Danny Jones Podcast
#278 - Steve Jobs Warned Us: How Blue Light Technology is Making You Sick | Anjan Katta
Mon, 30 Dec 2024
Watch every episodes ad-free & uncensored on Patreon: https://patreon.com/dannyjones Anjan Katta is the founder and CEO of Daylight Computer. SPONSORS https://acorns.com/danny - Get a $5 bonus when you start saving & investing with Acorns. https://whiterabbitenergy.com/?ref=DJP - Use code DJP for 20% off EPISODE LINKS Get a Daylight: https://secret.daylightcomputer.com/DANNY https://x.com/AnjanKatta [email protected] FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/dannyjones https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE 00:00 - Hanuman the monkey god 02:23 - hindering vs. helpful technology 09:11 - Modern tech is rotten 16:44 - Invention of the computer mouse 17:55 - getting laughed out of Silicon Valley 25:27 - Amusing ourselves to death 30:05 - Steve Jobs Knew the Danger of Blue Light 36:23 - Developing a blue light free computer 45:39 - How phone scrolling affects your breathing 49:51 - The grey alien timeline 56:09 - The solar punk timeline 01:01:38 - Banality of evil 01:06:51 - Daylight Computer 01:14:29 - Raising money / venture capital 01:21:59 - Live demo 01:25:47 - New decentralized computing stack 01:32:33 - Changing media & tech legislation Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
All right, Anjan.
Thanks for coming, dude. I'm excited to talk to you. We were just talking before Steve started rolling. Your name, your name, that doesn't come from Japan though, right? No, it's Indian. It's Indian. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The monkey god, Hanuman.
Hanuman.
Have you heard of him?
No, I haven't. It's fascinating actually how many cultures have this monkey god or monkey king, even in Chinese cultures. But in Indian culture, he's like the god of strength and energy. And this like devoted servant to Rama. Have you heard of the Ramayana? Yeah, I've heard of Rama.
Yeah.
So Hanuman's one of the core characters in that. And so one of his alternative names is Anjaneya. And so that's what I'm named after.
Yeah, that's a cool name.
I was a hyper energetic kid, monkey-like, so.
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Chapter 2: How does blue light affect our health?
Chapter 3: What did Steve Jobs know about technology's dangers?
Has never been designed with the idea that there'll be trillion dollar companies on the other side absolutely trying to steal all the attention they can from you. When you talk to the people who first did computers, they would have never guessed that computers were thought as calculators. They were thought of these tools that just nerds and geeks use.
They would have never thought they'd be these dopamine slot machines that eight-year-olds would be spending all day on. And so finally, there's the possibility today that to sit down and say, wait a minute, we can't just keep going forever in this current trajectory because the soul of a current computer, the soul of a machine is rotten.
it's it's simply technologists just optimizing something for the sake of optimization right it's it has no soul it's lost that early bicycle for the mind that what computing was early in the days which was this making you the best versions of yourself instead it just got into this object rat race of dissociation of this productivity thing that at the cost of everything else tries to promise you productivity um and finally
My whole journey to this was seeing the way that impacted my life. I'm super ADHD, and I just felt like an idiot all the time on a computer. I would intend to do something, and next thing you know, I'm scrolling on ESPN. I have 200 tabs open, if not more. I just keep beating myself up. Like, why are you not getting done what you need to get done? I'd stay up late. My eyes would hurt.
My sleep was screwed up. We know, I guess we're going to get into it, but all the ways that blue light can really affect you at your nervous system level, your physical health, your sleep, your mental health. And I was like, wait, this thing is my, it's my main relationship to the world. This is the thing I use for the most amount of hours per day. And it makes me feel like crap.
And it doesn't help me be the best version of myself. I kind of feel like the worst version of myself. And so, at a certain point, I... I was struggling so much. I was deeply depressed. I kind of lived a life where I was just living in my parents' basement and there was no sun, just surrounded by screens and blue light all day.
And it just got to the point where I just said, I can't do this anymore. Previous to that, I was in Silicon Valley. I came there. hoping, you know, this spirit of computing that we could help people's lives. And holy crap, what's the actual reality when you get there is far different than, you know, the picture sold to you. And so just it all kind of came crashing down.
And I just said, okay, let's declare bankruptcy on computing. If we were to start again, and this time start with the human in mind, what could it look like? And everything else that I then pursued was just really exploring the possibility of redoing computing. And for me, if there's anything I've learned is the basis for so much health is light. The basis for everything else is light.
And so if you want to reimagine computing to now be healthier, to now be holistic, to now be wholesome, you got to start with light. And that's where I wanted to make something where how can you make a computer that respects light circadian rhythms? How does it actually not produce junk light? How does it not produce blue light? How can it be used outside in the sun?
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Chapter 4: What is the vision behind Daylight Computer?
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You know, they were just symbols on a screen that you would type in and you do commands and you get it back to actually think of something that was visual and you could click on, you can drag stuff and it would actually look like a document. Like a touch screen? No, no, they didn't have touch back then. Just think of your Mac. Right. Oh, with the mouse, like clicking and dragging stuff?
They didn't have a mouse. If you go actually far enough back, everything was just keyboard. So the idea of literally having a mouse, the idea of having a cursor, of dragging and dropping files and moving it around, and actually you can be able to see that, that was literally all had to be invented and at the time not obvious.
And so folks like Doug Engelbart, there's an amazing demo you can look up. These are the people who inspired Alan Kay. He had basically predicted like in 50 years ago what computing was going to be. The possibility of networked communication that we could message each other.
The idea of the mouse, believe it or not, that was like people were skeptical that people would ever use a mouse or that was even a good idea. Essentially, at Xerox PARC, they came up with the future of computing, what would be a normal desktop and what's your MacBook today. Wow. And Apple and so on basically just got their ideas from Xerox PARC and implemented it. No way. Yeah.
What do people say to you when you're rubbing shoulders with some of these Silicon Valley big shots that are like balls deep in companies like Apple and Facebook, social media companies? Like what is their initial reaction to what you're doing?
they laugh i mean they think it's naive that's why it was so disillusioning for me i thought it was this place of idealism and i kind of believe the whole like hey they're trying to change the world for the better and you get there and it's not that at all it's sterile it's transactional yeah it's like pre-med and goldman sachs and mckinsey energy masquerading for you know wanting to invent things
It's now the high status thing to do is to be in startups or technology or Silicon Valley. And so there's something that just shifts deeply in culture when you go from kind of hippies and idealists and nerds and people who almost do this because they don't know what else they'll do. They're not employable elsewhere. They're not going to fit into normal culture. Now it's the exact opposite.
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Chapter 5: How does technology shape our behavior?
When did this become a culture of like, we'll have the most cynical viewpoints of what human nature is. And that's the big problem here is the way computers are being designed is they're not optimistic at all about human nature. They're not optimistic at all about our ability to self empower ourselves. They're completely cynical.
And so even if you think of a normal computer screen or blue light, they're like, yeah, whatever. People are never going to know about that. And I think the point of a podcast like yours and others is like, no, dude, people aren't dumb. We want things to change. We want the best things for ourselves and our families. And these guys are never going to do it because they just...
It's far more profitable. It's far easier to just be cynical and pander to people and sell them junk food. And I think that's the problem with computers today is they're junk food computers.
I was kind of shocked when Jack Cruz told me that out of all the contributing factors to all the diseases and cancers and obesity and diabetes and the stuff in the US, he thinks that food is like second or third on the rung as far as like key contributors to this stuff. He thinks that the light is the number one factor for all these diseases
this explosion of diseases that are in our country he thinks that because people not only because the light is addictive and it's like you said a dopamine slot that's great dopamine slot machine and it's keeping people stuck on these screens and keeping them up late at night and keeping them distracted and keeping them in this sympathetic state exactly
that it combined with the fact that they're not outside they're staying inside all the time is what's doing this and i i got on my phone and my laptop i got all the apps jack had to like make the screen red and i noticed i've already noticed a huge difference like i'm waking up at like i used to like have to drag my carcass out of bed at 7 a.m now i'm like wide awake at 6 30 and
And I've noticed it because I'm laying in bed at night with my phone and it's like fully read. And I'll try to I'll scroll through Instagram or like check my emails or my messages. Ten minutes in, I'm just done. I can't do it anymore. Literally like falling asleep. And when normally without that, with the regular light on the screen, I would probably stay up till 1 a.m.
So there's definitely a huge difference.
That's the big idea here is we're so numb and overstimulated and so bombarded, we have normalized the way we feel, the way computers make us feel, the way it impacts us. And until you actually go out of your way, you don't realize what the hell, how tired I am, how much brain fog I have. How much it screws up, you're sleeping.
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Chapter 6: What is screen apnea and its effects?
I feel the same way. Even when I go to third world countries where there's not normal everyday conveniences that we have in the modern world here, where there's not traffic lights on every corner, where you basically have to pull up to an intersection and look everywhere. look at people to make sure like, okay, I'm going right. Or like, you're not going to kill me.
You have to actually stay alive without using traffic lights and stop signs and, and all this stuff. It keeps you like in a, in a, um,
an active state of mind where you're like always like fight or flight you're trying to figure out your way around and like instead of getting in the car going down the street stopping at the stoplight scrolling on your phone going to the grocery store filling your car like it kind of i feel like society in general with how convenient everything is is sort of like compounding onto all of this stuff and making us making us slower and fatter and dumber
It's almost crazy that we've ended up this way because if you were diabolical and you were to design a society, you would come up with something similar to this. Check up everybody's nervous system such that they can't really think or feel. They're just reacting to things. And give them something in front of them that can give them endless stimulation.
That's an endless slot machine of variable reward. and put their physiology in a state between the blue light, the fact that it is bright light and it's flickering, such that you're always craving stimulation. Boom. Boom. Brave new world right there. Have you read Brave New World or Neil Postman? No, I haven't. I almost want to read it out loud. It's so good at describing this.
Let's see if I can pull this up.
he's pulling it up on his daylight computer right now. We got a little shot. I can show you how it works. I think so. Cool, man.
Okay. So this guy named Neil Postman wrote this book called musing ourselves to death.
Okay.
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Chapter 7: What is the solar punk timeline?
Do you think people in Silicon Valley and people that work at these giant tech companies are aware of this? Is there anyone who's aware of this? And if they are, what do you think, what is their view on it?
Well, I think that's what's so heartbreaking about this is they're the most conscious about this. People don't know this fact. I think it should be absolutely well known. Steve Jobs didn't allow his own kids to have iPhones or iPads until they were 16. but he is happy as hell to sell it to your kids. How is that not like on the front page of everything?
Is that real?
That's for real? Yeah, you can look it up. Wow. How is that not on the front page of everything that this guy who invented it knew what its negative impact was on a developing brain? And he's happy to sell it to the rest of you. You look at Mark Zuckerberg, he doesn't allow his kids to have social media or phones. Right. He himself uses...
Uses an e-paper tablet, but he's trying to get you to put the screen to be your entire life.
Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, did not allow his children to use iPads or other technology at home. Wow. In his 2011 interview at the New York Times, he said that we don't allow iPads in the home. We think it's too dangerous for them, in effect. And he recognized the iPad's addictive nature and believed it would be difficult for children to resist the allure. Wow. Oh, dude. Wow. Holy shit. Yep.
And Gates did not allow his children cell phones until they were 14 years old. Prohibit them during meals and before bed. Wasn't there something though? Did you hear about the, I don't know if it was a study or if it was an article that came out about surgeons that played video games were like 90% better at like performing surgery. They might've even been brain surgeons. Can you find a, yeah.
2017.
So what's the background? Video games have become extensively integrated in popular culture. Anecdotal observations of young surgeons suggest that video game playing contributes to performance... It contributes to performance excellence in laparoscopic surgery. Training benefits for surgeons who play video games should be quantifiable.
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Chapter 8: How can we redesign technology for better human health?
And the famous thing here is for the first time ever, a computer had beaten the world's best chess player. And that computer Deep Blue, that AI that beat Garry Kasparov back then, that was a million times less powerful than the AIs and computers we have today.
So you now today have a million times more powerful computer every minute playing a game against you, which is addict you and get you to spend as much time as possible. That's what they have on their internal dashboard, their OKRs, how much time, how much engagement we get from a customer. And you don't even know you're playing a game against this.
If Garry Kasparov lost back then, what chance do we have today? And I don't think people realize it because it just seems like, oh, I'm just reading something or watching something. They do not understand the system of control. And also, he was aware he was playing the game. He was aware he was playing the game. We're not. We have no...
And so that's, it's like when you start to realize actually how much this benefits the current status quo of society to have people this way, no wonder they don't want to change computers. And you can't come out and suddenly if you're Tim Cook and say, Hey, this is the iPad healthy edition, you know, no longer has blue light and no longer flickers.
Cause you're gonna be like, so every iPad before was not healthy. Like,
right you're not you're not going to come out and yeah that's not yeah right jeopardize your entire business and every everything you sell yeah i see what you're saying and so if more people just knew that so many of the people in silicon valley don't allow their kids to use phones and ipads and social media and unrestricted access they're all incredibly careful
Has no one tried to buy you out or silence you just to shut this down? Like Apple coming, Hey Anjan, here's a $10 million. Just go away.
We, we got, we got some early offers to, to buy ourselves out from some, one of the big guys, but really, yeah, but that's, and then what was the, like, what was the terms of it?
Like they wanted to buy it, like basically take it and you walk away. Yeah.
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