Podcasts by Ribbonfarm Studio
Thinking out loud about the future of the world, as shaped by technological serendipity
studio.ribbonfarm.com
Further podcasts by Venkatesh Rao
Podcast on the topic Gesellschaft und Kultur
All episodes
Welcome to the World of Tomorrow from 2021-04-07T00:40:13
In this episode of Breaking Smart podcast, I want to explore what it means to say that Covid has accelerated everything. If so, it means we’ve done some time travel relative the old timeline. As...
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Demiurgical Businesses from 2021-03-12T22:41:04
In today’s episode of the Breaking Smart podcast, I want to discuss a concept I call demiurgical businesses that I think goes beyond the 3 kinds you may be familiar with: lifestyle, customer-dri...
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Mars and the Meaning of Money from 2021-02-20T00:52:20
Space exploration has an unusual side effect: giving us a sense of the value of money on earth.
1/ The Perseverance rover, shown touching down on Mars in the photo below, cost abo...
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Anti-Network Effects from 2021-01-23T00:30:27
In this first 2021 episode of the Breaking Smart podcast, I want to talk about something that’s been on my mind a lot lately that I call anti-network effects.
1/ As I am recording t...
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Complete 2020 Roundup from 2020-12-25T19:42:26
Well, I guess 2020 is a wrap. I’m going to do a quick round-up of everything I published on Breaking Smart this year, and try to tease out the larger themes, but obviously no look back at the ye...
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Involvement Capitalism from 2020-12-05T01:24:08
Welcome back. The Breaking Smart newsletter and podcast is starting up again after a very refreshing 6-week break.
I want to kick off the post-break programming with a podcast on a big qu...
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Fifth-Generation Management from 2020-09-25T21:56:50
In today’s episode, I want to talk about an idea I call fifth-generation management.
1/ Fifth-generation management is an emerging style of management we don’t know much about because it ...
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The State of (Business) Play from 2020-08-21T23:57:10
For today’s episode, I want to share an out-take from my consulting work, something I think might be interesting for anyone working in the technology industry. It’s a set of 20 questions that ca...
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Thinking Out Loud: Year One from 2020-07-24T20:42:22
A special episode, an audio roundup/summary of the last year’s podcasts. I cover the 19 episodes I did starting in June last year. A year of thinking out loud.
* The inaugural episode riff...
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The Next Experiments in Elitism from 2020-07-10T22:23
In today’s episode, in honor of Bastille Day next week, and Fourth of July last week, I want to talk about the ongoing evolution in elitism, and the problem of how the emerging new elites can be...
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Big Moods, Little Moods from 2020-06-19T21:55:53
Today I want to talk about big moods, a phrase you may have seen on twitter, and also a related concept I made up called little moods.
1/ You may have seen the phrase “big mood” on twitter...
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From Story to Setting from 2020-05-29T22:52:37
In today’s episode, I want to talk about a new phase in the pandemic, marked by a shift in the role of the pandemic itself from foreground story, to background setting of other stories. I al...
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The Medieval Future of Management from 2020-05-08T23:10:24
1/ Today I want to talk about an idea I’ve been developing, which is that the future of the business world, post-Covid, and post software eating the world, looks surprisingly like the High Middl...
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How, What, and Where to Build from 2020-04-24T21:35:03
In which I shamelessly draft off Marc Andreessen’s It’s Time to Build essay and suggest an approach to how, ...
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Defaults and Defaults from 2020-04-03T22:01:52
The word default has two meanings: failure to fulfill an obligation, and a preselected option. We are finding out the hard way exactly how they are related.
Key points: Listen
Beyond Optimism and Pessimism from 2020-02-21T21:17:05
Hello and welcome back to the Breaking Smart podcast. In this episode, I want to pick up where I left off in my December 6 podcast, where we talked about Listen
Inventing Time from 2019-12-06T20:03:04
Today I want to talk about time, which is a subject I’m researching quite a lot these days. In particular I want to talk about two of the most-quoted lines in technology conversations that are a...
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Spacewalks and the Species from 2019-10-18T21:47:55
Two things happened this week. Last Friday, Alexey Leonov, the first human to walk in space (in 1965), passed away. And this morning, Christina Koch and Jessica Meir went on the first all-women...
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Charisma Neutrality from 2019-10-04T20:15:44
Today I want to talk about a possible emerging successor to net neutrality, which I call charisma neutrality, which I think is a plausible consequence of a very likely technological future: perv...
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The Direction of Maximal Derangement from 2019-09-27T19:21:12
In the original Breaking Smart essays, we used the idea of moving in the direction of...
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Like Riding an AI Bicycle from 2019-09-20T23:07:55
Today’s episode (~20 minutes) is about the idea of skills being like “riding a bicycle” and what that means when we are dealing with AIs.
1/ The idea of things being “like riding a bicycle...
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Technological Charisma from 2019-09-06T23:12:44
In this episode (21 minutes) I talk about the idea of technological charisma. What it is, how to create it, and the upsides and downsides of pursuing it.
1/ There are technologies that are...
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Investing in Your Ordinary Powers from 2019-08-30T18:53:19
This week’s Breaking Smart podcast (15 minutes) has to do with tapping into the things that make you ordinary. If that’s not enough, here’s me on the Listen
Towards Subtractive Social Media from 2019-08-23T19:33:55
This week’s podcast episode is on an idea I call subtractive social media. I didn’t do a transcript, just a few bullet point notes. The workflow for creating usable transcripts is still just too...
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Memes, Brands, and Missions from 2019-08-02T23:19:35
Today’s topic is brands vs. memes. I made a transcript as well, using Descript, which you can find below. Apparently I spoke 1751 words in...
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Planning to Start, Planning to Finish from 2019-07-26T20:30:47
This week’s podcast (12 minutes) is on a crucial difference, between planning to start, and planning to finish.
* We talk a lot about the difference between more and less planning, on the ...
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Following the Scenius from 2019-07-05T20:50:02
Hello from my new home in Downtown Los Angeles! This is another short, unrehearsed, unscripted, unedited, single-take 10-minute podcast episode. I think I’m going to be experimenting with this f...
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A Wabi-Sabi Technology Age from 2019-06-21T17:57:33
Since many of you have been suggesting for years that I do a Breaking Smart podcast, I figured I’d do a little experiment and try out the podcasting widget in Substack. If this works well, I’ll ...
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