Okay, so we have a new episode of Legends and Leaders and today it's great to have Esther here. You know, you're somebody that has kind of taken on multiple different major initiatives. One with early on the internet enable with ICANN and you know, really helping to create a system and structure for that. Now with what you're doing with equitable community living and creating a system that people can really grow and share in that growth together. So you've kind of taken on new initiatives and spearheaded those and so I'm excited to have you here to get into your story.
Great. Thank you. Yeah, it's a long story and I've had an interesting life. It's sort of lots of parallel things and then a fair amount of sequential stuff. So do you realize your video connection isn't very good? I don't know whether you're recording on your own side or how this works, but I just thought it...
It will change. It will change. It records about half the quality. It'll be much better when it's done.
Okay, great. Wonderful. Good. And I'll upload mine at the end then or something.
It will upload automatically.
Sorry for the interruptions.
So that's okay. So you know just starting out like early on. Where did your passion for getting into this space begin? Like into the business world early on, into technology, like where did that kind of start? Was it something experience you had as a kid? How did that begin?
Well, I mean, the thing that sort of an outsider would want to know is my dad's boss was Oppenheimer, not in Alamos, but afterwards at the Institute for Advanced Study, and my mother was a mathematician. So, the thing I learned the most was ask questions and keep learning. So, that's kind of what I did. I left home at 16 to go to college and then joined the Harvard Crimson which was the newspaper and learned how to ask questions as a journalist. I did a bunch of things after I left college and then ended up becoming a reporter for Forbes, which kind of got me into the world of business and also to some extent into the world of tech. And do you realize you've totally disappeared from my screen now?
Okay. Well, then I guess it doesn't matter. But your video went off.
All right. If it's a problem, I mean, we could try again. It's another way, but...
Just let me know if my video goes off.
Yeah. Okay. So, working for Forbes was wonderful. I traveled to Japan and wrote about the coming Japanese computer threat and said there was no threat in software. Visited Hong Kong back then. And of course, I've watched it turn into a little appendage of China. Most recently, got interested in tech and joined a Wall Street firm, worked on Wall Street for five years. And then for 25 years, I wrote and edited a newsletter called Release 1.0 about the tech industry from the time of Steve Jobs and the personal computer. We also had a conference called PC forum which started out as personal computer forum and ended as PC forum, platforms for communication forum. And in the middle of all that there was ICANN and I started going to Russia in 1989. So basically I had license to explore the world from many different angles and it was amazing.
So you're running the PC forum and you're having important conversations there and you're getting the ability to meet a lot of these different people in the space. I mean what do you think was the most impactful experience that you had at the PC forum that helped shape what you're doing now?
Um it wasn't one thing but it was sort of seeing the whole industry coalesce and in the end sort of get too large to be a single conference. And at that point this was like 2005 we sold it to CNET and then I went off and became sort of an independent person but you know just seeing all this stuff up front was amazing. And at the same time, you know, you learn both what to do and what not to do. I would say you know this recent thing with OpenAI, the whole issues around governance, about people, the industry went from a bunch of people who were trying hard to build something to now a lot of entitled people who forget the basic lessons of accountability, of disclosure, of transparency, all that. It's become sort of the DNA has been overtaken by the business model of money and finance and often returns that are too quick. So, it's, you know, much as I loved it, it's no longer a world of startups. It's a world of, oh my gosh, he's worth 400 million. Isn't that great? So I got interested in health care and if you look at health care pretty soon you have to ask why are we spending so much money fixing people who shouldn't have gotten sick in the first place. So you start looking at social conditions and community and the predatory business models of health care and ultimately that led me to start Wellville which is the current thing I'm doing. It's a 10-year nonprofit project that ends at the end of 2024. And the whole point of that is it's not sustainable. But what is sustainable is having a country and a broad public understanding that we need to invest collectively in the health of our people not just our environment but the actual people who live in the environment.
And with the study you know with the community and study that you kind of put together now I mean what do you think are going to be the most impactful aspects that you can show like hey this is what the issues are and this is how we can solve them so we can fix this problem proactively instead of retroactively as it's done currently.
So in some ways we're not going to find out anything new. We know what we should be doing. We should be raising kids in happy families. We should be eating better. We should have good schools. We should have child care that people can afford. And so it's less a study. It is an attempt to help five communities build that for themselves. It's not a nice white lady with tech and money coming in and helping. It's a bunch of outsiders who have your backs, but who don't live there, so they're not trying to take your job. They're just trying to give you support and guidance and introduce you to other people facing the same problems. And then starting sometime next year, I'm going to write a book that is less 'this is what you should know' but more 'this is what you know, but you're not really seeing it and you're not acting on it.' And you know, one way or another, I'm going to advocate for a lot more public investment in healthy conditions so that kids can prosper instead of being damaged by the time they get to grade school. And COVID obviously kind of made those cracks and fissures more visible. So that's kind of useful, but at the same time, we've not got exactly the political environment to get to rapid agreement on these issues. So that's going to be an interesting challenge. And meanwhile, I'm in the middle of trying to promote this idea of don't fuss about training your AIs, train your babies. Because the best defense against it's not evil AI, it's AI used by evil people and evil business models to manipulate people. So what kids need to learn and it's not like a 10-point curriculum. It's sort of in the way they're raised and grow up and learn is both to be more self-aware of their own motivations and how they work. You know, why do I cry? Why do I get angry? Is there a better way to deal with the world? And why are they advertising this food to me? Not because they care about my health, but because they care about their financial returns. So if you understand how the world works without becoming cynical, which requires, you know, a loving family, parents who have your back, you need to understand this stuff. It's like you need to be a cynic in general, but you need to be a trusting person in particular. Trust your family. Trust the people around you. Trust yourself. And then you become much less susceptible to all these business models and attention grabbers and all this other stuff that, you know, business is just doing its job. The people in the business are trying to make money to take care of their families. But the business models themselves are often predatory and end up manipulating people to do stuff that's not good for them.
And that's what do you think it's going to take to change that?
