Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, of
Speaker 1: the podcast that looks the future and says it's gonna
Speaker 1: be the future soon. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren, and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And today we thought we would participate
Speaker 1: in a quintessential forward Thinking exercise, which is analysis of
Speaker 1: the prediction of the future. Yeah, we've done a couple
Speaker 1: of episodes where we've talked about projections that current futurists
Speaker 1: have about the future. We've even talked about really lousy
Speaker 1: predictions that happened in the past. Lauren and I did
Speaker 1: an episode when you were out once, Joe and I
Speaker 1: remember when you came back you were sad to find
Speaker 1: out that you didn't get to participate, where we talked
Speaker 1: about really off the mark predictions from the past where
Speaker 1: people were just thinking all sorts of crazy things we're
Speaker 1: gonna happen by now. So we wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: some of our favorites, whether they were completely off track
Speaker 1: way back when, or if it's a current prediction about
Speaker 1: what the future will be and what our thoughts are
Speaker 1: and so what kind of all gout some notes about
Speaker 1: the sore of stuff that we want to talk about.
Speaker 1: My first one is actually about a series of drawings
Speaker 1: postcards really from France, from one in nineteen ten. You know,
Speaker 1: I'd seen these things before, and these are great, beautiful
Speaker 1: they're like full color beauties that are I don't know
Speaker 1: that they're not actually as cartoonish as one might imagine.
Speaker 1: Some of them have some interesting detail in them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different, um well, different aspects of
Speaker 1: what they thought the future would be like. Uh, and
Speaker 1: it's all sort of fantastical. Some of them actually are
Speaker 1: are pretty prescient. Uh. They were essentially thinking about what
Speaker 1: is the world going to be like in the year
Speaker 1: two thousand. Yeah, So one of them, I know, it's
Speaker 1: got like a barber shop where people are getting some
Speaker 1: gentlemen are leaning back in very cushy looking chairs getting
Speaker 1: their necks shaved by robots with razors going all over
Speaker 1: the place, crazy robot arms off of off of big
Speaker 1: they look like kind of like pneumatic polls that come
Speaker 1: up in in intervals out of the floor. Yeah, essentially
Speaker 1: like kind of like a column but with some sort
Speaker 1: of pneumatic element to it. So that the arms that
Speaker 1: are bolted onto the pneumatic part could be raised or lowered.
Speaker 1: When I watched those darker robotics challenge fails. The main
Speaker 1: thing I think is I want one of these things
Speaker 1: shaving me with a straight razor. Well, and and let's
Speaker 1: let's also point out that in this particular illustration, there
Speaker 1: is a gentleman uh well quoft which would not normally
Speaker 1: happen if you happen to be the barber. If you
Speaker 1: always know the barber in the town, he's the one
Speaker 1: with the worst hair do. Oh I guess, yeah, but
Speaker 1: he this guy has a great hair do because it's
Speaker 1: all done with these robot arms, although he is currently
Speaker 1: operating a system, well at least a giant lever, so
Speaker 1: perhaps there is at least some human power in this
Speaker 1: in this system, even if it's just to turn it
Speaker 1: on or off. I think what I like less than
Speaker 1: the idea of robot arms shaving me um is uh
Speaker 1: robot arms controlled by a person who's not looking at me.
Speaker 1: That's true, that is, to the customers. I think these
Speaker 1: are not autonomous shaving robots. These these are in fact
Speaker 1: just like multiple extensions. You know you've got those machines
Speaker 1: where you press one button and it does like five
Speaker 1: things at once. I think that's what's going on here.
Speaker 1: The barber is operating a machine and the machine translates
Speaker 1: all his actions into actions on five different customers at
Speaker 1: the same time. Yeah, it's more. It's a more sophisticated
Speaker 1: version of that old This might actually be too old
Speaker 1: for you guys. But for for chalkboards, there there were
Speaker 1: occasionally these things. It was like just a little board
Speaker 1: with little wire holders that you talking about multiple pieces
Speaker 1: of chalking. Yeah, it was the way of cheating. If
Speaker 1: the teacher told you to stay after school, right, I
Speaker 1: will not spit in my neighbor's milk, you know times right.
Speaker 1: So so it's it's like that where it's really the
Speaker 1: idea is to to make it easier for one person
Speaker 1: to do the work of like five all at the
Speaker 1: same time. Another image has an arrow cab station. I
Speaker 1: love this this picture. This is actually something that's kind
Speaker 1: of interesting because, uh, right now, as we record this,
Speaker 1: there's talk of Uber looking into creating vt O L
Speaker 1: vehicles for taxi cabs. We talked about this. I think
Speaker 1: that's a publicity stunt. No, I don't think it's a
Speaker 1: publicity stunt. I think it's I think it's a company
Speaker 1: that is used to making grandiose proclamations and then not
Speaker 1: quite realizing what the consequences are ahead of time. I
Speaker 1: don't think that. I don't think it's so much a
Speaker 1: publicity stunt as an is them rushing into an area
Speaker 1: that's not quite mature. Well, I mean, like when Uber says, oh,
Speaker 1: we want to have driver less supercars, I can see
Speaker 1: that being a feasible thing not too far in the future.
Speaker 1: When they say we want to v t o L.
Speaker 1: Uh flying taxi cap you're flying ubers? Yeah? Yeah, whatever? Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well the picture, the picture from these postcards shows uh
Speaker 1: tiny caps that have wings that apparently can extend or
Speaker 1: or can tilt upward so they can doc with a
Speaker 1: landing station, and then they have propellers on the front
Speaker 1: that allow them to fly. Obviously that would not be
Speaker 1: the case with the the Uber approach. They're looking at
Speaker 1: vto L and we talked about this when we said
Speaker 1: what would it take to have flying cars, and I
Speaker 1: think we all agreed vo v t o L would
Speaker 1: be absolutely necessary just from a space issue, and that
Speaker 1: autonomous operation would be necessary. Because we don't think any
Speaker 1: human being should ever operate a flying cars unless they
Speaker 1: are like a very accomplished by islet, especially if you're
Speaker 1: talking about within a dense urban setting, right. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: it's out in the open and there's there's plenty of space,
Speaker 1: maybe you could have like some exhibitions or whatever. But
Speaker 1: if you're talking about mundane day to day operations, we
Speaker 1: want autonomy in that. Yeah. I I never want the
Speaker 1: day when, uh, when a car crash results in like
Speaker 1: in like fiery parts raining from the sky. That's a
Speaker 1: that's not good news. Uh. I just want those people
Speaker 1: operating a multi ton lethal weapon they can drive around
Speaker 1: on the ground at seventy miles. I've been saying this
Speaker 1: whole time that I can't wait for driverless cars. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm just I want to make that clear. Uh. No,
Speaker 1: I want to point something out because I've looked at
Speaker 1: a bunch of these postcards, these French postcards you're referring to,
Speaker 1: and a whole lot of them involve flight. Many of
Speaker 1: them do, I would say from my memory, just more
Speaker 1: than half of them involved flying humans of one type
Speaker 1: or another. Well, and that's the thing, it's always humans,
Speaker 1: Like the concept of flying robotics I don't think had
Speaker 1: occurred to to anyone doing this postcard series, particularly like
Speaker 1: like one of the other images that you that you
Speaker 1: added to our show notes here has a fireman with
Speaker 1: these like kind of bat looking wings that are that
Speaker 1: are putting out of fire. It's essentially like they're all
Speaker 1: wearing jet packs, except instead of jets, they are flapping wings. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah uh. And and there are several in the series
Speaker 1: that are similar to that. I only included the fireman
Speaker 1: one because it was such a beautiful picture of these
Speaker 1: people who are are are flying through the air using
Speaker 1: water hoses to fight fires and to their you know,
Speaker 1: flying up to rescue a baby. And can I point
Speaker 1: out that in this picture if I'm understanding what the
Speaker 1: artists meant correctly, so the firefighters have these bat type wings,
Speaker 1: and I believe the wings are secured to their ankles
Speaker 1: via some kind of connecting strap. So it looks like
Speaker 1: what the artist had in mind is that the firefly
Speaker 1: or is held aloft in the air by flapping wings
Speaker 1: that are powered by the firefighter's own leg movements. They
Speaker 1: could also be pneumatic. It's hard to say that particular
Speaker 1: image it's very difficult to say, but you see, I
Speaker 1: haven't noticed that before. But yeah, that's that's very well.
Speaker 1: If you if you look at some of the other
Speaker 1: ones from the series, there's another one where there's a
Speaker 1: police officer who's pulling over an aviator who has clearly
Speaker 1: done something naughty, and so the police officers wearing wings
Speaker 1: that are that extend out from his back, but has
Speaker 1: a tail as well, presumably to provide stability. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're not crazy and uh that, but the tail is
Speaker 1: attached to his ankles, So he's got he's got these
Speaker 1: tethers that essentially go from the tail to his ankles,
Speaker 1: and he's in an upright position with respect to the
Speaker 1: airplane that he's trying to pull over. Not entirely certain
Speaker 1: how he's maintaining altitude well in a vertical position with winks,
Speaker 1: you would think that would pretty much cause you to plummet.
Speaker 1: But in the future, physics will no longer apply. Uh well,
Speaker 1: I and I did. I did want to mention that
Speaker 1: you know, we're we are this year we've been fighting
Speaker 1: fires with drones. Yeah, no, yeah, we're starting to see
Speaker 1: and we've also seen issues with drones getting in the
Speaker 1: way of firefighters. But it's nice to see them being
Speaker 1: used in the in scoping out the the um like
Speaker 1: how big a fire is, like how far does it stretch?
Speaker 1: And also to get a good look at places that
Speaker 1: would obviously be dangerous to send a person into without
Speaker 1: first checking out what's going on. But we don't attach
Speaker 1: a drone to a person and send a person in
Speaker 1: because that's crazy, because that's obviously terrible. Yeah, that would
Speaker 1: be not so good. Also, there's another element in some
Speaker 1: of these and you know, I didn't include all of them.
Speaker 1: I included you know a few, but if you go
Speaker 1: to there's a website the public Domain review dot org
Speaker 1: who has the entire collection as since Lee of all
Speaker 1: the ones that have survived, then they're gorgeous. There's a
Speaker 1: collection of them. Also where another big theme was underwater activities. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there were there people riding on seahorse, giant seahorse. In
Speaker 1: the future there will be giant sea horse. There's giant
Speaker 1: sea horses. There's one where they're there, uh, doing the
Speaker 1: equivalent of a horse race, except they're all riding very
Speaker 1: long eel like fish. Uh. There's another one where they
Speaker 1: are fishing for seagulls. So they're throwing hooked lines up
Speaker 1: through the surface of the water. Seagulls grabbed them, and
Speaker 1: then they dragged the seagulls underwater, presumably to their deaths. Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't know why you would want to do it,
Speaker 1: drowning birds for fun. I guess that's no more horrifying
Speaker 1: than pulling fish, which breathe underwater out into our atmosphere.
Speaker 1: Maybe I think it's a little more. And I like
Speaker 1: fish better than I like birds, so I'm sort of
Speaker 1: okay with it. All right, Well, Lauren the seagull murderer, Sorry,
Speaker 1: I'll know that. Speaking of disturbing uses of birds, there's
Speaker 1: another one of these images that is just titled intensive breeding,
Speaker 1: and it is a picture of a woman who I
Speaker 1: think is working on an egg farm with a basket
Speaker 1: full of eggs and she's attending this big refrigerator sized
Speaker 1: machine that has lots of little yellow chicks coming out
Speaker 1: of it on a slide. Yeah. Yeah, you put the
Speaker 1: eggs in the top and chicks come out. They get
Speaker 1: to write a slide. What's what's so sinister about that?
Speaker 1: I don't know what is this machine supposed to be doing.
Speaker 1: I think it just hatches eggs faster than a than
Speaker 1: a chicken could. Apparently I don't buy magic and technology.
Speaker 1: There's one that I think is actually kind of kind
Speaker 1: of interesting. There's the electric scrubbing one, where it's a
Speaker 1: showing a machine that is used to brush and scrub
Speaker 1: the floor. This again is being operated by somebody a
Speaker 1: maid at this point off to the side, so it's
Speaker 1: not fully autonomous. Who in the year two thousand is
Speaker 1: still wearing something that looks strikingly like like Edwardian made attire.
Speaker 1: That's something that we wanted to mention too, is that, Joe,
Speaker 1: You brought this up earlier today when I was telling
Speaker 1: you this was going to be something I was going
Speaker 1: to talk about. So while the technology uh seems to
Speaker 1: be kind of an advanced version of what they had
Speaker 1: available to themselves in these visions, when it comes to
Speaker 1: things like costume and uh and and hairstyles, everything remains
Speaker 1: exactly of that era. They can imagine the technology changing,
Speaker 1: but they can't imagine the culture changing exactly. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: don't see any representation of other ethnicities either, Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: and and in and in these cases, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's certainly not as though other other work from about
Speaker 1: the same time period didn't portray like like futuristic in
Speaker 1: big honking quote marks um quote marks, Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: like them, um uh a future futuristic fashioned um in
Speaker 1: another another science fiction and science presumptuous materials um but
Speaker 1: but yeah in this particular case, it's it's part of
Speaker 1: its charm. But but yeah, so so this so this
Speaker 1: cleaning device is essentially a very large, manually operated room
Speaker 1: by yeah, yeah exactly, and and it's kind of this
Speaker 1: also kind of plays into something else I want to
Speaker 1: talk about, just in general when it comes to make
Speaker 1: predicting the future. Two things. One was that that idea
Speaker 1: that we find it very difficult to imagine how people
Speaker 1: change along with technology. Right We we sit there and
Speaker 1: we look at the technology, say well, here's what the
Speaker 1: technology is going to be like in another fifty years,
Speaker 1: but it's hard for us to imagine what people will
Speaker 1: be like at that time. Can I offer a possible
Speaker 1: reason for that? Sure? I would think that that might
Speaker 1: have something to do with the fact that technology changes
Speaker 1: along a predictable path, in that you don't know exactly
Speaker 1: what solutions technology will will represent, what it will come
Speaker 1: up with, but you sort of know what problems it
Speaker 1: will be trying to solve, unless you're imagining a very
Speaker 1: far future where there are new problems that haven't even
Speaker 1: emerged yet. But all these problems are things that people
Speaker 1: understood at the time and were things that people actually
Speaker 1: wanted done. They wanted robots to make work easier, they
Speaker 1: wanted the power of flight, they wanted faster transportation, they
Speaker 1: wanted automation. All these things are real obvious concerns when
Speaker 1: you're trying to predict the future of culture, like what
Speaker 1: how clothes will look different? You don't have that same
Speaker 1: prompt you You can't say, like, I know what problems
Speaker 1: future fashion you know fashion designers will be trying to solve.
Speaker 1: It's just not something you can predict. It's not a
Speaker 1: linear change pattern. You could probably predict that whatever the
Speaker 1: fashion is of that particular era, it would be some
Speaker 1: sort of take on the fashion from twenty years previous. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's usually a pretty good rule. And furthermore, it's really
Speaker 1: difficult to predict how technologies like that could change us,
Speaker 1: like like what like how those technologies would be changing
Speaker 1: the culture that would lead to those kind of differences
Speaker 1: in appearance and uh, and day to day life all
Speaker 1: of that sort of thing, like like you can sit
Speaker 1: there and imagine that they like, yes, there's going to
Speaker 1: be this this cleaning robot, but you're still hiring a
Speaker 1: maid to operate it, right, Yeah, And I'm not I
Speaker 1: don't really want to call out the artists of that
Speaker 1: time period for being particularly silly or whatever. This is
Speaker 1: true for every era, right yeah, yeah, like it just
Speaker 1: beautiful examples example. Yeah, and I would I would also
Speaker 1: say these things are probably made with some sense of
Speaker 1: humor about them. Sure, I'm just saying I can't imagine, say,
Speaker 1: being in the nineteen eighties and being able to anticipate
Speaker 1: like the man Bun. It just wouldn't have occurred to me.
Speaker 1: Never would have never would have thought that that would
Speaker 1: become a thing. This isn't even me judging. I'm just
Speaker 1: saying that in the eighties I never would have huh
Speaker 1: that that would have been a big deal. Like it
Speaker 1: would have been one of those deals where someone had
Speaker 1: shown me a picture and I'm like, well, what, why
Speaker 1: is what's the he where did you get this? What
Speaker 1: if in the nineteen eighties somebody told you people will
Speaker 1: be making multimillion dollar live action transformers movies. I mean
Speaker 1: I would have at the time thought that that would
Speaker 1: have been brilliant, because it would have been before Michael
Speaker 1: Bay got a chance to do that. Wait, how would
Speaker 1: you even imagine that the nineteen eighties live action transformers
Speaker 1: that didn't even make sense. I be able to imagine
Speaker 1: it in the nineteen eighties. I was a kid. I
Speaker 1: could imagine that I was a giraffe. Okay, come on,
Speaker 1: I mean as an adult it's a lot harder, but
Speaker 1: as a kid limitless. So also I wanted to mention
Speaker 1: that that the other issue, because I said there were two.
Speaker 1: The other issue with predicting the future, especially when it
Speaker 1: comes to technology, is that we typically look at what
Speaker 1: is available today, we look at the things that we
Speaker 1: are currently trying to develop right now, and then we
Speaker 1: just sort of project based upon that. Right we sit
Speaker 1: there and say, okay, let's extend outward from where we
Speaker 1: are now and where we look like we're headed. But
Speaker 1: that means we we can't and by definition, we cannot
Speaker 1: anticipate any innovations that come out of left field that
Speaker 1: changed the game entirely, which means that by the time
Speaker 1: we get to that future and maybe that certain things
Speaker 1: we thought were promising turned out to be dead ends,
Speaker 1: other things we hadn't even considered might be the norm.
Speaker 1: A great example of this would be back in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties when everyone was building electronics with vacuum tubes.
Speaker 1: No one at the point that point in the early
Speaker 1: fifties was really anticipating the that transistors were going to
Speaker 1: one become small enough to really become an important electronic
Speaker 1: component and to replace vacuum tubes. And that's why you
Speaker 1: get these predictions about giant computers in the future, right
Speaker 1: because back then, if you were using vacuum tubes, they
Speaker 1: take up a lot more space than transistors do, and
Speaker 1: it would mean that if you want a really powerful computer,
Speaker 1: you'd have to have a lot more vacuum tube. So
Speaker 1: it's the reason that a very very powerful computer would
Speaker 1: be enormous the size of a building are bigger. So
Speaker 1: because of that, we find it amusing to see some
Speaker 1: of these predictions. But we have to keep in mind
Speaker 1: that we're doing the same thing, right, We're making predictions
Speaker 1: based upon where we are right now. Uh And by again,
Speaker 1: by definition, we cannot anticipate something that comes out of
Speaker 1: seemingly nowhere. Uh. So I don't want to heap too
Speaker 1: much uh jovial uh disdain or anything like that towards
Speaker 1: people who have made these predictions. I prefer we heap
Speaker 1: saturnine disdain other than all the time. Yes, of course. Well,
Speaker 1: the other one I wanted to talk about, which is
Speaker 1: a little less less whimsical, I would say, is the
Speaker 1: driverless car predictions, because I mentioned us a few minutes ago.
Speaker 1: I love the idea of a society that has driverless cars,
Speaker 1: especially if driverless cars are the primary vehicles on the road. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I try not to be overly sanguine about naive, optimistic
Speaker 1: future predictions, but I feel like this is one I've
Speaker 1: always been pretty optimistic about and remain pretty optimistic about,
Speaker 1: even though even though we've now seen some tragic accidents
Speaker 1: with driverless cars. I think, I don't know, I I'm
Speaker 1: I'm pretty bullish on this one. Yeah, I think I
Speaker 1: think it's completely possible, just there are so many kinks
Speaker 1: to work out before it's practical. I think the kinks
Speaker 1: are mainly on the political side and social side as well,
Speaker 1: and not so much on the technological side there. So yeah, yeah, exactly. No,
Speaker 1: I mean because because mostly like like we we technically
Speaker 1: have the technology to to have all of these devices
Speaker 1: talking to each other. We just need a the rules
Speaker 1: and regulations in place that will make companies make their
Speaker 1: products talk to each other and and beh uh build it. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: well we also need to get people on board literally
Speaker 1: and figuratively with the idea of driverless cars. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean you've got you've got an expectations problem in that people. Essentially,
Speaker 1: it's like, you're not gonna hold driverless cars to the
Speaker 1: same standard that you would hold cars with human drivers
Speaker 1: who can take personal responsibility to drive. Human drivers are
Speaker 1: already so bad at driving driverless cars. I don't think
Speaker 1: you're gonna have a problem of being worse than human drivers.
Speaker 1: But the problem is it's not okay for them to
Speaker 1: just be better than human drivers. They essentially need to
Speaker 1: be perfect well, and when it comes to driverless cars.
Speaker 1: So I would say that that the truly, the truly
Speaker 1: autonomous cars that are out there, not not like Tesla's autopilot,
Speaker 1: but the truly autonomous cars out there have demonstrated that
Speaker 1: they based upon the number of my as they've driven
Speaker 1: without any uh major accidents, that they are by far
Speaker 1: better than human drivers if you look at them, you know,
Speaker 1: for a million miles and how many accidents are are represented. Um,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cut and dry that they're superior. Uh. When
Speaker 1: you get to autopilot, then that's not supposed to be
Speaker 1: an autonomous system that's not intended to be. People treated
Speaker 1: as if it is, and that's a that's a problem.
Speaker 1: We're talking about public opinion. It's all about perceptions, right,
Speaker 1: and and also there's this public opinion. So so the
Speaker 1: Verge ran a piece recently in which they referenced a
Speaker 1: poll where people were asked US drivers were asked about
Speaker 1: their opinions on self driving cars. One of the questions
Speaker 1: they were asked was that, um, they were given choices
Speaker 1: between different levels of autonomy. So a level five autonomous
Speaker 1: car would be one that's fully autonomous and has no
Speaker 1: no control system for a human. Level four would will
Speaker 1: have control systems that humans could use. And everyone's like,
Speaker 1: I don't want level five. Not everyone like I don't
Speaker 1: want level five, I want level four. Like I absolutely
Speaker 1: want to be able to rest control from the system
Speaker 1: if I need to. I think they're they're anticipating a
Speaker 1: scenario where they really want to be able to run
Speaker 1: somebody over with their car on maybe maybe, But the
Speaker 1: immediately I realized that that's a terrible problem for people
Speaker 1: to say, I want to still be able to take
Speaker 1: over a control of this car. I get it that
Speaker 1: if you find driving enjoyable and you still want to
Speaker 1: have that experience occasionally, I get it. But if you're
Speaker 1: talking about taking over control of the car after it's
Speaker 1: under autonomous control, what you're really talking about when you
Speaker 1: boil it down is two drivers struggling for control of
Speaker 1: the same vehicle at the same time. Even if you
Speaker 1: have an autonomous vehicle that can very quickly figure out
Speaker 1: that a human is trying to take over and switch
Speaker 1: over to manual control, it's it's still kind of like
Speaker 1: if I were to reach over while Lauren's driving and
Speaker 1: just grab the steering wheel and give it a nice
Speaker 1: sharp tug to the right, that's not good. That's bad.
Speaker 1: For some reason I had stopped paying attention. Was driving
Speaker 1: us off a cliff. That would be good. And I
Speaker 1: think that's the kind of scenario that people people are
Speaker 1: thinking about. Yeah, I guess they're imagining like that. They're
Speaker 1: thinking this car is going to have problems or at
Speaker 1: least early generations are and I'm going to need to
Speaker 1: find it. I'm going to need to have manual override
Speaker 1: to get around those problems, Like there's going to be
Speaker 1: a life or death situation that it's going to come
Speaker 1: up that that I am going to need to be
Speaker 1: able to stop the car in case. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: what they're imagining, and I think it's um my opinion
Speaker 1: is that they are are largely wrong, or maybe they're mistaken,
Speaker 1: and they think that the total control means that the
Speaker 1: car is also going to tell them what they have
Speaker 1: to listen to on the radio. Yeah, well, I mean
Speaker 1: they would have issues with that too, especially that radio
Speaker 1: or like or like tell them which like coffee shop
Speaker 1: to go to, and right, we I should also point
Speaker 1: out that I won't take you there. Apparently, this pole
Speaker 1: also had people saying the responded saying that they don't
Speaker 1: want the car that they owned to be autonomous, and
Speaker 1: I think that presupposes the idea that they would own
Speaker 1: a car. Um As we've talked about a lot of
Speaker 1: the models that would have autonomous cars on the road
Speaker 1: suggest that these would not be personal vehicles. You would
Speaker 1: not own an autonomous car. It wouldn't make sense. It
Speaker 1: would make more sense to have a company operating fleets
Speaker 1: of autonomous cars and it's all on demand. And the
Speaker 1: reason why it makes sense is that if your car
Speaker 1: is sitting idle more than nine percent of the time
Speaker 1: you own it, doesn't it make more sense for that
Speaker 1: car to go out and do work rather than just
Speaker 1: sit there. And if it were doing that, then you
Speaker 1: could end up freeing up space that would otherwise be
Speaker 1: used for things like parking spots or garages. Uh, anyone
Speaker 1: who has a garage would have essentially an extra room
Speaker 1: now for storage or whatever you wanted. Um, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: You would be able to free up space on streets
Speaker 1: where you wouldn't have people parking all up and down streets.
Speaker 1: My street, you would actually be able to drive down
Speaker 1: because people park on both sides of the street to
Speaker 1: the point where if your car is wide enough, you're
Speaker 1: gonna reconsider going down that way. Um. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the most realistic vision of driverless cars remains
Speaker 1: this idea of a fleet that it's like an uber
Speaker 1: or a lift where you call a ride when you
Speaker 1: need to. And now, obviously that means that the best
Speaker 1: use case for This would be in dense urban environments.
Speaker 1: If you're out in a rural area, it makes more
Speaker 1: sense to have a personally operated vehicle because you're not
Speaker 1: going to have enough density of vehicles in those rural
Speaker 1: spots to have a reasonable UM response time. If you
Speaker 1: need to have a ride, well, I mean, you know
Speaker 1: you could. You could say that it would be something
Speaker 1: like a like a Netflix subscription and and having different
Speaker 1: subscriptions for different needs. Like if you're in a city, Uh,
Speaker 1: then you call a car up whenever you need one.
Speaker 1: If you're in the country, maybe you have a you
Speaker 1: have a car that you essentially like lease out. Maybe
Speaker 1: it is autonomous that that that you hang out with
Speaker 1: for a certain period of time. I could see that
Speaker 1: possibly being the case. Uh, you know, there are obviously
Speaker 1: there's a lot of opportunities for different UM business strategy.
Speaker 1: So just as I was saying earlier where we were,
Speaker 1: you know, taking today and then projecting outward, I was
Speaker 1: just doing that right now when let's talking about driverless cars,
Speaker 1: and you brought up in a situation Lauren that I
Speaker 1: had not really thought about, but it totally makes sense
Speaker 1: that could completely be someone's business plan moving forward. So
Speaker 1: UM I also think the autonomous cars, they're gonna be
Speaker 1: a thing, whether they become the thing and replace uh
Speaker 1: personally like manually operated vehicles. I don't know what timeline
Speaker 1: we'd be looking at for something like that. I'm guessing
Speaker 1: a couple of decades at the earliest to to really
Speaker 1: get to a point where you've got enough of the
Speaker 1: population saying yeah, I don't care about driving a car.
Speaker 1: I just want to have a way of getting to
Speaker 1: or I need to go, and then not worry about it. Again. Um,
Speaker 1: they may take like a generation or two to get through. Well,
Speaker 1: we keep hearing stories about how more younger people have
Speaker 1: less of a desire to own a car for for
Speaker 1: a variety of reasons, largely economic, but not only economic.
Speaker 1: And I imagine if those trends continue, then we'll see
Speaker 1: people much more receptive to this idea. But that that
Speaker 1: again presupposes that a trend continues and doesn't change. That's
Speaker 1: still a possibility. Anyway, those were the two I really
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about. One that was more whimsical and
Speaker 1: one that was more grounded in reality. Um, but it's
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff that, you know, it's hard for
Speaker 1: me to pick just a couple of predictions about the
Speaker 1: future that I really love, but uh, I decided to
Speaker 1: to to just commit to those. So I want to
Speaker 1: hear what you guys picked. Well. I wanted to think
Speaker 1: about predictions about the social impact of telecommunications. Who uses
Speaker 1: their phone nows? Well, no, I would say the Internet
Speaker 1: counts as teleki and so does the telegraphy. That's also emoji. Emoji, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're sending them across an Internet or text message.
Speaker 1: You know, we have never done a full episode about
Speaker 1: emoji before. Go ahead, Joe cry laughing. It would be
Speaker 1: amazing if we came up with never mind. Okay, So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about something that I've actually mentioned.
Speaker 1: I know I mentioned once on a Text Stuff episode
Speaker 1: that I guessed it on with you, Jonathan. Which is
Speaker 1: an article from nineteen twelve from Technical World magazine. I
Speaker 1: didn't check to see if this magazine still exists. I
Speaker 1: wonder if it does. Probably not, but the article is
Speaker 1: by one Ivan Narodney, and it's a profile of Giglielmo Marconi.
Speaker 1: Marconi build in this article as the inventor of the
Speaker 1: wireless telegraph, but a well known inventor at the time.
Speaker 1: Sometimes also credited with the radio right right Tesla fans
Speaker 1: hate that. Yes, he often is. So the article is
Speaker 1: called Marconi's Plans for the World, and it's got a
Speaker 1: bunch of long quotes from from Marconi, and this is
Speaker 1: one of the things he says. Quote. I am not
Speaker 1: personally a socialist. I have small faith in any political propaganda.
Speaker 1: But I do believe that the progress of invention will
Speaker 1: create a state which will realize most of the present
Speaker 1: dreams of the socialists. The coming of the wireless era
Speaker 1: will make war impossible, because it will make war ridiculous.
Speaker 1: The inventor is the greatest revolutionist in the world, if
Speaker 1: only it's such a nice thought. Now, I think there
Speaker 1: is a certain grain of truth to this, because I've
Speaker 1: read arguments and I think they're kind of can vincing
Speaker 1: that a lot of social changes you see throughout history
Speaker 1: that you would see attributed to changes in ideology or
Speaker 1: political movements and stuff like that, is actually better understood
Speaker 1: as a direct result of technological change rather than ideological
Speaker 1: or political change. I think in a lot of cases
Speaker 1: that is sort of true. So his comment about the
Speaker 1: the inventor being the greatest revolutionist, I think there might
Speaker 1: be something to that. But on the other hand, he says,
Speaker 1: the wireless era is going to make war impossible, because
Speaker 1: it will make war ridiculous. This was right before the
Speaker 1: the First Great War, and then of course we got
Speaker 1: a few more after that. It was the War to
Speaker 1: end all wars, and then the one after that one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: another funny thing. Later in the same article, the author
Speaker 1: summarizes more of Marconi's comments by saying, quote, a step
Speaker 1: further in the progress of wireless stands wireless lighting, heating,
Speaker 1: and transmit shon of motor power. Each of these systems
Speaker 1: is based on the same principle as wireless tell the
Speaker 1: wireless telegraph, only the transmitting and receiving instruments are different
Speaker 1: in the vibrations of the etheric waves have a different nature, intensity,
Speaker 1: and length. This is also very Tesla issue etheric waves.
Speaker 1: That's great, um, and we we have done episodes on
Speaker 1: on like wireless lighting. Yeah, we talked about about things
Speaker 1: like using inductive coupling and that's right stuff. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: he's thinking at the grand scale, so he envisions like
Speaker 1: he talks about a Niagara Falls power plant that would
Speaker 1: generate hydro power and then wirelessly transmit a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty million horsepower across New York State and that sell
Speaker 1: it to other states. It's very, very similar to the
Speaker 1: Tesla UH approach. Are the Tesla beliefs of the time
Speaker 1: to UH wildly impractical? As it turns out, right, this
Speaker 1: this thing about power transmission is sort of to the
Speaker 1: But I did want to mention that because two main
Speaker 1: principles come up in this article, the wireless telecommunications, the
Speaker 1: wireless telegraph, and then wireless power transmission. Of course, now
Speaker 1: one is a reality and one the other is not,
Speaker 1: at least not at the large scale. And I guess
Speaker 1: mar Coney could have been referring to either or both
Speaker 1: when he predicted that these conditions would bring about the
Speaker 1: end of war. But I tend to think more likely
Speaker 1: that he's referring to to the prospect of universal instantaneous
Speaker 1: wireless communication as that set of conditions that he thinks
Speaker 1: is going to make war ridiculous and bring it to
Speaker 1: an end. And I think this because it fits in
Speaker 1: with a perennial strain of utopian thinking about the implications
Speaker 1: of new telecommunications technology. Yeah, well, I mean I can
Speaker 1: I can see that the merit in that kind of
Speaker 1: thought process. It's it's tempting to believe that if people
Speaker 1: are able to communicate quickly with each other um, then
Speaker 1: then they'll be able to reach a better understanding of
Speaker 1: each other's motivations and and therefore not have as much
Speaker 1: stuff to fight about. Yeah, it's essentially a grander scale
Speaker 1: version of telling children just talk it out, will be fine,
Speaker 1: very much, And there are people who very very much
Speaker 1: bought into this ideology and have throughout history, or at
Speaker 1: least throughout the past couple hundred years. So I want
Speaker 1: to read you a quote from a couple of authors
Speaker 1: named Charles F. Briggs and Augustus Maverick from eighteen fifty eight,
Speaker 1: and this is what they wrote. It has been the
Speaker 1: result of the great discoveries of the past century to
Speaker 1: affect a revolution in political and social life by establishing
Speaker 1: a more intimate connection between nations with race and race.
Speaker 1: It has been found that the old system of exclusion
Speaker 1: and insulation, or stagnation and death national health can only
Speaker 1: be maintained by the free and unobstructed interchange of each withal.
Speaker 1: How potent a power in is the telegraph destined to
Speaker 1: become in the civilization of the world. This binds together
Speaker 1: by a vital cord all the nations of the Earth.
Speaker 1: It is impossible that old prejudices and hostilities should longer
Speaker 1: exist while such an instrument has been created for an
Speaker 1: exchange of thought between all the nations of the Earth.
Speaker 1: So this seems like sort of along the lines of
Speaker 1: the Marconi strain of thinking. Right, you get people connected
Speaker 1: to each other through instantaneous telecommunication and they just sort
Speaker 1: of like become one very harmonious mind. And there was
Speaker 1: an American communication theorist I was reading about named James W. Kerry,
Speaker 1: who wrote a book called Communication as Culture. This was
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties, I think, in which there is
Speaker 1: a chapter about the impact of the original telegraph. Now
Speaker 1: this was the wired telegraph, not the wireless one, but
Speaker 1: I think the same principle applies to how people were
Speaker 1: thinking about them and carry points out that this was
Speaker 1: you know, it's the first major invention to separate the
Speaker 1: concepts of communication and transportation. Really, it's the first example
Speaker 1: of telecommunication communication without the transport of mass basically. And
Speaker 1: I want to read a passage where Kerry summarizes this
Speaker 1: historical attitude. He says, quote, there were dissenters, of course,
Speaker 1: but the general uniformity of reaction to the telegraph demonstrated
Speaker 1: how it was able to fuse the opposite polls of
Speaker 1: the electrical sublime, the desire for peace, harmony, and self
Speaker 1: sufficiency with the wish for power, profit and productivity. The
Speaker 1: presumed annihilation of time and space heralded by the telegraph
Speaker 1: promised to bind the country together, just as the portance
Speaker 1: of the Civil War, we're threatening to tear it apart.
Speaker 1: And he goes on to quote a horrible poem from
Speaker 1: eight seventy five by somebody named Martin F. Tipper. Never
Speaker 1: read about that guy in my poetry age occasion. But
Speaker 1: I've got to read this selection from this poem too,
Speaker 1: And then I'll try to stop with all the quotes.
Speaker 1: But this is just too good. Yes, this electric chain
Speaker 1: from east to west, more than mere metal, more than mammon,
Speaker 1: can binds us together, Kinsman, and the best as most
Speaker 1: affectionate and frankist Bond brethren as one and looking far
Speaker 1: beyond the world in an electric union blessed. I don't
Speaker 1: know what you're saying, man, that's awesome. That's some darn
Speaker 1: fine poetry. Do you hear the alliteration there. That guy
Speaker 1: could have written an old English Okay, okay, so he
Speaker 1: maybe he's technically competent that this is a poem about
Speaker 1: the telegraph, the electric Union. They all have to be
Speaker 1: about clouds and feelings. Joe but Carry has a name
Speaker 1: for this mode of talk, which he claims he coined
Speaker 1: in conjunction with somebody named John Quirk, which is a game.
Speaker 1: And the name for this this whole style of talking
Speaker 1: is the rhetoric of the electrical sublime. I loved that. Yeah. Actually,
Speaker 1: come to think of it, I like at like a
Speaker 1: great deal of poetry that I saw in my poetry classes,
Speaker 1: and like the early two thousand's in college would have
Speaker 1: fallen under that kind of category. It's like people celebrating
Speaker 1: how technology is going to save us all or or not.
Speaker 1: Not not like how it will save us all, but like,
Speaker 1: oh man, this is magic. Check out this magic. It
Speaker 1: relates to feelings. Okay, okay, I'll see that all poetic
Speaker 1: elitist is anyway to bring us up to today. I
Speaker 1: would say that the Internet is the essentially the ultimate
Speaker 1: extension of the telecommunications principle. It's all of the telecommunications
Speaker 1: principles switches just flipped onto full And I think the
Speaker 1: rhetoric of the electrical sublime absolutely extended to those beautiful, innocent,
Speaker 1: naive early days of the Internet, not even the earliest
Speaker 1: days into the nineteen nineties. Well, to be fair though,
Speaker 1: the nine nineties that's where you get the public u
Speaker 1: understanding of the Internet, because before that it was essentially
Speaker 1: the domain of researchers and students and mega nerds. Well,
Speaker 1: but yeah, there's those first few people who were on
Speaker 1: a Prodigy or a o L We're all like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: like I can talk to my grandmother or if she
Speaker 1: had a computer, understood how it worked. It's something like,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, the guys, there were some savvy
Speaker 1: there were some savvy grandmas out there on l uh
Speaker 1: and and we hadn't we hadn't seen like the other
Speaker 1: side of that connectivity yet, which is, you know, just
Speaker 1: like more opportunities to argue about terrible stuff. Well, at
Speaker 1: the time when the the Internet was young, in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen nineties, when the Web in particular was young,
Speaker 1: because that didn't really become a thing till two right,
Speaker 1: so when and that was the easiest way to access
Speaker 1: the Internet. Otherwise you were accessing elements of the Internet
Speaker 1: like email, which you would just realize as like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: this is just a super or fast version of mail.
Speaker 1: I mean, someone's going to get it as soon as
Speaker 1: I hit send. But other than that, it's not it's
Speaker 1: not as transformative as some of the other implementations of
Speaker 1: the Internet. Once you get the Web there, everyone saw
Speaker 1: that this was a thing of a seemingly limitless possibility,
Speaker 1: and because it was just such a big opportunity, it
Speaker 1: was really hard to get an idea of how would
Speaker 1: it actually be used, right, because if you have every
Speaker 1: option open to you, you don't know what pathway you're
Speaker 1: going to walk down. It may be that you've been
Speaker 1: walking for a while before you realize which path you took. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so not to say that there wasn't plenty of
Speaker 1: paranoia and dystopian thinking about the Net back then, too,
Speaker 1: given things like the movie The Net starring Sandra Bullock
Speaker 1: that was phenomenal and it predicted being able to order
Speaker 1: pizza online within the first five minutes of the movie.
Speaker 1: I might have man that movie. Rachel and I watched
Speaker 1: that not too long. It was hilarious. It's so good,
Speaker 1: right stands up as being completely terrible. I covered it
Speaker 1: on a episode of Tech Stuff about hacking in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: I love it. It's great. But anyway, it's those pictures
Speaker 1: from the nineties where people didn't realize what computers could
Speaker 1: and couldn't control yet, so they'd have you know, like
Speaker 1: you get into your office, uh, and you sit down
Speaker 1: at your computer and you can control like the fire
Speaker 1: alarms in the building you're in. Yeah, okay, but yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: so I'm sure you'll remember this strain of techno utopianism
Speaker 1: from the nineties about the about the internet. The Internet
Speaker 1: is going to be a global village, right, this Marshal
Speaker 1: mccluan concept, uh, the information super Highway. There's the idea
Speaker 1: that there's just sort of like all learning, all sharing,
Speaker 1: all the world and a kind of mutually informative benign
Speaker 1: communion where people around the world connect, do you remember
Speaker 1: that word connect all the time, and they collaborate and
Speaker 1: learn to understand one another. And I think that's funny now,
Speaker 1: not because I would say the Internet has turned out
Speaker 1: to be a bad thing, which I certainly don't think,
Speaker 1: because if you did, then you'd be like get filled
Speaker 1: with self loathing. No, I don't think that at all.
Speaker 1: But I do think it's turned out to be a
Speaker 1: thing so ubiquitous and so invisible as a substrate for
Speaker 1: day to day behavior that it goes beyond categorization is
Speaker 1: good or bad? Like saying whether the Internet is good
Speaker 1: or bad is kind of like saying society is good
Speaker 1: or bad. Sure, I mean, you know, on the one hand,
Speaker 1: you could say, look at look at vine, our forums
Speaker 1: where people are sharing innovative ideas and collaborating in our
Speaker 1: real sense and trying very hard to work through challenges.
Speaker 1: It's it's very inspiring. Or look at YouTube comments. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so I wonder is there anything we could say
Speaker 1: so obviously Marconi was wrong, Uh, in the specific example
Speaker 1: of wireless communication and in the broader idea of just
Speaker 1: telecommunications more people connecting instantaneously a cross distances that that
Speaker 1: would solve social ills and in wars and stuff. Is
Speaker 1: there is there any grain of truth to that? I mean,
Speaker 1: is there any way of saying, well, maybe maybe in
Speaker 1: some way the Internet or or other forms of telecommunications
Speaker 1: around the world have in some way caused social change
Speaker 1: for the better. Well, they've clearly caused social change, And
Speaker 1: I would argue for the better in many cases. But
Speaker 1: I would say that it wasn't uh in the way
Speaker 1: that Marconi was necessarily anticipating. So, for example, the Arab
Speaker 1: Spring being able to use the Internet in order to
Speaker 1: organize protests and to inform people as to what was
Speaker 1: going on beyond the boundaries of a country became incredibly
Speaker 1: powerful or and and even within the boundaries of a
Speaker 1: country wherein these people were not allowed to to organize
Speaker 1: in other ways. Right and then if you want to
Speaker 1: look at right now, the the Black Lives Matter movement,
Speaker 1: I would argue, without the various tools that we have
Speaker 1: connected to the Internet, including things like live streaming video,
Speaker 1: what what has been a problem for a very long
Speaker 1: time in the United States is just now getting the
Speaker 1: attention that it deserves because the tools to distribute that
Speaker 1: information are now in the hands of the people that
Speaker 1: have been UH suffering from this problem for decades. Really,
Speaker 1: it's not like this is a new problem. It seems
Speaker 1: new to people who were not part of that community
Speaker 1: because it wasn't something them. Yeah, similar in the way
Speaker 1: to it. How when when television became a thing that
Speaker 1: people had in their homes in the nineteen sixties, suddenly
Speaker 1: or in the ninete sixties early nineteen seventies, UM, the
Speaker 1: the Vietnam War suddenly was thrown into very harsh relief
Speaker 1: because when you started getting images from that thing, it
Speaker 1: wasn't just like, oh, yeah, let's go. Oh this is
Speaker 1: terrible like being able to actually see the results, as
Speaker 1: opposed to you get uh an article in the paper
Speaker 1: that gives you very relevant information, but it distances you
Speaker 1: from the actual results. Yeah. I think I think it's
Speaker 1: you can't argue that it hasn't caused some social good,
Speaker 1: or at least, uh, it has facilitated some social good.
Speaker 1: It hasn't been smooth, It's never going to be, because
Speaker 1: we're human beings ultimately, and human beings were messy, right,
Speaker 1: But it has opened up opportunities that previously weren't there.
Speaker 1: Do you think though, that expanding the power of telecommunications
Speaker 1: always just sort of like it causes a change in
Speaker 1: human behavior too for the people who have access to
Speaker 1: this technology, and then sort of settles into an equilibrium
Speaker 1: that was similar to how things were beforehand, except now
Speaker 1: you just have some new tools. Or does it lead
Speaker 1: to lasting changes? I think again, I don't know that
Speaker 1: it leads anywhere. I think What it does is facilitates.
Speaker 1: Just like I said earlier, I think that the actual
Speaker 1: leading to change is dependent upon whatever force is trying
Speaker 1: to enact that change, and they're using the telecommunications tools
Speaker 1: as one of the methods to enact that change. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess to be more specific that the change I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about is is general uh, general increases in harmony,
Speaker 1: right what what Marc had? And I think I don't
Speaker 1: think that it is magically making people more harmonious. I
Speaker 1: think that that was a naive kind of prediction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it'll it lets more people hear stories, and
Speaker 1: that can ultimately lead to change. But it's not. It's
Speaker 1: not as simple, just as it wasn't when you say, hey,
Speaker 1: you kids, sit down and have a talk and everything
Speaker 1: will be fine. It's rarely that simple. I think that
Speaker 1: you can change minds with with telecommunication missives. I mean,
Speaker 1: I would hope that you can, because otherwise we've been
Speaker 1: spending a whole lot of time sitting in the studio
Speaker 1: over the past few years for your friend a thing.
Speaker 1: If we're just talking to people who would already agree
Speaker 1: with us. Uh. And I have seen in in common
Speaker 1: threads on on YouTube and Facebook people say, oh, I
Speaker 1: didn't know that before, thank you, thank you for telling
Speaker 1: me about it, like, you know, like like I would
Speaker 1: have been ignorant and I would have kept on going
Speaker 1: doing what turns out to be this harmful behavior if
Speaker 1: I had not known about this thing. Um. And also uh,
Speaker 1: on a on on again a personal person to person
Speaker 1: kind of basis. Um, the Internet has allowed uh, people
Speaker 1: who would not have a support group in their local
Speaker 1: area to have a support group for um, you know,
Speaker 1: if if they if they're gay, and they're in a
Speaker 1: in a very anti homosexual, homophobic kind of kind of town,
Speaker 1: then then they have that support and maybe they get
Speaker 1: to continue living their lives and live happier and get
Speaker 1: out of there. Yeah, on a on a much um
Speaker 1: less uh impactful scale. I mean, the thing that I
Speaker 1: think of is what it was like. See, I I
Speaker 1: grew up in the eighties, and uh, the stuff I
Speaker 1: was interested in, None of my friends were really particularly
Speaker 1: interested in the same sort of things I was interested in,
Speaker 1: and so I didn't really have people to chat about
Speaker 1: chat with about the things that I was really passionate about. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then I would end up going to conventions with
Speaker 1: my dad, you know, my science fiction author dad and
Speaker 1: run into people groups eventually, But I'm talking about the
Speaker 1: early eighties, so you gotta you gotta walk before you
Speaker 1: can run. Um running there it was compared to what
Speaker 1: was happening before. So but but the point being that
Speaker 1: that the conventions gave me a chance to chat with
Speaker 1: people who were like minded, who enjoyed the same things
Speaker 1: I enjoyed. And then eventually the Internet allowed that on
Speaker 1: a much grander scale where I could see like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're all these people who share the same interests I have,
Speaker 1: but I never had an opportunity to chat with them
Speaker 1: because they don't happen to be near me and same
Speaker 1: thing with them, they have the same experience. Uh. And obviously,
Speaker 1: again that's that's tiny on the scale. Is something like
Speaker 1: someone dealing with uh, you know, intense homophobia or racism
Speaker 1: or whatever it may be, like some sort of prejudice
Speaker 1: against them for whatever reason. It's very different, but um,
Speaker 1: it makes it makes a difference in a person's self image.
Speaker 1: They stop asking themselves like am I am I weird?
Speaker 1: Am I alone? Am I terrible? And that I think
Speaker 1: is huge. I mean it's huge on an individual to
Speaker 1: individual basis, but collectively you have to say, like, that's
Speaker 1: fantastic to take away that burden that some people feel
Speaker 1: because they don't fit whatever their community has identified as
Speaker 1: the norm. On the flip side, I it can. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are still people who are jerks, and they can
Speaker 1: also congregate on the internet and and kind of enter
Speaker 1: into a positive feedback loop where where they they are
Speaker 1: told that that that that racism or whatever it is
Speaker 1: is okay and is accepted by their peer group. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is not so good. That's very not good. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I'm thinking about so in the broader sense
Speaker 1: of creating global harmony. I do think there is some
Speaker 1: of what I don't know, the the you know, the
Speaker 1: people who spoke the rhetoric of the electrical sublime, what
Speaker 1: these people had in mind, connecting brother with brother across
Speaker 1: the world. Uh, people people forming bonds they would not
Speaker 1: have formed in physical space. I think that's certainly true.
Speaker 1: But I also think that there is global antagonism that
Speaker 1: would not have existed otherwise. And so I wonder if essentially,
Speaker 1: I guess what I'm trying to say is is there
Speaker 1: any way to figure out if there has been a
Speaker 1: net change or have we just sort of like settled
Speaker 1: into a new wider equilibrium that's about the same as
Speaker 1: it was before. Well, I think the thing is is that,
Speaker 1: I mean, technology certainly changes us, but it isn't It
Speaker 1: doesn't change very basic parts or no technology that we've
Speaker 1: had yet has been big enough to change extremely broad
Speaker 1: parts of the human experience of human nature, like the
Speaker 1: fundamental elements of being humans. Yeah, and and unfortunately, like
Speaker 1: being a jerk is kind of one of those, it's
Speaker 1: on the list. I would also argue that your question
Speaker 1: is impossible to answer, and the reason why it's impossible
Speaker 1: to answer is because we don't have a separate pathway
Speaker 1: that we could judge against. Right if we had, If
Speaker 1: we if we could peer into a parallel universe where
Speaker 1: telecommunications were never developed, but but human race continued on
Speaker 1: to their tween, and we would compare their twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: to our sixteen, maybe then we could draw at least
Speaker 1: some conclusions, knowing that there's still thousands, millions of other
Speaker 1: variables at play. But without that, it's impossible, right because
Speaker 1: we live in the world that we forged, and so
Speaker 1: we can't really say what it would be like if
Speaker 1: we had gone a different route. Uh, that being said,
Speaker 1: it is a fascinate anything to think about. I mean,
Speaker 1: I also, like you guys, believe in the power of telecommunications.
Speaker 1: If I didn't, I would not work here. I would
Speaker 1: be doing something else. But I very much believe in
Speaker 1: the power to do good with it. I know, and
Speaker 1: without denying the fact that you can also do evil
Speaker 1: things with it, absolutely you can. But it's such a
Speaker 1: powerful tool that if enough people choose to do good
Speaker 1: with it, I think you can't help but enact a
Speaker 1: positive change in the world. And that's what I strive for.
Speaker 1: And uh, I guess to sum it up, as Shakespeare
Speaker 1: would say, nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes
Speaker 1: it so. Okay, Yeah, I like your I like your
Speaker 1: southern Southern hey, to be fair, And in Shakespeare's time,
Speaker 1: the accent was closer to Appalachian English than any other accent. Wow. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: you know that we've been talking a lot already. We
Speaker 1: still have a ton more that we want to cover
Speaker 1: in this, uh, in this this whole topic, but we're
Speaker 1: super chatty, so we're going to end up. No, So
Speaker 1: we've got another one from Joe, and then we have
Speaker 1: Lauren's favorite kind of futuristic predictions to to talk about,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna save that for our next episode. Guys,
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