From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
I realised that what people do is, instead of figuring out the right thing to do and then doing it whether they want to or not, doing the ethical thing, what they do is they figure out what they want to do and then come up with the rationalisation for doing it, whether it's right or wrong. And we fool ourselves.
I don't believe in a magic solution or that there's just one thing that makes everything work. It's about a myriad of elements coming together; circumstances undoubtedly play a significant role too. Add a generous dose of enthusiasm and passion into the mix, and then, just a sprinkle of luck on top.
The only reason we are the master of anything today is because of our intelligence. We're not the strongest species on the planet. We're not the biggest, we're not the most resilient. We're quite fragile and in all honesty, without our intelligence, we're quite irrelevant. The reality is, when they are smarter than we are, it is wishful thinking that they will continue to be connected to us.
Subversive, ethical, ecological, political, humorous… this is how I see my duty as a designer.
Individuality is my biggest fight, not #MeToo. People need to realise their own power, their own freedom, and their own ability to be better.
Inside each of us are monsters and angels- there are no divisions between good and bad people- and I've seen how those times of insecurity can make us do terrible things to each other.
We therefore see the drone (robot) exhibiting (through software) signs of the moral-affective function of 'guilt' when engaging in each mission. The aim of such developments is to introduce a level of ethics into the battlefield which, as more drones and high power long range weapons are used, is becoming increasingly fraught with collateral damage.
We have the unusual paradox of being both highly individualistic, yet in essence social. We exist in what I describe as a collective survival exercise.
We have turned life into a business model- and have somewhat forgotten the reciprocity we have with nature rather; we just see it as a resource. We have maintained societies for thousands of years based on a reciprocal relationship with nature, and we need to.
Our knowledge of the world is always fragmentary and incomplete and our explanations of how the world works have therefore to be considered as provisional. This means we have to accept that sometimes we will turn out afterwards to have been wrong.
Seeing the Earth framed through the shuttle's small windows versus seeing it from outside was like the difference between looking at fish in an aquarium versus scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef… I was really out there, floating in it, swimming in it. I felt like a real spaceman…
Intelligence and self-deception appear to have co-evolved, with the belief that we are fully in control of our destinies serving as a mental safeguard, despite its inaccuracy.