Greetings, everyone, and welcome to the first edition of SemperViernes, which in a Latin-Spanish hybrid sense has the delightful meaning of "always Friday". Here, each week, I'll share three links to the best content I've found that discusses the future of tech, geopolitics, business, economics, natural science, behavioral science, arts, culture, and other topics. Special update: in my initial posts, I mentioned that this newsletter would be one paragraph. That was a wonderful, lofty goal! I apologize—for readability, it'll have to be a standard structure of four paragraphs (a brief intro and then one paragraph per link). I hope you'll forgive the modification. Now, here's the content I've promised!
First, I work hard not to overstate things, but this hourlong talk on A.I. is the most important video I've watched this year, and maybe last year too. I've already watched it twice, and sent it to most people I've texted in the last two months. I've been following SF's Center for Humane Technology since ex-Google employee Tristan Harris (pronounced like "triss-TAHN") helped found it in 2018; they're the folks who created the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma. In this talk to a private group of tech leaders in March 2023 (A.I. moves so fast that some info is already outdated), Tristan and his CHT colleague Aza Raskin detail their concerns about rapidly-advancing generative artificial intelligence (like ChatGPT). I'd bet serious money that CHT's advocacy is at least part of the reason that the White House summoned the CEOs of Alphabet, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Microsoft yesterday (Thursday, May 4) (may the 4th be with them). Tristan usually gets it right, so when he's alarmed, I try to pay attention.
Second, my brain loved the dense intellectual challenge (schadenfreude?) of listening to New York Magazine journalist Kara Swisher relentlessly grill Snap Inc. CEO Evan Spiegel for 45 full minutes. I often listen to podcasts at 1.2x speed; I couldn't do that here—there's no filler! Kara's podcast is driven by the belief, she says, that "smart people like difficult questions," and her no-nonsense questions dug into Evan's metrics for Snap's success, his thoughts on in-app advertising, and his major focus on augmented reality software for wearable technology. Evan also seems to think that Snapchat isn't a social media company, which is interesting rhetoric (marketing?). The actual conversation starts at the 12:22 mark, unless you'd like to hear the intro, which I did listen to and found helpful. Frankly, Evan's candor and thoughtfulness surprised me, and combined with Kara's thoroughness and pacing, this episode was an energizing listen for me. Kara begins the entire interview by simply saying, "So, let's start with your stock price." Thrilling!
Third, if you only have five minutes, start here: I found this article from The Economist, called "Why America is going to look more like Texas," to be both accurate and worth considering (if you encounter a paywall, let me know and I'll send you a copy). As much as many of my fellow Bay Area residents might prefer to pretend that Texas doesn't actually exist outside of Austin or Dallas' Deep Ellum (can confirm, there's more!), this article highlights the compelling reasons that to understand the future of the United States, it would be helpful to listen to what's happening in Texas. I found fascinating the Democrats' 2016 overestimation of the liberalness of Latinos in places like Laredo near the US-Mexico border, and from a dispassionate, intellectual, nonpartisan perspective I find Texas really interesting politically on an ongoing basis. I found this assessment to be both balanced in its critiques of Texas and also in its call for the rest of the country to pay attention to the serious potential for continued multifaceted growth that Texas brings to the table.
