I've noticed this, my whole life. I've continued to do activities that everyone else abandoned -- or even added new ones -- and now I look like a universal genius.

But it is simply that I persist, even when automation is superior, because I think the honing of mind and body is too valuable to capitulate to the machines. At the same time that I always learn to also leverage the machines.

And this, ironically, is precisely what keeps me ahead of the machines, and independent of machines.

It begins with very simple questions.

Why learn to play an instrument or read music?

Why learn to read anything, at all?