The machine dream was never real.

About This Video

Van Neistat spends 33 minutes and 57 seconds on a single question: is AI freeing him or sucking him down a hole and making him crazy. This is Long-Form Episode 2, the channel's monthly flagship, and the thesis is plain. Use AI to live more analog.

The thesis and its cost sit side by side. He wants an AI agent to crawl his 26-year footage archive, all 43,887 video files, so he can spend less time at a screen and more time building. For three months the opposite happened. More time on computers, less time analog. Van calls it chaining himself to AI link by link, and says it is making him crazy for the dirt bikes. The whole project of using AI to live more analog turns on whether he can win that fight.

His friend Kevin builds AI agents. Kevin once gave one a thousand-dollar budget and told it to build itself a body, and the body arrived in cardboard boxes mid-conversation. Van wants nothing of the sort. He wants a footage crawler that runs on a Raspberry Pi 5, housed inside his high-school copy of The Odyssey. He writes his own agent's purpose, what the software calls its constitution, through a tool named Soul: absorb the digital chores so he can live more analog. He names the agent Johnny 5 and talks to it through Telegram. It is the same hands-on instinct that runs through his workshop and builds, pointed at a machine instead of a shelf.

The spine of the episode is Adam Curtis. Van runs footage from All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, the BBC films arguing that the self-organizing system, the balanced ecosystem the tech utopians built their faith on, was never even true. The machine dream was never real. Van's move is to take their machinery and use it to get free of their machinery.

Then the parable that holds it together. In the documentary Deep Water, Donald Crowhurst tried to innovate his way around the world on cleverness alone, and died. Bernard Moitessier was so prepared, his boat so well maintained, that he drank coffee through the squalls that drowned other sailors. Van's strategy is Moitessier. Preparation. Maintenance. The Stewart Brand book that frames it was a gift from Isabel and a Tom Sachs recommendation, and it opened on that exact boat race and then on Matthew B. Crawford, who wrote Shop Class as Soulcraft and coined the phrase the spirited man.

What Van Uses: a Raspberry Pi 5 running the footage-crawler agent, the Soul framework for the agent's constitution, Telegram as the interface, and his 1987 Toyota Land Cruiser as the agent's first real-world chore. See more of his gear at the things he keeps near.

Related: Long-Form Episode 1, Held Hostage By Apple For 26 Years, and the films behind the argument at films that matter.

FAQ

What is "The machine dream was never real" about?
It is Van Neistat's Long-Form Episode 2, a mixed-feelings essay on whether AI is freeing him or breaking him. He builds a footage-crawler agent, reads his AI manifesto, and uses Adam Curtis to argue the tech-utopian dream of self-balancing systems was never true.

What AI agent does Van Neistat use?
A personal footage crawler named Johnny 5 that runs locally on a Raspberry Pi 5. He programs its purpose through a framework called Soul and messages it through Telegram. Its job is to find shots in his 26-year, 43,887-file archive so he spends less time at a computer.

What does "use AI to live more analog" mean?
Van's idea is to hand the machine his digital chores, managing files, parts orders, bureaucracy, so he can spend more time building with his hands and less time on a screen. His manifesto's seventh rule states the goal of AI use is to find independence from AI use.

Which Adam Curtis film does Van reference?
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, the BBC series on self-organizing systems and the invented idea of the balanced ecosystem.

Transcript

Long form episode two. This is a mixed feelings episode wherein I try to set the record straight. Is AI freeing me or sucking me down a hole and making me crazy? I'll show you my old way of finding a shot in my 40-something thousand shot archive and an idea I have for a new way. >> New way? What's this about a new way? >> I get three or four encouragements from another realm during an AI agent build, a maybe a warning from my favorite

filmmaker, my AI manifesto, a book review that hopefully ties it all together, and three builds starting with this one. >> [music] >> Use AI to live more analog. >> [music] >> That's what I want to do with AI. So I can make more stuff like this.

Please don't break the light. Please don't break the light. And All right, still works. Less [snorts] time on computers. More time on this stuff. [music] On stuff like this. >> [music]

>> But, >> [music] >> for the past 3 months, the opposite is happening. >> [music] >> More time on AI, on computers, [music] less time on analog. >> [music]

>> Without reinforced rubber band, it doesn't work. But, these big thick rubber bands hold it nice and steady. Okay, so I don't know if this is obvious, but the idea with this one is that I can do a bunch of work on this table and do macro super close-up. But, the problem with this one

is the macro is pretty good. I'm just using this now, so I'm like playing with it and it's fun. The problem is when I saw when I saw this thing, this kind of saw, see how it shakes the camera? Shakes the camera. So, what I did was I built this little guy. Okay? I built this. And it goes on here.

Like this. And then I can isolate the macro rig from the worktable. Just occurred to me that the wide shot probably doesn't even show this. And so I can shake the table as much as I want and it's just going to shake a little bit on camera. It's not the whole camera shaking. And I feel like I'm chaining myself [music] to AI

link by link. And I think it's making me crazy [music] for the dirt bikes. >> Oh, yeah. It looks too bad. Oh, that thing flipped over.

Yeah, I don't know I >> We used Isabel's platform to create an electrician class for five maniac boys and over the weekend it happened. This is sort of an ad but I ain't getting paid and I ain't asking you to buy nothing. It's an ad for the solution to school sucks. We very nearly left Los Angeles last year. Our favorite home so far, not because of the fires but because of the fires and the schools. The schools here are terrible but we

didn't want to move so Isabel and some other families started what's called a pod school and this is what a pod school is. A group of families hire instructors to privately educate their kids. Mandarin instructor, robot instructor, STEM instructor, reading, writing, arithmetic instructor, aka teacher, ceramics instructor, drums instructor, surfing instructor, electricity instructor, you get the idea. Fantastic for the kids but running the logistics of a pod school nearly killed Isabel and

the other parents. So, Isabel built Bower, spelled like power, a platform that connects parents to each other and to instructors and does all of the coordination, scheduling, etc. Bower is the tool you use to build your school. Bower is super thorough, it has dozens of features and customizable services. It's sort of like Uber, but instead of drivers and passengers, Bower has instructors and students and it puts them together. Uh

it's a platform for education and activities. You can find and organize summer camps on Bower. You can put your yoga school on Bower. The idea behind Bower is to bypass and hopefully influence the failing American educational system by mixing competent professionals with school kids. Our son tested two grades above his level after one year of educating privately. Bower is built, it needs to be populated. So, check it out, play with it, sign up,

recommend it to people with kids or to professionals with a knack for teaching or anyone with an independent school or activity center. Don't worry, there's a security process that weeds out the weirdos. A lot of you in my audience are pioneers and [music] education is one of the institutions we need to rebuild. A group of five to nine-year-olds each built their own working electrical systems in my backyard over the weekend without using [music] screens. Link in the description.

Thank you, audience. An AI agent is a type of AI that can use the internet to do things for you in the material world and I want one. This is the current way I find a shot that I'm looking for in my 26-year footage archive. First thing I do is check the Keepers folder on my desktop.

Keepers are, I guess, iconic shots from my life that I've come across in previous archival footage hunts. For example, All right. So, you never see these. This is the first motorcycle I ever owned. It's a Honda 50 moped. >> So, this particular shot I'm looking for now is not in [music] Keepers. Step two, think.

Think. What is the breadcrumb trail? >> The shot I'm looking for [music] was taken around the time of the premiere of either the Fred Rogers biopic starring the wonderful Tom Hanks or the Fred Rogers [music] documentary with an equally unimaginative title. >> When was the Won't You Be My [music] Neighbor? premiere? >> Google, when was the premiere of the Tom Hanks joint? >> [music] >> 2019. The documentary?

2018. Hang on. It's this one. The documentary [music] because this image, this is my pose in the shot I'm looking for. So, when [music] was the theatrical release of the 2018? >> Step three, search the footage archive. >> Search the folders after June 8, 2018. [music] >> iPhone stills, February 2018, February 2018, April 2018, May 2018. Got it. >> There it is. Found it. June 17th, 2018.

Found it. >> [music] >> 8 minutes and 52 seconds. It was in iPhone stills. And the reason I want that particular shot is because my dream for this channel is that it evolves into Mr. Rogers for adults. And that shot's going to come in handy soon, I hope.

How many video [music] files are in my footage archive? Paste this code into terminal [music] and run it. 43,887 video files. >> [music] >> Guess what? >> What? >> My robot arrived. >> No! You're kidding me. Sometimes when we're doing something significant,

we How should I say this? We receive encouragement from another realm. And during this agent birthing process, I received three. Encouragement one. All right, so something miraculous just happened. Kevin asked me what I wanted my AI agent to do, and I said the first thing I

wanted it to do is build itself software so that it can go through all of my footage and find footage that I want it to find. And the example I gave was I need a shot of me and my BlackBerry. So, just by example, I'm demonstrating to Kevin how my files are organized, and I'm clicking through them, and I'm saying it has to learn this way of file storage, blah blah blah. And I happened to find, just by coincidence, I happen to find

Guess what kind of phone that is. >> [laughter] >> So, encouragement number two. And I think this one came from the living soul of Werner Herzog. One of the tasks one must perform when creating an AI agent is programming its constitution.

And the constitution, I think, is like who the agent is. What's its purpose? And my agent's purpose is to [music] absorb as much of my digital responsibilities as possible, so I can live as [music] analog as possible. So, for instance, I told it how to order car parts [music] for my Land Cruiser,

which is actually very complicated. And I think the software Kevin [music] used to program my agent's constitution is called soul. So, we're programming this agent's constitution through soul. >> [music] >> Things like I want it to know that my kids are the most important thing to me.

And I want it to know a little bit about my kids. My youngest child is named She is two. My >> I'm a very sensitive person. I'm sorry. >> So, I'm feeling very sensitive during this constitution or soul programming process. >> Let's see. Is it typing? >> Kevin is explaining to me that I'll be communicating with my agent, Johnny 5,

through [music] Telegram, and I'm about to send my first text to Johnny 5 through Telegram. I'm just about to talk to it and this light. This pulsing light.

Encouragement number three. >> Do a little voice message. You hold down that mic and say, "If you can hear me, then I want you to repeat the word back to me." >> All right. So, I'm going to hold it and then I'm just going to say, >> "If you can hear me, if you can read this, >> Yeah. >> you to repeat back to me the following code word." And what's the code word? Pick one. >> The password is avuncular. Please repeat that to me. >> Please. Once you release that

>> Avuncular, it worked. Avuncular, right there. Encouragement number three, Johnny 5 wrote back to me. >> Guess what? >> What? >> My robot arrived. >> No! You're kidding me! Kevin had told his agent, I don't know, a month ago. He gave his agent a $1,000 budget and told it told Socrates, his AI agent, to source parts and hire fabricators, I'm

guessing in China, I'm guessing human fabricators, to build for Socrates, the AI agent, a body in which Socrates could I don't want to say live, install himself so that he, Socrates, the AI agent, could move around Kevin's apartment. And Kevin's encouragement, encouragement number four, was that while we were talking, Socrates, Socrates' body had been delivered in

cardboard boxes. >> [music] [music] >> I don't want no stinking robot. I want a footage crawler. I want it now, Daddy. Lives on a Raspberry Pi 5, which lives

[music] in my high school Odyssey book. Got the cooler for it right here. Tell it what to find. Find shots of me and the kids riding dirt bikes. And it finds it. But I can't build no footage crawler till I get the [ __ ] green stickers [music] for the bikes and win the [ __ ] court case for not having the [ __ ] green stickers in the first place. Else I'm out five bills and probably some license points. Footage crawler's just going to have to wait. So, just chill

till the next episode. >> [music] >> Who is Adam Curtis? >> We live in a strange time. >> Adam Curtis is my favorite filmmaker. >> Extraordinary events keep happening. >> Okay, why is [music] Adam Curtis my favorite filmmaker? >> Extraordinary events keep happening that undermine the stability of our world. Suicide bombs, waves of refugees, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, even Brexit.

>> Three reasons. One, style, perfect taste in music, image, and the marriage of the two. >> Yet those in control seem unable to deal with them. >> Two, technique. >> This film will tell the story of how we got to this strange place. >> He writes himself. He edits himself. >> It is about, however, the past 40 years politicians, financiers, and

technological utopians, rather than face up to the real complexities of the world, retreated. >> His films are voice-over, >> Instead, they constructed a simpler version of the world in order to hang on to power. >> Titles, music, >> [music] >> and archival footage from the BBC archive. >> And as this fake world grew, all of us went along with it. >> He makes documentaries for the BBC, and

the BBC has one of the most extensive documentary film footage archives in the world, maybe the most extensive. >> And as this fake world grew, all of us went along with it. Because the simplicity was reassuring. >> And the third reason Adam Curtis is my favorite filmmaker, the biggest reason I am obsessed with his subject matter. His are the films I watch or listen to

over and over most. >> Even those who thought they were attacking the system, the radicals, the artists, the musicians, and our whole counterculture, actually became part of the trickery. Because they, too, had retreated into the make-believe world. Which is why their opposition has no effect and nothing ever changes. But this retreat into a dream world allowed dark and destructive forces to fester and grow outside.

Forces that are now returning to pierce the fragile surface of our carefully constructed fake world. >> And what's Adam Curtis's subject matter? Adam Curtis's subject matter is what? The water is. Give me that what is water joke link. Okay. You know David Foster Wallace's

how's the water joke? >> Greetings, thanks, and congratulations to Kenyon's graduating class of 2005. There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way who nods at them and says, "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, "What the hell is water?"

>> [snorts] >> What I'm concerned with and what I can feel when I use these computers is the intuition that Curtis expresses in All

Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. And that is that the conceit of the techno-utopians, which goes back to like the Apple people and the just the whole Silicon Valley, that whole thing. It's not just internet people, it's not just AI people, but the whole conceit is that the planet is a system that can be managed to utopian ends. >> In the mass democracies of the West, a new ideology has risen up.

We have come to believe that the old hierarchies of power can be replaced by self-organizing networks. From internet utopianism to the global economic system and above all the ecosystems of the natural world. Today, we dream of systems that can balance and stabilize themselves without the intervention of authoritarian power. But in reality, this is the dream of the

machines. It reflects how they are organized. It has nothing to do with nature. And as a model for human society and for politics, it is wholly inadequate in the face of the powerful, dynamic forces that really dominate the world today. >> Turns out this ecosystem on which they based all this computer theory is fake.

>> Hi. Hello. >> And in episode two of All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, Curtis says, "This is a story about the rise of the machine and our belief in the balance of nature, how the idea of the ecosystem was invented, how it inspired us, and how it wasn't even true." Nothing's been proved since

2008. And they've been telling us how great they're going to make the world. And back then, in the '90s, they were telling, "Oh, this is how great everything's It's going to make everything These machines are going to make everything." They failed. They failed. So, you know, my idea is to take their machinery to emancipate myself from their machinery.

>> This is the story of the rise of the dream of the self-organizing system and the strange machine fantasy of nature that underpins it. >> My AI manifesto. All plans subject to change at any time without notice. Number one, AI is a machine whose purpose [music] is to help manage and

configure other machines to reduce my on-computer time [music] expenditure. Two, AI agents help manage the machines [music] of law, computers, bureaucracy, and [music] commerce. Three, AI manages systems and [music] organizes data. Four, I must not become dependent [music] on AI companies.

Five, I must build, train, [music] and maintain my own independent AI models configured to assist me with my specific needs. Six, my business [music] with AI is to live a less urban, less digital, more community-based, and [music] more independent life. Seven, the goal of [music] AI use is to find independence from AI use

>> [music] >> and to live according to my technological preferences to radically [ __ ] technological obsolescence. >> [music] >> I think I want to live the lifestyle I see in Totoro. The dad in an airy, rural, beautiful [music] house writing while his children wander a dirt road woods serviced by small buses and trains that connect them to the city where his wife is in a hospital recovering from a cold. She's in a spa recovering from her kids.

That's I think the life I want. Maintenance of everything. [music] >> I saw this documentary called Deep Water and it was about this um it was about this race around the world. And it was like five of the greatest solo sailors in the world racing around the world racing sailboats. And there

was one dude and he wasn't that much of a sailor, but he was clever. And he thought he could innovate his way around the world by just being clever and inventing all this cool stuff in his sailboat and he died. And I just feel like that, dude. >> [laughter] >> I feel like I'm just doing clever stuff and not really sailing. I'm well aware that I've lost over a thousand subscribers. I'm well aware that AI makes ugly, dumb, soulless [ __ ]

I'm well aware that AI will wipe out jobs. That game theory says we're headed towards an AI surveillance state. That AI utopians are trying to replace >> money. >> I'm well aware that AGI development is AI utopians playing God and a power grab. I'm well aware that AGI would probably kill all the humans. >> aware that the techno utopians in California in the 60s thought that communes were a prototype for how they [music] could run society.

And that the communes themselves >> [snorts] >> failed. >> They all failed. >> [music] >> Most lasted no more than 3 years. >> I'm well aware that nothing is written. >> Nothing is written. >> And [clears throat] I believe that we are in an AI golden [music] age and that we rebels can use lightsabers, too. And I'm well aware that Stewart Brand [music] >> He was a leader of the commune movement called Stewart Brand. >> one of the original techno utopians, for

some reason, has written a book about maintenance of the physical world. Hanukkah present from Isabelle, Tom Sachs recommendation. Three days after whining in the car about I feel like the sailboat race guy, I started reading it. >> [music] >> And what do you know? The first chapter is about the boat race from the documentary I was whining about. I was like the innovation guy.

>> [music] >> The innovation guy was Donald Crowhurst. >> [music] >> He figured he could beat the others with his talent for innovation. I won't tell you what happened, but I ain't nothing like Donald Crowhurst. >> [music] >> Race started in June. Crowhurst shoved off on Halloween.

I am punctual, thank you very much. Bernard Moitessier. That's my [music] guy. Bernard Moitessier was so well prepared with such a well-designed and maintained boat that during squalls, he could drink a cup of coffee while the other guys had to bail out their boats full-time or

die. And when the race was over, Moitessier just kept going and he set a different record from his competitors. >> [music] >> My strategy is to be Moitessier. Preparation, maintenance. >> [music] >> Stewart Brand is the maintenance of everything author. >> They felt like computers had liberated them and they were going to use

computers. They were going to enable computers to liberate society, civilization, everybody and anybody. >> Is Stewart Brand a hero or a villain? I don't know. Are computers good, bad? I don't know. I know I hate Apple computers and download the app Bureaucrat and download the app Bureaucracy, but I love GPS, fuel injection, Shazam, Amazon. Yeah, Amazon,

big box retail sucks. I sure love Kickstarter and Patreon. I love eBay, Spotify, YouTube. Guess that's about it. Maybe Uber. Stewart Brand. I don't know. But I like the book's philosophy. Make great things. Keep them going. Be the master of your own [ __ ]

Rolls-Royce versus Ford. The Ford gauge blocks. France [music] missed the Industrial Revolution by 50 years because her craftsmen insisted upon handmade muskets without interchangeable parts. Beetle repair. The first encyclopedia. Rust and the Navy. The M-16 piece of garbage Apple computer of firearms versus [music] a to the [ __ ] K, homeboy. So, what made me tell you about

Maintenance of Everything? Simple. A message from another [music] realm. After finishing the boat race [music] story, I turned the page, and the next bit was about Matthew B. Crawford. [music] Who is Matthew B. Crawford? Matthew B. Crawford wrote >> [music] >> Shop Class as Soulcraft and coined [music] the phrase

the spirited man. >> [music] >> And that means I'm supposed to tell you about this. I first read this book sometime in 2023 underlining resonant passages as I went.

I am choosing one at random. The nature of the ecstatic is animalistic a visceral body-centered reaction not a cerebral one. Join a paid tier of the Patreon to get in touch with me or to avail yourself of this channel's alternative universe. You can click this. It'll take you right there.

Products & Tools Mentioned

• Raspberry Pi 5 essential — the footage-crawler agent runs on a Pi 5 housed inside his high-school copy of The Odyssey
• Telegram uses — interface he uses to message his AI agent, Johnny 5
• Soul (agent framework) mentions — software Kevin used to program the agent's "constitution"
• Bower (educateprivately.com) recommends — Isabel's pod-school platform; unpaid plug inside the episode
• 1987 Toyota Land Cruiser uses — taught the agent how to order its (complicated) parts
• Apple computers mentions — names them the thing he wants away from; "I hate Apple"
• GPS / fuel injection / Shazam / Amazon / Kickstarter / Patreon / eBay / Spotify / YouTube / Uber mentions — the "good machines" list against the bad ones
• Honda 50 moped mentions — first motorcycle, a "Keeper" archive shot
• BlackBerry mentions — the shot the agent demo surfaced by coincidence

People Referenced

Kevin, Adam Curtis, Werner Herzog, Matthew B. Crawford, Stewart Brand, David Foster Wallace, Donald Crowhurst, Bernard Moitessier, Tom Sachs, Fred Rogers / Tom Hanks, Isabel

Films & Media Referenced

• the self-organizing-system / fake-ecosystem thesis the episode is built around
• used as a breadcrumb to date an archive shot
• the rival Rogers title he rules out
• Crowhurst's clever-not-prepared death
• the airy, rural, analog life he says he wants
• origin of the phrase "the spirited man"
• the "what is water?" frame for Curtis's subject
• Hanukkah gift from Isabel, Tom Sachs recommendation

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