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WAWGTDWATF - The Future of Product Design
79 Plays1 year ago
In the first episode of the podcast "WAWGTDWATF," host Rose Genele chats with Sanj Sirpal, a seasoned designer and futurist with 30 years of experience, shares his insights on the evolution of design and the influence of technology in today's creative landscape. He emphasizes the need for designers to venture beyond traditional dimensions, advocating for a shift towards designs that foster community rather than individual use. Sirpal calls for a more inclusive approach to technology, urging designers to consider the long-term impacts of their creations on humanity. Ultimately, he expresses optimism for a future where intentional and communal technology use prevails, highlighting the importance of creativity and the joy of the design process with his newly released Thinkable project.
Keep up with Sanj Sirpal on LinkedIn
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Transcript
Introduction of Sanjiv Serpal
00:00:21
Speaker
Today, our guest is Sanjiv Serpal, a founder, designer and near futurist. Sanj, thanks so much for being here. Hey, Rose, thank you so much for having me. I'm i'm so honored to be the first guest on your futures podcast. Amazing.
Design Journey from Architecture to Digital
00:00:38
Speaker
um Can you tell us a little bit about your background and your current work? Introduce yourself to us. Yeah, absolutely. So I go by Sanj and um i'm ah I describe myself as a designer and near futurist. um I've spent probably the last 30 years in design. um I studied architecture um first. And out of our architecture, I ended up um doing digital product design, working on software, CAD applications, and software applications for the first part of my career.
00:01:11
Speaker
um and Then after that, the first part of my career, I started working on both digital and physical devices, um so product experiences that that that we as humans interact with on a daily basis, smart TVs, smartphones, IoT devices, things that um are in our built environment and that we sort of you know have to engage with in order to to achieve certain outcomes.
00:01:38
Speaker
That's where I learned my craft. I kind of describe myself as a composer and conductor, so I both compose the the vision behind some of the products and I also conduct the teams that need to sort of orchestrate themselves in order to achieve the the design that's required to get those products out.
Passion for Near Futurism
00:01:59
Speaker
That's awesome. I love that. So what initially sparked your interest in one product design and two in future or you know near futurism? Wow, that's wonderful. um So product design, i think I think design was always in my DNA. I was always somebody that made things um and and imagined things in my mind and I wanted to bring into the world. um So that's when I started to study architecture. um Initially, when I started my studies in architecture, I thought about the the structures that i that appealed to me, the beauty of the the buildings and only through that to
00:02:41
Speaker
you know studying did I realize that I wasn't only designing the structure, but I was also designing the space. So this idea of um tension between the space and the structure was something that really ah enamored me with we but design and so on. So through the rest of my career, I sort sort of sought out What are the structures that I can create that create spaces for other people to appreciate and to use? So my my love of design has always been you know something that was about doing and creating those spaces and creating those those new experiences. I kind of got bored with
00:03:21
Speaker
designing things um over and over again. So I really jumped into zero to one work. And that's taking ideas that have no form and and then giving form to those ideas. um And so that that is probably what most designers that deal with zero to one work. They're always dealing with a near future. um And so near futurism was actually, you know, my love of zero to one work.
00:03:48
Speaker
and as well as um ah speculating. like like These are my ideas that I want to kind of give form to and see how the world reacts to. And so a lot of the near futurist work that I do um in my studio, in my practice, which is plastic the plastic studio,
00:04:05
Speaker
um which is sort of my five to nine job. I have a nine to five job as well. um It's more more or less design related, but I'll focus more on the on the and the five to nine because that's where the the real interesting work happens. So speculative design um really allows me to have a point of view and build form around that point of view for something that I think I want to see in the world.
00:04:35
Speaker
That's interesting.
Beyond 2D Design
00:04:37
Speaker
um And so with that with you know that lens and that perspective, what are some of the challenges or or opportunities you know um that you think designers will face as we continue to move into an increasingly digital and and interconnected world? I know that you have experience with both digital and analog products. and so um but
00:05:06
Speaker
What do you see as as some of those challenges or opportunities for for designers as as digital and and technology seems to really kind of take over our world at all fronts? I mean, that's a really interesting question. I have very strong points of view on the kinds of things that designers need to to tackle. I find a lot of designers today um They're, I call them single dimensional, not as a negative, but they're very much about a particular dimension. So for instance, digital products exist mostly in in a two dimensional plane, right? So a lot of the experiences that we see, a lot of the work that we do is around the two dimensional aspect of of of design. How do we present something to a human that then interacts with that thing in order to achieve an outcome?
00:05:57
Speaker
And usually, a lot of that design work is happening in this two-dimensional pane of glass, right? It's on a screen, whether it's a mobile so device or whether it's a it's it's a it's a a smart TV or a monitor or it's a laptop, it's usually two-dimensional. What ends up happening invariably when you only work in two dimensions is that you end up solving problems in only that dimension.
00:06:22
Speaker
So you start to ignore the fact that humans exist outside of those two dimensions, ah that we exist in in in multiple dimensions, 3D, 4D and over time. And so I always tell people of designers you know in order order for them to be very you know versatile and agile in the world of design that they have to expand their dimensionality. so you know So I start with the idea of 0D. 0D is really interesting. 0D is a point. right it's say It's a point. and And I describe that as a point of view. So as as designers, we should all have a point of view. 1D is a line. So it's a line that gets created. And that line is usually articulated and with with words, which is a really interesting um um way of communicating what you're thinking and what you want somebody to achieve.
00:07:13
Speaker
The 2Ds then get into that planar space and then 3D gets into the the physical world. And and then 4D is like how I described as as as all of these things moving over time. So for designers, um as they broaden their dimensional thinking, they can then impact a larger aspect of the world. right So their solutions aren't biased just to this one form.
00:07:38
Speaker
and Time is really interesting because then you start to think about the time that we have today and we have know what does time look like tomorrow. I think that's the aspect of it. that i'm yeah with with With what do we do with all this future, time is really important.
00:07:51
Speaker
um and so Another sort of way of looking at design is um I look at design as as is product design. So most people, when they think of products, they think of things tangible things or you know product experiences. But I look at it from a design perspective slightly different. And I see that product, if you look at mathematically, the product of two numbers is one number multiplied by the other. So the product of 3 and 4 is 12.
00:08:24
Speaker
And so as designers, I think we need to expand our ability to design in multiple dimensions, but also expand the skills that we have so that what we can create is a product of one skill set multiplied by another skill set, multiply another skill set in order to impact a larger um swath of of work, right? like So a larger impact of work.
00:08:49
Speaker
So rather than being single dimensional, stuck in one dimension and only forcing the solution to go through that one dimension, the versatility of a designer comes from being able to articulate themselves in multiple dimensions ah concurrently whenever they need to.
00:09:07
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's an interesting
Critique of Individual User Design
00:09:09
Speaker
perspective. And so the the challenge or the opportunity being to um step out of that 1D, 2D, and really look to design and and and have a perspective from, like you said, that 3D and that 4D is where you feel like the the opportunity is for designers these days.
00:09:32
Speaker
but Yes, i I do think. I think that um so ah oh ah have a very strong hypothesis that as as today with digital products um and physical products as well that have digital hearts, that we're actually seeing um devices and experiences that are only focused on one individual. so They will only work for one.
00:10:00
Speaker
right And I think that's a future where I think we have to rethink. right So for instance, when we pick up um a device, that device today, or so let's imagine a smartphone, um a modern smartphone will only work for one individual.
00:10:19
Speaker
It has scanning technology. It will recognize your face and unlock that experience just for you. So this is a very important part of of the future. Is the future always going to work for a one? So we are very exposed to echo chambers where our individual experiences across these screens, these displays, these digital experiences are only focused on me.
00:10:43
Speaker
and not not not somebody that's sitting beside me, not somebody that's in my my spectrum of world, or world my my my current um ah ecosystem of people, but only for me. And so what that basically means is that if I have a device that I pick up,
00:11:01
Speaker
It will not function for me. It will function only for you. And that has ah a huge ah impact on waste. It has a huge impact on this that this idea that we only build things for one people, like one people. like So it's really one people. And I think that is ah the flaw, the greatest flaw that we have in the digital world, um and that and and it is that We have designed things and we build experiences for once rather than the collective. We are social beings. We live in social spaces. We are social. We cohabitate. We're communal. were These aspects, these terms are ignored.
00:11:40
Speaker
And so what happens is that, and you might have seen this, there are certain devices that are in the world when, so typically a device, if you think about it, let's imagine a tool that you have in your home. like Let's say a series of, let's say you're a chef and you have all sorts of interesting tools in your kitchen. Anybody can walk up to those tools and use them, right? They can pick up those pick up those instruments and use them. Now imagine a world where you walk into my space, but you cannot use anything in it.
00:12:08
Speaker
And so that is ah ah that's a big problem because that means that we haven't designed the tools for humanity. We've designed it for one human. And I think that that's the problem of, and you'll see this ongoing, like we we're continually building experiences which only one person can experience. Sure, you can do this collaboratively in collaborative spaces, 3D spaces and VR spaces, but they're still just for the single. And so when we build more and more for the individual, we ignore the collective. And I think that is a ah pretty significant flaw. A lot of that comes down to privacy and security. But I do believe that we can we can
00:12:52
Speaker
that's a problem to tackle in a completely different way potentially. And I think that's what I sort of started to focus on. It's like, how do I build things that can last for many years and last for many people and that have lives after one person uses those things? And so I think a future or future spec my speculative thinking around the future is that we should be and designing more collaal you know communal objects that maybe have very specialized um um value for the individual, but then when they switch out of that individual mode, they're still very useful for anywhere that picks it up and uses it.
00:13:34
Speaker
So if we can imagine our tablets, we can imagine our kindles, we can imagine you know things of that nature, if we can design for the collaborative or the for the communal, that we probably are now solving a different problem ah that's more inclusive than designing for the one, building for the one. That makes perfect sense.
AI's Impact on Authentic Design
00:14:01
Speaker
Awesome. And so with that being said, and you've already started to, you know, speak to this a little bit, but what are some of the significant trends that you're seeing in the industry right now? So you mentioned about kind of designing for one versus designing for, you know, many, are there other trends that you are seeing in design or product design right now? And they can be trends that you're a fan of or not, but just wanting to get a little bit of a, of a perspective from you on that, what's happening, what, what are, you know, what are the behaviors, what are people,
00:14:31
Speaker
um you know two
00:14:35
Speaker
Okay, i mean ah that's a really interesting question. I think that we're we're really in an interesting time. We're always in an interesting time, right? Time is always interesting. But we're in a time where um AI has really come to the forefront. And and AI has sort of spurned this new generation of products that um are being built into across all of the existing platforms, right? So you can imagine the impact of AI. let's let's let Let's think about AI as an example from a content creation perspective. So we're at the stage where I might be an AI voice. You might not know that, but obviously you know I'm real because I'm on camera while we're
00:15:21
Speaker
but But I might be an AI voice, and I can get an AI avatar that speaks just like me if I train it enough, right so which is great. It offloads a lot of my, it potentially offloads a lot, saves me some time. Then we have AI that creates image images, right and so images are just being created ah it's it's it's It's a fire hose of content that gets created, and it's hyper-realistic, and it's really biased towards you know certain types of people. like you know You're seeing these beautiful model like example young examples of people's faces are just in this you know moment, where where where as a result of the content that's being created through these systems, we are now creating realities that never existed,
00:16:07
Speaker
and that reality is that don't have a witness. And those witnesses no longer exist for the content that gets created, right so which means that you know is it really valuable to me to see an image that somebody produced through some sort of a prompt that is now being you know you know brought into the world where i I see it in my field of view, but am i I don't even question its reality anymore, thinking it's real when it's not. So okay so so that's a really interesting part of AI. AI is being able to produce a lot of content, which um we we ah we as humans are learning to tell the difference between AI content and you know um ah content that is you know potentially real.
00:16:55
Speaker
So that then potentially creates a counterculture, like how do we create more analog, more real experiences that have real people behind it? um You're seeing that in some some camera platforms are now, I think, how it's a camera that runs on iOS that they've just released a no AI feature. and So this basically is showing that this camera has been, you know,
00:17:19
Speaker
taking a picture where very little AI was used to to identify what was in the picture and any any post-processing that may have potentially happened. So you're seeing certain counter movements for technology to sort of potentially balance it. I believe that when AI gets trained on the same output of content that it's created that we end we will end up having a lot of artifacts that are that are <unk> going to be introduced. and Those artifacts basically now create what I call a crystal echo chamber. It's like ah and some it's actually a fixed echo chamber um that fed itself and therefore it just reinforced itself. And as a result, we end up with a lot more sameness. so And when we start as ah as a society, and we realize that the sameness that's being produced is not something that's valuable to us anymore because we want to witness the creation of something. We start to realize that creating the process of creation is almost more important than the end result. And that's sort of what I talk quite a bit about in at Thinkable, which is which is a product that i'm and a company that I'm building around how we can realize our own potential
00:18:30
Speaker
um and realize and recognize that the act of creation is really important to us and ah to us as a species. So AI is going down this path. Now at the same time, you have AI that's doing some really interesting things.
00:18:44
Speaker
um if you think about robotics and and and and being able to to to maneuver through space and and to and to to now build um and really truly offload human work, physical work um and have it augmented by ah robots, real robots that look humanoid and that and that can achieve you you know things that we need and and that we'll probably need as we start to age as a population not have many people to support us. So we may need to have these kinds of aids in our lives in order to to help us live our lives as as we live longer and our bodies aren't or our minds might be clear, but our bodies might not be there. So then you have some really interesting things happening with AI from that perspective. Then you have this other culture where we're we're building these little pendants that observe us and listen to us and then act as our friends act as our friends. Because we're in this culture of one, so therefore we have no friends, so we need to have
00:19:43
Speaker
fake friends in order to really um um you know value ourselves. where it might just be as easy just to walk out and talk to your neighbor, right? So so so some some things will help us and some things will hurt us and other things we will just process out. um But AI is doing some really interesting things. um But it still hasn't, you know, without getting too much into the whole AI, the singularity and and and sentience and stuff, just getting into the pragmatics of things, AI is really
00:20:16
Speaker
at this stage where it's only doing what we've done but better and faster. It's only producing you know physical movement for us better and faster, repetitively. It is now producing images better, faster, where maybe we don't want them. But um um it's doing things that we're doing better and faster. At one point, AI will get to the stage where it's doing things that we can't imagine. And I think that's what's really interesting. And hopefully, we'll get through this like phase of you know like voice is the best interface and you know pendants that observe us.
00:20:48
Speaker
In the end, for for things to really um benefit us, um ai AI has to understand us and has to act on our behalf across you know digital spaces and physical spaces. That's where um our big benefits come from.
00:21:05
Speaker
So from a product design perspective, we are, and I think the robotic stuff, like you can imagine robot, robot needs to sense everybody and has to be understanding of everybody in its environment in order for us to interact, ah for it to interact with our spaces and for us to interact with it.
00:21:21
Speaker
So that in that case, when we think about AI um um and and fueling products, um we're probably seeing a more communal device. And on the other end, you have these pendants that we wear that only see us and only hear us. And so you know there is a spectrum that's being created. And I think you know um products that we we put into our world will probably you know um have a bigger responsibility in in working with us right and for us while balancing the efficiencies that we gain and in in digital platforms, the efficiency of being able to capture every bit of information and then to to decipher what's important and give that to a or not potentially an organization that that needs to act on it.
00:22:12
Speaker
Yeah. there's there's I mean, the the the impact of of AI is is certainly something that is necessary, I think, in in our conversations. And I think it's so important to have different perspectives. um It's easy to listen to what feels like the authority voice on AI. And that's coming from you know the engineers, the technologists, so to speak, or you know the the big tech companies and and what their
00:22:44
Speaker
um you know, what they have to say or or what their their research is, but I think it's valuable for us to take a look at a technology that ist is is not just, um you know, something that lives in screens. it It really does have an effect on us in the 3D-built world, right? And I think that, um you know, we need people with these different perspectives, whether it's humanities, whether it's, you know, um sciences, whether it's, you know, whatever it is, we need to take a look at it from from many angles because it it has such a
00:23:19
Speaker
a potential to to impact and change our world and change the future in in such a significant way. So I think it's i think it's a great conversation. and i'm And I'm curious if you have any personal experiences or projects that have really influenced your perspective on the
Architectural Insights in Tech Design
00:23:41
Speaker
future. I know that you mentioned thinkable, but I'm wondering, you know is it thinkable? Is it something else? Is it ah is it a combination of um
00:23:50
Speaker
you know personal experiences or um influences that really impact your perspective on the future.
00:24:03
Speaker
ah you've ah I think setting architecture ah was really formative for me. like When you build something that's meant to last for decades and then maybe stick around for hundreds of years, um you really have to take into account many different factors when you consider what you're putting into the world.
00:24:22
Speaker
there's a responsibility when you build something that's going to last that long. right You just sort of think about, okay, what's its journey going to be as ah as an object itself? right I think we kind of forget that when it comes to digital products because they come fast so fast. right So we build something really quickly and it gets out the door and then it's like maybe it's going to stick, maybe it's not going to stick. And so we all always expect digital things to like you know disappear. They only live in this one plane anyway, right? So you're not really impact the physical world. But now when you cross that divide, and you're building things that may autonomously work in this world, there's a greater responsibility.
00:25:02
Speaker
um a very significant responsibility across all of the the domains, right? Like the social sciences, the you know your humanities, you know responsibility around ethics and and things around, um you know still concerns about privacy, but also the role those things play. So for me,
00:25:23
Speaker
you know, coming back to what I was seeing in the world, right? And I was like, well, it feels like we, it almost feels like, this is how I describe it. It feels like technology is a colonizer. And wow we we just assume that tech that comes out is something that's gonna help us, right? And so tech we've all fallen to that. We've all fallen to the notion that, oh, what's the next best thing that's coming out?
00:25:53
Speaker
we don't realize that we have to choose our future. It's a choice that we have to make to either include these technologies in these given forms um or ah potentially not choose those technologies. Now, on top of that, we have this idea of commercialization, of valuations, and and and and and and and and capitalism, which is driving a lot of what sticks.
00:26:22
Speaker
and so Does that mean that those capitalistic um um mechanisms have the humanities built into it? The responsibility for for humans are built? No, it doesn't. It doesn't. it's it's it's very It's very matrixy, where its sole focus is its own survival, right? you know Growth, growth, growth over everything else. and that has ah ah ah And if you talk about those big companies, they are growing, growing, growing. No matter what, they still have they have to bring a the most I can d detect that they can in order to continue to engage us and to grow us in those digital spaces. That is not a choice that we made. And so that's where the colonialism comes in. And we know that colonizers, they don't care about us. And now it's not that those companies don't care. It's the system behind it that that doesn't care for us because it doesn't serve its own interests.
00:27:18
Speaker
so when we see technology, we don't have the choice. We can't say, look, I want technology that's more inclusive. I want technology that that that you know considers my humanity, my age, considers the things that I want to do, that considers the fact that I don't want to be on a screen 24-7. But I still want access to that content, potentially. And so I think there's a massive um buildup of a future speculative products that don't exist yet, but the moment you say, hey, let's build something that will last for 20 years that serves multiple people but can deliver this amazing you know experience through it, um I think that ushers in a potential future that um is probably more inclusive, right? So devices that we can use that and multiple people can use, um you know um um devices that have lives after you're done with it.
00:28:13
Speaker
right Something that you can pick up, you can pick up my phone. right Just imagine you can pick up my phone and it automatically goes into a guest mode so that you can make a call, you can reach out to your world. right it doesn't have to You don't have to like you don't have to like log in as me, suddenly it has a different perspective. Why aren't we doing that?
00:28:32
Speaker
Well, because there's nobody asking for it. There's no demand. Well, because it doesn't benefit anybody, right? Because it doesn't sell more phones, right? If I have a phone that every person in my house can use and I can hand over a phone to my kid and say, okay, now it picks up and it's his phone for the time being.
00:28:47
Speaker
um But there's ah also this vacuum of, like, you know, we either have displays, but think of everything else that's in your house, think of everything else in your home, like your furniture, your, you know, your chairs, the things, all of these things that haven't been reinvented in a way that um um can be imbued with a bit of tech, but also potentially can serve us, right? Now, counter to that.
00:29:13
Speaker
is this idea that only elite few have access to technology, right? They think about the 8 billion people on this planet, right? There's a start to think about that. You start to think about this very uneven um future that's being driven by the elite that have access. And then the companies that have that are done you know for their own self-serving needs, building things to to profit from in order to give access to those things.
00:29:41
Speaker
So there's ah there's ah there's a really skewed um ah technology future if we just let it go on its own. If we don't start to make declarative choices about wanting a more communal, more friendly, I won't say friendly, but but a more realistic in the physical world experience of the services that are being um being offered to us. That will help us.
Personalization vs. Customization
00:30:08
Speaker
one of the there was ah There's a word that keeps um coming up in my mind as you're talking about um you know this kind of injur in ah individualistic view of you know products and design and technology, and it's this personalization piece. I think some time ago, not you know not too far in the past, but sometime in in recent years, we decided that personalization was something that was the most important and or is ah you know is a priority and is something that we all want. I'm wondering you know how you see balancing and and if you and if you how much weight you add to personalization. you know if If there's a way to balance personalization with kind of a more communal approach to design, um if those two can live
00:31:01
Speaker
you know in the same space at the same time where we can take the benefits from from both sides and and somehow bypass most of the negatives. Absolutely. so so I think they can. so There's a difference between personalization and customization. so Personalization is the aspect of me specifying certain things in an experience which is tailored only for me.
00:31:23
Speaker
right And then there's customization, which is like, hey, I want it to look different. I want it to feel different. and and And so we have to balance those two. And personalization gets into privacy and security. So if you think about it from that perspective, I could pick up your phone. It could be heavily customized to you, but the personalization of it is turned off because I picked it up. So I'll know it's your phone and the experience looks like it's yours. um So i I do think that there's ah there's ah there's the ability to to to balance those. And quite honestly, we don't want we don't want to to eliminate those. you know We just have to find a balance of trying to personalize to the point where my information, my settings, and my like things that things that belong to me that that i identify that sorry i ah that belong to me, meaning privacy and security,
00:32:14
Speaker
are removed from a product. Now you can build something that can be customized heavily and not still be personalized, right? like like Let's just look at and the average classic car. It's like you know like, let's just look at our wardrobe. So those are customizations. They're not personalizations. They're customizations. So the personalization gets into when you know these are your, like literally, there' there's the scent of you is personalized on your clothes, as an example.
00:32:45
Speaker
um So I do think that there is there is that is a tension that will always exist, the individual in a group. and And we want to celebrate those things. We want to ensure that those are protected. right We want to make sure that that that the aspect of you in the digital product or a physical product or a physical device still gets to be you know displayed so that we can see that there's ah there's a difference between yours and mine. and and and
00:33:16
Speaker
you know, I think that absolutely needs to be honored, right? And I think that that adds to a communal environment, that adds to societies, right? And so the in many ways, different voices, different perspectives, it's the honoring of each other in recognizing the difference. um Definitely can be done. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's, that's, yeah, I agree that, you know, there it's,
00:33:45
Speaker
It's possible. I think anything that we desire is is possible. I think that's part of the attention and the intentionality that we put towards the future or futures or the future that we want to see. it It's deciding what we want and then being and then you know actively creating it. A question for you. What are you most optimistic about when it comes to the future? Just on a very broad
Optimism for Inclusive Technology
00:34:14
Speaker
scale.
00:34:14
Speaker
um It could be related to design or otherwise, but what's something that you are optimistic about when it comes to the future? Well, ah you know, um it's really interesting. I mean, optimism in the future is usually always intertwined to some extent, right? Unless you have a personal experience where, you know, or you're in a in a region of the world where you can't you're you're on the Maslov's hier hierarchy of needs, right? So once we get past that, um there can help you can have optimism. But I think youre if you're on the other side of that, where you're just dealing with fight and flight and survival,
00:34:49
Speaker
um It's not opportunistic. like It's not opportunistic. The optimism isn't there. So the optimism is really rooted in where you as an individual are. I think as a humanity, as a society, I think that we still have a lot of growth we we when it comes to our future. um you know There used to be a time when You know, we always think about the future and we think, oh, you know, we're at this there's is but this inflection point where everything is stationary and and and you get this like beautiful view of the future. Sometimes that view of the future is really jaded by our current present, right? so we you know like so our And our localized present. So sometimes when we think about that future,
00:35:39
Speaker
um or stuck in you know what we can see. And and we can we can only change what we know. and But we can only see, you know we can only change what we see, we can only change what we know. And so they're sometimes there's there's a challenge that we face when we when we look at that future.
00:36:02
Speaker
um And that challenge is that our current present you know is is biasing um the perspective of that future. right So I think you asked ask the question of what am I most optimistic about with that future? I'm most optimistic that we'll get to a point where... and i where I think that access to information, access to technology will become normalized to a perspective where we have we will have matured through the echo chambers. I think i think we're goingnna we're going to experience that now because we're building a lot of echo chambers, crystal echo chambers. yeah But eventually, if we can mature past that, we can get past the notion of you know this thing is only for me.
00:36:54
Speaker
um Then we start to recognize that the only thing we have left is not me, it's us. And I think that's what I'm most optimistic about, that we'll go through this this this period where it's hyper-crystallized, hyper-echo chamber-y,
00:37:10
Speaker
a lot of scrolling, doom scrolling, zombie tasking. And ah we can only as a species do this for such a long time or for a so for a period of time where we um want a difference. And I think we're going to get to that point sooner. And I think that AI is going to accelerate that because we're going to see a lot of the sameness and then we're going to want the differences. We're going to want something that's a little bit more intentional for for ourselves. So I think the awareness of the future and who and the cost where the cost of the of technology is now becoming a little clearer and the impact of technology on us as a species. And I think that's what I'm most
00:37:49
Speaker
optimistic about. that We'll get through that and we'll usher in a slightly different perspective and maybe build a different future that we manifest rather than is given to us because some tech colonizer is believing that that we need it. Yes, yes. I agree with with all those points.
Studio and Creative Work at GetThinkable
00:38:10
Speaker
Where can people find more information about you or find more of your projects or stay connected to you know the work that you're doing, um where can people go for that? Yeah, absolutely. So I have a studio. It's a studio for myself. I'm the only ah customer and I'm also the provider of that services. That's plastic, plstic.com. Out of that, I do some speculative work. And the biggest project I'm doing of my life is at getthinkable dot.com. And it is a system of thinking that takes ideas out of your head to make some
00:38:48
Speaker
ah Real by putting them in tangible space um is it's a physical device as well as a book that I wrote tangible thinking or less That physical device is basically an it's an organizer of of your thoughts as a simple desk organizer um But the design of it is so much intentionality that I'm hoping that inspires people to think about themselves Think about and give space to their own thoughts And to be honest, it's tech that's that's that's reducing that space. um But where people can actually create the worlds that they you know imagine. And I think that's what I'm trying to enable. That's something I've learned through ah decades decades of design. I realize that the joy of creating outweighs the result. And I think the more that people
00:39:39
Speaker
realize that the more balanced they'll have in terms of their well-being in their their daily lives as they battle technology, as they push technology and give it space. um I think it's important to create your own space for your own thoughts. That's amazing. Thank you so much, Sanj, for your time. I really appreciate it and and our listeners appreciate it.