Weeknote 649: travel

This week I have learned:

that Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, is a prepper. Something I picked up when listening to the fairly stodgy biography of Elon Musk by Walter Issacson.

At first impressions, preppers to me feel like they have the worst view of humanity. That they lack trust in others, and in preparing for the world to go to shit, somehow they are intimating that they think the world is shit. And I’m not sure I want people who think like that to be in charge of such influential technologies.

But then Altman is both gay and Jewish, so has two characteristics that within living memory could have consigned him to state-sponsored murder in Europe (and if we are honest still aren’t far off that in some parts of the world). So does all of this say more about my positions of privilege than anything else?
that if you want to find out how to really do something, find someone who has done something really well. My first coffee companion this week reckons he’s had in the order of over 10,000 coffees. That’s going some.
if I continue at 100/coffees per year I’ve got about 1,500 coffees left in my working life. That’s a humbling thought (although maybe I just make like Murdoch and leave retirement until far later).
that intentionally bringing people together is quite wonderful.
that next week I have a day when I am in charge of that intentionality, and so I am going to experiment. A mass coffee. And a creative art project based on conversation at scale. Just don’t tell anyone that’s what I’m doing, eh?
the ideas of Bourdieu keep coming back. Capital in all its forms shapes the way in which things work more than most of us realise.
I was also fascinated by a comment from Mark Earls on this podcast that behaviour change comes before attitude change, and that attitude change is probably an act of post-rationalisation. This gives me a hook for next week’s mass art experiment.
I was also luck to hear Oli Franklin Wallis talk about his research and book Wasteland at this week’s TBD Conference.