Big Technology Podcast - BuzzFeed News executive editor Mat Honan on the "Zoom Class," NFTs, and San Francisco

Episode Date: March 24, 2021

BuzzFeed News executive editor Mat Honan has long covered the way society interacts with technology. He joins Big Technology Podcast this week to discuss the “Zoom Class,” the rise of NFTs, and how San Francisco may change after the pandemic.

Hey, Matt. Hello, Alex. How are you? I'm doing well. Good to see you again. I will read this ad and then we can just jump right into it. MediaOcean is for people who like to be efficient, like listening to this podcast at 2X speed. So I'm talking super slow to make sure this ad is super clear. If you work in advertising, go to Mediaocean.com slash big tech to watch highlights from the omnischannel imperative.

That's mediaocean.com slash big tech. Hello and welcome to the big technology podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversations of the tech world and beyond. Joining us today is one of the keenest observers of the tech world, full stop. and someone who helped turn me into a journalist during the five years I worked for him. Matt Honan is the executive editor at BuzzFeed News, the person who built the publication's award-winning Silicon Valley Bureau, and overall someone who I quite enjoy shooting The Breeze with about tech's role and society. Matt, welcome to the show.

Alex, I really appreciate you having me. It's been a long time coming, and I think we're slowly making our way through the whole BuzzFeed Bureau, so I'm really glad to have you here today. Thanks much for asking me. I'm just very happy that I got to come on before John Pachowski. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And I do apologize having Mac on before you, we had to spend the first five minutes of our conversation talking about whether it's okay to microwave salmon.

Now that he's not here, we can both agree the answer is definitely not. So it's it's a, it's just, it's a total way to alienate people. Yeah. It's not good. Seems to be Ryan's specialty. Great. Okay. So let's start with what this year of pandemic has done.

to accentuate divides in society and specifically what the role of technology has been. So there's this part of the population that's been able to, whether this thing from home and say in their jobs entirely from their kitchens, at full disclosure, I'm definitely one of them. People call them the Zoom class. Some of these folks who even moved en masse to smaller towns outside of cities. Now people are calling these Zoom towns, but others haven't had the luxury. And, you know, they've either lost their jobs or they've had to go out into the city. the real world to perform them.

So what do you think the implications are here, Matt? You know, does our society become more divided because of this? What happens? I mean, I feel like I should start by disclosing that I'm in Truckee right now. There we go. But we're not on Zoom, so. Or at least on the outskirts of it. Yeah.

Okay. So, yeah, I mean, like, like you also hear this called the Work from Home Class. Mm-hmm. I mean, there's like a couple like really interesting things there, right? I mean, so first of all, like, I think it's true that if you think about what this pandemic would have looked like 20 years ago when it would not have been possible to have a Zoom class or I work from home class or Zoom school or all that kind of stuff, like technology really in a lot of ways helped this from becoming a lot worse than it could have been. You know, it helped, it clearly helped reduce community spread. But it's deeply unfair, certainly, that like some people were basically able to ride it out at home, you know, often all being paid very well to do that. And, you know, it really just, you know, there's that, I think it's almost a cliche at this point about it.

I wish I didn't remember who said it first because it's a brilliant truth about the pandemic being the black light that exposed like all this, you know, all the problems in society. But I'm just, I feel like I've wandered away from your question now, but I'm, you know, I'm like, I'm like, you know, largely feel like this show that the technology can be a very positive, you know, can play a very positive role in society. The internet can play a very positive role in society. You know, I personally like have not been vaccinated yet and am not in a huge hurry to run out and get a vaccine because I feel like I've, well, look, man, I can work at home. I've been, you know, I've been fortunate enough that I can, you know, that I can connect on Zoom or Google Meet or, you know, whatever. And I can, you know, do all my work through this little box, which is, like, boring and, and, you know, life is, life is monotonous and it's been March for a year and all that kind of stuff. But, you know what? Like, it's, it's, it's pretty incredible that, that that actually worked, that, that, you know, helped. And, like, in some ways, like, it, you know, it was, you know, it was probably, I think, I think in some ways it was, it was, it was, it was just like a lot of, like, right stuff, right time in terms of the fact that it did work, you know, like, you worked on a story, uh, when this is all starting about video capabilities at, uh, you know, at, when, when, when, when, when the pandemic was, was getting going and like so many people had gone to Amazon web services. There was some,

bandwidth, you know, people had a fiber of the house. There's all this stuff. But, you know, it, it, it was really just, it's just deeply unfair that, I mean, it's deeply unfair that so many people got to rat it out of home, you know, um, and like, it's deeply unfair that like so many, you know, the kids who had the, whose families have the, the money to have a better computer and better internet connection got, you know, got a better education or got an education with some families, their kids just saddled alone at home all day while both their parents are essential workers. You know, it's been,

it's been, it's been, it's really exposed the divides in society and how, you know, just what kind of inequalities we have to work on as a society. I think that's more than anything else. Zoom Towns is just like the most obnoxious, like, strays I've heard in a long time, but it's, it's going to have a, I just think it's going to have a long-term transformative effect in society that I hope we can, we can make a positive one. Yeah, so let's talk about that effect. I mean, what do you think happens? I mean, there's got to be some, some, you know, we talk about the effect, but why don't we try to flush it out a little bit and talk about what that means? Yeah, I mean, I don't want to hurt the future. I mean, frankly, I just don't want

hurt the future. Like, I don't know. I don't know what it looks like, but I think that, um, I certainly hope that. Yeah, we could talk about where it might go. Yeah. Maybe we just stay away from that. I mean, I, I certainly hope that like, um, all these conversations that we've had about race and class in the past year aren't uh you know aren't aren't aren't for not and that all the things that we've learned about about um you know that who who has the privilege to do these things that we don't unlearn those and that i hope that we can i hope that we can you know make changes in society to make sure that the people who are least protected have better protections i just i firmly feel like if we don't learn lessons from this that we really failed as a society

We already failed to my response to the end of the commission of the government response. And I feel like we're going to really fail if we don't take lessons from this and try and make it a more equitable society. Yeah. My real concern is we already seem to have a country where people can't put themselves in their neighbor's shoes. And oftentimes it's not their neighbor, but the person that lives is zip code away. We have Democrats unable to understand Republicans, Republicans unable to understand Democrats. And I worry that this will just add another layer of division inside an already really divided country. I do, too.

I do hope that there is some good to come out of it and we can have some sort of realignment. I saw that there are, I saw something recently about the massive number of people who are registered as independence now, you know, versus four years ago, eight years ago. 12 years ago and it's been an increase yeah in a large and um you know i think that i think that's like a kind of a positive thing one of the worst things that we've done as a society i think is an american society is to divide everybody up into teams you know like like you know you're you're on you're on one side and and you know my party right or wrong kind of shit uh just it's been incredibly harmful, you know, and I think there's a, I hope there's a chance that we can, I hope we can learn from it. And, you know, people become more civic-minded and people

can, you know, get more involved. I think that, you know, I mean, personally, like, I, like, like all of a sudden I care a lot more about, about schools, you know, and not just my kids' schools but other kids schools you know it's it's uh molly hensley clancy wrote a story on schools in the spring and about all these kids who've just been completely you know wrecked by by the pandemic and left behind and you know i'm certainly not the only person talking about thinking about this but it's it's it's i think people are really thinking about that now and i hope that we continue to think about that i hope that we can you know do things like, you know, I don't know. Like, I mean, I hope that we can do things like make sure

that that all families can have, you know, can have fast internet at home. Like, why, why is that something that, why is that something that only, only wealthy families can pay for? Why can't you have more equitable distribution of broadband? Why can't there be broadband? Why can't there be more, you know, why can't we do more to have the government do a lot of infrastructure where places like, you know, I don't know, where there's not affordable internet that people can get it. Yeah. And there's also this other aspect of, so when I came, moved to San Francisco in 2015 to join your team, one of the things I told myself was, I want to be in the bubble. You know, I was in New York. And I was like, well, I'm not going to understand the tech industry until I'm in

the bubble until I'm going out to dinner and the people that I'm at, you know, having dinner with my friends are working at Facebook or working at Google, you know, where I'm online and I hear chit chat about, you know, how people are trying to build things. And then you start to understand the industry. And largely it's been a good bet. And I do wonder, like, you know, we talk about, there's a great, you know, podcast about coronavirus called In the Bubble. You know, and it seems like coronavirus has put more people, some people in bubbles and other people who haven't had. had the luxury. And I'm curious what you think that means for tech in particular, because tech already seemed, the tech development already seemed like it was happening in a bubble. Now it seems

to be further ensconced in a bubble. So, you know, I'm curious what you think that means in terms of people being able to build for everyone and not just, you know, the people who are, you know, zooming nine to five. I don't know, Alex. It's a great question, right? I mean, I think that, uh, some things maybe became like less bubbled like for example grocery delivery um you know my my uh my mother who's in her 70s and lives in uh you know a rural rural rural area and has never and is on a fixed income and doesn't you know have a whole lot of resources uh you know had never been able to grocery delivery now she can get grocery delivering curbs like their order online i get kept up and that kind of stuff and she's

it just wasn't like available in her area and the grocery stores that were there then kind of scrambled to implement it and you're seeing you know kind of the i think and hope you'll see some things like that right where like places that weren't traditionally tech like you're like a rural grocery store um become you know have these infusions of technology that that make them more more useful to people's lives that may be a dumb example but yeah i'm thinking about the builders of technology like are they gonna you know because they've been less we have them listening to the show so i'm curious like what you think you know if they you know they're less exposed to um you know folks who don't work in the tech industry and of course

i guess we'll go back to normal potentially in a couple of months but i'm curious what you think that means yeah so i think what you're saying is like of people's ability to write it out at Zoom, does that mean that they're going to now have even less empathy than they already did have for people who they're not having contact with? Is that, that's a more blunt way of putting it than I did. But why don't you answer that question?

I'd like to hear your thoughts on it. I mean, it's concerning. It's definitely concerning, you know? I mean, there was a story about giraffe, but did you see the giraffe money story? Oh, I saw it. I forgot what the reference was, but you have enough money you could buy a giraffe is that what it was right right like even

thinking like when you when your company goes public yeah yeah are you going to get giraffe money from from this IPO or just uh you know you know or just fancy dog money i don't know um and you want to have giraffe money right i mean just like even that those discussions are taking place is you know is it's messed up i mean i mean the u.s is pretty messed up um i think a lot of that, though, is due to, like, long-term tax policy, long-term policies around race, long-term policies around who got to get a loan to buy a home, that type of thing. But it's not, it's, like, I would hope that the people who are listening to this podcast, who are the builders, are thinking about the, you know, kind of unglamorous middle class

and working class and working poor who, you know, are not living in those bubbles and are not, you know, are not, are not able to be on Zoom all day. There's this new ad from a gig economy company basically saying I'm my own CEO. Do you know what I'm talking about? In spirit, but not in this specific example. It's a I'm not going to say the company's name, but there's a company, there's a company that maybe they'll sponsor your show at some point. So there's there's a, there's a company that that has a new ad about a, you know, where a one of their drivers is, you know, sort of like I'm my own CEO, you know, and it just, it struck me as tone deaf. I think it struck a lot of people's tone deaf, because yeah, your own CEO, you don't have health benefits. You don't have, you don't have, you know, you don't have unemployment benefits. You don't have, you know, you don't have, you don't have, you know, you don't have, you don't have, you know, you don't have.

don't have any of the kind of safety nets that come with full employment. And actually, you're not even your own CEO because you don't really even set your outward. I mean, you can get managed by an algorithm. Yeah. And like that that mindset could come, you know, could come out. You know, now is like shocking to me and appalling.

There are so many people who have, you know, we just talk about these people as a central workers, yet we treat them as if they are completely inessential. And it's, it's I really, I just you know, it's discouraging to me that people don't have more empathy for the people who are,

it's discouraging me that you could have so little empathy, I guess, that you might not see, see that as a problem. And meanwhile, there's, you know, there's a thing going on in San Francisco right now. There was a driver, I believe it's an Uber driver, maybe a bus driver who, you know, was assaulted by some people who, who, you know, because he had asked him to wear his mask in the car.

And, you know, people are out there scrambling and working hard and, like, putting themselves at risk so that other people are able to be at home and, you know, and sit there on, on Zoom and Google Docs and, you know, get your work done and check your workflow in Asana, all that kind of stuff you know it happens because other people ventured out um and took risks and i totally just hope we think about them yeah so speaking of giraffe money we have to build on this i did want to get a chance to ask you what you think about this whole nfti craze the non fungible tokens and the fact that bitcoin is going to the moon um and i think you still have like uh you know a mountain full of Bitcoin sitting in some wired server somewhere back from your wired days.

So does this all seem? They burned that, actually. So what happened? They burned the server. So tell the story. I mean, we should tell the story of the wired Bitcoin server if you're able to me. Yeah. I mean, this wasn't me, but it was, it was while I was there.

And it's pretty amazing. I believe it was Bob McMillan, who's now at the Wall Street Journal, who had a, had a butterfly labs Bitcoin mine and it was in wired's like gadget closet you know and it's just in there turning away mining Bitcoin and what year was this

I'm going to say 2012 maybe 2013 and at first it's just like in there churning out stuff at like whatever Bitcoin was at the time even when it was like 100 bucks a coin it was not, you know, like nobody really thought about it as being a big problem.

Then all of a sudden Bitcoin shot up like, I think it was like a thousand bucks or something. You know, I'm not going to get these numbers right. And it became a problem. And people were like, wait a second, this stuff could really, you know, like it's a thousand bucks today. It could be 50,000 bucks tomorrow, which I don't think anyone believed. But like, here we are. Yeah, here we are. And there was a big debate internally over what we should do with it.

And I remember, I remember Adam Rogers, who's a. long time writer and editor there who um who's on the science desk there um you know making the case that like we should we should give that money to charity um we should be like like there are people sleeping on the street and like we you know if we're gonna you know we can't we can't keep this and sit on this sit on this this bitcoin stash because it could you know in some ways compromise our our integrity i don't necessarily think i believe that but you know i mean i don't why it could still be sitting on the bitcoin and at this point i think i think we're talking like i think it was i want to say it's some of the neighborhood of 10 to 15 bitcoin you know something like

it had mined several but not like a lot um you know not like it didn't have like a thousand bitcoin or whatever it wasn't that early and anyway uh at some point after after a lot of arguing over it i don't remember who was arguing what side other than adam uh because i remember Adam was in the way that he could be sometimes very animated about it. They made the decision basically to get rid of the key. And so they, you know, they burned the key. And once they did that, I mean, there's no getting it back. You can't get it.

And so, yeah, I mean, so, and actually we were talking about this the other day. I was talking about it with your, with your, I think with your former guest, Ryan Mack. I'm not sure. maybe actually maybe it was you Alex when we were talking last week but it would be like how much should it like like when they when they when they when they trashed it I mean if it was

I mean let's say it was 10 Bitcoin I don't know it would be worth what half a million bucks now you know I mean it was it was a substantial you know it's a substantial amount of money now in a way that it wasn't when they got rid of it so I can't believe they're like and what do I think about NFTs I think they're wait wait before

I think they're yeah okay okay sorry sorry let's do that how like just just give us your approximate guess of how much money was in that wired bitcoin server how much money did they burn it must have been i mean it had to be more than 10 i think at the time it was i i just don't remember i'm sorry i mean it's been several years uh i believe it was 10 to 15 bitcoins what they had and so i believe at the time it would have been 10 to 15 10 to 15 thousand dollars do you kick yourself for not not buying uh bitcoin when you knew it was happening back in the day. What do you mean? I'm kicking myself for not buying at $20,000. I mean, if you were, if, if, if you think that way, though, like, you just have to, you have to think like, uh, I don't know, no. And I think, I think you, I think about like, um, I think you have to think about what is when, what, like, what is, uh,

you can't just think about what could have been. You got to kind of go back to that moment in time and really think about it. There was a point in time when it Gizmodo, I want to say it was John Herman. Maybe someone else who was there bought some Bitcoin for a story and when it was still trading for pennies, a coin. And they like had to send a muddy order to somebody like who literally went by the name Morpheus. You know? I mean, it's, you know, who could have seen? that it became that. I actually did buy some Bitcoin, which I wish I still was holding

for a story one time. And like it was, I got beat by Cash Hill, who wrote another story about living on Bitcoin for a week, which is what I wanted to do. But, you know, like, when you think about like the, I heard somebody making the case, like, when you think about the million dollar pizzas or whatever or whatever cash spent, you know, she spent, you spent some fortune on a, you know, on a, on a, on a Bitcoin sushi dinner, I mean, it wasn't worth anything back then, you know, and it became worth stuff because people bought pizza and sushi dinners. Like, that's, that's why it's worth something now.

I don't know. Do you think it's going to crush? You know, when I said about not predicting the future earlier, I mean, I think it's, I think it's less likely to have a, I think it's less likely to be valueless now than it was because there's so many institutional people in it. I have no idea where the money is going and what's happening with it. Can I talk about NFTs? Yeah, yeah.

Let's do it after the break because looks good cliffhanger and it seems like you're going to have a response to it. So why don't we do that, play the ad and then we'll come back and we'll go bonkers on NFTs taking this in a direction we never anticipated, but let's have some fun. We'll be right back on the big technology podcast with Matt Honan. Stick around and we'll see you on the other side of this break. Hey everyone, let me tell you about The Hustle Daily Show, a podcast filled with business, tech news, and original stories to keep you in the loop on what's trending. More than 2 million professionals read The Hustle's daily email for its irreverent and

informative takes on business and tech news. Now, they have a daily podcast called The Hustle Daily Show, where their team of writers break down the biggest business headlines in 15 minutes or less and explain why you should care about them. So, search for The Hustle Daily Show and your favorite podcast app, like the one. you're using right now. And we're back for the second half of the big technology podcast with Matt Hohn and executive editor at BuzzFeed News.

He hired me into the brand new Silicon Valley Bureau at BuzzFeed in 2015. And it's nice to be back on the line with you, Matt. Great to talk to you, Alex. Yeah, appreciate you being here. Why don't we start by defining what NFTs are? And then it seemed like you're about to say that they're ridiculous. So I just love to hear your your thoughts on the. whole moment that we're having right now with these things?

I wasn't about to say they're ridiculous. I mean, I was about to say, I think it's very cool. Okay, well, let's define it first because, I mean, I'm still trying to get my head wrapped around how someone could sell a JPEG for $70 billion or $70 million, but sorry, yeah, I'll give you. I think if you define it as not like a JPEG that's sold, but as a unique digital object. That's the way, that's the way to think about it. And I think if you define it that way,

that it's a digital object that is one of a kind. I think that's a, you know, I think that is a way to think about it where you can understand why it might be exciting. But the digital stuff is, yeah, like digital stuff is, you know, replicable on pixels anywhere. If I buy a painting, at least that painting hangs in my house. If I buy a digital object,

anyone can see it on the web. I can't display it. I mean, I guess I could buy a screen and put it up there. But anyone could buy a screen and put it up there. So what's going on here? I mean, I can put a replica of the Mona Lisa in my house tomorrow. Right? That's true.

I mean, like the, you can replicate anything. You can already do that. And yet has value. Right. You know, is this like, people first 5,000 days thing that sold worth $69 million? I got no idea, man. Who knows? I don't know.

So someone just got like, they get like a token, which like shows they own the digital artwork. Is that kind of what it is? Yeah, basically. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And so why do you think this is cool? Well, I don't, I think it's cool when you start thinking about it, not just in terms of art.

I think that I think that I think it's cool and that when you start thinking about, uh, about the ability to have a unique digital item that is yours and yours alone you may have ownership of. And like, I think art is an easy. It's an easy place to start, but I think just in the same way that, like, you know, that, that you didn't used to be able to really use Bitcoin for anything except drugs, that you'll, that you'll at some point be able to do, to buy and sell other things. You know, there's some weird stuff. Like, there's that, like, there's that, that tweet that Jack Dorsey, you know, offered up as an NFT, you know? And so the tweet is always just going to exist, like, on Twitter anyway. His person is setting up my Twitter tweet, but someone else is going to own the NFT of the tweet, I think,

is that it works. It's bizarre. And, and, what prevents Jackson selling an NFT of the same tweet just on a different, sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you, but I'm just so dubious of this whole thing.

I mean, I think what presents, I mean, I think you could, uh, right, like could you fork the, the tweet?

I don't know. Uh, maybe. Um, and, and, and have it's all made up like, have like,

It's all made up. Yeah. But you could, I don't know. I mean, I think it's an interesting way to transfer ownership. You know, what if you're, I don't know. I mean, like, this is going to sound crazy, but like, what if you're, you know, what if sort of all ownership became something that was transfer through NFTs? You know, not just art, but like anything that you sort of, you don't have, that you don't necessarily have in the possession. Like the title to your car, you know.

I don't know. I, I've, you know, I, I, I, I, I, I, I possess my. car, but the title, you know, lives on a, it lives on a blockchain somewhere. I mean, there's just an interesting way to think about ownership. I think there's obviously like all these huge problems with the energy usage that people are talking about, but, you know, because mining Bitcoin at this point is just, and doing Bitcoin transactions takes the carbon of like an absurd amount of computing power. Yeah, the energy involved in, in, in mining and transferring Bitcoin and in transferring NFTs and doing all the, the, is, you know, I don't know.

I'm not, I'm not an expert, but is apparently, you know, quite significant and, you know, and bad for the planet in ways that we should think about. I don't know. I think being able to provide, to prove unique digital ownership is a pretty cool concept. Wait, do you think you'll buy any NFT stuff? Do you think if we put this podcast up? Not for $69 million. Yeah, yeah.

Like, I think if we, like, put this podcast up and sold the rights as an NFT, you know, it would be valuable at all? I don't know, Alex. I think you should try it. Why don't you try it? It's your podcast. Do it. I wouldn't even know where to begin. I'll have to read some guidebook.

I mean, there's that, there's a service. There's a service that you can, that you can use to sell your tweet. which is the thing that Dorsey used. Oh, yeah. I put something up on there. Yeah. And like one of the things that I, oh, you did. I did.

Yeah, it didn't sell. One of the things I would think about doing is selling, I, as, you know, I had someone hacked my Twitter a long time ago. They posted tweets of, they post it to my Twitter account. And it's always been sort of interesting to me that like, you know, when you look at Twitters, like I don't own my account, right? Like Twitter owns my account, but I technically own the content in their terms of service say because I created it, but I own the content that, you know, the content is mine.

Well, I didn't create that. And like, I didn't, you know, I didn't create it. I don't, you know, I didn't, I didn't display it. Someone else did all that. I've been, I've been kind of wanted to sell that tweet just to see how that, you know, how you transfer that, how it works to transfer ownership or something that I clearly don't own. I didn't make. Could people tell your Twitter was hacked when they did hack and post that stuff because, Matt, sometimes your Twitter account can't tell whether someone's possessed in. I think there was, I mean, I think there was one time where, and correct me if I get this wrong, but you were just like, like tweeting one night like, oh, God. And no, not this. Some like, probably reacting to a television show.

And I think Ben Smith had to call you to make sure you were okay. So it was game of, it was game of thrones. What happened? I guess I can tell this. I don't know. Yeah, I was watching Game of Thrones, and I was just like sort of reacting to Game of Thrones and there was a season finale or something. And I tweeted like, oh, shit, you know, something like,

oh, my God. You know, I don't know. This looks terrible. I don't know. And it's that total context collapse thing. And Mark Andresen. And then I went to bed. Like, right, as soon as the show is over.

And I guess Mark Andreessen saw the tweets and flagged them to Ben, who flagged them to our security, who like, you know, was trying to, like, call me in the middle of the night and my phone turned off. And I look up the next day and there's like all these messages from Ben and our security team like, are you okay? And I was all right. I said, yeah. Why would like watching Game of Thrones? That's amazing. I didn't even know what it's about. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. This was before I was blocked on Twitter by P. Mark. Mark. Oh, yeah. I was going to say, was this the moment when Mark. And recent turned against journalist. I don't think so. This is before he went on the blocking screen. This is when he actually followed lots of reporters and had,

I was saying those things about how Twitter was his way to inject his thoughts directly into a news area or whatever he was saying. Yeah. Yeah. We all go through cycles in life, I suppose. But we're not going to get into the journalist versus VC fight. To reiterate that, that fight is dumb. That fight is dumb.

It's dumb. It's dumb fight. Yeah. We won't, we won't do it. we won't fuel it um all right but okay let's we have 10 minutes left let's talk about san francisco um that sounds great you just wrote about it it sounds like i'm wearing a san francisco shirt you're wearing a san francisco shirt or i am oh tunnel records san francisco okay so you're ready for it to come back you're optimistic about it that's what i got

from the piece you wrote this great piece on substack by the way it was happy to see you right there. Even though you're not starting the substack, but it was cool to see you start something there. I'm sure lots of people signed up. And you said that you're feeling pretty optimistic about San Francisco coming back for the last year longer. People said San Francisco's dead and that the pandemic is the death knell here. You and I have basically weathered the storm in the city through the whole pandemic. What do you think is going to happen here? And why are you optimistic. I mean, I guess I see people doing interesting things in the city, especially around media. They're like a bunch of small, interesting media startups in the city now that I think

are cool. But I also see people becoming more civically, more engaged, you know. I do think that, you know, we've got so many problems to solve in San Francisco. It's got just, you know, clearly one of, you know, just horrible, absolutely just incredible fentanyl crisis, which I think we should call it a femoral crisis. It's not just an opioid crisis. It's a femur crisis. Yeah. And it's got, you know, horrible issues with, uh, with, with people's ability to, to, to actually live there, you know, like if you want to rent an apartment, if you want to buy a house, like good luck, you know, it costs it just a shit ton of money to try to do that. And, you know, I mean, I think that there are, there's, there's starting to be a little bit of building in San

Francisco. Like, even people are still fighting it, but you're starting for, I think, for at least the first time since the 20 years that I've lived there, to start seeing a lot more support for, for new construction and for affordable construction. And, you know, I'm seeing a lot more people involved in like knowing, like, what the board of supervisors is doing. I'm, I think that in some ways, like having school board meetings and board of supervisors meetings and all these other government meetings happening, you know, on the internet or people can tune in and see them and not have to go to a building in, you know, and be there in person, it encourages participation. And so, I mean, that's encouraging to me. I think it's only encouraging, though, if people are

like willing to kind of dive in and start doing things and trying to make a difference. And I certainly hope they are. But also part of the point of that piece was that, I mean, San Francisco's always been a weird, fucked up place, right? I mean, from the very beginning. And it's been just kind of place that's always attracted like weirdos doing weird things whether they're looking for gold or you know coming for the summer of love

or you know or you know whatever and I think that one of the reasons that there's so many like one of the reasons that there are you know certainly there's the

there's the like the origin stories that are connected to Stanford and Searock Park and Fairchild's Semiconductor and all that kind of stuff. But one of the reasons that there are a lot of tech people in San Francisco is that it was a place where people were trying interesting and differently things, you know, and there's kind of a, you know, there's a great book called what the Dormouse said about this, but there's kind of a direct line between people like experimenting with drugs and experimenting with technology. And I, you know, I just think that like San Francisco has been a town that's had a lot of

booms and busts and maybe we're having a bust right now, but it'll boom again. It's a beautiful place that's on the ocean that you can ride your bike across the bridge and be in a national park. It's, you know, it's got a lovely climate, even if we do have, you know, fire season now. And people are going to want to live there. And this, like, myth that everybody's vacating San Francisco from Miami, also a great city, but one that's, like, sinking under the underground and brutally hot in the summertime is just, It's just, it's ridiculous, you know, and people are always talking about, you know, about, about problems. But, you know, before the, you know, 1990s, San Francisco is pretty grim. And yet the tech boom happened after it's, it's, you know, grimness. And it's, I don't know, I guess I am a, I guess I am a hater, hater. So I, I feel the same way. I feel the same way. it's it feels um i get people why people like other places but it does feel uh i don't know uh entitled and elitist for folks to bash what is a great city uh and it's like you know

the the line oh i want more cafes it's like all right go ahead but don't call san francisco a shitty city because you want to drink coffee on a sidewalk which by the way you can now because everyone's built outside so but like that stuff to me is a little bit nuts uh they tried to draft you to run for mayor one at one point are you going to do that no i try to draft myself honestly uh but no i'm not of course not i could never do that um i think you'd be a great mayor of the city oh i mean first of all i would not but man what a terrible job that's got to be right like man that's a shudy job it's a man you get to be governor but uh or uh or you know, but I think it's also super interesting to me that San Francisco politics have

become so dominant. And not just San Francisco politicians have become so dominant, you know, Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, well, Kamala Harris. It's a, it's a real, like, like, all those people come out of San Francisco local politics. And it's, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, if you're to do so. If you think about the dot-com bust, which happened in 2000, but really took a couple of years to shake out,

lots of interesting stuff started happening in San Francisco in 2003, four, five, six. Before it was like totally on its feet. You know, if there are people who are there just for a job and they want to leave, like, they should be able to go. And I do hope, going back to one of your earlier questions,

I do think that like we're never going to go fully back to the office and there is going to be people who are working on Zoom are going to be working from all over the place and if they don't want to be in San Francisco they shouldn't necessarily have to be if they don't if they don't have to be if they don't have to be in person and you know

I know I think things will shake out and things will change and they'll be you know, we'll fix some problems and we'll get new ones. Yeah and I think this could be a great reset. I mean, you talked about how rent is high in San Francisco. It is. But it's dropping because a lot of those folks who are part of, you know, this Zoom world have decided

they would rather be somewhere else. So. Yeah. And I think that like you need a certain level of rent. You know, you need to be have a certain level of affordable rent to have the weird people that make a city weird and enjoyable. When we had Steve Adler on the show, the mayor of Austin, he said, your city can be a maker of art and a consumer of art. And a consumer of art. But once you stop being a maker of art, then your soul's missing. You know, I'm paraphrasing what he said. But you need to have that space for folks to be able to live on, you know, 500 a month in rent. So that weirdness, you know, sort of forms the soul of the city, forms the people making art.

You know, creates a place where people can try and fail things as opposed to have to take a job that pays them $300,000. a year. And so maybe this will be a good thing. One of the, one of the silver linings of the last year is that San Francisco will be a place where weird can flourish again. I hope so. And I hope it's also a place where people who have grown up there can stay there where, you know, my wife is, as you know, as a nurse, you know, I mean, she works with people who commute in from from hours away, you know, because they can't, you know, especially if they're younger, because they can't, they haven't been there a while. They can't afford the apartment there. It's, you know, it's, it's, it's, you know, I hope it's a place where, like, you know,

what artists and nurses and teachers and musicians and, and, you know, people who, you know, are the soul of the city can move. You know, I think that all comes down to housing. I think, you know, when you think about the home, the homelessness crisis, the people experiencing homelessness crisis, that's driven the housing, you know, it's like so much of what people complain about with San Francisco can be solved by starting the housing.

And, you know, it's encouraging me that we're starting to see a little bit more get built. And it's encouraging me to see that some of the, you know, some of the focus that's been happening out of, uh, city hall, including today is on, is on livability. And I think when we start thinking about what makes a city livable, it's people's ability to fucking live there. Right. It's like, I mean, that sounds like, just stupid, but like, if you can't actually live in the city, because you can't afford you, I mean, it's not going to be a little city. It's not going to be, Like, who cares, how many slow streets you have, you've got to have the house.

Yeah. All right, before we leave, I want to ask you about the fires. What about them? Well, I mean, you've written, you know, pretty eloquently about the fire season here. That's now become a fact of life. I think you wrote, you know, the only thing we can think about are the fires. And I'm kind of curious, like, where you think that? Are we going to have a fire season on the West Coast every year?

I mean, this year was particularly brutal. I feel like we were in a cloud of smoke for, what, two straight months? It was awful, yeah. I don't know. I don't remember how long it was. I just remember it was just absolutely awful. I mean, especially, you know, combined on top of the pandemic, it was just, I mean, you know, it was terrible. And it's, and it's, like, destroyed some of those homes and their lives.

And Peter Aldous has written a lot about it and everything that I've read that he's written has made me discouraged that it's going to get better in the time of scene. Seems to be Peter's outlook. Yeah. he knows too much that's the issue I mean the you know I mean the trend is certainly they're getting worse no we haven't

I don't know what the snowpack is like right now but it was low you know the last time I saw which I think was it may just been beginning of March which is not encouraging for fire season I think it's a fact of life in the West right

I mean it was happening in Colorado happening Montana I mean in ways that it didn't didn't used to. I mean, to me, like, that's the thing that's the, like, that's the thing that is really alarming about living in San Francisco and California and the West and the world. You know, it's like, oh, shit, what have we done to planet? And how are we, are we, are we going to be able to do anything to fix it? I hate to think about, like, my, my wife's cousin was emailing us and they're like, well, we wanted to come out in August, but we're worried that

there's going to be that it's going to be very smoky and i mean my response is yeah i don't think you should come in august like i wouldn't plan a vacation in california in august right now well it's yeah it's just been a fact of life here for the last bunch years and and i i remember when i moved here i had no idea that this could be a thing like i was from new york we don't do forest fires out there and then one of the first summers i must have been here it just burned it's like the third biggest fire in california history which has since been supplanted a couple of times the valley fire. And you had this idea to send us up to where the valley fire had burned and fly a drone into some of the structures to give people a view of like what this was like.

And it was my first time actually seeing the destruction that these wildfires could cause. And it was absolutely, you know, astonishing how destructive these things could be. And it was also a pretty good assignment, I would say. I mean, I appreciate you sending me there because I think. You know, that video was viewed by like six million people on Facebook to bring it full circle. That was like a good use of the algorithm because people, you know, it was a 360 video with the drone and people could actually move around and take a look at being what it was like to be in that place. It's hard to like get the scope of the devastation without seeing it or smelling it with your own body. And again, like actually I will weigh in on the tech versus.

media thing, I think people, you know, I mean, like, I think technology has had so many positive impacts in the world. And, you know, and, like, and journalists do often talk about them, but it's just like, it's not the only thing we talk about. We'll talk about tech anymore. I think that's been a shock for a lot. Yeah, totally. 360 videos pretty cool. Let's you see stuff that you couldn't, less you experience that you couldn't see. Yeah. And you see, so I think, like, then you saw, I know we're running out of time, but you saw Mark Zuckerberg doing his presentation for Oculus and he's got the video of like, I think, flooding in Puerto Rico behind him after the hurricane. And it's like, there's a, yeah, maybe there, that's that disconnect. We're talking about, you know, being in the bubble,

being not in the bubble. Like, maybe it's not the best idea. It's soon opportunistic. Yeah. Yeah, it's powerful to show this stuff, but maybe. And I don't want to say like journalists are the only one that should be showing this because obviously it's not the case. But like if you're doing a product demo, even though that is the case. It's a fine line to walk. Yeah. Yeah. Cool, Matt. Great to see Alex. Thanks for joining. Great to see you. Thanks for having me. Always a pleasure to talk. I have to. I have to have you back. I hope I wasn't inherent. No, you're extremely coherent, as usual. I'm a little drunk. Okay. Well, we'll have to make sure we get you in that state for your next appearance. So it is, it is 5 p.m. a Friday. It is. Yeah, I know. I started drinking

an end. Nice. All right. Well, hopefully we can we can, yeah, we'll have beers next time. Cool. Thanks, Alex. Cool. Thanks for joining Matt. Great having you on. Where can people find you online? They can find me at BuzzFeed News. Okay. Wait, is that the right answer? Should I, was this a bit involved question? I'm sorry. No, no, no. I didn't even speak to BuzzFeed PR about having you on. Okay, okay. But like, you know, we have you on, then you say, hey, you can find me at, you know, at M-A-T on Twitter, and you won't be able to tell if I'm hacked or not.

Okay, I see. Can you, do, do you want to do that again? Yeah, no, I'm going to run this life, but go ahead. Matt, what can people find you on the internet? They can find me on Twitter at Matt, with one T, at M-A-T. Great. And maybe I've been hacked. Maybe I haven't.

You'll never know. Perfect. All right, great. Well, maybe I'm just an M-FT. I'll be following you there. and hopefully seeing you in person sometime soon. And that will do it for this week on the big technology podcast. A big thanks to Matt Honan executive editor at BuzzFeed News for joining us.

And thanks to all of you for listening. It's been a pleasure having you here, as it is every week. Speaking of which, we'll be back next Wednesday with a new show. I think we're having Carol Codwaller, who broke the Cambridge Analytica story, and Yael Eisenstadt, who worked at elections on Facebook. Facebook and has since defected and become a big critic. So that should be an interesting discussion. I hope to see you Wednesday for that.

If you have reached this show for the first time and have listened to the end, well, that's pretty good. It would be great if you give us a subscribe. If you're a longtime listener and you're here too, that's also pretty good. If you could rate us, that would be a big help. Big thanks to Red Circle for hosting the podcast and selling ads into Nate Goatny, our great editor for always coming through with a talented edit. Thank you, Nate. And thanks again to all of you. We will see you next Wednesday. That will do

it for us here on the Big Technology podcast. Take care and have a good one.