Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher - Ep 104 | Last Tango in Cyberspace | Guest: Steven Kotler

Episode Date: May 18, 2019

An expert on human peak performance, keynote speaker and New York Times bestselling author Steven Kotler makes an epic return to the world of fiction with his near-future technothriller, LAST TANGO IN CYBERSPACE (published by St. Martin’s Press). Lion Zorn is the first of his kind—an empathy tracker, an emotional soothsayer. In simpler terms, he can spot cultural shifts and trends before they happen. It’s a useful skill for a certain kind of company.Arctic Pharmaceuticals is that kind of company. But when a routine em-tracking job leads to the discovery of a gruesome murder, Lion finds himself neck-deep in a world of eco-assassins, soul hackers, and consciousness terrorists. But what the man really needs is a nap.A unique blend of cutting-edge technology and traditional cyberpunk, LAST TANGO IN CYBERSPACE explores hot topics like psychology, neuroscience, technology, as well as ecological and animal rights issues. The world created in Last Tango is based very closely on our world about five years from now, and all technology in the book either exists in labs or is rumored to exist. With its electrifying sentences, subtle humor, and an intriguing main character, readers are sure to find something that resonates with them in this groundbreaking cyberpunk science fiction thriller. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You know, what's the worst could happen, Stephen? I mean, apps follow you, track you, right? Doesn't it happen? Not in real life. I always tell people, like, everybody's so... How do you, we know that, like, one's not awake already? Thank you. If Facebook's wakes up, first thing Facebook's going to do,

if they can figure out, holy crap, these humans are terrified about an AI waking up, I better hide. I'm right. Yeah, I mean, look, Stephen. Stephen Kotler, author of Last Tango in cyberspace, joining us here on Chewing the Fat. Stephen, we've already allowed all of this into our lives. It's no question.

I mean, I don't know how much more scared we can get because we've already allowed it in. I mean, if we get scared, okay, but we said it was okay. Come in. We want the convenience. Yeah, and I'm not scared. I'm not either. I mean, I think there's good. I mean, we are definitely looking at massive levels of accelerated change, right?

some of the stuff I'm trying to get at in last time on cyberspaces, how quickly the world is going to change over the next five years. I write the current cutting edge of the research shows that the most fruitful collaborations are AI and human together. So I move for our jobs, maybe, but the best we're being able to do is AI and human together and that unlocked a whole new creative possibilities. I'm excited about those. Yeah, look, we all want the convenience and we also want We want to be able to see what the future holds. And the future is going to hold humans and AI hopefully working together for a long time. I mean, that's going to happen.

When you write, you know, your last tango in cyberspace, your latest book, you know, is, you know, based in the future, at least presumably a few years ahead. How hard is it in today's world for you to write? a futuristic novel when we, you know, you and I just got done talking about how fast things are changing and we don't know exactly what's going to happen. I mean, you're talking about in your latest novel that it's, you know, five years from now or 10 years from now. I mean, how much did you change while you were writing it? So that's a really funny question. It's like Wired in the New York Times at the Atlantic Monthly and in three of my other books, companies that, if I'm going to get you to understand, here's what's happening in AI, here's what's happening in quantum computers.

Here's nanotechnology. Here's 3D printing. Here's, right? It's a list. You read it sequentially. It's one thing. But in a novel, I can put it all in the world, drop you into the world, and suddenly you get it in a way that I couldn't, like five years in the future, I actually, you know, we've been

very good at tracking technological development along exponential, straight up math. And they're very, very, very, very accurate. Ray Kurzweil, I published most of them in the similarities here, right? I think he's at 86, 87 percent accuracy rate in terms of what he's. he saw coming when he saw was arriving and what happened i'd be surprised if it's that bad right it could yeah it could be higher and one thing for sure um wrong here he has published like 10 000 papers telling them why they're wrong and like he's you know he's one of the smartest guys i've ever met on the planet you know i don't know right i get it so uh we can get into

uh the future and where we're headed but uh you know we'll talk a little bit about your latest novel and what that brings to the table. And then if we have time, we'll get into, we'll get into more because I could talk about the future and what that holds for, I don't know, ever. You know, no matter what, I mean, it's just fascinating to me. So, of course, no matter what, in the future, there's going to be crime. And I believe that that's where Last Tango in Paris, or Last Tango in San Francisco. or Last Tango in cyberspace? Last Tango in Paris.

That's all I've been thinking about all day. Don't say Paris. Don't say Paris. I say Paris. Last Tango in cyberspace, of course, takes us there, right? Crime. Yeah, it's very right. The protagonist is, he has, he has, I call him, he's an M-Tracker.

His name is Lion-Zorn, and he has, he has an expanded ability to feel empathy than most people, and he can feel empathy, you know, beyond the borders of species, plants, animals, It gives them the ability to sort of like see where cultural trends are going to be in the future. And it's a useful skill to serve in the company. He's hired by one of those companies and ends up basically discovering a dead body on the job. And, you know, this leads into kind of a, I always, you know, my feeling is, you know, you can, you can present big ideas and in really fun ways at the same time. Yeah. But that's what I was trying to do.

Have you signed a movie deal yet? no but there's a bunch of people yeah so i mean here's what's funny about it uh you ask that question but the book was actually uh written one of things was written for is i have a good friend of mine is a man named burke sharpless and he's uh and director and the lost in space series uh... now right yeah

and uh... burke and i have been friends since college and i literally i wrote it so he could make it oh nice lost in space happened and they signed in like a four you know a four year deal and he has no time to do it. No time to do it. Like, it was literally, it was built for, you know, I wrote it with an eye towards that, originally

for a very specific, you know, person. So yeah, there's a lot of people in Hollywood are kind of excited. I bet. Plus, I mean, what a great, who doesn't want to be Lion's orn? I mean, come on. Seriously, right. I mean, I love, I love the name. That's a, that's a powerful name.

So, you know, again, cyberspace, uh, murder mystery. well worth the read last tango in cyberspace so how much of it and you didn't uh i don't think i ever got a full answer on uh how much do you think you had to change when you were writing yeah okay okay so first of all everything in the book barring there's a central there's a there's a new drug that's at the center of the book uh that is i'm a fan already oh okay oh okay that is that's

that one's fictional every other thing in the book is real in a lab somewhere already being rolled out and there's some really freaky like AIs we can now store information in diamonds so you can start building computers out of diamonds and AIs out of diamonds that's in the book that's for you know really a couple of years out but I will tell you so I there's V there's not a lot of VR in the book everywhere it just wasn't everything I put it in where it showed up but I there's a then it we call it the I and I VR app it's a VR app in an airplane that allows you to get a nose cone view of the airplane and it flies along.

I love that. I love that. I created it. It's already in existence. I made it up. And by the time the book came out, that was totally fabricated. I made it up. And my editor, my partner, said, dude, you got to patent these ideas.

And I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, no, like, whatever, literally before the book was done. I mean, it's a tremendous idea, right? I mean, one of the, one of the coolest things that they did, you know, to get to what you're talking about as far as VR and being, you know, have that nose cone view is on long flights. You were able to see where you were at on that screen in front of you made the flights, you know, you could relax a little bit. You had an idea of how fast you were flying, where you were going.

I mean, that just, it helped so much. Certainly that's an extension of that. It's great. Well, I mean, who doesn't want, like, to see the Rocky Mountain? Right. Like, floating about, I mean, are you kidding? Like, you know, I, like, so I come out of the action sports world as a writer. And I remember back, you know, people started riding.

You see skiers, like, you know, riding on the pontoons of helicopters back from like a day of skiing. I was always like, oh, my God, I want to try that. That would be amazing. But I don't necessarily know if I want to strap myself to a pontoon outside a helicopter. But I'll take the VR version for damn show. Yeah, no kidding. I mean, even the, you know, look, we all got the, uh, You know, the cell phone VR headset and did what we could to step into that world from Oculus.

But, I mean, I'm ready for the next step. But, again, that's not, you know, that's not full on what your latest novel is about. But it's definitely going to be a part of our future, no question. And are you sure? Are you positive that the new pill or drug has not been designed yet? So I'm really not. And I mean, so what I mean by this is, So I was hired back in the 90s.

I didn't end up doing the story because I was literally investigating underground where they were producing a designer version of LSD where you only hallucin almost what the technologies are built for. At the same time, in my last book, Stephen Fire, I wrote about the work of a Scottish chemist named Lee Cronin. He's building a 3D chemistry printer. It works, you know, basically with a periodic table's worth of elements, and it's a 3D chemistry printer.

It will print up any compound you sort of want. You start putting these things together. itself as a field is going to massively accelerate, but you don't think there's going to be outlaw underground, weird stuff going on. And, you know, the psychedelic culture, which I talk a lot about in my book, Stealing Fire, and a little bit in this book,

let's just say there are people doing some really weird stuff with compounds in directions. You would never believe you could tilt consciousness. Right. Even that stuff, like, it's going on. Do I do this to them? Mrs. researchers came out of the Harvard Adult Development School of Overt the kind of link between empathy and altered states.

Sure. Right, like they did that. VRN put you there and it massively shifted. Right. We've got, so we, and in the experiments, you know, you want to know what it's like to be a 70-year-old homeless African-American woman on the streets of Detroit will go jump into their simulator.

So we are getting the technology and the pharmacology. Things like empathy, that's really interesting. Yes, it is. And scary. And scary, because while we're, We're looking for empathy. We're going to find a number of other things. Stephen Kotler, thank you so much.

I mean, I could keep you for another. We could go on and on and on, and I know you're a busy man, and so I'll let you go. The latest novel is Last Tango in Cyberspace. Stephen Kotler, Stephen, thank you for joining us today on chewing the fat. I appreciate it, man. My pleasure, Jeff. Hey, thanks for joining us on a quick little Saturday podcast that I like to do each week. This week was Last Tango in Cyberspace with Stephen Kotler.

Fascinating novel. If you have an opportunity, go ahead and read it. Get you through the weekend. Holiday weekend coming up next weekend. Be a good choice. Hey, don't forget to subscribe to Chewing the Fat with yours truly. Jeff Fisher, chewing the fat with Jeff Fisher. Subscribe, rate and review.

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