Theology in the Raw - S9 Ep934: Self Driving Cars, Elon Musk, SpaceX, and the Future of Tech: Peter McGowan

Episode Date: January 3, 2022

Peter McGowan is one of the founders of PlainJoe and Storyland Studios. He is a champion of bringing clients’ unique stories to life by broadening their visual vocabulary beyond words and helping shape the cultural influence of their organizations. Having worked with large-scale corporate clients such as Infinity, Nissan, IBM and Johnson & Johnson, as well as creative pioneers including Disney, Universal and Lego – Peter has a robust background in technology, art, and architecture which has equipped him to skillfully integrate these fields of design to tell immersive stories on the graphic and environmental stages. He is especially passionate about partnering with non-profit and cause-based organizations to reflect their missions with excellence and heart. https://www.storylandstudios.com/slsteam/peter-mcgowan/ In this episode, I ask Peter a bunch of questions about the future of tech, self-driving cars, neurolink, SpaceX, the future of smartphones, space travel, and related stuff. Peter is super techy and loves to keep up on where things are headed and how we can think Christianly about these things.  Theology in the Raw Conference - Exiles in Babylon At the Theology in the Raw conference, we will be challenged to think like exiles about race, sexuality, gender, critical race theory, hell, transgender identities, climate change, creation care, American politics, and what it means to love your democratic or republican neighbor as yourself. Different views will be presented. No question is off limits. No political party will be praised. Everyone will be challenged to think. And Jesus will be upheld as supreme. Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Check out Dr. Sprinkle’s website prestonsprinkle.com Stay Up to Date with the Podcast Twitter | @RawTheology Instagram | @TheologyintheRaw If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. If you have been blessed, challenged, or angered by Theology in the Raw and you want to spread the word, you can do so in three ways. Number one, you can leave a review down below. Number two, you can spread the word about the podcast on your social media accounts. Number three, if you have the means to do so, you can support the show financially for as little as five bucks a month through patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw get access to lots of premium content including a monthly q a podcast that i record for my patreon supporters my guest today is peter mcgowan peter is one of the founders of plain joe and storyland studios he's a champion of bringing clients unique stories of life by broadening their vision

vocabulary beyond words and helping shape the cultural influence of their organizations. He's worked with a number of well-known organizations such as Disney, Universal Studios, Lego, and others. I brought Peter on the show because this guy is very knowledgeable about all things technologically related. I told him ahead of time, I said, I don't have a specific direction in this conversation. He knows a lot about the future of everything and I just had a bunch of questions. So that's where we took this conversation. It wasn't planned out really. We ended up talking a lot about Elon Musk,k tesla self-driving cars neuralink space travel

and many many other interesting things so please welcome to the show for the first time the one peter mcgowan All right, I'm here with my friend Peter McAllen. Yeah, Peter, thanks for coming on the podcast. This is long overdue. We've talked about this kind of off and on for the last six months or so. But why don't you start by telling people who you are, what you do, and then I've just got a thousand questions about the whole tech world, the future of everything.

And every time I ask you a question about it, you seem to have a really thoughtful response. You more than dabble in all this stuff. So yeah, tell us a bit about who you are. Yeah. I help lead a communication design group called Storyland Studios. And we help people tell their story using a broader vocabulary than just traditional kind of writing or words spoken. It really is this idea that we're cut from the Walt Disney cloth, and the idea is that everything speaks. So there's kind of three major areas we look at. We say a story that walks away with people or strategic storytelling. A lot of times that's like branding, but for us a brand isn't so much about logos, fonts, and colors as it is an emotional response. So how do you feel when you say Disney, Apple, Nike, Starbucks?

And then the second area is story that doesn't walk away with people called spatial storytelling. And we actually are a licensed architectural firm and we get to dabble in that quite a bit. And really the idea of creating what we call is a sense of place. So where the story unfolds often is just as important, if not more important than the actual words being said, the context of the words mean everything. Right. Uh, so like if you're around a campfire and you say fire versus, uh, like you're alone in the bedroom and you yell fire, it's like two totally different contexts, two totally different things. Um, but yeah, the idea that even when we look at scripture, the Bible, like the context of the stories is so important and really changes the meaning of it when you look at like Jacob's well or the steps of the temple or whatever. And Jesus was a teacher along the way.

And a lot of times where he told the stories really made a big, big difference. And then the third thing is story that people actually interact with. And in today's mass media culture, interaction is just huge. Interactions happen naturally between two people. But now when you talk about social media and all these platforms and all these things, the idea that people are interacting with their brand through an app, through a website, however that culture is conveyed is really kind of key. So we've had a lot of fun over the last 20 years coming alongside all sorts of organizations, big and small. We get to work with some of the largest, most recognizable brands in

the world, all the way through to small mom and pop ministries, helping with human trafficking in Thailand and just saving kids one person at a time. So it's a blessing for us. Did you work with, what are some of the names that people would recognize? I know you don't want to show off or whatever, name drop, but just to give people context. So you work with – what are some of the names that people would recognize? I know you don't want to show off or whatever, name drop, but just to give people context. You work with later writers. Yeah, it's hard too because I'm a part of a much bigger team. It's not just me. A lot of times my role involvement is really limited.

But the brands that we've worked with on a large scale that's most recognizable is like our team built Hogwarts Express, the train at universal studios that everyone takes their picture in front of uh that was actually built out in southern california and shipped out to orlando um but yeah we work with disney lego a lot of work here at legoland uh in california uh but then even like mars m&ms during the covid shutdown we got pulled into quite a few interesting projects with mars m&ms uh looking at their guest experience and their um loyalty program their guest experience and their loyalty program, their store experience and a bunch of things like that. Okay. Have you always been like a like that? Has your mind always worked that way? Like with branding and storytelling? Yeah. I think there's a thing that we say is we call them natural branders. I think no matter

what, everyone is creative. I believe our God is the God of creativity. I believe everyone is creative. Everyone starts, you know, coloring outside the lines when they're born. They start coloring on the walls. They're told not to, that there's one answer that's in the back of the book. And, you know, stay inside the lines type thing. And I was definitely wired to color outside the lines. My mom, I mean, a bit of a sordid upbringing, but our dad had left us. We were relatively poor. We were on welfare for a while. But I remember watching TV and there'd be some toy and it was like, I forgot. There was a G.I. Joe truck or something like that. I'm like, oh, I want that.

But it was like $50. Might as well have been $500 or $5,000. So I remember my mom took me. We went to Goodwill and we found a Tonka truck that was yellow. And she got a $1.50 can of black spray paint. And we just spray painted this Tonka truck black. And that became got a, you know, a dollar 50 can of black spray paint. And we just spray painted this Tonka truck black. And that became my GI Joe, you know, mission truck. And that was the only one to have it. And it was just like, you know, how can we, we don't have 50 bucks, but we have five. How can we kind of pull it off? My mom always like stretched our,

our imaginations. Like, and, uh, I remember like one of the key things she shared with me one time is, uh, we were watching it's a wonderful life. And there's that line, if I only had a million dollars. And I remember looking at my mom going, yeah, we had a million dollars. And she just looked at me and she's like, yeah, if you can't manage a little money, you can't manage a lot. And that just stuck with me all these years. And it's not about how much money you have and how many resources you have that goes into that conversation we're having before about SpaceX. I mean, you know, they were giving a, uh, Boeing had a year head start and a billion dollars more. I'm not a bunch of these numbers, but it's like, you know, SpaceX had two point three billion and Boeing had three point four or something like that.

And but because they were put under this kind of creative pressure from NASA and never doing it before, all these other things, it's a lot to do with their thinking process. It's crazy that they not only leapfrogged Boeing, but they are actually shuttling people safely back and forth to the International Space Station. And the Starliner still literally can't get off the launching pad right now. It's like, yeah, they still haven't made it to the International Space Station. Unmanned. It's like crazy. Wait, so SpaceX. So this is Elon Musk's, one of his many hobbies, right? Yeah, SpaceX. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah and so it's a dragon

and you're saying his technology has surpassed like boeing oh oh yeah yeah yeah yeah oh yeah so boeing is literally i mean it's kind of embarrassing honestly because they they literally the falcon heavy is new rocket technology right and they just developed it with spacex for the last 10 years uh boeing was reusing the solid rocket fuel uh boosters from the space shuttle i mean they weren't reinventing anything they're just repurposing and they still couldn't do it it's just yeah and a lot of it is just their mentality i think a lot of time we talk about thinking thinking isn't just you know using what's tried and true, what, you know, was worked in the past and repeating it. And thinking is also not trying new things just to try new things.

Thinking is taking the balance of the two, taking what you know worked and what could possibly work and thinking through how do you merge them together and how do you actually innovate and move forward. But yeah, I think the way NASA treated Boeing and everything like that, they were trying to lean on a lot of their old things. I mean everything from the flight suits to how the rockets went up and the whole flight system. But SpaceX is like, hey, we want to do this. We want to make it so it's totally autonomous, a cruise for the astronauts. through the future of space tourism and travel and the idea that, I mean like we were just saying, I could hop into a rocket in LA and land in Australia in an hour and a half, two hours, rather than flying halfway around the world for 18 hours.

And how do we do that, just by going way higher? I'm gonna ask a lot of dumb questions and probably use the language we're gonna be in a dumb way. No, no, no, yeah. So, yeah, how would somebody do that? Why can't we do that now? And what would that take? Yeah. So it is interesting because a lot of it has to do with just how many air resistance and planes can only travel so fast.

And actually, it's kind of funny. Planes used to travel faster. They've slowed them down in order to get efficiency with fuel efficiency. But the Earth is spinning at about 1,000 miles an hour, right? So if you can just launch, get suborbital, the Earth is going to spin on its own, and then you just land back down. So you're actually leveraging the rotation of the Earth to help you do that. So you're saying that you're just going straight up, let the Earth do its thing, come straight down? You're going forward a little bit too.

Those things are going pretty fast themselves. To break out of the Earth's velocity, I mean, gravitational pull, you're going like 18,000 miles an hour or something. When do you think we'll be able to do that? When will that be commercialized? Is that in the near future, that kind of air travel? Near future is all relative. At the rate SpaceX is going, I wouldn't be surprised if it's in the next, at least next five years. If not the next three years, they'll be testing it probably.

Yeah. I mean, that will have dramatic effects on everything. Like just kind of like how the internet connected us at hyperspeed and now the world's a neighborhood. Like this is going to make it take that kind of impact and make it embodied like if you can just literally pop over to sydney for the day and yeah yeah well the cost of it is probably going to be pretty cost prohibitive for just everybody until it's brought to the masses and that's why one of those things too right now is like he wants to turn co2 into rocket fuel and there's a bunch of ideas around that. But yeah, the idea of transportation,

mass transportation is pretty on the forefront of his mind, solving problems of humanity. And right now, the current solutions that we have, they're just not built to scale. The idea that, you know, you have cars that take everyone everywhere and the gridlock of traffic lights and stop and go. I mean, if anyone's ever been in New York City around Times Square, it's miserable. Everyone knows like, yeah, uptown, downtown, take the train. That's the best way to go. And that's actually what, you know, kind of started his kind of side business of the boring company and tunneling, because especially if you can get into tunnels with low pressure air, I mean, half of energy efficiency is lost in air resistance. So the idea that you can get into a tunnel and shoot across like the pneumatic things that happened in the 60s and 70s when the bank tellers shoot your money to your car.

It's kind of fun. But he's a great innovative thinker though. You're talking about Elon Musk. Yeah. Yeah. He's wild, man. I love listening to him. I've only heard him I think a couple times on Joe Rogan's podcast and maybe a couple YouTube things.

But, yeah, he's fascinating. He really is brilliant, right? I mean, that goes without saying. Yeah, yeah. And his engineering background helps him. So he's not just depending on other people to help troubleshoot and think through problems. He's rolling up his sleeves and getting through to it and trying to figure it out. And, yeah, it's like when they started and they sold the Model 3, I think when they launched the Model 3, at the time, it still might be fastest selling product in human history or something like that.

In 36 hours, they sold 36,000 – I'm sorry, 36 hours, 300,000 cars. You're talking about Tesla now, right? The Tesla Model 3? Yeah, Tesla, the Model 3. Yeah, it was the first mass-produced car. And that's what's funny is he's always let all his plans be known, like the whole progression of starting with the expensive luxury car, the Model S, doing the SUV, the Model X, and then the Model 3 was the first mass-produced car. And it was funny because big automotive was like, hey, he just shot himself in the foot. It's going to take him five years to deliver 300,000 cars.

In five years, we're going to be doing 3 million cars a year all this stuff whatever and and sure enough i mean yeah they pulled it off but some of the things one of my favorite stories is when they talked about when they were in production hell um and they were trying to figure out okay how do we break past you know 2 000 cars a week or whatever these uh or month 2 000 cars a month or something and then he wanted to do 5 000 cars a month and i told him there's no way you can do that. But what ended up happening was he was looking at the assembly and they were at one spot where there was an issue where there was like a panel that married between the batteries

and the frame or just something like that. And it just wouldn't line up and it would stop everything. And if that part stopped, the whole assembly line stopped behind it. And he's sitting there going like all this stuff and they're trying to figure out troubleshoot and all these things whatever and uh and he just asked the question or someone asked the question um why is this part even here and they're like oh oh because the batteries guy said it's there for fire production uh and then uh say okay so they went over the battery guys and they're like hey do we need this insulation mat

thing whatever it is and they're like oh no no it's for the sound guys. The sound guys say it helps dampen the sound. And they were kind of pointing fingers at each other, like why they need it. And he's like, remove it, just remove it. And they removed it and no one could hear the difference. And, uh, and the safety guys said like, it doesn't help with fire at all. I mean, when a lithium ion battery lights up, nothing's going to stop it. It's a Roman candle. So, uh, so. But they literally – the solution was eliminating it, just eliminating it, and that solved the problems. And what's funny is not only did he make the 5,000 cars a month production that he was told, when he made the 5,000 a month, he goes, can we make 10,000 a month or a week? I'm sorry. I'm totally butchering these numbers, but it was a week. And then it was like, no no you can't do it 10 000 a week and they're doing 10 000 a week right now they're doing half a million cars a year wow and uh actually giga

shanghai is gonna hit i forgot half my i think total they're gonna finish off the year over 900 000 cars made in one year and and it was originally told to them it would take them five years to make 300 000 so wow in boise it's I would say in the last two months, I've seen an explosion of Teslas on the road. I mean, six months ago, you would see one maybe a week if you're driving around. I go to LA and it's like every other car seems like it's a Tesla. But in the last couple of months, it's just taken off here. How expensive are they? Are they crazy expensive or not? It's a trick. So the reality is, it's numbers. It's just like sales and all this other stuff, how you position it. The base cost, I think, was supposed to be $39,000 for the Model 3.

The trick is you can't get the base model, right? And especially like when we originally got ours, I don't want to butcher these numbers, but basically $39,000 and a $7,500 tax rebate. So $32,500. And you don't have to deal with all the maintenance, no oil changes, no timing belts. I mean, literally I've had a Tesla now for six years. The only major thing has been tires, windshield wiper blades, and windshield wiper fluid. That's it. Everything else is, and that's a part of his model. And that's why the auto industry is so against Tesla. They want to do away with the traditional car dealership model. It reminds me of Reed Hastings when he was trying to sell Netflix to Blockbuster. Did you hear about that? No. Yeah. Oh, he was trying to sell it to them based on valuation. At that point,

I think they had just broken even making money on the DVDs Mail-order DVDs, but it's but he was basically and it happened over several times but there was one time when they were in the boardroom and he was literally laughed out of the boardroom and in the guys were Like you don't even know our business and they're like what are you talking about? It was something like 15 or 17 percent There something like 15 or 17 percent which money and it's just like it's just funny because five years later blockbuster's out of business and netflix you know they've done okay yeah but the idea of innovation has not been kind to the assembly line process and how things used to work and that's the same thing with the automotive industry right Right now, automotive industry, they make their money on dealer service. The dealers don't make money selling a car. That's nominal. They make all their money on all the little add-ons

they do at the dealer, like the security system you didn't want, the extended warranty. When you come in, they say, oh, this is wrong too. These belts need to get replaced. I mean, yeah, Tesla's have on average about half the number of moving parts of a traditional car. But even things like cooling systems, most car, they can have anywhere from three to six cooling systems. You know, you have your air conditioner, but then you have the water pump for the engine itself. Then you might have seat coolers. You might have all these different cooling systems. A Tesla has one.

It's one integrated cooling system for everything. And it's just a lot smarter, a lot less parts to break. They'll last a lot longer too, right? I heard somewhere that they can easily go several hundred thousand miles, no problem. Yeah. Yeah, that was one of the things I had heard why Elon Musk started Tesla the way he did was they've known how to make the perfect hybrid for decades. I mean diesel locomotives. Diesel locomotives have diesel generators generating electricity to power AC motors that go millions of miles. And he was like, why is it that GM and Toyota are using crappy lead-acid batteries with crappy DC motors that fail?

And even like they even planned it so that if the batteries die, the whole car dies, even though that there's an internal combustion engine there that could power it. It was just like so bizarre. So he's like – that was the original roadster he tried to do as a proof of concept to be like, hey, look, it works. And everyone was like, yeah, but you can't make money on it. And that's why he really went into mass production. Interesting. But yeah, like the Tesla Model 3 motor I believe is rated at 1 million miles oh my word oh my gosh yeah a million miles of permanent magnets yeah so that going back and they have

even if you drop say it's 60 grand 80 grand in the test i mean in the long run that's going to be a lot cheaper than buying a 30 000 car, yeah. And between gas savings, maintenance, and it's the safest car in America. I mean, that's the thing. It's like driving. You have a Ram underneath you of these, you know, a couple thousand pounds of batteries. It's like, I mean, you can take on a pickup truck with that thing. And then the car's like a weeble wobble. It just doesn't flip over.

It stays on its feet. But yeah, I've known of and heard of several people in may they were able to walk away and if they were in any other car they would have been um yeah it would have been a different story the self-driving are they all do they have the self-driving feature now is that pretty common or and where are we at with self-driving cars is that a thing that yeah is here i don't know it's getting there yeah despite uh despite government regulations it's getting there a lot quicker and what's funny is all the videos and everything that you see right now it's it's it's a tesla driving itself on city streets which i mean you

put any new driver on a city street especially san francisco and they're gonna you know be hesitating and be doing those things but man on the on the freeway, Teslas just kill it. Right now what they have, we call it from on-ramp to off-ramp. As soon as you get on the on-ramp, you can put it on autopilot. It switches lanes, gets into the right one to take the right on-ramp, off-ramp, the freeway exchanges. From here I go 91 to 55 to the 405. It takes everything. I just kind of look up and okay

i'm here it's it's so nice it just takes a lot of the stress and anxiety and the car doesn't care if people cut me off if the car doesn't care if you know it's stop and go traffic and it's been a lifesaver for me so you can yeah you and that's why you have to be in the driver's seat or what's the what's the legality of it you have to be and you can't be asleep, right? Or can you just doze off? No. They have some YouTubers that did some things, whatever. But Tesla has been pretty aggressive about it, more aggressive than any other car company I know. So, like, right now, if you're in the driver's seat, a YouTuber, Sandy Monroe, was just talking about how he unbuckled the seatbelt to get his wallet.

And, like, all the emergency flashers turn on, take over immediately, whatever. It's like, you know, it's not just a little chime to be like, oh, your seatbelt's unbuttoned, unbuckled. It is there. They are diehard on safety. And you have to go through extraordinary efforts to try and weight the steering wheel or do different things. But eventually the goal is that, yeah, you can just hop in and it will drive you there completely autonomously. And they're getting there faster than anybody else. And the millions and millions of miles that they're accruing through machine learning and that's the main thing like when i got my tesla originally six years ago to drive from my house to the church was two and a half miles autopilot could do it it was there's a couple curves and everything like that but after

about two weeks it learned after i drove it several times and after my car learned every other tesla learned oh wow and now it's like no big deal i get in i set it and it drives two and a half miles as if it's yeah and yeah but but even when it very first came out i mean it it drives you know regrettably you know safer than i do so i mean i remember the first time i was driving and it kind of saved me was we were in stop and go traffic and i just for a split second i looked down to grab like a stick gum, and the woman pulled in front of me. And my wife yelled, and before I could do anything, the Tesla moved over and avoided the collision. And I was like, man.

I just saw, just on the freeway yesterday, actually, or a couple days ago, there was someone driving a Tesla that was, they were merging. There was a, let's see, they were in the left lane. There was a semi in the far right lane. There was middle lane between them and the person was stupid i mean they decided to merge while they're in the blind spot of the semi well sure enough the semi merges over and the tesla like jerked back into the lane and i said to my wife i'm like guy good thing they're in a tesla i think they probably would have ran right into the semi i don't even know if that was it could have been the driver or it could have been automatic i don't know but i mean either way either way they would not have been able to hit the sit like the thing would have

not allowed the car to get hit right i mean yeah well it avoids it at all costs yeah it's avoidance systems i mean i can't tell you i mean i mean at least at least eight times i know that the car has helped me out like and kept me out of harm's way. That's why I have a relatively high confidence in it. But especially when I enter into a construction zone or any sort of type of things, if I'm in somewhere new, I'm paying a lot more attention. But when it's the same bit of roadway that I'm doing like every week, I'm a lot more comfortable with it. But, yeah, it's pretty remarkable how quickly it's learning and how much better it is. I mean, it's a magnitude better than it was a year ago.

It just keeps getting better. Can you like sit there and email, watch a movie? I mean you can – as long as you're not asleep, are you allowed to do whatever? Yeah, so on its entertainment system, you can't watch a movie at this point. They just now released being able to play games. But you have to say that you're the passenger. the passenger can can play games and stuff like that um but yeah i mean there's no reason why you can't uh maybe streaming content especially once uh once starlink is fully up and going you know you'll be able to stream and that's that's the

interconnectedness between the cars using starlink is actually another key um but there's a bunch of other features i'm looking forward to like uh one of Caravan Mode, which is right now for the semi-truck. It's been announced. But there's been rumors about it coming out for the cars as well. And what that does is let's say I'm going to drive from here to Vegas. It's a 240-mile drive. And the idea is that if there's another Tesla going to Vegas, that I'll get in right behind them. And the cars will interlink. And I might be behind them just by a few inches like a train.

And I'll be able to draft off them just like cycling, whatever. And you lose – just like birds, but that 50% of energy lost in wind coefficients is gained. And when that car switches lanes, when that car breaks, my car will respond instantaneously. So it's like we're a virtual train. And so that's going to help us not only to have a 300 mile range, doing that mode, we might be able to go 400 miles or even further just by drafting off each other. And then the even funner part down the road is the whole idea that there won't be speed limits for electric cars. Really? Because, yeah, yeah. If an electric car can react and do everything,

why can't it drive 100 miles an hour? And that's – right now they just have – electric cars just have one gear. I think there are rumors about the Tesla Roadster having two gears. And once they have two gears, I mean like if you can do that and you can do it efficiently and safely, yeah, the car can react but definitely when they get into the tunnels that when there's low resistance the idea there is and his whole you know uh loop hyperloop premise is in a low pressure environment you get up to a thousand miles an hour so the idea that you could

you know hop in and you know an hour and a half be across the country in a tunnel. So all this like five, 10 years, do you think, let's just say 10 years. So I'm 45 now. So when I'm 55, you think the roads and everything, travel is just going to be very different than what we have now? I mean, it's hard to say. You know what? It's hard.

It's hard because I think 60% of people, what is it? 60% of people resist change. So people are resisting change, and especially our lawmakers. And the trajectory of our current government, they're kind of blind to who the opposing team is. And right now they think it's a war between ICE and EV, ICE being internal combustion engines, EV being electric vehicles. But that's not it it literally is it's china and china is going to just steamroll us um because they are putting all of their energy into full electrification um and that that is the moment the only hope that we have and luckily it's

leading it is is tesla right now but um but yeah we'll see where things are if the government gets its way it's going to slow things down even though certain things they're saying sped up. It was like if you listen to the government, they're like GMs leading the way. It's like what planet are you on? I mean you're even saying right now in Idaho – you're in Idaho, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're seeing Teslas. And I don't know if you know about the supply chain shortage and the microprocessor chip debacle and all that stuff but that's a whole

separate thing but yeah that's where the american automotive industry is just really struggling to get their feet under them but yeah yeah during the covid shutdown they released production on processors they're like hey like we don't need processors right now and what happened was they lost their line in those facilities in those factories in china and they got filled by other manufacturers microwaves refrigerators everyone that needs these little chips for everything and that's what the microprocessor shortage is and the only way to overcome it because they're not going to bump the new manufacturers that fill those gaps they have to build new factories and those factories take years to make so the american automotive industry is really on its back foot right now trying to figure things out meanwhile tesla is is like – even if they're short on processors, and you need processors for everything.

Was it the airbag system or the microcontroller inside the power windows or whatever it is? But Tesla, their software engineers just rewrote the code to use the processors that are already on board. And they overcame a lot of the shortages themselves just by being agile. I remember listening to Rogan talk to Elon Musk. I think this is a first or second or maybe both times where you're going to need to fill in the gaps here. Elon is talking about some kind of like robotic thing that would go into someone's brain and repair.

Like if, like if you're, if you're blind or something, a lot of these things are just brain related, right? So if you could fix the brain, you fix the disability. Does that – am I on to – is that accurate what I'm describing so far? That's science fiction stuff, right?

Yeah. It's called Neuralink. Neuralink, yeah. He's the founder of Neuralink. Yep. And the trick – and that's the funny thing is you hear the guy talk. Again, this goes back to a story. It's like when he was a kid and he saw like Man to the moon or whatever it is uh it was he saw rockets taking off and landing and he's just like

why don't they why don't they do that because that makes sense they're ready to take off again uh and certain things inspired him but when you look at sci-fi and all these things and the idea that you can control things with your mind that really is kind of what neural links about um and it is this extension that yeah if you like lost a leg or lost an arm, that it's connected to your brain, and those brain – those pulses of electricity can help control those body parts. But then it's a Pandora's box as far as what it opens up, and there's people that are really against it because they're like, oh, no, no. It's putting something in your brain. They're going to be able to control you or force – it's the matrix. They're going to be able to force images into your brain that aren't real.

But yeah, that's a whole separate thing. Well, here's my question is that got in, if I remember correctly, they were talking about how the same technology can not just repair, you know, a somebody who's paralyzed or something, but it can actually like, yeah, do kind of a matrix matrix thing where you're like downloading just knowledge like you can get you can you can increase your brain processing power times 100 or whatever like just make somebody super and then it's like well that's weird but it's like well but if if all the skilled doctors are going to med school and getting i

don't know like immediate knowledge and you're like oh i don't want that that's weird but how do you compete with that like it was just they went down this rabbit hole of a conversation and i remember rogan asking him like when would this even be possible and he said like in a few years or something it was some it was super eerie i mean to be honest i was like whoa yeah he doesn't say a lot of stuff that's not thoughtful i'm not saying it's true but like a few years we could be facing some kind of like superhuman brain power possibility is that am i on to something is that possible was that just was that sci-fi or you know it is it's sci-fi it's aspirational but he's gotten

to where he's at by being aspirational by being like hey there has to be a better way like one of my favorite stories i mean this isn't the first time he's been an industry disruptor. I mean, the thing is like when he got into PayPal, I don't know if you remember buying things on the internet before PayPal. It was painful. Like I remember one of the first time I bought something, I had to print out the order form,

fax it in with my driver's license. It was a huge multi-step process. And then PayPal came out. And what's funny is he actually, I'm probably wrong on these stories too. I read all the stuff on the internet and think it's true. But basically, PayPal wasn't a bank to begin with. So it didn't have all the SEC regulations.

It was a payment processor. And that kind of became a bank. But he was able to kind of help steer through that guest experience and everything like that. And that was his first windfall. It was basically taking on the banking industry and helping move it to online. So then taking on the automotive industry

and then the space industry, and then now whatever these other things. And the medical industry, it to online. So then taking on the automotive industry, and then the space industry, and then now whatever these other things, and the medical industry, it's interesting, but I think that the trick is, I don't want to be disillusioned in thinking he's some sort of incredible superhuman. I think he's definitely a talented, intelligent, really great thinker, out-of-the-box thinker

that has drive, probably unhealthy drive. I mean, he works people like 80 100 hour weeks and i i don't think i'd want to work for him i think uh i'm probably more selfish and want to enjoy life with my family and uh and spending time with them but but he has a conviction i mean that's i think that's the key thing is he has a deep conviction about make making mankind a multi-planetary species that the rate we're going um things are gonna the wheels are gonna fall off the bus and there's a lot of different metrics that kind of support that and i'm not even talking about you know greenhouse gases and whatever the planet it's like the economy's gonna fall apart and things get ugly i mean like here in southern california when covet hit and there were toy paper shortages and people were ransacking homes in the middle of the day.

It was bizarre. This is bizarre. That's wild. So real quick, going back to the Neuralink, are you saying that what I described, right now that's not possible? We're not on a trajectory to get there. I mean, anything's kind of possible. But are you saying that's not – we don't really have that? As far as i know

they're working on is they're making advancements to that direction okay and they're not afraid to fail to get there so i would not be surprised if they if they pull it off wow yeah i mean really when you look at even like with the robot and everything they're doing it's kind of like um they've developed a little lego system and what you build with legos is you know up to you in your imagination from there but they're really smart about how like when they built even the i mean the cars themselves are a robot with the vision system and his whole thing of going vision versus laser is kind of brilliant because he's like how many human beings do you know with laser coming out of them yet with two eyes they're able to adapt and do all these things and that's the thing is train the robots to do that so when you're talking about a

humanoid robot or any of these things um being able to use a vision system to control that is is pretty straightforward taking that information and importing it into somebody's brain and helping them because what is knowledge right it's the access of information um different than thinking what i talked about before you know so you might have access to all this information I don't know it'll be like Chuck whatever but but the idea that you'll have muscle memory and you'll be able to perform tasks that you did like that's probably a little bit more out there but if they could program and just make your muscles do whatever yeah it's pretty science fiction yeah but their their uh their ability to kind of move forward and not be afraid to fail will get them further down the road faster.

What are some things that will be normal in five to ten years? Like just the future of kind of everything. Like what, as you look at kind of advancements in technology or biotechnology or AI, like what are some advancements that are very likely to be part of our reality i know it's a broad question but yeah yeah yeah well i mean you know gosh man this is like it sends it all we're talking about is tesla here but uh but the idea that mass transit is going to be radically transformed i mean this whole hertz deal the idea that people won't own cars that my youngest son he he's like, why do I need to learn how to drive? It's like that, you know, mass mobility will be something that people just, you know, hail an Uber, hail the Tesla,

hop in, it'll drop you off, you'll get onto a freeway. That's a virtual train that there are no stoplights. It's almost like, you know, ants just moving around. They all know where each other are and they all are able to get us moved around. um you know you'll have that certain level of efficiency and then when you talk about i think the travesty right now is is the consumerism everything right now is kind of a lot of things are being built towards consumerizing people and that's what amazon and facebook or meta is about i guess that's why i probably have a little bit more faith in elon musk is like he launches products just as jokes but I don't feel like he's trying to consumerize me as much as like make my life better and you know Tesla

cars have actually made my life a lot better um yeah it's kind of kind of surreal do you so you think there'll be like like self-driving Teslas acting like Ubers where you just jump in and it takes you somewhere and there's no person in the car. Like that's a very likely thing to happen in the future at least. Yeah, we're excited especially for reinventing so much of spaces that people gather in. Because you'll get throughout human history the best places that people like to hang out. It's these outdoor spaces, these modern piazzas. And it kind of sucks you have to get into the car and be shuttled over in this tin can over to this other thing or all these other things. And yeah, and that's where I think people miss like,

yeah, I actually was just talking to someone earlier about the church and how they gather. And it's like, you know, the modern church on these buildings and suburbs that are very single use to be used one day a week on a Sunday, you have to be empty six days a week is pretty sad. But the idea that, you know, urban spaces are going to transform themselves and people will be able to go and gather and connect in them in the future is really kind of key to as we're moving forward. And our heart is actually to help serve like local communities and developing what we call mixed use spaces. So it is, you know, spaces beyond just one single use and the church is is definitely a key organization in that that we're going to serve that's or we are serving with a lot of technology

it does seem that it's not fostering community it's kind of warring against it and fostering individualism and even even just the change in the way cities are constructed you know I remember when I lived in Europe it's just everybody walks everywhere and there's such a you know the local baker the local um you know what's the meat person the butcher the baker whatever like and that really was kind of like that to some extent like it was just everything was just like i don't know you're just around like your community we're here you know you shop 10 miles away and you drive 20 miles here and you go to church across town then you drive home and go into your garage shut the door and and i don't know it's just it's it's i feel like advancements and just even even city

construction has moved away from community rather than toward it um but what you're saying not just go back what you're just saying is like this could be an advancement that actually fosters more connection and community rather than splitting us further apart um absolutely absolutely yeah yeah it is that human scale that we like to build to and you're absolutely right and really modern zoning and the idea that you have like a a shopping zone a residential zone an industrial zone that's all relatively new i mean 150 years i mean that's it was out of the industrial revolution the idea that master plan zoning you'd separate these things That's not how people naturally gathered for thousands of years. We gathered organically just like you're the human body in your circulatory system

It's all interconnected the idea that you know, you have these things that are totally separate that don't connect and talk to each other I mean it's out of the single-use Industrial Revolution mindset and I mean it's out of the single-use industrial revolution mindset. And again, back to thinking, that's that single way of thinking. And the trick with an assembly line is you don't want innovation. You don't want progress. That's the old little Vernon Shirley when they're on the bottling plant and things start going haywire. If you have an assembly plant, it's going to go haywire.

But that's the push is how do you balance the structure of an assembly line with the chaos of creativity? And that's a good design is the balance of chaos and structure. And what we're seeing is people are coming back now. And I mean, I remember when we started 20 years ago, people like, oh, you're from California. You guys want to do all those outdoor things. We're in Boston. You can't do outdoor stuff. We're in New York. You can't do outdoor stuff. We're in Chicago. No way. Well, Chicago, Navy Pier, Millennium Park are some of the hottest places to gather. I mean, you go to New York City, Central Park, Times Square, the High Line. I mean, people crave to be outside. And the funny thing is outdoor spaces tend to cost like less than half, if not a quarter, of indoor spaces.

So it means if you just use it half the time or a quarter of the time, it's cost effective. But that's one of the things as designers, we really try and think about what we say the space between the buildings and so like even at disney the walt disney company they start thinking about as soon as you pull on the property or even more as soon as you get off the freeway and you start looking at things and they you know put over a billion dollars into revamping anaheim or walt disney world in florida it's it's a the size of manhattan i mean so as soon as you're on the freeway, you start getting that experience to kind of lead you through that journey. And what we're finding now is people are realizing, okay, yeah, we can bring these things back to human scale. But disrupting things around autonomous driving is a key to that. But technology in itself isn't bad. It's what you do with it. That really is the key thing. Human beings are – I mean we are social beings.

Most of us are at least, right? And the idea that technology is going to replace that is actually kind of – if like online church is a big thing that people talk about, if online church can replace your physical church, you have bigger issues. If the online church experience is better than your physical experience, there are bigger issues to work through. But the reality is some of the largest gatherings in human history are happening right now all around the digital medium. Whether you talk about concerts or Comic-Con, 100,000 people flying in from all around the world to go to a trade show. I mean, yeah, it is like e-sports right now is just blowing up in the video game industry. It dwarfs all the other entertainment industries. And we're not finding – you do have the cases of people sitting at home but man they're social circles and when they have a chance to get together and

connect they really do um you know and that's some of these esports lounges and stuff like that are just crazy how people get together and it's like top golf type things people will gravitate and want to be together but the key is the drawbridge that gets them there, and technology has the opportunity to be a big role. But being intentional about it, it might – the avoidance of technology – kind of one of my favorite things is the best technology is totally transparent. You don't realize it's there. I mean that's when the iPhone came out. Like one of the jokes was – I think Steve Jobs said in an interview, no one – no survey, no one ever said, hey, I want a phone without a 10 key. I want a phone without buttons.

Everyone said quite the opposite. But in his mind, he saw a preferred future where you have this device that could transform from a phone into a web browser, into a contacts, into all these things. And to do that, you had to have a plastic interface with no buttons. And that's – he was able to see that future. But when it came out, I don't even remember, AT&T and BlackBerry, all those are like – not AT&&T. Blackberry and Motorola, Qualcomm, they were like, no, you have to have buttons. But he was able to see that preferred future. And when they were talking about like a two-year-old being able to pick up a phone and start using it, the technology was transparent. It went away, and he was able to naturally work with it.

And I think that's the key is great technology. It takes time to get there, a lot of time and energy. It's not just a box you check off saying hey we have you know a website it's like no what is that website actually do you how does it interact how do you make it better how do you iterate um yeah anyways what i'm curious you mentioned smartphone what's the future of the smartphone so like it's been around for almost what 15 years or so and they're getting better and faster and better cameras but there's in 15 years or are they just going to be same thing just even faster and better cameras, but in 15 years, are they just going to be the same thing, just even faster and better?

Or what's the next thing after? Yeah. It's kind of hard to think about and imagine, but really, in my humble opinion, as things are moving to the cloud, it is this idea that your profile, and Tesla's doing it now. My car profile is in the cloud now. So when I get into my car or my wife's car or her Toronto car, my profile follows me with that. And the idea that there's rumors about Tesla coming out with a phone that works with Starlink. There's rumors about Apple doing their own car because eventually the way you're connecting, it might be through your watch. It might be through

your physical phone, but if you leave your phone behind, your watch carries it with you. As soon as you get in your car, your car becomes your phone. As soon as you walk into your house, your house is the phone. But it is this continuity of a journey where it's seamless, really. And that convergence is really what we're looking at. And a lot of times when we look at what we do as far as like the kind of brand stuff,

the digital stuff, and then the physical built environments, a lot of times people think like, man, those are like three totally different things. It's like, it's actually one, it it's converging when we talk about the metaverse it is the convergence of our 3d architecture going into 3d space the interaction design is what people do in that space and the emotional response they have in that space is our brand uh and and for us it's always been a this continuous uh guest experience and journey

and the future of mobile phones yeah i see it going that way and they've had movies like that before where it's like you know you just walk sorry sorry um i remember when i was a kid growing up in germany and it's funny because um my dad was in the army we were military brats and i remember going to a friend's house and we walk in and our friend picks up his phone this is in the 70s he picks up his phone presses some numbers like four digits and hangs up and the phone rings two times and we're like what'd he do and it's like he just forwarded his phone to his mother-in-law's house and we're like wait what it's like yeah so now when it rang it rang two times because he was expecting an important

phone call and it rerouted and i was like man what kind of magic is this but the funny thing is germany and japan their infrastructure was bombed to crap after world war ii and they started from scratch so they that's when they realized oh we're going to do a 220 240 electrical system we're going to do fiber and all the more modern phone system stuff while in america we're on this aged 100 year old you know 110 system, and our phone systems are legacy. The leap forward to wireless really helped us. But even back then when I was a kid, the technology was around about enough that the technology could follow you. And so they've always been thinking about this, and guys are always looking ahead. But 60% of people want things to stay the old way.

So you're saying the phone would be one piece of a greater system so your car is like if you're in your car you're not going to need your phone anymore and then you maybe go into a store and you'd bring your phone with you then you go home then you have well even like alexa i mean or you have other is that you'll still have the phone i mean in 10 years people still have smartphones right you think you think? Or who knows? No, I mean, there's times when I leave my phone at home and I just have my Apple Watch. And I just use my watch. And all my key contacts, everything I need, the technology.

I like the Apple Watch better because when I open my phone, I get sucked into this rabbit hole of checking all these other notifications and stuff like that. But, you know, the idea that there might be some sort of like – maybe it is a wristband type thing. Maybe it's the Apple glasses. Maybe it's a glass. Maybe it's a contact lens that you put in that has augmented reality or HUD display stuff. One of my wife's favorite things is to go camping and hiking out in Yosemite and stuff like that. Yeah, and she has no qualms leaving her phone behind. But the idea that if something happens and there's an accident, we need to be able to get to it um that there's some sort of advice uh you know yeah and but the idea that things can follow you

along and there might be i'm just gonna throw it maybe it's a starlink phone that we use because it's satellite powered for hiking you know and that's it but does it have our contacts in our well i have contacts but does it have like our calendar and all the other things that our smartphone has maybe not maybe it's just for calling in an emergency. But I think that future is going to be plastic. It's going to be – it might use that. But the idea that you can borrow someone's phone and it becomes your phone. And that's kind of the way Tesla works.

It's the same car. They just software unlock features for it. Oh, wow. What about like biotechnology? You mentioned in passing like you have a in passing you have a contact lens or something like that. Is there any way that my smartphone will become part of me, like a chip implanted in me or something? Or I guess glasses. Yeah, they're working on that stuff. Yeah, they're working on that stuff. I think one of my favorite... I love Cathie Wood with ARK Invest,

stuff. Yeah, they are working on that stuff. I think one of my favorite, I love Kathy Wood with ARK Invest, and they have a whole genome kind of biotech things that I follow on there and stuff like that. But people are trying crazy things and things that you see in science fiction movies, and they're very aspirational towards those things. And really, I mean, the way that we're created and the resilience of the human spirit to go after these things, I don't know if it's impossible. But, yeah, it's pretty amazing how God created us to troubleshoot and figure things out. But, yeah, they're figuring out how to get bioelectricity to power these things so they can just set it in or it'll charge and it's able to go into your eye for 10 hours at a time or three hours at a time, whatever those things are. But Google Glass came out. That was definitely what I would say on the bleeding edge. I mean, you were just throwing a thousand, $1,500 away. I mean like, but there was learnings from that.

There, there's things that they learned and that's what the cost of innovation was that, you know, what do they learn from it? Um, and yeah, eventually, I mean, uh, yeah, right now, I mean the Apple glasses, I mean, they're talking about something as lightweight as this, that you just put it on and it has a wireless link and then right up here you could see uh i could see your information i could ask questions like you know how fast does the earth rotate and it would just show up on there for me kind of like iron man like when iron man's in his suit you know like he's got all this stuff like that's interesting yeah um you mentioned a planet travel or inhabiting planets uh is that a thing is that actually i mean a possibility who would want to because you there's no atmosphere anything right

i mean you have to like live in a bubble your whole life or uh yeah you and i think a lot of its innovations what you you don't know what you don't know and the process of going to the moon and even establishing the international space station so many innovations came out of that everything from i mean like it's current cell phone technologies and microprocessor stuff like things you know issues that they had overcome to get there it actually really did help uh you know progress on earth uh especially in the medical fields and science fields uh obviously i think the pursuit of getting to the moon some people think that's a fool's errand there are people who want to do it

but the idea that you're going to figure out how to do that and worst case scenario is you don't make it there but the learning journey the journey is the destination everything that they learn to get there and do heavy lifting and all the stuff and even now the new Starship that they're building. The Starship is the key rocket that will take 150 people from LA to Sydney cost-effectively type things. Those are all the things that they're figuring out along the way to help innovate and get us there. But yeah, it's funny how things work though because when Walt Disney did the very did the very first feature, animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, I mean people called it – they were like it's Walt Disney's folly. They were like people can't sit there and watch a full-color film for two hours. They'll go into seizures.

It's like they just didn't know any better. They didn't know until he did it and they were able to accomplish it. And same thing when he opened up Disneyland. They were like, oh, no, he's throwing his money away. And the reality is we're in such a sterile society. He just wanted a place to go and make memories with his daughters. And now it's the largest human magnet in the world

that people pay to go to. And they go there to make memories. And so I'm all for innovation, going to other planets. I think the byproduct in that worst case is we're just gonna come up with a bunch of new cool technology. Best case scenario is they actually uh make us uh multi-planetary and then if an asteroid ever hits the earth or i don't know yeah i don't know like yeah i don't know maybe god will send the asteroid to earth and mars and kill us all but i i think i

have a i think i have a different uh perspective on you know what you know thinking eternity what that means but i love the outside thinking and innovations happening now. And I believe that Jesus, when he came to this earth, he came as a storyteller. And he didn't just teach scriptures on the steps of the temple. The whole idea of parables was relating to people with where they were at. And I believe we are called to be storytellers and how that happens and how the church has used technology historically, whether it was in stained glass windows to convey the gospel to an illiterate society or the commissioning of the Gutenberg Press and the Gutenberg Bible to get the scripture into more people's hands. Or when Radio Very first came out and Amy Simple McPherson leveraged that for the Schwarzenegger Nation or TBN leveraging satellite TV for the short for short denomination or uh tbn yeah leveraging you know satellite tv for uh the further of the gospel those were all huge technology innovations um that they were really adopters on so you kind of already go in there but just to round out our

conversation yeah help us think christianly through all these things advancements in technology i know you know brain technology and self-driving cars picking you up with nobody in them like people can get a little bit kind of freaked out right um and certainly yeah you've already said it but like certain advancements in technology produce more evil and others can be used for more good so how should how should christians think through really the the fast paced advancement in technology yeah well i think that's the key is how do you redeem things and use it for good? I don't think things are inherently good or bad. It's like,

how do you use it? So, you know, a car is not inherently bad. A drunk driver behind the wheel of a car is evil. You know, it is, it's how we use it.

And I'm very much like in the parable of the talents, like, how do I take the talents that God has given me, not bury it and be like, okay, you know take the talents that god has given me not bury it and be like okay you know i'm fine i'm just gonna bury it and it'll be there when he comes back but how do i actually use that and multiply it and be affected with it in the parable of the talents it was the guy that took risks and had a higher return that was rewarded and and i'm not just talking about money i mean it is whatever the talents you have you know how do you maximize

that for the kingdom and technology is just one of those things. And it's like, when I'm looking at things in the, you know, advancements, where, where's the church being represented? You know, are we bringing hope to those areas? That, that's, that kind of what is what drives us. Uh, cause if we don't bring hope and all we do is sit there and complain about the things that we don't like, um, it gets hard. And I'm a really critical person too. I mean I'm an Enneagram 8, a challenger. I'm Asian.

I'm like – I have a lot of things going against me. And I come across as a jerk a lot of times when I'm pushing ahead on a project. But I know that the most important thing is how I make people feel. And sometimes I – my wife especially, she holds me accountable to slow down and to make sure that I'm being kind on those things. Um, because man, sometimes I just get so far behind, like, this is a big deal. We've got to take this issue on. We've got to do it. And you know, the, the, you know, right justifies might, but the reality is God has called us to love one another, love God first and love others. And I think technology's role in that is how can it help us get there? And I know for some kids, like, you know, it is the lack of technology or just being

intentional with it, you know? Yeah, we definitely need more discipleship, I think, on technology. It's just kind of the Wild West right now with just how fast things are being developed and like, or even, you even, you have kids, right? Are you a parent? Yeah. Raising kids in a world of smartphones and social media and TikTok and everything, it's like nobody prepared us.

It just happened overnight almost. And it's like, well, how do I parent and disciple my kid in this really brand new world that no one's ever known before. Like it's, it's, it's tough. And I do think, I think the church, discipleship in technology, I think that needs, do you think, I mean, it seems like that's an important enough conversation that needs to be happening, happening frequently, you know? Yeah, no, no, I totally agree with you. I think we have to talk about it. It's that whole thing, going back to thinking, I mean, it's like, you can't just expect the same old things to keep working. And I think historically – and I kind of blame a lot of things on the Industrial Revolution.

And before the Industrial Revolution, my kids would have worked alongside me. And I would have taught them how to – my work ethic. I would have taught them how I do what I do and how I manage my money and how I resolve conflict and my integrity and how I deal with the neighbors that they would have learned all those things alongside me. And then when they would have forged out on their own, you know, they would have figured things out and taken those lessons. But the problem is, you know, after the industrial revolution, the idea of putting and batching kids into schools and then onto, you know, junior high, high schools, university, you have other people pouring values and everything into them. There's, that can be very disconnected from where we are. So I've had to be very intentional to try what are my values i'm

pouring to my kids and how do they do that and i've been blessed that they've been able to be a part of a school out here in corona crossroads christian schools that really did align with our values and they they do something called 21st century learning which is very much uh technology centric and teaching people how do you use technology for good and be balanced in that. That's good. Well, Peter, I appreciate you. Thanks for giving us your time and wisdom.

Yeah, I really enjoyed the conversation. I do have probably more questions now than when I came in before the podcast. No problem. Yeah, go out and do this. It was fun. It was fun. All right, brother. Hey, hey good connecting talk to you later Thank you.