August 26, 2025 • 52 mins
Why does it feel like the main voices dominating tech today are basically super villains? Billionaires who don’t care if the world gets worse, just as long as they get a little richer.
We hear them everywhere— their bad ideas, their grievances are all amplified.
Anil Dash, one of the internet’s earliest voices, says it didn’t used to be this way. He's been a highly visible and impactful techie, writer, and entrepreneur for decades. In this thoughtful, wide-ranging, and optimistic interview, he talks with Bridget about how fun and personal the early Internet was, why tech bros keep making it worse, and how we can create a better Internet that once again centers fun, compassion, and human connection.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The whole Internet is made of people, and I think
it's easy to forget that because we've been taught these
myths that it is all these giant corporations, also the
myth of like these billionaire founders, and it's like, now
those dudes are sitting on top of work that regular
folks made.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
There are no Girls on the Internet. As a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm Bridget Todd, and this
is there are no girls on the Internet. Why does
it feel like the main voices dominating tech today are
basically supervillains, billionaires who don't care if the world gets worse,
(00:45):
just so long as they get a little bit richer.
We hear them absolutely everywhere. They're bad ideas, they're grievances.
It's all amplified like a handful of angry rich dudes
are the only ones who matter. But we know those
are not the only people shaping tech, because there are brilliant, diverse,
ethical creators who have been overlooked or outright erased or
(01:06):
silenced in favor of the loudest, most morally bankrupt, and
often wrongest voices. Writer and entrepreneur and Neil Dash one
of the internet's earliest OG voices says it didn't used
to be this way. Neil, thank you so much for
being here. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
So you were one of the first wave of very
cool tech people people like you. I'm not even kidding
or why I wanted to be in tech in the
first place.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Oh wow, that's really kind.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
And so as one of the OG like wave of bloggers,
what was it like, Like, what do you miss about
this earlier iteration of the Internet.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Oh, you know that, I'm always cautious about good old days,
but it was something special in terms of we knew
that it was genuinely new, Like we knew that, you know,
the early days of the social web, that this was
something everybody was going to be doing, and that those
of us that we're making friends, we could see that like, oh,
(02:08):
pretty soon everybody is going to be making friends online
and connecting, and that you know, that idea of like
sharing photos with somebody online with something and everybody was
going to be doing.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
And that seemed.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Wild in like nineteen ninety nine or two thousand.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
What do you think has changed since then?
Speaker 1 (02:28):
I think every I think all of the horrible things
that we encountered everybody else has too, you know, so
that the sense of like you know, before we had
the word catfishing that was around, and and even just
the awkward parts, like even the stuff that's just not
like hugely terrible, but the you know, the ordinary indignities,
(02:51):
like the things where you have that you know, frustration
of I wish I didn't have to see that person
in my timeline, or I wish that I could just
get a break from seeing you know, doom scrolling or whatever.
You know, that stuff all existed in its own basic
way even fifteen years ago, twenty years ago, a long
(03:12):
time ago, and and then you could see again like
this is something we're all going to be dealing with
on a daily basis, and that inevitability, I think was
a big part of what we had hoped maybe we
would have a solution for before now.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
That is a story we tell often on this show.
How the I like, how you use the word like
everyday in dignities, these things that you know, us a
particular group is experiencing, and it's like kind of a
canary and a coal mine where it's like this is
going to be the norm for everybody who's online one
day if we don't take this serious, or we don't
do something about this, or we don't change this, and
(03:48):
then it just becomes what it feels like to be online.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Oh for sure.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Yeah, I mean I think and that's you know, the
classic stories. Obviously, anybody in any marginalized group could see,
you know, this is how we're being targeted or or
this is how we bonded together and how we formed
our communities to protect each other or just to celebrate
each other, right in the positive sense.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
And so you could.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
See that these were these just ways of being that
we're going to be inevitable, that we're going to be ubiquitous.
And then you know it just it took in some
way so much longer to become a common knowledge. You know,
you would think, okay, this will be instant any day. Now,
(04:32):
everybody's going to have really good tools to like, you know,
protect themselves, or everybody's going to understand how joyous it
is to find your people online and to make these connections.
And you know, a day would go by, and a
month would go by, and a year would go by,
and a decade would go by, and then you would
(04:52):
still not have good tools or you would still not
have a way of discovering I mean, the example I
always think of was this, This is sort of a
minor one, but there were photo sharing apps in by
like two thousand and two or two thousand and three
that were pretty good. Before that, you would have to
like literally scan like film photos, right, And then people
(05:15):
were like, no, there's digital cameras. We're going to put
these online. And some of the early ones were called
Photoonet and Flicker, and those are the first ones. I
felt like, oh, no, you know, you have communities online.
And pretty soon they realized, wait, people are tagging locations
on these and even some of these cameras actually know
your location, like they had GPS by that time, and
(05:37):
so like, no, we got to take that out because
people are going to stock each other.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
It's going to be creepy.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
And I think Flicker was the first one, and it
was like really the first like kind of social network
around photos that felt like, you know, like what we
all do on Instagram every day now. And so they're like, Nope,
we're going to take out location. We can't have people
creeping on each other, and we're going to do the
right thing. And this is literally twenty plus years ago
they figured out the right thing to do. And I
(06:03):
kid you not. Literally every year since then, somebody has
launched a new photo sharing app that includes the location
from the photos that it gets from your camera and
does not take the location out. And then somebody like
creeps on somebody else and they realize, oh gosh, we
should take the location out. And it's like groundhog Day,
Like nobody ever learns this lesson, and it's always some
(06:26):
dude who's like, gosh, you know, why wouldn't I want
my location out there? I didn't understand, and and I
just like every time, I'm like, you know, there is
like this is a lesson that we have learned, Like
this you can just you could just look like you
could just google it. It gets out there, and and
I'm always like, you know, this time, for.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Sure they're going to learn. And in the twentieth straight
year that it happened, I was like, no, they're just
never going.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
To learn, believe it or not. E Neil and I
were talking before or Instagram's disastrous rollout of an opt
in location sharing feature. So when you posted a photo
on Instagram, if you opt in, your location would automatically
show up on a map, and the public reaction to
this was not good. Instagram really could not have handled
(07:17):
it worse. And the overwhelming question I was left with
was who exactly was asking for this feature from Instagram
in the first place. We know how this story ends,
and people just don't learn. That's something that I really
appreciated about your work is that I read your blog
and oftentimes you're like ask stepping back and asking the
question of do we actually want this? Or is anybody
(07:39):
asking for this thing? Like, is this new tech thing
that everybody is trying to make us think is going
to be great? Does anybody want this? Who was asking
for this? That's a question. I feel like we could
benefit from asking a little bit more. Is this actually
serving a need that somebody has articulated?
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Yeah, I'm you know, I'm hoping. And the thing is, like,
I love tech. You know, I've been a nerd my
whole life, and I I was lucky I got a
you know, a computer when I was a kid.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
And this is back in the.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Eighties when that was rare, and and you know, my
my my folks were as immigrants, they were just like
you know, scraping by and saving for us to get
a computer, and so I was really appreciative. So I
really I still feel lucky, like I can get a,
you know, a new phone every couple of years, and
I I geek out about it, like I'm not, you know,
I couldn't be more protect but I also am like
(08:26):
it does have to be for something, like it's not
just for its own sake. And so part of the
reason I'm I'm you know, skeptical or critical of it
is because I like it, right, Like I don't want
it to just be mindless, because I like to take
it apart. I like to see how it works like that.
That's part of appreciating it, you know. And I think
it's sort of like, you know, like like enjoying a
(08:50):
good meal, Like you don't just shovel it in your face,
right like you know, You're like, I want to taste it,
you know, or or you know, like anything that's really
great that you love, you sort of want to sit
there and enjoy, like you almost are like you know,
whatever you're at a concert, You're like, I don't want
it to be over, you know, or a great movie,
And and I think that's kind of it is like
that that mindlessness around the tech is this, I don't
(09:15):
think they even love it, and and so I think
that's some of what I'm so you know, resentful over
sometimes is some of these folks making the terrible tech
that that that's creepy or that does terrible things with
your data, or that's just thoughtless, that makes these communities
that are that people are being horrible to each other
(09:36):
on I think that people making it don't love tech,
like I think that's how you end up there. And
I'm very I am resentful of it because I'm like,
you know what you're You're lucky to get to do this.
I feel lucky to get to do this, to be
making you know, even still today, like I get to
make I have a website I've been working on for
twenty five plus years. I get to write stuff on
(09:58):
the weekends. I still tinker it, like I still am
messing with like the style of it and the designs.
It's like, you know, ten people looking at it's like
nobody looking at it. And I still feel lucky to
get to do it. And you know, I think these
people that get one hundred million dollars to make an app,
I think they take it for granted they don't feel lucky.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
To get to do it, And Neil says, there used
to be a time where the decent, thoughtful people in
tech had an easier time rising to the top and
taking up space. But then game the tycoons. They erased
the work of the smarter, more diverse creators and kind
of convinced us that technology only happens at a handful
of giant companies made by a handful of tech tycoons,
(10:40):
and none of that. And Eil says, it's true. So
what changed? How did we get here? What do you
think happened to get us to this point?
Speaker 1 (10:53):
I mean, there's so many things. I mean the easy
answer is, you know, it became the biggest industry in
the world, right and it used to be a place
for hobbyists, and you know that that's the easy answer.
It's it's a true answer, but but it sort of
mirrors so.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Many other things.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
You know, I'm a big music fan, and I always look
at that as one example, right, which is, you know,
I think anybody who loves music can think of a
undersung artist that they love, like a local indie artist
or or even you know, live in New York City,
and I can go on a subway platform and see
somebody who blows me away, you know, just an incredible voice,
(11:31):
and you're just like, wow, this person. You know, everybody
in the world should hear them. And you're like, they're
they're a better singer than somebody I can hear, you know,
on the radio or something. And and and so you know,
it's not always fair, like the it's not mapping almost
to talent, right or skill and and and so.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Some of that is, like I said, it's just commercialism.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
It's just like there's the maturity of an industry is
there's going to be a handful of giant companies. But
I think it's also familiar, right. I do use the
food analogy a lot, which is that we have a
you know, a handful of giant fast food tech companies,
you know, and you know, if I'm in the airport,
(12:15):
I'm gonna have McDonald's and it's fine, you know what
I mean, But I'm not having that every meal, you know,
like I would not feel good to have that every meal.
And you know, the answer that people are familiar with
is like, okay, well, if you don't like McDonald's, have
Burger King. It's like that is not the answer. Right,
You've got to have a home cooked meal, and you've
(12:35):
got to have your family recipes, and you've got to
have your memories of sitting down to a meal with
your loved ones, right, And that the how many of
the best meals or the best memories of your life
are in the kitchen with your family, right. And it's
not even sitting down to the meal. It was in
the kitchen cooking, right. And I think about that and tech,
(12:58):
which is that I have so many of the best
memories of my technical life building stuff with people that
I care about that have become my closest friends. I'm
not kidding, it's the truth, right, is that I can remember,
you know, building a website, building an app with people
that I genuinely love that we were bonded by. Like
(13:21):
we're going to put something out in the world, and
it might not be something that you know a billion
people use, but it is something that we put our
hearts into and that we care about, and we know
we're going to find other people who care about it.
I mean, I had this experience as we record this
over the weekend, and I had built an app with
a friend of mine, geinutupany that was about your social
(13:45):
media activity, like how to make it more meaningful. And
this was a decade ago and we had to shut
it down, like it didn't succeed as a business because
you were trying to get your data from Twitter and
Instagram and they wouldn't let us keep getting to data
back then, like they you know, they were like lock
that down. And you know, it was bittersweet, like we
tried to make go of it, didn't succeed. I don't
(14:06):
you know, I'm not lamenting that too much. And over
the weekend I got this message on blue Sky that
a developer had built a tribute to it using blue
Sky where he was doing the same kind of analytics
that we had done for Twitter using blue Sky and
our app was called think Up and he's like, this
(14:26):
is my tribute to think Up and I I was
so touched, like I genuinely got choked up. And I
was just like, somebody remember the app that we made,
you know, this is ten years ago, and made like
his own version of it and sent me the link
and it just out of the blue, you know, and
somebody remembers what you made. And that was like you know,
(14:48):
there's no that's not a you know, that's not an
app that anybody's still running. That is not something that
you know, ever got an IPO or got acquir by
anybody like. That's not something that has any of the
things that people think of as a success in tech.
But it had heart and it was something that evidently
the community meant something to people, you know. And so
(15:10):
I think people don't think of the Internet as that thing,
but that is what the Internet mostly is. Most communities
on the Internet are healthy, and people don't want to
believe that because they see these giant ones that are
full of toxic behavior, that are full of this unhealthiness.
Most of the communities that have ever existed on the
Internet are healthy. Most of the websites that ever existed
on the Internet were made by a person for people
(15:33):
that they knew, right. Most of the meals are home cooked,
and so I think that's something that people really forget,
and I think people could tell that that wasn't a
made with love by people that cared about each other,
for a community that cared about each other. And that's
what most of the Internet has been for most of
its history.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
And there is no reason it cannot be that.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Again, that's such a good reminder of how of the
legacy of people who cared about making thoughtful shit online,
Like we really owned the Internet for a while there,
and even if it doesn't seem like it today, Like
that's real.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Let's take a quick break.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
At our back and Neila's right, it's very easy to
fall for false nostalgia for the early days of the Internet,
which definitely had its problems, but y'all, it was also
so much fun. Remember the first time you stumbled upon
a weird little website or a weird pocket of the
Internet that made no sense but you loved for some reason,
(16:43):
Like websites that were just weird little flash cartoons. There
was a time in my life where the funniest thing
in the whole world to me was a loop of
the actor Sean Commery from the movie Finding Forrester saying
you're the man now dog for some reason, and I
don't know, it was stupid, but it was great, and
somehow it was ours. I was sort of taking a
(17:07):
trip down memory lane as you were speaking about what
it felt like to stumble upon a website or a
little pocket of the Internet where you felt your people
were showing up there and it felt good or you
were excited about something.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
And I feel like, you know, we've all had that,
Like it doesn't take much to prompt people about what
they remember of the good stuff, you know, And there's
so many examples.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
I was watching.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
A you know, a YouTube video over the weekend and
it was just like about a film or something, and
the woman who was hosting it just offhandedly mentioned making
a MySpace site, you know, back in the day. And
she just sort of said it like in passing, and
you know, it's thirty forty million people had made a
MySpace site back and they were all coders, right, like
(17:55):
they had to do code to do that. And like
those folks were all still around like they did like
get disappeared, you know what I mean, Like like they
didn't get fano snapped, Like they're still all here, and
and so like there is still a latent cultural memory
of like I made the Internet, Like all those people
made the Internet and they know how to do it.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
They still got the ability to do it, like they
can come back.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
And so I think that part of like the Internet
is something we make, not just something that happens to us.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
I think is is.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Still there and and you know, it doesn't mean that
we all have to become coders or something. I just
think the sense of that it could be something that
is good to us and good for us, that that
feels a little bit more homegrown and that is not
inflicted upon us. I think that is something that we
could have a you know, a cultural memory of and
(18:46):
that that can prompt us to ask more of it, right,
that that can help us believe that it doesn't have
to be, like I said, as toxic as it's become,
or as extractive as it's become, or that it's going
to constantly be surveiled us or taking our data or
doing things without our consent. I mean, I think that's
one of those words that I just keep coming back
(19:07):
to over and over, especially in the sort of AI
era is.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Consent. You know, I think we just do.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Not hear that word in an internet or technology context
nearly often enough, and it is the fundamental framing that
we really should be thinking about and so many of
our interactions with technology.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
I would argue that there's like a cultural dynamic now
where when you show up to a no online platform
or something that there's just an understanding that you don't
there is no consent, Like this is the cost of
using it, Like, if you want to, you know, post
your pictures, you have to also share your location with
a million people that you don't know. Like I think
that we have a warmpth relationship where it's like, oh,
(19:53):
the tech companies and the people that run them get
to make all the decisions that can take whatever they
want from me. They can benefit from what they take
however they want. And i' don't got to say it.
If I don't like it, don't show up online, don't
use these platforms. We should be able to expect more,
and in fact, I think we deserve more.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Absolutely, it's coercive, it's manipulative. I mean, I think, you
know the sort of the classic example is the you know,
at the beginning of the social network, would sucker putting
up the pictures of you know, all these women around
the campus at Harvard that he's he's started rating and
and you know those images are not gathered with consent either, right,
(20:28):
and and the you know I say this is like,
you know, I've been the CEO of a of a
tech company multiple times in my career, and one of
the things you do is you created terms of service, right,
and you know, there's very little case law establishing whether
terms of services are actually enforceable at all. And one
(20:54):
of the reasons why is almost every terms of service,
this is a little secret to tell you, as somebody
who's been on the hook for these, almost all these
terms of service are basically we even change this at
any time.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
I'm like, where they do that at? Like what kind
of contract?
Speaker 1 (21:13):
What? How do I've never signed anything in my life
that's like and we might just change it, like what
what is that?
Speaker 3 (21:23):
And and if we.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Change it, we might let you know, maybe maybe maybe
maybe okay.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Like that's not a thing.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
That is not a thing.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
There's no contract in the world that works like that.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
That's not a thing.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
And and like I'm sorry, I'm just like, you know,
and like I said, I've written some of those, so
I probably should, you know, have some.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Feelings about it.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
But I just every time we put one of those out,
I was like, I don't know, I don't know about this,
And so we try to you know, and fairness, like
I tried to be very thoughtful about that, and we
always did, you know, advanced notice of changes on other
companies that I you know, it.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
Was leading, but I think.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
It's it's tough because that is the overwriting principle for
all these platforms. And I remember Facebook used to have
a thing. People won't remember this because this is more
than ten years ago. Facebook used to have a thing
where they would have a like a governing council where
people could weigh in on terms of service change, right,
(22:34):
and they're like, if more than thirty percent of our
users don't like this, we're not going to do it, right.
And it was like this, like, you know, you get
to vote, and it never happened, like they never put
anything up to a vote. Of course they didn't, right
and then, and this always reminded me of the I'm
a real nerd, but at the beginning of Star Wars,
(22:55):
the first one a New Hope, they're they're like, you know,
the empresses all the Senate.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
It's like the first thing he does.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
They're like, now that we have the Death Star, we
don't need to worry about that anymore. And literally, like
you know, Zuckerberg is like, yeah, yeah, we're not doing
the voting on the terms of service thing anymore.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
That's like the emperors all dissolved the Senate.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
So I just think about, like they stop the pretense
that you.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Could even vote on the terms of service, and and.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
I'm like, why did they even bother going to right?
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Right?
Speaker 1 (23:27):
They can change it at any time on their own unilaterally.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
What are you going to do? Leave Facebook?
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Right?
Speaker 1 (23:33):
And I think that's the other part is like even
if there were because people say, well, why don't you
close your account? And and you know, I think about
this where like, you know, I have family. My families
were one of the most rural parts of India, and
you know, the only reasonable way to communicate with them
is what's happened?
Speaker 3 (23:50):
You know that?
Speaker 1 (23:51):
And what am I going to not talk to my cousins? Right,
like not be in touch with my family? That that
is too much coercive power, an absurd thing to dangle
over somebody's head. Is like you're not going to talk
to your family again? That's a I think it's a
violation of the Geneva Conventions of torture right to inflict
(24:14):
on somebody. So no, there actually isn't a way to
opt out of the terms of service, Like you are
not going to disconnect people from their world, from their
livelihood from their families. And when I say livelihood, I
literally mean it. Like in the case of my family,
they are in a very rural area and they're rice farmers,
and they're in the rice patty and so they use
(24:35):
what's app to get the price of rice at the
market that is often twelve hours away where they trade
their rice, and so that is a you know, livelihood
sustaining information path for them. They're not going to be like,
we don't like the terms of service, therefore we're not
trading rice this season, right, So, like these are not
(24:56):
like I don't think of most Americans. There are people
in the wealthy world world really understand the level of
infrastructure that these things present for the rest of the world.
But like, what are they going to say, No, we
read the terms of service and we're not going to
really agree to this change, you know. And so I
think those things are like these legal contracts are are
functioning as government for billions of people around the world,
(25:20):
and that level of course of power, we have to
have some kind of corrective around, and that's not the
place for these companies to be playing. That's a completely
different thing than they're supposed to be. And what we
used to have back in the day was we would
make a you know, at what we call it a
technical level, an open standard, and this is what like,
(25:42):
you know, on the Internet, we just have HTML and
that's what we can make a web page and anybody
can make a web page, and we would make these
systems work together. And even like podcasts, right, so like
a podcast or like listen to this podcast and whatever
app you want, great, so I can listen to this.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
On all my different devices.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
And that's what the you know, the WhatsApps or even
the facebooks or the Instagrams of the world should be, like,
use this on whatever app or whatever platform you want.
And if we have those kinds of systems, then they
don't have that same course of power, and we can
sort of pick and choose which companies and which platforms
we want to work with. That's how the Internet was
supposed to work. That starts to have that you know,
(26:17):
that corrective power where we can you know, make choices
about what we're doing and be a little bit less,
you know, getting our arms twisted.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
We got to talk about this because you know how
at the end of every episode of this very podcast,
I say, listen to there are no girls on the internet,
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts. Truly, this is not just something I say.
It means something something kind of revolutionary. Actually, as a
Neil puts it, being able to say or wherever you
get your podcasts is a radical statement because what it
(26:50):
represents is the triumph of exactly the kind of technology
that's supposed to be impossible, open empowering technology that's not
owned by any one company, that can't be controlled by
anyone company, and that allows people to have ownership over
their work and their relationship with their audience. Honestly, that
dynamic is why I became a podcaster in the first place.
(27:10):
I'm so glad you brought up that example. This is
like a pet thing for me as a podcaster. But
I did read your piece about how you know at
the end of every podcast, I say like get it
wherever you find your podcasts, and you're you talked about
how it's like a radical it's like a quietly radical
thing to say that is ubiquitous in the podcast space,
and that it is how technology is meant to be, right,
(27:31):
Like it's empowering that it's not owned by one company,
and it can't be controlled by any one company. You know,
that's not the ownership model. And I don't know something
about that is very empowering that if let's say, for
whatever reason, like I had beep with Spotify, Spotify alone
could not like end this podcast. That's empowering.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Yes, it's huge, and you know it's funny too, because
that's why you also don't hear people, you know, fussing
about like, oh, you know, why is my podcast being censored?
And like and I and I can't go up the
podcast charts, right because because anybody can just make a
podcast and put it out there, and and and so
it's it's the way it's supposed to work, right, and
(28:14):
and I think that's a really powerful thing. And it
also proves that it can work, like these open systems
can work. And I think that the thing people that
are skeptical understandably say, well, you have to have a
big company, because that's the only way that you're going
to get in front of millions of people or billions
of people. It has to be you know, it takes
this huge infrastructure and these giant companies to really reach
(28:37):
a big audience and to you know, sustain something and
and you know, I understand why they feel that way,
because that's what they've seen from the you know, youtubes
of the world and the Instagrams of the world. And
then it's so helpful to have these counterexamples, which is like, no, no, no,
there are these amazing you know platforms, these amazing media
you know examples that we can point to that are
(28:59):
as good as anything out there, that are using open
systems and that are easy and that we listen to
every day. And and that's how the Internet was supposed
to work. And they're still vibrant and they're still active.
And I think even you know, the rise of email
newsletters in the last several years, where everybody's you know,
everybody know is subscribing to a couple and again that's
just a totally open system that, like email is decades
(29:20):
old and still works every day, and I read them
every day, you know, like friends write them. And I
think those are just great reminders that like these you know,
technical architectures of the Internet were built really really wisely,
and they have adapted so much and evolved so much.
And also they've been constantly growing too. They're not stuck
(29:40):
where they were in like the eighties or the nineties,
Like they've continued to evolve. And I think one of
the things that's so fun and interesting too is they're
like they're just made by regular people, you know, the
the like podcasts, like a lot of the people that
pioneered them. There's a technologist State Whiner, who was one
of the first people that created the spec and you know,
(30:03):
he's like just a guy who lives here in New
York and he's a Mets fan. And like one of
the people that helped, uh create it, that speck was
Aaron Schwartz, who was a real pioneer of this stuff.
And you know, uh, he was a friend and I
missing me passed away, you know, more than a decade ago,
and and and and you know, just to have like
(30:23):
these people who are human and and pains in the
ass and you know, and and creative and and they're
not companies, you know what I mean, They're not billion
billion dollar companies, and they're not global titans.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
They're just you know humans.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
I think that that's just part of it too, is
that people can create things that have that kind of
impact and and so I think that that really sort
of proves out the every part of it, Like we
can be people that make podcasts, we can be people
that make the technology that makes podcasts. You know, we
can make the whole thing, the whole way down. The
(31:00):
whole Internet is made of people. And I think it's
easy to forget that because we've been taught these myths
that it is all these giant corporations and that there
is a you know, also the myth of like these uh,
you know, these billionaire founders. And it's like, now those
dudes are sitting on top of work that regular folks
made and and and their platforms exist because of the
(31:22):
regular people on them. And I think that's a real
important story to keep repeating.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Oh God, I have so much to say. First of all,
my first ever job in podcasting was on a podcast
that Aaron Schwartz was the co founder of called The
Flaming Sort of Justice. It was all about like using
the power of the Internet to tell like social justice
stories with all the sort of grandeur of David and
Goliath myths, right like uh, And it was back on
(31:51):
the early early early days of podcasting, so like nobody
knew what the fuck we were doing. We were like
it just was. But it was so fun to be
in a space where, you know, we were just making
something and like it didn't really if we didn't really
have the idea in our head that it super mattered
how many people listen. Like today, when I put a
podcast out, I'm like, how many downloads did it get? Right?
That is, I didn't have the wherewithal to like really
(32:13):
internalize that as a metric that I needed to be
thinking about. It was just such a fun time, And
you know, I think this is like one of the
reasons why I am. I think you're such an interesting
person in the space, because you really do see the
way that it's not that that tech is not just
like building stuff. It's also about culture and policy and
art and expression and how humans exist and fit with
(32:35):
one another. Do you feel like that's an ethos that
we kind of are losing even though we are keeping
it alive and around, but that like it becomes harder
to see for all of those parts.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Yes, and no.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
What I will say is I think in an absolute number,
more people believe in technology with the soul than ever.
The challenge is there's so many more billions of people
online that it gets lost to the noise, right, but
the the communities of people who are trying to build
(33:07):
good tech or who are building fun weird art projects online,
or who are trying to you know, have some soul
and what they're doing when they put stuff up on
the internet. It is more people all over the world
doing that than was there five years ago, or ten
years ago or twenty five years ago. But there's so
(33:29):
much other noise right that it can get lost or
it can get overshadowed. And so I think the challenge
is for all of us to find each other and
to amplify each other, and to lift each other up,
and to remind each other that it's there, you know,
despite the rest of it, the cacophony of the rest
of it. But the actual number of people doing it,
(33:53):
I think is bigger than it's ever been. And you know,
that's a hard balance to strike because I think, you know,
back in the day, that's all there was, and so
it had an outsized presence. And you know, I think
there's so many analogies of like.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
Like I said, I you know, being a music fan.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
I live on the Lower East Side, and and you know,
there was a time when there was a music scene
that was like you know these you know, the indie
punk scene and early hip hop and and you know
the sort of you had to really really love that
music those music scenes to be there, and because there
was zero money in it, right, Like you know, there
was nobody except the people in that club with you,
(34:36):
and and talking to people who are like, we still
have altars in the neighborhood who were there then, and
and talking to those folks and they're just like, you know,
you had to really believe and and they still love
the music, right and and so they're still listening to
the music, and they still are in touch with some
(34:57):
of those artists who were there for the music then.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
And so they're not mad that hip hop is global.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
They're not mad that everybody knows what happened with those
punk artists, right, And you know, they're not upset that
like I was, you know, talking to one of the
folks who's in Blondie, that was one of the bands
that broke out from CBGB's on the Lower East Side.
They're not mad that everybody knows those songs. But they
still have it there, right, And they still have it
(35:26):
in that scene, And I think that's kind of it
is like to hold true to you know, this was
a scene, right, The Internet was a scene, and so
as much does any music scene or art scene or
anything else, and say like this still exists. There is
still a community for people that want to make the Internet,
you know, with their hints right and be homegrown. And
we have to nurture that and remind each other of that.
(35:48):
But I am so heartened by seeing you know, young
creators or early career creators, or you know, people of
any age but that are new to the sort of
human Internet coming in.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
Oh, I didn't know.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
This was here because I was you know, in the
normal Internet that everybody else is on it. That's that's you know,
louder and more vibrant or more.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
Visible to people.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
And so I think just reminding each other that there
is still that that human part there, I think is
really key. But I don't think it's ever gone away,
you know, I don't think it's ever been silenced. And
you know, there's so many examples even of just like
you know, take something like Craigslist, right, like you can't
(36:32):
kill it, you know, like cockroach website, like you can't
kill it, and and and you know it's never changed
and it's still there and they totally totally investags of
the human Internet. But like you know next door, sure,
you know Facebook, Marketplace, sure, but you can't kill Craigslist.
And I think that's something that sort of epitomizes that,
(36:53):
which is like this is like the equivalent of that
for you know, the people powered Internet is there are
people just making these cool, little weird things that are
human and these little forums and these old you know,
these little art projects and all those things.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
I think that's still there.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
And so I think that's part of what I want to,
you know, really help people discover and remember is that
it's all around and and and then how do you
help people find it when all they've known is the same.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
Five apps on their phone for all the time they've
been online.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
More after a quick break, let's get right back into it.
I don't think I need to tell anybody that things
feel especially bleak right now. And if you're anything like me,
maybe you have to fight the feeling that nothing good
(37:49):
will ever happen again. But what if we're actually on
the edge of something better. People are sick of algorithms,
they're sick of AI slop, sick of tech leaders, who
clearly don't care. So what if all that frustration, everything
we're fed up with could spark something new You've talked
about or written about how it kind of feels like
we're in two thousand and four again, We're like a
(38:12):
cool sort of wave of people of exactly what you're
talking about could be right around the corner. Do you
still feel that way?
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Yeah, a little bit. I mean it's still fragile, right.
I don't want to be, you know, a polyandnat about it. Like,
I don't think it's like all of a sudden, everybody's
going to get back to building a Geocity's website again.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
But I think I'm very cautious.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
I don't believe in too much nostalgia, Like I don't
think there's a good old days. I think the old
days were bad in their own way, But I think
how do you make something that you excitedly look forward
to instead of like what are we fearfully running away from?
And the things that were positive about that old Internet
in terms of it being wide open and there being
(39:01):
a chance for people to build new things that are
wide open, I think that is true again, and that
for people who may not have been you know, maybe
on the Internet then, or paying attention then, or didn't
understand what was wide open then. I think the way
to articulate what the two thousand and four Internet was
about was there was no dominant search engine. There was
(39:23):
no dominant photo sharing, there was no dominant video site,
there was no dominant social network.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
There was no set pattern.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
Of all the tools and the apps we use every day.
And if you think about your behaviors right now, you
very likely swipe through the same three or four or
five apps on your phone all day, every day, and
you probably have been for the last many years. And
you know, maybe you've added one app in the last
couple of years, you know, and within those apps there's
(39:55):
a feed that is largely chosen for you by an
algorithm that you cannot see. And that has been true
for the majority people on the Internet since about two
thousand and four or five. And that's when the majority
of people in the world came online. And you know,
there are some of us who are as old as
(40:17):
I am who can remember the Internet before that, and
like I said, it's not good old days. There were
a lot of bad things about that Internet, but one
of the things that had a lot of potential. There
was people building other experiences, and especially people who were
not giant corporations building some of those other experiences. And
so I think that is the thing that is up
(40:38):
for grabs right now because we have seen this extraordinary
thing happen which one I could not fathom, which is
that you know, the biggest search engine in the world
making their search worse voluntarily. Well that's I didn't see
that coming.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Didn't have that on the Bingo card.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
No, I mean like the biggest own goal like maybe
in the history of the Internet, Like that's why. And
then and then you know, people already being fed up
with with you know, Facebook and their feed there like okay, sure,
and I think fatigue with feeds in general, I think
people are kind of over it. You know, they know
that they're tired of swiping and scrolling, like they kind
(41:17):
of burn out on that and feel a little bit
like this is a lot of empty calories for my brain.
Like I think people are very aware of that and
ready for something else. And then even just like other behaviors,
I think people are really ready to push back on
you know, the AI slop. I think on a number
of grounds. One is they don't like seeing, you know,
(41:40):
their elder relative's brains cooked by obviously made up stuff.
I think they don't like seeing their favorite artists having
their things taken without consent. I think they have a
lot of ambivalence about, you know, everything from the environmental
impacts to the other things that are happening around AI.
I think all that stuff has only raise the temperature
(42:01):
about you know, some of these misgivings and then just
being ready for something new, you know, I mean, I
think sort of saying like where is the good stuff?
Whereas the things that I like that I feel positive about.
All that stuff just sort of primes us for maybe
there's going to be something new and that you know,
being in this business a long time and being in
(42:22):
the tech space a long time, you can just sort
of sense it. You can feel it when there's going
to be you know, new players or new interests arising,
and so all of that coming together along with As
a nerd, I see so many new technical capabilities that
we haven't seen in a generation. And you know, I
(42:45):
won't nerd out too much, but just the things that
are available to programmers to build with feel like building
blocks that we haven't seen since you know, a generation ago,
and that's exciting to me. Like as a coder, I'm
playing with things. You know, some of it is around
the edges of the AI stuff, but just like you know,
technical things about how we can like share data and
(43:06):
get people to be able to collaborate together. I'm like,
oh wow, there's so many creative tools that we can
build there. And I see all those building blocks that
I just think, Man, somebody is going to fit these
together in a new way, and all of a sudden,
like the creative people of the world are going to
be inventing new stuff.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
So it sounds like when you think of the future
of tech, you're actually quite optimistic and hopeful.
Speaker 3 (43:26):
I am, I am. I can't not be.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
And one is I have to be just for my
mental well being, like you know, you can't it can't.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
I can't help but be. But also.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
I think of, you know, as America, I think of
the rest of the world, especially Global South, and they
are really ready to be free from the American centric Internet.
It's very obvious, very obvious for all the you know,
policy reasons and all the obvious reasons, and and that's
what the Internet wants to be it was always designed
(43:58):
to be decentralized, and so there's going to be innovation there.
And then I think the creatives of the world and
they're saying, wow, these platforms are like, like I said,
taking my stuff without consent for AI, or they're you know,
not letting me win through the algorithm and people can't
discover my content or all the other things. They're gonna say, well,
maybe I should have my own site or I should
have my own place for my content. So the creatives
(44:20):
of the world are going that way. That's another signal.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
And you know, and on and on.
Speaker 1 (44:25):
There's all these different things that are sort of pushing
towards people having more agency and autonomy and control. That's
just a signal, you know what I mean. I don't
need to know where it's headed to know that it's
going somewhere. And I just love that energy. I just
love seeing that happen. And for me, I'm like, I'm
you know, I'm like a middle aged dad. I'm washed,
(44:45):
like I'm not supposed to be the one that knows.
I just like I just need to follow, like I'm
excited to see it. I should be, you know, I
should be the one that's just rooting for it and
helping it happen. I like being I like being the
elder statesman of it now, like I had the chance
to be, you know, at the forefront of it a
(45:06):
generation ago. I'm I'm excited to be the one who's
wild buy what the next generation comes up with.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
Okay, Well, that brings me to my last question, which
is sort of a wild card speaking of creative, sort
of leading the way you and I are both big
print superman, I have to ask, like, what is it
about Prince that gets you that like draws you in.
Speaker 3 (45:27):
Oh, there's so many things. I mean, that's you know,
that's a big question. I think.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
I think there's a couple of parts, you know. I
think he touches on so many of the themes that
we've talked about. I think one is he comes from
a scene, a community, right the Twin Cities Minneapolis, you know,
especially you know, the black music community in the Twin
Cities is so specific of a place where you know,
they they were grounded in history, right, so they have
(45:55):
you know, this this blues music scene and the jazz
music scene that his parents were part of and that
they you know, they all sort of support each other
in I think that part is what sort of informs
his work. And I think that's sort of it's like
so tied to place and obviously like you know you
have that, you know his dad was, you know, part
of the great migration comes from that blues tradition in Louisiana.
(46:17):
I think that part you see suffuse through his music.
I think that is well, I mean it's the greatest
American music tradition, right, So like that's this long history
and then you take what he.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
Does with it and like his pure cohort.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
Right, So he's born in summer of fifty eight, so
is Michael Jackson, right, so is Madonna? Like this is
this like incredible through line.
Speaker 3 (46:39):
And then he is.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
A technologist through and through right. The reason he's able
to record his own records is he learns to run
an automated console when he's a teenager, which is cutting
edge technology at that time. He's the first to have
the Lynn lm One drum machine, which is the first
to have a digital sample of drums, which is his
signature sound of Birth of the Minneapolis Sound is a
(47:02):
story of technology. He tweaks that drum machine beyond its parameters,
of what it's supposed to do. The reason that when
you hear something at nineteen ninety nine or when doves
Cry has a unique sound that nobody had heard on
the radio before, is he's tuning a drum machine past
what it's supposed to be able to do, because he
is literally programming a computer to go beyond its limits.
(47:24):
And that is his innovation as a technologist. Right. That's
like he had, you know, the new iPhone.
Speaker 3 (47:30):
Before it drops.
Speaker 4 (47:31):
That's that's literally what he's doing, and and and then
on and on into the Internet era right where he
pre Internet, right pre web. He's got a CD ROM
when that was cutting edge to deliver an interactive experience,
right around the time that he starts to fight for
control of his master recordings.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
And then you know, in.
Speaker 1 (47:50):
The Twin Cities, the first Internet service provider ISP for
dial up access called didstream was created by engineers who
worked at Paisley Park at his So the Internet access
in the Twin Cities comes through his studio right by
people who work for prints, and you know, it's just
like the beating heart of all innovations, or it goes
(48:13):
through there, and then you know he pioneers having everything
that we look at now, whether it's a Patreon or
a Kickstarter. Like he has a membership fan club, he
has his own website. In fact, his first website in
nineteen ninety five is so early that he had to
have an instruction page explaining how to put a credit
card into the field for buying a CD from it
(48:34):
because he was selling CDs on his website before Amazon.
Was Wow, that's how early he was. The Next year
he does a crowdfunding for CDs on his website, and
that is.
Speaker 3 (48:46):
I want to say, eleven.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
Years before Kickstarter existed. Something like, wow, long time, long
time before, and on and on and on. Right, he
does a you know, a membership club in two thousand
and one, two thousand and two. That's like a Patreon now, right,
where the fans get first access to tickets. We got
to go to his his pre shows and you know,
(49:10):
his sound checks for his concerts because we were members
of the fan clubs. I have to sit you know,
a row away from him in the audience when he
was playing at Lincoln Center. You know, it's just unbelievable,
like the amount of access and that was because he
was on there. He was in the AOL chat rooms
with us in the early nineties, you know, and.
Speaker 3 (49:31):
So like that part that's all separate.
Speaker 1 (49:33):
From you know, unbelievable guitarist, you know, rock and Roll
Hall of Fame, writing top ten hits for you know
a dozen other artists. That's all separate from forty albums
that's all separate from you know, just unbelievable before where
that's all separate from you know, one hundred music videos
that's all separate from a thousand recorded songs of his
(49:55):
own deady released that's all separate from another two thousand
songs in the vault. You know, like it's just the
technological innovation alone is at a level I don't think
people could understand or fathom, just as a technology pioneer.
And you know, when he got his Webby Award, his
(50:18):
Lifetime Achievement Award in two thousand and six, you know,
he said, everything you think is true, and you know,
I think that, and he wrote it on the wall
of his bedroom at Paisley Park, and I think he
sort of was talking about how you can imagine a world,
you know that people can't yet conceive of. And that
(50:40):
was the same speech I gave when I got my
Webby Lifetime Achievement Award as a tribet to him.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
Full circle moment. That's so cool. I have toy like
as much as I appreciate your work in tech, talking
about the ways that princes a tech innovator is one
of my favorite things about what you do. And yeah,
I mean it's like why I love he always got
to shit early somehow, like he like just like sold
stuff before anybody else did.
Speaker 3 (51:07):
Knew how the system worked. Yes, that it worked, and
he could see it. He can see it.
Speaker 2 (51:16):
Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
just want to say hi? You can read us at
Hello at tangodi dot com. You can also find transcripts
for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are No
Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Toad.
It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed creative Jonathan Strickland
as our executive producer. Tarry Harrison is our producer and
sound engineer. Michael Almato is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
(51:38):
Bridget Toad. If you want to help us grow, rate
and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
check out the iHeartRadio, app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
The whole Internet is made of people, and I think
it's easy to forget that because we've been taught these
myths that it is all these giant corporations, also the
myth of like these billionaire founders, and it's like, now
those dudes are sitting on top of work that regular
folks made.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
There are no Girls on the Internet. As a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm Bridget Todd, and this
is there are no girls on the Internet. Why does
it feel like the main voices dominating tech today are
basically supervillains, billionaires who don't care if the world gets worse,
(00:45):
just so long as they get a little bit richer.
We hear them absolutely everywhere. They're bad ideas, they're grievances.
It's all amplified like a handful of angry rich dudes
are the only ones who matter. But we know those
are not the only people shaping tech, because there are brilliant, diverse,
ethical creators who have been overlooked or outright erased or
(01:06):
silenced in favor of the loudest, most morally bankrupt, and
often wrongest voices. Writer and entrepreneur and Neil Dash one
of the internet's earliest OG voices says it didn't used
to be this way. Neil, thank you so much for
being here. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
So you were one of the first wave of very
cool tech people people like you. I'm not even kidding
or why I wanted to be in tech in the
first place.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Oh wow, that's really kind.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
And so as one of the OG like wave of bloggers,
what was it like, Like, what do you miss about
this earlier iteration of the Internet.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Oh, you know that, I'm always cautious about good old days,
but it was something special in terms of we knew
that it was genuinely new, Like we knew that, you know,
the early days of the social web, that this was
something everybody was going to be doing, and that those
of us that we're making friends, we could see that like, oh,
(02:08):
pretty soon everybody is going to be making friends online
and connecting, and that you know, that idea of like
sharing photos with somebody online with something and everybody was
going to be doing.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
And that seemed.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Wild in like nineteen ninety nine or two thousand.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
What do you think has changed since then?
Speaker 1 (02:28):
I think every I think all of the horrible things
that we encountered everybody else has too, you know, so
that the sense of like you know, before we had
the word catfishing that was around, and and even just
the awkward parts, like even the stuff that's just not
like hugely terrible, but the you know, the ordinary indignities,
(02:51):
like the things where you have that you know, frustration
of I wish I didn't have to see that person
in my timeline, or I wish that I could just
get a break from seeing you know, doom scrolling or whatever.
You know, that stuff all existed in its own basic
way even fifteen years ago, twenty years ago, a long
(03:12):
time ago, and and then you could see again like
this is something we're all going to be dealing with
on a daily basis, and that inevitability, I think was
a big part of what we had hoped maybe we
would have a solution for before now.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
That is a story we tell often on this show.
How the I like, how you use the word like
everyday in dignities, these things that you know, us a
particular group is experiencing, and it's like kind of a
canary and a coal mine where it's like this is
going to be the norm for everybody who's online one
day if we don't take this serious, or we don't
do something about this, or we don't change this, and
(03:48):
then it just becomes what it feels like to be online.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Oh for sure.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Yeah, I mean I think and that's you know, the
classic stories. Obviously, anybody in any marginalized group could see,
you know, this is how we're being targeted or or
this is how we bonded together and how we formed
our communities to protect each other or just to celebrate
each other, right in the positive sense.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
And so you could.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
See that these were these just ways of being that
we're going to be inevitable, that we're going to be ubiquitous.
And then you know it just it took in some
way so much longer to become a common knowledge. You know,
you would think, okay, this will be instant any day. Now,
(04:32):
everybody's going to have really good tools to like, you know,
protect themselves, or everybody's going to understand how joyous it
is to find your people online and to make these connections.
And you know, a day would go by, and a
month would go by, and a year would go by,
and a decade would go by, and then you would
(04:52):
still not have good tools or you would still not
have a way of discovering I mean, the example I
always think of was this, This is sort of a
minor one, but there were photo sharing apps in by
like two thousand and two or two thousand and three
that were pretty good. Before that, you would have to
like literally scan like film photos, right, And then people
(05:15):
were like, no, there's digital cameras. We're going to put
these online. And some of the early ones were called
Photoonet and Flicker, and those are the first ones. I
felt like, oh, no, you know, you have communities online.
And pretty soon they realized, wait, people are tagging locations
on these and even some of these cameras actually know
your location, like they had GPS by that time, and
(05:37):
so like, no, we got to take that out because
people are going to stock each other.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
It's going to be creepy.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
And I think Flicker was the first one, and it
was like really the first like kind of social network
around photos that felt like, you know, like what we
all do on Instagram every day now. And so they're like, Nope,
we're going to take out location. We can't have people
creeping on each other, and we're going to do the
right thing. And this is literally twenty plus years ago
they figured out the right thing to do. And I
(06:03):
kid you not. Literally every year since then, somebody has
launched a new photo sharing app that includes the location
from the photos that it gets from your camera and
does not take the location out. And then somebody like
creeps on somebody else and they realize, oh gosh, we
should take the location out. And it's like groundhog Day,
Like nobody ever learns this lesson, and it's always some
(06:26):
dude who's like, gosh, you know, why wouldn't I want
my location out there? I didn't understand, and and I
just like every time, I'm like, you know, there is
like this is a lesson that we have learned, Like
this you can just you could just look like you
could just google it. It gets out there, and and
I'm always like, you know, this time, for.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Sure they're going to learn. And in the twentieth straight
year that it happened, I was like, no, they're just
never going.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
To learn, believe it or not. E Neil and I
were talking before or Instagram's disastrous rollout of an opt
in location sharing feature. So when you posted a photo
on Instagram, if you opt in, your location would automatically
show up on a map, and the public reaction to
this was not good. Instagram really could not have handled
(07:17):
it worse. And the overwhelming question I was left with
was who exactly was asking for this feature from Instagram
in the first place. We know how this story ends,
and people just don't learn. That's something that I really
appreciated about your work is that I read your blog
and oftentimes you're like ask stepping back and asking the
question of do we actually want this? Or is anybody
(07:39):
asking for this thing? Like, is this new tech thing
that everybody is trying to make us think is going
to be great? Does anybody want this? Who was asking
for this? That's a question. I feel like we could
benefit from asking a little bit more. Is this actually
serving a need that somebody has articulated?
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Yeah, I'm you know, I'm hoping. And the thing is, like,
I love tech. You know, I've been a nerd my
whole life, and I I was lucky I got a
you know, a computer when I was a kid.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
And this is back in the.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Eighties when that was rare, and and you know, my
my my folks were as immigrants, they were just like
you know, scraping by and saving for us to get
a computer, and so I was really appreciative. So I
really I still feel lucky, like I can get a,
you know, a new phone every couple of years, and
I I geek out about it, like I'm not, you know,
I couldn't be more protect but I also am like
(08:26):
it does have to be for something, like it's not
just for its own sake. And so part of the
reason I'm I'm you know, skeptical or critical of it
is because I like it, right, Like I don't want
it to just be mindless, because I like to take
it apart. I like to see how it works like that.
That's part of appreciating it, you know. And I think
it's sort of like, you know, like like enjoying a
(08:50):
good meal, Like you don't just shovel it in your face,
right like you know, You're like, I want to taste it,
you know, or or you know, like anything that's really
great that you love, you sort of want to sit
there and enjoy, like you almost are like you know,
whatever you're at a concert, You're like, I don't want
it to be over, you know, or a great movie,
And and I think that's kind of it is like
that that mindlessness around the tech is this, I don't
(09:15):
think they even love it, and and so I think
that's some of what I'm so you know, resentful over
sometimes is some of these folks making the terrible tech
that that that's creepy or that does terrible things with
your data, or that's just thoughtless, that makes these communities
that are that people are being horrible to each other
(09:36):
on I think that people making it don't love tech,
like I think that's how you end up there. And
I'm very I am resentful of it because I'm like,
you know what you're You're lucky to get to do this.
I feel lucky to get to do this, to be
making you know, even still today, like I get to
make I have a website I've been working on for
twenty five plus years. I get to write stuff on
(09:58):
the weekends. I still tinker it, like I still am
messing with like the style of it and the designs.
It's like, you know, ten people looking at it's like
nobody looking at it. And I still feel lucky to
get to do it. And you know, I think these
people that get one hundred million dollars to make an app,
I think they take it for granted they don't feel lucky.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
To get to do it, And Neil says, there used
to be a time where the decent, thoughtful people in
tech had an easier time rising to the top and
taking up space. But then game the tycoons. They erased
the work of the smarter, more diverse creators and kind
of convinced us that technology only happens at a handful
of giant companies made by a handful of tech tycoons,
(10:40):
and none of that. And Eil says, it's true. So
what changed? How did we get here? What do you
think happened to get us to this point?
Speaker 1 (10:53):
I mean, there's so many things. I mean the easy
answer is, you know, it became the biggest industry in
the world, right and it used to be a place
for hobbyists, and you know that that's the easy answer.
It's it's a true answer, but but it sort of
mirrors so.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Many other things.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
You know, I'm a big music fan, and I always look
at that as one example, right, which is, you know,
I think anybody who loves music can think of a
undersung artist that they love, like a local indie artist
or or even you know, live in New York City,
and I can go on a subway platform and see
somebody who blows me away, you know, just an incredible voice,
(11:31):
and you're just like, wow, this person. You know, everybody
in the world should hear them. And you're like, they're
they're a better singer than somebody I can hear, you know,
on the radio or something. And and and so you know,
it's not always fair, like the it's not mapping almost
to talent, right or skill and and and so.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Some of that is, like I said, it's just commercialism.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
It's just like there's the maturity of an industry is
there's going to be a handful of giant companies. But
I think it's also familiar, right. I do use the
food analogy a lot, which is that we have a
you know, a handful of giant fast food tech companies,
you know, and you know, if I'm in the airport,
(12:15):
I'm gonna have McDonald's and it's fine, you know what
I mean, But I'm not having that every meal, you know,
like I would not feel good to have that every meal.
And you know, the answer that people are familiar with
is like, okay, well, if you don't like McDonald's, have
Burger King. It's like that is not the answer. Right,
You've got to have a home cooked meal, and you've
(12:35):
got to have your family recipes, and you've got to
have your memories of sitting down to a meal with
your loved ones, right, And that the how many of
the best meals or the best memories of your life
are in the kitchen with your family, right. And it's
not even sitting down to the meal. It was in
the kitchen cooking, right. And I think about that and tech,
(12:58):
which is that I have so many of the best
memories of my technical life building stuff with people that
I care about that have become my closest friends. I'm
not kidding, it's the truth, right, is that I can remember,
you know, building a website, building an app with people
that I genuinely love that we were bonded by. Like
(13:21):
we're going to put something out in the world, and
it might not be something that you know a billion
people use, but it is something that we put our
hearts into and that we care about, and we know
we're going to find other people who care about it.
I mean, I had this experience as we record this
over the weekend, and I had built an app with
a friend of mine, geinutupany that was about your social
(13:45):
media activity, like how to make it more meaningful. And
this was a decade ago and we had to shut
it down, like it didn't succeed as a business because
you were trying to get your data from Twitter and
Instagram and they wouldn't let us keep getting to data
back then, like they you know, they were like lock
that down. And you know, it was bittersweet, like we
tried to make go of it, didn't succeed. I don't
(14:06):
you know, I'm not lamenting that too much. And over
the weekend I got this message on blue Sky that
a developer had built a tribute to it using blue
Sky where he was doing the same kind of analytics
that we had done for Twitter using blue Sky and
our app was called think Up and he's like, this
(14:26):
is my tribute to think Up and I I was
so touched, like I genuinely got choked up. And I
was just like, somebody remember the app that we made,
you know, this is ten years ago, and made like
his own version of it and sent me the link
and it just out of the blue, you know, and
somebody remembers what you made. And that was like you know,
(14:48):
there's no that's not a you know, that's not an
app that anybody's still running. That is not something that
you know, ever got an IPO or got acquir by
anybody like. That's not something that has any of the
things that people think of as a success in tech.
But it had heart and it was something that evidently
the community meant something to people, you know. And so
(15:10):
I think people don't think of the Internet as that thing,
but that is what the Internet mostly is. Most communities
on the Internet are healthy, and people don't want to
believe that because they see these giant ones that are
full of toxic behavior, that are full of this unhealthiness.
Most of the communities that have ever existed on the
Internet are healthy. Most of the websites that ever existed
on the Internet were made by a person for people
(15:33):
that they knew, right. Most of the meals are home cooked,
and so I think that's something that people really forget,
and I think people could tell that that wasn't a
made with love by people that cared about each other,
for a community that cared about each other. And that's
what most of the Internet has been for most of
its history.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
And there is no reason it cannot be that.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Again, that's such a good reminder of how of the
legacy of people who cared about making thoughtful shit online,
Like we really owned the Internet for a while there,
and even if it doesn't seem like it today, Like
that's real.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Let's take a quick break.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
At our back and Neila's right, it's very easy to
fall for false nostalgia for the early days of the Internet,
which definitely had its problems, but y'all, it was also
so much fun. Remember the first time you stumbled upon
a weird little website or a weird pocket of the
Internet that made no sense but you loved for some reason,
(16:43):
Like websites that were just weird little flash cartoons. There
was a time in my life where the funniest thing
in the whole world to me was a loop of
the actor Sean Commery from the movie Finding Forrester saying
you're the man now dog for some reason, and I
don't know, it was stupid, but it was great, and
somehow it was ours. I was sort of taking a
(17:07):
trip down memory lane as you were speaking about what
it felt like to stumble upon a website or a
little pocket of the Internet where you felt your people
were showing up there and it felt good or you
were excited about something.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
And I feel like, you know, we've all had that,
Like it doesn't take much to prompt people about what
they remember of the good stuff, you know, And there's
so many examples.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
I was watching.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
A you know, a YouTube video over the weekend and
it was just like about a film or something, and
the woman who was hosting it just offhandedly mentioned making
a MySpace site, you know, back in the day. And
she just sort of said it like in passing, and
you know, it's thirty forty million people had made a
MySpace site back and they were all coders, right, like
(17:55):
they had to do code to do that. And like
those folks were all still around like they did like
get disappeared, you know what I mean, Like like they
didn't get fano snapped, Like they're still all here, and
and so like there is still a latent cultural memory
of like I made the Internet, Like all those people
made the Internet and they know how to do it.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
They still got the ability to do it, like they
can come back.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
And so I think that part of like the Internet
is something we make, not just something that happens to us.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
I think is is.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Still there and and you know, it doesn't mean that
we all have to become coders or something. I just
think the sense of that it could be something that
is good to us and good for us, that that
feels a little bit more homegrown and that is not
inflicted upon us. I think that is something that we
could have a you know, a cultural memory of and
(18:46):
that that can prompt us to ask more of it, right,
that that can help us believe that it doesn't have
to be, like I said, as toxic as it's become,
or as extractive as it's become, or that it's going
to constantly be surveiled us or taking our data or
doing things without our consent. I mean, I think that's
one of those words that I just keep coming back
(19:07):
to over and over, especially in the sort of AI
era is.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Consent. You know, I think we just do.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Not hear that word in an internet or technology context
nearly often enough, and it is the fundamental framing that
we really should be thinking about and so many of
our interactions with technology.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
I would argue that there's like a cultural dynamic now
where when you show up to a no online platform
or something that there's just an understanding that you don't
there is no consent, Like this is the cost of
using it, Like, if you want to, you know, post
your pictures, you have to also share your location with
a million people that you don't know. Like I think
that we have a warmpth relationship where it's like, oh,
(19:53):
the tech companies and the people that run them get
to make all the decisions that can take whatever they
want from me. They can benefit from what they take
however they want. And i' don't got to say it.
If I don't like it, don't show up online, don't
use these platforms. We should be able to expect more,
and in fact, I think we deserve more.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Absolutely, it's coercive, it's manipulative. I mean, I think, you
know the sort of the classic example is the you know,
at the beginning of the social network, would sucker putting
up the pictures of you know, all these women around
the campus at Harvard that he's he's started rating and
and you know those images are not gathered with consent either, right,
(20:28):
and and the you know I say this is like,
you know, I've been the CEO of a of a
tech company multiple times in my career, and one of
the things you do is you created terms of service, right,
and you know, there's very little case law establishing whether
terms of services are actually enforceable at all. And one
(20:54):
of the reasons why is almost every terms of service,
this is a little secret to tell you, as somebody
who's been on the hook for these, almost all these
terms of service are basically we even change this at
any time.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
I'm like, where they do that at? Like what kind
of contract?
Speaker 1 (21:13):
What? How do I've never signed anything in my life
that's like and we might just change it, like what
what is that?
Speaker 3 (21:23):
And and if we.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Change it, we might let you know, maybe maybe maybe
maybe okay.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Like that's not a thing.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
That is not a thing.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
There's no contract in the world that works like that.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
That's not a thing.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
And and like I'm sorry, I'm just like, you know,
and like I said, I've written some of those, so
I probably should, you know, have some.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Feelings about it.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
But I just every time we put one of those out,
I was like, I don't know, I don't know about this,
And so we try to you know, and fairness, like
I tried to be very thoughtful about that, and we
always did, you know, advanced notice of changes on other
companies that I you know, it.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
Was leading, but I think.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
It's it's tough because that is the overwriting principle for
all these platforms. And I remember Facebook used to have
a thing. People won't remember this because this is more
than ten years ago. Facebook used to have a thing
where they would have a like a governing council where
people could weigh in on terms of service change, right,
(22:34):
and they're like, if more than thirty percent of our
users don't like this, we're not going to do it, right.
And it was like this, like, you know, you get
to vote, and it never happened, like they never put
anything up to a vote. Of course they didn't, right
and then, and this always reminded me of the I'm
a real nerd, but at the beginning of Star Wars,
(22:55):
the first one a New Hope, they're they're like, you know,
the empresses all the Senate.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
It's like the first thing he does.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
They're like, now that we have the Death Star, we
don't need to worry about that anymore. And literally, like
you know, Zuckerberg is like, yeah, yeah, we're not doing
the voting on the terms of service thing anymore.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
That's like the emperors all dissolved the Senate.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
So I just think about, like they stop the pretense
that you.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Could even vote on the terms of service, and and.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
I'm like, why did they even bother going to right?
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Right?
Speaker 1 (23:27):
They can change it at any time on their own unilaterally.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
What are you going to do? Leave Facebook?
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Right?
Speaker 1 (23:33):
And I think that's the other part is like even
if there were because people say, well, why don't you
close your account? And and you know, I think about
this where like, you know, I have family. My families
were one of the most rural parts of India, and
you know, the only reasonable way to communicate with them
is what's happened?
Speaker 3 (23:50):
You know that?
Speaker 1 (23:51):
And what am I going to not talk to my cousins? Right,
like not be in touch with my family? That that
is too much coercive power, an absurd thing to dangle
over somebody's head. Is like you're not going to talk
to your family again? That's a I think it's a
violation of the Geneva Conventions of torture right to inflict
(24:14):
on somebody. So no, there actually isn't a way to
opt out of the terms of service, Like you are
not going to disconnect people from their world, from their
livelihood from their families. And when I say livelihood, I
literally mean it. Like in the case of my family,
they are in a very rural area and they're rice farmers,
and they're in the rice patty and so they use
(24:35):
what's app to get the price of rice at the
market that is often twelve hours away where they trade
their rice, and so that is a you know, livelihood
sustaining information path for them. They're not going to be like,
we don't like the terms of service, therefore we're not
trading rice this season, right, So, like these are not
(24:56):
like I don't think of most Americans. There are people
in the wealthy world world really understand the level of
infrastructure that these things present for the rest of the world.
But like, what are they going to say, No, we
read the terms of service and we're not going to
really agree to this change, you know. And so I
think those things are like these legal contracts are are
functioning as government for billions of people around the world,
(25:20):
and that level of course of power, we have to
have some kind of corrective around, and that's not the
place for these companies to be playing. That's a completely
different thing than they're supposed to be. And what we
used to have back in the day was we would
make a you know, at what we call it a
technical level, an open standard, and this is what like,
(25:42):
you know, on the Internet, we just have HTML and
that's what we can make a web page and anybody
can make a web page, and we would make these
systems work together. And even like podcasts, right, so like
a podcast or like listen to this podcast and whatever
app you want, great, so I can listen to this.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
On all my different devices.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
And that's what the you know, the WhatsApps or even
the facebooks or the Instagrams of the world should be, like,
use this on whatever app or whatever platform you want.
And if we have those kinds of systems, then they
don't have that same course of power, and we can
sort of pick and choose which companies and which platforms
we want to work with. That's how the Internet was
supposed to work. That starts to have that you know,
(26:17):
that corrective power where we can you know, make choices
about what we're doing and be a little bit less,
you know, getting our arms twisted.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
We got to talk about this because you know how
at the end of every episode of this very podcast,
I say, listen to there are no girls on the internet,
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts. Truly, this is not just something I say.
It means something something kind of revolutionary. Actually, as a
Neil puts it, being able to say or wherever you
get your podcasts is a radical statement because what it
(26:50):
represents is the triumph of exactly the kind of technology
that's supposed to be impossible, open empowering technology that's not
owned by any one company, that can't be controlled by
anyone company, and that allows people to have ownership over
their work and their relationship with their audience. Honestly, that
dynamic is why I became a podcaster in the first place.
(27:10):
I'm so glad you brought up that example. This is
like a pet thing for me as a podcaster. But
I did read your piece about how you know at
the end of every podcast, I say like get it
wherever you find your podcasts, and you're you talked about
how it's like a radical it's like a quietly radical
thing to say that is ubiquitous in the podcast space,
and that it is how technology is meant to be, right,
(27:31):
Like it's empowering that it's not owned by one company,
and it can't be controlled by any one company. You know,
that's not the ownership model. And I don't know something
about that is very empowering that if let's say, for
whatever reason, like I had beep with Spotify, Spotify alone
could not like end this podcast. That's empowering.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Yes, it's huge, and you know it's funny too, because
that's why you also don't hear people, you know, fussing
about like, oh, you know, why is my podcast being censored?
And like and I and I can't go up the
podcast charts, right because because anybody can just make a
podcast and put it out there, and and and so
it's it's the way it's supposed to work, right, and
(28:14):
and I think that's a really powerful thing. And it
also proves that it can work, like these open systems
can work. And I think that the thing people that
are skeptical understandably say, well, you have to have a
big company, because that's the only way that you're going
to get in front of millions of people or billions
of people. It has to be you know, it takes
this huge infrastructure and these giant companies to really reach
(28:37):
a big audience and to you know, sustain something and
and you know, I understand why they feel that way,
because that's what they've seen from the you know, youtubes
of the world and the Instagrams of the world. And
then it's so helpful to have these counterexamples, which is like, no, no, no,
there are these amazing you know platforms, these amazing media
you know examples that we can point to that are
(28:59):
as good as anything out there, that are using open
systems and that are easy and that we listen to
every day. And and that's how the Internet was supposed
to work. And they're still vibrant and they're still active.
And I think even you know, the rise of email
newsletters in the last several years, where everybody's you know,
everybody know is subscribing to a couple and again that's
just a totally open system that, like email is decades
(29:20):
old and still works every day, and I read them
every day, you know, like friends write them. And I
think those are just great reminders that like these you know,
technical architectures of the Internet were built really really wisely,
and they have adapted so much and evolved so much.
And also they've been constantly growing too. They're not stuck
(29:40):
where they were in like the eighties or the nineties,
Like they've continued to evolve. And I think one of
the things that's so fun and interesting too is they're
like they're just made by regular people, you know, the
the like podcasts, like a lot of the people that
pioneered them. There's a technologist State Whiner, who was one
of the first people that created the spec and you know,
(30:03):
he's like just a guy who lives here in New
York and he's a Mets fan. And like one of
the people that helped, uh create it, that speck was
Aaron Schwartz, who was a real pioneer of this stuff.
And you know, uh, he was a friend and I
missing me passed away, you know, more than a decade ago,
and and and and you know, just to have like
(30:23):
these people who are human and and pains in the
ass and you know, and and creative and and they're
not companies, you know what I mean, They're not billion
billion dollar companies, and they're not global titans.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
They're just you know humans.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
I think that that's just part of it too, is
that people can create things that have that kind of
impact and and so I think that that really sort
of proves out the every part of it, Like we
can be people that make podcasts, we can be people
that make the technology that makes podcasts. You know, we
can make the whole thing, the whole way down. The
(31:00):
whole Internet is made of people. And I think it's
easy to forget that because we've been taught these myths
that it is all these giant corporations and that there
is a you know, also the myth of like these uh,
you know, these billionaire founders. And it's like, now those
dudes are sitting on top of work that regular folks
made and and and their platforms exist because of the
(31:22):
regular people on them. And I think that's a real
important story to keep repeating.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Oh God, I have so much to say. First of all,
my first ever job in podcasting was on a podcast
that Aaron Schwartz was the co founder of called The
Flaming Sort of Justice. It was all about like using
the power of the Internet to tell like social justice
stories with all the sort of grandeur of David and
Goliath myths, right like uh, And it was back on
(31:51):
the early early early days of podcasting, so like nobody
knew what the fuck we were doing. We were like
it just was. But it was so fun to be
in a space where, you know, we were just making
something and like it didn't really if we didn't really
have the idea in our head that it super mattered
how many people listen. Like today, when I put a
podcast out, I'm like, how many downloads did it get? Right?
That is, I didn't have the wherewithal to like really
(32:13):
internalize that as a metric that I needed to be
thinking about. It was just such a fun time, And
you know, I think this is like one of the
reasons why I am. I think you're such an interesting
person in the space, because you really do see the
way that it's not that that tech is not just
like building stuff. It's also about culture and policy and
art and expression and how humans exist and fit with
(32:35):
one another. Do you feel like that's an ethos that
we kind of are losing even though we are keeping
it alive and around, but that like it becomes harder
to see for all of those parts.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Yes, and no.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
What I will say is I think in an absolute number,
more people believe in technology with the soul than ever.
The challenge is there's so many more billions of people
online that it gets lost to the noise, right, but
the the communities of people who are trying to build
(33:07):
good tech or who are building fun weird art projects online,
or who are trying to you know, have some soul
and what they're doing when they put stuff up on
the internet. It is more people all over the world
doing that than was there five years ago, or ten
years ago or twenty five years ago. But there's so
(33:29):
much other noise right that it can get lost or
it can get overshadowed. And so I think the challenge
is for all of us to find each other and
to amplify each other, and to lift each other up,
and to remind each other that it's there, you know,
despite the rest of it, the cacophony of the rest
of it. But the actual number of people doing it,
(33:53):
I think is bigger than it's ever been. And you know,
that's a hard balance to strike because I think, you know,
back in the day, that's all there was, and so
it had an outsized presence. And you know, I think
there's so many analogies of like.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
Like I said, I you know, being a music fan.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
I live on the Lower East Side, and and you know,
there was a time when there was a music scene
that was like you know these you know, the indie
punk scene and early hip hop and and you know
the sort of you had to really really love that
music those music scenes to be there, and because there
was zero money in it, right, Like you know, there
was nobody except the people in that club with you,
(34:36):
and and talking to people who are like, we still
have altars in the neighborhood who were there then, and
and talking to those folks and they're just like, you know,
you had to really believe and and they still love
the music, right and and so they're still listening to
the music, and they still are in touch with some
(34:57):
of those artists who were there for the music then.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
And so they're not mad that hip hop is global.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
They're not mad that everybody knows what happened with those
punk artists, right, And you know, they're not upset that
like I was, you know, talking to one of the
folks who's in Blondie, that was one of the bands
that broke out from CBGB's on the Lower East Side.
They're not mad that everybody knows those songs. But they
still have it there, right, And they still have it
(35:26):
in that scene, And I think that's kind of it
is like to hold true to you know, this was
a scene, right, The Internet was a scene, and so
as much does any music scene or art scene or
anything else, and say like this still exists. There is
still a community for people that want to make the Internet,
you know, with their hints right and be homegrown. And
we have to nurture that and remind each other of that.
(35:48):
But I am so heartened by seeing you know, young
creators or early career creators, or you know, people of
any age but that are new to the sort of
human Internet coming in.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
Oh, I didn't know.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
This was here because I was you know, in the
normal Internet that everybody else is on it. That's that's you know,
louder and more vibrant or more.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
Visible to people.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
And so I think just reminding each other that there
is still that that human part there, I think is
really key. But I don't think it's ever gone away,
you know, I don't think it's ever been silenced. And
you know, there's so many examples even of just like
you know, take something like Craigslist, right, like you can't
(36:32):
kill it, you know, like cockroach website, like you can't
kill it, and and and you know it's never changed
and it's still there and they totally totally investags of
the human Internet. But like you know next door, sure,
you know Facebook, Marketplace, sure, but you can't kill Craigslist.
And I think that's something that sort of epitomizes that,
(36:53):
which is like this is like the equivalent of that
for you know, the people powered Internet is there are
people just making these cool, little weird things that are
human and these little forums and these old you know,
these little art projects and all those things.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
I think that's still there.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
And so I think that's part of what I want to,
you know, really help people discover and remember is that
it's all around and and and then how do you
help people find it when all they've known is the same.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
Five apps on their phone for all the time they've
been online.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
More after a quick break, let's get right back into it.
I don't think I need to tell anybody that things
feel especially bleak right now. And if you're anything like me,
maybe you have to fight the feeling that nothing good
(37:49):
will ever happen again. But what if we're actually on
the edge of something better. People are sick of algorithms,
they're sick of AI slop, sick of tech leaders, who
clearly don't care. So what if all that frustration, everything
we're fed up with could spark something new You've talked
about or written about how it kind of feels like
we're in two thousand and four again, We're like a
(38:12):
cool sort of wave of people of exactly what you're
talking about could be right around the corner. Do you
still feel that way?
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Yeah, a little bit. I mean it's still fragile, right.
I don't want to be, you know, a polyandnat about it. Like,
I don't think it's like all of a sudden, everybody's
going to get back to building a Geocity's website again.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
But I think I'm very cautious.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
I don't believe in too much nostalgia, Like I don't
think there's a good old days. I think the old
days were bad in their own way, But I think
how do you make something that you excitedly look forward
to instead of like what are we fearfully running away from?
And the things that were positive about that old Internet
in terms of it being wide open and there being
(39:01):
a chance for people to build new things that are
wide open, I think that is true again, and that
for people who may not have been you know, maybe
on the Internet then, or paying attention then, or didn't
understand what was wide open then. I think the way
to articulate what the two thousand and four Internet was
about was there was no dominant search engine. There was
(39:23):
no dominant photo sharing, there was no dominant video site,
there was no dominant social network.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
There was no set pattern.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
Of all the tools and the apps we use every day.
And if you think about your behaviors right now, you
very likely swipe through the same three or four or
five apps on your phone all day, every day, and
you probably have been for the last many years. And
you know, maybe you've added one app in the last
couple of years, you know, and within those apps there's
(39:55):
a feed that is largely chosen for you by an
algorithm that you cannot see. And that has been true
for the majority people on the Internet since about two
thousand and four or five. And that's when the majority
of people in the world came online. And you know,
there are some of us who are as old as
(40:17):
I am who can remember the Internet before that, and
like I said, it's not good old days. There were
a lot of bad things about that Internet, but one
of the things that had a lot of potential. There
was people building other experiences, and especially people who were
not giant corporations building some of those other experiences. And
so I think that is the thing that is up
(40:38):
for grabs right now because we have seen this extraordinary
thing happen which one I could not fathom, which is
that you know, the biggest search engine in the world
making their search worse voluntarily. Well that's I didn't see
that coming.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Didn't have that on the Bingo card.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
No, I mean like the biggest own goal like maybe
in the history of the Internet, Like that's why. And
then and then you know, people already being fed up
with with you know, Facebook and their feed there like okay, sure,
and I think fatigue with feeds in general, I think
people are kind of over it. You know, they know
that they're tired of swiping and scrolling, like they kind
(41:17):
of burn out on that and feel a little bit
like this is a lot of empty calories for my brain.
Like I think people are very aware of that and
ready for something else. And then even just like other behaviors,
I think people are really ready to push back on
you know, the AI slop. I think on a number
of grounds. One is they don't like seeing, you know,
(41:40):
their elder relative's brains cooked by obviously made up stuff.
I think they don't like seeing their favorite artists having
their things taken without consent. I think they have a
lot of ambivalence about, you know, everything from the environmental
impacts to the other things that are happening around AI.
I think all that stuff has only raise the temperature
(42:01):
about you know, some of these misgivings and then just
being ready for something new, you know, I mean, I
think sort of saying like where is the good stuff?
Whereas the things that I like that I feel positive about.
All that stuff just sort of primes us for maybe
there's going to be something new and that you know,
being in this business a long time and being in
(42:22):
the tech space a long time, you can just sort
of sense it. You can feel it when there's going
to be you know, new players or new interests arising,
and so all of that coming together along with As
a nerd, I see so many new technical capabilities that
we haven't seen in a generation. And you know, I
(42:45):
won't nerd out too much, but just the things that
are available to programmers to build with feel like building
blocks that we haven't seen since you know, a generation ago,
and that's exciting to me. Like as a coder, I'm
playing with things. You know, some of it is around
the edges of the AI stuff, but just like you know,
technical things about how we can like share data and
(43:06):
get people to be able to collaborate together. I'm like,
oh wow, there's so many creative tools that we can
build there. And I see all those building blocks that
I just think, Man, somebody is going to fit these
together in a new way, and all of a sudden,
like the creative people of the world are going to
be inventing new stuff.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
So it sounds like when you think of the future
of tech, you're actually quite optimistic and hopeful.
Speaker 3 (43:26):
I am, I am. I can't not be.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
And one is I have to be just for my
mental well being, like you know, you can't it can't.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
I can't help but be. But also.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
I think of, you know, as America, I think of
the rest of the world, especially Global South, and they
are really ready to be free from the American centric Internet.
It's very obvious, very obvious for all the you know,
policy reasons and all the obvious reasons, and and that's
what the Internet wants to be it was always designed
(43:58):
to be decentralized, and so there's going to be innovation there.
And then I think the creatives of the world and
they're saying, wow, these platforms are like, like I said,
taking my stuff without consent for AI, or they're you know,
not letting me win through the algorithm and people can't
discover my content or all the other things. They're gonna say, well,
maybe I should have my own site or I should
have my own place for my content. So the creatives
(44:20):
of the world are going that way. That's another signal.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
And you know, and on and on.
Speaker 1 (44:25):
There's all these different things that are sort of pushing
towards people having more agency and autonomy and control. That's
just a signal, you know what I mean. I don't
need to know where it's headed to know that it's
going somewhere. And I just love that energy. I just
love seeing that happen. And for me, I'm like, I'm
you know, I'm like a middle aged dad. I'm washed,
(44:45):
like I'm not supposed to be the one that knows.
I just like I just need to follow, like I'm
excited to see it. I should be, you know, I
should be the one that's just rooting for it and
helping it happen. I like being I like being the
elder statesman of it now, like I had the chance
to be, you know, at the forefront of it a
(45:06):
generation ago. I'm I'm excited to be the one who's
wild buy what the next generation comes up with.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
Okay, Well, that brings me to my last question, which
is sort of a wild card speaking of creative, sort
of leading the way you and I are both big
print superman, I have to ask, like, what is it
about Prince that gets you that like draws you in.
Speaker 3 (45:27):
Oh, there's so many things. I mean, that's you know,
that's a big question. I think.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
I think there's a couple of parts, you know. I
think he touches on so many of the themes that
we've talked about. I think one is he comes from
a scene, a community, right the Twin Cities Minneapolis, you know,
especially you know, the black music community in the Twin
Cities is so specific of a place where you know,
they they were grounded in history, right, so they have
(45:55):
you know, this this blues music scene and the jazz
music scene that his parents were part of and that
they you know, they all sort of support each other
in I think that part is what sort of informs
his work. And I think that's sort of it's like
so tied to place and obviously like you know you
have that, you know his dad was, you know, part
of the great migration comes from that blues tradition in Louisiana.
(46:17):
I think that part you see suffuse through his music.
I think that is well, I mean it's the greatest
American music tradition, right, So like that's this long history
and then you take what he.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
Does with it and like his pure cohort.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
Right, So he's born in summer of fifty eight, so
is Michael Jackson, right, so is Madonna? Like this is
this like incredible through line.
Speaker 3 (46:39):
And then he is.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
A technologist through and through right. The reason he's able
to record his own records is he learns to run
an automated console when he's a teenager, which is cutting
edge technology at that time. He's the first to have
the Lynn lm One drum machine, which is the first
to have a digital sample of drums, which is his
signature sound of Birth of the Minneapolis Sound is a
(47:02):
story of technology. He tweaks that drum machine beyond its parameters,
of what it's supposed to do. The reason that when
you hear something at nineteen ninety nine or when doves
Cry has a unique sound that nobody had heard on
the radio before, is he's tuning a drum machine past
what it's supposed to be able to do, because he
is literally programming a computer to go beyond its limits.
(47:24):
And that is his innovation as a technologist. Right. That's
like he had, you know, the new iPhone.
Speaker 3 (47:30):
Before it drops.
Speaker 4 (47:31):
That's that's literally what he's doing, and and and then
on and on into the Internet era right where he
pre Internet, right pre web. He's got a CD ROM
when that was cutting edge to deliver an interactive experience,
right around the time that he starts to fight for
control of his master recordings.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
And then you know, in.
Speaker 1 (47:50):
The Twin Cities, the first Internet service provider ISP for
dial up access called didstream was created by engineers who
worked at Paisley Park at his So the Internet access
in the Twin Cities comes through his studio right by
people who work for prints, and you know, it's just
like the beating heart of all innovations, or it goes
(48:13):
through there, and then you know he pioneers having everything
that we look at now, whether it's a Patreon or
a Kickstarter. Like he has a membership fan club, he
has his own website. In fact, his first website in
nineteen ninety five is so early that he had to
have an instruction page explaining how to put a credit
card into the field for buying a CD from it
(48:34):
because he was selling CDs on his website before Amazon.
Was Wow, that's how early he was. The Next year
he does a crowdfunding for CDs on his website, and
that is.
Speaker 3 (48:46):
I want to say, eleven.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
Years before Kickstarter existed. Something like, wow, long time, long
time before, and on and on and on. Right, he
does a you know, a membership club in two thousand
and one, two thousand and two. That's like a Patreon now, right,
where the fans get first access to tickets. We got
to go to his his pre shows and you know,
(49:10):
his sound checks for his concerts because we were members
of the fan clubs. I have to sit you know,
a row away from him in the audience when he
was playing at Lincoln Center. You know, it's just unbelievable,
like the amount of access and that was because he
was on there. He was in the AOL chat rooms
with us in the early nineties, you know, and.
Speaker 3 (49:31):
So like that part that's all separate.
Speaker 1 (49:33):
From you know, unbelievable guitarist, you know, rock and Roll
Hall of Fame, writing top ten hits for you know
a dozen other artists. That's all separate from forty albums
that's all separate from you know, just unbelievable before where
that's all separate from you know, one hundred music videos
that's all separate from a thousand recorded songs of his
(49:55):
own deady released that's all separate from another two thousand
songs in the vault. You know, like it's just the
technological innovation alone is at a level I don't think
people could understand or fathom, just as a technology pioneer.
And you know, when he got his Webby Award, his
(50:18):
Lifetime Achievement Award in two thousand and six, you know,
he said, everything you think is true, and you know,
I think that, and he wrote it on the wall
of his bedroom at Paisley Park, and I think he
sort of was talking about how you can imagine a world,
you know that people can't yet conceive of. And that
(50:40):
was the same speech I gave when I got my
Webby Lifetime Achievement Award as a tribet to him.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
Full circle moment. That's so cool. I have toy like
as much as I appreciate your work in tech, talking
about the ways that princes a tech innovator is one
of my favorite things about what you do. And yeah,
I mean it's like why I love he always got
to shit early somehow, like he like just like sold
stuff before anybody else did.
Speaker 3 (51:07):
Knew how the system worked. Yes, that it worked, and
he could see it. He can see it.
Speaker 2 (51:16):
Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
just want to say hi? You can read us at
Hello at tangodi dot com. You can also find transcripts
for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are No
Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Toad.
It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed creative Jonathan Strickland
as our executive producer. Tarry Harrison is our producer and
sound engineer. Michael Almato is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
(51:38):
Bridget Toad. If you want to help us grow, rate
and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
check out the iHeartRadio, app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
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