EN·IT·HU·AR

The Context

Themes and trends in technology and society, and why they matter

The Context helps you gain a broader understanding of why what we are observing is happening, what its possible consequences are, and how we can turn that understanding into action.

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The AI Paradox - The Context S07E05 The Power Of The Command Line - The Context S07E04 Your New Superpower Turns Ideas Into Reality - The Context S07E03 What is Scalability? - The Context S07E02 The Unreasonable Scalability of AI Radical Human Longevity - The Context S06E08 Interoperable Online Human Relationships - The Context S06E07 Become An Actioneer - The Context S06E06 My Vipassana Silent Retreat Experience - The Context S06E05 Don't be a Zombie, be a Luminary! The Context S06E04 Supporting Competence, the Example of Starship - The Context S06E03 AI Progress Can't be Stopped but Must be Managed - The Context S06E02 The Context S06E01: Quieting the Busy Mind The Context S05E17: Half Life of Skills The Context S05E16: Talking to AIs The Context S05E15: Remote Work is the Future (and Present) The Context S05E14: Living with Bots The Context S05E13: Education Created South Korea's Success The Context S05E12: Bear Market The Context S05E11: Memetic Engineering The Context S05E10: Bitcoin Doesn’t Care The Context S05E09: Financial Freedom for All Indians The Context S05E08: The Cult of Done Manifesto The Context S05E07: Ukraine Will Win The Context S05E06: Improve the News The Context S05E05: Standup The Context S05E04: Excellence or Mediocrity? The Choice is Ours The Context S05E03: DAOs can Scale to Meet Our Challenges The Context S05E02: Web3 Will Be Important, and it Will Take Time The Context S05E01: Don't Believe That Bitcoin is Wasteful The Context S04E26: Resilience Through Necessary Inefficiency The Context S04E25: Methods and Tools for Learning in the 21st Century The Context S04E24: Bitcoin Improves the Sovereignty of Nations The Context S04E23: AI's Astonishing Progress The Context S04E22: Digital Identities: True names, Pseudonyms, Anonyms The Context S04E21: Metaverse Infrastructure and Business Models The Context S04E20: Becoming a Grandfather The Context S04E19: Self Driving Cars and Blockchain Oracles The Context S04E18: Dubai Will Transform The Context S04E17: Waves of Adoption in Crypto The Context S04E16: The Internet of Things The Context S04E15: Attention Management The Context S04E14: Unlearning The Context S04E13: Can Support Ever Shine? The Context S05E12: A New Era of Humanoid Robots The Context S04E11: Permeable Business Models The Context S04E10: The Challenges of Abundance The Context S04E09: Glorious Times The Context S04E08: Should AI be Dumb Instead of Smart? The Context S04E07: Is Space Tourism Worth it? The Context S04E06: Megaverse, Multiverse and Metaverse The Context S04E05: Self Driving Cars are Here: Are We Ready? The Context S04E04: Defi - Inclusive Opportunity for a New Finance The Context S04E03: Understanding Aliens Through AIs The Context S04E02: Living with AIs The Context S04E01: El Bitcoinado The Context S03E32: Season Finale The Context S03E31: Torre Coach Democratizing Coaching The Context S03E30: Serendipity The Context S03E29 Learn to Earn The Context S03E28: BitClout is the Next Generation of Social Networks The Context S03E27: Should You Care About NFTs? The Context S03E26: Cognitive Freedom and Psychedelics The Context S03E25: Taking the First Step The Context S03E24: Dreaming Impossible Dreams The Context S03E23: We Are All On Mars The Context S03E22: Digital Biology The Context S03E21: Agricultural technology The Context S03E20: Jolting Decentralization The Context S03E19: The Power of Podcasts The Context S03E18: Nations Evolve, too The Context S03E17: Jolting Creativity The Context S03E16: Tools For Resilience The Context S03E15: Jolting Space! The Context S03E14: AI Driven Design: Protein Folding The Context S03E13: The Jolting Technologies Courses The Context S03E12: Collective Intelligence The Context S03E11: Intelligence Augmentation The Context S03E10: Fragmenting Reality The Context S03E09: Elon Musk Is Jolting The Context S03E08: Intel Is Jolting The Context S03E07: Oculus 2 - Building a New Reality The Context S03E06: NVIDIA Proves that AI Is Jolting The Context S03E05: Singularities The Context S03E04: Applying Elon Musk's first principles thinking The Context S03E03: Policies and Monopolies The Context S03E02: Universal Basic Income The Context S03E01: The Future of Work The Context S02E24: We Are All Ambiverts The Context S02E23: When a Friend Dies The Context S02E22: Scaling Consulting The Context S02E21: Liberating Content The Context S02E20: Upgrading the World via Software Defined Objects The Context S02E19: Sustaining Sustainability The Context S02E18: Nurturing Curiosity The Context S02E17: Thinking the Unthinkable The Context S02E16: Topic Extraction The Context S02E15: Open Live Pitching of Startups to Investors The Context S02E14: Your Home the Spaceship The Context S02E13: Open Source Fighting COVID-19

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Interoperable Online Human Relationships - The Context S06E07 You may not realize it, but there are important connections linking emails, short vertical videos, and infographics - three of the most popular mediums for online content. Their ability to effectively engage… Become An Actioneer - The Context S06E06 Actioneer is a new AI-powered startup coaching platform seeking to make high-quality advice and mentorship affordable and accessible to founders globally, helping unlock entrepreneurship and enable more people to find solutions, create… My Vipassana Silent Retreat Experience - The Context S06E05 Recently, I attended a nine-day Vipassana silent retreat, and I’d like to share my experience with you. Firstly, my perspective is limited. I’ll describe the organization and activities of the retreat I… Don't be a Zombie, be a Luminary! The Context S06E04 What are the implications of advanced Artificial Intelligence on our understanding of consciousness and self-awareness? We have to strive for self-discovery and introspection, embracing a "luminary" mindset, fully aware and engaged with… Supporting Competence, the Example of Starship - The Context S06E03 The recent SpaceX Starship test launch has important implications for space exploration. Is the media focusing too much on the negatives, such as the explosion, and overlooking the intricate process and the… AI Progress Can't be Stopped but Must be Managed - The Context S06E02 AI is experiencing jolting change, with advancements such as ChatGPT and GPT4, but there are limits to individual and organizational adaptability. I was invited to sign an open letter that asks to… Quieting the Busy Mind - The Context S06E01 I lived alone for three months while my wife was in Seoul, for the first time in 40 years. In today's world we receive a constant stimulation of inputs, and requests for… Half Life of Skills - The Context S05E17 When deciding what is worth developing in terms of professional skills, there is an important concept that I would like to talk about: the Half Life of Skills. I'm often asked for… Talking to AIs - The Context S05E16 We often imagine technology in our science fiction scenarios that is very different from what happens when it becomes available. Today, we are starting to talk about Artificial Intelligence that is not… Living with Bots - The Context S05E14 Are you worried about bots, and spam accounts and fake accounts on the various social media platforms? You could decide that this worry should be translated into some kind of eradication of… Education Created South Korea's Success - The Context S05E13 What can profoundly define the trajectory of a country over the course of a couple of generations? In the case of South Korea, the answer is clear: It is the belief in… Bear Market - The Context S05E12 We are in a bear market and more and more countries in the world will very likely declare over the course of the next few weeks or months to be in an… Memetic Engineering - The Context S05E11 The purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk is a concrete step in understanding how the evolution of ideas can be turned into mathematics and mimetic engineering, which will play an increasingly fundamental… Bitcoin Doesn’t Care - The Context S05E10 Does Bitcoin matter? Does Bitcoin care? What do you think about it? The President of the United States believes that Bitcoin indeed matters. He labeled it a potential threat to the national… Financial Freedom for All Indians - The Context S05E09 What is going to take to move Bitcoin and Blockchain and crypto from 10s of millions, maybe 100 million to billions of people adopting it and using it daily. I'm here back… The Cult of Done Manifesto - The Context S05E08 “The Cult of Done Manifesto” by Bre Pettis and Kyo Stark states that there are three stages of being: not knowing, action, completion. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action… Ukraine Will Win - The Context S05E07 Russia's attack against Ukraine is the largest conflict in Europe since World War Two. There are countries that believe to be far enough to be able to ignore it, or to take… Improve the News - The Context S05E06 I am recording this episode of “The Context” on the day that Russia invaded Ukraine. I don't know what will happen in the next few days, but it’s guaranteed that there will… Standup - The Context S05E05 Have you ever looked into the socks drawer of a horse? It's full of socks in ones, twos and threes, completely useless. Did you laugh? Didn't you? Well, that is the point.… Excellence or Mediocrity? The Choice is Ours - The Context S05E04 We want to excel, to succeed, we want to continue to adapt to the changing conditions around us. But, statistically speaking, we are average. How can we overcome the contradiction? If you… DAOs Promise to Scale to Meet Our Challenges - The Context S05E03 After corporations and our democracies, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) promise to scale even further our ability to organize. The goal is to achieve our goals in a transparent and accountable manner, and… Web3 Will Be Important, and it Will Take Time - The Context S05E02 Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and now Web3. Will we ever stop? Probably not, but Web3 is going to represent an important evolution of what we can do on the internet. When the… Don't Believe That Bitcoin is Wasteful - The Context S05E01 We are building the global financial and economic infrastructure for the 21st century, the Bitcoin Network. You hear a lot of superficial arguments of how Bitcoin is wasteful and must be stopped,… Remote Work is the Future (and Present) - The Context S05E15 The push by some companies to go back to the office full time is profoundly misguided. The remote work environment is conducive to increased productivity, better work, life integration, and is the…

Why "The Context"?

"I have always refrained from commenting on current news. On one hand I didn't believe that I would necessarily have something to say on what was being reported in the media on a daily basis or even a monthly basis. And on the other hand, I felt and still feel that the value of such commentary diminishes very rapidly with time."

So instead of chasing the news, The Context looks at the themes and trends underneath it, aiming to build a shared understanding of the most important challenges for humankind, and how we can turn understanding into action.

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