Architecting the Future with Radha Mistry | Think Forward EP 150

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One of my favorite essays for years now, probably for five or six years now, is called Defuturing the Image of the Future.
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It's written by Andrew Blauveld.
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It was published in the Walker Center art, um, like their magazine.
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The first line of that essay is um every act of design is in itself a small act of future making.
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And the reason that I love that essay is because one of the things he talks about is that in enabling certain futures, you also have to imagine and envision what futures you start to close off to.
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And so to me, I think that becomes really, really important in things like this when we imagine a future, for example, where cars are taking over every city, right?
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And roads are being designed in that manner, and perhaps pedestrians and cyclists are in a second and third tier kind of circulation function across the city.
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What other future are you shutting yourself down to?
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Rata, welcome to Think Forward.
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Thank you.
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Thank you for having me.
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Oh, very much looking forward to this.
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Um, this this goes to show you, audience, that if you just reach, you know, you never know.
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They might say yes.
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You just reach out to people.
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That's right.
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But we know a lot of the same people, but it's just really nice to fellow designers.
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Rata has just an amazing just your journey is amazing.
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Like how you have gone through from architecture and narrative writing, you know, storytelling, finding foresight, right?
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So I think before we get started, one of the things I found really cool, because I I heard your name I knew your name and I knew from Julian.
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It's like you know, Jimmy Mystery, which I know you're not related to.
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You might be, but it's I don't know.
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It means craftsman, which I think is cool.
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Which basically craftswoman, craftsperson.
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I mean, you are a person that is about craft.
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I mean, that is the essence, I think, of you when I think of you.
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Like you are a true person who pursues craft.
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Well, thank you.
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Thank you.
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Yeah, I mean, I think um it's definitely the desire to like make or find meaning through making, I think is just inherent to who I am.
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And I think it's in I think it's in my DNA.
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I think it's in my blood.
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I don't think I had to do that.
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Anybody creative listening to this can be like shakes their heads, listen, they're driving in the car going, uh-huh.
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Yeah, but it's also in my last name.
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You know, my my my dad was an architect.
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Um, he's like he's retired now, but he was a licensed architect.
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He did urban transportation planning.
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My grandfather before him was an architect.
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My great-grandfather, as far as I understand, was a builder, like a carpenter.
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And so I just I just grew up around, even my aunt, like I grew up around um uh around building things, around wanting to do that, you know.
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And I think early on, for you know, one of my earliest memories um of of having access to design as an intentional thing was like seeing my dad in his workshop in the garage in our house in the suburbs of LA County, um, you know, in the 90s, like and and basically like taking scraps from whatever he was making at the time, which was also a hobby of his to do carpentry on the weekends.
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I'm trying to imagine you as a little kid picking up wood pieces.
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I'm just Oh, it was my favorite thing.
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The smell of wood that had just been cut on like a table saw was like my favorite smell.
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It was my favorite smell, and it was such a yes, and it was such a but imagine being like 10 years old saying that to somebody and they're like, What are you talking about?
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You know, like especially in like the suburbs of Los Angeles.
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What do you mean?
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Like you're sitting in a w workshop all day, like your dad is, you know.
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And so, but I you know, I love like taking those scraps and just finding things around the house and like just building things with it and creating my own dream worlds and creating my own kind of like exploring my own imaginaries.
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And it's not something that we got to do in school all the time because it was very academically kind of oriented, of course.
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And you know, back in that day, like we didn't have as much of this um this like question-led learning that I think my children are experiencing, which is beautiful, uh, or play-based learning.
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It was very memorize the thing, get it back out on a test, do really good on that.
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Um, and that will lead you to college.
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Yes, that reminds me of my sister and I growing up because my sister was outstanding at memorizing and regurgitating, she would have been an excellent actor.
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I was horrible.
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Memorizing script, or she would probably been in theater.
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But me, no.
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But I remember, but I learned that's a there's a difference, like I retained.
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You know, I didn't get the A, but now I love you, Lari.
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You're probably listening.
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But she didn't, she's fully admits she doesn't really remember anything from school.
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It's just kind of in one in in the brain and just dump it out, right?
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Yeah, I think what's everyone fears the technology issues that could be with addiction to tech or blue screens, and I I get all of that, but there's an there's an aspect to how much do you have to learn?
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Like, you know, my degree's in accounting, I don't use abacuses anymore, right?
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It's like we use calculators, we use computers.
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So it's like, what is the layer in which you train?
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My son is using VR, he's nine.
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Amazing.
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And yes, before I get comments that he shouldn't be that young, guess he, I know he's he's quite mature, but he plays this thing called Gorilla Tag where they all run around.
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It's like I I'm listening to them, it's like they're on the playground.
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There's a lot of kids and they're all like gorillas running around trying to tag each other.
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No way.
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After an hour, the kid is like he ran like, I don't know, a 10K.
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He's like exhausted, but he also is doing he's a goalie.
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He's doing goalie training.
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He's a snowboard, he can he's a snowboarding game.
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Like he's trained, he's doing things to practice and interface with it.
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And I keep thinking about you know how you interface, you know, you're you trained as an architect, how you interface as a designer, and you know, you've evolved the lineage.
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So when did when did you realize that like the tr you're you're still part of the family tradition?
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Like when did that evolve?
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Like when did that you did just realize it's kind of in in what sense?
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And like when did I realize I wanted to be on the street?
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Yeah, I mean, I don't know.
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I'm I'm sure you'll be I'm sure you'll have your woodworking hut at some point if you don't already.
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That's my dream.
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Yeah, I know.
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I'm sure you know it's in LA, it's space is limited in LA, but like you know, build that little our garage has my husband's gym set up right now, so I lost that battle.
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Right.
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Well, there's the backyard, the rota shed, you can call it the rata shed, and the rota shed will be a woodworking space, right?
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But then you have the but you've continued that as a builder, right?
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Yeah.
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When did when did you see you you've just kind of evolved, like you just kind of evolved the tradition.
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You know, I've here's the thing is like I have always felt because people ask me, like, if you knew everything you knew about your career today, would you have done architecture school to start that off?
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And I say without a doubt, yes.
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Because what that afforded me was that architectural education.
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And I didn't, and I did it twice.
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Like I did my B arc and I did my MARC because kind of knowing halfway through that I didn't want to be an architect, but I just really loved that architectural education.
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And I came away from that understanding how to kind of wrap my head around systems thinking, understanding stakeholder engagement, understanding how to put my put myself in somebody else's shoes and think from a place of empathy.
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Like all of these tools, I think, are really necessary when you're doing futures work, right?
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How can I envision how this might affect somebody in any given future?
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And and one of the kind of key points of framing for myself, and I don't think this happened exactly, I hadn't articulated it.
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I could feel it as a thing, I could feel it as an emotion in architecture school.
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And it wasn't until I got out that I could articulate, like, wait a minute, buildings are future artifacts.
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We are, we are signaling something to people, right?
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About about values that we have placed in this kind of machine in the ground, about behaviors and norms that we anticipate will continue to be behaviors and norms, about the ways in which we believe the city will evolve around this thing, um, about attitudes towards things like climate change and the impacts of sustainable design.
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Like all of those things are embedded in these layers within this artifact that you are designing, right?
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And you can look at the landscape of any city and go back and say, okay, that house has been there for a hundred years.
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There was no built-in HVAC system.
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That means that either the world was not that hot and you could use passive cooling mechanisms like opening doors and and um having fans and opening windows and things like that.
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And maybe the people and maybe architects never anticipated that the world would get that hot a hundred years ago, right?
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Right.
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And so it's things like that that that made me realize like I am still using architecture as my primary mechanism to understand how the world is going to evolve.
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Now, does it include the you know, research around emerging technologies?
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Does it include research around, you know, that's more from a sociological perspective, maybe a little bit of kind of like armchair anthropology here and there?
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Yes.
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But I am still thinking about what the world looks like 20, 30, 50 years out.
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And sitting in a company like Airup, the really cool thing is I can then build those linkages back.
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And we have tools like backcasting that I'm sure you're familiar with in our foresight work, that allows us to say, if this is the vision of what we would love to happen, if we want to see cities being more connected to natural landscapes, if we want to see children growing up in urban environments that allow their brains to actually be functioning in a healthy way, what does the what does the built environment have to do now to respond to those future desires?
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Right.
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It makes so a couple things come off of that.
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One is uh, you know, as futurists, I think the best futurists are also historians, right?
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Macro macro, I mean history in general, but macro history especially, to larger changes in cycles of and pattern.
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But as somebody who studied, didn't go as far as you, but studied architecture and has a passion for it.
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I'm also a his I don't know if I'm a histor uh architecture historian, but I definitely studied the different architects.
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And you can look at buildings and go, that's a Bauhaus.
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Yes.
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Or you know, Frank Lloyd Wright's par prairie style, or you can look at Pay.
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Like you can look at these, or the brutalist of the 70s growing, like growing up in Baltimore, there's a a library that's like a Guggenheim, but it's brutalist architecture, cold and stark.
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And I always joke, you can tell like science fiction when it was made when you look at the woman's hairstyles, because they never seem to get there right.
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They're always the victim of their decade.
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That's right.
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And it's the same thing with like when you look at buildings, like you look back, and those styles obviously influence, you know, and it just for example, like the gout Gaudi's uh Sagrada Familia finally finished after 126 years, but it's like you look back and it's like you know, what the styles were that created that artifact of the future.
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It took 125 years to make that artifact.
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Yeah, and he was in his 30s when he started that.
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Isn't that wild?
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He knew it he knew it would outlive him, right?
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It's like but you that's a futurist.
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Yeah, that's a futurist, right?
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And when you look at his, you know, cantilever, his design.
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I I was looking, I I I don't know if you've been there.
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I I went there and they showed like how the the weights and balances like the thing should not be standard.
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Like you wouldn't think it it should work, but it does.
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And that's someone who invented a a building style on top of like the structure.
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And yeah, to your point, like you think about sustainability, like what would it and that's exactly when I think about like Paris.
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You you talked about like are they gonna have heat?
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Like when they built like those walk-up apartments in Paris, they didn't have elevators, they kind of stuck them in the middle as like an afterthought, like after the fact, right?
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Many splits were created in Europe because they couldn't get central air conditioner into old buildings.
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They just had to put a pipe in and you know, put a put a hang a heat pump off the side of the or the top of the roof.
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And you're right, it's like how do you create structures and how do you evolve when you design futures, right?
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It's that's uh and I think that applies to everybody's type of work because it's like when you you have to be thinking what is the impact of your work, not just tomorrow, but like yeah, long term, right?
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Yeah, and and how will the impact of your work um change, the perceived impact of your work change over time, right?
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Because what might seem like a great idea, I mean, we talk about this when we talk about like so one of my favorite essays for years now, probably for five or six years now, is called Defuturing the Image of the Future.
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It's written by Andrew Blauveld.
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It was published in the Walker Center art, um, like their magazine.
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And he talks the first line of that essay is um every act of design is in itself a small act of future making.
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And the reason that I love that essay is because one of the things he talks about is that in enabling certain futures, you also have to imagine and envision what futures you start to close off to.
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And so to me, I think that becomes really, really important in things like this when we imagine a future, for example, where cars are taking over every city, right?
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And roads are being designed in that manner, and perhaps pedestrians and cyclists are in a second and third tier kind of circulation function across the city.
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What other future are you shutting yourself down to?
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What other futures weren't allowed to kind of come into the mix in that way?
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And I think what I have found in my work is it's not necessarily a complete like shutting down of those futures.
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It's saying, is there another path through that?
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Right.
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So we're now seeing cities where like the car is not the primary mode of transportation, and folks have really intentionally kind of gone through and said, okay, let's retrofit our roads and reimagine how people and things move through the city so that cars are not at the focus of this thing.
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But it takes some unlearning to be able to do that.
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Amsterdam things are.
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Yeah for bikes.
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Now you'll get scooters on there that act like jerks and drive like bad men and bad women next to bikes, but they keep them visibly physically separate from car lanes, not just a white line, but it allows for massive amounts of bike traffic, which keep the car traffic.
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I mean, you live in Los Angeles.
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I mean, that as someone who's worked on a lot of mobility projects and you know, worked in the air taxi business and looked at especially the new eVootolls, people have to think about you know, LA like Dallas, this Metroplex.
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People might move across from town parts of town with an air taxi because I've heard people don't date each other if they live in other parts of LA.
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It's a long distance.
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It's too far away.
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It's true.
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It's like if you're it's like I I guess the analog would be like if you were in like Manhattan versus Brooklyn, right?
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You're not dating over the bridge.
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You're just not dating.
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Oh, even on the even on the island.
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There my my my wife's uncle lives sorry guys listening.
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It's like my wife's uncle lives in the village.
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Yeah.
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He would never date in like Upper East, Upper West Side.
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It's like Mars.
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Yeah.
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Like it's not even like Brooklyn.
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It's just And we don't measure by miles, you measure by minutes because miles is not an accurate indicator of how long it's going to take you to get from one part of town to another.
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So, like we have friends in the valley, and I have friends.
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I live we live in the middle, like in mid-city in Los Angeles.
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And I love it because I am equidistant from downtown and the west side Santa Monica.
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But if anybody is like up in Sherman Oaks or over to the valley, I'm probably going to see them for a year.
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Yeah, no, I haven't been to Silver Lake in years, and probably years.
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There you go.
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Yeah, because I my wife's uncle, another another, a different uncle.
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He they work at Disney and they live in Burbank, right?
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And it's like we went to go see friend, we went to go see friends over in Santa Monica.
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It was like we were trying to like cross-country trip.
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You're making you're road tripping.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Might as well pack a bag.
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Yeah.
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Well, and it it's like when I think about you talked about buildings of future artifacts.
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It's also the cities themselves.
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Like this, it's like what does the layout of the city when you put a building in the ground, and when you think about the future, like how do you the work today you do?
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Like how do you carry that sensibility in the work you know when you're doing futures work?
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Like, how do you how does that translate for you?
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I mean, I think it starts with this idea that there is no blank slate future, right?
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So we do have to, you said some of the best futurists are historians, and I take that to heart deeply.
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So we have to kind of recognize and meet people where they are.
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What is the landscape of the city?
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What are their tensions?
00:17:17.359 --> 00:17:18.319
What are their fears?
00:17:18.480 --> 00:17:19.440
What are their hopes?
00:17:19.680 --> 00:17:23.440
And then, you know, what is it that we are trying to bring people towards?
00:17:23.599 --> 00:17:31.039
Like what is the vision of a preferable future that that folks can kind of galvanize around and want to mobilize around, right?
00:17:31.359 --> 00:17:34.640
And I think like that work is really hard because it's so hard.
00:17:34.799 --> 00:17:40.400
One of my old colleagues at Autodesk used to say, you know, if you want to make soup for the world, you're gonna end up with water.
00:17:40.640 --> 00:17:43.200
And so what ends up happening in right?
00:17:43.920 --> 00:17:44.559
I love that.
00:17:44.799 --> 00:17:51.119
And so what ends up happening in that work is there are two questions that I think have really kind of formed the basis of my practice.
00:17:51.279 --> 00:17:55.599
And one is what do I hope to leave behind and for whom?
00:17:55.920 --> 00:17:58.720
And then the other one is who is this preferable for?
00:17:58.960 --> 00:18:06.000
And in both of those things, you are having to consider the notion that like you're not going to please everybody, right?
00:18:06.240 --> 00:18:08.000
That is that is an impossible task.
00:18:08.160 --> 00:18:26.720
And as I think in in the work that we do, that is something that we have to kind of reckon with on a pretty regular basis, is that somebody's version of an ideal future is going to be somebody else's version of something that's maybe problematic or maybe hurtful or or you know, something that they have to grieve.
00:18:26.960 --> 00:18:33.519
In a lot of the work that I'm doing, so much of that is to come in as um a mediator.
00:18:33.680 --> 00:18:38.960
You know, I'm never, I don't ever come in with this, with this notion of like, this is what I think needs to happen.
00:18:39.119 --> 00:18:43.920
I'm coming in with a designerly mind and perspective, of course.
00:18:44.240 --> 00:18:53.359
But I think what that allows is the ability to tap into people's needs and expectations, even the implicit ones that aren't always clearly articulated.
00:18:54.000 --> 00:18:57.359
Well, when you you came to Autodesk, correct?
00:18:57.519 --> 00:18:59.759
Before the futures practice.
00:18:59.839 --> 00:19:02.559
And how talk talk about this kind of transition.
00:19:02.799 --> 00:19:03.279
Oh, yeah.
00:19:03.440 --> 00:19:12.079
Did you get the job at for Autodesk for a specific kind of how that because I got the job and then I lost the job, okay?
00:19:12.720 --> 00:19:12.880
Okay.
00:19:13.279 --> 00:19:24.960
Because a lot of people wonder, like there, you know, you work, you work, you created and have built not only just work there, but you built like it's some of the best foresight practices in the world.
00:19:25.279 --> 00:19:26.799
And it's like, you're welcome.
00:19:26.880 --> 00:19:29.039
And it's just truly sincere.
00:19:29.119 --> 00:19:30.079
I mean, it's just a sequence.
00:19:30.319 --> 00:19:32.400
I can't take sole credit for that, but I do appreciate you.
00:19:32.720 --> 00:19:34.480
No, it's a it's a well, it's two things.
00:19:34.559 --> 00:19:40.880
It's a standing on shoulders of giants where we take all the techniques and the things that help us, and at the same time, it is a team effort.
00:19:40.960 --> 00:19:50.160
And that's where the culture and and really creating, you know, solid organizational foresight capability, but you know, it has to start somewhere, right?
00:19:50.799 --> 00:19:53.599
It's the the the force, the the futures team of one.
00:19:54.559 --> 00:20:04.960
We didn't exist, like tell share that story because because a lot of people wonder people people know it exists now, but it's like they don't it's like they think it's like, oh, yeah, it's been around.
00:20:05.440 --> 00:20:06.240
No, not really.
00:20:06.960 --> 00:20:07.519
Yeah, no.
00:20:07.759 --> 00:20:11.440
It's it's um, and it's now it's led by this phenomenal woman named um Dr.
00:20:11.519 --> 00:20:15.440
Aaron Bradner, um, and she is doing a really great job.
00:20:15.680 --> 00:20:18.960
I just saw them, saw her back in San Francisco a couple weeks ago, and I'm gonna go.
00:20:19.039 --> 00:20:20.079
Yeah, I want to get her on the show.
00:20:20.160 --> 00:20:20.559
Oh, yeah.
00:20:20.640 --> 00:20:21.039
She's amazing.
00:20:21.200 --> 00:20:22.799
She is absolutely amazing.
00:20:22.880 --> 00:20:24.079
Um, so brilliant.
00:20:24.400 --> 00:20:30.319
The funny story is I was first hired to be um the senior evangelist for AR and VR.
00:20:30.480 --> 00:20:35.839
I was poached from Steel Case, was doing work with Steelcase, looking at the future of work back when we were.
00:20:36.000 --> 00:20:38.480
I was gonna say, did you work with the futures group?
00:20:38.799 --> 00:20:39.599
Adjacently, yeah.
00:20:39.680 --> 00:20:42.799
So we were the the I would call them the human the intelligence.
00:20:42.960 --> 00:20:44.240
Yeah, they were like the research group.
00:20:44.319 --> 00:20:48.559
I don't think they were traditionally the futures, but you were doing some serious futures work there though.
00:20:48.720 --> 00:20:52.160
That that group very serious futures work.
00:20:52.240 --> 00:20:56.319
I was in the consulting side of it, so we took the research and we applied it out in market, basically.
00:20:56.640 --> 00:20:56.880
Got it.
00:20:57.200 --> 00:20:57.359
Okay.
00:20:57.599 --> 00:21:05.359
And so there were there, you know, there were they were my close collaborators, but I was not um nested squarely in the workspace futures group.
00:21:05.519 --> 00:21:10.000
But this was when the future of work was a very sexy topic to be, you know, focused on.
00:21:10.400 --> 00:21:20.480
Um and then Autodesk came calling and they said, we really need somebody who is a strong storyteller who can who can evangelize this technology that we are kind of investing in.
00:21:20.720 --> 00:21:29.599
And I basically said, like, I don't know anything about AR and VR except for some of the very baseline research that we had been doing about the implications for for work, right?
00:21:29.680 --> 00:21:30.400
For the workplace.
00:21:30.559 --> 00:21:30.799
Yep.
00:21:30.960 --> 00:21:33.279
And they said, Cool, we don't need you to know about AR and VR.
00:21:33.359 --> 00:21:34.160
You can research that.
00:21:34.240 --> 00:21:38.960
We need somebody who is a who understands how to tell stories to to various audiences, right?
00:21:39.119 --> 00:21:49.359
And so I joined, and about 30 days after I joined, the new CEO who had just come into his his role, Andrew, the organization went through a massive reorg.
00:21:49.440 --> 00:21:51.680
They divested from AR and VR as part of that.
00:21:51.839 --> 00:21:56.720
So my team got dissolved within a month of my my um hiring date.
00:21:57.599 --> 00:21:59.519
But in that time, I think I had made like enough.
00:22:00.480 --> 00:22:06.559
Just going around the organization, that one of the guys there, um, he was a fellow, his name was Mickey McManus.
00:22:07.279 --> 00:22:19.119
He literally one day like took me and he pushed me into the into the office of the corporate, the VP of um of corporate strategy, and he said, Hey, John, I think you need to meet this woman.
00:22:19.279 --> 00:22:21.440
And we just started talking.
00:22:21.599 --> 00:22:26.240
And um, and next thing I knew, he like had created a role for me, basically.
00:22:26.319 --> 00:22:29.359
And I came on as a creative lead and a storyteller.
00:22:29.759 --> 00:22:35.839
And what that meant at the time was doing a lot of kind of executive presentations and talks.
00:22:35.920 --> 00:22:44.720
But what that allowed me to do was to meet with all of these executive leaders across the organization and to understand what their individual points of view were on You had audience.
00:22:44.880 --> 00:22:46.400
You had a legitimate audience.
00:22:46.880 --> 00:22:48.400
I had right, exactly.
00:22:48.720 --> 00:22:50.079
Did you know the term foresight?
00:22:50.240 --> 00:22:56.000
Did he, did you he know it when he was did you guys did you did you kind of like aha like like no?
00:22:56.079 --> 00:22:56.319
Okay.
00:22:56.799 --> 00:22:57.599
So here's what happened.
00:22:57.680 --> 00:23:02.640
So, you know, I had done, I had been on Arab's Foresight team um in London and then San Francisco.
00:23:02.720 --> 00:23:04.400
I moved to SEAL case for a couple years.
00:23:04.480 --> 00:23:11.119
I was doing future of work stuff, but I was kind of finding myself moving further away from foresight, but still had a really deep passion for it.
00:23:11.279 --> 00:23:15.920
And I believed in the value that foresight could bring to an organization.
00:23:16.160 --> 00:23:31.279
And so what had happened in this kind of new role where I found myself in corporate strategy, because I had this audience with all these executive leaders, I started to realize that we didn't have one cohesive point of view on what long-term future was.
00:23:31.440 --> 00:23:34.880
Now, these people were super brilliant when it came to their industry strategies.
00:23:35.039 --> 00:23:54.559
They knew what the market looked like, they really had insight into how the market was shifting in a in a kind of near term, but there wasn't any one mechanism kind of coalescing all of their various points of view into like, here is our tenure vision on where we think the world is going and how we fit into that, into that, right?
00:23:54.720 --> 00:24:02.319
And I think each leader like had an implicit kind of assumption about what was going to happen, but it hadn't been explicitly stated anywhere.
00:24:02.559 --> 00:24:07.440
So I asked my VP at the time and I was like, hey, can I can I do this thing that I'm making up?
00:24:07.519 --> 00:24:08.720
It's called a foresight audit.
00:24:08.799 --> 00:24:20.400
I don't really know what it's gonna, what we're gonna learn from this, but I want to go and I want to interview like a hundred people across the organization, and I want to understand what are they doing to think about futures?
00:24:20.559 --> 00:24:35.200
Like they might not know specific foresight methodology or have the kind of lexicon at hand, but maybe I can do some kind of mapping to start to get a sense of like, are these behaviors already taking place in the organization?
00:24:35.279 --> 00:24:35.599
Right.
00:24:35.759 --> 00:24:44.640
And if they are, then why not create some formalized infrastructure to help um really propel that work forward in a more valuable way?
00:24:44.960 --> 00:24:51.599
So um we have a mutual Jeremy Carter, who was um who was my thought partner in that work.
00:24:51.839 --> 00:24:52.559
Shout out Jeremy.
00:24:52.720 --> 00:24:56.240
And shout out Jeremy, um, a wonderful soul.
00:24:56.319 --> 00:25:01.440
Um, so he and I, he kind of like went on this ride with me without really knowing what was happening.
00:25:01.680 --> 00:25:03.839
And I really, really appreciate him for that.
00:25:03.920 --> 00:25:08.960
Um, because I was just like the weirdo who talked about foresight all the time and nobody knew what it was.
00:25:09.680 --> 00:25:20.960
And yeah, you would ask Phil, you know, you could ask Phil Phil Belactus when when when I came to McKinsey, he's like, I was the only one talking about his like like now you're not alone anymore.
00:25:21.119 --> 00:25:22.079
Like, no, sorry.
00:25:22.400 --> 00:25:38.079
No, and to the point where like it was it became so associated with like me as a person that we had a bell on our team, and every time I said foresight, somebody would ring the bell because it was just called Future Boy, I got called Future Boy at McKinsey.
00:25:38.240 --> 00:25:39.440
I don't know if that's a really good thing.
00:25:39.759 --> 00:25:41.599
Like a hazing, I know, probably.
00:25:43.200 --> 00:25:52.240
But anyway, so so so we put this, you know, so we put this this audit together, and what we found was like we're doing all these things, and we're doing them pretty well.
00:25:52.319 --> 00:25:56.079
We're just not doing them together, and we don't use the same language to talk about it.
00:25:56.240 --> 00:26:03.200
And so, you know, we presented those findings to our CTO at the time, and then it made its way to Andrew, to Andrew Anagnoff, the CEO.
00:26:03.359 --> 00:26:09.279
And yeah, he is a, and I will say this, I don't think science fiction is the only way into foresight.
00:26:09.440 --> 00:26:13.839
I think it is one of the primary ways into foresight, but it wasn't my first way in.
00:26:14.160 --> 00:26:35.680
But Andrew's a sci-fi fan, and I was able to kind of like build, you know, that through line between wouldn't it be great to have some kind of a mechanism to like understand where your blind thoughts, blind spots are, foresee these gaps, and essentially have some agency and ownership over what future becomes for your organization, right?
00:26:36.000 --> 00:26:41.759
Like every CEO I think wants to have that ability in some sense to to kind of make the market, right?
00:26:41.839 --> 00:26:43.440
Not just kind of chase the market.
00:26:43.920 --> 00:26:45.119
And like that.
00:26:45.279 --> 00:26:52.559
And so he asked if if I could run a um a foresight workshop with his executive team with his C-suite.
00:26:52.720 --> 00:26:56.559
And I did, and um, I almost failed because I went to the world.
00:26:56.720 --> 00:26:57.680
So tell me about the workshop.
00:26:57.839 --> 00:26:58.880
So let's talk about the workshop.
00:26:58.960 --> 00:27:01.039
I'm sure there's a lot of people on list listeners.
00:27:01.200 --> 00:27:05.279
I know I know for a fact a lot of people do workshops facilitate, you know.
00:27:05.440 --> 00:27:07.119
So what did you put in it?
00:27:07.279 --> 00:27:13.680
What what was the was there a fall on your face in the middle of the morning type of moment?
00:27:14.000 --> 00:27:15.759
Like what what what what was the process?
00:27:16.079 --> 00:27:19.839
It was a I'm not gonna get out of this what I think I want out, what I think I'm gonna get out of this.
00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:22.319
It was because the leadership isn't there yet.
00:27:22.480 --> 00:27:33.039
So what I wanted to get out of it was like an aligned point of view on what this executive leadership team thought future was for them from for 10 years out.
00:27:33.200 --> 00:27:55.200
And because what I was then hoping to be able to do was to then trickle that down out of the exec team into other parts of the organization and use foresight tools and methodology to say, like, hey, if we have this vision as an organization, here's what it means for you, product development team, here's what it means for you, research, here's what it means for you, marketing, risk management, corporate development, all of those groups, right?
00:27:55.599 --> 00:28:09.200
What ended up happening was that within the executive team itself, there wasn't consensus on the kind of primary drivers that would be impacting the business or in the direction that they would go in.
00:28:09.359 --> 00:28:24.559
So you might have one, and I'm giving hypotheticals because I don't want to say exactly what happened in the room, but you might have one person saying, like, you know, I think that an increase in the middle class is going to mean that more people have more money to buy more things.
00:28:24.720 --> 00:28:29.359
And if people are going to buy more things, then we should be making more things for them to buy.
00:28:29.440 --> 00:28:31.759
So more people are going to use our tools to do that.
00:28:32.000 --> 00:28:43.279
But then you have someone who's kind of sitting in in the seat saying, actually, I work in our startup ecosystem and I work in emerging markets, and it's not buying, it's reuse and it's resell.
00:28:43.920 --> 00:28:51.599
So, so how are we thinking about, you know, kind of retrofit versus versus new consumption?
00:28:51.839 --> 00:28:52.079
Right.
00:28:52.400 --> 00:28:57.039
It sounds like those are scenarios and implications wheels waiting to happen right there.
00:28:57.279 --> 00:28:58.240
Yeah, exactly.
00:28:58.400 --> 00:28:58.799
Exactly.
00:28:58.960 --> 00:29:05.119
And so what I what I, you know, midway through the workshop, I kind of realized like we're not going to get consensus amongst this group.
00:29:05.279 --> 00:29:19.759
But what I did realize was what probably needs to happen is another series of workshops where we are together clearly articulating what are kind of what we ended up calling our forces of change, the autodest forces of change, what those were going to be for the organization.
00:29:19.920 --> 00:29:20.240
Yeah.
00:29:20.559 --> 00:29:21.039
Right.
00:29:21.279 --> 00:29:32.720
And so coming out of that workshop, what I ended up with was a clear focal question for the group, which was not my original desired output, but I think it was enough to kind of get the ball rolling.
00:29:32.880 --> 00:29:38.880
And, you know, from that, um, and mind you, this was like a year and a half campaign that I was building.
00:29:38.960 --> 00:29:40.960
So this is not something that happened overnight.
00:29:41.119 --> 00:29:45.359
This was me going around being the crazy foresight woman for about 18 months.
00:29:45.519 --> 00:30:02.240
But what came out of that was the spinning up of the foresight practice out of the corporate strategy team and this this more kind of like formalized infrastructure for the delivery of foresight work with our executive leadership team being our primary audience.
00:30:02.319 --> 00:30:04.480
And then we had these dotted lines to everyone else.
00:30:04.559 --> 00:30:10.319
But the team itself was also kind of nested in the office of the CTO, and that was that was by design as well.
00:30:10.559 --> 00:30:12.559
Yeah, that's a structure, that's a structural choice.
00:30:12.720 --> 00:30:15.039
Like, why do you think I want to talk about organizational things?
00:30:15.200 --> 00:30:18.400
Like, why do you think placement matters so much?
00:30:18.640 --> 00:30:20.640
Like, what happens if it's in the wrong place?
00:30:21.039 --> 00:30:23.680
I think we kind of know, but you know, like let's play it out.
00:30:23.759 --> 00:30:26.960
But yeah, yeah, um, this is a very leading question, but I think we have, you know, I know.
00:30:27.200 --> 00:30:29.680
So so so here's what I've found.
00:30:29.839 --> 00:30:35.279
And and I say this, I say this feeling like I think every part of an organization is critical.
00:30:35.440 --> 00:30:43.839
However, I think foresight work, we have so much trouble already demonstrating the value of what foresight does, right?
00:30:44.000 --> 00:30:44.160
Yeah.
00:30:44.400 --> 00:30:47.599
Because so much of it is not quantitatively measured.
00:30:47.759 --> 00:30:53.519
We don't have these very concrete KPIs that we can go back to and say, oh, we hit that, we hit that, we hit that.
00:30:53.680 --> 00:30:57.119
It's oftentimes value stories, it's oftentimes qualitative.
00:30:57.279 --> 00:31:08.000
And so I think what ends up happening is I have seen a lot of foresight functions be set in like a CMO's organization, a Marcom, a business development kind of.
00:31:08.400 --> 00:31:11.759
Right, because you think of storytelling or narrative, you're thinking marketing copy, right?
00:31:11.839 --> 00:31:20.640
People naturally grab, I mean, it's not the case, but the natural, we'll call it the new, you know, the the normie, they're gonna think it's communications, right?
00:31:20.880 --> 00:31:26.799
But this is where I feel, but this is the thing I always say that like this the story, the scenario, that is just the beginning.
00:31:26.960 --> 00:31:28.720
That is right, that is the tool.
00:31:28.960 --> 00:31:32.240
You're taking the tool and you're putting it out there and you're not letting people use the tool.
00:31:32.480 --> 00:31:53.440
And and so for me, like scenarios and narratives, and this was kind of why I went back to grad school and I did my narrative environments degree, because I wanted to understand like how do you take deep narrative theory and leverage it in a way where people see the value in it as a tool of thinking about potential futures, as something in the same way that you would think about a financial model.
00:31:53.839 --> 00:31:56.400
Like that was the analog I was trying to make, right?
00:31:56.799 --> 00:32:01.759
And and we look at financial models, which are predictive kind of technologies and tools.
00:32:01.920 --> 00:32:04.960
Nobody takes a spreadsheet and says, like, well, here it is, this is what you do.
00:32:05.039 --> 00:32:06.400
They say, How do we run the numbers?
00:32:06.559 --> 00:32:07.920
How do we shape shift this thing?
00:32:08.160 --> 00:32:12.400
How do we essentially query the tool to say, like, what is the best outcome here?
00:32:12.480 --> 00:32:12.720
Right.
00:32:12.799 --> 00:32:14.480
There's multiple kind of paths forward.
00:32:14.720 --> 00:32:17.920
And with scenarios and with kind of narrative building, it's that same.
00:32:18.000 --> 00:32:19.759
It's a prototype of a possible future.
00:32:19.920 --> 00:32:23.200
If I've done my job well, you should want to interrogate it.
00:32:23.519 --> 00:32:26.880
You should, it should create a discursive moment, right?
00:32:27.039 --> 00:32:31.599
It should be something where you're like, I like this, but there's a tension here that I'm not super comfortable with.
00:32:31.839 --> 00:32:36.240
Let's pull that component out of the scenario and plug something else in and see how it runs.
00:32:36.640 --> 00:32:49.759
And so, because of that, you know, it was really important to us that the Foresight team was nested within the CTO's organization, because what that enabled then was the scenario was not the end game.
00:32:49.839 --> 00:32:51.279
The story was not the end game.
00:32:51.519 --> 00:32:57.200
The end game was an input into an acquisition process, right?
00:32:57.359 --> 00:33:09.119
Or kind of in an MA kind of format, or like an input into um an industry strategy, strategic intent and realization program, or an input into a product development roadmap.
00:33:09.519 --> 00:33:13.279
And that's that that's much more quantifiable, right?
00:33:13.519 --> 00:33:16.799
Because then you're directly impacting the revenue outputs.
00:33:17.039 --> 00:33:33.200
That's why like I feel like the solutions and the strategy parts, you know, a lot of it used to stop at the scenario, but having that real connection with, you know, feeding the innovation pipeline, feeding the strategy variables, the outcomes that could impact revenue.
00:33:33.359 --> 00:33:37.200
But like, you know, you I mean, this group has grown so much.
00:33:37.279 --> 00:33:41.440
I mean, how does it feel to have created something that has out lasted your tenure?
00:33:41.599 --> 00:33:50.640
Because so many of these practices once that we'll call it the uh the force of nature, which I think would be an apt description of you.
00:33:50.960 --> 00:33:52.640
Um the force of nature leaves.
00:33:53.759 --> 00:33:59.920
Oh yeah, you know, I takes one to know one, but it's like when you have when you have that, it dies.
00:34:00.240 --> 00:34:02.319
It dies a lot, you know.
00:34:02.559 --> 00:34:04.880
Yeah, and it's you know, how does it feel?
00:34:05.200 --> 00:34:06.720
I have to well, I will say this.
00:34:06.880 --> 00:34:13.599
It feels really good, but I have to give credit to like the folks at Autodesk as well, because I think they were willing to receive that, right?
00:34:13.840 --> 00:34:21.519
And we had very importantly a CEO and other executive leadership who were really supportive of that group.
00:34:21.760 --> 00:34:25.599
So, like Andrew wanted the Foresight team, he wanted that practice.
00:34:25.840 --> 00:34:34.159
He came to us often when he had some level of uncertainty that felt quite volatile that he wanted us to explore further.
00:34:34.480 --> 00:34:40.480
You're like his Rainbow Six, like secret, you know, it was so we were like secret superpower.
00:34:40.639 --> 00:34:42.559
I mean, you know, of course, you know.
00:34:42.880 --> 00:34:49.920
And I will say, like, I think Erin is a formidable leader and she has expanded the capabilities of what foresight is inside of Autodesk.
00:34:50.079 --> 00:34:55.760
I think I had a small part to do with what that team has become now and what that practice has become.
00:34:56.000 --> 00:35:04.719
But, you know, I think the the organization itself like lends itself culturally to want foresight there, and the practitioners really have a passion for it.
00:35:04.880 --> 00:35:11.679
And so I think half the battle, and you've probably seen this in the work that you do as well, it's about like fluency building and education.
00:35:11.840 --> 00:35:15.280
Yeah, you know, folks just didn't have the language, they didn't have the language to talk about it.
00:35:15.360 --> 00:35:18.960
And once they found it, they were like super tapped in.
00:35:19.440 --> 00:35:24.320
It's championship, usefulness, and fluency.
00:35:24.559 --> 00:35:31.360
Like you have to have the culture, you have to have people that are supporting it, finding it, they're the people that keep it going, right?
00:35:31.519 --> 00:35:41.280
Beyond the the actual execution, and then it's people view its usefulness, and then people understand how to speak the language so that they understand the value, right?
00:35:41.599 --> 00:35:45.039
So now let's talk scale.
00:35:47.920 --> 00:35:49.440
So this is this is awesome.
00:35:49.679 --> 00:35:52.079
So you are congratulations, you are in a new role.
00:35:52.159 --> 00:35:54.800
This this is being taped uh early April.
00:35:54.960 --> 00:35:58.639
Uh uh, but you uh five days in.
00:35:58.960 --> 00:36:00.239
Five days in.
00:36:00.719 --> 00:36:02.639
Um, but you've been there a while.
00:36:02.800 --> 00:36:06.880
So maybe we can just step back before we kind of like do the drum roll.
00:36:07.039 --> 00:36:07.199
Yeah.
00:36:07.440 --> 00:36:33.679
But they're one of and I admire their firm as one as an architectural design leader in the world, but two is because they have one of the best foresight practices and they use it, they wield it not only to communicate the future, but it shows clients it is a self-serving thing because it serves shows the clients that, well, you kind of want us because we're thinking about things that nobody else is.
00:36:33.760 --> 00:36:35.840
And that's I can future proof the work.
00:36:36.159 --> 00:36:37.199
Beautiful, right?
00:36:37.280 --> 00:36:37.599
Yeah.
00:36:37.840 --> 00:36:38.559
So okay.
00:36:38.719 --> 00:36:40.960
So you see you left Autodesk, you step into a role.
00:36:41.440 --> 00:36:42.480
So let's talk about that.
00:36:42.639 --> 00:36:47.119
This yeah, so I I um I hadn't left Autodesk as yet.
00:36:47.199 --> 00:36:52.400
Um, Joseph Hargrave, who was the global director of Foresight at the time, he has now stepped into a new role.
00:36:52.480 --> 00:36:54.880
He heads up all of Arab University globally.
00:36:54.960 --> 00:36:59.599
Um, and he was one of my earliest mentors actually in Foresight um back in the day.
00:36:59.840 --> 00:37:01.920
But he knows his stuff he knows his stuff.
00:37:02.159 --> 00:37:03.280
He knows his stuff.
00:37:03.599 --> 00:37:10.719
I I don't know if they'll let me talk about my my like why why he made me, he's a read, he's one of the reasons I went and got my, you know, went back to UH.
00:37:11.199 --> 00:37:12.079
That's amazing.
00:37:12.320 --> 00:37:13.519
I have to tell him that sometime.
00:37:13.599 --> 00:37:26.239
But you know, he is definitely he's a wonderful and he knows it's not just about knowing the tools, but he knows how to like he he just knows the full body of it.
00:37:26.320 --> 00:37:29.920
And and it's a great, I mean, to have a mentor, it's it's great to have somebody like that.
00:37:30.239 --> 00:37:34.880
And he knows how to talk, he knows how to talk about it in context, right?
00:37:34.960 --> 00:37:44.239
And I think that's what matters is like you can have the academic kind of like fervor, but if you don't have the language and the storytelling capability, I think foresight can fall flat sometimes.
00:37:44.400 --> 00:37:51.599
But anyway, so he he had reached out to me like when I I think I had had my daughter maybe six weeks prior.
00:37:55.039 --> 00:37:57.679
He was like, hey, uh we have this open role.
00:37:57.760 --> 00:38:03.599
It, you know, the previous um America's leader for foresight had had left a couple years before that.
00:38:03.840 --> 00:38:06.239
It was the still the height of the pandemic.
00:38:06.480 --> 00:38:10.480
And he reached out saying, Would you be open to interviewing for this for this position?
00:38:10.639 --> 00:38:15.199
We've put it out competitively, and it's for the America's region leader for foresight.
00:38:15.360 --> 00:38:16.960
And I said, Yes, sure.
00:38:17.199 --> 00:38:25.599
Not really knowing, like maybe comprehending fully what that would entail, and still, in some sense of of Matt Leaf brain fog, I'll say.
00:38:25.920 --> 00:38:27.519
That's a big yeah, exactly.
00:38:27.599 --> 00:38:29.519
I mean, like, yeah, the first uh first year.
00:38:30.159 --> 00:38:30.960
Listen, that's your first child.
00:38:31.199 --> 00:38:32.079
And it was my first child.
00:38:32.159 --> 00:38:33.599
It was my first child, right?
00:38:33.679 --> 00:38:35.199
Yeah, first child's first time.
00:38:35.440 --> 00:38:35.920
Horrendous.
00:38:36.239 --> 00:38:37.599
He really got me at my lowest point.
00:38:39.519 --> 00:38:42.880
You're navigating, like you're failing every day.
00:38:43.199 --> 00:38:43.599
Everything.
00:38:43.840 --> 00:38:44.639
There's no sleep.
00:38:44.880 --> 00:38:46.239
Listen, there's I yeah.
00:38:46.400 --> 00:38:55.920
I came out of that interview and I had my husband like listening at the door, and I was like, You have to tell me if I am saying grown-up words because I am talking to grown-ups and I need to know that this is legible.
00:38:56.719 --> 00:38:57.519
That's awesome.
00:38:57.760 --> 00:38:58.239
Oh my god.
00:38:58.480 --> 00:39:04.960
It was, you know, and but it was also kind of it felt a little bit like a homecoming as well, because you know, I had been at AirRup previously.
00:39:05.119 --> 00:39:08.000
It was Air Up was my first experience in foresight.
00:39:08.079 --> 00:39:13.920
They were the ones that gave me the language, they were the ones that exposed me to the tools and the and the methodology.
00:39:14.000 --> 00:39:15.360
And so like coming home.
00:39:15.440 --> 00:39:16.000
You're coming home.
00:39:16.239 --> 00:39:16.719
It felt like that.
00:39:16.800 --> 00:39:23.440
It did after you're on a on that journey, walkabout, you know, go to the mountains, meditate for a year in silence.
00:39:23.599 --> 00:39:26.239
I mean, now you're like, I did some soul searching, you know.
00:39:26.480 --> 00:39:32.159
Um, and then I and then I kind of and then I came back and um I came into this new role.
00:39:32.320 --> 00:39:41.440
There wasn't a team, you know, the Americas region specifically, and for context, Airp is a global design and engineering firm.
00:39:41.599 --> 00:39:47.679
Uh, we have 90 offices, 18,000 people and growing, but it's a London headquartered organization.
00:39:47.920 --> 00:39:53.440
So the majority of the Foresight team sits quite squarely in London.
00:39:53.679 --> 00:40:01.679
And in this restructure, we have kind of done away with the regional format in the hopes of encouraging more global ways of working.
00:40:01.920 --> 00:40:10.159
But at that time, this was like 2021, 2022, it we were still very heavily kind of in these siloed regional contexts.
00:40:10.400 --> 00:40:17.760
Um, and so I came in as a solo practitioner, basically, um, with the task of you know rebuilding Foresight Fluency.
00:40:17.840 --> 00:40:20.800
The firm had had a lot of turnover due to the pandemic.
00:40:20.880 --> 00:40:23.360
I think most organizations had experienced that.
00:40:23.599 --> 00:40:32.079
Um and so there was a there were principals who had kind of been there for previous versions of the Foresight team.
00:40:32.239 --> 00:40:41.599
And then there were a lot of new folks who had come in who had no previous kind of exposure to the practice or to the value it can bring to their disciplines in their work on a daily basis.
00:40:41.920 --> 00:40:47.679
And so, you know, half the battle was rebuilding Foresight fluency across the region.
00:40:47.920 --> 00:41:07.039
And then the other one was like translating what Foresight could do out in market because we had both an internal remit to work with our leadership and help them think about what Foresight could do for the health, well-being, and and kind of you know, uh ongoing legacy of Airup.
00:41:07.360 --> 00:41:13.199
But then we also had to go to like our clients and say, hire us because we can future proof your work.
00:41:13.519 --> 00:41:20.079
You know, we're not just kind of building the work, we're making sure it's going to be around for the next 50 to 100 years or whatever that kind of timeline is.
00:41:20.559 --> 00:41:48.559
And I think, you know, now we have this really kind of beautiful concept that we're bringing back in that came from our founder of Airup around like total design, which is how do you kind of bring together skills and mindsets and different perspectives and different regional contexts to explore kind of the widest possible, you know, problem area so that you can kind of bring forward the best possible solution, right?
00:41:48.960 --> 00:41:53.760
So he was talking futurist language, he was talking foresight language without really talking about it.
00:41:54.239 --> 00:42:05.840
Because that's the beauty of our field is that people from all the different experiences in the walks of life, the kind of futurist they are, like that is what he's just yeah, his philosophy.
00:42:06.079 --> 00:42:18.559
Do you think that because of that philosophy is why because I I can't think please tell me if are there other foresight or organizations like ARPs in the world, like at other firms?
00:42:19.199 --> 00:42:21.679
I think there's there are starting to be foresight.
00:42:22.800 --> 00:42:23.360
So I see what you mean.
00:42:25.679 --> 00:42:30.079
Well, I think they see what you're doing and the effectiveness of it, and they're probably like, yeah, we probably should do that.
00:42:30.239 --> 00:42:37.280
And but I'm wondering, like, but that philosophy of his is if that didn't exist, would it foresight be?
00:42:37.360 --> 00:42:38.239
That's what I wonder.
00:42:38.320 --> 00:42:42.800
Like that would it, would it be like the DNA that legitimizes it, right?
00:42:43.199 --> 00:42:45.440
Yeah, I I do think it's ingrained in the culture.
00:42:45.599 --> 00:43:04.400
I think that when you come to Air Up, you are most definitely kind of buying into this this idea of like being, you know, perpetually curious, wanting to not just do the job, but do it go above and beyond and and think about like what else could we be responding to?
00:43:04.480 --> 00:43:05.760
Like, is this the right question?
00:43:05.920 --> 00:43:07.199
Is this the right research question?
00:43:07.280 --> 00:43:09.199
Is this the right project question?
00:43:09.519 --> 00:43:11.119
Do I have the right team in place?
00:43:11.280 --> 00:43:13.840
Do we need to upskill ourselves in some way?
00:43:14.079 --> 00:43:16.880
Are there new emerging technologies we should be leveraging?
00:43:17.119 --> 00:43:17.360
Right.
00:43:17.519 --> 00:43:25.199
It's this constant like wanting to learn and expand, I think, that lends itself to foresight work and to a foresight practice.
00:43:25.360 --> 00:43:29.119
And I think our, you know, our executive leadership is also very supportive of that.
00:43:29.199 --> 00:43:38.320
And so we as part of Arup University, we don't just have um like a consulting mandate to to go out and do the work for our clients.
00:43:38.400 --> 00:43:48.480
We also work very closely with our leadership inside the organization um to to help Arab think about like how do we how do we stick around to make it to our hundredth birthday?
00:43:48.960 --> 00:43:49.519
What does that look like?
00:43:49.679 --> 00:43:51.360
What does Arup want to be at that time?
00:43:51.599 --> 00:43:53.440
You know, we're we're we're coming up on eighty years.
00:43:54.480 --> 00:43:55.280
Oh, eighty years, okay.
00:43:55.599 --> 00:43:57.360
So twenty forty six.
00:43:57.679 --> 00:43:57.920
Yeah.
00:43:58.480 --> 00:43:58.639
Yeah.
00:43:58.880 --> 00:44:02.559
Well You know, and and the way the buildings are built.
00:44:03.039 --> 00:44:05.360
You know, it's for the building for the future, right?
00:44:05.599 --> 00:44:08.079
But it's also different between different places.
00:44:08.320 --> 00:44:17.199
I think when in our pre interview, pre-interview call we were talking about like the way you build here in Boston versus Los Angeles, Singapore, Mumbai, Lagos.
00:44:17.599 --> 00:44:20.239
Like you guys you operate in all those worlds.
00:44:20.320 --> 00:44:21.440
Like you operate in that.
00:44:21.519 --> 00:44:23.920
Like how do you think it's relevant?
00:44:24.239 --> 00:44:25.119
Like foresight.
00:44:26.320 --> 00:44:44.400
How do you how do you do foresight that's relevant globally without kind of because it's it's a thing when you have to go to 18,000 people, you have such different uh things to make sure that there's connection to do you have other people almost like foresight futurist agents, you know?
00:44:44.559 --> 00:44:45.840
I can think of layers, right?
00:44:46.000 --> 00:44:53.119
The core team, the adjacent, and then the kind of the the interested ones that kind of contextually design it, right?
00:44:54.079 --> 00:44:54.639
Yeah, yeah.
00:44:54.719 --> 00:45:06.159
So so we have so the really cool thing about Arab is so the core team, the core foresight group is within Arab University is about plus or minus like 40 people globally.
00:45:07.119 --> 00:45:12.800
So imagine 40 people being responsible for 18,000 people across the organization, right?
00:45:13.119 --> 00:45:13.679
Internally.
00:45:14.079 --> 00:45:19.280
And then we have over 60 disciplines inside of Arab, like engineering and design disciplines.
00:45:19.679 --> 00:45:30.719
So that means we are having to reimagine um new skills, new approaches, new methodologies, new tools in all of those disciplines and think about how those evolve over time.
00:45:30.880 --> 00:45:40.639
And that's everything from like digital tools and infrastructure to water, to aviation, to roads and streets, like you name it, we are we have our hands in it.
00:45:41.119 --> 00:45:50.960
People listening to this podcast have probably walked through, sat through, been in something that Air Up has touched, um, some project around the world, stadiums, roads, whatever, right?
00:45:51.199 --> 00:45:57.199
And so the the way we do it is we don't always do the same foresight work everywhere for everyone.
00:45:57.360 --> 00:46:07.679
Um you know, if we kind of like allude back to to that, you know, I think what is quite a perceptive but now overused quote from William Gibson, the future is here, it's just unevenly distributed.
00:46:07.920 --> 00:46:09.519
We have to reckon with that, yeah, right?
00:46:09.760 --> 00:46:10.000
Oh, yeah.
00:46:10.159 --> 00:46:11.199
We have to reckon with that.
00:46:11.360 --> 00:46:17.039
Um, and and I think part of it is to go back to like you can't make soup for the world.
00:46:17.280 --> 00:46:24.239
Um, you know, not everybody is kind of ready to hear or ready to kind of meet you where you are at any given future, right?
00:46:24.400 --> 00:46:34.320
So I would say from a regulatory perspective, you know, the country that you and I sit in currently is not the most advanced when it comes to adopting like sustainability measures and things like that.
00:46:34.559 --> 00:46:35.440
No, not at all.
00:46:35.679 --> 00:46:38.880
But we do find a lot of receptivity in parts of Europe.
00:46:39.199 --> 00:46:46.400
And so that's where we are starting to push some of our work around the principles of like regenerative design and circular economies.
00:46:46.559 --> 00:46:49.360
It's work we've been doing for for years now, right?
00:46:49.840 --> 00:47:02.639
Well, I think about the UX field, the UX field like in service design being the journey mapping and all of the optimization, because Europe was very much limited in space and limited in what it needed to optimize.
00:47:02.719 --> 00:47:04.480
Like service design took off there.
00:47:04.559 --> 00:47:07.440
It never took off here as a as a discipline.
00:47:07.599 --> 00:47:08.800
It's the same thing like over there.
00:47:08.880 --> 00:47:24.079
I think foresight, I see more activity in the Middle East and in Europe and in um Southeast Asia doing for doing like I would say the the pushing the envelope with futures work because they know that they need to.
00:47:25.599 --> 00:47:26.480
They have the the limit.
00:47:26.639 --> 00:47:35.920
Yeah, they have lim they they don't have the I don't know, if the the the luxury of uh waste in that way that sometimes is here.
00:47:36.480 --> 00:47:36.719
Yeah.
00:47:36.960 --> 00:47:40.960
Yeah, perceived luxury, I would say, like maybe, you know, but perceived luxury, yeah.
00:47:41.119 --> 00:47:51.679
You know, and and so I think what I have to think about alongside the the rest of the wider team is like how do we how do we take into context, and this goes back to that total design piece, right?
00:47:51.760 --> 00:47:56.960
Which is like how do we take into context all of these different cultures, all of these different perspectives?
00:47:57.199 --> 00:48:00.000
And now the great thing is we do have the 90 offices, right?
00:48:00.079 --> 00:48:08.400
So I can reach out to somebody in like Kuala Lumpur or like Hong Kong or Sydney or whatever it is and say, hey, tell me about what you're doing over there right now.
00:48:08.559 --> 00:48:10.639
Like how do you think something like this would land, right?
00:48:10.719 --> 00:48:19.280
Or can I speak to a client who you are currently working with so I can get some in real life, real time kind of data points to pressure test the work.
00:48:19.840 --> 00:48:53.280
We would do um we would do projects with uh we would do design fiction and we would work with we had local experts at the with McKinsey, we would do we'd have somebody in country to look at like I learned like in Malaysia about we were giving this whole thing about uh in the 2040, like this artist artisans, they would get collect the from the garbage patch, they would collect the plastics and they would turn it into crafter or jewelry or things, but there was a whole name to it, there was a whole tradition to it.
00:48:53.599 --> 00:48:54.639
I wouldn't have known that.
00:48:55.280 --> 00:49:15.920
And you have to you have to have those people to give it the texture and the context that someone can see that it's like this is authentic and I should I could I I want to read this, I want to actually you know just understand this, otherwise it just yeah, and it's not about like I hate these terms, like unconscious bias or this or that.
00:49:16.079 --> 00:49:17.519
Everyone's got bias, everyone's got the experience.
00:49:17.679 --> 00:49:20.800
Of course, if you are gonna come from what you know, yeah, if you're human, right?
00:49:20.880 --> 00:49:34.639
It's like but at the same time, if you just acknowledge that, okay, these are your perspectives, let's get that's to me the the thoughtful thing to do is like how do we make it relevant for the people that the real audience that is gonna read it, right?
00:49:34.719 --> 00:49:37.039
And yeah, just but you said something really key, right?
00:49:37.199 --> 00:49:38.559
The thoughtful thing to do.
00:49:38.719 --> 00:49:48.559
Like I think there is so much humility required in the work that we do because and this is why I go back to saying I am I am a humble mediator.
00:49:48.719 --> 00:49:56.559
I am like the person that connects the dots and sits, you know, sits in the room, sometimes like a fly on the wall, to say, like, what am I hearing?
00:49:56.639 --> 00:50:02.079
What are the whispers of possible futures that I'm starting to hear, you know, and then be kind of the sense maker.
00:50:02.159 --> 00:50:03.840
But but it's never my vision.
00:50:03.920 --> 00:50:09.920
It's never, I mean, I have my own little side projects, but like if I'm in the work that I'm doing, it's never my vision, right?
00:50:10.159 --> 00:50:12.159
I have been successful, yes.
00:50:13.039 --> 00:50:20.719
Speaking of side projects, um I I appreciate you with the segues.
00:50:20.800 --> 00:50:21.039
Yes.
00:50:21.119 --> 00:50:24.960
I mean, you have uh also a fellow showrunner.
00:50:25.119 --> 00:50:27.679
You have a show with Tobias, Tobias, your host, your coach.
00:50:27.920 --> 00:50:31.119
Tobias Ravel, yes, the great the magnificence.
00:50:31.760 --> 00:50:35.119
Talk about where that spark, you know.
00:50:35.360 --> 00:50:36.000
Yeah.
00:50:36.800 --> 00:50:41.119
This is really cool because we need we need more conversations.
00:50:41.360 --> 00:50:42.639
We need more shows like this.
00:50:42.719 --> 00:50:44.000
And it's thank you.
00:50:44.159 --> 00:50:44.480
Thank you.
00:50:44.880 --> 00:50:45.280
Great.
00:50:45.360 --> 00:50:49.039
Um Yeah, so we have um we have a podcast called Future-ish.
00:50:49.760 --> 00:50:58.480
Um, because we kind of were like, we're not really doing it's not like super futures, but it's future-ish, you know.
00:50:58.559 --> 00:51:00.239
It's like it's kind of there.
00:51:00.400 --> 00:51:04.000
Um, and we're not super serious about it, but we're like kind of serious about it, you know.
00:51:04.159 --> 00:51:05.280
Um Do you think we're serious?
00:51:05.360 --> 00:51:06.239
Do you think we're serious here?
00:51:06.400 --> 00:51:06.639
No.
00:51:06.880 --> 00:51:12.079
We have the whole point is to educate, but we gotta have like, yeah, I'm not no.
00:51:12.400 --> 00:51:17.679
I mean, if you can't laugh at like the potential peril of the future, then um Yeah.
00:51:17.760 --> 00:51:18.239
Oh man.
00:51:18.800 --> 00:51:22.320
You know, I have a whole prepper community that I can put you in touch with if you want to build a bunker.
00:51:22.400 --> 00:51:27.199
But honestly, then you need a support group, honestly, because this work can be really like mind melding.
00:51:28.159 --> 00:51:29.039
Oh, absolutely.
00:51:29.199 --> 00:51:37.199
Especially when you're like when you I mean, we are looking like we're in like the beautiful the the the backyard garage and beautiful mind.
00:51:37.440 --> 00:51:54.400
I mean, like everything is start, it starts to to you know kind of get to you, but yeah, but I love the I love the name because I want people that on this show that have just different perspectives, different conversations, and I just don't want to just talk to myself.
00:51:54.639 --> 00:52:01.119
So because that would I could board myself my I'd border my but you have you guys have really interesting banter between each other.
00:52:01.519 --> 00:52:01.840
We do.
00:52:01.920 --> 00:52:03.679
It's it's very like sibling rivalry.
00:52:03.760 --> 00:52:16.079
I mean, you know, it started because it started because um, you know, Tobias and I have both gotten, and and the funny thing is is like he and I both started as graduate researchers when we were doing our master's in London.
00:52:16.159 --> 00:52:17.760
So he was at the RCA, I was at St.
00:52:17.920 --> 00:52:21.760
Martin's, um, and we were at an Arab's Foresight team.
00:52:21.840 --> 00:52:23.920
And then we both kind of left and did our own thing.
00:52:24.079 --> 00:52:30.800
I went more corporate, he went academia, and then Joseph pulled us back in together at the same time, basically.
00:52:30.960 --> 00:52:32.719
So he was our design futures leader.
00:52:32.880 --> 00:52:36.800
He's since kind of moved into another part of the Arab University.
00:52:36.960 --> 00:52:44.000
He leads our strategy office now, but we came back at the same time through like peer pressure, is what I would call it at this point.
00:52:44.320 --> 00:52:51.840
But um, but you know, we got to this point where we're like, hey, we're not actually getting to do the the foresight work we love.
00:52:51.920 --> 00:52:54.480
Like we are advocating for it for our teams.
00:52:54.719 --> 00:53:02.800
We are facilitating it for other people to do, but we're not getting to do the nitty-gritty like horizon scanning, signal gathering, all of that stuff.
00:53:03.039 --> 00:53:06.639
Um, and we would send each other signals all the time in WhatsApp.
00:53:06.800 --> 00:53:17.039
And so um, a couple folks have kind of come to us and said, like, maybe I want to say jokingly, because I can't imagine anyone would seriously say this to us, but they were like, you should start a podcast, it would be really fun.
00:53:17.360 --> 00:53:20.320
And so Tobias and I just nobody's doing a podcast.
00:53:20.559 --> 00:53:23.440
No, we're like because there are so many good podcasts.
00:53:23.599 --> 00:53:24.239
You know how many are active?
00:53:24.320 --> 00:53:25.039
Well, hold on a second.
00:53:25.360 --> 00:53:29.119
This one included how many out of like the the couple million podcasts that are out there.
00:53:29.199 --> 00:53:31.280
Do you know how many are actually active?
00:53:31.519 --> 00:53:32.320
No, how many?
00:53:32.480 --> 00:53:33.519
Like 50,000.
00:53:33.920 --> 00:53:34.320
No way.
00:53:34.559 --> 00:53:36.480
I thought it was so much more saturated than that.
00:53:36.880 --> 00:53:51.119
No, I mean the thing is is of terms of real consistent, I mean, it probably could be higher, maybe a hundred thousand, but there's really consistent like shows out of like the million, there's only a fraction of them that are like 50,000 that are really producing.
00:53:51.760 --> 00:53:53.760
Well, that makes you feel better actually regularly.
00:53:54.079 --> 00:54:01.760
Yeah, so like that's what I feel like, you know, like Future Pod and your show and my show and Julian's show.
00:54:01.920 --> 00:54:06.400
Yeah, you know, Julian Bleaker was on the show, so you've got if you're listening, you should totally check that out.
00:54:06.480 --> 00:54:16.079
But he's got a great um thing he does on he's the you know originator of design fiction, but I think there's some really good and there's the varied conversations.
00:54:16.159 --> 00:54:20.159
We all do very different shows, yeah, and that's what's awesome.
00:54:20.480 --> 00:54:27.360
Yeah, and so Tobias and I were basically like, all right, we need to do something because we both felt very blah in moments about we love the work we do.
00:54:27.440 --> 00:54:27.920
I want to say that.
00:54:28.079 --> 00:54:29.679
Yeah, I don't want to get in trouble with anyone.
00:54:30.079 --> 00:54:36.880
Like, no, you are I mean, no, it's it's there's never a question of you loving the war, and that's that's never that's never a question, I wouldn't think.
00:54:37.199 --> 00:54:48.480
But but we w I wanted to like be talking about signals again, and um yeah, and so we just basically took we were like, how do we take our WhatsApp like chat and put it in a podcast?
00:54:48.639 --> 00:55:00.880
And so it comes out every two weeks, you know, one of us brings a signal to talk about each episode, and we basically like dissect it and trash talk a little bit and you know try to nice, yeah.
00:55:01.039 --> 00:55:02.559
No, I've listened to a few of them, yeah.
00:55:02.639 --> 00:55:09.679
Yeah, yeah, but it is very like sibling sibling rivalry, and then just gonna say that sibling rivalry is exactly, exactly yes.
00:55:09.920 --> 00:55:11.360
Yeah, it's exactly what it is.
00:55:11.440 --> 00:55:14.159
And um, this year we're bringing on guests as well.
00:55:14.239 --> 00:55:16.400
So like every few episodes we'll have some guests.
00:55:16.480 --> 00:55:21.920
Um we've just started doing that, so um, we're kind of like playing with that format as well.
00:55:22.000 --> 00:55:27.199
But it's just it's a side project, it's something to keep us excited about futures work.
00:55:27.280 --> 00:55:28.960
Um it's good you have permission.
00:55:29.039 --> 00:55:37.920
It's good that you have a company that understands that you're a great voice in the community and to have you be able to talk and share that only benefits them.
00:55:38.079 --> 00:55:40.000
Yeah, only it only benefits them.
00:55:40.239 --> 00:55:43.760
You know, and it's and it's just to clarify, like it's not affiliated with Arab in any way.
00:55:44.239 --> 00:55:50.320
No, and I want that's why I wanted to make sure you had the disclaimer, but still it's like there are places it's like, you know, no mom, no, no.
00:55:50.960 --> 00:55:55.440
But you know, as you know, as respect for your time, and we're totally gonna have a round two.
00:55:55.679 --> 00:56:04.320
I know that, but uh this is I want to kind of get a little bit of rapid fire, but I want to get into some could continue the fun, the funness.
00:56:04.639 --> 00:56:18.320
I don't know, like it's not even a word, the funness of the podcast talk is like some of the things that I don't know, people would call it the interrogation, it's not the interrogation, but I want to talk about like um books, methods, architecture.
00:56:18.559 --> 00:56:29.760
So, okay, so you talked about like some we talked about some of the things like I've been vibe coding this thing, and I think as a designer, when you get into this world of like you build something, it's so beautiful, and then they kill it.
00:56:30.079 --> 00:56:37.599
Or I worked at Sapient for a while, I worked at some ad agencies, and it's like you work on these cool things and they just never implement it, right?
00:56:37.679 --> 00:56:40.320
You give it to the client and it never sees the light of the day.
00:56:40.400 --> 00:56:46.559
Yeah, like what is their what's a specul what's a speculative piece like a project like you wish had been built?
00:56:46.719 --> 00:56:52.239
Like what was I worked on personally or that I wish like, uh, yeah, there's somebody where they yeah.
00:56:52.559 --> 00:57:05.519
If it's a good thing, you know, you know what was cool, and it did end up happening, but like seven years later, was I wish that we had been able to we did these four future scenarios at Autodesk, um, imagining what the world would look like like 10 years out.
00:57:05.760 --> 00:57:17.280
And I thought that work was super interesting because we were taking emerging technologies that our research labs were actually working on and evolving, um, and then kind of like gaming out those scenarios.
00:57:17.440 --> 00:57:21.760
And I really wish we were able to kind of like build those out because some of them are really cool.
00:57:21.920 --> 00:57:35.760
But now what has happened with that is one of the scenarios around um uh the Olympics and the kind of the a city looking back on the Olympics that they successfully delivered that did not deplete this the city.
00:57:36.079 --> 00:57:46.079
Um, one of my friends who was um doing brand partnerships for Autodesk at the time, she took that scenario and went to the LA 28 Olympics team like years ago.
00:57:46.239 --> 00:57:52.880
And that was a starting point for a conversation to build a partnership with Autodesk and the LA 28 Olympics.
00:57:53.039 --> 00:57:59.519
And last year she sent me a big bouquet of flowers randomly, and I was like, why are you sending me this?
00:57:59.679 --> 00:58:02.480
I haven't I haven't worked at Autodesk in like four years.
00:58:02.719 --> 00:58:16.000
She's like, I just wanted to thank you because tomorrow there'll be a press release coming out that Autodesk has been named the platform partner for the LA 28 Olympics, and it wouldn't have happened if your project hadn't been created, the Four Futures Project.
00:58:16.079 --> 00:58:21.840
She was like, This is what I took to that leadership team, and it's something they keep coming back to every single time we talk.
00:58:22.000 --> 00:58:22.960
So that was amazing.
00:58:23.280 --> 00:58:25.360
Yeah, that's gonna make they feel good.
00:58:25.679 --> 00:58:28.880
So you've had some great mentors, like like Joe.
00:58:29.039 --> 00:58:36.880
Yeah, but you know, any futurist worth their salt has a library that really annoys their significant other that they wonder what that they want.
00:58:37.440 --> 00:58:48.800
So, but but there's gotta be that one book that rewired like people who've listened to this show probably know the one I'm talking about for me, but what's what's something that kind of like how you think about the future?
00:58:48.880 --> 00:58:53.599
Like what kind of was like mind-blowing, like you know, sparkly things coming out of the top of your head.
00:58:54.000 --> 00:59:08.480
Yeah, it wasn't it wasn't a book, and I read a lot, and I have lots of amazing friends who um who have amazing books that I read, but it's that essay, it's that defuturing the image of the future essay.
00:59:08.960 --> 00:59:11.760
It is that was it was explain that for people.
00:59:11.840 --> 00:59:13.119
I don't think many people have heard that.
00:59:13.199 --> 00:59:13.840
That's yeah.
00:59:14.000 --> 00:59:18.719
So there's this there was an essay in Walker Center magazine by Andrew Blauveld.
00:59:19.039 --> 00:59:23.920
He wrote it back in 2020, so this is like six years ago now from the time of recording this.
00:59:24.320 --> 00:59:26.800
And he talks about this idea.
00:59:26.960 --> 00:59:33.519
First, there's that line that I think I had shared, which was like, every act of design is in itself a small act of future making.
00:59:33.599 --> 00:59:35.920
And that to me felt so profound.
00:59:36.000 --> 00:59:39.199
I was like, aha, like I have like this is what I do.
00:59:39.280 --> 00:59:42.800
Like this is, you know, you talked about that aha moment of like linking back to architecture.
00:59:42.960 --> 00:59:44.800
That felt really validating in that way.
00:59:44.960 --> 00:59:54.239
And I have since kind of expanded to say, like, every act of design, of inquiry, of technological advancement, of you know, of building, like that is an act of future making.
00:59:54.400 --> 00:59:59.280
So so talking about architects making buildings is an act of future making, right?
00:59:59.440 --> 01:00:02.480
Thinking about um new tools is an act of future making.
01:00:02.559 --> 01:00:24.480
And so I just love this idea that he has said that um, you know, we are both constrained by the futures we have created, and also we must kind of, you know, work ourselves out of these futures like going to Mars and um and thinking about the world ending, like those are escapist futures, and we're not doing good enough, basically.
01:00:24.639 --> 01:00:25.599
We need to do better.
01:00:25.760 --> 01:00:38.559
And it was this, you know, even colony like the colonial dream of like futurism is a is a future, is a scenario that we have worked our way into and we need to kind of re-envision, and we're still working through the kind of outputs of that.
01:00:38.800 --> 01:00:44.000
So that is something that's an essay that I honestly assign to every single one of my classes when I teach.
01:00:44.159 --> 01:00:47.360
It's something that frames a lot of my syllabi.
01:00:47.840 --> 01:00:52.480
You must get a hell, I'm I'm sure you get like an uh give them an essay to kind of evaluate the paper.
01:00:52.559 --> 01:00:55.199
Like you must get some really interesting responses.
01:00:55.440 --> 01:00:57.519
Um students.
01:00:57.920 --> 01:01:03.360
You know what I love about teaching is I will I have like half of the cohort every year is very skeptical.
01:01:03.440 --> 01:01:05.840
They're like, You're a snake oil salesman.
01:01:05.920 --> 01:01:07.519
Like that's what you know, salesperson.
01:01:08.159 --> 01:01:10.960
And then the other half is like super psyched about it, right?
01:01:11.039 --> 01:01:12.559
And they're like, oh, this is amazing.
01:01:12.800 --> 01:01:18.480
And usually what happens is I can convert that skeptical half by the end of the semester.
01:01:18.800 --> 01:01:19.519
And it's amazing.
01:01:19.760 --> 01:01:30.639
I got a yeah, I got a funny thing just to connect the so I I did a talk at uh a friend that um from grad school who runs the brand center at Virginia Commonwealth VCU.
01:01:30.960 --> 01:01:37.119
And all these students are doing their masters, they're going into advertising or going, you know, or leveling up their advertising careers.
01:01:37.519 --> 01:01:39.360
So I did like the future of advertising.
01:01:39.440 --> 01:01:41.119
I came in and talked about being a design futurist.
01:01:41.199 --> 01:01:43.119
This is probably like a year or year and a half ago.
01:01:43.760 --> 01:01:46.719
So over the week, this is early on in the AI tools.
01:01:46.960 --> 01:01:59.599
So in a weekend, I oh no, I'm sorry, on a Sunday, and I always just I say with you know, Chat GPT, runway, uh 11 lab, I did a couple different tools.
01:01:59.679 --> 01:02:06.320
I said for the cost of like a hundred dollars in tools, coffee, and my pajamas in six hours.
01:02:06.480 --> 01:02:12.079
Because I showed this to my friend, yeah, and he's like, I'm like, how much would this have cost?
01:02:12.239 --> 01:02:14.079
Like, he's like, half a million dollars.
01:02:14.239 --> 01:02:21.679
He's like, We'd have to get location, craft services, actors, camera, you know, but all all he just rattled it all.
01:02:21.840 --> 01:02:23.039
He used to run um can.
01:02:24.079 --> 01:02:33.519
So and he's wow, and I said, Yeah, it took me, you know, and I showed it as like it was a Nike ad of like uh a future shoe, a women's shoe, um called the Nike Glow.
01:02:33.599 --> 01:02:37.760
It was really really cool looking, had the running and the whole thing.
01:02:38.000 --> 01:02:44.480
And I showed it to him, and I also showed like other um potential jobs and what I showed in the future of the space.
01:02:44.719 --> 01:02:55.599
Half of the audience was terrified, and half of the audience was like excited and electric because they're like because think about it, right?
01:02:55.920 --> 01:03:07.280
You can create concepts and prototype, like you can spec this stuff that you can be an advertising firm and and you could never compete with a big shop, right?
01:03:07.360 --> 01:03:08.960
Or you could just even communicate to a client.
01:03:09.199 --> 01:03:13.599
I think that's the the peril of it, and I think what you're talking about like that essay is great.
01:03:14.000 --> 01:03:22.480
So for signal now, for signals, yeah, uh your your show, what's a signal you're watching that nobody else seems to be paying attention to?
01:03:22.559 --> 01:03:23.519
I I think this is appropriate.
01:03:23.679 --> 01:03:28.800
I don't usually ask this question a lot, but apropos because of your show, like yeah, yeah, for sure.
01:03:29.039 --> 01:03:31.760
So there's a there's like I'll bring up two in particular.
01:03:31.920 --> 01:03:36.400
There one is the the zero G manufacturing, lower earth orbit manufacturing.
01:03:36.480 --> 01:03:36.880
Yeah.
01:03:37.199 --> 01:03:52.239
Um and that feels I especially for like the fact that I sit in AEC and that I've come from Autodesk where they do product design and manufacturing, I'm not hearing enough people in my network talk about that yet.
01:03:52.719 --> 01:03:54.320
And I think we need to be.
01:03:54.480 --> 01:04:03.599
And then the other one, which is like not related to that at all, is so you know, Zoran Mamdani was um elected as mayor of New York City.
01:04:03.840 --> 01:04:12.079
He came up through, you know, I think initially his popularity was like he was a musician and a rapper, and he's tried a bunch of different things.
01:04:12.320 --> 01:04:18.559
Recently in Nepal, they just elected their prime minister, who is also a former rapper.
01:04:19.119 --> 01:04:25.599
Um, and I think there is something here, and I haven't quite figured it out yet.
01:04:25.920 --> 01:04:26.159
Interesting.
01:04:26.400 --> 01:04:38.480
So actually, so so Nepal's um Nepal's kind of like journey to electing their new prime minister was really interesting because the overthrow of the government happened through Discord, which I thought was super, super interesting.
01:04:38.800 --> 01:04:42.480
Yes, and there are I was reading, yes, so we have an episode on this, actually.
01:04:42.639 --> 01:04:44.320
I would urge you to listen to it.
01:04:44.480 --> 01:04:47.519
Oh, not because I'm trying to promote, but because I think it's really interesting.
01:04:47.760 --> 01:04:49.119
Um yeah.
01:04:49.440 --> 01:04:52.079
And and it happened through it happened through Discord.
01:04:52.159 --> 01:04:57.360
They organized the movement through Discord and to the point where like signal, not signal or telegram.
01:04:58.559 --> 01:04:58.880
Wow.
01:04:59.119 --> 01:05:00.079
And I was risking this.
01:05:12.960 --> 01:05:23.119
And so there's something there about the language that we are using to talk about quite conventional government structures, and we are reappropriating that to these virtual realms that I think is super interesting.
01:05:23.280 --> 01:05:33.440
Now, couple that with um what I think is not necessarily a new, but a recontextualization of like the influencer politician, right?
01:05:33.519 --> 01:05:41.760
So we've had the Ronald Reagans and the Arnold Schwarzenegger's, but now we have the Zoran Mamdanis and like Nepal Nepal's um new prime minister.
01:05:41.920 --> 01:05:44.400
And I do think there is a shift happening.
01:05:44.480 --> 01:05:56.800
I feel like there's this undercurrent of something shifting in the political arena where we are feeling like, you know, there's an inadequacy in how politicians have emerged in the last, I'll say 20 years probably.
01:05:57.199 --> 01:05:59.599
Look at our, I mean, the matter, I mean.
01:06:00.159 --> 01:06:02.880
Polarizing figure like Montana, polarizing figure like Trump.
01:06:02.960 --> 01:06:04.159
Trump's a game show host.
01:06:04.320 --> 01:06:04.480
Yes.
01:06:04.719 --> 01:06:08.320
I mean he's a real estate developer, but but his show the apprentices with catapult.
01:06:08.719 --> 01:06:09.360
But it's a populism.
01:06:09.599 --> 01:06:10.880
It's a populism wave, right?
01:06:10.960 --> 01:06:12.559
It's it's the outsider, right?
01:06:12.800 --> 01:06:13.599
Which is very indicative.
01:06:13.679 --> 01:06:19.519
I'm a gen Xer, so we're always forgotten about when they talk about the oh, the boomers have ruined everything.
01:06:19.679 --> 01:06:21.280
The millennials are the saviors.
01:06:21.599 --> 01:06:23.199
And I'm an alder millennial.
01:06:23.440 --> 01:06:23.760
Right.
01:06:23.920 --> 01:06:28.400
It's like the Xers, the forgotten children again, the latchkey children.
01:06:28.719 --> 01:06:30.400
The middle child again.
01:06:30.719 --> 01:06:33.920
And I'm thinking to myself, like, what about us?
01:06:34.000 --> 01:06:35.920
I'm like, yeah, we're just gonna come in and fix it.
01:06:36.079 --> 01:06:43.599
Because also, if you follow generational cycles, yeah, millennials were the they were the greatest generation, they were the ones that fought in Normandy.
01:06:43.760 --> 01:06:50.559
So we were like Gen Xers were like Eisenhower, like the battlefield commanders, and like the boomers of that gen were like FDR.
01:06:50.800 --> 01:06:54.880
So if you think about the cycle of it, it's like, yeah, we're just like the forgotten ones.
01:06:55.039 --> 01:07:06.639
I would offer to you as a signal to look at and I've been um involved in the the space for a while, is is is orbital data centers.
01:07:07.360 --> 01:07:09.039
Because what's happening, what's happening?
01:07:10.639 --> 01:07:12.480
The okay, two things.
01:07:12.960 --> 01:07:33.360
SpaceX bought XAI, which is was the part of Twitter, bought it that is giving them orbital AI capability to now put up data centers and sell because now there's no OSHA, there's no EPA, there's also Sun 24-7, solar, nuclear, all the things you could do.
01:07:33.440 --> 01:07:40.239
And and it's like the we're gonna have because we have a power issue when it comes to powering all the artificial intelligence.
01:07:40.480 --> 01:07:42.480
So it's like you're gonna start to see this.
01:07:42.559 --> 01:07:59.280
Is like to me, yeah, beyond setting people up and like space tourism, this is the first, I think, beyond like mining asteroids, is the real money maker commercialization of it's like the it's like the uh the killer app for commercializing space.
01:07:59.440 --> 01:08:00.159
Nobody's talking.
01:08:00.480 --> 01:08:07.599
I mean, Must talked about it, but there are a few companies, but it's you're gonna see it more like how much can we lift?
01:08:07.760 --> 01:08:11.599
Because I don't have to fight with the town to build a noisy ass data center.
01:08:11.840 --> 01:08:13.360
Like, sorry, I'll have to beat that one.
01:08:13.440 --> 01:08:15.119
Right, a noisy data center next door.
01:08:15.199 --> 01:08:18.720
No, I can just put it 32,000 miles away.
01:08:18.880 --> 01:08:24.239
And I think that that's a really interesting, like what is going to move off planet?
01:08:24.479 --> 01:08:24.960
Mm-hmm.
01:08:25.119 --> 01:08:25.520
Mm-hmm.
01:08:25.680 --> 01:08:26.800
So that's my signal.
01:08:27.039 --> 01:08:29.119
Yeah, but no, I'm definitely going down that rabbit hole.
01:08:29.279 --> 01:08:29.920
Thank you for that for sure.
01:08:30.159 --> 01:08:30.640
You're welcome.
01:08:30.720 --> 01:08:31.199
My pleasure.
01:08:31.279 --> 01:08:31.439
Yeah.
01:08:31.760 --> 01:08:37.680
Um, so for the fun things is we kind of so I never really asked this, but I always love the restart civilization content.
01:08:38.000 --> 01:08:39.039
You're that kind of person.
01:08:39.199 --> 01:08:42.720
So, like the books, the music, the objects, like what go with that?
01:08:42.800 --> 01:08:44.399
Like, what let's let's let's riff on that.
01:08:44.640 --> 01:08:45.199
What would you bring?
01:08:45.920 --> 01:08:46.640
Oh man.
01:08:46.720 --> 01:08:49.600
Um there's so many things.
01:08:49.680 --> 01:08:50.880
I I'm like, I would be a horror.
01:08:51.279 --> 01:08:52.560
See, the music lover can't decide.
01:08:52.720 --> 01:08:53.920
The book lover can't decide.
01:08:54.239 --> 01:08:56.159
And I'm both of those, and it's horrible.
01:08:56.479 --> 01:08:56.720
I know.
01:08:56.800 --> 01:08:57.359
That's why I do it.
01:08:57.439 --> 01:08:58.000
It's why I'm here for it.
01:08:58.079 --> 01:08:58.239
I don't know.
01:08:58.319 --> 01:09:00.800
I have Sade in my background, so I feel like you gotta have some Sade.
01:09:01.680 --> 01:09:07.680
Um but I'll say for objects, for objects, because I think I will say this forever, never, never.
01:09:07.920 --> 01:09:09.439
A pen and a notebook.
01:09:09.680 --> 01:09:10.640
Like There you go.
01:09:10.960 --> 01:09:11.680
Pen and a notebook.
01:09:11.840 --> 01:09:12.079
There you go.
01:09:12.239 --> 01:09:14.159
Write a story, communicate something, share something.
01:09:14.319 --> 01:09:14.960
That's what you need.
01:09:15.039 --> 01:09:15.279
Yes.
01:09:15.520 --> 01:09:19.520
Entertainment helps you remember shit when you learn new things, you know.
01:09:19.680 --> 01:09:20.319
Yeah.
01:09:20.880 --> 01:09:24.800
I want there to be like, you know, there's a book on how to survive the apocalypse.
01:09:24.880 --> 01:09:26.079
Probably a good one to bring with you.
01:09:26.479 --> 01:09:32.399
I probably bring like Shakespeare or the Bible or something to give me to give some values.
01:09:32.560 --> 01:09:34.800
Um and some maybe some comedy.
01:09:35.359 --> 01:09:36.159
But okay.
01:09:36.479 --> 01:09:38.800
So the let's let's finish this up.
01:09:38.880 --> 01:09:42.640
So that taking this whole environmental thing, finish this one.
01:09:42.880 --> 01:09:46.000
The future of the built and a built environment is what?
01:09:46.560 --> 01:09:48.079
It's not always new.
01:09:48.399 --> 01:09:49.119
Love it.
01:09:49.279 --> 01:09:50.159
That's great.
01:09:50.319 --> 01:09:50.640
Yeah.
01:09:50.880 --> 01:09:53.039
Rada, thanks for being on the show.
01:09:53.279 --> 01:09:54.159
Thank you so much.
01:09:54.319 --> 01:09:55.039
This was really fun.
01:09:55.359 --> 01:09:57.760
Thanks for listening to the Think Forward Podcast.
01:09:57.920 --> 01:10:06.479
You can find us on all the major podcast platforms and at www.thinkforwardshow.com as well as on YouTube under Think Forward Show.
01:10:06.800 --> 01:10:07.760
See you next time.