The madman came into the university at midday, a lit lantern in his hand.
āI am looking for the world,ā he cried. āI am looking for the world.ā
The scholars laughed.
āWhy the lantern?ā asked a professor. āIt is broad daylight.ā
āI know,ā said the madman. āThat is the trouble.ā
āAnd the world is all around us,ā said another. āWe study it every day.ā
Then the madman pointed to theā¦
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I have been trying to understand why so much feels unstable lately. Not just politically or economically, but at a deeper level that is harder to name. What if this unease is not primarily a sign of systems failing, but of conditions shifting beneath them ā and of us trying to make sense of the world from the wrong level.
For a long time, civilization has operated on a quiet assumption. Natureā¦
What if our experience of crisis ā whether described as a polycrisis or metacrisis, or as brittleness and non-linearity in the language of BANI ā are not the causes of our instability, but symptoms of a deeper transformation?
Not a transition, but a metamorphosis.
If that is the case, underlying and mutually reinforcing forces are reshaping the very foundations of our civilization. The currentā¦
In the last decade of global turbulence, it has become increasingly clear that the way we usually talk about the future is no longer sufficient. For a long time, weāve assumed that the future is something that comes laterāa next step in a linear sequence of time. Weāve drawn curves, traced trend lines, and tried to predict what might happen next. But all of this rests on an underlying, andā¦
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Four questions that open a philosophical abyss ā What LLMs reveal about thought, language, being, and meaning
We did not intend to create a philosopher.
We built a tool to complete our sentences. And yet, here we are. Staring into the language it gives back to us, wondering who, or what, is really speaking.
Large Language Models (LLMs) are not conscious. They do not know, want, feel, or intend. They do not reason in any human sense. And yet they speak. They advise. They offer insights. They mirror ourā¦
The worldās lost weave ā the cosmological condition of humanity
We live in a state of separation. From nature. From the whole. From ourselves. This is the result of a long cosmological shift in which humanityās relationship to the world has gradually changed ā from participant to ruler, from inhabitant to stranger.
The historical journey of cosmology
At the dawn of history, there was no separation between human and world. Hunter-gatherer peoples like theā¦
What actually happens when something foreign not only enters a system ā but begins to reshape the system itself?
Isnāt this precisely what we feel AI (or what is popularly called AI) is doing?
When we worry that AI will replace human jobs, or when AI is seen as a threat that could extinguish humanity ā what are we really thinking?
I believe that our feelings and scattered fearful thoughts onā¦
Itās Not a Transition ā Itās a Systemic Shift
Reflections on why most transformation efforts fall short ā and what might actually be required
Lately, I find myself returning to the same conversation in different forms. It doesnāt matter whether Iām speaking with CEOs, strategy teams, or transformation officers ā the themes tend to converge.
Everyoneās talking about transformation. The pressure is real: digitalization, AI, sustainability,ā¦
The Dead Horse Epiphany - What It Means for Futurists
In my previous post, The Dead Horse Epiphany: When We Realize the Ride is Over, I explored the moment of collective realization that many of the systems we rely on are no longer viable. The challenge isnāt just recognizing that the horse is deadāitās deciding what to do next. For futurists, this epiphany forces a fundamental shift in how we approach foresight, strategy, andā¦
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The Dead Horse Epiphany - When We Realize the Ride is Over
There comes a moment when the illusion of progress shatters, and we recognize the uncomfortable truth: many of the systems, industries, and ideas we continue to invest in are, in reality, already dead. We are riding horses that no longer move, sustained only by inertia, denial, and wishful thinking. This is the āDead Horse Epiphanyāāa collective moment of awakening when societies, businesses, andā¦
Eight years later, you still canāt beat a Pebble
I started working on PebbleĀ in 2008Ā to create the product of my dreams. Smartwatches didnāt exist, so I set out to build one. Iām extraordinarily happy I was able to help bring Pebble to life, alongside the core team and community. TheĀ companyĀ behind it failedĀ but millions of Pebbles in the world kept going, many of them still to this day.
I wear my Pebble every day. It's been great (and I'm astounded itās lasted 10 years!), but the time has come for new hardware.
YouādĀ imagineĀ that smartwatches have evolved considerably since 2012. I've tried every single smart watch out there, but none do it for me. No one makes a smartwatch with the core set of features I want:
Always-on e-paper screenĀ (itās reflective rather than emissive. Sunlight readable. Glanceable. Not distracting to others like a bright wrist)
Long battery lifeĀ (one less thing to charge. Itās annoying to need extra cables when traveling)
Simple and beautiful user experienceĀ around a core set of features I use regularly (telling time, notifications, music control, alarms, weather, calendar, sleep/step tracking)
Buttons!Ā (to play/pause/skip music on my phone without looking at the screen)
HackableĀ (apparently you canāt even write your own watchfaces for Apple Watch? That is wild. There were >16k watchfaces on the Pebble appstore!)
Over the years, weāve thought about making a new smartwatch. Manufacturing hardware for a product like Pebble is infinitely easier now than 10 years ago. There are plenty of capable factories and Bluetooth chips are cheaper, more powerful and energy efficient.
The challenge has always been, at its heart, software. Itās theĀ beautifully designed, fun, quirkyĀ operating system (OS) that makes Pebble a Pebble.
Todayās big news - Google has open sourced PebbleOS!
PebbleOS took dozens of engineers working over 4 years to build, alongside our fantastic product and QA teams. Reproducing that for new hardware would take a long time.Ā
Instead, we took a more direct route - I asked friends at Google (which bought Fitbit, which had bought Pebbleās IP) if they could open source PebbleOS. They said yes! Over the last year, a team inside Google (including some amazing ex-Pebblers turned Googlers) has been working on this. And today is the day - the source code for PebbleOS is now available atĀ github.com/google/pebbleĀ (see theirĀ blog post).
Thank you, Google and Rebble!
I can't stress how thankful I am toĀ RebbleĀ and Google, in general and to a few Googlers specifically, for putting in tremendous effort over the last year to make this happen. You've helped keep the dream alive by making it possible for anyone to use, fork and improve PebbleOS. The Rebble team has also done a ton of work over the years to continue supporting Pebble software,Ā appstoreĀ and community. Thank you!
In addition to PebbleOS, weāve been supporting development ofĀ Cobble, an open source Pebble-compatible app for iOS (soon) and Android (works great today, itās my daily driver).
Weāre bringing Pebble back!
I had really, really, really hoped that someone else would come along and build a Pebble replacement. But no one has. So⦠a small team and I are diving back into the world of hardware to bring Pebble back!
This time round, weāre keeping things simple. Lessons were learned last time! Iām building a small, narrowly focused company to make these watches. I donāt envision raising money from investors, or hiring a big team. The emphasis is on sustainability. I want to keep making cool gadgets and keep Pebble going long into the future.
The new watch weāre building basically has the same specs and features as Pebble, though with some fun new stuff as well š It runs open source PebbleOS, and itās compatible with all Pebble apps and watchfaces. If you had a Pebble and loved itā¦this is the smartwatch for you.
More info to come soon! Follow the fun withĀ @ericmigiĀ andĀ @pebble.
Are you like me?
Do you have a hole in your heart (and on your wrist) that hasn't been filled by any other smartwatch?Ā
Sign up to be the first to get one atĀ rePebble.com.Ā
Eric Migicovsky
Pebble Founder
FAQ
When can I buy one?
As soon as we nail down the product specifications and get a firm idea of the production timeline, we'll share it with everyone on the list and invite people to order.
Will it be exactly like Pebble?
Yes. In almost every way.Ā
Arenāt you the guy who screwed this up last time?
Yes, the one and only. I think Iāve learned someĀ valuable lessons.Ā
The magic in nature seems to come from emergence. So why do we humans still solve problems by analysis and have a reflex to organize ourselves in complicated hierarchies modeled after machines?
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Strongman rule is a fantasy. Essential to it is the idea that a strongman will be your strongman. He won't. In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents. We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something. But the vote you cast for him affirms your irrelevance. The whole point is that the strongman owes us nothing. We get abused and we get used to it.
Timothy Snyder is very clear about this. And history backs him up.
The advent of the Internet has also given the New Caesars something their predecessors could not have hoped to have: the ability to bypass or marginalize traditional custodians and gatekeepers of public knowledgeāthe established media, academia, and other authority figuresāwithout imprisoning or killing all that many of them.
Claire Berlinski call this new class of authoritarian leaders the New Caesars and not fascist because the term fascist is historically incorrect. A agree with this and much of her analysis even if I think we need to find a better term for them.