Ideas
The Ideas
Introduction
Throughout history, the manifesto has illuminated the path in the darkness, leading us to the peak. In the handbook, you have encountered the manifesto firsthand and perhaps noticed some initial changes. Our grand vision is our summit, that is, the collective experience of the manifesto. We have pointed out one or two examples along the way to make the manifesto more tangible. However, our goal was to avoid inappropriate concretizations as much as possible. How could we possibly advise the world's best expert on you specifically? A map cannot replace the experience of a walk nor fulfill its function. A map is merely a model of reality.
Life and our impact can be described as a process of continuous change and repetition. Our manifesto has an effect and it can generate new ideas. You will scrutinize these ideas, weigh them, and you will try out the good ones. Ideas that you find valuable and share with others become even more valuable. Others can then try out your ideas, build on them, and enhance your ideas. So, we have created a structure where changes can develop and flourish. Now we could sit back and watch as your ideas grow on this framework in the future. However, we believe that ideas are fertile. Therefore, we want to take a big run-up as good role models and make a big leap across the river. We now want to share ideas with you. Ideas that have been born in our alliance, that we have found good, and we believe that these ideas want to grow.
Before we make this leap, we want to prepare something necessary. Let's direct our attention to the evaluation of ideas, i.e., to the "… finding ideas good". An evaluation is always determined by an underlying value. The value weight determines the judgment of whether something is heavy. Suppose we follow the same route everyday, passing the same alleys and houses. Just like the raindrops taking the same paths on a windowpane. But one morning, we stop at an intersection and take a different route than usual, only to find ourselves back on our familiar path after a short while. Once we have reached the old path again, we can recognize that the new path was good. The old path was good, too, but at that moment, the new path was better. Let's now unfold our wings and look at this scenery from an even greater distance. We can now describe all actions in our life as a game in progress. Surprise surprise, since humans created games. In our life game, one move follows the other with the aim of collecting as much reward as possible in total. This is something we are familiar with from many board games. Moves can be the same, like the same route, or they can be different, like the new route. When a move is the same, we are moving within the existing culture. We follow the established, the experienced, the known. However, if a move now differs from the others, we move beyond culture. This beyond culture can also be described as the idea. Ideas can be small and personal in nature. A new route, a new lunch dish, a new ritual. Ideas can be good or not. Good ideas are the reward. Ideas can be big: an insight that connects a handful of areas of knowledge, like a bridge, and that serves as a foundation for further discoveries. We are aware that we have created new values. These new values now mean that future actions and ideas must be evaluated anew. Our ideas are not just permeated and interwoven with these new values; they also all have a certain new flavor, a certain new style. Of course, you can now think in analogies and start sorting: this idea seems conservative, this idea is rather progressive. This idea is shaped by techno-optimism, this idea originates from a libertarian school of thought, and so on. Consider the American lifestyle, which has spread over the past hundred years. Today - in retrospect - we can all too well summarize this lifestyle succinctly in the motto - from dishwasher to millionaire. But when it was still emerging a few decades ago, this was not possible. Only the practice of many has made this style and this phenomenon describable. Only the long practice of many - be it through movies, texts or direct experience - has made it possible to condense the style into its essence in a few words. So it is also with the Ultanio way of life. When we speak of adventure beyond culture, it is a description. Any analogy would be wrong. Adventure beyond culture is our current and therefore our best possible description to condense our lifestyle into its essence. Our ideas should now - and this is the real risk of this idea book - reverse this process. Our ideas should hand you the fragrant flowers so that your delicate nose can discern their essence.
Before we hand you our colorful bouquet for you to throw it with great joy like a proud bride, let's summarize.
Behind every idea lies life, that is, your life. So behind every idea lies an invitation to try it out, to look at yourself in the mirror with it, and to let this new impression affect you. We want to encourage you not to see our ideas as truths, but rather to question, test, understand and above all improve our ideas.
We have summarized our ideas in fields. The order of the ideas fields starts with you, then goes into your immediate sphere of influence, i.e., your family and your organizations, in order to finally go beyond that and focus globally and intergalactically. Some ideas have a political dimension and can inspire work in existing parties, impel the founding of one's own party, or inspire other social engagements for change and mobilization.
We wish you much joy with our ideas.
For your family
Our parents raised us and were thus the first instance that gave us values. We also pass on values in this role. This process repeats itself from generation to generation.
But the family is not a picture and therefore, the family is also not an ideal. The family is a system and the family is a process in which everyone learns, all on an equal footing.
A family is an interplay and the better the individual players complement each other, the more families can grow.
For your friendships
If we raise our gaze, we find people outside our family whom we learn to call our friends. We learn to categorize these people. Recategorizations of existing friends always take place. As the intensity of the friendship increases, so does the trust in the respective friend and thus the openness to exchange information.
Our first idea for you is to do an inventory. Just as the careful merchant goes to his warehouse at the end of the business year and weighs, measures, and counts all the goods he finds there, you can conduct an inventory of your circle of friends. You can ask questions at your discretion and put on different glasses: From 'How much was I able to help friend A recently?' to 'How much has friend B brought to me recently?'
Perhaps there is already an existing motive for you, like in a good opera, after which you have evaluated your entire circle of friends to date. So your view of the whole circle might be that you see it as too large, too small, too strenuous, or too distracting. This motive also offers many possibilities to question.
Once you have warmed up here, you can delve deeper: What exactly does 'good' mean to you? Why? Well, the question of the model behind a rating can also lead to interesting results. Or the question of differences: What distinguishes your family from friends?
Once you have completed your research, it is time to look at the results, to understand them, and to finally review and improve. Your ideas then come into play. One of the ideas can be to first record in writing your research results and what you want to improve. This way, you can check yourself at a later date and see what has changed.
Another idea could be that you not only evaluate individual meetings with your friends, but above all record their content. What insights did this meeting lead to? What ideas did it lead to? Afterwards, the genealogy of ideas can be helpful in reflecting on your own development.
By paying more attention to your friends, your friendships can bloom anew and change fundamentally.
You can do this!
For your suppliers
We are all customers. At our baker's or at our search engine. In these relationships, we can discover a lot of potential for improvement through open questioning. We also experience that ideas on how service could be improved do not always immediately find a receptive ear.
So share your ideas, not only directly with the supplier, but also with other customers and with your friends. A small note in a suitable place can make a lot of difference.
Transform your suppliers into the best in the world.
You can do this!
For your technology
As with your circle of friends, a basic inventory can be a first step to create clarity. An inventory can help to recognise which technologies you use, what benefits they bring you, and which topics concern you in this context.
We believe that in recent generations, the activity of understanding technology has become increasingly important. It goes without saying that a farmer who tended his land a few thousand years ago attached far less importance to understanding what he was doing than a contemporary knowledge worker who uses a variety of technologies.
At this point, we would like to remind you again that, in our view, technology encompasses far more than is generally subsumed under technology.
Understanding technology is thus initially a major investment, which wants to be paid with time. But if you look far ahead at this point, you can recognise that this investment pays a profitable interest and thus - in the long run - through the compound interest effect, can create a large treasure.
The first result of the inventory may be to recognise technologies as such anew.
Now our actual work can begin, i.e., to question technology - as a whole - and ourselves. You already know the procedure from the previous idea fields, so it could also be interesting here to put on different glasses, i.e., to use different filters.
What dangers arise from your current behaviour? What benefit has this or that technology brought you? Which technology could easily bring more benefit to you if you understood it better? What business models are inherent to the companies whose technology you use? What opportunities present to you when you use a new technology for a certain goal?
Our understanding of technology also includes psychology, language, nutrition, sleep and social. Technology as an interplay of various aspects of us.
At this point, we would like to briefly illustrate with an example how a better understanding of technology makes change possible. Let's take the well-known Alice and let's take Bob. Alice now wants to send Bob a message. Alice can thus first, become aware that what she describes as "I want to send Bob a message," is nothing more than a thought. It may have been a voice she heard telling her in an emphatic tone, "Bob should buy milk, the old lazybones!" This gives Alice a variety of new possibilities. So, she can not only follow the thought, but she can also ignore it or she can change it. The same, of course, applies to the communication channel and to the message as such. To recognise that there are many channels, to understand how these channels work, and to have options to formulate the message, provides Alice with a lot of room for change. So, while it might have looked at first as if there was only one single possibility, she can now choose from a huge universe of options. This allows new possibilities that she has not seen before to be tried out.
Let's now look at two specific technologies that are on everyone's lips and illuminate them with new ideas. Both governments and companies see artificial intelligence as either a tool or a resource. Yet, artificial intelligence in its essence is neither a tool nor a resource. Both tool and resource would be means to an end. But artificial intelligence is an end, not a means. Intelligence is the ability to achieve one's goals in various environments. This is one of the distinguishing characteristics not only of our species, but of life.
Politicians pride themselves on investing billions in artificial intelligence. The money is flowing into new university research centres, thus into big bottomless barrels. But even today, we have algorithms and data to convert simple control loops like traffic light systems into cybernetic systems. This would bring real progress and not create more senseless and useless papers.
As in all areas, politics lives at least a decade in the past in relation to the technological status quo and maintains a dilettantish understanding of it. After having followed the Gandhi roadmap exactly in politics and first completely ignoring social media, then mocking it as "Who cares about what I had for breakfast today," 2016 came as a wake-up call. One morning, politics woke up and realized that someone seems to be sawing on the branch they are sitting on, and after rubbing their eyes in disbelief, they saw that it was social media. Our idea is simple: Politics is not supposed to regulate social media now, but politics needs to create better social media. That must be the benchmark.
Pars pro toto. Artificial intelligence and social media are just two technologies that we have pointed out as part of the problem. Our goal is to support ambitious and bold projects that create something genuinely new. We understand technology in its original meaning, as the connection of engineering and art. We also understand technology as an increasingly significant essence of our species.
We, therefore, want to become technology.
We will also achieve this!