Episodi

  • What sir Jony Ive Sees That We Don’t

    What sir Jony Ive Sees That We Don’t
    Jun 3 2025
    Imagine the scene: a morning at Apple’s design studio. Not a boardroom, but a breakfast table. Jony Ive and his team gather not to pitch or perform, but simply to be together. This wasn’t corporate culture. It was ritual. Trust. A shared meal as sacred as any sketch or prototype.This is how Ive worked. Not in isolation, but in communion. Not in pursuit of profit, but of meaning.And now, he’s working with Sam Altman.Design as DevotionFor Jony Ive, design is not decoration. It’s devotion. A craft of care, where every curve, sound, and surface carries moral weight. He calls it a “servant orientation”—a way of working that begins and ends with the user, the human, the living being on the other side of the screen.In a recent interview, he reflected on how Silicon Valley has drifted—from the purpose-driven culture of the 1990s to today’s corporate noise. He still clings to a different kind of north star: “to enable and inspire people.”Innovation, for Ive, isn’t about disruption. It’s about care. About joy. About making something better, not just newer.Jobs & Ive: The Spiritual PartnershipWhen Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he didn’t just reclaim a company. He found a kindred spirit in Jony Ive.Jobs called him his “spiritual partner at Apple”, a designer who could hold both the grand vision and the microscopic detail. Their collaboration was legendary: the iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad—each a synthesis of Jobs’ intuition and Ive’s touch.They shared more than ideas. They shared ethics. Simplicity. Empathy. Obsession with the invisible. A respect for users as emotional, evolving humans. “Steve and I care about things like that,” Ive once said, after being disappointed by the finish on a knife blade. (Business Insider)And after Jobs’ death? Ive still asks, “What would Steve do?” (The Guardian)So Why Sam Altman?It’s a natural question. Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has taken heat for shifting the organization from its idealistic, open-source origins to a more secretive, profit-driven entity. Elon Musk has criticized this pivot sharply.So why would a man like Ive—whose ethos is so deeply human—partner with him?Because something is happening. Something big.Ive’s design firm, LoveFrom, is now working with OpenAI on what’s being called a “new category of AI hardware.” Not a phone. Not a laptop. Something entirely new.They’re asking: What should AI feel like? What should it live inside?Backed by SoftBank with a $1 billion fund, this project is being quietly built outside the gravitational pull of Apple or Microsoft. And at the heart of it is a design question, not a technical one.What if the future of AI isn’t on a screen, but in the room with you—calm, ambient, humane?The Pointe BeingJony Ive doesn’t build machines. He builds relationships—between idea and form, between person and product, between what is and what could be.Now, with Sam Altman, he’s stepping into the most profound design challenge of our time:How do we integrate artificial intelligence into our lives without losing our humanity?And what might emerge is not just another device, but a new kind of companion—one that listens more than it interrupts, adapts instead of addicting, and respects your attention rather than hijacking it.Imagine a world where AI is not a faceless force but a presence you trust—quiet, ambient, even joyful. A tool not to track you, but to understand and support you. An object that reminds us not of machines, but of ourselves—at our best.Jony Ive has done this before. He’s changed how we touch technology.Now, perhaps, he’ll change how it touches us.Let me know when you’d like the podcast script version and teaser posts ready. Shall we schedule recording for Tuesday morning as usual? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit roelsmelt.substack.com/subscribe
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    1 min
  • Ancient Wisdom Predicted Our Technological Awakening

    Ancient Wisdom Predicted Our Technological Awakening
    Oct 31 2025
    In 1894, Swami Sri Yukteswar wrote something remarkable in “The Holy Science.”He predicted humanity would enter an age of energy mastery around 1900. An age where we’d understand electricity, atomic forces, and the fundamental nature of matter itself.This was more than a decade before Einstein published E=mc2.I’ve been studying how great thinkers identify different sources of truth to explain why things happen. Tony Seba sees disruptive technologies as the driving force. George Friedman points to geography and geopolitics. Each offers a lens for understanding our future.But Yukteswar identified something deeper.The 24,000-Year PatternYukteswar described a cosmic cycle spanning 24,000 years. Our solar system moves through ascending and descending arcs, each lasting 12,000 years.For the past 12,000 years, we descended through what he called Kali Yuga. The age of material darkness. The age of extraction.Around 1900, we began ascending into Dwapara Yuga. The age of energy.The timing is striking. In 1720, Stephen Gray discovered electrical action. In 1831, Michael Faraday created the electric dynamo. In 1875, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. By 1900, the explosion had begun.Every technology Yukteswar predicted has arrived. Electricity. Nuclear energy. Quantum computing. Solar power.When Two Visions CollideTony Seba’s “Stellar” describes our shift from extraction to self-sustaining systems. He traces how the extractive paradigmdefined 12,000 years of agricultural civilization.That’s exactly Yukteswar’s descending cycle timeline.Seba identifies solar, AI, and robotics as “stellar core” technologies. They need initial investment but then self-sustain, self-improve, self-repair. Solar panels dropped 82% in cost over the last decade. They capture photons without ongoing extraction.This matches perfectly with Dwapara Yuga’s characteristics. The age when humanity masters energy and moves beyond material limitation.Two independent visions, 130 years apart, describing the same transformation.The Deeper ImplicationIf Yukteswar is right, technology isn’t driving our evolution.Cosmic cycles are enabling our technological awakening.The deeper the source of truth, the stronger the pattern. Seba analyzes 50 to 100 years of technological disruption. Yukteswar maps 24,000-year cycles of consciousness evolution.When they align, it suggests something profound. Our shift to abundance thinking isn’t random. It’s part of a larger universal pattern.Alignment, Not ResistanceThis changes how we navigate the transition ahead.Fighting these forces creates polarization. Wars. Conflict. Misery. We see it everywhere as old systems resist new realities.But alignment creates synthesis.Understanding that we’re in Dwapara Yuga helps us move with the cycle instead of against it. Free will isn’t about doing whatever we want. It’s about sensing the deeper forces around us and aligning our energy with them.If both ancient wisdom and modern analysis point toward self-sustaining abundance, resistance becomes the only real obstacle.The stellar paradigm Seba describes might be exactly what Yukteswar saw coming over a century ago. Not because he predicted technology, but because he understood the cosmic patterns that make such technology possible.We’re not forcing abundance into existence. We’re finally aligned with forces that have been building for over a century.That’s what makes this moment different.The Four Yugas and Where We StandYukteswar mapped four distinct ages within each 12,000-year cycle.Satya Yuga, the age of truth. Humanity understands the fundamental unity of existence. Consciousness operates at its highest level.Treta Yuga, the mental age. Telepathic communication becomes possible. We grasp the finer forces of creation.Dwapara Yuga, the energy age. We comprehend electricity, magnetism, and atomic structure. This is where we are now.Kali Yuga, the material age. Consciousness contracts. We see only gross matter. We believe in separation, scarcity, extraction.We spent the last 12,000 years descending through these ages. From enlightenment to darkness. From abundance to scarcity. From synthesis to polarization.But around 1900, the direction reversed.We’re now 125 years into our ascent through Dwapara Yuga. Still early in the energy age, but accelerating fast.Why Great Thinkers Need Sources of TruthEvery visionary identifies a fundamental force that explains change.George Friedman sees geography as destiny. Rivers, mountains, and oceans determine which nations rise and fall. Geopolitics becomes predictable when you understand the constraints of physical space.Tony Seba identifies disruptive technologies following S-curves. Solar, batteries, AI, autonomous vehicles. Each technology drops in cost while improving in performance, creating exponential change within decades.Both offer powerful frameworks. Both predict aspects of our future accurately.But Yukteswar’s source goes deeper...
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    8 min
  • Dear Europe: Your Kids Aren’t Broken, Your Parenting Anxiety Is

    Dear Europe: Your Kids Aren’t Broken, Your Parenting Anxiety Is
    Dec 3 2025
    Every generation has its bogeyman.In the 1950s it was Elvis Presley’s hips and rock ’n’ roll—psychologists warned it would turn teenagers into sex-crazed delinquents. In the 1970s and 80s it was Dungeons & Dragons (literally blamed for suicides and satanism). In the 1990s it was violent video games and Marilyn Manson. In the early 2000s it was television itself: “Kids are watching six hours a day and it’s melting their brains!”In 2025 the panic button is labeled “TikTok.”And just like every previous moral panic, adults are frantically hunting for evidence that something—anything—is catastrophically wrong with what the kids are doing… because deep down many of us suspect the real problem might be our own parenting.1. The Research Is Far Less Scary Than the HeadlinesLet’s look at the actual science, not the cherry-picked doom studies that dominate Brussels press releases.* The strongest, most rigorous studies (repeated-measure, longitudinal, pre-registered) find tiny effects. Example: A 2023 study of 480,000 adolescents across 40 countries (Vuorre et al., Nature Human Behaviour) found that social media use explains less than 1 % of variation in life satisfaction. The effect of social media on well-being is smaller than the effect of eating breakfast or wearing glasses.* Jonathan Haidt’s famous claim that “social media caused the teen mental health crisis” has been repeatedly debunked. Orben & Przybylski (2022) re-analyzed the same datasets Haidt uses and showed that when you control for prior mental health, the correlation between social media and depression almost disappears. In plain English: depressed kids use social media more, not the other way round.* The “smartphone generation is doomed” graph that went viral? It falls apart when you include boys (who game more than scroll) or when you look at countries outside the Anglosphere. In South Korea and Japan, kids spend far more time online and have lower suicide rates than in the 1990s.* Experimental evidence is even more sobering. When researchers force teens to quit Instagram for a month (the strongest design possible), depression drops… by about 0.1 standard deviations. That’s roughly the same boost you get from one extra hour of sleep or eating an extra portion of vegetables. Helpful? Yes. Civilization-ending? Hardly.* Positive effects are routinely ignored. A 2024 meta-analysis (Kreszynski et al.) found that active social media use (messaging friends, posting, joining interest groups) is associated with higher social capital, lower loneliness, and better identity exploration—especially for LGBTQ+ youth and neurodivergent kids who find their tribe online long before they do in real life.In short: the science shows modest risks for heavy, passive, late-night use (exactly like television did), and modest benefits for active, social use. Nothing that justifies treating Instagram like cigarettes for children.2. Projection in Action: “It’s for the Children” (Really?)Psychologists call it displacement: adults feel guilty about their own compulsive scrolling, their inability to put the phone down at dinner, their doom-scrolling at 2 a.m.—so they project that guilt onto their children and demand lawmakers “do something.”The European Parliament’s resolution was co-authored by politicians who themselves refresh X every five minutes. Ursula von der Leyen gave a speech about addictive algorithms while standing in front of a giant screen looping TikTok-style videos. The irony is thick enough to spread on bread.When French senators say “we must protect children from the tsunami of Big Tech,” ask yourself: who exactly is addicted here? My 10-year-old can happily walk away from Roblox to play outside. Many adults in that Senate chamber cannot walk away from their notifications for ten minutes.3. Self-Preservation and Personal Responsibility Trump Blanket BansEvery child is different.Some 11-year-olds handle Discord servers with maturity that would shame most corporate managers. Others melt down if they lose one game of Fortnite. A law that treats both the same is not protection—it’s laziness.The countries that score highest on adolescent well-being (Netherlands, Denmark—before they started panicking) have one thing in common: they trust parents and teach digital literacy from age six, not top-down prohibitions. Dutch schools have “mediawijzer” classes where kids learn to spot fake news, manage screen time, and mute toxic group chats. Result? Dutch teens use social media just as much as French teens but report higher life satisfaction and less cyberbullying.Compare that to Spain, which introduced strict age limits in 2024: kids simply lie about their age more creatively, parents are kept in the dark, and underground “burner” accounts explode. The law didn’t reduce harm—it reduced honest conversation.4. History Rhymes—And It Laughs at Us* 1956: American Psychological Association warns ...
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    4 min
  • Europe After the Auto Collapse

    Europe After the Auto Collapse
    Nov 20 2025
    The point being of today’s article is……that the collapse of Europe’s automobile industry is unavoidable, and the reason reaches far deeper than technology or global competition. It exposes a continent whose political design — built to prevent war — now makes meaningful innovation impossible. Defense spending, American protection, and fear of Russia temporarily mask this weakness, but if Russia collapses in the coming years, Europe will lose the last external force that unites it. Unless a crisis forces reinvention, Europe will slowly become what I wrote about earlier: a beautiful, historical place to enjoy life, preserved more as a memory than as a driver of the future.The Situation at HandArjen Lubach’s segment last week made something visible that has been happening for years: Europe is no longer competing in the global automobile market. We are losing. No — we have already lost. What was once our industrial backbone is now dissolving in slow motion.Europe shaped the 20th-century car. Germany built the engineering DNA. France and Italy gave it elegance. Scandinavia added safety. The supply chains stretched across the continent like an industrial nervous system. And then, in just one technological generation, this entire structure lost its relevance.China built an EV empire by combining batteries, software, and manufacturing into one coordinated strategy. The United States focused on AI, autonomy, and software-defined mobility. Europe perfected its regulations while letting go of its industrial ambition.The collapse of the car industry is only the symptom. The deeper disease is that Europe can no longer create new industrial giants. We can only manage, regulate, and preserve what once was.The real question is: why?The Core DilemmaEurope’s political architecture was designed after two world wars with one mission: prevent Europeans from fighting each other ever again. This system succeeded magnificently. Seventy years of peace is no small achievement.But the hidden cost is now becoming painfully visible.Because to prevent war, Europe built a system that slows everything down. It rewards compromise over decisiveness, consensus over initiative, committees over experimentation. Every bold idea must survive dozens of political realities and institutional constraints. Nothing moves unless everyone agrees, which means nothing ever moves at the speed required to shape the future.This was fine in a slower, more predictable world. It is fatal in a world driven by exponential technologies.And here is the uncomfortable truth:The radical change Europe needs is impossible within the system Europe built.A political machine designed to prevent internal conflict cannot suddenly transform into a machine built for innovation and speed.This is why defense spending feels like a relief. It gives the illusion of industrial momentum. It temporarily fills the gap left by automotive decline. It gives Europe a sense of urgency — but it is not a foundation. Defense is a response to fear, not a strategy for prosperity.And behind that fear lies the real unifying force: Russia.The SynthesisRussia’s invasion of Ukraine did something Europe had forgotten how to do. It forced us to act. It made us coordinate more quickly than we had in decades. It pushed us to invest, to upgrade, to think strategically. The Russian threat became a psychological glue, a reason to focus and unify.But Russia is a declining power. It is demographically collapsing, economically shrinking, and militarily exhausted. Many analysts believe it may fracture or turn inward in the coming years.This creates a paradox.Europe’s unity is currently strengthened by the existence of a threatening Russia.But Russia itself may not survive long enough to keep Europe unified.And then what?If Russia collapses, Europe loses the one external pressure that forces urgency.If America retreats, we lose the protection that allowed us to be slow.If our industries fall, we lose the economic engine that once defined us.We are left with a system that cannot reform itself from within.No bold industrial project will ever be agreed upon by 27 countries with different needs and political realities. No breakthrough will emerge from institutions built to manage equilibrium rather than create momentum. And without conflict — internal or external — the system stays exactly as it is.That means Europe’s default future is not reinvention. It is transformation through slow decline.Europe becomes what history always hinted it might be:A peaceful, beautiful, culturally rich continent.A place to enjoy life, not to build it.A living museum of human civilisation, where people travel to experience depth, meaning, beauty, and the art of being human.Not a future-shaping force — but a future-enjoying one.Closing NoteThe fall of the European car industry is the first shock that shows us the limits of our system. Defense spending fills the gap only briefly. American protection ...
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    3 min
  • AI as a Mirror for the Human Soul

    AI as a Mirror for the Human Soul
    May 14 2025

    Why does AI seem conscious? Society often reduces humans to logic, mirroring AI’s capabilities, but we are far more—emotions, intuition, and spirit define us. While AI lacks consciousness, it can free us from mundane tasks, as research on mindfulness apps shows improved well-being. Philosophers like David Chalmers highlight consciousness’s mystery, and Carl Jung urges exploring the unconscious. Steve Wozniak warns that limiting ourselves to logic risks AI dominance. By using AI as a mirror, we can explore our profound consciousness, ensuring technology serves our deeper humanity.

    In the quiet of a Vipassana retreat, where breath reveals the mind’s depths, I’ve pondered: what makes us human? As a philosopher of technology, I’m drawn to artificial intelligence (AI), which mimics logic but lacks the spark of awareness. Society’s tendency to view humans as mere logical processors fuels the illusion that AI is conscious. Yet, we are more—our consciousness weaves emotions, intuition, and spirit. Can AI, devoid of this depth, help us explore it? By reflecting our potential, AI can free us to embrace the beautiful consciousness that defines us.



    This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit roelsmelt.substack.com/subscribe
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    10 min
  • Playing in Freedom

    Playing in Freedom
    Apr 3 2025
    11 min
  • Europe as the Global Beacon of Authentic Human Experiences in an AI-Dominated World

    Europe as the Global Beacon of Authentic Human Experiences in an AI-Dominated World
    Feb 24 2025
    16 min