Jony Ive at Stripe Sessions

A couple of days ago, Jony Ive gave a talk at Stripe Sessions. He dropped some gems, especially for designers and founders focusing on a lot at once.

To me, it feels like everything’s marketed and shipped focusing on speed speed and more speed. It’s about getting “more” for less, with “more” being focused highly on monetary outcomes.

Quality’s always been really important to me in products I consume and has been my goal for everything I create. But really, it’s hard to pursue top quality in a world focused on speed and clear metrics first.

It’s nice to hear someone so important bring up the importance of unmeasurable joys. Make things for each other.

sometimes, joy gets confused with being trivial

 

17:00

no, we don’t have to choose, we can do both

 

23:20

you know what kills most ideas, I think, people desperate to express an opinion. And it’s really–let’s be very clear–opinions aren’t ideas

 

29:45

one of the things that terrifies me–I know that I’ve missed really amazing ideas that came from a quiet place, from a quiet person

 

30:20

think about the relationship between the chair you’re sat on and how you feel

 

35:00

if something doesn’t work, it’s ugly

 

36:30

you sense carelessness. You know carelessness. And so I think it’s reasonable to believe that you also know care and you sense care

 

39:30

Transcription

Below is a simple transcription of the whole hour to search around for more context. Or to feed it to an LLM to not think as much.

So, well, thank you for joining us. I really would love to say that I am unspeakably grateful and honored to be here. Spending any time with Patrick is a big deal, so thank you. Well, I want to start in the obvious place. I don’t know if you got to walk the floor and everything, but you can see a little bit here. You had the monitor backstage and so forth. What do you think of the design? It’s lovely, isn’t it? It’s very– do you know, I’ve not been here– I haven’t been here for a long time. And I have some very strong and vivid memories of being here. But no, the design’s lovely. The first event I ever came to in San Francisco was one that you designed. We’re the auteur behind. It was the WWDC in– I have to go back and check. I think it was ‘05, maybe it was ‘06. But that was the first event I came to in San Francisco. And it was– actually, I want to say it was here in this room at Moscone. But actually, John got to be in here, but I was relegated to the overflow room. JOHN MCCURRY: Which was not my fault. JOHN MCCURRY: All right. So well, speaking of that, you came to Silicon Valley in 1992. Is that right? JOHN MCCURRY: That’s right. Yeah, so you’re still very young, but that was a couple of years ago, a couple of decades ago. How has Silicon Valley… So Alan Kay says that the software industry and the computing industry is a pop culture in the sense that we are ahistorical, and we don’t understand the ideas and the antecedents and the things that came before us. And, you know, that’s Alan Kay’s view. I don’t know if it’s right, but I thought it was an interesting idea. And certainly it’s the case that if you ask people, I don’t know, to, you know, in many industries, the greats and the creators and so forth are these kind of big, hallowed names. But if you ask people, you know, who invented the Internet, a lot of people in the technology industry don’t have a clear sense of that history. I’ve always had that kind of phenomenon interesting. But since you’ve now got to observe Silicon Valley for, you know, 33 years, how has it changed? Well, I think when I was at art school, I studied design in England. I was born in London and studied up in the Northeast. And I remember discovering the Mac in my final year, sadly. I wish it had been earlier. But I came to realize something that was… I should have realized earlier. But what I realized was that what we make stands testament to who we are. And what we make describes our values. It describes our preoccupations. It describes beautifully, succinctly our preoccupation. And this struck me so powerfully when I saw the Mac. And I got a very specific sense. Because it was a kind of bicycle for the mind, that aspect of it, or something else? It was every part. I got a very clear sense of a group clearly of original thinkers with clear values, completely, I think, obsessed with people and culture. You know, you can look at something and it can tell you, I was designed to meet a price point at a certain time. So I hit the schedule, we can repent at our leisure, and it’s as cheap as we hoped. Or you can try and design something that genuinely attempts to move the species on. And I had a very clear sense of the latter, that this was created by this renegade group in California. And so powerful. I mean, I studied industrial design. I didn’t study technology. But I was so moved by the clear values and the resolve and the courage that I think enabled the embodiment of those values that I wanted to meet these people. I wanted to come out. And so after college in 89, I first came out. I had to return. This is probably way too much information. You’re among just a… A couple of friends. Exactly. This is a small, intimate fireside chest. Well, the interesting thing was that I had a job commitment. I was sponsored through college. And so I had to go back to work in design in London. And there was a strange liberty, I think, that afforded me. I was impossibly shy. And I think if I’d been traveling out to meet people with the goal of getting a job, I would have found that so anxious-making, I don’t think I would have dared to meet people. And so because I had no agenda, I think also, I think people were probably happier to meet me because they didn’t think I wanted anything. And so to dare to get close to answering your question, what I saw in ‘89, ‘92 when I finally moved out I consulted for Apple for a couple of years, and then they persuaded me to move to Apple here. What I saw, I think, or what I felt, was sort of an innocent euphoria, I think, of like-minded people driven by values clearly in service of humanity gathering together in some small groups, in some huge groups. But I do believe there was a very strong sense of purpose, and that purpose was we are here to serve the species. And was that at Apple in ‘92 or in the technology industry in ‘92 or in the Bay Area in ‘92? That’s a great question. I think honestly Patrick it was everywhere. I felt and even though you know there were competitors even though I did feel that there was an underlying sense of our place as servants and of principled service and what’s changed well I don’t think that’s the case entirely. I think there are agendas that are about, well, there are corporate agendas, I think, and this will sound a little harsh, but it is, driven by money and power. And I think if, you know how you tend to get, you end up somewhere by sort of increments. I think if you were to starkly contrast today with 92, I think that would be a reasonable assessment. And for anybody creating software, creating a product, creating a company, what’s the center or what’s the north star that you perceive as having gotten askew today or the thing that people should hold firm to in order to avoid some of these failure modes? Is it what you just mentioned, having a clear sense of purpose? Is it sort of having a kind of servant orientation? How would you think, what’s at the heart of it? I think there need to be foundational values and an understanding of our place in all of this. and having a clear sense of the goal, which is to enable and inspire people. I mean, Patrick and I were talking just a while ago about being toolmakers, and I’m very clear and very proud that that’s my occupation and that’s my practice. I love trying to move things forward, which means innovating. I have a real issue with, I think people confuse innovation with being different or breaking stuff. I have no interest in breaking stuff for the sake of breaking stuff. I don’t think breaking stuff and moving on quickly leaves us surrounded by carnage. I’m interested if things get broken as a consequence of actually creating something better. But I think one of the things that is, I think it’s part of the human condition is that we assume that progress and innovation is sort of inevitable. And you know that it’s not. You know that you have to have this underlying conviction, which is fuel. And then we need an idea and a vision. And then the resolve to make that vision something that is real, that is not just for us, but that we can share broadly. You once used a phrase with me, sincerely elevate the species. Yeah, I think that, you know, I remember many times, and fortunately I’m not talking in tense but I do remember particular Sunday afternoons working actually I remember working on some absurd details with in terms of packaging and and in such a trip I mean this this compared to what you guys do this will seem so trivial but I had such a clear awareness that in designing a certain solution for for example how we managed a cable that’s in a box that designing that I knew that millions of people would engage with this little tab and I can either make the cable an easy thing to unwrap so it’s such a trivial example isn’t it But clearly you think that, I mean, you can describe the purpose of that in seconds saves, that shaves five seconds off the unwrapping of every cable and multiplied across hundreds of millions. But I get the sense from you that’s not why you do it. It’s not this trivial utilitarian multiplication and calculation. There’s something spiritual in it for you. What’s the spiritual thing? I think the spiritual thing is that I believe that when somebody unwrapped that box and took out that cable and They thought somebody gave a shit about me. I think that’s a spiritual thing and I think it’s a way And I know I’m in good company here I know that when you You know what used to depress me was this sense that solving a functional imperative, then we’re done. But of course that’s not enough. That’s not the characteristic of an evolved society, of an evolved species. And so that Sunday afternoon when I really should have been out with my boys And I’m worrying about this. I did feel a connection and an excitement that somebody was going to experience something that they don’t even know exists yet. And even though it was a small thing, it really did come genuinely from a place of love and of care. And Steve spoke about this. I mean, he spoke about it way more eloquently than I can. but he talked about when you make something with love and with care, even though the people that you’ve made it for, you don’t know their story. They don’t know your story. You’ll never even shake their hands. But when they use the product that you’ve made, it’s a way, and the way Steve expressed it, I thought, was so beautiful. He said, it’s a way of expressing our gratitude to the species. And I thought that was such an incredibly thoughtful and beautiful and authentic declaration. So when people talk about your design, a design that occurred in your time in Apple, They often refer to minimalism, simplicity, the clarity and function, things like this. And that’s all certainly true. But part of what’s very striking to me is how much of it seems to have some kind of sense of humor or joy woven into it. Like there’s the iMac, like the Pixar lamp. There’s the lozenge iMacs in their Technicolor. There were even iPod socks. What’s the role of joy in design? Well, I think if… That’s such a good question because I think one of the mistakes that people make is that think simple products you know simplicity is about removing clutter and to me that means you just would end up with an uncluttered product but a kind of desiccated soulless product actually that’s a beautiful description desiccated soulless product I think that’s what a lot of minimalism ends up being or or modernism ends up manifesting as. My goal and our goal collectively has been to bring order to chaos, to try and, but simplicity to me is trying to succinctly express the essence of something and its purpose and its role in our life. I actually think that something that I feel conscious of is that I think generally in the Valley and generally in our shared you know in our industry I think joy and humor has been missing and that’s something that I that sort of weighed on me a bit and and I you know the the products that we you know we’re all developing they’re complicated aren’t they and sometimes joy gets confused with being trivial but but I think I always go back I don’t know about you but I always go back to being very clear that the my state of mind and how I am in my practice ultimately is going to be embodied in the work and so if I’m if I’m consumed with anxiety that’s how the work will end up and so I think to be hopeful and optimistic and joyful in our practice and and be that way and how we relate to each other and our colleagues I actually think that’s how will end up? There’s a wonderful talk by a guy called Daniel Cook about how to build a princess saving enterprise application, but he deconstructs Super Mario and obviously the core purpose is to save the princess and sort of approaches it from a standard enterprise application design standpoint and puts together some examples of how one might go about it. And he impugns this approach and critiques it because he says that this kind of design fails to recognize that the user is a person, the person wants to learn, the person can change, the software has an effect on the person, and you have to take that very seriously. And the words you’re using enable, inspire, love, care, gratitude, joy, to me they seem to come from a conception of the person as somebody who’s living and changing and the software in fact hasn’t affected them. So something Patrick and I talked about in the past is, and this is something I’d love to try and describe and you’ll have to help me, because I think it’s really important and it’s something that I realized and it It took me many years at Apple to realize this, but it’s an effect that I believe occurs when you’re in larger groups of people involved in the common cause of developing a product. I think one of the things that happens is, generally we grow up wanting to be able to relate to people and wanting to be sociable. We find ourselves in a work environment with hopefully a diverse range of people. And one of the things that’s interesting is if we are developing products together, there is this, I noticed this and it used to infuriate me before I came to try to have a slightly more generous interpretation of why this happens. But the people generally want to talk about product attributes that you can measure easily with a number. So if you guys think about it and you think about what would dominate the conversations that you would have, product conversations, you will end up talking about schedule, cost, speed, weight, anything where you can generally agree that six is a bigger number than two. And I understand why but the problem is much of what you know much of my contribution and the contribution of designers and other creatives you can’t measure easily with a number or it gets even more demeaning it can be just well that’s your opinion well that’s like telling your heart surgeon well that’s your opinion and you having a go yourself and so what I came to realize and I think this is that I think the more generous interpretation I had was we do that because we want to try to relate to each other we do that because we want to be inclusive but then this is the dangerous thing that happens and And I would encourage, I desperately hope this doesn’t sound arrogant, but I would really encourage you to think about this because I’ve been so struck by how important this is. The insidious lie follows, which is we spend all our time talking about attributes because we can easily measure them. Therefore, this is all that matters. and that’s a lie. It’s important but it’s a partial truth and all of the stuff that I think designers and other creatives can contribute to an experience or to a product that can make it delightful to use and joyful to use as well as more productive. If it’s delightful and joyful things tend to be used more, are equally important. Nothing you say sounds arrogant, because when you have a beautiful British accent, then you can get away with anything. So we’re speaking about the import and the impact of design, but if we shift a little bit to the practice, Is there a trade-off between speed of execution and ensuing quality? Sometimes. I was hoping you’d say no. I absolutely know there are fabulous examples where… I would reframe the question as it being about motivation. So I think what tends to happen is when we’re put in this situation of having to choose, I would get belligerent and say, no, we don’t have to choose. We can do both. It’s very hard. I mean, I know you guys have heard this lots, but it’s hard to do quality and speed and cost and other things. I think there is a beauty to working efficiently, and I think we can say that’s speed. I think, you know, I know we both pay a great deal of attention to the words that we use because they affect the way we think. And the words that we use to frame a problem are some of the most important. And so I would sort of frame the issue of how can we work wonderfully efficiently to create something with breathtaking quality. As organizations grow, there’s another kind of tension where maybe for various people here in the audience, certainly this is something I’ve experienced. In the early days, the earliest days, it’s just you. And then there’s maybe a couple of other people, but you can kind of stay abreast of everything that’s happening and you feel like you have the opportunity at least to exercise your taste or judgment or opinion in whatever the issue might be. And then perhaps things continue to scale, And at some point, it becomes far beyond the scale and scope of any single human. And then there’s this discontinuity where there are things that happen that I never saw. I never had the chance and opportunity to weigh in on. I don’t know how I feel about it. I wouldn’t have done that thing over there. I mean, Apple was not a small company when you were there, certainly not in the later years. How do you deal with this? And I think it’s both the scale and scope, but also doesn’t it feel intrinsically unreasonable to simply say that this thing here doesn’t accord with my taste? I think it’s very reasonable to say that. it’s very very hard isn’t it I think what I have I do believe that we go through chapters or seasons and we the painful part is the conclusion of one and the beginning of the next where we we have to adjust and we we change our approach I think the one thing obviously it will not work to assume how we we started is how we’re going to finish. And so I think being very clear that we are in a constant state of flux, and it’s trying to figure out, I believe, what is– what I’m not going to compromise. And I think that’s the very clear focus on your principles and your values and your motivations. I think the alarm bells always go off for me when I think, why did I do that? Has a motivation shifted? And that’s when I’ve really been upset with myself and disappointed with myself and reset. But I do think if our motivations and values remain the same, we will find ways to be the control freaks we were born to be. And which, of course, I mean, or we can say care as much as we– but let’s be honest. For a design team that you’re leading or participating in, what are the rituals? Well, one of the– The– I think that there’s nothing more important to me than the creative team and declaring that and being clear about this is my contribution, and therefore, I need to be part of an extraordinary team. But that’s just, you know, that’s the price of admission, isn’t it? So you can have the people, but practice our process, our practice, the protocols are so important. Over many years, over, I mean, I’ve been doing this and leading small creative teams for, I mean, over 30 years. These are some of the things that I’ve found important. If you’re dealing, as I was describing earlier, with concepts that you can’t measure with numbers, if you’re dealing with ideas that always, if you think about the evolution of an idea, it always starts off as a thought and then a tentative discussion. One of the things I realize is just how, you know, these ethereal thoughts, these fragile concepts are precarious. And I think a small team of people that really trust each other is, I think, is fundamentally important. Trust and love each other, who care about each other. If you care about, you know, then you might be in danger of actually listening. You know, the thing that just kills so many ideas, and I’ve worked in places where this happens, but people are just desperate to speak and to be heard. And there’s nothing like, you know what kills most ideas, I think, people desperate to express an opinion. And it’s really, let’s be very clear, opinions aren’t ideas. I was going to say something really rude then, but I won’t. But I think– You can say it, we can cut it from the video. But the to be quiet and to listen. And one of the things that terrifies me, I know that I’ve missed really amazing ideas that came from a quiet place, from a quiet person. And that really scares me, ‘cause I don’t know what I’ve missed. And so, talking about the rituals, I think doing things that mean our relationship is authentic and deep. One of the things that I discovered that I think is really important, you know, we tried a lot of things at Apple, and most of the things that I, you know, tried didn’t work out. But a few things I was excited about and grew, I think, to be very powerful. I think, one, as a practice, it’s very good to make things for each other. I think for that to become part of your, you know, daily way of connecting to your team, to think about what you can make for each other, that’s just really, it puts you in a lovely place. It makes you more worried about them than you. It makes you vulnerable, and it makes them grateful. And that’s a lot, isn’t it? I mean, those things, just think about what I said. So that starts to define quite a lovely culture. And then connected to that, something I was really struck by. - Paul Graham says, “Make things people want.” And Johnny Ives says, “Make things for each other.” - Yes. I mean, that’s what we do, isn’t it? I mean, all we’re doing is at a very personal level, practicing what we’re doing at our professional level. All of us here, I guess almost every single person here, We’re about making something for other people. And so perhaps, I don’t know quite what… What make things people want, I feel, is sort of a business strategy, whereas it sounds like what you’re saying is make things for each other is a team strategy. Well, as it was. So, for example, one of the things I thought was great was that you, you know, every Friday morning, I asked that one person on the design team would make breakfast for the whole team. And we took it in turns. So make things for each other, I’m imagining prototype iPhones, but no, it can also be bacon and eggs. I’m talking cornflakes and milk. I mean, we saw dizzy heights of some of the food, and some of it was so shocking. But it all came from the same place in terms of motivation. And something that was connected that I was surprised at how powerful it was. excuse me, was we would host, we would take it in turns to have the design team come to our homes and we would spend a day working in our home. And this is something I probably thought way too much about. But it was in a very, very powerful way of one doing or encouraging us in our practice to do good work and in building the team. And I think there’s an interesting, first of all, there’s an interesting dynamic in terms of how we regard each other. You know, the host, and this is a bit like when we make something for one another. the host is slightly anxious and concerned about the potential judgment of their soft furnishings. And I mean, you know what it’s like when you have somebody come to your house, there is a self-consciousness and well certainly I, you know, an awkwardness I feel and an anxiety. And I don’t think that’s unhealthy. always and and then the guests who you are hosting are you know they’re on better behavior than if they were all just trundling into a conference room and then then you’ve got the context you know if you’re designing for people normal I mean who here would actually want to spend time in a conference room I can’t think of a more soulless and depressing place I mean I always think it’s funny think about the relationship between the chair you’re sat on and how you feel. Like you would, none of you would sit watching the TV on these chairs. I mean, you wouldn’t choose to sit on this chair unless it was to listen to John and Patrick. So… I’m not sure that we’re the attraction in this particular event. But I think there is an important point, which is if you’re designing for and you’re in someone’s living room, sat on their sofa or sat on their floor, and your sketchbook is on their coffee table, of course you think differently, don’t you? Of course your preoccupation, where your mind wanders, is so different than if you’re sat in a typical corporate conference room. Thank you. Is beauty subjective or objective? Figure we now get to the easier questions. - Yeah, I think it’s, I don’t, I mean, I’ll be interested on your take on that. I think it’s a bit of both. I think utility and function, if something doesn’t work, it’s ugly. I always get frustrated when people try to– they set up a false opposition between utility and aesthetics. And when I’ve designed something or been involved in the design of something that doesn’t work, I don’t care what it looks like. It’s ugly. I think the tougher thing is when we get onto the issues of taste. And I think design has always been a difficult thing in that, because it’s very easy for everybody to have an opinion– everybody does– it just doesn’t mean every opinion has the same weight. And I think that’s a relatively robust statement, in that if you’ve studied and studied and studied design– although I know people who’ve studied and studied design with terrible taste. So I don’t know. Yeah, it’s a good– OK, so Christopher Alexander said that between two objects or two choices or two paths, the one that feels more humane is the one that you should choose. But that this kind of sense of humanity in the object is a better guide than beauty, which perhaps pulls you into more subjective territory. Does that resonate at all, or do you think that sounds crazy? No, I think that’s absolutely the case. And I think that people– I think generally, most companies patronize consumers. I think users are– I actually do believe are very sophisticated. And I think there’s issues of beauty, of humanity. I also think– and this goes back to the first thing I was saying about my sense of Steve and the Apple team, looking at the first Mac– that you sense care. And I’ve tried to talk about this before. I really do believe, and I wish that I had empirical evidence. But I do believe that we have this ability to sense care. It’s easy in a service because you confront care because you confront the person. When it’s vicarious, when it’s via an object, when it’s via a piece of software, it’s more complex. But I think you might understand it more if I said, you sense carelessness. You know carelessness. And so I think it’s reasonable to believe that you also know care and you sense care. And we worked very hard, and I felt passionately, about finishing the inside of products. And when I mean finishing, I mean, we designed everything and we cared about everything. And I’m sure many of you have heard the bit about, a great cabinet maker finishes the back of a drawer, even though it’s unlikely it will be seen. But in the same way, I think a mark of how evolved we are as people, it’s what we do when no one sees. And I think that’s indicative. It’s a powerful marker of who we truly are. And I would be haunted by– if all we did was the outside, I would have this nagging feeling in my tummy that we were just being superficial. So you mentioned modernism a little bit earlier in this discussion. And there’s a puzzle that I’ve been trying to reconcile around modernism that maybe you can sort of help me with, where so much early modernism was kind of deliberately ugly. Like you have the Duchamp Fountain, and you have, I mean, even Picasso’s work, I mean, it’s dissonant, right? It’s certainly not classically beautiful. And then you sort of had this political valence to the program, and, you know, Gropius said that Bauhaus was a, he said in the manifesto, it was a socialist movement. And you were originally trained in Bauhaus design, right? Yes. Yeah. So there’s this kind of… And you have Schoenberg and the A-tonality and all this stuff, right? But then the Apple products and the products that you designed are very beautiful. And Apple is not a socialist undertaking. And so what’s going on here? And so the particular thing I’m trying to figure out is, was there a strain to modernism where it was intentionally trying to be dissonant or even uglier to shock people or something? And how maybe now with some remove, you’re no longer at Apple. How do you view that whole thing and what’s your take on modernism? That’s a great question. I think what tends to happen is very often at the beginning of a movement, whether it’s a design or an art movement, there is that incredible energetic, I mean, in a way, by definition, if it marks the beginning of a movement, there is energy. And I think often beauty is, it evolves. Beauty takes time. And very often at the beginning of an energy, it’s an explosion. And there’s not time. I would dare presume that certainly if we’re talking about fine art, that people would say they have no time. They don’t want to be distracted by concepts of beauty. And so I think for sure, if a lot of modernism was driven by the heady excitement about new materials, your obsession was the manipulation of that new material. One thing, I mean, I’m not sure how many of you guys know about Bauhaus, but this was a movement in Germany. But what you will know, you’ll be– and it ranged from fine art to furniture to architecture. Patrick mentioned Walter Gropius. And an incredible, incredible movement. But there were– what you would probably be most familiar with would be chairs, like the Breuer chair or the Vasili chair, which were, if you think of trying to think of like polished steel, chrome-plated tubes that are bent, those sort of bent chairs. So what’s interesting there is these guys had just figured– they were so excited because they’d figured out how to bend tubes. And so what did they do? They bent tubes. And that’s why all the furniture is bent tube furniture. So I think that– I mean, that’s what I would have done. Because when you bend tubes, they tend to kink. And so they’d figured out this way of putting springs into tubes. And so of course, you’d run away, and you’d bend as many tubes as you could get your hands on. Beauty probably wasn’t at the front of your mind. Tubes. So when I look at your work– and we haven’t yet talked about love from, although maybe if you I want to give people a short summary of how you think about that. That might be helpful. But when I look at your more recent work and some of what Love From has done, I see it as Johnny’s ornament era, where Apple was so stripped down and bare and reduced to the essence. And now I see that– I mean, maybe this is a misapprehension, but now you’re more curious to try other styles. Is that true? - I think it’s a lovely observation. Yeah, I think, so it’s nearly six years ago that I left Apple. And my goal was to build the most extraordinary creative team could. And we’re about 50, 60 people. Many of the designers I’ve worked with for decades and decades, which means I’ve worked with them at Apple. But it’s a very diverse team. So it’s a team of industrial designers, graphic designers, user interface designers, architects, typographers, musicians, sound designers. And I think perhaps what you’re referring to is that just the– our usefulness or the people that we’re collaborating with, that’s a very diverse group now. Where before, we were very focused and we had a clear criteria for what we were doing. But if you’re working for the king on his coronation identity, that, of course, would demand a very different approach than the one we would have taken if we were designing instructional products for how to use an iMac. So I think that’s– It follows the context. I think that’s what you’re saying. Yeah, I think it’s really what the problem is that we’re addressing. So you’re talking a lot about the purpose of design and the effect that design has on the recipient, on the user, on the consumer, whatever the case is. There is widespread concern and speculation about the effects of smartphones slash the internet. It doesn’t necessarily accord just with the smartphone. but on some of these products on attention spans and whether it has some adverse effect on kids or teens or who knows, maybe all of us, maybe the adults as well. There’s questions over with AI, whether it changes how education works and cheating and school. All of these technologies that we create have this potential double-sidedness to them. And so I guess as somebody who clearly takes seriously and thinks seriously about the full effects, how do you think about the possible harms? Yeah, I think when– and this is– there’s probably not anything that I can be more preoccupied you’re bothered by than what you’ve just described. I think when you’re innovating, of course, there will be unintended consequences. You hope that the majority will be pleasant surprises. Certain products that I’ve been very, very involved with, I think there were some unintended consequences that were far from pleasant. My issue is that even though there was no intention, I think there still needs to be responsibility. And that weighs on me, as you know, heavily. What I think has been particularly difficult is traditionally when you look at innovation– I mean, there’s nothing new with– I mean, if you– one thing, I mean, Patrick and I were months ago talking about some of the architecture that was associated with the Industrial Revolution in England. And there are examples– we could talk about this– Google Victorian pumping stations. So a pumping, so you imagine this idea that sewage used to flow freely down the streets and then suddenly, and this is for all of humanity’s existence, if there were streets, And then suddenly sewage was silently and predictably and consistently kept from streets. And the machines that achieved this were housed in cathedral-like structures. I mean, it’s amazing. And there is just incredible precedent for these huge, when you have a big technological change it impacts society and the industrial revolution is, my goodness, a profound, profoundly significant occurrence in the middle of the 1800s, certainly in the UK. The thing that I think is so challenging is there was time for society to stop and consider what was happening. And there was time for structure, whether that was sort of infrastructure, whether it was sort of social frameworks, to try and assimilate and deal with these shifts. And I think what’s been very challenging is we are moving so fast. The discussion comes far too late. And there can’t be, I mean, unless there is, I mean, the thing that I find encouraging about AI is it’s very rare for there to be a discussion about AI and there not to be the appropriate concerns about safety. What I was far more worried about was for years and years and years there would be discussions about social media. And I was extremely concerned about social media. And there was no discussion whatsoever. And it’s the insidious challenge of a problem that’s not even talked about. I think he’s always more concerning. And so, yeah, I think the rate of change is dangerous. I think even if you’re innocent in your intention, I think if you’re involved in something that has poor consequences, You need to own it. And that ownership personally has driven a lot of what I’ve been working on that I can’t talk about at the moment, but look forward to being able to talk about at some point in the future. You mentioned, I wasn’t going to bring it up, but you mentioned the Victorian pumping station. So which place and time in history had the best design? Oh, that’s such a good question. I wouldn’t dare to answer. But I do think that the… I think what happened in the Industrial Revolution, I’m just absolutely obsessed with at the moment. You know, there were… You know, as a team at Love From, we’ve been doing research. I’m lucky enough to work with this amazing writer called Jemima, who I think might be here this afternoon. She’s been doing a bunch of research on whether it’s sort of physical objects or social consequences. And I think because I see design as much more than objects, I think, for example, There were two companies in England that really were born out of the, you know, they were Quakers. There was one called Cadbury’s and the other was a company called Fry’s. Both Birmingham, right? I think they were. I think in the Midlands. Yeah. But what was so interesting was the people that ran these companies, they also designed the housing. And you don’t just design a place to put bedrooms, housing, which meant towns, which meant this sense of civic responsibility. And of course that was appropriate because people were moving. The Industrial Revolution was not just a mass manufacture for the first time in history, but it was this huge movement from the land to cities, which had never happened before. And so I just think that generally when we talk about these huge shifts, of course we all get nervous and worried. But there are wonderfully encouraging prototypes that we can look to. And there was, I mean, so just after Cadbury’s and Fry’s, they were first. There was Hershey’s in Philadelphia, I think, and a very similar approach and concern. I know less about that specific example. But so I love it when the innovation is, you know, it’s cultural, it’s political, and very often it’s spiritual and it’s manifest in buildings. You don’t, you speak in public now very rarely, and so of course very grateful that you’re here. We’re at a programmable financial infrastructure conference. How and why should people, I mean, and of course, the businesses here are from every crevice and aspect and different sector of the economy. But for people in the infrastructure domain, or for businesses like Stripe, and maybe Stripe is kind of an example, or can stand in for other businesses where ostensibly perhaps one ought not care intensely about design in the way that perhaps a consumer electronics company ought to, why should a business with the characteristics stripe has care so much well if stripe didn’t stripe wouldn’t be stripe and you wouldn’t be sat here so I every bone in my body I truly believe that if we want to participate as members of the the species we actually don’t think we have a choice I think it’s an obligation and a responsibility to care for each other and I mean Freud said a great thing Freud said you know all there is all there is is love and work work and love that’s that’s all there is and so we spend a lot of time working and so if we elect to spend our time working not caring about other people I think not only do other people suffer I think we suffer I think that’s a corrosive existence and so I think it’s I would see it as a not only a responsibility but truly a privilege if we get to practice and express our concern and our care for one another. Yeah, I don’t see it as a… I don’t carve my existence up in that way of thinking, this is, you know, with my commercial hat on, I’m just Johnny.