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Mark Curtis's avatar

Really thought provoking Henry - thank you. I liked this best, a subtle and interesting thought - "Where will friction signal value? Both Apple and Google now offer live speech-to-speech translation; yet the more efficiently a practical task becomes, being able to do it ‘unassisted’ will become ever more impressive – language learning is about to become a luxury good (and this counter-trend can be applied to half this list ;)"

Mark Curtis's avatar

Oh and same kind of angle - if self driving cars really take off via Waymo etc...where will we get motor racing drivers from in the future if very few learn to drive?

Henry Coutinho-Mason's avatar

Thank you Mark 🙌

Re your racing driver point - probably like horse racing (which I’ve compared language learning to many times before)… from wealthy people who can afford to do unnecessary things as a form of status signalling

(One funny aside - Claude also singled this one out as the most interesting of the 52… which I find fascinating & humbling & terrifying in equal measures)