Innovation Will Find a Way | Shimmy Says Ep. 32

Hey everyone, it's Shimmy, and welcome to another Shimmy Says. So here's what I got for you this week. You know, I wrote an article, uh, November 3rd over on Techstrong, it called Tech Heal Thyself.

It came out of a, I was reading a book review in the New York Times by a book, uh, a fellow named Tim Wu called The Age of Extraction. And in this book, Tim worked, I think in the Biden administration, in the antitrust, uh, division of the Department of Justice, uh, was saying that big tech has transitioned from innovation to extraction. It's not that they're necessarily innovating anymore, but they're about extracting value and extracting data, which is value from all of us, and that that's where it's at.

And that we need the government to step in here. And, you know, maybe with some strong antitrust, uh, legislation or moves, try to move us off this age of extraction. And I read it, and I, I'll be honest with you, I, I thought to myself how quaint we think the government's gonna help us, because in today's world, you know, the government has traded their referees striped shirt to wear the jersey of the home team.

And we can't think that the government actually is in bed with the tech bros. They own a piece of the action here. So we can't be looking to the government to help us out of this conundrum.

And why is it a conundrum? I'll, I'll tell you why. It's a conundrum.

Because we are letting seven, eight, or nine companies, we're letting seven, eight, or nine companies dictate to us what we're doing and how we're doing it. They are controlling the, the narrative. They're controlling the technology.

They're controlling everything we're doing. Now, look, I've been in tech a long time. We, we've seen that we, you know, one of the great stories about tech is you could get two people in a garage and start the next Apple, or the next Microsoft or the next Google.

It's happened before and it should be able to happen, happen again. But what I fear is, in today's world where we have AI and we have robotics, or physical AI as we're calling it, or we, and we have, you know, the right on the horizon, quickly following in the rear view mirror quantum, that the barriers to entry here is so hard that we're not allowing for new growth in the forest. We're not allowing the next batch of innovators to start the next group of great companies that'll carry the, the this forward.

Where's the next Google? Where's the next meta gonna come from? If you need hundreds of billions of dollars to play at this level?

And I thought some more about it even after I wrote the article. And you know what, here's what I'm convinced of, though. Innovation will find a way.

I'm reminded of, if you've ever watched the original Jurassic Park movie, you know, and Jeff Goldblum's in the, in the laboratory where they're showing them how they, uh, you know, engineer the DNA of these dinosaurs, and they say, well, don't worry, all the dinosaurs are female, so they can't breed. And Jeff Goldblum says, life will find a way. And sure enough, if you know the story in Jurassic Park, they figure out how to breed.

And we've seen it in real life. These stories do happen. There's a term for it, scientific term for it.

I don't remember right now, but I do believe innovation will find a way. And what I mean by that is that we, people who are smart, people who are innovating, people will find a way to, to make a better mousetrap, to be more nimble, more agile than these be myths are, um, What we need to encourage it, right? Right.

Now, as I said earlier, with these eight or nine companies, we're watching the biggest technology consolidation of power, not just in technology, but a consolidation of power that we've ever seen. And it, and it's like this circular financing. Microsoft invest in OpenAI.

OpenAI then gives that money back to Microsoft for Azure hosting. So the money just really doesn't even change hands. It just, it goes through a circle thing.

Uh, Google and Anthropic doing a similar thing. Amazon's involved in there, Oracle and Nvidia swapping it back and forth to their own exclusive stuff. It's a merry-go-round, but it's, it's, uh, hundreds of billions of dollar, trillion dollar merry-go-round where each one of these eight or nine customers plays different parts in different parts of the movie.

They play different roles today. They're a customer later, they're a partner tomorrow, they're an investor and it's in all of, but it's a small circle of just their businesses. And as I said, don't hold your breath waiting for Washington to break this up.

Washington's part of it, right? So at the end of the day, what's, what are we going to do here? Innovation will find a way.

It always has and it always will. Um, I'll give you some more examples. IBM, even though they invented the pc, really didn't see it.

The, the rise of it and the impact of it, and they missed it. No clear Nokia and Blackberry didn't see the iPhone coming until they got run over Google. Didn't think of a Facebook face.

Facebook didn't think of TikTok. TikTok disruptors always show up where you least expect them from a blind spot. It's the place the giants aren't looking.

We saw it just a few months ago with deep seek it, it shook, it shook the heart of our AI oligarchy here in America. It was really, was sort of a Sputnik moment, right? Because the audacity of these guys to do it cheaper, faster without the whole Cadillac around it.

But this is, I think, the future that we have to look for. We need to find, you know, people are gonna figure out how to do these things smarter, faster, and leaner. And when they do, I think the market will reward them because no matter how hard the tech bros and the oligarchs try to hold it in their hands, the tighter they squeeze, the more it is like sand going through their fingers.

They, the harder they squeeze, the more the sand runs out. But make no mistake between AI and robotics and quantum, we are on the fifth wave or a fifth industrial revolution. But this revolution, like ones before, won't necessarily be won by the biggest factories.

It'll be run by what, how people rethink what a factory even is, what it does and how it works. And to me, the biggest counterweight to all of that today is open source. Open source has gone through its own revolution, right?

I remember in the two thousands, early two thousands, most enterprises had a no open source policy. Ludicrous. Today, 99% of enterprises use open source.

So it means using open source, source synthetic data, it means decentralizing compute. So we're not just dependent on these huge AI factories that the mag seven or the eight or nine are, are going to be using. These are the tools of the new rebellion.

Go a little Star Wars on you here, right? We've gotta rebel against the empire. These are the tools of the new Rebel rebellion.

The ways are, we've gotta be small, but nimble innovators who outthink and can outrun run in between the giants. So given that, right, how do we all not become slaves to the, to the big eight or nine? How do we help the rebellion in our own way, you know, without becoming X-Wing pilots or something.

Well, I got a couple of shimmy rules here for you on how to do that. Number one, double down on open source. You use open source today, use it more.

Support your open source project. Support your maintainers. Support your foundations that support open source.

Because at the end of the day, open source access isn't just fair, the right thing to do. It's fertile ground for the breakthroughs that will free us from the oligarchy. Second, push for interoperability.

Don't be satisfied with proprietary walled garden type of ecosystems or walled garden, uh, platforms. Don't lock ideas behind these walled gardens and closed APIs. Demand open APIs as much as you demand open source.

'cause when systems connect, innovations compound. Third, invest locally and creatively. Not every startup needs a trillion dollar valuation or even tens of billions of dollars.

Some of the most world-changing ideas started the side projects, as I said, in garages and dorm rooms and coffee shops, right? Some of them were kind of way out there. Look at some of the things DARPA has financed over the years.

When they originally financed them, they were way, way out. But you know what? Some of those crazy ideas wind up making new markets and setting new revolutions.

Finally, last de shimmy's advice on this one education. The next AI unicorn could come from just a kid in high school, not a VC in Palo Alto. And let's, let's talk about that.

The, this revolution probably won't be in Silicon Valley. 'cause Silicon Valley's already bought and paid for by these eight or nine people. It's just as likely to happen in Austin or Boulder or Tel Aviv or Bangalore or Raleigh or any town or anything out there who, you know, with the democratization of this, with open source, it could really happen anywhere, guys.

Innovation is not a spectator sport. You gotta get involved. It's a team game.

And the more of us that are involved in it, the better The odds are that someone will score and break through the eight or nine stranglehold that we have around us now with, with these new technologies, if we treat AI and robotics and quantum like a walled garden and innovation will die. But if we treat it like an ecosystem of interoperability, it'll thrive. So at the end of the day, we can't count on the government.

We can't count on the big eight or nine to be benevolent benefactors here, right? We need to heal ourselves, not with more hundred billion dollar deals or government programs, but with creativity, with curiosity, with courage. Innovation doesn't wait for permission.

It doesn't need a trillion dollar cloud. It needs room to breathe. It needs room to experiment.

And his history and Hollywood remind us whether it's evolution or innovation. Life finds a way and so does innovation. I'm Shimmy.

Thanks for tuning in and keep building the future. Says, says.