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told you so. something today,

2:00

as in click the little thumbs up

2:02

or a heart icon on a social

2:04

media app. You might have wanted to

2:06

show your approval for a new story

2:08

or a political post or dole out

2:10

some little dopamine hit to a friend

2:12

or you might have just thought that

2:14

a photo or a video was funny.

2:16

But in doing so you've added in

2:18

the tiniest way to a vast and

2:20

growing data set that's changed the way

2:22

economies, political parties, technology and entire countries

2:24

operate and may be rewiring human psychology

2:26

at a fundamental level. The authors of

2:28

the new book, like, the button that

2:30

changed the world, estimates that a thumbs-up

2:33

like button, or one of its many

2:35

progeny, like a smiley or a heart,

2:37

gets clicked seven billion times a day.

2:39

That's a whole lot of like, and

2:41

as fast company magazine puts it, in

2:43

terms of sheer impact, the like button

2:45

was one of the most successful pieces

2:47

of code ever shipped. Where did the

2:49

commoditisation of like come from? What is

2:51

it doing to our world and to

2:53

ourselves? And where is like leading us?

2:55

Joining us today is a man who

2:57

co-wrote that book with his friend, a

2:59

think tank marketing girl called Martin Reeves.

3:01

Bob Goodson was one of the founding

3:03

engineering team at Yelp, the early recommendation

3:05

site that's still going, and which I

3:08

still use now and again. He's a

3:10

Silicon Valley O. And he has a

3:12

very special relationship with the like button.

3:14

Bob Goodson, welcome to the bunker. Thanks

3:16

Angie. So on page two of the

3:18

book there's a very crude sketch by

3:20

you from the early 2000s of a

3:22

thumbs up and a thumbs down. Tell

3:24

us how you personally with no aid

3:26

from anybody else created the like button

3:28

without any influence from the outside world.

3:30

Yes of course these things always evolve

3:32

and what we were trying to do

3:35

at Yelp as you say this is

3:37

local review site popular in the US

3:39

now in the early days is we're

3:41

trying to help create incentives for people

3:43

to write content to write content and

3:45

so we had a feature called sender

3:47

complement which took a few clicks and

3:49

back then that was a meaningful amount

3:51

of time because bandwidth was just much

3:53

slower and so we we were looking

3:55

for a way to allow people to

3:57

interact in the most fluid way. possible.

4:00

And our co-founder and CTO said to

4:02

me one day, could you come up

4:04

with a design? I'm going to look at

4:06

the JavaScript and see if we can

4:08

make this as smooth as possible. And

4:10

so I spent the afternoon just looking

4:12

around at other sites and thinking about

4:15

what it might look like. and there's

4:17

a little drawing on page two of

4:19

like the very first like button because

4:21

that was it was a bit of

4:23

a joke question because a key point

4:25

in the book is that no one

4:27

person ever invents these things they're kind

4:29

of you know almost kind of unconsciously

4:32

crowd sourced of people everybody thinking about

4:34

a similar problem and coming towards almost

4:36

an answer this it's always predestined. Exactly

4:38

we dedicated the book to all the

4:40

tinkers and makers that history will never

4:42

record and in many ways the book

4:44

is in tracing the origins of the

4:46

like button and trying to answer this

4:49

question well who really invented it we

4:51

found ourselves going on a journey of

4:53

research over a 30 year period and

4:56

looking into and finding all kinds of

4:58

characters that made little you know tweaks

5:00

around the edges and this thing really

5:03

evolved on its own and such as

5:05

the way with almost all technology, you

5:07

know, in the media we often get

5:09

fed the cartoon version of innovation where

5:12

there's one person heroically coming up with

5:14

something without outside influence and and one

5:16

of the things we're trying to do

5:18

with the book is reveal how Silicon

5:21

Valley really works and how technology really

5:23

gets developed because there are some important

5:25

lessons for how we think about like

5:27

new waves of innovation. Tell me, why

5:29

do humans, and this isn't way sounds

5:31

like a ridiculous question, but why do

5:33

humans like liking things because you kind

5:35

of homophily in that like you like

5:37

things that are like yourself and hypersociality.

5:40

We like being connected to all the

5:42

people and we like sharing values with

5:44

them. Why do we like these things?

5:46

Whenever something is as successful

5:48

as this feature has been, I think

5:50

we have to ask ourselves, what can

5:52

it tell us about us? What does

5:54

it reveal about the way we're wired

5:56

and our motivations? And there's no doubt

5:58

this has been incredibly successful. feature, perhaps

6:00

the most successful interaction element like

6:02

created in the last 20 years,

6:04

and having spoken to a number

6:06

of experts in psychology and neuroscience

6:08

and various other fields, a couple

6:10

of the key takeaways for us

6:13

are that there is a dopamine

6:15

mechanism which is becoming increasingly well

6:17

understood that liking connects to, and

6:19

there's an element of the sort

6:21

of sociality that we're wired for

6:23

as well, which is... you know,

6:25

see, there's the approval seeking mechanism

6:27

within those close to us that

6:29

it's also wired into. So we

6:31

make the case that there is,

6:33

that the, this feature evolved in

6:35

response to the way people behave

6:37

and interact with it through many,

6:39

many tweaks and changes over many

6:41

different sides. And there are some

6:43

important lessons to that are revealed

6:45

about some of the fundamental motivations

6:47

of day-to-day motivations of day-to-day life.

6:49

Yeah, it's like getting, it's more

6:51

than just getting a seal of

6:54

approval. It kind of like makes

6:56

you feel that you're part of

6:58

a community, and that's something that

7:00

seems to go right back to

7:02

the to the primal mind. There

7:04

were a lot of astonishing the

7:06

interesting nuggets in this. I am

7:08

quite fascinated at the idea. that

7:10

the thumbs up itself, the myth

7:12

that the Roman Emperor would give

7:14

a thumbs up or a thumbs

7:16

down, turns out to be almost

7:18

certainly untrue or, you know, distorted

7:20

to the lens of history. Can

7:22

you tell us a little bit

7:24

about that? Because that's actually quite

7:26

fascinating where the actual thumbs up

7:28

gesture comes from. Yeah, we thought

7:30

going into this, or at least

7:33

one of the first things we

7:35

wondered is how far back does

7:37

this mechanism go? And so we

7:39

have a chapter on the pre-digital

7:41

history of liking and we explore...

7:43

the significance of the thumbs-up symbol

7:45

and where that came from and

7:47

how that evolved over time to

7:49

become a popular icon really in

7:51

sort of, you know, post-Second World

7:53

War actually, or when it hit

7:55

a new level of popularity. But

7:57

we went back and thought about

7:59

the... gladatorial arenas. One

8:02

of the things that we realized

8:04

is that it was a new type

8:06

of architecture which permitted

8:08

visual signaling within

8:11

a crowd. And there were

8:13

certainly visual signals that

8:15

were, you know, used. Whether it

8:17

was thumbs up, sideways down and

8:19

so on, like that's much murkier

8:22

territory and probably our idea of

8:24

that. came from a famous painting

8:26

that became popular in the US

8:28

100 years ago or so. But

8:30

what is fascinating to me about

8:33

that time is that if you

8:35

think about it, before an amphitheater

8:37

structure, you couldn't see thousands of

8:39

people at once. When you put

8:42

everyone in a circular structure and

8:44

you put them on, you know,

8:46

tears, then everyone could see each

8:48

other and suddenly it creates the

8:51

possibility for... real-time voting in

8:53

a visual way across thousands

8:55

of people. And so there

8:57

is an interesting parallel because

9:00

this is an innovation or an architectural

9:02

shift. that made a type of voting

9:04

possible and in the same way the

9:06

creation of the internet and the the

9:08

browser created another type of voting potential

9:10

right that but but the the mechanism

9:13

and the appeal of it goes back

9:15

way before the digital era. Yeah I

9:17

just like the story of how you

9:19

know there's a notion that was a

9:21

source of signal with the thumb in

9:23

the Roman arena. But it's far from

9:26

certain that it was thumbs up, thumbs

9:28

down. In fact, it may have been

9:30

drawing the thumb across the throat to

9:32

indicate kill him or drawing the thumb

9:34

into the pocket to indicate sheath your

9:36

dagger. And this gets boudlerized by I

9:38

think a prechical Talmadge, the United States,

9:41

who infers the uptighted thumb, and therefore

9:43

infers from the downturn thumb that there

9:45

will be an upturned thumb. So the

9:47

idea that like something that's misunderstood, then

9:49

goes around the world that becomes the truth.

9:51

It becomes a truth. It is actually very

9:54

internet, is actually very internet, isn't it. Maybe

9:56

we've uncovered some of the... But that's the

9:58

nature of history, isn't it? I mean, in

10:00

a way, it's the crux of history,

10:02

isn't it? Trying to figure out

10:04

where did these ideas come from?

10:06

And can we get back to

10:09

the source? And so many layers

10:11

of interpretation mean history is a

10:13

very difficult subject. And the harder

10:15

you think about it. The more

10:17

you say, why do you think

10:19

about it? The more you say,

10:21

why should a thumbs-up mean, no,

10:23

anyway? It doesn't make any. Well,

10:25

I mean, go back to Silicon

10:28

Valley. mode of early age and

10:30

broadband and so on. After that

10:32

early age, why did developers, why

10:34

did large tech platforms

10:36

realize that like was so valuable

10:38

so why do they want this

10:40

functionality more and more?

10:42

So one way to think about it

10:44

is that the era of Web

10:47

2.0 was really about user-generated content

10:49

and the shift that happened during

10:51

that era is that we went

10:53

from a time when the web

10:55

was read by... 90% of people and

10:57

maybe 5 to 10% of people

10:59

were the ones who are doing

11:01

the writing and the content creation.

11:04

So we sort of had a

11:06

90-10 scenario is how we all

11:08

treated it and understood it looking

11:10

at the numbers. And what happened

11:12

during this era in the early

11:14

2000s is that people figured

11:16

out how to bring more and more

11:18

people into a content creator role. And

11:21

nowadays we all assume that we're going

11:23

to both consume and create content. But

11:25

that really wasn't the case in the

11:27

early web. And so in some ways the

11:30

like button accelerated this because it

11:32

created the atomic unit of user-generated

11:34

content. There was and there still

11:36

is no simpler way to create

11:38

content on the internet. And people

11:40

don't think of liking as a

11:43

content creation act. They think of

11:45

it as a reaction or a

11:47

type of reading actually, but it

11:49

pulled people in on a massive

11:51

scale as a percentage of those

11:53

people reading to writing into content

11:56

creators. And liking was just one

11:58

of those mechanisms, but really... social

12:00

media itself made it so easy to

12:02

create content, share photos, send messages that,

12:05

you know, it pull people into content

12:07

creator roles. Why is it so addictive?

12:09

Well, I mean, we mentioned like how,

12:12

you know, we want to feel that

12:14

we're part of the community, we want

12:16

to feel that the people around us,

12:19

we want to learn from the people

12:21

around us, but there's a kind of...

12:23

almost an addictive feel to both giving

12:26

your approval, but also receiving your approval.

12:28

We all know people and sometimes we

12:30

do it ourselves. You get very antsy

12:32

about the fact that they might have

12:35

stuck something up on, you know, on

12:37

a social media platform. I'm like, well,

12:39

where am I like? So nobody's lucky.

12:42

Nobody cares about me. I am nobody

12:44

without like I have nothing. Where does

12:46

this addictive thing come from? Well, dopamine

12:49

is a highly addictive substance. And I

12:51

mean, this is my interpretation that so

12:53

addictive. If you think about what dopamine

12:56

is meant for and how it's always

12:58

served humans, it's the thing that motivates

13:00

action. So I think about lunch, right?

13:03

You get to 1130 or something and

13:05

you start to get hungry and you

13:07

have this thought, I can make a

13:10

chicken sandwich and that it feels quite

13:12

good and you imagine the taste of

13:14

that chicken sandwich and that's a little

13:17

dopamine hit and the nature of dopamine

13:19

is it gives you a little hit.

13:21

an anticipation of the big hit of

13:24

getting a reward. Now you motivate to

13:26

take action, go and make the sandwich,

13:28

you know, there's some physical effort required

13:31

in that, and now you eat the

13:33

sandwich, and it closes the loop because

13:35

if the sandwich is good or better

13:38

than you expected, you're going to get

13:40

a really big dopamine hit. If it's

13:42

disappointing, you'll get a much smaller dopamine

13:45

hit. So we're constantly in this cycle

13:47

of... of anticipation of reward and it

13:49

should be hard work to get dopamine.

13:51

This is just speaking from personal opinion.

13:54

It should be hard work, right? It

13:56

should, dopamine rewards things like working, having

13:58

relationships. being a parent, you know, creating

14:01

things, cleaning up, and you know, all

14:03

the things that we... That's just saying

14:05

something funny on the internet and watching

14:08

the like file up, yes. Right, throughout

14:10

all of human history, dopamine has been

14:12

hard work to attain, and it's a

14:15

very, very powerful motivator for action. And

14:17

one of the things that's happened in

14:19

the past, particularly the

14:21

past five years in the way social

14:24

media has evolved, is it has become

14:26

increasingly easy to access dopamine. And I

14:28

think this is... just a fascinating shift.

14:30

I don't think there's ever been a

14:32

time in history where dopamine has been

14:34

so easy to access. It's got down

14:36

to a point where you can just

14:39

swipe your finger and you can get

14:41

a dopamine hit and then you swipe

14:43

again and you get another one. And

14:45

it is never really designed. I don't

14:47

think that mechanism evolved to be so

14:49

easy to access and for you to be

14:51

able to access it so frequently. When

14:56

you think about super successful businesses

14:58

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terms, conditions, terms, and restrictions, and restrictions,

15:59

conditions, and restrictions, conditions, details, and terms,

16:01

and terms, subject to change. Subject to

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other thing that becomes very clear

16:37

from the book and in the

16:40

story of the whole mechanic is

16:42

that technology companies and platforms realize

16:44

very quickly that they can harness

16:46

that search for dopamine to create

16:48

one of the most powerful

16:50

objects that's ever existed, which

16:52

is the giant corpus of big

16:54

data where you have knowledge

16:56

of individuals' behavior right down to

16:58

individual decisions and you have

17:00

the methods by which to use

17:02

that. So previously, no human

17:04

being could ever fully understood the

17:06

activities of large numbers of people.

17:08

Now, the activities of billions of

17:11

people could be fully understood by

17:13

big data models and they can

17:15

be exploited to sell you things

17:17

to persuade you of certain political

17:19

arguments to deceive you. And it

17:21

can go really dark. So for

17:24

instance, as lots of listeners will

17:26

know, Facebook was held responsible for

17:28

prompting the genocide in Myanmar against

17:30

the Rohingya. This is to go

17:32

from, and I'm not blaming

17:34

you personally, obviously, but to go from

17:36

like a positive review, little thumbs up

17:38

on Yelp to this kind of mass

17:41

manipulation of the way humans think

17:43

is quite momentous, isn't it? Yeah,

17:45

there are a lot of

17:47

important lessons for how to

17:50

manage new technology. I mean,

17:52

ultimately, technology is a word that sort of

17:54

has a spell to it and a power

17:56

to it, but really what it is

17:58

is a new way to do... something.

18:00

And as soon as there is a new

18:02

way of doing something, then there can

18:04

be benefits and harms. In fact, there

18:07

are always benefits and harms. The idea

18:09

that you could ever create a

18:11

technology and it only ever be

18:13

used for good or only ever

18:15

create positive outcomes is ludicrous when

18:17

you think about it. Because it's

18:19

just a way of doing something

18:22

differently. So as soon as something

18:24

exists that's a new way of doing something,

18:26

there are new potential harms to

18:28

people. And that's what regulation and

18:30

governments have a role to find

18:33

and protect and they do. It's

18:35

a matter of time, usually as

18:38

these things get developed. Sometimes governments

18:40

react very quickly and preemptively to

18:42

new technologies. Other times it takes years

18:45

and sometimes it takes decades. Well perhaps

18:47

we can get to that in little

18:49

more detail in a minute, but you

18:51

know, the fact is that the use of

18:53

the like mechanic became pretty amoral

18:55

and driven by... the growth of companies

18:57

and the ability to do things like

18:59

transform the advertising market. So, you know,

19:02

just print ads and display ads have

19:04

gone largely and they've been replaced by

19:06

personal targeting of advertising. The UK information

19:08

commissioner, as you quote in the box,

19:11

says that reward loops or positive reinforcement

19:13

techniques, nudge or encourage users to say

19:15

actively engage with the service, allowing the

19:18

online service to collect more personal data.

19:20

So the more we use it, the

19:22

better it gets the more we use

19:25

it. and it seems to race

19:27

ahead of the regulation that you've

19:29

just described there, you're a very

19:31

experienced Silicon Valley person, is that,

19:33

are people in Silicon Valley worried

19:35

about what they're doing towards or

19:37

are they simply riding this to yet

19:40

more fame and fortune? It's a

19:42

good question and what's been interesting

19:44

to me is to see the sort of a

19:46

pattern or the shifts in the dialogue over

19:49

the years, over the last 20 years in

19:51

Silicon Valley, something that perhaps doesn't

19:53

get... talked about so much is

19:55

how idealistic people were in the early

19:57

days of the web and certainly in

20:00

the early 2000s as we went

20:02

into, you know, the second surge

20:04

of the web came into

20:07

effect. I think back

20:09

to being in that community

20:11

where so many of these

20:13

companies were getting started

20:16

and just knowing so many

20:18

of those founders. And I would

20:20

say, hand on heart, about

20:22

half of the dialogue was

20:25

about the future of education,

20:27

you know. We take for granted now

20:29

that we all have access to

20:32

an amazing encyclopedia for free, for

20:34

example. But when I arrived in

20:37

San Francisco in 2004, if you

20:39

wanted an encyclopedia in your

20:41

home, you had to be somewhat wealthy

20:43

to have one. They weren't for everybody.

20:45

I yearned for an encyclopedia when I

20:48

was a kid. So, you know, the

20:50

idea that information would be democratized,

20:52

that the ways we could learn

20:54

things would be democratized, you know,

20:57

the fact that, I mean, that

20:59

all the conversation that was around

21:01

politics is that democracies would get

21:03

stronger as information became free. And

21:05

so, but what I also observed

21:08

is that from those quite idealistic

21:10

foundations in say 2003, 2004, within

21:12

about four or five years, you

21:14

just didn't hear so much of

21:17

those conversations. And I honestly don't

21:19

think anybody involved at that time

21:21

realized that there were... were at the start

21:23

of a creation of a multi-trillion dollar

21:25

industry. I think that everyone was

21:28

aspirational and I think people were trying

21:30

to build big things. I don't think they

21:32

realized how much money was going to be

21:34

involved and once that was clear, then there

21:37

was a shift in the dialogue. I think

21:39

a lot of listeners were hearing the world

21:41

that you just described there and saying, well,

21:43

it's gone forever because we look at the

21:46

way tech behaves now, you know, one of

21:48

the most powerful men on the planet is

21:50

using it entirely. for ill. Zuckerberg, who is,

21:52

you know, not quite as powerful as Elon

21:55

Musk, but has basically abdicated any responsibility for

21:57

Facebook to moderate and pull back on

21:59

the... the harmful uses of Facebook.

22:01

It's as if the platforms

22:03

began being interested in like, and

22:05

then quickly realized that any

22:07

engagement is good engagement. And anybody

22:10

who has been using Twitter

22:12

until recently will have seen the

22:14

horrendous For You page, which

22:16

is designed solely to get you

22:18

angry, because anger is also

22:20

engagement. Is it just the profit

22:22

motive that pulled developers and

22:24

strategists away from the idea of

22:26

like, let's just quantify what

22:28

people like, and into darker and

22:30

more dangerous forms of engagement?

22:32

I think there's a new wave

22:35

of responsibility and development, which

22:37

I'm observing now, right? There are

22:39

folks that with part of

22:41

this generation of creating some of

22:43

these applications who are now

22:45

kind of going back into like,

22:47

you know, the second wave

22:49

of their careers, building new types

22:51

of applications, and doing so

22:53

with a new level of intention

22:55

and a sense of responsibility.

22:58

So I certainly wouldn't want to

23:00

characterize it that there aren't

23:02

a lot of people who are

23:04

in technology who think very

23:06

deeply about these questions. They absolutely

23:08

do. That said, you know,

23:10

I always like to look at

23:12

these systems from an incentive

23:14

standpoint. And what it's worth understanding

23:16

is that when there is

23:18

a competitive dynamic in an industry,

23:20

it's very, very hard for

23:23

companies not to pursue the outcome

23:25

that's best to compete. And

23:27

this is just the nature of

23:29

capitalism. And I don't see

23:31

that changing. Again, speaking from my

23:33

personal perspective, you look at

23:35

the incentives, you know, look at

23:37

what happened when TikTok came

23:39

into play with a very different

23:41

approach to the algorithms to

23:43

feed you content that would keep

23:45

your engagement, right? Completely different

23:48

approach. They didn't care if you

23:50

and I know each other

23:52

to show each other content. They

23:54

just cared about the attention

23:56

graph essentially, which is an evolution

23:58

from the social graph, perhaps

24:00

to the light graph, to the

24:02

attention graph. And... that changed the game for

24:04

social media because it was so successful those algorithms are so

24:06

successful the other social media platforms had to adopt the

24:09

same techniques in order to compete if

24:11

they hadn't if they hadn't focused on

24:13

those adoption of techniques then you've got

24:15

one player who's running away with it

24:17

for attention so that there's this massive

24:19

in the case of social media it's

24:22

a massive competition for attention and if

24:24

if one player finds something that works

24:26

and gets a bit more attention the

24:28

others kind of have to follow to

24:30

keep up. And so can you into

24:32

that system design a sense of withholding

24:34

or you know moralistic responsibility when the

24:37

science isn't there yet, when the

24:39

studies aren't there yet in terms

24:41

of the harm? And you know

24:43

and I've looked into this deeply

24:45

and you know we're still at

24:47

early stages when it comes to

24:49

you know the scientific research around

24:52

this, you know expecting companies to

24:54

hold back. is really not that

24:56

realistic and which is where governments

24:58

and regulations come in to protect

25:00

to protect its citizens. Yeah it's

25:02

possibly unrealistic to expect companies to

25:04

hold back but it is realistic to

25:06

expect regulatory authorities and government to intervene, which

25:09

the social media platforms are fought doggedly to

25:11

prevent from happening. They don't want that to

25:13

happen. I mean, every social media user recognizes

25:15

the buzz you'll get from getting a lot

25:18

of likes and the annoying feeling of being

25:20

ignored. These are kind of primal things. And

25:22

it looks like where they've driven us to

25:25

is a place. Again, I'm not blaming the

25:27

like button for this. It's a little tiny

25:29

bit part player in a bigger drama, but

25:31

it seems to a different place where kind

25:34

of social technology that was going to

25:36

bring about the utopia that you described

25:38

that actually just become a big rage

25:40

machine and a big hatred machine and

25:42

a big division machine. Silicon Valley stood

25:44

against the kind of regulation and still

25:46

tries to stand against the regulation of

25:48

its product. And yet we have, you

25:50

know, situations where, you know, smartphone bans

25:52

have been seriously considered for kids because we

25:54

don't know what it's doing to kids' minds.

25:56

We have New York declaring a mental health

25:59

crisis caused by social media which you

26:01

just you describe in the book is

26:03

it enough for Silicon Valley to say

26:05

well we just build this stuff and

26:08

what it reveals about human nature is

26:10

sadly that's what's hard writing to human

26:12

nature. Yeah I'll leave others to comment

26:14

on the you know the the art

26:17

and science of regulation and and this

26:19

system is no doubt complex. I think

26:21

what is helpful for everyone to understand

26:24

is that is the system itself. I

26:26

think that a better level of understanding

26:28

of how innovation happens, how these things

26:30

get created, who the players are, you

26:33

know, I think that's healthy. I think

26:35

that more education and more information out

26:37

there about how these things work can

26:39

only be a good thing. And it's

26:42

one of the reasons that I was

26:44

motivated to write the book. I mean,

26:46

it took four years to write and

26:48

it's been a passion project, but it's...

26:51

I felt that there were lessons that

26:53

I could see that are not out

26:55

there in the public domain and that

26:58

myself and my co-author Martin were very

27:00

keen to put out there. I'll add

27:02

one more thing to the comment you

27:04

made that the utopia is gone. I

27:07

don't think the utopia is gone. I

27:09

believe that it's a matter of timeline.

27:11

So we're 20 years, let's say, into

27:13

the era of web 2.30 years into

27:16

the era of the web or so.

27:18

And I believe that when we look

27:20

back on a 100-year-year time frame, there

27:23

will be no doubt of the power

27:25

and benefits that the internet has brought

27:27

to humanity. I think that when you

27:29

look at things on a six-month time

27:32

frame or one-year time frame you say

27:34

how is it doing right now, that's

27:36

a different question and you're looking at

27:38

a different time frame. But the arc

27:41

of what's getting created and the value

27:43

getting created for people, I think is

27:45

overall a positive one and is going

27:48

to be reflected that way over a

27:50

long period of time. For example, I

27:52

like to think about what YouTube does.

27:54

Right? Now, as an adult, I was

27:57

kind of interested in music as a

27:59

kid, but I had a few piano

28:01

lessons and then, you know, stopped having

28:03

lessons. But I didn't play instruments as

28:06

a kid, but I've learned to play

28:08

guitar and piano in my adult years

28:10

entirely with YouTube. And you can access

28:12

music lessons essentially, right, through this free

28:15

platform. If you think about how many

28:17

skills people have learned on YouTube for

28:19

free, it's an enormous contribution to education.

28:22

And again, thinking back to pre-internet, if

28:24

you wanted to learn an instrument, you

28:26

had to have enough money to pay.

28:28

for a music teacher and most people

28:31

cannot afford to pay for a music

28:33

teacher. And this is just one example,

28:35

but you can say the same about

28:37

language acquisition and physical skills and training

28:40

and all sorts of other fields. In

28:42

fact, you know, we're having this conversation

28:44

today, thanks and people are listening to

28:47

it thanks to the internet. Yeah, I

28:49

mean, it's enabled so many things, but

28:51

also you have to put little aspects

28:53

that you could have, by the way,

28:56

also destroyed democracy. And, you know, is

28:58

that, you know, you know, without being

29:00

too facetious about it. It's like, you

29:02

know, it is a tradeoff, you know,

29:05

what thing, we can't resolve this here,

29:07

but I just think one particular point

29:09

that you made that was really interesting.

29:12

You pointed out, I mean, you could

29:14

have called this book, like, and the

29:16

Lord of Unintended Consequences, because so many

29:18

things that you describe, uh, generates, consequences

29:21

nobody because of envisaged. One thing he

29:23

points out is that it's encouraged, which

29:25

these innovations take off, has encouraged an

29:27

idea among the public that. technological transformation

29:30

can take place really really quickly and

29:32

with almost instantaneous changes and suddenly you're

29:34

living in a different world and things

29:36

of kind of you know destruction begets

29:39

creation immediately and now we're seeing that

29:41

applied to like the bricks and moors

29:43

a real world by a guy who's

29:46

entirely steeped in the world of the

29:48

internet this is what gets you the

29:50

doge mindset has it has the speed

29:52

of innovation in Silicon Valley encouraged people

29:55

in the false belief that all change

29:57

can be quick radical, instantaneous and ultimately

29:59

positive. Location

30:45

the lab. Quinton only has

30:47

24 hours to sell his

30:49

car. Is that even possible?

30:51

He goes to carvana.com.

30:54

What is this? A movie trailer?

30:56

He ignores the doubters, enters

30:58

his license plate. Wow, that's

31:00

a great offer. The car

31:02

is sold, but will

31:04

Carvana pick it up in time

31:07

for? They'll literally pick

31:09

it up tomorrow morning. Done

31:11

with the dram. Done with

31:13

the dram. The

31:15

new KFC Duncan Bucket with juicy

31:18

original recipe tenders, new mashed potato

31:20

poppers, crispy fries, plus three sauces

31:22

that fit right on top of

31:24

the lid, so you can dunk

31:26

anywhere. You can dunk at the

31:28

game. Dunk while security points to

31:30

the no outside food sign. And

31:32

Dunk as 20,000 people watch you

31:35

and your Duncan Bucket get removed

31:37

from the stadium. Dunk almost anywhere

31:39

with the new $7 KFC Duncan

31:41

Bucket or get the new $7

31:43

KFC Duncan Bucket. slash

32:13

Spotify. We're not even 30

32:15

years into the social web, as you

32:17

just don't know, it's really 20 years into

32:19

Web 2.0. At the end of the book,

32:22

you talk about potential futures and the idea

32:24

that knitting... technology deeper into our lives and

32:26

so that it will it will have a

32:29

deeper understanding of what we like what you

32:31

call our revealed behaviors. You know if you

32:33

ask me what I do I'll tell you

32:35

something it might not be true but if

32:38

you watch me you'll see what I really

32:40

do what my real preferences are. Some of

32:42

these things are quite disturbing like the idea

32:44

that you know will be you know our

32:46

future generations of smart watches or phones will

32:48

not just be monitoring our choices and activities

32:51

and activities of things that we buy and

32:53

look at but will be you know, monitoring our

32:55

body temperature and, you know, rates of,

32:57

you know, pulse rates and, you know,

32:59

hormonal balances and kind of reading our

33:01

minds, kind of anticipating our behavior before

33:03

we know we're going to do it

33:05

ourselves. And it seems foolish to say,

33:07

is this going to be a good

33:09

thing or a bad thing because it's

33:11

going to happen or it isn't? Well,

33:13

do you see a future where ultimately everything

33:16

we do can be read and drawn into

33:18

the big data corpus and we will live

33:20

in a world where everything is kind of...

33:23

predictive level? That's a

33:25

good question. First of all, I

33:27

think it's inevitable that there

33:30

will be widespread integration

33:32

of brain computer interfaces.

33:35

I think it's the next

33:37

iteration of devices after

33:40

the smartphone. And the research

33:42

and the results are

33:44

already there with minimally

33:46

invasive techniques. We can

33:49

already get incredibly

33:51

accurate. information about

33:53

what someone is thinking to

33:55

the point where you can

33:57

extract the image they're thinking

33:59

of. And so the technology is already

34:01

there and I think it when you

34:03

look at the arc of computing and

34:05

the adoption of computing the number one

34:07

thing is is that there are always

34:09

huge incentives for people into compete in

34:11

life by bringing down the barriers to

34:13

interacting with compute let's say right so

34:15

we look at you know originally you've

34:17

got computers in a in a lab

34:19

and they're huge and they feel you

34:21

know space bigger than the rumor in

34:23

today and you have to show up

34:25

and you have to be in that

34:27

part of the city in that particular

34:29

room to access that computer and you

34:31

have your own terminal at it, but

34:33

you have to be in that university

34:35

building to access that machine and it's

34:37

big and fixed and you know and

34:39

then you move to personal computers where

34:41

you can have one in your home,

34:43

you can have in your office, you

34:46

can have your own one, but you

34:48

still have to be in that location,

34:50

then you move to smartphones where you

34:52

can carry the computer around with you.

34:54

the trend is to bring down the

34:56

barrier of interaction with compute and brain

34:58

computer interfaces are a natural evolution of

35:00

that and I think it's worth people

35:02

you know realizing early that's where this

35:04

is going and there will be a

35:06

huge amount of information that's drawn out

35:08

from those devices including what we think

35:10

how we're thinking how we're feeling and

35:12

all of our bio you know sensory

35:14

information and that will be used to

35:16

bring advantages to people which is why

35:18

they will you know people will will

35:20

opt in to to that system. So

35:22

when I say that I don't want

35:24

the implant I'll be like the Luddite

35:26

of the future I'll be the kind

35:28

of refuse Nick. There'll be the same

35:30

reason you've got a smartphone sitting next

35:32

to you right now you know I

35:34

have I have some friends by the

35:36

way technologists who don't own a smartphone

35:38

and they I mean just one. But

35:40

he he insists, his name is Paul

35:42

Bragel and he insists on using a

35:44

laptop for communication and it's a it's

35:46

a fascinating choice that goes against the

35:48

grain but he he wants to message

35:50

when he's ready. a message and on

35:52

his own terms and he doesn't want

35:54

to be followed around by the information.

35:56

I'm sure there are many people out

35:58

there where that's the case. But there

36:00

are outliers, right? They're making a conscious

36:02

decision. The rest of us carry a

36:04

smartphone very willingly and they'll be exactly

36:06

the same, making a conscious decision. The

36:08

rest of us carry a smartphone very

36:10

willingly and there will be exactly the

36:12

same incentives in place to accept. Four

36:14

years is a very long time and

36:16

internet time, isn't it? Did writing the

36:18

book change the way you think about,

36:20

you know, when you open up a

36:22

page and you start, you're going to

36:24

tap the smile on it? Yeah, I've

36:26

learned so much. You know, it was

36:28

like this, it was really a thread

36:30

that we started to pull and it

36:32

just went and went and went. I

36:34

mean, four years ago, Martin and I

36:36

had this chat in a cafe about...

36:38

about this idea and we thought maybe

36:40

we'll write an article about it together

36:42

and we presented the idea to Harvard

36:44

Business Review to see if they'd like

36:46

us to write an article. We'd written

36:48

one for them before and they came

36:50

back and said we think it would

36:52

make a great book and so what

36:54

turned from an article outline turned to

36:56

a book outline and then I think

36:58

we could have written our book about

37:00

every chapter in this book. it was

37:02

this little thread and once we pulled

37:04

it it just kept going and like

37:06

I say we never really intended to

37:08

write a book but it's been a

37:10

fascinating journey and and it's become almost

37:12

like a keyhole into so many different

37:14

fields that we've learned about and we've

37:16

been lucky to interview over a hundred

37:18

people in the book and that's what

37:20

it took so long we just wanted

37:22

to speak to everybody and everyone gave

37:24

such interesting perspective so really really lucky

37:27

for the hundred people that contributed and

37:29

the book ends up being really a

37:31

collection of ideas that others have shared

37:33

with us. Bob Carson, thanks so much

37:35

for joining us in the bunker to

37:37

discuss the weird world of the like.

37:39

Thanks to having me on. Not at

37:41

all. Listeners, please leave a positive review

37:43

or press the little smile or something

37:45

like that. Like, the button that changed

37:47

the world is published on April 29th.

37:49

There is a button to preorder it

37:51

in the show notes. Yet more buttons.

37:53

Listen, if you enjoyed this podcast, there

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38:14

listening for we'll see you next time. next time. The

38:27

Bunker was written and presented

38:29

by by group editor group editor Andrew Harrison.

38:31

Audio production was by Tom

38:33

Taylor and and Charlie Duffield by Kenny

38:35

Dickinson and artwork by Jim

38:37

by Jim Parrot. The managing editor is Jacob Jarvis

38:40

The Bunker is a is a

38:42

podmasters production.