Podcast appearances and mentions of Stewart Brand

Der Titel der heutigen Episode ist »Zeitlos«. Wie komme ich darauf? Die Motivation für diese kurze Episode der Reflexion ist eine Reihe von Tweets. Der erste war von Axel Bojanowski, dem — wie ich meine — führenden Wissenschaftsjournalisten im deutschsprachigen Raum. Er schreibt: »Der mit Abstand beste deutsche Wissenschaftspodcast ist Zukunft Denken« Natürlich freut mich eine solche Empfehlung aus derartig berufenem Munde ganz besonders. Es spornt auch an, weiter hart an diesem Projekt zu arbeiten. Es gab dann aber noch eine Reaktion eines Hörers, der den Aspekt der Zeitlosigkeit der Episoden betont hat. Das hat mich zum Nachdenken angeregt. Der erste Aspekt von Zeit ist ein eher banaler, aber einer, auf den ich gerne kurz eingehen möchte. Ich bekomme immer wieder Zuschriften, wo sich Hörer öfter neue Folgen wünschen. Warum das schwierig ist, erkläre ich in aller Kürze. Dann aber zu weiteren Aspekten der Zeitlosigkeit, die eher inhaltlicher Natur sind, denn dieser Kommentar hat mich zum Nachdenken gebracht zumal es einige Überschneidungen zu vorigen Episoden gibt. Was hat etwas das Zitat von Gerd Gigerenzer aus Episode 122 »Je größer die Unsicherheit ist, desto mehr Informationen muss man ignorieren.«  mit dem Zitat von Stafford Beer aus Episode 121 gemein? »Information and Action are one and the same thing« Zur Dimension der Informationsdichte kommt noch die Dimension der Zeit auf eine sehr interessante Weise hinzu. Je Größer die Unsicherheit, desto wichtiger ist also nicht nur die Auswahl der Parameter, der Daten, sondern auch die richtige Zeitlichkeit im Umgang mit dem Problem. Was bedeutet dies für News? Für den gesellschaftlichen und politischen Umgang mit komplexen Problemen? »Die relevanten Information entstehen Wochen, Monate, bei aktivistischen Großereignissen wie etwa Covid auch Jahre später. Diese geht dann aber im Lärm des nächsten Events unter.« Fortschritt und Entschleunigung haben aber eine durchaus interessante Gemeinsamkeit, wir Herfried Münkler bemerkt: “...Chance des Reflexionsgewinns durch Entschleunigung: Man kann die Bedeutung beim Treffen von Entscheidungen über größere Zeitspannen zu verfügen kaum überschätzen. und diese Zeitspannengewinn hängt nun einmal am Übergang vom mündlichen zum schriftlichen.” […]  »Man konnte nunmehr sehr viel komplexere Fragen zum Gegenstand von Beratungen machen, als das in den direkten partizipatorischen Formen der Antike möglich war. Und man konnte Herausforderungen und Probleme in längerfristigen Perspektiven ins Auge fassen.« Sind wir immer am Puls der Zeit? Oder sind wir eher am Puls des Rauschens? Warum gibt es keine Wissenschafts-News und warum ist es gerade in komplexen Zeiten wichtig, Abstand von schnellen Medien zu halten? Warum sind Bücher gerade in schnellen Zeiten von besonderer Bedeutung? Wie kann man die Welt in Schichten verschiedener Geschwindigkeiten begreifen? Stewart Brand bezeichnet dies als Pace Layering: »Build a thing too fast, and mistakes cascade. Build a thing at the right pace, and mistakes instruct. Build a thing too slow, and mistakes are forgotten, then endlessly repeated in the endless restarts. For instance, with infrastructure: Building a thing at the right pace steadily all the way to completion probably works best with: Continuity of control Protected and guided by continuity of oversight and Guided by continuously monitored undersight—from workers and early customers. Continuity is the key.« Was aber machen wir mit Systemen — um wieder auf Stafford Beer zurückzukommen — deren tatsächlicher Zweck sich vom deklarierten Zweck entfernt hat? Wir enden nochmals mit einem Zitat von Stewart Brand: »Fast learns, slow remembers.  Fast proposes, slow disposes.  Fast is discontinuous, slow is continuous.  Fast and small instructs slow and big by accrued innovation and by occasional revolution.  Slow and big controls small and fast by constraint and constancy.  Fast gets all our attention, slow has all the power.« Was haben Sie mitgenommen? Schreiben Sie mir! Referenzen Podcast Umfrage — Bitte teilnehmen! Andere Episoden Episode 122: Komplexitätsillusion oder Heuristik, ein Gespräch mit Gerd Gigerenzer Episode 121: Künstliche Unintelligenz Episode 119: Spy vs Spy: Über künstlicher Intelligenz und anderen Agenten Episode 104: Aus Quantität wird Qualität Episode 99: Entkopplung, Kopplung, Rückkopplung Episode 92: Wissen und Expertise Teil 2 Episode 84: (Epistemische) Krisen? Ein Gespräch mit Jan David Zimmermann Episode 80: Wissen, Expertise und Prognose, eine Reflexion Episode 49: Wo denke ich? Reflexionen über den »undichten« Geist Episode 47: Große Worte Episode 32: Überleben in der Datenflut – oder: warum das Buch wichtiger ist als je zuvor Fachliche Referenzen Tweet von Axel Bojanowski (2025) Herfried Münkler, Verkleinern und entschleunigen. Die Zukunft der Demokratie? ARD (2022) Stewart Brand, Pace Layering: How Complex Systems Learn and Keep Learning (2018) Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built, Penguin (1995)

My guest today is Kevin Kelly, the author of 14 books, a public speaker who has delivered TED talks with tens of millions of views, and a technology expert. In 1983, Kevin was hired by Whole Earth founder Stewart Brand to edit several later editions of the Whole Earth Catalog, the Whole Earth Review, and Signal. He later on served as the founding executive editor of the magazine Wired. In our conversation, Kevin and I talk about the scaling laws behind all technologies, but also how these laws intersect with biology, society, and policy. We explore themes from What Technology Wants, we focus on the 'Triad of Evolution' and the concept of convergence, and connect these ideas to antitrust and innovation policy. I also touch on his earlier work, including New Rules for the New Economy, where we discuss the dynamics of trust in network economies and its implications for technology adoption. Finally, we delve into the inevitability of technological evolution, its accelerating diffusion, and what happens when technology becomes ubiquitous in society. These questions feel increasingly urgent as we approach 2025, a pivotal moment for revisiting these ideas in light of modern developments. I hope you enjoy our discussion. Find me on X (@ProfSchrepel) and BlueSky (@profschrepel.bsky.social). References Kevin Kelly, What Technology Wants (2010) Kevin Kelly, New Rules for the New Economy (1998) Rishi Bommasani et al., Considerations for Governing Open Foundation Models (2023) https://hai.stanford.edu/issue-brief-considerations-governing-open-foundation-models

Former New York Times reporter John Markoff has been writing about Silicon Valley for almost a half century. In December 1993 the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist wrote one of the earliest articles about the World Wide Web, referring to it as a "map to the buried treasures of the Information Age." So where are we now in the history of tech, I asked Markoff. Is the AI boom just one more Silicon Valley cycle of irrational exuberance? And how do contemporary tech titans like Sam Altman and Elon Musk compare with Steve Jobs, who Markoff covered for many years.John Markoff is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. He has reported on Silicon Valley for more than four decades and wrote for The New York Times' science and technology beat for 28 years, where he was widely regarded as the paper's star technology reporter. He is the author of five books about the technology industry including his upcoming book Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand (on sale in March 2022). For decades Markoff has chronicled how technology has shaped our society. In Whole Earth, he delivers the definitive biography of one the most influential visionaries to inspire the technological and cultural revolutions of the last six decades. While Stewart Brand is largely known as the creator of The Whole Earth Catalog that became a counterculture bible for a generation of young Americans during the 1960s, his life's work is much larger. Brand became a key influence in the ‘70s environmental movement and the computing world of the ‘80s. Steve Jobs adopted Brand's famous mantra “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish” as his code to live by, and to this day Brand epitomizes what Markoff calls “that California state of mind.” Brand has always had “an eerie knack for showing up first at the onset of some social movement or technological inflection point,” Markoff writes, “and then moving on just when everyone else catches up.” Brand's uncanny ahead-of-the-curve-ness is what makes John Markoff his ideal biographer. Markoff's reporting has always been at the cutting edge of tech revolutions—he wrote the first account of the World Wide Web in 1993 and broke the story of Google's self-driving car in 2010. Stewart Brand gave Markoff carte blanche access in interviews for the book, so Markoff gets a clearer story than has ever been set down before, ranging across Brand's time with the Merry Pranksters to his fostering of the marriage of environmental consciousness with hacker capitalism and the rise of a new planetary culture. Markoff's other books are: The High Cost of High Tech (with Lennie Siegel); Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier (with Katie Hafner); Takedown: The Pursuit and Capture of America's Most Wanted Computer Outlaw (with Tsutomu Shimomura); What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry; and Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots. He is a Fellow at Stanford University's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He has been a lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley School of Journalism, and an adjunct faculty member at the Stanford Graduate Program on Journalism. In 2013, Markoff was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team for Explanatory Reporting “for its penetrating look into business practices by Apple and other technology companies that illustrates the darker side of a changing global economy for workers and consumers.” He continues to work as a freelance journalist for The Times and other organizations. Markoff graduated from Whitman College with a B.A. in sociology, and an M.A. in sociology from the University of Oregon.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On 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 keenon.substack.com/subscribe

In his 1979 Whole Earth Catalog, Stewart Brand wrote, “We are as gods, so we might as well get good at it.” Based on his time on the Mississippi River, however, Boyce Upholt concludes “that we do not make very good gods.” In the final pages of The Great River: The Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi, Upholt reflects, “The river is an unappeasable god, and to react to it with fear and awe is not wrong. . . . Perhaps what people learn after thousands of years of living along one of the world's greatest rivers is that change is inevitable, that chaos will come. That the only way to survive is to take care–of yourself and of everyone else, human and beyond.”Boyce Upholt is a “nature critic” whose writing probes the relationship between humans and the rest of the natural world, especially in the U.S. South. Boyce grew up in the Connecticut suburbs and holds a bachelor's degree from Haverford College and an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. His work has been published in the Atlantic, National Geographic, the Oxford American, and Virginia Quarterly Review, among other publications, and was awarded the 2019 James Beard Award for investigative journalism. His stories have been noted in the Best American Science & Nature and Best American Nonrequired Reading series. Boyce lives in New Orleans.Book photo courtesy of Boyce Upholt.

Jim talks with Nikos Salingaros about architectural theory, urbanism, and urban planning. They discuss inherited knowledge, the capability to distinguish between ugly & beautiful buildings, John Vervaeke's 4 kinds of knowing, vertical vs horizontal design, how architecture went so wrong, backward evolution, a Messianic futurism cult, the destruction of living geometry, how the real estate racket works, biophilic design, the correlation between modern architecture & modern art, the human scale, James Gibson, the Fibonacci sequence, deconstructivism, architectural assassins, fractals in architecture, richness, interpretability, medical health, functional ornamentation, information overload, cultural continuity & erasure, the ruse of postmodernism, algorithmic design, the AI revolution in architecture, an opportunity for new entrants, wonderful modern buildings, failed typologies, urban planning, making several systems work together simultaneously, autopoietic systems, urban DNA, Jane Jacobs, the city as a living system, post-war zoning, peer-to-peer urbanism, why it hasn't worked, the "yes in my backyard" movement, the future of architecture, and much more. Episode Transcript A Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander JRS EP 227 - Stuart Kauffman on the Emergence of Life The Death and Life of American Cities, by Jane Jacobs How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built, by Stewart Brand "P2P Urbanism," by Nikos Salingaros Dr. Nikos A. Salingaros is Professor of Mathematics and Architecture at the University of Texas at San Antonio. An internationally recognized Architectural Theorist and Urbanist, his publications include seven books on architecture and design, two of them co-authored with Michael Mehaffy. Salingaros collaborated with the visionary architect and software pioneer Christopher Alexander over more than twenty years in editing Alexander's monumental four-volume book The Nature of Order. Salingaros won the 2019 Stockholm Cultural Award for Architecture, and shared the 2018 Clem Labine Traditional Building Award with Michael Mehaffy. Salingaros holds a doctorate in Mathematical Physics from Stony Brook University, New York. He has directed and advised twenty-five Masters and PhD theses in architecture and urbanism.

As AI and automation reshape the workforce, the traditional way we pass down critical skills is under threat. Junior workers are losing the opportunity to learn directly from experienced mentors, putting essential human abilities at risk. Matt Beane, a leading researcher in machine intelligence, has spent a decade investigating this problem. In his latest book, The Skill Code, Beane uncovers the hidden dynamics of expert-novice relationships and explains why preserving these bonds is crucial for thriving in a tech-driven world.Matt Beane is an assistant professor at UC Santa Barbara, known for his groundbreaking research on the impact of robotics in the workplace. He holds a PhD from MIT and has delivered a TED talk with over 1.8 million views. His latest book, The Skill Code, highlights the importance and process of preserving human skills in the age of AI and automation.In this episode, Dart and Matt discuss:- The impact of tech on workplace learning- Technology management programs- Whether tech shapes behavior or vice versa- Using tech for scale development- The difference between knowledge and skill- Challenges in developing skills in tech-driven environments- Using positive deviance to grow at work- Human capital development's connection to productivity- And other topics…Matt Beane is an author and assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in the Technology Management Program. He is known for his pioneering work on how robotics are transforming the workplace, particularly in the evolving relationship between humans and machines. His latest book, The Skill Code: How to Save Human Ability in an Age of Intelligent Machines, explores how technology is reshaping the workforce and highlights the importance of preserving essential human skills as automation and AI become more prevalent.Matt holds both a PhD and a Master's in Management Research from MIT's Sloan School of Management and is also a Digital Fellow at both Stanford and MIT. His work delves into how organizations and individuals adapt to intelligent technologies, focusing on sectors like healthcare and manufacturing. His research on robotic surgery was published in 2019 in Administrative Science Quarterly and Harvard Business Review, and his related TED talk has over 1.8 million views. Matt is also a regular contributor to popular outlets such as Wired, MIT's Technology Review, TechCrunch, Forbes, and Robohub.Resources mentioned:The Skill Code, by Matt Beane: https://www.amazon.com/Skill-Code-Ability-Intelligent-Machines/dp/0063337797 “Don't Let AI Dumb You Down,” by Matt Beane: https://www.wildworldofwork.org/p/dont-let-ai-dumb-you-down How Buildings Learn, by Stewart Brand: https://www.amazon.com/How-Buildings-Learn-Happens-Theyre/dp/0140139966 Connect with Matt:www.MattBeane.comwww.TheSkillCodeBook.comX: @mattbeanewww.SkillBench.com 

Im Dezember 1968 und 1972 entstehen zwei Bilder der Erde aus dem All. Auf diesen ist der Blaue Planet in Farbe inmitten von einem schwarzen Nichts zu sehen. Diese Bilder ändern sehr viel, was das Bewusstsein der westlichen Welt über das Globale und das Planetare angeht. Was genau und wie, das besprechen wir in dieser Folge genauer. Außerdem ordnen wir dies in die Debatten der 1970er Jahre über Limits und Umweltschutz ein. Literatur & Quellen:Cosgrove, Denis: Contested Global Visions: One-World, Whole-Earth, and the Apollo Space Photographs. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 1994, 84:2, pp. 270–294.Daub, Adrian: Was das Valley denken nennt. Über die Ideologie der Techbranche. Suhrkamp.Hersch, Matthew: Inventing the American Astronaut, 2012.Kilian, Patrick: Ich sehe was, was du nicht siehst. Geschichte der Gegenwart: https://geschichtedergegenwart.ch/ich-sehe-was-was-du-nicht-siehst/Maier, Charles S. “Consigning the Twentieth Century to History: Alternative Narratives for the Modern Era.” The American Historical Review 105, no. 3 (2000): 807–31. https://doi.org/10.2307/2651811 .Poole, Robert: Earthrise: How Man First Saw Earth, 2008.Stichweh, Rudolph: Weltgesellschaft. Soziologische Analysen. 2000.Turner, Fred: From Counterculture to Cyberculture. Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism.

Paul F. Austin discusses the history of psychedelics and how we are now on the "third wave" of integral psychedelic use. The third wave coincides with the information age and perfectly maps on to what futurists like Alvin Toffler were forecasting. He delves into the history touching on key figures such as Stewart Brand, Ken Kesey and MKULTRA, Steve Jobs, James Fadiman, and how in the 1970s it was declared that the personal computer was the new LSD. Psychedelics provide you with a feeling of interconnectivity. Microdosing came around about a decade ago and have various health benefits. Finally, he comments on the legalization of psychedelics and the spiritual dimension. Watch on BitChute / Brighteon / Rokfin / Rumble / Substack Geopolitics & Empire · Paul F. Austin: LSD, the Computer Revolution, & the Third Wave of Psychedelics #468 *Support Geopolitics & Empire! Donate https://geopoliticsandempire.com/donations Consult https://geopoliticsandempire.com/consultation Become a Member https://geopoliticsandempire.substack.com Become a Sponsor https://geopoliticsandempire.com/sponsors **Visit Our Affiliates & Sponsors! Above Phone https://abovephone.com/?above=geopolitics easyDNS (use promo code GEOPOLITICS for 15% off!) https://easydns.com Expat Money Summit 2024 (use promo code EMPIRE for $100 off the VIP ticket!) https://2024.expatmoneysummit.com/?ac=8cDxEbJw LegalShield https://hhrvojemoric.wearelegalshield.com Wise Wolf Gold https://www.wolfpack.gold/?ref=geopolitics Websites Paul Austin Website https://www.paulaustin.co The Third Wave https://thethirdwave.co About Paul F. Austin Paul F. Austin, a prominent figure in psychedelics, has guided millions to safe and meaningful psychedelic experiences through his work as the founder of Third Wave. Featured in Bloomberg, Rolling Stone, Inc., and the BBC's Worklife, to name a few, he's curious about the convergence of psychedelics, personal transformation, and professional success and how they weave together to help form a meaningful existence. Paul empowers leaders, creatives, and pioneers to leverage psychedelics for profound personal and professional growth. He views utilizing psychedelics as a refined skill cultivated through mentorship, exploration, and purposeful use—critical for humanity's ongoing evolution. As the longest-standing and youngest entrepreneur in this emergent sector, Paul's focus on integrating psychedelics with professional development is evident in the Psychedelic Coaching Institute. PCI is training the next generation of impactful coaches to work with psychedelics in a transformative capacity. The core training program caters to individuals who wish to weave psychedelics into their business practices, under the guidance of one of the industry's most trusted leaders. *Podcast intro music is from the song "The Queens Jig" by "Musicke & Mirth" from their album "Music for Two Lyra Viols": http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)

Paul F. Austin discusses the history of psychedelics and how we are now on the "third wave" of integral psychedelic use. The third wave coincides with the information age and perfectly maps on to what futurists like Alvin Toffler were forecasting. He delves into the history touching on key figures such as Stewart Brand, Ken Kesey and MKULTRA, Steve Jobs, James Fadiman, and how in the 1970s it was declared that the personal computer was the new LSD. Psychedelics provide you with a feeling of interconnectivity. Microdosing came around about a decade ago and have various health benefits. Finally, he comments on the legalization of psychedelics and the spiritual dimension. Watch on BitChute / Brighteon / Rokfin / Rumble / Substack Geopolitics & Empire · Paul F. Austin: LSD, the Computer Revolution, & the Third Wave of Psychedelics #468 *Support Geopolitics & Empire! Donate https://geopoliticsandempire.com/donations Consult https://geopoliticsandempire.com/consultation Become a Member https://geopoliticsandempire.substack.com Become a Sponsor https://geopoliticsandempire.com/sponsors **Visit Our Affiliates & Sponsors! Above Phone https://abovephone.com/?above=geopolitics easyDNS (use promo code GEOPOLITICS for 15% off!) https://easydns.com Expat Money Summit 2024 (use promo code EMPIRE for $100 off the VIP ticket!) https://2024.expatmoneysummit.com/?ac=8cDxEbJw LegalShield https://hhrvojemoric.wearelegalshield.com Wise Wolf Gold https://www.wolfpack.gold/?ref=geopolitics Websites Paul Austin Website https://www.paulaustin.co The Third Wave https://thethirdwave.co About Paul F. Austin Paul F. Austin, a prominent figure in psychedelics, has guided millions to safe and meaningful psychedelic experiences through his work as the founder of Third Wave. Featured in Bloomberg, Rolling Stone, Inc., and the BBC's Worklife, to name a few, he's curious about the convergence of psychedelics, personal transformation, and professional success and how they weave together to help form a meaningful existence. Paul empowers leaders, creatives, and pioneers to leverage psychedelics for profound personal and professional growth. He views utilizing psychedelics as a refined skill cultivated through mentorship, exploration, and purposeful use—critical for humanity's ongoing evolution. As the longest-standing and youngest entrepreneur in this emergent sector, Paul's focus on integrating psychedelics with professional development is evident in the Psychedelic Coaching Institute. PCI is training the next generation of impactful coaches to work with psychedelics in a transformative capacity. The core training program caters to individuals who wish to weave psychedelics into their business practices, under the guidance of one of the industry's most trusted leaders. *Podcast intro music is from the song "The Queens Jig" by "Musicke & Mirth" from their album "Music for Two Lyra Viols": http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)

On today's episode, Clay is joined by Shree Viswanathan for a stock deep dive on Hermès. Hermès is a luxury goods manufacturer renowned for its high-quality craftsmanship. The brand is known for its iconic products, such as the Birkin and Kelly bags, silk scarves, and equestrian-inspired items. Since the IPO in 1993, shares of Hermès have compounded at 20.6% (excluding dividends), while the S&P 500 had a total return of just 10.4%.  Shree Viswanathan is the founder and portfolio manager of SVN Capital. IN THIS EPISODE YOU'LL LEARN: 00:00 - Intro 02:38 - A business overview of Hermès. 10:28 - Examples of Hermès thinking exceptionally long-term in their business strategy. 30:16 - The attempted takeover of Bernard Arnault. 37:59 - The strength of Hermès' moat. 56:01 - The growth opportunities ahead for Hermès and the luxury industry more broadly. 01:03:22 - How Hermès approaches capital allocation. 01:14:15 - Shree's thoughts on Hermès' valuation. 01:29:51 - Risks that investors should monitor for Hermès. And so much more! Disclaimer: Slight discrepancies in the timestamps may occur due to podcast platform differences. BOOKS AND RESOURCES Join the exclusive TIP Mastermind Community to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Stig, Clay, Kyle, and the other community members. Shree's fund: SVN Capital. Follow Shree on Twitter. Best Anchor Stocks write-ups on Hermès. Books mentioned: 100 Baggers, The Founder's Mentality, The Luxury Strategy. Stewart Brand's seminar on long-term thinking. Howard Marks' podcast with Morgan House. Related Episode: WSB585: Concentrated Value Investing w/ Shree Viswanathan. Mentioned Episode: WSB645: The King of Luxury w/ Christian Billinger. Follow Clay on Twitter.  Check out all the books mentioned and discussed in our podcast episodes here. Enjoy ad-free episodes when you subscribe to our Premium Feed. NEW TO THE SHOW? Follow our official social media accounts: X (Twitter) | LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | TikTok. Check out our We Study Billionaires Starter Packs. Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) here. Try our tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: TIP Finance Tool. Enjoy exclusive perks from our favorite Apps and Services. Stay up-to-date on financial markets and investing strategies through our daily newsletter, We Study Markets. Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the best business podcasts. SPONSORS Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors: River Toyota Range Rover Daloopa The Bitcoin Way American Express Found Vacasa Onramp Facet SimpleMining Public Fundrise USPS AT&T Shopify Fundrise HELP US OUT! Help us reach new listeners by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! It takes less than 30 seconds, and really helps our show grow, which allows us to bring on even better guests for you all! Thank you – we really appreciate it! Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm

Stora LSD-fester i San Francisco med kalejdoskopiska ljusshower och lantliga kollektiv i sfärformade hus känns som ljusår från andra världskriget och kalla krigets militära forskning, men skenet bedrar. Det finns raka linjer från andra världskrigets militärindustriella komplex till 1960-talets motkultur och gröna våg.När det tidiga kalla krigets rumsstora datorer med hålkort byts mot persondatorer kom motkulturens centralfigurer att intressera sig för datorernas möjligheter. Senare skulle både hackarna och den framväxande tech-industrin komma att inspireras av motkulturens tankegods.I detta avsnitt av podden Historia Nu samtalar programledaren Urban Lindstedt med David Larsson Heidenblad, docent i historia vid Lunds universitet, om boken From Counterculture and Cyberculture – Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism av professor Fred Turner.Det militärindustriella akademiska komplexet var centralt vid framväxten av techindustrin i Silicon Valley. Utan denna generösa offentliga finansiering hade varken minneskretsar, mikroprocessorer eller persondatorer kunnat utvecklas där och då. Det militärindustriella komplexets forskning skulle också inspirera motkulturen i Kalifornien.I centrum för boken From Counterculture and Cyberculture står Stewart Brand, född 1938, och mest känd som redaktör för The Whole Earth Catalog, utgiven mellan 1968 och 1972. Det var en kombination av tidskrift och produktkatalog riktad direkt till motkulturen. Stewart Brand var en entreprenör med en förmåga att sammanföra olika sociala världar, skapa dynamiska nätverk och bygga relationer.Katalogen visade att 1960-talets motkultur visade ett stort intresse för informationsteorier framtagna av militärforskare på 1940-talet. Och när kalla krigets rumsstora datorer med hålkort slimmades ner till persondator med skärm och tangentbord öppnades möjligheter för digitala nätverk inom motkulturen.LSD kom att läcka ut till motkulturen från militära forskningsprojekt både i USA och Sverige. Och i hippiesarnas bibel, The Whole Earth Catalog, fanns böcker om informatik från 1940-talets militärforskare. Och de sfärformade husen som hundratusentals grönavågare byggde när de skapade lantliga kollektiv i slutet på 1960-talet var direkt inspirerade av skyddshöljen från radaranläggningar som skulle upptäcka en sovjetisk kärnvapenattack.Motkulturen var intresserade av konsumentteknik som stereos och bilar, men förkastade stordatorerna som kontrollerades av militären och stora bolag. Därför blev persondatorn en symbol för individens frihet. Och de var mer intresserade av personlig utveckling och förverkligande än kollektivt politiskt arbete.Det är väl känt att Apples grundare Steve Jobs var hippie och att hans partner Steve Wozniak hackade telefonsystem. Men det är kanske mindre känt att techindustrins sätt att organisera sig i entreprenöriella och projektbaserade nätverk i stället för byråkratier kom från amerikansk militärforskning under andra världskriget.Bild: Timothy Leary, familj och band på föreläsningsturné; State University of New York at Buffalo (1969) (Buffalo, New York). OBS: Foto: Dr. Dennis Bogdan, Wikipedia Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0Musik: Swing It Smooth av Jon Presstone, Storyblocks AudioLyssna också på Sveriges psykedeliska historia.Klippare: Emanuel Lehtonen Vill du stödja podden och samtidigt höra ännu mer av Historia Nu? Gå med i vårt gille genom att klicka här: https://plus.acast.com/s/historianu-med-urban-lindstedt. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's funny that Steve, a very nuts-n-bolts guy, hosts this largely philosophical episode. But all three of us agree:Separate symptoms from causes—It's easy to get distracted or engrossed in symptoms, but the causes lead to solutions.Solutions come much easier if you first identify the problem(s).Step back to move forward. It's always tempting to jump on the "obvious" solution, but it pays to understand completely before offering solutions.This episode's strength is how each of us—architect, builder, building investigator—uses the approach above to improve our jobs.Pete's Resource(s):Building Science Insights: https://buildingscience.com/bsc-document-type/building-science-insightsEnergy Vanguard blog Building Science 101 (but in the context of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) - https://www.energyvanguard.com/blog/building-science-101/Stewart Brand's How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built (Brand is one of a rare few building philosophers...and his book also is expressed in a 6-part video series - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Buildings_Learn#Book& https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Buildings_Learn#TV_series

In TRIPPED, his intriguing new history of drugs and postwar America, the German writer Norman Ohler makes LSD both a symbol and a metaphor for the history of the Cold War. Linking Nazi Germany, the CIA with what he calls “the dawn” of the psychedelic age, Ohler presents LSD — the revolutionary psychedelic drug invented by the Swiss pharma giant Sandoz which the Nazi tested as a “truth serum” in Dachau — as a weapon used by the American military-industrial complex to fight the Soviets. As with most anti Soviet CIA plots, of course, it was a bit of a farce - although Ohler's thesis certainly offers an alternative way of interpreting trippy Cold War movies like Doctor Strangelove and The Manchurian Candidate. And Ohler reminds us of the psychedelic age's most lasting legacy - its influence on West Coast countercultural figures like Ken Kesey, Stewart Brand and Steve Jobs and their invention of the personal computer and internet.Norman Ohler is an award-winning novelist, screenwriter, and journalist. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Blitzed, the non-fiction book The Bohemians about resistance against Hitler in Berlin, as well as the novels Die Quotenmaschine (the world's first hypertext novel), Mitte, Stadt des Goldes (translated into English as Ponte City), as well as the historical crime novel Die Gleichung des Lebens. He was cowriter of the script for Wim Wenders's film Palermo Shooting. He lives in Berlin.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On 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 keenon.substack.com/subscribe

(NOTAS Y ENLACES DEL CAPÍTULO AQUÍ: https://www.jaimerodriguezdesantiago.com/kaizen/191-del-largo-ahora-al-ultimo-ser-humano)Es posible que hayas escuchado alguna vez el discurso de inauguración de Steve Jobs en Stanford. Es uno de esos vídeos con los que uno se topa de vez en cuando en internet. Mucha gente recuerda y cita frases que pronunció ese día. Como aquello de que los puntos sólo se unen mirando hacia atrás, o lo de que conviene preguntarse si lo que vas a hacer hoy es lo que querrías hacer si fuese el último día de tu vida. O como las palabras con las que cerró aquel discurso, por las que mucha gente recuerda a Steve Jobs: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” Algo así como «Mantente hambriento. Mantente alocado», pero suena mucho mejor en inglés. Aunque de lo que no solemos acordarnos es de que esas palabras no son suyas. Lo dice él mismo justo antes de esa frase, cuando cuenta que las leyó a mediados de los años 70, en la última página del último número de una revista bastante peculiar: The Whole Earth Catalog. El Catálogo de la Tierra Completa. Esas palabras, “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish”, fueron la manera en la que tuvieron de despedirse de sus lectores.Aquella revista fue fundada en los años 60 por un tipo peculiar: Stewart Brand. Y la historia detrás de esas palabras resume a la perfección su filosofía. En 1966, Brand creó una campaña para exigir a la NASA que compartieran con el mundo las fotos que tenían de la Tierra vista desde el espacio. Sí, porque en 1966, la mayor parte de la gente no había visto una foto de la Tierra. Así que nuestro amigo decidió distribuir chapas con una frase: «¿Por qué no hemos visto una foto de la Tierra al completo?» Estaba convencido de que la imagen de aquella canica azul de la que hablamos hace unos cuantos capítulos podía cambiar el mundo. De ahí vino el nombre de la revista. Brand era una de tantas personas obsesionadas con el efecto perspectiva del que te he hablado varias veces. De hecho, tenía una especie de proyecto en el que quería contraponer las imágenes de cómo se veía el amanecer de la Tierra desde el espacio como cómo se vivía siendo un humano en la Tierra. Y en sus propias palabras, se «imaginaba un autoestopista al amanecer, en una carretera perdida, con el sol saliendo y trenes pasando a su lado. La mentalidad de un joven autoestopista es una de las mentalidades más libres que hay». Y remataba, diciendo “You are always a little bit hungry and you know you are being completely foolish” «Siempre tienes un poco de hambre y sabes que estás siendo completamente alocado»Te he dicho que Brand es un tipo peculiar, pero seguramente no tanto como nos lo parece hoy. Como todos, fue un producto de su tiempo. Alguien que nació en 1938 y que pasó los primeros 30 años de su vida en una época de progresos tecnológicos increíbles. Progresos que nos permitirían ser dueños de nuestras vidas. De hecho, si en lugar de irnos a la última página, del último ejemplar del Whole Earth Catalog, nos vamos a la primera página de su primer ejemplar, publicado en 1968 con una imagen completa de la Tierra en su portada y leemos el pequeño manifiesto con el que se presenta, nos encontramos con la siguiente declaración, que es bastante difícil de traducir, pero vamos a intentarlo: «Propósito:Somos como los dioses y ya puestos podríamos aprender a hacerlo bien. Hasta ahora, el poder y la gloria que remotamente hemos alcanzado —a través de gobiernos, grandes empresas, la educación formal, la iglesia— han sido exitosos sólo hasta el punto en el que sus groseros defectos oscurecen los auténticos avances. En respuesta a este dilema y a esos avances, se está desarrollando todo un campo de poder personal —el poder de los individuos para dirigir su propia educación, encontrar su propia inspiración, dar forma a su entorno y compartir su aventura con quien quiera estar interesado. El Catálogo de la Tierra Completa busca y promueve herramientas para ayudarte en ese proceso»¡Toma ya!  ¿Te gusta kaizen? Apoya el podcast uniéndote a la Comunidad y accede a contenidos y ventajas exclusivas: https://www.jaimerodriguezdesantiago.com/comunidad-kaizen/

Work and urban design are continuously evolving, but there's something to be learned from one of the oldest multi-sided businesses in history – the Grand Bazaar. This intricate market has somehow managed to sustain itself for over 500 years without a single leader at the helm. Dr. Sharon Wohl has spent countless hours analyzing the design of the Grand Bazaar, revealing how such bottom-up hierarchies can produce quality products and processes consistently for hundreds of years.Dr. Sharon Wohl is a distinguished scholar specializing in complex adaptive systems within urban design. She is the current Associate Dean for the College of Architecture and Environmental Design at Kent State University. In this episode, Dart and Sharon discuss:- The emergence and sustainability of the Grand Bazaar- Complex adaptive systems (CASTs) in decentralized settings- Whether or not we need an overarching governance at work- How simple rules can lead to complex results - An analysis of bottom-up strategies for system design and urbanism- The less visible flows within a business- The way designers can enable thriving systems - And other topics…Dr.  Sharon Wohl is a distinguished scholar specializing in complex adaptive systems within urban design. With a Ph.D. in Spatial Planning and Strategy from Delft Technical University, Sharon has taught at University of Manitoba and held a tenured position at Iowa State University. She is the current Associate Dean for the College of Architecture and Environmental Design at Kent State University. Prior to completing her doctorate, she practiced with the award-winning Canadian Architectural firm, 5468796 Architecture.Wohl's research examines how principles of complex adaptive systems can be operationalized within the built environment. Her expertise in complexity has been recognized through a research fellowship with the Institute for Advanced Studies in Amsterdam, invitations for speaking/guest lecture events, and her academic appointment as an FRK Faculty Fellow at ISU. Her research has been published in a variety of journals, including Planning Theory, Progress in Human Geography, and Space and Culture.  Resources mentioned:“The Grand Bazaar in Istanbul,” by Sharon Wohl: https://dr.lib.iastate.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/f478ee3b-4098-4630-996b-024d6eefca01/contentHow Buildings Learn, by Stewart Brand: https://www.amazon.com/How-Buildings-Learn-Happens-Theyre/dp/0140139966 Connect with Sharon:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharon-wohl-4168177 Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=mGa84LoAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao 

Peter van Hardenberg talks about Industrialists vs. Academics, Ink&Switch's evolution over time, the Hollywood Model, internal lab infrastructure, and more! Peter is the lab director and CEO of Ink&Switch, a private, creator oriented, computing research lab.  References Ink&Switch (and their many publications) The Hollywood Model in R&D Idea Machines Episode with Adam Wiggins Paul Erdós Transcript Peter Van Hardenberg [00:01:21] Ben: Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Peter van Hardenbergh. Peter is the lab director and CEO of Inkin switch. Private creator oriented, competing research lab. I talked to Adam Wiggins, one of inkind switches founders, [00:01:35] way back in episode number four. It's amazing to see the progress they've made as an organization. They've built up an incredible community of fellow travelers and consistently released research reports that gesture at possibilities for competing that are orthogonal to the current hype cycles. Peter frequently destroys my complacency with his ability to step outside the way that research has normally done and ask, how should we be operating, given our constraints and goals. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Peter. Would you break down your distinction between academics and industrialists [00:02:08] Peter: Okay. Academics are people whose incentive structure is connected to the institutional rewards of the publishing industry, right? You, you publish papers. And you get tenure and like, it's a, it's, it's not so cynical or reductive, but like fundamentally the time cycles are long, right? Like you have to finish work according to when, you know, submission deadlines for a conference are, you know, you're [00:02:35] working on something now. You might come back to it next quarter or next year or in five years, right? Whereas when you're in industry, you're connected to users, you're connected to people at the end of the day who need to touch and hold and use the thing. And you know, you have to get money from them to keep going. And so you have a very different perspective on like time and money and space and what's possible. And the real challenge in terms of connecting these two, you know, I didn't invent the idea of pace layers, right? They, they operate at different pace layers. Academia is often intergenerational, right? Whereas industry is like, you have to make enough money every quarter. To keep the bank account from going below zero or everybody goes home, [00:03:17] Ben: Right. Did. Was it Stuart Brand who invented pace [00:03:22] Peter: believe it was Stewart Brand. Pace layers. Yeah. [00:03:25] Ben: That actually I, I'd never put these two them together, but the, the idea I, I, I think about impedance mismatches between [00:03:35] organizations a lot. And that really sort of like clicks with pace layers Exactly. Right. Where it's like [00:03:39] Peter: Yeah, absolutely. And, and I think in a big way what we're doing at, Ink& Switch on some level is trying to provide like synchro mesh between academia and industry, right? Because they, the academics are moving on a time scale and with an ambition that's hard for industry to match, right? But also, Academics. Often I think in computer science are like, have a shortage of good understanding about what the real problems people are facing in the world today are. They're not disinterested. [00:04:07] Ben: just computer [00:04:08] Peter: Those communication channels don't exist cuz they don't speak the same language, they don't use the same terminology, they don't go to the same conferences, they don't read the same publications. Right. [00:04:18] Ben: Yeah. [00:04:18] Peter: so vice versa, you know, we find things in industry that are problems and then it's like you go read the papers and talk to some scientists. I was like, oh dang. Like. We know how to solve this. It's just nobody's built it. [00:04:31] Ben: Yeah. [00:04:32] Peter: Or more accurately it would be to say [00:04:35] there's a pretty good hunch here about something that might work, and maybe we can connect the two ends of this together. [00:04:42] Ben: Yeah. Often, I, I think of it as someone, someone has, it is a quote unquote solved problem, but there are a lot of quote unquote, implementation details and those implementation details require a year of work. [00:04:56] Peter: yeah, a year or many years? Or an entire startup, or a whole career or two? Yeah. And, and speaking of, Ink&Switch, I don't know if we've ever talked about, so a switch has been around for more than half a decade, right? [00:05:14] Peter: Yeah, seven or eight years now, I think I could probably get the exact number, but yeah, about that. [00:05:19] Ben: And. I think I don't have a good idea in my head over that time. What, what has changed about in, can switches, conception of itself and like how you do things. Like what is, what are some of the biggest things that have have changed over that time?[00:05:35] [00:05:35] Peter: So I think a lot of it could be summarized as professionalization. But I, I'll give a little brief history and can switch began because the. You know, original members of the lab wanted to do a startup that was Adam James and Orion, but they recognized that they didn't, they weren't happy with computing and where computers were, and they knew that they wanted to make something that would be a tool that would help people who were solving the world's problems work better. That's kinda a vague one, but You know, they were like, well, we're not physicists, we're not social scientists. You know, we can't solve climate change or radicalization directly, or you know, the journalism crisis or whatever, but maybe we can build tools, right? We know how to make software tools. Let's build tools for the people who are solving the problems. Because right now a lot of those systems they rely on are getting like steadily worse every day. And I think they still are like the move to the cloud disempowerment of the individual, like, you [00:06:35] know, surveillance technology, distraction technology. And Tristan Harris is out there now. Like hammering on some of these points. But there's just a lot of things that are like slow and fragile and bad and not fun to work with and lose your, you know, lose your work product. You know, [00:06:51] Ben: Yeah, software as a service more generally. [00:06:54] Peter: Yeah. And like, there's definitely advantages. It's not like, you know, people are rational actors, but something was lost. And so the idea was well go do a bit of research, figure out what the shape of the company is, and then just start a company and, you know, get it all solved and move on. And I think the biggest difference, at least, you know, aside from scale and like actual knowledge is just kind of the dawning realization at some point that like there won't really be an end state to this problem. Like this isn't a thing that's transitional where you kind of come in and you do some research for a bit, and then we figure out the answer and like fold up the card table and move on to the next thing. It's like, oh no, this, this thing's gotta stick around because these problems aren't gonna [00:07:35] go away. And when we get through this round of problems, we already see what the next round are. And that's probably gonna go on for longer than any of us will be working. And so the vision now, at least from my perspective as the current lab director, is much more like, how can I get this thing to a place where it can sustain for 10 years, for 50 years, however long it takes, and you know, to become a place that. Has a culture that can sustain, you know, grow and change as new people come in. But that can sustain operations indefinitely. [00:08:07] Ben: Yeah. And, and so to circle back to the. The, the jumping off point for this, which is sort of since, since it began, what have been some of the biggest changes of how you operate? How you, or just like the, the model more generally or, or things that you were [00:08:30] Peter: Yeah, so the beginning was very informal, but, so maybe I'll skip over the first like [00:08:35] little period where it was just sort of like, Finding our footing. But around the time when I joined, we were just four or five people. And we did one project, all of us together at a time, and we just sort of like, someone would write a proposal for what we should do next, and then we would argue about like whether it was the right next thing. And, you know, eventually we would pick a thing and then we would go and do that project and we would bring in some contractors and we called it the Hollywood model. We still call it the Hollywood model. Because it was sort of structured like a movie production. We would bring in, you know, to our little core team, we'd bring in a couple specialists, you know, the equivalent of a director of photography or like a, you know, a casting director or whatever, and you bring in the people that you need to accomplish the task. Oh, we don't know how to do Bluetooth on the web. Okay. Find a Bluetooth person. Oh, there's a bunch of crypto stuff, cryptography stuff. Just be clear on this upcoming project, we better find somebody who knows, you know, the ins and outs of like, which cryptography algorithms to use or [00:09:35] what, how to build stuff in C Sharp for Windows platform or Surface, whatever the, the project was over time. You know, we got pretty good at that and I think one of the biggest changes, sort of after we kind of figured out how to actually do work was the realization that. Writing about the work not only gave us a lot of leverage in terms of our sort of visibility in the community and our ability to attract talent, but also the more we put into the writing, the more we learned about the research and that the process of, you know, we would do something and then write a little internal report and then move on. But the process of taking the work that we do, And making it legible to the outside world and explaining why we did it and what it means and how it fits into the bigger picture. That actually like being very diligent and thorough in documenting all of that greatly increases our own understanding of what we did.[00:10:35] And that was like a really pleasant and interesting surprise. I think one of my sort of concerns as lab director is that we got really good at that and we write all these like, Obscenely long essays that people claim to read. You know, hacker News comments on extensively without reading. But I think a lot about, you know, I always worry about the orthodoxy of doing the same thing too much and whether we're sort of falling into patterns, so we're always tinkering with new kind of project systems or new ways of working or new kinds of collaborations. And so yeah, that's ongoing. But this, this. The key elements of our system are we bring together a team that has both longer term people with domain contexts about the research, any required specialists who understand like interesting or important technical aspects of the work. And then we have a specific set of goals to accomplish [00:11:35] with a very strict time box. And then when it's done, we write and we put it down. And I think this avoids number of the real pitfalls in more open-ended research. It has its own shortcomings, right? But one of the big pitfalls that avoids is the kind of like meandering off and losing sight of what you're doing. And you can get great results from that in kind of a general research context. But we're very much an industrial research context. We're trying to connect real problems to specific directions to solve them. And so the time box kind of creates the fear of death. You're like, well, I don't wanna run outta time and not have anything to show for it. So you really get focused on trying to deliver things. Now sometimes that's at the cost, like the breadth or ambition of a solution to a particular thing, but I think it helps us really keep moving forward. [00:12:21] Ben: Yeah, and, and you no longer have everybody in the lab working on the same projects, right. [00:12:28] Peter: Yeah. So today, at any given time, The sort of population of the lab fluctuates between sort of [00:12:35] like eight and 15 people, depending on, you know, whether we have a bunch of projects in full swing or you know, how you count contractors. But we usually, at the moment we have sort of three tracks of research that we're doing. And those are local first software Programmable Inc. And Malleable software. [00:12:54] Ben: Nice. And so I, I actually have questions both about the, the write-ups that you do and the Hollywood model and so on, on the Hollywood model. Do you think that I, I, and this is like, do you think that the, the Hollywood model working in, in a. Industrial Research lab is particular to software in the sense that I feel like the software industry, people change jobs fairly frequently. Contracting is really common. Contractors are fairly fluid and. [00:13:32] Peter: You mean in terms of being able to staff and source people?[00:13:35] [00:13:35] Ben: Yeah, and people take, like, take these long sabbaticals, right? Where it's like, it's not uncommon in the software industry for someone to, to take six months between jobs. [00:13:45] Peter: I think it's very hard for me to generalize about the properties of other fields, so I want to try and be cautious in my evaluation here. What I would say is that, I think the general principle of having a smaller core of longer term people who think and gain a lot of context about a problem and pairing them up with people who have fresh ideas and relevant expertise, does not require you to have any particular industry structure. Right. There are lots of ways of solving this problem. Go to a research, another research organization and write a paper with someone from [00:14:35] an adjacent field. If you're in academia, right? If you're in a company, you can do a partnership you know, hire, you know, I think a lot of fields of science have much longer cycles, right? If you're doing material science, you know, takes a long time to build test apparatus and to formulate chemistries. Like [00:14:52] Ben: Yeah. [00:14:52] Peter: someone for several years, right? Like, That's fine. Get a detach detachment from another part of the company and bring someone as a secondment. Like I think that the general principle though, of putting together a mixture of longer and shorter term people with the right set of skills, yes, we solve it a particular way in our domain. But I don't think that that's software u unique to software. [00:15:17] Ben: Would, would it be overreaching to map that onto professors and postdocs and grad students where you have the professor who is the, the person who's been working on the, the program for a long time has all the context and then you have postdocs and grad students [00:15:35] coming through the lab. [00:15:38] Peter: Again, I need to be thoughtful about. How I evaluate fields that I'm less experienced with, but both my parents went through grad school and I've certainly gotten to know a number of academics. My sense of the relationship between professors and or sort of PhD, yeah, I guess professors and their PhD students, is that it's much more likely that the PhD students are given sort of a piece of the professor's vision to execute. [00:16:08] Ben: Yeah. [00:16:09] Peter: And that that is more about scaling the research interests of the professor. And I don't mean this in like a negative way but I think it's quite different [00:16:21] Ben: different. [00:16:22] Peter: than like how DARPA works or how I can switch works with our research tracks in that it's, I it's a bit more prescriptive and it's a bit more of like a mentor-mentee kind of relationship as [00:16:33] Ben: Yeah. More training.[00:16:35] [00:16:35] Peter: Yeah. And you know, that's, that's great. I mean, postdocs are a little different again, but I think, I think that's different than say how DARPA works or like other institutional research groups. [00:16:49] Ben: Yeah. Okay. I, I wanted to see how, how far I could stretch the, stretch [00:16:55] Peter: in academia there's famous stories about Adosh who would. Turn up on your doorstep you know, with a suitcase and a bottle of amphetamines and say, my, my brain is open, or something to that effect. And then you'd co-author a paper and pay his room and board until you found someone else to send him to.   I think that's closer in the sense that, right, like, here's this like, great problem solver with a lot of like domain skills and he would parachute into a place where someone was working on something interesting and help them make a breakthrough with it. [00:17:25] Ben: Yeah. I think the, the thing that I want to figure out, just, you know, long, longer term is how to. Make those [00:17:35] short term collaborations happen when with, with like, I, I I think it's like, like there's some, there's some coy intention like in, in the sense of like Robert Kos around like organizational boundaries when you have people coming in and doing things in a temporary sense. [00:17:55] Peter: Yeah, academia is actually pretty good at this, right? With like paper co-authors. I mean, again, this is like the, the pace layers thing. When you have a whole bunch of people organized in an industry and a company around a particular outcome, You tend to have like very specific goals and commitments and you're, you're trying to execute against those and it's much harder to get that kind of like more fluid movement between domains. [00:18:18] Ben: Yeah, and [00:18:21] Peter: That's why I left working in companies, right? Cause like I have run engineering processes and built products and teams and it's like someone comes to me with a really good idea and I'm like, oh, it's potentially very interesting, but like, [00:18:33] Ben: but We [00:18:34] Peter: We got [00:18:35] customers who have outages who are gonna leave if we don't fix the thing, we've got users falling out of our funnel. Cause we don't do basic stuff like you just, you really have a lot of work to do to make the thing go [00:18:49] Ben: Yeah. [00:18:49] Peter: business. And you know, my experience of research labs within businesses is that they're almost universally unsuccessful. There are exceptions, but I think they're more coincidental than, than designed. [00:19:03] Ben: Yeah. And I, I think less and less successful over time is, is my observation that. [00:19:11] Peter: Interesting. [00:19:12] Ben: Yeah, there's a, there's a great paper that I will send you called like, what is the name? Oh, the the Changing Structure of American Innovation by She Aurora. I actually did a podcast with him because I like the paper so much. that that I, I think, yeah, exactly. And so going back to your, your amazing [00:19:35] write-ups, you all have clearly invested quite a chunk of, of time and resources into some amount of like internal infrastructure for making those really good. And I wanted to get a sense of like, how do you decide when it's worth investing in internal infrastructure for a lab? [00:19:58] Peter: Ooh. Ah, that's a fun question. Least at In and Switch. It's always been like sort of demand driven. I wish I could claim to be more strategic about it, but like we had all these essays, they were actually all hand coded HTML at one point. You know, real, real indie cred there. But it was a real pain when you needed to fix something or change something. Cause you had to go and, you know, edit all this H T M L. So at some point we were doing a smaller project and I built like a Hugo Templating thing [00:20:35] just to do some lab notes and I faked it. And I guess this is actually a, maybe a somewhat common thing, which is you do one in a one-off way. And then if it's promising, you invest more in it. [00:20:46] Ben: Yeah. [00:20:46] Peter: And it ended up being a bigger project to build a full-on. I mean, it's not really a cms, it's sort of a cms, it's a, it's a templating system that produces static HT m l. It's what all our essays come out of. But there's also a lot of work in a big investment in just like design and styling. And frankly, I think that one of the things that in can switch apart from other. People who do similar work in the space is that we really put a lot of work into the presentation of our work. You know, going beyond, like we write very carefully, but we also care a lot about like, picking good colors, making sure that text hyphenates well, that it, you know, that the the screencast has the right dimensions and, you know, all that little detail work and. It's expensive [00:21:35] in time and money to do, but I think it's, I think the results speak for themselves. I think it's worth it. [00:21:47] Ben: Yeah. I, and I mean, if, if the ultimate goal is to influence what people do and what they think, which I suspect is, is at least some amount of the goal then communicating it. [00:22:00] Peter: It's much easier to change somebody's mind than to build an entire company. [00:22:05] Ben: Yes. Well, [00:22:06] Peter: you wanna, if you wanna max, it depends. Well, you don't have to change everybody's mind, right? Like changing an individual person's mind might be impossible. But if you can put the right ideas out there in the right way to make them legible, then you'll change the right. Hopefully you'll change somebody's mind and it will be the right somebody. [00:22:23] Ben: yeah. No, that is, that is definitely true. And another thing that I am. Always obscenely obsessed, exceedingly impressed by that. In Switch. [00:22:35] Does is your sort of thoughtfulness around how you structure your community and sort of tap into it. Would you be willing to sort of like, walk me through how you think about that and like how you have sort of the, the different layers of, of kind of involvement? [00:22:53] Peter: Okay. I mean, sort of the, maybe I'll work from, from the inside out cuz that's sort of the history of it. So in the beginning there was just sort of the people who started the lab. And over time they recruited me and, and Mark Mcg again and you know, some of our other folk to come and, and sign on for this crazy thing. And we started working with these wonderful, like contractors off and on and and so the initial sort of group was quite small and quite insular and we didn't publish anything. And what we found was that. Once we started, you know, just that alone, the act of bringing people in and working with them started to create the beginning of a [00:23:35] community because people would come into a project with us, they'd infect us with some of their ideas, we'd infect them with some of ours. And so you started to have this little bit of shared context with your past collaborators. And because we have this mix of like longer term people who stick with the lab and other people who come and go, You start to start to build up this, this pool of people who you share ideas and language with. And over time we started publishing our work and we began having what we call workshops where we just invite people to come and talk about their work at Ink and Switch. And by at, I mean like now it's on a discord. Back in the day it was a Skype or a Zoom call or whatever. And the rule back then in the early days was like, if you want to come to the talk. You have to have given a talk or have worked at the lab. And so it was like very good signal to noise ratio in attendance cuz the only people who would be on the zoom call would be [00:24:35] people who you knew were grappling with those problems. For real, no looky lose, no, no audience, right? And over time it just, there were too many really good, interesting people who are doing the work. To fit in all those workshops and actually scheduling workshops is quite tiring and takes a lot of energy. And so over time we sort of started to expand this community a little further. And sort of now our principle is you know, if you're doing the work, you're welcome to come to the workshops. And we invite some people to do workshops sometimes, but that's now we have this sort of like small private chat group of like really interesting folk. And it's not open to the public generally because again, we, I don't want to have an audience, right? I want it to practitioner's space. And so over time, those people have been really influential on us as well. And having that little inner [00:25:35] circle, and it's a few hundred people now of people who, you know, like if you have a question to ask about something tricky. There's probably somebody in there who has tried it, but more significantly, like the answer will come from somebody who has tried it, not from somebody who will call you an idiot for trying or who will, right, like you, you avoid all the, don't read the comments problems because the sort of like, if anybody was like that, I would probably ask them to leave, but we've been fortunate that we haven't had any of that kind of stuff in the community. I will say though, I think I struggle a lot because I think. It's hard to be both exclusive and inclusive. Right, but exclusive community deliberately in the sense that I want it to be a practitioner's space and one where people can be wrong and it's not too performative, like there's not investors watching or your, your user base or whatever. [00:26:32] Ben: Yeah. [00:26:32] Peter: at the same time, [00:26:33] Ben: strangers. [00:26:34] Peter: [00:26:35] inclusive space where we have people who are earlier in their career or. From non-traditional backgrounds, you know, either academically or culturally or so on and so forth. And it takes constant work to be like networking out and meeting new people and like inviting them into this space. So it's always an area to, to keep working on. At some point, I think we will want to open the aperture further, but yeah, it's, it's, it's a delicate thing to build a community. [00:27:07] Ben: Yeah, I mean the, the, frankly, the reason I'm asking is because I'm trying to figure out the same things and you have done it better than basically anybody else that I've seen. This is, this is maybe getting too down into the weeds. But why did you decide that discourse or discord was the right tool for it? And the, the reason that I ask is that I personally hate sort of [00:27:35] streaming walls of texts, and I find it very hard to, to seriously discuss ideas in, in that format. [00:27:43] Peter: Yeah, I think async, I mean, I'm an old school like mailing list guy. On some level I think it's just a pragmatic thing. We use Discord for our internal like day-to-day operations like. Hey, did you see the pr? You know, oh, we gotta call in an hour with so-and-so, whatever. And then we had a bunch of people in that community and then, you know, we started having the workshops and inviting more people. So we created a space in that same discord where. You know, people didn't have to get pinged when we had a lab call and we didn't want 'em turning up on the zoom anyway. And so it wasn't so much like a deliberate decision to be that space. I think there's a huge opportunity to do better and you know, frankly, what's there is [00:28:35] not as designed or as deliberate as I would like. It's more consequence of Organic growth over time and just like continuing to do a little bit here and there than like sort of an optimum outcome. And it could, there, there's a lot of opportunity to do better. Like we should have newsletters, there should be more, you know, artifacts of past conversations with better organizations. But like all of that stuff takes time and energy. And we are about a small little research lab. So many people you know, [00:29:06] Ben: I, I absolutely hear you on that. I think the, the, the tension that I, I see is that people, I think like texting, like sort of stream of texts. Slack and, and discord type things. And, and so there's, there's the question of like, what can you get people to do versus like, what creates the, the right conversation environment?[00:29:35] And, and maybe that's just like a matter of curation and like standard setting. [00:29:42] Peter: Yeah, I don't know. We've had our, our rabbit trails and like derailed conversations over the years, but I think, you know, if you had a forum, nobody would go there. [00:29:51] Ben: Yeah. [00:29:52] Peter: like, and you could do a mailing list, but I don't know, maybe we could do a mailing list. That would be a nice a nice form, I think. But people have to get something out of a community to put things into it and you know, you have to make, if you want to have a forum or, or an asynchronous posting place, you know, the thing is people are already in Discord or slack. [00:30:12] Ben: exactly. [00:30:13] Peter: something else, you have to push against the stream. Now, actually, maybe one interesting anecdote is I did experiment for a while with, like, discord has sort of a forum post feature. They added a while back [00:30:25] Ben: Oh [00:30:25] Peter: added it. Nobody used it. So eventually I, I turned it off again. Maybe, maybe it just needs revisiting, but it surprised me that it wasn't adopted, I guess is what [00:30:35] I would say. [00:30:36] Ben: Yeah. I mean, I think it, I think the problem is it takes more work. It's very easy to just dash off a thought. [00:30:45] Peter: Yeah, but I think if you have the right community, then. Those thoughts are likely to have been considered and the people who reply will speak from knowledge [00:30:55] Ben: Yeah. [00:30:56] Peter: and then it's not so bad, right? [00:30:59] Ben: it's [00:30:59] Peter: The problem is with Hacker News or whatever where like, or Reddit or any of these open communities like you, you know, the person who's most likely to reply is not the person who's most helpful to apply. [00:31:11] Ben: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that makes, that makes a lot of sense. And sort of switching tracks yet again, how so one, remind me how long your, your projects are, like how long, how big are the, is the time box. [00:31:28] Peter: the implementation phase for a standard income switch Hollywood project, which I can now call them standard, I think, cuz we've done like, [00:31:35] Ooh, let me look. 25 or so over the years. Let's see, what's my project count number at? I have a little. Tracker. Yeah, I think it's 25 today. So we've done about 20 some non-trivial number of these 10 to 12 weeks of implementation is sort of the core of the project, and the idea is that when you hit that start date, at the beginning of that, you should have the team assembled. You should know what you're building, you should know why you're building it, and you should know what done looks like. Now it's research, so inevitably. You know, you get two weeks in and then you take a hard left and like, you know, but that, that we write what's called the brief upfront, which is like, what is the research question we are trying to answer by funding this work and how do we think this project will answer it? Now, your actual implementation might change, or you might discover targets of opportunity along the way. But the idea is that by like having a, a narrow time box, like a, a team [00:32:35] that has a clear understanding of what you're trying to accomplish. And like the right set of people on board who already have all the like necessary skills. You can execute really hard for like that 10 to 12 weeks and get quite far in that time. Now, that's not the whole project though. There's usually a month or two upfront of what we call pre-infusion, kind of coming from the espresso idea that like you make better espresso if you take a little time at low pressure first to get ready with the shot, and so we'll do. You know, and duration varies here, but there's a period before that where we're making technical choices. Are we building this for the web or is this going on iPad? Are we gonna do this with rust and web assembly, or is this type script is this, are we buying Microsoft Surface tablets for this as we're like the ink behavior, right? So all those decisions we try and make up front. So when you hit the execution phase, you're ready to go. Do we need, what kind of designer do we want to include in this project? And who's available, you know? All of that stuff. We [00:33:35] try and square away before we get to the execution phase. [00:33:38] Ben: right. [00:33:38] Peter: when the end of the execution phase, it's like we try to be very strict with like last day pencils down and try to also reserve like the last week or two for like polish and cleanup and sort of getting things. So it's really two to two and a half, sometimes three months is like actually the time you have to do the work. And then after that, essays can take between like two months and a year or two. To produce finally. But we try to have a dr. We try to have a good first draft within a month after the end of the project. And again, this isn't a process that's like probably not optimal, but basically someone on the team winds up being the lead writer and we should be more deliberate about that. But usually the project lead for a given project ends up being the essay writer. And they write a first draft with input and collaboration from the rest of the group. And then people around [00:34:35] the lab read it and go, this doesn't make any sense at all. Like, what? What do you do? And you know, to, to varying degrees. And then it's sort of okay, right? Once you've got that kind of feedback, then you go back and you restructured and go, oh, I need to explain this part more. You know, oh, these findings don't actually cover the stuff that other people at the lab thought was interesting from the work or whatever. And then that goes through, you know, an increasing sort of, you know, standard of writing stuff, right? You send it out to some more people and then you send it to a bigger group. And you know, we send it to people who are in the field that whose input we respect. And then we take their edits and we debate which ones to take. And then eventually it goes in the HTML template. And then there's a long process of like hiring an external copy editor and building nice quality figures and re-recording all your crappy screencasts to be like, Really crisp with nice lighting and good, you know, pacing and, you know, then finally at the end of all of that, we publish. [00:35:33] Ben: Nice. And [00:35:35] how did you settle on the, the 10 to 12 weeks as the right size, time box? [00:35:42] Peter: Oh, it's it's it's, it's clearly rationally optimal. [00:35:46] Ben: Ah, of course, [00:35:47] Peter: No, I'm kidding. It's totally just, it became a habit. I mean, I think. Like I, I can give an intuitive argument and we've, we've experimented a bit. You know, two weeks is not long enough to really get into anything, [00:36:02] Ben: right. [00:36:02] Peter: and the year is too long. There's too much, too much opportunity to get lost along the way. There's no, you go too long with no real deadline pressure. It's very easy to kind of wander off into the woods. And bear in mind that like the total project duration is really more like six months, right? And so where we kind of landed is also that we often have like grad students or you know, people who are between other contracts or things. It's much easier to get people for three months than for eight months. And if I feel like [00:36:35] just intuitively, if I, if someone came to you with an eight month project, I'd be, I'm almost positive that I would be able to split it into two, three month projects and we'd be able to like find a good break point somewhere in the middle. And then write about that and do another one. And it's like, this is sort of a like bigger or smaller than a bread box argument, but like, you know, a month is too little and six months feels too long. So two to four months feels about right. In terms of letting you really get into, yeah, you can really get into the meat of a problem. You can try a few different approaches. You can pick your favorite and then spend a bit of time like analyzing it and like working out the kinks. And then you can like write it up. [00:37:17] Ben: Thanks. [00:37:18] Peter: But you know, there have been things that are not, that haven't fit in that, and we're doing some stuff right now that has, you know, we've had a, like six month long pre-infusion going this year already on some ink stuff. So it's not a universal rule, but like that's the, that's the [00:37:33] Ben: Yeah. No, I [00:37:35] appreciate that intuition [00:37:36] Peter: and I think it also, it ties into being software again, right? Like again, if you have to go and weld things and like [00:37:43] Ben: yeah, exactly. [00:37:44] Peter: You know, [00:37:44] Ben: let let some bacteria grow. [00:37:46] Peter: or like, you know, the, it's very much a domain specific answer. [00:37:51] Ben: Yeah. Something that I wish people talked about more was like, like characteristic time scales of different domains. And I, I think that's software, I mean, software is obviously shorter, but it'd be interesting to, to sort of dig down and be like, okay, like what, what actually is it? So the, the, the last question I'd love to ask is, To what extent does everybody in the lab know what's, what everybody else is working on? Like. [00:38:23] Peter: So we use two tools for that. We could do a better job of this. Every Monday the whole lab gets together for half an hour only. [00:38:35] And basically says what they're doing. Like, what are you up to this week? Oh, we're trying to like, you know, figure out what's going on with that you know, stylist shaped problem we were talking about at the last demo, or, oh, we're, you know, we're in essay writing mode. We've got a, we're hoping to get the first draft done this week, or, you know, just whatever high level kind of objectives the team has. And then I was asked the question like, well, Do you expect to have anything for show and tell on Friday and every week on Friday we have show and tell or every other week. Talk a bit more about that and at show and tell. It's like whatever you've got that you want input on or just a deadline for you can share. Made some benchmark showing that this code is now a hundred times faster. Great. Like bring it to show and tell. Got that like tricky you know, user interaction, running real smooth. Bring it to show and tell, built a whole new prototype of a new kind of [00:39:35] like notetaking app. Awesome. Like come and see. And different folks and different projects have taken different approaches to this. What has been most effective, I'm told by a bunch of people in their opinion now is like, kind of approaching it. Like a little mini conference talk. I personally actually air more on the side of like a more casual and informal thing. And, and those can be good too. Just from like a personal alignment like getting things done. Perspective. What I've heard from people doing research who want to get useful feedback is that when they go in having sort of like rehearsed how to explain what they're doing, then how to show what they've done and then what kind of feedback they want. That not only do they get really good feedback, but also that process of making sure that the demo you're gonna do will actually run smoothly and be legible to the rest of the group [00:40:35] forces you. Again, just like the writing, it forces you to think about what you're doing and why you made certain choices and think about which ones people are gonna find dubious and tell them to either ignore that cuz it was a stand-in or let's talk about that cuz it's interesting. And like that, that that little cycle is really good. And that tends to be, people often come every two weeks for that [00:40:59] Ben: Yeah. [00:41:01] Peter: within when they're in active sort of mode. And so not always, but like two weeks feels about like the right cadence to, to have something. And sometimes people will come and say like, I got nothing this week. Like, let's do it next week. It's fine. And the other thing we do with that time is we alternate what we call zoom outs because they're on Zoom and I have no, no sense of humor I guess. But they're based on, they're based on the old you and your research hamming paper with where the idea is that like, at least for a little while, every week [00:41:35] we all get together and talk about something. Bigger picture that's not tied to any of our individual projects. Sometimes we read a paper together, sometimes we talk about like an interesting project somebody saw, you know, in the world. Sometimes it's skills sharing. Sometimes it's you know, just like, here's how I make coffee or something, right? Like, You know, just anything that is bigger picture or out of the day-to-day philosophical stuff. We've read Illich and, and Ursula Franklin. People love. [00:42:10] Ben: I like that a lot. And I, I think one thing that, that didn't, that, that I'm still wondering about is like, On, on sort of a technical level are, are there things that some peop some parts of the lab that are working on that other parts of the lab don't get, like they, they know, oh, like this person's working on [00:42:35] inks, but they kind of have no idea how inks actually work? Or is it something where like everybody in the lab can have a fairly detailed technical discussion with, with anybody else [00:42:45] Peter: Oh no. I mean, okay, so there are interesting interdependencies. So some projects will consume the output of past projects or build on past projects. And that's interesting cuz it can create almost like a. Industry style production dependencies where like one team wants to go be doing some research. The local first people are trying to work on a project. Somebody else is using auto merge and they have bugs and it's like, oh but again, this is why we have those Monday sort of like conversations. Right? But I think the teams are all quite independent. Like they have their own GitHub repositories. They make their own technology decisions. They use different programming languages. They, they build on different stacks, right? Like the Ink team is often building for iPad because that's the only place we can compile like [00:43:35] ink rendering code to get low enough latency to get the experiences we want. We've given up on the browser, we can't do it, but like, The local first group for various reasons has abandoned electron and all of these like run times and mostly just build stuff for the web now because it actually works and you spend all, spend way less calories trying to make the damn thing go if you don't have to fight xcode and all that kind of stuff. And again, so it really varies, but, and people choose different things at different times, but no, it's not like we are doing code review for each other or like. Getting into the guts. It's much more high level. Like, you know, why did you make that, you know, what is your programming model for this canvas you're working on? How does you know, how does this thing relate to that thing? Why is, you know, why does that layout horizontally? It feels hard to, to parse the way you've shown that to, you know, whatever. [00:44:30] Ben: Okay, cool. That, that makes sense. I just, I, the, the, the reason I ask [00:44:35] is I am just always thinking about how how related do projects inside of a single organization need to be for, like, is, is there sort of like an optimum amount of relatedness? [00:44:50] Peter: I view them all as the aspects of the same thing, and I think that that's, that's an important. Thing we didn't talk about. The goal of income switch is to give rise to a new kind of computing that is more user-centric, that's more productive, that's more creative in like a very raw sense that we want people to be able to think better thoughts, to produce better ideas, to make better art, and that computers can help them with that in ways that they aren't and in fact are [00:45:21] Ben: Yeah. [00:45:25] Peter: whether you're working on ink, Or local first software or malleable software media canvases or whatever domain you are working in. It [00:45:35] is the same thing. It is an ingredient. It is an aspect, it is a dimension of one problem. And so some, in some sense, all of this adds together to make something, whether it's one thing or a hundred things, whether it takes five years or 50 years, you know, that's, we're all going to the same place together. But on many different paths and at different speeds and with different confidence, right? And so in the small, the these things can be totally unrelated, but in the large, they all are part of one mission. And so when you say, how do you bring these things under one roof, when should they be under different roofs? It's like, well, when someone comes to me with a project idea, I ask, do we need this to get to where we're going? [00:46:23] Ben: Yeah, [00:46:24] Peter: And if we don't need it, then we probably don't have time to work on it because there's so much to do. And you know, there's a certain openness to experimentation and, [00:46:35] and uncertainty there. But that, that's the rubric that I use as the lab director is this, is this on the critical path of the revolution?  

Danny welcomes back to the pod Margaret O'Mara, historian and author of The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America, to continue the story of how Silicon Valley came to be. They pick up in the midst of the Space Race, touching on the sources of tech capital the 1950s and 1960s, how the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) reshapes Stanford, figures like Stewart Brand and Steve Jobs, the transition from 60s counterculture to 70s “founder culture”, and more. Check out the first episode here.Be sure to grab a copy of the book! You can find Margaret's other work at her website. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.americanprestigepod.com/subscribe

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In every manmade job, place, and activity, design plays a pivotal role in shaping our experiences. Sadly, many designs miss the mark by neglecting the profound psychosocial impact they wield. This is where Dr. Sara Pazell steps in. As a dynamic design strategist, she empowers companies across industries to embrace human-centered work by integrating designs that ensure not only functionality but transformative success.Dr. Pazell is the managing director and principal consultant at Viva Health at Work and podcaster of WhyWork. At Viva, Sara leads companies to find solutions for human factors and ergonomics design across industries like mining, transportation, healthcare, retail, finance, food and beverage, sport and fitness, and government organizations. In this episode, Dart and Sara discuss:- The job of a work design strategist- Ergonomics and human factors in design- Why companies should consider psychosocial factors in design- The 7 principles of a human-centered organization- How to generate excitement and engagement when designing work- Improving design using failure modes analysis (in reverse)- How to contextualize design for success- The best and worst ways to generate new ideas- And other topics…Dr. Sara Pazell is a principal work design strategist, WhyWork podcaster, and managing director and principal consultant at Viva Health at Work. At Viva Health at Work, Sara leads companies in finding solutions for human factors and ergonomics design and work practices across industries like mining, transportation, healthcare, retail, finance, food and beverage, sport and fitness, and government organizations.In the past, Dr. Pazell has served as a healthcare professional, an executive business manager for health and surgical care facilities, and a trainer for business, leadership, and health and fitness training companies. She has helped publish various case studies and articles around work design and received her Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Queensland, where she is an Industry Fellow.Resources mentioned:International Ergonomics Association: https://iea.cc/ Human Factors and Ergonomics Society: https://www.hfes.org/ Human Factors and Ergonomics Society of Australia: https://www.ergonomics.org.au/Charted Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors: https://ergonomics.org.uk/ Jobs to Be Done, by Jim Kalbach: https://www.amazon.com/Jobs-Be-Done-Playbook-Organization/dp/1933820683 How Buildings Learn, by Stewart Brand: https://www.amazon.com/How-Buildings-Learn-Happens-Theyre/dp/0140139966 Connect with Sara:Viva Health at Work: https://vivahealthgroup.com.au/ WhyWork Podcast: https://whywork.com.au 

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Kevin Kelly is one of the most important tech writers of the last half century. Kevin started as the publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of Steve Jobs' favorite publications. After being mentored by Stewart Brand, he started writing books and magazine pieces before cofounding Wired Magazine. He has since become a prolific author - writing one feature article for Wired Magazine every year, and writing numerous bestselling books. The man is full of mysteries. Kevin writes abundantly but types very slowly. He writes often but calls himself a reluctant writer. He constantly explores new ideas but actually likes editing more than writing. Rare is the opportunity to sit down with the master who has decades of experience as a writer. This episode is a peek behind the curtain. SPEAKER LINKS: Website: https://kk.org Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevin2kelly Latest Book: "Excellent Advice for Living": https://a.co/d/3nYau0X Want to learn more about the next cohort with Write of Passage? Click here: https://writeofpassage.school/hiw Want to learn more about How I Write? Website: https://writeofpassage.school/how-i-write/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DavidPerellChannel/videos Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-write/id1700171470 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2DjMSboniFAeGA8v9NpoPv Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Original broadcast date: September 23, 2022. From hippie culture to the first personal computers, Stewart Brand has been key to some of the most groundbreaking movements of the last century. This hour, he reflects on his life and career. TED Radio Hour+ subscribers now get access to bonus episodes, with more ideas from TED speakers and a behind the scenes look with our producers. A Plus subscription also lets you listen to regular episodes (like this one!) without sponsors. Sign-up at: plus.npr.org/ted

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In this one-off summer episode we discussed 'How Buildings Learn' (1994) by Stewart Brand. The book is concerned with the whole lifespan of buildings, and "What Happens After They're Built?" This is a valuable and necessary agenda in architecture, however Brand's methodology is sometimes a little slapdash, often to comical effect. Come for the timeless wisdom of the Duchess of Devonshire, stay for the reductive account of the sins of architects. We talked through the book, the things we liked about it and raised some critiques, notably Brand's lack of thought about ownership and economics. All the images mentioned in this episode are available on YouTube. Edited by Matthew Lloyd Roberts. Support the show on Patreon to receive bonus content for every show. Please rate and review the show on your podcast store to help other people find us! Follow us on twitter // instagram // facebook We're on the web at aboutbuildingsandcities.org

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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit michaelgarfield.substack.comBefore we begin: I'm teaching a six-week online course on science, philosophy, economics, media, and dinosaurs! Join me at NuraLearning.com for Jurassic Worlding, a psychedelic deep dive into self-fulfilling techno-thrillers and the analog-digital transition, starting August 1st! Use discount code FUTUREFOSSIL for 10% off.This week on Future Fossils, I enter into a deep and delightful call-and-response game with Greg Thomas, co-founder of Jazz Leadership with his wife Jewel Kinch-Thomas, and Stephanie Lepp, CEO of Synthesis Media and multiple Webby-winning transmedia culture hacker whose friendship I made interviewing her for episode 154.Among many other things, we discuss these superb articles by Jewel Kinch-Thomas:Jazz Improvisation: Lessons for ConversationReciprocity: The Ebb and Flow of Relationship BuildingChange Leadership …and these pieces by Greg:Race and Jazz: A Candid ViewA Paradigm Shift on RaceCultural Intelligence: Transcending Race, Embracing Cosmos…and these pieces by and with Greg at Free Black Thought:Deracialization NowJazz, The Omni-American Ideal, and a Future Beyond BigotryConsidering Deracialization: A Response to Glenn Loury and Clifton Roscoe✨ Chapters:(0:00:00) - Departing From The Score To Navigate Transition(0:13:08) - Jazz, Business Leadership, and Conversation(0:31:37) - Principles of Jazz Leadership and Anti-Debate(0:49:53) - Exploring Reciprocity, Power, and Disagreement(1:03:33) - Deracialization, Defining Jazz, and Integral Theory(1:19:40) - Race, Jazz, Cultural Somatics, and Collective Intelligence✨ Mentions:Tyler Marghetis (Complexity 67), Allan Combs, Charles Eisenstein (Future Fossils 85), Doug Rushkoff (Future Fossils 67), Tech Ethics As Psychedelic Parenting at CBA, Stewart Brand's Pace Layers, Robert Poynton (Future Fossils 196), Jewel Kinch-Thomas, Albert Perry, Ian Leslie at Aeon Magazine: “A Good Scrap”, Lynn Margulis, Daniel Schmachtenberger (Future Fossils 51), Zak Stein (Future Fossils 97), Joseph Campbell, Heinrich Zimmer, Ralph Ellison, Peter Limberg, Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Douglass, Danielle Allen, Glenn LouryFull show notes and transcript generated by Podium.Page for patrons down below.✨ Support Future Fossils:Subscribe anywhere you go for podcasts.Subscribe to the podcast PLUS essays, music, and news on Substack or Patreon.Buy my original paintings or commission new work.Buy my music on Bandcamp.(Or if you're into lo-fi audio, follow me and my listening recommendations on Spotify.)This conversation continues with lively and respectful interaction every single day in the members-only Facebook Group and public-facing Discord Server (with patron channels). Join us!✨ Tip Jars:@futurefossils on Venmo$manfredmacx on CashAppmichaelgarfield on PayPal✨ Affiliate Links:• Find all the books I mention in the show at the Future Fossils Bookshop.org page!• Help regulate stress, get better sleep, recover from exercise, and/or stay alert and focused without stimulants, with the Apollo Neuro wearable. I have one and while I don't wear it all the time, when I do it's sober healthy drugs.• BioTech Life Sciences makes anti-aging and performance enhancement formulas that work directly at the level of cellular nutrition, both for ingestion and direct topical application. I'm a firm believer in keeping NAD+ levels up and their skin solution helped me erase a year of pandemic burnout from my face.• Podium.Page is a very cool new AI service for podcast show notes I'm happy to endorse. Sign up here and get three free hours and 50% off your first month.• And musicians, let me recommend you get yourself a Jamstik Studio, the coolest MIDI guitar I've ever played. I LOVE mine. You can hear it playing all the synths on my song about Jurassic Park (and that's a link to a new AI music video).✨ Full (machine-generated) show notes and transcript below the fold for patrons:

Access to Tools, and mushrooms. Early on K.M asks if J drugged him. It turns out, he did!!! Mushrooms!!! Although K.M. admits to being heavily influenced by the magic mushroom, it quickly becomes clear so is J. Together, they attempt to honor and chronicle Stewart Brand's counter culture icon and book series. Basically, we attempt to talk hippie shit from the 60's and 70's while drunk and on psychedelics. It's about what you would expect with J repeating himself endlessly, K.M. wondering what's happening and getting distracted by the possibly that William S. Burroughs fucked little boys. Thank Bacchus, Colorado steps in and wonderfully details the amazing achievement and work of Stewart Brand's "The Last Whole Earth Catalog, Access to Tools. After all, it was J's childhood.  

Welcome back to ParaPower Mapping. 2 EPs in 1 week? That's goddamn right! And it's the super-hefty first part of our comparative paranoid analysis of alchemical, Rosicrucian, & Pynchonian themes in Lodge 49 and The Crying of Lot 49. Support the show at: patreon.com/ParaPowerMapping ... so I can cont. to churn out the many "paragnostic" parsings of beloved cult-ural classics planned for future episodes. And gain access to the Boston Brahmin Watch Premium Feed! In today's episode, we discuss: Further evidence that AMORC founder H. Spencer Lewis was a German asset or agent during WWI; we examine R. Swinburne Clymer's pamphlet Not Under the Rose Cross, the expose that accuses Lewis of being aligned with "Baphomet" & "Antichrist" Aleister Crowley, AMORC's authority of being derived from the OTO, & Lewis of plagiarizing such New Thought weirdos as Koresh Reed Teed, Crowley, theosophists like Dr. Franz Hartmann, etc.; we talk Lewis's status as a Wandering Bishop & his "radio church" the Pristine Church of the Rose Cross, reading some liturgy from one of his broadcast services; we talk San Francisco's KPO, which hosted Lewis & was founded by a Navy comms man + department store; Pat Robertson mentions; a comparison to Perry Mason & Aimee Simple McPherson; various AMORC newspaper story odds & ends—the possibility one of Thelemite Jack Parsons's relatives joined AMORC; WWII prophecies, AMORC trips to Tibet, etc.; the modern day Alchemy Museum at Rosicrucian Park; the curator's connections to Arizona U. Center for Consciousness Studies; AMORC alchemy lab graduate Frater Albertus, which connects to... the Whole Earth Catalog; we talk sus Stewart Brand; we explore the Catalog's origins in MK-Ultra-adjacent LSD research studies; Myron J. Stolaroff; Ampex; Ram Dass; Merry Pranksters; mass cultural programming; Whole Earth Truck Store; the Whole Earth Festival on UC Davis campus; Brand's involvement in booking venues for the "Acid Tests"; Trips Fest 1966; Buckminster Fuller; Dymaxion houses; callbacks to the French occultism EPs; Fuller's frequent gov't contracts; geodesic domes; his elite Boston brahmin ancestry (Margaret Fuller); Whole Earth Festival as Age of Aquarius Happening; LSD dealing; Int'l Foundation for Advanced Study; Stanford Research Institute; very sus fact that Wavy Gravy was yearly MC... From there, we dive into CoL49 & Lodge 49; a brief history of alchemy; Hellenistic, Arabic, & Medieval periods;early alchemist Bolos of Mendes, his invocation of his dead master, & "arcanum" scrolls in secret rooms; Raff's Jung & the Alchemical Imagination; "reliquum corpus" (NOT MUMMIES) in Lodge 49; Sovereign Protector = Masonic Grand Master; "Magnum Opus" / Great Work; crypto as alchemy; the Ancient & Benevolent Order of the Lynx's founder Harwood Fritz Merrill, a Christian Rosenkreutz-esque figure; the processes of the Great Work; running out of gas & dying batteries as divine intervention;... Plot structure & thematic symmetries b/w CoL49 & L49; alchemical pyramid fydration schemes; Hollander's heuristic & narrative structure device for Pynchon Notes; CoL49's allusions to the JFK assassination; Pierce Inverarity as spook?; comparisons b/w Inverarity & "Captain"; LSD subjectivity, gnosis, & paranoia; Dr. Hilarius; Orbis = Yoyodyne; Pierce's investment in aerospace; hints of Bohemian Grove & organized sexual transgression in Chapter 2 at Echo Courts; Book of the Dead; the Scope evoking Acid Tests; Mafia; Fangoso Lagoons & human skeleton black markets; a possible reference to the Hellfire Clubs in The Courier's Tragedy; the inner mysteries of L49; abyss; L. Marvin Metz = Metzger; working class pathos; WWI + WWII = Vietnam & Crimea in L49; subterranean rites in the Ancient Mysteries; death & rebirth underground; Hollow Earth; etc. MUSIC: | Lodge 49 - Theme | | Santana - Soul Sacrifice (Live at Woodstock) | | Ronnie Foster - Mystic Brew | | The Greg Foat Group - Dark is the Sun (Harpsichord Waltz | | The Shields - Nature Boy |

Episode 165 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Dark Stat” and the career of the Grateful Dead. This is a long one, even longer than the previous episode, but don't worry, that won't be the norm. There's a reason these two were much longer than average. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-minute bonus episode available, on "Codine" by the Charlatans. Errata I mispronounce Brent Mydland's name as Myland a couple of times, and in the introduction I say "Touch of Grey" came out in 1988 -- I later, correctly, say 1987. (I seem to have had a real problem with dates in the intro -- I also originally talked about "Blue Suede Shoes" being in 1954 before fixing it in the edit to be 1956) Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by the Grateful Dead, and Grayfolded runs to two hours. I referred to a lot of books for this episode, partly because almost everything about the Grateful Dead is written from a fannish perspective that already assumes background knowledge, rather than to provide that background knowledge. Of the various books I used, Dennis McNally's biography of the band and This Is All a Dream We Dreamed: An Oral History of the Grateful Dead by Blair Jackson and David Gans are probably most useful for the casually interested. Other books on the Dead I used included McNally's Jerry on Jerry, a collection of interviews with Garcia; Deal, Bill Kreutzmann's autobiography; The Grateful Dead FAQ by Tony Sclafani; So Many Roads by David Browne; Deadology by Howard F. Weiner; Fare Thee Well by Joel Selvin and Pamela Turley; and Skeleton Key: A Dictionary for Deadheads by David Shenk and Steve Silberman. Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is the classic account of the Pranksters, though not always reliable. I reference Slaughterhouse Five a lot. As well as the novel itself, which everyone should read, I also read this rather excellent graphic novel adaptation, and The Writer's Crusade, a book about the writing of the novel. I also reference Ted Sturgeon's More Than Human. For background on the scene around Astounding Science Fiction which included Sturgeon, John W. Campbell, L. Ron Hubbard, and many other science fiction writers, I recommend Alec Nevala-Lee's Astounding. 1,000 True Fans can be read online, as can the essay on the Californian ideology, and John Perry Barlow's "Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace". The best collection of Grateful Dead material is the box set The Golden Road, which contains all the albums released in Pigpen's lifetime along with a lot of bonus material, but which appears currently out of print. Live/Dead contains both the live version of "Dark Star" which made it well known and, as a CD bonus track, the original single version. And archive.org has more live recordings of the group than you can possibly ever listen to. Grayfolded can be bought from John Oswald's Bandcamp Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript [Excerpt: Tuning from "Grayfolded", under the warnings Before we begin -- as we're tuning up, as it were, I should mention that this episode contains discussions of alcoholism, drug addiction, racism, nonconsensual drugging of other people, and deaths from drug abuse, suicide, and car accidents. As always, I try to deal with these subjects as carefully as possible, but if you find any of those things upsetting you may wish to read the transcript rather than listen to this episode, or skip it altogether. Also, I should note that the members of the Grateful Dead were much freer with their use of swearing in interviews than any other band we've covered so far, and that makes using quotes from them rather more difficult than with other bands, given the limitations of the rules imposed to stop the podcast being marked as adult. If I quote anything with a word I can't use here, I'll give a brief pause in the audio, and in the transcript I'll have the word in square brackets. [tuning ends] All this happened, more or less. In 1910, T. S. Eliot started work on "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", which at the time was deemed barely poetry, with one reviewer imagining Eliot saying "I'll just put down the first thing that comes into my head, and call it 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.'" It is now considered one of the great classics of modernist literature. In 1969, Kurt Vonnegut wrote "Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death", a book in which the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, comes unstuck in time, and starts living a nonlinear life, hopping around between times reliving his experiences in the Second World War, and future experiences up to 1976 after being kidnapped by beings from the planet Tralfamadore. Or perhaps he has flashbacks and hallucinations after having a breakdown from PTSD. It is now considered one of the great classics of modernist literature or of science fiction, depending on how you look at it. In 1953, Theodore Sturgeon wrote More Than Human. It is now considered one of the great classics of science fiction. In 1950, L. Ron Hubbard wrote Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. It is now considered either a bad piece of science fiction or one of the great revelatory works of religious history, depending on how you look at it. In 1994, 1995, and 1996 the composer John Oswald released, first as two individual CDs and then as a double-CD, an album called Grayfolded, which the composer says in the liner notes he thinks of as existing in Tralfamadorian time. The Tralfamadorians in Vonnegut's novels don't see time as a linear thing with a beginning and end, but as a continuum that they can move between at will. When someone dies, they just think that at this particular point in time they're not doing so good, but at other points in time they're fine, so why focus on the bad time? In the book, when told of someone dying, the Tralfamadorians just say "so it goes". In between the first CD's release and the release of the double-CD version, Jerry Garcia died. From August 1942 through August 1995, Jerry Garcia was alive. So it goes. Shall we go, you and I? [Excerpt: The Grateful Dead, "Dark Star (Omni 3/30/94)"] "One principle has become clear. Since motives are so frequently found in combination, it is essential that the complex types be analyzed and arranged, with an eye kept single nevertheless to the master-theme under discussion. Collectors, both primary and subsidiary, have done such valiant service that the treasures at our command are amply sufficient for such studies, so extensive, indeed, that the task of going through them thoroughly has become too great for the unassisted student. It cannot be too strongly urged that a single theme in its various types and compounds must be made predominant in any useful comparative study. This is true when the sources and analogues of any literary work are treated; it is even truer when the bare motive is discussed. The Grateful Dead furnishes an apt illustration of the necessity of such handling. It appears in a variety of different combinations, almost never alone. Indeed, it is so widespread a tale, and its combinations are so various, that there is the utmost difficulty in determining just what may properly be regarded the original kernel of it, the simple theme to which other motives were joined. Various opinions, as we shall see, have been held with reference to this matter, most of them justified perhaps by the materials in the hands of the scholars holding them, but none quite adequate in view of later evidence." That's a quote from The Grateful Dead: The History of a Folk Story, by Gordon Hall Gerould, published in 1908. Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five opens with a chapter about the process of writing the novel itself, and how difficult it was. He says "I would hate to tell you what this lousy little book cost me in money and anxiety and time. When I got home from the Second World War twenty-three years ago, I thought it would be easy for me to write about the destruction of Dresden, since all I would have to do would be to report what I had seen. And I thought, too, that it would be a masterpiece or at least make me a lot of money, since the subject was so big." This is an episode several of my listeners have been looking forward to, but it's one I've been dreading writing, because this is an episode -- I think the only one in the series -- where the format of the podcast simply *will not* work. Were the Grateful Dead not such an important band, I would skip this episode altogether, but they're a band that simply can't be ignored, and that's a real problem here. Because my intent, always, with this podcast, is to present the recordings of the artists in question, put them in context, and explain why they were important, what their music meant to its listeners. To put, as far as is possible, the positive case for why the music mattered *in the context of its time*. Not why it matters now, or why it matters to me, but why it matters *in its historical context*. Whether I like the music or not isn't the point. Whether it stands up now isn't the point. I play the music, explain what it was they were doing, why they were doing it, what people saw in it. If I do my job well, you come away listening to "Blue Suede Shoes" the way people heard it in 1956, or "Good Vibrations" the way people heard it in 1966, and understanding why people were so impressed by those records. That is simply *not possible* for the Grateful Dead. I can present a case for them as musicians, and hope to do so. I can explain the appeal as best I understand it, and talk about things I like in their music, and things I've noticed. But what I can't do is present their recordings the way they were received in the sixties and explain why they were popular. Because every other act I have covered or will cover in this podcast has been a *recording* act, and their success was based on records. They may also have been exceptional live performers, but James Brown or Ike and Tina Turner are remembered for great *records*, like "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" or "River Deep, Mountain High". Their great moments were captured on vinyl, to be listened back to, and susceptible of analysis. That is not the case for the Grateful Dead, and what is worse *they explicitly said, publicly, on multiple occasions* that it is not possible for me to understand their art, and thus that it is not possible for me to explain it. The Grateful Dead did make studio records, some of them very good. But they always said, consistently, over a thirty year period, that their records didn't capture what they did, and that the only way -- the *only* way, they were very clear about this -- that one could actually understand and appreciate their music, was to see them live, and furthermore to see them live while on psychedelic drugs. [Excerpt: Grateful Dead crowd noise] I never saw the Grateful Dead live -- their last UK performance was a couple of years before I went to my first ever gig -- and I have never taken a psychedelic substance. So by the Grateful Dead's own criteria, it is literally impossible for me to understand or explain their music the way that it should be understood or explained. In a way I'm in a similar position to the one I was in with La Monte Young in the last episode, whose music it's mostly impossible to experience without being in his presence. This is one reason of several why I placed these two episodes back to back. Of course, there is a difference between Young and the Grateful Dead. The Grateful Dead allowed -- even encouraged -- the recording of their live performances. There are literally thousands of concert recordings in circulation, many of them of professional quality. I have listened to many of those, and I can hear what they were doing. I can tell you what *I* think is interesting about their music, and about their musicianship. And I think I can build up a good case for why they were important, and why they're interesting, and why those recordings are worth listening to. And I can certainly explain the cultural phenomenon that was the Grateful Dead. But just know that while I may have found *a* point, *an* explanation for why the Grateful Dead were important, by the band's own lights and those of their fans, no matter how good a job I do in this episode, I *cannot* get it right. And that is, in itself, enough of a reason for this episode to exist, and for me to try, even harder than I normally do, to get it right *anyway*. Because no matter how well I do my job this episode will stand as an example of why this series is called "*A* History", not *the* history. Because parts of the past are ephemeral. There are things about which it's true to say "You had to be there". I cannot know what it was like to have been an American the day Kennedy was shot, I cannot know what it was like to be alive when a man walked on the Moon. Those are things nobody my age or younger can ever experience. And since August the ninth, 1995, the experience of hearing the Grateful Dead's music the way they wanted it heard has been in that category. And that is by design. Jerry Garcia once said "if you work really hard as an artist, you may be able to build something they can't tear down, you know, after you're gone... What I want to do is I want it here. I want it now, in this lifetime. I want what I enjoy to last as long as I do and not last any longer. You know, I don't want something that ends up being as much a nuisance as it is a work of art, you know?" And there's another difficulty. There are only two points in time where it makes sense to do a podcast episode on the Grateful Dead -- late 1967 and early 1968, when the San Francisco scene they were part of was at its most culturally relevant, and 1988 when they had their only top ten hit and gained their largest audience. I can't realistically leave them out of the story until 1988, so it has to be 1968. But the songs they are most remembered for are those they wrote between 1970 and 1972, and those songs are influenced by artists and events we haven't yet covered in the podcast, who will be getting their own episodes in the future. I can't explain those things in this episode, because they need whole episodes of their own. I can't not explain them without leaving out important context for the Grateful Dead. So the best I can do is treat the story I'm telling as if it were in Tralfamadorian time. All of it's happening all at once, and some of it is happening in different episodes that haven't been recorded yet. The podcast as a whole travels linearly from 1938 through to 1999, but this episode is happening in 1968 and 1972 and 1988 and 1995 and other times, all at once. Sometimes I'll talk about things as if you're already familiar with them, but they haven't happened yet in the story. Feel free to come unstuck in time and revisit this time after episode 167, and 172, and 176, and 192, and experience it again. So this has to be an experimental episode. It may well be an experiment that you think fails. If so, the next episode is likely to be far more to your taste, and much shorter than this or the last episode, two episodes that between them have to create a scaffolding on which will hang much of the rest of this podcast's narrative. I've finished my Grateful Dead script now. The next one I write is going to be fun: [Excerpt: Grateful Dead, "Dark Star"] Infrastructure means everything. How we get from place to place, how we transport goods, information, and ourselves, makes a big difference in how society is structured, and in the music we hear. For many centuries, the prime means of long-distance transport was by water -- sailing ships on the ocean, canal boats and steamboats for inland navigation -- and so folk songs talked about the ship as both means of escape, means of making a living, and in some senses as a trap. You'd go out to sea for adventure, or to escape your problems, but you'd find that the sea itself brought its own problems. Because of this we have a long, long tradition of sea shanties which are known throughout the world: [Excerpt: A. L. Lloyd, "Off to Sea Once More"] But in the nineteenth century, the railway was invented and, at least as far as travel within a landmass goes, it replaced the steamboat in the popular imaginary. Now the railway was how you got from place to place, and how you moved freight from one place to another. The railway brought freedom, and was an opportunity for outlaws, whether train robbers or a romanticised version of the hobo hopping onto a freight train and making his way to new lands and new opportunity. It was the train that brought soldiers home from wars, and the train that allowed the Great Migration of Black people from the South to the industrial North. There would still be songs about the riverboats, about how ol' man river keeps rolling along and about the big river Johnny Cash sang about, but increasingly they would be songs of the past, not the present. The train quickly replaced the steamboat in the iconography of what we now think of as roots music -- blues, country, folk, and early jazz music. Sometimes this was very literal. Furry Lewis' "Kassie Jones" -- about a legendary train driver who would break the rules to make sure his train made the station on time, but who ended up sacrificing his own life to save his passengers in a train crash -- is based on "Alabamy Bound", which as we heard in the episode on "Stagger Lee", was about steamboats: [Excerpt: Furry Lewis, "Kassie Jones"] In the early episodes of this podcast we heard many, many, songs about the railway. Louis Jordan saying "take me right back to the track, Jack", Rosetta Tharpe singing about how "this train don't carry no gamblers", the trickster freight train driver driving on the "Rock Island Line", the mystery train sixteen coaches long, the train that kept-a-rollin' all night long, the Midnight Special which the prisoners wished would shine its ever-loving light on them, and the train coming past Folsom Prison whose whistle makes Johnny Cash hang his head and cry. But by the 1960s, that kind of song had started to dry up. It would happen on occasion -- "People Get Ready" by the Impressions is the most obvious example of the train metaphor in an important sixties record -- but by the late sixties the train was no longer a symbol of freedom but of the past. In 1969 Harry Nilsson sang about how "Nobody Cares About the Railroads Any More", and in 1968 the Kinks sang about "The Last of the Steam-Powered Trains". When in 1968 Merle Haggard sang about a freight train, it was as a memory, of a child with hopes that ended up thwarted by reality and his own nature: [Excerpt: Merle Haggard, "Mama Tried"] And the reason for this was that there had been another shift, a shift that had started in the forties and accelerated in the late fifties but had taken a little time to ripple through the culture. Now the train had been replaced in the popular imaginary by motorised transport. Instead of hopping on a train without paying, if you had no money in your pocket you'd have to hitch-hike all the way. Freedom now meant individuality. The ultimate in freedom was the biker -- the Hell's Angels who could go anywhere, unburdened by anything -- and instead of goods being moved by freight train, increasingly they were being moved by truck drivers. By the mid-seventies, truck drivers took a central place in American life, and the most romantic way to live life was to live it on the road. On The Road was also the title of a 1957 novel by Jack Kerouac, which was one of the first major signs of this cultural shift in America. Kerouac was writing about events in the late forties and early fifties, but his book was also a precursor of the sixties counterculture. He wrote the book on one continuous sheet of paper, as a stream of consciousness. Kerouac died in 1969 of an internal haemmorage brought on by too much alcohol consumption. So it goes. But the big key to this cultural shift was caused by the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, a massive infrastructure spending bill that led to the construction of the modern American Interstate Highway system. This accelerated a program that had already started, of building much bigger, safer, faster roads. It also, as anyone who has read Robert Caro's The Power Broker knows, reinforced segregation and white flight. It did this both by making commuting into major cities from the suburbs easier -- thus allowing white people with more money to move further away from the cities and still work there -- and by bulldozing community spaces where Black people lived. More than a million people lost their homes and were forcibly moved, and orders of magnitude more lost their communities' parks and green spaces. And both as a result of deliberate actions and unconscious bigotry, the bulk of those affected were Black people -- who often found themselves, if they weren't forced to move, on one side of a ten-lane highway where the park used to be, with white people on the other side of the highway. The Federal-Aid Highway Act gave even more power to the unaccountable central planners like Robert Moses, the urban planner in New York who managed to become arguably the most powerful man in the city without ever getting elected, partly by slowly compromising away his early progressive ideals in the service of gaining more power. Of course, not every new highway was built through areas where poor Black people lived. Some were planned to go through richer areas for white people, just because you can't completely do away with geographical realities. For example one was planned to be built through part of San Francisco, a rich, white part. But the people who owned properties in that area had enough political power and clout to fight the development, and after nearly a decade of fighting it, the development was called off in late 1966. But over that time, many of the owners of the impressive buildings in the area had moved out, and they had no incentive to improve or maintain their properties while they were under threat of demolition, so many of them were rented out very cheaply. And when the beat community that Kerouac wrote about, many of whom had settled in San Francisco, grew too large and notorious for the area of the city they were in, North Beach, many of them moved to these cheap homes in a previously-exclusive area. The area known as Haight-Ashbury. [Excerpt: The Grateful Dead, "Grayfolded"] Stories all have their starts, even stories told in Tralfamadorian time, although sometimes those starts are shrouded in legend. For example, the story of Scientology's start has been told many times, with different people claiming to have heard L. Ron Hubbard talk about how writing was a mug's game, and if you wanted to make real money, you needed to get followers, start a religion. Either he said this over and over and over again, to many different science fiction writers, or most science fiction writers of his generation were liars. Of course, the definition of a writer is someone who tells lies for money, so who knows? One of the more plausible accounts of him saying that is given by Theodore Sturgeon. Sturgeon's account is more believable than most, because Sturgeon went on to be a supporter of Dianetics, the "new science" that Hubbard turned into his religion, for decades, even while telling the story. The story of the Grateful Dead probably starts as it ends, with Jerry Garcia. There are three things that everyone writing about the Dead says about Garcia's childhood, so we might as well say them here too. The first is that he was named by a music-loving father after Jerome Kern, the songwriter responsible for songs like "Ol' Man River" (though as Oscar Hammerstein's widow liked to point out, "Jerome Kern wrote dum-dum-dum-dum, *my husband* wrote 'Ol' Man River'" -- an important distinction we need to bear in mind when talking about songwriters who write music but not lyrics). The second is that when he was five years old that music-loving father drowned -- and Garcia would always say he had seen his father dying, though some sources claim this was a false memory. So it goes. And the third fact, which for some reason is always told after the second even though it comes before it chronologically, is that when he was four he lost two joints from his right middle finger. Garcia grew up a troubled teen, and in turn caused trouble for other people, but he also developed a few interests that would follow him through his life. He loved the fantastical, especially the fantastical macabre, and became an avid fan of horror and science fiction -- and through his love of old monster films he became enamoured with cinema more generally. Indeed, in 1983 he bought the film rights to Kurt Vonnegut's science fiction novel The Sirens of Titan, the first story in which the Tralfamadorians appear, and wrote a script based on it. He wanted to produce the film himself, with Francis Ford Coppola directing and Bill Murray starring, but most importantly for him he wanted to prevent anyone who didn't care about it from doing it badly. And in that he succeeded. As of 2023 there is no film of The Sirens of Titan. He loved to paint, and would continue that for the rest of his life, with one of his favourite subjects being Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein monster. And when he was eleven or twelve, he heard for the first time a record that was hugely influential to a whole generation of Californian musicians, even though it was a New York record -- "Gee" by the Crows: [Excerpt: The Crows, "Gee"] Garcia would say later "That was an important song. That was the first kind of, like where the voices had that kind of not-trained-singer voices, but tough-guy-on-the-street voice." That record introduced him to R&B, and soon he was listening to Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, to Ray Charles, and to a record we've not talked about in the podcast but which was one of the great early doo-wop records, "WPLJ" by the Four Deuces: [Excerpt: The Four Deuces, "WPLJ"] Garcia said of that record "That was one of my anthem songs when I was in junior high school and high school and around there. That was one of those songs everybody knew. And that everybody sang. Everybody sang that street-corner favorite." Garcia moved around a lot as a child, and didn't have much time for school by his own account, but one of the few teachers he did respect was an art teacher when he was in North Beach, Walter Hedrick. Hedrick was also one of the earliest of the conceptual artists, and one of the most important figures in the San Francisco arts scene that would become known as the Beat Generation (or the Beatniks, which was originally a disparaging term). Hedrick was a painter and sculptor, but also organised happenings, and he had also been one of the prime movers in starting a series of poetry readings in San Francisco, the first one of which had involved Allen Ginsberg giving the first ever reading of "Howl" -- one of a small number of poems, along with Eliot's "Prufrock" and "The Waste Land" and possibly Pound's Cantos, which can be said to have changed twentieth-century literature. Garcia was fifteen when he got to know Hedrick, in 1957, and by then the Beat scene had already become almost a parody of itself, having become known to the public because of the publication of works like On the Road, and the major artists in the scene were already rejecting the label. By this point tourists were flocking to North Beach to see these beatniks they'd heard about on TV, and Hedrick was actually employed by one cafe to sit in the window wearing a beret, turtleneck, sandals, and beard, and draw and paint, to attract the tourists who flocked by the busload because they could see that there was a "genuine beatnik" in the cafe. Hedrick was, as well as a visual artist, a guitarist and banjo player who played in traditional jazz bands, and he would bring records in to class for his students to listen to, and Garcia particularly remembered him bringing in records by Big Bill Broonzy: [Excerpt: Big Bill Broonzy, "When Things Go Wrong (It Hurts Me Too)"] Garcia was already an avid fan of rock and roll music, but it was being inspired by Hedrick that led him to get his first guitar. Like his contemporary Paul McCartney around the same time, he was initially given the wrong instrument as a birthday present -- in Garcia's case his mother gave him an accordion -- but he soon persuaded her to swap it for an electric guitar he saw in a pawn shop. And like his other contemporary, John Lennon, Garcia initially tuned his instrument incorrectly. He said later "When I started playing the guitar, believe me, I didn't know anybody that played. I mean, I didn't know anybody that played the guitar. Nobody. They weren't around. There were no guitar teachers. You couldn't take lessons. There was nothing like that, you know? When I was a kid and I had my first electric guitar, I had it tuned wrong and learned how to play on it with it tuned wrong for about a year. And I was getting somewhere on it, you know… Finally, I met a guy that knew how to tune it right and showed me three chords, and it was like a revelation. You know what I mean? It was like somebody gave me the key to heaven." He joined a band, the Chords, which mostly played big band music, and his friend Gary Foster taught him some of the rudiments of playing the guitar -- things like how to use a capo to change keys. But he was always a rebellious kid, and soon found himself faced with a choice between joining the military or going to prison. He chose the former, and it was during his time in the Army that a friend, Ron Stevenson, introduced him to the music of Merle Travis, and to Travis-style guitar picking: [Excerpt: Merle Travis, "Nine-Pound Hammer"] Garcia had never encountered playing like that before, but he instantly recognised that Travis, and Chet Atkins who Stevenson also played for him, had been an influence on Scotty Moore. He started to realise that the music he'd listened to as a teenager was influenced by music that went further back. But Stevenson, as well as teaching Garcia some of the rudiments of Travis-picking, also indirectly led to Garcia getting discharged from the Army. Stevenson was not a well man, and became suicidal. Garcia decided it was more important to keep his friend company and make sure he didn't kill himself than it was to turn up for roll call, and as a result he got discharged himself on psychiatric grounds -- according to Garcia he told the Army psychiatrist "I was involved in stuff that was more important to me in the moment than the army was and that was the reason I was late" and the psychiatrist thought it was neurotic of Garcia to have his own set of values separate from that of the Army. After discharge, Garcia did various jobs, including working as a transcriptionist for Lenny Bruce, the comedian who was a huge influence on the counterculture. In one of the various attacks over the years by authoritarians on language, Bruce was repeatedly arrested for obscenity, and in 1961 he was arrested at a jazz club in North Beach. Sixty years ago, the parts of speech that were being criminalised weren't pronouns, but prepositions and verbs: [Excerpt: Lenny Bruce, "To is a Preposition, Come is a Verb"] That piece, indeed, was so controversial that when Frank Zappa quoted part of it in a song in 1968, the record label insisted on the relevant passage being played backwards so people couldn't hear such disgusting filth: [Excerpt: The Mothers of Invention, "Harry You're a Beast"] (Anyone familiar with that song will understand that the censored portion is possibly the least offensive part of the whole thing). Bruce was facing trial, and he needed transcripts of what he had said in his recordings to present in court. Incidentally, there seems to be some confusion over exactly which of Bruce's many obscenity trials Garcia became a transcriptionist for. Dennis McNally says in his biography of the band, published in 2002, that it was the most famous of them, in autumn 1964, but in a later book, Jerry on Jerry, a book of interviews of Garcia edited by McNally, McNally talks about it being when Garcia was nineteen, which would mean it was Bruce's first trial, in 1961. We can put this down to the fact that many of the people involved, not least Garcia, lived in Tralfamadorian time, and were rather hazy on dates, but I'm placing the story here rather than in 1964 because it seems to make more sense that Garcia would be involved in a trial based on an incident in San Francisco than one in New York. Garcia got the job, even though he couldn't type, because by this point he'd spent so long listening to recordings of old folk and country music that he was used to transcribing indecipherable accents, and often, as Garcia would tell it, Bruce would mumble very fast and condense multiple syllables into one. Garcia was particularly impressed by Bruce's ability to improvise but talk in entire paragraphs, and he compared his use of language to bebop. Another thing that was starting to impress Garcia, and which he also compared to bebop, was bluegrass: [Excerpt: Bill Monroe, "Fire on the Mountain"] Bluegrass is a music that is often considered very traditional, because it's based on traditional songs and uses acoustic instruments, but in fact it was a terribly *modern* music, and largely a postwar creation of a single band -- Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys. And Garcia was right when he said it was "white bebop" -- though he did say "The only thing it doesn't have is the harmonic richness of bebop. You know what I mean? That's what it's missing, but it has everything else." Both bebop and bluegrass evolved after the second world war, though they were informed by music from before it, and both prized the ability to improvise, and technical excellence. Both are musics that involved playing *fast*, in an ensemble, and being able to respond quickly to the other musicians. Both musics were also intensely rhythmic, a response to a faster paced, more stressful world. They were both part of the general change in the arts towards immediacy that we looked at in the last episode with the creation first of expressionism and then of pop art. Bluegrass didn't go into the harmonic explorations that modern jazz did, but it was absolutely as modern as anything Charlie Parker was doing, and came from the same impulses. It was tradition and innovation, the past and the future simultaneously. Bill Monroe, Jackson Pollock, Charlie Parker, Jack Kerouac, and Lenny Bruce were all in their own ways responding to the same cultural moment, and it was that which Garcia was responding to. But he didn't become able to play bluegrass until after a tragedy which shaped his life even more than his father's death had. Garcia had been to a party and was in a car with his friends Lee Adams, Paul Speegle, and Alan Trist. Adams was driving at ninety miles an hour when they hit a tight curve and crashed. Garcia, Adams, and Trist were all severely injured but survived. Speegle died. So it goes. This tragedy changed Garcia's attitudes totally. Of all his friends, Speegle was the one who was most serious about his art, and who treated it as something to work on. Garcia had always been someone who fundamentally didn't want to work or take any responsibility for anything. And he remained that way -- except for his music. Speegle's death changed Garcia's attitude to that, totally. If his friend wasn't going to be able to practice his own art any more, Garcia would practice his, in tribute to him. He resolved to become a virtuoso on guitar and banjo. His girlfriend of the time later said “I don't know if you've spent time with someone rehearsing ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown' on a banjo for eight hours, but Jerry practiced endlessly. He really wanted to excel and be the best. He had tremendous personal ambition in the musical arena, and he wanted to master whatever he set out to explore. Then he would set another sight for himself. And practice another eight hours a day of new licks.” But of course, you can't make ensemble music on your own: [Excerpt: Jerry Garcia and Bob Hunter, "Oh Mary Don't You Weep" (including end)] "Evelyn said, “What is it called when a person needs a … person … when you want to be touched and the … two are like one thing and there isn't anything else at all anywhere?” Alicia, who had read books, thought about it. “Love,” she said at length." That's from More Than Human, by Theodore Sturgeon, a book I'll be quoting a few more times as the story goes on. Robert Hunter, like Garcia, was just out of the military -- in his case, the National Guard -- and he came into Garcia's life just after Paul Speegle had left it. Garcia and Alan Trist met Hunter ten days after the accident, and the three men started hanging out together, Trist and Hunter writing while Garcia played music. Garcia and Hunter both bonded over their shared love for the beats, and for traditional music, and the two formed a duo, Bob and Jerry, which performed together a handful of times. They started playing together, in fact, after Hunter picked up a guitar and started playing a song and halfway through Garcia took it off him and finished the song himself. The two of them learned songs from the Harry Smith Anthology -- Garcia was completely apolitical, and only once voted in his life, for Lyndon Johnson in 1964 to keep Goldwater out, and regretted even doing that, and so he didn't learn any of the more political material people like Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, and Bob Dylan were doing at the time -- but their duo only lasted a short time because Hunter wasn't an especially good guitarist. Hunter would, though, continue to jam with Garcia and other friends, sometimes playing mandolin, while Garcia played solo gigs and with other musicians as well, playing and moving round the Bay Area and performing with whoever he could: [Excerpt: Jerry Garcia, "Railroad Bill"] "Bleshing, that was Janie's word. She said Baby told it to her. She said it meant everyone all together being something, even if they all did different things. Two arms, two legs, one body, one head, all working together, although a head can't walk and arms can't think. Lone said maybe it was a mixture of “blending” and “meshing,” but I don't think he believed that himself. It was a lot more than that." That's from More Than Human In 1961, Garcia and Hunter met another young musician, but one who was interested in a very different type of music. Phil Lesh was a serious student of modern classical music, a classically-trained violinist and trumpeter whose interest was solidly in the experimental and whose attitude can be summed up by a story that's always told about him meeting his close friend Tom Constanten for the first time. Lesh had been talking with someone about serialism, and Constanten had interrupted, saying "Music stopped being created in 1750 but it started again in 1950". Lesh just stuck out his hand, recognising a kindred spirit. Lesh and Constanten were both students of Luciano Berio, the experimental composer who created compositions for magnetic tape: [Excerpt: Luciano Berio, "Momenti"] Berio had been one of the founders of the Studio di fonologia musicale di Radio Milano, a studio for producing contemporary electronic music where John Cage had worked for a time, and he had also worked with the electronic music pioneer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Lesh would later remember being very impressed when Berio brought a tape into the classroom -- the actual multitrack tape for Stockhausen's revolutionary piece Gesang Der Juenglinge: [Excerpt: Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Gesang Der Juenglinge"] Lesh at first had been distrustful of Garcia -- Garcia was charismatic and had followers, and Lesh never liked people like that. But he was impressed by Garcia's playing, and soon realised that the two men, despite their very different musical interests, had a lot in common. Lesh was interested in the technology of music as well as in performing and composing it, and so when he wasn't studying he helped out by engineering at the university's radio station. Lesh was impressed by Garcia's playing, and suggested to the presenter of the station's folk show, the Midnight Special, that Garcia be a guest. Garcia was so good that he ended up getting an entire solo show to himself, where normally the show would feature multiple acts. Lesh and Constanten soon moved away from the Bay Area to Las Vegas, but both would be back -- in Constanten's case he would form an experimental group in San Francisco with their fellow student Steve Reich, and that group (though not with Constanten performing) would later premiere Terry Riley's In C, a piece influenced by La Monte Young and often considered one of the great masterpieces of minimalist music. By early 1962 Garcia and Hunter had formed a bluegrass band, with Garcia on guitar and banjo and Hunter on mandolin, and a rotating cast of other musicians including Ken Frankel, who played banjo and fiddle. They performed under different names, including the Tub Thumpers, the Hart Valley Drifters, and the Sleepy Valley Hog Stompers, and played a mixture of bluegrass and old-time music -- and were very careful about the distinction: [Excerpt: The Hart Valley Drifters, "Cripple Creek"] In 1993, the Republican political activist John Perry Barlow was invited to talk to the CIA about the possibilities open to them with what was then called the Information Superhighway. He later wrote, in part "They told me they'd brought Steve Jobs in a few weeks before to indoctrinate them in modern information management. And they were delighted when I returned later, bringing with me a platoon of Internet gurus, including Esther Dyson, Mitch Kapor, Tony Rutkowski, and Vint Cerf. They sealed us into an electronically impenetrable room to discuss the radical possibility that a good first step in lifting their blackout would be for the CIA to put up a Web site... We told them that information exchange was a barter system, and that to receive, one must also be willing to share. This was an alien notion to them. They weren't even willing to share information among themselves, much less the world." 1962 brought a new experience for Robert Hunter. Hunter had been recruited into taking part in psychological tests at Stanford University, which in the sixties and seventies was one of the preeminent universities for psychological experiments. As part of this, Hunter was given $140 to attend the VA hospital (where a janitor named Ken Kesey, who had himself taken part in a similar set of experiments a couple of years earlier, worked a day job while he was working on his first novel) for four weeks on the run, and take different psychedelic drugs each time, starting with LSD, so his reactions could be observed. (It was later revealed that these experiments were part of a CIA project called MKUltra, designed to investigate the possibility of using psychedelic drugs for mind control, blackmail, and torture. Hunter was quite lucky in that he was told what was going to happen to him and paid for his time. Other subjects included the unlucky customers of brothels the CIA set up as fronts -- they dosed the customers' drinks and observed them through two-way mirrors. Some of their experimental subjects died by suicide as a result of their experiences. So it goes. ) Hunter was interested in taking LSD after reading Aldous Huxley's writings about psychedelic substances, and he brought his typewriter along to the experiment. During the first test, he wrote a six-page text, a short excerpt from which is now widely quoted, reading in part "Sit back picture yourself swooping up a shell of purple with foam crests of crystal drops soft nigh they fall unto the sea of morning creep-very-softly mist ... and then sort of cascade tinkley-bell-like (must I take you by the hand, ever so slowly type) and then conglomerate suddenly into a peal of silver vibrant uncomprehendingly, blood singingly, joyously resounding bells" Hunter's experience led to everyone in their social circle wanting to try LSD, and soon they'd all come to the same conclusion -- this was something special. But Garcia needed money -- he'd got his girlfriend pregnant, and they'd married (this would be the first of several marriages in Garcia's life, and I won't be covering them all -- at Garcia's funeral, his second wife, Carolyn, said Garcia always called her the love of his life, and his first wife and his early-sixties girlfriend who he proposed to again in the nineties both simultaneously said "He said that to me!"). So he started teaching guitar at a music shop in Palo Alto. Hunter had no time for Garcia's incipient domesticity and thought that his wife was trying to make him live a conventional life, and the two drifted apart somewhat, though they'd still play together occasionally. Through working at the music store, Garcia got to know the manager, Troy Weidenheimer, who had a rock and roll band called the Zodiacs. Garcia joined the band on bass, despite that not being his instrument. He later said "Troy was a lot of fun, but I wasn't good enough a musician then to have been able to deal with it. I was out of my idiom, really, 'cause when I played with Troy I was playing electric bass, you know. I never was a good bass player. Sometimes I was playing in the wrong key and didn't even [fuckin'] know it. I couldn't hear that low, after playing banjo, you know, and going to electric...But Troy taught me the principle of, hey, you know, just stomp your foot and get on it. He was great. A great one for the instant arrangement, you know. And he was also fearless for that thing of get your friends to do it." Garcia's tenure in the Zodiacs didn't last long, nor did this experiment with rock and roll, but two other members of the Zodiacs will be notable later in the story -- the harmonica player, an old friend of Garcia's named Ron McKernan, who would soon gain the nickname Pig Pen after the Peanuts character, and the drummer, Bill Kreutzmann: [Excerpt: The Grateful Dead, "Drums/Space (Skull & Bones version)"] Kreutzmann said of the Zodiacs "Jerry was the hired bass player and I was the hired drummer. I only remember playing that one gig with them, but I was in way over my head. I always did that. I always played things that were really hard and it didn't matter. I just went for it." Garcia and Kreutzmann didn't really get to know each other then, but Garcia did get to know someone else who would soon be very important in his life. Bob Weir was from a very different background than Garcia, though both had the shared experience of long bouts of chronic illness as children. He had grown up in a very wealthy family, and had always been well-liked, but he was what we would now call neurodivergent -- reading books about the band he talks about being dyslexic but clearly has other undiagnosed neurodivergences, which often go along with dyslexia -- and as a result he was deemed to have behavioural problems which led to him getting expelled from pre-school and kicked out of the cub scouts. He was never academically gifted, thanks to his dyslexia, but he was always enthusiastic about music -- to a fault. He learned to play boogie piano but played so loudly and so often his parents sold the piano. He had a trumpet, but the neighbours complained about him playing it outside. Finally he switched to the guitar, an instrument with which it is of course impossible to make too loud a noise. The first song he learned was the Kingston Trio's version of an old sea shanty, "The Wreck of the John B": [Excerpt: The Kingston Trio, "The Wreck of the John B"] He was sent off to a private school in Colorado for teenagers with behavioural issues, and there he met the boy who would become his lifelong friend, John Perry Barlow. Unfortunately the two troublemakers got on with each other *so* well that after their first year they were told that it was too disruptive having both of them at the school, and only one could stay there the next year. Barlow stayed and Weir moved back to the Bay Area. By this point, Weir was getting more interested in folk music that went beyond the commercial folk of the Kingston Trio. As he said later "There was something in there that was ringing my bells. What I had grown up thinking of as hillbilly music, it started to have some depth for me, and I could start to hear the music in it. Suddenly, it wasn't just a bunch of ignorant hillbillies playing what they could. There was some depth and expertise and stuff like that to aspire to.” He moved from school to school but one thing that stayed with him was his love of playing guitar, and he started taking lessons from Troy Weidenheimer, but he got most of his education going to folk clubs and hootenannies. He regularly went to the Tangent, a club where Garcia played, but Garcia's bluegrass banjo playing was far too rigorous for a free spirit like Weir to emulate, and instead he started trying to copy one of the guitarists who was a regular there, Jorma Kaukonnen. On New Year's Eve 1963 Weir was out walking with his friends Bob Matthews and Rich Macauley, and they passed the music shop where Garcia was a teacher, and heard him playing his banjo. They knocked and asked if they could come in -- they all knew Garcia a little, and Bob Matthews was one of his students, having become interested in playing banjo after hearing the theme tune to the Beverly Hillbillies, played by the bluegrass greats Flatt and Scruggs: [Excerpt: Flatt and Scruggs, "The Beverly Hillbillies"] Garcia at first told these kids, several years younger than him, that they couldn't come in -- he was waiting for his students to show up. But Weir said “Jerry, listen, it's seven-thirty on New Year's Eve, and I don't think you're going to be seeing your students tonight.” Garcia realised the wisdom of this, and invited the teenagers in to jam with him. At the time, there was a bit of a renaissance in jug bands, as we talked about back in the episode on the Lovin' Spoonful. This was a form of music that had grown up in the 1920s, and was similar and related to skiffle and coffee-pot bands -- jug bands would tend to have a mixture of portable string instruments like guitars and banjos, harmonicas, and people using improvised instruments, particularly blowing into a jug. The most popular of these bands had been Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers, led by banjo player Gus Cannon and with harmonica player Noah Lewis: [Excerpt: Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers, "Viola Lee Blues"] With the folk revival, Cannon's work had become well-known again. The Rooftop Singers, a Kingston Trio style folk group, had had a hit with his song "Walk Right In" in 1963, and as a result of that success Cannon had even signed a record contract with Stax -- Stax's first album ever, a month before Booker T and the MGs' first album, was in fact the eighty-year-old Cannon playing his banjo and singing his old songs. The rediscovery of Cannon had started a craze for jug bands, and the most popular of the new jug bands was Jim Kweskin's Jug Band, which did a mixture of old songs like "You're a Viper" and more recent material redone in the old style. Weir, Matthews, and Macauley had been to see the Kweskin band the night before, and had been very impressed, especially by their singer Maria D'Amato -- who would later marry her bandmate Geoff Muldaur and take his name -- and her performance of Leiber and Stoller's "I'm a Woman": [Excerpt: Jim Kweskin's Jug Band, "I'm a Woman"] Matthews suggested that they form their own jug band, and Garcia eagerly agreed -- though Matthews found himself rapidly moving from banjo to washboard to kazoo to second kazoo before realising he was surplus to requirements. Robert Hunter was similarly an early member but claimed he "didn't have the embouchure" to play the jug, and was soon also out. He moved to LA and started studying Scientology -- later claiming that he wanted science-fictional magic powers, which L. Ron Hubbard's new religion certainly offered. The group took the name Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Champions -- apparently they varied the spelling every time they played -- and had a rotating membership that at one time or another included about twenty different people, but tended always to have Garcia on banjo, Weir on jug and later guitar, and Garcia's friend Pig Pen on harmonica: [Excerpt: Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Champions, "On the Road Again"] The group played quite regularly in early 1964, but Garcia's first love was still bluegrass, and he was trying to build an audience with his bluegrass band, The Black Mountain Boys. But bluegrass was very unpopular in the Bay Area, where it was simultaneously thought of as unsophisticated -- as "hillbilly music" -- and as elitist, because it required actual instrumental ability, which wasn't in any great supply in the amateur folk scene. But instrumental ability was something Garcia definitely had, as at this point he was still practising eight hours a day, every day, and it shows on the recordings of the Black Mountain Boys: [Excerpt: The Black Mountain Boys, "Rosa Lee McFall"] By the summer, Bob Weir was also working at the music shop, and so Garcia let Weir take over his students while he and the Black Mountain Boys' guitarist Sandy Rothman went on a road trip to see as many bluegrass musicians as they could and to audition for Bill Monroe himself. As it happened, Garcia found himself too shy to audition for Monroe, but Rothman later ended up playing with Monroe's Blue Grass Boys. On his return to the Bay Area, Garcia resumed playing with the Uptown Jug Champions, but Pig Pen started pestering him to do something different. While both men had overlapping tastes in music and a love for the blues, Garcia's tastes had always been towards the country end of the spectrum while Pig Pen's were towards R&B. And while the Uptown Jug Champions were all a bit disdainful of the Beatles at first -- apart from Bob Weir, the youngest of the group, who thought they were interesting -- Pig Pen had become enamoured of another British band who were just starting to make it big: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Not Fade Away"] 29) Garcia liked the first Rolling Stones album too, and he eventually took Pig Pen's point -- the stuff that the Rolling Stones were doing, covers of Slim Harpo and Buddy Holly, was not a million miles away from the material they were doing as Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Champions. Pig Pen could play a little electric organ, Bob had been fooling around with the electric guitars in the music shop. Why not give it a go? The stuff bands like the Rolling Stones were doing wasn't that different from the electric blues that Pig Pen liked, and they'd all seen A Hard Day's Night -- they could carry on playing with banjos, jugs, and kazoos and have the respect of a handful of folkies, or they could get electric instruments and potentially have screaming girls and millions of dollars, while playing the same songs. This was a convincing argument, especially when Dana Morgan Jr, the son of the owner of the music shop, told them they could have free electric instruments if they let him join on bass. Morgan wasn't that great on bass, but what the hell, free instruments. Pig Pen had the best voice and stage presence, so he became the frontman of the new group, singing most of the leads, though Jerry and Bob would both sing a few songs, and playing harmonica and organ. Weir was on rhythm guitar, and Garcia was the lead guitarist and obvious leader of the group. They just needed a drummer, and handily Bill Kreutzmann, who had played with Garcia and Pig Pen in the Zodiacs, was also now teaching music at the music shop. Not only that, but about three weeks before they decided to go electric, Kreutzmann had seen the Uptown Jug Champions performing and been astonished by Garcia's musicianship and charisma, and said to himself "Man, I'm gonna follow that guy forever!" The new group named themselves the Warlocks, and started rehearsing in earnest. Around this time, Garcia also finally managed to get some of the LSD that his friend Robert Hunter had been so enthusiastic about three years earlier, and it was a life-changing experience for him. In particular, he credited LSD with making him comfortable being a less disciplined player -- as a bluegrass player he'd had to be frighteningly precise, but now he was playing rock and needed to loosen up. A few days after taking LSD for the first time, Garcia also heard some of Bob Dylan's new material, and realised that the folk singer he'd had little time for with his preachy politics was now making electric music that owed a lot more to the Beat culture Garcia considered himself part of: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Subterranean Homesick Blues"] Another person who was hugely affected by hearing that was Phil Lesh, who later said "I couldn't believe that was Bob Dylan on AM radio, with an electric band. It changed my whole consciousness: if something like that could happen, the sky was the limit." Up to that point, Lesh had been focused entirely on his avant-garde music, working with friends like Steve Reich to push music forward, inspired by people like John Cage and La Monte Young, but now he realised there was music of value in the rock world. He'd quickly started going to rock gigs, seeing the Rolling Stones and the Byrds, and then he took acid and went to see his friend Garcia's new electric band play their third ever gig. He was blown away, and very quickly it was decided that Lesh would be the group's new bass player -- though everyone involved tells a different story as to who made the decision and how it came about, and accounts also vary as to whether Dana Morgan took his sacking gracefully and let his erstwhile bandmates keep their instruments, or whether they had to scrounge up some new ones. Lesh had never played bass before, but he was a talented multi-instrumentalist with a deep understanding of music and an ability to compose and improvise, and the repertoire the Warlocks were playing in the early days was mostly three-chord material that doesn't take much rehearsal -- though it was apparently beyond the abilities of poor Dana Morgan, who apparently had to be told note-by-note what to play by Garcia, and learn it by rote. Garcia told Lesh what notes the strings of a bass were tuned to, told him to borrow a guitar and practice, and within two weeks he was on stage with the Warlocks: [Excerpt: The Grateful Dead, “Grayfolded"] In September 1995, just weeks after Jerry Garcia's death, an article was published in Mute magazine identifying a cultural trend that had shaped the nineties, and would as it turned out shape at least the next thirty years. It's titled "The Californian Ideology", though it may be better titled "The Bay Area Ideology", and it identifies a worldview that had grown up in Silicon Valley, based around the ideas of the hippie movement, of right-wing libertarianism, of science fiction authors, and of Marshall McLuhan. It starts "There is an emerging global orthodoxy concerning the relation between society, technology and politics. We have called this orthodoxy `the Californian Ideology' in honour of the state where it originated. By naturalising and giving a technological proof to a libertarian political philosophy, and therefore foreclosing on alternative futures, the Californian Ideologues are able to assert that social and political debates about the future have now become meaningless. The California Ideology is a mix of cybernetics, free market economics, and counter-culture libertarianism and is promulgated by magazines such as WIRED and MONDO 2000 and preached in the books of Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly and others. The new faith has been embraced by computer nerds, slacker students, 30-something capitalists, hip academics, futurist bureaucrats and even the President of the USA himself. As usual, Europeans have not been slow to copy the latest fashion from America. While a recent EU report recommended adopting the Californian free enterprise model to build the 'infobahn', cutting-edge artists and academics have been championing the 'post-human' philosophy developed by the West Coast's Extropian cult. With no obvious opponents, the global dominance of the Californian ideology appears to be complete." [Excerpt: Grayfolded] The Warlocks' first gig with Phil Lesh on bass was on June the 18th 1965, at a club called Frenchy's with a teenage clientele. Lesh thought his playing had been wooden and it wasn't a good gig, and apparently the management of Frenchy's agreed -- they were meant to play a second night there, but turned up to be told they'd been replaced by a band with an accordion and clarinet. But by September the group had managed to get themselves a residency at a small bar named the In Room, and playing there every night made them cohere. They were at this point playing the kind of sets that bar bands everywhere play to this day, though at the time the songs they were playing, like "Gloria" by Them and "In the Midnight Hour", were the most contemporary of hits. Another song that they introduced into their repertoire was "Do You Believe in Magic" by the Lovin' Spoonful, another band which had grown up out of former jug band musicians. As well as playing their own sets, they were also the house band at The In Room and as such had to back various touring artists who were the headline acts. The first act they had to back up was Cornell Gunter's version of the Coasters. Gunter had brought his own guitarist along as musical director, and for the first show Weir sat in the audience watching the show and learning the parts, staring intently at this musical director's playing. After seeing that, Weir's playing was changed, because he also picked up how the guitarist was guiding the band while playing, the small cues that a musical director will use to steer the musicians in the right direction. Weir started doing these things himself when he was singing lead -- Pig Pen was the frontman but everyone except Bill sang sometimes -- and the group soon found that rather than Garcia being the sole leader, now whoever was the lead singer for the song was the de facto conductor as well. By this point, the Bay Area was getting almost overrun with people forming electric guitar bands, as every major urban area in America was. Some of the bands were even having hits already -- We Five had had a number three hit with "You Were On My Mind", a song which had originally been performed by the folk duo Ian and Sylvia: [Excerpt: We Five, "You Were On My Mind"] Although the band that was most highly regarded on the scene, the Charlatans, was having problems with the various record companies they tried to get signed to, and didn't end up making a record until 1969. If tracks like "Number One" had been released in 1965 when they were recorded, the history of the San Francisco music scene may have taken a very different turn: [Excerpt: The Charlatans, "Number One"] Bands like Jefferson Airplane, the Great Society, and Big Brother and the Holding Company were also forming, and Autumn Records was having a run of success with records by the Beau Brummels, whose records were produced by Autumn's in-house A&R man, Sly Stone: [Excerpt: The Beau Brummels, "Laugh Laugh"] The Warlocks were somewhat cut off from this, playing in a dive bar whose clientele was mostly depressed alcoholics. But the fact that they were playing every night for an audience that didn't care much gave them freedom, and they used that freedom to improvise. Both Lesh and Garcia were big fans of John Coltrane, and they started to take lessons from his style of playing. When the group played "Gloria" or "Midnight Hour" or whatever, they started to extend the songs and give themselves long instrumental passages for soloing. Garcia's playing wasn't influenced *harmonically* by Coltrane -- in fact Garcia was always a rather harmonically simple player. He'd tend to play lead lines either in Mixolydian mode, which is one of the most standard modes in rock, pop, blues, and jazz, or he'd play the notes of the chord that was being played, so if the band were playing a G chord his lead would emphasise the notes G, B, and D. But what he was influenced by was Coltrane's tendency to improvise in long, complex, phrases that made up a single thought -- Coltrane was thinking musically in paragraphs, rather than sentences, and Garcia started to try the same kind of th

Meet Stewart Brand and his band of merry dematerialists, the Silicon Valley salesmen who undermined environmentalism with planet-saving fantasies that reek of technofetishism. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. Sources/Links/Notes:John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand, 2022.Anna Wiener, "The Complicated Legacy of Stewart Brand's 'Whole Earth Catalog'," The New Yorker, November 16, 2018.Wolf Tivy and Matt Ellison, "'Life Goes On' With Stewart Brand," Palladium, September 14, 2022."Ecomodernist Manifesto"Timothee Parrique, "A response to Paul Krugman: Growth is not as green as you might think," Resilience, February 28, 2023.Low-Tech MagazineThe Long Now FoundationRevive & RestoreSupport the show

On this week's Tech Nation, Moira speaks withJohn Markoff, the former New York Times journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner, to talk about someone we would call today an influencer only he has been influencing now for decades. Markoff's book is Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand.Then in biotech, Dr. James Mackey, the President & CEO, Aristea Therapeutics, tells about a painful disease which affects the palms of hand and soles of feet in post-menopausal women - Palmoplantar pustulosis or PPP - and how it may relate to other diseases.

This episode with Wired Founding Editor Kevin Kelly is one of my favourite episodes!His joie de vivre is infectious and I learned so much from his inspiring story and his fantastic new book Excellent Advice For Living which we talk about in this episode from which I know you will get a lot from too.But stepping back in time, Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review from 1984-1990 before he joined Wired in 1993 as its Founding Executive Editor alongside Louis Rossetto who we mention in this episode and Jane Metcalfe who I interviewed in Series 5, episode 40 (listen here). Kevin has also written some incredibly popular books including the New York times bestseller The Inevitable, Out of Control, which he wrote in 1992 and immediately became required reading on set of The Matrix film The Silver Cord, a graphic novel about robots and angels, What Technology Wants, a robust theory of technology, and Vanishing Asia, his 50-year project to photograph the disappearing cultures of Asia. Kevin is also co-chair of The Long Now Foundation with Stewart Brand.Kevin is a living legend and the 400+ pieces of advice from his latest book have already become part of my son's bedtime routine – that's how good they are.So without further ado, you're listening Danielle Newnham Podcast where I interview tech founders and innovators to learn the inspiring, human story behind their work and this is my interview with Kevin Kelly. Kevin on Twitter / Website / The Long Now Foundation Pre-order Kevin's latest book, Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier, here.Danielle Twitter / Instagram / NewsletterFrom this episode, Kevin's interview on This American Life here.Episode image credit: Christopher Michel

“"I wasn't partying. I wasn't relaxing on the beach. I was photographing – working – every minute of the day. That was a means to see as much as I possibly could. And to keep looking.”  –Kevin Kelly In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Kevin discuss the ambitions and connections that led Kevin to Asia not long after high school (2:30); how Kevin's interest in photography affected his experience of Asia (7:30); how seeing other cultures gave him perspective on his own culture, and on himself, and his countrymen (15:00); how photography gave him intensified attention to what in the world might be changing (23:00); how AI and other technology are changing how we live, create, and travel (30:00); how to travel in such a way that you are open to phenomenon and experiences you don't know of yet, and how technology might enable a "protopia" future (40:00). Kevin Kelly (@kevin2kelly) is a co-founder of Wired magazine, a co-founder of the Rosetta Project, and he serves on the board of the Long Now Foundation. He is a photographer, writer, and futurist, with much of his work centering on Asian and digital culture. His three-volume photo book Vanishing Asia draws on 50 years of vagabonding travel experiences, and his newest book, Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier, debuts in May of 2023. Notable Links: The Vagabond's Way, by Rolf Potts (book) Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman (poetry book) Communitas (egalitarian ethos of shared interest) Jan Chipchase (design innovator) Wired (magazine) Rick Prelinger (American archivist) Stewart Brand (founder of the Whole Earth Catalog) Shenzhen (city in China) A Pattern Language (1977 urban design book) "What AI-Generated Art Means for Human Creativity" (article) "A Brief History of Smell-O-Vision" (article) Burning Man (event in the US) Kumbh Mela (event in India) Musical.ly (defunct social media app) "Forget Utopia. Ignore Dystopia. Embrace Protopia!" (article) The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel's 2017 album Lumber. Note: We don't host a “comments” section, but we're happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at deviate@rolfpotts.com.

How do we get a handle on complex systems thinking? What are the implications of this science for philosophy, and where does philosophical tradition foreshadow findings from the scientific frontier?Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I'm your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we'll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.In this episode we speak with Carlos Gershenson (UNAM website, Google Scholar, Wikipedia, Twitter), SFI Sabbatical Visitor and professor of computer science at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, where he leads the Self-organizing Systems Lab, among many other titles you can find in our show notes. For the next hour, we'll discuss his decades of research and writing on a vast array of core complex systems concepts and their intersections with both Western and Eastern philosophical traditions — a first for this podcast.If you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and consider making a donation — or finding other ways to engage with us — at santafe.edu/engage.For HD virtual backgrounds of the SFI campus to use on video calls and a chance to win a signed copy of one of our books from the SFI Press, please help us improve our scicomm by completing a survey linked in the show notes.Or just a copy of the recently resurfaced SFI Press Archival Volume Complexity, Entropy, and The Physics of Information.There's still time to apply for the Complexity GAINS UK program for PhD students – apps close March 15th.Or come work for us! We are on the lookout for a new Digital Media Specialist, an Applied Complexity Fellow in Sustainability, a Research Assistant in Emergent Political Economies, and a Payroll, Accounts Payable & Receivable Specialist.You can also join our Facebook discussion group to meet like minds and talk about each episode.Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.Follow us on social media:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedInMentioned & Related Links:Carlos publishes the Complexity Digest Newsletter.His SFI Seminars to date:A Brief History of BalanceEmergence, (Self)Organization, and ComplexityCriticality: A Balance Between Robustness and AdaptabilityFestina lente (the slower-is-faster effect)Antifragility: Dynamical BalanceW. Ross Ashby & The Law of Requisite VarietyHyperobjectsby Timothy MortonHow can we think the complex?by Carlos Gershenson and Francis HeylighenThe Implications of Interactions for Science and Philosophyby Carlos GershensonComplexity and Philosophyby Francis Heylighen, Paul Cilliers, Carlos GershensonHeterogeneity extends criticalityby Fernanda Sánchez-Puig, Octavio Zapata, Omar K, Pineda, Gerardo Iñiguez, and Carlos GershensonWhen Can we Call a System Self-organizing?by Carlos Gershenson and Francis HeylighenTemporal, Structural, and Functional Heterogeneities Extend Criticality and Antifragility in Random Boolean Networksby Amahury Jafet López-Díaz, Fernanda Sánchez-Puig, and Carlos GershensonWhen slower is fasterby Carlos Gershenson, Dirk HelbingSelf-organization leads to supraoptimal performance in public transportation systemsby Carlos GershensonDynamics of rankingby Gerardo Iñiguez, Carlos Pineda, Carlos Gershenson, & Albert-László BarabásiSelf-Organizing Traffic Lightsby Carlos GershensonDynamic competition and resource partitioning during the early life of two widespread, abundant and ecologically similar fishesby A. D. Nunn, L. H. Vickers, K. Mazik, J. D. Bolland, G. Peirson, S. N. Axford, A. Henshaw & I. G. CowxTowards a general theory of balanceby Carlos GershensonA Calculus for Self-Referenceby Francisco VarelaOn Some Mental Effects of The Earthquakeby William JamesSelf-Organization Leads to Supraoptimal Performance in Public Transportation Systemsby Carlos GershensonAlison Gopnik on Child Development, Elderhood, Caregiving, and A.I.Complexity Ep. 99Simon DeDeo on Good Explanations & Diseases of EpistemologyComplexity Ep. 72David Wolpert on The No Free Lunch Theorems and Why They Undermine The Scientific MethodComplexity Ep. 45The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibilityby Stewart BrandMichael LachmannStuart KauffmanAndreas WagnerCosma ShaliziNassim TalebDoes Free Will Violate The Laws of Physics?Big Think interviews Sean Carroll

Margaret O'Mara, Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Chair of American history and professor at the University of Washington, leads the conversation on big tech and global order.   CASA: Welcome to today's session of the Winter/Spring 2023 CFR Academic Webinar Series. I'm Maria Casa, director of the National Program and Outreach at CFR. Thank you all for joining us. Today's discussion is on the record, and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/Academic, if you would like to share it with your colleagues or classmates. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We are delighted to have Margaret O'Mara with us to discuss big tech and global order. Dr. O'Mara is the Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Chair of American history and professor at the University of Washington. She writes and teaches about the growth of the high-tech economy, the history of American politics, and the connections between the two. Dr. O'Mara is an Organization of American Historians distinguished lecturer and has received the University of Washington Distinguished Teaching Award for Innovation with Technology. Previously, she served as a fellow with the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Forum on the Future of Liberal Education. From 1993 to 1997, Dr. O'Mara served in the Clinton administration as an economic and social policy aide in the White House and in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She is the author of several books and an editor of the Politics and Society in Modern America series at Princeton University Press. Welcome, Margaret. Thank you very much for speaking with us today. O'MARA: Thank you so much, Maria, and thank you all for being here today. I'm setting my supercomputer on my wrist timer so I—to time my talk to you, and which is very apropos and it's really—it's great to be here. I have a few slides I wanted to share as I talk through, and I thought that since we had some really interesting meaty present tense readings from Foreign Affairs as background for this conversation as well as the recent review essay that I wrote last year, I thought I would set the scene a little more with a little more history and how we got to now and thinking in broad terms about how the technology industry relates to geopolitics and the global order as this very distinctive set of very powerful companies now. So I will share accordingly, and, Maria, I hope that this is showing up on your screen as it should. So I knew I—today I needed to, of course, talk—open with something in the news, this—the current—the ongoing questions around what has—what was in the sky and what is being shot down in addition to a Chinese spy balloon, which is really kind of getting to a question that's at the center of all of my work. I write at the intersection of economic history and political history and I do that because I'm interested in questions of power. Who has power? What do they value? This is the kind of the question of the U.S.-China—the operative question of the U.S.-China rivalry and the—and concern about China, what are the values, what are the—and Chinese technology and Chinese technology companies, particularly consumer-facing ones. And this is also an operative question about the extraordinary concentration of wealth and power in a few large platform companies that are based on the West Coast of the United States—(laughs)—a couple in my town of Seattle where I am right now talking to you, and others in Silicon Valley. It's very interesting when one does a Google image search to find a publicly available image and puts in Silicon Valley the images that come up are either the title cards of the HBO television comedy, which I was tempted to add, but the—really, the iconic shot of the valley as place is the Apple headquarters—the Spaceship, as it's called in Cupertino—that opened a few years ago in the middle of suburbia. And this is—you know, the questions of concentrated power in the Q&A among the background readings, you know, this was noted by several of the experts consulted about what is the threat of big tech geopolitically and concentrated power, whether that's good, bad, if that's an advantage geopolitically or not. It was something that many of those folks brought up as did the other readings as well. And this question of power—who has power and taking power—has been an animating question of the modern technology industry and there's an irony in this that if you think about the ideological granddaddy of Apple itself is the Whole Earth Catalog, which I—and this is—I quote from this in the opening to my review essay that was part of the background readings and I just thought I would pop this up in full for us to think about. This is Stewart Brand. This is the first issue of the Whole Earth Catalog. The full issue is digitized at the Internet Archive as are so many other wonderful artifacts and primary source materials about this world, and this is right here on the—you know, you turn—open the cover and here is the purpose: “We are as gods and might as well get used to it. So far, remotely done power and glory as via government, big business, formal education, and church has succeeded to the point where gross obscure actual gains. In response to this dilemma and to these gains a realm of intimate personal power is developing—power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested. Tools that aid this process are sought and promoted by the Whole Earth Catalog.” The audience of the Whole Earth Catalog was not a bunch of techies, per se. It was back to the landers, people who were going and founding communes and the catalog was—you know, which was more a piece of art than it was an actual shopping guide, had all sorts of things from books by Buckminster Fuller to camp stoves and to the occasional Hewlett Packard scientific calculator, making this kind of statement that these tools could actually be used for empowerment of the individual because, of course, the world of 1968 is one in which computers and AI are in the hands of the establishment. We see this playing out in multiple scales including Hollywood films like Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, which, of course, follows, what, four years earlier Dr. Strangelove, which was also a satiric commentary on concentrated power of the military industrial complex, and computers were, indeed, things that were used by large government agencies, by the Pentagon, by Fortune 50 companies. And so the countercultural computer or personal computer movement is very much about individual power and taking this away from the global order, so to speak. This is the taking—using these tools as a way to connect people at the individual level, put a computer on every desk, connect everyone via computer networks to one another, and that is how the future will be changed. That is how the inequities of the world would be remedied. The notion of ultimate connectivity as a positive good was not something that originated with Facebook but, indeed, has much, much deeper origins and that's worth thinking about as we consider where we are in 2023 and where things are going from there. It's also worth thinking about the way in which global—the global order and particularly national security and government spending has played a role—an instrumental role—in the growth of the technology industry as it is. Take, for example, the original venture-backed startup, Fairchild Semiconductor, which is legendary as really starting the silicon semiconductor industry in the valley. It is the—it puts the silicon in the valley, and the eight co-founders known as the Traitorous Eight because they all quit en masse their previous job at Shockley Semiconductor working for William Shockley, the co-inventor of the transistor, and they went off and did something that one does not—did not do in 1957 very often, which was start your own company. This was something that you did if you were weird and you couldn't work for people. That's what one old timer told me, reflecting back on this moment. But they, indeed, started their own company, found outside financing and in this group contains Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, the two co-founders of Intel, as well as Gene Kleiner, co-founder of Kleiner Perkins, the venture capital firm. This is really the—you know, the original—where it all began, and yes, this is a story of free-market entrepreneurialism but it also is a story of the national security state. This is a—Fairchild is founded at a moment when most of the business in the Santa Clara Valley of California, later known as Silicon Valley, was defense related. This is where the jobs were. This is the business they were doing, by and large. There was not a significant commercial market for their products. A month after they're incorporated—in September '57 is when Fairchild incorporates itself. October 1957 Sputnik goes into orbit. The consequent wave of space spending is really what is the literal rocket ship that gets Silicon Valley's chip business going. The integrated circuits made by Fairchild and other chip makers in the valley go into the Apollo guidance system. NASA is buying these chips at a time that there is not a commercial market for them and that enables these companies to scale up production to create a commodity that can be delivered to the enterprise. And so by the time you get to the 1970s you are not talking about defense contractors in any way. These are companies that are putting their chips in cars and in other—all sorts of one time mechanical equipment is becoming transistorized. And Intel is Intel, still one of the most important and consequential—globally consequential tech companies around at the center of the action in the CHIPS Act of last year, not to mention others. But this longer history and this intertwining with the military industrial complex and with broader geopolitics—because, of course, the space program and the Apollo program was a Cold War effort. It was about beating the Soviets to the moon, not just doing it because we could. But that really kind of dissipates and fades from collective memory in the Valley and beyond with the rise of these entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates, young, new-time CEOs that are presenting a very, very different face of business and really being consciously apolitical, presenting themselves as something so far apart from Washington, D.C. And this notion of tech, big or little, being something separate from government and governance is perpetuated by leaders of both parties, not just Ronald Reagan but also by Democrats of a younger generation that in the early 1980s there was a brief moment in which lawmakers like Tim Wirth and Gary Hart were referred to as Atari Democrats because they were so bullish on high-tech industries as the United States' economic future. And the way in which politicians and lawmakers from the 1980s forward talked about tech was very much in the same key as that of people like Steve Jobs, which is that this is a revolutionary—the tools have been taken from the establishment, and this is something that is apart from politics, that transcends the old global order and is a new one. And, in fact, in the speech in May 1988 in Moscow at the end of his presidency Ronald Reagan delivers a—you know, really frames the post-Cold War future as one in which the microchip is the revolutionary instrument of freedom: “Standing here before a mural of your revolution”—and a very large bust of Lenin—“I talk about a very different revolution that is taking place right now. Its effects are peaceful but they will fundamentally alter our world, and it is—the tiny silicon chip is the agent of that, no bigger than a fingerprint.” This is really remarkable, if we sit back and take a deep breath and think about it, and particularly thinking about what happens after that. What happens after that are decades in which, again, leaders of both parties in the United States and world leaders elsewhere are framing the internet and understanding the internet as this tool for freedom and liberation, a tool that will advance democracy. Bill Clinton, towards the end of his presidency, famously kind of said, effectively, that I'm not worried about China because the internet is going to bring—you know, internet is going to make it very hard to have anything but democracy. And this notion of a post-Cold War and beyond the end of history and tech and big tech being central to that that, in fact, aided the rise of big tech. That was a rationale for a light regulatory hand in the United States, allowing these companies to grow and flourish and so big, indeed, they have become. But I want to end on a note just thinking about the—you know, why this history is important, why this connective tissue between past and present actually does matter. It isn't just that, oh, this is nice to know. This is useful. Lawrence Preston Gise was the second—sorry, the first deputy administrator of DARPA in 1958, created in the wake of the Sputnik—post-Sputnik panic, originally called ARPA, now DARPA. He later ran the entire Western Division of the Atomic Energy Commission—Los Alamos, Livermore, et cetera. Longtime government public servant. In his retirement he retired to his farm in west Texas and his young grandson came and lived with him every summer. And his grandson throughout his life has talked about how—what a profound influence his grandfather was on him, showing him how to be a self-sufficient rancher, how to wrangle cattle and to build a barbed wire fence. But the grandson—you know, what the grandson didn't mention that much because it wasn't really relevant to his personal experience was who his grandfather was and what he had done. But when that grandson, Jeff Bezos—a few years ago when there was—when Google employees were writing their open letter to CEO Sundar Pichai saying, we are not in the defense business. We are—we don't like the fact that you are doing work with the Pentagon, and pressuring Google successfully and other companies to get out of doing work with the Pentagon, Bezos reflected, no, I think we're—I think this is our patriotic duty to do work—do this kind of work. And as I listened to him say that on a stage in an interview I thought, ah, that's his grandfather talking because this little boy, of course, was Jeff Bezos, the grandfather of Lawrence Preston Gise, and those—that connective tissue—familial connective tissue as well as corporate and political connective tissue, I think, is very relevant to what we have before us today. So I'll leave it there. Thanks. CASA: Thank you, Margaret, for that very interesting introduction. Let's open up to questions. (Gives queuing instructions.) While our participants are gathering their thoughts would you start us off by providing a few examples of emerging technologies that are affecting higher education? O'MARA: Yeah. Well, we've had a very interesting last three years in which the debate over online learning versus in-person learning very quickly was not necessarily resolved. We did this mass real-time experiment, and I think it made—put into sharp relief the way in which different technologies are shaping the way that higher education institutions are working and this question of who's controlling the—who controls the platforms and how we mediate what learning we do. Even though I now teach in person again almost everything that I do in terms of assignments and communication is through electronic learning management systems. The one we use at UW is Canvas. But, of course, there are these broader questions—ethical questions and substantive questions—about how our AI-enabled technologies including, notably, the star of the moment, ChatGPT, going to change the way in which—it's mostly been around how are students going to cheat more effectively. But I think it also has these bigger questions about how you learn and where knowledge, where the human—where the human is necessary. My take on it is, aside from the kind of feeling pretty confident in my having such arcane prompts for my midterm essay questions and research projects that ChatGPT, I think, would have a very hard time doing a good job with it but although I'm looking forward to many a form letter being filled by that technology in the future, I think that there is a—you know, this has a history, too. The concern about the robot overlords is a very deep one. It extends from—you know, predates the digital age, and the anxiety about whether computers are becoming too powerful. Of course, this question of artificial intelligence or augmented intelligence kind of is the computer augmenting what a human can do rather than replacing what a human can do or pretending to have the nuance and the complexity that a human might be able to convey. I think there's, you know, these bigger questions and I'm sure—I imagine there are going to be some other questions about AI. Really, you know, this is a—I think this is a very good learning moment, quite frankly, to think more—you know, one of the things I teach about a lot is kind of the information that is on the internet and who's created it and how it is architected and how it is findable and how those platforms have been developed over time. And what ChatGPT and other AIs like them are doing is they're scraping this extraordinary bounteous ocean of information and it is as good as the—it's as good as its source, right. So whatever you're able to do with it you have—your source materials are going to determine it. So if there is bias in the sources, if there is inaccuracy in the sources, there is—that will be replicated. It cannot be—you know, I think what it is is it's a really good rough draft, first draft, for then someone with tacit knowledge and understanding to come into, and I like to think of digital tools as ones that reveal where things that only people can do that cannot be replicated, that this—where human knowledge cannot be, where a machine still—even though a machine is informed by things that humans do and now does it at remarkable speed and scale it still is—there is—we are able to identify where humanity makes a difference. And then my one last caution is I do—you know, the one thing you can't do with these new—any of these new technologies is do them well really fast, and the rush to it is a little anxiety inducing. CASA: Thank you. Our first question is from Michael Leong from the—he's a graduate student at the University of Arizona. Michael, would you like to unmute and ask your question? Q: Yeah. Hi, Dr. O'Mara. Hi, Ms. Casa. Sorry for any background noise. I just had a, like, general question about your thoughts on the role big tech plays in geopolitics. Specifically, we've seen with SpaceX and Starlink especially with what's going on in Ukraine and how much support that has been provided to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and potentially holding that over—(inaudible)—forces. So, basically, do we expect to see private companies having more leverage over geopolitical events? And how can we go forward with that? O'MARA: Yeah. That's a really—that's a really great question. And you know, I think that there's—it's interesting because the way—there's always been public-private partnerships in American state building and American geopolitics, and that's something—it's worth kind of just noting that. Like, from the very beginning the United States has used private entities as instruments of policy, as parastatal entities, whether it be through, you know, land grants and transcontinental railroad building in the nineteenth century all the way through to Starlink and Ukraine because, of course, the Pentagon is involved, too—you know, that SpaceX is in a very—is a significant government contractor as ones before it. I think that where there's a really interesting departure from the norm is that what we've seen, particularly in the last, you know, the last forty years but in this sort of post-Cold War moment has been and particularly in the last ten to fifteen years a real push by the Pentagon to go to commercial enterprises for technology and kind of a different model of contracting and, I should say, more broadly, national security agencies. And this is something, you know, a real—including the push under—when Ash Carter was in charge of DOD to really go to Silicon Valley and say, you guys have the best technology and a lot of it is commercial, and we need to update our systems and our software and do this. But I think that the SpaceX partnership is one piece of that. But there has been a real—you know, as the government has, perhaps, not gotten smaller but done less than it used to do and there's been more privatization, there have been—there's been a vacuum left that private companies have stepped into and I think Ian Bremmer's piece was really—made some really important points in this regard that there are things that these platform companies are doing that the state used to do or states used to do and that does give them an inordinate amount of power. You know, and these companies are structurally—often a lot of the control over these companies is in the hands of very, very few, including an inordinate unusual amount of founder power, and Silicon Valley, although there's plenty of political opinionating coming out of there now, which is really a departure from the norm, this kind of partisan statements of such—you know, declarations of the—of recent years are something that really didn't—you didn't see very much before. These are not folks who are—you know, their expertise lies in other domains. So that's where my concern—some concern lies where you have these parastatal actors that are becoming, effectively, states and head of states then and they are not, indeed, speaking for—you know, they're not sovereign powers in the same way and they are speaking for themselves and speaking from their own knowledge base rather than a broader sense of—you know, they're not speaking for the public. That's not their job. CASA: Our next question is from Michael Raisinghani from Texas Woman's University. Michael, if you could unmute. Q: Thank you, Ms. Casa and Dr. O'Mara. A very insightful discussion. Thank you for that. I just thought maybe if you could maybe offer some clarity around the generative AI, whether it's ChatGPT or Wordtune or any of this in terms of the future. If you look, let's say, five, ten years ahead, if that's not too long, what would your thoughts be in this OpenAI playground? O'MARA: Mmm hmm. Well, with the first—with the caveat that the first rule of history is that you can't predict the future—(laughs)—and (it's true ?); we are historians, we like to look backwards rather than forwards—I will then wade into the waters of prediction, or at least what I think the implications are. I mean, one thing about ChatGPT as a product, for example, which has been really—I mean, what a—kudos for a sort of fabulous rollout and marketing and all of a sudden kind of jumping into our public consciousness and being able to release what they did in part because it wasn't a research arm of a very large company where things are more being kept closer because they might be used for that company's purposes. Google, for example, kind of, you know, has very in short order followed on with the reveal of what they have but they kind of were beaten to the punch by OpenAI because OpenAI wasn't—you know, it was a different sort of company, a different sort of enterprise. You know, a lot of it are things that are already out there in the world. If we've, you know, made an airline reservation and had a back and forth with a chatbot, like, that's—that's an example of some of that that's already out in the world. If you're working on a Google doc and doing what absolutely drives me bonkers, which is that Google's kind of completing my sentences for me, but that predictive text, those—you know, many things that we are—that consumers are already interacting with and that enterprises are using are components of this and this is just kind of bringing it together. I think that we should be very cautious about the potential of and the accuracy of and the revolutionary nature of ChatGPT or any of these whether it be Bard or Ernie or, you know, name your perspective chatbot. It is what it is. Again, it's coming from the—it's got the source material it has, it's working with, which is not—you know, this is not human intelligence. This is kind of compilation and doing it very rapidly and remarkably and in a way that presents with, you know, literacy. So I'm not—you know, does very cool stuff. But where the future goes, I mean, clearly, look, these company—the big platform companies have a lot of money and they have a great deal of motivation and need to be there for the next big thing and, you know, if we dial back eighteen months ago there were many in tech who were saying crypto and Web3 was the next big thing and that did not—has not played out as some might have hoped. But there is a real desire for, you know, not being left behind. Again, this is where my worry is for the next five years. If this is driven by market pressures to kind of be the—have the best search, have the best—embed this technology in your products at scale that is going to come with a lot of hazards. It is going to replicate the algorithmic bias, the problems with—extant problems with the internet. I worry when I see Google saying publicly, we are going to move quickly on this and it may not be perfect but we're going to move quickly when Google itself has been grappling with and called out on its kind of looking the other way with some of the real ethical dilemmas and the exclusions and biases that are inherent in some of the incredibly powerful LLMs—the models that they are creating. So that's my concern. This is a genie that is—you know, letting this genie out of the bottle and letting it become a mass consumer product, and if—you know, OpenAI, to its credit, if you go to ChatGPT's website it has a lot of disclaimers first about this is not the full story, effectively, and in the Microsoft rollout of their embedding the technology in Bing last week Microsoft leaders, as well as Sam Altman of OpenAI, were kind of—their talking points were very careful to say this is not everything. But it does present—it's very alluring and I think we're going to see it in a lot more places. Is it going to change everything? I think everyone's waiting for, like, another internet to change everything and I don't know if—I don't know. The jury's out. I don't know. CASA: Thank you. Our next question is a written one. It comes from Denis Fred Simon, clinical professor of global business and technology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He asked, technology developments have brought to the surface the evolving tension between the drive for security with the desire for privacy. The U.S. represents one model while China represents another model. How do societies resolve this tension and is there some preferred equilibrium point? O'MARA: That is a—that's the billion-dollar question and it's—I think it's a relevant one that goes way back. (Laughs.) I mean, there are many moments in the kind of evolution of all of these technologies where the question of who should know what and what's allowable. If we go back to 1994 and the controversy over the Clipper chip, which was NSA wanting to build a backdoor into commercially available software, and that was something that the industry squashed because it would, among other things, have made it very difficult for a company like Microsoft to sell their products in China or other places if you had a—knew that the U.S. national security agencies were going to have a window into it. And, of course, that all comes roaring back in 2013 with Snowden's revelations that, indeed, the NSA was using social media platforms and other commercial platforms—consumer-facing platforms—to gather data on individuals. You know, what is the perfect balance? I mean, this is—I wish I had this nice answer. (Laughs.) I would probably have a really nice second career consulting and advising. But I think there is a—what is clear is that part of what has enabled the American technology industry to do what it has done and to generate companies that have produced, whether you think the transformations on balance are good or bad, transformative products, right. So everything we're using to facilitate this conversation that all of us are having right now is coming from that font. And democratic capitalism was really critical to that and having a free—mostly free flow of information and not having large-scale censorship. I mean, the postscript to the Clipper chip—you know, Clipper chip controversy is two years later the Telecom Act of 1996, which was, on the one hand, designed to ensure the economic growth of what were then very small industries in the internet sector and not—and prevent the telecoms from ruling it all but also were—you know, this was a kind of making a call about, OK, in terms when it comes to the speech on the internet we are going to let the companies regulate that and not be penalized for private—when private companies decide that they want to take someone down, which is really what Section 230 is. It's not about free speech in a constitutional sense. It's about the right of a company to censor or to moderate content. It's often the opposite of the way that it's kind of understood or interpreted or spun in some ways. But it is clear that the institutions of—that encourage free movement of people and capital have been—are pretty critical in fueling innovation writ large or the development and the deployment and scaling of new technologies, particularly digital technologies. But I think you can see that playing out in other things, too. So that has been, I think, a real tension and a real—there's a market dimension to this, not just in terms of an ethical dimension or political dimension that there does need to be some kind of unfettered ability of people to build companies and to grow them in certain ways. But it's a fine balance. I mean, this sort of, like, when does regulation—when does it—when do you need to have the state come in and in what dimension and which state. And this goes back to that core question of like, OK, the powerful entities, what are their values? What are they fighting for? Who are they fighting for? I don't know. I'm not giving you a terribly good answer because I think it's a really central question to which many have grappled for that answer for a very long time. CASA: Thank you. Our next question comes from Ahmuan Williams, a graduate student at the University of Oklahoma. Ahmuan? Q: Thank you. Hi. I'm wondering about ChatGPT, about the regulation side of that. It seems like it's Microsoft that has kind of invested itself into ChatGPT. Microsoft had before gotten the Pentagon contract just a few years back. So it's kind of a two-part question. So, first of all, how does that—what does that say about government's interest in artificial intelligence and what can be done? I know the Council of Foreign Relations also reported that the Council of Europe is actually planning an AI convention to figure out how, you know, a framework of some type of AI convention in terms of treaties will work out. But what should we be worried about when it comes to government and the use of AI in political advertisements and campaigns, about, basically, them flooding opinions with, you know, one candidate's ideas and, therefore, them being able to win because they're manipulating our opinions? So what would you say would be kind of a regulation scheme that might come out of these type—new flourishing AI devices? O'MARA: Mmm hmm. Mmm hmm. That's a good question. I think there's sort of different layers to it. I mean, I see that, you know, the Pentagon contract—the JEDI contract—being awarded to Microsoft, much to Amazon's distress—(laughs)—and litigious distress, is a kind of a separate stream from its decision to invest 10 billion (dollars) in OpenAI. I think that's a commercial decision. I think that's a recognition that Microsoft research was not producing the—you know, Microsoft didn't have something in house that was comparable. Microsoft saw an opportunity to at last do a—you know, knock Google off of its dominant pedestal in search and make Bing the kind of long—kind of a punch line—no longer a punch line but actually something that was a product that people would actively seek out and not just use because it was preinstalled on their Microsoft devices. That is—so I see that as a market decision kind of separate from. The bigger AI question, the question of AI frameworks, yes, and this, again, has a longer history and, you know, I kind of liken AI to the Pacific Ocean. It's an enormous category that contains multitudes. Like, it's—you know, we can—oftentimes when we talk about AI or the AI that we see and we experience, it's machine learning. And part of why we have such extraordinary advances in machine learning in the last decade has—because of the harvesting of individual data on these platforms that we as individuals use, whether it be Google or Meta or others, that that has just put so much out there that now these companies can create something that—you know, that the state of the art has accelerated vastly. Government often is playing catch up, not just in tech but just in business regulation, generally. The other—you know, another example of this in the United States cases with the—in the late nineteenth century, early twentieth century, with what were then new high-tech tech-driven industries of railroads and oil and steel that grew to enormous size and then government regulators played catch up and created the institutions that to this day are the regulators like the FTC created in 1913. Like, you know, that's—of that vintage. So, I think that it depends on—when it comes to—the question about electoral politics, which I think is less about government entities—this is about entities, people and organizations that want to be in charge of government or governments—that is, you know, AI—new technologies of all kinds that incorporate ever more sophisticated kind of, essentially, disinformation, that—information that presents as real and it is not. The increased volume of that and the scale of that and the sophistication of that and the undetectability of it does create a real challenge to free and fair elections and also to preventing, in the American context, international and foreign intervention in and manipulation of elections but true in every context. That is, you know, getting good information before voters and allowing bad actors to exploit existing prejudices or misassumptions. That is an existing problem that probably will be accelerated by it. I think there's—there's a strong case to be made, at least in the U.S. context, for much stronger regulation of campaign advertising that extends to the internet in a much more stricter form. In that domain there's—I think we have pretty good evidence that that has not been—you know, having that back end has made the existing restrictions on other types of campaign speech and other media kind of made them moot because you can just go on a social platform and do other things. So there's—you know, this is—I think the other thing that compromises this is the rapidly changing nature of the technology and the digital—and the global reach of these digital technologies that extends any other product made—you know, any other kind of product. It just is borderless that—in a kind of overwhelming way. That doesn't mean government should give up. But I think there's a sort of supranational level of frameworks, and then there are all sorts of subnational kind of domain-specific frameworks that could occur to do something as a countervailing force or at least slow the role of developers and companies in moving forward in these products. CASA: Thank you. Our next question is a written one. It comes from Prashant Hosur, assistant professor of humanities and social sciences at Clarkson University. He asks, how do you—or she. I'm sorry. I'm not sure. How do you think big tech is likely to affect conventional wisdom around issues of great power rivalry and power transitions? O'MARA: Hmm. I don't—well, I think there are a—these are always—these definitions are always being redefined and who the great powers are and what gives them power is always being reshuffled and—but, of course, markets and economic resources and wealth and—are implicated in this for millennia. I think that tech companies do have this—American tech companies and the tech platforms, which I should preface this by saying, you know, none of the companies we're talking about now are going to rule forever. Maybe that just goes without—it's worth just note, you know, this is—we will have the rise and fall. Every firm will be a dinosaur. Detroit was the most innovative city in the world a hundred and ten years ago. There's still a lot of innovation and great stuff coming out of Detroit, but if you—if I queried anyone here and said, what's the capital of innovation I don't know if you would say Detroit. But back in the heyday of the American auto industry it was, and I think it's a good reminder. We aren't always going to be talking about this place in northern California and north Seattle in this way. But what we have right now are these companies that their products, unlike the products of Henry Ford or General Motors, are ones that are—go across borders with—you know, the same product goes across borders seamlessly and effortlessly, unlike an automobile where a—to sell in a certain country you have to meet that country's fuel standards and, you know, safety standards, et cetera, et cetera. You have a different model for a different market. Instead, here, you know, a Facebook goes where it goes, Google goes where it goes, YouTube goes where it goes, and that has been kind of extraordinary in terms of internationalizing politics, political trends. I think what we've seen globally is very—you know, the role of the internet in that has been extraordinary, both for good and for ill, in the last fifteen years. And then the kind of—the immense—the great deal of power that they have in the many different domains and, again, Ian Bremmer also observed this kind of the—all the different things they do and that is something that is different from twenty-five years ago where you now have companies that are based on the West Coast of the United States with products designed by a small group of people from a kind of narrow, homogenous band of experience who are doing things like transforming taxis and hotels and, I mean, you name it, kind of going everywhere in a way that in the day of the—you know, the first Macintosh, which was like this cool thing on your desk, that was—yes, it was a transformative product. It was a big deal and Silicon Valley was—became a household word and a phrase in the 1980s and the dot.com era, too. That was—you know, everyone's getting online with their AOL discs they got in the mail. But what's happened in the twenty-first century is at a scale and—a global scale and an influence across many different domains, and politics, this very deliberate kind of we are a platform for politics that has really reshaped the global order in ways that are quite profound. This is not to say that everything has to do with big tech is at the root of everything. But let's put it in context and let's, you know—and also recognize that these are not companies that were designed to do this stuff. They've been wildly successful what they set out to do and they have a high-growth tech-driven model that is designed to move fast and, yes, indeed, it breaks things and that has—you know, that has been—they are driven by quarterly earnings. They are driven by other things, as they should be. They are for-profit companies, many of them publicly traded. But the—but because, I think, in part they have been presenting themselves as, you know, we're change the world, we're not evil, we're something different, we're a kinder, gentler capitalism, there has been so much hope hung on them as the answer for a lot of things, and that is not—kind of giving states and state power something of the past to get its act together that instead states need to step up. CASA: Our next question is from Alex Grigor. He's a PhD candidate from University of Cambridge. Alex? Q: Hello. Yes. Thank you. Can you hear me? O'MARA: Yes. CASA: Yes. Q: Yeah. Hi. Thank you, Ms. O'Mara. Very insightful and, in fact, a lot of these questions are very good as well. So they've touched upon a lot of what I was going to ask and so I'll narrow it down slightly. My research is looking at cyber warfare and sort of international conflict particularly between the U.S. and China but beyond, and I was wondering—you started with the sort of military industrial complex and industry sort of breaking away from that. Do you see attempts, perhaps, because of China and the—that the technology industry and the military are so closely entwined that there's an attempt by the U.S. and, indeed, other countries. You see increase in defense spending in Japan and Germany. But it seems to be specifically focused, according to my research, on the technologies that are coming out of that, looking to reengage that sort of relationship. They might get that a little bit by regulation. Perhaps the current downsizing of technology companies is an opportunity for governments to finally be able to recruit some good computer scientists that they haven't been able to—(laughs)—(inaudible). Perhaps it's ASML and semiconductor sort of things. Do you see that as part of the tension a conscious attempt at moving towards reintegrating a lot of these technologies back into government? O'MARA: Yeah. I think we're at a really interesting moment. I mean, one thing that's—you know, that's important to note about the U.S. defense industry is it never went away from the tech sector. It just kind of went underground. Lockheed, the major defense contractor, now Lockheed Martin, was the biggest numerical employer in the valley through the end of the Cold War through the end of the 1980s. So well into the commercial PC era and—but very—you know, kind of most of what was going on there was top secret stuff. So no one was on the cover of Forbes magazine trumpeting what they've done. And there has been—but there has been a real renewed push, particularly with the kind of—to get made in Silicon Valley or, you know, made in the commercial sector software being deployed for military use and national security use and, of course, this is very—completely bound up in the questions of cyber warfare and these existing commercial networks, and commercial platforms and products are ones that are being used and deployed by state actors and nonstate actors as tools for cyber terrorism and cyber warfare. So, yes, I think it's just going to get tighter and closer and the great—you know, the stark reality of American politics, particularly in the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries, is the one place that the U.S. is willing to spend lots of money in the discretionary budget is on defense and the one place where kind of it creates a rationale for this unfettered—largely, unfettered spending or spending with kind of a willingness to spend a lot of money on things that don't have an immediately measurable or commercializable outcome is in national security writ large. That's why the U.S. spent so much money on the space program and created this incredible opportunity for these young companies making chips that only—making this device that only—only they were making the things that the space program needed, and this willingness to fail and the willingness to waste money, quite frankly. And so now we're entering into this sort of fresh—this interesting—you know, the geopolitical competition with China between the U.S. has this two dimensions in a way and the very—my kind of blunt way of thinking about it it's kind of like the Soviet Union and Japan all wrapped up in one, Japan meaning the competition in the 1980s with Japan, which stimulated a great deal of energy among—led by Silicon Valley chip makers for the U.S. to do something to help them compete and one of those outcomes was SEMATECH, the consortium to develop advanced semiconductor technology, whose funding—it was important but its funding was a fraction of the wave of money that just was authorized through last year's legislation, the CHIPS Act as well as Inflation Reduction Act and others. So I'm seeing, you know, this kind of turn to hardware and military hardware and that a lot of the commercial—the government subsidized or incentivized commercial development of green technology and advanced semiconductor, particularly in military but other semiconductor technology and bringing semiconductor manufacturing home to the United States, that is—even those dimensions that are nonmilitary, that are civilian, it's kind of like the Apollo program. That was a civilian program but it was done for these broader geopolitical goals to advance the economic strength and, hence, the broader geopolitical strength of the United States against a competitor that was seen as quite dangerous. So that's my way of saying you're right, that this is where this is all going and so I think that's why this sort of having a healthy sense of this long-term relationship is healthy. It's healthy for the private sector to recognize the government's always been there. So it isn't though you had some innovative secret that the government is going to take away by being involved. And to also think about what are the broader goals that—you know, who is benefiting from them and what is the purpose and recognize often that, you know, many of the advanced technologies we have in the United States are thanks to U.S. military funding for R&D back in the day. CASA: Our next question is written. It's from Damian Odunze, who is an assistant professor at Delta State University. Regarding cybersecurity, do you think tech companies should take greater responsibility since they develop the hardware and software packages? Can the government mandate them, for instance, to have inbuilt security systems? O'MARA: Hmm. Yeah. I think—look, with great power comes great responsibility is a useful reminder for the people at the top of these companies that for—that are so remarkably powerful at the moment and because their platforms are so ubiquitous. There are—you see, for example, Microsoft has really—is a—I think what they've done in terms of partnering with the White House and its occupants and being—kind of acting as a NSA first alert system of sorts and kind of being open about that I think that's been good for them from a public relations perspective, and also—but I think it also reflects this acknowledgement of that responsibility and that it also is bad for their business if these systems are exploited. Yeah, I think that, again, regulation is something that—you know, it's like saying Voldemort in Silicon Valley. Like, some people are, like, oh, regulation, you know. But there's really—there can be a really generative and important role that regulation can play, and the current industry has grown up in such a lightly-regulated fashion you just kind of get used to having all that freedom, and when it comes to cybersecurity and to these issues of national security importance and sort of global importance and importance to the users of the products and the companies that make them there's, I think, a mutual interest in having some sort of rules of the road and that—and I think any company that's operating at a certain scale is—understands that it's in their market interest to be—you know, not to be a renegade, that they are working with. But I think having—you know, there can be a willingness to work with but they're—having a knowledge and an understanding and a respect for your government partners, your state partners, whether they be U.S. or non-U.S. or supranational is really critically important and sometimes tech folks are a little too, like, oh, politics, they don't know what they're doing, you know. We know better. And I think there needs to be a little more mutual exchange of information and some more—yes, some more technical people being able to be successfully recruited into government would probably be a help, too, so there's—on both sides of the table you have technically savvy people who really understand the inner workings of how this stuff is made and don't have simplistic answers of like, oh, we'll just take all the China-made technology out of it. You're, like, well, there's—like, it's kind of deep in the system. You know, so having technologists in the conversation at all points is important. CASA: Thank you. I think we have time for one more question. We'll take that from Louis Esparza, assistant professor at California State University in Los Angeles. Q: Hi. Thank you for your very interesting talk. So I'm coming at this from the social movements literature and I'm coming into this conversation because I'm interested in the censorship and influence of big tech that you seem to be, you know, more literate in. So my question is do you think that this—the recent trends with big tech and collaboration with federal agencies is a rupture with the origin story of the 1960s that you talked about in your talk or do you think it's a continuity of it? O'MARA: Yeah. That's a great way to put it. The answer is, is it both? Well, it's something of a rupture. I mean, look, this—you know, you have this—you have an industry that grows up as intensely—you know, that those that are writing and reading the Whole Earth Catalog in 1968 the military industrial complex is all around them. It is paying for their education sort of effectively or paying for the facilities where they're going to college at Berkeley or Stanford or name your research university—University of Washington. It is the available jobs to them. It is paying for the computers that they learn to code on and that they're doing their work on. It is everywhere and it is—and when you are kind of rebelling against that establishment, when you see that establishment is waging war in Vietnam as being a power—not a power for good but a power for evil or for a malevolent—a government you don't trust whose power, whose motivations you don't trust, then you—you know, you want to really push back against that and that is very much what the personal computer movement that then becomes an industry is. That's why all those people who were sitting around in the 1970s in Xerox Palo Alto Research Center—Xerox Park—just spitballing ideas, they just did not want to have anything to do with military technology. So that's still there, and then that—and that ethos also suffused other actors in, you know, American government and culture in the 1980s forward, the sort of anti-government sentiment, and the concerns about concentrated power continue to animate all of this. And the great irony is that has enabled the growth of these private companies to the power of states. (Laughs.) So it's kind of both of those things are happening and I think, in some ways, wanting to completely revolutionize the whole system was something that was not quite possible to do, although many—it is extraordinary how much it has done. CASA: Margaret, thank you very much for this fascinating discussion and to all of you for your questions and comments. I hope you will follow Margaret on Twitter at @margaretomara. Our next Academic Webinar will take place on Wednesday, March 1, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Chris Li, director of research of the Asia Pacific Initiative and fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, will lead a conversation on U.S. strategy in East Asia. In the meantime, I encourage you to learn about CFR's paid internships for students and fellowships for professors at CFR.org/Careers. Follow at @CFR_Academic on Twitter and visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis on global issues. Thank you again for joining us today. We look forward to you tuning in for our webinar on March 1. Bye. (END)  

Journalist John Markoff has been writing about Silicon Valley for over forty years. In this interview with Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel, Markoff talks about his long career, how he became a “tech journalist” long before that term even existed, and how he came to write his new book, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand. Markoff and Vinsel also talk about how Brand's life is interwoven with the history of Silicon Valley and the technology its companies have made. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Journalist John Markoff has been writing about Silicon Valley for over forty years. In this interview with Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel, Markoff talks about his long career, how he became a “tech journalist” long before that term even existed, and how he came to write his new book, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand. Markoff and Vinsel also talk about how Brand's life is interwoven with the history of Silicon Valley and the technology its companies have made. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Journalist John Markoff has been writing about Silicon Valley for over forty years. In this interview with Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel, Markoff talks about his long career, how he became a “tech journalist” long before that term even existed, and how he came to write his new book, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand. Markoff and Vinsel also talk about how Brand's life is interwoven with the history of Silicon Valley and the technology its companies have made. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

We read many worthy books that didn't make it onto the podcast last year. This episode mentions 15 books that we love but didn't mention to you until now. Proper Confidence by Lesslie Newbigin - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/273775.Proper_Confidence The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36072.The_7_Habits_of_Highly_Effective_People Peanut Butter and Dragon Wings by Sheri Zook https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56169056-peanut-butter-and-dragon-wings Doing Good Better by William MacAskill https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23398748-doing-good-better Unapologetic by Francis Spufford https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15929332-unapologetic So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13525945-so-good-they-can-t-ignore-you Neither Complimentarian Nor Egalitarian by Michelle Lee-Barnwall https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26266693-neither-complementarian-nor-egalitarian Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34536488-principles The Man Who Was Thursday by G K. Chesterton https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/184419.The_Man_Who_Was_Thursday The Clock of the Long Now by Stewart Brand https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33279.Clock_of_the_Long_Now Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/74034.Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4069.Man_s_Search_for_Meaning The Platonic Tradition by Peter Kreeft https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30072433-the-platonic-tradition Atheist Delusions by David Bentley Hart https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/863971.Atheist_Delusions The Supper of the Lamb by Robert Farrar Capon https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/157466.The_Supper_of_the_Lamb Follow Jaran on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/74450648-jaran-miller. Follow Reagan on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/93683928-reagan-schrock. Blue Dot Sessions kindly provided the music in this episode.

The first time I heard you could charge $47 for a PDF less than 50 pages long, I was shocked. When I first encountered an online course selling for $2000, I about fell out of my chair. Of course, it wasn't long until I, too, was selling information products for more than my first car cost. Of course, I'm also an autodidact who benefits greatly from the proliferation of “free” information. And I'm a writer and podcaster who chooses to make 99% of what I make free to consume and use. I've benefited from both sides of the equation when it comes to the economics of information. And so this episode is a long time coming. It's an exploration of the seeming paradox at the heart of how we value information. And this episode covers some broad territory: from the 1960s and Stewart Brand who originated the phrase “information wants to be free,” to how information gets priced, to a case study on two of my most popular forays into information products, to feminist economics and the erasure of care work.Footnotes: “The Real Legacy of Stewart Brand w/ Malcolm Harris” on Tech Won't Save Us with Paris Marx “The Zen Playboy” by Malcolm Harris in The Nation My courses on CreativeLive “Feminist Economics” video series from the Institute of New Economic Thinking, hosted by economist Jayati Ghosh Berik, Günseli, Ebru Kongar. The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Economics. 2021. 1st ed., Taylor and Francis, 2021. “What is Money? With Paco de Leon” on What Works Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle by Silvia Federici “Course Mechanics Canvas: 12 Levers to Achieve Course-Market Fit” by Wes Kao ★ Support this podcast ★

Interdisciplinary artist Alicia Eggert and Long Now's Executive Director Alexander Rose will be in conversation for this special evening discussion of time, art and long-term thinking. Eggert's sign work uses sculpture to bring time to the foreground, embodying its passage through carefully chosen quotes. These words, rendered in neon and steel, cycle rhythmically through subtle text changes designed to encourage a heightened awareness of time and place in the viewer. In the sculpture “This Present Moment,” she uses an epigram of Stewart Brand's from his book The Clock of The Long Now, which she first encountered while doing research in 02008. For more in-depth reading, see Long Now Managing Editor Ahmed Kabil's 02021 interview with Alicia Eggert and Long Now Fellow Jonathon Keats' article on Eggert's work in Forbes. Alicia Eggert's work gives material form to language and time, powerful but invisible forces that shape our perception of reality. Her creative practice is motivated by an existential pursuit to understand the linear and finite nature of human life within a seemingly infinite universe. Her inspiration is drawn from physics and philosophy, and her sculptures often co-opt the styles and structures of commercial signage to communicate messages that inspire reflection and wonder. Eggert's artworks have been installed on building rooftops in Russia, on bridges in Amsterdam, and on uninhabited islands in Maine, beckoning us to ponder our place in the world and the role we play in it. Eggert is an Associate Professor of Studio Art and the Sculpture Program Coordinator at the University of North Texas; her work has been exhibited internationally, and is in the collection of the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

The most famous photograph of Earth - the ‘Blue Marble' shot captured by NASA astronauts on Apollo 17 - was taken on 7th December, 1972.  The deep blues of the ocean, the green continent of Africa, the yellow edges of the Arabian Peninsula, and the vast empty blackness all around our planet are memorably captured within it. But what can't be said with certainty is who actually took it - as all three members of the crew have claimed they snapped the iconic image.  In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly trace the origins of this moment back to Stewart Brand's counter-cultural ‘Whole Earth' movement of the 1960s; explain how Jack Schmidt's presence in the Apollo crew was scientifically groundbreaking; and reveal why the photo was flipped before it was printed on the front page of newspapers… Further Reading: • ‘The Blue Marble Shot: Our First Complete Photograph of Earth' (The Atlantic, 2011): https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/04/the-blue-marble-shot-our-first-complete-photograph-of-earth/237167/ • ‘Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog, the book that changed the world' (The Guardian, 2013): https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/may/05/stewart-brand-whole-earth-catalog • ‘Our Blue Marble' (The Obama White House, 2015): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwqLzSiFqlE #70s #Space #Photography Love the show? Join 

Buckminster Fuller was a designer, inventor, and thinker, and a true American original. Alec Nevala-Lee is the author of a new detailed and honest biography of Fuller, "Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller." Dave talks to Alec about Bucky's life, the unusual cast of characters he attracted, and starts to get into some questions that help inform why Bucky's outsized personality might have attracted people who later went on to become attracted to various kinds of disinformation campaigns — a topic we'll explore in some later episodes. Follow Alec on Twitter at @nevalalee — and buy the book wherever books are sold. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/59571984-inventor-of-the-future Keywords: Buckminster Fuller, Bucky Fuller, Inventor of the Future, Alec Nevala-Lee, Margaret Fuller, Geodesic Dome, Tensegrity, Gurdjieff, Roerich, Montreal Expo, Spaceship Earth, EPCOT, Bare Maximum, Dymaxion, 4D, Trim Tab, Robert Kiyosaki, Critical Path, Synergetics, Grunch of Giants, Werner Erhard, est training, John Denver, Ellen Burstyn, The Hunger Project, Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Catalog, Rich Dad Poor Dad, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos

Jonathan Haidt sees that we have entered a social-psychological phase change that was initiated in 02009 when social media platforms introduced several fateful innovations that changed the course of our society and disintegrated our consensus on reality. In this conversation with Long Now co-founders Stewart Brand and Kevin Kelly, Haidt presses on questions of technological optimism, morality vs ethics, teen mental health, possible platform tweaks that could reduce the damage and just how long this next cycle of history could last. Prompted by Haidt's piece on Why The Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid, this discussion offers a behind the scenes look at the thinking going into Haidt's next book; release slated for the fall of 02023.

From hippie culture to the first personal computers, Stewart Brand has been key to some of the most groundbreaking movements of the last century. This hour, he reflects on his life and career.

  Jim talks with John Markoff about his new biography, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand. They discuss the meme of Brand as a Zelig, his role as a catalyst, the Pace Layers model, why Brand wasn't a pure libertarian, a Hemingwayesque boyhood, a commitment to conservation, relentless networking, the influence of Frederic Spiegelberg, … Continue reading EP 164 John Markoff on the Many Lives of Stewart Brand → The post EP 164 John Markoff on the Many Lives of Stewart Brand appeared first on The Jim Rutt Show.

Paris Marx is joined by Malcolm Harris to discuss the legacy of Stewart Brand and why the myth we're often told about him overstates the reality of his impact.Malcolm Harris is the author of Kids These Days, Shit is Fucked Up and Bullshit, and his forthcoming book Palo Alto. He also writes for New York Magazine. Follow Malcolm on Twitter at @BigMeanInternet.Tech Won't Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, support the show on Patreon, and sign up for the weekly newsletter.Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.Also mentioned in this episode:Malcolm Harris wrote a critical review of John Markoff's Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand.Benjamin Kunkel also wrote a critical review of Whole Earth.The Stewart Brand documentary We Are As Gods about his quest to bring back wholly mammoths to solve climate change is slowly being rolled out after two years of delay and seeming lack of sales interest.Brand's Long Now Foundation is building a 10,000-year clock in Texas that's funded by Jeff Bezos.We also mention Fred Turner's From Counterculture to Cyberculture.Support the show

NY goes after Twitch, Musk's real plan, Apple's DeepMind defection Elon Musk says Twitter deal can't happen until bot account dispute is resolved.  Twitter asks shareholders to support Musk's purchase.  NY Launches Ridiculous, Blatantly Unconstitutional 'Investigations' Into Twitch, Discord; Deflecting Blame From NY's Own Failings.  @kendraschaefer: My goodness. China's cyberspace watchdog, the CAC, just published a long (and unprecedented) set of draft regulations for recommendation algorithms.  Why is the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial so visible on social media?  The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt.  Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell.  Dianetics and scientology technical dictionary by L. Ron Hubbard.  Losing Ian Goodfellow to DeepMind is the dumbest thing Apple's ever done.  The Genesis Machine: Our Quest to Rewrite Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology by Amy Webb, Andrew Hessel.  Apple Shows Headset to Board in Sign It's Reached Advanced Stage.  VeeCon: Exclusive Conference Around Web 3 and Culture.  Fears grow for smaller nations after ransomware attack on Costa Rica escalates.  Ransomware gang Conti 'shuts down' in midst of Costa Rica attack.  Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.  Bobiverse by Dennis Taylor.  The Nineties: A Book by Chuck Klosterman.  Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto by Stewart Brand. Ideas That Created the Future: Classic Papers of Computer Science by Harry R. Lewis.  Pinball Map Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Amy Webb and David Spark Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: www.stamps.com - promo code: TWIT expressvpn.com/twit noom.com/twit Indochino.com promo code TWIT