Gadgetory

hi okay continue fine no need to stop no need to stop that is wonderful why are you stopping that is depressing hi thank you for coming welcome to on the verge I'm the editor-in-chief of the verge Josh Topolsky and I really appreciate having you guys here you picked a good night to come this is it's our best show ever I know I say that every time but this really this time I'm telling the truth it really is our best show we have an incredible show tonight levar burton is here yes yes I know you're thinking you're going you mean Geordi LaForge right that's what you were thinking but yeah levar is here we're going to talk about his career as an actor as a director talk about some apps Alexis Ohanian is here one of the founders read it and and and Tim Wu author of the master switch he's a super smart guy it's a it's a big show The Big Show it's a monster a show in fact and I don't want to waste any time we're very excited about it I want to thank the sponsor for tonight's show Ford they've been an awesome partner for us they gave us money which is wonderful which which we use to buy things like chocolates and ties we also put the show on with it anyhow I think we've just get under way so please welcome nilay patel and ross miller yes ah this is great look at you and your your beautiful pink scarf have you taken that off since the wedding no now now you really have an avenue had been drinking and scarfing God uh now you may notice that Paul Miller is not here he's been replaced with the bizarro world rossville you may notice they may not realize that that's true he's they're very restless all right so powerful thank you I think Ross is I'm just gonna say cuz he's not on the internet he'll never know i think rafa the superior miller i want frankly but no palsy mexico right now Eli's wedding was pretty wild let's just say actually it also Neil I had a wedding so give him a round of applause we got we got married to his off dimension fiance Becky who he can now no longer refer to as his fiancee she is just my property no I do not think that I love you property I don't I'm almost certain that's not legally accurate it is in New York State oh it's in New York State oh yeah that's great uh ask did you give her a matching a wristband oh yeah no it's a row with you with a fin it like a thinner road spikes it's joke is so good you know like you don't like my matrimony humor well you won't have to hear it for much longer Oh Eddie how so we were no we were in Chicago went to the ice buddy where he wrote a horse down a city block I wish I was kidding but not of course there are photos on the internet you can find them pretty easily and but we've been partying a lot but we've also had a crazy month of events and also parties we went to III out on the west coast where we had a party it was a show some of the shots from this here's me chris grant the editor of polygons this is a joint party with polygons are our sister video game site and by the way we it was an accident that we coordinated jackets there no no it was also accidental plaid from everybody here we are reading something we did a raffle yeah I go it went worse than well when as bad as any raffle we've ever done and we are really not good at raf wait it's a lot i understand it anyhow i'm not gonna go down but here's the outside of the building where we did it it was very cool it's very exciting here's some people posing in front this huge screen no we called the event polygon on the verge and the whole point was it was gonna be POV but we never made mention of POV anywhere public oh what's a good name for the party POV that's cool polygon on the verge and then we just let it go yeah let's never mention it but i was great we had um special drinks we had ice cubes that glow that glow there really ought i still have like a few of them do you yeah sure bring them to the office anyhow but but we are therefore III which is a big video game show i don't know if you guys are aware of III maybe you've heard of it maybe not really I really had to all Myers I really had a Yank I relied to pull on that applause uh but uh but you know it was a we saw a bunch of stuff not a crazy year for video games savia was it was a good year it just wasn't exciting there wasn't a lot of new console nails minutes xboxes and playstations they're kind of like in the retirement phase or go toward the end there towards you want a farm and the xbox our 40 than out to pasture happen is it gonna be happy it's to be very happy there be bouncing ring over there going to a better place ah but but we did see some cool things ubisoft head again called watch dogs which is of course which looks insane you can see some of it right here and the the prevailing theory was that what we're seeing is next-gen graphics like this is not gonna be on xbox or playstation like this right cuz that Spock skin dude it's certainly not for the wii right this isn't coming out of the week this is a wii u launch title is it ahhh no not no chance okay the original weeds originally yes yes look at that waggle right there just I mean you can see with the jacket animations clearly next-gen stuff I like that people didn't know if I was being serious or not I was being serious it's not funny okay but this was cool we also saw the new Quantic Dream's game beyond two souls yeah it's just the guys did heavy rain yeah ellen page isn't it ellen page is in it okay that game actually looks really gonna saying that I like went out and bought heavy rain it's a great interactive movie about heavy rain before your wedding right yeah then I played it throughout the wedding yeah it's like hang on he was like I know we're dancing right now but I just have to finish this chapter and my personal favor from III was last the last of us which is a game that is a post-apocalyptic nightmare world zombies and it's part of it takes place in Pittsburgh you wear it sure is where I'm from you really could just said it's Pittsburgh it's in Pittsburgh basically oh so no but it looks really cool I mean here you can see some killing going on and actually killing was the theme of e3 yeah it was one of them I think it's like the most violent III that I can remember it's very it's mature both technologically and creatively is the very nice way of saying is that we think it's matured it well you know in the same way Tarantino has matured from killing killing too I feel like massive brutal killer kill bit more stylish yeah it's more solid so we actually we actually noticed a trend at e3 something that we saw crop up you know all of the companies do their keynotes they show a bunch of game demos and we saw something that just kept appearing that we thought was a little weird which was the next tab that's this has been absent in the neck and they ship look repeatedly in games we saw it I you must be like an ex tab than a fountain of blood it's impressive the particle effects of arterial spray they're really really pushing the grapples to their maximum with the next step but we put together a little video of e3 sort of some of you know a couple just a couple of things we saw at e3 just kind of illustrate what was happening at the show so take a look at this I think you'll I think you'll enjoy that's that is really charming we have come a long way since cetera it's a little taste of what you missed if you didn't go to e3 I did it go hi I'm surprises we are in rehearsal right how do we come out of that there's no it's no it's upsetting yeah it turns out when we had the idea to do the video we're like that would be hilarious but it turns out when you watch people getting stabbed in a creepy I do kind of want to does actually feel a little upsetting is more of the couches you know it's very nice anyway anyhow let's move on folks do you mind we've got a show to do uh so there but there were a couple other things at e3 SmartGlass have you guys seen this microsoft's version of airplay essentially yeah I mean it's like it's the thing that you use to connect the phone the tablet it's a little bit beyond airplay lady like you can do interactive stuff there's internet explorer which everyone is constantly dying for I they're gonna say that I was going to say that internet explorer for the xbox would you be waiting for Microsoft's actually had a crazy month I don't know if you guys are aware of this they just announced windows phone 8 yesterday uh that's what it looks like they made smaller tiles yeah get a load of those tiles some of them longer to I think longer tiles yeah what you've been waiting for just waiting and and but but more importantly their big announcement this month i think is the surface if you guys seen the surface it's microsoft's ipad competitor basically it used to be a table need used to be a table and now it's not true the surface was a table and now they've turned it into a tablet it's actually kind of cool it's got a kickstand it has this smart cover that has a keyboard to it with two different ones two different ones yeah I'm into it I'll be the first to say how was the keyboard you try it um they wouldn't let us the keyboard they wouldn't let us try but they we did do some hands-on stuff but they wouldn't let us take photos while we were holding it they would only let us take photos when someone else like one of their guys was holding it but luckily this is actually interesting an estonian newspaper took a picture of me holding the surface this is uh I mean thanks Estonia yeah you accomplish what we could not with us thank you see look the guy in the background he's like give that back to me hahaha lucky he's like okay that's enough please stop holding that is that a cocktail up yeah there's a cocktail app I was after the event I was just trying to figure out where I was going to go and get wasted wasted drunk but but what's interesting about the surface event is that Microsoft ended it with this commercial for the surface which had very hard heavy dubbed dubstep can we have a set few seconds of this commercial can we show it this is what they showed when we finish with the live blog it's really heavy right very heavy stuff yeah but Microsoft has been doing this a lot like they had the I they have an IE at speaking of Internet Explorer that has dubstep in it and we actually been seeing dubstep in a lot of ads and I saw something the other day and I thought and I feel like it was done by the same people who do the microsoft stuff and I thought that's it like dubstep and advertising has truly jumped the shark net taiwan i wanted to share this with you guys check out this out i seriously couldn't believe it growth phase everything looking good hey go ahead planted I just feel I guess that sperm yeah I mean it was spur avoid it appear to be sperm fertilizing today I can't be entirely sure but Oh wishing big of Ovaltine dude did you not think of sperm fertilizing days I've never been thirsty I guess I'm right I guess what is very different people so yeah dubstep in advertising maybe has passed a threshold that we don't want to pass up okay finally on the news side WWDC daily dub dub lub lub dub c ya or what why job c5 that works too mistress is terrible um Apple had their big developers event iOS 6 was announced maps are gone mm-hmm no more google maps yeah but I built their own they built their own mountain lion which we saw yeah and finally a macbook right the new with Retina display yeah there it is right there you reviewed it you liked it it's really nice it's thin it's got a great screen for the most part for the most part then what is that well I mean like if you have a website there's a lot of pictures it's still your website like our website oh that's cool just thanks Ross sorry anyhow uh alright we've got to get on with the news I'm sorry not on with the news on with the show we're done with the news yeah um but we have one more surprise for you guys Paul as we said was in Chicago for Neil eyes wedding and he filed a video diary from Chicago and I think you can see you can truly see a man unraveling from not being on the internet in this video so take a look at this and we'll be back with LeVar Burton I'm Paul Miller i'm in chicago and this is day days like 30-45 of no internet you know I stopped counting I could stop counting everything when i left the internet so i don't know but it's been a while since i've used the internet and I've been in Chicago for about a week I came to Chicago for Neal eyes wedding and so I've just been hanging out Chicago for a few days before the wedding and then the wedding was like a three-day extravaganza at first I felt a little out of place because a lot of cool things would happen and everybody would share them on Instagram or Facebook but I think as the wedding progressed as some people even like the verge editor started like slowing down howdy pictures they were taking how many tweets they were doing and we all started living and loving and laughing a lot throughout the wedding I am I felt no disadvantage dancing whines well without the inner and I felt like I could pick up all the moves here on the spot nothing you had to look up on the internet it was it was a good experience I I didn't really think a lot about the internet they either way because I was just enjoy the wedding facebook so it was blast is also ed yeah you know everybody's tweeting I actually I forgot my camera on this trip which is kind of sucked but I got this yoshika electro 35 so I'm learning how to shoot film so I've been shooting a little bit film my big problem with film is that I forget if I wounded or not I think I either have a lot of blank frames on here I have a lot of doubles but it's a pretty cool camera I haven't developed any phelps oh I don't know I'm taking horrible pictures there are definitely a few people here that uh know me from my work might have no internet work because like you know you somebody asks you what do you do I still want to write about technology and they like like phones like yeah as I get phones and laptops you know and a lot of times it like the conversation should get in there but it's fun for me because I get to say yeah I write about technology right now I'm living the year without the internet but oh well you know so I'm like I'm cool right I'm a pretty hot commodity when it comes to conversations and social gathering I don't want to toot my own horn but I think I'm getting really good at navigating cigs I just absorbed them like sponge when I rented my bike they gave me this map this is this map is courtesy of Rahm Emanuel and this thing's epic and so I can get I could get anywhere in life I don't even know what you called area Chicago is a very large place i went to wicker park i went to a camera store the best buy my name how about two shirts you wanna shake oh my gosh my life so far what's still exciting stranger I don't miss the Internet I don't dream about it I don't yearn for it you know every once a while somebody's like oh there's this really funny thing a lot happening on Twitter but I can't tell you you know but I don't I don't care if you know my biggest fear though is that at the end of the year I don't want to really go back to the internet full-bore even though it's so awesome it's just a cool thing I just I like myself a lot better not on the internet so I feel like doing a year of this is gonna be like a piece of cake this is just this is basically really easy right now they're like there's tiny minor inconveniences in exchange for having a blast a total complete blast yeah and then we actually we were actually saying that it was like Eat Pray Paul he's going on kind of a Vision Quest dives in Mexico he may never come back honestly I hope he does though so I just want to briefly I don't need to introduce our first guest but I'm going to I mean you guys know who he is you know ms Geordi LaForge from Star Trek Kunta Kinte from roots which is you know crazy that he's here doing this and doing stuff like that and of course reading from Reading Rainbow please please welcome the amazing levar burton very careful thank you so much these are live human beings yeah we have real people Wow we've convinced humans to come in here good job levar thank you so much for coming mama uh I you've been now I know you've been on a whirlwind tour of New York yes Justin sightseeing indeed no your bid you've been to like everywhere you're on late night last night you were at CNN today you get all over the place and this is your last stop in here this is my last stop on the on the Reading Rainbow app launch press tour and I wanted to spend it here with y'all that is no sir I appreciate that I appreciate that and work and we're very glad that you did not so I mentioned before you came out yeah you have some very iconic roles in your history and talking about the fantasy island i did and fantasy eyelid I did Love Boat to you know and of court well of course loved up I mean no one no one can forget the love boat I have no one but you but but I was thinking I feel like you've got these their roles are so iconic and they have such a fan base around them particularly Star Trek uh that you must walk down the street people like hey Jordy mm-hmm does that drive you crazy no really no it really doesn't it doesn't bother you it's not like my fans are like Gary Busey fans you know what I mean he's Gary Busey have fans yeah he does and they tend to put cigarettes out in his arm it's really yeah but he's into that he loves he loves me yeah yeah wow so so that doesn't bother you at all so then that's great would you be annoyed if I conducted the rest of the interview as if you were Geordi and beyond and before you answer at who we get some mood music on for this you are serious well is this is the sound from the bridge I don't know what that sound is but actually at hold on but you would be an engineering so it'd be a little louder could we bring up the sound a little bit more and uh that sounds about right to me okay that's fine you cut I'm not actually gonna do this I'm not gonna subjection no no I was really getting in time very you're ready to go in Jordan right where I was I was almost in character we were talking backstage the whole time you were on Star Trek who the visor you really couldn't see very well in the month the visor actually took away about eighty-five percent of my vision when I put it on and there's a tremendous irony of hair right because the visor gave you on the show gave you all kinds of extra abilities you could like see what they what the makeup of the room was and yet in reality you were to die I was stumbling around that's uh I didn't know that by the way and it was brought up backstage and I was I was shocked too shocked to find this fun Star Trek facts to know and tell so so besides being an actor your director you hosted reading rainbow and obviously still reading rainbow Watchers in the house I don't want to make you feel old but I grew up on reading rainbow I'm lying I'm actually I'm quite all of myself and no but no reading rainbow was yes I mean that was like a huge deal 26 years on PBS 26 26 years and you you you want a bunch of Emmys mm-hmm you won a Peabody hmm um so 26 seasons yeah do you feel the story's over no word you know like there could be a movie in the office Oh a movie a Reading Rainbow movie not like a narrative film Wow have you were considered that we could get some butterflies go on maybe a sky yeah that's probably pretty easy to do yeah they have soundstages where they can recreate a sky I understand in Hollywood I would probably want to do it all CG I though yeah absolutely um so we're gonna I want to talk because you've an app you have this happening yes we do it we all heard about the Reading Rainbow app that's out in the app store some it out right now it's out now it's out now how am i how much is it it's a free app 23 it's free what are you waiting for why are you downloading the Wi-Fi in here is pretty bad okay but um but but so so before we talk about that I want talk about your life on the internet you become very active on you I love the internet you you are you're on reddit we've one of the cofounders of reddit here you're not correct me if I'm wrong your username on reddit is kunta in the house is that correct it's absolutely true okay that is true and true and you're pretty active I mean you're fairly active on there oh yeah yeah little uh you're also a mean you're aware of this that you've been mean I have been yes well we had neil degrasse tyson on who's also do you know he's astrophysicists absolutely and he's been meme heavily and we asked him about i just want to kind of show you one of my favorites here this is if you're having Hall problems I feel bad for you son I've got 99 problems but a breach ain't one apologies to jay-z does this does this weird you out as a strange for you i love this stuff you just randomly appear yes you're into it wouldn't you ah yes I would yes I wish I wish people did more creative memes with me I'm going to put that out into the world please do more creative memes so so let's talk about the app okay I actually have it here we do on an iPad let me see if I can get this up so it has we get this on on camera she's still talking yes so check this out it's got islands that you can fly through and we were reading a book you have a backpack right I thought was great reading pirate boy one of my favorites and who is the narrator of pirate boy I don't know no you tell me i don't i don't know isn't there one hundred and fifty percent oxygen mom what if there are sea monsters it's not you know that is Jim mess common who is one of our storytellers i read about twenty percent of the titles in the app you know you are reading the titles alone oh yeah absolutely that's it seems like a lot of time bigtime sink I work cheap for myself okay but it's a cool app we were playing around it it has interactive it does it's got this you can see dragon here can you can touch it and it starts doing that it is like very much like a pop-up book on an iPad dough I'm incredibly proud of what we've been able to do in terms of translating a television show in to a nap experience there are a lot of challenges involved and I think we've we've overcome a lot of them not the least of which is is the fear of disappointing those who really know and are familiar with the brand it it can be dangerous to you know go to the well too many times with the same franchise just just ask paramount yeah we're star trek is oh oh uh well but I mean I don't know Star Trek's been pretty successful has inherited and they had to give it a long rest before you know JJ rebooted the franchise do you feel bummed that there's not gonna be any more next generation movies I'm tired Josh first contact was on TV last night but was it completely random and I had to watch it obviously and who had to watch it well I mean it's really good yeah wouldn't you wouldn't you stop and watch it I whenever I maybe I start to like who's that guy he is great uh no but it's no good i miss the next generation crew yeah do you keep in touch with those guys do you think we all keep in touch and this is the 25th anniversary of next-gen coming on the air so we are having sort of a reunion tour of conventions we started a couple of months ago in Calgary and and we have others coming up there's one in Austin in a couple of months and so it's great Patrick lives over in England now michael dorn is spending his money his wharf money Worf on next-gen he was Wharf on deep space right God he had a long run Michael Dorn's got more money than God really yeah after the show can I get his contact information yes I need you do we did it to you know get some budget in here oh yes yeah I know right you know we try we know we're no CNN but we're doing that we're doing the best we can so let me ask you about that the the Reading Rainbow out though it's clearly for kids it is have you ever thought about how are young at heart have you thought about adding more adult titles like 50 shades of grey or lolita would be something you might put in there may be some of the n rice novels people have asked me for years about doing an adult version of Reading Rainbow and III think we should get around to that in in the fullness of time because I not be a lot of fun I mean adults need to read I let's hope I mean what are one of the goals for you with the app like what do you want to do with this happen and obviously you want to encourage people to read yes but it does read for you some way you're almost encouraging people not read does that seem fair to the kids seems a little counterproductive it does are we raising a generation of lazy kids who won't read I think we're raising a generation of overindulged kids and with iPad they like that i don't know i mean you know this is a generation that you know gets rewarded for everything you know if you're on a sports team everybody gets a trophy you know whether you suck or not and true and it's just most people think about yeah yeah you see professional sports players they're really good mm-hmm most people are not that good you should not be getting an award if you're not really good at sports I think that my generation of parents in an effort to really give our children the sort of of childhood that we feel we ourselves never had have really gone way overboard in in terms of indulging this upcoming generation and I just think they're they're a little spoiled yeah yeah I agree we should be hitting them a lot more right spare the rod spoil the child is my uh so so look I know I know your hips let's regarded with our burn advocates leading children's you heard it here first heard it here levar says hit your kids often more more yeah maybe they had it coming frankly they had it coming oh so silly I know you're very tired I'm not gonna keep you too much longer but I was thinking so they rebooted the old Star Trek I'm sorry not to keep going back to start no no but I can just tell you I'm a little bit of a fan I couldn't tell uh and so they rebooted the original Star Trek they put a bunch of new young actors in the roles of that you know the chatter had and right Leonard Nimoy right if they were to reboot next generation which by the way seems weird to reboot the next generation but if they were to reboot the next generation who would you want you is there anybody out there who you feel it would be a great new Geordi I really put you on the spot now woman no Gary Coleman's not here no that's not he's not gonna wreck you know why Gary Cole cuz the cat needed a job yes it smells so bad for him man I'll tell you what I spent years watching you I had no idea you were as funny you're like so serious on Star Trek and so much more bullshit always happens to you you know like you never get a chance to just cut loose on start right now that wasn't part of Jodi's character he always had to hold it together yeah you were you know everybody was counting on it right no it was always like everything is falling apart right they just whip up some new way to fix the warp core and you always did sure captain that's right on it that's are so amazing so no no actors in mind that you would want to let's see who in this current crop of actually I think Sam Jackson would make a helluva Jory's yeah yeah yeah don't you think no I does yeah Jordy like shot stuff all the time right it's like a nerd the next the next generation of the next generation Geordi LaForge badass total guys you know what I'm gonna leave it there the bar thank you so much for coming stick around we got a message from our sponsor and we'll be back with Alexis Ohanian from reddit levar thanks again so much so on the verge of the show we do once a month it's kind of a late night tech talk show it's an incredible experience we have a huge team that works on it more than 30 people there the day of the shoot we've got editors and shooters working all month long on segments and different pieces of the show we get to have incredible guests with celebrities and people from the tech world who are fascinating and brilliant and we do segments we get a little weird it's actually our chance to have a little bit of fun you know the site is very much focused on news and features and reviews the show is our opportunity to to kind of loosen up and it's it's really great and I love doing it before it's been a great partner for us calling Paul Miller on sale they sponsored our CES coverage which is insane can your command Pandora and it's great to have them back supporting the show you can tell they really get what we're doing yeah so so so before we bring Alexis out while we were shooting that we were shooting some of the behind-the-scenes stuff in Brooklyn and something happened it's not scripted this is not planned I just want to share this moment with you we happen to catch it on video just take a look at this and it's very odd what the fuck I'm here I mean just you tell me that happened we were just standing there it appears to be a flatbed with a part of a wrecked airplane on it you know we had Damon Lindelof on the show last month and I feel like it was kind of a weird karmic moment I just wanted to share that with you guys I thought you would appreciate it anyhow moving on our next guest you may not know him as a human being but you certainly know his website where you find all of your favourite memes and animated cat gifts please welcome one of the founders of reddit Alexis Ohanian what is that come on I love you you brought props I like anybody who brings props hi uh I'll taught me well use a carrot top taught you as a prop comic please leave ah the record for shortest interview ever yeah now first up can I ask you anything yes he's a reddit joke come on guys there were 300 off only three redditors in the audience yeah seriously very sad so let's talk a little bit I want to talk about the creation the ideation the birth of reddit hmm you co-founded it in 2005 who are you who your partners Steve Huffman this Steve yeah yeah me and Steve Young together we got together an apartment months about a month after we graduated from UVA and got started trying to create the front page of the Internet and you know a lot of fortunate things came together and here we are today and here you are good can you imagine that you could you have ever thought you'd be sitting talking to me uh-uh not in the middle is incredible climb what a success story really my big concern is I know it's only downhill from here it really is everything will seem boring and horrible after this because I'm going to ruin it for you so so what was your what was your thought like when you were building reddit what did you want to do you know in all frankness Steve and I were friends since the first day of college when he thought i was a girl because of my name on the door and we do have a lady's name well I i was i was actually it was i was named after he Nicaraguan boxer named Alexis argüello who was a dude but you know at a very early age realized I needed to embrace my effeminate name so yes I am awaiting your femininity uh-oh every day yeah but so most importantly Stephen I really just wanted to perpetuate our college life we really loved being able to eat pizza drink beer and work on fun projects and we thought let's try to do this by starting a company and you know we didn't set out to do a lot of the things that read it has done in the way of philanthropic work or political work I'd be lying if I said we did we just wanted to create a place where we could find what was known interesting online that's really interesting you just wanted a place to find hilarious stuff and collected and informative as well but cats cats can be instructional no that's true they can they can and and why do you think it's why do you think it's become you know you call the front page of the Internet why do you think it has actually you know really become the front page within it I mean it has turned into something that is I mean based on what you're telling me maybe you guys didn't even predict but it has turned into something really big and special what is that how did that happen black magic we made we made deals does it deals with rina farias individuals um well you know what I you know we when we started reading 2005 social media wasn't even a phrase you know Facebook was still sort of relegated to colleges and many of the things we can't live without today didn't exist and I think we just hit oh goodness don't carry on I said are you okay now obviously to drink but it's alcohol so is mine okay it's alcohol supposed to go into the lung I it's all right not a duh okay we can edit this right creek a timeless go ahead carry on ah I was busy trying to remember all my Heimlich training yes no thanks for nothing ah i could have free he died you just SAT there i was i was ready to jump a nag ah sorry so I uh I became well yes what it wasn't it I think a lot of it was timing and here's the thing i'm not to take anything of it Steve did a brilliant job actually building reading by the way we're open source so take a look at his work um the the work that went into it you know there was a ton of it but the other day we had a lot of really great timing and we we came about at a time when people were still starting they were just now starting to realize that user-generated content was a thing of value and it turned out there are a lot of people interested in submitting links and voting on them and having discussions on the internet far more than we'd ever experienced then you know we caught things at the right time and I think the overarching ethos the spirit of reddit that Steve and I knew we had to continue was that the two of us sitting in apartment we're never going to be able to find the best stuff on the internet there we tried for the first couple of weeks because we were like submitting things ourselves and there was no way we'd be able to find it all so we needed to be good to our users because if our users weren't excited about submitting to Reddit and providing good content they never do it we wouldn't have a site that was worth anything so so being good to those users i think is what helped right it continued to grow for all these years and you've had you've had a lot of competition if a competition out there at one point digg kind of seemed to occupy the space that you guys occupied maybe actually when I think about dig it didn't seem to go as deep and maybe that's just the way our culture is moving but read it seems to go reach deeper into not both the dark heart of the internet and to outwardly to things like policy but but but dig was at one point very much on top and they made some pretty substantial changes I feel like you guys saw kind of a flood of users who were looking for refuge what did you learn from that what did you see there and what were your takeaways from you know we didn't we saw a significant bump after dig version for it wasn't world-changing reddit has always steadily grown and I think what it did was it really reinforced this belief we had that we didn't need to care about our competition we need to build the best site we could for our users and like I said do right by them and and the real fatal flaw to dig for was taking away user submission was taking the very last bit of that democratic platform away from the people who like I said added all the value and as we moved closer towards giving users more power I feel like they moved further away until it eventually undid them well part of their thing was was they felt like some users had too much power yes and what do you do to combat I mean how are you trying to fight super users we well we work I mean there is a karma system on reddit and I hope many of you work hard to get lots of reddit karma but it really means nothing it doesn't buy us your votes every redditor all all red rose are equal no redditors are more equal than others that was something in our FAQ from day 0 and we wanted to make sure that we had a system where if you wanted to come on for the very first time and it happens every day on reddit submit a post say I'm a blank ask me anything you could be on the front page that evening and the next morning on The Today Show and that literally actually happens now because we can let anyone who doesn't have any clout on the internet but who's got a good story or has found some good content you know get the fame internet fame that he or she's idea dessert that's actually this is actually leads in perfectly to my next question so you recently banned some publications and a lot of news stories you've and the Atlantic some other guys for abusing reddit and you know we run a publication the verge we are occasionally on reddit which is wonderful and I wanted to get some tips from you i feel like if there's going to be a source on how not to abuse read it as a publication that you're the guy to ask so let me just a couple of questions here all right how many accounts is is normal for one person to have would you say I'm gonna give you a few ranging okay had between 20 and 40 between 40 and 60 mm where do you feel is the comfort zone for one individual to have accounts this is gonna sound crazy but one I will say I will make a loud and a half 100 and at you then on the head it's it's things like this we pay have always paid very close attention to its kind of an arms race we're always trying to keep one step ahead of the cheaters but that's a really obvious way to be bad on reddit is to create lots of Shilla counts and upvote your content you know I'll certainly agree that everyone needs a fake account so they can say the things they may not be comfortable saying racist penetrating stuff ah no no I don't really nasty stuff I i was i was thinking more like they ask me any things where you know candor is sort of required in being honest but the the the fascinating thing is we we've always tried really hard to keep that kind of cheating down and you know we had publications that disregarded it and and i think partly because our predecessors actually sort of encouraged it we've had to sort of undo that mess okay when using multiple accounts IP spoofing yes or no no no don't don't don't do that oh and and in general my final question in this extremely serious line of questioning how many verge links should i be submitting on a daily basis again i'll give you a range okay 20 to 40 40 to 60 or unlimited because it's all really great stuff I I think in the verjus case it should be that oh really oh god no please don't hurt of yours I'm submissions of verge content yeah in a nutshell the best secret I tell publishers is is and I think people often forget this when they go on the internet is just act like you would in real life don't act like a jerk don't act like yourself promoting your own content don't do that because that wouldn't fly in real life and it doesn't fly on the internet so you know we could stop we get word I mean honestly like reddit I mean look we're a new site right so we're growing and when we see something on the front page of reddit like the traffic is crazy and it's not just that its new traffic i'll just get a little serious with you for a second even though i was clearly just as a really serious center it is very serious um but but it's not just that it's traffic it's that it's a lot of new traffic mmm you know a lot of people who've never who never heard of the verge before and so we're actually like really i don't want to screw it up you know and there are times when we're like hey art stuff is you know it's got a bunch of votes like go check it out like vote it up if you're on reddit like and I don't want to be the kind of guy who abuses what you guys are doing because I think what you're doing is really special and really important and and and I mean yes I'm going to continue to use multiple accounts on spoof their ip's but I'm gonna do in a way that is almost undetectable to bring it and that's the important thing um so okay so if you guys are the front page of the Internet mmm by the way you have a lot in common with fortune if you're the front page or they like the back door of the Internet wow I like I can top that yeah I mean are they I mean do you how do you because I feel like there's like all this like you know there's almost a you feel like it could go fortune at any moment not that would necessarily be a bad thing but it would be a little bit more character than what you have going on now I mean the you know what the moderation system that's in place the pseudo anonymity so unlike 4chan your rhetoric entities they're anonymous you have a username it could be Alexis Ohanian or it could be fluffy bunny 26 you still have an identity it's me that was young spoiler and so I think that has helped preserve it and what's been really fascinating is you know reddit is a platform like Twitter Tumblr like all these others we use and communities form and use this platform to share links about everything from I subscribe to redskins ready because I happen to get tired skins fan and a masochist and that community has its own culture it has its own ethos it Smith certain type of links has its own inside jokes and that's how they choose to use the platform and it's those moderation tools that I think encourage that great behavior that we see bubbling up and the great things like the philanthropy and the political work I mean are you doing this on purpose your segwaying perfectly into my next question I am rather broke so you are so you are at very active me you guys were very outspoken on SOPA you are you were referred to as the mayor of the internet as a landslide election you I know but you you guys laugh but he had a chief of staff here backstage but but how do you take the kind of rage and anger and disillusionment that you see on reddit you know which I feel and I think a lot of us do when you're like watching these stupid pieces of legislation getting pushed and people kind of who don't get the internet trying to legislate the internet how do you take that rage and the stuff that bubbles up the front page and turn it into something that's that creates real action how do you go from from reddit to activism you know I am not entirely sure we have your the mosari uh I and it took a lot of chickens a ton of check-ins to get that mayorship I get all over the place on the internet i read i don't know i think i think if you see if you see any any of the stuff that starts out as a reddit post and ends it with real-world action again whether it's activism or philanthropy um there's just stuff that happens it's some person who starts with a random idea and it starts snowballing and what the internet does such a great job of is sort of giving us all ways to help i use the metaphor to talk a little while back about everyone getting the chance to be their own Batman or Batwoman we know there are lots of things screwed up that we want to try and fix my create vigilantes take to the streets at night I only deal violently with criminal only if they're wearing this mask what is this you brought this one piece I because I want to carry this metaphor in the real world because we all have we all have our little figurative Gotham's can we get it right yet oh yes and this is not promotion for the film although I highly recommend you all see it have you seen it no I really does get access oh no we don't get accident i think the entertainment industry does not do me any favors there goes my hair yes this is really uncomfortable by the way i will seed in my eyes is supposed to be in batman batman have bad sight is that what sure he's like I think you're the Joker stop coming with the hyssop committee crimes yeah here we go that's that's lovely but that's is nice that is that i'll be using the bedroom later to note uh is law protecting the people the bedroom obviously from josh Topolsky but that's there is we talk there is this really empowering thing it just suddenly became a role play it really is going after their it that that's the really empowering thing is that you can be sitting there you know just yesterday we saw this video of this woman on a bus up in queens new york being harassed by a bunch of students and 24 hours later after that story that video front pages on reddit she has literally two hundred thousand dollars donated to her from people all over the world who simply said this is wrong I want to do something about I gotta get harassed by it's a lucrative make sure it's videotape yeah a long video obviously uh Alexis I wish we had more time oh so much more to talk about well you know what I'm I was a little bummed I didn't get to sit down with Lavar but you know it I you can't disappoint a picture and maybe it's better that is true to meet them that's very mean you you say Alexis thank you so much wrong thank you come back thank you gotta come back um is awesome this is awesome what is this these are I'm sorry we need to get to this this is a book publisher this comeback started it's like a Newman's Own for nerds called bread pig we are goal or specified aims to make the world suck less we could we get this on camera on camera not and take a look and I'll show this this is this area Saturn moni breakfast cereal so zach weiner wrote this it's a webcomic one of those popular on the internet we published the book for him he gets a majority of the profits it's published under a Creative Commons license and our profits all get donated to donorschoose.org specifically to classroom projects in math and science now that's not totally benevolent you know why because little kids who don't learn about math and science don't grow up into being the geeks who will read this book so if we can make more geeks will sell more books it's just a long term I Foley's or that go by this about you go by right now thank you again on the on the we have Tim Wu coming up to talk more about activism and the internet and but but Neil I went out on the street doesn't we just scream uh very excited it was Tim actually o Neill I went out on the street and ask people if they knew what net neutrality was and I'm sure you can imagine the results were highly entertaining to take a look at this we write back with Tim will I think about net neutrality every day because i'm a huge nerd and tim was my hero but i'm here in the flatiron district in New York to ask these people would they think about it if they even know what it is and most importantly if they think anything should be done about it what is that neutrality what net neutrality I have no idea I have no idea I have no idea um I don't know so I've seen various YouTube tutorials or you know explanations of net neutrality and all of them make sense once I finished watching them but when you asked me what it is it's fairly complicated to explain so I asked you question who owns the internet I won't say people on the internet the people the data is owned by the people that have the data on their servers and the connections to the data is owned by the ISPs the providers no problem really is once is basically impossible to explain I mean what can you say do you want to pay more for you too so do you think like Verizon could sail you can go to every set in the air at except for youtube if you know I don't think that things you want you see that splashed by dollars no absolutely not students I think that's the point of YouTube it wouldn't be cool but it's business this is awful nobody knows what net neutrality is when they do find out they didn't want to talk about it because it's really political but in a spirit of this election year I'm gonna get desperate I'm calling Barack Obama and I'm calling Mitt Romney let's see what they have to say I'm gonna help you hi um where does the president stand on net neutrality on net neutrality yeah as you know net neutrality is no i don't why didn't you tell me a little bit about it so who should have more regulatory power over the internet the government or verizon Brendan even a verizon sells your product they should be the ones who determine how that product was that makes sense because if anything ever goes wrong you know who to go to captivating hi there I'm really interested in voting for Mitt Romney um but I have a policy question i'm just wondering what his position on net neutrality is I'm am a neutrality ah let's see here don't recall if it's come up as a major issue on the campaign that I can recall but I've got a source for you that you can tell you all right all the policy online on the lobbies of Lebanon County headquarters you're calling the court that if you'd like to leave a message please be don't you send me back to a fucking phone I gotta say man you can't just keep on putting me into robot town like this even happens you press the 0 when you call Romney headquarters it tells you to wait for your call and then it takes you to the top of the phone finder robbing the president headquartered so this has been the worst day of my life nobody knows what net neutrality is nobody cares about it nobody even really wants to talk about it with me not even the president permit I thought it would be on my side so i'm gonna go i'm gonna take a break here we have a drink maybe throw myself in front of a bus good night internet it was nice knowing you you a an upsetting story one we hope will find an end someday but you're in luck we have the man who coined the term net neutrality here please welcome Tim Wu hike up I I have to say I realized now after having three guests the most guests we've ever had on the show up by the way right that we have a lot of obstacles to getting onto the couch well that's what it means to be fancy yeah just you got to put up you got to make the barrier to entry very high Tim thank you for coming tim is the author of a book called the master switch it looks like this it's available in stores around the world and was it by the way apparently very hard to find we went we had some of our people go looking for copies of this and even want to call Barnes & Noble yeah it's almost like it's almost like they don't want it to be sold they don't want to hear the truth of this book but um you coined the term net neutrality what does it mean I mean these people people on the street don't know what it is what yeah you know it was watching that video and I was thinking you got a lot of taxis in this video and it's exactly the principle that applies when when you get into a taxicab the taxicab has to take you where you want to go you know imagine get on you in the taxicab this actually happens you know in some countries and you say i want to go to little Brooklyn and you end up in the gift store yeah yeah that you know this country when I want to go home from Manhattan you know like I want to go to Brooklyn they're like no I don't go too well there's that problem too but essentially is the idea that the taxi is supposed to take you where you want to go and the basic principle is the internet was built on the principle that the carriers take your data where you want it to go and that people are allowed to communicate over the internet without interference by the people in the middle it's a pretty profound principle and the fact that people don't know about it is is you know on the street doesn't mean it's not important because I think some of the you know most important principles are just sometimes very subtle you know they operate at the scent of subterranean level like equals MC square that's AG industry don't need it no no I think it's a I need to know I'd sound think it's that important well we can debate about that but it a lot of these things you know freedom is a kind of a thing that you can't really you know experience you just experienced its absence right you know when you're not free but you you don't notice when you're able to go to internet sites when you want to or say what you 12 because you just live in life can you just live in and you're just doing what you want it's when you aren't able to do that suddenly you notice it and i think that's that's that's why this is a profound principle it was baked into the original design of the internet it's what made the internet so revolutionary in so many ways I mean what made all these companies able to grow without asking somebody for permission the companies like Google ebay amazon whatever they just started their businesses they didn't sort of have to say you know AT&T or Verizon I got a good idea you want to you know run my service to you shot it felt like well you know well you know check it out wait for five years ten years see what happens I mean it's a very profound thing that as I said before you don't notice freedom you notice its absence and and and whose job is it to ensure net neutrality is it is it the government's job is it Verizon's job is it the citizens job I think it's kind of everybody's dammit i knew i knew i was gonna say that but i'll tell you that in a functioning system it's never completely possible to allocate a responsibility to you know one entity when you talk about something like how do you guarantee freedom of speech well you could say well you just have to have the government do that but you know the government did I work for the government sometimes they're they're lazy not everything gets to them they're not all-powerful but the government does but the government did do a lot of stuff to guarantee free speech but they knew they'd mess with it so it you know they're not completely reliable no one's totally reliable it sound a little paranoid although but the germs of free speech but you have to admit like the US government has done a relatively good job of saying like we've got we need a free speech and we're going to push that on our citizens we're gonna say like you can't just limit with somebody has so the courts have said that right the executive branch now and then is like maybe we don't want so much free speech maybe we'd like the New York Times to to say that there's weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or something I mean like there's a for dance on freedom of speech that's manipulation of the press well that's true I'll just say that the federal the executive branch hasn't been exactly reliable the hell was the executive you know they have their moments but laws exist sorry I me not to get off track but but they are but we have let we have said nothing legislation but we've said we've got some basic rules here that we believe in right one of those roses free speech and we and people fought on both sides of it but we have kind of pushed this agenda of free speech is valuable we need to protect it there has not been a similar there's not been a similar fight for the internet that's right nobody has said the free internet the open Internet is important and we need to protect it what they have said is with like things like SOPA right fuck the free internet we want to protect we want to make sure we have money right and there you've got people who are backed by lobbyists right pushing laws that will ultimately diminish the openness of the Internet right you notice elf a fan are you how would that be possible I don't know you tell them I like soap i don't like a fire so fat that's great but but i mean so so so what do we do I mean what's the obstacle here how do we how do we combat I mean it feels like we've got verizon and AT&T mm-hmm largely controlling the pipes was a few other players in there but not that many right and they are dictating in many ways what happens on the internet or what happens with the internet right you obviously have forces you've got forces from places like Hollywood which you talk about in your book and you've talked about elsewhere I ran into some Hollywood forces recently that there were very psyched on on the idea that you know that it's it's like Verizon 1880s responsibility to block things so that's a fairly scary concept what are we supposed to do how do we how do we how do we fix this you need two things you need a norm and you know and you need a law so first of all it has to be a principle that Internet freedom is sacred and fundamentally important to to a civilized nation it has to be understand stood at the level of free speech just like we've you acquaintance see you quit net neutrality with free speech yeah I think it's the sort of the flip side of it I mean free speech is I can say whatever I want net neutrality is I get to connect with whoever I want you know unless was a really strong reason not to free speech is an absolute net neutrality is an absolute but as a general rule i get to connect with you and what are those reasons how do we pick them how do we decide well that's another story and and you know there's obvious examples in free speech you have principles like it might send a very serious message to assassinate the president but that doesn't mean it should be legal right it obviously needs to be prevented so similarly with net neutrality you can think of I think very narrow categories but certain reasons that it might be reasonable to influence with people can connect to but they're rare they're sort of like interfering with terrorists efforts to sort of attack the United States for the country's things like this are a real pornography said child pornography is probably another except what about pirated movies no i mean because what one man's pirated movie you know one man's pirated movie is another man's innovation what is exactly a pirated movie is often not exactly clear and I you know you say it as if we know what a pirated movie is and sometimes you do but so the copyright law is so unclear that sometimes it's not legal it's sometimes legal and the other issue I have with with pirated movies is that fundamentally I don't think it's important to pass laws protect an industry that is in decline and that you know I think we go in a dangerous direction when we have an industry which is essentially in in decline and you know it is has been in decline from some time to try to use all the powers of government to try to save them right this has been an issue since the 16th century is every time an industry is dying it says I'm threatened by piracy can you give us some examples the booksellers in the 16th I can give you a million examples my book is full of them again the master switch by Tim Wu available available in paperback 1595 very affordable available in ebook form i would imagine yeah it's 10 it's I think it's about nine dollars on nine dollars on Amazon you were there taking a cut of the profits but not hopefully not too big no I let's go up but good but so no so you have examples so you've yet I have tons of examples you know if you look as early as in 1920s for example at that point sheep music was the dominant industry for distributing music and they said sheet music she oh sheet she amazed I face it did anybody else think he said sheet music yeah I felt like the animal thought I don't really know neither heard of that sorry go on no but I got way you made music in the 19th century it was actually nice as you bought music and then you took it home and played it you know that was like that was the recording industry and the day they were the dominant way of distributing music along came the record player and the sheet music was suffering because people listening to records easily and playing yourself yes so what they say they said the recording industry are a bunch of pirates who are destroying American culture they're just taking the sheet music recording what's on it and then selling is exactly like these guys are destroying America because you know America used to be placed where people sing and dance and and now you know people are listening these crazy photographs and and player pianos and we've lost our culture and its disaster out of work everyone's out of work out you see the hair the same thing every 20 years I mean it is what that is what the entertainment industry is saying I mean I mean Ari Emanuel said you can't make curb your enthusiasm in any other way than to have this big industry behind it and if you don't if you don't have the 3 million dollars per episode there's a hundred maybe 500 year old tradition of making starving artists the the kind of symbol of what is really an industry that's dying that's being replaced by different technology same thing Atma and cable came out people are like cable and I don't love cable but when it came out as a new industry and they said these cable guys are a bunch of pirates all they want to do is loot Hollywood loot TV I the same thing is said every single time is this a bit you become what you despise because I feel like you've got the Cable guy's really hey we're innovators and now they're the old guard and you've got internet a television sort of this whole IP you know revolution right and the cable guys are going like we got to do something about this everyone becomes what they despise you know that oh really but I don't know I'm good to go something terrible in that case just absolutely terrible so so so obviously very complex lot to talk about here we're not going to get to all of it tonight but but but what I mean how are we doing I mean we've got verizon as i was saying earlier they've got this monopoly how do we regulate these guys I mean they own the pipes they build the pipes there doesn't seem to be a ton of regulation there's a fear with government regulation that you're going to end up in this kind of down this rabbit hole of right you know it can be like Brazil nothing will ever get innovated on I mean what how do you strike a balance how do you do this I think you have to have just very simple rules net neutrality rules that say you must allow people to connect with who they want to connect with exactly what I said before they have to be regulated basically like New York taxi cabs and I know New York taxi cabs don't always obey the rules right but the basic rule when you get in a taxi cab as it goes where you want to go not where they want to go right and as long as I understand that position I think it's relatively straightforward but that is it difficult because as you pointed out there is a growth a return of the power of the telephone and cable monopoly you know for most of the history the United States we had one company AT&T running the show and things have a way you know like the Terminator robot if kind of going back to the way they were and we have to be very careful to see that our phone companies rise an AT&T comcast I guess their cable company don't end up HAP being essentially the gatekeepers of the internet that's extremely important so what do you what do you say it like people here what's the best thing you can do what is the best thing you can do didn't know best you can do is complain or get angry yes when no problem yeah we got ready for that but it read it helps you just need to be not willing to accept it when your cable company or your phone company says we're going to decide what the internet is you have to take possession of this thing and say it is our network I mean some of the people on there were like who owns the internet people on the internet and that's actually true right it was not designed to be owned by anyone but I've owned companies all intents and purposes verizon on the internet on you but UK I can't just go get on the internet I have to go through something so video I have to go through something that somebody else home look you have to take a taxi to go to Brooklyn doesn't mean the taxi owns broad but I can also buy it but I could buy a car you got to go through the Brooklyn Bridge and I can't drive and I could drive that road is anybody can drive on by the way this is a metaphor more than apparently people who like soap i hate but i mean you can but i can go buy a car and drive myself to brooklyn you can't drive yourself to the internet to get to brooklyn you got a cast pass I the brooklyn bridge or manhattanville bridgeberg yeah those guys earlier they don't own Brooklyn right you know you got to go through them if they had a policy like oh we're only going to let so-and-so through that would change you could get there but doesn't mean they own Brooklyn and it's very important not to convince to get confused a gatekeeper with an owner right they're completely different people someone has a tollbooth does not mean they own the thing but the gatekeeper has a lot of hazards I thought about our is the owner they have a lot of power and that's why since basically medieval times there's been a series of laws designed to guard the gate keepers so you think violent revolution is the only way to solve this maybe I'm paraphrasing all right we just arrived but you're working on a new book II just how many questions right you know I'm interested basically what technology should do next I think we're starting to solve some the problems of scarcity that have obsessed humanity for 500 years or so and I think we're starting doing at this question of what do we do now now that we have a lot of things enough food enough information what's next that's my next book I think huge party it'll be the answer Tim thank you so much right really off ledger timber everyone and again again the master sway in bookstores down thank you that no no you stay right here don't you go anywhere that's our show actually we have no musical guest tonight we had so much show I want to thank levar burton alexis ohanian Tim Wu of course and our sponsor Ford for helping us put this on and you guys for coming out really appreciate it we have some giveaways don't go anywhere including some of these signed by Tim yes ah so that's our show thank you so much we got next month