Katherine Druckman (11s): Welcome back to reality. 2.0, I'm Katherine druckman. Today. We are talking to Shawn Powers. I have doc Searls with me as always. And Shawn Powers. You should know because he's been on the podcast several times. And if you followed me or doc, you've probably seen Shawn around. I don't know where, but you've probably seen him. You might've seen him recently. You might've seen him on floss weekly. You might've also read his articles back in the day on Linux journal that you might have seen some of his other creative posts around the internet. And what I hope you've seen is something we're going to talk about today. And that is his new web comic, but we're also going to talk about some other things. Katherine Druckman (52s): So stick around, we're going to kind of get Doc Searls (56s): For the sponsor we don't have right after these words. Katherine Druckman (1m 1s): You totally could have maybe in theory. Yeah. So we're going to talk about, we're going to talk about some different ways to think about our relationship with web browsers and platforms and stuff. So we're going to get to that a little bit later, but first, before we get into some of the fun conversation, I wanted to remind everybody that we have a newsletter because I keep doing that and y'all keep signing up. So thanks for that. You can go to reality to cast.com. That is the number two in the URL, and there's a link to sign up for a newsletter. So please do that because we, we send out links that are sort of supplementary material to the podcast and just a few observations here and there. And if you've got last week, you saw a little snippet from Shaun's Shaun's web comic that we're totally going to talk about. Katherine Druckman (1m 46s): So Shawn, so we'll first, let me just a tiny bit of background. It's called my big round world. Shawn Powers (1m 53s): Yes, it's it's my big round world and the characters are squares because that's just how clever I Katherine Druckman (1m 59s): Am. That's how you roll. I mean, Shawn Powers (2m 1s): I roll. I see. What are you going to have other geometric characters know the nice thing is I'm the God of this world. So whatever it is, I decide it's going to be cannon becomes Canon. So I honestly don't know most probably not because the reason my characters are all squares is because I have zero artistic talent and squares are fairly simple to draw. Katherine Druckman (2m 26s): So, so that's, you know, that's an interesting question, but before I go into that interesting question, I just want to point out that it is my big round world.com. You can find it there. Yes. You can find it there also on Twitter. Yeah. Shawn Powers (2m 38s): Everywhere. Yeah. Twitter. And oddly enough, you can look me up exactly. Sean Powers with the zero, but oddly enough, most places had my big round world available. It's like twitter.com forward slash my big round world. facebook.com/my big round world. Apparently wasn't the common thing. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. So speaking Katherine Druckman (3m 0s): Of having artistic talent, which is not really true, actually, because I, you know, I would argue that the, having a specific skill of being able to draw realistically is not really necessary to having artistic talent, but I'll let you, I'll let you take it, interpret it. Shawn Powers (3m 20s): Yeah. So it is, it's a little ironic because, so I've been a trainer at CBT nuggets for over a decade. And when we do training, we, we draw on a whiteboard as we're demonstrating stuff and we'll use characters or whatever that we draw. And I've, it's literally the thing in the office and the headquarters for the whole company that Shawn is the absolute worst drawer illustrator of all the trainers they've ever had. They comically say, if you need something really horrible, see if Sean will draw it. I mean, it's, it's been that bad. So me having a web comic before any other trainers is pretty great. I got to admit, Katherine Druckman (3m 57s): But it's not really about, I mean, is it about the drawing it's really about the inspiration and the message. Yeah. Shawn Powers (4m 3s): And on a serious note, I didn't think that that was going to be the case. I thought that in order to have an entertaining web comic, it would have to be, you know, realistic or, or compelling or something. I mean, I think of all of my favorite web comics and even like XKCD is very simplistic with his stick figures, but they're fairly elaborate stick figures with fairly elaborate scenes and everything. So I just never thought that I would be able to do it, but it turns out that as long as the message is there and there's a little bit of humor and a little bit of a, you know, something to think about, it can be compelling. I think, Katherine Druckman (4m 42s): I think they work. And I feel like I'm qualified to say that because I have, you know, too much art education, but anyway, but yes, I think they totally work and I'm, you know, I'm really enjoying them. And what I think, what I think is most interesting and why I think this is frankly worth a lot of conversation is that I think that it is a, it allows you to take a completely take on events or, or, or the way you see the world or whatever it is in a way that you wouldn't feel comfortable with otherwise. Or, you know, you can, you can observe things through your characters that you, you just wouldn't be able to otherwise. And I think that's, that's kind of fun and it's liberating. Katherine Druckman (5m 23s): I think I suspect Shawn Powers (5m 25s): It's an interesting media for me and you're absolutely right. Like social social issues. Right. For example, one, one of the comics I tried to address systemic racism. I mean, it's pretty heavy topic for a web comic. Right. And the, the squares made comments that while I don't think are offensive, I don't know how I could say it as Shawn Powers, even Shawn Powers like on a Twitter feed and have it be something that wouldn't make somebody very uncomfortable, but in a web comic, there was just enough humor And just enough seriousness that it was like, Oh, and it was enjoyable. Shawn Powers (6m 4s): So yeah, I have to read it. I don't want to read the comic over on the podcast, but you know, there's, there's some heavy, there's some heavy issues that I don't know when they're approached with a lighthearted kind of attack. I think you still get the message across, but people aren't turned off her or upset. Katherine Druckman (6m 21s): Yeah. You don't always have to bang people over the head to communicate a message. And, and as, I mean, nobody's going to say that we're going to solve anything and for a little an illustrated frames, but, but I think, you know, it it's worth noting that you can initiate a real conversation through a fairly simple piece of humor. I mean, I, you know, I think, or at least you can initiate some interesting thoughts Doc Searls (6m 47s): As long as you can work irony in there. You've got some humor or at least the risk that it will be humorous, meaning you have to have at least one meaning maybe two, maybe more. And, and I think all, I mean, it, it's an interesting theory. I say, call it a theory because they're not sure it's true. Which says that all comedy is complaint and, and it's true. I mean, do you listen to Seinfeld or you listen to, you know, pretty much anybody. And most of it is in fact complaint is it's his observations about what's, what's ironically, you know, networking in the world or something like that, but I'm not sure it's all that. I think that some of it is just that's that's cool. Doc Searls (7m 30s): You know, or that's, you know, I mean, I I've actually thought here's my idea for, for a web comic, nothing but a headstone per day, you know, and the first one says, damn, I was almost finished there all they have different epitaphs and other ones that's mine, you know, and that's what I want another is, sorry, sorry. I'm on mute or pardon my daisies, or move a little to the left. If you don't mind, you know, just a different one every day when you start getting volunteer ones. And every one of those is funny because you play with death. Right. You know, so, and I think that's basically what you want to get toward, you know, I mean, even you, you, you, you, you know, I mean, you've got, you've got a square peg in a round world there, Shawn. Shawn Powers (8m 15s): Right. That's kind of the point, I think that complaint. So it's funny you say complaining because this is the first week. Right. But ever. So my plan is every Saturday, there's going to be just a single frame comic on Saturdays, because I want to take a little easy on Saturday and it's just gonna be blues. Grievances blue is the name of the main character. And it's just going to be just a complaint about something in a single frame. So it's funny that you say that, but I think that what really compels me when I'm reading web comics is if I identify with whatever is being talked about, right. So blue and in my strip is me. I mean, not obviously it's, you know what, I'm the character. Shawn Powers (8m 56s): And he Thinks the way I think, but things like once the pandemic is over that, I'm going to be a little bit sad that I have to go out and see people. I mean, that's, it's funny, but also actually it's like, I was kind of getting used to my own company here as who was it that said, hell is other people. I forget who that was. Katherine Druckman (9m 19s): We're settling in and getting in our groove. We're going to make me interact. Shawn Powers (9m 23s): Yeah, exactly. So funny, but also like, Oh yeah, yeah. I feel that. Or one of my favorite comics is dyno, man. It's the dynos and kind of introduced me. Oh yeah. And it's just great. I love it. And a lot of them are funny, but more than anything, they really make you identify with the characters, you know, like they'll be sad or they'll, you know, have emotional hangups that like, Oh yeah, that's me, you know, that's sort of a thing. So I think really identifying yourself in silly characters is, is compelling. We like to see ourselves in things. And I think that's where web comics really shine. Katherine Druckman (10m 2s): So, you know, one of my favorites is, is the oatmeal. We already talked about XKCD. I think that goes without saying, it's awesome. But the oatmeal also very, very good. And, and it can cover something very simple, very funny, whatever, you know, cat vomit, but it can also be very serious. Like I don't, if you want to seriously cry, like all day long, read the one about dogs. I can't even talk about what it's about or else I'll like lose it ramble. Yes. Shawn Powers (10m 32s): Okay. I just want to interject here that, right. When you said about cats, vomiting, my wife texted me, the cat just threw up all over the couch and I'm not making that up. She literally texted that to me Katherine Druckman (10m 43s): First. You, yeah. Anyway, but basically it's about how the tragic lifespan of a dog and that sucks. It sucks. It sucks anyway, moving on. But you know, it's but experience, it's experiencing it through a web comic. It it's a, you know, it's a proxy that allows you to, to explore ideas or emotions that you're, that are comfortable. And, you know, I think that's, that's, you know, not a bad thing. Shawn Powers (11m 12s): I think it's important when public people talk about like their mental health issues and, and that's more and more common. Now we see people talking about issues that they have, but a comic is a way that we can recognize that at least the same issues that we're struggling with exist, right. We're not alone in the universe. Like whoever that comic artist is at least understood enough to make a comic about something that I'm struggling with. And they made it enjoyable by poking fun at themselves, or by poking fun at something. And you know, it has to be, it has to be lighthearted, I guess it doesn't have to be because like you said, sometimes you cry it reading web comics, but, Katherine Druckman (11m 48s): And read that one. Can't do it. It's like the, it's like the future I'm episode that we will, we don't ever, but I'll tell you the name, Jurassic bark. That's all you need to know. Do I want to say, cause I'll completely lose it, but yeah. Anyway, it's very sad. Yeah. So, so yeah, I think that's interesting. I think it, it represents something it's a good, it's a good reason to take a different look at it. Doc Searls (12m 14s): Somebody worth looking at, I think actually required is Scott Adams. I realize he's become very politically active in ways. A lot of people don't like in the last year in the last administration anyway, I haven't looked at them recently, but, but he gave a talk once that I attended. That was really interesting. And it's worth sharing this, especially to Sean is eco to three panels from one, which is that he always says comic as it could live with two panels and the third P and it can live with two or three panels and he basically starts as a two panel and it makes it a three or did it that time anyway. Doc Searls (12m 54s): And you know, and it's, you know, and it's always making, you know, you're always looking for, what's screwed up about in that case. It's always business. You know, what's insane about business that the, and it's always been. And I think, and it's always about character. You know, you know that Dilbert's character is always the engineer and I forget the woman's name, but she's always punching people, you know, is, is that she's belligerent. And the pointy haired boss is just playing stupid. But, but there, and while he never works, it is wildly. I think it's while he always has a cup of coffee, he's actually never working. And, but having characters with strong, having strong characters makes a difference, right? Doc Searls (13m 35s): This is, this is peanuts. You know, that the Charlie Brown was always gullible. Lucy was always a love of Schroeder. You know, Linus a pig pen was always dirty there, you know, and, and Snoopy has always philosophical. There's a, and I don't know if that always works or not, because I think part of, one of my favorite one-liners is from one of the greatest copywriters ever, his name is ed McCabe. And he says, I have no use for rules. The only rule out the possibility of brilliant exceptions and you need the brilliant exception to, and you wouldn't even be doing this if he didn't have a brilliant exception. Right. You know, it's like, no, all the other cartoonists are fine. I'm done, you know, you're not going to do that. Well, so doc, why haven't you done your epitaph comic? Doc Searls (14m 17s): I can, I can assure you say drawing drawing is not a requirement. The ability to draw well, it's, it's funny. It was, it was it's it's funny. What influence different things have on your life? I was, it was in seventh grade when we were being taught, how to Robin leaves it a funny piece about this. Like, I will never need to know the volume of a cone. I never needed it. I never needed, why did I not need algebra? Because I knew in life, I would never need to know the volume of a cone. Well, in a similar way, we had to draw it, you know, draw a sphere and shade, fear on a surface and, and, and how you shade is fear and how your shade of cone and how you shave is cylinder. Doc Searls (14m 57s): And, and I remember feeling like I did a pretty good job of that, but I was more of an artist that I was an artist, but I drew lines and I was actually not bad at caricaturing people. And, and at that time it was like the seventh grade. I would do celebrities. I remember doing Sinatra when he had kind of hollered cheeks, big eyes and, and with big round circles in them. Cause they were blue and they were, they were like yours Shawn. And they were this interesting blue cause I can see Shawn now the rest of you, can't. Shawn Powers (15m 24s): I was going to say, that's great. I'm a podcast. , Doc Searls (15m 33s): That's in foxes and his old guy anyway. But, but then I was told, well, you know, you're not one of the really great artists here. We don't work with these other kids. And I gave up, I mean, it was like, okay, I wasn't good enough. And I never did it. And, and that's, and I look back on that with regret, you know, that I didn't, I didn't pursue that. Cause I, I actually thought, Hey, I could do art. I'm kind of an artist. I kind of think of myself as an artist. There's some art in our family. I have an aunt who is a really good artist. And, and I thought, well, yeah, you know, yeah. It runs in the family. I could do that too. And that just kind of pushed me in another direction, which by the way, was radio, Shawn Powers (16m 14s): That's interesting. That were bizarre way that we are kind of pushed out. Like, so I'm, you know, I talked about at work where I'm the guy that can't draw, but I mean, let's be honest. That's just me self-deprecating so that I don't feel bad about my inability to draw anything. Right. I mean, it's not that I, I take pride in being bad it's that I don't want to be embarrassed by it. And it's strange to me that we do seem to discourage anything unless somebody can draw perfectly. We don't encourage them to do art like that. I, I could never draw a character. I mean, I might be able to draw a SpongeBob. I maybe still do a character of SpongeBob because he's a yellow square. But Doc Searls (16m 52s): So there is a, there's a musician named Joe Craven and Joe is really brilliant. He's very engaging. And he has a, he was giving a little, like one of those concerts it's in somebody's parlor, but I've seen him in front of a thousand people as well. And he's just this fabulous character. And, and, and he asked, you know, anybody here not play a musical instrument and this woman raises her hand and he says, come up here, I'm going to teach you to play fiddle. And she saw, I can never, I can't even hold it to and he, and he said, can you walk? And she says, yeah. He says, well, you have a sense of rhythm then. Okay, good. Shawn Powers (17m 31s): You can't walk without a sense of rhythm. And then, and then he, you know, Doc Searls (17m 36s): He just has her, you know, scrape back and forth across the thing. And then, and then he just talks her through doing some simple moves on the violin and it was, and had her sound incredible in a fairly short time, just because he, you know, it reminds me of, there's a great teacher named John Taylor Gatto. So the job of the teacher is not to fill the kid with curriculum, but rather to remove everything that keeps the child's inherent genius from gathering itself. And that's what it's about. Right. You know, so you have an inherent genius, let it gather itself. It's not going to be like anybody else's so rock God. Right. Shawn Powers (18m 12s): It's, it's fun. I I'm not gonna lie. It really is fun. I think that Twitter has prepared us for writing comics, because being limited to how much you can say really makes you think through how you're going to express ideas. And as I'm writing the little speech bubbles, I'm thinking, this is just like a tweet, right? I think this is, it has to be small. You can't have a conversation in a comic. I don't, I mean, some comics do. I don't like those. I don't want to, I don't want to read and read and read. I want to look at pretty pictures and, and be entertained, but it it's a fascinating media and I, yeah. So doc, you touched on, on the education system and in which you're in, I, and, and I have, I have grievances about, about how they will pigeonhole kids into passing tests and stuff. Shawn Powers (19m 4s): So that, that, Doc Searls (19m 5s): Yeah, I do too. I mean, and I've written a lot about this. I had a horrible now, it, it, wasn't horrible. I had a typical educational experience as a kid, which is to say that I was tested endlessly much less than they test kids now and routed at different times in my young life, into the fast class and the slow class based on IQ tests, which varied across time. When in fact, you know, the, like what women said, I am never, I've never been measured. I never will be measured. And there's, and the educational system is about normalization. It's about your, your product of your education as if it was something that, that manufactured you. Doc Searls (19m 47s): And I did to me, it's kids who succeed in how to, you know, succeed, do it in many ways, the spider school and not just the cause of it, even though I think we need school, you know, it's tough. Shawn Powers (19m 57s): Agreed. It is. It's a weird, it's a weird one. And I think it's true of younger education, but also college. I mean, look at all of the, the true geniuses in their fields. A lot of them, you find out they didn't go to college or they dropped out of college. That's just an interesting truism. I don't think that means college is bad at all. I don't think it means that schooling is bad, but I think that we have the potential to miss a lot by, by just focusing on mediocrity or keeping everybody in the same lane and normalizing what it is to be. Doc Searls (20m 34s): Yeah. It's a, you know, systems need bell curves to deal with. And I don't think anybody wants to be in the bell curve unless they're at the top of it. And then they brag on it. Right. And it's, you know, like I never met anybody who believed in IQ tests who didn't do well on them, you know, did the people that didn't do so well, don't believe in him so much. And you know, I, I had a conversation with one of our alpha geeks who will remain nameless and, and about exactly this. And he says, yeah, I don't believe in the meter, but my IQ is 173. You know, I'm saying yours is, and he gives me a number that's lower than that. And I looked at him like, f*** (ring) hole, I mean, it didn't, did we just have a conversation about this that, you know, this is, this is not a thermometer. Doc Searls (21m 21s): It's not a dipstick. You know, it's, it's a bunch of quiz questions that you, you get or you don't, you know, and it's like pattern identification or something, whatever. It's not even about that. I mean, anybody could do well across. Whereas if they do it a lot, you know, anybody could do well at Sudoku. And those are both IQ tests of a sort, you know, it's like sat training, same thing, right. If, if you've had a, a basic education in school, you in, in math and, and, and words you can do well at that stuff, you know, our, our, our youngest son consistently never got anything less than an 800 on his, on his verbal SATs. Doc Searls (22m 5s): Well, this is a kid who's just start, you couldn't stop reading from the time he was like six. He just that's all he did. You know, he didn't do anything else. And it was drove us crazy, but that's so he did well on that. And what did that good to do him in life? I'm not sure it's done a much at all. So it's like, okay, that sort of thing. Yeah. Katherine Druckman (22m 25s): This did really well on test too. You know, I like, I, you know, when I, how old was, I was a teenager, I guess maybe, maybe in college. I don't know. My mom had a friend who was studying to be, I don't know, a diagnostician or whatever, whoever it is that gives a lot of IQ tests to young people. And, and she needed to do so many for, you know, school and whatever. And she gave me this test and this wasn't the first time I'd taken him. Right. When I went to a competitive private school when I was younger. And they made you do that crap all the time. And I always scored really well. You know, this, this woman gave me the test. You know, I, I literally, I basically broke the test. I got a perfect score. You're not supposed to bring it a perfect score. It's not designed because she was like, well, I can't measure it because it doesn't go that high. I'm like, Oh, well I'm such, it doesn't mean zero. Katherine Druckman (23m 5s): Like I, you know, that has done me no good in life. I think it's all complete BS. I'm fairly certain that if I took the same test today, I would, you know, I would look like a moron. Am I stupider today than I was at 18? Well, maybe, but I don't think so. I think I know a few more things, but I don't know. I think it's all complete BS and based on a lot of bias and, and lack substance, Doc Searls (23m 29s): Th th there's a, a, this, this is at least a three panel cartoon, Sean, that my older son was in the, you know, he, they at my insistence, I I'll tell you why they put him into gifted and talented class. This reason they gave him an IQ test and his, his verbal score was one Oh three, which is average. And his math score was a perfect, it only went up to one 40 and then it got all the answers, right? And they said, well, we average the two. When we came up with this and this below our threshold, I said, wait a minute, you average the number you don't know that could be with the number. Doc Searls (24m 11s): You know, that makes no sense that you just flunked the math test. Guys, you know, you are not gifted Or talented at this. And they, And they let him in. He never did anything with math. And he's probably written several books by now, you know, and is a ended, ended up being a verbal guy. Now, what the hell does that mean? Katherine Druckman (24m 27s): It's just, it's, it's nothing. Doc Searls (24m 30s): It actually means less than nothing because it allows you to, and this is part of what we're going through right now. I think with all of the, kind of, for lack of a better term political correction around, around gender and race and the rest of it is to de normalize that stuff. You know, w we have a whole bunch of norms that evolve, profiling people, you know, cops profile people based on their skin color too much. And we want to correct that. And schools profile people too much by who knows what, how they look, how they do on tests and arrest. So we have to de normalize a lot of that stuff because everybody's, you know, everybody's an individual and we're all different and we change and we're learning constantly, and we need to be able to do all of that. Doc Searls (25m 11s): And, and we need to be able to cut everybody else, a break by not typifying them in ways that it makes that by which it's easy to profile them. And that's not an easy thing to do. So there's a lot of cartooning available in Nasha just to, Shawn Powers (25m 27s): I don't know where we're going with that, but yes, that's true. Well, inspiring you right for your next several weeks being cartoons. Again, it does allow you to address those things without being in those things too. A little bit. So it's, yeah, it's interesting. There, there are some issues and we're talking about education too. So I'll, I'll talk about this too. I worried when I started doing this, that I'm going to run out of ideas, right? I mean, if we've all been writers and creators of different sorts, so that's a fear, like what if I run out of interesting things to say, and it dawned on me as I was, so I have a it's digital it's on my phone, but an app where I constantly write down ideas that I have, like throughout the day, like, Oh, this might be, I might make a comic. Shawn Powers (26m 9s): This might make a comic, Ooh, this might make an article for whatever. And I discovered that even though my brain tells me that I only have a certain amount of creativity or a certain amount of ideas that it's kind of like exercise, the more you use your brain, the more it generates things. So I, I want to encourage you to follow up on your epitaph, your dark humor, because you'll never run out of things that, that people will say. That's the thing is, I think somebody Doc Searls (26m 41s): Was interviewing Seinfeld at one point an D D don't you think there's a finite quantity of jokes or something like that. And he said, no, no, it's beyond infinite. I mean, there's always something, there's always something, and he's always alert for that. And that's kind of like, you, you develop an ear for it, you know, like, what is it? This is of no, sounds completely off base, but I hope it's not. There's on the, on the iPhone here. There's an app called DB and it's basically a sound app. And, and it basically just turns your phone into something that's listening to sounds, and it shows it across the spectrum. Doc Searls (27m 22s): And when I'm outside and here, I'm in suburban Los Angeles, I noticed that there is a subsonic sound going on all the time outside here. What is it? And I realized after a while it's airplanes and airplanes all make a really low sound and you don't notice them because we're sort of acclimated to them, but it's kind of a background noise that's out there. And suddenly I couldn't help hearing them after seeing it on the phone. It's like, I D I got attuned to it. And I noticed the crows are basically at 2,500 Hertz and hummingbirds, sort of at 8,000 Hertz. Right. That's where their little, their little toots are. Doc Searls (28m 2s): And I had noticed that before and just like, that's in my brain now that that's really interesting. So, you know, the world's full of stuff. Yeah. And thinking about, but the world's full of some weird stuff at times, too. I have my phone next to my bed, and sometimes I'll wake up and I don't know if you do this, like not a dream journal necessarily, but writing down ideas. I, so I'm looking over at my app. It syncs up with my computer here break fourth wall humans are mean, what does that even mean? Katherine Druckman (28m 33s): The second part is definitely correct. Doc Searls (28m 36s): That's, that's actually two, that's two word balloons over two of your characters. There you go. You know, one says, I'm breaking the fourth wall. I'm talking to you out there. I'm breaking the fourth wall. And the other one says, humans are mean, and then the first guy could say, I'm not human, I'm a square or something. Or I aspire to, I aspire to be human. This is how I'm doing it or something else, you know? Katherine Druckman (29m 1s): Well, but before we move on to the next topic, which I assume we're going to do, but no, I mean, no rush. I thought I would leave you with something that the education conversation and the drawing skill reminded me of it. I had a, one of my favorite professors in college art professor actually, who incidentally was collected all over the world. People paid ridiculous sums of money for his work. And it was largely like a lot of, one of his most popular series was pegboards pegboards with numbers and string connecting anyway, did not require any particular technical drawing skill. I digress. But one of the, the, the w the bits of wisdom that, that he said to me that has stuck with me over the years was when you need a skill, you will acquire it. Katherine Druckman (29m 50s): And then human. He was speaking in terms of art. Like, you need to learn to draw a hand, you'll figure it out. You'll, you'll teach yourself. You'll, you'll learn. And, but it, you know, I often think about it in terms of technology like programming skill or something like that. When I need to figure out this problem, when I really need it, I will figure it out. And most people kind of, you know, I think that that is just an interesting way to think about things, but I think it's a good way to think about art too, which is the context in which it was delivered. He passed away a few years ago, which was really sad, but he did leave us with that bit of wisdom. Shawn Powers (30m 19s): Doc could possibly write an epitaph farm. Katherine Druckman (30m 22s): Yes. You need a scale. You will acquire. Shawn Powers (30m 30s): I have a segue to the, to the web browser thing. Okay. If you, if, if you announced the segue, I don't know if announcing the segway makes it valid, go ahead and say, Katherine Druckman (30m 39s): Well, we make up our own rules here, Sean. Shawn Powers (30m 42s): We are, we are the gods of this podcast. So web comics come in frames, right? At least like any other comic. And it's been a challenge to figure out how to present them because mobile browsers are small. And so the, the desire that I've discovered is that people want each individual frame as a picture so they can swipe through it. But on a desktop, that's really super annoying. People want to see the whole thing together. So I have to somehow deliver both a sliced up web comic and a whole web comic. And there's already people that want all texts on every, on every frame and all the all texts for the entire thing on a single friend, it's a complicated endeavor to deliver stupid comics. Shawn Powers (31m 31s): You could do a comic on that, you know, like, you know, victims of, you know, a haul haul of victims of non-responsive design and then fix it. So responsive design, because that's what happens with responsive design, right? You shrink down, you know, you're shrinking horizontally and all of a sudden it stacks vertically or something. They've done that with blogs a lot. It's complicated. And I didn't let myself dwell on it too much, because same thing with my, the website, I don't like the website, but I'm a nerd. Right. I could have spent weeks trying to tweak it just right. And have zero content. So, but I, I want to store it all on a website, so it can be consumed via a web browser Katherine Druckman (32m 14s): And know, but let me just remind you, this is a good time to remember when you need a skill, you will acquire it. Well, you know, solve this problem. I have faith. Shawn Powers (32m 22s): No, my headstone. So Lily up in task could say, I still hit mode. I still hit my website design. Right. Because everybody doesn't like their website design to begin with. That sort of goes with almost, without saying, Katherine Druckman (32m 37s): I get actually really upset when I see like older of Linux journal. Like, I don't wanna like admit I was part of that. Anyway, go ahead. Doc Searls (32m 46s): You know, isn't just things changed with the times. So, so let me be, because this is sort of my topic of let, let me give my sort of two-minute frameless on, on my issues with browsers. And I, I wrote a piece called thinking beyond the browser, and we can put that in the it's an, a project VRM site is also a customer comments, go to the customer comments and look at blog, customer comments.org, go to blog. Since we have no readers so far I'll know it was you. Katherine Druckman (33m 19s): That's not true, Doc Searls (33m 20s): No track anybody. So I really wouldn't know it's you, but I'll know, I'll know somebody who listen to this showed up. So when the original idea with the browser that timber's, they came up with with, and the original idea behind HTML was, it was, it was simple. And then it was up to the user to a large degree. You know, you, if you wrote simple HTML, there was, you know, H one H two H three for sizes of headers and, and you know, what font you looked at it in and, you know, all, all that stuff is kind of up to you on the receiving side. And gradually we turned it into desktop publishing, and then we turned it into big-time publishing. So, so the Catherine would have a job. Doc Searls (34m 0s): And Katherine Druckman (34m 1s): So, because she works Doc Searls (34m 3s): On Drupal, which is all about that, and WordPress has done the same thing and WordPress has gotten farther and farther away, sort of from plain old HTML and it's, and it's now it's really complicated, but that's not my whole issue with it. It's not that it's, that it's, that it's really client server. We started at a client server as a, as a really, it's more of a, a format it's and it, it's not so much an architecture is an approach to building that, that says, Oh, you know, all the smarts is going to be on the service side and the servers in charge. And the client is just the client and the client requests things from the server and the server provides everything the client needs in order to do with the server once the client to do or allows the client to do. Doc Searls (34m 46s): And an awful lot of good can be done inside that. And we have that now, and we're living in that world, but it's a world in which we should really, we should recognize whether it's true or not, that the story that I have heard, and it might be apocryphal, but even if it's not, I think it matters that client server was chosen as a, an expression for what that architecture is because slave master didn't sound so good. Some of us have called a calf cow. Cause we, the calves go to the cows, have websites for, for the milk of HTML plus some cookies. And that's, that's a really subordinate way to operate in the world. Doc Searls (35m 27s): We should be able to do better than that, but we there's a lot. We can't do outside of it. You know, we don't get scaled from that. We don't get any more scale than we get from what any website gives us. Any platform gives us, which means that we're kind of stuck back in the modern equivalent of equivalence of AOL and CompuServe. And, you know, Apple is AOL Google's CompuServe, and then maybe Amazon is prodigy and we're sort of stuck inside their platforms and, and, and or Facebook would be that. And, and we're sort of content to be in there. And I think there's just an infinitude of stuff that can be done outside the browser. We're not even visiting because it doesn't even occur to us to take the blinders off and think, wait a minute, I've got lots of intelligence on this side and we have the internet underneath everything. Doc Searls (36m 14s): What are the other ways that any, any one party can do things with any other party in ways that are not narrowed down by what can be done with a browser? And I'll give one example of something I think was misguided and I'll name names. My password manager is lane, which is fine. I haven't tried any of the other, so I can't compare them, but I I've been into for a long time now. And they've had an app and I've always had that app open. And they had a browser extension, which I put on each of the many different browsers that I use. Doc Searls (36m 53s): And, and that worked fine. If I, if, if the browser extension didn't fill in the password, then I could go to the app and I could, I could find a password there and then copy and paste it in or something like that. Well, they decided, no, we're not going to have the app anymore. We are going to be in the browser. Well, that's a big pain in the ass. I have to have a browser tab open. I have to have a different one for every browser I'm in it's, it's an, it's an incredible value subtract. You could do more with an external app than you can inside the confines of a browser. But for some reason they decided to do that. Like, it was a good thing. And to me, it was almost like, you know, we have to imagine, we can't imagine anything outside the world of the browser, and this is not to knock anything we could do in a browser. Doc Searls (37m 38s): There, there one of the greatest inventions in the history of, of, of the world. But they're just one way where the internet is still young. We've been at, we've had the, the graphical browser really only since 1994. So we're really going on with 27 years. Something like that, not much in the history of digital technology, which should be with us for millennia, so we could do better or other, maybe not better, but other that's my case. I rested for me. It was Shawn Powers (38m 14s): So server. So server, is it the, is the biggest frustration you have with the browser itself or with the server client model as a whole for media delivery and stuff like that Doc Searls (38m 28s): Much. It's not so much a problem I have with those things. It's sort of like saying, I have a problem with horses. No, I don't have problem with horses. Of course, a great for a lot of things, but I'm not going to, of course, it's not going to do what a car can. Right. And Ms kind of goes back to what Henry Ford didn't say, which is that if people ask me what, what to make it they'd say faster horses and steady made a car. I think the browser does it at a huge variety of stuff, but it doesn't do everything. And there's a lot that we are not seeing. And I'm working on one of those right now. So I bet I don't want to talk about it yet because it's too early, but we're actually doing development and I want to involve you guys with it, but, and the rest of our listeners eventually, but, but, but it's only possible to start thinking outside the browser and, and that's, I mean, email, you know, I mean, I still use an email client. Doc Searls (39m 24s): I think an email client is better than the email client. I use it as the Apple. One for the most part is much, much better than what I could do inside of Gmail in a browser. You know, it's just, it's, it's, it's a separate thing. And, and the email, you know, protocols don't necessarily need the browser that we put it inside the browser because Google did that. And it's not a bad thing to do in it for a lot of people. It's good to be in there. But I think that is a lot of stuff that could do with, with messaging that is out effective. All of the, the messaging apps are mostly outside the browser. So it's not like no, no thinking is going on outside the browser. But I think so much more could be done if we don't wear those blinders. Katherine Druckman (40m 6s): But I mean, browser can can mean anything that is, that has a dependent relationship like that. I think, I feel like, you know, what you're getting at is just the, you come from and a lot of us come from a place where we think of technology as something that we want to control and, and, and, and have, and have independence, you know, and, and, and like what we were talking about earlier in an educational setting, for example, or, or any kind of setting where you want, you want a, you know, low technology costs per user, or, you know, whatever it is that gives you this advantage that comes from having little dependent, you know, satellites, depending on a central controlling entity, whatever that is, we had a, you know, cloud service or mainframe or, you know, whatever it is. Katherine Druckman (40m 56s): Whereas some of us kind of want, want to be able to live in our little air gap world and, and have full control over, over our information and our data and, and our communications. Although I suppose that does have to go out at some point, but I think it, is it just, is it just a dependence thing that that's the, that's the concern? Or, or is it something else Doc Searls (41m 16s): Concern? Is, is that the only concern? I mean, I, I, I like the term air gap. I think, I think we do need, I think we do need a isolation from the rest of the, of the, I think we need to able to be connected and yet isolated as isolated as we want. You know, I'm in a house here, we're all in houses. And we kind of like having doors and windows and locks and shutters and shades through which we can moderate our, our privacy and what we're willing to see and Nazi, or the others can see of us. And that is nothing like that exactly online. And I'm not sure if we're inside the browser, we can even see that, that we don't have clothing and shelter yet. Doc Searls (42m 2s): I've said that a lot and talks about privacy, but I think that that air gap that, that space that we need in order to not just have privacy, but have an independent life, you know, that, and, and I mean, for example, just imagine this, cause this is part of what we're working on. Imagine if all your health and financial data and, and, you know, the, not just the medicine, you're taking everything, you've bought everything that had a receipt, a list of all your books. Let's say you could run your own algorithms across all of those. Oh, and also across your, your calendar going back 20 years and your contact base going back 20 years, where it's your algorithm. Doc Searls (42m 48s): It's not somebody else's algorithm is guessing at you set again, advertise at you, which is what most of the algorithms in the world are doing. The big ones are doing right now, but rather it's yours that, that could give you insights into what's going on or remind you that, you know, what you're running out of, out of this in a fridge or you're running or that, you know, are you aware that, you know, in my case it would be, are you aware that you don't have the complete collection of John McPhee books? There's still this one more you don't have, right. Or, and you could look out, it could look out into the world as well, but it's not looking out into the world in order to serve some corporate master, but rather to serve you. Well, I, maybe you could have that displayed in a browser, but I think that's an app that's separate from that. Doc Searls (43m 31s): I think that's one app on my many apps that you can run many algorithms, you could run that. What is it? Yeah. Shawn Powers (43m 38s): And where's the data coming from. I think that's really a big part of the conversation. You know what I mean? Because I mean, again, the browser is an app, right. But where's it coming from looking so I'm, I'm browsing, you're, I'm thinking outside the browser article here and just the graphic that shows this hierarchy of things. I it's so, so condensed. I can't even tell what we're looking at, but it just made me think of the server client model. I am a truly genuinely shocked at how well we have scaled the concept. And, and I know that now there's just multiple servers in multiple locations. I mean, you know, we know data centers and all over the world are serving content based on geographic limits, but it's amazing how much we have expanded the server client model in such a way to, to facilitate that model continuing, whereas some kind of, and I hate to use the word or the term peer to peer, because that just sounds like piracy and, and, you know, BitTorrent, illegal software or whatever. Shawn Powers (44m 42s): But the closest connection for me is the person next door, not a server in San Jose. And I I'm surprised that we haven't come up with a way and yeah, this could be a segue to another, another podcast altogether of IPFS, but just the whole idea where everything is stored in a central location, I'm shocked at scale, as much as it has over the past couple decades. Doc Searls (45m 8s): It, it has a lot. And I mean, it's, it's an infinite amount. And, but, but I'm also thinking that, I mean, this is interesting to me. I mean, we're on an app, we're on zoom right now. We're not in a browser. I mean, we could, I mean, if zoom said to itself, you know, we're never going to be outside the browser. We're going to be, have to be in a browser in order to do some, instead they pivot right out of it. It starts opening in a browser and then it checks out almost immediately. Right? And you still got a tab open that has a little fossil imprint of zoom, but at least on my machine, it does that. But we're in, we're in, we're in another world, we're in the zoom world and where everything, all these things could be done. Now, of course, it's not, zoom is doing all this in the cloud. Doc Searls (45m 50s): It's all, there's an AWS backend on this and we're going through that. And that's a perfect example of scaling something up. I mean, I'm just in awe of how well zoom came into this market and stripped everybody else's gears. I was on Microsoft teams this morning and I wanted to copy off the chat. You know, the chat in zoom is this through the three little dots. You click on Israel, real dots, save the chat. And it's brilliant because it'll overwrite the last time you saved it. So you only have one copy of it. And it's just little things like that smart. But you do that with an app. You do that with a separate app. You're not doing it, you know, inside, inside the browser. And, and I think we're really kind of at the point right now where, where we're, we're maybe almost ready to, to look outside of the boxes we've made for ourselves. Doc Searls (46m 40s): I mean, with part of my point with that article is it's not even an article, it's a blog post. It's kind of not even that long a blog post, but is that, you know, because it's client server and the servers could do whatever they want. And I have, I unpack a, somebody who's been on this show more than once. I think Dr. Fu August and Fu his page x-ray that looks at what the daily mail does. And it's where data about you is cascading outward to hundreds of parties. You never, you didn't go to the website for your, for data about you to go out to these hundreds of other parties and no harm is done if you don't, if it's only about advertiser, but God knows what it's all about. Doc Searls (47m 22s): I mean, it's just, but it's, it's ludicrous because we have no record of that. And, and the people doing the development, don't even think you a record of it, you know, Oh, you've got cookies will lead you to, well, you could purge all your cookies. That's a pain in the ass because then you have to like redo a whole lot of passwords to get into a lot of places and stuff like that. It's like, there's no, it's, it's a really, you know, it, it's a great thing, but I think we're, we're, we're re we've written it about as far as we can, before we have to start looking at other, at other approaches that might, you know, allow us to do more rich things. And to me, the biggest part is let's look at, we could do for ourselves, you know, w w what can we do for the individual again, you know, rather than just for the individual as the best possible puppet of some corporate master. Katherine Druckman (48m 10s): So I was actually, it's funny, you mentioned the Gustin Fu graphic. I was going to mention that because Sean actually mentioned it without realizing it. And when he was saying, there's this hierarchical thing, and it's very condensed and hard to read. And, and the reason is because, I mean, it's, it's this massive, massive, massive data visualization. I was actually going to mention. So I'll link to the episode where we actually, we unpack this, the, the web app with Dr. Fu page extra is the name of H x-ray. We also, we have a, we actually have a blog post about it on the podcast site, just going in like a legend. So how to interpret this data, which I think was that is actually really helpful, then I will also link to, but the important thing is that there's a lot of really nefarious stuff going on under the hood that people just aren't aware of. Katherine Druckman (48m 59s): I don't think. And that's the value of this very, very dense visualization. There's anytime you see something in red, it's something pretty uncool going on. Yeah. In my opinion, phases, fingerprints too, in there somewhere. Yeah. So, and again, I'll, I'll link to a post where we outline what all of these things mean when you're actually looking at this report. Cause I don't think there's any, actually that our post is maybe the only place I can think of that, that, that details all this stuff. And I had Dr. Foo look it over before I even posted it. So it's all totally accurate. So yeah. Anyway, good stuff. Doc Searls (49m 36s): Yeah. I'll, I'll finish with the sad truism here that I think, unfortunately, even when we moved to apps, apart from the web browser, thanks to the way that we currently develop things. It's all the same. Yeah. Katherine Druckman (49m 53s): There's a lot of crap going on. No matter, well, Doc Searls (49m 55s): I mean, apps, apps are just, are just, I know there's apps are just, I mean, because now JavaScript runs on the front end and the backend, you know, it's the same thing. Even apps like Slack, Slack has a great app. It's just electronic. It's just running a specialty browser. Everything is, is out on the web, even the apps it's depressing. Yeah. Yeah, Katherine Druckman (50m 20s): Indeed. But what's the alternative. Well, I guess that's the point of this? Maybe that's the point of the next episode? How do we fix it? Yeah. I think what happens once we think outside the browser. Okay. We've, we've done that now. What do we do? Doc Searls (50m 35s): Yeah. I mean, what kind of apps do we demand? You know, and yeah. Katherine Druckman (50m 40s): The other thing about that, you know, so when you're, at least when you're using a browser, there are a lot of browser tools to alert you to the stuff that's happening under the hood, you know, and then in Firefox has come out with a lot of really kind of neat features to, to, to protect your privacy and protect your data. But in an app you don't have any of that. I mean, there are, you know, I guess he could have an antivirus or, but there are probably ways to protect yourself when you're using apps. But, but it seems like actually in spite of the difficulties that we're describing with browsers on, on the flip side is that there are, there's a lot of work being done to make the browsers more compliant with our wishes, so to speak. Katherine Druckman (51m 31s): And when I say our witches, I mean like us here, that the issues that we talked about on this podcast are privacy and data security and stuff like that. Maybe aren't so bad, I guess Doc Searls (51m 41s): They are better at all. And I'm not making a case that they're bad. It, you know, it's, it's sort of making the case against, you know, like I said, earlier, horses or gas powered automobiles, or improve on, or just come up with something else that's different that does other things that does them better. I just think it's, it's, there's a again, is it, I mean, it's less to me is less about the browser than it is about, you know, I had a follow up to that one called toward e-commerce 2.0, because I think e-commerce 1.0 is, is a, is about everything that could be done inside a browser. And I think that there's a place to stand outside the browser that, you know, for example, it gives us a way to come to agreements. Doc Searls (52m 27s): You know, obviously coming to agreements in the ways that we've figured out inside the browser is completely and horribly broken and has been for, for the, for the duration, which is where we're only agreeing to other parties terms. And that's the case because they are the servers and we're the clients. And as long as it's holding up to the servers to proper terms, our only choices to agree to them, and that's not good enough, that's not freedom of contract. That's coercive contract, it's contracts of adhesion. And I think we can do better than that, but we can do better, but, and it could be, we could do better than that within the browser, but I've been working on trying to make that happen for many years now and it hasn't worked, you know? So that's one reason why I'm looking elsewhere. Doc Searls (53m 7s): So Katherine Druckman (53m 8s): Interesting. Yeah. Sorry, it's interesting that you mentioned e-commerce because that, that is actually an area where things are going very much outside the browser, but almost in the opposite way, I think, than what you might have in mind. And that is going into apps like Instagram or Facebook. You, you shop directly through them. You can now, you know, one of the big so-called innovations in Instagram in the past. And I think it's just in the past year is fully integrating an e-commerce experience where people could literally sell directly through their Instagram posts. Yeah. There's some kind of there's e-commerce backend happening there, but it is it's, it's taking it, it's bypassing the browser and containing it within the walls of Facebook and Instagram. Doc Searls (53m 55s): Yeah. And I, and this is basically, I think something that the Instagram people or the Facebook people picked up from, I don't know, what, what do we chat or 10 cent or the, the other ones in China that worked that way. And I think a case could be made that a lot of what China does or what's done in China happens outside the browser as well as just happening on phones. But it's not browser dependent. It's, it's independent, independent and separate things. But again, I'm not, I'm not so much knocking the browser. I'm just, that's why I called it thinking outside the browser. I think there's a tendency that like, if you're inside the browser and you want to say, I mean, this is what the GDPR is about, you know, and that was the problem with the GDPR. Doc Searls (54m 39s): It's like, okay, everybody has got to be a data subject. They're the data subject. That's what a human being is. And what are the other operators here? Welders data controllers and data processors. Those are not the human beings. Human beings can't be data controllers or data processors. These other parties have to be the companies do so we'll regulate them and try to limit what they could do with personal data and or people who will just call data subjects, which is just so limited. But it's you think that because everybody's living inside a browser, right? That's like, well, of course they don't have any power there. So we're just going to regulate what the others could do. And of course, what have they done? They've worked around it. You know, there, there's far more incentive economic instead of to work around the GDPR that it worked with the GDPR and that's the world we're in now, you know, and, and we in browser world, but maybe there's another world we can make where we are independent. Doc Searls (55m 33s): We have an Archimedean place to stand where we can move the world and we can get scale. And, and we can do better signaling from demand to supply and not inside, you know, having to dwell in a zillion, different, different, different systems, actually something my wife, Joyce came up with in 1995, she looked at at e-commerce is that he's existed then, which consists mostly of Amazon and eBay and like three other companies and asked naively why she couldn't take her shopping cart from site to site. We still don't have that. We should have that. You know, every, every site should have something that says, Oh, if you have your own shopping cart, then we'll, we'll put your, or the stuff you have in your shopping cart. Doc Searls (56m 15s): Do you have a bot yet in that one, but you have to invent that from the user side. Now it's not saying it can't happen inside a browser. It's just hard to imagine inside a, Katherine Druckman (56m 24s): It seems like PayPal or Apple pay or somebody like that would have, would have figured that out by now. Doc Searls (56m 29s): Well, it, it, it, you could do it within and those sort of things. I mean, with Apple, for example, Apple is trying its best to like take over the way you do subscriptions. So like we, you know, we canceled Hulu decided we just watched everything. We want it on Hulu and I can on Apple in, in my phone or on the computer or on an Apple TV, I can cancel, I could cancel Disney. I can cancel HBO and cancel anything. It's an Apple TV and it, and it keeps track of that. And you know, and you could do it through there, but again, you're inside their silo. You're at their mercy. It's like, Oh, Apple is going to take care of my subscriptions. Well, the truth is I don't want it inside of Apple alone. Doc Searls (57m 10s): I want it. I want my own way to keep track of subscriptions. I don't want to imagine a world where I have to be an apples feudal system in order to do everything in the world. It's insane. You know, it's, it's, it's 500 years retro, you know, I mean, this is the damn internet. Now we should be able to be independent. How can we be independent? Well, let's think about it. Katherine Druckman (57m 29s): No, they throw us such tasty scraps though, you know? Doc Searls (57m 34s): No, no, they're good at it. I, and, and, and, you know, and, and of course, what can they do? They are there themselves that, you know, they can't think outside that box either. Right. And there, you know, Steve bomber when he was with Microsoft said, well, the secret every business is to find an intersection, park yourself in the middle of it and charge a rent across it. That's what you do. That's, you know, make an intersection or find one and cross rent and charge rent across it. And, you know, that's a way to do business, but it's also something a little bit, a little bit psychotic about that, because if you're a grocery store, you should know that people could buy groceries all over the place, just make your grocery store better, you know, you know, and, and, and, and do things as substandard ways, you know, put the perishables on the perimeter of the store, put the refrigerated stuff in the perimeter of the store and, and, and put the stuff that's, you know, the hard goods on the, in the aisles and sort the aisles out in ways that are roughly standard. Doc Searls (58m 27s): And then that makes some sense. So anyway, that's a little bit a field, but, Katherine Druckman (58m 32s): Huh. Well, I think we've covered, we've covered a lot of ground covered as usual as usual. I think this, this week may be an interesting newsletter week. I think we're going to have pretty cool assortment of links here promising Doc Searls (58m 44s): To send you links to it. I haven't done it, but I will. Katherine Druckman (58m 46s): That's fine. This week. This was a good week for it because there's a lot, there's a lot to cover. Doc Searls (58m 52s): Well, thanks for letting me come. Great. My big round world. I appreciate it. Thanks for coming. Yeah. Excellent. Well, good luck.