Build The Future

#76 — Jim Pethokoukis — Building an Up-Wing Culture

• Cameron Wiese

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Today, we're talking with Jim Pethokoukis, the author of "The Conservative Futurist" and the newsletter "Faster, Please!" where he writes about innovation, economics, and the potential of future technologies.

In this episode, we talk about the optimistic cultural zeitgeist of the 1960s space race, the unfulfilled promises of that era, such as nuclear-powered space exploration,  the role media plays in shaping societal attitudes towards the future, and much more!

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Cameron Wiese:

Welcome to the Build the Future podcast. My name is Cameron Weecy and I'm your host. I've always been fascinated by the ideas and the sentiment that drove American culture in the 1960s with the space race, a culture galvanized to dream about the possibilities of tomorrow, whether it's food, transportation, cities, biology or anything else. It was this cultural mindset, rooted in optimism, that the world tomorrow would be better than the world today, a mindset where people were compelled to build things and I quote JFK not because they were easy, but because they were hard. It's this desire to build and to dream that seems to have been lost and something we're here to bring back With Build the Future. We're here to promote the ideas and stories of those who see how the future can be better and promote their plans to get us there. It's our mission to get you to dream about the possibilities of tomorrow, to dream about the future that you want to live in, and inspire you to go build. Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the Build the Future podcast.

Cameron Wiese:

I'm your host Cameron Weecy, and today we're talking with Jim Pethacuchus, the author of the Brilliant Substack Faster Place, which I love and read every week and the author of the new book, the Conservative Futurist.

Cameron Wiese:

How we Get the Science Fiction Future we were promised. Jim's a writer, great public thinker, and in this episode we have a ton of fun talking about the role of media in shaping culture. Optimistic stories and the importance of good science fiction are about now his new book, of course, and how we ultimately get the future that we're going to be excited about living in. So I had a ton of fun, so, without further ado, let's jump right in. Jim. How we doing today.

Jim Pethokoukis:

Great, I am ready to go. I'm ready to accelerate my way through this fine podcast.

Cameron Wiese:

Indeed. Well, thank you for coming on on Build the Future. We've crossed paths several times in the last couple of years since I wrote that World's Fair essay and I've been a long-time subscriber to Faster Place. All subscribers are greatly appreciated. And then you just had a book come out, the Conservative.

Jim Pethokoukis:

Futurist how to Create the Sci-Fi World we were promised.

Cameron Wiese:

Let's start with what is the future that we were promised? It was a nuclear-powered space-faring future.

Jim Pethokoukis:

I mean, those were two of the foundational pieces that with unlimited inexpensive energy and advances in rocket propulsion, we would have atomic everything, everything from atomic flying cars to atomic blenders. We would be using those blenders in space, on the moon and beyond. We would have great leaps forward in computers and I think you know maybe a little more down to earth, that this kind of economic growth that we saw in the 50s and then in the 60s would continue unabated and America today would just be a far richer place, a healthier place, and we would be taking very fast rocket trips to wherever we want, everywhere, from London to a Mars city. So it's been called I didn't make this phrase up, it's been called Cool Shit, futurism.

Jim Pethokoukis:

And it was, it was a futurism of hardware, even though computers were part of it. But it was big, it was bold, it was optimistic, Indeed.

Cameron Wiese:

Cool Shit. Futurism yeah, it's like all these things that make life exciting, make things worth living. I do really want an atomic blender. I do a little bit more than my NutriBullet, which would be a very powerful blender, Cameron.

Jim Pethokoukis:

It'd be a blender of great robustness.

Cameron Wiese:

As a design. I wonder what it would, how it would do on a. Will it Blend Everything?

Jim Pethokoukis:

will be blended, everything will be blended.

Jim Pethokoukis:

But I should note, though, that that we kind of had this period again and maybe a little more irrelevant for you maybe not, but then in the 90s, in the late 90s, boy, it wasn't just like the boom and the internet. People were so optimistic that not only, would, with the economic boom, sort of continue unabated again to the future, but you started reading a lot more about again, about space, about the singularity. Wired magazine every three months, was running these wildly optimistic pieces. So, even though the longer period and what a lot of people will focus on is kind of that immediate postwar period, we had again kind of a hint of that in the 90s for a while. Not much since then it has happened, and a big part of the book is that I think we're at sort of this moment again where you have these technologies converging. But I just want to make sure we get the most out of them and if this is that kind of opportunity for a real sustained leap forward in growth and progress, that we don't blow it.

Cameron Wiese:

Totally. We could have unpacked this. But what was it that drove that sort of sentiment in the 90s? I think you and I would probably point to a lot of the science fiction, the stories that were being told culturally in the 50s and the 60s that were sort of fueling that era of optimism where we're building colonies on the moon, having our atomic blenders, atomic everything. I personally haven't looked too much into that sort of moment in the 90s.

Jim Pethokoukis:

It's interesting because in the early 90s there wasn't a ton of it's kind of a forgotten recession. We had savings and loan crisis and there was a very slow kind of jobless recovery and sort of. The economic consensus by like 94, 95 was that the era of fast growth was over. We were now going to be a 2% economy. These presidential candidates who were running for president in 96, they should just like tamp down their speeches. You're raising people's expectations.

Jim Pethokoukis:

And that really, the exact second that that sort of consensus really became concrete and widespread, already the economy was beginning to take off, so that it was really if so, if you were, it was a great time to be a contrarian because the consensus had it Absolutely wrong. And then literally, like, literally, like. When that hit its sort of peak gloominess, again it already started to take off. And like a year later, people are like off to the races. Singularity is an eye, we're gonna grow 4% forever.

Jim Pethokoukis:

A little bit of very rapid growth can really that's widely spread, can really change people's Opinions. And then you know you had a new technology that looked like it had a lot of promise and it was just a great confluence of like the. And then you know, and then there were these you know global that you were, you know the, the Soviet Union, you know, fell and China looked like it was becoming more capitalist. So it seemed like everything was sort of moving in the right direction and it really was kind of a holistic, all of society, techno, econ, optimistic period that I have not seen anything like that since.

Cameron Wiese:

Interesting. Yeah, it was a little bit before, before my time, and you know the popular dialogue around sort of the great signature, to call the great Downshift, is like, really focused on the earlier era.

Jim Pethokoukis:

But Everyone seems to overlook that that blip in the 90s, one of my favorite examples is I had you know, cuz I was a, I was a journalist and LA in the late 90s and I had this fan in ideally the financial journalism. I had this fantastic look ahead into the two, into the 2000s, from from Lehman Brothers, and they were super, super bullish and like we're just gonna keep on going. This is the new digital internet economy. Now, of course, lehman Brothers did not even make it like another 10 years after that, they clapped with a financial crisis, and nor did we get the uninterrupted period of rapid growth that like didn't happen either. So it was a tremendous. It was a tremendous bummer. I'll be honest with you to like, expect that and instead getting, like you know, the global financial crisis and slow growth after that and pandemic. So I I don't need to go through that again. I want the good growth and I wanted, I want to keep growing. I'm ready for that.

Cameron Wiese:

So what do you feel like we're out right now. What's the sort of your view? Because it seems there's there's hints of things that are really starting to bubble up.

Jim Pethokoukis:

I Think the technology we're seeing and a lot of I mean people probably sick of out hearing about AI ready, but I think I think, across energy and Computer science, meaning AI, biology and space and what people really are not focusing on the massive decline in space launch costs and how that will help enable potentially a lot of those kind of like space streams. You know, you know of the Immediate post war decades, like I think those are for real technologies. It's always a matter of timing. Usually, you know it takes a while to, you know the fully and you know like perfect these technologies and and businesses have to learn how To use them and things need to be approved and of course, that's some of my concern. I think these are all potentially together an important cluster of technologies, every bit as important as those of the second industrial revolution, of, you know, factory electrification, the internal combustion engine and industrial chemicals. I think these are really important and we just have to make sure that they are supported to the extent possible by public policy and by our culture. I mean, when I started writing this book, you know, you know to me, you know the example of nuclear energy and how we basically Pause that and kept it pause for my entire life. I'm like that's a really powerful example, but like that's what we're trying.

Jim Pethokoukis:

That's what some people want to do with AI. They want to effectively pause it or regulate it or nationalize it, with very little consideration about how that, could you know, slow that technology down. So it's like I feel like I'm reliving. So I was a kid then. Not much like I do about it, but I feel like I've been training my whole life for this moment again, where we're gonna have this potential, this real leap forward. But the same kinds of people that didn't want to do it back then either they're still around or they've taught their children or they've taught their apprentices. You know, much like the emperor and Darth Vader, they have taught their apprentices and they are on the dark side, and that's so. That's what I'm worried about. I think it's a real thing. We see how negative people already are about AI. I think it's a real concern.

Cameron Wiese:

It's a fascinating comparison. I hadn't sort of linked the sort of nuclear nuclear fear in the 70s and 80s to now, the AI fear, and like there seems to be a cultural shift right now when people are realizing that we don't have we generally we don't really have a client problem, we have an energy problem and that is our constraint like, oh, we probably should reconsider this thing that we have hamstrung ourselves on, and the worst case is that we don't fix that, and then we don't, and then we hamstrung ourselves on AI and then we don't fix that until you know, 20, 30 years from now, where We've continued to like just Puddle muddle along no more muddling and again it's the va, the same.

Jim Pethokoukis:

I Well, I think, ideally we would think hard right now about the, the nuclear mistake, and realize that it's a lot of the same kinds of people, a lot of the same kinds of organizations, certainly the same kind of worldview that we're seeing again with AI and and and and really the space, and also with some of the, some of the new energy technologies, where it is this ultra better safe than sorry, you know approach From people who really don't want to see the progress, whether that, you know, either they think it's dangerous on its own, or they're very, or they think economic growth is inherently bad. It's just gonna use up all the earth. So anything that facilitates that, whether it's cheap energy or what have you, or the ability of AI To enable the help, enable all these other technologies, they don't want that. So I Hope that we can point to the example like, hey, we've done that, we tried that and we don't.

Jim Pethokoukis:

What we have is a, a scarcity of clean energy Problem. Why would we want to do this again at some point? We have to learn that lesson and I I kind of think we will. I think that you it's clear that, like, if you're concerned about climate change, that telling people to use less energy, you know, forget just in a rich country, but in other countries that really need to use more energy to raise your living standards, that is a that is a loser proposition and ultimately what you have to settle on is we're just gonna have to, you know, make more clean energy and any kind of problems created by that we'll have to deal with them on the fly.

Cameron Wiese:

Do you have a sense of like why that view is so pervasive? Because to me it just seems like it's like morally wrong to be over here in the West and say, oh, we've industrialized and oh, but now we have climate issues and so, hey, developing nations, you can't do what we did, you need to stay where you're at. Like that just seems morally wrong to me and like, do you have any senses like why people like how people jujitsu their way of thinking about that is like a good thing.

Jim Pethokoukis:

Some will say well, you know, we'll help them by redistributing, and then the West will sort of lower its living standard so they so up poor countries can raise theirs again. Good luck selling that to people. So that's obviously not gonna happen. What would happen, more likely if you're gonna go down that road, is that we'll keep what we have. Maybe our growth will be slower or stagnant, but they'll never get rich. And and how they justify it well, bad luck. I guess that's just really too bad.

Jim Pethokoukis:

I don't think they'll say that in public. But if what you're saying is oh, we know the West will redistribute its vast resources and create this kind of global equity, what you're really saying is the latter meaning, because that's obviously not going to happen. I see no scenario where that one. We just came out of a pandemic where people were freaking out because there weren't enough like Clorox wipes on the shelves. We are not a society that does suffering. This is not a theocracy. We do not deal with shortage as well, as I think that that we're gonna be in a permanent recession and permanent shortage is an utter misreading, of sort of like our national room or the room that all rich countries are in. There really is no path.

Cameron Wiese:

But forward, and I think that part of this is articulating a compelling vision of what that future looks like. That addresses a lot of these, a lot of these challenges around climate, around energy, around, you know, our relationship with AI and our relationship with technology, and how we ensure that the planet and humanity flourish together, not like at the expense of one another.

Jim Pethokoukis:

I want to get out of the zero-sum game and the zero-sum thinking like that, that is, that is the dream killer. Like that is the society killer. A society or global society mired in zero-sum thinking, where you think any gain that guy gets makes me poor. I mean that to me that's a recipe for conflicts, it's a recipe for misery, and and the only way you get out you sort of crack that puzzle is through technological progress, driving growth. That that, like, that's the only way that we really figured to to get, to get out of that trap, and that that is an absolute trap that some people would actually have us voluntarily stay inside you know I'm hopeful because I don't find that vision compelling at all.

Cameron Wiese:

I don't think most people do.

Jim Pethokoukis:

They're like I don't want that but I think there's a lot of people who think maybe they don't want that, but I think that's that's the way it has to be. I, you know, I did a podcast and we were and I was talking about these kinds of themes and when it was over, the producer who was probably it was a young woman, probably about your age is like she said, like everything you just said, all my friends think the opposite. Like that you can't solve these problems. That we are destined for a world that of an of a chaotic climate and where all the rich people live on space stations and we're all on the earth like in the rubble fighting it out. Like that I'm like no, that that would be a choice. Only way is that we chose that. I don't know why you would choose that. I'm not choosing that a Cameron, you're not gonna choose that. So, like, why would we do that?

Cameron Wiese:

no, it's like inhuman is just like.

Cameron Wiese:

Yeah, I think the I want to kind of point to the framework, the articulate in the book around sort of the, the two different mindsets, the upwing and downwing, because it's sort of you that we've been talking about this like we're kind of limited, things are scarce, we don't want any, you know, we want to hold off the future for as long as possible because it's scary and uncertainly to catastrophe more or less represents the downwing and then the opposite upwing is the opposite. Can you articulate the two, like how you sort of define both of those?

Jim Pethokoukis:

you know the books called the consider of futures. I work at a kind of a center right think tank but, like you don't have to be like conservative or on the right center to believe in any of this. There, you know, I know there are plenty of people who are like left of center or call themselves Democrats, people in the middle. I think the common bond there is that you think that if you think we can solve problems, that we have enough, enough smarts not perfect intelligence, but enough smarts and will and tools, and the tools we don't have, we can build those tools to make things better, not a utopia, but like incrementally, year after year, make things better, solve problems and create a better world. Like, if you think like that broadly is true and not and as we just said, not everybody does, then that is an upwing belief, whether you're also on the left or right. If you don't think that's true and you're more concerned about the downsides to all that, you're more concerned about the disruption for progress, you're think that like, oh, space, that kind of sounds neat, but you know we have all these problems here on earth and the robots will take the jobs and then they'll murder us and we'll probably screw it up anyways and you know I, I'm very fearful that. You know that someone from another country they'll, they'll take my job and I'm very fearful that trade will make me all that stuff that's down weak thinking. You can find that on the left and right too. That's why, despite the name of the book, like I, I really kind of want to move out of that framing because I think it, I think it leads to nowhere.

Jim Pethokoukis:

You end up alienated people who you agree quite a bit like I. Just you know I just I just wrote in my faster please. Newsletter. You know Noah Smith. You know well-known newsletter writer, twitter person like he. You know he's he's still left to me, but I tell you, we agree on a whole lot when it comes to the fundamental sort of goal of a society, which is to make life better. You know, through innovation, you, like him and me in a room, I, we probably come up with a pretty good Ted Point agenda totally yeah, and I think I like how there's.

Cameron Wiese:

There seems to be this thing that's transcending the traditional sort of like political divide, where it's no longer sort of left versus right. It's like are you pro future or anti future? And I think the up wing, down wing. It's a like really good sort of encapsulation of that yeah, like anti future.

Jim Pethokoukis:

But listen, you know, when you look at politics how much of it is sort of stuck, wanting to return to the past, wanting to return to 1964. That world, you know that world, the societal arrangements, the family arrangements, people very worried about change. What I like about that era was not living in that era, but what I like about the era was the optimism and the effort to create a better tomorrow, not to stay there. That that's not what we're trying to do. But clearly there are people who view it like that and, you know, run political campaigns.

Jim Pethokoukis:

Here's my dream that, like whenever a president, someone runs for president, they'll have like the big flashy campaign ad which they'll go with the uplifting ad and they'll show great things from America's past. But what I noticed with those ads they all ended in about 1969 with Apollo, like you know. They'll like World War two, jesse Owens winning a gold medal, apollo, and and then not much. You know that's that is the kind, that's the kind of backward-looking I don't want. I want to hear a lot more about how we're gonna create great kind of America altering fate, altering stuff that will make us healthier, wealthier and hopefully a more resilient society.

Cameron Wiese:

How would you get people who don't, who are like, and I don't really feel like this certain political system is serving me, like how do you advocate the upweighing sort of mentality to both people who are sort of neutral right now and the people who are downwing?

Jim Pethokoukis:

I mean it really can't be apathetic. I mean, I think at some degree people get what they want and I think what we've kind of wanted is caution. We've wanted caution at a very deep level and that's what we've got. I mean, I mentioned this in the book in 2000, and that was the 2000, and I think, 12 Republican debate. They had Mitt Romney who eventually got the nomination, and they had a debate and Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, said we should build a colony on the moon, we should build a and it could be our 51st state.

Jim Pethokoukis:

And like Mitt Romney, who I kind of generally like, was like that's a ridiculous idea. Any business that tried to do it would go bust. And everyone was laughing and they're like what a gaffe, what a political gaffe. I'm like no, that says something very wrong about our society and our sort of our reflexive caution that that would be mocked. Of course, at the very moment SpaceX is working on Falcon Rocket. So it actually kind of made a lot of sense and I think we help read that kind of timidity in our politicians. Listen, politicians don't like to be bold, but they think there's like an audience for anything. That's what they'll give them If they think that's what we want. What we want is acceleration. We want universal vaccines and we want to be able to knock away a comet if it's coming here. And instead of having 2% growth, we want multiples of that. Well, you'll find politicians pushing that.

Cameron Wiese:

What do you think the core underlying the intellectual scaffolding is for the upwing narrative, the upwing point of view, just to contrast it with the downwing I've talked about this before the limits of growth, population bomb, this sort of that cultural zeitgeist in the 70s seemed to be very pervasive. What are the sort of upwing counters?

Jim Pethokoukis:

Well, one of my favorite quotes is why is it, when we see nothing but progress behind us, who we think will have nothing but disaster ahead of us? Listen, I'm a simple person. I look at what we have done. We have created a much better world over the past 250 years, even in this period of relative stagnation. I would rather live today than in 2000 or 1990 or 1980 or 1970. I've lived through those years. I would much rather be here today. So, but relative to what we expected and relative to what we could have achieved, it is to me stagnation, even if it's not literally stagnation.

Jim Pethokoukis:

And did we do everything we could reasonably have done to change that? No, we did just the opposite. I mean, if you wanted to create the kind of world we're talking about, you wouldn't dramatically reduce what the government was spending on basic science research. You wouldn't have followed up the Apollo program with nothing all right. If you really were serious about creating the kind of world we're talking about, you wouldn't have passed regulations that make it almost impossible to build anything of consequence in this country, either at all, or inexpensively or quickly, which means you get a lot less of that. I mean two very basic things. Listen, I would like us to.

Jim Pethokoukis:

It doesn't have to be the only lens. If we look at public policy and I work at a think tank Well, every time we pass a law we should think how does this affect, sort, of, the innovative capacity of our country? Does it make it a little bit less? Does it make it a little bit more? Now you can look at other things too, but if you don't look at that as one of the factors, then you end up in a world where we send smart people home.

Jim Pethokoukis:

We want to come here or we don't let them hear. We don't let them hear. I mean that again, you know not to do on Elon Musk in a podcast or anything, but I remember him saying in person I was attending a thing with him and he said if you want to do something great with your life, there's no better place to do it than the United States of America. So like that's a real secret sauce, deep magic of what we do, and like to not give that any thought and to disregard it, as many politicians are, that's not trying very hard to create a you know, I think, a richer, more capable society. So I mean that's my scaffolding.

Cameron Wiese:

One thing that's like fast for me is sort of visions of the future that emerged post limits to growth, like in the 70s. There's sort of this counterculture movement that Stuart Brand and Gerardo Neal and Eric Drexler were all involved in articulating like sort of as these responses to the limits of growth are you familiar with. Well, stuart Brand and Eric Drexler, yeah, the sort of organizing sort of thing that brought those guys together was Gerardo Neal, the Princeton physicist, the high frontier, and I thought that was the most like compelling sort of narrative, like in concrete, definite thing that transcends the sort of, oh, we're gonna run out of resource on earth Cause, even given human ingenuity, like, how quickly can we build new things to replace some of the? You know the challenges that we're facing? Like, oh well, let's just build up and go a little bit beyond. You know the atmosphere, and then our problems seemingly are solved.

Jim Pethokoukis:

It's not like those ideas didn't exist. They were there. Why did we choose not to follow them? I mean, there were certainly post-apowl. There were lots of ideas about what comes next. There were ideas about okay. So there were ideas about, you know, furthering the space program. There are ideas about supersonic flight coast, you know, city to city rockets there, you know, hypersonic. So there were these ideas out there, but why didn't we? So, why don't we pursue them? And I think, I think, fundamentally, we became a less future-oriented society in the early 70s and that ended up permeating policy, our culture.

Jim Pethokoukis:

I think you have to have those things supporting each other. You can chicken or egg them, what comes first, but you need to have them supporting each other or you won't have the mechanism for change. And if you don't have the culture, because with any change, again it's going to come disruption, jobs will come and go, businesses will rise and fall, and if people don't have some confidence that it's all going to be worth it, they're going to say it's not worth it and it's not worth it and we just better stay with what we're doing. And you can forget about the generationships, or you can forget about the giant space stations and coast-to-coast nuclear reactors. It's just not worth it. And we fail to provide. There's a saying from a Dutch futurist in my book, frederick Pollock, which is people who fail to imagine a better future, they're not going to have a future. And that seems to me to be coming true when and I'm sure you see it probably among your own friends just a lot of deep pessimism about the future, which creates, I think, a real paralysis and lethargy.

Cameron Wiese:

Let's talk about the role that media plays in all this, because even the change and addressing it, you introduced me through Faster Plays 2 for All Mankind, which is one of my favorite shows, and then I don't think it's been out for a while, so it's spoiler.

Jim Pethokoukis:

Well, the fourth season comes out November 10. I know it's on my calendar on, so I can't wait.

Cameron Wiese:

But it was fast to me. In like season three, they articulated the job loss from Helium 3. And I thought that was just a beautiful sort of there's always going to be change and there's always going to be this sort of tension.

Jim Pethokoukis:

There's protesters at some point, right, right, exactly. That's the sort of world building of the show that it sort of acknowledged that. But even with all kind of the cool stuff that's happening, you know, because we're going to Mars and we have nuclear fusion reactors, someone's not going to be happy. So is society built around that unhappiness? Or do we say one? Do we say, like okay, we'll try to help those people, we're going to keep moving forward? And do those people believe that, like okay, like my life plan is going to be different than what I imagined, but I'll press forward and try to make the best of it? But I also know that these changes will create a ton more opportunity and you can define that word in lots of ways for my children and grandchildren, like, if you believe that you can take a lot of disruption in your personal life, if you think it's for the better.

Jim Pethokoukis:

And you know, I think it's important that people again, I'm not an artist, I'm not a novelist, I'm not a filmmaker. I'm sure there are people who can create better, interesting images of the future, but like that needs to be done. It's whether it's Hollywood, whether it's Mark Andreessen and Silicon Valley, whether it's whether it's people who are just really good at mid journey, and new AI tools who can create images or short films which, so we don't have to rely on Hollywood, we can do it ourselves. Those images need to be created, and a lot of images. No, there's. No, I mean it doesn't have to be sort of this one version that maybe I might prefer or come up with, but lots of visions and lots of ideas and let them compete and we'll see what we choose.

Cameron Wiese:

Are there any concrete sort of things? You would like to see the things?

Jim Pethokoukis:

to me that are most concrete and I think these I think are fairly basic One, to make sure that we can produce a lot of clean energy, right. So, again, if that's fission fusion, deep geothermal, you know, regular solar and wind could be a part of its space. Solar, like, I'm agnostic about that stuff, but so that needs to be part of it, all, right. So I think energy is like a general purpose technology, maybe the ultimate general purpose technology, and like I was just having this conversation with someone there, so like, like, if you ran for president, what would be on your platform I'm not sure this is a winner, but absolutely on my platform would be planetary defense, whether it's from, whether it's from, you know, asteroids or comets, or gamma bursts, you know, solar storms, stuff that can really disrupt an advanced technological society. I think that needs to be, that absolutely needs to be on the agenda, whether hardening the earth or making sure that we're in places other than the earth, to me, that that makes you have enough energy and making sure. I'll tell you, I was just rewatching the film the Road I don't know if you've seen that, cameron where something, something has happened and basically earth is just pretty much devastated.

Jim Pethokoukis:

And if you, you know, if you read the book, in the film it's it was probably a comment strike and there was like no coming. The whole point of the movie is there's no coming back. There's absolutely no coming back from that. So I would like to avoid that. So, so, so it's a abundant energy, planetary defense, and I wouldn't mind being able to get from, like, washington DC to Tokyo in about 45 minutes. If we can make that happen, that would be awesome too. Absolutely.

Cameron Wiese:

So I think, like the planetary defense contrasts well with like imagine a film like that's kind of like the Martian contrasted with that. The Netflix movie came out to you so like don't look up. You know, it's just like that. The don't look up is like oh wow, look at humanity. Like we can't solve our problems, like our kind of helpless and we can't coordinate, because this bad thing is going to happen and we're all like kind of shit out of luck. It's like why are we telling that story? Versus oh, we have this huge problem. Humanity has come together, we've you, we've brought our best scientists or best engineers are best thinkers and we've coordinated ways to alleviate this problem and ensure that doesn't happen again. It's like very, you know, upwing, it's upwing, downweighing, sort of media.

Jim Pethokoukis:

I'm not sure what you think you accomplished with that. That was a demoralizing movie. It was also demoralizing the Apple Plus series, extrapolations from Stephen Soderbergh who did Contagion, which was supposed to be a serious fact based thing, about a series about climate change and there was nothing about nuclear in it. And by the end of because every show is like another 10 years in the future and by the end we had survived, the world was way worse. There was nothing about nuclear and they are putting CEOs on trial for war crimes. Who wants? And sorry, what are we supposed to do? Like, what is the call to action there? That sounds terrible, rather, how about like a Martian version of that? Like you know, you can make interesting, compelling media like everything Listen, everything doesn't have to be up way, we can have plenty, I like. I love a good zombie as much as you know movies, just the next person, but they have that be like 95%, that. That is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of dystopia.

Cameron Wiese:

The Contagion is a good example. I think this. This points out something that I'm curious to get your perspective, that I've been thinking about, which is, I think our pro future, like the opposite stories are mispriced Because no one watches Contagion or Terminator and says, oh, we should do something about this. It's just like passive fear. It's like, oh, we don't want that.

Cameron Wiese:

Versus you have, like Ready Player One and the social network, which are different, differently, sort of top, but those inspired people that gave them examples, like most the people I know in Silicon Valley. Like they watch the social network and like, oh, I can go be an entrepreneur, and that wasn't the point of the movie, but it gave them that permission. And Ready Player One, palmer, lucky Zuck like they've watched the movie, they read the book, they read Snow Crash, which was sort of the previous serve or the first instantiation, and like it compelled them to build something. So like it matters. It matters Like if you, if you define, hey, here's what could be like. Even like you have entrepreneurs building like the primer from Diamond Age or which is the Neil Stevenson's book, because they're like, oh, that is cool, that doesn't exist, we should build it. Versus oh, we're going to have a global pandemic. We should do something like. I don't think it compels people to action. The same way, no one seems to be thinking about this.

Jim Pethokoukis:

I mean a lot of my, a lot of my book. You know there's a lot I have studies as economics of the history and, and I'm like, well, the culture stuff. Is it really, you know, does it really go with that? Is it like then, the more I wrote the book, I'm like like this may be the most important part of the book, right? I mean, it obviously inspires entrepreneurs and technologists, you know, as well as giving society an image like it really does matter. And the example I've been, you know I've been using a lot as I've been talking about it is the book by William Gibson called the peripheral, and there's a TV show called the peripheral. I think of another fine Apple Plus production.

Jim Pethokoukis:

It's set in the future. It's set both like in the 2030s and in the year like 2100, and it's clear that in that between that time period, like nothing major went wrong but lots of little things went wrong. So you know, you had some pandemic and a bit of a nuclear war and climate and all of it added up and like 80% of us died. But then, like in the middle of that is at least in the book, the way Gibson wrote it was science started popping, it started, everything started to work the AI, the, you know, the nanotechnology, and that's the only reason, like anybody survived.

Jim Pethokoukis:

But I'm like, but it was still kind of too late. So that's my. So I don't want it to be too late, right, you know. So I don't want to, I don't want to figure out all this stuff, you know, as the comet is heading toward us, right. So so to me, that that is. You know, that is kind of a gloomy movie, but there's actually is like a message in there that you know that I think under that maybe a different writer might have pulled out more, and that, so you can do this kind of media, these kind of stories, and have them be interesting and all that, but have like a fundamental lesson that people can draw away, which is, like we don't want to wait till it's too late, so like, maybe we don't want to like screw up AI, so everything that we could get in two years, we don't get in 20 years.

Cameron Wiese:

Yeah, it's, it's it's like trying to think about like, what a, what a framework might look like for that type of type of story. We're I think we're we're both friends with Jason Crawford from Ritwoythia he and I have spoken about this, and then we have another friend who's a director and film producer and we're trying to figure out, like what is it? What does like, the genre look like for this type of film? And so what are the like, the underpinnings or values or ideas that are represented in the stories, whether they're like pro-topian or I mean even to some extent like the peripheral, where it's like maybe it's not like, oh, we solve all the problems, but like it, it's pointing in a different direction, like, what do you think about the like, what that set of films, like, would look like, or what the sort of? How would we define that category?

Jim Pethokoukis:

So I think it can be like a cautionary tale, as with like the Martian or or the revival of Lost in Space, which I think is on Netflix, which I wrote about in the book. Almost every episode was about fixing a problem with something that at least approached like real science, where the jeopardy comes from, like not being able to fix something and figuring out how to solve the problem. So I like, so I think like that's like like kind of like the Martian, kind of Lost in Space genre, the you know the kind of the cautionary tale. Oh, if we had, if we only had this technology, like we wouldn't be having this massive problem. It's me it's so easy to create something which you could, which people could leave with something beyond despair, that I don't think it's that hard. Instead, we just had media which has leaned into this, completely into the despair, where it's obviously like there is there is not going to be a happy ending. Listen, a zombie movie where the whole world is basically destroyed but the people at the end live. That's not like a happy ending, so they can live like we did 500 years ago. That's not a happy ending. I'm not an artist, but I I think there are enough examples out there where it does. It's not just Star Trek, I mean, that's one example, but there are. There is enough out there that if someone wanted to do it, I listen like for all mankind. You know.

Jim Pethokoukis:

Kind of this alt history, which is another interesting genre. I mean Ronald D Moore, you know, who did Balsar Galactica and did Star Trek, like he just created that right so like other people could have done that, but he did it and had a really good sort of leaping off point which is Russians win the space race. Then what happens? Well, america's like guess what? We're going to keep on racing. So you, you know, now we're going to win the next round and then everything flows from there. So I would like to see like really intelligent alt history world building, like in a smart way. I think that I think there's tons of alt history books out there.

Jim Pethokoukis:

I think that's a very ripe genre for this kind of stuff in which you can have things go right, things go wrong, heroes, villains, all it doesn't have to be a bland and just because it popped my head, you know, like I said, we can create our own media and I think if you've ever watched like the five and a half minute SpaceX video about Mars colonization. That's pretty spectacular, it's, it's to me I, anyone I've showed that is like that's great. We should do that. I recommend, if you go to the SpaceX side, I think you can find that it's you can, you can, you can make it, but it has to, I think, appeal to kind of a certain like we're pioneers, we're explorers, but that's as humanity, that's who we are. So, I think, trying to appeal to that spirit. Like, as you know, interstellar another great, I think, fundamentally pro progress movie, though it is very dystopian in a way too.

Cameron Wiese:

Yeah, but the trailer, though that teaser, that that they want, that they like released to promote the film, where it's Matthew McConaughey sort of narrating, you know, this key scene was like, you know we've forgotten that maybe we're still, like we're pioneers, that maybe the best is not behind us but ahead of us, and just like camera.

Jim Pethokoukis:

I'm getting the chills now. Camera. I love that movie so much. I in my in my, I'm in my AI office, but if we're doing this from my home office, I have a giant interstellar poster sitting on my wall. Absolutely Love it.

Cameron Wiese:

It's in in that that one scene. I can never get this out of my head, the scene where Matthew McConaughey is in the classroom talking with the principal and MERS teacher and they're like like Murphy can't be bringing this book to school. What do you mean? Like we can't talk about the Apollo missions because it's distracting kids. It's like, oh, it just like it gets me so, so tense thinking about that and that seems to be like I mean, that's the the downwing sort of mentality, that's great because all the problems in that society stem from a pervasive downwing attitude.

Jim Pethokoukis:

That's what it got people. It got when they finally had a really big problem that they needed the tools to solve. They did not have them and they didn't have them out of choice. And that is where the disaster didn't come from progress, but the lack of progress.

Cameron Wiese:

Last thing I want to talk about is, you know, a shared interest of both you and I, which is the World's Fair. What excites you about? About the World's Fair, historically and in the role it can play in enabling you know the sort of cultural perspective of the future, one of the most important roles of the World's Fair was to introduce people to technology so they could, you know, see it up close, they could touch it.

Jim Pethokoukis:

They could, you know, it wasn't a strange thing Everything from robots or highways of the future, all kind of and people got, you know, real electricity like very novel, but people got to experience it. So, a way, it kind of accultured people to the stuff that maybe they were only reading about or it just did not seem so foreign. I think that's an important role and certainly one can see with all these new technologies how that could be important. Again, I mean, you created a very, I think, attractive, super creative vision of like one version of what a World Fair could look like and I think, along with that, like the idea of spectacle, like getting people kind of fired up.

Jim Pethokoukis:

And one of the examples I use in the book was from the London Olympics of 2012, where they did this whole great thing at Wembley Stadium about the Industrial Revolution which you know went from the green sort of the green fields of England to, you know, all the you know the worst parts Industrial Revolution, the smoked stacks, but then out of a come, you know, it ends up producing modern society is represented by the you know Golden Olympic rings. And Danny Boyle, the great director who organized that, said that that's the message he wanted to get, that you know that we as society things, you know we move forward, went through difficult periods but here we are making like, making a better civilization, like, so that can be done. It was, it can be done in the Olympics, it can be done at World Fairs. I was talking to someone who thought who about this idea and she like you know, it's very you know again, it's you know the reason World Fairs are still popular in poorer parts of the world because it gives poorer people an opportunity to see these things that they don't see in their lives.

Jim Pethokoukis:

And I'm like that's wrong. I mean, like, how many people still like have never put on like a pair of like you know goggles, you know virtual reality goggles, or bent into a driverless car or even tried chap, gpt or any of this stuff? I mean that was a great time, I think an unbelievable moment for a World Fair to like introduce people to technologies and sort of the spectacle of human achievement. I don't see how that ever goes out of style. You've done great work turning me out to this and you that's. You've been a real hero on this.

Cameron Wiese:

Do it, do what we can. So this is this is one of my favorite books Fair Management by Lennox Lore, who is the GM of the 1933 Chicago World's Fair. Down through the ages, fairs have marked significant milestones in man's development. For each generation assault the urge to vent its pride and demonstrate its progress and the quality of its products, fairs have greatly accelerated the acceptance of new methods and of scientific, technical and agricultural discoveries. Masses of people assembled from distant parts saw for the first time recent developments that could be useful to them and thus speeded the otherwise lengthy interval between inception and general public acceptance.

Cameron Wiese:

And so, through the halls of the future times there were ring the gay voices of crowds seeking that which is new, and since human nature changes, but little that which is old. There were skeptics in 1930 who felt the day of the fairs was over, the reason that the world had become sophisticated and blossoming through the printed word and the radio. People had heard all worth hearing and with the ease of travel made possible with the automobile, they had seen all worth seeing. The doubters proclaimed that the day of the Hick was gone forever and with him the reason for a fair. That they were wrong was amply tested by the record breaking crowds which have attended fairs since 30 years after.

Jim Pethokoukis:

That was a 1964 World's Fair in New York City with the new version of the Futurama exhibit, which was also the 39 World's Fair, and I think the only thing that matched it was the artwork of Michelangelo who was at the fair lines around the block. People wanted to see in the Futurama exhibit vision of tomorrow and that thing had it had. It was all classic. Like you know, it was the, you know, space colonies, undersea cities. People love this. We are never too sophisticated to see what sort of crystals of imagination Can be exhibited with great spectacle at fairs. I think I would love I mean I would love to see those return to the United States and United States put in other rich countries, put great effort into them in a pro-progress, technologically optimistic way. Yeah, that's a great passage.

Cameron Wiese:

It just gives me chills every time I read this is it's timeless. Humans gathering, wanting to tell stories, wanting to, wanting hope.

Jim Pethokoukis:

People want to hear a story about how tomorrow Can be better than today, I don't again that that story will always sell.

Cameron Wiese:

Well, we've got a lot, of, a lot of work to do with you and I and everyone who sort of believes in the future, to To kind of tell these stories where people find you.

Jim Pethokoukis:

They should definitely sign up for for faster please, and by copy of your book faster, please on sub-stack, the book the conservative futures how to create the sci-fi world where your promise available everywhere Amazon Books, a million Barnes and Noble and audio Kindle hardcover. I get I mentioned faster, please on sub-stack. I also I can see mccasey on CNBC AI website and occasionally on fine on fine Podcasts like like yours.

Cameron Wiese:

Incredible. So any any sort of last, last words you want to depart to people?

Jim Pethokoukis:

Don't be discouraged, right, you know, don't be discouraged. We absolutely have it without our means to do better. I'll leave with this the conservative futures I talk about probably most in the book. This guy, herman Khan, who was a nuclear war theorist in the 60s, began this totally. You know, I love techno capitalism as he called it, and he said listen, at the end of the day, if we can just not make a lot of Dumb decisions and if you can have a bit of good luck will be okay, I think we've made too many dumb decisions. So we just have start making fewer dumb decisions, a few more smart decisions like a few we talked about, and as long as we can get that planetary defense up and running before a comment, I think we'll be okay. But we can make those decisions. It's, we have the agency, we have the power, so let's go do it.

Cameron Wiese:

Let's go do it onwards, onwards and upwards to a better. Faster, please, faster, please. All right, jim, thanks so much.

Jim Pethokoukis:

Thank you, cameron.

Cameron Wiese:

Thanks for joining us for this episode of the build the future podcast. If you loved, it would be really grateful if you share it with a friend or post a review on Whatever. Wherever you watch and are listening to this, that's it from us. We'll see you next time. Until then, go build.