Question: why have goalposts for machines been allowed to historically move — yet for humans as a species we are consistently obliged to remain static?

That is, machines can chase us, and in fact that is their purpose — but humanity as a species can never aspire to growing out of its collective past.

It may only resign itself to being caught up with. Only this. Only that.

But who decided this? Who took this decision? Who made out that it must be like this?

And why?

My name is Mil Williams. I’d like to tell a story. The story involves believing in human capacity.

One of my dearest roles at the moment is in the field of residential adult autism. Here, our training demands we observe 100 percent the legal figures of the UK Mental Capacity Act (MCA) 2005.

Look it up, if you wish. But right now all you need to know is that it requires us to allow all people in our care the right to reset and reboot, whatever they’ve just done.

We therefore assume, by democratic law, the capacity of all the people we work with — until, and only until, it becomes absolutely impossible to continue doing so. But then again, when the latter happens, we are equally obliged to be observant to the chance that the original capacity might return soon, in order that we facilitate its reintroduction.

At the time of writing this content I have just turned 60 years old. Much of my time on the earth has involved struggling to make ordinary people realise how truly extraordinary they are. Just as in socialcare as per the MCA, so in my life and times every single day I have existed.

I take as my tangible inspiration the sector of film-making, which formed the basis of my first degree, Film & Literature. Billions in revenues — probably trillions — have been generated over the last century.

It’s very very profitable to do things the movie-making way.

I studied the paradigm and subject in the early 1980s, at the UK University of Warwick; and as Jobs before me, I now have reason to join some of my dots up as a result.

First, a distinction I lately like to make:

• What we call #tech is not indistinguishable from #it, just as the #www is not the #internet.

• In #it, equally of late, but actually from the beginning of the creature’s time, its proponents and advocates, in a kind of flurry of covert womb-envy, have looked to eliminate the need for human activity, via an #automation to the max. They argue change is inevitable; they never highlight how it’s nature never will be. How we choose our #it architectures, whether regal admin vs user, or democratically conflating user and admin in one … well, it’s always a choice; and so there’s always someone choosing … usually for their primary benefit, not ours.

• Here, then, we are not observing at all the tenets of the MCA: in all big corporate #it (is there another?), capacity is eliminated consistently and deliberately to save money and concentrate wealth. It’s much easier to sell and monetise #automation than #industrialisation. The latter necessarily involves you enjoying and comprehending humans; the former literally ensures they are framed out of all workplace significance.

• However, #tech when not #it (it can be of course, but as you will shortly see, it doesn’t have to be), may extend human capacity massively. When not the automating #it I have mentioned, #tech can:

  • make a surgeon more accurate without eliminating the need for a surgeon;

  • make a screenwriter more creatively organised without generating screenplays automagically;

  • make a child more nonconformist by giving them free or low-cost tools to follow their own self-organised learning paths;

  • make an adult realise they are ordinarily extraordinary.

Meanwhile, the #it industry has consistently automated us into a future-present irrelevance. The mantra is as follows: get rid of more and more of your payroll, month in, month out. And then one day the machines will even duplicate baldly the creative stuff. Only, don’t tell them that. Tell them, instead, they’ll be getting better quality roles in exchange. Don’t tell them that automation will even destroy that.

I have been a teacher, enabler — then finally a facilitator. I have always looked to share, copy, develop, and pass on. I don’t see it the way that I tell it above. Never have, never will, never shall ever care to.

But then, I wouldn’t. I know, from personal experience, in myself and in those I’ve had the honour to support, what it’s like to reveal a capability; what’s it like to generate a personal confidence; what it means to suddenly realise the genius contained within, and therein.

So just one question I’d like you to take away from this page:

• Why have goalposts for machines been allowed to historically move — yet for humans as a species we are consistently obliged to remain static?

  • That is, machines can chase us, and in fact that is their purpose — but humanity as a species can never aspire to growing out of its collective past.

  • It may only resign itself to being caught up with. Only this. Only that.

  • But who decided this? Who took this decision? Who made out that it must be like this?

  • And why?

“Gutenberg (II): the printing-press of #intuition, #hunch, and #gutfeeling” — what the rest of this online whitepaper will deliver

The rest of this online whitepaper will develop these ideas in several structured sections. These sections run as follows:

1. The Age of Reason — where it all went right and where it all went wrong

2. Emotion and intuition — NOT what you think

3. The internal combustion engine — and why both Teslas are our template

4. Focus on the problem — learn to avoid solutions

5. Why this happened in the first place — and the radical difference between IT and tech

6. Why #secrecypositive architectures — and how to make them #totalsurveillance-compliant

7. Next steps — firm with the IT and always flexible with the tech

8. Final objective — the paradigm-upturning #gutenbergofintuitivethinking