Technological Revolutions with Jerry Neumann

Oxide and Friends · 18 Sept 2025 · 1h 25m · Episode 26

What this episode covers

Jerry Neumann, a venture capitalist and author, joins Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal to discuss his 2015 blog post on Carlota Perez’s theory of technological revolutions, arguing that AI is the maturity phase of the existing IT wave rather than a new one. Neumann distinguishes between financial capital, which drives frenzies and speculation, and production capital, which drives rational, productivity-enhancing deployment, citing examples like shipping containers and open source. The conversation explores how venture capital has evolved to absorb booms and busts, often front-running production capital, and examines the social and political upheaval that accompanies the end of deployment phases, such as the 2016 election and current regulatory trends.

Mentioned

Companies
Oxide Computer Company, Intel, Apple, Oracle, Google, Facebook, Cisco, Sealand, Red Hat, OpenAI, DeepSeek, Microsoft, Amazon
Products
AWS
Also
Carlota Perez

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