TOP Tech Podcast

Top Tech Podcast With Mark Fielding and Jeremy Gilbertson

All human. All original. We interview the people building AI, quantum computers, and spaceships. Then try to figure out what it means for the rest of us. The physicist who says consciousness is quantum. The CEO 3D printing moon hotels. The quantum computer that works at room temperature. The Founder who builds drones. We ask why they're building it this way. Who benefits. And what it means for your job, family, future and bank account. We also run a book club. You'll like it. Or your money back.

  1. 1 DAY AGO

    The Waymo Moment for Drones: Iona, Privacy And Logistics

    Iona delivery drones are not your typical multi-propeller drone. They're small planes with a bathtub-sized cargo bay, but take off vertically, then the propellers tilt and it flies like an actual aircraft. Listen up disruptors and curious minds! Today we're Thinking On Paper with CEO and founder Etienne Louvet.  On the agenda? A new logistics vertical in the skyWhy British weather is the perfect training ground for delivery dronesWhat BVLOS actually meansWhy "beyond visual line of sight" is criticalWhy Iona are deliberately working under the strictest aviation regulators instead of going somewhere easy.  Please enjoy the show. Cheers,  Mark & Jeremy. PS: Subscribe so other curious minds like you can find our channel. -- Other ways to connect with us: ⁠Listen to every podcast⁠ Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ Follow us on ⁠X⁠ Follow Mark on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Follow Jeremy on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Read our ⁠Substack⁠ Email: hello@thinkingonpaper.xyz -- TIMESTAMPS (00:00) Intro  (01:50) How much weight can drones carry (02:29) What counts as light cargo  (06:51) How drone regulations actually work  (13:04) Self-assessment and risk management  (14:12) Getting municipalities to say yes  (16:38) Weather problems  (19:48) Where Iona Drones is now  (20:58) Maximizing payload capacity  (21:58) Drone design choices  (23:27) BVLOS explained  (26:08) Drones and privacy concerns  (30:45) Implementing drones in existing logistics  (35:02) Where autonomous delivery is headed  (39:30) Technology and human progress

    43 min

  2. 6 FEB

    Prompting Vs Asking: Why the Blank Sheet Is What Forces You to Think

    Can you use AI to think better or think more critically? Philosopher Pia Lauritzen says no. The second we give up to the shortcut use AI, we are letting go of the very basic condition that forces us to think. When we ask if machines can think, the first question should be: why do humans think? Why do we think? For Pia, it is fairly simple. We think because we know there is something we do not know. We have a problem. There is a gap. A gap between what I know and what I want to know.  So I have to start thinking. That is why I ask these questions and that is why I put up with this pain in my head of trying to figure something out that I do not know. The machine does not have that problem. It does not know that it does not know.  It is like an animal.  It does not know that it does not know.  Of course it is a matter of how you understand thinking. But if you consult the old thinkers and not just the engineers and technologists, then you will have a really hard time finding anyone who would say that a machine could ever think.  And if it cannot think itself, why should it be able to help us think? We are the only ones who know how to do that. This is the core problem. AI feels helpful. It removes the discomfort of not knowing where to start. It fills the blank sheet. But that discomfort is not a bug.  That discomfort is the feature. That discomfort is what thinking is. And it is at this point that I am reminded of the scene in Con Air. Define irony. Please enjoy the show. Cheers,  Mark & Jeremy. PS: Subscribe so other curious minds like you can find our channel. -- Other ways to connect with us: ⁠Listen to every podcast⁠ Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ Follow us on ⁠X⁠ Follow Mark on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Follow Jeremy on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Read our ⁠Substack⁠ Email: hello@thinkingonpaper.xyz

    4 min

  3. 5 FEB

    AI-Generated Music Without Stealing: Maths, Vectors & Beats

    We taught technology to generate music before we taught it how to assign fair credit to musicians. Nicholas Ponari explains why Overtune rejects one-prompt AI music generation in favor of human-in-the-loop creation.  Unlike platforms trained on scraped catalogs, Overtune’s AI is built on licensed music, starting with ~20,000 loops produced in-house. Producers can submit stems voluntarily, creating a clean foundation for ethical training and attribution. The platform uses vector-based audio embeddings to measure how much each stem contributes to a generated track. This enables automated attribution and proportional royalty distribution when songs are commercialized.  Contributions are weighted mathematically, with clear thresholds to credit primary and secondary influences while avoiding excessive fragmentation  Please enjoy the show. Cheers, Mark and Jeremy PS: Subscribe so other curious minds like you can find our channel. Other ways to connect with us: ⁠Listen to every podcast⁠ Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ Follow us on ⁠X⁠ Follow Mark on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Follow Jeremy on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Read our ⁠Substack⁠ Email: hello@thinkingonpaper.xyz

    10 min

  4. 4 FEB

    Analog Vs Digital Marketing in 2026: Funnels Don't Exist and Your Customer is OpenAI

    Marketing funnels don't exist. They never did. The internet just convinced us they were real. Meta, Google, OpenAI and a supporting cast of billionaire sociopaths figured out they could control distribution and black-box your customers. Hurrah. Humanity forgot to read the small print.  Now you're running a business where you don't even know who your customer is. Well here’s the AI-shaped healthcheck: Your customer is OpenAI. You're paying 3-15% for a digital presence you don't need. It's called the Silicon Valley tax. You're burning money to keep VCs rich while platforms add another layer of black box between you and the people you serve. The alternative? Network methodology. Someone you know, or someone who knows someone you know. That's it. Funnels were invented to sell marketing. Networks are how humans actually work.  We've been doing it since we had prefrontal cortexes. Everything that's real is analog.  That's true for business too. Welcome to the marketing jungle.  The year is 2026, and if you don’t know who the sucker at the table is… you probably shouldn’t be playing the stakes.  Please enjoy the reality check. Cheers, Mark and Jeremy. PS: Keep thinking on paper. They don’t want you to, that’s why you must.  -- Other ways to connect with us: ⁠Listen to every podcast⁠ Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ Follow us on ⁠X⁠ Follow Mark on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Follow Jeremy on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Read our ⁠Substack⁠ Email: hello@thinkingonpaper.xyz --

    7 min

  5. 3 FEB

    NVIDIA Quantum Chips, GPUs And How Quantum Computers Can Model Nature

    Matt Kinsella runs Infleqtion, a company building quantum computers. The biggest misconception about quantum computing is that it will replace classical computing. It won't.  Quantum processors will sit above GPUs in data centers the same way GPUs sit above CPUs today.  NVIDIA just built the bridge to make this work. It's called NVQ Link, and it changes how we think about the future of compute. NVIDIA announced NVQ Link in October 2024. It's the bridge between quantum computers and classical GPU clusters. Workloads pass seamlessly between them. Here's how it works in practice. Infleqtion and NVIDIA solved something called the Anderson Impurity Model - a photovoltaic problem in material science. Parts of it were solved on a GPU cluster. Parts that couldn't be solved by GPUs were solved on Infleqtion's quantum computer.  Then they recombined to give the answer.  This isn't commercially useful yet. But expand that over time and you could be looking at the future data center. One with three layers. CPUs at the bottom for general computing. GPUs in the middle for parallel processing and AI. QPUs at the top for problems that are quantum mechanical in nature.  Workloads come in, get chopped up, each piece goes to the part of the stack best suited to solve it. Then results recombine. This is already happening. Infleqtion just announced a contract with the Army called Sapient Secure AI for PNT - position, navigation, and timing. It runs their quantum-inspired software on NVIDIA's Jetson edge GPUs.  Small GPUs that don't have much memory.  The software lets them ingest far more streaming data than normal. Video, speed, inertial motion. Then it recreates what GPS gives you - where you are in the world - by extrapolating from all those signals. Without GPS. Please enjoy the show. Cheers,  Mark & Jeremy. -- Other ways to connect with us: ⁠Listen to every podcast⁠ Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ Follow us on ⁠X⁠ Follow Mark on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Follow Jeremy on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Read our ⁠Substack⁠ Email: hello@thinkingonpaper.xyz --

    7 min

  6. 26 JAN

    Why Commercial Space Stations Don't Exist Yet: Space to Grow Part 2

    What is the value proposition of going into space? What is the killer app? How do we make money? And specifically, looking at space stations and satellites, do the economics actually work?In part one of our Space to Grow book club, we learned how SpaceX reduced launch costs by 97%. Matthew Weinzierl and Brendan Rosseau showed us how NASA gave the keys to private industry. The result was dramatically cheaper access to space.But so what? Who cares? So A bunch of billionaires can go to space for less money than before. What does that mean for you? What does that mean for me?In Part 2, we bring in the skeptics. They ask reasonable questions. Why spend money on hotels on the moon when there are problems on Earth? Why mine asteroids for precious metals when we have problems here? The pursuit of space is inspiring, but inspiration can blind us to reality.Outside of a few obvious existing users like satellites and government science missions, how could the rest of us and organizations benefit from lower costs to orbit? How much of what the optimists see as potential will turn into reality?Please enjoy the show. -- Other ways to connect with us: ⁠Listen to every podcast⁠ Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ Follow us on ⁠X⁠ Follow Mark on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Follow Jeremy on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Read our ⁠Substack⁠ Email: hello@thinkingonpaper.xyz -- TIMESTAMPS (00:00⁠) Trailer  ⁠(01:35⁠) No Dust Jackets ⁠ (02:00⁠) Name Jeremy's Astronaut ⁠ (03:52⁠) What Is The Product Market Fit For Space? ⁠ (05:26⁠) Satellites And The Le Chatelier Principle ⁠ (09:00⁠) Planet's Dove Satellites ⁠ (16:38⁠) Satellites For Climate ⁠ (18:28⁠) John Lewis ⁠ (22:30⁠) Ronald Reagan & Carl Sagan ⁠ (26:42⁠) Inflatable ISS Modules

    31 min

  7. 22 JAN

    Don't Press That Button: Why Two-Thirds of Data Center Outages Are Caused By Human Error

    Shapol led rocket launches before building AI to prevent the wrong switch from crashing your favorite apps. Two-thirds of data center outages are caused by human error. Someone flipping the wrong switch is all it takes to bring down AWS. Airplanes can't take off, hospitals can't function. AI can fix this.  Shapol, CEO of Entangl, explains how his company is solving this billion-dollar problem with AI-powered autonomous operations that understand every circuit, server, and switch in a data center. In This Episode: - Why 18-month generator lead times force risky shortcuts - How VR trains engineers without touching live systems   - The path from standard operating procedures to AI-guided work - Space-based data centers and manufacturing futures - Kevin Kelly's question: What should humans become? -- Other ways to connect with us: ⁠Listen to every podcast⁠ Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ Follow us on ⁠X⁠ Follow Mark on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Follow Jeremy on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Read our ⁠Substack⁠ Email: hello@thinkingonpaper.xyz -- About Shapol: Shapol and co-founder Antanas previously oversaw four rocket mission launches. Frustrated with engineering design software, they created Entangl - a platform that automates data center operations, generates maintenance procedures in real-time, and integrates with building monitoring systems to predict failures before they happen. -- Key Topics: Data center reliability, AI automation, infrastructure operations, space manufacturing, autonomous systems, cloud computing, engineering design TIMESTAMPS (00:00) Trailer (02:17) From rocket launches to data center automation (06:00) How Entangl integrates with building monitoring systems (08:34) Data Center Design constraints: How AI fixes it (15:37) AI, Dunning Kruger And Hallucinations (21:42) Will humans always have the final say in data centers? (24:53) Space-based data centers and solar power (25:04) Kevin Kelly's question: What should humans become?

    28 min

  8. 19 JAN

    How SpaceX Cut Launch Costs 97%: Space to Grow - Book Club, Ep. 1

    SpaceX launches 135 rockets a year. NASA's shuttles launched five. SpaceX delivers cargo to orbit for $2,800 per kilo. The shuttles cost $90,000. In fifteen years, one company did what a government agency couldn't do in sixty. We're reading Space to Grow: Unlocking the Final Economic Frontier by Brendan Rosseau and Matthew C. Weinzierl. This is the book that explains how private companies broke NASA's sixty-year monopoly on space. WHAT YOU'LL DISCOVER: How the Apollo program's end created the opening for private space companies Why NASA's shuttle program failed at $1.5 billion per launch The 2003 Columbia disaster that forced government to open the gates How COTS contracts changed everything by putting financial risk on private companies Elon Musk's failed Russia trip and the decision to build SpaceX from scratch The story of three rocket explosions, $100 million left, and a fourth rocket built from spare parts Why someone had to climb inside a rocket mid-flight to hammer out dents Blue Origin's different approach: Jeff Bezos at five years old watching Apollo, then building slowly and quietly The four principles behind SpaceX's success: iteration, vertical integration, reusability, and culture How SpaceX cut costs 97% while maintaining perfect launch records Why it's harder to work at SpaceX than get into Harvard PERFECT FOR LISTENERS INTERESTED IN: The economics of space and how market forces beat government monopolies SpaceX, Blue Origin, and the commercial space revolution Innovation strategy and how to disrupt calcified systems The future of orbital infrastructure and space-based industry Economic policy and public-private partnerships Entrepreneurship and building companies that challenge incumbents Technology disruption and first principles thinking CHAPTERS COVERED: This episode breaks down chapters one through three: Blue Origin, SpaceX, and the inception point. We cover the three-act history of NASA and the birth of the private space industry. COMING UP: Next episodes cover Artemis, Starship, supply and demand curves in space markets, property rights in space, the politics of orbital infrastructure, and the military space complex. We have former NASA engineers joining the show. 🚀 Get the book: Space to Grow by Brendan Rosseau and Matthew C. Weinzierl  📬 Newsletter and more episodes: thinkingonpaper.xyz Stay curious! And Keep Thinking On Paper. Cheers,  Mark and Jeremy PS: Please subscribe. It’s the best way you can help other curious minds find our channel. -- Other ways to connect with us: ⁠Listen to every podcast⁠ Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ Follow us on ⁠X⁠ Follow Mark on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Follow Jeremy on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Read our ⁠Substack⁠ Email: hello@thinkingonpaper.xyz-- TIMESTAMPS (00:00) Trailer (01:02) Space To Grow (01:55) Incorporate Space Into Your Thinking (03:28) The Apollo Program Ends (05:43) The NASA Budget & Shuttle Launches (07:51) Bush & The Aldridge Commission (08:36) COTS (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services) (10:27) Blue Origin, Bezos & O'Neill (14:40) A Quick History Of SpaceX (18:23) Falcon Blows Up (20:24) Elon Sues The Airforce (22:04) SpaceX Launch Costs (23:45) The Honda Civic Of Space Rockets

    26 min
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About

All human. All original. We interview the people building AI, quantum computers, and spaceships. Then try to figure out what it means for the rest of us. The physicist who says consciousness is quantum. The CEO 3D printing moon hotels. The quantum computer that works at room temperature. The Founder who builds drones. We ask why they're building it this way. Who benefits. And what it means for your job, family, future and bank account. We also run a book club. You'll like it. Or your money back.

Information

  • Creator
    Top Tech Podcast With Mark Fielding and Jeremy Gilbertson
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    104
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Top Tech Podcast With Mark Fielding and Jeremy Gilbertson
  • Show Website
    TOP Tech Podcast

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