Music
In 1984, Josh Harris arrived in New York City with only $900 in his pocket, determined to make his mark in the tech world.
He got a job at a market research company and tried to fit in amongst a sea of computer nerds.
The lesson here for the children watching is, eat your radioactive vegetables, have superhuman strength,
but then you're going to have to wash out of your mouth so.
He was just a common researcher, but in a matter of years he would become a millionaire
thanks to something very few people had heard of at the time, the internet.
We live in public is the story of Josh Harris, who was probably the greatest internet pioneer you've never heard of.
Not because he necessarily invented the computer, but he could foresee how we would react to technology as the internet took over our lives.
Music
The internet is like this new human experience. At first everybody's going to like it.
But there will be a fundamental change in the human condition.
Time goes by, you're really becoming in these more constrained virtual boxes.
Josh was saying, everything's free, but your image that we own.
And he was going to test your boundaries. He's going to push you as far as you could go.
And show us all that we're willing to give up basically everything, even our freedom for that chance at recognition.
You're going to wear my outfit. You're going to sleep where I tell you to sleep.
You're going to eat where I tell you to eat. And you're going to exist here.
And I'm going to film every part of it from you hanging out, to you sleeping, to you eating, to you showering, to you shitting.
The bunker was not scary as much for like fear of my life as it was for, you know, it was sort of the first observation that I had.
It's like an observation tank on people clamoring for attention.
They were clamoring to get in and be part of this Uber documented experience.
It felt like a bunch of lost people in this kind of artificial society and suddenly we're all neighbors and we're all supposed to be friends.
And most of them didn't feel like safe to me, you know, and then they just felt desperate. A lot of them felt desperate.
As time goes by, we're going to increasingly have our lives exposed in very personal and intimate ways. And we'll want that to happen.
Everyone's just suggesting that this is going to turn into one big origin, you know, watch it all.
Andy Warhol was actually wrong. His view is, of course, that people want 15 minutes of fame in their lifetime.
Our view is that people want 15 minutes of fame every day.
It was what I recognized about the bunker. All these people jumped into the bunker, you know, signed up to basically never leave, put on uniforms, be interrogated.
24-7 lived like this and then, you know, filled out 500 questions in a personality test.
And it's like accepting the terms and conditions on Facebook. You have no idea. They own your photos, you know.
It feels even nicer to be on Facebook, but people don't, people will sign up for anything.
It's like jumping on a reality show and jumping into a bucket of worms to get to the carrot or running around the world in the amazing race or something to win.
Really, probably notoriety.
Don't bring your money with you. Everything is free, except the video that we capture of you. That we own.
See, the whole thing is we think we're getting more to be more individualistic and more individualized and more expressing of ourselves.
And we think that we're connecting more. And in some ways we are.
Like, we're certainly able to find someone faster. Gosh, I don't know what we did before cell phones, right?
And then texting? Oh my gosh, you know, and then you think about email and then you think about Facebook and how suddenly you found somebody in rural Spain that you had, you know, had no idea, whatever.
That's incredible. But we are connecting, I think, to 50 times more people a day with 50% less depth.
