Radiolab - Man vs Machine

Episode Date: February 7, 2017

Are new ideas and new inventions inevitable? Are they driven by us or by a larger force of nature? In this episode, we look at the things we make—from spoons to microwaves to computers—as an extension of the same evolutionary processes that made us. And we may need to adapt to the idea that our technology could someday truly have a mind of its own.

Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From W. N. Y. C. See?

Yeah. Hey, I'm Chad Abumrad. I'm Robert Krollwitch. This is Radio Lab. And today, it's man versus machine. It's a smackdown between technology. And humans, of course. It's machines versus man.

Yes, where, like, the machines maybe have minds and the humans. Well, maybe mimic machines. Yeah. And first up, actually, I want to tell you about a band that I discovered. I didn't just discover them. I discovered them a while ago. But it is still, it remains, actually, one of the coolest things I've heard in years.

Actually, you know this band. I mean, maybe you don't know that you know them, but we've used them in a few shows. Remember the piece we did in the Bliss show about the perfect snowflake? Yes. We used them there. Oh.

Remember the story about the artist who weaponized his own blood? Yes, Barton Benish. We used them there too. So in a subtle way. I have already been exposed to them. That's what I'm saying. Although I am quite certain you will hate their music.

I could be wrong about that. Well, I will be as generous as I know possibly how to be. The band is called Don of Midi. Dawn of what? Of Midi. M-I-D-I-I? Do you know what MIDI is?

No. It's sort of like a computer language for music. Like in my studio at home, I have a bunch of synthesizers and various things. They all talk to each other using MIDI. Oh, the Dawn of Middy.

Don of Middy. It's one of those half and halves. Like, Dawn suggests something pleasant, beautiful, and sort of movie-like, MIDI, technological, card, cold. Yeah, that's actually not a bad place to start. Okay, so the band is three guys. Akash is Ronnie.

He plays the bass. Amino Belliani plays the piano. Kassim Kvhi plays the drums. They met in college at Cal Arts. Initially, though, their partnership was not about music. It was about tennis. It began on the tennis courts. On the tennis court.

Yeah, it was funny, actually, because we would play late at night. That's Akash, the bass player? Kossum had like stolen the key and kept it or something. And one night we were there at like 3 a.m. And I think we were really drunk and security showed up. And he saw us. They were pounding the ball back and forth, yelling.

And when he saw the intensity with which we were involved in this match, he was like, you know, you guys should continue. Like carry on. And he left. And that intensity sort of translated into the music that they started to play. They would take it really seriously. Like what they would do is they'd get together. We'd go into these classrooms that had no wins. and turn out all the lights.

And they would play these long, crazy sets in pitch black darkness. It was completely, totally improvised. Like, before they started, they would have no idea what key they were going to play in. No. No idea of what tempo? No. Or how long they were going to go? No.

Would you at least figure out who was going to play first? No. I mean, they just start cold? Cold. But it would end up sort of like that 3 a.m. tennis match. Really intense, rolling, rollicking, improvising. improvisations, kind of atonal. A tonal, oh boy.

Yeah, I know, I know. We're just trying not to use that word. Okay. But it's really, I like it. It's really interesting stuff. And like I said, we use it in the Snowflake story. But that style of music is not actually what I'm going to present to you now. It's what they do next that I find totally fascinating.

To set that up, as they're out on tour, doing this free improvisational thing, They were also listening to different kinds of music. Like they were listening to electronic music as well. Stuff like Apex Twin. Also, one of them gets really deep into trance music, not techno-trans, but... A lot of music from Africa. West African music as well as music from Morocco. And these are musical traditions that have a totally different approach to rhythm,

which we can talk about in a second. They're listening to all this stuff, and it begins to somehow seep in. They begin to gradually put a little bit of it into their sets and to make a long story short over the course of two years. It was a very incremental and slow process. They pieced together this style of music that is 180 degrees from what they were just doing, and unlike anything I've ever heard. And the only way I can describe it is it's sort of like ancient folk music filtered through highly obsessive,

computers that actually aren't computers but people. What does that mean? Here, I'm going to play you some, okay? Okay. No, not that. Let's put this on. Let's just wait. Let's just mute this.

All right. Here it comes. Now, keep an open mind. Okay. So this is how it starts with just a baseline. Is it going to develop or are we going to just hear this? It is, it just slowly. Just wait, wait.

Hear that? Doo. Doo. Right. It's a pianist. He's playing it with his left hand on the strings. so he's kind of muting it to create a harmonic. I know a pot of whales who would go crazy for this.

Just look, okay, you hear the drums are coming. Do you hear that? Yes. I don't know about you. Actually, maybe I do know about you. But for me, right about now, I'm getting into a deep trance. Let's just don't say anything for a minute and let's see what happens. Listen to that. They're not playing a machine.

They're playing traditional instruments. No, this is all live. They're playing real instrument. It's all performed. It's acoustic. Although it doesn't sound acoustic. Yeah, it doesn't. I am so addicted to this.

You can just listen to more. See, just starts to slowly evolve. A little bit by bit. And it just keeps doing that for 45 minutes. I mean, it's broken into tracks, but it's really just one long thing. I think that in seismic laboratories all over the world, where geologists gather, people who have to listen to impending earthquakes, This is going to be, like, enormous.

In the Crowell Witch household, too, I imagine. Because it's small, small shifts. Tiny, tiny shift. Come on, you don't find that groovy at all? Yeah, no, I do. Actually, I do. So these guys basically went from, like, free improv, no rules, to becoming, like, human machines. It's sort of, like, wishing to be an element in a very finely made Swiss watch.

Except now remove the watch. I think that something is going on in the world right now. That's Akash again? The last 10 to 15 years, you see in a lot of fields right now, people doing things, quote-unquote, in an analog way that 10 years ago would have been assumed were absolutely impossible without the aid of technology. You see it from big wave surfers who found out they could ride huge waves

if they have jet skis to pull them into these waves, to now saying, hey, wait a minute, we can catch these with our arms again, but the jet ski needed to be there to show them that this was even possible. and you see it with this French beatboxer video online He's doing something that just sounds impossible It's unbelievable And it's like something that

The kind of stuff that Apex was programming for his music But this guy's doing it with his mouth And it's like the computers showed us a world Of possibility And now we're sort of almost realizing that that world was inherent to us, not the machine. Huh. So you're talking about it.

like a reclaiming. Yeah, absolutely. And it was almost like we didn't know how far the biotech of our minds could go until the machine sort of showed us that, hey, wait a minute, like this is coming from you guys. You know what it is,

is if you just let it do what it's doing and have no known to the usual expectations of resolution or... Or like that usual arc. It's not going to tell you a story. It's just going to keep you company. That's what's happening here. Yeah, I mean, I think,

what it's trying to do is to get you into a different state of mind. Like a different state of time. That experience of time that is non-narrative. Where you're sort of existing in time, not in a sort of regular story way, where everything leads to the next thing, beginning, middle, and end. Something else. What Amino and I often talk about is the idea of quantum states of time. And I think what he means, what I take it to mean,

is something very ancient in a way. Like, you know how I mentioned that they were listening to West African and Moroccan trance music? Mm-hmm. What you have, and a lot of that music, are these vertical stacks of rhythms, like almost multiple time flows existing simultaneously in the same moment. And if you listen into this music that we're hearing right now, you try and pick out, okay, what's the bass doing, what's the drums doing, what's the piano doing? You will hear that they're actually almost not fitting together. Like they're playing different beats pulling each other in some sense.

If I listen in and try and pick out all the lines, I get lost in the intricacies of their roots. rhythms. If I listen out, I can just nod my head to it for 45 minutes. But if I listen in, I'm like, Jesus, God, what does that bass player doing? I have no idea what beat he's on. That's cool. And that's just interesting to me, the way that the patterns on the interior are, just kind of mess with your ear because they all seem to be on their own cycle, falling in and out a phase. But then when you pull out and just listen to the whole thing together, you're like, oh yeah, I can nod my head to this. I can nod to this. Surmines me actually

I don't know if you are familiar with Mark Rothko's painting So like sort of squares of color That sit one on top of the other I have the same I'll go There's a Rothko Chapel in Houston Yeah one of the most amazing places

Because he would often take a sponge And then dip it in the color And then very lightly dad Like over and over and over So it's very, very layered And when I Look closely I see patterns within patterns, within patterns, within patterns,

and I get feelings from the patterns. Yeah. I find myself sort of telling stories about the feelings that I'm having. Then I'll pull myself out and I'll see three rather richly tonal blocks of color. Big picture. Then little picture again. Yeah, totally. And it's the same thing you're describing.

Yeah, I like that phrase, feelings from the patterns. That makes sense to me. And these patterns, to me, they feel kind of ancient and new. at the same time. Super mechanical and yet deeply human at the same time. It never quite resolves for me somehow. In any case, not much more to say.

You can find out more about Don of Middy on our website, RadioLab.org. Their albums called Dysnomia. It's definitely my favorite thing in years. Up next, we go to a place where machines are in charge. And humans, they aren't.

They have to do their bidding. They have to do their bidding. Yeah, stay tuned. Humans. This is Amanda Darby calling from Rockville, Maryland. Radio Lab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org.

Hey, I'm Chad I boomrod. I'm Robert Krollowicz. Today we are once again pitting man against machine. Yeah, and in our last segment we heard a band who figured out how to mimic what machines do in some really funky, ways. And now... We're going to go to a place where humans don't mimic machines. Instead, they're run

by machines. The machines are the total bosses of them. Yes. And just a word of warning, this segment contains some strong language here and there and some discussion of products that... Not suitable for children. Yeah. Just wanted you to know that. Exactly. And it comes

from producer Pat Walters. Okay. Let me make sure that's recording. You're going to tell me something? I think I'm going to tell you about diapers. Okay. So we order from diapers.com all the time, you know, because we have these kids. Is that what it's actually called? Dipers.com?

You guys don't know diapers.com? That's the actual name of the website? My God, it's like such a part of our lives. I just figure it would be like to. Yeah. It's like all the crap that you don't want to have to leave the house to get, you know? Like paper towels. Okay.

Oh, God, I have to go down the street to get paper towels. Well, you can get it from diapers. So we order it. Like, how would you get paper towels delivered promptly? I tell you. This is exactly what, this is exactly the crux of the store. It's a simple story. And that we would order these giant boxes of shit from diapers.com, and they would appear second day, three days later.

And then one day, Carla orders it, and it appears the same day. The same day. Yeah. And now every time that we click submit on this thing, it shows up like three hours later, a huge box of stuff. You must be only blocks from the worldwide headquarters of diapers.com and ties and thumbtack. If someone asked me to pick up that stuff at the corner deli would take me all day. Somehow it shows up just in a few hours. And I just, I began to be like, what the hell happens after you hit Submit?

It's like magic. It's so wonderful. And that's the future, damn it. So what ended up happening is I was thinking about this in a sort of passive way. And as often happens, things sort of converged. And I ended up reading this article by a writer. Our producer Pat ended up interviewing. Yes, his name is Gabriel Mac.

It's a totally badass investigative reporter, reported from war zones and natural disasters all over the world. And several years ago, he wrote a story from Mother Jones magazine where he actually got himself hired at one of these internet retailer warehouses. They're called third-party logistics contractors or 3PLs. That's what they call them in the biz. And they basically handle all the goods that you order off the internet. So when you order something off the internet,

you're actually probably dealing with a company that's not the company you think you're dealing with. And maybe you think there's robots that just make these items show up at your house within a few hours of you ordering them. But as Gabriel come to find out, a lot of the time... That's not how it works. Not even close.

And we'll start at the beginning. When you're sitting on your couch and you hits a bit, your order bounces off some servers and ultimately gets funneled to a warehouse. Just a giant warehouse. If we were rounding, we would say it was a million square feet. What is a million square feet? Like, how many football fields could I fit in there?

That would be a lot. About 17. So just imagine, like, a huge airplane hangar, 17 football fields long, filled with people. There's thousands of us. And all I can put us regionally is west of the Mississippi, because we can't say, for legal reasons, where we were. Left half of the United States. Yes, I was hired as a Picker.

And Pickers' jobs are basically to run around. this cavernous warehouse and find the crap that you ordered off the internet. So basically your day is you arrive at the warehouse. You put all your stuff in the lunchroom because you can't take anything except for the clothes on your backs into the warehouse. Soon as they walk in, all the pickers are handed little computers. We get our little scanners. You have a handheld scanner. And it's on the little screens of those scanners that the orders you make sitting on your couch actually appear.

It pops up like go to this section, this region. this shelf, this unit, find a Malibu Barbie. Go. And it tells you how many seconds that you have to get there. Like 15 seconds. 14, 13, 12. And it counts down. It counts down?

It counts down? Oh my gosh. And so it like pops up 15 seconds, 14, 13, 12. Did that scanner that you used make sounds? Fuck. I'm almost positive it did. Can you imitate it? Like what...

Beep. It's like that. In any case, you're standing in the middle of 17 football fields. We've got 15 seconds to find the region that has the shelf, that has the bin, that has the Barbie. And then scan it. And then the plastic toads get set on conveyor belts. And they get carried away into some other magical area where people put it in boxes and send it to your house. And as soon as he's done that.

The next item will immediately pop up. And it'll say, go to this section, this region, this unit, find a dildo, let's say. because there are lots and lots and lots and lots of people ordering dildos on the internet, apparently. And so you have 40 seconds. 39, 38 to make it to the bin with the dildos in it. Which could be a football field away. You go as fast as you can. Find the dildo.

Scan your dildo. Beep. Put it in the tote. Next item pops up. Find an olive oil mister. Do you remember specific names of things? There were a lot of vitamins. Meep.

Mail enhancement pills. Beep. Lots of iPad things. Really? Oh my God, there's so many things that you can put on and around an iPad, like an iPad cover, carrying cases, protective cases, stand that you could put your iPad on so it worked like a computer screen, a handheld, like, iPad glove thing.

Dildos and iPad accessories are like the most popular items that I picked for sure. Did you ever find a dildo that goes around an iPhone? That would be like the perfect Internet. thing. I'm sure it's in there though. You know, you don't really have time to even look at what you're doing. There's just like a second where your brain is like, why does this product exist? Why does this product? Why does this product exist? That's sort of like a whisper all the time in the background, but for the most part, it's kind of a blur. Video games, baby food, diapers, paper towels. Who is ordering paper towels on the internet? Like, who's the person who's doing this? Um. And I was hired as a picker because of my youth and my fitness, which is to say that I'm not in my 70s.

Because there were a lot of people in the place who were in their 60s, in their 70s. Really? That old. Oh, yeah. This is like old white ladies. Gabriel says when he talks to people about this, most of them assume the warehouse is full of young Mexican people. But in fact, he says where he worked, it was mostly white people. And most of them are older than him. I was 32 at the 31 at the time.

Wow. That's why they gave me a job where you run around a lot. Actually, on one of the consent forms he had to sign before he was hired. It said that we were going to walk 12 miles a day. But going into it, I was like, yes, picker. I was actually really excited. You know, you get some exercise right now. My job, if I'm not out, like, actively reporting, is sit on my ass, right?

And type and stuff. So I was like, score. Like, you know, I'm going to do a good job. and I didn't think it was going to be my favorite thing in the world, but I thought it would be interesting and challenging, and I would do a good job, and I was so wrong about all of those things. First of all, in this warehouse,

and again, we can't say which one it is. Nothing was organized the way you'd expect it to be. Like if you're looking for a dildo, it might just be in some random box. This is like a bin full of crap. Thrown in with a bunch of other things. You know, so there's a bunch of batteries in there, and an iPad anti-glare cover, and then there's 10 CD, you know, whatever.

Products seem haphazardly stored next to each other. And that's by design, according to this guy, Brad Stone. I'm the author of The Everything Store, which is a book that looks specifically at. Amazon. There's actually some very sophisticated software that is governing Amazon fulfillment centers. What happens is, say the warehouse gets a shipment of 17 dildos in. Instead of taking those dildos to, like, the dildo section, the computer will figure out how much shelf space or bin space those dildos need

and where in the warehouse those bins are. So it might say let me put four deldos over here and three over there. The invisible hand that orchestrates the symphony that is Amazon's fulfillment center is called the mechanical sensei. The mechanical sensei. And it not only tracks where to put items, it tracks what the most efficient route are for the pickers to go through these shelves in the shortest amount of time. Like imagine you sit down and order 14 products at one time.

What the computer does is it will farm that order out to 14 different pickers in different parts of the warehouse. And then it will coordinate the timing so that each picker is grabbing the item, putting it on a conveyor belt in a certain order so that all the products arrive to the same box at the same moment. It'll make sure that box is just big enough but not too big. It figures out when to get those boxes on trucks and when those trucks should leave. And eventually, if you believe Jeff Bezos, the sensei will send out fleets of tiny helicopter drones that will deliver your packages to your doorstep at lightning speed, no humans involved. So yeah, for the moment, most of the time saving they're going to get is from making the human pickers pick faster.

Because if you think about it, once the packages get on trucks... The truckers are still going to have to follow the speed limit. But there's no OSHA laws about how fast you can make people work inside the warehouse. And the way you make those people fast, at least, in the warehouse Gabriel worked in is by treating them like drones. For example, you're digging through the bin and you see lots of other stuff, but not the thing that you're looking for. So these scanners assume you're an idiot and you just aren't seeing it. Like, you can't swear to the scanner that it's really not there. So you have to scan every item in the

bin to prove that it's not there. So the one time this happened to me, I mean, it happened to me a bunch times, but one of the times it was like 30 individually wrapped batteries in this bin. And so I have to scan every single one. Beep. Beep. Beep. Before my scanner will let me go on. But I'm not given extra time to do that.

And my, you know, my scanner the whole time is like... Three, two, one, zero. Now it's counting the seconds that you're late. Three, four. Does it go into the red or something? Yeah. So you know exactly how late you are. And you're trying to scan.

and your stupid olive oil mister. Gabriel says within the first few hours of his first shift, a supervisor walked up to him, said, You're only making 48% of your goal because you're supposed to be picking something like 170 items per hour. 170 things an hour. Yes. Wow.

It was the first time in my life because I'm an overachieving nerd from the Midwest. I went to Catholic school, you know. First time in my life, somebody came up to me and was like, you're doing a really bad job. Yeah. And I was like, me? But the third day, he says, he's doing a little better.

It was like 50%. 50% of my goal. I asked my supervisor at one point, you know, can I pee just like in the middle of the day? And he was like, of course, this isn't China. But it's going to hurt your numbers. So he thought, screw it. You know what? I'm not going to pee.

I'm going to hold it. Till lunch. The minimum shift is 10 and a half hours. And in that 10 and a half hours, you have. have 29 minutes and 59 seconds for lunch. They tell you that, not 30 minutes. They told us that. If it's 30 minute and one second, you get docked points.

And if you get docked enough points, you get fired. Especially if you're new. They told me when I got hired at the temporary staffing agency, they had videos about it. They had people walking around telling you, you cannot miss any time or be one minute late at any point during your first week of orientation. And so to sort of illustrate this,

point. He says that during his orientation, the lady leading our training says, you know, take Brian. Two points to a guy in the back of the room. Brian used to work here, and then his girlfriend had a baby, so he missed a day, and he was fired because it doesn't matter if you have doctor's notes or baby pictures or whatever it is. There are no exceptions to this rule. And so Brian had to go back to the temporary staffing agency, go back through their application process, get hired by them, clear a new drug test and go back through the training that he had mostly, you know, already done. And now he's sitting in this group with us and the lady's like, welcome back, Brian. You know, everybody don't end up like Brian.

So Gabriel says, when you finally make it to lunch, you finally pee. You just shovel food into your face while you watch your watch. And occasionally in between chewing. People talk. And everybody is asking each other, why are you here? Which is like, you know, in prison. And we actually fact-checked this because I was like, do people in prison really always ask each other what they're in for? Or is that just in movies?

And we fact-checked it. And I asked this guy who'd been in federal prison. He was like, it's the only conversation people are having. Gabriel remembers the people at his table were like, I got laid off. I used to be an accountant. I used to be a store manager. I used to work in a restaurant.

All over the place. Everybody was something else in another life. Gabriel says on one of his last days, he came back from work. Yeah, I came home from work, I took a bath, trying to sort of soak out some of the soreness so that I would be prepared and ready to wake up again and do it all over and make my numbers, which I, you know, was still failing to make. And I was skyping with one of my friends and he was like, how's it going? And I was like, because they fired this guy because he had a baby and people are terrible. And yeah, I cried about it a little bit. I hadn't realized really how mean the system was,

not just that it was tiring and not just that it hurt your body, but that it was mean in every way at every turn that it possibly could be. It kind of punched me in the face a little bit. Hello, hello, hello. Not too long after I talked to Gabriel, I went home from the holidays, which just happens to be near one of the biggest Amazon warehouses on the East Coast. Just outside Allentown, Pennsylvania. And we should say again that Gabriel did not necessarily work at an Amazon warehouse.

But talking to him had gotten me curious. This is a warehouse that in July of 2011 made some really big headlines because the temperatures inside the warehouse had gotten so hot that people had started to collapse from heatstroke. And rather than put in air conditioning or send people home, the warehouse instead just had local paramedics wait outside and car people away. And once the news broke, Amazon did install air conditioning. but I was curious to see if things had changed. And based on the people that I met,

you work here? Like, before I got kicked out. I'm a reporter. I'm just kind of hard to tell. What do you do if you don't mind me asking? I'm a picker. You're a picker? Mm-hmm.

This woman who I met in the parking lot told me that she'd been working as a picker for about a month. You describe what the work is like? Well, it's easy for a beat. Everybody has the old opinion, but I have lost a lot of weight. Oh, like I like it. Yeah, I like what I do. And when I went into the lobby of the building... Yeah, it's fantastic.

I met this guy who told me he was the warehouse DJ. During the holiday rush, the company would move him around to different departments, depending on who needed motivation. Oh, yeah. Like you DJ... These people take care of their people here. Yeah? I did karaoke shows.

We did dance contests. Wait, like while people were at work? Yeah. They're dancing and plays, you know, I do the Cupid Shuffle or do something crazy, like the chicken dance. You know, doing stuff like, you know. Yeah. And I played everything from, you know, Christmas songs to funk from the 70s to Pachata and Metallica,

Bollywood music. Yeah. There were some old Indian women that were packing up boxes and stuff. And then, you know, everything, Jamaican, reggae, tour. That sounds awesome. I mean, we did not have a DJ or a karaoke contest, which I would have won for the record. I mean, I like karaoke more than almost anyone, but that's not going to fix the main issue, which is that they're working these people like draft horses.

Although that woman I talked to seemed to dig it. Well, not every person that I worked with hated it. I mean, there were a lot of people who made their numbers, and they made their numbers every single day. people who made over their numbers, and I don't even understand what was going on with that, but they were very matter of fact about it. Or maybe I was thinking this is a talent. Like, maybe if you try to become a lacrosse player and you're just not very speedy and you don't like physical contact, that that's not a great sport for you and that you

should play golf. I mean, I'm from the Midwest, you know, I'm hardy workstock. I was a mover for years and years and years. Like when you call people and they have to come to your house and put all your crap in boxes and then load all the boxes onto trucks and then move them to another place. That was my job for years. So I do... So, I mean, do you order off the Internet now?

I mean, after having done this, have you sworn off of it? I try not to order anything off the... I don't actually buy that much stuff. But certainly, I mean, no, I'm not like ordering my paper towels off the Internet, if that's what you mean. No, I don't know who would do that. That's ridiculous. Can you imagine that I thought that it was novel that I was fulfilling in order for online paper towels at that time? Like, that wouldn't, that's not the reaction you would have now.

And I was like, what jerk? Well, and even when I was working in that warehouse, I was like, who is doing this? But of course, and I imagine this is partly why you guys are rearing this now, right? Like, the only thing anybody does who doesn't have to go out. out into the world and work is sit home and order things on the internet. I know. Now it's just like everybody orders everything and it just comes. I feel like we have tipped headlong into the world that we were looking at in the story

and now that is just the world, unfortunately. Where else do paper tells even come from? People don't even know. No, I know. They just come from the internet. So this is Gabriel Mack and we brought him. back into the studio for a bit of an update. So, I mean, I talked to you seven years ago.

And obviously I did a, you know, I did a bunch of stuff in the interim. But the last, like, thing, like voice-related thing that I did was, I was on the daily, you know, the New York Times podcast in late, 2017, which was about 15 seconds before I started transitioning. Oh, wow. So, and that was it. So it's been three and a half years. And I've been sort of in like, it feels like I've been in like voice hiding a little bit from being totally honest.

It's like, it's interesting because I was thinking about the, I mean, just of what you were saying about not just the story that we did, but like all of these stories you've made like in books and awards. And now you're this new person with a new name and. Well, actually, can I stop you there? Yeah. the new that's the thing that I find people say with some frequency like a whole new person yeah yeah that I'm an old person that I'm the old person you're the old person

yeah it's like becoming to me I mean I will only speak for myself here although this is not in my experience a rare feeling about this transitioning isn't about becoming somebody new it's about becoming somebody old like your old iteration that you just couldn't embody before. No, no, no.

Okay, so that does. That does make sense. But I guess I'm wondering, like, because you've done, you have all this work that you created before you transitioned. I mean, you won all these awards and you had these, like, amazing magazine features, but that all had a different name associated with them. do you do you think about having to reclaim that work in some way because it was done under a different name? I mean, as this conversation totally proves, like, that work lives.

Like, it still lives and it still breeds and it gets reissued or rediscovered all the time. So it's not like it's just sitting somewhere in a vault, in which case I'd be like, whatever, you know. But it doesn't. It's still alive. And this, actually, this piece that we're talking about, this radio lab piece, is probably the one I think of the most often because of how I introed and ID'd myself. Where in the first whatever 15 seconds of my talking, I identify myself as a lady reporter, which I frequently did. Yeah.

It just, yeah, it's a lot. But I think about it all the time, actually, this interview specifically. Oh, yeah. We obviously cut that from the original, so it's not in there anymore. But what it was telling to me that when I was thinking back on this piece, I could kind of remember the beats of the piece. But what I really remember for some reason was you IDing yourself as lady reporter. Some reason that just like sticks in my head. And I was like, oh, well, it's interesting to me that that sticks in my head. And that means something. So let's talk about it. Maybe you have a trans spiky sense that you, like somewhere deep in your subconscious, that you're not even aware of. Maybe. I don't know. I'm serious.

Like, maybe that's stuck with you as like something in the universe in your body was just like flagged that for later. Yeah, it's like just noted. File that away. Something's happening here. I don't know what it is. but in seven years, I'll figure out why something in my bones was like, hmm. I mean, it could be. I don't know.

Yeah, I have remembered that always, always. I actually talk about the fact that I did it in the intro to my new book. No way. Yeah, no, that's how much of a, because to me, that's like how clear it was that I was really grasping this identity. It's a completely ridiculous answer to a perfectly straightforward question that somebody asked me. Who are you? Like, calling yourself a lady doctor is a commentary on the stupid patriarchy. It just is in the shortest, most efficient way that you could possibly issue one, right?

So there were layers of that happening. But I mean, you're right. Like, the gender of the person who reported this story is not particularly relevant. to the late capitalist internet, third party logistics, industrial complex dystopia that we live in. That is a true story. Well, let's go ahead and have you re-I-D yourself. Tell us who you are and what you do. It's going to take me a minute. It's a big, I'm having a moment. You can't see me because my camera doesn't work.

Yeah, take your time. I'm sitting here having a moment. Maybe I'm going to be the first person who cries through their ID. Oh, yeah. Would I be the first person? I think so. Yeah. I like that you have to think about it, though. My name is Gabriel Mac, and I'm a writer and investigative reporter and a human person.

Thank you to writer and reporter Gabriel Mac and producer Pat Walters. I'm Jan. I'm Ron. Stay tuned. This is Casey calling from Fort Myers Beach, Florida. Radio Lab is supported in part by the National Science Foundation and by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world.

More information about Sloan at www. www. www.com. Hey, we're back. This is Radio Lab. I'm Chad. I'm Robben-Roy. I'm Robert Crilwich. And now... I'm going live. You were going live.

Sort of. From the New York Public Library, where they have a program called New York Public Library Live. Was it on a Monday or a Thursday or Wednesday? I don't remember the day, but I do remember the people who are on the stage with me. They are wonderful, but irritating. They are Stephen Johnson, who's got a new book called Where Good Ideas Come From, and then there's Kevin Kelly with a book that he entitles,

What Technology Wants? So that's Kevin. That's just a weird question, right? I mean, if I met a spoon, I know what it wants. It wants whatever I want. I take it, put it in the soup, bring it to my mouth, suck on it. put it down. When it's down, it doesn't want anything. So, at least that's my notion. So when you ask this question, or actually, you don't even ask it. Your book title answers it.

What technology wants? What does that mean? I think we view technology generally to mean all this new stuff, this gadget stuff, and stuff that's in our pockets and kind of around our household. But I wanted to look at it, not the individual objects, because as a single object, doesn't want really anything, as you suggest. I wanted to look at the way in which that object, say, that iPhone, that iPhone requires thousands of different technologies to make that one other technology. So there is a web of technologies that are kind of interdependent interweaving into produce what I think of as sort of a superorganism of technology.

You mean all the spoons, all the forks, all the knives, and all the telephones? All the telephones, all the factories, all the roads, everything together, and all the forks. Everything together and us, together form a new thing that, like other superorganisms, have an emergent kind of agenda that is beyond just the spoon. So the spoon itself is sort of like the bee or the ant in the colony. It doesn't really mean much. But together, all those spoons and everything else connected together, all the little chips, all the wires, all the roads,

it does form something that does begin in a very small way to have the slimmest bit, of autonomy and autonomy that wasn't there in the individual pieces. Autonomy and some kind of will? Well, so wants. That's a strong word when I use the word want because we immediately think of what you want and what I want and say deliberately thinking about, hmm, what do I want? But I mean want in the way in which that flower when it was alive.

It's sort of hanging on. wanted light. And so it kind of leans towards the light a little bit. It has a drift, it has a tendency towards the light. It's not intelligent, it's not conscious, but the plant itself is wants light. It leans toward the light. So the technium, which is the word I used,

to distinguish this whole superorganism of technology, it's leaning in certain directions. It has certain tendencies. so it wants to go in certain directions. We'll get to the directions where it may want to go. Let me ask you, your question is a little more modest than he is. I aim a little lower. This is Steve Johnson.

It's been my career path, is to aim just a little lower. Figure out where Kevin is going and just steer right underneath it. So your question is, where do good ideas come from? So for you, let me look at the word idea. You use that word, what do you mean? Everything from, you know, scientific breakthroughs, technological breakthroughs, breakthroughs in the creative arts, and also just kind of ordinary breakthroughs in our lives where we have a good idea that helps us kind of live a little bit better, be a little bit better in our jobs, you know, human innovation.

But when you use the word innovation or idea, so for most people in the cartoon version, that's the light bulb going on. So some guy is sitting there thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking, and then they think, oh, E equals MC squared. So for you, when you look into a brain, you don't see anything coming out of nothing. There's something a little bit more. Yeah, that's one of the biggest things I think you have to kind of undo when you approach a topic like this, which is this idea that the breakthrough idea, the light bulb moment, is a single thing happening in a single mind, and that it happens in an instant. For some reason, we want to tell the story that way.

There's this kind of innate desire. I mean, as a storyteller, I want to tell the story that way, too. and people do tend to build these elaborate fictions about their kind of moments of epiphany. But when you go back and look at the historical record and kind of rewind the tape and play it slowly, and so many of these breakthrough, allegedly, kind of break through epiphanies, what you find is, in fact, that the idea was incubating for a very long period of time. It actually builds upon other ideas by other people. It's more of a kind of a remixing of other people's concepts and other people's tools,

and it kind of fades into view over a much longer period of time. This is what I call the slow hunch in the book. That it's not this kind of gut impression or this sudden moment of clarity, but this much more evolutionary, more kind of lingering process. Do you have the sense that there is never a eureka moment, or do you have like one eureka moment and 50 slow, small, intrus. I think that there are moments where you do kind of advance

in some clear fashion and you suddenly do see things in any ways. A lot of them come in dreams. Actually, the book talks a lot about how many amazing empirical scientific discoveries actually occur to people in dreams. But I guess part of what I'm trying to do with this argument is to kind of correct that,

the emphasis we place on those things. And the other thing about those eureka moments is that they may, and often usually do occur to at least 10 other people at the same time, which diminishes the eurekaness of it. For example Every single invention that we know about For example, the telephone

The patents for the telephone Were submitted by Alexander Grandbell And Gray Within three hours of each other Really? Yes And The light bulbs were The light bulb that we associate with Thomas Edison

He was the last of 23 other people To me there was no light bulb No light bulb, no light bulb, no light bulb, no light bulb, no light bulb, no light bulb, no light bulb, no light bulb, no light bulb then then a matter of a couple of years lipo everybody had

the lipo idea what would explain the sudden ubiquity of an idea after a long eternal silence the precursor

inventions that are required for that next step have all been done so it's a kind of it's like a growth where you need to go through a certain stage

to get to the next stage you have to have all the parts and because no idea is alone. The light bulb required, you know, whatever is 100 other sub-inventions to sustain it, to even conceive of it, and when they're in place, and then it's like

the next idea is just there. And so being too early with an idea is really, is bad or worse than being too late. So we both use this, Kevin and I are both kind of fans of this phrase from Stuart Kaufman, this idea of the adjacent possible. The adjacent possible. Yeah, I mean, it's just bear with me.

It's a good, it's useful. And the idea is basically, at any given time, oh, come on, this is a very literary crowd. They can handle the set of syllables. So the ideas at any given time, both in the evolution of life and in the evolution of technology, there are kind of given the state of the current system, there are a finite set of moves that are possible. So imagine it like a chessboard, right? You're in the middle of a game, there's a certain number of moves that are possible, a much larger set of moves that are not possible.

The same is true of technological history. You cannot invent a microwave oven in 1650, just as you cannot invent an automobile in ancient Egypt. Just to make sure you could imagine one, but you can't build it. Yes, although it is remarkably hard to imagine one. That's part of the point here. I mean, I saw this in detail in invention of air,

the book about your friend Joe Priestley, who I like that you're a clocial friend in terms of it. He killed a lot of it. mice. So Priestley is most famous for isolating oxygen for the first time, which is another case of a multiple discovery where three other people kind of discovered it right around the same time independently, more or less. And the point was that they were able to think about

isolating oxygen for the first time, partially because there were tools that there were scales and things that made it easier to kind of realize that this element was there. But the biggest one was a conceptual leap, which it only had become possible a couple of years before to even think about the air is being something you wanted to investigate scientifically. Up until that point, they were like, well, I want to investigate wood and bodies and hearts and brains and rocks, but the stuff is pure.

The stuff between all. Why would we study that? There's nothing there, right? And it was because of a number, partially because they discovered vacuums, where they were like, not the cleaners, but the empty air, the lack of air, that they were like, okay, this is a vacuum, so there must be something in normal air

that we can actually study and understand. And so conceptually, that became a platform, that enabled Priestley to kind of think in a way and his compatriots to think in a way that it was much harder to think even five decades before us. Well, are you, do you think that when the environment is, is ready,

in some sense, then it will happen. So it's as almost as if the technium, your phrase, is kind of whispering now. Right. Yes. It is. It is, it is an environment that we're in. And it is...

It's creepy to me. It is creepy. And it's also, because it's inevitable, too, that's also another creepy word that people get spooked by. Inevitable? Inevitable. Right. Do you believe that?

Do you believe that a spoon is an inevitable thing that's bound to happen if you're hungry and you invent soup? Yes, definitely. So the question is, I don't think... But that everyone would think of spoon at the same time? They probably did. Robert, let me try this. We're going to win you.

So, so the, one very active evolutionary theory debate is something like the inevitability of evolution, given enough time, evolving eyes, right? Light is the fastest way to transmit information. And so the idea is that given enough evolutionary time, creatures would evolve the ability to kind of process and make sense of light and to somehow, kind of act on that information, right? And it turns out what we find when we go back is that eyes independently evolved multiple times in completely different lines because there was just something about the physics of the world

that made that despite the fact that evolution didn't, on some level want to, there was no intelligent designer saying eyes would be good, light waves moved very fast, that would be a good thing to do it. But evolution kept stumbling its way towards that innovation on these separate paths. And I think that's where I 100% agree with Kevin.

No one says that eyes wanted to be there. No one said that there was a niche called the eye niche waiting for eyes. The very serious question, which I think is real, is then how do you describe that? How do you describe that inevitability of a system not being directed, somehow ending up again and again? If you rewound the tape and ran it again, you would have eyes. Eyes would just keep showing up. So Kevin, I think, is picked as provocative, but I think useful way of describing it, which is that there is this tendency of that system to go towards some.

as attractors. There are kind of magnets that the system will gravitate towards. What he's done? He's there. Spoons. No. But the spoons are the point. Eventually people will invent spoons as well. Spoons are an attractor. No, he's saying that the spoons will get together. Why do you have so much? I mean, I mean, because

for the obvious reason that you are crossing a line here, you are saying that living systems, which have a logic, which he describes very well, have, that the logic of living systems also belongs to these inanimate things. Right. The history of technology sounds like from both of you, sounds suspiciously like the history of life. Right.

And I think... Well, I'm very suspicious of this. Yeah, you should be because the Mac does not look like a sunflower. But there are tremendous similarities in many ways. And there was a famous evolutionary biologist, Niles Eldridge, or is. alive and Niles's specialty is studying tribalites mapping the morphology of them as a change. He can make trilobites. He can make trees, genealogical trees showing them.

His hobby is collecting cornettes from around the world. Cornets as in phevoovoo! Exactly, trumpets. And so he uses the same techniques applied to the forms of these and actually traces out the little heritage trees. And he can show that to a rough degree, the evolution of these technological forms resemble in many ways

the kind of tracing of life as it works and speciates. And so there is one sense in which the things that we make are really just an extension of the same evolutionary processes that made us. And that really shouldn't

really be a surprise. So for example, here let me show you, this is from the book. This is a picture, a graph of what happened to underwater animals in the long time ago called trilobites. This is how they changed. And here next to it is a drawing showing what has happened in the history of cornet making. So I'm seeing here two branching trees, which look kind of similar, actually. Yeah. So let me ask you.

I think we're selling you on this. Well, no, now let me get a little harder. How far are you willing to push this biology pattern? Kevin, it seems to me when I read your book, it seems like you almost think that ideas are kind of alive or almost a lot. You even say that if you were to look at the living systems of the world, the kingdoms of animals and plants and all those little guys, of which there are six,

you then like, you know a little map, you plop this technium thing. So you call it the seventh kingdom. No, no, no, no. Because the first six. six are all have mommies and daddies. I'm not sure how to explain the seventh. Yeah, so I call it the seventh because I think it is,

I mean, I place, again, the question I'm asking in a larger context is what is this stuff that we're making and surrounding ourselves with it? It's not just little bunches of gadgets. It's just not wires. We have to see that it's really part of something that's been going on for a long time. And so... There's a very big difference between us. spoon in a whale. I mean...

I'm not talking about the spoon. I'm talking about the whole super organisms of all the technologies. But it's a lot of spoons. It's a lot of spoons. And what connects them is actually the fact that we have this stream of things that are organizing themselves, maintaining order, and in some cases

increasing their order, in the face of the rest of the universe running down. And the spoons that you're obsessed with have come from that same strand. There is a strand of these galaxies and stars and here's a little corner of the planet where this

self-organizing system has been making more and more order and it made these animals and then the more and more order and structure and complexity and diversity and it made minds and these minds have made another thing that has high degree of order and complexity and stuff and may itself be starting to make other things, other minds, May. It may have made... Does that seem scary?

Spook you? Well, worry you? Let me read to you. Let me read to you what some of your reviewers had said. Kelly's central thesis is this. Technology has its own internal logic and rhythms that are distinct and sometimes adverse to the desires of the humans that create it. Technology creates itself using humans to do its bidding.

Or, humans cannot direct or prevent technology's course, at least not in the long run. Like water contained behind a dam, relentlessly seeking escape, technology will eventually find its own way. Or doesn't that creep you out a little? No, no, I know. But you're just you. No, no. I'm seriously, it's like if you said the same thing about life, would that bother you? No, I'm part of life. I'm just worried about the thing. No, you're part of technology, too. Don't you understand that we humans have made, have invented ourselves. That, you know, we have this

external stomach, we call it cooking, that has changed our diets, that has changed our teeth, our jaws. We have remade ourselves when we become literate. Our brains are rewired. We think differently. We are not the same people that left Africa. We have domesticated ourselves. We are going to continue doing that. So why is that? You are technology. Does that bother you? Well, but when you say what does technology you want, I'm not sure I'm in that sentence. That's what keeps me out.

What would happen if, by your logic, and maybe as a fellow traveler by your logic, you could imagine a situation where the things that we have created, not only our ideas, but the things we have made, will have by the same processes that describe the evolution of life, will develop a will of their own, and then there will be either an evolution at our command or an evolution away from us or an evolution that might somehow compete with us. I don't know.

To some extent aren't we already in that kind of imagined future state? I mean, you think about the internet right now if we wanted to turn it off, it would be extremely difficult to do. It's impossible. And if we did, the catastrophic, non-linear,

unpredictable effects of turning this thing off would be unbelievably devastating, right? We would have no idea what would happen. At least will we be turning off at that point, would we be turning off something we use, something we need. But at the moment when, I don't know where this gets this far, but at the moment when to turn off the machine is to commit a murder, that is that the machine would have come somehow sentient or full of feeling,

that would be very morally troubling. But Kevin is very clear also to defend him again. He's, would you say want, and this is, I mean, this is the danger of want, right? Because he's not talking about consciousness. He's not talking about sentence. Well, not yet. Right. And it's like in the sense that you would say, you know, a little bacterium, you know, wants to kind of float up a nutrient stream or something like that, right?

The bacterium presumably is not conscious of what it is doing. It's not sitting there saying like, hmm, yummy nutrients here. This is great if I only had a spoon, you know. It's not thinking like that, right? But nonetheless, you have to look at it and say, it is happy going up this little gradient sucking in all these nutrients. And somehow that thing is driven towards that. So maybe the problem is we don't quite have that I want, but there's no I. Right.

We don't have the kind of the verb or maybe the subject. I usually want, you know, provocatively and deliberately, but partly so that we can rehearse this idea as things acquire more autonomy. Right now, the amount of autonomy and the things we make is minuscule. It's about the size of a bacteria or a grasshopper. But it won't be. It will increase. And so we have to prepare ourselves for the fact that some, day we're going to make something that we'll have

a want and how do we deal with that? When we make something that, you know, declares to us, oh, I am a child of God, what's our response to it? And so I use want to help us really prepare ourselves for that

eventuality. Let me just end. Let me finish with this. You're like one of the happiest people I know so you've often thought said that if in contemplating these future problems you just seem to always look on the

you know that from the life of Brian always look on the bright side of line in this case if you were to give the technium a mind of its own is

your thought that it will work out great? Yes I think that what evolution moves towards is increasing setteance of all sorts. So we see that, you see throughout life, mind being invented all the time. I think what we are doing is we're kind of evolution's way

to invent minds that evolution biological evolution could not make. So we're going to invent all kinds of ways of thinking that evolution in a biological sense could not reach. And the reason why we're doing to do that is we're going to invent all kinds of mind, different kinds of thinking, because our mind alone is probably not sufficient to completely comprehend the universe. We need other species of thinking.

So we're going to populate the universe as far as we can with other ways of thinking so that collectively we can comprehend the universe. And those other ways of thinking are ways that biological evolution probably couldn't get to itself. So I think that, yes, the more kinds of minds are, the better.

I think part of the problem is when you're saying, are we going to be okay? Kevin is saying absolutely on the 10,000-year scale. We're going to be great. But next year. But what about next Tuesday? Yeah, right? Both are valid concerns. Special thanks to Paul Holden Graber, director of public programs at the New York Public Library in New York City.

And of course, to Stephen Johnson, whose new book is called Where Good Ideas Come From, and Kevin Kelly, his book, What Technology Wants. Chad Abumrad. I'm Robert Crillwood. Thank you for listening. Hello, this is Rachel Rukier, a Radio Lab listener and supporter in Brooklyn, New York. Radio Lab is supported in part by the Afroid P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.s. www.s.org. Thanks, guys, that just made my week.