Shows
Techs on TextsEpisode #14: George Dyson on Childhood's EndI had the pleasure of recording this on-site with George in his Bellingham workshop (a former tavern). I experimented with having Claude write shownotes for this episode, and it proposed this as a "key theme" of our discussion: "The parallels between Clarke's Overlords and modern artificial intelligence as agents of human transformation." This is a pretty remarkable guess given that I only told Claude that the episode was a conversation with George Dyson about Childhood's End. In any event, that is precisely what George and I talk about.We also talk about many other things, including AI...2025-04-011h 25Techs on TextsEpisode #2: Jason Goldman on Dune by Frank HerbertJason Goldman, one of the world's foremost Dune podcast pioneers (listen to Escape Hatch!), talks about all of the Dune books, all of the Dune movies, the Dune TV shows, democracy, institutions, the dangers of charismatic leaders, the (a)moral arc of technological progress, the potential of governing with data, and how so many technologists miss the point of the literature they love. Our conversation left me wondering: could Obama be a mentat?A few notes and links:Escape Hatch - The podcast formerly known as Dune Pod, co-hosted by Jason with in depth discussions of...2024-03-151h 19Techs on TextsEpisode #1: Tim O'Reilly on Dune by Frank HerbertI've listened to this episode countless times as I've edited it and it is such a gift. I'm really grateful to Tim for doing it with me. A few notes and links:Frank Herbert, by Tim O'ReillyMany of the works Tim mentions in this post are mentioned in this blog post: Books That Have Shaped How I ThinkAt about 12:10, Tim mentions a passage about how Lao Tzu lists the attributes of a wise man, one of which is "roiled as a torrent." He explains this beautiful image in more detail in this blog post titled Knowing...2024-02-131h 13