this week on the futurists Alex Tapscott and then we get the band back together you know imagine being a kid in London
and going on a school Excursion down to Monument station you put your VR goggles on okay class put your VR goggles on
let's see what it was like in 1666 and suddenly the London Fire is on all around you right like the impact of that
event from a historical purpose would be entirely [Music]
different well guys thanks for joining us um later
in the show I we do have Rob Turk and Miss metaverse joining us we're going to chat about a little bit more about web 3
but before that we had the opportunity a little bit earlier to record a show with
Alex Tapscott um over the launch of his new book which is called Web 3 so here's
the interview I did earlier uh with Alex Tapscott on his new
book I'm your host Brett King and this week we have uh a returning guest um and
it's exciting because he's got his brand new book out so we get the opportunity to dive into that he is the co-author
and international bestselling author of blockchain Revolution been on the show before a good friend of the show he's
launching his new book web 3 charting the internet's next economic and cultural Frontier Alex Tapscott welcome
Brett it's a pleasure to be back and so how have you been my friend you know we haven't caught up since the
pmic how are things well things have been good fortunately those were some slow years so not a lot was happening in
the world of you know web 3 or the world in general so yeah not a lot happened um
in actuality it's been it's been a crazy four years um you know probably since we last spoke I had two kids uh moved into
a new house and wrote a new book um so big changes happening underway in my
world for sure you got to keep that content coming you know whether it's uh DNA based or paper based right so
yeah that's right so um you know where are you based these days uh yeah so I'm
based in Toronto Canada uh but as you well know as someone who does a lot of
uh speaking gigs I I travel around the world you know since the first book came out in 2016 I've traveled to I think 40
countries um every continent except Antarctica and um that's been
interesting for a lot of reasons I mean one it kind of puts your your home country in perspective but also gave me
a better appreciation for how globally distributed uh Innovation around web 3 has been and and where certain areas are
being uh you know leaders where the Vanguard is happening and and it's happening in some surprising and sometimes unexpected kinds of places
like Thailand or right Nigeria or some of these other countries um and that's
really opened my my uh my eyes more to just how Global uh this all is yeah I
think we might be having bit CB on the um show in a couple of weeks um and the and the the head of binance in Thailand
as well so um we're trying to organize that with the fintech association so watch out for that one coming up soon um
you know uh sort of getting at that actually before we dive into some of the themes in the book who you know who do
you think are the geographical leaders in blockchain specifically yeah because I've got my
idea I've got question and it's one that everyone's asking you know where's the next Silicon Valley going to be or
where's the future web 3 Hub and in many ways I think the next Silicon Valley
won't be a place it's not going to be one single geographical location uh
Silicon Valley was once called a tech Galapagos because of the you know unique blend of characteristics Talent Capital
universities government R&D big tech companies and so forth that uh that led
to the unique species of uh of technology companies that kind of dominated the first era of the internet
and this time I just think it's different we're in a different era um you know in the 90s as the first you
know economic Frontier of the web was being forged like most of the internet connections were in the states half the world hadn't made a phone call the
economies of all these countries is far were far less developed than they are today and now we live in a world where
you know three quarters of the population has a smartphone connected to the internet and technology and talent
and capital is way more distributed than ever so where is this all going to happen well I think the us is going to
remain a leader despite all of these You know forast despite the best efforts of
the SEC to destroy the industry well but despite all the the bearish forecasts
and in spite of uh the SEC um what's so interesting about the US is that you know web 3 can succeed in the US in
spite of government uh policy not because of government policy but in other parts the world it's the opposite
where if you're in you know the UAE for example you need to try and create the
conditions for that industry to succeed and you need to lure people to come
there to set up businesses to invest capital and so forth because absent those incentives those people may not
choose that as their first location whereas people might choose to stay in Miami or San Francisco even with an a
highly uncertain regulat environment for so many reasons many of them business but others cultural and and social and
so forth um and then there are sort of middle countries um countries like the United Kingdom for example or Canada or
Singapore where we're seeing different kinds of approaches you know Rishi sunak the uh the prime minister in the UK said
uh when Andre and horwood set up shop in London that he wanted to make the UK one
of the web three capitals of the world and I think probably that's sort of where we end up not with one single
place leading the way but with different nodes uh doing different things so the US will remain the the biggest like I I
I I know people try to zag on that but I just can't imagine world where that's not the case yeah but also see um
there's a lot more interest out of East Asia and I think that hubs around like places like Singapore Hong Kong Tokio
and soul are going to be um leaders in this respect and then there's the question of are we talking about
leadership in terms of company formation or you know company or or network formation investment and so forth and
then are we talking about usership and when it comes to usership that's going to be far more distributed and far less
spiky like I don't think it's going to be concentrated in any single location chain analysis does really good work on
this and they point out that a lot of countries where adoption of uh stable coins or uh web 3 gaming is highest is
in places you may not expect initially right you expect places you know developed Western countries quote
unquote to be where people are adopting these tools but in fact it's the opposite and a lot of I'm surprised I'm
surprised you haven't said China yet or Dubai well Dubai's a fairly well I did I said the UAE oh UAE right you did say
thator apolog Dubai no I would include Dubai and that group of comp countries that is making an aggressive
aggressively trying to lure uh companies in talent and capital so that they can sort of like like brute force their way
into becom a leader yes yes no that's very much Deb's way of things yeah the
Chinese thing is a is much more complex um I think that it's clear that as a
country you know look they've got they've had Tailwinds for 40 years and now they have headwinds right there's
demographic headwinds the economy is slowing down they haven't G like a Middle inome Country yet oh we can get into this debate brother this is a
debate I'm having online right now and I'm actually having it with my co-host for the futurist Rob Rob Turk
um because you know I I mean I'm I I have a slightly different view on the
economy of of China we we we should get into that offline but um you know I I mean the the reason I said China is we
just saw Shanghai announced that they're launching a digital asset register for Shanghai built on the blockchain all of
the you know the biggest banks in China all have blockchain integrated CES now we bank which is the biggest digital
Bank in the world you know has uh has a blockchain core um and I don't know of
any other um sort of you know Market level infrastructure that runs on
blockchain like that that does in China so you know I just think I think operationalizing of blockchain I think
they've done very well obviously when we start talking about other aspects of the web 3 world you know metaverse nfts Dows
and so forth that gets a lot murkier because of the whole cbdc stable coin
you know token issues in China which I you know I get but just pure blockchain
um you know I think they've done some already some interesting things without a doubt and I think that's an important distinction it's uh the old expression
right capitalism with Chinese characteristics that's how they like to describe there like a there's a market
economy but there's a strong State and you know single party and that kind of controls everything so it's a different system and I think in a way we're
looking at blockchain with with Chinese characteristics as well or or web 3 with Chinese characteristics yeah
one of the benefits many one of the many benefits of this um technology is it gives you a way to move and store value
peer-to-peer and to do so you know permissionless uh cross border um
between individuals big and small at relatively low cost and a lot of those things would be attractive um in to to
the Chinese government and to the corporate establishment but some of those things may not be right and so I think they're looking at ways to take
some of the benefits real-time settlement immutable records smart contract like an automate business processes all that kind of technology
stuff and um uh develop it in a way that suits the needs of the state and you
could say the same thing maybe for other countries um who also are looking to you know regulate this technology in a way
that suits their needs and that's fine too but I think the Chinese example is definitely unique in that respect now
now in terms of like where the country is today and why it might be pivoting um
well you know if the US is closing the door on something China may want to open a window and uh try and you know become
a center for innovation in a technology Arena that is going to be in my opinion one of the um you know key disruptors
for the next 20 years well not only does China have to um cour foreign direct investment which has done quite well it
has more foreign direct investment than the us today um but um it has to solve
the demogra demographic crash right I mean the us will have to solve that in the 2040s as well um but you know China
H you know has to deal with the fact that they've long been very skeptical of immigration from from cultural from a
cultural perspective mainly yeah like us could solve that problem with a snap of the fingers if if there was political
will it's like Canada you know where I live our natural growth rates been below replacement for 30 years right but
Canada has a huge immigration program right exactly yeah yeah um and that's
that's what's maintain Canada's economy for so long it's uh you know it's also despite um the fact that in Australia we
you know we have very much the same sort of conversation about immigration As Americans do um a Australia would be
half the size it is today without immigration so um you know and that has a clear economic impact so anyway let's
jump in into some of the book um you know we we're talking about web 3 today
but of course with you know web and the Technologies involved in this are building blocks of the smart world
you know um I talk about the concept of smart economies right auton highly autonomous economies you know in the
2040s and 2050s and to do that we need these Technologies we need stable coins
cbdcs cryptocurrencies we need a way to digitize assets so you know early
examples of that with nfts and tokens and so forth um you know we we need port
able identity systems you know that are um um that are immutable and secure um
but probably the biggest development we're going to see um you know Harvard's been writing about this uh recently um
is the emergence of autonomous corporations right and we are seeing the early examples of that today with Dows
um the despite the fact that the first hour on the ethereum network was a bit of a disaster um this is clearly the way
we're going but what can you tell us about how you think that sort of this
autonomous organization um or componentized organizations might
develop around this sort of autonomous technology well first off I love that
Fring that you just provide of what the the world might look like in in 2040 yeah we have to imagine an environment
where there are billions of of people companies autonomous AI agents um smart
devices and new kinds of organizations as you're describing them all needing to
you know transact to establish trust to build wealth to or organize capability
peer-to pure and that's not going to happen with the existing Financial infrastructure or even with existing technology platforms we need a new
operating system which includes I think all those things that you just mentioned so totally in agreement with you there
Dows are a fascinating part of this whole story so you know for your listeners Dows is distributed a ton of
aous organization or decentralized autonomous organization depending on on how you ask and basically they are they
are in um I would say digitally native organizations comprised of token holders
all working towards some kind of collective action or some sort of end goal so Dows can be the organizing
structure for new kinds of software applications so in defi for example a lot of projects um basically incentivize
usership through uh tokens so the earlier you are to something the more you contribute the bigger a share of the
application or platform you can own and as a result instead of a cap table with shareholders you have uh token holders
who have both ownership and governance rights and there are lots of advantages to that if you're building a a software
project from scratch and it's meant to live on the internet and it's meant to be you know permissionless to allow
anyone to access it regardless of where they are then the ownership structure structure that you put in place needs to
be similarly Global in nature so Silicon Valley has known for a long time that in
order to attract the best people or attract people at all you need to
provide incentives ownership incentives right that's why um you know there's always been this sort of cliche of very
generous stock options being paid to early employees so Dows kind of start with the same premise where if you're
early to uh using an application the more people that join the more useful
that application becomes you've helped to build the network effects you've helped to create something more useful and you should own a piece of it so in
defi something like a decentralized exchange if you're providing liquidity the more the more liquidity there is in
assets on an exchange the more useful that exchange is it doesn't matter that you know an exchange has 500 things you can buy if there's no volume in those
things then it doesn't really matter right um so that's one example and the difference though with Dows is that they
can do it globally so if you wanted to incentivize users all around the world using conventional method like say I
don't know like a restricted stock unit or a stock option you would have to create legal agreements in 50 different
countries um you know translate contracts into a dozen different languages all to just create the
incentive for people to earn a share of something over time and with a dow and with a token rather than Equity you can
do that much more simplistically now that's the promise of of dows from an ownership perspective the other um thing
that's really interesting is governance so if uh internet users are going to become internet owners owners of the
applications and services that they use then they may have some say in how that thing is run and that's an area of dows
that right now is showing revealing I think some of the problems with self-governance um with or with
governance in general which is that you know you may have a bunch of token holders but many of them don't vote they don't participate and as a result small
cabals of people are able to you know shape the direction of organizations which I should add is quite similar to
how it works in corporate um like proxy voting you know often times there's very
few participating shareholders in a lot of important votes and it's often times big institutional shareholders that sway
the direction of those kinds so this is this is all managed um you know you talk a lot about the consensus elements here
but the reality is that um once those contracts between the different parties
are put in place essentially this business is run by an algorithm or this component of the business is run by an
algorithm is an accurate assessment I would say like the the business processes part of the of what it does
are run by algorithms smart contracts um but the governance is done in a very human way um where you know it maybe
that tokens help allow you to vote on matters but it's still people and like people talk to people so you know you
can find out who the other token holders are and they can you know agree to to make a to vote in a certain way so this
is so consensus consensus sets policy yeah which defines process which is coded encoded that's right and the
measurement or performance of of that policy you know at the in in in sense of
the operation is is in terms of tokens um yeah that's correct and I just think that um like the thing I'm
describing right now is not a reason why Dows are a bad idea it's just an implementation challenge which is the
idea of um incentivizing users of an application through ownership and making sure that everyone who's contributing
value has a piece of The Upside is a very important and very um powerful part
of the web 3 thesis um but the practice of ensuring good governance is something
that has a human element and that human well you know we are going to have to get better at figuring out um you know
particularly as more and more of our business is running code yeah you know is automated we're going to have to
figure out how to govern you know that sort of blackbox function you know
particularly if there's elements of generative you know gener elements of AI
where it starts off doing you know or um doing approaches to execute on the core mission of the contract but not
according to the process we may have defined at the start because it thinks it can do it a more efficient way or
just finds you doesn't think but it finds more efficient patterns in terms of how to do trades or whatever it might
be I think it's interesting I do think that um U you know I think what the web3
community probably undersells is the fact that every corporation in the 2050s every leading
Corporation in the 2050s is going to be highly autonomous right or have highly autonomous elements to it so we have to
look at this as you know if people are dismissive of the Dow then they have to be dismissive of that future as well
which isn't reasonable so even if you don't agree with the Dow you have to see it as an experimentation in the stepping
stone to the way we have to think about corporations in the future and regulations about governing corporations
that are highly autonomous we don't have laws in place that defines a corporation
without office holders for example but we may not have a CFO function you know
in you know we will for now but you know in 30 years we may not need a CFO function in terms of oversight or
fiduciary duty of the the uh the The algorithmic Entity it just it's very
interesting right well you can explore I mean you can tease that out a little bit further so if um more and more
organizations are like Dows and more of their transactions are happening on chain or all their transactions are
happening on chain then you've created an immutable transparent record of their
finances and so you don't need a CFO or or at least you don't need um
accountants to you know prove that transactions occurred you have an immutable record that everyone can see
in trust well you can also have another algorithm that audits it yeah right well
I mean of course and this is the the intersection of AI and web 3 right which is that you know you have this process
this economic now we're getting into it this this this this way to um manage
transactions and contracts and to build trust and then you have this intelligence engine on top of it that can take that and interpret it and build
you know like value added services using that right and I think that's that's that's where we also see the
intersection of of AI and web 3 you know I I just want to say one thing before we
move on which is that uh you know I think right now all of these Technologies people are viewing as
distinct Technologies whether it's AI or iot or vrn ar blockchain and and so
forth but I think you know in much the same way as the term internet expanded from its original kind of definition to
describe our whole era that includes many Technologies business models social behaviors Etc uh this term web three I
think is is evolving to describe an era that is composed of a group of different Technologies now I'm not trying to slide
AI into um the into no no but I think know but a lot of what we're doing yeah
a lot of what we're doing particularly when we start talking about digital assets and decentralized finance you
know and and and the blockchain is we are trying to create a structure that machine readable right um you know the
digital twin concept and so forth this is so the the world of AI can recognize
you know the the utility and the you know products and services and and you know elements that we have in in society
so it can work with them so it's all in my view you can't talk about web 3
without talking about artificial intelligence you know and you can't talk about how AI is going to be integrated into society without talking about web 3
I think they're as as you say they're quite complimentary I do want to get into the book dude um because you know I
mean that's why we bought you on this week you've got the the book out but yeah um so uh I I I want to talk about
identity uh in a moment but first of all um obviously the book is called Web
3 it's uh it's just come out this week um it's it's I'm sure I haven't checked today but I'm sure it's on the the
bestsellers ranking already um but uh I you know talk about the Journey For You
in terms of the timing of this because you could have talked about web 3 5 years ago um but um you know why why is
now the right timing for a book like this is it because it's just it's critical mass or yeah well it's a it's a
great question um I've been thinking about the the idea for some time you know the term web 3 is not new it was
according in 2014 but there's nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come and I
thought that in 2021 22 while all this Innovation was happening there was a lot
of uh confusion about what web 3 was and what it wasn't and I actually think that the events of last year like the
collapse of FTX and teral Luna and some of these other high-profile projects um
has sort of thrown New Mud on the windshield and clouded people's views even further and sort of hastened my sense of urgency to actually get out and
write this book so my objective with the book really is to reset the conversation about web 3 to help people understand
some of the enduring sort of themes and Concepts uh around this technology and why it's important the we you mentioned
we're hopping into the book we've kind of been talking around a lot of the themes from B we' been talking about the theme of the book and and we've talked
we've touched on a couple we've T talked about assets and organizations so the way that the uh the book is kind of structured is that uh we look at you
know web 3 what it is how it works and so forth and then we look at the key Transformations what does this mean for
assets what does this mean for people uh internet users how what it means to be a person online how it impacts
organizations what it means for different Industries including financial services but also gaming infrastructure
Etc um how this is going to intersect with other Technologies like AI the metaverse and then what this means for
civilization and then we look at the path forward and give some key takeaways so each one of those Transformations
assets people organizations Industries basically you can think of as bigger and bigger concentric circles I think the
asset is the most important part of this or it's the foundational primitive or building block of of web 3 the idea that
we have a way to express ownership of a digital good uh online and we have a way
to move and store it and and use it and manipulate it to me is the big sort of Kernel the big starting point but what
this means for people I think is equally profound so in web 2 we entered into
this fian bargain unwittingly I don't think people consciously did this but basically the trade was you would give
access to your information and data and time and so forth to these big platforms
and in exchange you would be provided with a free service like search or social networking or so and so forth and
initially this seemed like a good trade because the these Platforms in the early days were were fun and they were novel
and they were useful and the data didn't seem all that valuable but I think what we've realized is that with if someone
else is capturing all of our data and using all this information it means we can't monetize it it might end up in the wrong hands so one of the really
interesting things you hear that web three is the idea of a self- sovereign identity the idea that an individual can
own their own data and own their own digital Goods um and can decide how how
they're used where they're used and and whether they get compensated for it and think that each of those different
concepts is really important so the web two model is a kind of um digital feudalism right where you provide all
this data and exchange you get access to something like free services like some cabbages or something from the Lord and
with this new model we have a different one where it's a citizen Centric identity where you own and control all
these different aspects of your of you and your life and you decide how they're used so there's a relationship here to
tokens you know it's italic utaran who's um you know the creator of ethereum has talking talked a lot about soulbound
tokens this idea that uh we could have a nonf funable non-transferable token
that's that's programmed to gather data about us over time and that becomes something that we can passport from
country to Country we can use it to improve how we access government services healthc care we can improve how
we Access Financial Services through you know reputation based credit scoring all of these different things are part of a
rich digital identity that you as a user you as the individual could get to control and that more than anything is
is a really profound shift in how we think about our relationship to technology and to the web that's uh well
it's great I mean it's always good to get a new book out I know how tough it is to um to write a book and this is one
that's pretty complex and to make the complex simple it takes a lot of time
you first of all have to have a deep understanding of each of these areas so um you know I'm I'm looking forward to
getting a copy of it this week and checking it out but for those that uh you know joining us here and listening
um you know where can they find the book yeah the book is available for wherever books are sold you know Amazon borders
um in in the UK If you have listeners it's available there we also have several uh foreign rights that we've
sold already so will be available in Korean Thai simplified Chinese Brazilian
Portuguese so far and we're expecting a lot more translations uh for those who can buy it in North America and the UK
the best way to buy the book is in massive volume for
yourselfs New York Times here we come now it's tough man it's tough you know I
mean I've tried a couple of times I've got close but about 18,000 you know these days anyway New York Times is the
Holy Grail but you know what you don't have to be a besteller to have a a book that no but you know you're GNA get on the top of the Amazon list and stuff as
as well so but listen to this uh this is a quote from the back page of the book and I'm I'm envious cuz I tried to get
this I tried to get this for technos socialism my last one this is the quote with web 3 Tapscott has captured the
Zeitgeist we're on the brink of an extraordinary New Era where technology can reimagine everything with Clarity of
thought and deep Insight this book explores web 3's immense potential guess who wrote that Steve wnc
co-founder of Apple what a what a a fantastic testimonial dude yeah thank
you that was yeah by yeah no that's awesome cuz you know
my agent knows his agent we tried to get him and he was just at the time I think he was sick or whatever but I'll make
that excuse but yeah um well well done um check it out uh web 3 charting the
internet's NE next economic and cultural Frontier Alex how can people get in touch with you if they want to know uh
more about what you're doing yeah please connect with me on Twitter and Linkedin follow me on Twitter and connect on LinkedIn so um Alex Tapscott on Twitter
and then just Alex Tapscott I think on on LinkedIn pretty responsive so please get in touch and yeah check out the book
fantastic well thanks for joining us today yeah my pleasure well that was uh that was fun
that was uh it was good to see um you know Alex is obviously still a believer in the web 3 stuff and the blockchain
stuff so let's take a quick break after the break there's going to be more more web three goodness when Rob Turk and
miss meterse and I get together we'll be right back after this break [Music]
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show hey there welcome back you're listening to the futurists I'm Rob Turk and and now we're joined by Miss
metaverse Katie the king of the metaverse and of course Brett hi Brett chiming in a little bit late here but
thanks for bringing us that segment from Alex tapcat good to see the the tapcat clan is still cranking out the books
about blockchain they have a minor industry making those books um right on though it's cool to see that there's
still Signs of Life in the web 3 area I'm a fan I'd like to see it gather even more just in Dubai and and you know it's
still um you know they just had the world blockchain Summit there and uh yeah there was tons of people in town
Brock Pierce was there who's the guy that runs London re Katie oh Brian Rose
yeah Brian Rose was there I mean it was I didn't know that it was really interesting um there was a bunch of futurists in town I mean they had gitex
on as well but blockchain is still you know especially in the Dubai um ecosystem has still got um you know
getting a lot of attention and uh even things like nfts here in Los Angeles there's an nft Community that's still
alive and kicking it's mostly artists I should say but I I actually kind of like that uh you know the crypto crowd is not
really my crowd the money people more interested creative people and um they're less interested in you know
making a ton of cash or cashing in on a boom what they are interested in is bringing creativity into this idea and
the concept of ownership and even decentralized ownership or distributed ownership of art assets is an
interesting space like that's a creative space you see of injection this is funny because you know you're talking about
web 3 I.E the metaverse and I was talking about web 3 I.E the blockchain
but actually they're two slightly different definition definitions of web 3 right because in when we talk about
metaverse we're talking about the 3D web right but when we talk about blockchain we're talking about version three of the
internet that's how they classify web 3 it took me a while to get my head around this actually because they're both
talking about web 3 but the blockchain crowd see web 3 definition very differently which is the decentralized
internet which leads to all these other things like decentralized currency and so forth so I know that's I mean many
people listening will already know that but I think it was important to make that distinction when we talk about web three right that's right and and those
are important Concepts because let's let's face it right now the web that we have is not just highly centralized it's
terrible I mean candidly when's the last time you had a great experience using Google search or searching for anything
on Amazon uh these these dominating platforms have become cluttered with so much crap they're over monetizing us
they're tracking us they're Force feeding of stuff we don't necessarily want uh you know there's a a book out by
Corey doct now where he talks about the nidification of the web and his message is really very simple but it's actually
a good point which is that the platforms always begin by attracting users and they borrow money from the capital markets because they have access so they
can scale that up they get a lot of users then they turn around and they change the system so that it favors uh
the the the suppliers or the people who are selling stuff which could be marketers or in the case of Amazon Merchants um and then they give a
favorable treatment to them until they're locked in and once they've got both sides locked in then they start to over monetize and spam the heck out of
us with unwanted ad and other clutter and so he calls that process and [ __ ] ification he points out that it's happened to search it's happened to
social media it's happened to online shopping and it's even happening to Tik Tok at this point I think he makes a
good point this is the consequence huge platforms uh so can we break free well that's the hope that's
the promise of web 3 uh the decentralized web and candidly I'm a fan
like I like that idea just because I find it exhausting to deal with all the Clutter and the regular uh the the big
centralized sites right right right and also too you have people you know
worried about even people worried about engaging with AIS you know like uh chat jbt you know there's people who are
really upset because you know the earlier versions had better quality results you know and uh as things get
messed with you know for for various reasons you know you get different versions you have no control over that
you know whereas back in the day you had one version of software maybe every year and you know you can hold on to it but
obviously that is a long time thing in the past even in the AI space you're quite right
look there was a frenzy of innovation just six months ago but now we're starting to see it solidify around this
the same big companies so AWS has launched a very ambitious project uh which is to attract companies you know
Enterprises to their cloud service using Ai and they've got a variety of different Foundation models that you can plug in so that makes it very convenient
and easy but it starts to look an awful lot like a roach motel which is easy to check into and hard to check out of what
they like to try to do is get you to put your whole business on the Cloud uh start to integrate those AI tools and
once you migrated your whole business process over be really hard to switch out now Microsoft's doing the same thing with aure and Google's doing the same
thing with Google Cloud uh so this starts to look like you know the the kind of uh rat trap or roach motel of
the web one more attempt by these big companies to centralize and to get companies uh Partners hooked on their
platform so that's a that's the bait and switch we're seeing that one more time I mean I think the whole world's caught on
to this technique now and we're kind of exhausted wild car with AI though is the
open source models of which there's now thousands and impr you can spin up your
own llm today in the garage you know or on your iPhone yeah exactly yeah yeah so
that's a space for some great creativity but you know in a way that's an illustration of the point we're just making which is the Innovation happens
in a decentralized way at least the The Innovation that favors users uh so
there's been some news you know actually we've had quite a lot of discussion around this Brett a second ago you were talking about how this dovetails with
the metaverse of course that's a topic we've had a number of different people come on the show to talk about and um uh
and there's been some news you know Tony paresi was on our show earlier uh he was
lamina one's L one's doing great he he's moved on to something else at this point but I just saw news today that Neil
Stevenson the guy who coined the term back in 1993 uh they have now launched lamina
one as a decentralized ecosystem for building interoperable metaverses so the principle here is actually quite
Isis yeah the idea is you're not it's not like the metaverse will be one company building a kind of 3D Disneyland
that you go to as a destination that was kind of the Facebook idea even Facebook back in the day when they were when they
were pushing this idea even they said there will be many different metaverses well that's what lamina 1 is seeking to
build uh they built a decentralized ecosystem for building metaverses anyone can build on it's totally open they
already have 50,000 beta users developing on a platform and they've got systems for decentralized identity uh
asset uh decentralized asset storage and asset exchange uh tools like game engines to help you build 3D worlds the
whole thing's built on top of the Avalanche blockchain uh which is a very fast blockchain that's always been an issue in the
past uh so there's some news from one of our previous guests uh and next week I'm Gonna Be Seeing wolf K you might
remember early in our show he was one of the first people we interviewed uh wolf is an in decentralized
governance yes so we talked about Dows way back in I think it was like episode number four of our show well I'll be
visiting with him and the Minnesota blockchain Association on Monday uh what we're going to talk about is basketball
team sorry not the Timberwolves the blockchain Minnesota blockchains yeah
sorry we're GNA talk about emic corruption the world uh the the world
that we're in right now in particular in the United States uh you know we have it's not just big tech companies big
companies dominate just about every category about 75% of the US economy is dominated by a handful of companies
three or four big firms so if you think of it like we have only four major airlines um we only have a couple
choices in operating systems for mobile phones we have a couple of mobile operators you have usually one choice of
broadband provider and so on and we see this across the board it's not just uh telecommunications and um and trans
it's also true in food uh most of the food that we buy is produced by about 10 companies in the US so this
concentration called an oligopoly or cartelization of the US economy in a
weird way that's like a centralization very similar to the kind of centralization we see on the web uh so
on Monday we'll be talking a little bit about that with blockchain group like how can we decentralize the existing economy nice
challenge absolutely well yeah there's a lot happening in the space um
you know there's talk of new ETFs in the Bitcoin space you know you you know people like Gemini have been trying to
do that for a long time so if we can finally get some an ETF through the SEC
that'll be big news considering how um how harsh the SEC has been towards
crypto in recent times you know um like a lot like I don't know whether you
guys saw the news that last week binance dropped carrying US Dollars you know um
in their um their uh ecosystem because you know there it's just too much
trouble with the SEC so it's pretty crazy that you know um it's been that
combative um given you know the amount of wealth that it's created in the US you know the the whole crypto Community
right so you know it's New World versus old stuff right yeah and and the and the
promise of innovation right our our Regulatory Agencies aren't supposed to get in the way of Regulation and it looks like the SEC is putting itself
firmly in the path of progress yeah uh there's no doubt we need regulation there's no doubt you know there's been
enough scandals and enough scams particularly in crypto SPF where they seem yeah they seem to crank out a scam
every week or so sure yeah we can talk about Sam bakan freed um that
unfortunately because it's about money that Sam bankrupt fraud like sorry he got it bankrupt
fraud no kidding yeah actually you know bringing up the FCC uh you know it's
kind of interesting too because it it seems that they're really trying to move along the metaverse in terms of devices
uh I believe just uh recently uh they just uh FCC gave the US green light to
use speedier 6 gigahertz frequency for uh low power wearables uh VR and AR
devices so hopefully uh this will be meaning that specific Spectrum yes yes
exactly exactly so uh you know obviously there's some big plans coming in and I think uh with all the hype of about
metaverse 2.0 we should be seeing more soon so it's exciting stuff good well
it's important to make sure make sure those devices can operate fast you know the the um particularly for augmented
reality you need those overlays to line up exactly precisely on point if you
turn your head or something if there's a little bit of a lag not only doesn't wreck the illusion uh it actually can
make you seasick you know you kind of get nauseous if it happens uh so low latency is going to be extremely
important for those wearable devices and been quite a few you know like um there's a new a new Rayband Facebook
collaboration yeah the meta of glasses yeah I saw that I was just going to talk about that actually have you got a got a
pay yet Rob no I haven't we have to get I haven't I'm waiting for the Vision Pro man that's G be yeah that's true but
don't call it AR call it spatial Computing because the jargon has moved on we don't talk about the meterse
anymore well the first time I heard that term was from um uh scobble actually you know which it
makes sense right he's the guy in that space but um like remember that book he did with shell Israel years ago on
special you know so I'm convinced that this is a thing you know I know there's a ton of hype and it always seems like a
Perpetual Dawn we hear about these technologies that haven't quite arrived they haven't quite matured um but
progress is being made I think for the folks who are listening who are skeptical who have heard the story
before remember that Hardware is hard and moving an entire gigantic ecosystem
like the web to something new is a big undertaking particularly when you're doing it in the face of the most
powerful and Rich companies on the planet they do not welcome this so you're running into resistance there and
then add to it things like you know the Securities and Exchange Commission setting up roadblocks uh making it difficult for companies to progress all
those things together make it a very tough uphill slog which is one of the reasons why web 3 is taking a bit longer
than people would hope but we do have pre precedence for you
know these types of Step change Technologies taking quite a while to break through I mean we've got Google
Glass was the early prototypes and stuff so you can even go back to that but I was thinking um you know this week I was
talking about um you know autonomous vehicles and a few years ago we used to
say oh we'll have self-driving cars before we'll have flying cars but actually we now have these flying
vehicles that are starting to operate around the world based on basic drone technology you know um and they're not
exactly what we thought of as a flying car back in the day um but you know we
we're seeing rapid progress in that area now but it took a long time for that technology to actually find the right
Tech to make it viable and there's a little bit of that with the metaverse in that um you know the quality of the
glasses and the ability to um not just create Virtual Worlds that you can disappear into to but that we see these
Computing devices as everyday devices that's going to be the game changer so that's really that the wearable smart
glasses augmented reality stuff that does the realtime translation does real-time image recognition you know
that you can project a screen you know but that that's wearable now Vision Pro
is getting closer to that but you know you're not going to wear Vision Pro around on the street right you know we
need a few generations of that technology to get to really Mass Market
where then I think um you know just the coolness of a a device like that will
lead to clear adoption you know that's that's sort of my view of it the the The Vision Pro is a is a
pretty significant step forward I mean that's a absolutely yeah it's going to
make it you know it's going to get the developers into that right and so that's the real thing you also need for success
of the metaverse is having those really cool applications on top of that and it's a an entirely new programming
competency it's an entirely new design language right so we need a ton of developers to
continuously um get get into this space before we get really compelling
experiences in that I mean if you remember the first iPhone right the 2G iPhone yeah you had a few apps and stuff
on it but you don't have anywhere near the experiences you have today yeah that's true look that's the
hardest developer program in the world to get into Vision Pro everybody I know is trying to get their foot in the door there um I I keep seeing my friends
posting their credentials yeah I got accepted into that program oh wow because people perceive that that's
going to be a significant step forward but you know let's give credit to Facebook because uh or to meta I should
I should should say Mark Zuckerberg has been seriously committed to this space
and he's put $40 billion to work on building out metaverse equipment not
just you know the the infrastructure but also the hardware you know this is it I mean they are making progress towards
that you now have smart glasses that can do real-time translation of language and stuff like that in your field of view I
mean this is pretty cool Tech well acquiring Oculus is really key in all that you know I mean if Facebook didn't
end up taking Oculus I think it would have been a totally different scenario in my opinion uh you know and a lot of
people even use uh you know the meta Quest and all that these days because
you know they still tied in with the original Oculus brand rather than meta itself and uh you know but we'll see
what happens I mean Horizon world's got kind of a bad rep you know in the beginning uh but I think more people are
slowly adopting more and more and I know uh even just from my experience I see more people hopping on and you know
adding me as a friend on Oculus and I mean meta uh you know so it's it's it's
showing there's more growth there's more people out there it's a good thing yeah and the new glasses go off in a a a
different direction as well and I'm sure we're going to see these worlds yeah I see these World sort of come together
you know I do see at some point that you know the operating systems we build for the VR world you know a lot of that will
cross over into AR the competencies the only difference really is sort of putting interfaces in into the world in
context you know when you've got AR versus VR so the sort of early stuff we've seen like being able to project a
you know Minecraft game you know 3D World onto a you know tabletop surface with Hollow lens and things like that we
see a little bit of that but you know that's really rudimentary stuff compared with what we're going to see with
amazing apps integrated into the world around us where they are heads up to as you walk around town you you'll sorts of
data overlays so right now I think the way to look at this is there's a kind of a foot race between Apple and um and
meta uh you so Apple's going to launch Vision Pro sometime next year um meta
has about a year then to start to really solidify their base before before people start to switch out and migrate to Apple
at least that's the fear right Apple's price point is super high when you add it all up with taxes it's about $4,000
per I know dude you know it's like it's like saying uh when iOS came out it killed Android you know it's like I'm
I'm not sure that we're going to have It's All or Nothing one way or the other I think you know just like I think
you're going to get different crowds of people with different preferences potentially and the two are going to propel each other forward right so
competition is good we get devices So Meta is going to try to come up in
quality step by step each step is more difficult than the last one and then Apple will try to step down in terms of
price point and somewhere you know eventually they'll be on the same wavelength and we'll have a choice of two exciting times ahead uh so there we
have it web 3 intersecting with the metaverse and uh evolving into something it might be the future of the web I'm
keenly excited to see it me too beautiful
Katie what do you use Oculus for what do you what do you like it for do you use like VR chat you know uh earlier on I
did you know uh there was like a lot of like virtual clubs and stuff like that which I found kind of interesting um and
being able to kind of like watch movies with someone you know um I think it's kind of cool you can share like a a
screen it's like you have your own virtual movie theater uh and there's also a bunch of other interesting things you could do uh you know I'd like to see
more there's a lot of games uh people are talking about quite a few games that just come out recently uh they stared to
look look a little bit better earlier on they're more like really short uh short
experiences now they're becoming more of a full-on game which is uh exciting so
hopefully we'll see more immersion uh more more people socializing and and whatnot uh but it still has some ways to
go but I'd say overall I I think we're we're getting there we're pretty close so it's looking up do you have this
experience when I when I do a VR thing I I memor I remember it like it it stays in my memory in a way that watching a
movie or looking at a book or something doesn't stay with me it's weird it's almost like a dream where you kind of
well I used to when I was playing halflife you know on Oculus um you you have very quickly
immersed in the environment and you know like it it's it's very different to a
game typical gaming experience cuz you're uh you believe you you know your brain partially believes you're in that
environment you know and it's not as natural the movement and so forth but so when you take the glasses off it's sort
of like you have to readjust to the reality of the room and things like that I'm not running through corridors having
face huggers chase me you know like well that's why the Vision Pro is cool because you can dial it down you can
sort of dial down you can choose which level of reality you want to um you know you want to be in the real one or the
one the virtual one um you know it's also why VR training is so effective we
tend to overlook that but that's the second biggest C category for VR after uh after games and it makes a good deal
of sense right if you think about how the way we train employees today almost always it's going to be a series of
really bad videos followed by some really poorly laid out clickable screens right that's usually how you do employee
training everyone's done those compliance training things they're terrible but if you do employee training
in VR it's almost like a lived experience like you really have it embodied in you and you remember it and
you moving your hands around in the space and you know picking up things and moving them and so forth it's impossible
to forget it's as impossible to forget as if you did it yourself and from the brain's perspective it's the same right so you're interacting with the virtual
world feels to the brain just like interacting with the real world an example yeah I've got an example that I
used in augmented so this was back in 2015 I said um you know imagine being a
kid in London and going on a school Excursion down to Monument station you know where the monument is in in London
you put your VR goggles on okay class put your VR goggles on let's see what it was like in 1666 and suddenly the London
Fire is on all around you right like the impact of that event from a historical purpose would be entirely different you
know this really has the potential to change our education significantly I'm sure yeah I think so too like you know
in a physics class they could take you inside of a molecule so you can actually see it because the models we have for
molecules are terrible like the representations we have today that teach with they're not really accurate KDs D
go ahead I'm sorry oh no no and uh it's actually funny you mentioned the mo molecules uh a friend of mine is
actually developing uh VR educational platform uh to to help people uh well to
educate both uh those in the medical field and patients uh about sickle cell
and actually you know uh show and and explore you know what exactly happens and you know a breakdown of all that so
there are some really uh useful ways that people are kind of tapping into VR besides games and whatnot um another
thing too and and this ties into the Vision Pro is that you know it's the the future of work right I mean when you put
on the headset you know you have this experience I know for me I like to have uh you know set up the home screen so
it's like you're in kind of like a cyberpunk future apartment and you know you're you're doing your work and you
know if you could be able to sit in there and write just for let's say six to eight hours or something why even go
to a cafe you got your coffee at home you put your VR maybe that's that's the maybe that's what I got to do right cuz
you know she because Katie is hinting at the fact that I only ride in cafes this is true it's like my jam for riding you
know so hey it's good to be in real space once in a while yeah
true here's one area that I know is growing fast uh during the pandemic the airlines all laid off a lot of crew and
not just the flight attendants but also the ground crew so if you've been flying lately Brett I know you've been flying
around the world you experienced things like delays and lost luggage a lot more than you did back in 2019 and that's
because the the crew the ground crew is often very new uh they've been they're new hires well they're finding that with
immersive training if you use a VR headset you can train people much faster and they retain it much better and where
that's particularly useful is repairing jet engines uh so VR for the repair of
gen I know it's like super narrow and precise but it affects everybody who flies so it's actually something where
we get the benefit of it even those engines have like a million components so super
complex that's always the example they use when they talk about industrial metaverse which is a category I'm super
interested in this is not the entertainment metaverse or the game metaverse but the more practical reality
of you know being able to see everything that's going on in a factory or everything that's going on at say a
complex place like an airport these are hard things to visualize because they're three-dimensional uh so an immersive
media representation is actually quite a good uh it's a good way to indulge in that big area for my practice right now
I've been dealing with that um on a city scale level now uh in different cities across the across the US building out
city- scale digital the complex Smart City design stuff and things like that you know there's going to be a whole lot
of I know you know it's off the track a bit but talking to the neom guys last week where I was in Dubai and so forth
you know we're really the the Big Challenge right now is US developing
operating systems for smart cities right it's like yeah cuz you know you have to
deal with all of these complexities and there's going to be a ton of automation thrown at it you know how do you M you
know how would you organize transport at the line for example you know um because it's so long would you put a train in
well then it'd have to it take like hours to get from one end to the other if you had regular station stops and
things like that so some of the design problems are pretty interesting the line City you know it seems like design
nightmare it's like if you want to get from one end to the other it's the most difficult thing in the world you're gonna have to but I think you know the
the point of the line and again this is where some of this emerging um design
thinking is coming for cities is that you have these mixed use or multi-use um zones and neighborhoods and you don't
need to go out of that zone unless you're you know you're traveling so you would have a Express version of a train
and then you'd have localized stops and things like that but the whole idea is you can work you can go to hospital you
can have your kids go to school all within that uh mix you Zone you know so was it 5 to 15 minutes to get from one
end to the line to the other because I think it it's yeah but that's if you don't have any stops
right right right right the problem is quite a long if you have all those stops that that was the discussion that was going on but uh yeah I mean look this is
you know we you know we're starting to have to think about the world in a different way that's what's really interesting about this you know we're
having to measure the world describe the world you know the digital twing concept you know that's also making us think
about how these systems are organized and AI one of the beauty of AI is it
we'll be able to handle all of these complex systems like Transportation San ation design you know better resource
and energy management than than we can but the the issue with that is going to be we don't understand what the Black
Box is doing necessarily so there's it's a really interesting time to start thinking about large scale systems and
you know how we represent data of that how we can use the the metaverse and web 3 for that it's uh yeah all all really
interesting stuff yeah Brett and kitty organized a conference on this very Topic in uh Santa Fe and it's happening
on November 10 and 11 it's called creative experience and it's where the digital world meets the real world and it's all about this idea of
large scale system thinking and how do we use Technologies like Ai and immersive media to Make a Better World
the reason we did it is really simple most of the folks I talk to are not that excited about artificial intelligence
generally speaking the people I talk to particular people who aren't in the tech industry they look at it skeptically
they're like here's just one more thing the tech industry's throwing at us and that's not a great way to approach the future on this show we're always
interested in the future and trying to give people different techniques or ways to think about the future they're a little more constructive I think you
want to lean into these things so I organized this event where people can learn about the Technologies people are
not from the tech industry and then ask the question how can we use this to make a resilient Community better so that's
happening in Santa Fe it's called cxf Uh and it's happening on the on the 10th and 11th of November and very excited
about this small group highly participatory with some outstanding speakers so a lot of future thinking
folks will be there on the 10th cool you know I I am I'm inspired by you Brad I
want to start to do more events now that the world is kind of coming back to life uh post pandemic and so uh the idea of
getting together in the real world and not just doing everything by Zoom is on my agenda too well you know I can tell
you dude you know my message is sharpening up you know like because I'm having to present it and I'm having to
handle um you know questions and stuff and I'm I'm just like you know we've talked about it a lot you know like the
the and we might even have um what's his name yanis whatever with these techn feudalism book out and you know we're
talking about these different people are starting to think about different systems different economic models you
know I mean 20 years ago if you suggested that you know we're talking about late stage capitalism it would
have been um you know almost heresy right but now people are at least starting to entertain this sort of stuff
you know what sort of systems do we need moving forward how is AI going to change that um even the question of techno
unemployment and things like that it's getting a bit more acceptance that we are going to change the way we work very rapidly and that's going to result in
displacement so we have to sort of think about that transition you know so um yeah it's it's an interesting time wow
we covered a lot of stuff on the show crazy uh how we're pulling all together we should do this more often though this is this sort of uh you know banter and
we should get Brian back on too you know yeah definitely yeah get the band back
together well thanks for Tapscott always good to hear from him let's try to get him and his dad on a show in the future
yes yes and well great this is uh this has been a fun time to see all of you and tie
these threads of AI and immersive media and web 3 and the decentralized web and blockchain all together what a these
these appear to be like the building blocks of the future um and and as slow as the progress might be there are signs
of progress well that's it for this week thank you all for joining us uh this been a pleasure to have I'm Rob tur
you've had our um my co-host Brett King and Katie Miss metaverse joining us what
a pleasure to have you on the show big thanks to Kevin heror for recording it Elizabeth sens our producer and the
folks at provoke media who make the show possible and of course a big thanks to our audience our listeners uh you make
the show possible as well and by sharing it with your friends and telling people about the show you help other people discover it the audience has been
growing and growing and for that we're really gratified so thank you all very much and um we will come back to you
next week week with yet another futurist because that's our mission we're going to interview them all someday and so I guess until then we
will see you here we go everybody see you in the future future
future we are never going to get the timing right on I tried it's fun all
right see you everyone all right well that's it for the futurists
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