The Rest Is History - 94. Silicon Valley Part 2

Episode Date: September 7, 2021

The rise of social media is the central subject of our second instalment with tech pioneer Marc Andreessen. Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook ask whether social media is the principal force behind an increase in populist politics. The ‘Americanisation’ of culture plus Marc’s theory on why software is the closest thing to real life magic also feature. A Goalhanger Films & Left Peg Media production Produced by Jack Davenport Exec Producer Tony Pastor *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Hello, welcome to The Rest Is History. This is the second part of a two-part series on the history of Silicon Valley, the development of the internet, the role it plays in the kind of broadest historical spectrum, and we're incredibly privileged to have as our guest, absolute titan of the internet, Mark Andreessen, developer of the web browser, one of the profoundest thinkers and investors in this field. And the first billionaire to have ever appeared on The Rest Is History. Yes, Dominic, you're obsessed with.

I am. I am. I'm above that. I've never spoken to somebody who's, I mean, just so colossally rich. But also such a, I mean, he'll be remembered when, you know, the man who popularised the web browser is much more important than any number of prime ministers. I'm not denying that, but I'm just above worrying about wealth. I know.

A nobler and better person than you. I know, listeners. What what an utter utter lie that is let's let's move on um so in the previous episode we were um we were discussing social media yes we just come to it hadn't we we've come to that so facebook has has basically been invented um mark andreessen is on the board of facebook today. So he's an investor in Twitter, all kinds of things like that as well. So a guy who knows infinitely more about it. No one knows more about Twitter than you, Tom. I mean, you tweet more than about the rest of the population put together, don't you?

You and the other Tom Holland. Yeah, but I'm the user. He's the supplier. Right. Yeah. And it's the supplier knows yeah and it's the supplier you know nothing makes my day more than when you get birthday wishes or it is a tweet asking for an autograph or something from a teenage girl in tuscaloosa because i know how much it annoys you i always enjoy it it's hilarious um the one thing

that really annoys me is people who think that i've never heard a joke about my name being the same name as the guy who plays spider-man yeah that's the great thing about it you see that's the joke that never stops giving because it was quite i mean it was quite funny in kind of 47 ad right we've got mark andreessen or we had mark andreessen rather we spoke to him and we should bring him on shouldn't we we should just stop wittering to each other. We started by asking Mark about what I see as a tension at the heart of social media. So on the one hand, social media is supposed to be a great collective endeavour, bringing people together and uniting people across the world. This is part of Facebook's entire ethos, of course. But at the same time, it's something that you do on your own. And there's

always a tendency to kind of retreat, as I see it, into silos or bubbles of like-minded people and to kind of screen out the rest of the world. So we asked him about that and whether he thinks that social media really does bring the world together. Well, so, you know, let's take on the sort of filter bubble or the silo thing right up front. And I know you guys, I listened to your Coffeehouse podcast last night, and you guys talked about this a little bit. But, you know, there has been this criticism of the internet um kind of the whole time and and i think there by the way there is some truth to it right and the criticism is this kind of they call the filter bubble criticism which basically is the internet lets you good news bad news the internet lets you find people

who are exactly like you right so the whatever thing you're into whatever you know hobby you have whatever interest you have whatever politics you have whatever hobby you have, whatever interests you have, whatever politics you have, whatever religion you have, like, it doesn't matter, you know, up until the internet, like, if you did not grow up around people who shared that interest, you didn't have anybody to talk to who shared that interest. And with the internet, all of a sudden, you can go find people who just happen to correspond exactly to your preconceptions. And that can be a really wonderful thing. And that can also be, you know, the argument goes a really terrible thing, right? Because, you know, echo chambers, you know, reinforces, you know, maybe this sort of cult like behavior, you know, that you do see. You know, I think there's a truth to that. But I

think there's also another truth. And the research on filter bubbles actually has demonstrated this other truth. The other truth is the internet also makes it much more likely you're going to encounter people who disagree. Right? So like, a lot of people in real life, as we say, IRL in real life, a lot of people in real life, you know, and this is sort of let's say this is like characteristic, for example, of a lot of highly educated people. Right. A lot of highly educated people grew up in these college towns. Right. And their parents are like college professors or something or professionals of some kind. And they grew up in these sort of relatively kind of insulated environments where everybody around them is like highly educated and, you know, kind of middle class, upper middle class, and often from, you know, a relatively narrow, you know, kind of selection of nationalities or ethnic groups. And, you know, and they basically in real life, they're only talking to people who are like themselves. And then, you know, and by the way, the same thing's true of rural America, the same thing's true of urban America, right? It's

same thing's true of, you know, lots of places around the world. You know, people grew up in these kind of real world filter bubbles. And then you go on the internet and it's like you get slammed into this kaleidoscope of lots of people, lots of other things. And so all of a sudden, for the first time, you can, fragmented, you know, you know, superheated, you know, you know, tons of arguments. You know, why do people get sucked into arguing online? Right. You know, there's a famous cartoon, which is, you know, sorry, honey, I can't come to bed right now. Somebody is wrong on the Internet. Right. Like, why do people get sucked into arguing online? Right. Which has become kind of the national or the global hobby. It's because like there are people, you know, you just are slammed into running, you know, slammed into people's people who really don't agree with you. And so I think that that is the other side of it. development of the printing press, the growth of literacy, the ability of people to read stuff

that previously they hadn't been able to read. I mean, you know, people then are able to kind of find people like them, but also they're able to find things that they really disagree with. And it has a transformative effect on the fabric and the culture of 17th, 18th century life do you think that um the internet is having a kind of analogous effect that it's amplifying the way in which people both agree and disagree with one another in ways that is kind of having a direct impact on politics in the u.s europe whatever yeah and in fact i think i would again, it took me a long time to come to grips with this, both because it's complicated

and also because as a Midwesterner, it's hard for me to talk too dramatically about work I'm involved in. But I think it's hard to argue any other thesis than what you just stated. And I take it a step further, which is I think the internet brings a level of intensity to consuming information uh to communicating with

other people to having arguments to being a part of a movement um you know to being a part of a scene uh to feeling like you're a part of history to feeling you know like you're you know fully connected to the kind of the flow of politics into cultural and social changes um the level of intensity the internet provides it seems to me is just way beyond, um, anything previous, right? Like, you know, you just like the, the rush of what happens when you get wrapped into these things online is just so far beyond the experience that, you know, you, you know, and it's, it's a striking right to kind of think about the history of, you know, can

you, if you guys can, can you visualize what it would have been like to be part of the first generation to learn how to read, um, and then, and then, you know, can you, if you guys can, can you visualize what it would have been like to be part of the first generation to learn how to read, and then, and then, you know, had access to a book, right, and, you know, and obviously people got, like, very enthusiastic about the Bible, right, like, you know, they went off on, you know, wars, and, like, all this stuff to follow, and so clearly they had, they had, they had this, you know, very high level of animating passion, but, like, you know, in, in our time, time, it's hard to imagine anybody getting that fired up about a book. But boy, are they getting fired up online. And so I think it's – right, I'll stop.

Sorry, if I can jump in, Mark. But to go back to combine the point you just made with Tom's previous point about the printing press. So in the first sort of decades after the invention of the printing press, you have this explosion of print culture and colossal consequences. I mean, the Protestant Reformation and so on. So the new technology goes hand in hand with an intensity that then drives political change. Do you think that the intense politics of the last, let's say, 10, 15 years.

So in America, the obvious example is the rise and fall of Donald Trump. I mean, that wouldn't have been possible without the internet, without social media, right? I mean, he used Twitter to communicate and his opponents used social media to kind of whip themselves into a frenzy of outrage at every new thing that he did. I mean, so the internet, it's not just that it creates a particular kind of politics, a very sort of assertive, maybe aggressive stride in politics, doesn't it? Well, so I sort of half agree. And the reason I half agree, of course, is because Trump is far from the first populist, right? Right.

Agreed. Right. Because before Trump, you had, you know, when I was younger, Ross Perot almost won the presidency, right? He was a very Trump-like figure. Before that, obviously, you had Huey Law, when I was, you know, when I was, when I was younger, Ross Perot, like almost won the presidency. Right. He was very Trump, like figure, you know, before that, obviously you had, you know, Huey Long, right. William Jennings Bryant. And, and, you know, so, and then of course, you know, talking about populace, right. You know, you had, you know, your Hitlers and your Mussolini's right. It's, you know, everybody's like,

oh my God, the internet's responsible for the rise of fascism. Right. And it's, you know, in the modern world. And it's like, well, you know, we, I, you know, we actually had fascism like 70, 80 years ago. And you know that hitler fellow say what you will like he didn't have access to the internet so um you know somehow he figured out a way to do it with you know but he's always on the internet now isn't he he's always you guys know godwin's law there's actually a lot of the internet every every discussion inevitably becomes a discussion about Hitler. So, you know, so it's like, basically, it's like, there is no, you know, like, in a sense, there's nothing new, you know, kind of about the politics of our era. And I would even say that in maybe a set of a disappointing

way, which is, it feels at least to me, like, we're kind of rehashing, you know, kind of old and settled, you know, debates and arguments from, you know, whether 30 years ago or 70 years ago or 100 years ago. And so, so therefore, establishing causation is hard. And so I guess, I guess the way I would put it is like, I don't know that the internet, I don't think the internet, for sure, it didn't cause populism, or by the way, the same thing, right, the resurgence of this, you know, kind of, you know, kind of more, let's say, primal kind of leftism, you know, at the same time, which is sort of you can kind of see in both, you know, kind of wokeness on the one hand, but also kind of this re-rise of socialism, you know, on the other hand, right. So the corresponding kind of, you know, at the same time, which is sort of, you can kind of see in both, you know, kind of wokeness on the one hand, but also kind of this re-rise of socialism, you know, on the other hand, right? So the corresponding kind of, you know, thing is happening on the left. But again, there, it's like, you know, identity politics are not new

with the internet. They were a big deal in the 1960s, pre the internet. And of course, ethnic and racial division is not new. It's very old. And then, you know, socialism is not new, right? And, you know, again, the socialism, you know, the Russian revolution, you know, happened on the basis of what, like the mimeograph machine. Um, so, um, and, you know, in-person organizing. So, so, you know, do these technologies create these things? I don't think so. Um, uh, on the other hand, I think there's a, at least my model is basically the technology

of the time is it's like, it's the conduit, uh, for these things. And then it's, you know, you might say the amplifier or, you know, the organizing, you know, kind of agent. And so, you know, if the Nazi party, for example, was the consequence of, you know, radio and the Russian revolution, it's consequence, mimeograph machines, like, you know, again, those are, those are very primal ideas, you know, but they flowed through the technology of that time. And now we have this, well, then you can argue the other side of that, which is now we have this sort of, I would argue, kind of much more, or I'd say even more visceral form of

technology that's even more present in people's lives, that's even more powerful than the ones that came before. And so maybe it's old ideas, but being expressed in new ways and leading to different consequences. By the way, let me let me add one other theory, right? Which is, you know, whenever you had, like, at least my understanding of history is like, you know, before the internet, if you had like that, basically a mass political movement, right, it was characterized by street activity, right? Like you have, you know, fights and riots, and you know, you'd have like, you know, bloodshed, people getting killed, you know, big public strikes and protests and all these things. And of course, you know, we, you know, fights and riots and, you know, you'd have like, you know, bloodshed, people getting killed, you know, public strikes and protests and all these things. And of course, you know, we, you know, we do have, you know, from time to time we have activity in the streets, you know, in the US.

But like, there's another argument basically, which is the internet is a substitution for real world activity. Right. And so there's a more benign kind of projection here, which is maybe the internet greatly inflames politics and gets everybody all heated up. But maybe people are basically too busy pounding away at their keyboards to go out into the streets. Yeah. Though, of course, something like the Arab Spring, I mean, that's a good example of something where the internet did get people out in the streets, didn't it? I mean – Yeah, that's right. And, in fact, one of the things that repressive political regimes learned from the Arab Spring and which they grapple with today when these things happen, which is, okay, what happens when there's like mass political movement online and where you even

have real world protests being organized online? If you're a repressive political regime, the very first thing you think of is I'm going to shut off that internet, right? I'm going to kill the switch. And of course, that is the guaranteed way now to get everybody in the street. Or, Mark, I mean, looking at the Taliban, you know, they're on Twitter. And, you know, it wouldn't surprise me to, you know, they'll give us their preferred pronouns. I mean, they're on Twitter, whereas Donald Trump isn't. And in a sense, perhaps, you know, the go-getting totalitarian you you get on social media and you kind of uh you manicure your message right you manicure the message you could yeah i mean i saw me i saw me

the other day as the taliban would like you to know that their preferred pronouns are he him don't think there's much doubt about that so that the internet could be well then there's this other well there's this other question right which flows from what you just said which is basically to what extent is the internet actually – yes, the internet may to some extent drive division and so forth. But maybe the sort of broader impact of the internet is that it's a giant assimilation machine, right? And it's a giant assimilation machine into Western culture broadly defined, right? And it's the Joseph Henrich kind of weird kind of concept, which is maybe the internet – you know, kind of concept, which is, you know, maybe the Internet, maybe. And again, this is sort of like if you were a traditionalist, you would basically say the Internet, basically, you know, basically, if you're a traditionalist, you'd say modern media and modern culture for the last whatever, you know, decades and centuries has always been ripping people out of their historical cultures, you know, for a long time now. But the Internet will complete that process.

Like the Internet is just going to rip every kid out of whatever the local culture is well that's um and you know right that you mentioned um wokeness wokeness is that we often have a little have a little segue into discussions of wokeness in this podcast and obviously there's there's an argument in britain for example that a lot of the argument about the kind of woke culture here is an americanization of our own kind of national culture that basically because of so many people on social media so many opinion formers they look at what's happening in the states and they just import it do you think there's I mean to what extent do you think the internet I mean in some ways because you are

a midwesterner and everything you're completely the wrong person to ask but to what extent is the kind of internet and social to what extent are they massive engines of americanization do you think so i think that's the case and this you know this this can easily sound triumphalist which is not kind of how i intended in fact i think there might be real significant you know downsides to this but i i think there's a very powerful argument to be made well look it's the same argument people have been making about hollywood forever right um yeah which is sort of you know you know clint east you know there's an argument used to be made about hollywood you know clint eastwood kind of defined a sort of image of

masculinity to like global, right? And so you've got kids, you know, all over the world in the 1960s, 1970s, were like, you know, aha, you know, it's, that's what I want to be like, right. And so, you know, this, this is an older idea. But yeah, the internet, again, it's just, it's so visceral. It pulls you in, like, so dramatically, It's such an intense experience. There's a language component to it, which is the internet is overwhelmingly English language. And so it must be entrenching the status of English as the global lingua franca, do you think? Yeah, absolutely. And by the way, I'll just tell you, here's a phenomenon we now routinely see, which we didn't see before. So the newly arrived entrepreneurs, the global entrepreneurs coming

from all over the world who come to Silicon Valley that are in their early twenties now, they show up here, they don't have accents. They speak completely fluent American English. And I always ask like, how did you get so good at English? And it's like, well, they said, you know, they look at me like I'm, you know, puzzled and they're like, YouTube, right? Like, yeah. Right. And so, yeah. So there's a language component, obviously, you know, language itself is a, it's a culture carrier as the French will tell you. And then yeah. And then there's just all of the other components, there's just all of the other components to go. I mean, no, there's the really fundamental things, which is just like, you know, the basic idea of uncontrolled

flow of information, right. It's just, it's something that comes with the internet that, you know, that people are, you know, freak out about all the time, but like that of course is a very Western, you know, kind of thing. And, you know, it's very specifically like, you know, an American thing with freedom of speech as a sort of a primary thing. And then, yeah, there's, yeah, just all of, yeah, all of the attitudes. You know, there's this debate online a while ago that I found really interesting. So Brian Kaplan, the economist basically said, don't, you know, basically he called Western civilization, he said, everybody's always worried about kind of Western civilization getting buried. Or, um, and he said, it's, it's, he called it the Hardy weed. Um, and he basically made this argument that Western civilization is kind of going to spread

and eat everything. And then Scott Alexander basically argued, it's not Western civilization, it's universal civilization because basically it's basically it's Western civilization, but incorporating all of the best elements of everybody else's culture. Right. And so just as an example, you know, Japanese anime has gone global on the internet. Right. And it's sort of like Japanese anime has been kind of embraced into kind of

the Western conception of entertainment and media in a way that it wasn't before the internet. And so, so Scott would say, it's going to be everybody's culture kind of munched together. The positive view of this is going to be everybody's culture kind of munched together, including the best of everybody's culture. And that's maybe the most utopian view. Well, we're all in favor of

utopian views and i think that um that would actually be a perfect note to go to a break um so we will see you back after the break i'm marina hyde and i'm richard osmond and together we host the rest is entertainment it's your weekly fix of entertainment news reviews splash of showbiz gossip and on our q a we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.

Hello, welcome back to The Rest is History. We are talking the internet as one of the great revolutionary forces in world history. And we are with Mark Andreessen, who, Mark, you wrote a famous essay, how software is eating the world. And I guess, I mean, there's almost something there perhaps of marx who said of capitalism you know famously that all that is solid melts into where the way that it kind of has this ability to transform and devour everything traditional everything solid um do you think is that a reasonable way to describe the impact of the Internet, the way that software has given us Netflix rather than Blockbuster? It's given us Amazon rather than Borders.

So I think that's true. But then there's also a deeper thing, which is what I tried to get to in the original software. It's the world essay, which is the internet is a viewed through a technological lens. The internet is a carrier of software. And we kind of take software a little bit for granted now because, you know, we, everybody uses software and everybody knows what an app is and so forth. And so it kind of seems like it's obvious what software is, but like, there's a, there's a deep truth to software, which I think maybe is still, still underestimated, which basically, and this is kind of what got me interested in all this stuff when I was a kid to start with, is software is like as close to magic as you can get in the real world.

And I often specifically use the metaphor of alchemy, right? Which is software, you know, it's like famously with alchemy, it was a search for whatever it was called, whatever the magic formula that was used. Right. Philosopher's stone that would turn something that was abundant, lead, into something that was rare and valuable, gold. Well, software basically is the philosopher's stone for turning literally, quite literally typing on a keyboard into changes in the real world. So what's the easiest thing in the world to do is to sit and type on a keyboard?

And what's the hardest thing in the world to do is to sit and type on a keyboard? And what's the hardest thing in the world to do is elect a new president or create a new global business or convince all these cars to all of a sudden be picking up riders or convince people to open up their homes and take in people to be able to stay in their homes? References to Uber and Airbnb. Or, by the way, even software to get everybody to realize that their friends are all online and connected and they can talk to all their friends in the form of Facebook. And so it's basically like in every one of these things, every time software is used to do anything, somebody has set up a keyboard, somebody has typed in these sort of magical incantations in this kind of weird sorcery language. And then at some point, they press enter.

And then the real world changes. Things change. The car starts to drive itself. Right. You know, really, really amazing changes actually happen in the real world. And so it's this it's this it's this lever. Right. It's this it's this basically it's this, you know, it's this it's this giant lever where if you want to change something in the real world, like the easiest and most powerful way to do it. Now it's to write software. And I would say like that, that fact is like, you know, that's the dominant fact of my basic entire life, but you know, my entire career as a venture capitalist, this is what all of our companies do. You know, all of, you know, basically, you know,

almost all of the really great entrepreneurial kids in the world now are motivated to start this kind of business, to do this kind of thing. You know? And so this, this, this is probably still a greatly, this is still a greatly underestimated factor. It's like software is sort of still visualized by a lot of people as like a separate computer thing. And it's really not that anymore. It's like woven into basically all of reality at this point. Yeah.

But that has consequences, I mean, for good and ill, right? I mean, if I terminate this conversation now and go and walk down the street, in five minutes I'll be in High Street, what you would call Main Street. And it's full of, let's say, High Street, what we would call Main Street. And it's full of, let's say, storefronts that are unoccupied. And there are, I mean, around the world, if this revolution speeds up and if AI has the effect that people think it will, that's going to cause colossal political and that's going to pose these immense political and economic challenges, isn't it? Not just for us, but for our successors and for their successors and so on. Well, some massive change, for sure.

You know, no question. You know, you often at this point in these conversations, you get to like these sort of dystopian, you know, kind of economic projections where people, you know, kind of, you know, the classic one is, well, you know, new technology will lead to mass unemployment. Right. Because if we have software doing all these things, then what will the people do? You know, if you put your economist hat on, you basically say that's not what happens. Right. And the reason that's not what happens, technology never leads to mass unemployment. And the reason, of course, is because what technology represents is increase in productivity. Right. In economic terms. Right.

Technology is a way to do more with less. When you do more with less, you increase societal wealth, right? As you increase societal wealth, you actually increase consumer demand. You increase consumer spending power, right? You quite literally create new demand. You create new ability for people to be able to pay for and afford things. And then, you know, new industries, new fields, new activities get created

that ends up soaking up all the, you know, all the labor. Do you think the experience of the pandemic has been an illustration of that? That the economic devastation has been much less than people thought it would be yeah well there were two parts so there were two parts to this that's so striking and so basically so yeah so two things so one is you know basically from like 2010 to 2019 at least the american press was absolutely full of i would say what right what i you know theories it was all this it was this just non-stop drumbeat of like the Internet's going to destroy all the jobs and robots are going to be whatever.

And nobody's going to have anything to do. And it's going to be this dystopian, dystopian thing. And then basically what happened was up to March 2020, I'm sorry, up to January 2020, the American economy right after 250 years of like seriously, you know, onrushing technological change, including the full impact of Internet and software and all the stuff that was happening up until January 2020, right, resulted in the best consumer economy and the best employment economy in the history of the United States. Right. So in January of 2020, you know, unemployment in the U.S. was at all time lows. Unemployment among the lowest skilled educated in the U.S. was at all time lows. You know, incomes were at all time highs,time highs, job growth, wages actually were rising. As of January 2020, wages were rising faster for lower income people than they were for higher income people. So you were actually starting to get a reinvigoration of wage growth, which is what you get when you get a productivity boom.

And so it was quite literally the best economy we've had in maybe forever in January 2020. It was great. And then, of course, COVID arrives. right? And exactly to your point, like I was like, you know, like a lot of people, I just got totally freaked out by COVID early on. And in part was like, oh my God, we're going to voluntarily, you know, we're going to take basically the best economy we've ever had. But by the way, completely disproves all these theories. And we're going to kill it. Like we're going to voluntarily kill it because we're going to shut it down because we're going to go into these lockdowns and we're going to, yous. And basically, from an economic standpoint, the lockdowns, basically, it's a simultaneous killing of the demand side of the economy because you're telling people they

have to stay home and they can't spend money. And it's a killing of the supply side of the economy, which is you're shutting down all the factories, all the production capabilities. And so I was like, basically, oh my God like Great Depression 2.0, like, you know, this is going to be a real problem. To your point, it turned out, right, well, part of what happened, obviously, was just like mass government subsidies, you know, a huge, you know, printing of trillions of dollars, and, and all these new social benefits, basically, we've been, we've been piloting UBI, at least in the US. And, and then, but yeah, look, part of what happened was basically all of these online

forms of activity basically got shoved forward by, you know, I think as much as a decade, right. And so all of a sudden, you have this massive share shift, you know, from, you know, offline, you know, from retail stores that literally could not be open. All of a sudden, ecommerce, you have this massive share shift from school to online, you know, kind of physical classroom to online education, you have this massive share shift from school to online, you know, kind of physical classroom to online education. You have this massive share shift from commercial office space to teleconferencing. And, yeah, the consequences of the true long term consequences of this period may have much less to do with the health issues. It may have much more to do with the economic transformation, but this is really accelerated. And do you think let's let's talk a little about the politics, go back to the politics.

So there's always a sense that Silicon Valley and the digital revolution, all these things, I mean, precisely because they are moving the focus away from, you know, factories, organized labor, all those kinds of things that they are a force for kind of libertarianism and sort of anti-state, you know, that their tech companies don't want governments interfering with them. They sort of create that sense that you're the agent, you know, you're not, you know, you sitting in front of the screen, you're the master of your own destiny and so on. Do you think that's true? Do you think in the future, as we move more online and as tech plays a bigger and bigger role in our lives that we will become more libertarian and we will become in a sense more well i mean a silly way of referring to it but more right wing in that way

yeah so i'll start by saying is there's a certain truth to the theory and and that certain truth is you know there is a libertarian wing to the tech industry um and there has been for a very long time um you know in in our time it's been, you know, kind of around, you know, this, uh, my, you know, my friend Peter Thiel, um, has become, you know, kind of one of these, one of these great, uh, one of these great American characters, um, you know, who's just an absolute genius and it's very inspirational for a lot of people, but as you know, is sort of famously a libertarian and kind of has a, has a culture that kind of orbits around him, uh, of libertarianism. Um, and so, you know, there is, there is that, uh, you know, there is there is that, you know,

there is that component. Just in reality, though, basically, like that's a it's a fringe of the politics of the Valley, at least the American tech industry. Overwhelmingly, the American tech industry is sort of what you just call classic, just progressive liberal. Right. And you can see you can see this, by the way, very clearly in the numbers, you can see this in the voting patterns in the Bay Area and you can see it in the political donations, like you take the typical big tech company or any cluster of people in Silicon Valley, you think the entrepreneurs would be the same way or the venture capital firms would be the same way

you know, it's like during the 2016 cycle, it's like, you know, whatever 97% of the money or something went to, you know, went to Hillary Clinton right, and like, you know 0.0001% went to donald trump and donald trump but donald trump is not on twitter anymore um right exactly right exactly well you know so like yeah so uh you know trump that was not libertarian but like you know it is it is no you know for all of the national youth around you know

the tech industry and trump like you know peter was the only you know tech donor uh to donald trump like he was you know n of one um so Like he was, you know, end of one. So, but, you know, then look, there's like a little scattering, you know, you'll see a little scattering of money to Rand Paul or something or to whatever the Libertarian candidate was in 2016. But it's really on the margin. It's almost entirely the standard liberal progressive Democrat. And I think the reason for that, it's a very prosaic explanation, which is kind of almost too boring to talk about, which is just the tech industry is composed of people who are

kind of almost too boring to talk about, which is just the tech industry is composed of people who are kind of highly educated. You know, they're highly open, and they're very socially progressive, you know, exactly, exactly as you'd expect from any sort of elite knowledge industry in the modern era. And they have the, they have overwhelmingly the exact politics of their peers in the entertainment industry or in the finance industry or in any of these other sort of knowledge work industries, um you know architects and graphic designers and it's all the same so it's it's overwhelmingly standard leftism um and i don't i don't really see any signs that um uh i don't really if anything that that's intensifying um if anything the the value is going for the left i mean i wonder if it's even more fundamental than that i mean you were talking about, you know, books, how amazing it

would have been for the first time to read a book. And there's a famous passage in one of Plato's dialogues where he describes the Egyptian god Thoth coming to the pharaoh and saying, look, I've invented writing. And pharaoh is absolutely appalled. This is going to have a devastating effect. We're not going to have it. And it's evident that, you know, that Plato basically kind of agrees with this because Plato is a massive conservative, even though, of course, he's writing it down. And there is a sense, isn't there,

that, you know, in every great convulsive period of change, there are people whose instinct is to say, this is going to be terrible. This is going to be for the worst. Why can't things just stay the way they are? And then there are others who say, yes, this is incredible. This has amazing opportunities. And I would guess, I mean, you're looking at what you've written about it, that you're absolutely someone who thinks, yes, this is great. Your dreams in the 90s,

I guess, have pretty much been fulfilled, haven't they? Yeah. So look, I guess I'd say more than anything else, I had this conversation with Andy Grove once years ago and he's, you know, talking about the impacts of new technology. And he's, to a certain extent, he just kind of waved the topic away. And I was like, I can't believe you're not, you know, I was like, I can't believe you're not more interested in this. Like, you know, you're the, you're the chip guy. Like you must, you must think about the consequences of these. And he basically said, he's like, look, it's like once new technology arrives, like, it's like,

you know, it's like, you know, instead of writing or like steel, like one day we don't have steel. The next day we have steel. Right. Or by the way, one day we don't have nuclear weapons. The next day we have nuclear weapons. Like the primary thing that happens is, okay, it's here. Right. Like to some extent, these debates are actually not useful, or at least he viewed them as not useful. Cause it's like, it's here. It's not, it's not, you're never going backwards. Like you're never putting the genie back in the bottle. And so, you know it's just it's just like it's just like air now you have air congratulations

right like everybody's gonna breathe there's no debate like it's just going to happen right um and so you know there's an extent to which it's just simply like you know this this technology once once people figure out you know kind of what's possible and they build it you you don't put it back in the bottle now you know if you're not an engineer you know that sounds a little bit insane it makes it sounds a little bit like engineers kind of what's possible and they build it. You don't put it back in the bottle. Now, you know, if you're not an engineer, you know, that sounds a little bit insane. It makes it sounds a little bit like engineers kind of think that they're just kind of on autopilot. They should just build whatever they want. They don't bear more responsibility for anything. You know, my, my, my big counter argument to that would be, I think engineers have a terrible track record of predicting both the negative and the positive consequences of their new technologies. You know,

my favorite example of that was Thomas Edison.ison uh you know thomas edison invented the phonograph um and uh you know he was completely convinced as a proper you know god-fearing lost pursuit of his generation he was completely convinced that the killer app for the phonograph was going to be to reinforce you know existing religions because you would people would finally be able to have their own home libraries of sermons right on wax records and of course to him it was the most natural thing in the world you put in a hard day's work factory um you come home at night you'd have dinner and then you'd put on a sermon and you'd say the family was sitting around listening to the sermon right um and so it turns out people want that it turns out they wanted this you know very evil devil music called

jazz uh right so so you know the technologists have a know, I don't know that the technologists have any sort of real track record for predicting consequences. I don't think, I don't know that the non-technologists have a very good, you know, record of predicting the consequences of new technology. You know, technology is, you know, by the very nature, it is just a tool. It is, you know, human beings who decide how to use everything. Nobody's ever been able to figure out how to put anything back in the box. And then I think, you know, look, with the really big ones, I think you've got good and bad, right? I think you've got the good and bad. I always think about nuclear weapons, right? It's like, you know, nuclear weapons, like of all the technologies,

you think maybe we should not have built as a species, maybe nuclear weapons would be that thing. But it's like, maybe, you know, we're what, 75 years in now. And, you know, we haven't had World War Three. And, you know, maybe the existence of in now and you know we haven't had world war iii um and you know maybe the existence of nuclear weapons it means that a billion people who would have died in world in a conventional world war iii in the 1970s or something you know didn't didn't die um and so maybe maybe they've actually kept the peace this whole time and so you know yeah on the topic of world war iii could i just ask you about china sure and has has china kind of emancipated itself from basically silicon valley has it has its control of the internet enabled it to

to stand clear of that and and is that is that a threat to the the silicon valley based internet that we have in the west well i think there's two two part two parts of that we can we can talk about either one so one is just like the actual chinese tech industry and to what extent is it able to function kind of independently of the us um and then the other question is like um that i think you're asking is more around the great firewall um and sort of the chinese ability to kind of harness the internet and restrict its impact and i suppose also to to um to use the internet to attack the West because, you know, you don't need nuclear weapons

if you can use hackers or whatever to, no, but to kind of disable, I don't know, power stations in the US. I mean, that would be something that tech has made possible in a way that simply wouldn't have been possible kind of 40 years ago. Yeah, that's true. So there is this concept that sort of you know sometimes you're the term network-centric warfare kind of you know irregular warfare happening online

um you know there there is this this is something i do i've talked to people in washington about um you know there there's you know there's there's so-called you know doctrine doctrines of war right so there's you know military planners right in any big country have all these theories about basically what counts as a military attack what what counts as a act of war. You know, what are you know, what retaliations happen? Like if, you know, if, you know, if, you know, if they shoot down one of our jet fighters, what do we do? Right. And at what point do they go? It doesn't go from, you know, kind of a skirmish to a war and so forth, you know, leading all the way up to and including, you know, nuclear nuclear strikes. As of right now, to my knowledge, there's no doctrine of war for what you might call online warfare. Right. And so, you know, the Russians hack this, the Chinese hack

that, this, that, the other thing, you know, whatever, you know, IRS records, voting machines, power plants, hospitals, you know, who's behind all these ransomware attacks, you know, where they've been launched from, you know, somebody, you know, trialing those, you know, and so forth and so on. And at least right now, I get the sense that that's, this is a very fuzzy topic, in the sense that like, it was, nobody in DC has been able to answer the question for me of X, Y, and Z happen online, and it therefore results in real world military retaliation. Like that, that doctrine literally doesn't exist. Now, I would, I would just, I would bucket this in with just this more general concept of irregular warfare um which is basically right

sort of non-traditional warfare um you know aimed at basically you know you know so in the old days it would have been like you know sabotage right as an example um now the optimist in me basically says if we're arguing about irregular warfare we're in pretty good shape right because you'd much rather sit around and worry about irregular warfare than regular warfare so i i think probably this means we're doing okay okay fair enough but what um here's a here's a question a slightly odd question so obviously in this podcast most of the time we look backwards um and i'm sort of conscious that most of the things that we use this new technology for are things that we kind of predicted we'd use it for back in the 1980s. So, you know, you buy things from your computer screen,

you talk to your friends, you exchange ideas, you read the newspaper online. I mean, people were saying we would do that one day, you know, in 1975 or 1980. What's coming, though? I mean, what's next that we haven't foreseen or that people like me and Tom, who don, what's next that we haven't foreseen or that people like me and Tom who don't know anything about technology haven't foreseen? Where do you think we're going

with this? Yeah. So the thing that just keeps surprising me over and over again, and this is where I'm trying to spend a lot of time trying to figure this out right now in our day job, it's the internet as an enabler and a catalyst for movements, right? Like social movements, right? And I would go so far as to say probably the right term is cults. Right. And we talked about this a little bit with the politics conversation. But I would just say more in general.

You just see, it's just that the things I've just been shocked by routinely. I forget if the press is much over there, but, you know, this whole thing with GameStop and, you know, this this big stock market kind of thing that happened like six months ago. You know, we're basically this this this basically crew of like random people on Reddit got together and basically just creamed a lot of these hedge funds. Like, you know, what you just see now basically is like these just, you know, these incredible movements. Well, I mean, you mentioned Woke. Like Woke is another one of these, right? Woke is this like very powerful, energized internet movement. QAnon. QAnon would be part of that as well.

Yeah, exactly. So QAnon. QAnon. QAnon. So there's this, there's this, there's this, there's been this concept in the gaming industry for many years called the augmented reality game, ARG. And it's this idea that you'll have games that basically play out in a hybrid of like basically a virtual environment, but also in the real world. And there have been these like ARGs over the years that people have built where it's like, basically it's like, you know,

there's this one game where you basically get to be a spy and like, you know, you get, you get a call at your desk at three in the afternoon and you have to go, you know, pick up, you know, whatever the secret package is, this and that, this and that. And then there's secret emails you have to decrypt and so forth. And so they try to kind of immerse you in this kind of fantasy, half virtual, half real kind of fantasy. So the ARGs never went mainstream. Nobody ever was able to figure out the formula to actually have these things take as compared to just a video game. In technical terms, QAnon is the first mass ARG.

Right. Right. Like somebody's running this thing. And their theories now is who it is, but like somebody's running this thing. And it, you know, quite literally, it's your point. Like it's an online phenomenon that literally like, you know, jumped out and now you see it present at every, you know, basically, you know, there's certain kinds of political rallies and so forth where you're in certain

places in the country where it's just, it's very prominent. And so, yeah, no, that, that's a, that, you know, there's certain kinds of political rallies and so forth where you're in certain places in the country where it's just it's very prominent. And so, yeah, that's a that's a great example. And I think, yeah, I think it's, you know, it's maybe it's this. I mean, if you wanted to get kind of really pseudo profound, you know, look, you could kind of say, look, you know, kind of modern, you know, Western culture, capitalism capitalism so forth right the standard critique is it kind of you know atomized you know kind of you know eliminated a lot of the historic connections that people feel to kind of family or tribe right or society or culture um and you know it may be that the you know people have been basically looking for meaning you know traditional religion has been collapsing and so people there's this meaning void in people's lives and like if you want meaning you

can almost certainly find it somewhere online yeah i mean i don't think that's that's pseudo profound at all i think that's pseudo-profound at all. I think that's exactly what's happening, that people find community, cohesion, a sense of purpose, a sense of who's on your side, who you need to hate. I mean, they get all that online, don't they? Yeah, I think so. I think increasingly that's the case. We're actually seeing it in business. I would say that, like, I'll just give you an example.

You know, cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, you know, I say Bitcoin is a movement, right? And there's just like this. Well, I'll just give you an example. Like there was just this, there's this attempt recently, you know, Washington's trying to figure out what to do with all this stuff all the time.

So they attach this Bitcoin, basically legislation to this, whatever this big infrastructure package they're doing. And then there was this mass uprising of all of the Bitcoin aficionados, right, in the US. So we're like,, wait a minute, you can't do that. This is our thing. You can't take it away. Or Tesla, I think, is another one of these stories where it's like, is Tesla a car company or is it a global science movement to save the planet?

Where the way that you participate in the movement is you follow Elon Musk, you hang on his every word, and you proselytize his gospel, and then, by the way, you buy the car and you buy the stock. And Tesla, I don't know if this is still the case, but there was a point not that long ago when Tesla stock was worth more than every other global car company combined. And why would that be? Well, maybe it's because Tesla is going to just be the best car know car company of all time which is certainly possible but maybe it's just because like people aren't just buying at stock because they like the financials the company maybe it's

part of being the movement um and by the way maybe that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy right maybe the fact that elon has such a movement you know there's no movement behind ford right there there used to be like 100 years ago henry ford was leader of a movement but like for motor company today there's no movement in toyota there's no movement but like tesla there's a movement so apple remains the kind of movement i was about to say apple i mean cola or levi's or mcdonald's especially in the you know the eastern block or something i mean they were but they were signifiers of of of political meaning and stuff yeah but but but apple i mean it was it it it almost died in the 90s, didn't it? And then it kind of, like a kind of expanding empire,

it recovered and annexed music and film and TV and phones and everything. And I mean, I would say that's the kind of the classic example. And that's why it's, is it still the largest company in the world? I mean, it was, seems to be. Yeah, I mean. It is. And by the way, the world i mean it was it seems to be yeah i mean it is and by the way the guy the guy you know steve came down from the mountain with the tablet yeah he did well i think that's probably and the tablet will tell you exactly what to believe yeah yeah buy another apple product is generally what it's what it's saying um i think that's the perfect note on which to end um can't thank you enough for this um it's been a blast and it's kind of you know as dominic says

normally we spend the time um looking backwards but it's been very energizing to look forwards as well so the rest is the future thank you guys thanks very much thank you very much thanks everyone for listening. Bye bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com that's