![[25-Reggie_James.jpg]] *Dialectic Episode 25: Reggie James - Our Infinite Mirrors - is available on [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4sNgOpvJQ3uK0I2PEUNfq8?si=37d3a279754348c9), [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/25-reggie-james-our-infinite-mirrors-live-at-fwb-fest/id1780282402?i=1000721834069), and [YouTube](https://youtu.be/RXcnD5jbQag), and all podcast platforms.* <iframe data-testid="embed-iframe" style="border-radius:12px" src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/4sNgOpvJQ3uK0I2PEUNfq8?utm_source=generator" width="100%" height="152" frameBorder="0" allowfullscreen="" allow="autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture" loading="lazy"></iframe> <iframe allow="autoplay *; encrypted-media *; fullscreen *; clipboard-write" frameborder="0" height="175" style="width:100%;max-width:660px;overflow:hidden;border-radius:10px;" sandbox="allow-forms allow-popups allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-storage-access-by-user-activation allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation" src="https://embed.podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/25-reggie-james-our-infinite-mirrors-live-at-fwb-fest/id1780282402?i=1000721834069"></iframe> [Video version from FWB livestream available here](https://youtu.be/5kS-Ohe_glw?si=LLDPdF4nWDkVN7Uo). <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5kS-Ohe_glw?si=kpjkFsoB1p9ludT_" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe> # Description Reggie James ([Substack](https://hipcityreg.substack.com/), [X](https://x.com/hipcityreg)) is a designer, writer, and entrepreneur. Reggie previously founded [Eternal](https://www.instagram.com/eternaltilidie/) and recently edited and published [Hardware 2024](https://hardwarebook2024.com/), a book highlighting recent attempts at creating a different hardware future. This conversation happened live on stage at [FWB Fest 2025](https://www.fwbfest.info/) in Idyllwild, CA. We explored Reggie's frame of technology as a mirror and the Kevin Kelly-inspired notion that technology has an agenda of its own. Reggie has a fresh perspective on brand and "feel" as they relate to technology products, why friction can create meaning, and a Naoto Fukasawa-influenced view that design is about communicating values. The latter, for Reggie, originates with writing. We dipped into a discussion about how hardware and how it shapes our software cultures, and what a world with more basic luxuries like the iPhone might look like. We also discussed "loaded" technologies and the current narratives that are working in crypto vs. what might be idealized. The conversation concludes with a zoomed out meditation on myth, American western idealism, personal history, and what type of vision is required to create something radically new. This episode is shorter than usual given the live nature, but it's jam packed and I'm thrilled that we were able to cover a lot of ground across many of the ideas that are representative of Reggie. # Timestamps - 3:05: Technology as Mirror - 8:04: De-fanging Loaded Technologies - 12:43: Writing's Role in the Design Process - 16:13: Affordances, Software, Hardware, and Values - 22:53: Universal Luxuries - 25:46: Friction and How Technology Can Make us Feel - 30:16: The Role Brand Plays in Technology Today - 34:30: Successful Narratives in Crypto - 41:30: Crypto as a Mirror - 44:39: American Myth & West - 47:56: Personal Myth - 54:16: Vision # Links & References - [What Technology Wants - Kevin Kelly](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7954936-what-technology-wants) - [Crying in the Garden ~ Closing Eternal - Reggie James](https://hipcityreg.substack.com/p/crying-in-the-garden-closing-eternal) - [Joan Didion on writing to think](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/22534-i-write-entirely-to-find-out-what-i-m-thinking-what) - [Universals & Luxuries - Reggie James](https://hipcityreg.substack.com/p/universals-and-luxuries) - [Naoto Fukasawa: Embodiment - Naoto Fukasawa](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36423240-naoto-fukasawa) - [THE TOKYO TOILET](https://tokyotoilet.jp/en/) - [‎Perfect Days (2023)](https://letterboxd.com/film/perfect-days-2023/) - [The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at M.I.T. - Stewart Brand](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38276.The_Media_Lab) - [The Near Collapse of the American Myth - Reggie James](https://hipcityreg.substack.com/p/the-near-collapse-of-the-american) - [The Timeless Way of Building - Christopher W. Alexander](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/106728.The_Timeless_Way_of_Building) - [ROLE: CREATIVE DIRECTOR \|\| COMPANY: USA - Reggie James](https://hipcityreg.substack.com/p/role-creative-director-company-usa) # Transcript **Jackson:** Okay, let's kick things off. **Reggie:** Maybe you can share what Dialectic is. **Jackson:** First things first, I'm Jackson. I host a podcast called Dialectic. My tagline for it is "conversational portraits of original people." When people ask what my podcast is about, I say I find people who are interesting to me, and I have conversations with them. Another way to think about it that would set the stage for today is getting to know people by way of their ideas. That is a selection criteria for who I talk to. With that in mind, I'm not going to ask people for their background and their life story. We're going to jump straight into the ideas. That being said, it is worth giving Reggie a proper introduction if you don't know him or you missed his talk earlier. fortunate to call Reggie a friend, and I am also inspired by him and his writing. He's a designer, a writer, an investor, an entrepreneur, and a former founder and CEO of Eternal, which was recently acquired. When I found out I was going to be doing this podcast live for the very first time, especially at FWB Fest, my frame for it was that I wanted to find somebody who can capture a bunch of the essences of what makes this place important to me. I've been to four of these. It's this weird blend of technology, culture, art, crypto, and all the things that come with that, and also other weird, esoteric Internet things and philosophy. I'm probably talking more now than I will for the rest of the hour, but Reggie really captures so much of that, and that's why I'm excited to have a conversation with him today. **Reggie:** I'm excited to be in conversation with you as a longtime listener. **Jackson:** I appreciate that. ## [00:03:05] Technology as Mirror **Jackson:** We're going to start the conversation today. There is an excerpt at the beginning of a book Reggie just published that he worked on called \*Hardware 2024\*, where he's referencing Kevin Kelly and his book \*What Technology Wants\*. You say, "Technology itself has an aim and that we are the facilitators of that aim. This is very different than thinking of technology as a derivative of ourselves, that our aims are its aims." Then you go on to say, "The mirror was the final product. Once we had the mirror, we simply continued to produce them. This is how technology convinces us it has an uncanny ability to reflect. And that reflection creates an inescapable human urge to tinker." Finally, at the end of that excerpt, you theorize what technology actually wants. You say, "perfect ubiquity and mutualism with humanity." My first question is, what does that actually mean? Those are some big words. As a part of that, why do you think so much of our technology converges on this metaphorical mirror? **Reggie:** I'll use the mirror to answer the other part about ubiquity and mutualism. We can look throughout culture—beyond just object-oriented technology to cultural technologies as well—to understand that we're always searching for higher purposes of meaning. Because we live life through an embodied, first-person perspective, a lot of that has to do with how this comes back to me and my lived experience. If I'm sitting around the fire and hearing a myth in my tribal village, it's not so much that I'm engaging with the story, but that this myth is telling me something about myself that I'm going to further embody in some set of actions. It's acting as this mirror to what I can be. The mirror isn't static in time. When I keep extending that out, some things act as amazing mirrors. Just to talk about the previous talk, the iPhone is probably one of the best mirrors. The Internet is a global mirror. To get to ubiquity and mutualism, we can all look at networks in particular as this really interesting mirror that's constantly flexing and prompting us to contribute to it. Then it becomes a question of contributing toward what ends. We're starting to see those ends really, really clearly. It's about a sense of embodiment around reflective intelligence. It's using our inputs, flexing that across the network to give it directly back to us. It's a little cerebral and can be hard to grok, but when you see it distorted, it becomes really uncomfortable. Sycophantic AI is when the mirror gets distorted and it becomes a little bit uncomfortable. C Right. **Reggie:** When mirrors get exciting, Ethereum is a really interesting mirror isolated to value and more economic senses of our participation, but a really fun one and one that people here probably grok really well. The mutualism is really about a sense of closeness. Technology just tends to get closer and closer to us. It starts off as these cold, large machines in factories. Our phone is so intimate that it literally vibrates near our most private sections of our body. I think about that a lot. We've taken this thing and really put it as close as possible. Now, with some of our most edge companies like Neuralink, that's as close as it gets. It's embedded in the brain. If you go back to forms of mysticism, is the brain where your consciousness lives? In some cultures it is. C Right? **Reggie:** In some cultures, the heart is where the consciousness lives. It's interesting to think about these embedded technologies and its closeness. It's this other animal kingdom that's really tightly wedded to us. **Jackson:** It's this perpetually increasing intimacy, which can be great or can be haunting. **Reggie:** It's always both sacred and profane. **Jackson:** We're going to talk a bunch about different technologies. You already gave a talk about hardware today, and we'll talk a bit about that. ## [00:08:04] De-fanging Loaded Technologies **Jackson:** In this broader theme of technological determinism and what tech wants, there's a phrase you've used a few times where you talk about defanging loaded technologies. **Reggie:** Yeah. **Jackson:** What draws you to loaded technologies? **Reggie:** I'm not big on identity politics, but I do think that some communities across all identities have really funky relationships to technology. As technology increases in its power, in the "not going to make it" idea, what happens if a community gets a six-month delay? What happens when a community gets a two-year delay? The Silicon Valley-ism of "the future's here, it's just not evenly distributed"—to defang a technology is actually to expand and bring the future forward to communities that might be on the lagging tail of that. I think that's really powerful. For me, in the current phase of my life, that's always been in areas of communication and brand design, to make things more approachable and to take away that language of "you're not going to make it," because I think that's actually disgusting language. In the future, what I would love for it to be for myself is: what are the policy paths that get Waymo into more cities faster? C Right. **Reggie:** Another one is that all of Japan runs off of 20 to 25 building codes. In New York alone, there's an absurd amount, which stops us from building the housing that we need. There are all these policy things that are secret in the background, but it's actually making the technology further fanged because it can't get to the people. To reference Nick Susie's talk, they have this external perspective of what's happening, so they're probably seeing the most extreme versions of it, which always tends to be in this negative, hyper-sensory, attacking perspective. **Jackson:** There's an element that the fear buys you a little bit more time, but it probably makes the coming impact worse. Going back to the earlier thing and determinism, there's a notion that we can slow these things down or stop them. It's probably closer to bending them than altogether stopping. So much of what defanging feels like to me, and why I find so much of your philosophy around technology to be so appealing, is that it broadly is about not only pulling it forward but pulling it to the other end of that quote : evenly distributing it and making it accessible. **Reggie:** The important thing to talk about when it comes to fear is : who does that fear benefit? C Right. **Reggie:** Not to be on a Bill Gurley regulatory capture vibe—although with the recent Figma IPO, it was great to see him in full form—that fear is being weaponized to reassert self-authority. **Reggie:** If I can wield the technology and then poke at why it's dangerous to society... but don't worry, because I'm the only one that can wield it, and I will protect you. Adam Curtis has this great documentary about how politicians stopped promising better futures and then reverted to just promising people that bad things won't happen. When they reverted to saying bad things won't happen, they were able to paint boogeymen around the world. For the US, this might look like terrorists in the Middle East, making them appear so much bigger and scarier than they were. The illegibility of those people made it feel scary because you can't even really do your own research; you're just relying on intelligence reports. We do the same thing with technology. Behind this AI black box is a scary ghoul, but we put a smiley face on it and it gives you deep research. We have to really deconstruct these notions of fear as we try to distribute technology, because it creates a manufactured consent on who has the authority. **Jackson:** Versus the classic Alan Kay computing idea of popping open the hood and actually introducing the complexity to people. **Reggie:** Exactly. ## [00:12:43] Writing's Role in the Design Process **Jackson:** I want to talk a bit about design. You've reiterated in many places and in many ways that design is a realization of values. In many ways, you are first and foremost a designer, but you are also a writer. You've said that your design process typically starts with writing. Why is that? **Reggie:** It helps me to not waste energy visualizing things that maybe don't need to be visualized. **Jackson:** Right. **Reggie:** If I work through an idea and realize it's actually really harmful in some way, why would I move forward to visualize that harm? I'm not judging people whose first mode of thinking is visual, but that's just my process. I design through writing, and it helps me filter out some of the things that I'm less excited to put further energy towards. It also helps me understand what I really believe, which is really important. Joan Didion talks about how the reason she writes is so that she can actually figure out what she thinks. I know that's super true for me. I don't ever retract anything that I've written, but I don't know if I would necessarily stand by every essay that's on the Substack. **Jackson:** Your voice in writing certainly embodies the garage door being open. It's like you're working through this in real time. **Reggie:** I'm working through this in real time. Every single newsletter ends with, "I don't do edits." If you unfollow this Substack, I won't be hurt by it because time is finite. Using it somewhere you don't want to use it is rough. To get back to design as an embodiment of values, that is directly from Naoto Fukuzawa. At the start of COVID, Saleo gave me that book, \*Embodiment\*. He gave me a stack of books to get me through COVID. He's a really good gift-giver. It really rocked my world at a time when I was trying to figure out my values while all of our environments changed so heavily. One bit just talks about chairs. He's designed a lot of chairs and discusses how a chair and the value you put in it give certain affordances. This chair has a certain affordance of how strictly I have to sit. I can't even go that wide, so I can't even man-spread that much. I'm a little clammy, so my butt gets a little sweaty. It has all of these features. It would be weird if I had someone else with me here. It sets a tone for how you're going to behave. Designers recognize pretty well that what they do is really a set of behaviors that they're putting forth as things that you should be doing. That's a level of cultural programming that didn't really get the love that it deserved earlier in technology's life, or in software technology of the 2000s. We were really trying to figure out what all this interaction stuff was with the phone, which is why critical theorists are important. That's a zag. **Jackson:** You have a line in a podcast where you talked about your Eames chair being about "being locked in," which I love. It captures that embedded value aspect of affordances really well. ## [00:16:13] Affordances, Software, Hardware, and Values **Jackson:** You brought up software. The computers we use, and particularly the iPhone, are so ubiquitous and so unopinionated that it feels to me—maybe I'm just numb to it—that they lack affordances. Where are the affordances in technology today? Is it purely in software? Can software even provide the same types of affordances that objects can? **Reggie:** That's a good question. The first thing I would push back on is that the iPhone is very opinionated. Immediately, there are all these things. If you just pull down Quick Settings, let's look at the defaults. The defaults when you receive your phone are that the ringer is on and that there's no Focus Mode on. Everything is about this instantaneous ability for another hand to reach out and interact with you. What's really interesting about that is that you then have to go in and set all of these barriers to protect your own attention, which is really interesting. The number one value of the phone, after the sense of self-importance of "I have this phone and now it's giving me these abilities," is instant reachability. Especially as a New Yorker, the last thing you want anyone to do is touch you, but the iPhone tells you that's the— **Jackson:** It goes back to intimacy at the top of the conversation. **Reggie:** 100%. I would just push back that the phone is extremely opinionated. Software and its affordances have to stack on top of the values of the hardware. This is why I say hardware exists in our environment layer of Stuart Brand's Pace Layering, which means that software is a culture that is derivative of our hardware layer, of our environment. If the number one value of this is a sense of reachability, it's no coincidence that our killer apps are social media, which is all about reachability and spreading your identity. The affordances stack from its root all the way up. I think we can push back. Software is beautifully flexible. What we get stuck in with the venture mindset is a sense of scale. We have perfect flexibility of affordances. Whether or not those things scale is a separate question, but we get stuck on the idea that good means scale—that good design is scaled design. I don't believe that's true anymore. If we want to reach out with new affordances, the joy of AI is going to be spreading the affordance landscape without worrying about scale because it will be so cheap to produce those interaction points. **Jackson:** Affordances are also fundamentally trade-offs, to your point. **Reggie:** 100%. It's about restacking your own value pyramid. If every value pyramid starts with reachability, that's a really weird way to live. But if your value pyramid starts with prayer or contemplation, that's going to inherently produce a whole new set of values. If your first value is prayer, the next thing you want is not going to be reachability because you're going to want to honor the value of prayer. It's really fun to play with how these things stack on top of each other. **Jackson:** A couple of lines on that last note that I love from you : One, "The image of our hardware is the image of all of our technologies." And two, "We are fascinated by the functionality of objects, but in reality, their function is subordinate to their signification." You gave a great talk on hardware, and about your framework for how these software cultures are reached by way of the hardware we get? You've referenced the PC, mobile, and video games. Can you talk a little bit about where we've been? And building on your example of prayer, what other value sets or types of hardware might actually allow us to get new software affordances? **Reggie:** That's a great question. We've all matured in a very dominant iPhone-plus-AWS landscape. The way we think about software is programming for this interface, and that interface is going to live remotely in US-East-1. What's been interesting about that is as we've scaled the requirement for all of these data centers and their maturity, what that did was build up all of this background compute, which has been really fascinating. And what has happened as a result of that—I always think about video gaming as the mushroom kingdom. It's really weird, a little psychedelic, and the people that work in video games rarely cross over to other parts of tech. **Jackson:** It's also like mushrooms in that I'm not sure it was always taken as its own thing. But now we know it definitely is. Especially video game consoles, which are downstream of their hardware. **Reggie:** As pretty much everyone in this room knows, Nvidia and the focus on these graphic chips opened the door not only to really great video games and this subculture of software, but mining. C Right. **Reggie:** Bitcoin, Ethereum, what have you. It's just so funny that these same exact chips are what we use in these data centers to train large language models. We had this parallel development of a technology that was somewhat undervalued and underappreciated, and it became the root of our two newest software cultures : crypto and AI. It's always interesting when you see something take off on a secondary or tertiary path and how it can come back to being the most dominant piece of hardware today. And naturally, Jensen and Nvidia shareholders have really benefited from that. ## [00:22:53] Universal Luxuries **Jackson:** You have a piece I like on universal luxuries. Classic examples—a Warholian idea—are Coca-Cola and certainly the iPhone. You nod at the notion that maybe others are possible. One example you give is what would happen if there was a hi-fi speaker in every single residence in America. Do you have a sense of other types of products, categories, or domains where there's potential for luxury and it's not yet happened or is underserved? **Reggie:** I love going back to Naoto Fukasawa. In his book, he has this example of designing public utilities as if they're for a luxury client. I think that's such a beautiful idea. **Jackson:** Like the Tokyo Toilet, a little bit. **Reggie:** Exactly. When I'm in Tokyo and I'm going to the restroom, I could sit on that thing straight. **Jackson:** Perfect Days, by the way. An amazing movie. **Reggie:** I love this idea of giving luxury treatment to public utilities. I think there is no reason, other than our dilapidated state capacity, that this isn't happening. The president and the homeless person drink the same exact Coca-Cola. The president and the immigrant coming to New York have the same exact iPhone. These are really powerful ideas. The ones I'm really interested in right now are around intelligence and transportation. This actually has a reformed theological view on common grace, which is God's mercy given to everyone through positive things happening in the world. I remember riding in a Waymo for the first time and thinking, "This is proof God loves us." Because growing up in the Poconos, it's the woods. Kids are drinking, and every year, some kid wraps their car around a tree and dies. Every high school has to deal with this. I remember riding in a Waymo and thinking that when this is scaled, no kid has to live that story. No parent has to live that story. No school has to live that story. And it really, really affected me. It's things like that. Beautiful transportation is also going to have a really deep psychological or societal effect. I want to live in the city, but I also want to go to the Poconos, and driving that far sucks. When that becomes automated, something really beautiful happens. So I think that and intelligence are the two main ones I think about. But intelligence has to be put on the right rails, because it's dicey right now. **Jackson:** My experience with the first Waymo ride was a childlike magic. ## [00:25:46] Friction and How Technology Can Make us Feel **Jackson:** One last note on hardware. There are a couple of quotes I really loved from the essay you have at the back of the hardware book from Bruno Schillinger on soulful technology. He says, “Electronic hardware seems to be the prisoner of its own utility.” He then goes on to say, “We should be getting into the habit of creating form from material that is not just a container for experience, but entirely in service of it.” A friend of mine, an art guy, has an idea that art isn't about understanding the intention behind a piece or even what it’s trying to communicate. Art is a prompt for an experience. This feels similar. There's a notion that technology is great for utility, but it can also be soulful, playful, and cause us to feel. I'm curious how you think about how technology objects, specifically, can make us feel. **Reggie:** That's a great probe. When we were organizing the book and deciding where to end it, we ended up on a really weird story structure. I was really happy when it ended with soulful technology. Not to keep referencing Tokyo, but I remember my first trip there when I went to Team Lab Planet. There's one moment where you have to climb up a thin waterfall. You are barefoot in water. Then you go into a pool that has lily pads projected on it that you can play with. I had this realization that if the payoff wasn't worth it, I would have been so upset at the friction. It existed on this relationship between what is asked of me and what I receive experientially. This is what I call a friction corridor of payoff. The experience has to match the friction or input, and then you are sublime. If the friction is too high and the experience is too low, you're rage quitting. **Jackson:** This applies to parties. **Reggie:** Nothing is worse than putting in so much effort for a party that is buns. **Jackson:** A party where you have to drive two hours, or Burning Man to take an extreme example—if it's a ton of friction and it pays off, it's the best party ever. **Reggie:** Best party ever. The environment we're in now is when something has no friction, but the experience is really high. That's called addiction. There is no friction to consume the digital life. **Jackson:** That is our digital lives. **Reggie:** That's our digital lives. There is no friction to consuming drugs, and the experience is incredible. That's why people can't break out of it. In the same way, there's no friction to consuming our phones—our current digital lives—and the experience is incredible. But that dopamine crash is really, really real. I think about that a lot. I did a meta on the experience piece, but what was the core question? **Jackson:** The question was how can technology objects make us feel? **Reggie:** Oh, that's right. **Jackson:** Your friction corridor is an interesting step towards that. **Reggie:** Something I loved about Yatu and Norm's USB Club is that the friction created an environment for intentionality. That intentionality then got shared. That feeling is very different than trying to find the good in Twitter. Because of the initial friction that everyone had to go through, the entire quality of the network was improved. The end result is a network that feels significantly better. It's like if everyone works out, then everyone gets the benefit of looking at hot people. It's pretty nice. But everyone first has to go through the personal friction of working out. **Jackson:** If everyone worked out, would this get into \*Invincibles\*—or what's it called, the Disney movie? **Reggie:** \*Incredible\*. **Jackson:** Yeah, \*Incredibles\*. If everyone is hot, is no one hot? **Reggie:** We get to focus on what's more interesting, which is personality, their sense of self, soul—all these things. ## [00:30:16] The Role Brand Plays in Technology Today **Jackson:** You have a line where you say in hardware, your brand is the promise of the thing that's coming right behind it. As we transition from talking about hardware to brand and culture, you've also talked about how in consumer software, there's almost a virtue in being brandless. You give the example of Instagram. Definitionally, it can't be too opinionated, or it limits its scale. My first question here is, why does brand still matter for technology and technologists, and especially for people thinking about software? **Reggie:** In another piece, I say that there is no progress where there's no narrative. Progress does not exist in a vacuum; it's the contextual nature of the narrative that we place it in. Brand, at a very fundamental level, is about symbolism and narrative—some sort of interplay between the two. The cheapening of software means a more crowded, noisy environment. It's going to fill the airwaves with static. If you can't sing a really tight melody, if you can't sing a bop, if you can't give someone a really tight story, you're equally going to be lost. It's almost like, the first question is: do you care for any type of resonance? If the answer is no, and you're just doing it for yourself, then that's fine. But if you're a venture-backed software company and you're expecting some set of scale, brand can't be an afterthought. I also think the interplay between brand, distribution, and design are all in simpatico. I tweeted that all these things are the same practice and maybe we shouldn't even break up these jobs. **Jackson:** Most of technology does not agree with or at least has not internalized that view. Brand, distribution, and design—they would not view those as the same things. **Reggie:** 100%. Design is determined through the understanding of distribution. Eternal was a media company and an AI games company. What's funny is media—let's say, just video—moves very differently than distributing a game. I think eventually there'll be some kind of legal case on this. What you see in gaming is it's all paid ads, and it's actually advertising mostly speculative features, which is dubious. What they're doing is determining if they should build that thing off of the resonance of that speculative feature ad, because they know top of funnel is really, really critical. That's the cleanest example of distribution-determined design. They know that this is the only way that they're going to be able to distribute this product, and the design is a direct reflection of the performance. **Jackson:** Purely market-driven design. Completely. **Reggie:** Now, I don't think that's necessarily the best way to get to certain outcomes, but just to stay in hardware land, this is an object that you have to sell. We have a lot of case studies around how to put narrative to objects, fashion being the best one. The clothing represents the narrative and lifestyle depicted in that brand. So you have this perfect triangle of design, brand, and storytelling that is then getting distributed through multiple sales channels. That's how they're standing out as a commodity. Not to make fun of the Steve: they sell shoes; it's a commodity. I think the same is true when you have peak optionality and you're wrestling against a hyper-object like this. **Jackson:** Or you're inside the hyper-object of your software. **Reggie:** Or you're inside the hyper-object and you're just cutting through static. ## [00:34:30] Successful Narratives in Crypto **Jackson:** It's interesting. That makes me think of crypto. One observation I have is that crypto feels like the one area of software where brand is actually incredibly important, or at least internalized as being very important. We're at FWB Fest, which is a lot of things, but also a crypto conference. You've observed that people sometimes don't know how to package crypto, in part because no one person can own it. Thus, the narratives become insular or scattered. You've even talked about this in the context of the McLuhan idea of identity through violence, where the inside wants to maintain the identity and the outside attacks it. With all of this as a backdrop, we're at an interesting time in mid-2025 where crypto is really working in some ways, at least on a monetary and speculation side—maybe more than ever. Some of the more cultural, brand-oriented, or artistic narratives seem lost in crypto. Is there a path for crypto to either own these narratives or at least widen the spectrum beyond the core monetary speculation? Can it get back to these ideas that people at this event were so interested in—the creative empowerment side, the artistic side, etc.? **Reggie:** That's a complicated question. We can always start by looking at what seems to be going right, in speculation and outside of it. Going back to the common grace thing, what is beautiful and makes me really excited about crypto is actually one of the more boring ones : stablecoins. Stablecoins are these really beautiful objects that decrease anxiety for folks dealing with monetary systems that are not working right. If my local currency is getting absolutely hammered, I can, without immigrating, buy into the financial system of America with no blockers. I struggle to think of anything better that crypto could do than that from a very nationalist perspective. That really excites me. The narrative there is really clear, and it's a deeply American narrative : this is the land of opportunity. Opportunity has a presupposition of baseline safety. There's no opportunity where you're not baseline safe. Being able to buy into and interact with that financial safety is a really powerful, clear narrative. The other narrative, which I have mixed feelings about, feels really clean. It's the Polymarket prediction narrative : you claim to know the future, so put your money where your mouth is. That's a really easy thing for someone to grok. **Jackson:** Speculation as a medium. **Reggie:** Speculation as a medium. That's not a hard thing for people to understand. What becomes really hard to understand is the same thing that makes new hardware hard compared to the iPhone. If I am currently receiving all the music in the world for 13 bucks a month, or getting all the images in the world for free, and this new system pulls me into something that doesn't have the same supply side and tells me I need to pay more for less, that's a really hard gamble if you don't have a strong narrative. Early versions of this creative narrative were about purchasing into access, this closeness narrative, this projection of being a superfan and creating some sense of identity. I don't think those have played out very well, but we can look at the ones that are working. The FWB one was interesting because it was a reflection of the internal. It was less about pulling in someone who's not dealing in crypto—for example, my favorite musician, MkGee--and being like, "Let me give you crypto so I can prove to you I'm a superfan." The counter was always there : just show up to a show. What FWB and DAOs did, which I'm still personally excited about even though the meta isn't for them, was gather and come inward, focus on what is right here, and then create some set of rituals around that. We're always longing for community, and that created a really simple narrative. We're going to gather because we're already around this object, Ethereum, and we're going to make that personal to us and then see if we can throw some arrows out into the ether and find new things. **Jackson:** And those narratives take longer to incubate. **Reggie:** We look at the timelines for previous technologies to scale, but we don't critique them enough for their simpleness. Instagram is amazing. Its cultural impact is insane. Still, at its core, it was about scaling a shared photo network. What is at the core of Ethereum is significantly more complex than that. Thinking that it's going to have Instagram's rails of scale is a little silly. What probably disheartens some people—but is still something to be proud of—is that we've created a deeply shared infrastructure level that traditional finance institutions can't even deny anymore. That's quite powerful. When I spoke here two years ago about the irrelevancy of crypto and how we can be relevant again, it was really about a set of values and understanding our referential objects. This is a financial infrastructure project. If TradFi is already bending to our will, I think we can have a lot of hope that we're going to bend other institutions that will have to get on similar financial rails. There's a lot of hope and excitement that people should have. ## [00:41:30] Crypto as a Mirror **Jackson:** At the beginning of the conversation, we talked about technology as a mirror, and you included crypto in that. Intuitively, to me, crypto has always felt like this weird, strange thing, especially in contrast to AI. In many ways, AI has been the eternal goal of computing since the 1940s. Crypto is this alien thing. Do you think crypto is still a mirror? Is it a mirror in a different way, or is it something else? **Reggie:** No, it's a really great mirror. I wrote an essay in college about the first time in history we put a ruler's face on coinage, which I think was in Rome when they put Caesar's face on the coins. What that did was tie together the nonstop transaction layer of a people to the authority of that same people. It wasn't a separate system. Instead, it was… **Jackson:** Ordained. **Reggie:** Exactly. It's ordained top-down, as in, "I am giving you the ability to transact." What crypto allows through a token launcher—as silly and fraught as those are—is for you to be Caesar. **Jackson:** Right. **Reggie:** Which I think is really interesting. That's extremely profound. And it doesn't have to be about personal identity, like putting my face on a token. It can be a symbolic representation of ideas. A token can symbolically represent artists, which is kind of what Zora is on. A token can symbolically represent a charity permissionlessly, and you can send those fees to that charity. The design space is still so underexplored. One of my critiques of tech people at large is that they're not very reference-driven and they don't read that much. If you don't have these offshoots, you're just cycling in your own mind. The reason I love writing is because you get to stand on the shoulders of giants. The reason I love technology is because you get to stand on the shoulders of giants. When you pull those things forward from the past—to your point on AI being the goal of computing—in the 80s, Alan Kay at the newly formed Media Lab was working on putting AI into Looney Tunes characters. You can look at that story in Stewart Brand's \*The Media Lab\*. **Jackson:** There are no new ideas. **Reggie:** There's no new ideas. I'm telling everyone, just go into technology books from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and you will find the next Coinbase or whatever it is just sitting there, waiting for you. It's waiting to be excavated. This is another thing from \*What Technology Wants\*. These ideas occur simultaneously when they need to happen, but they are waiting to be dug up. ## [00:44:39] American Myth & West **Jackson:** I want to zoom out before we wrap up. You wrote a piece recently on myth in America that I really enjoyed, where you reflect on this notion that America is built on freedom. There's a specific bit at the end when you say, "When in doubt, when having to bet on the new myth formation, look West. The odds are always good in the West." My question is, what is captured spiritually, energetically, and even verbally in that idea? What does West capture? **Reggie:** West, particularly from an American context, is always about the edge. It's always about the frontier. I don't think it's a coincidence that all the new city ideas, minus maybe one, are happening in California. If the history of the Californian city projects of the past 20 years is any sign, that's not really where I would want to put a new city, respectfully, just from my politics. I actually got this from my father-in-law, just to give a shout-out to Gary. What has happened is that where previously the locus of power was centered around the Atlantic century, the 1900s was about the Atlantic. It was World War I, World War II, the European theater, and New York and D.C. as these power holds, coordinating with Europe to carve up what the world was going to look like. Like any other time, we were asleep. The scrappy kid with a lot of drive and a totally different political framework was China. More and more, we've seen Europe become a summer playground for rich Americans. The locus of power has shifted to San Francisco and away from New York and LA, maybe as a soft cultural power center. It's about Shenzhen, it's about Beijing, it's about Taiwan, and we're in the Pacific century. To me, the West not only represents the frontier of America and where all the new things are happening, but it also represents the theater of competition. Previously, the competition was on the ideals of the new world and post-World War II authority. I don't want to be a scary person, but I think all the new conflict that will arise in this century will be in the Pacific, and it's going to be over the same questions of authority. AI acts as a meta-Cold War. Where the Cold War was previously nuclear—the post-World War II nuclear race between Russia and the US—now it's 100% a race between US AI and China, DeepSeek. As for me and my children, I never want to be a previous world power. That's why I've been focusing on myth and the West. ## [00:47:56] Personal Myth **Jackson:** On a more personal level, around myths, there's an excerpt from a Joseph Campbell book you quote. It's Campbell and Moyers. Campbell says, "I don't listen to other people's dreams." Moyers says, "But all these myths are other people's dreams." Campbell says, "Oh, no, they're not. They are the world's dreams. They are archetypical dreams and deal with great human problems." I know when I come to one of these thresholds now, the myth tells me about it—how to respond to certain crises of disappointment or delight or failure or success. The myths tell me where I am. On a more personal level, I'm curious how you think about myth, the character you are in your own story as part of a larger story, and how it grounds you and helps you dream. **Jackson:** Easy questions. **Reggie:** Easy questions. **Jackson:** The reason I ask you this is you seem to be more attuned to this than the average person I know. **Reggie:** I appreciate that. I don't know if it's true, but I appreciate it. I recently turned 30 and recently crossed one year married. As you mentioned, Eternal was acquired. Luca and I are navigating what our professional lives are about to look like and also processing what was the majority of my 20s working on that company. I've been spending a third of my day in theology. My wife and I are reading through Genesis. What's interesting about Genesis is that for the Christian, it's both historical and ancient history. Ancient history is steeped in symbolism and is not always a perfect, literal narrative. **Reggie:** Right. **Reggie:** What is deeply important about Genesis is creation, the fall of man, and how we reckon with those things. I've come to understand that what you believe about where you're from and where you're going determines a lot about how you act day-to-day. For a while, I was not ashamed, but I didn't want to rep being from Pennsylvania. **Jackson:** Right. **Reggie:** I remember having a clear moment of, "No, wait, I am from the Poconos." And I actually do love being from the Poconos. That's important to me. That has unlocked a lot of love, not only for the Poconos, but for my parents and what they did by moving us from New York to the Poconos. I was rejecting a lot of my personal creation myth. I was really blocked from that, and unblocking that was really powerful. David Lynch has this thing that inside all of us is this pool of creative energy. I used to think that was some woo-la-la nonsense. But more and more, this is actually so spiritually correct. **Jackson:** We all do that in little micro ways. Maybe it's where we're from, maybe it's our parents. **Reggie:** Exactly. And that honestly got unlocked reading \*The Timeless Way of Building\* by Christopher Alexander. **Jackson:** One of the rules of my podcast is Christopher Alexander has to be mentioned every single time. **Reggie:** Going back to personal myth, it was an embrace of the personal myth that is formed by my parents and a really deep love and respect for that. Then there's the spiritual myth : realizing that I have accepted that I'm a sinner and that I need redemption. What that does is it frees you from the idea that you can work your way to salvation, which is impossible. It also changes the way that you look at technology. To understand that these hyper-technical attempts to make all things right is folly. It's vanity. This is how I was able to get to the idea of why people start with fear-mongering. It's to accumulate authority for themselves, which is not about solving the issue. It's fundamentally not about solving the issue. So then you're left with that. For the second half of the equation : where are you going and how does that come back? Something that immediate gratification culture struggles with is the idea of timelines. My parents grew up very poor in New York. I'm sure there are dreams that they had that they didn't tell me. But at the core, my father learned a trade and became a short-term missionary. My mom dropped out of grad school when she got pregnant with my younger brother, and they moved to the Poconos. That is a really deep, radical act of generational thinking. It put them in the context of a longer timeline to give their kids the opportunity to go and do further radical things. A lot of the reasons why people our age struggle with getting married early or having kids early is from a very deeply selfish perspective. It's also from this lie that they have to themselves around the financial necessity to have kids. "If I can't pay for my kid to go to Chapin or Horace Mann, their lives aren't worth having." Which is insane. It's absolutely insane. And so the final myth is, "What am I really doing here?" To me, it comes down to this generational approach of what I can give my kids, which is not financial, although that's part of the equation and I'm not minimizing that. But it's about a deep sense of love for themselves. It's about a deep sense of love for country, for God, for their neighbor, and understanding that that is going to have this radical through-line of whatever the Jameses become. And that can only be rooted in a broader reformed theological framework that God is going to come and renew all things. **Reggie:** Right. ## [00:54:16] Vision **Jackson:** My final question is perhaps, on the surface, a little in contrast to myth and looking back. It ties back to design, and I think it all circles together. You talk about creative direction a lot. This is from a piece where you're talking about creative direction for the U.S., but I think it applies broadly. You say, "Being a visionary actually requires an isolation of the senses. Oftentimes the mode of processing anything has to do with using as many data points as necessary to do so, thus taking in all information from all receptacles. You hear something, you turn. You remember something, you pause. This stops us, changes the course of, and alters all potential actions." You go on to say, "A visionary sees," and, "A lot of future thought is actually seeking to act as past correction." And then finally, in all caps : "RIP OUT THE REAR VIEW MIRROR, TUNE IN, DROP OUT, EYES OPEN. IT'S VISION TIME, BOY." Why is seeing ahead, perhaps even with blinders on per your imagery, so foundational to design and, ultimately, to progress? **Reggie:** I think we have a really hard time imagining the future. It's really hard to see beyond the context of our environment. Maybe that was the one thing Kamala got right (laughs). We have this natural inclination to fix things... **Reggie:** Which is actually a really good habit. **Reggie:** But when you have to go out and really shoot an arrow in a direction, it takes a relinquishing of responsibility for all these other things so that you can shoot that arrow with its intended value. For better or worse, Elon is really great at this. Sam Altman is really great at this. Steve was really great at this. It's because they were able to tune out everything else in order to have that singular mission : "We are going to get a computer in every pocket." What's crazy is that the idea is so strong, it's hard to even think about breaking out of having a computer in every pocket. This goes back to the "standing on giants" thing. Their myth formation actually becomes a blocker to new myth formation, so you have to kill your heroes. That's been a really big thing I've been trying to give my younger friends : critique Virgil Abloh, because there are flaws in that thinking. Critique Jony Ive, because there are a lot of flaws in that thinking. If you can't critique those people, you can't see past them. We have to see past some of these current realities so that there is a new future to get to. You know what the worst part of stagnation is? It's boring. We're living the same life that we lived 50 years ago. There's nothing worse than that. The best part about progress is that it's genuinely fun. It's a genuinely good way to live life—to improve—because now you have to deal with new sets of realities. That's fundamental. That's what we're here to do : deal with new, fundamental realities. But you have to make those realities. **Jackson:** Thank you very much. **Reggie:** Thank you. **Jackson:** Thanks, guys. Thanks for coming. We'll see you out in the amphitheater.