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NET Society is unraveling the latest in digital art, crypto, AI, and tech. Join us for fresh insights and bold perspectives as we tap into wild, thought-provoking conversations. By: Derek Edwards (glitch marfa / collab+currency), Chris Furlong (starholder, LAO + Flamingo DAO), and Aaaron Wright & Priyanka Desai (Tribute Labs)
00;00;15;29 - 00;00;18;28
Aaron
So we're California dreaming, guys. Everybody's out here, right?
00;00;19;05 - 00;00;22;05
Pri
Naw, Cal. So, Cal, we're we're covering the coast.
00;00;22;06 - 00;00;25;19
Aaron
And that society is, is West Coast this week.
00;00;25;22 - 00;00;39;25
Chris
West coast? It's good. It's good. I the sun to actually out. I've been, I've been under a heavy marine marine layer down in, Playa del Rey and Long Beach, and I'm happy just to see the sun right now.
00;00;39;27 - 00;00;47;09
Aaron
Me, too. I mean, especially with all the, the, the snowpocalypse that's gripping the country, which is, kind of interesting.
00;00;47;12 - 00;00;52;22
Chris
Do you have your snow snow futures hedged and accumulated on your various prediction markets?
00;00;52;25 - 00;01;19;11
Aaron
Yes. Yeah. And, you know, I never use the prediction market. I did see this morning that, poly markets volume hit, like an all time high, like, higher than during the election cycle. So that's what it is. Yeah. It's notable, like a good 20, 30% higher than that. Their one of their investors. One confirmation just tweeted out like a something from one of their their either internal data tracking or something that the the team has to pass along to them.
00;01;19;13 - 00;01;50;15
Aaron
I think that question of whether or not like prediction markets are here to stay is I think they've kind of crossed the chasm there. Yeah, I mean it's been like that for it looks the past three months. So they were at like I'd say like 2.6 billion in monthly volume. Right. The peak of the election cycle. And now they're it looks like at about like 4.5 and it's, it's, it's held steady for, it looks like about a quarter, which is kind of wild, although Massachusetts seems to be cracking down on the, Kaushik.
00;01;50;17 - 00;01;54;29
Aaron
So the find the fine folks in Massachusetts, they want no part of this game.
00;01;55;01 - 00;01;57;24
Chris
Oh. Regulators, regulators.
00;01;57;27 - 00;01;59;08
Pri
They say regulating.
00;01;59;11 - 00;02;00;21
Chris
They do.
00;02;00;24 - 00;02;15;19
Pri
What is most of the prediction market volume, like sports at this point? I mean, I was thinking in my head of my goal, I guess there is a lot of global conflict for people to like, bet and make predictions on, but it feels like still a lot of it's just like sports betting. Like, is it because like the Super.
00;02;15;19 - 00;02;39;05
Aaron
Bowl, I think I think probably markets a little bit better. I, I, I don't I remember seeing but I don't have the numbers perfectly handy. But I think it's like overwhelmingly like 75% plus sports betting. I think probably market definitely has that element too. But it's a little bit more diversified pretty. That's my understanding. And I think that's why, tax that Ucits wanted to, clamp down on it.
00;02;39;05 - 00;02;45;01
Aaron
They have like a couple of laws preventing or precluding sports betting. I think that's the big hook.
00;02;45;03 - 00;02;47;12
Pri
Yeah. And this is, like, a way around it.
00;02;47;14 - 00;03;05;26
Aaron
Yeah, exactly. And so I don't know what that means. I don't know if, like, we start to see other states kind of like, start to push this stuff out very well. Could mean New York state tried to, I think, block DraftKings at some point. I don't know what happened with that if they lost. But I remember there was a little move in that direction for a spell.
00;03;05;28 - 00;03;16;28
Pri
Yeah, I remember I wonder if California will start regulating this. But anyway, should we should we talk about our California experience again, our West Coast experience? I mean, I you want.
00;03;16;28 - 00;03;18;17
Chris
Something to do with prediction markets.
00;03;18;18 - 00;03;23;22
Pri
Let's I mean, I mean like, no, we could talk about it. I just feel like it was kind of the conversation was kind of falling.
00;03;23;28 - 00;03;30;04
Chris
It was it was we weren't there. I'm still having my coffee. Aaron, have you interacted with a robot yet?
00;03;30;05 - 00;03;57;14
Aaron
Well, I did go into Waymo and like pre mentioned before they're pretty I mean they're pretty cool. I think the thing that surprised me is just how many there are here. We took like a Waymo from one part of San Francisco to another 20 minute drive. And you probably saw on the road, 30 to 50. And you get like some Waymo and Waymo action or like a Waymo is like pulled over to let another Waymo pass, which is kind of like a an interesting odd concept.
00;03;57;16 - 00;04;15;18
Aaron
The form factor is brutal. It's still like pretty ugly. So I think, you know, we'll see a lot more like a lot more innovation. Just like how they make the sensor smaller, but it's not really smooth. What was kind of interesting is took like an analog, Uber and had a driver that was like a little bit aggressive.
00;04;15;18 - 00;04;37;03
Aaron
And I thought to myself, man, I kind of like, a Waymo. And I did see one of the insurance companies, like one of Neon's top lemonade. They're beginning to, charge like half the insurance premium if you're using, like, a self-driving car. So I think I think the insurance companies are really going to be the ones that drive this down our, like, everybody's throats.
00;04;37;11 - 00;04;51;19
Aaron
And we may get to a point where, you know, if you wanted to drive kind of like an analog vehicle, it's going to be way, way more expensive to do that from a like a luxury, as compared to just using these systems. They definitely feel safe. They feel like a little bit cautious. But I'm okay with that.
00;04;51;19 - 00;04;53;22
Aaron
You know, I'm never in like, that much of a rush.
00;04;53;24 - 00;04;56;17
Pri
Just driving an analog car become a status symbol.
00;04;56;24 - 00;05;13;03
Aaron
I mean, you it sounds weird to say that, but you could you can begin to see that one is. I mean, you still go look at those cars in the 50s, 60s, 70s. Like, some of them are just such beautiful machines. Like, we really don't make cars like that. So I think, yeah, I think there is still something like related to that.
00;05;13;05 - 00;05;34;02
Aaron
And kind of like the, you know, the homespun engineering, like lack of computers around it. I think that attracts like the tinkerer type. I think that's going to be the same thing for all our nation. Like you could imagine. If you want to go to an analog doctor at some point, it being more expensive and getting it from, you know, some sort of like, I, I respect robotic type medical care.
00;05;34;05 - 00;05;47;11
Aaron
But, you know, I don't think a lot of people think about how insurance companies are going to be the ones like driving this innovation. Just just for simple cost cutting and green reasons. You're going to have one up, Chris. Are they down in, Los Angeles? Have. No.
00;05;47;13 - 00;05;50;06
Chris
I tried to order one last night. They're not down in Long Beach yet.
00;05;50;11 - 00;05;54;01
Aaron
So are they in the Valley or they? Only in San Francisco proper.
00;05;54;03 - 00;06;02;20
Chris
They're in Los Angeles itself. But long Beach? No. So I will get my first Waymo out of the airport today.
00;06;02;25 - 00;06;03;17
Pri
I can't wait.
00;06;03;18 - 00;06;09;20
Aaron
Let's go. Yeah. The Chris. Yeah. Live live. Tweet your experience.
00;06;09;20 - 00;06;10;16
Chris
Sure.
00;06;10;18 - 00;06;26;22
Pri
Being out here and being like seeing all them on the road and like being in one, it does make you feel like the East coast is like far behind it. A little it away like I feel like it just feels like pretty commonplace here. And it just I'm like, why? Yeah, it's just feels a little bit behind.
00;06;26;25 - 00;06;43;13
Aaron
Yeah. I mean, it is coming to New York, but I think it just takes longer. It's the same. It's the same story. It's like the overregulation. I think it wasn't really like demand or desire for it. I think it was really like they couldn't figure out how to deal with that. The rules related to it. And they had to go this like state by state route.
00;06;43;15 - 00;06;49;18
Aaron
So they start in Arizona. I think a lot of these experiments, even in California, was a little bit restrictive.
00;06;49;21 - 00;06;50;11
Pri
Yeah, it's true.
00;06;50;17 - 00;06;58;21
Aaron
And I do think it was the weather too. Like I think it's just not as rainy or snowy. I think there's concern about that. You know, it's hard to drive in the snow.
00;06;58;23 - 00;07;00;22
Pri
That's so true. Yeah I think about that.
00;07;00;22 - 00;07;06;06
Aaron
So what are they like just like shut shut down for like the days that it snows. That's pretty hard to operate.
00;07;06;09 - 00;07;07;11
Pri
Yeah, totally.
00;07;07;13 - 00;07;12;17
Chris
And we need live footage of a Waymo in in Manhattan on Sunday.
00;07;12;19 - 00;07;25;10
Aaron
Yeah. Completely. Or driving through Texas because they don't know how to drive in the snow. Oh man. But yeah I think it feels like that way. I guess the other thing I do, I just everybody's talking about this mare, they like love the mare which is.
00;07;25;12 - 00;07;26;00
Pri
Allowing.
00;07;26;00 - 00;07;42;11
Aaron
It. Yeah. I mean I've caught like some clips of them just like on my feed and he, he seems like pretty down the middle. Like, he's not particularly charming, you know. Is that it. Isn't that like the presidential work of, like, Gavin Newsom? But they're pretty excited about, about him.
00;07;42;13 - 00;07;54;09
Pri
I have not met one person who does not like him. It's pretty ubiquitous. People like different types of people. Like, it's not like I'm talking to just tech people. I've talked to, like non people. And they like, really like him too.
00;07;54;11 - 00;08;21;11
Aaron
And everybody's building something. And I mean like that's just across the board. They're working for some AI company. They're building into a company like it probably felt like this during web one. You know and I'm thinking in like crypto digital assets, we we got the like an entire city, like, working. But it definitely feels like that's what everybody here is focused on, like, in any capacity, which is pretty cool.
00;08;21;13 - 00;08;27;06
Pri
Yeah, it's it's definitely you'll feel the energy when you come off. It feels. It feels like real.
00;08;27;13 - 00;08;31;15
Aaron
Were you here, did you get tier one during web one at all? Chris.
00;08;31;18 - 00;08;52;00
Chris
Yeah, I came I came up for training in like 2000. We had acquired a company in San Francisco, and I had to I had to go and absorb their job functions. So that was my that was actually my first trip to Francisco. I know I maybe it was like 2001, 2002 somewhere in there. So yes, I was out there briefly.
00;08;52;07 - 00;09;09;19
Aaron
Yeah, but that was like post scam crash. I was, I was, too young to kind of see the last massive boom that and I didn't feel that way. Like during web two, like web two is kind of steady. This definitely feels like a like a boomtown right now, I guess. I guess the question is, just how long does it last?
00;09;09;22 - 00;09;32;19
Pri
That's what I'm trying to figure out because like, I was talking to roads and we had like a coffee. He's a member of one of the DAOs, and he was mentioning like, okay, like an it kind of like framed it nicely. And I've been thinking about it is like okay. Like the you know, s particularly you know, the West Coast but particularly S.F. is built on this like boom, gold rush, you know, type of cycle.
00;09;32;19 - 00;09;57;20
Pri
And basically since then it's been a city of boom and bust, not bust, but like just these waves. And maybe every city is like that to an extent. But given that it's like such like a place of like discovery and innovation, it's kind of had that pattern and it makes one think like, okay, you know, he was mentioning that he's like, I've been here for web one, been here for web two, crypto, Web3.
00;09;57;20 - 00;10;19;25
Pri
And now like this AI boom. And you know, it's been probably, what, like a year and a half into the boom. Like it doesn't feel like it's slowing down, but it's hard to know where the world is going. And I'm like, is it just the beginning? Like, you know, R and I were catching up on this, but like, you know, most people, most normies are not really using AI at all.
00;10;19;25 - 00;10;39;26
Pri
Or if they are, it's like for a recipe or their travel itinerary, it's not for sure productive gains yet. And so, you know, if that's actually the case, like, yeah, everyone in SF or even New York to some extent, even people in New York are not using it. You know, I like they are here. It's such like a niche group of people that it hasn't even been extended widely.
00;10;39;28 - 00;10;43;21
Pri
Which makes one thing like, okay, maybe we start at the beginning of the boom. Like it's not.
00;10;43;21 - 00;11;13;10
Aaron
Really we're at the beginning. I think it's the best analogy is electricity. You know, like this is like a new power. It's just like powering lots of different things. And it's going to take a long time to dissipate that. The Journal to its credit, they ran like a little infographic. I'll describe it. You know, the question that they asked a whole bunch of folks, I think it was like a survey of 5000 white collar workers from companies and a thousand or more people in the US, UK and Canada.
00;11;13;10 - 00;11;33;21
Aaron
And this was conducted at the end of the last year, like September to November. So private numbers are a little bit off. But they asked, how much time do you think you were saving each week by using AI and at the C-suite? You know, about 98%, said at least, you know, sorry, I got the numbers wrong.
00;11;33;23 - 00;11;56;14
Aaron
It's like about 75% said more than 48 hours, about 20% at the C-suite said more than 12 hours. If you go down to, like, just, you know, more like everyday workers, not like executives and companies, only 2% said that they were saving more than 12 hours, and about 60% said less than two hours. And notably, like 40% said no time at all.
00;11;56;21 - 00;12;18;14
Aaron
This is really like a top down adoption. It's happening like top down. It's not happening bottom up. I think it's going to take quite some time for like those numbers to even out. And, you know, frankly, just 12 hours a week getting saved by the staff is, in my opinion, like on the low end. So I, I think I don't think we're I think we have a long way to run here pretty personally.
00;12;18;16 - 00;12;38;11
Aaron
And I think San Francisco's probably going to be the city that almost got like electrified first. New York was that city way back in the day, right? Like with Edison and everything else. Like a lot of the like electrical innovations that came out in New York. I think a lot of the like, broad based AI innovations are going to come out of that stuff.
00;12;38;13 - 00;12;57;04
Aaron
And I think the Waymo is like a good example of that. Right? I think that's why it feels magical, like go back in time and like picture going to New York where there was streetlights, you know. Yeah. Your city, your cities were dark at night right where they have like oil lamps or you know, like, you know, pretty much it's like fire on a stick to light the cities.
00;12;57;04 - 00;13;05;06
Aaron
And New York was electrified like it must have been. It must have been insane. Right. And I think that this kind of a similar technology in that regard.
00;13;05;08 - 00;13;18;22
Pri
And I mean beyond like, I mean, I there's like AI software, obviously, which, you know, we use all the time, but even AI hardware, like with the Waymo's and stuff like that, the hardware stuff hasn't even like outside of Waymo's. Like it's not like you feel that full effect yet.
00;13;18;25 - 00;13;39;15
Aaron
Yeah, maybe. I mean, I read this book once that just talked about the electrification of cities and, you know, like, why does New York have Broadway? Why does New York have Coney Island? Like, Coney Island was like the first nighttime entertainment. There was no night entertainment before, like electricity, like people just got dark. You said in your house because you're worried about, like, getting mugged or robbed.
00;13;39;17 - 00;13;54;29
Aaron
You know, cities were not like, areas of nightlife and electricity. The light, like, kind of enabled a lot of that stuff to happen. So I think there's going to be a lot of like second and third or third order effects that we just don't fully know yet that I bet we see over the next five, ten years.
00;13;54;29 - 00;13;59;00
Aaron
I have no clue what that is, but I think it's like a similar, similar trend.
00;13;59;02 - 00;14;20;07
Chris
Yeah. So let's talk about some of these trends that are just starting to enter our view. We've had an interesting conversation. We have a Monday night call in which people get the open topic in, have a lot of good discussions on it. And one of our members, or couple of them, actually, we're really far down the self-hosting rabbit hole and running their own stack.
00;14;20;07 - 00;14;49;05
Chris
That and that was a very AI enabled phenomenon. And it the passion, the enthusiasm. And it was something I just never even considered. So it was like, you know, being on this call in which someone opened a brand new box of, toys to play with, and they sounded like they had become, you know, a ninja level sysadmin, network administrator sort of person, just just running their own private stack, which was crazy.
00;14;49;08 - 00;15;13;24
Aaron
Yeah. I mean, it's I thought it was super interesting because, you know, like, we're seeing, like, software developers ring the alarm that their their job is changing. And another member who doing the same thing noted this to me. And I think the developer that built a tool called Ralph Wiggum, which is pretty much is like a way to run like an agent for a longer period of time, which is getting some developers excited.
00;15;13;27 - 00;15;34;10
Aaron
Noted that, like, if you're running cloud code or 24 hours a day, it costs about like $10 an hour. So basically, like around the US minimum wage. Which is wild, right? Like if you were going to hire a pretty good software developer before, I don't know the exact per hour that they would charge, but it definitely wasn't minimum wage.
00;15;34;13 - 00;16;01;10
Aaron
So you can run these things for long periods of time. And I think a lot of folks are when they're seeing that, they're saying, hey, like, I don't even want to be on the web. Like I want to have, you know, customized software that I have complete control over that, that I'm running on my machine. And I can't tell if that's like, these are early adopters who, you know, maybe maybe they're like taking a minority position that that many people that not that many people will want to follow.
00;16;01;10 - 00;16;30;02
Aaron
Or maybe that's actually like the trend, right? Like you're not going to actually want to use like the web or third party software, you're just going to spin up something and continually tweak it until it just does exactly what you want to do. And if that is the trend, I just think that's such a titanic shift in how all software has been written literally since the mid 70s, 80s, right when we started to get, you know, software that you could license or software that you could access, you know, on the web.
00;16;30;02 - 00;16;33;18
Aaron
Right? So it's it's a pretty fascinating trend to me.
00;16;33;20 - 00;16;59;16
Chris
It is. And I wonder, is it a pathway to home automation? Like where does this lead once you've built your your perfect, you know, customized network stack, your for your impenetrable fortress of solitude in which you can, you know, safely play behind your own firewall like there has to be an extension beyond that. Does that veer out into, well, I can I can actually program my my Samsung TV.
00;16;59;16 - 00;17;06;13
Chris
I can program my lights. I can, you know, set up a, a drone for a minute or download corn, grow corn.
00;17;06;14 - 00;17;12;28
Aaron
Yeah, I think so. Yeah. What was that the who is saying that was talking about drone corn using cloud code?
00;17;13;05 - 00;17;27;02
Pri
Oh, yeah. No. Fred Wilson had a blog post today that was just like, you know, I want to grow corn using AI. So humans have. Goldstein. Like, set up a GitHub repo to start trying to vibe code their way into growing corn, which I thought was funny. Yeah.
00;17;27;02 - 00;17;38;01
Aaron
So I guess it's the end, but it's that you're literally a farmer just on your own homestead, growing corn, in an automated fashion, but like a, like a megalithic, corporate farmer.
00;17;38;04 - 00;17;59;02
Pri
This is like a little bit of a naive question, but, like, what advantage and what benefit does one have to really self-hosted everything? Like, obviously I know there are benefits from talking about like, normies, like normies are not going to do this. Like there has to be like some sort of insane cost gains, efficiency gains for them to like, want to go through this.
00;17;59;02 - 00;18;06;23
Pri
Like I understand why one would, but I like I'm having trouble this, imagining this being a wider trend.
00;18;06;25 - 00;18;37;04
Chris
All right. I think there's two paths here. Tree. One is, paranoia and security and just wanting to be in control of your network. The other is guys like to play with toys. Guys like excuses to buy hardware. This is like a getting into the world of self-hosting, I think is giving yourself permission to, load up on more toys than maybe you ever would had you stayed in the cloud.
00;18;37;10 - 00;18;54;26
Aaron
Yeah, I think it's just like you get to fuck around, right? And, like, make it learn some stuff. I think it's that. I think you're right. Pretty like I think I think people, not everybody will want to do it. And I do think it I think you're right, Chris, that it's like a little bit of playing with toys, but I think it's also just customization.
00;18;54;26 - 00;19;16;12
Aaron
I mean, I think when you're using like any service, like even if you go to like a restaurant or coffee, I think in the back of everybody's mind, you're just kind of thinking like this to be done differently or better. And I think just kind of scratching that it's a little bit for people, like if you go to a site and you just don't like the way it works, you register that, but you have nothing that you can do that fix that.
00;19;16;14 - 00;19;38;23
Aaron
You just kind of move on with your day. But now you're like, you could do that, right? Like if you want to go to a different email service because you're just sick of looking at Gmail's esthetic, you could build something that you like, you know? And if that takes you 25 minutes to tee up and you get that back 25 minutes later, maybe more and more people do that.
00;19;38;26 - 00;20;15;11
Chris
Like gardening. I mean, you know, there's no practical reason for me to garden, but there's esthetic reasons. There's a satisfaction in watching things grow my yards prettier. You know, people don't always do things for purely practical reasons. Fred Wilson. But like corn, corn is like one of those things I hate growing. I mean, I don't hate it, but like, I, I don't actually try to grow corn because, like, squirrels will eat my corn before they even shoot up, or I'll get a couple of corn stalks and then you get like the warranty is cobs on Earth.
00;20;15;13 - 00;20;17;12
Chris
Like growing corn isn't practical.
00;20;17;15 - 00;20;21;16
Aaron
You get better corn. Soy boy. Better corn. Chris.
00;20;21;19 - 00;20;40;15
Chris
Yeah, I mean, I always, even I like, I, I if I'm growing corn in a particular year, I always get the decorative, the decorative, like Indian, curdled corn with all the, the reds and the browns and the yellows. And because I know I'm not actually, you know, getting a bushel of corn out of my efforts here.
00;20;40;18 - 00;20;46;26
Pri
Yeah. You're like, you're trying to set up a Thanksgiving decorative table with the corn you're growing.
00;20;46;28 - 00;20;54;15
Chris
Yeah. Just wait till, people have decorative networks pre. I got to do my. Yeah. Do my private cloud over for Christmas. Make it all festive.
00;20;54;18 - 00;21;11;28
Pri
Yeah. I guess, you know, your point is well taken. I mean, there's nothing to necessarily be like. Like a a purpose, I guess. But I guess I was just trying to understand, like if, if that is like, I think for the privacy paranoia that feels like an actual reason why it could go more full mainstream. Other than that, it it does feel slightly hobbyist to me.
00;21;11;28 - 00;21;28;26
Pri
But, you know, if networks get corrupted easily, you know, quantum computing, all of these things start coming into the world. I think people then will become more paranoid and like, want to probably sell us their stuff and have more control over it.
00;21;28;28 - 00;21;42;25
Aaron
Yeah, that paranoia stuff, it's too like at events like the a lot of folks won't do that. And I don't think a material number of people will do that. I wonder if it's more like, you just are going to have more time, right, Chad? So it is.
00;21;42;25 - 00;21;45;20
Chris
Haven't Chad like maybe you do.
00;21;45;23 - 00;22;04;01
Aaron
Yeah. Like maybe you have more time and it's just like a way to to, you know, if around Chris, like you were saying like it gives you an a permission to like, explore and like learn. And you know, something you can always kind of tend to like it's like one of these, like, never ending type tasks, a little bit like gardening.
00;22;04;01 - 00;22;06;00
Aaron
Right? To to your point.
00;22;06;02 - 00;22;12;06
Pri
Ro, it should be an influencer for self-hosting. I feel like there's probably a real opening for influencers who are doing this.
00;22;12;09 - 00;22;31;05
Aaron
Well, he was saying. I mean, it's not like an insignificant number of people. Like he said, he's deep in, like a whole bunch of, like Reddit subcommunities and there's hundreds of thousands of subscribers to it. Right. So which means that there's probably several million worldwide that are just doing this in earnest and like that, that that feels a little bit chunkier than I thought it would.
00;22;31;08 - 00;22;43;22
Chris
There are a lot of sysadmins out there, Aaron. There are a lot of people who do corporate it networking. That's a very big you know, there's a good like professional domain knowledge that's dispersed all over the place. Yeah.
00;22;43;23 - 00;23;00;05
Aaron
I also feel like it's like it's hard to do that. Right. So like now it's so much easier. So you could see that expanding. Like I don't think everybody will do that. I think a lot of people just want it done for them. But you know, maybe that like homegrown software, it becomes like a much, much bigger, trend.
00;23;00;09 - 00;23;28;09
Aaron
Like honestly, because you could, you know, like this year already, it's crude, but using something like Ralph Wiggum or if you're like an expert, a cursor or there's a couple other projects like Gastown that are already experimenting with this. If you can run 30 of these things 24 hours a day, you know, you could imagine waking up. You have like a stack of software that you're using to go about your day, you know, and you just tweak it right every day and you wake up and it's done, you know, like, get out, get on that bus.
00;23;28;12 - 00;23;48;26
Aaron
All of a sudden you're you get something that's like perfectly tailored to whatever your preferences are. So if you like to see everything in dark mode, I personally don't, but I know a lot of people do like your entire world to me in that dark mode, right? If, you don't want to surf the internet, and instead you want to get it delivered to you and, you know, some audio package like that that could be done for you.
00;23;49;03 - 00;23;58;00
Aaron
You know, like, there's once you kind of like, move into this, like high degree of automation. I just think I think just the physics kind of changes.
00;23;58;03 - 00;24;00;05
Pri
Tinkers tinkering.
00;24;00;08 - 00;24;03;06
Aaron
Yeah. But maybe it's more like this. Like homegrown software.
00;24;03;08 - 00;24;06;11
Pri
Yeah, I like branding. Homegrown?
00;24;06;13 - 00;24;12;25
Aaron
Yeah. Organic software. Don't don't get your, mass produce slop. You get your organic software right here.
00;24;12;28 - 00;24;15;04
Chris
Your heirloom software. Yeah.
00;24;15;04 - 00;24;19;11
Aaron
Your heirloom software. It's a little bit uglier, but it tastes better.
00;24;19;14 - 00;24;20;21
Chris
It's artisanal.
00;24;20;23 - 00;24;27;07
Pri
There's probably some puns with Apple. You could be like, don't eat the apple, eat. But it is.
00;24;27;13 - 00;24;50;20
Aaron
I think Apple is going to, you know, benefit from all this stuff. Ultimately, I think they're like the Viper waiting in the air, like in the grass, just like waiting to pounce. And they're going to pounce on all this stuff because you're going to need some trusted service to, like, maintain your software. And I still think, like, even though you may not be on your phone as much like, know people want that like mobility of like a device.
00;24;50;20 - 00;24;55;21
Aaron
So and until there's like so many tracks that form factor I think Apple's in like in a pretty good spot.
00;24;55;24 - 00;25;20;28
Chris
Yeah. But what's Apple got. You know their product lineup is a little on the narrow side. I do know that they've got these, minis that people are using very heavily as home servers right now. And so maybe you'll see a growth out of there. And I mean, I guess, you know, if you're on Apple then it's fairly easy to run Linux, Unix, you know, style apps, you know, off of that backbone.
00;25;21;01 - 00;25;38;09
Chris
And so I guess they considered the core part. But then all your devices, all your doodads, your robot gardeners, your I need to divert power from my solar panel array over to my, my automated brewing setup. You know, that's not going to be Apple.
00;25;38;11 - 00;25;49;02
Aaron
You know, I think I wouldn't be surprised if Apple makes a run and tries to buy, like, anthropic this year. Next year. Like, I think anthropic goes public and then Apple just buys them.
00;25;49;04 - 00;25;51;12
Chris
When they want to head that off at the pass.
00;25;51;14 - 00;26;04;12
Aaron
I don't think they can. I mean, if I was anthropic, right, like, wouldn't you want to go into the market and get like your value adjusted up? Because probably, probably whatever they're trading for in the private markets is probably lower than the public markets at least today.
00;26;04;18 - 00;26;11;10
Chris
Well, I mean, look at the premium, circle carried just for being the first public market stablecoin company.
00;26;11;17 - 00;26;29;15
Aaron
Yeah. And I think, like if anthropic is the first out of the gate, it seems like they may be. And that's the rumor. Like what they get, they get their valuation like marked up. They probably get like a pop, right. And then their prime or trade it like, elevated multiple like Apple is. And then they'll do a deal.
00;26;29;17 - 00;26;49;04
Aaron
Right. But like, I think Apple probably is going to make a move to, to buy like one of these large, hyper, hyper scaled stuff. If all this like home homegrown software or, you know, AI generated software is kind of like the new App store and their App store is like under duress, maybe that's like the business case for them.
00;26;49;06 - 00;27;04;13
Aaron
And like anthropic, maybe with their deep developer roots, could provide that, provide that to them. I think Google probably would do the same thing, but I just don't know, even with the more permissive government, whether or not that one raises some antitrust concerns, I feel like, yeah,
00;27;04;15 - 00;27;30;00
Chris
How much room Google has to run. I do think, you know, to kind of tie these things together. Apple and this home homebrew software thing, we haven't even considered what embodied everyday appliances look like. You know, everyone jokes around about smart fridges, you know, but in terms of, like, orchestrating your whole room, you walk into a room, you're in a certain mood.
00;27;30;03 - 00;27;54;03
Chris
You know, we're not at a point yet where you have an agent that is controlling Spotify, controlling your lights, controlling you know what appears on your TV, you can orchestrate and you can sync all of that. And, you know, if you start giving, I think, you know, some of your more minor appliances, this embodied local Lem style thing.
00;27;54;03 - 00;28;33;21
Chris
And, you know, I'm not saying, like, you're going to be talking to your lamp, but, you know, your lamp may be able to, you know, based on you having conversation in your phone. It's it's changing the brightness of your lamp or the colors in your room. And I do think, like, there's a sense of magic and wonder that is available to us, you know, let's say ten, 15 years out when we start getting AIS locally in the home that are capable of this level of orchestration and harmonization, and, you know, it can start flowing through into, more everyday items like, why, why does it why do we have to have, you know, I just
00;28;33;21 - 00;28;38;02
Chris
in robots and cars in these big things like, can we have AI in the little stuff?
00;28;38;04 - 00;28;54;07
Aaron
Yeah. I mean, you're just talking IoT, right? Like. Yeah, like why not? That was the hard part, right? Like the home automation. That's like, how do you string it together? There's nothing smooth and easy that makes you do that. But it feels like that's. I would like that. I mean, I even have some of the Amazon Alexa connected, like plugs.
00;28;54;07 - 00;28;59;22
Aaron
They're pretty great. You can just like, say a simple command to your Alexa and then boom.
00;28;59;25 - 00;29;20;17
Chris
It works. Yeah, I always stayed away from that. I think maybe the only intelligent thing in our home is we have a nest, you know, that came with the house. I never wanted Alexa in there. I've never wanted, you know, anything that, like, has listening capabilities to go back to a cloud that's run by a mag seven company.
00;29;20;19 - 00;29;43;07
Chris
And so if we can get into this, like local on prem, in which that that level of control and that you don't have to worry about, oh, I'm going to try this, this friend thing or this core thing. And then the company goes out of business in a couple of years and your device is nerf, right. Like that is a big barrier is both one on the is the company going to be there to actually provide the service?
00;29;43;07 - 00;29;50;23
Chris
And then to I don't want to be in a relationship in which my service is, you know, outside of my control.
00;29;50;29 - 00;30;08;17
Aaron
Yeah, 1,000%. It's interesting. Right. Like and that, I mean, it kind of makes sense that, okay, if you if you think software is kind of cooked, which in many ways is doesn't mean it's over, but it's just like cook for software engineers, they're likely going to move to hardware. They're going to take some of their learnings of the internet and apply that.
00;30;08;17 - 00;30;28;16
Aaron
They're we've all known that you probably can connect more devices. They're a little bit Modi, I think wasn't the rumor today pre that Ledger's going public. I think you said that. Yeah like hardware businesses prior reasonably defensible if you can at scale. So yeah like why don't we see an IoT revolution and like then the whole tinkerer can go nuts, right?
00;30;28;18 - 00;30;40;17
Aaron
Like they can, turn on pesto lights at 7 a.m. and, you know, auto dim it at 930 and pass information from their TV to their refrigerator. It's the arrow. Jingyang.
00;30;40;20 - 00;30;50;09
Pri
I think if honestly, if it was like that connected, I would probably want a cell phone. So I don't know if I'd want that to be like a part of that data to go elsewhere, I guess.
00;30;50;11 - 00;31;13;07
Chris
Yeah, 100%. So anyway, I want to get I want to in this future, I want to be at a level where, based on what the weather is outside the time of year. My, my, I want my mornings, Aaron, to have, a custom soundtrack to it. Is it is it the second week in November? Is there a crisp in the year or are we about to turn a corner?
00;31;13;07 - 00;31;27;07
Chris
Well, let's let's put a little Leonard Cohen on. Well, well, the machine brews a coffee. You know, let's let's be in a contemplate a fall mood and, you know, versus, it's springtime and it's the first great day of the year. And, you know, let's kick out the jar.
00;31;27;08 - 00;31;38;22
Aaron
Completely or even like, the holidays, right? Like, how many people would love that? You know, like, it's it's, a day after Thanksgiving and all of a sudden, you know, your house just.
00;31;38;22 - 00;31;40;14
Chris
Goes full Christmas.
00;31;40;16 - 00;31;47;15
Aaron
Yeah, exactly. That's a that's the go to market, like, lever on, Santa Claus. The sleigh. Yeah.
00;31;47;18 - 00;32;05;24
Chris
I mean, you could you could sell just like, embedded seasonal starter facts. You know, you just, load up a bunch of, like. Oh, you're a first time parrot. Here you go. Here's your evil eye elf on a shelf. That's literally going to scare the shit out of your kids and and warp their brain. For eight years.
00;32;05;26 - 00;32;16;14
Aaron
I was thinking more like, good play, like all that, you know, like instrumental music. That's like all the rockets that they made for, like, every baby, you know, it was like, instrumental nirvana.
00;32;16;16 - 00;32;18;12
Chris
Yeah, I heard that.
00;32;18;15 - 00;32;43;08
Aaron
I mean, it's kind of true. I mean, then if you connected, I mean, I joked about Janine from, you know, from that show Silicon Valley who, like, made an internet connected refrigerator, which was kind of ridiculous, but, like, why not even draw it all the way down, like, if you keep track of what you're eating and, you know, autofill your basket, your, robot delivery service could just deliver your, your, provisions, I don't know, that'd be great.
00;32;43;10 - 00;32;48;09
Chris
All the ideas are in place. We just never had the convenience layer to manage it. Yeah.
00;32;48;11 - 00;33;01;18
Aaron
But if you can, like, you know, chug through, like, a million lines of code a week to, like, get that fine tune for your own purposes. Like that becomes, like, a lot more available. You know, maybe that is the next leg and some of the stuff.
00;33;01;21 - 00;33;07;08
Chris
I believe I have this week's episode title, which is a million lines of Lifestyle Code.
00;33;07;10 - 00;33;08;06
Aaron
There we go.
00;33;08;08 - 00;33;16;09
Pri
I like that it's picking up the topic though. Like, have you guys been keeping up with any of the Davos hubbub?
00;33;16;11 - 00;33;19;27
Aaron
But just, Dario saying the same thing he said last year, which is.
00;33;19;27 - 00;33;22;26
Pri
Like, yeah, I mean, nothing new there, but I'm curious if like like.
00;33;22;26 - 00;33;36;07
Aaron
Last year, he's like, in two years this stuff's going to get really good. And then this year he's like, this year and next year it's going to get really good. And then all the like, aged European leaders just look at him like shocked. It just keeps on happening.
00;33;36;13 - 00;33;52;22
Pri
I just feel like there's more I talk at Davos this year. I think you and I talked about that Aaron. But it does feel like it's like more of a focal point. You know I kind of listened a little bit to the Macron and Carney speech. It feels like Davos is here is like honestly trying to become more accessible to people.
00;33;52;22 - 00;33;55;29
Pri
Like they're like broadcasting everything. Like, is that just me?
00;33;56;01 - 00;34;19;23
Aaron
It feels like the like, like, World Wide Wrestling, like pageantry. To me, it's just like all these moments that are almost like contrived tension. The one thing, though, that I thought was the most interesting was Jamie Diamond. Pretty much saying that he thinks that companies should keep people on for longer, even if they're not needed, which I thought was interesting.
00;34;19;26 - 00;34;49;16
Aaron
Like, he's like, he thought that it was an imperative of corporate executives to basically, like, keep folks on, even if internally they, they like, have a view and know that they're no longer needed just for the greater benefit of society, which is just not something I expected. You know, somebody that's running by its nature, just like a hyper, avaricious organization, like ever saying that he's like, look, in the long run, like, if we don't do that, the dislocation would just cause too many problems.
00;34;49;18 - 00;35;12;08
Chris
Yeah. It's in his own selfish interest. As you know, CEO of JPMorgan, they do need a well-functioning and lubricated economy in which to do their business. Right. Like they're they're a transactional host. At the end of the day, you know, they, you know, they take bips on, on movements through the global economy. And so if you cut off that top layer, it it ricochets downward.
00;35;12;08 - 00;35;33;23
Chris
So I can understand where Jamie Diamond is coming from. I mean, I would I love to know that it's coming from, you know, a more altruistic sense of the, the greater global good, but also from, you know, just a hard tax business point of view, like he he needs this great global economy to keep global economy going. It he can't you know, he doesn't want to see, a GFC style freeze of.
00;35;33;26 - 00;35;59;17
Aaron
Yeah he's there just a well, you know, like catching like algae in their gills. Right. And getting really big. So and they, they need that they need the circulation of all that. But that was like the biggest shift, right. Like the like, oh AI is coming stuff, which was everywhere. Whether it was like the DeepMind guy who's very good and super charming, I was blanking his name or, you know, the folks from anthropic, they're just saying the same thing.
00;35;59;20 - 00;36;01;03
Aaron
I just think people are listening more.
00;36;01;09 - 00;36;05;07
Chris
Objects and objects in Rear View are closer than they appear.
00;36;05;09 - 00;36;22;13
Aaron
Yeah. I mean, like what? For the past, what, three quarters? We've been talking about AI coding and that the software developers finally woke up to that on Christmas Eve. Like that was their present this year. I mean, it's it's all just been sitting out there. It's been pretty obvious at least. At least it feels like.
00;36;22;15 - 00;36;43;16
Chris
Yeah. I mean, it's always one of those interesting things is when you operate out on the edge or, you know, you find yourself spending time in the frontier is you never have a great sense of how far ahead you are or which part of this catches on. And then when it does catch on, it's old news to you or it's incorporated into your life.
00;36;43;16 - 00;37;05;12
Chris
And so at least from, you know, my perspective, I don't always I don't always recognize just how big these things can become or you know, how far it can go because it's it's already in my rear view and I'm on to the next thing. And so it really will be interesting to see, how, how big and how broad this, this movement goes.
00;37;05;16 - 00;37;23;22
Chris
I was thinking about it in a certain, a certain framing. And, you know, it's like, why am I doing what I'm doing at this point in time? Right now, I don't need to I don't I don't have anything to prove. I, I clearly enjoy doing it and I have something to do, but like there has to be something a little more.
00;37;23;24 - 00;37;59;29
Chris
And the light bulb that went off for me is that this is the only great adventure that I can actually go on without, like busting up my lifestyle or like disappointing, you know, my family or, you know, any number of things that like, you know, especially with men and you know, who we are and kind of how we function that there are, there's that yearning right to be like just kind of out winging it, not having a direction, not knowing the course and like just being on like this, you know, great adventure.
00;37;59;29 - 00;38;20;00
Chris
And in the past it's always been, you know, a physical sort of thing. Go to see young man go west young man. You know, and and now that the whole world is labeled and tabled and, you know, it has discount airlines collecting every last piece of it that that great adventure has become, you know, more of a virtualized thing.
00;38;20;00 - 00;38;31;21
Chris
And this is a moment in which you, so many people, you know, can actually start on a great adventure in a way that you know, is compatible with their existing life.
00;38;31;23 - 00;38;39;03
Aaron
Yeah, exactly. Was that Chris? Did anything else jump out to you from, Davos, Peru kind of think.
00;38;39;05 - 00;38;40;26
Chris
I'll give you something else.
00;38;40;26 - 00;39;05;09
Aaron
I feel like, on Twitter, there was a lot of attention just given to like, Carney and Macron. But to me, the most notable thing was were the head of NATO and Germany. And it just feels like Europe's like about to go through a shift that's similar to the the US. Like I think I think they got like the message that they need to like step up and I think like more not not a Chad.
00;39;05;11 - 00;39;23;13
Aaron
Chad served Europe, but more like a Chad. Europe would be good for everybody. Could kind of counterbalance to the stuff that happens in the US and I think kind of globally. So it kind of felt like that message is landing and they know they got to get their act together. And yeah, I think we, I think once they do that, yeah, they probably will.
00;39;23;13 - 00;39;39;28
Aaron
I mean, it may take like another decade or so for that to fully slash out, but it just to me felt like we're we're starting to see that and kind of like the, like the, the global elite knows that the vibe shift has happened and they got to get on board with them. And I don't think they got that message before.
00;39;40;01 - 00;39;59;09
Pri
Yeah. It feels like it's like fully heard there. Like at least on their end. I don't know about on, on on Macron side. But I mean we'll see I feel like yeah I don't I it's very confusing as to me like the path of, of Europe at this point. Like what are they going to are they actually going to make it or not.
00;39;59;09 - 00;40;00;16
Aaron
Yeah, they'll make it because capital.
00;40;00;16 - 00;40;06;11
Chris
Are they gonna make it or not. Like what. Like we're just going to mop Europe up and put them in a garbage bin.
00;40;06;14 - 00;40;14;28
Pri
Oh yeah. Like more like, are they, like, on a trajectory? Like an upward trajectory or not like either like flat or like going down.
00;40;15;00 - 00;40;18;28
Chris
Yeah. What will they be left behind out of choice.
00;40;19;01 - 00;40;38;20
Aaron
Yeah. Like, and I think the answer is they probably will be further behind than they were before, but they they're not going to the though. They'll step it up. I guess the other big news is just like, I mean, there's there was a lot on crypto. It's just really interesting to see kind of Wall Street like absorb crypto at the speed with which it's doing.
00;40;38;20 - 00;40;44;15
Pri
It was, you know, much to it. I was I feel like I only heard like Larry Fink be like, everything's had to be tokenized.
00;40;44;17 - 00;41;04;05
Aaron
There was a bunch of that and probably more. And it was not from like, you know, I mean, you had like, Brian, you know, like bulb posting Bitcoin to like central bankers, but that that's interesting. Kind of fun to watch but nothing new. You know, I think it just kind of came up in like a lot of different venues I think which which is interesting.
00;41;04;05 - 00;41;20;17
Aaron
But to me it just like, you know, like Wall Street really is all in and they really are just absorbing it. And are probably going to co-opt it, in different ways. I think it's going to be, interesting just to kind of see where a lot of this stuff lands and like, where, and how they're going to kind of get it.
00;41;20;17 - 00;41;34;09
Aaron
But they definitely feel like they're in the driver's seat now with the industry, which is definitely a huge shift. I mean, I think kind of like related to that is that big news related to forecaster, which I know hit people in a lot of different ways. What you guys think about that.
00;41;34;16 - 00;41;35;21
Pri
My like normie being the.
00;41;35;21 - 00;41;36;13
Aaron
Shutdown.
00;41;36;16 - 00;41;42;08
Pri
Where like, what do you think about this? I was like really like I don't even know you knew what forecaster was like.
00;41;42;08 - 00;41;45;02
Aaron
Yeah. Like who actually is that? I mean.
00;41;45;05 - 00;41;49;26
Pri
It's it's in the realm of this product that I'm like shocked that you're asking me about it.
00;41;50;02 - 00;42;09;29
Aaron
Yeah. Like forecasters tough for me because one I like the concept. Right. Like I, I think at the time it was like birthed like we did need like alternative social media I think to the product actually was pretty good. Like it was well built, like operated well. It didn't have the the number of people needed to like, fully fulfill its vision.
00;42;09;29 - 00;42;33;24
Aaron
But I thought like on the engineering product side, it was like done pretty well. I'm sure people can kind of quibble about it or like, you know, there was like this moment when they were using like the Gen token and like some other stuff which, you know, definitely raise some people's eyebrows, but it kind of felt like that, was like the moment along with some statements last week that like bases going all in on just finance stuff.
00;42;33;27 - 00;42;52;03
Aaron
We're like a lot of the like, social kind of concepts around crypto took like a least a step back for, for a spell. So I thought that was kind of interesting. And I, I didn't know that, you know, the secondaries were so large there, which I imagine kind of raised an eyebrow for, you know, some in the VC class.
00;42;52;05 - 00;43;13;18
Aaron
I guess the other thing is, you know, we've been building at attribute this like, AI powered, you know, deal evaluator. And I just remember when they were raising, we were building it and I was throwing forecaster into it. And Aiden, that's the name of, the AI powered deal evaluator. It just really didn't like forecaster. And I was about it was almost like a bug.
00;43;13;20 - 00;43;23;06
Aaron
But now I'm like going back and thinking, well, maybe he didn't just had it right all the way like it. It was like, avoid this deal at all costs. I guess that turned out to be right.
00;43;23;12 - 00;43;43;12
Pri
Well, I think Web3 social kind of had a moment this week. I mean, like, we didn't we haven't really talked about what this year so much on the pod. But like between lens and Forecaster both announcing acquisitions or, you know, whatever Apple hires. I don't even know exactly the details of each of those deal graceful and graceful exits.
00;43;43;15 - 00;44;01;05
Pri
I think a lot of people are like declaring the death of web three social. I think that's a little bit hyperbolic, but like, I don't know. I'm curious if you guys have a thought, I don't I isn't on the self-hosted side unless we're discussing that. I do feel like there is room for web three social and people owning their own data.
00;44;01;05 - 00;44;22;21
Pri
And, you know, having that ownership over their I guess, identity online. But like, it's interesting to me that it's the timing is way off. Like I guess maybe it's just we were far too early. It was like a Covid era thing that thought, you know, maybe consumer crypto would be there, but it just is early. Like, I don't I'm not like against the thesis, but.
00;44;22;25 - 00;44;47;21
Chris
It was the wrong group of people at the end of the day. Right. That that's like the biggest thing. It simply was the wrong group of people. And, and on the American side of decentralized social right, they all come out of the same family tree. They all come out of Coinbase and, you know, XR, I think was probably the most aggressive in trying to monetize and trying to push this creator coin concept.
00;44;47;24 - 00;45;14;17
Chris
And then, you know, base was mirroring them. And then far Castor, you know, had its own separate lane in which it had to social graph, but ultimately it pivoted and then I think all of them just kind of got the same signals. And I do believe they come out, you know, same culture, the same mentality. And the writing was on the wall that like, this is either a dig in for a really long, hard slog or closed up shop.
00;45;14;17 - 00;45;31;09
Chris
And so from my point of view, one of the things that may have broken the back of Far Acaster is the fact that, like it was relying very heavily on base as a channel partner. You know, I've been in the business like that where you're downstream of someone larger and you kind of live and die by their decision making.
00;45;31;11 - 00;45;56;01
Chris
And this wasn't a rising tide. This wasn't, you know, a, an environment in which you could grow and become very big simply by serving specialty functions in a larger ecosystem. And so from a practical standpoint, it makes sense. And, you know, there's been a ton, a ton of, you call it hubbub on the timeline around forecaster and around the terms of the deal.
00;45;56;04 - 00;46;14;01
Chris
And you know what the founder did or did not cash out. And then you saw this huge, kind of Leo push back in defense of him from like, the VC class in which he's well-established and from other builders, you know, who are commiserating that this is, in fact, hard. And you know what? You didn't drop a coin.
00;46;14;01 - 00;46;37;27
Chris
You didn't max extract, you didn't grift a certain way. Therefore, we think you behaved nobly and you tried. And there's certain truth to that. I look at it, though, and I go, is that really like the bar? Is that the standard you're willing to accept? Like how how much Stockholm syndrome do you have going on here? Like at the end of the day, Aaron, you either make good product or you don't like this is capitalism.
00;46;37;27 - 00;46;42;04
Chris
And that's the arena we're judged in and everything else is kind of participation.
00;46;42;04 - 00;47;03;02
Aaron
Trophy theater. Yeah, a little bit. I mean, I think, you know, there's just there's a lot of things and building a like one of these hyperscale businesses that just need to kind of cut in your way. I don't think you can only do it just based on your labor. Like there is like some elements to it, like even like why are people choosing plotted over course are basically the same product?
00;47;03;04 - 00;47;23;17
Aaron
Like there's not that much of a difference. Like maybe it was like just a better twist. The market angle or, you know, a couple of those tweets from like Andre Karpathy related to it just gave it the the juice to set the fire, you know, and I imagine like inside a concert, they're like probably struggling right now just because the developers are not like choosing their their price cause they're choosing something else.
00;47;23;19 - 00;47;39;20
Aaron
And frankly, I think it's the wrong decision. But, you know, I think I said Dan did clarify. I think it was this morning. I don't know if you guys saw it, that they were turning all the capital to to the investors. Like, I think they raised like 100 and, you know, 50 plus million. That's all coming kind of back to the investors.
00;47;39;20 - 00;48;02;10
Aaron
So there may be like a couple layers. Yeah. Of additional information here that we, we may not be privy to or, you know, folks didn't want to, you know, just kind of explain, like, the full contours of the deal. Yeah. I don't know. It's it's a tricky one. You know, to me, it's more like, like upfront that there would be like that large secondaries and everybody would be comfortable about that.
00;48;02;10 - 00;48;21;16
Aaron
But maybe that was kind of like a high watermark and people will pull that back down. I think like the notion that you may want to let like a founder of a reasonably strong product take some, money off the table just so that they're not, you know, struggling to, like, find a house they want to live in or, you know, like, take care of some basic things.
00;48;21;16 - 00;48;29;20
Aaron
I think that's often reasonable, but that, that just felt like, like life altering money. Yeah. Like, that's like life altering money, right?
00;48;29;22 - 00;48;45;17
Chris
It is. And like, everyone's focused in on that. I look at this from a different point of view, and I always just feel like you owe a debt to your users when you were out building, when you were asking for people's time and their money, you owe a debt to them to ship good product, to ship things of value.
00;48;45;17 - 00;49;13;28
Chris
And and they're just certain equilibrium is in the relationship. Like I like to honor. And what killed me, what I really got my hackles up about the beast. Zora, sarcastic ecosystem is they treated that like a decentralized workforce, and they sold them these visions of we're working together. We're all builders. Were enabling you to make things, you know, they dragged people out to offsite, they had hackathons.
00;49;13;28 - 00;49;40;02
Chris
They, you know, it was really like a, like a Web3, you know, like water cooler office, like we're none of us have employment relationships, but we're all building together and we're investing in this thing. And then they pivot, and then they pivot and like, that's the part that bothered me was I felt like there were a lot of promises made, and there was a lot of expectations set around what these platforms would enable.
00;49;40;02 - 00;50;04;13
Chris
And the investment that it would take to capitalize upon that and all of that. Just, you know, Zora pivoted in like nine different times, you know, forecasted towards the end, got into that pivoting mode. Baze got into that pivoting mode like there were there were certain promises or certain expectations set that once it felt like it was going to be hard or they weren't going to come to fruition, they were thrown right out the window.
00;50;04;15 - 00;50;26;17
Chris
And that's the part that really, really burns me is this wasn't I'm selling cold pressed juice, and it's a wonderful cold pressed juice, and all you got to do is go to the store and you buy it. Right. Like this is more like a commit. Commit your creative output, commit your lifestyle, commit like your aspirations for a better future into time and engagement and attention on these platforms.
00;50;26;17 - 00;50;33;25
Chris
That was a far bigger ask, and I don't think it was treated with the respect that it should have been. And that's what really burned me about those.
00;50;33;26 - 00;50;53;07
Aaron
But yeah, it's fair. It's it's tough, you know, because they they also have to balance just the pressure of building. I mean that's just the nature of venture backed businesses, right. That like hyperscale nature. So it's a tough one. I mean that that's why I think it's generating so much conversation. It's just like it's it's tough, you know.
00;50;53;14 - 00;51;00;23
Pri
Yeah. And like the I think the money, the valuation, the timeline like all of that is like pretty shocking to people.
00;51;00;25 - 00;51;01;04
Aaron
Yeah.
00;51;01;04 - 00;51;15;15
Pri
Completely like this exists like in so many other aspects of venture too. It's not like it's like limited to to our little world. Like I feel like this probably happens quite a bit. It's just like crypto. Twitter is so like chronically online that like we hear about it and then people are just like posting about it.
00;51;15;17 - 00;51;34;03
Aaron
Yeah, I think it's that I think it's also, you know, like because Wall Street's now finally like made its move like it was the snake in the grass. Right. And like it's kind of like come in sank its like teeth into crypto and it's moving at and with all the other kind of like rogue actors in the space.
00;51;34;03 - 00;51;52;29
Aaron
It's just a really difficult terrain to kind of navigate. I think the mass extraction route or like, approach is not the right one to take. And I guess that's kind of what you felt, at least towards the end there. Right? Is that some of these like social platforms, we kind of defaulted back into that.
00;51;52;29 - 00;52;25;12
Chris
Yeah. It it felt like manipulative and exploitative. And it was treating these people as, you know, the equivalent of white collar, app, you know, DoorDash delivery people or, or whatnot. And then the turning point here was the stakes got real elsewhere, that it was going to be a very concentrated moment of focus in which you have to, like, deal in your strengths and having distractions, having, you know, things that just aren't proving out.
00;52;25;17 - 00;52;43;06
Chris
It was it was time for them to go out the window to me. Like, are they doing this at the same time? You know, and dumping lens like it certainly broadens the picture and gives it a little more clarity in which you can't just point a finger and go, well, these guys were all from Coinbase. You all know each other.
00;52;43;06 - 00;53;10;13
Chris
They also deal, yada, yada, yada. And you know, this little circle decided it was time to go home. It was like, no, no, no, the other the other ones did too. And so I do think this is, I think we can close the coffin on, you know, decentralized social v1. It also happened. You know, a time where info I got right hook, which, you know, that, that was to be expected.
00;53;10;13 - 00;53;17;07
Chris
I mean, you know, there's no possible way you're going to allow that, that amount of, like, parasitic activity on your platform. So.
00;53;17;09 - 00;53;40;07
Aaron
Yeah, I think what the way you framed it, like, Web3 social v1, like the V1 part is. Right. And I think you know, my, in my mind, maybe I'm being too generous, with maybe you think I'm being too generous, Chris. But I thought it was, like, at least in the context of, like, forecaster. And you know, even Zora, like, I think they were trying their best to try to navigate that space.
00;53;40;09 - 00;53;59;19
Aaron
And I do think with, like, more users, more mature infra like we will see like a V2 and a probably pretty glorious because I, you know, we were talking about this today or this week on the cloud like but really what what crypto is impart good at is social games. Right. Like in many ways like it is a social game.
00;53;59;19 - 00;54;19;16
Aaron
So I think somebody is going to figure out like, like a better approach to it. And I wouldn't even be surprised at some of the things that they were poking at, at either zero forecast or like, come back, but just maybe in a slightly, you know, more refined, way less extractive way to the extent that folks felt that way, etc..
00;54;19;22 - 00;54;24;01
Aaron
So looking forward to Web3 social V2 and V3.
00;54;24;01 - 00;54;51;29
Chris
Whatever, whatever comes back, Aaron is going to come back through the lens of energetic social push, right? Like no one's going to give up on social, they're just going to try to apply it into the new frontier domain. And so like AI, social agent, social, this idea of, you know, your, your collaborating or your orchestrating with agents that's going to extend out into how can we try to do this as a social tool as well.
00;54;51;29 - 00;55;14;23
Chris
And so maybe, maybe you need a little of a, a little of B, a whole lot of time. And when we do get back around to a decentralized social three, in fact, it's going to be who God knows, like the homebrew hobbyists have won out and have broadcasted a message out to, other households in their area saying, we're throwing, we're throwing porch fest.
00;55;14;23 - 00;55;19;19
Chris
Come on over with some beer. And that's your newer genetic social layer. Who knows? Man.
00;55;19;21 - 00;55;42;19
Aaron
Yeah, completely. You know, I was thinking about the the like had is either crypto an AI or AI agents kind of roll out and and it kind of dovetails into the self-hosting bits like I wonder if our agents first wave is really like getting the user's like affairs in order or like better managed before we get kind of this like agent agent type interactions.
00;55;42;22 - 00;56;05;02
Aaron
And I think that that could be like a logical way for it to roll out, you know, and I think people are already jumping to like agent agent type stuff, whether that's like the X 402 or, you know, even some of the stuff like around like cloud and cursor, that's a genetic like the orchestration. And they're always like looking to try to like integrated with third parties, which I bet is right in the long run.
00;56;05;02 - 00;56;18;03
Aaron
But I wonder if it's like first, like use it to just get your house in order, you know, like manage your on affairs better. Like almost like this. Like super kind of personal assistant, perfect worker type thing. That's like the the order of affairs. Yeah.
00;56;18;06 - 00;56;41;08
Chris
Like productivity gains in the office home. Get my affairs in order. Be you better about running my life. And then it's going to. Then that third wave and we're seeing it already in the extremely online is the search for the creator class. How do I how do I make a living out of this? Or how can I use this, you know, to express myself?
00;56;41;08 - 00;57;04;14
Chris
And in a way this can work, right, is that there are a lot of like event planners. There's a lot of like, party spaces, like you're a parent, you know, living in the city. You understand how this goes. But, you know, I mean, like, Facebook has its own economy of people who, cook for you know, who cook out of their kitchen and sell plates and all of these things.
00;57;04;14 - 00;57;42;17
Chris
And I wonder if you know that that class of people will start incorporating these and maybe upping the scale of what they're able to do in this, like, sort of informal economy of services. That might be a way in which we start seeing it blow out, because, I mean, if you think about it like if you look at the the blogging era, right, like that actually came about at the same time that like home decor and like the expectations of what within your phone, you know, in your four walls really expanded and leveled up dramatically.
00;57;42;20 - 00;58;02;14
Chris
And, you know, if you just like, you know, you throw on, like, home alone and look, you look at what the house looked like in Home Alone and then look at, you know, what what a modern family's house looks like. They're entirely different. And a lot of that came through this era of, like, lifestyle creators that started it.
00;58;02;14 - 00;58;29;26
Chris
It was, you know, mommy blogging and design blogging and that that wasn't a a top down, you know, sort of shift that was like a bottom up, expanding of tastes, expanding on what was available. Right? It was it was information sharing, like an informal or, you know, like semi organized level that actually, like really changed a lot of like consumer patterns and a lot of like what the product suite looked like.
00;58;29;29 - 00;58;34;29
Aaron
Yeah. Definitely true. Definitely true. 2026 is going to be wild guys.
00;58;35;00 - 00;58;37;17
Chris
It already is gonna be wild. There's no gonna.
00;58;37;17 - 00;58;58;08
Aaron
Yeah I guess yeah. 23 days in and recording this and that is pretty wild. Did you hear the other thing I, I should mention this from. I don't think it was at Davos like the reporting around it, but the, the head of the investment bank Lazard. Lazard I can never pronounce that one. He was pretty much like we're going into Iran this weekend.
00;58;58;11 - 00;59;08;27
Aaron
And the reporter was like, how do you know that? And he like, paused. And he's like, my information sources. It's like, what? So I guess, like, buckle up for this weekend.
00;59;08;29 - 00;59;10;08
Chris
Lord.
00;59;10;11 - 00;59;18;13
Aaron
Lord, is there we go again. Yeah. Let's, let's run this one back. Oh, man.
00;59;18;15 - 00;59;33;02
Chris
Well, I'm going to enjoy a million lines of lifestyle code. I'm going to see you guys later this afternoon. We're all going to pretend like 2017 was the most important thing that ever happened in the history of, digital art and collectibles, and it will be great.
00;59;33;04 - 00;59;50;16
Aaron
You know, I will say we didn't talk about this, but, I, we felt it last night. We hosted an event, and it feels like because San Francisco is going through one of this, like, boom moments, that it's following that pattern where the boom is happening. They know that there's going to be folks that, like, make it access capital.
00;59;50;18 - 01;00;18;14
Aaron
And San Francisco, to its credit, wants to build more cultural institutions. And, you can just feel that they want to do it more in like, digital art and kind of like technology infused media, which is pretty cool. So I do think like SF is going to continue to like add more culture to, to its base. And it's definitely going to, at least have elements of what we were exploring with, NFTs, digital arts.
01;00;18;16 - 01;00;21;17
Aaron
I think that's going to be a big, symptomatic there. It's coming.
01;00;21;17 - 01;00;22;09
Chris
Awesome.
01;00;22;11 - 01;00;45;04
Aaron
Hey, welcome to Net Society. This week, guys, you have free Chris Aaron talking all things internet, crypto, AI, automation, automation, homegrown software. Welcome. And just a quick reminder. Nothing we say here is said as investment advice and it does not reflect the views of our employers. So let's go. Oh John.