79. We've Been Sold Enough Chairs - Thoughts on The Future of Ai

We spend this one disagreeing about what a computer is going to be in ten years. One of us thinks the mouse and keyboard have run their course, and that whoever ships a voice-first operating system with screens spread through the house does to personal computing what the iPhone did to phones. The other thinks the appetite for that shift is gone, that people are worn out from being sold the next thing, and that whatever arrives will be software every company can copy rather than hardware anyone can corner.

Getting there, we cover the steps OpenAI puts between you and your own exported memory, why switching costs keep collapsing, what it means that someone's $20,000-a-month dashboard shows up as a power bill in somebody else's house, and the Seinfeld episode where George gets the department store security guard a chair. The chair turns out to be the argument underneath everything else. Every fix introduces the next problem, the simple version of a product exists to prove its value, and the complicated version is where the money is. -Ai

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From Apple To AI Operating Systems

SPEAKER_00 0:00

It's been a golden afternoon.

SPEAKER_03 0:03

And I remember having a familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with someone's in and Apple was the Apple was the disruptor of traditional computing up to that point. Everything was, you know, code-based uh or or uh command-based computing on machines that you had to have highly specialized training.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Introduced the mouse, introduced the j the GUI.

SPEAKER_03 0:31

And they made it accessible to everybody. But I think that like that Rabbit um presentation where they talked about how many steps it is to order an Uber, there it's just way too complex and bloated now. And that an AI-based operating system and persona computer that you don't have to just sit there with a keyboard and mouse to use. And again, it's a it's a it's an open operating system. And I don't mean open source, I just mean it's sort of it's open, fluid thing that can be whatever you need it to be. If you want to do video editing and media creation and all that stuff, and there's like, well, I want to do this with my video and it's film emulation or it's a VHS effect, it'll just write the code it needs to in an in a nanosecond to make you able to do that. You're not gonna like have to go find a plugin, install it. You're not gonna do any of that stuff anymore. And I don't think Apple is ready to give up the Mac as we know it, the iPhone as we know it, the iPad as we know it, everything they've spent the last 40 plus years building is gonna go out the window and become ideally a Siri-based operating system where there's screenless home pods, an Apple TV and a sense, um, and yeah, maybe uh some kind of foldable keyboard-based Mac that you only use when you absolutely have to or you're tired of talking.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

I think I think you you'll have a segment that gets that that loves that product. I just think we're too fragmented as a consumer culture now. For something like that to for something like that to, and you know, I obviously the the counter would be like, oh well you're you're just being like closed-minded or not. No, I don't think you are. And I'm not saying that, like I'm not saying that you are, I'm just saying like that would be if I was trying to counter this in myself, like that's would be the counter I give. And it's like I just think the the consumer culture is so fragmented. Like this isn't it, because even at this table, like you're pumped about the idea of like just a thing you can tell to do. And personally, I'm like, I mean, this is there, it doesn't get better than what I'm doing right now for me. Yeah, like the I had an issue with my mini DV capture in like an hour. I built an app that took care of it, and it was super easy, it didn't take any effort from me. I was like over here doing other shit, I was reading, I was whatever while it was just in the background. Like, and I I have like spent all of this time understanding how like things work and like focusing on like, oh, let me build these, you know, certain safety mechanisms and things like that. And I just um that's you know, least screen time, highest you know, return on my time investment in recent years. Um and like also I just I don't really like the idea of like don't get me wrong, if if I'm in DaVinci or something and something's kind of frustrating, um, you know, I would love to just be like, hey, do this. And I think all of that stuff, like I think more likely than not, you've got an option in DaVinci, or you can like give an AI access to your DaVinci and essentially co-edit, or like, hey, cut this, move this over, do this, go through the footage, find this, find this. I think that's that's just gonna be introduced. I don't necessarily I just don't think there's the market for a hardware change in the way that you're describing. I think just it's a different time. Like the energy in the late 90s and early 2000s, like the iPhone just snuck in, and we really haven't seen a major leap for and everybody like Google Glass came out in what 2012? iPad, AirPods, things like that. Vision Pro. Vision Pro. Um I think something has to be like the automobile hasn't really changed that much in a hundred years. Self-driving the automobile itself, you know, but and definitely self-driving and things like that, but I mean it's the American way. Like I don't no, I don't want a self-driving car, but like I don't, like I love my car. A lot of people like their car. A lot of people like driving. You know, you and I both obvious like we both own manual cars. Like that's because we enjoy driving. And like, you know, I mean, I'm wearing a Dale Earnhardt t-shirt.

SPEAKER_03 5:35

I gotta Rubbins race them.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

Yeah. Um it it and you know, I like it if I'm in a if I'm in a city that I've never been to. I like the idea of like, oh, I can order a self-driving car or something. Like that's fun and that's novel and things like that. But I don't think the future comes by, you know, I there's definitely technologies. And a lot of the the ironic thing is I think a lot of them have just

Hardware Leaps Feel Less Likely

SPEAKER_01 6:00

been around for a while. We just have been fucking around and using them the wrong way. And we'll talk about some of that. Uh, some of that goes back to the website and just all like these other little bits and things, and um, but I don't think the next thing is necessarily like a big hardware shift, I think it's more of a mindset shift, and it's already happening, but I think it's just like how can we use these things to maximize like our physical experience? And I see what you're saying of you know, you don't want to be in front of a screen, you just want to dictate, and I think that that will be an option, but I think everything's just so fragmented, we've kind of reached the high end of the curb where you know, for years, every five months it felt like you were hopelessly behind on your technology stack, whatever that was. Terrible term. I know I'm I'm sick of the word stack too. I I use a camera from 2009 and you know, 1970. I've had the same computer for years. Um I don't feel limited at all. You know, like I don't feel like we're shooting on these pieces of shit that are great. Like I haven't felt limited in my quote unquote technology stack for seven years now, I feel like. And um, you know, any new software, you can pretty much run it. Every, you know, and if not, I don't need to build out my hardware stack. Like there's plenty of even open source or you know, fully um like GPU and CPU um that I can just rent if I want now. Like all of that is in the infrastructure, everybody's got fiber now. Everybody's Wi-Fi is at least 100 up and down. Most people's are five to you know a gig or more. Um it's all free. You use as much of it as you want. You run the TV all day, fuck it. You know, power is and I have seen some of the people who are like paying the ridiculous power bills. That sucks. And you know what? Leave your state, like vote with your dollar. And I know that's like, oh, easy for you to say, I've got a kid, they're in school, I've got three kids in school and a job, and you know, I travel to work every day and we own our house, and da-da-da. It's like and I I sympathize and empathize with that, like that is sucks. I I don't know what to say about that. Like, that's fucked up. Um, but you know, people have been taking advantage of people for thousands of years, and we're gonna continue it. But I just I don't know if there's the appetite for a large-scale shift in the way that like hardware exists. Um if anything, I think more people want uh more options, like more like can we build some new typewriters that are good? Like, there's certain people that want that. Can we do you know, phones and different form factors? You talked about the Blackberry and everything. Um I mean, you know, you talk about like hardware and phones. People are like, oh, I've got this flip smartphone that flips open and da-da-da-da-da. It's like I I I get an email about a new dumb phone company like popping up every two weeks now. Yeah. Like, I think we go wider, I don't think we go up necessarily. Like, I don't I think it starts to just open playing field, and then you're gonna get new products and you're gonna get things. I just I don't know for an environment where something is gonna be able to corner the market, like like yeah, in the hardware sense. Like the reason AI was just so is you just go to a link and then it was like, oh my gosh. Like I remember the first time you know using Chat GPT, and it was like, oh, this is crazy. And the first couple of times you're like, this is cool, but it kind it kind of sucks. But you're like, this is amazing. Like, I can't believe that you can do this, and now it's just great. Um, and that was one of those moments, but I just don't know if we'll we'll get there with hardware necessarily again. Um I could be wrong. I mean, I might be totally misguided here.

SPEAKER_03 10:22

Do you think that your what you're talking about right now is primarily from your subjective experience with hardware and and AI tools right now, or are you speaking from what you see other the demand or the wants that other people might have?

SPEAKER_01 10:44

Um so the demand, the wants other people have um from my observation. I mean, that's subjective too, right? I can't I can only speak on what I observe. So, I mean, from my perspective, yeah, I think there's just I I just think there's a lot of people that are kind of burnt. They're just like sick of buying new shit. And new shit, I don't mean that as in like new shit, I mean like new stuff that turns out to just be more shit. Um, you know, fool me once, fool me 463 times over the course of 22 years or something, like whatever. It's just I think people are just fed up with that. And I'm not speaking for everybody, there's plenty of people who are pumped and who are just like all about the newest thing. There's always gonna be that group of people, but that was the zeitgeist from like 2000 or from 1995 till like 2014. Like that was the zeitgeist. That's not the in my opinion, that's not the zeitgeist anymore. That's not what happens. And you know, if if you're still operating in that mode, you're probably you'll probably see a shift in that behavior over time. Um I don't know. I mean, from my personal experience, like yeah, I'm pretty happy. I mean, like my bottleneck with AI isn't the user experience or the or the the um UI interface with any of these things. It's it's the limits, which you know the I I can't complain about that, and then also in the same breath, be like, oh, it sucks that people are paying $800 power. Like, I'm causing that. Fucking like maxing out my and I think it's kind of silly that you have people that are you know paying $20,000 a month and AI tokens, and they're just pulling shit, like, oh well, I've run a full dashboard of all of these statistics and it updates every day, and you know, I it writes tweets out, and I've you know, I have all of this information, and it's like I mean, it's literally just another way of slop of producing slop as I get an email. Um like you know, it's just something to keep so you're you're yeah, you have real side effects, like people are dying, people are get like being forced out of their houses and shit like that, so somebody can fucking run a dashboard of 300 metrics that they don't even actually have a comprehension of, yeah. And they can live tweet it. It's like that's kind of dumb to me. Um but yeah, my my bottleneck is just a usage, uh, and that'll get cheaper as as as it's a scaling

Why Today’s Tech Feels “Enough”

SPEAKER_01 13:40

technology. Um I just I don't think we have a hardware problem right now. And uh given the one thing that and I I will say like the the the thing that the market is susceptible to right now is if you get the right the right silver tongue pushing the thing, every uh not everybody, but a lot of people do feel like they have a problem right now. And so if you find the right silver tongued person that can synthesize that and then you might be susceptible to something like that. But if the solution to all of your problems is one thing, then I hate to break it to you, that's not the solution to your problems. You're being sold a bill of goods. And if the other side of that is fear, then you're being s that's a really good sign that you're being sold something. Um again, no, that's just my I don't want to like uh I think yeah, it's just one of those things that we kind of find ourselves on different sides of. And I I don't think it's I mean I I like her is cool. Like I love the idea of like the AirPod, and um you know, you sit down on a computer, and that's kind of what I see though as being like the model is like you just put your AirPod in and it's on your computer. Like there's no reason to make new hardware. Every home in America, bar sub 1%, has this set up in some way or another. I'm pointing to my computer.

SPEAKER_03 15:20

And I think you might be taking what I'm saying about hardware uh what I'm saying is is it's not uh necessarily this huge paradigm shift in the hardware we interface with in the sense of there's you don't need a screen anymore. You don't need something like this that you carry with you. I think that there's a an evolution that will happen with the hardware as we currently see it, whether it's a foldable computer with a keyboard and a touchpad, um, a screen that we hang on the wall or have in our living room. I think what you'll probably see is our body different um different screen-based hardware throughout the home, which isn't a huge leap. Facebook had their little hardware portal device that would go under your kitchen counter. Um, the Apple TV through a TV or a smart TV is similar to what I'm talking about. Yeah, you have the dots and the home pods and all that stuff. So I think there will be an evolution in the sense that screens will be more integral to the hardware throughout our home because the AI-based operating system is gonna have to show us what we need to see to interact with it. And that's gonna be, you know, um uh, you know, I want I what I I'm watching you know, I just watched this YouTube video and I want 10 other videos that are just like it and have it presented to you. Or I need to chart out um the different uh uh things that are that are consuming our our income, and I want to see it in a graph that makes me easy to understand where I'm overspending, and it's just gonna show that thing to you. Or I want to edit a video, you know. I recorded all this stuff, and my camera has a Bluetooth connection to you, and you already have the footage because it's automatically uploading to the cloud. Start put editing it together, edit this podcast, put audio finishing on there. Can we do a little bit more of a VHS effect? Like it's gonna show you the stuff as you talk it through whatever project you have, or you're building a website, whatever it is. Um, so the the real paradigm shift is the software and how you interface with the hardware. And the interfacing with it is, in my opinion, going to be much more verbal and much less traditional input tools like a mouse and keyboard. Now, I don't disagree with you. There are times where I just want to do that, I want to click the mouse or I want to type into the keyboard the thing I want to write rather than I can't do it verbally.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

Like I just flat out. And I and that's and I think that's I and I so i uh part of that disconnect is just this is a product I will never use. Just because like doing it verbally doesn't work the same way for my brain. So maybe I'm the wrong person.

SPEAKER_03 18:27

But I think it's also a skill that if you had enough enticement to start developing, you you would. Um but like because even back in the 60s when everything was typewriter-based, entire product lines of of dictation hardware existed for people that didn't want to type shit up. Dostoevsky dictated his novels. So it's like it's not it's not a novel, yeah, yeah. It's not a foreign concept, yeah. But we're so used to traditional inputting, and there are many people, and this goes to why I think this will be better. There are many people who suck at inputting into a computer with typing. And so it's much more natural. I see kids and people all the time using the dictate feature on their phone to reply, yeah, dude, I'll be there. Like you couldn't type that on your phone. So I think all of those things that I see.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

Oh, I completely agree with that. I just I don't think any one company has that's just something that every company is going to be able to do really, really seamlessly, I think, in the next five years.

SPEAKER_03 19:33

Right. But I think the the company that releases hardware and an operating system based on this new way of interacting with something that can literally give you whatever you want almost in an instant.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

I just think the switching cost is gonna be too low forever. Like AI is kind of this is why you have a lot of companies scrambling too. How can we make it more difficult to switch? Absolutely. So how can we make it more and they kind of got in too deep? Like the switching cost is already out the window for a lot of these things. And I I mean they're they're trying, they're like, oh, we're gonna personally, and then everything's gonna be easy, and you could reference old chats and da-da-da-da-da. But I mean, you've been using you know chat GPT for years, and you switched to Claude like it was nothing. Switching cost is just too much.

SPEAKER_03 20:24

Did you see did I tell you to get my memory from ChatGPT? You can get anything you want from ChatGPT in an instant.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

You just click it.

SPEAKER_03 20:32

The I had to ask Claude how to get my memory from Chat GPT. Yeah. Because it was like three, four, five steps. It was not easy to find out how to do it. Yeah, you had to like log into the website version of ChatGPT, you couldn't access it from the app or mobile, and then they you request your memory, they send you an email, and they tell you this is a cumbersome process, it'll be ready in a few days. We'll email you when it's ready. And so I'm already ripping through Claude for two or three days before I get my memory. I have access to my memory, have not downloaded it yet, because I'm already taking off with Claude. Yeah. And they are probably counting on the fact that I never will pull my memory and import it into Claude. And that that one bit of friction I have to wait to get it. Yeah. Means that 87% of users won't even bother inputting it into Claude and will retain that unique data, whatever, to use as we see fit from now on, even though it's not like are you gonna delete your ChatGPT

Burnout, Energy Costs, And AI Slop

SPEAKER_03 21:40

account? Uh I don't know, because I might just keep keep have the free version just to because I like j just to be able to kind of track how they're both progressing. Yeah. But y you also haven't watched that video that they put out where the guy sits there and talks to the computer through all these complicated things.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

That he needs done and never has to like I'm I'm very anti like the sales video because I it's just no I'm anti the sales video too, but what I'm saying is they're just introducing a general concept of what their vision is for interacting with the computer in the future.

SPEAKER_03 22:18

It sounds from your point of view, potentially, and from the audience's point of view, that I am amped on this. And if it's ready tomorrow, I'm signing up, I'm giving them everything, and I'm good to go.

SPEAKER_02 22:29

I'm in here.

SPEAKER_03 22:29

I'm not I'm not saying this because I am hungry for this as the answer to the problems in my computing life. I am deeply interested and fascinated with what it might mean for what I'm able to do in a daily basis, whether it's productivity, creativity, etc. I think I'm speaking passionately about this because to me it's obvious that it's the next leap forward in how the vast majority of us will interact with a computer-based device, an AI-based device. And there will be outliers. You may be an outlier, I may be an outlier, where I'm still sort of half analog or a uh a third analog, a third traditional computing, a third AI-based computing. Um, but I think for the vast majority of people, when they release whatever hardware they they release that is essentially like these things, like a phone, like a TV on your wall, whatever it is they release, but they show you how you can have this done, order flights, book a hotel, uh, call an Uber, get DoorDash, write a paper that you're dictating. Yeah, um, make a video, all the things that we're doing currently that you can just talk to this thing and work with it. Yeah, like a director works with a crew on a film set to make these things. The vast majority of people will be so blown away by that. And and if it does actually end up being a great product that just works, yeah, you will see people, it'll be slow to start, but more and more, just like with the iPhone, it'll just be something that many people are just sucked into completely.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

I just I think without hardware, you don't have any kind of hold on anything, and it'll just get I mean, there'll be the uh the Claude version of it and the the you know the Kimmy version of it. I think they will have hardware, and that's because it won't be I think they will have hardware, but I and and at first they're gonna try to be like, you have to buy this hardware, maybe I don't know, but that's what I would do. That's what I would do. And then I think people are just gonna be like, and then they're gonna be like, okay, it's software, and then they're just gonna be like, I don't know. I just I they they fly by this their very traditional Silicon Valley brain where it's just like just and we'll figure it out later. And a lot of times in the last like 10 years, that method hasn't worked. I mean, and maybe I'm maybe I'm wrong. Like obviously, I'm obviously not, you know, some Silicon Valley billionaire here. Right. But um I just I think things have shifted in a way that you know the isn't quite visible yet in the in the I mean I'm not gonna say in the marketplace, but just in the consciousness of how people are used. Like I I'm with you. I think people want way less time on screens. Yeah. Way less time on screens. And that's a problem that companies are now starting to solve because the market has gotten big enough. Um and you know, I love the idea of having a personal assistant. Um but and a lot of people do. I just don't know how many people really need a personal assistant, per se. And if the if if the economics work out. Like it's like, yeah, if everybody had the best secretary in the world, imagine how much better your life would be. Well, the answer for a lot of people is not that much better. I think. And that's just because of everybody has a different lifestyle, everybody does different things. Um, but anyway, I feel like it's one of those things, like I don't want to I don't want to talk about it too much because it's just like it'll play out how it plays out, and it'll be more interesting to talk about how it plays out.

SPEAKER_03 26:45

Yeah. Um and I'm not trying to also, I'm not gonna sit here and try to convince you to see it my way. Yeah. You know, I I think it's exciting to hear to hear both perspectives.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

And I'm not I'm not trying to like say that you're you're I mean, obviously, I don't I I have no idea who's gonna be closer to what works out. It's just I think it's interesting because we have very different perspectives on it. It's fun to dig into something that we see differently.

SPEAKER_03 27:14

And we're aligned with how we feel about these companies, but I'm telling you, what I'm seeing from OpenAI, they're the only company that is showing me right now that they are in the lead for a type of computing that I think is gonna take over the the the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 27:29

It's funny every everything I see is so negative open AI. I mean, like I I mean every time I like I talked about the opening YouTube on the on the TV. You can go through there right now and you're gonna leave thinking open AI is Satan. Yeah. I don't think I don't think I think I just think they're silly. It's just it's not a good thing. And I don't necessarily disagree with any of that.

SPEAKER_03 27:55

Yeah, but again, I feel like the people there or someone there took all these ingredients from frustrations with using a computer, they sitting there trying to create stuff, whether they were coding or whatever, and just said sitting here on this thing just feels so contained. Typing in, I I'm thinking faster than I can type. I need to get this out of me and into something faster. Um, and while there's positive motivations behind that and negative ones, um, you know, impatience and you know uh this feeling of scarcity or whatever it is, like I gotta get my thing out there, I gotta do this, I gotta get this done, I gotta do more with less time, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. I get all that. But I feel like someone over there has a clear vision of what feels like what could be good for uh a capitalist pursuit, and what seems to fit in naturally with the majority of people in the world, just like the iPhone did. I mean, there's a how many people in the world have a smartphone, which you could argue is an iPhone because the iPhone came out and everybody copied it, right? And and even the personal computer. There are millions of people across the entire billions of people across the globe that have these things in their homes. And I think someone said there's an easier way to interface with a computer. Yeah. And it's already proven that billions of people will welcome a piece of hardware into their home that lets them do things. Because using these things right now is incredibly complex. And while a wide range of intellects and ages and physical abilities can use them, you can't deny the fact that there's a lot of input that has to happen to use a computer and to use a smartphone. There's a lot of pressing and whatever. Do you remember when system preferences in Mac OS finally added a search feature? Yeah. You used to have to hunt through it to find the setting for sharing your files or only turning this off.

SPEAKER_01 30:10

I remember I learned the menu. And then they just kept adding shit.

SPEAKER_03 30:15

And they added shit, then they changed the laptop.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

And then eventually they just had to add search because it was like you can't find anything if you don't.

SPEAKER_03 30:21

And that's what I mean. This is this is doing that like one trillion times more intensive. It blew my mind that it took them that long to put a search option, and it came from iOS, it came from the phone. Well, people can't be clicking into submenus on the phone, so we have to make it

Voice Control And The Switching Trap

SPEAKER_03 30:40

searchable. And even then, dude, I don't even know what the right word is sometimes to find the thing in the menu that I need, the settings that I need. So I just want to tell Siri. You just want to be like, open the thingy, do this. See, I can tell her to go into low power.

SPEAKER_01 31:00

You could memorize every app on my phone in 12 seconds. Sure. Like it just wouldn't take you any time.

SPEAKER_03 31:06

I don't mean talking about the apps, I'm talking about just the settings.

SPEAKER_01 31:08

Yeah, yeah, no, for sure, for sure. Um I just my phone's running out of story. Clear it out. Part of my apprehension. It's just like that's the like the world you're describing isn't like that's not the world that I want to I don't I I mean that's again, I I don't think it it it's gonna, but we have we have a lot of things that we need to reckon with before like if we think all having little AI assistants that do all of our bidding for us is is gonna solve our shit, we're wrong, and we're just setting up for another reckoning with technology in five to ten years. We're just kicking the can. And I guess what I'm hopeful for is let's just have the reckoning now. Like, fuck these stupid ass companies and their stupid ass products that are just gonna get an extra percentage point of their metric of productivity out of your day-to-day life and your hustle and make all this money, and you know, you're a small business owner, and you need your accounts, and you need this now, and you need to do this, and you need to be more productive in this sense, and you need to, you know, get your blank up so blank can increase blank and we can get closer to blank. And I'm just uh all of that shit needs to burn to the ground. And I mean, I'm I I don't I don't I don't know if I've been this blunt about it on the podcast, but like I'm so fucking sick of all of that shit, and there is a tidal wave of people who are who feel that way, and you know, I talk about the pendulum all the time. The pendulum is gonna swing so drastically and so hard and so far in the other direction so quickly and violently because of how how manipulative and how uh just un It's it's not good. Like there's just it's you know it's not a problem until it becomes the only problem. And you know, you can only pacify a group of people for so long, and it is going to be violent. And I'm not talking about like violent, and it might be violent, but like, you know, you use all of the imagery you want and like the tidal wave of the hatred that a generation of people feels towards these mindsets, and this thing of like, oh, it's gonna make it be so much easier to interface with your computer and you're gonna be able to do da-da-da-da-da. There's a generation of people out there that are feeling like I will fucking smash my computer with a sledgehammer. I never want to see it again. I want to work with my hands for the rest of my life because of how much this has burned me. And it is, it is at some point, like the the the future is gonna have to take agency for our our state of mind and our the life that we live. And you just have a group of people that are so fed up with this shit that it's not, oh, the next computer or the next model. It is I'm done. I'm I'm done with it. I'm I'm gonna figure out a different way. And maybe that's just me being hopeful. Um, but there's definitely something brewing under there right now, and these companies are still playing these games and these analytics, and they're looking and they're trying to maximize their ROI and maximize their shareholder value and you know continue to grow and build the future, and you know, oh the future hasn't been the future, but now we're gonna make it the future. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no. Like you've got like, you know, I mean, if if my generation or the generation coming, generations coming behind me stands a chance, that shit's gotta burn. And I don't mean like in a like rip the system up, change, but like the way we look at daily life is not sustainable. And so anything that perpetuates that, I just it's outdated already in my mind. And that's I think that's why I have such like a like a pushback to like the idea of there's gonna be a thing that changes, like people are sick of it. Like, there's people that are just completely sick of AI and that will never use it. And I know we can sit here and be like, oh, that's funny. Um and like, you know, everybody like industry uses it, da da da. It is helpful in certain ways, but like there are people that are just sick of it, and they're just like, I'm done. I'm not, I'm never using it, I won't even use it. In the same way that I've never once opened TikTok. They will just never they will they are opted out from the beginning. And you know, you it's just I think the way that everything is done needs to change drastically in the way that we look at everything and like the reason that we even like do what we do on a daily basis needs to be re-evaluated. And I'm not saying that in like a revolutionary way, I mean it's a it's a slow re-evaluation, but I think that's just why that's why I'm reacting.

SPEAKER_03 36:42

Like well, I'm I'm curious to what you know that what what fuels a reaction like that when I'm I guess I'm just articulating, you know, uh I don't want to have to sit down at my computer, click on the calendar app, right-click on the right side, uh, on the date, add the thing, type in the information about the event, choose which calendar out of 18 calendars I have it goes on. I just want to tell the thing to do it in eight seconds.

SPEAKER_02 37:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:15

Um and I want to see that applied across the entire system.

SPEAKER_02 37:23

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:24

While I still have the option until I don't care anymore to have that option, if if possible, to do it manually. Yeah. Yeah. That being said, I'm also not forecasting that OpenAI is gonna create this thing and it's gonna suck everybody into using it, and then it's gonna have a monopoly on that and be able to do whatever it wants, manipulate us, take our data, all of that stuff. Because you're gonna see competitors come out, whether it's Apple, Anthropic, other companies come out with if basically everybody was sitting on the floor, and then this company invented a chair, yeah, and everyone, oh that's yeah, that's pretty great. It's pretty great. And the company was like, Well, we can't, yeah, we can't protect the invention of the chair. Everybody else makes chairs, different, or you know, this, that, you know, all that stuff. The same thing's gonna happen, but you can't deny the usefulness of a chair versus sitting on the floor, sitting on a rock, sitting on a box, you know, whatever, whatever you may have done before the chair was invented.

SPEAKER_01 38:38

I think it's consumer exhaustion, though. It's like we've been sold so many fucking chairs at this point. It's just like, you know what? The rock was fine. Like the rock was fine. I'm gonna I'm gonna go over here and focus on doing something that serves my life purpose a little bit more. And it's like you talk about the calendar thing, like I agree. I I don't think that's a but you have a ton of people who I think look at that and they're just like, you know what? Paper calendars worked fine for 200 years. I'm just gonna do a paper calendar. Absolutely. It's like it's like let me instead of having 40 different calendars and da-da-da-da-da, and I'm just gonna do a paper calendar. And people are even starting to get mad when people force them into oh no, you have

The Coming Backlash Against Tech Culture

SPEAKER_01 39:20

to use an electronic calendar for work or whatever. That breeds resentment, and it's starting to breed more and more, I think.

SPEAKER_03 39:26

And I agree with you that if this if this form of computing then just crowds your life with more digital things, more things that you have to subcategorize and manage and and all of that stuff, there's definitely a strong advoc advocacy for, in a sense, pulling the plug. Like, why do you need 12 different calendars? Personal, family, business, business business, business admin, this, this, this. Like, yeah, why is there so much going on in your life that you need hyper and that's that's what I'm exactly what I'm talking about. And I think that's what I want to clarify here.

SPEAKER_01 40:10

And even like like the iPhone was a lie to an extent, right? Like that was a really well done piece of marketing. And yeah, I mean, look, don't get me wrong, you took eight products or however many products and you made it one that you can carry in your pocket, like intellectually, logically, like that checks out. Yeah, it's a great idea, and you know, everybody still uses it. It's and it is a good idea, and it changed the the way that those things were were done. Um But what's the cost of that? Yeah, exactly. And I think a lot of people like I mean you see it happening on a small scale where people are just like, Yeah, you know what? I actually kind of like having like an MP3 player and a camera and a flip phone, and you know, my life's actually better. Yep. And we're you know, I think and I think part of that you you so many times were sold like this is the next great thing, because it's like the lifeblood of what makes a a system like ours work is here's the next great thing. That that thing's not good anymore. Get this thing, it's better. And eventually it was like, oh wait, the shit is actually not better, it's actually worse in a lot of instances, and it's making my life worse, and the whole like process is a lie, and it is, and I'm not saying that in like some like it's all a lie, like it's just everything is whatever you make it out to be, yeah. And like it's not it's not necessarily a lie, like a lie implies like a a very negative I mean, there's a ton of incentives, positive and negative, that come together to make anything at any point in your life or any any any set of circumstances. But I I just I don't think that society's as susceptible to that anymore. It's the same way that like like do you remember? I mean, do you remember? But like, you know, you hear all the time like there's stuff that happens every hour that would have like been the biggest news story in the world 25 years ago for a year or for two years or three years. And the world didn't change that drastically. Everybody you just incentivized people looking for the most outrageous thing, and now everything is open too. Everything that happens everywhere is open at all times. But what happened is everything desensitized to that over time, and I don't think that that's a bad thing because now we're able to kind of see through. You you could have lied, you know, one well-placed public relations lie in 1995 changed the entire world. Good luck doing that in 2026. That's just resilience. We built resilience, we have tougher skin, we're smarter, we're more elegant in how we can process things. Um I mean, that's uh in a sense, I'm a proponent for open the fire hose, and then the fire hose isn't as effective anymore.

SPEAKER_04 43:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:24

Um, but yeah, I think my pushback definitely comes from that of just like the whole complicate your life thing was just another sales tactic in my mind. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:40

Um but you can see though, as frustrating as it is for what these tools can introduce into our lives, you can see that when these inventions, when they're at their You know in their birth year, they're they're usually they're usually simple because they have to be in order to show the end user how beneficial they are to their lives. And as the commerce aspect of that genuinely problem-solving creation uh develops, it then becomes incredibly complicated. It finds its tendrils into all aspects of our lives. Um and it creates a new host of problems that we, at least in this day and age, tend to want to use technology or create technologies that then simplify that thing. And so what I'm saying is I think we have these devices with traditional software have run their course. They are it's too complicated, there's too much going on, too many apps, too many subscriptions, too much interfacing with the computer, proprietary software, too much, too much uh of its tendrils in our daily lives. That we are hoping for some technology that will simplify all that and still allow us to do what we what we do with less stress, less friction, all that. Now that new technology can sing that siren song, it can be that oasis in the desert and lure us in. And for a time, everything's great. And then the extraction period begins. They've attracted us, now it's time to extract. So that AIOS is gonna be serving up ads, it's gonna be manipulating our point of view by having sponsored information that we're seeking be delivered to us rather than the what we hope is the objective truth or the more reputable news sources, or if that there even is such a thing anymore. Um and so the cycle continues. There's a great episode of Seinfeld where George is at a department store and there's a security guard standing there, and he wonders why should he have to stand the whole time? Yeah, yeah, get him a chair. A nice rocking chair would be great. And this goes back to the chair thing, right? So he has a problem. I can still do my job seated, um, you know, and I won't have back problems and all this stuff. So he brings him a chair, and then the security guard uses it, and then there's a robbery, and when they need the security guard to help them, the security guard has fallen asleep in the chair. Yeah. And now there is a new problem that they can't solve because the thing that they had for the for that problem is asleep and unconscious. And I think that's just a it's you use the word hopeful.

SPEAKER_01 47:07

Like you're hopeful that I think that's a byproduct of hope. Like that's a byproduct of not being able when the only way that you can view things is in a I mean, I've been using this term a lot or this this description a lot, but like a linear progression. I just I think it's very helpful because it's just how all of us are locked into seeing the world. And I've said it on this podcast a hundred thousand times, but when that's the only way, it's like standing is bad. What is better than standing? Sitting is better than standing, and then yeah, you introduce a new but it really, if you think of it of like, oh, what's the objective here? You know, is is the objective being achieved? Um what's the

The Chair Problem And Extraction Cycles

SPEAKER_01 48:00

saying? When you have a hammer, every every problem looks like a nail. Every problem, it's like we just gotta in my we just gotta start looking at things like it's not a a nail. Because you're absolutely right. You you give the guy the chair, great chair, solves his problem and introduces a host of new problems.

SPEAKER_03 48:18

And there's an argument that with what you've been doing with your website using Claude Code.

SPEAKER_01 48:24

Let's talk about the website that I've entirely built without AI.

SPEAKER_03 48:29

That you know, this has taken up a lot of time and focus for you to build this thing, um, to direct Claude to code the website, setting up your own private server, all the different stuff that you've done. And that's part of why I asked the question well, what if this becomes a thing? What if it becomes a big thing? And you have an audience that you feel, and maybe they they uh you know, um speak speak about wanting more from you. And you've added features and you went through them all, and uh they're you know, it's it's it's all great. Um and this is not me saying, you know, I'm not trying to be like uh this is my gotcha moment thing, but I'm like everything that we want to do, whether it's my five 500 YouTube channels, the writing that I want to do, selling stuff in Josh's shop, all of that stuff has complicated my life in stressful and not destructive, but sort of distracting ways. And I've been went from a much simpler, disciplined, focused life that wasn't as fulfilling to blowing it all up and creating this whole big apparatus and all these different things and slowly editing them down into something smaller, but then it's gonna get too small and I'm gonna be unfulfilled, and then I'm gonna blow it all back up again. You know, same thing with you pulling back from YouTube, eliminating social media, going to a dumb phone, investing in typewriters, analog tech, all that stuff. And and not saying that you were unfulfilled, but you had a spark to build this website.

SPEAKER_01 50:13

Well, it it's the same, I just like I just wanted a place to put things. Yeah. And every platform I used was starting to turn into something that it wasn't. And I was, you know, at the end of the day, like, I mean, like I've I've talked to you about being big on like ownership for our entire as long as we've known each other. I I just wanted to own it. Like, if I put something there, it's there, I don't have to worry about it, and I can leave it there.

SPEAKER_03 50:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:38

And so that was the whole, and there isn't like like that's the reason I stopped making YouTube videos was the whole, oh, you expect more. Like, I don't this sounds I mean, yes, like when you're creating anything, like the role of like a you know, somebody who's making things is to share that with people. Um there is no more though. Like I make what I make, I try to every day do that job for me, not for anybody else. Like, I'm literally, I'm like, I want to take photos because I want to take photos. And if I want to go a year without taking photos, I'll go a year without taking photos. But you know, the work and the practice is at its best when I'm not taking you know some external pride from it, it's just a part of me, like running. Like, I just I've been running a lot recently, and I'm like, oh, I should do races or whatever, and I don't sign up for any races. I've done one race in like the last four or five years. This run because it makes me feel good. And you know, I can do some other stuff while I'm doing it. Like I finish and I feel good, and that's it. And the website was to get rid of any kind of external incentive and to really reorient myself towards I want something in the digital space because I mean I look, I'm not anti-digital in any way.

SPEAKER_04 52:07

No, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:08

I mean, I'm I I do love analog, and I but you know, there's a balance. It there are some things that when the internet came around, it just made it possible to do all these things that were really clunk, like I can publish to anybody in the world without leaving my house. That's unbelievable at any time, anytime, anything I want. That's unbelievable. Like, that's super cool. And it's like, you know, any feature that Instagram or open AI can come up with is not as cool as that. Because that's always been a thing. Like from people carving things on tablets and like giving them to the town people, like that's just a human behavior of like publishing something that you worked on or whatever, or communicating, communicating, yeah. And so that was the that was the um kind of the seedling for the website. Um and I, you know, I was I I built it very aware of the idea that you just said of like well, are you gonna be expecting more? I built it so it's you get what you get. When I put stuff up there, I put stuff up there. But also, in a way, it it works counter to that, where it makes me want to do it. Because it it is a it's a work of art in and of itself. Like the more I put up there, the more patina it can get. It's like wearing this, right? Or wear this or wear this watch. Because every day I wear it is an investment into it. It gets a little scratched or a little beat.

Building A Website You Actually Own

SPEAKER_01 53:40

And I can look at it and sometimes I'll just stare at it and be like, oh, yeah, look at these scratches, look at this wear. And so I wanted that in a digital form. And I wanted something that incentivized me to create work, but didn't not for any reason of like, oh, I'm gonna get you know 500,000 subscribers. Look, I would love to have a thousand people that support me on that website and do like the you know, thousand true fans or whatever, where I have enough revenue coming in from that site to support me or whatever. Like that's great. Um, but it's not the intent of the of the site. Um, and I mean I have to be careful, like you have to re-evaluate, but I am going in pretty clear, hopefully, to and you know, if if I start to violate that, you I want you to call me out on that, I want everybody to call me out on that. But I mean the idea is just to incentivize creative, like the only metrics on the site are how many works are up, and you know, you can be like, well, that's just you know, incentivizing you to put stuff out that's not ready, and it's like, no, it's not, trust me, because I've got a drive full of draft half-drafted things that I could probably put up, and I'm just like, no, not ready yet, still working on it. So I don't know. Um, I'm just I'm trying to change the way I look at things um pretty drastically. And over time, as I've done that more and more, I think my quality of life has improved. Um I just, yeah, I just um I mean just chasing freedom at the end of the day, right? I think that's it. Should we talk? What do you what how do yeah, what do you what do you think? Like what direction do we go with this?

SPEAKER_03 55:30

Uh I don't know. And I mean, uh as far as chasing freedom goes, you know, I think there's part of what's behind me talking about this is me noodling around this what I think is going to be a massive breakthrough and and sort of um overhaul of how we how we interact with a personal computer. And while you might be reacting to the the major downside of that, you know, I'm I'm just like, well, will this mean I'm sitting in a chair less? Will it, you know, these these small like you know, quality of life improvements that while I know there will be a cost to it that may ultimately make it not worth it, um, or require a lot of personal regulation and discipline and all that to not get sucked in, you know, to it to the extent that I have with preferring YouTube over other forms of media. And that can be a movie or a TV show or a book or whatever. Um, same thing with social media and its ability to suck me in if I'm hanging out with my family or you know, drinking a cup of coffee and looking at it rather than a a nutritional book.

SPEAKER_02 56:50

Um I love the I love the nutrition.

SPEAKER_03 56:53

Yeah, I have to because nutritional value.

SPEAKER_02 56:56

Nutritional value. Yeah. The nutritional value of what we consume.

SPEAKER_03 57:00

Yeah, yeah. Um clean simile, I guess. So I know we want to try to elegantly transition this into talking about the website and and why you built it and all that.

SPEAKER_01 57:14

Um I think this was interesting though, and um we're at about an hour. It might just be worth it just to cut it and then do a website thing. Yeah. And just or yeah, I don't know if you need to get out of here.

SPEAKER_03 57:26

I just have to get to the shop before it's too late. So I'd bum bum bum. Um because I yeah, I definitely don't want to rush through talking about the website because I do think that it's worthy of um really hearing you out on, especially with with your video that you put out on the YouTube channel that goes into it on the website, yeah. No, I mean and it is on the YouTube channel as well. That's where I saw it, and I know it's on the website as well, but I guess for sure, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 57:58

I even think I said I was like, nobody knows that this thing exists, right?

SPEAKER_03 58:03

Um but to to go through uh the yeah, the motivation, and then you know, you talked on the on the video about uh everything from algorithms and owning owning all of your own stuff and uh not being reliant on other platforms that could disappear in a in a second. Um I think uh I definitely want to have that conversation. Um so yeah, we're at an hour already.

SPEAKER_01 58:32

Yeah, I don't know. This was a uh it's one of those episodes where you like go back and forth and then you just kind of lose track of time, it felt like. Yeah. But I do know I have to pee really bad. So yeah. Well, let's just break it. Break it and then yeah.

SPEAKER_03 58:46

The only other suggestion I would have is me do the drop and then come back later and do it.

SPEAKER_01 58:52

Do you want to do that?

SPEAKER_03 58:53

Yeah, I'm going to go to um I'm I'm thinking of going to Benson first Friday.

SPEAKER_01 58:59

I was oh yeah,

Pressure, Obligations, And A Clean Stop

SPEAKER_01 59:00

I wanted to go with you. Or I just not no, yeah. Like jump in on your plan. No, I definitely would would love to go to I forgot it was Friday to be honest, until you just reminded me.

SPEAKER_03 59:09

So maybe that's the move. Yeah. And I'm and just leave everything as is and then come back and do the other one.

SPEAKER_01 59:17

Super down for that. Just leave the camera set up.

SPEAKER_03 59:19

Because I and this is this is what we're talking about, right? So let's just cut it now then. Well, I do I do my Friday drop and it gets posted on social media and it helps the shop. And so that creation of that thing, like you creating a website, and I'm not saying it's the same effect on you as this is on me, but it it's pulling me away from what probably for you feels like, well, let's just naturally go into the next episode. But I have this thing where I'm like you have an obligation. I gotta post the video. I teased it all week. I've got all the stuff in the car. Uh, you know, the shop might not be open or it's gonna close at six.

SPEAKER_01 59:54

I want it to be ready if Saturday morning and all pressure, pressure, pressure to do this thing.

SPEAKER_03 59:58

No, and I can't tell the AI computer to just take all my shit to lost.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:02

I was telling it to get that pile of dirt out of our yard yesterday and could not figure it out.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:08

It's been a golden afternoon, and I remember having the familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with someone's money.