How My Projects Fit Together

How Substrate, Fabric, TELOS, and Daemon fit into Human 3.0

Author

Daniel Miessler
October 07, 2024

When people look at the various projects I’ve put out over the last year, they often ask which is the main one, or if they’re all related. And if so—how?

So I see you doing Fabric, and then Substrate, and now you’re on about some thing called Human 3.0. And what’s this Telos thing?

Like, what are you actually doing? Is it all related?

A not-dumb question I often get

Yes, they are related, and this is the page where I describe how.

Table of Contents

The Problem(s)

I like starting every conversation about solutions with a clear description of the Problems they’re meant to solve.

Here are the Problems that all my life’s work—including all the projects above—is based around (WP = World Problem):

WP1: Humans are suffering from a lack of purpose and meaning in their lives, which is causing mental health and societal problems.

WP2: Humans do not understand—and are not prepared for—the sophistication and speed of introduction of AI into our society, which will cause major work disruptions and exacerbate our lack of purpose.

WP3: Humans are not trained to become full-spectrum people, but rather to become economically useful to a materialistic and transactional economy.

Most of my future work will be centered around solving these issues.

Security forever

There are two exceptions, however, that are purely in my home space of Information Security, which I still absolutely love and will never really move away from. I see AI as containing security, so I will continue doing security projects, assessments, consulting, advising, and thinking. It’ll just likely be accompanied by a regular question of “How can I turn this into a (AI-enhanced) platform?”.

Here are the two main security projects I’m currently working on and will continue (along with 1-2 security assessments per year).

  • HELIOS—An AI-assisted continuous monitoring and assessment system for attack surfaces.

  • DOMAIN—An AI-powered Security Program management framework and platform.

Basically, I will always be doing Information Security. It’s in my DNA and how I think about the world. And interestingly enough, security is actually Latin—meaning se (without), and cura (worry), so it’s actually very much part of my overall mission now, i.e.,: helping people can become their best selves.

Anyway, those two security projects are in my two favorite sub-fields in InfoSec (Attack Surface Management and Program Management), and I will continue maintaining and upgrading them. But I will mostly be hacking on and improving them technically while people I hire manage them from a business standpoint.

The Major Projects

With that clearly stated, here are the major projects I’m currently working on, and how they address WP1, WP2, and WP3.

  • Substrate

  • Fabric

  • Telos

  • Daemon

  • Human 3.0

Let’s look at each one first, and then at how they work together.

Substrate

Substrate is an open-source framework for increasing human understanding, meaning, and progress. It’s designed to make the things that matter to humans more transparent, discussable, and ultimately—fixable.

Application

Substrate is designed to be used as a map to explain things and solve problems.

It’s a bit abstract until you see an example, so here’s one from the announcement page.

The project basically provides handles for shared understanding and problem-solving. So when people meet each other, discuss things, disagree, or whatever, the various components of the proposal or conversation can be made visible and transparent.

The AI angle is that complete Proposals, Problems, Solutions, Arguments, etc.—can be entered into AI as context, at which point research can be done. Analysis. Counterpoint generation. Progress tracking. Etc.

So basically, AI serves as the pattern-matching container for holding all these various components, which allows us to answer all sorts of questions. LEARN MORE

Fabric

Fabric is an open-sourced framework for augmenting humans using AI. Its goal is to reduce the friction of using AI to solve everyday human problems.

Application

Fabric is designed to help people solve problems in their daily lives. Business problems, personal problems. Problems related to learning, getting promoted, being more creative, whatever.

And it’s not so much about big problems, but just everyday things that we want and need to be doing throughout a given day. Things like:

  • Learning

  • Studying

  • Self-improvement

  • Problem-solving

  • Explaining things

  • Deciding what to read / watch

  • Optimizing your life

  • Etc.

The idea is that AI is plenty capable of helping with those things, but it’s not clear which AI tool one should use. Or how it should be configured. Or what prompt should be used.

Fabric simplifies that by providing a massive, crowd-sourced library of Problem-solving Use Cases for all those tasks. LEARN MORE

Telos

Telos is an open-sourced framework for creating Deep Context about things that matter to humans. The framework allows us to use AI to manage entities of any size, from individuals, teams, organizations, companies, and even larger.

Application

The purpose of Telos is to use it as a structure for defining things we care about and want to improve. So:

  • Ourselves (individuals)

  • Teams

  • Organizations

  • Companies

  • Countries

  • Etc.

It works by capturing deep context about a given entity so that it can be consumed and understood by an AI (although it’s super powerful even without any AI application).

Once an AI understands the entity’s purpose, goals, challenges, strategies, projects, KPIs, etc., you can then start asking the AI questions related to that entity. Things like:

  • What mistakes are being made that are holding me back?

  • What if ______ happened, how should I adjust our plans?

  • What is the biggest efficiency I could gain right now?

  • Produce a 5 point next-steps plan of action, backed by research

  • Explain how $EXPERT would analyze my current situation

  • What advice would they give me?

Daemon

Daemon is an open-source framework for personal APIs.

Human 3.0

Human 3.0 (H3) is a framework and platform for upgrading humans. Its purpose is to help people transition from being a detail in the legacy, corporate-based economy to a new model of success based on self-articulation and expression.

This one is quite different from the others because it’s basically the container for all the others. Or, to state it differently, the others can be seen as infrastructure that helps make Human 3.0 happen.

Philosophy

Here are the primary concepts of Human 3.0.

  1. Humans have been trained over the last 150 years to become corporate workers (Human 2.0), and to primarily identify ourselves as that.

  2. This paradigm was never ideal for humans, and its time has now passed.

  3. AI is about to remove/disrupt most knowledge work jobs, which means we have to get ready for what’s coming next.

  4. What’s next is becoming self-actualized, full-spectrum humans that create and offer value to other humans.

  5. This transition requires a different way of thinking about how we learn things, how we define and pursue success.

  6. The process involves becoming radically self-aware, continuous learners who have the creative and financial freedom to spend their time doing purposeful work they enjoy.

Components

Human 3.0 is a guided platform for upgrading humans. Here’s what it includes:

  • A full set of Video Courses covering

    • Introduction to Human 3.0

    • The H3 Mental Models, with individual videos for specific mental models

    • The H3 reading list, with individual videos for specific books

    • Intro to Modern AI

    • Using Telos to capture your personalized context

    • Using Telos with Fabric to manage H3 progress

    • Building out your Daemon content using your Telos file

    • Establishing your tactical creativity workflow

    • Building a personal routine

    • Building your online presence

      • Web

      • Video

      • Audio

    • How to build out your income streams

    • Lots more modules…

  • The H3 Assessment, which rates your progress towards Human 3.0

  • An H3 Rating and Maturity Model, which shows which areas you need work in

  • Recommendations for how to proceed based on where you are in terms of H3 Rating and Maturity Model

Why make a platform?

So here’s the plain language explanation of this whole thing.

You can honestly get 85% of what I am offering here by going and watching every video I’ve ever created, reading every essay I’ve ever written, every book I’ve recommended, every article I’ve recommended, etc. And then you could consume all the various GitHub projects I’ve put out that are related to H3. And then you could build your own Telos file, manage it with Fabric, etc. That is absolutely possible, and some of you will do that. Some of you already have and it’s fantastic!

The H3 Platform is simply a guided version of all that—where I do all the work to organize the flow, the ordering of topics, etc. And it’s all accompanied by modular videos of me walking you through each concept, tool, and implementation.

It’s a curated workflow for upgrading yourself to this new model of thinking and executing.

Why listen to me?

For people not familiar with my arc over the last 20 years, a natural question should be asked.

Why should I do this? What makes him authoritative?

It’s a good question, and unfortunately it requires me to talk about my personal achievements, which I don’t enjoy. Here’s my best boasting person impression.

  • I’ve been deeply studying these topics for over 20 years, largely from having read somewhere around 1,100 books

  • I wrote a book in 2016 called The Real Internet of Things that predicted a lot of what’s currently happening with AI and tech. Really. It’s a short read.

  • Somewhere around 2019, I started realizing there was something wrong with the traditional corporate work paradigm, and that I needed to move to a purpose-based life

  • In 2022 I went independent—propelled by AI’s advancement—and I’m now making around $800,000 / year instead of a $260,000 corporate salary (a more detailed breakdown from last year).

  • I love my work now. I am working on what truly matters to me rather than preparing for pointless meetings. Most importantly, I no longer dread Mondays. I look forward to them.

  • That’s what I’m offering you. The ability to look forward to Mondays.

  • And this is not theory—it’s an actual guided curriculum and methodology for doing exactly what I’m doing.

How I intend to charge for H3

My goal (going back to my WP problems above) is to help as many people transition to Human 3.0 as possible. That’s the mission I’m pursuing with this platform.

Unfortunately (for me), I’m building this even if I can’t make money off of it. So I still haven’t figured out the monetization aspect yet. It will definitely be some sort of up-front cost that’s much cheaper with an H3 membership (or something).

I’ll work that out later, but what I wanted to do here is lay out all the various pieces of what I’m working on.

Component Summary

Okay, so let’s review all the various projects, how they relate to each other, which ones are open-source, which ones are paid, and how to use them.

  • Substrate is a shared library of transparent objects that matter to humans. Things like Arguments, Beliefs, Problems, Solutions, etc. It’s free, open-source, and designed to be used by anyone and incorporated into other projects.

  • Fabric is a shared library of AI prompts that solve human problems. Things like summarizing content, analyzing arguments, creating essays, etc. It’s free, open-source, and designed to be used by anyone and incorporated into other projects.

  • Telos is a structure for capturing deep context about something humans care about. Things like ourselves, teams, organizations, companies, etc. It’s free, open-source, and designed to be used by anyone and incorporated into other projects.

  • Daemon is a system for publishing an entity to the world as an API, and also for presenting that content on a website. These are the things that define you (using Substrate components), and allow people to understand what you’re about and why they should want to work with you. It’s free, open-source, and designed to be used by anyone and incorporated into other projects.

  • Human 3.0 is my platform for upgrading yourself. It’s a paid program that takes all of my content, recommendations, training, etc—and puts it in one place as a guided experience. But probably 85% of the content within it is freely available on my site if you take the time to discover and parse it.

Even more simply…

  • Substrate to make the world transparent and discussable.

  • Fabric to solve everyday problems with AI.

  • Telos to capture, articulate, and improve things you care about.

  • Daemon to make anything (including yourself) available as an API.

  • Human 3.0 to (optionally) be guided through learning how to use all of this to become your upgraded, best self. So you can look forward to Mondays.

Summary

  1. I’ve unified my work around a central mission: helping people transition to a Human 3.0, which is a vision and framework for people to become highly aware and competent individuals living purposeful lives and providing value to other humans.

  2. This has multiple components that I’ve created open-source projects to help accelerate, including Substrate, Fabric, Telos, and Daemon.

  3. These are all focused on helping people (and organizations) articulate what they’re about so that they can better improve themselves, engage with others, and find others with similar goals and interests.

  4. The projects share the themes of Clarity, Transparency, Continuous Optimization, and—most importantly—Purpose.

  5. They all significantly feature AI because of its ability to see patterns across multiple contexts, e.g., Goals in a Telos file, Ideas in both the Telos file and a Daemon—both of which point Ideas listed in Substrate. This unified context can then be operated on using Fabric.

  6. The final piece is a framework called Human 3.0 that’s designed to upgrade humans. It’s both a framework for thinking about progress and the future, as well as a platform explicitly designed to help upgrade humans to be ready for that future.

I want to get two things out of this page.

  1. Hopefully you now understand what I’m working on and why.

  2. And ideally you’re also encouraged shamed into making a similar page for YOUR work.

Please go make your version of this and share it with me and the world.

NOTES

I’ll keep updating this page as the projects advance, new projects are added, etc. If you’re interested in collaborating on any of these, the best way is to contribute to the GitHub projects themselves, but you can also reach out to me directly.