Hi, I’m Linda. Thanks so much for checking out the first 2025 edition of my Linda Be Learning newsletter. If you are just discovering me, I encourage you to check out my website to learn more about the work I do in the field of learning technology and innovation.

This year, I am being more intentional in how I’m designing this newsletter. I have worked in the tech industry since the 1990s, but I was already coding learning programs a decade before that on an Apple IIE. I’ve seen and learned a lot about this industry in terms of hardware and software, as well as technology hype and folklore. Much of what I have learned and continue to learn is just how much damage the tech industry is responsible for, and how we collectively can help turn around that damage and instead use our technology superpowers for good.

Moving forward, you’ll notice themes around this call for tech for good, looking at specific technologies and their intersections with human learning. In this edition, the theme is terraforming, and how learning technology - machine and human learning - can be leveraged to assist with the climate change crisis.

On the day I am putting the finishing touches on this newsletter in January 2025, it’s snowing in Atlanta, Los Angeles is on fire, and I have roses blooming up here in the greater Seattle area. There is no denying the impact we’re having, so let’s instead focus our energy on being the change.

Tech to Get Excited About

I am always discovering and exploring new tech. It’s usually:

• recent developments in tech I have worked on in the past,

• tech I am actively using myself for projects,

• tech I am researching for competitive analysis or other purposes, and/or

• my client’s tech.

This month, we’re going to look at some exciting tech used for terraforming.

What is Terraforming?

Per Benjamin Bratton:

“The term ‘terraforming’ usually refers to transforming the ecosystems of other planets or moons to make them capable of supporting Earth-like life, but the looming ecological consequences of what is called the Anthropocene suggest that in the decades to come, we will need to terraform Earth if it is to remain a viable host for Earth-like life.”

The take-home biscuit here is that human-induced climate change requires intentionally designed human intervention, that natural climate solutions such as afforestation or regenerative agriculture are not enough. However, terraforming itself is not simply a singular technology, but rather a variety of practices that include people in their various relationships with nature and with each other.

As Holly Jean Buck puts it:

“Rather than just emerging technologies, both solar geoengineering and carbon removal are practices that combine aspects of infrastructure and social intervention. We must not pigeonhole them in the field of technology, where only experts are allowed; we must see them as projects, programs and practices about which civil society can decide.”

So there’s the technology side, but also the human side. First, let’s consider the technology. One start-up that is making impressive strides is Terraform Industries.

Terraform Industries

Terraform Industries is scaling technology to produce cheap natural gas with sunlight and air. They have developed a system, called a Terraformer, that captures carbon dioxide (CO_²) from the air and creates hydrogen from water using solar power. The system then combines the hydrogen and CO_² into a chemical reactor to make natural gas. According to founder Casey Handmer, the chemical reactor is hitting 94% methane purity already, meaning that it is making synthetic natural gas fully compatible with existing distribution pipelines.

Unlike physically massive power plants, a single Terraformer is designed to fit into a shipping container. The company is betting that market subsidies and rapidly declining solar power cost will make it cheaper to synthesize natural gas from solar power rather than pull it from the ground. Terraform Industries doesn’t plan on selling the natural gas, but the Terraformers. The idea is to flip the current system on its head: Instead of burning hydrocarbons to make electricity, it uses electricity to make hydrocarbons.

The company’s success metric is reducing net fossil carbon flows by 10 times their current level. As their recent white paper says, “A decade or so of frantic work at massive scale to displace fossil carbon production, forever.”

If you are interested in being part of the climate change solution, are mechanically intuitive and like working on big hardware projects, Terraform Industries is hiring.

Technology for Good

I’m always on the lookout for companies, media, and products that benefit humanity. In keeping with the climate change theme, Hardware to Save a Planet is a podcast you should know about.

Hardware to Save a Planet

Launched in the summer of 2022, Hardware to Save a Planet highlights technical innovations in the fight against climate change. Hosted by Dylan Garrett, VP of Climate Tech Business at Synapse, each episode features interviews with the innovators themselves, focuses on a specific climate challenge and explores the emerging solutions.

Check out the trailer below, or visit their website to learn more and subscribe.

Tech Retrospective: Terraforming Mars

I began this edition with a short of Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson suggesting that if it is possible to terraform Mars, then it should be possible, and easier, to terraform Earth and reverse the damage human technological advances have produced. But where did the idea of terraforming Mars come from in the first place, and why was the idea pursued in lieu of focusing instead on Earth?

In this 2019 YouTube video, Dr. Tyson and Chuck Nice break down the logistics of terraforming Mars. They also discuss Elon Musk’s plan to warm up Mars, leaving Chuck pondering the pros and cons of being a two-planet species — definitely a Blade Runner moment for me. Dr. Tyson also elaborates on the point we began with in the short, that is, the day we have the power to terraform Mars is the same day we have the power to terraform Earth.

In a more recent YouTube video, Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder, a physicist and member of the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy (MCMP), weighs in with her take on the background facts and scientific merit of it all.

Dr. Hossenfelder discusses the primary challenges with terraforming Mars, including the challenges of growing food, which, incidentally, is the theme of next month’s newsletter. She ends with an endorsement of Planet Wild and a special offer if you are interested in how you can get involved in rewilding Planet Earth.

Learning Theory and Learning Technology

As Holly Jean Buck alluded to earlier, technology itself is not enough, because terraforming also requires changes in human behavior. In general, the everyday person has no idea how the tech they use daily impacts the environment, and even if they have some understanding of it, they likely will not have the confidence in their ability to do anything about it. Effective social intervention programs begin with awareness, but must quickly move to action.

As I quoted from Buck earlier, the idea is to co-create solutions in the form of “projects, programs and practices about which civil society can decide.” That means that people with technical expertise must be able to help effectively communicate and educate their less technical peers, so that the less technical folks can bring their best to the co-creation process - their novice mindset, outside of the industry perspectives, and unique insights into problems that the tech experts might not even have considered.

This brings us to the topic of peer learning.

Peer Learning

When it comes to technical training, one approach that can't be beat is peer learning. Why, you ask?

So glad you asked!

In my experience working for and with large, small, and start-up tech companies, a consistent issue I see is that most corporate learning teams lack the technical acumen to effectively design and develop learning experiences targeting the skills needed on highly technical teams. Because the learning teams don't have the technical skills themselves and often are challenged to extract technical content from SMEs as a consequence, the resulting learning experiences end up being designed for novices (the learning professional) rather than the intended, more advanced technical audience. The experience benefits no one and the learning team loses any credibility it may have once had.

So how do you get around this conundrum? By teaching the technical teams how to implement effective peer learning strategies and design practices. I learned long ago that it is far easier to teach subject matter experts (SMEs) learning design and development skills than it is to teach learning pros advanced tech skills.

So what are the learning design and development skills involved in peer learning? This is one of my areas of learning expertise, and I will be discussing my unique take in this introduction to peer learning session I’m offering in February (more on that below).

But if I have sufficiently piqued your interest in peer learning, you should be able to uncover lots of freely available resources online. To help get you started, check out this recorded webinar from some of my Canadian colleagues.

Upcoming Learning Offerings

Late last year, I conducted a poll to see what learning topics you'd like me to offer live learning sessions on in 2025. The top response (next to, Are you kidding? ALL of them!) was peer learning.

I'm so glad to hear that, because I am passionate about informal learning methodologies like peer learning and helping teams develop effective peer learning practices. I have replicated these effective peer learning practices with a variety of technical teams at multiple tech companies I've worked at and with over the past 16 years, including teams of software engineers, front- and back-end developers, tech writers, curriculum developers, UX researchers and designers, product and program managers, customer success teams and more!

Registration is now open for my first live learning session of 2025, An Introduction to Peer Learning, scheduled for February 20th at 9 am PST. In this session, you will be introduced to an intentional methodology for designing peer learning for internal teams.

Be sure to register early and secure your spot! And if you want to see recordings from some of my previous live learning sessions, check out and consider subscribing to my YouTube channel.

That’s all for now. I hope you have enjoyed this month’s focus on “regreening” the earth, as outside of technology, gardening and coexisting with the natural world are some of my biggest passions.

See you next month!