a16z Frontier show

James Gleick — acclaimed science writer and bestselling author of Chaos: Making a New Science as well as biographies on polymaths Isaac Newton and Richard Feynman — joins Sonal Chokshi and Robert Hackett to discuss his new book, The Telephone: A New History. It is a story of a device — who really invented it, how? — of a network, of a lab, and of how innovation happens.
The telephone was dismissed as a toy or a frivolity — at best, something people could use to listen to concerts or sermons from home. Even with a working invention, everyone was still trying to figure out what a telephone was for, using the framework of what they already knew. Then its users started finding their own answers. Farmers built their own decentralized networks using barbed-wire fences — the “devil’s rope” — and, over time, research at a company built around phone calls helped lay the foundations of modern computing.
This conversation explores the nuances of building at the frontier: competing inventors, the experiments, the “scenius of genius.” Why did established businesses underestimate it? Did the telephone network have to become a monopoly? What made Bell Labs so productive?
And how a single invention could set off a technology revolution
In this episode:
00:00 Intro: James Gleick and this new book
02:07 The messy invention of the telephone
03:53 When a “toy” becomes indispensable
08:15 How network effects changed the telephone
14:29 How farmers built a decentralized phone network from barbed wire
17:20 What Mark Twain missed while eavesdropping on his wife’s phone calls
20:12 To play monopoly or not?
31:22 Open vs. closed systems
37:17 What made Bell Labs (and Xerox PARC) more than one-hit wonders?
41:20 Scientists, tinkerers, and the conditions for invention
47:22 Debating whether AI is a fourth industrial revolution
52:11 How technology changes the way we think
54:18 James Gleick on solo writing vs. social conversation
58:25 The world brain
59:55 From “ahoy” to “hello, world”
References and readings:
read The Telephone: A New History: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374618940/thetelephone/
subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTHq3W46BiAYjKUYZq2qm-Q
subscribe to our Substack: https://a16zfrontier.substack.com/
visit our website: https://a16zfrontier.com/
follow us on X: https://twitter.com/a16zfrontier
—
reference links & readings:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1880/06/a-telephonic-conversation/306078/
https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=639
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dial_up_modem_noises.ogg
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-claude-shannons-information-theory-invented-the-future-20201222/ .
image credits (listed alphabetically by topic):
Alexander Graham Bell patent drawing [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alexander_Graham_Bell%27s_Telephone_Patent_Drawing_and_Oath_-_NARA_-_302052_(page_2).jpg]
barbed wire, Texas (Library of Congress)
Bell Labs campus, 2008 [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bell_Labs_Holmdel.jpg]
Bell System advertisement, 1912 [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bell_System_advertisement_in_Western_Electric_v1no1_News_March_1912_promoting_universal_service.jpg]
Centennial Exhibition, 1876 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Exposition#/media/File:Centennial_Exhibition,_Opening_Day.jpg]
Edison & phonograph, 1877 [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Phonograph#/media/File:Edison_and_phonograph_edit2.jpg Library of Congress]
Edison’s phonograph, 2004 [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Phonograph#/media/File:Fonograf_01_ubt.jpeg]
ENIAC patent, 1954 [https://www.historyofinformation.com/image.php?id=5454, Jeremy Norman Collection of Images (Creative Commons)]
Hello World, 1978 [https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/21/Hello_World_Brian_Kernighan_1978.jpg/500px-Hello_World_Brian_Kernighan_1978.jpg]
Mathematical Theory of Communication, 1949 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mathematical_Theory_of_Communication#/media/File:The_Mathematical_Theory_Of_Communication_title_page.jpg] + Claude Shannon’s diagram of communication (Bell Technical Journal)
Reis telephone, 1863 [https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co33781/reis-telephone-1863 (Creative Commons)]
telegraph lines, 1871 [https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:7h149w171 via Wikimedia Commons]
telegraphing Morse code, 1918 [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ada_Jones_sending_morse_code_in_1918.jpg]
telephone operators, 1928 [https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2016853369/]
transistor evolution 1941-1997, Bell System Memorial [https://memorial.bellsystem.com/images/tube-trans_history.jpg]
“We Learn about the Telephone”, 1965 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2eTOqLpT6Q via Maria Popova (Creative Commons)]
book covers, various
reference links & readings:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1880/06/a-telephonic-conversation/306078/
https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=639
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dial_up_modem_noises.ogg
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-claude-shannons-information-theory-invented-the-future-20201222/
—
This content is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. Views expressed are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect those of a16z or its affiliates. For additional disclosures, visit https://a16z.com/disclosures/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Circle co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire joins a16z crypto founder and founding partner Chris Dixon for a conversation about stablecoins, Circle’s Arc blockchain, and what happens when programmable money meets increasingly capable machines.
Drawing on decades of building and investing through changes in internet technology, Jeremy and Chris reflect on how far crypto has come, what still stands between it and mainstream adoption, and why its most compelling applications may look unfamiliar today.
Highlights
00:00 Intro
01:00 Circle’s original vision for programmable money
06:22 Why institutions started taking stablecoins seriously
11:07 Building a global financial network
14:05 What gives a stablecoin its moat?
19:05 Is crypto still waiting for its iPhone moment?
25:35 Crypto’s growing adoption beyond speculation
27:18 From making existing things better to creating entirely new markets
32:06 The weirdest experiments being built on Arc
36:09 What happens when AI hires AI
37:12 Why the next big thing starts out looking like a toy
38:12 Can blockchains counter AI’s centralizing tendencies?
39:47 How Arc balances openness and accountability
43:32 What the machine economy could look like in five years
Subscribe to the a16z crypto newsletter
https://a16zcrypto.substack.com/
More from a16z crypto
https://a16zcrypto.com/
Follow a16z crypto
https://twitter.com/a16zcrypto
Subscribe on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTHq3W46BiAYjKUYZq2qm-Q
This content is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not necessarily reflect the views of a16z or its affiliates. For important disclosures, see https://a16z.com/disclosures/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Guy Wuollet thinks crypto will have succeeded when we stop calling it crypto. Financial services will simply run on blockchains, much as other businesses now run on the internet. What will it take to get there?
In this conversation with Robert Hackett, the a16z crypto general partner explains where he sees opportunities to build, from stablecoin payments and perpetual futures to new markets for energy and compute. They discuss what tokenization changes for Wall Street, why faster and cheaper blockchains make different businesses possible, and how crypto’s cypherpunk roots fit with its growing commercial adoption.
Guy also shares his path from a16z intern to general partner, including a research project to build a decentralized internet service provider. Along the way, he explains how he evaluates founders, why early token liquidity doesn’t change his investment horizon, and what he looks for in people who want to spend decades building a company. Plus, oil painting and some strongly held opinions about how pants should fit.
Highlights
00:00 A preview of the conversation
00:52 From a16z intern to crypto general partner
11:51 Bitcoin and Guy’s cypherpunk roots
14:34 From technological revolution to practical products
19:28 Why timing matters for crypto adoption
23:31 Token launches, liquidity, and going public
28:20 Backing founders for the long term
31:39 How Guy evaluates founders
36:21 Where Guy sees opportunities in crypto
38:42 New markets for energy and compute
39:49 Stablecoins and finance’s digital transformation
43:29 Why perpetual futures are gaining traction
45:26 What tokenization changes for Wall Street
49:04 Oil painting and the pleasure of making things
51:02 Guy’s smallest hill to die on
Stay connected
Website
https://a16zcrypto.com/
Newsletter
https://a16zcrypto.substack.com/
X
https://x.com/a16zcrypto
This content is for informational purposes only and is not investment, business, legal, or tax advice. See https://a16z.com/disclosures for important information.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

More than 30 years ago, Gödel Prize Winner Noam Nisan helped develop a proof technique that he never expected anyone to use in the real world. 

At the center of that breakthrough was the sum-check protocol — an elegant technique that emerged from Noam Nisan’s early work on interactive proofs. At the time, even Nisan assumed ideas like these were far too theoretical to become practical technology. Today, sum-check sits at the heart of some of the fastest modern SNARKs, proof systems that are increasingly important to blockchains and verifiable computation. 

In this episode of First Principles, a16z crypto Head of Research Tim Roughgarden and research partner Justin Thaler sit down with Noam Nisan to trace the unlikely journey from theory to infrastructure. They explore how interaction and randomness changed the very definition of a mathematical proof; the deceptively simple “two into one” insight behind sum-check; the rapid sequence of discoveries that culminated in IP = PSPACE; and why Justin believes sum-check may be close to the optimal tool for building practical SNARKs. 

But Nisan’s career also tells a broader story about how research responds to technological change. When the web arrived in the 1990s, he deliberately left a field in which he was already a leading researcher to understand a new problem: How do you get independent actors on the internet to cooperate when they have different incentives? That question helped give rise to algorithmic game theory — and, decades later, brought Nisan back to questions around blockchain fees, token economics, and protocol design. 

Highlights 

0:00 — Intro 
1:28 — Noam Nisan and the origins of verifiable computation 
2:58 — Why Noam Nisan left complexity theory 
7:52 — POPcorn, distributed computing, and early blockchain-like ideas 
11:10 — The birth of algorithmic game theory 
16:14 — Justin Thaler discovers the sum-check protocol 
25:05 — From arithmetization to LFKN 
27:06 — The story behind IP = PSPACE 
30:40 — Why sum-check matters for modern SNARKs 
31:15 — What is a SNARK? 
38:52 — The key idea behind sum-check: turning two into one 
44:03 — When SNARKs went from theory to practice 
46:03 — Why blockchains were the breakthrough use case 
50:36 — Noam Nisan’s move into blockchain economics 
56:15 — EIP-1559, transaction fees, and efficient blockspace 
1:02:07 — From theoretical computer science to real-world systems 
1:08:49 — Boiling down the sum-check protocol: Two become one 
1:10:58 — Is the sum-check protocol optimal? 

About First Principles 

First Principles is a series from a16z crypto exploring the foundational ideas behind modern computing, cryptography, and blockchains through conversations with the researchers who developed them — and the people extending those ideas today.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How can you prove that something is true without revealing why it is true? 

That question gave rise to zero-knowledge proofs, one of the most important breakthroughs in modern cryptography. What began as an attempt to solve a seemingly playful problem — playing poker securely over the telephone — ultimately changed how computer scientists think about proofs, privacy, and verification. In this episode of First Principles, Turing Award–winning cryptographer Shafi Goldwasser joins a16z crypto Head of Research Tim Roughgarden and Research Partner Justin Thaler to tell the origin story of zero-knowledge proofs and interactive proof systems. 

Goldwasser recounts how she, Silvio Micali, and Charles Rackoff developed a new kind of proof involving interaction, randomness, and a small probability of error. Their work introduced the idea that a prover could convince a verifier that a statement is true while revealing no additional information. The conversation follows those ideas through some of theoretical computer science’s deepest results, including interactive proofs, IP = PSPACE, probabilistically checkable proofs, the sum-check protocol, and SNARKs. 

These concepts now power blockchain rollups, privacy-preserving applications, and systems for verifying computation without repeating all the work. They also explore why breakthrough ideas are often initially rejected, how toy problems can lead to foundational theories, why abstraction and narrative matter in scientific research, and whether AI systems should be required to prove their answers. 

Highlights 

0:00 — Intro 

3:36 — How mental poker inspired zero-knowledge proofs: Proving that something is true without revealing the underlying information 

6:30 — The simulation paradigm and the meaning of “zero knowledge” 

8:33 — Why the original paper was repeatedly rejected 

10:33 — How interactive proofs became more powerful than conventional proofs 

13:36 — The road to modern SNARKs 

19:02 — Why the sum-check protocol is so useful for verifiable computation 

25:31 — Why many so-called “zk proofs” are not actually zero knowledge 

34:06 — Why toy examples, playfulness, and narratives can produce deep theory 

37:23 — The role of rigor and computational assumptions in cryptography 

42:44 — Applying zero-knowledge proofs to law, evidence, and secret software 

45:23 — Training AI systems to provide proofs alongside their answers 

54:27 — Why genuinely new ideas are often difficult for experts to recognize 

About First Principles 

First Principles is a special limited series from a16z crypto about the scientific roots of modern computing — especially blockchains — told through rare conversations with the pioneers who helped shape the foundational ideas behind distributed systems, consensus protocols, economics, mechanism design, cryptography, zero knowledge, and more. 

People often tell the story of the Bitcoin whitepaper as if it appeared out of nowhere. But the ideas behind Bitcoin — and blockchains more broadly — come from decades of computer science, economics, mathematics, and cryptography. First Principles is a guide to that lineage, as told by the people who helped build it. 

Links 

Shafi Goldwasser 

MIT CSAIL: http://people.csail.mit.edu/shafi/ 

Simons Institute: https://simons.berkeley.edu/people/shafi-goldwasser 

Tim Roughgarden

a16z crypto: https://a16zcrypto.com/team/tim-roughgarden/ 

Website: https://timroughgarden.org/ "X: https://x.com/Tim_Roughgarden 

Justin Thaler 

a16z crypto: https://a16zcrypto.com/team/justin-thaler/ 

Website: https://people.cs.georgetown.edu/jthaler/ 

X: https://x.com/SuccinctJT 

a16z crypto

Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@a16zcrypto 

Website: https://a16zcrypto.com/ 

X: https://twitter.com/a16zcrypto 

Newsletter: https://a16zcrypto.substack.com/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.