Category: RG.org

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Real-World Crypto RG.org Writing

Crypto dot rahulgaitonde dot org

The Whatsapp group I started on bitcoin, cryptocurrency and decentralised finance now has over 200 subscribers across 14 countries.

Now, all of the past posts from the group are now available at Crypto.RahulGaitonde.Org. I will continue to add new posts here as they are published on the Whatsapp group.

Unlike the group, I have left comments open here – if there are ever discussions on posts, WordPress has moderation tools; Whatsapp does not.

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Life Design RG.org Writing

One year streak

Today is one year since I began publishing daily on the site. When I completed three hundred days in early October, I had written a Twitter thread about this practice means to me and what it’s done for me. I was surprised I had not linked to it here. Here goes:

All of this is still true. I intend to keep publishing – and there is something else, complementary, in the works. Soon!

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Audience as Capital Data Custody Privacy and Anonymity RG.org The Next Computer Wellness when Always-On

Generations, and their relationship with tomorrow’s big questions

The venture capitalist Andrew Chen wrote a Twitter thread about how some of the most influential new ideas sounded outrageous when first proposed. He describes Uber, for instance, as “an app that lets you into strangers’ cars” which is really exactly what it is.

This is what I found interesting though:

… these ideas often formed at the seam of the “natives” versus the “immigrants.” If you are Instagram-native, what you consider a great idea for a new retail space or ecomm brand is likely very different than someone who isn’t exposed to the same thousands of pics…

The upcoming generation are using tech in a different way. They are Fortnite-native. Minecraft-native. They are streaming-native. They use “insta” differently. Food delivery will be considered a human right. The expectations will be very different.

I often think about how different generations think about the Megatrends and Big Questions that we explore on this site.

Xennials like me were born in a mostly analog world, but grew up when PCs became common in people’s houses. Millennials always had a PC in their houses, connected to the Internet, and grew up with Nokias and Motorolas. Gen Z have not experienced a life before smartphones with 3G connections.

Each of us will consider questions like data custody, privacy and anoymity differently. They’ll have different views on the place of a ‘computer’ in their lives, and have different ideas on the effects of being always on.

I think that the answers to making the right choices about each of these issues is timeless, but it is the natives, to use Andrew Chen’s term in this context, who will get the word out most effectively. Building an audience will come naturally to them. And because they have navigated social networks in their most socially fraught years in school, are well aware of an audience’s value as capital.

Immigrants like me will use more traditional mediums, like this nearly two decade old blog, and traditional models, like the megatrends and big questions, to raise awareness.

(Featured image photo credit: Hansjörg Keller/Unsplash)

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Audience as Capital Data Custody Decentralisation and Neutrality Discovery and Curation Making Money Online Privacy and Anonymity Real-World Crypto RG.org The Dark Forest of the Internet The Next Computer Wellness when Always-On

300

7th October marks three hundred days since I began writing daily on this website.

While I have written on and off on the site from late 2002, this is the longest publishing streak the site has had. The streak began in December 2019 as something I wanted to do for myself at a time I felt low. It has now become a habit. If I remember correctly, Seth Godin had said on Tim Ferriss’ podcast that at some point after he started writing regularly on his blog, his thinking changed from ‘should I write tomorrow?’ to ‘what should I write about tomorrow?’.

I’ve gotten somewhat comfortable with drafting, writing and scheduling posts for the week ahead. Now I plan to build a healthy information consumption habit. My reading is too scattered, both in subject and in time. It doesn’t leave me with enough time to absorb things and think them through. I plan to trim my reading sources and structure my week so there are distinct chunks for reading, thinking and writing.

Community
This site has always explored questions about how you and I deal with technology in our lives. Those questions are so much more important in 2020 than they were eighteen years ago. My framework to understand this are the Five Megatrends and Five Big Questions.

Ultimately I’d love for the readers of this site to be a community that discusses and helps each other navigate opportunities that tech brings to our lives, and the challenges we face to our mental and physical health and to our relationships: by being conscious that tech serves us instead of us serving tech, or serving those that control tech. About Living Well in the Always-On.

Interested in being an early community member? Get in touch: Email or Twitter.

(Featured image photo credit: Jeff Golenski)

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RG.org

Making it Happen

This spoke to me. Derek Sivers on Making It Happen:

When you experience someone else’s genius work, a little part of you feels, “That’s what I could have, would have, and should have done!”

Someone else did it. You didn’t.

They fought the resistance. You gave in to distractions.

They made it top priority. You said you’d get to it some day.

They took the time. You meant to.

When this happens, you can take it two ways:

You could let that part of you give up. “Oh well. Now I don’t need to make that anymore.”

Or you could do something about that jealous pain. Shut off your phone, kill the distractions, make it top priority, and spend the time.

It takes many hours to make what you want to make. The hours don’t suddenly appear. You have to steal them from comfort. 

In a small way, I made this transition from comfort to discomfort when I restarted regularly publishing on this site in December last year. But it’s another thing when someone who is clearly successful, like Sivers is, articulates it so plainly.

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Audience as Capital RG.org

The write state of mind

The value of prolific writing and creativity is that you’re always in a pattern of thought. You’re constantly assessing beliefs and designing paths to further your understanding of a topic. When entrepreneurial thinkers begin a newsletter on the platform of their choosing, they are doing so out of sheer passion. Their minds are always thinking of enrichment, improvement, development, and progress.

– The Type House, 2PM, Web Smith

So far, this has been the biggest benefit to me of writing regularly.

First, writing gave rise to new questions, issues and ideas to explore and write about.

That made me think about how it was that I chose my topics, resulting in the Mega-Trends and Big Questions model.

That made me evaluate taking writing one step further, and perhaps we will see that unfold over the next few months.

All throughout there is the ferment of creativity and the excitement of creation.

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RG.org

Streak and next steps

Since December, I’ve published daily on this site. The WordPress app on iOS has encouraged me with streak notifications. A couple of weeks ago, I hit this milestone:

Shortly after, something in the app’s streak calculation went awry and it began displaying counts in the thirties, even though I was still publishing without a break.

The streak notification, for all these months a part of my life, has ceased to be accurate. I have since turned it off.

A few months ago I heard the marketer Seth Godin talk about his writing practice on Tim Ferriss’ podcast. He said that if you get over the initial hump, your mindset changes from ‘do I write tomorrow’ to ‘what do I write about tomorrow’, and something clicked within. It’s now gotten to where writing is a daily habit. The streak notification has served its purpose.

Now to make something of it. Some months ago I put together a framework based on what I have been writing about – a set of mega-trends and big questions that we will have to deal-with because they will affect all of us. The recent posts on this site have already been tagged with one or more of these trends and questions.

Last week, I published what I intend to make of this site for the forseeable future:

The Internet – the collective noun for email, the web, the ‘cloud’, wearables, AI, crypto, 3D printing and so much more – is a tool; ultimately it exists to make your and my lives better. But it is also orders of magnitude more powerful than any other tool, so we should expect our lives to get orders of magnitude richer as well, not just incrementally. How can we use it to transform our relationships, our health, our skills, our wealth? How can we lead much more fulfilling lives?

This is what I want to explore with rahulgaitonde.org. 

I’ve already begun using technology deliberately to achieve specific, small goals in life. For example as you’ve read under ‘wellness when always-on‘, I’ve been actively using it to get better while also not letting it own me. While I’ll continue writing about what I see and think of these trends and questions, I’ll also add how I’m using that framework in my own life.

Look forward to me walking the talk.

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RG.org

RG.org in the 2000s, found on the Wayback Machine

This website has been through many changes over the last couple of decades. Here are some screenshots from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

Left to right, top to bottom: 2004, 2005, 2006, 2011