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Thinking On Paper

Thinking On Paper is a technology show hosted by Mark Fielding and Jeremy Gilbertson. Described by The new Tech media as "a refreshing antidote to the stream of clone Silicon Valley tech shows", the CEOS, founders and outliers of space, AI and quantum Think On Paper about the human impact of progression at all costs. Kevin Kelly, IBM, Don Norman, Carissa Veliz, Phillip Metzger, Microsoft, D-Wave all Think On Paper. This isn't about seed rounds and investments, it's about connecting the dots of all technologies and working out why it matters to the regular people out there.

  1. 3 DAYS AGO

    Dr. Philip Metzger : On Industrializing Space

    Dr. Philip Metzger spent nearly 30 years at NASA before joining the University of Florida to research what happens when rockets land on the moon. Rocket exhaust blows lunar dust at three kilometers per second. Without an atmosphere to contain the blast, every launch becomes a global event. A 40-ton lander one kilometer from an antenna will jam it after ten launches. NASA's Artemis program wants a sustained lunar presence. China aims for 2029. Multiple nations and private companies are racing to the moon. But no one has agreed on how much damage is acceptable or who decides.Elon Musk concluded we cannot build enough AI on Earth without environmental catastrophe and said factories must be built on the moon. When AI production moves to space, Metzger's research shows it will drag the entire space economy upward to values billions of times Earth's current output. If a few people control an industry that produces a billion times Earth's economic value, democracy cannot survive. They will buy politicians and control militaries. The stakes couldn't be higher. Metzger now directs the Stephen Hawking Center for Microgravity Research and Education, creating programs for students worldwide to develop space technology, own intellectual property, and start companies. Questions answered:- After Artemis, will NASA still have a role to play?- What makes Starship critical for lunar operations?- When will data centers in space be cheaper than on Earth?- Are hotels on the moon actually viable?- Why mine the moon for Helium-3?- When will asteroid mining become profitable?- Why does lunar rocket dust create international conflict?- What is "fully autonomous luxury communism"?- How can students globally participate in space and own IP?- What can past economic revolutions teach us about space?- What products make economic sense to manufacture in space?- What are the environmental limits of launch rates?- How does space ownership affect democracy's survival?Metzger led NASA's research on rocket blast effects for lunar missions - studying how rocket exhaust affects the airless moon and the infrastructure that will be built on the surface. He now directs the Stephen Hawking Center for Microgravity Research and Education, working on how to democratize space ownership globally.Please enjoy the show.Cheers, Mark & Jeremy. Please enjoy the show. Cheers,  Mark & Jeremy. -- Take your Thinking Further.  Stephen Hawking Center: https://sciences.ucf.edu/physics/microgravity/lab/ Philip X: https://x.com/drphiltill - Other ways to connect with us: ⁠Listen to every podcast⁠ Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ Follow us on ⁠X⁠ Follow Mark on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Follow Jeremy on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Read our ⁠Substack⁠ Email: hello@thinkingonpaper.xyz -- TIMESTAMPS (00:00) Introduction to Space Exploration and Economics (01:26) NASA's Role in Future Space Exploration (06:45) Impact of Rocket Exhaust on Lunar Soil (14:39) Geopolitical Challenges in Space (23:39) Democratizing Space for Future Generations (33:45) Emergent Forces vs. Hierarchical Forces (34:08) Exploring Microgravity Applications (38:39) Rapid Fire Space Technology Opinions (44:02) The Future of Humans and Technology

    45 min
  2. 6 DAYS AGO

    Delivery Drones: The Economics Meets The Culture - Etienne Louvet, Iona Drones

    Iona delivery drones are not your typical multi-propeller drone. They're small planes with a bathtub-sized cargo bay, but take off vertically, then the propellers tilt and it flies like an actual aircraft. Listen up disruptors and curious minds! Today we're Thinking On Paper with CEO and founder Etienne Louvet.  On the agenda? A new logistics vertical in the skyWhy British weather is the perfect training ground for delivery dronesWhat BVLOS actually meansWhy "beyond visual line of sight" is criticalWhy Iona are deliberately working under the strictest aviation regulators instead of going somewhere easy.  Please enjoy the show. Cheers,  Mark & Jeremy. PS: Subscribe so other curious minds like you can find our channel. -- Other ways to connect with us: ⁠Listen to every podcast⁠ Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ Follow us on ⁠X⁠ Follow Mark on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Follow Jeremy on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Read our ⁠Substack⁠ Email: hello@thinkingonpaper.xyz -- TIMESTAMPS (00:00) Intro  (01:50) How much weight can drones carry (02:29) What counts as light cargo  (06:51) How drone regulations actually work  (13:04) Self-assessment and risk management  (14:12) Getting municipalities to say yes  (16:38) Weather problems  (19:48) Where Iona Drones is now  (20:58) Maximizing payload capacity  (21:58) Drone design choices  (23:27) BVLOS explained  (26:08) Drones and privacy concerns  (30:45) Implementing drones in existing logistics  (35:02) Where autonomous delivery is headed  (39:30) Technology and human progress

    43 min
  3. 6 FEB

    How NOT To Prompt AI For The Best Answers

    Can you use AI to think better or think more critically? Philosopher Pia Lauritzen says no. The second we give up to the shortcut use AI, we are letting go of the very basic condition that forces us to think. When we ask if machines can think, the first question should be: why do humans think? Why do we think? For Pia, it is fairly simple. We think because we know there is something we do not know. We have a problem. There is a gap. A gap between what I know and what I want to know.  So I have to start thinking. That is why I ask these questions and that is why I put up with this pain in my head of trying to figure something out that I do not know. The machine does not have that problem. It does not know that it does not know.  It is like an animal.  It does not know that it does not know.  Of course it is a matter of how you understand thinking. But if you consult the old thinkers and not just the engineers and technologists, then you will have a really hard time finding anyone who would say that a machine could ever think.  And if it cannot think itself, why should it be able to help us think? We are the only ones who know how to do that. This is the core problem. AI feels helpful. It removes the discomfort of not knowing where to start. It fills the blank sheet. But that discomfort is not a bug.  That discomfort is the feature. That discomfort is what thinking is. And it is at this point that I am reminded of the scene in Con Air. Define irony. Please enjoy the show. Cheers,  Mark & Jeremy. PS: Subscribe so other curious minds like you can find our channel. -- Other ways to connect with us: ⁠Listen to every podcast⁠ Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ Follow us on ⁠X⁠ Follow Mark on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Follow Jeremy on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Read our ⁠Substack⁠ Email: hello@thinkingonpaper.xyz

    4 min
  4. 4 FEB

    Analog Vs Digital Marketing in 2026: Funnels Don't Exist and Your Customer is OpenAI

    Marketing funnels don't exist. They never did. The internet just convinced us they were real. Meta, Google, OpenAI and a supporting cast of billionaire sociopaths figured out they could control distribution and black-box your customers. Hurrah. Humanity forgot to read the small print.  Now you're running a business where you don't even know who your customer is. Well here’s the AI-shaped healthcheck: Your customer is OpenAI. You're paying 3-15% for a digital presence you don't need. It's called the Silicon Valley tax. You're burning money to keep VCs rich while platforms add another layer of black box between you and the people you serve. The alternative? Network methodology. Someone you know, or someone who knows someone you know. That's it. Funnels were invented to sell marketing. Networks are how humans actually work.  We've been doing it since we had prefrontal cortexes. Everything that's real is analog.  That's true for business too. Welcome to the marketing jungle.  The year is 2026, and if you don’t know who the sucker at the table is… you probably shouldn’t be playing the stakes.  Please enjoy the reality check. Cheers, Mark and Jeremy. PS: Keep thinking on paper. They don’t want you to, that’s why you must.  -- Other ways to connect with us: ⁠Listen to every podcast⁠ Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ Follow us on ⁠X⁠ Follow Mark on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Follow Jeremy on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Read our ⁠Substack⁠ Email: hello@thinkingonpaper.xyz --

    7 min
  5. 3 FEB

    Infleqtion Quantum And The NVIDIA QPU - Matthew Kinsella

    Matt Kinsella runs Infleqtion, a company building quantum computers. The biggest misconception about quantum computing is that it will replace classical computing. It won't.  Quantum processors will sit above GPUs in data centers the same way GPUs sit above CPUs today.  NVIDIA just built the bridge to make this work. It's called NVQ Link, and it changes how we think about the future of compute. NVIDIA announced NVQ Link in October 2024. It's the bridge between quantum computers and classical GPU clusters. Workloads pass seamlessly between them. Here's how it works in practice. Infleqtion and NVIDIA solved something called the Anderson Impurity Model - a photovoltaic problem in material science. Parts of it were solved on a GPU cluster. Parts that couldn't be solved by GPUs were solved on Infleqtion's quantum computer.  Then they recombined to give the answer.  This isn't commercially useful yet. But expand that over time and you could be looking at the future data center. One with three layers. CPUs at the bottom for general computing. GPUs in the middle for parallel processing and AI. QPUs at the top for problems that are quantum mechanical in nature.  Workloads come in, get chopped up, each piece goes to the part of the stack best suited to solve it. Then results recombine. This is already happening. Infleqtion just announced a contract with the Army called Sapient Secure AI for PNT - position, navigation, and timing. It runs their quantum-inspired software on NVIDIA's Jetson edge GPUs.  Small GPUs that don't have much memory.  The software lets them ingest far more streaming data than normal. Video, speed, inertial motion. Then it recreates what GPS gives you - where you are in the world - by extrapolating from all those signals. Without GPS. Please enjoy the show. Cheers,  Mark & Jeremy. -- Other ways to connect with us: ⁠Listen to every podcast⁠ Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ Follow us on ⁠X⁠ Follow Mark on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Follow Jeremy on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Read our ⁠Substack⁠ Email: hello@thinkingonpaper.xyz --

    7 min
  6. 26 JAN

    No More International Space Stations: Space to Grow Part 2

    What is the value proposition of going into space? What is the killer app? How do we make money? And specifically, looking at space stations and satellites, do the economics actually work?In part one of our Space to Grow book club, we learned how SpaceX reduced launch costs by 97%. Matthew Weinzierl and Brendan Rosseau showed us how NASA gave the keys to private industry. The result was dramatically cheaper access to space. But so what? Who cares? So A bunch of billionaires can go to space for less money than before. What does that mean for you? What does that mean for me?In Part 2, we bring in the skeptics. They ask reasonable questions. Why spend money on hotels on the moon when there are problems on Earth? Why mine asteroids for precious metals when we have problems here? The pursuit of space is inspiring, but inspiration can blind us to reality.Outside of a few obvious existing users like satellites and government science missions, how could the rest of us and organizations benefit from lower costs to orbit? How much of what the optimists see as potential will turn into reality?Please enjoy the show. -- Other ways to connect with us: ⁠Listen to every podcast⁠ Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ Follow us on ⁠X⁠ Follow Mark on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Follow Jeremy on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Read our ⁠Substack⁠ Email: hello@thinkingonpaper.xyz -- TIMESTAMPS (00:00⁠) Trailer  ⁠(01:35⁠) No Dust Jackets ⁠ (02:00⁠) Name Jeremy's Astronaut ⁠ (03:52⁠) What Is The Product Market Fit For Space? ⁠ (05:26⁠) Satellites And The Le Chatelier Principle ⁠ (09:00⁠) Planet's Dove Satellites ⁠ (16:38⁠) Satellites For Climate ⁠ (18:28⁠) John Lewis ⁠ (22:30⁠) Ronald Reagan & Carl Sagan ⁠ (26:42⁠) Inflatable ISS Modules

    31 min

About

Thinking On Paper is a technology show hosted by Mark Fielding and Jeremy Gilbertson. Described by The new Tech media as "a refreshing antidote to the stream of clone Silicon Valley tech shows", the CEOS, founders and outliers of space, AI and quantum Think On Paper about the human impact of progression at all costs. Kevin Kelly, IBM, Don Norman, Carissa Veliz, Phillip Metzger, Microsoft, D-Wave all Think On Paper. This isn't about seed rounds and investments, it's about connecting the dots of all technologies and working out why it matters to the regular people out there.

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