BlogmyQuery – BMQ

One of the more compelling insights to come from the Joe Rogan interview with Elon Musk is this idea that humanity is actively creating “giant cybernetic collectives.”

Through our participation in social media platforms and on the internet in general, we are assimilating knowledge and building connections at a rate that vastly exceeds everything that has ever happened in human history.

But there’s an ominous underbelly to all this novel construction.

We grow these giant cybernetic collectives by feeding them information, and this is creating massive, centralized cyborgs—vast networks of people, technology, and content. Examples of these centralized cyborgs include:

• Google
• YouTube
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter

Because we feed and access these cyborgs directly, they have grown to become destinations rather than simply serving as highways of information. As such, these cyborgs now enjoy incredible leverage and power over their participatory nodes—you and me!

In other words, they have become centralized platforms we must visit in order to produce and consume whatever information is relevant to a particular platform.

They own the means of production and distribution. They effectively own all the content. They decide what happens—who’s in, who’s out, what you can see, what you can do, you name it. They are in charge.

If you play this timeline out 10, 20, even 50 years into the future, the situation just looks more and more bleak for endpoint nodes (again, that’s us!).

The centralized borgs grow bigger and more powerful—thanks to our input, no less—while our freedom and influence decline relative to them.

It doesn’t take genius-level insight to see this road is leading us to a dubious destination. And it makes one wonder: Is there something we can do to change this course?

I’ll be honest—it looks as though we are on this inexorable path of building these giant cybernetic collectives.

But before they swallow us whole, we can at least entertain the idea of decentralization and what it looks like if we are responsible for our own means of production.

Watch this video and discover the key difference between centralization and decentralization.

The Joe Rogan podcast with Elon Musk was one of the most important events of 2018, and no—I’m not being hyperbolic.

If you thought this interview was all about Elon hitting a spliff, you…may have been misled slightly.

In reality, Elon helps us peek behind the curtain to get a glimpse of the future:

• Can we dig underground tunnels to alleviate traffic?
• What does your brain look like on artificial intelligence?
• Can you control AI with your thoughts?
• Can you live forever with AI?
• Can social media and happiness co-exist?
• Are we living in a simulation?
• Flying cars? Electric planes? Cars with robot eyes?

Invigorating topics, but here’s the thing—Elon often speaks in a guarded, almost cryptic manner, and Joe doesn’t really know enough about these topics to press him for critical details.

This is precisely why I produced a supplemental, 13-part video series on the Joe Rogan interview with Elon Musk.

So many of the topics they touch on require massive illumination, and there’s so much additional value to uncover here. Fortunately, that’s where I come in!

I’ve included all the segments below, but I’ve highlighted the really good ones in yellow. If you want to maximize your time, start with those videos and then branch out to any others that interest you.

Segment 1: A Boring Intro — Flamethrowers, tunnels, and what’s really happening inside the mind of a genius?

Segment 2, Part 1: AI and Giant Cybernetic Collectives — Is AI going to kill us all? Are we already cyborgs? If we can solve the bandwidth problem, will we merge with AI and become something else?

Segment 2, Part 2: Neurolink — How do we “talk” to AI? How will AI shape the future of human evolution? What’s the near-term future for AI?

Segment 3: Social Media and Happiness — “Happiness is reality minus expectations.”

Segment 4: The Simulation — Are we living in a simulation? Is our creation of Giant Cybernetic Collectives a response to universal entropy? If your sense of “where you are” is simply a product of your perceptions, then what is reality?

Segment 5: Teslas and Easter Eggs — Elon talking about Teslas is the best possible advertisement for Teslas.

Segment 6: Tunnels, a 3D Solution to a 2D Problem — Why don’t we have flying cars? Why bother when you can have mag-lev in a vacuum tunnel?

Segment 7: Just Plane Sad about Carbon — Elon has designed an electric airplane, but he says electric cars, solar energy, and batteries are “more important” right now. And how does he feel about carbon and climate change?

Segment 8: The Tesla Subsidy — Elon falls flat in his defense of the economic subsidy Tesla has leveraged to accelerate sales and gain market share.

Segment 9: Teslas, AI, and Robot Eyes — Auto-pilot and traction control are examples of AI already built into production Teslas. The incredibly quick response time of electric motors makes this possible.

Segment 10: Topical Soup — Lawsuits, the 1% dominating the 99%, Elon wishes politicians were better at science, Tesla is making solar panels, and is Elon gonna take on air conditioning?

Segment 11: Spark of Genius — Elon hits a spliff, but did he inhale? A weird anecdote about dead horses in Manhattan suggests he got his mind right. Joe brings the cringe with more “you’re a special genius snowflake” talk, but this leads to an interesting consideration: What is the nature of genius? Elon calls it a “never-ending explosion.”

Segment 12: Are We There Yet? — Elon offers up his vision of an exciting future.

Watch my video on how I’m changing my approach with Thesis to include a lot more Focus.

When I launched Thesis 2 in October of 2012, my goal was to create something that could serve as the foundation for any WordPress design.

That’s why I spent the next 2 years working on Skins, which are simply different designs that run on top of Thesis.

And lemme tell ya—Thesis Skins are just awesome:

• They’re incredibly efficient;
• They share functionality that makes them easy to learn and use; and
• They provide users with lots of non-destructive customization options.

There’s just one little problem, though—almost nobody uses them the right way.

Too many Skins…

The issue with Thesis Skins is the same issue that plagues WordPress Themes—there are too damn many of ’em!

Over the last 6 years, DIYthemes has released 6 official Skins and also maintained two others that have never seen the light of day.

Because of this, I’ve mostly had to spend my time on routine maintenance and compatibility updates instead of “going deep” into any one Skin and creating something truly remarkable.

I had always thought I wanted to lead a burgeoning Thesis ecosystem that would be flush with Skins, Boxes, and anything else you might need to crush it online.

It took me 6 years to realize the end result of that approach would simply turn Thesis into WordPress-lite.

It also took me 6 years to realize I simply don’t have any passion for a quantitative approach to product development.

I only want to Focus on quality!

For the last 8 years, every bit of my work besides Thesis has been qualitative in nature.

The Golden Ratio Typography Calculator, for example, is all about perfect typesetting in any environment (digital or print!). It is a highly focused project with infinite applicability. Quality.

But because of the nature of Skins, my work with Thesis has morphed into this quantitative drudgery that feels a lot more like running a marathon than exploring the wonders of the universe.

No more.

From now on, I’m only going to Focus on the remarkable leverage I can provide for your website.

Watch my video about the incremental approach—the cheapest, smartest, and easiest way to build a website (and a business!)

One thing that’s always annoyed me about contract web design and development is this idea that you can actually pay for a finished product to be delivered within a particular time frame.

Nothing actually works this way. Fact is, there is no “I built this thing and now it’s done” scenario with a website (and especially a business site).

Real progress is incremental. For any significant project, there is no quantum leap from zero to done.

Failure to understand this is the number one source of frustration and angst for people trying to build business websites.

Here’s the deal:

Unlike other big projects such as houses, which are pretty much immutable once constructed, websites are dynamic, adaptable things. Hell, that’s what makes them so appealing and useful!

But people simply aren’t accustomed to thinking in these terms. We tend to think in terms of “done” or “not done,” as opposed to a specific point on some evolutionary arc.

This evolutionary quality is precisely why people struggle to work with developers and designers. Especially with business websites, there’s no point where you can really say, “Ok, we’re done here.”

The implications are huge. The natural evolution of websites means:

• Everything must be viewed through a long term lens because adjustments will be necessary over time.
• Therefore, it makes no sense to hire someone for a set fee to build a website. You’ll expect a finished product, and there’s no such thing!
• Stop trying to “finish” your site. There is no “finished” state—you’re either in a state of continuous adaptation or apathetic abandonment.

Bottom line: When building a business website, you can only do what you can do right now.

Because of this, it’s vitally important to understand the process and only commit to what you can achieve with the resources you have right now.

I’ll leave you with a quote from my video on the incremental approach:

You can’t cheat the process. You can’t go from zero to hero unless you’ve got massive resources. You can’t do it. And even if you do it then, I’d say it’s stupid to do it…

The knowledge, and the experience, and the context, and all the information that comes along with taking an incremental process to your goal is critical to actually achieving that goal in the end.

Watch my video and see why it’s so important to minimize digital waste.

Are you aware of how much digital waste your WordPress website is producing?

Did you know this waste carries an actual cost for both you and your website’s visitors?

Digital waste is an especially poignant topic in open source software (like the WordPress ecosystem), where the barrier to contribution is extremely low.

Wherever you have a lower barrier to entry, you also have lower quality output on average.

Consider, for example, the WordPress Plugin market, which is brimming with “solutions” to every problem (and non-problem) on the internet.

The general perception about Plugins is that you can find one to solve any problem you might have.

But this is precisely the wrong outlook.

The question you should be asking yourself is not, “Can I find a Plugin to do what I need?”

But rather, “Can I find an efficient, organized, and well-maintained Plugin to do [x] that I can rely on both now and in the future?”

Obviously, the average WordPress user is not equipped to ask or answer this question.

Which leads us to a pretty huge implication…

Developers—not end users, who bear the actual cost—are responsible for digital waste

When it comes to websites and digital waste, end users are just pawns in the game. After all, they’ll simply use whatever solutions are both popular and accessible.

This basic fact puts the responsibility for managing digital waste squarely on developers.

Unfortunately, developers have very little incentive to minimize digital waste because this process:

• Is difficult
• Takes a lot of time
• Requires care

For software businesses, these all add up to costs, and in the absence of external pressure, costs are antithetical to a typical profit motive.

As a result, most software companies essentially cannot afford to care about digital waste unless it impacts performance in a significant way.

At first glance, this seems like a dark and gloomy indictment of the web software industry, but the news isn’t all bad because…

The need for efficiency increases every day

The external pressures to reduce digital waste are mounting with each passing second.

People with poor connections on mobile devices still want—and sometimes need—immediate access to information.

Of course, the presence of digital waste slows this access time considerably while also increasing the bandwidth costs associated with access.

And the pressures don’t stop there.

We know from both Amazon and Google, for example, that customers spend more money more often as site speed improves.

This means there is indeed a profit motive attached to the reduction of digital waste.

But that’s not all.

When we explored the idea of centralized vs. decentralized platforms, we noted that the technical debt of these platforms—which is a first cousin of digital waste—is heaped on you, the user!

In other words, even though WordPress users aren’t necessarily responsible for the creation of digital waste, they will indeed be responsible for dealing with it whenever a critical juncture arises in the future.

(“Critical junctures” are simply points in the future where things break or where it becomes obvious that something must be done to rein in the waste and debt saddling a particular website.)

If I’ve learned anything from a decade in the software industry, it’s that people hate dealing with messes they didn’t consciously create.

And when this costs them money, it makes them feel cheated.

So there’s a basic human incentive in play here, too. Sooner or later, people will “wake up” and see the writing on the wall:

Reducing digital waste is a way of ensuring a more manageable and less complicated future.