[00:00:00] Katherine Druckman: Hey everyone. Welcome back to Reality 2.0. I'm Katherine Druckman. Doc Searls and I today are talking about, well, we're talking to talk about Twitter. That's, because it's, it's such a relevant conversation right now. I think it's on a lot of people's minds. It's on both of our minds. So we're just gonna have that conversation with y'all. We're gonna have it out in the open see what we can figure out. So if you're interested in, in social media and what's happening to it, and Elon Musk buying it out. And, and where do here, are people gonna leave. This is the conversation for you. So, uh, yeah. [00:00:33] Doc Searls: So just to place, this is a point in time. Most of what we talk about is we try to make it somewhat timeless. We don't wanna be snow on the water that doesn't matter next week or the week after, but this is really current. Because the latest thing I've read on it is that, um, is that the deal will go through like on the 28th, just in time for Halloween, you know, and it's, it's horrifying to some people and, [00:00:58] Katherine Druckman: especially Twitter employees, [00:01:00] Doc Searls: Twitter And, I think from following his tweets, including ones that have been pulled off ones that may be faked up, I can't tell. You know, where he's talking to some Russian dude and you know, the victory party in for Russia going to that, which must be giving the State Department fits, as well as others. There's just a lot to worry about. There's, um, and I should add, by the if I sound different this time, it's cuz I'm talking to my computer and not to a proper microphone. It seems like I'm okay, but you're hearing the computer's mics, cuz. With me here in New York, which is where I am temporarily. but here, here's the thing, Twitter is enormously important to, to news. I mean, I'd people under right? Especially complain about the mainstream press. There is no name in mainstream press. What the hell is that? I mean, when, when Shapiro and people like that have, 50 million readers or some ridiculous number like that. A week or a day. and you'd hit scan on an on an AM radio and what you're going to hear is religion and a lot of right wing talk. Right wing talk kind of owns the AM band for the people who still listen to AM radio. It's kind of significant. There are many, many millions of people doing that. I'm not sure what the mainstream press is anymore. I mean, uh uh, so, they railed against it and of, and their big, you know, whipping thing is wokeness uh, and Musk is among them. Elon Musk certainly will bring Trump back. Trump will be and others, and he will be divisive. And Trump is so expert at using Twitter to, to rile things up and cause news and, um, and it's likely. Affect the next in a huge way. And listen, I'm all for free speech. And I did, I had my misgivings about canceling Trump too on Twitter, but I did think he was doing enormous harm. And I can see the case. And it's a private company that's entitled to do what it pleases. It's, it's not the public square, but we are treating it like public square become virtually the public square. And I, I follow a zillion journalists. People who many of them longer employed, by the formerly mainstream press. It's now the, the, it's a cemetery you know, my of journalists is kind of like a bunch of headstones. There were, there's still mumbles coming out of the ground. Uh, and [00:03:35] Katherine Druckman: And they've since moved on to things like sub stack, [00:03:37] Doc Searls: We could talk about that too. And, and, um, yeah, which is just another commercial you know, that's performing a service. And I wanna give credit to Twitter and to Substack and any, Facebook for that matter, for creating a centralized system that makes doing a lot of things easy and, and speaking easy, and social easy. And, uh, I, I'm, I'm, I'm not here to, to knock those things, what I am here. Worry about, um, out loud that, uh, Elon Musk has a political agenda. It's very clear that he does, he's on the political right for the most part, or more or less the libertarian political, Right. And I, this is not a knock on libertarians. I think there's, I consider myself in some ways, libertarian, not in the Orthodox way. I don't, I'm not crazy about property as a thing. I'm not, I don't like guns a whole but I do believe in individual freedom and liberty and all that stuff. But where I think, I think Musk is, to me, the, the main problem is he has done a really brilliant job of creating new things. Just a giant hats off to him what he did with, with, uh, uh, Tesla, with SpaceX, starlink. Um, the thing that burs in the ground that's smart too. There's a lot of really brilliant stuff this guy's all about, and he's, track record is fabulous and for doing that, but for buying a standing company for $44 billion. [00:05:21] Katherine Druckman: That is a communication [00:05:22] Doc Searls: That [00:05:23] Katherine Druckman: a, completely different animal [00:05:24] Doc Searls: it's, it's a little bit like for, especially for news and for public conversation, it, it's almost as if he's bought a, an element in the periodic table or, or the, to be more primitive about it. He just bought water. He has water. You wanna use water, you gotta go uh, you gotta go to him and he may find a better way to do Right. We've got earth, air, fire, and water. He got water and. [00:05:48] Katherine Druckman: well, he has talked about his, his mega app, you know, launching a x.com, some sort of mega app. I, you know, I, I can't really speak to that, but there it is part of some strategy, some, some larger plan I think that he has, which is interesting. And I also think it's interesting that this seems like upping the ante in a major way on Jeff Bezos buying the Washington Post. This is like, [00:06:10] Doc Searls: Well, it's probably that too. [00:06:11] Katherine Druckman: Of it in, in those, in those terms and this, this is so much bigger in my opinion, than buying something like a longstanding news outlet. But I dunno, I wonder if we could talk about maybe some things, some predictions, like the things that we expect to happen. you already mentioned one he'll, you know, re-platform some people who have been removed. But also, you know, the, the layoff statement. I mean I I don't think it's a rumor, I think it's, I think it's, it's part of the plan. I've, I've heard what, 75% of the workforce. [00:06:42] Doc Searls: Yeah, Well, he, he, he, he, he wants low performing people cut off, and think he's one of those people who believes that you constantly evaluate everybody all the time, and you always lo off the bottom 10%. And [00:06:55] Katherine Druckman: Right. And that everybody should work 80 hours a week [00:06:58] Doc Searls: Yeah, as somebody who. [00:07:00] Katherine Druckman: Of no personal relationships [00:07:02] Doc Searls: Yeah, most of my academic life. When I was young, at least, I was at the bottom of the bell curve. I was at the bottom of the bell curve in almost every way. I didn't like being in school. didn't like being evaluated, but, but the people who believe in the bell curve all the time, I think is really bad. I think it brilliant exceptions and, um, But it, it, it's not, it's not just the employees. And I have great sympathy for them, um, and I think it's very likely that a lot of them will leave. But I know a number of writers who plan to leave, they're gonna leave as soon as he comes on [00:07:36] Katherine Druckman: Yeah, so that's, [00:07:38] Doc Searls: so they're, and that's the best part to me of, of Twitter. It's the great writers that are on there that have learned to write in 140 or 280 characters. [00:07:48] Katherine Druckman: So why do we think they'll leave? I mean, aside from the fact that many of them have already said that they'll leave. But I'm wondering about your thought, cause I certainly have my own, but what your thoughts are on what Twitter will become with all of these things. So when you, when you lay off that many people, low performers or not whatever, it's, some things should obviously suffer, in my opinion, content moderation, security controls. I'm not sure what else, but, uh, those seem like obvious ones that will suffer and, and what become, what becomes of a platform when you let those things go? [00:08:19] Doc Searls: Well there. Yeah, I, I, I expect it. I two things. One is, here's what I expect, like the, the, the way to bet and the way to wish. Um, way to bet, I think, is that it will be shit show. It will um, uh, a very depressing place to work. One where he's gonna run rough, shot over pretty much everything that was, um, civilized there. And he is gonna do it with Glee because he can, and he'll joke about it, he'll troll with it, and he'll turn it into the biggest troll operation we've ever seen because he's gonna bring Trump back who's the biggest troll of all time by far. Um, and lots of other, of others who have been off before and will jump off Trump's network and, and as well, even to come over from or just added to what they're doing on Facebook. That's essentially speaking to an Amen Chorus on the, on the right and the far right. That's gonna be, huge it'll, it will become really good at a right wing Amen corner. Uh, Uh, and it will drive a lot of people who are on the center of the left politically or don't care about that, but happen to follow enough of those people that it, it makes a difference. And here's, here's an important thing me, which is that there, there is no one Twitter. There. Every Twitter is what you follow. And if you don't follow it, you don't see it. And. People will tell me all the time, You, you know, geez, a Twitter such as cesspool is all full of politics and stuff. I don't see it. I don't see it. I, and, and the few people I follow who do get political, I don't respond to what they say that's political. And so for the most part, I don't see it. And I follow like 5,000 people. I've got like 25,000 followers that follow about 5,000. I don't see them all. Cause the algorithm always bubbles up the ones. Unless I hit latest, I'm not gonna seal most of those people. But, um, but I'm not seeing a cesspool. I just see stuff that I'm interested in and, and the people and companies that I, I wanna keep up with and I use it for tech support. And like today I used it, um, because we're, we're moving to another house before we leave the first one in blooming. And I wanted to get Xfinity, which is the only choice I have for, uh, internet to, to add the other thing. And nothing in their tech support line allowed that. So I did it through Twitter and I got in touch with 'em, and they're gonna do it, and it's great. So Twitter's good for that stuff. It's very handy for a lot of that, but I expect it. I, I just expect him to screw the whole thing out. I really do. And so that's the way to bet. [00:11:11] Katherine Druckman: And then the way to wish [00:11:13] Doc Searls: The way to wish. is, Is that Elon Musk, the genius, the guy who thought up SpaceX and, and um, and even if he didn't think it up entirely on his own. I mean, they're brilliant things and they're very useful. And, and Tesla for that matter, the guy, the fact that he took on Detroit, just Detroit but Tokyo and you know, Germany Sweden and all the places that make other places that make great cars. And just, just put the car on the map in a giant way is just a huge thing. Hats off, and I'm hoping maybe he has some secret plan that will turn Twitter into something great that it can't be right now, because it's too locked up in the way it is, and we'll all like it. I think that's a long shot though, it's a thing that already exists and either tears it down to the, you know, burns it down to the water line and builds up something else. He comes up with something brilliant, but I'm not expecting it. Yeah, [00:12:16] Katherine Druckman: I, tend to agree on the, on the, the shit show part. But the, my reasoning is, you know, I think that the type of cuts that will be made and the type of changes, I don't necessarily immediately go to, you know, it's just going to be a, you know, a right wing cesspool. But I do, I, my concern is more like, cause I think, you know, that exists now. You know, I think that, I think my concern is just the degradation and quality of the experience. I think that there will be less and less relevance and I think the, the algorithm as we say, you know, it, it, you see on Twitter an experience it is geared toward you and what you engage with. And you get more of that. And I think that experience it, it's not perfect today. Obviously it's problematic in many cases, but I think that will actually become worse. Um, I think it will become less and less useful and relevant to people. And what I'm really wondering is how it affects people with these. Personal brands, a large audience. You know, I, as I, I, I tend to look at it as a marketing tool in some ways, just because. My experiences and, and, and what I do for a living. And then all of those things. And, and I think of somebody like you, you have a massive audience. And what happens when the, You've built, you've, you've put all of this effort, you and others, into building this massive following and, and audience that you can engage with and, and bounce your ideas off of and promote your content. Um, what happens when. Disappears. I mean, there are alternatives, but I, you know, nobody has the, the huge audience that they have on Twitter. You ha you don't have it on Mastodon because that you, that hasn't really taken off meaningfully. I mean, we, I enjoy Mastodon, you know, either a lot of open source nerds and, and I get a lot out of it. But for the most part, it, it's not mainstream. You're not going to get a mainstream. Audience like you'd get on Twitter. And if you're talking about, um, the type of people I follow on Twitter are prominent tech voices, that's where I get my information. It's where I hear about security vulnerability announcements. It's where I hear about cool new technologies. It's where, you know, I learn what's going on. The, in the world of, uh, security lately is a particular interest of mine. And, and once that, it maybe doesn't go away, but it become, Less useful to me. Where, where do I turn and where do I try and build that community and that experience anew. [00:14:37] Doc Searls: Yeah. I, well, I, I like to think that we can build that in the wild. Um, we had that with blogs. I mean, blogs were, um, You know, just a great publishing medium. I, I, you know, at, at its peak, my old blog had up to 50,000 a day. I don't ever thought of that as an audience. Um, I had a readership and [00:15:07] Katherine Druckman: you [00:15:09] Doc Searls: yeah, and lots of good comments and lots of back and forth because there was real dialogue between people who were blogging. you know, if, You and Simple, or Shelly Powers or, or, um, you know, Janine Sesam or, Sheila Lennon. I'm thinking of people who used to blog or acma Adam had something useful or interesting or creative to say. David Weinberger another old friend, put something on their blog. I'd come back with something on mine that we'd, we'd comment on each other's, we'd link to each other. There were, was. Really, really, it was thoughtful. Uh, it was fun in a lot of ways. You could be creative. You were your own publisher. It was fantastic. And, and I think it was very consistent with what the web was meant to be in the first place. And then, uh, Twitter and Facebook came along and we're really good at moving things. Uh, a kind of well-informed to conversation and, and to a whole new modalities. You know, tweeting became a thing in its own and, and threads and, and, uh, and at some, know, at handles. And those were all that grew out of, grew out of Twitter and conventions that, uh, spread to the world. With Facebook, you could hook up with all kinds of people you never knew before, or you knew, I should say, knew a long time ago. Um, and, you know, there was, they were very good at doing that. But what happened is a lot of, most of, maybe 99% of what I think of is the great bloggers went Facebook and Twitter, and now some of them are coming back not to blogging, but to, um, to sub stack. And it's not even just. Newsletters, they're going to Substack because Substack makes that easy. that's not a bad thing. Everything you put on Substack is also on the web. Um, but it's inside their closed castle and it's another feudal system. But they did a great job of giving you way to write in a WYSIWYG way. It was just like medium and why medium did not take off as well as sub stack. I don't know. I really like Ev Williams who started Medium. He's one of the founders of Twitter as well. He'd be really interesting to get onto this thing. There's probably a lot he can't talk about. He probably still owns a lot of Twitter stock. I don't know. But um, uh, and Medium has newsletters too, but they came up with a modernization plan that was kind of a freemium thing. It doesn't, doesn't work. But they created that Wie wig thing. Where would you, you couldn't, There was a no visual difference between what you were writing and what was gonna be published very much unlike, say, WordPress, but just to go, go back to an audience on Twitter. I mean, I have maybe 25,000, it's down now cause it kicked a lot of bots out. But, on Twitter, But my joke about that is that, you know, Twitter, you have followers on Twitter, like a parking space has followers in the traffic going by. You you know, you engage 10 or 15 in a day and the rest of 'em just fly by. They don't see you at all and. So having that many followers doesn't mean that they see me at all. I, I have a sense that, you know, dozens of people see what I write and, and you know, with my, with my blog, um, I'm trying to check here. I don't, I, I had another tab open. It's gone now. Uh, I just can't find it. Uh, now I've lost you, I'm looking at these [00:18:55] Katherine Druckman: I'm still here somewhere. [00:18:56] Doc Searls: I know you are cuz you're in [00:18:58] Katherine Druckman: You can hear me as long [00:19:00] Doc Searls: can hear you. That's the main thing, you know, there's, I can't find it, but mean, I have, [00:19:07] Katherine Druckman: Yes [00:19:08] Doc Searls: know, a couple dozen on, on an average day, have a couple dozen readers on my blog. I sometimes, [00:19:13] Katherine Druckman: how many are on mine? not many. [00:19:16] Doc Searls: not And Facebook, I, I, there's no count there, but I don't know what, what's there. I mean, mostly what people do on Facebook. Share trivia and get angry at each other. Um, and that's kind of where it's at. You know, It's, uh, So, and maybe, maybe we're ready for a shakeup, you know, maybe it's time for a [00:19:38] Katherine Druckman: that's a good point. Yeah. I, I enjoy when you reminisce about, you know, the, the massive traffic your blog has. I feel, I feel similarly about the good old days of Lennox Journal back when, I mean, there were, there were a lot of eyeballs, man. I did, I guess I didn't even appreciate it at the time, but , but, um, [00:19:55] Doc Searls: Linux Journal was very leveraged for all of us. I mean, I, I I probably, if I look back at the curb weight of writing that I did online is probably 50% Linux Journal, maybe a less, um, because it blogs so much or years ago. But in terms of stuff that holds up, I mean, there's a lot I wrote in Lennox Journal [00:20:18] Katherine Druckman: Yeah. there's a and thank God it's still there. Um, or at least for [00:20:22] Doc Searls: not, yeah, if not timeless. It was at least interesting and relevant and you could look back on it and it and see, Wow, that, that was helpful. Um, [00:20:34] Katherine Druckman: what something that's, that occurs to me though is that, you know, when you talk about, and you were obviously blogging well before I ever did, I think I probably started a personal blog, I don't know, a year, a little bit before I started at Lennox Journal. So maybe 2005, 2006, somewhere in there. Um, and I, I was never. prolific blogger, but I had a site, you know, I had my little blog role. I linked out to all my smart friends and we were posting about, you know, various things. A lot of, you know, cool technology stuff we're into thing, discoveries we'd made. And, and I had a, not a decent a little audience and, and um, and you know, and we kind of shared and interacted and it was great. And. But I did want to point out , the experience of being a woman on the internet kind of sucks. And you know, while I didn't have the terrible experience that some did, I ultimately took down my blog. I don't, I can't remember when exactly, maybe 2011. Um, but I just took it down because I. Started getting, I had a bit of a stalker. I had people sending, [00:21:37] Doc Searls: Wow [00:21:37] Katherine Druckman: sending me weird, creepy anonymous emails, um, you know, with personal details of my life that were disturbing and, you know, and, and I, I just took it down. To hell with this. Yeah. Oh yeah. I, I haven't talked about this yeah, that [00:21:51] Doc Searls: remember you me this before, but I repressed it. It's, [00:21:53] Katherine Druckman: Yeah. , Well, you know, it's, it's, it's not a, it's not an unusual story for women who. Are posting a lot of things online, and it, it's a, uh, yeah, it's an unfortunate, uh, side effect. And so, yeah. Anyway, I took it down though, and I, you know, and I completely reframed the idea of what online presence is and how I interact and what I share and what I don't, and, and, um, Interestingly, I just, I uh, actually just put up a new blog. I had a very ecstatic personal site for years because just didn't wanna deal with it. I didn't want, I specifically did not want the interaction there. I, you know, it's fine on Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn or wherever else, but where it's, it's a more controlled environment, which I think is why it's relevant to this conversation, because it may not be in the future. But, um, but yeah, I took mine down. Um, I have since just put a new one up where I can, I'm going. See, test the waters and see if I want to, what I want to share there and, and, and how I wanna update it. But, but yeah, I, I did have a very different experience. So I think, and I think that different experience is relevant to this larger conversation about what's happening or what will happen with Twitter, because again, the less curated a space it becomes, the less appealing it is for. Some groups of people, [00:23:17] Doc Searls: Yeah. Well [00:23:19] Katherine Druckman: possibly me, [00:23:21] Doc Searls: well, that's, that's important. I mean, I think, I mean, there's, curation is an interesting concept that I'm, I'm an admirer of, um, of, uh, brew kale and what he's done with archive.org, with internet archive, and with archiving in general. Um, he came up with it in the nineties. The model for web was a library. It was a publishing place. You published stuff there. Um, all of the metaphors were, were publishing in real estate. You had sites with domains and locations that you browsed and visited. And those are, that's, those are locational, they're, they're real estate. They, they presume a kind of, and it was organized. In fact, the way uh, Yahoo started, it was, we're gonna web and we're gonna make it like a library where there's a sports section and there's a living section and there's a main news section and other stuff like that. And, and that fell by the wayside rather quickly when it turned into a haystack and all of search engines came along, um, Google basically finally won that. By basically indexing the entire mess and then letting you look through that. And, and what happened really in the teens, but starting earlier was that Google started indexing things almost instantly. How they do that, I don't know, but they're watching the whole damn thing. And, and so you've something and, Google has it now, and the good thing about that is you could find everything. The bad thing about it is that it. From a static medium into an active one, a live one. And, with the, with the popularity of phones and ubiquitous connectivity, we came into a world where became evanescent. You know, it just, it's all, all kind by. And I mean, like, I'm very interested in the way young people use photography. Old school I, me, photography is archival and by nature you're shooting photos to put them in albums, as it were, and put 'em in places where you can show them to other people. But for a lot of younger people, it doesn't matter as much that you gotta, you gotta use 'em for now. You can use them the next few days or weeks. You keep 'em for a while, but if you lose them, it's not the worst thing in the world. Um, and that's a very different way to use a medium. And I think it's, I mean, the, the entire corpus of Twitter is still available. Same. So same with Facebook. I can stuff I wrote on Facebook and Twitter going back to 2006 if I want to, I assume, But I don't have the sense of accessibility about it. There's nothing archival about it. And I'm not saying that's a good or a bad thing, but I do that there's, um, there's a transitory nature to what's going on now, which. I'm not sure that's a permanent state, and it's possible just to bring it back to Elon Musk, that he may do something really geniusly around this that may give us a better way to use to use the web than we've seen so far. I'm not counting on it, I think is a reputation to maintain about that. That not, just busy being a troll in an asshole, which he's not bad at doing. Right. you know and kind of tweaking the sensibility of the woke folk, um, who, I don't think he knows it, but really hate it. you know [00:27:07] Katherine Druckman: Well, the irony is, [00:27:08] Doc Searls: names, you know, [00:27:10] Katherine Druckman: his customer base is largely the people he's antagonizing the most. , you know the people who buy Teslas, the people buy Tesla, you know who Tesla, their, their. Power in their houses and yeah, I don't know about starlink, but probably the starlink customer base is largely a little bit left leaning and those are the the [00:27:32] Doc Searls: It could be though. I, I, you know, I know people who live in the North woods and in remote places that are very far from left-leaning and don't have internet access and want it you know, [00:27:41] Katherine Druckman: Oh, that's a good point. Maybe that's a [00:27:43] Doc Searls: there's that too. Uh, but, uh, But yeah, I mean, I, um, there's a, a funny, um, onion piece that came out I think maybe today or yesterday, which is things never to say to a Tesla owner. It's pretty funny. [00:28:00] Katherine Druckman: look that up. We'll link to that. Yeah. [00:28:01] Doc Searls: in the, show notes. Yeah. Uh, [00:28:04] Katherine Druckman: Another thing we should link to is our prior conversation. So we, we had a, an episode dedicated to this when it was in its rumor stage and I think we all sort of almost dismissed it. We said, Oh, that would be a weird thing if it happened, but it probably won't. Right. He'll, you know, that won't go through. Yeah. I don't think any of us did. And I'll Yeah. [00:28:21] Doc Searls: I thought he was fooling around there just being a dick. But, uh, which he seems to enjoy doing, you know that's uh, you know, and. And maybe he did that before he became a zillionaire, but I, I don't know. don't know. [00:28:35] Katherine Druckman: Yeah. Yeah. That's a good I don't, I don't know either. Um, but, uh, yeah, so we, we did have that conversation about Mastodon and, and the fediverse and, and, and the way that maybe this should work in an ideal world with decentralized or lack of centralized control. But, um, I don't know that, you know, as soon as the, the rumors started back then, there was a huge, huge, uh, peak or huge surge of mastadon use. A lot of people are signing up. There was activity, We were getting a lot more engagement, um, for the podcast, and I was personally getting a lot more engagement. And then it died down a little bit. Although it's, again, every time the more, uh, Elon Musk and Twitter are in the news together, the more, the more activity I see over, over there. Which is interesting and so I, you know, I who, who knows, maybe this, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we'll see. We'll see if that picks up or something else, or, I'm anxious to, to see what, you know, alternatives, people will, will flock to. If that happens, you know, who knows, maybe people will just stick it out. Again, people who have built up, if you've got 50,000 followers or something and that's a, a big part of your, your job or your purpose in life or you know, whatever it is, and you, you, you want to retain that, um, that voice that you have, then, you know, it seems like it's going to be hard for those people to just walk away from it. So, [00:30:03] Doc Searls: You know, an interesting thing. know, in Bloomington we're talking to locals about e-commerce in general, and one of the things that we found talking to people is that there actually is be for a seller, for example, between marketplace, Craigslist, Shopify, um, and uh, eBay. Um, they're. It's not a problem here. It's not a pain point. Um, and again, hats off to those outfits for making e-commerce for anybody fairly easy thing to do. And they're all centralized, but I think we have to admit that there are things that are, you can't decentralized or not so much you can't do it. It's just done so much better in a centralized way where you have a big company with deep pockets and that can hire really smart and creative people and put 'em all in under one roof and do some really interesting stuff that creates dependencies for everybody that aren't all bad. I mean, that's what Amazon did with, um, aws. Uh, brilliant. You know, the world is improved by it, I think. And I know people in Microsoft that say the same about Azure. I know of one very big entity that's moving from, from, uh, Google's cloud to the Azure Cloud on Microsoft and love Microsoft, which I did not expect to hear. Um, [00:31:51] Katherine Druckman: I'm, I'm using Azure more and more too, [00:31:53] Doc Searls: yeah, so, [00:31:54] Katherine Druckman: Yep. Who, who would've thought that, you know, 15 years ago [00:31:58] Doc Searls: and Right. And I, and I think the, the, um, you know, I, I, I, I feel the ghost of Kim Cameron smiling, um, about that because he had a lot to do with making Azure, the side of Azure. Anyway, do what it does. Um, so it's not, it's not like I'm against bigness or success there. Um, but. You know, a, a lot of what's easy to hate about, about it is the way that Musk is acting right now. I think [00:32:29] Katherine Druckman: Yes. Yep. [00:32:31] Doc Searls: here the, the richest man in the world wants to screw with the place where you live online by [00:32:37] Katherine Druckman: a downside to [00:32:38] Doc Searls: and something to it. You know, that's, that's, you going to be weird. [00:32:45] Katherine Druckman: Yeah, you, you, you have to wonder what, what the world would've been like, you know, a hundred years ago if, if the, the prominent wealthy men, obviously, especially at the time, but not too much different now, had, had the visibility that they do today. You know, if people knew as much about the Vanderbilt or the Rockefellers [00:33:04] Doc Searls: do. You know, [00:33:05] Katherine Druckman: or, the Morgans, [00:33:07] Doc Searls: Well [00:33:07] Katherine Druckman: I mean, it differently [00:33:09] Doc Searls: not as, Totally, Yeah. It was disseminated differently, but there certainly. There were certainly stars their own way that, you know, all and, and in some ways we have, we're replaying, we're echoing Victorian times now. You know, we have our JP Morgans and John d Rockefellers and, and, uh, Andrew Carnegie's. Um, today, you know, that's what and Bezos and Ellison and those people are in their own way. They're, they've. You know, and Peter the, in a different way, but, know, and, and the way they Yeah. And wanna outdo each other with big yachts and, and, you know, and riots and own parts of, um, of New Zealand, you know, and, and go to their, you know, mountain hideouts and, you expect in the end of the world. Right? And so they want to go Wind, [00:34:05] Katherine Druckman: that they're helping to bring about [00:34:07] Doc Searls: Yeah. They're gonna go, yeah, they're gonna go to these places. Done their damage, um, you know, or achieve what they've achieved. I mean, I Did you read what, um, William Shatner wrote about his experience for 12 minutes in space? [00:34:23] Katherine Druckman: Um, I think I did, but I don't, uh, I guess it did not resonate enough for me to remember it. I remember it at the time. It was very, uh, transcendent or something for him. [00:34:32] Doc Searls: Yeah. Well, it was just, it's a, there's this thing, there's. Phenomenon called the overview effect, which is named by, I believe, one of the astronauts, um, of the experience of looking at earth from space. That here's this really in the vastness of space, Tiny blue marble, spinning, you know, around a relatively small, definitely minor old star, um, in one of the arms. An average galaxy. and, and that outside of it is we're quarantined in vastness of nothing. And he, he called it to, you know, like it was, to him, it was a blackness and a void that was held itself and absence of life and the absence of anything. You know where, right here we have this that's at. Belongs to us and these and other animals and, and we are trashing the shit out of it, which are. Uh, and is We are a pestilential species um, which any apex species does when it is out of control and we are out of control and a political statement, I think it's irrespective of whether or not it causes climate damage. It, it's a. You know, we're the earth of everything. And this brings me back to Musk for a second. Cause I, one of the ways I definitely do not, I'm not with him, is on the Mars thing. If you're gonna go to Mars, you have to, Mars needs death. You, you have to have a lot of stuff dying there first in order for life to survive. And even if there life on Mars, it was probably 3 billion years ago. And, and it's not, it hasn't left enough [00:36:27] Katherine Druckman: Right It's a bit sterile. [00:36:30] Doc Searls: Yes, it's remarkably sterile and it's, it's not non hospitable. So, you know, that's, and the idea that we're gonna go there and like just start civilizing it in some way is to me, beyond absurd. Especially when we have some, you know, uh, a planet to take care of here and, and haven't figured out the best way to take care of it yet. [00:36:53] Katherine Druckman: Um, perhaps he's given up. I think a of people have, I guess I don't know. [00:36:58] Doc Searls: Yeah, I don't, well, I don't, I just don't think he cares as much about it I'm sure he If he, if he didn't, he would've had second thoughts about filling the sky with the little things that blink. Um, even if they do give us internet coverage in places we didn't have it otherwise. you know, the astronomers are busy, many of them he hating him for that, for starlink. I say that in great admiration for starlink as well. We can kind of. Contradictory thoughts there? I think. [00:37:29] Katherine Druckman: Yeah, I actually, yeah, I agree too. I, I struggle with that too. I, you know, on one hand I appreciate the, um, ex access to connectivity. So many more people have suddenly, But, but with you on the downsides. Um, yeah. And yeah, there's, so there are a lot of troubling things here. I mean, if we're, if we're being defeatist and depressing again, it's the, you know, I think times of international crisis sort of lend themselves to this type of introspection. But, um, you know, there's a lot going on, a lot of really bad stuff going on, and. Somebody with a, a massive platform with no particular qualification to weigh in on things like, you know, peace agreements when, when a part of the world is at war concerns me. And so, you know, and yeah, anyway, I'll leave it at that, but it, it's, it's um, the, add that to my list of concerns. [00:38:28] Doc Searls: Yeah. [00:38:29] Katherine Druckman: But yeah, it w the when, when, when we're in a period of, of peace and prosperity and, and whatnot. We tend to, we obviously tend to be more optimistic, but, but, um, when this sort of change happens at a time of global distress on many levels, I think, um, I think it's human to pick it apart and be concerned and, and, and, and that's where I am. So there we go. [00:38:55] Doc Searls: Yeah, I mean, I think there's a, I, Let me just talk about Ukraine for a sec. I think, and I say this and I'll sort of put my position out there, um, I'm basically a pacifist and I, I think war is almost always not the answer. think supporting war is not answer. Um, and, and yet I, I know. The US and the allies didn't need to intervene in World War ii. So I kind of hold these contradictory thoughts together. Uh, and you know, I know Ukraine, while a democracy was also, know, uh, a state that had fair amount of corruption in It And all that yet. And, and I'm not sure that the US should, I think there's an argument to be made that the US shouldn't be spending zillion dollars up the Ukraine war as far as it can, as a non-com combatant itself by supplying arms and, and financial support and much else. Uh, Putin is very much the aggressor in this thing and the wrong, think, and, and clearly I, from reading what I've read, Musk supports Putin and [00:40:22] Katherine Druckman: Sure seems that way and [00:40:24] Doc Searls: too. And, [00:40:25] Katherine Druckman: Yep And a lot And a lot of people. Yes. seen, I'm sure you've seen the t-shirt. Yeah. [00:40:30] Doc Searls: the t-shirt? [00:40:30] Katherine Druckman: the, I'd rather be a Russian than a Democrat. [00:40:33] Doc Searls: Yeah, exactly. There's, there's that and, and, and, and Russia did enormous amount, even if the Trump direct support from Russia was a hoax, as the people on the right claim, there's no doubt that Putin did everything he could to tip the scales toward Trump and is doing the same again now. favoring the right in the US And because the right to some degree is behind what he's trying to do, and for Musk to get Twitter and use it for that purpose, which is not out of the realm of possibility, is a really scary and bad thing. [00:41:11] Katherine Druckman: Yes, [00:41:12] Doc Searls: So there's that. Uh, And go [00:41:17] Katherine Druckman: well, Twitter, you know, speaking again of Twitter. Twitter is where. , um, oh, I hate this. This sounds so cynical and I don't mean it to, but where Ukraine really won the PR war in this, in this war because, I have never seen such absolute horror as I saw on Twitter, especially in the early days, you know, of the initial attacks. And I mean, I saw some stuff. I, you know, you know, will burn into the back of my eyelids because it was so horrifying. And, and, and it some, and some of it you can't look away because it's right there in the timeline because, you know, who knows somebody's, it's been shared and retweeted and promoted and I, I see less and less of that now. And, but, but, You know, now we see plenty of horrors in, in the mainstream media. You can turn on c, CNN and, and see the horrors. Now I'm sure there are those on, on the right who would say that that's propaganda and it's doctored and we're, you know, I, you know, but to me, twi Twitter is, was a source of a lot of information. You know, some of it I'm sure was not truthful, but I think a good, good amount of it was and still is. And, uh, so yeah, that, that's interesting because again, it's, it is a, Broadcast very directly from the scene of a horrific situation that, um, you can get, you can get the world behind you pretty quickly if you, uh, share enough of that type of thing. And, and that, that to me is, is an, an interesting place. So if you have somebody come in and take it over, , um, in support of the other side, the aggressor. Then, you know, what happens to the ability of, of those people to get the word out about what's happening to them. [00:43:04] Doc Searls: Yeah, it's, So, I, Since you bring this up, I just did a quick look to, I've not looked at it lately probably for cause. I've not looked at Twitter as much lately, uh, even though I post things on it now and then, but, um, one of my lists I have is a Ukraine list, and it's entirely journalists and journalists that are, that seem to be wise, that have, you followed to track of, keep track of the war and keep track of the entire thing. It's good stuff. I'm just kinda looking down through it now. and it's public. I can share it, you know, if it is shared, people look at what my lists are and see what they are, I guess. And it's thoughtful stuff. I mean, you could use Twitter like that in a way that is useful. But you know, I'm, I guess you'd say I'm on the Ukrainian side of that, cuz I think they're on the defensive. and they were wronged, know, their country was wronged I believe. And and so that matters. But, you know, I've been looking at a lot of other things that, you know, the Aze, Baja and Armenia and Turkey and Georgia and the Kurds and all what's the word for Irid, dentist? Where it's very hard to draw and, um, and that's, that's in play with in a lot of other places besides Ukraine. Ukraine's a big one for us right now and to, you know, do we want the United States involved in that? I think there's an ar there's a good argument to be had about whether the United States should remain at least trying to be the world's policeman. Um, we did a pretty bad job of it in a lot of places, maybe Iraq is better off than it used to be. And maybe even Afghanistan is in a way because they had some limited experience with being, relatively free or somewhat westernized, where women especially had had freedoms that they no longer have now under the Taliban. So maybe what the US did there was good in some ways, but it's a failure in the sense that it went back to the Taliban and we're. and I don't know. I mean, I, I, I think the world is a complicated place. Is it better if the US is, is very active militarily in its foreign in policy, or is it not? I, there are good arguments to be had on both sides of that one too. [00:45:29] Katherine Druckman: So I think we've, uh, we're coming up on our, our, our recording time on our hour. Um, I, uh, I don't know, I think we've, we've, we've thoroughly covered some, Well, I don't know, I, you know, can you thoroughly cover this? Who knows? But I think, um, I think the, the, the final thought really is we've, we've kind of shared our collective anxiety out here in the and I, you know, I would love to hear what other people are thinking [00:45:54] Doc Searls: Yeah. I'd like to hear it too. [00:45:56] Katherine Druckman: I, I live in my little silo, [00:45:58] Doc Searls: Yeah, and not just in a, you're full of shit way, but rather, Yeah, I'm probably am someone full of shit, but what's, what's a better way to look at these things? [00:46:06] Katherine Druckman: Yeah, I I welcome the, the, feedback that I'm totally wrong. [00:46:10] Doc Searls: yeah, and if, and if Musk does, if he does something brilliant, how do you support it? Have does something horrible. How do you fight it? Those are interesting questions too. Just jumping off, I'm not sure this is gonna do anything, [00:46:24] Katherine Druckman: and I'm wondering are people, are, are people hedging? Are people thinking in terms of, of going somewhere else or in, in tandem even? And, and where is that? Yeah. [00:46:34] Doc Searls: it, it, there's is also this kind of a false assumption that one is on one thing and not on [00:46:39] Katherine Druckman: Right. Exactly. you relaunching your personal blogs too? How many other are you doing? [00:46:44] Doc Searls: I i, I'm on different browsers most of the time, uh, I use them for different things and I, um, I have, you know, three or four different email addresses and, um, You know, Twitter, LinkedIn, um, Instagram, Signal, Telegram, discourse. I'm, I'm on all those things in different ways, you know? And we're, we, we are on Slack. We use Slack. Um, it's, it's not one versus the other in all cases. It's one plus the other. And how did you know, how does that math out? Just an [00:47:26] Katherine Druckman: Cool. Well thank you everyone for hearing us out and we, we would appreciate all, any and all feedback and we will talk to you next time. [00:47:35] Doc Searls: Okay. See you