Forum - Future is Now | Technology & Design - Panel

welcome to all of you and thank you for joining the panel talk about technology and design and one of the key themes has emerged this morning has been the interface or interaction between technology design between computers and art the breaking down of many of the silos that have been so present in the educational system and how we've looked at the world in recent years and all of you are on the cutting edge of breaking down silos but I'd like to wrap start with Nicholas Negroponte from MIT you started life as an architect you then went on to co-found the MIT Media Lab which is very much trying to bring together the different aspects of computers design and art when you look at the future right now and you look at the extraordinary capabilities of technology are you feeling optimistic that that's going to make our lives better and how does that interplay with design let me ask you a question do I get four minutes to say something or do I have to answer that because what I would like to do is start a little bit personally and talk about fried eggs and omelets and the world has been a fried egg when we were born and it's become an omelet and that's the consequence of being digital and the story I wanted to tell you is that when I went to school I always want all the art prizes always I even got my headmaster to allow me to do art instead of sports because I thought sports were stupid but for some reason I got an 800 in my math which in American lingo is a perfect score and so I decided I should study architecture because that was art and math I went to the headmaster and I said to him you know did well in art did well in maths I'm going to go to architecture he said something to me so profound that I missed it for a decade he said I like gray suits and I like pinstripe suits but I hate gray pinstripe suits I don't huh you don't like gray pinstripe suits I went to architecture school anyway and while there was an architecture school I realized that computers with what I was really into and that that was where technology and design met if then I thought to myself actually sat back and I thought wise up how do I have an impact on the world in an architecture do I have to become a Frank Lloyd Wright or whatever which I was probably not going to become but if I designed the tools for them I'd have a big impact and so I spent 50 years doing that building the media life building other things and something has happened during those 50 years and this is the point I'd like to see others share and that is we have been able to go smaller and smaller and smaller scale we can engineer genes we can and you can get right down to the atomic level and suddenly the building tools are not bricks they are not concrete what you saw in the keynote address in some sense is the end of construction things out of components because we will be able to do what nature did we will design buildings by planting a seed in the ground and it will grow it will not be added it will come from the bottom up and that is because we went from fried eggs comelet's and your life today isn't ominous you used to go to work they used to come home it was home life work life used to be part of a group or not part of a group part of a race not part of a race part of a country not part of a country and all those things are changing so the two things is one we are going to do as well and perhaps better than nature by growing things and to that omelettes a pretty good deal and think of all the things you can do with omelettes that you can't do with fried eggs okay so or maximize and mix up I came out a very optimistic perspective I've been asked marry in a minute for her view because she's also working at the MIT Media Lab in a very interesting cutting-edge part of the MIT Media Lab but before I do and I do ask Neil Neil you fit now in Silicon Valley but you have been writing about the sweep of history all the good bits and particularly the bad bit in recent centuries and looking at how technology has developed do you feel as optimistic about design and about the omelet well there are other things you can do with eggs and as an historian who has no other qualification for being on this panel than that I've studied the history of technology I can't help but remind the techno optimists in the room of one of the things that you can do with an egg because it happened to me yesterday as I was on my way to the reception at the glorious and spectacular foster foundation an egg was thrown at our car making rather a mess of the nice Tesla that we were in and it was thrown as far as we could work out by a Madrid's cab driver as part of the protest that is ongoing here over the disruption of transportation by uber now I listened to the keynote brilliant as it was by Matthias Kohler and as an historian I felt mounting dread man watching robots drone bricklayers a kind of Jenga Towers being constructed in the middle of nowhere in France and I I thought to myself when does the backlash against technology begin last year we saw the backlash the populist backlash directed mostly against globalization it is going to be directed against technology when middle America and middle Europe figure out that it's the technology that really threatens traditional manufacturing jobs I was really heartened to hear Johnny I've say we make tools for people I worry that we're increasingly going to be making people for tools and at some point history tells us the people push back against really disruptive technological change and although they often lose the push back can produce enormous upheavals I like two very brief points Dylan and then hand it back to the experts here I think and I've really been struck by living in California the people who work in this domain are terrifyingly historically ignorant the Silicon Valley Tyson's in their euphoria of the prospect of replacing all drivers with self-driving cars only ask the question how much basic income should we pay these people once we've made them redundant they don't really ask the question how have people in the past behaved in response to technological disruption so here my two point number one major technological innovation always as unforeseen consequences whatever it is that you're creating will turn out to have a different use from what you expected and it may not be very nice the printing press wasn't designed to destroy the Roman Catholic Church's monopoly on Western Europe but that's what it did and it unleashed waves of disruption for religious and other civil wars for a period of at least two centuries railroads were not supposed to transport armies to the front lines but that's what they did in 1914 and I could go on second point to an extent that we never want to admit most of the technological innovation of the last millennium was propelled by conflict not by philosopher designers sitting in elegant white painted Studios and we need to recognize that even the internet had its origins in a Department of Defense program even Silicon Valley itself came into existence partly because of a symbiotic relationship with what Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex that I am therefore in my glass region role as the voice of doom here to say that this bright and shiny future of drone bricklayers and men watching robots will not be as bright and shiny as you think and the rotten eggs have only just begun flying [Applause] [Music] well as someone who is trained in social science myself I always like to hear a historian plugging his craft I'm sure if anyone needs to hire a quick history and they can find one very easily but nary I'd like to ask you because you have been trying to bring together technology and design an art in a very innovative way and you talked about the fact that we need to move from consuming nature as a society to editing nature to mothering nature and trying to work with nature not in a conflict soaps way but in a more symbiotic way I mean how do you interpret what Nicholas and Neil are saying the two opposing views there so first of all thank you for having me and second of all I apologize because I believe I am the only one on the panel who has a couple of slides and and I feel uncomfortable showing them knowing that others don't have the same opportunity however and this will probably help explain what Nicholas meant and so if possible could you run this same slide over and over just loop it constantly which is what it was designed to do so if you loop if you replay that slide and it is called creating anticipation lemurs very margin and and you saw what was on the screen let's assume you can imagine it's still there do you have any idea what that was I'm just curious if the audience has any idea of what they were looking at the brain any other ideas the brain is good seed anything else I thought it was a raindrop actually so so it's true most people when they look at these kind of images and think it is a biological artifact or a biological object but in fact it is entirely designed so every voxel on this screen every three-dimensional pixel has been designed from scratch to create the next slide which is that is the challenge of Technology yes which is a set of death masks that are designed to contain life and so what you saw in the first slide is basically an MRI like representation of the object but an extremely high resolution and and that resolution approaches the resolution of nature so these objects were printed in 16 micron voxel resolution which is the resolution of human hair and are approaching the resolution of a red blood cell a sperm cell a muscle cell a nerve cell axon and that's a very exciting moment in design because designers are moving from an age where we're simply designing the shape or the form of an object to designing its properties and its behavior in the resolution that matches its use whether it's a wearable for the body that can scan the body and contain sweat or generate vitamins or melamine or whether it's a building skin that can sequester carbon or harness solar energy and so I'm fascinated by this ability to integrate between all things that are material and synthetics and all things that are natural but I'm curious because you've done give you 3d printing to create these amazing things like death masks but you're also starting to use 3d printing to experiment with say printing the bare bones of the building you're essentially bringing in AI you're bringing in robotics to start replacing if you like some of the traditional work of a designer architect construction expert are you at all concerned about the type of backlash that Neil was pointing to no you should know okay Neil you're officially outvoted well it's a long history of this sort of thing and some of us do know something about history and when when the agrarian society which represented whatever 90% of all employment went to representing something like 1 or 2 percent today people had the same comments and Plato even was against writing their people that were against all sorts of things in the course of history and you know right now the emphasis on jobs comes from a very narrow view of what a job is in fact jobs as we know them today are relatively new I mean if you think back hundreds of people didn't have jobs as we know them today so what do people do and the answer is people do what if they're lucky they're good at and they love doing now that's a very elite point of view probably applies to most people in this room but wouldn't a wonderful target be that everybody does that and then we create a world of that sort of thing and maybe that world is different maybe that world is you don't think of kindergarten through twelfth grades you think of kindergarten through 25th grade maybe you think of other things that make our point of view about work different and our point of view about maybe guaranteed minimum income will take off in one way or something but there are other ways than just looking at that job you don't want people driving cars I don't care how many eggs it's not safe you don't want humans driving cars QED period okay you just don't and you want them to park automatically you don't want them to be stored in somebody's garage you don't want them to do all the things 35 percent of most of the traffic in cities is looking for a parking space give me a break that's ridiculous so self-driving cars aren't just a fact of life is an important fact of life it's going to change the shape of cities as much as elevators changed the shape of cities and I'm not sure there were people against elevators when they were invented because I say well we're not getting enough exercise people should walk up seven and right our blinders are many elevator operators as they are truck drivers in America today I mean front driving is the biggest single occupation for middle-class working-class men right now but mark on battery say I'd like to bring you both in because you're sacked here patiently and ask you I mean how optimistic are you about the way that technology is changing the role of designers and architects like yourself mark do you want to go faster yeah well I suppose it depends what you mean by optimistic I think as has been already described I think to a large degree for people like me for designers the kinds of technologies that we've spoken about are tools at this moment in time I don't think anyone would disagree with the fact that you know there's no it's going to be a very very very long time before artificial intelligence could replicate the skills that in artists for example demonstrate you know and part of what we do part of what I do is is in a sense of being an artist I suppose you know we're not just engineers you know there's that there's a degree of well hopefully a degree of creativity and and that's the part you know that I that I think will be very very difficult to to replicate artificially although I don't fundamentally and philosophically have a problem with the prospect that it could it could happen but I think you know as I say on a fundamental level these technologies however compelling our tools and at this moment in time they need to be operated I mean as Nicholas I think has sort of alluded to people probably at some point in time complained about having a hammer or having a saw and you know now we're you know frustrated with with things that are just far more capable but ultimately they're tools they're things that enable us to do what we do in a more efficient and a more accurate right way but we need to still be able to operate those tools I mean do you see pretend Patricia laughter the same question Patricia in a minute but do you see your role as a designer being to soften or humanize some of this technology so that people can relate to a more technological world in a better way you seem to me yes I review either mark or Patricia what I think I don't know I love first I think to just give an answer what for me is difficult is to speak thinking about one future there's no one future we have in front of us many futures and we have to understand this and I think especially the young people here because we are gonna when we think about suitors is about futures echo and futures are already connected with what we are living today and all the fear are all the problems we see or during this umbrella problematic umbrella lives with the other umbrella which is the one of searching Auto pious in some way no and I think for example here we have with integrity Negroponte and nearly two persons from MIT doing our incredible research and I think they they are very clear already that part of the utopias we have in front of us we can call them even not boot obvious because Autopia is a no place but it's like a limit that is always moving and then makes you move and then moving you get alive then something goes in some way but Autopia which is a nearby word and this good place means that already they got that research and what they are saying and i think could become an interesting and very interesting for me is very interesting is because they think even digital is a frontier and from the very interesting very interesting frontier for architecture i am also happy to listen to you because in some way in etc we have to to move to the digital draw into the digital doing Michael but in any case you have very clear already that the passage is not digital is to bio tech and biotech means we possibly get in on the kind of thinking we can get kind of rhizoma which is not easy argument because his omelette it's not so easy because it's a most rhizomatic it's not egg as I've been educated in a humanistic way my eggs where were frito I'm a Spanish I think the Molly Spanish in all this conversation but me weber frito i capital overcome okay you have the the yellow I can do you have everything was working and you could move it a capital but those is camber lexico that ricotta yeah yeah is it not so no I think it's not so easy what I think is one they are speaking about one of the most interesting frontier we have in front but we have a lot of them then if and I would like to say the order to think then in this case I think they if we approach projects and I think now we have the best universities trying to do this but there are people in London is a few person different personages working on this even Indian Ally in Istanbul of design there were some personages working on this argument and the benefit will be interesting because in some way at the feature naturae something that G load office I come from from a school which is Italian Angelo Turkish is still alive then I think this biotech came by themselves 107 years old I thought he was said artificially Natalia I caught either that is equation the question and they are speaking a lot of time about that and possibly I think is the one most interesting for them I keep them protected Aiko III don't know with my kind of umbrella I'm going to try to draw it but I me Patricia I'm Spanish I study Madrid but I as many reiatives a certain moment I needed to to go out of my comfort zone yeah then you go out of the bank we have your magnesium that I think is fantastic coming from Australia and Chiara is so young with Saudi Arabia's so curious and so simplifying process of looking items that if you have Magnifico but he knew how to navigate pipe right on coming from far away removal form Italia we have ever - Italia as in a student and I've n my studies in another university in third this ship dinner that is fantastic that stupid University in Milano for those years was with five 1500 students ridiculous then it was already already I have rights over then they were doing sonography okay to that design citrus they were doing everything because there was all the political problems before then this faculty became the house well no girls for me was fantastic was not a custom because was interdisciplinary than me I became a designer and architect sonographer many things at the same time right I this university ended now is divided then they destroyed another time that's exactly the point we have to come back a call we will go to goddesses then I you go on I can tell other things those are a parent of designers we are increases of everything well that ties in very well with the key theme in the morning which is about the need to break down different silos I mean at some point that I'm completely fascinated by to the point where I actually wrote a book about it last year but as Mayor Bloomberg says earlier on breaking down silos is crucial in education and in many jobs but I'm just curious I'd like to come back to the split we have on the panel I think we're currently in terms of the optimist pessimist about three and a half to one the one being professor Ferguson at the end under security I'd like to ask the audience right now how many of you in the room feel optimistic about the potential of technology to make our societies better and how many film pessimistic or the optimist way that raise their hands okay and the pessimist you know double-edged sword okay or trick question jacking whether you're actually awake or not to system we are going to break for lunch in about five minutes but so Neil I think you are officially outnumbered here as always that doesn't mean I'm wrong though it's what it's worth making one point of clarification because I think Nicholas may have misunderstood me the issue here is not just the problem of the backlash the tendency on the part of innovators is to say resistance is futile I think this is the secret motto of uber you know our technology is so awesome any attempt to stop it is doomed to fail so you may as well just put your hands up and I think one clear lesson of history is that even when resistance is futile people resist if you haven't read das test these notes from underground shame on you but you should read it I won't do a show of hands because I don't want to embarrass anybody in this highly cultured city but Dostoyevsky in the writing in the mid 19th century said the utilitarians imagine a world in which every human action will be governed by timetable and all that we are going to do will be predicted with with with precision and accuracy which is very much the mentality in Silicon Valley these days and just ask his point is that we will reserve the right to be stupid even in the face of highly sophisticated rationality and I think dr. s key was entirely vindicated by everything that happened in Russia and indeed the world that he wrote those words so number one there will be a futile backlash and it will be larger than you think even if it's ultimately defeated by the technology but the second point is and in many ways more important do not forget that your brilliant inventions will be misused Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein didn't sit then ask themselves how can we design an atomic bomb but that's what happened and almost all the innovation line that we talked about today was I could give you a very long list Nicolas if you'd like most of the great innovations either were inspired by conflict or came to be used conflict and this will be true of drones to those drones look nice didn't they delivering the bricks into the Jenga tower there are other things that Roseville that deliver and soon and they'll be explosive devices so I think we all are in grave danger of succumbing to the Silicon Valley propaganda that everything is awesome and resistance is futile I think I will be in a minority for arguing this now in ten years from now you'll all agree with me [Applause] [Music] I competed Nicolas is dying to get back and I tea but also marks have barely said have had I've not really had a lot of time mark do you have a couple of things you want to say and then I'll let Nicolas reply it's Jonah the use of the word resistance as if it were the resistance against the Nazis or resistance of resistance of wonder is unto itself a very telling word um one of the founders of the Media Lab who founded it with me was the inventor literally the inventor of the field of artificial intelligence he just died this year's name is Marvin Minsky and Marvin coined the term and founded the field and I was very fortunate because he was a friend dear friend we cooked together we were neighbors we spent a lot of time and in the 1960s what were Marvin and his friends talking about they weren't talking about self-driving cars and robotics and all of that stuff they were talking about humor they were talking about why do humans appreciate music they wanted to understand the brain and they divided themselves into the wets and the drive the web's people like Jerry Lifan took the brain apart looked at it in the drys looked at behavior and there is no question in my mind that thirty years from now people will learn French by swallowing a pill that pill will go into your bloodstream and deliver French to the right part of your brain so that you can use it now if that doesn't blow you away and you say well maybe that's not the right thing because you should learn French this way there are things to come that make Ober look like child's play I mean this is child's play so if we're against self-driving cars we got a much bigger problem head and I don't see how you can be against self-driving cars it's safer it's like a gun light okay all right okay I don't want to get I would have smart mobs to have a word egg I think you know we need to hear from the designer here we are essentially at a design conference mark was either half in the three and a half I'm a sort of a glass half empty kind of guy unfortunately but I don't have any slides with me but I'd like to give one sort of practical example of an object I mean people always ask me you know what's the favorite it's a completely inane question one that I get really sick and tired of answering you know what's the favorite thing that you've designed cuz I designed all sorts of different things and I always try and dodge the question but just by pure coincidence I happen to have brought one of the favorite things that I've designed and it's a pen not a set dispenser not a soap dispenser and it's one of the objects that I think well I'd like to imagine that all of us love using a pen still you know it's not only a pen I mean it's a pen that has ink inside it you know like I've found them on top of that and I just think it's a sort of a you know it's a sort of practical example of an analogue tool that still enables people like us to sort of do what we do it's still the most it's still the most coherent and speedy link between you know what's going on up here and what's happening out there I mean it may not always be like that clearly but but I enjoy that that you know that that process and I'm not sure I could say the same thing about doing it digitally right now right okay well I think that makes you a half three and a half to one but I think it's - no I think we're if the pen is mightier than the drone ladies and gentlemen well I would love to carry on all morning we can't because we do have lunch now it's been a faculty discussion I take away through three key points firstly that obviously technology or technological change is accelerating in a way that is going to remake the world to quite an extraordinary degree secondly opinions about whether that is good or bad remain divided but thirdly the one thing that is absolutely clear that everyone agrees on is that the only way we can respond to this technological change is to rethink a lot of our traditional silos about the split between art and science computing and design in more innovative ways and I think last not least as a result of this panels we're never going to look as an egg quite the same way again so thank you [Applause]

Channel: Norman Foster Foundation

Views: 8,400

Rating: 4.9470201 out of 5

Keywords: Norman Foster Foundation

Id: WnfL83fQh7E

Length: 36min 22sec (2182 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 09 2017