Recently created
by Akron Flux

Imagine yourself on a path. You are slowly moving in one direction. It seems this is a path that many others have already walked on. You move along, sometimes you go slower. Sometimes you even trip and stumble. That’s fine and expected. Sometimes you slow down and stop. Then, after a moment (or two), you carry on. From time to time, you notice some faint marks on the road veering off-track and you think to yourself: “What if I changed my direction and went there? Clearly, those weak marks do not suggest it is a popular choice - the path ahead is well-trodden. Others can’t be wrong, if they chose the obvious.”

And yet, here we are: the obvious led to the point, where everyone should be able to see what is happening: with a few wars raging, the greedy getting greedier (and now, in the open), with the only planet that we have on the brink of collapse. Man-made disasters, unnecessary suffering and so much greed that some are now plotting their move to Mars - not exactly a fertile ground, but hey, dream big and destroy as much as you can to accomplish your goals! Because why not? It is perhaps much easier to look away and pretend: “We just didn’t know.” - something we have heard many times (most likely, even said this ourselves). Not a brilliant excuse in this hyper-connected world we’re finding ourselves living in. How about some education and deep thinking with a pinch of humility and respect for the world that is not our property?

It is clear that so many have walked this path before us, and yet, here we are. Following many cargo cults, or believing and trusting those who we thought should know better. Looking for silver bullets, best practices, attempting to reduce the irreducible… This list goes on. Walking on, we have had some hard lessons to learn: about trust, business, technology, biology, technology, information systems, circuit theory and other whatnots - and then, also, how they can be used and misused (often very deliberately, as ignorance and stupidity argument has very short legs). Used for the good and misused for the bad. Or, if we convinced ourselves (and others) - misused to get ahead whilst harming others - because why not? It’s a competitive world out there, so why not? - rhetorical, so don’t bother answering.

Not everyone makes it this far. But some do, and then, they get up and move on, equipped and prepared to make better choices in the world that is not linear, definitely not certain and not theirs to own.

So again, what if you decided to veer off? What if you changed your direction instead of blindly following the herd? Many question, a lot of uncertainty lying ahead. But you’re perhaps compassionate and understanding some of the complexities - and you do not brag about scars (like some do, while hiding head trophies and skins of anything they’d managed to skin on the way to the point where they are).

We are compassionate and discerning, obviously. Our goal is to help people realise that many such moments exist: and we cal them Akron Flux Vantage Points - we can show you some ways to find them. So you’re also at a point where you can stop, think and choose - with some clarity and acceptance: you are in charge of many of your choices, you can veer of track. You probably already know this, but maybe you’re a bit worried that unconventional paths are hard. We know that they can be, and not everyone around you will cheer you up. Things will become difficult as you rock a few boats - some of them are not sea-worthy at all, so there, many choices ahead!

Our role here is to help you see there are many Akron Flux Vantage Points, like this one: opportunities to stop, think clearly and make a choice that aligns with your values and your purpose. Think of a summit that you have to climb. Or, as we will show you one day, some of such points exist deep oceans, amongst sharks and other creatures, whose goal is to make you fit into their agendas, their views on what biocoenosis should be like, and eventually, assigning you a role of a link in their food chain. So no matter where you are, you will have choices, where you can find and make use of your Akron Flux Vantage Points to guide you and help you along your journey.

You won’t be on your own, we can show you the way up, where you will be able to have better visibility of what lies ahead. We are as human as you are, and we will not be enticing you with false promises. We won’t make you live two hundred years. We are realistic and we operate under the assumption that our time and resources here are limited. This doesn’t stop us from thinking big and looking for better ways, especially when we can do this with others who are also aware of everything we have mentioned above and who also think that veering off well-trodden paths can be a source of excitement, exploration, tangible results that matter and true achievement that won’t deliberately and knowingly contribute to destruction of our environment and life around us, and by life we mean everything that inhibits (or will inhibit) this world, hopefully for many years to come.

We are walking on our own path, with many twists and turns and a healthy dose of points of our own Akron Flux Vantage Points (akron is like a convenient vantage point, somewhere higher up, maybe closer to one of many summits, as opposed to some head-in-the-clouds, or bigger-than-you-can-chew moment, so go figure). We might sound a little woo-woo, but we’re none of that. We have seen enough, endured enough and made many mistakes to reach this point: no more corporate BS, no more empty words. You might be wondering to yourself: “Oh dear, what happened?”, or “Who hurt you?”. We can address it here, but only briefly. This is a set of tricky questions, with quite uncomfortable answers, pointing back to the beginning of it all back in June 2022. That was the moment we realised that no matter how many frogs you kiss, they won’t magically turn into princes (or princesses, whatever you like). And yes, a rock can paint itself red, but still, it won’t become an apple. Be our guest, and feel free to judge.

We learnt tough lessons about some delusional toads, who were often saying that in a search for better clients (read: big energy clients), we all had to kiss many frogs. So now, if you like bad metaphors, you can gather how cynical and patronising it really was (and I believe, it still is for many). It took a while to realise that even if metaphorical toads speak with human voices, they are just that: metaphorical toads (no offence to real animals here; this clearly is a metaphor here to make it easier to see what twisted reality we had a “pleasure” to be part of). This metaphorical animalium has a few more “interesting” species: from not-so-rare flying monkeys to a subspecies of “utile fatuis” - moving slowly, oblivious to many facts about this world and its other inhabitants - but this post is not about that. It’s just to show that a rock with no brain is still a rock, even if you paint it in red and start calling it an apple.

No woo-woo, just learning when to draw a line between the BS and the stuff that really matters. A costly mistake, and also a painful opportunity to climb up our own Akron Flux Vantage Point to see what lies ahead, and where not to go (and why not).

We base our approaches on critical thinking, scientific method, systems thinking, and at the same time, we accept that we will never know everything. The paradox here is that the more we all learn, the more aware we become of the unknown and the uncertain. It’s exciting and it is never boring. We thrive in the complex world, problem-solving and testing our hypotheses.

We recognise when we have to step away from linear and reductionist approaches to problem-solving and embrace the non-linear systems and solving problems under uncertainty. We do not (and will never have) all the answers. Accepting this, we will have some answers, and many hypotheses.

We are interdisciplinary: we learned about maths, its role in engineering, modelling, computing and also through systems theory, the socio-technical world of systems and interdependencies. You can only do as much with linear and reductionist approach, and then you perhaps need to unify, synthesise (or whatever your favourite word of du jour is for making sense of it all). A friendly warning here: this sense-making and moving along the spectrum of linear/non-linear never stops (we do not expect it to). If you’re like us, comfortable with the uncomfortable, or would like to help us along, do get in touch.

Our focus is on empathy and other people, who, like us, are also looking for something better without trying to run away to Mars and making things worse in the long run. We ask difficult questions, and we expect others to do so as well. You can probably imagine this is not a very popular path, and looking at the history (and by looking outside), we expect things will get much worse.

Nevertheless, in the meantime, for as long as we can, we will carry on walking, keep asking questions and looking for better ways of how we can do things better so that we don’t damage our direct and indirect surroundings. We are willing to do this with others, who, like us, are not afraid of veering off the path.

In the near future, we will be uncovering our Akron Flux Vantage Points to show others what we mean, how we think and why. If you want to follow us on this journey, or better, you wish to do it with us, we invite you to watch this space - especially if you have suggestions, observations or thoughts on what we do and say - do get in touch!