Far Beyond The Stars: The Archives

Written by Everett Bogue | See you on the other side.

Sometimes a year of work can be reduced to a few bits of data.

The density of a moment contains information stretching back to the beginning of the universe.

Looking deeply into someone’s eyes can transfer more information than you’ll ever receive online.

On February 15th, 2011, a few things are going to happen:

1. Augmented Humanity is launching exclusively on Ebookling. It’s my new e-book, about second selves and mental cybernetics. The price will be $30.

2. Ebookling is re-launching as an beautifully simple space to purchase e-books worth reading. Colin and Miles are working decisively to craft an incredible platform.

The Ebookling launch is pretty self-explanatory, so I’ll let it happen when it happens.

If you buy the book you’ll get a link you can retweet, email, or link to which will give you 25% commission on any book sales from Ebookling. No one has ever created an e-bookstore that pays people to read in this way.

3. I’m going to wipe Far Beyond The Stars completely, cleaning the slate. All of the writing and research is being condensed into the two e-books. Minimalist Business will remain available, but the price is rising from $47 to $50. The $37 option will no longer be available for sale. Both my e-books will be hosted exclusively on Ebookling.

The archive of Far Beyond The Stars is back in the sidebar. I’m uncopywriting all of the work I’ve done on FBTS over the last year and a half (except the e-books). You have until the morning of February 15th to do whatever you want with the content. Archive it, republish it, read your favorite article one last time.

The future of the work is in your hands.

Keep an eye on Gwen too, she’s up to some mischief as well.

Anyone who signs up for the Letter.ly ($25 per month) will receive a free copy of Augmented Humanity on February 15th. I will continue to write about the deeper work that I’m doing there — work that won’t be available anywhere else.

I’ll be deleting the feedburner list, so you’ll have to resubscribe to the new blog (when/where it launches) or follow me on Twitter.

Written by Everett Bogue | Twitter made us minimalists.

Information is flowing faster.

An idea that we come up today will be adopted by the collective tomorrow.

Remember two months ago when everyone thought I’d lost my mind when I started to talk about cyborgs/augmented humanity? Then suddenly Eric Schmidt and Amber Case start talking about the same thing, and we’re living in a world-wide cyborg-coming-out party.

I like to call this idea-triangulation. The same thing happened when people were terrified about the idea of becoming a minimalist a year ago. As Derek Sivers mentioned: “The first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader.”

This is just one example of how much faster info travels than it did one year ago.

When I wrote The Art of Being Minimalist, the world needed instructions. It needed someone to tell the world, point blank: here’s what happens when you throw out all of your stuff.

And this, admittedly prescriptive knowledge worked, for a time.

However, then one day I realized that I wasn’t a minimalist at all. I was an augmented human, I had been from the start.

Then, I began to see the pattern in augmented humanity everywhere: minimalism was simply a side-effect of developing skill in mental cybernetics.

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We are responsible for the ideas that we put out onto the Internet.

Once the ideas go out, they can’t come back.

Information propagates infinitely faster than we can hit the delete key.

That being said, we can (and should) take responsibility for distribution to a point. If an idea is no longer valid, we can’t continue to sell it.

When I look at The Art of Being Minimalist, I see a movement that had it’s time.

Minimalism is an element of augmented reality. There will always be space to teach that knowledge, and many will continue to do so.

As humans begin to see the way that augmented humanity is living, the incentive will be to transition into this new life. The ideas behind minimalism will allow that, but it needs an upgrade first.

I leave that up to you.

As for me, I’m stepping away from minimalism as a movement.

I live out of a bag. I live anywhere. My second self takes care of me. The mental tools of a newly augmented world make this possible. To follow this journey, follow me on Twitter –one of the most powerful mental cybernetic tools to cultivate.

The choice of minimalism was to embrace our cultural evolution, the choice came, the choice went.

Minimalism, the movement, can now be reduced to a simple equation:

“Rent a dumpster, throw your crap in it, join the future.”

On Febraury 10th at 11:59pm EST, I’m taking The Art of Being Minimalist off the market.

You can buy The Art of Being Minimalist for $17 below.

You can buy Minimalist Business and The Art of Being Minimalist together for the reduced price of $60 below.

–

There will be more to come in the next few days, keep your eyes on this space via Twitter.

“Blank Page…?”

Interview by Thom Chambers with Everett Bogue.

Thom has a digital magazine on the future of business on the web at In Treehouses. His two latest stories passed through my filter and into my radar, on how the web is becoming more beautiful with the addition of filter/social apps such as Instagr.am (which I use regularly) and how Colin Wright and Miles Fitzgerald are relaunching Ebookling.

Thom asked me to do an interview on how my platform is becoming multi-dimensional with the addition of my Letter.ly to the already fairly layered existence my second self has on the web.

Here is the interview:

Thom: Letter.ly is still quite unfamiliar to many. What made you decide to start up a letter.ly newsletter rather than putting that content on a blog?

Ev: A few months ago I discovered that I was a member of a group of people called ‘augmented humans’, a term that Eric Schmidt the soon-to-be-ex CEO of Google used at DLD2011 to discuss the future of human evolution. Augmented humans use mental cybernetic technologies, such as Twitter to extend their consciousness beyond themselves — creating personalities on the Internet called second selves, which allow them to unplug from the Internet.

While pre-augmented humanity is tethered to a computer screen answering emails, augmented humanity is having tea –discussing how to let technology do it’s thing, while we do our human thing.

I started the letter.ly because I began to realize that talking about advanced mental cybernetics to an audience of 85,000+ people was incredibly confusing for the audience. People were stumbling across the articles, and had no idea what I was talking about. At best this made people incredibly confused, at worst I was ripping people’s brains through the space/time continuum.

I had to make a choice: either dumb down the content for a mass audience, or ask people for a commitment before they entered the time-machine. Once I made this choice, it took a lot of the pressure off me to make sure everyone got it — which is impossible at this point. Augmented humanity is such a fringe topic that explaining it to a small audience is much easier than dealing with all of the backlash that came from proclaiming that there’s a generation of cyborgs living amongst us.

Thom: How hard was it to choose a price point? Have you got any advice for others considering a letter.ly newsletter when it comes to pricing?

Ev: Many people were charging $1.99 – $3.99 for their Letter.lys. My fellow-collective-buddy and augmented human @rosshill and I had a discussion (which for us is like two tweets) about how we could price our Letter.lys at a point where the people who received them felt like they were getting value from them. $25 seemed to be the right price point.

I’m teaching people how to create second selves that take care of them, essentially letting them earn a living without having to be tethered to a screen all day. The value return can be, when applied, many to the power of many times what the small group of people who subscribe are paying for.

When pricing a letter.ly, the biggest concern I had with extremely low price points is simply that it will just seem like an inconvenience to sign up. What is the difference between free and $1.99? Not much, it’s simply a barrier of entry. I think if you’re going to charge, you might as well charge a real amount.

This funds the research, and also creates a more dedicated following/interaction with the people who receive. If someone isn’t interested, they’re going to unsubscribe. This creates a stronger base of support for the work, because disinterested people leave naturally.

Thom: How have people reacted to the decision to charge for your content? In a world of so much free information, do you often find yourself having to justify the decision?

Ev: I don’t feel the need to justify the decision to anyone. If they want it, they can subscribe. If they feel like it’s not worth the value, I’d honestly rather them invest their money in another way. There’s a lot of information on the Internet, and research into augmented humanity really is only interesting to people who are either waking up to the fact that they are cybernetic life-forms, or are interested in becoming augmented themselves.

Thom: Without wishing to be too indelicate about it, how good is the income from the newsletter? Would you encourage others to take it up as a viable income stream?

Ev: The launch has been slow, purposefully. I haven’t been pushing the letter.ly on people, because I don’t think it’s necessary. That being said, while not revealing actual figures, the monthly revenue has quickly risen to become a significant amount of income for my business. It’s a nice bonus on top of e-book sales, occasional 1-to-1 consulting, and once-in-awhile affiliate revenue.

Everything is an experiment. I don’t think I necessarily would have started out with a letter.ly as the first product that I ever launched. It could work, but figure that I launched my letter.ly to a rather large audience with a significant number of extremely dedicated readers. Results will vary.

Julien Smith explains the economics of launching this kind of business in his article: The future of blogs is paid access.

Thom: Letter.ly allows people to unsubscribe at any time. Have you found that your audience is loyal or does the fact that it’s easy to leave make people more fickle, do you think?

Ev: I really hope anyone who isn’t interested in the content I’m writing will unsubscribe, it’s not worth their attention honestly to continue reading. The money, in my mind, is secondary to the attention that people are putting into the content they’re reading.

There’s an incredibly easy-to-click unsubscribe link on the bottom of every letter.ly. I hope everyone’s first instinct is to click it if they’re suddenly not vibing with the content.

That being said, I’ve only had a half a handful of people unsubscribe so far.

Thom: What are the benefits to a newsletter, do you think, over an ebook or a course or a blog? What excites you about the medium?

Ev: Information is traveling faster and faster. I’m noticing that a new idea that I have will be instantly adopted by my collective within a few hours of my writing it — and vis-versa. The internet is bringing us all closer together in our ideas, especially augmented humans. I know to some extent what is going on in the minds of a group of people who my 3rd brain is synced with in Melbourne Australia, and they know somewhat of what is going on in my mind.

This speed means that ebooks really need to be based around information that is timeless, instead of timely. I haven’t really ever taken a course, or given a course, so I can’t comment on that. However, when I look at the blog, I see information that floats just above the surface — enough to puzzle people a little about the possibilities available in their lives. When I look at the Letter.ly, I see a way of transporting people deeper into their understanding of a way of consciousness that’s just beginning to emerge in our culture. When I look at the ebooks, I see a complete story being told from beginning to end that takes your mind from this point to that point, and hopefully by the end you’ve jumped forward in evolution closer to where my collective is currently riding the wave.

Thom: In terms of content, have you found that particular themes or styles are more suited to the newsletter – or is it similar to blogging with its time-tested traditions of headlines and list posts?

Ev: I’m beginning to believe that “time-tested” traditions like list posts and impulsive headlines are going away. I want to write a headline that makes sense for my Letter.ly, I want to make a headline that makes sense for my blog, I want a book with a title that makes sense for the book.

This is a shift for me, because I wasn’t always approaching the work this way. I’m just finding that the more I travel into the future and bring information backwards down the evolutionary chain to people who need it, the more it’s not necessary to pad the content with superfluous techniques that they teach you in marketing school.

The web is becoming more intelligent to that stuff, and so are our minds. We won’t be tricked anymore, and we’re seeing that as some of the sites that rely on those techniques begin to fall in relevance.

Thom: Where do you see the newsletter going? Do you have a plan for it or do you run it more out of sheer enjoyment?

Ev: It’s an experiment, it’s also a stopgap. I have a major goal this year of eliminating email from my life completely (in order to show the world that it can be done, and so others can follow.) In order to that, I’m going to need to find another home for the Letter.ly content. I’ve made it clear for everyone involved that it may not be around forever.

Until then, I’m enjoying time-traveling with everyone much farther out than we could ever go on the blog. That’s incredibly fulfilling and enjoying for me, and for the people who are involved in the project.

–

Thank you Thom for allowing me to cross-post this interview on my blog. You can check out the new issue of In Treehouses on Febuary 14th.

My Letter.ly is here.

My three favorite Letter.lys right now are by Ross, Gwen, and Crystal.

Written by Everett Bogue | Tweeting gives you Jedi powers.

Blogging is in transition.

Many of us who have practicing blogging for awhile are becoming incredibly aware of the limits of the web as a medium for communication.

We have so much inside ourselves that we want to communicate, but our ideas end up getting caught in a technology that hasn’t changed very much since I was a teenager.

Yes, blogging has definitely gotten more widgets — but the most important decisions I usually make on my blog is turning all of the little functions off. Essentially many of us are blogging in the same way that we did ten years ago. The only difference is how we get the blog posts out, which these days is mostly by Twitter.

I turned off the Facebook ‘Like’ button, because as much as I loved the large number on the top of my posts that resulted from people pressing it, the actual traffic to my site was negligible. This is because Facebook wants Facebookers to stay on Facebook where they can be shown ads and click ‘Like’ on photos of girls/boys they will never sleep with.

Regardless, all of the smart people I know are leaving Facebook anyway.

Blogging needs two things to make it more successful as a platform:

1. Bandwidth.

Bandwidth is a term that we cybernetic yogis use to convey the depth of an information transfer between two humans. F2F (face to face) is universally the highest definition, holograms are the next (but are kind of hard to find in the world right now — soon enough) next is 3d video, video, still photos, audio, and then finally text.

Blogging tends to find itself in one of the lowest bandwidth ranges — text. The good thing about text is the low bandwidth means that it can travel much farther and faster than higher-bandwidth creations. A tweet can be read by 5000 people instantly, a blog post by 2000, but a video will probably only be played by 200, and F2F only conducted with one person at a time.

This results in an ecosystem of how we interact on the web. As my blog grows in popularity, my threshold for F2F has grown with it. Whenever I say ‘Wheels down in X-city’ I commonly get dozens of requests to connect — hardly any I can answer because F2F takes an incredible amount of energetic power, especially if it’s a one-way conversation.

2. Dimensionality.

Dimensionality is how smart the blog is in relation to its readers. For example, not everyone who comes to my work is in a place where they want to read about cybernetic yoga. They might want to time-travel back to when I was writing about how to reduce your possessions to less than 100 things.

This is where the intelligence of the web itself needs to evolve, I’m not sure how much blogging or even my own ability to curate the content can correct for the huge variables involved in breadth of the knowledge that readers who stumble across this blog may have.

To generalize, my blog used to have some pretty solid content for 20-somethings who were uncomfortable with their jobs — but over time my content has shifted to a place where I imagine my core audience is centered on Silicon Valley futurists.

What if people who needed my ‘how to quit your soul-sucking job’ posts could get be shown that content instantly? What if the people who really needed to declutter a desk could be shown that content instantly? What if the people who want to learn mental cybernetics could be shown that content instantly?

A lot of the tension surrounding my blog right now is the fact that decluttering-desks people are accidentally stumbling across posts on mental cybernetics. Not everyone is in the same place, it’s a big leap from clutter to maintaining your 3rd brain.

I think blogging systems will need to learn to adapt to this level of dimensionality if blogging is going to evolve.

–

I’ve been blogging on Far Beyond The Stars since October of 2009, since then my strategy has changed a lot. I’ll take the rest of this post to point out some ways in which I’ve changed my blogging strategy.

1. Business strategy entirely F2F (face to face).

I used to get my blogging knowledge from places like Problogger and Copyblogger, which I’m not linking to, because after a few months of experimentation I realized that almost everything those sites teach you is wrong. Everyone still thinks those sites are popular because 80% of bloggers have been trained (like little blogging puppies!) to suck up to established authorities in the off chance that they get linked to by an ‘A-List blogger’. The reality is that when I was linked to by Problogger last month it resulted in a grand total of 34 click-throughs.

If I do need intelligent advice on getting traffic to my blog, I commonly will buy Corbett Barr three beers or some good Scotch and ask him his honest opinion about my blogging strategy. The next best thing to buying Corbett drinks is reading his blog.

The lesson here is that all of my learning these days is not being done from blogs, instead I’m reaching out to people who I respect in real life. The highest bandwidth is real life, so if you want to learn how to blog successfully, the #1 strategy that you can employ is to meet a successful blogger in real life. Obviously this is hard to do, I commonly get upward of dozens of requests for drinks when I land in any city.

Start by reaching out to bloggers who are around your same level and in your city. For example, one of the first bloggers I met up with was Ash Ambirge in New York — now we’re both rockstar bloggers. Why? Because we supported each other until we found success.

Getting access to a rockstar blogger/entrepreneur F2F is difficult, but can upgrade your success at an incredibly fast rate — if you’re open to their suggestions.

2. Stopped caring about stats.

When I first launched my blog, I was obsessed with how many people read my blog posts. I’d click on google analytics three times a day (even though it only updates once a day!) I know, it seems silly now. Anyway, now I don’t care about stats so much.

I’d rather have a small group of enthusiastic readers than a large group of confused readers.

When you write for the masses, you end up writing stupid posts that no one cares about. One of the most surprising elements of transitioning from writing about minimalism to writing about augmented humanity/the cybernetic yogi lifestyle is that my blog traffic has actually gone up (though, I’ve only checked it once this month).

Why is that? Because blogging success comes from pushing your own personal edge. Too many young bloggers are trying to write what they think other people want to read, instead of writing work that actually challenges themselves.

Culture exists on the fringes. The center is boring, and secretly everyone wants out of the mediocre middle.

3. Pushing audience interactions to higher levels.

Many blogs will encourage you to ‘join the conversation’ in a place called “The Comments”.

“The comments” is where your good ideas and time (your most valuable commodity) goes to die. The reason for this is no one actually sees comments, because it’s generally assumed by the majority of smart Internet users that the commenting section is a place where the low-life of the Internet go to play.

Many people go straight to the comment section of larger blogs and post a “me too!” comment, because Darren Rowse told them that posting comments on other blogs is the #1 way to build your blog audience on his aforementioned blog that should be re-titled Unproblogger.com

There are two more important ways to “join the conversation” (whatever that means.) These two ways are guaranteed you put your interaction in a space where others can actually see it.

1. Respond on Twitter. “The most awesome cybernetic yogi I know is @evbogue! Here’s a link to his blog post –> TK TK url” or perhaps “Wow, @evbogue has really gone off the deepend and I don’t even understand what he’s talking about anymore.” Can really do wonders for how many people see what your opinion is. This way all of your followers can see it, and check out whether I’m really awesome/lost it themselves and weigh in on Twitter. When your followers see you responding to creators on Twitter, they will learn how to respond to your creations on Twitter, thus bringing more attention to your work! Yay!

2. Respond on your blog. If you read something online that really blows your mind, one of the most powerful actions you can take is to respond on your own blog. This can be as simple as linking to a post “this post made me think.” or can be a 2,000 word exposé building on the awesomeness of the material that you’ve been reading. They call it The Web for a reason, there are hyperlinks connecting everything. If you avoid hyperlinking out from your blog, no one will ever know your blog exists.

Both of these are what I consider ‘high-level’ interactions on the web. You know how in the middle ages all of the kings and royalty had great parties in the castles while all of the serfs got to sit outside the castles and live miserable lives? Twitter and blogging = building castles. Dwelling in comments or on Facebook = rolling in mud while we giggle at you from the castles. The good thing about modern day royalty is you don’t need to be born into the castle to stay there, all you need to do is launch a blog or sign up for Twitter.

A good way to start using Twitter is to follow me, and then follow everyone I follow. It’s a small list. This will instantaneously flood your brain with useful information, and you can change your follow list from there as time goes on and you discover more awesome people on Twitter.

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Oh! As many of you know I’ve moved most of the deeper writing here to a subscription-based Letter.ly. The reason I did this is because I began to notice that my writing was going too deep for general consumption. Random folks were stumbling across blogs on mental cybernetics which burned their brain in a really bad way.

The price of the Letter.ly is going up from $20 to $25 a month tonight, February 1st 2011, at midnight EST. If you subscribe before then, you’ll be locked in at the lower rate.

You can subscribe to the Letter.ly here. Everyone who signs up for the Letter.ly will receive a free copy of my new e-book tentatively set to launch on February 15th 2011. The book will cost more than $20, but I haven’t settled on a price yet.

[Update: The E-book is tentatively called “Second Self” and is on creating a “second self” digital presence that will take care of your physical body.]

Written by Everett Bogue | Twitter makes your world breathe.

There’s been a lot of uncertainty in my life lately, which has made me think about the ways in which I’ve practiced in order to exist in a state of uncertainty without allowing situations to develop into negative situations.

The world is changing at a rapid pace. I know this because I see how technology is accelerating our cultural evolution with my own eyes. I know because when I look within myself I see how fast my internal sense of being is shifting.

I know because when I look outward I see people who can breathe, and I see those who are locking up in face of change.

The ones who can breathe are thriving. The ones who aren’t trained in embracing change are locking up, shutting down, and turning off.

Our first reaction to uncertainty might not always be the most healthy, or even beneficial. We want to search for security when faced with an overwhelming change, security often looks like a box. We throw ourselves into the box, the idea of what we’re supposed to cherish as ‘being safe’ as a way of protecting ourselves.

The box isn’t protection though, it’s a temporary prison. The change is still going around outside, you’ve just shut down your senses so you can’t feel it anymore.

The box can look like many things. The box can be trying to make plans to get past the fact that you have no idea what will happen. The box can be reacting in anger, jealousy, rage, placing blame on others, the external world, for allegedly causing you harm. The box can be ignoring that there’s any uncertainty at all. The box can be as simple as saying ‘it’s not my job to deal with the situation that’s in front of me.’

The longer you’re in the box, the more it will hurt when you come out.

The reality is that no one is ever causing you harm. The world is fluid, and change is the only constant. When we cling, to an idea, to an expectation, to a person, to a place, we simply end up causing ourselves more suffering.

We’re told by society everywhere, on the TVs, movies, books, etc that we need to control our lives. Everything needs to be in nice, clean, orderly rows. A job is supposed to be a job, a man is supposed to be a man, an email is supposed to be an email, a definition is supposed to be a definition, a marriage is supposed to be forever, and a btw why not go get a house in the suburbs and a two cars for the garage?

That was never our destiny, we know that because when we try those things they don’t feel right. Security makes us tired.

When we cling to the idea of security it makes us want to drink an entire bottle of Jäger and puke on ourselves. Security makes us want to turn off our Internet and throw that glass vase our aunt gave us that we didn’t want against our kitchen wall.

I’m writing this from a place of existing in uncertainty, I know because these days I’m not sure where I’ll be sleeping at night. I jumped on a plane to Seattle, and ended up in Boulder –which ended up being the best last minute decision in my life.

The reality of uncertainty is that it is actually the most rewarding state for humans to exist in. In an uncertain world, days can seem like weeks or months in the space/time continuum. In an uncertain world, ideas come at the speed of light. In an uncertain world, you can put your feet down in any city without a plan and you’ll survive, thrive, and discover the depths in yourself and others.

In a certain world, years can blink past in an instant. For me, the last month or so of uncertainty has felt like one thousand years.

[Status Update:] Last week I made a brief mention that the minimalism movement was coming to a close (ahem, “Fuck Minimalism“.) This caused a whole bunch of interesting reactions from all over the web –dozens of blog posts, thousand of tweets. My favorite is Josh’s well-thought-out essay on how the leadership of movements shift over time.

Some complained of not having a voice in the conversation. If you don’t have a voice, it’s because you aren’t on Twitter and/or don’t have your own blogging platform. No problems, only solutions: get on Twitter so you have a voice — not just here, but in the world. A tweet can be 10x the power of a blog comment. A blog post can be 100-1000x the power of a blog comment.

This blog doesn’t have comments because I want to encourage you to use more powerful broadcast channels to communicate.

I’m only able to engage in certain mediums (mainly Twitter) because I spend most of my day in the world learning and engaging with real human faces and bodies.

–

The biggest question for many people seems to be simple: if minimalism is over, why are we still living out of backpacks and having a great time? I’ll attempt to answer that question in this blog post.

There’s been a lot of talk lately in the circles I frequent about human 2.0, cyborgs and augmented humanity. For awhile I decided to try and call this new type of human a cyborg, but the problem with using that word to define a movement is as @mikeschu said: “it brings up images of Robocop.”

People don’t want to look like machines, so the term cyborg (while more correct than you would think) alienates them and you.

So, I’m shifting gears and turning to the term Eric Schmidt (the soon to be former CEO of Google) used at DLD2011: augmented humanity. We’re essentially still humans, it’s just that some of us have access and the ability to use superhuman mental tools, and others are being left behind or caught up in the noise.

Truthfully, augmented humanity looks very much like regular humanity. All of the changes are happening in the backend.

I’ve been delving deeper into the implications of augmented humanity on the Letter.ly. As I noted earlier on the blog a few times, I can only really talk about surface information here on the public blog. Teaching advanced mental cybernetics requires a commitment from both the teacher and the student –the uninitiated can be damaged by the information overload.

Here’s a brief quote from Kit Eaton‘s Fast Company article on Schmidt’s talk to bring you up to speed on the huge changes taking place in how we interact with our world. The entire article is not long if you want to learn more.

From Fast Company: “Computers, Schmidt thinks, can, when used ubiquitously and interactively and with cloud-like access to remote supercomputer powers can give us “senses” we didn’t know were possible. “Think of it as augmented humanity” he suggested.”

[Please note that Eric Schmidt talks about all of these changes taking place “in the future” to be safe (so people don’t panic about Google’s tremendous power over our culture — IMO a good influence.) Reality is that for a large and growing percentage of us these changes have already taken place or will very soon.]

One of the key points that Schmidt brought up is that children now only have two states of being: asleep and online. There are no new disconnected humans being brought into this world — kids are being wired in from an incredibly early age to be part of collective consciousness. We will be blown away by the tremendous power that children have over the world — my generation’s power over the Internet will pale in comparison to the next.

We can try and run from this idea –and many are running. We can turn off the Internet, put our fists in our ears and scream “lalalalala” in an attempt to deny that we were assimilated into a world-wide super-organism.

The problem is that denying it is just going to make your life miserable, because increasingly the people who are fluent in the language of modern cybernetics are racing past those who are not in their ability to achieve amazing things.

The ability to achieve amazing things using the expanded mental tools available to augmented humanity are directly related to why we stopped caring about physical objects.

The reality is that you didn’t become minimalist because you wanted to, you became minimalist because of human evolution.

The adoption of technology gave you instant access to everything, instant knowledge of any location, instant ability to communicate with anyone anywhere in the world began to make stuff look like tremendous burden. This is the shift that Amber Case describes in her Ted Talk from physical tools to mental tools.

So we just got rid of it all and took off for a world-wide adventure the likes of which humanity has never seen.

This is why I’m taking The Art of Being Minimalist off the market on February 11th 2011, because it simply isn’t accurate anymore. It was at the time, but we’ve evolved past the understanding that I had when I wrote the e-book a year ago.

Anyone living out of a backpack traversing the world, exploding minds and bodies in this new world of endless ideas isn’t a minimalist at all. You’re an augmented human, a hybrid child of technology and biology.

…and you’ve got some crazy potential to do amazing things. I can’t wait to see what you’re up to next.

You’re really fraking beautiful too.

–

There are three subscription options for this blog now.

1. (the best) is to follow and interact with me on Twitter.

2. (kind of dated option in this day-in-age) is to sign up for email updates or RSS.

3. (the deepest) is to sign up for the Letter.ly which requires a commitment. The Letter.ly delves deep. Right now the monthly subscription, but it will go up to $25 at midnight EST on February 1st 2011. Anyone who signs up now will be locked in at the $20 rate unless they unsubscribe.

I’ll be sure to let you know a few hours in advance if you follow on Twitter.

The best way to understand my ideas is not to just follow me on Twitter, but follow everyone I follow too. This action taps you into a collective mind that will bring you up to speed much faster than a single mind can ever hope to accomplish.

Written by Everett Bogue | Twitter gives you superpowers.

Boulder, CO. January 26th 2011.

I left (deactivated) Facebook with the intention of never returning a few days ago. I thought I’d share a few thoughts on why here on the public blog.

Many of the smartest people I know are leaving Facebook as well. I predict we’ll see many people leaving over the coming months and adopting Twitter.

For around a year I’ve been using Twitter as my primary way to communicate with most of the important people in my life.

I believe that Twitter is a new form of communication so important that it rivals the development of language in the evolutionary history of the human race.

In a few hundred years historians (or our immortal digital selves for that matter) will look back at this day and say “wow, Twitter really changed a lot of things for the people who used it. It’s too bad so many people stuck with Facebook because they were brainwashed into clicking “Like” on photos of hot girls/boys they’ll never sleep with all night long.”

Today, let’s just focus on why I left Facebook, and why you should too!

1. The purpose of the Internet is to facilitate face to face communication.

I’m beginning to see the Internet as a tool to bring people together, so they can communicate 1 to 1 in order to exchange knowledge in a high-definition way. I’ve noticed that I learn the best these days when I meet brilliant minds to meld with, in person. Facebook wasn’t facilitating this for me, it was simply becoming a black hole where plans are made but never acted upon.

Twitter does bring people together. The only reason I’m staying in Boulder CO at the moment and speaking on May 21st 2011 at This is Mindful in Melbourne Australia is because of real world interactions via Twitter.

These days I can tweet in any city, or to any city, and things happen such as tweetups or missions dedicated to saving the world. If I need a place to stay, why not just Tweet? Easy. Yes, it takes time to develop a Twitter network large enough to facilitate this kind of massive collective interaction, but it is possible.

2. Accelerated cultural evolution.

Over time Twitter develops into convergent collectives of idea innovators and executors. @rosshill is a big advocate and designer of these collectives. Essentially, your education begins to accelerate due to natural group interactions on Twitter. I’ll tweet an idea while @edwardharren @janstewart @davidahood are asleep in Melbourne, and they’ll further the idea while I’m asleep in Boulder. Over Twitter we exchange ideas, articles, and books that are necessary for the work that interests us, thus we grow together.

This is exponential education — I’m an idea-growth addict these days.

If someone in the collective isn’t resonating with me, I simply unfollow. If I stumble across someone who is resonating, I follow. It’s a fluid collective with no obligations or contracts. Don’t worry if I unfollow you, I might just come back later! It all has to do with where my mind is focused on the work.

Twitter collectives begin to develop their own languages and insider knowledge. with Twitter can even start learning how to #ibc, which is a pretty extraordinary intuitive skill to master.

3. Attention is a currency.

We’re in a full-scale war on Internet noise, and Facebook isn’t helping. Facebook’s purpose is to bring you back again and again to see ads, this means the software is designed to play on your human desires in order to make you return to the software multiple times a day.

The noise on the Internet will only grow over the next few months, and our human minds can’t deal with it. Facebook isn’t helping with the noise, instead it’s adding to it.

Where Twitter retweets and @messages feel like an epic win in the gameification of reality, Facebook “Likes” feel like an epic win for Mark Zuckerberg. Why? Because every time someone hits the “Like” button on your Facebook page, it draws you back into Facebook so you can see another advertisement. Cash-money for Facebook.

You can’t trade your ‘Like’ wealth (the amount of times that someone has clicked ‘Like’ on your status update or photo) for real cash –Facebook can and does. Shouldn’t Facebook be paying you to spend all of your time on their site?

4. We need to create and own our virtual reality worlds.

Gwen pointed me in the direction of this beautiful talk by Jonathan Harris about the reality of the Internet today. I want to make out with him (we can invite Gwen too) after the talk, you will too after you watch it.

Jonathan is beginning to see two Internets. One of these internets is filled with condominiums that all look alike, with your own pictures on the walls. These condos are easy, and free. Your great aunt can set one of these Facebook condos up — so easy.

The other Internet is the one where we build our own beautiful virtual worlds. This blog for example exists in a world that I have control over — it wouldn’t be the same or have any power if I hosted the content on Facebook or another condo-like housing situation.

The problem with renting a free internet condo (ahem, Facebook) is that someone else has control of your virtual world. So, the default for a generation of new Internet users has been to go the easy route.

The thing is, the easy route isn’t going to create you a second self that supports your life in the real world, it’s just going to keep you in a place where you’re interacting with the noise.

The farther we get away from letting someone else control our virtual world, the easier it is to find success in a world filled with overwhelming digital noise. This is why you find all of the successful digital people on Twitter, and hordes of people caught up in the noise on Facebook wondering why nothing is working for them.

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Leaving Facebook is hard. It’s a part of your 3rd brain, the part of your mind that’s situated in the cloud. It’s important to build a Twitter presence first, and then slowly transition away from Facebook. To avoid losing all of your ambient intimacy at once, move slowly and with intention from Facebook to Twitter.

Here’s how to join us in our Twitter revolution. It’s a leap of faith, I’ll see you on the other side.

Twitter quick start guide:

1. Sign up for an account using your name.
2. Put a picture of your face. (No, not your hand, your face. No, not your kitten, your face.)
3. Don’t follow celebrities or organizations (for the most part.)
4. Follow real humans and cyborgs. A good list to get started is my follow list — every one of these people is a freakin’ brilliant revolutionary.
5. Follow less than 150 people. 50 is ideal. Rotate the list based on resonation and intuition.
6. Retweet links that you like. Say things that are awesome. Send positive energy into the world. Try unexpected things.

Let’s make the leap into a world where we have control of our virtual worlds.

The Jonathan Harris Aiga talk is here if you have 36 minutes to watch beautifulness.

Gwen wrote about her and Patrick’s experience leaving and being moderate with Facebook here.

Gwen and I recorded a video on the way to the coffee shop about why we left Facebook here.

You can follow me on Twitter here.

Retweet this post so your friends can see it. If you’re still on Facebook, hit the ‘Like’ button so more people will defect to the free world.

I wrote a little something about the end of a movement on a tiny virtual reality world that I created this morning…

“Minimalism was cool for awhile. Now, it’s simply the echo of a revolution that once was.” –> http://www.fuckminimalism.com

I’d love to hear your thoughts on Twitter.

Written by Everett Bogue | Cyborgs only communicate on Twitter.

January 23rd 2011, Boulder CO. 7:44am, Trident Coffee.

This is a confessional post. It’s one that I’ve been meaning to write as long as I’ve had this blog. It’s going to shock you, awe you, and perhaps even give you a little secret weapon that you can use against me in emergency situations.

Feel free to retweet it to all of your friends so they can feel my intense vulnerability here.

As Brene Brown says in her brilliant TED talk: courage and vulnerability go hand in hand. You can’t be courageous if you aren’t showing a side of you that your first instinct might be to protect.

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Alright. Deep breath. Let me tell you the secret that all of the people who’ve met me in person over the last year or so have noticed instantly.

Here it is:

All throughout my time writing about minimalism, I was wearing $200 Diesel jeans. Sometimes I had two pairs.

So, whenever you were reading posts back in the day about how I was living with 57 things (I no longer count things, but I do live out of a bag.) The “jeans” section was actually more like “$195 Italian designed but made in Indonesia 29″-32″ raw denim from the Diesel store.”

When I got into Boulder, CO (story for another day!) a few days ago, I realized that my 29″ pants were falling off again. I’d lost weight running around New York, or my pants had stretched a bit.

My bright turquoise American Apparel boxer briefs were showing from almost all directions.

As many of you know, I’m self-identifying as a cybernetic yogi (which I am, btw, dominating on google search results) right now, and part of being a cybernetic yogi is being able to do lotus pose anywhere in the world (and in virtual reality) –especially out on the street where people will look at me like I’m weird.

The only natural thing to do was to step into the Prana store on Pearl Street in Boulder and grab a pair of climbing pants ($54). They’re ultra-light, clean and dry easily, and also I can put my foot over my head if I want to in public places. Awesome!

Goodbye Diesel Jeans! Hello new world!

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I’m writing this as a confession, but I also want to make a point about money.

I do not feel ashamed about spending $200 on Diesel jeans for years. In fact, I love Diesel jeans, and will continue to. If I need a pair in the future, I will not hesitate to buy another pair.

This has never been, and will never be, a frugality blog.

In my experience, worrying about how you’re spending your money can be counter-productive in many respects.

Don’t worry about how much you spend on food, instead eat properly. Don’t worry about how much you’re spending on education, instead educate yourself smartly (this may not apply to college). Don’t worry about how much you’re spending on travel, instead see the world! You might just end up in unexpected places.

When you set limits on yourself, like: “all of my stuff will fit into a bag!” or “I will never buy a house and car in the suburbs” it’s hard to overspend on stuff you don’t need.

Instead, invest all of that energy/time on how you’re generating income with your second self.

When you make the switch from physical to mental tools (Twitter is a great way to start doing this,) it’s even easier to avoid overspending on things you don’t need, as you’ll start to realize just how much you don’t need things anymore. This is what I’m talking about when I’m speaking about cyborgs in-depth on the Letter.ly.

If you want to wear expensive jeans, wear them. A good pair of jeans can do wonders for how people perceive you in the real world. I, however, finally got past the point where that was necessary to wear expensive jeans. Instead, I wanted pants with functionality — namely flexible functionality.

Let the Prana climbing-pants era begin! Asana everywhere! I feel like I’m not wearing pants sometimes.

Ev

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

January 21st 2011. Boulder, CO.

I love Mars Dorian, and I laughed when he said “What kind of pills did you slip into your muesli?” the other day when we were Skyping. While Mars and I aren’t exactly #ibcing yet, after the in-person Skype chat we were way closer to being on the same page.

It’s true, Far Beyond The Stars lately has been kind of well, far beyond the stars.

The content here has been what we meditators like to call delving deep. It’s a brief glance into the future which is now for a few of us — I’m a timelord, you’re stepping into my Tardis when you’re with me in this space (it’s bigger on the inside than it is on the out.)

I’m hoping that the content that I still post on this blog will bring you to a page where you can delve deeper into the work I’m doing using the Letter.ly or the new book I’m working on.

Gwen and I have been talking a lot lately about how we wish the Internet was more 4-dimensional. It needs the intelligence to spot a person who’s at the point in their lives where they really need a 5-ways to declutter your desk post and give it to them, instead of a deep philosophical piece on assimilating other cyborgs into the collective.

The truth is that my work moves, it changes, it evolves. Your work does and will too.

Unfortunately I can’t write simple posts about ultra-light travel anymore. If you want a great collection of those, The Art of Being Minimalist really sums up how to go minimalist from the human perspective (though cyborg eyes will glaze over at this point when they read the content that I wrote a year ago.)

My physical/mental/spiritual body has been evolving, it’s tapped into the exponential nature of technology, and so my cultural evolution is tethered to the rate of computer chip evolution. This evolution is quickly closing on something like a million to the power of a million times better than it was every year, just wait until we get exponentially accelerating quantum computer chips. How will you possibly understand me then if you aren’t on quantum-Twitter?

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Minimalism was assimilated by the cyborgs.

This didn’t happen because cyborgs wanted to become minimalists, it’s because we the cyborgs didn’t know who we were when we became minimalists.

For eons humans only made physical tools, then all of a sudden we began to develop mental tools. This much is clear from Amber Case’s brilliant Ted Talk that you all should have watched by now.

Cyborgs are simply humans who made the shift from physical tools to mental tools. Eventually there will be enough cyborgs that we can call them humans again, and we’ll call people who still use physical tools something else.

I don’t want you to be called something else, so that’s why I keep telling you to get on Twitter.

When you develop mental tools, in a very short time you begin to realize that you don’t need your physical possessions anymore, so you kind of just let them go — it doesn’t hurt anymore. I saw this happen within a few weeks to Maren Kate after she went location independent when Zirtual was accepted into an incubator program in Palo Alto. She instantly shifted from physical tools to mental tools. Welcome to cyborgia Maren.

This doesn’t mean that minimalism never existed, just that there is much more depth under the idea that many of us previously imagined. I predict that a lot of minimalist websites in the next year (actually, probably a lot faster than that) will fold or move on to deeper topics as our own evolution progresses towards the future.

If you’re a minimalist blogger, it might be wise to quickly snag a URL that isn’t ‘minimalist-X’ before everyone evolves exponentially past what you’re writing about. However, be mindful of what your readers need. Mine need cyborgs right now, your readers might be in a different place than mine are.

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As always, the deeper stuff is going to go on the Letter.ly. The blog is the surface, you have to commit to stepping into the time-machine.

Required reading on how cyborgs are using intuitive back channel #ibc by Jan Stewart.

Everett