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Welcome back to the
local first FM podcast.

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We're currently on holiday break, but
we've prepared a special episode for you,

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which was recorded as a Twitter space
conversation between Gordon Brander,

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Peter Van Hardenberg, and Jess Martin.

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This conversation explores the ideas
and trade offs of apps versus files.

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I hope you like it.

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All right.

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I guess we're going to get
started here pretty soon.

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So my thinking on this would feel
something like we've all been at a

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conference and we've heard an interesting
talk, maybe enlightening talk even,

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where the person shared like five
minutes of thoughts, but not even like

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a full, they didn't fully elaborate
on everything they wanted to say.

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And the two of us said, Hey, you
want to go sit down at a conference

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table and talk through this?

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Cause I feel like there's
some interesting stuff here.

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And I have thoughts on it, and I
would like to work them out, out loud.

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So that's kind of my framing.

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I love that.

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We are all, I think, building in one way
or another, around this problem as well.

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Is that right, Jess?

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Yeah, more or less.

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Yeah.

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Do you want to maybe, like, recap
what the motivating question was?

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Absolutely.

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the reason this is called File, Symbol,
App, File over App is, Kepano from

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Obsidian posted a little, I guess
a Twitter post that also he has, I

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guess there is a link on his website
to a fuller article about this.

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And it's a philosophy that,  Kepano holds.

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And then the tool called Obsidian,
also embodies this philosophy.

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And, I'm not gonna go
into the whole thing now.

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I'm gonna kind of assume that most people
are, can like, go and read the, the post,

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and kind of get his thoughts, more fully.

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But I, the basic idea is that the tools
that we use should store that data.

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In a way that we own the data,
and he calls that files, and

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that we, and that the data lives
beyond  the application itself.

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So once we've, like, even if the app
goes away, we've still got the file,

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and that file gives us some ability
to, continue interacting with that

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data that we've spent such a hard
time, or had such a long time creating.

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That's the, that was the impetus.

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And I think the reason that I wanted
to chat about it and reached out to

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Gordon and Peter reached out as well,
is because I mostly agree with what

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Kepano is saying, and yet there are
some subtleties at which I, I think

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that probably we would, if Kepano was
here, that we would, we would part ways.

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So I'm curious to kind of work
out where the subtleties are and

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then talk about, you know, some
real systems that embody this.

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Well, let me, let me make the opposing
case because I think it's important

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to have both perspectives here, which
is files got their asses kicked.

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Right?

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Like, you want to email
people your Google Docs?

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That, that's the case here?

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Oh, I get it.

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I get it.

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Yeah.

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You don't want to be able
to share a link to a thing.

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You want to have to send it and then
choose a file name for it and get it back.

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And then, something, something,
merging, something, question mark?

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Make a small change, change the
name of the file, send it back,

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final Underscore, final, March

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7th, 24th, final, final, as
submitted, dot, doc, dot, you

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know, word, x, dot, whatever.

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so I mean, files got beat
because they're worse.

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What people want is places, not things.

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And so, okay, now I'm going to,
I'm going to undermine my argument,

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but like the desirable properties
of a Google doc are that a Google

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doc is a place, not a thing, right?

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So when you join a Google
doc, you are given a key.

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To a place where you
can go and collaborate.

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Now, everything that's wrong with Google
docs also falls out of this, I think.

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But like, what's great about a file
is also what's bad about a file.

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What's great about a file is that it's
a thing that you have, you can't take it

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away from somebody else who has it,  but
also they can't take it away from you.

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Right.

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They have a copy.

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They can edit it privately.

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Right.

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They can share it themselves.

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They can decide what
they want to do with it.

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But like, there are lots of power
dynamics as well in terms of

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like, places versus things, right.

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Which is like, if you've given someone
a thing, it's hard to get it back.

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But if you let someone into a
place, you retain perimeter control.

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You can choose who's let in, in the
future, if they're allowed back.

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Right.

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And while there's sort of a fiction about
like actually retaining control over

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data, like You know, I can screenshot it.

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I can copy paste it.

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I can exfiltrate any number of ways.

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You know, that's like an extra step
I have to take versus if I email

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you a PDF, you've just got it.

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So I think like, that's the, that's
the beauty of the place is that it

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gives people, it gives the person who
creates the data a lot more agency

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over its destiny,  and it gives
you a natural collaboration point,

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you know, kind of by definition.

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Yeah.

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And I think, I know that Gordon was.

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Wanting to talk about collaboration as
well as like a natural place where files

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kind of fall down But I think one of the
things that you're mentioning here One

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of the things that I think is included
in the file over app that isn't mentioned

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explicitly is the file system, right?

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It's the it's the container for the
file of like where does that file live?

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What is the place at which it actually
lives because it does have a place.

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It's just not a  Internet
accessible place via URL.

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and I think that is, that's actually
part of Kipano's argument is that

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the place where the file lives
is a better place than the cloud.

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He's saying the file lives on a local
file system on a device that you

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control, like a hard drive that is yours.

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And that makes it.

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in some place, in some sense
is a special place or a better

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place than some of the cloud.

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And that's what you were mentioning as
well, Peter, that like the cloud places

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enable, certain things, file system shaped
spaces,  places enable certain things.

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Like, how can we get the
best of both of those worlds?

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Oh, well, that's a different thing, right?

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You're claiming like, also, this is a
little bit of a category error, right?

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Like you're arguing, Like
Apple over refrigerator.

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Oh, between file and app?

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You're talking about Kepano or
the argument that I just made?

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Well, just the, the sort of
framing of the discussion, right?

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Like, there are plenty of
apps that work on files.

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Right?

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It's, it's not The problem here is, Like,
apps do not imply the death of files.

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But there is a culture and a
community set of values and certain

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sets of expectations, right?

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Like, are we talking about
mobile apps or web apps?

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You know, there, this is a, like a,
I think there's a, there's a lot of

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articulation points potentially here.

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For sure.

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And I think the only point that
I was making to try and simplify

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that, that first point is just where
does the thing live is whether the,

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whether the file or the app, is
the file living on my local device?

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Is it living in the cloud?

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how do I get to it?

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Do I have to have a network
connection to get to it?

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Can I get to it, locally
without a network connection?

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I think those are all wrapped
into Kipano's thinking about

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the philosophy of File Over App.

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Yeah, I guess, Kipano and, and all of us
are kind of, you know, thinking through

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this problem from different perspectives.

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I think he's making a pretty
strong rhetorical point.

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I guess I, I prefer to look at
this in terms of design goals and

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kind of the qualities of different
materials that you can work with

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rather than what's good or what's bad.

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Though I am personally, I'm very drawn
to capturing my notes in files myself.

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You know, I've got 10 years worth of
notes, you know, in a folder that syncs,

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and I've used plenty of SaaS tools over
the years, some of which have gone out

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of business and I've lost those thoughts.

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So when I think about, you
know, why files, why, why is

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Kapano interested in files?

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you know, there's some areas that
I resonate with and I, you know,

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I think files, to your point, they
live in a place that you control.

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the file system is a sort
of user on substrate.

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It's old.

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It was designed in, you know, the
sixties and seventies and didn't

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anticipate a lot of the things that
we ended up doing with networks.

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It has a lot of problems around
security and conflicts and many

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other things that we can get into.

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But I guess the one thing it does do.

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That the web tends not to do and
many apps tend not to do is it does

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leave you in control of that content.

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And that's kind of interesting
because it means often you can

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open that data in multiple apps.

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no one can

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tell you no.

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That the opening in multiple apps
was the other side of this thing that

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I think is like, not actually true.

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Except in a few very narrow
cases, which are the ones that

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programmers live in, but that much
of the rest of the world does not.

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Well, you know, much of the rest of
the world doesn't live on desktop

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machines with file systems anymore.

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I think, again, it's just, it's
not about it is or it isn't.

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It's about, there are different
jobs that people are solving.

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I think, you know, there are
actually a number of things

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that open up in multiple apps.

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They tend to have strong power laws.

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Like there's only a handful that end up.

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working out in this way, but I think
that it's better when you have this

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sort of user owned substrate where those
use cases can emerge, permissionlessly.

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Well, the thing is,

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like, I'm reflecting on like the file
format wars of the nineties, right.

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And like the EU legislation to try
and like force Microsoft to open,

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you know, the office suites file
formats to other participants.

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And, you know, I don't think that
was terribly successful, but, you

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know, that, that this is, um, just
because you have the file doesn't mean

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that you really own it in a sense.

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Like there are certain properties
of it that are quite desirable.

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And I think this longevity is,
is really remarkable and a really

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excellent point to bring up, but yeah,
there's a tension here between like,

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open file does not imply openness.

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Sure, though that can
emerge retroactively.

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Like we saw that happen with PSD
and with, you know, the doc format.

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Like PDFs were proprietary, right?

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Like they I was going to say PDFs

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the same way.

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So the thing that lets that
emerge is that,  that substrate

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that belongs to the user.

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If it was up to the app, if it was
up to Photoshop, they would say, no,

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a competitor can't open up our file.

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but they don't get to make that choice.

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I can open it up and, you
know, Affinity Designer or in.

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some sort of other app.

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And we saw the same thing happen
around image formats, around

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video formats, around 3d formats.

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They tend to be things that are pretty
low level and have like very broad

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expressive power so that there's
a wide range of jobs to be done.

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That people want to, to do with them.

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I also think there's like a
Lindy effect around these things.

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They consolidate around a few, like
text, plain text has a lot of problems,

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but I fully expect it's going to be
here in, you know, 10 years, 20 years,

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maybe even a hundred years,   define
it in whatever way you like, but I,

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I suspect whatever way you define it,
it's going to last longer than, you

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know, the, the Notion API, like notion.

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com.

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Oh, certainly.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Yeah, I guess I'm just
pointing out plain text.

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It's, I often think of
it as a fixed point, but.

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You know, if you look back at, the
history of plain text, right, we go

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from like ASCII encoding and having
to, you know, I don't know if you

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were ever opened up like, fileid.

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diz from like Eastern European countries,
which had different ASCII encodings than

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your, you know, Windows computer did,
back in the like late eighties, early

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nineties, but you get these sort of,

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Yeah, plain text across Windows and
Mac had, different file endings.

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That's right, yeah.

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You would hand a text file back
and forth, and it would, you

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wouldn't have line breaks where you
expected them to be, or you'd have

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additional line break characters.

228
00:11:14,478 --> 00:11:16,198
Control M symbols, yeah.

229
00:11:16,868 --> 00:11:20,228
no, that's, I thought, there was,
there was a couple areas, like,

230
00:11:20,388 --> 00:11:23,285
I think, Gordon made the point
that Kapano's making a really

231
00:11:23,285 --> 00:11:24,895
interesting rhetorical argument here.

232
00:11:25,162 --> 00:11:28,222
I love that he picks a fight
here, and that he has a very, it's

233
00:11:28,222 --> 00:11:31,032
a really nice mantra, but he's
definitely cheating a little bit.

234
00:11:31,352 --> 00:11:35,402
He cheats files as if they don't
have an encoding, like, as if, like,

235
00:11:35,422 --> 00:11:39,752
plain text is some given thing,
but plain text is an encoding.

236
00:11:40,022 --> 00:11:44,702
that we had to, like, as you come to
adopt it widely enough that there are a

237
00:11:44,712 --> 00:11:47,828
large set of readers for that file format.

238
00:11:47,848 --> 00:11:51,248
And I think that when you get
beyond, I think whether it's

239
00:11:51,288 --> 00:11:54,718
programmer usage or not, it's when
you get beyond the document format.

240
00:11:54,788 --> 00:11:58,660
That's when things start to
get,  this argument is more

241
00:11:58,660 --> 00:12:01,046
difficult to, not as clear.

242
00:12:01,561 --> 00:12:06,321
because, you know, I, like canvases,
for example, are everywhere now.

243
00:12:06,411 --> 00:12:12,231
And there's no single file format for
exporting the contents of a canvas,

244
00:12:12,231 --> 00:12:17,427
whether it's Muse export or tldraw has the
tldr file, all of these things, they're

245
00:12:17,427 --> 00:12:20,587
not compatible with one another,  it
feels like the early days of text files,

246
00:12:20,627 --> 00:12:24,637
like BDH was just mentioning, where
you've got a bunch of different formats.

247
00:12:25,267 --> 00:12:28,497
And the weird part about saying
file over app is that you still

248
00:12:28,497 --> 00:12:30,707
need a reader for the file.

249
00:12:30,882 --> 00:12:34,462
Like you have to have some code
somewhere that reads that file.

250
00:12:34,572 --> 00:12:37,732
And so it saying files are
better than apps or files or

251
00:12:37,792 --> 00:12:39,082
should be preferred over apps.

252
00:12:39,572 --> 00:12:42,462
It's like, well, a file without
an app is literally useless.

253
00:12:42,502 --> 00:12:46,639
Like you have to have an app to,
manipulate that file in some way.

254
00:12:46,889 --> 00:12:48,019
Can you define what you mean?

255
00:12:48,159 --> 00:12:50,829
Like the word app is, is
carrying a lot of water here.

256
00:12:50,849 --> 00:12:53,139
Can you, can you unpack that word a bit?

257
00:12:53,579 --> 00:12:54,019
Sure.

258
00:12:54,049 --> 00:12:58,119
I think when I simplify file over app, I
think what he's saying is data over logic.

259
00:12:58,119 --> 00:12:58,169
Okay.

260
00:12:59,269 --> 00:13:05,309
In other words, the, the data or data over
behavior, the data stored at rest in some

261
00:13:05,309 --> 00:13:09,552
way that you can carry it into the future,
own it, copy it from device to device,

262
00:13:09,572 --> 00:13:11,682
that's his idea for files, I believe.

263
00:13:11,930 --> 00:13:18,235
and he's making that, I think he's
making, And then for app, he's saying,

264
00:13:18,255 --> 00:13:24,002
he's basically, I feel like collapsing,
apps into databases, basically, of

265
00:13:24,002 --> 00:13:25,612
like databases that you don't own.

266
00:13:25,861 --> 00:13:29,335
you can't take your individual
records from that database and,

267
00:13:29,395 --> 00:13:30,655
and do something with them.

268
00:13:30,655 --> 00:13:32,849
They're stored in this,  mash of things.

269
00:13:33,162 --> 00:13:36,769
at least that's why I understood it is
like data over the application logic.

270
00:13:36,952 --> 00:13:39,712
The term we use at Ink & Switch
is tools, not apps.

271
00:13:39,777 --> 00:13:41,337
Can  you expand on that a little bit?

272
00:13:41,996 --> 00:13:47,476
the concept is that an app in its
sort of cultural construction, though

273
00:13:47,476 --> 00:13:51,476
not necessarily in its technical
requirements, generally implies that,

274
00:13:51,946 --> 00:13:53,756
you know, it holds the data inside it.

275
00:13:53,766 --> 00:13:57,746
I think mobile apps and web apps both
have different kind of habits here, right?

276
00:13:57,756 --> 00:14:01,431
Like, For the most part, a mobile
app is a hermetically sealed box.

277
00:14:01,531 --> 00:14:02,911
Nothing gets in or out of it.

278
00:14:03,217 --> 00:14:06,571
You can't open your Apple Notes
in Dropbox or, you know, Notepad

279
00:14:06,571 --> 00:14:08,321
or, you know, anything else.

280
00:14:08,564 --> 00:14:12,184
That's not necessarily true, but it
is practically, culturally the case.

281
00:14:12,641 --> 00:14:16,641
And so the idea is that tools operate
on some kind of material, right?

282
00:14:16,641 --> 00:14:18,891
And so Obsidian has strong tool culture.

283
00:14:19,491 --> 00:14:19,691
Right?

284
00:14:19,691 --> 00:14:22,791
Like one of the interesting things
with Obsidian and reflecting on

285
00:14:22,791 --> 00:14:26,971
Gordon's comments is just that like
Markdown and like plain, Obsidian

286
00:14:26,971 --> 00:14:28,291
doesn't operate on plain text.

287
00:14:28,291 --> 00:14:31,021
It operates on Markdown, but
there's no such thing as Markdown.

288
00:14:31,031 --> 00:14:35,341
There's like as many Markdowns as
there are apps that use some grammar

289
00:14:35,341 --> 00:14:38,381
of Markdown, but you get like a
certain amount of interoperability

290
00:14:39,901 --> 00:14:42,881
because it's like these really
nice, graceful degradation patterns.

291
00:14:43,371 --> 00:14:43,671
Yeah.

292
00:14:43,671 --> 00:14:45,111
Markdown is like an escalator.

293
00:14:45,111 --> 00:14:45,861
It can't break.

294
00:14:45,861 --> 00:14:47,371
It can only become text.

295
00:14:47,831 --> 00:14:48,191
Right.

296
00:14:48,941 --> 00:14:53,231
So like, it's kind of an inspired choice
from that perspective, but I think your,

297
00:14:53,261 --> 00:14:59,342
your point is well taken like these
formats, they tend to layer and it sort

298
00:14:59,342 --> 00:15:02,892
of necessarily like interoperability
is an ecological condition.

299
00:15:02,912 --> 00:15:04,362
It's something that emerges over time.

300
00:15:04,402 --> 00:15:05,357
You don't design it.

301
00:15:05,627 --> 00:15:08,623
This is often, this, this is actually
why for me, sort of permissionless

302
00:15:08,623 --> 00:15:12,943
substrates, substrates that belong
to the user where their data saved

303
00:15:12,943 --> 00:15:17,224
seems important because it allows
interoperability to emerge retroactively.

304
00:15:18,053 --> 00:15:23,493
But in any case, like these things,
they tend to emerge over time where,

305
00:15:23,493 --> 00:15:27,863
you know, one person creates a format,
another kind of app implements it.

306
00:15:28,277 --> 00:15:32,147
it doesn't happen often, but when it does
happen, it tends to be very valuable.

307
00:15:32,537 --> 00:15:34,117
It's often oppositional though, isn't it?

308
00:15:34,417 --> 00:15:37,207
It's often oppositional and
often happens in layers.

309
00:15:37,227 --> 00:15:41,960
Like I think that, you know, text
is on top of, you know, bytes and

310
00:15:41,960 --> 00:15:43,920
then markdown is on top of text.

311
00:15:43,965 --> 00:15:47,660
And then we have like Obsidian
layering their own sort of like bespoke

312
00:15:47,960 --> 00:15:49,750
markup forms on top of markdown.

313
00:15:50,470 --> 00:15:54,627
And, and these layers tend to move at
different speeds with the lowest layers

314
00:15:54,657 --> 00:15:56,507
kind of necessarily moving slower.

315
00:15:56,677 --> 00:15:59,757
Like the part of the problem that's
standardized and that people can

316
00:15:59,757 --> 00:16:03,567
interoperate around is necessarily
the part that has to move slowly.

317
00:16:03,774 --> 00:16:05,654
Well markdown's not standardized, right?

318
00:16:05,714 --> 00:16:08,829
Like it's that's an emergent
Like cultural phenomenon.

319
00:16:09,089 --> 00:16:10,389
It's de facto, right?

320
00:16:10,389 --> 00:16:14,239
Like there's sort of flavors that people
converge on, like GitHub flavored.

321
00:16:14,249 --> 00:16:17,039
And you know, like all, all
standards are sort of cultural

322
00:16:17,039 --> 00:16:18,149
constructions at some level.

323
00:16:18,449 --> 00:16:19,099
Yeah, you're right.

324
00:16:19,099 --> 00:16:22,309
It's, it's not like standardized
in like the W3C or IETF sense.

325
00:16:22,559 --> 00:16:24,439
Or even in the Unix POSIX sense, right?

326
00:16:24,469 --> 00:16:25,814
Like files are.

327
00:16:25,894 --> 00:16:28,374
You know, these kinds of bytes
and these kinds of orders, and

328
00:16:28,374 --> 00:16:29,604
this is how you end a file.

329
00:16:30,138 --> 00:16:32,768
But there, there are a couple
of emerging standards, right?

330
00:16:32,768 --> 00:16:35,508
We're at the, we're at the situation
where there's multiple plain

331
00:16:35,508 --> 00:16:37,058
text formats of Markdown, right?

332
00:16:37,058 --> 00:16:40,748
There's Common Mark and different
parsers that you can adopt that give you.

333
00:16:41,019 --> 00:16:44,979
true, guarantees around the way
that markdowns, but there's as

334
00:16:44,979 --> 00:16:46,849
you said, there's no one Yeah,

335
00:16:46,868 --> 00:16:50,139
this this actually seems important to
me Like I think a lot of people think

336
00:16:50,139 --> 00:16:53,979
about standards and interoperability
as these sort of platonic forms that we

337
00:16:53,979 --> 00:16:57,879
design in standards bodies And you know,
while that's true that there are people

338
00:16:57,879 --> 00:17:02,719
who craft that kind of material it's
like Typically done in retrospect and

339
00:17:02,729 --> 00:17:07,409
in real life cooperation usually happens
in the sort of ad hoc or de facto way.

340
00:17:07,509 --> 00:17:12,184
And when our systems aren't designed to
support that, it's not a huge surprise

341
00:17:12,224 --> 00:17:14,784
that, you know, interoperability
doesn't emerge and then we can sort of

342
00:17:14,784 --> 00:17:17,804
point and say, well, nobody wants to
interoperate and it's like, well, yeah.

343
00:17:17,804 --> 00:17:19,104
Cause the material doesn't support it.

344
00:17:19,134 --> 00:17:21,854
Like, like there's a kind of
chicken or the egg problem here.

345
00:17:21,854 --> 00:17:22,184
Right.

346
00:17:22,424 --> 00:17:25,434
I think both in your work and
Jess's work and our work, right?

347
00:17:26,294 --> 00:17:27,444
We're all exploring.

348
00:17:28,079 --> 00:17:32,909
Different ways of exposing the
substrate in more interoperable ways.

349
00:17:33,259 --> 00:17:33,559
Yeah.

350
00:17:33,629 --> 00:17:39,449
And it's not so much like locking the
door open as like, right now, I think

351
00:17:39,536 --> 00:17:43,636
like the political economy of choosing
files over these other things, right?

352
00:17:43,636 --> 00:17:48,302
Like if it's so much harder and worse
for you as a developer to choose, Like a

353
00:17:48,302 --> 00:17:51,362
file like thing over an API like thing.

354
00:17:52,082 --> 00:17:53,832
You're probably going to
pick the API like thing.

355
00:17:54,552 --> 00:17:54,922
Indeed.

356
00:17:54,932 --> 00:17:58,392
Some of this is like technical capability
and some of it is cultural norms.

357
00:17:58,852 --> 00:17:59,282
Yeah.

358
00:17:59,537 --> 00:18:01,317
Like files are just
the thing that's there.

359
00:18:01,347 --> 00:18:02,957
And they're actually in many ways, an odd.

360
00:18:03,277 --> 00:18:07,097
odd shaped thing for the problems
we're trying to solve, but they're

361
00:18:07,097 --> 00:18:13,647
just, uh, at least in the app store
and on the web, there aren't really

362
00:18:13,917 --> 00:18:15,507
good, viable alternatives yet.

363
00:18:15,517 --> 00:18:20,067
Like in the browser, we're starting to get
things like the file API and I, you know,

364
00:18:20,067 --> 00:18:24,157
on, on iOS, we're starting to get like
a little bit of a sort of file system.

365
00:18:25,797 --> 00:18:28,087
So it was very charming when
Apple excitedly announced

366
00:18:28,087 --> 00:18:29,047
files like they'd invested in.

367
00:18:29,087 --> 00:18:30,417
Yeah, totally.

368
00:18:30,707 --> 00:18:30,967
Right.

369
00:18:30,967 --> 00:18:34,357
But I, I, it's actually kind of
telling that like, why, why is

370
00:18:34,357 --> 00:18:36,407
it actually that we want this?

371
00:18:36,417 --> 00:18:38,647
It seems like a lot of knowledge work that

372
00:18:41,197 --> 00:18:44,257
needs to cross boundaries
of multiple apps.

373
00:18:44,382 --> 00:18:47,522
and this is just the only tool
we currently have to do it.

374
00:18:47,652 --> 00:18:49,862
Mostly because there haven't,
I think, haven't been good

375
00:18:49,862 --> 00:18:51,602
commercial incentives to build.

376
00:18:51,603 --> 00:18:51,622
Right.

377
00:18:52,142 --> 00:18:56,812
Interoperability layers that, that
makes sense on the network, at least not

378
00:18:56,812 --> 00:18:57,172
yet.

379
00:18:57,452 --> 00:18:59,242
Well, you still need a
data container, right?

380
00:18:59,242 --> 00:19:02,242
Like it's one of the nice things that
files make is like this, you know,

381
00:19:02,407 --> 00:19:07,097
relatively, this thing that has boundaries
that contains a certain amount of data

382
00:19:07,137 --> 00:19:11,899
that you can then pass around via a
whole bunch of different,   units of

383
00:19:11,899 --> 00:19:12,339
sharing.

384
00:19:12,819 --> 00:19:13,979
Yeah, exactly.

385
00:19:14,129 --> 00:19:15,419
So I, I'm actually curious.

386
00:19:15,429 --> 00:19:19,902
So for people who are listening, who
don't know, Peter's work, he's working

387
00:19:20,152 --> 00:19:24,736
on a, CRDT, which is, basically a data
structure you can think of it's called

388
00:19:24,736 --> 00:19:31,034
Automerge and Automerge actually calls
their, unit of, merging a document.

389
00:19:31,264 --> 00:19:31,684
So.

390
00:19:32,239 --> 00:19:37,339
Peter, do you guys think of documents,
Automerge documents, as files in this

391
00:19:37,339 --> 00:19:40,349
file like way we've been describing, or
do you think of them in a different way?

392
00:19:41,499 --> 00:19:45,489
The specific stated intention
of Automerge is to invent the

393
00:19:45,489 --> 00:19:48,179
new file system of computing.

394
00:19:48,429 --> 00:19:51,319
Like, the CRDT thing is just
like an implementation detail.

395
00:19:51,539 --> 00:19:54,954
The problem is, We don't want
places and we don't want things.

396
00:19:54,954 --> 00:19:56,864
We need properties of both, right?

397
00:19:56,864 --> 00:19:58,344
There's a wave particle duality here.

398
00:19:58,344 --> 00:20:01,824
We don't want to give us the good
things about files, things that we have,

399
00:20:02,144 --> 00:20:05,554
things that we can hold, things we can
maintain, things we can keep for as long

400
00:20:05,554 --> 00:20:09,064
as we want that we can use in whatever
way that we want, we can pop open the

401
00:20:09,064 --> 00:20:10,764
hood and peer under the covers, right?

402
00:20:10,764 --> 00:20:18,652
Like all that stuff is, is I think vital,
but like, it's so apparent that the  POSIX

403
00:20:18,879 --> 00:20:21,859
metaphor of the 19th, literally 1970s.

404
00:20:22,364 --> 00:20:22,604
Right.

405
00:20:22,604 --> 00:20:25,964
The series of bytes, it
assumes single access, right?

406
00:20:25,964 --> 00:20:28,574
Like, God, the amount of my
career I've spent trying to figure

407
00:20:28,574 --> 00:20:29,794
out how to lock a file system.

408
00:20:31,994 --> 00:20:36,044
There's so many, so many tricks that,
that we use in like professional

409
00:20:36,064 --> 00:20:37,814
contexts to cope with shared

410
00:20:37,864 --> 00:20:39,874
mutable state, shared mutable state.

411
00:20:39,904 --> 00:20:43,034
And the whole idea behind Automerge was
to say like, look, what if you could.

412
00:20:43,329 --> 00:20:47,649
Really think about this, really take your
time, really sweat all the details, not

413
00:20:47,649 --> 00:20:52,019
be in the rush that a startup's in, not,
you know, spend years with Martin Klepman

414
00:20:52,079 --> 00:20:56,219
proving the algorithm correctly, then
spend years with, you know, Orion and

415
00:20:56,219 --> 00:20:57,799
Alex Good getting the performance right.

416
00:20:57,799 --> 00:21:00,639
And people are like, Oh, Automerge is
this, Automerge is that,  Automerge

417
00:21:00,639 --> 00:21:02,249
is just getting started, right?

418
00:21:02,259 --> 00:21:04,659
Like this is a, this is a 10 year project.

419
00:21:04,659 --> 00:21:05,809
It's a 50 year project.

420
00:21:05,819 --> 00:21:08,839
It's, it's a thing that you just
keep working on until it works.

421
00:21:09,369 --> 00:21:11,659
And I think at this point a lot of
the pieces are in place and we're

422
00:21:11,659 --> 00:21:14,879
starting to see that pay out and if
anybody's following Ink and Switch's

423
00:21:14,929 --> 00:21:19,029
patchwork project right now, right,
like what we're seeing is like this

424
00:21:19,309 --> 00:21:25,819
ability to do ad hoc, like new forms
of real time and asynchronous version

425
00:21:25,819 --> 00:21:30,274
control on top of this substrate
because it has the right primitives.

426
00:21:30,934 --> 00:21:34,084
And of course, this is a research project,
so in the process of working on this we're

427
00:21:34,454 --> 00:21:38,424
discovering the ways that the APIs are
insufficient or where we need to add new

428
00:21:38,424 --> 00:21:42,054
kinds of indexing to improve performance
or, you know, all those other kinds of

429
00:21:42,054 --> 00:21:46,290
things, but it's sort of like we, We've
talked to so many people, you know, I

430
00:21:46,290 --> 00:21:49,337
was talking to, someone over at Scratch
the other day and they were saying like,

431
00:21:49,337 --> 00:21:53,367
oh, I did this in my thesis, but like,
it wasn't actually possible to build

432
00:21:53,387 --> 00:21:54,597
because we didn't have the material.

433
00:21:54,857 --> 00:21:55,177
Right.

434
00:21:55,177 --> 00:21:58,117
And like a former collaborator,
Blaine Cook, who was a coauthor on

435
00:21:58,117 --> 00:22:01,417
the Upwelling paper we did last year,
you know, he was saying like, it's so

436
00:22:01,417 --> 00:22:02,727
amazing getting to work on this stuff.

437
00:22:02,727 --> 00:22:04,827
He did a startup five
years ago or something.

438
00:22:05,062 --> 00:22:07,502
Where you tried to build, you
know, text editing tools, but like

439
00:22:07,782 --> 00:22:09,282
they didn't have the material.

440
00:22:09,552 --> 00:22:12,532
And so it's about trying to figure out
what the shape of that material is.

441
00:22:12,852 --> 00:22:17,342
And you know, I, I hadn't brought it
up before because I don't want this to

442
00:22:17,342 --> 00:22:21,832
be about a particular like concept that
I have or that we have about a single

443
00:22:21,832 --> 00:22:25,182
technology, but it's about like really
thinking about what the opportunities

444
00:22:25,262 --> 00:22:28,632
are and the potential, but I think
a lot about this question, right?

445
00:22:28,632 --> 00:22:34,092
Like I don't want my computer to
be a mall where I go in and I take

446
00:22:34,092 --> 00:22:38,242
products out one at a time, you
know, and bring them home and consume

447
00:22:38,242 --> 00:22:39,432
them and put them in the trash.

448
00:22:39,782 --> 00:22:44,342
I want my computer to feel like a wood
shop where I have my stock of lumber and

449
00:22:44,342 --> 00:22:47,552
I've got my tools and if I want to make
something, sure it's going to require a

450
00:22:47,552 --> 00:22:51,502
little more thinking and expertise, but
I can make anything, I can do anything,

451
00:22:51,512 --> 00:22:53,512
I can work with other people, right?

452
00:22:53,542 --> 00:22:56,202
Like it's, it's a different
kind of productivity.

453
00:22:56,657 --> 00:22:58,737
Like a kitchen is very much
the same thing as well, right?

454
00:22:58,737 --> 00:23:02,907
We buy groceries, we buy staples,
you know, and a handful of like basic

455
00:23:02,907 --> 00:23:07,507
tools, cutting board, a heat source,
a knife, you can do almost anything in

456
00:23:07,507 --> 00:23:09,027
the kitchen with a few extra things.

457
00:23:09,267 --> 00:23:10,927
You can do remarkable things.

458
00:23:10,927 --> 00:23:11,137
Right.

459
00:23:11,137 --> 00:23:15,497
And like, you know, we, we reject
the idea of unit task devices.

460
00:23:15,497 --> 00:23:18,577
Often we make fun of people who
buy the one off gadgets for the

461
00:23:18,577 --> 00:23:23,217
kitchen, but then we live in a world
of these one off gadgets on our

462
00:23:23,227 --> 00:23:25,007
devices, you know, on our computers.

463
00:23:25,737 --> 00:23:29,087
I'm trying to think like, if, if we're
gonna invent tools, we also need to

464
00:23:29,087 --> 00:23:31,127
figure out what the stock material is.

465
00:23:31,513 --> 00:23:32,023
And like Yeah.

466
00:23:32,177 --> 00:23:35,877
Text files are cool 'cause they're
old and, and like what's old is good.

467
00:23:36,687 --> 00:23:38,157
Like I don't mean that
in a dismissive way.

468
00:23:38,157 --> 00:23:40,437
Like it, it is cool because,
and it stood the test of time.

469
00:23:40,557 --> 00:23:40,887
Exactly.

470
00:23:40,887 --> 00:23:42,537
It's, and it will stand the test of time.

471
00:23:42,537 --> 00:23:45,057
It'll still be here in 50 years
if it was here in 50 years.

472
00:23:45,087 --> 00:23:47,667
For 50 years SQLite is amazing too.

473
00:23:47,667 --> 00:23:49,647
Simon Wilson's super inspiring.

474
00:23:49,647 --> 00:23:52,101
They're working on,  Like data
set and these kinds of ideas where

475
00:23:52,101 --> 00:23:55,571
it's like, yeah, like a database
is a file like that's awesome.

476
00:23:56,331 --> 00:23:56,571
Yeah

477
00:23:57,201 --> 00:24:03,531
It's more or less written by actual
monks as well It's it really does feel

478
00:24:03,531 --> 00:24:05,608
like a kind of cathedral of technology.

479
00:24:05,701 --> 00:24:08,801
That'll be here in a thousand years Yeah,

480
00:24:10,561 --> 00:24:16,141
I think that's, I love that woodshop
metaphor and it's often one that I

481
00:24:16,161 --> 00:24:20,418
think about, it, it's so evocative
because if you've worked in a woodshop

482
00:24:20,841 --> 00:24:24,718
and you understand all the things
that you're, the, the ways that

483
00:24:24,718 --> 00:24:27,908
you're able to modify your shop and
your tools in order to get work done.

484
00:24:28,208 --> 00:24:31,848
And then you just put that same
lens and look at your computer.

485
00:24:32,118 --> 00:24:36,783
You realize how incredibly rigid, the
computer is, even when you're a software

486
00:24:36,885 --> 00:24:41,700
developer who has, an ideological
commitment to using open source

487
00:24:41,700 --> 00:24:45,700
software, where you have the source of
every single application that you use.

488
00:24:46,120 --> 00:24:50,200
The difficulty in modifying
those applications to your own

489
00:24:50,200 --> 00:24:54,250
custom specifications is, is
astronomical compared to working

490
00:24:54,440 --> 00:24:55,620
models and metaphors.

491
00:24:56,025 --> 00:24:56,155
Mm

492
00:24:56,215 --> 00:24:56,225
hmm.

493
00:24:56,985 --> 00:24:58,405
Yeah, the new materials
you're talking about.

494
00:24:58,945 --> 00:24:59,325
It's great.

495
00:24:59,335 --> 00:25:01,875
I was reading, uh, Brian
Kernighan's biography.

496
00:25:02,167 --> 00:25:05,984
it looks like the C programming language,
but it's his, his self published thing.

497
00:25:06,274 --> 00:25:07,844
Unix, a history and a memoir.

498
00:25:08,394 --> 00:25:10,454
And, um, it's a funny book.

499
00:25:10,724 --> 00:25:13,994
But there's some really great parts in
it where he talks about sort of like the

500
00:25:13,994 --> 00:25:18,304
invention of Unix pipelines and how it was
sort of like somebody would ask how you

501
00:25:18,304 --> 00:25:22,224
could do X with a computer, you know, or
with this new pipes thing they'd built.

502
00:25:22,604 --> 00:25:26,034
And then, you know, him or Richie
or somebody would go off and, like,

503
00:25:26,354 --> 00:25:29,784
write the next little piece, you
know, sort or whatever, so that

504
00:25:29,784 --> 00:25:31,474
they could answer that puzzle.

505
00:25:31,474 --> 00:25:34,164
And I just love this sort of, like,
they discovered the Lego bricks, they

506
00:25:34,614 --> 00:25:37,344
you know, they built the shape and then
they just filled in a few pieces and

507
00:25:37,344 --> 00:25:40,654
then after a little while it was kind
of like, yeah, all the major pieces

508
00:25:40,654 --> 00:25:43,204
are there and that was good enough
and they stuck you know, it's still

509
00:25:43,204 --> 00:25:44,324
out there and you can still use it.

510
00:25:44,704 --> 00:25:47,194
But it's not really the best way
to do spellcheck anymore, you know?

511
00:25:48,669 --> 00:25:50,139
Such a glorious vision though.

512
00:25:50,369 --> 00:25:54,349
You know, I guess for me, like files
are not the thing, but what they are,

513
00:25:54,359 --> 00:25:59,899
at least for particular formats is like
a kind of Lego dot and producing Lego

514
00:25:59,918 --> 00:26:03,739
dots like this that allow you to compose
things together, like Unix pipe is

515
00:26:03,739 --> 00:26:08,709
another kind of Lego dot this strikes me
as important in like a laws of physics.

516
00:26:08,709 --> 00:26:09,179
Kind of way.

517
00:26:09,259 --> 00:26:10,540
Like, one of my favorite books,W.

518
00:26:10,540 --> 00:26:13,807
Brian Arthur's  the nature of technology.

519
00:26:14,103 --> 00:26:17,143
I always get it confused with Kevin
Kelly's book, but the, the nature of

520
00:26:17,143 --> 00:26:21,823
technology, he basically makes this, this
very sort of, mathematically grounded

521
00:26:21,823 --> 00:26:26,443
argument that innovation at its core
is a combinatorial process and not just

522
00:26:26,443 --> 00:26:31,713
like technological innovation, but, you
know, evolution, language, art, like

523
00:26:31,713 --> 00:26:36,378
these are about taking pieces, composing
them together to produce something

524
00:26:36,398 --> 00:26:38,678
new in a sort of recursive process.

525
00:26:39,588 --> 00:26:43,008
And like early computing was all kind
of like, I don't know if this was

526
00:26:43,008 --> 00:26:47,898
intuitive or chance or what, but all
of these early pioneers of computing

527
00:26:47,898 --> 00:26:49,308
designed their systems in this way.

528
00:26:49,328 --> 00:26:53,408
And we saw this kind of Cambrian
explosion of really interesting

529
00:26:53,408 --> 00:26:55,098
new things emerge very rapidly.

530
00:26:55,568 --> 00:27:01,470
Like actually we've had mobile phones,
for Longer than it took the browser to be

531
00:27:01,470 --> 00:27:03,850
invented after the introduction of DOS.

532
00:27:03,930 --> 00:27:06,880
So it's just like, like a lot
happened in like a very short

533
00:27:06,880 --> 00:27:08,500
amount of time in that first wave.

534
00:27:08,500 --> 00:27:08,770
Right.

535
00:27:08,770 --> 00:27:12,570
And that's part of me kind of wonders
that if, We sort of reduced the

536
00:27:12,570 --> 00:27:16,500
combinatoriality of technology to
actually slow the rate of innovation.

537
00:27:16,703 --> 00:27:20,343
not necessarily like there's someone
scheming in a room, but sort of the

538
00:27:20,343 --> 00:27:22,023
purpose of the system is what it does.

539
00:27:22,023 --> 00:27:26,383
And like, like big money, but also
kind of governments and people.

540
00:27:26,383 --> 00:27:27,623
It's eternal September, right?

541
00:27:28,023 --> 00:27:28,493
Yeah.

542
00:27:28,493 --> 00:27:29,468
It's like

543
00:27:29,468 --> 00:27:30,213
if

544
00:27:30,393 --> 00:27:34,893
you have a bunch of silos and those
silos do one thing, like on Instagram,

545
00:27:34,933 --> 00:27:39,423
you post photos and on TikTok, you post
short videos and on, like you, There is

546
00:27:39,423 --> 00:27:44,043
no such thing as combining those into some
new medium because they don't let you.

547
00:27:44,133 --> 00:27:47,733
And so you kind of have these known
quantities that you can regulate

548
00:27:47,773 --> 00:27:51,873
and control and also extract 30
percent taxes on pretty efficiently.

549
00:27:52,383 --> 00:27:55,853
So there's this kind of like striation
that's happened of the space.

550
00:27:56,558 --> 00:28:00,688
Some of this is probably inevitable, but I
do kind of want to click the dial a couple

551
00:28:00,688 --> 00:28:02,948
notches in the other direction, just by

552
00:28:02,958 --> 00:28:03,248
nature.

553
00:28:03,518 --> 00:28:07,678
I kind of think this is, the way you
describe that is, to me, a lost cause.

554
00:28:08,298 --> 00:28:11,298
Or maybe lost cause isn't
actually the right term for it.

555
00:28:11,658 --> 00:28:15,494
What I mean is that, actually,
a television is great if you

556
00:28:15,494 --> 00:28:16,904
want to watch Love is Blind.

557
00:28:17,321 --> 00:28:20,309
Is everything necessarily a television?

558
00:28:20,309 --> 00:28:20,536
No.

559
00:28:20,597 --> 00:28:22,561
Well, this is, this is the point.

560
00:28:22,841 --> 00:28:24,361
And so what I think though is like,

561
00:28:25,251 --> 00:28:28,471
I don't think we should be trying
to convince the mainstream systems

562
00:28:28,471 --> 00:28:30,821
to change their minds or solve
the problems we want to solve.

563
00:28:31,061 --> 00:28:35,441
It's that we need to, you know, like a
woodshop is not the right way to build

564
00:28:35,441 --> 00:28:38,228
an IKEA, you know, assembly line, right?

565
00:28:38,238 --> 00:28:41,518
Like, but we need the existence
of this other kind of computing.

566
00:28:41,888 --> 00:28:43,238
It is, it is not.

567
00:28:43,558 --> 00:28:47,218
a replacement for, it is an
alternative to, for the people

568
00:28:47,218 --> 00:28:48,288
who want it and need it.

569
00:28:48,718 --> 00:28:49,748
Yeah, we don't disagree.

570
00:28:49,768 --> 00:28:52,898
Like there's always going to be Facebook,
and there's always going to be like the

571
00:28:52,898 --> 00:28:57,018
Big Bang Theory or whatever, but I would
love for there also be like a world where

572
00:28:57,468 --> 00:29:01,898
like there can be, you know, I don't
know, independent films or hell, like,

573
00:29:01,898 --> 00:29:05,931
uh, Dune II is like something that's, kind
of in the air and kind of strikes, that

574
00:29:05,931 --> 00:29:07,941
balance in a nice and interesting way.

575
00:29:07,977 --> 00:29:10,810
It just feels like Like
what we want is diversity.

576
00:29:10,973 --> 00:29:14,203
We want like a technological
ecosystem that can actually support

577
00:29:14,243 --> 00:29:18,453
a plurality of, of different
ends and not just like Walmart.

578
00:29:19,023 --> 00:29:19,253
Yeah.

579
00:29:19,253 --> 00:29:21,623
And well, and the political economy
is the challenge here, right?

580
00:29:21,623 --> 00:29:25,819
Which is that right now it costs so
goddamn much to write a piece of software.

581
00:29:26,063 --> 00:29:29,793
It's like completely untenable to
build or operate software at all.

582
00:29:29,833 --> 00:29:33,233
And I say this as somebody who
has done quite a lot of it at all

583
00:29:33,243 --> 00:29:34,783
scales, you know, in production.

584
00:29:35,483 --> 00:29:37,038
It is just insane.

585
00:29:37,048 --> 00:29:39,768
We think of software as an
informational good, right?

586
00:29:39,768 --> 00:29:42,248
Like that's sort of the
like conceptual model.

587
00:29:42,278 --> 00:29:45,788
Oh, it's just some bits on, you know,
floating around, but it's not, it's

588
00:29:45,788 --> 00:29:50,888
like a whole, like massive amount of
extremely expensive infrastructure that's

589
00:29:50,888 --> 00:29:56,178
operated by a, you know, a priesthood
of like DevOps people who sacrifice

590
00:29:56,178 --> 00:29:59,228
themselves to get up at three in the
morning to figure out why the transaction

591
00:29:59,248 --> 00:30:02,908
wraparound on the Postgres has happened
again, you know, like it's hell.

592
00:30:03,219 --> 00:30:03,979
It's crazy.

593
00:30:04,419 --> 00:30:04,739
Yeah.

594
00:30:04,879 --> 00:30:08,333
The strange economics of,
software, I guess, support that

595
00:30:08,343 --> 00:30:10,123
kind of, like, rising floor.

596
00:30:10,183 --> 00:30:13,383
Because if you do have a hit, it
tends to make a ton of money and

597
00:30:13,383 --> 00:30:14,973
then all of that's a rounding error.

598
00:30:15,503 --> 00:30:15,713
Yeah.

599
00:30:15,713 --> 00:30:15,993
It's the

600
00:30:15,993 --> 00:30:16,313
network

601
00:30:16,313 --> 00:30:16,693
effects.

602
00:30:16,713 --> 00:30:19,623
The complexity of software is
determined by the economic value that

603
00:30:19,623 --> 00:30:21,093
can be extracted from the software.

604
00:30:21,593 --> 00:30:21,873
Yeah.

605
00:30:22,133 --> 00:30:22,423
Yeah.

606
00:30:22,706 --> 00:30:24,886
And that, that sort of
sets the floor as well.

607
00:30:24,886 --> 00:30:25,176
Right?

608
00:30:25,206 --> 00:30:29,476
Like if you're, if you're making not
thousands, but billions on a success,

609
00:30:29,486 --> 00:30:31,074
then you can afford, you know,

610
00:30:31,266 --> 00:30:31,446
Yeah.

611
00:30:31,476 --> 00:30:35,678
To burn out a bunch of, software
engineers and, you know, leave them

612
00:30:35,688 --> 00:30:40,782
staggering around, their hometown, gazing
bleary eyed into the morning light and

613
00:30:40,782 --> 00:30:42,182
wondering where their life went wrong.

614
00:30:42,398 --> 00:30:46,408
At the same time, like these economic
incentives, they create individual

615
00:30:46,408 --> 00:30:48,833
choices for like, individual developers.

616
00:30:48,883 --> 00:30:53,213
And I think that's, I think that's where
a lot of the slowdown has happened is

617
00:30:53,693 --> 00:30:58,795
when you, there aren't, there weren't
options if you were into computers in

618
00:30:58,795 --> 00:31:04,085
the sixties  to go make whatever the
sixties equivalent of 450, 000 a year.

619
00:31:04,299 --> 00:31:06,489
and kind of at a cushy job where they.

620
00:31:06,794 --> 00:31:09,324
You know, bring food to your
table and you can get up and take

621
00:31:09,324 --> 00:31:10,644
foosball breaks whenever you want.

622
00:31:10,964 --> 00:31:16,204
like the, the cruise ship mentality,
I think, lures a lot of people away.

623
00:31:16,437 --> 00:31:21,387
and I think it's really hard to kind
of wake them up to the fact that

624
00:31:21,407 --> 00:31:22,977
software doesn't have to be this way.

625
00:31:22,977 --> 00:31:24,217
We might have to do a little work.

626
00:31:24,807 --> 00:31:27,037
We might have to be a little
uncomfortable for a little while.

627
00:31:28,357 --> 00:31:28,997
You got

628
00:31:28,997 --> 00:31:29,797
to make the right thing.

629
00:31:29,797 --> 00:31:30,417
The easy thing.

630
00:31:30,417 --> 00:31:31,997
That was the lesson we learned at Heroku.

631
00:31:32,307 --> 00:31:34,307
If you make the right thing, the
easy thing, people will do it.

632
00:31:34,832 --> 00:31:39,822
All the, you know, all of the principles
and ideals, like, yeah, there's a

633
00:31:39,822 --> 00:31:43,232
certain amount of cultural affinity and
there'll always be some, like, weirdos

634
00:31:43,232 --> 00:31:45,922
and early adopters, but ultimately if
you want to win the day, you have to

635
00:31:45,922 --> 00:31:47,162
make the right thing the easy thing.

636
00:31:47,717 --> 00:31:51,277
But you need some people doing that,
making the right thing, the easy thing.

637
00:31:51,287 --> 00:31:54,847
And I think that's what I'm talking about
is like, I want to find that 2 percent

638
00:31:55,347 --> 00:31:58,807
or 3 percent of the developer population
who actually wants to do the work and

639
00:31:58,807 --> 00:31:59,997
make the right thing, the easy thing.

640
00:32:00,130 --> 00:32:02,440
and that, and for that,
you need to talk to people.

641
00:32:02,670 --> 00:32:05,914
You know, you need to have, these
wonderful mantras that, Kepano and

642
00:32:05,914 --> 00:32:10,381
that, um, Peter and,  Gordon, you
guys have honed over the years.

643
00:32:10,633 --> 00:32:14,123
actually, Gordon, I, to turn the
conversation a bit to your work,

644
00:32:14,143 --> 00:32:19,300
because you are working on a, network
tool, network thinking tool that

645
00:32:19,300 --> 00:32:24,793
captures those thoughts in documents,
files, one might say, and, You

646
00:32:24,803 --> 00:32:26,563
have not chosen to use Markdown.

647
00:32:27,153 --> 00:32:30,383
You've chosen, you've made some
interesting technical choices.

648
00:32:30,403 --> 00:32:34,713
So I'm curious how, when you, when you
look at file over app, are you like,

649
00:32:34,723 --> 00:32:39,833
yes, that, that aligns with my, The
decisions that I'm making right now

650
00:32:39,863 --> 00:32:43,513
for the tool that I'm building, or how
are your thoughts different from kind

651
00:32:43,513 --> 00:32:45,043
of what you've seen Kapano lay out?

652
00:32:45,273 --> 00:32:46,653
Yeah, that's a good question.

653
00:32:46,696 --> 00:32:50,906
I guess what we are building is a sort
of notebook app called Subconscious

654
00:32:50,946 --> 00:32:56,506
powered by this decentralized note graph
protocol, and the protocol is multiplayer.

655
00:32:56,691 --> 00:33:00,971
So the notion is like, what if you had
your Roam graph or your Obsidian graph,

656
00:33:00,991 --> 00:33:05,294
but it could sort of freely network with
other graphs in this cloud of graphs.

657
00:33:05,324 --> 00:33:09,384
But that cloud of graphs doesn't live on
my server where I can sort of, you know,

658
00:33:10,154 --> 00:33:11,894
extract a 30 percent text or whatever.

659
00:33:12,294 --> 00:33:14,414
It exists on this decentralized network.

660
00:33:14,724 --> 00:33:16,734
I actually, that's not quite right either.

661
00:33:16,744 --> 00:33:18,024
The protocol is local-first.

662
00:33:18,091 --> 00:33:22,701
so basically it syncs your slice of the
graph, like your content plus the content

663
00:33:22,701 --> 00:33:24,521
of people you follow onto your devices.

664
00:33:24,531 --> 00:33:25,421
So you have your files.

665
00:33:25,776 --> 00:33:27,076
and then this was clear,

666
00:33:27,076 --> 00:33:27,326
right?

667
00:33:27,335 --> 00:33:28,856
They're, they are actually files.

668
00:33:29,216 --> 00:33:30,266
They're actually files.

669
00:33:30,266 --> 00:33:30,596
If you

670
00:33:30,616 --> 00:33:33,916
run orb on a, or what you
guys used to call it, orb.

671
00:33:34,016 --> 00:33:34,926
Yeah, it's called orb.

672
00:33:34,926 --> 00:33:35,826
Yeah, no, it's called orb.

673
00:33:35,856 --> 00:33:37,496
There's, so there's a
couple of things, right?

674
00:33:37,496 --> 00:33:41,156
There's the app, but there's also
like a command line interface.

675
00:33:41,156 --> 00:33:43,026
You can use if you're a
developer, that's like git.

676
00:33:43,366 --> 00:33:45,066
And, and actually it works a lot like git.

677
00:33:45,106 --> 00:33:48,493
The whole thing uses kind of
git like, versioning semantics.

678
00:33:48,559 --> 00:33:52,249
the difference is that it syncs
not just your code, Quote unquote

679
00:33:52,249 --> 00:33:56,067
repository of notes, but also kind of
the, those are the people you follow.

680
00:33:56,079 --> 00:33:58,199
So you have your own little
internet archive, I guess.

681
00:33:58,229 --> 00:33:58,519
Right.

682
00:33:58,559 --> 00:34:01,849
You like Git, uh, it's like Git sub
modules or that's a terrible example,

683
00:34:01,849 --> 00:34:03,249
but it's like, No, don't say

684
00:34:03,249 --> 00:34:03,483
that.

685
00:34:03,483 --> 00:34:03,949
That's mean.

686
00:34:03,949 --> 00:34:04,709
It's not like that.

687
00:34:04,709 --> 00:34:05,229
I promise.

688
00:34:05,249 --> 00:34:07,433
It's, it's, it's all, it's
much, much better than that.

689
00:34:07,453 --> 00:34:09,013
It's all versioned together.

690
00:34:09,013 --> 00:34:12,423
I mean, I, yeah, without getting
deeply into the details, it's

691
00:34:12,423 --> 00:34:13,743
all sort of versioned together.

692
00:34:13,753 --> 00:34:14,873
This is part of, I guess, what's.

693
00:34:15,083 --> 00:34:18,183
That's what's a little bit different
from something like Git or why you can't

694
00:34:18,183 --> 00:34:23,159
just use Git, but right,  you know, I
guess a lot of what we're doing, yeah,

695
00:34:23,589 --> 00:34:27,889
at some point during your usage of
this, you will end up with actual

696
00:34:27,899 --> 00:34:32,179
files on your device, like, yeah, very
different than most other systems that

697
00:34:32,179 --> 00:34:35,469
we interact with right now, Obsidian
being one of the ones that you do

698
00:34:35,469 --> 00:34:36,729
end up with files on your device.

699
00:34:37,089 --> 00:34:38,709
But that's a choice you guys made.

700
00:34:39,169 --> 00:34:42,189
The files are, I guess you
could say they're a lens over

701
00:34:42,209 --> 00:34:44,039
the data on the protocol.

702
00:34:44,299 --> 00:34:49,115
And,  for me being able to get a
live synced,  instance of those files

703
00:34:49,115 --> 00:34:53,695
on a device is sort of proof of, of
what, what we call credible exit.

704
00:34:53,725 --> 00:34:59,610
So this is like our minimal definition of
what Sort of user ownership of data should

705
00:34:59,610 --> 00:35:03,590
mean for our tools for the way we choose
to build for it It's like you should be

706
00:35:03,590 --> 00:35:07,143
able to take your stuff and leave or bring
it into another app or whatever Now I

707
00:35:07,143 --> 00:35:10,676
think Obsidian actually has credible exit
as well And they do this through through

708
00:35:10,916 --> 00:35:16,578
files, but I think they have some maybe
tricky edge cases around multiplayer And

709
00:35:16,588 --> 00:35:20,378
this is because, you know, f files, one of
the shortcomings of files is they don't,

710
00:35:20,678 --> 00:35:24,878
they're, they just don't do multiplayer
really well on, on two axes, actually.

711
00:35:24,878 --> 00:35:30,834
One is, most file formats are not
designed to sort of freely merge updates

712
00:35:30,854 --> 00:35:34,964
from a bunch of different sources, like
Peter edits the file, I edit the file,

713
00:35:35,254 --> 00:35:36,574
how do we resolve those conflicts?

714
00:35:36,949 --> 00:35:42,259
The other sort of axis around which file
systems are not really well designed

715
00:35:42,259 --> 00:35:44,309
for multiplayer is around security.

716
00:35:44,676 --> 00:35:49,196
so once you have multiple players, it's
sort of an adversarial environment,

717
00:35:49,236 --> 00:35:51,356
or you have to design for that anyway.

718
00:35:51,776 --> 00:35:52,436
You have to predict

719
00:35:52,436 --> 00:35:54,336
the emergence of an
adversarial environment.

720
00:35:54,696 --> 00:35:58,186
Yeah, because, you know, imagine you're
reading and writing these files and

721
00:35:58,186 --> 00:36:01,101
then you just connect this thing to
the internet, what if 4chan suddenly

722
00:36:01,101 --> 00:36:02,802
has write access to your hard drive?

723
00:36:02,841 --> 00:36:05,801
Like that's the, that's the worst
case that you need to the mistakes

724
00:36:06,181 --> 00:36:07,301
Scuttlebutt had too, right?

725
00:36:07,301 --> 00:36:10,991
Which is they did this like replicating
friends of friends thing and then you

726
00:36:10,991 --> 00:36:14,111
only had to compromise one person's
friend graph and all of a sudden

727
00:36:14,121 --> 00:36:17,961
you were, you know, you could sort
of sneak someone into the graph and

728
00:36:17,961 --> 00:36:20,801
then have everybody else back up
your objectionable content for you.

729
00:36:21,344 --> 00:36:24,404
Right, which is, and then this became
a major problem because everything was

730
00:36:24,480 --> 00:36:29,334
append only and everything was replicated
and everything was encrypted and all of

731
00:36:29,334 --> 00:36:33,984
a sudden you're downloading gigabytes
of like terrible hate speech or other

732
00:36:33,984 --> 00:36:38,031
kinds of nasty stuff because, you know,
somebody made like a face account,

733
00:36:38,334 --> 00:36:42,004
you know, infiltrated a community and
then like, you know, linked in all

734
00:36:42,004 --> 00:36:45,194
their like hateful people that they
want to follow and now everybody else

735
00:36:45,194 --> 00:36:46,674
is like stuck mirroring their content.

736
00:36:47,419 --> 00:36:53,669
I guess, yeah, you know, again,
this, this system of replicating

737
00:36:54,369 --> 00:36:56,119
friends of friends content.

738
00:36:56,629 --> 00:37:00,449
Is very easily gamed by an adversary.

739
00:37:00,843 --> 00:37:06,482
Yeah, I guess it's important to
kind of define your,   Risk profile.

740
00:37:07,032 --> 00:37:07,802
Yeah, yeah.

741
00:37:07,982 --> 00:37:08,852
The threat model.

742
00:37:08,852 --> 00:37:09,172
Yeah.

743
00:37:09,172 --> 00:37:13,771
Like is your threat model that, like about
replicating friends of friends content?

744
00:37:13,961 --> 00:37:17,817
I like, I think,  browsers for example,
are even coping with this in a more

745
00:37:17,817 --> 00:37:21,327
pedestrian, not a decentralized way,
but like they're introducing the, the

746
00:37:21,327 --> 00:37:25,777
file API, which actually will allow you
to save files out from the browser in a

747
00:37:25,787 --> 00:37:27,357
sort of, so you could go to photoshop.

748
00:37:27,357 --> 00:37:29,867
com, edit a photo and that
saves it out to your disk.

749
00:37:29,867 --> 00:37:32,597
And this is something I worked
on when I was at Chrome a

750
00:37:32,597 --> 00:37:35,117
little bit, and it has a lot of.

751
00:37:35,262 --> 00:37:36,112
Thorny issues.

752
00:37:36,112 --> 00:37:40,002
Actually, most of the browsers only
partially support it right now or

753
00:37:40,002 --> 00:37:46,772
support, you know, certain parts of it
because the way the web secures content

754
00:37:46,872 --> 00:37:49,412
around domains is very different.

755
00:37:49,757 --> 00:37:53,737
sort of comes in at an odd angle to the
way file systems think about security.

756
00:37:54,137 --> 00:37:57,577
And so anytime you have these two sort
of security models budding up against

757
00:37:57,577 --> 00:38:01,127
each other, you have this turbulence zone
where all sorts of funny, scary things

758
00:38:01,127 --> 00:38:03,241
can happen and you need to deal with that.

759
00:38:03,531 --> 00:38:05,761
So this is actually, this
is a pretty tricky problem.

760
00:38:05,791 --> 00:38:09,374
You know, it's one that we've,
taken a stab at for our use case.

761
00:38:09,724 --> 00:38:13,204
but I think often you'll run into
this dilemma that isn't immediately

762
00:38:13,204 --> 00:38:16,354
obvious, but you can sort of,
typically you can either have.

763
00:38:16,515 --> 00:38:21,525
sort of files or, or, or data
ownership or multiplayer.

764
00:38:21,851 --> 00:38:27,471
but not both, unless you start picking
apart some of the security problems

765
00:38:27,501 --> 00:38:31,691
that the web has, you know, sort of left
us with some of that security stack.

766
00:38:32,046 --> 00:38:34,779
Gordon, when you say, unless you
pick apart some of the security

767
00:38:34,779 --> 00:38:38,449
problems, what I hear you saying
is like, you have to solve for sort

768
00:38:38,449 --> 00:38:44,459
of the identity slash network slash
authentication authorization piece in

769
00:38:44,459 --> 00:38:46,069
order to get files and collaboration.

770
00:38:46,069 --> 00:38:51,594
Like it implies that there are multiple,
you know, Writers that have different,

771
00:38:51,714 --> 00:38:54,874
that are different, you know, and,
and you have to somehow allow them to

772
00:38:54,884 --> 00:38:57,764
communicate with one another, allow
them to identify one another, and then

773
00:38:57,814 --> 00:39:02,153
also, allow them to secure content,
set up the rules for who can write

774
00:39:02,183 --> 00:39:04,153
when, how, all of that kind of thing.

775
00:39:05,683 --> 00:39:06,003
Is that?

776
00:39:06,033 --> 00:39:07,763
Yeah, I think that's right.

777
00:39:07,763 --> 00:39:12,612
I've personally become convinced of
the, the value of and this is rather

778
00:39:12,612 --> 00:39:16,922
low level stuff, but signing everything
with a key that maps one to one to you.

779
00:39:17,342 --> 00:39:18,902
And I think, you know Hold on, everything?

780
00:39:18,902 --> 00:39:19,172
What does

781
00:39:19,172 --> 00:39:19,852
everything mean?

782
00:39:19,872 --> 00:39:23,282
Because this is a specific technical
problem that we're, like, quite

783
00:39:23,812 --> 00:39:25,652
deeply investigating right now.

784
00:39:25,872 --> 00:39:30,072
Because, like, you sign every
keystroke on a 200, 000, keystroke

785
00:39:30,082 --> 00:39:31,492
essay, like the Embark essay.

786
00:39:31,862 --> 00:39:33,632
And what you have is mostly signatures.

787
00:39:33,936 --> 00:39:37,546
I like the way that you, you, you
love mip mapping, don't you, Peter?

788
00:39:37,546 --> 00:39:41,186
Like going one level more,
granular with definitions.

789
00:39:41,336 --> 00:39:44,746
Well, it's tough because like this
is this, like you have to constantly

790
00:39:44,746 --> 00:39:47,186
be moving up and down these
hierarchies of abstraction when you're

791
00:39:47,186 --> 00:39:48,466
working on these problems, right?

792
00:39:48,546 --> 00:39:53,166
So like, you know, Newsphere is cool
because, you know, you can operate

793
00:39:53,166 --> 00:39:55,116
at this very coarse, chunky grain.

794
00:39:55,360 --> 00:39:58,450
But when you say everything,
this is why I'm asking, like, you

795
00:39:58,450 --> 00:40:02,570
know, like, does this exclude that
kind of lower real time thing?

796
00:40:02,580 --> 00:40:04,380
Maybe this is a solvable
technical problem.

797
00:40:04,620 --> 00:40:05,980
Just curious what you think about that.

798
00:40:06,510 --> 00:40:08,350
Well, and I suppose you
might be able to sign at the

799
00:40:08,350 --> 00:40:10,470
granularity you care about, right?

800
00:40:10,510 --> 00:40:15,293
I guess what I mean is, the web
anchors security to domains.

801
00:40:15,588 --> 00:40:19,985
So the way the web thinks about security
is, it's guaranteed by a domain.

802
00:40:20,311 --> 00:40:26,601
if you want to start making attestations
about, people or individuals or actors

803
00:40:26,601 --> 00:40:30,415
on the network, then you start, maybe
wanting to give those actors keys.

804
00:40:30,515 --> 00:40:31,395
In some capacity.

805
00:40:31,925 --> 00:40:35,225
And now I think there's, you know, sort
of the cypherpunk view of it, which is

806
00:40:35,225 --> 00:40:36,725
that these keys should be self sovereign.

807
00:40:36,745 --> 00:40:39,925
And I, I sort of think that that's
a possibility that a protocol

808
00:40:39,925 --> 00:40:43,215
should allow for, but a lot of
people are going to want to escrow

809
00:40:43,215 --> 00:40:44,455
those keys or have them recovered.

810
00:40:44,475 --> 00:40:47,485
It doesn't, a detail that users shouldn't
have to care, care about most of the time.

811
00:40:47,565 --> 00:40:47,885
Right.

812
00:40:48,045 --> 00:40:48,435
And an important one too.

813
00:40:49,455 --> 00:40:49,655
Yeah.

814
00:40:49,655 --> 00:40:49,945
Yeah.

815
00:40:50,005 --> 00:40:54,201
But, what signing with keys does is.

816
00:40:54,392 --> 00:40:57,862
It allows for what a cryptographer
called non repeatability.

817
00:40:57,912 --> 00:41:00,912
Like you can basically say this person
definitely signed this at this time,

818
00:41:00,912 --> 00:41:04,272
or at least the person who had control
of these keys, and if you keep those

819
00:41:04,282 --> 00:41:08,892
keys secure, you can actually sort of
compose, trust at pretty high levels

820
00:41:08,912 --> 00:41:11,166
in pretty useful ways, mathematically.

821
00:41:11,741 --> 00:41:17,074
So in any case, I think where the file
system and the network tend to run up

822
00:41:17,074 --> 00:41:21,101
against each other at odd angles is the,
the internet or the web rather tends to

823
00:41:21,101 --> 00:41:26,007
think about security in terms of origins
and, of domains and actually apps by and

824
00:41:26,007 --> 00:41:30,815
large adopted that security model as well,
like, like iOS apps, Android apps, and the

825
00:41:30,815 --> 00:41:38,118
file system tends to think of, Security
in terms of who has access to the device.

826
00:41:38,558 --> 00:41:42,398
And these, these two ways of thinking
about security don't, don't mix

827
00:41:42,398 --> 00:41:46,628
very well without some sort of
trust boundary or sandbox boundary

828
00:41:46,628 --> 00:41:48,528
that mediates that relationship.

829
00:41:49,308 --> 00:41:50,798
Can you, can you talk more about this?

830
00:41:50,798 --> 00:41:54,798
Cause this is, I've had many
conversations with like browser heads

831
00:41:54,838 --> 00:41:58,808
and like, I get the idea of an origin
and let me see if I can say this in

832
00:41:58,808 --> 00:42:01,058
a way that like a non browser head.

833
00:42:01,433 --> 00:42:05,523
I mean, maybe I'm a browser person
now, too, by, by fate, but like an

834
00:42:05,533 --> 00:42:11,743
origin is basically like somebody
owns the SSL cert for this DNS.

835
00:42:12,143 --> 00:42:15,143
And so we're just going to trust
everything within that domain

836
00:42:15,143 --> 00:42:17,443
that's signed by that cert, period.

837
00:42:17,743 --> 00:42:20,923
But we're, but we're going to
prevent mixing of that data.

838
00:42:21,663 --> 00:42:27,343
You know, unless it helps us sell ads with
any data from any other origin period.

839
00:42:28,033 --> 00:42:32,143
I mean, I'm a little bit snide when I
say that, but it is a very real concern

840
00:42:32,153 --> 00:42:37,613
and it is very empirically how ads work
and, you know, however you feel about

841
00:42:37,613 --> 00:42:39,170
that, that's just, it is the case.

842
00:42:39,706 --> 00:42:42,456
That sounds like a pretty
accurate description to me.

843
00:42:42,616 --> 00:42:44,646
We're pretty far down the
rabbit hole on this stuff.

844
00:42:44,646 --> 00:42:45,856
Do we want to keep going?

845
00:42:46,031 --> 00:42:49,356
Well, the reason why I think it's
relevant to the files conversation where

846
00:42:49,356 --> 00:42:55,656
we started and the apps conversation is
that origin model is like so Like, many

847
00:42:56,406 --> 00:43:00,751
people I meet who work on these kinds of
problems They get really frustrated by

848
00:43:00,751 --> 00:43:04,301
like cores and like same origin policies.

849
00:43:04,531 --> 00:43:07,451
And the browser keeps ratcheting
these tighter and tighter and tighter

850
00:43:07,451 --> 00:43:10,721
over time, you know, yeah, exactly.

851
00:43:10,751 --> 00:43:13,971
And so to me, this is actually
a really fundamental problem.

852
00:43:14,296 --> 00:43:16,326
Where it's like, well,
but it's my computer.

853
00:43:16,326 --> 00:43:18,026
I want to decide what I do with my data.

854
00:43:18,076 --> 00:43:21,070
And then in the JavaScript console,
it's like, browser says no.

855
00:43:21,640 --> 00:43:23,230
Yeah, actually it's the, um, right.

856
00:43:23,230 --> 00:43:28,950
But like the, the most secure web would
be one where each website is hermetically

857
00:43:28,950 --> 00:43:32,500
sealed and you can neither interact
with it nor receive output from it.

858
00:43:32,750 --> 00:43:34,550
Just little pocket universes.

859
00:43:35,240 --> 00:43:38,770
So, I mean, there's a sort of like
reductio ad absurdum to this, where

860
00:43:38,770 --> 00:43:42,640
like we started with a pretty simple,
it was like a reasonable solve right at

861
00:43:42,655 --> 00:43:46,253
a time, especially in the early days of
the web when they were like,  I think

862
00:43:46,253 --> 00:43:50,363
the mental model was that you might run
a, a server out of a closet or perhaps

863
00:43:50,363 --> 00:43:54,693
your school would run a server, like
it was this very utopian kind of flat

864
00:43:54,693 --> 00:43:56,273
Notion of what a network would be.

865
00:43:56,273 --> 00:44:01,776
And so the server was assumed to be
the agent of the, you know, let's say,

866
00:44:01,776 --> 00:44:07,176
uh, Gordon's email would be like a
computer that was like in my , my closet.

867
00:44:07,176 --> 00:44:07,956
And so like, yeah.

868
00:44:07,956 --> 00:44:09,306
Gordon com Right.

869
00:44:09,306 --> 00:44:10,451
Was a, yeah.

870
00:44:11,206 --> 00:44:16,516
And so if that, if that server is signing
things, you know, you can sort of say,

871
00:44:16,536 --> 00:44:19,936
Oh, well, Gordon signing things, but
that's not really the world we ended

872
00:44:19,936 --> 00:44:23,796
up with because of network effect,
because of Facebook signs, everything.

873
00:44:24,266 --> 00:44:24,646
Yeah.

874
00:44:24,766 --> 00:44:25,086
Yeah.

875
00:44:25,496 --> 00:44:25,936
Now.

876
00:44:26,374 --> 00:44:29,164
Keys are tricky, like, because
there are these funny little things

877
00:44:29,164 --> 00:44:32,405
that you can't lose, just like in
real life, or you'll be locked out.

878
00:44:33,185 --> 00:44:35,675
Except there are no locksmiths.

879
00:44:35,675 --> 00:44:40,895
There are no locksmiths, yeah, at least
unless the NSA has its way, you know, but,

880
00:44:41,228 --> 00:44:46,278
No, but I do, I do have some hope that
we're going to see some, some interesting

881
00:44:46,278 --> 00:44:50,204
kind of new calculus emerge around this
problem with, the advent of like trusted

882
00:44:50,204 --> 00:44:54,523
computing modules, like secure enclave, on
the iPhone, or I forget what the Android

883
00:44:54,533 --> 00:44:58,603
version is called, which makes me a bad
former Googler, but you can sort of stash

884
00:44:58,603 --> 00:45:03,003
keys on these secure pieces of hardware,
and then you have a pretty, you know,

885
00:45:03,690 --> 00:45:06,543
maybe your threat model is the NSA has
your phone and is trying to crack into

886
00:45:06,543 --> 00:45:09,943
it, but that's less the world I'm trying
to solve for, and more the world of like.

887
00:45:10,363 --> 00:45:12,543
It'd be kind of nice to know if,

888
00:45:12,683 --> 00:45:16,213
this I think Bonsy Buddy is a, is a, is
a really credible threat model, right?

889
00:45:16,213 --> 00:45:18,933
Like, that's sort of the core
threat model for, that browser

890
00:45:18,933 --> 00:45:20,423
vendors think about, right?

891
00:45:20,423 --> 00:45:23,383
Which is, you've got some, like,
hostile agent on the user's computer.

892
00:45:23,383 --> 00:45:26,693
They've installed a search,
ostensibly a search toolbar,

893
00:45:26,703 --> 00:45:28,103
or some kind of browser plugin.

894
00:45:28,473 --> 00:45:31,933
Which is now like extracting their
credit card information or their bitcoins

895
00:45:32,013 --> 00:45:33,563
or just other private information.

896
00:45:34,076 --> 00:45:35,406
So so why does this matter?

897
00:45:35,416 --> 00:45:40,806
Well, so like this this origin security
model inevitably results in silos

898
00:45:40,836 --> 00:45:45,526
like by definition data silos Like
the the silo is the website the the

899
00:45:45,536 --> 00:45:48,396
whole security models that the data
can't make it out of the website

900
00:45:48,936 --> 00:45:50,766
And so you just sort of end up with,

901
00:45:50,813 --> 00:45:52,083
Well, it does at the server, right?

902
00:45:52,083 --> 00:45:53,473
That's, that's the funny thing.

903
00:45:53,513 --> 00:45:53,973
The server.

904
00:45:54,093 --> 00:45:54,533
That's right.

905
00:45:54,533 --> 00:45:57,553
So they run an API so you can come
in from other places there, but the

906
00:45:57,563 --> 00:45:59,643
user can't do it for themselves.

907
00:46:00,053 --> 00:46:00,343
Yeah.

908
00:46:00,470 --> 00:46:04,289
and then this puts the server in
a very privileged and powerful

909
00:46:04,329 --> 00:46:08,059
position on the network because
an API can, can cut you off.

910
00:46:08,129 --> 00:46:13,188
so data that might be notionally
yours, is in practice, it's not really.

911
00:46:13,709 --> 00:46:14,119
I don't know.

912
00:46:14,119 --> 00:46:18,389
If you want to try to solve for that
problem in some capacity, like multiplayer

913
00:46:18,619 --> 00:46:23,309
and some kind of data ownership or the
ability to take your content with you.

914
00:46:23,849 --> 00:46:26,839
I think there's only
three ways to solve this.

915
00:46:27,036 --> 00:46:29,686
one is with a decentralized protocol.

916
00:46:30,342 --> 00:46:32,902
Without going too much deeper
into it, the protocol also has to

917
00:46:32,902 --> 00:46:34,292
have certain security qualities.

918
00:46:34,582 --> 00:46:38,152
I think the other is actually with
local-first data, and this is, Peter's

919
00:46:38,152 --> 00:46:39,872
working on this problem of CRDTs.

920
00:46:39,872 --> 00:46:44,452
The reason local-first data gets you this
is because you know, a server might cut

921
00:46:44,452 --> 00:46:46,222
you off, but it's like, screw you, buddy.

922
00:46:46,222 --> 00:46:47,562
I already have my content, right?

923
00:46:47,572 --> 00:46:48,922
It was already synced to my device.

924
00:46:49,422 --> 00:46:51,132
No, but that's not true.

925
00:46:51,212 --> 00:46:55,302
Like I wish, I appreciate the compliment
implied there, but I think you still

926
00:46:55,302 --> 00:46:56,402
require the first thing, right?

927
00:46:56,402 --> 00:47:00,152
Cause like when you get the data,
like this idea of local-first data,

928
00:47:00,152 --> 00:47:03,282
if it's happening in your browser,
it's still being written into an

929
00:47:03,282 --> 00:47:08,112
indexed DB or an OPFS or whatever else
that's owned by the origin, there is

930
00:47:08,112 --> 00:47:11,672
the ability to write real files, but
it sucks and doesn't really work.

931
00:47:12,127 --> 00:47:16,877
And I see some folks here who have, like,
built apps, like, no one is making a

932
00:47:16,877 --> 00:47:20,929
user click, like, allow access to this
folder every time they open an app.

933
00:47:21,257 --> 00:47:21,717
Gosh, yeah.

934
00:47:21,757 --> 00:47:24,787
Uh, so that's what the, that's
like the file access API.

935
00:47:25,567 --> 00:47:25,877
Yeah.

936
00:47:26,547 --> 00:47:30,597
Right, like, so it is, it, all of that
data is still trapped inside the origin.

937
00:47:30,746 --> 00:47:31,810
Yeah, I'm sure that's true.

938
00:47:31,840 --> 00:47:36,550
I, so, Peter, you were saying, I have,
wait, I have a third, third point.

939
00:47:36,590 --> 00:47:36,870
Yeah.

940
00:47:37,030 --> 00:47:39,555
So, and actually I do want to
say CRDTs are still important.

941
00:47:39,580 --> 00:47:41,080
You're talking totally, totally, but it

942
00:47:41,080 --> 00:47:42,060
doesn't solve the, it

943
00:47:42,060 --> 00:47:42,450
doesn't solve

944
00:47:42,450 --> 00:47:43,150
the origin thing.

945
00:47:43,150 --> 00:47:44,280
And that's the part I don't have a good,

946
00:47:45,250 --> 00:47:46,300
let me circle back to this.

947
00:47:46,330 --> 00:47:48,460
I just want to throw out
one time over coffee.

948
00:47:48,460 --> 00:47:49,680
You told, you told me.

949
00:47:49,930 --> 00:47:52,880
You don't need to care about which
protocol you get the data from if

950
00:47:52,910 --> 00:47:54,250
the file knows how to merge itself.

951
00:47:54,290 --> 00:47:57,320
And I thought that that was a
wonderful provocation to sort of like

952
00:47:57,330 --> 00:47:59,020
argue in favor of the CRDT thing.

953
00:47:59,320 --> 00:48:01,710
And, and all of these are
satis satisficing, right?

954
00:48:01,710 --> 00:48:06,090
Like a protocol, a CRDT, these are not
going to give you perfect exit in any

955
00:48:06,090 --> 00:48:09,280
case because, you know, in the worst
case you might be shut out from the app.

956
00:48:09,370 --> 00:48:11,190
That lets you use this
stuff in a useful way.

957
00:48:11,220 --> 00:48:14,930
But I do think they give you the
ground conditions for things like

958
00:48:14,930 --> 00:48:16,970
adversarial interoperability to emerge.

959
00:48:17,180 --> 00:48:20,780
But the third thing, and the one that
I think is underexplored, and I haven't

960
00:48:20,780 --> 00:48:25,500
even thought through it fully, is,
something like a legal contract that

961
00:48:25,500 --> 00:48:29,220
guarantees the user access to their
data along some axes, as long as a

962
00:48:29,220 --> 00:48:31,330
service continues to be maintained.

963
00:48:31,570 --> 00:48:32,450
You mean like a, like a

964
00:48:32,460 --> 00:48:34,260
UCAN or like an actual, like.

965
00:48:34,485 --> 00:48:35,235
Like TNC.

966
00:48:35,985 --> 00:48:40,525
Like something like, so, and this is the
thing, nothing like this exists today,

967
00:48:40,555 --> 00:48:43,475
but there's no reason you couldn't
write something like a EULA where

968
00:48:43,475 --> 00:48:45,615
the valence goes the other direction.

969
00:48:45,843 --> 00:48:49,335
Instead of the user signing away
their rights, the user is granted

970
00:48:49,335 --> 00:48:50,755
certain rights over their data.

971
00:48:51,045 --> 00:48:54,910
Hey, I'll take that To my lawyer
and yeah, no, actually I've been

972
00:48:55,120 --> 00:48:57,460
thinking, I've been asking for

973
00:48:57,460 --> 00:48:57,740
this.

974
00:48:57,830 --> 00:49:02,530
I sent some, I sent some irony there,
but if you're interested in, I was

975
00:49:02,561 --> 00:49:06,640
thinking about actually going to a lawyer
and see, like asking, is this crazy?

976
00:49:06,640 --> 00:49:10,460
Cause like open source would have
been crazy at one time, but you

977
00:49:10,460 --> 00:49:11,960
know, it's interesting, right?

978
00:49:11,960 --> 00:49:15,860
Like we actually can bend contract on
some interesting directions to solve

979
00:49:15,880 --> 00:49:19,780
using Social technology is things
that are difficult to solve with, you

980
00:49:19,780 --> 00:49:22,847
know, bits and, atoms technologies.

981
00:49:23,257 --> 00:49:23,567
Right.

982
00:49:23,567 --> 00:49:26,467
Well, the challenge here is
not even, could you write a

983
00:49:26,467 --> 00:49:27,767
contract that would do this?

984
00:49:27,797 --> 00:49:31,677
The question is like, how would this
affect your ability to fundraise?

985
00:49:31,677 --> 00:49:34,507
Or what would happen when you told
your VP of sales what you were doing?

986
00:49:37,337 --> 00:49:38,317
Yeah, maybe so.

987
00:49:38,327 --> 00:49:41,047
I think you run into a lot of these same
problems when you say, Hey, we're going

988
00:49:41,047 --> 00:49:44,467
to give users control over their data
through a protocol or through a CRDT

989
00:49:44,497 --> 00:49:49,804
anyway,  so, you know, it's like in a lot
of ways, like, this condition of things.

990
00:49:50,284 --> 00:49:55,777
Not interoperating and users not owning
their data, like, an investor might look

991
00:49:55,777 --> 00:49:57,267
at that and say, that's a moat, right?

992
00:49:57,997 --> 00:49:59,762
It is a moat.

993
00:50:00,412 --> 00:50:00,772
Yeah.

994
00:50:00,832 --> 00:50:04,542
I tend to think about this in like longer
terms that, you know, it's like in some

995
00:50:04,542 --> 00:50:09,092
ways, like Google doesn't have like a
lock on search, like it keeps trying with

996
00:50:09,102 --> 00:50:12,962
things like the open graph, but I, like,
I think it's perfectly possible to build

997
00:50:12,962 --> 00:50:17,313
a defensible business without data lock
in, but it is, it's something you get for

998
00:50:17,342 --> 00:50:19,462
free with the current software paradigm.

999
00:50:19,462 --> 00:50:24,058
And so we're sort of stuck in this
metastable state where extra work.

1000
00:50:24,352 --> 00:50:27,432
This is where I think things like your
protocol or Automerge or other kinds

1001
00:50:27,432 --> 00:50:29,892
of similar projects have potential.

1002
00:50:30,302 --> 00:50:34,602
If you can crack the, like what
you need is enough benefit from

1003
00:50:34,602 --> 00:50:39,772
participating in the ecosystem that
allows you to get like a network style

1004
00:50:39,772 --> 00:50:41,832
returns from interoperation over time.

1005
00:50:42,392 --> 00:50:42,702
Yeah.

1006
00:50:42,992 --> 00:50:45,602
You need a low enough activation
costs that you can bootstrap

1007
00:50:45,612 --> 00:50:46,767
the ecosystem around it.

1008
00:50:46,782 --> 00:50:50,192
That has to be enough value from
adopting the technology to see that

1009
00:50:50,192 --> 00:50:52,762
kind of like a feedback on the returns.

1010
00:50:53,152 --> 00:50:55,592
And I think the other thing that we
haven't talked about that, but that

1011
00:50:55,592 --> 00:50:59,552
is implicit in all of this is like
the political economy of the software.

1012
00:51:00,147 --> 00:51:04,027
That is available to us is determined
by like the market economy of the

1013
00:51:04,027 --> 00:51:07,147
labor market and the VC funding
market and everything else.

1014
00:51:07,147 --> 00:51:11,667
And like, it's all well and good to like
hand wave that away, but it is empirically

1015
00:51:11,677 --> 00:51:15,977
the case, you know, like information
may want to be free, but my rent isn't.

1016
00:51:16,657 --> 00:51:22,277
I think I look at this as in
like a kind of scrappy, maybe

1017
00:51:22,277 --> 00:51:23,377
like entrepreneurial way.

1018
00:51:23,377 --> 00:51:26,417
I'm looking for the cheap hat because
I don't want to wait, abolish, wait

1019
00:51:26,417 --> 00:51:29,017
for the abolition of capitalism
to improve software somewhat.

1020
00:51:29,187 --> 00:51:34,627
And I do think there are these kinds of
judo moves, these interventions, like

1021
00:51:34,627 --> 00:51:37,607
CRDTs that can change the calculus.

1022
00:51:39,042 --> 00:51:40,154
Yeah, maybe I'm wrong, right?

1023
00:51:40,172 --> 00:51:41,002
and, and maybe you're wrong.

1024
00:51:41,012 --> 00:51:43,182
Maybe we're all wrong,
but I, I don't think so.

1025
00:51:43,202 --> 00:51:47,202
I, I think that it requires great
ingenuity and creativity to find

1026
00:51:47,242 --> 00:51:49,192
the strategic angle of intervention.

1027
00:51:49,222 --> 00:51:51,512
But yeah, you know, people
do this all the time.

1028
00:51:51,512 --> 00:51:57,355
They do it, for, they, They apply strategy
to find an entry into a market in order

1029
00:51:57,355 --> 00:52:00,395
to gain, because incumbents don't want
new entrants in the market either.

1030
00:52:00,395 --> 00:52:02,885
And I think we have to put that
hat on actually, if we're going

1031
00:52:02,885 --> 00:52:06,785
to, to change the, the balance
of power, that users have.

1032
00:52:07,055 --> 00:52:08,655
How do you think about
that with what you're

1033
00:52:08,655 --> 00:52:08,875
doing?

1034
00:52:08,875 --> 00:52:09,525
Oh, sorry, Jess.

1035
00:52:09,955 --> 00:52:10,525
No, it's okay.

1036
00:52:10,525 --> 00:52:14,305
I was going to mention, I think there's,
so I, I love your three things, Gordon.

1037
00:52:14,465 --> 00:52:16,322
The, there's three ways
you can solve the problem.

1038
00:52:16,362 --> 00:52:20,804
Like some decentralized protocol that,
Or two, local, distributed local file

1039
00:52:20,804 --> 00:52:22,394
state, like distributed local state.

1040
00:52:22,604 --> 00:52:25,264
And then the third, sort
of a legal contract.

1041
00:52:25,594 --> 00:52:29,434
And I think the one, Peter was pointing
out that the market economics right now,

1042
00:52:29,641 --> 00:52:34,111
what is easy is also very profitable and
therefore the label market and the funding

1043
00:52:34,321 --> 00:52:38,996
market were,  it, it drives against the,
any of these values and it supports sort

1044
00:52:38,996 --> 00:52:42,036
of the data modes that we were talking
about before with the same origin policy.

1045
00:52:42,466 --> 00:52:46,696
And I think the biggest funding
mechanism that I see, Peter's not going

1046
00:52:46,696 --> 00:52:51,746
to love this, that is alternative to
VC right now, is there is a large lump

1047
00:52:51,776 --> 00:52:55,276
of money in the Web3 blockchain world.

1048
00:52:55,576 --> 00:52:58,876
And you do see some of those
projects putting that to use

1049
00:52:58,876 --> 00:53:00,306
to try to solve this problem.

1050
00:53:00,826 --> 00:53:01,356
I see.

1051
00:53:01,356 --> 00:53:06,096
Famously anti capitalist
distributed wealth system of

1052
00:53:06,096 --> 00:53:08,176
the cryptocurrency market.

1053
00:53:08,716 --> 00:53:14,237
Known for its transparency, honesty,
and, Fair outcomes for all involved, yes.

1054
00:53:14,677 --> 00:53:17,327
You're not wrong, and also
there's a lot of money there.

1055
00:53:17,757 --> 00:53:20,777
And so this is kind of like,
it's basically the flip of

1056
00:53:20,777 --> 00:53:21,617
what you were just saying.

1057
00:53:21,777 --> 00:53:24,357
It's like we have to acknowledge
the reality of the market economics.

1058
00:53:24,397 --> 00:53:27,447
Well, the reality of the market economics
is that there is billions of dollars

1059
00:53:27,457 --> 00:53:31,717
in these decentralized protocols
that are basically payment rails for

1060
00:53:31,902 --> 00:53:33,642
Distributing tokens and things like that.

1061
00:53:33,652 --> 00:53:36,312
And a lot of shady, crazy stuff
is happening there for sure.

1062
00:53:36,532 --> 00:53:38,422
but they are, tell me about the

1063
00:53:38,422 --> 00:53:40,202
stuff that's not, cause I
think that's interesting.

1064
00:53:40,712 --> 00:53:41,782
So here's the one that I wanted.

1065
00:53:41,792 --> 00:53:44,502
This is the reason I brought it up
is I don't know if you guys have been

1066
00:53:44,502 --> 00:53:48,718
paying attention to the Farcaster
protocol, but they're distributed

1067
00:53:48,718 --> 00:53:52,078
social media protocol and they have
been iterating on this thing called

1068
00:53:52,078 --> 00:53:56,988
frames and frames are like a micro app.

1069
00:53:57,293 --> 00:53:59,793
Within a tweet, if you could embed.

1070
00:53:59,843 --> 00:54:04,023
And the, the interesting thing about
it, they're opting for Gordon's

1071
00:54:04,043 --> 00:54:09,216
option one for distributing state
and, access and, and all of that.

1072
00:54:09,306 --> 00:54:10,246
Yeah, they actually,

1073
00:54:10,246 --> 00:54:15,690
their, their protocol is not too different
from BlueSky or even our own, Neosphere.

1074
00:54:15,755 --> 00:54:19,066
but it does make a couple of
choices around key rotation that,

1075
00:54:19,183 --> 00:54:20,673
and they use a blockchain for this.

1076
00:54:20,703 --> 00:54:23,100
I could get into the why,
if we want to later on.

1077
00:54:23,400 --> 00:54:24,970
Well, here's the more interesting thing.

1078
00:54:24,980 --> 00:54:30,391
Just today, they showed off, frames
that allow for, money tra uh, sorry,

1079
00:54:30,431 --> 00:54:32,531
token transfers to happen inside of it.

1080
00:54:32,628 --> 00:54:35,978
So basically they built into
their protocol, micropayments.

1081
00:54:36,798 --> 00:54:40,218
And the reason I think this is
really interesting is because I think

1082
00:54:40,218 --> 00:54:42,331
one way out of this, the current.

1083
00:54:42,566 --> 00:54:46,116
uh, world that we're in with browsers
and same origin policy and the sort

1084
00:54:46,116 --> 00:54:50,870
of, the dead end, but it's a happy
dead end where the web is, is a, is

1085
00:54:50,910 --> 00:54:55,780
building a payment protocol into the,
the primitives of the network itself,

1086
00:54:56,180 --> 00:55:00,200
such that people can renumerate
each other directly, and You know

1087
00:55:00,200 --> 00:55:01,470
the web was meant to have this?

1088
00:55:01,545 --> 00:55:05,285
There's an HTTP code for
payment, like pay per view.

1089
00:55:05,665 --> 00:55:08,445
It just never got, yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

1090
00:55:08,765 --> 00:55:10,545
This is like Tim Berners
Lee just stuck it in there.

1091
00:55:10,545 --> 00:55:13,205
There's it's, it's along there
with like, uh, what is the, there's

1092
00:55:13,205 --> 00:55:14,795
another code for I am a teapot.

1093
00:55:15,195 --> 00:55:18,745
Um, there's like these funny, like
reserved codes for just in case that Tim

1094
00:55:18,745 --> 00:55:22,312
Berners Lee stuck in there and payment
was one, uh, we just never got it.

1095
00:55:22,455 --> 00:55:22,745
Yeah.

1096
00:55:23,260 --> 00:55:23,730
I don't know.

1097
00:55:23,730 --> 00:55:26,350
I don't know what you're going
to ask with regard to Web3.

1098
00:55:26,350 --> 00:55:30,210
I think the idea of like digital
payments is not crazy on its face,

1099
00:55:30,230 --> 00:55:33,690
and it would be interesting to think
about ways to do that with a protocol.

1100
00:55:33,980 --> 00:55:38,370
I think my stance with regard to Web3
is sure to piss literally everyone off

1101
00:55:38,410 --> 00:55:43,120
on both sides of this very kind of like
divisive issue, which is that, uh, I

1102
00:55:43,120 --> 00:55:45,988
think that,  I look at a blockchain
as a really interesting technological

1103
00:55:45,988 --> 00:55:50,218
artifact that does solve some problems
that are very difficult to solve in other

1104
00:55:50,218 --> 00:55:53,878
ways, but the number of people who want
to solve those problems is small, and

1105
00:55:53,888 --> 00:55:56,958
nevertheless, they can be high value.

1106
00:55:57,558 --> 00:56:00,518
So these are things like key
rotation, which Farcaster uses.

1107
00:56:01,268 --> 00:56:04,638
There's been this, there's always
been a challenge with key rotation

1108
00:56:04,668 --> 00:56:09,188
where you need like a third party to,
to basically handle that rotation.

1109
00:56:09,188 --> 00:56:13,728
And that third party is kind of like a
point of failure if someone, co ops it,

1110
00:56:13,858 --> 00:56:18,555
but in any case, you know, I, here's
where I'm going to piss everyone else

1111
00:56:18,555 --> 00:56:20,705
off, uh, on the crypto side is like.

1112
00:56:21,190 --> 00:56:23,960
I think all of the problems of
crypto are not crypto problems.

1113
00:56:24,000 --> 00:56:25,606
They're, market problems.

1114
00:56:25,636 --> 00:56:28,866
And if you look at them point for
point, like, you know, tulip mania,

1115
00:56:28,896 --> 00:56:33,537
wildcat banking, crazy token pump and
dump, these are literally all things

1116
00:56:33,580 --> 00:56:37,546
that we had to go through with regard
to, capitalism in general, markets

1117
00:56:37,546 --> 00:56:39,573
in general,  for the last 200 years.

1118
00:56:39,593 --> 00:56:45,173
And then we accrued this
enormous edifice of regulation.

1119
00:56:45,518 --> 00:56:47,758
Around markets in order
to get them to function.

1120
00:56:47,768 --> 00:56:52,168
So my personal attitude toward this
stuff, which probably a lot of people

1121
00:56:52,168 --> 00:56:55,305
are going to agree, disagree with for one
ideological reason or another, it's like

1122
00:56:55,358 --> 00:56:57,228
markets are kind of like nuclear reactors.

1123
00:56:57,258 --> 00:56:59,468
They can generate a lot
of interesting outcomes.

1124
00:56:59,661 --> 00:57:02,678
but they also have a tendency to
melt down,  without cooling rods.

1125
00:57:03,383 --> 00:57:06,635
And, and this is just kind of what
I see happening with, with crypto.

1126
00:57:06,725 --> 00:57:09,385
And I think it'll continue to happen
up until the point that it gets

1127
00:57:09,385 --> 00:57:12,535
some sort of enlightened regulation,
which may never come because it

1128
00:57:12,535 --> 00:57:16,085
seems like nobody's actually invested
in that outcome on either side.

1129
00:57:16,654 --> 00:57:19,484
so there's Gordon's unpopular
take with regard to Web3.

1130
00:57:21,054 --> 00:57:25,824
So Web3 is speed running 200 years
of financial market regulation.

1131
00:57:25,824 --> 00:57:27,934
Yeah, and, and actually,

1132
00:57:27,934 --> 00:57:31,124
especially To me, like, proof of stake
blockchains are a really interesting

1133
00:57:31,124 --> 00:57:35,394
technology that solve, like, a interesting
problem of, like, decentralized,

1134
00:57:35,464 --> 00:57:38,964
totally ordered, sort of, source
of truth that's credibly neutral.

1135
00:57:39,194 --> 00:57:42,854
These terms all have to be qualified
because, you know, they're all, all

1136
00:57:42,854 --> 00:57:48,504
of that is also kept afloat by, like,
basically, The financial function

1137
00:57:48,584 --> 00:57:51,894
that a chain is supposed to serve.

1138
00:57:52,228 --> 00:57:54,494
but I think the product market fit
that chains have found right now is

1139
00:57:54,494 --> 00:58:00,467
basically Vegas and, you know, crypto
just recently skyrocketed back up again.

1140
00:58:00,467 --> 00:58:03,127
So I've come to the conclusion
that Vegas is actually anti

1141
00:58:03,127 --> 00:58:04,567
fragile and you can't kill it.

1142
00:58:05,154 --> 00:58:09,374
but that's also something that is,  Vegas
is not personally my favorite place to be.

1143
00:58:09,521 --> 00:58:10,076
so.

1144
00:58:10,516 --> 00:58:14,719
If I engage with it, it's, it's, you
know, kind of, with, with care and

1145
00:58:14,719 --> 00:58:16,139
with a little bit of self protection.

1146
00:58:16,794 --> 00:58:21,574
Yeah, I mean, I, I think Jess,
has certain expectations about my

1147
00:58:21,574 --> 00:58:24,874
perspective on these things that are
not entirely unfair, but I, I would

1148
00:58:24,874 --> 00:58:27,824
say I'm not anti crypto conceptually.

1149
00:58:27,824 --> 00:58:32,684
I'm just opposed to getting dragged into
the kinds of communities that I've seen.

1150
00:58:33,314 --> 00:58:37,084
You know, I just, like
the ideas are reasonable.

1151
00:58:37,084 --> 00:58:38,954
It's just, the outcomes seem.

1152
00:58:39,159 --> 00:58:40,214
Odious.

1153
00:58:40,430 --> 00:58:41,130
So I'm just like,

1154
00:58:41,740 --> 00:58:42,990
so many things when,

1155
00:58:43,810 --> 00:58:47,657
when there's like a healthy, high
functioning, cryptocurrency for like

1156
00:58:47,687 --> 00:58:53,097
micropayments that isn't like a,
like an insane pump and dump, a penny

1157
00:58:53,097 --> 00:58:55,494
stock, gambling, whatever, right?

1158
00:58:55,494 --> 00:58:58,134
Like, yeah, like, but that would be cool.

1159
00:58:58,174 --> 00:59:02,134
I, I always ask if anybody has one
in mind and nobody does, but in the

1160
00:59:02,134 --> 00:59:06,514
meantime, I also think it's a little bit
irrelevant cause like, Oh man, use PayPal.

1161
00:59:06,814 --> 00:59:09,764
Use, like there's lots
of, use Square Cash.

1162
00:59:09,774 --> 00:59:11,424
Like there's, use a freaking credit card.

1163
00:59:11,444 --> 00:59:14,454
Like there's, payment is, is,
yeah, there's more friction

1164
00:59:14,884 --> 00:59:16,204
than, than you'd like.

1165
00:59:16,204 --> 00:59:18,214
But like Stripe is pretty good.

1166
00:59:18,254 --> 00:59:19,884
There's alternatives and Wraparate.

1167
00:59:19,924 --> 00:59:24,344
Like these are hard problems, but they're
so much less hard than they used to be.

1168
00:59:24,344 --> 00:59:26,824
And they're, you know,
Apple Pay is pretty great.

1169
00:59:26,854 --> 00:59:31,534
Like, you know, like we don't
need to invent a whole new

1170
00:59:31,804 --> 00:59:34,494
financial economy to do payments.

1171
00:59:34,989 --> 00:59:38,319
But I do think broadly, like
we've got a little bit off

1172
00:59:38,329 --> 00:59:40,422
track here, which is like files.

1173
00:59:40,932 --> 00:59:42,492
Well, no, it's files over apps.

1174
00:59:42,522 --> 00:59:46,792
And I think again, like we have to ask
why, why are things the way they are?

1175
00:59:47,962 --> 00:59:49,962
And so things are the way they
are because you can make a living

1176
00:59:49,962 --> 00:59:51,102
building software that way.

1177
00:59:51,292 --> 00:59:53,952
You can get investment from
other people to build software.

1178
00:59:54,212 --> 00:59:56,592
And if you can't get investments and
you can't make a living, then you're

1179
00:59:56,592 --> 01:00:01,322
not going to have the ability to
attract, attract top talent, right.

1180
01:00:01,382 --> 01:00:04,522
To bring in the investment it takes
to build a team in advance of revenue.

1181
01:00:05,552 --> 01:00:05,822
Right.

1182
01:00:05,852 --> 01:00:11,202
And like the problem with crypto money is
that it always ends up being predicated on

1183
01:00:11,232 --> 01:00:16,122
like the promise of crypto style returns
in sort of the, you know, idealized case.

1184
01:00:16,122 --> 01:00:19,912
And so what you see is like
ecosystems aligning around trying

1185
01:00:19,912 --> 01:00:23,002
to generate one of those crypto
pops, because that's the expectation

1186
01:00:23,292 --> 01:00:24,412
that comes with the investment.

1187
01:00:24,782 --> 01:00:26,582
And I think, I don't
want to call anybody out.

1188
01:00:26,582 --> 01:00:29,362
I'll just say that there have been
very interesting and promising

1189
01:00:29,362 --> 01:00:33,382
projects that have over time had
to realign themselves to generating

1190
01:00:33,392 --> 01:00:37,367
crypto Interest style returns.

1191
01:00:37,417 --> 01:00:41,177
And that, that, that has very frequently
been to the detriment of their mission.

1192
01:00:41,957 --> 01:00:42,267
Right.

1193
01:00:42,327 --> 01:00:42,537
Yeah.

1194
01:00:42,857 --> 01:00:45,737
Token pumping tends to
be an unstoppable force.

1195
01:00:45,777 --> 01:00:46,117
Yeah.

1196
01:00:46,587 --> 01:00:47,797
And getting that doom loop.

1197
01:00:48,217 --> 01:00:48,377
Yeah.

1198
01:00:48,377 --> 01:00:50,817
And I wasn't necessarily bringing
up web three to say that that was

1199
01:00:50,857 --> 01:00:55,877
the solution, but I do think the
acknowledging there, there's two things

1200
01:00:55,877 --> 01:00:57,217
that I think are interesting here.

1201
01:00:57,237 --> 01:00:58,527
One, how do you fund the.

1202
01:00:59,232 --> 01:01:04,635
The research into making, making easy what
we want, what we believe to be the future.

1203
01:01:04,892 --> 01:01:10,602
and one of those funding sources that is
non VC is a pool of cash that is Web3 that

1204
01:01:10,602 --> 01:01:12,892
has all sorts of other challenges with it.

1205
01:01:13,362 --> 01:01:15,502
Right, but look at what's
happened there, right?

1206
01:01:15,572 --> 01:01:18,132
Like, like really specifically
look at what's happened there.

1207
01:01:18,667 --> 01:01:22,757
Well, I do actually, I want to take
Jess's, perspective on this for a minute.

1208
01:01:22,917 --> 01:01:27,957
Cause I, I sort of gave my, you know,
like very boring, ambivalent take on it.

1209
01:01:27,997 --> 01:01:32,807
But like, I think actually there, if
you, if I remove my moral valence,

1210
01:01:33,007 --> 01:01:36,604
like there are a lot of things that
seem crazy on their face, that generate

1211
01:01:36,644 --> 01:01:40,934
unexpected outcomes and like, I see
a lot of money getting dumped into

1212
01:01:40,934 --> 01:01:44,854
things like ZK proofs, which is a
general purpose cryptographic technology

1213
01:01:44,854 --> 01:01:46,334
that has nothing to do with chains.

1214
01:01:46,419 --> 01:01:50,287
Work has been mostly funded
by, blockchain maxis.

1215
01:01:50,342 --> 01:01:53,142
I see interesting work on elliptic curves.

1216
01:01:53,419 --> 01:01:57,159
you know, like, uh, like Zuko
Wilcox's work on elliptic curves,

1217
01:01:57,232 --> 01:01:58,492
that's being done around this.

1218
01:01:59,400 --> 01:02:00,640
they use IPFS.

1219
01:02:00,700 --> 01:02:04,660
IPFS ecosystem has this new kind of,
I guess you could think of it as like

1220
01:02:04,660 --> 01:02:10,367
a zip format for blocks that, you can
stream in and it's all sort of like

1221
01:02:10,587 --> 01:02:14,437
signed in the way that you can sort
of streaming, uh, stream this stuff in

1222
01:02:14,437 --> 01:02:17,937
and, and cryptographically verify the
blocks as they come in is it's using

1223
01:02:17,937 --> 01:02:21,557
this elliptic curve technology that was,
you know, it's ultimately developed by

1224
01:02:21,557 --> 01:02:25,405
Zuko Wilcox for ZK stuff, uh, Zcash, I

1225
01:02:25,477 --> 01:02:25,527
believe.

1226
01:02:25,527 --> 01:02:28,737
And, uh, UCANs, from the Fission
team are another great example.

1227
01:02:28,737 --> 01:02:31,347
I think they've taken, you
know, a lot of research funding

1228
01:02:31,347 --> 01:02:32,537
from those kinds of sources.

1229
01:02:32,557 --> 01:02:33,257
I think that's good stuff.

1230
01:02:34,077 --> 01:02:34,567
Yeah, I think

1231
01:02:34,567 --> 01:02:39,747
we're also, we're seeing like Farcaster
and BlueSky and Nostr and various sort

1232
01:02:39,747 --> 01:02:43,900
of stabs at decentralized, protocols
that actually don't really have a

1233
01:02:43,900 --> 01:02:47,100
crypto component, but I think are
benefiting greatly from the mental

1234
01:02:47,100 --> 01:02:51,560
models developed by crypto researchers,
cryptographic researchers, as well

1235
01:02:51,560 --> 01:02:52,984
as, Cryptocurrency researcher.

1236
01:02:53,324 --> 01:02:55,434
So I think, you know, it's, it's
like, there's this quote I really

1237
01:02:55,434 --> 01:02:59,177
like from this, evolutionary biologist
who says, containment can lead to

1238
01:02:59,187 --> 01:03:04,794
contagion, and a degree of isolation
is of, great, Importance in sort

1239
01:03:04,794 --> 01:03:06,064
of new forms of being a false.

1240
01:03:06,074 --> 01:03:08,994
So it's like the island ecology thing
Like if something's off to the side

1241
01:03:08,994 --> 01:03:11,824
and it's under a set of different
selection pressures You could be like

1242
01:03:11,824 --> 01:03:13,464
those selection pressures are perverse.

1243
01:03:13,484 --> 01:03:14,344
They're terrible.

1244
01:03:14,554 --> 01:03:18,604
Maybe they are but you're gonna get
some weird and interesting critters

1245
01:03:18,634 --> 01:03:22,609
that emerge out of that primordial
soup for good or ill, right?

1246
01:03:22,639 --> 01:03:27,099
Like I definitely think we're seeing
some things emerge out of the crypto

1247
01:03:27,129 --> 01:03:32,669
landscape that wouldn't emerge out
of the incentives of like the web 2.

1248
01:03:32,729 --> 01:03:35,599
0 aggregator kind of landscape.

1249
01:03:35,699 --> 01:03:37,369
Well,

1250
01:03:37,369 --> 01:03:40,189
we're, we're about a little over an
hour and let me see if I can try to

1251
01:03:40,189 --> 01:03:43,749
land the plane here and kind of recap
the conversation we've had so far.

1252
01:03:43,809 --> 01:03:48,749
So we kind of jumped in with this files
over apps and kind of talking about each,

1253
01:03:48,819 --> 01:03:51,449
some of our different work around this.

1254
01:03:51,479 --> 01:03:55,601
And then, there was a lot of history
discussion around sort of how

1255
01:03:55,752 --> 01:04:00,266
did we get to the current system
where apps could even be used in

1256
01:04:00,266 --> 01:04:02,316
a sentence like file over app.

1257
01:04:02,522 --> 01:04:05,122
and what does that, what does
that mean for where we are today?

1258
01:04:05,162 --> 01:04:07,632
And then I think the, the most
recent exploration has been

1259
01:04:07,642 --> 01:04:09,172
how do we get somewhere else?

1260
01:04:09,222 --> 01:04:13,852
How do we get to a place where files
to open, to echo Peter's opening

1261
01:04:13,852 --> 01:04:17,672
comment, where files didn't get their
butts kicked and where we can actually

1262
01:04:17,762 --> 01:04:22,682
rely on some of the file like goodness
that we get, where we can get this,

1263
01:04:22,752 --> 01:04:24,402
a combination of files and places.

1264
01:04:24,952 --> 01:04:30,013
And, Yeah, there's been some really
great work, that, Gordon and Peter and

1265
01:04:30,093 --> 01:04:34,039
certainly, I've been trying to chip in
as well on,  moving us in this direction.

1266
01:04:34,049 --> 01:04:37,466
Really appreciate Obsidian and
Kapano for kind of,  being a

1267
01:04:37,526 --> 01:04:41,468
working piece of software that
embodies  these concepts as well.

1268
01:04:41,611 --> 01:04:45,641
we've talked a lot about,
local-first software as well.

1269
01:04:45,698 --> 01:04:46,958
that's another term.

1270
01:04:46,968 --> 01:04:50,138
If you're not familiar with it, you
should definitely look for the original

1271
01:04:50,138 --> 01:04:53,228
article from Ink and Switch that
defined the term local-first software.

1272
01:04:53,523 --> 01:04:56,703
And if you want to kind of hear
more conversations like these,

1273
01:04:56,723 --> 01:04:59,903
there's a podcast by Johannes,
which I noticed is sitting in

1274
01:04:59,913 --> 01:05:01,993
the audience, called localfirst.

1275
01:05:02,013 --> 01:05:02,573
fm.

1276
01:05:02,873 --> 01:05:07,099
And that'll kind of take you on the
journey of, local-first and which

1277
01:05:07,119 --> 01:05:11,499
really does,  not 100 percent overlap
with the file over app, philosophy,

1278
01:05:11,499 --> 01:05:13,169
but there's a lot of overlap there.

1279
01:05:13,214 --> 01:05:15,309
And there's a lot of technology
that's being developed that can

1280
01:05:15,319 --> 01:05:17,099
hopefully get us from where we are.

1281
01:05:17,389 --> 01:05:22,179
And sort of this current ecological
conditions to a new place.

1282
01:05:22,426 --> 01:05:26,276
but Gordon or Peter, do you guys
have any closing comments before we

1283
01:05:26,916 --> 01:05:27,216
wrap up?

1284
01:05:27,216 --> 01:05:31,579
I do, I do, which is, I liked
Peter's put that we need to make

1285
01:05:31,636 --> 01:05:32,986
the right thing, the easy thing.

1286
01:05:33,196 --> 01:05:37,196
I think it's actually extraordinarily
difficult right now to build an app

1287
01:05:37,236 --> 01:05:41,119
that, puts the user in control of
their data in any meaningful sense.

1288
01:05:41,322 --> 01:05:44,612
Almost literally, no matter how
you define user ownership of data.

1289
01:05:44,652 --> 01:05:49,822
And, you know, the work Peter's doing in
CRDTs, and I think the many decentralized

1290
01:05:49,842 --> 01:05:55,082
protocol projects, including our own, are
all attempts at trying to lower the floor

1291
01:05:55,112 --> 01:05:59,902
so that more people can, can build apps
that actually do put users in control.

1292
01:05:59,946 --> 01:06:01,326
I think that's, that's necessary.

1293
01:06:01,326 --> 01:06:03,486
cause otherwise it's going to
continue to be prohibitively

1294
01:06:03,486 --> 01:06:06,436
expensive to make that a reality.

1295
01:06:07,426 --> 01:06:09,096
Yep, absolutely.

1296
01:06:09,096 --> 01:06:09,116
Absolutely.

1297
01:06:09,846 --> 01:06:11,226
Peter, anything to wrap us up?

1298
01:06:11,696 --> 01:06:13,906
I don't think we have an answer yet.

1299
01:06:14,166 --> 01:06:16,896
Like, I don't mean us
here, though, also that.

1300
01:06:17,226 --> 01:06:20,983
But, like, I think that, there's a lot
more work to do and a lot more to say.

1301
01:06:21,438 --> 01:06:25,958
And, you know, I have plenty of like
pet theories and, and ideas as I'm sure

1302
01:06:25,958 --> 01:06:32,051
everybody here on this call, does, but
I think, I've tried not to, I've tried

1303
01:06:32,051 --> 01:06:36,541
not to fall into solutioneering in this
conversation because I think it's, it's

1304
01:06:36,541 --> 01:06:40,924
easy to get, jump into the why don't we
just,  kind of mode, but I think that

1305
01:06:40,925 --> 01:06:45,325
like a good, clear understanding of
the opportunity, the challenge and the

1306
01:06:45,325 --> 01:06:49,610
benefits and like a, uh, Like I just
feel like very often people sort of

1307
01:06:49,620 --> 01:06:55,670
lament the way things are, but I think
Gordon's approach to kind of analyzing

1308
01:06:55,690 --> 01:06:59,970
the, not just the technical landscape,
but like the political and cultural

1309
01:06:59,970 --> 01:07:05,510
landscape as well is part of why I so
enjoy these conversations that we have.

1310
01:07:05,510 --> 01:07:08,930
And I really, thank you,
Jess, for, for allowing me to

1311
01:07:08,930 --> 01:07:10,120
jump in and be a part of it.

1312
01:07:10,516 --> 01:07:11,196
Likewise.

1313
01:07:11,336 --> 01:07:11,906
It was great.

1314
01:07:12,576 --> 01:07:18,488
But yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm very, uh, Excited
to see folks like yourself, you know,

1315
01:07:18,488 --> 01:07:23,541
like actively engaging kind of one
rung closer to sort of market forces.

1316
01:07:23,541 --> 01:07:26,918
And, you know, I don't think
there's a wrong thing to try.

1317
01:07:27,508 --> 01:07:30,858
Like if you're doing things, I
wouldn't, I'm doing things you wouldn't.

1318
01:07:30,898 --> 01:07:31,908
I think that's great.

1319
01:07:32,391 --> 01:07:35,471
I'm not here to be a bigot for
an approach or a technology.

1320
01:07:35,471 --> 01:07:36,951
I'll speak my mind and
tell you what I think.

1321
01:07:36,971 --> 01:07:41,761
And if your thing works, I will celebrate,
you know, that's, I hope that we all

1322
01:07:41,761 --> 01:07:46,936
have that mindset of like, You know,
it's not about arguing for ideological

1323
01:07:46,981 --> 01:07:50,031
purity or like the one true solution.

1324
01:07:50,551 --> 01:07:53,051
I think it's just we got to get out
there and try and make things that work

1325
01:07:53,051 --> 01:07:56,901
for people and then See what people say
when they try them and then keep, keep

1326
01:07:56,901 --> 01:07:58,651
going, keep iterating, keep trying again.

1327
01:07:59,311 --> 01:08:01,571
So if you're sitting and
listening to this, I don't

1328
01:08:01,571 --> 01:08:02,361
know how many people are here.

1329
01:08:02,391 --> 01:08:03,521
There's a bunch of people wandered in.

1330
01:08:03,894 --> 01:08:06,364
yeah, like go, go make things, I guess.

1331
01:08:06,594 --> 01:08:09,524
Or try some of the things that
we've made and complain about

1332
01:08:09,524 --> 01:08:10,534
the ways they don't work for you.

1333
01:08:10,534 --> 01:08:15,204
That's, that's honestly, that's honestly a
pretty good, pretty good contribution too.

1334
01:08:15,754 --> 01:08:16,454
Such a gift.

1335
01:08:16,674 --> 01:08:17,104
Such a gift.

1336
01:08:17,353 --> 01:08:17,853
All right, guys.

1337
01:08:17,883 --> 01:08:18,443
Well, thanks.

1338
01:08:18,523 --> 01:08:21,146
And, yeah, look forward to the next
time I get to chat with both of you.

1339
01:08:21,686 --> 01:08:22,296
I see it, Jess.

1340
01:08:22,906 --> 01:08:23,006
Take

1341
01:08:23,026 --> 01:08:23,486
care, y'all.

1342
01:08:23,626 --> 01:08:23,976
Oh, Hey.

1343
01:08:23,976 --> 01:08:27,446
And if anybody out there wants to
see, I think you're going to the

1344
01:08:27,446 --> 01:08:28,916
local-first conf in person, right?

1345
01:08:28,916 --> 01:08:29,386
Yes.

1346
01:08:29,676 --> 01:08:29,936
I will.

1347
01:08:29,946 --> 01:08:30,106
Yeah.

1348
01:08:30,106 --> 01:08:30,736
I'm going to be there.

1349
01:08:30,736 --> 01:08:31,466
Gordon, are you coming?

1350
01:08:31,836 --> 01:08:33,836
I'm so sad to miss it.

1351
01:08:33,886 --> 01:08:35,211
Yeah, I will not.

1352
01:08:35,341 --> 01:08:35,811
Yeah.

1353
01:08:36,135 --> 01:08:37,965
I think it's going to be glorious though.

1354
01:08:37,995 --> 01:08:41,261
It's, it's going to undoubtedly be an
interesting cross section of people.

1355
01:08:41,261 --> 01:08:44,391
I feel like this is a, an
idea that's just breaking into

1356
01:08:44,391 --> 01:08:46,011
sort of broader consciousness.

1357
01:08:46,101 --> 01:08:48,401
and the people who have been
investing in it for a long time,

1358
01:08:48,401 --> 01:08:49,801
I'm sure are all sure to be there.

1359
01:08:49,801 --> 01:08:51,601
And it's, it sounds like it's
going to be a real party.

1360
01:08:51,861 --> 01:08:52,141
Yeah.

1361
01:08:52,141 --> 01:08:55,121
local-first conf I mean, not everybody
will be there, but hey, that's the idea.

1362
01:08:55,355 --> 01:08:57,934
local-first conf, it's
in Berlin, end of May.

1363
01:08:58,464 --> 01:08:59,834
yeah, you should look it up.

1364
01:09:00,774 --> 01:09:02,064
Berlin is amazing too.

1365
01:09:02,494 --> 01:09:04,054
That should be like excuse enough.

1366
01:09:04,084 --> 01:09:04,904
Oh my goodness.

1367
01:09:05,371 --> 01:09:05,961
What a place.

1368
01:09:06,731 --> 01:09:07,091
Alright.

1369
01:09:07,701 --> 01:09:08,151
See you guys.

1370
01:09:08,341 --> 01:09:08,651
Bye.