25: Reggie James - Our Infinite Mirrors (Live at FWB Fest)

Speaker A: Welcome to Dialectic Episode 25 with Reggie James. This is a fun one. It was my first ever live episode done on stage at FWB Fest in Idlewild, California. FWB is a crypto thing, a DAO, a Discord, a center of cultural production, and lots more. And every year they throw a fest, one part crypto conference, one part music festival in a really special place in California called the Idlewild Arts Academy. I've been to FEST all 4 years, and FWB is important to me in part because it was started by my friend Trevor McFedries and run for a long time by friend and Dialectic guest Alex Zhang.

This year I was given the opportunity to do Dialectic on stage, which was quite a treat, and there was nobody better than my friend Reggie James to both be the guinea pig for a live episode and cover just a wide range of topics that felt relevant for FWB, whether that be technology, hardware, culture, brand, crypto, and more. I introduced Reggie in the live recording. So with that, here's my conversation with Reggie live on stage in Idlewild. As always, if you enjoy Dialectic, please share it with a friend. Okay, let's kick things off.

Speaker B: Maybe you can share what Dialectic is. Speaker A: First things first, uh, I'm Jackson. I host a podcast called Dialectic. I think what I'm aiming for with Dialectic, or at least my tagline for it, is conversational portraits of original people. Um, and people ask me what my podcast is about, I basically just say I find people who are interesting to me and I interview them, um, or have conversations with them. I think another way to think about it maybe that would set the stage for today is like getting to know people by way of their ideas, and that sort of is a selection criteria for who I talk to.

And so with that in mind, I'm not really gonna do the thing where you ask people for their background and their life story and so on. We're gonna kind of jump straight into the ideas. That being said, I think it, it probably is worth giving Reggie a proper introduction if you don't know him or you missed his talk earlier. I'm fortunate to call Reggie a friend, but also am inspired by him and his writing. He's a designer, a writer, an investor, an entrepreneur, a former founder and CEO of Eternal, which was recently acquired.

And when I found out I was gonna be doing this, the podcast live for the very first time, especially at FwB Fest, my, my frame for it is like, I kind of want to try to find somebody who can capture a bunch of the essences of what makes this place important to me. I've been to 4 of these somehow, and it's this weird blend of technology and also culture and art and also crypto and all the things that come with that. And also like other weird esoteric internet things and philosophy and so on.

And so I'm probably talking more now than I will for most of the rest of the next hour. But Reggie really encaptures so much of that, and that's why I'm excited to have a conversation with him today. Speaker B: I'm excited to be in conversation with you as a longtime listener. Speaker A: I appreciate that. Speaker B: Cool. Speaker A: Well, we're going to start the conversation today. There is an excerpt at the beginning of a book Reggie just published that he worked on called Hardware 2024. Where he's referencing Kevin Kelly and Kevin's book What Technology Wants.

You say technology itself has an aim and that we are the facilitators of that aim. This is very different than thinking of technology as a derivative of ourselves, that our aims are its aims. And then you go on to say the mirror was the final product. Once we had the mirror, we simply continued to produce them. This is how technology convinces us. It has an uncanny ability to reflect, and that reflection creates an inescapable human urge to tinker. And then finally, at the end of that excerpt, you, you go on to say, as you sort of theorize what, what does technology actually want, you say perfect ubiquity and mutualism with humanity.

And so my first question is, what does that actually mean? Those are some big words. And maybe as a part of that, why do you think so much of our technology converges on this metaphorical mirror? Speaker B: Yeah, I'll actually use the mirror as the way to answer the other part of the ubiquity and mutualism. So I think that we can look through our culture and beyond just object-oriented technology, but cultural technologies as well, to understand that we're kind of always searching for higher purposes of meaning. And because we live life through this sort of embodied first-person perspective, a lot of that has to do with kind of how does this come back to me and my lived experience, right?

And so if I'm sitting around the fire and hearing a myth in my tribal village, then it's not so much that I'm engaging with this story, but it's that this myth is telling me something about myself. That I'm going to further embody in some set of actions, right? So it's acting as this mirror to what I can be, right? The mirror isn't like static in time, necessarily. And so when I sort of keep extending that out, right, there's some things that act as amazing mirrors, right? So just to talk about the previous talk, like the iPhone is probably like one of the best mirrors.

The internet is this like global mirror. And so then to get to the ubiquity and mutualism thing, I think we can all look at sort of networks in particular as this really interesting mirror that's kind of like constantly flexing and prompting us to contribute to it. So then it becomes, well, contribute it towards what ends? And I think we're starting to see those ends really, really clearly, and it's about I don't want to use tokenization, but I think this sense of embodiment around reflective intelligence. It's using our inputs, it's flexing that across the network in order to give it directly back to us.

I think that it's a little cerebral and can be hard to grok, but I think when you see it distorted, it becomes really uncomfortable, so like sycophantic AI is like, that's when the mirror gets distorted and it becomes a little bit uncomfortable, right? But then I think when mirrors get sort of exciting is like Ethereum is like a really interesting mirror isolated to like value and sort of like more economic senses of our participation, but a really fun one and one that people here probably grok really well. And the mutualism I think is really about like a sense of closeness.

Technology just tends to get closer and closer to us. Like, it starts off as these sort of cold and, like, large machines and, like, these factories, and it gets, you know, like— I mean, our phone is so intimate that it literally vibrates near our most private sections of our body. I think about that a lot. Like, we've actually taken, like, this thing and really put it as close as possible. And now, you know, with, um, some of our most edge companies like Neuralink, you know, that's as close as it gets.

It's like embedded in the brain. And if you use, again, if you go back towards like forms of mysticism, like, is the brain where your consciousness live? In some cultures it is, right? Some cultures, the heart is where the consciousness lives. And so it's interesting to think about sort of like these embedded technologies and its sort of closeness, but that's what it's, It's this other animal kingdom that's really tightly wedded to us. Speaker B: Yeah, I'll actually use the mirror as the way to answer the other part of the ubiquity and mutualism.

So I think that we can look through our culture and beyond just object-oriented technology, but cultural technologies as well, to understand that we're kind of always searching for higher purposes of meaning. And because we live life through this sort of embodied first-person perspective, a lot of that has to do with kind of how does this come back to me and my lived experience, right? And so if I'm sitting around the fire and hearing a myth in my tribal village, then it's not so much that I'm engaging with this story, but it's that this myth is telling me something about myself.

That I'm going to further embody in some set of actions, right? So it's acting as this mirror to what I can be, right? The mirror isn't like static in time, necessarily. And so when I sort of keep extending that out, right, there's some things that act as amazing mirrors, right? So just to talk about the previous talk, like the iPhone is probably like one of the best mirrors. The internet is this like global mirror. And so then to get to the ubiquity and mutualism thing, I think we can all look at sort of networks in particular as this really interesting mirror that's kind of like constantly flexing and prompting us to contribute to it.

So then it becomes, well, contribute it towards what ends? And I think we're starting to see those ends really, really clearly, and it's about I don't want to use tokenization, but I think this sense of embodiment around reflective intelligence. It's using our inputs, it's flexing that across the network in order to give it directly back to us. I think that it's a little cerebral and can be hard to grok, but I think when you see it distorted, it becomes really uncomfortable, so like sycophantic AI is like, that's when the mirror gets distorted and it becomes a little bit uncomfortable, right?

But then I think when mirrors get sort of exciting is like Ethereum is like a really interesting mirror isolated to like value and sort of like more economic senses of our participation, but a really fun one and one that people here probably grok really well. And the mutualism I think is really about like a sense of closeness. Technology just tends to get closer and closer to us. Like, it starts off as these sort of cold and, like, large machines and, like, these factories, and it gets, you know, like— I mean, our phone is so intimate that it literally vibrates near our most private sections of our body.

I think about that a lot. Like, we've actually taken, like, this thing and really put it as close as possible. And now, you know, with, um, some of our most edge companies like Neuralink, you know, that's as close as it gets. It's like embedded in the brain. And if you use, again, if you go back towards like forms of mysticism, like, is the brain where your consciousness live? In some cultures it is, right? Some cultures, the heart is where the consciousness lives. And so it's interesting to think about sort of like these embedded technologies and its sort of closeness, but that's what it's, It's this other animal kingdom that's really tightly wedded to us.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's this perpetually increasing intimacy, which is, can be great or can be haunting. Speaker B: Yeah, it's always both. Right. Sacred and profane. Right. Speaker A: We're gonna talk a bunch about different technologies. You already gave a talk about hardware today, and we'll talk a bit about that. Before we jump in, in this broader theme of technological determinism and sort of what tech wants, There's a phrase you've used, I think a few times in different ways, where you say, you talk about defanging loaded technologies. Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: What draws you to loaded technologies? Speaker B: Yeah, well, I'm not like really big on identity politics, but I do think that some communities across all identities have really funky relationships to technology. And I think that as technology increases in its power, in the not going to make it idea, what happens if a community gets a 6-month delay? What happens when a community gets a 2-year delay? So I think it's really important also, just the Silicon Valley-ism of the future series is not evenly distributed. To defang a technology is actually to expand and bring the future forward to communities that might be on the lagging tail of that.

I think that's really, really powerful. I think for me, in like the current phase of my life, that's always been sort of in areas of like communication and brand design and to make things more approachable and to take away that language of you're not gonna make it, 'cause I think that's actually disgusting language. But I think in the future, what I would love for it to be for myself is like, what are the policy paths that get Waymo into more cities faster, right? Like, I think another one is like, I think all of Japan runs off of like 20 to like 25 building codes or something like that.

And in New York alone, there's just like an absurd amount, which stops us from building like the housing that we need. And so like, there's all these policy things that are sort of like secret and in the background, but it's actually, making the technology further fanged because it can't get to the people. And so now they have this sort of— to reference Nick Zuse's talk, like, they have this external perspective of what's happening, and so they're probably seeing the most extreme versions of it, which always tends to be like in this sort of like negative hyper-sensory attacking, you know, perspective.

Yeah. Speaker A: Yeah, I think there's an element too that like the fear doesn't— maybe it buys you a little bit more time, but it actually probably makes the like coming impact worse. And I think it, going back to the earlier thing and determinism, like there's a notion that we can slow these things down or stop them. And I think it's probably closer to bending them than altogether stopping. And I think so much of what defanging feels like to me and why I find so much of your philosophy around technology to be so appealing is just like, it broadly is about pulling it, not only pulling it forward, but pulling it to the other end of that quote, evenly distributing it, making it actually accessible.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I, and I think the important thing to talk about when it comes to like fear is like, who does that fear benefit? Right. And I mean, not to be on like some Bill Gurley regulatory capture vibe, although with the recent Figma IPO, it was great to see him in full form. I think like That fear does, it is being weaponized to reassert self-authority, right? So if I can wield the technology and then like poke at, this is why it's dangerous to society, but don't worry because I'm the only one that can wield it and I will protect you.

There's, what's his name? Adam Curtis has this great documentary basically around how like politicians stopped promising better futures and then reverted to just promising to people bad things won't happen. And when they reverted to saying bad things won't happen, they were able to just paint boogeymans around the world. For the US, this might look like terrorists in the Middle East and make them appear so much bigger and so much scarier than they were. And the illegibility of those people made it feel scary because now you couldn't even really do your own research.

You're just relying on intelligence reports. And we do the same thing with technology. It's just like behind this AI black box is this scary, like, ghoul, and it's just like, but we put a smiley face on it and it gives you deep research. And so, you know, I think like we have to really deconstruct these sort of notions of fear as we try to distribute technology just so that it creates this sort of manufactured consent on like who has the authority. Speaker A: Yes, versus the classic computing Alan Kay idea of like popping open the hood and actually introducing the complexity to people.

Speaker B: Exactly. Exactly, exactly. Speaker A: I wanna talk a bit about design. You've reiterated many places in many ways that design is a realization of values. And I think in many ways you are first and foremost a designer, but you're also a writer, and you've said that your design process typically starts with writing. Why is that? Speaker B: Yeah, I think it helps me to not waste energy visualizing things that maybe don't need to be visualized, right? So if I work through an idea and on the other end of that idea is like, "Oh, I actually think this is really harmful in this way," why am I going to move forward towards the visualization of that harm?

Whereas, and I'm not judging people whose like first mode of thinking is visual, but I think that's just my process. And so, yeah, I design through writing and it helps me sort of like filter out some of the things that I'm less excited to put further energy towards. And then, and it also helps me understand like what I really believe, you know, which is really important. Like I think Joan Didion talks about like the reason why she writes is so that she can actually figure out what she thinks. And I know that's super true for me.

Like I don't ever retract anything that I've written, but I don't know if I would necessarily stand by every essay that's on the Substack. First time of our conversation. Speaker A: Your writing is certainly, your voice in writing is one of, It sort of embodies the garage door being open. Yeah, it's like I'm working through this in real time. Speaker A: Your writing is certainly, your voice in writing is one of, It sort of embodies the garage door being open. Yeah, it's like I'm working through this in real time. Speaker B: I'm working through this in real time, and every single newsletter ends with, I don't do edits, and if you unfollow this Substack, like, I won't be hurt by it because time is, you know, finite.

So using it somewhere you don't want to use it is rough. But yeah, to get back to like design as, as a sort of embodiment of values, you know, that is directly from Naoto Fukuzawa. Who at the start of COVID Saleo gave me that book, "Embodiment." He gave me kind of like a stack of books. He's like, "This is gonna get you through COVID," basically. And he's a really good gift giver like that. And I just remember it really rocked my world at a time where I was trying to figure out my values while my environment, like, while all of our environments changed so heavily.

And, you know, I kind of, one bit just talks about chairs, like he's designed a lot of chairs and how a chair and the value you put in it give certain affordances, right? So like this chair, you know, has a certain affordance of kind of how strictly I have to sit, and I can't even like go that wide, so I can't even like manspread that much. And, you know, I'm a little clammy, so my butt gets a little sweaty. Like it has all of these sort of like features, right? I can't, like, it would be weird if I had someone else with me here.

And so it sets a tone for how you're going to behave. I think that something that designers recognize, I think pretty well is that what they do is really a set of behaviors that they're putting forth as things that you should be doing. That's a level of cultural programming that I think didn't really get the love that it deserved. I think maybe earlier in technology's life because I think, or software technology of the 2000s because I think we're really trying to figure out what all this interaction stuff was with the phone.

Which is why, you know, critical theorists are important. But yeah, I mean, that's a zag. Speaker A: You have a line in a podcast where you talked about your Ames chair being about being locked in, which I love, which captures that kind of embedded value aspect of affordances really well. You brought up software. I think like the computers we use, and particularly the iPhone, are so ubiquitous and so sort of like almost unopinionated, that they— it feels, at least to me, maybe I'm just numb to it, it feels that it lacks affordances.

Where are the affordances in software, or excuse me, in technology today? Is it purely in software? Can software even provide the same types of affordances that objects can? Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good question. So I think the first thing I'd push back on is that the iPhone is very opinionated. Immediately, right, there's sort of all these things, even if you just like look in your like pull-down quick settings, right, where the default is sort of— let's just look at the defaults, right? Like the defaults when you receive your phone is that the ringer is on.

The default is that there's no focus mode on, right? Everything is about this sort of instantaneous ability for another hand to reach out and interact with you. And what's really interesting about that is that you then have to go in and set all of these barriers to protect your own attention. Yes. Which is really, really interesting, right? So the number— I would say the number one value of the phone, um, after like the sense of sort of like self-importance of like I have this phone and now it's given me these abilities is sort of, uh, instant reachability, right?

Which is a really like especially as a New Yorker, right? Like, the last thing you want anyone to do in New York is touch you, you know? But the iPhone tells you that's the first thing. Speaker A: Yeah, it goes back to intimacy at the top of the conversation, right? Speaker B: Yeah, 100%, you know? So I think— so that's— so I would just push back that I think the phone is, like, extremely opinionated. So then the thing about software and its affordances is that it has to stack on top of the values of the hardware.

And this is why I say like hardware exists in our environment layer of Stuart Brand pace layering, which means that software is a culture that is derivative of our hardware layer of our environment. And so if the— let's say the number one value of this, right, is this sense of reachability, it's no coincidence that our killer apps are social media, which is all about reachability and spreading your identity. Right, and so the affordances sort of stack from its root all the way up. So I think we can push back. I think software is beautifully flexible.

I think what we get stuck in in venture mindset is a sense of scale, right? And so we kind of have perfect flexibility of affordances. Whether or not those things scale is a separate question, but we get stuck on good means scale, like good design is scaled design, and I don't believe that's true anymore. And if we want to reach out with new affordances, and I think the joy of AI is going to be being able to spread the affordance landscape without worrying about scale because it'll be so cheap to produce, you know, said interaction points.

Speaker A: Affordances are also sort of fundamentally trade-offs to your point. Speaker B: 100%, 100%. And it's about restacking your own sort of like value pyramid. Right? Like if every value pyramid starts with like reachability, that's a really weird way to live. But if like, if your value pyramid starts with maybe prayer or contemplation, that's going to inherently produce a whole new set of values that you would even want to stack on that. Because if your first value is prayer, then the next thing you want is not going to be reachability because you're going to want to honor the value of prayer.

Right? And so I think it's really fun to play with sort of how these things stack on top of each other. Speaker A: Yeah, a couple lines on that last note that I love of, from you. One, the image of our hardware is the image of all of our technologies. And two, we are fascinated by the functionality of objects, but in reality, their function is subordinate to their signification. Speaker B: Mm. Speaker A: You gave a talk earlier on hardware, which was great, and you started to talk about it briefly.

Can you just talk a little bit about your frame around how these software cultures are actually sort of reached by way of the hardware we get. So you referenced PC and mobile, but also video games. Like, can you talk a little bit about where we've been and then maybe speak a little bit more to— you gave the example of prayer, other value sets, but like what other types of affordances or hardware might actually allow us to get software-wise? Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question. So I think we've all probably just like have matured in a very dominant iPhone plus AWS landscape.

Like, the way we think about software is like, I'm programming for this interface, and that interface is going to live sort of remotely in US-East-1, you know? Now, what's been interesting about that is as we've scaled the requirement for all of these data centers and the maturity of these data centers, what that did was build up all of this background compute, which has been really fascinating. And then what has happened as a result of that. And as I always think about video gaming as sort of like the Mushroom Kingdom of like, because it's like, it's really weird and it's like a little psychedelic and it's like the people that work in video games rarely cross over to like other parts of tech.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question. So I think we've all probably just like have matured in a very dominant iPhone plus AWS landscape. Like, the way we think about software is like, I'm programming for this interface, and that interface is going to live sort of remotely in US-East-1, you know? Now, what's been interesting about that is as we've scaled the requirement for all of these data centers and the maturity of these data centers, what that did was build up all of this background compute, which has been really fascinating.

And then what has happened as a result of that. And as I always think about video gaming as sort of like the Mushroom Kingdom of like, because it's like, it's really weird and it's like a little psychedelic and it's like the people that work in video games rarely cross over to like other parts of tech. Speaker A: Well, also it's like mushrooms that it, I'm not sure it was always taken as a third thing. Speaker B: Right. Speaker A: But now we know. Yeah, yeah. It's definitely its own thing. Speaker B: Yeah, no, exactly, exactly.

Speaker A: And especially video game consoles, which are downstream of their hardware. Speaker B: Exactly. And as I think pretty much everyone in this room knows, you know, like NVIDIA and the focus on like these graphic chips, like open the door not only to really great video games and this like subculture of software, but mining, right? And like Bitcoin, Ethereum, what have you. And it's just so funny that these same exact chips is what we use in these data centers to train large language models. And so I think what we see is like we had this sort of like parallel development of a technology that was somewhat undervalued and underappreciated, and it became the root of our two newest software cultures of crypto and AI.

And so I think like, I mean, I think that's kind of all there is to say about it. And it's, you know, it's always interesting when you see something take off in a sort of secondary or tertiary path and how it can come back to being like the most dominant sort of piece of hardware today. And naturally, Jensen and NVIDIA shareholders have really benefited from that. Speaker A: You have a piece I like on universal luxuries. Speaker B: Mm-hmm. Speaker A: Classic examples being— this is sort of a Warholian idea— Coca-Cola, but, but certainly the iPhone.

And you, you nod at this notion that maybe others are possible. Um, one example you give, what would happen if there was a hi-fi speaker in every single residence in America? Speaker B: Yeah. Speaker A: Do you have a sense of other types of either products or categories or domains where like luxury is— there's potential for luxury and it's not yet happened or it's underserved? Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I love, I love kind of going back to Naoto Fukuzawa here. In his book, he has this example of designing public utilities as if they're for a luxury client.

And I think that's such a beautiful idea. Speaker A: It's like Tokyo Toilet a little bit. Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Like when I'm in Tokyo and I'm going to the restroom, I could sit on that thing straight, you know? Speaker A: "Perfect Days," by the way, if you guys haven't, amazing movie. Speaker B: And so, you know, I love this idea of giving like luxury treatment to public utilities. I think there is no reason other than our dilapidated state capacity that this isn't happening. Not to really zag on conversation, but, you know, like the example, you know, the president and the homeless person drinks the same exact Coca-Cola.

The president and the immigrant coming to New York has the same exact iPhone. I think these are really powerful ideas. The ones that I'm really interested in right now is sort of around intelligence, around transportation. You know, I really— this actually kind of has like a reform theological view on common grace, which is like God's mercy given to everyone through things happening in the world that are positive. To me, I remember riding in a Waymo for the first time and being like, oh, this is like proof God loves us. Because growing up in the Poconos, you know, it's the woods, you know, kids are drinking.

Every year some kid like wraps their car around a tree and they die. And it's like every high school has to deal with this. My Poconos accent almost came out. And I remember riding in a Waymo and being like, when this escape jailed, like, no kid has to live that story. No parent has to live that story. No school has to live that story. And it really, really affected me. And so, like, it's things like that, right? Like beautiful transportation, you know, that I think is also going to have a really deep psychological or societal effect because it's like, I want to live in the city, but I also want to go to the Poconos, but driving that far sucks, you know?

And it's like when that becomes automated, something really beautiful happened. And so I think that and sort of, you know, intelligence are the two main ones I think about, but intelligence has to be put on the right rails because I think it's dicey right now. Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think my experience with the first Waymo ride, it's like a childlike magic, like, whoa. And I'm obviously— that, that one's complex too, but that's funny. One last note on hardware. There are a couple Couple of quotes I really loved from this essay you have at the back of the hardware book from Bruno Schillinger on soulful technology.

He says, electronic hardware seems to be the prisoner of its own utility, and then goes on to say, we should be getting into the habit of creating form from material that is not just a container for experience but entirely in service of it. A friend of mine has an idea. He's an art guy, and he has this idea that art isn't about about understanding the intention behind a piece or even what a piece is trying to communicate. Art is a prompt for an experience. This feels similarly— similar, I should say.

There's a notion that obviously technology is great for utility, but it can also be soulful, it can also be playful, it can also cause us to feel. I'm curious how you think about how technology objects specifically can make us feel. Speaker B: Yeah. It's a great probe. That's, yeah, that's a great— I really, when we were like organizing the book and we were trying to be like, where are we going to end this thing? And there were so many like, we're like, maybe it could be a hero's journey, but we ended up on this really weird story structure, but I was really happy when it ended with Soulful Technology.

So, God, not to keep referencing Tokyo, but I remember my first trip to Tokyo when I went to TeamLab, Planet, and there's this one moment where you have to like literally climb up a kind of like thin waterfall. Like you are in water, like you are barefoot in water, and then you have to go into like this pool that has like lily pads projected and you can like play with it. And I was having this realization that I was like, if that payoff wasn't worth it, I would have been so upset at the friction.

But the— but it sort of existed on this like what is asked of me. Speaker A: Yes. Speaker B: On this. And then what I receive experientially here. And this is, this to me is like the perfect, I just call it like a friction corridor of like payoff, right? So it's like the experience has to match the friction or input and then you are sublime. If the friction is too high and the experience is too low, you're rage quitting. Speaker A: By the way, this applies to parties. Speaker B: Oh my God.

I mean, nothing is worse than putting in so much effort for a party that is buns. Speaker A: But meanwhile, a party where you have to drive 2 hours, Burning Man even, to take an extreme example, if it's a ton of friction and it pays off, it's the best party ever. Speaker B: Yeah. Best party ever. And the funny thing, and I think the environment we're in now, is when something has no friction, but the experience is really high. Yes. That's called addiction. There is no friction to consume. Speaker A: It's the digital life.

That is our digital lives. Speaker B: That's our digital lives though. There is no friction to consuming drugs and the experience is incredible. And that's why people can't break out of it. In the same way, there's no friction to consuming our phones, our current digital lives, and the experience is incredible. But that dopamine crash is really, really real. And so I think about that a lot. I kind of like did a meta on the experience piece, but what was the core question? Speaker A: Well, the question was how can technology objects make us feel?

But I think— Speaker B: Oh, that's right. Speaker A: I think your, your friction corridor is an interesting step towards that. Yeah, at the very least. Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. I think I've been kind of giving him compliments all day, but something I loved about Yatu and Norm's USB club is that the friction created an environment for intentionality. That intentionality then got shared, and that feeling is very different than just like trying to find the good in Twitter, you know, because, because of the initial friction that everyone had to go through, the entire quality of the network was improved.

Now that it might not feel good for everyone, but the end result is like a network that feels significantly better, which I think is really interesting, right? Because through— it's kind of like if everyone works out, then everyone gets the benefit of looking at hot people. It's pretty, it's pretty nice, right? But everyone first has to go through the personal friction of working out. Speaker A: Well, the question was how can technology objects make us feel? But I think— Speaker B: Oh, that's right. Speaker A: I think your, your friction corridor is an interesting step towards that.

Yeah, at the very least. Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. I think I've been kind of giving him compliments all day, but something I loved about Yatu and Norm's USB club is that the friction created an environment for intentionality. That intentionality then got shared, and that feeling is very different than just like trying to find the good in Twitter, you know, because, because of the initial friction that everyone had to go through, the entire quality of the network was improved. Now that it might not feel good for everyone, but the end result is like a network that feels significantly better, which I think is really interesting, right?

Because through— it's kind of like if everyone works out, then everyone gets the benefit of looking at hot people. It's pretty, it's pretty nice, right? But everyone first has to go through the personal friction of working out. Speaker A: If everyone worked out, would this get into Invincibles or, uh, what's it called? Disney movie. Speaker B: Incredible. Speaker A: Yeah. Incredibles. Like if everyone were hot, is no one hot? Speaker B: Well, I get, I think we get to focus on more of what's interesting, which is like personality, their sense of like self, soul, all these things.

Right. Speaker A: Hmm. You have a line where you say in hardware, your brand is the promise of the thing that's coming right behind it. Transition a little bit from talking about hardware to brand and culture. You also talked about how particularly at least in consumer software, there's almost a virtue in being brandless. Yeah. You, you give the example of Instagram, like it's, Instagram can't, definitionally can't be too opinionated or it limits its scale. Going back to what you were talking about earlier around scale. And so my first question here is why does brand still matter for technology and technologists and maybe even especially for people thinking about software?

Speaker A: Hmm. You have a line where you say in hardware, your brand is the promise of the thing that's coming right behind it. Transition a little bit from talking about hardware to brand and culture. You also talked about how particularly at least in consumer software, there's almost a virtue in being brandless. Yeah. You, you give the example of Instagram, like it's, Instagram can't, definitionally can't be too opinionated or it limits its scale. Going back to what you were talking about earlier around scale. And so my first question here is why does brand still matter for technology and technologists and maybe even especially for people thinking about software?

Speaker B: Yeah, I love this question. Wow, you really read a lot. I kind of feel bad that you've gone through my job. In another piece, I say something to the effect that there is no progress where there's no narrative. Progress does not exist in a vacuum. It's like the contextual nature of the narrative that we place it in. Brand, I think, at a very fundamental level is about symbolism and narrative, some sort of interplay between the two. Still, like, working through these things. And I think as we've been talking about, like, the cheapening of software means a more crowded environment, means a more noisy environment.

And odds are they're not gonna be really even trying to say much, but it is going to fill the airwaves with static. And so if you can't, like, sing a really tight melody, like if you can't sing a bop, if you can't give someone a really tight story, You're equally going to be lost. So it's almost like, it's a little bit of a first question is like, do you care for any type of resonance? If the answer is no, like you're just doing it for yourself, then that's fine, right? But if like you're like a venture-backed software company and you're expecting some set of scale, brand can't be an afterthought, right?

Because I also think the interplay between brand, distribution and design are all in simpatico. I actually like tweeted something and Saleo kind of came after me, but I was like, all these things are the same practice and maybe we shouldn't even break up these jobs. Because I think like what— to go to the original quote— Speaker A: most of technology does not agree with, or at least has not internalized that view. I would just point out brand distribution and designer, they would not view those as the same things. Speaker B: 100%.

But I think like design is determined through the understanding of distribution. Eternal was a media company and it was an AI games company. And what's funny is media, like kind of just video, let's say, moves very differently than distributing a game. And I think eventually there'll be some kind of legal case on this, but what you see in gaming is it's all paid ads and it's actually advertising mostly speculative features, which is, dubious, but what they're doing is they're determining off of the resonance of that speculative feature ad how— if they should build that thing, right?

To— because they know top of funnel is really, really critical. And that's like the cleanest example of distribution-determined design, right? They know that this is the only way that they're going to be able to distribute this product, and the design is a direct reflection of the performance. Speaker A: Purely market-driven design. Speaker B: Completely, right? Now, I don't think that's necessarily the best way to get to certain thing, like certain outcomes. But I do think just to stay in hardware land, like, you know that this is an object that you have to sell.

We have a lot of case studies around how do we put narrative to objects, fashion being kind of like the best one, right? And the clothing represents the narrative and lifestyle depicted in that brand, right? So you have this perfect sort of like triangle of design, design, brand, and storytelling that is then getting distributed through kind of multiple sales channels. But that's how they're, that's how they're standing out as a commodity. Not to, not to make fun of the Steve, like they sell shoes. It's a commodity. But I think the same is true when you have peak optionality and you're sort of like wrestling against a hyper object like this.

Yes. Speaker A: Or you're inside the hyperobject of your software. Speaker B: Or you're inside the hyperobject and you're just cutting through static. Speaker A: It's interesting. That makes me think of crypto. And one observation I have is that crypto sort of feels like the one area of software where brand's actually incredibly important, or at least internalized as being very important. We're at FWE Fest, which is a lot of things, but also a crypto conference and festival and many things. You've observed that people sometimes don't know how to package crypto, um, or, or don't feel able to package crypto, in part because no one person can own it.

Thus the narratives become insular or scattered. You've even talked about this a little bit in the context of the McLuhan idea of, um, of identity through violence, where the inside wants to maintain the identity, the outside attacks it. With all of this as a backdrop, we're at an interesting time in mid-2025 where crypto is like really working in some ways, um, at least on a monetary and speculation type, maybe more than ever. I think some of the ideas that attract people to a place like FWB and some of the adjacent things to it, some of the more cultural narratives seem lost in crypto, maybe even some of the more brand-oriented or at least artistic-oriented narratives in crypto seem lost.

Is there a path for crypto to either own these narratives or at the very least sort of like widen the, the spectrum of stuff beyond just the kind of core like monetary speculation to get back to some of these ideas and narratives that maybe people in this room or people at this event were so interested in, the creative empowerment side, the artistic side, etc.? Speaker B: Yeah, that's a really good complicated question. It's really complicated. Yeah. Well, I think, I think we can always start looking at what seems to be going right, even in speculation and outside of speculation.

So the thing that, going back to the common grace thing that I think is beautiful and makes me really excited about crypto, is actually maybe one of the more boring ones, which is stablecoins. Like I think stablecoins are these really beautiful objects that decrease anxiety in folks dealing with monetary systems that are just not working. Speaker A: Right. Speaker B: So like if my local currency is just getting absolutely hammered to hell, I can, while not immigrating, buy into with no blockers the financial system of America. I struggle to think of anything better that crypto could do than that from, from like a very nationalist perspective.

Speaker A: Yeah. Speaker B: So that really excites me. And the narrative there is really clear and it's actually a deeply like American narrative, which is that This is the land of opportunity, and opportunity sort of has a presupposition of baseline safety. There's no opportunity where you're not baseline safe, right? And so being able to buy into financial safety to a degree, obviously the US isn't perfect and currencies move, but you can buy into that and interact with that. So that's really powerful, really clear narrative as well. The other narrative, which, you know, I have mixed feelings about, but I think feels really clean.

It's sort of like the Polymarket prediction narrative, which is just like, you claim to be right and you claim to know the future, put your money where your mouth is. Yes, right. That's a really easy thing for someone to grok, right? And it's— Speaker A: and it could be about speculation as a medium. Speaker B: Yeah, speculation as a medium, 100%. Um, yeah, that's really well said. And, you know, I just don't think that's a hard thing for people to understand. I think what becomes really hard to understand is actually the same thing that makes sort of new hardware compared to the iPhone hard, right?

Which is like, if I am currently receiving all the music in the world for $13 a month, right? Or if I'm getting all the images in the world for free, and now this system is not only trying to like pull me into something that doesn't have the same supply side, which is changing my experience, but now is also telling me that I need to pay more for less. That's a really, really hard gamble if you don't have a strong narrative. You know, I think early versions of this creative narrative was sort of like this purchasing into access, this like closeness narrative, this sort of projection of being a superfan and that creating some sense of identity.

I don't think those have played out very well. But I think we can look at the ones that are working well. And then I think maybe the FWB one was interesting, right? Because it was this sort of, it was this reflection of the internal. It was actually like less about, oh, I'm going to like pull this person who's not dealing in crypto, right? Like for me, maybe McGee, like probably my favorite musician right now and be like, oh, like let me give you crypto so I can prove to you I'm a super fan.

And he's just like, or just show up to a show, you know, like, you know, the counter was always there. Whereas I think what FWB did and what DAOs did, which I'm still personally excited about even though the meta isn't for them, is like, well, actually, let's gather and come inward and let's focus on what is right here and then create some set of rituals around that. I think that— I think we're always longing for community and I think that that created a really simple narrative of just like, we're going to gather because we're already around this object, Ethereum, and we're going to make that personal to us and then, see if we can throw some, like, arrows out into the ether, no pun intended, and find new things.

Speaker A: And those narratives maybe just take longer to really incubate. Speaker B: 1,000%. 1,000%. I think, you know, we look at sort of the timelines to scale of previous technologies, but we don't actually critique them enough in their simpleness. You know, Instagram's amazing. Its cultural impact is, like, insane. Still at the core was about scaling a shared photo network. What is at the core of Ethereum is significantly more complex than that, you know? And thinking that it's going to have like some Instagram rails of scale is like kind of a little silly, you know?

And I think what's— what probably disheartens some people here, but I think is still something to be proud of, is like we've created this deeply shared infrastructure level that traditional finance institutions can't even deny anymore. That's quite powerful. I remember when I talked here 2 years ago and talked about the irrelevancy of crypto and how we can be relevant again, it was really about a set of values and understanding what are the referential objects that we have. This is a financial infrastructure project. Project. And so if the— if TradFi is already kind of bending to our will, I think we can actually have a lot of hope that we're going to bend other things, other institutions that will have to get on similar financial rails to those institutions, you know.

And so I think there's actually a lot of hope and excitement that people should have. Speaker A: At the beginning of the conversation, we talked about technology as a mirror, and I— if I'm not mistaken, you, you included crypto in that. Intuitively to me, crypto has always felt like this weird, strange thing, maybe even especially in contrast to AI. AI in many ways is the eternal goal of computing since the 1940s or whatever. Crypto is this alien thing. Do you, do you think crypto is still a mirror? Like, is it a mirror in a different type of way or is it something else?

Speaker B: No, it's, it's, it's a really great mirror and it's, it's, uh, I remember I wrote this essay in college, and this is, I think, when I learned that I enjoyed writing. And I talked about how, like, the first times in history when we put the, like, ruler's face on coinage, which I think was in Rome, like, we put, like, Caesar's face on coinage, right? And what that did was tie together this sort of nonstop transaction layer of a people to the authority of that same people, right? It wasn't like this separate system, but instead it was like, no, it's ordained by— Yeah, it's exactly, it's ordained top-down.

Like, I am giving you the ability to transact right now. What crypto allows through, you know, just a token launcher, as silly and fraught as those are, it allows you to be Caesar, right? Which I think is really interesting. Speaker A: And that's pretty profound. Speaker B: I think it's extremely profound and I think that it doesn't have to just be like personal identity of like, I need to put my face on this token, but it can be this symbolic representation of ideas, right? And so like a token can symbolically represent artists, right?

Which is kind of like what Zora is on. A token can symbolically represent a charity permissionlessly and you can send those fees to that charity. The design space still is so underexplored, you know, but I think it's because one of my critiques of tech people at large is just like, they're not very reference-driven and they don't read that much. And so, you know, if you don't kind of have these offshoots and you're sort of just cycling on your own mind, like, I think the reason why I love writing is because you get to stand on the shoulders of giants.

The reason I love technology is because you get to stand on the shoulders Giant. And I think when you get to sort of pull those things forward from the '70s, from the— to your, to your point on like, um, AI being the goal of computing, in the '80s, Alan Kay at the newly formed Media Lab was working on putting AI— in the '80s— putting AI into Looney Tunes characters. You can look, you can look at that story in Stuart Brand's The Media Lab. Speaker A: And that's pretty profound. Speaker B: I think it's extremely profound and I think that it doesn't have to just be like personal identity of like, I need to put my face on this token, but it can be this symbolic representation of ideas, right?

And so like a token can symbolically represent artists, right? Which is kind of like what Zora is on. A token can symbolically represent a charity permissionlessly and you can send those fees to that charity. The design space still is so underexplored, you know, but I think it's because one of my critiques of tech people at large is just like, they're not very reference-driven and they don't read that much. And so, you know, if you don't kind of have these offshoots and you're sort of just cycling on your own mind, like, I think the reason why I love writing is because you get to stand on the shoulders of giants.

The reason I love technology is because you get to stand on the shoulders Giant. And I think when you get to sort of pull those things forward from the '70s, from the— to your, to your point on like, um, AI being the goal of computing, in the '80s, Alan Kay at the newly formed Media Lab was working on putting AI— in the '80s— putting AI into Looney Tunes characters. You can look, you can look at that story in Stuart Brand's The Media Lab. Speaker A: There's no new ideas. Speaker B: There's no new ideas.

And just be like, oh, I have character AI now, right? Like, I'm telling everyone, you know, just go into like technology books from like the '60s, '70s, and '80s, and you will find like the next Coinbase or whatever it is just sitting there, just waiting for you. It's waiting to be excavated. And this is another thing from what technology wants. Like these ideas occur simultaneously when they need to happen, but they are kind of waiting to be dug up. Speaker A: There's no new ideas. Speaker B: There's no new ideas.

And just be like, oh, I have character AI now, right? Like, I'm telling everyone, you know, just go into like technology books from like the '60s, '70s, and '80s, and you will find like the next Coinbase or whatever it is just sitting there, just waiting for you. It's waiting to be excavated. And this is another thing from what technology wants. Like these ideas occur simultaneously when they need to happen, but they are kind of waiting to be dug up. Speaker A: I want to zoom out a little bit before we wrap up.

You wrote a piece recently on myth in America that I really enjoyed. and I think people should go read it, specifically in the American context, as you kind of reflect on this notion that America's sort of built on freedom and freedom from all these different types of things, and look where we've been and where we're going. But there's a specific bit at the end when you say, "When in doubt, when having to bet on the new myth— on the new myth formation, look west. The odds are always good in the west."

So my question is, what is captured spiritually, energetically, even just verbally in that idea? What does West capture? Speaker B: Yeah, I think West, particularly from an American context, is always about the edge. It's always about the frontier. I don't think, like, it's even a coincidence that even all the new, minus like maybe one, like, city ideas are happening in California, which if the history of the Californian city projects of the past 20 years is any sign, that's not really like where I would want to put a new city, respectfully, just for my politics.

So I think the West always shows this frontier. It's always about the frontier. And I think we've— I actually got this from my father-in-law, just to give a shout out to Gary. But I think what has happened is where previously the locus of power was really centered around the Atlantic century, right? The 1900s is about the Atlantic. It's World War I, World War II, the European theater, New York and DC as these powerholds coordinating with Europe to set up everything else, right? Kind of like carving up what the world's gonna look like.

We were, you know, like any other time, we're always asleep So the scrappy kid that has a lot of drive and that scrappy kid with a lot of drive in a totally different political framework was China. And more and more we've seen Europe become this sort of summer playground for rich Americans and the locus of power as it shifted to San Francisco and away from New York and LA, maybe as like a soft cultural power center, something like that. It's about Shenzhen. It's about Beijing, it's about Taiwan, and we're in the Pacific century.

So to me, the West not only represents the frontier of America and where all the new things are happening, but it also represents the theater of what the competition is and where previously the competition was on these sort of ideals of the new world and post-World War II authority. I don't want to be like a scary person, but I think all the new conflict that will arise in this century will be in the Pacific. and it's going to be over the same sort of questions of authority. And AI acts as sort of like this meta Cold War, you know, where the Cold War was previously like nuclear, let's say, and like the post-World War II nuclear race and Russia and us, now it's 100% us, AI, China, Deepseek.

And as for me and my children, I never wanna be a previous world power. So that's why I think I've been focusing on myth and the West. Speaker A: On a more maybe personal level around myths, there's an excerpt from a Joseph Campbell book you quote, and it's Campbell and Moyers. Campbell says, "I don't listen to other people's dreams." Moyers, "But all these myths are other people's dreams." Campbell, "Oh no, they're not. They are the world's dreams. They are archetypical dreams and deal with great human problems. I know when I come to one of these thresholds now.

The myth tells me about it." how to respond to certain crises of disappointment or delight or failure or success. The myths tell me where I am. And so maybe on a more personal level, I'm curious how you think about myth, how you think about maybe the character you are in your own story as part of a larger story, and how it grounds you and helps you dream. Speaker B: Yeah. Ooh. Speaker A: Easy questions, always. Speaker B: Easy questions. Speaker A: But I, I, the reason I ask you this is, You seem to be more attuned to this than the average person I know.

Speaker B: I appreciate that. I don't know if it's true, but I appreciate it. Yeah. Well, I'll say, you know, I recently turned 30. I recently crossed one year married. So I'm kind of going through, like you mentioned, you know, Eternal was acquired and we're— Luca and I are navigating what, like, our professional lives are about to look like and also, you know, processing what was the majority of my 20s working on that company. I've been spending like a third of my day in theology, like every day, not while here at Fest, but like when I'm home, like I spend a third of my day in theology.

And my wife and I were reading through Genesis. And what's interesting about Genesis is that it's both, for the Christian, is both historical, but it's also ancient history. So ancient history is steeped in symbolism, and it's not always perfect literal narrative, right? But what is deeply important about Genesis is both creation, fall of man, and how we reckon with those things. And I've come to really understand, like, what you believe about where you're from and what you believe about where you're going determines a lot about how you act day to day.

And so for a while, I was actually really like kind of not ashamed, but like I didn't want to rep being from Pennsylvania, right? And I remember having a really clear moment of like, no, wait, I am from the Poconos, and I actually do love being from the Poconos, and that's important to me. Um, and that's actually unlocked a lot of love, not only for the Poconos, but for my parents and what they did by moving us from New York to the Poconos. So there's actually like I was actually rejecting a lot of personal creation myth.

And that was, I was, I was like really blocked from that and unblocking that, um, was really powerful. And David Lynch has this thing of like inside all of us is this pool of creative energy. And I used to, I was like, that's some woo LA nonsense. But more and more I'm like, this is actually so spiritually correct. Speaker A: Yeah, we all do that in little micro ways. Maybe it's where we're from, maybe it's our parents, maybe it's something. Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And, and that honestly got unlocked reading, um, Timeless Way of Building by, by Christopher Alexander, which is one of the rules of my podcast is Christopher Alexander has to be mentioned every, every single time.

How long can we get into an episode but without mentioning? Um, so, so going back to personal myth, so, so I— it was an embrace of like the personal myth that is formed by my parents and a really deep love and respect for that. Then there's the spiritual myth, right? Realizing that I have accepted that I'm a sinner and that I need redemption. Now, what does— what that does is it frees you from the idea that you can work your way to salvation, which is impossible. And it also changes the way that you look at technology to understand that, like, these hyper sort of We are going to technically make all these things right is folly.

It's vanity, which is how I was able to even get to the idea of like, why do people sort of start with fearmongering? Well, it's to accumulate authority for themselves, right? Which is not about solving the issue. It's fundamentally not about solving the issue. So then you're left with that. And so the second half of the equation, right? How— where are you going and how does that come back? I think something that immediate gratification culture struggles with is the idea of, like, timelines. My parents grew up very poor in New York, and, you know, I'm sure there are dreams that they had that they didn't tell me, right?

But at the core, my father learned a trade. Became a short-term missionary, what have you. My mom dropped out of grad school, you know, when she got pregnant with my younger brother, and they moved to the Poconos. That is like a really deep radical act of generational thinking. It put themselves in the context of a longer timeline to give their kids the opportunity to go and do further radical things. I think a lot of the reasons why people like our age struggle with like, like getting married early or having kids early is from a very deeply selfish perspective.

And it's also from this like lie that they have to themselves around like the financial necessity to have, like the financial, like if I can't pay for my kid to go to like Chapin or Horace Mann, like their lives aren't worth having, which is insane. It's absolutely insane. And so the final myth is like, what am I really like here doing? You know, and to me it comes down to this generational approach of what I can give my kids, which is not financial, although that's part of the equation and I'm not minimizing that, but it's about a deep sense of love.

It's about a deep sense of love for themselves. It's about a deep sense of love for country, for God, for their neighbor, and understanding that that is going to have like this radical through line of whatever the Jameses, become, you know, and so, yeah, and that can only be rooted in a broader reformed theological framework that God is going to come and renew all things. Right. Speaker A: My final question is perhaps, at least on the surface, maybe a little in contrast to myth and looking back, and it ties back to design, and I think it probably all circles together.

You talk about creative direction a lot. I think this is actually from a piece where you're talking about creative direction for the US, but I think it applies broadly. You say, Being a visionary actually requires an isolation of the senses. Oftentimes, the mode of processing anything has to do with using as many data points as necessary to do so, thus taking in all information from, from all receptacles. You hear something, you turn. You remember something, you pause. This stops us, changes the course of, and alters all potential actions. But you say a visionary sees.

You go on to say a lot of future thought is actually seeking to act as past correction. And then finally, RIP, in all caps, RIP out the rearview mirror. Tune in, drop out, eyes open. It's vision time, boy. Why is seeing ahead, perhaps even with blinders on, per your imagery, so foundational to design and ultimately to progress? Speaker B: Yeah, I think that we have a really hard time imagining the future. Like, it's really hard to see beyond the context of our environment. Maybe that's like the one thing Kamala really got right, you know, it exists in the context.

Thank you, jeez, I was scared that wasn't gonna hit. My politics are showing a little bit. So yeah, so I mean, this really relates to Like, it's really hard to do that. I think it's because we have this natural inclination to fix things, which is actually a really good habit. But when you have to, like, go out and really shoot an arrow in a direction, it really takes a sort of relanguishing of responsibilities of all these other things so that you can shoot that arrow with its intended value. And for better or worse, like, Elon is really great at this.

Sam Altman is really great at this. Steve was really great at this. And it's because they were able to tune out everything else, you know, in order to have that singular, we are going to get a computer in every pocket, you know. And that's— and what's crazy about that is that that idea is so strong, it's hard to even think about breaking out of having a computer in every pocket. Totally. And that goes back to like the standing on giants thing. It's like actually their myth formation becomes a blocker to new myth formation.

And so you have to kill your heroes. And that's actually been a really big thing I've been trying to like give my younger friends, you know, 5 years younger of just like, hey, critique Virgil Abloh because there are flaws in that thinking. Critique Johnny Ive. Because like there are a lot of flaws in that thinking. But if you can't critique those people, you can't see past them. And we have to see past some of these current realities so that there is some new future to actually get to. The worst— you know what the worst part of stagnation is?

It's boring. It's we're living the same life that we lived 50 years ago. There's nothing worse than that. Speaker A: Yes. Speaker B: And the best part about progress It's that it's genuinely fun. Like, it's a genuinely good way to live life is to improve because now you have to deal with new sets of realities. And that's fundamental. That's just like, that's what we're here to do, like, deal with new fundamental realities. But you have to make those. Speaker A: Reggie James, thank you very much. Speaker B: Thank you. Speaker A: Thanks, guys.

Thanks for coming. We'll see you out in the amphitheater.