The Stanford d.school’s Post

Transcript

New technologies like AI, biotech, and social media are now ingrained in our everyday lives. The tech transition raises questions about privacy, ethics, and the future of work. How can we safely navigate these changes and best adapt and thrive in this new tech world? Joining us live now is Scott Doorley and Carissa Carter, experts from Stanford Design School or D School. They've authored a new book, Assembling Tomorrow, a guide to designing a thriving future. And I have a copy of my hands. Chris and Scott, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks so much for having us. So what was your motivation to write this new book? Well, so Scott and I are are in the business of the field of making things and teaching others how to make things where educators and even for us, it's a really overwhelming moment. The technologies that we're using to build with have the potential for a lot of great things in the world, but also a lot of harm. Our climate is in dire straits. We're able to edit genes. There's a new algorithm released every day that can learn on its own and it can feel like all of this is happening to us, but has makers. As educators, we know how much agency we all have, so we wrote the book to call attention to the urgency of this unsettling moment and to pave a path forward that any of us can take on. So what is the right way to make right whatever that thing that we want is? You point out that we have a tendency to be so creative, build something, but we don't really anticipate or understand what the product of that product will be. And it gives us an example of how that's kind of harmed us or put us in a pickle and how we can go about designing that or redesigning that for the future. Yeah, I mean, I, I think you can look at past eras for the, for the answer. You know, the industrial era, we created cars. Cars are wonderful for everyone, except they also pollute the atmosphere. And so everything we create has hidden downsides that are very difficult to understand at the moment that we create them. So we're very good at making things and we're actually very bad at understanding the impacts of what we make. And So what we really need to do is, is be careful about what we're making. And get good at understanding the downstream impacts, right. So, you know, one of the ways you try to do that in in this book is you have a section that I think is really cool. It's speculative fiction, short stories, histories of the future. I especially find this one, Apple attacks the Amazon really interesting. Summarize that. And what is the point you're trying to convey? Well, we have this speculative fiction in there because we want people to imagine that potential futures that we could be building and to try them on and see how those moments work and see if they like them, see if they like the future that we're building. Scott, do you want to talk about that story? We play around with this moment where the company, computer company Apple, and this is work of fiction, heads down to the Amazon rainforest to make sure that it's not being completely overrun. Because the company is so valuable at this point that the saving the rainforest is the best way to preserve their customer base. And really it's a question of we're giving a lot of power to these corporations now. And that means they're gonna have to take on more responsibility. And then it also brings into question, you know, is that the right place to make our bets about our future? I want to say that this book is, you know, useful for, I guess, anyone who's building things in the future, running a business or want to relaunch a career or even parenting. But in the 30 seconds we have left, only because I'm a parent myself. So this always interests me when you look at what's happening in technology and, you know, how jumbled everything is, how fastly, how quickly it's all moving. What guidance might you have for parents? Well, it's so scary to be a parent. I'm a parent too. So Scott and I think it's scary because the jobs that our kids are gonna have in the future, they don't even exist yet. So it's hard to prepare them for that. But I'll say within the lens of school, maybe don't specialize too soon in the same way that we tell our kids not to or tell our kids to be multi sport athletes. Be a multi subject learner. Try chemistry, try math, try Mandarin, try computer science. Learn how a computer learns though they will be your colleagues in the future. And you're from someone and you'll be more adaptable, right? Whatever happens. Carissa Carter and Scott Dorley, thank you so much for coming on to talk about the book assembling tomorrow. Appreciate it. We'll be right back. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for watching Getting Answers. We'll be here every weekday at three answering questions with experts from around the Bay Area. World News tonight with David Muir's next, and I'll see you back here at 4:00.