Key Takeaways

In a world increasingly dominated by screens, the conversation on the podcast revolved around a critical examination of technology's impact on our lives, particularly our health. The podcast episode introduced listeners to the journey of Daylight, a company striving to revolutionize personal computing by creating technology that aligns with human health and evolutionary biology. Their flagship product, a tablet designed to work in sunlight without the harmful blue light and flicker of traditional screens, is a testament to their commitment to creating devices that don't compromise our physical and mental health for the sake of convenience.

The narrative of the episode weaves through the personal motivations that led to the birth of Daylight, highlighting the founder's struggles with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and the realization that our physiology is deeply connected to our environment, especially sunlight. This prompted a quest to create a computer that one could use outdoors, leading to the discovery of an old screen technology that had been abandoned by the industry but held the key to Daylight's innovative display.

The chance encounter at a display conference with the CTO of the only company capable of manufacturing their unique screen technology demonstrated the serendipity and perseverance needed to bring such a product to market. The episode delves into the complexities of the hardware industry, the challenges of innovation in the face of massive established players, and the power of aligning technology with our natural needs.

Best Quotes

1. "I think the real way you can have positive impact is when it's a side effect of you just doing what's most real for you."
2. "We have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology."
3. "If you want the power of gods, which is what technology is, you need the wisdom of gods."
4. "I think it's like almost a collective humility, which is like, I need to slow down and handle this power."
5. "We're probably the only company that's making computers, handheld devices, that's actually prioritizing the health, the sovereignty of the end user."

Sponsors

Conclusion

The overarching message is clear: there is a need for technology that embraces our humanity rather than exploits it. The implications of this discussion extend far beyond Daylight's product, touching on broader societal issues such as the impact of screens on mental health, the importance of connecting with nature, and the potential for technology to enhance rather than detract from our quality of life.

As we look to future discussions, it's evident that the conversation about the intersection of technology and health is only just beginning. With companies like Daylight leading the charge, there's hope for a future where technology supports our well-being and where we approach innovation with the wisdom it demands.

Timestamps

0:00 - Intro
1:27 - Light and temperature
12:54 - Honesty
18:20 - Wisdom
22:19 - Creating Daylight
28:35 - Gradually, Then Suddenly
29:14 - Hardware has more impact than software
38:07 - Don’t start a hardware company
43:24 - Getting the screen made
55:33 - Fiat culture
1:03:05 - How Daylight succeeds
1:14:04 - Amusing Ourselves To Death

Transcript

00:00:00:02 - 00:00:08:24
Marty
Our good. Let's go, gentlemen. It's been four of you in the office for the last hour. Big fan of Paul Miller.

00:00:09:05 - 00:00:11:09
Anjan
Okay? Yes, Big fan of Paul Miller.

00:00:11:18 - 00:00:13:00
Marty
Yeah. Yeah, I'm as well.

00:00:13:05 - 00:00:16:04
Tristan
I think we kind of sat out there for probably another couple of hours.

00:00:16:05 - 00:00:22:09
Marty
We came to the right spot to show off the day later as a bunch of tech nerds in here. Yeah, they're always playing with this stuff. Yeah.

00:00:22:09 - 00:00:26:09
Anjan
It's just funny, too, that earlier today we're tied with Zap right now for eight. People are there.

00:00:26:10 - 00:00:40:24
Marty
So this is a this is a cool quarter catty quarter to where we are at the Bitcoin conference where the Austin University, University of Austin, which is the Silicon Valley tech guys trying to create the university.

00:00:41:03 - 00:00:41:12
Anjan
Yeah.

00:00:42:13 - 00:00:43:03
Marty
Where are you at?

00:00:44:09 - 00:00:46:06
Anjan
San Francisco, where the company is based.

00:00:46:13 - 00:00:47:17
Marty
Sorry to hear that. Yeah.

00:00:48:18 - 00:00:53:08
Anjan
Thank you for acknowledging taking one for the team and going to Costa Rica after this. And I feel.

00:00:53:08 - 00:00:53:26
Marty
Like we part.

00:00:54:23 - 00:00:57:01
Anjan
All over in a sorry sponsored service.

00:00:57:12 - 00:01:00:06
Marty
Yeah, I'm. I'm partial to Hacker myself.

00:01:00:07 - 00:01:05:25
Anjan
Really? How do you spell the JCA? CHACE? Yeah, I got my flier from us.

00:01:05:25 - 00:01:06:10
Marty
Is a great.

00:01:06:18 - 00:01:13:24
Anjan
Great wave. That's that's actually how I judge success for daylight. Like where I can I work from Costa Rica and I come to be successful.

00:01:13:24 - 00:01:15:24
Marty
Why? Why is Costa Rica the barometer?

00:01:16:12 - 00:01:32:28
Anjan
I just want a place that has great sun, a free government, good soil, good food, animals. I love animals. Water, magnetism. Like you put all those factors together, it's hard to beat Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and maybe a couple of other places.

00:01:32:29 - 00:01:55:06
Marty
Yeah, that's what getting down to Haka surfing. Hermosa. Yeah. So my favorite memories are coming out of the water after like a long session, and then they just have dudes chopping coconuts, like pouring them in the plastic bags, which you probably shouldn't drink out of. But anyway, you're parched. So hour and you just got cold coconut water waiting for you.

00:01:56:01 - 00:02:08:18
Tristan
It's easy to be like just feeling good all the time when you're when you're in a place like that, it's like naturally outside more. And yeah, that's, I think, the key to a successful life.

00:02:08:18 - 00:02:10:12
Marty
I try to sleep outside when I'm there.

00:02:10:13 - 00:02:12:21
Anjan
Ooh, Mosquitoes don't eat you alive. No.

00:02:13:06 - 00:02:34:24
Marty
No. The, uh, my uncle had a spot that he sold that was in, uh, in Hakka. But you were in his back porch. You, like, go out there like, 9 p.m. and all the stars would be out, and you just sit there stargazing after days, surfing, inevitably fall asleep and then wake up outside to the sun are like 5 a.m. amazing daylight.

00:02:34:24 - 00:02:42:16
Marty
It's important. A How outside? How long have you been on this journey producing what you just shown us?

00:02:42:22 - 00:03:03:22
Anjan
I saw this summer 2018 in some ways feels like a sort of this in 2012 when I started having seasonal affective disorder. But the actual like put my full time into it was mid 2018 and then the company officially found it on April Fool's 2019. So five years.

00:03:04:10 - 00:03:06:12
Marty
That what's the seasonal affective or.

00:03:06:18 - 00:03:30:11
Anjan
Seasonal affective disorder sense or sad. So when you get really sad in the winter months, basically there's a certain group of people that get very depressed in the winter months and it's just due to how dependent my physiology is on the sun. I'm not sure if it's like infrared, it's not the angle of the light, the amount of light, like it's so surprisingly complex, but I get very, very depressed in the winters.

00:03:30:16 - 00:03:31:01
Anjan
And so.

00:03:31:11 - 00:03:31:27
Marty
That's.

00:03:32:12 - 00:03:39:05
Anjan
That's where like going to Costa Rica or Mexico or something like that. Like I went to El Salvador within two days out of the Depression, like two days.

00:03:39:16 - 00:03:42:03
Marty
And where are you in San Francisco at the time when you.

00:03:42:03 - 00:03:47:18
Anjan
Yeah, L.A., San Francisco, they all just don't they're not close enough to the equator. They don't have the quality of the sun. So.

00:03:47:25 - 00:04:06:16
Marty
So yeah, I experienced this. I got somewhat hoodwinked into going to college in Chicago, went with my dad on a business trip in the middle of July to a Cubs game there during one of the beautiful 100 days of summer. I was like, Oh, I love this. They'll go to college here. And then a freshman year showed up in the sun.

00:04:06:17 - 00:04:11:28
Marty
It appears the clouds for 93 days. I was like, whatever, Fuck that. My seasonal depression is real.

00:04:12:24 - 00:04:36:21
Tristan
And you're just inside, you know? I mean, that's part of the the big reason behind it, I think is well for Franzen is you know you're in Canada. Yeah. So that's quite quite a different environment than where your ancestors grew up. Right. So complete opposite And then we're just inherently spending no time outside when it's just miserable and cold and under all the artificial toxins inside.

00:04:36:21 - 00:04:48:13
Tristan
So I think there's a lot of gains to be had this winter in Wyoming and Wyoming gets cold. I did my best to try and like embrace the local seasonal environment and I've never felt better.

00:04:48:13 - 00:04:49:04
Anjan
So old man.

00:04:49:12 - 00:05:14:05
Tristan
Cold plunged every day and the river slowly turn the temperature in my house down one degree every day. And by mid-January it's like 48, 50 degrees. And I just I felt amazing because the thing about this, we live all year round at one temperature and we're so disconnected from our local environment and yeah, we're inside. So that's the hard part about winter is like we're not getting enough energy from the sun.

00:05:14:13 - 00:05:33:14
Tristan
And then you couple that with indoor lighting and just indoor living, which is even less energy and, you know, less connection to nature, you're going to get depressed, you're going to, you know, and then we're eating foods and, you know, having temperatures that are completely misaligned. So I went full carnivore as well and felt amazing.

00:05:33:20 - 00:05:39:18
Marty
Yeah. Now, just thinking about I spend a lot of my time in this office in the small.

00:05:39:18 - 00:05:43:20
Anjan
I was about to say, Dude, come on, man. Now fluorescent light.

00:05:43:22 - 00:05:48:29
Marty
We try that. We try with this little corner here, but it's it's hard.

00:05:48:29 - 00:06:07:02
Tristan
There's not that many good solutions, really, actually. And it's something, you know, I just I talk a lot about. It's like we need to bring better and healthier, more sovereign alternatives across the board. And, you know, the lighting space, the screen space, the tech space, massive gaps still in there.

00:06:07:02 - 00:06:25:06
Marty
See, that's why really fascinating about what you're building at daylight, because when you think about screens in front of our faces all day, this is a relatively new phenomena. Obviously, we had TVs for quite a while, but in terms of smartphone, there's only, what, 16 years old now at this point.

00:06:25:06 - 00:06:29:19
Anjan
I mean, the LCD is new, too. So that blue light that you get is also a new phenomenon.

00:06:29:19 - 00:06:56:15
Tristan
Any any light I mean, think of just light like the light bulb is, what, 1890s? We're talking like hundred 30, 40 years in human evolution and that's that's nothing. And we've drastically changed our environment so much in the past 150 years and then the past 25 years, ten years with smartphones and technology really becoming the thing we spend the most time on.

00:06:57:00 - 00:07:03:02
Tristan
I mean, it's a completely different world and our biology is not adapting that fast, nor should it. Maybe.

00:07:04:07 - 00:07:10:16
Marty
No, it literally can't. We have biology that's been slowly developed over the course of millennia, but it does.

00:07:10:16 - 00:07:16:29
Anjan
I mean, look at my pinky, right? Right. That's from holding my phone. Is it my fucking. Yeah. Most of us are. Pinkies are slightly.

00:07:17:03 - 00:07:24:06
Tristan
Myopia. Your nearsightedness has become now probably the most prevalent health issue in the world.

00:07:24:06 - 00:07:28:29
Anjan
In one generation, China went from 15 to 90% myopia. One generation.

00:07:28:29 - 00:07:30:29
Tristan
99 zero 15.

00:07:30:29 - 00:07:31:14
Marty
To 90 or.

00:07:31:24 - 00:07:33:27
Anjan
15 to 90. Korea as well.

00:07:34:29 - 00:07:37:21
Tristan
Because we're just one foot away to the.

00:07:37:21 - 00:07:38:16
Anjan
Screens, all the.

00:07:38:16 - 00:07:39:03
Tristan
Screens.

00:07:39:03 - 00:07:57:27
Anjan
Because they have to read, you know, we have 26 letters in the alphabet hoping that get there they have like thousands. So they got to start studying way more at a much younger age. And they're doing it on screens. And so it just sucks up here and they're not getting time outdoors, which you need to change your focal distance and stuff.

00:07:57:27 - 00:07:58:06
Anjan
So.

00:07:59:05 - 00:08:21:18
Marty
So how did you go from realizing that you needed to control your physical environment, to focusing on a physical tablet to to Salt Lake? How did you go from. Yeah, my exposure to sunlight is affecting my wellbeing too. I want to build a product that focuses on light exposure.

00:08:21:22 - 00:08:36:21
Anjan
Well, I needed like four or five things that all kind of triangulated and so into one spot because I tend to doubt myself a lot. So it's like I need, I need like multiple things that finally hit me over the head and be like, okay, I need to do this. So I think one of them was exactly that.

00:08:36:21 - 00:08:55:29
Anjan
I was just like, I need to spend way more time outside or I'm going to be depressed. And I just got frustrated like, I can't print everything out and I feel bad for doing so too, and you're wasting it. And so I was just looking for my life depends on a computer, email and writing things and reading things and doing all this type of stuff, how to use a computer outside.

00:08:56:02 - 00:09:10:19
Anjan
So I try to like shelter myself or stay in the shade or do all sorts of things, or I would just sit there and, you know, my iPad would die after 2 hours ago, charge it again and die after an hour and charge it again. And I try all sorts of stuff. The one thing that, like really worked is my Kindle.

00:09:11:00 - 00:09:32:12
Anjan
After college, I spent two years backpacking. I was disillusioned with Silicon Valley. I went to school in the Valley and I was like, Wow, this place does not give a fuck about people. It says it does. I want to change the world. I want to connect the world. I want to help people. It's like, No, dude, that's the shit you wrote in your admissions essay to get into Yale.

00:09:32:12 - 00:09:37:22
Anjan
And it's like, your friends know you don't give a fuck about any of that shit. It's. That's same energy.

00:09:38:14 - 00:09:44:02
Marty
What? How so? How would you describe the. I mean, there's a facade of Let's help the world. What's behind that facade?

00:09:44:02 - 00:10:06:08
Anjan
Yeah. And it's not a facade in the sense like people are evil. You're actually like nice, reasonable people. It's that like, is that like McKinsey Consultant energy, right? Or it's like they didn't like have the they didn't have the self-worth or agency to actually do something. They still wanted to please mom and dad and they still wanted to be successful in high status.

00:10:06:08 - 00:10:32:13
Anjan
So they do this like safe thing, right? And so it's socially safe to be like, I'm here to have impact. I'm here to change the world, join my boring ass startup because I'm helping people, right? Like it's it's this hope for receiving something from the other. And it's not it's not bottom up. Like if you didn't get people to join your company, if you didn't get investors to rationalize investing in you, if you didn't get the regard of other people, they wouldn't do it.

00:10:32:28 - 00:10:54:06
Anjan
And that to me is the problem. It's not actually inherently flawed because it is the flaw is it's done instrumentally. It's said to get something. And to me, like the real way you can have positive impact is when it's a side effect of you just doing what's most real for you, because then it's egoless or less attached.

00:10:54:06 - 00:11:02:18
Marty
Or yeah, it was like a formula that can lead you to making the world a better place, which is actually like, Maybe I get rich from this thing.

00:11:02:18 - 00:11:15:27
Anjan
Oh, I need to get into Stanford. I'm going to go volunteer in Namibia and give people popsicles. That's why you should accept me to university in med school. It's that energy. Yeah, it's still helping people, but, like, come on. Like, do you really even care?

00:11:16:06 - 00:11:16:29
Marty
Well, no, I don't.

00:11:16:29 - 00:11:29:06
Anjan
I don't want to be cynical, but to me, it's sad because there's so many brilliant people who could be doing so much better stuff. And we're being, like, channeled into these socially wasteful ways of being so well.

00:11:29:06 - 00:12:07:13
Marty
And they say, you don't want to be cynical, but I think we're at an inflection point where there's so much needed, like cynicism in the sense of like just being upfront with people like this is not like we were talking about. I right. Like, look, with like Google's Gemini, like all the AI engineers are baking in bias into their models and even the prompting and you said a prompt we're finding out that the yellow lemon has like all these queries are like, all right, I need to fix prompt here, here and here and give you this response that has nothing to do with the actual prompt you gave me.

00:12:07:13 - 00:12:20:29
Marty
Injected a bunch of this bias which is not the but truthful at the end of the day. And are you really helping the world If somebody is looking for a particular answer and you're injecting your buyers into it?

00:12:21:12 - 00:12:41:21
Anjan
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like the real truth is saying you're biased rather than pretending you're an oracle and let somebody choose who they want to listen to. Don't say, Hey, I'm the truthful one. Listen to me. Just say I'm biased. He's biased. He's biased. She's biased. You pick that. I'm going to be honest about what I care about.

00:12:41:21 - 00:13:02:18
Marty
Yeah. No, that's what this platform is, is like, particularly on the Bitcoin focus is like, I won't be upfront with you. I think Bitcoin is going to be the next reserve currency of the world. If I hold bitcoin, that means I'll get extremely wealthy. If if that happens, I do think it is the best money that's ever been created like I'm not.

00:13:03:24 - 00:13:13:27
Marty
I'm going to be upfront with it. Yeah, it is. This is my bias. I think the money is fucked. I think liquid fixes it. I am trying to sell you on this, but I'm telling you my bias.

00:13:14:05 - 00:13:29:27
Anjan
I went to Stanford because I was like, Fuck finance people like tech people care. Now I'm like, Dude, I love New York finance people because they tell you transparently about their self-interest. And tech people are like, No, I'm not doing this out of self-interest. I want to help people. I like to just tell me you want to get rich.

00:13:29:27 - 00:13:31:18
Anjan
Like at least we can. You know.

00:13:31:27 - 00:13:50:20
Tristan
I think that's a Northeast thing. Well, that's what I love. Like Martin, I got along. We grew up almost in the same area. And it's just honesty. It's brutally honest and it's like proof of work. You know, obviously, there's a lot of flaws with how the Northeast is run, but I know some of that West Coast energy is just a bit like.

00:13:50:25 - 00:13:51:28
Anjan
The Dutch are very honest.

00:13:51:28 - 00:14:14:21
Marty
I guess that's why I learned from Philly and went to college in the Midwest and then moved to New York. That's one thing I noticed. The Midwest people didn't get sarcasm, number one. But number two, like Blunt, I like telling people like what you think bluntly is not is not received well in other parts of the country where it like Philly.

00:14:14:24 - 00:14:59:04
Marty
I came from like a blue collar family because my grandfather's for union workers and had big Irish-Catholic families and and a lot of successful uncles went to Wall Street. You know, I was part of like them just being blunt all that. And we're we're not again, going back to like, I think, a degree of cynicism in terms of like world where the world is going, particularly from a tech perspective, like funneling us into this digital panopticon is necessary because if we keep going down this road without fixing the problems at the base layer of these technologies and the ethos that drives a lot of them were fucked.

00:14:59:04 - 00:15:09:22
Marty
I've got two young kids and I do not want them to live in the digital panopticon that censors your speech, tries to censor their money and tells them what to think and what they can do throughout the economy.

00:15:11:03 - 00:15:47:03
Tristan
And then it's on the devices that are simultaneously just robbing their frontal lobes of dopamine and shaping them in a way that's setting them up for being so easily manipulated. So it's almost and you could debate whether it's by design or just evolutionary, how the technology came to be, but it's a damn, you know, effective, you know, dual strategy from both the hardware and software perspective and the I guess the social aspects, the psychological social aspects of using some of these social media products.

00:15:48:04 - 00:16:27:01
Marty
Yeah, I'm going to be a getting his Marty Bent and I'm addicted to social media chuckling attacks by dopamine receptors very well and as somebody like I'm thinking about my own life journey that's why it's really interesting too. You know, I'm 32. I got the first iPhone when I was 16 or 17. So for half my life, I've been connected to these smartphone devices and they've only gotten more addicting over time, which is not to young kids and trying to be cognizant of being a father and not being attached to my phone is something that's top of mind at all times.

00:16:29:05 - 00:16:50:10
Anjan
So I like working with this guy. It's almost like I imagine I'm like, You like I still suck. I still use my phone too much. Like I still eat at nighttime. I got a little more here than I need to have, but it's like the way to think about daylight is hopefully engine looks like Kristen feels like Kristen eats like Kristen a couple of years from now.

00:16:50:21 - 00:16:53:26
Anjan
That is the promise of daylight. That's why you buy a daylight.

00:16:54:02 - 00:17:18:28
Marty
Well, that's because that's the thing. And these technologies like double edged swords, they're incredibly powerful and make you incredibly productive as an individual. But then there's the completely addictive, unproductive side of it. And I guess that's the question is, are we in this period of time where we're learning how to play with this double edged sword and create experiences that trend towards being as productive as possible?

00:17:19:06 - 00:17:56:13
Anjan
There's a beautiful quote by E.O. Wilson. He says, What characterizes the modern man is we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. And that's the key double edged sword, is if you want the power of gods, which is what technology is, you need the wisdom of gods. And that virtue ethics, that wisdom that what you learn from elders, from grandparents, from parents, from, you know, whether it be church or your community or whatever it may be, that's just so lacking in the modern world.

00:17:57:02 - 00:18:17:18
Anjan
And so whether you're young or you're a parent or that it's just we don't necessarily have the wisdom to handle the power of these things. And like we like to say, we the simple example of wisdom is as a kid, you want to eat all your Halloween candy. Now you get it. Everyone's like, Don't do it, come on, don't do it.

00:18:18:06 - 00:18:40:08
Anjan
The next day you feel like shit and then that tummy ache, that's wisdom. You're like, Okay, too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. I'll wait next time I'll eat a little bit less. Right? And I think wisdom is like getting a timer such right where it's like you do it and do it and it's misery.

00:18:40:22 - 00:18:43:24
Anjan
I don't know if you ever got a good time and such, but that stuff hurts.

00:18:44:08 - 00:18:45:01
Marty
Not. Oh.

00:18:45:17 - 00:19:26:25
Anjan
Brutal. But the next day you feel so good. Yeah. And it's like the wisdom trajectory starting out with tummy aches and going to time massages where you go from just indulging in what feels good in the moment, you feel bad afterwards to restraining in the moment so you can have a better, more sustainable long term life. And I think that's hopefully what we can be doing is not necessarily just what we invent or contribute, but start creating and catalyzing a movement to enable there to be more wise technology for there to be more wisdom in handling technology, for more technology to be in the time massage category around the time of year category.

00:19:27:00 - 00:19:29:21
Anjan
Yeah, like we were trying to build time massage such technology.

00:19:29:24 - 00:19:44:03
Marty
I like that. I like that analogy. No, no, when you put it that way too, it's like we are the generation that whether we like it or not, this has been forced on us to develop the wisdom to understand how to harness and use this stuff.

00:19:44:03 - 00:20:09:19
Anjan
It's so quick Who has a chance to learn By the time you're onto the next thing, you're on to The next thing. This has never existed before is like is never this amount of change that quickly, that deeply has access to our attention to our children at all times. It has never existed before. So I think it's like almost a collective humility, which is like I need to slow down to handle this power.

00:20:10:02 - 00:20:32:27
Anjan
And it feels like little boy energy is like, Give me more power. I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. Right until you die. Right? Or as things blow up catastrophically. And so I feel almost like it's a it's a growing up moment in every area of her life. It's like instead of buying the $15 H&M thing, they'll fall apart, like by the natural fibers, cotton linen thing that's like durable, sustainable and feels good, right?

00:20:32:27 - 00:20:51:08
Anjan
Like we're just applying that same philosophy to technology. And so whether we start with a tablet or we make a phone or we do this or do that, I think what we always want to define ourselves by is not being a computer company, but trying to bring this like growing up to technology. However that looks.

00:20:51:27 - 00:21:12:12
Marty
In what does look a certain way with the Daylight tablet, the endless like what is it made up? Like what in your mind is like the optimal stack for providing the market with this incredible power. But it doesn't let them fall into the other side of the double edged sword of addictive abuse of these technologies.

00:21:12:12 - 00:21:31:15
Anjan
And I'll try to answer your previous question really like how I even got going with this. The basic idea was I was just super cynical about technology because I went to Silicon Valley. I thought it was about innovation and impacting the world and it wasn't. That's what I deeply wanted to do. I come from a family of doctors and something built into my DNA to want to like, help people.

00:21:31:15 - 00:21:49:04
Anjan
And that's a place where I got pleasure. And it wasn't that. And so I was like, Fucking technology, man. It promises you the world and doesn't deliver on the bill of goods. I had really bad eyestrain. I'm super ADHD, so I'm always getting distracted. I feel like shit when I use a computer. I'm like, I'm going to write this essay.

00:21:49:04 - 00:22:10:25
Anjan
And then 3 hours later, ESPN, I've learned how Manny Pacquiao creates so much power with his left hook. Like, What am I doing right? I feel like shit. Somebody is like, Oh, you're going to get that to me tomorrow. I'm like, Yeah. And then like, Fuck, it's like 2 a.m. and I still haven't. It's just that was my life and a seasonal affective disorder, you know, just I lived in fear of every winter as it was horrible.

00:22:11:00 - 00:22:48:23
Anjan
I would get really depressed and so I was like, I wanted to do a fuck you to technology. I wanted to get revenge because it hurt me, my self-esteem, my actual physical health. I needed something that would actually allow me to be a little bit healthier because it was it was really grim at times. And All right. I became fascinated with trying to understand, like, how humans work and there's this concept called evolutionary mismatch, which is the way humans are designed and the way our modern environments are mismatched.

00:22:49:17 - 00:23:10:05
Anjan
And so the impulse to want to eat sugar is actually not a problem, because in an ancestral environment there was so little sugar you wanted it to be like if the you saw some honey, you went after it because it's really high, dense calories. It's just our modern environment has artificially over concentrated sugars and made them way too available.

00:23:10:14 - 00:23:29:01
Anjan
And so what used to be a feature is now a bug. And so the basic idea is that you can look at a computer from top to bottom and you can all the problems or a significant portion of them can be categorized as evolutionary mismatch. Your fingers hurt because your hands were never meant to be like this. Doing that, you're always like this, right?

00:23:29:21 - 00:24:02:26
Anjan
It's easy to get distracted because those red dots, that's danger, that's a barrier that you need to look at. And they're utilizing the color red in a way to manipulate your attention. Little Dings and Dongs. That's also specifically sound engineered to take advantage of what's an orienting response for danger or stuff like that. The fact that the light, the light is not natural light, the fact that it's unbalanced blue light, the fact that leads to circadian problems, sleep problems, metabolic health problems, dopamine problems, and even more is because that's not how we were evolved.

00:24:03:09 - 00:24:38:16
Anjan
There was no random blue light at 9 p.m. blasting you in the face. Right. And that's an evolutionary mismatch because no one, when they built computers, knew human physiology, mental health, evolutionary history, all those things. And so the questions behind it, bringing all these threads together is if you were to create a computer today from scratch and you prioritized it not fucking up an ADHD person, it not being so distracting, it not being so addicting, it not screwing up my physical health by forcing me to be indoors.

00:24:38:16 - 00:25:07:04
Anjan
If I could use it in the sun, if I could get rid of the blue light, if I could get rid of the flicker, what would that type of computer look like? And that is basically even now still the motivating question. If we were to redo a computer with our principles and be willing to compromise. So it's not some high, you know, AI falutin idea, but something that would actually solve a problem, something would be useful to me, what would it be?

00:25:07:16 - 00:25:27:13
Anjan
And at the time I was just reading so much, I read all these white papers. I still have an annotated copy of my original Bitcoin paper. I printed out this account like it's been like two weeks going deep on it. I like googled every little thing. So yeah, it's just like I wanted something that could help me investigate and learn deeply.

00:25:28:01 - 00:25:51:04
Anjan
And to me, a tablet is just a fat piece of paper. It's a it's a, it's a digital printout. And so that was the first product I pursued. It turns out it's actually the right way to build a new computer company, because essentially everything else in computing is a permutation of a tablet, a phone is a small tablet with a radio in it, a laptop is a tablet with a keyboard attached, a monitor is a bigger tablet.

00:25:51:04 - 00:26:10:15
Anjan
You know, you can kind of go down the list. And so it turns out it's so hard to do this if you get the sequence wrong, because every aspect of it is just insanely complex. No one has any idea how complex it is. And the proof of that is there's basically very few new computer companies, like Oculus was the last new computer company, you could argue.

00:26:11:04 - 00:26:38:02
Anjan
And so the hope is make a healthier distraction, free sovereign computer that's immediately useful that you can use instead of your iPad. You can improve your health, spend more time outside, eliminate blue light, get rid of eyestrain and flicker and things like that. Hopefully it actually makes you more productive. Hopefully it upgrades your consumption. Hopefully your kids don't get autistic or ADHD or all the impacts from that.

00:26:38:21 - 00:26:59:09
Anjan
And from there we can make a phone with us, we can make a laptop, we can just go down the list of personal computing and do it with our value set. And hey, you may not agree with your value set and like that's totally okay. Like our product is probably not right for my mom. Glenn Mom's number one computing value is can I play Candy Crush as a black and white display?

00:26:59:09 - 00:27:09:19
Anjan
Sorry, Mom, it's going to be hard of like, Candy Crush, right? So it's that's okay that it's not the computer for her, but it's the same thing for my dad because he reads all the time and, you know, the blue light affects him.

00:27:09:19 - 00:27:34:22
Marty
And so so when it comes to the psychological effects of these products and truly, when you're designing daylight, how much of it is the physical aspects like the screen, the lack of blue light, the lack of the flicker versus the actual operating system, Like how much of the design of these operating systems lead to distraction and the tendency to fall prey to your ADHD?

00:27:34:23 - 00:27:55:24
Anjan
Right. It's a good question. The short answer, it's both. The longer answer is it is surprising how much of the problem you can solve if you do zero on software and just do the changes on hardware. So like we have, we're still building it up, but we have two modes for the tablet, for the operating system. You have kale mode and cocaine mode.

00:27:59:04 - 00:28:17:18
Anjan
So kill mode is totally locked down. It's only got you can read on it, you can write on it, you can type on it, you can you can take notes, you know, you can listen to podcasts, audiobooks, music. But that's like basically a cocaine mode. You can do whatever you want. It's got a browser, you can download any app you want.

00:28:18:02 - 00:28:41:14
Anjan
And so when I use our thing in cocaine, my mode, I'm surprised by how little like Twitter I consume on it. I'm like surprised by how little YouTube I consume on it. You know, if I have unfettered access to all of it, there's something about removing the flicker, making it paper like a reflective where it doesn't feel like a computer if if you spend more time on it.

00:28:41:14 - 00:28:58:21
Anjan
I think that might be one of the most interesting subjective aspects is it feels more like a piece of paper or a book or looking at a dinner menu. It just doesn't feel like you're looking at a screen and something about that, just like your brain is put into a new relationship with the stuff. The black and white.

00:29:00:19 - 00:29:14:05
Anjan
You put the lack of blue light and there's like some interesting science around. Like the blue light is putting you in a particular low dopamine state and then you're craving it. So it's like the software is supplying what the hardware is trying to like take from you.

00:29:14:27 - 00:29:57:22
Marty
And yeah, I wonder if there's like this also like it's, I mean it's becoming really in your face now literally with Apple's new vision pro uh, but does the blue light in the screens that have become normalized over the last 15 years? Like is there something subconsciously where we think we're like observing another world that is somewhat addicting because it's like completely foreign and the fact that a daylight screen looks like a piece of paper or something in the physical world does something subconsciously where since it's like, I don't know if I'm describing this right, but like, since it's like in our physical world, it's not as it doesn't pull you in.

00:29:58:05 - 00:30:24:19
Tristan
Well, I think the further we deviate from nature, it's like the more stressful that environment is for us and the repercussions of that over a long period of time is just damage, whether it's eye damage, you know, or that's, you know, mental health issues from neurological damage like psychological issues because of you're in this constant state of stress, your body's not gonna be able to handle that over a long period of time.

00:30:24:19 - 00:30:51:27
Tristan
And it's really that simple. I mean, all we're trying to do is better emulate the natural world, having a light spectrum that is more, you know, similar to sunlight or having technology that brings you outside. You know, that's, you know, something on, as you mentioned, multiple times. But that might be the most important aspect of our of our company, of our products is that you can get the benefits of being outdoors far easier while still being productive.

00:30:52:10 - 00:31:15:12
Tristan
And that's to me, one of the biggest detriments is that we live indoors and, you know, then you're more susceptible to like seasonal affective disorder, you're more susceptible to all these things because the main energy source, the main environment that our biologists tune to has been stripped away and replaced with these, you know, artificial items that are completely different, like the pulse nature of light.

00:31:15:13 - 00:31:37:28
Tristan
I mean, that's sending your brain and your eyes in a frenzy and you can't even see it visibly. But it's there, you know, hundreds of thousands of times per second. These LEDs are switching on and off. That doesn't exist in nature. That doesn't exist. And we have no response other than that other than high stress to that sort of environment.

00:31:37:28 - 00:31:54:24
Tristan
So and you wonder why people are just walking around on edge all the time. And then like on set, we're just fed into the social media aspect and then it's like, oh, like, you know, we're so primed to be held captive by those types of applications.

00:31:55:08 - 00:32:19:15
Marty
And it's funny you mention getting outside to use these words I think of in the summer, I go to the beach in the Jersey Shore, my room has a deck out back and it's facing northeast, so I can't work outside until it's like 10 a.m. because the sun rises in the east. And then like if I try to work out there on my laptop, the glare so bad and even if I put my laptop facing east, it's just not worth it.

00:32:19:18 - 00:32:29:04
Marty
Um, so something as simple as that, like being able to get outside a couple of hours earlier and actually work on the back deck, which is much more preferable to the kitchen.

00:32:30:26 - 00:32:50:25
Anjan
And I think what's cool about this is his principles are transcendental, like even what Tristan's talking about, like the light on your MacBook, the light here, they're all fake. It's an illusion. They look like they're constantly like what you get from the sun, but they are literally switching on and off like 200 times, like 200,000 times per second, more or less.

00:32:51:22 - 00:33:08:11
Anjan
Because the way they change the brightness is they change what's the percentage of time it's on and off. And so you this is crazy. People don't realize this. If you shoot it in slow motion, you would see that be like on for like 2 milliseconds and then off for one millisecond and on for 2 milliseconds and off for that.

00:33:08:27 - 00:33:25:02
Anjan
And then the illusion, because it's happening so fast is it looks like it's at 60% brightness. And then if it was on for 3 seconds and then off 4.1 second and on for 3 seconds and off 4.1, it looks like it's at 99% brightness and that's literally how they change brightness by changing the illusion.

00:33:25:08 - 00:33:26:10
Marty
I had no idea. That's how.

00:33:26:11 - 00:33:52:24
Anjan
It's crazy. Nobody knows this. And so when we say flicker free, our thing is a light is a light is a light. It's just a light. It's just constant. Now, that's considered an old technology because every led is slightly different, you know? And if you do it, the Flicker style, when you go to 10% brightness on one tablet and then another, it'll be the exact same with hours 10%, one is going to be slightly brighter than on another because every OLED is slightly different.

00:33:53:08 - 00:34:11:26
Anjan
It's like what the truth was like, like real organic produce, they're all kind of different. It's only the, you know, the like factory farm GMO stuff where everything's the same. And so we're bringing that same principle here. It's like, that's an illusion. There's this convenience and this sameness and this like, I guess it works and it makes the engineers life easier.

00:34:11:26 - 00:34:39:21
Anjan
It makes the supply chain easier. It's an illusion. It's not real. That light is not real. And so how do you reset a computer? You got to start to what's most real like. If you're going to decentralize things, you need to centralize around transcendental truths. Well, that's devotion. Whether it's light is light or even color when you're looking on your iPad or iPhone and it is purple, it's not actually purple.

00:34:40:15 - 00:35:03:19
Anjan
It's a little red. It's got a little green and a little blue in such a proportion. And because those little red and green and blue are so small, when you look at it from distance, which is what you're doing, it looks like a purple dot. There is no purple at all. And so color at the deepest level when it comes to computers, it's a fucking illusion.

00:35:04:13 - 00:35:07:21
Marty
That's pretty crazy. I realized that either. So yeah.

00:35:07:25 - 00:35:23:02
Anjan
So when you see purple in nature, it's actually purple. Sure. You have rods and cones and there's some principles that are similar. But the fact that these you got these peaks that are different. And so, yeah, when you think you're looking at something, you're actually looking at a green peak that's like this and a red peak like that.

00:35:23:10 - 00:35:26:24
Anjan
And then your brain interprets that as, okay, it's yellow.

00:35:26:24 - 00:35:28:06
Marty
So it really is all fake.

00:35:28:09 - 00:35:46:22
Anjan
Yeah. And so in a way, even if black and white seems like a reduction to me, going back to something real, you know, if it's smaller, is better than having everything, but it's all fake. So and so our thing that's this is real when you're looking at it. It's real. Yeah.

00:35:47:13 - 00:35:50:27
Marty
So how hard is a building, a hardware company?

00:35:50:27 - 00:35:52:29
Anjan
I don't do it so heavily.

00:35:52:29 - 00:36:03:04
Marty
That's one of the most tried and true truisms of the modern day is like. Like you said, don't do it. You get highly advised not to get into hard work.

00:36:03:05 - 00:36:28:02
Anjan
Oh, yeah. I mean, it's just like start stacking up the great filters like hardware company already super hard. Make that like a consumer hardware company even harder than do it in a category that has the world's biggest companies. Is competition. Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google like even harder to create your own custom componentry. Like even somebody like Oculus, they just use off the shelf parts.

00:36:28:02 - 00:36:50:07
Anjan
They use cell phone displays, they use lenses that were used for other stuff. We actually invented our on display technology that could have been a startup in itself. We didn't need to build the software in the computer around it even harder. The last time there's been a new display company was in 2008. Pixel G went bankrupt. Right? So you start stacking all of this up and you just end up with like zero minuscule odds.

00:36:50:07 - 00:37:06:11
Anjan
You look at some of these other hardware companies that got funded. Often they had a rich dad or the person had a track record or they funded it themselves. Whether that's framework or remarkable tablet or idea or something like that, this is my first big, you know, first real company.

00:37:07:06 - 00:37:26:12
Marty
So how to get this far? I don't know, man. With all those odds that yeah, I mean, yeah. So what was like the process of what was like the first physical piece of hardware that you. Yeah. That would build on top of.

00:37:26:12 - 00:37:35:09
Anjan
The truth is I think we made it because we got really lucky. Like super lucky. I could just rant for 10 minutes about all the insane coincidences that had to happen.

00:37:35:11 - 00:37:38:09
Marty
I, I'm very interested. Okay? I can.

00:37:38:26 - 00:38:07:08
Anjan
I can bring up a couple of them. I think I have a high pain tolerance, so I think it helps that I didn't give up. And I think I think just starting from principles, like I wasn't chasing a trend, I wasn't trying to do something that was us. So there's something about if you can stick it out long enough and you're right about this is the the principles that others also care about.

00:38:07:28 - 00:38:31:04
Anjan
I think it starts to cohere like other people want you to succeed. It starts to make other people want to help. Like, I think the reason we got investment is because folks were like, I think I'm going to lose every dollar I put into, but this is the computer I want for my kids. So if nothing else, I'm paying $100,000 to get my two kids a computer that won't kill them.

00:38:32:03 - 00:38:36:29
Anjan
And so it was stuff like that along the way. But a huge difference. Yeah.

00:38:37:14 - 00:38:43:13
Marty
What's because I imagine you're building this from scratch new components. The supply chain is not as robust, but.

00:38:43:15 - 00:38:48:17
Anjan
2018 until 2021 to make the first working prototype. Yeah, just a horrendous.

00:38:48:29 - 00:38:51:20
Marty
One of those primordial things I got. What's going.

00:38:51:20 - 00:38:59:25
Anjan
On? I know. I feel like it's such a contradiction. I'm like distraction, Free technology of two phones in my pockets. I'm a sperm count. Might be low these days.

00:38:59:29 - 00:39:05:24
Marty
Yeah, but otherwise, like, what's it like? How is it on the supply chain? Supply chain side.

00:39:05:28 - 00:39:25:04
Anjan
Oh, I mean, that was one of the hardest parts of this is like if you want to make if you want to make a new display, you go to these guys, they first say, get out of here and you try long enough and they say, okay, we could do it. But your minimum order quantity are the minimum number of screens they'll make is 500,000 units.

00:39:26:02 - 00:39:54:25
Anjan
And you're like, okay, $200 transformers, those units. Well, how are we going to get that much money? And this is why nobody can ever make any screen, because it turns out making a new screen is like the worst industry ever, because there's no way to prototype. The effort it takes to make one screen is basically like 97% of the effort to make like a thousand screens, which is like 98% of the effort to make 10,000 screens, because it's actually the same process as if making a new chip.

00:39:55:12 - 00:40:13:06
Anjan
And if you know anything about making a chip that is expensive and complicated, a screen is just a big chip. It's actually worse than a chip, because with a chip, if some of the transistors, what makes up a chip doesn't work, you kind of route around it. You're kind of like, okay, we don't use that guy, we do this and that on a screen.

00:40:13:06 - 00:40:27:12
Anjan
If one pixel is dead, even a four year old kid would notice it. And what that means is you can't make mistakes. And what that means is the manufacturing process has to be insanely dialed, which means they're going to be extremely conservative.

00:40:27:19 - 00:40:42:01
Marty
So, no, I mean, that's something we deal with a lot. And the Bitcoin mining industry is focusing on TSMC and Samsung and I know way more about renting foundry space than I ever thought I would ten years ago. And so it's similar to that in the screen space.

00:40:42:01 - 00:41:00:06
Anjan
Exactly. And so you're like, Hey, I have this idea. I mean, a Japanese professor have worked on this for years. We have a here's a working prototype. We think this could be really helpful. We always pitched them like in Asia, they have so much myopia. So we're like, this is a myopia free computer. We think that's appealing in Japan and Taiwan and China, hopefully.

00:41:00:16 - 00:41:31:02
Anjan
Yeah. It's obvious too, that there's a market for this and could you make it for us? And they go, okay, you're going to buy Founders thousand of this when we make it for you and you're going to pay $20 million upfront to develop it right? Uh, yeah. And that was me for like years. And then I just. A super lucky coincidence, both in the industry and in me meeting the right person that somehow allowed us to strike the the deal of a lifetime.

00:41:31:12 - 00:41:51:17
Anjan
And so on the supply chain side, that was the most crucial thing is our display manufacture is willing to have our first batch be a thousand units. Really? Yeah. And we need to do 20,000 units, the minimum. Otherwise they'll cut us off. But 20,000 units instead of 500 is why any of this is possible. I could have had all the same people, all the same ideas, and none of it would have worked.

00:41:51:27 - 00:41:54:24
Marty
What pushed them to be confident to do this?

00:41:54:24 - 00:41:55:11
Anjan
Oh, man.

00:41:56:03 - 00:41:56:13
Marty
It's a.

00:41:56:13 - 00:42:19:24
Anjan
Story. I mean, do you want to hear it? Yeah. Uh, okay, so there's one. There's only two manufacturers in the world who can build our technology. They're both Japanese and one of them went bankrupt. So the first one I spent a year with, the one that went bankrupt, and I was like, Oh, shit, okay, this is not going to go.

00:42:19:24 - 00:42:36:13
Anjan
So the other one told me in the beginning that there they're unable to make this display technology. I was like, There's no way you guys of like, I know my research, I've read the papers and everything. And so I spent years every three months being like, Hey, you want to see the thing you want to do? I just like and they're just ignore me.

00:42:36:13 - 00:42:53:23
Anjan
Or they would just say like, Oh, we can't do this. I went to Japan service to meet one of the he was an alumni for my school. I was supposed to meet him for an hour. He left after like 6 minutes. So it was just like, Yeah, get out of here. Like, you're not going to be able to do this.

00:42:53:23 - 00:43:16:25
Anjan
Do you understand how difficult it is to make any screen? But the core idea was basically I was able to resurrect a really old screen technology that was completely thrown out into the dump in a bunch of random Japanese professors that spent like 30 years sitting there whacking away at the floors with it. There was a by refrigerants problem.

00:43:16:25 - 00:43:39:15
Anjan
There's a parallax problem. There's a microwave diet, you know, just up, up, up, up, up, up by all material science. And then like in 1998, they had a breakthrough. In 2003, they had a breakthrough in two nine that, you know, was just like random. But it's one of those things where the difference between having a bridge that is like 99% complete and 99.9% complete still is zero because you can't cross that bridge.

00:43:39:18 - 00:44:00:10
Anjan
Right. But you get that final brick and then you get the you get the credit of all of it. So it was like this technology was just like solving floors, but it was never getting there. And so I just got super lucky. I found this Japanese professor's research, one of the papers that was the final kind of plank to complete the bridge came out in December 2018.

00:44:00:21 - 00:44:25:14
Anjan
I started it, you know, July 2018. And so I was just deep in the research and I was like, whoa. And I put it together with a couple other papers. And all of them collectively came out in 2015, 2018, 2012, Earlier kind of solved the key problems of this technology. And so I started working with that professor and some reason he was open to work with me.

00:44:25:25 - 00:44:53:17
Anjan
I didn't have any money with him. He just wanted his life's work to make it into the world. So I spent time in Japan and over COVID, try to do it all remote. It was insane. And we finally, of fall of 2021, had a working prototype that showed that we could make this kind of fast refresh rate reflective paper like screen technology, and I would try to show it to the manufacturers and they just wouldn't buy it.

00:44:54:05 - 00:45:15:06
Anjan
But I finally, finally got lucky in early 22 where I emailed the guys, the guy just throw me a bone. There's a display conference coming up soon, just like, give me like 2 seconds of time. He's like, okay, dude, like, I don't know. God bless him. If it wasn't for the random people here in there that decided to do the right thing, like, none of this exists.

00:45:15:15 - 00:45:35:27
Anjan
For whatever reason, he always wished he was an entrepreneur, but he was too scared to do it. He decided that he's like, you know, this guy has the balls I never had. I'm going to support him. So if it wasn't for that person, none of this would be what would be here. And so we went there. We got our 2 minutes to pitch all these Japanese people, as did all these nods, and then just like ushered us out.

00:45:36:15 - 00:46:01:16
Anjan
And then, uh, I don't know why the women there wanted to be nice and then like, here, get some cookies and some bottled water, you know, this was at a display conference. And so we're sitting there and we're just like trying to eat as many cookies as possible because we're like, broke, you know, And believe it or not, the next customer that was going to see the display manufacturer was Tesla Cook.

00:46:02:07 - 00:46:24:02
Anjan
And if, you know about cars is they went from having like no screens to cars today or like covered in screens sort of all areas. This is the ones that the manufacturers, because their sales were crazy during COVID and then it crashed and they were desperate because they already owned their factories. Whether their factories are 90% utilization or 20% their cost is basically the same.

00:46:24:02 - 00:46:52:29
Anjan
The marginal cost is nothing. So they're desperate for any incremental demand. And so like getting Tesla is like the biggest deal for these guys. So it turns out the top the top of the top people of this manufacture were there for that Tesla meeting and they came over to get some water. And me being my precocious self, I started to chat the dude up and it turns out he's the CTO of the entire company.

00:46:54:04 - 00:47:11:11
Anjan
And the most insane coincidence is I took the prototype out of my pocket and showed it to him and he started asking about his and I was like, How does he know so much about this? It turns out the Japanese professor, his paper in 2018 was this dude.

00:47:11:11 - 00:47:13:00
Marty
Student Ha!

00:47:13:06 - 00:47:52:20
Anjan
And he was actually at that same university 30 years before innovating some of the foundational technologies that made these guys the only manufacturer he could do it. And the fact that his student was the person who made the paper up, who's now a professor that made this possible, it just felt like serendipity. The most insane synchronicity and the reason this manufacturer could do our manufacturing is because some of his stuff he came up with this cool thing called micro reflective structures, and it was like his life's work in academia before he went to the commercial side and he had found there was no practical use case for it except our thing.

00:47:53:21 - 00:48:13:17
Anjan
And so he is like, Oh, you might be able to bring my life's work into the world. And so he, he like, talks to me for like 15 minutes. And then I ask him, you know, would you be able to build this for me? Would you be able to pull this for me? Hey, turns around, there's all these Japanese people, like 25 of them.

00:48:13:17 - 00:48:34:05
Anjan
They're all excited. And he goes, What do you think guys in Japanese? Like, I learned this afterwards. What do you think, guys? Do you think we can build this for him? And I didn't realize this at the time, but culturally, when the Shogun, the big boss, says something like that, you have to say yes or you lose your or he lose his face.

00:48:34:20 - 00:48:41:09
Anjan
So by putting them all on the spot in front of me, you force the guy who, like, runs the division to say yes.

00:48:41:09 - 00:48:42:00
Marty
Oh, shit.

00:48:42:09 - 00:49:03:19
Anjan
And if that didn't happen, even if they were interested, it would have been like a 12 month, six month process. That's how bureaucratic they are. And so they had to say yes. And then for the next hour, everybody's clambering around, losing their ship, being like, Holy crap, they CTO son just told these guys that we're going to build this for them, like what the hell?

00:49:05:05 - 00:49:37:25
Anjan
And then the next three months was just this insane mad dash. And the whole time the guy who ran the division hated us because he's like, I never got to choose to work with you. And so there's some other stories about the way, you know, things got messy and this and that. It's a it's a fun story. But if that didn't happen, if I if we didn't, like, sit there and try to, like, scarf down more cookies, if I didn't take that prototype and show it to the guy, if somehow the insane coincidence that the dude who the CTO of the company was a professor of the professor that made this possible, none of the.

00:49:38:01 - 00:49:39:10
Marty
Tests if.

00:49:39:10 - 00:49:59:16
Anjan
Tesla didn't have a meeting next, if that guy didn't have us go right before Tesla. So honestly, it's like people say like, congrats or like good job on the success. Like, I just think about all of this and I say, Dude, this is out of my control, man. Yeah, the universe wants it to happen. It will happen. If the universe wants it to fail, it'll fail like we're just along for the ride, so.

00:49:59:22 - 00:50:06:12
Marty
Well, that's the one question I had. Like, this is something that's been worked on for decades. Yeah. CTO started.

00:50:06:17 - 00:50:06:27
Anjan
Yeah.

00:50:07:14 - 00:50:15:27
Marty
The product. It seems like as an academic, what was all this growing research over the decades? Purely an academic.

00:50:15:27 - 00:50:17:00
Anjan
Endeavor? Yes.

00:50:17:00 - 00:50:23:29
Marty
Yeah. Because you have the proliferation of the incumbent screen technology. Exactly. Today. Yeah. It's purely academic.

00:50:23:29 - 00:50:37:08
Anjan
Yeah, it's because there was no use for it. You go talk to any of these experts, and that was my interaction in the beginning. You go talk to them. They're like, Oh, it's a dumb idea because of X, Y, or Z due date. I'm like, Well, this paper says, That's not in this paper. And they're like, Yeah, you're not at it.

00:50:37:18 - 00:51:02:15
Anjan
And I'm like, Wait, you're not giving me specific arguments, right? So I sat down. I was like, okay, problem? Once a problem to solve a problem three solved it, did it. I mean, the 2018 paper, I was like, Whoa, problem three and four are solved. Like, Damn, that's enough. And so it's like there was people who believed in this and they kept at it in 225, some of the crazy folks kept out in 2010, but like at a certain point you're just like, Dude, it's been 20 years.

00:51:02:15 - 00:51:19:13
Anjan
Like this thing is done for. And so society has no good way to look at things. They've been bad ideas for a long time that's suddenly become possible. Right? And there's great analogies to to different, you know, Bitcoin or other crypto things as well. You know, schnorr signatures and RSA and things like that have been there for a while.

00:51:19:28 - 00:51:43:05
Anjan
So yeah, I just feel like sometimes it all comes together the right time. If I started in 2016, I'd be screwed. If I started it even in 2020, I'd be screwed because I timed it right, because all of these manufacturers, they make a lot of money on LCD displays. Then Apple decided to change some of the iPhones from LCD to all that, and then one day you lost 100 million units.

00:51:43:24 - 00:52:02:16
Anjan
So they're like, what do we do with these machines? And we just got really lucky that our screen technology can be manufactured on LCD machines. So these dudes are like, Dude, we just lost like 70% of our business on this. It's free money for us to make these guys a screen on this because otherwise there's no business for that.

00:52:02:16 - 00:52:09:25
Anjan
Everybody switching to old, that didn't happen. They wouldn't have worked with us. No way. We're getting, you know, 20,000 queue. So yeah.

00:52:10:18 - 00:52:31:04
Marty
And you going back to like this being an app, it was an academic problem for a while working towards the solution. Like what was like the CTO from the company that eventually manufactured these screens for you. What was his initial like? If we can solve this problem, here's what it will enable.

00:52:31:09 - 00:52:36:27
Anjan
I think it was more academic. I think he's like, Ooh, cool. Optical effect with sub wavelength, you know?

00:52:37:24 - 00:52:38:02
Marty
Yeah.

00:52:38:23 - 00:52:54:27
Anjan
It's called metamaterials. So I think it's I think it's so cool that it wasn't that they had an idea of how it could be useful. They were more like, This is really cool and hopefully one day it's useful and it's kind of fun that, that that's led to this stuff.

00:52:54:27 - 00:52:57:16
Marty
Yeah. Then you're seeding cookies. So like, yeah, I think it could be useful.

00:52:57:16 - 00:52:59:11
Anjan
Yeah, we just put all these things like.

00:53:00:14 - 00:53:01:14
Marty
Yeah, that's crazy.

00:53:01:17 - 00:53:07:26
Anjan
Snickerdoodle. That's the trick. You know, raising the chocolate chip didn't really work, but the snickerdoodle saw the future.

00:53:09:10 - 00:53:12:16
Marty
That is that's an incredible story.

00:53:13:19 - 00:53:35:05
Anjan
I should show you a photo. I probably can't see it on camera, but I didn't think I was getting anybody's time at this event. I was like, There's no chance that, you know? So you should see the way I dressed for this. And please give the guy's identity private, but I'll show I'll show you the.

00:53:35:14 - 00:53:50:13
Marty
Photo that we will pick. We'd have extreme privacy on the bookshelf. We're conscious. So you you get to this point where somebody is finally willing to make the screen search.

00:53:50:26 - 00:53:51:29
Anjan
So I cannot find this.

00:53:55:15 - 00:54:04:24
Tristan
It's interesting to think about that, too. Like other examples like DC Power versus AC Power, that's like one that always pops in my head. It's like Tesla versus Edison. It's like.

00:54:05:06 - 00:54:07:17
Anjan
Go look at the way I'm dressed.

00:54:07:27 - 00:54:13:26
Marty
What's your lovely event coming from Silicon Valley?

00:54:14:05 - 00:54:18:22
Anjan
Oh, come on, man. I tried so hard to be different, but turns out I'm the same.

00:54:18:27 - 00:54:19:18
Tristan
That's amazing.

00:54:19:19 - 00:54:27:05
Marty
And make sure you put that in the final thing. Yeah, I'll have to get his permission.

00:54:27:05 - 00:54:27:16
Anjan
So.

00:54:27:24 - 00:54:33:13
Marty
No, don't put the photo and the podcast. Are going to say, put like an overlay in this timestamp. It's a little boxes. Okay.

00:54:33:16 - 00:54:39:17
Anjan
Thank you. And they're just laughing their ass like they're real wearing suits and shit. And they're like, This guy looks like he.

00:54:39:17 - 00:54:45:12
Tristan
So yeah, they're, they're pretty formal over there. Oh, that's very traditional. Yeah, that's amazing.

00:54:45:12 - 00:54:49:14
Marty
Yeah, that's, uh, I've never been to Japan, and one of the amazing.

00:54:49:14 - 00:54:49:25
Anjan
I mean, it's.

00:54:50:04 - 00:54:50:18
Marty
Totally.

00:54:50:18 - 00:54:51:00
Anjan
Worth it.

00:54:51:27 - 00:55:04:29
Tristan
Yeah. Yeah. They have an interesting dynamic, right? Because, like, financially, they're running, like, the highest debt to GDP ratio in the world, but they can somehow have a very structured, organized. It's kind of like everyone's on the same page with.

00:55:05:02 - 00:55:06:00
Marty
Let's see, honor culture.

00:55:06:00 - 00:55:06:18
Tristan
Yeah, exactly.

00:55:06:22 - 00:55:34:00
Marty
You know, the friend who I discussed this with that would be like six months ago on this show. But that's what people always point to Japan, that the GDP, they were the first country to really embark on quantitative easing like monetary policy in the nineties. And they still have it compared to the U.S. like a high functioning society in the sense that the gap between the rich and the poor is anywhere is pronounced as it is here.

00:55:34:00 - 00:55:35:13
Marty
There's not as many homeless people. It's very.

00:55:35:13 - 00:55:37:14
Tristan
Clean, very tidy, efficient.

00:55:38:29 - 00:55:46:25
Marty
And while we have a similar financial predicament here in the United States, the social outcomes are completely different because.

00:55:46:25 - 00:55:48:29
Tristan
Of, you know, the have they have culture?

00:55:49:07 - 00:55:49:15
Marty
Yeah.

00:55:50:02 - 00:56:08:25
Tristan
I mean, seriously, like, I think that's very underrated aspect of it and yeah, we don't have anything to cling on to anymore. It's also like go back to the northeast like versus like maybe the rest of the U.S. The West is like, like you're saying you brought up an Irish Catholic household and you know, a lot of other similar families.

00:56:08:25 - 00:56:23:19
Tristan
Like you feel a big draw to that, like you would fight for your community. And now that's been absent for quite some time. Um, so it's not a, you know, a strong foundation anymore when that gets kind of ripped away.

00:56:24:03 - 00:56:30:27
Marty
No, no, it's a big problem. Yeah, I think it all comes back to the money here in the U.S. at least.

00:56:32:09 - 00:56:58:00
Tristan
All of this. Yeah, even the tech right. Like we just had lunch with Jimmy Song. The first time I talked to him, he blew my mind. I'm just, like, tying that all back. So if you actually think about it, there's been no innovation at the tech level, really like compared to what there could be. Like what I'm just saying is like, there were all these great leads people gave up on and then they just went with, you know, what the popular choices and what worked and what was exciting and pretty.

00:56:58:12 - 00:57:13:04
Tristan
And then, I mean, what innovation has Apple really had in the past ten years? They're kind of just farming on the monopoly they have. So there's no incentive for people to really have a disruptive company or.

00:57:13:08 - 00:57:20:09
Marty
Yeah, and I feel like Apple, all the major giants putting their hard work on complacent new iPhones or.

00:57:21:16 - 00:57:22:27
Tristan
Their innovation is the other.

00:57:22:27 - 00:57:46:13
Anjan
Companies. MAN Yeah, they got moms and Jakarta Indonesia using the iPhone. You think if you try to totally reinvent the thing, they'll understand what's going on. They're just captured, you know, they're so big. And if you meet people at Apple, they're actually brilliant, they're creative, they're it's somewhere bookstores just can't do anything. And so I think they're waiting for initiatives like this to be a better channel for their creativity.

00:57:46:13 - 00:58:01:21
Anjan
And that's what I like to say. It's less that we're innovative. Our technology that I think made this possible. It's more we were brave about values. I think if Apple or any of these guys wanted to do what we're doing, they could do it in a thousand. I go to a display conference. The entire thing is covered in Apple and Samsung people.

00:58:02:04 - 00:58:18:09
Anjan
They could do it like, as much as I feel like I found a cool little glitch in the matrix, like maybe they wouldn't have found it. Maybe they would. But I think the real thing was I spent the time to look because I was so convinced health matters. I spent the time to look so convinced. Real illness matters.

00:58:18:09 - 00:58:35:11
Anjan
I spent the time to looked because I was so much in pain and I feel it was validating my experience and validating my values enough to actually bet my life savings on it. To bet all this time. I think that is the core thing that drives us, not some genius technical insight or something like that.

00:58:36:18 - 00:58:49:19
Marty
Know it's funny to go back to the facade of value driven, driven initiatives in Silicon Valley and like Apple with like the Apple Watch, like we care about your health. It's like it's.

00:58:49:19 - 00:58:53:16
Tristan
It's what is it? It's like greenwashing for for health. You know, it's like, oh, the new.

00:58:53:16 - 00:58:55:01
Anjan
Apple, the rings. I completed my.

00:58:55:01 - 00:59:13:18
Tristan
Rings. If you you know, if you have a heart attack or fall, we'll call 911. It's like, okay. But like, you know, you could be the reason for that heart attack or like the decline of my health over the whole entire decade, decade period. But they're never going to admit that, right? Like, how can they just go back and admit they're like, Yeah, sorry, guys.

00:59:13:18 - 00:59:39:05
Tristan
Their screens are actually like, you know, lowering your dopamine and, you know, ruining your circadian rhythm, your sleep, which is, you know, causing premature chronic disease. So but we got these better ones now, so don't worry about that. It can never happen and they don't have to. And it's a perfect timing, not only from everything and on just story and the company story, but also people are waking up, right, Like people are becoming aware.

00:59:39:13 - 01:00:06:17
Tristan
COVID was extremely helpful. Huberman has 20 plus million, you know, followers and tens of millions of listeners. And he's talking about life. He's talking about the importance of sunlight. People are distrusting the organizations and centralized authority, giving health recommendations. Why? Because it's not fucking working. And then because of the age of the Internet, we can actually go back and see undeniable proof that you know, the sugar industry funded this.

01:00:06:17 - 01:00:36:05
Tristan
And, you know, the American Heart Association had this conclusion because of this funding and all so much research. You just go scroll to the bottom of the paper was paid for by parties of interest. And, you know, after the vaccine rollout and big pharmaceuticals like people are just distrusting that at an all time high. And then you couple in the data privacy of like Google and Apple and Facebook and people are they're hungry something else but they're just hasn't been anything.

01:00:36:16 - 01:01:03:28
Marty
Yeah and it's it was beautifully poetic how like the idea the the innovator's dilemma it comes into play because if you can imagine a world where like you just mentioned, people are becoming hyper aware of how technology is affecting our health, our foods affecting our health, how medicine is affecting our health. And go back to reporter like bravery, like having the balls actually get to do this.

01:01:03:28 - 01:01:26:09
Marty
Like if your apple trillions of dollars of cash is sitting there like if you had the bravery and the will to stick your neck out there and say, hey, it's pretty clear that we're all becoming aware this is affecting us negatively, I think we're going to provide products that take us in another direction in a healthier direction, probably have a lot of success, but it's to both of them and for them.

01:01:27:07 - 01:01:44:19
Anjan
And hey, we might still have egg on our face like we might be wrong. And where we still may fail. I mean, you still have a good chance of that there. The record for computer new computer companies is low, but I think it's fine. I took a swing on something. I believe I can never be. I can never go wrong that way, you know, if we fail.

01:01:45:00 - 01:01:50:28
Anjan
And so I think it's kind of cool to build a company not from a place of fear.

01:01:52:20 - 01:02:04:14
Marty
How? Like not leaning into a place for fear. I was going to say, like, how could you guys how could you see daylight failing? What is the avenue of success for you going in the other direction? Yeah, you're right.

01:02:06:11 - 01:02:25:18
Anjan
I think the biggest one is just it is so expensive to get something new into the world, especially when it's like a new computer screen. Once again, they want you to sell 500,000 their scale. If you're trying to do 20,000, each thing's going to go up the wazoo. I still don't know how the price we got, the price we did.

01:02:25:26 - 01:02:46:03
Anjan
It's expensive. Our price is high. 799. It's a premium product, same price as an iPad pro. You can argue what's the price of your health. This is cheap versus all the metabolic health, ADHD, medication and all that stuff. So like I think if you look at it the right way, it's totally worth it. It's a steal. But if you look at it from a different way, yeah, on paper it's expensive.

01:02:46:12 - 01:03:11:18
Anjan
And so I could see a lot of people resonating with their mission, resonating with their vision, being super into it, but struggling to get out of the frame of mind. I have rows 729 It does so much more. And so I think if we run into that psychological frame in that philosophy, I could see us getting a lot of attention but not converting enough into sales, let's say we only sell 10,000 of these, our manufacturer cuts us off and then we're done.

01:03:11:21 - 01:03:35:11
Anjan
There's only people in the world that could do it. So it's like goodbye. And so that's why I like to I like to appreciate folks like yourself because it is you going out of your way to educate and pioneer people. Think differently, act differently, like these different philosophies, these different psychologies, you know, more time massage, less tummy ache.

01:03:35:27 - 01:04:01:22
Anjan
If it wasn't for you folks leading that and educating, no one's going to buy our thing. Why would I pay more money for something that doesn't have skin color? Why would I pay more money for something that's like that does less what you're telling me it does less. And you want me to pay that much money? The only way we can start this different philosophical thing is if there's people who are actually pioneering that and educating people so well.

01:04:02:00 - 01:04:28:26
Marty
That was cool to see you guys walk in and you interact with Paul Tony because they're eating nerds that really think about this stuff and like they're like the prototypical archetype of your end consumer is like, I want this and compared to should, you had a competitor's product out and you're comparing the reaction time and it's night and day at some an objective product comparison.

01:04:28:26 - 01:04:46:28
Marty
Like if you can compete on that little reaction time, what you lack in blue light flickering, you make up for and being able to react faster than the incoming products. Like that's a leg up that I could see people easily forking out money to get access to.

01:04:47:01 - 01:05:06:21
Tristan
And that's just the product level. Like, I think we're a success when we have tens of thousands of people coming on board, you know, supporting us for the greater mission, the greater vision, right? This is just the first product we can do so much more like we want to do so much more. We just need this to be a success and then we can go do that.

01:05:06:21 - 01:05:29:15
Tristan
We're probably, you know, the only company that's making computers, handheld devices, that's actually priority, missing the health, the sovereignty of the end user. At the very first step of our product development, you might be convinced that other companies are doing that and they're not. And if you really buy into that vision, you know that we're emitting. Yes, screens are harmful for our biology.

01:05:29:21 - 01:05:52:18
Tristan
Yes, Being indoors all the time is harmful. We want to bring you to a place that's better for your entire well-being so that you can succeed. Because if you know, that allows for better, better productivity, better mental health, you're going to become a better person. And with the amount of time we're spending on devices, to me that's like the it's invaluable, right?

01:05:52:18 - 01:06:06:14
Tristan
And you would want such a mission to succeed. I mean, that's I literally dropped everything I was doing because I was like, this is the most important company in the world to succeed if we actually want to have a better future, a better alternative.

01:06:06:28 - 01:06:11:00
Anjan
And be back as I was on his podcast. Yeah. And afterwards he's like, We need to talk.

01:06:11:12 - 01:06:29:06
Tristan
I was like, We're talking tomorrow. Like there's no choice because I would drop everything. I'll sacrifice all my time so that we have a better future for the next generation. And we talk about, you know, children just thinking about them because they're so much more susceptible to the harm. So what sort of future do we want to create?

01:06:29:20 - 01:06:37:16
Tristan
And it was impeccable timing because if, you know, this was five years ago, even with all the screen technology breakthroughs.

01:06:38:01 - 01:06:38:16
Anjan
People.

01:06:38:29 - 01:07:00:04
Tristan
You know, we wouldn't have this conversation. We wouldn't have the support from this community. They wouldn't be as aware. And, you know, it's coinciding with a lot of the things you talk about freedom, tech, you know, Bitcoiners supporting that. We now have like an upper hand in actually having some finances, some money that's hard. So we can support better technology because it is expensive.

01:07:00:04 - 01:07:15:13
Tristan
It does take a ton of effort and that's what a real success looks like for us when we get a big community supporting us and behind us, because then we can go and do whatever you ask for in terms of technology.

01:07:15:25 - 01:07:34:25
Marty
Yeah, that's like how you want it. Like that's how a product should grow at the end of the day too. It's like organic focus on the community that gets it aligns with it's asking for it. Have the battle tested like, all right, here's what we need. Iterate on and go get it in the hands of the rest of the world.

01:07:34:28 - 01:07:59:28
Anjan
I mean, you can either have the ghost of daddy, Steve Jobs in Cupertino telling us all what we need and want, or we can build it ourselves. Grassroots, bottom up, learning from each other. And there's always a push and pull, but of bottom up and top down. But yeah, it's like decentralized to me is about taking responsibility. And you know, decentralized health to me is crucial.

01:07:59:28 - 01:08:18:05
Anjan
So you're not reliant on somebody else who gets to decide the life of you or your child. Get back to better food, better water, get back to the sun, get back to grounding and all the different things that can just contribute to your health. And we've talked so much about making the hardware real again, right? That's our goal, to make computers real again.

01:08:18:10 - 01:08:41:11
Anjan
So this illusion machine, the an illusion of productivity and it just distraction illusion that it's fine and it's doing all these weird and flickering the lights and the blue light spectrum. But the possibility is because we have our own computer, we control the entire software stock. And so the possibility of what comes afterwards is what you're talking about is what is a real OS that respects your attention, respects your time, doesn't try to hijack.

01:08:41:11 - 01:09:07:13
Anjan
You look like what is a real OS that has real software, a built in hardened software, secure software privacy, peer to peer protocols, bitcoin things, noster, lightning, so on so on, built into the OS. And we're not Apple. We only got shareholders that we owe a 30% app store tax on it right our business could be cash flow and hardware and so we can have these free app stores, these web apps.

01:09:07:13 - 01:09:30:25
Anjan
The apps can be composable, they can we can build these things and we don't need to Apple pay happy for it to be all lightning or whatever it may be. And so that is the optionality we get to if people trust us and like our hardware. And I think that's just a magical opportunity because I can't think of anybody else in the world, Oh, you got the Solana phone or whatever, but why would you buy?

01:09:31:02 - 01:09:52:22
Anjan
Right? And so hopefully we're providing enough of a differentiated reason for you to buy this over the A Samsung tablet or an Apple product or in compliment, right. Yeah. You know, when the sun goes down, you put away your MacBook and your iPhone, you take out this thing. So it's your wind down computer. It's the it's it's the first thing you see in the morning rather than your iPhone so on and so.

01:09:52:29 - 01:09:58:23
Marty
That's what I need is I get into my own right often not as often as you say.

01:09:58:24 - 01:10:01:25
Anjan
Google docs like typing or like write with uh.

01:10:02:22 - 01:10:04:26
Marty
The but predominantly for the newsletter.

01:10:04:27 - 01:10:05:07
Anjan
Yeah.

01:10:05:19 - 01:10:07:18
Marty
In Ghost in the publisher.

01:10:07:19 - 01:10:10:20
Anjan
Oh, you got to try our thing with the magic keyboard.

01:10:10:21 - 01:10:30:04
Marty
Yeah. Well, my, my writing flow. Yeah. These days is between the hours like 10 p.m. and 12 p.m. So I'll write, I'll send it out or get the dopamine ahead of like, I think I just read something cool and I think it feels good. So like, publish it. And then I get the wind down of like, yeah, I've been staring at my screen for 3 hours and I can't fall asleep.

01:10:30:19 - 01:10:35:02
Anjan
We should get him on with it. Yeah, the keyboard. Yeah. It'll be super interesting to see how it fits into your workflow.

01:10:35:04 - 01:10:56:04
Marty
Yeah, because that's something, again, going back to the double edged sword, I would not be here for leveraging this to get the message out. None of us would have these fucking blasting lights in their face for the podcast like, I can feel it again, especially since I have a four and a two year old. Now the four year old especially like it's becoming very obvious.

01:10:56:04 - 01:11:06:20
Marty
I got shed. He's looking at everything I'm doing and I do not want to pass on the bad tendencies of being fucking on my screen rant.

01:11:07:16 - 01:11:23:29
Tristan
But that's the opportunity we have for ourselves, right? We've gathered this knowledge, we've gathered this mindset. Now we can go and create the best world for the next generation. And that's like thinking extremely low time preference. That's what Bitcoin enables and that's what proof of work is really all about.

01:11:24:08 - 01:11:55:25
Marty
Yeah, yeah. Thank you for building this, honestly. Um, because there is, like I said here, as you can get in talking about cynicism earlier, but there's also like the sense of hopelessness that exists out there, like, oh, we're doomed to the financial, not the financial, the digital panopticon, and we're beholden to the, the, the whims of Apple and Google and Amazon, you name it.

01:11:56:02 - 01:12:10:21
Marty
And that's of the world we live in. And the way it's going to be, particularly in hardware, like it has been hard to see any I mean, you mentioned Oculus, maybe Purism, something that people would point to, but they just went bankrupt.

01:12:10:24 - 01:12:11:28
Anjan
Like, I don't know that.

01:12:12:02 - 01:12:35:11
Marty
Yeah. Yeah. And so it's it's something that needs to be done. And like you said, it takes a lot of balls because it's a Herculean effort at the end of the day. True hero's journey. But it's worth it. I think the the health and sanity of society, these things are literally driving people insane. It's telling me I'm trying to get off.

01:12:35:19 - 01:12:41:16
Marty
I haven't been using social media as much because it's just like, you go on there, so holy fuck, everybody's going crazy.

01:12:43:13 - 01:12:49:01
Tristan
We need to turn that narrative around. I mean There is optimism. We can create better alternatives.

01:12:49:11 - 01:12:49:20
Marty
Yeah.

01:12:51:28 - 01:13:23:24
Anjan
You just want me to read the last page that's read it. So the book's called Amusing Ourselves to Death. And the basic idea is so much of modern, the modern world and technology is too much of a good thing is a bad thing, right? And I think that's what a lot of technology today is. It's like junk food tech, It's a supernormal stimuli, it's hypersexual it it, it is all the sex appeal.

01:13:24:19 - 01:13:40:17
Anjan
And then you're amused to death. You're stimulated to death. And so let's see. I can find. Okay, so this is the foreword to the book.

01:13:46:28 - 01:13:47:25
Unknown
Oh, come on in.

01:13:47:25 - 01:13:48:04
Anjan
Or not.

01:13:49:05 - 01:13:50:13
Unknown
I could cut some silence here.

01:13:50:22 - 01:14:03:04
Anjan
You can. Okay, That would be great I mean, so or so turns. God, it was not like ending it on a negative note or something.

01:14:03:13 - 01:14:08:19
Marty
No, this isn't great. Okay. Logan has been staring at that screen.

01:14:10:16 - 01:14:11:14
Tristan
For a guy. For a.

01:14:11:14 - 01:14:11:22
Anjan
Guy.

01:14:12:09 - 01:14:13:16
Tristan
All right, We need to make a monitor.

01:14:13:25 - 01:14:38:04
Anjan
All right? Yeah. Yeah, dude, the possibilities are you can take this, right? Can I. Can I go? Yeah. Okay. The book's called Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. It starts. We were keeping our eye on 1984 when the year came and the prophecy didn't. Thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves the roots of liberal democracy had held wherever else the terror happened.

01:14:38:04 - 01:15:07:15
Anjan
We at least had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares. But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another slightly older, slightly west, no less well known but equally chilling Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief, even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophecy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression.

01:15:08:06 - 01:15:36:12
Anjan
But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history as he it people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think what Orwell feared were those who had been books where Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted read one.

01:15:37:16 - 01:16:02:25
Anjan
Orwell feared those who would deprive deprive Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we'd be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture.

01:16:03:10 - 01:16:33:28
Anjan
Huxley feared we had become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the Feelies, the orgy party, and the centrifugal bumble puppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions in 1984, Huxley added People are controlled by inflicting pain in Brave New World.

01:16:34:13 - 01:16:55:07
Anjan
They are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.

01:16:57:02 - 01:16:58:20
Marty
People love freaks. Okay.