25 Reggie James - Our Infinite Mirrors

Jackson Dahl
You say, technology itself has an aim and that we are the facilitators of that aim. This is very different than thinking of technology as a derivative of ourselves, that our aims are its aims. And then you go on to say the mirror was the final product. Once we had the mirror, we simply continued to produce them. This is how technology convinces us. Has an uncanny ability to reflect and that reflection creates an inescapable human urge to tinker and then finally at the end of that excerpt you you go on to say as you sort of theorize What what does technology actually want you say perfect ubiquity and mutualism with humanity and so my first question is, what does that actually mean? Those are some big words.

Reggie James
Well, I’m not like really big on identity politics, but I do think that some communities across all identities have really funky relationships to technology. And I think that as technology sort of increases in its power, you know, in the sort of not going to make it idea, you know, what happens if like a community gets like a six month delay? What happens when the community gets a two year delay? So I think it’s really important. Also, you know, just the Silicon Valley-ism of like the future is here. It’s just not evenly distributed, right? Like to defang a technology is actually to expand and bring the future forward to communities that might be on the lagging tail of that. And I think that’s really, really powerful. I think for me in like the current phase of my life, that’s always been sort of in areas of like communication and brand design and to make things more approachable and to take away that Language of you’re not going to make it. Cause I think that’s actually disgusting language. But I think in the future, what I would love for it to be for myself is like, what are the policy paths that get Waymo into

Reggie James
That’s a good question. So I think the first thing I’d push back on is that the iPhone is very opinionated. You know, immediately, right, there’s sort of all these things, even if you just like look in your like pulled pull down quick settings, right, where the default is sort of let’s just Let’s just look at the defaults, right? Like the defaults when you receive your phone is that the ringer is on. The default is that there’s no focus mode on, right? Everything is about this sort of instantaneous ability for another hand to reach out and interact with you. And what’s really interesting about that is that you then have to go in and set all of these barriers to protect your own attention, which is really, really interesting, right? So the number, I would say the number one value of the phone, um, after like the sense of sort of like self-importance of like, I have this phone and now it’s giving me these abilities is Sort of, uh, instant reachability. Right. Which is a really like, especially as a New Yorker, right. Like the last thing you want anyone to do in New York is touch you, you know? But the iPhone tells you that’s the first thing. It goes back to intimacy at the top of the conversation, right? Yeah, 100%. You know, so I think, so that’s, so I would just push back that. I think the phone is like extremely opinionated. So then the thing about software and its affordances is that it has to stack on top of the values of the hardware. And this is why I say like hardware exists in our environment layer of, you know, Stuart Brand Pace layering, which means that software is a culture that is derivative of our hardware Layer of our environment. And so if the, let’s say the number one value of this, right, is this sense of reachability, it’s no coincidence that our killer apps are social media, which is all about reachability And spreading your identity. Right. And so the affordances sort of stack from its root all the way up. So I think we can push back. I think software is beautifully flexible. I think what we get stuck in, in venture mindset is a sense of scale, right? And so we kind of have perfect flexibility of affordances. Whether or not those things scale is a separate question, but we get stuck on good means scale. Like good design is scaled design. And I don’t, I don’t believe that’s true anymore. And if we want to reach out with new affordances, I think the joy of AI is going to be being able to spread the affordance landscape without worrying about scale because it’ll be so cheap To produce, you know, said interaction points.
Jackson Dahl
Affordances are also sort of

Reggie James
Trade-offs to your point. 100%. 100%. And it’s, it’s about restacking your own sort of like value pyramid, right? Like if every value pyramid starts with like reachability, that’s a really weird way to live. But if like, if your value pyramid starts with maybe prayer or contemplation, that’s going to inherently produce a whole new set of values that you would even want to stack on that. Because if your first value is prayer, then the next thing you want is not going to be reachability because you’re going to want to honor the value of prayer. Right. And so I think it’s, it’s really fun to play with sort of how these things stack on top of each other. Yeah.
Jackson Dahl
A couple of lines on that last note that I love from you. One, the image of our hardware is the image of all of our technologies. And two, we are fascinated by the functionality of objects,

Reggie James
Not to really zag on conversation, but you know, like the example, you know, the president and the homeless person drinks the same exact Coca-Cola, the president and the immigrant Coming to New York has the same exact iPhone. I think these are really powerful ideas. The ones that I’m really interested in right now is sort of around intelligence, around transportation. You know, I really, this actually kind of has like a reformed theological view on common grace which is like god’s mercy given to everyone through things happening in the world that Are positive to me i remember writing in a waymo for the first time and being like oh this is like proof god loves us because because growing growing

Reggie James
And this is, this to me is like the perfect, I just call it like a friction corridor of like payoff. Right? So it’s like the experience has to match the friction or input, and then you are sublime. If the friction is too high and the experience is too low, you’re rage quitting. Okay. This applies to parties. Oh my God. I mean, nothing is worse than putting in so much effort for a party that is buns.
Jackson Dahl
But meanwhile, a party where you have to drive two hours, Burning Man even, to take an extreme example, if it’s a ton of friction and it pays off, it’s the best party ever.
Reggie James
Yeah, best party ever. And the funny thing, and I think the environment we’re in now, is when something has no friction, but the experience is really high. That’s called addiction. There is no friction to consuming drugs. That’s the digital life. That is our digital lives. That’s our digital lives though. There is no friction to consuming drugs and the experience is incredible. And that’s why people can’t break out of it. In the same way, there’s no friction to consuming our phones, our current digital lives. And the experience is incredible. But that dopamine crash is really, really real. You know, and so I think about that a lot. I kind of like did a meta on the experience piece, but what was the core question?
Jackson Dahl
Well, the question was, how can technology objects make us feel? But I think your friction corridor is an interesting step towards that, at the very least.
Reggie James
Yeah, exactly. I think I’ve been kind of giving him compliments all day, but something I loved about Yatu and Norm’s USB club is that the friction

Reggie James
Progress does not exist in a vacuum. It’s like the contextual nature of the narrative that we place it in. Brand, I think at a very fundamental level is about symbolism and narrative, some sort of interplay between the two, still like working through these things. And I think as we’ve been talking about, like the cheapening of software means a more crowded environment, means a more noisy environment. And odds are they’re not going to be really even trying to say much, but it is going to fill the airwaves with static. And so if you can like sing a really tight melody, like if you can’t sing a bop, if you can’t give someone a really tight story, you’re equally going to be lost. So it’s almost like it’s a little bit of a first question is like, do you care for any type of residents? If the answer is no, like you’re just doing it for yourself, then that’s fine. Right. But if like you’re like a venture backed software company and you’re expecting some set of scale, brand can’t be an afterthought, right? Because I also think the interplay between brand, distribution and design are all in simpatico. I actually like tweeted something and Saleo kind of came after me, but I was like, all these things are the same practice and maybe we shouldn’t even break up these jobs.
Jackson Dahl
Because I think like, what to go to the original quote most of technology does not agree with or at least has not internalized that view i would i would just point out brand distribution
Reggie James
And design or they would not view those as the same things 100 but i think like design is determined through the understanding of distribution you know the eternal was a media company And it was a ai games company. And what’s funny is media, like kind of, you know, just video, let’s say, moves very differently than like distributing a game.

Reggie James
It’s sort of like the poly market prediction narrative, which is just like, you claim to be right, and you claim to know the future, put your money where your mouth is, right? That’s a really easy thing for someone to grog. It’s like speculation as a medium. Yeah, speculation as a medium, 100%. Yeah, that’s really well said. And I just don’t think that’s a hard thing for people to understand. I think what becomes really hard to understand is actually the same thing that makes sort of new hardware compared to the iPhone hard, right? Which is like, if I am currently receiving all the music in the world for 13 bucks a month, right? Or if I’m getting all the images in the world for free, and now this system is not only trying to like, pull me into something that doesn’t have the same supply side, which is changing my Experience, but now is also telling me that I need to pay more for less. That’s a really, really hard gamble, if you don’t have a strong narrative. You know, I think early versions of this creative narrative was sort of like this purchasing into access, this like closeness narrative, this sort of projection of being a super fan And that creating some sense of identity. I don’t think those have played out very well, but I think we can look at the ones that are working well.

Reggie James
It’s a really great mirror. And it’s, I remember I wrote this essay in college and this is, I think, when I learned that I enjoyed writing. And I talked about how, like the first times in history, when we put the like ruler’s face on coinage, which I think was in Rome, like we put like Caesar’s face on coinage, right? And what that did was

Reggie James
Then there’s the spiritual myth, right? Realizing that I have accepted that I’m a sinner and that I need redemption. Now what that does is it frees you from the idea that you can work your way to salvation, which is impossible. And it also changes the way that you look at technology to understand that like these hyper sort of, we are going to technically make all these things right. It’s folly. It’s vanity, which is how I was able to even get to the idea of like, why do people sort of start with fear mongering? Well, it’s to accumulate authority for themselves, right? Which is not about solving the issue. It’s fundamentally not about solving the issue. So then you’re left with that.

Reggie James
That is like a really deep radical act of generational thinking. It put themselves in the context of a longer timeline to give their kids the opportunity to go and do further radical things. I think a lot of the reasons why people like our age struggle with like getting married early or having kids early is from a very deeply selfish perspective. And it’s also from this like lie that they have to themselves around, um, like the financial necessity to have, like the financial, like if I can’t pay for my kid to go to like Chapin or Horace Mann, like their lives aren’t worth having, which is insane. It’s absolutely insane. And so the final myth is like, what, what am I really like here doing, you know? And to me, it comes down to this generational approach of what I can give my kids, which is not financial, although that’s part of the equation. I’m not minimizing that, but it’s about a deep sense of love. It’s about a deep sense of love for themselves. It’s about a deep sense of love for country, for God, for their neighbor.