Early Internet era industries are dying.
Like was there a sense the city was like, please, we need you or
or not? No, no, no.
But so no, we would throw huge parties like, you know, we did
some really fancy stuff at the. Conferences well and we.
And and so that so that fed the, you know, that kind of created
the impression, you know, of like, you know, spending all
this money, you know, which we were, but, you know, it was all
sponsor money anyway. So I was very upset about that.
And so I wrote this long letter to The Washington Post.
You could at least correct these factual errors and but then 911
so. On the podcast A History of San
Francisco, it is defining the Nation Today with companies like
Open AI and Anthropic threatening to destroy every job
in the world. Jonathan Weber, the newcomers
editor at large, former editor in chief of the Industry
Standard and the San Francisco Standard, and a top tech editor
at Reuters, He's seen it all, is out with a new book on the
history of San Francisco and what tech did to it.
That book City on the On the Edge.
He comes on the show just as audiences are booing
commencement speakers. Interesting.
In the book, he captures the disconnect between the
technology set and the rest of us, and we start off the episode
talking about why people are so sour on what San Francisco is
building right now. This is the Newcomer podcast
hosted by me, Eric Newcomer, author and creator of The
Newcomer Substack. Find us at newcomer.co for
insider's look into venture capital and everything going on
in Silicon Valley. Literally this week, Eric
Schmidt, you know, the former CEO of Google is getting booed
during a commencement speech for talking about AI and sort of the
coming disruption. So I wanted to take sort of, you
know, from thinking about the history of the tech industry,
what, what do you make of sort of how out of touch the tech
executives are or I'm, you know, once out of touch, but also, you
know, I'm an AI sympathetic. Yeah.
What do you make of him getting booed on stage?
Yeah, well, that was was quite dramatic to see.
And I, I do want to say first of all, thanks Eric for for having
me here. It's been a great pleasure to
work with you over the years in various capacities.
Yeah. No, we've had you on the
podcast. We've had you on an earlier
iteration in the podcast. Right.
Yeah, very. No, I don't think so.
This is our first, first I think our.
Podcast appearance. I love it.
Here. We are in New York City.
Yeah, so, so that's very exciting.
I really appreciate it. And it's been a lot of fun to
work on this book alongside working with you and, and, and
seeing how the AI industry has developed.
A lot of that post dates the kind of conclusion of the book.
The book really ends in 24, but it certainly looks ahead at at
at the AI developments and and the theme that we see kind of
coming to a certain kind of fruition with Eric Schmidt being
booed is really a shift, very dramatic shift in popular
sentiment towards technology, towards towards the industry and
towards Silicon Valley, which is kind of the metaphor for the
industry. And historically America is a is
a techno optimist country, right?
We believe in in technology as a means of making the world a
better place, making our lives better.
That was certainly true in the 1990s, which is when the book
starts and kind of the beginning of the commercial Internet, the
rise of the World Wide Web. And the culture in San Francisco
at the time was was a very kind of effervescent, very optimistic
culture. We're going to change the world
with technology. We're going to make the world a
better place. And then over the course of 30
years, you know, that kind of that had an arc to it and, and a
lot of those hopes and dreams from the beginning were really
ended in disappointment. And I think now with, with AI,
we have a real, you know, real cynicism about, about tech and,
and, and A, and a kind of distrust of the elites who are
kind of selling this tech to us. Which is not a San Francisco
specific thing. It's, you know, across the
United States. The United States in particular
feels like, relative to some, to like developing countries.
The US in particular seems very anxious about artificial
intelligence. Yeah, I think, I think that's
true. And I, and I do think it's very
related to the political dynamics in the country
actually, because I think that, and you certainly see this in
San Francisco, where the rise of AI essentially coincided with a
big political shift where the, the tech industry had
traditionally been a, a fairly capital D democratic industry,
certainly committed to kind of liberal social values.
And that sort of flipped in the, in the Trump era.
And you have the rise of a, of a cadre of right wing tech
executives. And, and they've been very, very
dismissive of, of public concerns about, about AI, about
the job impacts and environmental impacts and other
things. They're very, very dismissive of
that. And I think that that is a huge
error and and is part of what's contributed to the public
backlash. I mean, I think one thing that
people need to understand going into this conversation today,
you know, we're pretty sloppy at newcomer between Silicon Valley
and San Francisco because Silicon Valley sort of moved up.
They're like, Oh yeah, you know, there are a lot of the venture
firms spend a lot of their time in San Francisco.
The junior partners want to be there. start-ups are, you know,
building there. Of course, some of the bigger
companies then leave. But you know, like the zeitgeist
is San Francisco. But when the book starts,
there's Silicon Valley with Apple that's booming, and San
Francisco has some, you know, a few quirky tech companies.
Or how would you describe San Francisco in the beginning of
the Internet era? Yeah.
So if you so 1990, it's essentially when the book
begins, there really isn't a tech industry in San Francisco
at all. I mean, there, there's one or
two tiny companies I talk about a, an outfit called Jasmine
Technologies that made hard disk drives, but that was essentially
it. There was no substantial
companies. We're no substantial companies.
Technology was a Silicon Valley thing.
It was S it was an hour to the South.
It was a different world. It was very much a, a kind of
government driven, military driven technology industry
historically. So the Silicon and Silicon
Valley, the chip industry was government driven at the
beginning. And so it was a very different
culture, a very different world. San Francisco was in a it's kind
of post counterculture period. It was coming out of some pretty
pretty rough economic and and cultural times in the in the 70s
and the 80s. People have been like killed,
right? I mean, obviously politicians
have been killed and a sort of radical.
Dramatic, you know, after that there was sort of the, the
Summer of love in the 60s. And then the 70s were just a
very traumatic time in the city. There was the assassinations of
of George Moscone and Harvey Milk in City Hall by a by a
former policeman and and it was a very, very fraught time.
There was the zebra killings. There.
I'd never heard of that before. Killings were basically black
people were killing randomly, shooting white people on the
streets, a small band of of black guys and.
For ideological reasons or. Yeah, it was, it was a little
bit unclear, but yeah, you know, revolution, you know, and there
was the Black Panthers in Oakland and they were then Patty
Hearst was kidnapped. So there was all of that, you
know. And so so the 70s were a time of
kind of big trauma in a way. And then that sort of calmed
down a little bit in the in the 80s.
But the but the economy of the city was a very was a real mixed
bag. You know, there was tourism was
strong, but all the manufacturing was going away.
You know, there used to been, you know, steel mills and other
kinds of manufacturing that was all going away.
The Navy was going away. And so the so the economy was
kind of weak, but the culture sure was very rich.
So there. Was one thing that stood out to
me about Jasmine as you were just describing it as, you know,
customer obsessed. You know, they're they're making
like what external hard drives effectively for the Mac.
But but it's like, oh, these are sort of they're, they're just
very worried about their customer and sort of build a
brand in a way that almost felt like not about, you know, even
sort of making money necessarily.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
True. Like it was just, it feels like
everybody's ruled by, you know, optimizing for money these days
it. Yeah, and it really was very
different in that regard. Like so as the 90s wore on and
the web was created, you know, so the web didn't exist before
the early 90s. I mean, the Internet did, but
the web started in the early 90s and the web, the 1st website as
we know it really was probably hotwired.
So at Wired magazine, they were not only writing about this
stuff, but they were also actually inventing the website
as we know it in the banner ad and and other things.
So it was a very kind of creative moment and there was a
lot going on. And so as, as it proceeded
through the 90s, people became aware that like, oh, you know,
maybe there's like money in this.
So that was interesting to, to to some people, certainly, but
it was not really the main driver for most people through
that early period. And it was really more the
possibility of doing something really cool and really
interesting and that, you know, that was the main motivator.
And then in the late 90s you had so Netscape went public and that
sort of in in the mid 90s, I want to say 90, five, I always
get this year mixed up 9495. But Netscape went public and
that was kind of the starting gun for like, Oh my God, you
know, there's money, money to be made.
There's money to be made here. So so that started to change the
dynamic a little bit, right? That was Marc Andreessen's
company. So Marc Andreessen had been a
graduate student at the University of Illinois at the
supercomputer center there. And then together with
colleagues, they had written a web browser called Mosaic, which
sort of advanced the kind of protocols originally developed
by Tim Berners Lee for the World Wide Web.
So there. So the Mosaic browser was the
first tool for mere mortals to use the Internet.
And. And so then Jim Clark, who was a
frustrated entrepreneur who had, who had started Silicon Graphics
and then been kicked out by his board and had a huge chip on his
shoulder about proving himself and he saw the mosaic and he
called Marc Andreessen. Mark came to Silicon Valley.
They agreed to start a company together, originally called
Mosaic Communications, actually, but then for trademark reasons,
they had to change that. There was a lot of litigation
etcetera. It didn't ultimately matter too
much. But so they started Netscape and
that was kind of the first sort of Internet company as as we
think about that did. San Francisco, invite the tech
industry in like you think in the beginning, you know, early
Internet era. It's like industries are dying.
Like was there a sense the city was like please, we need you or
or not? No.
No, no, so, no. So the city was like very
disconnected. You know, one of the strange
things through the whole book is like there's, there's a, there's
quite a bit of disconnect really between the city government and
the industry. So the city was like practically
not even aware of what was going on.
And so there were a lot of people, you know, just
individuals and creative people, techies, different kinds of
artists and stuff who would commandeered like these
abandoned warehouses and soma and stuff.
And they were just kind of doing stuff.
I mean, Wired showed up and these, I mean, South Park was
still kind of a dangerous neighborhood actually back then,
but but you could rent space for $0.50 a square foot.
And so people just kind of started doing stuff.
And the, and the, the reason that it was happening in the
city was because the people who were creating it were the
creative types who wanted to be in the city.
They did not want to be living in boring Silicon Valley
because. And part of this is the Mac and
the idea that you could use a mouse and there are graphical
interfaces and images were going on the Internet.
All of a sudden, what had been sort of the nerdy domain of
chips was now opened up to sort of the designers and other
people in San Francisco. Exactly.
So tech became a somewhat different kind of thing.
It wasn't just about the hard science, about the physics and
the engineering now, about the design and the creative
expression and the writing. You know, the web is, you know,
EV Williams, the CEO of Twitter, said this to me, you know, that
that Silicon Valley was, you know, about chips and, and the
web, you know, was something different.
The web was about writing and arts and expression, you know,
So it was quite different. And that was much more of a San
Francisco zone of expertise, as it were, than than it was in
Silicon Valley. We'll keep in our timeline, but
it is interesting in this present moment, if you're
bullish on sort of AI coding and that means that machines are
more able to be commanded basically with plain English.
You do have to wonder if like, oh, what will happen if
similarly a new set of people is able to sort of shape the
future. Like what, what pockets of the
world will embrace tech in sort of a in a different way?
Yeah, well. I mean, I certainly, you know,
an optimistic case around AI would be that it will, it will
liberate the creative, the creative impulses and, and, and
really elevate creativity above the sort of mere mechanics of
programming a computer. So.
San Francisco city government sort of oblivious to, you know,
that I mean what EFF and people are coming up, you know, all
sort of these people see the Internet coming or doing
creative things, building out forums, building websites.
When we we talked about Netscape going public being the moment
sort of is that when San Francisco sort of wakes up that
there's if there's money, there's a tax base or when's it
start changing? When's it start registering, I
guess with politicians? Yeah, well.
I I think it really was in the in the latter part of the 90s.
So Willie Brown was elected mayor in in 95.
He took office 96. Willie was a was a a brilliant
politic is still he's 91 years old, still a brilliant
politician take. Some of the credit for Kamala
Harris, right? Yeah.
I mean, he was, yeah, she was his protege.
I mean, Willie is responsible for the political careers of
essentially everyone in San Francisco at the moment.
He's. About.
Gavin Newsom is also, I wouldn't call quite call him a Willie
protege, but certainly Willie was instrumental in his in his
rise. Yeah, anyway.
Willie Brown I just wanted to for people I I, I think it's
worth saying you know, San Francisco with the boom of AI is
obviously poised to shape the entire country as we're now
touching on some of the San Francisco politicians could be
coming to you soon, America. So I do think why should you
consume an episode very focused on San Francisco and then go
read a book very focused on San Francisco.
It's because San Francisco is making a lot of the calls that
are going to shape your life. And anyway, so to go back, why
should people care about Willie Brown?
We explained it. It's like, OK, bringing up some
of the big politicians. You were getting into how he
recognized the tech industry. Yeah.
And so Willie, you know, for those who aren't, aren't
familiar with him, I mean, he's probably, you know, among the
greatest politicians in American history, literally.
I mean, he, you know, he was born a poor kid and a segregated
town in Texas and, and from there, you know, rose to be
longtime speaker of the California Assembly before he
was the mayor and very, very powerful, very, very shrewd guy.
Brilliant, brilliant guy. And, and so Willie was elected
mayor in 90, in 95, he took offs in 96.
The boom, the Internet boom started to kind of really take
off in sort of 97. And Willie being a shrewd guy,
started to notice that there was something going on here that he
kind of needed to be aware of a little bit.
And he, he still didn't really understand it really, but he had
a little bit of a sense. And there's a there's a
hilarious story in the book, you know, where so at one point, you
know, some shrewd, like stockbroker at Morgan Stanley
was like, hey, but Mr. Mayor, you know, you want to make a
little money on, on some, you know, dot coms.
And like, this was an era when the so the dot coms were going
public often with very little revenue or much of A business,
but it was a real bubble moment. And so if you could buy shares
at the opening price, that was guaranteed profit.
And so that was kind of used as currency to pay people off in
different ways. So, so this guy was given given
some shares to Willie and he had to report that as part of his
mayoral financial disclosures. And so at first he denied any
special access. He was just another day trader,
you know, it was all pretty, pretty funny.
And he made a little bit of money on that.
But but Willie was, you know, he was shrewd.
So he saw, you know, that that something was coming here and he
started to pay a little bit of attention to the industry.
But it was still, you know, relatively small beer.
Like even in the late, even at the peakofthe.com boom, as a
percentage of the city's economy, it was still fairly
small, you know, maybe 1010%, something like that.
So the, the politicians, you know, mostly, mostly had other
concerns, you know. A fun element of the book.
You start off your reporter at the Los Angeles Times assigned
by now famous Marty Baron to go to San Francisco when many in
the media class didn't get the importance of the tech industry
and it was fairly boring. By.com, you're running, you're
the editor of the Industry Standard, which was one of, if
not the sort of like, for good and bad, synonymous with the.com
bust and boom. What?
Yeah, what? I guess tell us thestoryof.com
through sort of a little bit of the story of your time at the
Industry Standard. OK, sure.
So, so I was working at the LA Times and I was recruited.
I got a call from a recruiter to who is working on behalf of John
Battelle, who was starting a new magazine, a weekly business
magazine about the digital economy.
It didn't have a name at the time.
And he had been been referred to me and he had been hired by
IDGA, big trade publisher to create this new magazine.
So, so I talked to John and he was, you know, he was clearly a
super smart guy and, and it was very controversial decision in a
way to leave the LA Times at that time.
Like, so when I finally decided to take the job, you know,
people looked at me like, is it? Such a good job.
Well, cuz the in the 90s, you know, the LA Times was, was
among the top papers in the country.
You know, big newspapers were the place to be if you were an
ambitious journalist. There were three or four top
papers, New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times.
So if you were an up and Comer with a good job at the LA Times,
you were kind of. On the top track of the
profession. So why would you leave that for
a weird start up trade thing, huh?
What? You know, but it was somewhat
obvious to me, honestly, I was had the chance to build a build
a magazine and I could and I knew that tech was a big story.
I mean, I, I was the tech editor at the LA Times.
I had started a section. I'd convinced the bosses that
tech was really a thing. There would be advertisers and
we should do a little weekly tech section in the paper, which
which we did. It was called the Cutting edge.
I was very proud of that. So I knew there was a big story
there. And, and then, you know, I, I
quite like John after a number of conversations and he hired
me. And so we, so then I went out
and hired a bunch of people. There was a little work going on
with a prototype when I got there and then hired up initial
staff, 15 or 20 people. And it was funny, we launched in
98 in the spring and, and it's, it's hard to get traction for
new magazines. It, it, it's very expensive.
And, and at the beginning, you know, we weren't really going
anywhere. Like the, we didn't have much of
A circulation strategy. IDG didn't want to spend the
money for paid circulation. And, and also it was hard to
compete like we had inexperienced reporters.
We are pretty small. We're trying to compete with the
Wall Street Journal, you know, so like getting the big scoops
that would really put us on the map was not that easy.
So the first six months were kind of a struggle and, and we
were under a lot of pressure from IDG.
Like they were going to shut us down.
They, you know, they didn't like the name.
They didn't, they didn't like a lot of things.
And it became clear that John and Pat McGovern, the owner of
IDG, had very different visions for what this thing would be.
So there was a lot of stress. But then like just kind of
overnight, like we were confident.
We were like, we know this is going to work, you know, And
then just bam, like what was the?
Core story type or what resonated?
Well, you know, the core story type was basically news analysis
about these new.com companies. So there would be, you know, we
would have some scoops on. Oh, you know, here's I remember
one of our early scoops was the formation of a company called
drugstore.com. You know, Kleiner Perkins was
gonna put a bunch of money in and, you know, create this
company, you know, So that was a, that was a big, it was.
Covering the business. It was covering well in at
first, right? It was covering the business of
like the businessof.com, you know, So that was sort of the
heart of it. But then it was part of that
whole thing was the idea that this isn't just about like,
you're gonna have a.com. It's like the Internet is going
to change business as we know it.
That's gonna change everything, you know?
So as we went on, we started to write more about bigger picture
stuff, you know, the Internet and politics and the Internet
and culture and this. What I'm about to use is a
loaded expression in the context of San Francisco.
But did you drink the Kool-aid like was?
Well, you know that. That's a great question because
you know, by disposition and, and, and you know, by
profession, I, I mean, I'm a journalist and I've always been
a skeptical, I've been a skeptical journalist.
I kind of my, my job is to kind of ask questions and, and, and
sort of poke at the soft spots of the story, whatever it is.
And so when I, when I was talking to John about what I
would do if I were editor of this new magazine and I, and I
told him that I thought what was really needed was for a
publication and journalism, they really played against the hype,
you know, because it was all, you know, hype.
But people really want to know like what's real and what's not.
So we positioned as the skeptics, we're going to cut
through the hype. We had like our slogans, like
99.9% hype free. That was what that was one of
our T-shirts, I think, you know, so, and, and if you read the,
you know, the tone of the editorial, I mean, if you read
the magazine from back then, we were very much like that.
You know, we were very tough, very, very critical.
And that formula proved very successful.
People really did like that for the reasons that I thought they
would, which is that when there's tons of hype, you want
to know what's real. And then, but then we were so
successful that we we became a symbol of the hype, right?
So we were like, you're just overspending.
Like what happened like? What did you what?
Did you do well? It was to me employees.
Well, so we had these parties, you know, so we started having
party. We, we had beer and chips for
the staff. So the magazine closed at 2:00
on Friday afternoon. We shipped the last pages and
then we would have beer and chips for the staff on the roof.
Then we started inviting people. Then a lot of people started
coming. Then companies wanted to
sponsor, you know, So then it became like, you know, gourmet
booze and, you know, fancy food sponsored by HP, you know, come
to the rooftop. And then there'd be a line out
the door and then there, you know, then we started having the
rooftop at bigger venues and it's amazing.
That HP has been fueling the events business like course
sponsors. Not not this year, but my
events. It was like such a huge time
gap, I. Remember totally that that one
of the we had a rooftop, A rooftop, standard rooftop at
Bimbos nightclub, which is a very large club, you know, and
this place was packed out, all sponsored by HP, you know, top
shelf booze, you know, everything.
So that stuff, you know, and then we had a conference
business and the conferences also were just tremendously
successful, you know, so we would sell out these
conferences, 3 or $4000 tickets, you know, for three days at a
fancy resort and sponsors paying 100 grand, you know, so it was
very lucrative. And then in association with
that, we would throw huge parties.
You know, we did some really fancy stuff at the conferences.
And. So that so that fed the, you
know, that kind of created the impression, you know, of like,
ah, you know, spending all this money, you know, which we were,
but you know, it was all sponsor money.
What? What is the?
Lesson I need to learn from this or you know what?
How similar does this moment feel to the.com?
I would say it feels a little bit similar.
Yeah, it does feel a little bit similar.
I mean, there's there's, you know, there's a big kind of
disconnect between, you know, the amount of money, you know,
that's going into these companies and the sort of
evidence, you know, business that they have to justify that
amount of money. So, so that certainly feels
quite similar and I feel. Like all this sort of like, I
don't know, decadence gets written in after the fact,
right? Things that just seem sort sort
of normal then when you have to write a narrative are decadent.
I don't know. Do you really think there are
these times that are like drastically more decadent than
others or people just zero in to like this?
I mean, there's some. Better parties.
I, I do think, you know, to me, and maybe I'm just older and not
in, you know, the same, same rooms, but you know, it, I don't
see the, the visible decadence isn't quite as extreme as it was
in the in the.com area. You know, I think people are a
little more conscious of at least, you know, keeping that
inside maybe, you know, the Super decadent parts.
Yeah. Soyouknow.com crashes, but San
Francisco is not so dependent on the tech industry that that sort
of ruins the place or anything. Yeah.
Well, so after 9, you know, 911 Oh I.
Love the I love the moment. What you you were complaining
about your how someone had covered you or something you
asked for like a correction. And then like you said it
September 10th and it's like whatever.
So it captures the moment that like September 11th, you know,
obviously horrible reoriented all culture, but it was sort of
like declare bankruptcy on everything you cared about
before then and just like move on.
What was the what was the quibble or I forget what you
were fighting about? Yeah.
Well, the so when we we went bankrupt with with a loud a
bang, it was quite a surprise to most people, including me.
The we still had a lot of money in the bank.
There was a game of chicken between the two factions on the
board, and I thought surely they would come to an agreement, but
they didn't. And we went bankrupt and the
bankruptcy. So we were a symbol of the end
of the.com era. And so people had, you know, the
the market had crashed in the spring of 2000.
It took about a year for all that to play through.
So by the middle of 2001, like it was just a meltdown out
there, you know, and it was clearthatthe.com party was over.
But there hadn't been a good event to symbolize it, and so we
were that event. So the bankruptcy, the industry
standard became a symbol of the end of the.com era.
And so there was a lot of press. So we have gotten a lot of press
on the way up, you know, the most successful magazine, new
magazine in history, blah, blah, you know.
And so that's fun, you know, and then on the way down, you kind
of get the other side of it. As I say in the book, it was now
our turn in the barrel. And so there was a lot of very
critical press and one story in particular that really pissed me
off, which was a a style section story in the Washington Post by
Sharon Waxman, who now runs the rap.
And and it was just the easiest, like, oh, they blew all their
money on parties and now they're, you know, getting what
they deserve kind of tone and, and it just really, really
rankled. Yeah.
And there were a lot of errors, you know, there, there were a
dozen errors and it you know, and it like relied super heavily
on like low level people who didn't know anything about what
was going on, but who she happened to know, you know, and
then. 9/11 happened. You never got.
It was in the Washington Post. It was in the.
Washington Post and, and I, you know, I wrote this long letter,
you know, about how like, you know, the story was unfair.
Well, the other thing that made me really mad actually, was that
this was really the real thing. Is that a principle that I've
always adhered to as a journalist?
Is that anonymous blind quote, like blind quotes that are
personally critical of someone are not allowed, you know, So if
you want to be a, if you want to be personal about somebody's bad
actions, you got to put your name behind it.
And so the story was full of anonymous quotes from IDG
executives blaming me and John for the failure, like they owned
the company, you know, and blaming management, you know.
So anyway, so I was very upset about that.
And so I wrote this long letter to the Washington Post so that
you could at least correct these factual errors.
And but then 911, so the tech. Industry loves to talk about
this idea that whenever you see the media cover the thing you
actually know a lot about, you become disillusioned with media.
And in some ways this is sort of what you're saying.
You got covered and you were disillusioned.
There was another moment in the book.
Let's step out of time in archaeology here for a second.
Where you're at Burning Man, which is another big character
in or place of importance in the book outside of San Francisco,
but created and populated by San Francisco people.
And, you know, there's like terrible, like mud storm where
like there it rains really badly and then there's so much mud and
everybody who wanted to get out early was sort of inconvenience.
But the media makes it seem like people are like starving and all
the rich people are suffering. And and it basically was one of
these cases where like don't let a good story get in the way of
the facts sort of situation. It's like, oh, people want the
shortened fraud and don't really reporters don't don't check it
too good, too good to check. I don't know, like you're
professionally in media yet in these two sort of pivotal
moments where you're in the news, you're, you know, you have
a negative experience. Like, I don't know what is what
is your gloss on sort of such a big question?
I'm trying to narrow it for you. But yeah, what do you make of
those 22 incidents, Right? Well, I think that, you know,
certainly in the, I mean, the first instance I think of really
as just a good lesson in sort of feeling, you know, as a
journalist, it was it was very educational to be on the other
side of it and not. All media is the same, like some
of the coverage was fair and some was well.
Exactly, And and so that was really more my you know, my take
away was not that Oh my God, you know, the media is all fucked
up. But but more like, yeah, you
know, this can really turn against you sometimes in in ways
that you don't expect and you can't really control.
And and that's very frustrating and kind of upsetting.
You know, I thought that on bounce.
You know, as I think I also mentioned in there, you know,
there was that story that I hated.
But, you know, the, the Wall Street Journal did a very long
story about, you know, the, the, the end by Matthew Rose, who's
still around. And that was a very good story.
You know, it was very accurate. It was, it was a little painful
to read, but you know, it was accurate.
You know, the Burning Man thing, you know, I, I see as a little
bit like, I guess I draw a distinction in, in, in media
terms there. There's sort of the kind of mass
market, you know, popular media around, you know, television and
celebrities and this kind of stuff, which which is not
something that I've been too involved in.
And, you know, I've always considered that to be a like a
slightly different realm of from the journalism that I do.
And, and I think in the case of Burning Man, it was very much
kind of caught up in that sort of, oh, that sort of celebrity
media world, you know, where the facts aren't really the point,
you know, and, and so that kind of stuff is, is not not very
inspiring to to see I. I want in our chronology, let's
skip to sort of Twitter's rise because Twitter becomes very
important to San Francisco. What that's where?
Is this like 2014 era or Yeah. Sort of early 2000 tens, yeah,
yeah. Why?
Why is Twitter in particular, such an important company for
the city of San Francisco? Well, there are several reasons.
First of all, it was actually the biggest of the, I mean, it
was the the biggest Internet. In the city.
You know they. Didn't build it in San
Francisco. Based was not.
In, you know, it was S, you know, Google was S, you know, so
so Twitter was, was actually in the city.
So that was significant. And also, you know what, what
Twitter was, I mean, it was and what their kind of philosophy
was early on, you know, where the free speech wing and the
free speech. And we're going to give, you
know, a means of expression to oppressed peoples around the
world. And we're going to enable the
Arab Spring and we're going to enable the social justice
movement. And so all of these things were
kind of very consistent with San Francisco values.
So, so the company was kind of a good fit for the city and in
that way and kind of expressed a certain political zeitgeist of
the city. And then it also became a kind
of a physical symbol around its building because the the
building and the negotiation around that building resulted in
a a deal with the city where the city granted a tax break for
companies to to locate in that part of the city.
And that became known as the Twitter tax break.
Twitter was at the center of that discussion.
So that's. When that?
Helped them really become a symbol of San Francisco, San.
Francisco is sort of inviting tech in.
It's like if you're giving tax breaks, you want the tech
industry there. Well, correct.
And so later on, so again in the night, you know, it was a
progression. So in the 90's the industry kind
of grew up and the book reflects us.
So the book at the beginning is sort of more about the growth of
the Internet and the the the, the rise of the San Francisco
tech community and has a little bit less to do with the
politics. And then the politics come more
later on, because as once you're big.
And there's money to be had. Then the politicians start.
Yeah, exactly. So then it starts to become a
thing, you know, and it's a big industry.
So that started to happen in the in the 2000s.
So. So Newsom was mayor during the
2000s. And Newsom, you know, he saw the
tech coming and he wanted to do certain things, but citywide
wireless was one of his big ideas.
So I write about this in the book and and Gavin, you know,
he's he's he's he's an idea volcano as somebody who I spoke
to called him and he's he's a smart guy and he has a lot of
ideas. He's very bad at the follow
through. So that was pretty
characteristic. So there is no free citywide
wireless and, and many of the other programs that he was
excited about didn't, didn't really happen, but it certainly
was becoming clear in the 2000s that tech and, and this was sort
of the Web 2.0 era, I guess. And, and then at the end of the
2000s, you really had this new wave of companies starting to
come up and that sort of coincided with the Great
Recession. So there was a funny dynamic
there where the all the, a lot of the jobs in banking and
finance and stuff were going away.
The city was really hurting, actually the city.
Become Wells Fargo, Bank of America.
Wells Fargo was important to the city, Yeah.
They were very, very important and you know, Schwab and other,
you know, financial services was it was big thing.
And so the great financial crisis hurt the city in that
regard and and tourism, you know, was down.
People didn't have money. But then sort of underneath
that, without people noticing too much, you know, the, the
tech was really starting to, to boil.
And then that really started to explode in 2010, two, 1011,
where you had a whole new wave of companies.
So then you had, you had Twitter and you had Facebook.
Google was getting huge. And even though Google wasn't in
the city, a lot of people, a lot of Google employees lived in the
city. And then and then you had in
kind of 2002 thousand, 2010 and 11, you had Uber, Airbnb,
Dropbox, you know, so then you have the whole kind of next wave
of of companies that grew up in the 2000 tens.
There's a lot of them associated with their smartphone and what
that enabled now. We're in the era of the open a
eyes and anthropics and the labs are, I mean, literally now we.
Have now we have another wave. You know, you can think of it as
like the you know there was the first wave around the rise of
the web. Then you had you had kind of a
the web 2 point O phase, the rise of blogging, which you know
was very interesting. There was a lot of interesting
things happening, although it wasn't quite such a big boom.
Then you have the next kind of big boom around the smartphone
in the 2000 tens. Then you had COVID and so forth.
And now we're in kind of the AI boom, which is yet another era
of of growth the I. Mean the housing market in San
Francisco is insane are we do is this sort of a Twitter or an X
invention or you think it's real.
I feel like I see all these listings where housing is like,
you know, houses in San Francisco are going for, I don't
know, 50% above their value or something.
Yeah, well, they're all these. AI employees are getting, yeah.
There's a huge amount of money coming in, you know, at the, at
the sort of the high end. And, you know, San Francisco's a
small city. There hasn't been that much
construction, so there isn't that much inventory.
And, you know, suddenly, you know, if you have, you know, if,
if, if 500 people make enough money, suddenly have enough
money to buy, you know, a $10 million house, you know, that's
going to change the market. It doesn't take that many
people, you know, at that, at those kinds of price points
'cause there just aren't that many houses, you know, and the
city has done a terrible job. I mean, one of the big crises in
San Francisco is that there hasn't been enough housing
instruction for decades. So there's very little
inventory. And so when you get, you know,
an influx of money and influx of people, as you have now with the
AI, you know, it's just really sent prices through the roof,
both rental and sale prices. And that's a real problem for
the city because it, it, it drives out everyone else.
And you know, the service workers, you know, you need the
service workers both because you need people to work in the
restaurants and, and and so forth.
But also like the service workers are often a part of the,
of the cultural economy, right? So it's, it's kind of a cliche
about the, you know, the actor who's waiting tables in the
restaurant, right? But that that's a real thing,
you know, So if, if that, if that person, you know, can't get
the job in the restaurant and there's and and they, you know,
theater business is sort of soft like that person is going to
move and and then you know this. Is adjacent to sort of the, I
think where we might have some disagreement or where I'm
interested to tease out. I mean, I think, you know,
there's an argument in the book, basically, you know, in the
beginning of the Internet, the government sort of funded it.
It was these quirky researchers doing fun stuff.
There wasn't that much money to be made.
They just literally one of the characters in the book wants to
go to raves and do drugs. You know, it's like, how do I
invite people to do rave, go to raves and do drugs?
Like I'll post about it online. Email's not enough.
We need forums, you know, and they're so you're having like
fun and then, you know, we build real businesses and it's sort of
the businesses, I guess, suck out some of the like creativity
and like San Francisco Ness of it all do.
Why? Why do you think sort of the
businesses are sort of killing that sort of spark of joy and
creativity? Like that's still possible, Like
those people can still go and be creative.
Maybe it's more expensive to do in San Francisco, so you move
somewhere else. I guess, you know, I to me it
reads more just like the ebbs and flows of culture or like
people feel driven to do certain things at a given moment.
It's like nobody's stopping sort of a creative, quirky person
from doing creative quirky stuff today.
They're just different sort of cultural moments or.
Yeah. Well, that I mean, yeah, you
could certainly, certainly argue that, you know, I think that the
the incentive structures are very are very different.
And you know, these days, if you're, if you're kind of an
entrepreneur, if, if you're not optimizing for being successful
as a, as a start up and the funding and all of that and the
growth and all, you know, the whole package of what you need
to be a VC funded startup. Like if you're not doing that,
then you're sort of not a serious person.
You know, then you're just, oh, you're just a, oh, it's just a
lifestyle business or oh, it's just a, you know, you're not
really enough to win it. And so not, not a serious
person. So there So there's there's kind
of a a disrespect towards non entrepreneurial endeavors.
So, you know, making, you know, making money with your start up
is sort of the prestige thing to do and everything else is just
kind of for the lightweights, you know, so that so that I
think is different and in an earlier era it's shaped.
The culture. The culture has become this
pressure to build a better and Better Business.
Or. Fundraising vehicle, Yeah.
Well, and, and you know, when I, and this is of course super
anecdotal, it's very, it's very hard to prove, but, but just in
my casual interactions, you know, the, the young, you know,
the 20 somethings, they're like really focused on like making
this thing work, you know, I mean, they're like, you know,
grinding and they want the money and they want, you know, and
that's like, that's really a very intense thing and 9:00. 96
now, yeah. 996 and you know no time for sex and no time for
drinking and no time you know and again, like some of this can
be a cliche in its own right and you know I, I don't want to be
too categorical about the universal truth of it, but but I
think that is a is a thing at this moment that the success in
business like making your money it's like now's the moment you
know the AI is coming so if you don't do it now like forget it,
you know and you and you better get there now 'cause like the
kid behind you it's like the last period of the day it's like
if. You don't make money now you're
life's over here. Exactly.
And, and, and I think that, you know, 20 years years ago, it
wasn't really like that, you know, like you were excited
about your startup, but like it was also like, yeah, I'm going
to Burning Man, you know. And so like, you know, if we
have to do that after Burning Man, no biggie.
You know, like that, you know, it was just a slightly different
but significant, I sort of subtle but substantial
difference I would say in the in the sort of the attitude of the
priority of of kind of making money versus like the rest of
life, you know. The I want to get into like the
San Francisco politics of it all.
I mean, there's a great and and it collides with this sort of
capitalism issue we're talking about.
But you have like an amazing synthesis right in the beginning
of the book. You know, San Francisco has
always occupied a special place in the national psyche.
The mythic fog shrouded city on the edge of the continent,
mesmerizing its beauty, founded by fortune seekers and
freethinkers, the birth place of the counterculture and pretender
to the title of the greatest city in the world.
And then you're sort of like, OK, what?
What what a political streak is sort of undermining that.
For the right, San Francisco is exhibit #1 for the argument that
progressive policies on crime and drugs have ruined Democratic
run cities. Among moderate Democrats, San
Francisco is a great example of the failures of anti growth
liberalism as outlined in the abundance theory popularized by
journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.
The progressive left has its diagnosis too.
If only the tech companies and the billionaires weren't so
greedy, there'd be plenty of resources to solve social
problems like homelessness. So which camp are you most
sympathetic to? Yeah.
Well, you know, when I started this book, I knew that there was
going to be a lot of pressure to to blame somebody to, to decide,
you know, it's it's it's always easier when you have good guys,
bad guys, you know, it's their fault.
And I found it very difficult to do that in all honesty.
And, and, you know, they say that, you know, success has many
fathers, you know, and, and you know, in the same way, I think
in this case, like there's plenty of blame to go around,
you know, so, so I, I really do think that that each of the, you
know, this is an unsatisfying answer to the question, but I,
but I think that each of the camps, you know, has a lot to
answer for in terms of, of how they've, you know, really not
met the moment and, and some of these challenges.
What? What is the biggest like failure
in San Francisco? Like, I mean, I'm the abundance
zone, so I'm, I would say a failure to build, but there are
lots of people. If you're, if you're in the
degrowth category, I don't know if you stay out of the
Tenderloin and don't go downtown, San Francisco's pretty
great for the people who can afford it.
I don't know what what is your core critique?
What has been the failure? Well.
I, you know, I think the biggest failure of San Francisco is the,
is the inability of the factions to work together better.
And, and that, you know, because it is a it is a very wealthy
city and the there is a lot of consensus actually around a lot
more than you would sort of think based on reading the
headlines, you know, about some basic kinds of issues.
But the political factions are kind of so dug into their
positions, you know, that they won't work together.
And that is very, very damaging to the city.
And I think that, you know, an example of it that I use in the
book is that in terms of the fentanyl problem, right?
So, so drugs are are are very, very tough issue.
It's very tough issue to deal with, right?
You know, many cities, countries, you know, struggled
with these problems, right? So you have a fentanyl crisis,
people dying in the streets, three people a day.
And and so you have on the right, it's like, well, we just
need, you know, law and order, just throw everyone in jail, you
know, just more cops on the streets, you know, and that'll
be that, you know, and then on the other side of the spectrum,
you have no, you know, these people are victims and they're
sick and we need treatment and we need compassion and, you
know, da, da, da. And so those are the entrenched
camps now, you know, it is to me, just screamingly obvious
that the solution such as one, you know, first of all, there's
no like solution there. There's like solutions, you
know, ways to mitigate, try to work on the problem lies
somewhere in the middle. You need some law enforcement
and you need some compassion together.
And so they had a program called lead a law enforcement assisted
diversion, where they had cops and social workers working
together to help the most troubled of these addicts.
And but the thing fell apart because the the cops didn't want
to work with, you know, where like the social workers are like
you, you know, bleeding hearts, you know, don't know that these
people are just criminals and you know why we don't even want
to deal with you. And then the social workers
like, yeah, law enforcement is no answer.
You know, we're you pigs. We're not going to work with
you, you know, and and so they wouldn't, they refused to
cooperate. And so the program fell apart.
So so to me that that is a huge failing.
So is, I mean the book, you know, the epilogue is Daniel
Lurie, the current mayor, but is mostly focused on pre him.
Does he just he's solving all these problems.
He's the most popular mayor in America.
So if there's ever going to be consensus, will he have it or
what? What is your read so far on his
morality? Well.
I think that he has done very well precisely on this point.
So he's kind of been able to get a little bit of a like, hey, we
actually all kind of agree on certain basic things.
So let's kind of can we just kind of do those things for
starters. And that's like, you know, the
encampments, for example. So, you know, even now, you
know, the left and the, a lot of the social workers, you know,
feel that the sweeping of encampments is, you know, a
nasty thing to do to the people who live there.
But if you, you know, in the city, like people are like, no,
you know, clearly it's not OK if people live on the sidewalk in
tents, you know, So, you know, they've swept the done a lot of
sweeping the encampments. That's been pretty popular for
the most part. And, and I think that they've
been, you know, at the same time done some things on the other
side with more treatment and more shelters and not, you know,
not been too harshly, you know, kind of clamped down about it.
So, so I think he's done a good job with sort of the low hanging
fruit, but the big tests are still are still to come.
So he's very popular right now. He's got, he's got a very
popular man. You know, he's got a good
manner. He shows up everywhere, for
every ribbon cutting. He smiles, he tells.
Everybody, he likes him. He's like, like, you miss this
genial? I like the left he likes.
Everybody, he's very genial, he's very consistent in that
manner. So it's hard for people to grab
on to something to dislike about him, you know, so, so I think
he's done a good job. You know, it helps him to be a
billionaire, honestly. Like, I, I think that, you know,
Trump somehow isn't fucking with him very much, maybe because
he's also a rich guy and Trump hasn't, he just has like.
Totally avoided the ice fight. He like, yeah, he's.
Avoided the ice fight you know the the the Presidio thing you
know Trump was making noises like he was really going to try
to dismantle the Presidio trust and sell off some of that
property but that that isn't happening I mean they just
appointed the new presidio trust board with Lynn Benioff on there
and Trevor trainer I mean that they're not dismantling anything
so I. Wanted to zooming on Wired
specifically. I literally had Katie Drummond,
the global editorial director on I think the podcast that will
run before this one that I've already recorded.
You know, recently Trey Stevens at Founders Fund joked about
acquiring it. You wrote in Newcomer sort of
about that whole incident and Wired is sort of a character in
the book. What is your view on how much
you know? I don't know.
Wired today is betraying the founding origins of the
publication and like give give us sort of your your gloss on on
the publication's evolution. Well, I think that Wired has
evolved in a almost inevitable way, you know, back one thing
that's very important to remember in thinking about this
history is that back in the 90s when Wired was created and when
there was this kind of effervescent optimism that I,
that I talk about, you know, the tech industry was very small.
It was. It was an.
Underdog. It was an.
Underdog, yeah, and relative, you know, the big industries
were like oil, you know, and and banking, like those were the big
industries. You know, tech was kind of this
smallish weird dish, you know, thing like important, but it's
not like the banks, you know. And and so that was it was a
very different thing. And so in those days, you know,
it was much, yeah. It was more of a, of a kind of
an underdog, you know, feeling so, so now, you know, you have a
tech industry which is like so big and so dominant and, you
know, has control of, you know, so many aspects of our lives,
you know, that it that it's just by nature is going to shift the
relationship. So, so back in the 90s, Wired
was championing the, you know, these, these idiosyncratic
technologists, you know, people, you know, thinking outside of
the box. We're going to remake the world
with these new technologies. And it's a, you know, it's a
glorious moment of, you know, reinvention led by these kind of
fascinating idiosyncratic freethinkers, right?
So nowadays, you know, you can't frame the tech industry that
way. Like it isn't about that.
You know, it's it's like the tech industry is not run by if
your publication. Is cheers for underdog
freethinkers. Those same people would not have
the same view of the tech industry today.
Exactly. You know, so now the tech
industry is not renegade free thinkers.
The tech industry is like super rich billionaires, you know,
with enormous power and political power and all kinds of
other stuff. So, so you can't like, you know,
Marc Andreessen would have been a hero, you know, of Wired in
1994 or and was, I guess, I don't remember exactly, but you
know, he would be the type of guy who was a hero in 94.
But nowadays, like, how would that guy be?
How would he be a hero exactly? Like one of the richest guys in
the world? Like he's not an underdog.
He's not a renegade. He's not, you know, he's just
like, he's like a rich guy, you know?
You know, we did the heroic act you wanted.
We built the great thing like and now everybody hates us for
it, you know, or what do you make of that?
Like I do Well they. Haven't built the great they
built the they built, they built the thing that benefits them,
you know, but it, but it, you know, they've gotten rich, but
what's it done for the rest of us?
You know, and, and so I, I mean, and I'm not saying that's a I'm
being sarcastic in a way. You know, there's plenty of
answers to that question, but they have not articulated those
answers. You know they have.
The tech industry leadership is not sold to the people.
Why? You know what they're bringing
is going to be good. Exactly.
We literally started this episode talking about Eric
Schmidt talking about AI and getting booed.
I mean, they're not doing a good job selling it.
I mean, and I think the question is, you know.
And and to go well and to go back to Wired because I think
that I think that's a good point.
And I don't know how Katie, you know, might have responded to
this, but it is certainly true that wired in the early days,
you know, was celebrated tech and wired these days is often
very critical. Now, to me, that's a that's a
kind of a natural evolution. But if you sort of say, well, is
wired the same thing as it was then does it represent the same
thing? Well, not exactly, no.
I mean it's. Clearly more political.
I mean, she didn't embrace totally.
I think she agreed with this line of argument somewhat.
But I think she is sort of casting about for the Renegades
and sort of people to be cheered for.
I think she sees the critique of like, oh, we need to work on
projects that that find sort of people we will designate as
heroes. But obviously she's very proud
of and should be proud of Wired's work on stuff like Doge
and sort of failures of Elon's renegade boys to find government
waste and just sort of the chaos they caused.
So, I mean, I think she's they're, you know, believes
they're doing important work, but is sort of working also on
pieces to find some of the optimism.
Yeah. Well, and interestingly, within
Wire, there's always been a tension between the liberal and
the libertarian within Wired. And so Lewis Rossetto, the
founder, you know, he was much more libertarian and and he
would actually agree with the, I fairly sure would agree with the
Trey Stevens critique. Like he thinks that Wired, you
know, Lewis has kind of gone to the right and he believes that
Wired today does not represent what you know, what he's
celebrated. And even Kevin Kelly weighed in
on Trey Stevens thing and said, oh that would be a very wired
thing to do to buy wired. I mean, I do think, you know,
I'm, I think fairly sympathetic to the tech industry, but if you
look at, you know, Facebook had some of these sort of San
Francisco, it sold the world on connecting everybody.
And obviously, you know, I do think people are connected over
Facebook, but I don't know that part of the message was, you
know, get all your political takes from your aunt or
whatever, you know, and and then, you know, the sharing
economy, which I really lived through, I really don't think
delivered on the message that it's like some guy with a car
making a little side money. Like mostly drivers there
professional. It feels like most Airbnbs you
go to, it is their job. And so again, you have the tech
industry embracing sort of. A creative framing, you know,
the Airbnb guys are like designers, but then once it
scales you realize it's sort of a nice story on top of what
feels like a less sort of societally mind bending, acid
tripping business. And yet again, we find ourselves
here with AI. You know, it, it, it leads to a
bad path on where things are going.
But right now we're in the fun. You know, you have your clawed
bot and you're like doing, I don't know, you're hacking
together websites. I don't know what.
What do you take from that journey we've been on?
Well. You know, we were talking a
little bit before about the, you know, the role of the role of
capital and venture capital. And you know, and I do think
that in the sharing economy, it's kind of an example of where
if you if you're really pushing, you know, to optimize for for
profit, like then that takes you in certain directions that you
wouldn't necessarily have to go, right.
So in other words, a service like Airbnb, like there is a
thing there that would be what it's purported to be, right?
Like friends, you know, just people making a little extra
money on their room and, you know, travelers saving a little
money and having a more personal, you know, natural
experience. And like, there's a business in
doing that. It's just not as good a
business, not as lucrative a business, as the business of
like professional operators renting apartments and renting
them out. I feel like there's this world,
it's not just like the mean money sort of forces that are
doing it. Like the left.
There's certain things in the book, right?
Like you read like like do drugs and like talk about it to your,
you know, it's just like some of the things that were wild and
fun, like the left culture wouldn't allow either.
And like having the, you know, Lyft tried to be the more like
random guy with a car. And in some ways it's like
that's pretty dangerous. And like there's something good
about a professional and like some of the bad Airbnb
experiences are like, man, the host just wants to talk to me
the whole time. And like there, there are
certain things where like some of the some of those examples
are examples where like left culture itself doesn't
necessarily want to sustain the wacking weird thing at scale.
Like you can trust it in sort of a small experiment, but once
it's becoming sort of societal wide litigious sort of culture
of of like that, I would put more on the left also sort of
sands that down. Like so these things just sort
of get sanded down to a version that like the markets can
sustain and that like you just can't scale sort of like wild
unhinged relationships. Or what do you take of the
critique that there are pieces of the left that are also sort
of sanding down? Yeah, I would you.
Know, I think I think that's I think that's fair you know, that
the you know, the left kind of you could say generically
there's sort of a prioritization of kind of safety, you know,
which would lead to a kind of conservative approach to certain
things. So I think that's AI think
that's a fair criticism. And you know, I would point to,
I mean, Craigslist, right, So that that's something in in the
book. I mean, to the extent they're
heroes in the book, right, Craig would be a hero.
You know Brian, Brian Bellendorf, you don't.
Shame, just keep it out. What?
Well, you're good and don't over extract.
But the thing that that I find awesome about Craig's story is
that, you know, he was just like, no, like, no, I'm, I'm not
gonna take the money because it's not my main.
It's not my thing. Like I've, I've got enough money
and I don't need the money. And if I take the money, I'm
going to have to do a bunch of shit that I don't want to do.
And I'm going to have to make the service something that I
don't want it to be. And so I'm just not going to do
it. And so he didn't do it and he
kept the thing the way it was. And, you know, he gets a lot of
criticism from for like not modernizing the service, but you
know, there's millions and millions of people who like it
just the way it is. And, and his insight actually
was that, you know, well, it's not really an insight, but he's
the only one whoever acted on it, which is that people don't
like change, so I'm not going to change it.
And, and Craig, you know, and The funny thing is that so
Craigslist still works. It's still the best place to get
certain things in a lot of cities.
You know, it depends, but you know, it still works.
It's still basically free. And Craig has made like a
billion dollars. Go read City on the Edge.
It's amazing. We don't read enough these days,
especially in the tech industry. Go read a book.
The amazing thing about reading history, and this history in
particular is, Yeah, you you remember that you fall victim to
the wins of your time and that there were other times they were
also awesome, where they think differently.
And if you really want to think different in the tech industry,
you have to sort of be aware of history.
And I think that's one of the things, honestly, that was Steve
Jobs was, you know, a liberal arts person, someone who really
had a sense of history. And I think one of the failings
of this current moment in the tech industry is just people
sort of myopically in their own time without that sense of
history. So go read, see On the Edge.
It is a very readable, enjoyable book and story.
And I think you will have a sense of perspective that will
be gained. And so thank you for joining us
on the show and giving us a taste of what is to be found
inside the book. Well.
Thank you, Eric. Thank you very much.
And if I would just add one last thing that kind of plays into
your point here, I think. And one thing that I'm very
proud of about the book is that I think it kind of weaves
together a story of the rise of the industry and the evolution
of the politics and the evolution of the culture and
shows how those things really interrelate with one another.
And I hopefully that's a unique contribution of the book.
So great. Thank you very much for coming
on the show. All right.
Thank you. That's.
Our conversation. If you want to see more of what
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This is the newcomer podcast. Thanks so much.