#39: Hola 🇪🇸
😌 Ebb To The Flow 🌊
Hola from Spain! 🇪🇸
After spending a week on the coast of Portugal, I picked up my partner (@_taylorrmoon) and headed off to Spain! (note: check out Taylor's Instagram for updated stories on our trip, she's much better at sharing on social media than I am 😊)
It's been a pretty packed week, driving all the way from Arrifana in Portugal to Barcelona in Spain. The first day was about a 7 hour drive (600 km) and the second day about a 9-10 hour drive (900 km). Parking in Barcelona took another hour to do a 500 point turn into a tiny spot 😂.
While in Spain, I've been pretty disconnected from my computer and writing. After finding flow all week in Portugal, exploring, journalling, and flying my drone, I thought that perhaps it would be a good idea to ebb in Spain; to take a bit of a step back and just experience things as they are without focusing on any kind of capture or output.
Ebb and flow 😌 🌊
Instead of creating new things, I've been soaking it all in.
Last week I told you what I was reading while on vacation. This week, I'll also share what I've been listening to on the road.
Recalibrating Recap 🧭 ✨
Welcome to Recalibrating! My name is Callum (@_wanderloots)
Join me each week as I learn to better life in every way possible, reflecting and recalibrating along the way to keep from getting too lost.
Thanks for sharing the journey with me ✨
Since I'm on vacation, last week's entry was a bit of a different style. I explained my pursuit of flow and the books that I brought while on my trip, tying together the concepts of flow and blockchain creation. I also tasked you with some reflection exercises 👀
Did you manage to find flow? 🌊
Let me know!
This week is going to be an even shorter entry. An ebb to the flow 🌊 Over the last week, instead of creating, I've been consuming (both podcasts and culture). With many hours on the road, I've been listening to podcasts. I thought I'd share some of my thoughts and recommendations ✨
On The Road 🚗 🗺️ 🎙️
Last week I talked a lot about why I brought two books with my on vacation:
Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement With Everyday Life (by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi); and
Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet (by Chris Dixon)
Books are great for sitting on the coast, soaking in the sun (and rain in my case 😂) but road trips leave little room for reading.
To complement my own reading of Read Write Own, I thought it would be interesting to listen to a podcast series by web3 with a16z, where different people interview Chris Dixon.
The first podcast was entitled "Read Write Own: A new era" and was a great introduction to Chris Dixon and his overall philosophy with Read Write Own.
The second podcast was entitled "The story of the internet, emergent networks, and their effects" and provided good commentary on network effects and how our world is shifting with AI and blockchain.
The third and final podcast of the series was entitled "Money, power, politics, and the internet's next battleground" and was my favourite of the three. This interview was performed by Marc Andreesen and Ben Horowitz, the founders of Andreesen Horowitz (a16z).
All three of these episodes may be found here, with links to all major podcast platforms.
I have to say, Chris Dixon speaks my language. I don't think I've resonated with anyone's philosophy on the Internet and the Creator Economy as much as I do with his.
It's incredibly refreshing to listen to someone speak rationally and reasonably about typically complicated and often controversial topics like AI and blockchain.
My Recommendations
I highly recommend listening to at least one of these podcasts over the next week. They really helped frame my own understanding of emerging technologies, while introducing good insight on current trends.
The book 'Read Write Own' only came out a few weeks ago and the podcasts in the last month or so, making them some of the most up-to-date commentary on the Internet and blockchain worlds.
You may have heard about Bitcoin reaching new all time highs over the last week, this podcast will help you to understand why.
For context a16z is a venture capital firm, investing in emerging technologies. Their slogan is "software is eating the world". Marc Andreesen is a co-founder of Netscape, one of the first successful web browsers back in the 1990s. Accordingly, Marc's perspective is incredibly insightful and well-informed.
If you're relatively new to crypto, blockchain, the creator economy, or the concepts of web2 & web3, I recommend listening to the first podcast.
If you're familiar with these concepts, but are a bit unsure of how AI fits into it all, I recommend the second podcast.
If you're familiar with all of these topics and have a good grasp on AI and the need for a cryptographic internet, the third podcast is the most complicated, yet, in my opinion, the best commentary on the current state of technology and where the Internet is headed.
More Context
If you have the time, I recommend listening to all three podcast episodes. Each one provided me with valuable insight into the current internet, the future of blockchain, crypto, and AI, and the creator economy as a whole.
I'll share more of my thoughts later, since these episodes tie into what I've been talking about over the last ~8-10 weeks. Chris wrote the book Read Write Own to help people understand the direction the world is headed, very much my mission with Recalibrating.
If you haven't had a chance to read the rest of my entries this year, I recommend checking out this overview entry where I summarized each of my newsletters of 2024.
I think that this overview is a great way to get a good grasp on current technological developments, especially when paired with the podcast I recommended above.
Next week
Since this week is an ebb week, I think I'll leave it at that.
For now, it's back to relaxing 😌 (and another 9 hour drive tomorrow...)
Not sure what I'll listen to next 🤔
Stay tuned ✨
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