0:01

Welcome to the three degrees of freedom

0:01

podcast, where we explore lifestyle

0:05

engineering with our expert guests to

0:05

bring you in alignment with your own

0:09

three degrees of freedom, location,

0:09

time, and financial independence.

0:14

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the show today.

0:17

We are excited to welcome Mr. Ben Pring to the show.

0:20

He's an acclaimed it

0:20

futurist and thought leader.

0:23

And Ben analyzes emerging trends in

0:23

business and technology from cloud

0:27

computing to AI, which is a hot topic.

0:29

These days, his insights on automation

0:29

and the future of work have been

0:33

featured in top publications like

0:33

the Harvard business review and the

0:37

financial times he's named a leading

0:37

management thinker by thinkers 50 and

0:41

Ben excels at seeing around corners.

0:44

Whether illuminating how digital is

0:44

changing organizations and, or in award

0:50

winning books, like what to do when

0:50

machines do everything or advising

0:54

global forums, like the Bilderberg,

0:54

his uncanny ability to decode the next

0:59

big thing makes him a sought after

0:59

voice on navigating the opportunities

1:03

and challenges ahead, Ben, hopefully

1:03

that was a good enough intro for you.

1:08

How is it? How are

1:09

you today? I'm good. Thank you, Derek. How you doing?

1:13

Very good. Very good. It's good to have you

1:13

on the show today, sir. So As I mentioned to you right before we

1:15

hit the record button There's always one

1:20

question that we like to ask every one

1:20

of our guests before we get going And

1:23

that is which of the three degrees of

1:23

freedom of location time and financial?

1:28

Do you feel that you're the strongest in right now? And which one do you

1:30

want to develop further?

1:32

Yeah, it's a great question the three

1:32

legs of that freedom still well, this

1:37

is apropos in a way, because I've just

1:37

broken away from corporate life to be in

1:42

essence a sort of freelance, independent,

1:42

a free radical in a way driven by that

1:47

kind of three legged stool that you

1:47

set up there, time, money, location I

1:52

suppose time in a way is the freedom

1:52

that I've sought by recently leaving

1:58

Gartner where I've been for a couple of

1:58

years in a second kind of go round there.

2:03

And setting up my own shingle

2:03

as a independent voice.

2:07

Yeah, I think time is probably the

2:07

value of time is probably a big

2:11

part of that drive to try and being

2:11

a free radical to be in charge of

2:16

one's own kind of destiny rather than

2:16

tied to the sort of corporate email.

2:20

Probably of the three I broke

2:20

away from a physical location

2:25

20 plus years ago, really. I've been working remotely from home long

2:27

before the the future of work work at

2:32

home kind of thing in the post COVID era.

2:34

I had that notion to arbitrage

2:34

a city salary and a remote

2:40

location quite a few years ago.

2:42

And you better not talk about

2:42

the money side of things but

2:45

time is certainly a big thing.

2:47

And I'm already seeing the benefit of that. I've long been a proponent of the notion

2:49

that you need to a vacuum to be able to.

2:53

think within, you need a blank slate.

2:56

And if your diary, if your schedule is

2:56

back to back on calls all day, talking to

3:00

clients and in a corporate role, sometimes

3:00

that's really what gets compressed.

3:06

And I think ultimately probably to

3:06

your own personal dissatisfaction

3:10

and probably not to the benefit

3:10

of the organization that's paying

3:13

you to think in the first place.

3:15

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. And I think we're going to talk about

3:17

that a little bit more, but I just

3:20

wanted to underscore once again that

3:20

every time I talk with someone, the

3:25

underlying degree of freedom that

3:25

people feel that they're most attracted

3:29

to or drawn to is time, because time

3:29

is that ultimate leveler, right?

3:34

It's, I don't want to say that it's

3:34

completely easy to get wealth, right?

3:39

Or to get financial freedom because it's

3:39

not, there is definitely some hurdles

3:42

there and there's things you have to do. But once you figure out the formula and

3:43

you are able to repeat that and stick with

3:47

it, it's something that more or less you

3:47

can copy and paste over and over again.

3:50

At least that's the way that I

3:50

understand it and have seen it work.

3:53

But time freedom is much different

3:53

in the fact that You do have a finite

3:59

amount of it, and there are things

3:59

we can do with our health and some

4:02

of our life choices that can make

4:02

it attenuate a little bit more, but

4:06

time is the ultimate currency, right? I know you wanted to say something about

4:10

that. No, I think that's exactly right. I think you put it very well, Derek.

4:12

And again, I think that was one of the

4:12

drivers for me when I moved from the

4:17

UK, from London to the States almost

4:17

25 years ago, was I was so tied into a

4:23

kind of city based commute in London.

4:25

Whereas when I came to the States

4:25

and I managed to break away from the

4:29

city, working remotely, spending a

4:29

lot of time traveling, but killing

4:33

that commute, I very much thought that

4:33

was that time saving was incredibly

4:39

valuable to me when I had a young family.

4:42

Being around the family was the time

4:42

that time was invaluable and then the

4:47

time to work out the time to think the

4:47

time not to be on a train or in a car in

4:52

a commute that was extremely valuable.

4:54

And I think more and more, as you say, more and more people have appreciated that.

4:57

I've also observed in, in my. Corporate journey that as you get more

4:59

senior and as your time becomes more

5:05

valuable to the corporation, and as

5:05

your diary is scheduled back to back.

5:11

In fact, that time that you

5:11

have for yourself as a person,

5:15

people throw that time away. They throw, they, they don't value it

5:17

in the way that you're trying to set

5:21

up here, which I think is correct. They throw that away.

5:24

And of course, that's one of the

5:24

great regrets that many people have

5:26

when they get to, the end of their

5:26

journey, their end of their career.

5:29

Did I really need to, work

5:29

that Sunday morning shift?

5:33

Did I really need to stay

5:33

in the office till 11?

5:35

Of course, many people get off on that

5:35

and there's, rewards to that financially.

5:40

Intellectually in terms of the ladder,

5:40

but no, I think you're absolutely right.

5:44

And I think, in fact, looking at a, a

5:44

lot of the sort of younger generation

5:47

coming into the workforce, I think they've

5:47

got a better appreciation of that kind

5:51

of balance between their own personal

5:51

time and what that's really worth.

5:56

And then their commitment

5:56

to to, to the corporation.

6:00

I think that's an interesting sea

6:00

change that's going on at the moment.

6:03

Yeah I definitely can feel

6:03

it because, as I'm talking to

6:06

you right now, I am just under 40

6:06

years old and me and my cohort of

6:12

millennials is what you'd call them. They were always lambasted by some of

6:14

the older generations Oh man, these

6:17

people are lazy or they're looking. It's just a different way of thinking.

6:20

And then Gen Z, which is

6:20

behind us is even beyond that.

6:24

So just out of curiosity, I know that

6:24

you're looking at what AI is doing

6:29

and what all of these technologies are

6:29

doing, but there's also a demographic

6:32

shift with the culture and the ability

6:32

for younger people to adopt some

6:36

of these technologies earlier on. And it's already starting to have

6:38

an impact on kids and their parents.

6:41

And, their parents even, the grandparents

6:41

of the younger generation these days.

6:45

So the question is. You have this book, What To Do When

6:48

Machines Do Everything, and I want to

6:54

try to understand what type of things you

6:54

discover in that book, or what are some

6:58

of the common themes that you're seeing

6:58

for the younger working generations, and

7:02

what do you think we should be ready for? What's out there for us?

7:04

Yeah. No, it's a great question. It's a very interesting way

7:06

to put it to frame it in that

7:09

demographic shift context.

7:11

I think that's very insightful of

7:11

you to frame it in that way, because

7:15

there's so much existential angst

7:15

among the intelligentsia and the

7:22

sort of talking head community.

7:25

I've said this for a while. There are so many people

7:27

forecasting the end of the world.

7:31

And they typically tend to

7:31

be people that skew older.

7:35

And I've long said to them, it's

7:35

not the end of the world, but it

7:38

might be the end of your world. Because they're aging out and I've

7:41

personally, I'm quite a bit older

7:45

than you, I'm in my early 60s and

7:45

I've personally been very conscious

7:50

of not aging out, of not trying to

7:50

fall, falling into that trap of of

7:55

seeing all this new technology and

7:55

these new kind of approaches, these

8:01

new aesthetic, if you like as a

8:01

disaster in the end of the world.

8:04

Because it's not, it's just the world is changing. The world has always changed.

8:08

Anybody with any familiarity with

8:08

history at all and, what's come before

8:12

them can see how different the world

8:12

was 50 years ago, 100 years ago.

8:17

There's nothing platonically

8:17

right about that world.

8:20

There's nothing platonically right. about the world that's coming.

8:22

It's just the world is always changing

8:22

and I think that existential fear

8:28

that a lot of people have around

8:28

AI and what it's going to do.

8:31

I don't think young people, by and

8:31

large are as freaked out as it,

8:36

because they're the proverbial,

8:36

frogs in the boiling pan of water.

8:39

They've been getting used to this. They're using filters on

8:41

their phone, all driven by AI.

8:44

They're using TikTok, all driven by AI.

8:47

AI is just a tool within that environment.

8:50

And I think, smart people are going

8:50

to figure out how to use these tools

8:54

for their own advantage in the way

8:54

that somebody my age, figured out

8:57

how to use the tools available to me. Somebody of your age figured out

8:59

how to use the tools of of your age.

9:03

And I think young people Of

9:03

course, there's challenges.

9:07

There's a lot of issues in the world

9:07

just as there's always have been,

9:11

but I think young people have the

9:11

means of production to put it in kind

9:15

of economic theory terms, literally

9:15

in the palm of their hands now.

9:20

In a way that previous generations

9:20

haven't had you don't need

9:24

a big data center nowadays. You don't need a huge

9:25

factory to produce anything.

9:28

It's all here on your phone. It's all here on your computer.

9:31

And a lot of the technology within that is

9:31

going to enable young people, a creative

9:37

imagination, to come up with all sorts of

9:37

things which will take the world forward

9:41

and solve a lot of the problems that my

9:41

generation are going to leave behind.

9:45

I think to summarize all of that and

9:45

get back to your kind of key question of

9:49

what to do when machines do everything,

9:49

there's a great quote that we that we

9:54

have in the book which is not our quote,

9:54

but it's either a journalist called

9:58

Kevin Kelly, who was the founding editor

9:58

of Wired Magazine a long time ago.

10:02

He said this very well, and we

10:02

reference it in the book, which

10:05

is that the future of your work,

10:05

whatever it is you do, is X plus AI.

10:12

X being what you do.

10:14

You're a doctor, you're a teacher,

10:14

you're a politician, you're

10:17

a podcaster, you're a writer. It's X, that's your thing.

10:21

Add AI to that and that's how

10:21

you get to the next performance

10:25

threshold of what it is you do. And it's a very simple kind

10:27

of idea, very simple formula.

10:31

But it's really saying

10:31

don't fight the technology.

10:34

Don't think that this

10:34

is here to destroy you.

10:36

That's the kind of science fiction trope

10:36

that's lazy and not really very accurate.

10:41

But use this technology to, to

10:41

do the thing that you want to do.

10:46

If you're a musician, an actor,

10:46

a filmmaker, a An accountant, a

10:50

lawyer, whatever it is, use the

10:50

technology to do that work better.

10:55

And I think if you do that, young

10:55

people, people your age there's

10:58

tremendous opportunity ahead.

11:01

Yeah, no I completely agree with you. And I think that you said it very well.

11:04

I love the X plus AI or the X.

11:06

Plus whatever it is that you're doing.

11:09

And the people that are embracing that

11:09

right now have an unfair advantage

11:12

over others because it's a very early

11:12

type of space and we've been talking

11:16

about this and there's clearly demand.

11:19

Cause if you watched open AI, when

11:19

they when they first started, the

11:22

number of users was crashing the system

11:22

and Microsoft had to come in with

11:26

a bailout package to help supplant,

11:26

supplant the technology and help them

11:29

with legal and all of that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. The scale.

11:32

And so it's definitely there. And what I hear from this

11:34

also is that whatever it is

11:38

that you do as a human being. You're going to use AI to augment

11:40

what you do, and maybe the output

11:45

of what you perform is going to take

11:45

less time, so it's going to be, it's

11:48

going to lead to more productivity. But, at the same time, is there a

11:51

point, you think, Ben, that we rely

11:55

too much on some of these technologies?

11:57

And if there is some sort of electrical

11:57

failure or something like this where

12:02

there's a truly great human crisis, I'm

12:02

not sure if this is Do you think that

12:08

we'd be able to lose the ability to,

12:08

I don't know, take care of ourselves?

12:12

Is there a danger of being over reliant

12:12

on this type of technology in your eyes?

12:16

Yeah, no, it's a great

12:16

question and it's something

12:19

that yeah, it does worry me. It's something that does concern me.

12:22

We're becoming so reliant on technology

12:22

particularly in this sort of cloud

12:26

based model where everything is in

12:26

the cloud and everything is, your

12:29

passwords are all remotely on your

12:29

device and and clearly cyber security

12:34

continues to be an unfixed problem.

12:37

We haven't solved cyber security.

12:39

It's been an issue. As long as anyone can imagine,

12:40

remember, but it's still a big problem.

12:45

At the moment, you probably saw last

12:45

week, there was a story around a

12:49

CFO a fake CFO requesting a transfer

12:49

of money within a corporation,

12:55

and it all went through because. The the deep fake CFO was so good

12:57

that the kind of the employee

13:02

went through that process. So that's a real issue.

13:04

And I've long said that we're

13:04

building this future of work

13:07

on very flimsy foundations. I think big corporations, governments

13:09

need, although they spend quite

13:14

a bit on cyber security, you'd be

13:14

surprised how little relative to market

13:18

capitalization relative their overall

13:18

technology spending they spend on cyber.

13:23

So that's that's a goldmine. In fact, relating that answer to the

13:24

previous question, there's a great

13:29

quote from a guy called Aaron Levy,

13:29

who's the CEO of Box, the cloud

13:34

security cloud storage company.

13:37

He said a few years ago, if you want

13:37

a job for the next five years work

13:40

in tech, but if you wanted a job for

13:40

life, work in cyber security yeah,

13:45

I think that's that's a real issue. And of course there are many aspects

13:47

of this sort of digital world that,

13:50

again, a sort of alarming and scary.

13:54

Some of your listeners may be

13:54

familiar with, the book Surveillance

13:58

Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff

13:58

from Harvard Business School.

14:01

It's a real kind of critique of the way

14:01

that our personal data is being monetized

14:08

by big corporations at the moment. And I personally, again, I've

14:10

aligned myself with that.

14:14

thought. Yeah, so there is a, there is clearly

14:14

a lot of kind of errors for concern, a

14:20

lot of sort of negative aspects to this. But again, I've always posed this

14:22

question in the context that, oftentimes

14:27

the debate is between the utopians.

14:30

And the dystopians, and now the modern

14:30

parlance seems to be changing to

14:35

between the accelerants and the de

14:35

decelerators, if you if people are

14:39

familiar with that debate that's going

14:39

on in Silicon Valley at the moment.

14:43

But I've always felt that's a

14:43

kind of false dichotomy in a

14:46

way, because we all know that in

14:46

history it was the plague and war.

14:53

But people fell in love,

14:53

got drunk, had a good time.

14:56

So it was bad and good. We all know today there's terrible

14:58

things happening in the world today.

15:02

But people fall in love,

15:02

get drunk, have a good time.

15:05

So if that's true of the past

15:05

and the present, why is the

15:09

future going to be either or? It's going to be both.

15:13

It's going to be full of terrible things.

15:15

But people are going to fall in

15:15

love, get drunk and have a good time.

15:19

And that's true. And so if you follow that metaphor,

15:19

that's true in technology is going

15:23

to begat wonderful things and it's

15:23

going to begat terrible things.

15:27

But, c'est la vie.

15:29

Yeah. That's what happens because

15:29

technology it, it's scale.

15:32

And I remember an old chart in my

15:32

business school when I was going

15:35

to business school and there was

15:35

a chart of the different systems.

15:40

Historically in human kind, right?

15:43

And it was a chart like this. I distinctly remember it.

15:45

And there were like

15:45

different colored lines.

15:47

There was a yellow line for government

15:47

growth, over a period of time.

15:52

Then there was another line for

15:52

cultural growth, meaning, number

15:55

of people impacted and ability

15:55

is, the ability for people to to.

16:00

To change who they are

16:00

to adapt to the times.

16:02

And then there's economic growth, right? And then there was one curve, there

16:04

was technological growth, that wasn't

16:08

a straight line, but it was more like

16:08

a hockey stick that was going up.

16:11

And we've already gotten to this

16:11

point, Ben, I think in my life, where

16:15

technology is outpacing political

16:15

systems, it's outpacing monetary

16:20

systems, it's outpacing everything. And information is everywhere now.

16:25

And when information is everywhere,

16:25

it accelerates The ability for

16:29

people to make decisions quicker. And when we make decisions

16:31

quicker, the world changes faster.

16:34

And one thing, I guess where I'm

16:34

leading to with this is that this

16:38

is just my basic understanding. I'd love you to jump in and

16:39

say, if that's not right, but

16:43

I am in the real estate sector.

16:45

And what I used to use, I

16:45

used to work in oil and gas.

16:49

These two sectors are some of the most

16:49

oldest and some of the most antiquated

16:54

things that have not adopted with AI or

16:54

have not embraced some of this technology.

16:58

And they're even resistant to go to

16:58

desktop machines and start doing remote

17:02

work situations at all in this situation.

17:05

My thought is because this is a

17:05

real estate investor show where

17:08

most of the people that listen

17:08

to this isn't is real estate.

17:11

How do you think artificial intelligence

17:11

is going to help transform the game for

17:17

real estate investors who want to find

17:17

properties to buy or looking for or

17:23

agents, for instance, that are looking,

17:23

they're buying and selling properties more

17:25

towards the investors, though, is what

17:27

we're looking at. Obviously this is a, as I'm sure most of

17:29

your guests and most of your audience talk

17:33

about and think about this is clearly a

17:33

tough time for commercial real estate.

17:37

This whole work from home revolution

17:37

has really changed the underlying

17:41

fundamental, fundamentals of the business.

17:44

And I think it's going to take,

17:44

frankly, quite a bit of time

17:47

for that to work its way out for

17:47

valuations to reset, perhaps to actual

17:52

physical spaces to be repurposed.

17:55

So it's a tricky one. And I think that's probably a medium term.

18:01

Dynamic. It's not going to be fixed

18:02

in the next year or two. It's going to take take

18:04

quite a long period of time.

18:07

Again, I'm not one of those that

18:07

think that the office is dead.

18:11

I'm not one of those that thinks that the

18:11

sort of central business district is dead.

18:15

I do think there's clearly a

18:15

reconfiguration of what that physical

18:18

space looks like, how we use it. Again, I've long thought that the

18:21

office is really for three things.

18:25

The physical office, if you

18:25

like, is for three things.

18:28

It's it's a showroom, if you like. It's, where you bring your

18:30

clients to impress them.

18:33

It's an R& D facility. It's where people come together to cook

18:34

the secret sauce of whatever it is you do.

18:39

And then it's a clubhouse. It's a social space.

18:42

And my observation, prior to Covid was

18:42

that most offices in most kind of western

18:49

business areas, London, New York wherever

18:49

the office wa was not really optimized

18:56

for any one of those three things. It was optimized for a

18:58

sort of mishmash of that.

19:01

It wasn't really very

19:01

impressive for the client.

19:03

It wasn't really a very nice space for

19:03

people to be, and it wasn't really a very

19:07

nice sort of social space to hang out

19:07

in, and I think what the reconfiguration

19:12

of the office in the next few years may

19:12

be is to be much more precise in because

19:18

it might not be in one physical office. You might have a.

19:21

A, a small showroom, you might have a

19:21

kind of r and d space out in the suburbs.

19:25

You might have a party space, a social

19:25

space where people would come together

19:29

in a kind of cool part of town. So I think that reconfiguration

19:30

is gonna take a long time.

19:33

But in terms of how AI can help I think

19:33

one of the obvious things to talk about,

19:38

this week, the week after the Apple

19:38

vr, I was just about to mention that.

19:44

Yeah. Lenses to mention. People are talking about the Yes.

19:46

The potential for that. To do physical virtual walkthroughs,

19:48

physical space, to be able to

19:51

design in the VR environment.

19:54

I think there's a huge potential

19:54

there, and I think that's gonna Clearly

19:58

show up in commercial real estate. It'll probably show up in high

19:59

end residential initially and then

20:03

probably permeate down into sort of

20:03

the more of the high end mid market,

20:07

but no, that's going to be huge. And clearly already, there's quite

20:09

a lot of that going on in terms of

20:12

virtual representations of physical

20:12

spaces, but that 2D experience,

20:17

that flat experience you have on a

20:17

computer when you walk through an

20:20

office or a home, obviously done.

20:24

In a completely immersed 3D environment,

20:24

that could be huge and then think about

20:29

that space again, I touched on this

20:29

earlier when I talked about the sort

20:33

of belief in the need for a vacuum to

20:33

think you need time, space to think

20:39

about what that vacuum of VR is going to

20:39

create, that's a new kind of environment

20:45

that the human imagination is going

20:45

to fill, think about the overlay of

20:50

information of all sorts of things,

20:50

music, vibe one day we'll be buying

20:55

houses in that kind of environment. Oh yeah.

20:57

Selling, selling, real estate

20:57

in those sorts of environments.

21:00

So yeah, that's again, that's science

21:00

fiction as of now, but I think

21:05

it's going to be, reality sooner

21:05

perhaps than some people imagine.

21:09

Yeah.

21:10

Like some of the things that

21:10

I've been seeing some ideas out there is

21:12

like, why even Go on vacation to Italy

21:12

or go anywhere because you can sit in.

21:18

And another reason, another thing

21:18

I wanted to point out here, and I'm

21:21

curious your thought on it is that

21:21

obviously malls across the United States

21:24

have been doing poorly because mainly,

21:24

partly because of Amazon and because

21:31

the ability to buy things online. So now you don't have to

21:32

go to a physical mall.

21:35

You have a virtual mall where you

21:36

can buy stuff, right? Yeah, no, that's gonna be huge.

21:39

And I think I still think there will

21:39

be a significant role for the physical

21:46

in person experience, both in tourism,

21:46

in vacations and in retail as well.

21:52

In fact, I think you

21:52

could draw a parallel.

21:55

Between this moment and the emergence

21:55

of TV, mass market TV because, again,

22:03

when TV started becoming more mass

22:03

market, more people had TVs all of

22:08

the big sports leagues around the

22:08

world were very worried that if the

22:12

games on the TV, nobody's going to

22:12

come to the stadium to see the games.

22:18

But if you fast forward 50 years and what

22:18

actually happened was seeing the game

22:22

on TV made you want to go to the game

22:22

Increase the desire to be there in person

22:30

and I think the same sort of You know

22:30

surprise might happen in VR you might go

22:36

to Florence VR Or you might go to the mall

22:36

in VR but as, as long as that experience

22:44

is cool and you really want to do it,

22:44

then you're going to want to go there

22:49

physically in the real world as well. I think the problem, for many of

22:50

the malls, the collapsing malls

22:54

in America is just those physical

22:54

experiences have degraded so much

22:59

over the last generation or two. Because.

23:03

Again, there's been a short termism

23:03

in terms of the investment profile for

23:07

lots of the supermarkets, the retailers

23:07

that, again, I've said this, there's

23:11

a paradox or a contrast you can see

23:11

if you go into, a local pharmacy and

23:19

you walk up and down the aisles and

23:19

you don't know what you're looking for

23:22

something you don't know where it is. If you try and find somebody in

23:24

that store to ask, good luck to you.

23:28

There's nobody there. If you go into an Apple store you're

23:29

overwhelmed by how many people are

23:34

working there in the Apple store.

23:36

And the reason for that is because

23:36

the pharmacy didn't automate away.

23:42

the elements of the transaction or

23:42

the experience that they could and

23:47

so they relied on people to do things

23:47

that computers and automation could

23:52

do much better and so if you go to

23:52

an apple store all the transactional

23:57

elements of it have been automated

23:57

away you just have a human experience

24:01

and it's a cool experience whereas

24:01

if you go into that pharmacy You're

24:06

not having a human experience because

24:06

the people there are basically doing

24:10

robotic work, acting as machines on DSO.

24:14

I think within that sort of

24:14

compare and contrast again

24:17

is a story about the future. Automate away.

24:20

The boring robotic elements where

24:20

people are just bad robots and allow

24:26

people to be people, good humans,

24:26

giving people good human experiences.

24:31

And that's the way I imagine a VR

24:31

environment and an IRL environment

24:36

ultimately continue to coexist.

24:39

That's amazing. Just a small story here. When my wife and I, we went to Lisbon

24:41

to do some, to kick off some of our

24:44

digital nomadism back a couple of

24:44

years ago and COVID, Japan was closed.

24:48

So we decided to go to Europe. And when we went to Europe.

24:52

There was we had never, I had

24:52

never seen it before because we

24:55

had never been to McDonald's. Like we usually never go there.

24:58

But in, yeah, it's different in Europe

24:58

and we were just curious like what the

25:01

experience was like in Europe and so we

25:04

went It's so much more automated there. Yes. Yeah.

25:06

Yeah, that's exactly, so we

25:06

went up there, there was like screens.

25:09

There was like, there was really nice screens. It was clean and taken care of.

25:12

And it smelled nice. Like it didn't smell like, someone had

25:13

dropped a patty and let it rot on the

25:17

floor like it does in the United States.

25:19

Yeah. And so then when I came back to the

25:19

U S I noticed the same thing there.

25:22

And so I'm starting to

25:22

see some of that there

25:24

now. That's right. McDonald's and others are bringing

25:27

that into the States, but certainly

25:30

in Europe, that's, and in Japan,

25:30

you mentioned Japan, that's been

25:33

quite common for quite a while. The company that's doing best

25:35

here, and again, there's a

25:38

bridge between Japan and the U.

25:40

S., is Uniqlo. people go into Uniqlo where, you

25:41

basically pick out your shirt and

25:45

your pants or whatever you're gonna

25:45

buy, put them in a little basket and

25:50

then you go to the checkout and you

25:50

put the basket in a little reader and

25:54

there's no human interaction involved.

25:56

And I asked some of the people

25:56

working there, do you feel put out?

25:59

Do you feel that you're your

25:59

job's been destroyed by this.

26:03

And they didn't feel that at all. They didn't care that the transactional

26:04

elements of it was taken away from them

26:08

because it actually allowed them to

26:08

deal with people, talk to people more.

26:13

It made their jobs better.

26:15

Yeah, absolutely. It's so great. Now this is a good segue into kind of.

26:20

The future, obviously, we've been

26:20

talking about the present and some

26:23

of the things and I still want to

26:23

talk a little bit about the past.

26:26

I've got two more questions for you. But this first one is, what do you

26:27

think gives you optimism about human

26:32

potential in this age of intelligent

26:32

machines that Quite frankly will

26:38

become more intelligent than us, and

26:38

they're already getting to that point.

26:41

What's there to look forward to? ?

26:44

Ben: So much. I, one of my favorite quotes

26:44

people will know the painter, the

26:48

Spanish painter, Pablo Picasso. In 1967, he said Computers are useless.

26:55

They only give us answers. And I think if you fast forward 50

26:59

years plus computers are a lot more

27:03

powerful than they were in Picasso's

27:03

day, but they're still useless because.

27:09

We ask the questions. And I think as long as we

27:11

ask the questions, then these

27:15

things are just our tools. They're just here to help us.

27:19

And the great genius of people,

27:19

and it's been true for however many

27:24

years we've been on this earth.

27:26

And I think it's, I think it's true

27:26

for the in Discernment Future is that

27:31

every answer that's given to you by a

27:31

teacher, by a podcaster, by a computer,

27:40

just generates the next question. And that ability to ask the

27:42

next question, that's really the

27:47

route to commercial security to

27:47

personal happiness, fulfillment.

27:54

It's that ability to

27:54

keep on asking questions.

27:56

Curiosity, I think, is the

27:56

fundamental, unquenchable, unfillable

28:02

sort of aspect of humanity.

28:05

That gives me hope because we'll

28:05

always continue to want to know

28:08

what's around the riverbend and even

28:08

these incredible, powerful tools

28:12

can give us, answers in a way that

28:12

Picasso could never have imagined.

28:16

I think I'm pretty convinced, pretty

28:16

confident that humans will begin,

28:22

will continue to be able to answer. Ask those questions that that

28:24

give them, their route forward.

28:28

Yeah, I love it. I think that it's maybe is the

28:29

right way to say it is that the

28:33

humans are supplying the art. It's the creativity and

28:35

it's the humanism, right?

28:37

That, and the machines are

28:37

just executing on that, or is

28:39

that, is that accurate? There's a great, if the musician

28:40

producer music producer, Brian Eno,

28:44

who worked with U2 and Coldplay

28:44

and a bunch of other people.

28:48

There's a lovely thing he said a few

28:48

years ago, is that the the real impact

28:51

of computer sequences in music is

28:51

that they replace skill with judgment.

28:59

And think about that for a moment. What he's saying is that, prior to

29:00

computers, you'd have to learn to play the

29:04

piano, and that would take you, 15 years.

29:07

Tremendous skill to be able to do that,

29:07

but now that's all just on a computer.

29:13

But what now you have, the issue is if you

29:13

go on to garage band or you go on to a pro

29:18

tools or in the music creation devices,

29:18

you've got so many choices, so many

29:24

options, but your contribution, your real

29:24

value add as the human in that environment

29:30

is saying that's good and that's not good.

29:32

And I like that. And that doesn't work.

29:34

And I want those two things

29:34

together, that judgment.

29:37

I think that's again,

29:37

judgment plus curiosity.

29:40

That's the human quality. Even as these tools get more and

29:43

more important, I think that's really

29:47

what the premium, the valuation,

29:47

the monetization for humans is.

29:51

I don't really, the second music

29:51

becomes exclusively produced by an ai.

29:57

I think the value of that music will

29:57

be, nothing, it'll be valueless.

30:02

And I think the again the sort

30:02

of paradox in all of this is that

30:06

actually the value of the human.

30:09

The monetization potential for

30:09

the human and that very AI infused

30:14

environment is actually higher. Because, you can go to a million

30:16

elevators today and there's Muzak there.

30:23

But that Muzak's worth very

30:23

little, Bruce Springsteen or

30:26

Taylor Swift is worth a fortune.

30:28

That's the way I think about it. I

30:30

love it. I love it. Man, this is so good.

30:32

I have to add one more question before

30:32

we start to head into the final part of

30:36

the show, but I'm going to ask you the

30:36

second to last question now, which is

30:40

lessons from history, because obviously

30:40

you've been doing this for quite some

30:44

time you've had a lot of experience in

30:44

these cycles because there's been, Rapid

30:48

technological change since the 90s, right? And even before that, there's

30:50

been a lot of change that

30:52

just wasn't, openly visible. Yeah.

30:55

Can you what perspective

30:55

can history provide?

30:59

Looking backward on navigating the current

30:59

shifts that we're seeing going forward.

31:03

You touched on television. Yeah, and promote work what type

31:05

of things do you think we can

31:07

infer going about the future?

31:09

No, it's a great question Derek

31:09

and I think that's again a very good way

31:12

to think about the future is to map it

31:12

to history and so things have happened

31:16

before and I think in tech in This whole

31:16

AI discussion, there is a very good

31:21

historical model that we can apply,

31:21

which is actually very relatively recent.

31:26

I was the first technology analyst

31:26

to write about what we now know

31:31

as cloud computing back in 1997.

31:34

The language was slightly different. People called these cloud and software

31:35

as a service different things.

31:39

But I started picking up on this and

31:39

writing about this in Gartner in 97.

31:43

And if you think about 97 to 2000, what

31:43

we 2004 now, that's 20 what, 25, 26 years.

31:53

Oh my gosh. Unbelievable. No, it's more than that.

31:56

It's 20, 27 years now. But if you think about.

31:59

Cloud in 1997 was this crazy idea, it

31:59

was a, fringe idea, it was the complete

32:06

antithesis of the way that computing

32:06

was done then, and for many years it

32:11

was ridiculed, and people thought it was

32:11

rubbish, and I used to talk about cloud

32:16

computing, and people would say, what

32:16

are you smoking, and, walk the other way.

32:20

And slowly the technology matured the

32:20

technology changed and got better.

32:26

The economics of it changed, got better.

32:29

And, fast forward to today. The cloud is, is everywhere, it runs

32:31

everything and the companies that really

32:36

got behind that, Microsoft and Amazon, et

32:36

cetera, et cetera, the biggest companies

32:40

in the world, but the people might be

32:40

familiar with the Gartner hype cycle,

32:45

this notion that we get very excited

32:45

and then we go off it and it goes down

32:50

again, interest goes down and then

32:50

slowly it becomes more and more mature.

32:55

And it enters the era of Gartner

32:55

called the plateau of productivity

32:59

when it becomes a real thing, a

32:59

real tool that people can use.

33:03

And I think that model, which took

33:03

sort of 25 years in with the cloud

33:10

probably by about year 12, year 15, it

33:10

was apparent this was going to happen.

33:15

It wasn't just an idea that was

33:15

going to be consigned to history

33:18

was going to happen, but that way.

33:21

25 years really took to unfold from

33:21

a tiny little kind of seed, tiny

33:27

little acorn to being a huge oak tree.

33:31

I think that wave, that curve is exactly

33:31

what's going to happen with AI as well.

33:39

And we're at the moment in

33:39

this sort of Again, peak of

33:41

inflated expectation has gone.

33:43

He's using the phrase. We're all jazzed up about it.

33:46

As you mentioned, the GPT 4 and GPT 3.

33:52

5 and chat GPT, that kind of everybody

33:52

got everybody's attention and

33:56

everybody's been excited about it. We're probably going to have

33:58

a bit of a backlash against

34:00

that in the next year or two. Where some of that initial hype doesn't

34:03

play out, but then it's going to rise and

34:09

I'm going to be completely foundational

34:09

to the next stage of evolution of

34:14

tech and business and of our world.

34:17

And but I, I think a lot of people

34:17

probably don't appreciate fully.

34:23

from a time perspective, how

34:23

long that's going to take.

34:26

I think it's not going to be 25 years.

34:28

It's going to happen more quickly

34:28

because to your earlier point,

34:32

technology compounds and we get into

34:32

this hockey stick exponential curve.

34:36

So I think it's arguable. It happens more quickly, but

34:37

it doesn't happen overnight.

34:40

It's not a black or white thing. And again, I think for the younger

34:42

folks, potentially listening

34:45

to this or even somebody in. Mid career, you have more time

34:47

than you think, this isn't like

34:52

something you've got to crack

34:52

tomorrow morning or next quarter.

34:55

But at the same time, if you think

34:55

this is something, Oh, we can get

34:58

to this next year or the year after,

34:58

and we can be a fast follower and

35:03

we can ignore it for the moment. That's a mistake as well.

35:06

It's a judicious balance

35:06

between realizing.

35:09

This is going to take a while to play

35:09

out as long as we're playing the game.

35:14

That's the sort of combination. I think it makes sense.

35:16

It makes sense. Cause I think it's because all those human

35:17

systems, the political, the educational,

35:21

the monetary, they all have to like line

35:21

up for mass adoption to happen is really

35:25

like the technology's there, but the. Human beings can only change and adopt so

35:29

much. Yeah, and that's completely, that's

35:30

very true in sort of corporate world

35:33

where, again, the sunk cost of legacy

35:33

IT prevents people moving to the next

35:39

wave of IT and then, go to your local

35:39

DMV to try and renew your, driver's

35:44

license and you see how slowly big.

35:47

Bureaucratic organizations really

35:47

move and yeah, so it is going to

35:50

take a longer time than some people

35:50

imagine, but again, I think that's

35:55

gives, somebody who's thinking about

35:55

this now, what could we, how could we

35:58

deploy this in the real estate world? How could we deploy this in

36:00

management of a reach portfolio?

36:04

Think of it. Yeah, absolutely. Be focused on that now.

36:08

That it might not be material and a

36:08

game changer next year But if in five

36:13

years if you haven't done anything at

36:13

all Then you're going to be you know,

36:17

you're going to be sears rather than

36:17

amazon, you know in that metaphor.

36:21

I love

36:21

it I love it You know, it's so

36:21

funny I couldn't help but also think

36:24

about cryptocurrency and how it started

36:24

also back then and it was a fantastic

36:28

idea and it was back in like I think it

36:28

was founded around the crisis, right?

36:34

Like 2010, I think, right

36:34

around after the 2008 crash.

36:37

Yeah. And I can't help but think

36:38

about 25 years later that'll be

36:41

2035 or somewhere in that era.

36:45

And that's about right. That's about where I think

36:46

that I don't know, it's.

36:49

You can say whatever you want about crypto. I don't want to put you on the spot

36:50

about what your opinion is on that.

36:53

But I do, I think the idea is solid.

36:56

And I think as a younger person, the idea

36:56

that we're trusting the Fed, which is

37:01

just a group of guys getting together and

37:01

saying, yeah, interest rates are too high.

37:04

Let's do that. There's no algorithm, no rules, no way to

37:04

hack the system like some people are doing

37:09

right now I feel like some younger people

37:09

are more willing to buy into that system

37:14

Which will then take momentum and get

37:14

there, but that's just my thought about

37:18

Yeah, Bitcoin and crypto. It's a complicated one in a way

37:20

It's more complicated than they

37:23

are in some ways and I'm I wouldn't

37:23

call myself a crypto evangelist

37:28

I've I've been joking for a while. It's, NFTs really stands for non fungible

37:30

tulips, if people know the tulip history.

37:37

But I do think there's something

37:37

interesting going on there and some

37:39

people may be familiar with Chris Dixon.

37:42

He's got a new book out last week

37:42

called Read Write Own, which is about

37:46

the next wave of what A blockchain

37:46

model can do to to the internet.

37:51

And there's something very

37:51

interesting in that but you're right.

37:54

The initial Satoshi idea of

37:54

of Bitcoin was really a middle

37:59

finger to the man, if you like.

38:02

And of course the man isn't

38:02

gonna, sit back and let.

38:05

So yeah, things they can

38:05

be taken away from it.

38:08

And so there's been lots of initiatives

38:08

by the big commercial banks by the

38:12

Fed to have their own version of this

38:12

to essentially, to co opt the idea.

38:17

And of course, that's been the death of it. And then all of the all of the NFT

38:19

stuff and that, that bubble again, I

38:24

think that's turned a lot of people off. So I think that's a longer term trend.

38:29

Again, it fits in this hype cycle model.

38:33

It's an interesting one and I think it's

38:33

going to be a kind of holy religious war.

38:37

that continues to be fought for

38:37

quite a long time between the

38:41

evangelists and the skeptics.

38:43

So I, my son's often said, I should

38:43

have had more money in crypto.

38:47

And I pointed out to him, we'd

38:47

be We'd be living in in a shack

38:51

probably if we'd done that. Yeah, that's right.

38:52

It depends on when you bought

38:52

and sold, but yeah, it's part of

38:54

that deal with craze basically. But yeah, no I was just curious your

38:56

thoughts on that and I had to ask.

38:59

But I think, because we're rounding

38:59

up towards the end of the show,

39:02

I want to get to our last segment

39:02

here, which is five questions.

39:06

We ask every one of our guests and you've

39:06

got 30 seconds to answer each question.

39:11

Great. Does that work? Are you ready? Sounds good.

39:14

All right, let's do the rapid round. First question, name any resource

39:15

that was or is essential still in your

39:20

journey to pursuing all this freedom.

39:24

What a great question. I think the ultimate freedom comes

39:26

from knowledge and the ultimate

39:33

source of knowledge comes from books.

39:36

Even in 2024. So you can see some of my books on the

39:37

bookshelf there, but reading really

39:43

for young people to read their history

39:43

to understand that, but also to read

39:46

about the future, trade magazines. I mentioned wired.

39:50

There's so much information out there. Read everything you can as a young person.

39:54

Try and absorb it. I think that's

39:56

the key. Yeah. Love it. Love it. Number two, if you woke up and your

39:58

business was gone and all you had was

40:02

500, a laptop, a place to live and

40:02

some food, what do you think you would

40:06

do first of everything to rebuild?

40:11

Wow,

40:11

gosh, what a great question. 500, gee, I'd probably go and

40:13

have a really good meal somewhere

40:16

and then jump off a cliff.

40:21

I am assuming. that you still have

40:22

your knowledge with you. So in order to rebuild everything,

40:24

I'm sure that there would be something

40:28

that you'd like to do, right?

40:30

I guess, yeah. I don't know what I'd do. That's too scary at my grand

40:33

old age to concentrate.

40:36

I get it. I get it. Okay. Number three.

40:39

What does, if you have one, what does

40:39

your self reflection and any goal setting

40:43

practice look like if you have one?

40:46

I think embarking on a kind of next

40:46

stage of my journey, being freelance,

40:51

breaking away from the sort of corporate

40:51

full time gig, I think it's making a

40:55

success of that, really it's Being able

40:55

to leverage all the relationships, all

40:59

the knowledge, all the network that

40:59

I've, built up over a long period of time

41:02

and and develop that and and use that.

41:05

So I think that's the next challenge.

41:08

And it's a little scary. I've had a full time gig for 40 years.

41:12

Congratulations. You've joined a cohort of

41:13

entrepreneurs in this world.

41:16

I haven't quite become a nomad

41:16

like you, Derek, but maybe that's.

41:21

I love it.

41:21

Fantastic. Yeah. Get some location freedom out there.

41:24

You already have it, all right.

41:26

Number four, what are the longterm

41:26

core work habits or personality

41:31

traits that you attribute most

41:31

of the success you have now?

41:34

I talked about this earlier on. I think my greatest personal

41:35

strength is curiosity.

41:38

Just being interested in things

41:38

wanting to know what's going on.

41:41

And I think that can take you

41:41

a long way if you align that

41:45

with a decent work ethic. 90 percent of success is just showing up.

41:50

You put those two things together, and

41:50

I think, it's state has got me where I

41:55

am, whether that's good or bad, but, I

41:55

think ultimately it's, if you can find an

42:00

intellectual niche, if you can find, to do

42:00

something that you really like and you're

42:05

passionate about and it turns you on. I've long said that I wrote a piece

42:07

about this quite a few years ago called

42:11

the wave is bigger than the board.

42:14

I think if you can put your board,

42:14

who you are, on a big wave, and

42:20

AI is a big wave, Even if you're

42:20

ordinary person, you're gonna do fine.

42:25

Whereas if you're a brilliant

42:25

person and you put your board on

42:28

a dying wave, a crested wave, no

42:28

matter how brilliant you are, you're

42:33

not gonna have such a great ride. So I think for a young person,

42:34

look for the big waves.

42:37

What are the big waves? Maybe crypto's a big wave.

42:40

I think the whole AI thing is a huge

42:40

wave, a generational, a lifetime wave.

42:44

For a 20 20-year-old, you'll still

42:44

be doing this in 61, you're 60.

42:49

Put your board on that big

42:49

wave and that board is really

42:52

curiosity, a decent work ethic.

42:55

That'll take

42:55

you a long way. I think. I love that. Absolutely.

42:57

I think. Real estate's not going anywhere because

42:58

we are human beings that need physical

43:02

space around us, especially residential.

43:04

My wife is in is in healthcare and

43:04

there's plenty of people that are

43:08

on that wave, of trying to learn. And she's doing virtual

43:10

stuff now with using AI.

43:12

And for me, I love tech tools

43:12

and I love connecting things.

43:16

And I love that analogy of picking

43:16

the right wave, with your board.

43:20

That's amazing. Love it. Okay. Last question.

43:23

What tool or process would you say has

43:23

become one of your most important time,

43:28

money or energy saving ninja magic

43:28

tricks that you use nearly every day?

43:32

That's a great question. I think in my work life, I would say

43:34

Actually, again, this is the source

43:42

of tremendous opportunity for the next

43:42

wave of people, because I think the

43:46

sort of tools that somebody my age uses

43:46

are pretty rudimentary, pretty simple.

43:50

I think there's huge room to use

43:50

better tools, a lot of AI infused

43:55

tools to do a lot of things that I do

43:55

more efficiently in corporate lands.

44:01

And, maybe some of your listeners

44:01

will live there and work there

44:05

and this will be familiar to them. You'd be amazed how CRAP, pardon my

44:06

French most corporate systems are.

44:12

Getting your expenses done, getting

44:12

procurement done, getting a website built.

44:18

It's shocking to me how much people

44:18

spend on these things and they're pretty

44:21

underwhelming to be honest with you. So I think there's a lot of room for

44:23

young people to develop new functionality.

44:28

That's going to help work, be better

44:28

and more efficient at a personal level.

44:31

My favorite app is Shazam

44:31

that always blows my mind.

44:33

Oh yeah,

44:34

I love that one too, no, to

44:34

be honest, like just to add onto

44:38

that point, I know exactly what

44:38

you're talking about because there's

44:41

a company that I used to work for. And have experience with that is

44:42

multi billion dollar, but it's a

44:47

run off of one Excel spreadsheet. All the accounting and all of the

44:50

payroll and the, everything is one

44:54

Excel spreadsheet that gets passed

44:54

around in multiple copies and it's

44:57

just, it's insane for me to see that. No, again,

45:00

for young people coming into the

45:00

workforce, I think, They shouldn't be

45:04

intimidated by the thought, Oh, these

45:04

are all these big corporate systems.

45:07

They're great. I think a lot of young people

45:08

coming in are going to make, it's

45:11

a big way for them to be able to

45:11

go into, big bank, big insurance

45:15

companies say, these things are crap. These things are terrible.

45:18

The things I do in my

45:18

personal life are way better.

45:21

Gartner's talk about the

45:21

consumerization of I.

45:23

T. for quite a few years. This notion that the things we use.

45:27

On our phones are much better than the

45:27

things that most big corporates have.

45:31

And that's true to this day.

45:33

Even the most prestigious big,

45:33

blue chip Fortune 100 company.

45:37

A lot of the technology

45:37

is really underwhelming.

45:40

No, again, that's in the in the sort

45:40

of category of hope and opportunity

45:45

the rewiring of all of that, the

45:45

rebuilding a renaissance of all of

45:49

that, taking that to the next level. There's tremendous opportunity for

45:51

people in those sorts of areas.

45:56

Unbelievable. Thank you so much. I was going to ask you what are great

45:57

things for young people to consider?

46:00

And this is, this exactly answers it. But we want to thank Ben

46:02

for coming on the show.

46:04

It's awesome to have him. He had such great insights.

46:08

Unfortunately the tail end of his

46:08

video got cut off, so we weren't able

46:11

to do an outro with him, but I just

46:11

want to thank you guys for listening

46:14

all the way to the end of the show. Thank you guys for listening.

46:17

Wherever you are listening to this or

46:17

watching it, please subscribe, thumbs

46:21

up and make sure you interact with

46:21

us so that we can get more people to

46:24

listen to the show and get some more

46:24

amazing people like Ben on the show.

46:28

Once again, thank you guys so much for listening. Have an awesome day and we will

46:30

see you guys again next week.

46:33

Take care. Yeah.