21min chapter

The Bitcoin Standard Podcast cover image

249. Daylight Computer with Anjan Katta

The Bitcoin Standard Podcast

CHAPTER

Rethinking Visual Technology

This chapter critiques the mismatch between human visual processing and modern computing systems, advocating for designs that mimic natural reflective surfaces to enhance usability. It highlights the collaborative development of a revolutionary black-and-white computing screen aimed at minimizing distractions and boosting productivity. The discussion culminates in a philosophy of using technology that aligns with human needs, promoting engagement with the natural environment while fostering conscious consumption.

00:00
Speaker 1
And, you know, the kind of the variable reward slot machine of what most feeds are. And you start to realize like, whoa, we just built all of this from a technology perspective and not from a human perspective. And so the canonical question is, can you solve this evolutionary mismatch? What does it look like to make a computer and a computing trajectory that works backwards from how humans work? Which, of course, are, you know, what are the natural principles? And that's where I thought, okay, you're going to have to solve all of this and you can solve all of this. But, you know, the pace layers, the slowest pace layer is always the hardware is always nature. So let's start there. And I thought the light was the core, core thing to start with. And so I asked the question, like, what did our ocular system, our eyes evolve for? What did our occipital lobe and our vision processing evolve for? And it evolved to look at objects, reflective analog objects. And by reflective, I mean is the light of the sun bounces off them and you're able to see it. And when there's no sun, you can't see it because it doesn't produce its own light. It doesn't emit its own light. That's what we're used to observing. Things that emit their own light, the way modern computer screens do, there were few, right? Like maybe a fire, maybe, you know, a firefly, maybe the stars, but this is not something you were looking at all day. All you're looking at trees and rocks, dirt, and so on. We're reflective. That's what our eyes, that's what our saccades, that's what our tear films, that's what it's all built for. The objects in our environment don't flicker. That's not what we're not used to looking at flickering light. And we can get into it more, but a normal computer screen on your iPad or whatever flickers at a really high frequency. light is turning on and off and on and off and on. And that's called flickering. That is not what our visual processing is built to handle. And so I was like, okay, could you make a computer screen that was similar to what our visual system is used to handle? And so that meant making it reflective and analog. Its main principle is it bounces light from the environment, i.e. it is in harmony with the environment versus trying to compete with it, right? That's what a flashlight is, is it's trying to compete with nature and have its own say. And that's why a normal computer screen, you can't see it in the sun because good luck trying to compete with the sun. But something like a piece of paper, a newspaper, or a Kindle, you can see that in the sun because it's reflecting the light. It's a total different principle of seeing something. And therefore, you can see it in the sun because it's working with the sun. And so I was really intrigued at the possibility of creating a computer screen that was more natural by being reflective and analog. And the early things like the Kindle do have that principle. But the screen technology is so incredibly slow. Their refresh rate is so laggy. It's fine for Harry Potter. It's maybe okay for taking a few notes, but I tried, I hacked all these devices similar to you. It's just, it's a real struggle if you want to do more of computing on it, Google docs, reading through PDFs, scrolling, you know, searching things up, kind of bigger breadth of knowledge work. And so the kind of wild goose chase I went on is, is it finally possible to unniche this whole category of computers that are reflective and paper-like and analog by making the refresh rate fast enough, which sounds like a subtle thing, but actually is what really holds it back. And I kind of went on this crazy intellectual chase. Kind of, I guess it's a similar thing to what got me into Bitcoin and so on. It's, you know, people judge things and they'll say stuff. And the experts were like, ah, there's no way people have been trying this for 20 years. Every attempt has failed. Amazon bought this company for hundreds of millions of dollars and it didn't work out who thinks that you can but just kind of like okay i'm just gonna like i'm just gonna dig in see what the actual ground truth is underneath all of that and uh i spent two years of my life becoming kind of the world expert on these paper-like reflective analog displays. And long story short, found this crazy Japanese professor who had solved some core, core problems with this and found another professor in the Netherlands and one in Germany. Put together, they were all kind of mavericks. They were all kind of shunned. No one really knew about them. And kind of put their different innovations together. And my core insight was if you combine them all, you may actually have solved the problem. And it took three years from start to finish and did it. And so then what you get out of that is finally, you know, a more natural computing screen. Its trade-off is it's black and white, but in a way, I think there's something so cool about that because I would say the problem with this emissive, maximalist, high-time preference computing is it's illusionary. It creates illusions to kind of trick you and what i mean by that is even color it's not actually color it's just rgb pixels that are so small that you see it as purple when it's actually just a red and a blue beside each other meaning like what you're seeing is actually not what you're seeing it's just fakery and so there's something about coming back to what is real and kind of saying, like, let's restart computing from a real core. And one like simple, but potentially very powerful way to do that is give up on the illusion. And colors are one of the core illusions of computing and come back to black and white. Because when you're seeing a black, it's a black. And when you're seeing a white, it's a white. It's real. And so everything else we're doing kind of comes back from this new computer screen technology. We have multiple patents on it. It took a long time to develop. It's a pretty big breakthrough in the field. And the possibility is you can create laptops phones whiteboards monitors a whole set of computers that are feel totally different because of this kind of reflective paper-like analog screen technology and then the sky's the limit in terms of rethinking the operating system and all the software on top of it yeah
Speaker 2
so i'm just going to show mine here um as you can see it's it's it's quite like a kindle screen it's very simple black and white um but you can open a google doc here and you can work you can type on it and then you can connect it to a keyboard and then it's just uh extremely extremely extremely useful it's incredible for zooming in and out. It's really incredible how easy it is to move documents around. It's very fast processing. It functions like a regular high quality tablet, like an iPad or a Samsung tablet. In terms of its ability to perform the basic tasks that these tablets do it it works as well as they do but it does it all while feeling natural so not placing strain on your eyes and i think i very much agree with what you're saying at the end and for me i mean when you're working you want to try to keep all of your tools as efficient as possible if you want to go far you have to make your machines as optimized as possible i mean it's just everything that you don't exactly need is going to be slowing you down everything that you take with you is slowing you down everything you're adding onto a machine is adding on weight onto your usage of it it's whether it's the colors bracing strain on your eyes or the screen requiring requiring a lot more space and making the machine heavier and making the machine overheat so the more you can get rid of things that are not essential, the more you're able to optimize for the essential things. And so if you write and if you read, this is an activity that almost always does not require colors. You don't need to be reading in colors. For most adults, we just read in black and white. And so you're able to perform a lot more reading, a lot more writing when you just give up on the superficialities of color. But then your machine can stay cool for a long time. It's simple, it's lightweight, it places no strain on your eyes. And it completely transforms the way that you work. I mean, this is something that always bothered me, which is that I love to be in the sun. I love to be outdoors, but I can't work outdoors. I have to go inside. And now this is becoming, this is changing. My life is really changing because I could spend a lot more time outdoors and enjoy a lot more productivity because I can be relaxed. I can be in the sun. I can be smelling fresh air. It's really wonderful. I
Speaker 1
think that's the simplest thing that computers can do, which is get out of the way so we can live the way we want to live our lives. It's not natural to be stuck inside all day. Let's be in our happy place. Let's be in the way we're evolved to, which is out in the sun and nature, doing our best work. And I was deeply, deeply influenced by a book called Brave New World. I'm not sure if
Speaker 2
you've read it. Yes, I have. Yeah, of course.
Speaker 1
And that feels like that's the core thing that's happening is computers are not computers. They're portals and tendrils to have us all stimulated into complacency, into nothingness, into no free thinking. And so if we keep going down that route, we're going to end up in WALL-E. We're going to end up in Brave New World. so what the hope of this project is is how do we go away from computers being portals back to being tools and objects that serve us that we can use to be the better versions of ourselves to read to think for ourselves to build ourselves up for self-development and cut the tendril of this complacent dopamine slot machine.
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah. And I, I, I think that's, that's a great way of putting it. And I think, I mean, there's still, you can still have other screens. So when you do want to see something that requires full color, then yeah, of course you can do it you can have a giant screen you can use a laptop screen but it's good it's a lot better if you're just using these for the times when you actually need the color if you say want to watch a movie or if you want to watch a sports game or something like that then okay it makes sense to do it then but then all the other time when you're working you don need that. You need the simplest, most lightweight experience. Because for me, and this is one of the keys to my productivity, as you mentioned, is the more distractions there are in the environment, the less productive I am. It's a very simple relationship. And this is part of the reason why I moved to working on a Linux laptop because i think macs and windows are becoming more and more like cable tv almost in that they're constantly trying to get you to buy stuff it's it's uh i mean it's uh it's just a lot of distraction so windows they have all these different screen savers that they'll show up and different background photos and it's just all distraction i mean it looks it looks really beautiful but i just opened the computer now because i want to sit down and work i don't want to be wondering about this beautiful scene in somewhere in peru and going down a rabbit hole reading about it which is you know designed to get me plugged in more and more and addicted to spending time in my laptop so that I could keep clicking the links that they give me and buy more of their crap. And that comes at the expense of my productivity. So I don't want that. I just want a laptop that functions like a washing machine. You click the buttons and it does what you're supposed to do. It's not supposed to sit there and try and sell me things. I don't want it to be talking to me. I don't want it to have its own agenda of what I want to do. I want to get in. I want to open my file where I'm working on my book and begin typing. And I want complete silence. And
Speaker 1
I think the reason that's so difficult, Safedim, for Silicon Valley is they have their identity around the computer. They have their business models and incentives around having you spend the most amount of time. So there is no accountability or responsibility to your productivity. Who cares, right? All they need to do is their OKR, their numbers of how many hours and clicks you had, you know, whether you're the Facebook, you know, or, or TikTok or so on, that's what they're optimizing for. If you're Apple or Microsoft, they're hoping you don't even know that you're less productive on it. It's just the lowest common denominator. It's super easy to have one computer that's full of notifications with an app grid that works for, you know, your grandma in Mississippi and works for you. It's always way more profitable to sell one thing to everybody and not need to make a bunch of different devices for different things. And we know these principles, right? In your house, you keep your office separate from your entertainment room. The argument here is not to not have entertainment or not have color. It's to have freedom. When you choose to have color, when you choose to have stimulation, entertainment, make a free choice. I'm going to sit down with my TV. I'm going to sit down with my normal computer. But when you're choosing to focus, to actually be productive, to think, to read deeply, to write, to take notes, freely choose to do that and have your choice be respected. But that's right now, your choice is not being respected. To your point, you're sitting down and it's always saying, here's some candy. It's like a black hole of the same set of activities. So you're not more free. It's a fake freedom. They're like, look, you can do everything on this. You have all these options, but it's a total fake freedom because you just end up doing the same couple things that are most, you know, path- least resistance. Yeah.
Speaker 2
The quickest way to get dopamine basically.
Speaker 1
Yeah, exactly. And the original point of dopamine is for learning. If you look at a kid before they get corrupted by society, they're out playing and pulling things apart and taking like climbing them and examining them. And a lot of that is the dopamine circuit rewarding learning. And what we've done, you know, it's an evolutionary mismatch again, and with all the screwed up incentives is take that same circuit that's meant for learning and exploring and using it for the stimming, this absolute junkie behavior. And I think what's really fascinating is blue light plays a key role in making us more compulsive because it overstimulates our dopamine pathways. It actually jacks up our nervous system. So we're in a sympathetic response such that, you know, our breathing rate changes. We breathe shallower and less often. That tension, you want to stim it out. And so there's a fascinating way where the whole thing has been kind of set up to be extremely convenient to their business models and incentives. And in a way, you're really, really trusting people when then you say, hey, I've made a black and white computer that does less and looks more analog. Because you're saying, I'm not going to sell you something on flashiness. I'm not going to sell you something on it being fancy. I'm going to sell you it based on its actual empirical ability to be useful in your life. And if you are the big companies, they're cynical about human nature. People are stupid. They're going to fall for glitz. No one's going to buy something because it's actually better for them. And so I think at the core here too is a principle of actually being not cynical about people, actually being optimistic about our willingness to empower ourselves, to educate ourselves, to make good choices. And low time preference, as you said, is a great way of summarizing this. It looks great in the story, looks good on first day, but then over time, see all the externalities and implications. Something like this may not have the same glitz and the glamour, but over time, starts to prove itself yeah
Speaker 2
no i think there's a tendency here to think that people might think that somebody's really out to get us with this and i don't think that's the case with the blue light we want that we want to be inundated with this stuff and it sells well and people just spend all their time glued to their phones and their screens because there's a lot going on in the phone and the screen it's it's okay to stare i mean there's the total sum of human knowledge is accessible from that little screen in your eye in your hand so it's entirely understandable that you want to stare that there's your mom on the other end, there's your children, your cousins, your friends, your life partner, your work, your entertainment, your favorite sports team. Everything, everything is there. You could find pictures of it or you could talk to it or you could work on it. So it's natural that people want to look at it. And I think it's just, it's also natural that people have more and more tendencies to go for the short-term thing until they start realizing the long-term implications of it. And then they start reversing course. So you see it with food, you know, people over the last few decades, we invented all kinds of new concoctions that people were really amazed by. And now people are beginning to realize, oh, well, you know, eating all of these dyes and chemical concoctions is not the best thing that you can do for your health. And so now you see an enormous industry of people moving away from junk food mass-produced high time preference high high dopamine big giant crash later food away from it to healthier options and i think it's inevitable that we'll see the same thing with computing because people are just going to realize there's no conspiracy out there they're not forcing you to buy those things they're not forcing you to stare at them you're the one conspiring against yourself you're you are the one that is buying it putting it in your hand connecting it and staring at it all day and you're the one giving yourself carpal tunnel you're the one giving yourself a neck and it doesn't have to be this way you can have a much healthier relationship with your machines and i think this is this is a great way of doing it because you're you're you're focusing on what you need and you're reducing the amount of unnecessary stimulation allowing you to have a much healthier relationship with
Speaker 1
your
Speaker 2
machines all right the
Speaker 1
way the way i see it is like it's just it's been hard if you realize what this is to kind of have another choice and if you're if you're the big dogs you have no reason to make another choice because people are already buying your stuff do you need to do anything and so the hope is there's a whole new cadre of companies like us making people have actually new choices when it comes to computing and kind of to what i said before it's just so damn hard and that's why we have few choices and so i think we're if nothing else a fascinating experiment to see is it possible to create a new computing company? Is it possible to have a different set of incentives in an operating system that's not about ads and tracking? Could it be decentralized from top to bottom? Yeah, I think it's this new timeline that we're all trying to create together. What if we can be full stack?

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