#E51 What Can We Do for the Next Generations? With Brendan McGetrick
About Brendan McGetrick
Brendan McGetrick is the Creative Director of Museum of the Future who is also a writer, designer, and curator. His work has appeared in publications in over thirty countries, including The New York Times, Wired, and The Financial Times.
Read the HYPERSCALE transcript
[00:01] Briar: Welcome to Hyperscale. It's great to have you here in the studio in Dubai.
[00:06] Brendan: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
[00:08] Briar: So tell us a little bit about what it's like working at Museum of the Future.
[00:13] Brendan: It's very exciting. So we've been open for about two years. I joined about five years ago before obviously we'd opened and we were still conceiving what the museum would be. And it's been extremely gratifying to see it open and see it full of people and see the response that we've gotten. It's a daily challenge because everyone comes with very high expectations and everyone is excited to see what would be inside of it. But still, that kind of adds to the pressure and adds to the excitement of being involved.
[00:41] Briar: And I think it's been quite popular really, hasn't it? We've obviously got a mutual friend Sundar who works there and he keeps saying, "Oh, I can get you some tickets to come in two days," sort of thing. But I think there's a waiting list of about two weeks, if I'm not mistaken, which isn't bad.
[00:55] Brendan: Well, yeah, it depends. So basically it's been sold out every day since it opened, which for the financial department and sales department is an amazing accomplishment. But for those of us who are really responsible for the visitor experience, it's a little bit of a challenge because it means it's more crowded than we expected. It means that people can't always get tickets, like you said. At the moment, I think it's like three weeks sold out because this is a busy time. And the irony is that for people in Dubai, most people think like, “Okay, I want to go to the museum.” And then they try to go and it's sold out and they go forget it I'm not going to do that, I've got other things to do. So a lot of people here haven't seen it yet and that's something that we wish wasn't the case, but obviously it's a good problem to have. But it is a little bit challenging because we've had to like stretch the hours out and really do the most we can to accommodate the audience.
[01:47] Briar: And Brendan, tell us about your role there, like what specifically do you do?
[01:51] Brendan: So, I'm the creative director of the museum. So basically I was hired to really oversee the production of all the content of the museum, all the exhibitions, define the visitor experience and really the kind of subject matter that we'd want to talk about and build the team around it that eventually produced all the exhibitions and things like that. And obviously interface with leadership in Dubai government to make sure that the museum was reflecting their interests and things like that. And so that was really my job, pre-opening. And then since it's opened, really I'm more trying to refine the experience, respond to the feedback we get from visitors and try to make it better and better. And really right now, at this moment we're conceiving the next round of exhibition. So that's the new project that's about to start.
[02:38] Briar: You reveal much about what's coming up?
[02:39] Brendan: Absolutely not. But anyway.
[02:41] Briar: I thought you were going to say absolutely.
[02:42] Brendan: I mean, to be honest with you, not to be protective or anything. It's actually that we haven't decided yet. We sort of have a general idea of what we'd like to improve and what we think we can do better the next time. And we've thought a lot about things that people have told us and we want to improve a lot, but how we're going to do that and exactly what we're going to say is still very much a work in progress now.
[03:08] Briar: What's the kind of main message about Museum of the Future, like what kind of perspectives do you want people to know when thinking about the future?
[03:18] Brendan: Well, I think there are two main messages. I think one which is really important is that we tried to make sure that we presented a vision of the future that was optimistic. So it isn't kind of naive about the problems that we face or the challenges we face, but it tries to direct them towards a better future. And I think this is a really important thing to do at this time in history because a lot of our kind of best filmmakers, best exhibition makers writers are really focusing their energy towards showing how things can get worse in the future. And I think that makes for interesting TV shows and movies, but it doesn't make for an interesting, like, cultural context. And it certainly isn't emotionally interesting because it's mostly just making you fearful and making you worried about what will happen and also like what your kids or your grandkids are going to experience.
[04:07] Brendan: So for us, we really wanted to make the museum as a sort of counterpoint to that phenomenon and say, okay you can be sensitive about the challenges we face and the anxieties we feel, but you can also show how with the right direction and the right kind of initiative, those things could become the raw material for an extraordinary beautiful future. So that's really the main thing that we try to put out, like as an overall message. And then for the visitors who come, one of the main things we sort of write into everything is that, a better future is possible, but not without your help. So we really, as much as possible, kind of extend a handout to everyone and say like, please understand that the future is a collective work that we all participate in and everyone needs to make a contribution and it's relevant for everyone. So these are the main things that we're trying to express. And I think genuinely, I think that it's really representative of Dubai and the kind of attitude that the city has, the attitude that the government and leadership has, trying to kind of encourage people to imagine what's possible and to feel that they can contribute to it.
[05:10] Briar: I think there are some really nice things that, well not even nice, but important things that you are discussing right now. It does sometimes feel like the media just wants to scare us. It's always doom and gloom. It's always, AI is going to make us extinct or these awful things all the time. Do you think that this kind of fear is justified?
[05:36] Brendan: Well, I mean, all fear is justified, but it's not useful. So of course, any possible negative scenario is possible. So it's like flying, like being on an airplane. Your fear of the flight is justified because if anything goes wrong, it's over. But the likelihood of that happening is very small. And to live according to that fear means that a million different possibilities are no longer open to you. So it's the same thing with technologies like AI or synthetic biology, all these technologies where they're kind of emerging now and have a lot of unknowns in them, of course you can take a fearful response and that's not inappropriate. But the problem is that if that stops your thinking about it and it stops your interest in it or your willingness to engage it, then it kind of means that a very, very small percentage of people end up controlling it and deciding how it gets applied.
[06:31] Brendan: And that's really dangerous. The main thing that we are committed to at the museum is to encourage people to take a position and to try to understand these things. We're not advocating for anything in particular except for curiosity and for people to feel like these things matter. So something like AI, obviously it's like floating around in the conversation and in the culture and it's very easy for people to manipulate that into making you feel afraid. But the reality is that it's much more empowering and much more generous to make people feel curious and to make people feel like actually it could be something of benefit to themselves or to the world in general because then that hopefully offers an invitation for them to get involved.
[07:13] Briar: I love this topic so much and I often think about how technology is a double-edged sword. It's a tool at the end of the day. It can be used for good, it can be used for bad. And I agree with you, there's no point being fearful. We should always go out and explore. And we do have so much more, I think collective power than what we think we have. And I think the unfortunate part is that we grow up. When we're children, we have this childlike curiosity, we have excitement when we think about the future. We dream about the future and all of the wonderful things that we will accomplish. And then it's like we get older and we've got bills to pay, we've got washing to do even worse than that the governments make it quite tricky for us to even live our day-to-day life. How can we be thinking about the future and the exciting future and what it could become if we are too busy worrying about how we're going to pay our next power bill, so to speak. And I'm speaking more about the UK in this context.
[08:18] Brendan: Yeah. I would say if we're going to be like passing out blame, the government is one but the free market is another one. This is a big part of it, because when you say that technology is neutral, that's right. But a lot of what we've seen is that the way that the technology gets introduced into the world is through a kind of free market competitive model, which isn't really about trying to improve people's lives. It's about trying to make as much money as possible. And I think that's also a big part of it, is that when you're young, what you're really thinking about is sort of, yeah, what is possible, how life can change, how your life can change, how the life of your family or the people around you can change. And it's not really incentivized in the way that like you're encouraged to be later as you get older and you have to start working.
[09:02] Brendan: So you have a kind of much wider frame of possibility and you also have a much more generous view of what's possible, what humans can do and also what a technology can do. As you get older, you're obviously encouraged to think much more practically. Many people discourage kind of wild thinking. And so you get sort of gradually, gradually, gradually pushed towards quite a limited way of interpreting what a technology can be or what your career can be and things like that. And I do think there's a real problem there because again it just creates a similar situation where there's fewer and fewer voices, fewer and fewer interpretations of what's possible with something that could be massively important. And I think that these are things that happen in a very organic way. It's not some massive conspiracy or anything like that. It just is the way that the sort of society is structured. But it is good every once in a while to kind of zoom out and think like, okay, how is this actually operating? And remember what it was like when you were younger and you didn't have the same set of limitations on what you think is possible and what you think the priorities of your life are.
[10:11] Briar: How can we be tapping into our imagination or our childlike curiosity and how can we be getting excited about the future rather than yeah, opening up social media and just feeling quite fearful about what all of the publications are saying?
[10:27] Brendan: Yeah. Well, I think social media is an important reference because I think one of the main ways to reconnect to the sense of the possible is to zoom out of yourself. Like one of the issues with social media is that it's very much about yourself and then other people's selves that they're presenting on the platform. And a lot of that obviously stirs up feelings of jealousy, feelings of insecurity and all these kinds of things. So it gets you smaller and smaller and smaller, when the reality is that what possibility requires is an expansion of your view, so to include many more people or many more beings than just yourself. And I think that's the tricky thing about a lot of what you see on social media is that because it's so much about you as a person kind of manifesting yourself to some audience, some kind of invisible audience, that's not really the same thing as you imagining a kind of larger community that you are part of and thinking, how can I contribute to this community? Or how can I kind of understand and feel the possibilities that this collective community could potentially manifest. I think a lot of these things are kind of keys to that feeling of possibility because when we feel imprisoned in just the limitations of our individual self, it of course does limit what we can do. And I think it makes us feel in competition with the people around us as opposed to in collaboration and in partnership with the people around us.
[11:54] Briar: I like the sound of this collaboration and I think it's missing from a lot of the big organizations these days. I always talk about how unfortunate I think it is that OpenAI went live with their new board and it was just all men again. And when you are talking now about this future and how there could be all different kinds of possibilities and of course we only see it from our own perspective because we've all got our own experiences, upbringings, cultures, etcetera. So that's why I think it is and I'm curious to get your thoughts on this as well, so important that we have diversity and diverse minds coming together to imagine the future. I think of when Apple launched their health app and they completely missed putting anything to do with periods on it because they'd had an all-male team designing this, and they didn't do that out of spite. They weren't like, oh, we're not going to include something that's very important for women. They did it because they just weren't thinking of it because why would they?
[13:06] Brendan: Yeah. So this is a massive issue. And yeah, so what you see with technology is that the limitations of the people that make it, because it is a product of the people that make it. And that's the funny thing about AI is that somehow it has these pseudo-mystical properties as if it's a magical thing that somehow like created itself. But the reality is it was created by mostly men working in… you know, computer scientists. And it reflects their limitations. It reflects the limitations of the data that they use to train the AI. And then that kind of takes on its own reality and begins to shape the reality that the people working with the AI have to confront. And so I think it's extremely important. And, when you talk about diversity, there is a certain diversity that's related to gender.
[13:55] Brendan: There's a certain diversity related to culture, there's a certain diversity related to disciplines in the backgrounds that people come to the project with. And these are the things that really matter because I will say diversity, you can get a diverse group of people together that are from different cultures, different genders that all think the same, so that needs to be cultivated in a very active way because there's a lot of like superficial diversity that's easy to achieve, but that actually wouldn't change anything really because it's all people coming from a similar background with similar priorities, similar assumptions and similar goals regardless of what they look like or where they come from. When something like AI or anything like a kind of broad technology that has an effect on potentially all aspects of life or many aspects of life, you really would want people at the table who are representing many of those aspects of life and can work together and not try to undermine each other through their own agendas, but actually understand, okay, this thing exists.
[14:55] Brendan: How do we make the best version of it? That's the kind of wisest version of it and the most generous version of it. And kind of be mindful of limitations that are built into any technology or anything. This is an ideal, in general most of the time it's not like that and you get a board that's basically made up of people who already know each other and essentially are just going to build the network and increase the influence of whatever the thing is that they're representing.
[15:21] Briar: How can we promote more diversity in this space?
[15:27] Brendan: I think one of the main things is to just understand that technology is one part of a healthy society, just like money is one part of a healthy society, but there are many other things, many other priorities that matter. And really, the goal of a technology or a society in general is to get the various kind of components in balance so no one is overwhelming and dominating the other. So education is a good example. If the quality of your education is entirely based on the amount of money you have, this is an imbalanced situation and it doesn't help people and it isn't generous for people and it isn't fair, basically. So you would want, somehow, a diversity of opinions to balance that a bit so that you'd go, okay, let's distribute opportunity evenly regardless of what the person's background is.
[16:20] Brendan: So I think the same kind of thing would need to happen with technology that you have a diversity of thought that sort of makes sure that there's no kind of single point of view, which can then like negate every other point of view. And like a really concrete example of that is when Facebook started getting into journalism and Facebook decided, okay, we're going to be the place where people get their news without any real appreciation for what journalism is, what journalists do, how it contributes to a democracy. And we're in the aftermath of that choice basically, where you kind of have almost all the major institutions which kind of represented a certain kind of journalistic quality are either, struggling or gone. You have tremendous amount of inaccurate information out there. And that's kind of the consequence of one realm of society, which is technology deciding that it should be able to control another realm of society, which is journalism and information.
[17:17] Brendan: And it's a shame that when that moment was happening, there wasn't a more spirited kind of internal debate going on within Facebook or Twitter or the other companies to kind of say, hey, what actually are the long-term effects of what we're doing? And this thing that kind of we're thinking about as a business or a vertical, what does it actually do in society? And if you took it away or you radically transformed it, what would be the consequences of that? It doesn't feel like any of that happened or a very, very, inadequate amount of it happened and now we're dealing with the consequences of that. And so I think that's really partly what diversity is for, is to try to create sort of harmony and justice within a situation when you have a new transformative technology emerging,
[18:02] Briar: You think we'd learn our lesson, really.
[18:07] Brendan: You kind of would, but at the same time, if you look at it from like Facebook's bottom line, it worked perfectly. And this is also, this is kind of the same point that, like, if the only way you judge the success of a company is how much money it makes and what its stock is worth, then these issues of harmony and justice don't matter because it doesn't matter what you destroyed and what the collateral damage is, you just keep returning value to your shareholders. And I think that's another big part of it, is that you need a situation in place where people go, yeah, okay, you can make money doing that but what are the other consequences and are you responsible for those things? Or is the only thing you're responsible for is generating money for the people who've bought stock in your company? And that's, I would say that check and balance has really been, has not been applied many, many times over. And when you see a new technology like AI emerging, you think probably it's going to go that way again.
[18:59] Briar: So who can we start holding accountable to keep people thinking outside their bottom line?
[19:07] Brendan: I mean, of course the companies are accountable, but if they don't have anyone to push up against, which they haven't done from like the government point of view, of course they're just going to do what they are hired to do, which is to basically take up the largest share of the market possible, get the most money for the least, that they put in. This is just the basics of capitalism. So you can't necessarily blame them for that. But in a healthy situation, you have some checks on that because the reality is that, a a single company thriving isn't necessarily good for the world or the country it's in or anything else. So you would like there to be a more active role in government. You'd like there to be a more active kind of process of educating the public in terms of what the real consequences are of what they're doing and how they're actually making money from you and these kind of things. All of that stuff you'd like to be much more widely available so that people as individuals can make an informed choice and decide like, do I want to participate in this or not?
[20:17] Briar: I think it's very interesting and I think from certainly just even talking about AI now, because it feels like we're in a moment of history, it feels like a very cultural sort of moment. And one might think that these businesses that are developing AI, they want their product to sound sexy, good. They want people to come on board and use it. Yet here we have the likes of Elon Musk likening AI to summoning the devil and saying, “Stop, we need to stop developing it.” Why do you think all of this is happening? Do you think it's the media that are driving the fear? Do you think it's companies that are driving the fear or like government driving the fear?
[21:03] Brendan: Well, I mean, I think it's all of the above. I also think that the unknown is scary. I also think that we've exited the period where everyone sort of gave Silicon Valley the benefit of the doubt and said like, okay, if you're producing a new radical technology, somehow it'll be a net positive for everyone. I think maybe up until like 2016, up until like social media became weaponized I think that most people still felt that way. They felt like, okay, if a cool new thing comes out, probably it'll be good. Now I think people can kind of recognize that a lot of the rhetoric, which is about emancipation and democratization and all these things that come out of the companies themselves are not real. I mean, they sound good and they allow you to kind of position a new technology in a way that seems like pro-social, but very often that's not the case.
[21:56] Brendan: So I think that everyone feels fearful because they can tell that it is a radical new way of doing things. I don't think many of us feel that there's anyone really on our side to defend us from the consequences of this technology. I don't think it's clear really what the real implications are because with everything with technology, it's like, for sure AI will be transformative and already has been transformative, but also there's a tremendous amount of like blowing it up and overselling it, just like there is whenever any one of these things comes out. And we've seen like recently a number of these kind of transformative sexy technologies come out. Everybody freaks out. McKinsey makes a report saying that it's going to be responsible for a $500 billion economy in the next two years, and then it just fizzles out into nothing.
[22:51] Briar: Just think about the metaverse and all of that hype, right?
[22:54] Brendan: Metaverse, NFTs, blockchain, like all these things, it's like, so that hype cycle exists and AI is in that now. I think AI is much more substantial than those things, but it nevertheless is in that hype cycle. So it's very hard to take a nuanced view of it. And without that nuanced view, of course a logical conclusion is this is scary and like, what's going on? So anyone who feels that way, I have total sympathy. And I think there are a million reasons for you to draw that conclusion.
[23:27] Briar: So let's get creative now. And we'll take a, a piece of our own pie, so to speak. How do you envision the future in the year 2071? How does it look like to you?
[23:42] Brendan: How do I envision it in terms of like, what do I envision or how would I go about envisioning it? You know what I mean? Like how would I think about it or what do I actually imagine happening now?
[23:51] Briar: What do you actually imagine happening?
[23:53] Brendan: This is super hard to say. So basically 2071 is the year that we choose to highlight in the museum. So when you go to the museum, we have three floors which are basically environments that take place in the year 2071. And we chose that year strategically on the one hand because it's the 100th anniversary of the founding of the UAE. So it's a significant year kind of symbolically, but also it was 50 years from the opening of the museum, basically. And we thought this was a really good amount of time because it allowed us to be like fairly ambitious in terms of imagining what could happen. But you're not so far in the future that it sort of doesn't matter. So it's like far enough away that most people who are living now, obviously younger people especially will see it and anyone can imagine their kids or their grandkids seeing it, but it isn't so close to the present that you feel like you're just making a prediction like a trend forecaster making a prediction.
[24:51] Brendan: So within all of that, there's kind of two ways to see it. There's a way to see it where you basically look at what's happening now, you understand some of the trends that will probably influence what the future can look like and then you kind of envision what that future would be. So I'll give you a concrete example because I realize I'm speaking kind of abstractly, but like climate change is a big one. So we know climate change is happening, we know that there are all sorts of projections. So in 50 years, the sort of full potential of climate change effects on the world will be manifest. So in that case, you're looking at some really scary scenarios, mass extinction, ecosystem collapse, really, really radical displacement of people. So if you take that as a possible future, then your choice is what do you do about that? Or how do you respond to that? So one is to imagine mass chaos and basically like ‘The Last of Us’-type scenario - post-apocalyptic, like hellscape scenario, which again, is a lot of the way the Hollywood ends are going.
[26:03] Briar: That's making me excited about the future.
[26:06] Brendan: No, but it's what most of it is. It's like, video games, movies, TV shows, they're like, okay, everybody, aren't you a little bit afraid of it? Let's make you super afraid of it. And all of that is kind of plausible if everything goes badly, but another way to say it is like, okay, faced with a truly global problem, is it possible for the people of the globe to begin to work together and to understand that we're kind of in it together? And that's like the point of view that we take, from the museum's point of view, because it's like, we don't know one way or the other. So you're equally right or wrong regardless, but if you're going to be wrong anyway, it's better to be wrong towards something which could actually, create a better future.
[26:49] Brendan: And so for us, we always try to imagine, okay, what were the steps that would be necessary to get us to a point where we as individuals, as cities, as countries, realize that basically the effects that we are having on other places in the world ultimately do affect us. So there's no way to kind of isolate yourself from it. So a kind of, a coalition thinking and a sort of collective thinking that we don't currently have needs to be put in place. And so the future that I would like to exist in 50 years would have that in place, because if it doesn't, I think the future that I would imagine in 50 years is going to be pretty grim. Maybe not universally, but certainly in many parts of the world.
[27:34] Briar: So what does grim look like?
[27:37] Brendan: Grim looks like a worse version of today in the sense of the inequalities that define the current world made even starker and even more kind of life or death determining. I don't want to be super pessimistic in the sense of...
[27:57] Briar: We'll talk about the utopian soon so you can be pessimistic now.
[28:00] Brendan: No, but I just mean like, I also don't mean to make people feel like the current state of things is a total disaster, because in broad terms, actually quality of living and length of life and education levels, nutrition levels have actually increased. So I don't mean to be presenting it, like we're in a nightmare scenario right now, but we certainly are in a scenario of increasing inequality within countries, among countries. We are in a scenario where you can already see a certain kind of response to danger, which is basically to close up, push out everybody else that you can, and try to kind of save your own. I think that if you kind of supercharge that because you fuel it with real fear that comes from environmental dangers, dramatic changes in weather, mass migration, and stuff like that.
[28:58] Brendan: You're going to end up with a kind of tribal situation that is pretty recognizable already, is certainly recognizable in history if we look backward and the raw material is there now. So that's a sort of pessimistic scenario where the pieces are in place for a similar and recognizable, but much worse version of what we have now. And I think, again, that's the sort of model, by the way, of like dystopian fiction and filmmaking and things like that is that you go, you look at things, you identify dysfunctions or dangers, and then you just extrapolate them out into a future where it's all defining. And that's very useful. I'm not being critical of that, that's very useful in terms of helping people understand things in the present that are worth looking at and worth being concerned about. But it isn't, like I say, many times, I find it like disempowering and kind of pacifying for people because it is just like, oh, I'm in the beginning of a timeline that's going to end in disaster.
[30:04] Briar: And I think if we did feel like we were being a bit more proactive, I think it would help us. Like the feelings that we have inside, I just even think on, not even a futuristic level, but say you've got something wrong in your life and you're sitting there and you're not doing anything about it, then it just like eats away at you. But if you decide, okay, this is bad, but I'm going to step up and take action and actually do something about it, already you feel a lot better because you are going out there and you're making change happen. So what would we need to do in order to pull everybody together, make this a bit more of a collective effort and actually create this more positive future that you've also described as well?
[30:49] Brendan: Yeah, I mean, it's not an easy question.
[30:51] Briar: It's not.
[30:52] Brendan: I will try to answer it though. So in my opinion, it's almost like a shift in consciousness that is necessary. It's not like “We need to elect different leaders” or “We need to boycott a certain company.”
[31:02] Briar: I love this.
[31:03] Brendan: You know what I mean? It's obviously a much more complicated situation than that. But what I would say is that it requires a kind of different way of thinking. And one of the ways of thinking that I sort of started embracing in that we did build into the museum is really imagining yourself as an ancestor of people in the future and thinking, how can I be a good ancestor? How can I leave something for them that's better than I received and understand that you're just a link in a chain ultimately, you're here for a very short period of time.
[31:36] Brendan: Many, many, many, many generations of people came before you, and many will come after you. So what you have is this moment and in that moment, how do you make the most positive contribution you can? And how do you behave in a selfless way that isn't about the maximization of your own life experience? It's really about trying to be generous, trying to be caring, trying to care for people that don't exist yet. And I think that again, it requires a sort of a cognitive shift because at the moment, the way our economy works, the way our media works is really about the self, maximizing the self and kind of living the best life that you can and there's something to be said for that. I understand that is empowering to a lot of people and it does help people kind of focus themselves.
[32:31] Brendan: But in the end, I think if we're really going to think about the future in a positive way and in a way that like you're saying, feels good. Because that's the other thing about it, is like, there's so much stuff about the future and particularly with climate change, that it just makes you feel sad and helpless basically. And that's not the raw material for someone to do anything really. It just bums you out and it makes you feel like, oh, what a sad time to be alive, whereas really, ideally we would be thinking beyond ourselves. And in a way that does feel like you have a sense of purpose because you're trying to do something for other people, basically. And it could be the people around you and immediately around you, but it also can be people that aren't here yet, but you want to leave for them.
[33:14] Brendan: You want to set them up for success basically by making changes and learning from the things that are dysfunctional in the present and saying these don't have to continue forever. And if they don't, hopefully that next generation would build on that. And then you've changed to the trajectory. So I know it's not like, I don't expect everyone to think that way, but I would say for me personally, when we were working on the museum, I found it a really healthy way to think. And it became very useful during moments of tribulation. Most of the stuff that we did was during Covid, when everyone [was] kind of feeling very anxious, there's a lot of darkness in the present. So it was really, really exciting and almost cathartic and therapeutic to think it's not about the present. Let's think about the future. Let's think about people who aren't here yet. Let's think about how we can make a better world for other people because they deserve it. Just because they're not here yet doesn't mean they just shouldn't have a voice or they shouldn't be factored in.
[34:15] Briar: I think that's a very powerful way of thinking about it. And I'm no psychologist, but I believe that sort of thinking beyond the self and sort of thinking about other people that can be even more empowering and can be even more motivating to actually go out there and do something.
[34:34] Brendan: Yeah, I mean, it is, I mean there are studies of this basically, of this phenomenon and that's why religion is such a powerful force in people's lives. And that's why art is such a powerful force in people's lives. And nature is such a powerful force because when you're among those things, you do feel part of something bigger than you. And there's an inherent, almost like evolutionary pleasure in that. And I think that people do want to feel that way. And so anything that can kind of encourage that I think puts people in a mind frame that's more open, more feels like new things are possible, different things are possible and also makes them feel like they matter to those things.
[35:16] Briar: Very interesting things to think about. When people come into the museum, what can they expect to see?
[35:29] Brendan: Well, they can expect to see a lot. It depends. What I'll say about the museum, maybe it's hard to translate in a podcast.
[35:37] Briar: Oh yeah, you probably just need to go down and see it, anybody who's listening.
[35:40] Brendan: Or Google it or whatever. So the building is really extraordinary. It really established itself, even in the short time that it's been there as a new symbol of Dubai basically. It's a sort of rounded shape that is unlike any other building. It's sort of adorned with calligraphy that's representing ideas by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed, Ruler of Dubai. When you go inside the aesthetic of it continues. So the lobby is very elaborate and ornate and sort of adorned with this calligraphy. So it feels very, on the one hand, it feels like a building you've never seen before. On the other hand, it feels like a building that really makes sense here in Dubai and in the Arab world in general. So that's really exciting.
[36:30] Brendan: Yeah. When you enter the exhibition experience themselves, I think the main thing to say about it is that we interpreted the future or we interpreted a museum of the future in a very specific way. And that's to try to create possible futures that you can then visit. So it's almost like film sets of the future rather than the sort of traditional museum format where you kind of have a neutral space and then you put things in it about different topics. We put a lot of effort into trying to create something that feels like a real place… so that one of our floors is a space station. So we try to give the feeling like you're really on a space station and we take you up into space through a trip on a spacecraft.
[37:12] Brendan: And the reason for doing that is because we wanted people to feel like this future was really intimate to them. It wasn't just kind of an abstract discussion of possible futures. It was a world that they were part of and that they were contributing to. And that's a big part of it, is just trying to create a new almost language for talking about the future that makes people feel that they have a role to play in it. And so we have three different floors that are this kind of style of immersive future environments. One is about space, one is about the environment and climate change and nature, and the other is about the self and wellness. Then there's another floor, which is about sort of the technologies that are emerging now. And then there's a children's floor, which is kind of a play space for 10 and below kids. And then there are other things too, auditorium and things like that. But these are the main things that make up the museum.
[38:03] Briar: I'm happy to hear you've got a children's section as well, because I hear a lot of Generation Z, they feel quite hopeless about the future. A lot of them have depression, anxiety, they're experiencing feelings of nihilism as well. What do you think we could be doing? And I think again, they are tomorrow, they are our future. How can we be empowering them and motivating them and educating them? Because this isn't something that's taught in schools, really, is it?
[38:38] Brendan: No, I mean how we can motivate them is by being better examples for them. I think with any generation, it's funny, like whenever a generation comes out and everyone goes like, wow, this generation is like, they've got problems.
[38:52] Briar: They say that about every generation, yes.
[38:54] Brendan: But also they're the product of what they were given. So they didn't like invent their problems. Their problems are a manifestation of what they encounter. So, I think that to the extent that they are growing up in a fear-based time in history, to the extent that they're growing up in a time where there isn't a lot of feeling of collective togetherness and kind of love. I think that anxiety, fear for the future, nihilism are very rational responses to that. I guess the only thing that bothers me about is I actually think that's not true. I think that all those things, positive things still exist and still motivate people and still are very much part of life. I think they're not as central as they could be. And I think there are a lot of things, and technology assists in this, that kind of isolates people and makes them kind of feel like they're in a kind of individual life or a group, a world that's defined by them and their friends.
[39:59] Brendan: And I think that kind of thing does ultimately make you feel alienated. But I would hope that maybe the thing that we can do as people of another generation, older people, is just sort of commit to making it very clear that the aspects of life that encourage you to feel alone, to feel hopeless, to feel that there isn't a clear reason for being here, that these things aren't real or they're as real as all the beautiful things that exist. So it's just a matter of what you're focusing on. And I think that, to the extent that society encourages you to focus on the negative, the consequences are predictable and focusing on something else hopefully would also have different set of consequences.
[40:50] Briar: Maybe we just need to make the future and the technology and these sorts of topics a bit more cool or sexy, so to speak. Because I remember when I was growing up, I just put this technology and future like in the same category as I'd put like mathematics or these sorts of subjects that I found quite boring. And you spoke earlier about how we need diversity in the futuristic thinking space when it comes to professions and jobs that we do and things like this. So do you think that there's something we can do to make this industry a little bit like more cool? We know it's cool, you and I think it's cool.
[41:33] Brendan: Do we?
[41:34] Briar: I think it's cool but I'm thinking about like these sorts of people that perhaps are watching like reality TV or like Love Is Blind and TikToks and stuff and this Makeup Boys, whatever, this kind of conversation is not necessarily on their radar and something they're thinking about.
[41:52] Brendan: Sure. But it's funny you mentioned Love Is Blind. I just watched Love Is Blind, the recent season. So what's interesting about Love Is Blind is there is a kind of technology there, like basically what Love Is Blind does is it removes things from you, so you have your pure voice and pure conversation. That's sort of how they're supposed to decide who they want to be with. If you just remove out all the reality, television, drama, whatever. What's interesting about that show is that rather than kind of having a million ways to communicate with somebody, which is what it feels like now, you have basically one. So you have to commit to that, commit to your voice, commit to curiosity about another person and commit to openness in terms of sharing about yourself because it also doesn't work if you're not willing to share. And I think there's something really powerful about that. I do think that there's a certain like way in which maybe it's worth considering how it's not that technology needs to be cooler, it's more that technology needs to be more focused on a particular thing that people care about, which isn't everything. And so I think that for people to want to get involved, I think they have to feel that the technology actually helps them to explore something new or be able to say something new.
[43:13] Briar: Or solve a problem.
[43:14] Brendan: Yeah. Or solve a problem or realize a problem exists. Podcasts are a really interesting example because before podcasts, there is a history of like long-form interviews, but it's years and years ago, like in the fifties and sixties. There were journalists who would do these long interviews with people and then that just went away because obviously television and radio became much faster cuts. And then it was interesting when podcasts came out, ones like this, they just opened up the timeframe again, so suddenly you could have these big long conversations with people where you really saw almost like a friendship form over an hour and that kind of added so much depth to it. And so that's not really a technology as much as it's using a technology to kind of remind people of how interesting people are basically and how interesting life is.
[44:13] Brendan: And I think these kinds of things make technology cooler because they make it feel more important to the human experience, not just important to whatever your resume or to you, like maximizing your appeal to a potential employer. They make it feel like it helps you understand that life is more interesting than it seems. That's one way in which technologies could be cooler, not necessarily through the way they present themselves with their image, but more through the way in which they show people that life is deeper and more complex and more interesting than it seems. And I think that to the extent that any new technology can do that, I think it would be great to push it in that direction and that would make people feel it's cooler. Because in the end, I think what people want is to feel that life is more exciting and more interesting than it seems.
[45:04] Briar: Just as you were talking about Love Is Blind and that kind of meeting of the minds through the wall, it made me think about how, I guess people like that format because they started to see through the likes of Tinder and Bumble and Hinge and things like this. Although back in the day, it opened up a whole new way of meeting people and it was really great. What some friends of mine are saying they're experiencing in New York especially is it's just so transactional now, like it just seems like there are so many people out there and available. It's almost created a cultural shift for them. So now it's kind of like things like Love Is Blind is going back to how it used to be, back to the basics sort of thing.
[45:50] Brendan: Yeah which I think is nice. And I think in a weird way that's the power of that show because that show is a very like self-important show. It really believes that it's doing important work, like whatever, it's a Netflix show. But I think the part of it that is real about that is that aspect, that in a time in history where things feel very surface, they sort of put you in a situation where if you are somebody who doesn't have interest in another person or doesn't have anything to say, you're not going to win that, you're not going to meet anybody. I think that to the extent that things are image-driven or driven by the way in which you can trick somebody into thinking you are more interesting than you are. It's really interesting to have an alternative to that and the rejection of that. And I do think that show has a certain kind of greater power than other dating shows or reality shows for that reason.
[46:50] Briar: We spoke a lot about the future. So I'm a big Reddit fan. I love spending time on Reddit and especially that Futurology page, I don't know if you've ever experienced it, but I see very much two kinds of people on there. I see the super utopian people and then the super dystopian people and something that they always talk about is the future of work. Is technology going to take over our jobs? What are your thoughts about this? How do you envision it? Why do you think people are so fearful of this?
[47:24] Brendan: Well, I mean, people are fearful of it because it's a very old fear and it's not an unfounded fear. Technology has taken over tremendous amount of jobs and whole careers no longer exist anymore. To give one example, it was even 30 years ago typesetter was a job, it was somebody who laid down the type to make a newspaper. And that was a skill. And that was something that you were playing a really important role in society, actually. You were helping a newspaper come into existence and then desktop publishing comes, you don't need that role anymore and it simply doesn't exist anymore or if it does exist, it's like a niche thing: a guy making art projects for people or whatever. So, these things and that's one example of thousands.
[48:10] Brendan: So these things exist and people are rightly aware of that. I think that technology has already taken over all of our jobs in the sense of we're all, or not all, but like the vast majority of us are constantly working through technology and with technology so that's already happened. Again though it's kind of like what we were talking about before, it's not the technology, it's whether or not the technology is applied to take away abilities from people or to expand the abilities that people have. So you would like a vision of technology or a vision of work that says, hey, we're not going to apply a new technology to make people obsolete or to make it so that we can pay them as little money as possible. We want to use it so that things which are kind of routine and take up a lot of time without adding a lot of value.
[49:08] Brendan: Those things can be kind of offloaded to a technology and then the people can focus on other things. That's ideally how you'd want it to be. And that's really how it should be because in the end, the quality of work can be improved by people not being bogged down by tedious work. Unfortunately, a lot of times the decision is, well, we don't need the people at all. And then you end up with a kind of loss of intelligence, and then you have a machine or a technology producing that work. So, again, like everything else, it's really how is the technology being applied? Is it being applied in a way that is concerned with people, concerned with ultimately the quality of work itself? Not even the quality of like the workers' experience, but the quality of the work they do or is it simply concerned with the bottom line and getting the most for the least.
[50:05] Briar: I think that's something that people should be excited about is yeah, using technology to do lots of the mundane tasks so we can essentially focus on what it means to be fundamentally human, which in my opinion is this kind of communication is being creative and experiencing nature and doing lots of these things. No one wants to be seated behind an Excel sheet for eight hours, plugging it away.
[50:30] Brendan: Some people do, but anyway, I agree, those are very special people. Yes. And even in the like design world, we did an exhibition for the European Union. This was 2004 and it was a 60-meter mural of imagery from the history of Europe, starting from the creation of the Earth all the way to that moment in 2004. So it was this very, very dense collage and unbelievable amounts of time had to be spent by the team. All of us cropping out all these images, like one by one, point by point in Photoshop, cropping it out, making a PNG in a transparent background, all these things could be done in half a day now and that was months of work.
[51:19] Brendan: So these kinds of things, you're right, they can make things easier and they can make things faster. So I think people shouldn't be afraid of them. The only thing I would say though is it helps you if you know what you want to do with them. It helps you to have a clear idea of how they help you rather than just leading with the technology and sort of seeing where it takes you. Because a lot of times, technologies can be super, super beneficial if you know the best way to apply it for yourself, everyone's different. And I think that just takes a bit of experience and a bit of reflection and kind of not assuming that the thing is going to end up doing everything, but just assuming that it's a kind of partner for you and it's almost like a colleague for you. And then what do you guys want to make together?
[52:08] Briar: What about like the merge of man and machine? Because I've been watching with interest how many cool things in the robotic space is coming out. And I did an article recently about brain chips and the kind of good things that they were bringing to people who had disabilities or paralysis or things like this, like it opened up a whole new world for these people. And then of course you've got these life-changing things happening and then you've got the other side of the coin where people are like, we don't want that. That's the devil's work. Take it away from us sort of thing, what's your thoughts about this?
[52:45] Brendan: So that's a really good example of the kind of technology or the application of technology that I wish people heard more about and thought more about because exactly as you say, allowing people who are quadriplegic, for example or people who have severe limitations on what they can do, a new way to communicate, a new way to interact, a new way to explore is an incredibly beautiful thing. And that's technology and it is technology that's applied to expanding what's possible for people. So that's to me like a really noble application and one that I would think that most people when they heard about it, would feel a bit better about what's possible. So I also think there's a little bit of a tendency to overemphasize the scary things and underemphasize things which are actually, in my opinion, really amazing and beautiful.
[53:42] Brendan: There is a lot of technology and science that's applied in that way to like help people cope with trauma. Anyways, we don't need to get that much into it, but there are a lot of applications of technologies that seem sort of either superficial and commercial or a bit scary and kind of like invasive that actually have some applications which are really exciting and humanistic. So I would hope that those things would maybe get a little bit more attention. But the reality is that man and machine or humans and technology have been coexisting and coming closer and closer and closer together for a long time. And there's certainly an argument that technology and invention is what distinguishes us as humans, as the species and the kind of multi-generational society that we are. But I think one of the only things about it that I have a little bit concern is like, to the extent that you integrate technology into yourself, how do you turn that off? Because you should always have in my opinion a voluntary relationship with technology, you should always be able to not be there and not be with it and not be integrated into it. So that's my only concern about it is that let's say if you have some kind of internal system.
[55:11] Briar: Did Georgia my producer tell you that I'm getting a microchip in my hand?
[55:14] Brendan: No.
[55:15] Briar: Yeah, everyone who is listening to this podcast is probably sick of hearing me talk about it by now. But I'm going to New York next month in about 18-ish days, and I'll be getting my microchip in my hand. So at the moment it can just allow me to unlock my houses, my car. You can add me on LinkedIn if you want and get my contact details, but what are your thoughts about a microchip? I've had people express concerns on social media and granted, I also feel some of these concerns as well because no topic is ever black and white. I've had people suggest that my hand might get chopped off in an effort to steal my data or my keys or whatever. I've just reminded them that it would probably be easier for someone to steal my handbag but no worries.
[56:04] Briar: I've had people worry about my data being shared out and government control and I've had people go as far to say that I'm doing the devil's work which I find very unsettling. But there are aspects of the Bible that talk about the Mark of the Beast. So I think it's all a very interesting discussion. My rationale for doing it, it's not even about the microchip for me. It's not even about the fact that I can unlock my houses, my car or you can add me on LinkedIn. It's about the stance that I'm taking. I'm a big believer that we need to be curious and we need to go out there and experiment and talk and discuss the future. And hey, if it means that I'm getting a little microchip inserted to me, my hand cut open a little bit, I don't mind for the bigger part of humanity as we were discussing before. I'm curious to get your thoughts and please don't feel like you have to go easy on me, be honest.
[57:02] Brendan: So you're basically doing it as a way to trigger conversation about this. Okay. Yeah, that's interesting. So yeah, I mean obviously it's an individual choice. I think in a weird way, if I would be honest with you, I think your reason is the best reason to do it because I don't know what the practical value is at the moment of doing something like that, but I do agree that you actually doing it makes it very real in people's minds and probably encourages them to share views that they might not otherwise. I would also say that the nature of the internet, of course is that most people dial up their views so you might be hearing a harsher version of it then.
[57:53] Briar: Very polarized. People either are like, “Oh, sign me up,” or the other people are like, “Oh, no way.”
[57:58] Brendan: Yeah. So that's the nature of dialogue these days, but anyway like I say, I think it's a personal choice and at least my main feeling about it is that it's unclear to me what the benefit would be yet.
[58:22] Briar: I think let's talk more about the future of microchips because in the future someone might have like a microchip that has their health data on it. And that's an interesting thought.
[58:33] Brendan: Yeah. So I think a thing that I find super interesting is the hyper precision that medicine can take when we are able to map the genome, map your gut bacteria and all of these kinds of things and create a vision, an understanding of what's going on internally that is almost minute by minute monitorable and adjustable. And so I think that's really interesting because, ultimately I think we would want to get toward an approach to medicine, which is actually more like traditional medicine, which is about kind of daily maintenance as opposed to something goes wrong and you fix it, something goes wrong and you fix it. It's more like you're fine tuning all the time, but you need the data for that.
[59:23] Brendan: You need to know what's going on to be able to do that. And sometimes it's as easy as like, eat three walnuts or whatever. So that kind of thing I find super interesting and I think could be really beneficial because obviously we waste unbelievable amounts of money, medicine, effort, emotion on the way that we currently practice medicine, which is like I say, mostly people ignoring what's going on with their bodies until something goes wrong and then saying, please fix this. And then a lot of times the fix causes new problems. So to the extent that we can bond with technology in the sense that it really helps us understand what's happening inside of us and then respond to it and be aware of it and kind of honor it, I think that would be super beautiful. So I hope that we head towards that direction.
[1:00:16] Briar: Yes, I've got my Oura ring, I've got my WHOOP watch, and I find these things really helpful. I enjoy the motivation that they give me. It's like turning my body inside out. Not to sound graphic or anything to people listening to this, but it gives me a little bit of an idea as to what's happening inside and what I can be doing in order to improve it. And the health chips that you describe, like that's on an entirely different level. But yes, I do sometimes wonder about all of my data and the stuff that I'm sharing with the organizations, like it's out of my control. It's in their hands now.
[1:00:56] Brendan: Yeah, so that's a case where I think really that's a fixable situation because that just requires regulations and anonymization basically. You need to be able to say you can do this, but you cannot… you have to make the data anonymous and then they can potentially use the data for some large study of understanding, trends or whatever, but nobody knows that it's yours. That's doable. And that frankly should simply happen. Because then without it, I think that people would be very, very reluctant because again, we already know that people misuse our data now, so why would you think that they wouldn't misuse our medical data? So I do think that's a case where we do need people to advocate for individual rights and a person to kind of claim a certain proprietary ownership of their own bodies basically and everything that goes on inside.
[1:01:52] Brendan: But I do think it's a really fascinating possibility and I even think a part of that that's positive and negative is to also understand that sentiment analysis and understanding of feelings is a part of that too. So on the one hand marketers would love to know with incredible precision what you are feeling emotionally at any given moment. And a lot of times physiologically that's easier to identify than even you can articulate at the time. So there's a huge amount there that I think on the one hand is super attractive to people to understand really someone's watching a commercial, how are they feeling? Somebody's encountering something, what's going on internally? That's on the kind of exploitation side. On the other side, I think in general, people don't listen to their body enough and let their body tell them, communicate to them how they're feeling. I think that a lot of people live very in their heads and they kind of intellectualize what's going on as opposed to simply allowing for something which is much more based on physical experience. And I think that to the extent that we could better understand what's going on internally, that would also open up a new territory for us to understand ourselves.
[1:03:09] Briar: Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today. It's been amazing to speak with you. I had so much fun and it's always one of these discussions where I feel like I could have talked for another couple of hours. But we can do this again and I'd love to come down and see you at the Museum of the Future.
[1:03:23] Brendan: Thank you very much for having me.
