Interactive apps

Interact with my material

Two paradigm shifts are underway in how we learn. The first is from monologue to dialogue. In antiquity, learning happened in conversation: philosophers walked and argued, and the spoken word ruled a world where books were beyond almost everyone’s reach. The printing press changed that. Pamphlets, newspapers, paperbacks, blogs and TED talks all share one shape: a single message, delivered from beginning to end, from one mouth to many ears. Now dialogue is back. We think and build in conversation with our chatbots, and we happily listen for hours as podcast hosts chatter about everything under the sun.

The second shift is from one size fits all to bespoke. A book or a lecture gives everyone the same words, in the same order, at the same speed, whoever they are. That makes learning wildly inefficient. Now imagine the opposite: a teacher that knows what you already know, matches your style from supportive to challenging, and draws its examples from what you love. Learn biology through the diet and training of top footballers. The Greeks called learning skolè: leisure, play, the opposite of work.

The apps on this page are my first experiments in that direction. Turn a frustration into a new approach through reframing, talk to my books and let them answer back. Learning will never be the same again.

Generous dialogue

Both of these begin with a question of yours rather than a method of mine. Think differently about what you do, and change your thinking to change your world. Or start from the deeper questions about life, freedom and meaning. What would you like to change, or explore?

Interactive books: books that answer back

A book is a monologue; these are dialogues. The complete text is there, verbatim, but you read it by talking to it: ask, challenge, be quizzed, jump to what matters to you.