Episode 302 - Sturbridge Village Retreat
Max and Aaron talk about this year's retreat at Sturbridge Village, MA. They go over the best and worst of their predictions from previous retreats, and what predictions they make for the future.
Links
Statista - Number of ocean cruise passengers worldwide from 2009 to 2022, with a forecast until 2027
Penny Arcade - Le Twittre
Related Episodes
Episode 295 - Rewriting the Constitution: Did the Founders Screw up the Senate
Episode 153 - Decentralizing Before our Eyes
Transcript
Max: You're listening to the Local Maximum episode 302.
Narration: Time to expand your perspective. Welcome to the Local Maximum. Now here's your host, Max Sklar.
Max: Welcome everyone. Welcome. You have reached another Local Maximum. Today I am joined once again by Aaron for three shows in a row. How're you doing, Aaron?
Aaron: I'm doing well. It's fun to be doing this face to face again. It's been a while.
Max: Yeah, I never got to do it face to face before I knew I moved to New Hampshire. But after I left New Hampshire, it's kind of nice to be able to come back because now I've got business up here. Of course, we're not in New Hampshire. But you know what I mean?
Aaron: Close enough.
Max: Yeah. All right. So what we're going to talk about is the tech retreat, which happened over the last weekend, very exciting tech retreat. So let's talk a little bit about the tech retreat for a little bit. First of all, this is the eighth Local Maximum tech retreat that we've ever done.
Aaron: What's the proper terminology? It's the eighth penta-quarterly retreat?
Max: Yes. Every five quarters. It's, you know, you can think of it as annually, I often
Aaron: It's been 40 quarters?
Max: I often denote it by year, because now some years, of course, we're going to skip, we're going to skip 2024. Because, you know, if it's q4 of 2023, five quarters after that is q1 of 2025. So it's actually the reason why I do that is because it's kind of nice to have something that's a little bit less than annual. I feel like if it were every year. As I live longer and longer and have done more multi-year projects, I feel like something that you tried to do annually often falls apart at some point. I don't know why that is. But it's sort of helpful if something kind of migrates between the seasons. And gives you a little extra time. I don't know, I don't know why that is. But also, it helps us make like ten-year predictions, five-year predictions, and then two and a half year predictions, and then one and a quarter year prediction. So kind of it when we're doing predictions, we didn't even get to the fact that predictions are a big part of this. But making predictions for the future and looking at our predictions from the past are a big part of this retreat. And so that kind of gives us nice numbers to kind of work with to get that five and ten-year.
Aaron: I assumed you were going to comment that it helps things to rotate around the calendar, which for those who joined us for the discussion of the constitutional amendment. We'll see a little easter egg in there in that the terms of the Executive Council members are on a similar rotating fashion.
Max: Actually, I'm gonna look at what I'm sure.
Aaron: That was 14 months, right? Yes, I'm gonna try to look up what episode that was. That was exactly.
Aaron: Well, so. But I was curious if you were going to explain why you chose to do it by making it longer than a year because you could have had a similar effect by making the frequency slightly less than a year.
Max: Yeah, that's true, but it's less. I feel like annual is already too frequent.
Aaron: Sometimes less is more.
Max: Yeah. So. So extra-annual, I think is the term might be might be less frequent,
Aaron: Just so those who are not looking at our show notes might not see this serendipitous moment, but you just paste it in the link to the episode on one of the episodes on the constitutional amendment. Yeah. And with the way that it cuts off the end of the line here. It looks as if the title is “Rewriting the Constitution: Did the Founders Screw You?” It indeed says screw up the Senate, but I think it might hit the point a little bit more.
Max: That's very interesting. Okay, so a little bit more about this retreat. Another thing, so first of all, it started in 2015. Before there was a Local Maximum-
Aaron: Not 2015.
Max: The retreat. Yes. No, I that is one of the times, rare times that I did not switch up the year. It was 2015. What did you think it was?
Aaron: 2015 doesn't seem that long ago. Trump was only elected in 2016. I guess. Depending on what mood you're in that event either seems like it just happened or it was forever ago.
Max: No 2015. January of 2015. It occurred or February maybe feels like a real long time ago. Mainly because, yes, you're right. Trump wasn't even in the picture yet. So politically, that whole thing hadn't started. We were kind of in the midst of that woke cultural revolution, but we didn't really realize it yet. You know, it was literally a few months after the whole yellow Halloween costume thing. And I was still working on the consumer app at Foursquare. So, you know, it just seems like a very long time ago. It is like nearly a decade ago. So really, I was trying to figure out my future like my career a little bit, and I kind of invited you all to a retreat to help me figure it out. And you guys considered a vacation. And so it was my friend Benji Bo's cabin upstate, which he no longer has, that kind of sucked. So that was in the Catskills. And it was 10 degrees below freezing. I'm sure you remember that?
Aaron: I do. Remember the, I believe the toilet froze.
Max: Yeah. The toilet. I think we were only there for one night. And, and also, that was, you know, that was like five. That was like four guys like, like a few friends out there. So that was a little easier to take care of. Now everyone kind of makes their own arrangements. But no, I remember the heat didn't go out into the kitchen. So in the kitchen, the stuff froze faster outside the freezer than inside the freezer, even though the freezer was running. So that was or was the freezer not running? I don't know, maybe the freezer was not running. And that's why it was just make keeping it slightly warmer than negative 10. But that was crazy. So I think my idea back then was that a cold day where you're kind of isolated is a good time to brainstorm because that one I did a lot of like, I basically made notebooks for everyone. We had no internet access. And I basically did a bunch of tech talks.
Aaron: I don't know if you realized ahead of time, but I don't think I realized how off the grid we were gonna be.
Max: Oh, yeah. For that one, for that one.
Aaron: Which I think worked to our benefit. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And we haven't been able to duplicate that in any future retreat. Really. So.
Aaron: The closest thing would be that the this year's location was in the same town as a, a witness. 19th century or more late 18th century reenactment village? Oh, yeah. Although the original retreat felt like we may have been thrust back in time a little bit ourselves.
Max: Right. So yes, because although the original was the old barn, and this one, we did it in. And so the previous two years, we've done it in New Hampshire. This time, we did it in Sturbridge village, Massachusetts, because he had people coming from both New Hampshire and Connecticut and New York. Sturbridge Village is a very centrally located town for New England. So if New England were to become its own country, I think I would nominate Sturbridge village as the capital. But Sturbridge village is right on the border between Massachusetts and Connecticut. And it's, like an old, well, it has old Sturbridge village, which is an 1830s town and I was there on Sunday. Most people couldn't make it but a bunch of us did. And first of all, it was a really nice day to go in the fall. And you know, we went to the blacksmith and the and saw the sheep and stuff, people, women dressed in bonnets and so like, basically, life in the 1830s. And we got into a discussion of, you know, once we met all the people with their different jobs, well, what job would you want in that time? And, you know, some of us were like, I don't know, maybe I'll be the preacher. The blacksmith. Sounds okay. But you know, I don't know. It's kind of hot in there. You get burned? I don't think I like that one. Yes, it was hard to say. But, ya know, very fun. And it was actually a very good place to do the retreat. We did it in the hotel in the Hampton Inn, in the hotel there, just in their lobby, which ended up working out really well. I was a little nervous about it, but nine people, so I think it worked pretty well. So we got into a lot of stuff. We discussed the Constitution, we discussed the newmap.ai, we discussed their careers.
Aaron: But is there anything we discussed that has not appeared on a previous episode in one form or another?
Max: Um, I think so. Maybe the longevity discussion?
Aaron: Yeah, I guess we haven't really addressed that directly. And that was only tangential but it was kind of an interesting thread that could potentially tie into a lot of other things.
Max: Yeah, I would definitely be open to talking about longevity on the show.
Aaron: Well, and you I believe, you know, several people who are very involved in that field.
Max: Yeah, but I'm having trouble getting someone who is interested in coming on the podcast. So yeah, and we have discovered we have started to talk about kind of the more philosophical, rather, stuff, because the people who are into the scientific portion of it are like, You better work on this problem, because if you don't fix it, you will die. Whereas the philosophical portion is interesting to me because I talked about the nature of consciousness and how we can't figure it out. And I've gone down the rabbit holes of near death experiences and all that. And, you know, what? What evidence is actually out there. For you know, what this whole conscious experience is. Also when I read, you know, Donald Hoffman. What was the name of his book?
Aaron: Was this the one about how we have no free will?
Max: The Case Against Reality. No, it's not quite about freewill. It's about how everything that we see and sense, in his view, is not actually real.
Aaron: Is this Plato's cave on steroids?
Max: I think that there's a whole book, but I think that is one of, yes, I think that's basically part of the argument. Yes, that's part of it. I think the idea is that, you know, our perceptions are shaped by evolution. So I don't really know why he says, he rejects the notion, like I would say, Okay, we have a partial or distorted view of reality. Or, you know, maybe color is not inherent, but it's based on wavelength. So it's like, it's a function of reality is what I would say. But the way he puts it is, it's just, it's not reality. So I'm kind of, there's kind of a semantic thing, where I'm not quite on the same page here. But it is very interesting how maybe 3D space doesn't exist. And everything that we see is just an icon to help us, you know, survive and thrive. But I kind of feel like, you know, and that's what particles are. But the fact that we discovered particles, he analogized it to discovering pixels on a monitor, and thinking, oh, I've discovered the nature of reality that I discovered the pixels on my monitor. When really that's not what's going on.
Aaron: Well, I would love to dig into that more, particularly the question of, okay, if so, how do we make use of that information? But we have another topic to discuss.
Max: I know, I know, I'm going down a rabbit hole. But hey, it's good to figure out at least so long as it's interesting, it's good to figure out new new things we've talked about here on the Local Maximum. So we're going to talk about some past predictions that have come due. And predictions for the future. The timeline for the predictions are one and a quarter year, two and a half year, five years, 10 year, 20 year, 40 years. Our topics this time around, we're and this was chosen by the group, it should be chosen beforehand, we discussed but we chose it then and there, are data, AI, fintech. That's one that was basically for me and someone else to be able to talk about our own studies and jobs. Social and media, because we kind of figured out that social media is sort of old news. But one of the interesting things about this was people are still interested in social media and its future. War and politics, no doubt because of the recent developments in the Middle East. Medicine and longevity because we had some people there who are interested in that. And we had our miscellaneous one, that was optimism and pessimism where I said you had to put a plus or minus in front of your prediction. My friend Nick always has a lot of minuses. And everything that he has, that's like every he has some crazy negative minuses that are jokes, but anything that's like mildly minus from him almost always comes true, which is very frustrating. I feel like they're negative prophecies. Okay, so we didn't have a lot of like, super bold predictions. I'm trying to find the predictions that are like, bold from the past that came true that you know, that were sort of unlikely. Those are very, very hard to find.
Aaron: I will note that this section is titled as past predictions that have come do not pass predictions that have come true.
Max: Right, right. All right. Well, let's talk about the ones that we picked out. And then we can and then we can move on from there. So the first one you wrote the Substack model continues to expand revenues greater than the New York Times writers. This was from 2022 for 2023 So this was this is just a very.
Aaron: One and a quarter year prediction cuz I think at that point Substack was was kind of the new hotness but it was also getting a lot of flak for people referring to it as oh, well that's just a place full of you know, right wing bigots and and extremists and that they were anticipating its collapse. So it certainly has continued to grow. I don't have good numbers to compare what its writer revenue or reader numbers look like compared to the New York Times. But I'll definitely take the win for continuing to expand. But it seems by growing both in terms of big name writers that are on it, but also kind of expanding its tendrils to a lot of smaller scale kind of utility players or, you know, maybe not big moneymakers. But people are using the features of the platform. So it's not just about celebrities, but it continues to grow in that dimension as well.
Max: So it feels it certainly feels like it's been growing. But what like larger trends — were you trying to get at larger trends here in that something about like, you know, that don't like what the New York Times it like, Okay, we could read on the New York Times all day.
Aaron: I think I think a big piece of it would be that that writers are, there's an exodus of, of key talent from, it used to be that the place you go, if you are a writer of accomplished skill, and notoriety was you wrote for one of the big, big publications, so on New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, or I don't know, The New Yorker. And, there are certainly people who do that still, but it has become very much a viable alternative to go out on your own. And either as you know, either replacing that that quote unquote, mainstream publication journalism approach, or in some cases, supplementing that there are people who work for, you know, traditional public news publications, but also have a sideline on on Substack, or a similar structured tool, because there there have been some, maybe not copycats, but but in the same vein, and and that's how they, they make their their real money, because very few people are going to strike it rich, you know, writing for, for mainstream media, unless you roll that into, you know, some some other big paid speaking gigs on the side,
Max: You also get more control.
Aaron: Absolutely I don't know if it is Bari Weiss. Is she still on Substack, or has she kind of gone off and done her own thing?
Max: Actually when you said like who that is, I think I when I think Substack I immediately think Bari Weiss.
Aaron: Yeah, so it certainly seems that that was a big motivation for quite a few of those people that either they were run out of the institutions they were working at, or they chose to leave because they didn't feel that they were able to continue doing the work they wanted to do.
Max: So what do you think, like? So when I think about Substack, I also think about Medium, like, what's the difference between the Substack and like a Medium think piece. Or Substack more for like Medium, Medium feels like more of a blogging?
Aaron: I think I think a big piece of the difference is how they monetized. That Medium is still much more centrally controlled. And and I think Medium took a much heavier editorial hand in things. And I'm trying to remember now if it was pre pandemic, or if it was in the early days of the pandemic, that they made that that shift, but it is not a place that that I, I used to go to Medium and look for stuff to read. I'd never do that anymore. I will occasionally end up on Medium because I've been sent a link to something that I'm interested in reading and it happens that it's hosted there. But But yeah, I don't I don't go there to seek out interesting ideas, like I did at at one point in the earlier, you know, either early 2020s or may have been in the late 20 teens.
Max: Right. Right. Okay, so also in 2022, we had a lot of kind of pandemic normalcy predictions, which honestly, were wait, no, was this 2022 or was this 2021? Okay, it's better if it's 2021 because I was gonna say, if the pandemic normalcy predictions were made in 2022…
Aaron: Well, I know my next one noted there's 2021 I'm not sure about the general pandemic No.
Max: Oh, and your Substack prediction was also 2021. Okay, so I misspoke. So both of these were from 2021, which means that it was actually two and a half year predictions. So whichever. A little, a little more, a little further.
Aaron: It’s a bolder take then.
Max: Yeah, well, okay, I think, predicting in the mid, in 2021, we're kind of in the middle where like COVID was still the current thing. And it's not too much of a stretch to hope that in two and a half years, this will no longer be the current thing. But it actually goes to some kind of a, because I tend to measure you know, my career focus in two and a half year increments, I feel like something always switches over every two and a half years where you're like, okay, it's like, you might feel you're doing the same thing that you're doing last year, but two and a half years, there's always like a, a new focus kind of kind of comes into view. And I feel that way for current thing as well. I feel like social, what do you want to call it social moods, or social panics or whatever? You know, or even long media cycles. I know, we live in an age when it feels like the media cycle could be 24 hours. And then the next 24 hours, we're thinking about something else. But some of these long term things, I really feel like the culture. I feel like there is kind of that two and a half year sweet spot where a certain longer term narrative is harder to maintain. And so okay, it feels like that. That's been true. But a lot of the pandemic normality predictions are on like hard numbers, like we're talking real estate travel, and that kind of thing. You pulled up something that aviation travel has not quite recovered. Is that true?
Aaron: Yeah. So and I didn't do an exhaustive search here. But the stats that I did see, now, they're using a forecast for 2022, 2023. So I don't know if these numbers are accurate, but it was showing that we had not recovered. In fact that the the forecast of 2023 numbers are equivalent to what is it like 2014 numbers previously, so that there was still a setback there, I would want to see some more recent data on that, but that was the best I could come up with on short notice. So it looks like it's not quite recovered there. Meanwhile, on the cruise front, and granted, this only has actual data through 2022 With forecasts going forward, but they're showing that as of 2023, the the forecasted data has them above what the 2019 number of cruise passengers was so so it again, some forecast data in there, but it looks like that is recovered even faster, which is a little surprising, given how centrally cruises played in the early COVID story.
Max: I know and it seems they seemed so like the scariest place to be.
Aaron: i guess we know there was some resiliency there because people have been catching you know, was it norovirus or whatever on cruises for decades, and that barely slows folks down.
Max: Oh, yeah, norovirus. Not, not not so much fun. I can say from personal experience. I didn't get on a cruise.
Aaron: So yeah, mixed results there in terms of the recovery. But certainly the recovery trend is on and I think that's a little interesting that when we were talking about this in 2021, that we were putting those benchmarks at the two and a half year mark, not the one and a quarter year mark.
Max: Right. Right. Yeah. Because at that point, we were like, I mean, I think in 2020, we are already predicting for the one in the quarter that it's going to end. And we were like, well, that didn't happen.
Aaron: So there there was, I won't call out who made this prediction? Where did it go here?
Max: Winter 2020?
Aaron: Oh, here it is. Yeah. So this was from spring of 2021. But it was a one and a half year prediction. So coming due in the summer of 2022. And it said COVID variants will be with us permanently, much like the flu. Yeah, not wrong. And I think that captures some of the short term pessimism, even though that's a prediction for long that one would expect to hold true for longer. But yeah, that's that's where we're where we were thinking,
Max: Here's an interesting flashback to one of our 2020 predictions for one and a half years. Here's here's yours. You wrote, large companies have publicly detailed disaster plans and stockpiles as part of their corporate reporting due to COVID experience. And I wrote several university closures hastened by the pandemic, man, I wish some of these universities would be close. But no, I feel like we were a little bit too in deep of the darkest days.
Aaron: I bet there were a few but not any recognizable names that we would know about. It's, I think some of the, you know, the for profit universities that were maybe on shaky ground like at Trump U, you are most likely the ones that bit it during the pandemic.
Max: Yeah. And instead of corporations and companies having detailed disaster plans, they seem to be intent on bringing on the disasters, so. Well, I mean, yeah, corporate America has, has gone in a very different direction than we expected there. Alright. Well, it just goes to show it goes to show how the, what the, I feel like, future historians looking, looking back on the past are going to say, look, there were a lot of like butterfly effects type things that came from the lockdown, or from the leak of the virus, you know, in general, and we don't, that that's kind of obvious in retrospect, it's just, it's hard to predict where all that goes. We now have seen some, some very strange effects. Like, I'm not even gonna get into all of it, just. But alright, so let's go down to the technology.
Aaron: Consumer tech.
Max: Yeah, because now we're gonna look at predictions from 2018, which was much more optimistic time in, I was gonna say optimistic time in our country's history, but it's not really our country, it was just in a more optimistic time on Earth, let's say, for most places on Earth. All right, I said in 2018, that by fall 2023, Apple tries to come out with glasses slash visual displays, style important. Well, style, the style important is kind of always an Apple thing. So that we can put put out, VisionPRO, already announced, comes out next year. So I think that is pretty spot on. It's not exactly what I expected. Because I was expecting something more along the lines of Google Glass where you walk around with it. I saw Google Glass in 2013. looks so cool, but everybody hated it. I think it was the fact that it had a camera. But I, you know, this was not a very bold prediction. It was, you know, we, we at Foursquare, were talking about things.
Aaron: The bold piece is not in predicting that Apple will do this. It's in trying to get the timing right, because similarly, you can talk about Apple's going to do a TV or Apple's going to do a self driving car. These are all things they're working on. But figuring out if it will actually come to market and when that will is the tricky bit.
Max: Yeah. So I don't know how I got it spot on almost, in five years. Also, it's not quite spot on, because it's not out yet.
Aaron: I think you get significant credit, given that the major product reveal has happened.
Max: Rlright, so we don't even know how it's going to do.
Aaron: Yeah, how often? And yeah, I don't know if this is a spot on question or not. But has Apple ever done like a product reveal like that, and then not actually brought the product to market?
Max: Yeah, they, I think they typically do that when they need developers to write software for it externally. So that way, they can get some third parties.
Aaron: I don't mean that there's a delay. I mean, that they do the big reveal. And then they decide oh, actually, no, we're not going to do it. Oh, it's canceled.
Max: I can't think of an example. Yeah. So I can't even think of any.
Aaron: The odds of it being vaporware, I think, are very low at this point.
Max: Oh, no, no, I don't think it's vaporware. I think it exists. But we don't know how it's going to do in the marketplace. It could be something.
Aaron: I expect what they demoed is going to be very much, look like what actually goes on sale that we're not going to. It's not like they did a proof of concept. And it's going to be dramatically changed between now and then.
Max: I do think because it's Apple, and because they have a compelling demo, they are going to get a large number of people putting down a lot of money to buy this thing. And then but you know, are they going to be able to maintain the momentum? I actually think and I could be wrong about this. But I think like a few years before the iPhone and the iPad. Apple was working on both of them. I think that the leadership, including Steve Jobs, thought the iPad was the bigger deal. I could be wrong about that. But it turns out to be not
Aaron: It's been a while since I've read the biography. But yeah, that wouldn't surprise me.
Max: Yeah. All right. I'll let you read your 2018.
Aaron: Yeah so this is in a similar vein, talking about consumer technology except where you had a pretty much a bullseye, I had a wide miss here I said that audio implants will become a common elective procedure.
Max: Now let me see, what was…the AirPod? No. Is it the AirPod? No. What's the thing that you put in your ear? Again? I don't even remember. Am I forgetting things?
Aaron: What's I think we're talking about? You mean earbuds or no, the Apple Airpods?
Max: Yeah, I get them confused with the air tag.
Aaron: Yeah. When did that come out? Was that already out in 2018?
Max: That's a good question. I've got to look that up.
Aaron: I think it may have been a little bit later than that. But, right. I have yet to actually use a pair.
Max: Oh no, they were announced in 2016.
Aaron: Okay, so they've been around for a while, right? Yeah, nobody's, no significant number of people are getting cyborg augmentations like that just yet.
Max: Okay. But I feel like I do. And I'll tell you why. Because I got this, this thing that I put on when I sleep, and it feels like a headband. And it's like, super comfortable. And it's got these like Bluetooth headphones. And I could put on, you know, I could put on music, I can put on brown noise, I could put on the radio. And for some reason, it helps me sleep so well. I don't, I forgot what it's called. But it's almost, it's not quite an implant, but it's almost, it almost feels like it's certainly a wearable. And so I feel like a lot of these are quite common. And I don't think we quite need an implant. Because that's a little bit invasive when what we already have works.
Aaron: I mean, there are people who are getting themselves chipped and putting the RFID tags in themselves to do, you know, some neat things. But that that's that's not quite the same as, you know, a built in audio device, and, and it's still very much outliers who were doing
Max: that. Yeah. I don't even want to read the next one. So because A) I feel like an awful awful person for making this prediction. And B) it's an awful prediction.
Aaron: No, no, I think you were being maybe naive, optimistic?
Max: Well, I thought that Trump would win the next election, mainly because the economic economy was doing well. And honestly, mostly because we've had a string of two-term presidents at that point. And so I predicted that the current tone that was being that was, I think that was during the whole like, Russia. thing, what was that?
Aaron: Russiagate?
Max: Right. Alright. So I wrote the Democrats finally tone down the rhetoric on Trump, and they focus on economic issues in the next election, or next, in the next recession, I wrote to talk about economics issues, and then do well in the midterm election. So I'm talking about the 2022, midterm election. So, you know, I would think they would kind of revert to form and say, Hey, let's just, you know, let's just, let's just nominate someone who exudes competence, and focus on the competence and the quality of our candidates. I mean, I don't think that has happened. But now, I understand this more in the context of the fourth turning. In the fourth turning, both parties are going to be angry and hysterical. And that is going to happen for the rest of the decade. Apparently, we don't know exactly how long. And so it's gonna be a-
Aaron: Can't say that we're not even halfway done with it.
Max: It's gonna be an age. Well it could end sooner. But it could also end later.
Aaron: But when you say it like that, now, I'm worried that the current level of outrage, and then contention is not going to end, that just the decades is going to end, it's going to end early. We're all going to end early.
Max: What do you mean, we're all going to end early? Oh, just the world? Yeah. Well, so long as the world survives, according to Strauss-Howe theory, we will enter a first turning, which has its own problems, but it's a little bit less. It's a little bit less crazy. It includes certain, you know, American time periods, such as the Gilded Age, the 1950s, and the era of good feelings, which all had some problems associated with it. There is no era in history that doesn't have problems associated with it, but it's also not associated with, you know, I don't know total war or anything like that. Now, I hope that the total war that we have mostly remains rhetorical. And so I have a little bit about that in terms of what's going on in the world where it has not remained rhetorical. But anyway, I hope. I hope I'm not rambling too much. But does that make sense?
Aaron: Yeah. Well, let's step away from our past predictions and look at some of the new ones that we formulated over the weekend. And looking forward, and I don't see what, what the timelines we should have.
Max: Yeah think they are. So the Mastodon timeline so the Yeah, I should I should I should pull that up. So why don't you read the social media ones?
Aaron: Yeah. So we had two predictions that were focused on. Not just social media in general, but particularly calling out Mastodon, which, which I think we have we had a Mastodon dedicated episode. We've certainly talked about it.
Max: Well, certainly the episode called. Certainly the episode. And let me decentralize before our eyes, right.
Aaron: Yeah, so So I made the prediction that Mastodon will be replaced as the open alternative to Twitter/X, and similar services. So it's, it by no means has a majority. But when people talk about X, Twitter alternatives, that is generally the first one that is mentioned. It's but I think, having not capitalized on some level of recognition and its openness, that something else is going to come along and scoop them as being the alt Twitter?
Max: Well, we should call out blue sky, which is, right, yeah,
Aaron: I have no idea where they are in terms of adoption, and, you know, traffic and activity. They're, they're certainly one of the other big names out there. Right. Um,
Max: and, you know, they certainly have the app protocol, which is open. Yep. So that is nice. And then you have a bunch of Twitter clones out there, which are the non open alternatives like threads, everybody said, Instagram threads, is going to replace Twitter, I no longer have threads, I have not been solicited to go on threads, I have no interest in being on threads. Nothing against. You know, it's nothing against anyone who's there or involved in it. It's not like the product is, it's honestly, it's very similar to Twitter. It's just how do you bootstrap and get everyone? I'm not just going to use it? Because I'm like, Oh, the software is nice. If there's no one on there, there's no one on there. Or there's nothing I want to see or it's hard to see what I want to see. So I don't know why people thought that was going to win. And honestly, one person that I want to read could be on there exclusively, and I would get it. But they still have that. I think because that person would then want to be on Twitter.
Aaron: I don't know how many people are actually exclusively on any of these. It seems like there's a lot of cross posting, which is kind of a nightmare to track and follow.
Max: Well, one of the things I realized with all these apps, because I used to, you know, dive into all of them when I worked at Foursquare, you know, I remember when Google Plus came out, you know, I joined that I dive into that. Anything that was an alternative to Foursquare, we tried that I was product research. But I realize now that I'm not working there anymore. And now that everything seems to be a Twitter clone, I realized I really shouldn't be spending my time on X anyway, you know, it's all a waste of time!
Aaron: Yeah, one of the things that I actually.
Max: Hold on, I'm getting an idea now that it's really late at night. Why not create a Twitter where you're only getting content that is not a waste of time? How do you define that? I don't know. But that would be interesting.
Aaron: Well, we've talked in the past about, you know, custom curation filters of some sort. But so so one of the dangers that I see and kind of that maybe Balkanized, if, if still, you know, cross-posting world of many social media alternatives. There's a little bit of a parallel in publishing, I've heard mentioned recently that Barnes and Noble is one of the the big players in the brick and mortar print world. And I guess, much like maybe the video game industry, they've started doing exclusives, and not necessarily that like, you can only get this book at Barnes and Noble, but there's a special Barnes and Noble limited edition. And in some cases, you know, kind of like how on a DVD, you can get, you know, special features. So, you know, there might be a bonus short story or a bonus chapter that only comes in the Barnes and Noble edition. So if you buy it from, you know, crazy uncle Jeff's online book Emporium, you don't get that version. And that makes sense from a Barnes and Noble perspective. But as a consumer, I really dislike that. Like if somebody, if I don't want to have to, you know, to buy all the things to subscribe to all the services to be able to get a piece of information I'm looking for or to even know if I'm missing it or not. And that's where some of the open alternatives might have a leg up there if they can get their act together and get some adoption and cohesion of movement behind it. So
Max: So why do you think Mastodon is — not necessarily I don't think he said doomed — but why do you predict that it's going to go down? And why do you think I am? What else predicts that it will stay?
Aaron: They just haven't gotten critical mass. And, I haven't heard from anyone else. Well, I haven't heard from anyone evangelizing them. Not since the very beginning when it was like well, Twitter is in freefall. Everybody get out. And this is the obvious place.
Max: That wasn't the beginning. Well, I mean, the beginning was a long time ago. Remember, I was talking about Mastodon in January 2021. Before it was cool. It was cool. When Twitter took over X and everyone said the world is falling. Oh, Twitter didn’t take over X, Elon Musk took over X.
Aaron: That was their opportunity because there was a moment of exodus and you could grab significant chunks of network effect. And it seems like they they didn't capitalize on it, or if they did, the people who made the jump, because of Mastodons somewhat, you know, Balkanized is too strong a term for it, but but the fact that you can kind of go into an instance and not interact with all the rest of it has meant that the network effect of that exodus hasn't really given them the boost that that they would have needed. And so I think I don't see them as doomed. I don't think they're going to disappear. But I don't think they're going to grow and it's ripe for somebody else to come along and become the new not-Twitter.
Max: Yeah, I think it's very difficult to replace Twitter with a Twitter-like service. It's because of that network effect. And, you know, I think that Mastodon, the whole everyone's moving to Mastodon meme was a lie. It was never happening. I think what was happening was people, you know.
Aaron: People were checking it out. Well, but nope, nobody dove in with both feet.
Max: But not even that. I think it was just a meme put out because people were mad that Elon Musk was taking over Twitter.
Aaron: Gonna move to Canada.
Max: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. We're gonna move to Mastodon is the new I'm going to move to Canada, people were angry that Elon Musk was going to take over Twitter, and that all of their shenanigans, we're not going to be allowed anymore. Now, Elon Musk is the guy to hate. And so we're all moving to Mastodon because Elon Musk was elected president of Twitter. And then they pretended to move to Mastodon for a while, but then lost interest. Other things came up. And eventually they realized they had to go back to Twitter, except Twitter didn't exist only X, so they're back on x, which is it, which is crazy, like people. It's amazing how and, and it takes someone like Elon Musk. And by the way, Mark Zuckerberg is the same way. And a lot of the social media, CEOs and entrepreneurs are the same way. Sometimes to do the right thing, you have to get everyone mad at you, and telling you that if you do what you are doing, you are going to fail and everything that you've built, and the billions of dollars are all going to crash and burn. And sometimes that turns out to be the right thing to do. Which is why Elon Musk is Elon Musk, you know. It's hard to imagine that kind of being under that kind of pressure, and still going through it anyway. I mean, now that I've seen these stories, I feel like I might be in that situation one day, but it's really interesting to think about, but nothing happened, honestly.
Aaron: So let's put a bookend on the Mastodon topic here because there was in contrast to my soft pessimism. There was at least one other person who was seeing a bright future for Mastodon claiming that they're going to win by attrition. And large players are going to join the activity pub network. So I don't know if that was explicitly that they will become they will they will continue to grow as the dominant alt X or if it was claiming that they're going to supersede X and they will become the new public square in terms of you know, social media, micro blogging or whatever it is that we So that X slash Twitter does now. So I could see it going either way. I, I don't know enough about really the underlying pieces of Mastodon to see why I should expect kind of a turnaround in the current trajectory. But I'd be interested to keep an eye on that.
Max: I'm surprised that, well, maybe I can add something on this. It's not like the timing is closed. But like, I'm surprised we haven't talked about Neurolink. And the fact that we are, will that be able to broadcast your thoughts because that was the original idea behind not the original but, kind of the original idea behind Twitter was you broadcast your thoughts?.This is what I'm thinking. Yeah. And, you know, very early on in the development of Twitter, there was that South Park episode, where, who was it? Some actor was some celebrity that they liked to lampoon was always sharing his thoughts. I don't remember what I want. Why do I want to think it was like Alec Baldwin? I think it was. It was literally read your thoughts and broadcast that. Will people do that? I don't know. But that might be a very prescient episode from South Park, because I feel like a celebrity who has a very high opinion of themselves might actually do that.
Aaron: I know when the guys that do Penny Arcade when one of them first got onto Twitter that he got very into it, apparently, and so that there was a comic that showed, you know, two panels of him talking about it. And then the third panel, is him in the bathroom, tweeting out poop coming out now. People needed to know.
Max: He has his phone in his hands. Oh, my God. All right, well. Alright, so what else? So I obviously have been talking about the fourth turning a little bit. I guess I just use the book, essentially, to put some predictions on the board. I mean, first of all, first of all, I said, the first turning begins, that's 10 years from now. Old boomers are out of the political picture. But that's obvious, because all boomers will be kind of too old. Young boomers will still be around. It’s not like they'll be all dead. But, you know, at some point when you’re in your late 80s, early 90s. I mean, how many people are gonna remain in politics? Apparently, everybody but you know. But, you know, we don't know that. So the idea is okay, politics is going to be less violent and cantankerous in the 2030s than in the 2010s and 2020s, just because of that Strauss Howe theory. And then, where's our fourth turning war? I think we're in it, I don't think it's going to be called World war three. It seems to be like more of a global proxy war, where all of the problem spots around the world start to erupt at once, with various proxies on either side, aiding these local conflicts. And so I am a little worried that this could spread to many more places. And, you know, how does it end? Does it end in a global conflict? Or does it end when they all burn themselves out? It is pessimistic, but compared to the total war, or that sometimes occurs in fourth turning or nuclear war? It's not, it's not as bad I suppose. But, but but we are in a global problem. We are in a global proxy war of sorts, I think. And it's, it's disturbing. I mean, unless the history of the decade is, hey, we had a couple of wars breakout and problem spots around the world. But that was really localized to those two places. And even though it was set up by proxies that have other places similar with other international interests, I didn't really spread out from there. I find that hard to believe that that's going to be how the story plays out. So it's very concerning. Aaron, I don't know what else to say. I mean, we feel safe here in New England, but you never know. All right. You have a good 10 year prediction. I like this permanent lunar presence established. Tell me about this lunar presence because man has not been back on the moon since the 70s.
Aaron: Yeah, it was to say, what was it 71, 72 It was early 70s and Apollo 17, which I believe was the last one.
Max: Are there any plans to send human beings to the moon in the next few years?
Aaron: Yes. So the Artemis missions and I'd have to recheck where the current timeline is. But they're looking to have a crude, I can't say manned because I believe it is explicitly included in their mission statement that they will land the first woman on the moon, but a crewed mission to the moon, also in that mission statement is the first person of color on the moon. But they're looking to put a three person crew on the surface of the moon. So they've got a command module, they've got the rockets, and currently they are in the process of figuring out the lander. And our friend Elon is certainly making a bid for that. I believe he is the lead contender. And crazy uncle Jeff is trying to come in second and be a viable alternative there.
Max: That's Bezos?
Aaron: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So SpaceX is the primary selected and, and Blue Origin is, I'd have to double check whether the current status is things are but they're certainly pursuing as if they're going to have a lunar lander option.
Max: I got confused because I think crazy uncle Jeff is who you used as the bookstore. That's just Amazon?
Aaron: No, no, that is Amazon. Not Barnes and Noble. Crazy Uncle Jeff's online book Emporium.
Max: I did not think that up. I thought you meant some like Podunk guy on eBay.
Aaron: I think I may have stolen that turn of phrase from from author Marko Kloos.
Max: Okay, so what are they trying to do? First of all, a moon landing is going to be so cool for the Gen X, Millennial generation, and Gen Z. Like this is going to be a defining moment, because we've never seen a moon landing.
Aaron: You'll notice that I said permanent lunar presence. I didn't say permanent American lunar presence, because we're not the only ones in play there. There are quite a few other countries that are looking to at least put additional robotic presence on the moon. But I think a big piece of it is that if we go back, the point of going back right now is to level up our presence in space and the ability to have a long term foothold. So you know, we've got the International Space Station, the next step is going to be a surface base on another, another celestial body in preparation for so that we could go to Mars in the future.
Max: So but so how does this happen by 2033? Because, you know, so, realistically, this Artemis program, did you give a year?
Aaron: I did not say it out loud, because they really wanted to have I think they wanted to have the first mission in 2024. But I don't know that we're on track for that.
Max: Okay, so it must be that for this to come true. The Artemis mission or something like it from another country has to succeed, correct? And then once it succeeds, that permanent lunar presence, it has to lead to a permanent lunar presence rather quickly. Like they can't just be like, Okay, we'll come back another five years because then this prediction fades right. Is that the goal of Artemis, to establish something permanent?
Aaron: I believe so. There's i I'd have to double check what the what the the mission timelines there are but my understanding is that the the point of going there and for designing a new lunar lander is not so that we can go once,touch down and say we did it and maybe bring back some rocks. Right? It's absolutely so that we can land a habitat, figure out what is involved in building, sustaining, maintaining, expanding a habitat, but be able to do it, you know, three days away, rather than, you know, a two year trip away.
Max: Imagine seeing like live streams from the moon and seeing you know, basically newscasts and interviews.
Aaron: Whether or not the moon can be used, you know, people have talked, whether there’s helium-3, we can use it as a gas station for the trip to Mars. Whether or not that makes sense in terms of logistics, being able to establish a track record of the the the cadence of launches for you know, supply and transit and build up that would be necessary for something at at a much longer interval to be able to do that in a relatively near Earth orbit setting is gonna be a big milestone because you, there's there's a lot less margin for error and room to learn when you put people on Mars.
Max: All right. So I think that is a very optimistic prediction. That would be, that'd be really cool. If that happens. Imagine, imagine the Local Maximum episodes you can make out of it.
Aaron: I don't know if these numbers are current or not, but they're looking at the Artemis two mission for November of 2024, which would be manned but not landing. So that would be like, your, was it Apollo 8? Was that the one that went around the moon but didn't land and stay there? So the Artemis 2 mission would basically be a dry run, they go out to the moon, they go around it. They've already had the Artemis 1 mission, but it was an uncrewed mission. So Artemis 2 would be the first time that they're putting real real astronauts in the vehicle and putting it through his tests. And then December of 2025, is when they're scheduled for the first actual lunar landing.
Max: Wow, these things tend to get pushed out though don't they.
Aaron: They do. Well, the other interesting thing is the duration of some of these. So, you know, the Apollo missions, it was roughly three days out three days back, and then you spend maybe a day and change on the surface. But they're looking at this, for Artemis 3, with the landing a 30 day mission. So they're, they're not. They're not just going and leaving. They're they're touching down and they're going to be doing substantial work. Presumably part of that as the the effort to eke out a presence.
Max: I feel like we could do a whole show on this. But I'm kind of interested in what is there to do on the moon. I mean, like, you land there, you look around. It's a bunch of gray rocks. It's like, okay, but what do we do for 30 days?
Aaron: You got to find the water? Yeah, well, and once you find the water, then you can start setting up infrastructure to turn that water into power.
Max: Interesting. We've got to talk more about that. All right. I think we're, I think we're good on the show today. Do you have any predictions for us: localmaxradio@gmail.com? Or join the locals: maximum.locals.com? We'd like to hear from you. All right. Any last thoughts on this episode? Aaron, before we close up shop?
Aaron: I'm gonna throw out a parting shot. So one of the other topics that there was a prediction or two on was bidets? So listeners, let us know your thoughts on the bidet situation?
Max: I have no idea. I don't know why that sub discussion, we got into that sub discussion. And why it was related to longevity? All right. Definitely a lot of local stuff. I mean, I'm not going to talk about all my newmap and data engineering predictions just because there's, there's so many on the you know, we've talked about it so much on the show already. So definitely check out our other episodes on that. And we'll talk about that more in the future. But yeah, looking forward to looking forward to a lot of these some more fascinating episodes. Next week on the Local Maximum, I think I'm going to talk about ancient Egypt, that's going to be fun.
Aaron: And look, you've been teasing this one for a while. So I'm looking forward to.
Max: Well, yeah, because I interviewed someone who's doing like, who has a very, like, alternative view of the ancient Egyptian timeline. And there are a lot of those people out there. And so I really wanted to figure out how to put that into context, because I really wanted to kind of learn about the, the more, you know, traditional, mainstream academic view on the Egyptian timeline, so I kind of wanted to educate myself as well. And then kind of think about how to think about this. So whatever you think about the ideas that are presented next week, I think it's just going to be fascinating. Ancient Egypt, Egypt is absolutely fascinating. I, how do I sell this? I think an example in one of the courses that I'm watching is that ancient Egypt had archaeologists to study ancient Egypt.
Aaron: Turtles all the way down.
Max: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. All right. So let's call it a day. And definitely let us know about your predictions. All right. Have a great week, everyone. That's the show. To support the Local Maximum, sign up for exclusive content and the online community at maximum.locals.com. A Local Maximum is available wherever podcasts are found. If you want to keep up, remember to subscribe on your podcast app. Also, check out the website with shownotes and additional materials at localmaxradio.com. If you want to contact me, the host, send an email to localmaxradio@gmail.com Have a great week.
