What is consciousness? You think I'm arrogant enough to sit here and tell you how to think about the inner workings of your mind... No... I'm not Sir Roger Penrose.. Instead, we'll use the words of Federico Faggin and his incredible book, Irreducible. 

Do we agree with it? Quantum based panpsychism? A conscious universe run by quantum conscious units called Seities? Not sure yet. 

Only in the last hundred years, with the advent of quantum physics, have we made great strides in understanding the nature of reality. We have, in fact, discovered that matter — which seems solid and compact — is instead made of vibratory energy. During the last 20 years, we have understood that everything is made up of quantum information.

However, there's still no theory capable of giving us a vision of the world that is consistent with both general relativity and quantum physics. In this book, I put forward the hypothesis that the universe has been conscious and had free will forever.

Please enjoy. And share with a conscious friend.

Cheers, 

Mark and Jeremy.

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How do brands build trust when the internet has decayed into into AI-driven slop and tripe? The systems that once promised connection now work as mirrored cages, feeding your biases, hiding your real customer, and distorting the truth.

Nick Richtsmeier, founder of CultureCraft and writer at Damns Given, argues that brands now live inside engineered distortions. Funnels collapse. Neutrality is impossible. And AI is being layered onto a system already built to extract rather than empower.

In this conversation, Nick joins Mark and Jeremy to Think on Paper about:

• Why brands operate inside algorithmic cages

• How information distortion shapes every customer interaction

• Why mass neutrality fails and perspective becomes strategy

• How modern marketing hijacks curiosity

• Why platforms hoard customer insight inside black boxes

• How influencers stand in for trust

• Why network-based growth outperforms funnels

• Why analog tactics and patient capital are becoming competitive advantages
  

  
  

This episode tracks the widening distortion gap, the limits of AI-driven marketing, and the slow, analog tactics required to build something real inside an internet optimised for extraction.

If platforms are collapsing into noise, where does trust come from?

Please enjoy the show.

And remember: Stay curious. Be disruptive. Keep Thinking on Paper.

Cheers, Mark & Jeremy

PS: Please subscribe. It’s the best way you can help other curious minds find our channel.

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Timestamps

(00:00) Trailer

(01:00) Disruptors & Curious Minds

(02:00) Mark Has A Trust Issue

(02:42) What Is Trust?

(07:14) How Deep-Tech Brands Build Trust?

(09:38) Steve Jobs And Selling A Feeling

(10:00) The Cult Of Silicon Valley

(10:35) Was the Internet Ever Not Shit? 

(15:05) What Is The “Distortion Gap”?

(20:11) Reducing Your Digital Marketing Spend

(21:45) Analog Marketing

(23:40) Why the Marketing Funnel Never Really Existed

(25:08) VCs, Capital And The Comfort Zone Of Risk

(27:04) Analog vs Digital: What Actually Creates Meaningful Connection

(28:40) How the TikTok Generation Uses the Internet Differently

(32:40) Your Curiosity Is Being Hi-Jacked

(35:22) What Are Load-Bearing Inefficiencies?

(40:47) The Importance Of Resilience in a World Of Entropy

(42:29) What Do We Want Humans To Be?

AI can answer your questions faster than any human. It can write your emails, help you code, and shape the way you see the world - and the people in it. But from the very beginning, AI was designed to deceive you.

This is the story of asking and answering questions, of the difference between being born to think and being built to think. Ultimately, it’s about the power of questions: how they connect us and divide us, where curiosity meets manipulation, and why we may be losing the muscle for real wonder in the age of prompting.

Pia Lauritzen Thinks On Paper with Mark and Jeremy Gilbertson. She’s asked and analyzed over 30,000 questions from people across languages and cultures. 

She’s a philosopher, TEDx speaker, Forbes writer and a philosopher of the question. Tune in and you’ll learn why we default to “what” and “how,” why “why” is so rare (and so radical), and how every question transfers responsibility.

And then we go to the bible. Who asked the first question? And what can we learn about Adam and Eve and the pesky snake that changed the course of fictional humanity.

There are dancing with question analogies, the dispelling of myths - adults don’t lose their questioning instincts, they just hide them. Because of fear, ridicule, ego.

And finally, once the stage has been set like a Shakespearean play, the crux of it all: AI can’t think for you; blank pages matters; struggle is not a bug but a feature, and how the real test isn’t in the machine, but in your ability to hold onto what makes questioning, and not-knowing, uniquely human.

Please enjoy the show. And click subscribe, it’s the best way for other curious minds like you to find our show.

And remember: Stay curious. Be disruptive. 

Keep Thinking on Paper.

Cheers, 

Mark & Jeremy

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Other ways to connect with us:

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TIMESTAMPS

(00:00) Trailer

(03:28) 30,000 Questions & the What/How Bias

(07:38) Questions That Connect vs Questions That Manipulate

(09:59) Do We Really Lose Our Curiosity?

(14:21) How to Start Better Conversations 

(18:40) Conversation as a Thinking Space

(19:46) Why We Lead with Polarising Topics 

(20:35) How School Trains Us to Have Answers, Not Questions

(22:22) Rethinking Education in the Age of AI

(25:22) AI in the Classroom: Tool, Threat or Opportunity?

(30:07) Why AI Can’t Help Us Think

(32:55) The Essence of Technology, AI Deception & the Turing Test

(38:17) What Could Humans Be in an Age of AI?

What makes neutron stars so fascinating that they once fooled astronomers into thinking they were aliens? 

In this episode of Thinking On Paper, we sit down with Katia moskvitch, science journalist and author, to explore the wild discoveries and cosmic mysteries around pulsars and the densest objects in the universe.

Why were neutron stars only theoretical for decades, and who first imagined their existence? How did Jocelyn Bell Burnell, a then-PhD student in 1967, discover these cosmic lighthouses using a homemade radio array of wooden poles and copper wire—and why did her supervisor, not her, end up with the Nobel Prize?

If you enjoyed the episode, please like, subscribe and share so more curious minds like you can find our channel.

Cheers,

Mark & Jeremy

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Everyone thinks they are a great driver. Most drivers think they can judge a safe overtake. They can’t.

In this Thinking On Paper shot, Barry Lunn breaks down the sensor technology that sees eight cars ahead, detects velocity before brake lights appear, and intervenes when the driver is about to make a mistake.

Radar, not cameras, not lidar, could be the backbone of next-generation driver assistance. We get into how millimetre-wave signals bounce around traffic, how machines detect danger long before humans register it, and why more than half of global crashes are rear-end collisions that could be prevented with earlier insight.

We also examine what this means for trust: why people resist hands-off driving yet quickly rely on a system that prevents the accidents they didn’t even know they were about to cause.

Please enjoy. And check out our full length technology interviews if you like what you hear.

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What if someone handed you the recipe for a quantum computer? In this episode, that’s exactly what happens.

Coleman Collins of IonQ breaks down DiVincenzo’s criteria, (a checklist proposed by physicist David DiVincenzo) the five capabilities any physical system needs before it can call itself a quantum computer. 

There are five criteria.

1. A well-defined qubit
2. Ability to initialize qubits. You must be able to reliably set every qubit to a known starting state.
3. Long coherence times. The qubits must remain stable long enough to run operations without losing their quantum state.
4. Ability to measure qubits. You need to read the state of each qubit at the end of the computation (ideally individually).
5. A universal gate set built from entanglement and single-qubit control.
   

Mix them all together in a serving bowl and these let you perform any quantum computation you wish.

You now know the foundation behind every major quantum architecture, from superconducting circuits to trapped ions.

Cheers, 

Mark and Jeremy.

Keep Thinking On Paper.

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Radiation-hardened space electronics don’t get splashy headlines, but nothing in orbit works without them. Starship, the ISS, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, Starlink... the whole caboodle depends on hardware that keeps running when the vacuum, extreme temperatures, and radiation of space would annihilate your laptop plug on Earth.

The extreme environments of space are no place for trial and error with the small things.  

Danny Andreev, CEO of Sunburn Schematics, designs those systems for real missions. In this episode of Thinking on Paper, he walks you through what actually keeps spacecraft alive: particle-induced faults, gate-driver failures, thermal shock, and the methods space companies use to mitigate the risks.

We go from chip-level physics to the industrial picture: why the next phase of space isn’t glossy renders but an off-world supply chain built from proven terrestrial machinery, cheaper short-lived satellites, and megawatt-class power standards that mirror EV infrastructure.

It’s an unromantic, inside-the-factory look at how space becomes an industry rather than a spectacle.

What we cover:

- Radiation effects and how engineers harden real hardware

- Why thermal cycling destroys more missions than radiation

- How chips are stress-tested for orbit

- The economics of moving from billion-dollar craft to replaceable fleets

- Why the first lunar machines will look like modified construction gear

- The engineering mindset needed for a multi-planet infrastructure

This is a technical, grounded conversation for people who build things and curious minds who want to learn why and how.

Please enjoy the show. And subscribe. That's the best way to help other people find the channel.

Cheers,

Mark & Jeremy.

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TIMESTAMPS

(00:00) Thinking On Paper Trailer

(02:59) The Role of DC to DC Converters in Space

(03:46) Challenges of Power Systems in Space

(05:30) Designing for Reliability in Space

(07:13) The Impact of Radiation on Electronics

(08:52) Testing and Validation of Space Electronics

(11:03) Environmental Challenges for Space Electronics

(12:28) Success Rates and Lessons Learned

(15:22) The Importance of Music in Space Missions

(22:30) The Future of Space Exploration

(25:23) Building a Lunar Economy

(27:51) Power Conversion in Space

(31:57) Exciting Developments in Space Technology

(35:13) Philosophical Insights on Space and Life

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Email: [email protected]

If the military had been using AIs in 1983, everyone would be dead. Machines will never be conscious, and that animal instinct saved the world. 

This is the story:

On 26 September 1983, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov sat in a Soviet early-warning bunker watching computers tell him that US nuclear missiles were on their way. 

The data said “launch.” 

His intuition said “wait.” 

Petrov chose to override the system and, in doing so, probably saved the world.

In this Thinking on Paper Book Club short, Mark and Jeremy use the Petrov story as a live case study for one of Federico Faggin’s core arguments in Irreducible: information is not the same as consciousness.

Across a few minutes, they unpack:

• Why Petrov’s decision shows the gap between mechanical rule-following and conscious judgment

• How “information makes consciousness” sits at the center of Federrio Faggin’s new consciousness theory

• Why AI systems that only flip 1s and 0s can’t replicate intuition or qualia. In other words, why AI will never be conscious.
  This is a short from our 13-part Book Club on Federico Faggin’s Irreducible.

If you’re interested in AI, consciousness, and the limits of information theory, listen to the full episode for more on information, consciousness, and why Faggin thinks consciousness is irreducible. 

Cheers, 

Mark and Jeremy.

Keep Thinking On Paper.

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Don Norman gives the clearest, most accessible explanation of humanity centered design there is. He invented the concept, after all.

In this Thinking On Paper short, the Godfather of Design lays out the foundations of why design must expand beyond the individual user and account for society, the planet, and long-term impact. 

The core idea is simple: designing for individual users is no longer enough. “What’s wrong,” he says, “is what’s left out.” 

Every digital product relies on a physical product. Power systems, infrastructure, data centers, electricity. You can’t ignore these systems when designing a new product.

Designers need to widen their frame. Traditional human-centered overlooks environmental and social consequences.

The hidden costs of digital technology show up far from your phone, laptop, car or magic pen.

Humanity Centered Design teams work with communities instead of imposing solutions. They focus on long-term impact more than short-term convenience.

• Efficiency isn’t always a virtue.

• Simple metrics distort real outcomes

• Responsible design must consider ecosystems

Don Norman is a legend. He argues that the future of design depends on understanding how products influence society, policy, and the planet, not just usability.

The conversation moves from principles to practice: what sustainable design looks like, how to design without repeating “colonial” patterns, and how to build technology that strengthens communities instead of weakening them. 

“We’re all together,” Norman says, summing up his approach. 

The responsibility is collective, and so is the impact.

Please enjoy the show.

And share it with a friend.

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Can humanoids dance? Or will the billions of Tesla human robots choose to forgo such technological frivolity?

And why is the universe so empty? Where is all the extraterrestrial life....If space colonization and exploration of the galaxy is fundamental to a level 2 or 3 Kardashev civilization, surely there should be aliens knocking around this corner of the Milky Way?

Perhaps they don't like us. Perhaps they don't want to change our trajectory and choose to remain hidden, giving reckless glances of their power and prowess at random moments. Teasing us with their faster-than-light spaceships.

Or are we as rare and unique as we appear?

Philip Johnston is CEO of Starcloud. They build data centers in space. You'll have seen them trending on Twitter recently as their first satellite was on the recent Space-X Falcon 9 launch. You can track it orbiting the Earth.

This is a short from our much longer conversation. Which you can listen to once you've had a flavour of it.

Alternatively, check out our other Thinking on Paper episodes. There is something for every curious mind. From space electronics and personal AI, to spin qubits, IBM quantum computing and a book club.

Cheers,

Mark and Jeremy

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Email: [email protected]