I apologize for starting this newsletter with so much excitement and then disappearing for many months. I had intended to go dark for a few weeks while moving my home and business, then went into overdrive with consulting client work stretching my days to capacity (and beyond). Those pressures never let off, and I was confronted with the reality that I didn’t have the capacity to sustain my passion projects at the current pace (the passion projects being thoughtfully-crafted weekly episodes of the show and the newsletter).
Yet I love doing this newsletter and the show so much, at no point did I ever want to stop. The connections and community and ongoing dialogue of important ideas make life so much richer and more rewarding. I was also increasingly asking myself what I really want to achieve with these written and video expressions, and since I had already stopped for a few months at this point I decided not to start up again until I had my mission and a sustainable execution plan all in place.
So here we are, and I’m more fired up than ever to dive into this. Regarding the newsletter, my intention has always been for this to be the central hub of the science, tech and human-enhancement content production I do, plus a distillation of my thinking and curation of the vast information that crosses my radar.
I have realized that weekly is too frequent, both for me to sustain and considering how often news arises that meets the hurdle of being worthy of presenting to you (news that I hope lies outside of your normal channels, I’d like this curation to be full of fascinating surprises). I don’t just want to send a stream of nice-to-know stories, but rather the most essential material. Therefore, I will now send the newsletter typically once a month, potentially up to twice a month depending on the volume of share-worthy information that has arisen. In other words, the hurdle is going up on what I present here, so the quality and value of each issue is jumping considerably.
My reflection on what I want to achieve here has also led to some revelations. While I love the fantastical visions of the future, and will sprinkle them in when relevant, I’ve realized my greatest desire is to make a meaningful impact on people’s lives by sharing more actionable info and insights on emerging knowledge and technologies. So I will lean increasingly toward new tech and ideas that can start changing our lives for the better now or in the near future, while connecting the dots to where this seems likely to evolve further down the horizon.
So much is being discovered and discussed so quickly that it’s hard to separate what matters from the endless hype. I hope this can be a source to do that. As always, I would love to hear what you think about this emerging direction for the newsletter and the Podcast/YouTube show (please reply to this email if you have any thoughts, or if this direction is not for you there’s an “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of each newsletter).
I’ll share more thoughts soon on my vision for connecting future and emerging technologies into our lives to become more capable and effective across our personal and professional priorities.
Excited to be back!
-August