0:15
Mark, nice to see you. Welcome to the show.
Search this video
0:16
Thanks for making the time.
0:16
Yeah, thanks for having me on.
0:18
I'm looking forward to this.
0:20
You've had a very very busy week and I imagine most weeks are very busy.
0:25
Perhaps this week busier than some, but before we get to perhaps current day, I wanted to flashback just a little bit in the course of doing research for this conversation. I chanced upon fencing.
0:35
Now, fencing I had seen in connection with your name, but I had no idea that you had been as competitive as you had been and I was hoping you could just describe a little bit your involvement with fencing and for people who don't know what makes fencing interesting or what made it interesting to you.
0:52
And I have follow-up questions, but I I I have taken two fencing instructional lessons.
0:59
This is maybe 10 years ago and was inspired to do so because of the writing of Bruce Lee of all things, but could you just describe your background with fencing and how you ended up competing?
1:10
This is probably one of the more interesting places to start an interview that I've ever done.
1:16
I fenced competitively when I was in high school.
1:17
It's not something I I did since I was like a little kid or something like that, but you know, I've I've always loved sports and and you know, just being active.
1:27
I like problems that you can solve intellectually, but I I I I also just think managing your energy and kind of being out there and being physical is just always been a really important part of my life and you know, so I I was looking for a you know, sport that would do this in the winter in high school, right?
1:43
So I I I did a bunch of running, right?
1:45
So I did cross country and I did tennis as well.
1:48
So I started doing fencing and I don't know.
1:50
I mean I I I didn't do it competitively for a super long period of time, but the the thing that I loved about it is it's obviously very physical and cardio taxing, right?
1:58
Just being kind of on your on your feet and kind of bouncing around.
2:03
It's also very very mental.
2:05
I mean I I have these memories when I was in my high school chemistry classes of like writing out sequences of moves that I wanted to try when I was doing bouts later after school that day and just like different things that you can do to win in multiple ways, right?
2:22
Basically, you know, try to you know, catch people off guard in one position.
2:26
It's like, okay, if they do parry you, then you're still in a better position.
2:29
You can get them on on the left or something or or if they don't, then then you then you get the touch.
2:33
So I I just I found it to be a very intellectual, but but a but a good a good sport.
2:36
I I was never that that good at it.
2:39
You know, I did it competitively, went to some state competitions and stuff like that, but I don't think I would have been good enough to do it at college, for example, but it's mostly it's a it's a fun thing to do.
2:50
The closest experience that I have is with Kendo.
2:52
I lived in Japan for a period of time and I did some Kendo and I think it's it shares quite a bit in common with fencing.
2:59
Of course, the techniques are are quite different.
3:00
The slashing movements predominate in Kendo, although you're allowed to stab to the throat if you're past a certain age, which is all a separate matter, but the idea of as they might say in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, this sort of position before submission is an interesting one, right?
3:16
So even if your first attempt fails, you're in a superior position to execute on your next move.
3:21
And it's always struck me that as much as people think of you as someone who studies or even predicts or looks at trends into the future, it seems like you have quite a background in studying the past and that's where I wanted to go next, which was classics.
3:38
It seems like you've spent quite a bit of time studying classics and I was wondering if there any books or any figures who stick out to you from that chapter in your life.
3:50
Maybe that chapter continues to this day, but if you could speak to that, I figured we'll use that as a segue to other things. I love classics.
3:59
I picked it up in in high school as well.
4:03
I started studying Latin because I was so bad at speaking French and Spanish.
4:08
So I I'm I'm very interested in in languages overall, but like the whole kind of thinking on your your feet and understanding like really quickly just I'm I'm actually I process things more methodically.
4:19
So so Latin was more my style because you don't have to speak it.
4:23
So you can just read it at whatever whatever kind of pace makes sense.
4:27
And then from there I got into Greek and and I I actually thought that when I went to college, my plan of time was to be a classics major.
4:32
I it turned out I took no classics courses at Harvard.
4:36
I I just I ended up doing psychology and computer science were were the two areas that that I focused on, but I just loved the discipline of of classics so much in the history.
4:44
I mean philosophically is sort of the underpinning of of kind of western thought.
4:50
I think it's super interesting, but I've also just been very interested in basically people who shape the way we live, right?
4:57
So the historical figures who I like learning about.
4:59
And so there's like a set of people like inventors, people who just create things and and change the world through that.
5:09
But I'm also very interested in historical figures who who kind of try to like invent or usher in new ways for for people to live.
5:20
people to live. So you know, I I I always thought you know, Augustus was a very interesting historical figure and I mean one of the things I mean he's controversial for a lot of reasons and you know, you can debate all the good
5:30
and bad, but one of the things that I thought was just really always stuck with me about what he what he did was when he basically stopped the wars, he you know, at the time in history, there wasn't really a concept of perpetual peace, right? It's like the
5:44
It's like the the concept of peace that they had at the time was like this is just the temporary period during which your enemies are too weak to fight you, but they're going to come back.
5:53
And and he basically like ushered in this notion of actually trying to convert a lot of the military towards other trades because he's like, all right, now we're trying to like be more peaceful.
6:04
We want to build a more positive sum economy.
6:09
Let's kind of do this in a way where we can get people doing more productive things and and I I always thought that that was just a really interesting historical thing and and in some ways has parallels today to some of the work
6:20
that that I think is going on in the tech industry around the whole creator economy, where it's like if you just think about how many people today basically do jobs that they have to that they might not actually like that much
6:32
because they're they're they're supporting themselves compared to where I I I think and hope that the world is going, which is just a a much more robust creative economy, where way more people can do things that are are kind of intellectually or physically interesting to them and and basically in in doing so build up communities around that and have enough kind of monetization and economy around that to to to kind of support that. That
6:53
That to me is is sort of like the modern version of of kind of how do you upgrade the way that people live and work in to to kind of fulfill human potential. So I don't know.
7:05
I think there are a lot of interesting lessons from the past.
7:06
I think you can also read into it too much, but I really enjoyed it when I when I studied it.
7:11
Where I'm going here across a broad spectrum is trying to and we are going to talk about the creator economy and and the potential of that and also questions around it and right now what I'm hoping to to learn more about are some of the influences and influences can take many forms, right?
7:30
One would be books and I want to ask this is from a profile in the New Yorker from 2010 and I remember this because I noticed it before I read it in the New Yorker at the time, which was for a period of time, I think the only book that was on your profile on Facebook was Ender's Game.
7:49
And I was wondering if you could It is a great book.
7:52
It was one of my favorites.
7:55
And I was I was hoping you could explain why Ender's Game and then if there any other books that you have in particular that come to mind, reread or say gifted to other people, what those might be.
8:07
But if we could start with Ender's Game since it is also a personal favorite of mine, I'd love to know why Ender's Game.
8:14
I actually don't think it has any unique significance.
8:15
I So I'm I'm surprised to hear that it was the only thing on my profile, but I do love it.
8:18
Um it's it's a great book and I think that kind of science fiction, not just exploring you know, certain technologies, but it's also a very compelling story and has good kind of moral lessons.
8:29
There are parts of the technology and things in it like the ansible for faster than light communication across the galaxy that we we had a project at our company that we named that we we we had code named that because we're all focused on communication.
8:45
So yeah, I can't really speak to it.
8:47
I'm not actually sure why it was the only thing on my profile.
8:50
That That Oh, just the only book.
8:50
Yeah, not the only thing.
8:54
I don't think it has some kind of unique significance in my life, but I love science fiction.
8:58
I mean I have spent a lot of time reading that.
9:00
I think it's often a good way to kind of understand what's possible.
9:05
what's possible. You know, in recent years, you know, for the last decade as I've gotten more into virtual and augmented reality and actually starting to build some of these things more, you know, I've certainly spent a lot of time
9:15
reading the science fiction and going back and revisiting a bunch of the books around that and it's it's just it's really fascinating to me to see kind of what people predict and what the sociological phenomena that that the people predict around this stuff as well. Are there any books in particular,
9:26
Are there any books in particular, writers in particular?
9:29
I mean one who comes to mind for me would be Ted Chiang, who's written a number of short story collections like Exhalation, which seem to include a lot of potentials kind of right around the corner, right?
9:39
Near near future speculative fiction.
9:43
Any books come to mind that you've done just in the course of of reading in the last few years, whether related to VR, AR or otherwise?
9:52
There are some that are just classics around this, right?
9:53
So I don't think at this point anyone who's in this space would read Ready Player One and Snow Crash. Snow Crash?
10:00
I think Rainbows End is one that is maybe not as commonly cited, but I think is is maybe the augmented reality sort of equivalent of some of the the seminal works that talk about virtual reality.
10:13
One of the things that I think is pretty interesting about all of these is that they they sort of posit that the that the world is in some sort of dystopian state.
10:22
And that I think is very different from from kind of how how I think about this.
10:27
I think that there are all these reasons why it is very valuable for people to be able to be present in another place, no matter what their their situation is.
10:35
I mean, I I you know, I kind of laugh about this sometimes when I I like you know, my my family has a you know, we we love going down to Kauai and it's beautiful there and you know, we'll we'll be out there and I'll I'll I love surfing.
10:48
I love doing a lot of stuff, but I also, you know, love being in in VR when I'm when I'm there, too.
10:51
So, it's obviously that's not you know, that's not some kind of dystopian thing.
10:56
But I I think that just if you look at like equalizing opportunity across the world, you don't have to be in some kind of dystopian situation to want to be present with another person who you care about or an opportunity that's better in another place.
11:07
So, that to me always struck me as a very interesting theme of that science fiction, but in terms of like exploring sociologically and technologically what's going to happen, I've always found it pretty fascinating.
11:18
Let's talk about long-term planning and long-term bets for a second.
11:22
I I find you particularly interesting in this respect because you're a founder CEO with sort of a lot of founder-driven control.
11:30
You're you're in a sense, you know, one of the last of a generation.
11:35
And you can make long-term bets.
11:35
And I know when we were chatting, I guess last week a bit, you mentioned having Correct me if I'm wrong, but like a 15-year road map for metaverse, right?
11:46
And what I'd love to ask you is how you manage say the short-term or the intermediate term with within the company with employees, right?
11:54
Because if you look at say Instagram, WhatsApp, the the bets paid off, but at the time there's a lot of scrutiny.
12:02
You know, the media sort of had a field day and by and large were wrong.
12:08
But I'm wondering since those types of bets are not necessarily obvious in the moment to everyone involved, how do you think about managing internally when you are making these long-term bets?
12:21
It's hard and I don't think that there's just one way to do it. Yeah.
12:24
You know, obviously people are psychologically much more interested and capable of focusing on a long-term outcome when they feel secure in the near term.
12:34
So, when there's a lot of near-term thrash or you know, prospects don't look good or the market is down overall, you know, even if that's not specific to your company, even if it's a kind of broader thing, I think that that that definitely strains people's time horizons. Yeah.
12:51
But I think that good leadership is you you you try to get people excited about where you're going.
12:56
You obviously you you you can't just ignore the the short term.
12:59
There's a a lot of stuff that we need to get done there and at this point, you know, it's a it's a pretty big company.
13:03
So, I mean, as one of our our board members says, we need to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, which is probably a simplification.
13:11
One of the things that I've sort of personally learned over the last, you know, 18 years of of running the the company is like I I remember when I was getting started feeling like you weren't understood kind of feels bad.
13:29
I think that there's there's a normal human impulse which is like you want to be understood.
13:33
I think that's that's partially why people want to express themselves and why communication is so important is like people at some level have this intrinsic desire to be kind of understood and belong and like feel like they're they belong with the people around them and obviously being in a state where you you're kind of something that you're trying to do is is kind of fundamentally misunderstood or that people don't believe in it can be tough.
13:58
But after going through a bunch of these cycles, I actually feel like I've trained myself to do to kind of see it the opposite way, which is if I'm doing something that feels too well understood for too long, then I feel like I'm just being complacent.
14:12
So, you know, after after having gone through a bunch of these different cycles, you know, a lot of things that are just not controversial today, but at the time people thought were crazy, right?
14:20
So, taking the the service initially from being a a college website to not, buying Instagram or WhatsApp, which were you know, billions of dollars for the acquisitions, but like at the time people were like, what?
14:32
You know, I I remember I I think it was Jon Stewart or or Colbert, but they did a segment that was making fun of the Instagram acquisition. It was like, what?
14:38
It's like, you bought Instagram for a billion dollars of money? Are you kidding me?
14:45
So, I think some of these things it's like you just you kind of go through a bunch of these and you you have the conviction to kind of push back on the on the world a little bit and say, okay, now we're going to we're going to get through this and and and come out, you know, 18 months, 24 months with something that we believe in.
14:59
And and after that happens a few times, you kind of understand that could happen.
15:03
I I think most people still will get more of these bets wrong than right.
15:06
So, it's not like, you know, I think it's obviously very important to not not get too overconfident with this.
15:12
But but at this point, I I kind of feel like if people fully feel like they understand what we are as a company and what we're doing, then I'm not pushing it hard enough.
15:22
And that actually now I'm at the point where like that feels bad to me.
15:25
So, I kind of like want to push us into the zone, which is like, okay, let's let's kind of constantly be doing something that can be doubted.
15:34
Because if we're not, then what are we doing? Right?
15:35
It's like we have this huge opportunity to to be able to, you know, do exciting things and and help invent things and create things for the world and if it's obvious to everyone that we're kind of going to be able to do each of the things that we're working on, then I don't feel like we're we're kind of making the most of what we need to do.
15:51
I'm not sure that that answers the original question around, you know, how do you get people through it, but I I actually think a lot of this how do you get an organization of 100,000 people through something is about managing your own psychology and about managing your team psychology. For sure.
16:04
You know, one of the things that I that I've always found is you can pretty much I think get an organization through and a team through almost any challenge as long as you can maintain good cohesion.
16:15
So, you know, the it's the external stuff that that doesn't bother me that much.
16:19
You know, people can criticize us.
16:21
I mean, I I obviously, you know, if there people I respect, I care a lot about that and want to want to make sure we do better, but it it doesn't it doesn't like make me not sleep at night. Mhm.
16:29
When our stock price goes down, that doesn't make me not sleep at night.
16:33
When there's a new competitor, that doesn't make me not sleep at night.
16:35
If there's an issue on my team and people aren't and there isn't good cohesion, then I'm not sleeping well until I resolve that. Yeah.
16:43
It goes back to the very first thing we were talking about with, you know, fencing, it's it's intellectual and you're managing your energy.
16:50
I I think like in order to get through these things and and and build big long-term things, you kind of just need to I I think you need to take care of yourself and you need to take care of your core team and then like that and and basically in doing so, you can I think lead a a pretty large organization through some pretty difficult times to do some pretty awesome stuff.
17:08
I think that it's intellectual, it's energy and it's about kind of training yourself to be uncomfortable.
17:16
Let's talk about the the training yourself to be uncomfortable or to become more comfortable with discomfort.
17:22
Does anything come to mind just in terms of managing your psychology?
17:24
For my own psychology, the way that I try to manage this stuff is I wake up in the morning and you get like whatever emails you have of like stuff that's going on in the world, right?
17:33
So, it's it's world events, it's team events, whatever trends we're we're seeing across our our products.
17:38
And often in there there's a fair amount of bad news and like new things that I need to absorb.
17:45
One of the things I've found that just just for kind of managing my my my myself is that if I try to just go straight into the day, it's like almost every morning when I wake up and like read read read through my my emails and get the news, it's like it's almost like getting punched with sort of like a ton of new context and it's like, okay, I need to like internalize this.
18:06
So, I found that basically doing something physical and and something that's like meditative to take my mind off of it for like an hour, so that I can reset and go do work is really important.
18:19
So, that's why, you know, things like foiling or surfing have been really important to me because, you know, when you're out there in the water, it's like pretty hard to focus on anything else, right?
18:28
It's I mean, it's like you when you're on the board, you you you're focused on making sure you stay on the board and don't mess something up.
18:34
And especially if you're if you're kind of towing or something like that, there's not a whole lot of downtime. Yeah.
18:40
I found that for my own performance, it's significantly better when I have something like that that's like meditative and and physical and and allows me to kind of output some energy and then I can come back in and it's almost like I'll have subconsciously settled all of the things that that have sort of all all the news that have happened in the world.
18:58
Now, it's like, okay, let's go deal with it. Yeah.
18:58
Now, obviously if if there's something that's really an emergency, I'm not going to, you know, go do a sport or something.
19:06
I'll I'll go deal with it and and obviously part of life is you you don't always get to control your schedule and and that's kind of how that goes, but you know, when I compare kind of how I do on the days when I kind of get to have some time to soak that in or or to to kind of have an outlet versus just like jumping right in, I I find I'm often like stewing in bad news or something and then I just I I like I'm not I'm not as productive.
19:27
So, I think that's sort of my own personal way that I try to to manage situations like this, but obviously a key part of this is like having an awesome team and and it's not it's not, you know, primarily about me at this point.
19:40
You know, it's a big company and we have awesome people who are who are running all these different groups.
19:44
So, I get that that what I'm what I'm saying kind of how I've worked out the system for myself isn't necessarily something that would work for a lot of other people.
19:53
I think that the the meditative palate cleanser makes sense though.
19:54
Especially if you're talking about things like foiling where the consequence of a lapse of attention on what you're doing has immediate penalties.
20:06
So, it's regulating in a sense.
20:06
Maybe I'm not strong-willed enough for like or or calm enough to just do straight-up meditation.
20:13
It's like I actually need to put myself in a situation where it's difficult to not focus on that thing. Yeah. But I don't know.
20:20
I mean I think part of this too, I mean I I do think managing energy is an is an interesting thing.
20:25
I mean some of the the the folks who I who I work with the company, they say this lovingly, but I think that they sometimes refer to my attention as the eye of Sauron.
20:32
In that basically you have this unending amount of energy to go work on on something and if you and if you like point that at any given team, you will just burn them.
20:41
But at the same time, right?
20:44
It's managing that so that way I can like manage my own energy and diffuse it well enough so that way it's like, okay.
20:50
I I have the thing that I'm focused on that that day and I it's it's really important to me that I can as as often as possible manage my schedule so I can actually focus on the things that I'm naturally thinking about.
21:02
I just think the engagement that you get of having like a immediate feedback loop around thinking about something and then going to getting to go talk to the people who are working on this is so much better than like going and scheduling a meeting that you'll have 3 weeks later when I mean maybe the topic will still be important, but it's not like what's going on at that time. Yeah.
21:18
Getting that balance right is an important thing for a sustainability for the organization as well. Yeah, for sure.
21:23
We may come back to to energy management.
21:25
We're going to touch a lot of subjects.
21:26
We're going to bounce from the professional to the personal and everything in between.
21:31
Let's touch on some things that are kind of top of mind or might be top of mind right now because I certainly have a lot of questions related to say the metaverse and a longer-term roadmap.
21:44
And you know, we we chatted briefly prior to this about engineering versus science problems.
21:48
So, I think I'd love to unpack that at some point, but let me ask a really specific question first and that's related to kinesthetic feedback and engagement, right?
21:59
So, one thing that struck me about Ready Player One, especially in the in the cinematic version, so the movie itself, is that you have this incredible tactile environment where they're grabbing objects and interacting with objects, feeling impact and so on.
22:13
But then you see them cut to an external shot of someone in a say trailer where where they wouldn't actually have that kind of feedback even though they have haptic suits in Ready Player One.
22:24
What do you see as kind of the roadmap for that type of interactivity?
22:29
The like the more I thought about this at the the more I realized well, surface level stimulation may not be quite as immersive as people would hope for.
22:39
Do we need to wait for some type of neuralink type of computer brain interface where we're actually stimulating the brain and not simulating, but actually producing sort of the perception of uh kinesthetic engagement.
22:52
How do you think about the future of that type of hardware and interaction?
22:57
So, I think that there's a pretty long arc there.
23:02
And it's also just pretty amazing how how good of a sense of presence you can you can get even with certain things being pretty raw or out of place, right?
23:10
The the original devices that we had for virtual reality didn't even have hand presence, right?
23:15
They just had basically the headset. And it had this wire.
23:18
So, you you kind of had this wire like wrapped around your neck because it it had to go to a computer to to power the thing.
23:23
And it just over like every year we basically like knock down one or two more barriers, right?
23:30
So, then we got Quest which it you got rid of the wire.
23:32
You got it so that now you could run virtual reality at you know, 1/50 or 1/100 of the compute power than what you have in a powerful desktop on on just a you know, with a mobile chip on your on your headset. Then we got hands.
23:46
And the first set of hands were basically controllers.
23:51
But now you're actually getting actual hand tracking with like all 10 you know, fingers being able to be tracked in real time.
23:57
You know, in the next version that's coming out, we have you know, sensors for your eyes so you can make realistic eye contact with someone in in virtual reality.
24:05
And you know, I mean just thinking about to what extent you can do without with some of this stuff.
24:10
I mean, think about all the Zoom calls that you've been on over the last couple of years during COVID.
24:14
There's no real eye contact over video conference. Yeah.
24:16
Cuz your your cameras are in different places.
24:18
So, and even without that, you know, it still gets you pretty far.
24:22
So, in in VR today, adding realistic eye contact, each of these things it's like you kind of almost don't realize that you're missing them and then when you have them, you're like, "Whoa, that's that's like a really core part of the the human experience is is being able to you know, make eye contact and hold eye contact with someone and like have that gaze.
24:40
So, I think you'll just add more things over time, right?
24:42
More realistic expressions, more realistic avatars, you know, going from from kind of cartoon and stylistic and fun to photorealistic and having having that work.
24:53
And then at some point I think you will get haptics.
24:56
And you know, the way that we kind of think about you know, haptic glove for example, you know, screens have resolutions, right?
25:00
You think about how many pixels are on the screen.
25:02
And you can actually think about haptics in your hand or anywhere else is basically also having a resolution.
25:08
It's like how many how many kind of you know, pinpoints can it make across your your hand?
25:12
And your hand is super sensitive.
25:14
So, it can actually you you your amount of resolution for haptics.
25:20
But when we first start getting haptics, they're not going to have that high of resolution, but it's still going to be amazing.
25:26
And then every year they're going to they're going to get better and better and better.
25:28
So, I I think that there's like quite a a far roadmap on this which is partially what makes it super exciting, right?
25:35
It's like you can have realistically a 15-year roadmap.
25:38
It's like, all right, what is it going to take to deliver the the kind of virtual reality presence that you want to be you know, feel like you're physically there with another person.
25:44
At the same time, augmented reality is a whole separate set of problems cuz now you're putting a hologram in the real world.
25:50
So, that's kind of a similar thing there.
25:52
But being able to just work on a project that's like a 15-year project where there's a lot of it is an engineering problem that you just need to go build.
26:00
But a lot of it is also unknown, right?
26:02
So, there's like six or seven key unknowns that we just have like multiple teams going out and trying to attack different different approaches at that.
26:09
I just think it's a it's a very fascinating and fun way to to make progress.
26:14
And of course, each year you're intercepting and launching a new product.
26:17
So, I find this to be some of the most exciting work that that I've ever gotten to be a part of.
26:20
And I hope that for you know, the rest of my career that I get to engage in more projects that are sort of you know, longer-term term oriented with this mix of engineering and science and kind of continual milestones.
26:33
I think it's just a great way to make progress in the world.
26:37
I'd love to ask some more questions about metaverse and also the recent announcement related to Instagram and NFTs.
26:45
Just to touch on that and then we're going to go back and fill in with some some backstory and of some family questions if you're open to that.
26:51
So, as I'm looking at the metaverse and have been observing fairly closely Web3 developments and NFTs and so on in the last handful of years, I've been thinking quite a lot about your long-term planning and then how you must think about sort of secondary effects, tertiary effects of these technological advances.
27:17
And then I've also thought about I think it was Andy Grove who had paired metrics.
27:21
So, you would have sort of like like a primary outcome metric that they were tracking and then they would look for kind of correlated impacts that they could track that were you know, undesirable or should be addressed in advance.
27:31
And I'll give you an example.
27:33
So, playing with Oculus, I was very impressed with the technology because I used a very early I don't want to prototype, but version years ago and the advances are really tremendous.
27:44
And I had an opportunity to chat with a friend of mine who unbeknownst to me at some point and I'm blanking on the exact game title, but he was something like second in the world or third in the world in mini golf. Huh.
27:56
And that was I want to say a year, year and a half ago.
27:59
Now he's not even in the top 500, right?
28:01
So, there's there's clearly a large demand for this.
28:07
The number of users is increasing rapidly.
28:09
And it's still early, right?
28:11
It's really really early. Yeah.
28:14
Now when I used the technology most recently and I had several ligaments torn in my knee.
28:20
So, I had the experience of actually engaging with it sitting on a couch which was fascinating because it was my first time not mapping out sort of the playing area and walking around.
28:31
So, I actually had the ability to test it as somebody who was sort of mobility restricted which was an amazing.
28:37
When I came out of the experience, it took a while for my eyes and brain to readjust to sort of the depth perception of objects around me.
28:45
And I was chatting with this this friend John.
28:47
He said, "Oh, yeah, you know, it takes about 2 to 3 months and then you adjust completely to that."
28:50
And I'm I'm wondering what types of societal changes, maybe physical adaptations you're tracking as more and more people come online and begin to spend more and more time using say VR.
29:06
The framework that you're talking about about having goals and metrics to track those goals and then counter metrics is is I think a really important one that we basically encode into all of our teams across the company, right?
29:17
They're basically things that we're that we're trying to that that we think are good if basically we can enable more connection or or more different things across the company.
29:28
But then there there definitely there there kind of counter metrics in all of these areas that we're that we're tracking to make sure that you know, we don't exceed or don't increase negative effects.
29:39
For VR specifically, the biggest issue that that people report is still this feeling of motion sickness.
29:46
And the the basic issue, just to to kind of break it down is your eye Now, eyes are not are not computers, but you can kind of think about it as a refresh rate, right?
29:57
Where it's like if if something changes in the world, it'll kind of take, you know, 5 to 10 milliseconds for different people for you to sort of recognize that.
30:05
And if you think about what's technically happening with with VR, basically you're you have to render this whole world continuously.
30:15
And if you basically if if if a person changes their head position or or eye position, then it expects the image to be different.
30:22
But then by the time that their saccade is is is done, which is, you know, what it's called, where basically you're you're kind of eye refocusing, if we haven't rendered correctly what you would kind of expect to be in that space, then it it it creates this real feeling of discomfort over time. Right?
30:39
And it and it kind of it's not like you miss one frame and you feel terrible for for most people, but it's over time if you're not doing that efficiently, then that creates this feeling that that it creates a kind of it's a real physical feeling of discomfort.
30:51
So, and this is partially why the early versions of of the VR headsets needed to be plugged into a computer because they needed to in order to be able to render a world that quickly, you needed a lot of computing power.
31:03
So, it's this it's this tremendous engineering challenge to now be able to do that so much more efficiently that you're doing that on a mobile chip, which is at 1/50 or 1/100 as as powerful as the desktop things, but get that to to work really well.
31:16
I would say that that problem is not fully solved yet, but it's getting better in every generation.
31:23
And people aren't computers and not everyone is the same and people have different sensitivity to this stuff.
31:28
So, you know, some people, if a headset is running at 60 frames per second, that won't bother them, but other people, I mean, at the other end of the spectrum, if a headset is running at 120 frames per second, they may still perceive some glitchiness.
31:41
And you know, for for most people, if you can get to 72 or 90, you're you're in pretty good shape, but you know, there are there are like outliers and people are not all the same.
31:49
And you know, at the end of the day, making this a technology that can be comfortable for basically everyone is going to be a really critical part of of making this happen.
31:56
So, that's probably the biggest effect that we see.
31:59
Some of the other stuff, like you mentioned, I think you just need some more kind of a longitudinal study. Right.
32:07
It's tough to exactly understand all the effects of anything right up front, but you want to be mindful of of that and and kind of and be open to the fact that what you're doing could have issues and that you want to improve those issues.
32:19
And you know, we try to research that stuff and and and basically try to continuously improve it.
32:22
But that's the biggest thing that we're tracking right now.
32:26
Looking at societal changes, we could look at that for a second and then we'll come back to Instagram.
32:29
You know, I've I've been very engaged in watching, say, Axie Infinity as an example, and play-to-earn in different different forums.
32:41
And it's been pretty mind-boggling to see, for instance, that there are so many players in the Philippines who are earning income that they can now impact large elections, right? As a constituent.
32:54
And I'm wondering how you see this developing.
32:57
And this is uh certainly Meta is going to be a primary player.
33:01
There are going to be other players, but where if we get to the point where, and please poke holes in this if you have a different view of things, but if we get to a point where there's almost a a universal basic income provided by the broad spectrum of jobs that you can have in the metaverse or online, what do you think some of the societal effects will be of that?
33:23
It seems to be certainly growing faster than I ever could have imagined, even though a lot of it is maybe not right in my backyard, but it's certainly on a global level, it seems to be expanding really quickly.
33:36
I'd love to hear you speak to that in any capacity.
33:40
I don't interpret this as a universal basic income.
33:45
I think what we're actually going to see is just the creation of a lot of different worlds that have different rules.
33:50
So, I think we'll we'll we'll kind of explore and and people will get to spend more time in in worlds that there are very different rule sets around, right?
34:00
Everything from from different physics, literally, to like kind of how how you can move through the space to, you know, different modes of governance, right?
34:08
So, you know, one thing that I think is pretty important and that I hope that we can build into the Horizon platform that, you know, it's it's the social platform that we're building, is the idea that, you know, anyone can create a space, but then spaces can be nested in other spaces, right?
34:24
So, you can basically create a, you know, a building or a store, and then that can be inside a city that that someone else creates.
34:32
And then there's the question there of, okay, well, how do you govern that? Right.
34:37
Who gets to say in what policies, who can enter it, how do taxes work, like what's the basic business model of that space, what are the design codes around like what what like what are you allowed to build there?
34:47
You know, all these different dimensions.
34:49
And basically, you know, the the physical world is I mean, there's there's a lot of it, but it is at the end of the day, you know, more finite than what we're going to have with the virtual world.
34:59
So, you know, not everyone can kind of get to be the mayor of of their own virtual space and see how that evolves.
35:05
But I think part of what we're going to get to see is you're going to have, you know, whether they could be, you know, young people in Philippines or anywhere else around the world, experimenting with basically creating worlds that are not just a single space or an experience, but but actually like an environment or a polity in a way that other people can can kind of be a part of.
35:25
And I think that there will be sort of pretty interesting innovation, you know, social and economic and and governance innovation as long as this gets designed in a good way.
35:34
So, I I guess more than any specific policy idea, I think this could end up being a a way to basically explore a lot of different ideas and and kind of see which of these different environments that evolve are going to be appealing to people in different ways.
35:48
I So, I I think that's going to be wild to watch play out.
35:52
And and it's one of the things that I'm I'm really looking forward to.
35:56
Are there any societal shifts or changes not necessarily catalyzed by Meta, but just that you see coming or plausibly coming that you guys are trying to get ahead of or think about just in terms of of mitigating problems later.
36:13
Is there Is there anything that comes to mind?
36:16
I'm not sure if this is exactly what you're getting at, but one big shift that I think is happening is the rise of distributed work.
36:22
I don't view that as a problem.
36:24
I think it's good because I mean, there's there's just a lot of research that shows that people's opportunities, social, economic, and otherwise are generally pretty anchored to physically where they are. Yeah.
36:34
And I think sometimes people draw this juxtaposition of there's like the digital world and the real world.
36:41
That's not actually how I think about it.
36:42
I think that there's a physical world and a digital world, and the real world is actually both. Yeah.
36:46
And increasingly, I think, people will use these technologies to be able to be present in places that they physically can't be.
36:56
And I think that that's really powerful, right?
36:58
I mean, it's like we're doing this podcast and we're not sitting next to each other physically, but it like feels like we're we're we're we're here and we're we're kind of having a a live conversation.
37:08
And then in the future, you know, maybe, you know, 5 years from now if we were doing this, I'll have AR glasses and, you know, hologram version of me will be on the couch next to you.
37:14
And I think that that that will be even better than what we're doing right now.
37:17
what we're doing right now. So, I think that through video chat, you can have moments where you feel present, but I think through things like virtual and augmented reality, when you can like have an office and someone can be walking through it as a hologram,
37:30
even though they're physically in a different place, I think that you'll just be able to much more naturally unlock more of the opportunities, both social and economic and and I guess other others as well, of being able to be around people and be present no matter where you actually are. So,
37:43
So, people will be free to to kind of live where they want, maybe where their family physically is, in a country that they grew up in, but they'll have all the opportunities that will be available around the world.
37:52
So, that I think is is awesome.
37:55
I think it's one of the most promising things about the future.
37:56
And one of the things that I'm trying to do is sort of take the conversation in a different direction.
38:02
We actually recently did this exercise at our company where we were thinking about, okay, we're coming up on almost 100,000 people soon in in our company.
38:09
And we kind of think about our values as a company is like our cultural operating system, right?
38:15
It's like, how do we how do we basically get work done well and continue to build the things that we that we need to build.
38:21
And you know, a big part of the the values, I'd love to talk through them here.
38:24
I mean, I haven't This is actually the the first podcast or or any public thing that I've done where I've discussed any of the values.
38:31
I think it'd probably be pretty interesting to to go through it. Sure.
38:34
One of them is basically we rolled out this value called live in the future, which is basically about the world is moving towards being distributed first.
38:42
And we, you know, both because we think that that's a good trend for how we work and because we aspire to play a role in building all the technology to to enable that through virtual reality, augmented reality, metaverse, software, and infrastructure, and like avatars to express yourself.
39:01
We have this saying that we want people inside the company to eat your own dog food, right?
39:04
We want people to to basically build that use the things that we're building internally as part of how we work because that's also what gets us in a faster feedback loop to make those tools better for for everyone else around the world.
39:15
But I mean, that's one of the the six values that we just rolled out.
39:18
I I I actually think it might be interesting to go through the others, too, but but but up to you. Yeah, please.
39:23
Let's go through them and then I'll I'll have some questions about them, I'm sure.
39:27
You know, some of them we kept, but we're just changing how we execute them.
39:31
So, one thing that I think our company is pretty well known for is having the value of move fast.
39:35
I've always believed that values are only useful if you can like legitimately disagree with them, Right?
39:43
So, I I've I've always thought like values like be honest are like not that helpful cuz like of course you have to be honest, right?
39:49
It's like I feel bad even needing to write that down.
39:50
If you have to write that down, then something something kind of went wrong.
39:54
But I don't know any good company that doesn't that doesn't focus on kind of honesty or demand that of of their of their employees.
40:00
So, from my perspective, that's not like a useful you know, if you only get to write down like five or six concepts to to kind of program into your culture, you want them to be things that good companies can reasonably do differently.
40:14
And I think part of this is that good values, you need to be able to give something up in order to get them.
40:17
So, around move fast, you know, we've always had this this question.
40:22
It's like you you can't just tell people to move fast.
40:24
The question is like what's the deal?
40:26
Like what are you what are you willing to give up?
40:27
And famously, we it used to be move fast and break things.
40:29
And the the idea was that we tolerated some amount of bugs in the software in order to basically encourage people to move quickly cuz it's like moving fast I think is the key to learning, right?
40:42
It's like you want to increase the iteration cycle so that you can get feedback from from the people you serve quickly and and then incorporate that into the product.
40:50
So, we would literally get into situations where, you know, it's competitors of us would would ship, you know, once a year or once every 6 months and we'd ship code every day.
40:57
And it's like of course we're going to learn faster and we're going to build something better if you're shipping something every day.
41:03
So, the question is what are you willing to give up?
41:05
So, it used to be we would tolerate some amount of defects in the product.
41:08
Now, it got to the point as the as the company grew that we were producing so many bugs that going back and fixing them was actually slowing us down more than than we were speeding up.
41:18
So, I I still thought okay, like moving fast, this is still like a really important thing.
41:21
We've got to change how we do it.
41:23
So, we we kind of evolved to building a somewhat less sexy phrase, move fast with stable infrastructure.
41:30
And then the basically the new the new bet was we were going to invest disproportionately in building up good infrastructure and abstractions inside our companies that where the average engineer who comes here is going to be much faster and more productive at getting things done than in other places.
41:44
And you know, at at a scale of almost 100,000 people, I think what this really means now is like methodically I don't know.
41:54
It's like companies just add process over time, right?
41:55
It's like and it's all good intention, you know, for the most part, right?
42:00
It's like people are trying to, you know, make sure that we don't repeat mistakes that we've made.
42:04
So, you just add this like checklist of things that everyone needs to do before they can ship anything.
42:07
But most companies don't have a counter process to that to basically garbage collect and remove processes that are no longer that useful.
42:16
So, part of what what I'm really focused on now is is just methodically going through and making sure all of the different processes that we've built up as a company still serve us well and kind of empowering a an an effort to go do that.
42:30
So, you know, so now that's that's kind of what move fast is focused on. Should we keep going?
42:34
You want to do the next Yeah, let's keep going.
42:36
All right, so the second one is it's focused on long-term impact.
42:38
Where on the one hand, you want a very fast cycle time to learn quickly, but on the other hand, you want to always keep people focused on the prize, right? And and and long-term.
42:48
And you know, one thing that's that's sort of it's unfortunate.
42:51
You know, we we we had a version of this before that we just said focus on impact.
42:57
But a lot of people, especially as the company grew, interpreted that to mean do something that would make an impact in the 6-month cycle, right?
43:03
So, that way like when you have your performance review, your manager can point to something good that you did and like and you get promoted.
43:10
And it's like, oh god, that's like definitely not what we're trying to do, right?
43:13
It's I mean we're like obviously it's good if you can have an impact in the near term, but but it's you know, you want to be able to have a faster duration speed to learn quickly, but it's not always important to to kind of deliver something every 6 months.
43:25
You want to You want to make sure that you're you're focusing and and improving things for the long term.
43:30
So, you know, we've actually made a bunch of changes to our culture.
43:33
We changed performance management and the performance cycle that people have from every 6 months to now it's just once a year to make it so the time frames that people have are longer.
43:44
The next one is a new one that we added that we call build awesome things.
43:46
And the the idea here is that I actually think that there's a pretty big difference between things that are valuable and things that are like awe-inspiring and and amazing.
43:58
And I kind of think that our company has been pretty good at building things that a lot of people use and and like.
44:07
But for a combination of reasons, we we just haven't focused quite as much until the last few years, especially as we've worked on a lot of this metaverse work in virtual reality and and things like that.
44:20
We haven't focused as much on things that are just like awe-inspiring.
44:23
And I actually think that there's this balance where you need to do both, right?
44:27
It's I mean you you can't do things that are just that are just all inspiration and no substance.
44:33
But I also think you can go too far in the other direction of just doing things that that are useful, but I I think a lot of what the world needs right now is inspiration.
44:42
You know, there there are a lot of things in our lives in modern day that work pretty well, but I think a lot of what we sort of lack is a positive vision for the future.
44:49
A lot of the metaverse work to me kind of has that level of of inspiration.
44:56
That that's partially why it's why I find it super exciting.
44:57
We talked about live in the future.
44:59
That's mostly focused on being a great distributed work workforce.
45:04
I mean, I you know, from the early days of COVID, I sort of made this kind of tried to put a flag in the ground that we were going to even after COVID is done, we're going to you know, by the end of this decade hopefully have, you know, 50% or more of the the company basically working distributed and working remotely.
45:20
And I I still think that that will be awesome.
45:23
It just unlock opportunity, get access to more talent.
45:26
And then the last two are basically, you know, be direct and and respect your colleagues, which I I find as as the company grows, one of my colleagues, Boz, has this saying that we're in danger of nicing ourselves to death.
45:36
I think like as organizations grow, there's this sort of politeness that comes in where when you're just working with a small set of people and then you're comfortable with them, you can you can actually be a lot more blunt and direct.
45:49
And you know, Sheryl always says that the the amount of progress that we make is directly proportional to the number of hard conversations that we're willing to have.
45:57
But it's like as companies grow, I think like it's tougher to kind of give hard feedback.
46:01
So, I think just kind of trying to build that into the cultural operating system, which is like we're just going to really reward and focus on being direct with each other, I think is a really important thing.
46:13
And then the last one, you know, I realize I've probably been talking for like 10 minutes straight at this point, but but I I think this is the first time I've talked about this stuff publicly.
46:19
So, I you know, I have a lot a lot a lot of things to say.
46:21
You know, when we rebranded the company to Meta, we had this internal question of like what should we what should we call our employees?
46:27
And and someone actually emailed Douglas Hofstadter, right?
46:29
The renowned author and thinker.
46:31
And and he he he wrote back.
46:34
He was like, it should be Metamates.
46:35
And so in turn, I kind of felt like if Douglas Hofstadter thinks we should be Metamates, then who am I to disagree with that?
46:41
So, our last value is Meta Metamates Me, which is it's sort of this adaptation from this old naval saying, ship shipmate self.
46:48
And it's it's just like as as the company grows, you want to make sure that the people stay focused on the long term and the whole enterprise and then their their teams and taking care of of of of their teams, but then and also take care of themselves.
47:02
I think that having that as a framework is pretty important.
47:04
So, I'm I'm I'm happy to go into more detail on any of these, but I also want to be, you know, aware that I this is a quite a long answer and and monologue as it is.
47:14
So, so wherever you want to go with this.
47:16
Yeah, let's pick up on it and then I have a a whole bunch of other things I'd love to get into, but with respect to the values, so and I've seen and looked very closely at the values of say Amazon, which you know, you've iterated, but uh that that Bezos put together and others.
47:31
And I think the degree to which values end up the for lack of a better term, sort of operating system of people at a company varies widely company to company.
47:40
And I'd love to know how or if you are and you mentioned one example of the longer performance review time frames, right?
47:50
Incentivizing these behaviors, right?
47:53
Do you have a team that is sort of determining how to facilitate supporting these values throughout the organization so that they they do have more saturation, so to speak.
48:10
Each of these is basically coupled with an operational effort.
48:11
So, we we have a a set of of work that we do that's you know, it's like move fast is is the work and it's basically it's actually something that I'm pretty engaged in where I will just routinely go and sit down with largely engineering leaders, but but also, you know, folks across the company and and ask them, okay, well, what is slowing you down? Right?
48:33
So, in addition to the product reviews that we'll do where we'll talk about, okay, what are the decisions we should be making or you know, what should we be investing in?
48:41
It's I I think it's useful to often just sit down with people and and have a whole conversation where they're like, all right, what what are the things that are that are basically causing you to move more slowly?
48:49
And then I view a bunch of my job as CEO, but then also we we have other people who just work on this to try to go remove those obstacles.
48:58
You know, and and obviously we have to do it in a way that helps fit the other goals of the company, right?
49:03
So, if people are saying, hey, you know, it's it would it would it would make me be able to go faster if I just didn't have to care about this issue.
49:08
You know, if that's an important issue, then you know, obviously we're not going to you just say no, right?
49:14
It's like let's let's figure out how we can care about that issue and do this as efficiently as possible.
49:18
But I do think that there's you can apply sort of a methodical amount of kind of you can apply energy methodically over a long period of time towards basically oiling or greasing the the the the wheels in the in the organization in the direction that you want.
49:35
And I I think you can you can get it done over time. Yeah.
49:36
I remember when I was first learning about running an organization, I had this conversation with this guy Dan Rose and Swig.
49:43
He was the COO of Yahoo at the time. And um And he's great.
49:49
He's he's a he's a great person.
49:51
And he he told me this thing that will always stick with me, which is that every organization sucks, but you get to choose the ways in which your organization sucks.
49:59
And which is maybe the most negative possible way of putting it, but I think it's basically if you want to move fast on certain dimensions, you can, but you only get a few things like that. Right?
50:08
So, I I think it's you know, if if you want to optimize moving fast, we could do that.
50:13
If we want to optimize being distributed first, we can do that.
50:15
But maybe you get like five of these.
50:17
And and like you you and and we are very focused on operationalizing them and and making sure that each of these values is backed up by like real work streams that we have or decisions that we make or processes that we make.
50:29
I mean, I mentioned changing the performance management tool.
50:32
For living in the future, one of the big things that we're doing is you know, I don't just want you know, teams to be working distributed and working over video conference.
50:40
I also want them to be using workrooms and using their their kind of VR headsets.
50:45
Workrooms is this product it's it's the VR product that we built for collaboration. I think it's it's great.
50:51
It's it's early still, but it's it's fascinating.
50:52
It's it's like you can you're in a meeting and you're sitting around a table and even though the kind of fidelity isn't quite as photo-realistic on the avatars yet as you know, say the conversation that we're having now, the fact that you can sit around a table and you can see people's gestures and you can have a side conversations.
51:10
If there's 10 people around the the the table, you can turn to the person next to them and ask them a question.
51:15
And there can be multiple conversations going on in the room like a normal room, but obviously you can't do anything like that over video conference.
51:21
There are a bunch of things like that that actually make it in some ways feel more real already than video conferences, even though the people are still very the avatars are still very stylized and cartoony.
51:31
So, but we basically have a rule that everyone who's who's in you know, across the company we who's in leadership or management should be basically doing at least like one standing meeting a week in workrooms. Right?
51:46
Because that's like, okay, we we want to get that feedback loop going on that. Right?
51:49
It's like that way that that team now is overwhelmed with feedback on on how to on how to get it to be even better.
51:54
But but I think that one of the outcomes of this is like I think workrooms is going to probably learn what they need to do to be a great product a lot faster than than a lot of others in this space.
52:02
So, I think that that's kind of one way to to operationalize these.
52:05
But yeah, you you got to operationalize them if you want them to be real.
52:08
Otherwise, they're just words that you put on a website somewhere.
52:12
I want to say that one thing that came up repeatedly in the course of doing homework for this conversation was how relentlessly product focused you are.
52:21
And I heard multiple anecdotes.
52:21
I don't know if they're apocryphal.
52:25
I can imagine them happening though, where if you know, you'd be walking down the street and some kid would be like, "Facebook sucks."
52:29
And you'd walk over and be like, "Oh yeah?
52:31
Well, tell me like show me why it sucks. Like show me."
52:33
And then you'd take like 25 notes and the next day team would get a long list of things from having actually sat down with someone for like a half hour, 45 minutes and having them walk you through their experience.
52:44
And I I do think that I'd love to ask a a few more questions about just web 3 in general and then maybe backstep for a second to ask you about a number of other facets in your life.
52:59
With with Instagram and NFTs, so I know that that the web 3 is getting a lot of airtime right now and you know, I just came from a separate conference where if like every conversation involved web 3.
53:10
I And it it strikes me that you know, web 2, web 3 decentralized, centralized are going to coexist.
53:16
I mean, I'm no expert, but it seems that people want curation.
53:20
In many cases, they want trusted third parties.
53:22
I don't want to always be my own bank.
53:24
It's there's there are good reasons why I use banks instead of not taking on all those responsibilities myself.
53:31
And I'm wondering how let's just say in the case of Instagram some challenges that perhaps you you foresee.
53:39
And I can imagine for instance if people can turn hypothetically posts into NFTs how that might affect let's just say content moderation and uh safety precautions and so on if they actually have ownership of their posts. Right?
53:58
So, I mean, this is a hypothetical that I'm just kind of throwing out there, but what type of challenges do you foresee coming up in the near term or in the long term?
54:09
The one that you just mentioned is is I think a really fundamental one.
54:10
think a really fundamental one. I mean, at some level you can make things censorship resistant, which has a bunch of equities and there's certainly a lot of people who feel like their their expression is restricted online more than they would
54:24
like, but that also prevents if if you really can't stop people from expressing things, then how are you going to fight against terrorism or child exploitation or things that people think are like really awful, even the people who generally want more stuff to to to be allowed online. So, I I think that there
54:40
So, I I think that there having the really removing the ability for anyone to do any kind of moderation at all in a broader platform, I think is problematic.
54:51
I think in something like messaging, we don't expect the people who run our messaging platforms, you know, whether it's us or Apple or whoever to to go kind of moderate a a message that you sent in private.
55:00
But if it's it's sort of this distinction between the living room and the town square. Right?
55:04
If you're in in a space that's a broader space, then I think that there there is a little more need to make sure that things conform to the values that society wants. Right?
55:14
And and and reducing things that are just really that I think everyone agrees are bad like terrorism and and child exploitation and bullying and things like that.
55:24
But taking a step back on your question around web 3 and and NFTs, I come at a lot of this from the perspective of thinking about the metaverse and how to make it more interoperable and a better environment for creators. Right?
55:40
Because right now, so I do think that there's there's an interesting conversation to have around you know, Instagram and and Facebook and what to do there.
55:48
But I kind of I tend to think about that as sort of how can you help bootstrap a creative economy in these 2D social apps that will be much much bigger once you get to the the this metaverse vision over time.
55:59
And um I think the reason why interoperability is so important is because like imagine this case. Right?
56:08
this case. Right? So, you're you're basically you know, we get to a point where instead of spending you know, 3 hours a day on video conference calls, you are now spending that same time in in basically feeling like you're actually present with someone either
56:21
because they're a hologram on your couch with augmented reality or you're in virtual reality in something like workrooms, but but a future version of it where you're like actually you feel like you're physically there with them around a table. Okay, so now in a world
56:30
Okay, so now in a world where you're spending a few hours a day doing that, you're going to care about how you express yourself. Right?
56:36
So, that's both the avatar, right?
56:38
Do you show up as a photo-realistic version of yourself or are you a dragon or you kind of a stylized version?
56:43
But a lot of this is going to be like, okay, how do we choose to express ourselves is through the clothing and what we wear and what we put on.
56:50
But now imagine that you know, basically every app that you go to, anything that you do to express yourself, you say you get a sweatshirt, it's in an app, you can't actually bring that to another app.
57:01
That would just be massively stifling for the whole creative economy.
57:03
Because now as a as a consumer, you're not going to want to buy a lot of you know, sweatshirts because they're not going to be that useful because you can't bring them between places.
57:10
And because you're not going to want to buy that much, it's going to be less useful for creators and fewer people are going to be able to make a living basically designing these kind of experiences or virtual architecture, virtual clothes or or different things like that.
57:23
So, the ability to be able to take how you want to express yourself and take your stuff with you between these different experiences, I think it's just like a really key kind of technical principle and standards thing to hopefully achieve with the metaverse.
57:37
So, I hope we can get there.
57:39
And in order to push in that direction, I think it's helpful to start sooner in things like Instagram and Facebook by by supporting the communities that are that are doing things like NFTs.
57:49
That way, you can get to minting, you can get to bring your stuff around between these different places.
57:53
But I do think that the the challenges that you're mentioning where all systems I think end up being some some combination of some element of decentralized and and centralized.
58:01
I think actually a lot of new systems just basically create value by decentralizing and creating more opportunity in some area by creating a new tool that a lot of people use.
58:13
But I think we'll need to get the balance right.
58:15
And that's something that I I I just I'm probably more optimistic about the web 3 stuff than most other people who are running these big companies.
58:23
So, I would I'm trying to push us to be more forward-leaning on that.
58:27
And our kind of fundamental belief is that if we if we create more use cases where creators can start to do this stuff, then you'll get more experimentation and you'll also just get a bigger creative economy over over time, which I I I think is a huge part of the goal. Yeah, for sure.
58:43
Well, that's going to be it's going to be exciting to watch.
58:45
I have to say also that doing a bit of biographical research, looking at your trajectory, having known quite a bit already, it's incredible to me how much complexity you have learned to grapple with in the sense that now on a global stage, if there are conflicts or state actors who want to engage or need to engage, you know, Meta is almost always it would seem going to be on the playing field in in some capacity.
59:17
And it's it's just very impressive to me that you have from the very beginning reached this point where you're grappling with with so many different layers of complexity.
59:27
So, I I just wanted to say that first and foremost. Man, I appreciate that. I can't even imagine.
59:32
I have enough trouble dealing with the complexity of a of a tiny team of of fewer than 10 people, much less 100,000 and then the global stage.
59:41
One thing I did want to ask about, so I had Noa Felman on this podcast a long time ago.
59:46
You put a lot of time and thought into the oversight board.
59:47
What is your assessment of of how that's how that's going?
59:53
Well, I think it's early, but I I think the key here one of the things that that I think has been really promising is that society needs a network of different institutions that it feels like are legitimate or have some legitimacy for making decisions in in order to basically accept the decisions and feel like they're fair.
1:00:15
And I think one basic issue that we've found ourselves in is that there's just no way that any single private company should be responsible for arbitrating so many questions of social values, right?
1:00:28
Between you know, free expression and safety or you know, locking things down to ensure privacy versus making sure that the marketplace can be open and competitive, right?
1:00:36
It's like these It's like these these are real issues and there's equities on all sides and there's no single decision that any company can make on any of them that I think is going to be universally accepted.
1:00:47
So, I think therefore you you really want to not set up a situation where where one company is is kind of has to make a lot of these decisions by themselves.
1:00:58
That's why I want to create this oversight board.
1:01:00
want to create this oversight board. I I I recognize that we're always going to have to be kind of the first line and we're going to be responsible for making the moderation decisions on our platform, but I kind of thought it was
1:01:11
important that we shouldn't have the final say in the most important decisions and that there was like a you know, a a a different body, you know, it's the the judicial analogy is something like a Supreme Court, although obviously, you know, there there are all these differences here. But
1:01:24
But something that people can appeal to and that we can also refer some of the most complicated cases to and that they can make the final and binding judgment on that.
1:01:34
And one of the things that we've seen that I think has been interesting is that it does seem like there's a little bit more acceptance when the oversight board weighs in on something complicated than when we just do it ourselves.
1:01:48
when we just do it ourselves. And I think part of that was we put a lot of thought into you know, making sure that the people who who are who are on the oversight board are kind of world-renowned in terms of a focus on human rights, really focused on on free
1:02:03
expression as well because you know, at the end of the day these platforms are about giving people a voice, diverse you know, spanning a large portion of the globe, but but it wasn't it wasn't obvious that that it's you know, legitimacy isn't like a binary thing. It's not like either it's completely
1:02:16
It's not like either it's completely rejected or it's completely accepted by everyone.
1:02:19
You know, we were mindful in setting this up and I I I think the oversight board has also done a good job itself in in kind of managing its independence.
1:02:27
It is a completely independent organization from us and and it has to be and and kind of its independence is super important for it's continued legitimacy.
1:02:35
Overall, I'd say I'm I'm sort of optimistic about how it's going, but I think building that sort of trust and legitimacy also takes time.
1:02:43
It's not like a thing that you can just turn on in a year and then all of a sudden people will be like, okay, this thing exists, great.
1:02:48
It's it's going to be you know, it making decisions, you know, it often overruling us or rebuking us on things and people seeing that we respect its its independence and its authority and going and implementing that.
1:03:00
That's I think how it how it basically builds legitimacy over time.
1:03:04
But I think as an institution, it's really important that we have this kind of independent function.
1:03:07
Of course, over time having clearer rules set in in kind of democratically elected Congress would be I think the most useful thing.
1:03:17
And we're getting that more or less in different parts of the world.
1:03:19
I you know, obviously it's it's a little harder in the in the United States.
1:03:21
The The First Amendment is great.
1:03:23
So, I I obviously hugely supportive of the First Amendment, but I think that makes it harder for for anyone in in the United States to to basically create or craft different regulations that that kind of weigh in on some of these tradeoffs.
1:03:35
But I do think over time people will will kind of there will be a a balance that is struck across all of this and I think that this is all part of that moving towards that equilibrium.
1:03:48
You mentioned Sheryl earlier.
1:03:48
I'd like to come back to to Sheryl.
1:03:50
So, this is a question from a female friend of mine.
1:03:54
I'll just read it kind of as it's as it's written and I'd love to to hear your thoughts.
1:03:57
So, Mark's business partnership with Sheryl is legendary.
1:03:59
I can't off the top of my head think of another partnership like this, male-female, lasted 15 or so years, 15 plus, still going. Why does it work? How does it work?
1:04:08
Why does he think so very few others have such a partnership?
1:04:12
And I'll just add one more.
1:04:15
You know, what has shifted in his life and business as a result?
1:04:19
So, I'd just love to hear any any thoughts on that because it does strike me also as a very unusual partnership that has been that has proven itself with in tremendous longevity.
1:04:32
Yeah, I mean I I think in a lot of ways that partnership has defined the growth of the company.
1:04:37
I and and so first of all, I would give a huge amount of credit for this working to Sheryl.
1:04:41
I think she's an amazing person and if you think about where you know, when when she joined the company I was like a kid, right?
1:04:50
I mean it's um she was actually as old as I am now. That was 15 years ago.
1:04:55
And and you know, I was in my early 20s and and didn't know anything about about about business or running a company or anything like this and I just think the the kind of extraordinary amount of patience that she had and I mean in a way is like as a manager of an organization, it's almost like she raised me like a child.
1:05:14
And and not just me, I think like a lot of the people we have on the on the team now.
1:05:21
So, I mean so I think she's she's exceptional in in that way.
1:05:23
One thing that's interesting about our company is that the business is sort of oddly divorced from the actual product, right?
1:05:34
So, most things it's like, okay, you build a product and you sell the product.
1:05:38
And in our case, I think one of the things that created enough space for someone who has as much energy and and is as senior as Sheryl to to join is the fact that in in the type of business that we have, the consumer part of what we do is actually somewhat distinct from the advertising and the business part of what we do.
1:05:56
So, you know, there was there was enough space I think in the company to have to have two people, right?
1:06:02
Who who basically were like primary principles for the company and you know, I've I've debated this with a bunch of other peers and people who have created companies.
1:06:09
I mean I know I I you you had a great podcast with Daniel Ek a while ago towards the beginning of COVID and now I I had this discussion with him a bunch of times.
1:06:17
He's like, I just couldn't do that, right?
1:06:19
couldn't do that, right? It's like because because it's like literally for for Spotify, it's like they they build the the business and the content and all that stuff is like part of that's like one kind of package, whereas I think
1:06:29
we're sort of uniquely set up where we can I can focus on the the consumer part of what we do and she can focus on all the advertising and building the business and that just has worked incredibly well over over a long period of time and and I think will for for for a long time to come. So, I just have a huge amount to
1:06:43
So, I just have a huge amount to learn from her and I think she probably feels I guess she feels the same way, but you'd have to ask her.
1:06:50
Yeah, maybe that'll be round two.
1:06:52
So, I do think that that you know, the separation of church and state, I mean that's probably an overstatement, but the the clearly delineated halves of the company, so to speak lend themselves to that.
1:07:02
It's a really good point.
1:07:05
What are her superpowers?
1:07:08
I know that may be a strange word to use, but I think of say Warren Buffett referring to Charlie Munger and saying he is the best 60-second mind on the planet, right?
1:07:16
They have very complimentary skill sets, slightly different views of the world, although highly compatible values.
1:07:22
What are Sheryl's superpowers that come to mind, if any?
1:07:27
Well, I think she has a very good combination of like IQ and EQ.
1:07:32
People either I think tend to be more manager or more strategic and I think she is very unique in being both and I just think that that's pretty rare, right?
1:07:43
And and and obviously, if you get if you get someone who's great at at strategy or great at product and they're not a great manager, that's great, right?
1:07:47
It's like I mean if you can have someone who's excellent at one of those things, it's like you hire them every day, right?
1:07:53
So, I think it's just exceptionally rare to find people who are kind of spiking both of those areas.
1:07:59
I think about this in terms of she actually uses a lot of dating analogies.
1:08:03
I don't, but I was talking to a friend who was single recently and we were talking about why she was single and I do just think like some people want to go through life with partnerships more than others. Yeah.
1:08:11
I think that there are some people who like want a co-founder, they want a partner who they can run the thing with and who can kind of have they can have that experience with on a day-to-day basis and then there are other people who are just like, okay.
1:08:23
Like, no, I'll just I'll just have a team of like, you know, five or six people around me and like I'll I'll kind of be the the leader or the founder, but you know, I don't need like a another, you know, person and I I just think that that's that's different. Mhm.
1:08:36
Partnership has always meant a lot to me both in my my personal life and and in work.
1:08:41
I like I like want people to be on the voyage with me, right?
1:08:46
It's like this isn't like a solo story.
1:08:48
That's like a lot of how I derive meaning in in life and again, you'd have to ask her whether she maybe she's oriented in a in a similar way, but I think to some degree, I think whether partnerships work over time probably the number one factor in that is whether you want the partnership to work. Yes, for sure.
1:09:06
Or if out of the box in a sense, you are predisposed to partnership, yeah, right?
1:09:11
Well, let's actually use this as a way to move to a question or just I mean a observation and then a question that I'd love to ask and we can take it any direction you'd like to.
1:09:22
So, this is from a mutual friend who who said one thing that most people don't know is that his mom is an MD, but she stayed home and never practiced medicine.
1:09:32
She worked at the front desk of his dad's orthodontic business, which was which was under their home.
1:09:38
And she was wondering, you know, how these family dynamics have shaped who you are today and how you parent your own children.
1:09:46
So, that's a big question that can go a lot of directions.
1:09:48
I I recognize, but I'd love to hear you to speak to that in any way that makes sense.
1:09:54
So, I'd say that that that story is partially true.
1:09:55
My mom and and dad are both doctors and my mom did practice for a bit, but it is true that when Randy, my older sister, was born, I guess my mom was having a hard time finding childcare and people who she trusted enough to raise the kids.
1:10:07
So, she decided that she wanted to spend more time with us, but my dad's dental office was attached to the house like you said.
1:10:14
So, it's just this like magical thing where I mean, my parents both worked super hard growing up and were great role models in that way, but also like when I got home from school, I could just like throw my backpack on the couch and run downstairs and go see them.
1:10:26
And then my dad would always like be drilling someone's tooth and like that person was probably not that happy that I came in and was like, "Hey Dad."
1:10:32
But um plenty of stories there.
1:10:34
And they were great parents for for for us growing up.
1:10:38
They really prioritized family, which is something that I definitely took from them.
1:10:42
And I think not only did I take it from them for myself, but it was really meaningful for me in basically who I look for as a partner.
1:10:53
And Priscilla, I think, is really focused on this and she obviously has an amazing career and has way more jobs than I do in addition to being a parent.
1:10:59
But the family orientation is a really big deal.
1:11:01
My parents cared that we like achieved and did great in in school, but beyond that, they didn't really care what specific thing we were interested in.
1:11:14
They just wanted to expose us to a bunch of things and then if we were interested in something, then they would try to kind of push us to be to become excellent at that thing.
1:11:24
But you know, my mom was never like, "You should go fence."
1:11:27
She was just like, you know, like sports are good, right?
1:11:33
Like go like go find some some sport.
1:11:34
And it's like, "Oh, you like fencing?"
1:11:35
It's like, "All right, well, let's get good at that."
1:11:37
You know, it's like so, I have three sisters and they're all kind of excellent at very different things, which is our family is I I think quite musical, but that's most expressed through Randy, who is just an excellent musician.
1:11:49
And I guess you can kind of go through the different siblings.
1:11:53
I I guess I got computers.
1:11:55
That seems to have worked out for you. Yeah, I I I I think so.
1:11:57
I'd say Donna's like the intellectual one.
1:11:59
And and Elle has always been the the kind of most well-rounded and and social and athletic of us, which is you know, as I've grown up and I've I've kind of gotten even more into sports, it's been really fun just getting to to kind of see her how how much she is how how much better she is at me at like skiing and all these and all these things that that we we kind of grew up together doing.
1:12:19
But no, I I I think like that's that's sort of how I hope to raise our kids is like yeah, I want I I mean, I I I I care a lot that they're going to be good at school, but like but I also care that they can get exposed to a lot of different things and and kind of choose the things that they want to do. It's a fun adventure.
1:12:40
One of the things in terms of my parenting is I I try to no matter what is going on in the day, I I always do bedtime with them.
1:12:49
I mean, I guess every once in a while I have to travel, although with COVID, it's been nice.
1:12:52
I haven't had to travel that much.
1:12:53
So, that's maybe one silver lining of the of the pandemic the last couple of years, but it's but basically, you know, I I just take an hour every day and you know, we we read, we like sing, we you know, it's um you know, I'm I'm reading this book with them now, The Way of the Warrior Kid, which is is is good.
1:13:12
I recommend Is this Jocko? It is. Jocko Willink? Look at that. That's great. Do you know him, too?
1:13:19
So, Jocko's first ever long-form public interview is on this podcast. Okay, there you go.
1:13:25
Yeah, so I know Jocko very well.
1:13:27
So, this book was recommended to me by Tobi Lütke, the founder and CEO of Shopify. And the girls love it.
1:13:34
And now they've started training jujitsu.
1:13:36
So, this is the stuff, you know, takes on a life of its own.
1:13:39
But it's super fun just having stuff that we do together every day.
1:13:42
And then I I always, you know, wrap up the day with them.
1:13:45
We we have this routine that um that Max calls the goodnight things, which is basically every night we go through.
1:13:52
I'm like, all right, what are the things that are most important in life? And we go through it.
1:13:55
It's like it's health, loving family and friends, something you're excited about, and like what did you do to help someone today?
1:14:03
And and we basically go through each of these things.
1:14:07
And it's like, all right, so health.
1:14:08
It's like, well, what did you do to like make yourself stronger or more fit today?
1:14:11
And like if you if you get hurt, right?
1:14:13
It's like Max broke her leg skiing once and it's like, okay, well, like let's go through the parts of your body that like still work and that you're going to like be able to use while you're recovering.
1:14:22
And it's like, okay, loving family and friends.
1:14:25
It's like, let's go through, you know, something that you did today with a person who is meaningful to you.
1:14:29
And then I think something you're excited about is and this is actually this is like my philosophy on life.
1:14:33
I'm just trying to like boil it down for them.
1:14:36
I guess the the adult version of this is I think you have to have something that you're looking forward to for the future.
1:14:40
I think that that's just a really important part of keeping people going with the weight of life.
1:14:46
But for kids, you know, it tends to be something that they're excited about tomorrow.
1:14:49
You know, more more often than not, it's just like, all right, I'm excited to see mom in the morning or like I get to cereal at breakfast.
1:14:54
It's like, okay, it's not not super inspiring, but um but it's the right the right basic idea.
1:14:59
And then every once in a while, it's something like, okay, like Max is like, "I'm going to get ski poles next week."
1:15:05
And it's like, okay, that's like a big milestone, right?
1:15:06
Or it's like, "I'm going to lose my first tooth." Right?
1:15:09
Or like I can't wait until I can like have do jujitsu again.
1:15:14
And then the last one I think is probably the most important, which is like I'm like, we, you know, I think especially for our family, right?
1:15:19
And especially for for these girls who are obviously growing up in very wealthy family, it's like, you're going to do something nice to help someone every day, right?
1:15:29
And it's like we like this is just like an important service orientation that I I just want you know, our our our family to have.
1:15:39
And we just all go around and like I tell them something nice that that I tried to do to to help someone and and they have to tell me something nice that they did to to help someone.
1:15:46
And it could just be like a another kid at school or it could be mom or or um cousin or or something like that, but probably much to their chagrin, I don't let them go to sleep until they can tell me something that nice that they did that to help someone that day.
1:16:01
So, that's probably like the best encapsulation of how I think about parenting and the values that I want to try to impart to them.
1:16:10
Thank you for sharing all of that.
1:16:10
You know, and I wanted I want to say a few things.
1:16:13
Number one, Toby, one of my favorite people.
1:16:14
I've known Toby since 2008 or so.
1:16:16
And people might be wondering, why am I asking about family?
1:16:21
Why am I asking about parenting?
1:16:23
And part of the reason I'm asking is because many people who listen to this podcast listen to model.
1:16:30
They listen to model people.
1:16:30
And I think it's very important to get a holistic picture of how people think about and prioritize things in their lives and manage things in their lives because you can end up, if you're not careful, say in the realm of business, modeling someone who is from an external perspective very financially successful, but their family lives, their relationships are in shambles.
1:16:52
So, I do think that the micro can be a reflection of the macro, which is why I like to explore these things.
1:16:59
So, on the point of things that are important in life, man, I I I love that you're reading Jocko's book to your kids. It's fantastic.
1:17:10
Do not Well, actually, no.
1:17:10
Someday you should roll with Jocko.
1:17:11
He is a black belt jujitsu and is an absolute killer.
1:17:18
Probably above your weight class, but worth rolling with nonetheless.
1:17:19
Speaking of things that are important in life, I would love to ask you about this and this is going to be interesting transition, this this sacred and then the secular.
1:17:29
And for the secular, I have a I have a very specific kind of technical question, but on the sacred, I'd love to ask you what role religion plays in your life, if any.
1:17:40
How do you think about that?
1:17:42
It's actually I I think playing an increasing role in in recent years.
1:17:45
And so, I mean, I I was raised Jewish.
1:17:49
And I think for I don't know, I'd say from the time I went to college or so, maybe I I wasn't as focused on it.
1:17:59
But I think a few things in the last five or six years have made me a little more focused on it.
1:18:03
One is of course family and having kids, right?
1:18:05
So, you like want to have traditions for the kids and a lot of the time it's like, okay, well, here are the things that I did when I was growing up that I thought were meaningful and the ones that are good, you you want you want to do.
1:18:19
And the ones that that aren't, um you don't.
1:18:22
But but I I I I just found having that community and values grounding was was really valuable.
1:18:28
So, so we are raising our our our girls to be Jewish and that's that's just become a a more important part of our our lives.
1:18:34
So, it's like every Friday, pretty much no matter what's going on, we do Shabbat dinner.
1:18:42
You know, Priscilla actually loves this.
1:18:44
I mean, she's basically it's sort of a meditative thing for her, but it's it's from I think about Tuesday or Wednesday, she starts carving out like an hour or so of the day to like start cooking the Shabbat dinner.
1:18:54
And basically, we have a bunch of friends over and like and it's it's just like a real center point to the week.
1:19:00
That element, I think, is more cultural.
1:19:02
I'd say for for me personally and for our company and probably for a lot of people around the world, I mean, the last five or six years have been pretty tough, right?
1:19:12
It's I mean, if you just look at how people felt about our company, you know, before 2016, if you look at like average sentiment around the company, it's like there was almost like never a month when the sentiment was negative and since 2016, there's almost never been a month where the net sentiment has been positive.
1:19:29
There have been so many social issues that have been kind of brought to the forefront that you know we talked about this a little bit before in terms of the Oversight Board and how it's important that it's not just like you know, one person or one company
1:19:40
making all these decisions trying to balance these complex social equities, but you know, part of me is like I've kind of gotten an appreciation for why Yes, I there there just need to be things that are bigger than you in your life. So, even
1:19:55
So, even though you know, our country has a lot of struggles, I probably believe more in democracy now than I would have I probably hadn't think about it that deeply before, but I I just think like, you know, believing in in in kind of democracy and our institutions is like sort of a a bigger force than any individual.
1:20:15
I think it's sort of a grounding thing.
1:20:18
But I think similarly, believing that there are things that are bigger than that, like God, is also just sort of a really grounding thing for me.
1:20:23
The more you sort of study the Bible or the Torah or whatever, I mean there's there is like just a lot of wisdom in it in in terms of, you know, how to live your life, how to think about creation and building.
1:20:35
I mean no matter what you're doing, no matter how kind of modern or technological it is, you know, I I I just think that there are interesting lessons.
1:20:44
It's really kind of meaningful to me.
1:20:46
It's like at the beginning of the the Torah in Genesis, most of like the the Bible's basically rules for how to live your life and but it starts with it was like, why does it start in this place of of talking about the creation?
1:20:58
And it's it's like it starts off with like, okay, God created people in in God's image and it's like, well, what does that mean?
1:21:03
What what does that mean you're supposed to go do?
1:21:04
It starts off talking about creation, right?
1:21:06
It's like like how how God created all the stuff. It's like, yeah.
1:21:10
I I think that there's like a a real interpretation in that that is kind of personal to me, which is like a lot of what we are here to do is create good things in the world and I think that that's like very intrinsic to you know, it's like when I'm having a bad day or bad month.
1:21:29
I just think like there there's something that's sort of grounded in it's like, no, this is like what I think a big part of what we are here to do is is like build things that make the world better and I think that that is like a fundamental thing that is is sort of ancient wisdom.
1:21:43
As people face challenges in their lives and as you think about the next generation, I think that these are both things that tend to ground you and tie you to much longer arcs and traditions and that's certainly been the case in my life.
1:21:57
I've actually gone to a number of uh Shabbat dinners here in Austin with friends of mine and it's it's made me feel like I have perhaps a a ritual deficiency.
1:22:09
It's such an incredibly grounding nourishing tradition.
1:22:14
I mean outside of the religious context and you know, also what you're saying reminds me I'm blanking on the book.
1:22:19
I think it's 4,000 weeks, but that's by Oliver Burkeman and there's a chapter called cosmic insignificance therapy.
1:22:26
Just the relief that one can feel when their time horizon what they're considering sort of spans outside of themselves.
1:22:33
Balance is to understand that there are things that are bigger than you, but what you do still matters. Yeah.
1:22:41
So, I you know, I'm going to get to the secular question and I know we're running up on time shortly.
1:22:46
But in the 2010 New Yorker profile, which can't believe everything you read, so we'll see where we go.
1:22:53
But among interests that were cited here, one was eliminating desire.
1:23:01
Do you recall having this in your interests and I I'm curious about this though because it is very emo.
1:23:08
That might have been more of a phase of of of life.
1:23:11
That was the Mark E Zuckerberg phase.
1:23:11
I painted my room black, yeah.
1:23:15
All right, we can we can chalk that up to emo.
1:23:16
So, emo emo period check explained.
1:23:20
I'm going to get to the technical question.
1:23:21
Before I get to that though, you did personal challenges annually for about 10 years.
1:23:27
Which which challenge ended up being much easier than expected and which one ended up being much harder than expected? Either or. Just be curious to know.
1:23:37
I still do stuff like this.
1:23:37
I don't like make as big of a deal of it anymore, but but I I mean but I think just kind of throwing yourself into different situations to learn new things is I don't know.
1:23:50
I I think that that's just a big part of life. So, Yeah.
1:23:53
Well, which ones were hard?
1:23:53
One, I tried to meet a new person every day for the year. That was hard for me. I'm pretty introverted.
1:24:00
I built some amazing relationships out of it.
1:24:03
I you know, I started teaching this class at the local Boys and Girls Club with a friend and like mentored the kids for just talked to them a couple weeks ago.
1:24:13
They were they were all like none of their families had gone to college before and now they're all graduating college. It's pretty cool. That's amazing.
1:24:18
But I'm super introverted.
1:24:21
So, I think that that's probably been another silver lining of the whole distributed work thing for me is having space to to kind of think and and kind of control my my time and like not not get interrupted by other people so much, but it's an interesting balance being introverted, but also like being pretty sensitive and caring a lot about other people.
1:24:39
I think that the people kind of think that that introverts are like you know, for like don't like other people or something. That's not true.
1:24:45
I just just get overwhelmed easily. Yeah.
1:24:50
And then some of the ones I The The interesting thing is they all went in weird directions, right?
1:24:53
So, one year I did this like year of running and and then it's like I just did all kinds of different running.
1:25:02
I did like sprints, I did long distance running and then like my knees started hurting, so then I brought down, did triathlons and training for this Ironman, but then I like I broke my arm biking, so that ended up not quite happening.
1:25:14
So, I mean they all kind of go in in different directions.
1:25:16
You know, I learned Mandarin one year, learned Mandarin.
1:25:20
You can't learn Mandarin in a year. It's a challenging one.
1:25:22
I mean, maybe someone can. I cannot.
1:25:23
You know, we talked about my language deficiency earlier on.
1:25:28
But I mean that was partially I like I like kind of throwing myself into things that they're hard and you know, like like I said before, I mean I've studied a lot of languages in my life.
1:25:35
A little Spanish, a little French, a little Hebrew, a little Latin, a bunch of Greek, but it's it's actually hard for me.
1:25:44
So, I kind of like doing things that are hard for me and and obviously Mandarin is is important cuz yeah, Priscilla's family is Chinese.
1:25:50
So, that's I mean I just the day Priscilla and I after dating for almost 10 years had We decided we didn't want to have like a big wedding that a lot of people like we didn't want a lot of people asking us about it for a while.
1:26:02
So, we did it as a surprise wedding and basically didn't tell anyone and then the morning of the wedding, we were kind of telling everyone and I I told Priscilla's mother in Mandarin and I never knew before that if she understood anything I was saying and I just told her and a single tear went down her face and I was like, okay, my Mandarin is at least good enough for that. Wow. Yeah.
1:26:28
They're super interesting.
1:26:28
Yeah. They're super interesting. A lot of them were have a physical element just because I I I I tend to think like people focus so much on thought process, decision-making, like how can you be as smart as possible, but I I just think like energy level and there hasn't been that much that's been
1:26:47
written about like historical figures and energy level as opposed to how they thought, but I I actually would be very fascinated about about to to to kind of understand that, but I I I think just you know, I mean learning how to how to foil surf and things like that, it's just I mean it's super humbling. I
1:27:02
I mean these are like really hard skills.
1:27:05
It takes like weeks before you can even like get going. And I'm such a beginner. Right?
1:27:10
And then it's like it's just wild and it's so much fun and you know, it's like you start off doing this like downwinding thing where I mean there's the the the awesome thing about the foil is like there's almost no friction compared to a surfboard, right?
1:27:20
In a surfboard, you need to like be in a big wave or else like it yeah, you just stop, but a foil, you're just kind of standing on the board, but you're actually riding this little wing and it has no friction, so you can kind of just or very little friction.
1:27:30
So, you can you can basically just ride it on open ocean swells and it's this great workout.
1:27:34
You just like can pump in between swells and you know, your heart rate gets up to like 160, but you're but you can go for like a mile or or more and it's just it's wild and it's a great workout and you can't think about anything else while you were doing it because you will fall immediately.
1:27:51
So, learning new things is like I think a big part of what what brings meaning and joy to life.
1:27:58
We'll link to some of your annual challenges in the show notes because you you've tackled some very hard things including including Mandarin, which is is certainly not one of the easier options out there having having been an East Asian Studies major back in the day.
1:28:12
All right, so ask the technical question and if you know, it may be boring, but then then we'll we'll start to wrap up right after that.
1:28:17
This is a question from a friend who's a technologist and he's very curious how you're thinking about computing for smart glasses.
1:28:24
So, his question was and I know this is a bit of a a left turn yet again, but with respect to the metaverse, if the phone is one of the best places to do the computing, how do you think about navigating say phones that operate on OS's that you don't control or how how you foreseeing the future of that unfolding?
1:28:41
I think one of the wildest technical challenges for augmented reality is that it needs to basically you need to fit all this stuff into essentially a normal pair of glasses.
1:28:53
Whereas a VR will always, you know, it's it's supposed to be immersive.
1:28:56
So, I mean maybe it'll eventually be more like ski goggles where it'll be it'll be kind of thinner, but it's it's not like meant to just look like, you know, normal glasses.
1:29:04
Whereas augmented reality, if you're going to wear that throughout the day, it really needs to be socially acceptable.
1:29:08
So, you you're you're basically talking about, you know, the normal frames of glasses, maybe called thick rim frames, maybe 5 mm thick. Right?
1:29:15
So, within that, you're talking about fitting like, you know, what would have been called a supercomputer 5 or 10 years ago.
1:29:25
You know, basically like a laser projector, and then uh the the tools to basically have that display kind of holograms with with wave guides, because in order to make sure that the image still in the hologram stays synced in the right place, it needs to know what your eye position is.
1:29:39
You need like lasers that understand where your eyes are, and then it needs to have speakers, cuz of course you're going to want sound.
1:29:45
Um it probably needs microphones, cuz you're going to want to have an assistant and and talk to it.
1:29:48
It has sort of positional tracking, so that way if like if you know, I'm sitting on your couch as a hologram, and you move your head, I'm not moving off the couch.
1:29:55
It like needs to know exactly where you're looking at.
1:29:59
So, okay, all that stuff to do all that computation instantly in glasses that have that are 5 mm thick.
1:30:06
So, yeah, no, I think this is like one of the wildest technical challenges of the next, you know, 10 or 15 years, which is why I'm I'm I'm so excited about it.
1:30:14
I think that there's this odd thing where I I think sometimes people get really inspired by physically big things, but I actually think miniaturizing things to be tiny is in a lot of ways even a harder challenge.
1:30:26
So, this is a lot of the work that's that's going to happen.
1:30:29
Will it be valuable to have another phone or something like that? I don't know, maybe.
1:30:35
I I think that there are, you know, it's on on the one hand you can offload computing, so that's good.
1:30:38
One of the biggest things that basically is a limiting factor is actually heat dissipation.
1:30:45
So, if you have a processor that's running on your glasses, and it's getting hot, it's like you're making your face kind of warm, and that's um uncomfortable.
1:30:51
So, if you can have that in your pocket, that's better.
1:30:53
But, on the flip side, you need to find a way to get all that stuff to the glasses and back, and wireless chips are actually pretty energy intensive, too.
1:31:03
So, you're going to always have some computation on the glasses.
1:31:06
The kind of equilibrium I don't think is to have all of the computation somewhere else.
1:31:11
And then you start getting into this interesting trade-off, which is, okay, well, if you're Apple, and you have the iPhone, is that an advantage?
1:31:19
And I I think that there there are a bunch of different questions in that.
1:31:22
One is basically to what extent are they just going to advantage their own devices, or are they going to make it so that some of the APIs are open?
1:31:31
And I think that this is somewhat of a regulatory question, right?
1:31:34
It's like, are they going to be allowed to just make something that has you know, they have a billion iPhones out there.
1:31:39
Are they going to, you know, is or basically are the are the kind of regulated regulatory agencies around the world going to allow them to just like only make it so that their glasses work with their thing?
1:31:48
It would seem to me like that there would be an issue with that.
1:31:50
But, then there's this other issue, which is if you were designing a secondary device for, say, input or something like that, it probably wouldn't look like a phone exactly. Right?
1:32:00
So, I think when new computing platforms come around, people tend to assume that the incumbents are that that model is sort of going to work, and that whatever the new thing is just sort of a peripheral to that existing platform.
1:32:15
But, I think it it kind of depends, you know, it's like maybe the watch is more of a peripheral to your phone, but I would guess that augmented and virtual reality are so fundamentally different that whatever you want in your constellation of devices, you probably want it to be designed specifically for that, and not just like, okay, you happen to have a phone, so now let's shoehorn it into into doing augmented reality, too.
1:32:37
So, I think that there's like a lot of interesting questions in this, but I don't know, at the end of the day, I I think that there's like just a ton to be invented, and there are a lot of different ways that this could go. Thank you, Mark.
1:32:48
I appreciate you taking so much time in what is an incredibly busy week. I can only imagine.
1:32:52
Is there anything else that you would like to touch on?
1:32:56
Any requests to the audience?
1:32:59
Uh anything at all that you'd like to chat about or mention before we bring this to a close?
1:33:05
I mean, this was a pretty wide-ranging conversation.
1:33:08
I've never had someone start by asking me about fencing, and I don't think I've ever done an interview where we've talked or podcast where we've talked so much about sports. I'm not I don't know.
1:33:16
I feel like we could do a whole 'nother one of these. I feel like we could.
1:33:18
I mean, we didn't go into science at all or curing diseases. I know. I know.
1:33:22
I have a lot of notes left.
1:33:24
There's a whole whole 'nother session on that, maybe like another couple of hours at some point. Yeah, for sure.
1:33:29
But, this is this has been a lot of fun.
1:33:31
So, thank you for having me on. Of course.
1:33:33
I really appreciate you being on and um making the time for it.
1:33:35
And to everybody listening, we'll also link to everything in the show notes, certainly.
1:33:41
And if there are any additional resources, Mark, that you or your team would like to put in the show notes, we can add those in the show notes at team. blog/podcast.
1:33:48
And certainly, people can find you online rather easily, I would say.
1:33:52
Facebook/Zuck, Instagram/Zuck.
1:33:55
And uh uh of course, people can find Meta at meta. com.
1:34:00
And it's been fun to have a wide-ranging conversation, and as expected, I have many, many pages of of topics left that we could cover, and and uh certainly the the science and research side is something that, you know, if the opportunity presents itself, I'd love to get into it at some point.
1:34:16
But, I really appreciate you taking the time to have this conversation, Mark. It's been fun. Thanks for having me.