilize the collective power of the internet for funding projects and solving complex problems.
- Real-time Data Sharing and Analysis: Enhance decision-making and resource allocation through immediate access to information.

Socialization: the ability to belong and connect with others and communities.
Bodies - centralized, nodes, stated-preference, mid
- Social Media Platforms: Connect individuals from diverse backgrounds, fostering friendships and community engagement.
- Online Forums and Chat Rooms: Offer spaces for people with shared interests to discuss, exchange ideas, and offer support.
- Dating Apps and Websites: Revolutionize how people meet romantic partners, expanding social circles beyond traditional means.

Behaviors - users, decentralized actions, revealed-preference, edges, tail
- Digital Communication Tools: Texting, video calls, and social networking sites become primary means of staying in touch.
- Online Gaming and Virtual Worlds: Provide immersive experiences where users can interact and form communities.
- Content Sharing and Creation: Blogs, vlogs, and podcasts allow individuals to share their lives, opinions, and talents with a global audience.

Commerce: the ability to transact and pay for goods and services.
Bodies - centralized, nodes, stated-preference, mid
- E-commerce Platforms: Transform the retail landscape, allowing consumers to purchase goods and services online.
- Digital Payment Systems: Facilitate transactions through online banking, mobile payment apps, and cryptocurrencies.
- Online Marketplaces for Freelancers: Connect freelancers with clients worldwide, changing how work and projects are outsourced.

Behaviors - users, decentralized actions, revealed-preference, edges, tail
- Online Shopping and Home Delivery: Become commonplace, with consumers expecting a wide selection and fast delivery.
- Customer Reviews and Feedback: Play a critical role in purchasing decisions, with platforms providing user-generated ratings.
- Personalization and Data Analytics: Drive marketing strategies, offering tailored recommendations based on user behavior and preferences.

To summarize the immediate bullet points above, we covered:

• Definitions of the pre-internet and post-internet era.

• How they break down within the construct of a collaborative society,

  • coordination,

  • socialization, and

  • commerce.

• How each of these apply to bodies and behaviors with potential intersecting definitions of words.

  • Bodies, which can relate to multiple words in context of centralization, nodes, stated-preferences, and statistically mid behaviors. Individual humans or teams of humans.
    Bodies allow for hyper optimization of centralized data flows.

  • We also covered Behaviors, which can relate to multiple words in context of decentralization, user behaviors, revealed-preference, edges and tail events. The outputs from actions by individual humans or teams of humans.
    Behaviors allow for hyper optimization of decentralized data flows.

• How the above definitions may have changed between a pre vs. post internet society, by identifying relative vehicles for bodies and behaviors during their time.

  • corporations vs. DAOs

  • public commerce squares vs. e-commerce squares

  • public social gatherings vs. farcaster social gatherings

Soft Closing

The majority of this mapping excludes onchain behavior, and I believe the reason for this is really telling. In the end if we look at the world through data flows, as Claude Shannon looked at the world through an information lens, we can begin to understand why data ownership becomes so valuable, and why onchain is so monumental in its ideas. Yet onchain is a subset of what it means to be more omni-online. It's a new behavior that will be adopted because we are more online and because the onchain ownership layer enables a better orchestration of the commerce world.

In the end, optimal states exist within these ranges:

1. coordination requires ownership of actions and information flow

2. socialization requires ownership of identity

3. commerce requires ownership and financialization

blockchains allow us to enter into this new coordination state of actions and information flow, where decentralization gives us greater ownership of our identity, and how we trade and engage within these new actions and information flows, will give us a hyper-commerce space.

So what is changing are the mediums, the relative vehicles that will take us between these three general states.

But in order to operate, with a clear mind, in this hyper commerce space, you'll need, or want, an AI.

So what is the word that will take us deeper online, through onchain behaviors?

ChatGPT: Innovation, Transformational

Human: I still don't know.

See you on the follow up.

If you'd like to support more of this writing and the ideas we are imbedding into our onchain lives, with our AI assistants, considering subscribing to my hypersub and

Love,

Les

Each object carries its own literacy.

Inversely, each user carries their own literacy.

The crossing of these ranges can create overhead.

In other words, good or bad outcomes.

Variables create probability of literary schilling-points.

When moving through product cycles, the team, the product, the user accumulates its own form of literacy.

This accumulation cause pressures, to form cognitive dissonance or consonance.

Literacy will drive cozy-spaces. Design in cozy spaces. Design is literacy.

Literacy synergy is your product.

The transformative powers of Bitcoin have still not been fully felt. I say this with 2 assumptions I hold true in my life.

1. I am a mid, have been an "NPC" and currently moving from squishy to actionable human.

2. I am an edge, illiterate during portions of life, disallowing me to connect with words, forcing a different perspective, moving towards literacy.

The reason it is important to identify with these ideas is to attach the directional ideologies to the importance of digital communities.

This story takes a bit of a personal journey but taking a page out of Richard Hamming's book, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering, I say a personal story to remain the most objective so others can decide for themselves, in relation to a single point. He said it a bit different.

This story is really about the migration of literacy from physical spaces, to digital spaces, through digital communities.

Literacy is the medium in which progress is made.

It can change form and factor, with the hope consensus leans us into a positive sum future.

Currently consensus leans education into an illiterate state, me.

I'm immigrant boy from a communist country, two, Cuba & Venezuela. Landing in Miami with an older sister, a mom, and a dad.

With little historical context to much of any of my own past, then or now, I moved through the educational system, little biased by the biases of my parents. So I thought.

In truth, my educational story is nothing of any sorts good or terrible. If told, I would venture to say it was mid.

I was always mid. So mid that when I graduated from the educational system I attended an award ceremony, where kids receive awards for club acitivity.

I recall having a sense of disbelief, sitting in the chair next to my then high-school girlfriend, "wow, I never knew school had all these programs you could be a part of". Twenty years later I still remember the feeling. I was shocked that schools had such abilities.

College was not much different. I did take a gap "year." Left to the military, did a tour in the Horn of Africa, got married, divorced, tried to get my green beret twice and failed at SFAS.

Why so much context about me?

I'm mid. Everything you see there falls within the spectrum of mid.

College was mid, I'd think.

I got a career in Finance. Moved between positions. Firms. Chasing something, I'd imagine.

Until a transformative idea hit me.

Why does everyone see the world so much more different than me?

I spent most of my life moving between states of confusion. Looking to my left, receiving words, feeling confused, turning right, transforming that confusion into "explanations".

Never fully confronting the confusion. Till maybe 2018.

Bitcoin and my ideas of Finance began to clash. If you think this is a story of riches, you can stop reading now. Remember I'm mid.

As I attempted to handle more confusion from life, I began to somehow very clearly see the narratives around me mismatching from the narratives I saw in my head.

To this day it's a difficult thing to explain. The importance here is that the confusion began to feel like a sense of curiosity.

I was as some would imagine, pilled into a perspective that shifted a narrative, for me.

In the midst of this shift, I looked towards digital ideas that could help for a career transition.

From a physical state of beliefs to a hybrid state of beliefs. Attempting to adopt technology.

With a gap of hesitation, 2020 began the shift. Data science, Roam Research, Digital identity, Twitter, and of course, Farcaster.

The discovery in this process was beyond anything I could have ever imagined.

I can't imagine.

The most important break-through for myself was writing. But I would sum each phase in these overarching ideas.

Data science gave me technical.

Roam Research gave me words.

Digital Identity gave me identity.

Twitter gave me compression.

NFTs gave me community.

Farcaster gave me literacy.

Each of these stages happened in digital communities. Each of them providing different narratives into myself.

The uncovering of my mid-ness happened in a somewhat exponential way, compounding into a singular tight pain-point.

500,000, plus, written words later, I can see it as clear as day.

I was illiterate.

How could I not be. I'm a CODA.

I lived my whole life saying "I have no connection to words". I may have read a handful of books up to high-school graduation. The only reason my baseball coach said "oh wow, your graduating on time." was because I was a mid-meandering student, with the ability to stumble through school, say some of the right things, but no one ever wanted to tell a normal looking kid, "you're illiterate".

My deaf community was definitely not going to either.

Until 2018, the majority of my perspectives were crafted by physical narratives, even the digital ones, Instagram, Facebook (that's all I used back then), mirrored the physical narratives. I would only follow the people I met IRL. I saw the world through signs. Words were a memory bank to pull from. Hoping I pulled the right one at the right time.

With no connection to words. Only signs.

Digital communities transformed this entirely. My literacy that is. It was all words, little signs.

And today it hit me.

Education is dead because literacy has moved online.

After attending data science bootcamp, writing hundreds of thousands of words, starting via Roam Research, taking a job in the digital identity space, becoming digitally technical, using Twitter as a public note-taking tool, becoming involved in an NFT community, and consuming Farcaster content for 2 years, I sat in front of my computer saying "wow, I can't believe the internet has all of this". Never having imagined the internet had such capabilities.

Remember, I can't imagine.

In this moment I realized I became literate.

The confusion of my world became a narrative I could easily see. My past was suddenly explainable. My mistakes were as clear as day.

My inability to connect with words was in large part due to the physical educational system failing me and society turning a blind eye but quickly recouped by the internets digital abilities to transport words and communities.

Digital communities gave me literacy.

I don't know how I feel about this.

This is part of the World Builder narrative.

Literacy.

Done is better than perfect.

Bink's purpose is to make shopping fun again by making the checkout experience social, not a choir.

It's hard to believe today.

At one stage, going shopping was a fun experience. It brought an excitement to many friends and family. The act of gifting was transposed from, I make or bake something, to, I make, bake, or buy something.

Never dreading the checkout process. Did we even realize it was a different thing? (Of course the bank account knew, but only after 2 weeks, when the check cleared)

It helped us learn about new products, new experiences, and feel things IRL.

Over time, these finer things have been lost.

Now, 70% of us refuse to checkout after picking out things we like, enjoy, or feel good about.

70% of us never checkout.

This trend has increased over the last decade. It's really become an abysmal stat.

Removing the idea of money. 70% of you take the time visit a website, swipe around, add something to your cart, some leave, others try to checkout, quitting. Like we quit our grade school homework.

If you measure your drive to work, let's measure our time driving aimlessly online, "shopping".

Introduce the idea of money, this is a massive leaky bucket - for us all. The brands and the users.

How we spend our time in society is highly correlated to money, on all sides.

Here are some stats of the problem.

How does Bink plan to attack?

By helping users take more control of their time and mental health with the behavior of shopping. Reducing the anxiety of checking out every time something interesting comes up.

Instead, send it to your sufficiently decentralized cart, and have your wish list shared with your social graph. Engage with each others IRL objects, learning about about the more intimate things in our life, with the people we care about. Discussing them at checkout. Reviewing them at checkout.

Claiming, buying, gifting on our terms.

Want to buy something for someone else, you can do that, from their wish list.

Fractionalize a community purchase, yes please.

Chip into to someone else's life changing purchases.

No need to go through 5 different apps, 5 different billing addresses, 5 different shipping addresses, text someone to get their address.

No, all that exist in one place.

Yes ambitious, I'd be bored if it wasn't.

What may this look like today?

Let's pretend a user takes frame actions, mints something, or would love to buy something without breaking their flow of the current app experience. Introducing friction in one area, to relieve the current friction elsewhere, at a later date.

Today users are already sharing, collecting, minting, their likes and dislikes. And anyone building a following could very quickly convert a URL experience into an IRL experience by allowing users to claim a drop-shipped shirt on Bink.

You might ask why a user would care to do this.

My answer would be, because there isn't a person in this world that wants to intentionally waste their own time. And 70% of people are increasingly wasting their time with a reduced experience.

We can only go up, or down, depending on your perspective.

Either way let's say that's not enough.

Let's pretend, you could update your address for all shipping and billing in one place with all the brands that you enjoy. That your PII is fully-encrypted, local, and/or backed-up as you wish. That your digital social behavior helps you claim or purchase the things you connect with more deeply IRL.

How about if you can gift things without having to ask for an address because your social graph has public and private features that can communicate with your friends and family.

I can go on and on but that's what an amateur founder would do. This is my second idea. Not my first. Actually, this is like the 104th this past week. I think it's a great one.

A "pro" would do this, I think, like this.

Phase 1: Invite some close friends and family to connect their Farcaster account, make sure the onboarding feels nice, I would want them to feel at home, because shopping is a comfort thing. Maybe even assign tiered memberships, like Costco. Sorry family, no skipping the line, it will be based on fid number.

Kind like this. Powered by Neynar.

Once everyone complains about there not being anything to do on the app, I'll bring the big guns.

Phase 2: Go to each persons door, knocking, saying, "hey remember you complained, there was nothing to do". Well you have some activities I need you to complete. Thank you.

Setup your user profile, if you wish, and are in the US, I can PREFILL all your information with just a phone number and last 4. If not you can manually add it. It can all be securely stored for you, or by you, with Privy.

Once everyone complains they've already done this with all 100 different shopping apps, I listen very empathetically. I help them set everything up and let them know that I'm grateful for their time and that all of this will pay off over time. Making sure they feel that I have their best interest at heart.

Phase 3: Over the course of a week. Send my friends and family curated links allowing them to take a set of actions leading to consumer behavior. These behaviors will populate in Bink for IRL purchases.

Kinda like this.

I'm assuming after this stage some will have forgotten what they did.

Phase 4: It's a Tuesday, or Thursday. I host a URL community event allowing new users to try the old sign-in flow. Requesting old users to claim or buy the items they have pending decisioning. Also to check out what their friends are trying to shop. Maybe even buying stuff for them.

Some might come back to be surprised by their taste and style. Or surprised a friend bought them something.

Phase 5: Repeat steps 1-4. I would likely repeat this step a couple times to make sure we are optimizing the right things that make the behavior more native and that the community is receiving their intended desires.

Conclusion

I think I'll stop for now.

The idea seems somewhat cohesive in my head. The tech stack can get complicated quickly but in the end this can be a category defining moment for consumer social, not because I am that, but because we definitely need better digital behaviors that augment physical behaviors.

Designing web3 and/or crypto in this mindset can create many category defining moments for our future.

Today is day 4 of 19 days in this product sprint. When I get a chance I will post the daily metrics.

For now, this is the product we will aim to ship live in 15 days.

If you made it this far, thank you, collect so you can be the first in line when we go live.

______________________________

Below are random thoughts that may fit somewhere in the future. Hold them lightly when comparing to the rest of the reading.

___

The fullfillment process hasn't entered the conversation but i'll address that in a future date.

We have created this shame culture of phone behavior. We need to get over ourselves. They aren't going anywhere. They are already everywhere. Let's make sure we do the right thing with them.

Let's build products that accept these as truths. Helping society adopt the better behavior.

This is what web3 can enable, I believe.

___

We have to put billing here, shipping there, email there, etc.

We’ve added all these new payment options but they all get funneled into the same funnel, to be provided more options at the end.

That’s not enough.

We need to deconstruct the funnel entirely and recompose old behaviors, in a familiar way, with a new order. I'm here to help build this.

I can break this into funnels or columns that show options at each stage of the checkout funnel, how that is deconstructed and reconstructed in a new way with a new stack to create better adoption of the web3 stack. 

These are moments where I think he hits on the coming "stream".

@5:10 "let's see how many messages come through on the wave"

@5:27 "share random things on my laptop"

@5:38 "perpetual kid at school"

@6:00 "all these sort of short cuts"

@7:01 "flip through and showcase the things Instagram doesn't have the capability to show"

His slides are even minimal, to active the stream. His stream. Allowing the activation to bring forward visual images in his head, I imagine, that's kinda what I see and feel when activating my own stream

But the thing I wanted to get at most is this one line by Virgil, @8:43.

I basically work at a feverish pace in a self-serving way just to find my signature. What's my DNA?

I think this line holds the clues towards.

1. How to tap into your stream, feverishly working.

2. How to be your authentic self, self-serving.

3. How to find your niche, signature / DNA.

Today I'm only going to address 1.

The Stream.

Something I touch on in this cast via Warpcast.

And how it requires this feverish pace to tap into creative sprints, intersecting so many different lines of thinking, the thing you produce in mind is normally ahead of it's time.

You'll need to have a certain level trust in your own authenticity and credibility in your niche to believe it for yourself, but removing those two obstacles. Trust me, the stream produces raw value, holding water, especially if most other people don't see it.

The stream is information, the more you move through, in clear states of flow, the more you can pick and choose what you carry forward with you to the next creative act. For me, I write and cast to be "in stream". When I'm flowing hard, I start to dance. Music plays a part too.

If you don't know Virgil was a DJ, I now understand why, and how much this played into his creative process. He had a DJ set brought into his creative room when hired as Creative Director for LV.

But few people can do this. It's like electricity flowing through the body. Hence his words, "feverish". And I'll admit, it's been an amazing "privilege" to have had experienced this.

Virgil was the first person to put language to something I never understood about my own brain. I need more information, not less. Feverishly working through it all, and only when I have enough can I go into "Deep Work" sprints away from everything.

Using all that information up, like water in a glass, then refilling as necessary. After a certain point in time this feedback loop stretches to longer time intervals. Iterations can be accelerated but continously pushing on the stream(s).

Virgil taught me his version of the Stream in this one talk, that honestly changed a lot of my thinking. Hence this slide.

I've read Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, and it all made sense to me but I could never do it the way it was described in this book.

This led me to think that the stream can be experienced in bi-modal states.

Precise or accurate.

Where maybe precise is the creation act of signature.

Precise is a very very narrow tunnel where you are flying headfirst and you can only see a thin strip in front of your retna, a thin red beam, printing your signature to material.

Where maybe accuracy is the creative act of authenticity.

Accurate is a inside the tunnel, sitting in a chair with everything passing you around and you are grabbing items as your authentic self desires.

And before you have a signature you must be true to your authenticate self. It all starts with you holding onto your Stream. It's a privilege you don't want to miss. Work feverishly through it.

tl:dr: a stream is about tapping into flow states in a future where information is coming at us through all sides -- focusing on pragmatism, design, and self to be creative and create.

This has also been written about in books like Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience .

add the chatGPT of what I say about things relating to him

If you want to explore Virgil Abloh through my stream here are somethings you can do.

• check out Searchcaster.xyz and look at all things I've posted of him.

• go to this ChatGPT bot that has all the things I have ever written privately about him.

• etc...

1. pull in the 2 streams I talk about before.

Hope this to be an extremely short post.

I'm currently working within a 19-day sprint of some of my own work and figuring out next steps.

Through moments like these I usually keep an excessively over-documented version of everything I am doing. Many times public, though eventually once I peel back enough layers, I go private. The iteration is so much faster that way.

One of the ideas that I have been working with, for some time, modeling an agent specifically on all of my writing. I approximate over 400k+ words written in the last 3-years. Words describing myself in details other humans care nothing for.

And in all fairness, other humans don't have the time. I wouldn't.

But AI does.

In a single day I wrote 2000k+ words, in 1 document, worked ~9.35hours according to my Union AI rep, took approximately 1.5hrs in breaks, and seem like a half decent employee.

Check out our conversation on Chat with 10-hour old Les Greys

Just incase you were wondering if I was working or not, I'm very self-directed.

A sprint to what? Product sprint, development sprint, founder sprint, focus sprint, or maybe more like a self-accelerator. Effective acceleration, I suppose.

The goal is the following (ideas started here):

1. Keep a stream live for 19 consecutive days, live-stream and stream of thought.

2. Create 3 artifacts; (1) a "self-accelerator" outline, (2) a pitch deck (Sequoia template), (3) a product mvp.

3. Move an idea from 0-to-1, in public, answering questions I have wondered, mostly alone, as a founder, a web3 tech adopter, and a Farcaster community member (I have casted most of them).

One of the biggest things I wish to accomplish, what can be done when you clear the floor of almost all distractions, and focus all the energy into an idea. Can you truncate 8-months of "meandering" into 19-days.

I personally have witnessed this answer to be yes. Not for the things I am attempting now, for other(s).

What can be done as a first-time founder, leaning heavily into a community of builders (Farcaster), with a "whimsical" idea, can we turn it into something real?

Let's see.

______________

What to measure the next 19 days + questions.

• Progress on 3 artifacts. (deck, mvp, growth and outline of

• Downtime/uptime of live stream.

• Number of meetings.

• Number of times I am not working on the idea (eg. losing connecting with the sense of flow and integration of the idea).

• As we move to smaller and smaller teams, can more and more be done with just 1-person that can focus?

• Is decentralization and terminally online highly connected?

• Is the future of compounding attention to grow it over minutes, hours, days, to produce new connections, new opportunities? (not weeks or months)

• What does it look like to take an idea and move it along the design process? (like the squiggle design)

  • this is one way, my way, some may view this as too much, too little, or somewhere in-between. I have found my brain struggles to stream without being connected to the public stream.

• This list will continue to grow..

“Working on stories and technology for the 22nd century.”

That’s far out and that’s intentional. In truth that's not that far out there but okay its out there, like 75yrs out, my kids will be alive, maybe even me. I mean we're over here obsessing about Roman Empires and Industrial Revolution.

My main purpose is to ensure you know, I don’t know where this lands, while holding some point of a future destination (1-liners included below), I’m working, constantly towards. 

To illustrate the importance of this point of trying to foresee the future I often use a standard story.

It is well known the drunken sailor who staggers to the left or right with n independent random steps will, on the average, end up about (square root n) steps from the origin. But if there is a pretty girl in one direction, then his steps will tend to go in that direction and he will go a distance proportional to n. 

In a lifetime of many, many independent choices, small and large, a career with a vision will get you a distance proportional to n, while no vision will get you only the distance (square root n). In a sense, the main difference between those who go far and those who do not is some people have a vision and the others do not and therefore can only react to the current events as they happen.

One of the main tasks of this course is to start you on the path of creating in some detail your vision of your future”

-Richard R. Hamming, Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

Farcaster has been such course for me. 

Grey consist of many topics. From fashion, to science, to technology, to random philosophical anecdotal perspectives. All anchored on a future with a dynamic perspective, shaped by the School of Farcaster. Some call it The Farcaster Aristocracy. 

Where technology underpins our society in a way we didn’t previously imagine. Where narratives and culture become hyper, where attention and focus enters a new arc, where religion and politics are undifferentiated, where children and families may appear. Where “humans” last forever. 

This is about discussing how society furthers their digital age, literally. The age of our digital selves.

Some may think about /gray-tribe, others may think about /network-states, others may think about /ai, many others may have /shower-thoughts. 

Yeah, I guess, those are definitely included. But those are end states, states that will also continue to evolve in itself. The greater work lies in how we get there. 

How /art evolves our language. How /love grows our families. How /war changes our history. How /ai helps us learn. How /creators grow our future. How /technology is so wildly cool. 

Shit, I don’t know, I just want to talk about web3 tech, Farcaster, digital identities, the future, my work learnings, amazing products, or teams, with a hope to land on some decent stuff from time to time. For all you cool cats in the world. And AI, ofc. 

I hope you join me, if you don’t, I get it, attention really is the modern day gold. I hope to earn it one day. 

Sorry for holding out on this tl;dr. I’d rather set expectations rather early, not later, these days.

1-liners I think describe these writings (the "fixed" future):

• Writing stories, working on technology, that drives a 22nd century narrative. 

• Bridging a divide between a digital and physical world. 

• The effective acceleration of a mid-tech-adopter into “brain-hood” (a ref to the mid-meme). 

Topics I’ll likely post (the "dynamic" journey):

• Books, 

• Farcaster, 

• Products & User Behavior, 

• Things I’m working on (data, side-project),

• Things I notice from day-to-day interactions that intersect with technology adoption, over arching global narratives, fashion, or families. 

Tempo may be 1-2 post a week via paragraph. 

Much love to you all, may our web3 / Farcaster journey endure a lifetime of friendship. 

• Les Greys 

I look forward to meeting so many of you one day.

For those that want to see earlier versions of things I write, before publishing you can visit my public Apple Notes RSS feed. 

When I was younger I remember my parents buying our first computer. It was a Compaq Pressario 5500. What a beauty. I learned how to take it apart, upgrade it, go Online, and surf the web, ofc.

What I don’t remember. The endless possibilities computers, the internet, or being Online, were promised to provide me.

I do remember, my time Online was limited due to the potential of “wasting” time on things “not valuable”. In other words, online was not presented to me as a tool of great opportunity, instead, a tool of great distraction. Not much different than the phone today, or the Vision Pro tomorrow.

When I got online, I did the thing, Napster, WINAMP, AOL chat rooms, flirt with girls. In truth, it’s sad to think how much time I squandered not exploring the depth of online knowledge. The other side, the internet was not primed with the wealth of information in existence today. Which grew with the rise of social media and blogs. Don’t believe those social media doomers.

After sometime, the Online became dull, I played Counterstrike at some point, but it required I go to my friend’s house to play.

I can’t recall a moment in my adolescent, young adult life, or even late 20s, where Online was sold to me as boundless knowledge and access, to grow oneself independent of institutions, “democratizing” the worlds education in such way Denzel Washington is the Equalizer. I was already ingrained with being Online was not what you do for a meaningful life.

From middle school on, computers, and online was nothing more than a product I used upto ~20% its utility, at most.

So, I took a walk. Alone. To explore things unknown. Moving Online. At great risk.

To use Online at >20%.

Today, I stand before many, in my mid 30s (yes, I took some years off), "reformed", and "baptized" from the holiness that is Online.

I did not just “go online”, I imbedded myself into communities inside this “online”. First it was an NFT community online, then it was a Twitter community online, now it’s a Farcaster community online.

I dropped out in search of something greater. The greener pastures that is, Online, and it did not disappoint. I can preach of my Online reformations. That’s not the point of this.

The point, more questions than answers.

• Why was I only using Online at ~20% its utility?

• What was my understanding, causing such misalignment in value between being online vs not?

If Onchain is the next Online, and if the majority of users utilize Onchain at 20% its value, and if those users never learn the value Onchain provides, what is the “reformation” process, “the walk”, they must travel to be become believers of this Onchain promise?

Which products bring people Onchain, without them knowing the promise Onchain provides?

A whole lot of what ifs and I honestly think this time it’s the same. But different.

Same as in, the middle of the road population, adopting Onchain will live oblivious to its value. As I did with Online.

Different as in, the middle of the road population, does not need to adopt new “get online” behavior, they need to do more “be online” behavior.

It’s harder to go from 0 to 1, than it is to go from 1 to 2. If you drive manual, you know this to be very true.

In other words, what is the new thing that being Online is layered with, providing Onchain value? Warpcast is a good modern day example of what this strategy may look like.

Where are the Napster, WINAMP, AOL Chat rooms, flirting with girls, $degen, blogs, social media, and so much more?

This is why it’s still so early. Based on these 2 things.

1. There are not enough products and/or organizations building innovative solutions in the market utilizing Onchain values.

2. There are not enough humans spending >50% of their time Online and/or 10% use products layered on Onchain tech.

I believe these to be true for the simple reason that I am a mid Online adopter, at least was. I am definitely an edge Onchain adopter. As many of you reading this are likely an edge too. So I am mapping my behavior as a mid as a universal truth of other mids adopting technology in the same way I would have as a mid.

The reason I don’t use any dates, the only thing that matters, where are those middle schoolers, where are they on their tech adoption journey, and what is the thing that they will want to do that brings value to their life?

The answer(s): Creator payments and status signaling on new interactive paradigms, leveraging AI, micro payments, and neck snapping cultural movements deeper into global society atop of new social prematives. It starts with art, moves into writing, and takes off with commerce in every industry.

More to come.

- It's the turn of the tide.

- Where we can begin to smell the open air and look ahead instead of behind.

- What shall we do with our time

- The life

- I see many things, swirling around in there. What do I want it all to become?

- It must become something.

- Looking around, I see buildings, they all feel empty.

- They look pretty from the outside but what is inside?

- I mean look at them. Don't they?

- In just my sight, there are over thousands of rooms. How many bodies fill them?

- And if there are thousands of bodies, think of all the bodies just confined to a room. All right next to each other

Before writing about the food and water, I feel a sense of responsibility to apply context for the reader. Also, this is purely based on my own personal experience. Dunno if this will work for anyone, would love to think it would.

CONTEXT

I have used cannabis as a form factor to achieve a certain peak mental state of open-mindedness. This habit started in 2017, stopped for a period of a year in 2019 and re-continued in 2020. That consumption would take place in the form of "dosage". Essentially, self medicating.

In all honesty, it has led to some of my most revolutionary thinking and feeling. More recently, consuming cannabis has felt more addiction and less achieve peak mental states. In this vein, I have been looking for a way out. While trying to stop, I realized I was actually addicted to it beyond the means of mental awareness.

The addiction became a behavior of creating mental space. This mental space is what would help me induce flow states. Here, I got stuck on a loop.

How do I induce my flow states if my behavior has become so closely connected to, go outside, consume cannabis, come inside, write and work? Rinse repeat. (I could induce flow states in other ways but this was the primary way)

Writing alone always helped me get into a flow state. Like now. No, I did not go outside this morning, although I should. It's only 4:30am, the streets feel so serene at these times.

Every time I walk outside my house the addiction comes to mind. Literally. I hated it and loved it. See cast.

Last context I'd apply is why I felt compelled to start using cannabis.

In 2017, several years after leaving the military, I tried it, again. The feeling of emotion I felt during that time was beyond the imagination I carried previously. I never knew I could feel those things. Cannabis connected me to a range of vulnerable emotions that helped me see a different side of myself and of the world. This vulnerability led me to a place of happiness I had never experienced before.

It taught me empathy. I deeply believe I have lived most of my life without the sense of empathy. For whatever reasons.

So, now that I finally hardcoded empathy into me and only need mental space. I had several questions to answer for myself.

• Can I induce my flow states without excess consumption?

• What use do I have for cannabis?

• How do I create this feeling of "high-ness" for my work?

CONSUMPTION

Introduce food and water.

Before starting, this is not a diet regiment or anything of any eating regiment I.e. no blueprint here. Although I do love his work, see cast.

I feel "high" now as I am writing this. Jamming to some Black Coffee mix from Apple Music and here we go... actually I changed my mind. Throwing on my favorite track of Fred Again. He just hits differently. Maybe it's the real vocals that make you feel the empathy.

Damn. Fred again really just gets you into some deep thoughts.

This has been an experiment for myself. Playing with proportions of food and spacing of time between meals. Less focused on what I eat, except for eliminating excess consumption.

The reason I haven't focused on "what" I eat, my family naturally eats fairly healthy. We have two kids that we are very health conscious for.

The most important factor has been reducing excess. Not eating large plates of food, the small "natural" sugar-stuff, the snacks, and the drinks.

Chasing a taste in my mouth that has become synonymous with flow and mental awareness.

The first thing I did was replace every drink with water. No more coffee, no more juices, no more anything except water. Actually, I sometimes do water with a scoop of cacao. Depends on when I crave it.

This change has allowed me to keep a very active taste bud and has helped me sustain a morning routine of waking up at 3:45am almost daily. With an alarm. Without an alarm I have a wakeup between 3-5am, it's contingent on my own children sleeping.

For father's day I had several sips of black coffee. It tasted delicious but I couldn't drink it all. Like I used to. I was a 2-cup a day kinda dude.

For breakfast, I started to skip here and there. All depends on what I feel.

My normal go-to is oatmeal with blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and/or banana, with a big scoop of almond butter. When I say go-to I mean this has been my breakfast of choice for over a decade now. My 4-year old will only eat this, EVERY MORNING, unless I make pancakes. She's a pancake monster. But who isn't?

For lunch, it's a toss up between pepperoni pizza from A-Pizza Brooklyn on bird road and 57th avenue. A home-made salad with a scoop of hummus, chicken with veggies, salmon with veggies, or left-overs from dinner. Sometimes I'll skip this because of the taste in my mouth and my slight sense of craving anything.

For dinner, see lunch options. I never skip dinner.

Essentially, I eat the same things I have been eating for years, except I alter the timing between meals and always drink a ton of water. I think this may be considered or called fasting.

Chasing a feeling and taste in my mouth that are distinct from anytime I eat something.

I can now literally taste my own taste buds and feel how my body feels when I consume foods.

I think the main reason for this change is cutting the excess small stuff. You know that thing people say? "It's the small things...".

Yesterday, for fathers day. It was the first time I went to a restaurant and couldn't finish all my food, while still having an appetite to eat more. Not because I was full, nor because it tasted bad, my taste buds were full. I was overwhelmed by the amount of flavor. The coffee, the eggs, the potatoes, the bread with butter. Greenstreet Cafe is a go-to here in Miami, not the best, but a staple. The food is predictable decent. But all that taste was just too much. I tasted the salt more than anything.

Sidenote.

The wildness of the universe, this song just came on.

So to summarize my consumption.

• eat smaller proportions.

• space eating out depending on taste in mouth and feeling

• only water as a beverage (small tastings during shared moments)

"HIGH"

Leaving the "high-ness" for last.

Let's go back to the original prompt:

"I think I may have finally learned how to get “high” with food and water. (cutting out all the excess consumption)"

I can't remember who and where someone responded something about "going slightly hungry" I thought it was on this thread of cast.

If I'm chasing this state of "high-ness" which is really just a flow state, how can I more predictably and organically make it happen?

I was less concerned with predictability. Remember I have children. I wanted more organic. I never thought I could use food as a mechanism for feeling "high". Also, this "high", a sense of flow, is always downstream of my sense of the world.

If my sense of the world was highly altered by my consumption of cannabis, there should never have been a reason for me to believe that I couldn't achieve a similar sense of the world with other forms of consumption. Yet, I lived believing that at some point.

I continuously find myself being wrong, see cast.

When I found this new organic sense of the world, through my day-to-day behavior of eating, predictability came downstream of it. And instead of chasing a physical behavior of going outside I can tell how "high" I am or will be based on how hungry I am, what taste I have in my mouth, and asking myself.

How do I feel?

Like right now, I'm feeling slightly hungry, already drank 3 glasses of water, equating to around 4-5cups, been awake for 3hours, and feeling as high as I did when I previously used cannabis as a crutch.

Food & water is the first and final abstraction of reality.

Going to go for a walk outside and then make breakfast for the family. See you all later alligators.

Sam's creations were anthropomorphic expressions of himself. The expression of a mind.

Each day, Sam attracted a sea of intrigued spectators. They'd stretch their necks, squint their eyes, and tilt their heads, trying to decipher the work. His methods were peculiar, his end products even more so. Whispers always filled the crowd.

"Why doesn't his jacket have a sleeve?"

"Why is his hair half cut?"

"Why, Why, Why?"

Till the right question arises, "What are you creating?".

The public normally doesn't understand Sam's methods or his vision. In truth, his human wearables may seem like an enigma, a source of intrigue with more questions than answers. But isn't this what every amazing child does, provide more question than answers?

For Sam, these human wearables represented the human condition in all its complex, beautiful, and chaotic glory. They were a manifestation of his worldview - recycled, repurposed, and yet, boldly distinctive. Each object was a piece of his soul, a testament to his resilience, a testament to the beauty of eccentricity in a world too often tethered to the conventional mind.

Each day, as the city fell asleep, Sam takes a step back, observe his day's work, and smiles. It doesn't matter if people understood or not; he was creating, expressing himself in the most unconventional manner. And while his creations earned him odd looks, they also granted him a sense of purpose and satisfaction.

In the end, wasn't that what truly matters?