Keen On America

Might future multi-trillion dollar AI platforms like OpenAI represent not just the end of the app age but also of economic competition itself? As That Was The Week’s Keith Teare and Andrew discuss in today’s weekly KEEN ON tech round-up, the news of OpenAI’s $6.5 billion new funding round suggests that big tech is going to get even bigger because these new post-platform AI leviathans will control everything associated with their revolutionary technology. There won’t be a need for apps in this economy because what Silicon Valley traditionally calls the technology “stack” will be controlled by a single AI company. It’s a daunting prospect that might, in the not too distant future, make us nostalgic for the relatively flat economy of the Apple/Google app store duolopy.Keith Teare is the founder and CEO of SignalRank Corporation. Previously, he was executive chairman at Accelerated Digital Ventures Ltd., a U.K.-based global investment company focused on startups at all stages. Teare studied at the University of Kent and is the author of “The Easy Net Book” and “Under Siege.” He writes regularly for TechCrunch and publishes the “That Was The Week” newsletter.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Carissa Carter and Scott Doorley both teach at Stanford’s interdisciplinary d.school. They are also the joint authors of Assembling Tomorrow, an intriguing new book in which, using their D School experience, Carter and Doorley provide a guide to designing a thriving future. They argue that the future, in all its socioeconomic complexity, can de designed so that we can mend the mistakes of our past and shape that future for the better. For some viewers this might be a bit annoyingly Stanford in its can-do positivity and virtue signaling. But if Carter and Doorley can indeed successfully instill in their d.school students a degree of moral responsibility about designing the technological and economic future, then they will have done the rest of us a great service. Carissa Carter is a designer, a geoscientist, and the academic director at the Stanford d.school. She’s the author of The Secret Language of Maps: How to Tell Visual Stories with Data (2022) and Assembling Tomorrow: A Guide to Designing a Thriving Future from the Stanford d.school (2024). Carissa teaches design courses on emerging technologies, climate change, and data visualization. Her work on designing with machine learning and blockchain has earned multiple design awards, including Fast Company Innovation and Core 77 awards.Scott Doorley is a writer, designer, and the creative director at the Stanford d.school. He has overseen everything from books to workspaces to digital products and initiatives focused on the future of learning and design. He has co-written two books: Assembling Tomorrow: A Guide to Designing a Thriving Future from the Stanford d.school (2024) and also Make Space: How to Set the Stage for Creative Collaboration (2011). His work has been featured in museums from San Jose to Helsinki and in publications such as Architecture + Urbanism and The New York Times.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Yesterday, I interviewed The Financial Times’ Andrew Hill about the FT’s best six business books of the year. Today, I talk to Michael Morris, the author of one of those books. In Tribal, Morris explains how the cultural instincts that divide us can also help bring us together. Our tribal instincts are humanity’s secret weapon, Morris suggests. Rather than deriding tribal impulses for their irrationality, we should therefore recognize them as powerful levers that elevate performance, heal rifts, and set off shockwaves of cultural change.  It’s an intriguingly counter-intuitive thesis from the Columbia University behavioral psychologist which offers an escape from our relentless culture wars. Michael Morris works as a cultural psychologist at Columbia University in its graduate Business School and its Department of Psychology. Previously he taught for a decade at Stanford University. Morris received his PhD in psychology from the University of Michigan after earning undergraduate degrees in cognitive science and English literature at Brown University. His research has discovered cultural influences on styles of cognition, communication, and collaboration, as well as situational factors that cue them and social experiences that shift them. Outside of academia, Professor Morris advises corporations, government agencies, NGOs, and political campaigns about culture-related issues. He lives in New York City.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

The Financial Times has just announced their short list of the best six business books of 2024. Authors include KEEN ON regulars like Andrew Scott as well as Michael Morris, who will appear on tomorrow’s show. As the competition’s manager, Andrew Hill, told me when I visited him at the FT offices in London last week, a business book is a tricky thing to define. Perhaps, like pornography, you know it when you read it. In any case, the list is full of timely texts on the morality of economic growth, the nature of the modern corporation, Silicon Valley’s control of the future of warfare, and, of course, how AI is about to change the world. We’ll try to get all the short-list authors on the show before the winner is announced in early December. But in meantime, please read the six and let me know which one you think should win the award.Andrew Hill is senior business writer at the FT and consulting editor, FT Live. He is a former management editor, City editor, financial editor and comment and analysis editor. He is the author of ‘Leadership in the Headlines’ (2016), a collection of his columns, and ‘Ruskinland’ (2019), about the enduring influence of Victorian thinker John Ruskin. He joined the FT in 1988 and has also worked as New York bureau chief, foreign news editor and correspondent in Brussels and Milan. Andrew was named Business Commentator of the Year at the 2016 Comment Awards and Commentator of the Year at the 2009 Business Journalist of the Year Awards, where he also received a Decade of Excellence award.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

While many fear that Trump offers an existential threat to American democracy, Barry C. Lynn believes that the real danger comes from big tech companies like Google, Amazon and Microsoft. Lynn, the executive director of the Open Markets Institute, is the author of “Antitrust Revolution”, Harper’s October cover story. Lynn argues that big tech offers the real threat to American freedom and major antitrust regulation is required to save liberal democracy. Not everyone will agree with Lynn, of course, but he has been the most consistent antitrust critic of big tech over the last decade and offers the most extensive economic and political critique of the Google/Amazon/Microsoft techno-monopoly complex.Barry C. Lynn is the executive director of the Open Markets Institute. Over the past two decades, Lynn pioneered understanding of how the monopolies of the 21st century threaten our democracy, individual liberties, security, and prosperity. Lynn’s efforts to update anti-monopoly law and thinking for the digital era have been fully embraced by the Biden administration and have shaped the thinking of policymakers and scholars around the world. His warnings on structural flaws in international systems predicted today’s supply chain crises, and his proposed remedies have been widely studied by the U.S. government, Europe, Asia, the IMF, and the OECD. Lynn developed his thinking in three books — End of the Line (2005), Cornered (2010), and Liberty from All Masters (2020), as well as numerous articles, speeches, and congressional testimony. Lynn’s thinking has been profiled in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Politico, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and CBS, and his work has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, French, and Danish. Lynn was previously the executive editor of Global Business Magazine and a correspondent for The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse in South America. He holds a B.A. in English from Columbia University.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Finally a tech show not about AI. Martin Schmidt is the President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) as well a distinguished technologist in his own right. So rather than having just another conversation about AI, I talked to Schmidt about how he expects quantum computing to change the world. Schmidt, who taught at MIT for many years, has a particularly interesting take on quantum because RPI is the first university in the world to house an IBM Quantum System One at its new Quantum Computational Center. So Schmidt’s insights are practical rather than speculative and he offers a very concrete understanding of why quantum will, in the not too distant future, revolutionize not just computing, but also medicine and many other scientific fields. Martin A. Schmidt, the 19th President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), took office on July 1, 2022. Prior to coming to RPI, Schmidt served as the provost of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) since 2014 and was also MIT's senior academic and budget officer. He was responsible for the Institute’s educational programs, as well as for the recruitment, promotion, and tenuring of faculty. As provost, he worked closely with MIT’s deans to establish academic priorities, and with other members of the Institute’s senior team to manage financial planning and research support. He also had oversight of MIT’s international engagements. Schmidt was a member of MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science faculty since 1988, and also served as director of MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratories from 1999 to 2006 and as associate provost from 2008 to 2013. He was also the Ray and Maria Stata Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), an international organization aimed at advancing technology. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Dr Josh McConkey’s new book, Be the Weight Behind the Spear, is about how to fix America. McConkey, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in North Carolina, believes that the strength of America has always been its people. So his focus is on motivating all Americans to be, what he calls, “the weight behind the spears” of the country’s future leaders. For McConkey, an US Air Force Reserve Colonel and physician as well as aspiring Federal politician, America’s future depends on this. The alternative, he warns, is increasingly sharp and perhaps even violent generational and political divisions. Dr. (Colonel) Josh McConkey is the proud father of three little Americans. His biggest mission in life is to help shape these children into the future leaders of America with the help of his wife, Elsa. Together, they reside in Apex, North Carolina. They are part of a very tight knit family with both Cuban and Irish heritage. The wonderful aromas that emanate through their house from cooking time-honored, secret Cuban family recipes brings a warmth, love, and security that only tradition can bring.Dr. McConkey has worked clinically as an Emergency Physician for over 20 years. He served in academics as a professor at Duke University from 2013-2014 and as adjunct faculty until 2018. He is Board Certified in Emergency Medicine with the American Board of Emergency Medicine and Fellowship Boarded in Emergency Medical Services (EMS), a subspecialty encompassing subject matter expertise in Disaster Response Medicine, National Incident Management Systems, National Response Framework, and National Disaster Medical Systems.Dr. McConkey has also had the distinct pleasure of consulting on international health policy and development, once meeting with New Zealand's Prime Minister, Helen Clark. He attended the National Security Course at National Defense University, College of International Security Affairs, Fort Lesley J. McNair, in 2017 where his policy discussions with members of Congress encouraged him to put his unique experiences to use in developing healthcare policy.Dr. McConkey currently serves as the commander of the 459th Aeromedical Staging Squadron at Andrews AFB and serves on the Air Force Association Council developing legislative and policy recommendations addressing quality of life, equipment modernization, and military construction issues that affect the Air Force Reserve.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Is there anyone who still believes in America as a force for good in the world today? There’s that doddery old cold warrior Joe Biden, of course, and his younger globalizing sidekick, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. And then there’s Edward Goldberg, the author of The United States as Global Liberal Hegemon, who is still hawking the idea that the world needs America as the global policeman for peace and prosperity. You have to admire Goldberg’s chutzpah, I guess, given the catastrophic consequences of its “liberal” invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. But, in 2024, to be still imagining the US as any kind of hegemon, especially a “global liberal” one, seems at best a tragicomic nostalgia for a world that no longer exists.Edward Goldberg is Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Center for Global Affairs at New York University, USA. He is the author of Why Globalization Works For America: How Nationalist Trade Policies Are Destroying America (2020) and The Joint Ventured Nation: Why America Needs A New Foreign Policy (2016).Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Instagram superstar and “Here’s Where It Gets Interesting” podcast host Sharon McMahon has been dubbed America’s government teacher. In her first book, The Small and the Mighty, McMahon writes about twelve unsung Americans who changed the course of history. Some of her heroes are more unsung than others, but as she explains, they all - like Sharon McMahon herself - capture the moral agency & can-do spirit that reflects the best of America. Sharon McMahon is a former high school government and law teacher who earned a reputation as “America’s Government Teacher” amidst the historic 2020 election proceedings for her viral efforts on Instagram to educate the general public on political misinformation. Through a simple mission to share non-partisan information about democracy, Sharon has amassed hundreds of thousands of followers online, affectionately called the “Governerds,” who look to her for truth and logic in a society plagued by bias and conspiracy.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Back in April 2011, Saad Mohseni was made one of Time’s 100 most influential people in the world. And who exactly is that, you might ask. I have to admit I hadn’t heard of him either. But as Rupert Murdoch wrote about Mohseni for that Time award, “he's the best-informed person in the world about Afghanistan”. Mohseni, in fact, is the Afghan version of Murdoch (without the wives & nasty right-wing politics). Even today, with the Taliban back in power, Mohseni remains amongst Afghanistan’s most influential media moguls. And he writes about all this in Radio Free Afghanistan, a memoir focusing on what he calls his “twenty-year struggle for an independent voice in Kabul”. Important stuff about a country that needs to be remembered in the West rather than conveniently forgotten.Described by the Asia Society as a ‘Game Changer’, Saad Mohseni has built a reputation as a dynamic and innovative entrepreneur. As Chairman and Chief Executive of MOBY GROUP, Saad has been widely applauded for his role in advancing press freedom, empowering civil society and defending women’s rights. Time Magazine recognized him in 2011 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, while in 2013, Foreign Policy magazine named him among 100 Global Thinkers. In 2016, he was featured in the Business Insider 100 “The Creators” list, and recognized by the BBC as one of 10 men globally championing gender equality. Saad currently serves on the boards of the International Crisis Group (ICG) and the Washington DC-based International Center for Journalists (ICFJ). One of four children of an Afghan diplomat, Saad spent his early years in the United Kingdom, Kabul, Islamabad and Tokyo, before emigrating to Melbourne, Australia.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe