Welcome to Crazy Stupid Tech, a newsletter about the tech-of-technology that shapes the future
If you don’t know us, here’s a quick introduction.
• I am Fred Vogelstein, an investigative technology and biotech journalist. I’ve been writing about Silicon Valley mostly for Wired, The New York Times Magazine and Fortune since 1998. I’m also the author of “Dogfight: How Apple and Google went to war and started a revolution.”
• I am Om Malik, partner emeritus at True Ventures. I was the founder of GigaOm, a pioneering technology blog and media company. I have been writing about technology since the early 1990s, mostly for Forbes, Red Herring, Business 2.0, Fast Company and The New Yorker. I also wrote “BroadBandits: Inside the $750 Billion Telecom Heist.” I blog atOm.co
Both of us together have followed Silicon Valley’s innovation engine for more than 50 years. We’ve seen a lot. But one observation stands out: The best ideas — the ones that launch meaningful companies - need to seem crazy and stupid at first.
Amazon, Google and Facebook are among the most powerful companies in the world today, but each of them seemed absolutely preposterous when launched. When Jeff Bezos started Amazon as an online bookstore 30 years ago, most didn’t even know what the internet was. Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google in 1998 when most believed search was going nowhere. In the 2000s, Mark Zuckerberg bet Facebook could fundamentally change the way billions of people used the internet - to share everything back when most were terrified about sharing anything.
It’s this messianic belief in a vision that makes many entrepreneurs so quirky — and so interesting. It takes a unique personality to spend years saying “I’m right” when most around you say “That’s wrong.”
There will be many, no doubt, who think we’re crazy and stupid for even launching something like this. Does the world need yet another technology newsletter? Not about Big Tech, certainly.
But a newsletter about the countless new ideas trying to reinvent the future? Absolutely. As Silicon Valley’s influence extends deeper into all corners of our economy and lives, there have never been more interesting, crazy, stupid and intriguing ideas and technologies out there. We don’t think they’re getting enough attention. So our goal is to tell you about those that really matter and explain why they matter.
It’s a big list that covers everything from synthetic biology and materials science to computers that can see, hear and think. And it is also about the revolutionary changes in chips, networks, photonics and other foundational layers necessary to drive these advancements. Early clues about where things are headed often live there.
We get that technology makes many of us more nervous than hopeful right now. Will AI cause mass unemployment and destabilize societies? Will we soon see an entire generation of genetically engineered children? Will our lives really be easier and more convenient when all cars are driverless and the sky is filled with drones delivering packages?
Many have become flat-out suspicious of technology innovators – with good reason. For 20 years we were incredibly naive about how internet technology would change the world, believing it was an indisputably good thing. Technology adoption is rarely like that. The automobile was a top-three invention of the 20th century. It also killed millions of Americans from 1900 to 1999. Technology revolutions are almost always both good and bad.
But that doesn’t mean we should view the future - especially technology - with as much skepticism as we do now. Since few of the technologies driving these developments are going away, we need to better understand both their potential for abuse and their potential for making our world a better place.
So yes, the prospect of CRISPR babies is scary. But the digitization of biotech is also supercharging the new drug discovery process. It speeds up the trial-and-error rate. Consider the progress made with cancer immunotherapy in the past 15 years or the breakthrough drugs to treat obesity. These advances are partly due to these new technologies.
Should we worry that AI is filling the web and social media with manufactured stories and images? Of course. But we should also acknowledge it’s helping unknot some of the difficult problems facing biology. It’s helping invent new materials. It’s helping us design superchips. And it’s going to drive down the cost of manufacturing.
Now think about applying all that AI to your own life. Friends of ours are already using AI to write first drafts of speeches and presentations. We can’t wait to turn it loose on our storage drives to see what it learns about us. If properly controlled, it has the potential to make all of us smarter — to help us remember and act on 100 times more of our experiences than we currently can.
All of this is fertile ground for us to connect some dots. We hope it will help us and you understand the world a little better, beyond the headlines and hype.
What does that mean in practice for subscribers?
Our newsletters will take the form of either a big interview or a deep dive into a subject that warrants careful consideration. You won’t find vapid, fawning celebrity profiles or funding-driven news analysis here. Our focus is on tech-of-technology that shapes the future. We believe, that the tech-of-tech is the best lens to focus on the future.
Expect something from us once a week. Expect it to be free, at least for now. And expect us to engage with you on an intellectual level as we craft a realistic narrative about the future full of contours, nuance, and hope.
