Rob’s comments below are in italics.Derek’s comments below are in normal font.
We're going to talk a little bit about a book called the Mighty Micro?
This is a book written in 1979. As far as I was concerned, he was preaching to the converted. I'd already been using microcomputers and indeed designing with microprocessors for two or three years at the time the book came out. But I've kept it on the shelf, and I pull it down from time to time to remind myself of the extraordinary changes that we've experienced over the last 46 years since it was written.
1979 was really the outset of macro computing as well, wasn't it?
I'd been working with them for two or three years, but they were completely off most people's radar. In fact, in 1979, I was a co-director and part-owner of an Apple dealership, which could have...
Which I think we discussed previously on an episode about “all the money I could have made but didn't!”
Quite so. Anyway, two things are interesting looking at this, but one is the way he tentatively speculates about all sorts of things that may be possible. Pretty well all of those on a technical and development front have now happened. They've exceeded what he predicted, and most of these we've just got accustomed to. It's very interesting to hear him cautiously suggest the possibility that these things were going to happen and continually reassure the readers that although this sounds like science fiction, it isn't really. Even the laborious way that he speculates about the fact that we might not have to write letters to each other anymore because we can sit down at a computer and type something in which can be printed off at the other end.
I’ve got friends who don't even speak on the telephone. They just send each other voice notes on WhatsApp, and that's how they communicate.
Right, well, best of luck! Do they ever meet in person?
Yeah, it doesn't bode well. Well, sometimes, yeah. But I don't know. It's not how I choose to operate. But there we go.
However, there are also some ironic aspects on the social, economic, and political fronts that he turned out to have been wildly overoptimistic about. He discusses the idea that everything will become significantly more efficient, rendering the current level of work unnecessary. He says, the first practical evidence of this shift will be reflected in a cut in the working week to an average of 30 hours, a retirement option with strong inducements at 55 or even 50, and annual vacations of at least six working weeks. In tandem with these questions must come the first significant questioning of the work ethic, leaving aside a discussion of the use to which people will put their increased non-working life. The notion is that it is morally reprehensible not to work hard all the time. The idea that the devil finds work for idle hands to do is deeply ingrained in our culture. It would have been very nice if we had had a 30-hour working week.
Sounds great. Yeah. He underestimated the determination of the world's billionaires to work everyone into the earth!
On a practical level, if we could sort out the psychological and political dimensions of it, the possibility of a much more satisfactory existence than the one that most of us are experiencing now is very real.
I'm further reflecting on some of the things we discussed in the last few episodes about the various threads of narrative that are going on on the planet at the moment. One of those in last week's recording, I alluded to the fact that Trump's attempt to backpedal on the revelations about the Epstein case was beginning to backfire on him. I was saying that it's very difficult. You said it was pretty much par for the course that some politicians make promises to get elected and then discard them. But he didn't even do a very good job of discarding it, starting off by announcing that there were revelations on the way and then trying to backpedal suddenly.
It just astounds me that this has happened twice as well. This all happened in 2016. How many times do we have to go around the merry-go-round to learn that the people making promises during elections do not have our best interests at heart?
Well, there is that, but the most astonishing bit of the misjudgement is to imagine that having gone into office and made various announcements to the fact this was going ahead and then suddenly decide that it isn't, he completely failed to realise how much that was going to enrage everybody, particularly a large proportion of his own supporters. Last week, I felt that he couldn't have possibly been involved in the sexual manipulation of underage people himself, even if his friendship with Epstein was pretty suspect. However, what has emerged over the last few days is a torrent of accusations, repeated on various channels, particularly on YouTube, which is the most important one because it is widely viewed.
The proportion of people who are seriously questioning mainstream media narratives has increased. I don't know what proportion of the population that is, but the ones who are serious about it disregard YouTube at least. But it's worth looking at YouTube from the point of view that this has got a far bigger audience reach than Substack and Odyssey and Rumble, and things like that.
It's clearly an approved narrative.
Well, it certainly hasn't been clamped down yet.
Obviously, the powers that be want that message to get out, otherwise those videos would, like many of us, contravene community guidelines…
Yep. Anyway, I cannot believe he can survive this, even with the thick skin we know Trump has. On the other fronts, it's difficult to know where to start. Still, one of the things I've been reflecting on is that a lot of aspects of the goings on in the world which appear to be entirely distinct, like the Israeli behaviour towards the Palestinians, like the Ukraine and Russia conflict, like the unravelling of the American dollar-centric hold on world trade and world economics. They are all in a way different aspects of the same process. Does that make sense?
Yes, these are symptoms, not necessarily independent things that are just happening. Maybe symptoms of the same root metaphors that we are living under and operating by. Perhaps these root metaphors have been at work for hundreds of years and are still manifesting in this way here.
Yeah. Meanwhile, the government seems to be hell-bent on self-destruction. The mere idea of arming ourselves and taking up a combative stance towards Russia, which is the only way you put the latest treaty between the UK and Germany. To the best of my knowledge, it hasn't even been discussed in Parliament. It seems that Keir Starmer just decided to go off and sign it on his own initiative, as far as I can tell.
Apart from the fact that it strikes me, it should be obvious to any sane human being that any war is something that should be avoided at all costs. Certainly, rushing into potential conflict with someone whose military resources completely dwarf one's own seems to be the height of recklessness on practical terms, much less morality.
It'd be like the financial crisis though, wouldn't it? Think of all the profits BlackRock would make rebuilding everything afterwards!
Well, if there is anything left to rebuild.
Yeah, that's it.
So once again, we just have to watch this space, watch it unfold and see how it goes. The only ray of hope I can see is that America becomes impotent by running out of cash and running out of credit before they unleash the end of the world. Or whether they might, that might prompt them to rush ahead and do just that.
Well, it certainly feels like things are speeding up, doesn't it?
The other thing that is interesting I was having a look in the Observer came out on Sunday and there's a whole lot of stuff about Starmer and there's one pretty well whole page article saying essentially that his own supporters in this country may not be fully behind him, but he's widely respected in international circles for his diplomatic moves. Well, I don't know. I would have thought he was widely derided internationally, but who knows?
Whoever wrote that needs to lay off the spice!
Haha, exactly.
As we've discussed before, most people are underwater as far as their own personal balance sheet goes. This again is something that wasn't the case 50 years ago.
Yes, if you consider the amount of work required or the value you'd have to provide to achieve the same outcomes, it's not even remotely comparable.
Unless you've found a high-growth, highly leveraged way of operating, such as leveraging technology or AI, or building a network that connects people together. I don't know if you've read Perry Marshall's emails today, but he outlined three businesses that would be immune to developments in AI.
One was building a platform, in other words, making use of AI. One was building a network that connects people together. And one was providing a service that has some human touch that AI cannot automate. So, if you have to decide strategically how to invest your efforts, whether in employment or business, then those three areas sound good to me.
No, I haven't read that yet. I'll take a look at it.
Very good, we'll catch up next week.
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