- Speaker #0
Welcome to Remarkable, a podcast proposed by Thomas Gauthier, professor at EM Lyon Business School and head of the Carbon 4 Chair, Strategy in Anthropocene. Anthropocene is this new geological era in which humanity is confronted for the first time in its history at the planetary limit. To better understand the challenges of this new era, Thomas goes to meet those who are incessantly exploring the future and who are remembering history to build a habitable world from today. Peter Leyden is an entrepreneur, consultant and essayist. He learned the ropes of the job of prospectivist by joining the discreet Global Business Network, a kind of think tank and very influential advisory board in the 80s. Dans l'entretien à suivre, il nous partage ses réflexions sur ce qu'il appelle la grande progression. Le quart de siècle à venir sera, selon lui, sensiblement différent de la grande simplification décrite par Nate Higgins dans un précédent épisode. Deux visions du monde, deux perspectives.
- Speaker #1
Hi Peter.
- Speaker #2
Hello there. Good to be here.
- Speaker #1
So here you are, you're looking at the oracle, and to the questions that you ask the oracle about the future, the oracle is going to answer right. every time. Please tell us, Peter, what is the very first question you would like to ask the Oracle?
- Speaker #2
First of all, I want to say I love this framework for these interviews and the idea of asking if you're asking a guy who spent his entire life and career thinking about the future and trying to figure out the future and explaining what's coming to people. So the idea that I could ask and get three absolutely clear things of the future makes me giddy. So that's it. uh, or I'm starting here, but here's what I'm going to ask. And I'm gonna explain why I asked this. I'm going to ask what, and I'm assuming she can explain with a little nuance, not just yes or no questions, but I'm saying what supersedes shareholder capitalism. That is going to be my first question. And, and I'm going to tell you why I asked my first question. And I was at least, I was thinking, how did we solve climate change would have been one, one, and there's maybe other people have talked to you about that. But I'm interested in big system change. I'm interested in the kind of longer range future. And to my mind, there are some key questions about the 21st century that are not clear in any way clear how we're going to get there. And so and what's going to happen. And so, for example, instead of asking. How do we solve climate change? I actually think we're going to solve climate change. And I have a lot of ideas on how that's happening. I think a lot of people are talking about it. I think it's a can-do thing. We're going to do it. It's going to turn the corner by 2050. We're going to lay that one down. So to my mind, despite all the challenges that are going on around how to pull that off, I don't feel like that's a mystery. That doesn't feel like, okay, what really could do that? But I do think my three questions are going to have to do with three that I really think require a ton more thought, a ton more innovation, a ton more really fundamental invention. And one of them is, what comes after shareholder capitalism? The current capitalism we have now, we've had since the Enlightenment. It's essentially done amazing things of being able to scale the Industrial Revolution and kind of through globalization, really transform the world in many fundamental ways. It's also ended up in incredibly difficult situations where a handful of billionaires own as much as half the rest of the planet or the inequalities within societies and all kinds of things that it's also contributed to. And so to my mind, something is going to supersede this just in terms of the general scope of history. Something will supersede this. And in my way of thinking about the future, a series of mostly progress forward over time, some kind of steps back. But for every step back, a couple go forward. I actually believe we will have an economic system in the world that will essentially move wealth more equitably through society. And it will be kind of lead to less extreme kind of inequalities. And but we'll still have a dynamism and we'll still probably be rooted in some kind of market economy in some kind of way. But that there would be something now you're seeing people talk a little bit about it now, like what's stakeholder capitalism? capitalism? You know, how do we kind of move wealth to... workers as well as communities, as well as everybody who has a stake in these kind of companies or corporations or entities in the global capitalism. But it's just kind of a lot of talk and kind of vagueness now. And so to my mind, what's really critical about this next century, as we kind of knit together this world and go on to solve climate and all the things that we have to do, we're going to need some fundamental reinvention of that. It could be a ton of reform might kind of curb these excesses and keep channeling and squeeze the juice out of essentially what is known as, you know, this 20th century capitalism we've gotten used to. But to my mind, 21st century capitalism will be something that we will see as different from shareholder capitalism of the 20th century. There will be a 21st century version that will be better. That'll be more equitable. That'll be more dynamic. That'll have less externalities in terms of what we're throwing into the, you know, the environment and kind of causing climate change and not accounting in that in the system, not. running for these extremes, that system is going to be something. It might still be called capitalism. It might have some kind of other name, but it'll be distinct from this. And the more insights we could have now on that, if she could just tell me what does supersede the system that we're used to now and have been used to for literally 250 years here now, if she could tell me that, we could backcast it, we could move backwards from that, re-engineer it backwards and say, ah. That's where we should be placing our energy now. That's where we should be evolving these economies. That's the kind of reforms we should put in place. That's the kind of regulations we might be nudging. That's the kind of convenings we could have of intellectuals and economists from all over the world to kind of rethink at a fundamental level and get us to that place and maybe accelerate the pace of change. So that to me would be a fantastic piece of the puzzle that I would love to ask her. So that's my first one I would say.
- Speaker #1
Well, thank you, Peter, for this. opening question and and i think you're starting big with asking the oracle about ways in which the current capitalism may evolve um i've been thinking about this probably not as much as you have and one of the correlated questions i'm asking myself and i'd like to ask you is do we see early signs of organizations do we see early signs of companies that are on their own, or perhaps through the means of coalitions with other organizations, moving into this next version of capitalism? Where are the signs of emerging futures that you suggest to the listeners they pay particular attention to? And the second related question I'd like to ask and throw in the mix for you is, how can organizations that would be willing to take this bold step towards moving beyond capitalism may do so without finding themselves at a disadvantage. There is something about rules of the game, I guess, that those, you know, early birds will have to escape to create new rules of the game. How do you maneuver in a tactical way this transition from one to another economic paradigm?
- Speaker #2
Fantastic questions. And I'll give it I'll give you some insight on that just basically in my own journey, which I know by the end of the interview, we're going to talk a little bit about my own journey and what I've learned over the years. First of all, after the 2008 financial crash that went through the West and throughout the world, the 2008 crash, there was a real kind of shock of recognition around many economists and many people in business and all kinds of governmental leaders that, you know, The system that has currently figured out was got us in this mess and that there was a lot of structural and really deep seated problems of essentially how we're organizing the global economy and under these national economies. And I got involved in one effort that was very interesting. It was a group that was called it's essentially an institute called the Institute for New Economic Thinking. It goes by the... INET is what it goes by in terms of its acronym. And it was funded by George Soros, who many of you out there might know, you know, a billionaire who had basically made a lot of money in the 20th century version of capitalism. But he also had a very strong and profound desire to actually fundamentally rethink the foundations of economics. And so he thought the I waited. do that would be to fund with a lot of money, of which he did, put it into a essentially a new institute that would essentially cultivate the next generation of economists. And it was headed by a guy named Rob Johnson, who I knew quite well through other things. And he recruited me. And at the time, my startup and my crew was called Next Agenda. And we helped them essentially build the foundations of that, their website and their media. For the first two years, we essentially, They had convenings of... of tons of world-class economists, including Nobel laureates, all kinds of things in Cambridge, England. And if you had to kind of think about what they were doing is they were bringing together a lot of people that appreciated what John Maynard Keynes had basically the breakthroughs in the coming off the Great Depression and World War Two. That was the last time we saw a fundamental rework of economic policy, at least in the eyes of these folks. And then it had kind of economics had shifted in the early 80s to kind of a Milton Friedman, more free market fundamentalism kind of. challenge. The Keynesian was more kind of government intervention and how do you steer the economy differently. The free market economists who'd kind of taken over, you could say, high level economics from the 80s on. And so what was happening was all these young economists coming into the game to get on with their careers. They had to kind of buy into that free market fundamentalism the way this was seen. So the INET idea was let's fund the next generation of economists. young economists with enough kind of support so that their careers wouldn't be destroyed if they kind of went off on a limb in these new ways of thinking and give them the kind of financial cushion and the kind of credibility to actually take off and build their careers. And so this has been going on for about a dozen years now. It's still very successful. It's actually happening. And it goes by the way that a lot of science is talked about this way, which is the only way to really move the ball in fundamental ways in science and in that respect, economics, is for the old guard to die. and the new guard to take off. It's that basically that there's such a kind of a hold, essentially a generation of single-minded kind of economists would have, and they kind of hold the minds of the young people tight because they're rewarding those people and giving them promotions, giving them the kind of jobs and all the stuff that come out of that kind of world, that you need one to go off and the next to kind of grow. And so there was a sense that we're in this next updraft. And that there would be a next generation of economists that could really fundamentally rethink this in the way that Keynes did, the way that Milton Friedman did. I mean, a lot of these kind of characters that shaped economic history potentially could be coming out now. And so you've got people like in your friend France, their Piketty is a great example of, you know, someone who's swimming against the grain of everyone and pointing out these contradictions. But you can't just have one or two economists here and there doing this. You have to have essentially a whole whole cohort of them. And so that's one thing that I think is happening now is we're watching essentially almost foundational rethinking of the structure of how could you run modern day economies, you know, with all the dynamism and entrepreneurship and all the kind of innovation that we need. But do it in ways that you kind of move wealth differently and everybody kind of benefits better and there's less externalities and all this kind of stuff. Anyhow, that's kind of one answer to that. The question of where would you go on that thing? And the second thing you're asking is essentially how if you're a company or something, how do you or how do you get ahead of the game if you're not an economist fundamentally rethinking it like I was describing there? And that's an interesting I'll give you another example of something I've been involved with. There's a whole thing called the long term stock exchange right now that has been launched recently out of Silicon Valley here. And it was it's run by a guy named Eric Reese, who has been kind of famous young guy, relatively young guy who had kind of came up with a whole kind of methodology of startups of kind of all of innovation, essentially how you chat. You start with smaller kind of ideas and you iterate and you test them and you pivot. And all this language that's been coming out of Silicon Valley for the last 15, 20 years. a lot of it has been He's been known as one of the people that has helped innovate and spread that kind of framework. But what he's really been his passion recently, and again, it's something I've been kind of involved with a little bit, is how do we start and create a stock exchange that isn't kind of that is a long term stock exchange? That essentially is the people investing in the companies in this long term stock exchange aren't kind of everyone focused on their quarterly returns in this, you know, every three months is like what's your return? What's your return? What's your return? or 10. which has kind of made this mania of short term thinking in the global economy and all stock exchanges all over the world are basically based on this kind of kind of absurd way of thinking about stuff. It's sure it helps for efficiency and it helps for growth and that in kind of a short term way. But it doesn't allow the long term planning, the long term kind of bets that you have to do to really kind of fundamentally transform the world. And so the point is, there could be institutions, nascent institutions to start. This is organized just like NASDAQ or the New York Stock Exchange, but it's a separate stock exchange. And they're trying to recruit companies that would go by these rules, which these rules are not. They're actually meant to kind of enhance or kind of back or kind of the kinds of companies that will think long term and the investors are going to attract are people that are going to be patient and they're going to say, OK, I can wait over five or 10 years to watch this play out rather than kind of this next quarter, next quarter. Also, I'm going to pull my money out. So anyhow, those are just two good examples. But like the world is filling out with these kind of projects that are like minded people that are thinking the way I'm thinking. And they are seeing like, let's we need to kind of do this. And so we're kind of evolving and kind of iterating and kind of moving in that direction. But I wanted that oracle to give me a much cleaner way of like, OK, here's how it gets solved. And like, oh, damn, OK, well, then we can just throw all our resources in that direction to get it done. It'd be a shortcut. That's kind of what I love about the question.
- Speaker #1
Well, what I like with the two examples that you gave, the long term stock exchange and before that, the Institute for New Economic Thinking, is that you are... offering some questioning into our current societal matrix. And that brings another unanticipated question I'd like to ask you. I know that in your earlier training, you worked and studied and made progress together with Stuart Brand. Now, we both know that Stuart developed this pace layers model of civilizations. And it feels to me like this... new way of organizing capitalism that you're discussing could in fact be a starting point for reconfiguring civilization. Now, if we are talking about this sort of change, this sort of systemic change, I guess it takes brand new narratives, brand new storytelling to take place. My question to you is, we understand that in science, new knowledge is a acquired in a normal process where new knowledge is an increment on the previously acquired knowledge. How do you see us making the necessary radical step forward in terms of knowledge generation to equip potential new civilizational configuration? And what role do you see for for fiction in this configuring of a new civilization. Where is fiction? Can it help us also determine what the proper agenda might be for institutional changes and economic changes, etc.? What are your thoughts on that?
- Speaker #2
Oh, good question. Although I tell you, this is going to be a five hour interview here. I think if we're going to go down all these paths off these questions. But first of all, I want to just applaud your raising this idea of Stuart Brand. Stuart Brand, by the way, for folks out there, is a new... biography out there of him. There's a new documentary of him out there. Stuart Brand is one of the most unappreciated, but is really one of the great minds of our time, honestly. And I worked with him in his strategic foresight firm called Global Business Network. I worked very closely with him for four years. And I also have worked with him in what is now, he has founded the Long Now Foundation, which is another collection of amazing folks thinking really long-term, like 10,000 years out and 1,000 years out, those kind of... thinking. I've also worked with him there in a couple of capacities we can talk about if it's useful. Anyhow, totally great idea. Long term, it infuses my own thinking. He's a great mentor of mine. But I do think, and you've actually kind of already detected where I'm going with this interview, because this interview, I'm talking civilizational change. I mean, to me, what's the most important thing, and my oracle questions you will get to later are also at that scale. Basically, what I feel we're in in this century, we're going through a civilizational scale of change. And essentially, and we'll get into it through the whole thing. So we don't have to go tons into that. But I will just say what it's closer to what happened in the Enlightenment. We're essentially going through another one of those really foundational periods where fundamental inventions are being created that will kind of be centuries long kind of innovations. And we can get more into the details of that later. But where you bring this. so Fiction. I am a complete and utter sci-fi fan. I mean, to me, fiction is an absolutely fundamental way to help people understand the future. My own genres I like are the near-term future that kind of goes out 50 to 100 years. So it's kind of within my timeframe to understand how to help fill out what's possible. too much of sci-fi is essentially very dystopian usually which is a disappointment to me because i think in actuality the world is progressing and things are moving in more positive ways i'm an optimist i see the future as opening up great opportunities and things that i love so i wish there was a more of what I call blue sky sci-fi. To me, there's a category of sci-fi that doesn't need the dystopian, gloom and doom, post-apocalyptic, everything that just all movies and so many books go into. But there is enough of a crew there that has essentially a less dark gloom and doom kind of framework of the future. And those in particular are really positive. And I do think it helps. tremendously for the society at large or for future engineers or all kinds of folks who um to see and feel and and really experience the future i mean there's just it's literally like silicon valley where i'm here in san francisco and silicon valley i've been here for 30 years and you know it's an unbelievable how many people uh here engineers and core scientists and people that come have been inspired by like star trek or just these future you know gadgets they saw in the future that they want to make come into reality and all kinds of stuff it's just all over the place and and i think that's uh it just it's not just about engineers it's like people want to see the future they need to see how things could be better they need to understand how those systems work and so i think it's a huge and very important role for fiction to do that i personally i'm not a very good fiction writer but i did write a series of stories which which we could maybe um your readers if they want to read i did a six-part series uh in medium about three years ago called the transformation which was essentially my way of i took a character a gen z character who was born in 2000 came of age you know out of college in 2020 this was when i wrote it but i was telling the story of his he was telling the story from the year 2100 when he's 100 years old which by the way all these gen z kids are going to wait live to 100 or beyond and so he was at you know a point of his life, looking back at 2100 at... telling the story of how we solve climate change and a bunch of these bigger pieces that, in fact, some of these things we're talking about here. And my idea there was just simply what you just said. It's just through a story to have to have people say, oh, that's how we solve climate change or, oh, that's how democracy evolved or, oh, that's, you know, what's going to happen with, you know, these kind of various big swings here. And to give people a more hopeful sense that this is all solvable and that you know which i believe it is and anyhow and give people a fact so absolutely totally into sci-fi anyone out there listening go right i mean i can give a million examples of what else what to read but um but anyhow that it's absolutely a way to help understand the future all right let's go back to the oracle then and now is a chance for you to ask the oracle your question what would that be okay well this is going to sound familiar but it's going to be a very different question it's going to say. What supersedes liberal democracy? Another way to think about this is, how will the best democracies operate in 2100? That was another way I was thinking of phrasing the question. But by asking what supersedes this thing, I'm implicitly baking into the question, I would call it a positive framework, which is, I do believe humans will evolve off these fundamental institutions that we have now, and we will get beyond the limitations of those institutions. And so all I'm trying to ask that that I'm not, you know, I'm not I didn't want to pinpoint the date or, you know, all this kind of stuff. I just said, what will supersede that? Believing that in this century, they will be supersede. And that she could explain to me the next what democracy looks like later in this century. Now, the reason I want to tell you this is it's very similar to the one I did before, but it's very different. We were talking about the core economy, which is fundamental to any society. is really democracy. And I would say what's happening now in America is like completely a great example of this, but Europe's running into these same problems is, you know, our representative democracy was invented literally a whole cloth, uh, basically in the eight, it's 1780s, you know, they didn't know about electricity. They were trying to just figure out, Oh, what lightning was electricity, let alone electronics. I mean, you know, anyhow, it was a kind of a mindset that was, you know, for its time was a brilliant breakthrough. it was actually using the best as good as you could probably get at that time to figure out how would we get representatives of people together and how would we make decisions and how would we do these things. But anyhow, it's 250 years later, it's just completely out of whack. And so America is just convulsed with these. You know, how close are your people over there watching? You know, the red states, the blue states, the electoral college, which was a kind of a device we did to kind of get this buy-in from the slave states, you know, and all these kind of disproportional representation in the Senate compared to the House of Representatives. And anyhow, all these compromises and deals and all the things that were kind of cut 250 years ago are just constraining what we can do now and just leading to these crazy... inequalities and nutty kind of situations where we can't just get things done. Now, it seems to me that if the founders of our country were sitting now and devising a, you know, a democracy like they did back then, they would be insane if they didn't take advantage of, you know, digital computers and, you know, high speed internet and, you know, AI even, you know, and it's like, how would you figure out how the majority of people want the country to go? and how would you... efficiently get the government to, you know, kind of carry out that majority ideas, protecting the minority, of course, that's, you got to kind of deal with that too. And there's a balance in there. But you would have started just with a whole different set of tools, a whole different set of operations and a whole 250 years of knowledge of how people work and how the economy works and how politics works. And, you know. you know, neuroscience works and manias and all kinds of stuff. We just, we're in a very different place. But the problem is we can't start from scratch. We're actually started, we're constrained by these old rules. To my mind, I think climate change and some of the other challenges of this century are just going to build the pressures and they're so high that we're essentially going to reinvent this in some fundamental way. And Europe has its own way of talking about this. And we're all kind of linked in this kind of enlightenment era of representative democracy. I do believe it's going to move forward. that there will be very fundamentally different ways that will work better, reflect better. And I also think it'll be a kind of in a more global context as well, you know, that we will have a more functioning, a more a kind of a democracies that would be maybe not as efficient as autocracies or totalitarian regimes like China and, you know, Russia are now. But it would essentially get around the limitations of those. You know, so so China can move fast on climate change. It can kind of... move quickly and do things. But it also opens itself up to horrible kind of vulnerabilities, like when one guy at the top, Xi, kind of gets the wrong call around COVID. Hey, we're going to lock everyone up for zero COVID policy. Nobody can say, hey, that's a bad idea, or what about another idea, or why don't we vote on that, or whatever. There's no way to stop. So anyhow, the vulnerabilities of autocracies are just obvious. And ultimately, in the long run, democracies are um better in terms of because they can innovate, they can change leadership, they can evolve. It's messy and crazy and takes slow and it's all that stuff about democracy. But ultimately, they are better than autocracies long term. So what I'm just trying to figure out is how do we get a much more fair and equitable democracies that are also efficient and are competent to the level or kind of closer to what you can do in autocracies and essentially because we're going to need that given, you know, the scale of challenges we got ahead of us, including. And first and foremost, climate change. So anyhow, my question is, how would those work? And then the same thing, you could work backward from there and say, oh, damn, that's how they did it. Well, damn, then we should be right now investing in, you know, some kind of, you know, digital voting and da da da, or these kind of AI enhanced kind of ways to parse out majority thoughts on, you know, where we should go. But anyhow, there's a bunch of things you could brainstorm on. But the point being is, if you knew actually where it's going to go, you could actually channel. so many of your resources into making that, accelerating that change and making that happen quicker.
- Speaker #1
Well, I am not going to try and reformulate what you said, but it triggers new thoughts that I don't think ever crossed my mind. It's like what you're saying is if we go back in time and appreciate the circumstances in which the founding fathers in the US and perhaps the French revolutionary on the other end of the pond. did it when it was time for them to think up governance for their land and for their people, they in a way were in sync with the civilizational matrix of their time. They were using the best and brightest technologies available. they were basing their thinking on the most advanced philosophical thinking, they knew about humanism. And what I sense or what I hear you say is that upgrading our policy systems, upgrading our governance is another...
- Speaker #0
non-civilizational act it takes to completely connect this thinking with where we're at in terms of technology and where we could be where we're at in terms of you know degraded earth system and where we could be but it cannot be just in reaction of all the other layers of the world around us changing it's got to be synced with the various changes that are happening around us is Is that reasonable? as a reformulation?
- Speaker #1
Totally right. I would say that. And what's, yes, but what happens in civilization levels change is usually something has to happen more radical. In other words, you need to kind of more fundamental breaks when you're shifting that level of change. So yes, but in general, I'm just kind of leading. There's something has to actually break you. And I would say in general, what we're seeing, and again, we're getting ahead of ourselves because when we talk about the history stuff coming up, I really do want to talk about the Enlightenment. But basically, these brilliant innovations of the Enlightenment essentially have carried us so far, but they have also every one of them has gotten us in trouble now, including these outmoded democracies. We're essentially paralyzing these dynamic modern countries by essentially strapping them to a kind of institutions that are just way outmoded. At a time when we need to move fast and do things very comprehensively and change very thoroughly. So so probably that is not going to be an incremental reform here and there. I think it may be more fundamental. And that gets a little wackier because, you know, but in history, that's what we've seen is more dramatic junctures that happen. In fact, including, you know, you mentioned the French Revolution. It's like their revolutions, you know, their their overthrow the old way. You know, they kind of rebuild from the scratch. You know, it happened here. We had a war with, you know. the colonial rulers of Britain, you know, to kind of start from scratch. I mean, these are not normally kind of just, oh, hey, what do you say we all try something different? They usually happen more kind of fundamentally. So I don't know. I don't necessarily welcome that, but I actually expect it. I think something's going to happen along those lines. I hope it's not as violent as we've had in the past, you know, but potentially it might be. Anyhow, that's just, maybe the Oracle would tell us that. Say, well, you know, yeah, you got to this, but you have to go through this and that. And, you know, good luck with that. Whatever. I don't know. It depends how much she's going to tell us.
- Speaker #0
All right. Well, speaking of the Oracle, you have another chance to ask her a question about the future. What would you like to ask now?
- Speaker #1
Well, at the risk of being redundant here, I'm going to do a whole other category, but it's in the same framework. The same idea is what supersedes the nation state. And the other way to think about this is how will global governance work by 2100 is another way to think about it. In other words, we're at a situation now where we're approaching, you know, we're on track to hit about 10 billion people on the planet. And we are at a stage of globalization where we have, you know, now in just the last 40 years knitted together the world in ways that, you know, great leap forward. You know how the global economy evolved in the last era here. knit in China. By the way, China then brings 800 million peasants who are living on two bucks a day or less, you know, brings all of them into kind of a global economy where they're all working and, you know, many of the middle class and, you know, thriving and in ways they hadn't done. So there's a great humanitarian positive side of what globalization did, particularly in the developing world. But also it kind of reconstituted this essentially very interconnected world. Now, People talk about, oh, we're going to react from it. all this there's a lot of issues in this transition that are making you know us kind of refine things but in general the general trajectory of human humanity on planet earth is going to be towards more and more global coordination to the point that we're going to be working on a planetary scale i mean humans in 50 100 a thousand years from now whatever they're going to be there unless we run into some disastrous era where apocalyptic crazy thing which sci-fi gives us a million ways to think about that. But in my way of thinking, and most people, I would say, maybe not most people, but the way I see the world evolving, we are progressing. But one of the things we have to figure out is how are we going to coordinate these billion people in new ways? And so far, because of the great innovation of the Enlightenment in the nation state, we essentially figured out an international international nation state system that kind of through treaties and, you know, tariffs and, you know, a million ways that we've kind of coordinated to some extent moving, you know, people across, hey, you got to have a passport or, you know, oh, goods, oh, we're going to, you know, charge you a little tariff here or there or anyhow, whatever, all this stuff, customs and, you know, all that stuff we have. Anyhow, it evolved and it was a really pretty innovative way. But it's also gotten us to the point we've still got 200 independent entities that, you know, when you say, OK, we all got to sacrifice a little bit differently here to deal with climate change. And then we say, OK, who's volunteering for that? And, you know, OK, well, yeah. Is that a binding volunteer? Well, maybe not binding, but OK, if you don't live up to your thing, well, what are we going to do? Well, nothing, because we can't really do anything with those, you know, independent initiatives. Anyhow, my feeling is that we're going to get beyond that and it's going to come sooner than later, I would say. And even when you just say, when I say the 21st century and I say like this guy talking in 2100, you know, maybe listeners will go, oh, well, that's so far in the future. Who can you think? I mean, basically anyone who's under age 40 now will probably, has a good chance of seeing 2100. So this isn't like science fiction, like, oh, generations in the future, they'll fucking figure this out. It's like, no, it's like your kid. I got a kid who's, you know, 30, right? She will absolutely be alive. I mean, barring some catastrophe. in 2100. And my grandkids will live deep into, if not fully through the next century, right? So we're kind of talking about real stuff here. It's not like crazy out of this box stuff. But one thing that has to happen is we have to figure out a way to coordinate. There's a general term called global governance in kind of these circles. To my mind, it is the least understood. category of these three I just mentioned. I think people have some pretty good ideas of how the economy could evolve differently and operate differently. And even people I think around democracy, oh, that's a big challenge. They would be like, okay, we could imagine some kind of digital democracy or a different way that we're utilizing these technologies in ways to get majority rule. But I think this idea of how would you coordinate a global scale amongst 10 billion people is a much harder problem. And what I will say is this, is people say, oh, the world will never do that because we have this 20th century idea that, you know, the UN will control everything and there'll be, you know, one category, a handful of people at the top of the world running things. I don't believe that's how it's going to happen. And there will be a lot of coordination and autonomy at a city state level or a city level, I think, in my own feeling. But there will be many more ways to organize things at a planetary scale, at a global level. And some of that will carry legal weight in ways that we don't think of it now. And so it's not. And that thing is going to be driven by, I think, as much necessity, given pressures of climate and things or global pandemics that are inevitably going to come out this century more and more. I mean, COVID was a good test run, but there'll be more. Anyhow, there are going to be things that are global scale on a relatively small planet. And we're going to have to figure them out together in a different way. But that is the hardest problem of these three I've just asked her. And so if she could give me or any us, you know, that answer, it's like, oh, this is what's going to happen. It'd be like, holy shit. Then let's double down on that and move in that direction because that is the hardest one right now. And I will tell you this. It's not just me thinking about this. You mentioned the Long Now or I mentioned the Long Now and Stuart Brand. Over the pandemic, I hosted a thing called the Civilization Salons, which were virtual. conversations like roundtables of about a dozen people. And because it was hosted by, it was the board of directors of the Long Now asked me to do this. And many of the board participated in these conversations. But because of that, we literally got the elite thinkers of the world. I mean, I had noble laureates in these conversations. They were private conversations. They were not public. But one of the things and what we were trying to do is think 25 years out. So we took a concept like governance in 25 years. And we asked everyone to bring their questions of what would they want to know? Kind of like this Oracle thing. What would they want to know? If they could know something about governance in 25 years, what would they want to know? And many of the people were bringing, you know, again, world class thinkers. bringing to the table these questions. And I will say one general thing I will tell you came out of these conversations. We held many of them and I hosted all of them, is a general concern about those last two questions I asked, which is how is the world going? How are liberal democracies going to get more competent and more efficient at solving, moving fast and solving things, but solving the collective will of the majority? And two, how will we coordinate globally? And those are like on the front lips of like, you know, Nobel laureate economists are thinking that. And, you know, anyhow, we had all kinds of different crazy people. But basically, the point being is like, I'm not the only guy thinking about this. These are really tough problems. And they are ones that we got to figure out pretty soon here this century. And so, boy, if we got insights from a magical oracle, it would be awesome.
- Speaker #0
well I don't want to add even more challenge to the challenge that you have shared with me and with the listeners but i guess i will regarding this global governance question that you asked it also comes to my mind that we're talking global governance for the future of not only human beings but also non-human beings as we recognize more and more the intertwined relationships that we as a species have with other living species that is perhaps yet another level of complexity that we would have to deal with and plus it appears to me that as scientists are helping us appreciate what planetary boundaries are as scientists are helping us also describe what could be a safe operating space for humanity a question that is emerging is How do we, let's say, create a sustainable and desirable bond between what hard science tells us about this safe operating space. So essentially, science tells us what is our playing field, how big is our sandbox, as human beings like to play. But then the rules of the game that human beings would play are probably better designed. for the long run by, as you were saying, an augmented version of liberal democracy. And I personally am wondering how there will eventually be some connection between hard science telling us more and more precisely what our safe operating space look like, and, I guess, social science and social innovation and all kinds of innovation showing us the way forward towards a better version of liberal democracy. That, I don't know how exactly it will eventually work, but I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.
- Speaker #1
Well, I'm not exactly sure if this is exactly the way to build off your idea there, but basically what I would say is, I'll give you an example of my wife. I've been with her for 30 years. Anyhow, we've been all over the place together. And she's a therapist. She's much more into human psychology. She's in social work. She's been trying to solve homelessness, basically, for the last 30 years. Well, I've been out there in Silicon Valley trying to do all the things with technology. So there's a whole body of human innovation and creativity and insight. And she's also very spiritual. She's much more spiritual kind of person. She has all these meditation practices and she's very enamored of Ayurvedic medicine and kind of ancient traditions. Anyhow, my daughter is like when she grew up in this house, it was kind of, you know, OK, she saw two worldviews, you know, that kind of work, but are also evolving in kind of together in a way. Because now the neuroscience, like she's increasingly talking to me about the latest neuroscience is like saying things that had been ancient wisdom, you know, was reinforcing, you know, for the last 5000 years. Anyhow, there's all this kind of kind of melding essentially of the human insights into the way forward that I think is a healthy thing. And I think ultimately over the century, I think we're going to increasingly see that melding of. things that we thought of as spirituality and all these kind of things. You're like, well, we're actually scientifically going to show, oh, that's why that's happening. That part of the brain is doing this and whatever, all kinds of stuff we're going to understand better. And so I do think it's not just a matter of technological innovation going forward or even the hard sciences going forward. I think it's absolutely going to take the social sciences in the broadest sense, political, my own background is political science and economics. But hers is psychology and neuroscience. And I don't know. Anyhow, everybody has a piece of the puzzle here if we all kind of move ahead. Because yes, I think the level of innovation that's going to happen is civilizational level innovation. And when you get to that level, and maybe in those next questions, we're going to get into the history things. When we've seen this happen before, these are not isolated, you know, a handful of elites solve something. It's essentially a society-wide... kind of upwelling that happens across many, many, many different fields at the same time. And I think that's where we're at. We're heading into it. I think you already can see the pieces of it coming, but I think much more is on the horizon, basically.
- Speaker #0
Well, let's move on to the second part of the interview, then. Let's look in the rear view mirror. Could you please start by bringing back from history to us one key historical event or one key historical process that you think can serve as a lesson and help us orient ourselves in the present and in the future.
- Speaker #1
Well, I've kind of telegraphed this from the beginning of the interview, basically. But let me kind of tell you my analysis of what happened in the Enlightenment. So for those that are not as familiar listeners out there, I mean, again, there's a little debate on when it started and that kind of thing. But, you know, the way I think of the Enlightenment is something about like 1680 to maybe 1800 or so. And you can start a little earlier. Whatever. There's a bunch of ways. But think of it that 120 years or so. It was mostly centered in Europe. The U.S. played a part of that as an extension of Europe. But essentially what happened in that period was essentially the building of a new civilization. That essentially is the civilization we're still operating in right now. But that's essentially getting us into trouble. And I'll even squeeze down further. And I do talks on this and I've done some writing that mentioned, actually the writing I mentioned to you earlier, incorporates some of this thinking. But basically to me, to my mind, there were six mega innovations, like fundamental innovations that happened in the Enlightenment that were really, that you have to understand. One was essentially mechanical engines was one obvious thing. But that was the most profound thing that humans could basically, that physical power could get amplified through machines was essentially a superpower basically that happened and it never happened before so mechanically engines was the first breakthrough second one was carbon energy which is now getting us in trouble but basically humans had not been able to harness coal which later went to you know oil which later went to natural gas but we hadn't really been able to harness that except haphazardly through you know throwing wood on the fire occasional coal thing on the fire but anyhow the point is we essentially harnessed an energy source that was just crazy powerful the third one uh was we essentially invented industrial production and along with that factories and all the different ways that you could essentially scale using that those machines and that energy and then you could scale them and scale them to a way that average people could get you know live well i mean it's again if you go back to that period of time literally like 90 percent of the people on the planet were living on the equivalent of two bucks a day or less i mean It was everybody was poor. Everybody was poor in the world before the Enlightenment. It was only through industrial production, all these different ways that we eventually get that we could spread and raise the living standards all over the world. So there was a three. That was the third big innovation. The fourth one, which we've come down, these last three ones are essentially the ones we've already talked about. The other one was financial capitalism. Basically, there was no way before that that you could take a money and trust that if you gave someone your money and they grew that thing, you'd get a return on that and you could take it away. And it was literally invented. It was actually more in England. And one of the things that was interesting about it is they recruited at the time because this was a problem that no one could figure out how to do. And so what they did is they took the smartest guy in the world, Isaac Newton, who had invented calculus and had figured out gravity, and they drafted him to be the master of the mint of England. I mean, it's like people don't realize this is they took the guy who figured that shit out and said, hey, we need you to figure out how to make people trust the mint and our currency. And once he cracked that thing, he was he was he did this for 25 years. All the gold in the world went to England because everyone said, oh, shit, man, there's one place you could do it. And so it's this crazy, powerful thing for England. But anyhow, the point is, we invented financial capitalism. So that's the fourth one. The fifth one was we invented representative democracy. I mean, that was the one contribution the U.S. did, which as a colony, you know, we're kind of hanging on to the Enlightenment. We did that. And of course, the French Revolution was right there, too. I mean, anyhow, there was that moment when the West invented for the first time humans had always been ruled by basic kings or chiefs or whatever you want to call them. but Never had been. I mean, there have been a few moments in Athens and a few times where there was some democracy. But in terms of a scalable thing that could actually work over time, that was an invention of profound importance. And the final one was the nation state. It's like everything else was kingdoms and fiefdoms and all kinds of other ways that we organize stuff. Empires. But you didn't know. Nation state was a different thing. So anyhow, these were amazing innovations at the time. It happened in the space of about 120 years. And they are today still define our world today. but they Every single one of them is now running into problem. That carbon energy thing is now destroying climate change, right? That financial capitalism has got this crazy handful of billionaires with the majority of the wealth and plan. I mean, anyhow, these have gotten out of control. We've talked about some of these other problems that we've run into. So what my feeling is, the more we can learn about what happened then, what how did that level of invention, societal level scale invention, how did that happen? How could we recreate that? How could we, you know, nurture and bring that about in our current context? I mean, it's a very different context. You know, it's a lot more complicated society, a bunch of stuff's happening here. But in general, that is really the... That's the closest thing I would say to what the world is going through in the 21st century. And I think because I think what we're going to basically have eventually here on planet Earth and people in a five hundred years, five hundred years, five thousand years. You look back just like we look back on the Enlightenment. They're going to look back and they say, oh, that's when humans basically went all digital. They basically. Everything went into computers and interconnected computers. That's when the world went sustainable. They figured out a way to kind of environmentally kind of clean energy and sustainable products of every kind. But also sustainable socially. It's like you weren't going to have crazy, you know, you're not going to have workers, you know, revolting because the world's run by 10 billionaires. You know, it's not sustainable to do that. So there will be some system that everyone feels, OK, I'm bought into the system. you know they'll always be somebody mad and you know wants more whatever but the general thing they'll be a sustainable economy in society and the final thing is it'll be global it'll be working at a planetary scale and anything in science fiction that goes into the future it's taken for granted that earth is considered one entity it's like you know humans will leave earth they'll do other stuff they'll go fill out the solar system eventually whatever there'll be all kinds of stuff for humans to do but earth will have to be figured out as now so the point being is That's a different civilization. That's a digital, sustainable, global civilization. We're going to have a planetary scale. That thing is not the Enlightenment's idea. That was a different idea. And so it's so fundamentally different that it's essentially a civilizational scale change. And so it's kind of like you've got to go back to the roots of how do you do that. Like, how do you say convince, oh, the kings that you're the past and we're going to do the future is going to be run by these democracies? Well, what did it take? It took wars. It took revolutions, took all kinds of stuff back then. Now, hopefully we can do it a little more, you know, not as violently. And anyhow, there's other ways you could imagine this happening. It doesn't have to end up in that. But the point being, it's going to be a profound breaks and we're in it now. And the more we understand we're in it now, the better for all of us. And that is our, you could say. challenge it's our burden it's our it's also our opportunity it's it's it's our you know legacy it's like that's what we're the people that are living on planet earth when the whole system fundamentally has to get reinvented for the long haul and what a crazy thing to think about now nobody you know rarely people think like that but that's the way i think that's the way stewart brand thinks i mean there's a bunch of folks there are people that think like this but it's um It's a different way to think about what's going on here than, oh, my God, Trump's, you know, going to win and that. It's like, no, Trump in the grand scheme of things is a crazy reaction to this changes. And anyhow, there's a different lens you can apply to everything. If you think on that bigger scale.
- Speaker #0
Well, Peter, with this, I need to ask for a quick advice here. I'm an educator. You are also, among many other things that you are doing, an educator. How do you... go about, let's say, training business school students at civilizational level, leadership and business innovation and all those sorts of things that they are trained at doing. You know, business schools are, the way I think of them, organizations or educational places where we help students learn how to organize. And how to, you know, create. efficient ways of getting communities of people to transact with one another and in a way build societies together what do we change how do we how do we alter training in business schools to reach this civilizational level that now you've been talking about a few times in the interview well i'm talking um Thank you.
- Speaker #1
Good question. Great question. But here's the way I do it, because you're right. I am in ways I do a lot of public speaking. I probably talk once a month, if not twice a month in a keynote where I spend an hour. I was just down in Mexico, for example, at what is called the MIT, which is Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT in the U.S. essentially is there's a version of it down in Mexico called, they call it Tech de Monterey. Anyhow, it's MIT of Mexico. And they had gathered like... the business elite, 500 business elite of Mexico. And I did a keynote talk down there just last week. But I laid out kind of a big idea like that. I didn't go into civilizational conversation, but I'm going to tell you how I do this. But anyhow, I was laying out this idea of the future and then it was extremely well received and people really love it. And I do this a lot. So here's the way I think about it, which is I don't really go into the civilizational change with business folks. I mean, people like yourself and, you know, actually, if anybody I do it with, it's Europeans, because European business people do have more of a civilizational scale kind of sense about ability. But in general, I don't really go there. I do that with more academics, a different kind of people. But but I do do that this way. I talk about. So my language is that for the next 25 years to get to 2050, we're going to going through what I call the great progression. And that is essentially we're laying the groundwork for... three fundamental new technologies. The next iteration of information technology, which is AI, among other stuff, you know, the metaverse and much stuff too, but let's just say AI is the big one. Energy tech, which is essentially transition to clean energies of all kinds and ultimately diffusion, I think, which is another story we can get into. And the third one is essentially biotech or synthetic biology, which is essentially going to be essential to essentially getting products and things in sync with nature. It's essentially... biological engineering. We're essentially going to biologically engineer. We're going to engineer living things, which is, again, something we've never been able to do. But now we can do it. So anyhow, these are core technologies that are going to drive a tech boom and an economic boom in the next 25 years. But we're also, there's other things happening in these 25 years that essentially is a series of what I think of as fundamental system changes, like we're going from carbon to clean energy. That's a fundamental system change. Now, in that kind of thing, but there's a bunch of them. They were going from the internal combustion engine to, you know, electric cars. Some of those are obvious in them, but there's a dozen of them like that. And so what I find with business audiences, and so I would by extension business students in your case, is they are absolutely central to what I see as this fundamental system changes of the 2020s, which are going to scale by the 2050s. 2050. So basically the systems are getting invented and modeled. in this next decade, like where are all the chargers going to be for electric cars? And like, you know, how will people, you know, with range anxiety, you know, get to the mountains and, you know, there's a million questions like people don't know, right. How it's all going to work. Right. But that's going to get figured out by business, you know, and government and stuff too. I mean, it's in sync, but I mean, this generation's business people are going to crack the new model, get the paradigm shift of their thinking from the old way of thinking to the new way. The young people are already there, but you're teaching them, but anyhow, Now get him in the new system. crack the models, and then scale it to 2050 so we can turn the corner on climate change and get a handle on global warming. That's the big project, right? And that's a business, that's the great progression. That's an era of progress. It's going to solve a bunch of things. It'll get us to where we need to go. You don't even have to mention civilizational change in that. And there's a lot of motivation. There's money motivation. There's save the planet motivation. There's all kinds of motivation for everyone to do that. But it happens that that is laying the foundation for the even bigger transformation what i call the rest of the century i call the transformation which is so the great progression is just crazy 25 years of we're going to progress to get to this foundation then the next the rest of the century uh is what i would call the transformation which is more civilizational scale change which will probably involve more The evolution of democracy, the evolution of global governance, the evolution of, you know, capitalism itself. I mean, I think those things are not going to happen, you know, next year kind of thing. But they're going to basically be built on that sustainable economy that we got up to speed by 2050. It's going to be built on all this stuff. Right. So from a business point of view.
- Speaker #0
In a business student point of view, if you just stay focused on the short term, relatively short term, it's 25 years. But the relatively short term goal here is we got to make this system change across all these systems and we got to make them as fast as possible. And if we can do that, then, yes, it's going to have laid the foundation for this other stuff. Now, if there's some of them that want to hold both ideas at the same time, they're all in sync. It's just it's a continuum of essentially evolution of the society. And so... if they're capable of really rocking the bigger idea, go for it. Because some people will go for it. But on the other hand, that can also get in the way of a lot of people. And I've found this just, you know, for example, I talk to business guys, like I deal with C-suite leaders, boards, that kind of people all the time, right? And if you go too trippy into civilizational change, they're kind of like, okay, that's too much. But they're fine with it if they're over drinks and, you know, talking about it. But then, but they... I want to know that next 25 years is absolutely critical. And here's the other thing that's interesting. Even people who don't want to see these changes come in, these business leaders, or for example, I get into a demographic changes amongst generational changes are going to add to a lot of political changes. So there's a lot of conservative business people who have been used to last 40 years. And I tell them, dudes, these next generations, they're going to be more progressive, what we call in the broadest sense. They're going to want to aggressively do climate change. Anyhow, all the issues around the next generation's prohibition, some of these guys are like, I don't want to go there. I'd rather have low taxes and less regulation that we've had for the last 40 years. It doesn't matter what you care. It's not really your choice. And they're smart enough as business people to say, I get it. Okay, fine. Maybe it's not what I want, but that's the way the world's going. Great. So they wrap their head around it and they're good. So business people are... practical if you could just kind of convince them this is what's happening folks they're your customers your bit your kind of workers they're going there you could either be with them or you can then thrive or you could basically kind of complain and go back and say oh if only you know ronald reagan was back or still here um anyhow there's literally that kind of nostalgia going on in a lot of business circles here now too but anyhow the point being is uh business folks are savvy. They want to go with what's really happening. And so that first, that 25 year frame is a very invigorating frame. I just, like I said, I just laid it. I literally gave them the story of what I call the great progression to 500 business leaders in Mexico. They loved it. But it was about, this is, you know, Mexico has a lot of oil. And I was just telling them that's over folks. Basically, it's going to be a sustainable, clean energy thing. And I laid out the numbers and I showed all the charts and I gave them the whole thing. And they didn't like throw shit at me at the stage. They were like, we got it. Okay, that's happening. It's convincing. And anyhow, so you're in a good place. And so business people are good leverage points in this is get them focused on this next challenge where by the way, they can make a lot of money. If you can't make money in the next 25 years, it's gonna be a boom to end all booms. It's not just, if the last boom, my last, my original book of 25 years ago was called The Long Boom and it was talking about the boom in digital technologies and globalization. Together, we're gonna create a... a long boom for business, including stock markets, all kinds of stuff. It totally came true. But now we've not got just the next iteration of Infotech, which is going to continue to go on, but we've got two other fundamentally new industries, new technologies that are just going to essentially boom too, which is why we're in for a ride. I mean, it's going to be a... Now, there'll be backlash, there'll be disruption, there'll be people mad about it. I mean, anyhow, all that's going to happen. But in general, this thing is tipped. This is why I always tell the business audiences, this isn't a debate. Oh, should we do that or not do that? It's tipped. It's going, it's moving. Global finance has shifted. The whole global auto industry is going electric, period, full stop. That's not a debate anymore. Five years ago, it was kind of a debate. 10 years ago, it was absolutely. In fact, you'd be a better bet to say it's not going to go electric. But that is not a debate. That's a tipped industry. It's happening. And there's a bunch of those examples now. And so your generation you're teaching now are now all going into the next systems. It's the next systems, which is the great opportunities. It's the great moments where you can actually make fortunes. You can make, if not fortunes, live well. There's a ton of ways to thrive in that environment. And so people are talking about, you know, the recession and slow growth and all kinds of stuff. That's just they don't. I'm totally that's totally wrong. In my opinion, we're heading into another great boom, honestly. Anyhow, a lot to be said there.
- Speaker #1
Okay, Peter, we're getting to the third and final stage of our conversation here. We're going to focus on the present to finish our conversation. Could you please tell us about the very different ways in which you intervene in the world? Can you share with us some ongoing thought processes that you have, some ongoing practices that you're involved with that you think will resonate with the listeners and possibly give them some additional food for thought?
- Speaker #0
Sure. And I love the idea. We've gone through the future, the past, the present. Well, I just want to start by basically saying that I've lived a privileged life of which I am very grateful for. But I would just say in the context of the world, you know, of all the people on the planet right now, I, you know, grew up, you know, in America, I grew up in a middle class family. I had, you know, great opportunities for you know, I went to the best schools in kind of the East Coast for college and grad schools. I've, you know, my life has been a good opportunity. And so I've never really worried about money. So let's just, I mean, I'll put this. So one of the things is I've always been able to do kind of what I want to do and live while doing it because I just have that. background it's not like you come from money i don't come from money i come from a kind of middle-class family and all that but because of my you know education my networks my talents i've never really worried about money so i've always kind of prioritized a mission-oriented career that you know and and so one thing is you know can you do that depends on your own situation but i've done that so this kind of makes this kind of the context of why i was able to do this So from an early age, basically, I have wanted... I've kind of grok at some level that this is what this thing I've been laying out to you for the last the civilizational skill change and the kind of epic moment we're living in all that kind of stuff. I've actually felt some version of that from the very beginning. And so I kind of began my came out of college in the kind of early 80s. So date me here. But so I've kind of was. But I kind of watched when Reagan and Thatcher kind of changed the foundations of I was literally at Georgetown in university in Washington, D.C. when Reagan won and brought essentially a very conservative ideology into what had been for the, you know, since World War Two, a very kind of dominated by a more liberal, democratic kind of way of going. And that was kind of so I watched this transition at ground zero there. And and so what I've been but I've also but then I just kept my whole life thinking I wanted to follow the story of our time. I wanted to essentially make the most of my time. on the planet, kind of in this kind of giant story of our time. And so I've actually tried to organize my career to actually go to the places that, many of the places that I actually thought this was happening. So one thing which people don't know much about necessarily, but I started as a journalist and I ended up as a foreign correspondent in Asia. Because at the time, again, by the late 80s, when I really was over in Asia, I mean, it was a great story of our time. It was the beginning of the rise of China. It was essentially Japan at that time. People forget this, but, you know, it was at the peak of its kind of ascendancy, worrying people in the West that the Japanese way was going to solve things. Anyhow, I went over there as a foreign correspondent for Newsweek. I basically traveled the whole region, got to know Asia, spent a lot of time there and understanding that part of the world. But then, you know, I kind of had enough. background in technology that I also understood the next big story is going to be this technology story. And so without giving all the details, you know, I ended up being work here in San Francisco with the founders of Wired Magazine, which was ground zero for all the technology people of the world. And it became a place to watch this crazy story of the last 25, 30 years happen here in San Francisco. Right. Anyhow, so there's been a kind of a series of decisions I've been able to do and just you know, to get to the places that essentially are happening. And not everyone can do that. But I would say to the extent you can do that is something to think about, which is go to where the action is. It's kind of an instinct of all journalists, but essentially applies to everybody. And those networks, those early innovators, every time you get in, and I also do this in all kinds of different fields. So another one I did is I really was fascinated by politics. So how I got involved with the early Barack Obama's early campaign. And I basically was able to help Democrats transition to politics on the Internet because I knew at that time was I spent four years doing this. And it was basically a full time job. And I basically took technologists from the valley into Washington to cut. and it was part of the Obama campaign, but basically it kind of changed fundamentally how politics was run on the internet. Like people didn't even know what Facebook was or what, why would anyone want a YouTube video or, you know, what, what, what's a Google ad? They've no one knew that stuff. So anyhow, we've kind of did. So anyhow, I kind of like to go to where things are happening and where these key people and key innovators are to learn. So that's one big takeaway. I would say, think of yourself as this bigger story, go to where these things are. Um, but also, uh, Just stay total curious. I mean, to me, it's like my driving force of my career, besides learning, besides essentially being part of this story and being a part of the mission is essentially learning is like if I need to just be constantly learning and I get bored very quickly. And so to me, you know, which is good or bad, but it's more like I want to know a lot or a little about a lot of things is kind of my way of going rather than know a lot about one thing. So, for example, I was in a Ph.D. program, recruited for a Ph.D. program in Columbia when I was coming out of college. And I went as far as a master's. But then they told me, oh, you have to specialize in this one little thing that just goes deep, deep, deep, deep, deep. And I said, you've got to be kidding. I want to figure out everything. I want to connect. So anyhow, I shifted to be a journalist, took another master's in journalism, then later went on to be a journalist. But the point being is, like, to me, cross-connecting, multidisciplinary focus, knowing a lot. connecting the dots between happening in different fields is a much more valuable i shouldn't say more valuable but to me it was a more valuable skill to do and i would say it's underappreciated out there and i think people should if i were thinking if you're thinking about these kind of things think about the cross connect think about the multidisciplinary side think about that's where innovation happens that's where all the neat stuff happens so anyhow broad curiosity and then i would basically and this is something i did again i'm kind of privileged to be able to do this i I reinvent myself every five years. I mean, I literally... pretty much do something different every five years. I've had four different startups, really, in so many ways. And I've had, but I like, you can just see, oh, I was in the foreign correspondent thing. And then I was in the technology thing. And I was in politics. I kind of do these things, again, privileged because I'm able to do that for all these reasons and, you know, able to adapt to these spaces and get my way in there and figure out how to do it. So it's not everyone can always do that at that scale. But I would just say the reinvention process is a really good one. Now, I will say it's driven my wife crazy. Basically, it's like every five years, my wife is like, you've got to be kidding. We're now going to do another startup or, you know, or whatever. We're going to move there. It's like, no. So anyhow, it's not exactly. You've got to be with the right wife who has been good. She's supported my risk because it's a high risk thing. You're leaving something that you know how to do. And you could just sit there and. be fine for 20 years is like no i'm gonna go do something different and and anyhow you gotta start over and you're gonna bunch of stuff happens it makes me alive and it makes me feel energized and i'm learning i love that but it and it reinvents me and ultimately has been i think a successful way forward for me um and you know we've done fine we've lived well i mean my wife would not object to it but i'm just kind of being not a little bit facetious but i've also got to say it is not your normal way people would run their lives but basically to me it has essentially been a fascinating way to run a career and at least if i were thinking like that uh if i was early in my career and if you're like your students and kind of things like that i would definitely stay open to the idea of perpetual reinvention And whether you want it or not, it's probably going to happen. I mean, I think the pace of change and innovation is going to just keep going. And I think the opportunities are just going to keep spooling out here. So in some ways, whether you like it or not, you might end up doing that. But I would just say get ahead of the game and kind of get in that mindset and think of yourself as a series of essentially five year shots at doing something remarkable in your life. But keep in mind at all times that sense that you're living in a... really amazing, a rare moment in history. Essentially, you're in a time that is really going to be remembered for... centuries to come and i think that is something that people don't really think about it deeply uh if at all if at all but uh keep that in the back of your mind that you're living an amazing time there's a lot of crazy opportunities um and but also there's a lot of need to really help move the ball ahead for you know your society or wherever you live france or wherever it is or But also around the world. It's like we're really in an amazing moment of time, but it needs everybody to kind of lean in and try to do their part. And so I highly encourage you. Mission over money. You need enough money, but don't get obsessed with making money. There's a million ways to make money. But do get trying to think about your own mission in life and what you can do and then just start that process. And by the end of your life in 2100. uh when you're looking back on it you'll feel happy that you did the best you can and you were part of this amazing story basically and that i think would be a good way to think about that's why i think about it i'm not gonna make it to 2100 but i do think i'm gonna hit 20 2050 and i think by the time then i'll be able to look back and uh
- Speaker #1
feel pretty good about what i've been doing in my career and so good luck with yours be the way to end it thank you peter together we've established a new record on this uh, podcast. I think that you shared with us multiple insights, exploring the futures, bringing back some key moments from history, and now, well, simply sharing with us perhaps a, you know, a tiny little recipe of, let's say, striving for connecting our personal history with the long-term history and feeling a connection between ourselves and... all the people around us, but also feeling the connection between ourselves and those that were here before us and those that will be here after us. Lots of insights here. And I hope and I do trust that our path will cross again. Thank you very much.
- Speaker #0
It's been a pleasure to be with you. And good luck with interviewing more remarkable folks out there. There's a lot of them. Thank you for listening to this new episode of Remarkable. To not miss anything, subscribe. Don't hesitate to leave a note and talk about the podcast around you. See you soon!
