Transcript taken from SMGtheHouser.substack.com This week, a break from our work solving all the problems of small scale developers in rural America. Besides, our work relies on the success of tech entrepreneurs just as much as it does with municipalities, small business owners, manufacturers and advocates. So it's big tech and entertainment that's got my mind captured this time around. Ted Gioia's recent Substack on George Avakian's entrance into the teenage idol craze circa 1958 left me in my own stream of consciousness, reliving then to now and our slip into idiocracy with MAMLMs (modern advanced machine learning models). What's specifically got me frustrated is our consistent habit of giving up so much agency over tech and the enshitification that ensues. Is our society at large really ok with giving AI models a pass? If so, how did we get here? What began the slippery slope into permission for intellectual sludge which in our time might be on the precipice of being used to eliminate jobs, yours and mine, while further degrading the value of intellectual rigor? Capitalism is good at placing monetary value on a product or service. What it can't do, what it never could do, is place a value on quality. It can't critique, it can't consider, it can't make you look cool in front of your lover while you make an obscure reference. People like Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren understood plainly that the Revolutionary ideals that started it all, themselves bearing ideas as far afield from each other as those of John Locke, The Marquis de Condorset and the Haudenosaunee would not last unless the new country they helped launch waseducated. I'd like to believe they were really after a populace rooted in intellectual rigor.  People needed to be able to judge quality. They needed to agree on minimums of toleration while also being able to envision a future rooted in intellectual pursuit. They needed to think for themselves. So, we created the teenage idol. Not knocking you kiddos. I mean, it's adults who keep messing this stuff up. Alongside the creation of a new suburban landscape that launched an entire literary and cultural onslaught based on boredom and depression, came the desire to create cheap art. It was supposed, this would be most desirable to teenagers, fresh to market and flush with disposable income. An advantageous feature for record labels and book publishers was this stuff could be made on the cheap. Why deal with sophisticated adult performers and writers who believe in the artistic process, have 'standards' when you can sign kids with desperate parents. Hell, let's do away with A&R departments. Don't need those anymore. Stan Freberg saw it coming. It's quaint to hear, 'So long music parasite'. Surely, or so he thought, jazz would prevail over the trite. Here's his Payola Roll Blues: Right side of artistry. Wrong side of history. How does this relate to the here and now? Roughly speaking, we've had artists from the mid century to now insisting to us through their art to pay attention. Zappa's Joe of Joe's Garage fame ended up a cucumber living inside his head because, even as the record business debased his fantasy society, faschistic forces were tightening the screws on the public, a public willing to go along in the name of morality. Of cleanliness. We cut music and art programs for everyday America. We amped up the morality police running parallel with the desecration of industrial America. Manufacturing America. Working America. We gave each other permission in a two-parent-working-three-or-four-jobs-household to cut corners on quality of thought. We stopped going out. We stopped having the money… 'not enough time for that'. We stopped believing that our popular cultural pursuits should challenge our notions. Not enough time for that. This led to the next logical conclusion. Don't like being challenged by your college professor, just declare you're triggered and start convulsing on the floor. Let's face it, by the time we got ahold of the fact that suburbia can't pay for itself, and that we're really not sure what 'good' art or music is anymore, and that our kids are getting to college without having read a single novel, now AI is being sold to us as the next big thing, totally going to change the world, totally awesome BTW in totally vague terms. And likely , because it's all totally controlled by an elite who got pants-ed a thousand times in high school for being in the A/V club, is totally coming for your job while stealing your work content even as it can't totally do everything it's creators say it can totally do. Totally indeed. Totally needless. Totally worthless. We've gone from giving permission for lower quality art to giving permission for companies to 'aggregate' art, for free, in order to feed the AI beast. After all, it's just content, right? Why develop the largest opportunity for blanket licensing payments when you can steal writ large across the entire creative class economy? I'm reminded of what it was like as a teenage performing artist forty years ago. 'We can't pay but hey, it's a great opportunity for you to…. get your name out there.' Now the corporate state takes your very identity and converts it into profit. Most folks are too busy surviving to understand how bad this is, let alone understand how we got here. Because, after all, all those imaginary guitar notes, and other tasty thoughts, remain in the imagination of this imaginator. Watch your step, the white zone is for loading and unloading…..  

Cohosts Ryan Munn and Scott Graves delve into what's on the horizon in Vermont tech in 2026. Talk of BETA Technologies recent IPO and its consequences on employment opportunities was high among the list of other companies mentioned that we're watching in the upcoming year.  The list includes OnLogic, former podcast guest Rugged Micropower, Lightshift Energy and more.  If you didn't make the conversation this time around, have no fear.  We're watching YOU, too!  A look at the upcoming year cannot be had without some meaningful conversation on artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing and cryptocurrency as well. Check out our insightful 2025 conversation with AI leader Peter Voss.   We discussed current policy around these technologies and policy consequences for the workplace, for our country's position as an innovation leader and for society writ large.   Happy New Year from the guys at Innova802.  Reach out to us with your feedback, give us a review and let us know if you have a great story to bring to the Innova802 or Are We Here Yet? Podcasts

VShip is using digital tech to deliver a better way to ship your automobile using the rail system of the United States.  Started by two brothers, Amr and Amhed Aly the company completed the Actuator Program, the accelerator from Black River Innovation Campus in 2024 and recently won in the latest cohort of LaunchVT in the spring of 2025.  The two brothers hail from Egypt and have spent considerable time in New England.  Amhed is a graduate of Amherst College and the two explained for us why Vermont is for them the ideal place to start their business.  We explored the problem they are solving using their technology and the benefits to the trucking and rail industries, in addition to what it takes to build a company that employs people.  The pair is raising capital now and have big plans for their company to expand to other sectors.

The Innova802 crew sat down to take stock together on where we stand on Artificial Intelligence: Its effect on politics, creativity, industry, labor, culture and the possibility of global destabilization.  Have no fear, rather than simply complaining as to the side effects of an inappropriately deployed plan by the tech sector for AI, we delve into each of our insights on how a beneficial future could be wrought through the use of AI.   This could be a highly informative episode for our listeners coming on the heels of the United State's WHite House report,  Winning the Race: America's AI Action Plan Resources mentioned in our discussion Paul Krugman May 9: 'is crypto still for criming'   This common dreams article on SA president and Trump meeting. Grok admitted to musk request to hide the fact musk wanted the bot to emphasize a fake white genocide.   Atlantic: Big Tech's AI Endgame Is Coming Into Focus  Atliantic: One app to rule them all  Ted Goia The Honest Broker 06.15.25

Consorvia's founder, Christina Fedor wants to redefine society's relationship to the creative sector. With their latest client platform the company is fundamentally bringing the individual and the system together to serve people in their effort to self actualize. Our conversation reached into the benefits of letting people young and old flex their deepest and most creative muscles.  Some of the issues with how we interact with tech and the solutions to overcoming these limitations. Consorvia is an R&D ecosystem primed to answer the really big questions that seem to be converging on us at an accelerated rate none of us has experienced before in our lifetimes.  What kind of AI do we truly desire to interact with?  How does tech bring the most creative out of us? How do we build whole new systems for better leveraging tech?

Innova802 Crew Member Will Jeffries represented the team for the Burlington, VT premiere of a new and innovative funding organization, Compound good.  Compound Good is a nonprofit fund that allows donors to make impact investments with philanthropy, unlocking capital for social entrepreneurs. Founders include Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies (VCET), Sage Software and Lawson's Finest Liquids while supported ventures include Little Patahka, Local Maverick and a company familiar to the Innova802 podcast, Shiki Wrap and founder Meagan Downey.   Following a viewing of their latest launch video, they sat down with Will Jeffries in front of a live studio audience.

When you connect with a born to be entrepreneur you know it.  In our experience we place all creatives; the artists, the dreamers, the community builders in this category of human experience.  Our guest for this two part episode exemplifies what we're talking about. In a little more than an hour, Ron Rivers and co-hosts Scott Graves and Ryan Munn explored Ron's development of digital solutions for aiding mission-driven organizations, really community building in Web3 that is meaningful to the human world, focusing on Ron's work with AI for social impact (Nonprofit Navigator and Spirit DAO),  philanthropy reform, and the challenges of synthesizing beneficial aspects of various traditions while avoiding past pitfalls.  We talked about Ron's work to develop The Church of Temporal Naturalism which we explored in depth, particularly in part II.     But what we loved the most about talking with Ron was how he has spent the time necessary to understand and allow others into his understanding for why?  What's behind the importance of understanding how and why we desire to respond to others needs.  His work is asking the question 'can we have meaningful connection and build a more spiritual, less transactional world through the digital realm?  You hear us talk a lot on our podcasts about tech's proper place in our society. Ron lives this every day.  This discussion was insightful, exhilarating and left us with considerable items for self-reflection.  We hope it does the same for you as well.

When you connect with a born to be entrepreneur you know it.  In our experience we place all creatives; the artists, the dreamers, the community builders in this category of human experience.  Our guest for this two part episode exemplifies what we're talking about. In a little more than an hour, Ron Rivers and co-hosts Scott Graves and Ryan Munn explored Ron's development of digital solutions for aiding mission-driven organizations, really community building in Web3 that is meaningful to the human world, focusing on Ron's work with AI for social impact (Nonprofit Navigator and Spirit DAO),  philanthropy reform, and the challenges of synthesizing beneficial aspects of various traditions while avoiding past pitfalls.  We talked about Ron's work to develop The Church of Temporal Naturalism which we explored in depth, particularly in part II.   But what we loved the most about talking with Ron was how he has spent the time necessary to understand and allow others into his understanding for why?  What's behind the importance of understanding how and why we desire to respond to others needs.  His work is asking the question 'can we have meaningful connection and build a more spiritual, less transactional world through the digital realm?  You hear us talk a lot on our podcasts about tech's proper place in our society. Ron lives this every day.  This discussion was insightful, exhilarating and left us with considerable items for self-reflection.  We hope it does the same for you as well.

It was a high point for co-hosts Ryan Munn and Scott M. Graves when they were joined last week by AIGO.AI  founder Peter Voss.  Peter's a long-time innovator, founder, advocate and thinker concerning Artificial Intelligence(he coined the term artificial general intelligence) whose insights shared with us are making us think further, dig deeper into our own advocacy for the best use of AI in order to realize a benefit to a maximum spectrum of the worlds' population.   This is your opportunity to invest with one of the world's most thoughtful innovation leaders in artificial intelligence. Find out more by engaging AIGO.AI.  So what exactly does Peter Voss think about the current state of Artificial Intelligence? Are our current tech sector leaders, politicians and business leaders making the most and for the benefit of all humanity?  Listen now for the answers to these and more questions. We hope we can offer some answers to you while helping you generate your own new and thoughtful questions on the subject of artificial intelligence.

Byron Batres of Scrivnr.com to recount the early days of building his company, the importance for understanding your clients true needs and how these early experiences are informing his latest venture.  Byron's insights are well worth the listen and the service they offer can help those who find themselves without the resources needed to take their loved ones assets out of probate. Part II of II