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So, it's an honor to be amongst all of
you. Thank you so much for coming here
tonight, making it a very special
evening. Um, if you heard the uh steps
of a woman, a ghost in heels out back,
that was me pacing like a Chihuahua.
Um, I need to get one thing out of the
way very quickly. I actually was a
ballet dancer about 500 pizzas ago. And
uh yeah, and we just need to kind of
I'll just go ahead and do it. EVERYONE'S
>> so power of the liinal escaping digital
claustrophobia. Today I'm going to take
you through three quick chapters.
Collision, when different worlds combine
and new possibilities are created.
Compression, when these possibilities
are squeezed out of our daily lives, and
release. How do we design these back
into the real world and into our lives?
About eight or nine years ago, social
roboticist Heather Knight
and I, as well as a huge group of wild,
brilliant, muppety people, came together
and started working on a thing called
robot ballets. Not just because robots
should dance with humans, but because
when they did, something remarkable and
beautiful happened. artists showed up,
engineers, roboticists, world-class
athletes, writers, philosophers,
legal minds, and policy makers.
People who normally wouldn't share a
room came together and braided instincts
and knowledge sets and vernaculars and
language styles.
And we looked back on everything and we
realized that the robots were not the
point.
The collision was not a place but a
condition. A threshold where different
worlds come together just long enough
that something new can form and emerge.
A temporary or shared vernacular amongst
people and practitioners of every
background
because crosspollination doesn't happen
in strategy meetings. It happens around
things that invite attention, curiosity,
and presence.
Uh if you'll bear with me for a moment,
uh please pay attention to this lovely
video and uh you'll see a little bit of
crosspollination in the wild.
Turn around. You can actually
These people do not share disciplines
but they are sharing attention and
that's where I think a lot of the magic
happens. This wasn't a performance. It
was not a product or demo. It was just a
condition for connection
and I think a lot of people are really
starving for that right now. And that's
where connection begins.
For about 400 years, we've optimized for
connection. We've optimized for speed,
scale, and efficiency. But we've
forgotten to design for encounter.
People don't feel disconnected. They
feel compressed.
We live inside of feeds and silos and
algorithmic mirrors. And when we stop
encountering difference and diversity,
cross-pollination collapses. Someone
once told me, "Expression is a want to
have, not a need to have." I think that
that principle and that concept quietly
breaks society
because expression is how we signal
safety. It's how we recognize each other
and it's where connection begins.
Expression isn't a novelty nor is it
decoration. It is infrastructure,
social, emotional, and very, very human.
People don't lack identities. They have
extremely rich identities. We've built
these entire worlds online, and yet
we're somehow disconnected.
We've built identities the sizes of
cities, but we try to store them in
studio apartments. And where identity
can't breathe, cross-pollination
collapses. So the question isn't how do
we build better platforms and systems.
It's where does identity go to live?
What happens when our identities and our
digital identities can leave the screen
and enter into the real world into the
physical realm? Move onto bodies and
objects and surfaces. What happens when
these things become like signals and not
content like feathers that can talk? We
already know this intuitively. Children
talk to their toys. They create
relationships with things. They project
huge amounts of value onto abstract
objects by adult minds. And then
somewhere along our journey, somewhere
along the way, they are told and we are
told that these things have no value.
And that that value, if it does exist,
that meaning belongs in our head and on
screens. And I fundamentally disagree
with that. We already know that objects
throughout history carry so much culture
and so much meaning. And there's tons
and tons of proof around that. Hats,
totems, clothing, etc.
And so,
how do you design things that invite
interaction, permission,
and stories?
Objects that tell stories before our
words do. So, we know objects carry a
ton of meaning. So, the big question is,
how do we design consciously? How do we
put stories into objects so they can do
the talking before us? So our feathers
can do the talking. What you're going to
see is not a product demo. It's a
glimpse into what happens when you
design consciously and create conscious
objects that tell stories and that help
us leave the digital world and move that
identity into the physical lives that we
have.
So what changes there is not the
technology. What changes is the risk for
interaction, the risk for cross
cross-pollination.
Expression does the work first. The
feathers do the talking.
And our expression is both an identity
but also invites permission and
curiosity and interaction.
Two of my favorite humans, colleagues
and collaborators and friends, Orurid
Gal and Robert Leonard refer to this as
positive social friction points. Two
humans, two strangers, a cigarette and a
lighter.
5 seconds of cooperation and a human
moment. And that moment can lead to so
much and so many outcomes. I'll leave
you guys with these thoughts. Um
cross-pollination is not accidental. It
is very much so designed into the spaces
we gather, the objects we carry, and the
surfaces around us. Expression is by no
means decoration. It's the
infrastructure that lets identity
breathe. Looking back, the robot was
never the point. The expressive
wearables were never the point.
the collisions were.
And the future doesn't need smarter
machines. It needs braver ways of
meeting. Thank you.
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