On this week’s Techonomics, we start by checking in with Drew Curtis of Fark.com. Drew is the founder and CEO of Fark, a news aggregation site with tags like “weird,” “spiffy,” and “Florida.” Florida gets its own news tag on Drew’s site, and in part 1 of our chat, we find out why. “I wasn’t really on board with it ’cause I was like ‘Okay, I mean we get a weird story from them once in a while, but there can’t be THAT many.’ So, finally I capitulated and we just tested it out and, holy crap! What the hell is going on in that state?! I mean, it’s just insanity.” We discuss the research he’s doing for an upcoming book, dealing with the dark side of technology. “But in Kentucky, on the other hand, it’s like you tell people driverless cars are out roaming roads and they’re like ‘What? Huh? Are you kidding? That’s a ways off!’ And so the point of the book is basically to perhaps inform people so that [for] the first time, maybe in history, we get out in front of some of these things. And plan for stuff like 7 million truck drivers not having a job in 5-10 years.” Drew has opinions on much of technology, including 3D printing, self driving cars and asteroid mining. He puts the future of technology in more relative terms: “How do we want this to play out? Do we want Star Trek or Star Wars?”
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