Joe Rogan Experience #1840 - Marc Andreesson

Marc Andreessen is an entrepreneur, investor, and software engineer. He is co-creator of the world's first widely used internet browser, Mosaic, co-founder of the social media network platform Ning, and co-founder and general partner of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Joe RoganhostMarc Andreessenguest

Jun 27, 20242h 47mWatch on YouTube ↗

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150 min read · 30,002 words

0:00 – 1:09
Tech OG origins: life before browsers and why “obvious” tech wasn’t obvious
1. JRJoe Rogan
  (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
2. MAMarc Andreessen
  The Joe Rogan Experience.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music) What's up, Marc? How are you? (laughs)
4. MAMarc Andreessen
  (laughs) I'm good, I'm great.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  Have you done a podcast before?
6. MAMarc Andreessen
  I've done podcasts before.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah?
8. MAMarc Andreessen
  Nothing with this reach, though.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh.
10. MAMarc Andreessen
  So that's exciting.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  You can't think about that.
12. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yep. Nope, not at all.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  Can't think of the reach part.
14. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yep.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  Um, first of all, very nice to meet you.
16. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah, you too.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  You, you're, like, you're a tech OG. Like, uh, y- you know, when it comes to, like, the tech people, you're, you're like... You know. You're at the forefront of it all. I mean, you were one of the co-found- you were one of the co-creators of Mosaic, right?
18. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah, mm-hmm. That's right.
19. JRJoe Rogan
  What was it like before there were web browsers?
20. MAMarc Andreessen
  (laughs) So-
21. JRJoe Rogan
  How do you know- y- you know a time before web browsers, like...
22. MAMarc Andreessen
  I do. So, y- y- I'm an OG now, but when I first started, I thought I missed the whole thing. Like-
23. JRJoe Rogan
  Really?
24. MAMarc Andreessen
  ... I thought I missed the whole... 'Cause I missed the personal computer. I missed the whole thing.
25. JRJoe Rogan
  You missed the ad- the in- in- original use of the personal computer?
26. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah, the personal computer, and before that, all the other computers that, you know, came before that. So the computer revolution kinda happened over the 50 years right before I showed up.
27. JRJoe Rogan
  What was the first personal computer?
1:09 – 2:41
Proto-internet in the 1950s: PLATO, early email, and multiplayer games
1. MAMarc Andreessen
  The first personal computer... The first true personal computer, they were like kits in the early '70s that you could build. Um, the first interactive computer that you could use the way you use a PC was all the way back in the '50s. It was a system called PLATO, at the University of Illinois, where I went. And it was, uh, it was really, it's- there's a great book called the, uh, the- it's like The Bright Orange Glow, and it was a, it was a s- screen, black screen with on- only orange graphics.
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Wow.
3. MAMarc Andreessen
  Um, and they, they built it by hand at the time, and they had the whole thing working. And so, they, they, they like these ideas are all old ideas. They had email. Like, they, they had all these ideas kinda way back when. It just-
4. JRJoe Rogan
  They had email?
5. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah, they had email and messaging and did multiplayer video games and all that stuff back in the '50s.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Really?
7. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah, yeah. It just was, it just was in a- only in a couple places.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  So-
9. MAMarc Andreessen
  It was really hard to get it working. It was expensive.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  When you say multiplayer video games, it wasn't like a graphic video game.
11. MAMarc Andreessen
  They had like very simple, very simple graphics, uh, very simple like Space War games or whatever. I mean, really sim- remember like Asteroids.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
13. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah, like that quality of stuff or even, even simpler than that.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  So what year was Asteroids?
15. MAMarc Andreessen
  Asteroids would've been in the late '70s. '77, '78, '79.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm.
17. MAMarc Andreessen
  Somewhere in there.
18. JRJoe Rogan
  Yo, uh-
19. MAMarc Andreessen
  Pong, Pong was '74, I think, which was the big... The first console, the first, uh, arcade video game was Pong.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, we had one somewhere around that time, and I remember thinking it was the most crazy thing I've ever seen in my life. That you could play a thing that's taking place on your television. You could move the dial and the thing on the television would move. I mean, it was magic.
21. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah.
22. JRJoe Rogan
  It's so crude and dumb-
23. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  ... for kids today. They would never believe the, the impact that it had-
25. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah.
26. JRJoe Rogan
  ... on people back then.
2:41 – 6:56
Arcade inflection points: Pong’s origin story and Dragon’s Lair’s leap
1. MAMarc Andreessen
  So before the one you had on your TV set, that was later on. Before they had the, like, the arcade game, the console on the- in the arcade, and the, the, the story there is, is crazy, is this guy Nolan Bushnell, who's the founder of this company Atari that basically created the video game industry, and he, he developed this, this game Pong. So y- and he literally built one. Like, they, they had no idea if anybody would want to play a video game at that point, so they built one. They built this, this console. They put it in a bar in Mountain View in, in Silicon Valley, um, and, uh, the guy, the owner of the bar called up, you know, three days later, and he's like, "You know, your, your thing is broke. Like, come get it." Um, and you know, Nolan's like all depressed and he, he goes in and, and he realizes the, the, the, the thing, it's so jammed with quarters. It was so popular (laughs) , right? That people-
2. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
3. MAMarc Andreessen
  ... just like kept jamming quarters in it, right? And then it literally like, it couldn't take any more quarters and, and, and literally he was like, "Aha!" You know, proof people actually want to play video games. Like that, that's how... Like even that was not obvious at the time.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, I remember the first video game arcades.
5. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  And like a complex game was w- d- was that... There was like a Dungeons & Dragons game. What was it called? Dragon Quest or something like that?
7. MAMarc Andreessen
  There was, there was the first LaserDisc game which had like video clips.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Yes.
9. MAMarc Andreessen
  It's probably the one you're thinking about, yeah.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Isn't it, what was it called?
11. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah, yeah, something, something like that, yeah.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Do you remember that game, Jamie? You know what I'm talking about?
13. MAMarc Andreessen
  He, he's, he's way too young.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  And there was like a move that you had to do really quick.
15. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  And if you did the move correctly, you would go onto the next level.
17. MAMarc Andreessen
  Right.
18. JRJoe Rogan
  If you didn't, like a-
19. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  ... a, a video graphic would play where you-
21. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah.
22. JRJoe Rogan
  ... you got killed.
23. MAMarc Andreessen
  Well, that was, it was a big d- I think if it's the same one, it's a big deal 'cause it was the first game that had video clips.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  Yes.
25. MAMarc Andreessen
  And that, well, that was a really hard thing to do, and it had like a giant, the, the, it had this like giant, uh, platter, uh, LaserDisc platter-
26. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
27. MAMarc Andreessen
  ... inside playing these clips. And again, it was, it was like it existed, it was just really hard to make it work.
28. JRJoe Rogan
  Did you find it? What, was it Dragon's Lair? That, I think, that's it.
29. MAMarc Andreessen
  That's probably it.
30. JRJoe Rogan
  Let me see what it looks like. Yes. That's exactly what it was.
6:56 – 11:02
Early PCs were tiny by today’s standards: 4KB memory and cassette storage
1. JRJoe Rogan
  When you were first getting on computers ... So, like, how old were you when you first started coding and screwing around on computers?
2. MAMarc Andreessen
  Well, I started coding before I had a computer. (laughs)
3. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah?
4. MAMarc Andreessen
  So I taught myself. So I'm, I'm, like, the perfect ... I'm, like, right in the middle, I'm, like, the perfect Gen X age. I'm, like, fif- y- f- I've turned 51. I was born in 1971. Um, the, uh, the, the f- the home computers started coming out in, like, 1980, '81 where, like, normal people could buy them. They w- got down to a few hundred dollars. You hook them up to your TV set. Um, and so I, I knew I wanted one, but, like, I couldn't, I couldn't af- I didn't, you know, I hadn't-
5. JRJoe Rogan
  What did they run on? Like-
6. MAMarc Andreessen
  I didn't, I didn't, I hadn't mowed enough lawns yet to have the money to buy one. What did they run on? Like, software?
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Yes.
8. MAMarc Andreessen
  Oh. So Microsoft actually, they, they had a very simple operating system, and then they had, uh, Microsoft actually made, uh, what's called Basic at the time, which was the programming language it was built in.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  And so when you say this is a home computer, bu-
10. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  ... like, who was buying them and what was, what, what function did they serve?
12. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah. Well, that was a big debate. It's the, the big debate at the time actually was, are these things, do these things actually serve any function in the home? And sort of the, the, the ad- the ads would all say basically, like, basically it's ... 'Cause the ads are trying to get people to, like, basically pitch their parents on buying these things and be like, "Well, you know, tell your mom she can, like, do, like, she can file every, all of her recipes on the computer," right? They were, like, that's the kind of thing they were reaching for, right? And then your mom says, "Well, actually, I have a little card, you know, three by five card holder. I don't actually need (laughs) a computer to file my recipes." So there was that. Um, l- a lot of it was ga- a lot of it was games. A lot of it was vide- video games. And then, you know, kids, l- you know, like, like me, like to learn how to code, you know. First it's like play the game, and then it's like, "Well, how do you actually create one of these things?" And then, you know, businesses started to get a lot of, you know, sp- the sp- when the spreadsheet arrived, that was a really big deal, 'cause that was something that people, that was something people, a capability that business people didn't have until they had the PC.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  How much data storage did those things have back then?
14. MAMarc Andreessen
  So my first computer had four kilobytes of storage, 4,000 bytes.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
16. MAMarc Andreessen
  4,000 bytes of storage. And so you would write, you would write, you could code, you could write code, but you had to, you had to, you had to write code, you had to know exactly what was happening in basically every single slot of memory, 'cause it was, it, you just, there wasn't a lot to go around.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  And did it use a floppy disk? Or, like-
18. MAMarc Andreessen
  Uh, so later on they had the floppy disks. Um, w-
19. JRJoe Rogan
  That's new.
20. MAMarc Andreessen
  In, i- in, well, in the beginning, they used cassette players.
21. JRJoe Rogan
  Whoa.
22. MAMarc Andreessen
  Uh, so, okay, so this is the beginning. So if you're, you're a kid with a computer in 1980, you, you, you have a cassette player, and so they, it would literally record programs as, like, audio, garbled, you know, electronic sounds on a cassette tape, and then it'd read it back in. But you had this, like, tension, you had this tension 'cause cassette tapes weren't cheap. They were fairly expensive, and the high-quality cassette tapes were quite expensive, b- but you needed the high-quality cassette tape for the thing to actually work. But you were always tempted to buy the cheap cassette tape 'cause it was longer, right? And so you would buy the cheap cassette tape and then your programs, you know, story programs, then they wouldn't load and you'd be like, "All right, I gotta go back and buy the expensive cassette tape."
23. JRJoe Rogan
  Wow. How did they work through sound? Like, how did-
24. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah.
25. JRJoe Rogan
  ... that work?
26. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah, so they just, they, they code into basically, basically beeps. You know, you could, you could, you, you could ... Sorry. It wasn't music. You definitely couldn't dance to it.
27. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
28. MAMarc Andreessen
  But it was, it, you know, it was, it was beeps of different, different, uh, different frequencies.
29. JRJoe Rogan
  And that's how it stored data?
30. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah, and that's how it stored data. Yes. (laughs)
11:02 – 13:18
From DOS to GUI: the long lineage from Engelbart to Apple and Windows 3.1
1. JRJoe Rogan
  And so as you're watching this evolve around you and you're a part of it as well, like, when ... So when you, when, when did you guys first make Mosaic? What year was that?
2. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah, so that started in '92, and then-
3. JRJoe Rogan
  90, not even Windows-
4. MAMarc Andreessen
  ... really kind of hit-
5. JRJoe Rogan
  ... 95.
6. MAMarc Andreessen
  Hit critical mass in Windows, yeah. So yeah, no, it was pre-Windows 95.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
8. MAMarc Andreessen
  So it was ... Windows 3.1 was new back then, and Windows 3.1, Windows 3.1 was the first real version of Windows that a lot of people used, and it was, it was what brought the graphical user interface to personal computers. Right, so the Mac had shipped in '85, but they just never sold that many Macs, right? Most people had PCs. Most of the PCs just had text-based interfaces, and then Windows 3.1 was the big breakthrough.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  So the Mac got its user interface, the graphic user interface, from Xerox, right?
10. MAMarc Andreessen
  Well, so there's a long- this goes to the, the-
11. JRJoe Rogan
  Is that real?
12. MAMarc Andreessen
  ... the backstory. So the, so the Xerox had a system, yeah, Xerox had a system called the Alto, which was basically like a proto-, sort of a proto-Mac. Apple then basically built a computer that failed called the Lisa, uh, which was named after Steve Jobs' daughter, and then the Mac was the second computer they built with the GUI. But the story's not complete. The way the story gets told is that Apple somehow, like, stole these ideas from Xerox. That's not quite what happened, 'cause Xerox, those ideas had been implemented earlier by a guy named Doug Engelbart at St- Stanford, who had this thing at the time called the Mother of All Demos, which you can find on YouTube, where he basically in 1968, he shows all this stuff working. And then, again, if you trace back to the '50s, you get back to the PLATO system that I talked about, which had a lot of these ideas. And so it was like a 30-year process of a lot of people working on these ideas until, you know, basically Steve was able to package it up in the Macintosh.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  I need to see that video. The mother of all demos.
14. MAMarc Andreessen
  The mother of all demos. Yeah, so this is a legendary... This is a guy, yeah, this is a guy, Doug Engelbart.
15. NANarrator
  And then I say, "Well, this is going to be more important than it looks, so I'd like to set up a file." So I tell the machine, "All right, output to a file." And it says, "Oh, I need a name." I'll give it a name. I'll say, "Sample file."
16. JRJoe Rogan
  1968.
17. MAMarc Andreessen
  So you see on the right, that was the first mouse. So Doug Engelbart invented the mouse, among other things.
18. NANarrator
  And then it comes back automatically...
19. MAMarc Andreessen
  (laughs) And that's the first mouse there on the right side.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh, wow.
21. MAMarc Andreessen
  So he's showing the first mouse in use in the first computer system ever made.
22. JRJoe Rogan
  It was a three-button mouse.
23. MAMarc Andreessen
  It was a three-button mouse. Um, and-
24. JRJoe Rogan
  So could it copy and paste and all that stuff with those three buttons?
25. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it... He had word processing, he had all these, he had all kinds of interactive. He was one of the first four nodes on the internet back around that time, so he was even doing email back then, I think, or shortly thereafter.
26. JRJoe Rogan
  What?
27. MAMarc Andreessen
  Here he's writing code, um.
13:18 – 15:04
How the early internet worked: peers, email, file transfer, and telnet
1. JRJoe Rogan
  He was doing email in '68?
2. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very early on.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  Wow, so like sort of an intranet email? So you would have to be attached to the, the network to receive emails? Like, how did it work?
4. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah. It could either be... And yeah, you could... You had... There were private email systems early on, but also he was on the original inter- The original internet in the US started with only four computers on the internet, and one of them was his.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh.
6. MAMarc Andreessen
  Um, so there were four nodes on the original, on the original network map. And so he, he was kind of plugged into this stuff, really.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  And where was that?
8. MAMarc Andreessen
  This was at... It was at... It was something called Stanford Research Institute, which is-
9. JRJoe Rogan
  So did you have to be local to, to be a part of it?
10. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  Did it have to be connected by wire?
12. MAMarc Andreessen
  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And in fact-
13. JRJoe Rogan
  Like, it's not like it went through a telephone wire or anything, like another... You know, like, you know, like dial-up or anything like that.
14. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah. Well, so it, it... Early on they were the kind of the same thing. So actually early internet was actually integrated with dial-up. And so ear- early email, ear- early internet email actually was built, it didn't assume you had a permanent connection. It assumed you would dial into the internet once in a while, get all the data downloaded, and then you'd disconnect, because it was too expensive-
15. JRJoe Rogan
  So there was-
16. MAMarc Andreessen
  ... to leave the lines open.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  ... one original server? Like, one large server?
18. MAMarc Andreessen
  Well, the et- the, the internet idea was all the computers are peers, right?
19. JRJoe Rogan
  Okay.
20. MAMarc Andreessen
  So there's no, there's no single node, right? And so there's just four computers that talk to each other, which was the basis of what the internet is today. Four computers talk to each other, now it's 4 billion computers (laughs) talk to each other, but it was that same idea.
21. JRJoe Rogan
  And how... Did they store things individually? Like did you have access to each individual computer's data or did they have a collective database?
22. MAMarc Andreessen
  It, it, they, you know, they had a combination of... I mean, this is very original. The, these, these were very simple systems as compared to what we have today, so these were very basic implementations of these ideas. But they, they would have... They had very simple what's called store and forward email. Uh, they had very simple what's called file retrieval. So if there's a file on your computer and you wanted to let me download it, I could download it. They had what was called telnet, where you could log in to somebody else's computer and use it.
15:04 – 22:39
Mosaic and Netscape: productizing the web with graphics and encryption
1. JRJoe Rogan
  So you are messing around with this stuff and you guys create... Was it the very first web browser or the first, like, used-by-many-people web browser?
2. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah, it was the first... It was a productized, um... It was the first browser used by a large number of people. Um, it was the first browser that was really usable by a large number of people. Um, it was also one of the f- one of the first browsers that had integrated graphics. The, the actual first browser was a text browser. Uh, the very first one, which basically... Which was, which was a prototype that Tim Berners-Lee, uh, created. So, it... But it was just... It was very clear at that point, like we, we now have the G- we have, we have Windows, we have the Mac, we have the GUI, right? We have graphics, like, and, and then we have the internet, and we need to basically pull all these things together, which is what Mosaic did.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  And GUI is graphic user interface?
4. MAMarc Andreessen
  Graphic user interface, yeah.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  What is a GUI?
6. MAMarc Andreessen
  And, and it... And again, it sounds like it's... We, we've lived with the GUI now for 30 years. Most people don't remember computing before that. It sounds like-
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
8. MAMarc Andreessen
  ... obviously everything would be graphical, but it was not obvious at that point. Most computers at that point still were not graphical and so it was, it was a big deal to basically say, "Look, this is just gonna be graphical."
9. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah. Most computers were using DOS?
10. MAMarc Andreessen
  DOS, yeah, that's right.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah. And so when you created this... When you and whoever you did it with created Mosaic, what, what was that like to... What was the difference in, like, f- functionality? Like, what was the difference in what you could do with it?
12. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah. Well, so I... It... So (laughs) it worked really well. Um, so it... Like, we po- we polished it. Like, we got it to the point where, like, normal people could use it. 'Cause it was a bla- You, you could do this stuff a little bit before, but it was like a real black art to put it together. Um, so we got it to the point where it was, like, fully usable. We made it w- It's called backward compatible, so you could use it to get to any information on the internet, whether it was web or non-web. Um, and then you could actually have graphics actually in the information, right? So, so web pages before Mosaic were all text. You know, we, we added graphics and so you had the ability to have images, um, and you had the ability to ultimately have, you know, visual design and all the things that we have today. Um, and then later with Netscape, which followed, then we added encryption which gave you the ability to do business online, right? To be able to do e-commerce, right? And then later we added video, we added audio and, you know, it, it just kind of kept rolling and kind of became what it is today.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  When you look at it today, what... Do you remember your thoughts back then as to where this was all going?
14. MAMarc Andreessen
  So it was impossible to predict what... It's... You know, it's just-
15. JRJoe Rogan
  Of course.
16. MAMarc Andreessen
  It's played out at a much higher (laughs) level of scale with many more use cases than we would have thought, but it seemed pretty obvious to us that people would want this kind of thing. 'Cause at the very basic level is the ability for anybody to publish anything, right?
17. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
18. MAMarc Andreessen
  Text or video or audio, right? Um, and then it was the ability for anybody to consume anything, right?The ability for all computers in the world to connect with each other and that you wouldn't need centralized gatekeepers. You wouldn't have, you know, TV networks that could control what was on. Anybody could produce, you know, what- whatever they want to do. And then, so that... Like, that basic idea (laughs) seemed like a pretty good idea. Um, it, it hit an incredible wall of skepticism. Like, all of the experts, right? They're all on the record. They're all... If you read the newspapers, magazines at the time, 100% it would be like, "This is stupid. This is never gonna happen. Nobody wants this."
19. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
20. MAMarc Andreessen
  "This is, this is never... You know, this is never gonna work and if it does work, nobody's gonna want it." Uh, over... All, all the big companies were completely dismissive. Um, it was just like, "There's just no way. This is just too crazy." It was the same, same pattern. It's these, these crazy kids are at it again. You know, okay, sure, they've been right, you know, every other time. You know, not every...
21. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
22. MAMarc Andreessen
  They've been right many other times. You know, it's like-
23. JRJoe Rogan
  But this one they fucked up on.
24. MAMarc Andreessen
  Electricity worked, you know, telephones worked, the railroads worked, okay.
25. JRJoe Rogan
  Light bulb.
26. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah, light bulb worked, but like, you know, this computer thing is stupid. This internet thing is stupid. You know, now we're hearing it today. You know, crypto, blockchain, you know-
27. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
28. MAMarc Andreessen
  ... Web3, this stuff is stupid. You know, every new thing, it's just this constant wall of doubt. Um, and, you know, and frankly, a lot of it's fear and a lot of it's, you know, just kind of people getting freaked out.
29. JRJoe Rogan
  But your unique perspective of having been there early on with the original computers, having worked to code the original web browser that was widely used, like... And seeing where it's at now, does this give you...... a, a better perspective as to what the future could potentially lead to? Because you've seen these monumental changes, like firsthand and been a part of the actual mechanisms that forced us into the position we're in today.
30. MAMarc Andreessen
  Right.
22:39 – 24:08
What’s next after the internet: AI, crypto/Web3, AR/VR, IoT, and Neuralink
1. JRJoe Rogan
  What do you tr- what do you anticipate to be, like, one of the big factors if, like... If you're, you're thinking about real breakthrough technologies and things that are gonna change the game, is it some sort of a, a human in- internet interface, like something that is in your body, like a Neuralink type deal? Uh, is it something else? Is it augmented reality? Is it, is it virtual reality? What, like what do you think is gonna be like the next big shift in terms of the symbiotic relationship that we have with technology?
2. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah, so this is one of the very big topics in our industry that, you know, people argue about. We sit and talk about all day long trying to figure out like which, you know, which startups to fund and projects to work on. So I'll, I'll give you what I, what I kind of think is the case. So the, the two that are rolling right now that I think are gonna be really big deals are, are AI, um, on the one hand, and then cryptocurrency, blockchain, Web3 sort of combined phenomenon on, on the other hand. And I, I think both of those have now hit critical mass and both of those are gonna move, uh, really fast. So, so we should talk about those. And then right after that, you know, I think, yeah, some combination of what's case... they call virtual reality and augmented reality, VR, AR. Uh, some combination of those is gonna be a big deal. Um, then there's what's called Internet of Things, um, right? Which is like connecting, connecting all of the objects in the world online, and, and, and that's now happening. Um, and then, yeah, and then you've got the really futuristic stuff. You've got the, you know, Neuralink and the, the brain stuff and, you know, all, all kinds of, all kinds of ways to kind of, you know, have the human body be more connected in- into these environments. That, that stuff's further out, but there are very serious people working on it.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  So let's start with AI-
4. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah.
24:08 – 28:45
AI “sentience” controversy: training on internet text and why chatbots feel alive
1. JRJoe Rogan
  ... because that's the scariest one to me. This Google engineer that has come out and said that he believes that the Google AI is sentient because it says that it is sad, it says it's lonely, it starts communicating. And, you know, Google is... uh, they're... it seems like they're in a dilemma in that situation. First of all, if it is sentient, does it get rights?
2. MAMarc Andreessen
  Right.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  Like, does it get days off?
4. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yep.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  It, it, uh... I had this conversation with my friend Duncan Trussell last night, and he was saying, imagine if you, uh, you know, if you have to give it rights.
6. MAMarc Andreessen
  Mm-hmm.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Like, is it... does it get treated like a human being? Like what is it?
8. MAMarc Andreessen
  Mm-hmm. Well, I'll give you that. And make it even a step harder, what if you copy it?
9. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs) Right.
10. MAMarc Andreessen
  Now you've got two of 'em. (laughs)
11. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs) Well, that was what I said to Ray Kurzweil. Ray Kurzweil was talking at one point in time about downloading consciousness-
12. MAMarc Andreessen
  Right.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  ... into computers, and that he believes that inevitably will happen.
14. MAMarc Andreessen
  That's right.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  And my thought was like, "Well, what, what's gonna stop someone from downloading themselves a thousand times?"
16. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah. Of course, right.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  What if some Donald Trump-type character just wants a million Trumps out there-
18. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah.
19. JRJoe Rogan
  ... just out there doin' speeches?
20. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah.
21. JRJoe Rogan
  Like, what, what would stop that?
22. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah, exactly. So, so let's, let's start with what this actually is today, which is, I, I think, you know... which is very interesting. Not well-understood, but very interesting. So what, what Google and this, this other company, OpenAI, that are, are doing these kinda text... the text bots that have the... you know, the, the, the been, been in the news. Wh- what they do, it's a, it's a, it's a program. It's an, it's an AI program. It, it's, it's... basically, it uses a form of math called linear algebra. It's a r- well-known form of math, but it uses a very complex version of it. And then basically what they do is they've got complex math running on big computers, and then what they do is they have what they call training data.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
24. MAMarc Andreessen
  And so what they do is they basically slurp in a huge dataset from somewhere in the world, and then they basically train the math ag- against, against the data to try to kinda get it up to speed on how to interact and, and do things. The training data that they're using for these systems is all text on the internet (laughs) , right? So... a- and all text on the internet increasingly is a record of all c- human communication (laughs) , right? That's-
25. JRJoe Rogan
  All the texts on the internet.
26. MAMarc Andreessen
  All the texts on the internet.
27. JRJoe Rogan
  So how does it capture all this stuff?
28. MAMarc Andreessen
  Well, the... so Google, Google's core business is to be the craw- is to do that, is to be the crawler. You know, famously their mission, "Organize the world's information." They, they actually pull in all the text on the internet already to make their search engine work, and then that's, that's... and then you-
29. JRJoe Rogan
  And then the AI just scans that.
30. MAMarc Andreessen
  And the AI basically uses that as a training set, right? Um, and so... a- and, and basically just, just basically chews through and processes it. It's a very complex process, but, like, chews through and processes it. And then the AI kind of gets a converged kind of view of like, "Okay, this is human language. This is what these people are talking about." You know, and then it has all this statistical... you know, when s- when a human being says X, somebody else says Y or Z, or this would be a, a good thing to say or bad thing to say. F- for example, you can get emot- you can, you can detect emotional loading from text now, so you can kinda deter- with a computer, you can kinda say, "This text reflects somebody who's happy 'cause they're saying, 'Oh,' you know, 'I'm having a great day,' "versus this text is like, "I'm super mad," you know? Therefore it's upset. And so you could have... the computer could get trained on, okay, if I say this thing, it's likely to make humans happy. If I this... say this thing, it's likely to make humans sad. But here's the thing. I- it, it, it's all, it's all human-generated text. It's, it's all the conversations that, that, that we've all had. And, and so basically, you load that into the computer, and then the computer's able to kinda simulate, right, somebody else ha- having that conversation. Um, but, but what happens is basically the computer is playing back what people say, right? It, it-
28:45 – 37:26
Turing test and self-awareness: why humans are easy to fool (especially with sexbots)
1. MAMarc Andreessen
  Like, that's the real question. And so, uh, and, and so let's talk about... there's something called the Turing test, right?
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
3. MAMarc Andreessen
  Which is a little bit more famous now 'cause the, the movie they made-
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Alan Turing.
5. MAMarc Andreessen
  ... made about Alan Turing.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
7. MAMarc Andreessen
  So the Turing test basically, in its simplified form, the Turing test is basically you're sitting in a computer terminal, you're typing in questions, and then the answers are showing up on the screen. There's a 50% chance you're talking to a person sitting in another room who's typing the responses back. There's a 50% chance you're talking to a machine. You don't know, right? You're, you're the subject. And y- you can ask the entity on the (laughs) other end of the connection any number of questions, right? He wi- he or she or it will give you (laughs) any number of answers. At the end, you have to make the judgment as to whether you're talking to a person or talking to a machine. The, the theory of the Turing test is when a computer can convince a person that it's a person, th- then it will have achieved artificial intelligence, right? Th- then it will be as, as smart as a person. But, but that begs the question of like, okay, like how easy are we to trick?
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
9. MAMarc Andreessen
  Right? Like, a- a- and in fact-
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
11. MAMarc Andreessen
  ... a- a- an- so, and so actually it turns out (laughs) what's happened... this is actually true. What's happened is actually there have been chat bots that have been fooling people on the Turing test now for several years.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
13. MAMarc Andreessen
  The easiest way to do it is with a sex chat bot.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
15. MAMarc Andreessen
  (laughs)
16. JRJoe Rogan
  'Cause we're the most gullible when it comes to sex.
17. MAMarc Andreessen
  Speci- specifically to men. (laughs)
18. JRJoe Rogan
  Of course. (laughs)
19. MAMarc Andreessen
  Of course.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  I bet women are, like, way less gullible.
21. MAMarc Andreessen
  Women probably fall for it a lot less, but men... like, you get a man on there with a sex chat bot, like, uh, the, the man-
22. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
23. MAMarc Andreessen
  ... will convince himself he's talking to a real woman, like, pretty easily, even when he's not.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
25. MAMarc Andreessen
  Um, and so just think of this as a slightly more... you know, you can think about this as a somewhat more advanced version of that, which is, look, if, if this thing... if it's an algorithm that's been optimized to trick people basically, th- to convince people that it's real, it's going to... it's gonna pass the Turing test even though it's not actually conscious. Uh, uh, meaning it has no awareness. It has no desire. It has-
26. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
27. MAMarc Andreessen
  ... no regret. It has no fear. You know, it has none of the hallmarks that we would associate with being a living being, like mu- much less a, a, a conscious being. And so, so this is, this is the twist, and this is where I think this guy at Google got, got, got, got kind of str- strung up a little bit as... or held up, um, is i- the, the computers are gonna be able to trick people into thinking they're (laughs) conscious, like, way before-
28. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
29. MAMarc Andreessen
  ... they actually become conscious. And, and then there's just the other side of it, which is like we, we have no idea. We don't know how human consciousness works. Like, we, we have no idea how the brain works. We have no idea how to like... we, we have no idea how to do any of this... any, any of this stuff on people. The, the most advanced form of medical science that understands consciousness is actually a- anesthesiology 'cause they know how to turn it off.
30. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
37:26 – 49:59
Mind–body debate, Kurzweil uploads, and the “emergence” hand-wave
1. MAMarc Andreessen
  Like, it's just not a ... there's no drama in it, right? So, so anyway, that's why I say hope- hopefully it won't be Holl- Hollywood's, uh, dystopian vision. But here's another question though on the nature of consciousness, right? Which is another idea that D- Descartes had, that I think therefore I am guy had, is he had this idea of mind body dualism, which is also what Ray Kurzweil has with this idea that you'll be able to upload the mind, which is like, okay, there's the mind, which is, like, basically all of this, you know, some level of software-equivalent coding, something, something happening and how we do all the stuff you just described. Then there's the body, and there's some separation between mind and body, where maybe the body is sort of... it could be arbitrarily modified, or is disposable, or could be replaced, or-
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Hmm.
3. MAMarc Andreessen
  ... replaced by a computer. It's just not necessary once you upload your brain. And, of course, and this is a relevant question for, for the A- for AI because, of course, the AI, DALL-E has no body. You know, GPT-3 has no body.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
5. MAMarc Andreessen
  Well, do we really believe in min- m- mind body du- do we really believe mind and body are separate? Like, do we really believe that? And what the science tells us is, no, they're not separate. In fact, they're very connected, right? And a huge part of what it is to be human is the intersection point of, of, of, of, of brain and mind, and then brain to rest of body. For example, all the medical research now that's going into the influence of gut bacteria on behavior-
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Hmm.
7. MAMarc Andreessen
  ... right? And the, and the sort of ... and the role of viruses and how they change behavior. And, like ... and, and so basically, like, I, I think the most evolved version of this, the, the most sort of advanced version of this is, like, whatever it means to be human, it's some combination of mind and body. It's some combination of logic and emotion. It's some combination of mi- (laughs) mind and brain. It leads to us being the crazy, creative, inventive, destructive, innovative, caring, hating people we are, right? The sort of mess-
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
9. MAMarc Andreessen
  ... the mess that is humanity, right? Like, that, that's, that's amazing. Like, that, that, you know, the, the, the four billion years of evolution that it took to get us to the point where we're at today I- is, like, amazing. And I'm just saying, like, we don't know, we don't have the slightest idea how to build that. Like, we're ... we don't even understand how we work. We don't have the slightest idea how, how to build that yet. And that, that's why I, I'm not worried that these things, like, somehow come alive or they start to-
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, see-
11. MAMarc Andreessen
  But-
12. JRJoe Rogan
  ... I'm much more worried than you.
13. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  Because my concern is not just how we work, 'cause I know that we don't have a, a great grasp of how the human brain works and how the consciousness works and how w- we interface with each other in that way. But what we do know is all the things that we're capable of doing, in terms of we have this vast database of human literature and accomplishments and mathematics and all the different things that we've learned. All you, you need to d- have is something that can also do what we do, and then it's indistinguishable from us. So, like, our idea of that of our brain is so complex, we can't even map out the human brain. We don't even understand how it works. But we don't have to understand how it works. We just make something that works just as good, if not better.
15. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  And it doesn't have the same, like, cells.
17. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah, yeah.
18. JRJoe Rogan
  But it works just as good or better.
19. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  It just ... we can do it without emotion.
21. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah, yeah.
22. JRJoe Rogan
  Which might be the thing that fucks us up, but also might be the thing that makes us amazing, but maybe only to us.
23. MAMarc Andreessen
  Right.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  Right? To the universe, we're, like ... these emotions and all these biological needs, this is what causes war and murder and all the cr- and thievery and all the nutty things that people do.
25. MAMarc Andreessen
  Right.
26. JRJoe Rogan
  But if we can just get that out, then you have this creativity machine.
27. MAMarc Andreessen
  Right.
28. JRJoe Rogan
  Then you have this, this force of constant, never-ending innovation-
29. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah.
30. JRJoe Rogan
  ... which is what the human race seems to be.
49:59 – 57:53
Religion as society’s moral OS: from ancient cults to modern ideology and “woke Twitter”
1. MAMarc Andreessen
  Um, so you should look that up. Um, it's a, it's a, um, a, a, um, some people might call it a cult. Um, I don't wanna be judgmental. Um, it's a, it's a creative, it's a, it's a creative non-traditional, um, uh, uh, religion, um, that he apparently is fully ordained in. Um, uh, more power to him. Um, you know, a priest of a marginal, whatever, maybe we don't take that seriously, but now we get back to the big questions, right? Which is like, okay, like historically, Religion, capital R Religion, played a big role in the exact questions that you're talking about. And you know-
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
3. MAMarc Andreessen
  ... traditionally we, you know, culturally, traditionally we had concepts like, well, we know that people are different than animals because people have souls. Right? Um, and so, you know, we, in the sort of modern evolved West are, you know, a lot of us at least, would think that we're beyond the sort of superstition that's engaged in that. But we are asking these like very profound fundamental questions-
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
5. MAMarc Andreessen
  ... that a lot of people have thought about for a very long time. And a lot of that knowledge has been encoded into religions. And so I, I think the religious philosophical dimension of this is actually gonna become very important. I, I think we, we as a society are gonna have to really take these things seriously.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Uh, uh, in what way? Like what, in w- what way do you think religion is gonna play into this?
7. MAMarc Andreessen
  Well, in the sa- in the same way that it pl- in the same way that it plays, in the same way that it plays in basically any... So religion historically is how we sort of transmit ethical and moral judgments, right? Um, and then, you know, we basically sort of, you know, it's the sort of modern intellectual vanguard of the West 100 years ago, whatever decided to shed religion as a sort of primary organizing thing. But we decided to continue to try to evolve ethics and morals. But if you ask anybody who's is, if you ask anybody who's religious, what is the process of figuring out ethics, ethics and morals, they will tell you, "Well, that's a religion." And so-
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
9. MAMarc Andreessen
  ... Ni- Nietzsche would say we're just inventing new religions. Like we're, we're, we're sitting here, we think of ourselves as highly evolved scientific people. In reality, we're having basically fundamentally philosophical debates about these very deep issues that don't have concrete scientific answers, and that we're basically inventing new religions as we go.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, it makes sense because people behave in re- like a religious zealot-
11. MAMarc Andreessen
  Right.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  ... when they defend their ideologies.
13. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  Like when they're unable to objectively look at their own thoughts and opinions on things-
15. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  ... because it's outside of the ideology.
17. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah, yeah. The religious instinct runs very deep, right? I mean-
18. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah. But that's a-
19. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  Is that our, a part of our operating system?
21. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah, I think so. Uh, it has something to, from what, from what I've been able to establish from reading about this, it has something to do with basically w- what does it mean for individuals to cohere together into a group, and what does it mean to kind o- have that group have sort of the equivalent of an operating system that it's able to basically all agree on and prove to, you know, members of the group are able to prove to each other that they're full members of the group.
22. JRJoe Rogan
  And it seems universal?
23. MAMarc Andreessen
  And then, and then they, and then they, they transmit, right? That what, what religion does is it encodes ethics and morals, but it, it encodes lessons learned over very long periods of time into basically like a book, right? In a set, you know, parables, right? And lessons, right? And, you know, commandments (laughs) and things like this. And then, you know, a thousand years later, people in theory, right, are, are at least, are, are benefiting from all of this hard, hard won wisdom over the generations.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
25. MAMarc Andreessen
  And of course the, the big religions were all developed pre-science, right? And so they, they were basically an attempt to sort of code human knowledge, pre-scientific human knowledge into, into something that was reproducible even in an era where you didn't have mass literacy.
26. JRJoe Rogan
  Do you think that's why most attempts at encoding morals and ethics into some sort of an open structure turn religious?
27. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah.
28. JRJoe Rogan
  ... they almost all turn to this point where it seems like you're in a cult.
29. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah. You're basically... I, well, it's, it's, it's basically y- yeah. I think everything ultimately is some... I think basically all human societies, all structures of people working together, living together, whatever, it's, it's sort of, they're all sort of very severely watered-down versions of the original cults. Like, if, if you go far enough back in hu- if you go far enough back in human history, if you go back before the Greeks, th- there's this long history of the sort of devel- and I'm gonna specifically talk about Western civilization here 'cause I don't know much about the Eastern side, but Western civilization, there's this great book, um, that, called The Ancient City that goes through this and it talks about how the original form of civilization was basically... it was a fascist, communist cult. Um, a- and this is the origination of the tribes and then ultimately the, the cities and then... which ultimately became states. And, and it's what I was describing earlier, which was like, the Greek city state was basically a, a fascist, communist cult. Um, it had a very concrete, specific religion. It had its own gods. People who were not in that cult, right, did not count as human, had no rights, and were to be killed on sight, or could be, like, freely ensl-... Like, they had no trouble... They had no moral qualms at all about enslaving people or killing people who weren't in their cult, 'cause-
30. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
57:53 – 1:28:16
When science becomes doctrine: climate modeling, ‘the science is settled,’ and factional identity
1. JRJoe Rogan
  What seems to d-... that kind of religious thinking applies to so many critical issues of our time.
2. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yeah.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  Like, even things like climate change.
4. MAMarc Andreessen
  Right.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  I've brought up climate change to people, and you see this, this almost, like, ramping up of this defending of this idea that upon further examination they have very little understanding of, or at least a, a comprehen-... like, a, a sort of a cursory understanding that they've gotten through a couple Washington Post articles.
6. MAMarc Andreessen
  Right.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  But as far as, like, a real understanding of the science and long-term studies, very few people who are very excited about climate change-
8. MAMarc Andreessen
  Yep.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  ... it seems like, almost like a thing. Like c- clearly, don't get me wrong, it's like this is something we should be concerned with. This is something we should act, we should be very proactive. We, we should definitely preserve our environment. But w- I'm not... That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is this inclination for people to support or to like robustly defend an idea that they have very little study in.
10. MAMarc Andreessen
  Right. So I don't want to, I won't take a position on cli- climate-
11. JRJoe Rogan
  No, no, I don't want you to.
12. MAMarc Andreessen
  ... climate change, because... (laughs)
13. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
14. MAMarc Andreessen
  But, um, but-
15. JRJoe Rogan
  But it's clear it's real.
16. MAMarc Andreessen
  But the phenomenon... Well, so, it's, it's, so it's complicated.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  Yes.
18. MAMarc Andreessen
  So, it's, it's, it's, it's complicated. It's based on simulations of a very complex system. Um, like, it's not... The, the, climate studies are not scientific experiments in the traditional sense.

Episode duration: 2:47:16

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Tech OG origins: life before browsers and why “obvious” tech wasn’t obvious

Proto-internet in the 1950s: PLATO, early email, and multiplayer games

Arcade inflection points: Pong’s origin story and Dragon’s Lair’s leap

Early PCs were tiny by today’s standards: 4KB memory and cassette storage

From DOS to GUI: the long lineage from Engelbart to Apple and Windows 3.1

How the early internet worked: peers, email, file transfer, and telnet

Mosaic and Netscape: productizing the web with graphics and encryption

What’s next after the internet: AI, crypto/Web3, AR/VR, IoT, and Neuralink

AI “sentience” controversy: training on internet text and why chatbots feel alive

Turing test and self-awareness: why humans are easy to fool (especially with sexbots)

Mind–body debate, Kurzweil uploads, and the “emergence” hand-wave

Religion as society’s moral OS: from ancient cults to modern ideology and “woke Twitter”

When science becomes doctrine: climate modeling, ‘the science is settled,’ and factional identity

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