00:00:00Intro
00:01:55The Long Arc of Internet History
00:11:56Monopolies, Publishers & Big Tech
00:15:01Libraries, E-Books & Surveillance
00:19:24Public AI & Civilizational Infrastructure
00:26:00Credit Unions & Social Housing
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Brewster Kahle started planning the Internet Archive (creators of the Wayback Machine) in 1980 at the MIT AI lab, when he figured that machines worth talking to would need a library to learn from. Forty-six years later, he says the biggest obstacle to that future is a handful of companies that want to control information instead of selling it.
We recorded this conversation live at DWeb Camp 2026 outside Berlin. We talk about where the early web went wrong and what Europe's copyright carve-out could mean for public AI. Brewster also argues that small-scale capitalism belongs on the list of civilizational infrastructure, and tells the story of the credit union he tried to start after the 2008 crisis.
Brewster Kahle is the founder of the Internet Archive and a longtime advocate for the decentralized web.
Subscribe on Substack - https://allmodelsarewrong.online/
0:00 Intro
1:55 The early days of the internet and what they got wrong
11:56 Big Tech vs Big Publishing
15:01 The original vision of The Internet Archive
21:01 What civilizational infrastructure should we be building?
26:03 Internet Archive Credit Union vs Big Banks
Subscribe on Substack - https://allmodelsarewrong.online/
Buy my book - https://linktr.ee/blockchainradicals
English
United States
SHOW NOTES 🔗
TRANSCRIPT 🔗
WEBVTT
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But it had a couple of basic flaws, and we're really seeing those to this day.
00:00:04.160 --> 00:00:08.000
One is we never built in a money mechanism to try to get people paid.
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And so we ended up with the ad model, which tends towards monopoly.
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Big problem.
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And never trust a publisher to do a librarian's job.
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They just bad at it.
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They're going to manipulate it, they're going to change and delete it, and they do.
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And they do it at scale.
00:00:22.239 --> 00:00:30.879
And the biggest holdup we have now in the AI front is actually these monopolies saying, no, we're going to control everything.
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We don't want libraries anymore.
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What libraries do is they collect, preserve, lend, and interoperate with other libraries.
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Those guys that are all about control of information and they work extremely well with authoritarian governments because they sort of think in many ways the same way.
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And they're structured in many ways the same way.
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How can we build a decentralized system that actually works to get some people paid and some independence and control over what it is they're putting out?
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That's the only way to make a free and open society work.
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We now have actually a live podcast recording, which is pretty cool.
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This is the All Models Are Wrong podcast, hosted by Joshua Davila, in conversation with a person who, in many ways, started all of this, Brewster Kale, founder of the Internet Archive.
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As a young computer scientist, he dreamed of a library of Alexandria for the digital age, and 40 years later, that dream is core internet infrastructure.
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The show's name comes from the idea that no model is ever fully right, only useful.
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Uh a fitting frame for a talk about holding fast to a vision.
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Please welcome Joshua DeVila and Brewster Cale.
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Awesome.
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Thank you for the introduction.
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That means I don't have to do the introduction.
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We can just get right into it.
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So we're here today at DWebcamp 2026, just outside Berlin.
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This is the first time that they've done it, I believe, outside of the United States.
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Um I think it's really interesting that this is happening during a time uh during the rise of artificial intelligence.
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Um the technology has improved quite a bit since the past year.
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Um and also Brewster was one of the uh employees of one of the first AI companies, I guess, called Thinking Machines, not to be confused with the new company called Thinking Machines, started by one of the OpenAI co-founders.
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As part of this, I kind of wanted to contextualize what's happening right now within the long arc of history since you know, we could say from 1996 when Internet Archive started, or maybe even back in the 80s when you were working at thinking machines of where we are today and how we've gotten here and kind of where we're going.
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Um and so kind of one of the things that I noticed about your work when I do my research is that like um when I think about what's happening right now, and then I think back 30 years ago, because now I think we're 30th anniversary of Internet and Archive, um, the thing that's really striking to me is wow, you must have like you must have thought about the future with AI and what that would look like, and the kind of types of civilizational institutions and infrastructure that we would need in preparation for that future.
00:03:25.360 --> 00:03:43.360
And so what I wanted to do is start off maybe bringing us back 30 years ago or however many years ago, you want to go back to the young younger Brewster um founding Internet Archive and kind of what was going on in your mind during that time uh and like the history that got us here.
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Let's dial the Wayback Machine another another couple steps.
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Um so 1980.
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The AIs want to join the conversation.
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They're omnipresent now.
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Um make sure you don't say anything that angers them.
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So back at the AI lab at MIT in uh in 1980, um, I was looking for a project of going and being a geek that would be useful.
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And the idea is there was this we had been promising the Library of Congress on your desk for decades by then.
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And it was like, how hard could this be?
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Right?
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We just go and and and either just burrow through it and digitize it.
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But we thought, okay, what is gonna be needed to be able to make that come true?
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We knew even back then that we were going to be making machines that were gonna be inter they had to be interesting to talk to to have them learn enough to be uh uh useful to be around.
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Um so we thought, okay, and they would have to know a lot.
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And so I thought, okay, that sounds like a great idea.
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Let's go and build that AI future.
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Um and well, first we're going to need to kind of have computers that don't suck, and so we built a connection machine supercomputer.
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It was the first real search engine, but it was before while we were still in the ARPANET era.
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Um, and we needed the ARPANET to transition to the internet, and we needed to go and get um uh free and open source software because we'd screwed up the copyright system.
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Um, and that sort of that was in the early 80s.
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Um, and so I was not the leader, that Stallman was, um, but I was there with him to try to go and try to get this stuff to work.
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Then we needed to have open protocols uh to make this all go, and we had to get um uh these new personal computers that were coming along that had operating systems that didn't work.
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Um there was a single thing that you could do on a Macintosh, that you know, blah.
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Um so we had to try to get all of these pieces uh going.
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Then we had to get people publishing on the net because the idea of of going and just say buying a library and cutting off all the bindings and just digitizing it seemed um kind of short-sighted.
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We wanted to try to get the new publishing system going.
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Um so I put the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, uh the the first publishers on this internet thing, which was kind of a military uh uh research project, to try to get it so that people could make money by publishing on the net and try to make everyone into a publisher.
00:06:26.720 --> 00:06:35.519
So I did a system before the web called Waze to go and try to make it so that everybody would be a publisher.
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But Tim's system worked a lot better, it was a lot simpler, uh Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web.
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Um, and so we kind of all piled in behind that because it was an open protocol, open system.
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Um but it had a couple of basic flaws, and we're really seeing those to this day.
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One is we never built in a money mechanism to try to get people paid, and so we ended up with the ad model, which tends towards monopoly, big problem.
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Um, I'm a big much bigger fan of royalty systems.
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It's how the book publishing industry solidified in Europe in the early 1600s, but we didn't get there or we haven't gotten there yet.
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Uh, crypto was supposed to help, and then uh that's been having real trouble um based on regulator problems.
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Um so uh we but we got a bunch of the pieces.
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We got a bunch of the pieces.
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Uh uh the World Wide Web worked, but one of the problems of the World Wide Web is unlike publishing in the past, where you'd a publisher would go and make copies and and sell them or give them away, uh, and they would be in people's collections or in library collections.
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The uh in the World Wide Web, there's only one copy.
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It's got one Earl, it's in one place, and it's changed or deleted within a hundred days.
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Things would it's kind of a problem there.
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Um uh because that's putting way too much control in the power of that one publisher, and it tries to force them into being an archive or a library, and never trust a publisher to do a librarian's job.
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They're just bad at it.
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Um, they're going to manipulate it, they're gonna change and delete it, and they do.
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Um and they do it at scale.
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Uh, the other thing I got wrong was the uh monopolization of things, the drift towards concentration that is now allowed and encouraged by um governments that uh don't have uh well uh it so we now have monopolies uh basically being built in every field, and so we have media consolidation that is making it so that we're having to refight the same fights over and over again.
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Where we had to fight AOL to go and build a decentralized uh distributed interesting system.
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We won that one, but kind of they're back, right?
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We have Facebook, we got we have uh Twitter, we have uh YouTube that goes and sort of dominates whole media types.
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And this is not the way you can make things diverse and interesting and uh uh uh uh working.
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So um where the Internet Archive is the latest phase towards building the data sets for AI, um we have this counter trend towards monopoly.
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Um, and the decentralized web work of sort of started really for us 10 years ago to try to get the decentralized web to happen, um, was a Hail Mary to try to counter the monopolization forces.
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Um and um that it's you know got 500 people here in Germany in its first year indicates that there's real interest in trying to build an alternative to the to the uh future that we're being sold or force-fed um of this monopolized structure, which doesn't work very well.
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It's it's not a very innovative, interesting system.
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So long arc here.
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Um I started out trying to build a library that's smart, that would be a global brain, that would be a thing that would help people make better decisions, um, where the technologies have been unfolding.
00:10:06.639 --> 00:10:14.240
It's not like AI happened in you know 2023 with uh the the open AI thing, though that's awesomely cool.
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You know, Google has been basically AI for a long time.
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How can you type a couple of words and end up with good documents out of billions?
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And that is freaking amazing.
00:10:26.799 --> 00:10:39.200
And they've been basically tuning all of that technology for a long time, not widely deployed, but now we're having some of these new chat systems, which will is that kind of can you talk to the library?
00:10:39.200 --> 00:10:48.240
And the biggest holdup we have now in the AI front is actually these monopolies saying, uh, no, we're gonna control everything.
00:10:48.240 --> 00:10:51.120
Um there we don't want libraries anymore.
00:10:51.120 --> 00:10:56.799
What libraries do is they collect, preserve, lend, and interoperate with other libraries.
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That's what libraries do, four things.
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And the publishers say you're not allowed to collect, you're not allowed to preserve, you're not allowed to lend, and you're not allowed to work with other libraries.
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You all have to deal with me, I'm gonna surveil everything, everything is going to be paper drink, or I'm gonna control everything.
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And as a top lawyer of one of these media conglomerates said, uh it's not about compensation, Brewster, it's about control.
00:11:18.240 --> 00:11:37.840
So that's the world that we're uh living in, and D Web is essential towards building a different view, towards how do we go and make it so that everyone's a publisher, people some of us uh will be uh uh paid for that work, and we don't have to work for media conglomerates to be able to be a good reporter.
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That those are the systems that we need to have uh uh a work, long-winded question, uh answer to a very short question.
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That was uh that was great.
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I think the the thing that comes to mind for me, at least, is that it seems like Internet Archive plays in a space perhaps in the middle between publishers and big tech.
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So I think there's like been a lot of uh, you know, over the years, battles between publishers and big tech where uh at least my impression is that they're not uh in the No, they're no no come on, come on.
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They're the same, right?
00:12:09.120 --> 00:12:14.879
So uh so the publishers and big tech are the same type of people.
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They think the same way, they try to carve out and own particular things.
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And even if you're a new distributor like cable, then you end up owning the studios.
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Now we having the the um uh Reddit is indistinguishable from a publisher.
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Um uh Amazon bought MGM.
00:12:33.360 --> 00:13:01.679
So uh the all of those those guys are all about control of information, and they work extremely well with authoritarian governments um because they sort of think in many ways the same way, um, and they're structured in many ways the same way, and having uh fewer um uh so in the United States we're starting to see the merge, right, uh, of of our big media companies with um uh alignment with p a political party.
00:13:01.679 --> 00:13:20.240
So we're um so I'd say the uh uh one of the brilliant um things of the internet was the definition of the ontology of organizations into dot com, dot edu, dot gov, dot mil, and dot org.
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We think differently.
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We are different.
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We we wake up in the morning with a different success metric.
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If you're in the military, you think success is very different than if you're in a uh educational institution or in a dot-com uh or or organization.
00:13:36.720 --> 00:13:41.919
So I would no don't don't just this this this false dichotomy of publishers.
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No, they are the same people.
00:13:43.840 --> 00:13:48.399
And they are uh they basically think the same way, they're all about control of information.
00:13:48.799 --> 00:13:49.360
Sure, yeah.
00:13:49.360 --> 00:13:57.120
I guess the the way that I was thinking of it was more about like uh how they've kind of like usurped into each other.
00:13:57.120 --> 00:14:05.519
There were like early battles between them, and they've kind of they found a compromise between each other uh to some degree or bought each other out, or you know, something happened.
00:14:05.519 --> 00:14:26.720
Um but I guess the so the the the direction I kind of wanted to go with this question a little bit was now, you know, right now with the expansion of artificial intelligence, um, when you say uh like I think the the the motto for Internet Archive is open and universal knowledge for all.
00:14:26.720 --> 00:15:01.279
Um like is was the thinking 30 years ago, like the fear around the uh uh the inability to share knowledge freely with the growth of these types of companies, um, and that there needed to be like the the point of Internet Archive was to provide like a more uh uh uh truthful like database of knowledge than what maybe you could get um either because of authoritarian governments or because of like uh paywall behind uh like corporate databases of of knowledge.
00:15:01.279 --> 00:15:02.080
That makes sense.
00:15:03.200 --> 00:15:05.679
I actually it shows my naivete.
00:15:05.679 --> 00:15:09.600
Um I I didn't expect a monopolization.
00:15:09.600 --> 00:15:18.559
Um so the la the library system um funds about 20 percent of all of the book publishing done, right?
00:15:18.559 --> 00:15:25.679
So it's it is the fun, it's a socialized support of local production of knowledge.
00:15:25.679 --> 00:15:33.919
It keeps uh traditionally it kept local authors, local publishers, local newspapers all going.
00:15:33.919 --> 00:15:40.960
It was how we socialized and funded information production back in the old days, right?
00:15:40.960 --> 00:15:42.799
You know, uh early, right?
00:15:42.799 --> 00:15:44.080
I've got gray hair here.
00:15:44.080 --> 00:15:48.399
So um and so it it's a it bought one of everything.
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It kept things around.
00:15:49.759 --> 00:16:02.720
It it it was an infrastructure that was the publishers would go and make the new thing and then they'd sell them to libraries or individuals, and then um they would go off and work on the next one.
00:16:02.720 --> 00:16:13.039
That's not the way that uh these companies think about themselves, and they're threatening libraries all the time to make sure that they don't collect things, that they can't get things.
00:16:13.039 --> 00:16:14.960
They don't sell anything anymore.
00:16:14.960 --> 00:16:19.039
So it used to be that you actually would sell a book and a library would own it.
00:16:19.039 --> 00:16:23.759
But an ebook, no the none of the big publishers will sell an ebook.
00:16:23.759 --> 00:16:28.559
They're they they don't even let the libraries, they don't trust the libraries to have the bits.
00:16:28.559 --> 00:16:36.799
They basically only allow their uh patrons for money to go into their surveillance-oriented e-book lending systems.
00:16:36.799 --> 00:16:39.519
And those you better believe those are surveilled.
00:16:39.519 --> 00:16:44.639
Those those companies are now starting to call themselves data analytics companies and not publishers.
00:16:44.639 --> 00:16:50.240
So it it's really changed, right, how this whole uh ecosystem has worked.
00:16:50.240 --> 00:16:52.960
But the library system, I think, is a good one.
00:16:52.960 --> 00:17:09.119
Um, and I we if we didn't have this monopolization, we would have local news, we would have local authors, we would have authors actually paid somewhat reasonable amounts of money, but it all stops with these middlemen layers that are getting very good at standing in the way.
00:17:09.119 --> 00:17:12.319
But we still have to continue on, right?
00:17:12.319 --> 00:17:14.559
We still have to learn what our world is about.
00:17:14.559 --> 00:17:26.079
And wouldn't it be great if you could pay somebody um for their song and know that 80% or more of the money that you go pay would go to the freaking musician?
00:17:26.079 --> 00:17:27.440
Wouldn't that be awesome?
00:17:27.440 --> 00:17:29.200
That it's just not happening.
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It's all sifted off, and so um we we oh well it's an honor to go and be on Spotify and not get paid.
00:17:36.640 --> 00:17:37.839
And it's like, no.
00:17:37.839 --> 00:17:49.920
I it's like what what what how can we build a decentralized system that actually works to get some people paid and some independence and control over what it is they're putting out.
00:17:49.920 --> 00:17:53.279
That's the only way to make a free and open society work.
00:17:53.279 --> 00:18:01.920
Otherwise, we end up with a kind of Soviet centralized control uh uh uh company system um and control economy.
00:18:01.920 --> 00:18:05.039
Anyway, so um but where are we?
00:18:05.039 --> 00:18:09.839
We're at the point where we have some of the AI technologies that are kind of great, right?
00:18:09.839 --> 00:18:14.240
We can actually talk to these things um if we can be allowed to build them.
00:18:14.240 --> 00:18:16.720
Europe has done something awesome.
00:18:16.720 --> 00:18:31.039
They made a carve-out in their copyright uh uh law called Article III that if you're a collect if you're a cultural heritage institution library or a research organization, that you can go and let the robots read.
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And you can let the robots read to do text and data mining as long as it's scientific research.
00:18:37.359 --> 00:18:38.400
Awesome.
00:18:38.400 --> 00:18:40.960
Let's build public AI in Europe.
00:18:40.960 --> 00:18:54.960
This was the let the robots read is what the United States said that allowed search engines uh to happen, and what we ended up with a dot-com boom in the United States that didn't really happen in Europe because the publishers didn't allow it.
00:18:54.960 --> 00:19:00.480
But there's a carve-out now in uh in Europe to be able to build public AI.
00:19:00.480 --> 00:19:13.519
And I think this uh uh opportunity to build public good AI, let's build climate GPT, let's build health, uh uh, use these new tools to help with healthcare, big questions, big problems that we have.
00:19:13.519 --> 00:19:21.119
And not just selling shoes or whatever it is the e-commerce-based search engines or AI companies are gonna want to uh push on us.
00:19:21.119 --> 00:19:34.799
But but the big hard problems of education, how do we make it so that Europe, if you're a uh a parent in Europe, uh um and you know that your kid is gonna be brought up by these large language models, right?
00:19:34.799 --> 00:19:39.680
That's gonna be a major part of how the education system goes forward.
00:19:39.680 --> 00:19:47.680
People under 40 largely got brought up in the search engines, and we ended up with, well, one really, um, and it wasn't European.
00:19:47.680 --> 00:19:50.960
So are we gonna do that again in Europe?
00:19:50.960 --> 00:19:58.799
Uh is it is the choice parents are gonna have to have their kids brought up on a large language model that has an American accent or a Chinese accent?
00:19:58.799 --> 00:20:01.920
Is that the is that the uh the real opportunity?
00:20:01.920 --> 00:20:03.200
I would say not.
00:20:03.200 --> 00:20:08.720
Let's go and build things with European values in Europe uh and have it reflect Europe.
00:20:08.720 --> 00:20:10.960
Let's have Africa reflect Africa.
00:20:10.960 --> 00:20:27.359
Let's have a more decentralized world that allows us to go and carve our ecos our information ecosystem to suit more than just the commercial interests of a few monopoly players that are probably thousands of miles away and that don't have your interest in mind.
00:20:30.720 --> 00:20:31.599
Well said.
00:20:31.599 --> 00:20:39.519
Um yeah, I think it's kind of I think you kind of uh brought into my next question is about um civilizational infrastructure.
00:20:39.519 --> 00:20:46.400
I guess the the way that I would frame Internet archive, I mean, we've been kind of blessed with its creation.
00:20:46.400 --> 00:21:00.720
I think it's something that uh um yeah, I mean, clearly states or governments didn't create something like the Internet Archive, and it required, you know, someone like you to actually make it come alive.
00:21:00.720 --> 00:21:10.880
Um what are some other types of I'm using my term, civilizational infrastructure uh that you think we ought to be building right now?
00:21:12.000 --> 00:21:13.039
Oh, cool.
00:21:13.039 --> 00:21:15.519
Civilizational infrastructure.
00:21:15.519 --> 00:21:24.880
Um well let's take some of the preconditions that allow something like the Internet Archive to have been founded.
00:21:24.880 --> 00:21:39.759
Um or Wikipedia um is um a freedom to go and build nonprofit infrastructure um that does not just advocacy but but real infrastructure.
00:21:39.759 --> 00:21:52.559
So um uh in the United States we've got nonprofit uh universities, we have nonprofit hospitals, we have nonprofit, a lot of operational infrastructure.
00:21:52.559 --> 00:21:59.759
So it wasn't that odd in the United States to build a nonprofit library that was independent from the uh from the government.
00:21:59.759 --> 00:22:02.640
In Europe, there's not as much of that.
00:22:02.640 --> 00:22:06.480
Um, a lot of it's really within the government uh infrastructure.
00:22:06.480 --> 00:22:16.640
So I would say we need room to go and experiment with new infrastructure without the top-down nature of government institutions.
00:22:16.640 --> 00:22:27.519
So I think the nonprofit structure, I think, is really important one for inf inst for cultural uh uh moving uh for civilizational moving forward.
00:22:27.519 --> 00:22:29.200
And I'm gonna surprise you with one.
00:22:29.200 --> 00:22:35.920
I'm gonna suggest another piece of civilizational infrastructure that we need is capitalism.
00:22:35.920 --> 00:22:38.880
Okay, did you expect that?
00:22:38.880 --> 00:22:41.440
I bet you did not expect that.
00:22:41.440 --> 00:22:51.680
Uh I I okay, so let me define that as um buying and selling things, like having large numbers of small competitive players.
00:22:51.680 --> 00:22:57.039
I I still like the mom and pop uh uh uh restaurants, right?
00:22:57.039 --> 00:22:59.519
Those are really awesome places, right?
00:22:59.519 --> 00:23:02.799
Unlike, say, the franchises, right?
00:23:02.799 --> 00:23:08.319
I'm against monopolies and these large score large-scale corporate structures.
00:23:08.319 --> 00:23:14.880
They make for homogenization and blandizing and horrible lives and you don't want to work there and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:23:14.880 --> 00:23:23.599
But uh having large numbers of of small players, sort of the Adam Smith for version of capitalism, where you actually buy and sell things.
00:23:23.599 --> 00:23:26.640
We're being told now that you're not allowed to buy and sell anything.
00:23:26.640 --> 00:23:29.279
Everything comes with a license, a terms of service.
00:23:29.279 --> 00:23:32.160
You don't own your phone, you don't own your car.
00:23:32.160 --> 00:23:33.680
That's a connected device.
00:23:33.680 --> 00:23:37.279
Every time you tap on the brake of a Tesla, it's reported back home.
00:23:37.279 --> 00:23:38.640
This is awful.
00:23:38.640 --> 00:23:51.200
Um, you you're not allowed to repair your tractor, you're you're you know, all of this uh uh um tanglements um of of sort of you're just a serf, you're just allowed to go and use the land for something.
00:23:51.200 --> 00:23:52.319
We know what that was like.
00:23:52.319 --> 00:23:53.359
It was feudalism.
00:23:53.359 --> 00:24:00.319
We had uh we basically had the uh uh Enlightenment was kind of some breaking the shackles of that.
00:24:00.319 --> 00:24:09.599
When I try to think of the freedom that Europeans thought they were getting by moving to the new world, it was trying to get out of all of these obligations.
00:24:09.599 --> 00:24:15.680
That was these tangled obligations that basically made it suffocating.
00:24:15.680 --> 00:24:18.000
And that was the sort of like a brand new start.
00:24:18.000 --> 00:24:20.240
You can get your own land that you own.
00:24:20.240 --> 00:24:22.400
Okay, it came from Indians, it was a problem.
00:24:22.400 --> 00:24:35.599
Um uh so uh but the idea that we can go and have commerce happen, small-scale competitive commerce, I think is a great uh uh a great thing to have happen.
00:24:35.599 --> 00:24:54.240
So I would say the nonprofit infrastructure is is a way that we can build international organizations that function well and outside of all of the constraints uh of within the government structure, um, but are still in the public good side.
00:24:54.240 --> 00:25:00.079
Uh and then let's build lots of small organizations that buy and sell things.
00:25:00.079 --> 00:25:03.519
On the internet, let's try buying and selling files.
00:25:03.519 --> 00:25:06.079
Let's not just do this license garbage.
00:25:06.079 --> 00:25:12.000
Um it's the only way I think we're gonna make a decentralized work uh world prosper.
00:25:12.000 --> 00:25:14.000
Interesting.
00:25:14.079 --> 00:25:20.319
Yeah, I think um I think it's funny that you mentioned Adam Smith.
00:25:20.319 --> 00:25:28.079
I think uh, you know, if you take many of his quotes from his original text, many people you would you would think he's a socialist based on some of the things he said.
00:25:28.079 --> 00:25:49.680
I mean, the neoliberal era I think was one where it sold ideologically commerce, but then in the end, what it actually did in practice was uh concentrate capital in very few players in practice, um because we lost the public institutions that help facilitate like more small-scale competitive markets, so to say.
00:25:49.680 --> 00:26:06.400
Um, one thing one of the last things I wanted to talk to you about because I think this is a a part of Internet Archive history that maybe not so many people know about, but I think is really fascinating, is that at one point you tried to actually make a credit union through the Internet Archive uh or with the Internet Archive.
00:26:06.400 --> 00:26:14.319
Uh could you explain a bit what happened during that that journey and what were some of the the learnings from it?
00:26:14.319 --> 00:26:32.000
Because I think part of the question that we have to answer for ourselves is not just the the knowledge part or the sharing of information, but also like the financial sustainability of this entire infrastructure and um how we buffer ourselves from the more extractive forms of of finance capital.
00:26:32.880 --> 00:26:42.480
Um yeah, well there's uh this the great financial crisis, 2007-2008, uh and things just um went went really wrong.
00:26:42.480 --> 00:26:47.039
And it was interesting to see how it went wrong from my perspective.
00:26:47.039 --> 00:26:56.799
Um yes, this the uh uh there was uh monopoly structures that were a lot unleashed in the banking industry that screwed up the housing market.
00:26:56.799 --> 00:27:00.720
Um and there uh there was a cr there was a crash.
00:27:00.720 --> 00:27:07.680
Um the government went and bailed out the banks, didn't bail bail out the the um uh the homeowners, shame on them.
00:27:07.680 --> 00:27:12.480
Um and so I You could say the the model that they had was wrong.
00:27:12.640 --> 00:27:13.680
Uh oh yeah.
00:27:13.920 --> 00:27:18.240
I mean I just you know you're looking back on it, you know, we bailed out the wrong people.
00:27:18.240 --> 00:27:23.279
Uh and we basically ended up taking away houses from an awful lot of people.
00:27:23.279 --> 00:27:29.279
And it ended up in Berkshire Hathaway going and uh buying up a lot of single uh family houses.
00:27:29.279 --> 00:27:32.720
And you know, we have just the rise of private equity, we have the rise of billionaires.
00:27:32.720 --> 00:27:34.079
There shouldn't be billionaires.
00:27:34.079 --> 00:27:40.799
So we have this uh uh uh situation that was really sort of taking off with this financial crisis.
00:27:40.799 --> 00:27:44.079
Um, so we polled um our our employees.
00:27:44.079 --> 00:27:59.200
Um there was a um uh a well uh a shovel ready sort of welfare to work program in San Francisco that they would basically cover the direct expenses uh if we covered the indirect expenses of hiring welfare people that had been basically just put out.
00:27:59.200 --> 00:28:01.920
So people with kids, uh poor people.
00:28:01.920 --> 00:28:06.799
Uh and so we started scanning books um for the blind and dyslexic.
00:28:06.799 --> 00:28:08.559
Um with that help from the government.
00:28:08.559 --> 00:28:14.960
We just said, okay, let's go and and and do part of our mission of of supporting the blind and dyslexic at a big scale.
00:28:14.960 --> 00:28:16.559
So we hired 140 people.
00:28:16.559 --> 00:28:20.799
If they could guarantee that it would stay around for two years, I would have hired 2,000 people.
00:28:20.799 --> 00:28:22.240
But they couldn't guarantee it.
00:28:22.240 --> 00:28:29.519
And in fact, one of the parties went and filibustered to go and make sure that all the money was clawed back, and uh they made they they took the money away.
00:28:29.519 --> 00:28:30.480
Awesome people.
00:28:30.480 --> 00:28:37.039
Anyway, um, so uh we polled our our workers to just go and find out how were they doing, and the answer was badly.
00:28:37.039 --> 00:28:39.519
And um the the reason why was rent.
00:28:39.519 --> 00:28:44.640
Um and uh so trying to figure out 40 percent of their income was going to rent.
00:28:44.640 --> 00:28:45.680
This is stupid.
00:28:45.680 --> 00:28:50.720
Um, and so uh it's uh how do we get can we go and get around this?
00:28:50.720 --> 00:28:51.920
Uh we're smart people.
00:28:51.920 --> 00:28:54.960
Is there some way to go and and make this uh not work?
00:28:54.960 --> 00:29:01.599
Because look, I I raise money for for an organization and about 80 percent of it goes to people.
00:29:01.599 --> 00:29:10.319
And then if 40 or 50 percent of that is going um to rent, then basically I'm paying, I'm raising money to pay rent.
00:29:10.319 --> 00:29:11.920
And where does that rent go?
00:29:11.920 --> 00:29:16.000
It turns out it's not taxes like you hear people, oh, taxes.
00:29:16.000 --> 00:29:17.039
It's like it's not.
00:29:17.039 --> 00:29:22.400
It it uh where it's going is mortgage uh uh on that apartment building.
00:29:22.400 --> 00:29:27.759
Uh it and about two-thirds of it, half to two-thirds of the money goes to paying mortgage.
00:29:27.759 --> 00:29:32.640
So I'm raising uh uh money to go and put into Wells Fargo and Bank of America.
00:29:32.640 --> 00:29:34.880
It's like, oh, I don't want to be doing this.
00:29:34.880 --> 00:29:37.839
Okay, so um, you know, reading David Graeber, right?
00:29:37.839 --> 00:29:40.480
There, you know, the Bitcoin thing came out at the same time.
00:29:40.480 --> 00:29:43.599
So all these sort of like, okay, what do we do about this?
00:29:43.599 --> 00:29:49.440
And we said, okay, let's make a new banking system and um let's go and start credit unions at a velocity.
00:29:49.440 --> 00:29:54.079
Let's see if we can start 3,000 of them, um, because they're member-owned nonprofit ones.
00:29:54.079 --> 00:30:09.440
And so I thought, okay, let's make a model that can be replicated um uh uh over and over and over again, and um to basically help people raise um make money to go and buy houses and get rid of the debt and keep the debt off.
00:30:09.440 --> 00:30:10.880
Longer conversation.
00:30:10.880 --> 00:30:18.480
Um, but anyway, so we made a credit union uh with a banker friend of mine who was sick of those people, and so we said, let's go and do this.
00:30:18.480 --> 00:30:25.200
And um, what I didn't realize is how against credit unions the banks are.
00:30:25.200 --> 00:30:37.440
The banks have um have basically put together in 1972, they put together the National Credit Uh Union Administration as part of the United States government to slaughter um uh uh credit unions.
00:30:37.440 --> 00:30:56.400
They they were started at 300 to 500 a year since the New Deal, which is um the world that I sort of grew up with, uh, up to 1972, 300 to 500 new credit unions every year until 1972, and it's been going down at three to five hundred a year ever since.
00:30:56.400 --> 00:30:59.519
Um they can only shut down a credit union a day.
00:30:59.519 --> 00:31:03.359
Um that's sort of that's all so, but that's what they are all about.
00:31:03.359 --> 00:31:08.079
And um, so I was going into a diseased area that was controlled too much.
00:31:08.079 --> 00:31:12.480
Um, and so they really didn't allow us to do anything.
00:31:12.480 --> 00:31:16.240
Um, and so we we we we shut down the credit union.
00:31:16.240 --> 00:31:26.640
Um, I think there's still real reason to go and try to build alternative financing structures for people to go and take control and definancialize the housing system.
00:31:26.640 --> 00:31:34.480
This uh just the United States, we don't have social housing like the the wonderful examples we have in the Netherlands uh and other places.
00:31:34.480 --> 00:31:36.160
United States, we don't have that.
00:31:36.160 --> 00:31:43.759
But can we build it in a nonprofit structure that's out of outside of the hands of one political party which would destroy it every time they're in power?
00:31:43.759 --> 00:31:48.240
So can we go and build definancialized housing was the idea, and I failed.
00:31:48.240 --> 00:31:54.720
In terms of you know, big sort of face plant failure in my career, my credit union was was definitely one.
00:31:56.079 --> 00:31:59.039
But this is something that I think um probably still worth pursuing.
00:31:59.039 --> 00:32:02.160
Um and if you're interested in that, um absolutely.
00:32:02.240 --> 00:32:08.240
I think there are ways that we can pursue this, but just don't actually go through the strict banking system.
00:32:08.240 --> 00:32:11.200
Uh start to do lending outside of that system.
00:32:11.200 --> 00:32:15.440
And we have enough money these days to be able to do a lot of this.
00:32:15.440 --> 00:32:18.000
We are we did make foundation housing.
00:32:18.000 --> 00:32:22.640
Uh foundation housing is to go and make nonprofit housing for nonprofit workers.
00:32:22.640 --> 00:32:27.119
There's 12% of American workers work in nonprofits and they're completely screwed.
00:32:27.119 --> 00:32:30.720
So they're uh like if you work at EFF, you're commuting in from Oakland.
00:32:30.720 --> 00:32:36.559
If you're if you're a teacher or a policeman or whatever it is in San Francisco, you can't afford to live in San Francisco.
00:32:36.559 --> 00:32:39.759
Can we make nonprofit housing with for nonprofit workers?
00:32:39.759 --> 00:32:42.960
We bought an apartment building, it's working, it's a model.
00:32:42.960 --> 00:32:48.960
We can go and do socialized style housing in the United States outside of the government infrastructure.
00:32:48.960 --> 00:32:49.759
It's doable.
00:32:49.759 --> 00:32:56.799
We've uh we have at least a demonstration, it's only one data point, but it's working and it's worth uh sharing some of this idea.
00:32:56.799 --> 00:33:08.720
You guys in Europe have got uh more functional governments uh towards in some of these aspects, um, so you may not need it as much as we desperately need it in the United States and other other countries in the world.
00:33:09.119 --> 00:33:09.279
Cool.
00:33:09.440 --> 00:33:15.119
So I think if you're interested in uh decentralized cooperative banking, check out bread.coop.
00:33:15.119 --> 00:33:17.359
Uh quick shill is my project.
00:33:17.359 --> 00:33:22.640
Um so this was the first episode of the of the podcast, All Models Are Wrong.
00:33:22.640 --> 00:33:34.799
If you enjoyed this conversation and you want to listen to more of these types of conversations, allmodelsarwrong.online is a website I set up yesterday where you can subscribe or or scan the QR code if it's easier for you.
00:33:34.799 --> 00:33:37.519
Um yeah, thank you guys for joining us.
00:00:00.080 --> 00:00:04.160
But it had a couple of basic flaws, and we're really seeing those to this day.
00:00:04.160 --> 00:00:08.000
One is we never built in a money mechanism to try to get people paid.
00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:11.599
And so we ended up with the ad model, which tends towards monopoly.
00:00:11.599 --> 00:00:12.640
Big problem.
00:00:12.640 --> 00:00:15.759
And never trust a publisher to do a librarian's job.
00:00:15.759 --> 00:00:17.039
They just bad at it.
00:00:17.039 --> 00:00:20.399
They're going to manipulate it, they're going to change and delete it, and they do.
00:00:20.399 --> 00:00:22.239
And they do it at scale.
00:00:22.239 --> 00:00:30.879
And the biggest holdup we have now in the AI front is actually these monopolies saying, no, we're going to control everything.
00:00:30.879 --> 00:00:33.119
We don't want libraries anymore.
00:00:33.119 --> 00:00:38.880
What libraries do is they collect, preserve, lend, and interoperate with other libraries.
00:00:38.880 --> 00:00:47.679
Those guys that are all about control of information and they work extremely well with authoritarian governments because they sort of think in many ways the same way.
00:00:47.679 --> 00:00:50.399
And they're structured in many ways the same way.
00:00:50.399 --> 00:01:00.719
How can we build a decentralized system that actually works to get some people paid and some independence and control over what it is they're putting out?
00:01:00.719 --> 00:01:04.079
That's the only way to make a free and open society work.
00:01:04.480 --> 00:01:10.079
We now have actually a live podcast recording, which is pretty cool.
00:01:10.079 --> 00:01:24.480
This is the All Models Are Wrong podcast, hosted by Joshua Davila, in conversation with a person who, in many ways, started all of this, Brewster Kale, founder of the Internet Archive.
00:01:24.480 --> 00:01:35.519
As a young computer scientist, he dreamed of a library of Alexandria for the digital age, and 40 years later, that dream is core internet infrastructure.
00:01:35.519 --> 00:01:42.560
The show's name comes from the idea that no model is ever fully right, only useful.
00:01:42.560 --> 00:01:47.280
Uh a fitting frame for a talk about holding fast to a vision.
00:01:47.280 --> 00:01:50.640
Please welcome Joshua DeVila and Brewster Cale.
00:01:54.959 --> 00:01:55.439
Awesome.
00:01:55.439 --> 00:01:56.480
Thank you for the introduction.
00:01:56.480 --> 00:01:58.079
That means I don't have to do the introduction.
00:01:58.079 --> 00:01:59.760
We can just get right into it.
00:01:59.760 --> 00:02:05.200
So we're here today at DWebcamp 2026, just outside Berlin.
00:02:05.200 --> 00:02:08.960
This is the first time that they've done it, I believe, outside of the United States.
00:02:08.960 --> 00:02:16.639
Um I think it's really interesting that this is happening during a time uh during the rise of artificial intelligence.
00:02:16.639 --> 00:02:21.599
Um the technology has improved quite a bit since the past year.
00:02:21.599 --> 00:02:35.039
Um and also Brewster was one of the uh employees of one of the first AI companies, I guess, called Thinking Machines, not to be confused with the new company called Thinking Machines, started by one of the OpenAI co-founders.
00:02:35.039 --> 00:02:53.919
As part of this, I kind of wanted to contextualize what's happening right now within the long arc of history since you know, we could say from 1996 when Internet Archive started, or maybe even back in the 80s when you were working at thinking machines of where we are today and how we've gotten here and kind of where we're going.
00:02:53.919 --> 00:03:25.360
Um and so kind of one of the things that I noticed about your work when I do my research is that like um when I think about what's happening right now, and then I think back 30 years ago, because now I think we're 30th anniversary of Internet and Archive, um, the thing that's really striking to me is wow, you must have like you must have thought about the future with AI and what that would look like, and the kind of types of civilizational institutions and infrastructure that we would need in preparation for that future.
00:03:25.360 --> 00:03:43.360
And so what I wanted to do is start off maybe bringing us back 30 years ago or however many years ago, you want to go back to the young younger Brewster um founding Internet Archive and kind of what was going on in your mind during that time uh and like the history that got us here.
00:03:43.680 --> 00:03:46.639
Let's dial the Wayback Machine another another couple steps.
00:03:46.639 --> 00:03:48.960
Um so 1980.
00:03:53.840 --> 00:03:56.080
The AIs want to join the conversation.
00:03:57.599 --> 00:03:58.960
They're omnipresent now.
00:03:59.039 --> 00:04:01.520
Um make sure you don't say anything that angers them.
00:04:04.639 --> 00:04:14.000
So back at the AI lab at MIT in uh in 1980, um, I was looking for a project of going and being a geek that would be useful.
00:04:14.000 --> 00:04:21.680
And the idea is there was this we had been promising the Library of Congress on your desk for decades by then.
00:04:21.680 --> 00:04:23.920
And it was like, how hard could this be?
00:04:23.920 --> 00:04:24.319
Right?
00:04:24.319 --> 00:04:28.160
We just go and and and either just burrow through it and digitize it.
00:04:28.160 --> 00:04:33.759
But we thought, okay, what is gonna be needed to be able to make that come true?
00:04:33.759 --> 00:04:47.360
We knew even back then that we were going to be making machines that were gonna be inter they had to be interesting to talk to to have them learn enough to be uh uh useful to be around.
00:04:47.360 --> 00:04:52.079
Um so we thought, okay, and they would have to know a lot.
00:04:52.079 --> 00:04:56.800
And so I thought, okay, that sounds like a great idea.
00:04:56.800 --> 00:05:00.079
Let's go and build that AI future.
00:05:00.079 --> 00:05:07.920
Um and well, first we're going to need to kind of have computers that don't suck, and so we built a connection machine supercomputer.
00:05:07.920 --> 00:05:13.040
It was the first real search engine, but it was before while we were still in the ARPANET era.
00:05:13.040 --> 00:05:22.800
Um, and we needed the ARPANET to transition to the internet, and we needed to go and get um uh free and open source software because we'd screwed up the copyright system.
00:05:22.800 --> 00:05:25.920
Um, and that sort of that was in the early 80s.
00:05:25.920 --> 00:05:34.720
Um, and so I was not the leader, that Stallman was, um, but I was there with him to try to go and try to get this stuff to work.
00:05:34.720 --> 00:05:46.399
Then we needed to have open protocols uh to make this all go, and we had to get um uh these new personal computers that were coming along that had operating systems that didn't work.
00:05:46.399 --> 00:05:50.560
Um there was a single thing that you could do on a Macintosh, that you know, blah.
00:05:50.560 --> 00:05:54.240
Um so we had to try to get all of these pieces uh going.
00:05:54.240 --> 00:06:07.439
Then we had to get people publishing on the net because the idea of of going and just say buying a library and cutting off all the bindings and just digitizing it seemed um kind of short-sighted.
00:06:07.439 --> 00:06:10.319
We wanted to try to get the new publishing system going.
00:06:10.319 --> 00:06:26.720
Um so I put the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, uh the the first publishers on this internet thing, which was kind of a military uh uh research project, to try to get it so that people could make money by publishing on the net and try to make everyone into a publisher.
00:06:26.720 --> 00:06:35.519
So I did a system before the web called Waze to go and try to make it so that everybody would be a publisher.
00:06:35.519 --> 00:06:40.800
But Tim's system worked a lot better, it was a lot simpler, uh Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web.
00:06:40.800 --> 00:06:47.040
Um, and so we kind of all piled in behind that because it was an open protocol, open system.
00:06:47.040 --> 00:06:52.399
Um but it had a couple of basic flaws, and we're really seeing those to this day.
00:06:52.399 --> 00:07:00.879
One is we never built in a money mechanism to try to get people paid, and so we ended up with the ad model, which tends towards monopoly, big problem.
00:07:00.879 --> 00:07:04.240
Um, I'm a big much bigger fan of royalty systems.
00:07:04.240 --> 00:07:12.240
It's how the book publishing industry solidified in Europe in the early 1600s, but we didn't get there or we haven't gotten there yet.
00:07:12.240 --> 00:07:19.120
Uh, crypto was supposed to help, and then uh that's been having real trouble um based on regulator problems.
00:07:19.120 --> 00:07:23.759
Um so uh we but we got a bunch of the pieces.
00:07:23.759 --> 00:07:25.120
We got a bunch of the pieces.
00:07:25.120 --> 00:07:42.000
Uh uh the World Wide Web worked, but one of the problems of the World Wide Web is unlike publishing in the past, where you'd a publisher would go and make copies and and sell them or give them away, uh, and they would be in people's collections or in library collections.
00:07:42.000 --> 00:07:44.560
The uh in the World Wide Web, there's only one copy.
00:07:44.560 --> 00:07:49.600
It's got one Earl, it's in one place, and it's changed or deleted within a hundred days.
00:07:49.600 --> 00:07:52.000
Things would it's kind of a problem there.
00:07:52.000 --> 00:08:05.040
Um uh because that's putting way too much control in the power of that one publisher, and it tries to force them into being an archive or a library, and never trust a publisher to do a librarian's job.
00:08:05.040 --> 00:08:06.399
They're just bad at it.
00:08:06.399 --> 00:08:10.160
Um, they're going to manipulate it, they're gonna change and delete it, and they do.
00:08:10.160 --> 00:08:12.240
Um and they do it at scale.
00:08:12.240 --> 00:08:37.440
Uh, the other thing I got wrong was the uh monopolization of things, the drift towards concentration that is now allowed and encouraged by um governments that uh don't have uh well uh it so we now have monopolies uh basically being built in every field, and so we have media consolidation that is making it so that we're having to refight the same fights over and over again.
00:08:37.440 --> 00:08:43.840
Where we had to fight AOL to go and build a decentralized uh distributed interesting system.
00:08:43.840 --> 00:08:47.039
We won that one, but kind of they're back, right?
00:08:47.039 --> 00:08:54.559
We have Facebook, we got we have uh Twitter, we have uh YouTube that goes and sort of dominates whole media types.
00:08:54.559 --> 00:09:01.200
And this is not the way you can make things diverse and interesting and uh uh uh uh working.
00:09:01.200 --> 00:09:13.759
So um where the Internet Archive is the latest phase towards building the data sets for AI, um we have this counter trend towards monopoly.
00:09:13.759 --> 00:09:27.360
Um, and the decentralized web work of sort of started really for us 10 years ago to try to get the decentralized web to happen, um, was a Hail Mary to try to counter the monopolization forces.
00:09:27.360 --> 00:09:47.200
Um and um that it's you know got 500 people here in Germany in its first year indicates that there's real interest in trying to build an alternative to the to the uh future that we're being sold or force-fed um of this monopolized structure, which doesn't work very well.
00:09:47.200 --> 00:09:49.919
It's it's not a very innovative, interesting system.
00:09:49.919 --> 00:09:52.000
So long arc here.
00:09:52.000 --> 00:10:06.639
Um I started out trying to build a library that's smart, that would be a global brain, that would be a thing that would help people make better decisions, um, where the technologies have been unfolding.
00:10:06.639 --> 00:10:14.240
It's not like AI happened in you know 2023 with uh the the open AI thing, though that's awesomely cool.
00:10:14.240 --> 00:10:18.559
You know, Google has been basically AI for a long time.
00:10:18.559 --> 00:10:24.240
How can you type a couple of words and end up with good documents out of billions?
00:10:24.240 --> 00:10:26.799
And that is freaking amazing.
00:10:26.799 --> 00:10:39.200
And they've been basically tuning all of that technology for a long time, not widely deployed, but now we're having some of these new chat systems, which will is that kind of can you talk to the library?
00:10:39.200 --> 00:10:48.240
And the biggest holdup we have now in the AI front is actually these monopolies saying, uh, no, we're gonna control everything.
00:10:48.240 --> 00:10:51.120
Um there we don't want libraries anymore.
00:10:51.120 --> 00:10:56.799
What libraries do is they collect, preserve, lend, and interoperate with other libraries.
00:10:56.799 --> 00:10:58.879
That's what libraries do, four things.
00:10:58.879 --> 00:11:05.039
And the publishers say you're not allowed to collect, you're not allowed to preserve, you're not allowed to lend, and you're not allowed to work with other libraries.
00:11:05.039 --> 00:11:11.440
You all have to deal with me, I'm gonna surveil everything, everything is going to be paper drink, or I'm gonna control everything.
00:11:11.440 --> 00:11:18.240
And as a top lawyer of one of these media conglomerates said, uh it's not about compensation, Brewster, it's about control.
00:11:18.240 --> 00:11:37.840
So that's the world that we're uh living in, and D Web is essential towards building a different view, towards how do we go and make it so that everyone's a publisher, people some of us uh will be uh uh paid for that work, and we don't have to work for media conglomerates to be able to be a good reporter.
00:11:37.840 --> 00:11:45.440
That those are the systems that we need to have uh uh a work, long-winded question, uh answer to a very short question.
00:11:46.000 --> 00:11:47.200
That was uh that was great.
00:11:47.200 --> 00:11:56.240
I think the the thing that comes to mind for me, at least, is that it seems like Internet Archive plays in a space perhaps in the middle between publishers and big tech.
00:11:56.240 --> 00:12:07.840
So I think there's like been a lot of uh, you know, over the years, battles between publishers and big tech where uh at least my impression is that they're not uh in the No, they're no no come on, come on.
00:12:08.000 --> 00:12:09.120
They're the same, right?
00:12:09.120 --> 00:12:14.879
So uh so the publishers and big tech are the same type of people.
00:12:14.879 --> 00:12:19.200
They think the same way, they try to carve out and own particular things.
00:12:19.200 --> 00:12:24.559
And even if you're a new distributor like cable, then you end up owning the studios.
00:12:24.559 --> 00:12:30.240
Now we having the the um uh Reddit is indistinguishable from a publisher.
00:12:30.240 --> 00:12:33.360
Um uh Amazon bought MGM.
00:12:33.360 --> 00:13:01.679
So uh the all of those those guys are all about control of information, and they work extremely well with authoritarian governments um because they sort of think in many ways the same way, um, and they're structured in many ways the same way, and having uh fewer um uh so in the United States we're starting to see the merge, right, uh, of of our big media companies with um uh alignment with p a political party.
00:13:01.679 --> 00:13:20.240
So we're um so I'd say the uh uh one of the brilliant um things of the internet was the definition of the ontology of organizations into dot com, dot edu, dot gov, dot mil, and dot org.
00:13:20.240 --> 00:13:21.919
We think differently.
00:13:21.919 --> 00:13:22.960
We are different.
00:13:22.960 --> 00:13:26.399
We we wake up in the morning with a different success metric.
00:13:26.399 --> 00:13:36.720
If you're in the military, you think success is very different than if you're in a uh educational institution or in a dot-com uh or or organization.
00:13:36.720 --> 00:13:41.919
So I would no don't don't just this this this false dichotomy of publishers.
00:13:41.919 --> 00:13:43.840
No, they are the same people.
00:13:43.840 --> 00:13:48.399
And they are uh they basically think the same way, they're all about control of information.
00:13:48.799 --> 00:13:49.360
Sure, yeah.
00:13:49.360 --> 00:13:57.120
I guess the the way that I was thinking of it was more about like uh how they've kind of like usurped into each other.
00:13:57.120 --> 00:14:05.519
There were like early battles between them, and they've kind of they found a compromise between each other uh to some degree or bought each other out, or you know, something happened.
00:14:05.519 --> 00:14:26.720
Um but I guess the so the the the direction I kind of wanted to go with this question a little bit was now, you know, right now with the expansion of artificial intelligence, um, when you say uh like I think the the the motto for Internet Archive is open and universal knowledge for all.
00:14:26.720 --> 00:15:01.279
Um like is was the thinking 30 years ago, like the fear around the uh uh the inability to share knowledge freely with the growth of these types of companies, um, and that there needed to be like the the point of Internet Archive was to provide like a more uh uh uh truthful like database of knowledge than what maybe you could get um either because of authoritarian governments or because of like uh paywall behind uh like corporate databases of of knowledge.
00:15:01.279 --> 00:15:02.080
That makes sense.
00:15:03.200 --> 00:15:05.679
I actually it shows my naivete.
00:15:05.679 --> 00:15:09.600
Um I I didn't expect a monopolization.
00:15:09.600 --> 00:15:18.559
Um so the la the library system um funds about 20 percent of all of the book publishing done, right?
00:15:18.559 --> 00:15:25.679
So it's it is the fun, it's a socialized support of local production of knowledge.
00:15:25.679 --> 00:15:33.919
It keeps uh traditionally it kept local authors, local publishers, local newspapers all going.
00:15:33.919 --> 00:15:40.960
It was how we socialized and funded information production back in the old days, right?
00:15:40.960 --> 00:15:42.799
You know, uh early, right?
00:15:42.799 --> 00:15:44.080
I've got gray hair here.
00:15:44.080 --> 00:15:48.399
So um and so it it's a it bought one of everything.
00:15:48.399 --> 00:15:49.759
It kept things around.
00:15:49.759 --> 00:16:02.720
It it it was an infrastructure that was the publishers would go and make the new thing and then they'd sell them to libraries or individuals, and then um they would go off and work on the next one.
00:16:02.720 --> 00:16:13.039
That's not the way that uh these companies think about themselves, and they're threatening libraries all the time to make sure that they don't collect things, that they can't get things.
00:16:13.039 --> 00:16:14.960
They don't sell anything anymore.
00:16:14.960 --> 00:16:19.039
So it used to be that you actually would sell a book and a library would own it.
00:16:19.039 --> 00:16:23.759
But an ebook, no the none of the big publishers will sell an ebook.
00:16:23.759 --> 00:16:28.559
They're they they don't even let the libraries, they don't trust the libraries to have the bits.
00:16:28.559 --> 00:16:36.799
They basically only allow their uh patrons for money to go into their surveillance-oriented e-book lending systems.
00:16:36.799 --> 00:16:39.519
And those you better believe those are surveilled.
00:16:39.519 --> 00:16:44.639
Those those companies are now starting to call themselves data analytics companies and not publishers.
00:16:44.639 --> 00:16:50.240
So it it's really changed, right, how this whole uh ecosystem has worked.
00:16:50.240 --> 00:16:52.960
But the library system, I think, is a good one.
00:16:52.960 --> 00:17:09.119
Um, and I we if we didn't have this monopolization, we would have local news, we would have local authors, we would have authors actually paid somewhat reasonable amounts of money, but it all stops with these middlemen layers that are getting very good at standing in the way.
00:17:09.119 --> 00:17:12.319
But we still have to continue on, right?
00:17:12.319 --> 00:17:14.559
We still have to learn what our world is about.
00:17:14.559 --> 00:17:26.079
And wouldn't it be great if you could pay somebody um for their song and know that 80% or more of the money that you go pay would go to the freaking musician?
00:17:26.079 --> 00:17:27.440
Wouldn't that be awesome?
00:17:27.440 --> 00:17:29.200
That it's just not happening.
00:17:29.200 --> 00:17:36.640
It's all sifted off, and so um we we oh well it's an honor to go and be on Spotify and not get paid.
00:17:36.640 --> 00:17:37.839
And it's like, no.
00:17:37.839 --> 00:17:49.920
I it's like what what what how can we build a decentralized system that actually works to get some people paid and some independence and control over what it is they're putting out.
00:17:49.920 --> 00:17:53.279
That's the only way to make a free and open society work.
00:17:53.279 --> 00:18:01.920
Otherwise, we end up with a kind of Soviet centralized control uh uh uh company system um and control economy.
00:18:01.920 --> 00:18:05.039
Anyway, so um but where are we?
00:18:05.039 --> 00:18:09.839
We're at the point where we have some of the AI technologies that are kind of great, right?
00:18:09.839 --> 00:18:14.240
We can actually talk to these things um if we can be allowed to build them.
00:18:14.240 --> 00:18:16.720
Europe has done something awesome.
00:18:16.720 --> 00:18:31.039
They made a carve-out in their copyright uh uh law called Article III that if you're a collect if you're a cultural heritage institution library or a research organization, that you can go and let the robots read.
00:18:31.039 --> 00:18:37.359
And you can let the robots read to do text and data mining as long as it's scientific research.
00:18:37.359 --> 00:18:38.400
Awesome.
00:18:38.400 --> 00:18:40.960
Let's build public AI in Europe.
00:18:40.960 --> 00:18:54.960
This was the let the robots read is what the United States said that allowed search engines uh to happen, and what we ended up with a dot-com boom in the United States that didn't really happen in Europe because the publishers didn't allow it.
00:18:54.960 --> 00:19:00.480
But there's a carve-out now in uh in Europe to be able to build public AI.
00:19:00.480 --> 00:19:13.519
And I think this uh uh opportunity to build public good AI, let's build climate GPT, let's build health, uh uh, use these new tools to help with healthcare, big questions, big problems that we have.
00:19:13.519 --> 00:19:21.119
And not just selling shoes or whatever it is the e-commerce-based search engines or AI companies are gonna want to uh push on us.
00:19:21.119 --> 00:19:34.799
But but the big hard problems of education, how do we make it so that Europe, if you're a uh a parent in Europe, uh um and you know that your kid is gonna be brought up by these large language models, right?
00:19:34.799 --> 00:19:39.680
That's gonna be a major part of how the education system goes forward.
00:19:39.680 --> 00:19:47.680
People under 40 largely got brought up in the search engines, and we ended up with, well, one really, um, and it wasn't European.
00:19:47.680 --> 00:19:50.960
So are we gonna do that again in Europe?
00:19:50.960 --> 00:19:58.799
Uh is it is the choice parents are gonna have to have their kids brought up on a large language model that has an American accent or a Chinese accent?
00:19:58.799 --> 00:20:01.920
Is that the is that the uh the real opportunity?
00:20:01.920 --> 00:20:03.200
I would say not.
00:20:03.200 --> 00:20:08.720
Let's go and build things with European values in Europe uh and have it reflect Europe.
00:20:08.720 --> 00:20:10.960
Let's have Africa reflect Africa.
00:20:10.960 --> 00:20:27.359
Let's have a more decentralized world that allows us to go and carve our ecos our information ecosystem to suit more than just the commercial interests of a few monopoly players that are probably thousands of miles away and that don't have your interest in mind.
00:20:30.720 --> 00:20:31.599
Well said.
00:20:31.599 --> 00:20:39.519
Um yeah, I think it's kind of I think you kind of uh brought into my next question is about um civilizational infrastructure.
00:20:39.519 --> 00:20:46.400
I guess the the way that I would frame Internet archive, I mean, we've been kind of blessed with its creation.
00:20:46.400 --> 00:21:00.720
I think it's something that uh um yeah, I mean, clearly states or governments didn't create something like the Internet Archive, and it required, you know, someone like you to actually make it come alive.
00:21:00.720 --> 00:21:10.880
Um what are some other types of I'm using my term, civilizational infrastructure uh that you think we ought to be building right now?
00:21:12.000 --> 00:21:13.039
Oh, cool.
00:21:13.039 --> 00:21:15.519
Civilizational infrastructure.
00:21:15.519 --> 00:21:24.880
Um well let's take some of the preconditions that allow something like the Internet Archive to have been founded.
00:21:24.880 --> 00:21:39.759
Um or Wikipedia um is um a freedom to go and build nonprofit infrastructure um that does not just advocacy but but real infrastructure.
00:21:39.759 --> 00:21:52.559
So um uh in the United States we've got nonprofit uh universities, we have nonprofit hospitals, we have nonprofit, a lot of operational infrastructure.
00:21:52.559 --> 00:21:59.759
So it wasn't that odd in the United States to build a nonprofit library that was independent from the uh from the government.
00:21:59.759 --> 00:22:02.640
In Europe, there's not as much of that.
00:22:02.640 --> 00:22:06.480
Um, a lot of it's really within the government uh infrastructure.
00:22:06.480 --> 00:22:16.640
So I would say we need room to go and experiment with new infrastructure without the top-down nature of government institutions.
00:22:16.640 --> 00:22:27.519
So I think the nonprofit structure, I think, is really important one for inf inst for cultural uh uh moving uh for civilizational moving forward.
00:22:27.519 --> 00:22:29.200
And I'm gonna surprise you with one.
00:22:29.200 --> 00:22:35.920
I'm gonna suggest another piece of civilizational infrastructure that we need is capitalism.
00:22:35.920 --> 00:22:38.880
Okay, did you expect that?
00:22:38.880 --> 00:22:41.440
I bet you did not expect that.
00:22:41.440 --> 00:22:51.680
Uh I I okay, so let me define that as um buying and selling things, like having large numbers of small competitive players.
00:22:51.680 --> 00:22:57.039
I I still like the mom and pop uh uh uh restaurants, right?
00:22:57.039 --> 00:22:59.519
Those are really awesome places, right?
00:22:59.519 --> 00:23:02.799
Unlike, say, the franchises, right?
00:23:02.799 --> 00:23:08.319
I'm against monopolies and these large score large-scale corporate structures.
00:23:08.319 --> 00:23:14.880
They make for homogenization and blandizing and horrible lives and you don't want to work there and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:23:14.880 --> 00:23:23.599
But uh having large numbers of of small players, sort of the Adam Smith for version of capitalism, where you actually buy and sell things.
00:23:23.599 --> 00:23:26.640
We're being told now that you're not allowed to buy and sell anything.
00:23:26.640 --> 00:23:29.279
Everything comes with a license, a terms of service.
00:23:29.279 --> 00:23:32.160
You don't own your phone, you don't own your car.
00:23:32.160 --> 00:23:33.680
That's a connected device.
00:23:33.680 --> 00:23:37.279
Every time you tap on the brake of a Tesla, it's reported back home.
00:23:37.279 --> 00:23:38.640
This is awful.
00:23:38.640 --> 00:23:51.200
Um, you you're not allowed to repair your tractor, you're you're you know, all of this uh uh um tanglements um of of sort of you're just a serf, you're just allowed to go and use the land for something.
00:23:51.200 --> 00:23:52.319
We know what that was like.
00:23:52.319 --> 00:23:53.359
It was feudalism.
00:23:53.359 --> 00:24:00.319
We had uh we basically had the uh uh Enlightenment was kind of some breaking the shackles of that.
00:24:00.319 --> 00:24:09.599
When I try to think of the freedom that Europeans thought they were getting by moving to the new world, it was trying to get out of all of these obligations.
00:24:09.599 --> 00:24:15.680
That was these tangled obligations that basically made it suffocating.
00:24:15.680 --> 00:24:18.000
And that was the sort of like a brand new start.
00:24:18.000 --> 00:24:20.240
You can get your own land that you own.
00:24:20.240 --> 00:24:22.400
Okay, it came from Indians, it was a problem.
00:24:22.400 --> 00:24:35.599
Um uh so uh but the idea that we can go and have commerce happen, small-scale competitive commerce, I think is a great uh uh a great thing to have happen.
00:24:35.599 --> 00:24:54.240
So I would say the nonprofit infrastructure is is a way that we can build international organizations that function well and outside of all of the constraints uh of within the government structure, um, but are still in the public good side.
00:24:54.240 --> 00:25:00.079
Uh and then let's build lots of small organizations that buy and sell things.
00:25:00.079 --> 00:25:03.519
On the internet, let's try buying and selling files.
00:25:03.519 --> 00:25:06.079
Let's not just do this license garbage.
00:25:06.079 --> 00:25:12.000
Um it's the only way I think we're gonna make a decentralized work uh world prosper.
00:25:12.000 --> 00:25:14.000
Interesting.
00:25:14.079 --> 00:25:20.319
Yeah, I think um I think it's funny that you mentioned Adam Smith.
00:25:20.319 --> 00:25:28.079
I think uh, you know, if you take many of his quotes from his original text, many people you would you would think he's a socialist based on some of the things he said.
00:25:28.079 --> 00:25:49.680
I mean, the neoliberal era I think was one where it sold ideologically commerce, but then in the end, what it actually did in practice was uh concentrate capital in very few players in practice, um because we lost the public institutions that help facilitate like more small-scale competitive markets, so to say.
00:25:49.680 --> 00:26:06.400
Um, one thing one of the last things I wanted to talk to you about because I think this is a a part of Internet Archive history that maybe not so many people know about, but I think is really fascinating, is that at one point you tried to actually make a credit union through the Internet Archive uh or with the Internet Archive.
00:26:06.400 --> 00:26:14.319
Uh could you explain a bit what happened during that that journey and what were some of the the learnings from it?
00:26:14.319 --> 00:26:32.000
Because I think part of the question that we have to answer for ourselves is not just the the knowledge part or the sharing of information, but also like the financial sustainability of this entire infrastructure and um how we buffer ourselves from the more extractive forms of of finance capital.
00:26:32.880 --> 00:26:42.480
Um yeah, well there's uh this the great financial crisis, 2007-2008, uh and things just um went went really wrong.
00:26:42.480 --> 00:26:47.039
And it was interesting to see how it went wrong from my perspective.
00:26:47.039 --> 00:26:56.799
Um yes, this the uh uh there was uh monopoly structures that were a lot unleashed in the banking industry that screwed up the housing market.
00:26:56.799 --> 00:27:00.720
Um and there uh there was a cr there was a crash.
00:27:00.720 --> 00:27:07.680
Um the government went and bailed out the banks, didn't bail bail out the the um uh the homeowners, shame on them.
00:27:07.680 --> 00:27:12.480
Um and so I You could say the the model that they had was wrong.
00:27:12.640 --> 00:27:13.680
Uh oh yeah.
00:27:13.920 --> 00:27:18.240
I mean I just you know you're looking back on it, you know, we bailed out the wrong people.
00:27:18.240 --> 00:27:23.279
Uh and we basically ended up taking away houses from an awful lot of people.
00:27:23.279 --> 00:27:29.279
And it ended up in Berkshire Hathaway going and uh buying up a lot of single uh family houses.
00:27:29.279 --> 00:27:32.720
And you know, we have just the rise of private equity, we have the rise of billionaires.
00:27:32.720 --> 00:27:34.079
There shouldn't be billionaires.
00:27:34.079 --> 00:27:40.799
So we have this uh uh uh situation that was really sort of taking off with this financial crisis.
00:27:40.799 --> 00:27:44.079
Um, so we polled um our our employees.
00:27:44.079 --> 00:27:59.200
Um there was a um uh a well uh a shovel ready sort of welfare to work program in San Francisco that they would basically cover the direct expenses uh if we covered the indirect expenses of hiring welfare people that had been basically just put out.
00:27:59.200 --> 00:28:01.920
So people with kids, uh poor people.
00:28:01.920 --> 00:28:06.799
Uh and so we started scanning books um for the blind and dyslexic.
00:28:06.799 --> 00:28:08.559
Um with that help from the government.
00:28:08.559 --> 00:28:14.960
We just said, okay, let's go and and and do part of our mission of of supporting the blind and dyslexic at a big scale.
00:28:14.960 --> 00:28:16.559
So we hired 140 people.
00:28:16.559 --> 00:28:20.799
If they could guarantee that it would stay around for two years, I would have hired 2,000 people.
00:28:20.799 --> 00:28:22.240
But they couldn't guarantee it.
00:28:22.240 --> 00:28:29.519
And in fact, one of the parties went and filibustered to go and make sure that all the money was clawed back, and uh they made they they took the money away.
00:28:29.519 --> 00:28:30.480
Awesome people.
00:28:30.480 --> 00:28:37.039
Anyway, um, so uh we polled our our workers to just go and find out how were they doing, and the answer was badly.
00:28:37.039 --> 00:28:39.519
And um the the reason why was rent.
00:28:39.519 --> 00:28:44.640
Um and uh so trying to figure out 40 percent of their income was going to rent.
00:28:44.640 --> 00:28:45.680
This is stupid.
00:28:45.680 --> 00:28:50.720
Um, and so uh it's uh how do we get can we go and get around this?
00:28:50.720 --> 00:28:51.920
Uh we're smart people.
00:28:51.920 --> 00:28:54.960
Is there some way to go and and make this uh not work?
00:28:54.960 --> 00:29:01.599
Because look, I I raise money for for an organization and about 80 percent of it goes to people.
00:29:01.599 --> 00:29:10.319
And then if 40 or 50 percent of that is going um to rent, then basically I'm paying, I'm raising money to pay rent.
00:29:10.319 --> 00:29:11.920
And where does that rent go?
00:29:11.920 --> 00:29:16.000
It turns out it's not taxes like you hear people, oh, taxes.
00:29:16.000 --> 00:29:17.039
It's like it's not.
00:29:17.039 --> 00:29:22.400
It it uh where it's going is mortgage uh uh on that apartment building.
00:29:22.400 --> 00:29:27.759
Uh it and about two-thirds of it, half to two-thirds of the money goes to paying mortgage.
00:29:27.759 --> 00:29:32.640
So I'm raising uh uh money to go and put into Wells Fargo and Bank of America.
00:29:32.640 --> 00:29:34.880
It's like, oh, I don't want to be doing this.
00:29:34.880 --> 00:29:37.839
Okay, so um, you know, reading David Graeber, right?
00:29:37.839 --> 00:29:40.480
There, you know, the Bitcoin thing came out at the same time.
00:29:40.480 --> 00:29:43.599
So all these sort of like, okay, what do we do about this?
00:29:43.599 --> 00:29:49.440
And we said, okay, let's make a new banking system and um let's go and start credit unions at a velocity.
00:29:49.440 --> 00:29:54.079
Let's see if we can start 3,000 of them, um, because they're member-owned nonprofit ones.
00:29:54.079 --> 00:30:09.440
And so I thought, okay, let's make a model that can be replicated um uh uh over and over and over again, and um to basically help people raise um make money to go and buy houses and get rid of the debt and keep the debt off.
00:30:09.440 --> 00:30:10.880
Longer conversation.
00:30:10.880 --> 00:30:18.480
Um, but anyway, so we made a credit union uh with a banker friend of mine who was sick of those people, and so we said, let's go and do this.
00:30:18.480 --> 00:30:25.200
And um, what I didn't realize is how against credit unions the banks are.
00:30:25.200 --> 00:30:37.440
The banks have um have basically put together in 1972, they put together the National Credit Uh Union Administration as part of the United States government to slaughter um uh uh credit unions.
00:30:37.440 --> 00:30:56.400
They they were started at 300 to 500 a year since the New Deal, which is um the world that I sort of grew up with, uh, up to 1972, 300 to 500 new credit unions every year until 1972, and it's been going down at three to five hundred a year ever since.
00:30:56.400 --> 00:30:59.519
Um they can only shut down a credit union a day.
00:30:59.519 --> 00:31:03.359
Um that's sort of that's all so, but that's what they are all about.
00:31:03.359 --> 00:31:08.079
And um, so I was going into a diseased area that was controlled too much.
00:31:08.079 --> 00:31:12.480
Um, and so they really didn't allow us to do anything.
00:31:12.480 --> 00:31:16.240
Um, and so we we we we shut down the credit union.
00:31:16.240 --> 00:31:26.640
Um, I think there's still real reason to go and try to build alternative financing structures for people to go and take control and definancialize the housing system.
00:31:26.640 --> 00:31:34.480
This uh just the United States, we don't have social housing like the the wonderful examples we have in the Netherlands uh and other places.
00:31:34.480 --> 00:31:36.160
United States, we don't have that.
00:31:36.160 --> 00:31:43.759
But can we build it in a nonprofit structure that's out of outside of the hands of one political party which would destroy it every time they're in power?
00:31:43.759 --> 00:31:48.240
So can we go and build definancialized housing was the idea, and I failed.
00:31:48.240 --> 00:31:54.720
In terms of you know, big sort of face plant failure in my career, my credit union was was definitely one.
00:31:56.079 --> 00:31:59.039
But this is something that I think um probably still worth pursuing.
00:31:59.039 --> 00:32:02.160
Um and if you're interested in that, um absolutely.
00:32:02.240 --> 00:32:08.240
I think there are ways that we can pursue this, but just don't actually go through the strict banking system.
00:32:08.240 --> 00:32:11.200
Uh start to do lending outside of that system.
00:32:11.200 --> 00:32:15.440
And we have enough money these days to be able to do a lot of this.
00:32:15.440 --> 00:32:18.000
We are we did make foundation housing.
00:32:18.000 --> 00:32:22.640
Uh foundation housing is to go and make nonprofit housing for nonprofit workers.
00:32:22.640 --> 00:32:27.119
There's 12% of American workers work in nonprofits and they're completely screwed.
00:32:27.119 --> 00:32:30.720
So they're uh like if you work at EFF, you're commuting in from Oakland.
00:32:30.720 --> 00:32:36.559
If you're if you're a teacher or a policeman or whatever it is in San Francisco, you can't afford to live in San Francisco.
00:32:36.559 --> 00:32:39.759
Can we make nonprofit housing with for nonprofit workers?
00:32:39.759 --> 00:32:42.960
We bought an apartment building, it's working, it's a model.
00:32:42.960 --> 00:32:48.960
We can go and do socialized style housing in the United States outside of the government infrastructure.
00:32:48.960 --> 00:32:49.759
It's doable.
00:32:49.759 --> 00:32:56.799
We've uh we have at least a demonstration, it's only one data point, but it's working and it's worth uh sharing some of this idea.
00:32:56.799 --> 00:33:08.720
You guys in Europe have got uh more functional governments uh towards in some of these aspects, um, so you may not need it as much as we desperately need it in the United States and other other countries in the world.
00:33:09.119 --> 00:33:09.279
Cool.
00:33:09.440 --> 00:33:15.119
So I think if you're interested in uh decentralized cooperative banking, check out bread.coop.
00:33:15.119 --> 00:33:17.359
Uh quick shill is my project.
00:33:17.359 --> 00:33:22.640
Um so this was the first episode of the of the podcast, All Models Are Wrong.
00:33:22.640 --> 00:33:34.799
If you enjoyed this conversation and you want to listen to more of these types of conversations, allmodelsarwrong.online is a website I set up yesterday where you can subscribe or or scan the QR code if it's easier for you.
00:33:34.799 --> 00:33:37.519
Um yeah, thank you guys for joining us.
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