David Pierce

[00:00:00] My fondest gadget memories still to this day are the gold iPod mini that I had in high school that got stolen out of my car. This is the Techsploder podcast, conversations with tech professionals about being human in a binary world. Episode 24, David Pierce. Techsploder is made possible by the financial support of our patrons like Brian Yeager, Brandon Quintel, and Jill Rodzilski. If you like what you hear,

[00:00:28] head on over to patreon.com slash Jason Howell and you can support the show directly and thank you for making independent podcasting possible. Hello everybody and welcome to the Techsploder podcast. I'm Jason Howell and I am super excited to welcome this week's guest, David Pierce. He's the editor at large at The Verge, co-host of The Verge cast. David has been at the forefront of technology

[00:00:58] journalism for a very long time. He's held prominent positions at some of the industry's most respected publications. Yes, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Protocol, and currently he leads technology coverage at The Verge where he writes about consumer technology. Like I said, he hosts The Verge cast podcast and has the very popular installer column, which you should check out. His unique perspectives come from years of experience covering the intersection of technology,

[00:01:27] consumer products, and digital culture. And he's just a heck of a lot of fun to talk to. So why don't we get right to it? My conversation with David Pierce. David Pierce, welcome to Techsploder. It is so great to have you here today. Thank you for taking time. I'm very happy to be here. Thank you for doing this with me. Yeah. You know, the thing that I love about this show and people who, you know, watch or listen to this show with any sort of regularity have heard me say it a million times,

[00:01:52] is the nostalgic quality of technology. I feel like tech, and you could probably speak to this at length if you were so inclined, but tech has become this like weighty, heavy, almost depressing thing to a certain degree at times. And I like remembering when tech was fun and awesome and inspiring and everything. So that's why we got you here to see, you know, what that fire is for you.

[00:02:19] So I'm into it. Yeah, it's weird. It's tech was so fun when it was like a nerdy thing to be into. And now that everybody's into it, it's it's awful. So many things have changed because tech has become more popular. And now like all my friends who for years didn't want to talk about gadgets and didn't want to talk about the stuff that I was into and was using are now like blowing up my group chat about

[00:02:45] deep seek. And it's like, how did this change so fast? And also, why is it so much less fun now? Yeah, yeah, no kidding. Like, I remember being a kid and being, you know, my, my computer when I was a child was a Commodore 64. That was like the love of my life. The fact that I had one in my bedroom, it was the best thing in the world. And that, that proved to the world that I was an outlier, that I was the nerdy little kid who would rather kind of sit in a room, you know, plunking away on

[00:03:14] his Commodore 64 than going out and playing football or something along those lines. And now technology has become so incredibly ubiquitous. Like that's kind of a funny thing to think about. Like now, you know, everybody lives that life. And yeah, it's taken a little bit of the quirkiness away from it because it's just kind of part of the oxygen in the air. Totally. One of the things we talked about on the Vergecast all the time is, uh, if you go back,

[00:03:38] I don't know, 30 years, let's say like mid nineties, everybody had a computer room, which was like a place in your house. A lot of people didn't have computers at all, but if you did, it was, it was in a space and everybody's computer room was exactly the same. It had like wood paneling and everybody had that same sort of like hutch that went around the computer. And it was this big, deep, wide, thick monitor. And you had a, you had a tower. Mine was a gateway back when gateway was a thing. Uh, and it was like, it was like a piece of

[00:04:06] furniture in your house. And I think we thought of computers so differently then they were, they were like destinations and things in the way that they're just kind of oxygen now. Uh, and I kind of think we had it right 30 years ago and we should probably get back to that. Well, there was something to be said for, and, and this was only because it was a limitation of the technology at the time. Obviously now laptops are so incredibly ubiquitous that that, so, you know, we all have them,

[00:04:33] but there was something to be said for going somewhere with the intention of doing the computer thing. And now the computer is always with us. It's in our pockets. It's in our bag because we're carting it around. Cause it's been miniaturized to this point that it's so easy to bring it with us. And sure. There are great things that come from that, but it also doesn't get, you know, it does remove, I think a little bit of the special quality of it. Um, at this point.

[00:05:00] Yeah. I think there, there's a, there's a thing about doing technology on purpose that I think is coming back in some really interesting ways. Uh, Chris Hayes, the, the MSNBC anchor, just wrote a really good book about taking back your attention. And in so many ways, that whole conversation is just about like, how do we do this stuff on purpose again? And, and it goes back to, uh, I now have a thing in my pocket and a thing on my wrist and often a thing in my ears that is just making noise

[00:05:25] at me all the time. And it just, it has feelings about me that I have to react to all the time. And, and it used to be that even, even the idea of like, I have to put my laptop on a table and open it up is like that friction is good. And I think it's, it's productive. And I think there's like, there's a balance in there somewhere where like, I'm definitely not advocating for let's all get back to computer towers and gigantic CRT monitors. Like things have gotten better since then.

[00:05:51] But there's something to just that tiny bit of like, I am, I am doing technology now that I think it, it sort of, it implies that there are times where you're not doing technology. And I think that's, that's a good thing. Yeah, no, I would completely agree. Now, now that I'm doing, you know, technology, uh, as a career, but like as an independent thing, I can very easily fall into the trap of every moment in my life is a technology moment. Because when you run a business,

[00:06:20] when you own a business and you're trying to make it successful, it's like all of your time is valuable, valid time. Totally. And you lose a little bit of that separation. Well, actually you lose a ton of it. Like I, you know, right before this recording, I had to get myself out of the house for like a 25 minute walk with the dogs, which was partially for them. But I realized when I'm doing it, it's also for me because if I don't step away from this stuff, I can easily lose days staring at these screens. That might not be good for me.

[00:06:47] Yeah. Walks. Everybody needs more walks in their life, uh, including you and your dogs and me and my dogs. Yes. So, um, so this all kind of, uh, you know, points to, I think the thing that I sometimes am missing in the world of technology, which is the, the glimmer of excitement or, um, I don't know that, that spark that I remember when I was a kid and I came across a cool piece,

[00:07:14] piece of technology that, you know, I'd never seen anything like that before. I will, I have to have that, you know, that sort of thing. I'm curious, like when you think about your childhood, you know, ahead of everything that you've done with the verge and all the places that you've worked and you, you know, you're very well known for the work you do. I love the work that you do. Um, but ahead of all of that was probably a, I'm guessing an early kind of interest in technology.

[00:07:39] And I'm curious to know where that story kind of starts, where, what is that? It's an interesting question. I think, uh, I, I, I definitely don't have the, you know, I grew up taking apart computers story. Uh, I kind of wish I did. I feel like there's like a piece of the nerd cred that I'm missing in my life. That's a real bummer. Um, I hear you on that one, but I think so my dad in,

[00:08:03] I think the early nineties, uh, ran a software company. And so we had a computer in our house much earlier than a lot of people. Uh, and I like essentially learned how to program is strong, but I like learned my way around a command line essentially in order to play games. Uh, and so that was kind of my early computer experience. And then, uh, just enjoyed the

[00:08:29] process of figuring all of that out and like learn just enough code to be dangerous without actually being any good at it. And then, uh, it just kind of spiraled from there. But I think really where it kicked off for me was I came of age with the iPod. Uh, like I, I was, I was becoming my own person as the iPod was becoming a thing. And so I think about like my fondest gadget memories still to this

[00:08:55] day are the gold iPod mini that I had in high school that got stolen out of my car. Uh, and it was, it was devastating. And, uh, I had the thing that you would, you would plug one end into the headphone jack and the other end into the cassette part of the car. Uh, and it was like, I think about all of that as like core growing up stuff. And I still remember like, I have, I have awful music tastes. That's like an important thing to say out loud. I have terrible music tastes.

[00:09:21] And so all music tastes for you. No, no. When you say, even I don't think I like good music. I like terrible music. I like, I was the one in, in high school who like, didn't like classic rock and all the stuff that was cool to like. And I was like, have you guys heard of this? Britney Spears? Like she's sick. And all my friends were like, don't ever say that out loud again. Um, but, but like that was, that's really, I think the first thing that I can think of as like gadgets that were mine

[00:09:47] that I loved in that same way. And then I graduated from there to like early smartphones. Uh, and I also loved the Palm pilots. So there's something in that kind of like right before the smartphone era that was like, as I was really starting to understand technology for myself. And that's the stuff I really look back at. Was the, uh, the gold iPod mini, was that a piece of technology that like you paid for or, or was that bought? Like, did your parents get that for you? And I

[00:10:16] paid for it. Um, I was, uh, I figured out that the babysitting racket was a pretty successful way to make money as a, as a teenager. My dad was a pastor. Uh, so I came sort of inherently trustworthy because like, you know, my dad knew Jesus. And so, uh, there were people all over our church who were like psyched to have me babysit fabulous money. Can't recommend it enough. And that was how

[00:10:40] I bought my iPod, but first I went through a sort of parade of other lesser MP3 players. I had all of the like huge boxy creative ones. And I had like a Rio and all these things that were like actual spinning hard drives in an MP3 player. And then a bunch of those broke because I was like, I was, you know, I was, I was young and didn't have any actual money. So I was cheap and it was like, I'm going to buy the crappy thing. And I learned the buy the good thing because it's cheaper in the

[00:11:07] long run lesson, uh, pretty early on. And that was, that was how I landed on the iPod mini. And it was like, okay, this is, I have bought the good thing and it is magical until somebody stole it out of my car. But that was years later. So I had, I had a good run with the iPod mini. All right. So you got, you got your money's worth at least to a certain degree. Very much so. The downside of this is that you no longer have it to like pull out and look at. Like that's, that's something that I cherish is the ability to kind of sometimes take out some of those old

[00:11:33] pieces of technology. And if even only for like five seconds and that's all it lasts for, you know, be able to look at it and be like, Oh yeah, this is a good one. This side here. If you're listening to this and you're the person who stole my iPod mini, I will pay you an alarming amount of money to get it back to me. They've formatted it. It's a shell of itself. The battery doesn't even hold anymore, but you know, I don't care. I'll frame it. It'll go right back there behind me. It'll be awesome.

[00:11:55] I can't remember. I can't remember which, um, pre iPod MP3 players I had, but I know I had one or two and I don't know if you remember this, this era where, I mean, auctions, online auctions were a really big deal. You know, eBay obviously is the easy one to point to, but I remember back in the like very early two thousands pre iPod, there were these sites that, that the auction sites,

[00:12:24] they seemed too good to be true. And you'd go there and you'd be like, Oh wow. I could get that thing for like $10 or whatever. And I, I don't know if my memory is flawed, but I remember getting, using one of those sites to get one of those off-brand, you know, MP3 players. And it was just total garbage. Like I think it could hold like 75 megs at any given time. So you're, you're managing the seven or eight songs that you ever want to take with you or whatever. And it was, it was hot

[00:12:52] garbage. What was it about the iPod mini that really captivated you in comparison to some of those other ones? Uh, it was, it was, it had been loved in a way that I think a lot of technology hadn't. And I think that's like, there, there was that run of Apple that I think, I think everybody kind of lionizes Apple too much in a lot of ways, but like it did a thing where they just cared more than

[00:13:16] everybody else. And you could feel it in the products for a long time. And with that, it was, uh, like there was just something about the, the scrolling mechanism was exactly right. I still would rather scroll music on a click wheel than with a touchscreen. Uh, there, it was totally understandable in a way that I really liked. Like I would hand my creative jukebox to somebody else and they had, they literally had to use a joystick. Like there was one that had a joy,

[00:13:42] like a D pad joystick on it. And the menus were insane. And the thing essentially like ran windows and it was bad, but then there's like, you could just sit down in my passenger seat and I could hand you my iPod. And it was like, I was a sort of very vulnerable in that moment because I'm like, here's all the music that I like. Do you like my Britney Spears? Yeah. Have you even heard of any of it? Are you going to make fun of me about this? Uh, but like 99 out of a hundred people could just sit

[00:14:08] there and figure it out. And like, it, it looked cool. It was small. The battery lasted a long time. And it was just like, it, it felt like the thing should feel in a way that I remember being just so impressed by the whole time. The software was trash. I had a windows computer at the time and trying to get music on and off that thing was just a full nightmare. Uh, but actually using it was, was delightful. Yeah. I mean the hardware experience itself and you're right. The, the, the wheel and that, that kind of like that clicky sound that it would,

[00:14:38] you know, that, that, Oh man, it was just so satisfying. You knew when you moved to the next line, cause it was just like a little kind of like snappy. Yeah. You could do it without looking at it, which I think is an underrated thing in technology that you, you would learn to scroll by feel. And like, I could, I could basically remember in order the lists of a lot of my music. And so it's like, okay, it's, it's the third track on this one and you could feel it click three times and hit it. And that's like, that means something. I think it's, I totally agree.

[00:15:07] I totally agree. I'm going to take a super quick break, come back, uh, talk a little bit more about all this stuff. I love the nostalgia conversation and, uh, I have something to touch on what you just, we're just talking about here in a second. Klar können wir multitasking, aber wenn's drauf ankommt, konzentrieren wir uns gern auf eine Sache. Das ist jetzt möglich mit dem neuen Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. Klick aufs Banner und entdecke deinen persönlichen AI-Begleiter. Aktiviere Google Gemini und frag die AI einfach

[00:15:37] zum Beispiel nach Restaurant-Optionen und teile sie mit deinen Kontakten. Das klingt dann so. Hey, such mir ein indisches Restaurant in der Nähe raus und sende es an Luca. Was das Galaxy S25 Ultra noch kann, erfährst du auf Samsung.de. So you're talking about the clicky wheel and what that reminds me of, and I'm happy to see this, I think, is there seems to be kind of a movement right now around returning to tactile,

[00:16:05] returning to, like, the touchscreen came along and everybody thought, this is the best thing since sliced bread. Everything needs to be a touchscreen. You know, like, I've got a touchscreen in one of my cars and I'm still not entirely sold. It's the best method, but, you know, I'm so used to touchscreens that I put up with it and it's fine. But I'm starting to see kind of like a resurgence to this idea that, like, oh, wait a minute, maybe having tactile, maybe having dedicated single-purpose,

[00:16:32] single-use-purpose buttons is a good thing. And I think I'm kind of heartened by that. I don't know. Oh, I completely agree. I mean, I think we hit this point where the smartphone became so big and so mainstream and so successful that everybody just kind of assumed that the smartphone must have gotten everything right and was definitely the future of everything. That it was, it just, it hit scale unlike anything ever had before, right? Like, everyone had one. Like, in a real way,

[00:17:02] everyone, more people have smartphones than have ever had any other technological product ever in history. That is nuts. And so I think a natural thing to do is say, okay, this got everything right. What else can we do with this, right? You have all this supply chain stuff that's like, let's, let's rethink the way that we make everything with smartphone parts. But then it's like, okay, most people know how to use a smartphone. Let's just give them smartphone style things everywhere.

[00:17:29] Perfectly reasonable idea. Horrible in practice. Like, I actually think, I think touchscreens are the precise wrong thing for cars, because do you know what you shouldn't be doing is looking at the screen in your car. Like, this is so uncomplicated. And we as humans, we know how to use tools and we know how to use buttons and we learn how to feel these things in a way that you physically cannot on a touchscreen. There's something deeply inhuman about a touchscreen. And in

[00:17:56] some ways that's fine. But when I need to look down and hit four buttons just to change the temperature in the car, you've now caused actual danger in my life. And that is a problem. And so I think, I think you're right that what we're starting to see is car companies are realizing people like buttons, which thank God, and there's a mix to be had there, right? Like, scrolling through your music works on a touchscreen. Sure. If I like, I think CarPlay is generally good. But this thing where Apple

[00:18:24] is like, we're going to take over the temperature controls. And if you want to change gears, that's a it's like, no, no, no, no, none of that. Give us buttons. But I also think, again, we pulled everything into the phone. And like they say, in tech, everything is always either bundling or unbundling. And I think what we're starting to see now is people who are like, I don't want to spend my entire life looking at my phone. I want things that feel more tuned to what they are. I mean,

[00:18:51] vinyl is coming back for God's sake, right? Like, yeah, people like the idea of I get to hold a record in my hand and put it down and put a needle on it and have it play like, sure, there's a pure just nostalgia kind of aesthetic factor that but there's also something to like this is a purposeful device made for this thing that I think we've lost by just yanking it all into smartphones. And it is fun to see that slowly starting to come back. Yeah, 100%. I mean, I think of, I think of when I was in

[00:19:19] high school. And, you know, CDs were, of course, the thing at the time, this is pre MP3 era. And the idea of listening to music or the idea of buying music was man, it was just so different than it is now. When I think of when I was a kid, my dream of the future was, oh, we're driving around in the future in our car, we were going to have every single song that's ever been written. Like, I remember

[00:19:46] having this conversation with my parents. I don't think that it was like overly prescient of me. I think it was just an extension of what I believe technology would do someday. And we got there. And what I realized, looking back is that we really lost this tangible quality of what you're talking about, of being able to like, of it meaning and mattering so much that I own or I went out and sought this sought out this one thing. And I decided I'm going to spend my money on that one thing.

[00:20:16] And as a result, I end up listening or playing that one thing 1000 times because I did that versus having access to everything. And everything just kind of feels not very special at all. Right. Yeah. And it's so funny, because on the other hand, you wouldn't go back, right? Like if I could, if I could snap my fingers and Spotify is gone, like, no, thank you. I love Spotify. But there is something about that, that we've either lost for good or need to figure out how

[00:20:45] to get back. Right. And there's like, you go back far enough. And there's the like flipping through the record crates at the record store. And then kind of one step after that was like, for me, that experience was the black binder of CDs that everybody had. And it's like, it sits on the backseat of the car and you unzip the binder and you're flipping through the sleeves of people's CDs. And that's like, that's the discovery mechanism. And there is nothing like that in scrolling through

[00:21:12] Spotify recommendations. Right. There's that, that sense of like, I have decided all of these things are good and you can look at them or like, I'm going to flip through a bunch of mixtapes that I've made for myself. Like even Spotify playlists don't work that way. And there's something about technically it's the same, right? Like here's a playlist with all my favorite songs. Like it's kind of the same thing, but it is different. It doesn't feel the same. Yeah. And there's, there's something about the work and there's something about the physicality and there's

[00:21:41] something about the kind of finiteness of it that I think is just lost now. And again, maybe that's a trade worth making for access to every song ever made in history. But we did lose something. Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree. And meanwhile, like, I don't know, I've probably been saying for the last three years, I really do want to get a record player again. Cause you know, I used to have when I used to be a DJ, so I used to have, you know, walls of records that I, at some point decided,

[00:22:11] you know, I no longer needed cause it took up space. And now of course I'm regretting it. You know, I wish I had those records, but, um, but it's three years later, I've been saying this for three years. I still don't have a record player. I still don't, you know, haven't started shopping for records again. So there's obviously some sort of barrier there, but I like to, I like to romanticize the idea, you know, totally. I keep claiming, I keep claiming I'm going to buy all the movies that I like because, you know, streaming services, everything's moving around too much. It's too messy. I'm like, I like to watch the office. Maybe I should just buy the office and

[00:22:41] have it on DVD. And then I'm like, I don't think I own a DVD player. Like, I don't think I literally don't think I have a way to play that in my house. So now I'm like, am I going to buy a DVD player when it's just right there on Peacock? Like, no, no. So, but maybe I should, maybe, maybe it would be better if I had, you know, a thousand DVDs of my thousand favorite things sitting behind me right now. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I do. I do recall one time, God, I must've been probably like 20 or 21.

[00:23:06] This is probably going to date me, but getting a Laserdisc player. There you go. But not just the Laserdisc player that played one side, it's the kind that played both sides. So you didn't have to however many minutes. Yeah. I don't know if you're very familiar with the Laserdisc experience, but there were, there was a point in a movie during which you have to flip to the other side. And I can't remember if it was like 45 minutes in or whatever. If you had to do that manually,

[00:23:30] that was just a total bummer. But again, it was the, it was the process of like, I remember at the time being so into film and the coolest releases were released on, on Laserdisc. Like you could get your normal version of the abyss by James Cameron on VHS or whatever. But if you got the Laserdisc, you got all the bonus features, you got all the behind the scenes and the audio track that is the

[00:23:58] cast talking over it, which later came to DVD and you know, everybody got access to that. Now we're in the digital realm. And do we even have that in the digital realm? Like, I don't even know if that exists. The idea of bonus features has been totally killed by just go watch another movie, right? Like, why do you need another thing to watch? Just go watch a different movie. And again, like that's, that's a thing we lost. I missed that. The, the deleted scenes and the, the bonus features and the commentary, like that's the kind of stuff that if you liked a thing,

[00:24:27] you wanted to sort of live inside of it in a way that you can't anymore because there's other things to go do. And they just want you to go do those other things. Yeah. And all of those things and your interest in it was kind of an emblem of how, yeah, how passionate you were about that particular thing. How you decided that it was worth spending $40 or however much, I can't remember how much it was, but whatever that cost was to buy that one thing instead of like, like you say,

[00:24:52] what we have now, which is just infinite choice and that's cool in its own right. But again, I like, I would not snap Netflix out of existence if, if you allowed me to, uh, but I do, I do miss having DVDs and I don't know what to do about that fact. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, you know, you, you, well, I guess now it's what it's, it's Blu-ray and like, I've done the thing where I'm like, you know what, I'm just going to buy it. Like I actually, I remember probably like three or four

[00:25:18] Christmases ago, I bought for the family, the entire Harry Potter blue Blu-ray collection. So I was like, you know, they aren't interested in, in Harry Potter yet, but I know they will be because every kid is eventually. And once they are, we'll have the best versions of them all. I think we only ever watched the first disc be just primarily because a, they didn't get as interested in it as I thought they were going to get. Um, and B because it was already available

[00:25:43] in all the places. So the idea of like going through the extra step to find, pull them out, you know, make sure the things plugged in that actually plays it. Cause we've never played Blu-rays. I mean, it's just, it's just a different time. Yeah. I mean, it is like if, if you and I were to race right now, I could be playing Harry Potter on max much faster than you could get the, the Blu-ray at some point. It's like, I, maybe I'm just buying this because it makes me feel better for no particular. And I think this is why you don't have a record player and I don't have a DVD

[00:26:13] player because ultimately I kind of don't know what it's for anymore, but I still long for that thing. And I always have trouble squaring those two things in my brain. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Totally. Um, going to take a super quick break and I want to come, when we come back, I want to talk about, um, technology keeping us organized. Cause I know that I think, I believe this is the thing that's near and dear to your heart because productive and

[00:26:36] organized. So we'll talk about that here in a second. All right. This, uh, this topic is, is close to my reality right now. Um, primarily because very, very much so early, just early this, earlier this week, I gave up on the idea that I believed because I'm so into technology that technology is the best way to keep myself organized. And I've tried this for years and years and years

[00:27:05] and all the different apps and all the different calendars and everything. I just picked up a white board, a whiteboard calendar to keep myself on track. And I will, I'll be damned if it isn't the best decision I could have made. It like works so well for me, but I'm curious to know kind of like where you stand on, on this, like does technology, does it help keep you organized? And if so,

[00:27:30] how are you able to square that up? Cause it never works for me. Um, the answer is yes and no. Uh, like I, I am a very organized person and I am a very organized person in large part because of technology. Yeah. But I also spend way too much of my time thinking about the organization and not doing the things. And so it's like, if I threw it all away and just use a pen and paper, would I get any less stuff done? Uh, I'm choosing not to know the answer to that question because there's a real

[00:27:59] existential dread that comes with finding out how true that might be that I'm just, I'm just not willing to do it. Yeah. I'm happy in this chaos that I've created for myself. Oh God, I could, I could only last so long in that chaos. And, uh, it's like, it is a reality for me that I have one, two, three, four, five different places that I go to when I have like an idea, like say I have like a show idea or a podcast idea or something that I, that I need to put down in a place.

[00:28:28] I never know exactly what to open. Do I open my Apple notes app? Do I open Google keep? Cause that's in the cloud. Do I open my drive? Because I've got an organizational system in my, you know, in my, my drive. Do I open a text edit? Because that's just the quickest thing. It's, it's crazy. And like, even, you know, even preparing for this episode, I had some notes that I scribbled down. I spent 10 minutes trying to find out where I put the damn notes. Cause I've

[00:28:55] got five different places. I put notes. I don't know how people do it. I mean, Jason, I say this with love. That might be a you problem. No, no, no. Believe me, I get it. It is totally a me problem. But no, I, I feel this. And I think a thing, a thing that I have reckoned with a lot is, is that same thing. This question of like, okay, I have a million possible ways to do everything. And that's very cool and very exciting. And it has removed a lot of friction, but then I'm like,

[00:29:24] where was that thing? And it's never anywhere. And I'm like, I know for sure that I took notes on this. Like I'll give you one example. And especially for me, like I've been, I've been covering tech for a very long time and I have notes on stories going back a million years. And a few years ago during the pandemic, uh, a Netflix producer reached out and was like, Hey, we're doing, uh, we're doing a, a Juul documentary about vaping. Uh, and I had written a story about

[00:29:51] Juul for Wired many years ago. And they're like, we, we want somebody to talk about this thing, like as a gadget, because they wanted to talk about it as a gadget. Do you, do you remember anything? Do you have any notes? Do you want to talk about anything? I spent, I'm not kidding you four hours trying to find the notes that I took from my visit there. And it was in Evernote, an app I haven't used in seven years, but it was just like, I paid for Evernote to get access to that note so that I could do this interview. Like it was ridiculous. And this is such a bad use of my

[00:30:21] time. But then on the flip side, I did find it. It does exist. And so what I, the thing that I have spent a lot of time on, especially over the last year is, uh, I think I'm clearer than ever on what I need to be successful. And I'm getting pretty good at only doing things that satisfy all of those needs. So like, okay, I used to be the type who would be like, okay, I'm going to use this one tool that does this one thing really well. And this other tool that is this other thing really well. And then this other tool that does this other thing really well. And now I'm like, give me a B plus

[00:30:50] at all three of those things in the same place. And I'm a much happier and more successful person. Oh man, that, that really resonates with me. Um, and I, I need to find that place. Um, yeah, I, I fully, I fully agree. This is a me problem of having a million different places. Uh, but try as I might, man, uh, I, I try and get myself committed to one thing. I had the Evernote, I think at some point once Evernote kind of, you know, had its, its weird time a handful of years ago,

[00:31:20] I ended up moving my Evernote into notion. That's like another place that sometimes I go into. And so, you know, it's just, it's messy. It's well, and that's the problem is you eventually you have, Oh, my system, I'm as messy as anybody don't, I deserve no props on any of this, except that I just have more stamina to keep banging my head against this particular wall than, than most people. Uh, but I think there is something to, we, we like try so hard to make

[00:31:46] these things fit for us. Like notion is actually a perfect example. You see on notions, subreddit, all these people who spent like many hours building these beautiful elaborate systems. And then it's like, okay, I need to write something down. I just had a story idea. I need to write this down. I now have to like essentially fill out a form on my phone in order. And that like, now it breaks because you've just given me a bunch of work to do just to write this one thing down.

[00:32:10] So I think the, the thing I think smart people are starting to preach is just like, do the least you possibly can. And just like your text file thing is, is I think in a lot of ways the correct idea, right? That it's just like, just, just write it down somewhere and look at that thing every now and then. And that's an entire productivity system, right? Like write things down, look at them sometimes is like, that's it. That's the whole system. Hopefully you're putting them in a place

[00:32:36] where you do look at them. Well, that's, that's the one piece of discipline. And frankly, I have struggled with this too. Like I keep, I keep pretty good notes on just like my day-to-day life and stories I'm working on and stuff like that. But then it's like, everybody preaches the idea of the weekly review, right? Like sit down on Sunday nights and look back at everything. And I'm like, I don't want to do that. That sounds terrible. And so then every once in a while, I go back and I'm like, oh, there's a really good story idea I had that I wrote down and forgot about and never looked at again. Like, I don't know what I'm accomplishing here. So I'm trying to

[00:33:04] develop the like, just sit down and look at it all every once in a while. Yes. Yeah. And that's usually where the good things actually happen. Yeah, no, I would, I would agree with that. So, you know, I, I even got to the point how I can't remember how many episodes ago, but, um, doc rock, um, and I got into a conversation. He was one of the guests on text bloater and his method has been to, God, do I even have one of them hanging out here? No, because I've probably taken them to other places and then, and then left them

[00:33:33] because it's not part of my habit, but keeping a little notepad in his back pocket. Because what I realized sometimes when I'm out and about in the world is this thing might suddenly appear and I might only have like 10 or 20 seconds with that jostling around in my brain. And it's the best idea in the world. If I don't get that scribbled down right then and there, it is gone probably off to someone else's brain and they're going to rule the world with it. Um, and you know, so even that just

[00:33:57] having some sort of tangible thing in my pocket to be able to just jostle, you know, jot it down. Yeah, totally. If I, what I, if I could rewind back 20 years and actually solve this problem, the thing I would do is work on having better handwriting because like my, truly my handwriting is so bad that I don't even like looking at my own handwriting. And so I think that's part of the reason I have run away from physical note-taking. Like I look back at notes I took weeks ago and I'm

[00:34:25] like that, those aren't words. Like, no, that's not an English word that someone wrote down there. Yeah. Like this just, it's just, you know, ancient Sanskrit. Like, I don't know. Uh, and, uh, if I were a better hand writer, there are so many advantages to handwriting. The, the, like the fact that your brain remembers it because of the physical act of writing it is real. The, the tactility of it again is really important. The fact that you can like keep these things physically around is really useful.

[00:34:55] That is in so many ways. I think the right answer, I just hate writing by hand. I hate it. And it is, I think that is a huge reason I have spent this much time trying to solve digital tools. I just don't like writing in notebooks. I mean, writing by hand, it just takes, takes so much time. Yeah. When we're, when we're so used to the flick of the fingers, right. You know, like just that. And we've got two words versus having to go the whole, that is part of the problem. I type very fast and I write much slower. And I think that is, there's a, there's a like cognitive dissonance

[00:35:25] in taking physical notes that has always been tough for me. Well, and we've, and we've been working with, uh, with, you know, digital keyboards and computers for so long at this point, point that we can almost, it's almost like we can type nearly as fast as we're thinking about a thing. And yeah, it's really hard to compare that to handwriting. Um, you know, I've got two daughters, you've, you, you've got a child as well. So you will definitely see this, but yeah, the handwriting

[00:35:53] thing is definitely not, not as much of an, like a, a priority in, in schools as it once was. I can't imagine. I mean, I'm sure kids aren't, they're not like learning cursive anymore, right? No. Why would you? I mean, I mean, well, what the first school that my kids went to was a Montessori school and they actually did work on cursive there, but you know, that's a little, I think that's outside of the norm. I think the majority of the schools, yeah, kids aren't working

[00:36:20] on that because the, the now technology is not handwriting is not cursive. It is a keyboard. And it's very funny because that now, because AI is so pervasive, there is this huge push back to that in schools that like kids are starting to be asked to write essays in school for the first time in a really long time, explicitly because it is worse technology. Like, and I think that we've, we're truly just going full circle there that actually the technology has gotten so good that

[00:36:48] we have to ban it and make people write, like we're, we're going to be carving into stone tablets here at some point just to make people actually learn things. It's crazy. Totally. Yeah, it is. That's, that's so interesting. It's a, it's a really interesting time right now with, uh, with artificial intelligence and how that's impacting everything. And, and just the fact that like our kids are growing up in a time where that is just that,

[00:37:14] that is like the beginnings for them is their experience with technology includes LLM technology that can write an entire thing for you. And what does that mean? 10, 15, 20 years down the line for their development. And I'm not saying this to, to imply that like, oh, they're, they're screwed or anything like that. I actually don't believe that. I think it opens the doors for different, different ways of learning and different ways of maneuvering

[00:37:38] the world that you and I might have a harder time connecting to because we're used to the way it was, not the way it is. Right. And that's going to be a really interesting evolution to see. Yeah, I think that's right. But I think there are going to be big questions about what is sort of innately useful. Uh, like I think a lot about somebody, somebody tweeted, you know, what's the, what's the point of writing a paper anymore when chat GPT can just do it. Uh,

[00:38:07] and somebody replied and was like, you idiot. The point is for you to learn about Moby Dick. Nobody cares what your paper says. Like it's, it's, it's the you part of that, that is actually, what's valuable. Like learning how to think about something, digest it and explain it. Like that's the kind of thing that doesn't go away. Right. Like learning and synthesizing and expressing does not become less useful in the future. And if it does, we have sort of existentially real

[00:38:36] problems as a society. Yeah. But then there is the question of like, okay, I don't, I don't know that like knowing your times tables is all that useful anymore. Right. Like I learned them, but like, I can just, everybody has a calculator in their pocket. My teachers used to be like, Oh, well you won't always have a calculator with you. And like, yeah, I super do always have a calculator. Yeah. And so that kind of stuff, I think the baseline of what I have in my pocket at all times.

[00:39:01] It's the least interesting thing I have in my pocket. Uh, and so I think that those questions of like, what, what is it actually fine for us to sort of assign out that was stuff that we had to know because we had to know it, but now we don't anymore versus like what is valuable to us as people that we actually shouldn't be outsourcing to technology and are anyway, I think is kind of a big reckoning. We're in the middle of right now. 100%. 100%. Yeah. It's really interesting. Um,

[00:39:30] just to see how that is influencing. Yeah. Their development, their understanding of the world and, uh, what that means for us. I think you're absolutely right. And this actually goes back to the handwriting thing. So often, if I want to be sure I really remember something, it does involve getting kind of tactile with it. In fact, so much of today's conversation is about tactile qualities,

[00:39:54] but doing that helps my brain remember things in a way that sometimes even just like typing it out on a keyboard is a little bit too abstract even, you know, it's just, it's a different, it's a different process altogether. Yeah. Um, we're kind of nearing the end of the conversation, but I like to kind of end the podcast with a couple of questions that are a little random, but always kind of go to really fun places. Uh, you, you know, you, you live and breathe technology

[00:40:24] for, for what you do at the verge and what you've done over the years. And I don't know if you're sitting at your, like your, your console where you normally work and where you're, where your technology also resides. Yep. But as a, as a cool little exercise, is there an interesting piece of technology that is within reach of you in this moment? If so, what is it? I'm just super curious. Man, there's so many fun ones to choose from here. That's, that's the perfect solution. Um, yes,

[00:40:52] I have both generations of the Google pixel fold. Oh, I have the books Palma, which I like very much. Let's do this. Yeah. Uh, the Palma. I like the Palma. So I have the rabbit R one. Ah, yes. Okay. And the humane AI pin, uh, both of which came out in early 2024 and were supposed to be like the future of AI gadgets. Um, both of which are, are awful. Uh, I reviewed them both. They both suck. And I

[00:41:21] said so many times in my reviews, uh, it has now been almost 12 months and I haven't touched either one in a very long time. And just on a whim the other day, I was like, all right, let's, let's give these things a whirl. Like a lot changes in 12 months. The AI world moves really fast. Let's see if either of these is any good yet. Um, I don't have answers for you because I've had to do like 15 software updates on each one just to get, Oh, I'm sure. But like, I still, there is something about the, the rabbit R one in particular that is just like this lovely, like you talk about tactile,

[00:41:51] like this is a gadgety gadget in the best way. It has a button. It has a scroll wheel. Like it's, it's fun to hold and play with and look at. And like, this is the kind of design that I wish we had more of. And I think there's a reason this thing resonated with so many people. It was $200. It was fun. It was silly. It was a gadget. Like that's, it just, it's fun, but it sucks. Like if only it was good at anything, I think it would have been successful,

[00:42:19] but it was terrible at everything. Uh, and I'm, I'm very curious to see that the rabbit team and the humane team have both, they've done a lot in the last 12 months. And I'm very curious to see if either of them actually adds up to anything. Yeah. And not optimistic, but we'll see. Yeah. If they can overcome, you know, cause they both had a really, they, they had, they both had a really compelling initial kind of impression and then a really bad kind of initial reaction or,

[00:42:48] uh, you know, kind of, uh, uh, insight into how people were using it that really undid a lot of that initial excitement. But I think you're, I think you're absolutely right. And if, you know, if there is a kind of like an undercurrent throughout this entire conversation, it is the fact that good technology has a uniqueness to it. And I think some of my favorite technology from throughout my life, like you pick it up and you look at it and there's a curiosity and, and kind of,

[00:43:15] there's something about it that draws you in and whether the rabbit are one, cause I have it, you know, up on the, my, my console behind me, I've hardly used it, but, um, what, you know, whether it did what it promised to do or not, which it definitely did not. I don't know about now. I know the large action model has been updated and you know, they, they promised that it's better, but I haven't put it to the test. Whether any of that is true, you have to give it credit for the fact that it's a compelling piece of hardware that you, that draws you in to

[00:43:45] want to pick it up and play with it when you see it. And that's, that's not a feeling that I feel a lot, uh, like, like very often about technology these days, things just look, and, and operate the way you expect them to that one promise something a little different. Yeah. And I think there's something that goes back to what you were saying at the very beginning of this conversation about like, people want to root for this stuff in a lot of ways, right? Like

[00:44:10] we're, we're in an era of on one hand, very mature technology, like smartphones are essentially finished, right? Like there, there are lots of things, but we have, we have done the smartphone in the same way that like we did the laptop, right? And then everybody tried to mess with the laptop and it turns out like, no, we pretty much got it right. Let's just leave it alone. Laptops are awesome. And then all the way on the flip side, we have all of these like social

[00:44:34] platforms and things that we're understanding the dangers of. And people want there to be a next thing. I think in so many ways, just because it'll be exciting again, people want something to root for. And I think so much of the response to the, the AI gadgets was like, maybe this will be cool and maybe that's enough. And I think with rabbit in particular, they got by so much on like, it seemed like fun and we need more of that in the gadget world right now.

[00:45:04] Yeah, absolutely agree. Absolutely agree. Well, David, this has been a lot of fun. Speaking of fun, thank you so much for, uh, yeah, for hopping on with me on tech sploder to talk a little bit about tech nostalgia and go all the places that it takes us. It seems like the tactile quality of technology is important to both of us. So I really appreciate your insight in technology over the years and, uh, for you taking time with me today. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. This

[00:45:29] was really fun. All right. The hugest of thank yous to my guest, David Pierce. He gave me, uh, some solid time for the recording of this podcast and something else that I'm actually working on on the side. So hopefully I have something to share, uh, in the weeks ahead. It's going to take me a while to get there, but I promise I will. All things tech sploder can be found at techsploder.com. Pretty easy to remember, or you can go to my YouTube channel at Jason Howell and you can find all the

[00:45:56] episodes of these interviews and the thing that I'm working on. That's kind of a bonus with David Pierce. Uh, that's coming soon at Jason Howell. Tech sploder patrons get access exclusively to the live prerecordings of interviews like this one, as well as ad free shows, early access to my YouTube videos, a discord community, and so much more. We also offer the chance to be an executive producer of this show. And why would you want to do that? Well, you get a tech sploder t-shirt when you do that, just like

[00:46:25] this week's executive producers, uh, Jeffrey Maraccini, John Cuny, and WPVM 103.7 in Asheville, North Carolina, patreon.com slash Jason Howell. If you want to hop on board there. Thanks so much once again to our guest, David Pierce. Thanks to you for watching and listening. I'm Jason Howell, and I will see you next time on another episode of the tech sploder podcast. Bye everybody.

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