Alex: we are back with a new episode of the Open Internet Pod live on X every Thursday, twelve PM UTC, together with me as always, Richard Parris. How has your Richard: Everyone? Alex: week been, Richard? Richard: So it's been a crazy, crazy week, but it's been really good to see both the software just really cranking out through its bases and then also all the new features and the cool look and feel. It's great. Alex: so so basically what you're saying is that things are running according to plan and everything's moving along swimmingly. Richard: Yes, yeah. mean, there's always when you're testing, you find things, you got to fix them, but everything within bounds. And I think the other good thing is some people, Alex, know, lucky guy amongst them, have seen snippets of what's coming out and we've had really good responses to that. So that's really, you know, gives you the kind of extra energy you need to keep pushing through when you've got so many things to keep track of, polish up, et cetera. You know, the team's really hard at it. it sort of can be hard to drive yourself all the way to the finish line, but we're getting a lot of really positive feedback. So the combination of just looking at how good everything looks, how well it's working, and then getting good feedback, it's been positive. Alex: Yeah, and I mean next week is gonna be, you know, a whole bunch more the feedback, right? 'Cause people are gonna get a chance to have a look at it and play around with it. So so I'm sure that next week it'll be even more eventful for you. Richard: Yeah, well that's the... that really is always a painful process. mean, I see one, release candidate one, the idea is this is ready for, you know, to go live on the network. Let us know what you think, let us know if anything doesn't work for you, etc, etc. And that's always, I mean, you give people your masterpiece and they're like, I haven't done that bit over there. Why doesn't this make sense? Yeah, why is the guy wearing a dress or whatever it is? So, Alex: Yeah. Richard: yes, it's a long process, but I love that feedback in the end because it means people care about what you're doing. Alex: Exactly. So what what we would like everyone to who's watching this to like you know, maybe announce in your friend groups that we need as many eyeballs as possible on this release candidate. I think that Richard's been getting way too much sleep lately and he needs to Richard: But yeah, absolutely come and and use it and come and do something with it, you know, call your grandma, chat to your friends, post something, see how it feels. If you're adventurous, make an NFT or two on testnet. Maybe try, you know, sending some, some, you know, tokens around to people, play a game for some tokens you made. There'll be a whole lot of stuff to do, different ways to get involved. So yeah, really, really excited about it. Alex: Yeah, and it's it's also this part that w we really, really want people to see this new version, this refactor as a starting point for a lot of crazy things that you can build on top of it, right? It's Richard: Mm-hmm. Alex: it's not just a consumer product. Sure, you can you can go to chat, you can play games, you can do your video calls, publishing, right? All that stuff. But you can also build your own stuff. You know, you can build your own apps. There's I mean, Richard, you probably know know more about this stuff. Richard: Yeah, well, mean, there's also multiple layers. you can take the whole stack. It's open source. So you could go and launch your own chat version based on ours, based on your own. You could do whatever you like. You can also, within the system, do coding in the kind of DeFi sense, if you're familiar with Ethereum or Solana or something like that. So you can make programmable tokens or make skins for our system. You could do things like you could make tickets for something that can only be transferred once or twice, or you actually have to have two tickets together to redeem them. All sorts of crazy things you can do on the site. We'll be doing different things to help people get started and different campaigns to kind of work with people to understand what they can do and how to go about achieving it. But it's all there on the site. And we'll also be wanting people to start building things and say, why can't I do this? And it'll be the kind of thing we've never thought of that gives us the inspiration to add features and make it more user friendly. Alex: Right, so so in other words, both you and David will be a bit more available to give feedback and help people out and spread the word and the knowledge. Richard: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so mean, our plan as well with what we're doing now is to get, break the back of a bunch of things we'd had on our to-do lists, et cetera, and to get to a kind of feature complete state where we can, for the most part, flip to helping other people start to build on what we've done rather than concentrate on. know, extending and so forth. what we built started off as demonstrations, they're now pretty polished. They give people user experience, they let people come along and experience open internet for themselves really easily. But the kicker will be when people start building killer apps that we've never even thought of, things that we use cases we hadn't conceived of, or just really great experiences that weren't something we were gonna come up with, sort of, you know, broader. set of things we're worried about. Someone really driven who has a passion, thinks I'm going to make this thing great. That's what really will start people coming over and seeing the difference. Alex: And I think it's also the the idea that, you know, you have something like Linux getting a lot of attention lately, especially for the Steam Deck and that broke Richard: Mm-hmm. Alex: a lot of barriers for people, right? Because all of a sudden you were no longer required to buy something specific to run Linux on or install it yourself and do something wrong. You Richard: Yeah. Alex: bought something that you're gonna buy anyway, a Steam Deck, and then all of a sudden you can reboot it and it goes into this desktop experience and you're like, What? Richard: Yeah. Alex: it you know, and it it works like a real OS. There's everything just works. This is crazy. So that Richard: I mean it's Alex: was a big moment for for for Linux. And I think that can also be a big moment. Like that's the sort of big moment that we're looking at with Sado Network. That's the point I'm trying to make. Richard: Absolutely. think there's, you know, is it a patent switch or is it wonderful? no, I think it's one of the things people may be on anticipating is, you know, people have used modular things before they've had a blog website where you can plug a thing in and you get calendars or something, you know, they've had that, but the open world is so different because you don't have all these people clinging desperately to keep you inside their space and to monetize what they built. So the way interoperability happens, the way data can flow from one app to another, and your experiences can be much more about you and much less about what the tech wants for itself. I think people aren't ready for that. And you can start seeing that when you use it now. But when you start getting into it more and more, you start feeling like, this identity, it's working for me. And I'm communicating in different places with different people. And it's so seamless. I think that's something that people maybe are not anticipating. They're thinking it's going to be clunky. Alex: Yeah, exactly. And and it and it took it took so much for me to understand that. And by the way, just so you guys know, we're not saying that on RC one, Sato's gonna be as feature complete Richard: Yeah. Alex: as the Linux version you saw in the Steam Deck, right? we're not there yet. You know, there's there's just give us a few more weeks and we'll get there. We're joking. By the way, we're joking. Richard: No. Yeah. Alex: No, but but the point is that it it it's all of a sudden you have so much such a big spotlight. on specifically this type of software that you mentioned, Richard. You know, this modular Richard: Yep. Yeah. Alex: c idea of software. Like you only download the bits you need and then you you run lean, right? Instead of having this like package that comes with so much bloat that you never use in your life, right? And and getting people Richard: Why don't things people don't? Alex: to think about that will also help them understand Sato in a different way. Because Richard: Yeah. Alex: of Sato is also modular in its architecture. And you you take bits that you need and Richard: this, yeah, it's one of the things people don't get, right? So if you think about it, a lot of the software you use, the people who provide it had the killer thing that brought you there, whatever it was, chat, social something, documents, email, whatever it is. And then to keep you there, they've made it feature complete. So they've, they've wrapped it around it a whole bunch of other stuff, but that's not what they do. is it the best? Like, so most of the time you're using whatever they plugged on the end of their thing that you wanted to use because it's the thing you have to use if you're in their ecosystem. You're not choosing to use, I mean, I'll use really clunky example, but you're not using documents from Microsoft and mail from Google and whatever. You're using, if you want to use the Google mail, you get the Google documents, even if you think the other ones, the Microsoft ones are better, right? Whatever it is, whether it's Facebook, and using their messenger, right? Even if something else is better. And that, think is something that people just take on and accept, right? It's just sort of how it is. And it doesn't have to be that way. I think it's one of the things people will see really change as you get genuine competition and genuine openness between software. Alex: Yeah, because you think that this is so nice that everything works together. But it only works together if you stay in the let's say in the Apple ecosystem or in the Google ecosystem. And if you wanna leave, then it doesn't work so well together. In this other world, in this modular open world, they always work. And you can go wherever you want and change providers, but the modules always work. So the providers need to build their business model above this layer of like constitutional rights, right? You can't do this to me. Richard: Yeah. Yeah, the, the it's, it's, it's, we sort of had it with email, but it's such a clunky technology and so unsexy. doesn't really click for people, but you know, you can send an email to someone across systems. You know, it's an open underneath. It's open. If you imagine if everything was like that, like a social post or, you know, whatever. So you read it in one thing. I read it in a different app because I like my app and you like your app. That's fine. And that's a difference. So the people who make these apps we're using, their only way to win us as customers is that that experience is better and we want to use it because we can always move on and we don't lose the things we had before like our friends groups or our history or whatever. And so you end up in a space where people are competing for your custom right now. Think kind of restaurants rather than sort of automotive companies or whatever. Alex: I think I think I think the best way that I can think of w when trying to describe it it would be like what if I could make like my own version of a phone? And I would say that it would have the hardware from Apple It would have the, you know, parts of the OS from Google. It would still have iMessages, but it will have Google's camera or or some Hasselblad camera that I found in Richard: Mm-hmm. Alex: a Xiaomi whatever. And then I wanna run it on this network when I feel like it. I wanna run it on another network when I when I feel like it. All of a sudden that phone becomes possible, right? Even though in in today's world that's a that's a crime chimera, it's impossible to do, right? Because Richard: Yeah. Alex: they will never go along because they're like proprietary on both sides. So it's the ultimate consumer like fantasy in a way, really. Richard: Yeah, it's funny because mean, like old Linux users know about this where it's like, you know, the people who provided your operating system tell you what to do. And it's such a strange idea if you've if you've not had that happening to you for a while, the idea that you would have software pushed on your experiences pushed on you. And I think, you know, what's happened is we've gone through a phase where obviously companies like Apple, you know, they've made billions making things people really, really like. It's not like they don't do good work. But we're seeing now, and this is part of the whole archivist certification, that it slowly turns from you've got your captain, how do you capture an audience, how do you delight them through to how do you extract from them? And when people see that, then they're suddenly realizing, I'm now, I'm out of luck. I keep my Apple experience or I lose it. There's no way of saying, look at that that thing that other person's I'd like that on my phone right or I'd like I'd like a different Operating system. This one feels a bit dated to me, but I still like the phone You know, it's just this sort of there's all these arbitrary blocks that you just don't even necessarily realize Alex: We've been we've been trained into this like locked in mentality, Richard: Mm-hmm. Alex: right? Like everything is locked in. You can't have you know, and then you can't have compatibility, right? Or if something has to be compatible, has to run through emulation or some you know, it's never really the way it should be, right? So we grew up with this idea that everybody just pulls in one direction, they wanna win and there's like you two or three companies and you gotta pick a side basically and you know, see what happens. Richard: Yeah, you know, it's, it's, mean, and it's then also they build everything to that, right? So they build deliberately Alex: But I think that's Richard: non-operable interoperable to make sure that that's true. You know, can't escape. Alex: I th I think that it this also kinda shows the the business models that are running, right? 'Cause you have like a genuine innovation that happened with the with the Mac with the f Lisa, the first Mac and so on, right? Like the personal computer. But then you had Microsoft that came and built a business together with IBM Richard: Mm-hmm. Alex: on on giving you a package, right? But they just saw it as a business. You know, Apple actually created the the the category. Right. And you kind of can see that happening. Like for example, Facebook meta created this category and then you had everybody going in it and trying to do their own thing. And it kind of like became a capitalist race to the top and now race Richard: Mm-hmm. Alex: to the bottom, or right? Or cause cause only the first one does it as out of genuine, you know, curiosity. Everyone that comes afterwards is just, that's a business model. Let's do it. Richard: Yeah, well, there were, were, yeah, there were precursors, right? There are a bunch of social things before that, but Facebook nailed, yeah, to Zuckerberg's credit, Facebook nailed something that just worked for people. And it's why it blew off like that, blew up like that. Alex: yeah, that's true 'cause you yeah, th you had a high five and and MySpace and all that stuff. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Richard: You had these things and they were interesting, odd hybrids. Sometimes they were more about chat or whatever, and then you had a kind of space where you could post stuff or, you know, people were kind of experimenting. But I think Facebook also were partially there for inventing the concept of these mega scalers, right? So that the way you do good software is also about the business model, like you say. so building the moat. around it, they could see that, you know, they knew that they weren't the first with this idea per se, but they got it kind of right. But they also could see that you had to do it in a way that really made it hard for competitors. And so they did the thing where they, you go to VC, you get a ton of money and your only objective at the start is just to get more users. And then once you kind of have. absolutely one, once you dominate that, then you start working out how you're to generate your income, right? And we all know how that story ends up. So they didn't just invent the social network. They also invented a way of delivering it that pleased business that worked as a business and didn't put them in a space where they were competing with other people who were innovating around them because they went so hard and so fast that They found this kind of methodology to explode so big, quickly that you got away from the other competitors you had. And they killed off everything else. I mean, you were just all alone if you weren't on Facebook. I mean, I've never had a Facebook account. And I remember the 18 months or so before people started realizing it wasn't everything, where I wasn't getting invited to things, et cetera, because nobody... People just found it so convenient and they loved it so much, they would just do everything on Facebook. Kids, yes. that was young people thought that way once. It wasn't just boomer land at one point. And, you know, they really succeeded in doing that, venting that business model as well along with a few others. And that, I think, colors how we think today. You just have this assumption that because things have then been built around that, that that's how it's got to be and that that's the way good things are. And it's, you know, it's sort of, I think, down to the software, down to the very like the web tools you used to build web software now actually belongs to these guys a lot of the time. It's their toolkit. They've built the philosophy and the methodology into the software itself. Sorry, into the business and into the product itself. Alex: Yeah, that's that's that's a very good insight there. And it kinda shows that we are fighting forces that are far, far above our pay Richard: Ha ha. Alex: grade in a way. but but you know, like all all all innovation starts on the edge. So, you know, we are definitely in the right place from that point of view. And it's always, you know, your your margin is my opportunity and there's such a big margin there too. chomp on and I think what is really great about something like Sato is that you can get in and be part of the ride, right? You can start developing, start creating stuff, spreading the word, all that good stuff. Because you know people s forget that even blockchains are like technologies and they're networks, right? MySpace might have been the first or the the the one to beat at one point, but then new architecture comes in, new ideas come in, new technologies, new ways of thinking, and you get a an upgrade of the same thing, right? It's still a social network, Richard: Yeah. Alex: but it's night and day. And I think that's the kind of stuff that we are aiming for with with Sato, right? We want things to be night and day difference. And yeah, sorry, you're gonna say something. Richard: Yeah, no, no, I think, I mean, again, I'm starting to think things through here. like, yeah, that was one of the things Facebook did was they had a really clever cellular campaign where they went campus to campus initially seeding usage. You know, they'd go and find the cool kids, they'd get them on it. And then they had this better experience, but it was the combination of those things that had that kind of growth strategy as well. I think what you said before about like your margin is my opportunity. I think one of the, the. things we can do to kind of take on these behemoths is understand that the payback in open systems goes to the right people and it goes there immediately. So eventually something like Facebook, it's huge VC funding and then those people want their money back. So they've to build this business that then pulls cash back out of the people they've captured. If you're building open tools, there is no them, it's people building for themselves and those rewards come back very quickly, which gives the ability to spread virally and to grow organically in a way that you can't orchestrate. And it doesn't require, you know, spin up time and organizations to be built and so forth, because people can do this for themselves with, you know, their friends. And I think that's a very, very different approach and it also gives you different thresholds. You don't have to have that corporate profitability shareholder pleasing mindset. You can just build something you really like and because the economics are so very different, you've got a much better chance of actually making a living out of it and being able to keep providing something that people actually want on an ongoing basis. Alex: Yeah, and you also have to the way I'm looking at it, I'm also thinking about things like do I want something that is so addictive? Right? Do I want to feel like every Richard: Ha ha ha ha. Alex: time I take my phone out, if I open any app, their only purpose is to keep me there. Right? Richard: Mm-hmm. Alex: So maybe I wanna have a a device, you know, another dream device that is possible in the open in the new open world order. Richard: take my notes about it. Alex: Sorry? Richard: saying I'll take notes on exactly what you want so I can build. Alex: okay. Yeah, no, no, but I'm saying like maybe I want a phone that does things like keeps me in touch with my friends, allows me to do video calls with everybody, you know, maybe play some games, but I'm not necessarily interested in syncing all my contacts to the cloud. I'm not necessarily interested in having to opt out of of notifications or having to opt out out of like random surveys and you know, just send my data everywhere to make the apps better without being asked about it. You know, something like that that doesn't need to be constantly pushing you, right? And it's more like when you needed it, it's there. And then when you don't need it, it's back in your pocket. Richard: Hmm. Well, I think, yeah. I mean, the, the design for that is obviously there because dumb phone sales are going up and E Ink phones are becoming more and more popular. Right. Alex: Right, right. Richard: And I, the way I see that is it's, it's answering exactly the thing you're talking about. The question you're asking. Alex: Fatigue. Yeah, it's fatigue. It's just like Richard: It's, it's either I want something that And yeah, I'm to go and buy the phone now. I'm thinking clearly about it rather than when I'm already in mid scroll that will stop me from doing that. Right. Or, you know, I want to be able to read a newspaper or read a chart or go to someone's website or whatever, but I don't want that dopamine filled like video experience. So I'm just going to get an E phone. Right. So people are making those choices for that reason. The difference, I think the thing that you're getting at is. It's an all or nothing, right? Like I'll stop those. I'll stop my exposure to those things by basically meaning you can only contact me by texting me or calling me. That's it. Right. I'm just going to cut it out and I have to use hardware. That's kind of on the edge of the ecosystem and I have to make this big choice. And I think what you're talking about is what about if someone just made an app where I could lightly share things with friends, right? So where The cool stuff that happened in bigger chat groups would be public and could be posted and seen, but there's no corporate entity injecting stuff into it. There's no big profit motive architecturing the app so that I'll never leave. So it's not there to extract the very last cent's worth of my attention out of me. And I think that... That is a big difference and that's not possible in the model that we saw spawned with what I was talking about with Facebook where you have to build this explosive app that then captures everything. Alex: Right, and and that's that's why you have stuff like Google has the best maps, but it also tracks you four times more than an iPhone. And and their their their offer to you is you get ten percent better you know usage out of your out of your maps and we get all your data. You know, it's it's it's not like and you give us fifty cent or one dollar. It's you give us everything. Right? Richard: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Alex: So so you are in a situation where the lowest price tag you pay for that comfort is everything. Right? They give you all these granular options, but they're like, have you ever tried going and and they just create more ways of no notif like on Android, they have like six, seven types of notifications. So your choice is to either turn all them, all of them off, or go through them and turn some. I mean, they make it, they put so many layers of you to go through and do it by hand. When instead the cus the consumer-friendly, user-friendly thing to do would be: hey, don't notify me. You have AI. Notify me only about things that interest me because I said so. Or don't notify me unless my friends call. You know, that's not that's not something that you have to select that granularly. And I think adding layer upon layer of these kind of frictions everywhere makes it so that you feel like you can't ever leave. You're like stuck in there, right? You have all these claws into Richard: Hmm. Alex: you. And the alternative is we don't have that. You can get s something with zero claws, one claw, one and a half claws, three claws, Richard: Yeah. Alex: how many claws you want, or none, if that's what you want. Richard: Yeah. Yeah. Alex: And you know what? When you turn it off, it doesn't send you notifications, hey, where you've been. Because it doesn't have that sort of interest, because Richard: Yeah, I think. Alex: it makes its money by the usage, and you realize that. The usage in itself is not so expensive either. Richard: Well, it's also, you also need like, and this is why openness is important here. You need to, you do need some level to enforce it, right? Like, so with, with Linux, you had the GPL, right? Licensing matters an awful lot to like computer geeks who are into their open stuff because it's what's kept it alive, right? Cleverly licensing. And so you need to have these open rails. And the reason for that is That's how it's possible for me to have the dopamine frenzy three feeds at once, all notifications all the time won't leave me alone app that I want. And you to have something that limits itself to a certain amount of usage per day. you know, we'll, it markets itself as, you you won't get a fourth notification on any given day, right? It's like, it's how it markets itself. It's like, I'm not going to, I'm I'm going to give you just as much contact with me as you want. Right. You can have that and I can have my version and we can have the same content, right? We can have the same share between us, the same feed. So maybe I'm consuming 800 times as much. And I also subscribe to 400 channels about movies and fashion and blah, blah, blah, blah. And you're basically, you know, aesthetic politics and philosophy and chats with Richard and that's it. And. We can do that without me having to be in my world and never being able to talk to you and vice versa. Right. That's the big difference is the content can flow freely and you can choose your mode of engaging with it without having to have those coupled and be like, well, you're in, you're in Instagram or you're not in Instagram. Right. That's the, that's the difference. Alex: Ex exactly, instead of having proprietary feeds in each and every app with the account Richard: Mm-hmm. Alex: that maybe is shared in between, right? You get to access the same flow of content. It's just that one might prefer to access it through portal A and one other one for portal B, different features, different user experience, but the same information. And I think that in this era of AI, that's where I wanted to get it, where software can become more and more customized because the price of producing hardware, software has gone down through the help of Richard: Mm-hmm. Alex: these two tools, you will enter a a a period. We will enter a period of, in my opinion, custom software for more and more people. Richard: Mm-hmm. Yep. Alex: And then and then it makes sense to have a modular thing because everybody's doing their own app. So you n the network that has the system for modularity is the network that wins. Wink wink. Richard: Yeah. Well, no, it's true. So this is one of the funny things is that there's a whole bunch of stuff. I mean, I've been a Linux user since early 2000s. And one of things I love about it, aside from like the grand power of the command line and using the software I choose to, is the cool themes. I like the pretty buttons, right? And you get that because it's totally modular. And so a lot of what's happened in last few years that's super cool is a lot of designers cut their teeth on Linux. They realize, I can take the experience and practice. I can get really good at being a product designer and industrial product designer by taking on the challenge of how do I do all of that benefit for me? I get to put their project on my lap, on my laptop environment for one week, six weeks until I'm sick of it or whatever. But I get these cool themes from some Latvian designer or whatever, some Swedish dudes, some Japanese guy, whatever, you know, some lady in Kazakhstan, whoever it is, built my look and feel for the week. That's super cool. I, I don't know if it's ADHD or I love that, but I want to look at a Mac and it looks roughly the same as it did 10 years ago. get really sad. and that was, that's not something I think people anticipate about this openness is right. Like the idea that it's not, you don't have to buy an Apple developer license and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah to do things. And then you still have to obey their rules and their design choices and stuff. you know, occasionally my buttons are too big and they don't fit in the thing or whatever, but it's my choice to use that look and I can have it for a week. Alex: I just had this idea when I heard you speak about Linux and the themes, and I thought that I'm just asking you, right? And by the way, everybody was watching, you guys can also ask questions. If you write a comment, we'll check it out and answer your questions. You know, the more questions, the better we want to get you guys involved. So don't be shy. write a comment and ask us a question. But what I was curious about was Could it could I not like in this version of the world that we are living in today where you have access to AI tools that can write code for you, would I not be Richard: Mm-hmm. Alex: able to write a version of Linux that has support for NFTs on Sato? And then I could put my Linux themes on the store on Sato, and Richard: Yeah. Alex: then you c and that would be like fifty copies, and that lo that thing would automatically load onto my Linux computer and I'll get this theme that is unique. There's only 50 copies of it or like five copies or 10 copies of it. And that remains on the network. And when I'm bored of it, I can sell it, put it back in the store and sell it. That's what's possible on on this kind of technology, right? It's which is crazy. It's like stuff we never had before. It's ownership in the digital realm without having to rely on a third party. Richard: Yeah. mean, what I was talking about before is like the benefit of getting someone's like, you know, master's thesis is my desktop, but you know, that's, that's only a sort of limited, experience, the ability to like actually have people earn money. And this is the big thing with openness, the ability for creators to manage and control and vend what they sell without needing to go to a gatekeeper who's going to take it. Like you said before, your choice is everything. Right? When you go to marketplaces now, you just get the deal that they give you. And they're taking huge chunks. that's for the creators. For users, it's even worse. It costs a fraction of a cent to render the page for you. But that ad view that you had to tolerate to see it gave the company that put it there $5, $6, $7 in some cases. And so I think that whole creator economy can be totally stimulated by the kind of thing you're talking about, the ability to do limited editions and earn money even through the resale of them, et cetera. So if you've got that capacity, if you know that there a few people out there who'll pay $5, $10 for a theme that they can keep and then resell and you'll get a small cut of the resale price. It gives you enough of an income if you're any good. And if you get a following to be able to do this full time, you know, way before you could do it, you know, selling through commercial channels or through, you know, gate kept things like app stores, et cetera. And I think that's, that's the other thing that people aren't expecting is that I think the open universe can be way prettier because it has way more chance to reward aesthetic. activities and efforts. Alex: Yeah, no, I think I think that there's there's I was just thinking about cool stuff that is possible. I never thought about it. That that is this is so crazy. I think Richard: Yeah, no, really is. Alex: it's it it's literally dawning on me that like I've been I've been part of of this journey with you guys in one way or another for so many years, but I'm still discovering new things about about the blockchain and and how these modular structures work. And it's it's just fascinating to still be on that journey and like, bet it took me so long to understand this part, but I finally get it. Yeah, and and it and it just goes to show that we kinda need the push. And for us the push was the horrendous behavior from the people that we thought were our friends, right? It's everybody like trying to nickel and dime you, whether it's Apple for their services or Microsoft, which are very aggressive with their OneDrive and 365 and Copilot and all that stuff. Richard: ads in ads in your operating system. Good Lord. You you're just trying to open a file. Alex: Yeah, yeah. And then and then you realize that yeah, you realize that wait a minute, this this is a scam. I'm being scammed Richard: Mm-hmm. Alex: here, right? So people are waking up and it's kind of funny in a way, 'cause you you have the people that create the things, then you have the people that latch on top of it and then create the environment, and then you have the people that discover it, right? You guys are now in a way the people that have come behind the people that created it, right? This is this new wave of blockchain technology that is something that we've never had before. And it's it's a blue ocean for everybody to go there and and discover what what you can do and liberate yourself from all these things that were previously you know unthinkable. Like no you can have, let's say, iMessage running on Android in a laptop made by Apple. You know, that sort of, you know, craziness is possible once you go modular and you can just take the bits that you want. You can take Word and put it on Linux and run it on the network. So am I am I getting this right or am I exaggerating or Richard: Yeah, no, mean, absolutely. I think, I think going back to something you said, tying it to this with, with like people being able to vibe code or AI code stuff up. Right. So again, you know, what we're really doing, if you think about it, you know, like years ago, governments got involved and they said, no documents have to be an open standards. You, you, had this thing where you couldn't open a word document in another tool or whatever. And so we kind of see bits of this where now there's different things you can cross open. can open Word documents on a non-Word app on your Mac or on Linux or whatever. But there's still these little bits and pieces. And what we've been concentrating on is building those open rails that we were mentioning before, where the data has standards and formats and things that can be transported around and shared. And they're separate. They're not related to the app and the ecosystem that those things come from. And one of the things that means is that, with AI available to code interfaces and things that interact, you also don't have to code from the top to the bottom. So if you want to build a Facebook in a traditional way, mean, those guys rewrote a programming language. built their own kind of data centers. Google transformed the data center to make happen what they did. CYTO handles that on the scaling infrastructure side. So if you're a developer, you don't have to be worried about doing all of that to have a product. And what that means for users, for people, is that you've got a way lower barrier to entry. And so you're going to have way more choice, which means it's far more likely that someone who just fundamentally gets what you want is going to make something that you can find and use and enjoy. And that can also happen much more regularly because, again, it doesn't have to have the reliability and the interoperability of this whole stack of software, right? Its job is quite simple. It reads tweet format messages and it presents them to you and it mixes them with chat format messages. And so it's, it's only doing that. It's not inventing a new form of chat message and tweet message and how to store those in databases and all of that. It's just, its job is just to take the feed and give it to you. And so those applications can have much more attention and they can be much, you know, anyone can develop them and they can do things like. that we've never thought of with that feed of information. Alex: So what you're saying is that they function a bit like Legos, right? Richard: Yeah, absolutely. It's very much like that. you know, and it'll be things like take this function from your phone and give it to your car, right? Which we sort of don't think about now, but that we'll be able to have apps that just do different things than we're anticipating because they'll be able to interact with AI for one thing, but also just be different and rebuilt and... plugged together in ways that we really don't anticipate because it's kind of prevented now. So until a product team have an idea in a little meeting room somewhere in Silicon Valley, you don't get. Whereas this takes that barrier away. Alex: Yeah, I I think I think I know exactly what you mean because it's it's one of those situations where you you're no longer bound to what people expect you to use, right? And the fact that that sh so far we've been used to getting getting let's say a car And it's all paid and everything is put together, right? Here you're you're what you're doing is that you can build your own car whichever you way you go, you can ask an AI to build it because the instructions for building it are very simple to follow, and the elements that you use when you build it are pre-made. So it's question of imagination and use cases that dictates. How you do it right? And in that sort of environment, open source always wins because is the one that allows all the possibilities to play out. While the closed Richard: Yep. Yep. Alex: models they always lose because they have to protect something, and so they cannot try everything. Richard: Right. Alex: so the system in itself has a built-in mechanism for winning. Richard: Yeah, there's, there's a reason that like science is open, right? It's because non-open science lost, right? It's not for any other reason. It's just, it's a better way of finding stuff out. the reason that, you know, Linux totally dominates the data center and in fact, most people's lives, cause it's in your TV and your phone and all that sort of stuff is because when people are making choices about operating systems that need to go into machines that need to, to be used a lot. It's the obvious choice. It's clearly better. And that's because, you know, any manufacturer anywhere, any company, any individual can put the things that they need into it. And so that openness wins over time, despite endless corporate attempts to kill it. And the issue is, like I said before, you need these little protections like the GPL, like the licensing for Linux that means that you can't take parts off and steal it or poison it or various things. And so with a lot of what we're trying to do with SIDO is to build something that gives you, it just does that role, right? It vouchsafes, it protects the openness of the system. And that means that people can then plug and play and also compete openly with each other. And you get the best result rather than people being able to say, now I'm going to use this technology and a wall off my stuff. that's it. can't, you can't touch it. And so that's really why we talk about openness so strongly, what we do. Alex: Right, and and that's the whole idea of the open world order. And it's basically in Richard: Mm-hmm. Alex: in this environment where where where these tools are available that more or less guarantee guarantee personalized software going forward, right? It's it's gonna become more and more more more and more prevalent. Then that world order automatically favors the the open model because The group cannot win against it's a it's a numbers game, right? Like no no small group, no product team in Silicon Valley can win against literally everyone else. Right. So in that mindset and in that environment, all of a sudden something like SATO Network becomes becomes a lot easier to understand. And it becomes like, yeah, that's how we should do things, right? Richard: I mean, I've always, I've long believed that. So I was an open source person when I got into blockchain. And when I first saw Bitcoin, my first thought was, an ownerless network. That looks interesting. The fact that it transmitted money was like just to the obvious first use case. And to me, I was like, what if this can transfer information? Which it could just very, very badly and very, very expensively. that, that spark captured me then because It always occurred to me as an open source was we're using these open tools, but we keep banging into like smashing into these closed walls. there's, there's always stuff where, and I think some of some of that's gotten better for the reasons you were saying, I like so like, you know, things were much worse with carrier locking of phones and all sorts of things. And also just hardware not working because it came as part of a software stack that came as part of a corporate offer. Right. That's. That's changed because Linux changed. Alex: Lightning plug. Yeah. The lightning plug on iPhones. Richard: Right. Exactly. All those sorts of things were, you know, just obviously counted the benefits of having these open systems. So to me, and I won't give myself, you know, I'm not saying I was this, giant visionary. It just seemed better to be able to make the network open in the same way that the software could be open the same way that science could be open because we just get better things. Right. That was the primary thought I had was it will just be better. and I think what we've seen over time is it's become not just, kind of offering us better alternatives, et cetera. It's also become important to give us ways around some of the, what these products turn into to have some small real alternatives. Alex: Right, and and think about it like this as well. you know, you also should be careful what you wish for because the moment something that is open and works becomes successful, you also have the big corporations that wanna start building around it. And that's why you need Richard: Mm-hmm. Alex: to have a system that is also designed against that, right? Because Richard: Yep. Yep. Alex: It it's it that it's not enough that you create this open source product that works very, very well. You also have to protect yourself from big, big monopolies that just wanna buy you up or break you or just yeah. Richard: If you don't, if you don't protect it, yeah, it will. mean, this, this is the absolute kernel of what you're saying. There's if you go and look through the Linux kernel, you'll find stuff from Alibaba, from Google, from Microsoft, you know, from the bite dance, all these huge tech companies contribute things because they, there's something that they wanted it to do quicker or better or faster. And because it's protected. that you can't keep it in part, they have to inject it back in. So if they want to keep using the benefit of the stuff that's already there, they have to contribute and make it better rather than locking it off and keeping it for themselves. So what's happened is all of those corporations have realized at least within how their computers work, it's better for them to just all compete on making something better together than it is to try and build their own super thing. they'll Alex: Right. Richard: try that. keep their special source and that separate. But it's that layer of protection that's let that happen. As soon as something they can do is not covered by that, they go back to the hoarding and the building of the wall garden, et cetera. And so that's kind of, people have thought up until now, really, you can't extend that level of openness with something like the legal protections that give it to a software. You can't take that to the network level because it's... It's a different thing, it's alive, it's always moving, it needs different kind of regulation, so you can't do that. And that's what we're trying to show is actually you can, you can build something where there's no gatekeeping on it at all. It is genuinely open and then that will give us the same kind of competition to make things better rather than to wall them off and keep them to yourselves that we see in the Linux space much more generally. Alex: Right, and and I think that you could also I mean you could also talk a bit about how SATO consensus works and how that fights the the same type of behavior, right? Richard: Right. Well, that's again, I keep talking about these, these verticals, but it's really important. Right. So one of the things that the go back to that Facebook model, one of the things they did is they got to having nine data centers full of Facebook servers running their network so fast that a competitor needed to have an, you know, just needed to have unfathomable resources, I at least three of the big VC firms behind you to be able to even think about taking on such a behemoth. What CIDO consensus does is it lets that open network pay people for running infrastructure basically just on the use. Agnostic doesn't matter who's using it, right? Just the more used there is, there's more money for them to produce, to provide hardware and infrastructure to it. That ties into what I saying earlier about then if I build an app, I don't need to worry about scaling because if I'm bringing users to the network, that's bringing value. to the infrastructure providers and they'll put more infrastructure in place to support it because that's how they make their money. But we don't have to have a deal or an agreement or anything where we're locked into anything. They're competing to provide infrastructure in a blanket way to me and make money doing that. So I just know I throw needs at that infrastructure. They all provide and fix those needs. I can just concentrate on building my software that runs on the user's machines. So I don't need to run any complicated hardware or anything at all. Alex: Right, right. Richard: I just provide the software. I've got one job that makes it very, very easy for me to do my job, but it also means I have no moat, no ability to stop anybody else from doing it except the quality of what I do. Right. So as soon as someone else provides a more compelling experience, it does the same thing. They're going to start. winning some of the people who maybe use mine and so I'm in competition for them but it's a very very fair very even competition and the only beneficiary really is the end user. Alex: And it's also a localized competition, right? Because you also act on modules and on network that is closest to you. Richard: Mm-hmm. Alex: Right. So in in the previous business model, let's say for let's lose use an analogy of the the chain supermarket and the local grocery store. Right? The chain supermarket wins because everything is centralized and it pays one centralized price for all all fruit, vegetables, all produce, and it has the the transport network that that Richard: Mm-hmm. Alex: the prices are pushed down maximum, right? And that's how they make their money. But in a let's say in a SATO network world, that becomes incredibly expensive because the closest route from A to B is the one that makes Richard: Mm-hmm. Alex: most money. Richard: Yep. Alex: If I have to centralize it first, A centralized and then from center send it back to B, then I'm losing money. So Richard: Yep. Yeah. Alex: in this way, you end up in a situation where the local the local grocery store not only has the better produce, but it's also cheaper than the supermarket. So the idea Richard: Yeah. Yeah. Alex: of the supermarket doesn't even make sense in this world. Richard: It gives you the ability that if you happen to, mean, there's a wonderful old supermarket in Melbourne that had this, they had two supermarkets, Italian family started them. They would sell local fruit from people's backyards. I think they eventually got regulated out of doing this, but they, if there are a lot of plums growing because it was that season stuff, you could go and get a huge box of plums at their supermarket cheap, because some granddad would bring them in and they'd just give him some money for it. And then they'd sell it to people. It's that sense, right? It's local, it's quicker, it's more efficient. They also would do, they would do stuff if a different ethnic group moved into the area, they'd start selling them whatever they wanted. They had no good luck going and asking a giant chain for something until their focus group show the need for it, right? Until they think they can turn a dollar. Whereas these guys were local. If they had customers coming in and asking for something, they'd source it and get it. It is that difference, right? And traditionally the problem was that those little supermarkets or those little corner bodegas or whatever they are would be more expensive. And that's where we flip that thing where actually they shouldn't be more expensive because the fruit came from Gino's backyard and it got walked here in a cardboard box. So it should in fact be cheaper because no logistics center and trucking was involved. And that's essentially the logic behind how SIDO is doing stuff. So of course software moves freely through things, but the infrastructure that you end up using will be closer to you and will be provided to you by someone local because that's actually the more efficient, cheaper way to do it. And the best reward for them is to get something from you as efficiently as possible to where it needs to be in the network as close as they can make that. Alex: I always think about our conversations and I wonder to myself, like, next time we'll make it more simple. You know, like next time we'll make it more simple. And we've been saying that for so long and I think we're getting there. But you know, I think it's also like that saying, it y you ca it's not about timing the market, it's about time in the market. And I feel it's i similar here and it's one of those things that you kinda have to see it because it's It's not so much a paradigm shift, it's it's literally the the empire long united must divide, the empire long divided Richard: Hmm. Alex: must unite. And here it's the empire long united and it cause it was really an empire of like monopolies. And Richard: Yeah. Alex: now now they're just like they can't really make money anymore. So they have to split and Richard: Yeah, it's, I think it's that and also there's something weird that happens in your mind. I think this is sort of related. I think I've mentioned this to before, Rory, I forget his surname, the sort of famous British marketing guy who talks about like, what if it was the other way around and we'd always had electric cars and you're trying to sell the idea of petrol cars to people. And you go, you say to someone, well, look, you know, they're really good. They make all this noise. And they're like, what? What other advantages do you have? you can fill them up at these petrol stations all around the country. like, so we have to build a network of like oil tanks around the city. And what do do with the oil? you burn it. that's, so I have a fire in my car. is, you know, it just, it's immediately apparent that like describing a more, you know, a more complicated, more fiddly, it's because we're used to them that we accept that it's the change to electric, right? And I think once people use genuinely open platforms, they'll look at it and think, how on earth did we ever get stuck with like such arcane scenarios where I could only use documents I created in this piece of software on this piece of software. And I could only, like, I couldn't send my messages across these different platforms. You know, I had this sort of weird thing where if you were using Telegram and I was using WhatsApp, I couldn't send you a message. And people will think it's very odd. And it's just something that would be used to because that's how it's been delivered to us in the first place that we expect it to be that way. But I think, you know, the generation of internet users, which who knows how long that is, seven minutes from now or something, will look back at it and say, do you realize that there were times when people use proprietary messaging apps that were not interoperable? Like how bizarre and arcane is that? Alex: But can tell you that there was a time where they were interoperable, right? Richard: Mm-hmm. Alex: Where where where like AOL had its own client, ICO, ICQ had its own client, Yahoo Messenger Richard: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Alex: had its own client, and there was this app called Trello, and you could log in Richard: Trillium. Alex: Trillium, Trillium, sorry, not Trello, Trillium. Richard: I remember Trillium. Alex: Yeah. And you could you could write in all your all your d data and addresses and web servers and Richard: Mm-hmm. Alex: usernames and so all that stuff for each individual app. And then you'd have the software that had all of them. And you had your friends Richard: Yeah. Alex: from each individual app in the same in individual network in the same app. So we've done it before. And it's so nice. But we kind of lost that with with web two and the social media platforms. They kinda Richard: Well, that's exactly what happened. So it was never perfect. There was some cludge involved in that, but yeah, it was sort of going in the right direction. And then what happened was companies realized, you know, why does Facebook Messenger exist? And then why did they buy WhatsApp over at Meadow? It was because they realized like, people would leave Facebook if the messaging isn't up to speed, right? And so there was a risk. So yeah, they sit there and they look at how can we build these sort of... sufficient. And that's what I'm saying. Like you end up with the next best, right? You don't end up with the best of breed. You end up with whatever is good enough to keep you on the primary product. Alex: Yeah. Yeah. Richard: and we've just gotten used to that being the kind of mode, right? And it's how it operates. Alex: Yeah, and I and I think like like I said earlier, I think we're we're leaving that behind us, especially with all the open source AI models that you can run on a four gigabyte video Richard: Hmm. Alex: card locally and you know, they're they're not as advanced as the biggest ones, but you don't need all that, right? If you're just building some some small modular apps. Richard: Well, think, I mean, it's a sideline. think we're just so early with this stuff where if you think about like what you could do on your, you know, like your Lisa, your Apple Lisa or your Apple two for that matter. I mean, it was absurdly, you you, looked at those and you told them that we would one day have a tiny version of this in our pocket and that would be our most important possession. That would have thought you were mental. I think, yes, absolutely. As you know, within a few years, we'll see the kind of. results we get out of some of the bigger models in affordable open platforms. And for the reasons we were saying before, that will end up winning because the openness will make it better. Alex: And and I s I said it before, and you know, I'll say it again. There was a l there was a time where Nokia thought the iPhone was a silly idea or Microsoft Richard: Hmm. Alex: thought the exact same thing. And there was a time when electrical cars elec electric cars were a a silly idea. Richard: But you know that New York had far more electric cars than petrol cars at one point in the early 20th century. Yeah. So like. Alex: before the before the petrol monopoly took care of it. Richard: Yep. Yep. Yes. And I mean, sorry, let's not sidetrack. Well, no, was about Alex: Yeah, no, but what No, go ahead, go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. Richard: to say it fits in very well to what we're saying because it was, you know, it's the battery technology, et cetera, wasn't great then, but if you go and look at some of those early cars, were horrendous. You had like manual cranks that could fly off and break your arm and no gears and all sorts of stuff. But one of them kept getting the attention and pushing forward. if that had been electric all the way, battery technology would have been where it is now far earlier. Alex: Right, and and that's what I'm saying, like it's it's these technologies that that seem to be so how should I put it they seem to be irreplaceable, right? And I don't think we're thinking big enough. Like some people think the internet is a one network. It's not, it's a series of networks. Richard: Hmm. Alex: And you know, what if j the internet was just like MySpace? And now something that is the equivalent of Facebook in in terms of you know forward thinking and you know vision comes along. Richard: Mm-hmm. Alex: Right? You will obviously move into that new thing. And the the idea that the internet could span into different networks and become their own thing. Like you could have a new open internet. That's what it's about. It's about moving from this old way of doing things and being stuck with the same providers, logging with Google, logging with Apple, logging with Meta, and stepping into Richard: Hmm. Alex: something where You are you. You can decide w how you wanna interact with everything. Stuff you don't wanna have anything to do with, you don't have to have anything to do with that. You Richard: Mm-hmm. Alex: don't have to use third parties for sending money, for identifying yourself, for Richard: Yeah. Alex: making a phone call. Richard: I think it's, it's a similar leap to like very early on you use the internet to do things like find out about the film or TV show or whatever, but you had to consume it on physical media or in a cinema or on TV, on broadcast. Cause you couldn't use your computer to like, as the media terminal itself. And there's been a, you know, there's been a whole generational shift. It's just a different network now because it's, it is amongst many other things and probably primarily. And you know, content delivery system for these more complicated media formats, et cetera. And, you know, the kind of stuff people used to do like text protocol stuff is, you know, tiny fraction now. And I think we can see, like you're saying, a leap forward where we had the internet where you were always kind of asking for, you know, your kind of usage. Can I just use it for a second? I'll, you know, You can tag me, like you can put a wristband on me and I'll walk around for a second and you can kick me out again, right? And that's essentially the way we use the internet now. It's how it feels, right? You've got your like, you've rented 10 minutes of time and you can go and use these different things or while you're paying, you can live there. And I think we'll see a very big difference to your point with things like owning your own identity where that's your identity and you're just there and it's your internet around you. And you overlap with other people and you share things and you, you know, communicate and stuff in totally different ways because it's not an experience of having permission to go into the thing, use it while you're there and then, and then wait to be kicked out again. Alex: just I just love this idea that I can have my key. Like I I love having my my wallet on let's say on Sato and I can save it then put it on my phone, load it on my phone or make a copy of it. So I have two keys. It's so much Richard: Mm-hmm. Alex: nicer than having to remember what's the the password of my password manager or where's the which two FA authenticator did I use and it there's Richard: Mm-hmm. Alex: just so much friction in that world now because there's so many ways to for people to scam you or to for people to you know like get lost or do mis make mistakes or get hacked that Richard: Mm-hmm. Alex: having something as simple as just having your key on a stick and knowing that that stick is in my pocket nobody else can get to it Richard: Yeah. Alex: is it's just like it's it's it's like a simple res rephysicalization of a of a Richard: Mm-hmm. Alex: digital concept but but it's so much easier now. It's so much less friction. Richard: Yeah. And it's also, it's funny, it's kind of much more organic in a weird way, right? Because it's, it's, it's you, it's tied to you. and it doesn't belong somewhere else yet. It also has weird things like you can put on a hat and glasses and be someone else if you want to, right? You can, you can just, you know, have an identity that's perfectly solid, but use it for one and only one thing, right? Or, you know, compartmentalize the interactions and there's no connection between them. And you didn't somewhere in the background have to do that. Alex: It's like having th the physical nature of things coming back in the digital world, right? It's Richard: Mm-hmm. Alex: like I can have two wallets. I can have a nice wallet that I take with me when I go at night and have dinner with my friends. And there's a wallet that I only take with me on vacation because it has all these extra pockets and I can keep different currency in it, right? It it it's it's it's still me because I'm carrying it, right? Richard: Yeah. Yeah. Alex: So the identity comes back to the actual person and then you decide how to use these keys for what to use them, right? And I think that's how it should be. And especially with the tendencies we've seen across the world to just centralize and you know, minority report everybody. we kinda need this outlet to to, you know, be our own selves, our own true selves. Damaste. Richard: Yeah, well, I think it becomes important for broader, much broader things that I think we have anywhere near enough time to talk about now looking at the time. But, you know, I think in the end, things like the viability of concepts like democracy depend on people being able to communicate Alex: Also Richard: freely and openly. And that's another big part of this. Alex: Not just the viability th but also the vibe ability is very important in today's world and we cannot ignore that. We Richard: Yeah, it's true. Alex: we strive for the best vibes all the time here at Sato Network. Richard: You're coming to me for vibes, good lord. Alex: Anyway, this has been the Open Internet Pod. Today's episode has been the Open World Order. Are you ready for this open world order? Let us know in the comments. Share this with your friends, your loved ones, your enemies. Pe Richard: Yeah. Tell us, tell us why we're wrong. Alex: Exactly. and don't forget this is also available on demand every Sunday, 12 p.m. UTC in your favorite podcast app. Catch you guys or next week, same time, same place. Richard: Thanks everyone, bye.