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A Product Needs A Blueprint

We All Love to Upgrade Things

It’s now the twenty-first century. Technology is all around us. There are many in the world who are still missing the modern conveniences of life, yet, the one piece of technology that’s most common to everyone today is the mobile phone. The latest statistics that I found on this were from 2019, which showed that five billion people own at least one mobile device.¹ We now have countries existing where the mobile phone is the only access point to our connected world.

We all know that at some point in our lives our mobile phones need to be upgraded. Why do I share this, you may ask? Well, what this means is that at least five billion people in some way, depending on how their local language uses it, understands the term “To Upgrade.” The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as a verb:

: to replace something (such as software or an electronic device) with a more useful version or alternative²

Everything we use today needs to be upgraded at some point. It can be our electronics, our clothing, our furniture, even our homes. It’s our national infrastructure like roads, bridges, and airports. At some point, the things we use will need to be upgraded. We can’t avoid it. Considering this, what if the earth itself is also a type of technology? Let’s call it Organic Technology. What if we can’t save it any more than we can save our iPhones from becoming obsolete? What if the earth just needs a very complex upgrade?

I have a lot of experience with this myself. I worked as a sales and business operations lead for ten years at HP Software, HPE Software, and Micro Focus. A key part of my role was managing our processes. This responsibility meant looking at how we could improve or upgrade them. Sometimes upgrading also meant throwing out the old and starting from something brand new. This is what we did when we removed our old CRM software and installed the largest deployment in the world of another CRM software solution.

This customer management software had come to its end, where it was so slow that it couldn’t be upgraded anymore. It had to be thrown out and replaced. When Micro Focus bought the software division from HPE, we had over 1,200 IT professionals working for one and a half years on building an entirely new IT system from the ground floor up, which would then run the new combined company. This was a huge undertaking, where the older systems were thrown out and the upgrade comprised new products.

When we speak about upgrades, then, it becomes clear that an upgrade doesn’t happen on its own. Sometimes, it requires thousands of people working on the project. It needs key leadership overseeing the plan and knowing how this should be achieved. It’s certainly going to fail if the management team is not in full control of the process and doesn’t know the ins and outs of their product.

Therefore, if we can even consider any kind of restorative upgrade plan for the earth, there must be some kind of management team as well driving this plan. Wouldn’t you agree? If the earth is to have any purpose at all, a purpose can only be fulfilled when there’s a plan in place for it to fulfill. This chapter is important in helping us to understand where we find the blueprint plan in all the data out there.

From Never Reading a Book, to Devouring History

I grew up in a small rural town called Rodney, in Ontario, Canada. It had a population of 1,100 residents. My high school in West Elgin County had around 375 students in it across all grades and covered the villages of Rodney, West Lorne, and Dutton. This was rural Ontario at its best. Through and through, I’ve always been a small-town boy at heart all my life.

I was someone who only did what I had to do to graduate high school. I wasn’t a grade A student. Man, I hated school. Counting down the days to freedom, when I could get out of there. How many of us can relate to this from our high school years in some way or another? For me, opening a history book, or in fact any book, was like kryptonite to Superman. It wasn’t going to happen.

It didn’t matter what I tried to do, I somehow couldn’t open a book for enjoyment. I preferred playing my Nintendo or whatever fun or trouble I could get into with my cousin Jeremy and my friends Jamie and Ricardo. Let’s just say there was a lot of cruising in our cars at the end of the school day. Have you ever played car tag? That was the best. I think you get the point; books were not a thing for me.

This kryptonite of books progressed into my adult life as I lived and studied for a time in Toronto and later when I moved to the Netherlands to go to university. Again, I just read what was necessary. As I moved to Germany and entered the workforce, it continued. I didn’t read for pleasure at all. After three and a half years in Munich, I moved and settled in the capital of Austria in 2008. Throughout those years, opening a book was on a need‒only basis.

Therefore, it’s amazing that now I’m writing this book. Something clicked in 2010. It was like night and day, where suddenly I loved books. Specifically, I found myself hungry for history. It’s the strangest thing, but it came out of the blue. I can devour a 200-page book in an evening. As I shared in the introduction, now I’m someone who loves reading, analyzing data, and trying to understand the world around me. Asking crazy questions.

But it wasn’t always this way. I think it’s just something that comes with age, maybe, but I have to say, looking back at the last ten years, I have loved this diving into the past. I find that learning about history opens us up to better understand the world around us and to be able to grasp our present day. It’s fascinating though, how we as humans can change and grow as we get older and wiser. I’m now very thankful for the switch that took place in 2010 that has brought me to writing this book to share with you the things I’ve discovered along the way.

Understanding Impact of Language, Culture, and Time

I have learned that over time the meaning of the words we speak change. They change many times and they even disappear. A simple example of this during my lifetime is the word “sick.” When I was in high school, this word always meant that whatever we were talking about was bad. It was horrible, terrible, or even disgusting. Yet at the same time, though, in the ’90s we can find that this word was already being used in South London, England to mean the complete opposite.

It actually meant that something was cool, hip, awesome, and amazing. Sooner or later the changes to this word entered American and Canadian culture to mean the same thing. Today, it still carries the same meaning of being cool, hip, and awesome. So we should consider culture and the generational effect whenever we read the written word.

For anyone who speaks more than one language, you know that it’s hard to translate a word or even a concept accurately into another language. Languages don’t travel well when they take the journey through time. Especially when the person who wrote the original text is dead and gone.

The changes that happen to words within a culture are complex enough, let alone looking at those words from outside of that culture, outside of the time period, and from an utterly different world view. We always need to consider how words and books are translated from their original state.

Having said all of this, I think English is a crazy language—more so in trying to express the finer complexities of other languages. I remember when I was in university in Groningen, the Netherlands, I had German roommates who were so much fun to live with. Often, they would ask me what was the English word for some German word they wanted to use. How should it be said or spoken? My only response sometimes was … um, we don’t have a word for that.

I still remember the look on their faces as it left them puzzled. How could we not have a word for that in English? The answer: we just don’t. What can I say? We see this in how often English uses other languages to express our own language rather than having our own translation. An example is the German word Kindergarten.

It’s important to be aware, then; no translation is perfect. We need to always consider the original. I’ve tried to put what I’ve learned through culture, time, history, and the translation into this book which will help us on our journey to revealing the grand master plan and where we find the data and purpose for planet earth.

In All the Data, Where Do We Find the Blueprint

Any successful project needs a plan. It must be well recorded where all stages, processes, procedures, and requirements are laid out. I’m sure you can imagine what industries these documents belong to, like the blueprint, the sheet music, the food ingredients list, the requirements engineering document. Everything we create starts off with some kind of plan. If this didn’t exist, chaos would be sure to follow. In our case, then, could the upgrade of the earth succeed without a proper plan in place?

Another purpose of these documents is to give the support teams the confidence that they can rely on their management teams to lead them. Likewise, this needs to be valid for earth and its upgrade. I can’t imagine working on a project and not trusting the management team. This would be extremely stressful. In fact, it is stressful. I think many might have experienced this in their own jobs. It’s not fun.

As I shared in the intro, the key question that drove me was what is the practical purpose of the earth? The groups I described in the beginning didn’t seem to have a consistent answer that satisfied me. Have you ever thought about this yourself? Have you ever heard of someone speaking about the practical purpose of the earth?

I considered that anything that was written down on paper could be considered data, so I began the search for an answer. This included books on general history, science, beliefs, religions, philosophies, and ideologies. I did the best I could with the time I had, which now is going on ten years. Now in all this data, where do you think we find the most relevant answer with some sense of a practical purpose uniquely defined for the earth? Also, trying not to cherry-pick the data in the process. It may surprise you.

I could only find a trace of an answer in one source: the Bible. Yes, you read that right. The answer to this great, amazing, wonderful future of the earth and the coming restoration upgrade is all found in the grand plan of the Bible. I’m not joking. At this point you may think, oh great, that old ancient book called the Bible and, wow, you are pointing to Christianity as the answer. Which is religion. You’ve misled me.

I hope, in fact, that you are not angry at this statement. Let me first answer you by saying no. I haven’t misled you at all. Let’s for the purpose of this book just set aside completely religious thinking. I care little for it myself. Let’s also set aside political and ideological beliefs. I want to focus on only the element of creating something. Is it possible to build and create without someone planning, designing, and drawing up documentation for what you want to create?

Bakers and chefs know that if you don’t get the ingredients just right, the food you are cooking will end up tasteless. Music composers know that without first writing each note down in their symphony, it won’t be a symphony when finished. Software developers know that without the foundation of coding language, the software won’t be able to do anything. Lastly, science knows that since the discovery of DNA, we have what they call the blueprint of life.

If everything is data, maybe as a data point—not a religious book—the Bible could be that document. The most amazing blueprint ever. A blueprint that helps us to understand the practical purpose of planet earth. A purpose and plan that includes us as part of the plan.

And … most importantly, a guide to understanding the criteria needed to qualify for joining the team which will lead the great upgrade, helping you to understand more about the purpose of your life. There’s more than enough evidence in the Bible that the earth will be around for at least the next 43,000 years. Now, isn’t that interesting? I’d like to invite you to read on and expand on the concept of “anything is possible!”

Some Facts about Our Blueprint

As you read on, thank you for giving me the chance to share what I’ve discovered. I’ll admit, not all of it is anything new. Yet much of it might have never been heard of in this way before. What I write in this book has brought me so much peace, joy, and a newfound outlook on life. It’s changed how I view the lives of people around me, and how I view work and the purpose of work. It’s a discovery that keeps on changing me for what I hope is the better. I hope it will be the same for you too, as you continue.

I wanted to share some facts about the Bible which many people might not know. I think it’s important to learn a couple things about the blueprint that has changed billions of lives. The Bible is not a book about one day escaping the earth to go to Heaven, as many believe. In fact, it’s the blueprint and execution plan of Heaven being established on earth and the final and greatest upgrade ever to be executed. Here are some interesting facts that I wanted to highlight:³

The word “bible” is from the Greek ta biblia, which means “the scrolls” or “the books.” We derive the word from the ancient city of Byblos, which was the official supplier of paper products to the ancient world.⁴
The Bible is not a single work but a collection of works from a wide variety of authors, such as shepherds, kings, farmers, priests, poets, scribes, and fishermen. Authors also include traitors, embezzlers, adulterers, murderers, and auditors.⁵ It was written over fifteen centuries and by forty different authors and has sixty-six books within it.
Over 100 million copies of the Bible are sold each year,⁵ with total sales exceeding five billion copies.⁶
The full Bible has been translated into 532 languages. It has been partially translated into 2,883 languages.⁷
While it took over 1,000 years to write the Old Testament, the New Testament was written within a period of 50–75 years.⁸
The top three highlighted books of all time on Kindle are (1) The Holy Bible by Crossway Bibles, (2) Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, and (3) The Hunger Games.⁹
China is not only the largest producer of textiles and manufactured goods in the world; the country is also the largest producer of Bibles.¹⁰
The Bible has inspired more song lyrics than any other book, including “40” (U2), “Adam Raised a Cain” (Bruce Springsteen), “Adam’s Apple” (Aerosmith), “All You Zombies” (The Hooters), “Be Still” (Kelly Clarkson), “Blackened” (Metallica), “Cinnamon Girl” (Prince), “Come Sail Away” (Styx), “Every Grain of Sand” (Bob Dylan), “I Am God,” and his new album, “Jesus Is King” (Kanye West), and many more.¹¹
Bob Marley was buried with a stalk of marijuana, his red Gibson Les Paul guitar, and a Bible.¹²
There are 93 women who speak in the Bible, 49 of whom are named. They speak a total of 14,056 words, or about 1.1 percent of the Bible. There are 188 named women in the Bible.¹³

These are my top ten facts that I found interesting. Online you can find many, many more. There’s also plenty of external evidence from non-Christian writers and archaeologists confirming that the entire Bible is a trustworthy document. Joseph Free, an archaeologist, said that:

“Archaeology has confirmed countless passages which had been rejected by critics as unhistorical or contrary to known facts.”¹⁴

Famous Jewish archaeologist Nelson Glueck confidently said that:

“It … may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference. Scores of archaeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or exact detail historical statements in the Bible.”¹⁵

Former agnostic, author of 151 books, and Christian apologist Josh McDowell¹⁶ tells us that:

“After personally trying to shatter the historicity and validity of the Scriptures, I have come to the conclusion that they are historically trustworthy.”¹⁷

Management Teams Write Blueprints

I find it helps, when we think about our architects, the earth, and the Bible blueprint plan, to think about it in terms of the founders of a company along with their selected management teams. The Bible is a combination of the company internal rules, the business plan from start to finish, the process overviews, and the blueprint of the products it will create—the product being the earth and us.

If I have a business and I’m the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the company, then I’ll surround myself with a good team of people. I’ll build relationships with them. I’ll share my visions and plans with them and invite them to come join me in the journey. You could apply this to any organization that has teams of people working toward a goal of some sort. Though the leader holds the vision, it will be the wonderful teams who will do the physical writing and drafting of the documentation with me on the project.

As we read in the second fact about the Bible, it’s not a single work but a collection of works from a wide variety of authors, such as shepherds, kings, farmers, priests, poets, scribes, and fishermen. Authors also include traitors, embezzlers, adulterers, murderers, and auditors. These people are the team members that our architects and founders of the company have surrounded themselves with. They’ve done the work of drawing up the foundational documents of the company.

When we catch the grand vision of the founders of the company, we want to become a part of their team and a part of that vision. It’s no different from joining a company’s team, or a professional sports team, or a music band. We understand what it means to be a part of a team and to make the team. We also understand that it’s not always so easy to make it.

When I was in high school, I can say I didn’t make the cut for the junior basketball team. That was tough, but it made me want to review why I didn’t make it and then make the corrections so I could try again the following year. In my career, I’ve also applied to work at some amazing companies, as their own visions and plans for their products were attractive to me. I wanted to be a part of their team, a part of their company. Yet I wasn’t qualified. Or, more so, I haven’t yet met the qualifications they require of me to join their teams.

Once we know how to qualify to get onto the team, we then discover how we fit into playing our specific role that can only be achieved by us alone. It’s exciting to begin the journey in discovering what your own purpose and role is in the blueprint and plan of the company. It literally changes your entire life. Right now, I’m working for my founders and I’m a part of the team. I can’t imagine trading it for anything else in this world.

When I see the value of joining this company and the team, let’s just say, there’s no other company, team, or business that I would ever want to switch to. The owners of this company are the best. The company benefits are out of this world; literally, they’re out of this world! In this company I’m valued and irreplaceable. Once this book is done, I’ll move on to what they have next for me to work on, knowing there’s always amazing work ahead.

Not only that. I’m not only part of the team, but I’ve joined a family business. I became a part of the family. I know that whatever happens in my life, this company and its founders have my back, that I can trust the team surrounding me. I can trust the blueprint that has been drawn up with full certainty. You get to take part in the continued work of the amazing blueprint plan. You start the journey towards being part of the great upgrade coming to the earth.

It’s so exciting to discover, in all the data out there, that all along, we find the plan and purpose for the earth in the Bible blueprint.