Hard Fork's 100 Most Iconic Technologies

Hard Fork's 100 Most Iconic Technologies

Released Friday, 29th November 2024
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Hard Fork's 100 Most Iconic Technologies

Hard Fork's 100 Most Iconic Technologies

Hard Fork's 100 Most Iconic Technologies

Hard Fork's 100 Most Iconic Technologies

Friday, 29th November 2024
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10:00

created in the 1930s by Egmont

10:02

Ahrens, a former editor who also designed

10:04

the ice cube dispenser. Oh,

10:06

no wonder I love him so much. Number 92, barcodes. Oh

10:10

boy, have you been to a restaurant lately? Maybe you've seen, no that

10:12

way, that's a QR code. But

10:15

barcodes were the precursor to the QR

10:17

code and they made checkout and inventory

10:19

much, much faster. You had to, previously

10:21

you had to write down everything had

10:23

to have a number associated with it,

10:25

but barcodes were this invention that allowed

10:28

for much faster processing of goods at

10:30

stores. The first item scanned with a universal

10:32

product code barcode was a pack of Wrigley's

10:34

Juicy Fruit Chewing Gum on June 26, 1974

10:36

at a supermarket in Troy, Ohio. Thank

10:40

you, barcodes. Number 91, drones. Wow,

10:44

this is a way you can take a little object and

10:46

it can fly around and kind of it can take pictures

10:48

and with some of the more advanced ones, they can actually

10:50

even kill a person. Yes, we

10:53

included this on the list because I'm pretty sure that drones

10:55

are what's gonna end our lives. Yes, but

10:57

in the meantime, I would still say they

10:59

have mostly positive applications and when I watch

11:01

TV, I'm constantly seeing very cool shots by

11:03

drones and I have friends who have drones

11:06

and take them out and they'll record themselves

11:08

skiing down the side of a mountain. Wow, amazing.

11:11

Yeah, number 90, the Nintendo DS.

11:13

Kasey, why'd you put this on? Look, there

11:15

are so many amazing game consoles and I

11:17

kind of wanted to put all of them

11:19

on this list, but when I thought about

11:21

what is a console that really took the

11:23

world for it, it was the Nintendo DS.

11:26

It was sort of the evolution of

11:28

the Game Boy. This was one of

11:30

the first major mass market handheld consoles

11:32

and if you talk to any sort

11:34

of millennial, they will tell you that

11:37

some of the happiest memories of their

11:39

lives are playing Pokemon on their Nintendo

11:41

DS. And that's an iconic technology

11:43

to me. Number 89, Zoom. Wow,

11:46

imagine the pandemic without Zoom, you can't.

11:48

Yeah, it's true. There were other

11:51

web video conferencing pieces of software, but they

11:53

were all terrible and Zoom came along and

11:55

really changed the game. And do you know

11:57

what the original name of Zoom was? What

11:59

was it? I'm like, I'm gonna be on sassbee.

12:01

Sassbee? Okay, why is that so much better than Zoom?

12:04

Catch me on sassbee! Damn,

12:07

now I wanna say that. But seriously though, Zoom

12:09

was a social lifeline for me for about two

12:11

years. And while I never wanna use it ever

12:13

again, I do respect the time I spent with

12:15

it in 2020 and 2021. Number

12:20

88, the sundial. Oh my gosh, Kevin, believe

12:22

it or not, there was a time before

12:24

watches. There was a time before clocks. And

12:27

you know what we had? Sundials. I

12:30

never think about who the first person ever was. It was

12:32

like, you know what would be interesting and good? A way

12:34

to tell what time it was. I mean, imagine

12:36

being the first person to have that idea and just be like, wait

12:38

a minute, we could just put a stick in the ground. Was

12:42

that the first sundial, a stick in the ground? No,

12:44

that would be the sun stick in the ground. It

12:46

was a dial that let you know what time it

12:48

was. That's why it's called a sundial. Number 87,

12:51

the Haber-Bosch process. Oh, go off,

12:53

King. I love this one. Did

12:56

you know that fertilizer is

12:58

one of the most important things in the world?

13:00

Absolutely. Because it allows for mass

13:02

agriculture. Absolutely. And before humans

13:05

learned to synthesize ammonia using

13:07

the Haber-Bosch process, nitrogen

13:09

was a major constraint on the proliferation

13:11

of life on this planet. You need

13:13

fertilizer to grow crops. To make fertilizer,

13:15

you need ammonia. The Haber-Bosch process was

13:17

an invention that allowed us to mass

13:19

produce fertilizer. And a 2008 study estimated that

13:22

without the Haber-Bosch process, about half

13:24

the world's population wouldn't have enough

13:26

food. The mass production of fertilizer

13:28

has also been linked to serious

13:30

environmental damage and runoffs from fertilizer

13:33

are one of the leading things damaging the earth.

13:35

So in conclusion, the Haber-Bosch process, it's a land

13:37

of contrasts. Number 86, Linux. Open

13:40

source software is a huge, before

13:43

Linux really entered its heyday, so much software, it

13:45

just, it came in a box. It was packaged.

13:47

You were paying a hundred bucks for it. And

13:49

this created a lot of problems. And then

13:52

along came Linus Torvaldskevin, and he built

13:54

this open source operating system, and he

13:56

actually gave it away for free. And

13:59

this enabled which

22:00

were invented around 1970, are

22:02

the key technology that basically the entire world

22:05

is built on now. They are different from

22:07

other databases, since you're asking, because they organize

22:09

data into interconnected tables with defined relationships, using

22:11

primary keys, foreign keys, and SQL to ensure

22:14

data integrity. I've been wondering about that. Number

22:16

70, insulin. Insulin. If you have diabetes, the

22:18

invention of insulin changed your life and may

22:21

have saved your life. No, it definitely saved

22:23

your life. Yeah, diabetes, type one diabetes, used

22:25

to be basically a death sentence. If you

22:27

got it, you would probably die. And

22:30

there was not much you could do about it, but

22:32

in 1889, two German researchers made

22:34

a discovery because they found out that

22:36

when you removed the pancreas gland from

22:38

dogs, the dogs got diabetes and died.

22:41

And later in 1921, a young surgeon

22:43

named Frederick Banting and his assistant Charles

22:45

Best figured out how to remove insulin

22:47

from a dog's pancreas. The first human

22:49

was injected with insulin in 1922. It

22:52

was a 13-year-old boy and it saved his life. Just

22:55

goes to show you, never be afraid to remove a

22:57

dog's gland. You never know what you'll invent. Number 69,

22:59

OnlyFans. So

23:01

OnlyFans was invented in 2016. And

23:03

I think it came out of

23:06

the movement that Patreon started. But

23:08

OnlyFans is really, I think, the

23:10

most successful company in the entire

23:12

creator economy. It is obviously a

23:14

lot of not-safe-for-work and adult content,

23:16

but guess what? Adults deserve to

23:18

have an internet too. And

23:21

I think OnlyFans has been a huge positive,

23:23

not just for the creators, many of whom

23:26

are making tons of money, but also just for

23:28

the internet at large. To have a place for

23:30

adults on the internet to explore their interests. Yeah,

23:32

and if listeners would like to find your OnlyFans

23:34

page, where can they go? It's at platformer.news. Number

23:38

68, Dolby Surround Sound. Why'd you

23:40

put this on the list? Here's why, because

23:42

before Dolby Surround Sound, movies didn't sound as

23:44

cool. The whole experience of

23:46

going to a movie is you sit in

23:48

the seat and then you see the big

23:50

Dolby thing and they play the really loud

23:52

noise and it sounds cool. And you know

23:55

that Star Wars is gonna sound much better

23:57

than it's gonna sound at your house. Okay.

24:00

Well, I don't really use

24:02

Dolby surround sound much. No? What do you? You

24:04

just want the straight stereo left right channels? I

24:06

mean, I guess I'm not an audio file like

24:08

you are. No. You want to have the subwoofer.

24:10

You want to have those rear speakers. And when

24:12

it all comes together, I'm telling you that is

24:14

the best way to watch anything. Will you come

24:16

to my house and install a Dolby surround sound

24:18

system? Absolutely not. Number 67, Doom. We're

24:22

not talking about the concept of Doom. This

24:24

is the video game Doom, which I would

24:26

argue changed the course of modern computing. Why

24:28

is that? Because Doom was one of

24:31

the first first person shooter games. It

24:33

was also one of the first multiplayer

24:35

internet games. And it had this thing

24:38

called texture mapping, which basically

24:40

started an arms race among the people

24:42

who built video games trying to make

24:44

more and more realistic environments in those

24:47

video games, which led to the creation

24:49

of something called the GPU, which was

24:51

a special processor that we

24:53

now know was the key to unlocking

24:56

everything that we now see in AI

24:58

today, as well as things like cryptocurrency

25:00

mining. There is no AI without Doom.

25:02

Number 66, ibuprofen.

25:06

This really is the main technology that we have

25:08

to deal with headaches. It's

25:10

true. Do you take a

25:12

lot of ibuprofen? I actually prefer naproxen. It

25:15

works a little bit better for me. But guess what,

25:17

Kevin? If there's no naproxen around, I'm going straight to

25:19

ibuprofen. Yeah. Ibuprofen really does a lot for you. Yeah.

25:22

In the pain department. Speaking

25:25

of pain, we have 65 more of these. Number

25:30

65, the compass. Well,

25:33

compasses are a great way of figuring out where you're

25:35

going, which I would say is an important technology if

25:37

you are lost or if you

25:39

are trying to navigate over land or sea. I've never

25:41

had a sense of direction. But you know what, I

25:43

have had at various points in my life, Kevin, a

25:45

compass. And from time to time, it has gotten me

25:47

where I was trying to go. When was the last

25:50

time you used a compass? I would say when I

25:52

was trying to get out of the New York City

25:54

subway and I had Google Maps open on my phone

25:56

and I'm sort of spinning around in a circle. That's

25:58

the last time I used a compass. Yeah. Well, compasses.

26:00

The person who made that really snapped off, because without

26:03

it, we'd all be lost. And I believe it was the Han

26:05

Dynasty, was it not? No, I think it was Mr. Compass. Oh,

26:07

OK. Number 64, AOL

26:10

Instant Messenger. I would say that few technologies

26:12

have changed my life more than AOL's to

26:14

Messenger, which came on the scene when I

26:16

was a child and quickly took over my

26:19

social life. It was the main way that

26:21

my friends and I communicated. And it really

26:23

introduced this concept of instant messaging, which we

26:25

now see everywhere. It's ubiquitous. And I would

26:28

also argue it was essentially the proto-social network.

26:30

When I was in college, you would set

26:32

up your little away message. People would be

26:34

able to check in on you, see what

26:36

you were up to. The key was to

26:38

put coded messages to your crush in your

26:40

away message. Using song lyrics. Yes, exactly. The

26:43

first AOL instant message was sent by Ted

26:45

Leoncis, the AOL executive, to his wife in

26:47

1993. And it read, don't

26:49

be scared. It is me. Love you and miss you.

26:52

That's beautiful. Number 63, GPS, the

26:54

global positioning system. This is how

26:56

your phone and your car know

26:59

where you are in the world. Yes, I would put

27:01

this in the same category as the compass. But it was sort of

27:03

like the next big thing in

27:05

navigation after the compass. And

27:07

it's part of the modern world. No

27:10

one would have any idea where they were if

27:12

it weren't for GPS. We would all be lost

27:14

simultaneously if it weren't for GPS. Yes, and we

27:17

would have missed out on a great episode of

27:19

The Office, which is where Michael and Dwight are

27:21

driving in a car with GPS. And they follow

27:23

the GPS and end up driving into a lake.

27:25

Number 62, compound interest. It's maybe apocryphal, but Albert

27:28

Einstein is often credited with saying the compound interest

27:30

is the eighth wonder of the world. And

27:32

that's because it is the force that means

27:34

that when you loan somebody something, they can

27:37

pay it back with interest. And that interest

27:39

can compound over time. Compound interest,

27:41

I would argue, made things like agriculture

27:43

and banking possible. It made the concept

27:45

of governments issuing currency and lending out

27:48

money through bonds possible. Compound interest drives

27:50

the world today. And without it, we

27:53

would be a much different society. And it's

27:55

also very controversial over

27:57

time because usury or the practice.

28:00

of charging excessive interest on loans has been

28:02

outlawed by a bunch of major religions and

28:04

societies over time, and just generally been a

28:06

pretty bad thing in the world. For more

28:08

on that, you can read the Bible. Number

28:10

61, Facebook News Feed. So

28:14

look, before the Facebook News Feed, there was no

28:16

way of sort of having an ambient sense of

28:18

which ones of your friends were getting in and

28:20

out of relationships and why. It's true. The Facebook

28:22

News Feed, I would argue, was one of the

28:24

most important innovations in early social networking. It changed

28:26

Facebook from a place where you would have to

28:29

go to someone's profile to see what was up

28:31

with them to a place where you could have

28:33

a personalized, algorithmically ranked feed

28:35

of everything happening on the network, which

28:37

depending on who you asked was either

28:39

a major step forward in making social

28:41

media feel more personalized and engaging, or

28:43

it created surveillance capitalism. Yeah, we live

28:45

in the world that the news feed

28:47

created. Number 60, Dolly the Sheep. Dolly,

28:50

of course, was the first mammal ever

28:52

to be cloned from an adult cell.

28:54

This happened in 1996. It

28:56

absolutely captured the public's imagination. It led to

28:59

a lot of dystopian sci-fi. You know, Kevin,

29:01

Dolly herself only lived six years, but I'm

29:03

told that after she died, she really did

29:05

turn out to be delicious. Yeah,

29:09

she died in 2003, but four clones made

29:12

using the same genetic material were created

29:14

in 2007, nicknamed the Nottingham Dolly's, and

29:16

they lived healthy lives into old age.

29:18

And if I ever met their creator,

29:20

I'd say, thanks for mutton. I'd say

29:22

hello, Dolly. Number 59, Tesla. You

29:25

want to take this one? OK,

29:28

see, as the world's biggest Elon Musk fan, I

29:30

think you should make the case that Tesla is

29:32

an iconic technology. I mean, a lot of our

29:35

listeners are probably driving around in Teslas right now.

29:37

Teslas are very cool cars, and they do deserve

29:39

credit for kind of catalyzing the electric car revolution

29:41

in this country. Yeah, I think before Teslas, there

29:44

were electric cars, but they were sort of coded

29:46

as things for crunchy hippies to drive around the

29:48

streets of Berkeley, California. But I think Tesla really

29:50

brought them to the mass market. And whatever you

29:53

think of Elon Musk, I think it's a pretty

29:55

important thing that he did with Tesla. Number 58,

29:57

Tumblr. beautiful,

32:00

sleek lines, very satisfying snap when it

32:02

closed and it became one of the

32:05

first icons in mobile phone technology. Everyone

32:07

wanted one of these things. Yeah, it

32:09

was a real status gadget when that

32:12

category was sort of new. Number 54,

32:14

Gunpowder. Kevin,

32:17

tell us about Gunpowder. Well, I would put

32:19

Gunpowder into the category of iconic, but pretty

32:21

harmful. It was invented in ninth century China

32:24

and it's led to a lot of warfare. It has

32:26

led, and I'll say it, it's led to too much

32:28

warfare. And if we could go back in

32:31

time and get rid of the Gunpowder and transition to a

32:33

more swords-based combat universe, I'd be in favor of it. Me

32:35

too. Number 53, Snapchat. Snapchat

32:38

invented so much of the web that

32:40

we use today. Of course, disappearing messages,

32:42

that was huge. Also stories, the idea

32:44

of an ephemeral post on a social

32:46

network, something that could only be viewed

32:49

for 24 hours. They

32:51

also were the first major tech company

32:53

to release kind of fun little augmented

32:55

reality glasses. So very few companies have

32:57

had as many good ideas as

33:00

Snapchat, and so it is surprising that this company remains

33:02

as unprofitable as it is. Well, very few companies have

33:04

had as many good ideas that were immediately stolen by

33:07

Mark Zuckerberg as Snapchat. That

33:11

was good. Number 52, Condoms. Austin

33:14

Powers once said that condoms are only for sailors, but I

33:16

think other people should wear them as well. Yes,

33:19

I put contraceptives in general into a

33:21

category of iconic technologies because they allowed

33:23

for things like family planning. They gave

33:25

people more control over their own lives

33:28

and were an incredible bulwark against the

33:30

spread of infectious disease. And

33:32

to give you just one example of how important condoms are, Kevin

33:34

didn't wear one one time and now he has a human child.

33:39

Number 51, eBay. I

33:42

put this on the list because eBay

33:44

really did shape the early internet. It

33:46

was the first major platform where people

33:48

could buy and sell things from other

33:50

people over the internet. What an

33:52

amazing thing. And it was one of the companies that

33:55

first made people comfortable storing their credit cards with an

33:57

internet company. Like many people did not. want to put

33:59

their credit card number online before eBay came along and

34:01

someone decided, you know what, I really do need that

34:03

shipment of Beanie Babies. Do you know what the first

34:05

item sold on eBay was? What was that? Well, back

34:07

then it was called Auction Web, but it was a

34:09

broken laser pointer and it sold for $14.83 in 1995.

34:13

Well, I hope someone fixed it. And

34:16

just like that, Kevin, we're through the top half

34:18

of the list. We're halfway through. We're halfway through.

34:20

I need a sip of coffee, Casey. This is

34:22

exhausting. I'm in coffee, by the way, another iconic

34:24

invention that I guess we'd have to say was

34:27

an honorable mention on this list. Yeah. When we

34:29

come back, Kevin, the remainder of the iconic 100

34:32

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35:49

All right, Casey. We are back and

35:51

we are ready to count down the

35:54

top 50 iconic technologies. If you thought

35:56

the first 50 were iconic, let me

35:58

just say you've heard nothing. onto

38:00

trucks and trains, and that caused a

38:02

lot of friction and took a lot

38:04

of time and energy. But Malcolm McLean

38:06

got the idea to create a standardized

38:09

container that you could transport by truck,

38:11

train, and ship without needing to take

38:13

any goods out of the container. And

38:16

that reduced the cost of carrying cargo and led

38:18

to the world of interconnected shipping that we have

38:20

today. And I bet things are probably cheaper as

38:22

a result. Yes, they are. Number 46, TikTok.

38:26

TikTok, the world's most popular short form

38:28

video app. Kevin, this one really kicked

38:30

off a revolution, I would say, in

38:32

social networks when it dropped. Yes, and

38:34

I would say it's also become a

38:36

cultural force and has led to many

38:38

popular musicians and memes and just, I

38:40

would say, has become sort

38:42

of iconic because of how widely used it

38:44

is, especially among young people. Very important for

38:47

its recommendation algorithm, which some people think might

38:49

be the best in the world. It also

38:51

created this idea of a network where you

38:53

don't even have to follow anyone. We'll just

38:55

use AI to pick out what you think

38:57

you might like, which everyone has copied since.

38:59

Yes, and sort of moved us away from

39:01

the era of social networks based on who

39:03

your friends were and what they were sharing

39:05

into this sort of universal for you feed

39:08

where everything is just picked out for you by an

39:10

algorithm. Also, let's the Chinese government spy on you whenever

39:12

they want. Number 45, the light bulb. Kevin,

39:15

when I saw this on the list, there was a real light bulb

39:17

moment for me. Yeah, light

39:19

bulbs, obviously, iconic. And

39:21

my favorite fact about the light bulb

39:23

is that they were one of the

39:25

first examples of planned obsolescence. This is

39:27

this theory that companies sort of

39:29

maliciously make their products not last as long

39:31

because they want you to keep buying more

39:34

of them. There was an actual example of

39:36

planned obsolescence called the Phoebus Cartel, which was

39:38

a group of major light bulb manufacturers that

39:40

formed in 1924. And

39:43

their goal was to shorten the lifespan of light

39:45

bulbs so that people would buy more of

39:47

them. My grandfather was murdered by the Phoebus Cartel. He knew

39:49

too much. Number 44, microscopes.

39:51

Good luck seeing the human cell without

39:54

one of these. Yes, if you are

39:56

a biologist or just someone who takes

39:58

any kind of medicine. you

40:00

are grateful for the advent of the microscope, which

40:03

allowed us to see things that could not be

40:05

observed with the naked eye. It's kind of its

40:07

own kind of corrective lens, if you really think

40:09

about it. But what it corrects for is not

40:11

being able to see the mitochondria, which is the

40:13

powerhouse of the cell. I loved using microscopes in

40:15

science class. Number 43, washing machines. This

40:19

is the thing that I think about most when

40:21

it comes to like the things that my great

40:23

grandparents did not have that I have that have

40:25

radically made my life easier than them. I

40:28

run the washing machine every day or every

40:30

other day. Wow. I mean, if

40:32

you have a young child someday, you

40:34

will too. Cause they're always throwing up.

40:36

Yes, very dirty, very dirty beings. And

40:38

the washing machine really freed up people,

40:40

especially women who are doing the majority

40:43

of laundry before the advent of the

40:45

washing machine to do other things around

40:47

the house and to actually participate in

40:49

the workforce. So I think there's an

40:51

argument that the washing machines have changed

40:53

not only the way we did our

40:55

laundry, but also changed the dynamics of

40:57

the modern household. Beautiful. Number 42, elevators.

41:01

Look, before an elevator came along, if you

41:03

lived on eighth floor, you were walking up

41:05

and down every single time and your legs

41:07

were hurting. Yeah. And they

41:09

basically created the conditions that made the skyscraper

41:11

possible and tall buildings that were much larger

41:14

than anyone would want to walk up or

41:16

down the stairs to. And my

41:18

favorite fact about elevators was that Elisha

41:20

Otis, who was the sort of popularizer

41:22

of the elevator, was the ultimate salesman.

41:24

He did this sort of Steve Jobsian

41:26

demo at the 1854 World's Fair, where

41:30

he suspended himself on a platform and

41:32

then had the rope that was

41:34

holding him up cut and demonstrated

41:36

the safety brake that he had

41:38

invented that kept the elevator from

41:40

plunging to everyone inside's death. And

41:43

that was a very dramatic reveal.

41:45

Icon behavior from Elisha Otis. Number

41:47

41, Twitter. RIP

41:49

Twitter, founded in 2006, while

41:53

it was never a particularly well-run

41:55

company, it also was, I think,

41:58

the most important news product. modern

44:00

streaming music era as we know it, because people

44:02

all of a sudden realized, hey, you don't have

44:04

to go out and buy whole albums anymore. You

44:07

can just download individual songs. It completely changed the

44:09

music industry. And certainly from the standpoint of consumers,

44:11

I think we live in a much better world.

44:13

Before Napster came along, you wanted to listen to

44:16

a new CD. You were paying $18. Now

44:18

we pay, what, $10, $11 a month, and

44:21

we can hear every piece of recorded music in

44:23

the world. Pretty amazing. Do you know that Best

44:25

Buy owned Napster for three years? Really?

44:27

What did they do with it? Well, they owned it from 2008 to 2011, and

44:31

then they merged it with Rhapsody, another music streaming

44:33

service. And it still exists today. Amazing.

44:36

It's not free anymore. Number 37, Money.

44:40

Before money, you had to barter. You had

44:42

to say, hey, I want a cow. About

44:44

how many goats will that run me? So

44:48

thank you to the leadership of Lydia,

44:50

Modern Day Turkey, who around 600 BC

44:52

invented the first metal coins. These

44:55

coins created the modern

44:57

currency system that we know today,

45:00

where you don't have to barter with beads and wampum

45:02

and cows and goats anymore.

45:05

You can just give someone a dollar bill.

45:07

It's such a relief to be paid in

45:10

money and not in livestock the way our

45:12

ancestors were. It's true. Number 36, the

45:14

Cotton Gin. KC, I

45:17

would put this on the list of

45:19

iconic technologies because not only did it

45:21

allow for the quick and easy separation

45:24

of cotton fibers from their seeds, fueling

45:26

the Industrial Revolution, it also indirectly caused

45:28

the Civil War because the Cotton Gin's

45:31

invention intensified the demand for

45:33

slavery in the American South because all of

45:35

a sudden you could produce way more cotton

45:37

and people wanted way more cotton. And

45:39

that expanded slavery in the South and

45:42

led to the Civil War. It

45:45

didn't lead to the Civil War. It led to

45:47

the actual Civil War. And just goes to show

45:49

you, there's a real chaos

45:52

theory thing here where you sort of don't know

45:54

what's going to happen when you unleash a new

45:56

technology into the world or when you unloose it.

45:59

Number 35. Uber. So

46:01

look, the taxi industry had been not great

46:03

for a long time. I

46:05

remember before Uber, you would call it for a cab in San Francisco,

46:08

and then you would just pray that it would actually show up at

46:10

your house, and often it would not. And

46:13

then along comes Uber, and you can summon a car to

46:15

wherever you are in the city with the tap of a button, and

46:17

it truly did change my life. Yeah, it changed my life too, and

46:20

I think it changed the course of the technology industry. Obviously,

46:23

we remember that period in the 2010s where

46:25

there were all these Uber for X startups. Many

46:27

of those failed, but Uber has continued on, and

46:30

I think has reshaped transportation around the world,

46:32

is also increased congestion, led to a lot

46:34

of other things that we maybe don't think

46:36

are so great, but I would say Uber

46:38

is an iconic technology. Number 34, the fulcrum.

46:42

You know, we already talked about the lever, and

46:44

you can't have levers without fulcrums. It would just

46:47

be a plank. Tell us about what

46:49

you would even say a fulcrum is. Fulcrum is

46:51

the point that gives levers their

46:53

leverage. It allows humans to

46:55

amplify force and perform tasks more efficiently.

46:57

The fulcrum is essential to technologies like

47:00

seesaws, scissors, and crowbars. I feel like

47:02

the physical fulcrum is sort of a

47:04

metaphorical fulcrum for the leverage that technology

47:06

has over our lives. It's true. I

47:09

would not want to live in a world without fulcrums. Number 33,

47:11

vaccines. I

47:14

would say get one before RFK Jr.

47:16

takes over the Department of Health and

47:18

Human Services. Yes, there's

47:20

a reason that we no longer die

47:22

of polio, and that is

47:24

because of vaccines, which I think were a

47:27

great invention, we should probably

47:29

keep them around. The reason I did

47:31

not get childhood measles, also vaccines. Also

47:33

the day in 2021, when I got

47:35

my COVID vaccine, truly one of the

47:38

happiest days of my entire life. Vaccines

47:40

are an amazing, amazing technology. Yes. Number

47:43

32, Myspace. So

47:45

it was not the first social

47:47

network that was arguably Friendster, but

47:50

man, when Myspace came along, it

47:52

truly defined a generation on the internet,

47:55

having to pick your top eight friends

47:57

and then watching them all jockey for

47:59

position. I

50:00

got nothing. Number 29, agriculture. Casey,

50:04

what do we want to

50:06

say about agriculture? Agriculture was

50:08

what took us away from

50:10

being hunter-gatherers in small tribes

50:12

and sort of modern life

50:14

began. And without

50:17

agriculture, if you wanted a peach or a

50:19

berry or a pineapple, you just had to

50:21

hope that you lived near one, Kevin. Agriculture

50:25

came along, it enabled their mass

50:27

production. And now you can actually

50:29

get pretty good strawberries for most of

50:31

the year in California. Yeah, agriculture was

50:33

so important to the development of modern

50:35

society because it meant that you could

50:37

distribute labor. You could have people

50:39

who grew the food and people who ate the food. And

50:41

those could be different people. You didn't have to have your

50:44

own family farm. Number 28,

50:46

the Walkman. Talk about

50:48

an icon. You know, when the Walkman came

50:50

along, all of a sudden, you didn't have

50:52

to be listening to the radio to listen

50:55

to your favorite music. You could put it

50:57

on a cassette tape, later a CD, walk

50:59

around town, and the world was your oyster.

51:01

It was really the start of the sort of

51:03

personal technology revolution, I would say. Yeah, and I

51:05

think one of the biggest things that sticks out

51:07

if you look at photos of groups of

51:10

people 50 years ago was that

51:13

none of them are wearing headphones, right? And

51:15

the Walkman really ushered in this era where

51:17

you could be constantly walking around listening to

51:19

your own personal music. Today we

51:21

often see people with headphones in AirPods or

51:23

otherwise. I would say that's just like a big

51:25

change in the way that people went about their daily lives. Did

51:28

you know that Sony initially considered naming the Walkman

51:31

the soundabout? Hmm, honestly, pretty good.

51:34

Number 27, Cuneiform. Cuneiform. Oh,

51:36

the foundation of the written word, Kevin.

51:39

Yes, it's so important. Among

51:41

the earliest known examples of Cuneiform was

51:43

a list of receipts for beer, which

51:45

just shows you how important writing

51:47

is. Also, one of my most recent uses for

51:49

writing was getting a receipt for beer, and I'm

51:52

not even kidding. It just goes

51:54

to show you the enduring power of Cuneiform. And

51:56

let me just say this. If you read the

51:58

written word today, thank Cuneiform. Yes. That's where it

52:00

all started. We used to be an oral society. And

52:03

now we're a written society. Well, I think

52:05

we're going away from that because now we've got

52:07

TikTok, but Kinea Form was very important for a

52:09

long time. Number 26, spaceships.

52:12

Spaceships at the end of the day. There's

52:14

a lot to say about spaceships, but I

52:16

think it all starts here. They're very cool.

52:19

They're very cool and they catalyze an entire

52:21

generation of people's interest in science and in

52:23

exploration. The moon landing was

52:25

the sort of pivotal turning point of

52:27

the 20th century in a lot of

52:29

people's eyes. And I would

52:31

say that being able to explore space has

52:33

led us to some very cool and important

52:36

discoveries. And Kevin, if we ever

52:38

become a multi-planetary species, spaceships will be the

52:40

reason that we did it. Also, most great

52:42

sci-fi I would argue owes its life to

52:44

the existence of spaceships. True. Number

52:47

25, CRISPR. And

52:49

we're not talking about the drawer in

52:51

your refrigerator. No, this is the gene

52:54

editing technology that was pioneered by Jennifer

52:56

Doudna and Emmanuel Charpentier and other researchers.

52:59

And while CRISPR has not been in

53:01

wide use in humans yet, it has

53:03

already sort of transformed the way that

53:05

scientists are thinking about the editability of

53:07

genes and a way that

53:10

we might be able to cure diseases

53:12

and engineer new products

53:14

in the future. Number 24, combustion engines.

53:16

Wow, combustion engines were so important. Imagine

53:18

having to travel by stagecoach and horse-drawn

53:20

carriages. As we often did earlier in

53:22

our careers. Yeah, and the combustion engine

53:25

changed all that by making it possible

53:27

to get around in the new thing

53:29

called an automobile. And of course, it

53:31

had a lot of deleterious effects on

53:33

the environment. And we got to a

53:35

place where we realized, hey, we need

53:38

to transition away from these. But much

53:40

of modern society was invented by the

53:42

combustion engine. True. Number 23, aqueducts. I'm

53:46

obsessed with aqueducts, Casey. Tell me. I listened

53:48

to a podcast about them once, a multi-part.

53:50

It was very cool. Essentially,

53:53

aqueducts exist because you need fresh water to

53:55

run a society. And if you do not

53:57

live in a place with freshwater deposits, get

54:00

that water from somewhere else. And

54:02

so aqueducts were popularized in ancient

54:04

Rome. And without aqueducts, there's no

54:07

cities in deserts, no Phoenix, no

54:09

Los Angeles. Aqueducts are so important

54:11

to modern society. Moving water around

54:13

since way back in the day,

54:15

and they're still doing it, and

54:17

they're doing a great job. Number

54:21

22, Grindr. I

54:23

think you put this one on the

54:25

list. I did, listen, Grindr, I truly

54:27

believe, changed the way that people meet

54:30

in the world. Obviously, it started

54:32

with gay men hooking up, also

54:34

dating. But Grindr was really the

54:36

first location-based dating and hookup network.

54:39

Grindr is how we get to

54:41

Tinder, and it's how we get

54:43

to online dating being the

54:45

way that so many couples now meet.

54:48

I would argue, obviously, it is not

54:50

the only online dating product, but there

54:52

was something about just as a gay

54:54

man knowing, hey, there's a really hot

54:56

guy 600 feet away. Maybe

54:59

we could hang out right now that changed

55:01

the world. It kind of

55:03

brought instant gratification and instant

55:06

fulfillment to dating in

55:08

a way that has now spread to straight people with apps like

55:10

Tinder and has led to many,

55:12

many successful marriages and relationships, and also a

55:14

lot of unsuccessful ones. That's right. And I

55:16

hope you'll try Grindr someday. Number

55:18

21, the telephone. Telephones,

55:22

when these came along, they

55:25

changed the way that we communicate. And I think

55:27

they actually brought us closer together. And particularly for

55:29

those of us who live far apart from our

55:31

friends and loved ones, the telephone became the best

55:33

way to stay in touch. Yeah, Alexander Graham Bell

55:36

really popped off with telephones. They

55:38

became sort of the foundation

55:40

of modern communication, replacing the

55:43

telegraph. And I

55:45

would say they had a long and successful life

55:47

until they were murdered by text messages. No one

55:49

calls anymore. It's really a shame. If

55:51

you're listening to this, let me just say, call your mother. If she's

55:53

a round caller, she wants to hear from you. Number

55:56

20, semiconductors. Casey, what would

55:58

you say a semiconductor? And

1:08:00

while there are questions about whether transformers

1:08:02

really are all you need, there is

1:08:04

some thought even to this day that

1:08:06

we might be able to create a

1:08:09

super intelligence based solely on this technology.

1:08:11

And even if we don't get all

1:08:13

the way there through transformers alone, they

1:08:15

seem like they will be at least

1:08:17

a huge pillar of the foundation of

1:08:19

whatever is about to come next. Yeah.

1:08:22

And I could talk for an hour

1:08:24

about transformers and why they are so

1:08:26

important. But I think it's important to

1:08:28

say that they were inspired by the

1:08:30

alien language in the film Arrival, which

1:08:32

had just recently come out and a group

1:08:35

of researchers at Google, one

1:08:37

researcher in particular, who was part of

1:08:39

that original team, was inspired

1:08:42

by watching Arrival and seeing that the

1:08:44

aliens in the movie had

1:08:46

this language which represented entire

1:08:48

sentences with a single symbol.

1:08:51

And they thought, hey, what if we did

1:08:53

that inside of a neural network? So rather

1:08:56

than processing all of the inputs that you

1:08:58

would give to one of these systems one

1:09:00

word at a time, you could have this

1:09:02

thing called an attention mechanism, which paid attention

1:09:04

to all of it simultaneously. That would allow

1:09:07

you to process much more information much faster.

1:09:09

And that insight sparked the creation of the

1:09:11

transformer, which led to all this stuff we

1:09:13

see in AI today. I love that story

1:09:16

for a lot of reasons, but just the

1:09:18

feedback loop between like nerds watching sci fi

1:09:20

and and and sort of seeing things that

1:09:22

don't exist and getting expired to make things

1:09:24

that are real, which then inspires more sci

1:09:27

fi. Super cool. Very fun. God

1:09:29

help us all the transformer and iconic piece

1:09:31

of technology. Yes, it could kill us all.

1:09:34

It could save the world. The jury's still

1:09:36

out. But I think it's fair to say

1:09:38

already iconic. And speaking of things that could

1:09:40

kill us all or save the world. Number

1:09:42

nine, the atomic bomb. Kevin,

1:09:44

without the atomic bomb, there simply is

1:09:47

no Barbenheimer summer in 2023. That's

1:09:50

true. I think it's done a few

1:09:52

more things than that. But look, the

1:09:54

iconic nature of the atomic bomb is

1:09:56

because of how important it has been

1:09:59

not only to arguably ending World War

1:10:01

II, but through sort

1:10:03

of creating the global

1:10:05

nuclear reality that we live in

1:10:07

today where nation states are basically

1:10:09

defined on the world stage by

1:10:11

whether or not they have access

1:10:13

to the atomic bomb. Nuclear

1:10:16

powers have been sort of keeping each

1:10:18

other in check through mutually assured destruction

1:10:20

and the entire geopolitical order that we

1:10:22

now have today basically rests on the

1:10:25

atomic bomb. Yeah, and we should also

1:10:27

say atomic bombs have done horrible things.

1:10:29

They've killed hundreds of thousands of people and

1:10:31

I hope we never use them again. Yes, me

1:10:33

too. One interesting fun

1:10:35

fact about atomic bombs is

1:10:38

that during the Manhattan Project and the

1:10:40

testing of the first atomic bombs, scientists

1:10:42

placed beer and soda cans near the

1:10:44

first atomic bomb test sites and then

1:10:47

drank what was inside afterwards. And they

1:10:49

all have superpowers now. And that's how

1:10:51

we got surge cola. No. Some

1:10:55

of the cans reportedly tasted a little off,

1:10:58

but most were fine and they didn't harm anyone. Well,

1:11:00

and that really raises the question, what

1:11:02

is in Coca-Cola? Number

1:11:06

eight, YouTube. I

1:11:09

will never forget the first time I saw a

1:11:11

YouTube video embedded on a friend's blog. It was

1:11:13

like before then you sort of had to go

1:11:15

to a dedicated website where there was some sort

1:11:18

of horrible player, but YouTube said, Hey, we're going

1:11:20

to take video and of course you can upload

1:11:22

it here. You can watch it here, but we

1:11:24

can also just sort of spread it all across

1:11:27

the web through embedding. And over time it became

1:11:29

truly one of the most important

1:11:31

media innovations of all time. I

1:11:33

think. Yeah. I would say on a

1:11:35

pure hour spent basis, YouTube probably consumes

1:11:38

more of the world's attention than basically

1:11:40

any other website or technology. It has

1:11:43

totally reshaped the entertainment industry, but also

1:11:45

just things that I do around the

1:11:47

house every day. I mean, yesterday

1:11:50

I was watching, I was trying to make some

1:11:52

sushi at home for dinner. And so

1:11:54

what did I do? I watched a YouTube video and

1:11:56

that is how many, many people discover how to do

1:11:59

many, many things. Every time I have

1:12:01

to carve a chicken, I go back to

1:12:03

YouTube and watch the same video. But of

1:12:05

course, it's not just the how-to stuff. There

1:12:07

is so much entertainment that happens there. It's

1:12:09

about live streaming. It's also about maybe watching

1:12:11

really extremist content, or at least it was

1:12:14

for a certain period of time before they

1:12:16

cracked down on that and led people down

1:12:18

some pretty dark rabbit holes. And if you're

1:12:20

interested in that, we have a podcast to

1:12:22

recommend to you. It's called Rabbit Hole. Kevin

1:12:24

hosts it. It's great. But YouTube

1:12:26

is truly one of the great icons of

1:12:29

all time. And my favorite fact about YouTube

1:12:31

and its history was that it was originally

1:12:33

supposed to be a dating app. Did

1:12:35

you know this? I did not know this. Yeah, so

1:12:37

the co-founders of YouTube basically had this idea for a

1:12:39

site where people could upload videos of themselves and then

1:12:41

you could find other people's videos and sort of try

1:12:44

to date them. And they even had

1:12:46

a slogan, Tune In Hook Up. But

1:12:48

then no one wanted to upload their videos, so they

1:12:50

pivoted to letting anyone upload any videos they wanted. They

1:12:52

said, well, tune in, but we don't really feel like

1:12:55

hooking up right now. And

1:12:57

that's, you know, that just happens sometimes.

1:12:59

We're making products. Number

1:13:02

seven, airplanes.

1:13:05

The Wright Brothers in 1903, Kevin figured out

1:13:09

how to get an airplane off the

1:13:11

ground and completed the first flight at

1:13:13

Kitty Hawk and kicked off

1:13:15

a revolution in the way that we

1:13:17

get around this world. Yeah, and if

1:13:19

you've never read the biography of the

1:13:21

Wright Brothers by David McCulloch, it is

1:13:23

one of my favorite biographies of all

1:13:25

time. It's a really interesting story of

1:13:27

these two brothers who were inventors, also

1:13:31

heroes of my native state of Ohio. But

1:13:33

they really did something that

1:13:36

people thought was impossible and they proved that

1:13:38

it wasn't. And I think that led to

1:13:40

many, many changes that we now take for

1:13:42

granted today. You know what's interesting, given how

1:13:44

important they are, how few people name their

1:13:46

children Orville or Wilbur these days. That's true.

1:13:48

You think this would be due for a

1:13:51

comeback. That's true. They're icons

1:13:53

of flight. Yeah, so they were

1:13:55

brothers. They were bicycle mechanics

1:13:57

and Wilbur was the older brother and he

1:13:59

was off. There

1:20:00

are many books that have been written about

1:20:02

the development of the iPhone. I think people

1:20:05

100 years from now will still look back

1:20:07

on it as an iconic technology, but I

1:20:09

think it's really easy to forget how different

1:20:11

the world was before the iPhone. Yeah, it

1:20:13

was worse, at least for me. Yes, and

1:20:15

the original code name for the iPhone, Casey,

1:20:17

do you know what this is? Sassbee. No.

1:20:20

No. It was purple. Well,

1:20:23

I think they came up with a better name for that one at

1:20:25

the end. Yes. Do you remember

1:20:28

when the iPhone came out? Do you remember where

1:20:30

you were and what your thoughts were? I

1:20:32

was sitting at my desk in a newspaper

1:20:34

in Arizona, and at the time, there was

1:20:36

no live stream of the Apple event, so

1:20:38

I was having to follow tech blogs and

1:20:40

getting these very incremental updates, but I remember

1:20:42

calling a friend afterwards and just saying, like,

1:20:44

dude, do you hear about this thing? Like,

1:20:46

this thing seems legitimately amazing, because obviously it

1:20:48

had been rumored for months and months, but

1:20:50

then when people saw it, they're like, this

1:20:52

seems really cool. And while I would say

1:20:54

that the very first iPhone wasn't that great,

1:20:56

by the time you get to iPhone 3G

1:21:00

or my favorite iPhone, iPhone 4, that is

1:21:02

when it seemed like everything had started to

1:21:04

come together and they had really kicked off

1:21:06

a revolution. Yeah, and that's when basically like

1:21:08

every cell phone became an iPhone, right? It

1:21:10

was like very hard to find like the

1:21:12

flip phone because the iPhone's touchscreen was just

1:21:14

so much obviously better than the ones where

1:21:16

you had to use a keyboard. Yeah.

1:21:20

Okay. All right. We've reached the

1:21:22

top two. Top two. We are

1:21:24

in the pantheon of the greatest

1:21:26

technologies of all time. Casey,

1:21:29

number two. Electricity!

1:21:32

Electricity, it's powering all of the lights

1:21:35

in this studio. It is providing power

1:21:37

to our laptops, and it is the

1:21:39

feeling that Kevin and I have between

1:21:41

each other every time we step into

1:21:43

the podcast studio and that's electricity. Yes,

1:21:45

modern life as we know it today

1:21:47

would not be possible without electricity. And

1:21:49

who invented it? Well, it's... Uh.

1:21:56

It wasn't Ben Franklin. Technically

1:21:58

it wasn't invented. It's a

1:22:00

natural phenomenon that has always

1:22:02

existed, but it was harnessed

1:22:05

by many people over a period

1:22:07

of centuries. Obviously, Benjamin Franklin and

1:22:09

his famous kite experiment in 1752

1:22:11

demonstrated that lightning was

1:22:15

a form of electricity, but

1:22:17

it also, we needed things like the

1:22:20

electrical battery, which was invented in 1800

1:22:22

by Alessandro Volta, Michael

1:22:26

Faraday, who discovered electromagnetic induction

1:22:28

in 1831. And

1:22:31

then we got things like alternating

1:22:33

current from Nikola Tesla and

1:22:36

the light bulb from Thomas

1:22:38

Edison. All of these are

1:22:40

implementations of electricity. I mean, it's

1:22:42

not only is it a technology,

1:22:44

but it's like a force of

1:22:47

nature, right? And we have

1:22:49

been able to harness it in so

1:22:51

many ways. And every time I turn

1:22:53

my lights on, I say, thank you,

1:22:55

electricity. Yes, one of my favorite books

1:22:57

of all time is by a historian

1:22:59

named David Nye, who wrote this book

1:23:01

called Electrifying America. And it's

1:23:03

just sort of about the period

1:23:06

where electricity was really seeping into

1:23:08

American life and culture and

1:23:11

how it redefined basically everything. Like you

1:23:13

would be in some sort of an

1:23:15

agricultural village or something where people were

1:23:18

doing subsistence farming, and all of a

1:23:20

sudden electricity would come to town and

1:23:22

it totally changed everything about your life.

1:23:25

You could do things at night. You

1:23:27

could extend the work day. Like it

1:23:30

became possible to have just

1:23:32

all kinds of new technologies in your

1:23:34

life that would basically take you out

1:23:36

of the subsistence farming era and into

1:23:38

modernity. And that's what we want to

1:23:40

see more of out of our technology.

1:23:42

Change our lives in positive ways, please.

1:23:44

Yes. Well,

1:23:46

Kevin, can't believe it, but we've arrived at number one.

1:23:49

God. And this took a lot of thought,

1:23:52

a lot of debate, a lot of fractious

1:23:54

contentious debate. But when we really

1:23:56

thought long and hard about it, there was

1:23:58

only one. possible

1:24:01

candidate for the most iconic technology of all time.

1:24:04

And we'll say it now, the number

1:24:06

one most iconic technology of all time,

1:24:08

fire. First of

1:24:10

all, only technology on this list that was stolen

1:24:13

from the gods. Thank you Prometheus. Second

1:24:16

of all, once we became able

1:24:18

to control fire, sometime within the past

1:24:20

million years, we were able

1:24:23

to cook food, which

1:24:26

was one of the

1:24:28

biggest revolutions of all time.

1:24:30

We were also able to

1:24:32

create campfires and sit around

1:24:34

and tell stories, which became

1:24:36

the foundation that podcasting is

1:24:38

built upon. Yes. And

1:24:40

a third thing I would say, once we

1:24:42

began to be able to control fire, we

1:24:44

were able to adopt a scorched earth technique

1:24:47

to our military campaigns. So if it really

1:24:49

seemed like we were going to lose a

1:24:51

war, we could just burn down our whole

1:24:53

country. I think they did that in Russia

1:24:55

once or twice. Yeah. I

1:24:57

would say the most important application of

1:24:59

fire has been to keeping us warm.

1:25:02

Right? Yeah. People

1:25:04

would just die of being cold. Fire is

1:25:06

the most iconic source of heat that exists.

1:25:10

It's true. And it's

1:25:12

sort of a cliche now among

1:25:14

people in our world, the tech

1:25:17

industry, to compare AI to fire

1:25:19

in some way to say it's the most important invention

1:25:22

since fire soon to approach I the CEO of Google

1:25:24

has said that. But I think implicit in that is

1:25:26

that no one is arguing that fire is the most

1:25:28

important technology of all time. We just sort of take

1:25:30

that one for granted. We do. And

1:25:32

so today we really wanted to

1:25:35

celebrate it because I think fire

1:25:37

is it perfectly

1:25:39

encapsulates so much of what we talk

1:25:41

about when we talk about tech, which

1:25:43

is it is incredibly powerful. It has

1:25:45

many wonderful uses. And also if it

1:25:48

is not controlled, it can absolutely kill

1:25:50

you. Yes. It is a

1:25:52

dual use technology that can cause both extreme

1:25:54

harm as in a wildfire or a house

1:25:56

fire or it

1:25:58

can cook food and keep you warm

1:26:00

and help you survive. Fire

1:26:03

also allowed humans to migrate,

1:26:06

to leave warm regions and settle

1:26:08

in colder areas. It helped

1:26:10

humans navigate the dark with things like lamps

1:26:12

and lanterns. And it was

1:26:15

essential for making things like metal.

1:26:18

Well, anything else we should say about fire? What would

1:26:20

you say is your favorite kind of fire? My

1:26:23

favorite kind of fire is when the roof is

1:26:25

on fire, but you don't need any water. And

1:26:28

so you just let the mother effer burn, like

1:26:30

sort of in a dance club setting. You

1:26:32

know what I mean? Do you remember the old song

1:26:34

that said, you know, somebody called 911 because

1:26:37

there's a shorty fire burning on the dance

1:26:39

floor? To me, that's the kind of fire

1:26:41

I want to be a part of. How

1:26:43

about you? I'm a big fan of

1:26:45

the bonfire. Mm. Yeah. Still a

1:26:47

great place to have a conversation,

1:26:50

to maybe roast some marshmallows, to

1:26:52

sing some folk music. Bonfires,

1:26:55

they also, you know, I

1:26:57

love the way they smell. Yeah, I mean, it

1:26:59

feels like you shouldn't want your clothes to smell like

1:27:01

a bonfire afterwards, but it always makes me happy when

1:27:03

it does. Yeah. Love a bonfire. Well,

1:27:06

Kevin, any final reflections on this list

1:27:08

of 100 iconic technologies? Yes,

1:27:12

I would say this was an exercise

1:27:14

that seemed a little bit stunty to

1:27:16

me when you first proposed doing it. And

1:27:19

I should say it is

1:27:21

stunty. We are doing this in part because

1:27:23

we're taking a week off making a podcast

1:27:25

about the news. But

1:27:27

I would also say that it has, doing

1:27:30

all of the research about all these

1:27:32

iconic technologies has really made me appreciate

1:27:34

just the process of invention and the

1:27:36

people who go out into the world.

1:27:38

And they say, there's a problem, I

1:27:40

want to fix it. Exactly, you know,

1:27:42

look, I love the aspect of my

1:27:44

job that lets me to think critically

1:27:46

about technologies and point out potential problem

1:27:48

areas and urge people to fix them.

1:27:51

But I wouldn't have started writing about

1:27:53

these issues at all if I didn't

1:27:55

fundamentally love trying new things and sampling

1:27:58

the fruits of human ingenuity. transforming

1:30:00

their work with Claude.

1:30:02

Unleash your team's potential

1:30:04

at anthropic.com/enterprise. Special

1:30:32

thanks to Paula Schumann, Pui Wing

1:30:34

Tam, Dalia Haddad, and Jeffrey Miranda.

1:30:37

As always, you can email us

1:30:39

at hardfork at nytimes.com. This

1:30:59

podcast is supported by Made In Cookware.

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