I feel like AI has almost become like the word metaverse, where like you don't know what somebody means when they say it.

Could you explain it to another human being? Can you actually kind of shut your eyes and conceptualize, how is it that I'm going to explain what it is that I want this thing to do?

Blockchains are, in a sense, one of the frontiers of operating systems research. Like in the same way, like there's an operating system like Windows. There's a browser, which is itself an operating system because you can run apps in it. It's got a full programming language. Mark Zuckerberg bought Oculus because he thinks this is the next smartphone. He didn't buy it to be a game's device or to have 100 million people using it. He bought it because he thinks this is an Xbox smartphone.

The moment you finally understand a technology is often the moment you should stop paying attention to it.

What matters isn't the absolute level of adoption, but the rate of change.

We talk about a technology most during the transition, then forget it exists.

Today, that transition is happening simultaneously in AI, crypto, smart glasses, and robotics.

The conversation about each is at maximum volume, which means the interesting question isn't whether they matter, but what each one actually disrupts and what it leaves standing.

Today we're bringing you a conversation from the Network State podcast.

Host Bologi, Srinivasaan, speaks with Benedict Evans,

independent technology analyst, and one of tech's most read newsletter authors.

I'm here with Benedict Evans. We worked together at A6 and Z more than 10 years ago.

Benedict is, you know, well-known newsletter author. Probably needs no introduction for people watching this.

We're here in Singapore. We just came here for an AI conference. You do about one-fourth newsletter, three-fourths conference nowadays, or speaking. That's what brought you out here, right? Pretty much, yeah. And newsletters now at like 175, something like that, you said? Yeah, something like that. It wobbles a bit from day to day. And it started out, you started as a mobile analyst and you became like a broader tech analyst. Is that the evolution?

Yeah, it's one way to put it. I mean, I think...

You're at Orange. Is that right?

A long time ago, yes. Long time ago, yes. Just when it was all becoming horribly French. we were chatting before this and I said the thing in tech

is at the point that you understand something

is often the point that you should be moving on

to pay attention to something else

so I started my career in the dot-com bubble as an equity analyst and I was covering mobile stocks and at that time mobile was kind of dynamic and exciting and sexy and disruptive and they turned into water companies. Into water companies? Utilities.

Oh, utilities?

...