background
i trained in spain as an editor in the early part of the 2000s. but as someone who always blogged better than he authored, i already had the custom of attributing my ideas through the tool and habit of hyperlinking.
attribution is really important: not because it inevitably takes us down a peg or two, although it does. more importantly, an outcome with shape to it is more valuable than an outcome, full stop.
the memex machine
i realised this consciously ever since reading vannevar bush’s treatise on human thought: “as we may think”.
you can find it in “the atlantic” to this day:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/
in it, using the immediate post-war tech available, and any future tech extrapolated from the same, he suggested a machine called the #memex. it would enable human thought to the extent that we would not only be able to store outcomes — what those most interested in making money would consider a product or service to be scaled up massively — but store the trails of thought that would always lead up previously (and to my mind — and bush’s — also preciously) to such outcomes.
because when a thought is a reel of thoughts not just a pic which snaps shut on time … this is when we have a human being rather than a machine.
the implications of attribution’s fact
the result of all the above? NOTHING we think up is independent of ANYTHING. as a consequence, it is tantamount — just about — to daylight (and more importantly, night-time) robbery to claim one has an exclusive right to make money out of any idea “you might EVER have”.
you don’t agree? then it isn’t. but then you’re a genius in the divisive sense most of society understands: that is, very few of us can or will be this figure; and most of us will never be anywhere near.
which is elitism to the max, in fact.
only i don’t agree with this. i don’t believe such elitist approaches accurately reflect the human brain and how it best works. and when leaders in different fields impress on us to believe that they do reflect the state of human thought, and then build business models on such belief systems, we get a type of tech-kryptonite thrust into the most vulnerable core of human experience.
my experience, meantime, as a language teacher, then facilitator, then enabler (the progression taking place out of what almost became a fanatical frustration with the rank incompetence of traditional learning paths) showed me ALL humans can radically improve their thought processes, given the right environment.
and where processes can be improved dramatically, surprising — even shocking — outcomes can be achieved. and so i saw it happen. and was a convert.
platform genesis
this is why both my son, from whom i am now deeply estranged, and myself worked together for a while on a platform we named “platform genesis”.
the idea is that all of us, all human beings, can find the right tools to uncover some aspect of genius in our souls, hearts, and grey cells. it’s not the preserve of intellect: it’s mainly the preserve of confidence in oneself — whether one has it or not. if one doesn’t, intellect cannot follow. if one does, a happy series of accidents — where a given — will lead to your genius in some way or other.
my happy path to my genius
a few minutes after the photo that follows was taken i met the muse of my life. it’s hard to admit that nothing i have thought up since 2016 that evening in dublin on the banks of the river liffey would now exist if we hadn’t met and spoken for three hours, as we shared a meal on the roof terrace of “the woollen mills”.
i had lost my fear of flying the day before, you see: the 15th of june of that same year, when i flew into dublin on ryanair for the first time, for precisely the meeting that would then take place on what was my birthday the following day. being the 16th. coincidently called, in ireland mainly, “bloomsday”. (and so don’t you think it’s cool to have a birthday called “bloomsday”? the day you are born being that, i mean.
don’t you?)
and so i literally lost my fear of flying that june. actually, truly, in a second. a total flip. a click of the brain’s chip that’s never clicked back.
and therefore in my wider life, too: because i assure you, quite objectively, i have a better brain now at 60-something than i have ever had the whole of my life before. and it’s NOT because of intelligence that i am far more intelligent than i could once have imagined myself becoming. it’s because of the confidence that slowly seeped into and then infused my brain, my heart, and my soul … as an utterly natural consequence of meeting the muse of my life.
the meaning of this … for me
bringing together the threads of this article, then, i now conclude:
1. none of my ideas since are mine to exploit exclusively for my own benefit.
2. none of my ideas since are mine.
3. none of my ideas are yours.
4. none of my ideas are yours to exploit exclusively for your benefit.
5. all of the ideas which have emerged after this meeting of ours, and precisely because we met, belong to no one — and therefore belong, altogether, to a whole planet and creative ecosystem.
because it WAS a sort of magic: and magic, the genius of genie, once uncorked CANNOT be boxed into a business model for the benefit of the few.
conclusion
when we upturn a paradigm, we can choose to leave the business model — and therefore the hegemony — untouched. or we can choose to upturn two paradigms simultaneously: the “thing” itself (for want of a better phrase), and how we get it out there as fast as possible.
what’s the problem i’m looking to solve with the #gutenbergofintuitivethinking and the #intuitionvalidationengine? and #intuitionvalidation more broadly?
it’s not #darkfigure and #neocrime (only). it’s not #wastefulmeetings (only).
it’s not #loopholes and other zemiological activities (only).
it’s not the inability of #specialisms to duly and safely communicate across their knowledge lines (only).
rather, it’s something which informs all these use-cases — and many many more.
one UNCOMMON denominator: a denominator that connects everything in human experience since the dawn of rhymes:
truth. a concept of an absolute and indivisible truth.
mil williams, stockholm sweden, 5th april 2023
so we kick relativism finally into the long grasses, where it may be admired and remembered but not treasured. nor missed. again.
accept and underline, therefore, and deliver on and re-establish, as a result, that a VALIDATED truth may be something we can establish ABSOLUTELY.
not universal truth: i’m not sustaining this. we can still be dependent on circumstance and context. but in each of these, an unattackable truth.
just this: impossible to break.
this i believe. deeply. firmly. and now till i die.
and if so, even if only gently, this then leads this article to its final statements.
all of the above says to me only one thing: i need to know what i owe my muse. because if any of the above can happen to any useful degree one day, it will happen one day only because of the impact she had on me, that day.
it’s consequently NOT a fixation at all i have for you, my dear muse, but an almost overpoweringly intellectual — as well as obviously emotional — demand to work out to what extent i was just a lever someone pulled.
not that YOU pulled it, either. i don’t think this for a minute. no.
but a tool or extension of someone or something out there … why is this so impossible to propose or contemplate? or prosper as an assertion to be justly considered?
do you understand me now?
do you?
mil's page 