We talk with Kino Alyse who is a destination photographer and educator. They use their background in astrophysics & particle science to translate business tactics for a world-wide audience of creators.
This episode is one that you do not want to miss as we dive in talking about:
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Duke McKenzie
Kyle Kaplanis
Duke McKenzie
LinkedIn - Duke McKenzie
Kyle Kaplanis
LinkedIn - Kyle Kaplanis
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IG - @kyle_kaplanis
YT - The Web3 Guy
We talk with Kino Alyse who is a destination photographer and educator. They use their background in astrophysics & particle science to translate business tactics for a world-wide audience of creators.
This episode is one that you do not want to miss as we dive in talking about:
Be sure to Follow the Tomorrow Today Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts so you never miss a new episode.
Follow us on Social Media
Duke McKenzie
Kyle Kaplanis
Duke McKenzie
LinkedIn - Duke McKenzie
Kyle Kaplanis
LinkedIn - Kyle Kaplanis
TikTok - @theweb3guy
IG - @kyle_kaplanis
YT - The Web3 Guy
Hey everyone. Welcome back to Tomorrow Today. It is one of your host Kyle Kaplanis. And in the studio I have Duke McKenzie,
Duke McKenzie:Duke McKenzie is here. How you doing Kyle? How you doing? I'm looking forward to today.
Kyle Kaplanis:Doing well, we're really fortunate enough to have our special guest Kino on the show today.
Duke McKenzie:Kino welcome.
Kino Alyse:Hello. It's good to see you guys.
Kyle Kaplanis:I just wanted to do a quick intro. They're a destination photographer and educator. They use their background in astrophysics and particle science to translate business tactics for a worldwide audience of creators. And we're gonna be talking about a lot of really fun, interesting things that are in this new space of technology and where we're going. We're really excited to have Kino on so Kino and
Duke McKenzie:Kino deserves a standing ovation. There you go.
Kino Alyse:Thanks for having me. You guys are so excited. I love this
Kyle Kaplanis:We're we're happy bunch.
Duke McKenzie:I'm excitable. I have many problems getting excited is not one of them.
Kino Alyse:just like a dork in all elements. It's perfect.
Kyle Kaplanis:I love it. How we typically kick it off is I love to know a little bit more of your origin story before jumping into some of this stuff. Talk to me a little bit about who you are and what got you into where you are now.
Kino Alyse:Sure. Like you said before, I do have a, particle physics degree. I started out, with a master's degree in astrophysics and particle sciences, and using that heavy research background. I think I've gotten very good at identifying opportunities within, specific business structures actually. And being able to, translate those for modern digital artists. Which is effectively what I do these days. But didn't start there obviously. I got super duper sick and was not able to obtain my PhD. So I decided to go and self study photography back home in Rome. Went to college in Boulder for some years. Went. Home is Rome. Anyway, that's a long story. Decided to go study, photography, and realize that, you know, these$7,000 workshops that people are paying for to learn photography and how to be a successful artist. wasn't making me a successful artist. But instead the self study was making me a successful artist, particularly in B2B or business to business mm-hmm And I decided to leverage, that amount of research that I did on also my, existential frustration, against those, that money grabbing very capitalistic, element of exploiting artists, frankly, to create my own initiative where now I give, free access education to artists all over the world.
Kyle Kaplanis:Awesome. No, that's really cool. I love that cuz you, learned throughout your experiences of where the value really is. And you were able to create that. I think that's really smart and you have a lot of background knowledge. We were on a space together with Alex Stemp. Who's one of the creators that we represent and you were talking on there a lot about Twitter algorithms which really caught my attention. And I think that would be really interesting to know, a little bit more about that and your knowledge within that space.
Kino Alyse:Now when we say the algorithm, are we talking about Twitter's algorithm or do you want to talk about algorithms at large?
Duke McKenzie:Start with the large and bring it down. Yeah.
Kino Alyse:Backgrounds on what algorithms are. algorithms on social media at least is a machine learning entity that helps you prioritize content across social media. Usually it serves two purposes, both of which make platforms money. The first, is because, advertisers will pay these platforms money to bypass an algorithm. So an algorithm is basically just a gateway to get access to a particular set of target audiences. The second reason is user retention. So because an audience is constantly. And I think constantly, we all have been there fighting against algorithms. That means that we're further incentivized to upload as much content as possible and get further engagement on the platform. Mm-hmm which again, shows more advertisements to the audience, which makes the platform more money. But I don't like to vilify algorithms, honestly. I think that the capitalistic element of algorithms can be very toxic, but, machine sorting based on our interests, I think is a very good thing. And it's beneficial to creators.
Duke McKenzie:Sorry for interrupting you. Let me ask you a quick question. When you say can be toxic, give the audience some examples as to what you mean when you say the capitalistic elements of the algorithm can be toxic to the users or just provide some examples.
Kino Alyse:Primarily what I mean by toxicity is that these platforms basically exploit artist time and by exploiting the time and not. Necessarily giving them monetary feedback or, engagement based on the amount of time that they're investing in these platforms. Mm-hmm , it causes a lot of artists to not only internalize that perhaps their work is bad because they're not getting engagement and that feedback, but that they inherently are bad and don't belong rather on social media. And for artists, I. Think that is a very toxic element, or byproduct of algorithms. Not direct, cuz I, I don't think of algorithms as like this Beepboop robot overlord that is trying its best to keep us from our target audience. I think that we can work together with an algorithm to actually get in front of who our target audience and buyers are. But in order to do that, you need to know how an algorithm. Works mm-hmm and obviously, because of the lack of transparency, that's very difficult to do. So what I've done is used my, blood, sweat and tears, and years of research to effectively name, several different, factors of the algorithms across a couple of different platforms. Oh, okay. And explain what it is.
Duke McKenzie:Do you have some insights and stuff on Twitter?
Kino Alyse:Oh, yeah. I wrote a book about Twitter.
Duke McKenzie:I would love like, is that one of the ones? Is that one of the ones that got insight? I would love to hear some. Absolutely.
Kino Alyse:On Twitter, there are seven factors. The factors can be broken down into main factors and secondary, factors. Four of which are direct, that you have direct influence over and three of them that have passive influence. The first one that I usually describe is called the interest factor. The interest factor is basically just, again, a way of prioritizing content, but in particular interest, prioritizes it, by identifying what is interesting to the user. And then it accounts for engagement with similar content, which also includes visually similar content. So we were talking earlier about the TikTok algorithm mm-hmm and the interest factor is actually The only ones that is consistent across most social media platforms, with a big caveat that it's not the exact same. So when I talk about interest, it does apply to multiple platforms, but it's not exactly the same. Mm-hmm . So how, I mean that, is by a visual, similar content, on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, as well as Pinterest. Basically, there is an algorithm within each image that you upload, and that is able to tell what type of content is within that image and sorts content based on how someone has interacted with it. Categorized it as, oh, this person wants to see more of this content mm-hmm so it will show you more of that content. Does that make sense? Mm-hmm yep. Yep.
Duke McKenzie:So let me ask you a question. One of the reasons why we were excited to have you on was to have these types of conversations and in the audience that we have is we have a wide spectrum of, the business professionals and stuff like that. And what we're trying to. Always teach them is okay. You have to hear about these topics and learn about these topics. And that's why we call it Tomorrow, Today, because the future is happening.
Kyle Kaplanis:The future is happening today.
Duke McKenzie:The future's happening today. There's so much change and all of those things. So let's talk about, TikTok, the TikTok algorithm there. Let's talk about that. What I find fascinating about TikTok, which I don't understand, and, and then. If there's any insights into that. I didn't realize, but I love pets, like animals talking videos. I didn't know. I liked animal talking videos. I don't fully know how TikTok knows that I like animal talking videos and whatever it is, but I love them and they serve them to me. They figured it out and they serve them to me. And I love them. And what I find fascinating about TikTok itself is how it seems to be finding content that I don't know, I like, and serving that to me. Where other platforms, it seems like it feeds me content like, oh, I liked this, I went to this first, but it's what I find fascinating about TikTok. It's serving me these things before I even know I like them. And then I like them. I'm like, oh, I love talking. I find that crazy about how that works.
Kino Alyse:you're talking about social capital. When an artist or content creator is able to identify what their social capital is, that is when we're starting to have a convers. About scalability. So this concept is for, artists who usually already have an established audience and are looking to, scale into different sections of their target audience. Essentially what social capital is the relationship between your content and your audience. And when you're starting to scale, what you need to do is think about, your content and how it overlaps with, particular segments or your target audience. So for example, if I were to write, a travel photography blog, and the language that I use. adheres more to a boomer audience. That means that if I was starting to scale, I would think, okay, well now I wanna go to TikTok, but I don't want my labor to be so heavy that I'm like having to make completely new content in order to, go to a particular audience . So instead I would consider the relationship between my. travel blog and how I can adhere that to a millennial, Zoomer audience, whoever was going to be my target audience on TikTok and transform that into, TikTok based content for that particular audience. Does all that make sense? That's a lot, but does that's there's like a four hour conversation, Duke McKenzie: That totally makes sense. You know what I was gonna comment on, by the way, when you, when you were talking about your studies, I was like, boy, could you not have picked harder things to study? So I'm like, yeah. You know, you know, I'm like, I'm gonna pick this, like Sy one and all those things. Yeah, no, that was, uh, yeah, no, I, I feel like I literally just got a PhD in economics. Because it just wrote an NFT pricing guide to help artists price their work. And if you told me a year ago that I would have even picked up an economics book, I would've laughed at you. What I'm doing is definitely teaching me some new things.
Duke McKenzie:Your view and what we're getting from is that you, it seems like you like to advocate to make sure that artists. Are able to grow and get paid and all of those things. Right.
Kino Alyse:Very much so.
Duke McKenzie:You've been paying attention about four platforms. Which one do you find? I don't know if interesting is the right word, but which algorithm on which social platform do you feel that you are more empowered to manipulate, like as a creator, that empowers the creator the most.
Kino Alyse:TikTok or Twitter? TikTok or Twitter? Definitely easily. Yes. So Instagram is an enormously individualistic platform with how the algorithm works as well as just how the platform's built. It doesn't have very heavy community value and it also does not show content unless you are following somebody mm-hmm so effectively you have to do external marketing as well as, Multi-platform marketing, but, and yet on the same platform, because they've now introduced Reels where you don't have to follow people. And, I GTV. It's almost like means of multi-platform marketing without it being multi-platform marketing it's wild anyway. Right. Instagram's very individualistic where TikTok and Twitter are enormously relational. Very heavy community value. But the algorithms there are so damn friendly and part of why TikTok is so innovative, I think is actually because it marries the Instagram algorithm with elements of the Twitter algorithm and through showing engagement rather on, similar content, which also includes music sounds and things like that. That's essentially how it's able to bypass the individualistic of Instagram and get your content. Not only, shown to people who don't follow you, but the viral element that TikTok has is enormous. It's insane.
Duke McKenzie:Yeah. The viral nature of TikTok is crazy and Twitter. Because I've been starting to pay a lot of attention to, nFTs, but my NFT journey is I'm not a massive collector or whatever. It's actually allowed me to become more appreciative of photographers and artists and whatever. So that's, that's kind of what I've been doing. I've been spending a lot more time on Twitter because that's where the NFTS and all those things live . How are you finding that artists are embracing Twitter a lot more, especially photographers and people who are not, the assumptions that we're not normally technical and things, are you finding like a more ING art community leveraging Twitter, and TikTok, more so now
Kino Alyse:TikTok definitely. I think that Twitter, because. It's always had very heavy, community value , has always been a good platform to leverage for artists, but obviously the web three community is exponentially, adopting Twitter at this point mm-hmm mm-hmm but also to that, As more platforms innovate into web three. I think that there is going to be a bit of a shift and that shift is going to be based in, liquidity as well as access to an audience. what scares me a little bit, honestly, about Instagram innovating for web three is that unless they innovate their algorithm, as well as add very heavy community value into their platform. I foresee a lot of B2B or business to business takeover happen there because of the lack of communication that we have. And, one of the tenants of web three is decentralization. And if a corporation who has millions of dollars at their expense is able to capitalize on that and close us off from that decentral, communication. That's a takeover, essentially. Wow. So I love Twitter because it's commun.
Kyle Kaplanis:Exactly. So you're saying like Instagram, if you're a big money player, you can manipulate because the way the algorithm is you can manipulate it with money and power. Is that what you're saying
Kino Alyse:completely. Yeah. Yeah. We actually had Bored Ape Yacht Club. I'm not gonna necessarily open up that one, but, Bored Ape Yacht Club had a very large controversy in the space because they're essentially a centralized, community these days.
Duke McKenzie:Mm-hmm mm-hmm mm-hmm are you able to elaborate on that a little bit? Cause that's funny the one collection that most people would know about is Bored Ape Yacht club. Cuz it's the one with the apes, like all the monkeys and whatever, that's the example that they always show in the news. I think it's the most valuable collection right now even though there's the NFT winter and all of those things. Elaborate a little bit more, what you were speaking about.
Kino Alyse:There's a disillusionment happening in the NFT community right now, but particularly for one, one artist. So when I'm about to say, philosophically, I do not think adheres to one, one artist or anybody that is good faith within the space.
Duke McKenzie:I'm sorry, what are one, when you say one, one artist, what do you mean.
Kino Alyse:One one artist would be, photographers, digital artists, AI artists, et cetera, usually speaking usually. What's going on in this space is a sort of disillusionment where, artists are feeling alienated away from NFTs. And there's a bit of a mass Exodus right now. and a lot of people losing faith because these multimillion dollar, projects are essentially farming off of Degen culture mm-hmm mm-hmm and making millions of dollars off of it. But what scares us a lot is that Bored Ape Yacht in particular, not only do they have their own cryptocurrency, but they have a company that works out of Hong Kong I don't even remember how much they made it's in the millions, where they airdropped, land essentially for free to, Bored Ape Yacht club holders, where they manipulated the floor price so that you, me and our grandma decided to pay an exorbitant amount of money for these NFTs. And then the floor price dropped very significantly. We have, web two artists and people within this space that like to say that, NFTs are a pyramid scheme. Mm-hmm , and it's difficult to fight against that when we do have these massive projects that are coming in doing these things and then rugging themselves and manipulating the rest of us.
Duke McKenzie:I agree. So I'm in line. I actually think, but I wanna ask you a question.
Kino Alyse:Sure.
Duke McKenzie:A little bit of a debate, I agree as in, I believe that in the NFT space in general, I think that most of these 99.9% of everything, if not everything, there's going to be a massive correction. Most projects will lose 90 to 80% of their value. Even though I'm a big NFT believer in the value of this. I'm like, this is a great way to build community. There's many benefits of this mm-hmm I get people pushing back saying it's a massive pyramid scheme if it's this. And when I always say back to them, I'm like, well, how is this different than, and you can argue against my point, but how is this different than the stock market or different than, the beam stock. So. Legally people, bought up AMC theaters and bought up. What was the other thing that the meam stocks were there? The big one was the AMC theater on Robin's
Kino Alyse:game stop
Duke McKenzie:game stop. That was, yes. There we go. Giving you fist bump, fist bump over the, game stop. I think like those fundamentals haven't changed and there's going to be, the people who came at first. That almost looks like a pyramid scheme as well. Do you think that this is in your opinion, do you think that , in that Bored Ape Yacht Club example, do you think this is happening a lot more in NFTs or this is just one of the byproducts of markets and. In general
Kino Alyse:in general, I think it's the same. The NFT community stemmed from crypto, and a lot of those structures, and communicatory structures, I'm talking about that lived on like telegram, discord, whatever. A lot of the tactics that they used came directly from crypto. So no, I don't think that it is NFTs that are all of a sudden capitalizing on this. I think that it's a culture that has existed for a very long time. And as NFTs grew from, people who were heavily invested in crypto and realized that there was an opportunity here, they took the same workflows, I suppose, into NFTs. But, what's difficult about that though, is that exists, but that does not mean that NFTs as a whole. Bad mm-hmm . We tend to, I think, compartmentalize everything as very black and white, good and bad. And I think that the NFT community and web three adoption in particular, is going to be amazing, especially for artists and businesses as they enter into the space. But part of the problem is that the only real tenant that we have is decentralization and that in. Self is still a little bit of an abstract idea. It's not defined mm-hmm , which means that we, as a community don't really agree on what that means and how to pursue that future. Right. So I think that ensuring that our communicatory platforms are solid and open based is enormously important as we go into the future.
Duke McKenzie:Mm-hmm yeah. And that allows everyone to have the. As to what I, I agree with you, it's funny. That's, I'm gonna steal that. I'm gonna make a clip of that and steal that. I like that. Cause you're right. Everyone's talking about defi and what does that mean? Mm-hmm cause to me it means something different. Like I am less now maybe it's cuz of my history or whatever. But I am less, suspicious of some corporate organization as others where it's no control. It's a hundred percent bottom up and then I'm like, okay, but how do we organize it? How do we do this? And whatever it is. But I do agree that there needs to be open community platforms. The more open they are, the better it is, cuz that allows everyone to have an open debate as everything starts to settle as exactly what all these things. Yeah.
Kino Alyse:And part of the difficulty there too, is that, again, decentralization being abstract, but humans have an innate need to organize your question that you posed. And there was about organization and, to my anarchists out there, y'all know that even anarchy, needs some sort of structure like anarchy even in and of itself is not just like pure fucking chaos. I said a bad word. That's OK. There
Duke McKenzie:you go. We're leaving it. Leave a bad
Kino Alyse:worded there it's yeah, it's not like there, there are no structures that work. As long as we remained within the evolutionary elements that we are right now, where there is a need for structure, it cannot exist. It will fall apart. And web three is much the same,
Kyle Kaplanis:right? Yeah. But I do agree with you. A lot of people are not educated yet. When they see NFTs, they just see the example of board apes and they don't look past it. But where I'm seeing is in the future, I think that technology is gonna be everywhere. It just makes sense. and people are not grasping that yet, bypass the look of the board apes and all that, but look at the technology itself and realize. In itself is just something incredible, like the blockchain, having access to be able to see everything and where things came from and have in that history where the public has access to that, to me is like a huge revolution to our future.
Kino Alyse:I agree. And there is still a lot of innovation that needs to happen backend, but in particular with how we teach people about it. Part of the reason that mass media remains singularly on Bored Ape Yacht Club is because that's the most accessible and easy to understand elements of NFTs.
Kyle Kaplanis:Exactly.
Kino Alyse:Whereas there are no. Yet, no resources available that are able to onboard people in an effective means that teaches them about the full spectrum of NFTs, which includes protection, investment, the different facets, the tenants, and all kinds of things like that. Equity, especially too. It's
Duke McKenzie:crazy how it is crazy. There's something there's a whole industry and something, and it's so UN user friendly.
Kino Alyse:I know. Right?
Duke McKenzie:They added something that you could buy with a credit card, but you could not, you could only buy with Ethereum and then to talk to the average, person's a load of Ethereum. And again, I'm sort of in the middle, right? Like, I'm like, okay, we gotta like to talk to the average. Person's like, okay, you gotta go sign to this thing and get a wallet. Okay, great. Mm-hmm then you gotta go put Ethereum in your thing. And if you don't already have E half the credit cards, won't let you buy cryptocurrency, I think the point I'm trying to make is it is amazing how. Especially on the, NFT side, but you go through other things, how UN user friendly it is. And how much work there needs to be done.
Kino Alyse:Definitely, definitely. But also the jargon is very heavy too. Mm-hmm, part of what I do and why I think my physics background empowers what I do so much is that I am used to having to take broad concepts like loop quantum gravity, and break them down into pieces and translate. Exactly. And that's what a lot of degens don't do. A lot of NFT does. They haven't learned how to do it.
Kyle Kaplanis:Hundred percent. My biggest thing is what I'm trying to do in this new space is be that bridge. And you're right. There's a lot of people that understand that new technology mm-hmm and vocabulary but they're not translating it to the communities that are below them that don't understand. So therefore, when you're using these big terms, People are confused and it puts them off. Yeah. Whereas if you explain it to your communities that are growing and you want them in this space, you have to give it to 'em in a language that they can digest and understand. And that gives 'em more enticement to learn about this new stuff. And you're totally right. There's a lot of people not doing the correct education right now.
Kino Alyse:Yeah. And to, anybody who's listening too, like you're not alone in that feeling. I'm actually there too, where I go into a space that is about, dev work or, the finer elements of cryptocurrency. And they might as well be speaking another language. I have no idea what they're talking about. Right. So yeah, we need, translations and easily accessible information to make sure people are safe and onboarded, because wet free is about to hit everybody like a truck!.
Duke McKenzie:Right. And it's coming, it's coming to everybody.
Kyle Kaplanis:It's here.
Duke McKenzie:It is. This reminds me of and I am old enough to remember the first.com boom. I just graduated. And I was there. What people don't realize is when you were looking at, like, I remember the pets.com and the whatever, and all of those things, what people didn't realize. And I didn't realize at the time, even though I was in the industry, it was, is that. If you look at the web then, and you look at it now the internet now is everything. Like we don't even think about it. The internet is everything, everything it's because, and what actually allowed it to become part of everything was the smartphone, right? Cuz like that's where most of the interactions happen now, like here and globally. When I think about all of these things now, web three is such a broad term, but it's going to. Everything like that ticket, that concert ticket that you bought is going to be an NFT that whatever, and just like the internet when it was like all bubble and all those things. And we were talking about fantastic things, such mundane things like TikTok knows that I like pet talking videos where I don't know how it knows. Amazon knows when I need things and they it's mundane. And it just comes here within a period of time.. And it's just everywhere, but that's what we're seeing right now. Web three. So crypto defi NMD, all that side stuff is going to be part of everything. And I'm always encouraging people to look. You don't need to be an expert. You don't need to do it, whatever, but you should start tipping your toe in the water. Come on in mm-hmm , you know, cause like you can just start learning.
Kino Alyse:My favorite thing about you is that when you get excited, your voice stops to harass. And I just, I love it. We haven't mentioned the metaverse just yet too, right? The metaverse I think is what, fascinates me the most. Particularly when we look at the physicality or user experience, if you will, of technology and how it's grown and where I think the most innovation needs to go. We meme on AOL and, when the internet used to start up, you remember that like just obnoxious noise to make? Yeah, it's awful. Awful. And then we'd enter into, like forums that would have just that very basic, structure that they used to have. And now we have like text messages where we can send gifts and all kinds of things like, user experiences are something that, evolve very quickly in order to onboard as many people as possible, which ensures profitability, blah, blah, blah. So I think that the metaverse is where most people we're going to see the quickest adaptation, with these businesses in particular.
Duke McKenzie:Now. And when you say the metaverse right, mm-hmm cuz again, it's, it's one of those broad terms. Do you think it's more like a video game type of experience? Talk to me about what you mean that's gonna cause adoption or do you group it all in together, right? There's the Zuckerberg putting on the goggles saying, hi, we're gonna have the blah, blah, blah. In front of us. Right? Like we're, we're gonna do those. I have two kids. Okay. And my son's an avid video game player. Mm-hmm and why I knew NFTs worth thing. I've been spending money on digital goods since he's been like five years old with Roblox and, skins and all those things, at least now he could trade them and do whatever those go on. So there's the video game side, which the argument is okay, Minecraft and Roblox, whatever is a metaverse type of thing. That's one of the arguments. Is that what you see when you say metaverse or do you think like what basically what, when you say metaverse, what did you mean? What did Kino mean when you said that?
Kino Alyse:I think about it actually as a generational divide between where human consciousness is going to exist for the most part. So basically where our identities are going to be. Mm-hmm so if we, as millennials, gen Xers, when we think about the metaverse yeah. We usually look at it and we think, oh, it's just VR, but for a Zoomer and for the newer generations, it's going to be so much more than that. That is going to be their identity and where. Live. Right. So when I say the metaverse, I am thinking much more about the generational gap and how each generation is going to use it and effectively live in it and identify with
Duke McKenzie:Okay. That's fascinating. That's fascinating.
Kyle Kaplanis:What you're saying is like us millennials, gen Xers and stuff we identify with, Hey, I live in Los Angeles. I'm from here. Blah, whereas maybe this new generation, it won't matter the physicality cities, you're like, I live in this world. Where I'm hanging out is my culture. And that's where they're gonna mostly say they identify versus like maybe physical stuff in our real world.
Kino Alyse:Yeah. You guys remember ASL when we were growing up age sex location yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's gonna be that, but in the metaverse now.
Duke McKenzie:Right. Yeah. And, and we see a place where it's a serious part of their identity. Exactly. And maybe even as opposed to, I live in Los Angeles, I live in Toronto. I live in whatever. This is a major part of my identity, if not the majority of my identity. Which is interesting.
Kyle Kaplanis:That is interesting,
Kino Alyse:but do you also see why I'm very excited about B2B, but also terrified of that because the implications of, being able to so quickly identify effectively your geographics, but within a metaverse is so lucrative for people with budgets to be able to do that. So excited for that innovation, but also need to maintain and manage, our web three ethics. And communicate that and have those debates, as you said, in order to ensure that we don't just get taken advantage of.
Duke McKenzie:I'm gonna give you my thoughts. I don't think it's gonna be great news, but I can give you my thoughts. It's not even a debate. I actually here's what I think's going to happen. Okay. So if you look at what happened with right now, there's a major debate going on with social media. Like web two, right. Social media. And finally the Facebooks of the world. They're getting reigned in a little, they're starting to get reigned in a little bit and they started feeling it by, governments around the world, arguing how they target on all of those things and social media particularly. Is quite harmful. Like can be, I love it., I've made a lot of money off of it and whatever, but it's addictive. There's a lot of negatives to it as well. And for a long period of time, it went unchecked. And so the positive of the negatives peaked. And now we're starting to say. What does this mean and how we deal with it? I think that's gonna happen. I think your fears are gonna come true in the three place. Meaning like we're gonna have the debate, all of these things, people are gonna adopt things really quickly. It's gonna grow. We think something's going to go too far, whatever that is, whether it's corporate interest or whatever, and then people will claw back and say, okay, this is what we think it should be because that's what, that's how I see these things always goes like they things go too far and corporate interests, which. I benefit a lot from this corporate interest, but I do see where like, even me right now, whom, is prosp sponsorship. At one point, I was like, , this whole Facebook stuff's gone a little too far. Right. At one point in my life, I was very pro Facebook. I understand why you're worried. Mm-hmm I agree with your worry, like I'm down with Kino's worry. The way that we do things, I don't see how it won't get there. And then we'll claw back. It's not woo. We didn't get there. Corporations didn't take over too much or whatever. It's more like we see all these bad things happening than people get angry. And then. For everyone's capitalistic interests. Mm-hmm they simply have to claw back because customers will get ticked off or whatever that is.
Kino Alyse:Sure. There's definitely an ebb and flow there. I think that one of the solutions to corporate takeover and the negativities that we're talking about is actually teaching, discoverability. discoverability, I think is also an enormous element of ensuring an equitable future too, where we make sure that everybody is taken care of. And there is an equal playing field within web three when we do have mass adoption of it. And what I mean by. Is that, like we said before, humans have an innate need to organize and that's. That's okay. Of course we're allowed our friend group we're allowed our interests, but in order to make sure that we don't, get into those positive feedback loops as well as, bias groups and things like that, we need to make sure that we are seeking out specific forms of content. And when it comes to equity within this. Face in particular, what I mean is, making sure that you're seeking out LGBTQIA+ content, black content, , differently abled content, et cetera, and, making sure that you are promoting an awareness and really frankly, being responsible, I think, for managing an equitable, decentralized and open access Web3 future. Because if we don't do that within a web two space, We're not going to happen in web three. And we are going to have more of the same philosophies in web two, which is profitability and exploitation.
Duke McKenzie:I think the only thing I could say is that I think that. If you want to talk about, gen Z, what do they call 'em? Zoomers if you like, zoomers what I, yeah. What I'll say about zoomers is that I have a lot of faith in them. So I, me too, part of the nature of my job is I talk to them all. Most of the people that we manage and the, most of the people that I work with mm-hmm , and that spend a lot of time with zoomers and then my two kids and whatever, but I spend a lot of time with zoomers who are very focused on trying to build things and. Think, and I listen to them a lot and I have a lot of faith with them. And one of the things that I like about them, you talked about inclusivity and you talked about those is that they are less as a mat. World's a big world and all those stuff. So I'm not, I don't wanna generalize, but they are less stuck on labels and they are more. Open to seeing different things. Right. I'm 46 fresh, , and the debates that I am having, or even the things that I think about and things like that. As I'm transitioning, I say, my opinions change or evolve, they don't even have to think about those things, cuz it is always that way. So my position on gay marriage evolved over a period of time. Right? So at one point I was like, and I don't believe that. Right. Right. Obviously mm-hmm, I support gay marriage now. Right? Like everyone, adults should be able to do what they want to do, but if you talk to me 15 or 20 years ago, I wouldn't say I wasn't anti I wasn't. No, there's. I just didn't think, ah, no, it shouldn't happen. But what I would say is when you look at zoomers, they don't need to evolve because like, when you talk to my kids, the evolution of Duke McKenzie or the education of Duke Mackenzie, they don't have to have that because. They already think more inclusively. It's just natural to them. Like they already, yeah. Labels mean less to them. What my prediction is, is that there's three groups of people, right. There's people that are always trying to evolve. We learn, we think we say, we get presented with new information. Society change you, you say, oh wait, okay. This makes sense. But then there's this group who is, this is the way it is, and that's why I have a lot of faith in them because to make web three. More equitable. If you look at social, web two has a lot of problems, but web two is a lot more equitable than web one. And web one is a lot more equitable than TV, right? When one person in an ivory tower. Decided who got in and got out. Yes. We could say the algorithms, all of that type of stuff, but it is still a lot more equitable because I see creators of all types, creators of different disabilities, creators who identify differently and all those things that are able to break through. Not enough. Not enough because we could argue about, TikTok history. I'm like, okay, this platform here talks a lot about African American music. But yet in the top 20 there's no African Americans, like this is weird, but there's still breaking through. The thing is it's still improvment it because if you. When I was a kid. My father, was a minor he's retired now. And whenever it was a small community, it was four hours away from a major city and all of those things and all of my options and everything were gated and the big, the massive, innovation was hip hop and I had to vote like, get through that. And that was the most, new rock and roll inclusive. So my long-winded answer here , as I'm thinking about it is I agree with you that we don't want web three to make the same mistakes as web two and web one. But my argument I think is just by the nature of who will be owning it and driving it as it goes. I don't think it will be perfect because humans are imperfect, but I like, it will be a lot more inclusive by nature of who right now. We're not seeing it because right now who's running. Is a bunch of rich people that like, it's not like the early adopter, it's a capitalist game, so we're not seeing it now. Mm-hmm but I'm even watching. I'm very optimistic on how much more inclusive it's gonna be. Not perfect, but a lot more inclusive. Yeah. Um, mood forward.
Kino Alyse:No me too completely. The kids are alright for sure. I completely agree with everything that she said. So I don't feel, I need to revisit that, but, within, my generation and, the bulk of the population that's within web three, I think that it's very important that we still have those structures and projects. That at least account for equity within the space onboarding as well as education within the space. Mm-hmm . And that we all agree philosophically that this is the web three future that we want so that we keep out bad faith projects and B2B.
Duke McKenzie:I hear you. Yeah. Yeah. I'm aligned. That makes sense. But
Kino Alyse:yeah, kids are all right, like preach. So,
Kyle Kaplanis:so.
Duke McKenzie:Do you mind if I take a little turn, I, I have a facet. question, a personal question to ask you. Okay. When you got all of those degrees, Right. And in the science field and physics and all of those things. You are the second person that I know now, cuz we just met and all those things, you are the second person that has turned to art. Like photography, particularly art and photography. Right. The first person I've known that has taken something that I was like, huh? Your photographer was Alex. Actually Alex was actuary. Alex is very scientific. I was an actuary. And then he quit his job and he decided to go into photography. Now what I find fascinating. I'd love to talk to you about it. More, just love, love your opinion is that, I do not normally equate science. With art and physics with art mm-hmm were you always an artistic person or do you think they're part of the same strain or am I wrong to think they're two completely different things?
Kino Alyse:I think that there are multiple ways. That creativity manifests. My way of doing art is extremely structured, but I honestly think that's because I suffer from codependency mm-hmm . If you look at my art, every single line has to be very straight. It needs to be edited in a way that is like actually real life. Or I have failed as a person, which is actually kind of funny. And, I've set myself up for failure there cuz I can see ultraviolet light. So whenever I go to shoot something, it looks nothing like, oh, really? Like it's going to look like in the computer. Nothing. No. Huh., so I don't really, I like looked at a rainbow like 10 years ago and I was like, wow, that's not what they look like in photos. And I've realized I can see you be light anyway. So hold
Duke McKenzie:on. So sorry for, okay. Finish your answer and then I'm gonna ask you, what do you see go? I'm pretty good.
Kino Alyse:It's, it's hard to describe, but I'll try, my way of doing photography, is very structured and I think very scientific. I love figuring out what settings need to be in order to get the perfect shot. And then what I need to do mechanically in the computer to compose something. Whereas other artists are able to just give birth to something tangible that they have in their brain. Mm-hmm I can't do that to save my life. I can draw you a pony, but it's gonna be a stick figure. And that's it.
Kyle Kaplanis:Right, right. Yeah. That makes sense. You're basically saying that yeah. Science and art can be a thing because you're very, more scientific with the way you do your art versus somebody who's maybe more, really artistic doesn't care about science. They just put something together and they're happy with that product.
Kino Alyse:Sure. But also there's different tenants of science too. So I was , a particle physic. I tend to deal in abstractions, which is why I deal so well with algorithms, cause algorithms, aren't exactly the most tangible thing, but here I am attempting to describe them. That's what I basically did with particle physics too. And then you've got art, which again is, it's not engineering for me. It's not. Tangible until it's on a computer and I'm able to manipulate it in a way. My approach to art is abstract, but the way in which I produce it is very, mechanical mm-hmm
Kyle Kaplanis:no, that's.
Duke McKenzie:I love it. I love it. thanks a lot for coming on today. Thank you for having me. I really, I love it. I gotta give you another one. This is right. It was a very thoughtful, I love having these thoughtful conversations and I think these are important. So thank you very much. Coming on. You have a very unique perspective and where can, we find you on Twitter and on your socials? Oh,
Kino Alyse:no talking. Self my weakness. I am, I, I teach people how to talk about themselves and I'm so ONED myself. It's ironic. And I realize it. I am on, Twitter at, twitter.com/kinoalyse I literally write, workbooks about algorithms and, branding concepts as well as sales. I am about to launch a. Well as a massive project. So I would encourage anybody who wants updates to that. Do follow me on Twitter cuz that's where all of that will be. Cause I'll be changing platforms soon.
Duke McKenzie:All everybody, so coming we'll to you.
Kyle Kaplanis:So.