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The Monolith is a podcast about navigating exponential change without losing your humanity. What began as an exploration of design thinking inside large organizations, has evolved into a broader inquiry: how people and institutions adapt when legacy systems fail, and new ones arrive faster than we can name them. Each episode explores the present through systems thinking, economics, hacking mindsets, and cycles of change. The Monolith isn’t futurism for spectacle. It’s pattern literacy for people who sense the shift and want agency to thrive inside it.
Cameron Craig (00:00)
Hey Keith!
Keith (00:01)
Cameron, how you doing,
Cameron Craig (00:03)
Good man, happy 2026 my friend.
Keith (00:05)
Right, happy new year. Almost into February at this point.
Cameron Craig (00:09)
Yeah, let's go my quick. I'm glad we had a couple of, know, cathartic podcasting without recording sessions between the last time we actually recorded and released something or recorded something for release and today, but I'm glad we're actually back doing it. ⁓ So Keith is knee deep in getting that last episode from 2025, which is the closeout of our first.
Keith (00:11)
Go back quick. But there's a...
Yeah.
Yep, fine as stride.
Cameron Craig (00:40)
season if you will. Season one.
Keith (00:41)
Yeah, Season 1.
The Genesis Discovery Block.
Cameron Craig (00:46)
the Genesis discovery block of monolith. ⁓ you know, in that episode, we did a little bit of retro. So in this episode, we are going to be the futurists. It's one of the things that I think you and I both love the most.
Keith (00:47)
Hmm
Yeah.
This is a pivotal year to be I mean, it's already started with like, Maduro and Greenland and a couple of people getting shot with ice protest. mean, not to get into the politics of the history, but it's it's been eventful so far. And we're just like getting warmed up. So I think it is a good plus we're figuring out kind of what we're this is an experiment. I use for us, you know, starting as like design thinking, moving into systems thinking and kind of combining like
Hacker mentality and like a little astrology all this stuff together still with business. But yeah, so Thinking you're ahead kind of predictions a little monolith visa vie Arthur C. Clark Some news that we saw that we thought was interesting. I'm just go from there. I think
Cameron Craig (01:52)
Yeah. Yeah. I love it. So, ⁓ return back if you will to season one, sometime Q3. Here's my, my future, my, my past. Yeah. ⁓ yep. Those are my time machine backwards fingers.
Keith (02:01)
quick yeah throwback Wayne's world
We're gonna copyright strict today as well as they have it with all this. Yeah.
Cameron Craig (02:14)
Yeah, yeah, you
and I are knee deep in basically ⁓ doing things to get our... Yep, we're gonna do ourselves to get... We're gonna do as much as we can to get ourselves into trouble. ⁓ So one of the fascinating things, if you all remember, the three of you who listened to our podcast was we spent some time late in Q4 of last year talking a little bit about our favorite...
Keith (02:18)
Do it all in one shot. It's all good.
Cameron Craig (02:41)
⁓ marketplace from the past and we talked a lot about what they could do and what they should do. And one of the things that we talked about was that we thought they should look at new ways in becoming relevant in the new world. And also with this impending shift that we predict is going to happen with HCI, ⁓ which is go send your bot out to solve some problems. And I think we even talked about exactly that on the podcast.
So this week, as I was just telling Keith, I was fascinated to find this. And if you...
Keith (03:21)
eBay bans
illicit automated shopping amid rapid rise of AI agents. So basically, you can't send something out to go shop on your behalf now.
Cameron Craig (03:25)
So.
There is no, you are in violation of their EULA if you send an agent out to buy on your behalf. So as I think we had talked about and one of the things that I had kind of played with ⁓ was this idea of structuring an agent-based comparison website for lenses for the camera that I am coming through onto this podcast, the Sony, whatever it is. You bought another one of these? Yeah, thanks.
Keith (03:59)
ZVE10. Yeah,
I got two of
Cameron Craig (04:01)
So I bought a bunch of ⁓ lenses and I wanted basically to go out to eBay and have them compare and then basically it stopped short in my experiment of allowing me to add to cart because there is no API for the cart. ⁓ There is no API for the cart on anything else other than Walmart, which we, I believe also talked about. So Walmart and OpenAI are doing the exact thing that eBay has decided to ban you as a user.
Keith (04:22)
Ahem.
Cameron Craig (04:29)
doing, which is so crazy to me.
Keith (04:31)
This
is what we call the episode, the marketplace that time forgot because
Cameron Craig (04:35)
Yes, so
if you've forgotten that, go back and listen to this. that was a quick moment in 2026 to remind us all ⁓ that sometimes Keith and I are not totally off our rockers when we suggest things. And again, our analysis of like, hey, these guys potentially are going to run this thing into the ground, which would make both of us sad for different reasons. But, you know, yet another signal.
that they're going in the exact opposite direction.
Keith (05:08)
I wonder if you're going to see other kind of like dot com.
Keith (05:13)
All right, we're back. We got disconnected, but we're working through it. I think the monolith didn't like what we were talking about. it's like, nope, stop. yeah, so what we were getting on was about was ⁓ we wonder if other .com darlings are going to basically deep six themselves in this process where they literally became like their own little monoliths where they just couldn't keep up with change. Now they're trying to double down on the past because they don't want to adapt.
Cameron Craig (05:19)
Yeah, 2026, baby.
Keith (05:42)
That's going to be one of the biggest themes we're going to get into later. We don't have to become an AI expert, but you've got to start. There is a new reality that is coming that people are ignoring right now. It's ambient intelligence, ambient computing, whatever you want to call it. It's just going to ramp up.
Cameron Craig (06:04)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I
think, you know, whether you're a
burn the ships or shoot your darling, whatever it is, your chosen metaphor for that nonsense. Like now's not the time to be hanging on to things. ⁓
Keith (06:17)
Yeah.
No, you're
going to see the Luddites come back again like the cotton gin, but it's like, it's going to be in everything. Like, because the model is going to go from large to small and they're just going to be embedded and just all kinds of stuff. And do we, we haven't even bought, we haven't even started buying knockoff Ram and GPU user NVMe from China with embedded AI and chips that is probably going to be, you know, some kind of state sponsored backdoor. Like no one ever thinks about.
What happened to all those Bitcoin miners in China that left? Where did they go? Like those dudes, I forget what news agency it was, but they were like doing a documentary and there were dudes in like, know, sweaty tank tops, like soldering these things together because they're getting paid like a probably a slave labor wage, whatever, in the middle of China, just trying to keep the thing spinning. Like you could easily put more ICs or more chips on those things and...
Cameron Craig (06:55)
Yeah.
Keith (07:21)
You only need this one behind your data center and you're inside and it's a massive security thing. So that's going to be something you're going to see too is like a, this is where the hacking part is important from what we look at is there's way more vulnerabilities than people realize.
Cameron Craig (07:36)
Well,
I mean, one of the fascinating things that I mean, speaking of that, and then we can get into futurism. I bought a peripheral that came yesterday, which is basically.
Keith (07:51)
That's
a 2000 name, a peripheral. I've already been calling it peripheral in ages.
Cameron Craig (07:53)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, well, OK. ⁓ So this particular peripheral I bought was dual screens that attached to my laptop, right? So you like unfold the thing, you clip it onto the, you know, your monitor in the middle and then you got a screen on either side to kind of do this. Right. Yeah, that you can just take with you, right. Plugs in through USB. So I was I was really curious why this thing came with like a USB
Keith (08:08)
sweet.
It's like a triple monitor now basically. Okay.
Cameron Craig (08:24)
C-A key, like old school, like thumb drive nonsense, right?
Keith (08:29)
like
a dongle to like license it or something.
Cameron Craig (08:31)
No, that had the instructions and the driver on it. And there was nowhere where you could download the It took me hours yesterday to finally find the driver online or find a driver that would work. And it comes from another company. But you know me, I'm pretty suspicious of a USB A, any key, any kind of thumb drive I'm suspicious of. Why am I putting this into my computer?
Keith (08:35)
⁓ huh.
Yeah.
It's like free Bitcoin.
Cameron Craig (09:00)
And you
know, like I'm reading the instruction, the printed instruction manual that came with it. And it's basically saying, oh, you you need this particular driver and then you're to have to tell, like if you're running on a Mac, you're to have to tell the Mac permissions in in the operating system, which again, I have. Two big screens in front of me that are running on my USB bus, I have a another portable monitor that I use for a different computer that.
Keith (09:12)
permissions.
Cameron Craig (09:29)
I take with me, but it was a little too fragile to take with, and that plugs right in and up comes the monitor. I don't know why this thing, I needed to grant it permissions to display and listen.
Keith (09:29)
Yeah, it's sketchy.
Yeah, so I had to do that with the Elgato prompter to the the new teleprompter I got because it's USB-C. It's not Thunderbolt So I think it doesn't see it as like a monitor. It's like some HUD or human interface device compliant I'm still skeptical to I'm like the friggin my like allowing this thing to see in my machine right now I'm like I'm not really cool with this but
Cameron Craig (09:48)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yep.
Well, and I intended to use this on my work laptop, right? I bought this thing not for the laptop that I use in addition to the desktop that I'm on now. I bought it so that I could tote this thing around between offices and basically have multiple monitors, because I need that. Yeah, and you know, like one, there's no way they're going to like,
Keith (10:14)
Yeah.
A real setup, yeah. Reading culture.
Cameron Craig (10:31)
A SEV1 ticket's going off somewhere if I plug a USB drive into my laptop.
Keith (10:35)
Yeah,
you should have done it to be like, is this thing legit? They're going to tell me if it's not.
Cameron Craig (10:39)
Well, so I went and found the driver online, downloaded it, loads right up, like no issues with the permissions on my work laptop. I'm like, okay.
Keith (10:47)
Wow. All right.
where did you buy from like amazon alibaba would you get it yet alright then i mean it's kinda become like alibaba with the e-commerce in because a lot of like counterfeit stuff but i mean you know i don't know fifty fifty depending if you're reputable or not
Cameron Craig (10:54)
Yeah, I it from Amazon. Yeah.
What?
Whatever, mean,
it's in somebody else's hands now. It's if it's a hack, somebody within my own company better be figuring that out, because I did all the things. I did not use the suspicious USB-C or USB-A key. ⁓ So.
Keith (11:28)
I mean, it's
an interesting design constraint when you think about they don't want to build and maintain a website in perpetuity. They just want to ship it and be done with it and just like send it out.
Cameron Craig (11:37)
It's not even their
driver. Like when Push came to shove, the driver I found was on a domestic website for a domestic software company that also retails, I'm gonna use the word again, peripherals. ⁓ So at least the thing's coming from some company in Sunnyvale, not somewhere else.
Keith (11:54)
referrals.
They're making FPGAs for DARPA, so you know, it's not that bad.
Cameron Craig (12:06)
Yeah, right. Somebody somebody's somebody's done the check somewhere.
But yeah, nevertheless, like your to your point, it's interesting that now these hardware companies that are probably not even really they're like more like systems integration. They're probably going down the block and grabbing, you know, tiny flat screens. And they're like, yeah, we make this thing that's a clip that's kind of like a interface like we need screens. And, know, they're
Keith (12:35)
You're fine. It's IPS probably, you know, it's that don't need OLED for a lot of these things. So it's like it's yeah.
Cameron Craig (12:39)
Yeah, it's exactly what it is. It's IPS.
You're absolutely right. And it's fine. Again, I'm not gonna be days in front of this thing. I just need it when I'm not in my home, not my home office, but my home office at the office where I've got the same setup that I have at home, two massive monitors plus the laptop over to the side. If I'm somewhere else, which I'm often somewhere else, I can't actually do my job without multiple monitors at this point.
Keith (13:05)
Yeah, I got a smaller MacBook Pro and at the bit I think the 14 I think it is not the 16 because I'm just like if I'm gonna be sitting somewhere I'm gonna jack in otherwise it's gonna be a quick like touch and go and I'd like the coffee shop or something and then I'm gonna like you know I want like lightness at this point instead of something huge and just heavy to like slip around so
Cameron Craig (13:25)
Well, Keith.
⁓
This is just gonna make you laugh. Not that I'm hawking this thing, but it is thin as cicadas wings. It totally is. I love it. It's like Seymour carry less, except for now you're carrying this thing with you. Yes!
Keith (13:39)
my god, that's totally made in China. ⁓
But wait, aren't cicadas locust or something? I think they're the same family, really?
Oh dude, that's a little sad. That's how they brand it, like dragon red too. Thinness's cicadas wings, that's amazing, oh my God. It's like Apple-ish branded. You could tell they decided that down the cube or down the mall to get the same kind of packaging as Apple had. Like, oh, it's good enough.
Cameron Craig (13:54)
Yeah, you later.
Yeah, they got the box and then just rewrapped it. Like probably if I peel off that wrapping, there's like, know, MacBook Pro underneath it.
Keith (14:12)
Yeah.
Yeah, you know, dude, like the more I think about like all this war stuff and everything going on, the geopolitical stuff, like China's built a hell of an industrial base that to go to like a giant strip mall and be like, okay, like, dude, they're stripping down 50 90s and making them like 48 gigs, 64 gig graphics cards now and just like taking the chips out, soldering new ones in, you know, someone sends in a, you know, a beat up card that is, they're just hooking up in parallel. And you know,
Cameron Craig (14:43)
Yeah.
Keith (14:44)
I don't know. I mean, there's a whole police state aspect that is kind of terrifying, but
Cameron Craig (14:47)
Well, mean,
the whole thing, you know, and then we'll get back to futurism. The whole thing is totally brilliant how it was done, right? Like, hey, you guys need a really cheap source of manufacturing.
Keith (15:03)
Santa's little factory, toy factory.
Cameron Craig (15:04)
And
you you can't build anything without showing the schematics, the plans, the whatever, right? And they're just like, huh. You know, it's like, interesting, you know, what else can we do with that? Like to your point, right? It's like, you're the engineer, you're basically borrowing the engineering from somewhere else because we're too lame to actually make the things here at a reasonable price.
Keith (15:11)
No. You know.
For a few more years, yeah, at least.
Cameron Craig (15:35)
For a few more years, yeah, maybe. But NetNet was like, they're building up their economy and we're pumping cash into their economy and at the same time, they're building up their IP. Like, they're just borrowing all of our IP to the point where they're just like, okay, got it. Now on to making things better, faster and cheaper. Like, here we go, right?
Keith (15:51)
Yeah.
I mean, if you think about like the World War Two wave, this is a Ures and Gemini that we're about to like pop back into now. Part of what kept us alive was just like the massive industrial base and the industrial output we had as a country. And it's like, they have that now. So I don't know, man. It's interesting times that we are in, but.
Cameron Craig (16:16)
Yep.
So, ⁓ before we go into our own futurism, is now a good time for us to revisit our friend from the past who is our favorite futurist.
Keith (16:28)
dude, yeah, like this is two conversations ago. You play this for me. And I was like, we need to start the next season two episode off of this.
Cameron Craig (16:36)
Okay, so one, much like, know, Keith and I anytime we speak anywhere, we're like, hey, disclaimer, this is our story. This is the way things have worked for us. So disclaimer, this is not our story. This is copyrighted material from Arthur C. Clarke from 1968, which is the 2001 book as an audio book.
We are not using this to promote ourselves. We are not using this in any of our marketing material. We are using this as a part of this episode to illustrate and educate based on something that we pulled out of his work of fiction that has been seminal in a lot of the work that we've done. And I, again, to kick off this conversation, I picked a couple of clips and Keith, you can steer me because I think ⁓ you had heard.
Keith (17:33)
Yeah, we, you know, our podcast is literally called the monolith, which is like the main character of 2001 space Odyssey. And what's really interesting about the audio book was that the monoliths were basically seated as a way to grant intelligence. And it was like a giant experiment. And that was a big change that wasn't as apparent in the movie when you watched it. And we listened to the clip. It, ⁓ it was either control or like a long.
Cameron Craig (17:33)
some of the things that we had.
Keith (18:02)
a long drawn out experiment, is very Capricorn, which is what the new moon was just about. And Capricorn is like the long plan. And when COVID hit, that was the destruction of that, because that was Saturn and Pluto. So structure and destruction, Saturn, Pluto, and Capricorn. And the last wave of that was a partisan reformation. So all these things were kind of like, all these gears were kind of turning in place. And I was like, oh, this is great, because this is just kind of tying everything together, because now we're going into an even bigger shift in February.
which hasn't happened in like 6400 years, is Saturn Neptune at the beginning of areas, which is going to give some really wild echoes from the past. that was pre-religion, pre-recorded history. So this is part of why everyone's kind of freaking out right now. I'm not really knowing what's going on. But yeah, so anyway, if this is the monolith and it's been seeding intelligence and ideas, and if it's like if AI has been the consciousness throughout the universe, who knows what this will see. But yeah.
Cameron Craig (18:57)
Who knows? We'll see. But so again,
Arthur C. Clark, ⁓ with Stanley Kubrick is a visualizer of this 1968 and Clark started writing this, ⁓ in idea form in 1965, after a 1964 meeting with Stanley Kubrick, to think about a teleplay that would ultimately become the movie 2001. So this is from chapter two. It's called the new rock.
Keith (19:28)
you rock.
Cameron Craig (19:31)
of intersection. Fantastic, fleeted and geometrical patterns flickered in and out of existence as the glowing grids meshed and unmeshed and the man-apes watched, mesmerized captives of the shining crystal. They could never guess that their minds were being probed, their bodies mapped, their reactions studied, their potentials evaluated. At first, the whole tribe remained half-
crouching in emotionless tableau as if frozen into stone. Then the manate nearest to the slab suddenly came to life. He did not move. All right. So that's one thing. And again, the context here is these are prehistoric men basically sitting around ⁓ seeing the monolith for the first time.
Keith (20:22)
Ahem.
Cameron Craig (20:27)
This is a follow on from that. Hang on one sec. Still more pointless things. Some held their hands out at arm's length and tried to touch their fingertips together. First with both eyes open, then with one closed. Some were made to stare at ruled patterns in the crystal, which became more and more finely divided until the lines had merged into a gray blur and all heard single, pure sound.
of varying pitch that swiftly sank below the level of hearing. When Moonwatch's turn came, he for...
So that ⁓ was an interesting set of things that I think I pulled. Hang on, let's see if I get the one that talks about evolution and experimentation. It was a very
in rolls of fat. From time to time they stirred lazily as they lolled at ease near the entrance of a cave, apparently at peace with the world.
awakening from a dream, abruptly realized where he was and led the tribe back to the caves. He had no conscious memory of what he had seen, but that night as he sat brooding at the entrance of his lair, his ears attuned to the noises of the world around him. Moonwatcher felt the first faint twinges of a new and potent emotion. It was a vague and diffuse sense of envy.
So again, these are all the things that are talking about, you know, this monolith showing pictures and grids and sounds, and it's starting to influence the evolution of these ancient humanoids, basically. OK, so this is last clip, I think, that I'm to play from this particular section. ⁓
nor its replicas scattered across half the globe expected to succeed with all the scores of groups involved in the experiment. A hundred failures would not matter when a single success could change the destiny of the world. By the time of the next new moon, the tribe had seen one birth and two deaths. One of these had
So think those are the ones that I wanted to play. wait, there's one more. There's one more. Sorry. Sorry, sorry.
but that remorseless mental control would not relax its grip. He was compelled to follow the lesson to the end, though all his instincts revolted against it. Those instincts had served his ancestors well in the days of warm rains and lush fertility, when food was to be had everywhere for... Sorry, hang on. Let me expand that for a second. No way his eyes, but that remorseless mental control would not relax its grip.
He was compelled to follow the lesson to the end, though all his instincts revolted against it. Those instincts had served his ancestors well in the days of warm rains and lush fertility, when food was to be had everywhere for the plucking. Now, times had changed, and the inherited wisdom of the past had become folly. The man-apes must adapt, or they must die.
the greater beasts who had gone before them and whose bones now lay sealed within the limestone hills. So Moon Watcher stared at the crystal monolith with unblinking eyes, while his brain lay open to its still uncertain manipulations. Often he felt nausea, but always he felt hunger, and from time to time his hands clenched unconsciously in the patterns that would determine his new...
way of life.
So we can maybe, I mean, we were laughing mainly because the term monolith comes up quite a bit. Yeah.
Keith (25:05)
Dude, okay so the first clip, it's like
it's the AI that's penetrating everybody's minds right now. The way that they're feeding back and getting the, they're putting in, it's like garbage in, garbage out. So if you just put in stupidity, it makes you think you're like a god. But it's giving everybody feedback at the same time. The second which is cool, which is it's sound, was the transmission that it used. It was like high frequency waves. It wasn't just information.
The third thing which is interesting was rib. The ribs makes things like the Bible, like the birth of man. Adam and Eve would have like the rib of Adam and Eve or something. ⁓ This is an experiment. this is single success changes the destiny of the world. So these monoliths were actually venture capitalists. They just need one win out of a bunch of failures and they're successful. Follow the lesson to the end. That's Saturn, that's Capricorn, that's like structure due to the end. Adapt or die, which we talked about a little bit, which is...
Cameron Craig (25:54)
Yep.
Keith (26:03)
One of the biggest predictions now is you have to get in the game in some way. You cannot just let the game be dictated to you. Like you have to try and open your mind to do something with AI, otherwise you're going to be given options that you're not going to like with how fast things are changing.
Cameron Craig (26:19)
Yeah, agreed. And I mean, it's funny to think about that, that in some ways, the internet, you know, is the the dropping of those monoliths around the planet. And now, like, to your point, AI is is sort of that training program that's coming in. mean, you know, one could say even some of the things the conventions of the past that we've developed over the last 25 years are also these.
evolutionary training mechanisms like the phone itself, the smartphone landing in all of our hands again is yet another one of the, it's like the mini monolith in your hand, you know, it's just.
Keith (26:58)
Dude, but it's also like a scrying mirror, like what the occultists used like hundreds of years ago, and some still do today, which it's like Black Mirror, the TV show on Netflix or whatever is literally a call about this. It's like esoteric analogies that they're slowly seeding into people's mind. So on that, the last thing, which is interesting, the Kubrick, I think Kubrick, the original monolith was a crystal monolith, like a, yeah, but it's like a crystal oscillator.
Cameron Craig (27:15)
Right.
Yes, in the book, it's clear.
Keith (27:28)
That's like the timing mechanism that keeps your watches, GPS, everything, statering on point at the same time. So I'm like, it's like a giant crystal oscillator trying to sync everybody up to put them in the same kind of polarity. So.
Cameron Craig (27:41)
Yeah.
Keith (27:43)
Man, there's so many ways to talk about this, because it's like, is it the US monolith where it's like, we're more freedom and egalitarian, or is it more like the Chinese monolith where it's like, no, no, no, we want peace and cohesion and like, know, ⁓ congruence amongst like the singularity or whatever.
Cameron Craig (27:59)
Or is it the off planet monolith that my son believes in, right? That, you know, like the book, that all of the things that we're doing are leading us to a place where we either perish or get off planet, right? And we go do something else or that we're training some other simulation to do this differently in either a different time or in a different place or in a different version of our own universe.
Keith (28:27)
I think there's a lot of truth to that 100%. I mean, we were definitely going to get off planet within our lifetime. And I think one of the biggest crazy revelations we're going to see is the last time Neptune was in Aries wasn't just the Civil War. It was when transatlantic telegraph cable was started to laid. It was also when the railroads got connected across the United States. So you add Saturn to that the beginning of Aries because Aries is like the start of the zodiac and it's like the physical body.
If you go from the first house, I think we're going to have the first foray into like teleportation because Neptune dissolves Saturn gives structure and it sounds nuts. But when you think about like in the 70s, we saw Star Trek was like Kirk and Spock or whatever, like a little tricorder guys talking to each other. People walk down the street, you know, just like talking to each other, like video chat. It's the same same shit. 50 years later, not even so.
Cameron Craig (29:15)
Yeah. mean, maybe
maybe it's not necessarily physical teleportation, but maybe it is our consciousness. Who knows? I don't know.
Keith (29:24)
Dude,
100%, like, there's a lot, I think it's Hans Morvac who talked about, I think he's a Carnegie Mellon, was, one of his theories was if you have enough memory on a hard drive, does that somehow create consciousness? I have to double check all this before I can put this out publicly, but like, that's, consciousness is gonna be the next, the really big final frontier, especially like with remote viewing and stuff.
Cameron Craig (29:48)
which
it's easier to transport that to different places, different times, et cetera, quickly than it is to move a physical body, right?
Keith (29:58)
Yeah,
well, it totally breaks the laws of physics from how we, you know, we're living this like Newtonian Cartesian world of like, and they take matrix algebra. That's like what, that's like the irony of what AI is. It's like a bunch of set of matrices. So I don't know. There's something in here. I don't think we don't know what the hell this is yet, but like this, is kind of how, I don't know if it's like the neurodivergent.
brain patterns or kind of the intuition or a combination of all of it. But it's like, there's something good, like there's like a ping there that you kind of like catch, like, okay, something there.
Cameron Craig (30:31)
So I
mean, to fast forward in the book really quickly so that we can get my awkward clip.
foisting out of the way. ⁓ As you know, Keith, the reason why this book has always been interesting to me is more around ⁓ the work that IU and others are doing currently, right, which is in the space of HCI and evolving HCI and ultimately being in a place where, you know, computing is ambient and it's there to assist humans wherever they need it, whenever they need it and however they need it, right? And so
Keith (31:01)
Cybernetics.
Cameron Craig (31:12)
as most people ⁓ know, eventually in the Kubrick film and also in the book, you get a very, very elegant portrayal of this in the character of Hal, who becomes in some ways on the spaceship a third character, right? Like he is as much a character on screen and in dialogue as the other two humans, the astronauts, Poole and Bowman. ⁓ And this...
for me has been again, seminal in how I think about human computer interaction. It always has been, but it's become much more relevant recently. So I pulled a couple of clips here that, you know, take us up through chapter 16 in the book. It's funny because honestly, when I downloaded the audio book and I like, cause I have a copy of the hard bound book here somewhere. But when I downloaded the book, I'm like,
I'm just going to fast forward to the chapters that are about the discovery and how, because the evolution part, it's like, kind of fascinating, but also kind of not fascinating. And then I was like, no, I'm just going to listen to the whole book. what better things do I have to do at five in the morning when I'm walking a dog, right? And those chapters ended up being as fascinating about where human life is at this moment. But let me play a couple of these clips that are.
Keith (32:13)
Yeah.
you
Cameron Craig (32:37)
basically near the middle to end of the book.
lunar light and sometimes when the Pacific was calm he could even see the moon glow shimmering across its face and he would remember nights beneath the palm trees of tropical lagoons if he had no regrets for these lost beauties he had enjoyed them all in his 35 years of life and he was determined to enjoy them again when he returned rich and famous meanwhile distance made them all the more precious
I don't know why clipped that. Never mind. All right. I think this one's actually legit. Hang ⁓ on. no less was a masterwork of the third computer breakthrough. These seem to occur at intervals of 20 years. And the thought that another one was now imminent already worried a great many people. The first had been in the 1940s, when the long obsolete vacuum tube had made possible such clumsy high speed morons as ENIAC and its successors.
Then in the 1960s, solid state microelectronics had been perfected. ⁓ sorry. Computer, no, state microelectronics had been perfected. With its advent, it was clear that artificial intelligences, at least as powerful as man's, need be no larger than office desks if one only knew how to construct them. Probably no one would ever know this. It did not matter.
In the 1980s, Minsky and Goode had shown how neural networks could be generated automatically, self-replicated, in accordance with an arbitrary learning program. Artificial brains could be grown by a process strikingly analogous to the development of a human brain. In any given case, the precise details would never be known, and even if they were, it would be millions of times too complex for human understanding. Whatever way it worked,
The final result was a machine intelligence that could reproduce, some philosophers still prefer to use the word mimic, most of the activities of the human brain and with far greater speed and reliability. It was extremely expensive and only a few units of the HAL 9000 series had yet been built, but the old jest that it would always be easier to make organic brains by unskilled labor was beginning to sound a little hollow.
Hal had been trained for this mission as thoroughly as his human colleagues and at many times their rate of input, for in addition to his intrinsic speed, he never slept. His prime task was to monitor the life support systems, continually checking oxygen pressure, temperature, hull leakage, radiation, and all the other interlocking factors upon which the lives of the fragile human...
I just need to 1964. ⁓
Keith (35:33)
It's crazy when you think about how far ahead this guy was.
Cameron Craig (35:36)
I mean, dude, it's it's unreal.
Keith (35:42)
I mean, we quoted Clark's third law in one of the presentations, which you hear people talk about, which is like, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Which it basically is at this point. It's all magic.
Cameron Craig (35:52)
Yes.
Yeah. Okay. Two more clips and then we're out.
that's all right leakage, radiation, all the other interlocking factors upon which the lives of the fragile human cargo depended. He could carry out the intricate navigational corrections and execute the necessary flight maneuvers when it was time to change course. And he could watch over the hibernators, making any necessary adjustments to their environment.
and doling out the minute quantities of intravenous fluids that kept them alive. The first generations of computers had received their inputs through glorified typewriter keyboards and had replied through high speed printers and visual displays. Hal could do this when necessary, but most of his communication with his shipmates was by means of the spoken word. Poole and Bowman could talk to Hal as if he were a human being and he would reply in the perfect...
idiomatic English he had learned during the fleeting weeks of his electronic childhood. Whether hell could actually think was a question which had been settled by the British mathematician Alan Turing back in the 1940s. Turing had pointed out that if one could carry out a prolonged conversation with a machine, whether by typewriter or microphones was immaterial, without being able to distinguish between its replies and those that a man might give, then the machine was thinking by any sensible definition of the word.
Hal could pass the Turing test with ease. The time might even come when Hal would take command of the ship. In an emergency, if no one answered his signal...
Let's see, I have one last clip, I believe.
Let's see if this one is relevant.
By 10... Okay, here we go. By 10 hundred, this would be finished and he would start on a study period. Bowman had been a student for more than half his life. He would continue to be one until he retired. Thanks to the 20th century revolutions in training and information handling techniques, he already possessed the equivalent of two or three college educations. And what was more, he could remember 90 % of what he had learned. 50 years ago...
He would have been considered a specialist in applied astronomy, cybernetics, and space propulsion systems. Yet he was prone to deny with genuine indignation that he was a specialist at all. Bowman had never found it possible to focus his interest exclusively on any subject. Despite the dark warnings of his instructors, he had insisted on taking his master's degree in general astronautics. A course with a vague and wooly syllabus designed for those whose IQs were in the low 130s and who had never...
reach the top ranks of their profession. His decision had been right. That very refusal to specialize had made him uniquely qualified for his present task. In much the same way, Frank Poole, who sometimes disparagingly called himself General Practitioner in space biology, had been an ideal choice as his deputy. The two of them, with, if necessary, help from Hal's vast stores of information,
could cope with any problems likely to arise during the voyage, as long as they kept their minds alert and receptive and continually re-engraved old patterns of memory. So for two hours, from 10-hundred to 12-hundred, Bowman would engage in a dialogue with an electronic tutor, checking his general knowledge or absorbing material specific to this mission. He would prowl endlessly over ship's plans. Sir? I pulled that last one. One.
because it talks about generalism. And two, it talks about systems thinking. And three, I'm calling this out, not to spoiler on the story, ⁓ Bowman is the only one who survives.
Keith (39:53)
I was gonna say that,
That's interesting. Forgot about that. He's okay.
Cameron Craig (40:11)
He's the only one that makes it out at the end. The ship gets destroyed. Obviously, Pool dies trying to fix the ship. ⁓
Bowman unplugs the artificial intelligence eventually and has to make do with lower level assistance from what's left of the computer. And then he has to basically be truly in charge of all the ship functions. And then, you know, as he eventually leaves the ship and becomes one with whatever the entity is. Yes. Yeah. So I thought that was fascinating that, you know,
Keith (40:44)
the monolith. Yeah.
Cameron Craig (40:51)
⁓ Clark goes through all of this amazing technology and what it can do for human beings, how technology in some ways and ⁓ force outside of humankind causes this evolution. But at the end of the day, the guy who basically was the generalist and wasn't like a specialist in any particular area, as just stated in that clip, is the guy that basically survives and evolves the furthest.
Keith (41:21)
and then basically merge with the entity at the end to become like the next phase of the entity, yeah.
Cameron Craig (41:25)
The next. Yes,
that's right. That's right.
Keith (41:29)
That's crazy. I didn't make that connection until now.
Cameron Craig (41:31)
And if you read
any of the other books, 2010 is kind of a little bit of a diverge, but 2061 and then 3001, you see that ongoing like merge of humankind into another species continue to come back and be revisited by humankind in some way. So Bowman ends up being this interlink between
that other world, you know, and it's lightly mentioned. It's not like they come back and really revisit this in depth, but you see that influence.
Keith (42:09)
So is there like,
so okay, so you see like traces of Bowman in the other books too. Okay, that's cool. Huh.
Cameron Craig (42:15)
You do. You do. Yeah.
As I'm continuing to read these reread these books, I will as those clips come up, I will bring that back.
Keith (42:25)
I'm willing to bet synchronistically that you're gonna find the time to go through the books and find the right passage it mixes with some kind of crazy news thing that's happening in the world and you'll be like, oh, by the way, it's Bowman.
Cameron Craig (42:38)
Yeah, so anyway, futurism, Keith. Like, our favorite futurist laid out 50 plus years ahead of his time.
Keith (42:45)
Yeah.
At least it makes you wonder about like AI and what people are talking like. I don't think there's any way to control all this stuff because if if you take the human, the ape brain, the human, what do call it? The human apes or the ape man or whatever? Man, it's the ⁓ we're going to try and use to go to war with each other. So if you do like a zero sum game prisoners dilemma, everyone's going to defect, which we've talked about in the DEFCON talk. You know, they're going to try and work in their own self-interest, which is to build more weapons.
Cameron Craig (43:04)
Man-Apes. Man-Apes.
Keith (43:21)
which becomes an acceleration on everybody's side, which accelerates the whole thing because everyone's trying to find their way to get to the next wave, which I don't know. I don't know if it becomes like a Borg, like Star Trek kind of thing. That was the attempt of Saturn in Aquarius post-COVID, which is like everyone eats the same thing. They think the same thing. They wear the same colors and whatever. ⁓ I think this is more about finding space to express
the residents of your own individuality within this domain, but people aren't ready to be open to that yet because things haven't gotten painful enough for everybody everywhere at the same time to be like, okay, we need to back up and be like, we're still human. And that's what the big discussion is about all this, is like, what does it mean to actually be human when you can start doing head in a jar brain case kind of thing?
Your body, physical body might survive and live forever, but your brain, your mind might be able to in the next like 30, 40, 50 years. And you know, this, this tech is coming. Like I think there's a lot of it's already, they already have it. Like when, when Elon Musk talks about they're building robots, like dude, they already got the factory set up. They just haven't told anybody about it yet. Like
Cameron Craig (44:35)
They just got to prevent them all from falling over at demos.
Keith (44:38)
Yeah, but sure. Do you think that's part of the the the ruse to to make it seem like that? Because remember, if everybody lived, felt like they aged a decade in 2020 and by 2030, it's going to be 100 years of change by 2040, a millennium or a thousand years to change. That means the military is like 500 years ahead right now, if they're 30 years ahead. So, you know, I don't know how to keep a hold of all these secrets like DARPA and stuff. But I mean, it makes you wonder.
How much of this is, because if we are on the Civil War theme right now with like Neptune and Aries, part of the Civil War was like photography, right? That was a new medium, because photography is ruled by Neptune and like creativity. part of what we realized is that like some of the photographers took creative license and they rearranged bodies to make it look worse than things actually were for certain battles. So was like, it wasn't real, it was a deception. So that's gonna be heavy right now too, but you're also gonna see a lot of like truths.
on things coming out. Look at the Epstein files that came out where they redacted but didn't redact the PDF, which like, come on. How many years has the government redacted and redacted? That was like an unintentional, intentional whoops. it's like, know, but who knows what the hell's really going on? But there's a lot of stuff. I think the technology ultimately is gonna be a great liberator.
Cameron Craig (45:51)
Yeah, of course. Of course it was.
Keith (46:05)
But the point now is I think you have to kind of be the generalist and do the systems thinking thing and figure out what is kind of resonant with you while you're still making the survival points happen for money or whatever. Because things are going to keep changing a lot. mean, this is going to be a big year. I mean, not to try and be hyperbolic or scare people. ⁓ I'm still optimistic.
But think, yeah, I mean, do look at like RAM and NVMe prices and GPUs. Like I'm building a computer right now. An RTX 5080 went up 50 % from like 900 to like 1500 bucks. 128 gigs, a DDR5, like 3200, like speed is like $1,112. It's not even super fast. So it's, know, and if like war happens or even like little skirmishes and supply chains get even more choked, like
Cameron Craig (46:48)
Yeah, I know.
Keith (47:03)
going to be $10,000 to buy the same kind of computer in the future, which it's like, do we really have to rent everything at that point? And we have to interact through terminals. And then we have to be in the model at that point to even just participate in society. So I don't know.
Cameron Craig (47:19)
Yeah, I mean,
think that's you're bringing up great points, right? Like, and again, if you centralize all that computing or intelligence or whatever you want to call it, ⁓ the drive to have that come from centralized places, I think is high, you know, like that I think you're gonna see that this year, where ⁓
Keith (47:42)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (47:46)
I think there is going to be tension this year between what is the value that we're getting out of all of this AI investment. And I don't mean that at the core. You'll see it play out in corporate environments. You absolutely will. But I think what's going to become much more apparent to the human being at large on the street is what are we actually giving up as a society to make
this stuff work, right? ⁓ I think it's easy for one part of the population to look at another part of the population. So in this case, blue collar work versus white collar work and basically say like, aha, finally, know, white collar, like job attrition and job decimation is finally here after 60 years or whatever, 80 years. ⁓ But that's not the end of it, right?
that is not where it stops and all of sudden it's like, the overeducated are finally getting their due. and I think what's happening with the AI thing is you either are gonna go all in as a company, as a country, as a society, and you're gonna give up other things, right?
Keith (48:55)
their fair share what they deserve yeah class warfare
person.
Cameron Craig (49:15)
cheap energy to heat and light homes, ⁓ which I think where you live and where I live is not cheap energy already, but that's, you know, it's gonna continue to probably punish the coasts in some way. ⁓ You know, and at the same time, there's going to be a drive which may eventually like equalize some of these costs out so that companies and governments can still make
Keith (49:24)
No, it's stupid.
Cameron Craig (49:44)
these investments palatable because to your point, by centralizing all that intelligence and controlling that intelligence in some way, you're in a place where you control the population and, you know, back to your bits, bits, not bombs. Like I think.
Keith (49:59)
zero
marginal cost to control the world. Yeah, the hands of a few controlling the of the many.
Cameron Craig (50:02)
That,
yep. And so I think those are the things that I think I start to get curious about. I won't put a judgment on it to say negative or positive, but like I get curious about that dynamic. And I think you're gonna see a bunch of that play out this year.
Keith (50:23)
Yeah, you're gonna see, I think if cities get worse, crime wise, to the point where they can't do the mark to market stat counting, like how they're kind of like not faking the numbers, but the way they count, because it's accounting, it's not always true, it's how they're counting shit, it's like off balance sheet, whatever, SPACs or not SPACs, SPVs, special purpose, the same kind of thing where it's like not really ⁓ clear what's going on.
then politicians would be like, we have all these cameras everywhere and we've been storing the data. It gets to become a slippery slope really fast. having worked in these large legacy systems for 20 years almost now, each of us, it's like, the more you try and put control of the whole thing, the more fragile it becomes. It requires too many resources, too much coordination. Even with AI, it's...
I mean, the military is hooking it up with GROK AI or must say AI, whatever. I I think this is even more reason to have the individual like at least try to learn these things at some some some trying to get some literacy so you know what's going on, because almost it's like your kids are using Roblox or these other apps, you don't really know what the hell's going on with the threats are what what are they really being exposed to at some point and, you know,
Cameron Craig (51:48)
Yeah,
I live without it all the time.
Keith (51:50)
Yeah, I mean dude, it's it's like a whole other freaking full-time job and I think people are just kind of like They're burned out and they're at the wits end and you know, it's like with inflation It's it gets hard the dollar goes short, know, it doesn't go as far as it used to Prices are still going up regardless. He's just talked about the GPUs and just computer parts Let alone like food and eggs and stuff like basics ⁓ But yeah, you know that's I think that's part of why we like doing this podcast or we want to do it is
Again, it's like the systems thinking, the economics, the astrology, the hacking. These are the four food groups that are like really integral to understanding how to be like literate for where things are going because it still gives you some semblance of like autonomy and security, but ability to like build a complete picture from incomplete information. I think at least.
Cameron Craig (52:40)
Yeah, I agree with you. I totally agree with you. think ⁓ as you and I kind of laid out this episode, it wasn't just like, here's everything that we see. And I mean, this isn't everything we see. think over the next months, we'll start to continue to refine the things that we're seeing. But one of the things that you and I had said, ⁓
Keith (52:57)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (53:04)
about this particular episode is we wanted to reiterate some of the things that I think are kind of the basics. And you just reset the pillars that I think we'll be talking about coming into this year and this, again, in air quotes, season. ⁓ But I think maybe one of the things I wanted to make sure we talked about in this, ⁓ at the back half of this episode, because we're coming up on almost an hour, ⁓
Keith (53:18)
Hehehehe
Cameron Craig (53:31)
is the things to remember again, because I think, and you had said it really eloquently right before we started recording, which is you kind of have to remember what's important in this moment. And I think the thing that I wanted to reiterate, which you just were starting to do, is you got to stay light and you can't try and own stuff. Like I think of last...
Keith (53:58)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (53:58)
year and last season. That's one of the things to bring forward into this year is it's not just being a generalist. It's really detaching from a lot of the things from your past that you're sort of like maybe hung on to and maybe you're like, I got to keep carrying these things with me. Like now is the time to not do that. It's like look at the things that you have and evaluate them, whether those are the skills that you have, some of the things you need to take forward, a lot of things you probably don't, you know.
Keith (54:27)
Mm.
Cameron Craig (54:28)
Like for me, one of the most painful things about the whole, you know, last year, and we touched on this at multiple points last year, is this idea of like interface design, right? Like back to the very tangibles of being a designer. ⁓ I am so glad in the almost third week of January, that I had the foresight over the last...
year, well, it's like three years, but to act on it over the last year to start to move my world and the people that work with and for me away from that commodity. And it's been painful to get people away from that. But you know, as a skill set, it's one of the things like lighten load people, lighten the load, lighten the delivery, hand this off to processes and machines.
Keith (55:09)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (55:26)
and start to get, go deep on design with a, I don't know if it's a lowercase D or capital D, but like the verb of design, right? Like every human being goes through a design process when they are innovating and building and coming up with the next new thing. And like we are doubling down on that. It's like any cycle you have any spare time to experiment or get curious.
absolutely double down on figuring out the new, the next, the what else could I think through, what else could I be curious about. And sure, some things you may have to maintain in your day job, but your day job is no longer gonna be about the things that you were doing even six months ago. And it...
Keith (56:17)
No, this is a
phase transition point of the structure of corporations are going to fundamentally change here.
Cameron Craig (56:25)
Yeah, and so
don't do it to yourself because like the building blocks, the foundations, all of these things are shifting around you. The last thing that you as the individual who is dealing with these things and trying to be a generalist, do not hang on to the things that you love from your past. Hang on to the things that you think have value going forward and try. And this is what you were saying. It's like.
try your damnedest to start integrating new skills, new curiosity, and ultimately like a bigger picture. Because if you are down trying to protect the things that you valued from your past, you're just going to get. Annihilated, and I don't mean that in a purely negative, it's just you are going to like start to move with the shaking versus kind of like standing there and figure out like how to stay independent. Yeah.
Keith (57:17)
It's like a riptide.
You're going to pulled rather than directing or moving with things intentionally. It's not about is my job going to exist. It's about less corporations that are large are going to exist with the ⁓ capitalization structures that they're used to with the cheap debt and the way that debt gets ⁓
Cameron Craig (57:18)
as the shaking's happening.
Yes. And you want your head above water as you're getting pulled.
Keith (57:47)
allocated is going be more for conflict or building things for like think World War II and how like not to be like oh everything's gonna end it's so you don't you know that's one ethical thing but the thing I really like too when you started on this was like the mindset letting getting your mindset light and load not taking you know if there's like family stuff or whatever like even on an existential kind of bent like work on getting rid of that shit too because that will help you move ahead
And I mean, that's part of why I'm building this computer and scanning books. And I'm literally shredding like 20 years of taxes right now and scanning stuff just to not have the freaking paperwork around because it's just get a digital, have a backup and yeah, you know, just go from there. But, know, again, it's it's a balance of how you make a life out of this. But, you know, there's a lot more opportunity for everybody.
It just requires you to lighten the load and not be so rigid by, how do I say, the rules and constructs that you bound yourself by previously that you evoked in yourself. Like, I have to be this or I am this. mean, dude, even like as a chief of staff now, like, I don't know, who knows what's gonna happen in the next year. I mean, it's just a title at this point, but it's just, you make things happen or you don't, you know, and that's it.
Cameron Craig (59:12)
Yeah,
yeah, I mean, I think, again, I think there's a ton of opportunity as well, like you had said earlier. So I don't wanna end my part of this episode on a negative note, because I think there's a lot to be curious about, and I think there's a lot of opportunity to be had. I think it's just how you set yourself up coming into it.
Like you said, it's the mindset shift. you, if you approach things from an opportunistic and curious standpoint, you're going to succeed. Like, I go back to the, the, thing that we said at some point last year, which is the entire structure that we've been working in, terms of, you know, web-based internet-based, like things that are delivered the bits, if you will, everything's in beta. And with that comes.
Keith (59:49)
Yeah, curiosity.
dude.
Cameron Craig (1:00:07)
so much opportunity to do things new, different, and better.
Keith (1:00:12)
Be like Dave.
Cameron Craig (1:00:14)
Be like Dave.
Keith (1:00:15)
You're going
to you got to integrate. He becomes the to understand the monolith. You got to become the monolith so you can change from the inside out. That's it.
Cameron Craig (1:00:21)
Yep. Dude. ⁓ So good. Well said. Well said. All right.
Keith (1:00:24)
Be like Dave.
That's good. I think it's a great first first episode for the next year. This is gonna be a banger of a year. I mean, we got a Chinese New Year coming up. You're the fire horse. It's gonna be fast and furious. We went from this watery muck to like the engines firing and got cleared out. So things about to start moving really quick. So yeah.
Cameron Craig (1:00:51)
Yeah, yeah,
I'm excited to see what happens next.
Keith (1:00:56)
Yeah, me too. This is good. We're finding our stride. We're getting our the the tech gremlins worked out We got new, know, both of us have new gear that we're rocking. So it's you know, we're making it happen
Cameron Craig (1:01:05)
Yeah, it's getting better, but it still has teething, so bear with us.
Keith (1:01:10)
You know, at least we're heading in our direction. We're being like Dave, heading towards the monolith.
Cameron Craig (1:01:14)
Yes. Yep.
All right, Keith. Happy January.
Keith (1:01:20)
Yeah, dude, happy January. Happy New Year. I'll catch you in the next one. All right. Later. You too, Later.
Cameron Craig (1:01:23)
All right. Thanks, man. Appreciate you.
See ya.