40: Charles Broskoski - Everything is Personal

20:06Jackson Dahl:your daily like is that a i don't know what else to call it you know yeah yeah yeah i i think like research is the closest thing but it's it's a little bit more like self-directed exploration

20:19Charles Broskoski:yeah yeah do you spend much time distinguishing between um passive learning and active learning

20:29Jackson Dahl:no i don't think so yeah because i think it's uh i think it ends up being the same it ends up sort of being the same uh does it no it feels the same to me to be honest yeah that was kind of my sense and i don't think that would be a conventional view really wait describe the um passive learning and active learning i mean

20:53Charles Broskoski:part of the implication or maybe at least part of the connotation might be that passive learning is more likely to be things that like you're doing for fun anyway or even maybe like quote-unquote research and active learning is like i have to learn this thing i mean i'm probably like even even still like too rooted in the traditional like school metaphor yeah i see what you mean

21:14Jackson Dahl:no i mean like no they to me those things sound like different modes that one might be in but they don't really sound like the end is all that different or the or the motivation to do the

21:27Charles Broskoski:thing is all that different uh huh huh okay maybe that might be something we come back to um one Another little thread, I think it was also in that Yatu interview, he apparently had dance in high school. And you had made the comparison between skateboarding and dance, both being these things that you kind of have to teach yourself.

21:50Jackson Dahl:Yes.

21:51Charles Broskoski:Most education, at least youth education, is not that. It's not self-directed or even teaching yourself. what about what are you pointing at either inside of skate or dance or in general like these types of activities what what about them builds that self-directed muscle

22:10Jackson Dahl:for skateboarding in particular i mean it's like embarrassing to admit but i'm 43 i still go skateboard and the thing that i like about it compared to other forms of physical activity is you really are just deciding at any given point what you're going to do. And it's really based on mood. And the mood of what you're doing is influenced by so many different things. And I mean, this is dangerous territory because I could talk about skateboarding for two hours. but um one's own mood and sort of i also really hate to use the word taste in this context but one's a taste in skateboarding like what you're doing is informed by like consuming hours and hours of skate media you know like you almost consume more reference for skateboarding than you do the activity at least that's how it was when i grew up um so you're sort of like skateboarding and dance are both very referential physical activities because you're sort of like pointing like like every trick has a connotation you know and when you're doing something it's like a certain type of there's like a certain type of skateboarding that you're doing you know and i mean like i'm being reductive a little bit.

23:41Charles Broskoski:Do you think that like, um, playing guitar has this set of attributes?

23:45Jackson Dahl:Yeah. Yeah, probably. Yeah.

23:47Charles Broskoski:Because what I'm kind of hearing and maybe I'm forcing it is there's a classic like idea that you, you're trying to sound like so-and-so and then you end up sounding like yourself and there's maybe there's a modeling or something.

23:59Jackson Dahl:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You kind of like fake it until you make it a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

24:04Charles Broskoski:Yeah. I think that relates a little bit to being a beginner, which I think is something that kind of comes up a lot too. There's an interview with Daisy and Francis at Tasteland. You just brought it up. You say, I'm kind of a poser apologist. If you notice that you're into something, you have to start somewhere. You have to act like you know more than you do. There is some part of presenting yourself as how you want to be that is not bad, just pushing yourself a little bit outwards.

24:31Jackson Dahl:Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for bringing up my poser philosophy. I love talking about this.

24:39Charles Broskoski:Can, like, can posers, are posers earnest? Or can they be earnest?

24:43Jackson Dahl:Well, I mean, first of all, I don't know if, like, poser means anything nowadays. I, like, reflect upon being young and learning how to skateboard and being at the skate park in this like um the meme of like your good memories versus your cringe memories and like the cringe memories are like etched in like marble um like having these like terrible embarrassing moments of like asking a older skater like how to do something and um you know like this kind of stuff um i don't think that would happen nowadays i don't know what i'm getting at it's sort of like why would they have a notice um because i think like people have like this it's the same thing why like i don't think poser is a thing you know i think there used to be some sentiment that like one has to pay their their dues in any particular activity and i think that people are much more patient and empathetic towards learning and being a beginner and like everyone sort of having their place.

25:49Charles Broskoski:I was going to say more like trying hard is way cooler now.

25:54Jackson Dahl:Trying hard is way cooler now.

25:55Charles Broskoski:Even selling out or whatever.

25:57Jackson Dahl:Yeah. Yeah. I think that's true. Yeah.

25:59Charles Broskoski:Yeah.

26:00Jackson Dahl:I think that's true. Yeah. And when I was younger or like the people that I looked up to were like Gen X people, which like trying hard is very much not cool. Or it's like way more complicated.

26:14Charles Broskoski:like everything has to be done casually yes yeah it's interesting i i do wonder about the to the extent you're right in that it is way easier to um be a beginner or be open about being a beginner there is a maybe maybe the realm where we're more performative or where there's more complexity around it is the internet like yeah it still has this bit where like it's cool to again try hard or sell out or whatever like everybody's in there you do a sponsored post and you're in your buddy's comments being like yeah so sick or whatever but like there it does feel that um i don't know i i think about a place i spent a lot of time twitter like the the the dominant artifice of twitter over the last five to seven years is the dunk yes which is which is kind of like not it's it's kind of like screw you poser yeah that's true yeah and i do think that at least the platform you've you built like there's something inside of this where you you're trying to say it's okay like yeah yeah yeah i mean i yeah i mean they're very different modes though

27:27Jackson Dahl:like even though you would like arena is considered social only because there's some like activity can be public, you know, but I don't think it's social in the sense of Twitter where like the point is to talk to other people, you know, like, like the things that you're interacting with on arena's content, and you might interact with a person through content, but on Twitter, you're just interacting with people basically.

28:01Charles Broskoski:there's a few thoughts coming to mind one is you have somewhere where you describe um social networks that are about doing an activity yeah as being more you didn't say virtuous but i think that's kind of the implication um and you may have even been thinking about github yeah at least old github um and so there's something inside of that i guess i'm interested both in that and this notion that like it doesn't have to be like arena could be a totally private tool yes um i've used a lot of these types of uh tools that are much more private um and it seems maybe i'm wrong maybe there's a whole back catalog of things that i weren't aren't visible to me but in doing a lot of you have a lot of arena channels yeah a lot of like why is why do i do that all in public is it a default thing is it something else

28:49Jackson Dahl:yeah it has to do with it's sort of like different modes for me okay and i think this is this different people have different approaches to this for me for some of my beloved channels doing them in public has like a little bit of extra pressure that sort of makes me more careful with them whereas if it was and it's i mean the public on arena is so slight that it really almost means nothing. Um, like no one is paying attention to what I'm doing really. Um, but I'm not sure

29:25Charles Broskoski:that's true, but, uh, well, a couple of asterisks. One, you could say it's sort of like if you were publishing on a website, but not on your real name, like it's out there, but it's not like, that's kind of what you're implying. But also you're the, you're the CEO of this platform. Like it, in, in theory, if anyone's going to be looking at anything on arena, like people are

29:42Jackson Dahl:gonna be looking at your stuff now uh maybe but i think i think it really sort of like comes across as just like oh you know what i mean like i think i don't think it's like people aren't analyzing takes in the way that they do on twitter you know the interpersonal dynamics that come up on twitter

30:01Charles Broskoski:don't happen in the same way of course do you have many private channels yes i probably have like equal private channels so this is what i'm interested in which is like to go back to the original theme, which is like, I think the point of this, not the only point of Raina, but certainly the way you seem to be using it. And one of the stated uses is this self-directed education and research. If that is the goal, perhaps it is this thing you've, you've picked up, which is like, it's almost an external pressure. Like if I know I'm writing something for an audience of one or five, um, versus a journal, it does change the work.

30:36Charles Broskoski:So maybe it's kind of like that.

30:37Jackson Dahl:Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's part of it. But also, I mean, the thing that happens on Arena, the reason, the real rationale to make something public is that things that you're adding to your channels, well, if it's public, then other people will add those things to their channels. So you sort of like ambiently get exposed to other things that may or may not have to do with what you're looking at. You get serendipity kind of as a pipe in. Exactly. And that's the utility of, that's the reason why having it be social at all, you know?

31:13Charles Broskoski:Yes, yes, yes.

31:15Jackson Dahl:And I mean, I think to relate it back to this, like comparison to GitHub, at least when I first started publishing code to GitHub, like doing things open source, I don't know. like those things feel scary when you're before you do them and then and then you realize that the feeling of those kinds of platforms where they're where it's like public but having it be public is not the point of it it has like a different quality to it which is like the publicness is a utility to you and to other people yeah and it's a dynamic that's like it's really nice actually once you once you sort of like get a handle on it yeah it had me wondering about like whether this might be more we we've sort of all assumed that like social networks

32:08Charles Broskoski:first of all we hardly even have social networks we have whatever like the the instagram and twitter aren't social networks there's something they're content platforms yeah um but it like they're and it's it's definitely closer somewhere in between twitter and in an arena but like i was thinking of there's a platform i like called letterbox for movies yeah and there is something about the fact that it's kind of or strava maybe it is kind of like this single player thing that can then yes and i think there's something there yeah and i think that's why people point to

32:39Jackson Dahl:yeah letterbox strava any kind of platform where there's like there's a there's a primary thing to do thing to do and there's a secondary social part of it like it always ends up being better yeah and it's also easier to make a business around those things than than there are just telling that all those are subscription businesses yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and i think i mean also it's why people still like i still see people point to pinterest as being like one of the last places on the internet you know even though it's like a shopping platform it still feels like that I think to a lot of people.

33:19Charles Broskoski:Hmm. Hmm. Yeah, I wonder if that's right for more new things. One other core part of this that maybe blurs between what I think we all talk about around the attention and nodal point stuff, but we were talking before we started recording, a clear, an essential part of the medium of arena is the channel. And thus, I think one articulation of that that would be the pattern. There's a quote from Chris Alexander. He says, at the core of these books is the idea that people should design for themselves, their own houses, streets, and communities. This idea comes simply from the observation that most of the wonderful places of the world were not made by architects, but by the people.

34:06Charles Broskoski:That's him talking about, I think it's all three books, so Timeless Way and Pattern Language. And so I thought it was an interesting way to start this conversation, which is, particularly under the theme of like self-directed learning, there's something about organizing ideas in this way. If you want to take it in a kind of high concept form, you could call it a pattern. If you want to go low concept, you call it a meme or whatever. What is it about these kind of contextual buckets that like are helpful in learning and maybe eventually in making to go back to Alexander's point?

34:39Jackson Dahl:That's a good question. well i mean i can only speak to my own experience and my my own way of using arena which is that like the channels that i really have at the forefront i sort of just use them as like a way to filter things that i'm seeing you know yeah it's like a perspective through which to view a certain piece of information, like does it belong here or does it not belong here? And then when it belongs, when you might sort of like open up the bounds a little bit and say like, oh yes, this does belong here, like come on in. And now all of a sudden the bounds are shaped a little differently.

35:26Jackson Dahl:And then you can, you just have a way of looking at a piece of information or an idea or whatever that feels more personal, you know?

35:35Charles Broskoski:Well, there's a memory part. There's a lot of things happening inside of that thing you describe, which is like partially it's a little bit just like I know where this goes.

35:44Jackson Dahl:Yeah.

35:45Charles Broskoski:And thus maybe it'll be easier for me to filter it and remember it or whatever. To your point, there's also you can imagine a channel that you've just created that has three things in it. If you add a fourth thing, it changes a lot. It changes everything. Yeah, yeah. Versus if it has a that. Are you typically creating channels or patterns or whatever these things are? um like you read one or come across one thing like how how do how do they form yeah it's it's

36:13Jackson Dahl:usually like i've been noticing something or like i've been noticing an idea forming and it has to do with a couple of things and so it i typically the way it starts for me at least is it will start in private it will be a couple of things to start you know what i mean and it needs to be like three you're between three and five or something and then once you have that then you have like enough of a frame to like judge other things against right yeah and like now like yeah i have like maybe 10 of these types of channels that like over the years and now i think the bar for me is so high of like what that frame could look like.

36:59Jackson Dahl:Like it has to be so, it's not complex, but it's more like nuanced and some kind of combination of being nuanced and new that I haven't made a new one or I haven't had like a new successful one in a while.

37:15Charles Broskoski:I suspect my sense is what you just described is actually a phenomenon that happens across,

37:24Charles Broskoski:as creative people become more experienced the benefit is they have more of these like what again whether or not they use any of this language or not even this conception or not yeah um it's easier for them to slot things in yeah but the weakness might be something along the lines of what you just described which is that they're more rigid in what their set of patterns are.

37:47Jackson Dahl:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The bar. Yeah. The bar raises, I think. And it doesn't necessarily raise in terms of like, like grandiosity, but it's, it's, yeah, it's something more subtle than that. I mean, I, I will say, I think that the last couple of ones that I've had that have been successful just turn, end up turning into essays. Like the things, the collection of things sort of happened first. Or I noticed that I'm saying the same ideas to people, like a couple of the same ideas over and over. And that means I'm thinking about something. And then there are other things in the world that remind me of that thing that I'm thinking of.

38:32Jackson Dahl:And it's the life cycle, at least in recent times for me, has been that the frame has come up, and then it sort of shortly turns into an essay.

38:43Charles Broskoski:and then yeah well this would be one of the strongest cases for this type of thinking um is maybe it goes back to the christopher alexander quote um i suspect that makes it way easier to actually make the essay write the essay definitely it's like i have an organizing frame it's kind of like yeah otherwise you're just gathering scraps and it's like you haven't

39:01Jackson Dahl:done the work to connect all the dots yeah yeah yeah definitely for me yeah and i mean obviously writing and collecting references are two very different things i find collecting references to be infinitely pleasurable and writing to be excruciating well maybe that's a form of passive and active learning yeah maybe yeah maybe yeah yeah yeah having having the sort of like bar of you can't just have these things be like sort of peasantly uh opaque and like pointing to something

39:40Charles Broskoski:mysterious like blob yeah yeah right yeah yeah there's a line out of which is um writing is high resolution thought yeah or or another one actually comes from um paul graham the y combinator guy he says writing turns your ideas from vague to bad yeah yeah but there is yeah there there is some kind of like and obviously writing isn't the only form but there's there's something very fun and generative about one and very kind of like it's almost compression yeah It's like taking all those.

40:09Jackson Dahl:Yeah, yeah. It's the decision-making thing. Yeah. Yeah.

40:13Charles Broskoski:One other quote that maybe really said, you had said, the things that do well in arena tend to be prismatic. They do well with a lot of different perspectives and you can put your own perspective into it. Maybe this relates more into the social side. I'm curious, have you ever had an experience where you've really seriously adopted somebody else's pattern or channel into how you kind of think or create or you're adding a lot to or whatever?

40:37Jackson Dahl:Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, there are patterns that come up on Arena, not necessarily in terms of like, how it like what kind of conceptual frame to draw around a set of references, but just patterns of using it and sort of like an open ended way like, someone started this like inbox pattern of just like making an open channel calling it an inbox and saying like, or like, this is a guest book, like, come sign my guest.

41:06Charles Broskoski:Almost like a UI kind of thing.

41:08Jackson Dahl:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Someone else started this thing of like pre-pending your channel titles with a symbol so that they're grouped together in your index. Stuff like that. Like I definitely adopt from other people. Yeah.

41:20Charles Broskoski:Are there ways that you found that seeing a world in these types of buckets can be limiting?

41:29Jackson Dahl:That's a good question. I'm like embarrassed to say no. No, I do not think that they can be limiting. I think it's, for me, it feels very productive to have a sort of like set of constraints. And I find the constraints that Arena has to be extremely productive. Like I think that myself and other people who I work with arena on all sort of like use it the same way and are really like, I don't know how to put it. Like it's really hard at this point to imagine a different mode of working that is not like arena, not like using arena. Yeah. Yeah.

42:13Charles Broskoski:Yeah. You've grown, you've evolved around this certain type of scaffolding.

42:18Jackson Dahl:Yes, exactly. yeah yeah i'm i'm like deep in you know yeah yeah for better yeah for better probably are

42:28Charles Broskoski:some limitations but also it's been really empowered like you've been augmented by this yeah this kind of way of doing things um one last little bit on this um which is i guess the implication if you're gathering all these things is that uh you might eventually look through them um different ways people have described i think damon zucconi said it's

42:51Jackson Dahl:effectively just building a personal archive or maybe this was you archiving the casual web

42:56Charles Broskoski:two other quotes i really liked uh one from the describe arena at a party channel everything not saved will be lost which comes from the nintendo quit screen message which is so good yeah um and then this other wikipedia term i found i can't remember what channel it was on but it's sundoku um which is acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one's home without reading them in japanese um i think that last bit actually really has the the implication i'm i wanted to pull out which is how how often you like do you really dumpster eye of the archives like to and like maybe this goes back to the writing versus just it's really fun to just like pick up shiny objects all the time going back through the archives certainly doesn't necessarily mean to be turning into an essay but it is a little bit of a different mode

43:50Jackson Dahl:and so i'm curious how you relate to that yeah yeah i mean like i said i have these channels that i sort of like uh treat in a more special way than my other ones and i go back through those

44:03Charles Broskoski:almost like they're a gallery or something maybe that's not quite the right connotation something like that yeah yeah they're slightly more solidified or crystallized yeah yeah yeah or

44:14Jackson Dahl:there's there's just something about the the frame that i find like continually attractive and um at this point having gone back and looked at them so much it feels like all of that stuff

44:27Charles Broskoski:is mine like oh and you know it well you've traced those grooves almost yeah yeah but also like

44:33Jackson Dahl:the things there are like i'm responsible not like like it's not like someone else it's like all i've had they've been in my house long enough yeah yeah yeah exactly um yeah but then some of the other things like like our new like this is not like not like a commercial for our new app but like the new app has a like a widget on it yeah and so like hooking up some some of my like very gigantic channels to that um channels that might be more like i'm like throwing a link in here to read later um sometimes i'll get to them and sometimes i don't but like having them just continually come up is also just a nice way of like i i think um part of our job as like people who are maintaining and building arena is figuring out thoughtful ways of resurfacing that stuff

45:24Charles Broskoski:without being too didactic about it yes well and there's someone who used a lot of tools from delicious all like there is a temptation i i'm i'm curious and i like dopamine from new information so i just i'm doing the sundoku thing but yeah they're they're diminishing returns no diminishing

45:46Jackson Dahl:yeah yeah yeah no i have like i have a real problem buying books like i have way too many books yeah Yeah.

45:54Charles Broskoski:Let's talk about nodal points. There's so many kind of different ways to take this, but maybe a place to start, two quotes, one that's maybe just energetically sets the tone. It's a tweet from Ted Nelson.

46:06Jackson Dahl:Oh, great.

46:07Charles Broskoski:All caps. Yeah. There is too much to say and it goes in all directions. This is not just a slogan, but my most fundamental belief.

46:16Jackson Dahl:Yes.

46:17Charles Broskoski:And then a quote from you in this excellent piece you wrote that I think if any people are going to go read anything, maybe this or one other that we'll come to later, but you have a piece called Here for the Wrong Reasons in which you describe normal points and you go on to say, when you encounter a piece of life-changing information, no matter how large the change part is, you are simultaneously discovering and creating yourself, becoming incrementally more complete. Your perspective is made up of a meandering line through these points. Learning, or maybe some precursor to learning, is a lot about developing the intuition to recognize when something you find in the world is going to be a nodal point for you.

46:58Charles Broskoski:There's a lot there. Maybe the first place to start would be like, what is life-changing information? What are you getting at when you say that? I don't know.

47:11Jackson Dahl:I feel like it's different for everyone. Do you feel like you can point to an early, an early piece of life-changing information.

47:18Charles Broskoski:There's a really important part of the piece, perhaps, that anchors this, I think, or at least sets the tone around it, which is you're describing kind of these Borges and hell.com and skateboarding. Like, you're describing... And so I think that, with that tone, certainly, I think maybe somewhere else you describe it as something that causes an inflection. And so at the very least with regard to art, I think it's easy to think about what were the things that kind of helped me develop

47:44Jackson Dahl:that intuition you're you're describing yeah yeah i yeah like i like i also said in the piece i tend to like um my weakness is nostalgia you know and this is like a family a family weakness like my whole family is uh afflicted with this but i think about early books you know and wonder whether or not like the book formed the inclination or like the inclination was there and I recognized it in the book. And that's kind of like the thing that I think I'm trying to point out with this thing, which other people do as well. And yeah, so the life-changing part is like, I think it's about that recognition.

48:36Jackson Dahl:You know what I mean? Like it's about just sort of understanding like this thing is made for me or I'm made for this thing or me and this thing share a strong connection. And like I said before, I think the hardest thing about like being creative is just understanding yourself, you know? So the change part is sort of about this like understanding that understanding yourself, understanding your own perspective, you know? Yeah. And whether or not the perspective is made when you encounter the thing or if it was already there you know

49:12Charles Broskoski:it's a quantum question uh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah they're um they're sort of artifacts that where you had that experience of feeling like of um of realizing that there really are things out there that feel like they were made for you yes yeah yeah um maybe a part of this then on this never-ending kind of path towards completeness or cohesiveness you describe somewhere else in that piece like it's sort of like these things are contributing as a piece of a very large puzzle at least considered in retrospect maybe i answered the question in how i asked that but like do you aspire to completeness or or towards some kind of fullness no no i think

50:01Jackson Dahl:that this is like never ending ideally yeah you know because i think is it increasing like is the

50:09Charles Broskoski:picture dialing in resolution yeah it's dialing in resolution that's a good metaphor yeah yeah cool yeah but i don't think there's like a perfect yeah sure yeah yeah well there's a there's a kevin kelly line i like where he says the goal of life is to become yourself by the time you're on your deathbed yeah exactly which is maybe exactly yeah but it's a asymptotically approaching a limit yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah. Another kind of key frame or key idea you use in the piece is this idea of radar. And you're pulling from desire lines. But effectively, I think the critical point here is that it's a verb, not a noun, in terms of how we relate to these things that are these objects of our attention, more active than static reference.

50:49Charles Broskoski:One other piece, you're describing desire lines, which are the classic image of the walkway. and then there's an additional path made through the grass that shows where people actually wanted to go. And you described desire lines is a path made by walking. So there's an active orientation here. Yeah, why is that active part, maybe to tie it back to anything that we enjoy, like why is that active recognition, the agency inside of it, like why is that so critical?

51:27I think it's so critical because it feels increasingly rare, you know, like it's really hard to feel a connection to that, to one's own radar, you know,

51:42Jackson Dahl:and I think there's so many things that diminish one's own ability to have a connection to your own radar. So, yeah.

51:51Charles Broskoski:And just maybe to define it, since I'm pulling from these ideas, a radar is the reason you care about a quote-unquote nodal point. Sure. A nodal point being one of these things that change is inflection.

52:05Jackson Dahl:Right. The recognition of the thing, like the thing belongs to me or like me and the thing have this relationship. Some kind of relationship. Some kind of relationship. Like that recognition is what I'm calling, yeah, radar. It's attention.

52:19Charles Broskoski:basically yeah but again an active attention it's an active attention i consume many many things for which there's no radar happening yes 100 to go back yeah yeah yeah i think i think the

52:31Jackson Dahl:radar's ability becomes dulled over time you know with a lot of attention with a lot of exposure to information that's one one part of it but the other part of it is i mean it's like literally uh gigantic corporations business models to try and hijack the radar without being too like social networking about it like yeah that's what it you know what i mean that's what it is yeah yes and um

53:02Charles Broskoski:the there's like a it's a diffuse attention maybe versus a highly active attention um

53:09Jackson Dahl:yeah i mean like the way that i was describing earlier this like um this sort of like ritualistic thing of like getting into the mode of wanting to sort of like explore ideas or let your intuition guide you or something like that um like the the stage has to be pretty clear in my opinion um or or or at least for me yeah and so like it really means that like one should like not have a lot of a thing not have a lot of things like pulling at you um that's kind of about diffuse it's like yeah yeah exactly yeah yeah yeah totally yeah yeah which is i mean it's a hard like you have to actively i mean one part of it is having active attention or active radar but you have to actively try to set the conditions for yourself yeah it's it's this kind of like

54:06Charles Broskoski:like the the magnitude or something of our attention i mean i guess it's not like i'm trying to think about the ways to distinguish this i could be incredibly engaged with something that i don't have this relationship to um part of that's just a medium like if i go see a film versus i'm scrolling my phone um like i i guess maybe part of my question is like how much of this is about reflecting on it or something like like i suspect there were things that you just happened to come across that you actually had very little intentionality towards and they like

54:38Jackson Dahl:blew you yes yeah yeah yeah but you have to i think i think the thing that i'm sort of trying to point out is like like you have to be in the mode where it's possible to recognize it or it's possible to be blown away by the thing and there's different types of being blown away you know like one can be blown away just by like the pure artistry of a film or or something like that and you might not have this sort of like personal connection that i'm um trying to illustrate or articulate but the the personal connection thing i think is like you really have to you know what i mean like there's a certain mode and it's a it's a fleeting kind of mode also you know like

55:22Charles Broskoski:perhaps what you're implying at at some level is that actually um regardless of what the object is I need to be at a certain state.

55:33Jackson Dahl:Yeah. Yeah. Like you have to be ready for that thing. Yeah.

55:37Charles Broskoski:Yeah. There's another piece of this, which is obviously we've been talking around it, but like you, you go on to kind of explicitly talk about how this ties into identity. You say the radar, your radar is you, not the things you focus on, but the orientation, the internal rule set, your magnetism towards things, the natural intuition that you've had your whole life. forgive me if this is a little too esoteric but like Maybe this is a distinction between we are what we love and we literally are our love. Does that make any sense? Yeah, yeah.

56:13Jackson Dahl:That's also part of trying to figure this out. It's not the things. It's not the collection of things. It's the fact that you recognize the thing.

56:26Charles Broskoski:Where my mind went, thinking about this, was almost like you can imagine a youthful teenager teenager yeah who really has attached their identity to like the music they're into or whatever and it's like they haven't quite made this jump yet yeah yeah yeah and they're like

56:40Jackson Dahl:who are you well i have all these songs yeah i'm super into hardcore or whatever yeah yeah yeah

56:48Charles Broskoski:why do you think it's tempting to to to do that at least for young people like why do you think it's so tempting to map our identity not to the radar but to the objects

57:00Jackson Dahl:that's a really good question i have no idea i have no idea but i think like maybe it's because there's a preciousness about the objects yeah when i think when you first when you first see those things that feel very special to you like you think it must be the thing it's not right right it's not me it's that like that thing is special you know i think it takes a really long time to understand that like in the way that that teenagers might describe like a band or a song or something, you know, this sort of like cliche thing of like, you gotta listen, like it's the, it's the best thing in the world.

57:35Jackson Dahl:You know what I mean? And it's not, yeah, right. You'll change your life. Yeah. Um, but it's not actually like, like this is like a certain thing for a certain person at a certain time period. Like, like there's a, there's conditions at play.

57:49Charles Broskoski:It relates, I think, to another thing you've gone to, to kind of think about in discussing in the piece, which is, well, actually it's rooted in this notion of like, there might be rocks I haven't turned over almost. Like what if there are no little points that are going to change my inflection points that are going to totally change my life that I haven't discovered. If there were one soulmate out there for me and I haven't found them or whatever, like, and what you kind of go on to, let me see if I, maybe, maybe I have it. Yeah. What gives me anxiety is if there's a notable point out there that I will never come across, what if the one is a piece of information that I will never get a chance to give my attention to.

58:21Charles Broskoski:And then Damon And Zucconi kind of reframes it as like, we actually have thing-shaped holes in us.

58:28Jackson Dahl:Yeah. And where my mind went,

58:31Charles Broskoski:and I think this ties back to the teenager thing who hasn't learned this yet. And it creates an abundance maybe, which is like, my love is abundant and I can find things to give it to and it's actually not the things. Yeah.

58:46Jackson Dahl:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. damon is really um regretful about how he articulated that the thing shaped holes i think like i'm very sorry damon um that we're bringing this back up um but yeah yeah yeah it goes back to the thing of like it's a verb not a noun like yeah like like the like the thing that you're pointing towards could be anything and no one can really tell you what that thing is you know like Like, like, yeah, I tend to also think about like the way that I use Arena or the way that I like go through a used bookstore with this sort of like thrift store mentality. You know what I mean? Like, like a person could go into a thrift store and maybe buy anything and put in the right context.

59:40Jackson Dahl:That thing was the right thing to buy, you know, and same thing on Arena. like there's no telling like quality is sort of like it's not like uh i don't know what i don't know how to try and quite articulate what i'm trying to say but like like quality is sort of not like on a binary scale it's like there's there's this uh all-encompassed thing um way which one can approach a thing yes um in the same way like again like not to like over reference but like just like taking a thing out of a situation and put it in into a different context like like that can be done with anything yeah the shadiest jpeg that you see you can like take that and like find something meaningful from it if it's like coming from the right yeah if you're open

1:00:30Charles Broskoski:yeah if you're open to it there's a um annie albers quote materials metaphor students worry about choosing their way i always tell them you can go anywhere from anywhere yes exactly yeah

1:00:41Jackson Dahl:And that's the kind of thing that I mean, like, gives me comfort and anxiety at the same time, you know, because it really foregrounds agency and one's own perspective and highlights this thing of like, like the most important thing is like knowing yourself, you know? Yes. Like it's the only thing. Yes. Yeah. One other piece of this that kind of had me thinking about, you can kind of be curious in like a truly open-ended way without much discretion.

1:01:17Charles Broskoski:You say, I feel like I have to constantly remind myself of the things I'm actually interested in. Sometimes I wonder if there's a problem with being too curious. That is when you feel like you're interested in everything. While we do want to cultivate a curiosity, we also think about encouraging more sustained deep thinking. Put another way, like overly, overly simplified, like curiosity and adoration are not the same or deep attention are not the same. And so I wonder about that with like one view just says like, if there really are infinite nodal points and it is about my disposition, I mean, like maybe that's the answer.

1:01:55Charles Broskoski:but like I should just be like all like looking at as many things as possible and just like waiting to see like whereas I think what you're implying here and what I what I what feels maybe more resonant to me especially if it is about my just disposition and not the thing is that I should be

1:02:10Jackson Dahl:looking more carefully at fewer things yeah yeah I think it's something like that but I I don't think there's like a one-sized solution i don't know if i believe that i mean i i'm like as you're talking i'm sort of thinking about the mode in which a person is going down like everyone goes down finds themselves going down a wikipedia hole you know it's like the purest uh the like purest reason to believe that like hyperlinking was like a good decision you know um it's like it's like fulfilling that that dream yeah but i don't think that that sometimes one can find like a thing that's important in that kind of activity but i don't always think that like just going down a wikipedia hole is like like it's much better than just sort of like letting your feed take you but but it doesn't mean like like it's it's a step towards the right direction but it's not always an indication that like this is going to like yield um good results yes or good like life-changing

1:03:26Charles Broskoski:information it's it's sort of i think goes a little bit back to the passive versus active yeah yeah like tiktok is full passive yes yeah um learning and then like i don't know like doing extremely hard research in the stacks is and like yeah maybe the point is to sort of oscillate there and catch yourself if you're just doing the this is maybe this brings up an interesting question it's like should this always feel fun or easy i don't think it's like yeah it's something

1:03:58Jackson Dahl:i wouldn't call it like fun or easy but it's related to those things like it's downhill like um no i don't think it necessarily needs to feel downhill i think it needs to feel um like engaging is not the same thing as fun you know yeah i'm pulling this thread and i'm like i'm kind of locked in yeah yeah yeah yeah that's a nice place to be and i think yeah like i just said like i don't think that that's that's like an indication of something it's not an indication of like yeah the gold is there but like having that kind of practice i think is like useful for getting towards what i'm talking about just being able to have an sort of like radar or an attention like a radar or an attention span that's like that feels more tuned for like lack of a better word.

1:04:54Charles Broskoski:Tuned feels like a good word. I want to briefly broach the topic of taste, which you already alluded to being messy as a quote. People often think about making work as if the person on the other side will have no choice but to enjoy it if the work is good enough. But it's nice to think about the practice of viewing or consuming as an art form in itself. I think this is kind of getting at something we already talked about a little bit um but it is interesting because it sort of does feel like sometimes there is work that is good enough like work that is so like I don't know I'm thinking like on one hand there is stuff I have engaged with that that I I guess I was my act of viewing or consuming was an art form in itself and that it took a lot of work and there are other things where like I watched Casablanca for the first time recently and like it didn't take like there wasn't there wasn't much effort required yeah yeah i'm not really sure what my question is um

1:05:56Jackson Dahl:yeah it's hard it's hard also to like um like in this particular time period in the past three days when we find ourselves in like taste

1:06:09Charles Broskoski:war taste wars 10 or whatever it's just literally it's a sequel to a sequel yeah yeah um

1:06:18Jackson Dahl:yeah i i tend to think that there is a distinction between objectively or like nearly objectively good things you know um versus things that feel specific to a person

1:06:33Charles Broskoski:yeah yeah i think that i think there's something there's something different there and i think one

1:06:41Jackson Dahl:is just like being able to recognize and appreciate what a person has done um but and another thing is like recognizing that like this person is talking about something that you feel like you've been thinking about for your whole life but haven't been able to articulate yes yeah and i think like like i hate now to use the word taste but i think that if i were to try and like like really hone in on a definition that i thought was correct or um describe the quality uh that like people that i know who i think like have the best taste in the world it's more towards that the second relationship which is just like like it's a self-knowledge right It's a self-knowledge.

1:07:30Jackson Dahl:It's a thing you keep coming back to.

1:07:33Charles Broskoski:One of the next things I had, and I think it really connects, you had reflected on having Corey Archangel as your professor, I think, in college, and describing this kind of experience in class. You say the first part of class was everyone talking through some links they found on the internet. People would bring in things that may not seem interesting at first, but Corey was amazing at parsing out why something might be interesting. it showed you it's important to think deeply about why you like what you like first of all like i think a really wonderful and kind of generous thing like what do you think made him good at that to what extent did you learn about even being able to do that for yourself from from him he like i mean i don't want to like uh overstate it and embarrass him but like i think

1:08:23Jackson Dahl:he played a large part in that kind of practice or looking at things with that sort of perspective of like kind of like it's a game you know that like taking a taking something out of context like whatever the thing is a piece of media content or whatever and like placing it here and having it kind of be like a reflection on you and that as like a move was like uh just like a different way of uh relating to things that i had never i feel like i had experienced but like he took it to like a different level in my opinion and he like i remember him um so i worked i was his first studio assistant after college and he very generously took me around to like see art shows like his studio was in chelsea and we would like go on a lunch break and then just be like okay like let's just go look at shows and he would just like show me around and like talk about how he was like looking at things and like why something might be interesting and maybe like what the context around something might be like he was also very young at the time and like also sort of trying to understand this for himself, but being sort of like open source about how he was coming to an understanding.

1:09:51Jackson Dahl:And I remember him talking about like, oh yeah, like, you know, this like person can just put a, you know, like a mop in a gallery and it's like, and you're just like rolling your eyes, but then you think about like where he's come, where this person's coming from, you know, just this kind of thing of like relating to me in like a human way um this sort of like gestural conceptual art way of relating to to things in the world it sounds both like uh properly critical but also like very personal yes that's a really nice way to put it which is um i think something we tend to forget

1:10:30Charles Broskoski:in the conversation about all these things like i just want to think the the taste thing again And it's sort of silly, but like, I always like to bring up like, taste is kind of like, it's like a product of eating food. It's like, what do I actually like? We're talking about it. It's like, we're going around pointing at all these dishes, but we haven't tried being like, this is the good one. Yeah.

1:10:47Jackson Dahl:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's why, I mean, like we should not get into this, but like, like the conversation around this is annoying because I mean, when someone says taste is a skill, that is annoying because you're talking about something that is personal, you know it's something that you develop over a long period of time and and it's to me yeah again like i just think this is taste is synonymous with like an understanding of one's own self and um when you talk about it like a skill then you put it in this sort of like arena of like competition you know and like like people are comparing one's own taste to another one's um which like doesn't really make any sense it's like saying i'm like better than you because i like like this like to your point is like like i like this hot dog you don't like this hot dog

1:11:40Charles Broskoski:like i'm better than you is insane when you put it like that it's both insane and also like totally plausible like people you know we do that um i want to come back to the competitiveness but one last thing on this briefly um i think this was in that same taste land interview you said there's no single thing that could convince me that someone has good taste it's the composite and i think the implication here is that or at least one implication is that it takes time um to evaluate both uh somebody else but also ourselves in taste and so i guess like as one kind of final piece in this or maybe to not use that word like this why is duration and in almost like reference to yourself over the course of time so important in this self-knowledge as you kind of grow through it

1:12:32Jackson Dahl:yeah well so i think i mean part of this class that you were talking about with gory archangel like like we were using delicious and delicious was just this what basically the way it worked is you would send links to delicious instead of saving them to a bookmarks bar so you would look back and see this sort of like trajectory of like, Oh, I was thinking about this thing. Like this thing was important enough for me to save. And then like a week later, like I can sort of draw the connections between these two things. And so I think the duration is like, it's about a sort of like ongoing conversation that you're having with yourself.

1:13:12Jackson Dahl:And yeah, I mean, when you bring up this, like, there's not one single thing that could convince me that a person has good taste like i think about someone who i think has like the best taste in the world who i know is chris charan who was our original designer who's also like the designer for k-hole and a musician and just like has impeccable taste and highly idiosyncratic i don't know like if this is still a thing i mean i have to like air out his taste for a second but like i don't know if It's still a thing for him, but he's like, was for a long period of time obsessed with Tom Cruise. And I'm like thinking about that versus like every other thing that he likes, like it makes sense, you know?

1:14:01Jackson Dahl:But when you just take that one thing, it like sounds like, like it's like, it's not evidence. You know what I mean? Like, like the, like the, the trajectory is that.

1:14:13Charles Broskoski:It's almost like a, uh, to extend the food metaphor. It's almost like a dish. like there's some this ingredient in the context of all these other ingredients is quite interesting yeah yeah yeah when you say he has great taste one other kind of you even admitted at the time you like you didn't love this framing it was sort of like this person's world is complete and maybe what you're getting at is like there it was more cohesive the resolution is dialed like is that what you mean what when you say he had great taste what do you specifically mean

1:14:37Jackson Dahl:it's so like it's at once refined but it's also so specific to him and his personality and when you see the connection in a person with like those two qualities going hand in hand that can be really active right a self-knowing that can be really active but also like works in the world in a sort of like particular gestalt that like couldn't be really be replicated

1:15:05Charles Broskoski:by someone else yeah yeah i like that a lot you you briefly referenced the comp the kind of competitive nature of taste the other kind of big idea you're working through in that piece here for the wrong reasons is this what you i think frame is like competitive realities yeah and there's a articulation you have where you're talking about like thinking the incentive is for us to all think of ourselves as brands and think of information or content as like a resource to to use in this way. You go on to make an amazing bachelor reference with here for fame, not love. And you say, someone whose interests are more strategic than personally intuitive.

1:15:45Charles Broskoski:A person whose interests accumulate with an awareness of how they will reflect back onto them. A person who follows nodal points, not from an innate desire, but from the expectation of some kind of reward, social or otherwise. There isn't a clean way to get around the idea that personal expression is always at least in part performative expression is partly fun because it's performative and so like those two together the first is this total cynicism you're heard for fame not for love the second quote i should have made clear it was distinguished like those are intention a little bit like yeah uh your your platform like arena itself is actually a great example of this where it's like it it seems to be sort of resisting that you're trying to have it resist the perils of the first part but also all taste is a little performative a little bit like even if even to ourselves yeah um and so i guess i'm curious how you like square those two things like what amount of performativeness is tolerated is it about a self-awareness about performativeness

1:16:53Jackson Dahl:yeah i think it's about i think it's about motivations and expectations you know and when it's like i mean like these are like very these are like my own rules now that i'm just like coming up with but i think that um in my mind doing it in public and having it be performative in just being confident with like, I want to say joy, you know? Like finding joy in a thing, showing off a thing with joy, not expecting like someone to look upon, not the whole motivation can't be like, I'm showing off and you should look at me as someone with good taste. Or even I want a specific reaction. I want to, yeah, you can't basically want any kind of reaction at all in my in this worldview of of like standards is joy performative though

1:17:56Charles Broskoski:um like real joy i would argue probably isn't very performative it's enthusiastic it's not

1:18:03Jackson Dahl:internal yes it's like this rare combination of being able to um like show the thing with love and do it in public without expectation, which I think is extremely hard and maybe almost naive at this point to expect.

1:18:21Charles Broskoski:A child could do it easily, though.

1:18:22Jackson Dahl:Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah.

1:18:24Charles Broskoski:Yeah, I think that's... On the kind of broader theme of competition, and I think you alluded to this earlier, two more quotes. Social media has largely made permanent a world of individual realities, but it also underpinned that world with the perspective that the larger structure holding everything together is competition. in order for your reality to be the most real, it has to win. And then a second quote, you have to think of content or information as a resource. And doing so means that in some ways you're producing or consuming in order to cultivate a position rather than treating content as something out there to be curious about, to be fascinated by, or to love.

1:19:05Charles Broskoski:The last part, obviously, I think is the thing hanging over all this and like this authentic taste whatever like i guess what i'm what i was trying to what i was thinking about a little bit is like this this idea that in order for your reality to be the most real it has to win like artists and you and i don't maybe we'll get to this i don't know if you still consider yourself an artist but like a part of that is actually being opinionated in fact i know you're quite opinionated about software and how you make software and so on one hand like Like, great artists are sometimes just, like, loving or whatever, the joy thing.

1:19:44Charles Broskoski:But oftentimes they're saying something. They're actually trying to have their reality win.

1:19:48Jackson Dahl:Yeah.

1:19:49Charles Broskoski:And maybe this gets back to the same tension we were just discussing around performance. Yeah. But, like, maybe it depends on the context. Maybe it depends if you're just in this sort of enthusiastic learning period versus constructing something.

1:20:01Jackson Dahl:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think like, I mean, a really good example, like, it's just top of mind. I'm making an excuse to bring up Taste Wars 10. But like, a really good example is seeing the different ways that this is sort of like playing out on Twitter. And people taking one side against this sort of like taste is a skill thing. Other people taking other sides. It's like, it feels like people are trying to align themselves properly and that the goal is not so, I mean, whatever. This conversation is annoying for a lot of different reasons, but like one of the reasons it's annoying is that it feels like the goal in the end is to like end up on the winning side of this.

1:20:49Jackson Dahl:Yes, yes. You know?

1:20:51Charles Broskoski:And to feel, honestly, in this case, to feel better about one's own like...

1:20:55Jackson Dahl:Position. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is like a problem with Twitter in itself. But like, but like, the other part of it is, well, it's the sort of thing about, of, of, of talking about the thing you're doing rather than like doing this thing, you know, and when you talk about taste, then you're like, then you're like talking about the idea of loving something and not like actually putting your attention towards the thing or whatever. But I think in relationship to that, maybe when I was going to shows, to art shows in New York more regularly, experiencing a show, feeling like it was successful, like something ineffable was communicated to me, and not really feeling like that was so much of a competition, but more of an ongoing conversation.

1:21:46Jackson Dahl:This is sort of like a long way of saying that the motivation towards these things plays a large part in how the tone of that thing goes. If one is doing these things to dunk on someone to end up in the right spot so that they will be in a better spot later on, that's different than, like, I've been thinking about this thing for a really long time. I'm going to articulate this in the best way.

1:22:16Charles Broskoski:I care about the response, but in a way that is less about my ego, perhaps. I mean, it's a delicate thing.

1:22:21Jackson Dahl:It's a delicate thing because it always comes into play. But I think you care about, I think in one mode, you care about the response because you want the conversation to keep going. Because you love the conversation so much that you want things to be generative. And you want to add to the conversation so that someone else can add to that.

1:22:43Charles Broskoski:The other is to signal.

1:22:44Jackson Dahl:The other is to signal. Yeah. And there are like percentages of everything and every way of dealing with this, obviously.

1:22:53Charles Broskoski:Obviously, so much of this is about attention. And I think really what the piece is about loving attention, right? I was also thinking there was some kind of brief line you just said, we have to pick which things we give our attention to. There's a finiteness about human attention. And it's hard not to think about that in the context of like this other form of intelligence where we've created, which actually the whole feature and bug of it is that it has infinite attention basically. There's this quote you have about it that prompted something for me, which is, if you're really focusing on the moment, on something you love, on something in the world that feels like it's made for you, you can't be thinking about how it will benefit you or how it will fall back on you.

1:23:34Charles Broskoski:We were just talking about this. These two modes are at odds with each other. True attention requires that you don't view something in the world through the lens of what can this thing do for me. yeah and i have a couple questions on this but my first is can you fake it till you make it on this front meaning like can you actually can you be a poser around it and then and then end up loving it

1:23:57Jackson Dahl:yeah yeah yes i totally believe that that's why i'm a poser apologies yeah because i think i think like if you find yourself wanting so hard to associate yourself with an idea then there's

1:24:10Charles Broskoski:that means something there's there's some radar happening yeah yeah yeah yeah and if you're

1:24:15Jackson Dahl:willing to sort of like be vulnerable to um to like maintain that position like that's also very

1:24:23Charles Broskoski:important you know okay cool um the other part of this is at rude it's like um i think actually this whole thing we we just spent the last five ten minutes kind of talking about is like is it inward looking or outward looking in a way there's you have this thing about like the common advice is to do more things for yourself not for other people and you kind of like invert it and you say like actually we should point our attention out into the world um how like understanding what connects you to the world your radar what draws you in you have to pay attention pay attention what you're paying attention to it it almost reminded me of like um i don't know if you ever listened to or read the david foster wallace this is water speech and like that's really his core contention is like he's got this line about you can be trapped alone at the center of a school sized kingdom worshiping some kind of thing for yourself or you can turn your attention outwards yeah um and that was where where i kind of found myself going as almost like a possible resolution for this is just like making your attention more generous and some like generous is a maybe that's a question like like how how does one cultivate that that generosity of attention that external outward facing attention yeah right the thing that i learned from cory to go back to

1:25:47Jackson Dahl:what we were talking about earlier is one could find anything interesting if you look at it long enough or from the right direction um and i think the sort of like generosity of attention is around that you know sort of like like not like you have to give in completely to this idea that like i could look at this forever you know like you can't like that's unproductive but you can like open up the aperture a little bit to to be able to like i mean what i was saying you to you before we started talking, the thing that I really miss about being in New York is just like having random conversations with people on the street.

1:26:31Jackson Dahl:And that activity sort of reminds me of this, like anything can be interesting, you know, because you can really, I found that you could really quickly get into that mode with someone where you're both, you both might be looking at the same thing and sort of trying to like, you know, make a little joke or something or like look at it from a funny angle as a way of relating to each other and you're sort of like very quickly seeing something from someone else's perspective um so yeah i think it's about this like it's a being it's about being empathetic to perspectives and like understanding that one can look at anything from a million different directions and find a way and find like a personal way in

1:27:21Charles Broskoski:it's a form of kind of like looking with some amount of humility or something like that or or even like um it's not quite the like i'm searching for some kind of language or like it's not quite intentionless but it's like a looking with a willingness to be surprised or

1:27:37Jackson Dahl:something yeah yeah yeah and i mean the thing that i'm talking about in this piece or like the activity that i'm annoyed by is like like there's another way of looking which is just like like how can this thing benefit me you know what i mean like yes like like i want that object like that will make me look good like that is like a really damaging mode um to sort of like have as your rubric for looking at things in the world in my opinion yeah what am i going to get from this yeah

1:28:09Charles Broskoski:what am i going to get from this it's um it's almost a looking without needing anything yeah Yeah.

1:28:13Jackson Dahl:Yeah. Yeah.

1:28:15Charles Broskoski:I appreciate you indulging me on the attention thing I interviewed you referenced in one of the in the channel for that post Nadia Asparova's book, Antimemetics. And I had a similar conversation with her and it's the attention thing. It's just continued to come. There's something metaphysical about it and it feels very sort of. It's like the one scarcity left.

1:28:40Jackson Dahl:Yeah. Yeah. It gets so quickly metaphysical. which is why it's like i'm like oh whatever i can like be that person for a second but like when you start talking about it i don't it's not it's not like bullshit you know what i mean like there is no end to the amount of attention that you can pay yeah yeah it's not yeah that's real yeah yeah

1:29:02Charles Broskoski:i want to talk a little bit about maybe a grab bag of things i would broadly describe as like design um i think like tool making sort of maybe a form of like gardening that you do like in shaping mainly arena first on maybe the a little bit of a thread we were we're on um there's an interview with you in the creative independent back in 2017 um and you say before when i was working on my solo show as an artist i was thinking about what it means to be generous as an artist At the time, I thought it was about being really personal or really open, like to the point of being diaristic or sharing images of me and my family.

1:29:41Charles Broskoski:Towards the end of making that show, I decided, no, it's actually about tools. It's actually removing myself entirely and making things for other people to do stuff. I decided making tools is the nicest thing you can do as an artist. So Arena still feels like a natural extension of where I was going. Arena has changed the way I think. I continue to think about things the same way I would as if I were making art, but I just don't make art. What, maybe, I mean, that was a long time ago. Like, what is so generous about making tools? And basically, maybe more broadly, I don't want to get too in the weeds of what we were talking about just now, but like, what makes an artist generous?

1:30:26Charles Broskoski:Those are two separate questions.

1:30:27Jackson Dahl:Yeah, yeah. That's, I mean, that question is, that's super personal. I mean, I don't mean like, I won't answer it. I mean, like, it's specific to the person and how they define that kind of thing. But for me, for me, that's the sort of like, next logical conclusion and this like conversation that I was creating with myself and like the work that I was making at the time. the thing that's generous about making tools is that like you're sort of like trying to optimize for reinterpretation i think um at least at least that's how i would approach making tools like these things should be used in different ways and because like i think about tools in the in the realm of software i tend to like want to play with this um on the spectrum of open-endedness

1:31:24Charles Broskoski:and sort of like rigid and right right oh you could argue that's generous yeah yeah yeah yeah

1:31:30Jackson Dahl:i mean it's yeah there's there's there's parts of there's other parts of it too which is that like like what i would want from a tool is sort of like what i try and do with arena um so i'm like trying to be generous to like a person who might share my same perspective is arena art no no i don't think so um no but i do think that um yeah everyone that we employ at arena has a artistic or creative background and And I think it's, yeah, this is like, I tend to think that it's harder to learn how to make creative decisions in business than it is to sort of like learn the practical parts of running a business.

1:32:30Jackson Dahl:um so it's not art but i i like treating decision making within the context of running a business

1:32:41Charles Broskoski:as a creative act and if i'm to infer correctly your your sort of baseline implication is easier to teach creative people business than teach business people that's what i think but i'm sure a ton of people would disagree with me yeah um on the note of design specifically uh you reference this 37 signals old blog post about making opinionated software and i think it's them they say the best software takes sides yeah um and then this is you we tend to approach the problems we solve from a cultural perspective rather than a purely technological one and maybe those two ideas aren't exactly related but they felt related to me but i'd be curious for you to actually explain that that specifically the distinction of and maybe with the lens of taking sides like what is it what does it mean to approach something one very simplistic reading would be it's like it's not mechanical it's not the the bare metal it's actually this like much

1:33:45Jackson Dahl:more soft amorphous sort of yeah human thing yeah i mean i think that like i said i mean like i've said a lot like i use arena myself like as a person and so uh what i mean by like we take we take we try and like approach things from a cultural perspective is like an understanding of like what we would want as people who use the software, what we're seeing our community, like the peop, the other people around us who are using arena, what we're seeing, how they're, how they're using it, what they're coming up against, what's frustrating them. There's those things, which maybe is like a little bit more like that's table stakes.

1:34:35Jackson Dahl:But I think there is something to be said about it actually being a sort of like rare case when one is making software that you are the you know what i mean like a lot of people are making these things as like like they're trying to make smart business decisions and having like smart business decisions not be like the number one reason why we do things and more like like how is this going to add to the conversation like how will this change the dynamics of what people are doing on arena um because we're using it ourselves and we don't want the quality to dilute So like, like that being the number one thing is, I think, sort of what I mean.

1:35:16Charles Broskoski:Are you conflating business and technology there?

1:35:19Jackson Dahl:I think so a little bit. I mean, yeah, like, like, I also can't say that we like don't make strictly technical decisions because we spend like a ton of time just trying to make things super fast.

1:35:32Charles Broskoski:Right. But there is a meta thing here, which is like technology wants something. I think often we think of technology as being sort of value neutral. it's not yeah and so maybe that's the other force that's pushing up against this which is like

1:35:44Jackson Dahl:what is the platform yeah well yeah there's what is the platform one but there's also like like we have things i mean to to what i was just saying like the things that we're opinionated about are like it should be super fast like faster than is reasonable yeah and it should be very minimal it shouldn't have too much of a feeling like content should come through way more than arena as an interface comes through and we think about those things just as qualities in themselves but also like what kinds of like behavior feelings do those qualities and gender and so in that sense

1:36:25Charles Broskoski:there are cultural decisions i was gonna say they're almost like taste decisions well i mean

1:36:33Jackson Dahl:the weird thing about like like uh like being opinionated like that is it can sound like taste and it can also sound like being principled or like having morals or something but it really is just like yeah having an experience of using software over the lives of our of our entire lives understanding the things that we think are like well done and trying to like emulate and like push past those qualities as much as possible. Yep. Yep.

1:37:07Charles Broskoski:On this note of like what the platform is going to be or wants to be, the way you talk about it often feels more like the classic kind of gardening bottom up versus, versus top down. You say it often feels like arena itself has its own needs and desires that arena has its own personal intuition and that we, you and I are figuring out what it wants to be together. We try to listen to how we all talk about arena, pay attention to how it changes to the platform, bring about new needs and ideas, and recognize the times when we, you and I, have strong urges to do something on arena but can't. These are the times when we know how to make arena more complete.

1:37:48Jackson Dahl:Yeah. Yeah.

1:37:50Charles Broskoski:That goes back to so much of what you just said. principal stuff like but i'm so interested in like like almost like embodying like the feeling like what literally maybe you can give an example like what is happening when there's something you guys want to do and that you can't that like crosses that thread because because by the way i suspect there have been times when given that you are pretty principled there are things you feel like you kind of want to do maybe you charles want to do that aren't right yeah yeah

1:38:19Jackson Dahl:Yeah. Well, I'll give you like a counter example to this, which is coming up in my head as you're asking this question. The thing that people have brought up the most in terms of a feature request over the lifespan of Arena is like, I want to be able to see my channels and other people's channels in graph view. Like, I want to see this thing like a nodal map. And like, we've definitely, I mean, people have explored it with our API. We've explored it. We keep coming back to this like conclusion that it's just a novelty and it doesn't actually provide anything like useful. for every product yeah yeah and it's like and it's a and it's a thing that feels like um it would be valuable in some way but actually like doesn't deliver in the way that at least from the way that we're using arena it doesn't deliver in the way that you think it's going to deliver almost like the arena doesn't want that yeah yeah i mean yeah and that's and like unfortunately or unfortunately like that's our particular take um but it's also one of the reasons why we're like we're opinionated that like arena should always have an api um and that is like it's feeling more and more like a radical position because like the things that live on arena there there's no algorithm it's people doing this and that's super rare you know like people are categorizing information you know and like they're doing it because what a waste of time well i mean yeah no it's it's just yeah it's it's a wild thing to think about um and i think that that it is just inherently valuable but but at the same time we do believe that like there are interpretations of like what arena canon should do that someone should have the ability to

1:40:24Charles Broskoski:um and act if they want it's almost two spiritual aspects of the platform that are kind of at odds

1:40:30Jackson Dahl:but you're like you're allowing them to exist in slight tension yeah i think so yeah yeah two i

1:40:36Charles Broskoski:know ted nelson has been very influential two ideas from him one mediums are infinitely harder to create create than media and two recognizing parallelism as an essential part of thought um which i think is obviously very very central for his work but i think it's at the very least influential to you also one other line from you the key is that arena isn't doing the work for me at all it's just an environment that is oriented to this type of activity yeah which is almost getting at the medium idea a little bit yeah like i'm curious what's been most important in creating that environment you talk about quite literally a i would call arena a medium yeah um and why why is whether it's literally parallelism as ted describes it or just bi-directional um linking like why that's been so important to create this type of environment that

1:41:28Jackson Dahl:produces what you want i mean to like put it in way um dumber terms like i think i think like what we're trying to get at is like like what are the optimal conditions to get at the kind of content that we want in order for that content to come in one has to have the quality of being fascinated with something you know yeah so so the parallelism or like the structures of arena like even the positions that we take as a business like saying like no algorithms ever like one way to think about it one very real way to think about it is like these are the conditions that have to exist in order for like the good content to come through it's a it's um a very strict constraint in some sense yeah or prompt yeah yeah yeah yeah but but like because it has this sort of like a little bit of a learning curve like a like it has an open-endedness that

1:42:38Charles Broskoski:feels ungenerous at first that's it's a threshold it's a threshold yeah yeah one idea that comes up a lot is and maybe you're pointing at different things i i even have a few interpretations but is this idea of space one place you say i don't always want to be augmented i want space in my software just maybe capturing the the real kind of essence of it and then you go on um it's just a bunch of people recognizing that it's really hard to think when you're attached to the internet

1:43:07Jackson Dahl:all the time, which is really funny.

1:43:10Charles Broskoski:And then finally, in this piece you have on Boehm Dialogue, the longer one you say, it's so easy to treat technology as though it can prescribe a solution to a particular problem. Software developers build complex workflows, create new methods for faster communication, and tune information delivery to an individual level. But what humans really need is much more simple time and space to think and process.

1:43:38Charles Broskoski:there are, I think actually like two kind of core articulations of space that fit arena. One is the one I was just describing with all those quotes, which is like almost like negative space or something, a gap. The other is actually like spatial interfaces.

1:43:56Jackson Dahl:Yeah. Both are clearly very deeply seated

1:44:01Charles Broskoski:in how you design this product. um i'm curious why

1:44:10Charles Broskoski:one to the extent they ever interact and two like why you particularly on the negative space one like why you kind of keep seemingly coming back to that maybe it's just a personal thing

1:44:20Jackson Dahl:um maybe it's about that threshold yeah i mean like like also part of what i'm trying to point at with that is like, like it's about what we do, but it's also like what we don't do. So like, not like deciding not to do these like graph things or like be too heavy on animation or like design an interface that like looks too slick in one particular direction is like another form of space. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, it's like letting the person's content intention intention or whatever, all that stuff come through more than what we're doing. It's a really fine line to us, I think, that it should look good, but also not really too much of anything.

1:45:09Jackson Dahl:And that's a really hard thing to pull off, but that's what we aspire to.

1:45:14Charles Broskoski:It's a good transition. One of my favorite things I read of yours is actually this blog post on Ariel, your new typeface, which is A-R-E-A-L, misspelling of the proper Arial. A few ideas that I actually think play so well into what you just said about space. First is Johannes Breyer at Dynamo who designed the font or he and his team. He says, he's talking about Arial, it's a system font. So at another stage, it also became a kind of non-choice for a certain type of graphic designer who didn't want to make a point of choosing a cool or new font. But of course, choosing to go with the default is also a choice.

1:45:53Charles Broskoski:Part of what you were just saying. The question became, if we want to make a font for Arena, but they already have the perfect font, how can we update Arena's identity with a meaningful gesture? And finally, the hope is that you can't really spot a difference. Looking at Ariel and Ariel should feel like refreshing a browser page. It's the same, but it isn't. Even references this woman, Kristen Sue Lucas, who refreshed by changing her legal name from her, from Kristen Sue Lucas to Kristen Sue Lucas. Yes. kind of insane yeah maybe i'll just read one last quote from you this was in that interview when we made this interface change our desire was to be as default as we could so that arena wouldn't get in the way of the content in other words we wanted arena to look good but to fade into the background as much as possible yeah yeah great design fading into the background is a little oxymoronic right like um or it's a little paradoxical like in theory all design should sort of like it's it's such a delicate thing to have design not show up yeah um it's hard for me even reading this like the the aerial like i both know that it actually was functionally better for

1:47:09Jackson Dahl:you guys but it almost reads as performance art or something yeah yeah i mean i yeah like it is but it's not like the new ariel by the way like i did a presentation a couple days ago in like a class and i realized that the computer that i was showing it on did not have ariel r ariel and i could tell the difference immediately because the kerning on ariel is like so fucked up so when you look at new ariel versus old ariel like like it's minor but there is like a real so it's it's the

1:47:45Charles Broskoski:Maybe the essence of that great design fading in the background is not that it's unnoticeable, but it might have to be pointed out for you to notice. Like, you should feel the benefits without noticing them.

1:47:58Jackson Dahl:Yes, that's exactly right. Yeah, yeah. You should feel the benefits without noticing them.

1:48:03Charles Broskoski:Only in actually looking at the old version would you notice.

1:48:06Jackson Dahl:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And now there's no way to look at, I mean, I guess you could just modify the CSS on new arena and see the difference. Yeah. It wasn't purely gestural. Like, yeah, it has like a real utility, but it's at this sort of like, like Ariel, the font to us, the original Ariel, the Microsoft Arial, was nearly perfect. And Johannes and Fabiola, who worked on Arial, our Arial, made it like 100 % complete. So to us, that's so satisfying. And I think like, it's just part of this contextual whole that makes it very special and beautiful without it looking like too much of anything.

1:48:59Charles Broskoski:How do you conceivably justify something like that

1:49:02Jackson Dahl:given that you have very constrained resources um i mean honestly it was a partnership between both of us so it was just like a fun thing that we both got to work on together um we don't have the same kind of relationship with dynamo that like a huge startup might have you know it's like like johannes and i are friends yeah and by the way it's also time but like

1:49:28Charles Broskoski:the answer i think also can be that you wanted to and that you wanted to do something for the

1:49:32Jackson Dahl:community yeah yeah yeah yeah i think johannes is like like approaches dinamo in the same way that we approach arena which is that like we love working on it and we find it endlessly interesting and he loves like the collaborations that we try and do now are just like people that we want to work on things with because it's fun you know what i mean and because we share a similar way of

1:49:58Charles Broskoski:of looking at the world my last two kind of sections go together which are about effectively building businesses specifically building independent businesses and software businesses i think you alluded to this briefly earlier but you are clearly an advocate for creative people starting businesses. A few lines from you, and particularly with the notion that maybe they're unlikely to do so. We have a very limited conception of the type of person who starts a business, especially tech businesses. When I talk to artists, young creative people, I always recommend starting a business. And finally, arena itself is what drives me to be entrepreneurial in order to make it more resilient.

1:50:41Charles Broskoski:You wrote somewhere that you felt complicated about your first commercial art show. And yet you have a seemingly very healthy commercial relationship with this project. Maybe it's, as you said earlier, maybe it's because it's not art, but there's some other part too where you were talking about like, businesses are great. Like people like patronage, but like patronage, you have to answer to a very specific person. Like you're almost talking about like the commercial part of it being it's like freeing container. And so I'm curious about like in this spectrum between, you could make a case that Arena itself has patronage actually.

1:51:18Charles Broskoski:It's business model of patronage. But in the spectrum between patronage and business in terms of like a fuel to do something creative or do something important, how you think about what a business is and what it allows for and like why it's so, like what is driving you to want to persuade more and more creative people to adopt this kind of fuel or shape?

1:51:38Jackson Dahl:Well, I mean, there's a couple of reasons. For software in particular, I just think the internet, the web would be infinitely more interesting and healthy if there were just different takes towards what making a business online is. And especially businesses like ours that have this sort of like cultural or social component. Like, I don't think that the ways in which we think of being social online represent all the ways that one could be social online. And I don't think it's like this particular type of way of funding software businesses that is going to find all of those ways of...

1:52:26Charles Broskoski:Meaning like the venture capital industrial complex.

1:52:29Jackson Dahl:Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

1:52:29Charles Broskoski:So Mike, maybe I should let you finish, but the obvious critique here would be that the reason we don't have more of these is we don't have the business models for them. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:52:39Jackson Dahl:Yeah. And that's what I mean about like, creative decision making. And I don't think that like, Arena's business model is by any means creative. But I think it's, I do think, like subscriptions, in our case, is a business model that is really, it's really symbiotic with how we want to work on Arena, because we're providing an environment. And the question is just like, do you find this environment valuable enough to like help us continue, maintain and build it? And so the relationship is like so simple that it is almost radical at this point. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

1:53:26Charles Broskoski:You said somewhere you're the only social media or social network that its users pay it. Yeah.

1:53:32Jackson Dahl:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, that's not, maybe that's not like entirely true, but it's, I mean, it's definitely the only social network where the like relationship between the people who make it and the people who use it are, is really understandable. Yes. You know, it's very straightforward. It's like, it's like almost done. but I think that there are much more interesting ways of figuring out like different setups for that and ways that people who are using software and people who are making software can be more aligned.

1:54:05Charles Broskoski:Yeah, to borrow a frame from my friend, Chris, it's like business model product fit in this context is actually quite rare. I think another piece of this, to be honest, is your business model isn't that creative, but you have something else that's rare, which is a whole lot of patience.

1:54:23Jackson Dahl:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, part of the other thing that is radical about arena is just that we keep continuing to do it, you know, that there's like a, there's a commitment to it. And that's also why I try and sort of like illustrate this relationship that we have as like people who are using the product. Like we're like in the same, we're like in the same place as people who don't work on arena yes like like we're right there and if something frustrates a person who's using it it probably frustrates us too i i thought it was

1:54:57Charles Broskoski:cool to look over on the note of patience there's one line where you're like success as a business relies on people who love arena enough to pay for it so getting to 400 paying customers was a big deal for us then you're like now that we're about 70 000 in revenue and da da um you're now at 18 thousand um paying users yeah it's gonna be twenty thousand pretty twenty thousand over a hundred thousand dollars in revenue um has it gotten easier or harder to be patient uh much easier

1:55:26Jackson Dahl:yeah yeah yeah i mean i think for the longest time when we had to do other things to just like functionally exist like do freelance projects or work other jobs or that kind of thing um yeah it's just it's just exhausting now i feel like like we've reached like like this is the ultimate goal to be able to work on arena all the time is like that's like the bag you know and and so like continuing that is like or or making that like stronger is like uh yeah we're motivated to do

1:56:02Charles Broskoski:that you're coming up on your 15 year anniversary this year yeah uh a quote i really loved uh one question that is still hard to answer after 10 years of working on arena is what's the long-term vision this is difficult for a few reasons one reason is that we have to calibrate our definition of long-term with the person who is asking the question arena is a lifelong project our ideal outcome as a company is not becoming the next facebook god forbid it's becoming the next nishiyama onsen pronunciation or kyonkan a hot spring hotel in japan and one of the world's oldest businesses around 705 a.d um you were going to say the slow blade quoting dune the slow blade penetrates the shield i do think it's worth considering slowness as a strength what an amazing i mean amazing to imagine a business that old but especially amazing if you think about a digital software thing in that way.

1:57:05Charles Broskoski:I guess my question is like, beyond just being patient and being intentional, what has or what will make Arena more anti-fragile for the chance of lasting another 15 years or beyond?

1:57:19Jackson Dahl:Yeah. I mean, yeah. Lasting another 15 years is one thing. I think lasting past us retiring is like a different thing. um and i think a thing that arena has going for it in that regard is it's like almost nothing you know like like as a piece of software it's like extremely on i mean it's complex but it's like like compared to other things it's like not that complicated and i think it has a sort of structure that could be remade in different forms very easily so it's mo it's like i don't know i i sort of go back and forth about this but i think that one part of its strength is that like it's a software but it's also an orientation and the orientation is like something that can manifest in different ways

1:58:18Charles Broskoski:it's funny you say that one of the thoughts i didn't do the research but my my expectation is that onsen like it probably hasn't been the building it probably hasn't i don't even know it's in the land like yeah yeah but there's some threat yeah yes yeah and i think when you think about that that durable of a time frame it it you're probably making there's some asterisks

1:58:39Jackson Dahl:but there's some there's some threat yeah yeah yeah yeah and i think that that the orientation of uh like something as simple as just like this is a piece of software that the people who are making it like are deeply committed to and use as individuals and feel and feel like they need as like a as like a part of them you know um yeah the other businesses that i sort of like look to in part for inspiration have this sort of same quality and feel to me like they could also have this kind of like um they gesture towards longevity you know can you give a couple examples well like i'm not like the hugest obsidian user or like i'm not like a complex obsidian user but i like appreciate like that as like another manifestation of an orientation that is sort of manifest in a piece of software and how those two things play back and forth you know my last kind of primary section that obviously relates is um about a awesome piece you wrote recently about personal business

1:59:58Charles Broskoski:um and a natural kind of thread of of building independent businesses a slug of quotes from you that I think maybe set the tone. When I started running Arena with friends 14 years ago, it often felt like having such a personal stake in what we were doing would be a liability. Today, it's often perceived as an asset. I'm not especially pro-capitalism, but I am pro-doing something really hard that you care about desperately and unabashedly. You alluded to this earlier, but I wouldn't be running a business if it weren't for Arena. It's a very personal business, meaning that it is something I want to see in the world.

2:00:36Charles Broskoski:It is a tool that I would personally be devastated if it were to not exist. And finally, I've never wanted to walk away, even when we ran out of money. I think it's the coolest thing on the internet. I don't know what else I would do. Maybe you got at this slightly, but can you make your case for more people starting these types of personal businesses?

2:00:58Jackson Dahl:Oh, man.

2:00:59Charles Broskoski:Maybe especially digital or software ones?

2:01:01Jackson Dahl:Yeah. I think that if you're the type of person that feels critical of the way that social interaction happens online or your relationship to information is compromised. there are uh probably like a billion people who fit this qualification like like i i mean

2:01:34Jackson Dahl:It's easier than ever to create software. It's cheaper than ever. People can figure out ways of playing around with this stuff and feeling the right shapes and orientations of things. And I think it's a very important, it's a very important place to experiment in because it's ridiculous that there's just like a single type of person making this type of software.

2:02:04Charles Broskoski:What I was going to say is like, I actually think there are, there's a huge, especially in the last six months, cloud code, whatever. Like the way what's happening in the labs is the disposition towards making software is like, oh my gosh, you can just do things.

2:02:15Jackson Dahl:Yes. Perhaps the implication there is that you're saying that's generally one type of person.

2:02:21Charles Broskoski:Because what I was going to say is that it sort of feels like if anything, the disposition has been like, maybe the good aspect of it is there's a lightness. The negative aspect, it doesn't, it definitely doesn't feel like the way you talk about a personal business. It's not heavy and meaningful and caring. It's like, just throw stuff out.

2:02:36Jackson Dahl:No, no. I mean, to say that like the resources are available if you feel like you can be opinionated about these types of things and you can sort of start to shape your opinionatedness easier than you might've done so earlier. like learning html learning php like my process for like learning how to write software took a really really long time and that time like like one doesn't have to spend that amount of time now in the sort of same way i mean like there's a limit to what i'm saying i think because i don't totally believe that you could do these things at a scale that would be meaningful just yet um give it four more months of clod who knows yeah but i mean um but i do think that like yeah i think i think there are a lot of like young people a lot of people with like weird and opinionated ways of uh how they want to interact with with the world and with each other and figuring out like more interesting ways of manifesting those behaviors online um yeah it feels important i i like that's a long way of saying like i think the drive and motivation has to come first the feeling like that something should exist that doesn't already exist and that you can maybe there's a way for you to try and articulate that perhaps there's a group

2:04:03Charles Broskoski:of people who have that the thing they they don't have that in short supply they have the technical ability in short supply or whatever it goes back to your earlier point around that maybe more creative people should start but they're unlikely to um but that like that is the thing that perhaps the software world has been slightly lacking is people who have that kind of set a perspective um to approach it from a new we've had a lot of people approach it from a specific kind of way

2:04:28Jackson Dahl:yes yes a lot of people approaching it from a specific kind of way but also like the expectation that making a software business will follow, like in the best case, a particular time scale and trajectory, you know, and that these things will ultimately cease to exist, like making something with the idea that like the point is to cash out at some point, you know. Or even like, I don't know, your history of the arena,

2:04:58Charles Broskoski:I don't know if I have all the details, but it wasn't, you were kind of eating glass for a little while. you definitely weren't working out at full time yeah you could hardly like and so but i think that goes back to being personal which is like i need this yeah yeah yeah and i i mean i can think of

2:05:14Jackson Dahl:people who are like doing this kind of thing and um like also in this phase of figuring out how to make it their like full-time thing or or their life's work you know um and it feels super positive you know yeah i don't i don't know how to like it's it's an interesting thing to try and pitch because um well okay i'll say the other thing consider the possibility that working with your friends on something that you think is cool is like the most luxurious possible thing that you can do you know independent of the reward yeah yeah yeah no the reward is the work the like that you get to hang out with your friends and make something cool.

2:05:59Jackson Dahl:Like that's, that's the reward and figuring out a way to keep doing that is like, like, that's the challenge, but yeah, that's the challenge, but it's easy to do once you like start experiencing it. I like that. Yeah.

2:06:12Charles Broskoski:Maybe as a, just to wait a little further in the waters of a template for this, you were talking about kind of the approach you say, offer product services and or experiences that are both high quality and idiosyncratic, the type of business that both sustains and is sustained by a community. Again, getting at that business model product fit thing a little bit, but I'm curious what you think about the shape of businesses or products or customers that do tend to, what is it about that relationship that is productive for these types of businesses, whether it be something like Arena or the local whatever, grocery store or bookstore or whatever?

2:06:55Charles Broskoski:Is it intimacy?

2:06:56Jackson Dahl:Well, I think it's that, yeah, it's something about intimacy, but it's also about infrastructure. It's like providing a thing, a place, an armature for other activity to happen within, and that someone can rely on that. It can become theirs. Yeah, yeah. It can become theirs, but there's a dependability that comes over a long period of time.

2:07:28Charles Broskoski:I was texting you about this yesterday. In this Time It's Personal arena channel, you have this just incredible SoftBank deck from 2010. Or Masa's hardcore brain blasting, vision questing. He has a slide about happiness. and happiness is about being touched, touched by seeing, touched by interactions, love, learning, playing. He has this thing where he's talking about when you get lost, look into the far distance whenever you get lost. And this is how SoftBank's gonna go from his 30-year vision to his 300-year vision. And one of the things he texted me is we need that masa back. And so what this prompted for me is like, maybe all founder-led businesses are personal.

2:08:11Charles Broskoski:And if so, like, do people just sort of forget why they're here?

2:08:17Jackson Dahl:Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, part of it, I think, has to do with the sort of typical way that most large software businesses are funded and the expectations of growth. You know, I think it's hard to maintain. I mean, the way that they're funded, the expectation is an exit, like in some form. It's not really typical that like a company might get investment and pay dividends or something over time. I think that for me, this is related to sort of like another question that sometimes comes up when someone on Arena is sort of like feeling that it's like getting a little bit bigger. And the question is like, do you think Arena can get too big or do you think it's like quality will diminish as it grows?

2:09:17Jackson Dahl:And my answer for that is usually that it can grow really big. It just has to do it slowly enough. And the issue is mostly the sort of timescale expectations of a business more so than it is that it's getting super big. Yeah,

2:09:40Charles Broskoski:maybe that applies especially to a community or social thing.

2:09:44Jackson Dahl:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

2:09:45Charles Broskoski:yeah but it probably i mean probably some like broad analogy around all growing living things like things it's not good to grow too fast yeah yeah yeah it's it's funny it makes me think of um i once met with somebody at lvmh um and they were talking about how like it's actually bad if any of their brands grow it's like more than 15 percent year over year or something or 25 25%. Wow. Because it's sort of like, when you're in the business of 100-year brands, you don't want a 200 % year. No.

2:10:17Jackson Dahl:That's actually showing that something's wrong. Or you've totally mismanaged supply and demand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's inspiring. Yeah, yeah, it was cool.

2:10:25Charles Broskoski:It was cool. I have just a few more kind of miscellaneous things. I thought I would ask this before we got here, but what do you think of the word authenticity? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

2:10:37Jackson Dahl:Yeah, this was coming up during that, like, Here for the Wrong Reasons essay. Yeah. I think I'm a bit of, in the same way that I'm like a poser apologist, I'm like a bit of an authenticity apologist. Just in that I sort of believe that, like, one could fully understand themselves, like I was saying before, you know. And, like, that to me is synonymous with authenticity. You know what I mean?

2:11:07Charles Broskoski:The fact that you believe it is possible, or at the very least is worth approaching?

2:11:11Jackson Dahl:Well, I mean, authenticity is possible because it's possible to understand, to get better at understanding oneself. Yes.

2:11:20Charles Broskoski:In fact, you almost, it's like, I must be an optimist. Like, yeah.

2:11:24Jackson Dahl:Yeah.

2:11:26Charles Broskoski:I can't remember where I found this. It's generally a good idea to try to apply metaphors to places where they don't quite fit. I think that's from you.

2:11:35Jackson Dahl:I said that? I think so.

2:11:36Charles Broskoski:It's possible I got it from some other channel, but it felt representative of something that is happening inside of Arena. Yeah, yeah. And the patterns.

2:11:43Jackson Dahl:Yes, absolutely. Yeah, that's the thing that I was talking about earlier, which is like, it's just useful to try and look at something with a frame of mind that it could be interesting. So it's like applying a gaze to something that might not be there implicitly. Right. Ready to see. Ready to see what might be there.

2:12:05Charles Broskoski:you have a piece about it and i didn't get to like fully deep deep dive that the david bohm and bohm dialogue stuff but i'm curious what what you think we can all learn from what either stood out to you in that or the researcher you've done or what you think he

2:12:22Jackson Dahl:was getting at in dialogue that was really unique yeah i mean yeah super long super big topic but But he was a very classically trained quantum physicist who sort of had this long trajectory towards simplifying what his overarching interest or message was, where it went from hard physics to thinking and thought and what that meant. And so he wrote this book called On Dialogue, which is all about this like sort of like a proposal for a practice, which is like a bunch of people sit in a circle. You try and have a you essentially try and have a generative conversation. And the point is that everyone is supposed to add on to what the other another person is saying.

2:13:17Jackson Dahl:And then the place that you sort of get to ideally is that everyone is sharing a thought and you're sort of like looking at it. You're all looking at it and it's like out there and you can sort of start to like view it from different angles. And I have to say, like, Laurel Schwolz and I did organize one Baum Dialogue once, and it was, like, super—it was really incredible.

2:13:49Charles Broskoski:How is it different from hanging out with 10 people?

2:13:52Jackson Dahl:There's, like, an intentionality and setting-ness to it that changes things. And like what we did, what you're supposed to do is sort of like lay out these like, um, very simple rules, which I don't remember off the top of my head, but it's essentially like, like you can't change topics. You have to add on to things and you end up talking about talking and you talk about thinking and it like, it gets,

2:14:21Charles Broskoski:it's structured and generative.

2:14:23Jackson Dahl:It's not so structured. It's very open-ended. um it's structured only in that like maybe focused focused yeah yeah focused but like one one comment that i have um that i really remember is someone describing it as like the cartoon where uh it's like a train and it's putting the track uh ahead of itself while it's going and yeah yeah yeah and you know when you have like a good conversation that's like that's how it feels but when you have that good conversation stretched out to like 10 people it's super interesting ah so the number it's critically i think it's part of it that there's like a like a uh yeah a number of people that that are that that do it that's that's the thing yeah yeah

2:15:12Charles Broskoski:i'm excited to learn more yeah um you said you could talk for two and a half hours about it earlier what else have you learned from skateboarding well i think like skateboarding

2:15:28Jackson Dahl:like art has a snobbiness to it that can feel like being um principled that is actually um something that's slightly different i'm trying to figure i'm trying to think of like which one of these like stupid rules that skateboarding has like like there's there's a person who um describes the middle of the board as the forbidden 14 as it's like the 14 inches that one should not slide okay like like you can't do a board slide but you can do nose and tail slides like one should not do any slides that involve the middle of the board that's the forbidden 14 so there's like all these sort of like random made up rules that are like principles for like what is like correct or right you know and there are though they are all arbitrary you know like like they're all just made up by people but it's like but it comes across as some kind of like it's also funny in

2:16:25Charles Broskoski:a sport or an activity that is so like punk in so many ways and so not about the rules yeah it's got

2:16:31Jackson Dahl:it yeah yeah when i think when systems like that are are entirely open-ended that's that's the sort of like rules that people make up. And it's the same sort of like framing that happens on Arena where someone is just like, like this is now a guest book. This is an open channel that is a guest book. Like I'm calling it a guest book and this is how you interact with it. And so there's these behaviors that emerge when like a system is open-ended like that. Yeah.

2:16:55Charles Broskoski:Yeah. Yeah. We didn't talk about it, but one of the, I was enjoying, you have a rules are rules channel that I was enjoying perusing across. It's fun. The, the freedom that comes from certain types of arbitrary constraints.

2:17:06Jackson Dahl:Yes. Yeah.

2:17:10Charles Broskoski:Whereas you listed him as one of those kind of like key kind of early, some like ex-girlfriend's friend introduced you. I'm just curious if there was anything that really stood out.

2:17:22Jackson Dahl:Well, yeah. I mean, Library of Babel is just like a short story that just has obvious connections to not just Arena, but like people thinking about hypertext and all that. Do you know this one?

2:17:33Charles Broskoski:I haven't read it.

2:17:34Jackson Dahl:Oh, wow. Yeah, super short. You can read it tonight. It's basically about a library that is infinite in all directions. And every book has a certain number of characters. And there are librarians who wander this library looking for a book that has a phrase, any kind of phrase at all. Because it's every permutation of all these characters. So most of the time you're going into a room and you're opening a book and it's just nonsense.

2:18:05Charles Broskoski:Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's kind of like the monkeys. Yeah, exactly. It's exactly like that.

2:18:09Jackson Dahl:So sometimes you'll go into a room and find like a single phrase that is like, you know, the right phrase at the right time kind of thing.

2:18:18Charles Broskoski:Will you have any chance of bringing back directions to last visitor dot com?

2:18:22Jackson Dahl:Yeah, I should do that, but I don't know if it's possible anymore. um yeah so directions so yeah directions the last visitor was um you it was a website that you would go to and uh it would geolocate you and give you google maps directions to the person who visited the website before you pulling automatically pulling their like latitude data yeah yeah yeah and right it and that is also kind of like the reaction that most people had of it like that it was some sort of like privacy uh violation but the point that i was sort of coming to it from was like removing myself outside of the equation and letting two people make this connection without me you know what i mean yeah yeah yeah

2:19:14Charles Broskoski:you have uh i believe the delaware c-corp name for arena is when it changed yeah yeah why was

2:19:20Jackson Dahl:that moment so meaningful um we um that comes from a from a william gibson uh so in uh he has a trilogy of books called the bridge trilogy and there's it's it's sort of like this post-apocalyptic situation that uh the the apocalypse moment is never really fully described but it's called when it changed and uh in the early days of arena there were sort of like multiple eras where we were forming and reforming this corporation and when we finally like got control of it ourselves we called it when it changed just as like a yeah any like association that we can make like yeah we've had like a million way william gibson where our first mobile app was called case like we always try yeah if there's any consistent naming scheme that comes from gibson stuff uh

2:20:18Charles Broskoski:on the arena influence channel influences channel there is a tree that owns itself you know this is yeah yeah why is that meaningful to you uh i didn't believe now it's the son of

2:20:30Jackson Dahl:the tree that owns it yeah i didn't put that in there but now that i'm thinking about it um Yeah, John Michael Bowling put that in there. And that's like, I don't even know if that's an artwork. It's just like a situation that exists that he has always like referenced as like a major thing. And I think he's pointing to something. He was actually pointing to something really early that I think we're pointing to now, which is just that somehow this thing should have a life of its own that should exist outside of the people who made it.

2:21:12Charles Broskoski:For people who don't know, this is a tree that apparently somehow legally owns the small area around it that is on. also apparently called a jackson oak so i will take oh nice um just a few more things uh there's an interview with kell i'm forgetting her last name um you were asked what are the things you'd like to do in your life that are doable i'm gonna read the list switch back number one switch back tail shove which i googled is sick so sick number two nollie crooked grind number three pivot fakie number four read in search of lost time the top four alone was already really great number five kiretsu which i think i looked up but i don't know what it is six pass on arena to future employees and seven run a small use bookstore any reflections any additions any updates on this list

2:22:04Jackson Dahl:yeah no that was very a very recent list and yeah i was trying to think of things that are like infinitely doable and i think in my like like skate one there's like a limit to how long one can skateboard for i'm like very much i'm like essentially past that limit but like brian

2:22:26Charles Broskoski:johnson's gonna figure it out for you yeah thank you brian johnson um you get metallic limbs or

2:22:32Jackson Dahl:whatever um yeah those are like those are like doable tricks that are also like within this weird um this weird sort of like rubik for what i consider to be tasteful skateboarding yeah the the kiretsu is um kiretsu is a thing that that japanese businesses did at one point where they um like two sort of like complementary businesses would buy shares of each other or exchange shares to sort of like solidify uh a harmonious relationship um and we also sort of imagine a future world where Arena sort of has this relationship to other people's businesses that we sort of take inspiration from.

2:23:17Charles Broskoski:Almost marrying them together or something. I brought it up before we started recording, but one of your long-time channels is the secret agent. It remains quite secret and mysterious, but I'm curious if you can impart any insight for the rest of us on what's going on then in there that pattern yeah that's like

2:23:41Jackson Dahl:the i know exactly what seeded that which is there was a toy when i was a kid called spy tools and it was just like it was like a black light and like a little alarm system and like a fingerprinting kit and all of this stuff and i like loved the look of it i can like still imagine in the logo um but i think the thing that is interesting about that to me now apart from these sort of like like literal secret agents is what part mystery plays in making like a concept or an idea attractive and like what the sort of like level of mystery that something has to have that makes it sort of like compelling yeah i was thinking of my i had i had a walkie talkie

2:24:30Charles Broskoski:watches at one point yeah yeah yeah you said i like every age more than the last any advice

2:24:39Jackson Dahl:making that more likely that's like that's a little bit of a manifest like i'm trying to manifest that idea that sentiment in myself like i do like every age more than the last um but sometimes it's like hard to like every age more than less but i i don't know when i think about like this sort of i like having had a really long relationship um i mean in the context of this conversation to like something like arena to have like a project that i feel like i can work on for the rest of my life um having that like time span to me is like super special and i I realize how lucky I am and we are to be able to have that.

2:25:25Jackson Dahl:So like, yeah, the benefit of experience, like I do see a lot of value in that.

2:25:31Charles Broskoski:You're deep in the compounding.

2:25:33Jackson Dahl:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

2:25:36Charles Broskoski:This is a quote from the Arena Influences channel. What strikes me is the fact that in our society, art has become something which is related only to objects and not to individuals or to life. that art is something which is specialized or which is done by experts who are artists but couldn't everyone's life become a work of art why should the lamp or the house be an art object but not our life that's Foucault yeah um how do you make sense of what art is

2:26:09Jackson Dahl:yeah I think it yeah I yeah it's funny to be like this is what we talked about before But I do think it is about this sort of like being able to make decisions that are creative. And what is creative is like, from my perspective, most personal. So any kind of decision making could be creative if it's like coming from this particularly personal place. Yeah. Yeah.

2:26:40Charles Broskoski:One more thing should probably come as no surprise. in the film you've got mail uh joe tom hanks's character is telling uh meg ryan's character uh what's your name um kathleen kelly kathleen that it isn't personal yeah to which she replies i'm so sick of everyone saying that that just means it wasn't personal to you but it was personal to me it was personal to a lot of people what's so wrong with being personal anyway whatever else anything is it ought to begin by being personal how do you try to remember to keep

2:27:24Jackson Dahl:things personal well for arena at this point it's like that's i don't have to try automatic i have to try not to make everything personal basically yeah if i were if i try and imagine a world where um where arena didn't exist and i would be compelled to make another business like uh how i would tune that relationship and yeah i think i think setting up a scenario where you are the person who's using the thing is the only way to do that. And it has to be something that you're sufficiently opinionated about. And probably invested in. Invested in, opinionated about, yeah, all of those things.

2:28:23Charles Broskoski:Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

2:28:24Jackson Dahl:That's all I got. Thank you. Thank you.

2:28:28Charles Broskoski:Thanks again for listening or watching. And I'd like to thank Notion, Dialectics presenting partner one more time. As I mentioned at the top of the episode, Notion is a tool that allows you to have leverage across the work, the ideas, the writing, whatever it might be that is most important to doing what you do. And the way they think about AI and agents is all about giving you more leverage to focus on the things that really matter to allow you to have deeper attention on the real work. Meanwhile, you can delegate to Notion's AI and agents for all of the incremental work, the busy work, the synthesis, whatever it might be.

2:29:03Charles Broskoski:I found it's even helpful to have Notion AI just give me a second set of eyes as I'm trying to parse through all of the most important ideas in my research or after the fact as I review my conversations. You can check out Notion at notion.com slash dialectic and you can learn all about all of the ways Notion has evolved in recent years in terms of giving you more leverage, particularly with AI and agents. You can find all the links and full transcript for this episode at dialectic.fm slash cab or CAB. that's dialectic.fm slash cab, where I'll have a transcript, all the links, all of the platforms, the episodes available on and more.

2:29:44Charles Broskoski:And once again, thank you so much to Notion for presenting Dialectic and thank you to you for listening and making it all possible. I hope you're inspired and I hope you give your attention more deeply and more generously. I'll see you next time.