Hey, I'm Finally Writing a New Book! Here's a Preview.

Over the last year or so, I've been noodling with a book proposal, a way for me to finally link together all the conversations and arguments I've had over the past several years about the future of technology and why things feel so bad right now. Basically, the old way is dying, the new way is being created, and we're stuck in limbo -- but things won't be like this forever. As long as we move forward with curiosity, openness, and a will to make web3 work for good, we can create something better. This book will provide context on why things seem to take so long, and will spell out a vision for the future that sees everything as connected as we move from the meta-present to the meta-verse to the meta-physical.

You'll be hearing a lot about this book as 2025 progresses -- I'm still hammering out final details with regards to publishing and an exact date, but it'll probably be mid-fall. For now, stay tuned and enjoy this excerpt from the introduction.

Despite all my energy, not to mention lots of research about how AI will impact businesses in the future and why VR is better for training than almost any other medium, uptake has been slow. Not a day goes by that I don’t notice something that could be done better or smarter using emerging technologies, but people don’t seem to grasp this.?

Put it this way: the Innovator’s Dilemma, the late Clayton Christensen’s groundbreaking book on why most companies that refuse to innovate wind up dying, came out my senior year of high school (I didn’t read it then as I was too busy pretending to read Infinite Jest). I am now in middle age, and several of my peers have children in high school. None of this is new, and yet companies make the same mistakes, over and over and over again.?

It’s not entirely their fault. For one thing, a reward system focused entirely on quarterly and yearly earnings doesn’t encourage taking big, long term bets. Meta, for instance, has been excoriated for “losing money” on virtual reality, even though they are investing long term in research and development. Most CEOs are so overpaid and wealthy at this point that they can steer a car right off a cliff and still walk away with a fat exit package; as for the day-to-day workers, no one seems to care what happens to them.?

Early adopters and innovators are also far more open to punishment by the market than those who lag behind. It’s a national news story every time a Waymo car is in an accident; meanwhile, drunk, stoned, and distracted drivers are free to cause havoc and death on the roads and it barely merits a mention at the tail end of the local newscast. If an AI agent returns an incorrect result, it is proof that the entire technology stack is a joke; at the same time, elected officials all over the world can lie and misinform from their offices and plenty of people simply accept it as true. If someone gets an upset stomach from a shoddily produced VR piece, that means they’ll never put on a headset again; a poorly made 2D video is likely forgotten in five minutes or less.?

Despite all this, these new technologies are coming, and those who don’t embrace them will eventually be left behind. Will there be edge cases who can stubbornly refuse and hold out? Sure; as I found out when, on vacation in Uruguay, the town I was in eschewed parking meters for a mysterious dude in a vest who took an unspecified amount of money to watch a car. There will always be patronage gigs, and there will always be, as David Graeber described them, “bullshit jobs” – governments will decide that spending money on make-work to keep people busy is better than giving them government support and dealing with idle hands.?

For the vast majority of people not lucky to be paid to hang out in a lawn chair all day collecting pesos, understanding, using, and implementing web3 technology will be critical to their future employment and survival. And beyond just work, this mode of communication and viewing the world will shape how we communicate, interact, and live day to day. We are at the edge of a major breakthrough, one that will change everything – but don’t expect it to happen overnight. Rather, expect a slow, steady upward slope, and then a hockey stick. The world you thought you knew will gradually start to shift, and unless you’re paying attention, it will pass you by.?