Yeah, so 2024 happened...
Moving on.
What's next? What are we thinking about for 2025?
Well, let's address the elephant in the room. AI is here. It's real. Maybe this is the year the hype dies down a bit...maybe it isn't.
The blowhards can keep blowing, the tech toddlers can keep making all the promises they will never be able to keep...frankly it's boring at this point. Who cares.
What can we think about today that will help us become better tomorrow by applying the technologies that we have available right in front of us, right now?
To that point, as I was reflecting on the year ending and thinking about how to create a better world - or at least a better understanding of it - in the New Year, three concepts seemed to solidify pretty quickly in terms of areas to explore:
- The intersection of UX (User eXperience) and Generative / Agentic AI
- The convergence of Bayesian probability thinking and modeling with emerging thinking in Quantum Mechanics / Quantum Physics
- The concept of "Architecture Fluidity" - essentially an exploration of the concept of "architecture" or structures that can be effortlessly built, torn down, and rebuilt
Now I'm sure you're all excited to dive into sexy-sounding topics like Quantum Bayesianism, but I'm going to pull the punch bowl and reveal this isn't a technical post.
The actual super interesting thing that I came across during my "Burning Hellscape that was 2024" retrospective exercise was that I was finding my approach to these subjects - and essentially any subject I wanted to learn deeply - was highly structured.
Now, I'm a structure guy - I design conceptual and digital "structures" for a living - so this maybe shouldn't have been such a profound realization.
But until I took the time for a little reflection and inquiry, I hadn't really considred how much of my thinking about the future involved designing and building "human architecture."
I've written about and recorded YouTube videos about concepts under the guise of "thinking like an architect" - but what good is thinking about anything if that thinking is never applied?
What is the tangible output of this "architect thinking" and why would it matter at an individual level?
This was where the "What" - such as UX or the concept of fluid technical architectures - met the "Why" for me.
Why does it matter if and how we structure our own thinking and our own personal systems or "architecture?"
Because AI enables us, at an individual human level and not as corporate servants, to find the boundaries of our own knowledge and our own capabilities.
And knowing where we begin and where we end helps us to establish effective systems for interfacing and integrating with the world (or worlds) around us.
We can move up Maslow's Hierarchy on our own when we don't need to rely on big companies for the safety of a paycheck. We can find our own path to self-actualization.
And once we've reached our own potential as individual humans, we can begin to think outside of ourselves and learn how to maintain or re-establish human connection in a digitizing world.
Touchy-feely ideological rah rah aside, what has emerged for me in terms of how to structure my own thinking and pursuit of knowledge is an approach to designing personal systems based on a foundational "thinking framework" that breaks down into these patterns or disciplines:
- Thinking Critically (the subject of my YouTube "Demo Tape")
- Thinking Conceptually
- Thinking Holistically
- Thinking Non-Linearly
- Thinking Objectively
- Thinking Humanistically
- Thinking in Abstractions and Patterns
- Thinking in Boundaries and Constraints
- Thinking in Layers
- Thinking in Flows
- Thinking in Models
- Thinking in Systems
So in addition to the "What Stuff" - i.e. the thinking that (hopefully) leads to tangible (and valuable) outcomes in the future - I'm going to be exploring the "Why Stuff" which focuses on frameworks and models that can be applied to the thinking about achieving outcomes beyond ourselves with a more systematic approach to understanding and interacting with the world around us.
Sounds like a potentially wonderful year to me.
Next Page | Previous Page | Page Name | Published Date |
|---|---|---|---|
 Architecture as a Durable Ledger of our Thinking and Knowledge | Thinking Critically: What is Critical Thinking? | January 15, 2025 |