Today, we're diving into the fascinating world
of technology with John Greenwood, a luminary
in the tech industry and the chief technology
officer at Kronos Fusion Energy. With over two
decades of experience, John's career is a testament
to innovation and creativity, seamlessly blending
IT, web, mobile, and software application development.
His career is a rich tapestry, woven with diverse
experiences across sectors like consumer electronics,
entertainment, graphics, and many more, contributing
to companies and working alongside notable names
like Disney, IBM, and a few other musicians currently
in your playlist. Known for his dynamic approach
and versatile skill set, John has been instrumental
in spearheading digital transformations, enhancing
data analytics, and pioneering new product designs
and development. His extensive background encompasses
innovation, solution and service development,
digital transformation, and much more. At Kronos
Fusion Energy, John's visionary leadership and
deep technological expertise are driving the
development of the smart fusion energy generator,
steering our company towards realizing a sustainable
and clean future. His approach is not just about
advancing technology, but about creating a positive
impact on the world. It's personal too. I must
know. John was kind enough to give me a job at
Live Nation Entertainment over a decade ago.
Our team at Live Nation was an overarching team
of superstars, and John was our leader. We were
charged with designing, building, and launching
complex, multifaceted technology that streamlined
hundreds, if not tens of thousands of internal
and external business processes. I have always
known John to be a great leader, an exceptional
technologist, an avid environmentalist, and an
all -around great human. And so, when Cronus
needed a CTO to build the first -ever fusion
energy ERP system, I knew John was our wild card
that could make near -impossible, cutting -edge
technology a reality. It's not just his professional
achievements that set John apart. His passion
for music, art and innovation continues to drive
him towards exploring and integrating new technologies
in unique ways. Join us as we explore John Greenwood's
fascinating journey, his insights on the future
of technology and his relentless pursuit of innovation
across various sectors. Here's John. John, you
are like a heavy hitter in the technology industry.
What got you interested? What got you interested
in what you do? So I suppose that I was originally
following in my father's footsteps. He was an
artist and a musician by trade. And that's what
I wanted to do. And I was a musician, pretty
successful musician. We were able to open for
some big bands, go on tour. But I got an opportunity
to join a company called Micrographics. Micrographics
had written the world's first vector -based drawing
program for the IBM computer. And I joined them
a few years later in 86. and was able to work
on a program called InnoVision, which was a CAD
program, a drawing program. And we launched it
before Windows 1 .0, and we became the first
commercially available Windows application ever.
And so I was very interested in kind of incorporating
the art side of my brain with... with this business
and we went on to develop Windows Draw and Windows
Graph. We went on to go public. During my time
there, I did start there as an artist. I didn't
quite get the vector based drawing feel as an
artist. I kind of wanted to do more freeform.
So I started traversing different roles within
the company and I was in sales. I started their
inside sales group and their dealer programs,
visiting dealers, setting them up. I worked in
tech support, program management, release management.
quality assurance and finally software development
and R &D. I think I was there for six or seven
years and I think I discovered early on through
that experience the intersection of creativity
and tech. I was able to identify how technology
can make your life better which directly translates
into how it can make life better for co -workers
and your clients and customers. when working
on whatever product or solution you're developing.
So I think that was engrained in me early and
it kind of facilitated that passion approach
to wanting to work with technology, but still
getting to have that creative side. That's awesome.
Yeah. You've been in entertainment, you've been
in manufacturing, you've been in gaming. How
does one translate their work between all of
the different industries? It requires a nuanced
approach that takes into account the unique challenges
and opportunities and requirements of each industry.
I know that one thing that's always bothered
me is from time to time, if I was looking to
work with another company, Some companies would
be really hard headed and say, well, you have
to have mortgage industry experience or you have
to have FinTech experience. And what I've done
is set out to disprove that. And then I've worked
with graphics companies, entertainment companies.
I worked for nearly five years at a big law firm,
one of the biggest law firms in the world, office
products, ticketing. toy company, retail, e -commerce.
So in doing that, it's made it a lot easier for
me to pick up gigs here and there with companies
that otherwise would just kind of look at your
experience and say, no, you don't have that.
But you still need to have that passion. And
I've always had it, regardless of what it was.
And a good example is the law firm. That might
sound a little dry for somebody that's worked
in graphics and entertainment. But the role was
Chief Digital and Innovation Officer. And that
also really drives me. The whole digital transformation
piece to me is creative. It's getting in there
and figuring out how you can streamline operations,
streamline business processes, using technology
and tools to help facilitate making things better
for folks. I've been able to easily kind of translate
that to different business types and it hasn't
been a problem for me. Wow. Yeah. How does you
must have seen quite a bit of an evolution within
technology just from, you know, the 1980s to
where we are now talking about AI machine learning.
quantum computing, how do you stay on top of
it? How do you consistently learn? Is it something
you are built with or do you work hard on it?
Yeah, actually to the point of the last question,
it becomes easier for me because of traversing
all these different companies and industries.
in these different spaces. So I'm able to more
easily like continuously monitor the industry
trends, merging technologies and regulatory changes
that impact technological strategies in each
of these sectors. So if I see, I'm constantly,
if you follow on LinkedIn, for instance, I'm
constantly posting. stories that I find interesting
in digital transformation and innovation, but
a lot of those, again, traverse different industries
like legal. Maybe some things I post is on GDPR
and the changes to GDPR, or there's new EU laws
that are passed this week. I don't know if you
saw those. Those are very interesting to me,
but those traverse all sorts of industries. They
touch on legal, of course. They touch on compliance
and regulatory. but they also touch on all these
other industries I've worked on. So I stay connected
with industries, associations, I attend conferences
and engage in knowledge sharing forums to stay
informed and adapt strategies. I'm part of a
collective of folks that are continually reaching
out and helping each other to understand the
ever -changing landscape. you know the anti -technology
so yeah so so it's like you're naturally interested
in it and you're good at it and yeah your friends
do it yeah i get that that's pretty cool um what
what is like the most innovative project you
think like in your lifetime what has been the
most fun challenging um You know, so after I
left Minder Graphics, I actually left with the
president and COO. And again, we'd gone public,
very successful company. I've learned a lot of
things there. I'm very lucky to have joined that
company. But he wanted to leave and start a multimedia
company. And this was right down my alley, of
course. We actually even brought in some very
famous musicians and producers. But I was the
third employee in that company. And it was called
Seventh Level. It was a startup. And at the time,
companies like Brøderbund and Disney were releasing
interactive titles with a few hundred sales of
animation and 8 -bit mono audio, which is unheard
of in today's day and time. But these were the
big the big interactive gaming and title houses
at the time. It was very rudimentary stuff. And
our vision and mission was to create interactive
titles, at least when we started for children.
So educational interactive titles with much improved
audio and visuals. And so we set out to develop
an AV engine that would allow us to produce titles
in 16 -bit stereo. for things like sound effects
and maybe dialogue. And in the cases where we
were going to use key songs in the title with,
we had people, yes, John Anderson from Yes sang
songs, children's songs. We had David Gilmore
from Pink Floyd playing in the title. Howie Mandel
was our main character that took the children
throughout the title. And in those cases, we
used CD quality audio, or 44 .1 kilohertz, 16
-bit stereo, which again, unheard of at the time.
And then moreover, again, these other titles
had a few hundred cells of animation. And this
is Disney we're talking about. Our first title
contained 12 ,000 cells of animation. And this
allowed us to launch titles that were what you
call on 24 Hollywood quality. So it's like watching
a Saturday morning cartoon. And then we were
able also to localize that into 13 different
country languages. And it was very popular. We
also did things like reuse of cells and tweening.
Tweening is when you create key cells, a key
character cell, but then automatically create
the cells in between, which speeds up the development
process. And folks like Disney took attention
immediately. They hired us to create games for
them, including some of the Lion King games like
Timon and Bumba's Jungle games. I was able to
create the world's first Mix Mode or Orange Book
CD -ROM for Windows. So I was interviewed by
CD Magazine for that. And then we just went on
to use that AV engine and that experience and
continue to improve on it to create other...
Little Howie, Little Howie Mandel titles, for
which we won a presidential award from George
Bush for a lot of the children's stuff. But then
we got into other things for older children and
adults, a virtual reality series, and then eventually
produced all the Monty Python interactive titles.
And much like micrographics, I kind of traversed
through different roles at that company. So when
I started, I started up their QA and release
management group. but then I got into some coding,
you know, actually doing some programming and
scripting on the titles, and eventually became
a producer, and I was a producer for Monty Python's
Quest for the Holy Grail, and we actually won
at the Cannes Film Festival the first year they
had an award for video games, and we won for
Quest for the Holy Grail, so super, super, yeah,
super, super fun, very innovative. very challenging
lot of hours put in on that on that company and
we did take that company public as well we actually
did a secondary public offering so yeah um it's
almost like you seek to be in the forefront of
ideas and innovations technologically um it almost
feels like you have some sort of instinctual
insight that allows you to see uh the next move
in the game, so to speak, technologically speaking,
just kind of looking at your resume and the evolution
of it. That's pretty cool. And it shows passion.
There are passion projects for you. Right. Yeah,
absolutely. I always try to find some level of
passion in whatever I do. And I've been lucky
enough to find these organizations like Bicronos
Fusion Energy that I'm passionate about. It shows,
John, it definitely shows. So all of these, like
you've seen so many full cycle management or
full cycle build of a lot of technologies. I'm
sure with the advent of AI and AI doing some
of the programming now, helping with data scrubbing,
all of the ETL processes that we used to hire
people for. is now almost autonomous and optimizes
itself, et cetera. How does a software development
lifecycle, how is it gonna evolve over the next
20 years? Just speculate. Yeah, that's a good
question. I'm not entirely sure how it'll evolve
over the next 20 years. That's pretty far out,
but for easily the first half of my career. in
a lot of our careers, waterfall SDLC was king.
And to some extent it still exists, especially
in the realms of legal and government and manufacturing
projects, which I've worked on all of those in
the last few gigs I've been in. However, to your
point with the advent of things like DevOps,
low code, AI. we've embarked on cultural philosophies
and practices and tools that increase our ability
to deliver applications and services at high
velocity. So evolving and improving products
at a faster pace than organizations using traditional
software development and infrastructure management
processes can. Automated testing frameworks also
factor into this. I used to manage, as you know,
Frank, a large QA organizations at a number of
my roles. And these have all but gone away. It's
tough to find like a VP of quality assurance
or anything because the developers are building
these automated testing harnesses into the code
that they write. And to your point again, now
with AI actually generating code and doing code
reviews and testing. artificial intelligence
is changing the programming landscape and the
future of coding by making code generation and
optimization much better. Code snippet generation
and performance optimization are two tasks that
developers can automate now with the help of
AI -powered coding tools. AI can analyze big
data sets and find patterns to boost code quality
and efficiency. And the tools can suggest better
code structures and warn developers of possible
cybersecurity risks. I was looking at one of
these the other day. I think it's called Devon,
if I remember correctly. But I was very surprised
that it was not only generating the code, but
also going in and debugging and looking at cyber
security and endpoint protections. But it can
also predict future issues using past data, right?
doing predictive analytics based on the data
workload. And it can lead to a better final product
or solution and a smoother, more efficient development
process. That said, I still believe humans are
the creative element that's missing in the chain.
So AI, at least currently, doesn't have that
creative element intact. I'm not seeing it at
least, and I've played around with it a fair
amount. While AI is automating a lot of these
tasks, the notion of AI replacing programmers
is still more of a speculation than a reality
due to the irreplaceable human creativity problem
solving skills. Right. I think it'll make things
faster and easier, but I don't think it's actually
going to replace human beings. I think you have
to know what you're doing to even communicate
with it properly. Right. Yeah, it's like, I tell
my wife, my wife's an artist and a poet. She
made her a poet. And I've tried, but I haven't
convinced her yet that she constantly wants to
spawn new ideas. And I said, you really should
use generative AI to at least get you kickstarted.
You don't have to use the content that's generated,
but it gives you ideas to press on and move forward.
Right, yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. You know,
I talk to gamers and a lot of people when they
play video games, they think that the next step
is somehow programmed in. And the truth of it
is the programming for the program is in there.
but the actual visuals and everything is actually
built as you play through the game. And I think
a lot of people quite understand how well our
sort of predictive modeling has gotten, even
when it comes to predicting not only your gaming
moves, but the visuals that then show up, the
characters that then show up. All of that is
almost like a machine learning model. Right.
Right. And that's interesting because like, you
know, you go from playing like Pac -Man, not
just less than four decades ago and the constraints
of video games then. And now you see this whole
other world. And I saw a demo of the Apple Apple
Pro headset and it was mind blowing. It was mind
blowing. It is. It's crazy. I was almost terrifyingly
good. It was almost like, you know what? That's
it. Like, I don't think I'm going to leave my
house during my retirement. Like, it's getting
over. Yeah, it's moving at an incredible pace
right now. All right, yeah. Yeah, I think as
technology people, like, we're all excited about
it, but there are a lot of people that see a
lot of doom and gloom, which I don't get. I only
see the upside, so maybe I'm the problem item.
So... John, you've generated a lot of intellectual
property out there with some of these ways where
you've married technology and art and technology
and music and things like that. Do you have time
for your music, by the way? How do you make time?
I haven't as much as I want to. I was a lead
singer in the band back in the 80s, but it was
after I stopped doing that so much that I started
playing guitar more. And I've performed here
and there. I was lucky enough to do a gig at
the House of Blues on Sunset before they tore
that down, because that was kind of a landmark
for House of Blues. And then some other clubs
are around here. But I try. I need to make more
time for it. Have you have you had a chance to
try the app where you it you train it with your
voice? And then you just tell it the song and
it'll sing that song in your voice. I have not.
It's called Dub AI. I literally trained it with
my voice and I made it sing like Whitney Houston's
I Will Always Love You and I was blown away.
There's no way I can do that in real life, but
I sound so good. That's super interesting. Yeah,
I have a ton of patents in my name, and it was
always frustrating to me that a lot of them came
under Gateway. I think I've got one at Sony and
some other places, but the vast majority was
when I was with Gateway Computer, and they had
a brilliant way to go about generating IP. They
had an intellectual property program where you
turned the IP in. They also made it part of your
bonus, actually. And they did bonuses quarterly,
which I thought was unique to them versus other
companies. But they actually tried to get you
to work with other people to help generate IP,
which was very successful. Sometimes I would
come up with things that were outside maybe a
little bit of what they did and your remark about
the voice AI piece reminded me. I came up with
something where you could play guitar. But as
you were playing guitar, whatever notes you were
playing were automatically registered on this
tool, this solution. You know, recorded everything,
recorded the tempo, everything, so that you can
kind of go back. Because as I grew up, you know,
as a musician, a lot of times in our band, a
guitar player may start playing a solo for something
that you guys have written. And then you get
done, you're like, Oh, my God, that was fantastic.
You know, what was that? And they just kind of
shrug their shoulders and go, I don't know, I
just kind of did it on the fly. And that was
great. Can you do it again? I don't know. You
know, I don't think so. So this invention was
kind of to record the actual notes that you were
playing, the tempo you were playing, the keys,
everything, and Gateway passed on that, right?
Well, many years later, of course, other inventions
came up where people were using that. So I've
done the same thing with keyboards. I actually
have an invention I can show you where I turned
into Gateway for a foldable, compactable phone.
which I believe isn't the same. Yeah, that does
that now. But this was back in 1996 or 97 that
I turned that in. So it was a phone that folded
in three parts. And so it was frustrating sometimes,
but moreover, it was very rewarding because they
actually paid you for specific milestones as
you created things. You'd go to an invention
board. I eventually... did so much and was privy
to the process so much that I joined that intellectual
property board and was able to review other patents
that other people were turning in. But as you
go in, you've just got to make sure that you
approach the creation and the protection of the
IP. And as much as possible, it's good to be
in a collaborative environment. Every so often,
you'll hear a success story like Sony, right?
They did the Walkman. I don't know if you know
that story, but I can't remember the guy's name,
but it was a guy and maybe a few other people,
and they literally went and locked themselves
in a room and worked on this in a vacuum. And
it was obviously a great success for Sony so
many years ago, but it's hard to replicate that
sort of thing. Apple's done it at times. as well,
but I find that a more collaborative environment
is helpful, especially because I wasn't a hardcore
programmer. So if I came up with stuff, I would
go and work with my counterparts, my friends
at Gateway as an example, and say, is this possible?
I know it's unique because I don't see things
out there and I know it's novel, but is this
possible to generate this piece of hardware or
this software process? And at times then you
can sign them on and then they become co -inventors
with you. But you just need to be cognizant to
register your copyrights, trademarks, patents,
register business product or domain names, create
confidentially non -disclosure licensing contracts
for employees and partners. But it's important
and a lot of companies have gotten away from
it, but IP is very important. Yeah, we definitely
think so. We spoke to a company, I want to say
about two to three weeks ago, and they were making,
they call it sapphire screens, but they were
making these ultra strong screens that could
go on your phone and would also be foldable.
producing these screens requires, producing that
material requires like industrial heat of almost
200 degrees centigrade. So we were having conversations
with them about potentially using fusion energy,
like an industrial generator to help them process
those things. So it's interesting to hear about
like the origins of that technology. Wow. Yeah.
What do you think about what's happening in terms
of like our superconducting capability in America?
I know that how do you feel about that? As it
relates to Just the future of the availability
of these superconductors in order to have computing
follow Moore's law in the future. I mean, so
if we're talking about things like quantum, if
we're talking about things like quantum computing
and AI, all of these things require not only
huge amounts of energy, but they require computing
that we don't have the capacity to produce right
now. And I know a lot of startups are working
on it. Yeah, so I mean, if you're talking about
kind of the internet, I don't have a strong opinion
on some of the, you know, these countries that
you brought up and, you know, that there's always
a danger there and that comes into the regulatory
and the compliance and moreover the security
piece. But if you're talking about the intersection
of technology and these energy pieces evolving,
to your point. High performance computing is
one to look at and advanced simulation techniques
being essential for modeling and optimizing these
fusion reactors and their designs and the plasma
behaviors. Computational modeling, which enables
the scientists and engineers to simulate complex
dynamics and optimize the reactor performances.
That's all going to be crucial. to predict the
behavior of fusion reactions under different
operating conditions. We've seen things like
what was it, the Japanese reactor that had an
issue when it flooded, things of this nature.
So high -performance computing models in that
respect are gonna be helpful. The development
of advanced materials and engineering techniques,
I know that... I shared something with everyone
at CREMIS on AI being used, you know, to help
find new materials, you know, not too long ago.
So those materials and engineering techniques
are going to be critical for building and operating
fusion reactors, innovations in material sciences,
like high -temperature superconductors and evading
ceramics and all these sorts of things. that
were all in that article that I shared, but AI
is gonna factor into it heavily. It's gonna be
very interesting to watch this space and how
AI and machine learning can be impactful to it.
But as far as the others, the other part of that
question, I think it's all about security. It's
gonna be crucial that we secure all of this.
It's tough. A lot of these countries are way
ahead of us in terms of the hacking and the breaches
that they're performing in a lot of these companies.
And it's tough to stay ahead of the curve on
that. I really haven't seen anybody that's been
able to stay ahead of the curve. It's been more
reactionary. That's true. That's true. And I
think the fear is that you know, like we we rely
a lot on Taiwan and for for our computer chips
and things like that and so that so one wonders
that like if we for Yeah, yeah, no, I I understand
I understand the concern and and gateway for
instance, we got a fair amount of our chips from
from Taiwan as well. So there's always that danger
of that marketing, I'm sorry, that market kind
of closing up to you based on geographical concerns
and politics as well. Cyber security is a big
thing for us and we're heavily relying on you
for all that, John. What do you think? Not only
do we as a nuclear energy company have regulatory
things, that we need to worry about. And so there's
a lot of compliance around that. But you hear
about cyber attacks all the time. In terms of
an energy asset, I worry about cybersecurity.
What do you think? How can we really ensure that
we're protected? Is there a way? What I've really
fallen back on So in regards to compliance in
general, so compliance first, let me just say,
I've had a lot of experience with ADA and GDPR,
CCPA, HIPAA, PCI, FedBrand, all these, especially
in roles they've served in within legal, finance,
retail arenas. Same thing goes with security.
The compliance and security pieces are hand in
hand. You've got to do a full assessment of solutions
and the infrastructure coupled with continued
audits to evaluate the adherence to regulatory
requirements and endpoints in the security piece.
Everything as far as compliance and regulatory
is constantly changing. On the flip side of the
coin, on the security piece, the threats are
constantly changing. As soon as we figure out
a way to... shut an organization down or plug
up an area that could be breached, they find
a new way in. So you have to really work on a
regular basis to ensure that all these things
have been plugged up. I've had very good luck
with certain tools. that I've worked in recently
are very concerned over breaches and hacking.
I know everyone is, but when you're working at
one of the biggest law firms in the world where
they're handling, they have tens of thousands
of clients and they're handling their matters,
they obviously don't want to be breached because
it's not just their data, it's all their clients'
data. And it's critical and it's very private
data. It just can't be out there. constantly
having to keep up with protecting those endpoints.
Yeah, it's gonna be an interesting decade for
computing. I mean, it always is an interesting
decade for computing, I guess, but I feel like
now, especially so, you know, about five years
ago, I used to talk about using five, maybe six
years ago, I used to talk about using AI machine
learning and even quantum computing for fusion
energy and I used to I spoke at an event at Harvard
and I heard snickering in the back of the room
like people thought that this was an impossibility
and now it's in the ethos of fusion energy as
how how are we going to use a quantum computing
lab and their opening of quantum computing lab
in Princeton dedicated to fusion energy. And
this happened just a week ago. And it made me
so happy to see this. Because it was proof that
I'm not crazy. So that's always good. So that's
always good. But it was cool to see that. You
know, I've always seen quantum computing, like
I've seen quantum computing being applied in
a financial sense, like algorithmic trading.
That's really what I've seen. I've seen friends
use it for drug manufacturing and, you know,
like basically health research, like cancer research.
I've seen that. So these are the two areas where
quantum computing has really taken off and excelled,
I think. I've heard a lot of talk about quantum
encryption and how they're going to be quantum
encryption programs that are going to be for
banking and hospital use in the future because
we're going to need it. So I really want fusion
energy to be like that fourth leg for this. And
I feel like there's a lot of room, like you said,
like that supercomputer that at Google that synthesized
material uh, compositions of 380 ,000 materials
using the right way. That's phenomenal. Like
now I think, Hey, what happens if we stick that
into a quantum computer and speed up that process
and give it 200 more variables as to like creating
the perfect product? And I mean, the perfect
material and wow, like that blows my mind. I
want to do that badly. Yeah, it's super interesting
to watch this space. It's all kind of coming
together in the best ways. So what do you think
about fusion energy, John? What makes you interested
in fusion? Well, I mean, that's kind of been
the holy grail, right? And so that, again, it
kind of drives into the passion parts of it.
I'm very interested in energy in general. I'm
striving personally to get off the grid if I
can. I live on a very large property kind of
on a little mountain top and the only thing we
have here right now still is our Southern California
Edison is supplying electricity. I'd like to
get out of that business too. We're on propane.
I've got Starlink for my internet. I'd like to
install solar and battery backups and all that
sort of thing. So I'm very interested in an energy
future where we can create unlimited energy and
as clean as possible to drive a lot of these
clean energy. and help everybody get to the point
where they can kind of jettison that technology.
Yeah. Yeah, I think it'll be super cool. I think
10 years from now, we'll circle back and have
a conversation about how we use computing to
crack fusion energy for humanity. I think, you
know, as a team, we're all environmentalists,
like we're so I think it's that basic passion
that drives us. Yeah, I think it's going to be
super interesting to see what the emerging technologies
and trends are. To your point, you know, I don't
have a crystal ball, so I don't know 20 years
out, right? But right now, you know, in the here
and now, I have to say digitalization and Internet
of things is going to factor heavily into this.
You know, I go out to Palm Springs a lot too,
and Joshua Tree. I'm actually on the board of
the National Joshua Tree National Park Association.
And if you go out there, which I think you've
gone out there, right Priyanka? That's my favorite
place on earth, man. It's ours too. And as you
know, when you're driving out there, you can't
miss them. You see all the windmills, right?
The wind turbines. And those have become more
and more Internet of Things pieces. If you look
at them, you see all kinds of devices on that
are measuring things. If something fails, those
things can catch fire through friction and they'll
shut them down beforehand. So AI is being used.
But just the digitalization of that in the energy
sector for things like Internet of Things and
artificial intelligence. they're really going
to enable more efficient and intelligent energy
management. You've got things like smart meters
and sensors and internet thing devices that provide
real -time data on energy consumption, enabling
predictive maintenance, as I mentioned a moment
ago, demand response, energy optimization strategies.
Another one is the integration of AI and predictive
analytics into energy management systems. It's
going to enable more efficient operation and
optimization of energy assets, AI algorithms
to analyze vast amounts of data in real time
to predict energy demand and optimize energy
production and improve grid reliability and contribute
to overall energy efficiency and sustainability.
Another one that, you know, I... was into this
a lot, I need to make more time for it, is blockchain.
So I got pretty heavily into it when I was at
the big law firm. And I actually became kind
of a blockchain expert there. And when people
hear blockchain, you know, a lot of people hear,
you know, NFTs and Bitcoin and things of that
nature. Blockchain, as you know, is so much more
than that. And it's the underlying technology
that drives all those things, which may or may
not be a success. Those things, I mean, NFTs
and Bitcoin. But blockchain technology offers,
you know, new opportunities for peer -to -peer
energy trading, decentralized energy systems,
and transparent energy transactions. You know,
blockchain enabled platforms. would enable consumers
to buy and sell renewable energy directly with
each other. They could foster greater energy
independence to our point that we were talking
about earlier. Resilience and really democratization
of the energy markets. So I think that blockchain
is going to factor into a lot of different industries,
but I think that for proneness, it's going to
be another key element. Right definitely like
contracts management things like that at a large
scale. Yeah, exactly And record -keeping and
source of truth. That's that's amazing on on
the on the flip side of it I was I'm in the process
I kind of have it about 70 % done but I'm in
the process of writing an article about the future
of cryptocurrency and how you need fusion energy
for for such a thing to take off because there
is there are huge energy constraints when it
comes to crypto mining. It's been a huge drain
on the grid in like small cities and people have
done all kinds of shady things to leverage energy
prices in different locations. I was reading
something yesterday and I wish I had the exact
numbers but the water. that use to pool a lot
of these systems. I'm pretty sure I read that
there was as much water was consumed by the state
of Idaho in a year. So it's tough. You're absolutely
right. That's a great point. Well, I'm hopeful
for the future. I think we can make it happen.
I have friends that are very curious about the
field. What would a young person trying to get
into computing and AI and maybe even fusion energy,
what should they know? Yeah, on the fusion energy
part, I mean, I think you'd know better than
I would at this stage at least. But just in technology
in general, there's so many unique solutions
out there. When the whole AI and generative AI
thing started, there was only one or two solutions
out there that you can play with. And as you
know now, they're popping up almost daily. You
can now generate text -based videos, right? You
type in some prompt text and get a full video
out of it. What was it? Sora AI. And you know,
chat GPT, there's a new version. Like I said,
it's almost daily. You know, Google, Musk is,
you know, doing his thing as well. So I would
really encourage people to, a lot of these solutions
are free, at least the base models, and to get
them and play with them. And to my point earlier,
you know, with my wife, even if you've got an
aversion to you know, generating things and then
using that as your own work, that's not necessarily
how you have to use it. You can use it to spawn
new ideas, to spawn a spring point, right, to
spring off of it and create something new. So,
and artists, same thing, right? I know a lot
of artists are scared right now of the generative
AI, you know, replacing them. I think as with
bank ATMs and everything else in our past and
PCs even, you know, it's a tool. And it's up
to us how we use that tool. And I think people
are going to start to realize this, that it's
actually something that I would encourage people
to use to make things, make their lives easier,
right? Circling full back to where we started
this conversation. you know, how do you make
your life easier? How do you streamline things
so that you have time to do other things? How
do you generate, help yourself generate new ideas
by using these new technologies? So I would encourage
people to start there and kind of play around
with some of these tools and learn these tools
because they're not going away, right? They're
going to continue to grow and scale. Yeah, that's
awesome. Thank you so much, John. Of course.
Thank you guys