It turns out that at least some of the things they say about parenthood are true - time and coherent headspace come at a premium.

Add to that a move from the UK to France (which has earned its reputation as being a bureaucratic nightmare), and a busy work schedule, and life has not afforded me all that much space to sit and write.

I have a growing backlog of notes on different topics, each of which I’d love to expand into fuller pieces of writing, but the reality is that that’s not happening anytime soon. I could of course throw it all at an LLM but that seems like it’d be doing a disservice to me as the writer and you as the reader.

So whilst Clover naps, I’m putting a few ideas down on paper.

For a while at least, this newsletter might be more of an experimental tapas menu vs. a refined main course.

Bon appetit.

On Fatherhood

One of the things that happens when people learn that you’re going to be a parent is a barrage of unsolicited advice. Mostly this advice is irrelevant and annoying.

So not to fall into the trap of dishing out my own, 6 weeks into the experience, all I will say is that there’s too many variables for parenthood to be seen as a single experience with a one-size-fits-all approach.

For us, it’s been a mixture of the magic and the mundane. Life-affirming, joyful, tricky at times, but already the best decision we ever made.

Disconnected from reality

A lot is made of the benefits for tech folks of being in Silicon Valley. A lot of it is true. Almost nowhere else in the world is there the same concentration of available money, smart people and innovative energy.

But (and I say this as a Brit who lives in France) I’ve been thinking more and more about the harms of bubblethink. The more tech people hang out with other tech people, the more they seem to culturally disconnect from the rest of the world they claim to be building products and companies for.

I think this is damaging - sometimes in benign ways, like Zuckerberg investing billions in the Metaverse when any person on the street could have told him it was destined to fail; but often in more malignant ways.

I look at the AI hype cycle. The ubiquitous use of ‘AGI’ and ‘Superintelligence’ as though they’re an inevitability. The role that science fiction seems to play in how the tech billionaires see the future (often missing the satirical intent of the original writing). There is a risk of culture that gets totally high on its own supply - disconnected from the realities of the world in which we live now.

Even going outside has its own weird tech term - ‘touch grass’.

At the risk of being labelled a naysayer - let me just say that I’m a big believer in the creative capacity that we as people have - I just think better technology and better companies would be built if tech people hung out in the real world from time to time.

Positive backlash

Things move in pendulum swings, and when it feels like we’re reaching extremes it can be helpful to consider what happens when we move in another direction.

Here are a few things I’m optimistic about:

Resurgent arts and humanities - the arts and humanities have taken a backseat to sciences and engineering. I believe culture has suffered as a result. I think part of the positive backlash to AI may be a resurgence in arts and humanities. Maybe we build more beautiful buildings. Maybe we stop just making Marvel movie. Maybe we establish a positive view of what culture means in a globalised world.

Stronger Europe - Trump may not be the US President that Europe wanted, but he may well turn out to be the one it needed. Much of Europe has been in a state of slumber for a long time. With Trump comes a reevaluation of the old world order and an increased realisation that dependency on the US is not necessarily a good thing. I see a dynamism emerging. A greater sense of European pride. And hopefully a path to a more prosperous Europe in future.

Less fake news - not everyone believes this will be true. Some think generative AI will flood the world with fake slop, and they have a point. But this is one area where I’m very bullish on AI helping to solve a real problem. The world seemed to really go off the deep end when boomers started getting their ‘news’ from Facebook and other social media. As the algorithms optimised for virality, more extreme content flourished, and with it the more extreme views it was espousing. But LLMs are structurally different - they surface consensus more than extremes - so the more people get their news via AI, the better. Could some bad actor come along and make an LLM totally skewed towards extremes - sure - but then it would be useless for almost everything. General LLMs are inherently centrist, and I think that’s a good thing. You can read more on this from people like Dan Williams or John Burn-Murdoch.

Innovation in the real world - it seems a great shame that some of the smartest minds of a generation have spent most of their time trying to get people to click ads or integrate with Salesforce. Ok, I’m being a bit glib, but I think there’s some truth to the idea that money and therefore innovation has often centred on the purely digital (and not always useful) as there’s a lot less friction in building software than there is doing things in the real world. But perhaps in an age of AI, friction is your friend. It’s the place you know you can add value in a way that AI may not. It’s the place that investors will look to for a ‘defensive moat’. I hope we see money reallocated to things that either make our physical environment more beautiful and liveable; or give us better infrastructure - cheap renewable energy, reliable transport etc.

Dynamic governance - I think the movement to extremes points out the failings of the old system. Authoritarianism is bullshit. Orban, Putin, Trump - all grifters. We need democracy, but democracy that people feel they can genuinely participate in and see positive change as a result. I don’t know what it looks like. Smart people like Audrey Tang and Geoff Mulgan (amongst many others) are writing about it. I’m hopeful for a more dynamic version of democracy.

Stages of development

When I work with coaching clients, these are the phases I often observe in terms of their development. It’s not a linear process in reality, but I’ve outlined it as such here.

1. Unconsciousness - a lack of awareness of their blindspots. They may start to notice things ‘going wrong’ in their external environment but haven’t connected that to themselves.

2. Resentment - as people become more self aware they start to join the dots between themselves and what’s going on in their world - usually resulting in a level of resentment. ‘Why do I have to be like this?’

3. Rejection - by this point there is often a clearer view of how they might be getting their own way. This can lead to an outright rejection of a certain part of themselves - ‘I’ve always been too apologetic, now I’m never going to apologise again.’

4. Integration - they tried the rejection approach and realised that caused a whole new set of problems for them and others. They’re now able to see that it’s not binary. That part of themselves doesn’t need to be ostracised, it needs to be integrated and in healthy balance.

5. Alignment - when who they are, what they believe, what they do, how they treat others, who they spend their time with are all coherent. There no longer feels like any other option besides being totally who they are.