Seth Godin:

Forty years ago, I drove a brown Fiat Strada. Perhaps one of the 10 worst cars ever
made. It went 0 to 60 in about 19 seconds. It got about 20 miles to the gallon. The
backseat was remarkably uncomfortable. It handled poorly and it was really ugly.
Today, for about the same number of inflation-adjusted dollars, I drive a Toyota
Prius plug-in hybrid. It gets 199 miles to the gallon. It goes 0 to 60 just as fast
as I need it to. It's super safe, and the back seat is quite comfortable.

Seth Godin:
Hey, it's Seth, and this is Akimbo.

Seth Godin:
I don't really want to talk about cars today. I want to talk about software, and I
want to talk about why software is so bad. I developed my first computer game as a
hobby in 1976, when I was in high school, and I was super fortunate in the early
80s to do it professionally. In those days, making games for the Commodore 64, our
major limitation was hardware.

Seth Godin:
This is what the music sounded like:
[Vintage 8-bit computer music playing]

Seth Godin:
The text was so clunky, it was almost unreadable. The graphics were nothing to
write home about. We were busy pioneering how software might work. At the time, I
was beta testing the original Mac, and the Mac was a revelation. On that Mac, I had
a word processor. Soon after that, a spreadsheet. Today, 40 years later, I have a
word processor that does almost exactly what that word processor did 40 years ago.

Seth Godin:
I have a spreadsheet, Google Sheets, that does less than the spreadsheets I used to
pay for. Sure, it's free. Sure, it's connected and can have multiple users, which
makes it even more useful. But in terms of software development, if we leave aside
the network effects, most of the things that I, and you, do with software are not
dramatically better than they were soon after the Mac came out.

Seth Godin:
Why is that? What happened to this industry that is no longer driven by hardware?
The hardware is now as fast as we need it to be. The screens are as sharp as we are
able to discern. And the colors, unless you're a sea slug, are infinite. So what
all this means, is that software, the Architecture of software isn't what it could
be.

Seth Godin:
I want to share a few reasons why I think this is. The first one is: 'The buying
cycle'. Cars have made a lot of forward motion, even though they are largely
hardware dependent. Well, why is that first? There's a buying cycle every three,
four, five, six years. We take a deep breath and we start over. The operating
system of the car hasn't changed in almost a hundred years. If you know how to
drive one car, you know how to drive almost every car.

Seth Godin:
But when we start over, we can switch brands. We can go from Company A to Company
B, and we're about to spend $50,000, $30,000, $70,000 for the privilege of doing
that – which means that the car companies are under a lot of pressure to create
something that users think is better. That's not true with word processors, or
spreadsheets, video editing software. We are stuck with the operating system, with
the method, with the UI, with the file format that we are used to. Number two: 'Car
companies have dealers'. And dealers talk to consumers, face-to-face. Dealers live
and die everyday. Dealers see that people are walking off the lot. And, they are
happy to scream directly at the people at the car companies – who have no choice,
but to listen to them. That's not true for software. Software isn't sold for the
nearly the same price to a consumer, and it's usually sold directly, without a
middleman.

Seth Godin:
Number two, as we discovered about 20 years ago, the Network Effect is actually the
killer app. Software exists primarily today to connect us to other people. That the
way Microsoft ended up destroying Wordperfect, was by showing up with file formats
that could be shared – one person to the other. It wasn't worth it, once someone in
your office was using Word, for you to insist that it had to work with Wordperfect.
Shareable file formats meant that it went in one direction.

Seth Godin:
Google gives its software away, but we'd probably pay for it, because the magic of
the Network Effect is so overwhelmingly powerful. We would forgive the fact that
you can't do nice typography and other features in Google Docs. We would get over
the fact that Google Sheets isn't as fast, or as reliable as Excel at its best.
Because the Network Effect – multiple users using the thing, overwhelms everything
else. As a result, the biggest brains, the smartest people, the hardest-driving
focus at every software company tends to be about, "How do we get people to share
this?" Not, "How do we architect it with care, so that the experience of using it
on your own is delightful?"

Seth Godin:
Number three, which might be the biggest one, is that: 'Software is complicated'.
It's complicated for the user. When I think of how many instructions I need to give
somebody to be able to learn to drive a new car, it's probably three minutes –
"Here's one button, here's the the lighter, here's how you turn on the Cruise
Control, and don't forget about this, off you go". You can walk into a rental car
agency, get a car you've never driven, and drive it off the lot.

Seth Godin:
Software isn't anything like that. That the number of options, because options are
super easy to add, keeps increasing. One person wants to, I don't know, 'composite
reverse type in these colors with an alpha channel'. And suddenly, that's one of
the features. As a result, the architecture of software is significantly more
complex, because the architect doesn't know what the user wants to do.

Seth Godin:
And there is no convention that has been accepted for turning off features, so that
you can have the version that you want, and have it work the way you want to use
it. The next idea is that, culturally, we stopped giving prizes for craftsmanship.
That when the early versions of Keynote came out, people moved to it, away from
PowerPoint, because it was well-crafted. But that was more than ten versions ago.
Since then, there hasn't been a lot of discussion about what it means to be 'good'
at crafting 'how,' to create presentation software.

Seth Godin:
I think you and I could sit down and come up with 20 ways to make it significantly
better. Then when a new company, like Prezi, comes along, what we notice are a
couple gimmicky moves. Not that it is perfectly crafted the way, perhaps, a Porsche
is a better crafted car – from the user car experience point of view.

Seth Godin:
Not that you asked, but as someone who's given more than a thousand presentations
using Keynote, here are some of the things great presentation software would do to
make my job easier, and to make the experience of consuming the presentation
better. Number one: "How come there isn't a timer built-in that shows me, compared
to what I expect, where I am through my presentation?" Show me, with colored
lights, that I'm behind or ahead.

Seth Godin:
"How come there isn't a way to group up subsections of a presentation?" So, I could
sub them in, turn them on, turn them off easily – not with some sort of clunky
hierarchy. Number three: "Why can't I instantly glance through all of the material
I've used in the past, to find which switch subsets are available, which ones I
want to add?" It goes on, and on. None of these features have been added. Instead,
what I've got, is now the ability to change the outline on a font, which no one has
any business doing. That's not what it's for. But, nobody seems to be in charge of
making Keynote more elegant and useful. Instead, it's sort of a random collection
of ways to get more people to share it and use it together.

Seth Godin:
It's not becoming more powerful, or more beautiful. It's simply becoming more
clunky. The same thing is true with almost all the software I use. Apple, which
used to lead the way in figuring out how to give us power and leverage, now dumbs
things down because there are luxury brand – not a group of people trying to craft
tools for folks who are trying to change the culture.

Seth Godin:
And then, back to this idea that software is complicated. We've been trained to put
up with it. So a specific example – about four years ago some versions of the Mac
laptop began to lose connection with Wi-Fi networks, sort of randomly. No one's
exactly sure why. And you can find posts online from 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 with
people complaining about the same bug, with solutions that verge on witchcraft.
"Delete this. Do that. Stand on one foot, over and over again, for years and
years". Try to imagine a car that didn't work at many gas stations on a regular
basis, and no one knew why the filler cap wouldn't open at some places, under some
circumstances. Try to imagine that this went on for year, after year, after year of
the car being sold.

Seth Godin:
I think it's pretty easy to believe that 'that' car would be recalled. That 'that'
brand would plummet in value. That our standards for what we're looking for from
our $40,000 car, are really different from what we're looking for from the software
that we make a living using, every single day. Now users are complicit, because as
software companies stopped caring about the quality of experience, users started
stealing the software.

Seth Godin:
Because the Network Effect is powerful. Because, incrementally, a second copy of a
piece of software in the world doesn't cost the company money – the way it would
cost Ford Motors money, If you went to a dealer and drove a car off the lot without
paying for it. Conceptually, digital goods have always had this marginal cost
problem.

Seth Godin:
It doesn't feel as wrong to steal software, as it does to steal a car. None of this
would matter, except that software drives the culture. When they came up with new
ways to do editing, new ways to do special effects, the movies we watched began to
change. The Terminator – that guy with the silver skin –happened because someone
made software that would enable it to happen. That changed our understanding of how
the future might look. That changed the kind of cars that got made. That changed
our expectations of what tomorrow would look like. Software changes not just the
way our movies look, it changes the way that we tell a story. It changes the way we
consume a story. It changes our attention span. That the Network Effect, at all
costs, means that we've got clickbait. It means that people are hunting around for
hours, every day, on their smartphones – a device that didn't even exist when I sat
down with that first Mac, that was on my desk.

Seth Godin:
Our attention span has been shifted, because software Engineers are in a hurry. And
this lack of care about Architecture and user delight, combined with the
overwhelming effect that networks have, means that we are victims of a cycle that
has been driven by a hundred, or a thousand cutting-edge software Engineers, who
are making decisions. Making decisions about whether to make something more
beautiful, or more profitable. Making decisions about what tools we're going to
have, or not have – about how long we should spend on something, before we get to
the next thing.

Seth Godin:
We began with software being 'our' tool – a tool to help us do 'our' work. But,
over time, we have become 'software's tool'. That we exist to enable software to
reach its goals. And its goals, are to turn 'us' into subscribers – networked,
paying subscribers – who keep making more stuff that enables the network to thrive.
It is entirely possible that hardware isn't going to get much better.

Seth Godin:
That, back when I was making games for the Commodore 64, I saw a hard drive burst
into flames, because our software was making it work too hard. And yet, just last
week, Google updated Chrome, which caused the editing stations of hundreds of
companies in California that were making cutting edge commercials and movies to
stop working on their Macs – totally stop working, unable to reboot, to do
anything. That's 40 years later.

Seth Godin:
Software is a mess. Software is complicated. Software is driven by the Network
Effect, and we are the victims of it. If we stand up, speak up, and argue that this
thing that we are spending our entire day using ought to be better – if we
establish standards, awards, heroes – maybe we'll find another Andy Hertzfeld.
Maybe we'll find another Susan Cain. Maybe we will find another series of
Architects and Designers, who will insist that software can be beautiful, that it
can be powerful, that it can help people express the ideas they want to express –
as opposed to being victims of a commercial system that doesn't have our best
interests at heart.

Seth Godin:
That's my rant. Thanks for listening, we'll see you next time.

Seth Godin:
I really do love hearing from you, and it's okay if you want to ask a question that
isn't about this week's episode. To ask your question, just visit Akimbo dot link.
That's A K I M B O dot L I N K, and press the appropriate button.

Oh hello, Seth – Aegis here from Toronto, Canada. You keep mentioning here and
there, throughout your podcast, that we are in an 'open marketplace' moment in
time. It seems that you are painting a future that we are inviting the gatekeepers
back in the building. This is worrying and what are you referring to? Is that about
net neutrality? What is it, are we inviting the gatekeepers back in the building?

Seth Godin:
Something dramatic has happened in the last 15 or 20 years, and it's this: 100
years of gatekeepers, all right, 500 years of gatekeepers are being replaced by
systems that are dramatically more open. If you wanted a business profile written
about your company in 1974, while you could use Businessweek, Forbes, or Fortune –
and that was pretty much it – now you can write your own. Now, you can be featured
on more than five hundred, ten thousand, a million websites that could talk about
you. In the 1980s, if you wanted to be on TV, there were three, maybe five people,
who could put you on TV.

Seth Godin:
Now, you can put yourself on TV. One medium after another – sound, video, text –
all of it wide open. But, my instinct is that, that can't last. It can't last,
because over time people seek to consolidate, to lock in, to create monopolies and
oligopolies. And we're seeing it, for example, in what Netflix is trying to do in
the business of television. Of course, Apple and Amazon are racing after them as
hard as they can. But, this idea that there would be an open place where someone
could make a thing and get paid to make it – well, already we're getting boxed in.

Seth Godin:
We're getting boxed in, as Podcasters consolidate – as people in the movie business
consolidate. Because that is where the stock market wants them to go. Because they
want to extract the maximum amount of revenue.

Seth Godin:
So, my argument begins with that, and then proceeds to the idea that there's only a
finite number of people – of voices – that a listener can follow. That permission
is a self limiting function. Once you've got your problem mostly solved, you stop
giving permission to new voices, to new options. And so, we have this wide open
area, this land that's being carved up. And I think if you seek a thousand true
fans, if you seek to change the culture, waiting is not your friend. Diving into it
now makes a lot more sense.

Hey Seth, this is Neil from Portland, Oregon. I am a huge Akimbo fan and anxiously
await each new episode, each week. I feel like I'm a living, breathing embodiment
of one of your core messages – which is, 'If you do good work, people will follow
it and they will share it with others'. I find myself talking with friends, family,
and colleagues about your episodes and share each podcast episode with them.

Akimbo is a really interesting example, which brings up my question is, "How do you
create content that is more shareable?" I was talking to someone about Slack in
their business, and wanted to share an Akimbo episode with him, but found it very
hard to search for that episode, so that I could send it to him. Thanks again for
all the work that you do; looking forward to the next episode.

Seth Godin:
Yeah, shareability is one of the factors in how ideas spread, or how viruses
spread. We know, for example, that the Measles has an R0 of up to 18 – one person
with the Measles can infect up to 18 others – that's why it's such an impactful
virus, as it spreads through our ecosystem. And the same thing happened on Twitter.
Because Twitter is so bite-sized, so easy to share, people share it. And because
people are sharing it, an idea can rocket through the Twittersphere in just
minutes. Making your idea more shareable without giving up any other element of it,
is generally a good idea. But too often, to make an idea shareable, we dumb it down
and make it less sticky. And it turns out, that stickiness is even more important,
if you want your idea to persist. So, back to the idea of the Measles. The thing
is, that Hepatitis has an R0 of only 2 when it peaking – which means that far fewer
people are infected by someone who has hepatitis, but it can stick with someone for
the rest of their life. That stickiness means that it is a notable and important
disease. Not because it spreads widely – it's easy to share. But, because it sticks
around. So part of what we need to do, is not just make our idea in a package
that's easy to say, "Hey look at this," but also to have the guts to put ideas into
the world that stick with people.
Hi Seth, this is Dan from Florida. The question essentially is, "Why is it so easy
to help others edit their work, but then it's so hard for us to edit our own". If
you have any advice, I'd love to hear it. Thanks, and have a great day. And thank
you for all that you do.

Seth Godin:
I think there are three reasons why it might be difficult to edit your own work,
compared to editing someone else's work. Idea number one is: 'Our context
blindness' that happens all the time. There will be a typo in a blog post of mine
after I've read the sentence ten times. I still don't see it, so fresh eyes get us
through that problem. But, more important than that is, the idea that we don't see
things that are important, and others might. We might not see them because we're
afraid of them, and we might not see them simply because our point of view is
different than theirs.

Seth Godin:
So, asking someone to look at something with fresh eyes, who is open to giving us
that, sort of, generous insight – that's precious. And then the third one is this:
'We don't like to be wrong'. We don't like to be wrong, and editing our own work
requires us to admit that we could have made it better. So, one of the things that
it takes to be a good writer, a good creator, is willing to suspend your desire to
be right and, instead, embrace an instinct to be better.

Seth Godin:
Hope that helps. Thanks for listening, we'll see you next time.