I just joined Warpcast. You can find my profile, here.
At first glance, Warpcast is going to look a lot like X. But instead of tweets, you cast. There are also various topic channels, similar to how Reddit works. But the most important difference is that Warpcast is a client for the Farcaster protocol, which is a social network built on Ethereum. This means that it is a decentralized social network.
You won't see of any this if you decide to sign up. All of the esoteric crypto things are hidden in the background. But it's there. And it ultimately means that, as a user, you get to own your online identity and whatever content and following you create. Meaning, you can take it with you if you decide you no longer want to use Warpcast and instead want to access the network through another client.
It also means that software developers now have a real incentive to build things on top of the protocol, because unlike with a centralized service like X, they can be confident that they won't get the rug pulled out from underneath them. And herein lies the feature that will ultimately lead to an enormous amount of new ideas and innovation.
In real estate terms, you can think of developing on top of a centralized service like building within a theme park owned by a single company. The theme park might want you to build on their land, right now, but if at some point it no longer suits their business needs, they can always change the game on you.
On the other hand, building in a city on land you own outright is a lot like developing on top of a decentralized service. Sure, you need roads and municipal infrastructure to service your land (think of these like the above protocol), but you generally don't need to worry that the city might wake up one day and remove all of this important infrastructure. It's a given. And that's a fundamental difference, even if the buildings might look the same in the end.
Venture capitalist Fred Wilson once explained it in this way, “don’t be a Google bitch, don’t be a Facebook bitch, and don’t be a Twitter bitch. Be your own bitch.” What he meant by this is that if you build on someone else's land, then you're opening yourself up to being their bitch. What you want to be is your own bitch. And similar to how our cities work, this is the potential of decentralized services.
As I write this post, I currently have 6 followers on Warpcast. If you'd like to be number 7, you can follow me here.
Remember Wuhan? Well, it turns out that it is emerging as an important hub for driverless vehicles. Right now it is home to the largest fleet in the world:
In Wuhan, 500 robotaxis, mostly run by Baidu, China’s rival to Google, recorded more than 730,000 ride-hailing trips last year. That compares with combined orders of more than 700,000 last year in Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles, according to Waymo, the self-driving car developer of Google’s parent company Alphabet. Waymo told the Financial Times that it had “a couple of hundred cars” in each of the three fully autonomous zones.
One of the things that is allegedly helping Chinese companies is that they have access to more data. The networks of cameras and other infrastructure that make Chinese cities the most surveilled in the world are, coincidentally, also good for training machine learning models.
This has some industry experts speculating that China could reach an autonomous vehicle "tipping point" sometime around 2027. Meaning, the technologies will be significantly safer than human drivers (at least 10x) and ready for mass adoption.
I don't know if this is the right timeline. There have been many forecasts made over the years. But I do know that competition is good for progress and that having a rival can be an important motivator. And right now, this is yet another example of the US vs. China.
Google just opened up its first ever retail store. It's in Chelsea in New York City at the base of its offices in a building that the company owns. The space is about 5,000 square feet and it occupies a full city block.
A collaboration with New York-architect, Suchi Reddy, the retail space is deliberately different from what you'll find at an Apple store (though the broad intentions are arguably similar). Instead of sleek, metallic and futuristic, the focus here was on creating a warm and inviting space that feels more like a home. (Note the pale woods.)
The approach is intended to make a statement about the role that technology, or at least Google's technology, should play in our lives. It is about tech servicing humanity and not the other way around.
FastCompany has a good article, here, that explains all of this.
It is interesting to watch these spaces evolve into what we are now calling experiential retail or commerce. If you read the FastCompany article you'll read about the work that Johns Hopkins University is doing on neuroaesthetics, which is the study of how spaces and aesthetics affect our bodies. That is how finely tuned these spaces have become.
And it's kind of what you need to do today. Consider the example of Microsoft's retail stores, which launched in a clear attempt to mimic the successes that Apple has seen with its stores. They even looked somewhat similar. But then last year Microsoft announced that the company would be closing all of its stores.
Why? Part of the problem is that they were too focused on just selling Microsoft products. And that, it would seem, can't really be the main objective anymore. You also need to consider the experience. What story are we telling about our brand with our space, and is it compelling enough to standout?
P.S. The first image at the top of this post is of their Google Translate booth. You walk in. Say something. And Google translates the hell out of it for you.
Photos: Google