Thought Leadership: Earlier this week, I began reading Robert McFarland’s latest book, Is a River Alive? The book explores the transformative idea that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law. I wrote about this idea in a 2021 Forbes article, and I am aware that it may strike many people as a “fringe” idea. Nevertheless, versions of “the rights of nature” have already been adopted into law in Ecuador, Bolivia, New Zealand, Colombia, India, and Canada. Years ago, I came across a quote from Joi Ito, and it has always stuck with me: “One hundred years from now, the role of science and technology will be about becoming part of nature rather than trying to control it.” I would now add that the role of law must also be added to the statement. Unless we come to better understand nature’s regenerative wisdom and then learn to apply it to our understanding of ourselves and the world, I fear our future will be less than optimal.
Think Cheap: AI is everywhere these days, but many people (myself included) may be overthinking the technology. Implementing AI into your organization–whether in a boardroom or a classroom–need not be expensive. This article outlines 6 ways classrooms can be “reim(ai)gined” for less than $50 using artificial intelligence.
Think Again: As the above article suggests, there will be many benefits to implementing AI. There will also be risks. If you are a CEO, CTO, or CIO, I encourage you to read this Harvard Business Review article: Organizations Aren’t Ready for the Risks of Agentic AI.
Think in Questions: Here is a troubling question which I have been pondering, and I encourage you to spend some time thinking about it as well: What happens when we trust the voice in our earbuds more than the voice in our heads? As this excellent article (“What Happens the Day After Humanity Creates AGI?) points out, AI might not only augment ourselves, it might undermine ourselves. (I hate to sound like a “nervous nellie” regarding AI but just as many of us should have taken more seriously our responsibility to contemplate the negative aspects of smartphones and social media before they were unleashed on society, we must not repeat this same mistake with regard to AI.)
Thoughts from Beyond: Close your eyes and touch your nose. It’s an easy thing to do, but explaining how you can do it when you don’t engage any of the five “traditional” senses of sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell is a trickier proposition? The answer is that proprioception–sometimes called the “sixth sense”–is defined as the awareness of body position and limb location. In more scientific terms, the body translates muscle tension (i.e., whether a muscle is stretching or contracting) into actionable and accurate information. What is interesting to me is that proprioception is so “close” to us that we aren’t even conscious of the sense. This begs the question (to me at least): If proprioception is a sense that we aren’t conscious of, are there still other senses of which we are not aware? If so, can we find and develop these senses? When I think about the deep future, I can’t help but imagine that we will develop new ways of seeing, hearing, and being.
Afterthought: “What will undo any boundary is the awareness that it is our vision–and not what we are viewing–that is limited.” James Carse
