00:03:16.180And so as one of the OG like wave of bloggers, what was it like?
00:03:21.140Like, what do you miss about this earlier iteration of the Internet?
00:03:24.680Oh, you know, I'm always cautious about good old days, but it was something special in terms of we knew that it was genuinely new.
00:03:34.020Like we knew that, you know, the early days of the social web, that this was something everybody was going to be doing.
00:03:41.280And that those of us that were making friends, we could see that like, oh, pretty soon everybody is going to be making friends online and and connecting.
00:03:49.560And that, you know, that idea of like sharing photos with somebody online with something that everybody is going to be doing.
00:03:56.420And that seemed wild in like 1999 or 2000.
00:04:01.140What do you think has changed since then?
00:04:04.820I think I think all of the horrible things that we encountered, everybody else has to.
00:04:11.000You know, so the sense of like, you know, before we had the word catfishing, that was around. And even just the awkward parts, like even the stuff that's just not like hugely terrible, but the, you know, the ordinary indignities, like the things where you have that, you know, frustration of, I wish I didn't have to see that person in my timeline.
00:04:37.180or I wish that I could just get a break from seeing, you know, doom scrolling or whatever.
00:04:43.340You know, that stuff all existed in its own basic way even 15 years ago, 20 years ago, a long time ago.
00:04:49.720And then you could see, again, like this is something we're all going to be dealing with on a daily basis.
00:04:56.340And that inevitability, I think, was a big part of what we had hoped maybe we would have a solution for before now.
00:05:04.120That is a story we tell often on this show, how the I like how you use the word like everyday indignities, these things that, you know, a particular group is experiencing.
00:05:15.900And it's like kind of a canary in a coal mine where it's like, this is going to be the norm for everybody who is online one day if we don't take this seriously or we don't do something about this or we don't change this.
00:05:25.120And then it just becomes what it feels like to be online.
00:05:28.500Oh, for sure. Yeah. I mean, I think and that's, you know, the classic story is obviously anybody.
00:05:33.140in any marginalized group could see, you know, this is how we're being targeted or this is how
00:05:40.720we bonded together and how we formed our communities to protect each other or just to
00:05:44.860celebrate each other, right, in the positive sense. And so you could see that these were these
00:05:50.860just ways of being that were going to be inevitable, that were going to be ubiquitous.
00:05:57.400And, and then, you know, it, it just, it took in some ways so much longer to become a common knowledge. You know, you would think, okay, this will be instant. Any day now, everybody's going to have really good tools to like, you know, protect themselves or everybody's going to understand how joyous it is to find your people online and to, to make those connections.
00:06:19.800And, you know, a day would go by and a month would go by and a year would go by and a decade would go by.
00:06:27.260And then you would still not have good tools or you would still not have a way of discovering.
00:06:33.500I mean, the example I always think of was, this is sort of a minor one, but there were photo sharing apps in like 2002 or 2003 that were pretty good.
00:06:46.580before that you would have to like literally scan like film photos right and then people were like
00:06:52.800no there's digital cameras we're going to put these online and and some of the early ones were
00:06:57.180called photo net and flicker and those are the first ones i felt like oh no you know you have
00:07:02.760communities online and pretty soon they realized wait people are are tagging locations on these
00:07:09.140and even some of these cameras actually know your location like they had gps by that time
00:07:13.060and so like no we got to take that out because people are going to stalk each other it's going
00:07:17.000to be creepy and and i think flicker was the first one um and it was like really the first
00:07:21.800like kind of social network around photos that felt like you know like what we all do on instagram
00:07:25.880every day now and so they're like nope we're gonna take out location we can't have people
00:07:30.620creeping on each other and we're gonna do the right thing and this is literally 20 plus years
00:07:35.820ago they they figured out the right thing to do and i kid you not literally every year since then
00:07:42.540somebody has launched a new photo sharing app that includes the location from the photos that
00:07:48.520it gets from your camera and does not take the location out and then somebody like creeps on
00:07:54.340somebody else and they realize oh gosh we should take the location out and it's like groundhog day
00:07:59.220like nobody ever learns this lesson and it's always some dude who's like gosh you know why
00:08:05.440wouldn't i want my location out there i didn't understand and and i just like every time i'm
00:08:10.480like you know there is like this is a lesson that we have learned so you you can just you can just
00:08:17.460look like you can just google it like it's out there and and and i'm always like you know this
00:08:23.220time for sure they're gonna learn and in the the 20th straight year that it happened i was like no
00:08:30.460they're just never gonna learn believe it or not anil and i were talking before instagram's
00:08:37.620disastrous rollout of an opt-in location sharing feature. So when you posted a photo on Instagram,
00:08:44.320if you opted in, your location would automatically show up on a map. And the public reaction to this
00:08:49.860was not good. Instagram really could not have handled it worse. And the overwhelming question
00:08:56.600I was left with was, who exactly was asking for this feature from Instagram in the first place?
00:09:02.460we know how this story ends and people just don't learn that's something that i really
00:09:08.600appreciate about your work is that i read your blog and oftentimes you're like
00:09:12.160as stepping back and asking the question of do we actually want this or is anybody asking for
00:09:16.560this thing like is this new tech thing that everybody is trying to make us think is going
00:09:20.760to be great does anybody want this who is asking for this that's a question i feel like we could
00:09:25.280benefit from asking a little bit more is this actually serving a need that somebody has
00:09:29.520articulated? Yeah. I'm, you know, I'm hoping, and the thing is like, I love tech, you know,
00:09:34.380I've been a nerd my whole life and I was lucky. I got a, you know, computer when I was a kid and
00:09:39.760this is back in the eighties when that was rare. And, and, you know, my, my, my folks were as
00:09:44.180immigrants, they were just like, you know, scraping by and saving for us to get a computer.
00:09:48.540And so I was really appreciative. So I, I, I really, I still feel lucky. Like I can get a,
00:09:53.360you know, a new phone every couple of years. And I, I, I geek out about it. Like I'm not,
00:09:58.140I couldn't be more pro-tech, but I also am like, it does have to be for something. It's not just
00:10:05.400for its own sake. And so part of the reason I'm skeptical or critical of it is because I like it.
00:10:12.320I don't want it to just be mindless because I like to take it apart. I like to see how it works.
00:10:19.440That's part of appreciating it. And I think it's sort of like enjoying a good meal. You don't just
00:10:27.880shovel it in your face right like you know you're like I want to taste it you know or or you know
00:10:33.840like anything that's really great that you love you sort of want to sit there and enjoy like you
00:10:38.740almost are like you know whatever you're at a concert you're like I don't want it to be over
00:10:42.420you know or a great movie and and and I think that's kind of it is like that that mindlessness
00:10:48.240around the tech is this I don't think they even love it and and so I think that's some of what I
00:10:56.100i'm so you know resentful over sometimes is is some of these folks making the terrible tech that
00:11:03.160that's creepy or that does terrible things with your data or um that's just thoughtless that
00:11:09.900makes these communities that are that people are being horrible to each other on um i think the
00:11:15.120people making it don't love tech like i think that's how you end up there and i i'm very um
00:11:20.980i am resentful of it because i'm like you know what you're you're lucky to get to do this i i
00:11:25.640feel lucky to get to do this to be making you know even still today like i get to make i have a
00:11:31.480website i've been working on for 25 plus years i get to write stuff on the weekends i still tinker
00:11:36.500on it like i still am messing with like the style of it and the designs it's like you know 10 people
00:11:42.240looking it's like nobody looking at it and i still feel lucky to get to do it and and you know i
00:11:48.080think these people that get 100 million dollars to make an app i think they take it for granted
00:11:53.680They don't feel lucky to get to do it.
00:11:57.020Anil says there used to be a time where the decent, thoughtful people in tech had an easier time rising to the top and taking up space.
00:12:05.860They erased the work of the smarter, more diverse creators and kind of convinced us that technology only happens at a handful of giant companies made by a handful of tech tycoons.
00:12:47.380I always look at that as one example, right?
00:12:49.660Which is, you know, I think anybody who loves music can think of a undersung artist that they love, like a local indie artist or even, you know, live in New York City and I can go on a subway platform and see somebody who blows me away.
00:13:08.180And you're just like, wow, this person, you know, everybody in the world should hear them.
00:13:11.600And you're like, they're a better singer than somebody I can hear, you know, on the radio or something.
00:13:17.900And so, you know, it's not always fair, like the, it's not mapping all this to talent, right, or skill.
00:13:25.880And so some of that is, like I said, it's just commercialism.
00:13:29.020It's just like there's the maturity of an industry is there's going to be a handful of giant companies.
00:13:34.680But I think it's also familiarity, right?
00:13:37.700I, I, I do use the, the food analogy a lot, which is that we have a, you know, a handful of giant fast food tech companies, you know, and, you know, if I'm in the airport, I'm going to have McDonald's and it's fine. You know what I mean? But I'm not having that every meal, you know, like I would not feel good to have that every meal.
00:14:00.260and you know the answer that people are familiar with is like okay well if you don't like mcdonald's
00:14:06.360have burger king it's like that is not the answer right you've got to have a home-cooked meal and
00:14:11.880you got to have your family recipes and you got to have your memories of sitting down to a meal
00:14:17.900with your loved ones right and and that the how many of the best meals or the best memories of
00:14:25.340your life are in the kitchen with your family, right? And it's not even sitting down to the
00:14:30.620meal, it was in the kitchen cooking, right? And I think about that in tech, which is that
00:14:35.760I have so many of the best memories of my technical life, building stuff with people
00:14:43.080that I care about that have become my closest friends. I'm not kidding. It's the truth, right?
00:14:47.500Is that I can remember, you know, building a website, building an app with people that I
00:14:54.500genuinely love that we were bonded by like, we're going to put something out in the world
00:14:59.960and it might not be something that, you know, a billion people use, but it is something that
00:15:04.440we put our hearts into and that we care about. And we know we're going to find other people who
00:15:08.780care about it. I mean, I had this experience as we record this, um, over the weekend and I had
00:15:15.900built an app, um, with a friend of mine, uh, Gina Trapani, that was about, um, uh, your social
00:15:22.000media activity like how to make it more meaningful and this was a decade ago and uh and we had to
00:15:26.760shut it down like it didn't succeed as a business because um you were trying to get your data from
00:15:31.860twitter and instagram and they wouldn't let us keep getting the data back then like they you know
00:15:35.900they were like locking that down and uh you know it was bittersweet like we we tried to make a go
00:15:40.860of it it didn't succeed i i don't you know i'm not lamenting that too much um and over the weekend i
00:15:47.320got this message on blue sky that um a developer had built a tribute to it using blue sky where
00:15:56.780he was doing the same kind of analytics that we had done for twitter using blue sky and our app
00:16:01.520was called think up and he's like this is my tribute to think up and i i was so touched like
00:16:08.120i genuinely got choked up and i was just like somebody remember the app that we made you know
00:16:13.340and this is 10 years ago and made like his own version of it and,
00:16:18.480and sent me the link and it just out of the blue, you know,
00:16:20.900and, and somebody remembers what you made. And that was like, you know,
00:19:03.380Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.
00:19:07.820I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:19:12.380I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:19:19.820They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:19:23.620But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:19:27.300They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:19:30.360Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:19:39.320If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:19:45.240This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:19:57.720I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:20:04.840I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. So obsessed.
00:20:08.420From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:20:14.360It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:20:21.840Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:20:31.440Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:20:58.060Remember the first time you stumbled upon a weird little website or a weird pocket of the internet that made no sense but you loved for some reason?
00:21:05.880Like websites that were just weird little flash cartoons.
00:21:09.600There was a time in my life where the funniest thing in the whole world to me
00:21:13.660was a loop of the actor Sean Connery from the movie Finding Forrester saying,
00:21:54.220I was watching a YouTube video over the weekend and it was like about a film or something.
00:22:01.640And the woman who was hosting it just offhandedly mentioned making a MySpace site, you know, back in the day.
00:22:08.040And she just sort of said it like in passing. And, you know, it's 30, 40 million people had made a MySpace site back and they were all coders, right? Like they had to do code to do that. And like those folks were all still around. Like they didn't like get disappeared. You know what I mean? Like they didn't get Thanos snapped. Like they're still all here.
00:22:27.820and and so like there is still a latent cultural memory of like i made the internet like all those
00:22:34.340people made the internet and they know how to do it they still got the ability to do it like they
00:22:38.720can come back and so i think that part of like the internet is something we make not just something
00:22:43.540that happens to us um i i think is is um is still there and and you know it doesn't mean that we
00:22:50.160all have to become coders or something i just think the sense of um that it could be something
00:22:56.380that is good to us and good for us, that feels a little bit more homegrown and that is not
00:23:03.020inflicted upon us. I think that is something that we could have a cultural memory of and
00:23:08.480that can prompt us to ask more of it, right? That can help us believe that it doesn't have to be,
00:23:14.800like I said, as toxic as it's become or as extractive as it's become or that it's going
00:23:20.780to constantly be surveilling us or taking our data or doing things without our consent. I mean,
00:23:26.680I think that's one of those words that I just keep coming back to over and over, especially
00:23:31.440in the sort of AI era is consent. You know, I think we just do not hear that word in an internet
00:23:39.580or technology context nearly often enough. And it is the fundamental framing that we really should
00:23:48.080be thinking about and so many of our interactions with technology. I would argue that there's like
00:23:52.820a cultural dynamic now where when you show up to an online platform or something, that there's just
00:24:00.660an understanding that you don't, there is no consent. Like this is the cost of using it. Like
00:24:04.840if you want to post your pictures, you have to also share your location with a million people
00:24:09.600that you don't know. Like, I think that we have a warped relationship where it's like, oh, the tech
00:24:16.100companies and the people that run them get to make all the decisions. They can take whatever
00:24:19.140they want from you. They can benefit from what they take however they want. And I just don't
00:24:22.600get a say. And if I don't like it, don't show up online. Don't use these platforms. We should be
00:24:26.920able to expect more. And in fact, I think we deserve more. Absolutely. It's coercive. It's
00:24:32.480manipulative. I mean, I think, you know, the sort of the classic example is the beginning of the
00:24:38.820social network with Zuckerberg putting up the pictures of all these women around the campus
00:24:44.020at Harvard that he's, he's sort of reading and, and, you know, those images are not gathered
00:24:49.980with consent either. Right. And, and the, you know, I say this as like, you know, I've been
00:24:55.080the CEO of a, of a tech company multiple times in my career. And, and one of the things you do is
00:25:00.840you, you create a terms of service, right. And, you know, there's very little case law establishing
00:25:08.980whether terms of services are actually enforceable at all.
00:25:14.840And one of the reasons why is almost every terms of service,
00:25:19.440this is a little secret to tell you as somebody who's been on the hook for these,
00:25:23.600almost all these terms of service are basically, we can change this at any time.
00:25:34.400what how do i i never sign anything in my life that's like and we might just change it like what
00:25:42.880what is that and and if we change it we might let you know maybe maybe maybe maybe okay like that's
00:25:54.940not a thing that is not a thing there's no contract in the world that works like that
00:26:01.020that's not a thing. And, and like, I'm sorry. I'm just like, you know, I, and like I said,
00:26:07.460I've written some of those, so I probably should, you know, have some feelings about it, but I just,
00:26:13.320every time we put one of those out, I was like, I don't know. I don't know about this. And so we
00:26:20.260try, you know, in fairness, like I tried to be very thoughtful about that. And we always did,
00:26:25.900you know, advanced notice of changes on other companies that I, you know, was leading. But I
00:26:32.660think it's tough because that is the overriding principle for all these platforms. And I remember
00:26:43.640Facebook used to have a thing, people won't remember this because this is more than 10 years
00:26:48.600ago. Facebook used to have a thing where they would have a, like a governing council where
00:26:53.260people could weigh in on terms of service changes right and they're like if more than 30 percent of
00:26:59.020our users don't like this we're not going to do it right and it was like this like you know you
00:27:03.600get a vote and it never happened like they never put anything up to a vote of course they didn't
00:27:09.860right and then um and this always reminded me of the uh i'm a real nerd but at the beginning of uh
00:27:17.120of star wars the first one a new hope uh they're they're like you know the emperor's dissolved the
00:27:22.620Senate. It's like the first thing he does. They're like, now that we have the Death Star, we don't
00:27:27.220need to worry about that anymore. And literally, like, you know, Zuckerberg is like, yeah, yeah,
00:27:32.700we're not doing the voting on the terms of service thing anymore. And that's like, the
00:27:36.880emperors have all dissolved the Senate. So I just think about, like, they stopped the pretense that
00:27:42.640you could even vote on the terms of service. And I'm like, why did they even bother going to the
00:27:49.120Right. They can change it at any time on their own unilaterally. And what are you going to do? Leave Facebook. Right. And I think that's the other part is like, even if there were because people say, well, why don't you close your account? And and, you know, I think about this where like, you know, I have family. My family is one of the most rural parts of India. And, you know, the only reasonable way to communicate with them is WhatsApp, you know that. And what am I going to not talk to my cousins? Right.
00:28:17.440Like, not be in touch with my family, that is too much coercive power.
00:28:22.140Like, that is an absurd thing to dangle over somebody's head is, like, you're not going to talk to your family again.
00:28:29.800That's a, like, I think that's a violation of the Geneva Conventions of torture, right, to inflict on somebody.
00:28:38.140So, no, there actually isn't a way to opt out of the terms of service.
00:28:41.400Like you are not going to disconnect people from their world, from their livelihood, from their families. And when I say livelihood, I literally mean it. Like in the case of my family, they're in a very rural area and they're rice farmers and they're in the rice paddy. And so they use WhatsApp to get the price of rice at the market that is often 12 hours away where they trade their rice.
00:29:04.240And so that is a, you know, livelihood sustaining information path for them. They're not going to be like, we don't like the terms of service. Therefore, we're not trading rice this season. Right. So like these are not like I don't think most Americans or people in the wealthy world really understand the level of infrastructure that these things present for the rest of the world.
00:29:27.120But like, what are they going to say? No, we read the terms of service and we're not going to really agree to this change, you know? And so I think those things are like these legal contracts are functioning as government for billions of people around the world. And that level of coercive power, we have to have some kind of corrective around. And that's not the place for these companies to be playing.
00:29:53.960that's a completely different thing than they're supposed to be and what we used to have back in
00:29:58.680the day was we would make a you know at what we call the technical level an open standard
00:30:03.160and this is what like you know on the internet we used to have html and that's where you make
00:30:06.820a web page and anybody can make a web page and we would make these systems work together and even
00:30:10.980like podcasts right so like a podcast you're like listen to this podcast on whatever app you want
00:30:15.320great so i can listen to this on all my different devices and that's what the you know the whatsapps
00:30:22.000or even the Facebooks or the Instagrams of the world should be,
00:30:24.720like use this on whatever app or whatever platform you want.
00:30:27.400And if we have those kinds of systems,
00:30:29.940then they don't have that same coercive power
00:30:32.320and we can sort of pick and choose which companies
00:30:34.440and which platforms we want to work with.
00:30:36.360That's how the internet was supposed to work.
00:30:38.100That starts to have that corrective power
00:30:41.240where we can make choices about what we're doing
00:30:44.780and be a little bit less getting our arms twisted.
00:31:20.840that can't be controlled by any one company and that allows people to have ownership over their
00:31:25.480work and their relationship with their audience. Honestly, that dynamic is why I became a podcaster
00:31:30.680in the first place. I'm so glad you brought up that example. This is like a pet thing for me
00:31:35.460as a podcaster, but I did read your piece about how, you know, at the end of every podcast, I say
00:31:40.140like, get it wherever you find your podcasts. And you talked about how it's like a radical,
00:31:44.860it's like a quietly radical thing to say that is ubiquitous in the podcast space and that it is how
00:31:52.000technology is meant to be right like it's empowering that it's not owned by one company
00:31:56.460and it can't be controlled by any one company you know that's not the ownership model and
00:32:01.020i don't know something about that is very empowering that if let's say for whatever
00:32:06.960reason like i had beef with spotify spotify alone could not like end this podcast that's empowering
00:32:13.560Yes, it's huge. And, you know, it's funny, too, because that's why you also don't hear people, you know, fussing about like, oh, you know, why is my podcast being censored? And I can't go up the podcast charts because anybody can just make a podcast and put it out there.
00:32:31.140And so it's the way it's supposed to work, right? And I think that's a really powerful thing. And it also proves that it can work. Like these open systems can work. And I think that the thing people that are skeptical, understandably say, well, you have to have a big company because that's the only way that you're going to get in front of millions of people or billions of people.
00:32:54.760It has to be, you know, it takes this huge infrastructure and these giant companies to really reach a big audience and to, you know, sustain something.
00:33:03.160And, you know, I understand why they feel that way because that's what they've seen from the, you know, YouTubes of the world and the Instagrams of the world.
00:33:09.640and then it's so helpful to have these counter examples which is like no no there are these
00:33:14.320amazing you know platforms these amazing media um you know examples that we can point to that are
00:33:20.840um as good as anything out there that are using open systems and that are easy and that we listen
00:33:25.380to every day and and and that's how the internet was supposed to work and they're still vibrant
00:33:30.540and they're still active and i think even um you know the rise of email newsletters in the last
00:33:35.540several years where everybody's you know everybody i know is subscribing to a couple and again that's
00:33:39.900just a totally open system that like email is decades old and still works every day and i read
00:33:45.320them every day you know like friends write them and i think um those are just great reminders that
00:33:50.260like these you know technical architectures of the internet were built really really wisely and they
00:33:56.980have adapted so much and evolved so much and also they've been constantly growing too they're not
00:34:02.540stuck where they were in like the 80s or the 90s like they've they've continued to evolve and i
00:34:07.900think one of the things that's so um fun and interesting too is they're like they're just
00:34:13.720made by regular people you know the the like podcasts um like a lot of the people that pioneered
00:34:19.220them um there's a technologist dave weiner who was one of the first um people that created the
00:34:24.960spec and you know he's like just a guy who lives here in new york and he's a mets fan and like one
00:34:30.220of the people that helped uh create it um that spec was um aaron swartz who was a real pioneer
00:34:36.440um of this stuff and you know uh he was a friend and i i miss him he passed away um you know more
00:34:42.600than a decade ago and and and and you know just to have like these people who are human and and
00:34:48.340pains in the ass and you know and and creative and and they're not companies you know i mean
00:34:55.020they're not billion billion dollar companies and they're not global titans they're just0.98
00:34:59.100you know humans um i i think um that that's just part of it too is that people can create things
00:35:06.500that have that kind of impact and and so i think that that really sort of proves out the
00:35:13.040every part of it like we can be people that make podcasts we can be people that make the
00:35:18.700technology that makes podcasts you know we can make the whole thing the whole way down the whole
00:35:23.360internet is made of people and and i think it's easy to forget that because we've been taught
00:35:28.100These myths that it is all these giant corporations and that there is a, you know, also the myth of like these, you know, these billionaire founders.
00:35:36.940And it's like, now those dudes are sitting on top of work that regular folks made and their platforms exist because of the regular people on them.
00:35:45.600And I think that's a real important story to keep repeating.
00:35:50.960First of all, my first ever job in podcasting was on a podcast that Aaron Schwartz was the co-founder of called The Flaming Sword of Justice.
00:35:59.840It was all about like using the power of the Internet to tell like social justice stories with all the sort of grandeur of David and Goliath myths.
00:36:09.880Right. Like and it was back in the early, early, early days of podcasting.
00:36:16.260So like nobody knew what the fuck we were doing.
00:36:17.820We were like, it just, but it was so fun to be in a space where, you know, we were just making something and like, it didn't, we didn't really have the idea in our head that it super mattered how many people listened. Like today, when I put a podcast out, I'm like, how many downloads did it get?0.52
00:36:32.420Right. I didn't have the wherewithal to like really internalize that as a metric that I needed to be thinking about.
00:36:39.560It was just such a fun time. And, you know, I think this is like one of the reasons why I'm I think you're such an interesting person in the space, because you really do see the way that it's not that that tech is not just like building stuff.
00:36:52.020It's also about culture and policy and art and expression and how humans exist and fit with one another.
00:36:58.260Do you feel like that's an ethos that we kind of are losing, even though we are keeping it alive and around, but that like it becomes harder to see for all of those parts?
00:37:09.380What I will say is I think in an absolute number, more people believe in technology with a soul than ever.
00:37:19.400The challenge is there's so many more billions of people online that it gets lost in the noise, right?
00:37:25.120But the communities of people who are trying to build good tech or who are building fun, weird art projects online or who are trying to have some soul in what they're doing when they put stuff up on the internet, it is more people all over the world doing that than was there five years ago or 10 years ago or 25 years ago.
00:37:50.920but there's so much other noise right that that it can get lost or it can get overshadowed and
00:37:57.480and so i think the challenge is for all of us to find each other and to amplify each other and to
00:38:03.820lift each other up and to remind each other that it's there you know despite the rest of it the
00:38:10.820cacophony of the rest of it but but the the actual number of people doing it i think is bigger than
00:38:16.480it's ever been um and and you know that's a hard balance to strike because i think um you know
00:38:24.080back in the day that's all there was and so it it had an outsized presence and and i you know i
00:38:31.740think there's so many analogies of like um like i said like you know being a music fan i live on
00:38:37.540the lower east side and and you know there was a time when there was a music scene that was like
00:38:42.600you know, these, you know, the indie punk scene and early hip hop and, and, you know, this sort
00:38:47.900of, you had to really, really love that music, those music scenes to be there. And because there
00:38:53.700was zero money in it, right? Like, you know, there was nobody except the people in that club with
00:38:58.780you. And, and talking to people who are like, we still had alters in the neighborhood who were
00:39:04.280there then and, and talking to those folks and they're just like, you know, you had to really
00:39:09.620believe and um and they still love the music right and and so they're still listening to the music
00:39:17.760and they still are in touch with some of those artists who were there for the music then
00:39:21.840and so they're not mad that hip-hop is global they're not mad that everybody knows what happened
00:39:28.640with those punk artists right and um you know they're not upset that like i was you know talking
00:39:36.000You know, one of the folks who's in Blondie, that was one of the bands that broke out from CBGBs on the Lower East Side.
00:39:41.620They're not mad that everybody knows those songs, but they still have it there, right?
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00:42:40.920if your bookshelf and your for you page are equally important to your personality welcome home
00:42:47.100This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:42:59.560I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:43:06.660I'm going to have to look up this story.
00:43:09.800From best-selling authors and your favorite BookTok creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
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00:43:33.280Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:48:06.060like maybe in the history of the internet, like that's wild.
00:48:08.260and then and then you know uh people already being fed up with with you know facebook and
00:48:14.400their feed there like okay sure and i think fatigue with feeds in general i think people
00:48:19.440are kind of over it you know they know that they're tired of swiping and and scrolling like
00:48:24.200they they they kind of burn out on that and and feel a little bit like this is a lot of empty
00:48:29.180calories for my brain like i think people are very aware of that and ready for something else
00:48:33.180um and then even just like other other behaviors i think people are really ready to push back on
00:48:41.460you know the ai slop i think on a number of grounds one is they don't like seeing0.82
00:48:46.880you know their elder relatives brains cooked by obviously made up stuff i think they don't like
00:48:54.380seeing their favorite artists having their things taken without consent um i think they have a lot
00:49:00.760of ambivalence about you know everything from the environmental impacts to the other things that are
00:49:04.940happening around ai i think all that stuff has only raised the temperature about you know some
00:49:10.940of these misgivings and then just being ready for something new you know i mean i think sort of
00:49:15.880saying like where is the good stuff where is the things that i like that i feel you know positive
00:49:20.380about all that stuff just sort of primes us for maybe there's going to be something new and and
00:49:26.700And that, you know, being in this business a long time and being in the tech space a long time, you can just sort of sense it.
00:49:33.560You can feel it when there's going to be, you know, new players or new interests arising.
00:49:39.820And so all of that coming together, along with as a nerd, I see so many new technical capabilities that we haven't seen in a generation.
00:49:50.940um and you know i won't nerd out too much but just the the things that are available to programmers
00:49:56.680to build with feel like building blocks that we haven't seen since you know a generation ago and
00:50:04.360that's exciting to me like as a coder i'm playing with things you know some of it is around the
00:50:08.760edges of the ai stuff but just like you know technical things about how we can like share data
00:50:13.580and get people to be able to you know collaborate together i'm like oh wow there's so many creative
00:50:18.300tools that we can build there. And I see all those building blocks and I just think, man,
00:50:22.600somebody is going to fit these together in a new way. And all of a sudden, like the creative people
00:50:27.220of the world are going to be inventing new stuff. So it sounds like when you think of the future
00:50:31.320of tech, you're actually quite optimistic and hopeful. I am. I am. I can't not be. One is I
00:50:37.080have to be just for my mental wellbeing. Like I, you know, you can't, I can't help but be,
00:50:43.980But also, I think of, you know, as America, I think of the rest of the world, especially Global South, and they are really ready to be free from the American-centric internet. It's very obvious, very obvious for all the, you know, policy reasons and all the obvious reasons. And that's what the internet wants to be. It was always designed to be decentralized. And so there's going to be innovation there.
00:51:11.020And then I think of the creatives of the world and they're saying, wow, these platforms are like, like I said, taking my stuff without consent for AI or they're, you know, not letting me win over the algorithm and people can't discover my content or all the other things.
00:51:24.620They're going to say, well, maybe I should have my own site or I should have my own place for my content.
00:51:27.880So the creatives of the world are going that way.
00:51:33.820There's all these different things that are sort of pushing towards people having more agency and autonomy and control.
00:51:40.460that's just a signal you know i mean i don't need to know where it's headed to know that it's going
00:51:45.580somewhere and um i just love that energy i just love seeing that happen and for me i'm like i'm
00:51:51.760you know i'm like a middle-aged dad i'm washed like i'm not supposed to be the one that knows i
00:51:56.940just like i just need to follow like i'm excited to see it i should be you know i should be the one
00:52:02.680that's just rooting for it and and helping it happen um i like being i like being the elder
00:52:09.480statesman of it now. I had the chance to be at the forefront of it a generation ago. I'm excited
00:52:16.860to be the one who's wowed by what the next generation comes up with. Okay. Well, that
00:52:21.740brings me to my last question, which is sort of a wild card. Speaking of creative sort of leading
00:52:26.680the way, you and I are both big Prince super fans. I have to ask, what is it about Prince
00:52:33.140that gets you, that draws you in? Oh, there's so many things. I mean, that's a big question.
00:52:39.180I think there's a couple parts, you know, I think he touches on so many of the themes that we've talked about. I think one is he comes from a scene, a community, right? The Twin Cities, Minneapolis, you know, especially, you know, the black music community in the Twin Cities is so specific of a place where, you know, they were grounded in history, right?
00:53:02.480So they have, you know, this, this blues music scene and the jazz music scene that his parents were part of and that they, you know, they all sort of supported each other. And I think that part is what sort of informs his work. And I think that's sort of, it's like so tied to place. And obviously like, you know, you have that, you know, his dad was, you know, part of the great migration comes from that blues tradition in Louisiana.
00:53:25.620I think that part you see suffused through his music.
00:53:28.860I think that is, well, I mean, it's the greatest American music tradition, right?
00:53:44.860Like this is this like incredible through line.
00:53:47.940And then he is a technologist through and through, right?
00:53:51.360The reason he's able to record his own records is he learns to run an automated console when he's a teenager, which is cutting edge technology at that time. He's the first to have the Lynn LM1 drum machine, which is the first to have a digital sample of drums, which is his signature sound. The birth of the Minneapolis sound is a story of technology.
00:54:11.640He tweaks that drum machine beyond its parameters of what it's supposed to do. The reason that when you hear something like 1999 or When Doves Cry has a unique sound that nobody had heard on the radio before is he's tuning a drum machine past what it's supposed to be able to do because he is literally programming a computer to go beyond its limits.
00:54:31.480and and that is his innovation as a technologist right that's like he had you know the new iphone
00:54:38.180before it drops that's that's that's literally what he's doing and and and then on and on into
00:54:43.340the internet era right where he pre-internet right pre-web he's got a cd-rom when that was
00:54:48.820cutting edge to deliver an interactive experience right around the time that he starts to fight for
00:54:54.700control of his master recordings and then you know in the twin cities the first internet service
00:55:01.260provider isp for dial-up access called good stream uh was created by engineers who worked
00:55:06.700at paisley park at his studio so internet access in the twin cities comes through his studio right
00:55:12.940by people who work for prince and you know it's just like the the beating heart of of of all
00:55:20.000innovations or goes through there and then uh you know he pioneers having uh everything that we look
00:55:27.280at now, whether it's a Patreon or a Kickstarter. He has a membership fan club. He has his own
00:55:31.640website. In fact, his first website in 1995 is so early that he had to have an instruction page
00:55:37.740explaining how to put a credit card into the field for buying a CD from it because he was
00:55:42.820selling CDs on his website before Amazon was. That's how early he was. The next year he does
00:55:49.000a crowdfunding for cds on his website and that is oh i want to say 11 years before kickstarter
00:55:57.840existed something like a long time long time before and on and on and on right he does a um
00:56:03.420you know a membership club and in 2001 2002 that's like a patreon now right where the fans
00:56:09.760get first access to tickets we got to go to his um his uh pre-shows and and you know his sound
00:56:18.880checks for his concerts because we were members of the fan clubs i got to sit you know a row away
00:56:24.120from him in the audience when he was playing at lincoln center um you know and it's just
00:56:29.220unbelievable like the amount of of access and and that was because like he was on there he was in
00:56:35.460the AOL chat rooms with us in the early 90s you know and so like that part that's all separate
00:56:41.300from you know unbelievable guitarist um you know rock and roll hall of fame writing top 10 hits for
00:56:49.240you know a dozen other artists that's all separate from 40 albums that's all separate from
00:56:54.700you know just unbelievable performer that's all separate from you know 100 music videos that's
00:57:00.980all separate from a thousand recorded songs of his own that he released that's all separate from
00:57:05.780another two thousand songs in the vault you know like it's just um the technological innovation
00:57:11.800alone is at uh a level i don't think people could understand or fathom uh just as a technology
00:57:21.960pioneer and you know when he got uh his webby award uh his lifetime achievement award in 2006
00:57:28.520You know, he said, everything you think is true. And, you know, I think that, and he wrote it on the wall of his bedroom at Paisley Park. And I think he sort of was talking about how you can imagine a world, you know, that people can't yet conceive of. And that was the same speech I gave when I got my Webby Lifetime Achievement Award as a tribute to him.