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George, thank you so much for that
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terrific introduction. Thank you for the
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plug for my 0ero to1 book. Uh um
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certainly any additional royalty checks
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are very much appreciated. Uh and so
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thank you for that plug. I am uh you
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know in my brief uh comments here I'm
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going to offer uh three contrarian ideas
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for the future where you know where
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things are going with uh technology and
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computers. And I thought I would try to
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double um these three ideas up as a as a
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sort of book review of uh Gilders's
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terrific uh book uh um Life After
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Google. And so I'm going to give you
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three contrarian ideas, but I'm going to
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weave in a little bit of a book review
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of uh um of the of uh Life After Google
00:00:39
as well. Um you know, one of the things
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that's always difficult about talking
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about the future is that uh you know, we
00:00:46
don't don't really know what's going to
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happen for sure. It's not that
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deterministic. Um I think it's even hard
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to talk to know what happened in the
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past. So let let's start by talking
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about the history of the computer age
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and the the history of the future. The
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way people talked about the future in
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the past and the way they thought where
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was the computer age going to go and if
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we were if we' been assembled in
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1969 the future of computers was going
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to be massive centralization. It was
00:01:17
giant databases, uh, giant, uh, AI like
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computer intelligences that would run
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everything. Uh, it was like IBM was, um,
00:01:26
hal transposed in the space odyssey, uh,
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movie. Um, one letter off from IBM. Uh,
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it was one of the early Star Trek
00:01:34
episodes. They they come to the planet
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beta which uh thousands of years earlier
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had been um somebody had unified the
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planet and left a computer program that
00:01:43
ran the whole planet and all the people
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were sort of uh peaceful but very
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docsil. Nothing ever happened um and um
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and as usual they sort of follow the
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prime directive and um convince the
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computer to self-destruct. They don't
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follow the prime directive and and then
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sort of leave everything in disarray.
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But uh but the future of the computer
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age circa 1969 was centralization, a few
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large companies, a few large
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governments, uh a few large computers
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that controlled everything. Fast forward
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to 1999,
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um the future of the computer age was
00:02:16
going to be massive decentralization. It
00:02:18
was sort of libertarian anarchist. uh it
00:02:22
was uh sort of the correlary to the end
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of the Soviet Union was that information
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had this decentralizing
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um tendency and um and uh and that you
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know the internet was going to fragment
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things um and it was going to be uh this
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sort of anarctic libertarian place and
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if if uh and then um and then if we uh
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fast forward to 2019 the consensus view
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of the future today I would submit is
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that the pendulum has somehow swung back
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all the way to 1969. And the consensus
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view is again that uh it is about um you
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know large centralization
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um Google Google like governments that
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uh that sort of control you know all the
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world's information in this uh super
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centralized uh kind of way and uh and I
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think the you know the the life after
00:03:12
Google thesis that uh that I agree with
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and endorse is that uh if we look at
00:03:17
this past and people got it terribly
00:03:20
wrong in ' 69 and things were going to
00:03:22
go to decentralization 99. It it it
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actually started going back the other
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way. from the point of view of 2019,
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even if we uh even if I'm hesitant to
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talk about the absolute future and you
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know where this all ends ultimately um
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perhaps the contrarian thing is to say
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maybe the pendulum can swing back and
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that things can swing back towards more
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decentralization
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um more privacy uh u and and things
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things like that and uh and this is sort
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of uh this is sort of what what seems to
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be at least contrarian and uh at least
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uh something that we should we should uh
00:03:59
always take more more seriously if you
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um if you want to frame it in terms of
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the buzzwords of the day in terms of
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crypto and AI um it is um it is easily
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understood by people it's always
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understood that crypto is somehow
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vaguely libertarian but um we never are
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willing to say the opposite which is
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that AI if you know if crypto is
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libertarian then AI is communist and um
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and you know it's it's because it's
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centralized it's the computer knows more
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about you than you know about yourself.
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It is uh it is totalitarian. Communist
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China loves AI and dislikes crypto. Um
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and um and um and uh and that uh and
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that we at least have uh that we should
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at least uh consider the possibility
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that uh you know Silicon Valley is
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probably way too enamored of AI not just
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for technological reasons but also
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because it expresses this uh this sort
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of left-wing centralized zeitgeist and
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and and then and so I think the uh the
00:05:02
first sort of contrarian idea I have is
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that you know perhaps it's time for the
00:05:06
pendulum to swing back and life after
00:05:09
Google um you know at its core means
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that we are going to go back from this
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very centralized uh uh world today
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towards a a more decentralized one and
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that seems to me to be be the correct
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thing to bet on. Now the you know the
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second um contrarian idea that uh is of
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course um we can sort of talk about how
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fast these things are happening and how
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much is happening in technology
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generally and you know it's it's one of
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these things where we we live in a world
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of incredible scientific and technical
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precision we can measure Avagadro's
00:05:42
number or the fine structure constant
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physics or other things like this to to
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many many significant figures but when
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we talk about um the nature of the
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progress of science and techn technology
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um and how fast science or technology
00:05:57
are progressing. Uh we do this in the
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most qualitative way with um you know
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with incredibly little precision and um
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you know are we are we accelerating in
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scientific and technical fields? Are we
00:06:10
um are we progressing but at a slower
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pace? How fast is this? And uh and with
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respect to that question, we tend to
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only get um these sort of um fairly
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vague answers. And I would say but I
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would submit that the sort of consensus
00:06:26
in um in sort of a both a Silicon Valley
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and a sort of academic context is that
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we are doing great and everything is
00:06:35
just moving super fast. It's sort of uh
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all these forms of accelerationism and
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we can debate whether it's utopian Allah
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Curtzswhil the singularity is near. All
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you need to do is sit back and eat some
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popcorn and watch the movie of the
00:06:49
future unfold. Um, or perhaps it is
00:06:52
dystopian. Allah all the science fiction
00:06:54
movies from Hollywood and the robots are
00:06:56
going to kill you or you're going to be
00:06:58
in this matrix and we're sort of
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accelerating. We're sort of accelerating
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to utopia or accelerating to dystopia.
00:07:05
And the, you know, the somewhat
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contrarian thesis I have on this is
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always that uh perhaps the progress is
00:07:11
not as fast as advertised and that we've
00:07:14
been in this world where things have
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been slower and they've been slower for
00:07:18
quite some time. Um you know one one cut
00:07:20
on this is always to differentiate the
00:07:22
world of atoms and bits and that uh
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since the 1970s we've had a narrow cone
00:07:27
of progress around atoms that they've
00:07:29
been so around bits the you know
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computers internet mobile internet
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software these have been advancing
00:07:34
fairly quickly uh the world of atoms
00:07:36
somewhat more slowly you know when I was
00:07:38
an undergraduate at uh at at Stanford um
00:07:41
I I would in the late 80s uh I would say
00:07:43
that almost every engineering field in
00:07:45
retrospect was a bad field to go into it
00:07:47
was already obvious you shouldn't go
00:07:48
into nuclear engineering, aereroastro
00:07:51
engineering weren't that good. But even
00:07:52
all these other fields were were not
00:07:55
going to do that well in the decades
00:07:56
ahead because we were know electrical
00:07:58
engineering was still okay. Uh computer
00:08:00
science was the really good field to go
00:08:02
into in in the late 80s. All the other
00:08:04
engineering fields it was just regulated
00:08:06
to death. there wasn't that much you
00:08:07
could do in the world of atoms and uh it
00:08:10
turned out that we had you know a lot of
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a lot of slowed process and I I think
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that if we sort of analyze this question
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of the uh the rate of scientific
00:08:18
progress politically and think of it as
00:08:21
um as sort of um university professors
00:08:25
or entrepreneurs or venture capitalists
00:08:27
um um exaggerating about how much good
00:08:30
they're doing and how great they are. We
00:08:32
understand that the incentives are
00:08:33
always to exaggerate and to uh to you
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know say that you know we're we're just
00:08:37
around the corner from curing cancer.
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We're around the corner in you know all
00:08:41
these different things and yet uh it's
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been uh it's been in some significant
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way slower over the last uh last 40 or
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50 years. Uh certainly uh one of the one
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of the concerns I would have is that um
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um that perhaps um the danger is that if
00:08:57
anything that things are slowing down
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even more at this point and that um the
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sort of world of very fast progress in
00:09:03
bits is actually starting to slow down.
00:09:06
Um and if we look at um at the rate of
00:09:09
progress in uh in Silicon Valley um you
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know it was sort of charismatic in this
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because it was the one place where
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things were still happening relative to
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the rest of the US and uh and it's
00:09:20
become a lot less charismatic in the
00:09:22
last 5 years. You sort of think about
00:09:24
the the vibe in 2014 even as recently as
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2014 it was sort of um this was the
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place where the future was being built
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in 2019. um you know the big tech
00:09:34
companies are probably as self-hating in
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some ways as uh as the big banks were in
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2009 and um and uh there's sort of a
00:09:43
sense that it's uh it's not quite
00:09:45
working and so if you sort of begin to
00:09:46
pick on Google a little bit here the you
00:09:48
know the Google propaganda of the future
00:09:50
was of course was all going to be bits
00:09:52
it was all going to be sort of more
00:09:53
automation you know the story in 2014
00:09:55
were things like Google glasses so you
00:09:57
could um identify anybody you looked at
00:09:59
at any time was the self-driving car we
00:10:01
say these aren't like that big a set of
00:10:03
innovations. Probably a self-driving car
00:10:04
is a step from a car, but not as big as
00:10:06
a car was from a horse. And so you can
00:10:08
sort of debate quite how big these
00:10:09
things are and how how to quantify them
00:10:11
again. But u but that was still the
00:10:13
narrative that was very intact in 2014.
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And uh when you fast forward to 2019,
00:10:17
it's striking how there's absolutely no
00:10:19
narrative of the future left. Google
00:10:21
doesn't even talk about the self-driving
00:10:23
car very much. There's a sense that it
00:10:25
may still happen, but it's further in
00:10:26
the future. The t the expected time
00:10:28
seems to be getting further away uh
00:10:30
every passing year. it's the expected
00:10:32
time is getting even further into the
00:10:33
future and um and so there's sort of the
00:10:36
sense that uh perhaps there's this
00:10:38
danger that we have um slowed progress
00:10:41
um um even in tech even in the world of
00:10:44
information technology. Uh one of the
00:10:47
you know one of parathetically one of
00:10:48
the ways this stagnation thesis sort of
00:10:50
was embedded in the language is the word
00:10:53
technology of course had a very
00:10:55
different meaning in the in the 1960s
00:10:56
technology meant not just computers but
00:10:59
also rockets and supersonic aviation and
00:11:01
underwater cities and the green
00:11:02
revolution agriculture and biotechnology
00:11:04
and new medicines and all these things
00:11:06
because all these things we're
00:11:08
progressing on many fronts and today uh
00:11:10
if you use the word technology it is
00:11:12
often synonymous with um with
00:11:14
information technology technology and
00:11:16
and probably just the uh software
00:11:18
internet part of that because that's the
00:11:20
only part that has been moving um that
00:11:23
has been progressing in recent decades.
00:11:24
And the the danger is that even that has
00:11:27
slowed down um um a lot that somehow
00:11:30
Silicon Valley has consolidated into
00:11:31
some larger companies. It's it's gotten
00:11:34
harder for new companies to break
00:11:35
through and it's gotten harder because
00:11:36
new companies are small companies are
00:11:38
good at doing new things and people are
00:11:39
doing fewer new things than um than the
00:11:42
big companies are are more dominant. So
00:11:44
um so I think the second uh you know uh
00:11:48
uh cut on the life after Google book in
00:11:51
in these terms is um is always what I
00:11:53
think is the sort of um you know
00:11:55
Gilder's always super optimistic but
00:11:57
there is like a a small undercurrent of
00:12:00
pessimism to the book and the
00:12:02
undercurrent is you know the spectre
00:12:04
that haunts life after Google is that
00:12:06
maybe this current regime is going to go
00:12:08
on for a really long time and you know
00:12:10
you know we're you know there was life
00:12:12
after television But uh but life after
00:12:14
Google may take uh you know it will
00:12:16
happen eventually but it may take uh a
00:12:18
little bit longer and that we're that
00:12:20
there is a danger that we're in this
00:12:22
somewhat slowed somewhat stagnant world.
00:12:23
So uh so that's sort of a second um idea
00:12:27
that we I think we need to always um
00:12:29
grapple with a lot that maybe we're in
00:12:31
this in this world of a tech stagnation.
00:12:34
Third um contrarian idea I will give you
00:12:36
is sort of a qualifi qualification on my
00:12:40
first two ideas um because I think you
00:12:42
know the first one was it's it's about
00:12:44
um pendulum's going to swing back to uh
00:12:46
to decentralization. Second one is yet
00:12:49
yes it's swing back but it's just going
00:12:50
to be slow because everything is slowed
00:12:52
and we're in this in this world of
00:12:54
stagnation. But um the qualifier to both
00:12:57
the um back to decentralization and the
00:13:01
stagnation idea is that um you know at
00:13:03
the end of the day technology is about
00:13:06
people. It's not about um you know
00:13:09
inanimate forces. It's not some kind of
00:13:12
Marxist historicism about you know the
00:13:14
way things are inevitably going to
00:13:16
happen. And so the stress is always on
00:13:19
um on individuals, small teams that
00:13:22
start companies that start new projects
00:13:23
that that do new things. And um and um
00:13:28
it's a question of human agency. It's
00:13:30
not deterministic. We have every
00:13:32
possibility to do these things, but at
00:13:34
the end of the day, it is up to us to
00:13:36
make it happen. And it's uh it's not set
00:13:39
in stone that it's going to happen one
00:13:40
way or another. And so uh you know in
00:13:43
conclusion I think you know sort of one
00:13:44
other one other gloss on life after
00:13:47
Google is that perhaps you should think
00:13:48
of the title uh as you know with life
00:13:52
being italicized or stressed or put in
00:13:55
bold and that uh you know the critical
00:13:58
thing is you know there is life goes on
00:14:01
and uh in particular human life uh
00:14:03
humanity goes on and uh and that uh that
00:14:06
even though the dominant narrative is
00:14:09
that tech is about inanimate forces or
00:14:11
Marxist historicism. Um it really is at
00:14:14
its core about human beings and we
00:14:17
should uh we should always um we you
00:14:20
know if we have to bet on it we should
00:14:21
always bet on the indomitability of the
00:14:24
human spirit.
