Nerds On Tap

Embarking on a Tech-Adventure: Analyzing Technology's Evolution

• Nerds On Tap • Season 1 • Episode 1

Share episode

In this episode of "Nerds on Tap," hosts Tim Shoop and Tim Schaffer welcome guest Brian Wilkey, COO of Digital Boardwalk, as they dive deep into the technological evolution of the past two decades. Over craft beer, they discuss the transformative journey from dial-up internet to today's high-speed connectivity and reflect on the challenges posed by the massive influx of information and the ambiguity of truth in the social media age. Sharing personal entrepreneurial stories and the influence of mentors and books, they explore technology's generational impacts. As they look to the future, topics include the potential of AI in healthcare and energy, the concept of eternal life, and the future role of social media plays in our lives.

Sponsors:
Digital Boardwalk Managed IT Services
Smarter Web

Special Guest:
Brian Wilkey, Chief Operating Officer, Digital Boardwalk

Beers in Order of Appearance:

  1. Oyster City Brewing Company Mill Pond Dirty Blonde Ale 
  2. Emerald Republic Luminescent Shores American Lager 
  3. Copperpoint Brewing A-10 Red IPA 
  4. Perfect Plain Citrus Spin Hazy IPA 


Book Mentions:

Other Mentions:
Quint Studer, Studer Community Institute
The Magic Castle Hotel - Los Angeles

Thanks for listening!
Visit us online at www.thenerdsontap.com
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel
Follow us on Instagram
Like us on Facebook

Tim Shoop:

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Nerds on Tap. I'm your Tim Shoop, and I couldn't be more excited to embark on this nerdy adventure with all of you. So grab your favorite brew, because things are about to get exciting.

Tim Schaffer:

Three two, one go.

Tim Shoop:

Welcome to Nerds on Tap. Hey everyone, welcome to today's inaugural episode of Nerds on Tap, where we'll explore the intersections between human, personal and professional development and technological advances. I'm actually going to go all the way back to the 1970s and 1980s. I'd like to do a quick shout out to our sponsors today Digital Boardwalk, one of the largest MSPs in the state of Florida, a managed services provider, and, of course, Smarter Web, your local marketing department. I'm Tim Shoop. I am CEO of Digital Boardwalk and owner of Smarter Web. In future episodes we will have packed with remote and local guests and celebrities, so please try to subscribe so you can see some of the exciting developments as we work out the show. As the inaugural show, we're probably going to have some hiccups. We're in the technology industry so we know how that works. So as the shows develop, they'll get better and better. With me, I have our local nerd Tim.

Tim Schaffer:

How you guys doing my name's Tim Schaffer. Yeah, I'll be co-hosting this. Nerds on Tap. Awesome.

Tim Shoop:

And of course, suds, our producer on the other side of the room, say hi, suds, hey everybody. And today's remote guest is Brian Wilkey. He is the Executive Vice President in charge of operations of Digital Boardwalk. He keeps the wheels turning. He just recently got his Microsoft 365 certified enterprise administrator expert qualifications. So very proud of Brian on that. Welcome to the show, Brian.

Brian Wilkey:

Thank you, thanks for having me.

Tim Shoop:

So the way these shows are going to work, moving forward, we'll have three segments per show, and today we'll talk about human, personal and professional development in segment one, and then we'll go into the evolution of technology and the pivotal points in technology that have changed the landscape as far as devices and things go, and then we'll wrap it up with the intersection of humans, how technological advances have impacted the way we work, live and play. But there's a little twist in our show Before each segment we will taste either a local or nationally recognized micro brew and comment quickly on it. Brian, did you get your shipment of beer? Say yes, I know you didn't. So it's our inaugural show, folks, but we will be shipping beer out to our guests.

Tim Schaffer:

Imagine you're drinking a beer. That's all that counts.

Tim Shoop:

So the first beer that we have here is Oyster City Mill Pond Dirty Blonde Ale. Suds - Why don't you give us a low down real quick on that beer?

Suds:

Well, the Oyster City Brewery is from Apalachicola, USA. This is a dirty blonde ale. It's an easy ale with a well balanced crafty malt structure hopped with Ahtanum, and pairs well with oysters, sunny beaches and saltwater. Also on the gold medal US beer championship in 2020.

Tim Shoop:

I do like it, like for real. It goes down smooth, it's got a good aftertaste and I just learned that Suds is a really good reader.

Tim Schaffer:

What's the percentage on that?

Suds:

That's a 5.5. It's very smooth and.

Tim Schaffer:

I agree, there's the wealth oysters.

Tim Shoop:

There is me for 5.5. Wow, yeah, I like it. I like it. I mean, I've had low alcohol content all the way up to the golden monkey, which I'm glad we don't have on the show today, because we probably wouldn't finish it. So let's get started. This show is not about beer. We just like to drink beer and taste beer. So we're going to be involving that in each one of our shows. So I'd like to kick off with the human evolution, changes in we as humans over the years, both professionally and personally, and what impacted us to make those changes. I'm going to start with Brian here. So, brian, over the last 20 years, how would you say you've evolved as a human and what made you change, like you know? I mean, did you look different back then? And I mean, did you wear your hair crazy? We've known each other. What 15 years, 16 years? Yep, yeah, and I have seen massive changes in you, as I know you've seen in me. So let's start with you.

Brian Wilkey:

Gosh, that's such a tough question to answer. I feel like this will tie in a bit more as we kind of bridge the gap into the technology. But I feel like I've grown more skeptical of things over the years, just as I've learned how to deal with all the information that's put in front of us day to day through social media and through, you know, propagation of the internet and everything else that's happened over that time. Marketing and how that's been shaped over the years. Yeah, I've had to grow skeptical of what's presented to you and learn how to research and read between the lines and get to the truth, which is really hard to find these days. So that's really shaped the way I look at things and the way I kind of function day to day.

Tim Schaffer:

Well, with that note right there, think about it 10, 15 years ago I don't even feel any of us were in this space because we were just kind of told information and that was it right. But the more information that gets fed and the more you figure out the combination of it all, you're starting to realize this isn't how I thought it worked. To the point now you're skeptical of everything you see, because so many times you thought one way to end up being something entirely different, Right, you?

Tim Shoop:

know. You know what's funny, Brian? You said something about truth, trying to find truth, yeah, and it's so hard for us nowadays because everybody hides behind screens and creates false truths or false narratives. I actually watched a movie the other night I think it was on Netflix. I think it was called Jesus Revolution and it was about this hippie pastor and this conservative pastor that came together back in the early 1970s.

Tim Schaffer:

Calvary Church. My mom went to that church in California. That's where she grew up and so I watched that because there was a strong connection with my family with that. She was one of the couples they showed of the marriages going on there. She was married in that church that they were showing and what were they looking?

Tim Shoop:

for truth. Yeah, exactly, Hippies in that movement were looking for truth. So it's a great point that Brian brings up. There's so many things that impact us. I mean, I started my first business back in 98, 99. And I didn't even remember what I looked like back then until my wife pulled a Polaroid out of the attic that she had found and I looked at it. I had earrings and piercings and bleach blonde hair. Did I look like that when I met you, Brian?

Brian Wilkey:

No, you were a little bit more professional then.

Tim Shoop:

I think when I met Brian, I was probably a suit and tie guy with a little bit more subdued haircut, yeah, and I met you probably I want to say about a decade after that picture was taken, but I was still trying to find my truth back then so well, we all still are, I guess, right?

Tim Shoop:

Yeah, and you know, another thing that changes us as humans is people we meet along the way. I mean so, for instance, Brian. Brian, when I met Brian, he was, I think, 18 or 19. And I was probably, you know, 21.

Brian Wilkey:

Yep, Now I was probably late 30s.

Tim Shoop:

I don't know I've been to late 30s, I know I was pushing 40, but it's funny. I have video content from back then of all of us and the. I can see the evolution and change in us. But it's about it's also about the mentors that we meet.

Tim Schaffer:

Yes, so many pivotal changes were because I found someone who taught me a great deal and feels like exponential growth in a very short amount of time. If one person you can find just a role model and someone that you really can see doing things right, at least in your heads. Who knows what they're thinking on the other side of that? But at least in your head you're like they're doing everything I would love to be doing myself and you just start going out path and because of that that's what gives you the motivation to keep going forward Right, you start making big changes real fast whenever you can find a mentor like that.

Brian Wilkey:

I remember it was actually back in high school I had a teacher Her name was Mrs. Maurer. She was my AP literature teacher and I got into that class and of course we're, you know, reading book after book and I was not doing well at all. I mean, I was normally like a straight A student and I was getting like c's on everything in that class. And so she kind of pointed out my mistake was I was a surface level, literal, word for word interpreter and what she was wanting was to go deeper. You know, read between the lines, the you know the purpose behind the message. You know, the example she gave was the sky isn't blue. You know, everyone looks at the sky and thinks it's blue. It appears blue because that's just the way the light refracts off of the upper atmosphere, but it's not actually blue. And that really changed the way I looked at everything. I stopped looking at things surface level and started, you know, like I said, reading between the lines and digging deeper. I always remember her as an early mentor. That's fantastic.

Tim Shoop:

Brian, what kind of dog do you have over there?

Brian Wilkey:

You can hear she is a Hungarian Vizsla.

Tim Shoop:

Say that five times real fast. So I've had a lot of mentors in my life. You know, I started my first business in the late 90s and I knew squat about business and I wasn't a fan of school or reading books at the time. I didn't read a lot of books unless it was a comic book. But I will tell you something when I got into business I quickly learned about checks and balances and accounting and actually went to classes for it because I knew that was the core of any business. But as I grew and as I met more mentors in you know 25 years of being in business, I've learned and then I learned to - this is funny. I learned to read books.

Tim Shoop:

Right, I have read so many books and you'll see on the walls back here. They might be out of frame right now but there are so many books on my wall and you'll be able to find these on our website at thenerdsontap. com. You know everybody from local mentors. We've got some local celebrity mentors here that created a really good educational company. A little shout out to a local company called Studer Community Institute. Quint Studer started that. I got to be the mentor on one of them. I was actually invited to be the mentor and I was humbled by it, you know, because somebody actually wanted to learn and pull from my brain. Now, back in the 90s, not a lot of these types of things existed, yeah, yeah. So a big shout out to them and other mentors that I've met.

Tim Shoop:

My dad was a big mentor for me. He taught me what not to do and how to just get down to the grind. You know, he was one of those good old baby boomers that you know basically said work hard and things will come. And, Brian, when we started Digital Boardwalk I don't know if you remember, I'm going to see if you can finish it but something that I said was I didn't want to focus on what profit? I didn't want to focus on profit. If we do the right thing, the profits will come.

Tim Shoop:

Mm-hmm, I didn't always think that. I mean, when you start your first business and you're in your young, maybe in your 20s, you're chasing anybody that'll give you a check. Right, because it keeps the lights open. Well, what I learned over the years and I had the ability, or I was in a situation where I didn't need to chase every check and I told Brian, let's not chase profit, let's chase doing the right thing for the customer. Even if the customer thinks we're trying to sell them something, make sure they're getting what they need to fulfill that business when I started here.

Tim Schaffer:

That was a big thing. I noticed out of you more than anything else is because I worked a lot of big companies in the past. But they have thousands of employees all over the world, kind of levels, right, Asurion, all this, but no one is caring about the person, they're just seeing them as a number right, and I felt that difference. Being around Shoop is realizing oh, it's not all talk, he actually believes he does want to just do what's right and the money coming after the fact.

Tim Shoop:

Well, I appreciate that, but you know you should be referring to Mr. Shoopdog, right? A few more things. We talked about books. So, Brian, I'm gonna direct this at our guest here. You know, let's talk about books. I mentioned them earlier and and I'll I'll get into the books that changed my life most dramatically out of all the books I've read. But if you could only pick one book, what book would it be that had the most dynamic impact on your life?

Brian Wilkey:

You're gonna hate this answer, but there I really can't think of a book, and that's because as a child I lived in the library, so I read all sorts of books, but of course it's your. You know children's kind of books, fantasy and that kind of stuff. Yeah, once I got old enough to read any books of value was the birth of the internet, and so I switched completely to online research and reading. But having that wealth of information at my fingertips got me addicted to learning from a really early age. So there wasn't really, you know, a specific book per se, it was just the internet and all the information it had to offer.

Tim Schaffer:

Every single day, every evening, you know, after school, after work, I was reading and researching all this information online, whatever interested me at the moment, so I can piggyback off of that because I was very similar age and very similar about we weren't really reading books because we were reading so much material online, whether it was articles, forums, whatever right. We just weren't in that mode because we grew up with the internet being so large by the time we were late teens there was kind of no purpose to reading the book, but I don't want to worry about that way there's definitely a great purpose. But it's just we didn't think that. You know, we, we just were getting so much information so many other places. Book wasn't really our number one pick, not by a long shot.

Brian Wilkey:

Yeah, books were. Books were the escape. You know that. Yeah, I would use that as entertainment. You know reading, you know fantasy and everything else, but when it came to real world, get information, it was always coming from internet.

Tim Shoop:

You know it's funny. I get a lot of my information from internet nowadays and you know, pull everything online, anything.

Suds:

I mean, it's so easy yeah so quick.

Tim Shoop:

but I remember in the 90s, pre first business, just still trying to figure it out, just still trying to find my truth right, I was always in a bookstore, usually in the business section, reading about something and it was usually technology related, because I knew I wanted to start a technology company yeah, but I wanted to learn how to get it going, what do I need to do? And I would go in there and sit in the bookstore and a lot of times just read the book in the bookstore because I couldn't afford.

Tim Schaffer:

You're hustling that hard, trying to get whatever Information you can and think about in the 90s, even Windows 98, you're still in dial-up days, if you want to think about it that way. Right, so it's like we were not finding this information online. If it's all the way till pretty much the early 2000s, that's pretty much when we start shifting to where most people start gathering from online Windows 98. You guys are so young, more in that way, on purpose, to show like you're still in dial-up. You still aren't being able to spread information that quickly and that universal. Oh, was it Encyclopedia Britannica.

Tim Shoop:

Yeah, my dad, I think, bought them from some guy that came to the door. We had a whole bookshelf full of them. I know, when I was a kid I wanted to be an architect, so I studied Frank Lloyd Wright and I would go to the encyclopedia and read about these people, you know, and learn more with the sake of time. Let me touch on the two books that have impacted my life, one book I know Brian has heard me say over and over and over again. It's a book called E-Myth. What is it Brian.

Tim Shoop:

E-Myth. E-Myth. E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. You can find it on Amazon. Ladies and gentlemen, but that book my wife, I, was in a situation where I was trying to sell a company that was in turmoil.

Tim Shoop:

It was during the economic recession and I sat in the parking lot after meeting with a broker who basically told me it's not worth anything. And she called me, said, how's it going? I said I'm going to get into the other story about how Digital Boardwalk was born because of that moment, but because we're talking about books, yeah, but E-Myth Revisited, teaches you how to treat any business as a franchise by taking little things, systematic processes, and breaking them down and departmentalizing them. So, for instance, little things like the shirt you wear, the hat you wear, the way you greet someone at the door, should always be a certain way. And if it's a certain way, I can train that to a new hire to do it exactly like I want to now.

Tim Shoop:

There's an old analogy that I used to use, and I used to use it on Brian and in the early days of Digital Boardwalk a lot, and they used to laugh at me because I would always talk about Brian? Huh? The pickles, the pickles. So McDonald's is two things. Mcdonald's makes a great hamburger, you know fast food, but it's also a real estate company. But the big thing about McDonald's and I learned this from reading rich dad, poor dad the big thing about McDonald's in referring to the, the book E-Myth was when you pull into a McDonald's drive-thru you're already picturing in your head or tasting that burger in your head, because you know it's gonna taste the same way every time.

Tim Shoop:

Right, it's two pickles, two circles of ketchup, one circle of mustard and it's wrapped the same way, put in a bag. Now, hopefully, you know back in the day you'd get it with packs of ketchup if you're fries and everything, and then that's changed. But here's the deal it's the same way every time and they can hire someone and teach them that same thing. And that is what, from day one, we want to do instill in the DNA of digital boardwalk. When you were hired, Tim, did you have a welcome package, was it?

Tim Shoop:

an onboarding process.

Tim Schaffer:

Yeah, yeah, was it impressive? Yeah, I mean, weirdly, I was more impressed by over anything else. I think I've told you already it was just the back end documentation to everything. That's what impressed me. As nerdy as that is, I don't know, but yeah.

Tim Shoop:

Now, another book that impacted me is a book up here on my shelf called the Power of Moments. Now, this goes hand in hand with E-Myth. Now, I had the pleasure of introducing Dan Heath. Chip and Dan Heath co-wrote this book. They're obviously brothers. I was able to introduce him on stage at an entrepreneurial event. Funny thing is backstage he's trying to prep for his talk and of course I had to introduce him. So I went up to him and I go now let me get your name right. It's Chip Heath, right. And he just looked at me and he didn't think it was funny. I don't think.

Tim Shoop:

But that book, if you're listening, Dan, had an impact. He talked about a hotel in California I think it was called White Castle that was competing against all these big chains. It was a local owned operated hotel. The thing about this hotel, though. They figured it out. He went to Trip Advisor and he saw this hotel was well above any hotel listed on Trip Advisor, had the best reviews, this and that and whatever. So he decided to book it and he took his kids.

Tim Shoop:

He showed up and he goes what is this? You went in, it was old school, you walked in the outside, this and that, but here's what was different when they walked into the lobby, he was introduced by someone in a tuxedo and he's like, oh, this guy's walking up to me in a tuxedo, past right by him and went to his children, leaned down, offered him candy Okay, awesome, right, yeah. So then they're out at the pool and there's a hotline, a phone hotline by the pool. It says unlimited popsicles. The kids would call the hotline and order a popsicle, and that man in a tuxedo would come out with a tray with all these flavors of popsicles on. So if you have a family, who's the influencer on where you stay? A lot of times it's your kids.

Tim Schaffer:

Yeah, yeah, it really is.

Tim Shoop:

What neighborhood you're picking, what schools in nearby, all of that, yeah yeah, but the power of moments, if you want to relate that to running a business, it's the power of moments, the welcome package that you had when you came in. Now, we used to clap people into the room when they were hired. We kind of nixed that because people would get embarrassed and this and that. But it's the little things, thank you. Thank you, card. The impact the thank you card can have on someone.

Tim Schaffer:

Yep, yeah, it's for sure the little things that count, like them, being able to order popsicles, like you're saying, that weirdly makes all the biggest moves.

Tim Shoop:

So so, suds, let's go ahead and talk about. We've got Emerald Republic, Luminescent Shores, American Lager.

Suds:

All right, the Emerald Republic Brewery in Pensacola, florida. 4.2% alcohol. It's a highly drinkable American Lager with a light body, low bitterness, giving away to a light malt character. A perfect beer for relaxing at home in the pool or on the shorelines.

Tim Shoop:

I like it. This is a good light body beer. It's easy to drink, not a bitter aftertaste.

Tim Schaffer:

I don't know how to describe that. It's very different than any beer I've had.

Tim Shoop:

It's, it almost taste, it almost tastes like it's got a little fruity tone to it on aftertaste. Yeah, all right. So the next section we're going to talk about the evolution of tech and, to put it in a perspective, we're going to talk about our ages, so we can. So, so our audience can put it in a perspective, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, and I'm not going to ask you how old you are, I was a 70s child and an 80s teenager.

Tim Schaffer:

What about you? I mean, I don't care if I say what age I am, but anyone could figure it out. And we named the generations anyway because, yes, when I was a kid, grew up in the 90s right, and then by the time I'm, like you know, teenager and going on right. That's when the 2000s started to hit. So most impactful, I feel, for most people are those teenage years, right. So, technically, whenever I say a 90s kid, I'm not learning these impactful big moments when I'm seven years old. If I did, it was all subconsciously. You know what I mean. So, technically, if you really think about it, I was raised by 2000 to 2010 in terms of anything that's going to be really powerful and anything that's going to impact me. A lot of stuff I remember to this day and what I learned from it.

Brian Wilkey:

Brian, what about you? Yeah, I'd be about the same. Yeah, late 90s, early 2000s was the memorable parts.

Tim Shoop:

During that time, what was the first impactful emergence of technology that you remember, dating back to your child?

Brian Wilkey:

Oh gosh, I mean the first one had to be dial up Internet, so that was.

Tim Schaffer:

AOL free trials 700 hours a month.

Tim Shoop:

Yeah, I want to say that was what 94, 95, 93, 94, 95.

Brian Wilkey:

Prodigy, yeah, we didn't have it in the household until probably 98. But yeah, that was huge. I remember fighting my dad at night for Internet time. Same yeah, gosh, expanding on that. I remember even into the early 2000s my dad thought dial up Internet was the fastest we would ever need and there was no reason to have multiple people online at the same time in the household. So eventually I got a job because my dad wouldn't pay for DSL. You know I bought the DSL plan for the family just so I could be on.

Tim Shoop:

Oh, that's funny. How old were you when you when you bought that?

Brian Wilkey:

I started working when I was 14. And that was the reason I got the job, so yeah, so your dad, marty, I'm friends with them.

Tim Shoop:

So what was going through his? What did he say to you? Was he like okay, brian, we're just going to follow your lead.

Brian Wilkey:

Yeah, I mean again, I think this is a generational thing because at the time, like he appreciated what the Internet could do, but he didn't really see the potential in it, like I did, I guess. So you know I was really eager to spend a lot of time on there. You know learning, but to him it was still a tool just for checking emails. And you know hopping on Amazon or whatever the shopping was at the time.

Tim Shoop:

And now I'm going to date myself. I'm a 70s child, 80s teenager, and the most impactful for me I don't even know if I want to talk about it on here it's the emergence of the PC.

Brian Wilkey:

OK.

Tim Shoop:

So you know, you guys had it in your life. You don't remember not having computers in a household, do you?

Brian Wilkey:

I do yeah yeah, we didn't have a computer until I was older.

Tim Schaffer:

But that's only because of personal parents and all of that. Technically, yeah, we could have if the situation arised.

Brian Wilkey:

They were around. Yeah, my first one was Windows 3.1. Ok.

Tim Shoop:

Yeah so. So I got my first computer in 1983. Now it wasn't a PC, it was an Atari 800, but and I learned how to code in basic on it. And going back to what Brian talked about, dial up internet. So for you youngsters listening in, prior to dial up internet, you could dial into my parents' house and access the rampage BBS, which was designed for skaters, but my entire audience was helicopter pilots, because we lived outside of Fort Rucker, alabama, so I had all these pilots coming on thinking I was an adult, that I was just some other pilot running a BBS. And for those of you that don't know what a BBS is, it stands for Bullet Board System and it was a way for people to call into these numbers and access information just like you do on the internet.

Tim Schaffer:

Which later evolved into news groups. I don't know if you all remember those. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Tim Shoop:

Yeah, I had message boards on there. I had other things and all I cared about as a 14 year old kid was software. I just wanted games. I wanted to play games. So I literally would ask people to upload to gain more access to the higher levels so they could get. I had BBS numbers and things that I would give them that was listed in these boards, but they had to upload stuff to me.

Tim Schaffer:

So there's a connecting fiber between all of us. I bet this whole room is anytime you're trying to get further in tech, that wall, at least for me. I was like I couldn't get something to work of something I was just trying to play right and I went through all these technical hurdles to get it to run. Next thing, I know when that keeps happening, what hundreds of times now you know so much more than you did prior only because you were just trying to play whatever stupid game. But that's what drives the course of you learning how to dig into windows, dig into whatever other software, just to get that accomplished.

Tim Shoop:

And you know you say that. Like I said, the PC, I think, had most impact on me as a child. And if you think of what technology has really impacted the world more than anything, you know we can talk about social media, we can talk about dial up internet or high speed internet, but really, why would you need any of that if you didn't have a PC to connect it to or a device that started it all? I mean, we have a computer in our pockets now, but it all started with those larger microprocessors and those larger things that helped us build a tool that we all use to work and play today. So we talked about the tech that we first remember. Brian, you talked about dial up internet and how you brought that into the household. But what tech? If you think back to when you were younger, what tech most mostly had a profound change on you psychologically, Like, can you think of something that really changed the way you think and live?

Brian Wilkey:

Probably not, for the better, but it's, it's got to be AOL instant messenger.

Tim Schaffer:

Wow, you just opened up a tunnel of just memories, wow, yeah, oh, I can remember my whole childhood staying up to three or three in the morning chatting away on AIM.

Brian Wilkey:

Yes, yes, see, that's funny because when I was a child, I was on my BBS.

Tim Shoop:

I was the sys-op talking to my guests. Yeah, because I could talk to somebody in Africa.

Tim Schaffer:

I could talk to somebody in England, whatever, and you're just freaking out that you can just communicate with anyone all over the world and you could see all of these different chat groups of just dedicated to oh, here's a skateboarding community, oh, here's a metal community, right, whatever it may be, just finding your interests, finding like-minded people and just talking to them. And I remember, I'm sure, your parents, as of mine, they think we're just sort of wasting our lives, they think we're just sort of wasting our lives away talking to these people, right, but in our heads I feel it was very important because we were finally at a point where no longer do I just have to talk to my neighbors, I can get a full world view at such a young age. I think it was really important.

Tim Shoop:

It's funny predating you guys, I mean when I was a kid and this is important to think about, because if you think about how the way we communicate today and it's so easy to get in touch with anybody right away, instant gratification. When we were kids and you went to parties in high score or whatever, I'm sure you guys because did have IM and you did have those technologies you would go out and, hey, where's the party tonight? Right?

Tim Schaffer:

Now we still have to hope that the person's on the other end and they're also online, right? So there's a lot of stipulations to that. It's not how texting would be today, right?

Tim Shoop:

Well, and we didn't have cell phones either. Yeah, so today you pick up cell phone, call your buddy hey, where's the party? When we were kids we couldn't do that, so we put little CBs in our cars and we would call. There were a certain amount of friends, we all had these little CBs and we would hey. Hey, you know where's the party. Hey, we're meeting at the normal spot.

Tim Schaffer:

And we'd go because four or five days for response, sometimes for my person, and we were just accustomed to that. Think of the changes, yeah.

Tim Shoop:

Yeah, I mean if you think of CBs when I think of CBs, I think of Smokey and the Bandit.

Brian Wilkey:

Smokey and the Bandit. Yeah, I mean, I grew up on the road so we had a CB in the truck and we would talk to the truckers on the highway.

Tim Schaffer:

Same here. My dad had one and yeah.

Tim Shoop:

But you don't see it even. I know, I know, I mean, I'm sure, ranchers might still use some of that technology, but I mean, you don't see them anymore. So it's interesting. The evolution tech yeah, and that's going to take us into our third segment, but we get to have another. Are you going to be able to make it through these four beers?

Tim Schaffer:

Go huh Easily.

Tim Shoop:

All right, let's do it. So we're going to go ahead and introduce beer number three. We've got a Copper Point South Florida Brewing Company. It looks like a A10 Red IPA with a 7% alcohol volume. This is an India Pale Ale. Suds, give us the low down.

Suds:

That's Copperpoint Brewing in Boynton Beach, Florida. It's a Red IPA that's an approachable yet complex IPA with solid balance. Darker caramel malt adds backbone and guarantees you can drink a few without crushing your palate. It has a crew of rich mahogany and the abundant of mosaic hops adds tropical notes of passion fruit and mango.

Tim Shoop:

How did you memorize all that Suds, magic, ooh.

Tim Schaffer:

That's my type of beer right there. Now, that that's good.

Tim Shoop:

That's got some bite to it right there, we're going up in the alcohol content. I like it though, yeah, all right. Well, we're going to go into segment three. This is our final segment of today's show. We talked about the psychological and personal and professional changes in our appearance and everything as humans over the evolution of time, yeah, and why we made those changes. We talked about the evolution of tech by looking back to our childhood and going, hey, this is where we were as children and this had an impact on us. But now we're going to talk about the crossroads of these emergences of technology and the psychological impact it has on us as humans, both individually and collectively. Okay, so I mean, the first thing that comes to mind for me is social media. You know, in the beginning I loved social media because it tended to bring people together by sharing things like pictures of our animals and pictures of the food we eat, yeah, things like that.

Tim Schaffer:

Oh, I miss those days, by the way. Yeah, yeah.

Brian Wilkey:

I miss the Myspace days.

Tim Shoop:

The Myspace days Now it's changed.

Brian Wilkey:

Good social media.

Tim Schaffer:

Because it was just fun and people sharing their fun times in life. Now, it's what Arguments? It's hatred.

Tim Shoop:

I mean, I feel like you know, when I was a kid, none of this existed. Yeah, right, yeah. So you know, if you had beef with someone and you felt confident enough, you went up to them and told them your beef, and then you might meet at three o'clock in the parking lot and duke it out or whatever. But nowadays it's easy to hide behind a screen. It's easy to tell somebody, oh my God. Or you know, I was just reading today on the NFL. I'm a Saints fan and I was on there and you know people were bagging on Jameis Winston. You know he's our backup quarterback this year, but people were bagging on the way he played. But it was. There was a lot of hatred being spewed and I'm like you know it's easy for you people to do that. Try doing it to a space. Yeah yeah, that's not the same.

Tim Schaffer:

Yeah, yeah.

Tim Shoop:

What do you think, Brian?

Brian Wilkey:

Yeah, social media was one of those roller coasters. We loved it. Growing up that was such a thing. It was a fundamental part of our childhood. Like I said, the MySpace days I remember that so vividly. But, yeah, it hit this plateau and then it just started getting bad to the point now where social media was like my life when I was growing up and now it has zero part of it. Do you not participate in any social media anymore? Because I just it's not what I loved when I was a kid.

Tim Schaffer:

Yeah, it's not fun anymore. I actively put a lot of effort into making sure I don't use this or that, and neither do I even kind of care to, because I've kind of feel like it's just a lot of hatred and a lot of fighting and a lot of like. I understand for big changes to take place, there has to be hard discussions, right, but can we meet in the middle? Right, can we balance a little more? Can we have the hard and have the fun? But the fun just seems to be completely just gone nowadays when it comes to the platforms. So why am I even engaging? At this point, regardless of what I say or what they say, it seems like the other person is just few.

Tim Schaffer:

Yeah.

Tim Shoop:

They just want to spew negativity. And you know a mentor getting back to the mentors that we talked about once told me surround yourself with positive people and you'll create positivity. Yeah, surround yourself with people that have the same ambition as you and you'll do great things, but surround yourself with people that spew hatred and you just become one of them.

Tim Schaffer:

I think most people are thinking on the same level of like not wanting to use it much, and I kind of feel in about what five years maximum, we might be in a lot better state, because when you talk to so many people, all of us are saying the same thing of all this is a bunch of argument and fighting right. I think at some point we're going to have a movement take place to where people are just kind of done with it and back to just talking amongst each other again and not trying to use a social platform that goes out to the world, and trying to bring back the balance of talking to your neighbors more, hanging out with your friends more and not so much turning to online.

Tim Shoop:

I don't know. If Mark Zuckerberg has his way, we're all going to be wearing goggles and having meetups and some virtual bar somewhere.

Tim Schaffer:

No, I think we're sick of all that.

Brian Wilkey:

Fortunately that business is taking. Yeah, I know it's taking.

Tim Schaffer:

I think people are sick of it. I really do. I believe it.

Tim Shoop:

Well, you know it's the negative impacts of social media, in my opinion, far outweigh the positive impacts, because it's a really good tool. I mean that what they built very good tool If it was used and moderated in a way that helped humankind. But there's so many ways to circumvent it and you know all the sharing that goes on out on the dark web to collectively bring together like terrorism and domestic terrorism and things like that exists and that happens because of these proper telephonic advances over time since we were kids. Yeah, so let me ask you guys, you know, just to kind of close out and talk about some of the technology that we've experienced and some of the technology that's coming down the pike. So we all know what AI. All right, I couldn't do a show without mentioning AI right now, because AI is huge huge, huge right now.

Tim Schaffer:

That's all anyone's doing, working on, talking about - it's huge, yes.

Tim Shoop:

I mean, you can't turn around without hearing AI on a show or whatever you turn on. In the right hands, ai can be a really good tool. You know, I have a friend that owns a marketing company and they're using AI to benefit their findings for their customers in regards to marketing and businesses. I mean, I just recently read an article about how researchers I forget which university have been doing this research using AI, where AI on your computer can listen to your keystrokes on your keyboard and, in a 95.5% accuracy rate, identify exactly what you're typing. Brian, you have I talked to you about this this morning. Why don't you embellish on that a little bit? I mean, obviously there's some things that have to happen right in order for that to work perfect. But what about down the road when they figured out those advances?

Brian Wilkey:

Yeah, you know this went a different direction than I thought. You know, AI is obviously top of mind for most people as far as future technologies. It's definitely the hype right now. I almost see it as a fad, at least in its current form, because AI in general has been around for decades now. It's hit mainstream media for specific aspects of it, but I don't know. To me, I think actually the biggest opportunity for change on the horizon with regards to technology is in the energy sector. If energy gets substantially cheaper and we're talking like substantially cheaper with nuclear fusion technologies, obviously enhancements in solar and other renewables, think of what that does from a tech perspective.

Tim Shoop:

Now everything can be electrified for nothing, for free basically how many calculations per second can happen leveraging AI versus just humans working on?

Brian Wilkey:

I don't know at the top of my head, but AI can process a lot of information very quickly, but you give unlimited energy power to those systems and it can grow exponentially. There's actually a YouTuber. Her name is Cleo Abram. She has this channel called Huge If True and she actually explores the latest technologies and what it means for the future, and she did a whole segment on future energy and what that would mean and how it would transform technology. It's really fascinating. Definitely recommend checking it out. But yeah, she talks about all these different possibilities of what if energy becomes basically free, what it unlocks for a future of technology and everything being electrified, because that is a hard boundary that a lot of systems face. Today we don't think about that, but especially when you look at other countries that don't have a whole lot of propagation of technology, a lot of it's because of lack of accessible energy.

Tim Schaffer:

Well, think of what everyone has access to. Everyone has access to what the sun right, and that's all you need. That alone is just infinite energy, at least, at least until I don't know what some matrix level thing goes down or something to where they cut out the sun.

Tim Shoop:

But otherwise we have infinite energy, Just what do we got alone Sun, wind, water. Yeah right, Natural resources.

Brian Wilkey:

They continue these enhancements in nuclear fusion. There's so much energy potential there.

Tim Shoop:

Yeah, I was reading an article. There was a big breakthrough in nuclear fusion not that long ago.

Brian Wilkey:

Yeah, I don't remember the. They still have a ways to go because right now the amount of energy they're putting into fusing the atoms is still more than what they're getting out of it. Okay, but they hit a new record for the amount of energy they got out of it.

Tim Shoop:

Cool, and it was like a substantial increase. Okay, we're getting short on time, so we're going to get into the last beer tasting in just a second and then we'll close out and I'll talk about the next guest that we have coming up. I want to point this one again at Brian. I'd like to point it to Suds, because I sure would like to have him show up real quick for our audience to see. They're probably going to wonder why they can't see his whole face.

Tim Schaffer:

Because he's hiding over the fence as a neighbor. Home improvement guys, yeah.

Tim Shoop:

It's a throwback, but I'm going to direct it to either Suds or Brian and ask you this Artificial intelligence, AI good or bad?

Brian Wilkey:

100% good yeah.

Tim Shoop:

Even with what we know it can do in the hands of the wrong.

Brian Wilkey:

Yeah, if you study it, there was a breakthrough in the healthcare space earlier this year when it comes to sequencing proteins for viruses. This is something that humans have been working on for a number of years and there was a certain amount of output they could do, just based off physical limitations of their research. Oh, wow, and those sequences into an AI model and one thing AI is really good at is doing predictions based off of data inputs. It was in a matter of like a week or two weeks it had produced sequences or basically theorized accurately what they would be for like 100X of what humans had done in the prior decade. So now they have the instructions to produce vaccines for a lot of different infectious diseases and stuff, and there's just no way humans could have done it in that short of time.

Tim Shoop:

Yeah, we can take those data points right. We can excel the movement along those data points and see what's happening. My mom passed away from Alzheimer's and it deals with I think it's called amyloid proteins or something attaching to different parts of your neurons, and it basically blocks your brain is like a network, like the internet.

Tim Shoop:

It's like a network of networks so it blocks different areas of your brain communications, so parts of your brain you know like you forget how to swallow and you forget how to, you know, maybe talk fluently and things like that. And with algorithms and AI we should be able to solve a lot of these natural, these diseases that happen to humankind a lot faster. You think we'll cure cancer and Alzheimer's disease and whatever else, Brian, it's bound to oh gosh, I mean.

Tim Schaffer:

it's bound to be faster than it ever was prior to AI existing. That's automatic.

Brian Wilkey:

I would say confidently within our lifetime. Yeah, that's awesome.

Tim Shoop:

Within my lifetime or your lifetime.

Tim Schaffer:

Hey, Shoop wants to live forever. Okay, we need confirmation on this. Now. I was thinking about this that will we be able to finally hit a point within our lifetimes to where, like, whether we're actually really human or not, can we achieve living forever and whatever body and whatever substance you know like? Is that going to be a thing that actually achieves today? That's something that I'm always wondering, because who doesn't want eternal life? But you know, I guess there's pros and cons to it all. There's a lot of stories of people getting eternal life and ended up hating it after the fact, so maybe it's not worth the chase, you know.

Tim Shoop:

And they're they've seen everything, done everything. What else is there to do? They just want to rest, right, you know, eternal life is something we all want, but it's just like everything else, we get it. And they were like, oh yeah, did I really want this Monkey's paw? Right, you know? And anyway, we'll talk about the last brew now. This is from one of my favorite breweries, Perfect Plain. It's local in Pensacola. This is the Citra Spin.

Tim Schaffer:

Hazy IPA. Now I have had this and I did like it so good.

Suds:

Ah yes, the Perfect Plain Citra Spin Hazy IPA. Soft aromas of fresh citrus sliced into our fluffy IPA, hopped exclusively with Citra. Welcome in the haze of this breezy beach side brew. 6.5% alcohol by volume. Just a note Hazy IPAs are also known as Juicy IPAs.

Tim Shoop:

Juicy. All right, we're going to go ahead and close out. Brian, I really want to thank you for joining us on our inaugural episode. I hope it all recorded and I hope we're going to be able to put it out there, folks.

Suds:

Was I supposed to hit a button?

Tim Schaffer:

Oh, maybe.

Tim Shoop:

Oh, I love it. I love it. Suds Suds has been sitting back there drinking, so I don't think he knows what to do the show we might have to re-record, Tim. Thanks for joining me, as always, yeah, yeah.

Tim Schaffer:

It went really well, I think so right. Yeah, I loved it.

Tim Shoop:

We've got some great guests coming up. We have a two-time author that does a national speaking circuit on training in the insurance industry, and we have somebody that American Sailing to Pensacola, Florida, and it's a big deal. So stay tuned. Make sure you subscribe to where you listen to your favorite podcast. Hey, I'd really appreciate it if you share it with someone that might gain insight using our podcast. We'd really appreciate it. And be sure to check out thenerdsontap. com to learn more about what we're doing. Check out our three-minute trailer. It's pretty funny.

Tim Schaffer:

It's an awesome trailer. It's three minutes, it's just pure bliss.

Tim Shoop:

Yes, and that's it for today's show. So we thank you everybody. Thanks for joining Nerds On Tap. Until next time, I'm Tim Shoop. See you later.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Tim Shoop

Host