The things in the computer lab, those were tools. And the things that I had at home in my dad's office, that was a toy, right? And so that's the thing that we always say. It's like, if you can make it a toy and not a tool, you're going to love it forever.

This is the Techsploder podcast, conversations with tech professionals about being human in a binary world. Episode 5, Megan Morrone.

Techsploder is made possible by the financial support of our patrons, Like Nate Manahan and one of our newest members JeepsonTraining. If you like what you hear, head on over to Patreon.com/JasonHowell to support the show directly, and thank you for making independent podcasting possible.

Hello, and welcome to the Techsploder podcast. I'm Jason Howell. And this week's guest is none other than Megan Morrone, technology journalist and founder and co-founder of Techsploder, a non-profit organization that focuses on helping people with disabilities learn how to use technology to make a difference in the world we live in. A journalist, podcaster, and parent of the digital age, Megan Morrone began writing for the web in the late 90s for sites like CitySearch and LookSmart before becoming a web producer for the TechTV cable network. There, she actually ended up in front of a camera and quickly became a notable network personality.

And over the years, Megan has created and hosted a number of podcasts for the TWIT TV network and in recent years, ventured back into full-time writing for companies like Medium, Protocol, and now Axios. So let's get to it. My conversation with Megan Morrone. Hi, Megan Morrone. It's so good to see you. I miss you.

I miss you too. I miss sitting next to you. It's funny. I'm just across town, but this is the way we do things now, I guess.

This is the world. I know. And it's been a while since you and I worked in the same office. For those who don't know, Megan and I worked, we had some overlap while we were working at the TWIT podcast network. And so you were kind of like my office pal and also co-host on Tech News Today slash Weekly slash many other things. Yep. Throughout the time.

The screensavers and all that stuff. But you've been away from podcasting now. You're now doing like behind the byline news, like the straightforward kind of writing for people to read type thing. Are you missing talking into a microphone or is that like your speed nowadays?

I'm not. I mean, I enjoy talking to you, but I'm not missing the podcast world or the performing worlds. We do a lot of events at Axios and I'm just always like, someone else can do that. I'll just write about it. I don't miss it. Yeah, I love writing. It was my first love. So I just fell into TV and podcasting. So I am glad to be back to writing. Yeah.

And who knows? Maybe Axios or something or someone else will pull you back in. It's like you think you've escaped and it pulls you back in. Right. Yeah, I get it. The very first thing I want to ask you.

Top of the fold. How do you feel about the fact that there is now a famous singer, country singer named Megan Moroney who spells her name the wrong way? I hate it.

It's the worst thing that's ever happened to me.

Is this the only example of a Megan Moroney that's coexisted with you in a very public way or have there been others?

Absolutely. And sometimes I think about her PR people and they're like, who is this other person? She has a Wikipedia page. Why? What is she doing? She just looks like some suburban lady that knows how AI is going to take over the world. Yes. I don't like it, but I haven't listened to her music. Neither have I.

Yeah. I wondered kind of leading into this, if I was going to ask you this question, like, should I actually listen to it? And you know what? No, because there's really only one Megan Morrone as far as I'm concerned. Exactly. Yeah. Her name more looks like baloney than Morrone. So there's that. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

She spells it wrong. It might not even be Italian. It's probably Irish. I mean, I could change my name. You shouldn't have to.

It's like that scene in Office Space, right? He says, why should I change my name? He's the one that sucks. And God, who was the artist? I forgot. Yeah.

This is the second time in a couple of days that Office Space has come up and I realized I forgot most of it, except for PC load letter, because that's like for years after we just shout at the, you know, the copy machine, just whenever it wasn't working, like everybody would just shout PC load letter.

Haven't we all? Yeah. Haven't we all had that situation with the fax machine that we want to take it out in the backyard and hit it with a hammer a million times? Michael Bolton is the name that I was searching for. The character in Office Space, his name is Michael Bolton. And why should I change my name?

He's the one that sucks. Office Space was a very defining movie for me. I don't know if you and I ever talked about this, but the time that it came out, it was like early 2000s. I want to say like 2000, 2001. No, maybe even earlier than that. I think it was like 1999 or whatever. So it was total dot com era, which we're going to talk about. And it just encapsulated office life so well. I don't know. I saw it as kind of like a Bible at the time. It was a movie that inspired me to quit my horrible office day job.

Oh, interesting. I think I was already at tech TV then. So I did not have a horrible office job, but it took place in Austin and I had just moved from Austin. I think I'm pretty sure it takes place in Austin. Like I might be making that up, but I don't think so. But I do remember that world. And yeah, and Jennifer Aniston was in it.

Yeah. Do you remember her and her flair? Absolutely. Absolutely. The 37 pieces of flair. If you want me to wear more flair, why don't you make it 43 pieces of flair or whatever the heck it was? Yeah. So you started, and this is going to just go all over the place, but that's okay, because that's the beauty of this show is we can talk about whatever we want. Before tech TV, which I would say is where a lot of people kind of discovered Megan Morrone, essentially, because you were on the screen, you were on a cable news network, a cable TV channel, was LookSmart, right? You spent some time at LookSmart, which I never had really a whole lot of experience with, but the human-powered search engine. Is this right? Did you start off in .com that way?

That was how I started off. So I had moved to San Francisco and done the thing. Back in the late 90s, men would work in the mail room and women would work as receptionists. That's how it worked, because of the patriarchy.

Not all, but that was generally. And so I was answering phones. It was a time when executives didn't necessarily have computers on their desks. That was more of an assistant thing. So often I would be reading CEOs' emails and showing them the ones they needed to see, which is bizarre. Yeah, faxing things for people.

And then I did some freelance writing, and I wasn't really making enough money to live in San Francisco. And then it was when the .com era happened, and then we're hiring just all these humanities majors to come and work at this company called LookSmart, which was sort of like Ask Jeeves. That's the one that people remember.

That one I remember. I remember using Ask Jeeves. Oh, I can just frame it like a question. That's handy.

LookSmart is to Ask Jeeves as MySpace is to Facebook, basically. The one that's never remembered.

Yes. The one that was eclipsed.

But yeah, they hired us to sit at computers all day, and people would send in questions, and we would reply with the answer. So this was 1998, 1999, and people really didn't know how search engines worked. And so yeah, they would ask, how do I get chocolate stain out of my shirt? Or what do I feed a new puppy?

Or how do I fix my popcorn maker? Or whatever it was. And that was right at the time when Google was just starting, and most people didn't know what that was. They used Yahoo, or AltaVista, or Ask Jeeves.

Which were much more of indexes that you go to and you poke around. The idea of searching for something, I feel like it was still very early days for the search. It was very browsy at that point. I mean, maybe search had been around a little bit longer than I'm giving it credit for, but that's my memory of that period of time anyways.

I mean, I think of it now, like there's a corollary now between like, how do you use chat GPT, or Claude, or any of the other people are just like, how do I use this?

What is it for? And then there's a few people who get really good at it and know exactly, this is what the prompt you use for that. So that was basically it. So often, my responses to these people were, here's a new search engine, and it's called Google. And you put the words and put a plus sign or put quotes around them, like basically giving my job away.

This is what I was doing, slowly, slowly. Like, you don't need a human. You can use this thing we call an algorithm. And I've basically been doing that for the last 25 years.

Well, I was going to say, as you were kind of giving the walkthrough of what the actual, you know, what LookSmart was, immediately in my mind, I was like, oh, yeah, that's what I tend to use like AI systems for now. Like, oh, I've got a stain in this, you know, in my pants.

How do I get it out? I would have gone to search and still do. But often now, I will pull up AI partially just out of straight curiosity.

Like, you know, it's part of my job. I want to know better what it's really great for and what it's horrible for. But also because the more I use it, the more I realize, like, often I get the answer I'm actually looking for. So, okay, so then I'll use that. And so, you know, from humans doing the work, it's like you were an AI. Mm-hmm. It was. Yeah, it's kind of a backwards way of looking at it. Yes.

So, yeah, then, you know, everyone remember, well, I mean, everyone who's over 25 remembers what it was like in the, you know, 1999, 2000, 2001, when there was the crash. I guess, you know, by 2001, it was kind of over. Mm-hmm. And I could see that LookSmart was sort of like, I was like, how are they going to make money?

How are they going to compete? And I realized, like, it would be much more fun to cover this weird world and write about it and stand a little slightly outside of it than it would be to be in it. And yeah, that was the moment where I chose never to be rich for the rest of my life.

Yes, I know that choice well.

I mean, because, you know, we know so many people that like went in, you know, I know tons of people who were journalists in the 90s who then were like, oh, this I'm going to speak, you know, I'm going to start working for a tech company. I went the opposite way. I did, you know, I did have a time where I went back to Microsoft, but that wasn't, you know, that wasn't a startup or anything. But yeah, so I applied for a bunch of jobs.

I ended up in the office of a nice young man named Tom Merritt, who most people will know and still don't know, like, why he picked my resume off. Because I, you know, I really like, I was a web producer job. I didn't have any experience as a web producer. I didn't know HTML. I didn't, I don't know. We had both. I mean, we talked, obviously, we're still, we're all still friends.

These low, these many, you know, 20, four years later, some odd years later. We both worked at bookstores in Austin as like our first jobs out of college. And I think that was why we just talked about that. And he was like, you're high.

Honestly, with Tom, yes, that absolutely makes a lot of sense. He'd see that and that would be the click. And he'd be like, oh, well, yeah, you know, we've got that in common. Why wouldn't I go? You know, why wouldn't I go think? He obviously made the right choice.

Yeah, I think so. I mean, yeah, I mean, I will say and have said to him and others like Tom, you know, changed my life. Like he really like that was the beginning of my career that I've enjoyed for so long.

I feel lucky to have. But yeah, then he says that he hired me. One of the reasons he hired me was because I wrote him a thank you note. And up until like a few years ago, he still had the thank you note.

It was like, you know, an actual paper. Thank you. That's what I did. Like I was. Yeah. My mom taught me well.

If I had an interview, I would send it. And he kept it. I mean, I think he was hoping I would be as famous as the Megan Maroney with a Y and he could sell it somewhere. But sadly, I am not. Yes.

I like to think that he still has it. Maybe it's tucked away somewhere now, but he probably still has it somewhere. Yes. Yeah. Comparing the look smart experience, because look smart a few years earlier, definitely during the time where, you know, this dot com kind of sun was rising and there was just like a feverish, like, oh, my goodness, what is this going to become? Excitement, offices filled with tons of junk food and really crazy kind of office culture and everything like that. Was the culture at look smart more indicative of the typical dot com boom that we all kind of think of when we think of that time period? Or was tech TV along those lines on a deeper level? Because I mean, I could see them both being really, you know, fun, probably for different reasons.

Yeah, they were both. I mean, I don't know that look smart was all that much fun. I think I had I gotten there like a little bit too late. So like it was like I think I was a contractor, so I didn't have stock options. So like the day that I mean, it was kind of gross. Like I remember just nobody was working and everyone was just like watching their stock, you know, and like and that I mean, it was those people, a lot of them that I knew, like the end, you know, they ended up I don't even remember what happened, but I think they ended up, you know, having owing a ton of money because the stock was then worth nothing, you know, so it was like, right,

and they made purchases in advance on the expectation that their stock was okay.

Yeah, that's no good in the Bay Area, you know, with adjustable rate mortgages, and we all know what happened there. So so yeah, it was it was a good I mean, it was fun. I liked all those people.

I'm still friends with some of them. But but tech TV was just different. And it was tech TV was like part startup and part, you know, just old school cable TV, right network, which was interesting. I mean, we did we had separate offices, like the studio wasn't even in the same office. And so I wasn't really working on the show.

When I first got there, I was working on Thompson, we just did the web content. And there was, you know, that was before streaming. But there was like a there was, you know, there was such thing as video on the internet. And there was like a push towards that. So I remember real media.

Yeah. When they so we were ZDTV first, right. And then we got our name changed to tech TV. And I remember a lot of people on the web team were like upset that it still had TV in the name. We were just like, Oh, TV is not going to be around in 10 years like that name is like, you know, we should have named it something else. Obviously, TV is still around.

TV is still around. But it's, you know, it's it's morphed and transformed. It's its level of importance has definitely fluctuated. And I'd say, you know, definitely step down, you know, a number of rungs on the ladder with kind of the younger generation that probably is tied to that, you know, at least as far as cable and, you know, these networks and everything tied to that model a lot less than they are, you know, like, like, I don't ever watch Comedy Central. But if I open up YouTube, I'm probably going to see like a daily a daily show, you know, thing of almost the entire episode.

And I might watch it there. The habits are different with the younger generation now. So they were halfway there. Yeah, you know, TV is still here, but it's not quite the same, but it's still pretty important.

Yeah, so I was just doing the web. And then I think they just occasionally needed people to do segments. And I, you know, for my time at LookSmart, I had understood how search engines work. I think my first segment was about like how Google worked.

Our associate web producer, the woman who really makes a screensaver site saying, ladies and gentlemen, for the first time ever, on the screensaver television program, Megan Olasky.

I was ridiculously nervous. Like, I don't know that I could I mean, barely made it through the whole segment. And yeah, and then then there was this push to like, go more Hollywood at tech TV. And so they hired Paul Block, who was a Hollywood producer and still friends with him on Facebook, too.

Lovely man. But he, you know, he really didn't know a ton about technology, but he knew how to make live television. And so his thing was like, OK, we need a new studio and we need girls on the show. Again, a lot of this was, yes, just take us back to the language.

Just the time. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, how things have changed.

And yeah, because I was 26 years old. I was hardly a girl. But yeah, he was basically like, you, you know about computers.

And so you you're a girl, right? Yeah. OK, come on board.

A girl who knows about computers. It's amazing.

Perfect. That never happens. So, OK. All right. So that happens. I'm I'm curious to know kind of like the kind of preceding all of that. Was technology something that you were so interested in that when an opportunity to go on camera for a network that is so completely specific to, you know, interest in technology? Like, was that a was that a leap for you? Or were you already just very dialed in to kind of tech topics? And, you know, maybe you had a childhood that had technology is as part of your experience that you were excited about or maybe not. I don't know. I'm curious.

Well, I mean, I think I have always been curious about everything. I ask a lot of questions. Like still now, people are just like, really? One more question. That's all you get. But I'm a journalist. I want to know everything about you. And so that started really young. And my dad was very into Macs. So we had like a Mac classic. Like we had just like the first Macintosh, the second Macintosh, you know, we had it all and he used it. He was in advertising. He didn't really need it for work, but he pretended like he did.

So I probably wrote it off on his taxes too late for him to get audited now from 1984. But it was it was so fun. Like I would play with it all the time. I would play with all the graphics programs and, you know, the screen savers and, you know, just amazing. And it was like markedly different than the computers we had in the computer lab, which were IBM black screen, green type monochrome, boring.

Yes. And I was like, that was the first time I realized. I mean, I don't think I realized it at the time, but looking back later, like the things in the computer lab, those were tools and the things that I had at home in my dad's office. That was a toy, right? And so that's the thing that we always say.

It's like, if you can make it a toy and not a tool, you're going to love it forever. And so I think that was basically it. And so many years, I mean, aside from like, you know, well, I guess my my Atari, my love for Atari was before that. So that was a thing.

What Atari? Like 2600, 5200?

2600.

Okay. And yeah, like break. I mean, basic games breakout. Yeah. The one where you swing for the vine. What was that called?

Pitfall or Jungle Hunt or? Pitfall. Pitfall is great. Asteroids. Yeah.

Yeah. So that and then, but you know, like that, I didn't think of that as technology at the time, right? That was also, it was just a game. It was just a game. It was fun. Yeah.

Right. And then, I mean, I think for the years, high school, college, it was all just a tool. Like I had Macs, but I used them to write.

And it was an interesting time too, because I do remember my freshman year of college. I was in a creative writing class and the professor was like, use a typewriter. Like if you use a computer, that's not real writing. Like using like a word processor is not real writing. You have to use a typewriter. And I was like, that's dumb. I'm not going to do that because I don't have a typewriter. I have a computer.

Is he saying that it's not real writing because it's somehow cheating? Because it's not the old process, which is a paradigm or which is a thought that comes into technology all the time, which is the new technology is not the right way. It makes things too easy. I mean, we're seeing that right now with AI, especially. But is that the thinking behind why he was saying that?

I mean, I think it was for us. I mean, before, I'm sure when he was learning to write, it was like, use, you know, write by hand. Don't use a typewriter. But I think his argument was like a typewriter, you just worked more slowly. You couldn't, you had to be more intentional. You couldn't just delete things, cut and paste and move things around so easily.

Oh, okay. You had to commit. You had to commit because it was going to take a while to undo something.

So, partly, yeah, like it's not real, but partly like he felt he was doing that for us, you know, like this is how you learn to write. You will like, you'll edit yourself too much if you do it that way. Which was interesting. But yeah, I don't, I don't, I think it was just his suggestion, which I didn't take and, you know, used Microsoft, whatever it was. I don't even know what it was back then in the late 90s, like early 90s, WordPerfect. I don't know.

Possibly, yeah. But yeah, and then, so it was just like basically a tool for me. And then it wasn't until I graduated from college that people even really had the internet regular, like normal people. And so, I worked in the bookstore that I told you about and we had email and that was fascinating.

We had like a little bit of access to the internet and then we could get it, you know, access the internet at home. And then I think it was again, like, wow, this whole world is opened up to me. And again, like I think maybe basically it was like my innate curiosity, like just, oh, I want to learn about this.

I want to learn about that. And then it became also just a way, because I had wanted to be a journalist. I had, you know, taken some TV classes that was like vaguely what I wanted to do, but mainly I wanted to be a freelance journalist. And there were so many other opportunities with the internet too, like that just before that you had to like work as a cub reporter in, you know, Kansas City for three years. And, you know, that wasn't, it was hard. There were only a few jobs. And so I, you know, I wrote for City Search, which was, I don't know if you remember that they got, I think they got bought actually by X, like Elon Musk's company.

I think at some point they were bought by them. But for a while, like I was just writing restaurant reviews in San Francisco or writing, you know, just basically city reviews. And I did that until... Do you remember City Search?

I do now. Yeah. Once I saw the logo, I was like, okay, I think I remember this. Yeah.

So I would, you know, just like be like, oh, you want to, like I wrote this whole series about all the restaurants and stores on Guerrero Street in San Francisco and the Mission and, you know, and then that job became, went away because people just wrote their own reviews for free. Right. So it was basically, I got yelped out of a job. Yes, indeed.

Boy, has that, yeah, that's just the way it is now. Everybody writes their opinion. They got to go online and share their opinions with everyone. Everybody's got an opinion.

So if it wasn't computers taking my job, it was other people writing for free. Yeah. So then that is basically how I found myself at LookSmart and then Tech TV. And then by the time I think I got, I mean, I was fascinated by the internet. And I mean, back then, like technology was really something you could teach yourself, by and large.

I mean, it is now too. But I think, you know, I'd never had any interest in building my own computer or, you know, hacking into a computer, you know. Some of the things some of us on this podcast might have done, I was not doing.

I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what you're talking about. This show isn't about me, Megan. It's about you. Or maybe not me. Someone else in the room. Bronson, my dog. You were talking about my dog, obviously. Yes.

But then once I, I mean, I think I very clearly remember those first like pitch meetings that we had with Leo and Patrick Norton and all the people. And they were just like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, saying all these things, throwing all of this jargon, you know, all these abbreviations of things. And I was like, so lost.

I'm so in over my head here. Yeah. Oh, boy, that feeling doesn't. And by the way, I don't know if you'd agree with this. That feeling doesn't entirely go away ever. Like, I find myself still to this day in situations with technology where I feel totally over my head and I just make do the best that I can.

Exactly. Like, I remember in like 20, I don't remember. It was like 2017 or something. We like had to explain crypto, you and I and some. Just like we spent the whole day, like, let's figure out what the heck this is. So we can explain it to everyone else.

Totally. Oh, my goodness. There's still aspects of crypto that I'm just like, actually, I was just thinking about this earlier today, like as a tech, and this is just an aside, but as a technology, it's so complicated to like to understand all the intricacies of it. No wonder so many people look at crypto and think of it as a total scam. And, you know, maybe it is. Maybe that's part of the reason why it is, because the people that truly know, know how damn confusing it is. And they just make a lot of money.

Well, and I think that's what I learned from that meeting. Like, you know, I went to, we had those pitch meetings every day for all the years I was working there. And, you know, it didn't take me long to realize like, okay, a lot of this is just jargon. A lot of this is like people, you know, like it's not that hard to figure out. And sometimes some people in this world, and that was why like we were all like dedicated to getting over that of like making people realize like it's actually quite easy. You know, it's not like your IT person that's going to pretend like he knows so much more than you and not ever like make it easy for you.

Like that's definitely a type of person in the world who like will hoard their technology knowledge in order to feel better than you. So I think, yeah, that's what I realized. It's like, and you know, I've just, I would ask questions and, you know, once, you know, sometimes people don't know the answer to your questions and then you realize, okay, like this is, we're all just sort of figuring this out.

We're all making it up as we go along. We're all imposters in this technology world. Some better than others, I suppose. That is awesome. All right. I'm going to take a quick break and then I want to talk to you about parenting in the digital age because things change.

Things also stay the same. That's coming up here in a second. All right, Megan Maroney, you once hosted, you once hosted and co-created a podcast called Jumping Monkeys. This was before my time at Twit.

I think you probably did this like 2007, 2008, somewhere around there, my guess with Leo Laporte. And the question that came to mind as I was kind of getting ready for our conversation was, you know, you've parented, wonderfully parented three children. I'm in the midst of parenting two children myself. And, you know, so we've got this love, this fascination, this kind of intricate web of technology that we are involved with on a regular basis. And we're trying to raise our kids to be responsible with technology, to, you know, be safe and all these kinds of things. And I wonder, from the time that you did Jumping Monkeys, when your kids were younger and at a different phase that they are now, younger than my kids are right now, but you and I have had lots of conversations about parenting and the digital age and all that. How have things changed between then being a parent? Like, do you think it's more difficult parenting in the digital age that is now versus 2007? I mean, things are definitely different. We didn't have smartphones back in 2007. We had, there were cell phones, but they weren't quite the, you know, do everything devices that they are now. What do you think about that?

Yeah. I mean, well, first part of your question is like, you know, it's easier to parent children of different ages. I mean, that was what, like, that was part of why Leo and I did the show. Cause his kids were middle school, high school, early high school, maybe just middle school age when we did the show.

So like, that was part of it. It's like, Oh, you know, what do you do with like three-year-olds and five-year-olds versus 12-year-olds and, you know, 14-year-olds. But I don't know.

I wouldn't say, I mean, I think some things are harder and some things are easier. When I think back to like, I am incredibly grateful that I didn't have a smartphone when my kids were babies, because I absolutely know I would have been here instead of looking at them. Like, I don't like, I don't judge anyone because I know I would do it. And so I think sometimes about like, cause I know I was like a distracted parent because I was working and, you know, at the playground and I had like, you know, I did have a smartphone where I was emailing just because I had a regular job, but I also wanted to be with my kids.

So I absolutely know. So I do think it's, I'm grateful that I didn't have that when they were very young. And what I'm not grateful for, which I think is easier now for parents of teenagers and maybe yours, I mean, you can tell me if this is easier or not. Like, I think we know, we know the dangers of Instagram, you know, especially with girls. So, I mean, I guess back then I kind of thought about it, but I was also like, I, you know, all the things that have come out, you know, even Zuckerberg apologizing, you know, like literally apologizing to the parents that whose kids who, you know, horrible things have happened to them in parts they feel because of Instagram. So, yeah, I think that I feel like my children were part of this great experiment.

And so I do think maybe it's a little bit easier now because, you know, and a little bit, but then there are so many, you know, like there was not TikTok when they were younger. You know, there was, you just saw the things that you, you know, I didn't have to deal with like, are, how are they responsibly using AI and for, to write their papers or not write their papers, like before they learn how to write. Like, I think all my kids learned how to write. So now, you know, whatever, they can use it as a tool to help them because they're beyond that. I think my kids already learned how to think.

So that I think, yeah, I don't know if it's harder or easier. I, whenever I hear someone talking about something I vaguely worried about, you know, five or seven years ago, and I felt like no one was talking about then, then I'm like, oh, well you have it so easy because everyone's talking about this now. And, you know, we're not only talking about like these tools that can help you maybe keep track of your kids, but we're also talking about like, do you really want to use those tools that keep track of your kids?

What is it going to like do? And I think those were things that you and I had discussions about all the time when your kids were pretty young and mine were, you know, I don't know. I guess they were probably like seven, eight, nine, 10. Those were the years we podcasted together. Maybe a little bit older, but yeah, I do think, I don't know if it's easier or harder. I know. Yeah. I mean, our childhoods feel idyllic, right? In comparison.

Which I'm sure at the same time, you know, if you were to ask our parents back then when they were in the midst of it, that it was probably really hard. I think it just always is. It just always, parenting always is difficult because you're, no matter what era or technology or lack of technology, you're always faced with new things that didn't exist for, you know, for you when you were that age.

You know, there's always a rock and roll. There's always an AI, which I feel like, you know, is kind of the current thing to demonize. And yeah, I mean, I was helping out in my younger daughter's classroom a number of months ago and while the art teacher was there giving out an art assignment and one of the, you know, he was either fourth or fifth grade because it's a combined classroom, raises his hand. He's like, can we use AI for this project? You know, and I was just like, whoa, like these kids, you know, fourth and fifth grade, like they understand enough about artificial intelligence to know that this is a tool that they could use for these things.

Probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense to tell them you can never use them because they're probably gonna. So, how do you figure out, you know, kind of remove the, this is hard. I don't understand it. I don't know how to parent through this thing because it's never happened before stigma and more kind of seek curiosity.

And I think that ends up being the major thread that goes through parenting from, you know, generation to generation is how can we stay curious instead of fear this technology and block them from it? Right. You know.

What did the art teacher say? What was the response? Good question.

She actually thought about it. She thought about it. She was like, no, I think for this one, don't use AI. And I thought that was, you know, I thought that was reasonable. What it did is it really made me realize the position that teachers nowadays are put into, and I'm sure there are many examples of this throughout the decades, but right now I'm sure it's very difficult for teachers because how do you know how to teach your students effectively when you've got this machine, you know, the system that can write, you know, article or write papers for you and can draw pictures for you. And it could do all these things that before, you know, there was no easy way to get a machine to do that.

And now it can, you know. Yeah. Yeah. No.

No. And haven't having to figure it out on the fly. And I'm sure they have lots of questions, you know, conversations with each other and about how to, how to solve the problem or how to work with it. And that's what, that's kind of what I hope is like, how do you work with these things? Cause I don't think you're going to be able to, you know, beat them into the ground and they'll never, they'll never, you know, come into our classroom again. I don't think that happens.

That's actually the most ideal situation for the, for the student to ask the question, can we use it totally to thoughtfully give an answer? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Totally. I totally agree. I was like, okay, that's good. That's good. You've tested a lot of technology over the years, you know, early 2000s era, all the way through, you know, to the last handful of years, you cover artificial intelligence now. So I don't know how much of your job, you know, involves you in working with these systems or, you know, even working with products the way you were when you were working at, at Twit. But and, and I know that it's a, it's, it's always hard to ask what is the most or what is the least blank because you're suddenly on the spot.

But when you think about your time working with all these, these devices and everything like that and software, whatever, is there a piece of tech that you've ever, that you've ever used? Doesn't have to be the most or least or whatever, but just something that comes to mind that was, that was really, really disappointing.

Disappointing. Yes. I changed it there at the end.

You did.

I was going to say my Apple watch, but I also feel like in some ways my Apple watch is disappointing too, because it's just like, you know, right now it's bugging me. Like, like whatever. Yeah. Like, I don't know.

Oh, it's telling you you're getting, you're getting some notifications right now, right?

Yes. Right. It's like, look at me, look at me. Yeah. And I think I was like waiting for a table the other day and like they gave me, you know, gave me my, I gave them my phone number and I was just talking to the friends and then I got the notification and I was like, well, that was actually a good notification to get. Cause I didn't have to have my phone out. I was just talking and I was like, oh, our table is ready. But the most disappointing.

Or not most, but just a disappointing piece of technology that you've, maybe you had high hopes and it just let you down.

Well, I think iPads are pretty disappointing. Like I have to have, yeah. Like I have a collection of them from my time, uh, reviewing. I mean, when I was looking around for the plugs for this, I was like, oh, there's an iPad. What's that? And I don't know. I just never like, even though I, you know, I took over iPad today from Sarah and I changed it to iOS today. Cause I was like, not that interested in an iPad. Um, yeah, you just never found a use for it. It was never something that my phone or my computer couldn't do. Um, it just always felt like an extraneous piece of technology.

And yet some people absolutely love their, their iPad. So yeah. I wonder what it's delivering on for them that it isn't for you. And you've, you've have a lot of iPads, so you've given it a lot of. A lot of, uh, a lot of tries. What are you hoping to get out of an iPad that it's not delivering on? It's just not proving itself as a replacement or it doesn't find its way, fit its way into your lifestyle somehow.

Yeah. Like I think, you know, I tried all kinds of keyboards. Cause you know, a lot of my, what I do is writing. So, um, there was never as easy as a laptop. Um, I don't do art.

So like, I think that's, you know, I had the Apple pencil and that was always a thing that people love to do. Right. Um, I just don't find it like, you know, I don't read books on, like I read paper books still.

So that's not a thing. Um, and you know, I can watch movies on my, on my laptop. Um, so yeah, I mean, I guess I'm just not, I'm not someone that like travels light necessarily. So that is maybe like people are like, Oh, I don't want to bring my laptop on a trip.

I just want to bring my iPad that, you know, I, yeah, not me. So I guess that, yeah. I mean, I'm sure there's tons of other things that are just disappointing. Um, that, I mean, I guess my smart, a lot of stuff in my smart home has been disappointing.

Um, you know, lights that like, they never quite work as well as like voice controlled lights or app controlled, like never quite work as well as just like turning off and on the switch. Yeah.

If we have this, this idea that a, that a truly smart home is just a magical wonderland where everything does exactly what you want, when you want it, be it, you walk into the room and the lights turn on. Although I never really liked that feature. It's like, you know what, I want to actually push a button when I want the lights to go on, but it, it, it makes all these promises of making things easier. And I think at the end of the day that that probably drives our disappointment in tech is that we've been given some sort of idea that there is a promise being made that is going to do this thing. And even if it does it, but doesn't do it very well, you know, that's disappointing too, I guess it does it, but it doesn't quite match the thing that I had in mind that this was going to make my life easier or better or more fun or whatever.

I mean, I think the worst kind of tech is always like, um, the solution looking for a problem. Like if, you know, if you didn't really need it, why did you build it?

There's so much of that, that happens. There's so many products. I mean, it's, I've, I've, I've talked to many people who look at, um, was Google IO just last week?

God, I can't even keep my week straight. No, two weeks ago, um, yeah, it was, it was, uh, you know, it was, it was a whitewash of AI. It was AI wall to wall AI through, from the moment that keynote start started to the time that it ended. And it seemed like a lot of people that I talked to, you know, even the people that really do like AI or like it, it was just too much. Like, I don't know what the focus was other than Google has a lot of AI things. And really at the end of the day, that's what a lot of people said is, you know, Google is trying to solve.

And a lot of these companies are trying to solve problems that don't exist. Why? Because they've got this, they've got this hammer called AI and everything is a nail. So they just want to hit it with that, that AI hammer everywhere they go. Right.

I mean, and that's the thing it's like using like, you know, a chat bot for a thing that like you could Google search was perfectly good until they had to mess it up and do the AI summaries. Yeah. So yeah.

Yeah. I definitely think that just knowing how to use, like they're still tools, even though they're toys, they're still tools that like they have a specific purpose. Everything is not a nail. Right.

Everything is not a nail. I like that. And then finally, cause I know we're about hitting the end of the time for this chat. Tech cleanse. This is something that I've never really done before. And I'm trying to remember in our time working together, I feel like there were times where, I mean, we could never really do a true tech cleanse because it's part of our job. It's part of our everyday, you know, thing. But I feel like there were times where you did kind of mini cleanses. Is my memory failing me? Like you would step away from a social network or whatever. How did you know you needed to do that when you did?

Um, yeah, I think mostly what I read about was like, here's how you could do a tech cleanse. Do you ever want to? No, I do. And I think, um, yeah, like, I mean, part of it was like turning off all your notifications, you know, or like getting rid of all your apps or, you know, just I think many tech plans is a good description of it. Yeah. I mean, I still, I set limits for myself. I have limits for myself on several apps that I know. I used to have also, I used to have a 30 minute limit on Twitter and I would hit it every day. And now like I never use Twitter anymore, which is crazy because it's like, I thought this is going to be, I'm going to be addicted to this for the rest of my life. I'm going to like, you know, be distracted from every important person in my life because of Twitter. And now it's like, Oh, I'm free.

Did that, did that change when your kind of work situation changed? Changed because I mean, podcasting is very community driven. It's one of the things that I love about it. But when you're, you know, not in front of a microphone in front of people on a regular basis and you're writing behind the scenes, does it make it easier to kind of step away from something like, like Twitter or something like that?

No. I mean, cause I, you know, I've been writing since I left Twit. I mean, I was at medium and protocol. So I've been writing since 20, uh, 19. And so, no, I mean, I, my, um, interest in Twitter changed when Twitter changed. Um, and it really was like a place, especially like for any kind of journalist podcast written, it was like just the best place to get news. It was the best place to connect with other people, doing the thing, same thing that you could do. And the best place to just like have fun with those people to just like take a minute from like the solitary act of writing to just like make jokes with people, but it just, you know, it's like.

And I don't want to say like it. Um, when I, when I lost my blue check, I got out of there, but like that was, it wasn't an, I mean, it's of course a little bit of an ego thing. Like I have a college degree, three beautiful children, but that blue check. I'm kidding.

But like, and you can't bring yourself to pay for it either. Like I refuse.

I will not, because that, because the blue check now means something different. Like it means something. And so that, so that is what changed to me. You have no, you no longer could see who was an authoritative source on something.

And, you know, it's not like every person with a blue check was amazing and smart and never made mistakes, but it was just a guide where now you go. And it's just like, what I see there, like I keep trying it, but I mean, it's the same thing happened with Facebook. Like I had a very short time where I loved it. And then all of a sudden it was like the algorithm was just showing me the stuff.

And unless I spent a lot of time on it, it was never going to get good or useful in my life. And that's how I feel about X. And that's how I feel about threads too. Threads was like for a minute, I really liked it. And then it was like, I don't like this either. It's more of the same. Yeah. Weirdly LinkedIn is, is my favorite. Isn't that interesting?

I, yeah, I, LinkedIn was, was always kind of the, the service that I never really spent much time with. Like I would, I would collect my, my connections, you know, if I worked with someone, I would, I would, you know, connect with them because who knows somewhere down the line, this, this might, this connection might come in handy, but I have no idea for what, cause I don't really use LinkedIn, but I've started using it in the last, you know, definitely since I, since I was laid off last year, but, but less, not entirely from a, I'm going to get out there and do some networking, but more just like, oh, what if I use LinkedIn like another social network? And I just, you know, happen to share the things that I'm doing that I'm really proud of, or, or the, the lessons that I'm learning. And I never thought of LinkedIn like that before. And since I've been doing that, I've actually really been enjoying it. Yeah.

It just feels like a little bit of a calmer, I mean, everyone's sort of on their best behavior because it's related to the work and it's just not chaotic. And it also, yeah, it feels like you have a real like work community there. And when I was freelancing, it was incredibly helpful for getting jobs and connecting to people.

And yeah, I mean this, I think part of that is that we've just been in such a volatile job market for the last few years that it's more people are finding it really useful to go back there and you know, shore up their networks, but it also is a place to learn news and share things that you're working on. Like I don't see what you're working on there. So yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I totally agree. Well, Megan, I could talk to you for hours and I have in the past and I will in the future, but right now it's gotta be around 45 minutes. So we have reached the end of this conversation. I'm so happy to get the chance to talk to you and I want to see you real soon and catch up and yeah, all the best. What do you want to like, I know you're writing for Axios, of course. Do you want people to follow you on LinkedIn or like?

Yeah, friend me on LinkedIn.

Yeah. And also, I mean, you can also follow me on X or threads or Instagram, wherever, who knows when I'll go back to those,

but mostly I want you to subscribe to the AI plus newsletter on Axios that is mostly written by Ina who is just been around longer than anyone and an amazing tech reporter. So I'm mostly the editor, but I write sometimes too. And it's, yeah, I love it. It's just like, we just work really hard to appreciate and respect people's attention and know that you don't have a lot of time to read stuff. And we talk to smart people and we give you the stuff that you need to know the promise of peril. I like to call it if I, if you and I were going to start a podcast, I know you already have an AI podcast, but if you were going to start another AI podcast with me, we will call it promise and peril.

I thought, wow, I love that name. I love that name. Maybe we should start a TikTok channel. There you go. There you go. Love it. Yeah. Get on. Are you on TikTok already? No, no. Okay.

Well, that's one that I have to, I purged because it's too addicting for me.

Yeah, no, it is. It's really, it's really enticing. You got to pull yourself away from that. I totally agree. You and Ina match made in heaven as far as I'm concerned. And I love the work that everyone does at Axios. I love the approach. And I think you, you put it perfectly. It respects your time.

When you go there, you go there, you get exactly the important information with not a lot of extra kind of filler around it. And I think you guys do great work. So Megan, always great to hang out with you and wonderful to know you. Thank you for coming on text voter today. Appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Big thanks to my guest, Megan Morrone. The one and only text floater podcast relies on the support of our amazing community.

And you know what? We could always use more of it. So the easiest way to support this show is at our Patreon. That's patreon.com/JasonHowell. There we offer ad free shows, exclusive access to the interview, recording live streams as they happen early access to videos, a discord community that's hopping regular hangouts with me and the extended text bloater family, even an exclusive pre premiere live stream every week before each episode airs. We also offer the chance to be an executive producer of this show.

Just like this week's executive producers, Jeffrey Marraccini, Catie Lake, Bill Rutter and John Kuehne. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for supporting this independent podcast. Techsploder podcast premieres every Friday at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern on the Techsploder YouTube channel with the audio podcast publishing to the feeds later that day. And you can find everything that you really need to know about the show by visiting Techsploder. I'm Jason Howell. We'll see you next week on another episode of the Techsploder podcast. Bye, everybody.

Megan Morrone

Axios

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