Mountain Biking, Parenting, and AI’s Breakneck Evolution with Luke Wroblewski

Brad: [0:12] Luke Wroblewski what has you waking up excited these days?

LukeW: [0:16] I have children, so that wakes me up excited every day. got up this morning at 5:00 AM because it rained recently over here, and so the mountain biking trails in Santa Cruz are pretty ridiculous. So I spent this morning about two hours out there on the bike. None of these things are work related. I don't know if that's what you were asking me

Brad: [0:37] Oh,

LukeW: [0:37] to get

Brad: [0:37] no.

LukeW: [0:38] but yeah.

Brad: [0:38] Oh, dude, it, it, it is children. It is mountain biking. It is, it is all of that stuff. And I've, I've gotten to, to see all of that from afar. I'm curious about the rain. 'cause you said ridiculous good. Ridiculous or bad. Ridiculous. 'cause there's like rain washing out trails or rain making good mountain biking conditions.

LukeW: [1:00] It's all a cycle. sticky, kind of grippy good traction on mountain biking trails is great, which doesn't come when everything's super dry and loose. It also doesn't come when everything's slippery and muddy. California living is, it's mostly and dry ish, you know, and then there's a season where it rains. So usually when we get rain, it means to

Brad: [1:23] That okay. I would never have thought that. So that's very interesting. That's news to me.

LukeW: [1:27] Maybe it's, it's definitely specific to the type of biking I do. Right? Like road riding doesn't matter. But I

Brad: [1:33] Yeah.

LukeW: [1:34] downhill gravity, those sorts of things where like traction matters when you try to break,

Brad: [1:40] How long have you been doing that type of mountain biking?

LukeW: [1:44] I don't know, 20 something years longer, probably longer 25.

Brad: [1:50] So it's like, it's, it's been an adult activity that you've picked up like through adulthood. It's not like something that you've been doing your whole

LukeW: [1:59] maybe started like eight. I mean I used to mountain bike in college, right? But I went to college at the University of Illinois, it took coming out to California where trails are more like this than this to. into that side of it, but I've always been mountain biking, so I guess it depends on like how you define it. Right. But

Brad: [2:15] Right.

LukeW: [2:15] specifically probably like 20 something ish years just because of being in an environment where you can actually do that.

Brad: [2:21] so it took you being in the, in the right conditions to really like kind of sink into it

LukeW: [2:26] You

Brad: [2:27] and do it.

LukeW: [2:27] scuba dive when you're living in Wisconsin. I mean, I guess you could, but it's not really,

Brad: [2:31] there's a great uh, t-shirt company, called Homage Outta Ohio, and they have this like really amazing retro surf Ohio shirt that just like, you know, at first glance it just looks so legitimate that you're like, oh yeah, it's like a cool surf surf shirt. And then you, you do the double take and,

LukeW: [2:50] probably something, there's something to surf there,

Brad: [2:53] yeah.

LukeW: [2:54] not pipeline.

Brad: [2:55] Right. Do your, do your kids mountain bike with you?

LukeW: [2:58] Yeah, a little bit. They don't do the stuff that I do though, so

Brad: [3:01] You're, you're living on the edge. You're, you're.

LukeW: [3:03] It's a thing to grow into. just for transparency, I'm like out there building jumps and wooden drops and shit, like in the woods for hours and throwing the bike off of stuff. So it's an, it's an acquired taste for sure.

Brad: [3:17] you like host things too, right? You have like, even crazier people come, come join you.

LukeW: [3:23] Yeah. Yeah, way crazier. Uh, like the current mountain biking, world champion, Jackson Goldstone's been in the backyard riding with us the most winning downhill mountain biker ever. Um, Greg Manar was out there, Steve Pete, who was kind of the guy before him, out there, so yeah, like the dudes.

Brad: [3:41] Amazing. has there been any like direct correlation to, uh, of what you're doing there and other aspects of, of life

LukeW: [3:50] Yeah. I made this one slide a long time ago. I don't even know if, I'm trying to see if I can find it, where I was like trying to equate trail building to like building products because uh, it was kind of funny, right? There's like some stuff on prototyping and

Brad: [4:04] Yep.

LukeW: [4:05] things and all that. I don't even know if it, oh This will be how we make the transition, right?

Brad: [4:09] Yeah.

LukeW: [4:10] step one, understand the problem, right?

Brad: [4:12] Yep.

LukeW: [4:13] got this giant ravine here. What are we gonna do? two prototype. You can see there's like little ropes there and things, so trying to figure out how to cross the chasm. Then you like actually start planning little architecture. You get your resources, you build the back end, and then you build the front end.

Brad: [4:28] Bada bing bada boom.

LukeW: [4:30] not a direct analogy, but you know,

Brad: [4:32] Yeah.

LukeW: [4:32] close enough,

Brad: [4:33] that's fantastic. That's fantastic. and then surely there's, there's the iteration along the way where you're like, you, you take that first turn as you, you learn your physics were wrong and carene over the edge.

LukeW: [4:46] Hopefully get that out earlier, right? I think the bigger analogy is maintenance,

Brad: [4:51] Yeah,

LukeW: [4:51] a key part of launching anything, right? As soon as you build it, you're maintaining it.

Brad: [4:55] yeah. Which is the, which is the hard and often unglorious part of doing any of those things, right. It's the, it's the literally like getting out there with the shovel and.

LukeW: [5:07] Yeah.

Brad: [5:07] Digging it out.

LukeW: [5:08] thing's. True. Any little web thing you launch, right? Somebody updates some framework, all of a sudden it starts to break. You gotta get in there and fix it, and you get code rot or what have you. That's, I, you know, launch is the start.

Brad: [5:22] There's an old book. It was like, it is like starting and sustaining and that, that book I feel like did a great job at, it's like, here's like this, this totally unique mindset that takes to sort of take something from an idea in your head into a thing that exists into the world. And then it's like, people are like, okay, well that, that mindset got me here. And that it's like as soon as that, that threshold gets crossed, it's like, and here comes a totally different mindset of like keeping this thing alive and growing it, maintaining it, and,

LukeW: [5:59] The more you own, the more you maintain

Brad: [6:01] man.

LukeW: [6:02] to children too. To go back to the beginning,

Brad: [6:04] I mean, 'cause you have two kids, right?

LukeW: [6:06] yeah.

Brad: [6:07] are, how old are they now?

LukeW: [6:08] 17 and 15.

Brad: [6:10] how, how has that changed? Because like, I mean, I've now gotten a chance to hang out with your kids, which are, which is, that in and of itself is, is really, really fun that it's just like, oh yeah, you could come along and you're not just like, you know, here, here's the high chair. It's like, you're, you're a part of these conversations. You're, you're at least like,

LukeW: [6:31] trying

Brad: [6:32] you know. Yeah, yeah.

LukeW: [6:34] yeah. Give it a

Brad: [6:34] how has that been? How has that been? As like, as they've kind of come into an age where it's like you're able to, to kind of like, interact with them in, in different ways.

LukeW: [6:45] Yeah. I think there's a narrow window there to prepare you to take advantage of. Right beginning, they're kids and you're doing a lot more of, you're watching them, right, and then gradually they can kind of do things themselves and, but they're still too young to do your stuff. Then there's that like little band where there's an overlap, like what you do and what they wanna do, And then after a while they're like, yeah, that stuff's lame. I'm gonna do my own thing.

Brad: [7:11] Yeah.

LukeW: [7:11] really gotta take advantage of that little overlap period when you can. So I take my kids to concerts, right? Like me and my daughter read the same comic books as you mentioned. I drag them along on, uh, trips to conferences and things to go see stuff. But that, that window is narrow.

Brad: [7:29] Yeah, yeah. Well, especially at 17 because that's And that's your son, right? So, so he is like off to, off to his own adventures here pretty soon. Yeah.

LukeW: [7:40] he is to touring colleges. His mom took him out to the Midwest.

Brad: [7:44] Okay.

LukeW: [7:45] Yeah. See some schools.

Brad: [7:47] Okay. I'm picturing you on these college tours that I could just see, hear you being like,

LukeW: [7:52] I,

Brad: [7:53] that's bullshit.

LukeW: [7:54] they're all, they're all the same man. Well, so I, my philosophy on this is path will kind of find you through a series of doors that you come upon, choose to open or not. Right? Because I went to school at the University of Illinois because I wanted to keep my car. was accepted to MIT, I was accepted to Michigan. I was accepted to all these other schools, right? And my parents were like, if you go to all those other schools, you can't keep your car. And I'm like, well, I own my car. So I went to the University of Illinois. That was how I made my college choice. these days, right, like people are like killing themselves for college acceptances. it worked out great for me to go to the University of Illinois. That's where NCSA mosaic came out of. I met tons of amazing people, right? Like eBay came and recruited there, and I made the move to Silicon Valley like. It was great, but it wa it didn't come from me like, you know, killing myself to put myself in this situation. It came from me like genuinely doing what was right for me. I think that's, that's where the path should, you know, that's how you should walk the path. and then you get into these modes. I'll rant on this for a second, but like, you know, computer science, you have to be a computer scientist. Everybody has to be an engineer. So everybody goes in the same flipping direction. It happened before with like lawyers and doctors, that industry obviously gets saturated and or implodes or, you know, so much, much better just to find your own way and

Brad: [9:21] Yeah.

LukeW: [9:21] you think is right for you. And you'll, you'll find a way.

Brad: [9:24] that's like testament, certainly like to the, the early web is just full of librarians and English majors and just like anthropologists and just kind of like people who come in at, from all these different angles because there wasn't, a cow path there, there wasn't a, a paved road. There wasn't that doctor lawyer type clear definition just yet. And, and that's kind of what made. That kind of early era, a little beautiful. 'cause there's a ragtag group of people who are all kind of stumbled into this new technology that didn't have a precedent.

LukeW: [10:02] Yeah. And, and now everybody gets so cookie cuttered, right? Like you talk to all these quote unquote user experience grads and they're like, this is the user experience

Brad: [10:10] Yeah,

LukeW: [10:11] and I have to do this, and why aren't you doing that? And I'm like. you're, you're, way too deep into the mechanics that you're losing the soul and the purpose. I mean, you could say the same thing happens in many of these disciplines where it's like the mechanics just start to drive it, as opposed to, you know, the, the purpose.

Brad: [10:29] And I think that that's, that's been the just uttering complete shock to the system for, in this moment in time. And I feel like e especially like this year, for a lot of folks who I think have really hung their hat on those mechanical aspects and, and define their career and define their worth, uh, as, as a designer maker through the lens of knowing a specific framework or a specific tool and the mechanical aspects of it, and you're just like, wait a minute, what? on one hand, I, I certainly appreciate the. The, the fear and a lot of it is legit, you know, these are people's livelihoods we're talking about. But on the, on the other hand, setting that aside, it, it is bringing back into stark contrast. Like, what, what is it that we're doing here? Why, why, why are we making these rectangles? Why are we, why are we pushing this stuff around? Why are we writing this code? Like, why does that syntax,

LukeW: [11:35] Yeah. I mean if, if what you do as mechanics, those can be mechanized

Brad: [11:40] Yeah.

LukeW: [11:40] they can be automated. Right? And like, it shouldn't be much of a surprise that mechanics can be mechanized or automated. 'cause that's literally their nature, right? you know, if the fear of job, I think it's people need to separate, again, I'll, I'll use like similar terms that I was talking about before. Like when, when I think about design, the most important thing I can do help people translate their purpose. like either interactions or communication or visuals or what have you. And a huge part of that is that the, understand their purpose side, And then kind of do all the things that need to happen to bring that to life. And then sure, at some point there's some mechanics to like do the things right. But that's really a means to the

Brad: [12:29] Yeah.

LukeW: [12:29] And

Brad: [12:30] Yeah.

LukeW: [12:30] I'm not troubled at all at the means automated. Like that's great. That

Brad: [12:35] Mm-hmm.

LukeW: [12:36] do more of the other stuff

Brad: [12:37] Yeah. Yeah.

LukeW: [12:38] actually the, the real job, right?

Brad: [12:41] and that. Part, the, the extracting the purpose of defining values and, and, and nailing those things down and helping people understand the, the goals and, and here's some dragons to watch out for. And like, all of, like that, that stuff that's, that's like really important work that is, that is like purposeful and, and pretty human led work in a lot of respects. But it's like that, that's like, that, that facilitation of extracting those things is, is really half the battle. And, and then like you said, it's just like that's the set it up part and the knock it down part is getting increasingly automatic almost.

LukeW: [13:25] And, and the more of the knock it down part that gets, you know, quote unquote automated, the better,

Brad: [13:31] Yeah.

LukeW: [13:31] right?

Brad: [13:32] Yeah.

LukeW: [13:32] 'cause machines can do certain things better than humans

Brad: [13:36] Mm-hmm.

LukeW: [13:36] the things that machines can do better than human, I mean. will poo poh all over this argument because they have the a GI pill, which maybe will happen, right? Um, but you have to have a pretty bleak view on if you believe, like the human essence is no longer relevant, even if it's true, like I don't think you can have that view. 'cause at that point you're like, well, what's the point of anything? Right?

Brad: [14:01] yeah, yeah. It gets into to kind of just like a, a rolling over nihilism that that is just like, and those are all decisions too. I think that that's, that's the big thing. it's very difficult to talk about the future, but it, it isn't difficult to make choices in the here and now, uh, one way or the other.

LukeW: [14:22] Yeah, totally. And, and, and

Brad: [14:24] Yeah.

LukeW: [14:25] humans. something in them, right. drives them to do human things. And, and I don't know if that, you know, I just don't know how that, you know, call it whatever you want. I just don't see that part of it. Some people call it a soul or whatever. I just don't see that part being taken over anytime soon.

Brad: [14:43] Right.

LukeW: [14:44] reason like, you watch like robot and you're like, and we watch human boxing and you pee your pants.

Brad: [14:51] so a lot of this stuff, for as long as I've known you, I feel like there's been, just to, to use an example, it's like web forms and you're like, look at this long, stupid form. This is obnoxious. Here's a better one that's like three fields, and now we're at the, here's the zero fields, like this form is now irrelevant, and then we just get the thing that the form was there to do for free. And so in a lot of ways you've been kind of just like, you know, babe Ruth calling the shot from, you know, along, you know, over like a 15, 20 year time horizon. So, so that much, I, I, I get, and like, we could, we could dwell on that a little bit, but I, I think the one thing that I'm interested in is like, is there anything about how this is kind of unfolding that's like, that isn't so obvious or something that you're like, oh, this has been like a, a weird left turn or something that's like super surprising in how this is all kind of unfolding.

LukeW: [15:58] Yeah, I mean, it's all coming super duper fast and furious. so I've lived through like, you know, transition to PCs and then transition to web and then transition to mobile, blah, blah, blah. Um, and all of those follow like really similar patterns and similar patterns to what's going on here. But what's happening now that I think is actually distinct is just the rate at which things evolve, right? And the. Open question to me is how much you're gonna benefit from seeing each step of that evolution and understanding why it moved from one to the other versus kind of picking it up in its final state. Right. Uh, because there's a cost for sure to being in all those evolutionary steps happening so fast and they're, you know, so dramatic.

Brad: [16:54] Yep.

LukeW: [16:54] Um, in the past I've always felt like riding that curve is what gave you the kind of insights that you're describing.

Brad: [17:02] Mm-hmm.

LukeW: [17:02] don't really know what's happening until you're, you know, like you don't know where the car's going until you're reading the map is, that's a silly analogy, but you kinda get what I mean.

Brad: [17:12] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yep.

LukeW: [17:14] we kind of had enough time that we could through that process. And now it's just so fast paced because the ability to create is so insane

Brad: [17:27] Yep.

LukeW: [17:28] that, uh, I don't, that's the part, I don't know how it's gonna unfold. Right. pretty clear like, oh look, computers are gonna write code. Cool. Oh, computers are gonna make pictures cool.

Brad: [17:38] yeah,

LukeW: [17:39] making it be making them better,

Brad: [17:41] yeah.

LukeW: [17:41] of them. Right? there's probably compounding a b capabilities of that as well. Like, we're already starting to see that stuff. Like when they can do all those things together, you'll get a bunch of compounding capabilities and things. But like, I, I don't know if riding the evolutionary, what's it called, bull, right? Like the, the bull ride

Brad: [18:00] The me, the mechanical bull. Yeah,

LukeW: [18:01] riding, the evolutionary mechanical bull. that's a necessary step or not, I, I hope it's necessary. Um, but then, you know, not a lot of people are willing to ride that mechanical bull and may end up in a, in a mode where like too many things are being dictated to them, or they end up in this like, copy pattern world. 'cause they, you know, they don't know why the bull got to be the way it is.

Brad: [18:23] that's right and that's, that's I think experientially felt by everyone is that everyone's like, okay, this is new. Depending on how many waves you've, you've been riding, it's like, oh, here's like another hype cycle. Here's another, like technological evolution. But then it, it does feel like, it's like, oh, this one is just, feels like it is an everyday. Occurrence. And, and when you think about this, this last one, I'm curious to get, you know, you're talking about like PCs and, you know, mobile and, and like just that, that device diversity, there's still like a hardware component to that. And it's like how much of, of this rate of change is to the, due to the fact that it's like almost all aside from the giant server farms that is like the kind of brain behind it all. It's like this all just kind of comes to us like literally every single day. It's just like, new release, please up, please update. here's more stuff we're jamming down in your throat,

LukeW: [19:24] things. Yeah. Well, it's all compounding, right?

Brad: [19:27] right?

LukeW: [19:28] everything is kind of layer cake. And so the stage we're at right now just builds on everything that came before it. So that's why it's so accelerated. Like without the web you wouldn't be doing any of this,

Brad: [19:39] Yep, yep. Yep.

LukeW: [19:41] without like GPUs you wouldn't be doing any of this and so on and so forth, and all those things. And networking and god knows what else. so it's all compounding and I assume it's just gonna keep compounding.

Brad: [19:51] yep.

LukeW: [19:52] crazy ways. Um, but like, Ima, the analogy I always have is like, imagine you were in the jungle for like two years or three years, right? And you left when smartphones were a thing, and then you come back and somebody puts like, you know, Claude in front of you, you would be like, what the right, you, you, you, what is this crazy magic

Brad: [20:13] Right.

LukeW: [20:13] that you have?

Brad: [20:15] Yeah,

LukeW: [20:15] like, you just wouldn't be able to really, I mean, maybe over time you could wrap your head around it, but you wouldn't have gone through the process of how

Brad: [20:23] yeah,

LukeW: [20:24] about and it would

Brad: [20:25] yeah, yeah.

LukeW: [20:25] very, very and almost untouchable

Brad: [20:29] Mm-hmm.

LukeW: [20:29] ways. Right?

Brad: [20:31] Yep.

LukeW: [20:32] Um, so

Brad: [20:33] And.

LukeW: [20:33] the advantage of being in the thick of it.

Brad: [20:35] For, for sure. And, and that's like the thing, like at a societal level, I get super freaked out by that because it's like, you know, we're still in an era where a healthy percentage of the world's population are like fall prey to just your run of the mill phishing scams. Like, here's, here's like the thing that is just like, please give me your bank account information right now. And it's like, I gotta text, text my granddaughter to, to, to say like. Is this real or, or not? And it's like, meanwhile, there's just this, this avalanche, this daily avalanche of two developments that it's like that, that divide growing between, just like I can conceptually wrap my head around this, that the, the, the people in the jungle, uh, the proverbial jungle versus not, it's like that just even in my own world, and I don't even feel particularly like, plugged in to this. Like, I don't understand like the, the depths of the technology and nearly as deep away as, as a lot of people, you know, like in, in your realm and stuff but I'm like, okay, like I'm trying, you know, I'm trying to ride the mechanical bull and I just like feel like I, anytime I have a conversation, even with people who have been developing for a long time, but just haven't been as close. To it as, as even I have been. They're just like, wait, what did you just do? And I'm like, oh, like that's,

LukeW: [22:08] it's

Brad: [22:09] are, that's, that, that chasm is, is is becoming obvious.

LukeW: [22:13] And it, and the, the increasing pace right, makes that chasm grow faster and faster.

Brad: [22:18] Yeah.

LukeW: [22:19] the capabilities you had, like, I mean, literally last week, right? Compared to this week. Just today, like Codex makes PDF files and reads word and whatever, like

Brad: [22:29] yeah, yeah.

LukeW: [22:30] pick any news you want.

Brad: [22:32] to your point of just like the compounding nature of it. It's like we're so used. To going from like a thing to another thing, right? It's like, oh yeah, we used to have blackberries. Ha ha, now there's iPhones. And like, we could get our head around that. Or, oh, we used to design and Photoshop and then we went to Sketch, and now it's Sketch to Figma and like we go from like a one to a one. And I think like what we're experiencing right now is, is this shift from like a one-to-one, to a one to many one, one to infinite, and oh, all of these things just connect into each other and you get this, this just exponential thing that our, our human brains aren't wired to comprehend.

LukeW: [23:16] Or, or it's the opposite, right? So let me now play the other side of the story, the like. I didn't ride the mechanical bull.

Brad: [23:23] Mm-hmm.

LukeW: [23:23] You know what, to go back to web forms. Web forms are still around and they still suck. You know what else sucks? Pretty much every piece of software that's out there. All right. You know, it all sucks. Like the operating system, you're spending all your time, like clicking on little buttons, finding the app, clicking the little menu, making to do things, moving a little cursor around all it's crap,

Brad: [23:42] Mm-hmm.

LukeW: [23:43] right? And like, yeah, it's amazing. So it's how it always is, right? Amazing. But crap.

Brad: [23:49] Yeah.

LukeW: [23:49] Like, let's say you come out of the jungle and all of a sudden you just talk and things get done.

Brad: [23:54] Yeah, yeah,

LukeW: [23:56] is how

Brad: [23:56] yeah.

LukeW: [23:57] the whole time,

Brad: [23:58] Yep,

LukeW: [23:58] Write me a document about how, you know, make me a video that shows me how to fix this thing on my bike. it is.

Brad: [24:05] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

LukeW: [24:07] why do I need to click on any boxes? Why do I need to go search things? Why do I need to, you know, navigate the web into browser? What the hell does that even mean? confu, it's compounding and crazy. But on the other hand, if you kind of play it out, right, let's just say

Brad: [24:22] Mm-hmm.

LukeW: [24:24] everything can be rendered in real time, then you actually don't need all the crud we've been building for the past, you know, 40 years or whatever.

Brad: [24:33] in a lot of ways it helps cut that Gordian knot and, and ends up with an interface that feels the most natural to us, which is what we're doing right now, which is just, you know, having a conversation and, and only I could say, Luke, I need you to make me 700 PDFs right now in every, every the 700 top languages of the world. And then you just are like, no problem. I got, I got, I got you, babe.

LukeW: [25:02] of pdf, right? Like let talk, talk about crappy things.

Brad: [25:05] Sure, sure, sure. But, but yeah, like, you get the idea, right? Like, for me, it's been very interesting as like someone with a DHD who. Is used to that dance of skipping between programs and between tasks. And I've always been, any project manager that's ever worked with me can tell you just what a nightmare I am when it comes to things like, making sure that my, what I'm working on is, is accurate or, or recent or, or, you know, like true, not very good in that department. And usually it's because, man, I'm doing more important things than, than updating a, a status board. But I think, like what's nice about this moment for me, is that I am like. Simultaneously working across like five different repositories. It's doing all the get shit. For me, I've always hated that stuff. Like with a burning passion. I'm like, oh, and, and the people that would like flex and show, it's like, oh, like here's this terminal command. Like, oh, you don't know about,

LukeW: [26:16] Right.

Brad: [26:17] rebase barrel roll, you know, slice and dice, cherry pick. And I'm like, Ugh, that's awful. And now I'm just like, whoops, I made a mistake. Please fix that. Across literally all of these five things that are all kind of pseudo connected to each, to each other. And by the way, update the task board along the way to say like, this is, this is what's, what's going on? And then, and it just does it. And so like me. As, as someone who every steam, every, every command tab in between an app is, is a risk for me just kind of going off on a, on another thread, I'm now like more just like, oh, here, here's what I'm doing, and I'm able to stay there. And it just is kind of just doing the stuff and, and that's, that's been really, really welcome and I've, I've really enjoyed that part of it. back to what you're saying, it's like being on that ride, I'm able to at least articulate and have a general gist of like, what's going on behind the curtain. And I think that that is helping me be able to like, articulate some things that I wouldn't otherwise be able to articulate.

LukeW: [27:29] I mean, every tool you need to learn how to use, right? And so, like, I think that's an important piece of even these super advanced tools that they're not perfect. I don't think anything will be perfect. So you kind of have to know where the hard parts in this, you know, the, the soft spots and the hard, hard spots are.

Brad: [27:47] Yep.

LukeW: [27:48] Um, and that helps you become a better administrator, user manager, whatever term you want to use of the things.

Brad: [27:54] I'm curious to get your take on the open web. cause it's, it's getting me in all the feels there.

LukeW: [28:03] what I found is like what everybody predicts. Oftentimes something else happens in, in, in the, these sorts of situations, right? Everyone's like, oh, the web's gonna die. like what I see around me is people who used to have blogs and stop blogging, all of a sudden they're all blogging again

Brad: [28:17] Yeah.

LukeW: [28:17] and they're

Brad: [28:18] Yep.

LukeW: [28:18] and they're active and they're right. They're like back in it. you know, the consensus view is like no one's gonna do that. Um, similarly, there's this consensus view that a software engineering jobs are gonna go away. What I see is more people trying to hire software engineers 'cause

Brad: [28:33] Yeah.

LukeW: [28:34] do more and they're more excited about things to be able to build. And, um, so I'm not so worried about. You know, individuals wanting to express themselves in various ways and put what they either make or think or do or know out there. I think that's another core human thing that's just gonna

Brad: [28:54] Yep.

LukeW: [28:54] happening.

Brad: [28:55] Yep.

LukeW: [28:55] If anything, the web was dying like five years ago there was nothing interesting happening in terms of technology, right? Like maybe people were talking about crypto a little bit, but beyond that was, but now like everybody's experimenting, everybody's building, everybody's sharing what they're learning, everybody's

Brad: [29:14] Yeah.

LukeW: [29:15] things. If anything, it's almost like an overload.

Brad: [29:18] Mm-hmm.

LukeW: [29:18] there's too much, look at this thing I made. Look at this thing I made look right? Like back to our earlier conversations, it's like, it's like the opposite.

Brad: [29:25] Yeah. Yeah.

LukeW: [29:25] and more being created than ever before,

Brad: [29:28] and that's just by the humans. And, that sentence is, that's the actual thing that gives me word. 'cause everything you just said, I'm like, yeah, I'm here for it. Like, sign me up, give me more weird ass experi experiments. Give me more. Like, here's this thing that like, has just been gnawing at my brain forever, and I finally have the, the means to, to articulate it. Uh, that stuff's awesome and I want that like forever.

LukeW: [29:56] Yeah,

Brad: [29:56] I think it's the, it's the flood of the, uh, you know, the, the former, uh, SEO optimizer that, that is like gets access to a nuclear weapon. That's, that's, that's what I, that's what I,

LukeW: [30:12] yeah,

Brad: [30:12] what I'm worried about.

LukeW: [30:14] let me give you two concrete. Examples of things,

Brad: [30:17] Okay.

LukeW: [30:17] as, as examples and, but also as maybe as like thought exercise. We launched a company like a year ago called Rev, which has its own image models, creates all these things, right? And when we first launched it, we had the domain rev.art.

Brad: [30:31] Okay.

LukeW: [30:32] buy the.com, whatever. We launched it the next day. There was hundreds of sites like Rev Art com, rev ai, like hundreds of them. And they basically just like made a fake ui, stuck a little credit card thing on it and put a crappy, like stable diffusion image, uh, model behind the scenes. because we were getting a bunch of press and people were, you know, writing about it and talking about it everywhere, there was literally instantly like a hundred things out there,

Brad: [31:05] Oh my God.

LukeW: [31:07] A, I didn't think it was gonna be that fast and that furious, like in, retrospect, like duh. Right, makes sense.

Brad: [31:15] Yeah.

LukeW: [31:16] are gonna use the tools just the same way the good guys are gonna use the tools.

Brad: [31:20] Yeah.

LukeW: [31:21] But you know, you know now every time we do a launch, we kind of buy up some of the adjacent domains and we're cognizant of it. We know how to do take downs. It just becomes another part of doing business, right?

Brad: [31:32] Yeah,

LukeW: [31:32] think the bad stuff, why, where I'm going with that example is I think like the bad malicious stuff. always like the coders, code breakers thing and it's been

Brad: [31:42] sure.

LukeW: [31:43] tussle forever. So people

Brad: [31:44] Right,

LukeW: [31:45] new things and we're gonna bring 'em back. Then they're gonna try new things. We're gonna reign 'em back. You know, like when's the last time somebody that uses Gmail? You can't say this about Outlook, complained about spam. Like pretty much just all goes to the spam box and it's great. There're still, if you look in the spam box, geez, they're still trying like crazy, right? But it doesn't affect my life.

Brad: [32:05] right, right.

LukeW: [32:06] kind of taken care of it. Again, I can't say the same for Outlook 'cause I looked in someone's outlook recently. I was like, oh my God. Um, like in the context of Gmail,

Brad: [32:14] Yeah,

LukeW: [32:15] is, you know, basically gone.

Brad: [32:17] yeah, yeah.

LukeW: [32:18] you know, we'll we will have similar countermeasures. They'll break 'em, then we'll be, um, what have

Brad: [32:22] Yep. Yep.

LukeW: [32:23] that's kinda one angle about the, the bad guys. I think people, there's many, many people out there that are fight it and do a pretty damn good job. I've seen it firsthand

Brad: [32:32] Mm-hmm.

LukeW: [32:32] lot of these big companies. And the other kind of example is I've been poking at this writing process recently 'cause I blog and I probably don't blog enough. But what I've started to do now is I just talk, I record it, use like a model on my, uh, computer that does real time translation as I talk, right.

Brad: [32:55] Mm-hmm.

LukeW: [32:55] that. Blah, blah, blah. it into, um, an AI model that has a skill or a prompt, or whatever you wanna call it, that's basically been trained by reading all of my previous writings over the years to write like me. And so I'm like, take this, write like me and I get something, and then I'll go in and edit it and change it a bit. And I'll ask like, Hey, give me like 10 ways to write this, and I'll pick some part of it that I like and I'll stick it in there and whatever.

Brad: [33:25] Yep.

LukeW: [33:25] Did I write that? I mean, yes. And also no o

Brad: [33:30] yep,

LukeW: [33:31] so

Brad: [33:31] yep.

LukeW: [33:32] another piece of it, right? Just because the bots are involved and there's clankers doesn't necessarily mean it's not, you know, human. and

Brad: [33:42] Right.

LukeW: [33:42] stuff is gonna be all over the place

Brad: [33:46] Yeah.

LukeW: [33:46] the tools just enable it.

Brad: [33:48] Yeah.

LukeW: [33:48] net net, like I can do more right

Brad: [33:51] Yep,

LukeW: [33:51] than I

Brad: [33:52] yep,

LukeW: [33:52] to do before.

Brad: [33:54] yep.

LukeW: [33:54] now some people just be like, Claude, write a thing and publish it. But like that

Brad: [33:58] Right.

LukeW: [33:58] previous example that I was kind of talking

Brad: [34:00] Yep, Yeah, and I, I think that, that you're, you're picking at the, just what's been such a theme is that it, it does just feel, it's, it's just such a common theme of, I feel like every conversation I have is, it's just like this. This caveman level, binary one or zero is like AI bad or AI good, you know, is it doesn't cut it. And, and I, I think that that's been a lot of my fun has been to basically go check this out and to like, look literally just, you know, right before we joined, I just had like a session, uh, working with Melissa and her, uh, boss who's the, who's the owner of this counseling practice, right? Where, and we were co-creating and kind of mouth coding their new website together. And they're, she is talking about the con, I was like, let's, let's talk about the contact form because it's like that's, you know, the front door for people who are trying to get mental healthcare We're like, we obviously want it to be a lot more accessible and friendlier than it currently is, which, uh, as, as a web web form person, you wanna talk about some, some lousy, lousy forms, uh, whew, uh, leaves a lot to be desired. So we're like, okay, let's like, friendly this up, but let's also like pick at this a little bit, right? Because these are all people that are in varying states of, of, you know, vulnerability and like, we need to be like really, really, you know, delicate with like, and, you know, hold their hand and guide them through, but not like overwhelm them and all this stuff. And she just happened to, to mention. She was like, well, yeah, and like for, for this part with like the, you know, if we are soliciting a phone number, she's like, well we gotta be careful about that because there's, you know, people like domestic violence situations and other things where it's like to, for us to call them back

LukeW: [36:04] Right.

Brad: [36:05] a, a huge safety thing. And so what we did in that moment and in that exact moment, I'm just like, okay, we're just recording this on in Notion right? As like, like the meeting notes. But we have Claude code running hooked up to the website. I'm like, oh, Andrew just brought up a really great point about this. And it was just like, this changes everything. And it was just like, here's like these like seven things that should happen. And she was just like, holy shit. She was like that. She was like, that's that's amazing. Yes. Oh my God. Yes. Oh my God. Yes. not to, not to pat myself on the back and not that I'm like, particularly like I, I'm not like some like AI evangelist, but I, but I do see, see like that real value in there and she, up until we kind of started talking was like pretty allergic to, to all of that. To the point of like, she's like, I'm gonna get a dumb phone. Like, I'm, I'm kind of sick of all if shit like, I'm gonna go just throw everything in the river. And, and so to, to kind of go from that to like, here's this thing that's like born of a real human desire to protect people and keep them safe and to like, you know, be, be welcoming and to have this thing that sort of supercharges the, the humanity of that experience. She's like, okay. She's like, oh, all right.

LukeW: [37:30] it's a tool, man. Like, you

Brad: [37:32] Yeah,

LukeW: [37:33] you can use the tool for good, you can use the tool for bad, right? But

Brad: [37:37] yeah,

LukeW: [37:38] it's weird to hate a tool. I, I mean, maybe there's some that you can hate that are like, particularly bad. I don't wanna name any, right? But general, it's a tool

Brad: [37:49] yeah, yeah.

LukeW: [37:50] out of it what you put into it,

Brad: [37:53] Right.

LukeW: [37:53] real thing, right? yeah, that, that's kind of my whole take on it. It's hard for me to like seethe about this stuff. When you have examples like that and when you, yourself experience like what it can actually do for you,

Brad: [38:06] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I, and that, and that's just it. It's like I, I, I think, you know, whatever, as out. Visiting California last time. That's, that was, we got into that. It's just like, yeah, we, it's like we have to be able to, to hold these multiple thoughts in our, in our heads at the same time. And again, that's just like, kind of been just a theme of all of this. It's like, it's like there's a, there's a lot of real, there's a lot of real dangerous and scary shit that comes with this territory, and it's gonna take like a lot of like active work to, to mitigate that stuff and to, to right those wrongs and to do those things and like, that's all valid. And, and, uh, you know, the, the, the curing cancer part, the ability to, to see, to a level, uh, by extrapolating, you know, like you've, you've digested thousands upon thousands upon thousands of X-rays, and you're now able to detect cancers before, you know, any human eye could ever see it before. Like, like, that's real.

LukeW: [39:11] It is pretty

Brad: [39:11] That is real. It'd be real. So, so yeah, it's, it's, it's fascinating. But like, you've, so you've been like close to practitioners for so long, right? Like, as like a practitioner yourself, but then like, also someone who's just like, kind of around it and like, like a certain, we'll say like a, the. The, the general zeitgeist of like, kind of like the design and, and dev world, and your bullshit detector has always been, something that's both been very entertaining and also often very true.

LukeW: [39:48] I like the entertaining part.

Brad: [39:49] yeah. I mean, you know, it's, it's great. It's great. But like, but like in this moment in time, like when we have those, those shifts, uh, like what we were talking about earlier with, with like the kind of like fixation on tools and, and now that's even being superimposed onto, it's like just even like these, these AI models, it's like it, at some level you gotta be like, you do realize that like sweating this level of, of detail on like, it's this specific model that is going to change like literally next week, like. Like you do, you do realize what, what a trap that is. Like, I guess like do you, do you see that as well? Where it's like, like that, that kind of like fixation on the, the sort of like trees? Uh,

LukeW: [40:33] Yeah, for sure.

Brad: [40:34] yeah,

LukeW: [40:35] I, I mean, people love to make, so I, I see a bunch of patterns I have all the time. A, there's people who love to make. generalized platform, and you're like, what is it for? It's for everything, right? Like this, that's more possible now than ever. So those people kind of have a, a

Brad: [40:50] yeah,

LukeW: [40:50] ground to stand on.

Brad: [40:52] yeah.

LukeW: [40:52] Um, but like that's always been true. You can do anything with it, what have you. And then there's people that f that have the opposite thing, which fixated it. That one finger, it is six fingers. It's, it's terrible. This whole thing's

Brad: [41:05] Throw it out.

LukeW: [41:06] fingers, throw it out. Right? So you have like both of those worlds, or I guess mental models or something like that, right? Um, but like the Six Fingers thing, you know, I remember so vividly I was at Netflix talking about mobile in like 2000 something. I don't know what the heck. Right? And like the lead PM's, like, nobody's gonna watch videos on their phone. I'm like, okay. And then I was at eBay and they're like, nobody's ever gonna buy, you know, expensive stuff on their phone. I'm, mm. Okay. a lot of this like, ain't gonna never

Brad: [41:39] Yeah.

LukeW: [41:40] know, people know and they work on it and they fix it and technology keeps getting better, right?

Brad: [41:44] Yeah, yeah.

LukeW: [41:45] So I, I, I think that's the mental model to have for that part. And then the universal platform piece, like, I don't know, it's you, we still have, we have specialized things for nearly everything in our lives. There's not like a kitchen gadget that does everything,

Brad: [42:02] Yeah.

LukeW: [42:03] right? We have an oven and we have a, a frying pan and we have instant pot. If anything, like things get more and more specialized, the more capable they are, right? Because they like, um, do something like really, really well. And so you're like, oh, I'll pick

Brad: [42:19] Yeah. Yeah.

LukeW: [42:19] I have the choice. Uh, so we'll see. Uh, I'm sort of more of that camp,

Brad: [42:25] Of like, of like, there's gonna be like sort of specialized, like I, I think that that it's less, it's less even about like the compounding, but more about just like the interoperability of this stuff that is just like, everything could be hooked into everything, where it's like there's inputs and outputs and then it's just kind of like, where does something start versus, versus end. And that's where it's like, that's, that's been one of the things that we've been picking at in our course where it's just like, you know, to look at the, the double diamond process and to look at like, oh yes, here's like this specific workflow that, that, and this is how you design and build digital software. And now it's just like, it's, we just kind of draw this like big just amorphous ball of, you know, moving, shifting stuff. 'cause it's just. It, there's an in you, you could, you could moonwalk your way backwards to, to the beginning of the process. Like it's, it's just, it, it all kind of just is this weird omnidirectional thing now that, that doesn't feel like there's like a fixed point in time. And I think that that, that it is both liberating as well as like unmooring and unnerving for a lot of people who, who welcome some structure,

LukeW: [43:43] good for me. I never learned what the double diamond is, so like, I, I tend to live in that amorphous thing all

Brad: [43:49] it's, yeah.

LukeW: [43:51] project, you know, I, I deal with right?

Brad: [43:53] Mm-hmm.

LukeW: [43:54] emerging from literally like a person. And in, in those situations, 99.99% of everything is unknown.

Brad: [44:03] Yep.

LukeW: [44:04] Who's gonna buy this? How are they gonna use it? What's it gonna be called? How's it gonna be built? Who are we gonna hire or how are they gonna, like, everything is unknown, right? Um, and so like you, you don't have a process because every person is different. Every moment in time is different. And so like what you have is to go back to my earlier analogy, you have a tool, tool chest, and you're like, oh, I'm gonna reach for this here because that seems to fit this here and I'm gonna reach for that here because that seems to be the thing that can move us to the next step. Um, and like that, that is an interesting way to think about kind of this unified thing. The, the problem with that though becomes an awareness situation. So just again, tangible example, I'll, I find it helps to ground these things. we have a company that's building this, like agentic in the cloud thing, and you can basically like talk to it and it'll go set up an agent for you. It'll connect it to a bunch of tools. Those tools can do things. You can tell it to do stuff. And like the hard part becomes like, wait. What's, what's going on? What's it connected to? What does it see? Wait, what did it just do? Right? You're constantly in like probing mode, which is like a really crappy user experience actually, because like it's this and it's somewhere over there and you don't know, right?

Brad: [45:21] Yep.

LukeW: [45:21] you're like, what, what? And like probing through text continuously is not

Brad: [45:28] No.

LukeW: [45:29] wonderful.

Brad: [45:30] Yeah,

LukeW: [45:30] Um, and so I think there will be some other kinds of affordances that you need to make sense of stuff, especially as the tasks these things start to do become increasingly important. Let me, actually, I'll show you something.

Brad: [45:44] please.

LukeW: [45:45] 'cause I feel like we've been talking too long, so I'm gonna just give you a picture. All right, cool. Go over to Slack. Okay. So Amelia just sh sent me this little thing inside this app we're working on. So she has this little prototype that kind of gives you an overview of everything that's happened in a workspace. And so you can see over here, you've got like the routes and the pages, and you can make your way through it. And here's all the different UI components, and here's all the static assets that are in there, and you can just mouse over them and get a

Brad: [46:14] Yep.

LukeW: [46:14] it, right? And now you can click into the routes and pages thing and you can see, you know, what's in there. Um, and I, I think we're gonna need these kinds of things, This is very specific to like a coding project

Brad: [46:28] Sure.

LukeW: [46:28] where you can, you know, this type of organization makes a lot of sense for that. Like, here's your scripts, here's your utilities. And like you kinda get this, you know, oh you can, right there, you can see an agent working. You see actually the two, three agents in here working, there's the little icons, the yellow one, the blue one, and the green one.

Brad: [46:45] Yep.

LukeW: [46:45] they kinda like, you can be like, oh, what's this guy doing now? And how's, oh, and then from there you like click in and see what changes he made and

Brad: [46:52] Yep.

LukeW: [46:52] you. Now I'm looking at like a whole bunch of before and after things. And so I think that kind of stuff this is just me, right? I, I think we're gonna need something like that all these very capable systems. ' cause

Brad: [47:05] I, yes. Like wholesale. Yes. it's talking to, with my friend Dan Donald, who does a lot of great stuff, and he is been kind of doing a lot of, yeah, just these, these kind. Multiagent, uh, things, and I'm sure you've, you've seen these, it's like, oh, it's like, here's this whole, whole business that's just like nothing but these autonomous, you know, like bots or whatever. This isn't what Dan's talking about, but it is like you have this orchestration of a bunch of these computers that, yeah, again, there's just kinda a aware of activity that you're just kind of like, ugh. So what he did was he like spun up like a whole slack, like for them and he is able to like, see their conversations with one another and like, and I'm like, that's pretty cool 'cause you're like super posing uh, these things that we're already like, using ourselves and you, you kind of get this like, at least some sort of visibility like through into these, like this different world but through the lens of something that feels familiar to to us. So I think that that's stuff like that is fun.

LukeW: [48:10] it's funny you bring that up. Like the trend right now seems to be like, oh yeah, talk to all your agents through Slack. And my reaction is like, show me one Slack bot. Over the past, you know, like 15 years that has actually worked. Like I literally, everybody built a Slack bot. Every single software

Brad: [48:28] Yeah. Yeah, yeah,

LukeW: [48:29] built a Slack bot.

Brad: [48:30] yeah,

LukeW: [48:31] them

Brad: [48:32] yeah.

LukeW: [48:33] right?

Brad: [48:33] I, I welcome the, the kind of like, just like, it's like read only where it's just like, oh, yeah, my eyeballs are already here. I don't, it's like, it's less of a, like, interactive thing and more of a like, like a, oh, yeah, I see this.

LukeW: [48:48] get commit happened, you know, that

Brad: [48:49] Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

LukeW: [48:52] stuff, but like the, as soon as you start talking to one of those things, you run into exactly the problem that I was describing. You're like, like, go do this thing, and it's

Brad: [49:00] Oh, yeah. Yeah.

LukeW: [49:02] I don't know about this. And you are like, what is this?

Brad: [49:04] Yeah.

LukeW: [49:05] right.

Brad: [49:06] Yeah. Yeah. And it's, what's, what's quite fun is seeing, this new crop of tools try to feel their way into user interface design. Because at first it was just kinda like, so here's the, here's just like the terminal, or here's like this thing. And then it's like, ah, let's like introduce this into the mix and then, ah, yes, we could like on the fly, bring this in here and then, ah, we'll put some tabs here, I guess. And then two days later it's like, ah, now they're over here. And ah, this is like this, but not in this mode. And, and, uh, anyways, go back to the terminal and we'll kind of like we're just back to ASCI art.

LukeW: [49:47] Comes back to what we were talking about

Brad: [49:49] Yeah.

LukeW: [49:49] I don't think the final form is settled. Right. And like other examples of this is. Where does like context and information live in these systems? You can like have an agent with instructions. You can have some system prompt for instructions. You can have some memories. You can have some skills. You can be connected to a bunch of mcps. All of those can have different tools that they're calling, And like what is affecting what

Brad: [50:14] Yep.

LukeW: [50:15] in time

Brad: [50:16] Yep.

LukeW: [50:16] is actually a big challenge and it's actually, it's pretty damn critical for like getting the output that you want.

Brad: [50:22] Yeah, sure. Yeah. It's like, it's like, yeah, this stuff is increasingly being hooked up to pretty like mission critical kind of things. And so, yeah, so that, that kind of, where's the,

LukeW: [50:35] What's

Brad: [50:35] the trust, that re reliability, visibility, all of like that stuff that, uh, an entire freaking industry has been built on, on things like monitoring and. vulnerability testing and you know, all of that stuff that it's like, is the stuff that, once again, I'm like, man, I'm glad somebody's doing that 'cause that sounds like an awful job to me. But like, I'm glad that some people are like turned on by that 'cause, 'cause it's needed.

LukeW: [51:04] Let me show one more thing. Again, it's always better to look at pictures of things here. Sorry about all this shenanigans. So this is the backend of my, uh, ask Luke service. so you can see somebody asked this question and like, here's the response and what is super useful here is I can open up this thing and it shows me like all the things that it used to respond. here it used this like blog thing that scored pretty significantly. I can see specifically the part of it that it dropped in there. Right. I can see over here it like rejected this because it's too similar to other things. Uh, see. This is coming from saved questions. There should be some things from videos maybe, I don't know. But you, you get the idea, right? Like all of

Brad: [51:52] Mm-hmm.

LukeW: [51:53] this is just a pretty simple system, which is going through all my stuff and putting it together, but already like look at all the stuff that's in the mix.

Brad: [52:01] Again, it's like th 30 years of, of, of writing, of, of putting yourself out there, of, of expressing yourself and, and kind of back to, is that me or, or, or not? It's, there, there is some like really interesting terrain there, because you can say is that, Weirdly, like misusing my humanity or is that scaling my humanity? And I think that you can make a pretty sound argument for, for the latter, but also the, the former is like, also like, yeah. It's an interesting philosophical question, I think. And the fact that you, you did it, you know, it's like this was done, you know, of your own volition. I think that that matters. I think that like, and that's what irks so many about, you know, how their work just got like kinda hoovered up and then put into the Borg.

LukeW: [52:54] two things. Two things. Number one, uh, the point I was trying to make of that was like knowing what influences the answer is super important.

Brad: [53:03] Yep.

LukeW: [53:03] Right. And so like to determine whether or not it actually sounds like me or something, I would say like I need to see the things it's using to generate the answers, which is what that whole UI is about.

Brad: [53:13] Yep.

LukeW: [53:14] point around the, like, it hoovered up my stuff, again, just to sort of do it a thought exercise here, right? Like I've read, I don't know how many books about design I've listened to. I don't know how many

Brad: [53:24] Mm-hmm.

LukeW: [53:27] I answer you, is that really like me? And if you ask me to trace, like the thing you just said about web design, like where did that come from? I have no

Brad: [53:37] Yeah.

LukeW: [53:38] of answering that, right?

Brad: [53:39] Yep,

LukeW: [53:40] a lifetime of reading, learning, listening, talking, whatever.

Brad: [53:45] yep, yep.

LukeW: [53:46] like my, my counter argument to that is like, it's exactly the same thing the machines are doing.

Brad: [53:50] Mm-hmm.

LukeW: [53:51] reading all the stuff, they're listening to all the articles, and when it comes time for them to respond. Right. They're not like, oh, I'm gonna copy Luke here and steal his stuff. They're like, here's all the things I've seen and read and heard about this topic, and I'm gonna put it all together into response just the same way a human would. So if I were, personally, this is my personal take, and I know a lot of people will like throw crosses at me for this, but like if I accused these deep learning models of stealing and cheating, then I'm stealing and cheating, right? Like, I'm reappropriating people's work. I've hoovered up all these books and articles, and now I am, you know, falsely profiting from them when I write my article.

Brad: [54:34] it's,

LukeW: [54:35] like a controversial take, but like again, I, you know, the, it

Brad: [54:38] no,

LukeW: [54:39] sense to me that that is the same process and it's move forward, right.

Brad: [54:43] well, and it's, and that's just it. It's like, it's like no one person on earth has, has walked the exact path, uh, as you, and it really is the, the sum of, of all of your lived experience that. Leads you to this very moment in time. Right. To, to have, to hold these views to, say the things you're saying. Right. And that's, that's I think like the, the beauty of, the human experience is that Yep. There, you know, I'm in the land of Mr. Rogers and it's like, you know, there's only one of you and you know, you're special just the way you are.

LukeW: [55:16] there's some part of Mr. Rogers somewhere in your brain. You heard some show as a kid and Right, and

Brad: [55:21] Exactly.

LukeW: [55:22] the word that just came outta my mouth.

Brad: [55:24] Yep, yep, yep. I think though though too that there's the, the movies. You went to the theater and paid the, paid the, the cost of admission to, to go see that movie. And yes, like you, you saw that, but it's like, you know, the, you, you, you paid the, the price tag or you saw, you know, you saw that band and you, you, you paid the money versus, you know, like the, the things that are on the open web, and this is the, the bit that has me like really conflicted is that it's like, yep. Like, I've been writing on the web and putting that stuff freely out there. I put my book out there for free so that when the Atlantic came out with their thing of like, Hey, you could like look up if your work got absorbed by this stuff and used in the training data. Sure enough, there's my book and I'm cool with that because I put it out there for free for people to read. But like, I also could really appreciate the people that are like, wait, I wrote that and didn't do that, and I like put it out there for money to buy. And so to find your way into one of those databases feels, feels a little treacherous.

LukeW: [56:34] again, I'll play the bad guy here. I'll, I'll say two more things just to be a bad guy. There's, you know, Limewire and fricking Napster

Brad: [56:41] mm-hmm.

LukeW: [56:42] people stealing music,

Brad: [56:44] Mm-hmm.

LukeW: [56:45] going and stealing music. I took your thing instead of paying for it, I took it and I have it now and I, right. but that's different than like, I've listened to 50,000 songs and now I'm making new songs. Those are, in my mind, those are two different

Brad: [57:01] Mm-hmm.

LukeW: [57:01] things. Right.

Brad: [57:02] Yep.

LukeW: [57:03] then my other controversial statement I've made too now, so I'll make a third one, is like, I personally feel blessed and privileged if like these giant libraries of Alexandria read my shit and it influences what billions of people are

Brad: [57:18] Yeah.

LukeW: [57:18] as a response.

Brad: [57:20] Yep.

LukeW: [57:20] Like

Brad: [57:20] Yep.

LukeW: [57:21] so I would pay money to be included. Right? Please include me in your training data because I spent all this time putting my thoughts out there. I don't want to be not part of that. Like when the giant machine thinks, I would love for it to think about the thing, you know, like web forms suck. Please have that perspective.

Brad: [57:38] Yeah. Yep,

LukeW: [57:39] you

Brad: [57:39] yep.

LukeW: [57:39] I feel I'd be doing myself and other people disservice by saying, no, pull me out. Right?

Brad: [57:46] Yeah.

LukeW: [57:47] again, those three things are controversial, but that's, you know,

Brad: [57:50] It's,

LukeW: [57:51] on that side of the argument.

Brad: [57:53] what's interesting is that this brings up like, I think a, a path forward that I think is like very interesting. That gets to the heart of, it's like there's a lot of that, again, just that, that binary thinking of like this good, bad. I think that what you're saying is, is it's like, yes, here's all this stuff that you've been spending your entire career trying to steer towards better outcomes, and that the more that becomes a default, uh, way of, of thinking, right? The more that your influence influences a machine that ends up influencing the, the trajectory of things that could be really, really. Amazing. And one of the things that, that I'm starting to pick at with, with a few people now is, is that opportunity and back to this democratization and this, this more inclusive and participatory process of like, you might not be a professional designer or you might not know how to make websites or you might not know how to write code and like the terminal might look scary to you, but like, are you able to articulate goodness? Are you able to like articulate like a vision for a better world? And like, I think what's very, very fascinating about this moment of time is that you have organizations that have been doing. The hard work, like the, the United Nations and stuff like trying to eradicate poverty and feed people and like, you know, promote peace and, and, and harmony and all this stuff. And it's like they don't have super deep pockets. So they've been like reliant on, you know, designers and, and developers and stuff who are foregoing that the opportunities provided, uh, by, by Silicon Valley or, or certain things to, you know, that that's what they're, they're relying on, on that kind of, that type of designer developer to, to kind of like help them along. And that's amazing. But I think what's really fascinating is that it is possible to steer the, the whole machine. In the art, in the direction of that, and, and that kind of sits on top of the, the, the core apparatus of how this stuff came to be. Right? But what, what has started to emerge is this idea of, you know, harnessing and, you know, being able to just kind of guide it in a certain direction. And it's like, well, what does it look like to just be like, put a har giant harness on the whole thing that's just like, here's these things that we're not going to agree on universal truths when it comes to ethics or morality. But there are some things we could do, we could give, we could put some numbers to that shit. Like, we could basically be like. Love with the golden rule might be like the one, like unifying, you know, thing across any spiritual tradition or, or, or philosophy or like, whatever that is. Just like promoting a, a healthy, continued direction for, for humanity in the world at large. And to basically go, okay, let's put that harness on there. And then there's some other stuff that sits on top of it where it's like, ah, you might have people forking that and saying, ah, I believe in gender equality, but, but not in this way. Or, or whatever. And you could basically be like, that's fine. We don't need consensus on it. But like, you could spell it all out. Just lay it all out there, MCP it up, and then just like, you know, basically be like, everything sits on top of this. So that like any, any. A piece of software that gets like written like is, is hooked into this thing that's ultimately steering towards like better outcomes.

LukeW: [1:01:52] It's kinda what Claude's constitution is trying to do. The, the problem

Brad: [1:01:56] It's kind of weak. It's kind of, it's kind of like vague though, I guess. So, sorry. Uh,

LukeW: [1:02:01] yeah, it, I said trying to do, but the problem is the stuff gets baked in at like the model level, right? And there's like levels of influence that things have. And so like the stuff baked in at the model level is always gonna have stronger influence at things like at the prompt level or at the

Brad: [1:02:19] yep,

LukeW: [1:02:19] level or anything like that,

Brad: [1:02:21] yep,

LukeW: [1:02:21] So you effectively have to be one of these model makers to have that

Brad: [1:02:25] yep.

LukeW: [1:02:26] of impact. I, I actually think there's, I, I've posted some stuff on this in the past and I think it continues to be a problem. Like the fact that everything is steered towards helpful assistant is not helpful. Like a helpful assistant is a personality that is beneficial to have in your life. Sometimes, maybe always, but you also want like contrarian professor. That's like, yeah, that's bullshit. Like don't

Brad: [1:02:52] Yep.

LukeW: [1:02:53] Right?

Brad: [1:02:54] Yep.

LukeW: [1:02:54] you all, you know, you just want like these different types of personas make you feel uncomfortable. That's okay, that's good, right? Like that helps you grow. You

Brad: [1:03:04] Mm-hmm.

LukeW: [1:03:05] most when you feel emotions than when you're just riding the serotonin train all the

Brad: [1:03:11] Yeah.

LukeW: [1:03:12] stuff I studied way back in college. We studied these like modes of dialogue I thought were really interesting. 'cause there's like conversation, but there's also debate. also inquiry, right? There's all these like different ways people talk to, uh, get to different outcomes. And we've really standardized on this. You're absolutely right.

Brad: [1:03:34] Yeah. Yeah.

LukeW: [1:03:34] Kind of persona, which is a pers again, great, to have something like that. But probably need more.

Brad: [1:03:40] that part and back to that, that kind of growing chasm in between, you know, the, the people who sort of even have a vague understanding of how the stuff comes to be. And as the stuff is starting to get more and more accurate, more and more realistic, more and more believable, and you just have, we're we're just orders of magnitude out of our depths when it comes to just like kind of perception and, you know, again, back to like the phishing scams and stuff like that. It's like, boy, oh boy, like, as this stuff just yeah, continues to just feed you nothing but what you want to hear. That's, that's pretty like damaging writ large.

LukeW: [1:04:22] then it becomes the Facebook feed.

Brad: [1:04:24] It becomes the Facebook here comes, here comes the, the, the red pill or the whatever. Yeah. It's like they just like, wait. I, I think that you're right. And that's, this is where it's like If you throw that stuff out, be willing to sit with like, you know, it getting thrown back at you and stuff. And like, like you said, it's like that is, that's, that's the healthy friction

LukeW: [1:04:45] yeah.

Brad: [1:04:46] of, of growth and, 100% possible to design that you just like, like it's, it's, it's easy to do at the user level. But I think that what you're saying is, again, like that, that kind of model level is, is such like a, the, the thing that's really setting the defaults, right? Like these are, these are like the, the smart defaults as they were, or maybe not so smart defaults and when

LukeW: [1:05:13] of the thing, right? You can't, it's tough to change the core once it's

Brad: [1:05:16] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's fascinating. there's some like interesting, there's some really interesting stuff, but I think, um, you know, Maggie Appleton.

LukeW: [1:05:25] Mm-hmm.

Brad: [1:05:26] Yeah, she's, she's awesome. She did, she did a really great, article on kind of some of the stuff on just kind of how, how to intentionally, uh, sculpt, like steer towards those, you know, controversial professors or, or, uh, you know, things that are, that are like actively kind of arguing against you and stuff and, and kind of putting.

LukeW: [1:05:52] bit, but it's not, it's not, you

Brad: [1:05:54] Yeah, it tries real hard. It tries real hard to come back. And it's like, there, there's a lot of stuff that it's like, it's, it's a very, very fascinating material to, to work with. 'cause you're just like, I'm like, no, no, no. Like, I need you to only build the UI using my shit. Like, please do not, and ever, ever invent any other thing. And it's like, there's, there's so much, you know, you know the story of, um, van Halen and the green m and ms. Oh really?

LukeW: [1:06:25] I don't

Brad: [1:06:26] Mr. Green. Okay. Van Halen on their tour Rider? Yeah. On the rider. You know about this? So they had on their rider it's like. In the dressing room before the show, we want the bowl of m and ms with all the green m and ms picked out. Right. And it's just like on at face value. It's just like, oh, look at that. rock and roll lifestyle. They don't give a shit. You know, all of that stuff, you know, just, just total rock and roll. But that was their, that was their signal that whenever they got to that dressing room and if that, those m and ms had the green ones in there, that meant that they didn't read The rider and, and on the rider were a bunch of really important safety related, like stage safety things, pyrotechnics, like all this other stuff. And so that was the signal that it's like, yep. You, you didn't do your job. And so, so for me, I, my, my signal is at the, the beginning and the end of all of my interactions with these things, I have it spit out just these total non-sequitur, that, that are just like,

LukeW: [1:07:35] to you. So the, the one, the, the challenge you run there though is as the systems become more quote unquote intelligent,

Brad: [1:07:43] Yeah.

LukeW: [1:07:43] they like interpret the instructions as opposed to taking them literally. Right. And there's benefit to that. So they could be like, yeah, it's kind of silly for me to say quack at the end of this. Why am I gonna do that? It's much better for me to blink any blink, right.

Brad: [1:07:58] it's been interesting. I've like caught some bugs where it's like, if I start in with like, like if I'm like starting with like a voice thing, it will, it will not catch the, the, like my, like user settings or whatever, and then it will just like, kind of start going and, and it's like, oh, there's, there's my green m and ms. Uh, but yeah, so I have these, uh, the astral badger has signed your waveform parchment. The anvil politely refuses the cloud. The salmon of persistence swims upstream through the cascade of intention.

LukeW: [1:08:33] I, I had this guy, I brought up the quack, who was like complaining to us. I can't remember which product. He was like, it, it doesn't work because I explicitly told it to say quack at the end of every thing, and it doesn't. I'm like, well, did it do everything that you asked it to? Yeah, great job. It even like invented this stuff, but it didn't quack.

Brad: [1:08:51] Did it quack?

LukeW: [1:08:52] right. But like, you know, like if you're talking to a human and you're like working with this engineer and you like, want him to quack every time he writes code for you, he's gonna be like f you.

Brad: [1:09:01] It's

LukeW: [1:09:02] gonna

Brad: [1:09:02] it's the, it's the rubber ducking. Yeah. Yeah. The, the real rubber ducking the turkin.

LukeW: [1:09:09] Turkin. That's right. I'm not gonna squeeze the turkin every time I'm done. the other part that gets where some of that stuff is actually useful, right? There's so many different places nowadays where you can influence.

Brad: [1:09:21] Mm-hmm.

LukeW: [1:09:21] I have a skills file, I have like custom agents, I got a system prompt, I have memories, I got a bunch of files, agents, MD files sitting in my wrote repo. like this comes back again to like, what is driving what,

Brad: [1:09:36] What's, what's what? Yep.

LukeW: [1:09:38] you can

Brad: [1:09:38] Yep.

LukeW: [1:09:39] into a zone where it's unclear what's influencing what. To go back to my little example of the Ask Luke thing, um, I, I feel like this is another place where things haven't really coalesced. Like everybody keeps throwing out yet. Another thing that influences the behavior of these models after a while, like you get into this like hot mess of things all over the place and sometimes you don't even know that they're there you forget that they're there and they, you know, can have a really big impact on what you're getting out on the other side, which is all is pretty big deterrent for new people, right? They come in, they're like, what skill, like system prompt, what is all this stuff?

Brad: [1:10:15] and behind all of this is this like kind of Yeah. Everyone's feeling around in the dark. These, the, the makers of these things are in this arms race, like brick neck competition with one another, trying to throw everything out at the wall and, and all of that stuff. But it does get into the, the, the standards tracks, you know, the, whether it's the railroad ties or, or web standards or whatever. It's like, it's like some of this dust will, will start to settle. Some of these conventions will, will take root while others will fade away. But back to kind of where we kind of started was, or, or, or early on was like the, the pace of this stuff, it's like by the time this thing gets standardized, there's gonna be these whole other different kinds of hula hoops and stuff that we're, that we're jumping through. So it's, it's.

LukeW: [1:11:10] things are changing. Too much to standardize, right?

Brad: [1:11:12] Yeah. Yeah.

LukeW: [1:11:14] time to pull in the reins because we don't, again, we don't know the final form yet. We're like iterating through it right now.

Brad: [1:11:20] how, how confident are you that there will be a final form? Like I am, I'm like less like convinced by the day that it's like, this is gonna just like kind of peter out. Or, or, or stabilize.

LukeW: [1:11:33] you sort of know what a website is. You sort of know what a mobile app is, right? There's flexibility, picture in your head and you roughly know the pieces and the parts and how they fit together. that's kind of the way I think about it, right? I think there's gonna be like this sort of shape.

Brad: [1:11:49] a shape of it. Yeah.

LukeW: [1:11:51] show is?

Brad: [1:11:52] Yep. That's interesting. It, it does feel though, uh, just again, back to its, its, its nature that it's like, and, and, and kind of back to what you were showing a little earlier about like the, the need for some form of, of visualization that it's like, yeah, like it just kind of, by its very nature, this thing is just this like fuzzy, amorphous, cloud concept that, that just like, it's that that itself makes it just weird. It's like with, with websites all the way back to your mosaic days, it's like, oh, that's kinda like a brochure and we can just like bring that thing in.

LukeW: [1:12:35] To be fair, like that's not where it started, right?

Brad: [1:12:39] sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

LukeW: [1:12:40] for us to figure out what websites. be like, the earliest website things we were building were all like these academic research

Brad: [1:12:48] Mm-hmm.

LukeW: [1:12:48] and like we were doing control, remote control of, uh, earthquake shake tables through the browser. We, we thought it was all about like sharing scientific findings and working on experiments together. And so like, that's why it was actually like HTML was like, you know,

Brad: [1:13:05] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

LukeW: [1:13:07] a document basically,

Brad: [1:13:09] yep,

LukeW: [1:13:10] cross-linking between documents. That's what it was. It was, you know, hyper text. That was the

Brad: [1:13:14] yep,

LukeW: [1:13:15] nobody pictured, right? Like Amazon. So same kind of thing, right? Like the current form, like, oh, I don't know what it's gonna become.

Brad: [1:13:24] Yeah.

LukeW: [1:13:25] like thing things will evolve outside of the, like the, let me give you an example. One of the things that we're very focused on right now is like collaboration. Yeah.

Brad: [1:13:36] Mm-hmm.

LukeW: [1:13:37] of these things are really thinking about how people work together.

Brad: [1:13:40] Mm-hmm.

LukeW: [1:13:41] like, here's another tool, here's another tool, here's another tool. And so like you've got people now with more tools that can produce more stuff. So there's more things being thrown over the wall. And frankly, like people are like, well, I just got like a hundred prs from random people in the organization. What do I do? Right? Or this marketing guy is sending me like 20 freaking, uh, whatever blog posts. Um, and, and like all of these tools are very like solo sport individual,

Brad: [1:14:12] Yep.

LukeW: [1:14:12] ramp up your individual productivity and you can do more and you can step outside your lanes and

Brad: [1:14:17] Yeah.

LukeW: [1:14:17] Nobody's really thinking about like, Hey, beings still pretty much dominantly work together on stuff.

Brad: [1:14:25] yep.

LukeW: [1:14:26] And what

Brad: [1:14:26] It,

LukeW: [1:14:27] like?

Brad: [1:14:27] yeah. And, and, and again, that's one of those innate human things that, that's just going to always happen. It's like we, we are a social species. We, we. Coordinate and collaborate like that, that's, it's hardwired into us. And that's, that's I think like why I bid sort of so dialed in, like out of the vast landscape of areas that I could kind of like go. The thing that has been most exciting to me is this, here's conversation. Something that it, we are, we are just hardwired to do. Here's something like collaborating and coordinating with one another and working together, which is also something that we're hardwired to do. And now we have these, these real time. Uh, abilities to, to make together. And we also, like, as we've been talking about and picking at in this conversation, is like, we like looking at things and like looking at something versus nothing. Back to your little, you know, your prototype, you know, slide. It's, it's like, it's like here's the prototype in that ah, yes. Even if we're looking at a shitty logo, that's better than just like talking about a logo in the abstract for an hour. And, and it gives us something to latch onto and we could work with it. And so I really love this idea of being able to pull in all of these kind of non-technical roles. All of these people who have ostensibly been sidelined. By just the existing design and development process and to take meetings, which used to be just a goddamn nightmare. And it's just like everybody's just like, when is this thing gonna be done? Or we're all kind of like looking elsewhere because we're trying to multitask. What if the freaking meeting was just the work? Like and then you just kind of like have at it and it has all of that context and then you just like build the right thing together.

LukeW: [1:16:25] Let me show some pictures on that 'cause this is Last set of pictures maybe, but like, I was literally working on these things today. So like, this is kind of the world right now. Everybody's got their own tools and like, okay, sweet. We add cloud code to the designer or the PM's now they're still

Brad: [1:16:40] Yep,

LukeW: [1:16:41] over the wall.

Brad: [1:16:42] yep.

LukeW: [1:16:42] that's not collaboration. Collaboration is when you all work on something together. And even

Brad: [1:16:47] Correct.

LukeW: [1:16:48] as like writing a blog post. You know, designers gotta make some assets. Developers gotta build the tool, PM's gotta work on the words.

Brad: [1:16:55] Mm-hmm.

LukeW: [1:16:56] any one of these folks can be like, I'm just gonna do it all. But that doesn't really work out well, right? Nor should that be the way. And so like what we've been doing is creating this concept of a shared workspace. I'll just sort of show you what this looks like. The designer can basically go in here and be like, this is the design system. These are the layouts, this is the grid. developer can be like, here's how we deploy. These are the frameworks. You know, I want Tailwind and Astro, and I want to render icons as SVG for performance reasons. And all that stuff kind of gets baked into this workspace. So to your point, anybody that shows up in that workspace, when they go and talk to the agent, those agents do the things that have been encoded into it,

Brad: [1:17:42] Yep.

LukeW: [1:17:42] makes

Brad: [1:17:42] Yep.

LukeW: [1:17:42] Right? So

Brad: [1:17:43] Yeah.

LukeW: [1:17:43] goes in here and says, Hey, here's the grid.

Brad: [1:17:46] Mm-hmm.

LukeW: [1:17:47] can be there like, oh, there's the grid.

Brad: [1:17:49] Mm-hmm.

LukeW: [1:17:50] And you can take like, okay, here's a bunch of images in Figma. Here's a, blog post inside a word. So maybe the PM writes the blog post in Word, maybe the designer's working in Figma and they drop it in and out comes a thing that is using the right frameworks. It's using the right layouts, it's using the right design language. And this is the thing I think that allows people to like collaborate, right? can all set sort of the context and the structure of the space, and then anybody can come in there and do their thing. But what comes out on the other side is a unified entity opposed to like, oh, here, I made the webpage. No, I made the webpage. No, I made the webpage. And you're like, what the f Right? The

Brad: [1:18:34] I

LukeW: [1:18:34] with that is like, it doesn't let designers be designers and it doesn't let developers be developers. Like the developer knows which frameworks to use and why.

Brad: [1:18:43] Sure.

LukeW: [1:18:43] a fricking life figuring that out, and they know all the secret get commands and how to set it up and all that. Cool. Do that and then don't make me the designer learn all that and figure all that shit out myself.

Brad: [1:18:55] Right.

LukeW: [1:18:55] do the things you don't do. Right? Let me

Brad: [1:18:57] Yep.

LukeW: [1:18:58] Let me figure out the design system. Let

Brad: [1:19:00] Yep.

LukeW: [1:19:01] on the aesthetics. But you, you mush those two things together and you have a collaborative environment

Brad: [1:19:06] Mm-hmm.

LukeW: [1:19:06] anybody can come in and participate, but what they do like fits right.

Brad: [1:19:13] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I love that. And it, it, I, for many years, you know, I've been asked a million times like, Brad, what, how do you define, how do you define a design system? And I'd always piss people off with the, with the answer. 'cause it's, I, I used to say what it's like, well, or used to still do a design system is the official story of how you design and build digital interfaces. And people are like. Like, that's bullshit. Like, like, you know, just, just that's a very lackluster and like, that feels like a cop out answer. But what you just described is, is exactly, you're, you're basically saying, how do we wanna tell this story? Like what are the standards? What are like the, the best practices? What are all the things that we're encoding in this?

LukeW: [1:20:03] Yeah,

Brad: [1:20:04] that tell that collectively taking everyone that we collectively tell the story of how we're gonna do this. Right. And it's like, so

LukeW: [1:20:13] you encode

Brad: [1:20:13] yeah.

LukeW: [1:20:14] into an environment that is a shared environment.

Brad: [1:20:17] Yep.

LukeW: [1:20:17] Right, and this is what I'm talking about. Like I feel the collaborative piece is sorely missing right now.

Brad: [1:20:23] Hard. Same.

LukeW: [1:20:24] And, and like,

Brad: [1:20:25] Yep.

LukeW: [1:20:25] yet you have this capability, like, I can bring my design sensibilities, I can bring my developer sensibilities, I can

Brad: [1:20:31] Yep.

LukeW: [1:20:31] content sensibilities. What does it look like when we all do that together? I think the end result is like 10 x better oh, I'm gonna learn everybody's skills because AI allows me to do that now.

Brad: [1:20:43] Yeah. I, I think that we've gotten to such a point in the industry though, like where it's like those, those brick walls that you're showing there, they've been internalized for. I think now, like kind of two generations of, of designers and developers. And so that's, that's the part that I'm like, again, why I think I feel like I'm kind of focusing where I'm focusing is that I, I, I see that collaborative opportunity, like, like you're showing there. It's always just like, yeah, you, you bring the people closer together. You don't have to understand the details of, of each other's worlds, but you are able to just exist and, and just do the work together. And it kind of like falls out the other end in the way that you want it. And the, the great thing is that it's, it's not this, you are able to pull in closer and that I will, I will die on this hill that it's like that, that is an innate human. desire is to, to be with other people. But we've done such a damn good job at creating the conditions of the separation, uh, for the last, like, couple of generations of, of design and development that it's like, it is like

LukeW: [1:22:00] It's. It sucks.

Brad: [1:22:01] It's like re, re rewilding, uh, zoo animals.

LukeW: [1:22:05] Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's, I mean, this comes back to what we're talking about, how people come in with this, like mechanics, right?

Brad: [1:22:11] Mm-hmm.

LukeW: [1:22:12] tools. This is the thing I make in my tools, you know? And

Brad: [1:22:16] Yep. Yep.

LukeW: [1:22:16] it's not just designers that are guilty of it. Each of the

Brad: [1:22:19] No, it's, it's everybody. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

LukeW: [1:22:21] I

Brad: [1:22:21] Yep.

LukeW: [1:22:21] went and learned Figma and I make the rectangles and Figma with the color patches and the different size headers, and then your job is to go and implement that. Uh, I'm, yeah, it that nobody likes that.

Brad: [1:22:34] Yeah.

LukeW: [1:22:35] maybe some people like it, but I, I don't a, I don't think that's how you create good things, right? That's how you create, uh, pro that's how you, how you implement processes, but it's not necessarily how you create good things.

Brad: [1:22:48] Yeah. I think it's like the, the ins when you pick at the incentives and like what's like sitting underneath that is, I think that another innately human, you know, sort of desire is, is to feel valuable. Is to feel worthwhile. And I think that a lot of people of have really done a lot to protect that through the lens of, you know, whether that was creating the 90 page, uh, wire frame deck, uh, is like, look at me, look at, look at how useful I am. Like look at how, how long this PDF is. I think that, that, it's like we are, we are now free from that, which is, which is, again, it's, it's a, it's a liberating, it's a liberating place to be. And I think that it's like that initial fear. If we're able to like, translate that into, it's here, here's this environment, here's this place where you could all be together and like, yeah, you might need a little bit of like coaching or help to like kind of get the hang of, of working together again. But at the same time, it's, it's a lot of fun and yields a lot better outcomes than, than throwing shit over the wall.

LukeW: [1:23:56] well, this, this is again where I might be a contrarian, but like I feel most of what people are doing is creating digital detritus, right? It's this digital flotsam and jetsam, and like, nobody gives a crap about. And the beautiful thing about ai, again, this, you can argue this, but like, it basically turns the value of that to like zero, right? Oh, I

Brad: [1:24:17] Yep.

LukeW: [1:24:17] page PDF. Oh, here's a 90 page one, here's 120

Brad: [1:24:21] yeah, yeah.

LukeW: [1:24:22] Okay. Who gives a right? Like,

Brad: [1:24:24] Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep.

LukeW: [1:24:26] the value is. Right? I wrote a hundred articles, I wrote 200 mine's, 500 words, mine's, 700 words, It's all

Brad: [1:24:33] Who cares? Yep, it's, it's laying bare so many things that I think ha have been needing to be exposed

LukeW: [1:24:41] yeah.

Brad: [1:24:41] for a long ti for a long time and, and, and that much I, I welcome, but I do worry about the transition period, especially as it translates to, you know, people's livelihoods. I think that, I think that that's like that's an important piece of that puzzle that I get worried about, but, but at the same time, it's like I know what we're talking about to be true.

LukeW: [1:25:05] So let me go, we'll, we'll, we'll uh, pull it back to one thing we said earlier, which is right. You need bad experiences. need challenges, and that's where the growth happens,

Brad: [1:25:17] Yeah.

LukeW: [1:25:18] And like without those, you're not gonna become the, you're not gonna hit your potential. You're not gonna figure out what your path actually should be and where you fit in and how. Um, so I agree. You know, it can be uncomfortable and painful. Totally. But where I may differ is like, I don't necessarily feel we should be sheltering people from what you have deemed as obvious and necessary. Right. can help them with that transition. Absolutely. Right. And we can like, get them to the other side, I don't think we want to like, hide it from them and protect them from it, uh, because they're gonna end up in a worse place if that's, you know, if

Brad: [1:25:57] Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, it's like, it's like building that, that, um, that that resilience and that grit and that, uh, you know, there's a, a book by Jonathan, Heidi talks about like anti fragility, right? It's like you gotta like expose people to that, to that grit. And like, you, you do have to learn those lessons, and it's something that is you as a parent to bring this back to, to, you know, your kids. It's like they're gonna need to, to take their own bumps and bruises in order to sort of like learn those lessons. You can speak about it all you want from your own bumps and bruises, but it's like there really are some things that require going through it. Your yourself experientially. Yep.

LukeW: [1:26:42] Like, I mean, I deal with companies all the time and startup founders and stuff,

Brad: [1:26:46] Mm-hmm.

LukeW: [1:26:46] we've built tons of companies. I built companies. I can tell you a gazillion things, but you're not gonna, you're not gonna internalize it until it happens to you. Right. So what what I do is instead of like telling people, oh you should do this, I just do it, demonstrate and I like bring them along through the process.

Brad: [1:27:05] Hmm.

LukeW: [1:27:05] the other side they've experienced it 'cause they've gone through it.

Brad: [1:27:10] Yep.

LukeW: [1:27:10] And at that point right, makes sense,

Brad: [1:27:13] Yep.

LukeW: [1:27:14] like, oh you should do this. Like, okay. It's like if you're about to have a kid and I'm like, oh, you should really make sure that they get enough rest. Otherwise it's, you're like, okay. And then you're like tired kid. Worst death. But until it happened, until you got that screaming kid on the airplane at two in the morning and everybody around you is like glaring at you. That's when you're like, I get it. Right.

Brad: [1:27:36] Yeah, exactly. that feels like a good thing to, to end on is like e everyone's in this moment. We all have to go through it. Like, there, there's no, there's no like, just, just, just, I'm gonna ask Luke what to do, and he's just going to, I'm gonna ask the Luke bot you know, solve all my problems for me. You're gonna have to, to go out there and, and live it and, and do, do the stuff and feel uncomfortable and, grow as a result. So I think, I think that that's, that's a great, a great, uh, call to arms there. So

LukeW: [1:28:08] Luke, Luke, Bob might make you feel uncomfortable, so try it out.

Brad: [1:28:12] Luke bot's an asshole.

LukeW: [1:28:14] That's right. He learned. He learned from the best.

Brad: [1:28:17] The only bit of structure aside from the first question is the last question, which is, what music, do you want more people to, uh, know about? Listen to?

LukeW: [1:28:28] I'm the wrong person to ask this man. I just

Brad: [1:28:30] no. You're, you are the, you are the right person to ask this.

LukeW: [1:28:34] on for the next 30 minutes. I spent four days in Knoxville at the, uh, big Ears Festival two weeks ago. something like 300 shows over the course of four nights. So, uh, just, I can't possibly name all the things I saw, but I will pull out a couple highlights. I was in a cathedral church where the Westerlies played the music of Bill Frill, bill

Brad: [1:28:59] Yeah.

LukeW: [1:28:59] American composer guitar player.

Brad: [1:29:01] Amazing.

LukeW: [1:29:02] daily a new song during the pandemic, he sent this group a bunch of these songs that they recorded. There are two trombones and two trumpets playing inside of a cathedral, like gorgeous stuff. Brian Marcella is a piano player out in New York who's under the umbrella of John Zorn, who's like a big improvisational jazz guy. He took over the Biju Theater for two days. In Knoxville, like curating all the things. And Brian played in a couple groups there. group he had was Imaginarium, was really amazing. But the part that knocked my socks off the most was Brian Marcella with Julian Lei on guitar. Chaz Smith on drums, and a Jorge reader on bass. They played live an album that John Zorn composed called Serato. It was unk. album doesn't do it Justice. The album, you know, it's challenging 'cause

Brad: [1:30:00] Yeah.

LukeW: [1:30:01] out there, jazz, but like

Brad: [1:30:02] Yep.

LukeW: [1:30:03] but like the level these guys played at and the way they aligned was just bonkers. So I'm

Brad: [1:30:12] That's,

LukeW: [1:30:12] there 'cause I

Brad: [1:30:13] no, no, that's,

LukeW: [1:30:14] going

Brad: [1:30:15] that's amazing. But, but thank you for that. I think that that, that last thing that you said though is, is really important and is, is also I think, a really good call to arms, which is. Music is incredible recorded music is incredible. And the fact that that it exists is, is a, a gift, uh, to all of us. But then there's things, especially things that are like really pushing it. Things that are, that are really pushing the envelope or things that are like, and, and jazz, pre jazz and experimental jazz and stuff. Like, it falls into this category where you're just, you could easily fall prey to the, I don't get it camp, and I've, I'm guilty as charged when it comes to like, re-recorded music. But it's like the, the experience of being in a place to be present with really any music, but like, especially the stuff that's like, that's like pushing it is I think a really, really, like That's really cool to hear you describe that to just like to, to, to feel it, to, to be there.

LukeW: [1:31:19] wasn't the craziest stuff there. They call it big ears for a reason,

Brad: [1:31:23] That's amazing.

LukeW: [1:31:24] I gave you are roughly tame.

Brad: [1:31:26] but the experiment, right? Like you're, you are there to experience that live, right? So it's like, yeah.

LukeW: [1:31:33] 30 miles over four days just going from venue to venue and seeing like all this, that, festival is extremely well curated. Like pretty

Brad: [1:31:43] Hmm. Yeah.

LukeW: [1:31:44] walk into are gonna be expert level musicians doing like something very unique. might not all be your cup of tea. Right, but like the caliber of folks playing there outside of like, I saw, I don't know how many shows, I think I saw like 15 a day. So 60 shows. Like there'd be like one where I'd be like, yeah, whatever. Everything else, so

Brad: [1:32:08] That's, that's amazing. Amazing. Well, that's great. That's great. last quick question is like, where could people follow along with you and your adventures?

LukeW: [1:32:18] I'll just type Luke W in the box. It'll work.

Brad: [1:32:22] What, whatever box that might be? Uh, your, your mailbox, your, uh, the, this fuzzy Yeah, yeah, exactly. Just j

LukeW: [1:32:30] it in all. I haven't tried it in all the boxes, but many of the boxes, it'll work.

Brad: [1:32:34] Luke w Uh, well thank you, man. Thanks. This is, this is great. we'll, we'll see you soon. We'll play some, some free jazz together next time. All right. Take care, man. Thanks.