[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":132},["ShallowReactive",2],{"podcast-meta":3,"podcast-theme-colors":32,"episode-creating-communal-computers-interview":92},{"title":4,"author":5,"description":6,"artwork":7,"categories":8,"feedUrl":10,"type":11,"explicit":12,"link":13,"language":14,"copyright":15,"podcast2":16,"hasPeople":31},"The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source","Changelog Media","Software's best weekly news brief, deep technical interviews & talk show.","https://cdn.changelog.com/static/images/podcasts/podcast-original-f16d0363067166f241d080ee2e2d4a28.png",[9],"Technology","https://changelog.com/podcast/feed","episodic",false,"https://changelog.com/podcast","en-us","All rights reserved",{"persons":17,"funding":27},[18,23],{"name":19,"role":20,"img":21,"href":22},"Adam Stacoviak","host","https://cdn.changelog.com/uploads/avatars/people/Qo/avatar_large.jpg?v=63760280419","https://changelog.com/person/adamstac",{"name":24,"role":20,"img":25,"href":26},"Jerod Santo","https://cdn.changelog.com/uploads/avatars/people/z4/avatar_large.jpeg?v=63760071650","https://changelog.com/person/jerodsanto",[28],{"url":29,"text":30},"https://changelog.com/++","Support our work by joining Changelog++",true,{"palette":33,"sourceColor":54,"extractedColors":55},{"light":34,"dark":43},{"primary":35,"primary-foreground":36,"secondary":37,"secondary-foreground":35,"accent":38,"muted":39,"muted-foreground":40,"ring":35,"podcast-vibrant":41,"podcast-muted":42},"#00182f","#ffffff","#eff2f6","#e7ecf0","#f0f2f4","#6f7275","#0375c4","#e2e5e8",{"primary":44,"primary-foreground":45,"secondary":46,"secondary-foreground":47,"accent":48,"muted":49,"muted-foreground":50,"ring":51,"podcast-vibrant":52,"podcast-muted":53},"#5580a9","#09090b","#191b1d","#dcdee0","#1d2022","#1a1b1c","#8d8f91","#c1c4c8","#3694e6","#151618","#a1978d",[56,63,71,79,84],{"hex":54,"red":57,"green":58,"blue":59,"area":60,"saturation":61,"lightness":62},161,151,141,0.13136455555555557,0.09615384615384609,0.592156862745098,{"hex":64,"red":65,"green":66,"blue":67,"area":68,"saturation":69,"lightness":70},"#d2d1d4",210,209,212,0.000134,0.03370786516853954,0.8254901960784313,{"hex":72,"red":73,"green":74,"blue":75,"area":76,"saturation":77,"lightness":78},"#525153",82,81,83,0.003252888888888889,0.012195121951219556,0.32156862745098036,{"hex":36,"red":80,"green":80,"blue":80,"area":81,"saturation":82,"lightness":83},255,0.03285188888888889,0,1,{"hex":85,"red":86,"green":87,"blue":88,"area":89,"saturation":90,"lightness":91},"#101820",16,24,32,0.8323966666666667,0.3333333333333333,0.09411764705882353,{"meta":93,"episode":101,"transcript":129},{"title":4,"author":5,"description":6,"artwork":7,"categories":94,"feedUrl":10,"type":11,"explicit":12,"link":13,"language":14,"copyright":15,"podcast2":95,"hasPeople":31},[9],{"persons":96,"funding":99},[97,98],{"name":19,"role":20,"img":21,"href":22},{"name":24,"role":20,"img":25,"href":26},[100],{"url":29,"text":30},{"guid":102,"title":103,"slug":104,"description":105,"htmlContent":106,"audioUrl":107,"audioType":108,"audioLength":109,"pubDate":110,"duration":111,"artwork":112,"episodeType":113,"explicit":12,"link":114,"podcast2":115},"changelog.com/1/2785","Creating communal computers (Interview)","creating-communal-computers-interview","Spencer Chang caught our attention with the alive internet theory website, but he creates all kinds of computery things to bring people together around play, connection, and creation. Spencer's experiments with computing-infused objects inspired him to create an entire line of internet sculptures and real-world computing shrines that will hopefully inspire all of us to keep the internet alive and flourishing for years to come.","\u003Cp>Spencer Chang caught our attention with the \u003Ca href=\"https://alivetheory.net/\">alive internet theory\u003C/a> website, but he creates all kinds of computery things to bring people together around play, connection, and creation. Spencer’s experiments with \u003Ca href=\"https://spencer.place/creation/computing-infused-objects\">computing-infused objects\u003C/a> inspired him to create an entire line of \u003Ca href=\"https://internetsculptures.com/\">internet sculptures\u003C/a> and real-world \u003Ca href=\"https://shrine.computer/\">computing shrines\u003C/a> that will hopefully inspire all of us to keep the internet alive and flourishing for years to come.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>\u003Ca href=\"https://changelog.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/456187-interviews\">Join the discussion\u003C/a>\u003C/p>\u003Cp>\u003Ca href=\"https://changelog.com/++\" rel=\"payment\">Changelog++\u003C/a> members save 8 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!\u003C/p>\u003Cp>Sponsors:\u003C/p>\u003Cp>\u003Cul>\u003Cli>\u003Ca href=\"https://www.tigerdata.com\">Tiger Data\u003C/a> – Postgres for Developers, devices, and agents The data platform trusted by hundreds of thousands from IoT to Web3 to AI and more.\n\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>\u003Ca href=\"https://namespace.so\">Namespace\u003C/a> – Speed up your development and testing workflows using your existing tools. (Much) faster GitHub actions, Docker builds, and more. At an unbeatable price.\n\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>\u003Ca href=\"https://www.augmentcode.com\">Augment Code\u003C/a> – Developer AI that uses deep understanding of your large codebase and how you build software to deliver personalized code suggestions and insights. Augment provides relevant, contextualized code right in your IDE or Slack. It transforms scattered knowledge into code or answers, eliminating time spent searching docs or interrupting teammates.\n\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>\u003Ca href=\"https://nordlayer.com/thechangelog\">NordLayer\u003C/a> – Protect your business with NordLayer, the toggle-ready network security platform built for modern teams. VPN, access control, and threat protection—no hardware or complex setup required. Get 28% off NordLayer yearly plans this Black Friday with code \u003Ccode>changelog-28\u003C/code> at \u003Ca href=\"https://nordlayer.com/thechangelog\">nordlayer.com/thechangelog\u003C/a>\n\u003C/li>\n\u003C/ul>\u003C/p>\u003Cp>Featuring:\u003C/p>\u003Cul>\u003Cli>Spencer Chang – \u003Ca href=\"https://spencer.place\" rel=\"external ugc\">Website\u003C/a>, \u003Ca href=\"https://github.com/spencerc99\" rel=\"external ugc\">GitHub\u003C/a>, \u003Ca href=\"https://x.com/spencerc99\" rel=\"external ugc\">X\u003C/a>\u003C/li>\u003Cli>Jerod Santo – \u003Ca href=\"https://jerodsanto.net\" rel=\"external ugc\">Website\u003C/a>, \u003Ca href=\"https://github.com/jerodsanto\" rel=\"external ugc\">GitHub\u003C/a>, \u003Ca href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/in/jerodsanto\" rel=\"external ugc\">LinkedIn\u003C/a>, \u003Ca href=\"https://changelog.social/@jerod\" rel=\"external ugc\">Mastodon\u003C/a>, \u003Ca href=\"https://x.com/jerodsanto\" rel=\"external ugc\">X\u003C/a>\u003C/li>\u003C/ul>\u003C/p>\u003Cp>Show Notes:\u003C/p>\u003Cp>\u003Cul>\n\u003Cli>\u003Ca href=\"https://alivetheory.net/\">Alive internet theory\u003C/a>\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>\u003Ca href=\"https://internetsculptures.com/\">Internet Sculptures\u003C/a>\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>\u003Ca href=\"https://shrine.computer/\">Computing Shrines\u003C/a>\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>\u003Ca href=\"https://playhtml.fun/\">playhtml\u003C/a>\u003C/li>\n\u003C/ul>\n\u003C/p>\u003Cp>Something missing or broken? \u003Ca href=\"https://github.com/thechangelog/show-notes/blob/master/podcast/the-changelog-667.md\">PRs welcome!\u003C/a>\u003C/p>","https://op3.dev/e/https://pscrb.fm/rss/p/https://cdn.changelog.com/uploads/podcast/667/the-changelog-667.mp3","audio/mpeg",55661511,"Wed, 19 Nov 2025 20:00:00 +0000",3468,"https://cdn.changelog.com/uploads/covers/changelog-interviews-original.png?v=63848368174","full","https://changelog.com/podcast/667",{"transcript":116,"chapters":119,"persons":122},{"url":117,"type":118},"https://changelog.com/podcast/667/transcript","text/html",{"url":120,"type":121},"https://changelog.com/podcast/667/chapters","application/json+chapters",[123,124],{"name":24,"role":20,"img":25,"href":26},{"name":125,"role":126,"img":127,"href":128},"Spencer Chang","guest","https://cdn.changelog.com/uploads/avatars/people/b031Z/avatar_large.jpg?v=63930788335","https://changelog.com/person/spencerc99",{"content":130,"type":131,"url":117},"\u003C!DOCTYPE html>\n\u003Chtml>\n\u003Chead>\n  \u003Cmeta charset=\"utf-8\">\n  \u003Cmeta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width, initial-scale=1\">\n  \u003Cmeta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex\">\n  \u003Clink rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https://changelog.com/podcast/667\"/>\n  \u003Ctitle>Transcript for Changelog Interviews #667\u003C/title>\n\u003C/head>\n\u003Cbody>\n\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Today, I'm joined by Spencer Chang, who made my day earlier this week. Spencer, you made my day with your Alive Internet Theory. I emailed you, even before, I think, I put it in Changelog News. I'm "I've got to talk to this guy. This guy is making me happy." So welcome to the show.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Thanks for having me, Jerod.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>So I have been fretting the Dead Internet Theory for probably the last 18 months, off and on, whether it's in Changelog News, or just in conversation on the show... Because I feel it. I feel the encroaching of the robotic content increasing the upward swing. And so the theory to me feels a very good one. \\[laughter\\] And the recent news, or the recent study that showed -- they've found about a 50/50 break in AI-generated content versus human-generated content, so I'm thinking "Well, if half the internet, at least new stuff being created is taking over, then this theory has some legs to it." You came out with a competing theory, on a website - I'm not sure how theoretical your theory is, or if you're just trying to make us all happy - about the alive internet. And kind of saying "Don't freak out, everyone. The humans are here. We are here and we're staying." I'm putting words in your mouth, but that was kind of the gist, right? Like, let's celebrate the humanity out there. Do you want to tell the story of this Alive Internet Theory?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. I mean, I didn't come up with this name. It's interesting, I think it just sort of emerged naturally online. I found a lot of random Tumblr posts referencing this, TikTok posts, some people made YouTube videos about it... And I think it just -- it naturally emerged in response, and it's basically like... The essence is yeah, humanity will always be here. We've created the internet, so much of it so far, and we're not going away.\n\nMy take on it - I felt very inspired coming across this stuff, and I've also been thinking about the dead internet theory... And I created this -- the prompt of it was I was commissioned to do a piece for the Internet Archive, and it felt very fitting to sort of bring these two things together, because they've archived so much content that has been created by humans for more than the past -- yeah, three decades or more.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Three decades, pretty much, yeah.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>They have tens of millions of content, which is just a very crazy scale to think about each of these things was uploaded by a human in some point in the past. And I was just going through the archive's contents from different years, and it's very cool to see... I don't know, it's just very cool to see this content from the past, because there's this human touch to it. And I don't think that's lost in today's world. I still feel a lot of that -- even in social media spaces, where a lot of bots flourish, I think every day they're just... I feel people are finding just crazier and crazier ways to show that they're human, really pushing the human ingenuity... And I'll just see videos that's someone animating a piece of bread, or it's just them throwing a piece of bread on the ground... It's like, AI would never --\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>It'd never do that.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>It's too weird.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yes. There is a fluidity and kind of a roundness to AI-generated content that humans don't exhibit. We are jagged little pills, as they say... And there are things that we can do, that the current crop of technologies are never going to be able to do. Now, maybe the next crop will pin us down a little bit better... But yes, the essential human aspect of creation is not to be matched by what's out there... Which is why we still can feel -- we can feel the encroachment, because it's still obvious, "Yeah, that's not funny", or "That's not interesting."\n\nNow, humans wielding AI can do new things. You start to get some pretty crazy creations. You're "You know what, that is actually pretty smart." But it was the idea behind it that made it what it was, versus the actual execution... Which is totally fine.\n\nSo tell me about this website... I know how it works, I've described it on the show... You load up a time period, and then you hit Go, and now you're just throwing a collage of just insanity at our faces. That's pretty much the idea, right?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>How do you do that?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>\\[00:07:57.17\\] I basically, just pull random content from the archive for a specific time period, and it's just filtered by media type. So I'm pulling images, I'm pulling audio, and I'm putting video files... And there's no -- yeah, almost no curation whatsoever, because I wanted it to be a very... I wanted it to be an authentic look of the spectrum of things that are on there.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Gotcha.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>So you might run into NSFW content as well, because that's just part of what's on the internet...\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Because you're not curating it. It's just what it returns, you know?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, because if I curated it, it would be my version of the internet.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>And yeah, part of me making it this overwhelming experience was I thought there was this paradox for the Internet Archive that has archived all this human content, and we also know that it's one of the big sources that a lot of AI companies have trained on... And I sort of imagined an LLM training on the archive... Visually, if I picture what that would look like, it would probably feel a little bit like this.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Right. It's like the LLMs fire hose of what it had to consume.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, exactly. So I don't know, there's interesting empathy with the machine; a bit of that experience as well that I was trying to get at.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Right. That is interesting. So I'm not sure how long you've been around... I've been around for the majority of it. Do you remember Flickr? Were you a Flickr user?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>I do remember Flickr. Barely...\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Barely. Alright. So you're quite a bit younger than me. That's fine. A lot of people are. Flickr had this really cool thing... And of course, for those who don't know Flickr, it was kind of the original web 2.0 image site where you're sharing your pictures. And it was very popular, very good, built by the same fella who built Slack... Is that right? I think that's right. Check my work there, but - going off memory. And the reason I bring it up is because Flickr had some of the most interesting pictures in the world on it for a very long time. And they had an interesting sort, where it was like "Give me pictures", and you could search an area, or a word, or a tag, and stuff. And then you could say "Sort by interest in this." And I always love that concept of like "Well, give me everything, but let's go ahead and somehow-" I'm sure it was some fuzzy math they were doing inside of Flickr, or some hardcoded thing, who knows, based on stars... Who knows what it was...? Views, probably... Just start with the most interesting and work your way down from there. And I loved that inside of Flickr. And I wonder if the Internet Archive at least has one of those buttons, where like - yeah, you're not curating it, but you could be like "Please send the most interesting things... Because I don't want to bore people as they enjoy the Alive Internet." Or you're just fire hosing it? Whatever they've got, I'll take it?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, they have the basic sorts of like - you can sort by views, and stuff like that... But it's almost like because this is historical content... Like, I'm wondering what you saw on a given day on Flickr, when you would turn on that filter... Because this content isn't something that people are actively going to, or returning to. I don't even know how someone would stumble upon it. Maybe only if you're searching for that specific kind of content. So for this case, it's almost like it's better at that -- like, the more interesting stuff is the stuff that's buried, in some way.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>It's funny that you say stumble upon. Now, do you remember Stumble Upon?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>I don't know if I was -- I don't know if I knew about it when I was using the web, but I do know about it. Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>So Stumble Upon used to be -- it was a Firefox extension. I'm sure it's still out there, in some form or the other; probably bought by three different private equity companies at this point. It was just for fun and discovery. And it was a Firefox extension, and probably other browsers too, that you would throw in your tab bar when you're bored, and you would just click a button and it would send you to a quasi random place on the internet.\n\n\\[00:12:03.14\\] And they had curation, I think, and they were trying to send you interesting stuff, which is kind of why you appreciated it... Because you're going to stumble upon some pretty cool stuff. It wasn't terrible. You're almost guaranteed to enjoy what you're going to land on. And your website reminded me of that, because it was almost like you hit Stumble Upon and you just like clicked on the button like 75 times, and you're just loading them all into the DOM. That's what it felt like.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>So they hired you to build this.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>\\[laughs\\] That would've been nice.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>They asked you to build it?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Oh, you mean --\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Not Stumble Upon. The Internet Archive.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>\\[laughs\\]\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Oh, you mean Stumble Upon? Yeah, I don't know who they are or where they are. I'm saying you -- this wasn't... You caught a random hair. This was like -- or a wild hair.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, well, they asked me to make an art piece to celebrate... They recently hit a trillion web pages, and I was trying to figure out what is the best -- what could I make though.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Did you have to pitch it back to them, or did they just let you go wild?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>It was pretty -- just a lot of flexibility for the artistic vision.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Cool.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. As long as I used the archive content, or it was inspired by it...\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, like "Use our stuff somehow to build something cool."\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>And you certainly did.\n\n**Break**: \\[00:13:20.18\\]\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Is this a common thing for you? Or do you pick up grants, or - what do you call them? ...people give you money to create... Or is this an uncommon thing?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, I wouldn't say it's common, but I guess I now wouldn't say it's uncommon... Yeah, I'm sort of still even now figuring out what it means to be this independent artist, designer, technologist... It's been almost three years now of doing this full time. I started in January of 2023.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Really?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. And I used to work as an engineer in tech, and I found my -- I mean, every now and then I'll sort of get these commissions from very different organizations; sometimes they'll be more arts-based, sometimes they'll be more technology-based... Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>And you've found this more interesting than your engineering job.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, I sort of stumbled into it. And I wouldn't call it a break from my engineering career.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Sure.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>\\[00:16:13.04\\] I think it's actually just like -- it felt like the most natural progression of it. So I worked at Coda for three and a half years, which - for those who aren't familiar, is in the document database editing space. And I got into that because I was very inspired by a lot of the research and HCI stuff behind it, like Dynamicland, and Bret Victor, and creating software a lot more accessible to people. Now it's interesting, because a lot of that is coming true, at least the democracy of creating software... But yeah, I felt like what we were missing was -- I thought there needed to be an equal cultural change, as well as technology change, to get people interested and invested in taking agency over technology. If you look four or five years back, there wasn't a broad societal sort of interest, or even awareness of the political power of software. I think it's changing now, with all of the effects of AI and stuff... But yeah, I felt like I wanted to bring those two together. So sort of where I am, I thought that allowed me to both push for a technological change, but also a cultural change.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>And you're pretty good at it, because it's allowing you to live, which - the stereotype of the starving artist is not just a stereotype. There's a lot of artists that don't make any money off of their art, but it's nice that you're able to create... You kind of live at this intersection of art and technology, and there's lots of money on one half of that intersection, on the technology side. So it's kind of a nice place to live, right?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, I feel very grateful that I am able to make a living doing this. I'm honestly not sure... It still feels weird to be able to say that. I think it's very -- not as steady of a path, compared to working a standard engineer job. But yeah, I've found ways to think about making a business creative as well, and I think that was one big \\[unintelligible 00:18:42.11\\] I had to get over, of treating my art and my creations also as a business, from that lens. Because it's important that it sustains. If I want to keep doing this work, if I care about the ultimate impact or possible change that I can create from it, I also need -- it's my responsibility to make sure I can keep doing it.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. A couple of weeks ago I was talking to two guys in the Ruby community, who are longtime open source maintainers. And we were talking about that push and pull between sustainability, finance, your hobbies, your passions, and the unfortunate, sometimes, result of parlaying your passion into a job. Because it allows you to sustain it, but it also turns into your job.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Have you felt any of that, where it's like "I love making art, but I don't want to make art today, because I have to, because somebody hired me to"?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah... I have felt slivers of that tension. Only in the space where I've had to be the most business about it, which is - I have a shop for these Internet Sculptures I make, where I put digital experiences into ceramic and other material objects... Just because that involves a lot of manual labor. I'm making every one of them by hand, so there's a lot of repeated processes. And that definitely sometimes could be like --\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>\\[00:20:17.22\\] So everytime you get an order, you're like "Dang it." \\[laughter\\]\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. Sometimes it's just like "Okay, I'm spending several hours making all these by hand. Dang."\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. You start doing the math, like "How much am I making per hour on these pieces of art...?" Well, let's go there, because that stuff is so cool.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Thank you.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>You have this concept that you put on your website of creating communal computers, that people gather around and play, connect, and create. And it seems like that particular thing that you're making is very communal, and is melding the real world with the digital world. Can you tell us more about them, and where this idea came from?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. So they're effectively like design objects or art objects, that you would picture putting up for display in your house. I have one that's a ceramic fortune cookie. But what makes them special is I have put RFID tags in all of them, and program a specific digital experience that fits the sculptural form. So the fortune cookie gives you a new fortune every time you tap your phone to it. And yeah, they sort of connect the physical to the digital in this interesting way, and it's cool that other people can experience it as well.\n\nI sort of just stumbled upon it. I was taking a ceramics class with my partner, and just making stuff for fun, and I was feeling this issue of telling people my website whenever I met them... And I literally was just like "Well, it'd be really nice if I just had something I could give people my website."\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Right. "Here's my website" and you hand them a token, or something.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, exactly. And I have this stamp on my website that's sort of the website logo, that's made out of my Chinese name, basically. So it's sort of like a sigil. So that was the first piece I made. I wanted something that represented my website, so I put the stamp in this small token, and then put my website on it... And not really expecting too much of it, honestly; just for my personal use. But people reacted very strongly to it whenever I pulled it out. And just being able to feel -- I feel like ceramic especially has a very earthy feel, that's very different from how you perceive software...\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>For sure.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>...and I could see how the experience of my website connected to that was so much more meaningful than just them experiencing it in isolation. And so yeah, that's how I just ended up like "Okay, there's something interesting here", and how I started experimenting more.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>\\[00:23:08.13\\] Yeah, I love that concept. I have heard it one time previously, and I can't quite put my finger on it, but it was at a conference and there was a person who was like... I think they said "Do you want my website?", or something like that, and they handed us a thing. And I'm like "What is this?" And it's an experience. So like "Put your phone up to it." It's a conversation starter, it's different... The technology is pretty straightforward, you know. It's like the same thing as a QR code, basically. You're just encoding some sort of address that gets opened, or whatever. But that doesn't make it not cool. I mean, it kind of makes it even cooler. It's so simple, and yet the melding of the two worlds in a unique way is what is memorable. And unfortunately for this person, it's not memorable enough that I can give them a shout-out, but...\n\nBut I've also seen this recent trend at conferences of like coinage being handed out as gifts, or as rewards, or even just a way to stay in touch... And I don't think I've seen any of those. I know Amazon does one, I have one from -- we were at Oxide's office a couple weeks ago and they had little Oxide coins, that are just cool things that you're going to go and... I think I put it over on the shelf over there. It'd be sweet if it had some sort of thing in there that -- and maybe it does, and I should go try. But no one said that. So what other stuff? I think the fortune cookie one's a cool example, because it's not just a URL; it's a fortune, right? So what other stuff are you putting into these objects?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. So I did a bunch of experiments... One of the first ones was this pillow that you put your phone on, and it turns on Do Not Disturb.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Oh, nice.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>And I'm finally actually releasing that tomorrow.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>That's cool. I like that.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>So can you sow?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>No, it's made out of concrete, actually.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Oh, it's a concrete pillow.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>It's a concrete pillow, but it does have a fabric tag that you would expect from a pillow thing incorporated into it...\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, yeah, yeah.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>But I don't know, I just like contrasts, so I wanted it to be concrete, because it looks a pillow, but it's very hard.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>I like that. I just expected it to be an actual pillow.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, exactly. I made this bathtub, where you put your phone in the bathtub while you shower, and it plays your shower playlist...\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Is that made out of concrete as well?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>No, that was made of ceramic.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Okay.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Most of my experiments are ceramic. Yeah. I made a WiFi router that gives you the WiFi, your home WiFi, for guests when they come over. I made these tiny -- it was like a tiny photo frame with interchangeable pictures, basically. These are all ceramic. And the pictures would link to different photo albums, and they would give you a random photo from the album.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Okay. All the places this idea can go... Are you tapped out? Do you have other ones in the works? Are you thinking --\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, I've still got a bunch. I actually just started a content series on Instagram called "Will it internet?"\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>"Will it internet?" Nice.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. And I just try to turn everyday objects into it, instead of creating a special form for it. The first one I did was just on my -- this is my Casio watch I wear every day, and I just put a chip on it, and it gives me a photo from this minute of this day in the past.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Okay...\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>So right now it's 12:32, November 13th. It would give me a photo that's closest to that in previous years, November 13th.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>So you hold your phone up to it, and it would go through your phone's photo album and find the closest picture to that date in some past year.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, exactly. Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>That's sick. I love that.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>And so it's tied to the minute, which I really like. If I'm seeing a sunset, I might see a sunset from a previous year. It's it's tied to the year and the -- or the minute and the day.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>How does it pick a previous year? It just finds the closest one, it doesn't care what year it is?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>It just picks a random one. It'll find all of them and it picks a random one.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Right. I love that. How many different aspects -- I guess some of it is informed by, or perhaps limited by what the phone gives you to actually do from, and see...\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, totally.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Do you have -- what all can you access, or what all can you do? Obviously, you can launch a photo album to a spot.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's very --\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>\\[unintelligible 00:27:40.10\\] Do Not Disturb. What else can you do?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>It's very OS-specific. So this is all pretty limited to iPhone stuff. For Android I think you have to get some third party software. I mean, you can trigger a lot of stuff. I don't know. It uses Shortcuts, basically, on iOS, where there's a lot of different stuff you can program.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Gotcha.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>\\[00:28:04.20\\] Most of the experiences I do rely on just websites, and doing interesting stuff there... But I do wish -- iPhone in general is very protective about NFC access, which definitely limits what you can do...\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>\\[unintelligible 00:28:20.15\\] just walk by somebody and get close enough that they have an NFC chip, and they can -- whatever they want to do. So I understand why they keep it close to the vest... But it certainly limits the art, doesn't it?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, yeah.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>That is really cool. So when it comes to the technical underpinnings of this, how are you programming the chips, etc?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, so I mentioned on iOS stuff I'm using shortcut programs to run programs on the iPhone.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Well, you're triggering it from the device, to run on the iPhone.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, exactly.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>What do you actually -- is there an API that Apple gives you? I don't understand how NFC stuff works.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, it's just Shortcuts, which is this native iOS application...\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>It's literally just Shortcuts.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. And you can program it to run a shortcut when you --\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>So do you write that in Swift, or...?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>No, they have this no-code-esque builder thing for Shortcuts.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Really?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. I mean, now it's really annoying... \\[laughs\\]\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Wow. So then how do you get it onto the chip?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>It's just like an address thing. It's like a URL style.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>It's like an app-specific URL.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>I'm not actually sure exactly how it works under the hood, but yes, I imagine it's something like that.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Okay. And where do you acquire these chips from, that you put in the ceramic? It's like you buy them off Amazon kind of thing?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>No, I bought them just from some suppliers I found on Google... But yeah, I've started to source them directly from China now, just because I need very specialized --\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>And you might need a lot of them, as you start to sell more of these tokens. What about talking to the chip? Is it just like a USB cable that just connects into them, or a firmware thing, or...?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, it's just a phone thing. So you can -- there's a bunch of apps available.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Oh, so from your phone you connect to it.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, exactly. Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Okay. You can tell I've never done this, before I'm completely clueless.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. It's really magical, honestly.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>It's super-cool. So you call that Internet Sculptures? Is that the name of this -- or computing-infused objects? I'm reading some of the words off your website.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Internet sculptures. Internetsculptures.com is the website for the shop.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. But Internet Sculptures, it sounds, is just a step along the road, perhaps? ...a move down the path, but you're going further now.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>To computing shrines, which is like - okay, similar, but different. Tell us about computing shrines.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>So Internet Sculptures is sort of the business or the shop container for all this stuff.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>The thing you're selling.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. I do these experiments, some of them feel cohesive enough, repeatable enough to be products, they go in the Internet Sculptures shop. It also serves as a vehicle to do collaborations with companies or organizations if they want custom ones... And yeah, the manifestation of all those things is in this latest project, Computing Shrines, which is a sculptural version of these same concepts, where you take larger sculptures and create a more immersive digital experience that's only accessible at the sculpture. So it creates this very direct physical to digital bond. And all of them are basically collective experiences. So they have some interaction with visitors who have been there before.\n\n\\[00:32:09.25\\] So one of them is like a -- it's like a phone booth made out of acrylic. You place your phone -- it's like a phone booth for your phone. So you place your phone inside the phone booth, and the website or the web experience is a voice sharing thing, where you hear just the last person's voice, and then once you listen to it, you can record a message for the next person...\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Oh...\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>...and that replaces the message. So you know the only one person, sort of -- your message isn't there forever. It's just --\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Right, it's only the next person in the chain. That's kind of cool... That reminds me of geocaching. Have you ever geocached?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, exactly.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Because they have that concept of like leave a thing -- or take a thing and leave a thing, right?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>This is cool, because it's that same concept, only there's only one thing. With the geocache, you might open it up and there might be a few trinkets in there, or whatever it is, or notes, or memories, pictures... And you take one with you and you leave your own.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>And then there's still be a few others in there. Or there might not be. But with this, there's just one message, you're going to listen to that message, you're going to leave one message... And then only one other human in history is going to listen to that one.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>I love it.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. I'm really inspired by geocaching, and all of the -- just very, I would say folk practices of leaving traces of oneself in public places... Like, I even think about people who will write in chalk, or scribble something in the sand... Like, write in chalk on stone, or whatever. There's all these small -- or stacking stones, if you've ever seen that...\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, I have seen that. When you come across one, you're like "Wow. Somebody spent three hours", or however long it was.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Right, right. And sometimes you can tell that multiple people have added to it, just by the arrangement of it. I like that there's this sense of how many people have been here...\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Oh, that's interesting.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. So all of these are sort of inspired by those practices, but using a digital form, so that it can -- yeah, I'm interested in what other interactive experiences you can do, that amplify those practices. And there's environmental concerns of some of these practices, tagging rocks especially... So this is sort of a way to keep doing those practices, but without -- still tying it to the physical place, but without having to deface anything.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. Well, as we began talking about this, my mind immediately went to graffiti, which - I have two minds about graffiti. Sometimes it's beautiful art, and other times you're like "This is just desecration, this is vandalism." And it's so permanent. Of course, you can paint over it, but not without major effort.\n\nSo I like this idea of ripples in water... They have this ripple effect, but eventually it goes back to calm. And that's kind of what you're doing with that particular photo booth experience. I think that's a super-cool idea. What are some of your other sculptures you've built, or are thinking about building?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. So there's one that's -- so the phone booth is shrine to voice, and there's another one that's shrine to earth, and it's inspired by the rock stacking practice specifically. So I transformed this large boulder, and embedded it with some chips, and the experience is effectively like a rock stacking experience. You load up the website, all of these rocks come falling down, and they're all rocks that have been uploaded by someone who went there... And so you're able to offer a rock to the shrine. So it accesses your photos, it prompts you to search for a rock, it'll verify it's a rock...\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>\\[00:35:55.27\\] \\[laughs\\] I can tell you've put some work into that one... That was very important to you.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>\\[laughs\\] \\[unintelligible 00:35:59.02\\] I wanted it to be like -- if I could tweak the model, I wanted it to be like if someone uploaded Dwayne Johnson, the Rock, I wanted it to accept that.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>One exception.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. But I'm not that \\[unintelligible 00:36:18.11\\]\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, but now, is it set in stone, or can you actually -- can you still access the software side?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>I can still access the software.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Can you upgrade that sucker? Somebody is going to -- you made my day, but that's going to make somebody's week. If it rejects other humans, but it accepts Dwayne Johnson... I mean, that's the kind of stuff that goes viral.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>I know...\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>\\[laughs\\] I'm just here to encourage you to go ahead and work on that. That's all I'm gonna say.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>On the next version.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, so it verifies it's a rock, it removes the background, and then you're able to add your rock to the pile.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>So are these sculptures then -- is the selling of the objects funding this stuff that you want to do? Or is this also commissioned for other -- because these are living in public spaces, right?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. I mean, I'm working on a public art version of it, to be installed in a park.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Oh, that'd be awesome.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. Which would be really awesome. Yeah, I don't know exactly how the funding is going to work, to be honest. I received a grant from San Francisco to try to do this in a park... We'll see, based on permitting and stuff, how that turns out. But yeah, it's tricky for this stuff, especially public art... Public art broadly is just -- as I've learned more about it, it's usually just funded from private patrons or donors, because it's not like a museum installation. It's not something that brings in a lot of money. It's literally a free thing in public.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. It's not exactly a line item on the budget when there's so many other things that they're already paying for.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. Which is interesting. It's like, that's the kind of thing I want to do, because I've worked on open source on a lot of my projects as well too, and I think a lot of my philosophy is around technology as a sort of public good... And so this is an interesting parallel to that in a very physical universe... So yeah, I'm going to figure out how the funding works. But at least for now it hasn't gone large scale enough that it's prohibitively expensive. I guess I'll cross that path when it comes to it.\n\n**Break**: \\[00:38:47.07\\]\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>One of the things you say on your website is that you try to create perpetual energy. Now, I grew up in a world where there was no such thing, so I assume this is aspirational... But I'm curious your thoughts behind that statement.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. It's funny, because we know this thing is not real... But I feel like the aspiring towards it allows us to feel that it's present in various points, or various situations. I think I feel that perpetual energy in some of these folk practices that we've talked about, like the rock stacking, or seeing these traces of people... There's nothing physical that is saying that this energy is circulating. But I can just make that gesture, and so many people will see it and might interpret it, and might feel this abstract sense of my presence that feels like there's some cycle happening.\n\nI think it's the same if we look at the software side, things like open source, or this public good style technology... And in that case, there's more of an infinite possibility, because software is free, and can be infinitely replicated... But I think you just see all these projects building off of one another.\n\nI think the thing that I strive for most in the things I make is that people can surprise me with what they do with it. And that also feels like this sort of infinite cycle, or perpetual cycle that gets produced. You just come up with one idea, or a project, and it inspires or enables all these other versions of it.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Right. Yeah, it's perpetual not through exerting of energy, but through inspiring to exert energy. What's that old saying? "Creation is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration." And when it comes to the perspiring, there's no perpetual for that. That's just good old fashioned motivation, plus discipline, plus whatever it is; stubbornness... But the inspiration part perhaps we can get a little bit of perpetuality moving in that direction, where your idea ripples and inspires another idea, which ripples and inspires another idea. And we've still got to put the work in, we've still got to go build... You've still got to make that new ceramic thing tomorrow, or whatever. But there is a perpetuating of the energy of the idea and the human behind it, which I do think is still probably aspirational, but sounds more achievable than just raw energy perpetuated forever.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>So that's cool. If you do stumble across that one, let me know, because I'm sure we could put it to good use.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. \\[laughs\\]\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>\\[laughs\\] You could probably fund all your art installations.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, that might be my business.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. "This is my sustainability model, is a perpetual energy machine."\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>I'll pitch that to some investors.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>So much cool stuff, Spencer... What else are you working on? What else are you thinking about? What else haven't we talked about? Because you have a whole -- I just encourage people... Of course, check out Alive Internet Theory, but spencer.place - he's got a bunch of stuff on his website that I'm sure you can just dive into the depths of each of these projects you've had. But what else are you currently working on or mulling on?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. One of the projects that I'm really excited about is more on the software side. It's called playhtml. So it's this open source library I made to make making collaborative web elements really easy; as easy as creating a single player web element. So how it works is you can just add a single attribute or program interaction as you normally would, and it syncs that state to everyone. So instead of -- you know, I have a lamp on my website, for example, and you can turn it on and off, and that is the same state for everyone.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Oh, I did that for everybody that was on your website?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. And it persists. So it's like mapping that to a more permanent thing.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>I see.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>And so yeah, I just felt like this paradox of so many millions of people are using modern social media platforms at any given moment, but the actual experience of using the site is very solitary. You have a personal feed, no one else is seeing the same thing that you are in that given moment. There's sort of like a gap between that. And I think having this primitive of like what you do has effect for everyone else - that forms an interesting foundation for new, I don't know, digital social interactions. So that was sort of the premise of the project, and trying to make more interesting digital social spaces using it.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>\\[00:48:27.08\\] There's certainly been a lot of interesting gaming, and maybe even just toy experiences online the last 5 or 10 years that have been driven by a similar component, where it's like we're all experiencing the same thing at the same time. I can't remember who it is, whether it's Neil.fun, or there's another website where they create a lot of cool, interactive games...\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah... Nolan?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yes.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, yeah, yeah.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Where it's only fun because there's 7,500 people there, and they're all screwing around on it... And if you were here alone, you'd be like "30 seconds and I'm out." But the fact that there's so many people, and everything I do affects everybody else does bring a new... I don't know what it is, a new excitement to what is otherwise a solitary experience.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Totally.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>So this is an open source project for other people to build stuff like that. It's not just driving your works, but you're trying to get this to be a thing.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, exactly. And it's also I guess an implementation of this philosophy of public good technology. It's an open source library, and I also run the the infrastructure that powers it, basically as a service... For a free service, basically, for anybody who uses it.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>So is there a key-value store in the background, or...?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>It's basically -- yeah, there's a standard sort of database store behind it, and I run the real time streaming infrastructure.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>So you have a server behind this, as well as a data store that you're basically just donating -- so if I'm using playhtml, the open source project, I can basically just piggyback on top of your infrastructure, or I've got to run my own?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, you can basically piggyback off of mine. \\[laughter\\]\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Shh, don't tell anybody...\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>\\[laughs\\] I have audits and I have some checks in place for abuse, but... And it's set up for -- if you're doing tons of data or something, you can run your own infrastructure.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. Which would be the kind thing to do, versus...\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>That would be the kind thing to do.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>...effectively hotlinking... It's effectively hotlinking, which we've all learned is not something that you do on the internet without somebody making you pay.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Right, right. But I think that's such a big barrier for so many people who create interesting experiences on the web. When it gets to the backend infrastructure part, that's the biggest barrier. And usually, these experiences don't need that much; don't need that much bandwidth, and don't need that much storage. And so it just feels like -- it's a very high leverage thing for me to do to provide this, because I've seen so many people who are not from technical backgrounds, but they have a personality to their websites that they want to make... Enabling them to create these experiences has been really rewarding.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. It's like, if you're trying to make a massively multiplayer version of Solitaire, that wouldn't make any sense. Or a version of Minesweeper... I mean, you don't want to go take a class in data structures to get your Minesweeper game out there.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, exactly.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>It's just not -- this is what a yak shave is, like "Why am I over here shaving this yak? I'm trying to make a game." And so that's cool, that you're providing that for everybody, and obviously as an open source project, as well as anybody -- have you got anybody to use this thing, or you've already got people saying "Thanks, man. Check out what I built with playhtml"?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, yeah. And I've run a few workshops and get-togethers, so there's been a lot of --\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Oh, cool.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, it's just cool to see what ideas are possible with it. For example, someone made a horse racing game, where there's four horses, and then you just pick a horse, and then you just click on the horse really fast, and it starts moving...\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>\\[00:52:17.26\\] That's like straight out of the carnival game. You just point the water at it, you know? \\[laughs\\]\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, exactly. Someone made this tug of war game, where you click one side or the other, and everyone's clicks are powering it, and \\[unintelligible 00:52:32.10\\] going between the two poles...\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Love it.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. \\[unintelligible 00:52:37.22\\] Someone has on their website a knock, they have like a door, and you can knock on it, and you see everyone who's knocking on it at the same time... And then probably the biggest one, it was one I made, but it's this fridge poetry game... Basically, it's playchannel.fun/fridge, and it's just like a huge fridge wall for the internet. You can add words, and you can move them around, and you can delete words, and just see these poems emerge on the website... That's had probably multiple tens of thousands of players go through that.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>"Sometimes I dream of a world full of love, where lightning surrenders with vanishing tenderness." Just a small sampling from your current fridge wall.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>\\[laughs\\] Yeah.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>That's pretty nice. I assume you didn't write that.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>\\[unintelligible 00:53:37.23\\] for a while, yeah. And you can see the color under each word... That's a different person. Every person has a different cursor color.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Gotcha.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>So whatever color...\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>And then you can delete words off the fridge. So if you're a jerk, you could just delete this amazing piece of poetry that somebody wrote.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. It does stop you if you're --\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>It stops you eventually?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah, yeah. It's actually a similar approach that Nolan did for I think 1 million check boxes, where if you're \\[unintelligible 00:54:06.00\\] and you're doing it a lot, it tells you to chill.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>It says "Knock it off, jerk." Very cool stuff, Spencer. I'm kind of -- I'm inspired, I'm also jealous of your creativity, and I'm happy that the internet is alive and well with people like yourself creating cool things... Playhtml.fun, spencer.place, aliveinternet...\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Alivetheory.net, yeah. Lots of URLs.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Many URLs. Internetsculptures.com...\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Internetsculptures.com, yeah. There's shrine.computer...\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Okay...\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>I have a lot of domains.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>You're going to have to figure out a funny model for your domain name renewals. That's your biggest expense, probably. \\[laughter\\] Let me teach you about a thing called subdomains, you know? They work, and they're free. Cool. Love your work, love your perspective and your attitude on the internet and life... I appreciate you joining me, especially on short notice, to chat about the Alive Internet Theory. Anything else you want to say to me or to the audience before I let you go?\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Yeah. I mean, first, just thank you so much for having me on.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Of course.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Spencer Chang:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>I really enjoyed the conversation, and I feel like we should be talking more about this stuff. Also, it's up to all of us to keep the alive internet a thing. I hope my work is just a seed for all the amazing things that the person listening to this right now could do. I think it takes all of us coming together to preserve the internet that we know and love.\u003C/p>\n\n\n    \u003Ccite>Jerod Santo:\u003C/cite>\n    \u003Cp>Beautifully said. Did you hear that, to you out there listening to this? Take this seed, plant it in the ground, and hopefully something beautiful will grow. Awesome. Thanks, Spencer, thank you all for listening, and we'll talk to you on the next one.\u003C/p>\n\n\u003C/body>\n\u003C/html>\n","text/html; charset=utf-8",1771793543840]