Virtual Communication

Dean: Welcome to Cloudlandia.

Dan: Wow. Wow.

Dean: Welcome to Cloudlandia.

Dan: Well, thank you very much. And I'm in a very snow covered mainland in the north.

Dean: Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. It's a little bit, it's, I'd say a little bit chillier than normal here out in the courtyard, but it's still outside. It's sunny, there's not a cloud in the sky. Slight breeze, high 60s, I would say. Beautiful. Yes. But in Cloudlandia it's always perfect.

Dan: Is that true? Is that true?

Dean: I mean, the weather.

Dan: No, I mean the weather.

Dean: Right, yeah, weather. That's what I mean. Yeah.

Dan: I'm not sure that Cloudlandia has weather.

Dean: That's true. It's a known factor because if it's

Dan: the same every day, it's like Sandy. I don't count, I don't count that as weather.

Dean: Okay. Well, yeah, listen, it's been, there's a lot going on right now. I don't know if you've noticed, but there is particular things that I'm gonna, I'm gonna throw out three things that I think the con slab of these is going to be a very interesting conversation. All right. And first of those is it doesn't matter which order I start in, but here's. We'll put this in the VCR files that, that fits pretty amazingly. So the Grammy nominations just came out in the last few days since our last conversation. And among them was a Grammy nomination for two young girls who created a musical version of a Netflix show called Bridgerton. And it was called the Unofficial Bridgerton Musical. And these girls in their bedrooms basically created these musical like songs brilliantly well, well, well done. And they're not without talent. They've got the capabilities to do it, but certainly they were just creating them live streaming on TikTok and started out with one song that edged them on and the whole community kind of was gathering around them, building this big audience of people who were, you know, following and loving it. They're reach was growing and growing and they put out an album called the Unofficial Bridgerton Musical and got so much attention that it was nominated for a Grammy. And that to Me Dan is 20, a 20 and 22 year old in their bedrooms basically at their homes or wherever they.

Dan: They're doing.

Dean: You know, separated. But live streaming created something that is at the highest level of acceptance in the mainstream kind of thing. You know, like we the way we've saw little Nas X with becoming the longest running number one song in the history. All of these barriers now are down. There's no gatekeepers at the top. If you've got the reach to get to the people, the capability to do the work, and the vision to apply the capabilities, the idea to something that is going to appeal to a lot of people, it is green lights all the way for you right now. So that's number one. Number two is this Metaverse situation right now is heating up that somebody just sold a $650,000 yacht inside a virtual world called Sandbox, where people are building the developing property. 4 million for a plot of land inside Decentraland, which is very close to our own Cloudlandia, which is very kind of funny. But the actual, like now cordoning off of place, time and place within the digital. Within the. The cloud now, within the digital world that people are buying physical. Well, the analog or the equivalent of physical things for millions of dollars. Hundreds of thousands in these. In this digital place. That's a big change. And then I'll top it all off with the. The kind of flavor for the conversation is I saw a funny meme, Dan. And this applies to our relationship as long as we met maybe the first time 25 years ago that this was what struck me. It said 25 years ago that if you wanted to get a picture of a raccoon, you either had to have a picture of a raccoon or you had to go to the library and get a picture of a raccoon. And if you wanted to have a picture of a raccoon with a silly hat, you could just forget about that. I thought, that is so funny, because now all you have to do is type in raccoon and silly hat, and you've got an unlimited buffet of raccoons and silly hats available to you. Every possible itch that you would want to scratch is available right now to you.

Dean: And so just looking at all these things are converging in my mind that are really amplifying the fact that 2022 is not 1992. You know, that's really where we're at right now, in my mind. And so I thought, who better to have that kind of a conversation with than you on a movie like this?

Dan: Yeah, I'm just going back to 1450s, you know, 1500s.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, with the creation of the. The new universe that is created by written word and combined with public, combined with publishing, you know, that someone can write something down, take it to a print shop, and they'll set it in Type and then run up as many copies as the person needs and probably a broad sheet that can be folded into a smaller shape. You know, they can fold it in half, they can fold it into quarters, they can fold it into 16, and then they have themselves sort of a pamphlet. And that pamphlet can be distributed out, let's say, to a thousand thousand people. And.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Now who did that? Advantage and who did that? Not advantage. So in the present situation, I'm going to use the same category of looking at what's happening. Who does this advantage and who does this? Not advantage.

Dean: Okay.

Dan: Okay. So want to take a crack at that?

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You don't have to go back to the early. You don't have to go back to the earlier model because what it disrupted was the control of the authorities over written word.

Dean: Right.

Dan: That written word was. First of all, it was limited to just one off, written documents. Okay. And only a few people had the skills to do that. And, you know, they were only hired by a certain number of people. But then, guess what? Almost anybody who had an idea could write it down. And if they could find a printer to do that, and there were a growing number of printers, then they could get that out there. And so who did that advantage?

Dean: Anybody Who. I guess the creators.

Dan: Well, yes, it advantaged the creators, but

Dean: that probably wasn't even a word.

Dan: But, but in. In the stern. But in the world, who actually takes advantage of new thoughts and new ideas, it's very seldom the creator.

Dean: Okay, I gotcha.

Dan: As the early adapters is the earlier, it's not the innovators who do it, it's the early adapters. So you're two. Let's take the two young woman who have created this album that's now Grammy awarded or nominated anyway for the Grammy Awards. Yeah. And let's say, are they innovators or are they early adapters?

Dean: That's true. They're early adopters. That's true.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: So they can make a ton of money. I mean, they can make a ton of money because the model they're using isn't any different than the one that you introduced two years ago with little Nas. Yeah, different genre. You know the genre. They, they probably got him out to different influencers.

Dean: Yeah, but the same model. You're right. That's an interesting. That's an interesting difference. Innovator and early adopter.

Dan: Mm. Mm. Yeah. So what I'm looking at right now is somebody who's the person who's getting rewarded for the yacht. Somebody created a yacht, obviously, in a Digital world and somebody else thought it was worth the money.

Dean: I can't wrap my mind around that yet. That that would be all those kind

Dan: of things, you know, in the world that he created the app, what else exists in that world? It must be a fairly fully furnished world that.

Dean: Oh yeah, this is why I was saying to you that this. So Sandbox is, you know, almost like one of these places. Like remember we met the guy from. From Second Life and these. Yeah. This whole digital Second Life was really kind of the first of those alternate reality worlds kind of thing where it was a real. Trying to make a real world out of. And yeah, now it's like it's mostly taken off in the gaming world. Like in. For Fortnite is one of the. The big things or, you know, where the universe is created and everybody's in there or Minecraft or Roblox or all these things where people go in and you're collectively, you're building something that you can continue to build and control. You know, have stake your claim kind of thing. And people sell things within that environment like to. And a lot of them are not affecting the play of the game, but they're just personal choices like, you know, skins or fashion things or tools or things that you could buy to express your individuality, I guess on the. Or, you know, you know, in the place much like fashion or the way we buy things in the real world. Right. Real properties. And it was interesting to hear conversations about this. Like when you think about NFTs and in the art world that owning digital rights to art is actually probably a way to get it more seen than if you actually own expensive works of art that you hang in your home where nobody gets to see them. You don't know. Nobody knows that you have them unless they come to your world. But if you've got these things now, it's like having the certified verified check mark on your Instagram account that you are. That's a status thing that people notice that you have that. You know, it sets you apart. And so having these crypto punks or owning this yacht in Sandbox or this land in Decentraland, I mean, it's a really like. This is where things that. Like what's happening in Fortnite is people. It's becoming an experience center where they've had, you know, big concerts with major artists, seeing 10 million people or more in at one time in the same experience kind of. And there's a really interesting.

Dean: I'll throw this in as an aside too, that there's a show on television right now called. I think it's called Alter Ego, and it's based on kind of like Todd Herman's book Alter Ego. But the show is a singing competition among holographic avatars. So you, Dan, create your holographic avatar. How you present yourself to the world. You are projected on stage, regardless of who you are, what you actually are, and you are judged on that presentation to the world, not what you really are. And it's a really interesting thing because it goes with. There's another game show, another show on TV called the Masked Singer. And there's something about this. I don't know, it's evolving to where this people prefer to mask, put a protective bubble around themselves, to express themselves truly without them people knowing that it's them kind of. And that seems. It's an interesting. I don't know, that's. I don't know if that's a new desire, but it's certainly. I've never seen it as prominently displayed. Mm. As well.

Dan: Yeah. I'm wondering what, you know, what I'm taking a look at is what is the incentive to do this? You know, I mean, not that these are very different things that you're talking about. Yeah, they're distinctly different activities. But there's something about, you know, investigating, exploring, mapping out an area in the world that, you know, is not controlled by other people. You know, it's not a pre existing establishment that you have to make your way slowly into with approval at every step. And.

Dean: Right.

Dan: You can go in here and you can create your. You can create your creature material. You know, I think that people who are really creative actually do this in their minds, you know, and that some people need sort of a bridge to be kind of creative. They can't just do it conceptually. They have to. They have to have other tools for them to do that. I was just. It's kind of interesting. I'm going to bring this in as maybe another example of what you're talking about here. So about two months ago, I was doing my regular podcast interviews with Peter Diamandis. And before the session, before we started our actual conversation, he introduced me to two young guys who have a company. And there's two things that this company will do for you. They'll download all of your existing intellectual capital. In other words, anything you have in printed or audio, video form, they will convert it to digital content. There will be this big single repository of all your intellectual content. And then they will create an avatar that looks like you and sounds like you. Or it's similar. And then that avatar will be supplied with your intellectual capital and it can be asked questions and it will. It'll go through your body of knowledge and then it'll come out and it'll answer a question and. And you can set this loose on the world as your representative. Yeah, you know, and, you know, when I was walking through the capability. But it wouldn't be useful to me to set it loose on the world. It would be useful for. To set it loose on me.

Dean: Wow. Say more about that.

Dan: Well, I would ask the avatar a question, and then it would go through all. Everything that I've written and come back with an answer and large amount of which I've completely forgotten.

Dean: Right. Yeah.

Dan: And so I. And, you know, it'll. You know, I'll say, well, where did you get that? Well, this is in such a thing. And so one of the things about writing journals and writing down ideas and having notebooks of ideas that is useful is that. But the usefulness is in the present when you're actually writing down the idea. The full benefit of the idea is when you're writing it down. But the past value of it recedes because you're always creating new stuff which distance you more and more from ideas that you might have had a year ago or five years ago or 10 years ago. And I said, you know what? Wouldn't it be neat to have, you know, randomly? Because I don't want to remember everything. I just want to be reminded of something that I'd forgotten. And so I asked this avatar who looks and sounds like me to what about that? And they said, well, you know, you know, I'm kind of dramatizing the avatar here, as I tell you.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Say, well, Dan. And it calls me Dan. And I call it Dan. And Dan comes back and says, well, you know, you wrote about this. This is like 19. You know, this is 1994. You wrote something like this. And I says, oh, that's really interesting. I can bring that back. That's really valuable. I can bring that out in the next quarter as a new thinking. Thinking to it. So to me, using it as an interface with the world, I have no interest with, but having an interface with my past, I have a great deal of interest in it.

Dean: Could you imagine being able to say, yeah, when did I first say the words Cloudlandia? Where did. When did I first bring that? Yeah, or when. Yeah, that whole. To go back.

Dan: Who not how.

Dean: Yeah, exactly.

Dan: Well, who not how. Yeah, we bring that because every time I'M asked about who, not how I mention your name.

Dean: So I love that. That's good. Yeah, I like that.

Dan: Yeah. So to a certain extent, kind of a bot out there for you in the world too.

Dean: Oh, that's so funny.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Good. Yeah. Yeah. Now here's the.

Dan: Can I. Can I tell you something though, something that I think is a reality? It's the people who profit the most who are advantage most are the people who can cross continually from one world into the other and bring something valuable both ways. In other words, they can be in Cloudlandia and then bring something into the mainland and then they can get something in the mainland and take it into Cloudlandia.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: So just operating in one of the worlds completely isn't. I think there's a receding value to your. To your existence in either one of the worlds.

Dean: And I think that, Dan, we underestimate the value of the mainland too, in a lot of ways that people look at. Like, I bet I would love to see actually the economic impact of the mainland versus Cloudlandia in terms of where the economic consumption and spending is or the economy itself is because. Excuse me, I look at. I was doing some calculating. I do a lot of work with financial advisors and we were calculating, doing some postcards into an area. We get a list of people who have certain attributes and if you have one of the attributes of B, people with a million dollars investable assets available, and if you take within a radius of your office some number of those people that 1,000 people with a. With investable assets of a million dollars is a billion dollars of potential assets under management from a thousand people within a mile of where you're sitting right now.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Or within. Within two miles or whatever. Yeah.

Dan: Whatever it is, you have to go far from you.

Dean: It's not far from a thousand people that you can literally walk to.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: And that's really.

Dan: I think you're really putting your finger at the crucial point. You know, I mean, if I go to the number one, I think criteria of whether things are getting better economically or not is actually productivity simply measures the output that you get per capita of people who are working. In other words, you have this number of workers and the per capita output, you know, and that's sellable output. So it's more than just having. Creating something, but it's creating something that actually gets sold. And so my sense is that your example is an example of extraordinary output from the, you know, the economic activity involving a thousand people.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: With some sort of agents who are transposing it from a low level of productivity to a higher level of productivity.

Dean: Yeah. And so that's, that was just observing all of this, you know, as how it all interplay between, between Cloudlandia and the mainland. And my.

Dan: Can I give you, I'm going to give you a thought here that tells you there's one indicator that tells you whether an economy is really a, you know, it could be the economy of a city or the economy a state, a province or a country. And there's one factor that I think determines and it has to do with the amount of cement created.

Dean: Okay, I bet that's, I mean, I love like, you know, random, you know, correlation.

Dan: And here's what I'm using. I'm only using one data point. Actually, I'll use two data points for this. And the first data point was Nazi Germany during the 1930s. Their economy went, you know, went from depression, depression level performance to thriving major country performance because there was a massive creation of cement that they began building things. The number one was the autobahn, which

Dean: was

Dan: major highway system throughout Germany, joining the various cities in Germany. And, and the whole point about it was, is that they were creating more highway than they had cars to drive on it. Okay, so it wasn't in, they weren't creating the highways to satisfy.

Dean: They were getting prepared. Right.

Dan: Demand for the number of car owners because there weren't that many car owners in Germany. It was actually they were just creating highway and they were putting thousands, tens of thousands of people to work and the money was disproportionately going into. And they were building all sorts of warehouses and factories using cement. Cement's probably the big thing. And they had to declare war because at a certain point in the 1930s, the jig was up. And their own economy just putting the emphasis on cement wasn't, wasn't going to continue to create the prosperity. The prosperity. It was a forced prosperity forced by the making of cement. And so they said, well, let's go to war. You know, let's go to war. And they invaded, you know, eventually. The one that triggered the war was they invaded Portugal, Poland, and the main reason was to steal everything useful that the Poles had. And they invaded a whole series of other countries, 25 other countries. And it was to steal that. We can't produce our own valuable output, so we'll just steal the output of other people. Okay. So the interesting thing is that if you go to the 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s, Japan was the country that was going to be the 21st century. I remember the movies, you know, showing how far ahead the Japanese were in America.

Dean: Right.

Dan: But the one feature in at the center of the Japanese growth and their prosperity was cement. They were producing cement like mad. They were cementing over everything. They were creating all sorts of cement structures and features and walls. They had seawalls that they created out of cement. And then around 1984, 85, they just hit a wall. And they've been essentially not in a growth position for the last close to 35 years. They haven't been in a growth position. When you look at China today and now there's this threat of failure in their real estate markets, the number one factor that you look at what's been happening in China for the last 15, 20 years is cement. They're producing cement. So there's an interesting thing about it that when you start noticing that the productive capabilities of a country are going into producing cement and then you over using cement, it kind of tells you that they don't have any other value creation in their economy.

Dean: That's interesting. And yeah, I mean, cement through history.

Dan: I mean, if you think about cement as representing the mainland, I mean, kind of going in that it's like the. I mean, the mainland's heavy enough now they're cementing it over. It's almost like it's the failure of creativity. I mean, cement's not hard to make. I mean, there's. There's no innovation in cement right at this point. And you can pour it out, you can just produce lots and lots of cement. So my feeling is that, you know, that an economy is bottoming out when it's at the bottom of it is increased amounts of cement.

Dean: Yeah, that's a really. Because you look at, you've said before, you know, we looked at Toronto as an example with the number of cranes is a indicator too. Right. Which, but everywhere there's a crane, there's cement. That's. That's part of the, the thing, I guess. You know, lots of cement. Yeah.

Dan: I mean, there's other things. The thing is that there's major what look like cities in China where if you flew over it, you'd say there must be a million people there. But. But it's all the buildings, but nobody's living in them.

Dean: Nobody yet.

Dan: Yeah, nobody ever. Nobody ever.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Like nobody ever. And what's interesting is that they have a credit. 75% of all personal investment would be individual Chinese investing in the Chinese economy. 75% of the total investment feature, personal investment is in buildings. It's in building projects, it's in real estate. And some of the. Some of it is second mortgage, some of it is third mortgage, some of it is fourth mortgage. Okay. And so they've got this massive credit, but it's all geared to an activity which, if you look at it, the more that gets built, the less useful it is. The.

Dean: Wow. Yeah, there's some, I mean, this, this kind of thinking, you know, like when you look at. What's the. So what do you, what do you do with that information? In a way, now that we know that. Right. What are we?

Dan: Well, in the world of reality, what's the opposite of cement?

Dean: Right.

Dan: Like the idea who. Not how. Seems to me to be the opposite of cement.

Dean: Yeah, yeah.

Dan: Vision, capability. The idea of VCR seems to me to be the opposite of cement. Okay. So it seems to me that the opposite of cement is a conceptual value.

Dean: Yes. And the ability, the multiplier of those is our ability to get that idea, get that concept to everybody at once that there's no. Yeah. Being able to spread. You know, it's not unlike the. If you. Even. If you had a picture of a raccoon in a funny hat 25 years ago, how would you even let the world know that if they were looking for one, you've got it. You know, the fact that you can type in to Google right now, raccoon and funny hat, and be presented infinite options for that right now, instantly at the thought of it, you know, now that since we've. Everything has been digitized, that's something. Yeah. Digital, I mean, cement is decidedly not digital. You're absolutely right. Everything about it is non digital. Yeah, yeah.

Dan: I mean, I mean, it's just. Yeah. I mean, first of all, it's. It's. There's a permanent. There's a permanent uselessness that, you know, that if it's in the wrong place, you know, it's in the wrong place and it doesn't generate any activity. And so, you know, I'm just trying to think. My sense is that the real economic activity is between the two worlds. That's more and more. I mean, from the past. I always feel that it's. The people who facilitate trade across boundaries seem to be the great money makers or the, you know, they're the, the people who have great flexibility to what they're doing because they're constantly looking on both sides what's needed on the opposite side. Yeah. I often say, people, I said, you know, the concept of heaven and hell, just as it exists, is, you know, it seems Sort of static to me, you know, heaven and hell. That actually the real interesting is the courier service in between.

Dean: Yes, the courier service. That's so funny.

Dan: Yeah, I mean, that's where the action is. The action is not heaven. I mean, from all I told, you know, it's. It's kind of, you know, it's kind of dozy. You know, the image is kind of dozy. And, you know, hell's got, you know, it might be interesting for the first, you know, first hour or two, but after that not so much. And. But actually the possibility of moving between the two is probably where all the action is.

Dean: Times Square in the Upper east side.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Oh, that's. Yeah.

Dan: And it's movement. Like, my sense is that value is in movement.

Dean: And that's what. Yeah, I mean, that's where that's, you know, explains kind of zoom in a way. Movement being able. Moving around in there.

Dan: Yeah. And nobody. People still don't get it. You know, it's kind of interesting because they're still talking in terms, you know, and I'm talking about team members, I'm talking about clients, you know, other people, they say, well, it's not really personal, you know, and I said, personal. You know, I'm not quite. I'm not quite wrapping my mind around the concept of personal, you know. What you mean personal? You mean. You know, it's kind of funny because I. For the first time, three days ago, for dinner, I had a dinner with five of my project managers. And this is the first time I've seen them since, you know, March of 2020. And we were at the Hazelton. We went to the restaurant in Hazelton and, you know, and there was this thrill. There was kind of the thrill for the first half hour, first hour. And, you know, and we were talking, first of all. Then it got really loud and it was hard to.

Dean: Were you in the private.

Dan: No, we didn't. We were too late. No, we were too late together. It would have been nice. I mean, that would have been fantastic if we had that. But. And the restaurant seemed to be worse after Covid, with noise levels than they were before COVID Wow. And maybe it's just been. Maybe it's just because I've been without the noise for 20, 20 months. Affecting. Affecting me more. But the big thing was that there is another dimension. There is another dimension that's not capturable on zoom. And it's a random multi dimensionality that happens when you have a group of people because people don't really talk complete sentences. They referred to this, they referred to that and everything else. And I'm not diminishing that or in any way. You know, saying that isn't great, but it's a different sort of thing going on.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Whereas in the zoom session, it seems more precise. You know, there's. There's a focus that's maintained and new material is added to the focus and it's all for the purpose of planning that's going to lead to action and deadlines, everything like that. So that's the difference that I know. But nobody taught, really brought up the subject of instant transportation. And I said, you're missing. The whole point of it is instant transfer transportation. You know, you're.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: The value is instantaneous transportation.

Dean: Yeah. You can be in a room. Yeah. You can all.

Dan: You may be the sort of person. You may be the sort of person that you're not creating any value here and you're instantly transported somewhere else and you won't create any value there. So that may be the issue.

Dean: More efficient non value creation.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. More efficient sameness.

Dean: Well, this is an interesting. Like what I'm interested, Dan. It's something that you said. If we go back, and I love the fact that, you know, we're talking about now and you immediately go back to the 1450s when the printing press was getting started, and we're talking about innovators and early adopters and I've been, you know, when we were looking at how we've evolved to get to where we are right now, that there's been a lot of steps, you know, from Gutenberg to where we are now. But it seemed to me, and this is what gets lost when you're looking back is the depth of the time. Like the. It seems to me if we're looking at the timeline of developments that led to digitization and where we are right now, that Gutenberg was one of the first that got us into the asynchronous distribution of consistent information. That was. That's the first step, the first domino there. But it seems like it took us then all the way to the 1800s to get to the next level where we could record pictures and audio with the phonograph and photography. And then it all sort of happened very quickly from there. Cascading improvement all the way up. What happened between 1450 or. And 1850 or 1830s or whatever the first photography was happening there. What. How did the impact of Gutenberg kind of change the landscape here that the. Who were the early adopters? Because it's the same. I Think we see that same opportunity here. Maybe, you know, do you know historically like who were.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. I mean the, the one that my sense is the one new capability that printing had a huge impact on were first of all commercial contracts that you could establish principles of trade law and in other words that you could increase the possibility of cooperation with strangers. And then the real breakthrough was it facilitated enormously deep water navigation from the standpoint of mapping and having more and more accurate maps of unexplored areas. So people would bring back information and they would revise the maps. You have to remember that this coincides within 50 years the discovery of a new hemisphere, the Western hemisphere was essentially all of human history was essentially in the Eastern hemisphere. And then starting in 1492 there was the discovery of another hemisphere as big as, you know. So the last 500 years have really been about the growing importance of the Western hemisphere. So much so that, you know, at the end of the Second World War, the key country that had been created in the Western hemisphere basically took over the policing and the coordinating of the Eastern Hemisphere. You know, the United States took over. And I mean a lot of people, you know, they don't really have an understanding of what happened at the end of the Second World War. Everything else. But what you see is more and more a movement of knowledge and utilization of the multiplier utilization of knowledge that seems to be increasingly dominant in one hemisphere over the other hemisphere and then in one country in that hemisphere over all that. So I would say that's. And all the breakthroughs that you're talking about for the most part in the Cloudlandia are taking place as a result of things happening in the United States.

Dean: That's true, isn't it? You're absolutely right.

Dan: Yeah. I mean even the little Nas story starts in Amsterdam, but the payoff is in. The payoff is in the United States. These two women, are they from the United States? Are they both?

Dean: They are, Yep.

Dan: Yeah, they are. And then all the action is in the United States. Mr. Beast takes place in the United States and all the.

Dean: Yeah, all of that. Right.

Dan: So my sense is that if you look at the word of world of Cloudlandia and the gaming business, you'll see that however dominant the Western hemisphere and I'll just say the United States here and its influence, that became the key power in Cloudlandia and that area in the mainland. And now it's infinitely probably from a positive standpoint, the biggest power in Cloudlandia.

Dean: Yes. Until. Unless then you get into where reach could make the biggest difference and you start to see. I've been reading about the future of the movie industry and the impact of China on box office just in streaming and those things. Just the sheer numbers of China, India, as Everybody moves into a 5G, you know, self directed kind of world where the phone is the outlet for things rather than the movie theaters, that's gonna stack the deck in the favor, you know, in China being a huge market like that. Yeah.

Dan: And I think my sense.

Dean: Your volume.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. My sense is that China now realizes that they're in a existential fight for control over the minds of their own people.

Dean: Yeah,

Dan: I mean, all their, you know, creating a surveillance society is that they're really worried enormously about what images and messages their own people are taking in that they're not controlling. They're not controlling.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: I think, I mean, my sense is that a lot of the argument is that the Chinese are on the offensive. I don't think that they have been now for about 10 years because they've been coming, they're clamping down, they're suppressing. And anytime you hear about suppression and surveillance and everything else, that's not a confident offensive position. It's a, as a worried defense position.

Dean: Well, they're finding out. They're finding out. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, that in the bud.

Dan: Yeah. And you know, but you know, American culture since the movie, the age of movies and then moving into the age of, you know, age of music and television, that's really been the dominant cultural power on the planet. You know, I mean, all the techniques that the Chinese are using are basically created outside of China. There's no new, there's no new technological creativity inside China. Everything say, you know, is a, an adaptation of things that were created other parts, parts of the world. And I think that, you know, that's true in the mainland and that's also true.

Dean: Well, you're starting, this is an interesting conversation because you're starting to see now through Netflix becoming a global provider of access to digitized entertainment, that some of the biggest stories of the last 18 months have been foreign things. Like there was a show called Money Heist that was the number one show and it came from Spain and then there was. Now Squid Games is this big phenomenon that's the number one show in the world from Korea and it were. It's a really interesting.

Dan: Well, the other thing is that it's been the golden age of television, I would say, for the last 25 years out of London, basically out of, you know, the British have been producing more great tv, you know, long running, especially long running tv, you know. And, you know, and I saw a great series called Babylon Berlin, which was the, the most highly financed TV series in German history, you know, that came out. So my sense is that wherever there's creativity, it will be sought for, sought out for by the capital markets that are behind streaming. You know, Disney's in it and you know, HBO is in it, everything else. So what it means, it's a single world. And therefore where there's really interesting, you know, really interesting stories can find their place, they can find it sort of in your back.

Dean: Going back in your knowledge after Gutenberg is. When did literature start to, you know, rather like, when did entertainment writing start to storytelling start to grab hold like book publishing? Story publishing, I guess.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. You don't see a big real upswing in, you know, in fiction right. Until, until around the 15, 1600s, you know, so it's a good, it's. When I say 1600s, the late 1500s, you have Don Quixote, you know, came out Don Quixote, a Spanish thing. I think that's in. That might be contemporaneous with Shakespeare, but theater became really big. That's the thing. Shakespeare is really the crossover point for theater. And the reason is that he was purely entrepreneurial in the sense that he was a playwright, but he was also a producer of plays. And he had a company which was an organization to produce plays. And he created his own theater, the Globe, which was his own theater. And this was the first time that a theater existed that wasn't owned by the monarchy or. Yeah, it would have been the monarchy, more than that. And, and so I think there's a crossover of entrepreneurial activity that, you know, that really picked up. And my sense is that theater and fiction appeared most where countries were busy with trade as a source of economic power. Okay. You have a very diversified audience that's living in fairly dense population where entertainment. Entertainment becomes a big part of their life.

Dean: Right?

Dan: That's a good question. I mean, I'll go and you know.

Dean: Well, I wonder if it ties in with. With the innovation that creates leisure. I mean, that creates. Where we start to really have some time to kick back a little bit.

Dan: Yeah. And the, the interesting thing is that watching streaming on television is a lot cheaper than, you know, getting dressed, traveling down to the theater and paying the price of theater and then probably having to eat either before or after.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Transportation costs. And the last 20 months has given people a full introduction to the alternative than you leaving your house

Dean: and it's. Everybody loves it.

Dan: Nothing like the courtyard.

Dean: All the introverts love it.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. Well, now, I mean, I'm. Yeah, I'm clearly introvert in the mainland and an extrovert on zoom.

Dean: In Cloudlandia. Right, Exactly.

Dan: In Cloudlandia, I'm an extra. I'm an extrovert in. In the mainland, I'm an introvert.

Dean: I love that. Well, now we've got this omicron, so that's gonna keep us. That should chase us back into our hidey holes for a while.

Dan: Yeah, they couldn't use the next one. They couldn't use the next name, you know. Why?

Dean: Why?

Dan: Well, it was G. Like the president of China. They couldn't. That.

Dean: That's interesting.

Dan: So, anyway, because of these variants that keep coming and they force the science to just keep getting better. So what's been happening backstage is all the scientific labs in the world are doubling down, getting a head start on the next variant. So my sense is that they may be producing really, you know, super knockout type of vaccines. And I suspect they're going to be oral vaccines. They're not going to be shots that you'll be taking an oral vaccine once a month. And it just keeps you perpetually on top of things.

Dean: Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. Just keep taking your pillow and everything will be fine.

Dan: I take lots of pills. I mean, yeah, I take Adderall. You know, I. I have one called propranolol. I've got a thing called an essential tremor, and it's in one of my hands that I have a tremor.

Dean: Okay.

Dan: And it's not a precursor to Parkinson's. You know, that's what they look for if you have anything.

Dean: Right.

Dan: But it's actually just a. It's. It's a flaw, you know, But I take a thing called propranolol, and it's a. Originally meant as a blood pressure disease. Wasn't very effective. But what it does is it actually

Dean: lowers your heart rate.

Dan: Your heart rate comes down and there's a point where the tremor stops and.

Dean: Wow. And.

Dan: And so anyway, but I take my drug. You know, I take my drug, I've got blood pressure medicine that I take and everything else and that. And everything's cool, you know, it's effective. It doesn't decline and affect its effectiveness. And so I don't mind that.

Dean: Right. You are a fan of pharmaceutical advancement.

Dan: Yeah. And, you know, I mean, foods are. You know, we're told from childhood that this food is good for you, and this food isn't necessarily good for you.

Dean: And. Well, I always find it fascinating and that people will take, you know, three handfuls of supplements to avoid taking one pill of a pharmaceutical. You know, it's. It's an interesting, like, I'll do this, but I won't do this kind of mentality, you know, Strikes me.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. I think that people's reasons for anything are. Are highly specific and highly quirky.

Dean: Yeah. Mm.

Dan: And you know that you have to understand the individual at a very deep level to figure out why they're for this and that again.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Why they're against this. There's no. When it comes to individuals, I find. I find there's fewer and fewer general rules.

Dean: Right. Well, there's a lot of, like, signaling and approval seeking. You know, a lot of people's in supplementation and there's a lot of shame and, you know, guilt. Yeah. In pharmaceuticals or whatever. But if you take it on a meritocracy, the result getting basis. Yeah. That's a. Probably more. Probably a better barometer to judge than just the emotional attorney speaking. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. I've got this neat thing that I got. You can look it up. It's called hustle drops. H U S T L E Drop.

Dean: What are they called? Hustle Hustle.

Dan: Like hustle. You know, somebody who hustles.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: A hustle drop. You look it up and it comes in a black bottle with a, you know, a pincher like, you know, that you can press it and you get a certain amount of fluid and you put it in your mouth and then you. You just move it around in your mouth for about 10 seconds and then you swallow it. And it's. You get an instant hit of energy. I mean, you're. First of all, your. Your entire breathing passages just instantly clear. And you get this real shot of energy. And I take it just before I do my exercise in the morning and I get a bottle. You get about 30. It's good for about 30 days. And so I've just been experimenting for the last six months with it. And I really like it. I really like it. And if you get a cold or anything and you just take this, all of a sudden your nasal passages just completely clear out and you get a. You know, and it's a whole bunch of too much, like mint and menthol and everything. That's a mix. And I think it's a crowdsourcing project. I think they funded this opening with crowdsourcing. Wow. Damn. Anyway, Yeah. I warn people off the things that don't seem to work, you know?

Dean: Right.

Dan: Anyway. Yeah. Anyway, next time I want to go deep into what are the components of a compelling offer.

Dean: Okay. I know a lot about that.

Dan: Yeah. I would really like to get a handle on that because I think it's the essence of persuasion.

Dean: Absolutely. This. Yes. Oh, well, this will be. This will be fun. Let's do that.

Dan: Okay.

Dean: I'll count on you to remind. But that's. I'll be right.

Dan: We'll do. Thank you.

Dean: Thanks. Have a great week, Dan. Bye.

Dan: Take care. Bye.