Walter Isaacson - President and CEO of the Aspen Institute

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Language: en

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- [Sal] It's always fun to talk to you.

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I know the team here are
super excited about it.

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I mean, there's like 10 different things

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we can talk about with you.

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I'll start with, kind of, who
you are and your background

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just to get everyone on the same page.

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You're fundamentally a writer.

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Right when you came out
of college, you went

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to be a writer in London,
then in New Orleans,

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which is where both of us grew up.

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What was it early on in your
life that kind of convinced you

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that you wanted to be a
writer, that this was something

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that you would kind of find meaning in?

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- Sal and I both grew up in
New Orleans, and I had a,

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sort of an uncle in New
Orleans, my uncle by marriage.

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But we never knew what Uncle Walker did,

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because he was always
at home drinking bourbon

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and eating hog's head cheese,

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north of Lake Pontchartrain,
on the Bogue Falaya,

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and we'd say, "Ann,
what does your dad do?"

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And he'd say, "Well, he's a writer."

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And I was like nine or 10 years old.

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And it was only after, I
think I was age 11 or so,

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The Moviegoer comes out by Walker Percy,

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and he's a great, or was
a great Southern novelist.

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And I realized that being
a writer was something

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you could do, just like being
an engineer or fisherman,

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or doctor, or whatever.

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And like, you could actually be a writer,

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and you got to sit home
all day and drink bourbon,

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which seemed an upside
to the whole writing gig.

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And so I would, you know,
grill Walker Percy and say,

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"Tell me about it, how do
you do this?" or whatever.

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And then I read his novel, by
that point he'd come out with

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The Last Gentleman as well.

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I read them carefully,
and they always were about

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faith and growth.

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- This is when you were in high school?

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- Yeah, it's when I
was about 14 years old.

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- So you were able to
track him down and...

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- Well (mumbles) so we would
go fishing on the boat.

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You know the Bogue Falaya
right near Covington?

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And we had a place up there, our family,

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and the Percy's did, and we
were all kind of related.

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So, we'd go waterskiing.

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His daughter, Ann, was my
age, and we would waterski

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the Bogue Falaya and capture
turtles and do whatever

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you did when you were 14 years old.

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Try to flirt with Ann, but we
didn't know how to flirt well,

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but we could catch turtles well.

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Then, you know, we'd get home, and I'd...

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Or get to their house,
and I'd say, you know,

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"Tell me about this thing."

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And I asked him about the novels and the

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themes and the philosophical
themes and the preacher,

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and he said, "Look, here
are two types of people

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"come out of Louisiana.

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"Preachers and storytellers."

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He said, " For God's
sake, be a storyteller.

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"The world's got far too many preachers."

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And so I realized that
storytelling was sort of a way

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that you could make sense of the world.

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You know, make people
understand things better.

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And I said, "Well,
that's what I want to do.

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"I want to be a writer,
and I don't want to be

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"an opinion writer, I want
to be a storyteller writer."

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- And did you have doubt?

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I know you were a teenager now.

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Did people tell you that,
hey, it's hard to be a writer?

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Is this kind of a, be a doctor...?

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- Well, I had, I mean it wasn't
like, okay I'm a teenager.

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I'm going to be a writer.

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I mean, I was a teenager
and then I went to college.

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And I actually studied
philosophy in college,

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and then went to graduate
school and studied philosophy.

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So, there was a moment, I
thought I might be a philosopher,

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although I didn't quite
know, whether, I don't know,

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in this strip here, whether
somebody says, you know,

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philosopher and you go in and they...

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I didn't quite know how
you become a philosopher.

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But I was actually thinking of, you know,

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being an academic and even
showed my undergraduate

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professors the thesis I
had written in England.

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And they said, "No, you'd
probably be better off

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"being a journalist."

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And so, it was at that point that I joined

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the Sunday Times of
London, and what is now

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The Times-Picayune of New Orleans.

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- What was it that first, and
Walter's extremely humble.

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To go from, not a lot of
kids go from Louisiana

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to Harvard to Rhodes Scholar.

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- You did, sort of.

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- I didn't do the last part.

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- You did MIT.

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- Wait, wait, but the...

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- We're not that much of a backwater.

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- Yes, that's right.

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- A lot of people go...
- That's right.

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- Okay.

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- Ellen Degeneres went to my high school.

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- Really?
- Yeah.

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- Did she go to Harvard?

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- I don't think so.

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- Okay.

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- That's um...

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- Grace King High School.

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- I know what your high school was.

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- You went to...

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- Newman.
- The fancy school,

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where, anyway...

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- Me and Michael Lewis.

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- Fewer people from Grace
King go to, anyway..

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- I love it when you and I are doing

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competition on our humble roots.

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(audience laughs)

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- Ain't gonna work.

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- Yes, I didn't do a
lot of turtle catching.

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- Yeah, yeah.

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- You're kind of a young
adult at this point.

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You graduated from...

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How do you find that first experience?

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You know, there's kind
of this romantic notion

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of being a writer, and
when you're in college

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and you're doing your thesis,
you're doing philosophy.

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But then there's this kind
of real world of kind of

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being on the beat and
writing stories about

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the local whatever it might be.

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Was that a disappointment,
was it exciting?

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Was it a mix?

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- You know, I loved it.

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I started off...

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At the Picayune, but I had
gotten a summer internship

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at The Washington Post.

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It was the summer of Watergate, right?

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And it was just '74, all about to break,

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Nixon was going to resign.

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And either foolishly or
not, I decided not to do it.

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And I worked for T. Smith
and Sons, the stevedores

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on the Mississippi River.

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You know, the Napolean
Avenue wharves and stuff,

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because I wanted to write
and novel about the river.

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So, I decided I should work the river like

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Mark Twain did or something.

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And so I missed all of Watergate.

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I still have the novel I wrote that summer

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that's excruciatingly bad.

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It's about the river and
all that sort of thing.

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And I realized, gee, I
will never be a novelist.

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And then went into journalism.

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- [Sal] So you actually,
you were on a boat?

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- Well these are called derrick
barges, you know if you look

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at the wharves, and there's
these flatbed barges,

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but they have a crane
on them, and they get

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pushed around by what looked
like tug boats, we call them

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push boats, because
they actually, you know,

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they don't tug the thing,
they push the thing.

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And they go up and down
the river in very lazy way.

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Incredibly hot, because these things

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had creosote metal,

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and you'd have to put the
creosote on the metal.

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You'd have to wear very thick soled shoes,

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because the deck got so hot
that it would burn your feet.

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And the other thing I
remember, which I loved,

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was every time the barge
started up, you know,

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the crane started up, the
electricity would go back on.

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And we had a coffee
percolator, and so it would

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re-percolate the coffee all
day, until it was almost

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the consistency of the creosote.

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And I loved that really strong coffee.

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- And so you were working on it?

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And you said, can I work
here and also write?

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- Yeah, 'cause you...

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I mean, I don't want
to sound too romantic.

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It was also an incredibly
high payed job, at that time.

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The port in the early '70's was booming,

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the extraction industries:
oil, natural gas, sulphur,

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were going really well.

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I don't know why, but I
mean, it was the '70s.

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And so you could make, I
don't remember the dollars,

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but you could also make
double time and then

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two and a half times if you
worked Sundays or overtime.

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And so, I just made enough
to last me through college.

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So, it was partly for the
money and partly for the

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romanticism of writing a novel.

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And yeah, you couldn't sit
there on the derrick barge

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and type a novel, but you'd
sort of meet all the people

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on all the boats coming up and down

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in those unloaded boats, you'd go in...

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So I'd gather stories
and at night, I'd go home

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and write it up, and it was really bad.

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- (laughs) I mean, you joke
about it now, but obviously,

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this was something you cared deeply about,

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this idea of being a writer,
this idea of being a novelist.

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I mean, what was, I guess,
one, what made you think

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that this wasn't cut
out for you, but also,

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what allowed you to not
give up writing altogether?

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- Well, I actually liked

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nonfiction, too.

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I mean, to be able to tell...

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And when I started
working for the Picayune,

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I was on police beat.

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And you'd get these
wonderful, wacky stories.

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I mean Jim Garrison was trying Clay Shaw

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for the murder of President Kennedy.

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I mean, I don't know if
you remember (mumbles).

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- One of Jim Garrison's
best friends was my

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AP American History teacher's father.

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- Oh.

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- So that's all that...

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- That makes you really close...

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- To that story.

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That's what we did in AP American History.

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- Can we go to the white
board and graph that out?

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- He's kind of, yeah.

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Well, I don't know, my...

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Friend's, my teacher's
father in law, anyway.

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There's a...
- So, there are all these

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wacky people, including Jim
Garrison, who was followed by

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Harry Connick, whose son is
the cornet and trumpet player.

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So, there are all these
wonderful tales in New Orleans,

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and there was a rush...

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I don't quite know what it
is, but there's a rush which,

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every day almost, I would have a story.

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And often on the front
page, 'cause if you're

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covering crime, you get on the front page.

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And there you were,
you'd tell these stories,

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and your name would be in the paper.

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And so, it wasn't like I
was lamenting the fact that

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I hadn't yet written the
great American novel or

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the great novel about the river.

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I kept thinking I would,
and then eventually,

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after I wrote my first
book or two, I showed it,

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an updated version of the
novel to my agent, who...

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Was not in any way
encouraging, and said...

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- But they liked your biography.

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- Right, well they liked, the
nonfiction was doing well.

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And you know, in some ways, if you take

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Steve Jobs and you take this book,

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I write narratives.

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I mean, I don't write...

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Analytical nonfiction.

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So these are stories, and I
tell you, if you wrote a novel

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that was word for word
that Steve Jobs book,

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people would say, "Well that's
not, you know, credible.

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"It doesn't feel like it
could possibly be true,

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therefore it's not a good novel."

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But in some ways, with a piece

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of narrative nonfiction,

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you know, you can try to
make into the same type

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of tale a novel would be.

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Now, obviously, I consider people who are

00:10:19.160 --> 00:10:22.689
truly creative novelists
to be in a quantum orbit

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you know, above ours.

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I was once going to a writers conference,

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and Betsy, my daughter I
think you may have met,

00:10:31.187 --> 00:10:33.323
said, "Dad, why are you
going to a writers...?"

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I said, "Well, cause you know, I'm a..."

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And she says, "Well Dad,
you're not a real writer.

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"You write nonfiction."

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And so, we know it's not quite the same,

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but I do think, if you're telling a tale,

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and you try to make it a
storytelling type thing,

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meaning chronological
narrative, you can have that

00:10:50.807 --> 00:10:54.290
excitement of watching
people grow, ideas forming,

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one thing leading to another.

00:10:56.426 --> 00:10:59.311
- And so you, with that in
mind, you have this kind of

00:10:59.311 --> 00:11:02.315
parallel life, or maybe
it's not so parallel.

00:11:02.315 --> 00:11:06.053
The Times-Picayune, you started
working for Time Magazine,

00:11:06.053 --> 00:11:08.352
which is kind of the big piece

00:11:08.352 --> 00:11:10.279
of your career, Time Magazine.

00:11:10.279 --> 00:11:12.671
Eventually, you're the editor-in-chief.

00:11:12.671 --> 00:11:14.296
But at the same time,
you're this biographer,

00:11:14.296 --> 00:11:17.872
and you kind of take on these
larger than life characters,

00:11:17.872 --> 00:11:21.424
Franklin, Einstein, Jobs.

00:11:21.424 --> 00:11:24.489
Were those two different jobs
that you had in your head,

00:11:24.489 --> 00:11:27.508
or were they the similar
type of role, writing for

00:11:27.508 --> 00:11:29.574
Times Magazine, eventually
becoming editor-in-chief.

00:11:29.574 --> 00:11:32.871
- Well, when I started at Time,

00:11:32.871 --> 00:11:36.029
I did it with a friend who I'd
gone to college with, a guy

00:11:36.029 --> 00:11:39.442
named Evan Thomas, who
you may have heard of.

00:11:39.442 --> 00:11:43.134
And we were frustrated,
because at Time Magazine,

00:11:43.134 --> 00:11:45.967
this is in a previous
century, let me remind you.

00:11:45.967 --> 00:11:49.821
There was no website, you
didn't have to tweet everyday.

00:11:49.821 --> 00:11:53.699
You came out once a week,
usually, with two pages you write.

00:11:53.699 --> 00:11:55.533
So, it wasn't the hardest job

00:11:55.533 --> 00:11:58.366
and the heaviest lifting,
you know, in America.

00:11:58.366 --> 00:12:00.200
And, in fact, it was boring at times.

00:12:00.200 --> 00:12:01.668
Like, Monday, Tuesday,
Wednesday, you're sitting around

00:12:01.668 --> 00:12:04.547
trying to figure out what
am I supposed to be doing.

00:12:04.547 --> 00:12:06.939
And then you got frustrated,
because you'd go out,

00:12:06.939 --> 00:12:09.191
and you'd report the story,
and you had to keep it

00:12:09.191 --> 00:12:12.233
to what would we say, 2,000 words.

00:12:12.233 --> 00:12:15.623
And so, I was covering
the campaign of 1980.

00:12:15.623 --> 00:12:19.059
Ronald Ronald Reagan,
Jimmy Carter, Ted Kennedy.

00:12:19.059 --> 00:12:21.474
I mean, some larger than life dudes.

00:12:22.720 --> 00:12:25.575
So, I said to Evan, "You
know, we're not getting

00:12:25.575 --> 00:12:28.315
"this stuff in the magazine,
and we just get the...

00:12:28.315 --> 00:12:31.310
"We should do a story on the
great American establishment

00:12:31.310 --> 00:12:34.027
"and how it created the post-war world."

00:12:34.027 --> 00:12:37.301
And we'd never written a book before.

00:12:37.301 --> 00:12:40.830
And it was about six friends
that nobody had ever heard of,

00:12:40.830 --> 00:12:43.848
Dean Acheson, Averell
Harriman, Bob Lovett.

00:12:43.848 --> 00:12:48.051
And we walked down the street
in the place where we had a

00:12:48.051 --> 00:12:50.442
summer house, Sag Harbor,

00:12:50.442 --> 00:12:53.275
and there was an editor, Alice Mayhew,

00:12:53.275 --> 00:12:55.272
and we said, "We want to do this book,"

00:12:55.272 --> 00:12:57.965
and she said, "I've always
wanted to do a book like that.

00:12:57.965 --> 00:12:59.886
"It's a prequel to The
Best and the Brightest,"

00:12:59.886 --> 00:13:02.533
which is Halberstam's book about Vietnam,

00:13:02.533 --> 00:13:04.297
in other words, it leads into it.

00:13:04.297 --> 00:13:06.457
"And I've always wanted
to call it The Wise Men,"

00:13:06.457 --> 00:13:08.198
because it was about these people.

00:13:08.198 --> 00:13:11.379
And so, we got to write this book.

00:13:11.379 --> 00:13:14.491
And it was oddly successful.

00:13:14.491 --> 00:13:16.998
It it was because it was very, very, long,

00:13:16.998 --> 00:13:18.893
so people couldn't quite
finish it, so they had to

00:13:18.893 --> 00:13:20.751
say it was good, you
know, they couldn't...

00:13:20.751 --> 00:13:23.258
Whatever it was, it did well,

00:13:23.258 --> 00:13:26.556
and it made me think,
well this is really great,

00:13:26.556 --> 00:13:29.179
writing narrative about people.

00:13:29.179 --> 00:13:31.803
The other thing about Time Magazine then,

00:13:31.803 --> 00:13:35.820
and when I was editor, we always
put a person on the cover.

00:13:35.820 --> 00:13:38.946
It was Henry Luce, who
invented the magazine mantra,

00:13:38.946 --> 00:13:41.523
"Tell the story of our
time, through people."

00:13:41.523 --> 00:13:42.800
The people who make it.

00:13:42.800 --> 00:13:43.766
Somebody said, "Well, you're inventing

00:13:43.766 --> 00:13:45.577
personality journalism."

00:13:45.577 --> 00:13:47.319
He said, "No, Time didn't invent that.

00:13:47.319 --> 00:13:49.292
"The Bible did, that's how it works."

00:13:49.292 --> 00:13:53.077
You know, Adam, Eve, Moses,
you do it through people.

00:13:53.077 --> 00:13:57.328
And so, that got me
interested in a biographical

00:13:57.328 --> 00:14:00.243
way of looking at the world.

00:14:00.243 --> 00:14:03.079
- And what's your, and so, I guess it's

00:14:03.079 --> 00:14:05.080
some of your really complimentary skills.

00:14:05.080 --> 00:14:08.888
The biographies allow you to
go much deeper than just the...

00:14:08.888 --> 00:14:11.790
And what's, you know, as
you go into, what was it,

00:14:11.790 --> 00:14:14.925
late '90's, you transition
in, I guess Time

00:14:14.925 --> 00:14:16.921
becomes part of Time Warner.

00:14:16.921 --> 00:14:19.197
You become CEO-Chairman of CNN,

00:14:19.197 --> 00:14:21.380
which doesn't seem like a natural jump.

00:14:21.380 --> 00:14:24.700
- It wasn't, it was a very unnatural jump,

00:14:24.700 --> 00:14:27.091
which I didn't want to make,
and I shouldn't have made.

00:14:27.091 --> 00:14:29.576
You make mistakes in life.

00:14:29.576 --> 00:14:32.989
And that was a two-headed mistake for me.

00:14:32.989 --> 00:14:36.100
As you said, Time Warner owned both,

00:14:36.100 --> 00:14:38.631
and I finished my stint as editor of Time.

00:14:38.631 --> 00:14:41.626
They kept pushing me to do it.

00:14:41.626 --> 00:14:43.995
It was a mistake because
I didn't like the medium.

00:14:43.995 --> 00:14:45.225
I just don't like television.

00:14:45.225 --> 00:14:47.826
I'm not very good at it, I
don't know how to make TV.

00:14:47.826 --> 00:14:50.589
And I realized I was a pretty
good editor of the magazine,

00:14:50.589 --> 00:14:54.374
simply because I knew every
detail of how it was done,

00:14:54.374 --> 00:14:58.182
meaning if somebody came back
and said, "We can't get..."

00:14:58.751 --> 00:15:02.538
You know, I had been in Russia or Poland,

00:15:02.538 --> 00:15:03.606
during the fall of communism.

00:15:03.606 --> 00:15:05.603
I've covered these things.

00:15:05.603 --> 00:15:08.621
I also had, you know, designed pages,

00:15:08.621 --> 00:15:11.315
so I could say, you know,
"Crop the picture this way,

00:15:11.315 --> 00:15:13.428
"and you can do it in 2,000
words, but leave out this

00:15:13.428 --> 00:15:15.471
"part, and make it a narrative.

00:15:15.471 --> 00:15:17.723
"And there's a billboard graph
that will say all of that

00:15:17.723 --> 00:15:19.604
"and get it out of the
way, " or something.

00:15:19.604 --> 00:15:21.940
I mean, some people are
great, and they can be

00:15:21.940 --> 00:15:23.798
the head of Proctor &
Gamble and then be the head

00:15:23.798 --> 00:15:26.700
of United Airlines and then
you know, be a professor

00:15:26.700 --> 00:15:27.838
and do all sorts of things.

00:15:27.838 --> 00:15:31.692
Me, I kind of knew how to do
what I knew how to do, and

00:15:31.692 --> 00:15:34.809
I shouldn't have gone into a
field where I didn't know it.

00:15:34.809 --> 00:15:39.104
Secondly, I'm not a
great executive manager.

00:15:39.104 --> 00:15:42.123
I'm not somebody who likes
bossing people around.

00:15:42.123 --> 00:15:45.861
And at Time, it was quite easy because,

00:15:45.861 --> 00:15:49.205
there are only like 60 or 70
people that I'd deal with.

00:15:49.205 --> 00:15:51.898
I mean, two floors of the
building, you could walk around.

00:15:51.898 --> 00:15:53.747
At CNN, there were like 6,000 people,

00:15:53.747 --> 00:15:56.510
and I was supposed to be this manager.

00:15:56.510 --> 00:15:58.948
And I realized, I like it
when people have to manage me

00:15:58.948 --> 00:16:01.339
rather than me having to manage them.

00:16:01.339 --> 00:16:05.856
And so I didn't like that executive role.

00:16:05.867 --> 00:16:08.668
And so, that was a three
year detour that was not

00:16:08.668 --> 00:16:10.200
something I enjoyed.

00:16:10.200 --> 00:16:12.615
- And then you go to
your current position,

00:16:12.615 --> 00:16:14.139
which is head of the Aspen...

00:16:14.139 --> 00:16:15.694
- When my current contract was up, I...

00:16:15.694 --> 00:16:19.479
Well, I mean we had, unfortunately
9/11 and then the war.

00:16:19.479 --> 00:16:22.335
The first, I mean the Iraq War.

00:16:22.335 --> 00:16:24.703
I guess the second out
of three Iraq wars now,

00:16:24.703 --> 00:16:26.236
depending on how you're counting them.

00:16:26.236 --> 00:16:27.745
And so I waited through the end of that.

00:16:27.745 --> 00:16:29.881
My contract was up, and it was like,

00:16:29.881 --> 00:16:31.553
I want to write books.

00:16:31.553 --> 00:16:34.455
I want to be involved
in, you know, thought

00:16:34.455 --> 00:16:36.452
and bringing people
together and doing things.

00:16:36.452 --> 00:16:39.517
And the Aspen Institute came on.

00:16:39.517 --> 00:16:41.421
- And what's your role, what do you see as

00:16:41.421 --> 00:16:42.791
the role of the Aspen Institute?

00:16:42.791 --> 00:16:44.486
It's kind of a really
interesting organization.

00:16:44.486 --> 00:16:45.949
- Yeah, Sal has joined on board.

00:16:45.949 --> 00:16:48.433
It's a great organization,
been around 60 years.

00:16:48.433 --> 00:16:50.476
And it's partly a think tank.

00:16:50.476 --> 00:16:51.953
We have policy programs,
and everything from

00:16:51.953 --> 00:16:54.833
the environment, education, whatever.

00:16:54.833 --> 00:16:57.340
It's partly a tank that does things.

00:16:57.340 --> 00:16:59.384
I mean, we have Middle East loan funds.

00:16:59.384 --> 00:17:01.845
We're working with Khan
Academy to try to, you know,

00:17:01.845 --> 00:17:04.747
put together American civics courses.

00:17:04.747 --> 00:17:07.696
But it's also, and I wish there
were a better word for it.

00:17:07.696 --> 00:17:10.993
Seems like, you know, a 50 cent
word for a 25 cent product,

00:17:10.993 --> 00:17:13.124
which is convening.

00:17:13.124 --> 00:17:15.155
We bring people together,
and that's something that

00:17:15.155 --> 00:17:16.632
you particularly don't have in Washington

00:17:16.632 --> 00:17:19.672
or other places these days,
with Democrats, Republicans,

00:17:19.672 --> 00:17:22.667
left, right, people with
different persuasions,

00:17:22.667 --> 00:17:24.989
come together, sit around a table,

00:17:24.989 --> 00:17:27.520
spend a few days together, exchange ideas.

00:17:27.520 --> 00:17:30.539
It's particularly interesting
to me that in the digital age,

00:17:30.539 --> 00:17:33.371
when we thought that we could all Skype

00:17:33.371 --> 00:17:36.645
and do things on Google Hangouts,

00:17:36.645 --> 00:17:40.894
and chat rooms, and live virtually,

00:17:40.894 --> 00:17:44.331
there's actually more a
hunger for in-person meetings.

00:17:44.331 --> 00:17:46.444
This is why you have a room like this,

00:17:46.444 --> 00:17:48.533
is why people hang out.

00:17:50.133 --> 00:17:53.316
And in some ways Googleplex
meets Google Hangouts,

00:17:53.316 --> 00:17:56.456
having a nice environment like this.

00:17:56.456 --> 00:17:58.221
So, the Aspen Institute
has grown quite a bit

00:17:58.221 --> 00:18:00.497
through ideas, festivals,
and many other things,

00:18:00.497 --> 00:18:02.888
which is where people
watching things on YouTube,

00:18:02.888 --> 00:18:05.396
doing Khan Academy videos.

00:18:05.396 --> 00:18:06.998
But at the end of which they kind of say,

00:18:06.998 --> 00:18:08.252
"Okay, now let's get together.

00:18:08.252 --> 00:18:11.502
"I want to be in flesh and discuss it."

00:18:11.502 --> 00:18:14.289
- That's, I think, what's
interesting about you.

00:18:14.289 --> 00:18:16.773
You have this, you're a historian

00:18:16.773 --> 00:18:18.166
and now the Aspen Institute.

00:18:18.166 --> 00:18:20.372
You're kind of a convener;
you're very plugged into

00:18:20.372 --> 00:18:22.369
kind of, the current state of affairs.

00:18:22.369 --> 00:18:23.692
You've been in Washington.

00:18:23.692 --> 00:18:26.920
But you're also intimately
involved in Silicon Valley.

00:18:26.920 --> 00:18:30.356
I know this, the latest book,
which isn't even out yet.

00:18:30.356 --> 00:18:32.028
- Not until next month, but you get

00:18:32.028 --> 00:18:33.816
an advance copy.
- The innovators...

00:18:33.816 --> 00:18:36.602
It's a history of Silicon Valley,

00:18:36.602 --> 00:18:38.135
essentially.
- Correct.

00:18:38.135 --> 00:18:39.258
- And obviously, you've
done the biographies...

00:18:39.258 --> 00:18:41.725
- It actually starts at
your alma mater, MIT,

00:18:41.725 --> 00:18:44.511
with the Tech Model Railway Club,

00:18:44.511 --> 00:18:47.320
and the people creating
Spacewar, and all the people

00:18:47.320 --> 00:18:50.641
in the late '40s, who come
up with those video games

00:18:50.641 --> 00:18:52.211
and hands on computing.

00:18:52.211 --> 00:18:55.239
But then it moves west,
and it tries to explain why

00:18:55.239 --> 00:18:58.610
people like yourself move
from MIT to the Valley.

00:18:58.610 --> 00:19:01.606
- And that's whats fascinating,
because it's a history

00:19:01.606 --> 00:19:04.717
about kind of something
that is defining the future.

00:19:04.717 --> 00:19:07.294
And then you also have
this Aspen Institute,

00:19:07.294 --> 00:19:09.175
what's going on in DC.

00:19:09.175 --> 00:19:13.053
And so, with this kind of
futurist slash historian hat,

00:19:13.053 --> 00:19:15.583
I mean, where do you think we are?

00:19:15.583 --> 00:19:17.975
It's very easy for us
to get caught up in the,

00:19:17.975 --> 00:19:20.529
you know, what's going on,
week by week, you know.

00:19:20.529 --> 00:19:21.713
You're on the Apple board.

00:19:21.713 --> 00:19:24.592
Apple announced it's new iPhone
today, all this craziness.

00:19:24.592 --> 00:19:27.239
But you know, 25 years from
now, 50 years from now,

00:19:27.239 --> 00:19:31.362
500 years from now, how are
people going to think about now?

00:19:31.860 --> 00:19:34.721
- I think they'll think
about it just as they thought

00:19:34.721 --> 00:19:38.436
100 years ago, about 1840 and
the Industrial Revolution,

00:19:38.436 --> 00:19:40.155
where you start having steam engines

00:19:40.155 --> 00:19:43.452
and mechanized products, and
it changes the whole way.

00:19:43.452 --> 00:19:46.818
I mean, instead of people,
artisans weaving fabrics, it's

00:19:46.818 --> 00:19:50.510
now done, and it changes
employment and everything else.

00:19:50.510 --> 00:19:52.437
So, I think you have that disruption.

00:19:52.437 --> 00:19:55.502
I think we're at the stage
of the Digital Revolution,

00:19:55.502 --> 00:19:57.267
where we're just getting out of pouring

00:19:57.267 --> 00:19:59.450
old wine into new bottles.

00:19:59.450 --> 00:20:02.918
You know, for the first 20,
30 years of the Revolution,

00:20:02.918 --> 00:20:06.462
we had the internet, we had
online, we had computers,

00:20:06.462 --> 00:20:09.658
but we were still taking
op-ed pieces and pouring

00:20:09.658 --> 00:20:12.769
them online, you know, blogs or something.

00:20:12.769 --> 00:20:16.205
Or we were taking Time Magazine
and putting in on the Web,

00:20:16.205 --> 00:20:18.852
and it would be an online,
you know, Time Online.

00:20:18.852 --> 00:20:23.300
But we weren't inventing whole new things.

00:20:23.752 --> 00:20:26.274
There were three or four industries that

00:20:26.274 --> 00:20:30.476
did not get disrupted, which
gets back to Khan Academy.

00:20:30.476 --> 00:20:33.657
Early on, healthcare and medicine

00:20:33.657 --> 00:20:36.258
did not get disrupted
the way it should have.

00:20:36.258 --> 00:20:38.580
And K through 12 education, I mean,

00:20:38.580 --> 00:20:40.437
I wrote about Ben Franklin.

00:20:40.437 --> 00:20:42.852
He invented a type of
school that he called

00:20:42.852 --> 00:20:45.290
The Academy for the Education of Youth,

00:20:45.290 --> 00:20:48.192
and what it was was about
24 kids sitting in a row,

00:20:48.192 --> 00:20:50.282
and the teacher in front and a blackboard,

00:20:50.282 --> 00:20:52.511
and a lecture and then a test.

00:20:52.511 --> 00:20:55.901
That was, whatever, 1740.

00:20:55.901 --> 00:20:58.966
And you flash ahead, you know,
two and a half centuries,

00:20:58.966 --> 00:21:00.963
and we're still doing it that way.

00:21:00.963 --> 00:21:04.446
So, the disruption you all
in this room are bringing

00:21:04.446 --> 00:21:06.907
to K through 12 education,

00:21:06.907 --> 00:21:10.041
and in your book, The
One Room Schoolhouse.

00:21:10.041 --> 00:21:12.921
That's beginning to kick in.

00:21:12.921 --> 00:21:15.567
So, the next phase is when
we quit pouring old wine

00:21:15.567 --> 00:21:18.841
in new bottles, and frankly
the first people doing

00:21:18.841 --> 00:21:22.719
online learning and stuff, it
was simply taking a camera,

00:21:22.719 --> 00:21:25.227
pointing in Sanders
Theater to Mike Sandel,

00:21:25.227 --> 00:21:27.131
and he would give a lecture,
and they would call that

00:21:27.131 --> 00:21:28.942
an online course.

00:21:28.942 --> 00:21:32.192
I do think especially with
Addax, you're seeing a platform

00:21:32.192 --> 00:21:34.955
that does it quite differently now,

00:21:34.955 --> 00:21:37.858
and has a feedback loop that says,

00:21:37.858 --> 00:21:39.646
"Okay, that works, that doesn't,".

00:21:39.646 --> 00:21:41.480
Likewise, you're doing
it much differently.

00:21:41.480 --> 00:21:45.834
You're not just putting a
high school course online.

00:21:46.263 --> 00:21:48.808
And that's what I mean about
new wine for the new bottle.

00:21:48.808 --> 00:21:50.573
So, we're getting into that age.

00:21:50.573 --> 00:21:53.406
I think there's a lot still to be done.

00:21:53.406 --> 00:21:56.215
I mean, books have not been disrupted.

00:21:56.215 --> 00:21:59.605
I wanted with Steve Jobs, and
now I'm a whole book later,

00:21:59.605 --> 00:22:02.670
and still don't have it
happen, I want to take a book

00:22:02.670 --> 00:22:04.853
and write it, and curate it.

00:22:04.853 --> 00:22:07.848
But I want it to be open
source, like Wikipedia.

00:22:07.848 --> 00:22:11.516
I want everybody in
that book, from Wozniak

00:22:11.516 --> 00:22:15.928
to Bill Gates to Dan Bricklin,

00:22:15.928 --> 00:22:17.971
or you know, or Stewart Brand.

00:22:17.971 --> 00:22:19.645
I mean, they don't have
to be major characters.

00:22:19.645 --> 00:22:21.645
Or even people who aren't
in the book, but have,

00:22:21.645 --> 00:22:23.642
"Oh, I have this video,
I was at this (mumbles),"

00:22:23.642 --> 00:22:25.709
to be able to put stuff up.

00:22:25.709 --> 00:22:28.983
So, you write a collaborative
book that's multimedia.

00:22:28.983 --> 00:22:31.537
People putting up the code
they wrote for the first

00:22:31.537 --> 00:22:34.880
basic interpreter for the
Altair, and somebody else

00:22:34.880 --> 00:22:37.458
is putting up the circuit design
for the Altair in the book,

00:22:37.458 --> 00:22:39.710
and somebody else is
saying, "Here's the video

00:22:39.710 --> 00:22:42.798
"of Steve's first launch of the Apple II."

00:22:42.798 --> 00:22:45.209
That sort of thing.

00:22:46.485 --> 00:22:49.415
If you had a collaborative
project like that

00:22:49.415 --> 00:22:52.736
I think should be curated,
'cause I'm a control freak.

00:22:52.736 --> 00:22:55.266
I don't want everybody just
to put whatever they want,

00:22:55.266 --> 00:22:58.146
but I want, and I was working
with Ev Williams yesterday.

00:22:58.146 --> 00:22:59.910
I don't know if you know who
he is, but he did Twitter

00:22:59.910 --> 00:23:01.466
but now does Medium.

00:23:01.466 --> 00:23:03.091
I put some of my chapters on Medium,

00:23:03.091 --> 00:23:04.786
and people could put comments and things,

00:23:04.786 --> 00:23:08.060
but I could reject them,
or I could include them.

00:23:08.060 --> 00:23:11.450
So, it gives me some
curatorial power, and then

00:23:11.450 --> 00:23:14.167
eventually we'll have
to have payment systems,

00:23:14.167 --> 00:23:16.535
where, especially, I mean,
I'm not trying to do this,

00:23:16.535 --> 00:23:18.903
you know, for money the now.

00:23:18.903 --> 00:23:22.618
If my book is written
and 40 percent of it is

00:23:22.618 --> 00:23:26.207
people have collaborated
and crowdsourced it,

00:23:26.612 --> 00:23:28.972
when people read those
sections, there should be some

00:23:28.972 --> 00:23:31.642
metering, and the royalties should go,

00:23:31.642 --> 00:23:35.078
just like if a song is played
on the radio, the original

00:23:35.078 --> 00:23:38.654
composer of that song gets a
fraction of a cent royalty.

00:23:38.654 --> 00:23:40.790
We ought to have ways to collaboratively

00:23:40.790 --> 00:23:44.528
crowdsource things and to
allocate royalties based on that.

00:23:44.528 --> 00:23:48.058
That's just one example of
where I think things might go.

00:23:48.058 --> 00:23:49.567
I wanted always to do a book

00:23:49.567 --> 00:23:52.785
on our hometown boy, Louis Armstrong.

00:23:52.785 --> 00:23:54.736
And I want to do it with Marsalis.

00:23:54.736 --> 00:23:56.872
I want Wynton to be able
to say, "Okay, when we do

00:23:56.872 --> 00:23:59.765
"West End Blues, we see him
take this 17 bars, and".

00:23:59.765 --> 00:24:02.645
(scats) "You know, just rag it."

00:24:02.645 --> 00:24:04.224
And if I wrote that, nobody would know

00:24:04.224 --> 00:24:06.336
what I'm talking about, but
if Wynton is saying, you know,

00:24:06.336 --> 00:24:08.914
"Here's how Kid Ory did
it, and now here's how

00:24:08.914 --> 00:24:11.700
"Louis Armstrong did it,"
you'd say, okay, I get it.

00:24:11.700 --> 00:24:15.485
And so, those type of
projects, we aren't there yet.

00:24:15.485 --> 00:24:18.457
But I keep waiting for
those platforms to be built.

00:24:18.457 --> 00:24:20.221
- Yeah, that's, that's amazing.

00:24:20.221 --> 00:24:22.845
I mean, one thing that's
fascinating about you.

00:24:22.845 --> 00:24:24.401
I mean, you even just mentioned it now.

00:24:24.401 --> 00:24:26.073
Even with Louie Armstrong is, you know,

00:24:26.073 --> 00:24:28.186
the thread of all the
people you write about,

00:24:28.186 --> 00:24:29.741
and especially with this book.

00:24:29.741 --> 00:24:31.738
This is kind of a combination
of a bunch of books.

00:24:31.738 --> 00:24:34.083
Whether it's Franklin or
Einstein or Louie Armstrong

00:24:34.083 --> 00:24:38.307
or Steve Jobs, they're
all, actually, innovators,

00:24:38.554 --> 00:24:42.755
And in some degree, kind of
scientists in their domain.

00:24:42.755 --> 00:24:46.052
- Absolutely, I mean different
biographers or writers

00:24:46.052 --> 00:24:47.422
are interested in different things.

00:24:47.422 --> 00:24:48.644
Some people like crime stories.

00:24:48.644 --> 00:24:50.873
Some like war heroes.

00:24:50.873 --> 00:24:53.798
You know, writing about Eisenhower, D-Day.

00:24:53.798 --> 00:24:56.817
Some like sports heroes, some like...

00:24:56.817 --> 00:24:58.465
You know literary biographies.

00:24:58.465 --> 00:25:01.251
They want to write, you know,
the biography we've all been

00:25:01.251 --> 00:25:04.015
waiting for for Joyce
Carol Oates or something.

00:25:04.845 --> 00:25:08.162
I like people who are imaginative

00:25:08.162 --> 00:25:10.971
and not just smart, because
you know you're in this room.

00:25:10.971 --> 00:25:13.131
Smart people are a dime a dozen.

00:25:13.131 --> 00:25:16.428
What really matters is being imaginative,

00:25:16.428 --> 00:25:20.266
being able to thing different,
to use Steve Sperling's...

00:25:21.374 --> 00:25:23.942
And, so I sort of say, "What makes..."

00:25:23.942 --> 00:25:26.682
You know, Ben Franklin wasn't
the smartest of the founders.

00:25:26.682 --> 00:25:29.050
I think Jefferson, Madison,
you've got a lot of

00:25:29.050 --> 00:25:33.021
really sharp cookies in that box.

00:25:33.021 --> 00:25:36.550
But Franklin had a certain
ability to think more

00:25:36.550 --> 00:25:38.965
imaginatively, to be more creative.

00:25:38.965 --> 00:25:41.124
What makes for creativity?

00:25:41.124 --> 00:25:44.305
And I don't know that I said
out, I like to think okay,

00:25:44.305 --> 00:25:46.998
when people ask me, if they're
not a friend, and I'm...

00:25:46.998 --> 00:25:48.949
You know, I'm being more honest with you.

00:25:48.949 --> 00:25:51.131
Normally I always say,
"Yeah, I try to write about

00:25:51.131 --> 00:25:54.998
"creativity, what happens,
how people think differently."

00:25:55.264 --> 00:25:58.251
Actually, I wrote about Kissinger,
which believe it or not,

00:25:58.251 --> 00:26:00.573
was a very creative thinker
and the balance of power

00:26:00.573 --> 00:26:02.430
he did with Russia and China,

00:26:02.430 --> 00:26:05.263
during our extrication from Vietnam.

00:26:05.263 --> 00:26:07.910
And then obviously, Franklin, Einstein...

00:26:07.910 --> 00:26:09.991
But it wasn't like I started out saying,

00:26:09.991 --> 00:26:11.430
"Let me make a list of people

00:26:11.430 --> 00:26:13.125
"who have thought imaginatively."

00:26:13.125 --> 00:26:16.794
It was only two or three
books into it that I said,

00:26:16.794 --> 00:26:20.834
"That's sort of the theme
that I keep exploring."

00:26:20.834 --> 00:26:22.450
- And what do you think it is,
I mean, you mentioned this.

00:26:22.450 --> 00:26:24.880
It's not necessarily the raw mental

00:26:24.880 --> 00:26:26.760
horsepower that's doing it.

00:26:26.760 --> 00:26:28.455
I mean, do you think it's
think it's just this kind of

00:26:28.455 --> 00:26:30.954
creativity gene, or do
you think it's something

00:26:30.954 --> 00:26:33.253
that they developed and that
they cultivated, and they...

00:26:33.253 --> 00:26:35.621
- Well, the good news is there's
not a once sentence answer,

00:26:35.621 --> 00:26:38.431
which is why you get to
write 600 page biographies,

00:26:38.431 --> 00:26:39.800
instead of saying, "Here's the answer.

00:26:39.800 --> 00:26:41.286
"You don't need to read the book."

00:26:41.286 --> 00:26:45.837
However, part of it, I
do think, is being able

00:26:45.837 --> 00:26:49.599
to connect the arts or humanities,

00:26:49.599 --> 00:26:52.107
having a real feel for beauty, let's say,

00:26:52.107 --> 00:26:54.962
with technology, engineering, and science.

00:26:54.962 --> 00:26:58.004
And if you, and I'm sure some of you've

00:26:58.004 --> 00:26:59.815
actually worked at Apple.

00:26:59.815 --> 00:27:02.648
I don't know, I assume
Tim did not do it today,

00:27:02.648 --> 00:27:05.852
but in every one of Steve's
launches, the last thing

00:27:05.852 --> 00:27:09.590
on the screen would be that
intersection of the streets,

00:27:09.590 --> 00:27:12.516
the liberal arts and the
sciences, I think it was,

00:27:12.516 --> 00:27:14.049
technology, whatever.

00:27:14.049 --> 00:27:17.926
And he said, and it's the
very first pages of my book.

00:27:17.926 --> 00:27:21.107
He says, "When I was a kid,
I loved the humanities,

00:27:21.107 --> 00:27:23.754
"but I was also an electronics
geek," and then I read

00:27:23.754 --> 00:27:25.751
something that Edwin Land,
who invented Polaroid

00:27:25.751 --> 00:27:29.093
said, which is, "If you
stand at that intersection,

00:27:29.093 --> 00:27:32.243
"of the arts and the sciences,
that's where true value is."

00:27:32.243 --> 00:27:36.238
That's what Leonardo da
Vinci did, that's what...

00:27:36.238 --> 00:27:40.042
And so I think that's one of
the secrets of true creativity.

00:27:40.042 --> 00:27:43.733
Far too often, and it's
why the Khan Academy videos

00:27:43.733 --> 00:27:46.055
are important to me,
and I think are great,

00:27:46.055 --> 00:27:49.631
and why your whole learning
growth thing is important,

00:27:49.631 --> 00:27:53.323
if you're a humanities
person, meaning you studied

00:27:53.323 --> 00:27:57.224
you know, literature,
the arts, maybe history,

00:27:57.224 --> 00:28:01.337
you get intimidated by science and math.

00:28:01.998 --> 00:28:04.543
And it's odd, maybe not people you know,

00:28:04.543 --> 00:28:06.238
but people that I know would even brag,

00:28:06.238 --> 00:28:07.228
"Oh, I don't know math.

00:28:07.228 --> 00:28:08.621
"I couldn't tell you an integral from a

00:28:08.621 --> 00:28:11.500
"differential equation or a
transistor from a resistor,

00:28:11.500 --> 00:28:13.938
"or a gene from a chromosome."

00:28:13.938 --> 00:28:15.888
They would never brag about
saying, "I couldn't tell you

00:28:15.888 --> 00:28:18.466
"Hamlet from Macbeth"
or couldn't, you know.

00:28:18.466 --> 00:28:21.995
And so it's socially acceptable

00:28:21.995 --> 00:28:23.806
not to know math and science.

00:28:23.806 --> 00:28:26.105
And that should not be the case.

00:28:26.105 --> 00:28:28.984
And that's why I wrote the
Einstein book, in particular.

00:28:28.984 --> 00:28:33.094
Part of our problem, of the
C.P. Snow's two culture problem

00:28:33.094 --> 00:28:35.267
comes from Einstein.

00:28:35.267 --> 00:28:39.390
It's not his personal
fault, but up until then,

00:28:39.725 --> 00:28:42.944
the Newton mechanical
universe was something

00:28:42.944 --> 00:28:45.475
the average person,

00:28:45.475 --> 00:28:47.541
Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson,

00:28:47.541 --> 00:28:49.585
they all could pretty much understand.

00:28:49.585 --> 00:28:52.766
You know, the laws of motion,
the equal and opposite

00:28:52.766 --> 00:28:54.437
reactions, balances.

00:28:54.437 --> 00:28:58.338
You read it in the Constitution,
the balances that come in.

00:28:58.338 --> 00:29:02.053
With Einstein, suddenly, time is relative,

00:29:02.053 --> 00:29:05.373
and you know, gravity bends light,

00:29:05.373 --> 00:29:08.972
and the quantum, you know...

00:29:08.972 --> 00:29:12.757
At the subatomic level and
quantum mechanics, you know.

00:29:12.757 --> 00:29:16.960
We're not, have strict
determinate, strict laws...

00:29:16.960 --> 00:29:20.721
And, whoa, all of a sudden,
science becomes something that

00:29:20.721 --> 00:29:23.915
the average person can't cope with.

00:29:24.483 --> 00:29:27.701
- But that's part of what
you're saying is that,

00:29:27.701 --> 00:29:30.000
in order for some of these folks to,

00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:31.811
the kind of culture is in
the wrong place right now.

00:29:31.811 --> 00:29:34.110
It's not favoring more of the
creativity and innovation,

00:29:34.110 --> 00:29:35.898
because there's a lot
of very smart people,

00:29:35.898 --> 00:29:38.420
probably on either side
of that Venn diagram

00:29:38.420 --> 00:29:40.950
who are afraid to go
into that intersection.

00:29:40.950 --> 00:29:43.992
- Yeah, and I'm trying to say
if you look at Ben Franklin,

00:29:43.992 --> 00:29:47.103
the most important
scientist of his period.

00:29:47.103 --> 00:29:48.241
Even though you probably don't...

00:29:48.241 --> 00:29:49.867
You know, we think of
him as a doddering dude

00:29:49.867 --> 00:29:51.399
playing his kite in the rain.

00:29:51.399 --> 00:29:53.860
Single fluid theory of
electricity that comes from his

00:29:53.860 --> 00:29:57.715
electricity experiments is
up there in that century,

00:29:57.715 --> 00:29:59.618
you know, with Newton, even.

00:29:59.618 --> 00:30:02.544
I mean, he's the best experimental
scientist of his time.

00:30:02.544 --> 00:30:04.820
Jefferson would have thought
you were a Philistine

00:30:04.820 --> 00:30:07.234
if you didn't study botany
and everything else.

00:30:07.234 --> 00:30:10.453
Nowadays, people like a Ben Franklin

00:30:10.453 --> 00:30:12.821
don't do electricity experiments.

00:30:12.821 --> 00:30:15.538
And even when I was growing up...

00:30:15.538 --> 00:30:17.720
I'm in a slightly different category.

00:30:17.720 --> 00:30:20.135
My dad is an electrical engineer.

00:30:20.135 --> 00:30:22.364
All my uncles were electrical engineers,

00:30:22.364 --> 00:30:24.779
so I grew up with heathkits and ham radios

00:30:24.779 --> 00:30:28.424
and soldering irons and figuring
out different transistors

00:30:28.424 --> 00:30:30.119
and making circuits.

00:30:30.119 --> 00:30:33.602
But many kids in the '60s did that.

00:30:33.602 --> 00:30:37.433
And there's a problem now, too, that

00:30:37.433 --> 00:30:40.034
if you're a computer kid growing up today,

00:30:40.034 --> 00:30:42.425
you're not even allowed
to change the battery

00:30:42.425 --> 00:30:44.654
in your computer, much less, you know,

00:30:44.654 --> 00:30:47.685
screw with the circuit board.

00:30:48.648 --> 00:30:51.658
- Kind of, taking that too,
this book, which is as we said,

00:30:51.658 --> 00:30:54.490
it's about the founding
of this tech revolution

00:30:54.490 --> 00:30:56.534
that we're in in Silicon Valley.

00:30:56.534 --> 00:30:58.322
When you wrote this book, and
I'm sure this is something

00:30:58.322 --> 00:31:00.272
that you've been thinking
about, especially with the

00:31:00.272 --> 00:31:03.917
Steve Jobs book, what do
you think is special about

00:31:03.917 --> 00:31:07.006
either Silicon Valley or the
time we're in now that it's

00:31:07.006 --> 00:31:09.142
allowing it to be what it is?

00:31:09.142 --> 00:31:11.478
- Yeah, I mean there are
multiple layers of this.

00:31:11.478 --> 00:31:14.380
One is, why does the United
States tend to, still,

00:31:14.380 --> 00:31:17.859
even with the 17th best
education system in the world,

00:31:17.859 --> 00:31:20.037
meaning, we're not the
best educated these days,

00:31:20.037 --> 00:31:23.009
but we still invent more things than

00:31:23.009 --> 00:31:25.029
get invented in other countries.

00:31:25.029 --> 00:31:26.933
And secondly, why was there a migration to

00:31:26.933 --> 00:31:30.091
Silicon Valley in particular, in the 70's?

00:31:30.091 --> 00:31:32.668
I have a whole chapter,
besides writing about people,

00:31:32.668 --> 00:31:36.638
you also have to write
about cultural forces.

00:31:36.638 --> 00:31:39.448
I mean, history is also cultural forces.

00:31:39.448 --> 00:31:42.420
It's not just people doing things.

00:31:42.420 --> 00:31:46.576
And in the late '60s and
early 70's, you had a lot

00:31:46.576 --> 00:31:48.736
of movements out here.

00:31:48.736 --> 00:31:51.568
One was sort of the hobbyist movement.

00:31:51.568 --> 00:31:54.566
The other was electronics, because

00:31:54.566 --> 00:31:57.760
Westinghouse and all the
defense industries coming.

00:31:57.760 --> 00:32:00.745
But also, there were two
counterculture movements,

00:32:00.745 --> 00:32:04.603
the hippie movement with
a lot of, you know...

00:32:06.178 --> 00:32:09.876
Personal empowerment, and, you know...

00:32:09.876 --> 00:32:12.314
Likewise, the anti-war movement

00:32:12.314 --> 00:32:14.798
and the free speech movement at Berkley.

00:32:14.798 --> 00:32:16.981
And they all come together in the Bay area

00:32:16.981 --> 00:32:20.092
with a lot of great
music, the soundtrack by

00:32:20.092 --> 00:32:21.648
the Grateful Dead.

00:32:21.648 --> 00:32:24.248
And it's rebellious.

00:32:24.248 --> 00:32:26.176
It's personally empowering.

00:32:26.176 --> 00:32:29.217
It's defiant of authority, all of these.

00:32:29.217 --> 00:32:33.025
And it creates an atmosphere

00:32:33.025 --> 00:32:35.928
where the computer,
which had been thought of

00:32:35.928 --> 00:32:39.864
as a big Orwellian, George Orwell

00:32:39.864 --> 00:32:44.083
type thing that governments
and the military

00:32:44.083 --> 00:32:47.241
and big corporations got to have.

00:32:47.241 --> 00:32:48.912
It's like, no...

00:32:48.912 --> 00:32:50.770
There's a wonderful...

00:32:50.770 --> 00:32:53.185
The Homebrew Computer
Club had a newsletter.

00:32:53.185 --> 00:32:56.180
"It's computer power to the
people," was the mantra.

00:32:56.180 --> 00:32:58.664
And that played off the
"power to the people"

00:32:58.664 --> 00:33:02.960
mantra of the 60's and 70's in this area.

00:33:02.960 --> 00:33:05.845
So, you had that cultural

00:33:05.845 --> 00:33:08.097
stew, that milieu.

00:33:08.097 --> 00:33:10.465
I remember talking to Tim Berners-Lee,

00:33:10.465 --> 00:33:13.809
obviously the guy who
creates the web protocols,

00:33:13.809 --> 00:33:17.686
and he said, "I'm the exact
same age as Steve Jobs

00:33:17.686 --> 00:33:21.952
"and Bill Gates," born in 1955,

00:33:21.952 --> 00:33:23.682
my generation.

00:33:23.682 --> 00:33:26.102
He said, "I was doing
the same thing they were.

00:33:26.102 --> 00:33:28.889
"Every time a new electronic
component would come along,

00:33:28.889 --> 00:33:31.559
"like a new transistor, that
was really cool, and then

00:33:31.559 --> 00:33:34.043
"I figured out, okay,
microchips come along.

00:33:34.043 --> 00:33:35.216
"I can make more things...

00:33:35.216 --> 00:33:37.750
"Home microprocessors,
so I went down to Oxford,

00:33:37.750 --> 00:33:41.131
"and I was there, same age as Woz

00:33:41.131 --> 00:33:43.197
"and Steve and all.

00:33:43.197 --> 00:33:47.377
"And I created my home
computer, the way they did.

00:33:47.377 --> 00:33:49.815
"A circuit board," and he said,

00:33:49.815 --> 00:33:51.904
"And then I got to
Oxford here, and what was

00:33:51.904 --> 00:33:53.614
"I supposed to do with it?"

00:33:53.614 --> 00:33:55.610
There was no (mumbles),
there was no guy driving up

00:33:55.610 --> 00:33:58.931
like Don Valentine to
Steve Jobs' family garage,

00:33:58.931 --> 00:34:02.506
and saying, "I'll fund you,
make this into a company".

00:34:02.506 --> 00:34:06.105
And so he said, "We didn't
have that entrepreneurial stew

00:34:06.105 --> 00:34:09.704
"and that rebellious spirit in England

00:34:09.704 --> 00:34:11.492
"that you had in the Valley."

00:34:11.492 --> 00:34:12.607
- And where do you think we are now?

00:34:12.607 --> 00:34:15.097
What do you think, do you
think the Valley, do you think

00:34:15.097 --> 00:34:17.535
this is, what's the next 30
years going to look like?

00:34:17.535 --> 00:34:18.951
Do you think it's only
gaining more momentum?

00:34:18.951 --> 00:34:19.917
It's definitely changed.

00:34:19.917 --> 00:34:22.425
- No, and I don't wanna, I mean...

00:34:22.425 --> 00:34:25.676
You may not all definitely
want to hear it,

00:34:25.676 --> 00:34:28.299
because I love the Valley,
but I think when you...

00:34:28.299 --> 00:34:30.412
The next phase, as I
said, is the connection

00:34:30.412 --> 00:34:33.942
of the creativity
industries with technology.

00:34:33.942 --> 00:34:36.635
And it's not as much as
an engineer-driven game

00:34:36.635 --> 00:34:38.353
as a creativity-driven
game, whether you're in

00:34:38.353 --> 00:34:40.861
fashion or journalism or playwrighting

00:34:40.861 --> 00:34:45.528
or RPGs and LARPs, whatever
it is that makes you creative.

00:34:45.528 --> 00:34:50.084
The tying in of creativity to

00:34:50.084 --> 00:34:54.449
technology is the creation of the new wine

00:34:54.449 --> 00:34:57.088
for the engineered
bottles that we now have.

00:34:57.088 --> 00:34:59.967
And that's why I think
you're seeing San Francisco

00:34:59.967 --> 00:35:01.244
property values...

00:35:01.244 --> 00:35:04.680
I just came late last
night from San Francisco.

00:35:04.680 --> 00:35:07.234
And I was even at the Pier
48 area, where you just

00:35:07.234 --> 00:35:10.392
stand outside and watch
condos rise, and you know

00:35:10.392 --> 00:35:12.993
people have bidding wars for them.

00:35:12.993 --> 00:35:16.870
And so I think, that's something
you and have talked about,

00:35:16.870 --> 00:35:19.401
Mountain View, Palo Alto,
whatever, how are you

00:35:19.401 --> 00:35:22.954
going to have a more culturally rich life,

00:35:22.954 --> 00:35:26.042
for creative people who
want to do things like

00:35:26.042 --> 00:35:29.571
go to talks, go to plays,
go to music, go to whatever.

00:35:29.571 --> 00:35:31.962
There is some of that
here, but not as much as in

00:35:31.962 --> 00:35:35.213
San Francisco, so you want
to build up the magnet

00:35:35.213 --> 00:35:37.326
of creativity and diversity.

00:35:37.326 --> 00:35:40.995
You and I know, growing up
in New Orleans, if you have

00:35:40.995 --> 00:35:43.247
blacks and Creoles and
Vietnamese and Spanish,

00:35:43.247 --> 00:35:45.267
and people coming back from
the Spanish-American War,

00:35:45.267 --> 00:35:47.635
and the sanctified church, and you know,

00:35:47.635 --> 00:35:50.305
Italians and everything else,
all in the neighborhood,

00:35:50.305 --> 00:35:53.324
then you're going to get
a stew that produces jazz.

00:35:53.324 --> 00:35:57.132
So, I think one of the
things for the next few years

00:35:57.132 --> 00:35:59.004
would be, how do you have the diversity

00:35:59.004 --> 00:36:00.536
and the creativity everywhere?

00:36:00.536 --> 00:36:02.162
Why is Austin doing well?

00:36:02.162 --> 00:36:04.855
And I think that's a
challenge for Mountain View

00:36:04.855 --> 00:36:07.920
and Palo Alto, and it's a
challenge that's easily met.

00:36:07.920 --> 00:36:12.065
And I guess the second big trend is

00:36:12.401 --> 00:36:14.278
some of the technology that's coming up

00:36:14.278 --> 00:36:16.763
will be biotech, not infotech,

00:36:16.763 --> 00:36:19.503
and that's harder to do in garages.

00:36:19.503 --> 00:36:22.544
I mean, that's wetware, not software.

00:36:22.544 --> 00:36:25.006
And you kind of need
the big hospital systems

00:36:25.006 --> 00:36:27.513
and other things, which
is why your old haunts

00:36:27.513 --> 00:36:32.087
of MIT and Harvard may get
a second bite of the apple,

00:36:32.087 --> 00:36:33.806
no pun intended.

00:36:33.806 --> 00:36:35.441
- Yeah.

00:36:36.286 --> 00:36:38.710
Kind of just to put everything together,

00:36:38.710 --> 00:36:40.289
as you know we're going
this whole campaign

00:36:40.289 --> 00:36:43.168
around, you know, you can
learn anything mindset.

00:36:43.168 --> 00:36:45.699
Given all your experience
and the people who

00:36:45.699 --> 00:36:49.902
you have known, interviewed, studied,

00:36:49.902 --> 00:36:54.035
what would you tell to a young person who

00:36:54.035 --> 00:36:56.696
may be a person who considers
themselves good at writing,

00:36:56.696 --> 00:36:58.670
but is fearful of math?

00:36:58.670 --> 00:37:00.960
Or someone who considers
themselves good at math

00:37:00.960 --> 00:37:02.562
and is fearful of writing?

00:37:02.562 --> 00:37:04.582
What advice would you have for them?

00:37:04.582 --> 00:37:06.880
- Well, since I'm not a
preacher, I'm a storyteller,

00:37:06.880 --> 00:37:09.667
I'll tell a story, which is
that Einstein was no Einstein

00:37:09.667 --> 00:37:11.222
when he was a kid.

00:37:11.222 --> 00:37:12.755
He was slow in learning how to talk.

00:37:12.755 --> 00:37:14.821
You know, so slow they consulted a doctor.

00:37:14.821 --> 00:37:18.118
And the family maid
called him "der Depperte",

00:37:18.118 --> 00:37:20.464
the dopey one, in the family.

00:37:20.464 --> 00:37:22.553
And so it takes him awhile.

00:37:22.553 --> 00:37:24.434
He doesn't...

00:37:24.434 --> 00:37:28.149
He's not able to do things
in a verbal way as easily, so

00:37:28.149 --> 00:37:32.003
he thinks in pictures, what
he calls "thought experiments.

00:37:32.003 --> 00:37:34.247
Like what would happen if lightning struck

00:37:34.247 --> 00:37:36.383
both ends of a moving train?

00:37:36.383 --> 00:37:38.417
Would you see it the same
if you were on the train

00:37:38.417 --> 00:37:39.416
or on the platform?

00:37:39.416 --> 00:37:41.018
All of his great breakthroughs are done

00:37:41.018 --> 00:37:42.945
through visual thought experiments.

00:37:42.945 --> 00:37:45.987
So, you begin by thinking,
if Einstein was no Einstein

00:37:45.987 --> 00:37:50.329
when he was a kid, I can be
anything if I want to learn.

00:37:50.329 --> 00:37:52.860
Also it's why I like journalism and

00:37:52.860 --> 00:37:55.901
why I like doing what
I do, which is everyday

00:37:55.901 --> 00:37:57.085
I could learn something different.

00:37:57.085 --> 00:37:58.920
I could be in Eastern
Europe and try to figure out

00:37:58.920 --> 00:38:01.799
why communism was falling,
and then I could go

00:38:01.799 --> 00:38:04.167
to CERN and figure out
what they were going to do

00:38:04.167 --> 00:38:06.257
with the Higgs boson
particle if they found it.

00:38:06.257 --> 00:38:07.325
I had to learn these things.

00:38:07.325 --> 00:38:11.239
And for me, once I got successful enough

00:38:11.899 --> 00:38:16.223
as a biographer, that's when I
bit off things like Einstein.

00:38:16.223 --> 00:38:19.056
Partly because I wanted to tell people,

00:38:19.056 --> 00:38:21.889
"Hey, you should learn,"
and that you shouldn't

00:38:21.889 --> 00:38:23.561
be intimidated by science.

00:38:23.561 --> 00:38:26.184
But partly I wanted to
tell myself, which is,

00:38:26.184 --> 00:38:29.110
can I understand general relativity?

00:38:29.110 --> 00:38:32.905
I first got turned on to Khan Academy

00:38:32.905 --> 00:38:35.904
when I had to learn tensor calculus,

00:38:35.904 --> 00:38:39.450
which is not so much in the
book, but I had to understand

00:38:39.450 --> 00:38:42.327
the tensor calculus that
Einstein used to show

00:38:42.327 --> 00:38:44.928
the curvature of the universe,

00:38:44.928 --> 00:38:47.505
or the fabric of space and time.

00:38:47.505 --> 00:38:51.150
And I realized that I've
got to get all my calculus

00:38:51.150 --> 00:38:55.144
dusted off, and I started
going to Khan Academy

00:38:55.144 --> 00:38:57.466
and saying, "Okay, let
me boom, boom, boom."

00:38:57.466 --> 00:39:00.229
And also, this was a cool thing, which is,

00:39:00.229 --> 00:39:02.295
you're never too old to learn.

00:39:02.295 --> 00:39:05.383
I can now learn...

00:39:05.383 --> 00:39:08.147
not enough of general
relativity that I'm going to

00:39:08.147 --> 00:39:11.119
be able to debate Brian
Greene on string theory,

00:39:11.119 --> 00:39:13.905
but enough that I can talk to him about it

00:39:13.905 --> 00:39:15.809
and learn from him.

00:39:15.809 --> 00:39:17.991
- And I guess just one last question,

00:39:17.991 --> 00:39:19.965
what advice do you have for us?

00:39:19.965 --> 00:39:22.519
You're familiar with the
organization, Khan Academy,

00:39:22.519 --> 00:39:24.075
and kind of some of our aspirations,

00:39:24.075 --> 00:39:27.697
but you have a historian's mind,

00:39:27.697 --> 00:39:29.499
so what advice would you
have for us if we really

00:39:29.499 --> 00:39:31.914
do want to, over the next 50 or 100 years,

00:39:31.914 --> 00:39:34.305
become something that can empower

00:39:34.305 --> 00:39:35.493
billions of folks?

00:39:35.493 --> 00:39:38.349
- You know, I'm going to
blow smoke for a moment.

00:39:38.349 --> 00:39:41.135
Which is, I actually think
what you're doing is so good,

00:39:41.135 --> 00:39:43.944
which is why I've been a fan, which is why

00:39:43.944 --> 00:39:46.545
I felt lucky to get to know you.

00:39:48.160 --> 00:39:50.924
I watch other people trying to do things,

00:39:50.924 --> 00:39:52.271
pouring old wine into new bottles,

00:39:52.271 --> 00:39:53.664
Michael Sandel making...

00:39:53.664 --> 00:39:56.636
which is now a good
course bit it took awhile.

00:39:57.159 --> 00:40:01.284
I think what you're doing
really is defining it very well.

00:40:01.712 --> 00:40:04.370
How learning can work.

00:40:04.370 --> 00:40:08.140
I've tried to do one additional angle

00:40:08.140 --> 00:40:12.575
in our work with you,
which is my belief that

00:40:12.575 --> 00:40:16.258
people can learn alone
by doing these videos

00:40:16.258 --> 00:40:18.464
and it's good because they
can learn at their own pace,

00:40:18.464 --> 00:40:21.157
but there's something
that's probably the oldest

00:40:21.157 --> 00:40:23.850
philosophy around, which is Aristotle's.

00:40:23.850 --> 00:40:26.103
Which is, man is a social animal.

00:40:26.103 --> 00:40:29.330
That, in the end, people kind
of like getting together.

00:40:29.330 --> 00:40:33.370
That it's a collaborative,
personal, group process

00:40:33.370 --> 00:40:36.157
of learning and exchanging ideas.

00:40:36.157 --> 00:40:39.082
So I've pushed a little bit,
and we've been trying to do it

00:40:39.082 --> 00:40:41.613
at the Apsen Institute, is to combine

00:40:41.613 --> 00:40:45.444
the online learning with
a place-based convening,

00:40:45.444 --> 00:40:48.532
which is, if you get through this course,

00:40:48.532 --> 00:40:51.736
and you do this essay, and
you pass it, and you...

00:40:51.736 --> 00:40:53.687
Not only do you get a
badge and something signed

00:40:53.687 --> 00:40:56.009
by Sal and everything else,

00:40:56.009 --> 00:40:59.445
but you can apply for
scholarships, because we'll

00:40:59.445 --> 00:41:01.372
raise the money, and you can come to,

00:41:01.372 --> 00:41:03.787
say we do something as we're doing now on

00:41:03.787 --> 00:41:06.295
privacy and the constitution
with Sandra Day O'Connor

00:41:06.295 --> 00:41:08.919
and Justice Roberts
and a few other people,

00:41:08.919 --> 00:41:12.610
say, "Okay, you take that
course, and if you do well,

00:41:12.610 --> 00:41:16.256
"apply for one of these things,
and we'll pick 100 scholars

00:41:16.256 --> 00:41:18.856
"from around the country
who finish the course",

00:41:18.856 --> 00:41:20.923
and you get to go to
Philadelphia and sit down

00:41:20.923 --> 00:41:22.989
with Sandra Day O'Connor, have a weekend.

00:41:22.989 --> 00:41:24.847
You come to Washington
and you get to hang out

00:41:24.847 --> 00:41:27.192
at the Supreme Court, and

00:41:27.192 --> 00:41:29.583
get to meet the other people
who did the course with you.

00:41:29.583 --> 00:41:33.438
So, I think combining virtual
learning with place-based

00:41:33.438 --> 00:41:35.620
learning, which is obviously
something you write

00:41:35.620 --> 00:41:36.531
about in One Room Schoolhouses,

00:41:36.531 --> 00:41:38.691
it's obviously things
that Rocketship have done.

00:41:38.691 --> 00:41:41.059
That's next phase of the
revolution, is how do you

00:41:41.059 --> 00:41:45.540
blend it in, because we're never going

00:41:45.540 --> 00:41:49.743
to be something Aristotle
wouldn't recognize.

00:41:49.743 --> 00:41:53.262
We're never going to be people
who like to learn alone.

00:41:54.085 --> 00:41:57.234
I think it was Franklin who
said, I know it was Franklin.

00:41:57.234 --> 00:42:01.390
What he said was, "He that
would try to learn alone

00:42:01.390 --> 00:42:04.107
"or drink alone, would
be like the person who

00:42:04.107 --> 00:42:06.266
"tries to catch his horse alone."

00:42:06.266 --> 00:42:08.902
It's something you have
to do with other people.

00:42:19.019 --> 00:42:20.900
This is why I don't get
asked to speak at high school

00:42:20.900 --> 00:42:23.779
graduations that often
or college graduations.

00:42:23.779 --> 00:42:27.470
Almost every one of my characters
drops out and runs away.

00:42:27.470 --> 00:42:31.162
Einstein, you know,
hates school, drops out

00:42:31.162 --> 00:42:33.693
in Germany, runs away to Switzerland.

00:42:33.693 --> 00:42:35.574
Ben Franklin runs away to Philadelphia.

00:42:35.574 --> 00:42:38.646
Steve Jobs drops out of Reed.

00:42:40.015 --> 00:42:42.576
I guess that's all, Franklin...

00:42:42.576 --> 00:42:44.689
Kissinger doesn't, I mean, that's...

00:42:44.689 --> 00:42:47.568
The Nazis take over, so
that's a different issue.

00:42:49.814 --> 00:42:51.948
All of them are rebellious, in a way.

00:42:51.948 --> 00:42:54.740
They all run away from home.

00:42:54.740 --> 00:42:57.349
And that makes them,
in some ways, more open

00:42:57.349 --> 00:42:59.717
to learning experiences, I think.

00:42:59.717 --> 00:43:02.469
Or to think out of the box.

00:43:07.487 --> 00:43:10.552
I mean, one way to answer
is, I go back and forth

00:43:10.552 --> 00:43:13.454
about writing about current figures

00:43:13.454 --> 00:43:16.635
and writing historical figures.

00:43:21.511 --> 00:43:23.986
And you know, there's an
different set of muscles you need

00:43:23.986 --> 00:43:26.726
if you're going to interview
somebody like a Steve Jobs.

00:43:26.726 --> 00:43:29.257
The interesting thing
about the innovators is

00:43:29.257 --> 00:43:31.161
it's both historical,
you know, people like

00:43:31.161 --> 00:43:33.599
John von Neumann and Alan
Turing, who obviously I never

00:43:33.599 --> 00:43:37.407
got to meet and do it
through archival research.

00:43:37.407 --> 00:43:39.775
But then people like
Bill Gates or Steve Jobs,

00:43:39.775 --> 00:43:43.560
who spend hours and hours
allowing me to interview them.

00:43:43.560 --> 00:43:45.928
So, I try to do the mix there.

00:43:45.928 --> 00:43:48.715
I think you always have to
put someone in historical

00:43:48.715 --> 00:43:51.849
context, but you also
have to judge them by

00:43:51.849 --> 00:43:53.475
how history turned out.

00:43:53.475 --> 00:43:56.632
The best example is slavery.

00:43:56.632 --> 00:44:00.672
In the end, I don't think
Jefferson was a great man.

00:44:00.672 --> 00:44:03.273
In the end, he didn't
even free his slaves.

00:44:03.273 --> 00:44:04.689
And you say, "Well, you have to understand

00:44:04.689 --> 00:44:06.129
"the historical period.

00:44:06.129 --> 00:44:08.962
"He was back then, and
that's what they did."

00:44:08.962 --> 00:44:13.350
No, Benjamin Franklin also, at one point,

00:44:13.350 --> 00:44:16.708
had two household slaves,
and it occurs to him

00:44:16.708 --> 00:44:18.728
how abhorrent that is.

00:44:18.728 --> 00:44:20.586
And so he becomes the
President of the Society

00:44:20.586 --> 00:44:22.257
for the Abolition of Slavery.

00:44:22.257 --> 00:44:24.463
So, this is the great debate in history,

00:44:24.463 --> 00:44:27.296
which is, do you judge
people by their period,

00:44:27.296 --> 00:44:31.475
or do you say, "No,
history proved them wrong.

00:44:31.475 --> 00:44:34.215
"And that's something we judge them by."

00:44:34.215 --> 00:44:35.794
I'm a little bit in the latter camp.

00:44:35.794 --> 00:44:38.278
Even a Churchill, who's a great man,

00:44:38.278 --> 00:44:41.715
but so against the anti-colonial, you know

00:44:41.715 --> 00:44:44.060
against Ghandi, against everything else.

00:44:44.060 --> 00:44:45.732
Well, you look at history.

00:44:45.732 --> 00:44:47.520
He was on the wrong side of that one.

00:44:47.520 --> 00:44:49.679
So, as great as he was
during World War Two,

00:44:49.679 --> 00:44:52.744
you say, "No, umm...".

00:44:52.744 --> 00:44:56.320
Even though a lot of people
were racist and anti-semitic

00:44:56.320 --> 00:44:59.710
and pro-colonial and
everything else back then,

00:44:59.710 --> 00:45:02.333
not that he was anti-semitic,
but you know, people...

00:45:02.333 --> 00:45:05.421
You don't just say, "Yeah,
I excuse them because

00:45:05.421 --> 00:45:07.000
"that's the way they were at the time."

00:45:07.000 --> 00:45:08.556
You say, "No, these people turned out

00:45:08.556 --> 00:45:11.131
"to be better than these people."

00:45:14.918 --> 00:45:18.122
Well, two things, I would like to invent

00:45:18.122 --> 00:45:21.326
the new wine for the new bottle.

00:45:21.326 --> 00:45:23.997
I would like to invent
what I told you about,

00:45:23.997 --> 00:45:27.851
a collaborative,
multimedia, crowd sourced,

00:45:27.851 --> 00:45:32.216
yet curated, guided,

00:45:32.216 --> 00:45:35.049
new thing that people would say,

00:45:35.049 --> 00:45:38.671
"Oh yes, when Gutenberg did the
movable type printing press,

00:45:38.671 --> 00:45:41.341
"pretty soon afterwards
lots of things happened."

00:45:41.341 --> 00:45:42.827
The Reformation would have...

00:45:42.827 --> 00:45:45.033
But even novels begin to happen.

00:45:45.033 --> 00:45:48.260
You can have novels if
you have a printing press.

00:45:48.260 --> 00:45:51.859
I want to say, "I was
involved in figuring out

00:45:51.859 --> 00:45:55.807
"what type of new narrative

00:45:55.807 --> 00:45:59.359
"nonfiction," and it can
be fiction, but I'm...

00:45:59.359 --> 00:46:01.449
I'll probably leave that to somebody else.

00:46:01.449 --> 00:46:03.864
Just like, if it's fiction, you
would say, "Okay, let's take

00:46:03.864 --> 00:46:06.464
"role playing games and
LARPs," and blah blah blah

00:46:06.464 --> 00:46:08.995
and say, "How are we
going to have interactive

00:46:08.995 --> 00:46:10.899
"storytelling fiction?"

00:46:10.899 --> 00:46:13.639
I want to do that with nonfiction.

00:46:13.639 --> 00:46:15.287
And I think that would be cool.

00:46:15.287 --> 00:46:18.956
I've been somewhat
involved over the years,

00:46:18.956 --> 00:46:22.694
and not truly inventing the
future like the real innovators.

00:46:22.694 --> 00:46:26.758
But I ran a digital media,
TimeInc, in the early '90s,

00:46:26.758 --> 00:46:30.148
and it was right when
the web browser was first

00:46:30.148 --> 00:46:33.816
invented, which is, I think '93 or '94,

00:46:33.816 --> 00:46:37.299
when Mosaic comes out of
University of Illinois.

00:46:37.299 --> 00:46:40.178
And we said, "Okay,
let's create websites,"

00:46:40.178 --> 00:46:43.498
and even we invented some things
that probably weren't good,

00:46:43.498 --> 00:46:45.333
like banner ads and popup ads

00:46:45.333 --> 00:46:47.980
and ways to pay for things that we do.

00:46:47.980 --> 00:46:50.789
And I was part of the team that invented

00:46:50.789 --> 00:46:51.973
some of those things.

00:46:51.973 --> 00:46:53.947
I'm not going to take
blame or credit for it,

00:46:53.947 --> 00:46:56.594
but at least I was in that mix of people,

00:46:56.594 --> 00:46:58.498
who said, "We will create websites.

00:46:58.498 --> 00:47:01.702
"We will take news and journalism

00:47:01.702 --> 00:47:04.326
"and invent things like Pathfinder."

00:47:04.326 --> 00:47:08.157
I mean, new brand names that would create

00:47:08.157 --> 00:47:11.222
ways of doing news and
blogs and integrate them.

00:47:11.222 --> 00:47:13.335
And we had a lot of failures.

00:47:13.335 --> 00:47:15.448
I mean, one of which is, we were

00:47:15.448 --> 00:47:17.111
totally advertising
dependent, because we were

00:47:17.111 --> 00:47:18.945
making so much money on ads.

00:47:18.945 --> 00:47:21.424
So, we didn't become
reader dependent, and so

00:47:21.424 --> 00:47:23.561
we began catering to advertisers.

00:47:23.561 --> 00:47:26.765
Another is that we took
the community that we had

00:47:26.765 --> 00:47:29.481
created before the Web was
invented, the community

00:47:29.481 --> 00:47:32.128
found on the WELL, or America Online,

00:47:32.128 --> 00:47:34.311
where people write bulletin
boards and chat rooms,

00:47:34.311 --> 00:47:36.424
and every night they'd
be discussing issues.

00:47:36.424 --> 00:47:39.512
And we relegated those
to comments on the bottom

00:47:39.512 --> 00:47:43.599
of our articles, that were
stupid, anonymous, dumb,

00:47:43.599 --> 00:47:45.201
and nobody read them.

00:47:45.201 --> 00:47:49.009
So, we went from being a community service

00:47:49.009 --> 00:47:51.632
to being a publishing service online.

00:47:51.632 --> 00:47:53.304
And that was a step backwards.

00:47:53.304 --> 00:47:54.549
I like to think we did some things

00:47:54.549 --> 00:47:57.451
that were kind of good,
though, like create

00:47:57.451 --> 00:47:59.379
beautiful web pages and designs.

00:47:59.379 --> 00:48:01.956
We integrated words and
multimedia and video

00:48:01.956 --> 00:48:05.021
and pictures, and that
was sort of a new thing.

00:48:05.021 --> 00:48:08.573
We created those, you know, in Pathfinder,

00:48:08.573 --> 00:48:11.197
and Hotwire did it better than we did,

00:48:11.197 --> 00:48:15.528
a lot of the early websites of 1994.

00:48:16.630 --> 00:48:18.340
So, I would like to say I want one more

00:48:18.340 --> 00:48:22.008
turn at the wheel on invention.

00:48:22.008 --> 00:48:24.052
And I have a couple of biographies,

00:48:24.052 --> 00:48:26.490
just plain old biographies
that I'm gonna write,

00:48:26.490 --> 00:48:30.878
including a historical one
about the ultimate guy,

00:48:30.878 --> 00:48:35.165
Leonardo da Vinci, who combines art and

00:48:35.165 --> 00:48:38.020
science like nobody else did.

00:48:38.020 --> 00:48:39.614
- Well done, that's a
great note to end on.

00:48:39.614 --> 00:48:41.077
Well, thank you so much, Walter.

00:48:41.077 --> 00:48:42.818
Real honor.

00:48:42.818 --> 00:48:45.602
- My honor.
(audience claps)


Types of escrow in real estate

WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

00:00:00.399 --> 00:00:02.533
- [Voiceover] The term escrow.

00:00:02.533 --> 00:00:03.923
That E looked funny.

00:00:03.923 --> 00:00:08.369
The term escrow is used
a lot in real estate.

00:00:08.369 --> 00:00:09.904
It's actually used in a lot of

00:00:09.904 --> 00:00:11.700
just financial transactions in general,

00:00:11.700 --> 00:00:14.366
but real estate is the
place that most of us

00:00:14.366 --> 00:00:16.123
will see it most frequently.

00:00:16.123 --> 00:00:18.984
And even in the context of
residential real estate,

00:00:18.984 --> 00:00:21.133
it tends to be use in two different ways

00:00:21.133 --> 00:00:23.479
which can only make it more confusing.

00:00:23.479 --> 00:00:26.300
Now one way in which he word escrow is use

00:00:26.300 --> 00:00:28.742
is when you're actually buying the house.

00:00:28.742 --> 00:00:32.135
So what happens is, you
make an offer on the house.

00:00:32.135 --> 00:00:34.727
Let's say that the
seller accepts the offer,

00:00:34.727 --> 00:00:36.927
then you have an opening of escrow.

00:00:36.927 --> 00:00:40.015
And what an escrow is,
it's a third party account,

00:00:40.015 --> 00:00:43.643
so it's managed by a trusted third party.

00:00:43.643 --> 00:00:48.100
So this right over here is escrow, escrow,

00:00:48.100 --> 00:00:52.200
and it's managed by a trusted,
a trusted third party.

00:00:52.200 --> 00:00:54.804
And what happen is, is that the buyer,

00:00:54.804 --> 00:00:57.592
we'll do the buyer in another color.

00:00:57.592 --> 00:01:02.200
The buyer places all of their
obligations into escrow,

00:01:02.200 --> 00:01:03.400
so it might be the deposit

00:01:03.400 --> 00:01:06.333
that was part of the offer contract.

00:01:06.333 --> 00:01:08.681
It could be the actual,

00:01:08.681 --> 00:01:10.156
the remainder of the down payment,

00:01:10.171 --> 00:01:12.294
usually the deposit goes
towards the down payment.

00:01:12.294 --> 00:01:15.533
It could be, it could be
getting the financing,

00:01:15.533 --> 00:01:17.786
so let's, this is the down payment,

00:01:17.786 --> 00:01:19.953
the down payment and the deposit.

00:01:19.953 --> 00:01:24.546
It could be getting, actually
securing the financing

00:01:24.762 --> 00:01:27.573
which would mean the
remainder of the house.

00:01:27.573 --> 00:01:30.723
And the seller fulfills
all of their obligations.

00:01:30.723 --> 00:01:35.723
So, this right over here is the seller,

00:01:36.000 --> 00:01:38.796
and they allow the house to be inspected,

00:01:38.796 --> 00:01:41.665
and let's say that the
house passes inspection,

00:01:42.004 --> 00:01:44.700
passes inspection.

00:01:45.253 --> 00:01:48.300
Let's say that the title company is able

00:01:48.300 --> 00:01:51.524
to do a title search,
and it's a clear title.

00:01:51.647 --> 00:01:54.679
Clear title, clear title.

00:01:54.679 --> 00:01:56.300
So then on the closing day,

00:01:56.300 --> 00:01:59.104
and that day is actually
the closing of escrow,

00:01:59.104 --> 00:02:01.209
so you go to the closing day,

00:02:01.209 --> 00:02:04.435
so closing, on the closing day.

00:02:04.435 --> 00:02:06.800
This third party says,
"Okay, everybody has met

00:02:06.800 --> 00:02:09.633
"their obligations, I'm
going to give the seller

00:02:09.633 --> 00:02:12.532
"the money, I'm going to
give the seller the money,

00:02:12.532 --> 00:02:14.433
"and I'm going to give the buyer,

00:02:14.433 --> 00:02:16.166
"I'm going to give the buyer the house."

00:02:16.166 --> 00:02:18.700
Or we could say the title,
the title to the house.

00:02:18.700 --> 00:02:20.966
And we go into a lot
more of depth into this

00:02:20.966 --> 00:02:21.750
in other videos.

00:02:21.750 --> 00:02:23.271
So this is one form of escrow.

00:02:23.271 --> 00:02:24.956
It's the third party where all of the

00:02:24.956 --> 00:02:27.407
the things from either
party are put into place

00:02:27.407 --> 00:02:29.043
so that you could have closing,

00:02:29.043 --> 00:02:32.500
and then actually, and actually transact

00:02:32.500 --> 00:02:34.266
the house and the money

00:02:34.266 --> 00:02:36.873
and the house actually changes hands.

00:02:36.873 --> 00:02:39.066
Now the other way that
the word escrow is use

00:02:39.066 --> 00:02:40.327
in residential real estate,

00:02:40.327 --> 00:02:42.442
it's a related idea, it
still involves having

00:02:42.442 --> 00:02:44.066
a trusted third party.

00:02:44.066 --> 00:02:46.033
And that's what this term generally means,

00:02:46.033 --> 00:02:47.833
is using a trusted third party,

00:02:47.833 --> 00:02:49.604
having a trusted third party account

00:02:49.604 --> 00:02:51.366
where the different
parties to a transaction

00:02:51.366 --> 00:02:53.833
they can use it, so
that they can facilitate

00:02:53.833 --> 00:02:55.433
the transaction itself.

00:02:55.433 --> 00:02:56.935
So the other place you might see this

00:02:56.935 --> 00:02:58.533
is actually when you are making

00:02:58.533 --> 00:03:00.104
your mortgage payments.

00:03:00.104 --> 00:03:02.467
So when we typically talk
about mortgage payments,

00:03:02.467 --> 00:03:04.733
let's say that your monthly mortgage is,

00:03:04.733 --> 00:03:06.194
let's just say for the sake of simplicity

00:03:06.194 --> 00:03:09.786
it's a $1000, it's $1000.

00:03:10.201 --> 00:03:14.212
So this is your mortgage payment, $1000.

00:03:14.212 --> 00:03:16.400
And let's say your very
first mortgage payment

00:03:16.400 --> 00:03:17.830
is going to have, some amount of it

00:03:17.830 --> 00:03:19.486
is going to be paying for interest.

00:03:19.486 --> 00:03:20.871
So when you start paying it's only

00:03:20.871 --> 00:03:22.675
going to be mainly interest.

00:03:22.675 --> 00:03:26.994
And some of it is to pay
down principle, principle.

00:03:26.994 --> 00:03:28.533
And then we've seen this a lot of time,

00:03:28.533 --> 00:03:30.825
the next payment of a $1000

00:03:30.825 --> 00:03:33.332
if you have a fix mortgage.

00:03:33.332 --> 00:03:36.171
So the next payment of $1000,

00:03:36.171 --> 00:03:38.000
more of it is going to be principle,

00:03:38.000 --> 00:03:40.338
and less of it is going to be interest.

00:03:40.338 --> 00:03:43.833
But when you actually write
your check to the bank

00:03:43.833 --> 00:03:45.312
you might find out that you're paying

00:03:45.312 --> 00:03:47.266
more than a thousand dollars.

00:03:47.266 --> 00:03:49.566
And you say, "Why am I
paying more than a $1000?"

00:03:49.566 --> 00:03:50.600
And if you call your bank

00:03:50.600 --> 00:03:51.733
and you would ask them that,

00:03:51.733 --> 00:03:53.357
they'll say "Okay, well you know what,

00:03:53.357 --> 00:03:54.987
"If you're not able to pay this mortgage

00:03:54.987 --> 00:03:56.333
"this house comes to us,

00:03:56.333 --> 00:03:58.234
"and we want to make sure that this house

00:03:58.234 --> 00:04:00.124
"is properly insured,
and we want to make sure

00:04:00.124 --> 00:04:01.633
"that the taxes are paid on it."

00:04:01.633 --> 00:04:03.369
Why do they care that
the house is insured?

00:04:03.369 --> 00:04:05.500
Well, if the house isn't insured,

00:04:05.500 --> 00:04:07.133
and there's a hurricane or a tornado

00:04:07.133 --> 00:04:08.425
and it destroys the house,

00:04:08.425 --> 00:04:09.700
then you might want to walk away

00:04:09.700 --> 00:04:11.800
from that mortgage and all the bank

00:04:11.800 --> 00:04:13.494
is going to be left with is a house

00:04:13.494 --> 00:04:15.866
that was destroyed by a
hurricane or a tornado.

00:04:15.866 --> 00:04:17.363
So they want it to be insured,

00:04:17.363 --> 00:04:19.066
and they also want the taxes to be paid,

00:04:19.066 --> 00:04:21.333
because once again if
there's a bunch of back taxes

00:04:21.333 --> 00:04:22.966
you might just want to
walk away from the house,

00:04:22.966 --> 00:04:24.333
and then the bank is going to be left

00:04:24.333 --> 00:04:26.204
paying those back taxes.

00:04:26.204 --> 00:04:28.613
And so what the bank might do is say,

00:04:28.613 --> 00:04:30.000
"Okay, you know what?

00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:31.400
"You, your house--"

00:04:31.400 --> 00:04:32.766
And I'm just going to fix the numbers

00:04:32.766 --> 00:04:34.894
so that they work out well.

00:04:34.894 --> 00:04:38.842
"For your house, you
have to pay 1200, 1200

00:04:38.842 --> 00:04:43.842
"a year in insurance, and you have to pay,

00:04:44.581 --> 00:04:49.466
"and you have to pay
1200 a year, 1200 a year

00:04:49.466 --> 00:04:52.799
"in property taxes, in taxes."

00:04:52.799 --> 00:04:56.161
So that comes to a total of 2400 a year,

00:04:56.161 --> 00:05:01.161
whoops, that comes to a
total of 2400, 2400 a year.

00:05:04.115 --> 00:05:05.896
And so, and we could write this for,

00:05:05.896 --> 00:05:07.333
this is for taxes and insurance,

00:05:07.333 --> 00:05:10.630
and sometimes they'll
even short handed T and I.

00:05:10.630 --> 00:05:12.878
So there's a $2400 of tax and insurance,

00:05:12.878 --> 00:05:15.366
the way that we're going to
make sure that you pay it,

00:05:15.366 --> 00:05:16.632
is that every month you're going to pay

00:05:16.632 --> 00:05:17.745
one twelfth of this.

00:05:17.760 --> 00:05:19.650
So you're going to pay $200,

00:05:19.650 --> 00:05:22.760
so every month you're going to pay $200

00:05:22.760 --> 00:05:24.533
for taxes and insurance

00:05:24.533 --> 00:05:28.409
and this is going to go
into an escrow account.

00:05:28.501 --> 00:05:33.346
So that $200 every month goes into

00:05:33.346 --> 00:05:36.527
an escrow account for taxes and insurance.

00:05:36.727 --> 00:05:38.827
It goes to an escrow account.

00:05:38.827 --> 00:05:41.266
And then the escrow, the escrow account

00:05:41.266 --> 00:05:43.619
in this situation, whoever is managing it,

00:05:43.619 --> 00:05:45.400
well every time that they get a bill

00:05:45.400 --> 00:05:46.867
for the taxes or insurance,

00:05:46.867 --> 00:05:50.314
they will pay it out
of the escrow account.

00:05:50.314 --> 00:05:52.273
And so once again, it's kind of a safe

00:05:52.273 --> 00:05:54.850
third party account for a stated purpose,

00:05:54.850 --> 00:05:56.838
and then in this case the stated purpose

00:05:56.838 --> 00:05:58.933
is to pay the insurance and taxes

00:05:58.933 --> 00:06:00.966
to you want that to go into the account,

00:06:00.966 --> 00:06:02.500
to make sure that the bank
just doesn't pocket it,

00:06:02.500 --> 00:06:04.092
and the bank wants to go to that account

00:06:04.092 --> 00:06:05.787
so make sure that there's money around

00:06:05.787 --> 00:06:08.556
to pay for the insurance and taxes.

00:06:08.556 --> 00:06:10.433
So these are the two primary ways

00:06:10.433 --> 00:06:12.876
that you might encounter the term escrow.

00:06:12.876 --> 00:06:16.142
They both are representing the same idea

00:06:16.142 --> 00:06:18.311
of kind of putting money into an account

00:06:18.311 --> 00:06:20.884
that can be used for a stated purpose,

00:06:20.884 --> 00:06:23.800
but they are usually using
two different contacts here,

00:06:23.800 --> 00:06:26.166
this is to facilitate
the closing of a house,

00:06:26.166 --> 00:06:27.640
and literally the closing of escrow

00:06:27.640 --> 00:06:29.129
the transaction of the house.

00:06:29.129 --> 00:06:32.771
This is to make sure that
other cost are being paid.