Strive to be extraordinary

'Computers are useless

They can only give you answers'

Pablo Picasso, 1968

This has been a constant in my talks about technology and real estate for years.

First, because it is true and secondly to placate real estate people, who are obsessed with the idea that ‘we are a people business’.

But today, it is even more true (from ‘truthiness’ to ‘truth’) and whilst real estate is still a people business that is no longer sufficient.

In 1968 Picasso, indeed just about everyone, could ignore computers. They were not, as they are now, an integral, pervasive part of life.

Today, most people would give up just about anything before they gave up their smartphones. Genuinely, we find it hard to live without them. For good reason - they are extraordinarily useful, in so very many ways.

But his point - they can only give us answers - is becoming increasingly pertinent.

We are approaching the stage where ‘they’ don’t need much from us.

For example, prompted with just the dumbest few words, Microsoft, Google or Linkedin will craft a passable email on our behalf. Or a tweet, or X, or post.

They will be ok. Probably as good, or better, than much of the bilge one encounters on social media. But ….. sans humanity, that’s as good as it will get.

The average bar will undoubtedly be raised. Literacy levels will improve. The Overton window of acceptable dialogue will be moved.

But … as Picasso well knew, any old fool could give an answer, or paint a picture, or craft a sculpture.

The important thing was who could ask a great question. Or conceive a Guernica, or sculpt a Bull’s Head?

And we need to think like this today. It is going to become far too easy to be better versions of ourselves, aided and abetted by extraordinary technology whereas what we really should be striving for is to be extraordinary ourselves.

We should be thinking of nothing but great questions. Deeper, broader, more profound questions. Questions that ‘make a dent in the universe’ as Steve Jobs famously said. Questions that lead to a better place. Questions that improve the lot of mankind. Questions to which the answer is better, faster, cheaper. Questions that matter.

We are moving to a world (in some important ways, but by no means all) where abundance is the default. Where we have abundant words, that largely make sense, are largely coherent and largely harmless. But in such a world we need to push for much more. We need to push for greatness. For being far better in everything than we are now. For raising the average bar to a place unimaginable a generation ago.

New technologies, especially related to the broad church that is AI, are monumental enablers. But for good and ill. They could enable outcomes that trash the planet or save the planet. That venerate the few but disregard the many. That promulgate a world foreseen in 1919 by WB Yeats where:

‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.’