Hi you,
Welcome to 2026. I’ve got something special to share to kick us off. In 2023 I was presenting at a conference heavily themed about A.I., and a set of words found their way to me in the middle of the night. I had the good sense to write them down.
On a very few occasions since then, I’ve shared these words on stage at conferences and in closed rooms. Now I’m ready to open it up to you all.
The best way to experience the words is to watch, listen, and feel them above. But if you want to sit with the language itself, here’s the full text:
DEFINE THE CIRCLE
I wonder
If our obsession with intelligence
Of an artificial nature
Has us wandering too far
From our essential human nature
When spreadsheets can analyze themselves
And emails can write themselves
When songs can sing themselves
And meetings can attend themselves
Then what are we going to do with all that time?
If the answer to every question
Can be generated in a flash
Then it’s time for us to question
Just what we want to ask.
What will it mean to be human?
To be alive?
If you believe the line from industry
Then we will just be more productive and happy
But that is a lie
We will use these technologies to produce too much
So we’ll have to use these technologies to consume too much
Meanwhile we are not being asked to do enough
They say, don’t worry, humans will be kept in the loop
But that’s not good enough.
I don’t want to be in the loop.
I want to define the circle.
I don’t want to be along for the ride.
I want to drive.
I want to fly so high I realize
there’s no such thing as empty sky,
That we live in one of hundreds of billions of galaxies
And it’s just a matter of time
Before we recognize the lack of boundary
Between matter and time.
And I don’t want to travel alone
We’ve been told that it’s down to me, myself, and I
That everything we need we can buy
That individual self-interest is our why
But that too is a lie.
I wonder
If our obsession with intelligence
Of an artificial nature
Has us forgetting the intelligence
That lives within all nature.
We move most powerfully
When we recognize we are a We.
That to live well collectively
in the future, in the cloud
We must also plant our feet firmly
in the now, on the ground.
The video rendition above is unique for the collaborative production. On October 8, 2025 I delivered it at the Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco. Composer Ryan Holladay (Weapons movie) created a musical piece to accompany my words, and the production team designed the starry night background. Huge thanks to Masters of Scale and the teams at Wait What and Up and Up for this collaboration. Further gratitude to others who helped shape on inspire this communication including Afrotech, the mountains and National Forests of Crested Butte, Colorado, and Jeffrey Katzenberg.
And thank you for your attention, as always.
If this landed, subscribe or share.
