The digital landscape

Welcome back, everybody. Simon Severino your host. And today we explore what's going on with technology what's going on with the world. My guest today is best described by Forbes. Forbes says he's an artist, a global seeker and a trend maker. Other people say he's an Australian futurist speaker, creative director, strategic digital consultant, entrepreneur, globe charter. We will this discuss today. How technology presents a lack of humanity on the one side, on the other side, it can help brands to connect more and how we can be better humans at the dining table and how we can ensure that the five senses are utilized when we leave in these little boxes here, like right now, work on everybody to the show. Shing.


Good Simon. I love your live audience. How, how fabulous is that?


Everybody's excited here. Yes, yes, yes. And sh what are you currently creating?


That's a great question. Thanks. I mean, look, there's about 10 things, you know, I like to think I'm a polymath. I, I find it very hard just to focus on one thing at a time. So the thing that I'm currently creating literally three minutes ago is I'm, I'm writing a new book. I actually wrote a book called forward forward doing, I published it for myself. It was, it was designed a way that I wanted to read things so short, sharp, and concise. I'm doing another one. I've done a video series for many years called Shing of views. And I'm currently writing a book called stuff you saved. Here's the premise real quick. If I ask you to flip, open your phone, you've probably got 20,000 image in there. Maybe more, maybe less, but you've got a ton of photos, not cataloged. Well, probably not. Well curated. If I ask you to look at your bookmarks, it's probably a hot mess too, but you save stuff. You know, if I came and visit you in Italy, you're not in Italy. You're not in Italy. You're in Vienna. Vienna. Where are you? Where are you? Remind


Me. I'm in Vienna. Austria right now. Yes.


Oh, Austria. Oh gosh, go. Or just part of the world. But look, if I asked you to, if you and I got together live, there's certain stuff that you saved. Either. Somebody gave it to you or has sentimental value, or there's a reason and I'm kind of intrigued why people save stuff and why do they save it? Either pull it outta their head as a quote, or literally on their desk or their bookmarks. I'm just intrigued. Why, how people sort of, of track their path of, with all this noise. If you're hit with 1500 media messages per day, what's the stuff that you save. And that's something that I'm, that's the premise for what I'm writing at the moment, interviews with smart people like you, which I'll come back and ask you to do at some point. And just, I'm just intrigued by it.


Yes. That's beautiful. We saved so many things and we, we, we actually document our life all the time via saving, right. But it's, as you say, it's non curated. It's, notin intentional.


And it's also not, it's not really designed to be, there's a reason you did it, but there may be no rhyme, you know? And so given that's the case, what's the, why did I do that? You know, I visit stuff and I think, you know, wow, that just, I don't get why I kept that. You know, it was a very strange phenomenon, but that's what I've been working on this morning. But prior to that, you know, my part of my big part of my business is not just speaking and traveling and, and educating, which, you know, took a dive in 2020, as you can imagine, it's consulting. I spend time with startups and at the core of it, all I care about is are they moving the human condition forward period, full stop. So if the technology is helping people become better humans, when they're offline. Great. If the technology is trying to come in and pillage their minds, I'm not interested in it. So I'm kind of I'm at that point where I just spend time with really in, in spaces that I think are really interesting, but it's pretty broad last time. Yeah. Today's biotech to booze. It's very broad where I spend my time, biotech to boo is kind of a weird category, but I spend time in those. And, and it's very, it's very interesting to see how brands are trying to navigate the new, the new moments


Right now. You are in your, at home last time I saw you, you were between Dubai and Mexico. So


I was, yeah.


Are, are you, when you say you are traveling less, how much are you traveling right now?


It's still pretty aggressive. I mean, I do a few trips a month, so, you know, it's, it, wasn't when I was at the height of my travel though, it was like 300 days, hundred 20 days, something like that, very aggressive, but I don't need to do that. I don't, my body doesn't need to do that. My mind doesn't need to do that. So I'm in a different place and, and it came at a, you know, it's interesting the pandemic or the pause came at a perfect time for me just to reset my rods and cones, just to sort of understand what is it that I really care about and where do I want to think about putting my energies? So I've been an output engine for a very long time, like an educator. And I just, I'd rather be the student. And so that's where I'm sitting today is I'm just absorbing a lot of things.


And I'm as a, as a somebody who, who works as a, as a one man consultancy, somebody quoted me as a one man culture McKenzie, which I'm down for, but what's interesting about it is what can I learn? And then what are the things that I've already got in my, in my war chest that I use all the time and what are the bits that I don't like. So it's great to go back to being a practitioner. It's great to, don't just talk about these things, but put these principles in play and see if they apply, whether I dig 'em and that's really important to me.


I love this. So which clients, you, you do not work with


People who aren't trying to destroy the world. That's a really broad statement and it sounds a little bit sort of high mighty, but honestly, if, if there is, and I get approached by different technologies all the time, if there's a technology that I think is kind of trying to unearth data in a bad way, and it's not really designed to make somebody feel great, but it's designed to, you know, provide, you know, universal discounts, for example, by skimming the top of people's data points that might help the person who's trying to sell something. But what's the benefit to the user I'm on the defense of the consumer. Like who is that person? What do they benefit from? And the purpose of why? I mean, why do they exist? Why, why is this better? Why is this important? Why should somebody care? They're the things that I ask myself every single time. So they're the sort of brands that I wouldn't work for people who are just trying to, I don't know, game the system pillage, pillage the, the mind of the person and occupy a different space. That's the sort of thing I wouldn't like to work on or people who are polluting the environment. I mean, my God, that's a whole nother level of discussion. We could do another time, but I like, goodness, my brother,

The basic principles

Many people listening right now, they run small businesses and, and they, and, and they might use some of your powerful questions around branding. So when they think are around branding, what are some questions that they should post themselves?


Okay. That's a great, that's a great segue into kind of the, the things that, the material that matters. And I love the fact that we're not really staying on a topic or asking questions that we are normal. So I love, I love this train of thought, Simon, to stay with me. The principles are actually quite basic. And what I mean by that is there's every business, it doesn't matter which brand you said, Hey, what about this brand? Shie, I'm gonna tell you, there are three things that every brand can do to make them stand out. Because today, historically, you'd have to be a top 10 brand on planet earth to have occupy the, the mind of most people. Those days are well over. It's not about spend anymore. It's about mind share. So it's about being at the right time at the right place with the right message.


That sounds easy to do. It's incredibly hard to do, but there are three principles that make it simple. And most people miss focusing on these three principles, they only typically focus on one and the three of this, the first one is performance. If the thing that you do does what it says on the can. Awesome. And by the way, you're incredible at that. The things that you talk about with strategy sprints, the way you talk about it's all results, results are results. So performance, performance, performance, get it awesome. Very powerful. The second thing is story. So people buy into a brand because of their story. I mean, if, if you've ever seen me present, or if you ever read a great book, it really starts with once upon a time in whatever that context is. So I'd already benchmarks like, Hey, I decided to do this because it, it really helped me move forward.


Cuz there was didn't exist today. Or I did this because it, because it didn't exist, we needed to have this thing. There's so many things sort of understand that the lynchpin around it is story. And that's why we buy I'm intrigued. I'm gonna lean in. I'm gonna head tilt and go. What's amazing about this story. But the real thing, particularly as we think about a world that's incredibly noisy is period, full stop feel. So what's my brand feel. What does it feel like even digitally, if I'm a physical brand, what's the texture of this brand that I wanna occupy people's mind in the digital verse. And what does that look like? So they're the three things, but most people only focus on performance. So if you think about benchmarking for small businesses, typically they'll do, you know, direct to consumer ads or they do, you know, any type of marketing and it's all about, Hey, we'll give you 10% off or Hey, our thing performance 10 times better than whatever I'm like, okay, but I'm gonna glaze over it.


Can't say the last time I clicked on a God ad. So not interested, but if somebody occupy my time with, here's a great story and this is why it's valuable to you. There's a pause moment. But the real thing is Phil. I mean, it really is about getting back to making sure that you can feel the essence of a brand and really what it's going to do for you and what the benefits are. So that's, that's one thing. The second thing is being self aware. Brands need to be self aware, man, what I mean by the, that is, you know, if you are going to go and spread your brand all across this entire environment, are you acting like how your brand should act? But if you know who you are as a brand, you know how to act. And I'm concerned that brands jump into these hot platforms and they jump in in a way that doesn't feel like their brand.


It feels like they're trying to be like the platform wants them to be, it feels like a disconnect to me. You know, it's like, it's like speaking to a 75 year old dude who wants to jump into a, a space that's occupied by 15 year olds that act like a 15 year old. That would seem very off to me. So that's about that. Meaning if you know who you are, you know how to act. But I also think, you know, particularly as time constraints, businesses fragment, people's mind share, go where you're celebrated. Where are the places where brands can actually have conversations with people and have feedback and actually understand who the customer is and all of those incredible value points. They need to be reiterated in a way that I feel like means the brand needs to be where it's celebrated and where it can be can celebrate others because ultimately you don't own your brand. The audience should own the brand and you should reflect that. And part of that for my mind is do an audit, figure out the places you should be and where you suck at it. And if you do suck at it, could you retune those, those particular platforms to be a different part of your business? So it's not just one piece of content broadcast everywhere. I think those days, well over,


Particularly For


Time for


Time celebrate, this is, this is powerful. I have to let this sink in. Cause if we use this question and go through our daily activities and where we show up and, and, and we use the checklist, are we celebrated here, here, here, here, probably this changes a lot of most teams activities right now. Have you, have you experienced recently going through this with clients and can work us maybe through examples of how, how you audited, Hey here, you're not separated here. You're celebrated. And how, how did you, what's the process of faxing it?

Don't compete against competitors

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, part of that is, you know, just evaluating the front doors. I mean, most brands do that mistake where they produce a piece of content, which they've spent too much time on. I mean literally broadcast it on all their channels. Then they're flabbergasted when it doesn't perform on all of them, but you have to be specific in particular channels, like social channels. You have to be tuned towards that social channel. And if you can speak that vernacular, great, if you can't, don't be in it. But also what's the thing that you're trying to measure. If you're trying to compete against competitors, that's one benchmark and maybe advertising's more appropriate to that. But when it's social currency, maybe you shouldn't compete against competitors. Maybe what you're competing against is what you believe is valuable in that platform against the things that you are trying to develop because otherwise, why are you gonna be there?


And that's part of the problem is that, you know, everybody would say that when you produce a great piece of creative work, by the way one of them might want to, it may be tuned to selling something awesome, but you actually may need to do some brand development. That's awesome too. But those, that same piece of creative won't do those two things. They're two separate pieces of creative. So part of that in audit in my mind is to go through and make sure that you're putting the right type of content at the right place to affect the right emotion period. So if you're in the business of brand building and you're really trying to create emotion around your brand, you're not selling at that point in time, you're in the business of storytelling and feeling your, your brand. And when it comes to selling, it's a matter of turning it up or turning the volume down.


It's all about media spend. It's all about budget at that point in time and getting a CA, right, which is your customer acquisition cost. You don't wanna be upside down on that, but there are so many different techniques. So for me, part of that audit is just find out where it is what's going on and make sure that you're evaluating it. You know, I have a B2B client who, who recently wanted to get into a bunch of social channels. And I said, well, how can you think about getting into social channels when your front doors are rubbish? Like, you know, there are bad reviews of the company from, at Glassdoor, LinkedIn. Wasn't great. And I think, well, even those two front doors, which feel very B2B to me, you're not even, you know, you're not even present, you're not even having that conversation. So how are you gonna do it in a B2B experience? Like social when you're talking B2B to C? So for me, it was a really, just a good gut check to make sure they, they figured that out. So you know that for me to, that's very tactical also. And then you overlay that with strategy, but you know, they're the basics


And, and I love this, this goal where you are celebrated and I'm thinking right now, if, if you can re remember even the first years when, when you were finding out where you're celebrating, cause right now you come onto shows you are the star and we celebrate you, but can you remind yourself of the first years, the first appearances?


Oh, Simon? Yeah, of course.


And how did you, because I guess you were not celebrated right away. And how did you keep rolling? Keep showing up? What was the internal conversation? Because this is, this is something that touches many of us.


Okay. So that's a, that's a really good question for reasons. One it's intimate and two it's it's, it's also speaking about your ability to actually believe so the first time, it really, it really happened to me. I'll give you a bit of my background. So, you know, I used to run media and marketing for AOL and Europe. So I ran, I dunno at, at the time it was the 11 countries running their media, asking for them. And then I took UK, France and Germany as well, added that to the portfolio. And while I was very much building those commun community audiences around consumers I spent a lot of time at spaces talking about media, but I would find that my peers were only talking about what they're doing. And my goal was to about the industry. And we will get the value of what we get by brand association to the industry, if that makes sense.


So I'm much broader. My, my, my thinking and people sort of were so curious about it. They removed me away from being a guest on a panel and asked me to present. And that was where I naturally became a presenter, which is the base of what I do today. But at some point in time, when you turn up to somewhere where you are very different than potentially the audience that are expecting, yeah, man, I wasn't celebrating in a ton of places. So people are like, did this guy just create a persona? He wears nail Polish, he's got weird hair. He's got a title called the digital property. He works for AOL there, rods and cones just got messed up and it's not true. I mean, I believe in what I believe. And I also have very strong opinions about this industry. And more importantly, the persona is me.

Stay relaxed and calm

I've been like this for bloody all my time on earth. My, my sister is a hairdresser. So I've had crazy hair since I was a kid. And I'm one of 10 kids. So I know what it's like to be around a bunch of people, your entire, but it was around 2014. I ended up going on a TV show called the Ms. MSNBC, the cycle great guy who hosted. And we had some really interesting conversations, but the audience of that particular show, wasn't, isn't really perhaps my target audience. And so today just went nuts, man. It was awesome. And I, I got trolled so heavily across the internet that at one point in time, I was trending more than social Olympics was. And, and all I wanted to do was throw the duvet over my head, wait for the bad storm to pass and maybe pop up again.


And that's it. But you know what? I just decided, look, Twitter sucks. If you wanna feel bad about yourself, go on Twitter. So I decided to retire from Twitter, cuz there's much hate out there. There's enormous amount of love and you don't see the love until you've run through the hate. So I've changed and completely changed my orientation and said, I'm only gonna listen to things that are great and I'm gonna confront the people who are actually horrible at me. I'm gonna ask them about that directly. And it turns out most of 'em trolls. And so there wasn't really anybody behind it that could stand could, could validate it. So if you believe in what you believe in, you're gonna get knocked down, man. But the important thing is to believe in it and continue because you know, more than the audience has typically again, in know if you're a subject matter expert, one two, if you have convict and belief, that's more contagious than somebody telling you they're an Asay, but the negatives are there to help improve, you know, and sharpen your tools.


That's how I see it, but I don't need that all day. So I don't need to sit on Twitter and watch people jam at me all day. Even if there's love there just don't need it. So separate myself from it pretty quick. I love. And by the way it was in, I talked defriend unfollow as a trend, people thought I was bat crazy. And what I meant by that is and think about it today. I spent the weekend at a luxury pricing conference, like a conversation with, with a brand that we are working with luxury pricing, talking about how behaviors are changing, et cetera, cetera. And it is incredible how of those people that I was with. None of them have Instagram anymore. Not, not even as a private, they're just not using it. It's a time suck for them. And you know, when somebody removes Instagram, you lose them as a follower.


So they haven't defriended, you it's by happens by default. And I was really kind of intrigued by that because I've been saying that for years and years and years, and what I mean by that is not just in friend unfollow, but the ability for people to go and make their accounts private. So there's a lot of people that keep their accounts private, which means there's an intimacy level missing there. So here's the gotcha on that. If you're a business and you as a person inside that business have a social account, that's private, what would it take for the business that you work for to become part of that inner social of that person that has now a private network that's incredibly valuable to think about and what are the tools that you can add to your business? That's not only part of that in a network, but what are the tools that you're using to connect to that in a network?


A good example of that is texting and text messaging is still incredibly important today and it's very intimate. So if you and I, in this con conversation, you got a text, I'd probably see you glanced down at it. That's how much it occupies your attention. And you know, it's very, very important. Imagine if that text came from a brand that you care about who feels like part of your inner circle, that's pretty important. And so as we go to a world that has potentially more intimacy, yeah. There's the broadcast part of it on the rest of the web, that the intimacy of it, the close net, it works the friend to friend experience. That's where brands have to rethink about, or they really need to reframe their thinking. When I think about China as an example, I'm you know, I know you're Italian and you're currently in, you know, Germany, not really where they speak German more than anything else. But what's interesting about that being in Vienna, you probably use WhatsApp, right?


I do.


Do you use WeChat?


No.


Yeah. So most so I'm, I'm half, half Chinese. So WeChat is something that we use, but it's typically with my Asian friends. But if you think about that platform itself, it, you can do pretty much every transaction you think about on the rest of the web, all can happen in WeChat. And it's intimate. It's point to point peer to peer. It's exactly like WhatsApp, point to point peer to peer. It's a closed network. And that's an example of really, you know, texting on steroids in a, almost a like a social environment, but it's closed Instagram. You have to close it down. The only one that's open today, when I, when I made that statement to be true at that time was TikTok because it's open. But TikTok is just a broadcast me mechanism today with just millions of users on there, broadcasting the intimacy happens through the intimate channels of TikTok that privately not necessarily publicly. Anyway, that seems like a rabbit and we ran down. So I'm happy to back out of that now. And I'll move on to something else. If you'd like,


I might, I might explore another area and I'm interested, are you, are you watching the blockchain versions, the decentralized versions of social media? You know, they are popping up, but there are. So what do you, what do you see coming?


Well, I think there's two things. One, it feels like intimacy, but there's also a persona behind it. Right? So, so whether you are, so whether you are just another character chatting about what's going on in those environments, there's almost a over honesty to it, but you can, you can be shielded by behind your own a avatar as such. So it's not really a, a direct representation of you, but it's just like every other social network it's creating these fragmentations of people's deep interest. The rest of the social networks today were all completely open and they're not really about niche networks. So what I'm seeing around, particularly around blockchain, or even the category of this sits on top of blockchain of NFT is it's just, it's super niche. And that's where people hold their attention, right? Because if you think about it, the, the internet, certainly one certainly web one allowed us all to be able to understand there's so much this information being developed and connected, and it's like that super wide.

Importance of the structure

So I can skim across the top of the internet. And then what social did is it, well, let's come back together and now go intimate in some of these categories you like, and those categories tend to be based on friends. Okay. And their interests. And that's what the social graph created. But what's happened with the fragmentation of blockchain, et cetera, is it's just going well, let's go wide and deep, but based on you. So when people talk about it as the, you know, web three, I don't call it web three. I call it web me. Andre reason for that is it's really meant to be about you. And what are your interests? And where is your value in this? I'd like the conversation to move around social popularity. Cause I think that's kind of, it feels a little bit like we're 10 years old and we're trying to put our hand up and say, pick me, pick me, pick me and, and look to a different type of value exchange.


But we're not there yet, but at least the structure of it will allow that to happen. I also wanna cover one other thing off, which is when people talk about the metaverse all the time and they want me to talk about it. Here's the thing that bothers me most about it. It, the, the metaverse is not a bloody destination. It's a mindset cause it's already here, man. Blockchain's been around for 10 years. Roblox has been around for almost that time. You know? And so we're seeing applications like NFTs on top of the blockchain, which is a, you know, the darlings last year pop up simply because it's an application of that, but it's not the metaverse, you know, if you take the metaverse, the metaverse is all of it. It's any type of interactive point that you think about. So it could be AR filters today on your phone. It could be as, as, as simple as that, or as extreme as putting a headset on and wandering into a gaming experience for the next 10 hours, that's all the same thing, which is this immersive experiences that we've had at our, at our fingertips for many years. So it's not a destination. It's a mindset


As you are probably also confined into this square and rectangle here, life here. How do you make sure that it's a human experience that the census are, are still here? Maybe even all five senses?


Well, all five sensors are definitely not part of the metaverse if I just extend that conversation today, because when was the last time you put a VR headset on you personally, Simon? Not for quite some time


Last year.


Okay. So here's the deal when you did put it on, it may have been a pretty immersive experience and it is, it's like an Oculus. It's great. It's great, man. Tint, tin. I hear somebody with the piano. I turn around to see it. I see the person on the piano. It's incredible. Incredibly visceral, but guess what? It doesn't give me it doesn't give me tactility. So, you know, when somebody's like, oh wow, look at this. This is incredible war Mile's just done. It's just entered the metaverse with a shopping experience. That's inside the metaverse. I'm like really? That's the dumbest thing I've seen why I can't pick up the thing. And if, if I do pick it up, I can't feel it. So if I picked it up, I, you don't know whether this cup feels smooth or actually fills cos this cup is cos.


So when I feel this, it feels a bit like sandpaper. I'm not gonna get that, man. I'm just gonna pick up an innate object. So it has no, it, it doesn't have a direct correlation to sensation. Or the other thing is if I turn around and I see that person playing in that piano and they're smoking a cigar, I can't smell the cigar. So I suddenly feel like, oh, I'm already. So it's not that immersive. It's not that immersive. Cuz the only two sensors I have, maybe the three sensors I have is vision sound. And if I'm lucky, some sort of hap tech that makes me feel something, but it's not gonna make me feel the textures of it. So sensors we're at two plus maybe 2.5. We're definitely not all five of them. You know what I mean? So, and this confinement that we're in, this is rubbish mate.


This great to see you on this screen. God bless, but I'd much rather you in person for all those reasons, right? But it is a, at least is a good way to try and understand that face to face. Like we are is probably better than phone, but there are times of just audio. There are times when I do these presentations where I ask people, turn the cameras off. And the reason I do that is I want their other sensors to come alive. Meaning don't spend the time on this, on this presentation of you watching yourself and pretending you can't be kind of wandering around folding clothes while I'm presenting to you. Maybe that's gonna make you concentrate better. So turn the camera off. So all I want you to do is now listen. And all I want you to do is really go deep into that one particular sense because having the visual is not gonna help you.


I'd love to. So it's about applying some of your books. Do you have one of your books at hand or one of the books that you are currently reading?


Mm, I don't have my forward doing book, but I'm gonna send it. But yeah, it's a be


There was something that you sent me, which was one of the books that I I care about. And I like that question by the way. And I haven't really, I don't read a lot of books that have to do with business. I read a lot of books that has to do with inspiration. So there is, there is a business book though. That was amazing. And it's called connected by design and it's by good friend of mine, Barry Waxman. And the connected by design principle is it talks about there are vertically integrated businesses out there. I'll give you an example. If you drink a, if you were to sip Coca-Cola you probably don't take a sip of Dasani water and then go back to the Coca-Cola and sip that and then sip the Dasani water. You probably pound the Coca-Cola and then you think, oh, I'm really thirsty.

The real purpose

And you pound a bottle of water. That's a vertically integrated business. You don't have other, you're doing one thing one time a horizontal is you sip a Pepsi and then you buy the Dorito owned by the same company. That's more of a horizontally integrated business and ecosystem. It's really understanding how they're all connected by design. A good example of that is apple. Apple is connected, not because of its hardware, but it's connected because of its software. And you can see that by the value of the app store. So, you know, that whole thinking was, is something that, you know, I subscribe to for sure. So that's one, the other one is, there's a great little book, which I normally give away as gift to people when whenever interview them or, or, or I, I meet with them and it's called Wabi SBI. Do you know this principle? Do you know the principles of Wabi?


I've heard of it. I heard of it.


I'll give it to you very simply. So if this cup, I break it by accident, I can either throw it away. Now it's discarded waste or I could take the fragment of this and rebuild it. And the way they do it in Japan is it's rebuilt, but the joints maybe have gold in them. So it's using gilded paint and you know, so the, the, the cup itself is now more original, more unique and has a, has a real interesting purpose to it. So I subscribe to that, cuz you know, this more is more, is not a great world to be in. So WBI sub is a great one, but there's a book there's not just wild. Be SBI it's it's Wabi SBI for artists, designers, poets, and philosophers. So it's, it's very short read. And the other thing that, so I did, I did actually pull one down from my bookshelf and it's this thing.


So a friend of mine publishes this it's called 101 great minds. I happen to be in it, which I'm thrilled about, but there's a whole bunch of people in here. Some of them are really close friends of mine. And there are two things that I love about this book. That's very pointed, cuz it all talks about the power of sound, which is incredible. And we all have different theories in the, and my theories on sound are different to other people's theories of sound. But I love the design of it. If you look at the edge of that book, how it's it's, it's just beautiful yellow. It's enormous. It's enormous. It's a, huge book. It's a brick. But when you stack the books together, it creates this beautiful vignette of color. So it's incredibly well designed, but yeah, I'm a massive freak. So you can imagine things that I care about have to be well designed people. And what's your


Theory of sound?


Oh look, I think sound is the one of the best kept secrets out there. And, and, and here's why the average person in the us listens to eight hours of sound a day. And I'm not just talking about music, that's podcasts or people listening to YouTube and turning the sound off if they were at work when they used to have an office. So sound is a way for us to connect even more importantly than visual. And it's also emotionally a way to connect. So if you think about it, if you and I play a film clip from when you grew up and said, Hey man, this was a time when I was coming into my own. And this song was incredibly important to me. And let me play it for you right now. And you, we watched the video together. You probably won't have the same emotional reaction.


If you put headphones on and you played that song, you know, you probably burst into tears and think this is a time that I became me. There's something about it, isolated from the visual, that sound can be incredibly important. It's also iconic. So if you think about the ability, if I played you the Intel ding, ding, you'd probably I you'd to hear that and go, oh, it's Intel in three seconds, but three seconds. If I have to show you something for five seconds or I have to do a frequency of showing you that five second thing for a hundred times, just to be able to understand what that brand is that's wasted. But if you can create sound iconography, that's recognized a brand in like three seconds. That's incredible. That's incredible. So for me, sound is man, it's, it is the best kept secret.


And every year I think sound technology are gonna be the next thing. And also voice recognition. It's not voice recognition today is terrible. Texting. You know, voice to text is terrible for me, maybe part of it's because I speak too fast. My accent is too strong. Even if my series set to, you know, Australian and Google translate is slow, but voice and sound are an incredible way to, to reengage and remember things even more. So I think, than the visual cortex, your eyes. So yeah, man, I lots of theories around around sound and it's very important. And just walk, you see people with all these headsets on they're listening to things, man. And because they're listening to things, the visual cortex is the world we lived in, but the whole, the whole idea of sound and oral. Oh perfect.


I'm I'm similar to you every year I think. Okay. This is the year where we do everything just with talking like I come back home and I say Hey, give me the three most important crypto news. Give me a seven minutes spiritual update a reminder of some of, of who I really am and then give me the, the two seconds, Hey, what's what's in the kitchen so I can, I can invent something to cook. And then I walk to the kitchen, but it never happens every year. I think this is the year, but it never happens. What's going on.


You know, what's interesting about technology though. So when I go to these large tech fairs and fortunately I get to speak at most of them, I get to observe where the technology trends are going. And the idea of big screens happens in cars. So cars today, the screens are getting much, much, much bigger because autonomies coming right. So why would Simons sit inside a car, the phone, this small and do all of the things he wants to do when he could have a 60 inch immersive screen that he could deal with because the car is safe. It's autonomously driving, we're getting there. So that's, we're that horse is being led for us. However, today people want to feel super safe. So then most of the things they're looking at on those big screens, the things that make them feel safe when they're in autonomy driving.


Okay. So the first thing is autos is gonna become screen as a service, meaning you'll be renting a whole bunch of applications in an ecosystem of your car. Cause the more time you're spend in it, the more immersive it is. And that's why you want a big screen. Lots of apps. Great. The second thing though, is that when you're in your living, I'm noticing this trend of all technologies starting to recede. So you have televisions now, like from Samsung, the frame that looks like a picture frame and it could be yours right behind you. So when you're not showing the book of strategy, sprints on your shelf, there, it could be showing you could be watching Hulu if you turn it on side, but it looks like a picture. It doesn't look like a exchange television facing you in the milling of your living room where you're ignoring everything around you, which you've already been ignoring today because you've been face down in front of this screen.

The strong commitment

So technology in the living room is receding. It turns up when you want it. And it goes way when you don't, that's kind of giving me some hope about where it's going, because I'm the guy who goes with the small screen on a phone, not the big screen on a phone. If I'm gonna go with a big screen on a phone, I might as well have an iPad, you know, and also it's throwing off my hips anyway, cuz the pockets aren't big enough to carry the phone around anymore. So I need a whole nother thing, but I, I guess all I'm saying is, you know, there's a sense of technology. Things like sound needs to come, so it could be more discreet. So I'm not always distracted by visual, visual, visual, because it's everywhere. So where do you get your calmness when you don't want that? You still may wanna be connected, but sound might be the most important part of that. Mm


You rock so much. I could talk to you for days uninterrupted. Where can people, if they wanna find you and learn more from you, where can they find you?


Yeah. So, oh, great question. I'm I'm clearly on across the internet. So she dot com's probably the best place to, to find me. But if you wanna see what my intimate looks like, I'm on Instagram as well. And you know, if you look at the, the talks that I've done or the interviews, I wanna see their Shing of views across YouTube and I have them posted on other channels and like Vimeo. So it's, I'm pretty easily found brother, but I love this discussion and everybody does ping me. I'm happy to send them my book called forward doing, which is the, the book about kind of inspiration as to where, where this, this digital connection's all happening. And as I revisit it, some of that stuff is so current. It just keeps me in tune with the things that I talked about a a while ago. And today they're reflected. It just feels, it's a, it's a nice validation that these premonitions are still coming true, which is gre


I love? Oh, I think your next guest should be Barry Waxman. The guy who did connected by design. Yeah. I'll introduce you. He's a very cool cat. He can talk more about those theories and I think he'd be great. Here's one thing I want to talk to about, it's been distracting me the whole time, but I love the halo behind your head right now. The fact that you're your short haircut and whatever that white object is behind there, it's either a light or a speaker or something. It looks like a halo. Its a lamp. So


It says the lamb.


I love that man. Oh it is. It's a lamp turn the other way. Yeah, I get it now. Yeah. Look, it's a perfect


San.


All you need now is a collar and some and some gowns and you're good to go, man. We've got your, we've got your Halloween figured out. That's for sure.


Here we go. Shingy thank you so much for being here for sharing your energy, your journey, your wisdom, and please stay safe and keep rolling.


You better believe it. Thanks.