Full Transcript for Tega Brain

where decision making a little bit more distributed between ⁓ environments, humans, and their technologies. So the time I was doing a lot of experimentation with solar power and solar power computing and what it would mean to run ⁓ on solar, so computers that serve websites. I was really inspired by Low Tech Magazine's solar powered website. I don't know if you're familiar, but it was sort one of the earliest projects I saw. experimenting with solar powered servers and you know, they had redesigned the front end of their website so that the design of the website reflected the status of the battery and how much power was being produced. And then it would go offline sometime. And so we were really excited about that because, know, it's the first time I'd seen website that actually put the server data front and center. Like, and it ⁓ makes you realize that The fact that that data is inaccessible and that like all the big data centers and server farms don't allow you to access that data. Like that's a design decision. That data exists, right? And again, it's just kind of like ⁓ hiding introducing opacity that we don't really think about the environmental costs of our digital technologies, which, you know, I think there's a growing public awareness that it's really significant. cost and impact. And so, yeah, we came up with Solar Protocol, which is a project that is built from a network of solar powered servers. And we were really interested in, you know, if you have servers in different time zones and different places around the world, you can then serve the website from wherever there's the most sunshine at the time. the way that If you go to solarprotocol.net, it comes from whichever server is online and is producing the most power. And so really the way that traffic is routed and the serving process happens is really dictated by the sun and by the distribution of solar energy around the world. So the time of day and weather patterns and all this sort of stuff. So it's an experiment in how we might infrastructures where environmental limits and logics are incorporated ⁓ a sort of automated, you these logics are allowed to automate decisions in these systems. You know, and so we work with volunteers all around the world to set up the servers and maintain them. it's one of these big sort of sprawling community projects. But for me, it's very much in dialogue with the conversation in AI ⁓ or you know, we should call it machine learning. cause AI is sort of a meaningless term, but you know, this conversation about automation and like with what logics we automating? Who gets to decide what, what's being optimized in that process? Lauren Franco: thank you. I'm also about when you're about, well, one, we probably shouldn't call AI AI because it doesn't actually have its own intelligence necessarily, ⁓ but also your projects are reframing how we think of automation and that maybe we don't need to use automation in the places we think we need to use it. And

maybe ⁓ redirected towards other places. So I'm thinking about even how you had bots, automated bots talk to other bots instead of maybe how we think about like too many people maybe interacting with something like chat GPT today and thinking that's the use case for automation. I'm interested to hear you speak out where you actually think maybe you. people are running too fast to machine learning or even to your point about maybe we already know a lot of solutions to the climate. maybe you don't need planetary scale models and this and that. You don't need to compute all of this, but maybe there are certain use cases. So I'm wondering if you can speak about how you see people's rush towards. machine learning, both helpful in some areas, but maybe actually super unhelpful in other areas. I'm interested how in your projects you frame or rethink maybe how we can interact with automation. Tega: Yeah. I mean, to give you a bit of background, You know, I guess a lot of my early work is looking at questions of data and surveillance and what it means to be alive at a time where we're constantly interacting with online systems that are collecting data about us and that our online media and most of content we is also by ⁓ an advertising business model that has then produced motivation to collect a lot of data. And now we see that. operationalized through machine learning. so, yeah, think the bot project I think you're referring to is a project called Synthetic Messenger. And that's a project about automation, ⁓ but about climate, right? So a lot my work is still like asking questions of. how we understand our environment and how we manage it and what the politics of those processes are. And so with Synthetic Messenger, the work consists of 100 bots. So they're a botnet. And they basically listen. They scrape the web looking for news about climate change. And when they find it, they click on all the ads running alongside that news article to try to make that article more valuable for the news outlets. ⁓ it's simulating human traffic. makes it look like that article and the ads are getting a lot of attention. also then potentially has this sort of amplification effect. So like then the article would get aggregated more. And we were really interested in if there was sort of a way you could kind of artificially make climate news more, valuable and then have it covered more because, know, it's, it's kind of well known in the, in ⁓ the news space that if you put climate in headline, people much less likely to click on it because I think we all feel like it's so scary the situation we're in and yet ⁓ we have lot of agency to actually act and address it, right? We're stuck in these fossil fuel economies and we protested and ⁓ there's lot of people who have engaged in really amazing activism and yet our banks, our governments, the decision makers are still really dragging their feet on shutting down fossil fuels. And so often, my work is also looking for like where

there is agency, like this data-driven, advertising-driven internet. Again, What does that mean for a human actor, a human reader? interesting then to ⁓ what does it mean to create bots that are then sort of simulating this crowd? yeah, ⁓ attention to driven economies are really, I think linked to, to sort of the quantification of human attention and activity And so I think that project gives you kind of another example of how we're often like, co-opting or taking existing technologies and then trying to deploy them for a different agenda. So in this case, to to amplify climate news. Lauren Franco: when hear you speak about both that there's this exhaustion from people and then that doesn't lead them to either engage with climate news from the user side. I find your work powerful in engaging people in a way that maybe sometimes other, can maybe be categorized as climate art doesn't always do, which is ⁓ engage with people directly or make people take ⁓ related to the work, as as sometimes like have a humorous component to it. So wondering if you could talk a bit about how you see approach as maybe different. to some other climate art in the way that you engage people well as, how does humor play into your Tega: a lot of our is, and I say our because a lot of my climate work recently has been a collaboration with Sam Levine. We just had a show that closed in December at Pioneer Works called How to Get to Zero. And there was about a body of work that's sort exploring the themes you're talking about, climate, technology, agency. And so I think a lot of our collaborative work definitely came out of a feeling that we also wanted a bit more from climate art. We were seeing a lot of projects that were sort of about grief and about, you know, creating space for people to really sort of feel the crisis, which is great. Like we need that. But we also need to, I think for me, I wanted to really kind of remind or point to the ways that, you know, it's not done, right? There's a lot of things we can still do to reduce the damage. And those, a lot of those things, there are people sitting behind desks who, you know, have some capacity to change things, right? And it did feel like, it often feels like the art world is a little bit siloed and the conversations don't really get out of that space. And so, our work is definitely trying to do that. And so like synthetic messenger, right? definitely like a intervention where we actually run the bots. actually go out and do the action. If you have a look on Hacker there's a long sort of thread about people who are like, this project sucks. It's not going to work. It's going to work. They don't understand how advertising works. So like that kind of engagement from like Silicon Valley communities is really exciting for us. Cause we're like, you know, if you find out, like think about what actually is at play here. so give you another example, most recently we've done a body of work around carbon offsetting because obviously offsetting is absolutely central to net zero right? So countries, corporations, communities setting net zero goals and trying to achieve them. And yet the carbon offsetting space is like really problematic. It's not well regulated. It's extremely boring to look at carbon accounting information. Like if you want to send someone to sleep, talk to them about carbon accounting, right? And so, yeah, we started doing ⁓ looking at some of the strategies in offsetting and then trying to think about like what they leave out or like what does it mean to try to, you quantify the world based on carbon. And so one of the projects that kind of came out of that work is a project called Cold Call where Lauren Franco: Thank Tega: we discovered that in the US there's this funny thing where can actually just buy phone numbers from people in certain sectors. so we spent some of our production budget on a thousand phone numbers from executives and CEOs who work in oil and gas. And then we use those phone numbers in an installation that takes the form of a call center and the audience is invited to come into the call center. And basically call, you're automatically connected to one of these phone numbers. So one of these executives and we made custom call center software that then instructs you to try to waste as much time as possible of this person on the other end of the phone. So there's like scripts and poems and meditations and all these things that we offer that you could might invite the person talking to, to do with you. Cause we got really interested in like, sabotage and time theft as this strategy of worker resistance, right? Where you're actually just like wasting time on the job, you know, and slow down and time theft, you know, has a long history. And if you look in the history of like, worker ⁓ activism, and so we've then wrote this white paper on like, how might you calculate ⁓ potential carbon savings by wasting, you know, ⁓ CEO's time, like, could you look at salary to like how many minutes they're idle, you know, and we had a lot of fun with that. But really it is, I love the way that project came out because, people come into the gallery and they think that it's ⁓ a work or they think that you're going to get on the phone and just listen to a recording or something. And then all of a sudden they're actually on a phone call with a oil and gas executives, you know, often somewhere in Texas or who knows, somewhere across the country. And they have to have a conversation. And so again, like thinking about these decisions are being driven by people who are running companies and doing just like work that, you know, they're just trying to earn a living and feed their families too. And could we make a way to connect like, you know, art, audiences with those other people and what would that how would that happen? And again, yeah, I think humor for us is really important because like a lot of this stuff is really heavy. Carbon accounting stuff is

really boring. And so I think we try to often make work that is amusing to ourselves. And so therefore, sort amplifying, like, you uses humor a strategy to get attention and also to like, invite people in to think about like, ⁓ what is behind carbon accounting? What kind of methods are they using? Like, I think it can be really effective for new audiences to some of these ⁓ topics. Lauren Franco: Yeah, I appreciate that a lot because I think also to your point, if a topic is either heavy or very boring, but you're able to bring both humor and this artistic vision to it. And I had read about your recent projects. I'm sorry, I can't be there in person to see it because it seemed super amazing. And I thought it was even funny, I think on one of the articles I was reading, someone had commented they were too scared to get on the phone with the ⁓ executives something when they were there. ⁓ Tega: Yeah. Lauren Franco: ⁓ And I thought even that maybe that was also great to see the different ways that people interact with work. Was there anything I read too? Maybe. Tega: Yeah, Sam was very worried that people would be too scared to make phone calls because he's got a lot of phone fear. And for the first time we showed the work, we actually hired an actor to sit in the call center and make calls so that, you know, to show people that, you can do it and it's fine. But honestly, like that work is so popular and like particularly really popular with like kids, you know, the seven, eight, nine, 10 year olds. Lauren Franco: Hmm. Tega: They just spend hours in there like calling executives and I don't know what they're saying, but it's so funny. Lauren Franco: That's amazing. Yeah, it's like that's amazing to think a kid can be sitting in a gallery stealing time from executives. ⁓ But even reading that comment that maybe someone is scared also made me think that it's still great though, even if someone is not immediately maybe ready to get on a call, then maybe they listen to other people do it and they realize that these tasks or ways to kind of sabotage. actually things they can do, which I think that's very cool. I'm wondering how, because I think also maybe interestingly engages with different scales that you're able, or people talk often about kind of local versus global action of what scale we need to work at with the climate crisis. And ⁓ Interestingly, that maybe works out multiple scales because you're taking local action, but kind of from afar or how you think about these different scales. Tega: Yeah, I mean, think the thing with working with systems, like I often do, is that it could scale, right? Like a system is sort of a mechanism to enact agency at scale. And so yeah, that's definitely something that always comes in, I think, to the work is like, And that's also because we're working with software a lot, right? And like, that's one thing that, you know, has driven the Silicon Valley boom and like software scales in a way that other sort of technologies, it's really hard to do. Like, so for example, if you look at solar protocol, right? The fact that it's the system is serving a website and that means that it can software can sort of relocate itself around the world. relatively easily, right? Cause it's relying on digital networks and internet. It's much harder to do that if you're like trying to like look at, I don't know, air conditioning or like, like systems that actually have materiality that are really, that are really situated in ways. I think the fact that we're often working with code and software does mean that there's potentials to scale or the work has reach, or it can move in ways that like, you know, a sculpture or a more traditional art practice is much more kind of grounded in one place with a much more limited audience. And so that's one of the reasons I love kind of working in this way with software often online is like, yeah, it gives ⁓ means the work gets seen by think more kind of diverse audiences because it just can be accessed outside of galleries. Lauren Franco: I'm also wondering if you ⁓ speak a bit about your role as a teacher and professor and because also when I'm thinking about your influence, both ⁓ artistic away is also through teaching and ⁓ maybe touching on how you think about. teaching students about software and computation as it relates to art, especially with your background, seeing how some these tools are taught in maybe an engineering context and then how you hope your students will think about these tools and also how to bring this political practice into maybe software development and practices that go between these areas. Tega: Yeah. So when I started my art practice and started making work within an art context, it was also the time when a lot of like open source software tools for the arts were being and ⁓ So things like processing, P5, Arduino, these are all tools that are open source and that are software and hardware tools specifically for arts communities. So for people who want to like, you know, make things and tinker with them and have visual and expressive outcomes. And so I feel really lucky to have been a part of that because, you know, prior to the launch of processing, if you wanted to use code to like make animation or imagery or moving image or anything like that, it was really hard, right? Like none of the tools, could easily gave you a kind of visual output and you had to go and learn like C++ or like languages where there wasn't a lot of documentation for beginners. And you you had to like have a community, someone who was like good at computer science to kind of lead you through. was really hard. And so it's like totally different story, right? Like with these tools, there's a huge community of people who are using code for self-expression and for critique and like, You know, for me, it's part of trying to stimulate discourse around particular issues related to emerging technologies. Like a lot of scholarship exists

to sort of white papers and journals, and it's really important, but it also is there's only a really small community who's actually looking in those spaces. And so I think critical practices ⁓ we've as particularly around AI and surveillance have been really effective in, you know, shining a light on some of the complexities and issues and the narratives by which these technologies are being developed and do that through creating like similar to me, like experimental systems or provocations with code that you can encounter in different like often online spaces, but also cultural spaces like exhibitions and books and things like that. So I think that's been really an amazing thing we've seen happen over the last sort of 20 years. in my teaching, I teach a lot of those tools. after I finished my masters, I started doing a lot of teaching and working with students and trying to really like give these tools or create, ⁓ these tools to art and design people often come out of high school being I'm really creative. I'm really bad at math. is not for me. And then it's seeing someone that then start to realize that they can actually do all these amazing visual experiments with code. that there is a different like pedagogical ways in which ⁓ one can get familiar and competent in tools that aren't necessarily like a CS engineering. method right which tends to be more narrow and kind of more based on pass fail metrics and there's not a lot of space for like self-expression or experimentation, right? So yeah, that's a lot of what I still do now. Like at the moment, I'm a professor at NYU in the digital media department, but we're actually housed in the engineering school. So we are really sort of deeply invested in trying to bring more humanities and arts literacies into tech spaces and also explore technologies as, you know, mediums for art making and also these political things, right, that have political dimensions and impacts and yeah, that we really need to understand them like that. Lauren Franco: And that's terrific to bring it into that space and to see programming, not just to point as, ⁓ I'm not good at math, I can't do this, but that actually can carry cultural weight, political weight. through ⁓ working with what questions, do you also see students asking about these technologies that either are hopeful or inspiring or does working with students maybe help you see things ⁓ either a new way or what you want to impart on them? Tega: I mean, it's, ⁓ It really changes from year to year. So when I first started teaching, really had to make a case to our students of why working with programming was possible and interesting and maybe would help them augment whatever existing practice they had, right? So if they're really into like animation, what does it mean to like try to introduce code to that space or whatever? Now though, like, decade on where I think we've seen, we're amidst of a huge tech backlash, right? And we've seen that, you know, Silicon Valley does not have public good at their, as a priority. And now particularly in the current administration, you know, it was very clear that all of the big tech companies are lining up behind Donald Trump without pushing back at all. I think, the shine has really come off and that we all need to be asking really big questions about like, what role we want these technologies to have in our lives, what political agenda they further. And so my students now are very skeptical of it, right? definitely went through a period of optimism and excitement and like, everybody to get jobs at Google and Microsoft and so on to be a part of. developing these systems to now, like a lot of my students are really skeptical and wanting to like do more experiments around how you might create tools of refusal or alternatives or like small scale things or tech that's, you know, a different business model or like even like physical media, right? Where there isn't a digital network component at all. So cool to see how culture changes in response to these things. And then also how, yeah, the sort of up and coming. artists, designers, really asking meaningful critical questions around how we're designing with computation. Lauren Franco: Yeah, that's awesome to think about a new group of artists maybe emerging from these programs, actually thinking about modes of refusal and kind of spawning out and creating more ways for people to understand these systems. It's I guess also looking at kind of the future and about possibility. Where do you see ⁓ much as, as mentioned, people are more skeptical now of AI and all of systems and are also seeing what really lies behind these business models as well. where do you see ⁓ genuine possibility in this space or where do you feel caution of how people are now looking at these systems or maybe ⁓ also way to ask that is do you look towards certain writers or other artists that are also thinking about these issues? ⁓ Tega: Yeah. I mean, I think Solar Protocol has been inspiring work for people because it is sort of, it does point to a different way we could design and different way we could then also use our technologies to codify a relationship to environment, right? Where it's given more agency or decision-making power. It's not just like extraction and human centeredness until like it all falls down. Right. And that work I think really sits in community of practice that's ⁓ there's of really cool work happening in Europe or in what's called permacomputing. So thinking about how you take kind of ideas and approaches that we see in permaculture, which is very much about that, you know, collaborating with environments rather than just trying to control and extract from them. and how you take those sort of permaculture ideas and apply them to computation. So like small data, alternative power, systems aren't surveilling you. I think that work is really exciting, right? I know that there's a group of folks ⁓ in London who are developing

composting computers. ⁓ There's an artist, Wesley who's involved in that, who is doing really interesting like around, yeah. AI refusal and critique. And so they're developing this composting system that powers a computer. ⁓ And like folks who are kind of taking ideas from feminism around like, again, and pushing back against these capitalist logics and trying to build, social social networks and technologies grounded in those ideals. So that stuff's really cool. I think I mentioned low tech magazine as well. They have a regular publication and books and things which are really focusing on, yeah, like minimal small scale technology and yeah, applying a really critical lens to things which I think is really inspiring I think in art and design, there are lots of folks experimenting and working and asking questions similar to mine that is really great. Like Alexander Daisy Ginsburg in the UK has also done some really lovely work with machine learning deployed for things like optimizing gardens for pollinators or looking at bird call data and you know, that what that tells us about biodiversity ⁓ so on. So I love her work. I find ⁓ stuff really beautiful and inspiring. And then course, I mean, I feel like I owe a lot to a collective called the Critical Engineering Collective who were based in Berlin. who, wrote a manifesto, I don't know, 10, 12 years ago around what a critical engineer is. So like looking at engineering as this political social practice. And they this and I just, at the time I was kind of early in my thinking on this stuff and I just found it so fantastic and inspiring to, as it kind of acknowledges engineering isn't this sort of narrow field. where you end up, as I did in consulting, right? That can bring and imagine engineering to be a much more kind of diverse, weird, experimental field where there's lots of stuff happening outside of industry that maybe just doesn't get the same attention as the systems that actually scale. we this lot in design and architecture where those fields have really... celebrated on the margins, right? Practices like forensic architecture or speculative design or practices where they're actually treating design as this kind of discourse. think there's lots room to do that in engineering. I think, yeah, the critical engineering stuff was kind of ⁓ kicked off a lot of my thinking that space. Yeah. Lauren Franco: Thank you. mean, that's a huge list for people to look into. make sure I know all those projects and names. And think your point is very true. I mean, I'm in the architecture space. And we kind of allow for people to be on the margins maybe more than if you come from the reverse side. Tega: because architecture is sort of it's ⁓ halfway between science, design, art. So there's a real I think there's a better engagement with arts and culture in that field than what we've seen in STEM, right? Like in engineering. And ⁓ I noticed because I've taught in architecture schools a little bit. Lauren Franco: already kind of in that margin, yeah. Tega: there, it's really kind of reflexive, like architects are always asking, well, what is architecture? What is the future of architecture? And I'm, I've often wondered why, why don't I ever hear engineers like asking, well, what is engineering? What could it be? Right? There's much less of a kind of speculative culture in, in technology. And it's curious why that is. So yeah, I hope with my practice, I kind of stimulate some of that thinking. Yeah. Lauren Franco: Yeah. Yeah, no, That's why I think it's very inspiring to see someone like yourself who is asking these questions of, okay, why do we think of engineering in this one way? Or maybe your point also that engineering takes one particular path that is kind of solution oriented or has a very tunnel vision towards a solution that maybe doesn't consider all these others. issues that you're saying we need to address what I want people to also gain from the is to ⁓ hear creative practices like yourself and be inspired ⁓ and to also kind of understand how they can get into this mindset. ⁓ So wondering as well as, you know, maybe looking at other people's practices, ⁓ What is your kind of daily creative rhythm to have your best ideas emerge or kind ⁓ what is your process like? Tega: I guess my creative routine ⁓ ⁓ chaotic. I'm not someone who does well with ⁓ schedule or I also work a full-time job as an academic. It really depends on what time of year it is. So during semester, I'm spending a lot of time teaching. ⁓ Lauren Franco: and Yeah. Tega: doing university stuff. And then we tend to do a lot of art making the summers and in the breaks. ⁓ so the, it really depends what's happening in the year. And then, but we do like Sam and I, so Sam, my collaborator, we do ⁓ of make a regular time every month to just chat ideas. You know, we'll put an evening aside where we just like, okay, let's just go for it. And like any weird project idea or you know, issue that's been annoying us that maybe there's been a bunch of press about and you're like, ⁓ we should make something about, I don't know, digital twins. Like what the hell are they? like, or the other thing that's really mind boggling at the moment, all these like, betting markets, like Polly, what is it called? Polly market. I don't know. gambling on what the weather is going to be tomorrow, who wins the Super Bowl. And you're like, wow, we're to just transform the whole world into like a casino. That's crazy. ⁓ So like we have we do of schedule every month or so time where we like and think about weird wonderful project ideas that kind of all go into a notebook and then Lauren Franco: You're still here? Yeah. Tega: Often it's driven by an opportunity or a deadline where someone's like, ⁓ know, pitch us something for this and we'll go in and see what we want to work on. Lauren Franco: I'm similar it I like the chaos of doing many things at once, and kind of shifting between many things. So I

understand that a routine doesn't necessarily mean the same thing every day, actually, that this chaos is maybe productive, actually, in terms of a practice. Yeah, question is kind of how your work is often encouraging people reconsider how they relate to technology in their own Like how do you see yourself? of course you relate to technology through the work you do. But kind of in your day life, how do you see yourself relating to technology? ⁓ in the way of either almost like regulating your own usage of it or do you see your own relationship to technology either change over How does it feel in this moment? Tega: Yeah, I I think we all I think I'm like a lot of people where I'm trying to we're trying to spend less time online and trying to spend less time on my phone. And, you know, I do think the greatest minds of our generation have been working on ways to keep us on our phones. And so it's tremendously challenging to sort of log out and take take time away. And I think we are all have very fractured attention because of these systems are trying to optimize for ⁓ attention. I definitely feel very strongly that I'm constantly navigating that. But I think we are seeing the media art community for a long time, we've talked about how surveillance and data collection, there's a of potential there ⁓ for governments ⁓ nefarious ⁓ government to these systems against us ⁓ and ⁓ use to democracy. we're seeing that happen now, right? I don't think we've lived through a time in the States where data and the collected on us has been really used for and the that the Trump administration is using it. So I think I'm very worried about that. think we're seeing ⁓ that play in real time at the moment. And I think that's something we all really need to be doing whatever we can to push back against, Is, you know, the way that ICE and these really like non-democratic are gaining access to like social security data and census data just operating outside of the law. And so that's really scary. And I think that's something that is impacting in the US, right? You know, a lot ⁓ of scholars like Virginia Eubanks ⁓ have for a long time on the way that technology is on marginalized communities, right? So if you're poor, Or if you're a refugee, right, you've experienced surveillance technology in a way that is very different if you're in the sort of affluent group. However, that shows us what's going to happen in the future, right? Because often, you those groups, the refugees, the marginalized, they're the sort of test cases for the way that facial recognition gets used or, know, the tech may be and then gets rolled out more broadly as public opinion is softened towards it. And so I think, again, we're seeing that happen in real time in the US and it's just the US, but I think the US is one of the leaders. So it's, we're ⁓ in a place. ⁓ Lauren Franco: yeah, don't have many words ⁓ to ⁓ even say it's sad place to be in that people harness this technology for evil. what we can, or I take away from what you're saying is that, and I try to consciously think about it, how do these tools or how do we, even if ⁓ I engage with these tools, even if You're a person that doesn't care about your data in this way or that. How can you either use the tool or resist the tool if this is harming others or financially this company is using its data to attack marginalized communities? So I think we should all be thinking about that. And I appreciate you saying that. And I'm also wondering when we see so much of this technology harnessed for evil. these companies creating these technologies, what question if they had to almost answer something publicly, would you like them to answer? Or what should the question? It's like, that's a hard question. I'm almost thinking about that. It almost feels like. Tega: What's that? Lauren Franco: as soon as people realize that one technology is being harnessed for evil and attack people, feels like another technology emerges that then we realize is also like that. And so maybe it's also a question of what questions you hope people ask themselves before engaging with these technologies? Tega: ⁓ think we do have some choice with the systems we use, right? Everybody should using Signal. We should be to use Meta as least possible because they are just one data collection engine. So there are things that you can do like in terms of like personal choice, but I think it's also worth just emphasizing that lot of these issues are systemic. ⁓ framing them as only something that is all like, that's all on the individual that they have to like use a better ad blocker and not use Facebook and whatever is I think the wrong framing. I we need to figure out ways to collectivize and Lauren Franco: Yeah. Yeah. Tega: make our demands and rethink some of these systems at a more like collective level. And so there's some you know, there's some really cool stuff happening in New York City, like there's a group of what they call themselves neo Luddites. And so this is a big group of folks in their early 20s who are like holding all these events around killing your phone and doing less sort of screen based culture. And so Yeah, I've been sort of aware of some of the stuff they've been up to. And it's been really cool because, know, it's fun. And it's they're doing a lot of work to kind of foster a culture around criticality and refusal of technologies and like reminding us all that, ⁓ you actually live a pretty decent life without a smartphone all the time. Right. Like it's totally possible. So I think Lauren Franco: Yeah. Tega: there's some ⁓ sort of cultural movements around this stuff that I'm finding exciting.