The above image was made with stable diffusion using the prompt 'a fountain pen writing a complex diagram.'
There's a trap that many thinkers fall into. When their ideas have developed to a certain point, they begin inventing jargon and acronyms that make their ideas less accessible. They invent new systems and methods, each with its own new name. The end result is that making sense of their ideas requires massive cognitive investment, and their ideas consequently languish in obscurity.
In my twenties and early thirties, I fell into this trap with my writing on systems theory. My greatest achievement there was authoring Fixing Broken Robots, a wordy monograph that I later was able to translate into just half a dozen blog posts without ignoring any critical information. In my situation, getting a job summarizing news forced me to learn to say more with less, ideally using everyday language. That was back in 2014, so I've had a fair amount of practice doing this. It helps that I've written ten scifi novels and blog every day.
This trap of the thinkers is on my mind lately because I'm wrestling with how to avoid it in a new writing project. The plan is to synthesize tons of information from my blog posts and other works into a handful of long-form articles. Admittedly, here and there I've succumbed to the temptation to invent jargon or labels. This temptation is likely to grow stronger as I put my ideas into larger, more structured pieces.
Maybe I'll end up with another book. Maybe I'll just end up with a collection of articles for my small, smart readership. Either way, I'm committed to presenting my ideas in the most accessible way possible. This might be harder than making up new jargon and systems, but I feel like it'll produce a better result.
What will these articles be about? All of the same stuff my writing usually focuses on. Technology and society. Conspiracies and the misdeeds of the control regime. Crypto. Personal freedom and empowerment. The history and future of activism. That kind of thing.
On a conceptual level, I'm still wrestling with how best to structure this new project. Do I start with the control regime or the individual's predicament? How much history would my readers find interesting? My publishing schedule is also in question. Right now I'm thinking of doing one article every two weeks or so, just to see how that goes. But I may publish as often as every week or as seldom as once a month.
I haven't settled on a title for the series. 'Unpopular Opinions' is one I've been playing with, though something more descriptive seems like it might be better. If you have any ideas, please share them in a comment.
Last year, I did a project with a similar scope, but fictionalized. The book Small Gods of Time Travel was the result. Although I'm happy with this work, only two people that I'm aware of have read it, though a few more have collected the project's NfTs. Hopefully this year's big project does better.
Read my novels:
See my NFTs:
