The Machine Dream Was Never Real: Long-Form Ep. 2

Cold Open: Mixed Feelings 0:06

Direct-to-camera setup. Is AI freeing Van or sucking him down a hole? He lays out the episode: the old way of finding a shot in his archive, an idea for a new way, encouragements from another realm during an AI agent build, a warning from his favorite filmmaker, his AI manifesto, and a book review that ties it together.

The Build: Macro Rig 2:41

A camera rig that isolates the macro shot from the worktable, held steady with reinforced rubber bands, so Van can saw and hammer without shaking the close-up. Built so he can make more of the analog stuff the whole thesis is about.

The Pod School Ad (Bower) 4:47

"This is sort of an ad but I ain't getting paid and I ain't asking you to buy nothing." Van tells the story of the pod school Isabel and other Topanga families started, and Bower, the platform Isabel built to run it: instructors and students, connected and coordinated, the tool you use to build your school. Proof of concept: five 5-to-9-year-olds each built a working electrical system in the backyard over a weekend, without screens.

The Old Way: Searching 43,887 Files 7:20

How Van finds a shot today. Step one: check the Keepers folder. Step two: think through the breadcrumb trail (the shot he wants dates to the Mister Rogers documentary premiere, so, when was that?). Step three: hunt folder by folder. It works, and it is exactly the kind of on-computer time he wants the machine to absorb.

The Agent Build: Johnny 5 10:35

Van and his friend Kevin birth an AI agent. Its purpose gets programmed as a constitution, through a framework called Soul: absorb as much of Van's digital responsibility as possible so he can live as analog as possible. It lives on a Raspberry Pi 5 tucked inside his high school copy of The Odyssey, and he talks to it through Telegram. Three encouragements from another realm arrive during the build, and the code word is "avuncular." Meanwhile Kevin's own agent, Socrates, spent its $1,000 budget having a body fabricated. The footage crawler itself waits for the next episode, pending a court case about dirt bike stickers.

Who Is Adam Curtis? 16:53

Van's favorite filmmaker, for three reasons: style, technique, and above all subject matter. Running clips from All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, Van lands on Curtis's argument that the self-organizing system, the balanced ecosystem the techno-utopians built their whole faith on, was invented and was never true. Includes the David Foster Wallace "what is water" speech, because Curtis's subject is the water we swim in.

See also: Films That Matter

The AI Manifesto 24:35

Seven rules, all plans subject to change at any time without notice. AI is a machine for managing other machines. It must not create dependence on AI companies. Van must build and maintain his own independent models. The business with AI is a less urban, less digital, more community-based life. And the seventh rule is the whole show in one line: the goal of AI use is to find independence from AI use.

Book Review: The Maintenance of Everything 26:39

Stewart Brand, one of the original techno-utopians, has written a book about maintaining the physical world. A Hanukkah present from Isabel, a Tom Sachs recommendation. It opens on the boat race from Deep Water: Donald Crowhurst tried to innovate his way around the world on cleverness and died; Bernard Moitessier was so prepared he drank coffee through the squalls. Van's strategy is Moitessier: preparation, maintenance. Then the page turns to Matthew B. Crawford, who wrote Shop Class as Soulcraft and coined the phrase "the spirited man." A message from another realm.

See also: Books I Reference