My name is Dr. J. D. LaRocque. I'm the president and CEO of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, also known as NIFTY. We're a global nonprofit organization that works around the world and in the US to help young learners from underserved communities learn how to start businesses. And it is my great pleasure to have with us here today a very esteemed panel to talk about our topic today, the learning relay and lifelong learning. So let me introduce them first. We have with us Yusuf Albanian, the Minister of Education for Saudi Arabia. Welcome, sir. We have Minister Deepumoni, the Minister of Education from Bangladesh. Welcome. Kevin Frey, my colleague from another esteemed entrepreneurship education organization, Generation Limited. Kevin, nice to see you. And Ulrika Beesert, the chief human resources officer for Inka Group, also known as IKEA, in the Netherlands. Welcome to you all. Let me set the stage by just saying that I love the metaphor of the learning relay because we can think of that metaphor in two senses. First, we're all acknowledging that education is no longer something that just happens at one point in time and at one stage in life. So we can think about it in terms of the learner, himself or herself, going through a race of education in stages that, of course, starts with primary and secondary and perhaps tertiary education. But now, in today's day and age, might encompass top-up education in the form of short-form programs or workplace-based education or other types of credentialing and skill building as one gets older. And then there's another way we can think about it, well represented by the panel here, which is the idea of a relay race and a handoff, not just from schools, but involving employers, governments, members of civil society like the organizations that Kevin and I represent, and of course, the learner as an individual. Now, we have some data that we'd like to show on a slide that I think will really elucidate both of these ways of looking at the learning relay. So this is from the World Economic Forum's new report that was just released yesterday, and you can see here the top ten skill priorities for the coming years. Well, it should be no surprise that number three is a new entry on the list and has debuted in a very high position. AI and big data is changing the way we think about education and lifelong learning and is going to be a massive skill need going forward. But it's also important to recognize that skills that have always been important, namely the top two here, analytical thinking and creative thinking, nonetheless remain important skills for all learners to develop, both in formal education and in lifelong learning. And if we go to the next slide, we can see that despite the need for that skill building and our awareness, our growing awareness of the need to build those skills, there is nonetheless a persistent mismatch between the type of skills in education that learners are receiving along the way and what employers and workplaces need. 49% just under half of people working jobs unrelated to their formal education. Obviously, this creates an even greater imperative for alignment between education systems and industry. And to think of new ways to go beyond formal education as we know it and really build out a true system of lifelong learning. So let's jump into the conversation and we do want to engage you with your questions. I do want to reserve ample time for that. So start thinking and we'll get to those questions before long. But minister, you yourself before you came to your current post were a leader in industry. What did you learn there that informs your current thinking in your current role as Minister of Education around lifelong learning and the need for it? But first of all, I'm very pleased to be part again on visiting the web. I have been engaging with the web for the last 20 years. But this is my first time really coming with the different hats. I am part of the other 49% who came into the educations without really. I think it's my reflections on today. So this is a very important topic and I think why the web is really a good platform for it because we are learning all collectively from a great talents really across the globe and the web is the best platform for us to do this. Now from what I have learned being in the business coming to the governments and specifically to very important functions, that it's most of the time leaders are really focused on their shareholders. And in fact, you need to focus on your entire stakeholders. And I think this is very important elements in our learning. If you look at the challenges right now, lifelong learnings is facing with. We have an issue around basically access to educations. In order for you to allow everybody gets into it, there is a requirements to really engage with the entire ecosystem. There are some issues around works and life balance. Basically it's a culture and values that has to be generated within the ecosystem in order for you to achieve. There are a rapid technology advancement and the education system is lagging behind. And these are all challenges that I have really tried to capture from the learning from the business comparing to education system. Now in the kingdom, I think our vision 2030 is coming with a very important pillars. And that's again, I would like to classify it into the ecosystem required for lifelong learning. The first one we looked at a very important vibrant society. And by itself it requires a lot of things in order for you to achieve it. The second pillar, you need to have really a thriving economy. So you need to have a very minimum economical transformations in order for you to have long life learning. And the third element is also ambitious nation. You need to have a nation that has always looked at it from a long term perspective. So in my view, what I have learned that you need to look at the entire stakeholders rather than only your own specific shareholders. And there are a lot of elements that we need to take into account in order for us to achieve it. You cannot demand a lifelong learning where the values and cultures are naturally there for it. There is a policy need to be in place in order for you to incentivize people to continue. And I do believe also technology is going to play a major role on that aspect. Again, I can go on and on, but I know that we have limited time. I have to listen to my colleagues because I'm learning also from them today. Thank you so much, Minister. And Minister Mone, I know you have a very active agenda for schooling and education in Bangladesh. How are you thinking about lifelong learning? Well, thank you. And as you were asking him about his experiences, and he said he falls under that 49%. I don't know which side I fall in actually because I trained as a doctor and lawyer and a public health professional, but I do politics. And so whether I'm in the 50% or 49%, I don't know. But what we are trying in Bangladesh is that we know that and we live in a world of knowledge economy and it is transforming. This economy is transforming the demands of the labor market worldwide. And manufacturing processes are changing very fast. It's an enormous speed and also the modes of services. And this advanced machine learning and AI as you just mentioned, and it's revolutionizing the work landscape. So we need more skills, more knowledge. But our traditional education system that is not equipped to deliver that. And so we are in the midst of transforming our education system. Where the whole issue is that now we have learners. We don't call them students anymore. They're learners and they will constantly be learning. And there comes this lifelong learning because now it's not just primary, secondary or tertiary, and things are changing so fast. Whatever we learn in our universities now may not be relevant five years down the line. So learning to learn has become more important. Being more flexible, being more adaptable and learning those skills, especially those which we call now soft skills. That are so important. So we're changing our whole system, keeping this in mind so that lifelong learning can be there. And it will take, definitely it will take a little time because as I said, you cannot impose things on societies. But people have to remain relevant. They have to, because there is already a mismatch between the skills, set of skills that they acquire in educational institutions. And what the demands are on them at their workplace. And that is also changing at a very fast pace. So the realization is there that we have to adapt and we have to keep on learning. And there comes lifelong learning. So I'm sure that as a society, as a nation, we are preparing ourselves for that. But we do have, I think, our traditional, before we were colonized, our traditional learning systems actually had that capacity, had given that capacity amongst learners. But we switched to a system a few hundred years ago, which I think sort of constrained us. And restrained us within a certain kind of expectation. And now we, maybe we can go back to our old traditional, very old traditional systems where you learn throughout your life. You learn from your gurus, you learn from your elders. You learn from the society, you learn from the environment. You learn from nature, from everywhere. Absolutely learning 360 degrees, that was there. That is such a great point to make because we often talk about lifelong learning as the new thing. And yet you just made a vitally important point about how indigenous ways of thinking about education and learning may be what we have really needed after all. I'd like to come back to the point that each of you has made ultimately about building a constituency for lifelong learning, creating the conditions for that to be accepted. Let's drill into it with our additional panelists. Kevin, I know you want to share some thoughts about artificial intelligence, which of course has been a big topic at this conference and at the annual meeting. Tell us a little bit about what GenU does, first of all, and how you are thinking about AI and these new technologies that are coming to the fore in the context of lifelong learning. Sure. So Generation Unlimited is a public-private youth partnership housed within the UN, brings together some of the world's biggest companies, UN agencies, governments, together with young people to skill and connect with opportunities, opportunities for employment, for entrepreneurship, and for social impact. I just want to pick up on some of the things that the minister said here. I think what AI has done is massively accelerate a transition that was already happening within education on the skills we're developing. I think if a lot of us think about when we were in school, we learned how to generate knowledge. We learned how to do research to synthesize that knowledge and produce it in a report, in a PowerPoint presentation. Maybe later we learned how to code. Well, now there's AI. So the marginal value of creating knowledge, of generating knowledge, is going to zero very, very quickly. And what that means is that is not skills that the workplace are going to value anymore. So we now have to very quickly fast forward to say, what are the uniquely human skills that are left now post-AI, and how do we cultivate those? And I think minister, you started to speak to many of them. I was in a conversation with Adobe just a little bit earlier this morning, the value of creative skills, uniquely creative skills that are human, but also I would say communicative skills. So interpersonal skills, social-emotional skills. As humans, we solve problems together, but we do that vertically, horizontally, and team. So how can education system transform the skills that we're creating for this new kind of post-AI world? Couple ways that I think AI changes the game very positively for this lifelong learning relay. I know you were at ASU GSB JD, which is the, maybe some other folks were there in San Diego a couple weeks ago, the world's leading EdTech job tech conference. I got to demo a couple of AI tutors, and I was blown away. We know from research that high-dose tutoring, one-on-one high-dose tutoring is one of the best ways to improve educational outcomes. Now, and I demoed one that works on a 2G phone using chat GBT, every young person will have a personal tutor that can accompany them through their entire life, who gets to know them. The demo I saw, he told me to pretend that I liked soccer. So I said, I don't understand inflation and I like Manchester United. And it gave me a personalized story about inflation using soccer players from Manchester United. So imagine this personalized tutor that travels through your life with you and learns about you and how you learn. Absolute game changer going forward, delivered via 2G to every young person on the planet. I think that's tectonic. The second thing would be a career coach. Similar to that young tutor, every young person can have a career coach, a chat GBT and a generative AI career coach telling them which skills they need and which jobs to be connected to. So I think we're in a new world. This idea of personalization is an important point because Minister Moni, much like your comment about the system of education that you were forced to adopt after colonization, we think of traditional Western educational systems often in terms of batch processing of students in very familiar ways across many different countries. It looks much the same. And yet, I imagine that a key driver of the need for lifelong learning is that ultimately you need education in order to really fulfill yourself, in order to not only fulfill yourself economically and in terms of remaining competitive, but also to actualize yourself as a person. So thank you, Kevin, for bringing in those examples. Now Ulrika, as an employer, I imagine that you are thinking of yourself as a learning organization. Tell us about that. What types of skills are you prioritizing for the sake of your business? What types of needs do you see need to be developed in your employees? I think as a starting point, what we can see, and I think all of you have discussed that now also, is that we're going from a knowledge-based society to a skilled-based society. And what do I mean by that?  So I'm a Swede, and in Sweden we love meatballs. So if I take that as an example, I might understand a recipe and I might remember it in my head. So theoretically, I might know exactly how to do those delicious meatballs. But in reality, I need to practice, I need to test, I need to try, I maybe need to fail, I need to adapt to actually create something that people want to buy and we want to eat. Then I think that it's so rapidly changing. We heard that here also. I mean, the whole landscape of learning, education, upskilling, reskilling is in such a speed, the need. And we also heard earlier here, the mismatch between the skills that is needed and the skills that we're holding. And I believe here that the lifelong learning, you asked about if we have that in our culture, I think we have had that, but we have not had a name for it. So we talk about everyday learning. So how can we learn by building in reflections? When we're sitting here today, I think if we just stop, we will learn something today and we reflect and we will actually be a little bit wiser when we leave this room. That goes for every coworker. So how can we work with the teams and actually developing by that? But I believe there is two components that is critical for learning and one is curiosity. So how do we create a mindset of curiosity, of openness, of daring to testing and trying actually be a little bit playful and that will also create creativity. So I believe curiosity is a key component, but the other one is about feeling comfort and confidence and self-confidence, I think it's a critical component of being a learner. And what I mean here as a company and organization, you need to ask yourself, what company are you? What culture do you stand for? Do we allow people to bring their full self to the work environment? Equality, diversity, inclusion is a prerequisite for that, but do I as a coworker feel safe enough to express I don't know, I want to learn this, why are we doing this? I think that is components that is very, very important to create a learning culture. I also think that the notion of recognition is important. So all of us, we actually strive when someone sees us and we feel, you're talking about feeling self fulfilled, but also getting recognition, for instance, for my leader, so how do we have a constant feedback culture? So I grow by that.  So the question then is, how do we push ourselves to be a little bit on the non-comfortable side, tiptoeing into the unknown and by that growing? And my last comment would probably be, I love the word learner, I'm a learner, so I believe it's very important that each of us are fully responsible for our own competence development and learning journey. Having said that, I think that the leader in the organization has a super critical role, but also the organization, the company as such. How do we provide systematic re-skilling and upskilling programs to support? So what I'm trying to say, it's a systemic way to develop in competence and learning. Thank you, and I think that your point emphasizes something that's been spoken to multiple times so far, which is, when we think about AI and the new technologies that are coming on the scene, sure, they're immensely helpful, but they work from a base of knowledge that already exists. So Kevin, back to your point, and Ulriga, you just emphasized it. If that's going to be our new reality in an education context, in a work context, in a lifelong learning context, then perhaps we'd better focus ourselves on those things that machines still can't do, at least right now. And all of the things that you're speaking to are emotionally based, they're psychologically based, they're about the connections that human beings have with each other, and how that plays an important role in being productive in a workplace setting. Again, it goes back to self-efficacy, and ultimately it goes to something that, again, as of yet, AI can't do so well, which is to be generative. That's what creativity is all about. Let me ask a couple quick questions for anyone to answer, but get ready, audience, with your questions, because I'm gonna turn to you in just a moment. So let me ask, so here we are. We represent the lifelong learning chain that's supposed to exist. Governments, civil society, employers, and yet as that statistic from the WEF report shows, there is a break, there is a disjuncture between what we know we need and the alignment that currently exists. Comment for us, ministers first, on where you see an ability to create a better match between employers and education systems in civil society. Well, I think this is a very important topic, specifically since I joined the ministry. I have really spent quite quality time just for me to understand what exactly it takes for us to do it. And I think the only way for us to achieve it through a public partnership, private partnerships really sit up, where ministries, they have to come up with policy and regulatory environments, there are employers, there are also education institutions, and there are elements that has to be and a clear, important components, but also in the same times, individual themselves, they have to take a lead to own their career. And I think this is very, very important. And again, this has to come with the education system. I have learned from my previous role that if you wanna do anything, you need to do a reverse engineering. And I think in this case, we need to go back into the market and make sure what the market needs and all the for us to have the institutional work with education system in order for you to have the right output for them. But I need to alert you to very important elements. We cannot also rely heavily to the fact that we just going to wait for the market to determine what type of output the education system will provide. In my view, universities has a major role to innovate new business. And if I'm going to wait for only market to tell me I've been in the business for more than three decades, not initially all the time we do the right business. So we maybe even select the wrong business. So therefore, this is really a collaborative mode. Business requirements in the same times, institutions like university and education system has to come up with the culture for learners or students to come up with their own drive, not waiting for somebody else to really to direct them. In the same times, also we need to come up with a new innovative business because if you look at most of the industry that we talked about today, it came out from university labs. And I think it's very important to take that and talk to us. Thank you. Who else would like a word on this question? Minister. I totally agree with him. You see, that is why we're trying to, we're emphasizing on industry academia collaboration because we ask the industry, what do you want to see? What knowledge, what skills, what set of, what attitude do you want to see in your, in your workers, in your employees? And if we can involve them in developing our curriculum and then also involve them for internships, or apprenticeships, then there could be a better match. And also, as he said, that a lot of industry can come out of the universities. So when universities are doing research, it's not just research for the sake of research, but they must do research, they must innovate, they must incubate, and then also commercialize that so that from the research, there is this match and there is this connection between the two. So I think that is very important. It's so interesting that both of you are not saying in this context that we're grappling with today, let's throw away our existing institutions and start fresh. Instead, you're saying the opposite that we need to lean into, existing institutions, even those that may have contributed to the this match to create a better match. And it's your call for a greater communion between employers and the universities, for example, is a very important call. Let's get our other panelists in before we turn it to the audience. So I think if we can push the analogy a little further, the relay race analogy, where the baton gets dropped all the time is where actually generation-unlimited focus is, which is on the learning-turning school to work transition. That's where there's a really big mismatch. And I think there's things that ministries of education can do. I think there's things corporates can do. I think there's things young people can do to improve that space. If we, again, play with the analogy, of course, a good relay race has you running side-by-side as you hand the baton off. And I think the private sector has to run side-by-side with the public sector as we talk about the skills mismatch. I know Bangladesh is actually a global leader working with private sector to ensure that really strong transition for young people. So what we advocate for ministries of education to work with private sector, what we called on from the private sector in a paper actually in the Harvard Business Review last year that co-authored with a professor from the University of Toronto and Bob Moritz from PWC, we actually called on corporations to move some of their training from behind what we called the corporate firewall. We understand there's competitive advantage and you don't necessarily want to move your training but make that training available. It's world-class training. It's industry-relevant. Companies, can you look at your internal training and say, what can we make available for free to the young people in our country to prepare them for that transition? And then the last thing we advocated for was make sure young people are at the table. When we're talking about young people and their transition, they need to be there. They know what they want and we need to be taking their input. Thank you. I really like that.  I think on an overall level, I think we need to make learning more accessible, more relevant, and more equitable for everyone. And yesterday someone talked about that during the industrial revolution, people actually were left behind. I believe we should have a commitment, no one should be left behind, so that is the starting point. Then I believe if you represent the government, I think we need to think how we can transform the education system to really early on in childhood train what we call the soft skills. How do I learn to build sustainable long-term relationship? How do I actually develop communication skills, creativity, innovation? What technology can't do? And maybe those soft skills will be the core skills into the future. I believe if you are representing the educational or academic, I think the curriculum needs to be super simplified, but also how can we make sure that the curriculum are in line with what the labor market needs short and long-term? And then for the business, I think we need to step up a bit and be even more relevant, but also systemized the way we are supporting the coworkers to be relevant today and tomorrow. So they're the radical collaboration that I'm hearing all of us are talking. I think that is key. So isolation and silo is not working anymore. We need to really radically collaborate. Radical collaboration, what a great term. Let us turn it to the audience. We'll see a number of hands up. And if I can ask the WEF team to give me the three-minute warning that will also be very helpful. Let's go to this gentleman in the front. No, no, let's, since you're there, let's go there and let's go here and let's go there. Good afternoon everyone. My name is Mohammed Kafaji from Al-Faisal University, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The title of the discussion today is a lifelong learning. And certainly lifelong learning doesn't start at the university. It starts further, too far back in life. And we have saying in the Arab world, Mr. Binian will understand it, ad-lib al-mahd, ad-lib al-al-mahdi al-al-lahd, which literally is translated into seek knowledge from cradle to grave. Now, my question to the panel is we are, most of the discussion so far is at the university level and the business and how much we can bridge the gap. My question is how far we need to go further back into the family and the early years of the children when they start learning and we should not also forget. There are early years children are being captured by all those social media and some devices which sort of mask or model their brain into a certain way of thinking. So the question is how do we tackle this dilemma? Where do we start and how do we improve that from the early stages? That is such a great question and you know I'd like to speak to this because at the organization I lead, we actually start our work on entrepreneurship education as young as middle school, why? Because we are trying to educate students to develop the habits of mind, creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, future orientation, ability to manage risk, that they need to recognize early on so that they can develop the idea that they can be creative. So you have put your finger sir on a really important point, let's get in. I think Minister Mone, you would like something to say on that? No. Okay. I would like to say it quickly. Yeah. You know this is we can spend days to tackle your questions. But the first one I think we need to do a big change management programs. People understand that learning is not only in defense of schools or adversities. Second, I think we need to take into account that focus on our curriculum where it's not just knowledge base, it's also cultural base and skill set space. So people you build and their DNA from the beginning. A third continuous campaign within the institutional universities also from pre-K to high school that your school is not just by the time you get the certificates continuously. Then this is the role of private sector in the same times that if you, by the way I have participated with the web in the study during my previous role that when graduate from university leaves after four years, there will be absolute out of knowledge that the learner from school. So this is just a skill set that's required for you to learn in order for you to continue learning. But I agree with you. This is a continuous journey. Sorry. Any quick additional comments from the panel? Yes, I fully agree with what you are saying. And I think that children in the nature are actually learners. They are curious, they are testing and trying, they're non-judgmental. So how do you build in that in a school system early on when you're talking about parents? So I think it's absolutely right that we need to change the mindset and have a gross mindset that is actually lifelong. Sir. Thank you very much. JJ from Japan. And then my takeaway from your panel is the most important skill for the future is maybe not the creativity, but the learning skill, I guess. Yeah, that's what you say. So, and the problem, my question is how the low-performing students or the employee can enhance the learning skill. The reason is on the right-hand side, I'm teaching a business school. And those people, they have nothing, no problem for develop learning skill. My left-hand side, my family business is a high school for all the drop-out children. And they really have a difficulty to enhance the learning skill. So, I just want to get some hint on how those low-performers can develop a learning skill. Fabulous question. If we need to inculcate lifelong learning, what do we do about those learners who need to learn how to love learning? What are your thoughts? I'll jump again. This is a failure to understand. I think we are normally afraid of unknown. And I think AI should be a great platform for us to really enable access to those individuals. Two, we need really to make sure that we have a very strong gating system how to recruit teachers. Thank you. Yeah, teacher's role is very, very important. Teacher's role is crucial, absolutely crucial. Many of us, I would say that those of us who are in this room, if we think about our childhood, the subject that we like most is most likely that we had a very good teacher for that subject. So, it depends on how that person engaged you to learn that subject. So, it is crucial. And also, making learning enjoyable, joyful, that is so important. So, we're trying all these things and also, not confining learning within the four walls of classroom. So, learning everywhere, learning with joy, and you nurture that curiosity, the natural curiosity that children have, and not be judgmental. And people, if they learn from very early on to collaborate, so that's why our new curriculum that is trying to do exactly that, that children will, the teacher will introduce a subject, but then students will find for themselves all the information that they need. They will do their research on their own. They will form groups, do things, do presentations. Obviously, not all of them will perform equally, but if they find the joy in it, then they will at least learn more than what they would have learned in the traditional system. And I think that is important. And teacher's role now will become that of a guide or of facilitators. So, I think that is one way of doing it. Thank you. Ulrika? On your question, my first thought is we really need to understand why. So, why is those people you're talking about not interested in learning? And I think half of the answer sits there. Then I think we need to realize it's not one way to learn. So, in our company, we're talking about there are many ways to grow and really providing opportunities that is not only standardized. So, what I'm trying to say is that you can make a career that is lateral. You can make a career that is horizontal. You can grow in current position. And the best way that I see that we're growing is that you might change unit, department, cross-border, cross-country. And by that, you're really developing and learning as well. But the first question for me, why don't you want to learn? Do you have a definition of what success means for you? That's the issue. Yeah. I think this is very important for us. Not necessarily everybody pass. It's going to contribute. Thank you so much. Let's see if we can get one or two more questions in. We have more questions than we have time for, sir. Thank you. My name is Goyang. I'm from the Singapore Skills Future Agency. I'm really enjoying the rich perspectives that the panel is sharing. Not a fan of menu, but let's agree to disagree. Yeah, my question is I pick on Eureka's point about equitable, equitableity. And my question is how do you keep the supply of lifelong learning equitable? And I ask that from two perspectives. The first is our national data, I can only speak for Singapore, constantly shows that those who have benefited most from formal education are the ones also most likely to go for lifelong learning. But that's a little bit ironic, isn't it? Because we want to serve the rest of the population as well. So that's one aspect of equitableity. The second aspect is across companies. So we see companies like IKEA and so on who really, you know, embrace this and who provides the sort of infrastructure for the workers and so on. But there are many, many companies, especially smaller companies, which are either not ready or too distracted with many other things to be thinking about this. How then do we do this lifelong learning to reach these other companies? So very happy to hear the panelists' views. Thank you. Thoughts from the panel. I think number one, going back even to the first question, I think creating lifelong learning, it's often a little bit too late, not always in university to start, to think about how to create a lifelong learner. I do think national policies within the family start long before 10 to create those trajectories, those vectors, the passion for learning. But then what do we do with students who don't have that passion? I think deep personalized learning on things they care about, make it fun, make it joyful. The example I used of the AI tutor, if I care about soccer, teach me economics through soccer.  And I think technology can actually play a role here, but nothing can replace a great teacher. We're down to our last few minutes, so I apologize that we weren't able to get to all the questions, but maybe we can answer some of them after the panel has formally dispersed. But I wanna just take a moment to sum up what I've been hearing here. So first of all, first of all, I would like to commend all of you who are in the audience and watching online to take advantage and read WEF's great reports that have just come out on these topics, the Future of Jobs report and the Skills First report where those slides came from. They are informative and I think will provide a great basis for further understanding of this important topic. So here's what I've heard from this conversation. Number one, we see the need for greater interconnectivity between the types of organizations that we all represent and that we want to take the needed next steps to get connected. That's point one. Point two, we aren't saying that we need to completely disrupt the system. Rather, there's a huge opportunity to evolve and modify and reform existing systems in a way that are more responsive to current and future needs. The role of teachers to make learning come alive will always be at the forefront of how to foster lifelong learning. And I really appreciated the point in the discussion that was made because it's so contrary to what we've often heard. Lifelong learning is not adult learning. Lifelong learning is about the whole chain of learning from birth through retirement, maybe after retirement. And so it's important not only to think of work-based learning, tertiary education, professional education, but also how we develop those habits of mind in younger learners so that they can really develop a love of learning that allows them to become lifelong learners. Thank you so much for those brilliant insights and thank you all for the engaged discussion. I hope you've enjoyed our session today and thanks again for your time. Thank you.


In this presentation we will discuss general standards and compliance, accounting principles, and confidential client information. Starting off with general standards and compliance. First a word from our sponsor. Well actually these are just items that we picked from the YouTube shopping affiliate program but that's actually good for you because these aren't things that were just given to us from some large corporation which we don't even use in exchange for us selling them to you. These are things that we actually researched, purchased, and used ourselves. Acer 27 inch monitor. I've been using an Acer monitor as my primary monitor for a few years now. This is the first Acer monitor that I have used after having used a series of different brands of monitors in the past. The Acer monitor has been performing well and I'm trusting the Acer brand more and more as I use the monitor. 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That includes professional competence so we've got to make sure that they have professional competence if we're in an audit engagement we want to make sure that there is professional competence with regards to it that may seem obvious but note that there's a lot of different types of engagements not every audit is of course the same we could be auditing different types of industries we can be auditing different levels or different sizes of organizations as we do so we got to make sure of course that we have the professional competence in order to audit those types of industries then we have do professional care want to make sure that we take do professional care within the audit process we apply due diligence within the performance of the audit procedures so we need to have the competence in order to do so and then we need to follow through with it with the do professional care planning and supervision we want to make sure that we have the proper planning and supervision involved within the auditing process meaning we have the process involved in terms of who is doing the work and the proper supervision of the work that is being done so that we can complete the audit process in a sufficient fashion and build the evidence that is needed be able to rely on the evidence that is needed sufficient relevant data we want to make sure that we come compile sufficient relevant data with regards to an audit process that's going to be of course our audit evidence we got to make sure that we do the due diligence do the audit process make sure that we have the evidence to support the opinion that is given now we'll discuss accounting principles and rules a member shall not express an opinion or state affirmatively that the financial statements or other financial data of any entity are presented in conformity with gap generally accepted accounting principles or state that he or she is not aware of any material modifications that should be made to such statements or data in order for them to be in conformity with gap generally accepted accounting principles if such information or data contain any departure from an accounting principle promulgated by bodies designated by counsel to establish such principles that has a material effect on the statements or data taken as a whole so basically what we're saying here is that within the audit engagement the the idea is to give an opinion generally this is me paraphrasing this information the idea is to give an opinion and of course we can't give an opinion on the the financial statements being fairly stated if of course they are not fairly stated in accordance with generally accepted accounting principle next we have confidential client information a member in public practice shall not disclose any confidential information without the specific consent of the client so we have confidential information of course as we go through the audit process we we can't give that information out without specific consent from the client however there are some exceptions some exceptions to the rule and again obviously as we go through the audit process we will be gathering information confidential information information about the client and the accounting process related to it and we were not the general rule of course is that we cannot give out that information without the consent from client to do so however there's going to be some situations where there's going to be exceptions to the rule of course so situations where confidential information can be disclosed situations where we have an exception to the general rule that it cannot be disclosed in other words to meet gap or gas disclosure requirements to comply with a subpoena so if there's a subpoena then we needed to comply with a legitimate subpoena if required by an authorized peer review body so if there's a peer review body because that's within the profession that's my interpretation of the reason for that being an exception in part of an investigative or disciplinary proceeding so if it's an investigative or disciplinary proceeding similar to a subpoena type of situation to allow a review for the purchase sale or merger of the practice


Hi everybody. So I'm going to talk about kernel image formats, mostly related to Uboot. So a couple of goals for this talk. I'm going to talk about, is my voice loud and clear, everyone? Okay, thank you. So some of the goals for this talk. I'm going to discuss about existing image formats, the limitations, you know, whatever's out there. I'm going to talk about multi-component images. Some support for that has been added where you can embed like a RAM disk, a device tree, all this kind of stuff into a single image. I'll talk about the challenges and the limitations. I'll talk about how some of these problems have been solved. And I'll talk especially about the fit image format, which is what this talk is mainly about. And I'll discuss how fit solves some of those issues in having like an image that has multiple components embedded in it.  Then I'm going to talk about applications where fit has been used, you know, especially about secure boot, verified boot, things like that. And a whole lot of other applications. I'm going to talk about the other advantages, you know, of potentially using fit in your applications and talk about future work and all the challenges we're seeing having this stuff accepted. So I'm going to start with the classical image formats. So especially start with the Z image format. And this is what it basically looks like. There's a header on the top there. It contains some magic number and some other fields. There's some code in head dot s that does some initialization. This decompression code that actually has the decompression logic that takes the kernel payload and decompresses it. So this is what it looks like. So this format is like very limited. The way it is, you know, there's hardly any information about the kernel itself, what architecture it has. And, you know, there's really no support out of the box of embedding a DTE device tree meaningfully in this format.  It has a few kernel, it does have a few kernel decompression algorithms though. And so along this line, you know, there's format called DTB image which was added to PowerPC and does have some support for, you know, embedding a device tree inside of the image. You know, and this has been proved useful for systems that don't support passing a device tree from boot loader or the firmware. So again, this really hardly talks about what the kernel is about and, you know, it's load address. There's no check sums. There's, you know, and all that kind of stuff. So it's very limited in the way it is. And somehow we come to a simple image format which is just like DTB image format but it can be executed anywhere in memory. And basically this is for systems that can't pass anything to the kernel at all. So all the information required for boot has to be present in the kernel already and including the arguments and all that kind of stuff. So this was useful for systems that could pass nothing to the boot loader, not only a device tree but literally nothing. And again, this is limited.  And I'm going to talk a little bit more about this for ARM. There are some, you know, hacks that basically support appending a device tree to a Z image and, you know, this was added quite some time back.  Really, you know, the data that is appended at the end of the kernel is really no notion of what it is. Someone who looks at the image doesn't know what it is really, you know. And you can only embed one DT in this way to a Z image. And that makes the image only a single platform once you can't take the same image and boot it across multiple boards. So because you've already, you know, embedded a device tree into it. So and though there is boot support, you know, code has been added to head.s to support this. But to build this, there's really no code. I mean, if the device tree is appended, you know, the kernel can detect that it has been appended and, you know, do what is required. But there's really no as such build support. And you really have to build, append that device tree yourself. So it's a bunch of limitations. So now coming to UBoot's image format. So UBoot's image format is really operating system architecture independent. You can specify those in the header, you know, that information supports a bunch of compression types. It has checksums, CRC, you know, it's really good. You can ensure the integrity of your kernel image has executed in place support. So there's a special type of field that tells you that, okay, once you load the UBoot, directly execute the kernel code directly from within the UBoot image and don't copy it anywhere else. So support for that. There's quite a bit of metadata I'll show in the next slide on what the kernel is about and things like that. The U image format is very efficient to parse when it was introduced 13 years back. Systems were, you know, didn't have much processing power and, you know, having a fixed size header was really meaningful and U image was very lean and, you know, it was efficient to parse. So this is what it looks like. So you have a bunch of, so the stuff in blue is like a fixed size header. You have name, architecture, you know, all that kind of stuff. You have a timestamp that allows you to do things like rollbacks and stuff like that. You have a magic number that tells you what type of image it is. And you have a bunch of other fields where to load the kernel in memory, what the size of the kernel is, where to jump, things like that. And it's not limited to kernel.  So it's not really, though I keep saying kernel, you can use this for many things. So that's what it looks like. So it's how it works. So my clicker works. So this is in a nutshell, this is what, I dropped a bunch of fields because there was no space, but typically in a U image what U would does is it takes the payload and it copies it into a location specified by this field in the header. So it takes this and copies it here. And then it just does a jump to the entry point location and it just executes it. So all this happens with the bootamp command. So you just say bootamp and then bootamp parses this header up here and it does a copy that I mentioned and execution. So, and yeah, this copying is not really required. And for image types that do in place kind of booting, the jump is directly to the payload itself. So it's not really required. And in systems that you have not flash, for example, where you want to directly jump, this mechanism is not used. But I've seen this used quite a bit and kind of copying to a location and then jumping to the entry point is what happens. So yeah, and it's a command that you can use to see what the contents of the U image are, shows you all the details there.  So what were the limitations of single-component image? Users wanted to embed like more than one component, obviously, all in a single image. There are a lot of use cases and that cannot be handled.  And then for recovery of systems where, you know, you want to RAM disk, it's kind of nice to have all that inside of the image itself, right? So you don't want to mount your root files, you want to directly go into a RAM disk with busy box and stuff. So that's kind of one of the applications possible. Firmware upgrades, it's not easy to download multiple components. Firmware, like vendors prefer to have just one image that just works. And even security, like there's no support at all, even in multi-component images actually that I'm going to talk about. But fit does have support for security, where it was thought that it would be nice to embed the cryptographic signatures inside of the image itself. And that's just not possible, you know, with these kind of simple image formats. So I'll talk more about that. So the type field I was talking about here, you know, has to really say that, okay, I'm a multi-component image and so that is what this macro is about. And that's how you would know that, okay, you know, there might be more than one component in this image. And another limitation of single component images is that the checksum is only limited to CRC32. I mentioned that it's a good thing for the checksum, but if it's CRC32, it's a small chance that, very small chance that, you know, the image is carved, but the checksum is the same. So, you know, these are the limitations of having a fixed size format. This is what a multi-component image looks like. So what they did is they went ahead and added a little table here in the payload that tells you more about the different, actually this table is non-terminated. So you can have, like, multiple sections in that. And the way it works is, you know, because of the non-termination, you know where the table ends. So, you know what the next component is and you know its size. So you can, in that fashion, you can embed multiple components that way. So, this is how that works.  And RAM, it has to be the first thing here. And the device tree has to be here. It's not the whole notion of, it's not flexible, you know. So the code has things like, you know, it makes all sorts of assumptions that the kernel is at index one and, you know, the code is really messy because of that from what I observed. So it's fixed mapping of ID to component type, predefined, you know, all that stuff. So it's kind of messy. So, like I was saying, yeah, so the good thing was that now you can have, you have a single image that you can just DHCP and it has all the good stuff in it. You know, you don't have to... So that was a good thing that happened because of this image type. And, yeah, again, like, there's no... Though you could embed multiple components, you can't really have, like, multiple kernels in an image. So you can have an asymmetric multiprocessing system where we have two different cores and you want to load different kernels. So that was not possible even with this. So the same disadvantages, you know, that the IDs were hard-coded, you know, and associating numbers instead of names is not a good thing. Like, you need to make it a little more... The code has to be cleaner, you know. If you have IDs in the code, it's quite sad. And so it's difficult to maintain. You know, code is very, very horrible. And so, you know, it's like very inflexible, basically. That's what I'm trying to say here. Okay. So again, limited support for only these three components. Multiple kernels cannot be represented and it doesn't scale for future designs. No support for stronger checks and stuff like that. So all that I was talking about till now is the existing image formats and their limitations and all the disadvantages I showed you. It was good 15 years back, but now it's time to move on and use something more powerful and, you know, something more flexible using existing tools. So I'm going to talk about tree-like structures to represent some of these images. I'm going to talk about the, you know, like basically what a tree-like structure can add. You know, you can have a more flexible way of representing a kernel like in the form of a tree. You know, wouldn't it be nice to have something like this, you know, to represent an image however you want it with the fields placed wherever you want, as long as you have those fields somewhere. And, you know, you can arbitrarily arrange nodes in a tree, move them around, trees can have properties. Properties can even be binary images if you want it. So a lot of flexibility added, you know, because of, like, if this fixed-size structure could somehow be made more flexible and trees are a nice way of possibly representing it. So we're going to talk about a little bit of a device tree, what it is and how it has been used for fit. A device tree is basically a structure to describe hardware. I think most people here know that. So the idea is that instead of hard-coding everything in the kernel about the platform, you know, you have all that data, you know, have all that code converted to data and actually use that data to represent, to tell the kernel more about what the platform you're booting on is about, you know, the details. And that kind of makes the code a lot cleaner. So the problem now is that now you have all these device tree sources that is not code, but actually data, but it's still in the kernel tree and, you know, that's adding a lot of churn. I'm sure those who attended a lot's talk yesterday heard them about talking about moving it out of the tree and kernel tree and stuff like that. Anyway, regardless, it keeps the code clean and, you know, there's been a lot of effort in that direction to convert drivers to use device tree instead of using, you know, these hard-coded platform data kind of stuff. So that's what device tree is about. You know, it has a basic describe CPUs, peripherals, memory, all that configuration, kernel output, which serial port, kernel parameters, all that kind of stuff. Can be embedded in nice tree-like format. So this has nothing to do with the image formats that I'm talking about. This is just what device tree is and how it has been used. So the question is, can we reuse the device tree? So it's already in use in the kernel. So why not just reuse it? So tools that build the tree are already part of the kernel. So you want to take existing tools and kind of use that in a more useful way. And device tree compiler recent also has got support for embedding even binaries inside of node properties, you know, property values. So all this good stuff is already there in the kernel tree. You know, we're not really talking about adding anything new. And so, sir, Marion, I think, between 2008 he came up with this whole idea, you know, for PowerPC. And the idea was actually it emerged because they wanted stronger checksums and U-image has fixed field for CRC32 and you want to do MD5 or Shah or something like that and you just have no way to do it. So the idea was, okay, let's Wolfgang and Marion and all these guys got together and decided, let's come up with something that's more flexible and that's where they invented fit. And it really uses, makes use of device tree to build a tree node correspond to image components.   And, you know, this format can be adapted to pretty much anything that you want to do and that you can't think of now, but you might want to do in the future. So this was the board that had the first support added and needed stronger sections and, like I was saying, all these details. So any questions on so far? Okay. So I did some research and I found quite a few users already there in U-boot users.  In fact, all the XES boards use fit quite a lot. And most if not all free-scale boards that I've seen in the U-boot sources use it.  I won't bore you with the details, but there's Neo Free Runner from OpenMoco, the Zinc free-scale again here. And yeah, this is very interesting. Samsung Chromebook actually, they do secure boot and they're planning to use fit to kind of store cryptographic signatures inside of the image tree. And I also have a little bit of a demo on my favorite platform BeagleBone. I'll be showing you, like I just added support for that. So I'll just show you the logs. I try not to do demos because demos usually go wrong at the wrong time. I mean, you know, so I have the logs of what I did and I'll show you those details. And X86 support is not really there, but Simon again has posted some patches on the U-boot mailing list for X86 support and they're being reviewed for what I know. And then you have this soft CPU from Zardinx as well that actually uses fit. So coming back to the Zimage hacks to support appending DT and this was one of our main points to, you know, convince all the maintainers that we really want to do this, that it's kind of really a messy way to, you know, it has a bunch of drawbacks of appending a DT. So I think I brought up these points earlier, but I'll say them again. There's no kernel support for this. You have autotree hacks, kernel build support. Runtime support is there, but there's no build support. You have hacks floating around that you have to apply to actually embed a DT, you know, and sometimes I do like hundreds of iterations and I don't want to like keep, like sometimes my device tree is just fixed. I don't want to pass it, you know, copy from my pass it. I want it to be in my image. I want to build kernel and device tree all in the same image. That's not possible. You need autotree hacks in the kernel code to actually do that build. And again, it makes it a single platform where you can embed more than one device trees, you know, even with this approach. And so, yeah, this is the kernel config option you have to enable in order for the kernel to actually work. So there is runtime support when kernel boots, it can detect that there's device tree appended to it, and it can do all that. You need to enable this config option. So these are just details. This is what the code looks like.  So it's very simple. You just slap both of them together and, you know, that's what it looks like. So what I talk about fit and how it can be used, I'm going to show you a little demo in the slides on... You know, I'll show you source code and I'll show you different components inside source code and, you know, I think we did a little short of time to try to keep up. I'll show you the source code, show you how I built the actual image, show you your boot commands that you can use to boot the image, show you boot log after it boots, stuff like that. So my first demo is going to be a single kernel, single device tree blob. We're building an image out of these two and it's quite simple. So that's the first demo. Now, for this experiment, I used UBoat, the latest one, at the time, and kernel 3.8. So everybody knows the big old board. So this is what the sources look like. So basically, you have a device tree source version you have to specify, just for backward compatibility. And then you have the whole tree here and you describe the image and, you know, this is the image node. You start with images node and then you have to put a kernel. You have to have this kernel node here that tells you about the, about what image you want to embed inside your, inside the kernel nodes. This actually gets converted to a binary property.  You can specify them flexibly, up and down, wherever you want. You're not limited by a fixed size header. And this is the most interesting thing, like you can actually embed hashes, multiple hashes for even stronger checks on your kernel, you know. So this node is mandatory kernel. So you have an images parent node and then you have multiple sub nodes. The sub nodes tell you what the different components are. So you have first component is kernel. Then I guess I have, in this demo, I have the next component is device tree, the device tree blob. So you can specify which device tree blob you want to embed and this gets converted to a binary property. And again, you have the same hashes and all that on the device tree blob component of the image. Okay, so then you end the images, the parent images node that encapsulates all these little images. You end it with this and then you have a configuration node. That configuration-based concept is that you have different configurations and you can tell, you can say that for this configuration, I want to take this kernel, this boot loader, this device tree, this RAM disk and boot them all together. So it's a nice way of, you know, you can just tell you boot this configuration and it will just take these components out of the images, out of all these image nodes and it will boot it together. So it's very, very clean, you know, the way it is. Then I built the image using MKImage. Very simple, you know, no fancy properties or anything, just simple. You know, if you look at the kernel sources, MKImage is like three lines. This is just so simple. So I build it like this and then this is the output of the build and this is the, this is the, you know, the ITB, so to speak, image tree blob that came out of the image tree sources that I just showed you. So you can see the checksums and stuff that shows you, you know, the SHA and all that has been embedded inside the image already. So MKImage computed those values for you and stored it in the image. Then we just boot it. So booting it is very simple. I didn't have to pass anything to boot it. No device tree location or anything. I just say boot it and it just works. So I copy the ITB I just built and I just boot it. So these are the boot logs of what it looks like. You boot, you know, detects its fit and it looks at the checksums, it verifies it, makes sure everything is okay. Then it does the same thing for device tree. This is not even possible with, you know, old image. I mean, we didn't have concept of checksums since port device tree blobs itself.  And then it just starts. So it's quite nice, you know, quite elegant and flexible. So in the second demo, I'm going to introduce the RAM disks. So now I added a RAM disk to here. And I don't specify any load address. Just set it to zero so that you would copy it wherever it likes. You know, and I just added, you know, one hash here for the RAM disk. And I created a new configuration in second demo. This doesn't work. Okay. So yeah, too bright. So the second configuration says that, okay, I want to add a RAM disk to the mix as well, not only a kernel and a device tree. So it uses this node that I just added here to, you know, kind of encapsulates all that together. So then I just build it the same way and it, you know, it created the new configuration. I'm showing you in blue here. Pretty standard. And then I just, then I boot it. So this time, I want to boot the recovery configuration. So it's quite simple. I just have to pass the configuration name that I had here, recovery conf. I just pass it to the boot-em command and it takes the kernel RAM disk and device tree from the fit image and it boots it together. So I actually, you know, booted it and there you can see the new updates. And it added, loaded the RAM disk as well, and now I'm inside of a nice RAM disk file system and, you know, I can, you know, I don't need an SD card or anything anymore. So this is one of the other applications. I think it will be very useful to have something like this. And then there are more use cases for fit, like other than this, like just like what I showed you, I mean, you can have two kernel images and one kernel image can be for production. You optimize it, turn on all the optimization flags and make it compact and all that. And then you can have one for your own debugging where you would turn on everything, all the tracing infrastructure and all that. And you can embed both these kernels in the same image and you can have multiple configuration nodes that say that this is a debug configuration node and I'd like you to boot, I'd like you to pick the debug kernel and likewise for production. So, you know, it's another application for that. So, and the other big application where this will be useful, and I'm trying to, I've been writing code to kind of have multiple device tree blobs embedded in the same image to kind of make it like a multi-platform kernel image. And you have different configuration nodes for different boards and you'd have the right device tree blob in each of those configuration nodes. So, you can really have one image that kind of supports multiple boards. It's kind of a nice way to do that. And what you can potentially do is read the WE from or figure out from switches or something that it's this kind of board and, you know, that I need to, you know, board X or something and I need to boot configuration X. So, something like that. So, we'll see how that goes. And, yeah, this is another big use case. Simon Glass was saying added fit support for his push patches for x86. You know, it's like really useful. Like, this is something that wasn't even thought of when fit was invented few years back. And he went ahead and added signatures, you know, that he, you know, the value of which is computed by using a private key and signed those images and embedded multiple signatures, you know, inside of the, inside of the image itself. So, that's really useful. It's something that is not possible at all with the existing U-boot image formats. It's not at all possible to do this. So, it's really flexible. Something that wasn't even thought of can be added to the U-boot image format and, you know. And then he went ahead and added even more security support. So, the idea was that you have a kernel and you have a signature for that. And that's verified and everything's good. And then you have all these other components and everything has signatures. You don't have signatures for configurations. So, now somebody can easily hack the device tree and boot some random configuration that you haven't even thought of and that exposes a lot of holes and stuff. So, he went ahead and added signatures to, you know, even configurations. So, now U-boot can verify that the configuration node itself has not been tampered with. So, stuff like that. And this is another use case. It still hasn't been done, but we're discussing, I was discussing with Simon that, you know, for, this is perfect for AMP configurations where, you know, the P2020 free-scale SOC, which is what the P2020-RDB board is based on. It's a perfect use case because right now what it does is it takes two different kernel images, TFTPs them, you know, that's how they've written it. And the TFTPs, the device tree blobs separately and then it, you know, takes each of these kernels, manually loads it into each of the, for each of the processors and it passes the right device tree blob and stuff like that. So, there's a lot of, you know, magic that has to be done to make this kind of thing work. And this is a very good use case for FIT, you know, where you can have embedded those kernels directly in the image itself and then just have a configuration that possibly tells you which core to load, what kernel on and what device tree blob to pass it. And it can be done much better in a nice little, you know, tree than doing it the way they do it today. So, what I thought was a very, very good application of that. And yeah, I was saying I upgrade procedures for devices, also some vendors want to just, you know, distribute a single image and they want to give you tons of components, you know, customers can use them in a different way and break their boards and stuff and whatnot. So, I guess this can be applied to this kind of use case too. So, a lot of future work and challenges. So, we need a simple way to extend the, so we already have the DTB's target in the kernel, which what it does is, say, make DTB's and it builds DTB device tree blobs for all the platforms that you have configured. So, you know, they already do that. So, why not just take all that and use some of that, you know, and at the same time build a tree itself that contains all the device tree blobs. So, there was a lot, very difficult to accept these patches. Two, three years back, patches were posted for PowerPC and they were grant-likely nicked them and it was, he had his own reasons and, you know, but recently it has become easier to, you know, there's been more, this idea has been more welcoming, you know, now that we're moving to a multi-platform kernel and stuff like that. So, it's much easier. So, that's what is encouraging me more to pursue this. And generally, the challenge in the community is like, if people don't use Uber, they just hate it. I don't know why. I've seen that a lot. Like, you know, generally speaking, this considered to be something that's very bloated and all that, and I really think that it's not the case. You can make it as small as you want to or as big as you want to and it's a good thing that has so many drivers because you can boot in so many different ways. So, that is, again, a very debatable topic. So, that's where that is at. And you would currently... Yeah, so this has been breaking things all over. I think Tony posted some patches, I guess, and, you know, the whole move to the multi-platform kernel. So, we've seen breakages related to that, you know, where the Uber image itself is not built with a load address. And if you didn't do that, it would break.  So, I have a little patch I wrote yesterday night that fixed that problem. So, I'm able to boot a fit image without specifying a load address at all. So, you know, that's... So, I've proof of concept that you don't need a load address to boot a fit image. You can just boot it in place. So, that works. And I've seen... The other challenge I've seen is, like, crypto operations are very slow from Uber. Still looking into it, but it takes a long time to do a SHA and to verify it. And so it adds a lot of time to the boot. So, possibly use hardware accelerators to possibly speed up those crypto operations and stuff like that. So, that's possibly something I would like to look at at some point to speed this up. But generally, yeah, this format, it's going to be quite a challenge to accept it and add this support to the kernel tree. And I think it's a good idea because the tools are already there that do this, you know, device tree compiler, all that is in the kernel. So, I think it's not that bad and just adding this is... So, we're having discussions on the mailing list and we have a huge thread going on this topic. And yeah, it's an interesting thread. So, let's see where that goes. So, any questions?


We continue today with Chapter 27. The Quiet Answer In quietness are all things answered, and is every problem quietly resolved. In conflict there can be no answer and no resolution, for its purpose is to make no resolution possible, and to ensure no answer will be plain. A problem set in conflict has no answer, for it is seen in different ways. And what would be an answer from one point of view is not an answer in another light. You are in conflict. Thus it must be clear you cannot answer anything at all, for conflict has no limited effects. Yet if God gave an answer, there must be a way in which your problems are resolved, for what He wills already has been done. Thus it must be that time is not involved and every problem can be answered now. Yet it must also be that in your state of mind solution is impossible. Therefore God must have given you a way of reaching to another state of mind in which the answer is already there, such is the Holy Instant. It is here that all your problems should be brought and left. Here they belong, for here their answer is. And where its answer is, a problem must be simple and be easily resolved. It must be pointless to attempt to solve a problem where the answer cannot be. Yet just as surely it must be resolved if it is brought to where the answer is. Attempt to solve no problems but within the Holy Instant's surety. For there the problem will be answered and resolved. Outside there will be no solution, for there is no answer. There could be that could be found. Nowhere outside a single simple question is ever asked. The world can only ask a double question. One with many answers can have no answers. None of them will do. It does not ask a question to be answered but only to restate its point of view. All questions asked within this world are but a way of looking, not a question asked. A question asked in hate cannot be answered because it is an answer in itself. A double question asks and answers both attesting the same thing in different form. The world asks but one question. It is this. Of these illusions, which of them is true? Which ones establish peace and offer joy? And which can bring escape from all the pain of which this world is made? Whatever form the question takes, its purpose is the same. It asks but to establish sin is real and answers in the form of preference. Which sin do you prefer? That is the one that you should choose. The others are not true. What can the body get that you would want the most of all? It is your servant and also your friend. But tell it what you want and it will serve you lovingly and well. And this is not a question for it tells you what you want and where to go for it. It leaves no room to question its beliefs except that what it states takes questions form. A pseudo question has no answer. It dictates the answer even as it asks. Thus is all questioning within the world a form of propaganda for itself. Just as the body's witnesses are but the senses from within itself, so are the answers to the questions of the world contained within the questions that are asked. Where answers represent the questions, they had nothing new and nothing has been learned. An honest question is a learning tool that asks for something that you do not know. It does not set conditions for a response, but merely asks what the response should be. But no one in a conflict state is free to ask this question, for he does not want an honest answer where the conflict ends. Only within the Holy Instant can an honest question honestly be asked. And from the meaning of the question does the meaningfulness of the answer come. Here is it possible to separate your wishes from the answer, so it can be given you and also be received. The answer is provided everywhere, yet it is only here it can be heard. An honest answer asks no sacrifice because it answers questions truly asked. The questions of the world but ask of whom is sacrifice demanded. Asking not if sacrifice is meaningful at all. And so, unless the answer tells of whom, it will remain unrecognized, unheard. And thus the question is preserved intact because it gave the answer to itself. The Holy Instant is the interval in which the mind is still enough to hear an answer that is not entailed within the question asked. It offers something new and different from the question. How could it be answered if it but repeats itself? Therefore attempt to solve no problems in a world from which the answer has been barred. But bring the problem to the only place that holds the answer lovingly for you. Here are the answers that will solve your problems because they stand apart from them and see what can be answered.  In the Holy Instant, you can bring the question to the answer and receive the answer that was made for you. And from the workbook, Listen 213. I am not a body. I am free, for I am still as God created me. All things are lessons God would have me learn. A lesson is a miracle which God offers to me in place of thoughts I made that hurt me. What I learn of him becomes the way I am set free. And so I choose to learn his lessons and forget my own. I am not a body. I am free, for I am still as God created me. Amen.


In the past I have heard several room correction systems during demos and they never impressed me. They replaced acoustical problems with DSP problems back in the day. So I lost interest. Over the past year I came across some interesting demos and tried some things myself. As Dylan said, the times they are changing. This video has been recorded on Friday, July 27th, 2018, the day after the hottest night ever measured in my country, 23.4 degrees Celsius, 74.1 degrees Fahrenheit. Since we have a mild climate we are not equipped for these temperatures. That is why this video is late and why you might hear a fan blowing in the back. The temperature here, my little studio in the attic, is about 45 degrees Celsius, 113 degrees Fahrenheit. So far for the public service messaging. Let's go to the topic at hand. Room correction in general tries to compensate for acoustic problems by applying filtering to the source material. This can only work in the low frequencies, roughly where the length of the sound waves is half the distance between the boundaries of a room, or multiples of that. Depending on the religion you adhere to, this works for frequencies up to 200 to 500 Hz. It's not coincidence that I mention those frequencies in my loudspeaker placement videos. It's good practice to watch one of them and put them into practice before even considering room correction. Over loudspeaker placement can prevent room problems and thus need not be corrected. Or even might not be correctable by filtering. Although proper placement will not prevent all problems, it most likely will prevent the big problems leaving only smaller problems to be corrected by electronic means. All room correction systems basically do the same. They measure the so called transfer function of the audio channel from the DA converter to the measurement mic at the listening position. This means that the non-linearities in the chain, DAC, amplifier, speakers and acoustics will be corrected, or at least an attempt will be made. Given the fact that corrections are only made below 500 Hz or lower, there will be little corrections of electronics, but speakers might be corrected to a degree. It also depends on where the correction takes place. If it takes place in a computer that plays back the music, it really will be the entire chain, DAC, amplifier, speakers and acoustics. But if the room correction takes place in the amplifier, for instance, it will only potentially influence the power amp, the speakers and the acoustics. There are at least two ways to do the correction. In the amplitude domain or in the time and amplitude domain. The first system uses parametric equalizers. These equalizers are called this way since all parameters of the filter can be varied. Frequency, boost or cut and Q-factor. The first two will be clear. The third one describes the relation between the center frequency and the bandwidth over which the attenuation takes place. A high Q stands for a small band filter while a low Q stands for a wide filter. And there are variations over this theme where the filter width stays constant when varying the cut or boost and filters that vary the width depending on the cut or boost. There are even filters that use one variant when boosting and the other while cutting. These are uniquely to the concert sound world. Since all filtering for room correction nowadays is done digitally, it is relatively easy to add all kinds of filtering, appropriate for a given situation, providing sufficient DSP horse power is present and the manufacturer has designed or bought sufficient DSP programs to do so. Measuring the amplitude versus frequency, when done properly, gives you a good impression of what deviation in the frequency domain are to be corrected. But with some more calculations it can also become clear what time alignment would improve the sound. Of course filters might cause face distortion and group delays. In layman's terms the highs, mids and lows are delayed differently, potentially destroying transient response and stereo imaging. The better the filters are chosen, the less this will occur. But it is also possible, although more complex, to include a time domain in the filtering, keeping the energy constant and again when done properly, resulting in a yet more transparent sound image. Since modern room correction is applied digitally, there are software music players like Amara, HQ Player, J-River, Fubar, Roon and even Volumio on the Raspberry Pi that can take care of it, sometimes needing a so called plug-in. If you already have the software, adding the filtering is very affordable as we will see in the coming videos. If you don't want to use a computer or use non-computer playback equipment like CD player streamers and the like, you could use a box in between the player and the amplifier. That room correction box might be analog or digital in and out, but in all cases up to here they only work with the audio source selected. An alternative might be to use a room correction device or computer in between the tape out and taping of your amp while listening with the tape monitor switch engaged at all time. Putting the device between the preamp and the power amp is also done but would not be my first choice since chances are they have to work with very low levels and thus have limited resolution. Let's see again where room correction can be applied. This is the schematics of a reproduction chain, the sum of the stereo and room acoustics. If you use a computer as a source, software in the computer can do the room correction filtering. If your player's software does not support this or if you use another digital source like a CD player, you could use a room correction device that has digital in and out in between the digital source and the DAC. In both these cases the room correction will only work with the digital source and for instance not with the TV that is connected to the same stereo. That is not the case if you use an amplifier or AV receiver that has room correction built in. If not you can connect a room correction device over analog to the tape monitor connectors of the amp and have the tape monitor engaged all the time. The disadvantage here is that the room correction device has to do the analog to digital conversion prior to filtering and convert it back to analog after filtering. Room correction is no matter for me and a completely different application of knowledge I partly have but also partly lack. I am already working on four different systems to see what they can and can't do. As soon as I feel comfortable to report on them you will see the videos appear. In the meantime I might publish other videos depending on what review equipment becomes available. So, if you want to follow my quest, subscribe to this channel or follow me on Twitter, Facebook or Google+. If you liked this video, please consider supporting your channel through Patreon or PayPal. Every financial support is much appreciated. The links are in the comments. Help me to help even more people enjoy music at home by telling your friends on the web about this channel. I am Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you in the next show or on theHBproject.com. And whatever you do, enjoy the music.


We wanted to share with you parts of a chapter from Floating in Quiet Darkness, the book we are working on writing that will be out early next year. I invite you to imagine when you were a toddler learning to walk and join me in my crawl down memory lane. In our living room, I crawl over to the chair with the ladder back and using one of the bars of the ladder, I lift myself to standing. I pull and push until I'm balanced front to back. Then I switch my weight to my left leg, pushing with my right. I pull and push until I'm balanced on my left leg. Then I turn to the right and I step out and I shift my weight to my right and I lose my balance in fall and laughing and crawl over to the chair and start again. This kind of focused attention and experimentation allows me to learn very quickly to walk. I use similar attention and presence to learn to eat and talk and all of the other things that babies and young children learn in the first few years of their life. When learning any of these skills, I am fully present with great attention. I'm constantly watching the people around me and trying experiments to see what works and what does not. During this period of our lives, we are generally present, which is what I'm working to be now. That is, we're generally conscious. As adults, when we walk or talk or eat, the experience when we were young, those experiences are used by the brain to allow us to do these activities without our conscious participation. We can walk down a crowded city street while talking to a friend without focusing any of our attention on our walking or how to talk. These activities are handled totally automatically by our brains. Most adult activities are done this way. Besides walking and talking, once we learn to drive, cook, even argue, they are mostly done automatically. How to do one is automatic. In other words, done by the part of the brain using past experiences. Dr. Marcus E. Rayichel, a neurologist in 2001, discovered a part of the brain called the default mode network, DMN. One of the functions of this network is to track input, sensory input, and find experiences from the past that relate to the situation at hand. As soon as it finds the relevant experiences to use in handling the current situation, it ignores further input. That is, it limits the amount of input we receive to an absolute minimum, just enough to know what past experiences to access. This is very useful. If a tiger is headed our way with its mouth open, salivating, we do not want to think about what to do. Instead, the brain tells us based on past experiences whether we should run or pray. It is very important for us as adults to be efficient. The time for learning and experimentation is childhood. Adulthood is for functioning, using the experiences from when we were young to function efficiently and automatically. I have to prepare onlets for the guests that have arrived and are sitting at the pass-through in front of the stove where I'm going to cook them, the omelets, not the guests. Most of the time, we have done all of these things many times before. In fact, it is so routine that my brain pulls up experiences from the past and is mostly done as easily and automatically as walking, with as little conscious participation as walking takes. While I am cooking, I can put my focus on talking to my guests. Dr. Allison Gopnik, a child psychology professor and associate professor of philosophy at UC Berkeley, points out that our childhood is the largest of any animal so we can learn so many things that as adults we can do automatically and efficiently. By protecting and caring for our young for so long, the young children can learn massive amounts about how to function in any new environment, like technology that hasn't been around for 20,000 years, much less 200 days. Dr. Robin Cahart Harris, a neuro-scientist researching the working of people's brain when they're on psychedelics, found the default mode network is not active when they are on psychedelics or have been meditating. In these times, we are very open to all of the input. Without the default mode network bringing up earlier experiences, we get a much wider range of input and possibilities. That is where babies and young children spend their time. It turns out that they are better at solving problems that require thinking outside the box. Let me repeat that. Young children are better at solving problems that require thinking outside the box. This is because they are not being fed the data from the past that keeps them from seeing all of the sensory input. Dr. Gopnik for some experiments created a music box that would only start with the proper colored block when the block was set on it. Halfway through the experiment, she changed it so that it required two blocks to work. In testing four-year-old children and college students, she found that the four-year-old students did far better. The children were far more willing to consider and try possibilities outside the box. Their job as young children is to learn from all possibilities. They are excellent at trying anything, not such a good procedure to follow if a tiger is headed our way. Dr. Gopnik is struck by the similarities between the LSD experience and her understanding of the consciousness of children. For example, more possibilities, diffuse attention, magical thinking, and less sense of self. She suggests if you want to understand what an expanded consciousness looks like, have tea with a four-year-old. She says children's brains are extremely plastic, good for learning, not accomplishing. Better for exploring than exploiting. It has a great many more neural connections than the adult brain. Once we are adult, the neural connections we have used the most remain and unused ones disappear. As adults, our past experiences are used to solve current problems. We only come up with solutions that our past experiences point to. That is why we can't think outside the box. We only use whatever our experiences dictate. Einstein said no problem can be solved by the same kind of thinking that created it. Lots of our problems need a different kind of thinking. How do you turn off the default mode network so you can consider all possibilities and think outside the box? As previously mentioned, a four-year-old could help us. Or we could take psychedelics. Additionally, the DMN does not work during a session after we have been meditating or floating frequently or long enough. So we could meditate or float. A lot of meditators think that floating is the ultimate place to meditate. They find it makes meditating much easier and more effective. It is sure my experience. I think floating is the ultimate place to be creative because it allows us to move into a conscious state where the DMN is not active. Any time I have a highly creative job to do, I float at least every day. Actually I generally float every day anyway. As a result, I have become far more creative outside the tank than I used to be inside. The default mode network chooses what it uses to solve current problems. For example, as an adult, Lee started public speaking and found it terrifying. She floated and hung out in the fear, simply experiencing it. It took several times before she found this. You loved it. Once Glenn was working with this material, I had a long-standing fear of public speaking. Our annual talk here, one year, I couldn't even go through with it. I got so tight. What I saw was that I understood that every time I got up to talk, this old habit was being pulled out and used to aggravate and have that fear come up very fast and quick. What I did when I went into float was I started looking for all the things that could have happened to me that I was storing in memory that would come up and be used to aggravate that fear. What I found was that when I was five years old, I was tap dancing. My class was giving a performance for the parents. There were 10 of us in a line dancing. It was in a room probably like this, not quite as big, but with a wooden floor. This one doesn't have that. With a wooden floor and the piano was playing, and the parents were all there, and very soon I started feeling something moving. The costume was a silver shirt and black pants, and my pants started feeling as if they were in motion. I didn't know what to do. I noticed that there was a lot of laughter coming from the audience, and a lot of the attention of the audience was in my direction. I then, very soon after, noticed that my pants fell to the floor, and again, out of not knowing what to do, I bent down, picked them up, finished the dance, and went crazy. I worked with that. That was one of the things that I made a note about this. Once I saw that decision that I knew what it was, now I could release it. That was something that happened to me a long time ago, and I made a new decision that was right there inside of me that I no longer had to be afraid of public speaking, and that has been able to stay with me. There are still pieces that come up, but I have a tool to work with now that is very useful, and I highly recommend it. The brain never asks us for our rating or ranking of experiences when they are stored, whether they should be used, valued, or thrown out. It stores them all. The brain also does not ask us whether we agree with the experiences chosen now to solve the current problem. It figures out on its own how to value them and what to use for any situation. To have a high quality of life, we cannot let the brain arbitrarily choose its selection from the past to handle a problem in the present. Lee has just illustrated that. The automatic functioning of the default mode network is not always choosing the past experiences we would like it to use. In order to change that, we have to work hard to become conscious and not allow unconscious functioning of our brain to control our life for us. There are lots of ways we can work to become more conscious. Our second book will be all about that. Lee shares how one early tank owner worked with that. This was a really long time ago. He was one of our very first tank owners. At that time, we were selling cardboard tanks mainly by phone. We got a call from somebody in Vermont who told us that he had no skills for any work other than being a parking lot attendant. Somebody told him that he could work on himself in a tank. He had the ability to take care of that problem. We sent him a cardboard tank, we sent him to Vermont. He wanted to work on himself until he was able to have a job that he was aiming for by floating. The first thing on his agenda was to clear his relationship with his parents. He set out a system for getting it okay with his parents. He worked on that until it was done, months.  He went on like that. Three years later, we got a call from him and he said he had just been hired by a research scientist in Australia. He was given a job and he was going to be driving cross-country with his new wife. Could they stop by and visit with us? We said yes. He made up his own system of becoming conscious and the floating, it took three years, got him through it. Besides floating, John Lilly gave us the gift of inspiring us to include expanding our consciousness as a high priority in our life. No matter how you are supporting people using the tank, if they use it, it is likely they are at some level expanding their consciousness. Supporting people floating is a very high calling. John said it is my firm belief that experiencing higher states of consciousness is necessary for the survival of the human species. We want to acknowledge your participation in expanding consciousness. Thank you all.