Welcome to this week’s edition of Simon Sees!
This week’s signal inspiration comes from the latest Future With Friends episode — “The Future of Silence”, featuring my wonderfully vivacious friend Amy Scott. For anyone who’s met her, the irony of that title won’t be lost on you.
Set in 2045, Amy imagines a world so saturated with AI chatter and digital noise that true silence has become a rare luxury. Drawing on her own experience of a silent retreat, we chat about what silence might look like in a future overflowing with conversation, notifications, and background noise.
Now to this week’s signals: Forbes reports on a collaboration between Nvidia and Synchron to train AI directly from human brain signals – bringing machines closer to understanding what we think before we even say it! Futurism explores a technology that can create pockets of sound isolated from their surroundings, directing audio to a single person in a crowd – a reminder that even in silence, we may not be as alone as we think (queue X-Files music). And Sherry Turkle’s classic TED Talk, “Connected, But Alone?”, warns that constant connection often comes at the cost of real intimacy.
In a world that rewards volume – more content, more noise, more everything – perhaps the real future belongs to those who know how to pause. Because silence isn’t empty. It’s full of possibility.
FORBES AUSTRALIA
This Melbourne man with ALS just fed his dog with only his thoughts
“We recreate your body in a simulated body. You look down, you’re looking at your body, you’re looking at your hands. You can’t control them anymore, you’re paralysed. But… that activates your brain in a really amazing way.”
Tom Oxley, Synchron founder and CEO
FUTURISM
Scientists Create Sound That Can Curve Through a Crowd and Reach Just One Person
“Someone within an audible enclave can hear something meant only for them — enabling sound and quiet zones”
Jiaxin Zhong, Acoustics Researcher at Penn State
TED
connected, but Alone?
“As we expect more from technology, do we expect less from each other?”
THE FUTURE WITH FRIENDS PODCAST
Ep 16: The Future of silence
In this episode of The Future With Friends, Simon is joined by his vivacious and very lovable friend Amy Scott to explore her ironically chosen topic – the future of silence.
Set in 2045, Amy’s future scenario imagines a world where AI mediation and constant digital noise have made true silence a rare luxury. Drawing on her own experiences, including a transformative silent retreat, Amy and Simon dive into what silence means in an age overflowing with conversation, notifications, and background noise.
They explore the many layers of silence – from its role in mental health and mindfulness to the social and cultural forces that determine who gets to experience it. Together, they question whether silence has become a privilege, and what it might mean to value it not just as the absence of sound, but as the presence of awareness.
And in a delightfully ironic twist, Simon and Amy do their best to honour pauses and moments of quiet throughout the episode – no small feat for two naturally big, talkative personalities.
Their conversation ranges from the healing power of natural soundscapes to the possibility of silence being designed, protected, or even mandated in the future.
At its heart, The Future of Silence is an invitation to pause, to listen more deeply to ourselves, to each other, and to the world around us – and to imagine how stillness might become one of the most valuable resources of the decades ahead.
Also available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Simon
