The story of the internet, emergent networks, and their effects

with @stevenbjohnson @cdixon @rhhackett

Welcome to the web3 with a16z crypto podcast. Today's episode features a conversation between Steven Johnson, a prolific author of books about technology and innovation who is also, as editorial director at Google Labs, helping to develop AI writing tools such as NotebookLM, and Chris Dixon, founding partner of a16z crypto and author of the new book Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet. The two discuss the history of their shared interests, they explore the emergent properties of decentralized networks, and they dig into the past, present, and future of the internet.

Resources for references in this episode:

• Author page for Steven Johnson
• Google Labs's personalized AI writing tool NotebookLM
• "Beyond the Bitcoin Bubble" by Steven Johnson (New York Times Magazine, January 2018)
• How We Got To Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World by Steven Johnson (Riverhead Books: 2015)
• Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, And History's First Global Manhunt by Steven Johnson (Riverhead Books: 2021)
• Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson (Sribner: 2002)
• Chris Dixon's blog at cdixon.org
• The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs (Random House: 1961)
• The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro (Vintage: 1975)
• The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual (Basic Books: 2000)
• "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" by John Perry Barlow
• "1000 True Fans" by Kevin Kelly
• Index, a History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age by Dennis Duncan (W.W. Norton: 2022)
• ReadWriteWeb blog (ca. 2003)
• "Airbnb Proposes Giving Hosts a Stake in the Company" by Aisha Al-Muslim and Maureen Farrell (Wall Street Journal, September 2018)
• "Lyft Unlikely to Get SEC Pushback on Plan for Two Share Classes" by Nabila Ahmed and Ben Bain (Bloomberg, March 2019)
• "OpenAI Says New York Times Lawsuit Against It Is Without Merit" by Cade Metz (New York Times, January 2024)