Antoine RJ Wright discusses wearables like Oura rings and Ray-Ban Stories, how they track health and memory while raising privacy concerns like gait-based identification. He contrasts traditional design with "humane" design that weighs ethical responsibility and societal impact, and shares how sleep, exercise, and mentorship helped him overcome burnout.
Chapters
Good afternoon, sir.
What up?
It's been a while. It's been a while. How are you, man? I'm not too bad. Just getting in, getting out of the, uh, the midday heat. Uh, it's not a midday heat, it's just humid now. The humidity has picked up last hour or so.
So are you in DC area still?
Yeah, just above the DC. Yeah, just above DC.
What's the weather like there today?
It is 84 and sunny.
Oh, that's not too bad.
That's great, it's great. But it's, it's also August humidity, which is like—
Yeah, I feel that.
I mean, I'm complaining. I'm not, I'm not really complaining because up until— was it Friday of last week? It was, it was Like 95, high humidity, you know, no rain in 10 days kind of moment.
I feel that. It was the same here. It was like, uh, sorry, let me put my thing on do not disturb. Um, yeah, it was like 100 degrees for months and months without rain. I was like, dang, we had to buy like a little hose attachment to water plants while we were gone. It's like, it's just crazy. So I'm glad it's fall. I like fall, you know.
Uh, I'm a fan of summer, actually. I do like the summer. This is like my peak body time. I'm, I'm in, I'm in that spot where I can just like walk out the house like, hey, you haven't exercised, let's go ride 60 to 80 miles. Just ride. I'm in that, I'm in that kind of mood, you know, September, October, I can do that. But I know how sore it's gonna feel when the weather, when it hits that 50. And you know, your knees go, guess what, you shouldn't have exercised that much.
That's like David Goggins mode. Like, I'm gonna do 1,000 miles on a bike on a whim. It's like Forrest Gump.
I get, I get, I get my moments. I actually had, I'm I ought to be training for another long— I say long ride. Um, I did in— with no prep, no training, no prep— in March, um, I did a Rails to Trail trail that goes from, um, York, Pennsylvania, uh, down to Baltimore. And then I said, you know what, I, I live 20 miles, a 20-mile bike ride from Baltimore. I'm just gonna keep going and ride home. And I got— And I was, I was mentally prepared for it, but physically my body was like, Yeah, and then like the night before we got a cold snap, so everything froze the night before. So I'm like, man, I can't leave as early as I want to. I gotta wait till things thaw out, right?
Oh my God. So how, how, how many miles is that?
How long? I did, I did 60 of the 75 miles. Uh, yeah, I could— I couldn't, I couldn't do the rest. I had a There's a city in this area, Ellicott City, that's literally in a valley. It floods out every 100 years, but every 100 years has been like every 5 years lately. And so it's one of those real deep valleys, you know, and then you got to come out of the valley. And it's like, nah, I didn't think I was gonna be able to come out of the valley.
So—
Well, you made it.
Here you are. Like, it worked. How many days were you laid up afterwards?
Half a day.
Oh, that's not bad.
Yeah, it's like, it doesn't take— I mean, for me, um, and this is funny because we can talk about all the fun tech and wearables and all, one of the things I've learned from all of the quantified stuff that I've been tracking is how I recover and what recovery looks like for me, um, on the harder days. So on That ride, and it's similar to my usual longer days on the bike, I'm doing 10% of what I did for that long day the next day. So if I did a 60-mile ride, I'm going out for 6 to 10 miles the next day.
Yeah.
Just to spin the legs, just to move things around. It's probably a yoga day also. So I mean, I'm getting— I'm doing all of the recovery things. I've got the compression sleeves for my knees and my ankles, you know, to go. And I'm doing all of these things. And so I'm generally, you know, within a day, I'm actually able to go back out and go do something again, go do the same distance again. So that's really—
Is it— do you feel like part of it is that like internal habit thing too, where it's like, oh, I'm supposed to get up now, and it's like I need to get on my bike, and this is the time of day where I do that thing, and it just like takes over?
On the— I would say that's kind of more of a Saturday, Sunday, um, kind of, kind of moment. So Um, as a part of— in the very beginning of lockdown, very, very, the very, very beginning of it hitting here, um, I stopped driving my car. I purchased the e-bike and the e-bike was perfect for getting around. It was like the car doesn't got to move. I don't have to go to an office. Yeah, e-bike, e-bike for everything. The car didn't move for the next 7 months.
Yeah, that's good though.
Didn't move. It was— there was dust on it that, like, people, like, sell me, get rid of me, pick me up. It was really— it really didn't move. And so I ended up getting rid of the car, and which was, you know, dream car, but I wasn't driving. I wasn't going anywhere.
Yeah.
So I ride regularly. I have a— I'm a regular cadence of jumping on the e-bike or jumping on the Brompton. I'm always riding, but my riding is, is split almost 50/50 between Transportation, riding for transportation and riding for recreation. And the riding for recreation bits, which are— which was usually get out in the evening, early evening, like 4:00, 4:30, you know, right after the heat of the day, go out for a nice hour, 2 hours. I go out for 15 to 20 miles. I call it chase the sunset.
Oh, nice.
You know, just go out and ride, get back, and I get to go— I get golden hour on the way back. It's like you're really meditative, contemplative bit. That's something that's kind of the scaled, you know, the— this is how I roll.
Yeah.
The weekend, it's, hey, let's go get 30 miles plus in the books and work off the week, get things off the brain, explore something I hadn't explored in a while. And that's fun. That's just a fun ride. That's the There's no speed or anything. It's just pick a direction. All right, what do I want to do? You know, last— I think last weekend was, uh, the wildlife refuge. There's a wildlife refuge about 5 miles away, so it was right— it would bike through the wildlife refuge and it's miles and miles of gravel.
Fun.
You know, fun, you know. So it's go out and enjoy and take that off. So to that end, now it's It's, it's scheduled, but it's not scheduled.
Yeah, I feel that. I think, uh, I think there's something to be said for that exercise. It like breaks loose thoughts and ideas that wouldn't ever come through, or like solidifies things and makes connections that you wouldn't otherwise. And I think it's like some of the research we've done into connectomics, it's, it really is, you have to embrace the fact that your body is part of your brain. Your nervous system is all a single functional unit. It's not like, oh, just the space between your ears is, is the part that does the work. Like, I've even found, like, we've done a massage and weird things will trigger during a massage. And I realized, well, it's like, yeah, someone's like literally poking your brain. It's just like in your side or your arm or something.
Yeah.
It's part of your brain. And you had like facts or insights or ideas like stored in your left elbow that you had no idea about. It's like, yeah, there we go.
Yeah, that, that's the only intentionality of— I think the intentionality is that I get in motion and I, and I do regular motion, you know, like the evening going out right before, you know, that 4:30, 5 o'clock, 6 o'clock window. That's actually pretty regular for me. It's either I'm going for a bike ride or I'm going for a walk. That's— I mean, it could be raining and I go for a walk. I don't Really care. There's something about that that clicks. Um, and it's not just like transition from maybe what I was working on, which, if you will, office life, because my office and my not office are 20 feet from each other.
Life bleeds into one stream, right?
It, it, it does and it doesn't. So I am— thank you for chatting with you here. I'm on the work— the work iPad.
Really? You have 2? You have a different device for each one?
I had 3 at one point.
3 What were the 3? Like entertainment, work, and like just personal or whatever?
Um, I had— so I originally had— I started with 2. I had basically— that was the 12-inch dedicated to just work stuff. Yeah. And then I had an 11-inch, um, that was dedicated to— I call it the evening weekend computer. Um, so because I don't do Mac, Windows. Yeah, I leave that for old people. Um, you know, tablet only. So, um, it happened. I got in the— I had gotten the Pro, the 12-inch, and I got an 11-inch Pro, and I was like, okay, well, for my birthday, I want to treat myself. I'm going to do the treat myself. So I did. I'm going to go for the 12-inch when they come out with the brand new M1 Pros. I'm going to get the M1 Pro, you know, spec it out where I want. I'm gonna get it engraved. Yeah, so I did that, but they were having trouble, you know, fulfilling orders quickly. I think it came out like April. I was like, yeah, we'll get it to you by June something. I was like, oh, I think I can wait. And it might have been like the middle of May, and I was like, I can't wait anymore. So I went out and purchased an 11-inch. The 11-inch came in like a week before the 12-inch did. And so I was like, oh, I got 11, a 12, and an 11. And it's like, oh, this is cool. I'm just going to just use all 3. I'm just going to swap between all 3 of these. I'm literally just going to pick one up. I'm going to look like that scene in Star Trek: The Next Generation where they're just picking up tablets and just working. You know, this seamless, I'm going from one thing to the next.
Yeah.
However, there was a line, the 12-inch one, because I was doing federal work, federal and state work, I needed to make sure that I had a device that was, if you will, cold. That wasn't as connected to items. So there were certain apps, programs, connectivity that wasn't allowed on the 12-inch. It isn't allowed on the 12-inch. It's very much the workhorse.
Yeah.
Just a little. I mean, it doesn't really need it per se, but I'm a little anal as well.
Well, like that compartmentalization too, you know, like when I grab this one, okay, I'm in that. mode. It just, it like changes your mode a little bit, which I think is super helpful in those scenarios where, yeah, I mean, it's like the whole, the whole thing. It's like what you're working on, who you're working with, like communication style, like expectations, requirements. It's just an easier transition. Yeah, super interesting. But yeah, I'm super curious to hear, like, because I know you've gone super deep in I mean, all the wearables, like even the Snapchat stuff. Like, break it down like a fraction for me. Like, what, what did you learn after— I mean, you've been doing this for years.
Yeah, I've honestly had experiments for a long, long time. Um, and they're all just experiments. I'm just, I'm literally just exploring what's there. And then I'm trying to ask a better question. I actually was writing a writing in my journal today about just the, um, the article about that was testing touchscreens in cars and, um, saying how crappy they were. And I'm like, well, yeah, but you don't put the same affordances on physical things that you do on virtual machines. And that means we weren't thinking about the interface properly. It doesn't mean it was designed wrong, you know. Um, and that's where wearables come in. It's like, okay, what about computing are we thinking about, um, when we use these pieces? Um, you So for like the vision-based stuff, Snapchat Spectacles, the Ray-Ban Stories, the, um, Bose ones, the, the View—
Yeah.
I still got those as well. Um, View glasses, it's like, okay, what are they actually augmenting? You know, obviously they're doing prescription glasses, you know, handicap, you know, if you will, disability help for vision. But then what about hearing or memory are they augmenting? Snapchat Spectacles is a, for them, it's a half step to augmented reality or augmented visual reality. However, I think they kind of, they went, you know, the long way around by saying, okay, well, let's first augment your memory. Let's take the things that Snapchat does inherently well, you know, instant, erythral, instantaneous kind of snap of who, of what's going on.
Mm-hmm.
And let's give you a means of kind of playing that back and then maybe tweaking with memory a little bit, tweak a little bit of what you think about it or, or how you think. Um, for those folks that like to play with Lens Studio and the filters and all that in Snapchat, the glasses actually really— they, they extend whatever about your memory or whatever about yourself that you want to express. And, um, their upcoming spectacles, the new ones that look like meme glasses, actually, they're like the little whole glasses meme. They, they are pushing into it. Okay, can we like actually augment the world in an active manner, not a passive, you know, after, after the fact manner.
Right.
Um, I think that, so for me, that, that's been that part of that lesson. It's like, okay, how is it trying to augment my memory? And I generally wear my spectacles when I'm cycling, which for me was, you know, one of the rules of being pulled over by a cop, have a camera kind of moment. And it was like, but when you're riding, you don't wanna sit down and pull out a phone. You wanna capture the moment and then maybe relive it You know, or relive a piece of it that was fun, etc., etc. And that's where I think the spectacles really have been aha, an aha moment. And hey, I can capture this right now. I don't really have to look at it immediately. I can come back and look at it later. Oh yeah, I remember riding this road. I remember. Oh yeah, I saw that classic car as I was rolling. Da da da. And I've got this memory vault of. stuff. Uh, uh, I might have a memory vault of falls because there might be a few— it might be— there's definitely a few flats, um, that were captured by the Spectacles. Definitely some flats, nails and all that got me. Um, so that's that part for the, for the vision stuff. For the, uh, hand, wrist, that kind of stuff, Apple Watch or, uh, um, NFC ring. NFC ring. Um, that one is different. I see those more as, um, Physical tokenization.
What do you mean by that?
How do we— so the Aura is in that line of quantified self piece, but it's really like, how do you tokenize a piece of who you are? How do you not make it reputationally great? But what about it increases your value or your wealth, your value to self, your wealth to self? Um, Aura has been good, it's been uncommonly good. And I, I think I'm still at the front of their, their user base, um, in terms of those folks that tried it early and keep going. Um, and what they found, you know, they did with the study with the WNBA that was really dope, um, that improved across the board, improved their metrics for tracking women's specific health, which was freaking dope. Um, that was just dope. That was really dope. Um, and then they did the study, the COVID study with the University of California San Diego, which was extra dope. Um, can wearable— well, they, they— can wearables predict COVID? Which at one glance is like, yeah, why would you do that? At another glance, it was like, well, we already know that heart rate Heart rate variability, body temperature are all signs of being sick in any way, shape, or form. The aura catalogs those. Is there a pattern to how you get sick with COVID versus how you get sick with the flu? There just happens to be a pattern. There's particular temperature variations and HRV drops, things that happen that are different between flu, common cold, allergy. COVID. Well, damn, wait, do the other wearables do this? So Fitbit jumped in in the study. I think Apple eventually jumped in the study. And well, what do you know, a wearable can kind of tell you that you're sick before you know that you're sick. You know, you get a 2 to 3 day window of, hey, you should probably up your ginger intake because you're not feeling good, go get some more sleep. You get those pieces where I'm like, yo, that's— yes, quantified self, but it's token— is a token of yourself. It's like, hey, These particular things add, can add value to you. And if you're looking at it over time, to which I'm really glad the wellness tracking aspects are following a bit more what Oura and Sports Tracker have done of getting people to look at trends over time instead of, hey, you just need 10,000 steps. You don't need 10,000 steps. You need consistent movement. You need not to be idle every hour, da, da, da, da, da. Getting folks to be able to look at things over time. You know, hey, you didn't sleep good tonight. The next 3 days you need to like actually concentrate on. going to bed on time, getting up on time, you know, those kind of things are good. You know, those are society lifts. Those bring up, you know, I think bring up everyone. And as different folks have talked about what works and what doesn't work from work from home from a mental psychosocial point of view, those tokens of wellness, I think, rise a little bit more. Are you sleeping? Are you disconnecting from work? Do you need to get the you know the blue screen glasses? Da da da da da da da da. All of those things, I think the finger wrist wearables have done a good job of of calling into attention. And then I have one more EOS. It's a payment ring. It's a ring that enabled that payment enabled, which is freaking dope. Yeah, you can pay for stuff with a ring. And it's like, why would you pay for stuff with a ring? Well, nobody carries spare cash, but you can put spare cash on a ring. I was like, damn, that's actually smarter than just having Apple Pay. Because you just tap Apple Pay and it doesn't work. But if you got spare cash on the ring, dude, duh, damn, that works. That's the other ring. That one's not being worn at the moment since I'm home.
But wait, so how does that work? You just load it from your bank account and then how do you pay? It's NFC from your—
Yeah, just a tap. Yeah, tap with the terminal and PIN code and PIN that you set up. ESOS. Yeah, that's the company. Um, it took me a while to find a US-based company that was doing that. That was really difficult.
Interesting.
Um, to find that. But they, um, they're not selling the current version. Good job. It looks like trash. It, it looks like some— it looks like a piece of PVC pipe that you cut out of Home Depot and just tossed it in your ring. As a kid, you know, you would like doing that. It's like, power ring! As an adult, you're like, what is this big piece of non-ornamental—
It's like, where is this guy coming from?
But then, you know, in my circle of cafes that I visit, though, that's actually some of the questions that happen. It's like, okay, what tech are you playing with today? I'm like, oh, I might have—
Is that just no?
I might have glasses on. I might have the glasses on. It might be the ring. Yeah.
Yeah.
Because what I think folks do recognize is that wearables offer a chance to actually own a little bit of that agency back. So where maybe your phone feels— is now feeling a little bit more intrusive, I can't help but have it. I can't help but pull it out. Um, you have a watch that ain't as busy as a phone. My watch is my dumb phone.
Mm-hmm.
So do I need a dumb phone or maybe a watch that's a phone? You know, I've got rings that can pay for things or track things. Do I really need to carry the phone all the time for those bits? And it's like, well, no, I don't need that slab of glass and I can still get some of the benefits of connectivity and I think that's where wearables, you know, do the right thing. And there's probably a potential for more and there's definitely potential for more nefarious stuff because, you know, with Oura, for example, it can 100% do gait tracking, which is one of those unique identifiers for who you are. Right.
Yeah, for sure.
And gait plus temperature plus sleep means you 100% know who these people are.
Yep.
And you probably know where they are.
That's the authentication system of the future, is just your unique connectomic signature, is the one, because it's always changing all the time in terms of the vibration pattern. So you would have to sync it up with the real you who's still alive. So you can't like cut off a finger or like an eyeball from Mission Impossible.
And, uh, you can't. And that's, that's, and that's where it's That's like cool but scary, you know, because it's like a— Yeah, is it? I, I think in some respects, yes, it's going that way, but it's also what agency do people lose when that happens, you know? Um, what's the opt-out? You know, every time there's an economic shift, there's always an opt-out. It doesn't mean it's, it's liked, but there's always an opt-out. So what would be the opt-out in this case? And I don't really know, but it's, it's fun to be on the edge of playing with it to ask those questions to explore, you know, what does it look like to program my own ring? So I have my own me, source of me in the ring, and whatever else happens outside or whatever else happens and changes with me is fine that it changes, but I still have source of me that's me.
Yeah.
And then whatever, you know, state owns or private company owns, you know, that's, that's only a part of the, of the story. It's not the story. It's not the Equifax. You know, this is the Equifax because it's mine. You know, a bit.
So yeah, I think it's— that's, I mean, like one of the reasons I do what I do is I think we— and you're probably the same, I mean, you tell me— but it's one of those things where if you are on the edge and you are one of the people building it, then being able to live out there, you can see the stuff that's going to come for billions of other people and then get around those problems because you're using it yourself. It's like Man, I don't want this. Like, why would some overlord like design that in? And then you can stand up and go, no, this is not for me. This is not okay. And, you know, that's, I mean, that's, I always cite Tron, right? Like that key moment in Tron Legacy, which is I fight for the user and then he jammed, he like rammed his ship into the other dude and then like the user is safely Garland Bya, it's like, yeah, we're out in the front, like taking shrapnel so other people don't have to.
It is. And it's fun. Um, it's a heck of a burden at times because you, you're like, hey, do I have to be doing this? Can I just fall back? Um, you know, my, my every 3 months, do I really not need to be on Facebook to keep up with everybody else kind of moment? But it's like, okay, what's the cost? What, what, what's the cost of, of feigning ignorance if I know that there's another story in there. There's another thread in there to pull. So it's fun. It's fun. It's— and I'm somehow figuring out how to make a career out of the way this brain works with it. So it's a career life.
I think, I think it's one of those things where if you follow, I don't know, whatever the voice is, that little thing of like curiosity, if you follow the curiosity, given a long enough timescale, The rest of the world catches up and becomes valuable. I mean, I remember even like 10 years ago, companies were like startups or like software. That's a decade, that's a blip, that's literally a blip. And now everyone's like software, software, software, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme. And it's just like, whoa. And so now there's just like a huge ram of people coming into the space. And it's like, that's great. But it's like, oof, you gotta be careful. Like, so I think, you know, I think you're in a great place because we're on yet another precipice where the whole wearables, the 3D computing, AR/VR, AI, blockchain are all coming together and like eyes, ears, like wrists, fingers, Like phone. I mean, we haven't even gotten into like the bodywear stuff, like smart Nike gear.
Oh, I mean, yeah, I mean, that's gonna be— it's gonna be all of that here. And so it's interesting, us as men, we, we have a— we actually have a really weird view of this as men because we're like kind of playing with this. And I truly mean we're playing with understanding this. But then if you talk to the ladies and you realize just how deep they already are with it, you're like, wait a minute, so you're already doing temperature tracking?
Pause.
Help me understand why you do and don't share this. You know, help me understand, you know, what are the ethical kind of questions that you have? You know, I've got younger godchildren and nieces and all who are between teen years and I'm like, okay, well, what's the Black book? You know, the ladies have a Black book. They have a— we don't, we don't get them. They have a Black—
Yeah, we don't exist in there.
Yeah, I'm like, okay, but I'm like, but what are you being told about, you know, how you connect with digital tools and connect with tools? What aren't you being told? Um, I actually just tweeted on my personal tweet the other day because my best friend and, um, and my niece actually was at— my niece was asking for Fortnite and Snapchat. And she's not quite that age yet. And I'm like, yeah. But at the same time, she's not that age. I was like, well, let me check. I'm like, not really sure. So I'm looking stuff up. And it took me forever to find Epic Games' parental controls, by the way, which was really not good.
Mm-hmm.
Hey, that was really not good. And then I found it. And I'm like, wait a minute. You guys barter your information through this service And I know where this, you know, ParentCheck, KidCheck server— I know where their data dump happens. Oh, hell no, I shouldn't even be using these services.
Yeah.
You know, and it's like, well, I mean, the young ladies, they— but they're in those, those pieces. That's part of their conversation. How do you track? How do you find, um, the adult ladies? They, they have a whole— if I meet a dude And I get two facts about him. I can do a reverse phone lookup and da da da da da da da, and I laugh at all. I laugh at it all. I'm like, the hell! Y'all are better than the FBI. I mean, really, you know. But I'm like, but okay, but you have to be because of there's safety and life concerns. She-Hulk actually hit on us in that first episode, which I thought was really dope.
I started like five minutes, and then I got distracted and had to do something else.
It's a good watch. The CG might throw you— CGI might throw you a little bit here and there because there's some frame drops that are like—
Yeah!
But as a whole, they held closer to the comic than you would think that they could do in a lot of respects, slash adjusted to today. But, you know, the things that women have to deal with are in a literal different world than we do. So when we're playing with this tech and we're thinking about what works and what doesn't work, Um, the ladies, Roe versus Wade, and they were all like, okay, take your information out of this period tracking app and maybe use this one instead, and don't use this and do use that. And I'm like, oh wait, there's a whole world of— yes, wearables help, but the complications and the ramifications of it, those are the things that, um— And talk about being ahead and being, being in the front and hitting hitting those things first that I enjoy running into, asking the questions about being there, because then that allows us to lead with compassion where it's really needed, to lead with curiosity rather than just leading with product discovery, because those two are two totally different trains. And then, you know, where we have the opportunity to coach up other folks, or coach up other teams, then we can, we can, we can really be an agent of change in that wise. Because it's not just Antoine uses a couple of iPads. Well, he uses a couple of iPads because he can scribble his ideas much faster than you can type. And if you can scribble faster than you can type, we can get from imagination to concept to doable reality really fast.
Yeah.
Um, and actually reduce, reduce some of that friction which is inherent in making a decision. And we can get to the decisions that matter, decisions that, that hopefully elevate or maybe even stop the worst from happening. So.
Yeah, that was a hell of a process you packed in right there. I mean, that was 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and you just went all the way from like insight, design, discovery, implementation, organization. Yeah.
Yeah.
So true. So true. It is.
I, I, I, I'm done being slow, I think. And it was around the time of meeting you, actually. I, I remember saying this, it's like, man, these people don't move fast enough. Where— and then it was like, okay, Antoine, your brain works differently. Well, you got to slow down. I was like, no, don't slow down. Yeah, just go.
Yeah, just embrace it.
Just, just go.
Just embrace it. I mean, the thing, honestly, man, the thing I found is like cycle Like the faster you can get iteration and cycle times, like the better outcomes because like you're doing, I mean, it's just like real-time testing and I mean, if you're anything like me, which I think you probably are, you have your user conversations in your head having the argument with yourself until you like iterate into the spot that sort of like feels okay. Then you go test that thing. Yeah, like, yeah, and that's why you ride the bike, because it's happening while you're riding the bike and you're like, oh shit, I just went 10 miles. Like, what, what year is this? You know, like, did the star systems change? Like, I think I warped somewhere. I did that this week. It was weird, man. It was like, time is a funny, funny thing. It's a funny thing.
Time is a— oh man, I was thinking, I was reading, was it last week's? It might have been in last week's Somebody was talking about time, and it was about the perception of time is actually being— is actually controllable. They were talking towards that, I think, um, which made me go, ooh. And I was like, all right, I gotta be— I, I have to be careful of rabbit holes. I went to a rabbit hole last yesterday. Brian, uh, Rommel, he posted a thing about a map, and I went on a whole tangent about islands.
There's the afternoon.
Gate of the Gods as a bookmark. I got maps of Antarctica that have no ice that are from the 1500s. I'm like, what the heck, this is cool. I gotta be careful of tangents.
But yeah, do you have like the red strings and the sticky things? Like, and then the— that's why the background's blurry is because you don't want to—
That's what my head looks like. My head looks like the background. My head looks like the red strings. I do have whiteboards all over. I actually got to rewrite one whiteboard. Um, I use an application now called Muse. Because of that.
Yeah.
And, um, Muse, um, uh, was it, um, Hiroku, one of the guys who did Hiroku, he, uh, him and his team Ink and Switch, they, um, they had a concept for an idea, um, they had a concept for an idea of a tablet-first personal idea space. So think notebook. And they, they thought thoroughly around, you have a pen, pencil, and you have your tablet. What does the canvas enable? And I'm like, I'm reading their research and I'm like, yo, give me the app yesterday. Email them, yo, where's your beta? Hell, give me your alpha. Yes, Muse app is it. And—
Yep, got it.
And they eventually came out with the product and actually spun out Muse from Ink Switch and It's, it's a measurably dope space because it's not the notepad. It's not Apple Notes.
Yeah.
But it's similar. It's not GoodNotes, Evernote, but it's similar. It's not Miro, Mural, OneNote, Evernote, but it's similar. It's— but it's similar and it's not because it's coming from the other end of, okay, what are you personally thinking about and how are you taking that personal thought space Before it becomes something you stick into a collaborative space or product space, da da da. And with Muse, I've, I've like watched my brain actually finally get to the iPad as a canvas and actually be, oh yeah, yeah, let's walk through this spatial interface. 'Cause it's all boards, it's all spatial, spatial. Okay, we got a board over here, content here, and I'm doing this all day. Um, that used to be my demo of folks. They come, plug the iPad to a monitor, do the Minority Report thing. It's 20—
Yeah. You know?
Yeah. Wow, that looks like the future. I'm like, it can't be the future. I'm doing it in front of you. The question is, why isn't the rest of what we do fitting with our brain, fitting with the way that we work? And now we've seen Craft and Notion and other, you know, items that have actually kind of clicked. It's kind of clicked for folks like, wait, we need to build software around the way that we think, not think around the way that we build the software. And those kinds of things have allowed for those connections for me. those connectomes to really just like kind of extra just pop. Um, and so now it's fun. It's, it's absolutely fun. So between Muse and MindNode, because I, I'll mind map something in a heartbeat. It's, uh, once it gets past the extra, the Antoine idea phase, I'll mind map the mess out of it. Um, and that's actually part of what, part of my teaching techniques now is like, hey, can we mind map this? Can we, can we get to some goals, issues, and resources? And hear what it is that we're aiming for? Do we know what connects to these items? Do we, do we have some sense of the space, of it, of the, of the, the shape of it? And that map ends up on— weirdly enough, that map usually answers everybody else's questions. You know, I'm helping them make a map, not necessarily solving their problems anymore, which I'm— I think that's, that's, that's the route.
You know, yeah, it's like just like show you visually what you're describing and play it back to you and you're just like, whoa, magic. It reminds me a lot of like Bret Victor. I don't know if you've dealt— Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like inventing on principle. But the thing I'm super duper excited about, and you're 100% right on these like crude tools, is 3-dimensional space. where we can build ideas as physical 3-dimensional spatial objects in front of us and play with concepts in a collaborative co-located environment. So you and me in a room and we've both got the glasses on and we're messing around with like, here's a triangle which represents this concept and we're literally connecting the triangle to the square and energizing it because it's software as well. And like it, I think with some of the other tools like AI in there and like being able to pull up research information and plug it in there, like I, we just have to get to that space because I want to build Trond but in terms of tools so we can build on the tools, you know, like a physical space of, like a physical space not of furniture but of ideas.
Yeah.
Which is nuts to think about. Like, can you sit in a chair that is like, like how to connect 2 concepts together? Like, what does that even mean? Like, that's weird and random. It's like we need a better way to create and interact with tools. Like, we're working with hammers trying to build a skyscraper, and it's just like—
It's not, it's not the right— it's no longer the right tool. We're For the thing that we're trying to do, it's no longer. And so my, I guess my friend says I'm being nicer these days about it. I'm not really nice, but I'm being nicer these days.
Controlled.
Um, I don't think the mouse and keyboard was an excellent long-term direction because it takes that indirect manipulation, takes us away from finding better tools.
Mm-hmm.
Now, that doesn't mean that keyboard isn't optimized for a certain type space of input. It doesn't mean mouse isn't optimized when you don't think about certain, you know, insets or mouse, or if you will, controller surface isn't. But there's something about direct input that's a different part of your brain. And that's where, for me, with Muse compared to like all of the other, all of the other notes programs, Yeah. Made a difference because Muse forced me to go— and as they forced, it was just like, hey, you want to use your fingers on your left hand while you're drawing with your right hand? Yes, I do. I want to use most of my digits. I don't want to have a tablet and literally be constrained to 3 fingers, and that's all I can use, because that's thinking like a mouse, that's thinking like a keyboard. I want to use 10 fingers, and hell, I can use my palms if I want to. And it starts to get into that space of, okay, now I can, I can work in space. I can pull content in, 2 fingers to, you know, to kick it away or zoom, not zoom. I've got all the multitasking gestures, da da da da. But it's like, okay, well, once I have this, then what? Well, it's up to me to pull the idea into space and then do something with it. Now it's, it's less me dealing with the tool and it's more me dealing with my ideas. And that shape of work, that shape of computing, that shape of augmented space, um, yeah, we're— I'm agreeing with you, we, we ain't there, but we, we could have been there, you know, to Engelbart's words, we should have been there 40 years ago. True.
But I will say, like, I'll, I'll give our species credit. Look, like, We've got 5 billion people on the internet now. We've got almost everybody has some type of phone. I mean, obviously we have third world issues we got to deal with, but we're—
No, no, they have phones. It's not the third world. They got phones.
Yeah. So I mean, look, we've got people connected, we've got devices, we're getting access to each other and information. Now we're dealing with the consequence of pulling back the veneer on everybody and like everyone, what they really think is coming out at scale. And now the species is trying to deal with the fact that like everybody has an opinion. And like, we knew it, but we weren't confronted with it until Facebook. And it's like, oh damn, I thought I knew you. And like, I don't know you now.
And yeah.
So it's like it had to happen. And maybe it happened in the right way because What if, what if we had better tools and it allowed, maybe it would accelerate too fast where, you know, it's like that, it's the old thing, like why have we not heard of another species from any other planet or system? And like, it's the great filter essentially. And like, maybe we're going at the right speed. It's like trees, trees that grow too fast are weak. And their trunks aren't as strong. We— trees that grow slowly are strong and last for hundreds of years. So I'm gonna be positive and say maybe it's a good thing. I don't know though.
Uh, all I know is that we're doing a really crappy job of imitating mushrooms. That's, that's, that's, that's what I put our connectivity as. We're doing a horrible job of imitating mushrooms. And I got my plants next to me right here, and they're probably Lily laughing at me in plant language.
Um, the slime mold stuff kind of thing?
Uh, well, no, I mean, we should, you know, in taking from the trees and taking from myceliums and mushrooms, what have you, fungi. Yeah, there, there is a— we're trying to be like that, um, that I think, okay, cool, you know, as a species. I don't want to say hive mind, but we want to be this interdependent Brainage of stuff. Um, but like every good virus, you know, you know, where some parts of us are not quite developed and some parts are way out of control.
Boy, truth. Facts.
You know, um, facts, man.
But that—
and that's— I think that's also where being on the, you know, on, on, on the edges of experimentation with, with devices, services, processes, procedures Also, it ends up being helpful, sometimes hurtful. It's like, okay, hey, I look back at some old, old work of mine, old, old, old work, and I'm reading them like, dang, I had the basis for human-centered design way back in 2001, 2002. I didn't know that.
There wasn't a name for it. There wasn't a name.
There really wasn't a name. There was human factors, you know, but it wasn't, you know, human. Okay, cool. But then it was like, wait, I shifted. I shifted from human face design to humane design. 2 totally different thoughts almost nobody talks about. What does it mean to be humane? Human-centered design is 100% business lingo and a good slice of, oh crap, we forgot, we messed up, so we need to get better. Humane actually looks at, oh crap, what are the implications of us not actually caring for one another when we do this.
Right.
Which is, that is that next step. That's, that's that, you know, when it, when a tree in my little Norfolk evergreens that have been ever dead for the last 2 years, you know, when they died, it was like, well, I'm watching the big one that was resilient die. And I'm like, oh wow. And then whatever it got sick with passed to the small ones. I'm like, that's tree-centric, tree main, you know, I was like, human, human-centered design would've said, Just move the pot. That's sick. And the other one should be okay. Humane Design says no, even if you move it, the others are going to be affected because they talk. So what things do you put in place? What things did you take away? How do you put— how do you put boundaries around your time so that you can— you got an hour in between meetings, go for a walk. You can walk for 45 minutes and Just clear your head in between meetings. Well, I can't leave. You can leave the desk. It's your home. Get outside.
You have agency over yourself. Like, they do not have power over you. You have power over yourself. Like, take that walk. I'm a big firm believer in that for sure.
Yeah. And so it's like when you're— when you think of humane design and— or life-centered design, as Monica will call it, you're thinking— we're now thinking less about, okay, let's just build it because we can build it and test it because we can test it. Well, let's actually go through the whole thought experiment of what if we did? What if we didn't? You know, who is helped? Who's hurt? What narrative can we not escape about this? What narrative should we escape if we do this? Um, okay, now forget the money. Do we do it because it's humane or do we not? And you can't ask questions like that. I was like, well, you can, and you should, and we should explore. And, you know, and that's why we have really great comic book artists and sci-fi folks and speculative fiction folks, because we could, we could have them pull on them. Hey, can we explore this thing? What if this thing was like this? So we might spend the money on it, but we might test it in a different way.
Mm-hmm.
We can test the money on Tron because we've got a few movies and a few books. We, we, we've tested it. We, we know what our visceral reaction is to, we don't want to be here, we want to be here.
So, so true.
It's, it's taking those pieces and I'm hoping over the next, um, I feel our project starting, uh, next week, um, starting on next week. Um, I'm hoping to add a bit of that kind of push, um, into how this particular company thinks, not just about engineering. and software development, but okay, they're doing it for, um, for, for, you know, organizational agencies. I was like, okay, cool, how do we pull that in? That's not human-centered, that's being humane. And we're gonna go sketch an approach that actually— that if it doesn't work, the really cool part is if it doesn't work, we actually learned the right lesson. And if it does work, we learned the right lesson. The only way we don't learn a lesson is if we don't approach it in this manner. And that's the, the thing behind my, you know, using the spectacles and the auras and the NFC rings. It's— you, you've got to find the stories, the, the things to pull on. Um, there's, you know, there's a Ledger wallet sitting around here, you know, and a knot and a paper wallet and all that good fun stuff. No, that's all right. It's play with— I play with with all of those things.
Yeah, right.
But it's, but it's like, let's play, let's see what happens if. And then at the same time, seeing what happens if— what are the implications if not, you know? And, um, and the implications are— can be huge, you know. If I'm, um, in those regions that, um, agency online really doesn't exist, some of this stuff really Matters.
And you know what you just, you know what you just invented is AOL 2.0, Agency Online.
Well, yeah, that's just it, you know. I, I think somebody said, man, the internet's getting polluted. I was like, what can we do about it? I'm like, you can technically just unplug the servers, it'll, it'll all go away. I mean, every, every data center can just be unplugged. They all, they, they all Work via the same— just really just, just unplug them.
Or don't look at your phone. You, you know, you don't look at your phone.
Well, I don't even— I, I, I, I don't even have a don't look at my phone moment because somebody said, hey, Antoine, is there any time you don't look at your phone? I was like, I almost never look at my phone, but I got 2 tablets and a watch. I'm looking at those all the time.
Just different size screens.
You're like, what do you mean? I'm like, I said, being connected doesn't mean being overwhelmed. You've got to figure out, and everybody's got to figure out what their Shannon limit is. You got 41 bits of information you can take in. Well, what, what does that limit look like? And you got to live within that rather than trying to extend yourself out of that. And if, you know, as I used to say to my team, I was like, y'all can't possibly process as fast as I am. I've been doing this for a while.
Yeah.
You're not. Here's the thing that you can do. Take notes. I don't care how you take notes, just take notes.
I still do it. I'm 41 years old. I've been taking my own notes on every call since I was a kid. Yeah, like you learn 10 times faster and then you have a resource to go back to when you need— when you're forgetting something, you go over those notes and you're like, ah, there we go, there it is.
Exactly, because that's where, that's where the connections happen, I think. You know, and, um, the, the sleep book that I wrote, that I read, Queen of Sleep, um, was her, her moniker, um, woman, she was at the head of sleep research. And she, she talked about, um, we think there's a problem with creativity, you know, ethical creativity, because folks aren't getting enough REM sleep. And I go, Yeah. And I go, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. She, she isolated it to a stage. I was like, wait, And all the whole book was a whole thing of sleep and what they've learned and not learned. And I was like, wait, REM sleep is important. I was like, wait, but most folks don't activate REM sleep unless medically induced, and they they get they get past the deep sleep and they can get in there, or their body basically starts to shut down and say we need to clean ourselves. We got we got to dream. We we've got to dream. We we we gotta dream. And so I'm looking back at my Oura Ring and I'm like, man, my REM sleep is like jacked up. Like, I'm not like sleeping the way I should. And then I'm comparing to, you know, some friends and that. I'm like, okay, hey, life circumstance. I'm like, wait a minute, all you married dudes, y'all get a lot of REM sleep. Your wives cause you to dream that much? What are you running away from? Deep cuts.
You know, wait, so what did you do? What did you do to like get more REM sleep? That's huge.
I had to actually adjust my sleep time, um, like back it up by about an hour. So instead of like 11, I had to do like no later than 10, 10:30, um, and I had to stay in bed, um, for the duration of the last dream cycle because sometimes I would, I, I would shut it short. I would have to actually finish the last dream And oh wow, measurable improvement.
Could you, could you feel it, or was it just the ring? You can feel it. Yeah, you can.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because so the, the, the problem with a lot of folks is that we actually don't listen to our body to wake up. We listen to it to go to sleep. Sometimes we ignore the first 2 yawns because there's a yawn There's a yawn slash energy drop, temperature drop that happens about like 90 minutes to 2 hours before you're ready to go to sleep. It's your body basically saying, hey, guess what? Shut it down. You need to do whatever you need to do. Just shut it down.
Go to the bathroom, get your bed. It's time.
You know, and then you get the yawn. Yeah, man. Yeah, get to sleep. But when you're asleep, there's a natural waking mode. There's like there's natural crests where we can wake up and we're we feel refreshed. We've completed the night. Da da da da. Our mind has washed itself clean. I was cutting mine off by waking up the way I was, and it's like oh oh okay where's that happening? Roughly where is that happening? And what eventually happened, and it's happened beautifully gracefully over time. I'm now waking up with the sun.
Yeah.
Which was actually the thing that my body— it was like, hey, listen, I need you to wake up with the sun. You don't necessarily need to get out of bed, but you need to be awake with the sun. And so the sun comes up, those points in the late spring, early summer where the sun comes up over here at 5:30 in the morning, I'm pissed off. Like, the hell, man? I don't want to be awake. But that's at the end of the crest, and That's where I'm the dreams are completed at that point, and that that the REM sleep is actually oh wow, I'm hitting REM the way I need. Oh okay, cool. I'm seeing the heart rate drop where it needs to. Da da da da. From so from a quantitative end, I'm seeing the numbers to validate. Oh wow, I'm actually in the spot that I need to be to actually wake up. And so let me continue that. I mean, and those pieces, and that's supposed to be an Alzheimer's you know prevention method, aka get good sleep in your forties. And you don't get Alzheimer's in your 60s.
Oh, word? I never heard that. That's really interesting.
Yeah, so, um, the study was done primarily with women because guys don't live that long. Um, that sucks.
Oh, another thing.
Um, but it was, um, Alzheimer's— a onset of Alzheimer's was actually, um, pointed to a lack of sleep, a lack of a full night's sleep. Of women in their 40s, part of the study actually traced it to what the women were doing in their 20s, which I thought was hella dope. Which I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait.
What were they doing in their 20s?
Partying all night. Da da da da da da da.
No, we're all screwed then. We're all done. Like we're gonna have to cut out college and youth for that. Yeah, like.
But it was it was so interesting. It was like, but these ladies, they said the women started recognizing that they couldn't do a full night's sleep in their 40s. And hormonal menopause, da da da da da, you know, for them. But it was because this happened, and now they got used to the stress of not sleeping.
Oh man!
It led to the buildup that caused Alzheimer's in their sixties, seventies, eighties. And I'm like, what?
It's like plaque in your brain that hasn't been cleaned out from just sleep. It's like the broom that just says, like, comes in every night and it's like just cleaning up shop.
You got to get this, you got to get to sleep. So, and it was, so I learned that and I'm going to my mom like, are you sleeping during the night? She's like, of course not, I wake up at 2 in the morning, I'm wide awake. And I'm like, oh, okay, all right, Antoine, how do you plan for a parent that may get Alzheimer's if these are some of the things, you know, how do you plan, how do you build the home, you know, legal things? Now, here again, wearable technology comes in. We get mom the Apple Watch. Hey mom, I want you to monitor, you know, have you monitor your heart rate. We'll get notes if things are awry and you fall or things of that sort. But I need to get you on regular motion, get you tired, you know. Yeah, you're retired now. Your job is to go to the YMCA and just exercise with the girls.
Yeah, I think it's, I think it's just all so Connected, right? I mean, it's like, like my chiropractor said, motion is lotion, right? Like that's the best thing you can do. Just motion is lotion. Stretching fine. Like just getting up, standing up, walking. The exercise, right? It just cleans out your mind, your body. It gets you more tired so you can have a better night's sleep. It processes food better, makes you hungry. You taste the food better. Your metabolism kicks up. And then the system, it's like this gamification thing, like create boosts and it starts, you feel better. I mean, I'll tell you just personally, man, like the last couple years when COVID went, I went really hard into work mode, like nonstop, like building multiple companies at the same time. And I just got to this place where it was just like pure and utter burnout. I couldn't do it anymore. Like I had I mean, I wasn't drinking a lot, but I was like drinking. I wasn't exercising, and I had exercised my whole life. And I finally just got to the point at like my 41st birthday in May, and I was like, what am I doing? Like, you know, you, you have the things that society says you should have, and it's like, but none of it means anything, and it's just like doesn't feel good. And I just said, all right, we're done here, and just like wiped the board clean. And I haven't had a drop of alcohol since. I've been exercising regularly. I've had the Apple Watch, so I've seen the trend line, and everything's kicked up by like 50 or 100%. And, um, everything is improved. Everything's improved. And like, you're younger, you feel better, you're happier. Like, you engage with other people better. You're healthier, you're more creative, you can do more. It doesn't feel as bad. Like, your quality above, quality above. And so it's like, why wouldn't you? And I think, I think it's a mental block.
Oh no, it's 100% a mental block. But it's so the mental block is that I'll be okay, or I can do it later.
Yeah. Um, later tomorrow.
There's tomorrow, there's the I don't know how. Um, so I, I'm in a unique— I've been in a pretty unique posture. Um, I was working with one company, I left them in October of last year, and I took 2 months off.
Yeah.
And I had never been in a financial spot where I could take 2 months off of a company and just be like, fine.
I was like, whatever, whatever.
Yeah, kids getting Christmas gifts, all the God kids got great Christmas gifts. I was like, I was I was like, great. I was like, damn, I've not been like this ever. Um, but then it was like, well, the 2 months are over, and I'm like, yo, yo, hey, there's a shape of work that I actually see that's a lot better. Let me do this. Yeah. And so, so it was like, hey, kick back up with Avanza, file the business paperwork finally with the state. So it was extra official, you know. They will be taxing me like crazy this year.
Comes last. Yeah.
You know, but it was like, um, but it was like, okay, well, what are you doing? Well, you wake up in the morning, you know, up at dawn. I'm up at— I'm up, you know, sunrise. I get 30, 40 minutes of— I'm just a slow, slow, slow starter. Then I do my yoga.
Yeah.
And it's like, there's no meetings before yoga. There's no talking to people before yoga. Um, and I know if I'm late doing yoga because the trash truck comes if I'm not doing it by that point. And it's— I'm late because we, we're roughly at the same time. I was like, okay, cool, you know. And then it's, you know, on with the day. And some of the days is, okay, look, we're gonna go bike to the cafe. Okay, which cafe? Or I'm gonna go sit with one of my mentors, you know. We bike, we go to a cafe, or we go to breakfast like we did this morning, and we sit, we chat for a few hours, and then we go on with the day. And it's— wait, the shape of work is looking like, hey, you're doing intentional for you, You're setting your mind, you have a time of collaboration, you've got exercise or movement in between, then you got time of collaboration. Um, what I've done, like, this time of the day for me is just be out of the sun. I, I would like to be outside, but the UV's high. It's like, take care of your skin, don't be outside.
Okay, cool.
But then come 4, 4:30, it's, hey, it's time to go for that walk or go for that ride. Let's transition. And that shape of work has merited all of these kind of, oh, that's what you've been thinking, Antwane. Oh, that's what you want to explain. Here's how you can help folks go, oh, Afonso, it's easy. I can help you go forward. Because now, to quote my 24-year-old mentee, I want to work like you do. I don't know what the hell you want to do this for. This is hard.
I'm still trying to work like I work. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, I'm still trying to figure it out.
Yeah, but she's like, but you, you, she's like, you have a flow to it and your flow doesn't look as stressful as— I said, oh, I see what you see. Let's, let's help you create the shape of life that works for you. Now, you're not going to be me, but let's create the shape of life that works for you. And I think For a lot of us that's on this edge, whether it's tech or, or behavior, we have a shape of living that grants us a kind of agency to live, a freedom to live. That is what we should be doing. We, we, we should be expanding our knowledge and expanding our connections. But a lot of folks get stuck.
Mm-hmm.
And it is a mental, it's a mental block. And we might get stuck in the, in the, being like everyone else, you know. Can you see, you're 41, I'm 43, and I've still not done the wife and kids thing yet, you know. And it's like, man, I've got a wife and kid. I've got friends whose kids are going to college. Wait, your kids are going to what? Oh man, I'm really behind. And it's like, well, but am I really behind? I mean, I spent 12 years doing a magazine that actually helped a whole lot of people out. Maybe I'm not behind. I just went in reverse of everybody else. Y'all going this way in the road, I'm doing this way. Okay, cool. Benjamin Button style. I'm just getting younger, you know. There's no—
there's, there's no rules to this thing. And honestly, I, I feel you with the work cadence thing. Like, that's the spot that I found, and it's— it feels like you could— you know you're in the right cadence when it doesn't feel like work and you could do it forever.
Yeah, yeah.
That's like a different feeling than I think most people are used to, which is like Shove as much coffee as possible down your throat and, and army crawl to your work and just like grit your teeth through it and then collapse at the end of the day, which is like, that's no way to live for 20, 40, 50, 60, 70 years. You've got to know—
No way to live for one year.
Yeah, you just like, you've got to find a way out. Like if it takes a pay cut, like work smarter, not harder, like get a different thing, like a better environment, like a better team, a better culture, and just find a way out.
Well, it's find a way out. But I mean, I was talking to the waitress this morning, and actually, we're gonna talk later on. She was like, I'm just tired of the 9 to 5 thing. And I was like, okay, I hear you. But if all things were paid, if all your bills were paid, all things, all things good, you just woke up in the morning and did what you do.
Yeah.
What would you do?
Right.
What are you doing? And that's the lottery question, you know, like you won the lottery, what exactly would you do? And so many folks are like, well, I would travel. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, that's not the right answer. After that, what would you do? You know, you're going to go to this new place, are you going to bring them smallpox, or are you going to, you know, just buy all the touristy stuff? What are you going to do? What are you going to do? Um, that's mean to say bring on smallpox. It's, it's true, but it's mean. But it's like, hey. And then folks are like, well, you know, I really don't know. I was like, at the end of the day, you've got to make your imprint on this world, um, because we don't have— we don't have time. And in the pantheon that is eternity— and thank you, James Webb Telescope, for showing us just how little time that we really, really, really, really don't have. You have like that much of a moment. And so what are you going to do with this, this speck, this breath, this, this piece of light, this piece of stardust that we are? What are we going to do? And man, I've been scared excited to help other people kind of, you know, figure that out, whether it's a small thing of, hey, we're trying to do diversity, equity, and inclusion. Well, that's nice, but why? That's why. I was like, but why? Why? What, what exactly does that— what— how does that forward what you do in this world and what the imprint is? Or the other groups that say, hey, I want to play with XYZ tech. One of my other mentees, he just picked up the NFC ring because he's like, yo, the whole business card thing you do when you You made me tap your ring, it's so cool. And I'm like, I'm like, okay, cool, but you gotta understand, I'm older than you. You have to— what I'm doing is your floor. You have to imagine better. So what can you imagine better than this? And he's like, oh, oh, all right, I see you, I see you. I was like, good, come, come.
We're springboarding.
Yeah, if, if we can build lives that do That will— will this world get better moment by moment? Yeah. Is it still gonna be crap? Yeah, there it is. But man, um, I can't help but say, okay, in this time, let's be the right agent. Let's, let's use the, the freedoms, the activity, this moment. We were born in this time, you know. We weren't born earlier, thankfully for me. I wasn't born later, probably also thankful for folks. I'm here. What can we do in this moment that creates the right dent, the right steps so that folks can, man, go forward? And that doesn't mean we have to have the answers. I mean, the United States of America can turn into the 11 countries of America for all I care. But of the people in them, are we building towards a sustainable equitable, usable world that, that treats people as people, um, and not as resources, that embraces— yeah, we're connected, but we're gonna be more like mylesium, and we're gonna be more like the tree roots, and we're gonna be a little less like sand. You know, you know, sand is connected, but sand is kind of abrasive when it connects, you know. So what can we do around I think it's possible. And I think the platform I'm shaping with Avance allows me to be a part of that, to connect with yourself and others who are doing that. And just whatever forward looks like, you know, what does it look like for us to pick that knee up and take the next step forward? Let's do it. And then from there, we can answer the questions of, okay, we took the step forward. What did we step in? We stepped in poo. We need to turn it into energy.
But nobody has to anymore. Yeah, I think, I think that's it, man. I think it's just— I think the first step is people need to step into their own shoes and just do that inner work to figure out like what, what gets me going. Yeah, what like make me good with me. And then if there's enough of us that are like cool with me is me. Each of us are gonna have like very unique perspectives, skills, experience that when those small world networks come together, magic will happen organically from the center of all of that. That's, that's what I'm really excited about. And that's what I can't, you know, it's like sometimes people like us, we can see a few steps ahead because we're in it and we know where it's going and we also build part of it. But that's the piece that's just completely blind on the other side because you don't know what comes out of that. It's gonna be— it can be pretty cool. That's what I'm excited about, like in the next 5, 10 years.
It could be cool, it could be scary. But I, but I, all I know is that I, I want to be— I don't want to be, I don't want to be on the side watching for a chunk of it.
Yeah.
That, that's for darn sure, you know. Now, I'm not the builder that, you know, I wish, I wish I was, you know. Well, I would love to be the coder that I really would— I can imagine myself to be. That would be great because the other NFC ring would be doing things that y'all have no clue what I have in my back pocket as imagining. I got stuff. Um, you know, I—
that's just, that's why you just need like a really hot engineer to sit next to you.
And then like, anybody that knows some Java, you know, anybody that knows Java, Java ME and Java OS and knows how to program a ring, you can, we, we can, we can chat. It's like, I got, I got the thought.
Yeah. Yeah, man. I mean, that's, that's honestly why I'm doing this stuff.
Yeah.
Because I forget, like, I don't even know. I forget everybody that, you know, I've come across in work situations over the last couple decades. And this is why I'm doing this, to just bring that stuff out and start— instead of connecting dots, connect people so new dots can emerge and crazy shit can come that can help people. And that's what I don't know what's gonna happen. But I'm doing it, and people are starting to like. I see it happening.
It's like a like pew pew pew. Yeah, man.
Real slow. Just like real slow. It's like tink tink, and it's early. We're like two weeks in, and this yeah yeah. I'm excited for like two years in. It's gonna be like pew pew pew pew pew.
Hey man, it's why I'm amped. I mean, that's that's why I'm amped on on all the fun on on all of this. And I'm also a little sober-minded as well because I, I understand, um, in my position I'm hella blessed. Um, you know, I'm— man, I've been invited into places that I had no business being invited into.
You did the work though, man. You did. You put in the hours. You did the work. You did the thought. The thinking is the thought. You bought the rings. You thought about it. You used them. Right? Like you put in the work. That's the difference. You put in the work, and you were there when the work was like, "Hey, I don't know anything about this," and you were like, "Oh well, that's just da da da da da." Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, because you spent years, years, years, years.
I was telling a friend of mine; he was poking me about you know about about about an item. I was like, "Oh man, those that group still exists." Man, I remembered when they were just babies and they were doing da da da da da. He was like, "Oh, you know about them?" I was like, "Well, I'm kind of responsible for them. Let me point you to this." He was like, "Wait, what all have you done?" I was like, "Oh, there's this trail on the internet where if you actually know how to follow it, there's this road." And it's like, and I and I thought about it. I sat there was like, "Wow, I've actually done." A lot of stuff. Oh, okay, cool. All right, what else we want to do? What else we want to invent? Yeah, what else? You know, I've got my email server sitting next to this iPad. Okay, well, my email server is sitting next to my iPad. Yeah, why not? Why not host your own email? I used to host my own website on a phone, so that was fun. I missed doing that. God, I missed doing that.
Yeah, that's it right there, man. It's like, go back so you can go forward and like, oh, this is kind of interesting. Let's see what comes out of this. Some weird remix.
Some, some something weird, something possible, something impossible. And it's, it's funny, it's even less for me as much— I mean, my niece and my nephew, they're, they're, oh, Uncle, you're doing that? We want to do it with you. I'm like, oh yes, I Messed with them. Yes. You know, goddaughter just got an Apple Watch. I'm like, oh yeah, I'm like, she has no clue what she has on her wrist, but I'm going— we're gonna walk right on through. We're gonna walk through all of the school likes it, doesn't like it, calculator, talk Siri talking to you in class, right? Yeah. Okay, make sure— let's make sure you got your AirPods so we can definitely do the calculator in the class. You know, kind of moment. You can't use your calculator in class. Why not? Y'all got TI-83s, I got Siri. What's the difference? You know, it really, you know, and then whatever she invents, because, you know, she's phenomenal. God, she's phenomenal. So helping, helping those, helping that group who— Man, I mean, we thought it would— we think it's crazy at our age. We think it's crazy the kids who you know, were born in '97, '98 who don't know the world without the internet, right? But my niece is 10. Yeah, it's not just not know the world without the internet, she doesn't know a world without an iPad-based internet.
Yeah, it's like you're born, here's your standard issue iPad and your internet and your Instagram.
Yeah, so it's like when she's— when she says, you know, I want to get on Snap, And I'm like, whoa, pause. Help me understand what you're trying to do, because I know what it does. I know how it's architected.
I know why it was invented.
I know why.
Yeah, exactly.
Help me understand. Help me understand what you, what you and your friends are trying to do, and why the heck are your friends on that anyway? You know, and then it's like, oh man, we gotta have the conversation. Yeah, we gotta have the conversation. the conversation. I gotta have that with my godsons as well. Um, we did that— I did a conversation back some years back when I worked at a Y. I sat a couple kids down with their parents and I said, here's what you don't share on your phones.
Yeah.
And I was very explicit with the wording, and I, I was deliberately explicit with the word. And I was like, here's what you don't do because here's rules in this state for if this is found. Kids looked at me with that, why would you say it in front of my parents? I was like, uh-huh, yeah. Parents looking at me like, wait, they do this? I'm like, the heck, y'all used to do it too. What the heck? Yeah, it's just on a phone versus the magazine. Yeah, you know, you know, instead of looking, peering at the pay-per-view with your squinty eyes, now they're just looking at Snapchat.
The snow.
Yeah, you know, and so it's, it's helping folks say, okay, hey, but these are the implications of using this. We can go forward. We can enable some really cool stuff. And there's some, some hella dangerous stuff. I mean, the oldest industries in the world, sex and drugs, ain't going nowhere.
Yeah, for sure. And taxes.
Taxes isn't really as old as those guys though. I mean, well, yeah, are you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, are you? I guess.
Yeah, even like seeds and grain.
Yeah, yeah, there was, there was, there was Gangsters and Taxes. Gangsters and Taxes is kind of— yeah. Oh, let me go to Samurai. Let me go to Seven Samurai. About time to go watch that again. That's a good one. Yeah, but hey, I know we spent 4 hours plus chatting, man. We can— you and I can do this like Forever. Um, I mean, yeah, no, I, I enjoy these moments and, um, I enjoy these kind of connects because like folks like yourself spark me to be better, um, be wiser, um, and then just keep experimenting.
Yeah.
I'm debating whether it's the Microsoft Duo that I'm going to play with because I really want— I, I really need to get around the whole folding phone kind of thinking. There's something about transformative, transformative glass that, that I— that's next on the list.
Yeah, I like it. I think it's rad. I want to get one. Yeah, I don't know when. I'll just play with it a little bit, but I can't get out of the Apple ecosystem.
Well, that's the kind of the other— well, I need something that's out of the Apple ecosystem-ish. Um, so I still have a— I still have a Sailfish OS tablet and phone. I just upgraded Updated them last night. Um, I was like, wow, that old platform still exists. Oh cool, this is great. All right. And this is like, it's like the, the Android-supported platform that's not Android, that was funded by half by, you know, Eastern Europe. I was like, oh yeah, let me go play with this some more and see if anything's changed. And, you know, that's today's homework, to see if anything's changed and what has, what hasn't, how has the Android ecosystem adopted to America Android, if you will, Google versus global Android, which is not Google Mobile Services enabled, which might be, you know, Chinese services or Yandex and Russian side or, or, or, or, or, or. So I'm curious. And then there's the Material You side of things, you know, this adaptive idea of an adaptive interface and that being the interface language for things beyond phones and It's like, okay, so well, what do y'all want to do? What does Meta want to do? And Unity Engine, what are y'all, what are y'all really plotting on doing? Is this all like silicon drugs to make us go to another world? You know, you know, I mean, we could have just stayed with psychedelics and, you know, just ran the random machine, like, you know, but whatever.
Click the record button.
Yeah.
Well, cool, man. It's been, uh, it's been wonderful catching up. Let's, uh, Let's do this again. Yes. Yeah, keep the contacts coming. Appreciate you sending over that stuff yesterday. I still haven't had a chance to look at it yet, but yeah, she she liked a couple tweets. So she's got some stuff.
She she dove in and out of some stuff. I was really intrigued.
I knew a dude at Compound VC like many years ago in the prom days, but uh. Yeah, she seems highly capable and intelligent, so I need to like chat with her a little bit, I think. Cool, man. All right, have a great weekend.
You too as well. You too as well. Enjoy that Cali sun. Kind of jealous.
Tennessee now. I haven't been in Cali for—
wait, you're in Tennessee?
Yeah, Nashville area.
Nashville? That's a— that's a— that's not even a 2-hour flight.
I know. We need to get together in person at some point. I'm gonna do a road show I'm just gonna start traveling around the US a little bit, like later this year after I get some stuff done.
Okay.
Um, yeah, I'll stop by.
Yeah, if you're, if you're passing between anywhere between DC and Philly, I'm probably there. Um, probably. And I'm trying to make an escape from Florida after how— after hurricane season, just to, just, just to die, just throw my brain near the Gulf slash the Atlantic.
But, uh, yeah, we'll figure it out. I'll do a train like from New York or something, and then we'll We'll spend an afternoon or something together and plot against the world.
Sounds like a plan. Sounds like a plan.
Cool. All right, man. Thanks so much for taking the time. I'm gonna—I'll chop up, make an edit or whatever. And yeah, if there's anything you feel like you don't want shared, just let me know. Share it all.
Share it all. Nah, I didn't say anything that's not shareable. That's—that's the fun part. Got—I've got the—I've got the—the blind list of things that you. Can't say. There's— yeah, it's like on the wall.
Yeah, like, like George Carlin, the 7 cuss words you can't say on television or whatever.
Yeah, exactly.
OG, man. He was original.
Cool, man.
All right, man, have a good weekend.
You too as well.
Take care. Talk to you. Bye. Peace.
