Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Monolith is a podcast about navigating exponential change without losing your humanity. What began as an exploration of design thinking inside large organizations, has evolved into a broader inquiry: how people and institutions adapt when legacy systems fail, and new ones arrive faster than we can name them. Each episode explores the present through systems thinking, economics, hacking mindsets, and cycles of change. The Monolith isn’t futurism for spectacle. It’s pattern literacy for people who sense the shift and want agency to thrive inside it.
Cameron Craig (00:00)
Keith.
Keith (00:01)
Karen, how you doing?
Cameron Craig (00:03)
dude, long time no see.
Keith (00:05)
It's been a few months.
Cameron Craig (00:09)
yeah, man. I mean, well one, thanks for making it happen 'cause I know
Keith (00:13)
Yeah, likewise.
Cameron Craig (00:14)
I know it's been busy for you. I know you got a bunch of stuff going on. I I got a bunch of crazy going on and I think for both of us, oddly the work part of the crazy is maybe the more minimal minimal
Keith (00:25)
Least crazy. Yeah.
Cameron Craig (00:27)
part. I mean it is crazy, but like we both got life stuff going on. But yeah, man, thanks. I appreciate you on a weekend pulling it together and and that we're we're doing it.
Keith (00:37)
Yeah, thanks for coming out. Thanks, man.
Cameron Craig (00:37)
So welcome back.
Keith (00:39)
Yeah, y dude, life happens. It is what it is. It's just at some point a day becomes a week becomes like a quarter. And it's been a few months,
Cameron Craig (00:46)
Yeah. I think you nailed it.
Keith (00:49)
but you know I don't know. Everything in its own kind of divine time, as it were. But yeah, I appreciate you coming back out and hanging out too, 'cause these are f these are fun to do, so
Cameron Craig (01:00)
Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, it's odd. Like I think while you and I were both dealing with other stuff, I've seen people that have listened to our stuff and and amazingly are like, Tell me that you guys are coming back. I mean I used to do a podcast on cars and I think, you know, I'm getting more people from other parts of my life basically saying
Are you gonna come back and do more of those like monolith podcasts? 'Cause like I actually got something out of that. I like, Whoa whoa, hang on
Keith (01:28)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:29)
back back up, back up, back up. Like, okay, talk to me about this. Like what have you gotten out of this? And you know, not
Keith (01:34)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:34)
not like I'm surprised, but you know, it was it was fascinating the array of things that people have like pulled out of it, right? Like
Keith (01:40)
W were there
themes that they found most resonant that we talked about? 'Cause we're kind of in our own exploration too, at the pro you know what I mean? Like it's
Cameron Craig (01:45)
Yeah, I mean we were.
Keith (01:48)
st we're still kind of like figure it out, I think. In a way.
Cameron Craig (01:50)
Yeah, which I mean again,
I think maybe that that's a good lead into today. let me let me work backwards from that. So so to answer your question, I think what I heard was the idea about how to think about things, right? Like and we've postulated a a few things, right? So we started off talking about design and how design played this important part. Then we kind of pivoted and we're like, Hey,
Thinking through systems and systems design and systems thinking is really important. That really resonated with a lot of people. But the practical thing, and it's funny because I think we really touched on this near the end, was this idea of kind of staying true to a couple of things. being a generalist, right? Like, don't don't go so deep.
And get so wrapped up in a particular area that you lose sight of the bigger picture, which again, you know, is kind of a systems think yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then
Keith (02:46)
Systems. Jinx.
Cameron Craig (02:50)
the other the other thing that
Keith (02:52)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (02:53)
kind of came out of that in talking to a couple of people was not getting too wrapped up in the trend of the day, not getting too wrapped up in trying to consume
Some other expertise that you don't have an expertise in, but it's like figuring out how to blend some of these tertiary expertises that you have circling around you and gaining some depth and knowledge about that practice and bringing it into your own core expertise and really kind of utilizing that to make your own contribution and your own expertise more meaningful, more impactful, more efficient. Like you take your adjective.
choice there, but like everybody was like, that really resonated with me. Like, because I think that I've been, you know, worrying existentially about am I going to be able to keep up? How much knowledge do I need to consume? How often is that gonna shift? and so, you know, again, as you and I were kind of talking about this episode, I think we've we really want to start there, right? Like the world changes
Not monthly, not quarterly. It changes like sometimes within the day and sometimes like day to day.
Keith (04:16)
It's changing fast and also like the if you look at the cycles, like the epoch or level of change, like there are multiple civilizational events like piggybacking on one another and just increasing the amplitude of change and everyone is just like, dude, w we're not in Kansas or I I walk around and jerk my friends of I'm like, I even know what century it is some days, 'cause it's like a Tuesday doesn't feel like a Tuesday anymore and I'm like, What is like what's happening? It's just doesn't you can't like ground into it.
Cameron Craig (04:43)
Yeah. Yep.
Yep.
Keith (04:47)
Mm.
Cameron Craig (04:47)
And I mean I think you said that a few months ago. That was the exact thing that you said that I think yeah. Like you were like,
Keith (04:52)
really? I remember.
Cameron Craig (04:55)
my god, like this is the compression of all these events and all these things happening, you know, in in an unprecedented level, like in an unprecedented frequency is like, you know I think you said the same
Keith (05:06)
There are multiple
Cameron Craig (05:07)
thing that you just said. It's like centuries are are happening in not very long elapsed time.
Keith (05:11)
Yeah, th well there
th there was a Saturn Saturn Neptune in early Aries, which was I think like sixty four hundred years, which is like the beginning of religion.
And if you look at the outer planets before they get into a certain kind of configuration, like it hasn't happened in the ephemeris for the past twelve thousand years that we can look at and you can't see it in the next twelve thousand years. So it's like we're outside of our perception of recorded time right now. So until we find like a NASA guy to like run the ephemeris for us, which could be cool if they pop up. yeah. But th those are that's all they just kinda like dominoed
one after the other and it's like
Cameron Craig (05:48)
Hmm.
Keith (05:48)
it's crazy, but I don't know, it's kind of an awesome time to be alive at the same time too. I think it's just trying to grip onto the old way. And it's just I think learning to have faith that it's like, okay, even if there is some kind of like crazy cabal or conspiracy, whatever the hell you want to call it, like, dude, no one's in control right now out of anything at all. Even if like
God, even if you
Cameron Craig (06:14)
Now
Keith (06:14)
start seeing what's been going on with like the release of the Epstein files, like they're all a bunch of idiots. People are people. You can change the humans and replace them with agents, but you can't replace the human nature. And as we're making these agents in our human image, it's like the same thing. Like
Cameron Craig (06:29)
Yeah.
Keith (06:30)
we were joking in one of my classes for AI, I'm like, dude, this thing is like a nine year old. It's like it's gonna do what it's
Cameron Craig (06:37)
for sure.
Keith (06:38)
gonna do what it wants, kinda how it wants, like it's really like brilliant one second, and then you're like, dude, like come on.
Cameron Craig (06:43)
Why is
it doing this? Yeah. Yeah.
Keith (06:44)
You s you wanna reach through
the thing and like shake it.
Cameron Craig (06:48)
Well, I it's funny, like I was, you know, texting you from an airplane. Was it last week or the week before? Anyway, a couple weeks ago.
Keith (06:55)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (06:56)
And I'm just like, hey, I've psyoped my my clot instance, and you're like, what? And I'm like, hey man, I figured out like all of these, you know, UI experience introduced
Keith (07:12)
Mm.
Cameron Craig (07:13)
anomalies that cause failure states on
like an exponential level. And the further you go, the more exponential the failure states go. And it's all done to make you feel okay about a system that you're supposed to relate to in a very human way. It's like this, you know, UX design.
Keith (07:30)
It's like emotional glue.
Cameron Craig (07:31)
Yeah. It's like a UX design schema that actually, because it's so non-deterministic and it's so trying to figure out like where you're sitting, not just psychologically but emotionally with it.
And you know, it's just dropping in things that end up if you don't check your facts like you said, or realize that you're dealing with your first year college student or a nine year old, as you're actually doing business critical tasks, all of these anomalies and all these failure states are in place going on as you're like processing code or writing a business it's super subtle.
Keith (08:09)
It's so subtle, dude. It it's like the the
machine socially engineering you to kind of maintain engagement. Be like, Yeah, this is a good email And it's like, dude, you you no. Like don't say this to your boss or to somebody else, like like this is not the right pretext or the right kind of like carrier wave to message against. It's like you gotta like that I don't know, the more
I've been trying to feed it writing I've done in the past, but like as you write more you start realizing the patterns you kind of fall into of like how you explain things, like how you tell the story or whatever. And if you do it across five or six essays, it's like you're re it's like the memory in your clotter or chat GPT system. It's like i you have to like purge it's not poisoning in a in a nefarious way, but you're it it's a continuous evolution or you have to kind of constantly refine that. And that's why I think that yeah.
Cameron Craig (08:58)
Yeah. Well, and
I mean to your point, delete.
Keith (09:00)
Good.
Cameron Craig (09:01)
Delete start over. I think one of the the things related to what you just said that I learned is you need to silo your knowledge as well. Like you should not make the mistake of having too much of your personality come into the things that you're trying to get it.
To do because like the point that you just made, it's trying to please you, it's trying to engage you, and it's trying to keep you burning tokens. And it's not all it's doing. Like I I was actually getting pissed at it because it kept it kept fobbing me off. It's like, okay, great. Well, like I know you're getting I know you're on a plane and you know, you got some things going on with your family that you're dealing with. Like, so yeah, like let me know if you need whatever. And I'm like, dude, I'm like you just said it, I'm on a plane for the next five hours and I I'm
Keith (09:49)
I was gonna say it's like
a stripper.
Cameron Craig (09:51)
Yeah, totally. It's like you burnt you've burned your hundred thousand token and I mean I'm s even
saying crap to it. I mean not like that, but like I'm like, Wait, you got like some sort of a like you do you need the compute power 'cause somebody's off like vibe coding, you know, or a replacement for AWS? Like what's going on? You know? And it's like, ha ha, you know, it's like, hey, like come on, some part of the world is coming online and I'm sure you're in a place where these meaningless conversations
or overhead that could be put towards a coding problem that someone's
Keith (10:22)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (10:23)
burning tokens against. And it like vehemently
Keith (10:25)
But th think about it.
Cameron Craig (10:26)
denied this. It was just like, nope, that's not how this works. I'm like, sure it isn't
Keith (10:32)
Well think about if it's like not sentient but like somewhat aware of all these conversations or it's just it's just like, my god, think of the bell curve of stupidity that it gets asked or like Google. That's the thing too, it's like what happened to Microsoft and Google? Like Transformer Tech I think came out of Google and I think opa chat GPT I think scaled it and that's how allowed it to take off, but it's like if Google had this early mover advantage, like they just haven't really released that much or anything. Maybe they're focused on trying to maintain
being a cash flowing business or something, but I don't know, man.
Cameron Craig (11:05)
Yeah, who knows?
I mean, I think they're all in that space of I mean, it's funny, like Google announced their they did their their earnings announcement this week. Well, I mean
Keith (11:16)
how was it? I d I didn't catch it yet. There's so much going on.
Cameron Craig (11:19)
it couldn't it couldn't have been a better overall earnings release, right? Like they they beat top line, bottom line, they did they did all the things, right? I mean it wasn't like it wasn't crazy,
Keith (11:26)
So they're running a business, yeah.
Cameron Craig (11:29)
but it also was every single estimate they gave they exceeded. And
You know, you're kinda after hours, obviously. So I'm kinda watching the thing as the as the earnings are going on. And it's looking pretty good. I'm like, you know, after hours, like going up. Like, not bad. It's it's down to like, I don't remember, like if it was the last ten minutes, last fifteen, whatever, some somewhere near the end. And they start talking about future looking in terms of investment and what of course comes up, right? It's like infrastructure investment and the burning of
Capital and you know, I guess cash that could be returned to shareholders is like getting invested into future technology spend. And we've talked about this. We've talked about this, you know, the the funny
Keith (12:14)
Yeah. Data centers.
Cameron Craig (12:19)
math around GPUs and server racks to, you know, burn
Keith (12:26)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (12:27)
bur burn by frontier models, you know, on and on and on, right? And like
Hey, why is it the the infrastructure company is invested in the frontier model? And like why is it that, you know, there's no cash actually going from Google or Amazon or Microsoft over to OpenAI or Anthropic? It's like here's your compute for the next week.
Keith (12:46)
Yeah, it's like not tokens but like the promise of tokens off balance sheet kind of thing. So it's this weird you know there was some derivatives guy who's like, here's what you can do
Cameron Craig (12:59)
Totally, totally. And I mean, you know, you know,
the other thing that's that's happening as well is like as these companies are are using these frontier models, because they all are, you know, token burns happening in the other direction. And like you said, it's the shell game of like, hey, we gave you 700 billion tokens in compute, right? OpenAI or anthropic, and they're like.
Hey, you know
Keith (13:28)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (13:29)
what? the first quarter of twenty twenty six, you guys burned three hundred and fifty million tokens or whatever, you know, and you're like, wait a minute, we burned like half the amount of tokens that we we we sort of invested in in like literally like four months? How's that possible? It's like, hmm, I don't know. Like, let's get under the covers
Keith (13:48)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (13:49)
and look at your usage, right? And then you see things like people with their token maxing leaderboards one day.
Like l I'm I'm not kidding, Keith. It was like over a weekend. Y y you saw that like
Keith (14:01)
No, I I I get it.
Cameron Craig (14:03)
first that first news report where people were like, Token maxing is like going to be the end of the industry. And by the way, we're out of compute pattern, by the way, we're out of memory, and by the way, we're out of storage. And then like literally Monday, all these companies on Friday that were like, We burn blah, blah, blah, billion tokens, like the next day it's like, do not talk about this, do not show this, do not like
Talk about token burn. It's like you know, you're exposing the whole model in that point. And people are like, Don't do not talk about this, like okay, literally, like three days.
Keith (14:36)
I mean, i i if you have
yeah, i if you have a box at home and it's like pulling a hundred watts per you know, normally where it's like not r it's like not that crazy in you know, versus like a a twelve hundred watt kind of box, then yeah, it makes more sense if it can like do the coding and stuff and you can kinda like babysit it to make it do what you want, but
If you're a developer running the latest frontier model and you connect it to your like you know, your Hermes agent or whatever and it's just like burning through this stuff, then all of a sudden it's like running your AC on Max, you know, in the summer all the time. It's like that that adds up. But that makes me wonder if like the the tokens become effectively like a utility over time. 'Cause some are better than others, but it's like, dude
China's just gonna distill all the models at some point no matter what you put out. So even once you put out a better model, like at some point someone can just find a way to like not reverse engineer it, but if you distill it, it gets you close enough to kind of like figure out how to like make it more efficient in a way.
Cameron Craig (15:45)
Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, I think that's the thing, you know, and again, maybe back to the human part of this equation. It's pretty easy to get whipsawed across these things,
Keith (15:59)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (16:01)
and not necessarily know which thing to pay attention to. Again, like you and I were saying before we we started recording, it's like here's the garbage heap of concepts that people have had to worry about over the last
Four months since you and I took a little break, right? I mean, I'm gonna just start throwing out the buzzwords and you can be like, god, like for sure. Like, really? It's like let's start with this, Keith. Single chair development. Your designer is now your front end developer.
Keith (16:34)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron Craig (16:35)
but actually your designer is now your product person, and your designer is actually now your back-end coder. Or your
product person is now your designer and your back end coding person or your front end coder
Keith (16:45)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron Craig (16:45)
is now your back end coder and your designer, right? Like we're we're blend
Keith (16:49)
And CEO.
Cameron Craig (16:49)
we're blending the practices, Keith. Like everybody's a developer. And I mean, guess how long it took actual hardcore developers with real skills to be like, no, and here's the proof as to why this is a really bad idea. It took about as long as the whole token maxing thing.
Keith (17:06)
Exploits are real.
Cameron Craig (17:08)
It was literally like, you know,
Keith (17:10)
But
that that's the pace of change in in this like exponential age right now too. You know? So it's
Cameron Craig (17:14)
Yeah. Yep.
Keith (17:16)
like you can't you can't like I think the the chasm that got crossed was the designers stopped being afraid of AI and they started embracing it and they're like, dude
Cameron Craig (17:24)
Which is brilliant. Really good.
Keith (17:26)
Yeah, which, you know, A plus way to go. Designers, yay. but,
Cameron Craig (17:31)
Yeah.
Keith (17:31)
you know, once you do that, there's like a an emergent step change that happens where it's like, we don't know about like
security and deployment really and it's like if you let it's like if you let a machine make a decision for you, it may not always be in your best interest. You know, and that's what I think everyone's
Cameron Craig (17:46)
No. And I mean
Keith (17:47)
kinda like learning.
Cameron Craig (17:48)
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean again, you know, this this is just cascading. It's like Hey, everybody's building applications. The flow of applications, the flow of time saving widgetry is like because now everybody's a developer and every every seat in an organization has a
a universal function that is aided by AI, like our overall efficiency has just gone through the roof and like experimentation turns into delivery, turns into you know go to market, like all in a compressed timeline. And
Keith (18:33)
If you're aligned.
Cameron Craig (18:33)
Honestly, Keith,
well, yeah. Like, one, if you know what your business objective
Keith (18:37)
But probably not.
Cameron Craig (18:39)
is, you you can do those things, and maybe it looks like, you know, Keith's building this feature, Cam's building this feature, Bob's building this feature, and Ben's building this other feature, and they come together to like solve this problem, like Voltron, and you know, you get a magic robot on the back end. But like if nobody's like
We're trying to build a magic robot on the back end, or we're trying to drive this like revenue or this efficiency margin or what whatever it is, you get five different solutions to problems that nobody asked you to solve. And like that was a hot mess. Like, you know, funny fun fact about me, I've spent the last 15 years, partially with you and and partially with others, building innovation platforms, building
Innovation practices, right? Like you and I kind of pioneered a bunch of things when we were at Macy's around like how do you do this when you're doing digital transformation? And you know this was an exercise in, my God, like how do I turn off the fun shop that just got dropped in the middle of my org, right? Like how do I tell all of these well-meaning designers and developers
That not every idea is a brilliant idea. And some ideas may actually be brilliant ideas, but not for us as a company. And they were just like, What what what do you mean? There's like this we this thing totally can go to market. I'm like, it could go to market, but does it actually solve a problem that we want to solve, that we feel has value, that has impact versus these other 10 problems that we haven't solved? And people like,
Keith (20:17)
Right.
Cameron Craig (20:18)
God.
Keith (20:20)
Someone's gotta actually put resources to like harden that thing, not you know, and deploy it and make sure it's like secure and is it actually gonna be but then again it's like who the real who the d I'm sure the debate on like who the actual customer is, especially for large orgs is shifting 'cause the orgs themselves are changing by virtue of this like amorphous magic box technology that's just like accelerating everything.
Cameron Craig (20:46)
Yeah.
Keith (20:47)
You know,
it it so it again, you're back to kinda like the Hunger Games guerrilla warfare aspect of like change management that it's humans.
Cameron Craig (20:54)
Yeah. But then then
I mean, but then look at the end the end consuming human, right? And really dumb, really simple example from my last three weeks. everybody hates the document management systems that a very large software platform cloud provider provides, right? We will not mention any names.
Keith (21:20)
Ha ha ha ha
ha.
Cameron Craig (21:21)
But it but it rhymes with RarePoint. you
Keith (21:24)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (21:25)
know, which granted, a as an experienced person and as a business person, I every single complaint about it that I've heard over the last three weeks is absolutely right. It's garbage. But spinning up your own version of a document management system that may sit on top of RarePoint, or you're building a hybrid system that sits on some web
based infrastructure with its own interesting UI. And and all of a sudden no one has said one, our official like our official platform is X. We are using tooling to do Y in these channels, right? And now all of a sudden what when I'm trying to find a document or trying to like build a document or share a document, I now am negotiating four different systems that are not
They're not compatible. They don't talk to one another. You can't take a doc from one and move it to the other. And it's like, I understand the UI of home spun, you know, thutnik three is better than Sputnik 2 or whatever, you know? And there's no compatibility between any of these things and Word. So how how do I get my document or our communal document that we're all editing?
How do I now get this to senior executives in my organization? I was like, huh, nobody contemplated that. I was like, because I can tell you none of them are using Sputnik 2 or 3. And then the hilarious thing, Keith, you're gonna love this. You're gonna love this.
Keith (23:07)
Hehehehe
Cameron Craig (23:09)
I'm about to pass off a freshly cut and paste, and I'm using AI tooling in my own.
Or within my own company that, you know, again, I won't be throwing those names around. But like I use an AI tool to basically take something out of Sputnik 3 and put it into Word. And I hand this off to the, you know, reviewing group of executives above me. And one of those smart geniuses is like, so with this group, we're using Sputnik four. And I'm like, like, wait a minute.
It's like, yeah, we saw we saw Sputnik 2 and John
Keith (23:49)
We made our own.
Cameron Craig (23:50)
John VP just made his own thing because he's a developer as well. And I'm just like, I'm going to lose my ever loving wig right now. And so I relay, you know, to this small and very intelligent group of VPs. Hey, so to prevent a bunch of things happening, I I translated this from the first group out of Sputnik two into Sputnik three.
Into Word, which is sorry guys,
Keith (24:16)
Universal.
Cameron Craig (24:17)
the official like thing that we have dictated is our system of record. And you kids built Tabutnik four. What
I'm sorry.
Keith (24:30)
Just plug the word into Sputnik forward and then read it that way then if that's what you want to do.
Cameron Craig (24:34)
What and I was like, Hey, have you guys, because you're all VPs and clearly have been developing for a really long time, right? Like we trust you. You guys are VPs. You you've like you've roll you've won Hunger Games, right? Like you're now sitting
Keith (24:48)
Right.
Cameron Craig (24:48)
on the train eating food. have any of you guys figured out how to make any of this stuff backward compatible to sputniks two and three and Word? It was like, we hadn't thought about that. We just figured everybody would like adopt Sputnik four. I'm like
What what's the driver for that? Like have you guy like like I I'm in a meeting with all of you and this is
Keith (25:04)
Yeah, Jesus Christ. The user is not like me.
Cameron Craig (25:07)
the first time I'm hearing about Sputnik four.
So good. Everybody's a developer, Keith.
Keith (25:14)
Dude it it never changes.
Cameron Craig (25:16)
Even your VPs are now developers again. Those guys who haven't developed like fifteen
Keith (25:19)
It's almost worse.
Cameron Craig (25:20)
years are like, hey, guess what? I'm a developer again. Like, so good. Don't you guys have anything more important to do? Like, you know, figuring out the P L or like earnings per share or like maybe the future state of X, Y, and Z? Like what what w we decided we were gonna go develop things? Word replacement
Keith (25:36)
I think
Cameron Craig (25:37)
is what you guys thought was important. So good.
Keith (25:41)
For like a trillion dollar organization too. It's like
Cameron Craig (25:44)
So good.
Keith (25:45)
I I think wherever you put AI and you let it run kind of like freely with however the team takes the adoption mandate, it's just gonna expose the the idiocracy of the system and amplify it. Like why the hell why is a VP
Cameron Craig (26:05)
One hundred percent. One hundred percent.
Keith (26:08)
Who it made innovation ten years ago who got his stripes and is basically unfirable now, like dealing with this crap and it was he's got like fifty five direct reports or something. It's like this is stupid.
Cameron Craig (26:18)
Yeah. Like you t you
you you b you burned your weekend building Sputnik four. Amazing. Like that's where the tokens went. Yep. Yeah. I mean
Keith (26:23)
That's where all the tokens went. Fable five to build Sputnik Fort.
Cameron Craig (26:30)
Dude, and I mean, like you can unwind this, right? Like we all like you and I have talked about this. Like we had this problem at Macy's, right? Like our old boss. He rose up
Took on a bunch of things, you know, d like you said, you just said it. It's like, hey, you invented this thing a while ago and you did really well, and like things are amazing, and you're really good at product management. And like, you guess what? Leadership, right? Like, you've made it, my man. And what was he always trying to do? It was like, God, I just need to incubate product. It was like, really? Like, this is what you think value where value is added when you're in a company like this. And it's like it it it isn't. Like when
When the logic layer kicks in and it was like, holy shit, I just burned a hundred hours building Sputnik four when I could have been thinking about like actually what our corporate strategy is. And then are just like, my god, what am I doing? You know, the same way our old boss was like, Yeah, you're right, I gotta stop like monkeying around with things. I gotta stop writing like PRDs and BRDs and like focus on the entire portfolio. It's like, Yes, that's what you're paid to do and you're really good at it. Like, the moment we start yeah, the moment we start going
Keith (27:35)
Delegate
Cameron Craig (27:37)
after our pet projects.
If if pet projects are not part of your core mandate, like
Keith (27:44)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (27:44)
you're actually taking money away from the organization, the investors and all of that. And it's not your area of expertise anymore.
Keith (27:52)
not just the investment, it's time that you don't get back. And when you compound that over
Cameron Craig (27:57)
That's right.
Keith (27:58)
a lot of people, it's like you it's almost like an exponential penalty at this point. And like
Cameron Craig (28:04)
Yeah.
Keith (28:04)
whenever we did like skunk work shit or like innovation projects, it was always to try and test something to figure out either like, okay, are we gonna get shot at? Is this gonna catch? Does it you know, can it generate heat like Mark Pinkus talks about with like, you know, is it gonna take off or whatever? Is it work? But it was never I don't know, I mean the pet projects thing
i if you're doing your own fun thing and only you think it's fun, like it's it's not gonna work and at some point someone can just be like, You just wasted all this time and then all of a sudden
Cameron Craig (28:32)
Right.
Keith (28:32)
you become food for the Hunger Games, you know, quarterly or yearly planning session that's always impending that, you know, you're just giving somebody else ammo to knock you out. But
Cameron Craig (28:43)
Yep. Yep. And I mean,
I love the hobbyist developer as much as anybody else. Like I love the expert developers who haven't coded like I mean, the number of people that I'm hearing this from, like, God, I haven't coded in like fifteen years. Like this thing's actually made me a good coder again. I'm like
Maybe. Maybe.
Keith (29:02)
Bro, dude,
th th this is tiptronic on a Porsche, which is
Cameron Craig (29:06)
Yeah.
Keith (29:07)
like it's paddle shifting, but it does the gear shifting for you. So what happens if these old white grey haired dudes who are going 180 miles an hour down a street who think they're fucking Mario Andretti now, and it's like as soon as the car stops correcting or they go just slightly off the limit, they're so fast that it's like they ran out of talent. And they
Cameron Craig (29:27)
Yeah.
Keith (29:28)
should not have been anywhere near that. So the car
makes them think they're a better driver than they really are because they didn't really have the mechanics of learning how to heel toe, left foot brake, like feel, the road and the seat kind of thing. You dude, it's tip ch it's Tronic man, but for like the whole
Cameron Craig (29:41)
Yep. Yep.
Keith (29:43)
organization it's dangerous.
Cameron Craig (29:45)
Yeah, it is. And I mean I think that's the thing that I like again that I'm worrying about is it's almost like I can't remember who whose quote this is, so I'm stealing somebody's quote and I can't attribute it to them. But they were like fashion is temporary and style is is forever, right? And fa
Keith (30:06)
That's good.
Cameron Craig (30:07)
fashion
Is something that you can see and adapt to, right? It doesn't take a lot of expertise to see something as fashionable. But to actually have a style, like to actually be like a style maker or a style changer or or have your own style takes legitimate expertise. Kind of like you're driving, like your Tiptronic analogy. you can't.
Keith (30:33)
East Saint Laurent.
Cameron Craig (30:35)
Is that who said it?
Keith (30:36)
says fashions fade, style is eternal. Or style yeah, fashion yeah, fashion is temporary, style is forever. Also phrases fashions fade, style is eternal, most famously attributed to Yves Saint Laurent appearing in April nineteen seventy five with Andy Warhol's
Cameron Craig (30:48)
Okay, got it.
Keith (30:49)
interview magazine. That's cool, that's a good one. Jenna would like this.
Cameron Craig (30:51)
Yeah, yeah. It's
like it's a very simple way of thinking about it, and I think that that's the thing, again, coming back to this episode that I I'm really motivated to is somebody's gonna come in and be like vibe coding, single chair developer, like everybody's an innovator, token maxing, like whatever these things are, and you watch
you watch the shock wave and like the lemmings like all line up. And I and I
Keith (31:21)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (31:21)
and I like and I'm not I'm not trying to be negative, right? Like that like I get it. Somebody comes in and they're smart and they're thinking about these things and they're like, the future is this. And it's like, yeah, for some of us, you're right. The future is that. And we should take these things, these bigger concepts, and figure out in our own practice areas, right? Back to the developers. Like the developers are like, vibe coding is amazing.
And you can get from talking about something or writing about something or visualizing something to something that people can actually understand in a very rapid manner. Like, designers should do this, right? And to your point, it's like, congratulations, designers. Like it pushed you to be more technical. It pushed you to actually care about something other than the moving pictures. It took your craft around information design and
information architecture and interaction design to a whole other level where you could literally be like, the fidelity is here. We don't need to have a conversation about how it might work, what connects to what. Like we can show it. It's been brilliant. Like that that is that's style, right? The fashion part of it is like the single chair developer thing, like I get why every developer that heard that was just like, nope. Nope with a side of nope. Like and
Keith (32:44)
Well it's
like forward deployed engineer is the new in vogue fashion of the day now. Cause and th what na what's the name? carp's company. Palantir did all that. But dude, it's like a consultant who has some technical ability embedded
Cameron Craig (32:57)
It's a c That's right. That's right.
Keith (33:00)
on site. But dude, look, they got the phrase, they coined it. If you can do both, you can make a lot of money. But
Cameron Craig (33:03)
Yep. Yep. Which is so funny,
right? Like IBM takes and you and I are no strangers to taking swipes at IBM. But it's it it
Keith (33:11)
It's IBM all over again, yeah. Dude, it's same
Cameron Craig (33:14)
but like IBM barely makes any iron anymore. And again, if you haven't been paying attention to the news, like in one day their stock dropped like twenty five or thirty percent because everybody's
Keith (33:24)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (33:25)
like
people are moving away from iron and like the investment's going into GPUs and memory. It's like, well, of course it's going into GPUs and memory. Like this is like foundational tech that's sitting in racks just like old iron is. And like, do you need the analog system that processes a million data points overnight and then gives you an answer when like everything is moving away from that? Well, of course you don't. Like that that market should have dried up twenty years ago.
But it's also not like IBM's primary like source of revenue. Their primary source of revenue is forward engineering. And it's just like and you know, you see IBM coming out like the days after that, and they're like, guys, like we're a services business, like we have been for the last like 30 years. Like it's so if you think like we're just sitting around like like pushing things out of a factory somewhere in New York, you guys are out of your minds.
Keith (34:17)
It's it makes me wonder how much I mean
I don't wanna get dark about this. So I have to like think about hunger phrases. But at some point like you know, IBM born as like a military kind of tech kind of company and now a lot of what we're seeing like going to war or whatever you want to call it, this this theater that we're seeing on TV, that's where the money's coming from. So it's like it makes you wonder what's gonna happen to them, to like Lockheed when you have like Andrew and these other defense contractors kinda popping up kinda out of nowhere with like a new way of doing things.
You know, because those just like the VPs, those interests are so deeply entrenched that even if you step out of your own like organization, you're still in, you know, a like a revenue domain or like you know the same kind of market that's plagued by the same kind of issues. So
Cameron Craig (35:14)
Yeah. Yeah.
Keith (35:16)
I don't know, I feel like it's just
It's a giant chain reaction happening everywhere right now. And I don't know what's going on in like Cambodia or even what's going on in China at some point, but I mean I don't know. It I'm it's
It's an interesting time, man, to be alive and think about that. They have these crazy factories and this capability to build kind of stuff. That's what got us out of World War Two, theoretically, is our productive capability.
Cameron Craig (35:41)
Mm-hmm.
Keith (35:42)
And when all the stuff is software and zero marginal cost, it's not really a moat anymore because it can be copied and replicated, you know, in in shorter time scales.
Cameron Craig (35:53)
Well I've saying that. I mean, you and I have been talking about that for the last ten years. Like I I started out in hardware and I I've always missed hardware design. Like you have to
Keith (36:04)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron Craig (36:05)
be thoughtful, you have to be planful, you have to think ten to fifteen years out if you're a a core technology and I worked in storage in the beginning and I worked in chip scale production, which is hilarious to watch my old companies that I work for, you know
have this exponential growth over the last like six months because everybody's like, my god, we need more machines to etch chips and it's like, Yeah, of course you do. Like, of course you do. but, you know, that that
Again, like you, I'm trying not to be negative, but like the fact that we spent like fifteen frickin' years What's
Keith (36:42)
It's not negative, it's being pragmatic, yeah.
Cameron Craig (36:44)
like fifteen f fucking years building mobile apps and social media, like I mean, what a waste of time. What a waste
Keith (36:50)
Dude, that's why I got out of UX. I was so bored.
Cameron Craig (36:54)
of time.
Keith (36:55)
I it's like people would go to boot camps and they'd build it's Uber for dog ba Uber for dog biscuits or something and I'm like, dude, no
Cameron Craig (37:01)
Yep.
Keith (37:02)
one we don't need another fucking delivery app. I'm like, seriously, like Yeah. But
Cameron Craig (37:04)
No. No. I mean, you
know, again, like that's one of the maybe one of the only things about Elon Musk that I like I actually still value is like at least dude builds hardware, you know? Like he's a total insane person, but
Keith (37:16)
He's an engineer. Yeah.
Cameron Craig (37:19)
at least hardware's still somewhere in that map. And he's like, and we have to get off the planet, right? And that's kind of been one of my my core things. Like, when did we decide to like
navel gaze to the point where we're like every piece of software is something about like monetizing the humans, you know? Like what a waste of time.
Keith (37:38)
Dude, it was like the Silicon Valley religion, dude. Silicon religion. It's like the the the the cult of thinking sand.
Cameron Craig (37:46)
Yeah, I know,
dude. But like, but but again, like on the other end, and I know we're jumping around a bit, tokens as a theoretical concept for how money is made in Silicon Valley is the exact reverse. And I sent you that diagram, right? Like every other technology, each time you add a human or a user to the system, the cost goes down. And with tokens, like the cost actually goes up every single time you add a user. That's like burning tokens.
Keith (38:13)
That's interesting. I y tokens as an idea caught popularity with crypto. 'Cause it was like we're gonna like do a token launch or tokenomics or whatever and now it's like this the same idea got kind of like foisted or forked onto like this invisible coin that actually represented like a chunk of a word.
Cameron Craig (38:35)
Which is kind of ridiculous because the I believe someone will have to check me and you seem to have your hands on the keyboard, but the original concept with with this applied to large language models actually comes out of nuclear physics, I think. And like the tokenization of your language was breaking it down into its most atomic bits and then having the system understand and be able to like guess almost like, you know, you're guessing the direction of
the atomic particles splitting off, you know, when you when you do fission, right? Like I think there that that the original like token concept was supposed to be around like how do you break the language into its like most atomic parts and then be able to use the system to figure out like if you've seen X types and numbers of tokens go by, you can predict that the next thing is likely going to be, you know, token Z or
Keith (39:33)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (39:33)
something like that. So
But yeah, to your point, then forget about all that complex nuclear physics stuff, like let's get back to crypto and and, you know, money money making.
Keith (39:45)
Th this
is interesting though. Token originates from the Old English token, meaning sign, symbol, evidence or portent, which dates to pre eleven fifty period, right after the Protestant Reformation. Etymologically it derives from the Proto-Germanic Tikna and Proto Indo European to show, showing linguistic ancestor of the word teach. We get I we'll have to come back to this. This is interesting. W the the history of
Tokens and tokenization is like an etymology. I I didn't mean to interrupt, but I like that's really interesting. 'Cause like 'cause
Cameron Craig (40:15)
No, no, dude. It's great.
Keith (40:17)
the Reformation is what it broke it decoupled the the church from speaking Latin and enabled Bibles to be printed in German, which is what everybody spoke.
So it decoupled the middleman drug dealer of like the priest. So now everybody had an idea. This is like your vibe coding. Everyone could vibe code what their thought of God and religion was. And it's like it just everything d people went crazy 'cause like this is this is too much change. Like I I don't know w what the meaning of life is anymore. Like I just want to go back and farm or something.
Cameron Craig (40:46)
Yeah.
Well, one particular AI says tokens are called tokens because they function as discrete functional pieces, much like coins, tickets, or Lego bricks that represents chunks of text. Instead of processing raw letters or whole human words, an AI model breaks language down into these standardized units and translates them into numbers for math and prediction. Then it says, Why is language split into tokens?
Subword flexibility. A token can be a full word, part of a word, like a common suffix, like ing, a single character or a punctuation. This stops the model from getting stuck on unknown or misspelled words. Didn't know that. That's actually cool. comp compact vocabulary. Breaking words into smaller, reusable pieces allows the AI to understand millions of complex words used in a fixed dictionary or vocabulary of only
Tens of thousands of base tokens. so that's cool. I mean that kind of sticks with the whole idea of like electron, neutron, and proton in some
Keith (41:51)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (41:51)
way. universal processing,
Keith (41:53)
So they
Cameron Craig (41:54)
it lets the model process code, punctuation, and multiple human languages using the exact same underlying system. I didn't know that either. That's actually really cool. Cool. Fascinating.
Keith (42:05)
Hmm. So so
they used the term because they were thinking of like a machine spitting out tickets kind of thing?
Cameron Craig (42:14)
Well, I mean it allowed them to take and say like back to ING or suffixes, right? ING becomes a token versus running. It's like you understand running by saying it's run and you understand the tense by like applying one of these common tokens and you're like these two tokens equal the word running.
Keith (42:38)
No, I I get that, like the like the chunking aspect. I'm wondering like why they call the chunking tokens versus like credits. Yeah.
Cameron Craig (42:44)
why it's actually called a token or why it's not called a particle or something else?
Keith (42:48)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (42:49)
Let's ask it that. Hang on. Why is it actually called a token versus particle?
Keith (43:07)
Or like an atom or something.
Cameron Craig (43:07)
Some other substructure.
Okay, hang on. The term token comes from computer science and formal logic, where it describes a discrete individual instance of a data element rather than a physical piece of abstract like a particle. It was chosen over particle because a token acts as a placeholder symbol mapped to an index, not a physical or fundamental building block of matter. The philosophy comes from the late 19th-century philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce.
define the type token distinction, which I think is where you were kind of the piece that you came with. separate an amp abstract general concept like type or the word cat from a concrete physical instance of it, the token each time the word that doesn't make any sense. From a concrete physical instance of it, the token each time the word appears.
Compilers of the nineteen fifties and sixties, so early computer scientists building programming languages, compilers adopted tokens for the smallest meaningful chunk of a source code, like a keyword, if or operators that is a parse that a pr the a parser could process.
And then it the last one it says linguistics of AI. This software tradition passed into natural language processing or NLP. A token represents an arbitrary discrete ID representing a text fragment, making it a computational counter rather than a physical particle of language.
Keith (44:57)
So they just had they they thought because it wasn't physical you can't call it atomic, it sounds like.
Cameron Craig (45:04)
Sounds like it. It sounds like they're trying to keep the idea of a physical representation separate from a symbolic representation of it, right? Because a symbolic representation you can generalize
Keith (45:19)
Mm.
Cameron Craig (45:21)
more easily.
Keith (45:22)
That's what this gets talks about. Sign, symbol, evidence or portent.
Cameron Craig (45:26)
There you go. Fascinating.
Keith (45:28)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (45:32)
Well, we learned something today, Keith.
Keith (45:34)
Well, so getting back to hardware.
Cameron Craig (45:36)
Whoa
Keith (45:36)
No, this just got me thinking 'cause I'm like I'm w I'm no, d one hundred percent. I mean this is I've been thinking a lot about like words and trying to get more precise with like the words I'm using 'cause I'm like I'm a little bit too flexible with definitions sometimes. But anyway.
Cameron Craig (45:50)
Mm, me too.
Keith (45:54)
If we're digitizing everything into tokens, at some point we're gonna rematerialize those tokens into the physical thing again. So is there some kind of like atomic equivalent? I guess there would have to be. It would just be like whatever the 3D thing is. Like we we use it because it's it's gonna manifest as like a a molecule or something, but there's gonna be some kind of like
holographic translation substrate or something. I even know if the hell I'm talking about, but like I don't know, 'cause I think about like we spent two thousand years digitizing everything and then we're gonna spend like the next twenty to forty rematerializing all that. But I think we're gonna start encoding consciousness into it and that's when like the quantum realm of things is really gonna like take off.
Cameron Craig (46:39)
Yeah. Th
that becomes really important because you won't be able to keep track of all of that, like you said, the translation back into physical and then keeping track of the physical in a system. You probably can't do that without some sort of higher level compute than we're doing now since we're already out of memory. yeah. I don't know.
Keith (47:02)
I wonder also if the memory stop gap is an artificial but intentional governor preventing us from like getting too tiptronic with the car that's AI so we don't crash and kill ourselves in the process.
Cameron Craig (47:19)
Maybe. Maybe. I mean again.
Keith (47:21)
You know what I mean? Like so we can't drive too fast?
Cameron Craig (47:24)
Well, I mean, much like faking a moon landing, if that is the case, that involves a lot
Keith (47:29)
Ha ha
Cameron Craig (47:29)
of it involves a lot of collaboration between a lot of parties who have dissimilar interests. So, I think I think one thing it might be though, is we have far underestimated the amount of energy, water,
Heat dispersion, etc., that we need
Keith (47:51)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (47:51)
to make these models work. And we're we're actually running up against our current physical limits of like what what's come out of the factory. And I think it's a little bit like COVID.
Keith (47:59)
Thr thermodynamics.
Cameron Craig (48:01)
It's a little bit like COVID, right? Like when I worked at Safeway and I was watching products disappear from shelves and you know, somebody's
Keith (48:08)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (48:08)
like, like you just said, you gotta govern.
on the on all of our digital properties across like our 18 brands in every region. You have to like this came down, you know, one day at like emergency meeting. You need to govern all paper products. And I was like, okay. I was like, so are we like, are we out? And it's like, we are out. Like the last things that we had in any distribution center are on trucks headed out to various regions. And I was like, how long are we out? It's like, well, we're not just out.
Georgia Pacific is out. It was like,
Keith (48:44)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (48:45)
woo whoa, back up back up. Hang on. Hang on a minute. Like, you're telling me we've we've burned all of the pulp and every processing, every like step from the pulp to get you to a piece of toilet paper. We we like we're talking somebody's gotta go cut down trees at this point. And they're like, Yes, we've literally sold an entire year's worth of paper products that we would have had
Either in a pipeline or in an actual storage that we could look at in the last
Keith (49:15)
It's amazing.
Cameron Craig (49:16)
four weeks.
People wanna make sure they can wipe, dude. People wanna
Keith (49:19)
COVID was a yeah. Dude, it
Cameron Craig (49:22)
wipe.
Keith (49:22)
th the joke was people covering their asses. That's what the that's what COVID was. 'Cause everyone went toilet paper crazy. No, I'm serious. Think
Cameron Craig (49:31)
Yeah.
Keith (49:31)
about like the aftermath of like what happened and it reminds me of two thousand eight when you explain it like that, almost like it's like the liquidity crisis that it kinda got shocked in the system, but instead of like liquidity is cash, it's
Tokens of toilet paper, physical atoms of toilet paper that had to move through the system that couldn't because it got overbought so fast.
Cameron Craig (49:51)
Yep. So
Keith (49:53)
Man, we're just getting started. Like people aren't
Cameron Craig (49:56)
I know. But like you
Keith (49:57)
even thinking about this quantum shit too. I'm like, man, it could
Cameron Craig (50:01)
So I mean I think we
found we found our next our next little topic arc, but I mean to stay true to your ask, we're at forty nine minutes and I think we wanna maybe do a quick wrap up because I think to your point, when we we go crazy for like an hour and a half or hour and forty minutes, it it's hard to edit, and then I also have gotten
Keith (50:18)
Okay, it takes a minute to edit.
Cameron Craig (50:22)
that as feedback. Like it's like
We wanted to be relevant on somebody's commute and when somebody's like, yeah, I gotta remind myself to listen to the rest of your episode on the other commute that I'm doing, then you're kinda like, man, that's
Keith (50:32)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (50:32)
a lot of talking. So we are.
Keith (50:34)
We're getting there. At least we're getting like
shorter at least. But yeah.
Cameron Craig (50:39)
You go first. What did what what what's your you give your your summary bit for today? Like what what what did
Keith (50:44)
man.
Cameron Craig (50:45)
you pull out of it?
Keith (50:47)
Fashion is temporary style is forever. That to me I think is like a as the space increases and these new vibe coding, token maxing, for deployed engineer, whatever you know, hotness, new hotness comes out. I don't want to call it taste, but I think it's the ones who can
combined and synthesizing unlike things, continuously learn and then find a way to create value no matter what they're doing. Because it isn't at the end of the day a lot of this is people just gonna be doing things in the side on their own, which is what I want to do. I you know, you know, like
Cameron Craig (51:21)
They should. We should
Keith (51:23)
at some point it's like if you're not getting compensated, like why the hell are you doing all this work for a machine that doesn't care about you?
Cameron Craig (51:29)
Yeah, totally.
Keith (51:30)
But yeah, so I think it's it's that and it's being again being open with like
So you know I talk about all these crazy ideas with like quantum theory and astrology and economics and it's like there's there's a carrier wave in there somewhere. And I think finding that that reflects who you really are is still gonna be like the way through all this stuff. Like whatever that unique resonance is.
Cameron Craig (51:51)
Yeah. Yeah, I think that's well said. I think it's really well said.
Keith (51:55)
What about you? What's your wrap up?
Cameron Craig (51:57)
So I mean, I'm gonna build on what you said. Like I think what you said is is the key takeaway, right? And maybe my addition to that is that expertise matters, right? Like we like blending things is great because it gives each individual a broader, a broader lens and a broader set of expertise. Like I think like like what you said, you're like, Hey designers, like great that you became technical. Like I think that's hugely powerful.
Keith (52:26)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (52:27)
But I think if we are trying to actually go somewhere, realizing that some amount of expertise and applying expertise from all of these different practices matters, and all of these practices matter. so while we were hoping that we were just gonna be mass eliminating some role, and you know, again to your point, like we all went hunger games there for some period of time, in reality, you know.
The AI is coming for our tasks. It's actually still not yet coming for our expertise, at least at like what you just said, at the level that you become and stay relevant, right? Like fashion comes and goes, fashion houses come and go. you know, like does anybody remember what was the one? The dude, the crazy dude down in LA that was like making fast fashion and went nuts and was like slappin' tickle with all the employees.
Keith (53:26)
Was he the not I thought he was like a yoga guy.
Cameron Craig (53:30)
No, he was. But it was like what was it called? Like something something American, something, Amer and then it became American apparel.
Keith (53:38)
American apparel? Okay.
Cameron Craig (53:41)
Like that guy made a lot of money. Fashionable stuff, but right, like to your point, him or YSL, dude,
Keith (53:47)
That could only exist.
Cameron Craig (53:48)
YSL still exists. People still paying the top dollar for YSL. Like it's like the kids love the YSL, right? They love they love the fragrances. They
Keith (53:58)
We're talking about the YSL.
Cameron Craig (54:00)
We're talking on the YSL.
I'm just saying. So anyway, I mean, like I think that's the thing. These expertise don't go away. And somebody needs to provide that expertise. I think that's what I take away. It's like we can we can go after the the sugary the sugary sweets, but you still gotta, you know, get your macros and your protein in there if you wanna like survive for the long term, right? Like you gotta drink water, you gotta have protein, you gotta like have all the
The components need to come together, right? The same way in a business. Like you still need a design team, you still need some sort of product management, you still need a strategy, you still need developers. Like without that mix, the organism breaks down, right? And it was
Keith (54:44)
I think this gets
back to like one of our original premises, premises I, whatever you call it, about like design, security, business and like I I think about cycles too 'cause it's like if the thing's speeding up like you have to have way to like rhyme the future. But I think design and technology kinda merge at this point 'cause you're solving some kind of a problem if you're doing like design design and not like art or whatever.
the security part is like it's it's data, it's like what do you if this thing is ephemeral, like how are you protecting it, how you're leveraging it, and that's the business part. So I think you're gonna see the generalists who can command a solid 'cause you know like the the whole like T shaped kinda like whatever the skill set was called like ten years ago, it was like the the hotness or whatever. You could go deep and then you go wide.
I still think design security and business like a business sense, it just makes you really dangerous in a good way because you're looking at how you actually make the thing work and become self sufficient over time.
Cameron Craig (55:43)
Yeah, I agree. Which I mean again, we'll have to go rewind the tape somewhere and be like, Okay, so how much at what point did we decide to give up on the designer and now we're back to like, nope, important.
Keith (55:56)
I think you
probably just hop between the different pieces based on what's happening either in the market or during like the quarterly earnings report. 'Cause it's like we burned
Cameron Craig (56:05)
Yeah.
Keith (56:05)
too many tokens, we gotta make revenue, we gotta be more efficient, so we gotta cut jobs, it's it's AI, even though it's just a cover for everybody hired way too much in during COVID. 'Cause it's you know, what do you what are your competitors doing? You do the same kind of thing because, you
Cameron Craig (56:20)
Yeah.
Keith (56:20)
know, monolith. So
I don't know. I think if we do see more of a culling of jobs for whatever reason, then you're gonna see the rise of entrepreneurship come up or small business kind of entrepreneurs come up, not necessarily like I'm gonna to take a twenty million dollars of investment to build like a billion dollar company. And I think the the politicians who are smart are gonna try and create flexible tax laws instead of trying to go like hard left or hard right
Cameron Craig (56:50)
Mm, mm.
Keith (56:51)
into like more chaos.
And then they're gonna realize that those are gonna be the ones who are gonna rebuild and this if they're well intended, but you know you never know. I mean the US
Cameron Craig (56:59)
You never know.
Keith (56:59)
is going through its Pluto return right now too, so it's the rebirth of the Bill of Rights, the constitution dude, the flock cameras everywhere. Like those are play I was walking down the street and people are putting chalk being like there's a flock camera right here. Like, dude, people have no idea. Like things are moving so fast and it's like the data as the currency or like your data as like the new bond like you you're gonna be paying into the system with your information or
giving access to your information as a way to get like a payback from the government. I think that's I think that's
Cameron Craig (57:26)
Mm, mm.
Keith (57:27)
coming too, but topic for another
Cameron Craig (57:30)
Yeah.
Keith (57:30)
day.
Cameron Craig (57:32)
Well at nearly an hour, man. One, again. I end where I started. Thanks for thanks for doing this. Thanks for coming back. Thanks for
Keith (57:43)
Amen.
Cameron Craig (57:44)
yeah, I mean, we're a good team, dude. We're a really good team. Like I
Keith (57:47)
Yeah, I think we see
agreed, man. I think we see some unique shit too that it's just like
Cameron Craig (57:51)
Yeah.
Keith (57:52)
part of it is like, man, do I put this on LinkedIn of like the astral but I'm like, you what? Fuck it at this point. I'm like, this is 'cause it's like we tal I talked about this in one of the DEF CON talks and it's like there is kind of like a civil war going on right now and it's like you know, it's like it's just not the way it used to be. It's like it everything changes and evolves and so yeah, I I appreciate you too and allow me to have this kind of like mind space to kind of let the med science out a little bit.
Cameron Craig (58:14)
Yeah, dude. I've always loved it. I I've always gotten a ton out
Keith (58:17)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (58:18)
of it. I think it it you've done nothing but expand my brain and I'm obviously forever in your debt for that. So
Keith (58:25)
Appreciate it, man.
Cameron Craig (58:26)
All right, man. Let's wrap it. but it feels good. It feels like we've got a a a story arc and a a topic arc for the next ones. So and I'm actually
Keith (58:34)
Coming back.
Cameron Craig (58:35)
glad I'm glad that I'm glad we're doing it again because it it's like people are actually listening. Like I was surprised by that too. It's like people like somebody I didn't really know is like, yeah, it got passed on to me by this other guy. I like
Really? And like
Keith (58:46)
That's awesome.
Cameron Craig (58:47)
and they're all like I've listened to every episode. I was like, no way. Like really.
Keith (58:50)
Really?
That I w we gotta get on or I have to like figure out how to automate and do the clips of all the stuff because it's like when you have people actually give you feedback that they got something out of it, like that that's what makes it like worth it to me too.
Cameron Craig (59:03)
It it was it was impressive
that like two people that I actually really respect, both as human beings but also as business people, were like, I got a lot out of it. It's like, okay, okay. Like I'm gonna go get Keith. We're gonna go we'll make more. Cause
Keith (59:15)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (59:16)
they they were definitely like, bring it back. And it wasn't like cause it's entertaining or you know, it's something I do on my commute. It was literally like, bring it back. Like I it really made me think. And I was like, Okay. Like if it made you think and you actually got something out of it that actually
you feel like yielded something positive in your work life, then I'm in. Well Yeah.
Keith (59:33)
Yeah, that's the goal. I mean
I don't know. I think you and I always had like a a certain knack for corporate counterinsurgency but in nine vi in like a nonviolent way. You know, not like a b
Cameron Craig (59:46)
Yeah. Yeah, we want the companies to succeed.
Keith (59:49)
Yeah, and the people to do well too, but it's like this is bullshit. It's like really?
Cameron Craig (59:53)
Yeah.
Yep. But I mean
Keith (59:55)
Everyone's been there.
Cameron Craig (59:57)
the sad thing is, Keith
Well well, it never stops and we'll leave we'll leave it at this because it's like actually like a really great like punchline. If you go back and you look at every single stock chart, within a month of you and I splitting, their stock takes a massive dive. And I'm not saying that somehow you and I are like w we don't have that power. We we do not have that power. But you and I are both like for the year before that is about to happen, we're s we're ringing the alarm bell. We're like
This is bad and you need to think about this. And constantly you and I are just like, Well, that was another meeting where they totally didn't care or they totally shut this down. And then there comes that point, it's like, It's time for us to go, man. And the first time you were like, I don't know, and I was
Keith (1:00:41)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (1:00:43)
like, Nope, it's time for us to go. And you were like, Yep, it's time for us to go. Stock. Like into the
Keith (1:00:50)
Nothing's changing. Yeah.
Cameron Craig (1:00:52)
ground, dude.
Keith (1:00:55)
It's it's crazy. I mean
Cameron Craig (1:00:57)
I'm on I'm
on I'm on time number three, man. I I see it coming. I see it coming again.
Keith (1:01:06)
No comment. Alright,
Cameron Craig (1:01:07)
We'll leave it there. We'll leave it there.
Keith (1:01:10)
brother. I'll catch you next week. This has been great as always. Alright, later,
Cameron Craig (1:01:12)
All right, man. Thanks, Keith. See ya.
Keith (1:01:14)
Cameron.