Techstrong Gang – November 20, 2024

Hey everyone. Welcome to Bizarro World. You're watching Textron Gang.

Hey everyone, it's Alan Shimel back home here in our studios in Boca Raton, Florida, and we've got a great text on gang for you this lovely Wednesday. Um, we've got two of our gang members out in Vegas. It seems like they went right from Salt Lake City to Vegas.

Um, and good for them. They're out there two weeks before I'll be there. But, um, let's welcome our Vegas contingent right away.

First of all, he bats left, throws righty. Hits with power to all fields. He's our chief content officer, Mike Vizard.

Hey, Mike. How are you? I'm doing well.

You know, surviving the big road trip. Yes, it well. Yes you are.

You went, you did go right from Salt Lake to Las Vegas. I did, man. I stopped by Zion National Park.

Man, it was a good place. Good time. Highly recommend it.

Absolutely. Let's enjoy our national parks while we have them. Oh boy.

Um, and let get kicking things right off. Let's move over to our next Las Vegas. Uh, right.

Well, not resident, but visitor in Vegas almost. He's, he's, he's kind of a semi resident. A couple more days you're gonna have to pay taxes there.

Oh wait, they don't have taxes there, do they? I just have to leave the c the state every six days and then I'll be Okay. Alright.

Fu vp, uh, text John CTO. Mitch Ashley. Hey Mitchell.

How are you? Good to be here. Right.

And notice Mike and I have the same curtains. We are in different rooms. Trust me, you're not like, not even close to anywhere near each other.

Listen, the government may care, but we don't care what you guys do in your own private time. That's two. That's two.

But I'm thump Zs. Now let's move over to, uh, San Angelo, Texas for our editor of Textron ai, text Strong, ITSM and so many more things here at Textron. Our own Amanda, Rini, Rini, Ani, Ani.

Amanda, you need to be on more so I get more practice with it is the problem's anyway. Like lasagna. It's rni lasagna.

There you go. Mitch, I love when you do that Italian accent. Could you do a little more for that?

For us, it's just all my years in New York in new, we're call to beer party here in New York. Amanda, welcome. It's great to have you on.

And then lurking a little bit in the shadow. Say, we gotta get him a light, but he likes it that way. You doing that light?

After all, he, he pulls the strings in the background. He is the sarr of Silicon Valley, our own editor do of Jon Swartz. Hey John, how are you?

Hi. Hey Ellen. Hey.

Hey. We're getting ready. We're batting down the hatches.

We're gonna have an atmospheric river the next several days. Are you bomb cycle as they call it? Yes.

We're just pours. So this is becoming an every year thing for you guys? Pretty Much.

Yeah. Yeah. Usually around this time of year and it's gonna be, we're gonna get soaked.

I look forward to it. Well, I'm sure the west could use it, right? Yeah.

I look forward to it. I love a rain. We need it.

Yeah. You know, and it packs some snow pack up in the mountains and then that melts and, and Phoenix while it burns up, at least they'll have some water. But after all, there is no climate change.

What are we worried about? Everything's fine. It's all good.

It's all good. Everyth. Everything's sucky Dory.

Yeah. Alright, On that pleasant note, let's jump right in guys. Gang, into our, uh, topics for today.

Mike, do you want to take the first one? Yeah, I'll kick it off. But, uh, the new administration under President-elect Trump has nominated, I think it's Brendan Carr.

Is that right? Um, yes it is. Yes it is.

He's the, uh, nominee to run the FCC and everybody's trying to read the tea leaves because on the one hand he's kinda anti-big tech. And on the other hand, you know, he seems to be good friends with Elon Musk. So John, what's your read on what's going on here?

So remember when it was obvious to the tech leaders that Trump was gonna be elected, it seemed that they had some inside information. Maybe they were talking to Elon Musk. I don't know, that's just speculation.

But they all sidled up to Trump, all the major big tech leaders. I think now they might have a little bit of buyer's remorse just a tad, because if Brendan Clark, well, when he becomes the chair of the FCC, he has a pretty ambitious list, and it's all pretty much anti-tech. He wants to, um, investigate and regulate big tech.

He wants to ban TikTok and expand this. So-called cover list, which are communications, equipment and services. The FCC believes pose a national security risk.

He wants to revise Section two 30, which is a big, big booking Man for, he doesn't wanna revise it. He wants to revoke it. He wants, he wants to kill it, right?

So he wants to go through Congress. They basically wanna lift the protections that platforms like Meta and, and Google have that legally protect them from third party content. He wants to roll back net neutrality rules.

He wants to force big tech to pay for rural broadband expansion. And, uh, one of the things that he and and other conservatives have fixated on was this belief that there's, they're being censored by content moderators at Facebook and Twitter. That was before.

And Twitter. Yeah. Yeah.

It's before, uh, uh, Musk bought Twitter Before it became the Yeah. Yes. So here's the interesting thing and the thing that I think will get Alan's blood boiling beyond its high point already.

Um, what Carr wants to do, he wants to grant billions of dollars in federal subsidies to starlink, which is Musk satellite internet service, as well as, as its competitor, Amazon's kuper to ensure American companies control the future space-based internet, which kinda opens a whole can of worms. So, in other words, big tech look over your shoulder or look in front of you, look to your sides, you're gonna get hit from every conceivable angle and less you, you are starlink or X. And I'll just leave that hanging There, John.

Think you left that one important thing. He wants to do. Two things I think you gotta mention.

Mm-Hmm. When we talk about Brendan Carr, first of all, he's in favor of pulling licenses of TV that radio stations who don't kowtow and tow the government line just like any good dictatorship should. Okay?

So here that I, that I was saving the, I sh I bury the lead. I was saving that for less. But yes, there were three instances that Trump, uh, objected to the 60 Minutes interview with, uh, Kamala Harris, uh, the a BC debates, which she was when she was eviscerated.

And, um, NBC Saturday Night Live, or SNL in which Harris appeared, Carr in all those instances agree with Trump that these are, uh, uh, violations of, of one sort of the other, especially SNL, which they, they say is a violation of the equal time rule. So yes, you're right, that one is probably the most jarring and that's why you're gonna see the networks probably react in a certain way. And you're probably have already seen one sign of it with M-S-N-B-C in their morning show going down to visit and to, uh, Trump to kiss the ring.

That's, um, that's, that's, that's lingering above all else. That affects more people than any other decision if they decide to go down that path. I'm not saying they will, but they're definitely threatening.

That's the one thing is a difference between a threat and actual action. So just throwing this out There. Well, John, you left one other thing out.

Oh no, what is that? What's that President-elect? Mr.

I don't agree with project 2025. I don't even know what's in there. Happened to nominate the guy who wrote the project 1 25 FCC piece into it.

Yes. So All of, so everything that I mentioned is contained in the chapter on the FCC in project 2025, which was written by Brendan Carr. Brendan Carr.

Okay, that's the punchline. Now let me give you the real punchline though. You ready for this, Mitch?

Yeah. I'm never waiting all Day. Alright, so, so during the President Biden administration, the Supreme Court has made no secret, has made multiple rulings that these agencies and commissions such as the FDC, the FAA, the FCC cannot exceed their authority, specifically granted by Congress.

And that for most of the regulations and promulgation of, of rules that they want to do, they must go back and get Cong Congressional action to enforce this. If we see the courts, the Supreme Court go back on that, because now you've got a different party in power in the White House. I'm telling you, fold your cards, pack your stuff, and get the heck outta here.

Get outta Dodge, right? Because that would be the ultimate hypocrisy. That would be the ultimate tipping point of you no longer have an independent judiciary, let alone a competent executive branch and a whatever you wanna call our dysfunctional legislative branch.

And that spells real trouble for the America that we all love. Do you think there's enough votes in the GOP that might cross over to, are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?

You can say that with a straight face. Hey, I'm glad you said that, Mike, because I was gonna suggest it too. So I'm glad you're taking the bullet on this one.

You, You think there's enough votes in the GOP to stand up to this? Is that what you're saying? We'll see, man.

It only takes three or four. I think That's true. Yeah.

So a lot of these, a Lot of these things require congressional. I'm sorry, Mitch. Yeah, I just, you know, given we're already in the age of, uh, Trump calling all the senators that are, are balking about gates, um, Matt Gates being the, uh, head of the, the, uh, attorney General.

Attorney General, thank you. Why? What's not with paying for sex with young guys?

I, you know, you know, we, we, we all have our, our vices not, not cool. No, I he's already infl trying to influence energy. You know, it, it's, it's the, is liable to be a fire in the right stack.

And and where are we seeing loyalty tests? You know, people fail those No, they, they, they stand up to it or they're quiet. They, they're inaction or they don't, you know, they, they get behind it.

So I I Why would that change? They're in power now. They're one, you know, so I, I think it's gonna be more support, not less for what he is trying to, you know, If if these, if these re if this, these recess appointments take place, then all bets are often including the F CCC and, and they're, they necessity to have congressional approval.

I just see guardrails being stripped left and right. Wow. And I think it applies to the FCC as much as anywhere else, perhaps.

Hope I'm wrong. Oh, Absolutely. FCC uh, chairman has a lot of power, has a lot of flexibility to do.

And they bring in, you know, they bring in their own philosophy and belief about things. And Wheeler did when he was in and, you know, his belief about broadband or not, and what should be public funded, what's privately funded. So it's, it's not a new phenomena that that, that someone, especially in FCC, comes in and there's some real direction changes here.

We just have, um, some things that are very much aligned with beyond the panel, not just Yeah, yeah. Beyond the cabinet, the party, the whole project 2025 thing. Well, wait, maybe there's a way we could vaccinate ourselves against this.

Oh wait, no, vaccinations are out now too hot. Inocular. Hey, you know, what, can I make the one thing that doesn't make sense to me?

So they always get mixed signals about their reaction thing Doesn't make sense to you. Only, only I'm just trying to Make, Doesn't make sense to you. This one thing.

We live in a bizarre world that one thing doesn't make sense to you. That's why he is zr he's the czar. Right, Right.

No, what I'm talking about, I should have rephrased that. But the something in particular doesn't make sense to me is that this, this attitude they have towards big tech, I don't quite understand it because on one hand, they, they, um, they want no nor no form of regulation. They want to deregulate everything.

Yet they, they, they also wanna get rid of the FTC chair, Lena Kahn, right? Who's going after big tech. So they, they want that, they have a punitive approach through Carr, yet they're getting rid of the, um, FTC chair who is for some sort of punitive measures against, against big tech.

And in fact, actually there was, I think Mike sent me something earlier today, or I may have seen it somewhere, where Google is considering splitting off part of their business because they lost to the Department of Justice. So I'm not really sure what's going on. And remember back in 2019, it was the Justice Department, and of course it was probably a much different justice department under Trump that started all these investigations into big tech.

So, um, so this Is whole One relationship here. Wait, let, let clarify the Google thing. 'cause it's a Bloomberg report saying the d oj is gonna ask Google to get rid of their browser from the rest of their business to satisfy that judgment.

Oh, I'm looking at That. The DOJ is gonna do that under Trump is zero. Zero.

Yeah. Let, let me explain the, the fact, the real politic of this big tech will buy their way. I mean, unfortunately, we live in a world where conflicts of interest and, and separation and money influencing government is, is a thing of the, of the past.

And if money can buy your way out of it, big tech will buy its way out of it. Right or wrong. You know, it's Kind of an Latitudes.

It's, this is classic oligarchy. This is how Old work. It really, and in a, in a sense, what I don't really understand is this, this whole national movement, or at least half a na national movement or a third of the national movement against authority and things like big tech, when in fact they're gonna enrich themselves.

They're gonna be, be more powerful than ever, in my estimation. Um, the Musk is going and as long as he's on Trump's good side, and God knows how long that's gonna last, I I'm giving it a couple months, Right? They're both stable geniuses.

Yeah. Well, big, big tech. Big tech isn't a monolith, right?

It's, it's who's in favor in big tech, right? And who's supporting the political party in power in this case, there's a much clearer alignment of, you know, Musk and Trump and, and the other, and Amazon Bezos, right? He clearly, you know, made his movie, I think cook's in line too.

I mean, he's always been on, okay. He's, he's been pretty a droid at, at handling Trump. I Mean, and that's the big tech that, that, that lines up will be supported and the others won't.

Guys, let's, let's, let's be clear here. They'll say nice things about the man, and he loves that. They'll put some money, spread some money around, like you would in any third world, banana Republic and all will be, well, don't, don't, don't cry for Argentina or a big tech.

Right. Argentina may be in better shape than us in some way. So this, this is gonna be like watching the Kremlin to see who's on the podium next day.

Yeah. That's the government, right? That's exactly what, it's an oligarch.

He Mm-Hmm. And let's be, can I Break a fourth wall here? Let's be really clear about this too.

Go for it. So, so what's interesting is Tom Siebel, who's a billionaire out here, uh, sea's ran Siebel Systems, and now he is running an AI company. I is, I've interviewed him many, many times.

He's only a couple miles away from here. And I had asked him specifically about Trump, and he told me how crazy he is and how he's irresponsible, and how, uh, Siebel had worked and helped the Obama administration, or Biden administration, both of them. And yet he's one of the biggest fundraisers for Trump.

When Trump came out here a few months ago, it was Siebel who actually hosted the event. And, and don't judge me, but it, when I was in Austin a couple months ago, I fell into an interview with RFK Jr. Where I talked to this guy for half an hour, and I asked him specifically about his grievances with Biden and Trump, and he told me they were both equally terrible people.

So what the, the personal bullies versus the public stature stance, persona, they all just get in line. I mean, I, but their personal beliefs really al almost mean nothing in the, in the big picture. It's all about accumulation of power and access to power and profitability.

So Certainly what I did, you know what? Let's take a break. I'm sick.

You are watching Text Drunk Gang. We'll be back with something a little more uplifting about that way, thinking your jobs maybe. Amen.

You're watching, you're watching Text Drunk Gang. All right, folks, we're back and we're gonna talk about something a little less contentious. Artificial Intelligence.

There's a new report out from IESC Business School talking about how, um, it looks like maybe AI is creating a demand for more managers. And the issue is, of course, that, uh, we are starting to see some of the maybe lower level jobs in organizations be automated by ai, but maybe everybody's about to become a manager. Alan, how do you think this is gonna play out as we go forward?

Is everybody gonna be their own boss of a slew of AI agents? Well, that's an interesting concept. I'm a manager because I manage AI agents, not people.

And that makes me a manager. Let's think about that. Is that really what a manager is?

When we talk about more AI means more managers Managing technology, technology managers, I, but, but in terms of jobs, generally, managers manage people, not technology, not AI agents. Are we raising AI agents to pseudo three-fifths of a person makes sense in this political climate anyway, but, um, you know, is, is that what we're talking about? But before we even jump into that, I wanna just give a quick shout out.

com, cloud native now, security Boulevard here on Techstrong tv. You know, we have some other great sites. We, and we put some great content out on there.

Text Drunk AI is one of them. We, we launched this probably eight, nine, maybe more months ago now. And if you are interested in AI, as we all are, there's some great content out on ai, on Techstrong.

Do AI Tech strong, do, uh, tech strong. com is also a great site. If you're interested in the ITSM space, um, digital CXO, if you're, you know, talk about leadership and managers interested in digital transformation.

com, we got the domain. It's gonna be a lot of good stuff happening there. Stay tuned to it.

So please, if you wanna stay on top, all kidding aside, and politics and all that, these are great sites to stay on top of these things. ai. Um, but, but to your point, that's not the manager I'm looking for, right?

I mean, that's, you know, I'm managing myself and my digital twins of myself. And, and so I don't, um, know necessarily if I would say AI means more managers, managers, um, is AI beginning to take jobs? Absolutely.

Is ai AI creating more jobs than it's taking? I think absolutely. And I think that will be the norm for the next three to five years at least.

Here's a, go ahead. Uh, yeah, I think that, you know, that was the fear originally. It's gonna take jobs, but, you know, that's progress.

But definitely it's just rerouting those jobs. It's just creating a whole lot of new jobs and, um, giving people opportunity to skill up in a new area. I think everybody may become possibly their own little entrepreneurial companies and instead of being an, an employee will all be contractors to each other.

And there's a, even a bet on among the VCs out there, there may someday be a company who has a billion dollar valuation that only has one employee because yeah, they're just doing everything with agents. And John, I know you've heard that out in the Valley. Yeah, that's, I, I'm, that's an interesting concept because I was thinking, one of the phrases that keeps coming up, um, when I talk to folks is that the concept of the super agents.

So we have, um, genic ai, but you'd have like teams of a, uh, AI agents run by a super agent, like a traffic cop, which is also an agent. And then that, that agent may, um, report to the human in a weird way. So the hierarchy would be one person, as you said, Mike, running perhaps a multimillion billion dollar company, even billion dollar company with a, with a bunch of a, and, and, you know, it's funny, that's kind of what, what's, um, in a, in a roundabout way, Benioff and Jensen were talking about at Dreamforce, they're talking about deploying billions of workers, uh, who do all these tasks.

Uh, you know, it could, the one thing that scares me though is you have a company worth a billion dollars if it's only employees, one person, and normally you'd have maybe a thousand, couple thousand people. So what, maybe you create this, this job, but the, in a, in a sense, there's a vacuum in terms of you create this company, but there's a vacuum in terms of jobs that always no oversight. I always wonder how that works out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah. Why, why, why couldn't you have AI oversight ai? Oh, You will.

Yeah. That's what the super Asian concept is. Yeah.

So the folks, Cisco were, were talking about this, that pa, Palo Alto Networks and was there a couple days ago, they were talking about the same thing. Um, the only, the only their only fear is that the agent makes some of the same mistakes or same oversights that the human had done before it, based on, you know, what the agent learns from the operations at a company. Um, yeah, But that, but that's just, so now you train it to continually improve that.

Let me give you another scenario. I don't know if you thought it, but John, you, you're talking about, you know, we only have this one person. What happens if, well, quite frankly, what's so special about that one person?

Why can't we just put another person in? Because after all, it's the agents, the AI that's doing it. Anyway, I'll go one step further.

Why even need the person? Well, Alan, there's one job that we, we know will always be required. Matter of fact, it's gonna be elevated quite a bit, whether it's from the TV series expansion or iRobot or Blade Runner.

And that's the human detective to figure out what the heck got went wrong. And where did AI go off track? Elijah c Bailey, Elijah e Elijah, Bailey Decker.

Elijah Bailey was a robot. Mitch. Oh, he wasn't?

Oh, well, no, but I thought he was human. He wasn't. You're right.

He wasn't. No. Elijah Bailey's a robot.

See, my theories blown. There we go. Well, there's some humans that are Detectives.

I think for now, we still need some human oversight at this time. Maybe down the road we won't. I think the timeframe is that you said, Alan, it's probably really accurate, three to five years.

That's always, you know, we do all these, we look at all these surveys and polls and studies, and we talk to a lot of experts. And that timeframe keeps coming up, uh, before we start seeing the creation of new types of jobs. My fear always is that you're displaced because you don't adapt to what's to the technology.

But that's, that's a, that's a concept, or that's a, a reality that we face everywhere. There's certain people who are very good in certain regions of the country at, at adapting and transforming themselves in the workforce. Um, and there are those who always resist it.

So that'll play its way out too. So I, I suspect that places like Silicon Valley, parts of Texas, Colorado, all of the places we are, New York, we'll be able to Massachusetts will they be able to move along. But I always think of the, some of the other places where tech doesn't really quite pick up the pace.

It just doesn't catch on in other regions of the country. And I think it'll, that this will continue to be the case. Yeah, I can think of so many dystopian movies.

Well, you know, to quote, quote, a good friend of mine is I've been in tech a long time, and one of the things that I've learned is that predictions usually take about twice as long as as we think it's gonna take to happen. So when I hear five years, I think it's, you're probably talking about eight to 10 years before, not to say we won't see change, but mass significant large scale, Yeah, you're right. Takes Takes a long time to happen.

And maybe AI will be different, you know, so is cloud and so is blockchain, and so was, you know, every other thing that came along, and I'm, I'm not being the skeptic, but you know, it does take longer than it thinks. You know, that we think the impact of things will be much greater and it'll happen much sooner usually than what it takes. There's, there's old cowboy wisdom to that that says, never mistake a clear view for a short distance, right?

Oh, we've been hanging around in Nebraska, Wyoming, Yellowstone, Yellowstone, Yellowstone, I am Park. Um, hey, you know, the one thing too that's interesting to me, and Mike brought this whole notion is the startup, the cost of the startup. Remember when it used to be really cost prohibitive or was expensive to, to start a company because of the equipment, because of the tools that were necessary, then that kind of went away.

This accelerates it, perhaps, right? To the point where you have this workforce that's free for the most part, doing a lot of the tasks that, so We're at the, we are in the era of everybody can create an agent right now, right? Microsoft just launched more agent capabilities in copilot.

We've had that in, you name it, Broadcom, Atlassian, all of these tools, you know, both for developer, but a lot of citizen, quote unquote developer. You don't have to be a developer, right? It can be natural language, whatever.

So, you know, uh, whoever was saying, we're gonna be kinda managing this world of our own AI agent, if you will. I think there's a lot of truth to that. Well, I just gotta say, you know, thank God the next administration understands this issue deeply and will be doing something about it, regulating it.

Needles and pins, pins and needles. Man, happy man. The great, just drop one and leave the room.

Uh, thanks Mike. Yeah. No.

Well, but I'm not gonna take Mike's bait. Okay. First person to pack up and move to the blue state, Mike aside for the first time, not taking the bait.

But, but let me, let me do give you a real world example. You know, I was talking to our friend Mike Rothman this morning, right? And for those of you who don't know, Mike, Mike is a long time security analyst player in the cyber world.

Um, and Mike, you know, worked with us here at Techstrong. He left about a year ago, I bet. And Mike Wenton, uh, is now him and his brother are running a, their a family business in actually in the candy business.

Candy and Sweets. I call him Sugar Man. If you've ever heard that song by Rodriguez, an old song.

Mm-Hmm. Sugar man. Yep.

So I call him the Sugar Man. Anyway, I spoke to Mike this morning, and he is hip deep in an ERP migration at his company. He moved from sort of an old school host, not hosted, you know, in the server room, ERP on-prem to a SaaS-based ERP.

And it, it involved literally, I mean, 'cause their ERP ran everything and it involved literally every facet of the business and, and checking it and rescripting stuff and moving stuff and working with Microsoft. And I said, um, Mike, how, how big an IT team do you have over there? He said, it's just me.

I said, how, how are you doing this? He said, well, I use chat gpt as my friend, right? And he's, he's using it for Python scripting.

He's using it to create sort of advanced macros in Excel. He's using it to, to, you know, do the logic and the Microsoft Office stuff. He, you know, he's using ai.

He is, you know, the one human doing an ERP migration, basically himself with the help of ai. So you mean Mike Rothman may have solved the age old, never get on an ERP migration project dilemma, just, he claims he's just waiting for the end of the fiscal year to pull the switch. It's just about ready.

More powerful. He's been working on it a few months. Those are, those are the most career ending projects you can take on.

Well, ERP, he's family there. So what could happen, sir? Okay.

Alright. Well, there's a lot of forgiveness in that. Gotcha.

But your point is, he is leveraging AI to do work that, you know, he would've to hire somebody else, right? And this isn't a billion dollar startup or anything, but this is real world. This is real world.

This is what people are doing right now with this AI stuff, right? And I think who we are, you know, the TikTok and all the, all the social media is just, it, it just covered with people. I'm gonna write a, I'm gonna have chat, GPT or my plugin copilot, write a program that does this, and I'll show you how to do it.

And it does it. And it's amazing what it can do. It's all, all I can think about now is that I love Lucy episode when she's in the chocolate factory and they, oh, I drop it at the end of the room, putting the Bon Bonds in his shirt.

I betrayed my neighbor. Um, he's, he's, he's getting a master's degree basically through chat CPT. He just let me in on the secret, like he's in the third module and he is rated to do his thesis, and he, he said, thank God for this.

Oh, it's an amazing tool. It is. So please don't mention his name on here though, John.

No, I won't. He's already gotten in trouble before on other things. Yeah.

I won't go into it. Oh, my immediately qualified. But look, but that, you know what, but guys, real world, this is what we're dealing with.

Oh, yeah. This is, this is the, this is where rubber meets the road, not in some highfalutin theoretical physics lab. Right.

But where is it? Is it, can I ask a quick, quick, is it possible that some, well, I don't know what the answer is, I'm just gonna throw it out. But is it possible that some of the, um, AI agents from one vendor like a Microsoft might be better than say others?

So therefore, the quality of the work, or the quality of your startup is based on the, the agent AI that you hire. Sure. Absolutely.

So that's gonna be a factor what's behind the agent. It isn't just, you know, automating something is for agents to be effective, they have to have access to data, but they also have to have some kind of a knowledge graph that gives them context about how things fit together. That's how, that's how agents can do really productive work.

Otherwise, they're kind of improvements on automation. You know, I think we're in the calculator phase of a, of agents, which is you can't use a calculator in class. Right?

And, and certainly we go, we get past that and, and now they're so common, common use, everybody uses one in everyday life. You know, there's scientific calculators to take my test with. Same thing in life with agents.

Today's no one knows trigonometry anymore is, yeah. Well, no, yeah, you can, you can get out to, you know, pro what gonna next and have fun. But, you know, I think agents are gonna be common to people.

Maybe, maybe not while I'm on earth yet. Maybe, maybe so. But as as calculators are on our phone, I think it's just gonna be part of our environment.

It's, nobody Knows, nobody knows how to spell anything anymore either. They just rely on the machine. So, ah, Or grammar.

Absolutely. Well, no one writes, let's face it. Mm-Hmm.

Um, but you know what, we're notis here. I think we're all human. Let's take a break.

We're gonna come back and we're gonna talk about, uh, digital twin tourism. That's great. I could sit my Walle walleye chair, Wally chair a wall chair, and go anywhere while I'm eating Bombon like Lucy, you're watching Text gang.

All right, folks, we're back. And yes, we're gonna talk about, well, digital twin tourism is a thing. Now, apparently the Vatican is making it possible to look at a digital twin of the entire, uh, basilica and the, and everything around it.

And you can go look at places that you're not even allowed to go in if you actually went there. Um, it turns out though, that this is just one of many of these things that we're starting to see. Amanda, I know that you've kinda looked into this in the past.

What's your take? Is this gonna be a real thing or is this like some fad we're looking at? Oh, Yes, absolutely.

And you can find several articles on digital CXO about other versions of this. Um, our writer, Nathan likes to cover those a lot. So I think it's a great way to preserve some really old or important buildings, um, and still let people see the inside of these historical structures, but without any risk of damage.

So I think we will see a lot more of that. And it's also a way for people, um, you know, who don't have the budget to travel. It's allowing them to be able to travel and learn about the world, even just from their living room.

You know, I'm reminded, I'll tell you guys a start. When I was a young kid, when I was a young kid, we'd, you know, the idea of getting on a plane and going to Italy to the Vatican or anywhere on a plate was kind of out of our reach. I mean, most, most of us, I think, you know, didn't grow up with our dad being a slum lord in Queens, New York, and, and, uh, leaving me $600 million.

Now, when I was growing up, you had to take a steamer to go see the Vatican, but you know, that's, that's was all a while ago. Well, no, we had planes by then, Mitch. And you're by age.

Yeah. But you were in Nebraska. Not where I live.

Crop dust. Let, let keep, don't get me defocused here. Lemme stay on.

Anyway, my grandpa, my grandpa subscribed me to this. Remember the, remember the books where used to in the back there were like color stamps that you would peel out and you would have to lick that You didn't peel them, you had to lick them. You would rip out the stamps, they were perforated.

You would lick them and you would place them in the proper place. You are too young for this, Amanda. So I'm sure you, I Remember these.

You Do remember. Okay. And you would put the, the, the pictures in the appropriate place in the book.

So my grandpa signed me and my brother Kevin, up for, uh, a series of books that had, like, at that time, every country in the UN had its own little pamphlet book. And you would take the book and you would read through the book, and you'd go in the back and you'd tear out the sticker that goes into each picture frame in the book. So if you were in Italy and you went into the Vatican, they'd have a picture of the Sistine Chapel and, and all of these things.

And you know what, for two kids growing up in the mid to late sixties, and we didn't really have money to go to the Vatican or Africa or Asia or some of the places, my brother and I would read the books. That was as close as it got. But it, it made us feel like we were world travelers.

It like, as close as, you know, like we were there, right? This is today's version of it. Yeah.

That's interesting. I mean, in a sense, you can you, I mean, if you can't afford it or if you just want it, I mean, given the times that we live in, you want to divert your attention to something that's positive or something that's adventurous. You can essentially travel and it's kind of an in interesting way to some of these places.

And learn and educate yourself. It'd be interesting if people try to establish a residency outside the country, this through this type of way, you know, where you, you have like an interaction with a pleasant different type of culture. It's an Escapist, but I, I don't know if you could, I mean, that, that's a whole different, you are talking about creating a world Yeah.

Interacting people or programmed people. Yeah. But I was talking about just Learning.

This is, yeah. This, I dunno if this reaches that level. No.

I wonder if we could someday create versions of buildings that are no longer there, or the version of a building, you know, whether it's Roman Coliseum or, you know, the, the Notre Dame Cathedral before the fire Kind of thing. Before the fire, right? Yeah, Absolutely.

Before the fire. I Think we have, I think I posted an article, I, I can't remember What Yeah, no, we did do something with Notre Dame, but yes, we have Mm-Hmm. Um, you know, that, That's interesting that the Notre Dame example's really interesting because of about, was it 2019?

I was going to Paris and I got the t we got the tickets before the fire. So it was that, that situation. And we went to the, the, the, the cathedral.

But it was, you know, of course it was being reconstructed and being, being rebuilt or being renovated. I, I was there before the fire, and then this past trip I went, it was still closed, you know, right before the Olympics. But, but let me finish my thought on my grandpa's sticker books.

My brother and I love those books. That, and, and the World book encyclopedia. My mom invested in getting us a series of the World book encyclopedia.

Remember they'd have those overlays of the human circulatory system and stuff like that. We learned so much, much more, much more than kids today are learning, I guarantee you. But, but fast forward, that is a cheap substitute for going to see the Sistine Chapel in person.

It's a cheap substitute for actually standing outside Notre Dame Cathedral and seeing the bell towers. It's a cheap substitute for seeing the world. And I hope and pray that we don't evolve into a society where people will sit at home on their fat asses, going on digital twin virtual experiences instead of really experiencing the world, because there is no substitute for it.

No. But instead, we're flying to Las Vegas and going to a place where we can experience a digital twin. You wanna see one?

I can open this curtain. Yes. I, I, I agree with you.

And I'm going, I'm gonna be seeing the eagles there, you know, right after reinvent. But hold, hold that thought. Now, now you can visit Paris in Las Vegas.

And, and, exactly. So that's a great example in Rome, Paris in Las Vegas. How does that compare to Paris?

Paris, right. It's not, or even the same thing. Right?

And not, and that is, Mike's been dying to do this the whole show, by the way, here it is. The sphere. I wish I could be there for that race, The F1 race this weekend.

Yeah. You know, so if we had the hollow deck, okay, let's go to the Star Trek next generation. There's a pretty damn close, you know, digital twin of a real thing where you can really experience it.

It's, it's not the place. But if you could really create that kind of a, that kind of an experience, it was that close. Um, I'm not, it would, would still be valuable to go to see the real thing, but you could sure get a lot of what made the Ho Jack interesting.

Mitchell is the cha It wasn't just the place you had people, characters, animals Yes. And stuff Yeah. That were programmed in.

That's an amazing shot of this sphere, Mike. Hey, um, one thing, remember, you know, people go to these places and they touch s**t and ruin it. So, you know, this is a way to preserve things.

Yeah, That was my point. I Was saying. But, but let me give you another example.

Let's say we go to the holodeck in Paris. Is the baguette and butter still gonna taste as good as it does on the streets of Paris? Well, I, you don't have the sights or the smells or the ambiance we do on the holiday.

You have the sight, but I don't know. It's not the same. It's, yeah, I mean, like real, we got smell of vision, you know?

I get it. I, I, I get, I can calm some smells into your room and it'll be fine. We want keep those to yourself in, in the sphere backyard.

Okay. I see where I see we're keeping that highbrow level of professionalism that we started off with here. That's one visual twin.

I don't need to experience. But, but nevertheless, you know, as I said, for two young boys, you know, that was our version of digital twinning tourism. Right?

It's the imagination, right? Yeah. And it, no, but you know what?

It set, it set us on fire. Both my brother and I have traveled around the world a lot. My brother, much more than I, he, he's reached, he's done the Silk Road, he's done, my brother's been everywhere, including Antarctica.

And, um, I think a lot of that wanderlust is due to, hmm. Those sticker books we had when we were younger. And, and so maybe, maybe this, that is the silver lining here, right?

People who experienced this as digital twins then are more inclined to go do things. I think, quite frankly, one of the problems in America, bring it back to America, especially I'm a Long Island boy, grew up in Long Island. Do you know how many people I know have never left Long Island A lot?

Yeah. Because they think Long Island is the center of the universe, and there is nothing to see. A quick story.

When I moved to Long Island from Nebraska, I thought, yeah, there's so many people in Nebraska, I've never been out of this state. Boy, how backwards is that? I go to Long Island.

How many people have never been off of Long Island? Yeah. It's like, okay, well no, they might go to the city, right?

City? Well, no, they, the people who have never been on Long Island. I mean, I mean that No.

And so, okay. You know, you don't wanna encourage that. But if this would encourage people to, because I do believe that going out and meeting people around the world, and you find out they're not as different as you think.

Absolutely. When you have a lot more in common with them than not. Well talk about conference.

How many times do we see, why do we keep going to conferences when we have, 'cause they pay us. Well, this is true for some of us. Some of us pay, some people pay to go to these things, right?

Yeah. No, it's the, it's the personal experiences. It's the personal interaction.

It's the things you don't get in any high fidelity at all through digital experiences. Right. You know, what are the, what is, I Don't, there's conversations with people from around the world.

I learn a lot about the world just from talking to people at conferences. So what, that's what all those people stumbling around the casino were doing. I didn't know.

I, we heard for the experience, Mike, in the conversation. So what personal experience, the, one of the best decisions we ever made, it was, it was, it was for, and it won't go down the path, but we left the country for a while, back in the late eighties. Uh, we went to England and that was one of the best decisions.

We lived in London for a year and a half. And you learn more, not just about other cultures, about your Own country. Yes, it was.

And so you learn as, as much about your country when you live outside the country and the perspective, and you see things a little bit differently or more clearly. And you learn a lot about people in other countries, and you are right, Alan. They are, we're all basically the same.

Um, and it's, there's like this fear sometimes Of the unknown in this country. I, I've always kind of felt this way. Something you don't understand you're scared of, like for some people.

And I just think that they, uh, the, uh, discovery is such a great thing. It's part of your personal education, part of making you a better world citizen. And I always treasure living there.

I will give one shout out to my hometown, the Bronx. Every day you meet somebody who's from somewhere else. Yeah.

Yeah. Mm-Hmm. Yeah.

But the Bronx has a way of leveling them all out, doesn't it? Mike, beating you down? Is that what you're saying?

No, shout out to the, it's when I drove through the Bronx, I was getting beat down the Bronx. The Bronx, the Bronx. Uh, no way.

Yes. You know, I, I think we might had a Stickle book about the Bronx. I think it was the zoo and the stadium and the gardens.

The botanical gardens, right. There you go, man. Yep.

Um, all right. I think that's gonna call a wrap to this rollicking version of the Gang Today. Uh, we, we, we have a, uh, uh, tech Field Day on today.

I believe that you can watch its, uh, mobility Tech Field Day, as well as our usual great lineup of, uh, Textron TV content. So invite you to watch that immediately following this. We will be back tomorrow, Thursday with some great con more gang content.

Uh, I'll be here. I know you guys are in, uh, Vegas. I'm not sure if you'll both be here, John, you know, you're always welcome.

Anytime. I know you've, I'll see you carrying out your royal duties. Oh, yeah.

We'll see you tomorrow. You're on tomorrow. And Amanda, always, always welcome to have Amanda here on the gang.

Um, Ani Amanda Razani. Yes. Ani like lasagna, like Rosana.

You know, if you, if you'd gotten off of Long Island, you'd know how to say that. That's, that's, that is the problem. A lot of my speech patterns are I'm a child of my environment there.

You know what I mean? Because we only had the stickers in the books. It wasn't like sound audio.

So you put an R on. I had the audio. I might be talking with a French accent or rolling my RS right now.

Who knows? Yeah. Put it, put an R on everything.

You're good. This is Alan Shimel for Tech Truck Gang. We're out.

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