Latest / General Magic & The Soul of Tech / Ep. 4 | One of Tech’s OGs on Why AI Feels Like Magic | Andy Hertzfeld

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Ep. 4 | One of Tech’s OGs on Why AI Feels Like Magic | Andy Hertzfeld · General Magic & The Soul of Tech

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_02: This is Mike Stern.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: We're still living inside what it started.Today we're going to be talking with Andy Hertzfeld,
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: one of the original inventors of the Macintosh,
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: the co-founder of General Magic,
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: one of the giants of the tech industry,
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: and one of the most decent and kind people who's ever worked
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_02: in Silicon Valley.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: He's going to give us some surprising insight into what
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: AI means for his practice
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_02: of writing software talk about what's gone wrong in Silicon Valley and
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: in the world at large and what we can do to help make things better.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm Tom "Hersh" Hershenson.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: Today we have the pleasure, an absolute pleasure,
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: of speaking with Andy Hertzfeld,
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: one of the OGs of the computer age,
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: integral member of the Apple Macintosh team,
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: who shares his thoughts on innovation,
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: pursuing one's passion,
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: and a surprising take on AI and its place in our lives.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: Right, and and Mac was created with the idea of empowering people,
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: unleashing creativity, making something easy and beautiful to use.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_02: ~ is that a design philosophy that you think still prevails in the Valley
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: and in the industry generally,
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: or has that sense of the craft disappeared?
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_03: Well, the industry's a hundred times bigger than it was when I started working
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_03: on the Macintosh ⁓ And there are still some pockets where people
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_03: are idealistic and they want to do the right thing.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_03: They want to make the world a better place.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_03: We had the the ground of our belief was if we made the computers easy enough to use,
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_03: we'd be helping humanity.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_03: I think we might have overshot our mark a little bit
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_03: on the cell phones anyway, they're
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_03: a bit too addictive.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not sure what to do about that because you
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_03: do want people to use it and love it.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm not sure the geometry of the guardrails.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: Just to take a step back and expanding on that,
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: Andy, I'm wondering what did you feel motivated you early on in programming?
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Was it a sense of accomplishment of writing great code?
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Was it seeing people use it?
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: Were there other things in the mix for
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: you kind of emotionally and philosophically when you first started out?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_03: Well when I I first started out I was a high school kid and I
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_03: was basically just joywriting.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_03: I was ~ you know following my heart,
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_03: doing what I wanted to do.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_03: They had a a a single ASR thirty-three terminal,
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_03: a teletype, in my physics classroom
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_03: that was connected to a GE timesharing system about 15 miles away.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_03: We were programming with punch tape for that because the online time
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_03: was so expensive that you had to do it all beforehand and just put in the tape
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_03: so it all run through quickly.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_03: But I was working out of excitement and and love.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_03: It's hard to put put your mindset back to how rare it was then to have access
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_03: to a computer.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_03: I was lucky that I was able to access it at all when
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_03: I was fifteen years old.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_03: Continuing throughout my career,
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_03: really I've been
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_03: working on what I'm excited about,
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_03: you know, following my heart.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_03: ~
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_03: And later, you know, when you're getting a salary and all that changes
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_03: the dynamics quite a bit.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_03: But I was fortunate in my career that ~ that's what they
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_03: wanted me to do.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I wasn't fighting against them so much the only time,
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_03: just have fun with the computer.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_03: My goal when I was writing any program,
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_03: I I wanted to see the person I was writing to their jaw drop,
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_03: then to smile and laugh.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_03: That's
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_03: how I I knew I I was doing a good job.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_03: It was very, very different than programming for offices or whatever.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_03: Apple's always been great, that at their heart,
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_03: sometimes they've deviated from it,
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_03: but they they really want to make something lovable,
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  SPEAKER_03: fun, exciting, as well as useful.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_03: Well what do you
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think it feels like to use Claude Code or another AI tool to code?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: That must take all of the joy out of the experience.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_03: Well no, it's actually thrilling,
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  SPEAKER_03: at least in the early stages of using that stuff.
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  SPEAKER_03: when it works well, it's like magic.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_03: ~ And ~ it's definitely a very exciting thing that wow,
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_03: it did it all for me.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_03: But I think it's a tremendous step forward.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_03: I'm retired, you know, so the the only programming I do is is for fun,
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_03: just like it was when I was in high school.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: What tools are you playing around with?
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_03: ~ You know, the thing that excites me the most that I I've spent the most time
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_03: on is audio generation tools,
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  SPEAKER_03: a program called Suno.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_03: Ever since I was a college student,
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_03: I was writing ~ poems that were really songs.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_03: I did that for five or six years,
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_03: maybe even up to ten years.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_03: But I could never hear them as songs because
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't have the music technical skill.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_03: But Suno does just a remarkable job at taking my poems,
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  SPEAKER_03: taking a little bit of input from me,
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  SPEAKER_03: just in English, ⁓
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_03: Nothing too fancy, but just telling it what I want and iterating.
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  SPEAKER_03: It does a tremendous job and I get an ecstatic feeling when I when I listen to it.
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  SPEAKER_03: Hey, I created this.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_03: Thought it was totally beyond me,
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_03: but the tools
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_03: all put it in my grasp.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_03: It must be like what vibe coders,
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_03: you know, non-programmers must feel something like that when they make their first
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_03: game and it's, my god, I can't believe I did it.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_03: Well that that's me with the guitar and piano.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I I I'm clumsy, I'm inexpert,
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_03: but it's I an amazing feeling of satisfaction when when it when it works.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: It
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Andy, it's so striking to me to hear you talk about your experience with Suno
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: and AI, because I hear in you the the same sort of delight that
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: I imagine really thrilled you when you were coding,
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: that your your conception of technology,
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: maybe I'm overstating it, but it I get the impression that for you,
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: the emotional experience of creativity or empowerment that people get,
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: is for you, really central to how you conceive what computers and innovation
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: is all about.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Am I am I barking up the right tree on that?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_03: No, I I learned a long
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_03: a a long time ago, when I was having fun,
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_03: right?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_03: The more fun I had writing the program,
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_03: the more fun the users have using the program.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's not an obvious thing, but that that is how it works with me.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_03: I guess I just like I'm I'm enthusiastic.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_03: I said in
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_03: one of the first interviews I ever did in nineteen eighty four.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_03: I said, if I ever stop being enthusiastic,
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_03: I won't be able to program.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think that kind of joy of doing it still exists?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: Do you see that in the colleagues you had later in your career?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_03: insight into what
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well well just these these
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_03: these days, as I mentioned, just using the AI tools give gives you that same kind
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_03: of thriller at least me.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_03: it it it when things are going well,
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_03: it just does it so fast, it'll solve problems unbelievably well.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it let lets me spend my time more where where
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_03: where it is fun for me.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_03: The AI tools are really,
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_03: really good for boilerplate programming.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_03: There's a fair bit of your program is is drudgery,
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_03: because it's just required stuff that has no creativity to it.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_03: The AI takes care of that for you.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_03: And so you could spend more of your time with doing what you want to do.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_03: I've been using ~ AI tools on Bill Atkinson's eulogy.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_03: I I hate the idea of letting it write because I I care about my writing.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_03: And when when the the the writing just comes comes from nowhere,
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_03: that's disconcerting to me.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_03: But I find it's very good for roughing things
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  SPEAKER_03: out or just, you know, I write something
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_03: and the sentence is a little awkward or something,
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_03: I'll I'll let ~ Gemini k take a crack at it.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_03: I almost never will put in what j verbatim what Gemini generated,
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_03: but it all often get me over a hump and say,
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_03: yeah, this is the way I should say it.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: Why did you pick Gemini as opposed to one of the you know,
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  SPEAKER_02: 'Cause I Well I
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: the other three?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_03: You know.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_03: I started out on Chat GPT like everyone.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_03: ~ But I just have a a lot of faith in Google is what it comes down to.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_03: More more much more so than say Sam Altman.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: Got that.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, you it's been
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: Well but but
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: thirteen or fourteen years since you were at Google.
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  SPEAKER_02: is it a place you would be willing to work now?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_03: given
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_03: willing to work now.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_03: I'm too old.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_03: ~
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I'm too old and I'm too rich.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_03: You know, there's there's no financial incentive for working there.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, occasionally I might help someone with a little,
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_03: but I don't want to be paid, because being paid puts pressure on me.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_03: And I d I don't need the pressure,
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want the pressure.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I was thinking more about the political and ethical culture.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: You know, when when you were at Google,
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: you know, twelve, fourteen
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_02: years ago, it was a different place.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there there's an employee petition circulating now to try
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: to block the deal that they're that it's doing with the Pentagon,
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: to integrate.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_03: ~ d did they sign it?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_03: And it already failed.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_03: They already signed that contract,
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_03: I think.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: As as far as it's
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: I mean
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_03: it's it's maybe for the next time,
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_03: you know.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: How does that strike you?
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: Is that a sea change in the entire industry?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: Would the Google where you worked have done that?
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Google's changed dramatically and also I'll tell you I hated reading
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_03: the New York Times article about Sergei placating Trump and all that.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe I'll talk to him about it someday or whatever,
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_03: but it's just just a heavy heart that Sergei's got a ma MAGA girlfriend.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_03: ~ I don't like that.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_03: And you know,
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_03: and that helps indicate to me,
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_03: well, Google maybe isn't maybe I put it on too much of a pedestal.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_03: Google when I started there, it was I thought I was kinda late starting there in
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_03: two thousand five.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_03: But it was yeah,
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_03: very much a different place.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_03: I As I think Apple as well.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_03: You know, my experience with Apple was earlier,
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_03: but I I still have friends there.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_03: It's very different than when when I was there.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_03: As a as it must be really to you know,
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_03: they have like a hundred thousand people.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, is it purely a matter of size or
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: is it more than that?
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_03: I think the values of the founders,
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_03: the you know, the just the values of the company,
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_03: ~ start out at least at with as the values of the founders.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_03: And I think it makes a makes a pretty big difference.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe not as, you know, you you're now steering a battleship instead
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_03: of a little kayak.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_03: But the same principles apply,
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_03: I think.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Andy, I still remember a conversation we had when I was mulling over whether
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: to leave General Magic.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: And you explained to me that you had more than once
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: in your career seen how companies start with people who have a vision,
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: and founders are motivated and engaged by an idea.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: The way you put it to me was sooner or later the suits arrive.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's just the way things go.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's a natural evolution.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: And the suits are there to do something different.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: They're not there to innovate per se.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: They're there to make a business remain profitable.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_03: And it just through
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_03: And the startup people go on to their next startup.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: the next thing.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly what you said.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I still remember you framing it in those terms.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it really was helpful
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: for a young kid to understand that A) that dynamic existed and B) that
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: the choice was mine.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: Did I want to be at places that were at the early stage when
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: there was a certain kind of culture,
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: or did I want to stick it out and be at companies that were further along
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: and just had a different set of priorities.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: And the thing I wonder about AI is
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: how much that founder ethos or motivation persisted?
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: it seems like
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: We're here.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: there's really a race to commercial success and maybe a race to the bottom
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: in terms of companies being willing to deal with anyone or have their
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: AI used for any purpose.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: Do you detect that there's a kind of idealism put the user firstness
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: to the AI industry, or do you think that ship has sailed?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_03: Well the AI industry is ~ poisoned by money,
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_03: you know, in for the last year or two.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_03: It's insane how much they're they're paying people with fairly narrow
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_03: but deep technical expertise.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's just you know,
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_03: everyone would be better off if there wasn't ~ so much speculative
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_03: financial enthusiasm, let's call it.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_03: Whatever.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's not it's not what Yeah.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_03: ~ I think it's called greed.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_03: But Steve Jobs, founder of Apple,
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_03: one of my favorite quotes that he liked to say is,
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_03: the only way to do great work is to love what you do.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_03: If you don't love it, the user will feel that.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_03: You know, why should they love your software if if you don't?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_03: ~ And then of course Steve's partner,
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_03: Steve Wozniak, purely operated on that principle.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_03: By the time I got there I got to know him he wouldn't do a thing if
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_03: if he didn't love it.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_03: It was a real challenge for the product managers
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_03: at Apple because if you really needed to get it done,
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_03: you ha had to like trick Woz into doing it.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it you can't really generalize it.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_03: But I'm I'm lucky that the forces came around when I was young enough
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_03: and enthusiastic enough to do something and make a difference.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_03: y You have to be lucky to get to exercise your values in an effective
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_03: way in the world.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_03: Most people don't.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_03: They try, but you know, things are complicated and they'll they'll occasionally
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_03: be bad guys, guys
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_03: who don't believe in the things that I do and they try to thwart it.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I'm coming to mind John Louis Gassade killing HyperCard multiple times.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_03: And Bill Bill's story is in order to get HyperCard to ship,
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_03: they had to do it when John Louis was on vacation.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_03: Pretty amazing, but true.
• 13:48
  Yeah.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: And for those youngsters out there,
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: Hyper card was kind of a the the concept of pages linking to each other.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: Is that a fair statement?
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, I mean HyperCard made a big difference for that.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_03: R really HyperCard was about end user programming.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_03: Not so different than vibe coding,
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_03: right?
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_03: It was the vibe coding of the eighties.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: But w was there an inherent tension though,
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: at General Magic between your freewheeling sense of I'm doing what I love
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: and that's gonna make what we do worthwhile.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: Was there an inherent tension between that and the commercial realities that
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_03: Sure, it's called it's called a schedule.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: the company?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_03: w
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_03: And the schedule by design is unrealistic because the various
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_03: is needed at ASAP.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_03: So ~ it just put a lot of pressure on things.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_03: It certainly doesn't help the quality of the software to be you know,
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_03: to be missing sleep for two weeks,
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_03: to meet your deadline.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: Y yeah.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: One of the questions that,
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: you know, the documentary asks is,
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_02: how do you do a minimum viable product for a moonshot?
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_02: Could we have done it faster?
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: Could it have been simpler?
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_03: You know, those kinds of questions.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that was my my my
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_03: single biggest mistake at General Magic was to to not try to do something thin
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_03: and boil down and you know simple to to to get it out in the market quickly.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_03: I I just I indulged myself because I had a whole set of opinions about
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_03: how to make fun software.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_03: I sometimes I was wasn't pragmatic about it,
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_03: you know.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_03: I was convinced I was doing something that's right for the long run.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_03: Just because, you know, you're responsible for,
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_03: dozens, ultimately hundreds of people.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_03: You can't can't just do what you think is fun.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_03: I also have been conditioned after General Magic.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_03: I I had a startup that I was idealistic and wanted to really
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_03: solve some problems in the world.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_03: but it it flopped.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_03: We couldn't get our second round for investment.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_03: Not so much because of the qualities of what we were doing.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_03: But it was because of the macro forces in the software industry.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: in ~ you know yeah, yeah.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_03: I'm talking about Eazel
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: You're talking about Eazel right?
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_03: You're you're talking about easel?
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_03: ~
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_03: and Eazel couldn't raise money.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_03: We didn't get a chance to watch our ideas flop.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_03: They flopped because ~ the industry wasn't funding startups anymore for
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_03: a period of about a year.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_03: That was around 1999 to 2001.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_03: ~
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_03: just the gears of the machine kind of froze up.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, another thing I was wondering about is what draws somebody to a project.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: My understanding was that although you found Marc a very compelling ~ communicator,
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: that really it was your relationship with Bill that led you to General Magic.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: And certainly there was an amazing team assembled there on the basis
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: of a a really good feeling that people had about the prospect of working there,
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: that there were not just really talented people,
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: but there was a culture of fun and team and whatnot.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: How did Bill impact you in terms of that decision to join?
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, there's
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_03: no question I I wouldn't have worked on General Magic if it wasn't for Bill.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_03: the main reason I I started working on General Magic was a chance
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_03: to work closely with Bill again.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_03: There we we had a guy, I don't know if anyone remembers him,
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_03: but a a guy named Dave Crocker.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_03: Do you remember him?
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_03: He he was an engineer guy.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_03: His brother was one of the guys who wrote many of the basic internet protocols.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_03: Steve Crocker, I think.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm probably not even
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_03: Hmm.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_03: Hello.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_03: remembering their their names right.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_03: But he sat me down three or four times telling me how we have to
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_03: use the internet protocols.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_03: Jim White,
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_03: invited me to the decades-long story of the war between academia
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_03: and commercial concerns like AT&T.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_03: Two parallel sets of standards developed,
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_03: you know, about the same time.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_03: One that was free and open, ~ one that was closed and ultimately all about money,
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_03: We picked the wrong side.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_03: You know, that
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_03: Ha.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_03: it giv gives gives gives me chills to think about it,
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_03: but really, the internet protocols,
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_03: if we had done that, you know,
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_03: SMTP for mail is literally one tenth as complex as what we were doing.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it was ~ so much better.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_03: but we we had you know, how do you make money question.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, you know, we're doing something cool,
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_03: but we can't keep doing it if we don't make money.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_03: And in that meeting we came up services.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_03: And that was before
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_03: we had Telescript or anything like that,
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_03: but we knew we had to have a communication service which had some justification
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_03: in the product, but was really about business model.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: Well again, that's one of the questions.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: ~ Could we have done without most or all of the partners?
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I think
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: ~ I that's a really difficult question for me.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_03: We c not all the partners.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_03: We you need partners,
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_03: We needed somebody to make the stuff.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: but yes.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no,
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_03: But
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_03: but
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_03: it was tight.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_03: We had something tight and reasonably idealistic and you know,
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_03: with with the three, you know,
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_03: Apple, Sony and Motorola.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: ~ that that that th those are important.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_02: remember we had an advisory committee.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_02: It was Tribble,
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_02: ~ Mitch Kapoor, Alan Kay,
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: and John Warnock.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_02: And we had a meeting with them to talk about cer you know,
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_02: Mitch Kapoor.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_02: w which
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_02: direction should and they unanimously said,
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: Don't go near AT&T.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_02: They will kill you.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: And
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_02: Marc's response was to dissolve the advisory council.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, I tell that story man many times.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_02: But so do you think that was
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: I was that one of the roots of why we didn't make it?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_02: That choice, do you think?
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_03: Well AT
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_03: and T was one of the roots and that whole meeting was about should
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_03: we do partner with AT and T, our esteemed
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_03: advisors say no, they'll chew you up and spit you out.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_02: Well their seventeen million dollars helped us.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_02: I mean that you know, they put in more they put in more equity
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: And but there's also
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: than anybody else, you know, more than almost twice as much.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: ~
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_02: That was the problem.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: We weren't gonna get venture funding.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't know where else we're we were gonna find the money,
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_03: you know.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_03: But we
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_03: could have gotten venture funding.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_03: You think so?
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you're you were just saying how excited everyone was about what we were doing.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_03: It was a big secret, but the best people in the valley wanted to come work there.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_03: That doesn't sound like a recipe for
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but VCs
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_02: V VCs would have wanted to see an eighteen month time to market.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_03: Well, they would first first they would have wanted to see ~ compelling demo,
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_02: right?
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_02: When we did the public offering roadshow,
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: we did not present financials.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it was crazy.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: It was crazy to have your lawyer on the on the roadshow.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, we we didn't talk about financials.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: We we just demoed the device.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_02: Th
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_02: People didn't care about the financial,
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: the business model.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: And that was again, another fatal weakness that we had is that we didn't have
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_02: Sounds a little bit like the
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_03: to worry about it either.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_03: AI companies, right?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_03: They're they're they're not look they're not looking
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_03: Well that was where I was headed,
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_03: yeah.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_03: at at the bottom line yet.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_03: Every time you use one of the models is it's costing them the more money than it's
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_03: costing you.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_03: ~ and because we're in that phase,
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_03: it's ~ it's ~ gold rush
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well that
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: that I think gets to an interesting issue about the business model
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: in the following sense:
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: that we're now the product.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: you don't pay for your email account because
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_03: You're talking about a advertising.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: right because advertisers are paying for everything.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: And that pushes society and politics in a certain direction.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: And there was a much different model,
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: as I understand it, with respect to Personal Link,
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: the AT&T service that went along with the General Magic Magic Cap
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: -powered devices, which was the expectation that you would pay for things,
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: that the consumer would be paying.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: They wouldn't be the product, they would be the buyer.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Mike and Andy, you were much closer to the business model than I was,
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: but I'm curious to hear each of your thoughts on how a business model
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: can have unintended consequences socially and politically.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: Well
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: I mean when you commodify user data and that that becomes what you sell.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_02: sell to advertisers and and more nefarious actors.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: And and right, and but you know,
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: thirty years ago the idea of advertising on a service like Personal Link didn't
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_02: I mean no it never... it never occurred to anyone that there would be
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: ads on the service, right?
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: Andy?
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean that was never I mean it was never in anybody's v view,
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: Because mainly
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: right?
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_02: because people thought it wouldn't work.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_03: It's they they'd put ads on there if they thought it was gonna make money.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_03: But they didn't.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_03: And it's interesting,
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_03: you know, 'cause we were, five,
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_03: ten years before that
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_03: you know, very interested in using the service model,
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_03: monthly fee or whatever.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_03: When I did think about ads, I immediately thought,
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_03: Well, how do you strip the ads?
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_03: You know, that's what everyone's
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_03: gonna be gonna want.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: Well, in terms of you know, you had said earlier on that it wasn't clear
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_02: to you how guardrails and constraints could be applied to frontier models for AI.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_02: When Jim and and Rich were doing Telescript,
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_02: they they built some deterministic safety provisions into the architecture.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: We're way past that point, it seems,
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_02: in the AI space.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_02: What else could be done to try to make it safer from
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: a public health perspective for AI to be in the world?
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well and it's not just a AI,
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_03: but a broader set of concerns about you know,
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_03: like current systems are taking your clicks and doing what you want it's more about
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_03: the ethics of advertising.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 23:18
  ~
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_03: Users and developers both both take the path of least resistance.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_03: So it it's interesting to think what is the path of least resistance there where
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_03: you gotta be making money but you also ~ gotta make the user happy
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_03: and thrilled.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because you know, you look at you look at different the evolution
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: of safety in different industries.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it took sixty years to get safe cars,
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_02: even though the technology
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_02: was there long before it was deployed.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, seat belts existed in the fifties,
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_03: ~
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: but people didn't use them.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_02: And do we have that much time to figure
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: out a safety regime for this wave of innovation?
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I think
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_03: I think some some of the companies,
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_03: especially the s smaller ones,
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_03: OpenAI and Anthropic, they're a little disingenuous in hyping up the dangers.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_03: Because they're not dangers unless you're wildly successful.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_03: And they wanna be wildly successful.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, there there are real dangers.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_03: ~ I don't subscribe to the school that the Singularity's gonna happen,
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_03: in the next five years or whatever.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_03: That's a little bit self serving.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_03: I like the idea of the Singularity when I first read about it when I
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: was in grad school, and it's it's a compelling idea and I
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know though, there's something about me that I think there's
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_03: s something a little bit hollow there to think you know your your software
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_02: is so good it's dangerous.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_03: We're we're in a funny interim period where we're still,
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_03: you know, half the in the old world,
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_03: actually probably more like seventy percent in the old world,
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_03: but this new world is visible,
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_03: it's kind of inevitable, but no one really knows the parameters.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_03: I like thinking, even though I'm retired,
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_03: I like thinking about well, what what should the UI be for something really new?
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_03: That's just fun, fun to think about.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_02: Well, ~ you know, think of the smartphone and its impact on society,
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: right?
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, your instantiation,
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_03: your and Bill's and the team's instantiation of the first would-be smartphone.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_02: Were there design choices that could have been made then that might have lessened
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_02: its role now as a gateway to addictive and exploitative businesses
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_02: and psychographic targeting.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: s surveillance and all the rest.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_03: to be made there?
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, we
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_03: we definitely went overboard in some areas and not far enough in others.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_03: We weren't hardly thinking about the privacy issues.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't even know if we should.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_03: We we would have had to be a little more successful than we were to even make
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_03: a serious effort at protecting users from things.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_03: There's not enough users.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_03: there.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, it like even even the iPhone,
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_03: you know, which is the canonical breakthrough everyone talks about,
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_03: it took four or five years for it to be become a breakthrough.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_03: iPhone was shipping in two years and people still thought it wasn't necessarily
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_03: a viable product.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_03: Also, Before
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_03: we forget, I'd love to talk a little bit about Newton as one of
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_03: the other forces that came into play.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_02: miss Yeah.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_02: Now go go for now.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_03: well Apple was our f our parent,
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_03: our benefactor.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_03: There definitely wouldn't have been a General Magic.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_03: There might have been something using General Magic type ideas,
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_03: but no General Magic without Apple.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_03: And then, you know, my really good friend who I care a lot about,
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_03: Steve Capps,
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_03: we had this big meeting at Bill's house with Sculley and part of what
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_03: we were trying to do was convince Capps he should work on it.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_03: But he had already had a team he was loyal to with Newton and stuff.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_03: I still have the highest respect for Capps.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: I just had lunch with him about three weeks ago.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_03: But
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_03: they reached a point, and this is my retelling of of what Newton was,
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_03: but they reached a point they were making something that was an eight and
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_03: a half by eleven page, they called it,
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_03: the Dynabook version of New Newton,
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_03: was projected to cost five thousand dollars and was totally different than Marc's
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_03: Marc's models.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_03: And then it internally flopped
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_03: without even being a product.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_03: Some of the main technology they were putting bets
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_03: on disintegrated.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_03: They saw that the $5,000 thing wasn't right.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_03: So they were gonna have to essentially s fire the team or whatever.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_03: But one one guy really, Michael Tchao had the idea well,
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_03: the right thing for us to do is pivot toward
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_03: making something based on Marc's models,
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_03: you know, a handheld di device.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_03: I think that that could be if you're intellectually honest,
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_03: that could have been the right thing and you can't be too mad at them
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_03: for w wanting to survive.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_03: But the evil part was that they didn't tell us.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_03: They decided to to to to copy us.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_03: They knew what we're doing,
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_03: but for whatever reason, they decided it was right to make it a surprise.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_03: And I still remember the sinking feeling,
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_03: but I mean I couldn't believe they would do that.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_03: So that's part of the downfall not only of General Magic,
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_03: but the downfall of Newton.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_03: We were both way early.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_03: I mean that's what history shown,
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_03: right?
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_03: MagicLink would have had a much better chance of success if it came
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_03: out five years later than it did.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_03: But Newton, you know, it's different when,
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_03: you know, they they knew all the vocabulary of Marc's vision and all of that,
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_03: decided to
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_03: make it a sort of zero sum game.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_03: And so it ended up, Newton became a death slog to the Newton team,
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_03: right?
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_03: 'Cause they knew we were coming behind their heels.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_03: What they had to do was come out a year before us,
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_03: which they did.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_03: But there was a huge human price paid for that,
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_03: including a suicide.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_03: ~
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_03: And so clearly wasn't good for them to do that.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_03: What we should have done is they should have proposed,
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_03: well, let's merge!
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_03: When their other version of Newton wasn't viable instead
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_03: of copying us or copy us but join us,
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_03: ~ and maybe maybe then it could have succeeded,
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_03: you know.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_03: But it was profound to ~ get
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_03: you know, dumped on like we did.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: Do think that the Newton discredited the category of the handheld
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_03: Palm Palm came along just that same time.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_03: And was pretty successful.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_03: So
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_03: it wasn't discredited.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_03: They there was a big success.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_03: It just wasn't from us or from Apple.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_02: it's I mean I thought it I thought it discredited the category
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_02: to some extent because it became a laughing stock.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: Because of the handwriting recognition
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: new new and
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: glitches and the Simpsons making fun of it and Dilbert
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_02: making fun of it and all that.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: I I mean I think it had some impact in in calling into doubt the viability
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_02: of a mobile device.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: And Palm was successful because it did so little.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_03: Well the
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_03: yeah, the key thing that Palm did,
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_03: that we kinda thought about but but backed away from it.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_03: But they depended on the personal computer.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't a standalone device.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_03: That's a stark difference and it turns out they probably made the better choice.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_02: Well and they and they moved in the smartphone direction,
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_02: once H. P. brought them
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_02: Treo.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_02: but it was too late.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_02: BlackBerry had already won that battle.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: Well, y y you know, we always market it as and I remember the phrase,
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: communications at its core.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it was not a personal digital assistant.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_03: It
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: it was a it was a communicator.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: We called it, the inside the building,
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: PIC, PIC, personal intelligent communicator.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: And we saw that as the killer app for small devices,
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: and I I think that
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: history has proven that that was correct.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder with AI, what is the killer app?
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: Why can't there be two killer apps or three killer apps?
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, sure, sure.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: ⁓
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: But we're in a stage where you know,
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: the the volume of the hype, I mean what can't AI do,
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: which to me is a tell that the people marketing it don't have a really solid,
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: compelling, focused message when you talk about it it you know,
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: being all in one and it does everything.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_02: Well, their notion that it's gonna transform every conceivable business process,
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_02: right?
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: You know, i in healthcare,
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_02: especially in diagnostics and in protein folding and the development
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_02: of new drugs and things like that,
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_02: it's clearly going it I mean, those are spaces where it can do real good
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_02: and is already being deployed to do important things.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_02: From weeding out erroneous mammogram readings,
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_02: to improving imaging interpretation,
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_02: things like that.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that this notion that it's the Swiss Army knife
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_02: for everything is is is inhibiting our imaginations about where it could yield real
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_02: benefit.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_02: But again that goes back to how how do we preserve
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: the notion that innovation
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_02: makes people's lives better and not worse?
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_02: Because what we've seen mobile,
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_02: social and the internet do is to make people's lives worse as well as better.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_02: And
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_02: and how how do we constrain that this time around?
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_02: Well, first
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_03: you have to identify what it is that's making it worse,
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_03: you know, and then think about how you mitigate that.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_03: And so partly in order to figure that out,
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_03: you need to have your users using it a lot before it'll reveal the pain points.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_03: So some of it is just to have that as one of your basic goals,
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_03: which I think the AI world pays lip service to.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe it's real, but they're they're afraid they're gonna destroy mankind
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_03: or something like that.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_03: The first step is just being aware that it could.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_03: We didn't really even have that level of awareness and neither did Steve Jobs,
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_03: neither did Apple.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_03: They didn't think they'd be so successful that they'd ruin
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: people's lives.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: One of the
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: things I always wonder with technology is whether people notice any change
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: in their own mindset or how they approach the world based on that technology.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, cell phones, not only did I communicate a lot more with people,
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: but the nature of making plans and the nature of being on time and things like that
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: really shifted for me because of being able to be instantly in touch with people.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm wondering, Andy, if you noticed for yourself,
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: for example, using AI has changed the way you think about solving problems
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: or what's interesting to work on,
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: etcetera.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well definitely, you know,
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_03: programming
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_03: and really creation of all kinds is just so much more frictionless and you know,
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_03: you can see beyond the old horizon.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_03: But it
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: sounds like it's it's unleashed
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: or it's enabled your creativity as a poet and lyricist,
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: and to the extent that you still program,
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: it's allowed you to focus on higher value work or work that requires human ingenuity
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: and that AI can't do as well.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: has that been your experience of how it's empowered you?
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's it's almost surprising to say this,
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_03: but there's a lot of ingenuity in in I'm saying not my ingenuity,
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_03: it's it's the software that trained neural nets.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_03: It seems like it has ingenuity.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_03: It kind of blows me away and some of the time,
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_03: not all by any means all of the time.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_03: but if you're using it to like try to write fiction,
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_03: it's interesting to see what it comes up with.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_03: And sometimes it comes up with really great ideas.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: A thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, and it's profound for an old guy like me that the UI these days
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_03: and in the days ahead is English.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you you just talk to the thing and there's no rules or whatever.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_03: You just hey that doesn't work,
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_03: try it this way, whatever and I imagine it really will be if it's
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_03: not already incredibly empowering to
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_03: high school kids etc.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_03: can
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_03: Everyone can program.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_03: I was preaching that that was the world I wanted
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_03: to help create.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_03: And now that it's been created,
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_03: we think of how do we control it,
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_03: shackle it, put up barriers.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_03: Just weird.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: What's also
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: Well
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: interesting to me, I mean, you talked about how server time or mainframe time
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: was so valuable that you had kind of had to do think everything through before
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: you dialed up the mainframe.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that that created a discipline
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: of writing really tight code and really making sure that you were being efficient in
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: what you were building,
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: And
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: now we're in an age of AI where,
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: you know, experimentation and playing around with the tool is part and parcel
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: of the experience.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's a much different way of interacting with
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_02: but it's illusory.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's illusory though.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_02: Users are not paying the cost for playing around with the tools.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_02: it it's very much like the early stages of other industries.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_02: you know, where where where people absorb a lot of losses in order to build scale.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_02: we're and when users have to pay the actual cost of the tools they're using,
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_02: are those costs gonna come w wh where's the where's gonna
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_02: be the intersection between affordability and profitability for the industry?
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_03: me is
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_03: That's
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_03: really decided by the investors.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean they gave Amazon 16 years to get to profitability.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_02: Or like ride sharing, you know,
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_02: Uber and and Lyft didn't charge very much at the beginning in in order
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_02: to build their user bases, but
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: now their prices are much higher because they're not absorbing the cost.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_02: We're paying for what it actually costs.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_02: Take those rides.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_03: so
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I gotta
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_03: say that I love taking Waymos.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_03: I really feel like ~
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_03: Mm.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_03: I made it I made it to the future.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_03: I was at Google while that was still somewhat of a pipe dream,
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_03: but still incredibly impressive on their part that they were able to carry a twelve,
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_03: thirteen year development cycle to market.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, when I was a kid growing up in Pittsburgh,
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: they had the autonomous vehicle project at CMU and they had a a vehicle
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: and then cables running to a van behind it,
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: driven by a human being because of all the computing power required and
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: you know, I remember a news story about how they achieved a top speed of like
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: a half a mile an hour, and they were elated at how fast the thing went,
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_01: you know.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: So
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: In just one lifetime, you know,
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: from that to what we have now.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's really stunning if you take a moment to consider it.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_03: In this ~ AI moment that we're in now,
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_03: it seems to me the VCs aren't exerting very much pressure when they're paying yeah,
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_03: new engineer, you know, just out of grad school and they're gonna
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_03: pay him five hundred thousand dollars a year or
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_03: where is that money coming from?
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_03: I I think I don't know I'm not sure.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_03: I mean Andreessen Horowitz.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_02: Right, they're herd animals now and
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_02: they're all Russian.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_02: This is 1849 for them,
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_03: Right, right.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_02: you know, and they're all gold rush victims.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, they were always
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_03: herd animals.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_03: Like I mean
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but but they were a little more rigorous.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_02: Remember we were we we were one of the first concept companies,
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_02: right?
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_02: And they they were not fond of concept companies back then,
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_02: right?
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_02: And there wouldn't have been a liquidity of that,
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_02: without revenue, let alone
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: profit.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, so
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, it's fun it's funny,
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_02: this is something of a reset for me,
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_02: Andy.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_02: I would have thought you would have been very skeptical
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_02: and and somewhat contemptuous of AI coding tools,
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_02: given your artistry.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_02: The fact that they enhance your ability to practice your craft,
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_02: that you feel that way is is something of a surprise for me.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, I mean I'm an excitable developer.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_02: Well you know, if you were gonna give a commencement speech at this point,
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_02: like Steve did, what what would you tell people who are coming out of college now?
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_02: What would you say?
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_03: G given
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_03: Well
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_03: the main point I'd make is just follow your heart.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_03: You know that Steve Jobs quote,
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_03: right?
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_03: The only way to make something great is to love what you do.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_03: So you gotta find what you love that other people will ~ join with you,
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_03: ~ fund it, but
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_03: I still always go it's just me and my my nature,
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_03: but it's just I wanna work on stuff that I want for myself.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's the the key.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_03: I I believe that was the key to Apple.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_03: Almost everything they succeeded at was something that they made because
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_03: it wasn't in the world and they wanted it to be.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_03: From the Apple II to the iPod to the iPhone.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we have a standard question that we ask interviewees.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: If you had a bumper sticker on your vehicle that summed up what you're all about,
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: what would it be?
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: What is Andy Hertzfeld's bumper sticker?
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: have to put some
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_03: I I I had a bumper sticker, not a bumper sticker,
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_03: but a license plate of something I was super proud of:
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_03: my license plate was MacWiz for a year or two.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_03: And I came to realize it was a big mistake to have that license plate because
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_03: any stranger that sees me leaving the car would see what my career
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_03: was and people would
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_03: start talking about it to me and you know,
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_03: hey, I wanted more privacy
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_03: than that.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_03: I've been
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_03: meaning to get one of those decals ⁓ about ~ Tesla,
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_03: A vanity point.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_03: A a vanity point,
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_03: yeah?
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_03: you know
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_03: saying, I bought this before Elon went nuts or something like that.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_03: 'Cause I am embarrassed driving the Tesla.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_03: And the sticker lets people know at least a little bit that you're not a total fool.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_02: The the ones I've seen are like this is econ friendly,
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_02: not Elon friendly.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the it's unfair
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: of me to ask the question, Andy,
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: because I don't know if you knew about it.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: But when I was at General Magic,
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: I had this old Honda Civic and I bought a couple sets of refrigerator magnets,
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: the alphabet magnets,
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: because I didn't like the idea of having just the same bumper sticker every day.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so on different days I would take out all the letters and spell
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: out a different message on the back of my car.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not fair to hold you to a single
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: a single bumper sticker as
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: the bottom line of who you are.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, I live in Washington,
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: DC now, and in this town hypocrisy never goes out of style.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: So
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: that's why I I ask a question that that I would never tolerate someone asking me.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_03: The coun the country is more fucked up than I thought it was possible to be.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_03: It's really amazing.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Lily Tomlin had a a great line of no matter how cynical you get,
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: you can never keep up.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it's
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: now more than ever.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and such uncertainty, you know,
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_03: about where's it gonna go.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_03: ~ very hard to say.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_03: You know, with with AI contributing a lot to that.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_03: Or the whole thing, I mean it I j I feel disgusted when I see someone would refer
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_03: to me as a "tech bro".
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_02: You're an anti-tech bro.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, how about a tech grandpa?
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_01: That to me has a
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: much homier feel to it.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: I qualify
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but I mean, you the Broliarchy is partly responsible for the pickle we're in.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_02: And, they're enabling fascism in ways that we would have never dream you know.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and so so many
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_03: it's they're denal the the you know,
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_03: tech people who suck up to Trump.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_03: W what could they really be thinking?
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_03: Just so short term.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_03: I they can't imagine there's long term benefit from
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know, just so embarrassing.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_03: But, you know,
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_03: I I guess I I don't understand human nature quite well enough.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, money was not the motivator for the General Magic
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_02: community.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_02: It really wasn't.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_02: some people made some money, most people didn't.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: And that wasn't what motivated people.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_02: It it was the idea of changing the world and making things better.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_02: And that's analogous, that's adjacent to politics.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_02: Government as a should be about making people's lives better.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so The working title for the book,
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_02: it's: From Jobs to Musk, How Tech Lost its Soul and How Can We Find It?
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_02: I do think the valley has turned rancid,
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_02: and that tech broliarchy, and its pursuit of political power ⁓ as well
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_02: as economic power has ⁓ really had disastrous consequences.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_02: What can we do to try to undo some of that?
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_03: The first thing is is I would broaden the concern.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_03: It's not just the tech industry.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_03: It's the country, the world has gone down some bad paths in the last five,
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_03: ten years.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_03: Some of it's the same the same forces.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_03: You couldn't solve just the tech industry without addressing the broader concerns.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_03: And then what my advice or what I practice is is not some grand plan.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_03: It's just each person in their day to day life has to get their values straight.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_03: If you're working just for the money,
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_03: there's nothing wrong with that.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_03: But you need to be honest about that.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_03: And ~ if enough people... and I I guess I'm an optimist in in many ways,
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_03: have always been
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_03: sort of an optimist that people will ~ get better.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_03: I I don't think you have to be an optimist to say that things
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_03: can be considerably better than they are now just because things are so bad now.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_03: But I think the the situation in in politics definitely needs
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_03: to be revamped somehow.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_03: And
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_03: I still think, you can do great work that you're proud of and if enough people
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_03: do that, things will get better.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_03: To me, your values are really everything.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's who you are.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_03: And sometimes you compromise,
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_03: often you compromise because, you know,
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_03: the world's not perfect.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_03: But you have to have a sense of right and wrong
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_03: in order to know how to do something right.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_03: So where do you get that from?
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_03: For me, I loved reading my whole life,
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_03: and I'm sure it shaped my values and I could tick through twenty different books
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_03: that ~ you know went inside me and still live there.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_03: ~ And then the other thing I've learned is on a whole other other level,
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_03: but it's just really important to be kind.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_03: Probably the biggest distinction between Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_03: Steve Jobs was unkind in in everything.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_03: Steve Wozniak is is incredibly kind.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_03: You know, that's what a lot of
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_03: what government and the tech stuff have in common is just it's like
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_03: the gold rush makes people, weird or disappointing and,
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_03: you know, just ~ try to intellectually feed yourself a a good diet
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_03: of books that matter.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_03: There's way more than you'll ever be able to consume,
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_03: but there's plenty to get a good start from.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Andy, I had to drive you back from a photo shoot with Wired magazine.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_01: It was the cover story.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: You guys were on a beach in Santa Cruz standing
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_01: in a phone booth that they had dragged there.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: It was called Bill & Andy's Excellent Adventure.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: ⁓
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: And my brother said to me, You're gonna get to have forty-five minutes alone
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: in the car with Andy Hertzfeld.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_01: You better have some good questions.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: Don't make small talk.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: And once you ask the question,
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: shut the F up and listen because he
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: this is Andy Herzfeld.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember one of the things you said was you said,
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: you know, I can understand that maybe the CEO is a hundred times more important than
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: somebody on the custodial staff.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_01: I can't believe they're a thousand or ten thousand times
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: more important.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: It just it just seems utterly implausible.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I don't remember much from 30 years ago,
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_01: but that
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: really stuck with me both as a way to navigate in terms of my values through life.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_01: And to me, ~ you know, I've always thought of you as just a mensch,
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: a a person who really has human concerns and concerns above commerce
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: and stock options and stuff like that.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_01: So that's one of the reasons I admire you so much.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: And you've been one of the formative figures in my life,
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_01: you know.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_01: My experience working with you and just listening to you and to me,
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: somebody a role model of you can do what you love and you don't have to sell out.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's luck involved and yeah,
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: there's some compromises involved,
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: but there is a way to stay true to your ideals and make a a r
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_01: a really meaningful contribution and have a rich life as a result of it.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_03: Well I was lucky I had er fairly early success,
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_03: just from being at Apple, which gives me the luxury of turning my nose down
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_03: at people who just wanna make money.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but the mensch part was still the one that counted.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_02: And same for me, Andy.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_02: I mean it was a real privilege to be part
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_02: of the original Magic adventure.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, you and Bill made it so special.
• 46:31
  So
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to General Magic and the Soul of Tech podcast.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: Tune into our Substack for more interviews
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_00: and articles at spellboundproductions.substack .
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: com.