March 11, 2024 • 39 mins
Ed Zitron of the Better Offline podcast joins the show, and boy is he mad! Ed and Jonathan get angry over the state of the tech industry, the focus on short term gains at the cost of long term benefits, and why the tech we have at our disposal sometimes just feels like it's not as good as it should be.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and How the
tech are You. I've got a special episode today. I've
got a fellow podcaster in the studio with me, virtually
(00:24):
Ed Zetron, who has the better offline podcast. If y'all
think that I cast a critical eye at the tech industry,
strap in, because Ed, you know, I give him the business.
But I've listened to your show and it's gloves off
when you start.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I can't help myself. I have to because everyone's angry
at tech right now. Everyone is so angry, and I
get emails about it saying, oh, you've really put into
words so I feel. And I think it's just I
am naturally pissed off. I guess very much, just a
natural fury.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
I suppose.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Yeah, I'm a gen xer, so I'm a little older,
and I think the natural cynicism that I possess has
sort of dulled me to the point where I'm angry.
But I'm also tired supposed to being angry. I've been
angry since the early eighties. Yeah, I mean, you grow
(01:21):
up in that Cold War era and you really start
you learn how to be angry. But I wanted to
talk about your show and about its genesis and sort
of the process of you know, how you came about
thinking about doing a podcast and the sort of things
that specifically inspired you. I'd love to talk about the
episode that published most recently as we record this, where
(01:43):
you talked about the metaverse, because it's something that I share.
All the feelings that you express in that episode I've
talked about on this show as well, which is largely
about how infuriating it is to have this ill defined
concept take over to an extent where you feel you're
just screaming into the void. Why are you doing? Why
(02:04):
are you spending money? Why are these businesses jumping into it?
But you can say the same thing about NFTs, you
can say the same thing about AI and he did, yes,
and you continue you will continue to do so. But
let's talk about that, Let's talk about sort of what
your background is and then leading into the creation of
the Better Offline podcast.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
So in twenty twenty, I was as many people were
getting quite depressed, and it was because I wasn't writing
as well as the world burning around us. So I thought,
I'm going to start a newsletter. I had two hundred subscribers,
three hundred maybe, and most of them, I'm pretty sure
with dead emails. But I started writing about tech stuff
because I've be running a PR firm for about twelve years,
(02:46):
and a tech PR firm specifically, so I've seen all
these things up close. And then during twenty twenty, I
was writing a lot about return to office, and that
felt like I was screaming into the void as well.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
People were saying.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
From like July, oh no, even like May Well, We've
got to get back to the office, but no one
could say why. There were all these articles Wall Street Journal,
New York Times talking about the office is better, the
office is better, and it was always talking to executives,
and that really began to joke afire me a bit.
I was like, ah, I don't like this, and people
were reading it. People were responding really well. But I
(03:19):
remember the thing that the first time it really took
off was this thing called Clubhouse. Clubhouse was I don't
know if you remember, so everyone in the tech industry
was saying clubhouse is the future. Clubhouse is the future.
What Clubhouse was was basically a live podcast show. It's
Twitter spaces, that's all. It is a live voice chat
(03:40):
thing where any number of speakers can speak at the
same time. And what happened was Andrewson Horowitz major venture
capital firm, and Mark Andresen himself were really trying to
push this through. They were pushing every tech person, every
celebrity they knew to use this platform, and everyone was
talking about it and saying this is the future. And
I couldn't tell how because last time I checked, radio
(04:01):
existed and everyone was talking about this thing, saying it's
going to be worth billions, and it was allegedly a
four billion dollar offer. And I kept writing, just saying,
this is vaporware. This isn't the thing. There is no
there was no revenue, there was no monetization strategy. There
really wasn't a point to it. And also tech people
are frightfully boring. So hearing these ultra rich buffoons.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Going, oh, well, you know, the innovations are very important,
and they'd ramble on and on.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
It was dull, but people were flocking to it. And
then one day they just stopped. They just stopped using it,
and I did a few like aha moments where I
was like, ah, gotcha, and then I got quoted in
like Wired, and I was like, oh, okay, this is cool.
But I kept writing because I enjoyed it. And also
I kind of see both sides. I see the business
(04:48):
side and I see the journalism side. And I was
a games journalist before this, and so I just kept
writing about the stuff and I kept calling it as
I see it because it was an independent newsletter, and
it went from two hundred people to fourth out like
one thousand to four thousand subscribers. It's twenty three thousand today,
and so it became a big thing. And I don't know,
I like writing a lot, and I can write very fast.
(05:09):
I used to do three or four a week. I
have no idea how I had that output. Now I
just do once a week when I can make it.
But I write in the way that I grew up
reading and seeing on television. In England, there was generally
a more critical approach to journalism, but there was more opinion,
and when the opinion ran, there wasn't really afraid of
leaving a few black eyes. As long as you punched up,
(05:31):
you don't attack the people below, you, attack the executives,
the sun duper shies of the world, Google's alphabet CEO
guy who makes two hundred and twenty million dollars a
year and lays off thousands of people and drives Google
Search into the ground. These are things that people see
and people.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Are angry about.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
And I think I'm good at putting that into words
for better.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Words there.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
I guess sure. It's such a valuable asset to have
because to your point, in your various podcasts and hearing
you talk and meetings and things, you know, we got
a lot of quote unquote tech journalism that's not really
journalism at all. It's essentially regurgitating press releases, which doesn't
(06:14):
have any value to it. You could just go and
read the press release if that's what you wanted to do.
And it's only a few outlets that go any further
than that, and I find them incredibly valuable. But unfortunately
those are like the exceptions rather than the rule. And
actually we could even talk about tech's effect on journalism
(06:35):
and how that has played a huge part in this
and that it has devalued journalism to large extent. There's
the infamous pivot to video moment we could talk about like,
there's so much that ends up being wrapped up in this.
It becomes a lot of inside baseball for folks who
work in the industry. But it's important to recognize so
that when I do something like advocate for critical thinking,
(06:57):
people have those assets that they can go to that
help train them on this and not just throwing them
into the deep end of the pool and saying think
critically and you'll be fine.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Yeah, what does thinking critical look like? Tech journalism as
a whole has got more critical. On the broadcast side,
a lot of tech podcasts are very right leaning right now.
The two most successful ones the All In Podcast and
Lex Fridmund's And Lex Fridman is a right wing so
it is the all In guys. David sax Is a
pro Russia goon. Jason Kalakanis isn't much better. These guys
(07:33):
are controlling the airwaves to some extent. But a lot
of that is because a lot of the tech industry
thinks that what media in tech should do is positive.
It should be rah rah, and we should only criticize
a few things when we kind of feel like here
versus what people want, which is an explanation as to
why things aren't working right. They want to understand the
(07:54):
decisions that people are making. Something you've done very what
was You've explained why things are the way they are,
how things have got places when Google was a search
company versus an AD's company. People don't know these things.
There is a need for things like how your iPhone works.
Rich Deimiro Katla excellent guy, great radio host as well.
He does very good like how to avoid scam stuff.
(08:16):
That kind of journalism is extremely valuable. Steve Noviello and
Houston on Fox another great guy for this, that's very valuable.
But otherwise, tech journalism is growing into an industry. It's
growing into something that critiques things and says, here are
what the powerful people are doing. But I don't think
that there's enough just explaining why the world is the
way it is and showing the emotion the anger you
(08:37):
need to because this stuff Google Search being worse is horrifying.
It's something that hits billions of people. You should be angry.
You're angry. I'm angry. This should be front page news
everywhere except Google put out a thing saying, oh, we're
gonna fix search we're gonna make it better, and everyone's like, great,
Google's good. Now they're not. They haven't done anything well.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
And if it were a front page news, you never
find it because you've put it in Google Search and
it wouldn't come exactly.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
You get three different seo spam sites.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Yeah, it's fascinating to me because I can actually, I mean,
obviously this isn't a new thing. I can see patterns
of this kind of cycle where if you start asking
questions and you start coming up with answers, you start
to see kind of the cynical background that's fueling things
within the tech industry. I'm reminded when I first started
getting into tech podcasting, it was in two thousand and eight.
(09:25):
Two thousand and eight was around the time where all
the different television manufacturing companies were all pushing three D
televisions and you start to ask the question, why why
are you pushing three D TV? And if you start
coming up with answers, Well, one, you've got the various
studios out there that are really keen on the idea
of creating a format that is very difficult to pirate,
(09:48):
and so therefore they have an incentive to push the
three D technology, and then you've got the manufacturers who
they need to come up with ways to differentiate this
year's models from last year's models. It's not just good
enough to out with another TV that does what last
year's TV does, and you can't just constantly push resolution
year over year. So there were all these very cynical
(10:09):
reasons for it, and ultimately the response from consumers was
I just don't want this.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
But that's a fascinating one, though, because I remember that
two thousand and eight was actually when I moved to
America and I moved into the tech industry. And the
other thing that you're completely right about is you'll notice
you didn't mention the filmmakers. The filmmakers were just like,
I don't want I don't want to do this. This
doesn't sound like it will make the movie better unless
I'm making Shrek. Shrek was one of the few the
(10:37):
minions movies I think much later, obviously, Yeah, but that
was really one of those times where I don't think
I saw it at the time quite as clearly as
you did, but you're right, that was one of those times.
So it's like this something he's being done to consumers
rather than for them.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Yeah, they were trying to pull a Steve Jobs, who
was obviously brilliant at convincing people they needed something that
they probable. Guy though, listen, we're not going to talk
about getting on this podcast because that was a thing
at Apple, I know. But yeah, well probably know people
who got jobs at one point that was when you
would walk in and Steve Jobs would fire you on
the spot for some minor thing. Anyway, what he was
(11:14):
really good at was convincing people that they wanted a product,
or that a product that he had on offer was
going to solve a problem they didn't even know they
had before. And partly why he was able to create
entirely new markets. I don't want to discount all the
other people who also put in a huge amount of work,
you know, Johnny Ives and all that kind of stuff.
But the industry was trying to copy what he was
(11:34):
able to do, and they just weren't able to achieve it.
They were not able to convince the market that three
D television was really a valuable thing. There was the
issue that there wasn't that much content in the beginning
to really grab people.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
This still isn't Apple on the vision pro is still
trying to convince you to get three D content.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Yeah, well, I mean when you look at some of
the ones that came out, like there were a few
obvious standouts that showed spectacle and how spectacle could be effect.
I mean, Avatar is it's impossible to argue like it
was the top grossing film of all time and in
part was because of the spectacle of this three dimensional
filmmaking approach. But then you had things like the Hobbit series,
(12:17):
which certainly did not capture imaginations the same way Avatar did,
despite the fact that it was three D and forty
eight frames per second film making pushing the envelope, saying
this is the future of film, and people said, yeah,
can we make it? Not that because I don't like
the Hobbits looking like they're acting in a Mexican soap opera.
It's just not appealing to me.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
But also just no one wanted it. No one was
saying that being like I wish this movie was more
in front of me.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Right, or that it was three times longer than it
needed to be. Yeah, oh god, yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
We won't go.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
So I also have a Lord of the Rings tattoo,
so I'm not even gonna go into my disdain for
the Hobbit films, but that, to me is an example
of sort of the things that are going on behind
the scenes that you may not necessarily be aware of
as a consumer or just you know, part of the
mainstream public. And that's why I find podcasts like Better
Offline really valuable, because what you're doing is you're asking
(13:10):
the questions and peeling back the layers and saying, not
only does this thing not make sense, but you need
to understand the motivations behind why it's a thing in
the first place, and why you should question it and
why you might feel uneasy toward it. Like I again,
I think to NFTs as being a great example of
(13:31):
the thing that everyone who was already invested in the
crypto world, we're desperate to convince you this is a
valuable thing enough so that companies were jumping in without
really understanding what NFTs were. I think I think most
companies still don't understand what NFTs are, and everyone was
getting that feeling of am I actually missing out? Is
this going to be a case of not investing early
(13:53):
on and I'm going to miss out on a huge opportunity,
and of course, we saw the bottom drop out of
NFTs at the end of that EA, and it hasn't
recovered since, which suggests that the people who were skeptical
and expressing caution were right all along. That to me
is where the value for a show like Better Offline
really comes in, because it teaches you to ask those
(14:15):
questions yourself, even if you haven't done an episode about
that specific topic yet.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
And a lot of it is as well that people
are a lot smarter than they think they are with
this stuff. And I think the tech industry is done
and the marketers especially have done a really good job
making people feel that they won't understand there are algorithms
and powers at play that you just simply could not
on Stay You don't understand NFTs, and that's why you
(14:39):
will have fun staying Poor or Crypto the same deal,
when ultimately with Crypto they claim to be making decentralized
software and they weren't. The software does not work, None
of it is good. Axioinfinity is allegedly like a Pokemon clone.
It costs like one thousand dollars just to start, and
by the way, it's a terrible game. It's not good.
(15:00):
A lot of guys rich though, And that's the thing.
When people understand the incentives and the actual basic things.
I think a lot of people can understand tech way more.
And you know this, You've been doing this podcast for
a long time. People are way more aware of this stuff.
But there is almost a deliberate obfuscation at times, and
I find it reprehensible. I find it very annoying. And
(15:21):
the reason the Metaverse episode got me so angry was
I remember everyone trying to explain to me, Hey ed
virtual worlds of the future, and I looked them dead
in the iron and said, I was literally like the
second guy in England who wrote about massively multiplayer online RPGs.
I know these things, and I've known them for a
long time. I played Meridium fifty nine and I know this.
(15:44):
I played Ultimore Online. I know this stuff. What you
were describing is the stuff that I was playing on
a PCMIA card. So please tell me how this is different.
And they couldn't. It was a big lie, and I
think everyone saw it at the time, but the media
fell for it. There were so many there were Wall
Street Journal, New York Times, Time Magazine, all of these
places saying the metaverse is here, The metaverse is here everyone,
(16:06):
and it wasn't.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Yeah, and it was reminding me if you go back
a decade of discussions of the semantic web, the semantic web.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Oh god, I haven't saw about the semantic web in forever,
I know, But it's essentially I mean, it has a
lot of the same groundwork as as the metaverse does.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Right, it doesn't necessarily incorporate a virtual world, but then
arguably neither does the metaverse because the word doesn't mean anything,
so like the metaverse could involve a virtual world, or
you could be talking about something entirely different. It all
depends upon how.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
I saw Microsoft teams referring to itself as ye verse.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
I got that was when it's not nope, yes enough, it's.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Not just frustrating, it's destructive. When you see enterprises jump
in on these trending ideas that are not fully baked
and convincing people, whether it's it's employees or partners or investors,
that this is the future when clearly no one has
a really firm grip on what they're even talking about,
(17:05):
and it's such a massive waste of resources. And when
you sit there, when you see when tech works well,
when tech is doing its job and actually making things
easier or better, and you sit there and think, what
if we took all that wasted time and effort and
we had actually dedicated it to enterprises that could benefit people,
where would we be now? Like, those are the questions
(17:26):
that get me angry. I still rant about it, and.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
A lot of it comes down to something are called
the rot economy, where we are in a world where
companies are evaluated in the public markets and at times
the private markets based on growth, not based on what
they produce, whether they have happy customers, whether they are
making a sustainable income, whether they could do the same
thing for another three years and may be fine, No,
(17:50):
you must grow ten twenty percent a year, which is
why Microsoft jumped on the metaverse wagon. Disney same deal
and then drop them the moment things look bad, and hey,
you know who also dropped the metaverse meta They also
moved itward. They went fro him in twenty twenty two
talk about the metaverse being the most important thing to
twenty twenty three being the year of efficiency, and that
(18:12):
AI was where Boz and Zuck were now facing themselves.
And he'll still claim that the metaverse is around, but
it's just that is the symptom of an economy that
doesn't build technology for people, but builds technology to sell
to investors. And that's where we're going right now. And
that's the scary thing. Tech can be great and a
big thing better off on I'm trying not to do
(18:33):
is not to be just endlessly cynical. I'm angry, and
you should be angry. But I don't hate tech. I
hate some people in tech. I find Mark Zuckerberg truly disgusting.
Same with Steve Jobs, staying with Elon Musk, all of
these people are not working for people. They are working
for investors in themselves. And Steve Jobs was an evil
(18:55):
cret in listened to Behind the Bastards if you want
to know more. But at the very least he made
stuff for people. He had an inherent sense of like,
this feels good in the hand, This UIUX situation is satisfying.
They can now do this and that will make me
lots of money. He was good at that. Tim Cook less,
so he's better, and he's better than a lot of
the rest of them. But Sundar Pishai, he doesn't give
(19:16):
a rat's ass about any of this he wants to
see Google grows. It was two hundred and twenty three
million in twenty twenty two, two hundred and eighty and
twenty twenty one year off of the pandemic, millions of
people dying, and he's becomes one of the richest guys.
Really really sad, especially because Google Search has got so bad.
And I think the big difference is it no longer
(19:36):
feels like a fair trade. We're no longer in situation
where they're making cool stuff and we're okay with them
getting rich doing so because they're making bad stuff and
getting richer.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
And getting richer ed. And I will be back to
rant a lot more, but first, let's take a quick
break to think our sponsors. Google in particular is a
tricky topic simply because even in its good years, it
(20:08):
was a company that seemed like it was throw anything
at the wall and hope that things stick. And even
if things stuck, you weren't guaranteed to have that product
last for more than a few years before Google would
either discontinue it or you know, cannibalize it for parts
and put it into other existing Google features. Like I
talked recently about Google Wave, a product that was, oh,
(20:30):
Google Wave good for maybe two people, and it was
me and my co host because.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Because we were so cool. But it was useless.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
It was it was useless except we would use it
to literally build run of show for a live streaming
show we did once a week, and for that it
was perfect. And I said, I literally can't think of
another use case for this particular tool.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
The thing.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Imagine if they'd have built Discord instead, which is basically mIRC,
which is a twenty thirty year old piece of free software.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Yeah. Yeah, So even in Google's you know heyday, when
the Don't Be Evil was still at least nodded to.
It was a tricky place, but at least you felt
like they were sincere. I felt that it was a
lot of engineers building tools for other engineers, not necessarily
for the general public. If you weren't an engineer. It
wasn't nearly user or friendly enough. But I felt like
(21:20):
they believed in what they did. I don't necessarily feel
that today, largely for the same reasons you've mentioned.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Well, there's a big thing that happened in twenty nineteen.
Twenty twenty. Ben Gomes, who was the head of Google
Search at the time he was Actually he put out
there was an event at Google called Code Yellow, where
basically they realized that the search had a problem, and
he put out an alert warning saying the Google Ads
site is getting too close to search. They keep trying
(21:48):
to mess with him. Twenty twenty, Prabakar Rakavan takes over
his former job head of Ads at Google. That's what happened, folks.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
This it's not a bug, it's a feature. Yeah, it's
not a problem, it's a goal.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
And what was funny was at the time Prova CoV
was like, oh, yeah, yeah, God's doing a great job
with search.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Great job man. Zip.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Now Google Search sucks so bad. Yeah, it's so And
that's the thing. That's the emails I get about the
Row Economy episode, where it's like, thank you for saying
that I'm being confused this whole time. These things feel
very obvious to those of us who were extremely online,
who were doused in this every day. But I don't
think most people realize because there's so much happening, and
to your point earlier, Google news is not particularly useful.
(22:32):
News is not something that's very well spread these days.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Sure, yeah, I mean, well, I'm not gonna open up
the can of worms, because I totally could. But this
is it's making me want to start talking about things
like recommendation algorithms and the evils they present. But we've
done I've done tons of episodes, but I've done a
lot that. Yeah, I don't need to retread that ground,
but there are big problems that I think need to
be recognized and addressed. I don't know what the solutions
(22:57):
are because when I look at the issues of you're
running a company specifically to keep shareholders happy, right, rather
than to see any other corporate mission through. That to me,
has its roots deep in the again the nineteen eighties,
like there I grew up, and like that's where that
kind of really started to take hold thanks to like
people like Jack Welch and stuff and areas outside of tech.
(23:20):
But the tech industry seems to have really taken that
ball and run with it.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
They're rewarded for it by the markets, of course, is
very profitable.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
It's what makes me have to ask questions too, that
even when I'm hearing things that on the surface sound
beneficial or benign, I started asking questions and then it
turns out there's a darker side to it. So, for example,
open AI and the push for regulations in AI, Like
(23:49):
that sounds great, you know, the idea of, oh, we
have a dominant company in generative AI that's advocating for
the purposes of creating regulations rules for AI. That sounds
like that's good. Like that seems like that's within the
actual mission statement of the original open AI, which was
presumably created to make responsible artificial intelligence implementations and avoid
(24:15):
all the pitfalls that we worry about.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Whether it's you know, except you were basically letting a
murderer at that point dictate his own sentence.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Yes, you're you're letting the person who would most benefit
from making the rules make the rules right, which could
very well mean that, oh, let's make rules so that
it suppresses anyone else who's getting into the AI game,
giving us an even greater advantage in the market than
we already have while impacting us the bare minimum amount.
(24:43):
And it starts sounding like you're getting into fringe theories,
but that's really what's going on. It's really it's really
the truth that you're talking about people who they have
such a huge stake in the game, And I think
that kind of applies to pretty much everything we've talked about.
They have such a huge steak, that's the full and
centive for them to do this. It may sound on
the surface to be like this very kind of gracious approach,
(25:06):
but in reality it's very self serving.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Well, it's kind of like the entire open ai nonprofit
side that when Sam Altman was elvested, was proven to
be completely ineffectual. People should be really angry about that.
What happened there was Sam Oltman was kicked out for
reasons we still do not know.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
We really do not know.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
That's never come out. However, what happened was pressure from
venture capitalists and Microsoft, a three trillion dollar tech firm,
was used to put him back in. The pressure was done.
That should That is one of the darker things I've
seen happen in the tech industry. And I saw journalists
saying this is beautiful. That scared me. That scared me
more than anything I've seen in this industry when you see.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
That the other people who are on the board were
members of the co founding group that came up with
the idea of open ai in the first place.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
And the people on the board were replaced by Larry Summers. Yeah,
you want some gen x cynicism. Yeah, Harry bloody Sommers.
Adam DiAngelo, the co founder of Qura, he's still on
the board. Cora is currently full of open ai stuff
ruining the platform. People don't realize this is the stuff
that matters. These moments are the things to be angry about.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Right and when people like the members of the former
board are trying to take action in order to get
back on the track that was originally intended when they
were first forming open Ai, you know what they get
for their their efforts is this huge backlash that was
exacerbated by the media coverage of it, and then forced
(26:36):
to not only reinstate Altman, but to step down as well.
Right like, you had co founders having stepped.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Down and replaced with Larry goddamn Summers and one of
the sales force guys. Just like, replace them, Just replace
them with Darth Vader, just go, just go the whole way,
replace them with replace them with David Petraeus. Why not
just go the whole damn way. I'm sure they considered
Contaliza Rice m so they now have something in common
(27:05):
with the Cleveland Browns.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
This totally off topic, but I'm reminded of the time.
I'm a huge fan of the Disney parks because I
went to them as a kid. So even as an adult,
while I recognized the shortcomings of the Disney Company, the
parks have a special place in nostalgia in my heart.
It's not that different from today, honestly, but this happened,
you know, back in the nineties. There was a time
(27:28):
period where Disney had replaced the executive level of leadership
for the Disney parks with retail leaders so people from
like the Banana Republican Gap, and that was a time
where they started to do things like gut all the
stuff that gave character to the Disney parks and replace
them with stores, and to take out some of the
(27:48):
other attractions and to put in like quick service food
carts because they were much higher profit margins, right like
they were running it like they were running a retail business.
And it started to take away a lot of the
charm that had been there in the parks. And to me,
like I recognize a lot of that same sort of
stuff going on in the tech world in general, like
(28:10):
even tools that maybe once upon a time you liked
a lot of the sheen has worn off.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Well, I mean Google is more profitable than ever. Yeah,
same with Meta, Like these companies are so much worse,
the products are so much worse, but they're more profitable
than ever.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Yeah. When you're thinking about Google, I also think about YouTube.
I think about how incredibly successful YouTube is, and I
think about all the creators on YouTube and how at
the mercy of YouTube they are. Like, if there's any
change in YouTube at all, it has a disproportionate effect
on the people who are creating the content there. And
you could have someone who has really good content and
(28:46):
genuinely has a good voice and something to say and
good production values, and they could be absolutely devastated by
a change in YouTube's algorithms or be completely laid waste
when there's unsubstantial copyright claims put against them, Like the
platform can be weaponized, and so it has been weaponized.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
I look at that.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
And meanwhile, you have at the company level, a company
that continues to just benefit financially larger amounts a year
over year over year.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Yes, and by making the product more annoying to use
so that people spend more time on it. I mean
it's frustrating as well. Because the fair question is what
do we do here? And the answer genuinely is things
like four h four media independent group of former VI
some motherboard people at Jason Coblo, Emanuel Milberg, Fantastic, Semantically Colors. Well,
(29:37):
they did a really great story about research thing that
showed that Google results were getting worse. I believe that
awareness of these issues will put pressure on these companies.
I know it's I'm just running a podcast, really, but
I believe that more people being aware of these things
means that more things will change. These companies have gotten
away with it because they've obfuscated the value proposition and
(30:00):
the way they're making their money. Now that that's changing,
I actually believe that they may stop pulling these things back.
It will take time.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
I have some optimism, largely because I have seen activism
and organization and unionizing starting to grow, especially in the
tech industry over the last couple of years, which was
unheard of a few years ago.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Unions will also break the back of these companies, which
why they're so scared of them.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Yes, and it's why they're challenging the National Labor Relations
Board and whether or not as constitutional.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
I know, right so discussed I'm.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Not going to go into it because I'll start screaming
into the microphone. Support your unions, guys, please do. But yeah,
like seeing that has given me a lot of hope
because it tells me that there has finally reached a
point where you can't just sit back and not be
active and not support your fellow workers, and to actually
(30:56):
call out these companies when they are doing things that
are hard for everyone other than the executives and the shareholders.
And I think that is promising. It's not a guarantee
that we're going to turn the corner and enter into,
you know, the idyllic version of the future that Gene
Roddenberry had when he made Star Trek. I don't think
(31:16):
that we're like on that doorstep. But I find solace
in seeing that movement grow in various sectors of the
tech industry. And my hope is to continue to see
that grow and to continue seeing people educate themselves, as
you've said, and to advocate for those changes because ultimately
it does benefit the largest amount of people. The people
(31:39):
it doesn't benefit would be again the executive team, the
c suites, and the shareholders. But honestly, I think they
can afford to it will be fine.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Think, Yeah, you'll make fifty million dollars a year.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
Hell, you'll probably make one hundred million dollars.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
You'll be fine. You'll be fine. Make good stuff again.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Yeah, and in the long term, you'll actually be better.
I'm not done being angry at the tech industry just yet,
but I do have to take a break to thank
our sponsors. So there's an online media company that I
(32:19):
was a fan of for a very long time called
rooster Teeth, and yeah, Warner Brothers Discovery announced yesterday they
shutting it down. So after twenty one years, almost twenty
one years, the company, rooster Teeth is getting shut down.
At more than one hundred and fifty people are losing
their jobs as a result of that. I plan on
doing a full episode kind of giving a history of
that company and its impact on Internet culture. But I
(32:43):
look at things like that and I think that's why
it's really important to organize, to have unions, to have
the ability to advocate, because the problems of Rooster Teeth
it's more than just Warner Brothers making a decision, a
unilateral decision to shut them down. It's not just David
Zaslov wants to say money. It's also that there were
a lot of bad decisions made over the last decade
(33:04):
that have hurt that company in the long run. And
if you have things like unions, you can help mitigate that.
If you have people who passionately believe in what they
are doing, and it's not just how can we make
number go up, I think that you see a much
healthier ecosystem for all involved. And I'm so tired of
(33:26):
watching companies sacrifice things to get short term gains and
then suffer in the long term.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
It's exhausting, and that is the right economy is the
growth of all costs economy. It is a frustrating business.
And the only way to fight is awareness because we
cannot test people. But like you said, labor organization will
do it too. Yeah, a worker owned business is like
the facta like for or for media, like Aftermath. They
are going to fight this. They're going to fight the
(33:53):
people like Corey Hike who ran Vice into the ground.
These people have names, yeah, and they should be said
out loud on podcasts and in the media. The people
that are responsible. David Zaslav one brother Discovery. He is
responsible for so many great things not happening like Coyote
vosus acme. Yeah for example, Yeah, that woman.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Like he just literally killing media.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
So full disclosure, The company I worked for when I
started this podcast was HowStuffWorks dot com, which at one
point was part of Discovery Communications. So, as I've said
on this podcast a few times, I am well aware
of how David Zaslov operates because I got to see
it up close and personal. And I can't say that
anything that's happened over the last two years as its
surprised me. I've felt discouraged. I mean, as a fan
(34:38):
of those properties, I really would have liked the chance
to see them. And it's a shame that for a
tax right off, it means that they can never see
the light of day. It's not just oh it's on
the shelf. No, it's going to be like obliterated from
the earth for no reason. Yeah, tax right off, that's it.
But also do you need that tax right off, whether
they need it or not. Like when you see someone
(34:59):
who's in control of a company that makes content seemingly
have no passion for content at all, it's just heartbreaking.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
And this is the problem behind a lot of the
problems of Catalysm right now that the people running things
are not making things for people. Yeah, they are making
things for the markets. They're making things for algorithms. They're
making things because they saw something on TikTok is. They
want to appeal to an algorithm or a market. And
it's disgraceful because this kind of works until it doesn't,
and when it stops working, it's calamitous. Yeah, look at
(35:32):
what happened to Disney with the streaming. The massive overinvestment
in streaming. Things like that are a result of this disconnection.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
And to your point, it ends up affecting like when
I was talking about rooster teeth, it ends up affecting
so many people who end up without a job and
the end of it when it ultimately collapses in on itself.
We saw the same thing when the pandemic hit and
you had all these tech companies invest in their infrastructure,
which made sense at the time, seemingly, but then once
(36:01):
the pandemic starts to recede, they realize, oh, we now
have this huge investment in infrastructure that's no longer necessary.
It's now we could view it as a cost as
opposed to an asset that's downsize it's just such a
massive waste and so many talented people end up being
jerked around.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
The CEO should be fired. Yeah, but then.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Well, and I've heard plenty of people argue about when
they talk about AI, not generative AI, but AI potentially
replacing jobs, Like, why aren't we looking at the C
suite for that? Because that seems to me.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
I wrote a business inside a piece on this very subject,
and people were very mad at it. People did not
like that idea, most of them CEOs. Most of them
were like, hey, whoa, whoa, I got sweet gig.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Yeah, I could see why they would be mad at
the same reason why I get mad when I hear
a CEO suggests that eight thousand jobs could be held
off from being filled by humans because we can just
fill them AI in the future.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Here's a funny one for you, so read it. Read
it laid off what ninety people just before their IPO,
how much Steve Hoffman made in twenty twenty three, how
much over one hundred and ninety million dollars? Actually, let me,
I want to confirm that number.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
That's a that's a lie of schaeddar.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Well, it was a combination like all these things between
stock options and all that. Yeah, his total compensation exceeded
one hundred and ninety three million dollars in twenty twenty three. Yeah,
and read it is getting worse made and he has
not paid a single person who actually dedicated themselves to
building Reddit.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
That's the thing.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Yeah, these people better hope that there is not actually
a revolution. Their faces are all over the internet.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
I mean, you know, it's it's funny because every year
I feel like we're just a little step closer. Well,
this has been a great conversation.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Yeah, I'm ready now to go out and start swinging.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
So hell yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
I want to again remind all my listeners. Better Offline
is the podcast. It's live now. You can find it
wherever you get your podcasts. You absolutely should check it
out and take a listen.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Better Offline dot com and all.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
The links, all the links go there.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
Check out the newsletter too. Again, being informed is your
best weapon when it comes to these sorts of things,
and you know, otherwise you're just going to be left
asking why is nothing as good as I remember it? Being?
Like there are reasons why I'm not on well what
is now X? But used to be Twitter? Like for
a while, it was great. I loved it. It was
(38:40):
a fantastic one.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
I have made my business, made friends, fallen in love
on that, and now now it's going to the dogs.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Yeah I remember getting opportunities to do things that I
never would have done had I not been on a
platform like that. But yeah, it just got so useless
so quickly that I couldn't justify staying there anymore. I
have friends who still use it as a way of
promoting stuff, but I just found it far too depressing,
(39:08):
honestly to be active on the platform, and for my
own mental health, I step back. I was like, you
know what, I did build an audience, but honestly, I
don't even know how many of those people are still
active on this platform, because that's how bad it got.
So definitely check out all those links and ed, thank
you so much for agreeing to be on the show.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
Thank you for having me really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and How the
tech are You. I've got a special episode today. I've
got a fellow podcaster in the studio with me, virtually
(00:24):
Ed Zetron, who has the better offline podcast. If y'all
think that I cast a critical eye at the tech industry,
strap in, because Ed, you know, I give him the business.
But I've listened to your show and it's gloves off
when you start.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I can't help myself. I have to because everyone's angry
at tech right now. Everyone is so angry, and I
get emails about it saying, oh, you've really put into
words so I feel. And I think it's just I
am naturally pissed off. I guess very much, just a
natural fury.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
I suppose.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Yeah, I'm a gen xer, so I'm a little older,
and I think the natural cynicism that I possess has
sort of dulled me to the point where I'm angry.
But I'm also tired supposed to being angry. I've been
angry since the early eighties. Yeah, I mean, you grow
(01:21):
up in that Cold War era and you really start
you learn how to be angry. But I wanted to
talk about your show and about its genesis and sort
of the process of you know, how you came about
thinking about doing a podcast and the sort of things
that specifically inspired you. I'd love to talk about the
episode that published most recently as we record this, where
(01:43):
you talked about the metaverse, because it's something that I share.
All the feelings that you express in that episode I've
talked about on this show as well, which is largely
about how infuriating it is to have this ill defined
concept take over to an extent where you feel you're
just screaming into the void. Why are you doing? Why
(02:04):
are you spending money? Why are these businesses jumping into it?
But you can say the same thing about NFTs, you
can say the same thing about AI and he did, yes,
and you continue you will continue to do so. But
let's talk about that, Let's talk about sort of what
your background is and then leading into the creation of
the Better Offline podcast.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
So in twenty twenty, I was as many people were
getting quite depressed, and it was because I wasn't writing
as well as the world burning around us. So I thought,
I'm going to start a newsletter. I had two hundred subscribers,
three hundred maybe, and most of them, I'm pretty sure
with dead emails. But I started writing about tech stuff
because I've be running a PR firm for about twelve years,
(02:46):
and a tech PR firm specifically, so I've seen all
these things up close. And then during twenty twenty, I
was writing a lot about return to office, and that
felt like I was screaming into the void as well.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
People were saying.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
From like July, oh no, even like May Well, We've
got to get back to the office, but no one
could say why. There were all these articles Wall Street Journal,
New York Times talking about the office is better, the
office is better, and it was always talking to executives,
and that really began to joke afire me a bit.
I was like, ah, I don't like this, and people
were reading it. People were responding really well. But I
(03:19):
remember the thing that the first time it really took
off was this thing called Clubhouse. Clubhouse was I don't
know if you remember, so everyone in the tech industry
was saying clubhouse is the future. Clubhouse is the future.
What Clubhouse was was basically a live podcast show. It's
Twitter spaces, that's all. It is a live voice chat
(03:40):
thing where any number of speakers can speak at the
same time. And what happened was Andrewson Horowitz major venture
capital firm, and Mark Andresen himself were really trying to
push this through. They were pushing every tech person, every
celebrity they knew to use this platform, and everyone was
talking about it and saying this is the future. And
I couldn't tell how because last time I checked, radio
(04:01):
existed and everyone was talking about this thing, saying it's
going to be worth billions, and it was allegedly a
four billion dollar offer. And I kept writing, just saying,
this is vaporware. This isn't the thing. There is no
there was no revenue, there was no monetization strategy. There
really wasn't a point to it. And also tech people
are frightfully boring. So hearing these ultra rich buffoons.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Going, oh, well, you know, the innovations are very important,
and they'd ramble on and on.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
It was dull, but people were flocking to it. And
then one day they just stopped. They just stopped using it,
and I did a few like aha moments where I
was like, ah, gotcha, and then I got quoted in
like Wired, and I was like, oh, okay, this is cool.
But I kept writing because I enjoyed it. And also
I kind of see both sides. I see the business
(04:48):
side and I see the journalism side. And I was
a games journalist before this, and so I just kept
writing about the stuff and I kept calling it as
I see it because it was an independent newsletter, and
it went from two hundred people to fourth out like
one thousand to four thousand subscribers. It's twenty three thousand today,
and so it became a big thing. And I don't know,
I like writing a lot, and I can write very fast.
(05:09):
I used to do three or four a week. I
have no idea how I had that output. Now I
just do once a week when I can make it.
But I write in the way that I grew up
reading and seeing on television. In England, there was generally
a more critical approach to journalism, but there was more opinion,
and when the opinion ran, there wasn't really afraid of
leaving a few black eyes. As long as you punched up,
(05:31):
you don't attack the people below, you, attack the executives,
the sun duper shies of the world, Google's alphabet CEO
guy who makes two hundred and twenty million dollars a
year and lays off thousands of people and drives Google
Search into the ground. These are things that people see
and people.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Are angry about.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
And I think I'm good at putting that into words
for better.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Words there.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
I guess sure. It's such a valuable asset to have
because to your point, in your various podcasts and hearing
you talk and meetings and things, you know, we got
a lot of quote unquote tech journalism that's not really
journalism at all. It's essentially regurgitating press releases, which doesn't
(06:14):
have any value to it. You could just go and
read the press release if that's what you wanted to do.
And it's only a few outlets that go any further
than that, and I find them incredibly valuable. But unfortunately
those are like the exceptions rather than the rule. And
actually we could even talk about tech's effect on journalism
(06:35):
and how that has played a huge part in this
and that it has devalued journalism to large extent. There's
the infamous pivot to video moment we could talk about like,
there's so much that ends up being wrapped up in this.
It becomes a lot of inside baseball for folks who
work in the industry. But it's important to recognize so
that when I do something like advocate for critical thinking,
(06:57):
people have those assets that they can go to that
help train them on this and not just throwing them
into the deep end of the pool and saying think
critically and you'll be fine.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Yeah, what does thinking critical look like? Tech journalism as
a whole has got more critical. On the broadcast side,
a lot of tech podcasts are very right leaning right now.
The two most successful ones the All In Podcast and
Lex Fridmund's And Lex Fridman is a right wing so
it is the all In guys. David sax Is a
pro Russia goon. Jason Kalakanis isn't much better. These guys
(07:33):
are controlling the airwaves to some extent. But a lot
of that is because a lot of the tech industry
thinks that what media in tech should do is positive.
It should be rah rah, and we should only criticize
a few things when we kind of feel like here
versus what people want, which is an explanation as to
why things aren't working right. They want to understand the
(07:54):
decisions that people are making. Something you've done very what
was You've explained why things are the way they are,
how things have got places when Google was a search
company versus an AD's company. People don't know these things.
There is a need for things like how your iPhone works.
Rich Deimiro Katla excellent guy, great radio host as well.
He does very good like how to avoid scam stuff.
(08:16):
That kind of journalism is extremely valuable. Steve Noviello and
Houston on Fox another great guy for this, that's very valuable.
But otherwise, tech journalism is growing into an industry. It's
growing into something that critiques things and says, here are
what the powerful people are doing. But I don't think
that there's enough just explaining why the world is the
way it is and showing the emotion the anger you
(08:37):
need to because this stuff Google Search being worse is horrifying.
It's something that hits billions of people. You should be angry.
You're angry. I'm angry. This should be front page news
everywhere except Google put out a thing saying, oh, we're
gonna fix search we're gonna make it better, and everyone's like, great,
Google's good. Now they're not. They haven't done anything well.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
And if it were a front page news, you never
find it because you've put it in Google Search and
it wouldn't come exactly.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
You get three different seo spam sites.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Yeah, it's fascinating to me because I can actually, I mean,
obviously this isn't a new thing. I can see patterns
of this kind of cycle where if you start asking
questions and you start coming up with answers, you start
to see kind of the cynical background that's fueling things
within the tech industry. I'm reminded when I first started
getting into tech podcasting, it was in two thousand and eight.
(09:25):
Two thousand and eight was around the time where all
the different television manufacturing companies were all pushing three D
televisions and you start to ask the question, why why
are you pushing three D TV? And if you start
coming up with answers, Well, one, you've got the various
studios out there that are really keen on the idea
of creating a format that is very difficult to pirate,
(09:48):
and so therefore they have an incentive to push the
three D technology, and then you've got the manufacturers who
they need to come up with ways to differentiate this
year's models from last year's models. It's not just good
enough to out with another TV that does what last
year's TV does, and you can't just constantly push resolution
year over year. So there were all these very cynical
(10:09):
reasons for it, and ultimately the response from consumers was
I just don't want this.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
But that's a fascinating one, though, because I remember that
two thousand and eight was actually when I moved to
America and I moved into the tech industry. And the
other thing that you're completely right about is you'll notice
you didn't mention the filmmakers. The filmmakers were just like,
I don't want I don't want to do this. This
doesn't sound like it will make the movie better unless
I'm making Shrek. Shrek was one of the few the
(10:37):
minions movies I think much later, obviously, Yeah, but that
was really one of those times where I don't think
I saw it at the time quite as clearly as
you did, but you're right, that was one of those times.
So it's like this something he's being done to consumers
rather than for them.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Yeah, they were trying to pull a Steve Jobs, who
was obviously brilliant at convincing people they needed something that
they probable. Guy though, listen, we're not going to talk
about getting on this podcast because that was a thing
at Apple, I know. But yeah, well probably know people
who got jobs at one point that was when you
would walk in and Steve Jobs would fire you on
the spot for some minor thing. Anyway, what he was
(11:14):
really good at was convincing people that they wanted a product,
or that a product that he had on offer was
going to solve a problem they didn't even know they
had before. And partly why he was able to create
entirely new markets. I don't want to discount all the
other people who also put in a huge amount of work,
you know, Johnny Ives and all that kind of stuff.
But the industry was trying to copy what he was
(11:34):
able to do, and they just weren't able to achieve it.
They were not able to convince the market that three
D television was really a valuable thing. There was the
issue that there wasn't that much content in the beginning
to really grab people.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
This still isn't Apple on the vision pro is still
trying to convince you to get three D content.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Yeah, well, I mean when you look at some of
the ones that came out, like there were a few
obvious standouts that showed spectacle and how spectacle could be effect.
I mean, Avatar is it's impossible to argue like it
was the top grossing film of all time and in
part was because of the spectacle of this three dimensional
filmmaking approach. But then you had things like the Hobbit series,
(12:17):
which certainly did not capture imaginations the same way Avatar did,
despite the fact that it was three D and forty
eight frames per second film making pushing the envelope, saying
this is the future of film, and people said, yeah,
can we make it? Not that because I don't like
the Hobbits looking like they're acting in a Mexican soap opera.
It's just not appealing to me.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
But also just no one wanted it. No one was
saying that being like I wish this movie was more
in front of me.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Right, or that it was three times longer than it
needed to be. Yeah, oh god, yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
We won't go.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
So I also have a Lord of the Rings tattoo,
so I'm not even gonna go into my disdain for
the Hobbit films, but that, to me is an example
of sort of the things that are going on behind
the scenes that you may not necessarily be aware of
as a consumer or just you know, part of the
mainstream public. And that's why I find podcasts like Better
Offline really valuable, because what you're doing is you're asking
(13:10):
the questions and peeling back the layers and saying, not
only does this thing not make sense, but you need
to understand the motivations behind why it's a thing in
the first place, and why you should question it and
why you might feel uneasy toward it. Like I again,
I think to NFTs as being a great example of
(13:31):
the thing that everyone who was already invested in the
crypto world, we're desperate to convince you this is a
valuable thing enough so that companies were jumping in without
really understanding what NFTs were. I think I think most
companies still don't understand what NFTs are, and everyone was
getting that feeling of am I actually missing out? Is
this going to be a case of not investing early
(13:53):
on and I'm going to miss out on a huge opportunity,
and of course, we saw the bottom drop out of
NFTs at the end of that EA, and it hasn't
recovered since, which suggests that the people who were skeptical
and expressing caution were right all along. That to me
is where the value for a show like Better Offline
really comes in, because it teaches you to ask those
(14:15):
questions yourself, even if you haven't done an episode about
that specific topic yet.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
And a lot of it is as well that people
are a lot smarter than they think they are with
this stuff. And I think the tech industry is done
and the marketers especially have done a really good job
making people feel that they won't understand there are algorithms
and powers at play that you just simply could not
on Stay You don't understand NFTs, and that's why you
(14:39):
will have fun staying Poor or Crypto the same deal,
when ultimately with Crypto they claim to be making decentralized
software and they weren't. The software does not work, None
of it is good. Axioinfinity is allegedly like a Pokemon clone.
It costs like one thousand dollars just to start, and
by the way, it's a terrible game. It's not good.
(15:00):
A lot of guys rich though, And that's the thing.
When people understand the incentives and the actual basic things.
I think a lot of people can understand tech way more.
And you know this, You've been doing this podcast for
a long time. People are way more aware of this stuff.
But there is almost a deliberate obfuscation at times, and
I find it reprehensible. I find it very annoying. And
(15:21):
the reason the Metaverse episode got me so angry was
I remember everyone trying to explain to me, Hey ed
virtual worlds of the future, and I looked them dead
in the iron and said, I was literally like the
second guy in England who wrote about massively multiplayer online RPGs.
I know these things, and I've known them for a
long time. I played Meridium fifty nine and I know this.
(15:44):
I played Ultimore Online. I know this stuff. What you
were describing is the stuff that I was playing on
a PCMIA card. So please tell me how this is different.
And they couldn't. It was a big lie, and I
think everyone saw it at the time, but the media
fell for it. There were so many there were Wall
Street Journal, New York Times, Time Magazine, all of these
places saying the metaverse is here, The metaverse is here everyone,
(16:06):
and it wasn't.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Yeah, and it was reminding me if you go back
a decade of discussions of the semantic web, the semantic web.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Oh god, I haven't saw about the semantic web in forever,
I know, But it's essentially I mean, it has a
lot of the same groundwork as as the metaverse does.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Right, it doesn't necessarily incorporate a virtual world, but then
arguably neither does the metaverse because the word doesn't mean anything,
so like the metaverse could involve a virtual world, or
you could be talking about something entirely different. It all
depends upon how.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
I saw Microsoft teams referring to itself as ye verse.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
I got that was when it's not nope, yes enough, it's.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Not just frustrating, it's destructive. When you see enterprises jump
in on these trending ideas that are not fully baked
and convincing people, whether it's it's employees or partners or investors,
that this is the future when clearly no one has
a really firm grip on what they're even talking about,
(17:05):
and it's such a massive waste of resources. And when
you sit there, when you see when tech works well,
when tech is doing its job and actually making things
easier or better, and you sit there and think, what
if we took all that wasted time and effort and
we had actually dedicated it to enterprises that could benefit people,
where would we be now? Like, those are the questions
(17:26):
that get me angry. I still rant about it, and.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
A lot of it comes down to something are called
the rot economy, where we are in a world where
companies are evaluated in the public markets and at times
the private markets based on growth, not based on what
they produce, whether they have happy customers, whether they are
making a sustainable income, whether they could do the same
thing for another three years and may be fine, No,
(17:50):
you must grow ten twenty percent a year, which is
why Microsoft jumped on the metaverse wagon. Disney same deal
and then drop them the moment things look bad, and hey,
you know who also dropped the metaverse meta They also
moved itward. They went fro him in twenty twenty two
talk about the metaverse being the most important thing to
twenty twenty three being the year of efficiency, and that
(18:12):
AI was where Boz and Zuck were now facing themselves.
And he'll still claim that the metaverse is around, but
it's just that is the symptom of an economy that
doesn't build technology for people, but builds technology to sell
to investors. And that's where we're going right now. And
that's the scary thing. Tech can be great and a
big thing better off on I'm trying not to do
(18:33):
is not to be just endlessly cynical. I'm angry, and
you should be angry. But I don't hate tech. I
hate some people in tech. I find Mark Zuckerberg truly disgusting.
Same with Steve Jobs, staying with Elon Musk, all of
these people are not working for people. They are working
for investors in themselves. And Steve Jobs was an evil
(18:55):
cret in listened to Behind the Bastards if you want
to know more. But at the very least he made
stuff for people. He had an inherent sense of like,
this feels good in the hand, This UIUX situation is satisfying.
They can now do this and that will make me
lots of money. He was good at that. Tim Cook less,
so he's better, and he's better than a lot of
the rest of them. But Sundar Pishai, he doesn't give
(19:16):
a rat's ass about any of this he wants to
see Google grows. It was two hundred and twenty three
million in twenty twenty two, two hundred and eighty and
twenty twenty one year off of the pandemic, millions of
people dying, and he's becomes one of the richest guys.
Really really sad, especially because Google Search has got so bad.
And I think the big difference is it no longer
(19:36):
feels like a fair trade. We're no longer in situation
where they're making cool stuff and we're okay with them
getting rich doing so because they're making bad stuff and
getting richer.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
And getting richer ed. And I will be back to
rant a lot more, but first, let's take a quick
break to think our sponsors. Google in particular is a
tricky topic simply because even in its good years, it
(20:08):
was a company that seemed like it was throw anything
at the wall and hope that things stick. And even
if things stuck, you weren't guaranteed to have that product
last for more than a few years before Google would
either discontinue it or you know, cannibalize it for parts
and put it into other existing Google features. Like I
talked recently about Google Wave, a product that was, oh,
(20:30):
Google Wave good for maybe two people, and it was
me and my co host because.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Because we were so cool. But it was useless.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
It was it was useless except we would use it
to literally build run of show for a live streaming
show we did once a week, and for that it
was perfect. And I said, I literally can't think of
another use case for this particular tool.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
The thing.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Imagine if they'd have built Discord instead, which is basically mIRC,
which is a twenty thirty year old piece of free software.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Yeah. Yeah, So even in Google's you know heyday, when
the Don't Be Evil was still at least nodded to.
It was a tricky place, but at least you felt
like they were sincere. I felt that it was a
lot of engineers building tools for other engineers, not necessarily
for the general public. If you weren't an engineer. It
wasn't nearly user or friendly enough. But I felt like
(21:20):
they believed in what they did. I don't necessarily feel
that today, largely for the same reasons you've mentioned.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Well, there's a big thing that happened in twenty nineteen.
Twenty twenty. Ben Gomes, who was the head of Google
Search at the time he was Actually he put out
there was an event at Google called Code Yellow, where
basically they realized that the search had a problem, and
he put out an alert warning saying the Google Ads
site is getting too close to search. They keep trying
(21:48):
to mess with him. Twenty twenty, Prabakar Rakavan takes over
his former job head of Ads at Google. That's what happened, folks.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
This it's not a bug, it's a feature. Yeah, it's
not a problem, it's a goal.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
And what was funny was at the time Prova CoV
was like, oh, yeah, yeah, God's doing a great job
with search.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Great job man. Zip.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Now Google Search sucks so bad. Yeah, it's so And
that's the thing. That's the emails I get about the
Row Economy episode, where it's like, thank you for saying
that I'm being confused this whole time. These things feel
very obvious to those of us who were extremely online,
who were doused in this every day. But I don't
think most people realize because there's so much happening, and
to your point earlier, Google news is not particularly useful.
(22:32):
News is not something that's very well spread these days.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Sure, yeah, I mean, well, I'm not gonna open up
the can of worms, because I totally could. But this
is it's making me want to start talking about things
like recommendation algorithms and the evils they present. But we've
done I've done tons of episodes, but I've done a
lot that. Yeah, I don't need to retread that ground,
but there are big problems that I think need to
be recognized and addressed. I don't know what the solutions
(22:57):
are because when I look at the issues of you're
running a company specifically to keep shareholders happy, right, rather
than to see any other corporate mission through. That to me,
has its roots deep in the again the nineteen eighties,
like there I grew up, and like that's where that
kind of really started to take hold thanks to like
people like Jack Welch and stuff and areas outside of tech.
(23:20):
But the tech industry seems to have really taken that
ball and run with it.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
They're rewarded for it by the markets, of course, is
very profitable.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
It's what makes me have to ask questions too, that
even when I'm hearing things that on the surface sound
beneficial or benign, I started asking questions and then it
turns out there's a darker side to it. So, for example,
open AI and the push for regulations in AI, Like
(23:49):
that sounds great, you know, the idea of, oh, we
have a dominant company in generative AI that's advocating for
the purposes of creating regulations rules for AI. That sounds
like that's good. Like that seems like that's within the
actual mission statement of the original open AI, which was
presumably created to make responsible artificial intelligence implementations and avoid
(24:15):
all the pitfalls that we worry about.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Whether it's you know, except you were basically letting a
murderer at that point dictate his own sentence.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Yes, you're you're letting the person who would most benefit
from making the rules make the rules right, which could
very well mean that, oh, let's make rules so that
it suppresses anyone else who's getting into the AI game,
giving us an even greater advantage in the market than
we already have while impacting us the bare minimum amount.
(24:43):
And it starts sounding like you're getting into fringe theories,
but that's really what's going on. It's really it's really
the truth that you're talking about people who they have
such a huge stake in the game, And I think
that kind of applies to pretty much everything we've talked about.
They have such a huge steak, that's the full and
centive for them to do this. It may sound on
the surface to be like this very kind of gracious approach,
(25:06):
but in reality it's very self serving.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Well, it's kind of like the entire open ai nonprofit
side that when Sam Altman was elvested, was proven to
be completely ineffectual. People should be really angry about that.
What happened there was Sam Oltman was kicked out for
reasons we still do not know.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
We really do not know.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
That's never come out. However, what happened was pressure from
venture capitalists and Microsoft, a three trillion dollar tech firm,
was used to put him back in. The pressure was done.
That should That is one of the darker things I've
seen happen in the tech industry. And I saw journalists
saying this is beautiful. That scared me. That scared me
more than anything I've seen in this industry when you see.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
That the other people who are on the board were
members of the co founding group that came up with
the idea of open ai in the first place.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
And the people on the board were replaced by Larry Summers. Yeah,
you want some gen x cynicism. Yeah, Harry bloody Sommers.
Adam DiAngelo, the co founder of Qura, he's still on
the board. Cora is currently full of open ai stuff
ruining the platform. People don't realize this is the stuff
that matters. These moments are the things to be angry about.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Right and when people like the members of the former
board are trying to take action in order to get
back on the track that was originally intended when they
were first forming open Ai, you know what they get
for their their efforts is this huge backlash that was
exacerbated by the media coverage of it, and then forced
(26:36):
to not only reinstate Altman, but to step down as well.
Right like, you had co founders having stepped.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Down and replaced with Larry goddamn Summers and one of
the sales force guys. Just like, replace them, Just replace
them with Darth Vader, just go, just go the whole way,
replace them with replace them with David Petraeus. Why not
just go the whole damn way. I'm sure they considered
Contaliza Rice m so they now have something in common
(27:05):
with the Cleveland Browns.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
This totally off topic, but I'm reminded of the time.
I'm a huge fan of the Disney parks because I
went to them as a kid. So even as an adult,
while I recognized the shortcomings of the Disney Company, the
parks have a special place in nostalgia in my heart.
It's not that different from today, honestly, but this happened,
you know, back in the nineties. There was a time
(27:28):
period where Disney had replaced the executive level of leadership
for the Disney parks with retail leaders so people from
like the Banana Republican Gap, and that was a time
where they started to do things like gut all the
stuff that gave character to the Disney parks and replace
them with stores, and to take out some of the
(27:48):
other attractions and to put in like quick service food
carts because they were much higher profit margins, right like
they were running it like they were running a retail business.
And it started to take away a lot of the
charm that had been there in the parks. And to me,
like I recognize a lot of that same sort of
stuff going on in the tech world in general, like
(28:10):
even tools that maybe once upon a time you liked
a lot of the sheen has worn off.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Well, I mean Google is more profitable than ever. Yeah,
same with Meta, Like these companies are so much worse,
the products are so much worse, but they're more profitable
than ever.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Yeah. When you're thinking about Google, I also think about YouTube.
I think about how incredibly successful YouTube is, and I
think about all the creators on YouTube and how at
the mercy of YouTube they are. Like, if there's any
change in YouTube at all, it has a disproportionate effect
on the people who are creating the content there. And
you could have someone who has really good content and
(28:46):
genuinely has a good voice and something to say and
good production values, and they could be absolutely devastated by
a change in YouTube's algorithms or be completely laid waste
when there's unsubstantial copyright claims put against them, Like the
platform can be weaponized, and so it has been weaponized.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
I look at that.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
And meanwhile, you have at the company level, a company
that continues to just benefit financially larger amounts a year
over year over year.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Yes, and by making the product more annoying to use
so that people spend more time on it. I mean
it's frustrating as well. Because the fair question is what
do we do here? And the answer genuinely is things
like four h four media independent group of former VI
some motherboard people at Jason Coblo, Emanuel Milberg, Fantastic, Semantically Colors. Well,
(29:37):
they did a really great story about research thing that
showed that Google results were getting worse. I believe that
awareness of these issues will put pressure on these companies.
I know it's I'm just running a podcast, really, but
I believe that more people being aware of these things
means that more things will change. These companies have gotten
away with it because they've obfuscated the value proposition and
(30:00):
the way they're making their money. Now that that's changing,
I actually believe that they may stop pulling these things back.
It will take time.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
I have some optimism, largely because I have seen activism
and organization and unionizing starting to grow, especially in the
tech industry over the last couple of years, which was
unheard of a few years ago.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Unions will also break the back of these companies, which
why they're so scared of them.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Yes, and it's why they're challenging the National Labor Relations
Board and whether or not as constitutional.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
I know, right so discussed I'm.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Not going to go into it because I'll start screaming
into the microphone. Support your unions, guys, please do. But yeah,
like seeing that has given me a lot of hope
because it tells me that there has finally reached a
point where you can't just sit back and not be
active and not support your fellow workers, and to actually
(30:56):
call out these companies when they are doing things that
are hard for everyone other than the executives and the shareholders.
And I think that is promising. It's not a guarantee
that we're going to turn the corner and enter into,
you know, the idyllic version of the future that Gene
Roddenberry had when he made Star Trek. I don't think
(31:16):
that we're like on that doorstep. But I find solace
in seeing that movement grow in various sectors of the
tech industry. And my hope is to continue to see
that grow and to continue seeing people educate themselves, as
you've said, and to advocate for those changes because ultimately
it does benefit the largest amount of people. The people
(31:39):
it doesn't benefit would be again the executive team, the
c suites, and the shareholders. But honestly, I think they
can afford to it will be fine.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Think, Yeah, you'll make fifty million dollars a year.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
Hell, you'll probably make one hundred million dollars.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
You'll be fine. You'll be fine. Make good stuff again.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Yeah, and in the long term, you'll actually be better.
I'm not done being angry at the tech industry just yet,
but I do have to take a break to thank
our sponsors. So there's an online media company that I
(32:19):
was a fan of for a very long time called
rooster Teeth, and yeah, Warner Brothers Discovery announced yesterday they
shutting it down. So after twenty one years, almost twenty
one years, the company, rooster Teeth is getting shut down.
At more than one hundred and fifty people are losing
their jobs as a result of that. I plan on
doing a full episode kind of giving a history of
that company and its impact on Internet culture. But I
(32:43):
look at things like that and I think that's why
it's really important to organize, to have unions, to have
the ability to advocate, because the problems of Rooster Teeth
it's more than just Warner Brothers making a decision, a
unilateral decision to shut them down. It's not just David
Zaslov wants to say money. It's also that there were
a lot of bad decisions made over the last decade
(33:04):
that have hurt that company in the long run. And
if you have things like unions, you can help mitigate that.
If you have people who passionately believe in what they
are doing, and it's not just how can we make
number go up, I think that you see a much
healthier ecosystem for all involved. And I'm so tired of
(33:26):
watching companies sacrifice things to get short term gains and
then suffer in the long term.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
It's exhausting, and that is the right economy is the
growth of all costs economy. It is a frustrating business.
And the only way to fight is awareness because we
cannot test people. But like you said, labor organization will
do it too. Yeah, a worker owned business is like
the facta like for or for media, like Aftermath. They
are going to fight this. They're going to fight the
(33:53):
people like Corey Hike who ran Vice into the ground.
These people have names, yeah, and they should be said
out loud on podcasts and in the media. The people
that are responsible. David Zaslav one brother Discovery. He is
responsible for so many great things not happening like Coyote
vosus acme. Yeah for example, Yeah, that woman.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Like he just literally killing media.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
So full disclosure, The company I worked for when I
started this podcast was HowStuffWorks dot com, which at one
point was part of Discovery Communications. So, as I've said
on this podcast a few times, I am well aware
of how David Zaslov operates because I got to see
it up close and personal. And I can't say that
anything that's happened over the last two years as its
surprised me. I've felt discouraged. I mean, as a fan
(34:38):
of those properties, I really would have liked the chance
to see them. And it's a shame that for a
tax right off, it means that they can never see
the light of day. It's not just oh it's on
the shelf. No, it's going to be like obliterated from
the earth for no reason. Yeah, tax right off, that's it.
But also do you need that tax right off, whether
they need it or not. Like when you see someone
(34:59):
who's in control of a company that makes content seemingly
have no passion for content at all, it's just heartbreaking.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
And this is the problem behind a lot of the
problems of Catalysm right now that the people running things
are not making things for people. Yeah, they are making
things for the markets. They're making things for algorithms. They're
making things because they saw something on TikTok is. They
want to appeal to an algorithm or a market. And
it's disgraceful because this kind of works until it doesn't,
and when it stops working, it's calamitous. Yeah, look at
(35:32):
what happened to Disney with the streaming. The massive overinvestment
in streaming. Things like that are a result of this disconnection.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
And to your point, it ends up affecting like when
I was talking about rooster teeth, it ends up affecting
so many people who end up without a job and
the end of it when it ultimately collapses in on itself.
We saw the same thing when the pandemic hit and
you had all these tech companies invest in their infrastructure,
which made sense at the time, seemingly, but then once
(36:01):
the pandemic starts to recede, they realize, oh, we now
have this huge investment in infrastructure that's no longer necessary.
It's now we could view it as a cost as
opposed to an asset that's downsize it's just such a
massive waste and so many talented people end up being
jerked around.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
The CEO should be fired. Yeah, but then.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Well, and I've heard plenty of people argue about when
they talk about AI, not generative AI, but AI potentially
replacing jobs, Like, why aren't we looking at the C
suite for that? Because that seems to me.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
I wrote a business inside a piece on this very subject,
and people were very mad at it. People did not
like that idea, most of them CEOs. Most of them
were like, hey, whoa, whoa, I got sweet gig.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Yeah, I could see why they would be mad at
the same reason why I get mad when I hear
a CEO suggests that eight thousand jobs could be held
off from being filled by humans because we can just
fill them AI in the future.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Here's a funny one for you, so read it. Read
it laid off what ninety people just before their IPO,
how much Steve Hoffman made in twenty twenty three, how
much over one hundred and ninety million dollars? Actually, let me,
I want to confirm that number.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
That's a that's a lie of schaeddar.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Well, it was a combination like all these things between
stock options and all that. Yeah, his total compensation exceeded
one hundred and ninety three million dollars in twenty twenty three. Yeah,
and read it is getting worse made and he has
not paid a single person who actually dedicated themselves to
building Reddit.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
That's the thing.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Yeah, these people better hope that there is not actually
a revolution. Their faces are all over the internet.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
I mean, you know, it's it's funny because every year
I feel like we're just a little step closer. Well,
this has been a great conversation.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Yeah, I'm ready now to go out and start swinging.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
So hell yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
I want to again remind all my listeners. Better Offline
is the podcast. It's live now. You can find it
wherever you get your podcasts. You absolutely should check it
out and take a listen.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Better Offline dot com and all.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
The links, all the links go there.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
Check out the newsletter too. Again, being informed is your
best weapon when it comes to these sorts of things,
and you know, otherwise you're just going to be left
asking why is nothing as good as I remember it? Being?
Like there are reasons why I'm not on well what
is now X? But used to be Twitter? Like for
a while, it was great. I loved it. It was
(38:40):
a fantastic one.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
I have made my business, made friends, fallen in love
on that, and now now it's going to the dogs.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Yeah I remember getting opportunities to do things that I
never would have done had I not been on a
platform like that. But yeah, it just got so useless
so quickly that I couldn't justify staying there anymore. I
have friends who still use it as a way of
promoting stuff, but I just found it far too depressing,
(39:08):
honestly to be active on the platform, and for my
own mental health, I step back. I was like, you
know what, I did build an audience, but honestly, I
don't even know how many of those people are still
active on this platform, because that's how bad it got.
So definitely check out all those links and ed, thank
you so much for agreeing to be on the show.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
Thank you for having me really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.