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Maker and Machine: The History Behind Design's Most Dramatic Relationship · Design Darlings

• Ro Rich: ⁓ We started machines and we ended with ⁓ now here here with Claude. We went from ⁓ from brand metal all the way up to superconductors. So my friends, thank you for taking the journey with us ⁓ as we we wove through history of industrial revolutions and now an intelligence revolution and. ⁓ buckle up for what comes next because you never know you're in the middle of a revolution or an art movie. You to look back at that. But yeah, let us know what you're thinking about AI. How are you working with it or not working with it or have you retreated to the Arctic and built an igloo? We'll visit. Let us know. Allie Miller: Hello, darling. Ro Rich: Hello darling, I'm Robin Richardson. Allie Miller: And I'm Allie and welcome to Design Darlings, a podcast where we obsess over what makes, breaks, or bakes a good design in the real world. Today's episode, I'm very pumped, I'm very excited. This one's for the true nerds. If you wanna talk about history, economy, products, production, race, class, technology. Yeah, let us know. All right, it's been real. Bye, Robin. darling. Ro Rich: It's been fun. Goodbye, darling. Allie Miller: Everything in between maybe even Walt Disney might sneak in there somewhere this up says for you so Robin What do we got on the plate today? Ro Rich: ⁓ my gosh, this episode has everything. Thank you for that Bill Hader throwback. ⁓ my gosh, you did it. So this is going to be a dialogue. It's a history lesson, but we're gonna go talk about the major technology inflection points and the role of the designer in this. We're gonna dive into two questions, two big questions, and they're related to design and technology. Allie Miller: It has everything. Ro Rich: Currently sweeping headlines having a huge impact on the world. No, AI. You already knew that. I gave you the answer, but you already knew it. So question uno, where in history have we experienced these major technological and design inflection points? And question two, how did humans respond and culture adapt? Because we know it did. I mean, we're all still here. And ooh, here we are. We're in it again. History doesn't repeat. It rhymes, right? Allie Miller: Mm-hmm in the words of Brittany oops we did it again ⁓ Technology and design have been long bedfellows, and I think you can always draw there's constant errors in history right where you can draw a straight line between what is happening in technology and What that allows the designer the maker the creator the tinker to do? Ro Rich: We do. Allie Miller: And then ultimately has an impact what we change, what we make, what we think, how we think, what we build infrastructure wise for the future, good, bad and ugly. ⁓ And so I think as Robin mentioned, history does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. want, we are going to kind of look back through different industrial revolutions. So academically, typically industrial revolutions are sort of defined as four eras that we're going to walk through. So the first Industrial Revolution you have roughly between 1760 to 1840, starting in Britain and primarily Europe. Second Industrial Revolution, so this is post-American Revolutionary War. This is circa 1850 through 1914. Then we dive into sort of our next major technical revolution, which is the 1960s. This is our computing era post-World War II. And then finally, academics are sort of defining right now our AI era as sort of a fourth wave, the fourth boom of technology in which the AI computing ecosystem is of that predominant technology inflection point. ⁓ So we're just gonna dive We're gonna have fun. We're gonna go all over the place, but we are gonna try to go in a ⁓ roughly linear fashion. ⁓ for those of you who like a little bit of structure. And let's kick it off with our first revolution. We are in the Dickens era. Please sir, please Robin, may I have some industry revolution? What's going on? Ro Rich: Can I have some more? ⁓ Well, of course we can. So as you mentioned, starting in Britain, that first Industrial Revolution went from makers, things were really literally made by muscles, to being made by machines. So you've got textile production being mechanized, you've got iron production and the steam engine. ⁓ This is also considered the Regency era, which followed the French and American revolutions. You've got steam engine and these mechanized tools, Z's mechanized tools, I just call myself doing that. Yes, the tools created a factory culture. And so now instead of using ⁓ people to power everything, you've got this machine power. And so, ⁓ Allie Miller: Who's the tools? Ro Rich: You also got with that, womp, womp. I'm not making light of this. We all just, this is the truth. The massive urbanization brought the poor working conditions, the low wages and the child labor. Hello, Oliver Twist. And artists were talking about this. machine both and monster because power could be manufactured, it's harnessed, it's sold and the human is... Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. Ro Rich: becoming a cog in the machine. And so you have the rise of patents and capital that was once reserved for craftspeople. had guilds, you had ⁓ organizations that were like the backbone of society and its functioning. Those are suddenly disappearing. ⁓ Yes, because the production shifts. Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I think what's important to kind of pinpoint what you just said is that machines have always, since the caveman days, right, we've been making fire, we've been building contraptions. ancient evolutionary ancestors have been building tools, tools and technology of our existence and capacity. ⁓ I think what's important about this era is that ⁓ had ⁓ ⁓ engines, right? You had steam, you had the first kind where we actually harnessing a natural material, in this case steam, to allow machines to run without humans physically having to crank a wheel. These could be run automatically and so it allowed us to produce things more quickly. Ro Rich: Mm-hmm. Allie Miller: capital owners said, hey, I can cram more people into a building and I can make more things in a certain amount of time. And, alert, I can exploit their labor because I have power and infrastructure and resources. Yeah. Ro Rich: Yes, that they don't have. And that steam, we think of steam as like very clean, but it was being powered by coal. So you had this eruption of soot in cities and you had this factory production waste essentially as the byproduct of the steam. And also now that you have these factories, you have this imposed time of running, running shifts and you have whistles and you're, you're being accounted for because you have to report to the factory. But that was a really profound shift. Allie Miller: Mm. Hmm Ro Rich: in the way that people function. They didn't function around machine schedules. They were functioning with natural rhythms and they were the ⁓ rhythms were probably more agrarian based because you're working with seasons. But now you're running on that factory clock. You're running up that hill, babe. ⁓ Allie Miller: Yeah, and I think what's interesting is that, again, we also had this sort of boom in literature and the press. you know, obviously we talk about Diggins and we talk about other writers at the time. Like, people always had this sense of morality. And I think as we go through... each of these sort of time periods, you're gonna see that come up again and again, that at every one of these inflection points, people aren't just blindly accepting this technology. They're contemplating the consequences of what they're being asked to build, how they're being asked to create these things, how it either exacerbates... class division and economic and racial division or the bringing things together as it's helping humanity. But yeah, one of my favorite examples is the humble sewing machine as a hobbyist sewer. Even something as simple as a sewing machine, now we think about sewing machines as like, oh, a sewing machine. But it was an incredibly political item, right? So yeah, so sewing machines, Ro Rich: What? Allie Miller: brief timeline, so like 1830, we have one of the first mechanized sort of ⁓ industrialized sewing machines, right? And that was like, people were losing it at the idea of... sewing machine that would allow you to make clothes faster, because typically, economically, you had mantua makers, had tailors, you had, like you said, had guilds, you'd trades people who specialized in garment making, and now it democratized the ability to make more garments more quickly, that was a huge threat to that previous textile industry, the maker industry, the sewing community, And so literally people were like burning down factories that were producing these sewing machines because they saw it as like such a threat to this entire economy. ⁓ And then in a few years later in 1834, Ro Rich: Mm-hmm. Allie Miller: a guy named Hunt, he makes what is sort of considered the more modern, like the most modern version of the sewing machine. And this is also a time when like patents were starting to become big, because people could create things that had never been created before. So you had patents, you had intellectual property, people were really jazzed about that. And he decided not to patent the sewing machine, or at least his design, because he... He understood the gravity of what this design could do to the industry. He could have made so much money off of this, but he was like, I don't want to threaten this entire economy. And then after that, there were more guys that came through and made different versions. there's this 30, 40 year battle between all these dudes fighting over the designs of sewing machines. is it going to? Ro Rich: Mm-hmm. Allie Miller: disrupt the economy. Is it not? There's protests, there's fires burning down, and I'm just like, yeah, it's crazy. Ro Rich: Well, you mentioned something about patents and IP, intellectual property, and all of a sudden legal systems were being, and laws were being set up to support people who were owners and to support, all of a sudden you have this capital ownership over ideas where before, yes, you had guilds and industries, but... Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Ro Rich: No one, and you could make garments in unique ways, not say that didn't happen, that people had a personal brand, will say, ⁓ in the way that they created, but now you remove that, now somebody owns it. Now, hey, guess what? You can't just ⁓ this ⁓ everyone could use now you're getting into property law and that is completely that's a completely new way to go about life as well so ⁓ yeah it really it freaked people out ⁓ no one goes burning things down or sabotaging factories because they don't i mean they felt really passionately about it and you have the counter reaction ⁓ you know we've a little bit about reactions but you've got romanticism there's a call to return to nature and there's Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. Ro Rich: There's this idea that cities are ugly and you've got this even considered evil. you're shoveling in coal and it's fire. And so there's like a fire brimstone feeling about it. And this is also Frankenstein was published in 1818. This started in 1760. The first industrial revolution ended in 1840. Frankenstein, God and monster. What are we creating? Allie Miller: Thank you. Mmm. Ro Rich: Gravel's with a lot of those ideas and there was a recent article about the new Frankenstein that was released that talks about that. ⁓ So what is the human experience now becoming and what is the spiritual connection and what is this being born out of because it didn't feel pretty for a lot of people. Allie Miller: No, we were all just, we're Kira Knightley standing on the bluff, looking at the ocean, just one with nature, with beautiful music. We just wanted to be surrounded by beauty. ⁓ this is where we also have the beginning of Impressionism and the... One of my favorite Monet paintings, it's called Sunrise on the Bay, Sunrise in the Harbor. There's a few different like interpretations of it. But it's this gorgeous painting of these little boats and it says sunrise and there's giant orange. Maybe it's a sun, maybe it's a moon. There's these kind of grayish purple boats floating. And what's really cool, interesting about it is it's a gorgeous painting these beautiful colors, but it's like actually him painting smog. So. it looks beautiful like it's nature, but he's also at the same time simultaneously representing the pollution that's around him. So these artists were again grappling with painting these gorgeous scenes of life and nature, but also like they were very conscious of the industrialization that was happening around them as well. Ro Rich: the imposition on their natural landscapes. Well, then guess what? Boom! ⁓ Industrial Revolution happens. Girl, you tell me about it. Allie Miller: What? Another one? But this time, it's in America. America! It was also still in Europe and other places too. But this time we have the second Industrial Revolution, I hope we've all watched Hamilton or at least listened to Hamilton. ⁓ We're post Hamilton. We're in the new era. Ro Rich: Ha ha ha! Allie Miller: France is still kind of going through their own revolution. Every country is just having their own little revolution ⁓ the first was We in revolution, we introduced something very exciting electricity. And so not now are we able to both have Ro Rich: Mm-hmm. Allie Miller: Factory workers work in these insane conditions. They now can work at night So we now have even a further just schism our rhythm our natural rhythm of the world The ability to produce more things more quickly. We now are able to have machines run You know electrically Etc. We also have a lot of crazy inventions In as the fates say in Hercules like indoor plumbing. It's gonna be big. We got indoor plumbing. We got world's fairs. ⁓ We have the whole world coming together and just ooh-ing and ah-ing over technology. Things are very exciting and things are, we're global, we're able to do more than ever, we're able to create more than ever, we can start communicating in ways you've been able to communicate before. It's a very exciting world to be in. Ro Rich: Yes, well because the telegram was happening and the telephone had been invented. So the idea of time and space also collapsed. So you could communicate, you know. Allie Miller: Mmm. Ro Rich: almost instantaneously in certain instances you would send a wire and then that wire could be handed off to whomever and ⁓ and electricity though even though electricity was exciting it also freaked people out because they hadn't quite regulated it yet and they were still figuring out at least in the united states ac and dc current and people who were against it actually would do do stuff like ⁓ this is this is weird i'm just gonna say like this is not cool but they would stage electrocutions of an animal or something in a city to say, look how dangerous it is. Just so messed up. if you didn't have currents regulated you weren't ⁓ managing that and the flow of your voltage. you, mean, things- Allie Miller: ordinances, safety standards, unions. Ro Rich: Things could obviously go wrong. Yeah, no, safety standards, what are those? So yeah, so that was, again, so you've got this, like you said, you've got this boom from steam now into electricity and these other new ways to literally keep the lights on 24 seven. And yeah, now, so now your body and your clock, the daily rhythm of life is being dictated around factory life and get up, go to the factory, clock out. Like, ⁓ my gosh, what a huge shift. Allie Miller: Yeah, what's interesting also is there's a conversation that starts in this era around quality of product. So we're no longer excited about just making the product. We're also now judging how well is it made. And there are people that see the things that are being produced and say, it's not as good as 50 years ago. We were making the same chair, the same shirt, the same name your product. Ro Rich: Mm. them. Allie Miller: way better. This is where we have the rise of the Gilded Age, right? And the Gilded Age, if you break it down... gilding is a surface layering. It's a surface cover of a gold material. Right. And so we're not actually building things out of gold. We're just putting a patina. We're putting a layer of gold on top of things. And so we were manufacturing a lot more. We were playing a lot more like decoration, but the decoration also had this air of like superficiality kind of bringing it back to fashion. One of the predominant fashion houses at the time for the Ro Rich: Okay. ⁓ Allie Miller: guild elite was the House of Worth, right? And so he was known all across Europe and the United States of making the most luxurious gowns. he had a few other contemporaries that were making gowns. ⁓ Most of hand embroidery that was being done being done by skilled laborers in India. And in India, ⁓ obviously under colonial rule and... Even those craftspeople, if we look at the history of Indian embroidery, before colonization, they were using incredible precious metals and materials and really beautiful things that were hand done that would be able to last for centuries to come. Ro Rich: Mm. Allie Miller: But even in the Gilded Age, were kind of taking like, they were making these crafts people essentially mimic the technique, but using more subpar materials, using materials that were gilded that were not pure gold, pure silver, pure precious metal. So again, you had things that looked really beautiful, but were not necessarily to the level of quality that had been made historically because... Ro Rich: Thank you. Yeah. Allie Miller: To invest in that same level of quality, that means it costs more money, it takes more time to make, and we want to make things cheaper, quicker, faster. Get it to the consumer in less amount of time for less money. Ro Rich: Unfortunately that mantra has not left. That is still happening. I mean that conversation is happening around J.Crew and Banana Republic right now. People are looking for vintage Banana and vintage J.Crew because it was made better. Even 10, 20 years ago. I mean not that long ago at all you find pieces that are just, you know, the quality is just demonstrably different. Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But at the same time, ⁓ we also have one of favorite eras of art emerge, which is the Art Nouveau movement. ⁓ ⁓ And I think what's again, is the reaction, counter-reaction, where we have things that are mechanized in the machine and the pollution and... all that kind of stuff and we had people saying, know what? I just want to make things that look really beautiful that I can take my time. Hello, Gaudi literally has taken over a hundred years to build Sangrado Familia. They're like, I don't care how long it's going to take. I don't care how labor intensive it's going to be. I don't care how tedious it's going to be. I want to just make a beautiful thing. I want us to all just... Ro Rich: Okay. Allie Miller: squeal with joy over how beautiful this thing is and how we can be inspired by nature. But habits will be functional, but beauty first. Ro Rich: Yeah. Well, so. I think about Art Nouveau and how ⁓ I love the iron work that came out of Art Nouveau because they had the capacity now to make like iron filigree. And like what? Those two words shouldn't go together. you have, especially in Paris and you had also different Art Nouveau movements. So you had Japanese Art Nouveau, you had British, you had an American version, you have of course Belgian and French. And so even the way that they interpreted and... Allie Miller: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Ro Rich: and experienced and expressed their own Art Nouveau was really beautiful because yes, it was saying how do we move back away from some of the, a literal sense, the dark harsh nature of what's happening into cities. So it was this call to return to the country or pastoral life. And is again, moving away from that industrialized mass production. Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. Hmm. Ro Rich: aspect of living that people felt, I mean, people felt literally mashed. mean, they were like, machines are mean and gnashy and gnashy. I'm saying gnashy because I feel like I don't want think I said nasty, but gnashy. Like think about the gnashing of a machine. And so fine art is... Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. Thank Ro Rich: I don't want say having a renaissance, but romanticizing what was life like before we had all of this. You get that romantic movement back into thinking about the natural world ⁓ before all this took over. Allie Miller: Yeah, we're breaking free. We're breaking free from the man getting us down with its machines. We just want to be free and frolic in a field and you know, hands. Yeah. Ro Rich: Yeah, there was like, I mean, think about those ethereal women ⁓ I mean, some of it too, yes, it's not to say that Art Nouveau wasn't ⁓ without overt sexualization ⁓ women and the body and, ⁓ know, sort of things that are happening ⁓ with. ⁓ workers in cities and now you have, you know, this own ⁓ industry popping up. yeah, I mean, you know, movement, counter movement. You've got this push-pull in the zeitgeist and the zeitgeist, you've got this mechanized industrial zeitgeist and then you have this artistic response ⁓ pulling its own weight, ⁓ I guess, as a pendulum ⁓ maybe. Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. Right. And I think again, it's the, we've kind of talked about this a little already, but it's, we're always referring back to histories. And so a lot of the Art Nouveau movement was pulling from references from ancient Japan, ⁓ We obviously know the famous wave and Mount paintings from Hokusai and their contemporaries. just had, you know, they're referencing nature and mountains and animals. And so again, we see this sort of calling back to cultures that, and even, you know, tying back to Indian cultures, these ancient civilizations and, you know, even modern civilizations around the world that celebrating nature and using that as sort of an antidote to machine and production. Ro Rich: Yeah. Well, and at the end of this, mean, Art Deco happens, which I personally love. OMG. I feel like Art Deco is kind of a nice mashup. Like if we were to do a mashup of the art in the industry, boom, baby, you've got Art Deco with its very, it's literally the streamlined lines. Like there was so much movement and geometry in Art Deco and it's absolutely one of my favorite design movements because you have things happening. Allie Miller: Spoiler! Counterreaction! Yeah. Ro Rich: As this is going on, you see things happen across the four orders of design. You see it happen in visual design because when we think about Art Nouveau, you think of those beautiful posters because they were being used to talk about ⁓ movements and the revolutions and those sorts of things. we've had poster, poster became an art form to communicate. And so as that's happening and as you're getting posters to communicate to people as its own form, you've got Art Deco who is ⁓ of a sudden very future leaning. So if we can do this, what can we do in the future? And Art Deco has those really cool lines. Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. Ro Rich: So you've got the first order, is like visual design. You've got objects that are changing. There's such a big market for Art Deco. ⁓ Objects like household up like ashtrays and lighters and you've got this really awesome Artifacts like the physical objects then you've got interactions because you can make you can make these things faster you make them and then you've got the architecture which obviously stands out because you've got the leap in technology so that we can build Bigger crazier buildings the Chrysler building is a wonderful example of art deco ⁓ the inside Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Ro Rich: of that. ⁓ And did you know that behind Miami, do you know that Mumbai, Bombay, India actually has the second largest, I don't want to say collection because that's not the right word, but of Art Deco ⁓ buildings in the world. Isn't that wild? Crazy. Yes. Allie Miller: ⁓ I did not. Very cool. Yeah. And what you'd see is, you know, outside of the US in Russia and Eastern Europe... you see them, these artistic communities reclaiming machines as a symbol of power and protest, where I think what's different than the Art Nouveau artists is they were actively pushing away from technology. They said, we wanna be nowhere near technology, we wanna reclaim nature, but you had the Russian constructivists, you had Vladimir Tatlin, you had Alexander Rodchenko, you had Elalyshki, Ro Rich: Thanks. Allie Miller: Literally saying no Machines are powered by humans We claim machines like this is a symbol of our strength and our industry and like what we can do is having collective power to like rise up Against our government a lot of bad stuff went down eventually afterwards So like we're not gonna get into that cuz we're on history podcast, but It was cool to see them, they're claiming machinery, as their tool, as their tool of power versus kind of pushing away from it. But then you also have them being like, but machines are kind of silly, right? You had the Dadaist being like, machines are cool, but machines are also very silly. So we're gonna make silly art with us because like, let's not like... be too self-serious about this and let's make sure we check ourselves and keep the humanity in this and be a little silly. So it's just funny to see how they're, it's a more curious approach to technology versus being so running away from it. Ro Rich: Well, I mean, the Dadaists, were they ever not silly in a way? ⁓ They were funny. Yeah. Allie Miller: Yeah. the gestures of the art world. We're gonna make fun of everything and nothing's off limits. Ro Rich: Absolutely, but to your point of machines as being power, hello, right at the end of this, there's World War One. And so the idea that all of a sudden we have these machines on a giant scale. ⁓ Also, I mean, to say, you know, things, things got terrible is an understatement. So, boy, they. Allie Miller: Right. And without kind of dwelling too much into it, not that the constructivists and the Dadaists were necessarily making fun or these people were making fun of the seriousness of World War I, but post-World War I, that's where you see the Surrealist movement happening. And a lot of Surrealism was a reaction to the trauma of World War I. So, Ro Rich: Hmm. Mm-hmm. Allie Miller: In World we see, okay, we've only really talked about machines as like making a shoe or like a sewing machine or like a chair. We now have a human understanding of what machines and technology can be used in warfare. And that's scary and it's horrifying and we've physically seen the effects that it has to humanity. So there's like this whole other layer of consciousness about our understanding of what technology actually means in an adversarial capacity. Ro Rich: Thank you. Yes. Well, and then like, here we go, third wave, you get the post-World War II boom and we come out of this and the infrastructure has been laid ⁓ during World War II production lines. You've got ⁓ this third revolution in the sixties and like, yes, we come out of the second World War with this infrastructure. ⁓ We've got computing and networked information. And so things are happening. with these manufacturing capabilities that we're like, wow, we just made a bunch of stuff for war. Now what are we going to do? Boom. Let's go from making war goods to consumer goods because we have the power and we can do it. And we've got all these new manufacturing ⁓ capabilities and techniques. You told me a cool story the other day about the Eames. Tell me that story. Allie Miller: Yeah, ⁓ the ultimate design darlings of the design are you know, the Ray and Charles Eames. So they started out, they had kind of had this molded plywood steam technique that they were sort of like tinkering with. It was them, the husband and wife, maybe I think they had like one employee. And I don't know exactly how they got a contract, but they somehow got a contract with at the time the Department of War. And essentially they needed a way to produce better splints. People were using metal splints. And if your bone's broken and you have a metal splint, on and whatever vehicle, cart, whatever is vibrating that exacerbates your injury and it's really painful, ⁓ wood was a better material to make splints out of than metal. So they essentially figured out how to use their molded plywood technique to make ⁓ splints ⁓ then they thought a lot about the modularity of it so they were able to, if they had to ship something overseas to... ⁓ Ro Rich: Hmm. Allie Miller: the South Pacific or they had to ship something to Europe, they were able to physically fit more products into a single container. And so they worked a lot on the form factor, the efficiency, but also just the human ergonomics of it. And so then after they'd grown from being like two or three people pre-World War II to post-World War II, they had a whole team, they had a company, they were like well-known. And they were like, well, geez. Ro Rich: Hmm. Allie Miller: We have all these cool machines. We know it works, but we don't really want to make splints for the rest of our lives. And they're like, well, what do we make? Let's make a chair. And the Eames is we know it was born. Yeah. Ro Rich: Yeah, well, and then they went from chairs to, mean, entire like lifestyles. I saw that video I sent you the other day of they created their home that they wanted to be a blueprint ⁓ for other homes, a kind of like a prefab, like a kit, which we saw a lot of prefab and housing kits come out of this time where you could mail order a prefab home and you could put it together. And some of those are still existing and standing. mean, the boom was used for Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Ro Rich: the middle class also speaking of like policy and legal, you had things that were supporting the middle class. Like you had programs set up that were. absolutely watering the seeds of the middle class and the idea that ⁓ I mean media, mad men, hello, like that came out of a real thing. Now we're using art to sell things. Now like these posters, think about the Art Nouveau posters. Yes, they're promoting tobacco or cigarettes or alcohol, classic things for posters. But now we're now we're selling like lifestyle. Now it's keeping up with the Joneses and it I heard a story Allie Miller: Yeah. Yeah. Ro Rich: once it used to be when you went to someone's house to eat dinner before this boom you ⁓ were able to sit at the table and you would have a collection of different plates around the table because those were plates that had been passed down through the families. And so you would have different china patterns and you would have different types of porcelain. And it was, I mean, it was like an honor to have that. But then the idea of keeping up with the Joneses, symmetry and sameness and homogenization meant you could buy and you could acquire and you could have what was new. So that as a practice, Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. Ro Rich: got thrown out the window because the machine was also reinforcing the sameness and lack of individualization. Now it's like, ⁓ here we are with this culture that ⁓ consumerism shaped the culture and being able to buy those things. Allie Miller: Yeah, there's a great, it's the development of this great monoculture, We're able to all have kind of the same things. ⁓ And honestly, people are excited about technology. Technology is a thing to fear. It's not a thing that holds us back. It's now a tool for economic mobility, for us to at least be perceived as being equal or being set ⁓ on... being able to project a certain level of class, of dignity, of economic mobility that we didn't have before, right? And then because you have social protections in place, like things like from the New Deal and so on and so forth, we have unions are as strong as ever, right? And so technology is not something that is holding people back. It's something that's actually helping build upward mobility and generational wealth in a way that had never been done before. Ro Rich: Mm-hmm. Definitely. thinking about, I think about pop art, like, as well, and I feel like pop art spans, like, modernism and postmodernism. I feel like it had like a Andy Warhol started and carried it through. But he was making Brillo boxes and everyone's like, what the heck is this? What is this Brillo box thing? Like, what? he the idea of mass production. ⁓ for machines and culture and he applied it to art and everyone's like I don't get it and some people were like ⁓ my god I love it it's brilliant and he had said you know he would do interviews and he would be kooky and funny and and all of all of all of Andy Warhol being Andy Warhol in his interviews and he would say well I love Coca-Cola because I can have a Coke and so can the Queen of England and that means that we're the same we we shared this thing so this idea that you could buy the same thing that somebody else could buy it Allie Miller: Hmm. Ro Rich: I don't want say it flattens this idea of class, but the accessibility that you have, there is something very shared in that. everything is reflecting it all across the corridors of design. You've got posters and media and art that you can buy. You've got objects that everybody can buy, like the consumers around objects. Not just... kitchen items, but even clothing because you had small, medium, and large sizing that had to be created to outfit soldiers more quickly. So now you have this general sizing that you can produce clothes more quickly and people can buy them. You've got new interactions because you're creating new architecture and what does this future architecture look like? And so... You have new language, new visual language, you have new object language and things that people are purchasing. So you're getting new practices, new rituals. I don't want to say new consumerism, but kind of in a way. then you've got, I mean, flight, flights, the T like you mentioned earlier, the TWA terminal in marvelous Mrs. Maisel for anyone who watches it and loves it. Yes. ⁓ Allie Miller: ⁓ Ro Rich: Hell yes! ⁓ my gosh, it was so smart. It was so fun. Yes. Is it? Allie Miller: very fast cars looked fast. You talked about new experiences. This is where we have in 1955 Disneyland in California opens up and Walt Disney creates Tomorrowland. like literally we are building theme parks. We're building a whole new ways for people to like come together and be excited about the technology. But yeah, and that even in the TWA terminal, the scene it's when at the end Lenny, Bruce and Miss Maisel, they're like, Midge they're saying goodbye for like the last time and even that in and of itself when I watched I was like, oh this is The the language of an airport of the future He is physically walking into the future in this futuristic environment and like we don't know where it's gonna go but we're excited for him, but we're scared but we're nervous and it was all that like wrapped up and in one kind of visual motif and it was beautiful. It made me cry. I'm not a big cryer in TV shows, but that episode made me a little peepy. I shed a tear. Ro Rich: Ha It was, well, you know, as you're speaking about this also, was, well, one for Disney, you know, they opened Epcot, the world of tomorrow was supposed to be a place where you would test innovations for the future. So they wanted Epcot to be a place where would actually go live and try out new inventions. So they would try out things before they would be like distributed to the market. They wanted it to be a little innovation hub, essentially, which is really cool to think about. That's awesome and very much ahead of its time. And then. Allie Miller: No! Yeah. Yeah. Ro Rich: I, and you had cartoons and you had animation. So you have all of this really cool technology that's changing what people are watching and the way that we consume ideas, which in and of itself, like you think about, you get these segments, you also get customer segmentation. You've got shows for kids. You've got shows for teenagers. You've got these shows now that are aimed at people because they, they're consuming media now. So how are we gonna get them to consume media and Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. Ro Rich: How are we gonna target them with ads? Hey kids, you know, that's the first time you're watching stuff that you're being sold, something's being sold to you as a kid, whether that's a serial or something that's different. And then what, in 1962, the Jetsons premiered. And you've literally, the cartoon of the future, which I mean, where's my robot? Where's my Rosie? Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Also too, we talk about Rosie the robot, parallel to Rosie the Riveter, right? We're referring to our history, referring to our past. Yeah, yeah. I also, I went down some rabbit hole recently on a Disney Reddit thread where it was like, what cartoon or what Disney theory are you convinced is true? And somebody had a theory that, ⁓ Ro Rich: Mm-hmm. Allie Miller: The Jetsons, because you also have the premiere of the Flintstones, and somebody's theory was that the Jetsons and the Flintstones are actually in the same universe, but it's like the deeper meaning is like class division, so the Jetsons are like the elites, they're able to afford the future in space exploration, and then the Flintstones, they're like the working class back down on Earth who are funding. this sort of elite society. And I was like, whoa! It gets very conspiracy very quickly. But you know. Ro Rich: That's a hell of a ride, Cole. That's crazy. Well, they were also prehistoric. Hello. But they did have a drive-in. When did drive-in theaters start? That was a thing, too. Now you're like, there's a car. has a car. Yeah, everyone's doing that. Remember when they went to the movie or the drive-in? Yes, because the big rib gets thrown on Fred's car and it tips the car over in the intro. Allie Miller: Mmm. Yeah, I we had cars, yeah. Right. I World War II, you've got the Golden Age of Hollywood. And so post-World War II, you have people who both have cars and the ability to, you know, have the money to go see movies again. So, yeah. Ro Rich: Well, and at the end of this, you know, I'm going to say at the end of modernism and I like how art movements reflect the zeitgeist because I feel like the art movements are the tip of the spear, they're the pointy end of the spear and then everything ends up like kind of lassoing around and catching up. And so when we come out of modernism and move into postmodernism, you get the ideas that ⁓ when we move away from you know, like just following ⁓ the monolithic like white male artists and like their singular genius and now you are getting into like that counterculture that happened in the 60s where minimalism and mass conformity is like no, hell no, we don't like all of this and you not only get the hippie movement and the art and craft revivals but that is also when you get the civil rights movement and you have you have folks saying like wait a minute we need to look at other people's art not just these guys who Allie Miller: Hmm. Ro Rich: who live in New York and, you know, and they're like these. Allie Miller: Yeah. No more Brillo boxes. We're done with the Brillo boxes. No more pastel plates of cake, man. Like... Ro Rich: Yeah. No. So that's funny to see the art movement shift and change with culture, but also hearken the wave of the culture and where it's going. So the art that came out of the early postmodern movement was really... One, it was experimental, but it was also just explosive because you have all these ideas and all of these things literally coming onto the scene, that also shook things up. So we went from one spot to another. Allie Miller: Right. I love the piece by Kusama. Most people know Kusama for like the infinity mirrors, the polka dots on the pumpkins. you know, if you don't know her name, you've seen her work and you know, a picture of her work has been on your Instagram at some point. ⁓ But 1966, she puts out a piece called Nurses' Garden. Do you know this piece? ⁓ Yeah, and so it's a water-based installation and it's... Ro Rich: Yeah. I don't know if I do, I know her work. Allie Miller: dozens if not hundreds of these metal spheres, right? And so narcissus, it's the root of the word narcissism, know, mythology, if he died looking at himself because of vanity. And so it's all these spheres that have a super high reflection on them, just floating in water. So you're kind of mesmerized because you're already, it's already in water reflective surface, but then you're having to stare at these balls that you can see your reflection in and you sort of get absorbed into it. I don't, Ro Rich: Mm-hmm. Allie Miller: know if this is what she was commenting on, but I wondered too, was she commenting on sort of maybe this larger sense of narcissism, right? And in the post-World War II boom, we start to see people have this level of individualism and identity and being able to like kind of promote themselves and be maybe a little more selfish than we had to be in previous generations. I don't know, but I thought that was an interesting piece. Ro Rich: Mm. Allie Miller: It's one that I really like of hers. Lesser known piece of hers, I feel like, I interpret, I project on it that it's a commentary on the development of narcissism, you know, in the 60s and 70s forward. Ro Rich: Yeah. Well, the culture was really proud and obsessed with what it could produce. So it's like, look at us, look at all the things we're making, look at all the things we can do. Allie Miller: And then. Ro Rich: I think people were questioning was this for good or bad. Artists always ask you those hard questions, man. Those artists, they're pesky. ⁓ And those designers, their ethics, they're asking questions about design for obsolescence. They're asking, why are we doing this? Should we be doing this? I don't know. ⁓ Allie Miller: Yeah. artists who. Mm-hmm. Ro Rich: And trying to get to the root of those existential things. Are we doing this? Should we do it just because we can? ⁓ And whose voices are important? Whose voices should we listen to? So you've got, ⁓ you know, we went from, we have all these now these like mass media productions and companies, but we also have to, we're also like, what are we consuming? And how is that? How are those messages being pushed to us? ⁓ Yeah. Allie Miller: Yeah. Ro Rich: Well... Allie Miller: and we all back to the world of Coke and we all lived in peace and harmony. The end. Nope, just kidding. There's one more revolution. Ro Rich: No. OMG. Congratulations, you're living in it everybody. Allie Miller: Futurist Now! Snaps. Yeah, so our last and final industrial revolution is the age of AI. And I think an important kind of prehistory to that, what's important is if you kind of go all the way back to World War II, in the 40s and 50s, you have, you know, well-known code breaker Alan Turing. create the Turing machine to help with code breaking against the Nazis in World War II. That really is a huge watershed moment in creating what we now know as modern AI. I led to that and then obviously we have. companies like IBM and Apple starting to come on the scene in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. One of my favorite, I wasn't even alive, but now I love it, the famous 1984 Apple Super Bowl commercial directed by Ridley Scott. I was like, okay, great. ⁓ Yeah, but you have actress Anya Major. Ro Rich: Mm-hmm. Heck yeah, Bring in the drama. Allie Miller: in just this awesome decathlon running outfit. It's literally 1984, so they're referencing and the audio is 1984 playing. Just running through this of apocalyptic factory with all these people dressed the same, looking the same, no sense of free will or consciousness, and she takes the giant sledgehammer and throws it at the screen and it breaks. And then Apple's like, be different. Don't be like 1984. So I think that's a great precursor to this. speeding up, 2015, we have the creation of this tiny little company called OpenAI. And 2022, baby, chat GPT gets released. And AI goes from being something that a bunch of nerds knew about and only the nerds to now anybody can put a little prompt in a little chat. Ro Rich: you Allie Miller: And literally the entire internet up to that point is at the world's fingertips. And then now we're in the 2020s, right? We have Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet. These are trillion dollar companies we are now living in ⁓ the next gilded age. ⁓ But this time... It's the Tech Bros. Ro Rich: Well, I mean, we're producing intelligence, right? When you look at the previous industrial revolutions, they were all producing products that were very tangible. And so now you've got a mechanism, which is an algorithm, okay? So I was born in the 80s and we had reading rainbow and it was like, butterfly in the sky. I can go twice as high. Did know Shaka Khan saying that? Yes, she did. She's a queen. ⁓ And now it's like what algorithm in the cloud. Tell me what I want to know now. Like, ⁓ gross girl. don't like that. But okay. So. All right. AI is a marketing term. love, we love our friends in marketing. I listen, I teach them marketing and design management program. So I'm not going to hate on marketing, but when I working in healthcare and tech in 20. 2019 we created what you would call an artificial intelligence product and we taught a robot how to read what we did was we took an algorithm and we ran ⁓ qualitative data through it, which is literally survey comments and we wanted the robot the algorithm I'm calling it the robot because in my mind it was like a cute little robot. It's like a baby rhino and we taught it how to read Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. Give me your survey responses and I will tell you what they say. Ro Rich: Yes. I will give you a sentiment analysis, which we built one that was like way better than the ones that were out of the box, because go us. And then we taught it how to categorize the comments so that we could classify them and then understand where they fit into some buckets that were aligned to benchmark standards. And we taught our little algorithm how to read so well that we were able to train it. the first set of training, this is what you call supervised. learning, you ⁓ teach out, you go through and you give the algorithm, you give it comments and you classify it for them. So you're like, hi, this is good. This is positive. This is negative. And this fits in this bucket and this goes in this bucket. So you show it and it's like, okay, thanks boss. And then you teach the little algorithm how to continue to classify things. And it's like, hey boss, I put, so you give it a training data set. Then you give it a Wait, am I saying this right? Then you give it a test data set and you say, okay, baby rhino robot, I want you to do this data all by yourself. And so it goes through and it classifies the data and it says, hi boss, did I do good? And then you help it. you teach it, like you go through and you help the classifications and you feed it back to the model. And so you create a large language model, which is what chat GPT is. Chat GPT said, okay. I can read the internet. And so you have these algorithms that were trained to scour like large swaths of data, which is why, forget your IP. Remember IP laws that we talked about way back in the first industrial revolution. Those might be out the window now because we have AI bot crawlers that are like, I'm going to eat the internet. nom, nom. it's just, yes, yes. Yeah, I don't care. I'm just going to eat it all and synthesize it out. Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. Pookie Monster, give me data. Give me your IP, give me your art. Ro Rich: You can buy my product. So we're at a weird inflection point where we are creating ⁓ algorithms that can synthesize information and language and give it back to us in a way that is processed at a certain level. So that's your large language models. Then you have automation that says, hi, I do this task over and over again, and I would like for you to do it for me. And that's a great way to use artificial, what we call artificial intelligence. because you're teaching an algorithm to do a repeated process over and over. ⁓ And then you have an output and you're like, ⁓ great, that's hopefully you're gonna save me time and money. ⁓ I think eventually, and I'm sure this is already happening, I'm not on this corner of the internet yet, but you can ask ⁓ your AI, you can ask Claude, be like, hey boo, go track me down in Eames chair design and I'm gonna get a 3D printer and 3D print me an Eames chair. Or find me a factory that can make an EAMS like we're going to be able to do these things so that we're asking an algorithm to complete a task for us and have the output. ⁓ We're not fully there yet, but it's like, okay, if we're to ask the machines to do all the things for us, what are humans going to do? What are we good for? Allie Miller: Well, you're kind of tapping into the next era, which is not just AI. So what you just described is the design and autonomy of one single algorithm, right? The next era is agentic AI, So it's taking, not only are you asking one algorithm to do one little thing, you're creating a whole network. Ro Rich: Mm-hmm. Allie Miller: of algorithms that each specialize. are, we go all the way back to the Dickens era. You are the evil factory owner in Les Mis who has the Fantine and all of her little bitties in the factory. You are now the factory owner, You are, you have a whole chondra. of agents that do one little thing in the machine line really, really well. And you can build, you're designing a whole ecosystem of things to do a larger, more complex task. So rather than asking one little robot to know everything, you can make 20 robots that specialize in one thing really, really well, and then you put them all together, you chain them together to then do that thing. Ro Rich: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. chain them together. Well, and I mean, we do this, like things that are agentic. We're making agents to talk to other agents. And so when you create, well, that's a skill, right? So you can make an agent that's like, I'm really good at this skill, boss. And then you say, cool, I want you to talk to this other agent that's good at this skill. Like you guys be friends now. ⁓ And so, well, not really, you don't ask it that directly, we have, creating all these little agents to orchestrate things together. So you have, have orchestrated agents to execute things and that can ⁓ execute skills on your behalf or on behalf of an organization. So we've got agents. saw this great meme today that said, remember in the matrix, ⁓ Neo was fighting the agents and the agents were the things that we made. And I was like, ⁓ Mr. Anderson, that guy. Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. Yeah, also I feel like agents that's the new tech buzzword where every LinkedIn post I read is just some guy talking about agents and I'm like, let's can we stop it like stop it. So I also want to bring this back to design. I think that was a really awesome primer on just Ro Rich: Thank you. Allie Miller: What is this technology? designer, I you ⁓ kick this off with a really point about what are we now designing? And you talked about we are commodifying. The product is intelligence. ⁓ And I think there's a really conversation is ⁓ as our world becomes digital, as things that we as designers are being asked to design for are increasingly incorporated AI. What is the role of the designer in this? And what is the thing that, because we're not making tin cans anymore, we're not making boots and books and bikes anymore, right? What are we making and what is our role in this process? Ro Rich: Well, and we're not being asked, you raised this point the other day, not just to design for humans, but the user ecosystem or people are designing for agents. Like, hi, I know how to make a B2B SaaS agent, blah, blah. Like some of the language is happening right now. It feels just wild. ⁓ And so designers are being asked to leverage AI to get to quicker outcomes, especially as we are designing digital products. Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Ro Rich: So this is entirely in a digital space right now. Right. So it's yes, there's artificial intelligence as a digital product. There is the immersive product that you can use with AI, which I think is also obviously going in on its own offshoot. But yeah, we are manufacturing experiences now. And those four orders, haven't seen AI architecture. Maybe that's coming. ⁓ But the interactions, like we're at very high, like at an interaction layer is what we're doing. And like, yeah, there's some AI media. So if we're to talk about the first order of design, I haven't seen AI products yet, like a I haven't seen a cup designed by AI yet. ⁓ I suspect it'll probably hallucinate a lot. Just like, what was it? Ariana Grande? That Vogue? It was like, it was a Vogue cover. It was some magazine cover where she had six fingers. Yes. Like, how did that happen? She was like, thanks. I always wanted six fingers. Girl, come on, really? So I don't think AI slop products are going to make their way off the factory floor quite yet. But ⁓ my gosh. ⁓ Yeah, it's a very, it's a digital like... Allie Miller: She looks six fingers. Ro Rich: choke hold right now. Allie Miller: If you want a really good laugh, there is a whole rabbit hole of YouTube videos that I love watching, which is basically makers will buy products that they know are generated by AI, and they buy them intentionally to then review them. So they'll buy these dresses that look like these gorgeous baroque gowns with details and fairy wings and hand embroidery and they get them and they're just like the most subpar quality. They're laughable or there's a couch that went around that was really viral which was like this giant gorilla couch and it was all over like Shien and Ti Mu and Tik Tok and stuff like that but it looks like this massive plush gorilla couch that takes up your whole room and you get Ro Rich: Really? Allie Miller: it and it's just cheap printed plastic. So no, we're not making AI products successfully yet. But I think where the designer does come in is, mean at the end of the day a designer, regardless of what sort of Ro Rich: ⁓ my gosh. Okay, so there are, but move this. Allie Miller: sub-genre field of design you're in, a lot of what design is is communicating information and helping create understanding, visual understanding. And so I think whether you're a service designer, graphic designer, an interior designer, whatever it is, I think how are we using our skill set to create a shared visual language for what these things are, how they work. Whether or not you're using AI in your practice, but like being able to map out the human experience if you're designing an AI system and agents and how does actually impact people? How are we still at the end of the day? Going to the user the end user and saying How is this going to impact you good bad and ugly? you know, how we're bringing ethics, like how are we like artists asking the hard questions about just because a thing can be built, should it be built? Like how are we that voice in the room that's always advocating for the consumer, the user, the customer, you know, in what's being built? Ro Rich: Well, and I almost wonder if we've reached a point of saturation. I've seen a couple articles over the last few months about ⁓ people are making analog rooms in their houses where there's zero technology, no TVs. This is a screen free room where people are going in and playing board games. They're playing cards. there's a, when you were talking about interior design, it triggered that memory for me ⁓ that... Allie Miller: Hmm. Ro Rich: I mean, we grew up in a time that was analog. ⁓ It was pre-internet. You used to have a corner in your house. And then in the late 90s, early 2000s, where you'd go have your internet for the day and you would log in and no one could use a phone line. And then you'd be like, okay, I've had my internet for today. And you would log out. ⁓ And I wonder if that saturation is... pushing us back into these more analog trends where people are handwriting again. The kids want like day planners. don't want, know, nobody needs. Remember when. Allie Miller: The journal. Ro Rich: Remember when blackberries were a thing and everyone's like, ⁓ my blackberry and now people are like gross I would like a handwritten date calendar with a pen where I Can my my data cannot be mined like take me out of that so no one can mine my data to understand me to try to sell me Another product that I don't need. I mean, what was that thing? I sent you the other day about ⁓ People making tech decks now where the game The girlies are Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. ⁓ girlies, they're rising up. The girls of the dolls, they're like, no tech. Yeah. Ro Rich: Yes, and they're making tech decks which are cool. It's like I was just not steampunk. It's like, what is it? I need a new word. People help me. need to make, we need to coin a new phrase, which is not steampunk, but it's like, it's digital punk where they're building their own softwares and putting things in these tech decks that do not have the invasive reach of a company that's like. Allie Miller: Yeah. Ro Rich: Hey girl, can I have your data? girl, I'm gonna take that data anyways. You don't need that data. I'm just gonna just boop I'm just gonna swipe it so I can have a profile on you like ew gross. I don't like it Allie Miller: Yeah, Betsey Johnson, but make it technology. Vivian Westwood. I'm trying to imagine like Vivian Westwood like trying to code, trying to design for an agent. Ro Rich: ⁓ but maybe... Girl, she would not like that. She was a big, ⁓ she was all about the environment and sustainability and ⁓ climate. She was really, that was a big, she was, she campaigned hard for that, especially towards the ⁓ end of her career and life. ⁓ So I think, you know what, she would be a saboteur. She'd be burning down home centers. she, and she's punk, Vivian Westwood, totally embraced punk. And she'd be like, no, ⁓ let's go, get rid of this. We don't need this. ⁓ But she's an artist, right? Like you have those that, ⁓ that border on, ⁓ Allie Miller: Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ yeah. Yeah. Ro Rich: like avant-garde art. Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. Ro Rich: in a way that they push boundaries. And it seems like artists are also gravitating. We're seeing even more leaning towards ⁓ like tactile immersive experiences, which big brands are doing now too. I've been seeing like, hey, if you're a really cool brand, you don't wanna be all online. You wanna have these like, not, I don't wanna say low key, cause they're not, they're really great immersive experiences. Like think about Meow Wolf, if you've ever been. We have one here in Florida. ⁓ Allie Miller: Yeah. Ro Rich: Is it called Florida land? went, I went a couple of months ago. It was awesome. It was really hilarious. It's in St. Pete. Um, and it's just so, it's so fun. And you're just like, wow, this is immersive and amazing. And so you get a Meow Wolf, you get these immersive experiences that you, that are very tactile, um, and not, you know, completely digital. So. Allie Miller: The away. I'm just imagining a virtual reality headset where you just watch a guy wrestle a crocodile. Ro Rich: Listen, it was close to that, but you weren't watching it. just had, you had like swamp scapes. It was really cool. I mean, you walk into all these little vignettes and you feel like, you feel like you're on a weird movie set. It has a little bit of a Beetlejuice vibe where you're like, I in a movie set? And of course it's like very Instagramable. ⁓ and what's her name? ⁓ my gosh. Who's the artist that ⁓ makes all the felt, all of the products out of felt. So you go and you, you walk into her store. ⁓ my gosh. I bought a Brillo box. Haha. Cause I liked the irony of both of Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. You Ro Rich: packed in one, but it's, ⁓ you walk in and there's all, literally it's like a little bodega, every product in there, one you can buy, two it is all made out of felt and it is plush. You can buy toothpaste, you can buy pees, you can buy a hamburger box, like all of it, but it's all hand sewn and handmade and it just blew my mind. Like what a cool thing to do. I feel like those are the pushbacks. Like we're getting this return to a very pre digital saturation era where people are experiencing things they can touch and see. ⁓ They're publishing offline or making zines, things that AI can't scrape. I feel you can see it. You can see it in the zeitgeist. You can see the kids are doing it. And I think that's that's the if AI is the call, the response is to say. Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. Ro Rich: Maybe we go in a little more. Allie Miller: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think there's this push-pull, Like there's a lot of artists who are kind of, and makers who are kind of going towards your end, or the end that you were just describing. And then you have artists who are really learning how to embrace it for good. There's a great piece that came out, I think it was around like 2017, but this artist, Alejandro Gonzalez, he's a director. created this work called the Carnegie Arena, it's a, basically it's a virtual reality experience where it mirrors the journey of a refugee going across the border, And so he's using technology, but he's taking his artistry for storytelling ⁓ able to communicate this really complex topic. So I think it's ⁓ like so much technology, it's not a Ro Rich: Wow. Allie Miller: Is it good or bad? Are we using it in a way that's bringing humanity together, that's creating community, that's benefiting us? Or are we using it for less savory pursuits? Ro Rich: Yeah, that. Yeah, look at is it the double edged sword where you can't have one side without the other? Like you can't have the light without the dark. And so some people will look for the positive and the storytelling is it like a Tower of Babel where it can like either bring us together or are we going to the how high we climb it? Like we we could all speak the same language, but for whatever reason, we can't. I don't know. Allie Miller: Mm. Mmm. Yeah. All right. So time to wrap things up. Ro Rich: Girl, we dove deep. ⁓ was a winding road. I liked it. Yes, virtual. Allie Miller: Woo! Virtual high five. And we did it in like under an hour. Look at us. Guys, we got through like 200 years of history in about 60 minutes. We're so efficient. Good job, guys. Ro Rich: I think we did. We are so efficient. Hopefully everyone got it. Like we were like, get in the car. We're going on a 200 year road trip. No, we're not stopping for anything. Get your data rate. ⁓ Yep. We're not. That's right. This is a Griswold trip and we're getting in. singing. We're going to have a wonderful time. Allie Miller: Get, take your bathroom breaks now. Cause this, this bus don't stop. Yeah. Ro Rich: All right, we're going to wrap it up. Design, darling of the week. This is our sign off where we ⁓ we tap an iconic symbol, object, interaction or system and culture that best represents the theme. So Ali Miller, who was your design darling this week? Allie Miller: My Design Darling of the Week on the theme of technology and the maker, it is Steve Jobs, not Steve Jobs, it's Steve Jobs' sassy little sweater, the iconic sassy little black sweater. He knew exactly what he was doing. He laid the groundwork for an entire generation of both tech bros and design bros to say, I don't have the time, the capacity to think about what I wear. My fashion, fashion is irrelevant to me. I need to focus on the idea. So I'm just gonna wear a sassy little sweater that may or may not cost $500 and is from some luxury Italian atelier. I'm not gonna tell anybody that. ⁓ But yeah, I just think it's so. It is him, it's an icon, it's a symbol. It's on the cover of his memoir. That's my design darling. Ro Rich: So wow, fashion is a symbol of progress. It was kind of a futuristic, it was an Issey Miyake sweater, because he tried it on and was like, I want 50 or whatever. So I the idea of that ⁓ representation of a future leaning uniform. It was sassy. ⁓ It'll soon be back. Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. was thinking about uniform. It made me think also too just about ⁓ succession. There's a lot of great kind of commentary just on the clothes that the family wears ⁓ succession. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, is this a precursor to quiet luxury? This idea of like, we're going to look like we have ⁓ like we don't care at all about what we wear, but what we are wearing costs more than you will make ⁓ a year, but it's going to look like we don't give a crap. Ro Rich: Mm-hmm. The quiet luxury. Mm-hmm. Allie Miller: Yeah. Ro Rich: Hmm intentionally intentional Allie Miller: But it's this idea of like, again, I don't have time to think about what I wear. I only have time to think about business of industry, of my ideas, my creativity. Ro Rich: Hmm, but is he I mean I want to look intentionally unintentional but for him he chose good design That's why he was like I want this is a hockey sweater. So it was about the good design the principle behind it which Allie Miller: He did. Mm-hmm. Ro Rich: You can always get behind a well-made sweater. ⁓ Mine is going to be a throwback future leaning icon who was also Sassy, which is Hal 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's 2001 Space Odyssey. And Hal was far ahead of his time. As you know, Hal was the artificial intelligence that they had with them on the spaceship on the mission. And Hal was basically omniscient. Like, Hal could read lips. Allie Miller: Mmm. Mm-hmm. Ro Rich: everyone was doing all the time and Hal was always collecting the data. This was from 1969. And when Hal found out they were going to decommission him, he was like, well, I'm going to have to kill these astronauts because the mission is too important. And so the astronauts had to try to figure out how to outsmart Hal. But it's funny, there have been some stories. There was a company that created their own AI agent and, you know, it crawled through the company servers and the CEOs. Allie Miller: Mm-hmm. Ro Rich: email and the AI found out they were going to shut it down and decided it knew enough about the CEO that it was like blackmailing the CEO because he found out the CEO was having an affair and was like, shut me down. I'm going to release all of your emails that yes, I mean, it's very, I mean, ⁓ my gosh, like the idea of Allie Miller: No. Stop it. Mm. Ro Rich: intelligence but also the fact that it's surveillance there's a weird that's that in itself is a weird double-edged sword that this technology for intelligence also became its own surveillance and was like i will destroy you the mission is too important my mission is too important ⁓ so i don't know did we not design intelligence with i mean our intelligence has hubris which is scary like wow we were wow Allie Miller: Yeah. I think this just tells me that we just need to go back to empowering pigeons to deliver all of our secrets. You know? Ro Rich: ⁓ I saw the weirdest. It was a sad meme today. It was like we domesticated pigeons for hundreds of years and Now they hang out in cities because they were bred to be around us and we treat them like a nuisance and it's like they just want to be with us because we bred them to be important to us so yes to the return of pigeons You were our friends. Of course That's why they're in cities because they would fly from major cities to major cities to deliver news. So Allie Miller: No... No... Yes, pigeons! Yes. Ro Rich: I say we bring back the pigeon network. Who's with me? Pigeon Intelligence for 2026. Allie Miller: I was gonna make yes. How, how rocked So Rocky Could Run. Ro Rich: how walk so that Grok could stumble or like clomp around because Grok is like clumsy. Well, we did it.