Practical Advice: Pick Problems and Protect Attention

Welcome to episode #1033 of Thinking With Mitch Joel (formerly Six Pixels of Separation).

We spent the last twenty-five years calling software "technology," which was convenient, profitable and just a little bit delusional. Apps got smarter. Feeds got stickier. Ads got creepier. Dashboards got dashboards. Meanwhile, the real world kept asking harder questions. How do we produce enough clean energy for eight billion people? How do we build things again? How do we manufacture without waste? How do we use AI for science, not just better chatbots and faster slop? Pablos Holman has spent his career living inside those questions. He is a hacker, inventor, venture capitalist, and founder of Deep Future, an invention capital firm backing the mad scientists, rogue engineers and maverick entrepreneurs trying to build technologies that actually matter. His career has touched everything from cryptocurrency in the 1990s and AI for financial markets to the early days of Blue Origin and the launch of Intellectual Ventures Lab, where the work included mosquito-killing lasers, malaria-diagnosing microscopes, vaccine coolers, advanced antennas and nuclear reactors powered by waste. His book, Deep Future - Creating Technology That Matters, argues that the next wave of innovation will not come from making software marginally more addictive. It will come from solving the physical, messy, expensive, essential problems that humanity depends on: energy, water, food, waste, construction, manufacturing, medicine and infrastructure. In this conversation, Pablos makes the case for optimism with teeth. Not optimism as a mood. Optimism as a discipline. A willingness to stare at massive problems without flinching… and then go build something. We talk about why software can't save the world by itself, why energy may be the root problem behind almost everything, why AI's most meaningful work may happen in science, and why the future belongs to people willing to work on problems big enough to scare everyone else. Enjoy the conversation…

• Running time: 1:04:47.
• Hello from beautiful Montreal.
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• Here is my conversation with Pablos Holman.
• Deep Future - Creating Technology That Matters.
• Check out Pablos on the Tim Ferriss Podcast: One of The Scariest Hackers I've Ever Met — Pablos Holman.
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Chapters:

(00:00) - Introduction to Deep Future and Venture Capital. (02:47) - The Shift from Software to Deep Tech. (06:08) - Revolutionizing Manufacturing with Robotics. (08:49) - The Environmental Impact of Energy Production. (12:13) - Innovative Solutions for Energy Challenges. (15:08) - The Role of AI in Scientific Advancements. (17:53) - Cultural Shifts in Manufacturing and Education. (20:55) - The Future of Energy and Nuclear Solutions. (23:56) - The Importance of Long-Term Thinking. (26:45) - Connecting Work to Meaning and Purpose. (30:13) - The Role of Corporations in Infrastructure Investment. (33:03) - The Future of Jobs in an Automated World. (36:13) - AI's Role in Solving Global Problems. (39:01) - The Need for Optimism in Technology. (41:59) - Final Thoughts and the Future of Humanity.