Episode 159 - Gresham's Law, More Google Drama, Self Driving San Francisco
In today's February News update, we go over Gresham's Law, more firings at the Google AI ethics lab, Waymo expanding driverless cars to San Francisco, and the future and past of audio with the passing of Rush Limbaugh and the rise of Clubhouse.
Links
Amazon: The Innovators Dilemma
Bloomberg: Google to Change Policies on AI Research
Wired: Second Researcher Fired by Google
Venture Beat: Waymo Testing RoboTaxis in San Francisco
Glen Beck: Rush Limbaugh should be Remembers as the Johnny Carson of Radio
Tech Crunch: Clubhouse reaches 8 million downloads
Related Episodes
Episode 70 on the History of Audio Medium
Episode 149 on the departure of Timnit Gebru from Google
Episode 150 on Waymo opening up self driving taxis to the public in Arizona
Episode 157 on Bitcoiner’s Ambition to Replace Fiat Currency
Transcript
Max Sklar: You're listening to The Local Maximum Episode 159.
Time to expand your perspective. Welcome to The Local Maximum. Now here's your host, Max Sklar.
Max Sklar: Welcome to the show you've reached another local maximum. Aaron, I'm going to go a little Socratic method on you here today because we have a few unfinished topics from Episode 157, two episodes ago. Have you ever, have you been to a coffee shop and you've gotten those little punch card things?
Aaron: Indeed. And because I'm a bit of a hoarder, I have like a stack of little frequent flyers, business cards for various things, which invariably have one, maybe two items, punched out on them, and I will never go back to that place again.
Max: Yeah, yeah. But there was a joke on The Babylon Bee the other day, said that, Donald Trump is hoping for one more impeachment, he gets a free sub or something like that. But have you ever gotten— I think most of the time in the coffee shops they have they give you 10— it's usually 10. Right? You have to get 10 coffees, and then you get a free cup of coffee. Have you ever actually gotten the 10?
Aaron: Not in a coffee shop. But there used to be a falafel food truck, outside college that I frequented. And it was like, buy six falafels and get your seventh one free. And I definitely— I feel like multiple times, I seem to hit that up. But that's when food trucks were a great deal back then.
Max: Well, there used to be when I lived in Brooklyn, that was a great building in Brooklyn in 66 Rockwell Place where they had a coffee shop, or they used to have a coffee shop in the building got taken out by COVID, I guess. But that one, I would frequently get my — after living there six years, I might have gotten like three or four free cups of coffee out of that. So that was pretty great.
So okay, imagine you go up to one of these coffee shops, you have that card in your hand, you got all 10 punches on it and you also have cash to pay for the coffee. What are you going to pay with, you're going to pay with the punch card, get it for free, you're going to pay with your cash?
Aaron: I'm absolutely going to liquidate my free coffee as quickly as possible.
Max: Absolutely, absolutely. But why? Why would you do that? Both of them will buy you the same thing, both of them are of equal value.
Aaron: I feel like I'm getting what you're driving at here, it's that that punch card is valueless elsewhere. It has a very limited realm where it will be accepted. Whereas my cash money, I could use almost anywhere.
Max: Right? So that the punch card, or maybe a coupon, or whatever that's going to expire, is actually way less valuable to you anywhere else. So overall, it's way less valuable. Whereas the cash is universally accepted. I mean, look, if you're in that coffee shop, you got 10 punches on there, if you don't use it now, the chance of it ever getting used again is like 5%. I know this from personal experience, it’s probably even lower than that.
Aaron: Any of those card, or rebates, or anything, invariably have a fine print on the back that says, “Redeemable for cash value equivalent to like, .0001 cents, or something.” If the lawyer has actually looked at this program at all, they will make sure that it is not redeemable for a reasonable cash value because that would destroy the business model.
Max: So then, yeah. So, then this right, so this raises the question, another kind of obvious question, but again, I'm just having you lead here. Why would the coffee shop accept the punch card or accept the coupon to begin with? If it's worth so much less — it's worth nothing to them, essentially, and that the cash is worth more?
Aaron: Well, they're converting loyalty into value for you. And presumably, they're operating on the assumption that if you buy your free coffee, you're not just going to buy your free coffee, that that they will be able to spread the value of that free coffee over the preceding 10 purchases you've made and the odds of you buying a muffin or a Danish or a donut or something to go along with it are extremely high. So in reality, you've already paid for that. They’re bringing you cost —
Max: Yeah. And they’re also bringing you in —
Aaron: As have all the people who never make it to their tenth coffee. They've been subsidizing your free coffee.
Max: Right, right. Okay. So, this is the kind of the economics lesson in here is closely related to something called the Gresham's law, which I'm going to talk about here, is that if you're at a store, and they will accept two forms of payment. And one form of payment is worth less to you elsewhere, then you're going to use the one that's worth less to you elsewhere because the one that's worth more to you, you'd rather hang on to.
So let's say it's not a coupon, let's say it's two forms of currency, okay? And you have one form of currency, you have red dollars and blue dollar, I don't know, pick colors or whatever. And let's say, one of those dollars is still going to be worth $1 tomorrow, and the other type of dollar is going to be worth 50 cents tomorrow. You're going to want to spend the one that's only going to be worth 50 cents tomorrow because the other one is a much better store of value.
So ironically, what Gresham's law says, is that in any other situation, like, if you have a bad product and a good product, you're going to want to use the good product. But in currency, it's kind of reversed. If you have a bad product and a good product, you're going to want to use the bad products, because using currency is akin to getting rid of it, assuming that the good and bad product both buy you the same thing today.
Aaron: Absolutely.
Max: Did I explain that correctly? Does that make sense?
Aaron: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And it reminds me of an example from my childhood. So, there's a ski resort in North Central Vermont, Jay Peak, which they do, or at least at one point, they did a lot of business with folks coming in from Canada. Certainly not right now during the pandemic, probably nobody coming in from Canada. But at the time, there were a lot of people coming across the border to ski there because they got a lot of really good snow. And there was a period where they would offer to take Canadian dollars on par. Meaning that if the ticket price was $45, you could pay $45 Canadian or $45 American and get the same ticket. And I'm sure there were some exchange, some transactional costs involved if you wanted to convert money back and forth. But if you happen to have Canadian dollars, even if it was only exchanging, not the two to one ratio that we have seen in recent memory. But even if it was 89 cents to the dollar, then you would get rid of any Canadian money you happen to have and take advantage of the benefit there. Why would you pay good, valuable American dollars when you have the opportunity to do otherwise?
Max: I guess so. Were Canadian dollars less—oh, well, so they were less valuable at the time on face value. So, it wasn't expected inflation, it was more just like, “Hey, this is what they're valued at now. But the ski resort is accepting them on par.” So yeah, it's kind of a seller that is kind of doing something that.
Aaron: Right. The intention was certainly that that it would be a way to get Canadians into, if they got enough volume, that it would be profitable. I don't think they were planning on Americans going out and exchanging their American dollars for Canadian. Just probably because the hassle would be too great to yield that benefit.
Max: Oh people do a lot for five bucks.
Aaron: The difference in the exchange rate was small enough that — well, yeah, because people don't do a good job converting the value of time into money.
Max: Yeah, yeah, that's true, too. Yeah. So all right, so let's apply this to — so the question is, does this apply to Bitcoin? Or even to say, to fiat currencies, say the dollar and say, some currency that's failing today? So, if you're in, say, another country where you have a currency that's hyper inflating, it's a failing currency, it drops by the hour. If you go into a store that accepts that currency, and you have dollars too, you'd rather hold on to your dollars and spend that currency.
So that works for a while, but it works up to a point because then the store is going to try to get rid of the currency very quickly. And basically, it works until the store, or whatever service you're buying, stops accepting the bad currency because they don't want to accept it anymore. So, it works up to a point. And then when it's so—
Aaron: This sounds like a game of hot potato or musical chairs.
Max: Right, right. So, if there's very light inflation on the dollar, people don't really care that much. You spend your dollar at a store, that dollar is going back right back out again. It's going right back out to its employees, it's going right back to its inputs, inventories, all that stuff. So, it's not going to feel the rate of inflation on dollar, one to two percent inflation, especially. If it was say, I don't know, what was it, the German mark in the 1920s, or more recently, Argentina or Zimbabwe or something, yeah, that could be a problem. And we think of most products, say in tech, it's like, you have a better product come along. And then people are still using the old product. But then more and more people start using the better product as they realize it's better. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But in currency, it's so totally on its head, where the one that gets used, it’s the worst one that’s still holding up. If that makes sense. It's like the bottom of the totem pole that still isn't underwater is the one you see gets used a lot.
And so, I've been thinking about that with Bitcoin and the fact that the price keeps going up and up, and yet you still don't see it being used at the grocery store or something like that. And it's because Bitcoiners are crazy, and they believe in their currency so much. And they believe it's going to go up so much that you don't want to spend it — are you crazy? I mean, there are a few things you might spend it and then try to like refill what you spent to try to encourage it.
Aaron: Well, certainly, yeah, you’re giving up future gains by doing that.
Max: Yeah, yeah. And so I listened to a podcast, another episode of “What Bitcoin Did” last night, which is turning out to be a pretty good podcast. I'm trying to think that it wasn't last night, it was during the day, but whatever. I don't have to be that accurate on the show here as to when I'm listening to. I'm always like, what am I, can't lie to the audience, but some, some things. Okay.
But if I see all the episodes, there was an episode with Bill Barhydt, who is the founder of Abra. And that's one of those companies where you can get a rate of return on your Bitcoin, you could you could bank with Bitcoin. You can lend, borrow, all that stuff. And he said, “Yeah, what I want people doing is Bitcoin is their store of value, then they use it as collateral to borrow worthless dollars. And then spend those worthless dollars. Not worthless because you can spend it, but in the mind of a Bitcoiner, kind of like, inferior money.”
And now I'm thinking, wow, what is this going to do if you have everybody just borrowing dollars, and then immediately offloading them, and using their Bitcoin as collateral? Could that accelerate some kind of crisis in the currency market? And I think Gresham's law says, yeah, this thing accelerates.
Aaron: It’s like fuel for a bubble.
Max: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's definitely something to watch. So, I guess if I could state Gresham's law very simply— because I know we get, went over a lot of stuff — is that the bad money gets used over the good money. And coupons get used over money. Basically, the one that's going to have less value in the future, that's the one that you're going to want to use. That's the one people are going to want to use because using money involves getting rid of it or exchanging it. And so that would increase the velocity of said currency.
And now that we have this very hard currency in terms of Bitcoin and we have a lot of other currencies popping up, that could create tremendous pressures that could go in a variety of different directions. We don't know, but it's definitely something to watch over the next few years. And I'm going to probably mention Gresham's law a lot in talking about these topics.
Again, “velocity of money” is an interesting economic concept as well because that's how often it changes hands. And you think, well, that's great. Money has high velocity, that means people are spending and they're moving their money around. They're spending and spending, and spender’s spending. That’s economic growth, right? But ironically, it's like the higher velocity of money has somehow the less value it has. There's that equation, there's that famous economic equation. It's like — I can't even — it's PV equals — oh my god.
Aaron: I would imagine velocity is related to volatility in the stock market. And high volatility, in and of itself, doesn't indicate that things are good or bad in the stock market. It just means that things are changing, and rapidly. And that's there's a lot of room for gains there but also a whole room for possibly things to go horribly wrong.
Max: Okay, so I'm confusing the velocity of money law with the gas laws. So, yeah, no, it's vm = PT. So, it's the price level and the aggregate. So, the important part is M is the total amount of money in circulation and V is the velocity of money. So basically, if V goes up, then M goes down, so the money becomes less valuable, I guess, as it goes up. That's a little bit more complicated. I don't want to. An economist would probably kill me right now. Yeah.
Aaron: Yeah, we don't want to get in deep with a discussion of m versus m2, and, yeah.
Max: I'm not trying to explain that. But I think in terms of just the technology that's coming up, I just wanted to go over that loss. So that's pretty good. We got over too much of it. Yeah.
Aaron: Before we move over Gresham’s Law, one question about that. So is Gresham's law kind of universally accepted? Or is there some controversy around its validity? And I don't want to have the whole debate about how and why but is this pretty much a universally accepted law of economics? Or there's still debates?
Max: I haven't seen any — it's not like the Phillips Curve or something where people are like, “What curve?” And you look at the data.
Aaron: Or, like, modern monetary theory, where there are those that if you believe in it, it’s going to be bogus.
Max: It doesn't seem to have a huge amount of detractors. And kind of like, the Wikipedia page does not have criticisms section. So, I don't know if that means anything. But the fact that he can't find anything on the internet, like, I think it's pretty well established. Kind of like, hey, if the price goes up, then less people will want it sort of an economic law. Obviously, there are exceptions to that. And I'm sure you could find some exceptions to Gresham's law as well. But there's always some trick to it to make it not really an exception.
So okay, cool. There was another law that I want to talk about that's also related. And this law doesn't have a name. So, if anyone wants to come up with a name for this law, or tell me. And by the way, I hate — the term law doesn't really describe these things, does it? It's kind of like a good way to think about how the world is proceeding, whereas it doesn't have to be a law. But anyway, we call them laws, like Moore's Law, or whatever. So this one is about legacy products getting worse as new up and coming products supplanted. So, it's not like, “Hey, I am going to build a better” — I don't know, let's think about one product supplanting another. You could think about say, well, let's say —
Aaron: When you say getting worse, do you mean literally getting worse?
Max: Yes.
Aaron: Or just stagnating and failing to improve while the water level is rising around it?
Max: Literally getting worse. So, an example where that doesn't work is say Blockbuster versus Netflix. Right? So, Netflix comes into supplant Blockbuster. And Blockbuster, it stagnates and even tries to get a little bit better over time because it tries to say, “Okay, we're not going to charge late fees, we're not going to try to compete.” So, in that case, the opposite is happening. But I think when you have a paradigm shift in the industry, where some technologies feels really old, and then there's new technology to supplant it that feels really new and exciting, then the more the engineers and product professionals and entrepreneurs, who are more motivated, are going to go to the new one. And the old one, not only can it not compete and stagnates, but it actually gets worse because there's kind of a brain drain of talent.
And I think that's kind of what's happening to Google today, as we'll talk about in a minute. And it's what's happening to a lot of companies today. But you can see it, I think, you can see it in the cryptocurrency, and the world as well. Where's the motivated people, the motivated finance people are going to decentralize finance and cryptocurrency. And maybe that's a brain drain from traditional finance.
So, what's the brain drain from Google and Facebook? I don't know. But if it just feels so old and crusty, then the motivated people are not going to want to work there. I'm not saying that everyone who works at Google and Facebook are not motivated, but I'm just saying, there will tend to be some kind of a brain drain there. And so, it's something that I'm starting to notice more and more, but I don't actually see like a name for it. Have you?
Aaron: Yeah, I'm not familiar with. Well, I believe something similar was referenced in The Innovator’s Dilemma, but I don't know if it's exactly that. And it doesn't have a catchy name to it.
Max: So, it needs a catchy name. Okay, I'm going to look that up, innovator's dilemma. And if anyone has a name for this rule, please let me know, localmaxradio@gmail.com.
Okay, today's episode is more of like a February news update. So, we still have a few more to go through. That was just sort of an update from 157, on sort of a what's happening with our currencies and with our tech.
This next part is kind of an update from Episode 149, when we talked about the firing of AI ethics researcher, Timnit Gebru. Well, I don't know if you've heard, Aaron. Turned out, they fired the person she was working closely with, another AI ethics researcher. So they went for the twofer there.
Aaron: Right. Yeah.
Max: Yeah, we have some more corporate talk from Google, which I just have a very strong negative reaction to that. It’s like, “We're sorry, this looks bad. We're going to change things next time.” The actual quote from Jeff Dean, I don't know if he really wanted to write this, but he says, “I understand we could have and should have handled this situation with more sensitivity. For that, I am sorry.” It's like, yeah, I mean, I know people have to apologize.
Aaron: Is that referring specifically to Gebru? Or was it the new fire?
Max: That’s Gebru. That’s Gebru. No, not the new one.
No, that's a new one, because now they've dealt with Gebru, they've come up with a new thing where “We're going to redo our corporate culture and we're going to reorganize. And this time, we're going to get better.” And, hey, maybe that's what they need to do. Maybe they should never have had this AI ethics group structured in the way it was in the first place.
So, the next one that they fired is Margaret Mitchell, who also worked in the AI ethics group with Timnit Gebru. In a statement, Google spokesperson said, “Mitchell had shared confidential business sensitive documents and private data of other employees outside the company.” I don't know if that sort of raises the question, well, what kind of things was it? Was it something where it's just like an email that got forwarded? And it's something that they can basically get anyone on and just decided to they wanted to fire her anyway, and got her on that? Or was there like a real breach there? That we don't really know. But again, like I asked, is Google fishing for an excuse?
Aaron: The more damning question is, were the leaked documents related to the Timnit Gebru situation?
Max: Oh yeah.
Aaron: Was this an outgrowth of that? Or was this something completely separate from that they were using the leverage here? Because it could flow either way. But on the one hand, Google certainly has an incentive to — if they're starting to develop a culture of leaking leakers, they want to nip that.
Max: Sure. Sure.
Aaron: For both IP reasons and for PR reasons.
Max: Absolutely.
Aaron: Much like the US government in the wake of Snowden and things like that. Generally, the concern that the government has is more on the nature of who are the leakers and how can we stop them? Rather than any of the specifics about what was leaked? Because they're real sensitive about that, and a sufficiently large company starts to act like a government in that way.
Max: Yeah. And this is, I mean, Google's nothing compared to Apple, Apple will lock you down, from what I've heard. I mean, I don't know, maybe they've changed now. But I don't think so. I think Apple is the biggest in terms of secrecy. But it's strange when you're working on AI ethics group and you're trying to put out public research. I don't know what exactly you're leaking. It's probably not leaks on business strategy. I mean, we could just speculate, but it's probably not business strategy and IP. It's probably more like you said, communications on which papers they're going to publish. I mean, I know, the people who were fired would take exception to this, but it's like, was this a good idea that Google will say, “Hey, we're just going to hire a bunch of people to think about ethics and we're going to give them freedom to just write whatever they want.” And then of course, it blows up in their faces because that's not really what they wanted. And then, of course, they're going to hire people who also have an ideological agenda.
Aaron: It seems like part of the problem here might be that they brought in a bunch of people to operate in a academic environment, within a corporate environment. And those two cultures do not often match.
Max: Alright, so I'm going to try to follow that a little bit more. We've covered the Timnit Gebru situation pretty in depth in 149. I'm not going to do that today with the update. But it's just interesting to see — I mean, look, any sufficiently large company, even medium and small companies have like coworker crap that blows up in their faces all the time. I mean, that's not uncommon. But like, this kind of goes to the heart of like our entire economic system — not economic system, but like our entire technical internet system when it comes to like what we're doing in terms of AI and ads. I don't think anyone's really articulated really what the problem really is. I think, even a lot of this research that I read, it's just, it's very fluffy. It's not really very, I mean, maybe that's why they don't like it. It's not really bringing them any value. But I don't think so, I think Google loves putting out like fluffy puff pieces. And I wouldn't describe the research like that. But I would describe the research as I don't know what the practical implication is going to be for Google here.
So, I don't know. I'd like to get one of these people on the show if I could. But I don't know if they’ll come on, but we'll see. All right. Anything else?
Aaron: I think the big question remains—is this the last domino to fall? Is there another shoe to drop?
Max: It feels like there is.
Aaron: Or is there going to be a lot more happening in the same cycle?
Max: I vote yes. I don’t know about you, but I vote yes.
Aaron: Well, we'll keep watching.
Max: Okay, some good news from the other part of Google, although this is not really Google anymore, from the other side of alphabet. Waymo, which we recently spoke about in Episode 150. Remember? They opened up to the public in Chandler, Arizona, which is where they have their self-driving taxis with no safety driver, you just get in? Well, they are expanding to San Francisco, which seems like a much more danger fraught driving territory in a variety of different ways. Because there are huge hills, there are throngs of tourists, and let's say, just the people who hang out in the streets there, a little bit crazy. And it's an urban environment.
Aaron: Don’t forget the trolleys.
Max: The trolleys, urban environment. So that's really interesting. So, the question is, how well can it deal with urban areas from this article in VentureBeat. In 2020, Waymo ramped up testing in the San Francisco Bay Area. Yeah.
Aaron: I haven't read the article, but I assume they're not going immediately to the driverless cars.
Max: No, I think they are. That is what this is. Yeah, I mean, they might start with a safety driver
Aaron: Without the safety drivers or?
Max: Oh, man. I assumed it was without the safety drivers since they were already doing that the other one, but they might start with the safety drivers. I don't know. So, hold on. I just want to read this one quote, just to just summarize what was happening.
Aaron: I would expect that they're going to have to ease into it in San Francisco.
Max: “In 2020, Waymo ramped up testing in the San Francisco Bay Area, in anticipation of future ride hailing pilots. Waymo says it has optimized the Waymo driver. It’s autonomous planning perception and navigation system to handle the complexities of the Golden Gate City, aided by cameras that can spot jaywalkers.” People doing a lot more than jaywalking there. “If the driver pulls up to a bus by a crosswalk, it can reason that passengers may be getting off to cross the street.” So like if it sees the bus, it's like okay, I'm going to assume there are pedestrians on the other side of the bus. “And if it's driving on the street with roadwork, the driver understands the traffic cones and signs are meant to guide it out of the usual lane.” So that's pretty cool it can it can understand what the cones say and what the signs say which sometimes a lot of people can't understand that.
So yeah, like I said the first one, you think they're really going to stop at Chandler, or you think this is really going to happen? Is there any better indication this is happening than they're trying to move into a city like this? And this, I think will be as big of a change in our day to day lives as the currency thing, as the Bitcoin thing. Maybe you won't have as much incredible wealth.
Aaron: Yeah, they're certainly putting all the pieces in place so that they can make it happen. I would not put any money on them being able to operate in San Francisco without safety drivers in 2021. But I could already be wrong on that.
Max: I'm going to quote from another part of the article. Let’s see. Oh, shoot, it's trying to play a video. That's bad. “As of 2019, Waymo had 268 safety drivers in California. The company to declined to disclose the size of its current fleet. But Waymo said last summer to play to autonomous minivans to service the Bay Area.” It does not say whether there are safety drivers.
I think there are going to be safety drivers to start out. But hey, at least you could give it a try. If you are one of the few who are still in San Francisco and hasn't fled yet. Maybe you could give a try on one of these Waymo rides and that and see how it goes.
Okay, so I'm kind of excited about that. That's takes a step forward.
Aaron: And much like they say about New York City, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. I think if they can solve the autonomous driving without a safety driver problem in San Francisco, then they've got a really strong case for exporting that capability to the rest of the country and the rest of the world.
Max: Almost anywhere, though, because it's not New York. But yeah, maybe 90% of… If you can make it there, you can make it 90% of the places.
By the way, one of the things I start realizing about New Hampshire is how much they hate Massachusetts drivers. So, I think they might have to have their own division for...
Aaron: Everyone hates Massachusetts.
Max: Yeah, they might have to have their own division for Boston at Waymo. The Boston AI team, specifically to deal with Boston drivers. Okay.
Aaron: Yeah. Well, if the AI trains on Boston drivers as its learning dataset, then that is going to be a seriously impressive AI.
Max: That’s the future. That's the dystopian future, isn't it?
Okay, so finally, I want to follow up on, well, Episode 70, which was already a couple years ago, I talked about why podcasting is such a fun medium. And I'm working on getting some guests these days. I hope so. I mean, I talked on, I went on Charlie Oliver’s show the other day, I was back on to talk about Clubhouse, which is a new audio app. Not really podcasting. And so, yeah, well, with the passing of Rush Limbaugh last week, at the age of 70.
Aaron: Have you used that much? Because I've heard of it, but we have not talked about it.
Max: I use it a little bit. I use a little bit. I just want to talk about with the passing of Rush Limbaugh at the age of 70, how the audio medium has changed in the last 30 years and what's happening now. Because he was really probably, I would say, the person who used the media, the audio medium of like, talk radio. The best certainly have the biggest audience. And I know like, regardless of what you think of him, he really knew how to put on a show in that regard. And so, in that way, just like kind of Joe Rogan cracked podcasting, I really think when you have a new medium come, you kind of have the rise of like, not even experts, just like masters who figure out how to use that medium as best as they possibly can. And podcasting is still open for that. Like I said, Joe Rogan is kind of ahead and he's got all the things, but sort of opened for disruption. I don't claim to be that person. But I do claim to put on a cool podcast that people should listen to every week.
But, look, Clubhouse is coming up. And that is, I don't really get it that much so far. But it's basically, you go in and you listen to conversations from like, some people in tech might be having a conversation on how to build great products. You can go and listen to their conversation. That's great. Another thing I didn't know about it, which I'm glad I didn't know when I first logged into it, was that they could call on you. So that would be, that’s a huge difference from radio. I mean, can you imagine if you're in your car listening to talk radio, and all of a sudden, they'd be like, “Hey, Aaron, what do you think?” Like, “Wait, what? I've got to have a ‘hold on, stop’ sign.”
Aaron: Yeah, it's really turning the call and radio show on its head.
Max: They called it Call You. I don't think you'd have millions of people willing to do that. Although, that would be interesting.
Aaron: I mean, having not participated on Clubhouse it, it almost sounds like it's acting as a replacement for like in person conferences, where you could have those kinds of like, panel discussions, but also with audience involvement. And granted, it's probably a lot more freeform without the strictures of physical location. But for sure.
Max: Yeah, yeah. And also, I also failed to mention on that podcast there — I don't know if you've heard of the podcasting platform called Anchor. That's a podcasting platform today, but they actually started trying to do something else. They started Spotify.
Aaron: Is Anchor independent, or did they get acquired by like Spotify? I believe we talked about that before.
Max: Yeah, when they were independent, they first want it to be kind of like the Twitter of audio. So basically, you'd say something for 10 seconds. And then basically, when you wanted to listen to it, it would be like a constant feed of 10-second audio thoughts from the people you follow. And I thought that was really interesting, but I guess it was hard for them to— I think it was just, it was so unique that it was hard for them to get the user base they wanted. And they just found, hey, if we just get into podcasting, people will understand what we're doing. But it's not surprising that someone else tried to do something with audio like Clubhouse.
Aaron: If Vine is any indicator, they were just ahead of their time with that idea.
Max: So hey, maybe someone will build something like that as well. Maybe Clubhouse will come out as well. And yeah, I went back to Episode 70 of this podcast, and I really liked it because I really sort of traced the history back from radio to podcasting, which I'm always interested in. And so, yeah, I think it's like, sort of an end to an era in AM radio, although it will still exist. But no, I think people who are getting into audio now are almost exclusively going to be getting into podcasting and maybe even Clubhouse, maybe some of these more, maybe AR, maybe Marsbot, maybe Marsbot Audio. We’ll see!
Okay, so that's really all I had for today, a bunch of different news items to tie up some loose ends from previous shows. We went over Gresham's Law, we went over Google AI turmoil, we went over driverless cars expanding to San Francisco. And we went over how the audio medium has changed in the last 30 years since Rush Limbaugh came on the air.
Alright, anything else? Any other comments? I think we're going to wrap up today. Any last words?
Aaron: Yeah, I mean, a lot of interesting things to keep an eye on in the future. But nothing pithy to wrap it all up with it today, unfortunately.
Max: All right, great. Thanks for coming on the show today, Aaron, and have a great week, everyone.
Max Sklar: That's the show. To support The Local Maximum, sign up for exclusive content and our online community at maximum.locals.com. A local maximum is available wherever podcasts are found. If you want to keep up, remember to subscribe on your podcast app. Also, check out the website with show notes and additional materials at localmaxradio.com. If you want to contact me, the host, send an email to localmaxradio@gmail.com. Have a great week.
