General Magic & The Soul of Tech

Michael Stern
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Our documentary told the story of General Magic—the most influential tech company you’ve never heard of. Now, we’re exploring the lessons it left behind and what they reveal about the future of technology, culture, and human ambition. spellboundproductions.substack.com

Episodes

  1. Aug 25

    Ep. 7 | The Agent Safety Architecture We Abandoned | Rich Miller

    What do you get when you cross a New Mexico cowboy with the early days of email and telecommunications? Answer: Rich Miller, one of the OGs of email and, with his colleague and close friend Jim White, the force behind General Magic’s communications language, Telescript. Amidst today’s talk of agentic AI, Rich Miller recollects the original agentic concept and how, from the start, safety considerations like identification, authentication, and authorization were front and center rather than relegated to the “we’ll fix it in post” attitude rife among today’s purveyors of a new class of agents. Rich is measured and thoughtful yet does not mince words. “The notion of complete autonomy of agents is a recipe for a disaster and how big a disaster is the only question.” He offers a nuanced approach for heading off the worst possibilities, discussing considerations across economics, public policy, legal frameworks, and more. So, saddle up for a deep dive into the deep issues at the heart of whether a technology will ultimately serve us well or run amok. Show notes Before Rich Miller was CEO of Telematica and Executive Chairman of Provenant Data, he spent roughly fifteen years building electronic mail into a real industry — running early ARPANET messaging work at Infomedia Corporation, serving as Chairman of the Electronic Mail Association, and representing the U.S. as a delegate to the international CCITT standards body. That’s the résumé he brought to General Magic in 1990 as VP of Strategic Partners, where he and his longtime collaborator Jim White architected Telescript, the agent-based network technology GM built years before “agentic AI” was a phrase anyone used. Telescript didn’t just let software agents travel across a network to act on your behalf — it fenced them in: agents needed explicit credentials, defined authorities, and permits before they could do anything, with the guardrails built in from day one rather than bolted on after the fact. In this conversation, recorded after the passing of Jim White — Telescript’s co-architect and, by Rich’s account, its moral center — Rich joins Michael Stern and Tom “Hersh” Hershenson to walk through how Telescript worked, why AT&T forced General Magic to build for safety before scale, and why he believes the AI industry is now rebuilding what Telescript already had, minus the accountability — plus what he’s building now at Provenant Data to give AI a memory of where its facts actually came from. In this episode * 01:35 – Rich Miller’s path: ARPANET messaging, chairing the Electronic Mail Association, and building email into an industry — plus the MagicCap vs. Telescript culture divide inside General Magic * 05:33 – Jim White — Telescript’s co-architect and moral center, remembered in detail * 08:47 – What is Telescript? The PostScript analogy for sending intent to an “engine” * 10:49 – Software agents in the wild — the 1994 travel-booking use case * 13:35 – Deterministic safety-by-design vs. today’s constrain-after-the-fact approach * 18:11 – The “architect of spam” & lessons from early email standards * 19:35 – Constitutional AI, alignment, and human-in-the-loop for autonomous systems * 23:24 – AT&T’s enforced guardrails as a model for accountable infrastructure * 30:59 – Governance, treaties, and who pays for AI’s externalities * 36:01 – Provenant Data and the case for data lineage and provenance in AI * 44:33 – Closing reflections & remembering Jim White About Rich Miller Rich Miller spent roughly 15 years building electronic mail into an industry — at Infomedia Corporation on early ARPANET messaging, as Chairman of the Electronic Mail Association, and as a U.S. delegate to the CCITT standards body — before co-founding Rapport Communication with Jim White and Ted Myer, where Telescript was conceived. He joined General Magic in 1990, building the AT&T PersonaLink service and the NTT Japan partnership. Today he is CEO of Telematica and Executive Chairman of Provenant Data, writing publicly about the parallels between Telescript’s agent-safety architecture and the unconstrained rise of agentic AI. About Jim White Jim White co-founded Rapport Communication with Rich Miller and Ted Myer in the late 1980s and, with Rich, conceived Telescript — the agent-based network technology that General Magic built years ahead of its time. White brought the deep network-architecture thinking behind Telescript’s PostScript-inspired design and its built-in safety model, work that remains sparsely documented online despite its influence on what would later become agentic AI. He passed away in March 2025. Rich considers him Telescript’s moral center, and this episode is in part an effort to put Jim White’s contribution on the record. Resources & Links * Rich Miller on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richmiller * Pender Fund podcast, “Technology Disruption: A Front Row Seat” (2018): https://penderfund.com/fr/podcasts/technology-disruption-a-front-row-seat/ * Jim White tribute / Telescript retrospective: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/should-we-tell-them-telescript-generalmagic-legacy-dopmc As always, our full, unedited interview appears on YouTube (link below) and our audio-only version is at the top of this post and pushes to Spotify and Apple Podcasts as well. If you are enjoying our week, please share this podcast liberally. Thanks for listening to General Magic & The Soul of Tech! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit spellboundproductions.substack.com

  2. Aug 11

    Ep. 6 | Superintelligence, Fusion, and Faith | Marc Porat

    Our special guest for Episode 6 is one of Silicon Valley’s most influential and persuasive visionaries. Marc Porat’s Ph.D. thesis at Stanford created the very definition of what he called the Information Society, predicting with startling accuracy how data was to become the oil of the post-industrial economy. Marc joined Apple from the Aspen Institute in 1989, tasked with charting the company’s path into the post-destktop computing future. He did far more than that. With Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld, co-creators of the Macintosh, he founded General Magic, which Apple spun out jn 1990 to create what became the first smartphone. But Magic was the incubator for far more than just a mobile communication device. Marc’s farseeing vision embraced the entire ecosystem of social, mobile, anytime, anywhere communication, smart networks hosting software agents, app stores, digital currency and ecommerce that we now take for granted 35 years later as the infrastructure of our daily lives. Hersh and I talk with Marc about what sort of future he now envisions as the age of AI dawns. In his usual dexterous fashion, Marc honors both AI’s potential dystopian impact as a destroyer of employment and human ingenuity and augmenter of authoritarianism and its promise of abundance as a cognitive amplifier and enabler of new forms of human creativity and democratized wealth creation. The three of us worked together at Magic, and it’s a pleasure to reconnect to speculate on what the emergent AI revolution portends. As always, the uncut episode is on YouTube (below) and the edited version, audio-only, is here on Substack, on Apple Podcasts, and on Spotify. Subscribe for free to instantly receive notifications of new podcast episodes. Episode Description Marc Porat is the original smartphone visionary — he co-founded General Magic in 1990 and dreamed up the smartphone, the app store, and autonomous software agents nearly fifteen years before the iPhone existed. Today he’s one of the most sought-after voices on AI and superintelligence — advising governments, insurers, and institutional investors on what an abundant AI future could look like, and what could go catastrophically wrong along the way. In this conversation, Marc, Michael Stern, and Tom “Hersh” Hershenson dig into the AI safety debate that pits Eliezer Yudkowsky’s extinction-level doomerism against Peter Diamandis’s radical abundance, unpack Marc’s “digital twin” concept and his Alexandria Federation project to democratize AI for the non-English-speaking world, argue over who should fund and govern this transformation, and land on a remarkable story: a closed-door meeting with DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis and Vatican representatives about nothing less than “the mind of God.” In This Episode * Honoring both sides of the AI safety debate — doomerism and abundance * The “digital twin” vision: a personalized AI * Alexandria Federation and the fight against AI’s English-language monopoly * Business models for democratizing AI access in the developing world * Government’s proper role in AI guardrails and the coming jobs disruption * Distributed micromodular fusion as the unlock for energy abundance * A dystopian role-reversal debate on cheap energy and cheap intelligence * Demis Hassabis, the Vatican, and science as “the mind of God” Timestamps (1:33) Chasing another “Aspen moment”: has Marc found his future again?(4:16) Honoring both sides: Yudkowsky’s doom vs. Diamandis’s abundance(9:22) Ten years to do what took industrialization a century: the velocity problem(12:59) Market failure: AI wealth concentration and the new tech aristocracy(19:22) Alexandria Federation: democratizing AI for 50+ countries(23:59) Mia, Rosetta & Contienza: a blueprint for a global AI commons(36:35) Funding models: venture capital vs. utility vs. single-payer AI(42:29) Government’s role: guardrails, criminals, and the coming jobs bomb(1:05:48) Demis Hassabis, the Vatican, and “the mind of God”(1:09:09) Full circle: General Magic’s legacy and getting AI right this time About Marc Porat Marc Porat is the original smartphone visionary — co-founder and former CEO of General Magic, the 1990 Apple spinout whose Magic Link device and Telescript software anticipated the smartphone, the app store, and autonomous software agents more than a decade before the iPhone. After General Magic, he spent nearly two decades in cleantech, co-founding Serious Materials, CalStar Cement, and Zeta Communities to bring sustainability to windows, cement, and net-zero housing. Today he’s Chief AI Advisor at Access Holdings (appointed October 2025), Senior Advisor to SandboxAQ, and Senior Advisor to Pegasus Capital, and speaks and consults globally on AI and superintelligence — working on projects including the Alexandria Federation, an effort to democratize frontier AI for non-English-speaking countries, and distributed micromodular fusion energy. He engages actively across the AI safety spectrum, from Eliezer Yudkowsky’s extinction-risk warnings to Peter Diamandis’s abundance thesis. Resources & Links - Marc Porat on LinkedIn - Marc’s Summit Detroit keynote, “A Techno-Visionary’s AI Forecast” (June 2025, 52 min.)— the fullest public statement of his current AI worldview, including Sovereign AI, superintelligence, and digital twins - Access Holdings announces Marc Porat as Chief AI Advisor (October 2025) - Marc Porat on Wikipedia - General Magic documentary (2018) Thanks for reading General Magic & The Soul of Tech! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit spellboundproductions.substack.com

  3. Aug 4

    Ep. 5 | General Magic’s “Gatekeeper” on Vision as a Double-Edged Sword | Kris Rodriguez

    Kris Rodriguez was one of the original HR people at General Magic — the person who decided who got hired, and who didn’t, at one of Silicon Valley’s most mythologized companies. She now runs Clear Path Communications, a leadership coaching and organization-development consultancy focused on change management and executive coaching, largely in biotech. In this conversation, she traces a direct line from her days as Magic’s “gatekeeper” to the leadership philosophy she teaches today: dispelling the old instruction-manual model of leadership, helping people connect to their own purpose, and reckoning honestly with the double-edged nature of bold vision. She also weighs in candidly on AI anxiety, Amara’s Law, and why the most compelling visions can blind us to their own risks. In This Episode * General Magic’s hiring philosophy: integrity, enthusiasm, and the space to play * From Digital Equipment Corporation to the “graduate school experience” * The heartbreak of the company’s collapse and the pivot to Portico * Amara’s Law and the anxiety of living through another technological inflection point * Dispelling the “textbook” of leadership — coaching as a return to purpose * Vision as a double-edged sword: the “ice wall” metaphor * The discipline of saying no and making trade-offs explicit * AI’s own creators sounding the alarm — and what that should tell us * Gene editing, biotech ethics, and believing in the good * Her bumper-sticker answer: “Human… and Mom” Timestamps 01:29 — What General Magic screened for: integrity, enthusiasm, and play 10:32 — Amara’s Law and the anxiety of the AI moment 17:15 — Dispelling the leadership “textbook” — coaching’s real starting point 22:39 — “The thing I’ve been trying to get back to for 30 years” 24:57 — Vision as a double-edged sword: the “ice wall” metaphor 26:59 — The art of saying no: trade-off decisions in coaching 29:33 — AI’s own creators sounding the alarm 37:51 — Why coaching isn’t a turnaround tool — integrity as a filter 41:50 — Gene editing, biotech ethics, and believing in the good About Kris Rodriguez Kris Rodriguez was one of the original HR people at General Magic, where she helped build the team and served as the company’s “gatekeeper” during hiring. She previously worked at Digital Equipment Corporation and has spent the last 25 years in biotech, most recently as founder of Clear Path Communications, a leadership coaching and organization-development consultancy specializing in change management, org design, and executive coaching. Resources & Links * Clearpath Communications * Contact Kris: kris@clearpathcommunications.com * General Magic documentary This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit spellboundproductions.substack.com

  4. Jul 28

    Ep. 4 | One of Tech’s OGs on Why AI Feels Like Magic | Andy Hertzfeld

    Andy Hertzfeld wrote much of the original Macintosh operating system, co-founded General Magic, later worked at Google, and created Folklore.org, the definitive oral history of early Apple. In this 46-minute audio edit, he opens up more candidly than ever about why using AI coding tools and AI music generation feels, in his words, “thrilling” and “like magic” — the same joy he felt writing code as a teenager — while also delivering a clear-eyed reckoning with what went wrong at General Magic, how Apple’s Newton team secretly raced to beat them to market, why he thinks the AI industry “is poisoned by money,” and, in a closing conversation, what it will take for Silicon Valley — and the country — to rediscover its soul. In This Episode 04:17 - “It’s actually thrilling”: Andy on using AI coding tools 04:51 - Suno, poetry, and rediscovering creative joy through AI music 07:54 - Why Andy trusts Gemini over ChatGPT 12:04 - Is the AI industry idealistic, or “poisoned by money”? 14:57 - Andy’s biggest regret at General Magic26:10 - The Newton betrayal38:45 - Andy’s bumper-sticker answer and his Tesla regret 41:04 - Silicon Valley’s political turn, and finding tech’s soul again 43:58 - The Steve Jobs/Steve Wozniak kindness distinction that still guides him About Andy Hertzfeld: Andy Hertzfeld was a key member of the original Apple Macintosh team, where he wrote much of the system software that defined personal computing. He went on to co-found General Magic, the legendary Silicon Valley startup that envisioned the smartphone 15 years before the iPhone. He later worked at Google, where he contributed to Google+. Hertzfeld is also the creator of Folklore.org, a widely cited living archive of stories from the early days of Apple, and co-author of the book Revolution in the Valley. Now retired, he spends his time on personal creative projects — including AI-assisted music composition through Suno — and remains one of the most respected and beloved figures in Silicon Valley history. Resources & Links: * Andy Hertzfeld on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Hertzfeld * Folklore.org (created by Andy Hertzfeld): https://www.folklore.org * Revolution in the Valley by Andy Hertzfeld: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/revolution-in-the/9780596007195/ Thanks for reading General Magic & The Soul of Tech! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit spellboundproductions.substack.com

  5. Jul 21

    Ep. 3 | What Orange’s Chief AI Officer Learned from General Magic | Steve Jarrett

    Steve Jarrett is one of the rare technologists who has built products at every stage of the mobile revolution — from General Magic and Audible to Philips and the iPod team at Apple, to Chief AI Officer at Orange, where he oversaw AI strategy for 300 million customers across 26 countries. In this conversation, he brings that depth to the questions that matter most right now: how AI should be governed, who gets left behind when it isn’t, and what the EU AI Act gets right and wrong. He also shares hard-won lessons on innovation methodology, why simpler models often beat complex ones, and his thoughts on future societal impacts of AI. In this episode: * What it was like inside General Magic — and the lesson Steve carried with him: “The world is built by people.” * Building the first app store at Philips with Tony Fadell — years before Apple’s App Store existed * Creating Audible’s first mobile audio player and the first mobile web browser * Joining the iPod team at Apple and building the first version of CarPlay * The AI digital divide: what happens when AI reaches places where people earn five euros a month and speak languages no model understands * Open-weight vs. closed AI models — and the national security trade-offs Europe is navigating * EU AI Act: what it gets right, what it gets wrong, and why governance matters * “Don’t use AI if you don’t have to” — why simpler methods are more explainable, more repeatable, and generate less CO2 * On-device AI, privacy, and the future of the smartphone * Tony Fadell’s innovation methodology and what Steve Jobs actually taught the people around him About Steve Jarrett:Steve Jarrett is a serial technology innovator who began his career at General Magic and went on to help build the first commercial app store (at Philips, with Tony Fadell), the first mobile audio app (at Audible), and the first mobile web browser. He later joined the iPod team at Apple and supported the first version of CarPlay. Most recently, he served as Chief AI Officer at Orange Group, in Paris, overseeing AI strategy for 300 million customers across 26 countries.Resources & Links:Steve Jarrett on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevejarrett/Steve Blank's Customer Development: https://steveblank.com/Eric Ries's Lean Startup Methodology: https://leanstartup.co/ The audio-only link of the interview here in Substack, on Spotify, and in Apple Podcasts is edited for length. The full-length version of the interview is the video we post on YouTube …which also includes some fun bits between Steve and Hersh, who were quite the pranksters back at Magic. Enjoy! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit spellboundproductions.substack.com

    Ep. 3 | What Orange’s Chief AI Officer Learned from General Magic | Steve Jarrett

  6. Jul 14

    Ep. 2 | The Soul from Every Side | Scott Knaster

    Welcome to our second episode of General Magic & The Soul of Tech. This was a nostalgic conversation with one of our early colleagues at General Magic. Scott Knaster is one of the few people who worked at Apple, General Magic, and then Microsoft and Google—which means he’s seen the soul of tech from just about every angle. In this conversation, he talks about what made each of those cultures different, and why Magic’s still stands apart in his memory. It’s a warm, honest, and sometimes funny look at what happens when a company is built around people rather than products—and what gets lost when that stops being the priority. The full uncut video is below on YouTube for those nostalgia buffs who want to hear our full conversation. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit spellboundproductions.substack.com

  7. Jun 29

    Ep. 1 | The Soul of Tech: Jobs, Musk, and the Next Inflection Point | Michael Stern & Tom Hershenson

    Thirty years ago, the team at General Magic invented the smartphone concept — and helped usher in a revolution that reshaped how we work, communicate, and relate to each other. They also didn't see the dark side coming. In this first episode of General Magic and the Soul of Tech, hosts Michael Stern and Tom Hershenson sit down with the General Magic documentary co-director Sarah Kerruish for a wide-ranging conversation about what General Magic got wrong the first time — and why the rise of AI may be humanity's only chance to get it right. They cover the original vision at General Magic, the invention of software agents (yes, before AI agents were a thing), why “Jobs vs. Musk” is the title of their upcoming book, and what a "call to conscience" for technologists, policymakers, and investors looks like in 2026. This isn't despair. It's a summons. Topics in this episode:• Why General Magic matters now, not just as history• The soul of tech: Steve Jobs vs. Elon Musk• How GM invented agents — and what that means for AI today• Safety-first architecture: what Telescript got right that modern AI hasn't• The K-shaped economy and who benefits from the AI boom• What social movements teach us about the road ahead Join the conversation: Substack → spellboundproductions.substack.com General Magic documentary → generalmagicthemovie.com General Magic and the Soul of Tech is produced by Spellbound Productions II LLC. #GeneralMagic #SiliconValley #Innovation #Technology #Ethics #FutureOfAI #HumanCenteredDesign #TheSoulOfTech #Podcast #spellboundproductions This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit spellboundproductions.substack.com

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Our documentary told the story of General Magic—the most influential tech company you’ve never heard of. Now, we’re exploring the lessons it left behind and what they reveal about the future of technology, culture, and human ambition. spellboundproductions.substack.com

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