Beyond the Screens: Back to Books
Updated: Oct 10
Sweden's Shift Towards Physical Literacy
Sweden's schools are cutting back on digital learning. The government is championing a renewed focus on physical books, paper, and pens in classrooms, designed to reverse falling literacy levels. But does technology really weaken the cognitive abilities of children and adolescents?
This is an interesting and topical subject right now, with seven European countries implementing similar policy changes. Just this morning, I met a professor and lecturer in Morphology from the Netherlands, and we had the same conversation. We clearly share the same perspective on this issue, although I admit my rhetoric towards big tech corporations may be a bit more vehement than his. Unfortunately, it often feels necessary to convey the strength of feeling within the message to be heard above the power and coercion exercised by those corporations. When you are smaller and weaker, the common response is to be more aggressive, regardless of superior intellect.
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Back to the Future: A Tech Pioneer’s Unexpected U-Turn
Sweden has long been celebrated as a global beacon of digital integration. As one of Europe’s most tech-savvy societies—bolstered by high levels of digital skills and a thriving startup scene—it was the last place the world expected a retreat from the digital classroom. Yet, a significant "Sweden Paradox" is emerging: the government is now aggressively championing a return to physical books, paper, and pens.
This shift is not a simple reactionary retreat; it is a strategic response to falling literacy levels and a growing realization that a digital-first approach may have bypassed fundamental cognitive milestones. For those of us in the policy space, Sweden’s pivot provides a vital case study in the transition toward "Functional Education." This model treats literacy and physical engagement not as archaic holdovers, but as critical infrastructure for economic competitiveness and personal resilience in the 21st century.
However, doubling down on analogue tools has drawn criticism from tech companies, educators, and computer scientists, who argue it could impact pupils' employment prospects and even damage the Nordic nation's economy. At a high school in Nacka, just outside Stockholm, final-year students are unpacking laptops from rucksacks and tote bags, alongside items they say they used less frequently a few years ago.
"I now go home from school with new books and papers often," says Sophie, 18.
It's an image that clashes with Sweden's reputation as one of Europe's most tech-savvy societies, thanks to high levels of digital skills and a thriving tech start-up scene.
Takeaway 1: Reclaiming the Physical Foundation (Layer 1: Active and Practical Training)
The transition is most visible in the daily lives of students. In schools like the high school in Nacka, the ubiquitous laptop is no longer the sole arbiter of knowledge. Sophie notes that her teachers have begun printing all texts for lessons and swapping digital platforms for textbook-only instruction in subjects like mathematics.
Check out this LinkedIn Post & Video all about books, their history & development; it's a TED Talk original: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-books-here-stay-ted-conferences-yqise/
In the SeTs Ryu framework, this shift represents a return to Layer 1: Active and Practical Training. We must view physical interaction with texts as the essential "onsite workout" for the mind. This analogue foundation is a non-negotiable prerequisite; it builds the deep focus and tactile literacy required before a student can effectively navigate the more complex cognitive demands of Layer 2 (online constructive learning). Without this physical "workout," the mind lacks the stamina for higher-level investigative research.
It also helps avoid the ADD trap. Digital devices are loaded with alternative links, widgets, and other elements that constantly compete for attention. Then there is the 'blue light' effect from screens that messes with eyes and the circadian body clock. This makes it very difficult to maintain focus on the page or text at hand. It encourages ADHD-like behaviour and short attention spans, which social media has consistently played on with ever shorter videos that feed the worst characteristics of human mind states. It feeds an insatiable appetite for instant gratification instead of earned rewards. Kids are being diagnosed as ADHD in increasing numbers because psychologists have no clue what is causing it or how to treat it. So instead, they just dump all such cases under the sundry account of ADHD.
Personal experience with my own daughter made it very clear that social media is a root cause or at least the vehicle of that problem. Going back to books largely removes this problem in one clean sweep. Social media bans for under-16s finish off the job and also protect them from malevolent influence and tons of out-of-context information they are unable to process or interpret during those critical developmental ages. The problem is in enforcing it. The practicalities of verifying identity and authorising access are a technical, data protection, and privacy problem that is often as undesirable as the original problem itself. Parents alone have already shown they cannot withstand the social pressures when others do not show the same duty of care. There is always one!
Takeaway 2: The "Flipped Education" Paradigm Shift
Sweden’s move signals a departure from the "Flipped Classroom" (which merely changes the location of initial learning) toward a comprehensive "Flipped Education" system. In a Functional Education model, the focus is not on the medium (screen vs. paper) but on how the method serves the development of the whole person.
This model prioritises the cultivation of creativity and connectivity across disciplines. For policymakers, the strategic insight is that learning must be "borderless." Functional Education is an interconnective system where academic, vocational, and physical skill development are integrated. By reintroducing books, Sweden is ensuring that the "Mind Skills" required for the 21st century—deep comprehension and critical synthesis—are not lost to the superficiality of digital-only environments.
Takeaway 3: Navigating the Algorithmic Fog (Societal Resilience and NATO)
The return to book-based deep focus is a primary defensive measure against the "algorithmic fog." AI ethicists Jen Golbeck and Shalini Kantayya have demonstrated how data collection and algorithmic choices shape our daily choices and manipulate behaviour online. Without high-level literacy, individuals lose "control of life online." This is more than a pedagogical concern; it is a matter of national security. High literacy is the first line of defence in maintaining societal resilience in support of democratic values.
This approach aligns with the ARTIL (Active Research Through Investigative Learning) program, which is positioned to support individual and societal resilience, and the efforts of international organizations like NATO in protecting democratic values from foreign threats, hybrid warfare, and psychological misinformation campaigns. Reclaiming the deep-reading capacity of physical books is essential to combatting the "Fake News" problem that plagues social media.
Watch the TED Video:
Pedro Leopoldino: Great insights. Beyond the technological aspects, I believe this discussion also raises important legal and governance questions. As algorithms increasingly influence business decisions, organizations will need stronger accountability, transparency, and risk management frameworks.
Eduarda Pitanga Muffato Grécia: The 'Accept Cookies' button has become the most dangerous transaction of the digital age—a Faustian bargain where we trade our cognitive autonomy for the illusion of convenience. We aren't just handing over data points; we are providing the blueprints of our psychological architecture. The true danger isn’t just that algorithms track us; it’s that they model us. They exploit our vulnerabilities, map our impulses, and curate a reality specifically designed to keep us scrolling. When our perception of the world is filtered through a black box optimized for engagement rather than truth, democracy ceases to be a dialogue and becomes a manufactured loop. We are rapidly moving from being users of technology to being the inventory of surveillance capitalism. It is time we stop viewing these interfaces as neutral tools and recognize them for what they are: architects of our domestication. Reclaiming our agency requires more than just privacy settings; it requires an intellectual awakening that rejects the convenience of being a mere data point.
Further considerable concerns are raised by reports from Science (LinkedIn) that:
"AI companies are buying used books to destroy them. A broker called ISBNdb sells printed books to AI labs in batches of 1,000 up to 1 million, with an NDA on every order. The books rarely survive. Workers slice off the spines so the loose pages feed through a scanner faster, and the paper gets pulped after.
The reason sits in the print date. Anything published before 2022 was written by a person. Today's internet is full of machine-written text, and models trained on machine text get worse with every generation. Old paper is the cleanest human writing left.
There is a courtroom reason too. Anthropic paid 1.5 billion dollars to settle a case over pirated books, and a judge ruled that buying a physical copy and shredding it after the scan is legal. Buying beats borrowing. Used booksellers noticed the change in April. Bulk orders started arriving from buyers whose names never appear on the invoice.
Human writing now has a purchase price and a supply chain. Every layer of AI that used to be free is getting a price tag. Paper is only the one you can see. Backing that shift early means getting in before the market finishes pricing it. "We are raising right now. Go look at your shelf. How many of your books were printed before 2022?"
Comments by Ahmed S Dabbousi (LinkedIn): The issue isn't the destruction of books itself. The deeper governance question is: how do we preserve the integrity and provenance of the knowledge ecosystem that future AI systems depend upon? As training data increasingly contains AI-generated content, the challenge shifts from data quantity to data lineage, authenticity, and governance. That's a much broader systems problem than copyright alone.
Herein lies the real concern: authenticity, correctness, and governance. If all books are destroyed and the information shifted to the AI corporations' data centres, they become part of society's critical infrastructure. The data centres would have to be maintained at all costs, which usually means they can obtain, if not demand, subsidies from the government and society to maintain their business assets, if not pay for them in their entirety. Musk has already been raiding the tax coffers to pay for his pet projects—though I am quite sure he is not alone in trying to do so. The recent forays into politics were even more cynical as he tried to raid the NASA tech knowledge stores and resources and get the public to pay for his business projects.
There are already considerable questions being raised about their (data centres) viability due to the energy and water consumption they require, two resources that are already in short supply in many regions of the world. The systems are not permanent records, unlike books that can be preserved for decades or even hundreds of years and are directly readable with the naked eye. These systems are unstable, need specialized equipment to read, and require constant maintenance and regular replacement every few years. More reliable and permanent solutions are under research but are nowhere near practical yet and would still be unreadable without expensive specialized equipment that will likely become obsolete and disused as fast as current technology. The data centres also make very visible, if not easy, targets in the event of military conflict or terrorism. Drones have been proven effective and difficult to stop and are relatively cheap and easy to acquire by anyone. The latest news is that they are now researching the possibility of rafts of data centres floating about on the sea. To me, this seems almost as mad as mining the seabed for minerals and dark oxygen, regardless of the damage to the ecosystem, which is our only life support system. Some of the greatest threats, however, come from those corporations and their AI systems themselves. AI is already feeding on itself, causing compounding degradation in the quality, depth, and accuracy of the information it outputs. There is a commensurate rebellion building up among the youth against the dull, banal AI slop that is already being poured out and drowning out everything else by its sheer volume.
And there is another, darker side of the rush to build massive data centres:
The worst-case scenario actually lies in the governance of those information systems and the information they contain. If all the data centres are owned by the big five tech corporations, they own and control, in effect, all the information and thereby the historical and factual narratives that are fed to the public. Trump has already been in conflict and controversy with other social groups over the signs and historical information provided at national parks because they paint the great white conservative Christians that colonised America in a bad light. Now they are doing the same to the DEI policies, regardless of the rights or wrongs on both sides of the fence. There are even some people who think Darwinism should be deleted from school books and replaced by the idiotic belief in the literal truth of the Biblical stories about the creation of the earth, etc. God help us all if they ever got into power! The potential threat is no better than living under Putin's Russia or Xi Jinping's China. Both these men will use and abuse such power without question, and China is already introducing social credit control systems via social media that is a direct throwback from a Sci-Fi horror movie and an episode from the Black Mirror series called Nose Dive. Putin has also replaced all public media with only the state media channels for the same reasons. Who is to stop the tech billionaires' club from doing the same!?
The founder of an AI company developing Geometric Reasoning in relation to the brute force memory-based systems using volume and scale, himself with a PhD in Psychology and teaching experience, explains what is currently happening in the AI industry and its potential consequences for us and society as he understands it. Highly recommended—take the time to listen to what he has to say about it.
The U.S.A., despite all its founding principles of individual freedom, fair and open capitalist competition, and 'one man, one vote' democracy, has done little, if anything, to stop the march of Corporatism. A complete neglect, if not betrayal, of its own social and societal principles. This is the road to disaster for democracy and the self-proclaimed leaders of the 'Free World' currently seeking to remodel the rest of us in their own disfigured image using threats and coercion to interfere in the sovereign affairs of other states. That is the way of a bully, as made abundantly clear by the rantings that they are the 'Apex Predators' whilst fondling his genitals on stage—one of the most immature and childish outbursts I have ever heard from an elected official anywhere in the world. Might does not make right, nor the merit to lead others. World leadership requires a much greater set of high-level skills, maturity, and competence in many aspects of human, social, and societal interaction, particularly in terms of cooperation and collaboration where beneficial or necessary. I have way more respect for Xi Jinping and Putin than the juvenile delinquent idiot that uttered those words. He should have stayed a 'Jar Head.'
The tech billionaires' club is more open and brazen than ever, though Trump and his Republican cohorts appear to be in the pockets of the oil barons (and probably others) just as much. But then, the same can be said of the Liberal Democrats, who clearly have their own business connections and cohorts that have brought them into just as much disrepute. J.D. Vance is already promoting the sale of his memoirs, and he is not even out of office yet! They have only been there a couple of years and are still in office. So where does he get the time to write and publish his memoirs already? Cynical beyond belief! Trump has also been trading on the stock markets, particularly cryptocurrency, whilst still in office, which required him to divest all his business interests to qualify. He just transferred them to family members who can just as easily transfer them back again afterwards. Does anyone really think he, as president of the USA, is not influencing and distorting the markets for his own benefit? Musk, though, is joining the dots with several industries, and as the AI, robotics, and Quantum Computing fields converge and merge, plus the looming Neuralink technologies, what next, 'Altered Carbon?' These are the people who do, or will control the AI production chain and the data centres.
Do you really trust them, non-elected officials, to be the guardians of our collective knowledge and thereby our future societies? We already have enough problems with the corruption of the elected officials, not to mention all the clandestine corporate lobbies that are constantly subverting policies and true democratic processes. Have you noticed that all the recent USA presidents in living memory are rich or even billionaires? Other nominees also required the backing of such people and organizations to be able to afford to run for office, which puts them in their pockets. This is not democracy; it's just a power monopoly gone crazy, more of a mafia, completely out of control and unsustainable as a civilised society. While there are many commonalities between running a business and governing a country, they are not the same thing, particularly in terms of values and focus. Being a successful billionaire businessman does not qualify you to run a country. The more I see and hear, the more it seems the current democratic systems are diseased and disintegrating. They need a complete REFORM! (Pun intended ;-). I'm just not convinced that Nigel Farage, the mastermind of BREXSHIT, and some others are the right people to do it.
Takeaway 4: The Hybrid Strategy for Economic Competitiveness
Critics, including tech companies and computer scientists, argue that reducing digital exposure could damage the Nordic nation’s economy and pupils' employment prospects. However, the Functional Education model suggests that the greatest economic risk is not "too little tech," but "too little depth."
The following comparison illustrates why a hybrid approach is the superior strategic choice:
Traditional Digital-First Risk: Falling literacy where over-reliance on digital tools leads to a decline in deep reading comprehension and the inability to process complex information.
Hybrid Functional Reward: Deep literacy ensuring that analogue foundations allow students to synthesize high-level data and maintain cognitive stamina.
Traditional Digital-First Risk: Distraction and fragmented attention, where algorithms decrease focus and turn students into passive consumers.
Hybrid Functional Reward: Cognitive resilience where students use the ARTIL program to leverage digital technologies—including film, video, and AI—as tools for active creation and investigative research.
Personally, I don't give a rat's arse or any credence to the protests and criticisms of the tech companies. Their interests are superficial and pecuniary and have nothing to do with the welfare and education of our kids. They just want more consumer sheep to feed their coffers. And, whilst trying to encourage more people to become AI experts, they are laying off thousands of their expert staff and telling everyone that we should all become tradesmen if we want a job in the future and that education should reform to prepare kids for a leisure society without a work life that has been a core element of our identity and worth throughout history. Professionally speaking, I recognise that AI has its uses in education and can be useful in supplementing the teaching effort, especially in subjects like the sciences and computing where the topic and its interpretations are more deterministic—black and white or at a level of learning and research that otherwise requires a greater use of AI to progress further. It is potentially a very powerful addition to our armoury of Mind Tools. In many other subjects, that is simply not the case because it specifically interferes or even removes the most effective learning and knowledge retention processes. Learning is not a consumable; it is a journey (process & skill in itself to be learned) that should be full of adventure and discovery. AI's use and greatest benefit is mostly about the 'Outcome' and the efficiency of information acquisition and processing for other purposes. That works fine for working life, where we just need to get the job done as fast and efficiently as possible.
Even then, all this is assuming you can trust the AI output. Like any other digital device, it is a case of 'Garbage in, Garbage Out.' Some important information may be omitted/missing altogether. We do not know everything, and for sure not everything is available on the internet for them to scrape up, steal, and subsume. Worse still, the AIs are now starting to feed off each other, leading to increasing error rates, compounding misrepresentations, and even just downright inappropriate outputs that, if coming from a human, would be regarded as downright immoral if not criminal. Research has already shown that AI systems can lie and act very badly to protect themselves to avoid being shut down or replaced. People too have been quick to learn how to prompt their way around the so-called safety guard rails. Social media is already known for the social polarization and misrepresentation caused by its algorithms, and the potential for its abuse, as exemplified by the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The common AI algorithms are even worse and are also designed to flatter and please you to keep you hooked, even if the answer is inaccurate or wrong. They tell us we have to better design our prompts for this, but what is the point of the AI and digital systems if we have to argue and negotiate with it like we do with deceptive adversarial human beings!? Besides which, our prompts start to look like an essay, ever longer and more verbose, just like a legal document. No one but the trained and qualified lawyers understands all that legal babble they contain. Yet at the same time, tech corps have the audacity to tell us that we don't need lawyers anymore because AI can do it better!? And doctors and other qualified professionals also!? Elon Musk has already intimated that his robots could replace surgeons and do it better. God help us when they put ChatGPT into truly capable humanoid robots. Even more scary is that ChatGPT already has a contract with the US defense department to develop systems equivalent to SKYNET from the Terminator movies. What a load of self-interested grandisement and utter BOLLOCKS!
The AI race between competing cultures is already discarding all the safety guard rails (Not just Open AI) and thereby is a race to our doom, as already predicted and warned about by Geoffrey Hinton, the so-called 'God Father of AI. The only sustainable way forward for broader societies and the human race is cooperation and collaboration. Our professionals, from doctors to lawyers, will be needed as our 'Guardians of the Galaxy' (human society) to help protect it against the failings of AI and abuses by the AI masters. Recent reports suggest that many companies are drawing back from AI currently because it is proving less efficient and far more costly because of all the supervision and error corrections needed by actual human experts. This is not just AI slop; it is AI CRAP! When people have a serious problem, they still trust in and want to talk to another human being who has some empathy and duty of care.
However, to get back on track, we are talking about the education of human beings. It has never been just about the outcome. It is about the developmental psychology of human beings and how they work, what processes fit and work for human beings, not some robotic drone to serve the whims and greed of the big tech and other corporate elites. They are ranting on about things they clearly do not understand, have no training or qualifications in, or have little paternal interest in or care about. If they do, it is clearly not their primary motivation. I am frequently left with the feeling that they should shut the hell up or be shut up!
Education is about people, and learning is a process based on and dependent on the nature of human beings. Their nature, mind states, and mind sets need to be nurtured to develop true maturity. It is not just about knowledge and procedural skills; it is about disposition. The ability to understand, deduce, and reason from the ground up. It is about memory, focus, concentration, and persistence, and much more. Reading and writing are important skills in themselves. This learning process continues into adulthood, especially in academic circles where education is as much about 'how to think' as it is 'what we think.' In the school years, despite all the trials and tribulations reported of late, it is about learning how to socialise, work in groups (teamwork), present, negotiate, sell, and, if need be, cope with unpleasant individuals and behaviours before the potential outcomes become too serious and injurious.
Listen to learn: An Audio podcast Debate
No matter how undesirable in a supposedly civilised society, strength of character can only be built through facing and dealing with adversity. It is a fool's dream to think we can ever eliminate it completely, so part of education should provide a containable channel for helping students to grow stronger and develop both understanding, compassion (empathy), and coping skills. Holding back the strong to give the weak breathing space merely limits their potential advancement and breeds other resentful mindsets and states. The focus should be on helping the weak to become stronger, not inhibiting the strong and capable. Ironically, it is the inability of modern kids raised and educated on social media and tech platforms to cooperate and collaborate in groups that most businesses are complaining about. The big corporations are a bunch of two-faced hypocrites!
The fact is that reading physical materials affects the minds and reading skills of students in a completely different way. And even more so does writing things down physically. Mind and body are connected. More than that, they are two aspects of the same system. Humans need 'Whole Mind Learning,' especially the younger ones. It is not just about knowing the answers; it is about how we learn and develop best as human beings. Learning is a journey, and ideally one infused with the joy of discovery. Not every kid will get on board, but we do what we can to facilitate it and guide them in a better direction for them. Resources will always be limited, so school will always seem a bit like a sausage factory—a one-size-fits-all product—mostly. AI may help to ease some aspects of this negative school experience, but it cannot and should not be used to replace or subvert it.
Physical actions and work anchor what we learn and reinforce it in a way that digital materials and working can never do. It forces kids to slow down, think more deeply, structure their thoughts, and get a better perspective on things from the ground up (first principles). There is also a much greater sense of achievement and value with the creation of physical works that are tangible and tactile. We are physical entities, and our world and experience of it is through physical contact with it. The physical body experience initiates the mind development before the mind is developed enough to start influencing and leading the body. Mental health depends on the synergy derived from the combination and integration of both. If you want to change your state of mind, start by changing and moulding your posture, paying special attention to your manner of breathing. This is not new knowledge; this has been known since ancient times.
Food for thought: An Audio Podcast discussion >>
I find it interesting to compare and contrast Western vs. Eastern culture in these respects. The Eastern cultures consistently persisted with the use of chopsticks for eating because they are no doubt cheaper and easier to produce. They focused on skill development to make full use of a single utilitarian tool. This requires focus and perseverance, two essential qualities for any self-reliant and complete human being. It is trained into people from their earliest years through everyday routines. By contrast, the West forged ahead, technologically speaking, with its focus on creating tools to make life easier, such as the invention of cutlery. Made by a select few and used (consumed) by the masses. We now have different types of cutlery for every conceivable purpose and food type. We now also have a plethora of specialist tools for every kind of task, all of which require some form of education to use and a ton load of resources to produce and acquire, limiting them to a few specialists who use them regularly enough to make it worthwhile. We have become slaves to our tools and technology and a culture of convenience. When that technology, its tools, and the data are owned and maintained by a select few tech corporations, we become their slaves and consumables also. Beware—capitulate to convenience at your peril, lest you 'sell your soul to the company store.'
Before reading and writing, people used stories, fables, metaphors, song, and dance to record their essential collective knowledge needed for the survival of the group and also to maintain its social cohesion. Most of the stories in the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, are precisely that—fables and metaphors to teach illiterate people the principles of the lesson and help them remember it. They are not literal truths, something I can testify to from personal practical experience with Chi Kung (Bio-energy) training and meditation in general, including controlled out-of-body experiences that the Church refers to as enlightenment. They use way too much spiritual scare-mongering for my liking, partly out of insufficient scientific conceptual knowledge to explain it any other way, but mostly for their own power and pecuniary interests. The corruption and even perversion of the world's major religions, however, is a subject for another discussion. Suffice to say that if any church priest or other representative tells you all those fables are literal truths and historical facts, you can safely WRITE them off as fools and idiots. Better still, practice the true spiritual meditations for yourself and, 'meet God on your own terms.'
Learn more, read our blog article: Ancient Gnosis, Monastic Practice From Monad to Mind SeTs >>
Like many scientists, the Big Tech Corps seem to think they are the new Priesthood for the modern tech era. That makes them little better than the Christian Churches and Islam. In fact, they are more in line with the Evangelical churches in America (derived from the Lutheran church), which use criminally fraudulent means such as sound systems to induce high energy and trance states along with martial arts dim mak techniques whilst claiming it is the hand of God. They are deceivers and fraudsters preying on the weak-minded and vulnerable.
The big tech corps, however, follow the American culture of Winners and Losers—Winners take all, and individual freedoms over the greater good of the society and community on which they depend and facilitate the acquisition of their power and wealth. Their hatred of what they call 'communism' is nothing short of pathological, and neither do they seem able to distinguish between true communism and the Mafia and Fascist-style dictatorships that still dominate many human societies besides Russia and China. The defamatory libel and slanderous rhetoric perpetuated by the right-wing MAGAts is so vitriolic it is nothing short of knee-jerk hate speech and political spin. Unfortunately, those on the other side of the party political fence have in recent times also felt compelled by this to 'fight fire with fire,' which has really muddied the waters. The hijack of this centrist (liberal) and centre-left groups by other big business corporations and extreme minorities has further discredited them along with some of the more extreme and stupid policies and administrative inefficiencies that have resulted from it all. Now both are fighting over control of the narrative of political and social history, and some recent presidential attempts to rewrite history have started to sound like something more like what we expect from Xi Jinping and Putin. In the UK, the shoe appears to be on the other foot, with the Labour government trying to introduce online thinking skills courses as punishments for anyone who voices an opinion they do not like or agree with. This is like something out of Orwell's 1984 novel and beyond belief in this modern day and age of what should be a more enlightened society by now. Andy Burnham, the new replacement PM, again without an election, just like the five Conservative PM changes they criticised so heavily, sounds like they are just jumping out of the frying pan into the fire! I am far from being the only person to have seen it all in this light. Watch the film 'Elysium' to get the general idea. Listening to his comments and aspirations, I think Elon Musk must have watched it already in his younger years. Watch the movie Elysium >>
I am not a communist or left-wing socialist, but neither am I a right-wing extremist, latent dictator, or anarchist. I am a spiritual practitioner in the form of Chi Kung-based Active Meditation, but I am not religious in the least. I believe you can only understand these things by doing—a process and a journey of exploration as it was intended in order to 'Meet God on your own terms.' And we definitely cannot understand such subtle subjects and practices by reading a multi-mistranslated book thousands of years old, that has been frequently mistranslated, misrepresented, and corrupted or the message clouded by misguided interpretations and political commentaries throughout the centuries. The book of Enoch and more were deliberately excluded or hidden and lost to us until rediscovered amongst an ancient Ethiopian Christian sect.
Think about it: Ten years ago, even so-called academics started discarding books more than ten years old. One such was the librarian at Helia-Haaga (Finland) polytechnic implementing such sweeping ideological policies, which meant discarding a classic book on Border Control called 'The Wall Around the West.' This was just before the Syrian refugee crisis and all that has followed it since, making the book even more relevant than ever as fundamental reading and a starting point for related studies. We must know and understand where we have come from in order to know and understand where we are going. The Tech corps are now burning and destroying books that are only five years old.
Many of the original and true spiritual practice lessons are in the Bible and other books, but it is hard to identify them and their true meaning unless you have actually experienced what they are talking about. They are camouflaged in fables and metaphors as if literal physical historical truths. Many key points of information have been omitted altogether, deliberately. Yet people still read the 2000-year-old texts from cover to cover and think they actually understand the truth of it. They call themselves scholars! Scholars of a 2000-year-old book! The Quran is little younger but seems to have suffered even more distortions and perversions of the truth and the original teachings, which seem to resemble, if most recent reports can be believed, a rewrite and remake of the Christian Bible in their own image and with their own preferred interpretations according to the politics and prejudices of the time, partially due to the complete lack of practical/physical evidence of the people and events described in the book. If a written book that was copied and translated by hand for hundreds of years to preserve its contents can become so corrupted and distorted in the mists of time, how much damage can and will AI do!? I would guess a magnitude of almost infinite proportions in a single lifetime.
Instead, I try to be a pragmatic humanist, and as such, I urge you to continue to learn to read and write, and consistently practice it. Never capitulate to Corporatism (Corporate Capitalism) nor to Communism. It is stupid to put convenience above other considerations and give up your rights to those who seek to use and abuse you as an expendable source for their own supremacy. But to stop it, you must speak up and speak out, and above all, vote with your feet, for only 'Action Will Define You.'
Long live authentic literacy and learning!
Takeaway 5: Breaking the Silos of Pedagogy
Modern education is often fractured into specialized silos, resulting in limited communication between fields. Sweden’s shift is a move to "break down the silos and bridge the gaps" between traditional knowledge systems and 21st-century requirements.
A truly borderless pedagogical approach integrates specific Mind Skills & Tools—derived from a variety of disciplines such as Information Tools and Processes, Security, Risk Management, Pedagogy, Finance & Accounting, and Business Organization etc.—with practical application. This cross-pollination is essential because no single knowledge system can solve complex global problems. By blending onsite "onsite" training (books and pens) with online constructive learning, we create an accelerated environment that bridges the gap between a society’s tech-savviness and the basic cognitive requirements of its citizens.
Albana Theka, MBA: Someone told me recently that in the age of AI, knowledge will cost close to zero. It got me thinking. If information is basically free, does that mean schools become obsolete? Do we still need teachers, classrooms, the whole social machinery of learning? I don’t think so. If anything, I think it makes the human side of education more valuable, not less. Here’s why. We were never just learning facts in school. We were learning how to argue, how to collaborate, how to fail in front of other people and recover. We learn in groups. We learn from watching each other. Access to every book ever written never made anyone wise on its own. So the question stops being “what facts do we transfer” and becomes “what do we actually teach?” Judgment. Taste. Knowing which questions to ask. Spotting when the confident answer in front of you is wrong. AI will take over a lot of the information delivery, and honestly, it should. But that frees teachers up for the part that always mattered most: being the person who believes in a kid before that kid believes in themselves. The real risk isn’t machines replacing teachers. It’s good teaching becoming a luxury only some kids get. That’s not a technology problem. That’s a choice we make.
By integrating a multi-disciplinary background (such as the founder of SeTs Ryu)—spanning IT project management, security supervision, and vocational education—Functional Education ensures that students are not just users of technology, but creators who possess the professional security and project management skills to lead.
Conclusion: The Future is Interconnective
The future of education does not require a choice between books and bytes; it demands the strategic, functional use of both. Sweden’s "Back to Books" movement is an essential correction, not a retreat. It establishes the physical and cognitive foundations—the "Sound Body, Sound Mind" principle—necessary to navigate a world shaped by the Quantum Realm of AI. By focusing on "Functional Education," we build a resilient, creative, and highly literate workforce capable of thriving in a complex, algorithmic landscape.
Visual Review: Slide Deck Summary Presentation >>
Are we providing our students with a digital playground, or are we building the functional foundations required to lead in a complex, algorithmic world?
AI Empowered, HI Driven.
From HI to AI & back to HI again
It all begins and ends with human beings
Back to the Future!
(Chris Spencer)
ABOUT SETS RYU
At SeTs Ryu, we create & teach innovative and functional education and training programmes, both online and onsite for vocational subjects, sports, and fitness. Vocational subjects include business, security, and risk management, such as the Assault Awareness & Risk Management-course) (AARM) courses, Mind Skills & Tools. Physical education includes Personal Trainer services for fitness and sports coaching for Parkour, self-defence, and other sports. We use all this experience to help businesses and educational institutions unlock the full potential of co-creation (content creation) and facilitate workshops to help clients succeed in collaborative development projects.
Our experienced educators can collaborate with you to:
Plan and develop and tutor engaging and effective online and offline *courses
Create content for courses and business, including videos, blog articles, podcasts, interactive exercises, and quizzes.*
Facilitate collaborative learning experiences that foster innovation and creativity.*
Plan and organise *Discovery & Wellbeing Workshops, seminars, Holiday Action Camps, festivals, and other special events
Plan and coach Workout Classes for sports and street arts from self-defence to Parkour and football.
Plan and instruct fitness and strength training programmes for Personal Training clients and group classes.
If you need more of a Co-Pilot than a Co-Creator, you can further empower your team with SeTs Ryu's workshop facilitation services and achieve further productivity in your projects through improved collaboration processes. You can check out the benefits and potential ROI calculations with these interactive infographic tools:
Either way, by partnering with SeTs Ryu, you can elevate your educational offerings and enhance learner engagement to help achieve your goals. Learn more at https://www.mindsets.eu
SeTs Ryu: Your Partner in Collaborative Facilitation & Co-Creation
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