Where Does our Thinking Go?
Slides brief
Feeds the slide build (frontend-slides skill). This is the slide text, the builds, and the image asks. The spoken track is script.md; the slides are sparse against it. Rule: the speaker carries the argument, the slide carries one image and one phrase. If a slide needs a sentence read off it, it has too much on it.
## = section (doubles as a section-divider slide unless noted). ### = one slide. Under each slide: On slide (exact text), Build (animation / transition, only where it does narrative work), Visual (image / screenshot / diagram). Live tool moments are marked [LIVE] with a static fallback noted.
Theme and feel
- Start from the Life Itself warm-earth template:
~/src/life-itself/design/presentations/life-itself-warm-earth-reference.html. Sand / clay / charcoal, Cormorant Garamond display + DM Sans utility, full-viewport slides. It already reads as Life Itself / Second Renaissance, so no new identity work. - One accent colour (amber / signal, as in the explainer series), reserved for one meaning: newly contributed or newly connected — a card just placed, a node just edited, the condition nobody is holding. Never decorative.
- Mostly type on warm ground. The real tool (tree, reader) appears as live screen-share wherever room and tech allow; static screenshots are the fallback, captured in advance.
- Transitions are quiet: fades and simple builds. Two deliberate exceptions where the transition is the point: the opening question evaporating, and the pivot where the assumption breaks.
0 · Introduction
FIX: this is introduction not cold open.
Title
On slide: Where Does the Thinking Go? / Trees, forums, and getting Second Renaissance to build on its own ideas / Rufus Pollock & David Joseph · Second Renaissance Research Group Visual: faint, out-of-focus tree canopy seen from below, or a ghosted hand-drawn tree diagram, behind the type. Warm, low contrast. Build: none.
The question that started it
On slide: "What is the goal of the Second Renaissance, and how would we know we were moving toward it?" / — a sense-making session, earlier this year Build: the question fades in a line at a time. Hold. Then it drops to ~20% opacity and stays there — it evaporates in front of the room. (It comes back at full opacity in the close.) Visual: none, or a very faint paper/notes texture.
A week later
On slide: A week later: nowhere. / No note. No thread. The thinking stayed in the room. Build: "nowhere" lands first (quick scale-in). The three short lines fade in under it.
Spine line
On slide: Where does the thinking go? Visual: full bleed, largest type so far. No image. Build: cut to black, then in. This slide's design is reused, once, as the closer.
1 · The problem
What the movement is trying to be
On slide: A movement for civilizational renewal. / A living theory of change, meant to get better as more people work on it. / That only works if the improving adds up. Visual: faint scaffolding image, low in the frame (sets up "wall vs scaffold" later). Optional.
The research circle
On slide: Same conclusion. Twice in three years. / Both times the room agreed. / Both times it evaporated. Build: three lines in sequence. On the third, the first two dim to near-nothing. Visual: a single thin loop-arrow motif (returns to its own start). No photo.
The line
On slide: "Agreement that survives only in the people who were present is a rumour." Visual: full-bleed quote slide, charcoal background, the one dark slide in this stretch.
Not a shortage of
On slide: Not a shortage of intelligence. Or goodwill. Or ideas. → (replaces in place) → A shortage of somewhere to put them. Build: first line fades out, second fades in at the same position.
No address
On slide: Six or seven white papers. ~200,000 words. / A claim in the middle of page 40 has no address. Visual: screenshot of a real, dense page of a Second Renaissance white paper, greyed down. One sentence mid-page ringed in the accent colour. Build: the ring appears, then a small "?" beside it, then both fade. Nothing to attach to.
Wall, not scaffold
On slide: A long document is a wall, not a scaffold. Visual: split frame, blank wall / scaffolding. Low priority; type alone is fine.
2 · The idea + Demo A
The idea
On slide: What if what we share isn't a stack of documents, but a structure. Build: a stack-of-pages icon on the left gives way to a simple node-and-line tree on the right.
Every claim has an address
On slide: A top claim. The sub-claims it depends on. All the way down. / Every claim has an address. / The links are claims too: this one is necessary for that one. Visual: a clean schematic tree, 3 to 4 levels (not the real 2R tree yet). Build: the tree draws itself node by node as the lines are spoken. One node then gets a small pin / coordinate tag ("an address"). One link lights and shows its "necessary for" label.
[LIVE] Demo A — the real tree
On slide (hold): The Second Renaissance tree of change Then: screen-share the real tool. Speaker does two clicks only: (1) a deep leaf, its path to the goal lights and the rest dims; (2) one link, its "necessary for" gloss appears. ~90 seconds, no full tour. Fallback: three screenshots — whole tree; one leaf-path highlighted; one link glossed. Capture in advance.
Two things at once
On slide: A thesis about what has to be true. / An object you can improve, one claim at a time. Visual: reuse the schematic tree. Left label slides in ("thesis"), then right ("editable object"); one leaf blinks to show a single-point edit.
Lineage (aside)
On slide: (small, margin-note styling) The shape is ~40 years old. Operations research. "The Logical Thinking Process." Nothing here depends on knowing that. Visual: small photo of the Dettmer book The Logical Thinking Process, or Goldratt's The Goal, tucked in a corner, deliberately un-emphasised. Build: quick in, quick out. Should feel like a footnote.
3 · The conflict + the turn
Why don't we already do this?
On slide: So why don't we already work like this? Visual: single line, full bleed. Beat slide.
The conflict
On slide: Left: Keep it human — quick, exploratory, relational. Nobody wants to fill in a form. | Right: Make it add up — structure, or the good parts dissolve into the scroll. Build: the two columns slide in from opposite sides and meet with a small clash in the middle. (This is the Evaporating Cloud shape without the name.)
The hidden assumption
On slide: One assumption holds the dilemma together: / The structure has to be added by the contributor, at the moment of contributing. Build: the two columns from the previous slide collapse inward and hang off this one sentence — it is the thing bridging them.
The turn
On slide: It's not true. / (small, under it) That's more or less the whole talk. Build: the assumption sentence visibly breaks — a crack, or it crosses out and dissolves — leaving "It's not true." Cut to black, then in. This is the pivot; mark it.
4 · The move + Demo B
The move
On slide: So don't add the structure at the moment of contributing. / Let the conversation be a conversation. Visual: a stream of forum / chat bubbles, flowing normally, untouched.
Structure recovered afterwards
On slide: Afterwards, separately, a machine reads it against the tree. Build: the same bubble stream stays; faint lines now run from individual messages to nodes on a small tree at the side.
[LIVE] Demo B — watch it read a thread
On slide (hold): A real forum thread
Then: screen-share. A real public 2R forum thread, 4 to 6 posts (@David to pick — see notes.md build tasks, and the script's Demo B block). Trigger the reader; 3 to 4 placement cards appear against the tree — supports this / challenges that / can't place yet — each linked to the exact post. Pre-baked for a ~1-minute reveal, narrated live.
Fallback: screenshots of the thread and the cards.
Who decides
On slide: A rotating handful of people decide what merges. / Not one person. Not the machine alone. Visual: a small icon row — a few people plus a model glyph — with a checkpoint/gate between the proposals and the tree.
The cost of contributing
On slide: Cost of contributing: one sentence, where you were already saying it. / The filing is someone's job now. Not the contributor's. Build: a cost bar drops from high to low.
Why now
On slide: Two years ago this ended at "too much hand work." / AI is what makes the filing affordable. Visual: faint before/after. Matter-of-fact, small.
5 · You try it (Demo C)
[LIVE / INTERACTIVE] Demo C — write
On slide (stays up while people write): Your turn. ~1,000 characters. / Something important the Second Renaissance may be missing, underestimating, or getting wrong. Or something we could act on. / Your words. Don't tidy them. / [QR code + short link to the shared form] Visual: a 3 to 4 minute countdown element. Note: after the write, switch to the tool. Run live if room and tech allow; otherwise the pre-baked mock-up (contributions already collected and processed). Decide on the day; have the mock-up ready regardless (see notes.md).
The three questions
On slide: 1 · Where does it fit? / 2 · Gap or disagreement? / 3 · So what, and who owns it? Build: stays up during the walk-through; each number lights as the speaker reaches it.
The reverse view
On slide: The same map tells everyone which condition nobody is currently holding. Visual: the tree of change with the least-supported condition pulsing in the accent colour; a small annotation count on each of the eight. Payoff visual; build task in notes.md.
What just happened
On slide: A paragraph of ordinary thinking → a specific claim, at a place, with a path to an action. / A long way past "thanks for your feedback." Build: a short pipeline draws left to right — contribution → claim @ address → gap / opportunity → proposal → action → evidence — and the last arrow loops back to the tree.
6 · Close
Back to the question
On slide: "How would we know if we were moving toward what we're trying to do?" / You can only ask that of something you can point at. Build: the opening question returns at full opacity (it was faded in slide 0.2).
Loaded words
On slide: "Goal." "Progress." "Moving toward." Loaded words here, and that's fine. / That disagreement should live at an address, with a name on it. Not be had again next year.
The ask
On slide: Today: write the thousand characters. / After today: follow where it lands. / If an action comes out of it, own it. Build: three lines in sequence.
Spine line, answered
On slide: Where does the thinking go? / (fades in beneath) Into the tree. At an address. With your name on it. Visual: same design as the slide 0.4 spine slide. Largest type in the deck. The closer.
Final
On slide: Find the claim you disagree with. Or the one nobody is standing under. / (small) the trees are public: [link] Visual: Life Itself logo, bottom-right.
Assets to source (later pass)
Consolidated so image research can be its own job. None are blocking; every slide works as type-only if an image doesn't turn up.
- Title background: faint tree canopy from below, or a ghosted hand-drawn tree/issue-tree diagram.
- "No address" slide: screenshot of a real dense page from a 2R white paper.
- Optional: blank wall / scaffolding pair.
- Lineage aside: cover of H. William Dettmer, The Logical Thinking Process (and/or Goldratt, The Goal). Copyright not a concern for an internal talk.
- Tool screenshots to capture in advance (fallbacks for Demos A and B): full tree; one leaf-path highlighted; one link glossed; the chosen forum thread; the reader's placement cards; the reverse view.
- Demo C: QR code + short link for the contribution form.
- Confirm Life Itself logotype asset path for the deck build.
