Podcasts about The Diamond Age

This week, Noah Smith and Erik Torenberg explore persistent economic myths and recent developments—from cost disease in services like healthcare and education to stagnating manufacturing productivity, rising higher education costs, drug pricing policies, and student loan debates—while also reflecting on broader intellectual shifts driven by culture wars and foreign aid discussions. – SPONSORS: NetSuite More than 41,000 businesses have already upgraded to NetSuite by Oracle, the #1 cloud financial system bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, HR, into ONE proven platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine learning: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://netsuite.com/102⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ AdQuick The easiest way to book out-of-home ads (like billboards, vehicle wraps, and airport displays) the same way you would order an Uber. Ready to get your brand the attention it deserves? Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://adquick.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ today to start reaching your customers in the real world. – SEND US YOUR Q's FOR NOAH TO ANSWER ON AIR: Econ102@Turpentine.co – FOLLOW ON X: @noahpinion @eriktorenberg @turpentinemedia – RECOMMENDED IN THIS EPISODE: Noahpinion: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.noahpinion.blog/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  – TAKEAWAYS: Healthcare & Education Cost Trends Reversing: Healthcare price growth has slowed significantly since 2009 and is now growing slower than average costs. Technology's Role in Services: AI potentially solving education through personalized one-on-one tutoring (referencing "The Diamond Age"). Student Loans & Market Dynamics: Marginal students are dropping out of college, reducing demand. Pharmaceutical Pricing: Americans actually pay less on average for pharmaceuticals due to cheaper generics. Cultural Commentary: Discussing intellectual debates between prominent thinkers (Tyler Cowen vs. Scott Alexander on foreign aid, Scott Alexander vs. Curtis Yarvin on governance), emphasizing the importance of not getting trapped in the cultural moment of 2020-2021.

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"Ich liebe jede Farbe, Hauptsache sie ist schwarz.""Pop will eat itself!""Wer vergisst, tötet auch ein zweites Mal!"Sprüche wie diese, in ihren unterschiedlichen Graden von Nihilismus, standen in meiner Teenagerzeit an unseren Wänden. Ganz normaler Gruftistuff. Weder wir Wandmaler noch das angestrebte Publikum - Kumpels, Eltern, Funktionäre - nahmen den Quatsch sonderlich ernst. Wenn man es sehr hoch hängen will, war es eine Form der Rebellion, ein Auflehnen gegen eine Gesellschaft (die DDR), mit deren Zielen man vielleicht noch halbwegs übereinstimmte - Sozialismus, warum nicht? - deren Methoden man aber ablehnte, speziell so Sachen, wie Leute ohne Rechtsgrundlage wegzusperren und s**t.Gerade weil die Kluft zwischen der postulierten und der gelebten Moral so tief war, fühlten wir weniger das Bedürfnis, gegen "das System" zu kämpfen; wir machten unser Ding parallel zu ihm, im Zweifel in leichter Opposition, aus der tiefen Überzeugung heraus, dass das alles eh nicht mehr so lange geht; zu bankrott, zu ausgehöhlt, zu bigott war die Gesellschaft.Was seinerzeit an Wänden stand, strahlt Dir heute auf Insta, TikTok oder, gottbehüte, X, the everything app, durch die Rezeptoren direkt ins Brain. Das ändert an der Tatsache nichts, dass das angestrahlte Publikum - Kumpels, Eltern, Funktionäre - den Quatsch auch heute nicht sonderlich ernst nehmen. Dabei steht im Unterschied zum plakativen Spruch damals, in den Posts heute, je nach Bubble, manchmal Fundamentales, klug Analysiertes gar. Aber da das gefährlich sein kann für die aktuellen Machthaber, benutzen diese die Kraft des Algorithmus, die Nachrichtenzone mit "Scheiße zu fluten". Damit sich das nur milde politisch interessierte Publikum nicht durch intelligente Kritik radikalisiert, werden Videos priorisiert, möglichst harmlose - Affen, Kinder, Katzen - und nur zu Wahlkampfzeiten pusht man vielleicht mal die eine oder andere Greueltat der aktuell größten Feinde des Establishments. Das alles ist gut untersucht und in Kurz- und Langform dokumentiert.Wenn man das Ganze als Wettstreit von Ideen betrachtet, von mir aus sogar "Ideologien" oder "Wertesystemen", kann man dieses Game durchaus interessiert finden, auch wenn die Protagonisten mit dem eigenen Leben spielen. Schon immer gab es den Wettstreit um die richtige Idee, den richtigen Weg zu leben und bei aller Verzweiflung ob des aktuellen Niveaus des Diskurses bringen 3 Millionen Posts immer noch weniger Menschen um, als 3 Millionen Kugeln. Früher wurde der Battle auf dem Schlachtfeld der Ideen als ein Kampf zwischen Progressiven und Konservativen betrachtet und als wertvoll angesehen, denn eine Gesellschaft, die zu schnell voranschreitet, lässt zu viele der Langsameren auf der Strecke; verharrt jedoch die Gesellschaft in Angst vor der Zukunft, droht sie zu explodieren, weil die Klugen und Wilden keinen Bock auf Langeweile und zähe Muffigkeit haben.Aber entspricht die Beschreibung "Vorwärts gegen Rückwärts" noch der Realität? Kämpfen hier zwei Moralitäten gegeneinander und die eine, aktuell die Konservative, liegt gerade vorn, weil den meisten Leuten der S**t um sie herum zu schnell geht, sie nicht mehr mitkommen?Wenn wir lesen (müssen), was der angeblich reichste F****r auf dem Planeten so sagt, ist man eher verwirrt:Für Nicht-Nerds: Wir Menschen sind nur die Starthilfe für eine digitale Superintelligenz, meint die menschliche Superintelligenz Elon Musk. Nun muss eine Meinung weder fundiert, durchdacht oder auch nur klug sein, um sich zu verbreiten, siehe "Coronaschutzimpfung machen 5G", siehe "Ausländer sind Schmarotzer" und ähnlicher Dünnschiss, den man im Erzgebirgsvorland so glaubt.Die Idee einer Singularität, einer Superintelligenz, in der wir Menschen bestenfalls aufgehen, wenn wir nicht einfach nur ihr Treibstoff sind, weil, zu dumm, stammt in etwa aus der Zeit, als ich die eingangs erwähnten Sprüche mit schwarzem Filzer an die Rauhfasertapete über meinem Bett malte. Dachte William Gibson Ende der Achtziger Jahre aus heutiger Sicht noch "konventionell" (Stecker in den Kopf), beschreibt 1995 Neal Stephenson in "Diamond Age" einen Almanach für Kinder, der dem ChatGPT-Abo, mit dem Schüler heute ihre Lehrer bescheißen, verdammt ähnlich ist. 1998 schrieb Ray Kurzweil dann den Urtext "The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence", und legte dar, wie wir uns alle zusammenschalten und inmitten von Computern leben werden. Nur ein Jahr später vollendeten die Wachowski-Geschwister den Weg von Gibsons "Computer für alle" zu "Alle für den Computer" mit der Matrix-Trilogie und ihrer Vision für die Biobatterie Mensch. Alles hübsche Geschichten über Superintelligenzen und Singularitäten, je nach persönlichem Geschmack hoffnungsvoll oder schreckensnihilistisch - aber auf keinen Fall real.Musks Spruch aber, dass wir Biopeople nur der Samen für eine digitale Intelligenz seien, ist, so dumm er ist, ernst gemeint und der Menschenfeind hat die Mittel und den Einfluss auf den mit Abstand dümmsten Präsidenten der Welt (Honni war ein Einstein dagegen), wenn schon nicht dieses Ziel zu erreichen, auf dem Weg dahin aber ordentlich Geschirr zu zerbrechen, die Weltwirtschaft z.B. oder den mehr schlecht als recht haltenden Weltfrieden. Irgendwie macht da die eigene Neigung zum zynischen Spruch, den manchmal nur ich lustig finde oder die provokante Spielerei mit dem Nihilismus, zu der ich auch 40 Jahre später noch neige, nicht mehr den allergrößten Spaß. Milliardäre machen einem aber auch alles kaputt. Duh.Aber so schnell lasse ich mich nicht aus der Rolle der milden Opposition drängen und praktiziere nunmehr Antinihilismus. Nicht oft, es fällt mir nicht zu, zu lange trage ich schwarz, bin zu introvertiert, zu fremd ist mir der Mensch, aber wenn es gegen Elon Musk geht, reiße ich mich zusammen. Zu pessimistisch sind die meisten Menschen um mich herum, da spielt es kaum eine Rolle, ob ihr Tribe bei Wahlen gerade verloren hat oder gewonnen. Denn so ansteckend wie ausländerfeindlicher AfD-Scheiß, Anti-Woke-Quatsch und AI-Slop sind, muss man wissen: alles, was beim Menschen durch irgendeine Körperöffnung rein geht und dann im Kopf ankommt, kann anstecken - sogar Freundlichkeit! Ich habe es jahrzehntelang nicht geglaubt. Jetzt ist es fast die letzte Hoffnung. Also mach ich das jetzt! Ich geh rein! Ich f*****g lächle Menschen an. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lobundverriss.substack.com

Clement Pang, cofounder of Lirvana Labs and Jeremy Au explored: 1. Google Engineer to $400M Exit Clement detailed his journey from a computer science graduate at Rice University in 2004 to starting at Google during its IPO phase and later GLMX in 2007 to build a financial trading platform as a founding engineer. In 2012, he co-founded Wayfront, an observability SaaS company that filled a gap in system monitoring. Early customers included Workday, Yammer, and Lyft, and the platform eventually scaled to serve companies like Reddit and DoorDash. Wayfront's acquisition by VMware in 2017 for $400 million provided Clement with invaluable lessons about scaling cross-functional teams and handling millions of data points per second. He emphasized minimizing dependency on external factors, a lesson learned from GLMX's reliance on interest rates, and aligning teams with a clear vision—a skill he honed while managing 2,000 engineers at VMware. 2. “Diamond Age” Education AI: Drawing inspiration from Neil Stephenson's The Diamond Age, Clement envisions AI as a tool to democratize education and approximate human tutors. In 2021, Clement co-founded Livano Labs with his sister to transform early childhood education using generative AI. Their app, Yeti Confetti Kids, launched in 2022, targets children aged 3 to 9, teaching math, English, and social-emotional skills. AI designs personalized learning experiences instead of relying on pre-set algorithms. Feedback loops enabled the AI to improve its outputs by analyzing real-world usage data. He emphasized curriculum alignment for classroom settings, where AI must adhere to structured learning goals. 3. Gen Z Future: Clement reflected on how tools like ChatGPT are changing interpersonal communication, particularly for Gen Z. He drew parallels to the introduction of calculators in education, noting how technological tools shift norms and practices. He discussed AI's role as a sounding board for personal and professional problem-solving, encouraging users to engage critically with its outputs while leveraging its strengths. They also discussed lessons from Clement's experiences managing cross-functional teams during Wayfront's rapid growth, how decreasing costs are enabling scalable applications like Yeti Confetti Kids, and the role of AI in enhancing collaboration and decision-making. === Clement Pang is a serial entrepreneur (400MM in exits) and current co-founder and co-CEO of Lirvana Labs, a startup that created an AI Learning Companion to teach children the critical literacy and reasoning skills that change lives and destinies. With over 17 years of experience in software engineering, architecture, and leadership, Clement is passionate about building purposeful products that leverage the power of AI and data to solve real-world problems and improve human well-being. === Watch, listen or read the full insight at www.bravesea.com/blog/ google-engineer-to-400M-exit Nonton, dengar atau baca wawasan lengkapnya di www.bravesea.com/blog/ google-engineer-to-400M-exit 观看、收听或阅读全文，请访问 www.bravesea.com/blog/ google-engineer-to-400M-exit Xem, nghe hoặc đọc toàn bộ thông tin chi tiết tại www.bravesea.com/blog/ google-engineer-to-400M-exit Get transcripts, startup resources & community discussions at www.bravesea.com WhatsApp: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VakR55X6BIElUEvkN02e TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@jeremyau Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jeremyauz Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeremyau LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bravesea Spotify English: https://open.spotify.com/show/4TnqkaWpTT181lMA8xNu0T Bahasa Indonesia: https://open.spotify.com/show/2Vs8t6qPo0eFb4o6zOmiVZ Chinese: https://open.spotify.com/show/20AGbzHhzFDWyRTbHTVDJR Vietnamese: https://open.spotify.com/show/0yqd3Jj0I19NhN0h8lWrK1 YouTube English: https://www.youtube.com/@JeremyAu?sub_confirmation=1

This week we strapped on a Motorola pager and stole a briefcase off our dad in order to look businessy enough to chat to the Batman of the B2B world, LinkedIn legend and co-founder of Evidenza, Peter Weinberg. Peter Weinberg has effectively grabbed B2B marketing by the ankles and dragged it out of the dull and dreary hole into which it had buried its head. World famous for his time in charge of the game-changing B2B institute at LinkedIn – alongside his pal Jon Lombardo – Peter is now the extraordinary human brains behind AI powered research platform Evidenza, where he continues to be a champion for the kind of B2B that's never bland. ///// Follow Peter on LinkedIn Here's his website Here is Rory Sutherland Eurostar TED Talk Timestamps (02:37) - Quickfire Questions (03:34) - Peter's Career Path (06:36) - Transition to Advertising (11:22) - The B2B Institute at LinkedIn (15:50) - Pivotal Moments in B2B Marketing (17:37) - Contrarian Views in Marketing (19:05) - The Role of Synthetic Data (24:32) - Launching Evidenza (30:50) - Validating Synthetic Research (34:13) - Scepticism Towards AI in Marketing (40:15) - AI and Advertising Effectiveness (45:45) - Using AI for Strategic Planning Peter's Book Recommendations are: Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson How Brands Grow by Bryon Sharp   Building Distinctive Brand Assets by Jenni Romaniuk  How Not To Plan – Les Binet & Sarah Carter Antifragile by Nassim Taleb  The Elephant In The Brain by Kevin Simler & Robin Hanson /////

Neal Stephenson's ability to illuminate complex, future-focused ideas in ways that both provoke thought and spark wonder has established him as one of the most innovative thinkers in literature today. Yet his new novel, Polostan, revisits the Soviet era with a twist, shifting his focus from the speculative technologies of tomorrow to the historical currents of the 1930s. In Neal's second appearance, Tyler asks him why he sometimes shifts from envisioning the future to illustrating the past, the rise of history autodidacts, the implications of leaked secrets from the atomic age to today's AI, the logistics of faking one's death, why he still drafts novels in longhand, Soviet idealism among Western intellectuals, which Soviet achievements he admires, the lag in AR development, how LLMs might boost AR, whether social media is increasingly giving way to private group chats, his continuing influence on technologists, why AI-generated art might struggle to connect with readers, the primer from The Diamond Age in light of today's LLMs, the prospect of AGI becoming an unnoticed background tool, what Neal believes the world really needs more of, what lies ahead in Polostan and the broader “Bomb Light” series, and more Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video. Recorded October 9th, 2024. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Neal on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here.

This week we talk about the Double Reduction Policy, gaokao, and Chegg.We also discuss GPTs, cheating, and disruption.Recommended Book: Autocracy, Inc by Anne ApplebaumTranscriptIn July of 2021, the Chinese government implemented a new education rule called the Double Reduction Policy.This Policy was meant, among other things, to reduce the stress students in the country felt related to their educational attainment, while also imposing sterner regulations on businesses operating in education and education-adjacent industries.Chinese students spend a lot of time studying—nearly 10 hours per day for kids ages 12-14—and the average weekly study time for students is tallied at 55 hours, which is substantially higher than in most other countries, and quite a lot higher than the international average of 45 hours per week.This fixation on education is partly cultural, but it's also partly the result of China's education system, which has long served to train children to take very high-stakes tests, those tests then determining what sorts of educational and, ultimately, employment futures they can expect. These tests are the pathway to a better life, essentially, so the kids face a whole lot of pressure from society and their families to do well, because if they don't, they've sentenced themselves to low-paying jobs and concomitantly low-status lives; it's a fairly brutal setup, looked at from elsewhere around the world, but it's something that's kind of taken for granted in modern China.On top of all that in-class schoolwork, there's abundant homework, and that's led to a thriving private tutoring industry. Families invest heavily in ensuring their kids have a leg-up over everyone else, and that often means paying people to prepare them for those tests, even beyond school hours and well into the weekend.Because of all this, kids in China suffer abnormally high levels of physical and mental health issues, many of them directly linked to stress, including a chronic lack of sleep, high levels of anxiety, rampant obesity and everything that comes with that, and high levels of suicide, as well; suicide is actually the most common cause of death amongst Chinese teenagers, and the majority of these suicides occur in the lead-up to the gaokao, or National College Entrance Exam, which is the biggest of big important exams that determine how teens will be economically and socially sorted basically for the rest of their lives.This recent Double Reduction Policy, then, was intended to help temper some of those negative, education-related consequences, reducing the volume of homework kids had to tackle each week, freeing up time for sleep and relaxation, while also putting a cap on the ability of private tutoring companies to influence parents into paying for a bunch of tutoring services; something they'd long done via finger-wagging marketing messages, shaming parents who failed to invest heavily in their child's educational future, making them feel like they aren't being good parents because they're not spending enough on these offerings.This policy pursued these ends, first, by putting a cap on how much homework could be sent home with students, limiting it to 60 minutes for youngsters, and 90 minutes for middle schoolers.It also provided resources and rules for non-homework-related after-school services, did away with bad rankings due to poor test performance that might stigmatize students in the future, and killed off some of those fear-inducing, ever-so-important exams altogether.It also provided some new resources and frameworks for pilot programs that could help their school system evolve in the future, allowing them to try some new things, which could, in theory, then be disseminated to the nation's larger network of schools if these experiments go well.And then on the tutoring front, they went nuclear on those private tutoring businesses that were shaming parents into paying large sums of money to train their children beyond school hours.The government instituted a new system of regulators for this industry, ceased offering new business licenses for tutoring companies, and forced all existing for-profit businesses in this space to become non-profits.This market was worth about $100 billion when this new policy came into effect, which is a simply staggering sum, but the government basically said you're not businesses anymore, you can't operate if you try to make a profit.This is just one of many industries the current Chinese leadership has clamped-down on over the past handful of years, often on cultural grounds, as was the case with limiting the amount of time children can play video games each day. But like that video game ban, which has apparently shown mixed results, the tutoring ban seems to have led to the creation of a flourishing black market for tutoring services, forcing these sorts of business dealings underground, and thus increasing the fee parents pay for them each month.In late-October of 2024, the Chinese government, while not formally acknowledging any change to this policy, eased pressure on private tutoring services—the regulators in charge of keeping them operating in accordance with nonprofit structures apparently giving them a nudge and a wink, telling them surreptitiously that they're allowed to expand again—possibly because China has been suffering a wave of economic issues over the past several years, and the truncation of the tutoring industry led to a lot of mass-firings, tens of thousands of people suddenly without jobs, and a substantial drop in tax revenue, as well, as the country's stock market lost billions of dollars worth of value basically overnight.It's also worth noting here that China's youth unemployment rate recently hit 18.8%, which is a bogglingly high number, and something that's not great for stability, in the sense that a lot of young people, even very well educated young people, can't find a job, which means they have to occupy themselves with other, perhaps less productive things.But high youth unemployment is also not great for the country's economic future, as that means these are people who aren't attaining new skills and experience—and they can't do that because the companies that might otherwise hire them can't afford to pay more employees because folks aren't spending enough on their offerings.So while it was determined that this industry was hurting children and their families who had to pay these near-compulsory tutoring fees, they also seemed to realize that lacking this industry, their unemployment and broader economic woes would be further inflamed—and allowing for this gray area in the rules seems to be an attempt to have the best of both worlds, though it may leave them burdened with the worst of both worlds, as well.What I'd like to talk about today is another facet of the global tutoring industry, and how new technologies seem to be flooding into this zone even more rapidly than in other spaces, killing off some of the biggest players and potentially portending the sort of collapse we might also see in other industries in the coming years.—Chegg, spelled c-h-e-g-g, is a US-based, education-focused tech company that has provided all sorts of learning-related services to customers since 2006.It went public on the NYSE in 2013, and in 2021 it was called the “most valuable edtech company in America” by Forbes, due in part to the boom in long-distance education services in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic; like Peloton and Zoom, Chegg was considered to be a great investment for a future in which more stuff is done remotely, as seemed likely to be the case for a good long while, considering all the distancing and shut-downs we were doing at the time.In early 2020, before that boom, the company was already reporting that it had 2.9 million subscribers to its Chegg Services offering, which gave users access to all sorts of school-related benefits, including help with homework, access to Q&As with experts, and a huge database of solutions for tests and assignments.The company then released a sort of social-publishing platform called Uversity in mid-2021, giving educators a place to share their own content, and they acquired a language-learning software company called Busuu, which is a bit like Duolingo, that same year for $436 million.In May of 2023, though, the company's CEO said, on an earnings call, that ChatGPT—the incredibly popular, basically overnight-popular large-language-model-powered AI chatbot created by OpenAI—might hinder Chegg's near-future growth.The day after that call, Chegg's stock price dropped by about 48%, cutting the company's market value nearly in half, and though later that same month he announced that Chegg would partner with OpenAI to launch its own AI platform called Cheggmate, which was launched as a beta in June, by early November the following year, 2024, the company had lost about 99% of its market valuation, dropping from a 2021 high of nearly $100 per share, down to less than $2 per share as of early November.This isn't a unique story: LLM-based AI tools, those made by OpenAI but also its competitors, including big tech companies like Google and Microsoft, which have really leaned into this seeming transition, have been messing with market valuations left and right, as this collection of tools and technologies have been evolving really fast—a recent five-year plan for Chegg indicated they didn't believe something like ChatGPT would exist until 2025 at the earliest, for instance, which turned out to be way off—but they've also been killing off high-flying company valuations because these sorts of tools are by definition multi-purpose, and a lot of the low-hanging fruit in any industry is basically just providing information that's already available somewhere in a more intuitive and accessible fashion; which is something a multi-purpose, bot-interfaced software tool is pretty good at doing, as it turns out.Chegg's services were optimized to provide school-related stuff to students—including test and homework answers those students could quickly reference if they wanted to study or cheat—and serving up these resources in a simple manner is what allowed them to pay the bills.ChatGPT and similar AI tools, though, can do the same, and for practically or literally—for the end-user, at least—free. And it can sometimes do so in a manner that's even more intuitive than the Cheggs of the world, even if these AI offerings are sometimes jumbled along the way; the risk-reward math is still favorable to a lot of people, because of just how valuable this kind of information provided in this way can be.Other companies and entire industries are finding themselves in the same general circumstances, also all of a sudden, because their unique value proposition has been offering some kind of information intuitively, or in some cases they've provided human interfaces that would do various things for customers: they would look up deals on a particular model of car, they would write marketing copy, they would commentate on sporting events.Some of these entities are trying to get ahead of the game, like Chegg did, by basically plugging their existing services into AI versions of the same, replacing their human commentators with bots that can manage a fair approximation of those now-unemployed humans, but at a fraction of the cost. Others are facing a huge number of new competitors, as smaller businesses or just individuals are realizing they can pay a little money for AI tokens and credits, plug an API into a website, which allows that AI to populate content on their site automatically, and they can then run the same sort of service with little or no effort, and vitally, little or no overhead.This creates a race-to-the-bottom situation in many such cases, and often the bots are nowhere near as good as the humans they're replacing, but especially in situations where human jobs have been optimized so that one human can be replaced with another human relatively simply, it has proven to be fairly easy to fire people and then replace them with non-humans that seem human-enough most of the time.So blog-writing and video-making and inventory-organizing and, yes, school-tutoring and similar services are increasingly being automated in this way, and while, sure, you could pay a premium to stick with Chegg and access these AI tools via their portal for $20 a month, the bet many investors are making is that folks will probably prefer to get what amounts to the same thing cheaper, or even free, directly from the source, or via one of those other lower-end intermediaries with fewer overhead costs.Chegg has lost about $14.5 billion in market value since early 2021, and the company is now expected to collapse under the weight of its debts sometime in the near-future; the shift in fortunes brought about by the deployment of generally capable, if not perfectly capable, chat-interface accessible AI tools has been that sudden.None of which means this is a permanent thing, as entities in industries currently being challenged by AI equivalent or near-equivalent tools might push back with their own, difficult to replicate offerings, and there's a chance that the small but burgeoning wave of vehemently non-AI tools—those that wave their human-made-ness, their non-AI-ness like a flag, or like an organic, cruelty-free label—might carve out their own sustainable, growable niche. That becomes their unique value proposition in place of what these AI-focused companies stole from them.But this kind of disruption sometimes leads to an extinction-level event for the majority of operators in a formerly flourishing space.Chegg, for their part, decided to revamp their AI offering, moving away from the Cheggmate name and working with Scale AI instead of OpenAI, to build a few dozen AI systems optimized for different academic focuses; which could prove to be a valuable differentiator for them, but it could also fall flat in the face of OpenAI's own re-skinned versions of ChatGPT, called GPTs, which allow users to do basically the same thing, coming up with their own field focused experts and personalities, rather than using the vanilla model of the bot.There's a chance this will also help Chegg deal with another AI-related issue—specifically, that ChatGPT was providing better answers to some students' questions than Chegg's human-derived offerings; they're trying to out-bot OpenAI, essentially, doing the homework-AI thing better than ChatGPT, and there's a chance that offering a demonstrably higher quality of answers might also serve as a survival-enabling differentiator; though their ability to consistently provide better answers in this way is anything but certain.It's also worth noting that what we're talking about here, so far, isn't the sci-fi dream of a perfect digital tutor—something like the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer from Neal Stephenson's novel The Diamond Age, which is something like an AI-powered storybook that adapts its content to the reader, and which then teaches said reader everything they need to know to flourish in life, day by day. Chegg and ChatGPT serve up tools that help students cheat on tests and homework, while also helping them look up information a lot easier when they decide not to cheat, and to practice various sorts of assignments and exams beforehand.So this is a far easier space to compete in than something more complex and actually tutor-like. It may be, then, that moving in that direction, toward tools that focus more on replacing teachers and tutors, rather than helping students navigate schoolwork, might be the killer app that allows some of these existing tutoring-ish tools to survive and thrive; though it may be that something else comes along in the meantime which fulfills that promise better—maybe ChatGPT, or maybe some new, more focused version of the same general collection of tools.It'll probably be a few years before we see how this and similar bets that're being made by at-risk companies facing the AI barbarians at the gate turn out, and at that point these tools will likely be even more powerful, offering even more capabilities and thus disrupting, or threatening to disrupt, even more companies in even more industries, as a consequence.Show Noteshttps://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/how-chatgpt-brought-down-an-online-education-giant-200b4ff2https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpts/https://ai.wharton.upenn.edu/focus-areas/human-technology-interaction/2024-ai-adoption-report/https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/07/ai-tutor-china-teaching-gaps/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Reduction_Policyhttps://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20965311241265123https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0738059324000117https://archive.ph/VKkrLhttps://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/07/22/asia-pacific/china-private-tutoring/https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/chinas-youth-unemployment-hits-fresh-high-economic-slowdown-restrictiv-rcna172183 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit letsknowthings.substack.com/subscribe

An interview with innovator and mobile app creator Jason Bavington regarding AI and how we balance technology with the real world. Here's his website link: https://apps.mi.ca/ The book mentioned: The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson can be purchased here - https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/172835/the-diamond-age-by-neal-stephenson/9780553380965 Closing song, Full Time Job by MindMe courtesy Epidemic Sound

Diamonds are only occasionally brought to the surface. But because carbon is plentiful, science fiction, such as Neal Stephenson's novel The Diamond Age, has sometimes imagined a world where scientists find an easy way to make lots of diamond artificially.

In dieser Episode von FUTURE UPDATE tauchen wir in Neal Stephensons visionären Roman "Diamond Age" ein, der die Themen Dezentralisierung, Bildung und Technologie auf faszinierende Weise verbindet. Wir erkunden Stephensons Vorstellung einer Zukunft, in der Technologien wie die Seed-Systeme und CryptNet traditionelle Machtstrukturen herausfordern und lokale, autonome Gemeinschaften entstehen lassen. Besonders beleuchten wir die "Illustrierte Fibel", ein adaptives Lernwerkzeug, das Kindern hilft, selbstbestimmt zu lernen und sich die Welt anzueignen. Der Roman wirft auch Fragen zur Rolle von künstlicher Intelligenz in der Governance und der Bedeutung von individueller Entwicklung auf. Abschließend diskutieren wir die Relevanz dieser Ideen für unsere heutige Gesellschaft und welche Lektionen wir daraus für die Zukunft ziehen können.

Justin is an associate professor of digital media in the department of Comparative Media Studies/Writing at MIT and the director of the Teaching Systems Lab. He is the author of Iterate: The Secret to Innovation in Schools and Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can't Transform Education, and he is the host of the TeachLab Podcast. He earned his doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and is a past Fellow at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society.Highlights from the conversation include: an opening segment reacting to the wave of student protests on college campuses across the United States and Canada; how generative AI skipped the adoption phase and arrived in classrooms with little to no preparation; a technical overview on what generative AI is and how it works; why AI is sometimes just a label to make things seem more "magical than they are;" how experts and novices can have very different experiences with Chat GPT; where the technology as a co-pilot may or may not fit within various industries;  the importance of implementing guardrails as AI becomes more prevalent in the education space; why students should be central to conversations about how to navigate the changing technology landscape; and a lighting round offering a science fiction summer reading list (see recommendations below).Science Fiction Reads:  Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. The Diamond Age by Neal StephensonAnything written by N.K. JemisinQuestions? Thoughts? Feedback? Email us at  freerangehumanspod@gmail.com or Tweet us at @jal_mehta and @Rodroad219

Subscribe to https://www.crisisInvesting.com to learn what Doug's investing in and get access to Phyle, our private member community, for free.    Books mentioned in this episode:  "180 Degrees: Unlearn the Lies You've Been Taught to Believe" book (00:06:28) Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth: Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (00:08:53) "What If" book series (00:12:17) Isaac Asimov's short story "The Final Question" - mentioned by speaker 2 at 00:27:03 Robert Heinlein's science fiction works - mentioned by speaker 2 at 00:28:03 Arthur C. Clarke's "Rendezvous with Rama" - mentioned by speaker 2 at 00:28:03 Jules Verne's science fiction works - mentioned by speaker 2 at 00:28:03 Olaf Stapleton's book "The Last and First Men" - mentioned by speaker 2 at 00:28:03 Joe Haldeman's "The Forever War" - mentioned by speaker 2 at 00:28:03 Larry Niven's "Ringworld" - mentioned by speaker 2 at 00:29:11 Neil Stephenson's "Diamond Age" - mentioned by speaker 2 at 00:29:11 Cixin Liu's "The Three-Body Problem" - mentioned by speaker 2 at 00:29:11 John Taylor Gatto's books on education - mentioned by speaker 1 at 00:37:44 Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov - mentioned at 00:51:00 Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler - mentioned at 00:55:12 Chapters: 00:00 Intro The suggestion to move to Argentina (00:01:04) Doug explains the differences between moving from California to Arizona and moving from Europe to Argentina. Owning land in Paraguay (00:03:13) Doug discusses the unique characteristics of Paraguay and why he does not own land there. Questions about the 9/11 building collapse (00:06:28) Doug shares his thoughts on the controlled demolition theory of Building 7's collapse and the lack of awareness about it. Historical events and numbers (00:12:17) Doug discusses the questionable historical numbers related to the H**** and the disappeared people in Argentina. Political and societal narratives (00:15:40) The conversation delves into the simplification of historical events and the creation of false narratives. Current political climate and potential civil unrest (00:21:39) The discussion touches on the potential for civil unrest and the escalation of political tensions. The right to bear arms and recreational nukes (00:21:56) Doug addresses the question of individuals' rights to possess nuclear weapons, emphasizing the impracticality and risks involved. The proliferation of dangerous weapons (00:23:13) Discussion on the potential dangers of modern warfare, including computer hackers and bio-weapons. Trump's solution to de-dollarization (00:25:02) Critique of Trump's economic ideas and comparison to the current government. Influence of science fiction literature (00:27:03) Doug Casey's appreciation for science fiction literature and its impact on his views. Libertarian ideals in science fiction (00:29:18) The presence of libertarian ideals in science fiction and the elite's disdain for the genre. Airlines as an investment (00:30:22) Warren Buffet's perspective on airline industry and Doug Casey's stance on airline stocks. Rising costs of public education (00:32:40) Discussion on the increasing costs of public education and the inefficiencies in the system. Biden's tax proposal (00:38:41) Analysis of Biden's tax proposal and its potential impact on the capital system. Economic war with Russia (00:44:07) Discussion on the economic conflict with Russia, including the repo act and potential consequences. The Ukraine Conflict (00:47:51) Discussion on the US funding and prolonging the war in Ukraine, contrasting it with Israel's defense spending. Israel and Palestine (00:49:29) Debate on the US government's support for Israel and its impact on the Palestinian conflict. Psychopathic Leadership (00:50:29) Analysis of the US government's upper levels being populated by psychopaths and sociopaths. Economic and Trade Wars (00:52:03) Discussion on US-China relations, including Blinken's visit and Yellen's comments on China's industrial capacity. Hopeless Situation (00:54:04) Reflection on the current state of affairs and pessimistic outlook for the future.  

It's time for the Comic Talk Headlines with Generally Nerdy! Neal Stephenson's book, The Diamond Age, is coming to life.Nintendo's Wii-U has a workaround for the lack of proper online support.Marvel is trying to capitalize on Wolverine's name again.And so much more...Plus, don't forget to subscribe for more fresh content.    

It's time for the Comic Talk Headlines with Generally Nerdy! Neal Stephenson's book, The Diamond Age, is coming to life.Nintendo's Wii-U has a workaround for the lack of proper online support.Marvel is trying to capitalize on Wolverine's name again.And so much more...Plus, don't forget to subscribe for more fresh content.    

Education was among the first victims of AI panic. Concerns over cheating quickly made the news. But AI optimists like John Bailey are taking a whole different approach. Today on Faster, Please! — The Podcast, I talk with Bailey about what it would mean to raise kids with a personalized AI coach — one that could elevate the efficacy of teachers, tutors, and career advisors to new heights.John Bailey is a colleague and senior fellow at AEI. He formerly served as special assistant to the president for domestic policy at the White house, as well as deputy policy director to the US secretary of commerce. He has additionally acted as the Director of Educational Technology for the Pennsylvania Department of Education, and subsequently as Director of Educational Technology for the US Department of Education.In This Episode* An opportunity for educators (1:27)* Does AI mean fewer teachers, or better teachers? (5:59)* A solution to COVID learning loss (9:31)* The personalized educational assistant (12:31)* The issue of cheating (17:49)* Adoption by teachers (21:02)Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversationEducation was among the first victims of AI panic. Concerns over cheating quickly made the news. But AI optimists like John Bailey are taking a whole different approach. Today on Faster, Please! — The Podcast, I talk with Bailey about what it would mean to raise kids with a personalized AI coach — one that could elevate the efficacy of teachers, tutors, and career advisors to new heights.John Bailey is a colleague and senior fellow at AEI. He formerly served as special assistant to the president for domestic policy at the White house, as well as deputy policy director to the US secretary of commerce. He has additionally acted as the Director of Educational Technology for the Pennsylvania Department of Education, and subsequently as Director of Educational Technology for the US Department of Education.An opportunity for educators (1:27)Pethokoukis: John, welcome to the podcast.Bailey: Oh my gosh, it's so great to be with you.We'd actually chatted last summer a bit on a panel about AI and education, and this is a fast moving, evolving technology. People are constantly thinking of new things to do with it. They're gauging its strengths and weaknesses. As you're thinking about any downsides of AI in education, has that changed since last summer? Are you more or less enthusiastic? How would you gauge your evolving views?I think I grow more excited and enthusiastic by the day, and I say that with a little humility because I do think the education space, especially for the last 20 years or so, has been riddled with a lot of promises around personalized learning, how technology was going to change your revolutionize education and teaching and learning, and it rarely did. It was over promise and under-delivered. This, though, feels like it might be one of the first times we're underestimating some of the AI capabilities and I think I'm excited for a couple different reasons.I just see this as it is developing its potential to develop tutoring and, just in time, professional development for teachers, and being an assistant to just make teaching more joyful again and remove some of the drudgery. I think that's untapped area and it seems to be coming alive more and more every day. But then, also, I'm very excited about some of the ways these new tools are analyzing data and you just think about school leaders, you think about principals and superintendents, and state policy makers, and the ability of being able to just have conversations with data, not running pivot tables or Excel formulas and looking for patterns and helping to understand trends. I think the bar for that has just been dramatically lowered and that's great. That's great for decision-making and it's great for having a more informed conversation.You're right. You talked about the promise of technology, and I know that when my kids were in high school, if there were certain classes which were supposedly more tech adept, they would bring out a cart with iPads. And I think as parents we are supposed to be like, “Wow, every kid's going to have an iPad that's going to be absolutely amazing!” And I'm not sure if that made the teachers more productive, I'm not sure, in the end, if the kids learned any better.This technology, as you just said, could be different. And the one area I want to first focus on is, it would be awesome if we had a top-10-percent teacher in every classroom. And I know that, at least some of the early studies, not education studies, but looking at studies of using generative AI in, perhaps, customer service. One effect they notice is kind of raising the lower-performing group and having them do better. And so I immediately think about the ability to raise… boy, if we could just have the lowest-performing teachers do as well as the middle-performing teachers, that would seem to be an amazing improvement.I totally agree with you. Yeah, I think that was the BCG study that found when consultants used gen AI—I think, in that case, it was ChatGPT—everyone improved, but the folks that had the most dramatic improvement were the lowest performers in the consulting world. And here you could imagine something very similar for teachers that are teaching out of field—that happens a lot in science and mathematics. It's with new teachers, and the ability of helping them perform better… also, the ability, I think, of combining what they know with also what science and research is saying is the best practice. That's been very difficult.One of the examples I give is the Department of Ed has these guides called the What Works Clearinghouse Practice Guides, and this is what evaluation of research, and studies, and evaluation has to say, “This is the best way of teaching math, or the best way of teaching reading,” but these are dense documents, they're like 137 PDF pages. If you're asking a new teacher teaching out of field to read 137 pages of a PDF and apply it to their lesson that day, that's incredibly difficult. But it can happen in a matter of seconds now with an AI assistant that can read that practice guide, read your lesson, and make sure that you're getting just-in-time professional development, you're getting an assistant with your worksheets, with your class activities and everything. And so I totally agree with you, I think this is a way of helping to make sure that teachers are able to perform better and to really be an assistant to teachers no matter where they are in terms of their skill level.Does AI mean fewer teachers, or better teachers? (5:59)I recall a story, and I forget which sort of tech CEO was talking to a bunch of teachers, and he said, “The good news: in the future, all teachers will make a million dollars a year… bad news is we're only going to need like 10 percent of you” because each teacher would be so empowered by—this was pre-AI—by technology that they would just be so much more productive.The future you're talking about isn't necessarily a future of fewer teachers, it's just sort of the good part of it, which is more productive teachers, and any field where there's a huge human element is always tough to make more productive. Is the future you're talking about just… it's not necessarily fewer teachers, it's just more productive teachers?I think that's exactly right. I don't think this is about technology replacing teachers, I think it's about complimenting them. We see numerous studies that ask teachers how they spend their time and, on average, teachers are spending less than half of their time on instruction. A lot of it is on planning, a lot of it is on paperwork. I mean, even if we had AI that could take away some of that drudgery and free up teachers' times, so they could be more thoughtful about their planning or spend more time with students, that would be a gift.But also I think the best analog on this is a little bit in the healthcare space. If you think of teachers as a doctor, doctors are your most precious commodity in a healthcare system, you want to maximize their time, and what you're seeing is that now, especially because of technology and because of some tools, you can push a lot of decisions to be more subclinical. And so initially that was with nurses and nurse practitioners so that could free up doctor's time. Now you're seeing a whole new category, too, where AI can help provide some initial feedback or responses, and then if you need more help and assistance, you'd go up to that nurse practitioner, and if you need more help and assistance, then you go and you get the doctor. And I bet we're going to see a bunch of subclinical tools and assistance that come out in education, too. Some cases it's going to be an AI tutor, but then kids are going to need a human tutor. That's great. And in some cases they're going to need more time with their teacher, and that's great, too. I think this is about maximizing time and giving kids exactly what they need when they need it.This just sort of popped in my head when you mentioned the medical example. Might we see a future where you have a real job with a career path called “teacher assistant,” where you might have a teacher in charge, like a doctor, of, maybe, multiple classes, and you have sort of an AI-empowered teaching assistant as sort of a new middle-worker, much like a nurse or a physician's assistant?I think you could, I mean, already we're seeing you have teacher assistants, especially in higher education, but I think we're going to see more of those in K-12. We have some K-12 systems that have master teachers and then teachers that are a little bit less-skilled or newer that are learning on the job. I think you have paraprofessionals, folks that don't necessarily have a certification that are helping. This can make a paraprofessional much more effective. We see this in tutoring that not every single tutor is a licensed teacher, but how do you make sure a tutor is getting just-in-time help and support to make them even more effective?So I agree with you, I think we're going to see a whole category of sort of new professions emerge here. All in service by the way, again, of student learning, but also of trying to really help support that teacher that's gone through their licensure that is years of experience and have gone through some higher education as well. So I think it's a complimentary, I don't think it's replacing,A solution to COVID learning loss (9:31)You know, we're talking about tutoring, and the thing that popped in my head was, with the pandemic and schools being hybrid or shut down and kids having to learn online and maybe they don't have great internet connections and all that, that there's this learning-loss issue, which seems to be reflected in various national testing, and people are wondering, “Well great, maybe we could just catch these kids up through tutoring.” Of course, we don't have a nationwide tutoring plan to make up for that learning loss and I'm wondering, have people talked about this as a solution to try to catch up all these kids who fell behind?I know you and I, I think, share a similar philosophy of where… in DC right now, so much of the philosophy around AI is, it's doomerism. It's that this is a thing to contain and to minimize the harms instead of focusing on how do we maximize the benefits? And if there's been ever a time when we need federal policymakers and state policy makers to call on these AI titans to help tackle a national crisis, the learning crisis coming out of the pandemic is definitely one of those. And I think there's a way to do tutoring differently here than we have in the past. In the past, a lot of tech-based tutoring was rule-based. You would ask a question that was programmed, Siri would give a response, it would give a pre-programed answer in return. It was not very warm. And I think what we're finding is, first of all, there's been two studies, one published in JAMA, another one with Microsoft and Google, that found that in the healthcare space, not only could these AI systems be not just technically accurate, but their answers, when compared to human doctors, were rated as more empathetic. And I think that's amazing to think about when empathy becomes something you can program and maximize, what does it mean to have an empathetic tutor that's available for every kid that can encourage them?And for me, I think the thing that I realized that this is fundamentally different was about a year ago. I wanted to just see: Could ChatGPT create an adaptive tutor? And the prompt was just so simple. You just tell it, “I want you to be an adaptive tutor. I want you to teach a student in any subject at any grade, in any language, and I want you to take that lesson and connect it to any interest a student has, and then I want you to give a short quiz. If they get it right, move on. If they get it wrong, just explain it using simpler language.” That literally is the prompt. If you type in, “John. Sixth grade. Fractions. Star Wars,” every example is based on Star Wars. If you say, “Taylor Swift,” every example is on Taylor Swift. If you say, “football,” every example is on football.There's no product in the market right now, and no human tutor, that can take every lesson and connect it to whatever interest a student has, and that is amazing for engagement. And it also helps take these abstract concepts that so often trip up kids and it connects it to something they're interested in, so you increase engagement, you increase understanding, and that's all with just three paragraphs of human language. And if that's what I can do, I'd love to sort of see our policymakers challenge these AI companies to help build something that's better to help tackle the learning loss.The personalized educational assistant (12:31)And that's three paragraphs that you asked of a AI tutor where that AI is as bad as it's ever going to be. Oftentimes, when people sort of talk about the promise of AI and education, they'll say like, “In the future,” which may be in six months, “kids will have AI companions from a young age with which they will be interacting.” So by the time they get to school, they will have a companion who knows them very well, knows their interests, knows how they learn, all these things. Is that kind of information something that you can see schools using at some point to better teach kids on a more individualized basis? Has there been any thought about that? Because right now, a kid gets to school and all teacher knows is maybe how the kid did it in kindergarten or preschool and their age and their face, but now, theoretically, you could have a tremendous amount of information about that kid's strengths and weaknesses.Oh my gosh, yeah, I think you're right. Some of this we talked about in the future, that was a prompt I constructed, I think for ChatGPT4 last March, which feels like eons ago in AI timing. And I think you're right. I think once these AI systems have memory and can learn more about someone, and in this case a student, that's amazing, to just sort of think that there could be an AI assistant that literally grows up with the child and learns about their interests and how they're struggling in class or what they're thriving in class. It can be encouraging when it needs to be encouraging, it can help explain something when the child needs something explained, it could do a deeper dive on a tutoring session. Again, that sounds like science fiction, but I think that's two, three years away. I don't think that's too far.Speaking of science fiction, because I know you're a science fiction fan, a lot of what we're describing now feels like the 1995 Sci-Fi novel, The Diamond Age and that talked about this, it talked about Nell, who was a young girl who came in a possession of a highly advanced book. It was called the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, and it would help with tutoring and with social codes and with a lot of different support and encouragement. And at the time when Neil wrote that in '95, that felt like science fiction and it really feels like we've come to the moment now—you have tablet computers, you have phones that can access these super-intelligent AI systems that are empathetic, and if we could get them to be slightly more technically accurate and grounded in science and practice and rigorous research, I don't know, that feels really powerful. It feels like something we should be leaning into more than leaning away fromJohn, that reference made this podcast an early candidate for Top Podcasts of 2024. Wonderful. That was really playing to your host. Again, as you're saying that, it occurs to me that one area that this could be super helpful really is sort of career advice when kids are wondering, “What I should do, should I go to college?” and boy, to have a career counselor's advice supplemented by a lifetime of an AI interacting with this kid… Counselors will always say, “Well, I'm sure your parents know you better than I do.” Well, I'll tell you, a career counselor plus a lifetime AI, you may know that kid pretty well.Let's just take instruction off the table. Let's say we don't want AI to help teach kids, we don't want AI to replace teachers. AI as navigators I think is another untapped area, and that could be navigators as parents are trying to navigate a school choice system or an education savings account. It could be as kids and high school students are navigating what their post-college plan should be, but these systems are really good with that.I remember I played with a prompt a couple months ago, but it was that, I said, “My name is John. I play football. Here's my GPA. I want to go to school in Colorado and here's my SAT score. What college might work well for me?” And it did an amazing job with even that rudimentary prompt of giving me a couple different suggestions in why that might be. And I think if we were more sophisticated there, we might be able to open up more pathways for students or prevent them from going down some dead ends that just might not be the right path for them.There's a medical example of this that was really powerfully illustrative for me, which is, I had a friend who, quite sadly a couple of months ago was diagnosed with breast cancer. And this is an unfolding diagnosis. You get the initial, then there's scans and there's biopsies and reports, and then second and third and fourth opinions, it's very confusing. And what most patients need there isn't a doctor, they need a navigator. They need someone who could just make sense of the reports that can explain this Techno Latin that kind of gets put into the medical jargon, and they need someone to just say, what are the next questions I need to ask as I find my path on this journey?And so I built her a GPT that had her reports and all she could do was ask it questions, and the first question she said is, “Summarize my doctor notes, identify they agree and where they disagree.” Then, the way I constructed the prompt is that after every response, it should give her three questions to ask the doctor, and all of a sudden she felt empowered in a situation where she felt very disempowered with navigating a very complex, and in that case, a life-threatening journey. Here, how can't we use that to take all the student work, and their assessments, their hobbies, and start helping them be empowered with figuring out where they should be pursuing a job or college or some other post-secondary pathway.The issue of cheating (17:49)You know I have a big family, a lot of kids, and I've certainly had conversations with, say, my daughters about career, and I'll get something like, “Ugh, you just don't understand.” And I'll say, “Well, help me, make me understand.” She's like, “Oh, you just don't understand.” Now I'm like, “Hey, AI, help me understand, what does she want to do? Can you give me some insights into her career?”But we've talked about some of the upsides here and we briefly mentioned, immediately this technology attracted criticism. People worried about a whole host of things from bias in the technology to kids using it to cheat. There was this initial wave of concerns. Now that we're 15 months, maybe, or so since people became aware of this technology, which of the concerns do you find to be the persistent ones that you think a lot about? Are you as worried, perhaps, about issues of kids cheating, on having an AI write the paper for them, which was an early concern? What are the concerns that sort of stuck with you that you feel really need to be addressed?The issue of cheating is present with every new technology, and this was true when the internet came out, it was true when Wikipedia came out, it was true when the iPhones came out. You found iPhone bans. If you go back and look at the news cycle in 2009, 2010, schools were banning iPhones; and then they figure out a way to manage it. I think we're going to figure out a way to manage the cheating and the plagiarism.I think what worries me is a couple different things. One is, the education community talks often about bias, and when they usually talk about bias, in this case, they're talking about racial bias in these systems. Very important to address that head on. But also we need to tackle political bias. I think we just saw that recently with Gemini that, often, sometimes these systems can surface a little bit of center-left perspective and thinking on different types of subjects. How do we fine-tune that so you're getting it a little bit more neutral. Then also, in the education setting, it's pedagogical bias. Like when you're asking it to do a lesson plan or tutoring session, what's the pedagogy that's actually informing the output of that? And those are all going to be very important, I think, to solve.The best case scenario, AI gets used to free up teacher time and teachers can spend more time in their judgment working on their lesson plans and their worksheets and more time with kids. There's also a scenario where some teachers may fall asleep at the wheel a little bit. It's like what you're seeing with self-driving cars, that you're supposed to keep your hands on the wheel and supposed to be at least actively supervising it, but it is so tempting to just sort of trust it and to sort of tune out. And I can imagine there's a group of teachers that will just take the first output from these AI systems and just run with it, and so it's not actually developing more intellectual muscle, it's atrophying that a little bit.Then lastly, I think, what I worry about with kids—this is a little bit on the horizon, this is the downside to the empathy—what happens when kids just want to keep talking to their friendly, empathetic, AI companion and assistant and do that at the sacrifice of talking with their friends, and I think we're seeing this with the crisis of loneliness that we're seeing in the country as kids are on their phones and on social media. This could exaggerate that a lot more unless we're very intentional now about how to make sure kids aren't spending all their time with their AI assistant, but also in the real life and the real world with their friends.Adoption by teachers (21:02)Will teachers be excited about this? Are there teachers groups, teachers unions who are… I am sure they've expressed concerns, but will this tool be well accepted into our classrooms?I think that the unions have been cautiously supportive of this right now. I hear a lot of excitement from teachers because I think what teachers see is that this isn't just one more thing, this is something that is a tool that they can use in their job that provides immediate, tangible benefits. And if you're doing something that, again, removes some drudgery of some of the administrative tasks or helps you with figuring out that one worksheet that's going to resonate with that one kid, that's just powerful. And I think the more software and systems that come out that tap that and make that even more accessible for teachers, I think the more excitement there is going to be. So I'm bullish on this. I think teachers are going to find this as a help and not as a threat. I think the initial threat around plagiarism, totally understandable, but I think there's going to be a lot of other tools that make teachers' lives better.Faster, Please! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fasterplease.substack.com/subscribe

Robots will build everything: our clothes, our food... but they will start by constructing our homes. This is Tesla veteran Russell Varone's wildest prediction. He's already providing a glimpse into this future. Varone is the co-founder and CTO of Diamond Age, a US-based company that has successfully constructed 25 houses using 3D printing and robotic technology. Varone quotes Elon Musk to communicate his vision: “Physics is the law. Everything else is a recommendation. So we abide by that."Varone quotes Elon Musk to articulate his vision: “Physics is the law. Everything else is a recommendation. So we abide by that."My Wildest Prediction is a podcast series from Euronews Business where we dare to imagine the future with business and tech visionaries. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Series Four This episode of The New Abnormal podcast features the renowned futurist Tom Lombardo, Director at the Center for Future Consciousness, Exec Board Member of the World Futures Studies Federation, and Editor at the Journal of Futures Studies. He returns to the series to give an overview of his choices of the top futures books in science fiction (author/topic clustered) which are roughly chronologically sequenced as follows: Late Nineteenth Century Classics (Future of Human Society): Albert Robida: The Twentieth Century, Jules Verne: Paris in the Twentieth Century, & John Jacob Astor: A Journey in Other Worlds...Systematic/Philosophical Futures - SF/FS Synthesis: H.G. Wells: The Time Machine, The Sleeper Awakes, Men Like Gods, & The Shape of Things to Come...Cosmic Futures: Olaf Stapledon: Last and First Men & Star Maker... Early Twentieth Century Classics: Aldous Huxley: Brave New World, Yevgeny Zamyatin: We, Laurence Manning: The Man Who Awoke, & William Hope Hodgson The Night Land...Heinlein & Asimov Futures: Beyond this Horizon, Waldo, & The Past through Tomorrow Series & The Foundation Series...Robot Futures: Isaac Asimov: The Caves of Steel and Jack Williamson The Humanoids...Alien Futures: Adrian Tchaikovsky: Children of Time, Abraham Merritt The Metal Monster, Sheri Tepper Grass, China Miéville Embassytown & Jeff Vandermeer Annihilation...Transcendent Poignant Futures: Clifford Simak: City & Walter Miller A Canticle for Leibowitz...New Wave Futures: John Brunner (Future of Everything): Stand on Zanzibar & Robert Silverberg (Psychedelic Future) Son of Man...Cyberpunk Futures: Bruce Sterling: Schismatrix & Rudy Rucker The Ware Tetralogy...Human Futures: Greg Bear: Queen of Angels & Darwin's Radio, Stapledon's Odd John, & Alfred Bester The Demolished Man... Outer Space Futures: Doc Smith: The Skylark and Chronicles of the Lensmen Series, Larry Niven: Ringworld, Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep, Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space , S. A. Corey Leviathan Wakes & Iain Banks Matter...Future of Everything: Dan Simmons: The Hyperion Cantos (Others See Below)...Cosmic/Scientific Futures: Stephen Baxter: Vacuum Diagrams (The Xeelee Saga) & The Time Ships...Philosophical/Scientific/Technological High Powered Futures: Greg Egan: Permutation City, Diaspora, & Schild's Ladder...Cultural Futures/Future of Everything: Ian McDonald: River of Gods, Brasyl, and The Dervish House & Cixin Liu The Three-Body Problem Trilogy...Singularity Hi-Tech Future: Charles Stross: Accelerando & Ernest Cline Ready Player One...David Brin Futures: Earth, The Uplift War, and Existence... Ecological/Comprehensive/Utopian Constructive Future: Kim Stanley Robinson: Mars Trilogy/2312 & The Ministry of the Future...Neal Stephenson Futures: Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, and Seveneves...So…we hope you enjoy the podcast!

Cryptonomicon er et vendepunkt i Neal Stephensons forfatterskab. Her forlader han den postmoderne cyberpunk, der kendetegner halvfemserhovedværkerne Snow Crash og The Diamond Age. Nu startede en periode med lange komplekse historiske romaner. Han skriver stadig umiskendeligt Nealsk, men i Cryptonomicon er emnet historisk og kontemporær kryptografi, tilsat konspirationer og en kæmpe guldskat. Indlægget Ep. 110: Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon blev først udgivet på SCIFI SNAK.

Noah Smith and Erik Torenberg discuss the rise in pseudoscience, the “administrification” in America, the trillion-dollar non-profit sector, and more. Daffy is offering Econ 102 listeners a free $25 for the charity of their choice when they join: https://www.daffy.org/econ102 –  Sponsors: GIVEWELL | DAFFY | NETSUITE Have you ever wondered where your donation could have the most impact? GiveWell has now spent over 15 years researching charitable organizations and only directs funding to the highest impact opportunities they've found in global health and poverty alleviation. Make informed decisions about high-impact giving. If you've never donated through GiveWell before, you can have your donation matched up to $100 before the end of the year, or as long as matching funds last. To claim your match, go to https://givewell.org and pick “Podcast” and enter Econ 102 at checkout. Daffy is the most modern and accessible donor-advised fund, making it easier to put money aside for charity. You can make your tax-deductible contributions all at once or set aside a little each week or month. And you don't just have to donate cash, you can easily contribute stocks, ETFs, or crypto. Plus, you never have to track receipts from your donations again. It's free to get started and Econ 102 listeners get $25 towards the charity of their choice. Daffy is offering Econ 102 listeners a free $25 for the charity of their choice when they join Daffy https://www.daffy.org/econ102 NetSuite has 25 years of providing financial software for all your business needs. More than 36,000 businesses have already upgraded to NetSuite by Oracle, gaining visibility and control over their financials, inventory, HR, eCommerce, and more. If you're looking for an ERP platform head to NetSuite http://netsuite.com/102 and download your own customized KPI checklist. –  Econ 102 is a part of the Turpentine podcast network. To learn more: www.turpentine.co –  RECOMMENDED PODCAST: LIVE PLAYERS Join host Samo Burja and Erik Torenberg as they analyze the mindsets of today's most intriguing business leaders, investors, and innovators through the lens of their bold actions and contrarian worldviews. You'll come away with a deeper understanding of the development of technology, business, political power, culture and more. LIsten and subscribe everywhere you get your podcasts: https://link.chtbl.com/liveplayers. – LINKS: Noahpinion on Substack: https://www.noahpinion.blog/ “Politicized science inevitably tends toward pseudoscience” –  https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/politicized-science-inevitably-tends ‘The Diamond Age' by Neal Stephenson: https://www.amazon.com/Diamond-Age-Illustrated-Primer-Spectra/dp/0553380966 “Nobody says hi in San Francisco” – https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/nobody-says-hi-in-san-francisco ‘Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers' an essay by Tom Wolfe – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Chic_%26_Mau-Mauing_the_Flak_Catchers – RECOMMENDED PODCAST: Odd Lots is a Bloomberg podcast hosted by Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway. Each week they speak with the perfect guest to explore the most interesting topics in finance, markets and economics. https://www.bloomberg.com/oddlots – X / TWITTER: @noahpinion (Noah) @eriktorenberg (Erik) – Timestamps (00:00) Episode Preview (01:21) New Release Day (01:35) Q&As (02:43) The politicization of science (16:51) SPONSORS: GIVEWELL & DAFFY (18:17) Is Academia Primarily Left? (21:58) The Administrator Boom (25:59) SPONSORS: NETSUITE & ODD LOTS (29:13) The Trillion Dollar Non-profit sector (31:06) Special Interest Groups (32:42) Nonprofit vs Government (43:24) Politicians on Nonprofits (46:23) Global productivity slowdown (53:09) Charter Schools (55:17) Accelerating those at the bottom (59:24) A.I. Tutors

»Snow Crash« und »The Diamond Age« (Neal Stephenson)

»Snow Crash« und »The Diamond Age« (Neal Stephenson)

Hollywood is currently at a standstill due to the joint writer's & actor's strike, in part because of the growing threat from generative AI. In this episode, I talk to one of the industry's greatest talents and thinkers -- Joseph Gordon-Levitt -- about how he believes the industry needs to adapt in the age of synthetic media. We also hear his thoughts on how technology is reinventing our relationship with creativity, human connection, even p*rnography.    Joe's Biography  Joe Gordon-Levitt is an American actor, writer, and director. He has received various accolades, including nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his leading performances in 500 Days of Summer and 50/50. He is also the Founder of Emmy Award winning collaborative production company HitRECORD.   Chapters 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:46 - AI paying residuals 00:14:35 - The right amount of competition in society 00:23:43 - Intersection of technology and creativity 00:30:27 - DonJon 00:32:53 - Addictive technology 00:44:50 - Competition in acting 00:00:49 - Competitive nature vs nurture 00:54:22 - HITRECORD & paying contributors 01:02:36 - Aliens 01:04:37 - Staying optimistic   Links ♾️  Joe's Washington Post OpEd - “If artificial intelligence uses your work, it should pay you” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/26/joseph-gordon-levitt-artificial-intelligence-residuals/ ♾️  Jaron Lanier's TED talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ-PUXPVlos ♾️  The Invisible Hand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand ♾️  Center for Human Technology https://www.humanetech.com/ ♾️  Don Jon ♾️  Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow ♾️  Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66354.Flow ♾️  HITRECORD https://hitrecord.org/ ♾️  The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson https://www.amazon.com/Diamond-Age-Illustrated-Primer-Spectra/dp/0553380966 ♾️  Culture Series by Ian Banks https://www.amazon.com/The-Culture-9-book-series/dp/B07WLZZ9WV   Credits ♾️ Hosted by: Liv Boeree ♾️ Produced & Edited by: Raymond Wei ♾️ Audio Mix by: Keir Schmidt

Welcome to another episode of Category Visionaries — the show that explores GTM stories from tech's most innovative B2B founders. In today's episode, we're speaking with Jack Oslan, Co-Founder & CEO of Diamond Age, a construction robotics platform that has raised $58 Million in funding. Here are the most interesting points from our conversation: Robotics for Affordable Housing: Diamond Age uses robotics to build affordable, energy-efficient single-family homes with significantly reduced labor. Speed and Efficiency: Their technology can build homes four times faster than traditional methods, offering substantial cost savings and efficiency improvements. Target Market: Diamond Age works with large production home builders like Century Communities to address the housing shortage, focusing on high-volume tract housing. Labor Market Impact: The goal is to replace physically demanding construction jobs with more technology-focused roles, making the industry more appealing to younger workers. Solving a Personal Problem: Jack was motivated to start Diamond Age after realizing the housing affordability crisis affected even high-earning professionals like his son and daughter-in-law. Regulatory and Market Adoption: The company's approach aligns with existing building codes, facilitating easier adoption by builders and regulatory agencies.  

Who are we? We're Thicc Radio! We're James and Tim; two gainers who want to explore everything to do with gaining and feedism. This week, we're celebrating our 100th episode, which just so happens to align with Tim's 40th birthday! New episodes will come out every Tuesday, so subscribe! Please rate us five stars, leave us a review, and share this episode with your friends, and if you want to reach out to us, you can find us on our socials below. So until next time, bye fats! James Instagram: @s.t.a.n.n.u.m BeefyFrat: @stannum Tim Instagram: @thickey_mouse Grommr: @orpheus BeefyFrat: @thickey_mouse Twitter: @thickey_mouse YouTube: @thickey_mouse TikTok: @thickey_mouse Thicc Radio Instagram: @thiccradio TikTok: @thiccradio YouTube: @thiccradio Website: ⁠⁠https://www.podpage.com/thiccradio/⁠⁠ Email: ⁠⁠thethiccradio@gmail.com --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thiccradio/message

Jack Oslan is the Co-founder and CEO of Diamond Age. Jack has 25 years in the high speed high volume print packaging industry where he got his education in factory automation and operations. In 2012, Jack founded the vertical indoor agriculture company Plenty(.ag) to solve the fresh produce supply chain problem. Plenty(.ag) is now valued at $2B. In 2017, Jack developed the business thesis for solving the affordability problem for first time home buyers and recruited the founding team for Diamond Age.https://www.linkedin.com/company/diamond-age/mycompany/?viewAsMember=truehttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jackoslan/diamondage3d.comMac and Bleu is the hot new podcast dedicated to all things related to building Arizona. Topics discussed range from construction, economic development, supply chain, and market segments.Mac & Bleu also includes diversity in construction, local politics affecting construction, women in construction, construction technology, and more.The host JJ Levenske of Bleuwave have their finger on the pulse of the people building Arizona.The show brings in the brightest minds in their perspective positions and industries and JJ has the unique ability to touch on the subject matter that you want to hear.If you want to know who's building Arizona, tune in and subscribe to Mac and Bleu today!___________________________________________________________________________________JJ Levenske is a seasoned construction executive with over 30 years of experience in the commercial and industrial sectors.From pre-construction services to complex quality controls and close-outs, he brings a commitment to delivering the highest levels of professionalism and customer service.

You might have caught Molly Wood's work in the New York Times or the public radio program Marketplace or her new podcast, Everybody in the Pool, which is all about Climate Solutions. Or maybe you didn't catch those. Look, who are we to judge? Regardless, Molly is a professional smart person with a lot of sharp insight as well as voluminous knowledge about certain areas that might put you to sleep, notably: insurance and batteries. She knows so much about insurance and batteries. And she explains those worlds in the context of climate change in a way that might make you feel good and not at all panicky about the world of the future. So plug in, learn up, and doze off.Mentioned in the EpisodeTwitter @MollyWoodMollyWood.coEverybody in the PoolThe Diamond Age by Neal StephensonOut on a Limb by Shirley Maclaine Hey Sleepy Heads, is there anyone whose voice you'd like to drift off to, or do you have suggestions on things we could do to aid your slumber? Email us at:  sleepwithcelebs@maximumfun.org.Follow the Show on:Instagram @sleepwcelebsTwitter @SleepWithCelebsTikTok @SleepWithCelebs John is on Twitter @johnmoe.John's acclaimed, best-selling memoir, The Hilarious World of Depression, is now available in paperback.Join | Maximum Fun

Zum Studio B Klassiker von Irmgard Lumpini schrieben wir bei der Erstausstrahlung:Was kann man Menschen zutrauen, welche Haltung besteht gegenüber der sogenannten “Natur des Menschen” – dies ist eine der zentralen Fragen von The Diamond Age. Dabei schafft Neal Stephenson mit eingestreuten Geschichten aus der Fibel, die durch Nell gesteuert wird, nebenbei noch einen Rückblick auf Technikgeschichte…Durch die jüngsten Enwicklungen in Sachen KI aktueller denn je eine unbedingte Hörempfehlung! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lobundverriss.substack.com

The Diamond Age er nanoteknologiens tidsalder. For hvorfor ikke bare bygge alt i diamant, når man kan bygge atom for atom? I Neal Stephensons klassiker fra 1995 følger vi Nell, der får en magisk bog af det pureste nanotech, og med den en billet væk fra nanosamfundets bund. Indlægget Ep 104, Neil Stephenson, The Diamond Age blev først udgivet på SCIFI SNAK.

Stranded without a guest in beautiful Springfield, Illinois, Jonah is forced to record another Ruminant, and the result finds his mind drifting from place to place like a wayward spy balloon. After a brief foray into dirigible-based punditry, he quickly turns to protectionism and Biden's “Buy American” mantra, providing some extended thoughts on why both are so annoying. From there, his ramblings fall into an uncontrolled tailspin, covering everything from NIMBianism to René Girard and, finally, the incomparable Cronut.Show Notes:- Real life Up- Dominic Pino: “Biden Promises to Spend Your Money Poorly”- Phil Klein: “The Story Construction Tells About America's Economy Is Disturbing”- George McGovern: “A Politician's Dream Is a Businessman's Nightmare”- Neal Stephenson's -The Diamond Age

Crystals. Do crystals have special energy? Can they be used to improve a spiritual practice? Are they practical or placebo? Wendy tells her reiki energy story. Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson. 

On previous episodes of Faster, Please! — The Podcast and in my newsletter essays, I've argued for the importance of optimistic science fiction. But what exactly qualifies as future-optimistic fiction, and how is it different from utopian literature? To discuss one of my favorite science-fiction book and TV series, The Expanse, and to consider the importance of what fiction tells us about the future, I've brought on Peter Suderman.Peter is features editor at Reason magazine. He has written a number of fantastic pieces on science fiction including "The Fractal, Fractious Politics of The Expanse" in the December 2022 issue of Reason.In This Episode* Does The Expanse count as optimistic science fiction? (1:15)* Optimistic—not utopian—visions of the future (9:10)* The evolution of science fiction (19:30)* The importance of the future sci-fi shows us (27:09)Below is an edited transcript of our conversation.Does The Expanse count as optimistic science fiction?French film director François Truffaut famously claimed it was impossible to make an anti-war film. He said, “I find that violence is very ambiguous in movies. For example, some films claim to be antiwar, but I don't think I've really seen an antiwar film. Every film about war ends up being pro-war.” And that quote, which has always stuck in my head, reemerged in my brain when I came across a somewhat similar observation from Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton, who said, “Futuristic science fiction tends to be pessimistic. If you imagine a future that's wonderful, you don't have a story.” I think some people may interpret that as meaning you cannot write optimistic science fiction.And I think of a show that you have written a long essay about, and I've written about—not as intelligently, but I've written about it from time to time: the TV show The Expanse. And I find The Expanse to be optimistic sci-fi. It takes place in the future, a couple hundred years in the future. Humanity has spread out to Mars and the asteroid belts. There's certainly conflict. As an Expanse fan, someone just wrote an essay on it, would you agree that it's optimistic science fiction?I think it is, with some caveats. The first one is that it's optimistic but it's not utopian. And I think a lot of the argument against optimistic science fiction is actually not really arguing against optimism. It's arguing against utopianism and this idea that you sometimes see—there are hints of it sometimes in Star Trek, especially in Star Trek: The Next Generation—of, in the future humanity will have all of its problems solved, we won't have money, there will be no poverty. If you think about the Earth of Star Trek: The Next Generation's future, it's actually kind of boring, right? There isn't a lot of conflict. Writers eventually found ways to drive conflict out of conflicts between the Federation and other planets and even within the Federation. Because of course, they realized the utopian surface is just a surface. And if you dig down at all beneath it, of course humans would have conflict.But I think a lot of the opposition to the idea of optimistic science fiction just comes from this idea of, “Well, wouldn't it be utopian?” And what The Expanse does is it tells a story that is, I think, inherently optimistic but really deeply not utopian, because it recognizes that progress is not an easy, straight linear line in which everybody comes together and holds hands, and there's a rainbow and My Little Ponies, and everybody just sort of sings, and it's wonderful. That's not how it works. In fact, the way that progress happens is that people have things they want in their lives, and then they seek, either on their own or in coalitions, factions, organizations—whether that's governments, whether that's the private sector, whether that's unions, whatever it is—they organize somehow or another to get the thing that they want. And sometimes they build things. Sometimes they build habitats.And so this is something you see a lot of in The Expanse. Humans have colonized the solar system, as the story begins, and there are just all of these fascinating habitats that humans have built. Some of those habitats actually have problems with them. There are air filtration issues, where you have to constantly be supplying ice from asteroid mining. That sort of thing. Some of the main characters, when we first meet them, are working as ice haulers. Because of course, you would have to have some sort of trade of important resources in space in order to make these habitats work. And you could call this, “That's not optimistic. In fact, a lot of these lives are sort of grubby and unpleasant, and people don't get everything they want.” But I think that misunderstands the idea of progress, because the idea of progress isn't that suddenly everything will be happy and My Little Pony-ish. It's not My Little Pony. It's actually conflict and it's clashing desires and it's clashing ideals about how humans should live. And then it's people kind of working that stuff out amongst themselves, day by day, hour by hour, through coalitions, through organizations, through institutions, through technology, through politics sometimes. And all of those sort of tools and all of those organizational forms have a role. Sometimes they also have drawbacks. All of them have drawbacks to some extent. And then it's just a matter of how are people going work out the problems they have at the moment in order to get to the next place, in order to build the thing they want to build, in order to start the society they want to have.It's a six-season TV show based on a nine-novel series. The six-season TV show adapts the first six books, and then there are three additional books, plus there's a bunch of short stories, novellas, interstitial material. There's this moment that happens in both the TV show and in the books that's really important. And it's about it when humanity finds a way to other solar systems. There are 1300 gates that open up and they can sort of go out and colonize the rest of space. All of these colonies are settled, and each one of them takes on an idea and a culture and often technological capability. There's one of them that's really funny that you meet called Freehold. Frankly, it's a bunch of anarchist libertarian gun nuts who decide to basically ignore all the rules that the trade union that is managing a lot of the trade between the gates has put in place. And they are managing that trade for a good reason. Because if you mess with the gates, if you go through them the wrong way, it kills people, it kills ships, it destroys them. And so you have to go through in order, and you have to go through slowly, and it's this whole sort of process. In Freehold, they‘re a bunch of difficult, crazy anarchist-like libertarian gun nuts who don't want to play by the rules. And at first they're a problem. You can see why that would be a problem for the social organizational form that has come up in these books from managing the gates and making sure that they don't kill people. But later, when basically a super powerful high-tech imperial planet that has designs on controlling all of humanity and putting all of humanity under the thumb of basically one emperor who has plans to live forever—it's sort of this, become a kind of a god who is ruling over all of humanity and then basically turn all of humans into like a hive mind but for the good of humanity so that we'll survive—when you have that all-encompassing, super powerful collectivist impulse that is threatening human civilization, it turns out that the libertarian anarchist gun nuts at Freehold are actually pretty good friends to have. This series does a bunch of interesting work of noting that, yes, of course those people can be difficult at times, and they can present problems to social cohesion. At the same time, it's not bad to have them as allies when you are threatened by an authoritarian.Optimistic—not utopian—visions of the futureYou've nailed it. Well done. I view it as optimistic but not utopian—I think that's a key point—particularly compared to how the future is often portrayed. I think it's pretty optimistic because no zombies. We're still around. And the world looks like it's doing okay. Was there climate change? Sure. But New York is surrounded by barriers. Clearly there's been disruption, but we kept moving forward. Now we're this multi-planetary civilization, so it doesn't look like we're going to get killed by an asteroid anytime soon.I think a big mistake that a lot of the pessimists about the future in politics and our culture generally, but in science fiction as well—a big mistake that they make is that they think only in terms of grand plans. They think in terms of mass systems of social control and social organization. And so when you see an apocalypse, it's “all the governments have failed and so has capitalism.” When you see an apocalypse, it's “the oceans swallowed us because we used too much energy or the wrong kind of energy.” And that's it. The grand plan didn't work. And then we're in a hellscape after that. And what you see in The Expanse, what makes it so smart, is grand plans actually do fail.Almost any time somebody has a big sweeping theory of how we're going to reorganize human social organization, of how humanity is going to be totally different from now on—almost anytime that someone has that sort of theory in The Expanse series, it doesn't work out. And often that person is revealed to be a bad guy, or at least somebody who has a bad way of thinking about the world. Instead, progress comes in fits and starts, and it's made on a much smaller scale by these ad hoc coalitions of people who are constantly changing their coalitions. Sometimes you want something that requires building something, that requires a new technology. And so you ally with people who are engineer types, and you work with them to build something. At the end of it, you've got the thing that they've built, and your life is a little bit better, or at least you've accomplished one of your goals. And then maybe after that, those people, the engineers, actually it turns out that they have a culture that is not cooperative with yours. And so you're going to ally with a different political faction and the engineers are going to be on the other side of it, but they've still built the little thing that you needed them to build. And it's just this idea that big systems and big plans that assume that everything falls in line, those plans don't work, and they do fail. And if that's your idea of how we're going to make progress, that's a bad idea. The way we make progress is…In a Hayekian sense, all our individual wants and needs cannot be incorporated in this grand system or grand plan. Our wants and needs today, much less how those will evolve over time. Our future wants and needs don't fit into the plan either.Yeah, this is right. This is one of the issues I have with a lot of zombie fiction, is that it just sort of assumes that after the zombie apocalypse—the zombie apocalypse is not all that realistic, but you can imagine a scenario in which there is something environmental that really goes very bad for humanity; that's not out of the realm of possibility—but what a lot of the zombie apocalypse fiction assumes, then, is that in the decades or years afterwards no one will really find ways to work with other people towards shared goals. Or at best, they'll do so in a really ugly and simplistic way where somebody sets up a society that's walled off but it's ruled by some evil authoritarian and you're living under this person's thumb.I grew up in Florida, and so we had hurricanes. One of the things you see when you have hurricanes is that, yes, there is a government response and they send out trucks and power company officials and all of that sort of thing. But people drive around the neighborhood with chainsaws and cut up the trees that have fallen across your driveway. And other people who may not have chainsaws go and help their friends move the stuff out of their bedroom where the tree fell into the bedroom through the ceiling and there's been some leakages. It's just sort of people working together in these informal coalitions, these little neighborhood local groups, to help each other out and to try to fix things that have broken and gone wrong. It's not fun. It's not like, “Oh man, hurricanes, they're wonderful. We shouldn't worry about them at all!” We should, and we should try to build resilience against them and that sort of thing.At the same time, when disaster strikes, often what you see—not always, but often what you see—is that people come back together and they survey the problems and they work to fix them minute by minute, hour by hour in little ways. And sometimes the first thing you do is, “Well, I got a hole in my roof. I'm going to stretch garbage bags across it so that the next time it rains…” And then you got a hole in your roof with garbage bags across it for a couple of weeks. But that's a solution for the time. It's better than a hole in your roof. On the other hand, you got a hole in your roof. It sucks. But that's progress relative to the hole that's there. That's a way that a lot of people who don't think about engineering, who don't think in a Hayekian manner, it's something that they miss. Because they only think about big systems and big plans. And big systems and big plans do have big risks, and they do often fail. But that's not how humans figure out how to move forward and how to make their life better.An interesting aspect is that, you mentioned how at some point these gates open so we're no longer stuck in the solar system. We can go to any of these other planetary systems. And what's interesting is the devastating effect this has on the planet Mars, which is its own world, its own government, it has its own military, it's independent of Earth. But it's a society that was built around one big idea, which is terraforming Mars and creating a sustainable civilization. And when that goal didn't look important anymore, that was it. It fell apart. People left. There was no resilience, there was no ability to adapt. To me, that's one of the most interesting twists I've seen in science fiction. When the grand plan fails, the whole thing falls apart because they never assumed the grand plan wouldn't work.The Mars example is great because it shows what I think is one of the biggest problems in political thinking and in kind of bad science-fiction storytelling. It's a great demonstration of steady state thinking, where people think that the current arrangement of power and resources is going to persist forever. And so Mars in The Expanse story was basically a competitor with Earth, which in The Expanse universe was the sort of political home of humanity as well as the bread basket. It's where of all the food was produced. And then the asteroid belt, which is sort of the rough and tumble outer world—the outer world were the resource extractors. They provided for the inner systems. They kind of had a blue-collar vibe to them. There was some terrorist activity that came out of this because they were resentful. There's sort of some interesting cultural and subcultural effects there. And then Mars was heavily military and high tech, and they thought that would be their competitive advantage.Almost a quasi-fascist state, in a way. It was very militaristic and authoritarian.Yes, which comes back to pay off in a big way in the final three books of the trilogy which, unfortunately, the shows don't adapt, but are in some ways, I think, the best of the books. And so much of our politics is built around that idea that this power structure, this arrangement of resources that we have right now where everybody's on Facebook, where everybody is on Twitter, where everybody uses Google search, that's going to last forever. And the only way you can dislodge it is through government and through regulation and through interventions that are designed to break that sort of thing up. I'm thinking very specifically of antitrust, and a lot of antitrust theories are predicated on this. But there are other realms in which this sort of approach to regulation and to politics is quite common as well.And in The Expanse, you see, guess what? Those power structures—even power structures that have persisted in the case of The Expanse books at least for decades and I think for a couple of hundred years that's basically been the arrangement as we sort of enter the story—even those arrangements that seem like they're immutable facts of human organization—Oh, this is how politics has always been; this is how the arrangement of national power (effectively in this story) has always been arranged—those things can change, and they can change because of environmental changes and they can change because of technological developments that people don't foresee.The evolution of science fictionIt seems to me that you had this period during the Space Race, the Atomic Age, ‘50s, ‘60s, in which there was lots of somewhat optimistic science fiction. You obviously had Star Trek and even I would say 2001: A Space Odyssey. You could go to the Jetsons, but then you started not seeing that. And to me, it seems like there's a pretty sharp dividing line there in the late ‘60s, early ‘70s, and I've written about that. Am I making too much out of that, that there was a change? Or has it always been like this and we started noticing it more because we started doing more science fiction?I don't think you're wrong to notice that. And I think there was a big change in the 1970s. I think maybe one place to start, if you're thinking about that, though, is actually something like 100 years before the 1970s.That would be the 1870s!Yeah. In the 1870s, in the 1890s, maybe even a little bit before then. This maybe tells you how naive I was as a seven- or an eight-year-old, but I started reading science fiction when I was around eight years old. My parents were big fans, and I of course watched Star Trek even starting when I was four or five. Star Wars, that sort of thing. I grew up in a real nerd household, and something that I heard when I was I believe in fourth grade that just blew my mind—but of course, it is super obvious when you hear it—is for a long time in human history, we didn't have science fiction. We didn't have it at all. And you go back to the 1700s, to the 1800s, you start to see little bits of it. Jules Verne, even maybe some of Edgar Allan Poe. But it wasn't until the Industrial Revolution and then some of the fiction that sort of came out decades into the Industrial Revolution. It wasn't until relatively recently in human history that people had the idea that the future would be different, because that's the heart of what science fiction is. It is the idea that the future will be different because humans will organize themselves differently, and/or because we will have invented new technologies that make our lives different.And you go back to 1000 AD or 1200 or 1500 even, and you just don't see that idea present in fiction and in storytelling because essentially no one imagined that the future would be different. They thought it would be the way it was in their time forever. And they assumed that it had basically been the same forever. That humanity's social and technological and resource arrangements would be steady state. And something happened in the ‘30s and ‘40s with the early science fiction that really predicated on this idea that, “Oh, wait! The future will be different and it will be better.” And then you get to the 1970s and things start to look a little bit shaky in world affairs, especially in the Western world, right? And what happens is that then is reflected in a lot of popular science fiction, where you start to see this more pessimistic view, this idea that the future will be different but it will be worse. And it will be worse because all of the things we rely on for the present will fail. I don't think that that's an illegitimate mode of storytelling in any way. I, in fact, really like a lot of…Even as I've harangued against them, those are all super enjoyable movies. I just wish there were the other kind too. And it seems to me that maybe we're starting to get more of the other kind again. I mean, we don't have a lot of examples.So about 10 or 15 years ago, there was literally a movement in science fiction led by people like Neal Stephenson, the author of most prominently Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, and Snow Crash in the 1990s, but also some more recent stuff as well. And he was like, “We need ideas about the future that are, if not utopian, then at least sort of optimistic. Ideas about things that we will do that will be better, not things that we will do that will make everything worse and that will sort of contribute to suffering and to collapse.” And Stevenson has been a leading proponent both of other writers doing that but then of doing it himself.Since we were talking about ad hoc coalitions and small-scale problem solving, his novel Termination Shock, I think from two years ago, is a quasi-science-fiction novel about global warming set in the near future in which global warming has both become a real problem and also one that people have started to find a lot of small-scale ways to, not solve exactly, but to address on a personal level. When the novel begins, there are a lot of houses on stilts in Texas because there are flooding issues. But what, they just picked up their houses and they put them on stilts. And people have to wear these sort of Dune-like suits that cool them. There are all these sort of crazy traveling caravans of people who live not in any particular place, but then there are these mega truck stops that have sprung up to meet their needs and sort of become these kind of travel hubs. And then, of course, people start trying to not solve global warming, exactly, but to mitigate global warming kind of locally by shooting stuff into the air that blocks reflections of the atmosphere. Of course, that causes some problems. He's not just sort of like, “Yeah, we can just fix this.” But he's like, “This sort of thing is how problems get solve solved. They don't get solved through politics and grand, multi-lateral agreements.”Of course, I would also point to another Stephenson novel, which is Seveneves, which is a novel in which things get about as dark for humanity as possible. We're down to seven people, and then we come all the way back and beyond.And it's all through distributed solutions. There's a great bit: You get down to the final seven people and then you flash forward, I think it's like 5,000 years. There's just a great like section header in this book. You're like 700 pages into a 1000-page book and suddenly it just says, “5,000 years later.” Okay, okay, I guess. Sure, Neal Stephenson, you can do that. 5,000 years later. And you see that humanity is flourishing again because somehow or another you have distributed rings, habitat systems around the Earth. You have the submarine people. We don't really know what they did, but the submarine people somehow or another figured it out. There are still some Earth-dwellers who survived in caves, like probably the Mars people who just like took off for Mars in the middle of the catastrophe. We think they survived somehow too. Part of this is, there's a kind of cheat in that book in which he doesn't tell you how all of these people survived, but there's also a kind of genius and a truth in that, in that we don't know how it's going to go. But what we know is that when put to the test, people have—not always, I don't want to say it just works 100 percent of the time, because sometimes there are true catastrophes in the world—but people, when put to the test, when your survival, the survival of you, your family, your friends, and the future of your race is on the line, people have figured out ways to survive that their predecessors would never have imagined because they never had to.The importance of the future sci-fi shows usIs it important that we have popular culture that gives us images of the future, a variety of images, to shoot for?I think it's incredibly important. I think even people who think it's important underrate how important it is. Because most people, even the smartest, most innovative people, they're… People are modelers. They kind of do things that they've seen done, even if it's that they've seen it in a story. And I just think about my own history and my own life. I grew up in a household where there wasn't, I would say, a lot of political ideology. It was in the background, but my parents like didn't actually talk about politics that much. It was just that one of them was quite liberal and the other one was quite conservative. And there were differing radio programs that I would hear in the company of one versus the other.But they were both, like I said, science fiction readers. And there was science fiction just all over our house. The first adult science-fiction novel I read was The Caves of Steel, which I was given when I was in fourth grade, eight-years-old. It's like Isaac Asimov's sort of Agatha Christie murder-mystery-in-the-future, in a futuristic New York, story. I was totally hooked after that. I just didn't ever go back. Read science fiction. And like I said, what science fiction gave me was this idea that the future would be different and that maybe—maybe—it could be better in some ways. And I think that if you just listen to interviews and talk to the people who are at the head of some of the most innovative companies in the world and in the United States right now, one through-line you see is that maybe not all of them, but a surprising number of them were science fiction readers growing up as kids.And they spent a lot of time, as a result, just sort of imagining the future. And imagining that it would be different. And I think that exercise, just being drawn into that kind of imagination of a world that is different than the one we live in now and different because people have invented things, because people have reorganized politics, because of whatever it is, but a world that is different because the future will be different—that is an exercise that we need more people to engage in. And when people do it, I think the results… I frankly think that even reading pessimistic science fiction is better than reading none at all, because again, it just constantly hammers home this idea [that] the future will be different. It's not a steady state. That progress or maybe anti-progress can be made.I think it certainly matters on that sort of doer, elite level, where you do have all these entrepreneurs, Silicon Valley folks, who obviously were really inspired by science fiction. Also, I think it's just important for everybody else. I just can't imagine, if people have gotten more of that, not only would they be a bit more resilient to the super negativity. It would just create more dreamers among people about what the future can be. Not utopia, but better. I'll take better.I'll take better as well. And I think that storytellers have a big role to play in that. And I think that anybody who creates images, who is an imaginer for the popular consciousness, has some influence here. Because like I said, people call to mind what they have seen before and people operate based on the ideas that have been handed to them. I certainly would like to see more of those stories. And I would also just like to say that if you're a person who tells stories and who makes images and who tries to sort of worm your way into the public consciousness, obviously you can do it through fear. But wouldn't it be better, wouldn't you feel a little more proud of yourself if you could do it through hope and through making people think that maybe there's something wonderful coming?Star Trek and Star Wars, which is the capitalist show, which is the communist show?Star Trek: The Next Generation's pilot episode is about how basically energy capitalism is inherently bad. The Ferengi are the super capitalists. It's really hard to make like a strong “Star Trek is a pro-capitalist show” argument. Maybe. You get a little bit into that with some of the Deep Space Nine stuff later. But even there, that's mostly just about political conflict. Does that mean that Star Wars is the pro-capitalist show? I don't know. I mean, people do seem to have jobs and buy and sell stuff and make things. I guess I'd have to go with Star Wars just because you can buy droids when you need help on your farm? That's all I got. This is a public episode. 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Phoenix robotics firm "Diamond Age" delivers 3D printed homes in less than 60 days, starting at around $200,000. Would you live in one? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Roof, Paint, Stucco, this machine is capable of things we have never seen automated on a 3D printed construction site before. Diamond Age is taking big leaps in the right direction (automation) by printing concrete walls then going many steps further. This has been one of my favorite interviews because of the scope of automation in their system. 3D printed construction is a cool way to automate one step of building a house but there is so much more to automated construction that isn't included in the printing alone. https://automate.construction https://www.diamondage3d.com/

If you're an action oriented individual looking to thrive in the coming chaos, you might be a perfect fit for our new premium service: Doug Casey's Phyle. https://phyle.co The concept of "phyles" originated from a sci-fi book by Neal Stephenson called The Diamond Age. Neal Stephenson envisioned a world in which humans would associate in groups based on shared values. Doug Casey's Phyle is a place for the true out of favor minority - Free thinking, clear thinking, productive people who value freedom and volunteerism. Learn More about the Phyle https://phyle.co The Phyle exists to generate solutions to the major challenges facing all of us today. All of these solutions fall under our 5 Tenets: CHOOSE RADICAL PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY- Thriving in the challenging times ahead requires you to become the most responsible person you've ever known, to focus on the things you can control, and to intentionally choose your own path. PROTECT & GROW YOUR CAPITAL - The Greater Depression, inflation, bank bail-ins, and CBDC's are just some of the threats to your personal capital. We must embrace strategies which protect our resources while engaging in astute speculation (a Doug Casey specialty). DISCONNECT FROM CENTRALIZED SYSTEMS - Life has become far too centralized making modernity incredibly fragile. To increase our resilience and optionality, we must decentralize our dependency on these systems wherever possible. Prepping helps, but we need to build longer term solutions into our lives. FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE - If we're completely reliant on a reliable single source of income, our lives can easily be turned upside down in the coming turmoil. To achieve financial independence, we look for opportunities to diversify our sources of income and reduce our expenses. PEOPLE & COMMUNITY - Bitcoin was the most valuable asset one could hold during the 2010's. For the 2020's the most valuable asset won't be a financial asset at all. It'll be people. We must cultivate relationships and build community around us. Yes, the virtual world is important, but it's critical that we do this in the physical world. We must prioritize finding "our people". If you're one of us, you probably know what it feels like to be an alien amongst your family and local community. You know what it feels like to be gaslight by the 'powers that be' and you know the value of connecting with like minds. The COVID hysteria is waning, but the threats to our livelihood and freedom are only accelerating. There has never been a more important time to connect with like-minded people who value the same things you do. Learn More about the Phyle https://phyle.co

If you're an action oriented individual looking to thrive in the coming chaos, you might be a perfect fit for our new premium service: Doug Casey's Phyle. https://phyle.co The concept of "phyles" originated from a sci-fi book by Neal Stephenson called The Diamond Age. Neal Stephenson envisioned a world in which humans would associate in groups based on shared values. Doug Casey's Phyle is a place for the true out of favor minority - Free thinking, clear thinking, productive people who value freedom and volunteerism. Learn More about the Phyle https://phyle.co The Phyle exists to generate solutions to the major challenges facing all of us today. All of these solutions fall under our 5 Tenets: CHOOSE RADICAL PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY- Thriving in the challenging times ahead requires you to become the most responsible person you've ever known, to focus on the things you can control, and to intentionally choose your own path. PROTECT & GROW YOUR CAPITAL - The Greater Depression, inflation, bank bail-ins, and CBDC's are just some of the threats to your personal capital. We must embrace strategies which protect our resources while engaging in astute speculation (a Doug Casey specialty). DISCONNECT FROM CENTRALIZED SYSTEMS - Life has become far too centralized making modernity incredibly fragile. To increase our resilience and optionality, we must decentralize our dependency on these systems wherever possible. Prepping helps, but we need to build longer term solutions into our lives. FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE - If we're completely reliant on a reliable single source of income, our lives can easily be turned upside down in the coming turmoil. To achieve financial independence, we look for opportunities to diversify our sources of income and reduce our expenses. PEOPLE & COMMUNITY - Bitcoin was the most valuable asset one could hold during the 2010's. For the 2020's the most valuable asset won't be a financial asset at all. It'll be people. We must cultivate relationships and build community around us. Yes, the virtual world is important, but it's critical that we do this in the physical world. We must prioritize finding "our people". If you're one of us, you probably know what it feels like to be an alien amongst your family and local community. You know what it feels like to be gaslight by the 'powers that be' and you know the value of connecting with like minds. The COVID hysteria is waning, but the threats to our livelihood and freedom are only accelerating. There has never been a more important time to connect with like-minded people who value the same things you do. Learn More about the Phyle https://phyle.co

(Warning - there are Rings of Power season finale spoilers in the first five minutes, so skip that part if you don't wanna know) Noam and Jen tackle the John Fetterman stroke situation, Herschel Walker paying for an abortion, bad faith deflections, the desire to win at all costs, and hypocrisy  Also the not so good Rings of Power finale with its Big Reveal, the very good She-Hulk season finale that is devoted to roasting the MCU, a little Hot D, and how we're about to have a lot less TV to consume Join us on Callin this week (8:30 Eastern) where, barring any Earth-shattering events that need to be discussed on a Wednesday, we'll be doing an October-long series on horror movies / TV shows  https://www.callin.com/show/all-crossed-out-jVWglWcHxW  Show notes: Noam's piece for Commentary on Max Fisher's book about the effects of social media https://www.commentary.org/articles/noam-blum/social-media-chaos-machine/  The Fetterman interview that launched a thousand accusations of ableism  https://www.inquirer.com/politics/fetterman-nbc-interview-stroke-pennsylvania-senate-race-20221012.html  And did you know Fetterman had a stroke four days before his primary? It's ok to say no, it wasn't talked about much https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-candidate-fetterman-almost-died-stroke-vows-return-trail-2022-06-03/  That one time it was perfectly OK to say having a stroke disqualifies one from holding office https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/14/chicago-tribune-offers-an-awfully-blunt-reason-for-not-endorsing-sen-mark-kirk-his-stroke/  Kara Voght's tweet about Gisele Fetterman becoming the de facto candidate, which I assume someone explained to her wasn't a good look  https://twitter.com/LoganDobson/status/1581306253606690816  Dianne Feinstein isn't doing so well https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/dianne-feinstein-senate-17079487.php  Herschel Walker gets caught paying for an abortion  https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/11/herschel-walker-abortion-payment/  Noam quotes The Diamond Age, because of course he does https://twitter.com/neontaster/status/1518212786983157761 

Neal Stephenson is a best-selling author, futurist, tech geek and swordsman whose works include Cryptonomicron, Seveneves, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash. He has also co-written several other books and graphic novels which we discuss in this episode. His latest book, Termination Shock goes into depth and detail about Sikh martial arts, which he had to research during the Covid lockdowns. Of course, Neal's main claim to fame is that he wrote the preface to my own Swordfighting for Writers, Game Designers and Martial Artists. We cover an enormously wide range of topics in this episode, from fountain pens to working with Jeff Bezos building rockets. If you want to find anything in particular, the timestamps and related links are listed below: [03:07] How Neal got into swords. Neal's club in Seattle is Lonin. [08:12] Ellis Amdur and Japanese martial arts. [14:31] Bartitsu [17:53] Silver and McBane. Note: It was Captain John Godfrey's 1747, A Treatise Upon The Useful Science of Defence, where he said that “The Small-Sword is the Call of Honour, the Back-Sword the Call of Duty.” [28:50] Indian Club training [37:46] Sword fights in fiction and how to write one [43:48] Working with Charles C. Mann on Cimarronin. The Manila Galleons. We mention Da'Mon Stith and episode 23 of this podcast. For the photo of Ellis Amdur sticking an eight foot spear into Neal's chest, see: https://swordschool.com/podcast/from-katanas-to-creating-the-metaverse-with-neal-stephenson/  [52:40] Fountain pens [55:38] How Neal plots, writes and edits his books, and how he co-writes with another author [1:01:09] How Neal's books changed culture – e.g. influenced the development of the Kindle (see Fiona image here: https://swordschool.com/podcast/from-katanas-to-creating-the-metaverse-with-neal-stephenson/ Fiona is a character in The Diamond Age. Amazon used the codename ‘Fiona' for their Kindle project.) [1:03:47] Working with Jeff Bezos at Blue Origin finding better ways to power space rockets [1:14:05] Bullwhips [1:15:41] LAMINA1 and building a new open platform for metaverses [1:28:28] The best idea Neal hasn't acted on yet [1:32:14] What Neal would do with $1 million to improve historical martial arts For more information about the host Guy Windsor and his work, as well as transcriptions of all the episodes, check out his website at https://swordschool.com/podcast   And to support the show, come join the Patrons at  https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy

Neal Stephensons moderner Klassiker “The Diamond Age”, im Untertitel “A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer” stammt aus dem Jahre 1995, und es war ein großes Vergnügen, ihn für Studio B nach 15 Jahren noch einmal zu lesen.Die Rezensentin muss gestehen, bei der ersten Lektüre nur ca. 10% des Buches nachvollzogen zu haben, denn schon damals zeigte sich eine der größten Herausforderungen aller Werke von Neal Stephenson, sofern sie nicht in vergangenen Zeiten, sondern wie The Diamond Age in einer zeitlich nicht näher definierten Zukunft angesiedelt sind: entweder ist man mit Visionen des technischen Fortschritts vertraut und besitzt eine hohe visuelle und gesellschaftliche Phantasie, oder ein großer Teil des Buches bleibt im Dunkel, weil der Verstand der Leserin nur Bruchteile fassen, nachvollziehen und einordnen kann. Da ein Großteil der damals für mich unverständlichen Schilderungen mittlerweile technischer Alltag und vorstellbare - wenn auch noch nicht vollständig umgesetzte - gesellschaftliche Entwicklungsprozesse sind, las sich The Diamond Age diesmal eher wie ein literarischer Kommentar zu einer teilweise realen, teilweise vorstellbaren Zeitgeschichte.The Diamond Age spielt auf vergangene Zeitalter an, deren kultureller Fortschritt durch die Verwendung, Entdeckung oder -entwicklung von Materialien geprägt war, wir denken hier an die Steinzeit oder auch die Bronzezeit. Jetzt hat sich die Nanotechnologie endgültig durchgesetzt: durch die Möglichkeit, einzelne Atome und Moleküle beliebig zu verbinden, entfällt der Kampf um Rohstoffe, Reichtum wird nicht mehr über deren Besitz erzielt, weil alles einfach hergestellt werden kann. Die Herstellung von Fenstern aus Diamanten ist unvergleichlich preiswerter als die Herstellung aus Glas. Ähnlich unserem Stromnetz werden grundlegende Elemente verteilt, um anschließend mit Hilfe von Feedern Mittel des täglichen Bedarfs zur Verfügung zu stellen. Hunger gibt es also nicht mehr. Allerdings sind auch die Nationalstaaten, wie wir sie heute kennen, nun eine historische Angelegenheit. Verantwortlich dafür sind neben der Befriedigung der grundlegenden Bedürfnisse unabhängig von Wohlfahrtssystemen, die ausgrenzen, die fehlende Kontrolle der Nationalstaaten über die Geldströme. Ein Staat, der keine Steuern eintreiben kann, hat keine Mittel, um seine Machtinstrumente zu bezahlen. Ersetzt wurden die Staaten durch verschiedene sogenannte Phyles, Zusammenschlüssen von Menschen, vielleicht Stämmen vergleichbar, die sich entweder aufgrund gleicher politischer oder kultureller Überzeugungen organisieren, dabei aber unterschiedliche Zugehörigkeitsvorgaben haben. Eine der mächtigsten Gruppen sind die Neo-Viktorians, die die Nanotechnologie entwickelt haben und die Feeds kontrollieren. Die andere wesentliche Gruppe sind die Han, die die chinesische Kultur nach Konfuzius repräsentieren. Dazu kommt eine Vielzahl anderer Gruppen, die entweder streng geographisch begrenzt, teilweise aber auch weltweit in kleinen Enklaven leben, und deren Beziehungen untereinander durch das Common Economic Protokoll, kurz CEP, geregelt wird. Bezeichnenderweise ist einer der wichtigsten Punkte dieses Protokolls der Schutz des persönlichen Eigentums, während Menschenrechte oder individuelle Rechte, wie z. B. auf Bildung nur innerhalb der verschiedenen Gruppen in verschiedenen Ausprägungen existieren, dafür aber Unterwerfung unter deren jeweilige Paradigmen voraussetzen. Übertragen auf die heutigen globalen Akteure ist das CEP am ehesten mit dem Internationalen Währungsfonds vergleichbar, während die Durchsetzung der Genfer Menschenrechtskonvention, nun ja.Neben diesen Gruppen gibt es noch die Thete, Menschen, die keinem Stamm zugehörig sind und damit auch keinen geregelten Zugang zu Bildung oder damit verbundenem gesellschaftlichen Aufstieg haben, also arm sind und mit großer Wahrscheinlichkeit arm bleiben werden.The Diamond Age sammelt eine Vielzahl von Handlungssträngen, Protagonisten und großen Themen, bedient sich dafür innerhalb des Buches unterschiedlicher Stile und ermöglicht verschiedene Lesarten. Den ungerecht geregelten Zugang zu gesellschaftlichen Gruppen und damit verbundenen Möglichkeiten habe ich bereits kurz angesprochen. Viele der Ereignisse in The Diamond Age beruhen auf den kriminellen Handlungen verschiedener Protagonisten, die sich dadurch ein besseres Leben für sich selbst oder ihre Kinder erhoffen.John Percival Hackworth, dessen 2. Vorname auf Parzifal, den Ritter auf der Suche nach dem Heiligen Gral verweist, ist ein neoviktorianischer Ingenieur, der den Auftrag erhält, den im Untertitel des Buches erwähnten “A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer” zu entwickeln. Dabei handelt es sich um interaktives Gerät, dessen Geschichten, Erklärungen und Gleichnisse jungen Mädchen die Möglichkeit geben soll, durch die Erziehung mithilfe des Primers - oder auch Fibel - ein interessantes Leben zu führen. Dabei hat der oberste Lord der Neoviktorianer, Lord Finkle-McGraw lediglich ein einziges Exemplar für seine Enkelin vorgesehen. Sein Ziel ist es, seiner Enkeltochter eine gewisse Subversivität zu ermöglichen, weil er den Niedergang seiner Gruppe befürchtet, wenn alle konform den Regeln folgen, damit aber keine Impulse für eine Weiterentwicklung geben können. Ihm ist klar, dass die Weiterentwicklung von Gesellschaften und Gruppen nie gleichförmig nach vorn, sondern sprunghaft, durch Anstöße von Individuen, die abseits des herrschenden Mainstreams handeln, in Gang gebracht wird. Hackworth, der Ingenieur, fertigt jedoch einen 2. Prototypen, den er für seine Tochter Fiona vorgesehen hat, um ihr damit später eine bessere gesellschaftliche Stellung zu ermöglichen. Dieser wird ihm jedoch gestohlen und gelangt so zu Nell, einem 4jährigen Mädchen, das zusammen mit seiner Mutter und ihren wechselnden gewalttätigen Freunden lebt und mithilfe der Fibel lesen und - wichtiger - Denken lernt. Dabei ist die Fibel kein klassisches Buch, sondern funktioniert eher wie ein Computerspiel, bei dem auf verschiedenen Wegen versucht wird, Probleme zu lösen oder eben das nächste Level zu erreichen. Von der kriminellen Kopie des Primers erfahren 2 weitere Protagonisten: zum einen der bereits erwähnte Lord Finkle McGraw als auch ein mit dem kargen Namen Dr. X ausgestatteter Chinese, der die Technologie des Primers für die Erziehung unzähliger chinesischer Mädchen nutzen will. Der Ausweg aus dem Elend als glücklicher Einzelfall oder als organisierte Revolte.The Diamond Age verhandelt die unterschiedliche Auffassung von Kulturen und die Basis ihrer Erfolge. So gibt es auch ein längeres Gespräch über die ursprünglichen Viktorianer, deren Erfolg im Zeitalter der Aufklärung auf der Ausbeutung und Kolonialisierung anderer basierte.Nun ist Information und der Zugang zu ihr, wie seit vielen Jahren propagiert, eine wichtige Voraussetzung für Reichtum. Die Verteilung von Informationen bzw. Modelle dazu sind eine weitere Diskussion: so wollen Hacker, die im Buch die Gruppe CryptNet bilden und die vorrangig im Untergrund agieren, das Verteilsystem über Feeder abschaffen, und stattdessen mithilfe der Seedtechnologie Ressourcen verteilen. Dies steht diametral zur herrschenden Ordnung des Common Economic Protokolls, die den Zusammenbruch und anschließende Anarchie befürchten, wenn jeder selbst herstellen könnte, wonach ihn gelüstet, z. B. Waffen. Widersprochen wird den Bewahrern des Common Economic Protokoll dabei insbesondere von den Mitgliedern der Han-Gruppe, die sich als diszipliniert genug begreifen, da sie nach den Konfuzius zugeschriebenen Regeln leben.Während im 1. Teil des Buches Personen eingeführt werden und die Handlung in vielen Einzelsträngen, die zunächst nur lose oder gar nicht verbunden erzählt wird, schreibt Neal Stephenson im 2. Teil, der etwas abfällt, mehr über Hintergründe und die teils fiktiven historischen Ereignisse, die zur Gesellschaft geführt haben, in der die Protagonisten leben müssen. Was kann man Menschen zutrauen, welche Haltung besteht gegenüber der sogenannten “Natur des Menschen” - dies ist eine der zentralen Fragen von The Diamond Age. Dabei schafft Neal Stephenson mit eingestreuten Geschichten aus der Fibel, die durch Nell gesteuert wird, nebenbei noch einen Rückblick auf Technikgeschichte; erzählt neben den Möglichkeiten der Nanotechnologie von ihren dunklen Seiten - so ermöglicht diese auch die totale Überwachung, da diese nicht nur außerhalb, sondern auch innerhalb von Körpern stattfindet; berichtet über irre Aussenseiter, die handwerkliche Produkte von Hand herstellen anstatt die Feeder zu nutzen; untersucht den Einfluss und die Wichtigkeit von einzelnen Personen für die Erziehung von Kindern, also: ist dies eine Aufgabe, die in Zukunft Technologie übernehmen könnte?Oder anders: den ausgedehnten Zustand des halbherzigen andauernden Krieges, der Gesellschaft genannt wird. Neal Stephensons Wälzer The Diamond Age kann auch mehr als 20 Jahre nach seinem Erscheinen empfohlen werden. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lobundverriss.substack.com

My interview with the co-founders of J&M Studios, Joseph Summers and Mandy Acosta promoting their web comic series, Diamond Age. Original theme music The City Above composed by Tim Roven on www.tabletopaudio.com. All rights reserved to Joseph Summers, Mandy Acosta and J&M (Joseph & Mandy) Studios. **Joseph translates my questions in Spanish for Mandy in order for him to answer.** - J&M Studios Website: https://tapas.io/series/Diamond-Age/info - J&M Studios Socials: FB - @JosephandMandySt // IG - @josephandmandystudios // Twitter - @Joseph_MandySt - - - Socials: IG: solonerdbirdpodcast Twitter: solonerdbirdpod FB: solonerdbirdpod Tumblr: solonerdbird Fanbase: solonerdbird Anchor.Fm: solo-nerd-bird WordPress: solonerdbird.wordpress.com Twitch: solo_nerd_bird Email: solonerdbird@gmail.com

 In which David & Cory talk about Elon Musk's Twitter board seat, what the Metaverse really means to 'normal' people, consider some eye opening NFT facts. Is it time to sit behind the safety car for a few laps, until the debris of the wrecks are cleared away before racing continues? Get in TouchShow Notes & Bookmarks(00:35) Simon Sinek Infinite Game (01:50) Elon Musk buys himself a Twitter board seat.(06:08) Jack's Web3 Tweet(07:17) Gartner's thoughts about the Metaverse(08:29) Nord VPN ask American's about their thoughts on the Metaverse(09:55) Facebook and the teacher slapping meme (10:21) Famous women are receiving terrible DMs and Facebook is doing nothing about it. (15:48) The dark secret of virtual spaces (e.g. IMVU, Yahoo Chat)(16:31) The B2B Work metaverse is where it is at… mixed reality and XR(19:15) Neal Stephenson's 'The Diamond Age'(19:43) Adidas partners with Ready Player Me (22:40) NFT 'Facts'(26:47) Netflix Documentary - Trust No One(30:20) The yellow flags are out…(33:42) Macdonalds doesn't need stores in the Metaverse… think about the user journey. Why can't they spend their hour in the metaverse in the Macdonalds store?(36:00) We talked about personalisation in Episode 5(40:50) Amazon is huge. Ecommerce is huge. But.. the majority of retails sales are still done offline.(42:01) Who is your customer? Who will be your customer? (44:05) Cory finally gets around to watching 'Drive to Survive'Support the show (http://www.pilotemedia.com/pilote-podcast/)

★Diamond Age https://www.diamondage3d.com/ ★TECH CRUNCH https://jp.techcrunch.com/2022/03/12/2022-03-11-diamond-age-series-a/ ★Youtube関連動画 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5ky1vfW_vM ★海外スタートアップ攻略（ブログ） https://daijirostartup.com/ ★だいじろうのTwitter（ご意見お待ちしてます！） https://twitter.com/daijirostartup #海外　#スタートアップ　#建設 #住宅 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/daijirostartup/message

NOTE: We apologize for the poor audio quality of this recording. Something happened to out tech. It'll be better next time! Thanks for understanding. Canary Cry News Talk ep. 379 - 08.23.2021 - DEADLY DOGHOUSE DOWN UNDER: Rider on the White Horse, TikTok Tattoo, Transhumans Among Us - CCNT 379 Our LINK TREE: CanaryCry.Party SUBSCRIBE TO US ON: NewPodcastApps.com PAYPAL: https://bit.ly/3v59fkR MEET UPS: https://CanaryCryMeetUps.com   INTRO Newsom Science: Larry Elder promises to drop mask mandate if he's elected (Clip) Old Biden clip how China “owns us” (Clip) FLIPPY Tiny Robot Fueled by Alcohol (Science Mag)   WACCINE/PANDEMIC SPECIAL Vaccinated are worried, and scientists don't have answers (Bloomberg) Hundreds of doctors sign open letter to PM, debate needed over flawed lockdown (Express) Scientists created False Narrative over lab leak theory (Telegraph) Blue surgical masks only 10% effective in preventing C19 spread (DailyMail)   AUSTRALIA (Emily T Email) Sydney, police seek to arrest man who “tested positive, failed to isolate” (Sydney Morning Herald) Rescue dog shot dead by NSW council due to C19 restrictions (Sydney Morning Herald) Man on white horse, William Wallace moment (Clip) Australian truckers are going to protest to take out Government (Clip)   CHINA China hits ZERO positive cases using draconian measures (Bloomberg) USA FDA tweet about Ivermectin is childish (Tweet, FDA) Alabama doctor says he won't treat unvaccinated (Yahoo NBC) Supporters BOO Trump for pushing jab at rally (Clip, The Hill) Mississippi, positive tested people could face 5 years jail if they don't isolate (Fox) University of Virginia disenrolls 200 students who didn't share jab status (NBC News)   ITALY Italian student becomes TikTok star after tattooing passport QR code on arm (The Sun)   BREAK (producer party)   POLYTICK Capitol officer who shot Ashli Babbitt exonerated (NBC News) Afghan president landed in Dubai with millions in cash (Guardian) US omits Macon's plea for ‘Moral Responsibility' (Guardian)   TRANSHUMAN Investor hoping to live 200 years with technology (Telegraph)   ADDITIONAL STORIES Maker of popular covid test told factory to destroy inventory (NY Times) Fentanyl creeping into mainstream drug supply (Vice) Who gets to decide what is allowable speech? (OC Register) Delta's gift is hybrid immunity (WSJ) France, anti-jab demos continue for fourth week in a row (France24) Jack Ma's Costliest Business lesson, China only has one leader (WSJ) Catholic officials on edge after reports of Priest using Grindr (Forbes) Hacker gang claims to be selling data on 70 million AT&T users (Gizmodo) Implantable AI chip created (Dresden University) Diamond Age raises $8 million for 3D printers, robot arm for RaaS (TechCrunch) PRODUCERS ep. 379: Brandon C*, Volodymyr S, Patricia B, Emily T, Coolrunningsmon, Aaron J, Juan A, JC, Sir Casey the Shield Knight, Malik W, Scott K, Doughty the Coyote, Adam42, Veronica D, Kim W, Big Tank, Brandt W, Aubrey W, Gail M, Dalton H, Ciara, Eric R   TIMESTAMPS: Christine C (break)   ART: Dame Allie of the Skillet Nation Sir Dove, Knight of Rustbeltia Runksmash

Bay Area-based Diamond Age this week announced that it has raised $8 million. The seed round is led by Prime Movers Lab and Alpaca VC and features a slew of additional firms, including Dolby Family Ventures, Calm Ventures, Gaingels, Towerview Ventures, GFA Venture Partners and Suffolk Construction. The startup looks to put a slew of […]

Second segment of conversation with Alison McDowell & Kate Ledogar. Part One: The Internet of Humans (0 – 27 mins) Minecraft education account, avatars in limbo, new child labor, digital assets, Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson's dark ties, synthetic humans, Meet Cathy, the wonder kid of Wharton, an open air jail, choice architecture, encoded nudges, block ... Read more

Chris talks about learning more AI and ML, and how learning that is helping as he teaches others. Christian is about to get a new 3D printer, and talks about how it's so cool that we can just download and print real things - we're living in the future. 00:00 Intro 02:15 Doing things under your own name vs a new domain name 07:18 Learning new things makes you a better educator 09:27 Consuming the content you create is important in business 14:33 Penny wise and pound foolish 19:11 Paying money for human experts to cover your blindspots 21:39 Updates on Chris's projects 24:14 Solutions for reducing the support load of a SaaS 29:27 3D printer + CNC + laser cutter 39:50 Openscad as a programmable 3D modeling software 42:16 Living in the future 46:07 NFTs Timestamps created with https://clips.marketing by @cgenco Links mentioned:

Definitionsessay [ es-ey ] / ˈɛs eɪ /(authorship) A written composition of moderate length, exploring a particular issue or subject.(now rare) An attempt.struggle [ struhg-uhl ] / ˈstrʌg əl /A contortion of the body in an attempt to escape or to perform a difficult task.(figuratively) Strife, contention, great effort.concinnity [ kuhn-sin-i-tee ] / kənˈsɪn ɪ ti /(music) The harmonious reinforcement of the various parts of a work of art. ReferencesHenry Hitchings, The Secret Life of Words Bruce Sterling, The Diamond Age or A Young Lady’s Illustrated PrimerZettelkasten (wikipedia) Obisidian

In this conversation, Philip spends time with Marcela Sabino, currently the Head of Innovation for the Museo of Tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro an applied science and technology Museum in Rio de Janeiro. Philip and Marcela explore the outer limits of design and how it impacts our cultural and lived spaces. The Drop – The segment of the show where Philip and his guest share tasty morsels of intellectual goodness and creative musings. Philip's Drop: Plantation Lullabies (https://open.spotify.com/track/5DmIkrFYG5xDtw5GZMLIpo) by Meshell Ndegeocello Marcela's Drop: The Diamond Age (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age) by Neal Stephenson Majur on Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/artist/3EWwR3BxuCaiYKniPGDjE7?autoplay=true) Special Guest: Marcela Sabino.

Very few people can get away with saying “I’m gonna move fast and not treat you like 3rd graders so you are going to have to keep up”. My guest this week is one of them. Paul Sankey has had a deep history with the energy industry and my favorite thing, analysis, data and figuring out where things are going and how people tick. If you know Paul, you know this was a great conversation. If you don’t know Paul, you should listen and follow his research. Hope you enjoy.   #hottakeoftheday Episode 73 w/Paul Sankey https://youtu.be/8u7M6UdlLAQ   Audio Podcast   About Paul Paul Sankey, the widely-followed oil analyst who was first to call for negative oil prices when COVID began impacting world markets, started his own research firm Sankey Research, breaking free from the limitations of Big Bank agendas. He has ranked “all-American” research analyst many times since arriving on Wall Street in 2004 to follow US oil & gas markets and equities. Among other recognized calls, Sankey tagged premium oil company EOG “The Apple of Oil”, ExxonMobil “The Big Unit”, pushed “The Diamond Age of Refining” over the past decade for US refiners, and has called for “The Renaissance” in US Exploration and Production in terms of companies reducing growth, reducing debt, and increasing cash return to shareholders. He has also styled himself an “analyst as activist” and heavily covered controversies such as Chevron vs Oxy for Anadarko, and most recently the sum-of-the-parts argument around Marathon Petroleum. Sankey started covering oil in 1990 out of Manchester University, joining the IEA in Paris, with subsequent stints at Wood Mackenzie, Deutsche Bank, Wolfe Research, and most recently Mizuho. He has ranked consistently highly or #1 in many investor surveys since becoming a sellside analyst in 2000.  

Jerzy and Rob check in on what they’re reading/watching/playing, followed by another entry from the Obstacles series. Sponsors for this episode Cartoon Crossroads Columbus Rob's workshops Lean Into Art Discord Links mentioned: Gods and Robots: Myths Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology The Diamond Age Holey Moley My Octopus Teacher Guacamelee! The Upside of Stress Borderlands 3 Thanks to our top Patreon supporters Chris Watkins Ashley Knapp Becca Hillburn Katherine Sugrue Keri Goble Billick This week's 2 Minute Practice Draw some lines representing the quality of your day Connect with Jerzy and Rob Jerzy on Instagram Rob on Instagram Lean Into Art on Twitter

Covid-19 has disrupted traditional modes of safe practice, but the advances in virtual reality and simulations are making it possible to provide memorable and impactful learning through practice. In this episode, Carrie Straub, Executive Director: Educational Programs and Research at Mursion, joins the Learning Geeks to discuss the advances in immersive, virtual practice. With Carrie's immense experience on helping others authentically practice interpersonal skills, she shares why it's important to create psychologically safe environments, how AI could play a role in the future, and why authentic, safe practice is essential for today's most important issues (e.g. racial inequalities, unconscious bias).CONNECT WITH USIf you have any feedback or want to join in on the conversation, connect with us via LinkedIN, Twitter (@bobbyhollywood), or email our show at learninggeekspod@gmail.com. RESOURCESStanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab (Publications) – https://vhil.stanford.edu/pubs/Diamond Age – by Neal Stephenson DISCLAIMERAll thoughts and views are of our own.AUDIO CREDIT"Seagulls Stop it Now" by Bad Lip Reading. Check them out at https://www.youtube.com/user/BadLipReading

In this month's book club, Scott and Matt join Neal Stephenson's phyle and talk all about his 1995 novel, The Diamond Age.  As always, this is an audio copy of the live-streamed discussion over on YouTube, so you'll hear us interact with the audience a bit as well as reference slides Click here for a copy of the slide deck used! Next month's book is The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Catherine Webb. The Livestream discussion will happen on Friday, July 31st at 9:30 PM Central Time Support us on Patreon Matt's Twitter: @moridinamael Scott's Twitter:@scottdaly85 Stay updated with Doof Media: @doofmedia See all of our podcasts, writing and more at www.doofmedia.com

In this month's book club, Scott and Matt head back to the wonderful world of Locke Lamora to talk about Scott Lynch's third book in the Gentlemen Bastards series, The Republic of Thieves.  As always, this is an audio copy of the live-streamed discussion over on YouTube, so you'll hear us interact with the audience a bit as well as reference slides Click here for a copy of the slide deck used! Next month's book is The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson. The Livestream discussion will happen on Friday, June 26th at 9:30 PM Central Time Support us on Patreon Matt's Twitter: @moridinamael Scott's Twitter:@scottdaly85 Stay updated with Doof Media: @doofmedia See all of our podcasts, writing and more at www.doofmedia.com

Many years ago I read Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson and thoroughly enjoyed it, enough so that when I made a goal to go back and start re-reading more books it was the first book I chose. In particular out of all the science fiction books I have ever read it may provide the very best defense of the connection between morality and civilization. It does this on top of having delightful characters and an excellent plot (except the ending, I apologize in advance for the ending...) 

Sri tries to invent a new word and viddies a bourbon. His "Bizarro Method" helps you get out of a rut. ***notes: Sri's article on Medium: Intermittent Fasting and the Placebo Effect Origins of Bizarro (Youtube)Superman Meets Bizarro (Youtube)  Seinfeld clips referenced: Jerry and Elaine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcjSDZNbOs0The two worlds collide:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc_f-0DCGI0Authors/bloggers to check out: James Clear and Charles Duhigg "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson (unabridged audiobook - Audible / Amazon)    “Influence” by Robert Cialdini (“click, whirr”) (Amazon) “Quiet" by Susan Cain (Amazon) 

DIAMOND EARTH ENERGY REPORT AND SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT! In this episode, Stephanie Lodge shares a special "energy report" from her councils on the current state of affairs as it pertains to earth changes, frequency shifts, and more! Angels in the Buff is here to bring some levity to the spiritual exploration and elevation of humanity during the greatest Age of Awakening this planet has seen in centuries - what Stephanie Lodge calls "The Diamond Age." She delivers the naked truth to empower humanity to enter their divine sovereign state that is our birthright as the Living Light or Diamond Light rises more and more on this planet each day. She specializes in empowering those who are stuck in grief, loops of fear, the energetically gifted, empathically sensitive and those who are just wondering, "What the heaven is going on?" Learn more about her work at StephanieLodge.com and you can find her also on her new "Angelic Lightstyle" site TheHugAngel.com and on all social media as @TheHugAngel. REGISTER FOR THE UPCOMING ANGELIC SUMMIT 2020 HERE! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/angelic-light-stream/support

Why is Australia's economic growth grinding to a halt while the US is going gangbusters? Might it have something to do with cutting red tape and reducing taxes? This week your hosts Scott Hargreaves and Dr Chris Berg are joined by the IPA's Director of Research, Daniel Wild, and special guest Dr Patrick McLaughlin, Director of Policy Analytics at the Washington DC based Mercatus Center. They'll be tackling everything from a new tool being adopted by US and Canadian Governments to tackle Red Tape (RegData), the impact Trump has made on restraining the US bureaucracy, and whether artificial intelligence means robots will displace humans (1:54-43:16) as well as diving into culture picks including the new Steven Soderbergh film The Laundromat, Ian Mclean's Why Australia Prospered, Neal Stephenson's sci-fi classic The Diamond Age and Tyler Cowen's Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero. RegData: Australia; Mercatus Center https://www.mercatus.org/publications/regulation/regdata-australia How much law do we have to obey? Chris Berg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wV5kUDVcT0 How British Columbia Defeated Red Tape – And How We Can Too; Gideon Rozner https://ipa.org.au/ipa-tv/how-british-columbia-defeated-red-tape-and-how-we-can-too IPA's Red Tape Research Program https://ipa.org.au/research-areas/red-tape Culture Picks: Chris: The laundromat (Netflix) https://www.netflix.com/au/title/80994011 Dan: Why Australia Prospered; Ian Mclean https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691154671/why-australia-prospered Patrick: The Diamond Age; Neal Stephenson https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/827.The_Diamond_Age Scott: Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero; Tyler Cowen https://www.amazon.com/Big-Business-Letter-American-Anti-Hero/dp/1250110548

Neal Stephenson author of Fall, or Dodge in Hell in conversation with Long Now Board Member, Kevin Kelly. Tickets include a signed copy of Fall, or Dodge in Hell. The Interval at Long Now: check-in starts at 12 noon. The talk will begin @ 12:30pm. Neal Stephenson will inscribe books after the event from 1:30 to 2pm. Additional books will be on sale before and after the talk thanks to Borderlands Books. Fall, or Dodge in Hell is pure, unadulterated fun: a grand drama of analog and digital, man and machine, angels and demons, gods and followers, the finite and the eternal. In this exhilarating epic, Neal Stephenson raises profound existential questions and touches on the revolutionary breakthroughs that are transforming our future. Combining the technological, philosophical, and spiritual in one grand myth, he delivers a mind-blowing speculative literary saga for the modern age. Neal Stephenson is the bestselling author of the novels Reamde, Anathem, The System of the World, The Confusion, Quicksilver, Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and Zodiac, and the groundbreaking nonfiction work "In the Beginning...Was the Command Line." He lives in Seattle, Washington.

Bestselling author Neal Stephenson is known for delivering novels with poignant and incisive reflections on our present and future. Now the acclaimed novelist joins us for a Town Hall conversation about his latest book Fall; or, Dodge in Hell. The story follows billionaire magnate Richard “Dodge” Forthrast who is left suddenly braindead after a mishap during a routine medical procedure. Per his will, Dodge’s brain is scanned and its data structures uploaded and stored in the cloud until it can eventually be revived. When Dodge’s digital brain is reactivated, the accomplishment shatters the human understanding of death and leads to the creation of an eternal digital afterlife. But this brave new immortal world is not the Utopia it might first seem. Stephenson took the stage to discuss this grand drama of analog and digital, raising profound existential questions and touching on the revolutionary breakthroughs that are transforming our future. Join Stephenson for a deep dive into his latest mind-blowing speculative literary saga for the modern age. Neal Stephenson is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Reamde, Anathem, The System of the World, The Confusion, Quicksilver, Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and Zodiac, and the groundbreaking nonfiction work In the Beginning . . . Was the Command Line. Recorded live at The Great Hall by Town Hall Seattle on June 3, 2019. 

In c't uplink sprechen wir in der aktuellen Folge über Science Fiction. Wir haben unsere Lieblingsbücher, -comics und -serien mitgebracht und sprechen über die Zukunft mit Raumschiffen, Hacker-Angriffen, Riesenrobotern und virtuellen Realitäten. Und für die Sendung über die Zukunft haben wir einen Gast aus der Vergangenheit geholt! Über das aktuelle Heft sprechen wir dann in der kommenden Woche. Hintergrund: Die eigentliche Folge ist kaputt geganen und wir konnten sie nicht mehr wiederherstellen - ja ja, schon klar, kein Backup, kein Mitleid ;) Mit dabei: Martin Holland, Hannes Czerulla, Jan-Keno Janssen, Achim Barczok, Fabian Scherschel Was sind eure Sci-Fi-Tipps? Schreibt sie uns in die Kommentare! Unsere Sci-Fi-Liste: [4:05] Ready Player One (Ernest Cline) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_Player_One [19:27] Tales from the Loop (Simon Stalenhag) https://www.simonstalenhag.se/books.html [30:28] I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_Scream [40:38] In eigener Sache: Auch heise bringt SciFi raus! Aus unserem Schwester-Verlag Hinstorff c't-Stories: https://www.hinstorff.de/science-fiction/720/massaker-in-robcity-9783356022292.html SciFi-Kurzgeschichten: https://www.hinstorff.de/science-fiction/719/ausblendung-wege-in-die-virtuelle-welt-9783356022285.html [41:58] Saga Comic (Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples) https://imagecomics.com/comics/series/saga [54:29] Daemon und Darknet (Daniel Suarez) https://www.rowohlt.de/autor/daniel-suarez.html [1:08:50] The Expanse https://www.syfy.com/theexpanse [1:10:41] Common Wealth Saga (Peter F Hamilton) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Saga [1:11:02] Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Age [1:11:24] Paradox (Phillip P. Peterson) http://raumvektor.de/paradox/ [1:11:58] Hackers (Steven Levy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer_Revolution [1:12:50] The Amiga Years (Brian Bagnall) https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1462758959/commodore-the-amiga-years-book?lang=de [1:13:29] The Pirate Book https://openglam.org/2016/02/11/the-pirate-book-read-me/ [1:14:35] WASD Magazin https://wasd-magazin.de/ [1:15:24] Picknick am Wegesrand (Arkadi und Boris Strugazki) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picknick_am_Wegesrand [1:18:37] Solaris (Stanislaw Lem) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(Roman)#Detaillierte_Beschreibung [1:19:20] Arrival (Film) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrival_(Film)#Handlung [1:20:23] Die-Hyperion-Gesänge (Dan Simmons) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Hyperion-Ges%C3%A4nge [1:21:13] Horizon Zero Dawn (Computerspiel) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_Zero_Dawn [1:22:15] Die drei Sonnen (Liu Cixin) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_drei_Sonnen

In c't uplink sprechen wir in der aktuellen Folge über Science Fiction. Wir haben unsere Lieblingsbücher, -comics und -serien mitgebracht und sprechen über die Zukunft mit Raumschiffen, Hacker-Angriffen, Riesenrobotern und virtuellen Realitäten. Und für die Sendung über die Zukunft haben wir einen Gast aus der Vergangenheit geholt! Über das aktuelle Heft sprechen wir dann in der kommenden Woche. Hintergrund: Die eigentliche Folge ist kaputt geganen und wir konnten sie nicht mehr wiederherstellen - ja ja, schon klar, kein Backup, kein Mitleid ;) Mit dabei: Martin Holland, Hannes Czerulla, Jan-Keno Janssen, Achim Barczok, Fabian Scherschel Was sind eure Sci-Fi-Tipps? Schreibt sie uns in die Kommentare! Unsere Sci-Fi-Liste: [4:05] Ready Player One (Ernest Cline) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_Player_One [19:27] Tales from the Loop (Simon Stalenhag) https://www.simonstalenhag.se/books.html [30:28] I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_Scream [40:38] In eigener Sache: Auch heise bringt SciFi raus! Aus unserem Schwester-Verlag Hinstorff c't-Stories: https://www.hinstorff.de/science-fiction/720/massaker-in-robcity-9783356022292.html SciFi-Kurzgeschichten: https://www.hinstorff.de/science-fiction/719/ausblendung-wege-in-die-virtuelle-welt-9783356022285.html [41:58] Saga Comic (Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples) https://imagecomics.com/comics/series/saga [54:29] Daemon und Darknet (Daniel Suarez) https://www.rowohlt.de/autor/daniel-suarez.html [1:08:50] The Expanse https://www.syfy.com/theexpanse [1:10:41] Common Wealth Saga (Peter F Hamilton) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Saga [1:11:02] Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Age [1:11:24] Paradox (Phillip P. Peterson) http://raumvektor.de/paradox/ [1:11:58] Hackers (Steven Levy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer_Revolution [1:12:50] The Amiga Years (Brian Bagnall) https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1462758959/commodore-the-amiga-years-book?lang=de [1:13:29] The Pirate Book https://openglam.org/2016/02/11/the-pirate-book-read-me/ [1:14:35] WASD Magazin https://wasd-magazin.de/ [1:15:24] Picknick am Wegesrand (Arkadi und Boris Strugazki) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picknick_am_Wegesrand [1:18:37] Solaris (Stanislaw Lem) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(Roman)#Detaillierte_Beschreibung [1:19:20] Arrival (Film) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrival_(Film)#Handlung [1:20:23] Die-Hyperion-Gesänge (Dan Simmons) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Hyperion-Ges%C3%A4nge [1:21:13] Horizon Zero Dawn (Computerspiel) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_Zero_Dawn [1:22:15] Die drei Sonnen (Liu Cixin) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_drei_Sonnen

In c't uplink sprechen wir in der aktuellen Folge über Science Fiction. Wir haben unsere Lieblingsbücher, -comics und -serien mitgebracht und sprechen über die Zukunft mit Raumschiffen, Hacker-Angriffen, Riesenrobotern und virtuellen Realitäten. Und für die Sendung über die Zukunft haben wir einen Gast aus der Vergangenheit geholt! Über das aktuelle Heft sprechen wir dann in der kommenden Woche. Hintergrund: Die eigentliche Folge ist kaputt geganen und wir konnten sie nicht mehr wiederherstellen - ja ja, schon klar, kein Backup, kein Mitleid ;) Mit dabei: Martin Holland, Hannes Czerulla, Jan-Keno Janssen, Achim Barczok, Fabian Scherschel Was sind eure Sci-Fi-Tipps? Schreibt sie uns in die Kommentare! Unsere Sci-Fi-Liste: [4:05] Ready Player One (Ernest Cline) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_Player_One [19:27] Tales from the Loop (Simon Stalenhag) https://www.simonstalenhag.se/books.html [30:28] I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_Scream [40:38] In eigener Sache: Auch heise bringt SciFi raus! Aus unserem Schwester-Verlag Hinstorff c't-Stories: https://www.hinstorff.de/science-fiction/720/massaker-in-robcity-9783356022292.html SciFi-Kurzgeschichten: https://www.hinstorff.de/science-fiction/719/ausblendung-wege-in-die-virtuelle-welt-9783356022285.html [41:58] Saga Comic (Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples) https://imagecomics.com/comics/series/saga [54:29] Daemon und Darknet (Daniel Suarez) https://www.rowohlt.de/autor/daniel-suarez.html [1:08:50] The Expanse https://www.syfy.com/theexpanse [1:10:41] Common Wealth Saga (Peter F Hamilton) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Saga [1:11:02] Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Age [1:11:24] Paradox (Phillip P. Peterson) http://raumvektor.de/paradox/ [1:11:58] Hackers (Steven Levy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer_Revolution [1:12:50] The Amiga Years (Brian Bagnall) https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1462758959/commodore-the-amiga-years-book?lang=de [1:13:29] The Pirate Book https://openglam.org/2016/02/11/the-pirate-book-read-me/ [1:14:35] WASD Magazin https://wasd-magazin.de/ [1:15:24] Picknick am Wegesrand (Arkadi und Boris Strugazki) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picknick_am_Wegesrand [1:18:37] Solaris (Stanislaw Lem) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(Roman)#Detaillierte_Beschreibung [1:19:20] Arrival (Film) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrival_(Film)#Handlung [1:20:23] Die-Hyperion-Gesänge (Dan Simmons) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Hyperion-Ges%C3%A4nge [1:21:13] Horizon Zero Dawn (Computerspiel) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_Zero_Dawn [1:22:15] Die drei Sonnen (Liu Cixin) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_drei_Sonnen

"Die Illustrierte Fibel für junge Ladys" ist das wohl vielseitigste Buch aller Zeiten. Das nanotechnologische Wunderwerk ist Lehrer, Spielgefährte und Psychologe in einem. Doch dann fällt die für Töchter aus gutem Hause entwickelte Fibel der bitterarmen, vierjährigen Nell in die Hände – und Nells persönlicher Bildungsroman beginnt.

“This time Seth is joined by Jason Snell, head honcho at The Incomparable, and they discuss Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, winner of the 1996 Hugo Award.”

While recognizing that quantum mechanics “demands serious attention,” Albert Einstein in 1926 admonished that the theory “does not bring us closer to the secrets of the Old One.” Aware that “there are deep mysteries that Nature intends to keep for herself,” 94-year-old theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson has chronicled the stories of those who were engaged in solving some of the most challenging quandaries of twentieth-century physics. To offer us a rare glimpse into scientific history, Dyson came to our stage to share his life story through a series of autobiographical letters and recount many major advances in science that made the field what it is today. Dyson met for a conversation with renowned speculative fiction author Neal Stephenson—and the pair were joined by moderator Robbert Dijkgraaf, Director of the Institute for Advanced Study. Dyson and Stephenson delved into Dyson’s letters to relatives, which rendered a historic account of modern science and its greatest players, including J. Robert Oppenheimer, Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking, and Hans Bethe. Dyson reflected on the horrors of World War II, the moral dilemmas of nuclear development, the challenges of the space program, and the considerable demands of raising six children. Join Dyson and Stephenson for a firsthand account of one of the greatest periods of scientific discovery of our modern age. Professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, Freeman Dyson is an English-born American theoretical physicist and mathematician. His work unified the three versions of quantum electrodynamics invented by Feynman, Schwinger and Tomonaga, and he went on to work on nuclear reactors, solid state physics, ferromagnetism, astrophysics, and biology. He is the author of numerous books including Disturbing the Universe, Weapons and Hope, Infinite in All Directions, and Origins of Life. Neal Stephenson is the bestselling author of numerous works of speculative fiction, historical fiction, and science fiction. His work includes books such as Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, Anathem, The Diamond Age, and The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.. He has received multiple accolades for his books, including the 1996 Hugo Award for Best Novel (The Diamond Age), the Arthur C. Clarke Award (Quicksilver), and the 2009 Prometheus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (The System of the World). Robbert Dijkgraaf, Director of the Institute for Advanced Study and Leon Levy Professor since July 2012, is a mathematical physicist who has made significant contributions to string theory and the advancement of science education. His research focuses on the interface between mathematics and particle physics. In addition to finding surprising and deep connections between matrix models, topological string theory, and supersymmetric quantum field theory, Dijkgraaf has developed precise formulas for the counting of bound states that explain the entropy of certain black holes. For his contributions to science, Dijkgraaf was awarded the Spinoza Prize, the highest scientific award in the Netherlands, in 2003. Recorded live at Meydenbauer Center Theatre on Wednesday, May 9, 2018. 

James & Sven discuss the book The Diamond Age (or The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer) by Neal Stephenson. The book is rich with technological, social, political, and philosophical visions of a unique and strange future Earth society, and has elements particularly of interest to Libertarians and Anarcho-capitalists. Taken from The James Fox Higgins Show #002 https://youtu.be/cIlUIzZGlNY

With hurricanes and tropical storms at the forefront of the news these days, Jason kicks off this episode by speaking with Ed Babkes about the difference in weather-related insurance policies, why investors pay more for these policies and how to eliminate the need for flood insurance for your property. And later, the second part of Doug Casey's interview from Aspen, Colorado. Mr. Casey is a self-proclaimed Anarchist Libertarian who warns of a forthcoming economic depression in the United States. Key Takeaways: [01:21] A quote from Franklin D. Roosevelt about real estate. [04:24] Ed explains the differences between weather-related insurance coverage. [09:05] The government charged investor-owned properties more than owner occupied properties. [12:46] Elevation certifications can eliminate the need for flood insurance for some. [17:56] Information on the new Amazon Echo contest, the upcoming Venture Alliance, and the Meet the Master's events.   Doug Casey Guest Interview Part 2:   [20:27] Will technology keep the US lifestyle status quo in the face of inflation? [25:48] Governments all over the world are seriously bankrupt. [29:18] The welfare or the warfare state? [33:54] A good thing about the upcoming depression. [35:30] Why Inflation is much worse than income tax Mentioned in This Episode: Jason Hartman Doug Casey Interview - Part 1 New Amazon Echo Contest Venture Alliance Mastermind Meet the Masters of Income Property Short-term Rental Council - Apply to be a participant   Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson The International Man Casey Research Doug Casey Books

This time Seth is joined by Jason Snell, head honcho at The Incomparable, and they discuss Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, winner of the 1996 Hugo Award. Huge thanks to Jason for taking some time out of his incredibly busy schedule (he recorded two other podcasts the same day he did this) to drop by. … Continue reading "Hugos There Podcast #6: The Diamond Age (feat. Jason Snell)"

We are literally surrounded by our own personal primers, but do we spend enough time thinking about the experiences they provide? In this episode of Book and Bourbon, Chris takes a look at the lessons learned in The Diamond Age and whether or not fiction holds more truth than the present. Pour some Michter’s, sit back, and relax.

Was kann man Menschen zutrauen, welche Haltung besteht gegenüber der sogenannten “Natur des Menschen” - dies ist eine der zentralen Fragen von The Diamond Age. Dabei schafft Neal Stephenson mit eingestreuten Geschichten aus der Fibel, die durch Nell gesteuert wird, nebenbei noch einen Rückblick auf Technikgeschichte..

"Diamond Age!"  -- George (after the podcast was recorded) Kevin and George watch a worthy follow up to Tarkovsky's STALKER in HARD TO BE A GOD.  A movie that gives you a premise and asks you to find the science fiction.  Has there been a more bare-bones non-sci-fi sci-fi take done before?  I'm hard pressed to think of one.   Join us as we experience the experience, misery and all, that is HARD TO BE A GOD. BIBLIOGRAPHY:   HARD TO BE A GOD, 2014, dir. by Aleksi German SPOILER POLICY:  We take a “fly on the wall” approach to our listeners.  As such, some of what we discuss falls into the realm of SPOILERS.  Consider yourself warned. If you enjoyed BUSY DADS DO SCI-FI, please take the time to rate and review us on iTunes, Stitcher, Tune In, Google Play or wherever you may find your podcasts.  You can follow us on Twitter or Instagram at bddscifi. Thanks for listening and keep coming back.  See you in two weeks. Theme song by Tony Fernandez

Zur hundertsten Folge habe ich mir etwas ganz besonderes ausgedacht! Nämlich nichts. Naja, zumindest ein kleines Gewinnspiel, die ersten drei Leute die unter diesen Thread kommentieren bekommen was. Eh wissen. Außerdem geht es in diesem Podcast um die Judge Dee, den chinesischen Bürokraten und Aufklärer von Verbrechen, vom Autor Robert van Gulik. Ich habe sein […]

  Reklame: Alexandras nächste Lesung: Am 26. April 2017 in der Garderobe der Stadtteilbücherei Ratingen-West (oder so). Kommt alle o/ Außerdem: Lebensmittelverschwendung – Dystopische Science Fiction – Buchtipps*: EM Forster “Die Maschine steht still“, Neal Stephenson “Diamond Age“, “Snow Crash” – Trinkgeld – Slam Poetry (Video) – Berufswünsche – Manspreading – Ordnung – Beziehungsbeendung – Steve […]

"Shouldn't this thing have me by now?!"  -- George Kevin and George talk about whether or not it's alright to bail on a book and who the onus to continue is on:  the reader or the author.  Should a book be expected to hook you or not?  We also talk a little bit about STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, a Heinlen classic, and discuss what is and what is not Steampunk.  Join us!   SPOILER POLICY:  We take a “fly on the wall” approach to our listeners.  As such, some of what we discuss falls into the realm of SPOILERS.  Consider yourself warned.     If you enjoyed BUSY DADDIES DO SCI-FI, please take the time to rate and review us on iTunes, Stitcher, Tune In, Google Play or wherever you may find your podcasts.  You can follow us on Twitter or Instagram at bddscifi. Thanks for listening and keep coming back.  See you in two weeks.

Welcome to the first episode of Technology and Choice, the podcast where we're likely to talk about almost anything, as long as it centers around these two concepts. In this episode, we introduce ourselves (John and Robert) and lay the groundwork for the ongoing podcast. Then we take up the subject of Virtual Reality technology, how it's starting to take its place in the world, and what the choices it makes possible, and necessary. LINKS: The Crossroads of Project SAFE -- http://safecrossroads.net Midwest Journal Press -- http://selfhelpbook.midwestjournalpress.com/ Live Sensical -- http://livesensical.com Recommended novels by Neal Stephenson (best in audiobook) "The Diamond Age" and "Snow Crash"

Eni Mustafaraj reads from The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson, published by Bantam Spectra. “If the Duke was human, [Princess Nell] should notify him so that they could plan their escape. If he was a machine, doing so would lead to disaster.”

How about hitting the reset switch in time for the 1st of March? Show updates, review of Dallas band LEWB's new EP and the premiere of a new track from My KickDrum Heart. CREDIT: "Come Alive" by The Dangits "Tangled" by Argon Cowboy "Listen" by My KickDrum Heart "Technicolor Haze Remix by Sid (Rubella Ballet) From Upcoming Remix 12" by Arctic Flowers (https://arcticflowers.bandcamp.com/track/technicolor-haze-remix-by-sid-rubella-ballet-from-upcoming-remix-12) "Test Loop" by Diamond Age "Temporary Loss" by LEWB (Left Ear & The Wife Beaters) "Mid Nite" The Fibs "Confidence" by The Bright House

After defeating mankind at Jeopardy, Watson is displaying humility and mercy by taking on a new role: assisting humans with research and finding smarter answers, for example, helping treat brain cancer.  In this episode we discuss Watson and how it will impact your future with, Jerome Pesenti, VP of Watson Core Technology.IBM continues to make a huge bet on cognitive computing through Watson, and is extending this bet into the cloud, making Watson available to a much wider audience in the form of Watson-as-a-Service,  Is there a place for it in your architecture?  After all, having some level of machine learning and intelligence may quickly become a base requirement for enterprise applications.  Listen to learn more...Listen now: (download)Books that were mentioned:Permutation CityDiamond AgeEverything is Obvious: How Common Sense Fails UsReferences:Watson EcosystemHow Watson Changed IBMBuild with WatsonWatson Q&A at IBM's Developer Works (interesting to peruse)

Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing (William Morrow & Company) Neal Stephenson, the beloved and bestselling author of modern speculative fiction classics including Reamde, Anathem, and Snow Crash, will discuss and sign his brand-new collection of essays, Some Remarks. "Neal Stephenson has made a name for himself as a writer whose imagination knows no limits." —Salon Neal Stephenson is the author of Reamde; Anathem; the three-volume historical epic the Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World); Cryptonomicon; The Diamond Age; Snow Crash, which was named one of Time magazine's top one hundred all-time best English-language novels; and Zodiac.  He lives in Seattle, Washington. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS AUGUST 8, 2012.

Kat Arney—songstress, Naked Scientist, knitter—joins Andy and Will to chat about colliders, steampunk, lab-based literature, quacks and the 'Verse. 230% efficient LEDs The Diamond Age Radium infuser for drinking water Ford Nucleon Experimental Heart and The Honest Look by Jennifer Rohn Charlatan: The Fraudulent Life of John Brinkley by Pope Brock Tracklist Talk In Colour – Nightshifts (free download!) Sunday Driver – Concubine Waltz The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing – Charlie Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog – My Freeze Ray Tim Minchin – If You Open Your Mind Too Much Your Brain Will Fall Out (Take My Wife) Can't read music? Don't harp on it. by Michael Summers The Large Hadron Collider/ATLAS at CERN by Image Editor Send feedback and comments to show@scienceoffiction.co.uk.