Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you? So? Old time Star Trek fans may
Speaker 1: both love and kind of cringe at the use of
Speaker 1: some of the technobabble in scripts for that show. My
Speaker 1: go to Star Trek tech Nonsense always includes the phrase
Speaker 1: reverse the polarity, which typically doesn't mean very much in
Speaker 1: most of the dialogue where it pops up, but it sounds,
Speaker 1: you know, science adjacent. So I suppose, you know, we
Speaker 1: should give writers some slack. They're trying to write stories
Speaker 1: that are set in a far off future about technology
Speaker 1: that really we can only dream about today. I still
Speaker 1: want a replicator, though. Just look at how far the
Speaker 1: tech world has come, however, since the original Star Trek
Speaker 1: series first broadcast back in nineteen sixty. But you don't
Speaker 1: have to go to the future to encounter plenty of
Speaker 1: jargon and buzzwords. They're all over the place, particularly in
Speaker 1: the tech sector, really throughout the business sector in general,
Speaker 1: but tech in particular is incredibly guilty of this. It's
Speaker 1: one of the hallmarks of tech, and you get extra
Speaker 1: points if whatever term you're using is so vague or
Speaker 1: easy to misuse that it may as well be meaningless.
Speaker 1: So today we're going to talk about some tech buzzwords
Speaker 1: that have made various lists for most hated buzzwords in Tech,
Speaker 1: or most hated jargon in Tech, or something along those lines. Now,
Speaker 1: I pulled these terms from a lot of different sources,
Speaker 1: all from articles that were about hated or misused tech buzzwords.
Speaker 1: Some of the buzzwords are used well beyond tech itself.
Speaker 1: Some of them don't even originate from tech, but just
Speaker 1: get reused. And I use sites like The American Genius
Speaker 1: and Smart Company and CMC Global and DNS Research, Vation
Speaker 1: and Forbes and trust Radius and net Suite to gather
Speaker 1: all of these different terms. And the terms span the
Speaker 1: last several years. Some of these buzzwords have faded a
Speaker 1: little bit from use. We're going to talk about some that,
Speaker 1: you know, just a couple of years ago were dominating
Speaker 1: the conversations in tech, and now they're almost forgotten. Now
Speaker 1: I'm going to start with one that I personally find exhausting,
Speaker 1: and I bet a lot of y'all out there feel
Speaker 1: much the same way, and that term is, of course
Speaker 1: the biggest buzzword of the last couple of years in
Speaker 1: tech Artificial intelligence, or more frequently, just plain old AI.
Speaker 1: The explosion in AI development over the last couple of
Speaker 1: years has really elevated the buzz terms use within the
Speaker 1: tech space. And don't get me wrong, AI has been
Speaker 1: a thing in tech for decades, like more than half
Speaker 1: a century. It's a common theme in science fiction stories,
Speaker 1: whether we're talking about comedic droi sidecakes, or you know,
Speaker 1: some omnim present malicious intelligence determined to wipe out humans.
Speaker 1: But in the last couple of years, AI has really
Speaker 1: ramped up in the public consciousness, largely thanks to a
Speaker 1: specific branch of the discipline, that of generative AI. Now
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone out there is unfamiliar with generative
Speaker 1: AI at this point, but just in case this term
Speaker 1: is new to you, Generative AI creates stuff. It generates
Speaker 1: based upon user input. So you might ask a question
Speaker 1: and then it gives you an answer, or you might
Speaker 1: create a suggestion that it makes some sort of content
Speaker 1: like I once tried to use generative AI to make
Speaker 1: I think it was a Shakespearean sonnet about artificial intelligence,
Speaker 1: and it did a decent job at making a very
Speaker 1: clever poem about AI, but it didn't follow the Shakespearean
Speaker 1: sonnet rules, and I'm a stickler for form. Anyway, you
Speaker 1: could even have generative AI that can create images based
Speaker 1: on techs. You're all familiar with this, I'm sure, and
Speaker 1: even today you can get to the point where you
Speaker 1: can create video clips with some of these forms of
Speaker 1: generative AI. And there's no doubt about it. Generative AI
Speaker 1: can be really impressive, at least when it's working properly.
Speaker 1: When it's not working properly, it can be creepy or unsettling.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it could be like that if it's working properly too,
Speaker 1: don't get me wrong, but man, even as recently as
Speaker 1: just a couple of weeks ago, I was using an
Speaker 1: image generator out of curiosity, just trying to create images
Speaker 1: of characters from a friend of mine's podcast. She made
Speaker 1: this podcast, and I was just like, I wonder if
Speaker 1: I could create some like character concept images. And I'm
Speaker 1: not an artist, and I just did this out of curiosity,
Speaker 1: having no desire to actually use the images, but I
Speaker 1: was wondering if I could make it happen, and still
Speaker 1: fingers are hard for AI, y'all. There were so many
Speaker 1: love crafty and monstrosities created by this image generator, and
Speaker 1: it made me really feel calm that if I were
Speaker 1: to actually help my friend create character images for some
Speaker 1: of her creations, I would actually work with an artist.
Speaker 1: I would hire a human artist to work with, because
Speaker 1: then I know I would be one helping an actual
Speaker 1: artist get work, which I think is really important and
Speaker 1: to get what I wanted. But countless startups have launched
Speaker 1: since late twenty twenty two, when open ai really got
Speaker 1: the ball rolling by introducing chat GPT. Though to be clear,
Speaker 1: there were already some generative AI applications available before chat GPT.
Speaker 1: I would just say chat GPT launched everything into the stratosphere.
Speaker 1: But here's my problem. Generative AI is just one implementation
Speaker 1: of artificial intelligence, and it's not the only kind. AI
Speaker 1: is actually an enormous discipline. It covers a huge amount
Speaker 1: of ground like computer vision and image recognition that falls
Speaker 1: under AI. Natural language processing is part of AI, and
Speaker 1: obviously it has to be part of generative AI too.
Speaker 1: If you're going to get anything that even resembles what
Speaker 1: you were asking for, a lot of robotics falls under
Speaker 1: the category of AI. Not all of it, but a
Speaker 1: lot of it does. And on top of that, you
Speaker 1: know the fact that we have all these different kinds
Speaker 1: of AI and not just generative means that using the
Speaker 1: blanket term the umbrella term for one specific implementation is
Speaker 1: really not very accurate. But on top of that, some
Speaker 1: companies are using AI pretty liberally to cover stuff that's
Speaker 1: not even really artificial intelligence, like stuff like just algorithms.
Speaker 1: And yes, algorithms are part of AI, they can be
Speaker 1: part of AI, but that doesn't mean an algorithm by
Speaker 1: itself should be described as AI. So if you've got
Speaker 1: an algorithm that is looking at what I'm browsing, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at maybe vinyl record albums of the New
Speaker 1: York Dolls, and then it do you have a recommendation?
Speaker 1: Algorithm says, hey, maybe you should check out Velvet Underground.
Speaker 1: That's not exactly artificial intelligence, although it is an excellent suggestion.
Speaker 1: But because AI is so buzzy, right, it's such a
Speaker 1: popular buzzword, there have been this ton of startups that
Speaker 1: have begun to use AI to describe their pitch to
Speaker 1: investors and to media. I can't tell you how many
Speaker 1: unsolicited emails I get every single day from PR firms
Speaker 1: representing clients who are trying to position their business as
Speaker 1: the next big thing in AI, and sometimes, in fact,
Speaker 1: I would argue frequently, they have little to no connection
Speaker 1: to the actual discipline of artificial intelligence. On top of that,
Speaker 1: I am also frustrated that so many businesses seem anxious
Speaker 1: to jump into AI or else. I guess they're worried
Speaker 1: they'd be left behind, but it seems to me that
Speaker 1: many of these businesses have very little to no strategy
Speaker 1: that's actually connected to AI. It's almost as if the
Speaker 1: idea of AI is some sort of fix all solution
Speaker 1: to every problem. That is going to be probably the
Speaker 1: coda for this podcast. The motto of this is that
Speaker 1: there are these buzzwords that people use, and it's almost
Speaker 1: like a shortcut or a get out of jail free card,
Speaker 1: where you've got this problem or challenge or goal in mind,
Speaker 1: but you have no idea how to achieve that goal,
Speaker 1: or overcome that challenge or solve that problem, So you
Speaker 1: just use this kind of blanket term to stand in
Speaker 1: place of an actual solution, and then you're just magically
Speaker 1: where you need to be, and we all know that's
Speaker 1: not really how the world works. I wish it were.
Speaker 1: I would love to be able to use that kind
Speaker 1: of logic to fix all sorts of things in my life,
Speaker 1: but that's just not how it works. And you know,
Speaker 1: you can't just open a big old box that has
Speaker 1: the label AI on it and then business will magically
Speaker 1: perform better. It's kind of like how I am with
Speaker 1: electric guitars. So rather than practice on the electric guitar
Speaker 1: I literally have standing right next to me. Sometimes I think,
Speaker 1: you know, I should really buy a new guitar, as
Speaker 1: if some how that new guitar is magically going to
Speaker 1: make me a better player. And I can tell you
Speaker 1: from experience that doesn't work either. And also my partner
Speaker 1: would likely kick me out of the house if I
Speaker 1: try and do that again. So I think the four
Speaker 1: guitars I have are enough. Before we move on, we
Speaker 1: should lump in some other AI related terms in here,
Speaker 1: because AI, while that one alone is extremely buzzy and
Speaker 1: people misuse it or you know, misinterpret it all the time,
Speaker 1: there are others that fall into that same general category,
Speaker 1: like machine learning and deep learning. They do have meaning.
Speaker 1: These terms actually do mean something, so does AI for
Speaker 1: that matter. They have meaning and they have relevance, but
Speaker 1: they are frequently overused or misused by various tech companies
Speaker 1: out there. And that's not good because you know, it
Speaker 1: can set unrealistic or incorrect expectations, and then when those
Speaker 1: expectations aren't met because the person had the incorrect interpretation
Speaker 1: of what the terms actually meant, then support for research
Speaker 1: and development in those kinds of fields can decline. And
Speaker 1: I know that sounds kind of dramatic, but it's happened
Speaker 1: again and again and again. It happened with virtual reality.
Speaker 1: You know, we're seeing it possibly happen with mixed reality.
Speaker 1: If someone's working on a research project and then they
Speaker 1: find out that their funding has been cut because the
Speaker 1: people who are in charge of the purse strings had
Speaker 1: the wrong idea of what your work actually is all about.
Speaker 1: And then once they find out what it is about,
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, well, that's not what I wanted and
Speaker 1: they cut off funding. That stinks, right, That really did
Speaker 1: happen with VR in the nineties. You had people who
Speaker 1: are working on important implementations of VR. I'm not talking
Speaker 1: just like games, which I mean, I think games are important,
Speaker 1: but beyond that, using VR for things like treating mental illness,
Speaker 1: and then all the money for research kind of dried
Speaker 1: up because people were disillusioned with what VR actually was
Speaker 1: compared to what they thought it was. This stuff happens, Okay,
Speaker 1: Next up, I want to talk about disrupt and disruption.
Speaker 1: So these terms have been around for a while, and
Speaker 1: it's a dramatic word. Typically, it just means that someone
Speaker 1: has figured out a new way to do something. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's not even a new way. Sometimes it's just a
Speaker 1: way that's a little bit different from how everyone else
Speaker 1: is doing it currently. But it might be a very
Speaker 1: old way that just fell out of favor and then
Speaker 1: you kind of resurrect it. Now, the implication of disruption
Speaker 1: is that this new way of doing things is going
Speaker 1: to upend the industry it's in as a whole, and
Speaker 1: that it will threaten the security of companies that refuse
Speaker 1: to adjust to this new method and it will leave
Speaker 1: them in the dust if they're unable to adapt. And
Speaker 1: it's easier to understand if we just consider a couple
Speaker 1: of examples. Amazon, for instance, disrupted retail. But how did
Speaker 1: it do it well? It did retail online starting with
Speaker 1: books and then eventually encompassing pretty much everything you can imagine.
Speaker 1: And I would argue that Amazon really isn't that much
Speaker 1: different from other huge retail companies in that many of
Speaker 1: the strategies employed by Amazon are similar to ones that
Speaker 1: were honed by companies like Walmart. It's just that Amazon
Speaker 1: cut out the brick and mortar stores for the most
Speaker 1: part and employed some other technologies to personalize the experience. Plus,
Speaker 1: you know, buying stuff online means people don't have to
Speaker 1: interact with other human beings, and for a not insignificant
Speaker 1: slice of the population, that is a huge selling point.
Speaker 1: Oh I don't need to talk to a person, I'll
Speaker 1: just buy it online. Uber Lift and other ride haling
Speaker 1: companies disrupted the taxi industry, which obviously has been a
Speaker 1: real sticking point in various places around the world where
Speaker 1: taxi companies have a great deal of influence. We've seen
Speaker 1: examples of local governments cracking down on these kinds of
Speaker 1: startups for sidestepping regulations that the taxi industry must obey,
Speaker 1: and there have been attempts to refer to these as
Speaker 1: ride shares, but because it's actually all about funneling money
Speaker 1: through to the parent organization like Uber or lyft or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's not really ride sharing, it's ride haling, so it
Speaker 1: really is more like a taxi service than say, just
Speaker 1: connecting people who happen to want to get to the
Speaker 1: same place the same time. And there are a lot
Speaker 1: of other examples. Of course, Airbnb is disruptive to not
Speaker 1: only the hospitality industry but also real estate. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's hard for folks who are just starting out to
Speaker 1: go out and buy a house when the market caters
Speaker 1: to rich people who want to add to their portfolio
Speaker 1: of rental properties. But not everything that's being called disruptive
Speaker 1: is actually upsetting apple carts. Sometimes the things that are
Speaker 1: being called disruptive are just a new kind of business.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's describing a way of doing things that's different,
Speaker 1: but it's not necessarily advantageous compared to how the industry
Speaker 1: as a whole is doing whatever the thing is. And
Speaker 1: a lot of leaders really hate the term disruptive because
Speaker 1: it can distract folks into pursuing disruption at the expense
Speaker 1: of actually making a business model that works. If you're
Speaker 1: banking on everything causing disruption in an established market and
Speaker 1: you're not actually spending effort making sure that your approach
Speaker 1: even makes sense. You're just trying to watch the world burn.
Speaker 1: Related to disrupt is the term game changer. That phrase
Speaker 1: implies that the business model forces a change on an
Speaker 1: entire industry, it changes the game. That very rarely happens. Instead,
Speaker 1: we often hear game changer applied to businesses that are
Speaker 1: just new, even ones that aren't doing anything particularly that
Speaker 1: differently from their competitors or performing better than their competitors.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they're performing worse. That's hardly changing the game. Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got tons of other buzzwords to get through. Before
Speaker 1: we do that, let's take a quick break to thank
Speaker 1: our sponsors. We're back. Time to talk about some more
Speaker 1: buzzwords that get a lot of hate on these lists.
Speaker 1: This next one is a huge one. It sometimes ranks
Speaker 1: is number one depending upon the year, and that is
Speaker 1: digital transformation that popped up on multiple most hated buzzwords
Speaker 1: and tech lists. John Moore of tech Target first this
Speaker 1: definition of digital transformation. He says, it is quote the
Speaker 1: incorporation of computer based technologies into an organization's products, processes,
Speaker 1: and strategies. Organizations undertake digital transformation to better engage and
Speaker 1: serve their workforce and customers and thus improve their ability
Speaker 1: to compete end quote. So it's kind of like modernizing really,
Speaker 1: is what I would call it. You know, you're trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how can we take these various legacy
Speaker 1: systems and processes and bring them into the digital age,
Speaker 1: potentially making things easier to manage and monitor and measure
Speaker 1: and all those sorts of things. Cindy Jondon of IFS,
Speaker 1: which is a cloud computing company, says, quote, it's really
Speaker 1: a seismic shift forcing organizations to better enable their teams
Speaker 1: and improve asset usage and customer experiences end quote. To me,
Speaker 1: that's teetering pretty darn close to being too vain to
Speaker 1: be really useful. But at the same time, you could
Speaker 1: argue that each organization is going to have its own
Speaker 1: specific set of requirements and challenges, and so therefore it's
Speaker 1: impossible to get specific, right because if you get specific,
Speaker 1: then you're leaving out lots of other use cases, so
Speaker 1: you have to be really general. But yeah, that particular
Speaker 1: description to me borders on not being very useful. Now,
Speaker 1: as pointed out on CMC Globals site, and issue with
Speaker 1: the concept of digital transformation is that there's a tendency
Speaker 1: to treat it again as a magical panacea similar to AI,
Speaker 1: right that by somehow just porting processes over into a
Speaker 1: computerized system, maybe even one that's networked, based on the cloud,
Speaker 1: whatever it may be, you have somehow transformed the business inherently,
Speaker 1: even though it's the exact same processes and everything, it's
Speaker 1: just now it's done in a different way. Business strategy
Speaker 1: is still absolutely important, and without business strategy, shifting how
Speaker 1: you do things from one model to another doesn't actually
Speaker 1: address fundamental issues. Again, it's like you're slapping a band
Speaker 1: aid on something and you don't even understand it. It's
Speaker 1: like if someone had a cold and you put a
Speaker 1: band aid on their arm doesn't really address the problem.
Speaker 1: There's no denying that modernizing systems so that they're more
Speaker 1: easily accessible and adaptable is really important. But as Mark
Speaker 1: Bilger of One Call puts it, quote digital transformations do
Speaker 1: not magically transform the business. A fool with a tool
Speaker 1: is still a fool, end quote. Kind of dig that.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of companies out there that do
Speaker 1: consulting work on digital transformation. I'm sure some of them
Speaker 1: are quite good at it, but in my experienced consultants
Speaker 1: are the absolute worst when it comes to leaning on
Speaker 1: buzzwords in jargon to obfuscate what they mean. And I
Speaker 1: feel like I can say that with some authority because
Speaker 1: in my previous professional life, before I ever worked for iHeart,
Speaker 1: before I work for Discovery Communications, before I work for
Speaker 1: house stuffworks dot com, I spent more than seven years
Speaker 1: working for management consultants. And I've read a lot of
Speaker 1: proposals and a lot of reports, y'all, And one thing
Speaker 1: I walked away with is that consultants just love to
Speaker 1: use language that ultimately doesn't mean very much but sounds good.
Speaker 1: Another big buzzword that makes these lists, and it's been
Speaker 1: around for quite some time at this point, is the cloud. Now,
Speaker 1: there's a meme that goes around that is one hundred
Speaker 1: percent accurate that says there is no cloud, It's just
Speaker 1: somebody else's computer. That's true. That's the basic truth of
Speaker 1: what the cloud is. Cloud computing, cloud storage, cloud development,
Speaker 1: whatever cloud service you're talking about. Ultimately, these all describe
Speaker 1: a situation in which the thing you are using is
Speaker 1: a computer system that's provided by a third party, and
Speaker 1: that's it. That's the magic of the cloud. So It
Speaker 1: may be that it's an operating environment. It may be
Speaker 1: that it's you know again, storage. It could be any
Speaker 1: of those things. But really it just means that these
Speaker 1: these services are living on computers that are some else. Now,
Speaker 1: cloud solutions free up businesses so that they don't have
Speaker 1: to host their own services on premises or in tech speak,
Speaker 1: on prem. I cannot tell you how much I hate
Speaker 1: on prem not the concept but the actual use of that,
Speaker 1: as if on prem is somehow saving you a huge
Speaker 1: amount of time as opposed to saying on premises. In
Speaker 1: my humble opinion, on prem is just a way to
Speaker 1: create a code language that in small ways excludes outsiders
Speaker 1: from your group. It's kind of akin to the Little
Speaker 1: Rascals having the he Man Woman Haters Club, though I
Speaker 1: really guess only a fraction of y'all probably know who
Speaker 1: the little Rascals are. I'm old, but anyway, my commentary
Speaker 1: aside the issue many take with cloud terminology is that
Speaker 1: people will frequently use the phrase, similar to what we
Speaker 1: saw with AI and digital transformation, that it's some kind
Speaker 1: of cure all for any business challenge. There are definitely
Speaker 1: really good reasons to use cloud services, right like you
Speaker 1: might not be able to scale your services to your
Speaker 1: customers if it became really popular. Right, if you host
Speaker 1: everything yourself and everything's running on servers that are in
Speaker 1: your own office space or garage, whatever it may be,
Speaker 1: and you suddenly get really popular, you could end up
Speaker 1: having your service completely overwhelmed and now you can't provide
Speaker 1: services to anybody. And this is also kind of a
Speaker 1: good problem to have. It means that your services are
Speaker 1: resonating with customers, but you don't want the experience for
Speaker 1: them to be to log in and find out they
Speaker 1: can't access the thing that they're paying for. That's bad.
Speaker 1: So leaning on a large, established cloud provider could be
Speaker 1: the solution. It might be that, oh, well, we can
Speaker 1: scale just by purchasing more compute power or more storage
Speaker 1: from this provider. But just poorting stuff from your own
Speaker 1: systems to the cloud doesn't automatically make them work better
Speaker 1: or reach more customers. It's not like the company providing
Speaker 1: the cloud services is going to be doing your marketing
Speaker 1: for you or anything, because they've already got their customer.
Speaker 1: Their customer is you. It's your job to go out
Speaker 1: and get your own customers. But yeah, cloud computing is
Speaker 1: often used as sort of this hand wavy way of saying,
Speaker 1: don't worry about these problems, we got it covered, when
Speaker 1: in fact, the cloud does not magically solve stuff on
Speaker 1: its own. Again, this is a real issue with a
Speaker 1: lot of these buzzwords. If I'm being honest, it's really
Speaker 1: it's not the word's fault necessarily, it's that folks are lazy.
Speaker 1: People are lazy and they don't want to have to
Speaker 1: really tackle and define the real challenging business or tech
Speaker 1: issues that they're facing. That's hard. This is very hard
Speaker 1: to actually identify and then solve these tough business problems.
Speaker 1: It's really hard work. So it's way easier to just
Speaker 1: use a phrase or a term and to take a shortcut,
Speaker 1: especially if you're an executive, and then you foist the
Speaker 1: actual problem onto your underlings and it's their job to
Speaker 1: actually figure out, Okay, well, how do we do the
Speaker 1: thing that our boss wants us to do when all
Speaker 1: our boss says is cloud compute or digital transformation. To me,
Speaker 1: this is kind of like the underpants gnomes in South Park,
Speaker 1: You know the underpants domes. They say phase one is
Speaker 1: collect underpants, phase two is something, and phase three is
Speaker 1: profit that's what a lot of these buzzwords are. You know,
Speaker 1: the buzzwords are phase one, Phase two is completely undefined,
Speaker 1: and then phase three is somehow huge success. And I'm
Speaker 1: sad to report again it usually does not work out
Speaker 1: that way. All right, So what's next? Well, I guess,
Speaker 1: I mean, I didn't want to have to do this
Speaker 1: because I really don't like covering these kinds of things,
Speaker 1: but it's time to tackle blockchain and the related buzz
Speaker 1: terms around that. So blockchain is a thing, right, I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that blockchain doesn't mean anything. It absolutely does
Speaker 1: mean something. It's mostly a thing that people associate with
Speaker 1: cryptocurrencies because that's where it's seen the most use and
Speaker 1: I would argue the most success. But blockchain evangelists proclaim
Speaker 1: that blockchain is going to underpin the entirety of the
Speaker 1: Web of the future. This will play into a another
Speaker 1: buzz term we'll talk about shortly, web three. Now, these
Speaker 1: evangelists aren't always super good at articulating how blockchain will
Speaker 1: actually underpin the web of the future, just somehow that
Speaker 1: it will, and often a lot of details get glossed
Speaker 1: over in the process. I mean, blockchain has a lot
Speaker 1: of challenges facing it too, Like a lot of those
Speaker 1: systems are very slow, they're inefficient, some of them are
Speaker 1: extremely thirsty for electricity if it's based on a proof
Speaker 1: of work approach to blockchain. So there are a lot
Speaker 1: of issues that evangelists usually don't directly address, and they
Speaker 1: have pretty glib answers if you start asking follow up questions.
Speaker 1: But what does blockchain actually mean? Well, basically, a blockchain
Speaker 1: is a record of transactions. Typically we're talking about a
Speaker 1: decentralized ledger, meaning this ledger does not exist in any
Speaker 1: one given computer, it is distributed across lots of different computers,
Speaker 1: and this ledger is a record of all these transactions.
Speaker 1: And not only is it a record, it's viewable by
Speaker 1: a collection of stakeholders. So in some cases those stakeholders
Speaker 1: could be everyone who is connected to and is using
Speaker 1: the system. So in other words, it's as public as
Speaker 1: it gets, right, as long as you are part of
Speaker 1: the system, you can actually view the ledger. But in
Speaker 1: other cases, we could be talking about a closed blockchain
Speaker 1: and which only a select number of parties have access
Speaker 1: to that ledger, even if the blockchain itself is a
Speaker 1: foundation for a service that lots of other people are using.
Speaker 1: So you might have tons of people using, say a
Speaker 1: specific cryptocurrency, but only a small collection of stakeholders are
Speaker 1: able to actually view the ledger itself. That is problem
Speaker 1: number one. Actually, often I hear or read about projects
Speaker 1: that are pitched to be built on top of a blockchain,
Speaker 1: and the implication is that this makes the system inherently transparent.
Speaker 1: It doesn't. For example, there was Facebook, which is of
Speaker 1: course now called Meta, and Facebook's attempt to ch a
Speaker 1: cryptocurrency initially called Libra, later it was called DM. Actually
Speaker 1: technically Libra itself was I think the second name for it,
Speaker 1: but Libra and then DIM. The blockchain serving as the
Speaker 1: foundation for this particular cryptocurrency was going to be the
Speaker 1: domain of a consortium of companies that initially was called
Speaker 1: the Libra Association, later became the DM Association. So instead
Speaker 1: of a community of users all having access to this
Speaker 1: distributed ledger of transactions, it would be this consortium. But
Speaker 1: that ultimately did not work out. The whole project got
Speaker 1: bogged down, a ton of companies that initially had signed
Speaker 1: on to be part of the consortium bailed on it. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: the consortium sold off what few assets it still had
Speaker 1: to a bank called Silvergate Capital for a couple hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars. At least that was the belief. The money
Speaker 1: amount was never made public, but then Silvergate subsequently shut
Speaker 1: down the following year. Because this stuff is hard, y'all.
Speaker 1: I mean, if Facebook can't do it, it's really hard.
Speaker 1: We'll come back to that when we talk about the metaverse. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the selling point for blockchain technology is that the record
Speaker 1: of transactions is both transparent and it is reliable because
Speaker 1: each block of transactions is cryptographically linked to all the
Speaker 1: previous transactions in that ledger, and we'll be linked to
Speaker 1: all subsequent transactions in that ledger. And this means that
Speaker 1: no one can tamper with the records of previous transactions.
Speaker 1: If you went back and tried to change the record
Speaker 1: further back on the list, like let's say it's three
Speaker 1: blocks back, well, that would actually make changes to the
Speaker 1: next two blocks. It would be impossible to hide. So
Speaker 1: there's no bacxies. Every transaction is permanent. You know, you
Speaker 1: could do a new transaction with the exact same assets,
Speaker 1: right Like if you had purchased something and then you
Speaker 1: wanted to turn around and sell it you could do that,
Speaker 1: but you couldn't purchase something and then go back and
Speaker 1: erase the record of you purchasing it so that you
Speaker 1: magically get your cryptocurrency back. You can't reverse an earlier
Speaker 1: transaction that way. So this leads some to say, aha,
Speaker 1: we can use blockchain to serve as the bedrock for
Speaker 1: all online transactions. I mean, you could do it to
Speaker 1: keep record of like buying a house. You know, you
Speaker 1: enter that transaction into a blockchain that shows proof of
Speaker 1: this transition of ownership of the property. No one else
Speaker 1: can claim to own your property. You've got the record
Speaker 1: right there, and it is unalterable and irreversible. So the
Speaker 1: blockchain will show that the transaction happened and will serve
Speaker 1: as proof that ownership has changed hands. Moreover, it can
Speaker 1: serve as a record for digital transactions, which are a
Speaker 1: lot more whibly wobbly than stuff that you can buy
Speaker 1: and sell an actual meat space. So, for example, let's
Speaker 1: say I wanted to buy a clip of music. Maybe
Speaker 1: I even want a smart contract that gives me the
Speaker 1: license to use that music clip in some other work,
Speaker 1: such as an episode of a podcast. Well, you could
Speaker 1: set that up on a blockchain ecosystem to show proof
Speaker 1: of this transaction, and that could stand as the record
Speaker 1: indicating that I, as a customer, have legally purchased the
Speaker 1: license to use a clip of someone else's music in
Speaker 1: my work. Now that's just one hypothetical example. This does
Speaker 1: tie into n fts or non fungible tokens. But there
Speaker 1: was obviously a huge problem with NFTs as they rolled out, Namely,
Speaker 1: they became a target for insane and unsustainable speculation. So
Speaker 1: folks were buying up NFTs with the expectation that these
Speaker 1: digital assets were going to escalate in value, and a
Speaker 1: lot of companies got in on the NFT craze. They
Speaker 1: saw it as a way to essentially print money, or
Speaker 1: they were afraid of being left behind, and ultimately the
Speaker 1: NFT bubble popped and laid waste to the entire landscape,
Speaker 1: and it also did an enormous amount of pr damage
Speaker 1: to the NFT concept as a whole. So even folks
Speaker 1: who were coming up with undeniably interesting ideas for NFTs
Speaker 1: found themselves scrambling for interest and support because the speculative
Speaker 1: market had burned so many people. Okay, we're coming up
Speaker 1: on the last third of our podcast and speaking of thirds,
Speaker 1: we'll be talking about Web three next, but first let's
Speaker 1: take another quick break to thank our sponsors. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back and we're going to talk about web three now.
Speaker 1: A lot of the buzzwords we've talked about so far
Speaker 1: have an actual meaning, right, They do have meaning to them,
Speaker 1: but often there's this issue of people misinterpreting or misusing
Speaker 1: the terminology, misconstruing something, and then the meaning of those
Speaker 1: other terms gets a little fuzzy. Web three is not
Speaker 1: like that, though, because it doesn't really have a definition.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like the term metaverse, which we will
Speaker 1: talk about in a second. In fact, I would argue
Speaker 1: web three and metaverse are very similar in that regard.
Speaker 1: They are both words used by people to make some
Speaker 1: pretty vague statements about a kind of hazy future of
Speaker 1: online interaction and commerce and society. But once you start
Speaker 1: to dive down into it, you start to discover that
Speaker 1: there actually are a lot of different takes on what
Speaker 1: these things are ultimately going to be, and so it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like anyone's really on the same page, Like
Speaker 1: there are a lot of similarities, but there are a
Speaker 1: lot of differences too, and this ultimately means there's not
Speaker 1: a really meaningful way to talk about these kinds of things.
Speaker 1: But you still have companies jumping on board in an
Speaker 1: attempt to establish a presence in an undefined field or
Speaker 1: else lose some sort of unknowable advantage. So generally speaking,
Speaker 1: most versions of Web three share certain qualities. One of
Speaker 1: the big ones is decentralization. So a big criticism of
Speaker 1: the current web is that power and influence gravitates toward
Speaker 1: a few massive players in the space. We're talking big
Speaker 1: companies like Amazon and Google, for example, and there's no
Speaker 1: denying it, Like, there are certain companies that have a
Speaker 1: stranglehold on the massive amounts of data that pass over
Speaker 1: the Web, And so the thought is, wouldn't it be
Speaker 1: better if we democratize that power somewhat? We took it
Speaker 1: so that the next version of the Web is not
Speaker 1: entrusted into the hands of these corporate mega giants, but
Speaker 1: rather to the users. You know, that's what evangelists like
Speaker 1: to say, put the power in the hands of the users,
Speaker 1: which is kind of like tron. Critics of Web three
Speaker 1: say that most of the Web three implementation ideas would
Speaker 1: really just create different power brokers for the Web. It
Speaker 1: wouldn't be the big companies that we talk about, the
Speaker 1: big tech companies, but it would go into the hands
Speaker 1: of a wealthy subculture that would be able to afford
Speaker 1: to act as the cornerstones of this new web. So
Speaker 1: really it doesn't democratize who owns the web. It just
Speaker 1: designates different stakeholders, the folks in charge of overseeing the
Speaker 1: various systems that Web three is actually built upon, which
Speaker 1: usually involves some kind of blockchain technology and token economy.
Speaker 1: Now I don't mean a token economy. I mean an
Speaker 1: economy based upon the minting, buying, selling, and trading of
Speaker 1: digital tokens. And we heard a lot of buzz about
Speaker 1: Web three just a couple of years ago. And to
Speaker 1: be clear, there are still companies that are working toward
Speaker 1: making something along the lines of a Web three implementation happen.
Speaker 1: But the excitement around this has fizzled out quite a bit.
Speaker 1: And I honestly I think that artificial intelligence has managed
Speaker 1: to drink an awful lot of tech milkshakes. So you
Speaker 1: can also look at the metaverse as an example of this,
Speaker 1: where some of that excitement has been ported over for AI.
Speaker 1: In fact, according to Gopal Solanki, who wrote a piece
Speaker 1: on Medium that's titled is Web three dead already? He
Speaker 1: said investment in Web three companies has fallen by more
Speaker 1: than seventy five percent in twenty twenty three compared to
Speaker 1: the levels it had in twenty twenty one. He went
Speaker 1: on to say, we cannot say that Web three is dead,
Speaker 1: but it has surely failed to deliver the promises it made.
Speaker 1: Each innovative idea presented in the form of renovated web
Speaker 1: version has turned into complete dust on unless it has
Speaker 1: something to do with the native cryptocurrency token. All the
Speaker 1: developments and projects introduced in the Web three hype are
Speaker 1: majorly underperforming. That seems to sum it up to me.
Speaker 1: I can't disagree with that, and not to say that
Speaker 1: something called Web three won't come down the line, but
Speaker 1: in the meantime, that term is largely without meaning, and
Speaker 1: it's mostly used by people who are scrambling for funding
Speaker 1: for something that's unproven and potentially no better than what
Speaker 1: we already have. In fact, potentially it could be worse.
Speaker 1: Things like transmission speeds and stuff could be drastically affected
Speaker 1: because again, blockchain transactions are not the most efficient. So
Speaker 1: if you build everything based on blockchain transactions like online
Speaker 1: commerce is completely based on blockchain. It could mean that
Speaker 1: it's just overwhelmed that it's far too slow to deal
Speaker 1: with that level of responsibility. All right, Well, then let's
Speaker 1: tackle metaverse and mixed reality, more stuff that went through
Speaker 1: the hype cycle and recently has struggled to remain relevant.
Speaker 1: Starting off with the metaverse, we're talking about a concept that, again,
Speaker 1: like Web three, does not have a firm definition. There
Speaker 1: are a distinct lack of details. Generally speaking, most definitions,
Speaker 1: if you can call them, that, imply a persistent virtual
Speaker 1: world in which you can explore and socialize and shop
Speaker 1: and create and consume, kind of like a computer generated
Speaker 1: alternate reality to the reality we experience if we step
Speaker 1: outside our houses. Some versions of the metaverse tap into
Speaker 1: similar stuff that we hear about in Web three, like
Speaker 1: cryptocurrencies and blockchain. Other versions of the metaverse focus more
Speaker 1: on the virtual reality aspect and things like creating your
Speaker 1: own avatar and being able to maneuver around these virtual environments.
Speaker 1: Some versions of the metaverse describe a huge, interconnected series
Speaker 1: of virtual worlds kind of hosted by different intit so
Speaker 1: there might be one that's owned and operated by Meta
Speaker 1: and another one owned and operated by Amazon, and maybe
Speaker 1: they're interlinked together so you can pass through from one
Speaker 1: to the other, kind of like how the web itself
Speaker 1: is a big interconnected series of web pages, but instead
Speaker 1: you're talking about a virtual world with like three dimensional
Speaker 1: virtual space, but like web three. A lot of the
Speaker 1: enthusiasm and excitement around the metaverse has kind of gone
Speaker 1: cup put in recent years. There was a flurry of
Speaker 1: excitement about the metaverse idea for a while, and you
Speaker 1: had people and companies that were rushing to establish a
Speaker 1: presence on various platforms, claiming that these platforms would become
Speaker 1: pillars of the upcoming metaverse. But you don't hear about
Speaker 1: that as frequently these days. It kind of blows my
Speaker 1: mind that virtual real estate sold for real money, sometimes
Speaker 1: a significant amount of real money, even before any such
Speaker 1: platform had established itself, as you know, a real thing
Speaker 1: that people wanted to go and spend time at. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like this wild land rush, except land in
Speaker 1: the real world is a finite resource, and the only
Speaker 1: thing stopping yet another company from launching a virtual real
Speaker 1: estate company is computational hardware. Scarcity is not really a
Speaker 1: thing in the digital space, which again brings us back
Speaker 1: to the challenges of digital assets and transactions anyway. Obviously,
Speaker 1: there are still companies that are working on creating a metaverse,
Speaker 1: but the question I have is how many folks are
Speaker 1: actually itching for a metaverse. I wondered that from the
Speaker 1: very beginning. I definitely wonder it. Now. Meta has spent
Speaker 1: billions with a b of dollars on such efforts. It
Speaker 1: continues to do this, much to the chagrin of investors,
Speaker 1: and I am still not convinced that those efforts will
Speaker 1: have a good return on investment. Maybe we'll get some
Speaker 1: virtual environments out of it, and some of them might
Speaker 1: even be really good and compelling experiences, but I don't
Speaker 1: know that that's going to be enough to get the
Speaker 1: results needed to make those billions of dollars a sound investment.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's going to make that, you know,
Speaker 1: the metaverse the future of online interaction. But then again,
Speaker 1: I'm not a genius anyway. There are tons of barriers
Speaker 1: that the metaverse will have to overcome in order to
Speaker 1: become a real thing. And real thing you can put
Speaker 1: in air quotes. I guess, assuming that you know it
Speaker 1: does involve virtual reality. One of the hurdles for the
Speaker 1: metaverse is the cost to the consumer, because VR headsets
Speaker 1: aren't cheap. Now, there are some headsets that are significantly
Speaker 1: less expensive than earlier models, so they aren't necessarily as
Speaker 1: expensive as they used to be, but they're still not cheap.
Speaker 1: And computers are really versatile technologies, right, You can do
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff on a computer. Now, you could
Speaker 1: arguably do most of that same stuff, if not all
Speaker 1: of it, while wearing VR gear as well, But that
Speaker 1: requires a lot of work to design a really good
Speaker 1: user interface so that the person who's wearing the VR
Speaker 1: gear can do whatever it is they want to do
Speaker 1: in a way that makes sense and feels natural. But
Speaker 1: if you can already do pretty much all of that
Speaker 1: stuff on a computer, you know, with the exception of
Speaker 1: being in an immersive virtual environment, I'm not sure the
Speaker 1: sales pitch is good enough to get people to buy in. Also,
Speaker 1: this whole concept of an online world that is persistent
Speaker 1: and virtual and even three dimensional isn't new. Folks have
Speaker 1: been talking about that for years. Heck, you watch old
Speaker 1: Hollywood films that represent the web, and it almost always
Speaker 1: has someone seeing at a computer, and it looks like
Speaker 1: they're playing some sort of weird first person shooter navigating
Speaker 1: through stuff, because that looks way more exciting than just
Speaker 1: staring at a page full of text and hyperlinks. Right,
Speaker 1: But you know, navigating through a virtual space in order
Speaker 1: to get to a destination has never made much sense
Speaker 1: to me. Like, instead of having websites, having you know,
Speaker 1: maybe like a virtual mall of stores and you have
Speaker 1: to wander around in order to go to places, that
Speaker 1: just doesn't make sense. Clicking on a link is super
Speaker 1: fast and efficient, and sure you could build that kind
Speaker 1: of capability into the metaverse, you know, maybe you make
Speaker 1: it a voice command. But is the experience of just
Speaker 1: teleporting from one virtual spot to another, perhaps, you know,
Speaker 1: just to do some shopping, or maybe even just check
Speaker 1: the news. Does that really sound like an experience most
Speaker 1: people want to have, because I think it would be
Speaker 1: pretty disorienting and distracting and inefficient. You could do it
Speaker 1: so much faster just using a computer or a smartphone.
Speaker 1: But really, whether you think like I do and you
Speaker 1: find the whole metaverse concept puzzling, or if you think
Speaker 1: it's a great idea, there's no getting around that. Tons
Speaker 1: of folks and companies. We're using metaverse as shorthand for
Speaker 1: this is the future. Nearly every press release or announcement
Speaker 1: I saw relating to the metaverse said very little apart
Speaker 1: from we're forward thinking and we're super cool, without you know,
Speaker 1: doing anything to back up those claims. Just as cloud
Speaker 1: computing and digital transformation can be used as buzzy shortcuts
Speaker 1: to avoid addressing real challenges, I feel like the metaverse
Speaker 1: and web three come across as more or less meaningless
Speaker 1: terms used to proclaim relevance. You know, they might not
Speaker 1: be anything today, but maybe tomorrow. Right, you'll see and
Speaker 1: you'll see it from us, because we're hip and we're
Speaker 1: with it. Okay, I'm really old, So maybe I'm just
Speaker 1: way too cynical. Maybe it's brought on by the fact
Speaker 1: that a lot of early attempts at showcasing ideas that
Speaker 1: are at least intended to be incorporated into the metaverse
Speaker 1: have been a bit disappointing. This brings me to mixed
Speaker 1: reality now, y'all. I love me some mixed reality. I'm
Speaker 1: not as big on VR these days. I acknowledge that
Speaker 1: VR is the far more successful end of the mixed
Speaker 1: reality spectrum. VR at least has established use cases in
Speaker 1: the form of gaming. My problem is physiological because as
Speaker 1: I get older, I get more prone to motion sickness,
Speaker 1: which stinks. It's not the technology's fault necessarily, unless latency
Speaker 1: is really bad, in which case it is the technology's fault.
Speaker 1: But you know, I used to be the guy who
Speaker 1: would ride a roller coaster two dozen times in a
Speaker 1: day and think nothing of it. Now, if I ride
Speaker 1: two different roller coasters in a row, I have to
Speaker 1: lie down for forty minutes, So that's on me. But
Speaker 1: VR has a place at the table, right It's an
Speaker 1: established technology, and there are some great VR games and
Speaker 1: experiences out there. It's still not necessarily a large enough
Speaker 1: library of experiences to get a critical mass of users
Speaker 1: on board, but the audience for VR tends to be
Speaker 1: fairly enthusiastic or at least curious to try VR stuff.
Speaker 1: I do know a few people who have VR setups
Speaker 1: that have gone untouched for you know, long enough for
Speaker 1: them to gather dust, So I don't know how common
Speaker 1: that is. I'm sure there are people who use it
Speaker 1: every day, you know. I've got a friend who uses
Speaker 1: VR to do exercise with beat saber and that's you know,
Speaker 1: she's not alone. Lots of people do that. It's on
Speaker 1: the augmented reality side where I am actually the most interested.
Speaker 1: But I simultaneously have to admit that not nearly enough
Speaker 1: has been done in the AR space to make it
Speaker 1: really useful outside of some very specific implementations. And I
Speaker 1: think it's easy to imagine how AR could be useful,
Speaker 1: Like if you can overlay digital information on your view
Speaker 1: of the real world around you. There are countless ways
Speaker 1: to make that really useful, everything from just entertaining to
Speaker 1: genuinely answering questions or letting you do things more efficiently.
Speaker 1: But while the technology has potential, we haven't really seen
Speaker 1: that potential realized, and it's been a challenge so difficult
Speaker 1: that even Apple appears to be struggling with it. Apple
Speaker 1: launched the Vision Pro earlier this year. The year in
Speaker 1: question is twenty twenty four for many of y'all listening
Speaker 1: from the future. An initially word was that despite the
Speaker 1: incredibly hefty price tag of three thousand, five hundred dollars
Speaker 1: for the base model of this headset, the company was
Speaker 1: actually going to sell out of its initial production run. However,
Speaker 1: it's just a few months later and the story has changed.
Speaker 1: An Apple analyst named Ming chi Quo posted that the
Speaker 1: company was cutting orders by nearly half for the rest
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty four, downgrading the expected unit sales that
Speaker 1: initially were projected to be seven hundred to eight hundred
Speaker 1: thousand units down to four hundred thousand to four hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand, which is a big old' oof because
Speaker 1: demand dropped very quickly. Wes Davis of The Verge posted
Speaker 1: an article recently that said he was finding listings on
Speaker 1: eBay in which the headsets were selling for far below
Speaker 1: market price, and Davis says it stings to know that
Speaker 1: he could have waited and purchased a Vision Pro for
Speaker 1: much less than what he actually paid for it when
Speaker 1: it first became available. But really, I would argue that's
Speaker 1: just the tip of the iceberg for consumer pain when
Speaker 1: it comes to mixed reality, because I think the real
Speaker 1: problem is that, facing a lack of a really big
Speaker 1: user base, developers don't have a lot of reason to
Speaker 1: make applications for AR hardware, because why would you spend
Speaker 1: your time and your energy and your skills making something
Speaker 1: that hardly anyone is going to get to use? But
Speaker 1: if developers don't embrace the hardware, then consumers don't really
Speaker 1: have an incentive to shell out the considerable amount of
Speaker 1: money it costs to buy one of these headsets. It's
Speaker 1: a catch twenty two issue, right because I don't want
Speaker 1: a vision pro because I feel there aren't enough applications
Speaker 1: for it. But no one's going to build applications for
Speaker 1: the vision proh because people like me don't want to
Speaker 1: purchase one. And then it's very possible that Apple will
Speaker 1: either have to scale the tech way back so it
Speaker 1: can introduce a significantly less expensive headset, which presumably would
Speaker 1: have far fewer features and make it less attractive, or
Speaker 1: just back away from the effort entirely and say this
Speaker 1: one is a loss. My whole point is that if Apple,
Speaker 1: with its famous reality distortion field, can't get mixed reality
Speaker 1: to work in the market, it might just be too
Speaker 1: early for that technology to take hold. Now, maybe someday
Speaker 1: it'll be a big success, but it's going through its
Speaker 1: own rough time, kind of similar to how VR really
Speaker 1: struggled after a similar issue in the nineteen nineties after
Speaker 1: that hype cycle kind of deflated. And this brings me
Speaker 1: to a conclusion as well as a general warning that
Speaker 1: I think it's really good to remember. If someone is
Speaker 1: pushing very hard to sell you an idea, whether that
Speaker 1: idea is AI, it's web three, a blockchain, or the
Speaker 1: metaverse or mixed reality or anything like that, it often
Speaker 1: indicates that the person talking to you is heavily invested
Speaker 1: in that particular technology, and in order for their investment
Speaker 1: to pay off, they need to get other folks to
Speaker 1: buy into it. Now, I don't mean to say that
Speaker 1: all of these ideas are ultimately nothing more than a
Speaker 1: pyramid scheme, but they sure do operate that way in
Speaker 1: the early days, and you don't get paid out unless
Speaker 1: folks lower down the chain buy in. So buyer beware
Speaker 1: is what I'm saying. Use critical thinking, make sure you
Speaker 1: ask questions and make sure that the answers are satisfying
Speaker 1: and that they mean something, and it's not just filled
Speaker 1: with buzzwords and jargon. And for the leaders out there,
Speaker 1: really think about different ways you can communicate your ideas
Speaker 1: that aren't necessarily reliant on buzzwords, that actually do define
Speaker 1: challenges and problems and solutions, because otherwise it starts to
Speaker 1: sound like you're using language to cover the possibility that
Speaker 1: you don't know what you're doing, and that's not a
Speaker 1: good look at all. Doesn't serve anyone well in the
Speaker 1: long run. All Right, that's it. Like I said, there
Speaker 1: are tons of other buzzwords that we could include here,
Speaker 1: and maybe I'll do another episode in the future with
Speaker 1: more of these, but I thought this was a good
Speaker 1: roundup for an episode like this. I hope you are
Speaker 1: all well, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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