Learn, Make, Learn
Learn, Make, Learn is two product geeks sharing qualitative & quantitative perspectives to help you make, better. Hosted by Ernest Kim and Joachim Groeger.
Learn, Make, Learn
Hello World
Get to know Ernest & Joachim, hear their hopes and dreams for Learn, Make, Learn, and get their first-ever weekly recommendations!
INTRODUCTIONS
Meet Joachim – 01:00
Meet Ernest – 10:21
PRODUCTS WITH A POINT OF VIEW – 18:51
OUR HOPES FOR LEARN, MAKE, LEARN – 23:53
WEEKLY RECOMMENDATIONS – 26:55
Joachim – Telehack
Ernest – Lavinia
- Text of Ursula K Le Guin’s speech in acceptance of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
- Video of Le Guin’s speech, with a wonderful introduction by Neil Gaiman.
CLOSING & PREVIEW OF OUR NEXT EPISODE – 36:21
(Episode artwork image credit: Apple)
****
Rant, rave or otherwise via email at LearnMakeLearn@gmail.com or on Threads @LearnMakeLearnShow.
CREDITS
Theme: Vendla / Today Is a Good Day / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Drum hit: PREL / Musical Element 85 / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Hello and welcome to Learn, Make, Learn, where we share qualitative and quantitative perspectives on products to help you, make, better. This is episode one and our topic is, us. And speaking of us, my name is Ernest Kim, and I'm joined by my friend and co-host, Joachim Groeger. Hey Joachim, how's it going?
Joachim:I am good. I'm great. I'm excited. Excited to be here. Excited to be talking with you.
Ernest:Oh, same. Really excited to be doing this. Now as I mentioned, for our inaugural episode, we're gonna talk about us, primarily so that we can talk about ourselves as little as possible in future episodes. Our intent here isn't to beat our own drums, but really just to share our backgrounds as relates to making products so that you have some context for the perspectives we share. And I wanna emphasize that we want to hear from you too. So please send any questions and feedback that springs to mind while listening to this episode to LearnMakeLearn@gmail.com. Okay, so how about we start with you Joachim? Can you tell us about your background creating products and services?
Joachim:Yeah. I'm gonna start with the beginning where products and services did not enter into the conversation at all. So it was all academic work. I was a faculty member at a university as an academic economist. I did research, I did my teaching, I supervised PhDs, and I was working in a, in an area that I like to call empirical game theory. And it's just, it's a very catchy phrase, you know, talking about trying to encapsulate the complexity of what you're doing in a few words is tricky. So that one, I felt, captured a lot of it. So it's data driven. We're thinking about strategic interactions and all putting that inside of a quantitative framework. The main things I was doing, as I said, were research and teaching. And I was mulling this over as I was, as we were getting ready for this whole thing, and I was gonna say initially that, you know, knowledge production was the product I was involved in, right? I was making thinking about questions, coming up with solutions to those questions and rinse and repeat and let and, and hope other people liked what I was coming up with. But the really interesting thing about academia is it's kind of a cheat. You get to pick the problems that you work on, so you don't really, you're not confronted with reality. And reality is saying to you, Hey, I need you to think about this right now. You kind of go in and go, oh, that this sounds kind of interesting and I probably have a way of tackling this problem and I have some tools. And then you go, so I don't think knowledge production falls into the bucket of product creation and service creation, because those are fundamentally problem solving--real problem solving. Like you can't pick the problem and you don't necessarily know what the solution is. So in academia, I think the closest thing that you come to, to being a product person, is when you're in the classroom and you're teaching, probably the one thing that academics think of the least , especially in research driven institutions, right? So teaching is one of those moments of pure inception. It's very rare someone walks into this room. we assume they're ready to absorb information, but most of the time they're really not. They're, you have to get in their heads and you have to motivate why it makes sense for them to be up at eight-thirty AM sitting in a really poorly, neon lit lecture hall. Right? Even the surroundings are not designed to be conducive to learning and exploration and thinking they're just office blocks. The worst of open office planning from the eighties is in the lecture hall, right? So. I spent a lot of time trying to come up with these ways to incept and to get an emotional connection happening between the material, the speaker being me, the students, and creating this community of people that want to absorb information. You know? And then what happens in that feedback loop is of course, the students are gonna come back to you and say, you know, this, this doesn't work for me. How are we going to, you know, how are we going to make progress in understanding these things? And so. There's another problem. it's not the problem I wanna work on necessarily. It's the one that's been handed to me. This is a student who thinks very differently than me, or a group of students that think different than me. So how do I form and reshape what's kind of fixed, which is the knowledge I need to impart, but how do I change the message, the medium, so that they can get it and rotate things so that they can see it from different angles? So, that was as I was like about to fall asleep last night, how I was thinking about really the product problem, right? It's problem solving problems that are really not yours to pick. They're just, they're things that have to be solved. And so teaching is one of those that I think hits the hardest on that, probably also why it's the most ignored.'cause it's really tricky. It doesn't get a lot of reward in the profession, right? Our success is determined by our research output. So all of that. That was a long little excursion into that, but I felt that that was the first moment of confronting the difficulty of product and innovation in that space. And so actually with that in mind, I was already kind of in that mode of enjoying being challenged in specific forms that I had not picked. And so industry was the next thing that I entered into. And so I entered into the tech industry very much as a data, data scientist, measurement guy, and a way coming in, after all of the innovation has happened, all the product questions have been answered and someone just needs to know, you know, can I say this to my boss? We're making more money, or This is making people happier in these abstract ways. And so that was great training. It forced me to connect with a product view of how is it gonna filter through the system? How are the user experiences gonna be shaped by this product? And then how do you extract signal in the data that is usually not been designed to capture a human experience of this new product. So that was a really great challenging problem, but it was very clear that, you know, you're coming in after the fact. You've, the work has, most of the work has been done. Most of the tough decisions have been made. And now people just want to know, okay. It wasn't a total disaster, right? So then the opportunity came to move out of a classical tech environment and move into the innovation group, at Nike, which is where we, where we met. And that was a very I didn't know that was gonna be the next step. It was a really interesting thing having a recruiter reach out and explain to me what it was that they were recruiting for. Initially it was just data science. I thought, okay, here's another one of these enterprise data science questions, and sure, we can, we can do that again. And then the recruiter started saying, do you know, do you know about shoes and sneakers? I'm like, yeah, of course. And you know, Tinker Hatfield. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Now we're getting, now we're getting a little bit deeper into sneaker culture here, and design. And I thought, okay, what's going, why? Yeah, I know Tinker Hatfield. He asked and he said, well, this is, this is the group that he works in, you know, and I was hooked and I was, okay, this is, this is the next step. So that was my first exposure to actually connecting with the data, the digital product, how model ideas can be turned into product and then how they interact with physical product, you know? And I think it was very inspiring to even sit in the, these meetings we were working on these cross-functional projects. You know, Nike's super matrixed. You're in the room, Ernest, explaining, hey, this is the newest challenge and it's a physical product and it's something to do with the shape of this. And, and people are responding that way and I'm, oh my goodness, I'm, I'm gonna see this in the data. And how do we put that back in so the product can evolve and, and use that information. Absolutely fascinating space to be in. So that was really great. And then I think that's also where I realized that fundamentally, I like being in the space of problem solvers. And, and that's, that's the thing, right? Artists, sculptors, designers, they are natural problem solvers, and they usually have to solve problems that are just presented to them. Like, I want to achieve this thing, but it turns out I need to know about how, you know, how a wifi signal bounces through concrete so I could get this thing to work, you know, even though it might be an art installation. But now they have to think and solve this problem. The next steps were driven more about, okay, let's get some more tools. Let's go into, back into a traditional tech thing, and I worked at a social media company. I came in there with a very different perspective than the first time when I left academia, I was coming in with a more um, user experience focused approach. And so a lot of my work at this company was essentially representing the user and the experience that they went through in the data very directly. And it was very empowering because now I could talk to a product person about pretty lofty data driven work, I'm gonna quantify a user journey here, I'm gonna show you what a user journey looks like, and here's what it looks like in the data. And we have the data to be able to do this, and it's gonna give us all kinds of cool signals that will be useful for business, but also for the users so that we can actually understand how are they feeling about this experience, you know? So, that's kind of where I went. And then, then the next step was to go into Metaverse development, obviously. Then what else would I be doing next? So I worked at a video game company that was pushing into Metaverse development and they wanted to design a creator economy around that. That sounded really great. It was gonna sit inside of product now. So now, instead of sitting inside of a data science group or anything like that, I'm sitting inside of product and I'm gonna talk to product people all day long. That was very, very powerful for me. Being able to shape things actually from the ground up. Now finally going, moving up the funnel, shape the product, talk to, to other people who have a different perspective coming from a design user experience perspective. And I'm coming from an economics platform design perspective now and platform architecting perspective and then bringing those together to to turn something out and create something new. And then at the same time, close the loop. Be able to measure all the stuff at the end of the day. So I'm, I'm in a happy spot now that I think I've figured out who I am and it's been quite a journey as I say it all in one go to you, Ernest. But yeah, that, that kind of brings us to where we are today.
Ernest:That's awesome. Thanks for sharing that. One thing I should mention too, is that the views expressed here are ours alone and don't represent those of our employers past, present, or future. Just to make that clear. Uh, but like you mentioned, Joachim, we worked together at Nike. So that's something I've, I've been doing for uh, very nearly 15 years now. I started out as what is called at Nike, a product line manager--PLM , more broadly is is called product marketing. And much as you mentioned you did when you were at that social media company, the primary responsibility of that role is really to be a representative for the consumer to help the, the broader product team understand what the needs of the consumer are and what their journey is, just like you were talking about. In my case, more from a qualitative perspective. When I got started, we didn't really have great data inputs ... it was very much, or at least not great quantitative data inputs. So it's very much qualitative. But then like you mentioned uh, I moved into some other roles that were more focused on innovation. And then right now um, I'm uh, in a consumer research role, so really focused on understanding the consumer and what they're looking for, what the journey is, et cetera. Prior to that kind of maybe jumping back to the, to the beginning. On my end, I, I came more from the visual side of things. I started out in web design actually, and this is dating myself, but when I was at university, I was studying multimedia design, which at the time meant CD ROM interfaces. Um, but while I was in school, at NYU the NCSA Mosaic browser was introduced and um, I was just blown away by that. And so I very quickly got into web design and was very lucky, you know, being in the right place at the right time, lots of little agencies popped up. So that was kind of my first career, was doing web design. I had the opportunity to go and move out to Chicago to help start up the Chicago office of a company called Organic, which at the time was one of the bigger um, web marketing agencies. And I was the creative director for the Chicago office, and the first person I interviewed, the first person I tried to hire to join my team was a guy named Jason Fried. And he had the wisdom to not take my offer, but we uh, stayed in touch and after about a year, I, we actually um, got together and started our own company called 37signals, which um, still exists today in a different form, it's called Basecamp. In the beginning we were uh, basically a boutique web design company, but we were, what made us distinct is that we were really focused on web sites as products. We didn't call it that at the time, but looking back now, I, I kind of see that that was what we were doing. We wanted to work with clients who needed to be online and wanted to treat their online presence as a key part of their business. You know, at the time, Flash-based splash pages were really all the rage, and we just hated that. The idea of, you know, putting this thing in front of your consumers and blocking them from getting to your actual site experience. So, you know, that I think set us apart and enabled us to kind of weather the storm that was the first dotcom bust that we lived through. But after 37signals I moved out to Oregon... and oh, I guess one thing I did while at 37signals was, I I always had this thing for sneakers and particularly basketball sneakers, and so I started up this site called Kicksology.net, where I reviewed basketball shoes. It was honestly just an excuse to be able to buy more shoes. But by, you know, really no intention of mine it, it became pretty popular and helped me get connected with folks in the footwear industry, including at Nike. And so that's what led to me joining Nike. I actually have had two stints at Nike. So I had that first stint where I was a product line manager, and then uh, after about three years at Nike, I got the itch to come back into digital because social media happened while I was at Nike that first time. And I just really was fascinated by that, and wanted to get back into that world. So uh, I went over to Weiden and Kennedy, which actually does quite a bit of marketing and advertising work for Nike, but I worked on the Coke and Diet Coke accounts, and that was just an amazing experience. Spent about a year and a half there. And I, I just will always cherish that time. That was an incredible experience. And then, you know, I would've stayed, but then I had this opportunity to go work overseas and lead digital strategy at a small agency based out in Singapore. And that's something I'd always wanted to do, was live and work overseas, so I, I did that. And again, that was an amazing experience. And also would've stayed there longer, but then after about a year and a half, a, a former colleague at Nike got in touch about a role in innovation back at Nike. So that's what brought me back, and I've been back at Nike ever since then. But really kind of like you were saying, you know, Joachim, the thread that's tied that together for me has been this interest in the understanding, the why behind consumer behaviors. It's funny because before I joined Nike in this PLM role, I had no idea that that sort of a role existed. But looking back I can see that that's something that's, that I've always been interested in. Even when I was doing web design, I knew even then that I, I wasn't a great designer. I just was doing it because I wanted to make these things. But fundamentally, what I was always most interested in was that why, and, and delivering on that why. So that's kind of been the, the thread that's connected all these things that I've done over the years.
Joachim:I'm so curious now, when you mentioned CD ROM design, does that, maybe I'm grasping at straws now, but. That is a very restrictive medium, very limited ability to get at what the consumer's experiencing in the moment. It's kind of a one and done. I make it, I hope I've figured it out, and it goes out there, and then people consume it. Very different from the closed loop feedback system wherein where we're, you know, at a microsecond we're tracking the user and we're saying, okay, they, they, they dwelled on this thing for two seconds longer than another time. Does that thinking still shape things that you're doing right now where you say, because you mentioned that you're also in a space that doesn't have all the signals ready and you're now in this very unknowable domain where you're just trying your best to not guess, but educated guess. Use proxy, figure out what else is going on in the ether. Is that something that you think you can bring back to that CD ROM design, or is that just something that was there and that set you up for where you are now?
Ernest:That's a great question and, and I really do think it helped set me up for physical product creation because it is that what you described, you know, really having to front load as much as you can in terms of your knowledge base, because as you mentioned, you're not getting that closed loop data back. And, you know, that was the case with CD ROMs and that's very much the case with physical products, at least the sorts of physical products that I had experience um, uh, creating. You, you know, you do get some data back, but it's much, much slower, much, you know, farther off in the, the creation process. So I think it did help to help me to start to build that muscle of understanding that you really have to dig into it at the front end, and knowing that you're not gonna have this crutch of being able to iterate, you know, after the product's been launched. Because, you know, once it's a--'cause CD is a physical product, right? You have to print the bits onto a cd and in the case of say, footwear, that's a physical product. You can't, you know, do an over the aire, uh, update for that . So, yeah, I do think that that helped um, helped guide me uh, having done both. It's, there's definitely pros and cons to both. You know, I think it's easy when you're in physical product to look at digital and think, oh, that's just such a luxury to be able to push out a follow-up update. But there are challenges with that as well. I think there's, there's a benefit to the discipline of knowing that you ha... you're gonna have to bake a product and push it out there knowing that you're not gonna be able to update that incarnation of the product. So I think it's beneficial to have had a foot in both of those worlds, but that's a great question.
Joachim:Yeah. It reminds me a lot of, in my domain A big thing that economists got very excited about when these digital platforms were emerging was exactly this idea that they could run experiments I, I think that in digital now, this is a strong statement, but why not We're doing this to make strong statements. you run out of the discipline that comes from taking a stand, right? As a product, like this is the product, this is where the lace is gonna go. You're, you're really telling the consumer, look, this is a representation of our thought process in the physical product, and we stand by it. We've done our best. Maybe not to everyone's taste, but we've got skin in the game here right now. You know, and I find that a lot of dig, digital domains, skin in the game with experimentation and iterative procedures has kind of been removed. People don't want to make those strong statements and say, we strongly believe that it should look like this, and it should feel like this. And so that's where I kind of also wonder how much of the internet digital stuff has become all very beige. You know, everything kind of feels the same. The physical space is still a place where you have to just say. This is what it's gonna be like and it's gonna, it's gonna be this, and we're gonna talk soon about things like spatial computing and headsets. I mean, these are big physical statements about where you think the future's gonna be. And tech, I believe, really was a lot more of that in the past, you know, and Apple did that a lot. So yeah, that got me thinking a little bit more when you said that front end work being so vital in physical stuff, and I make it more ground by saying, you're taking a stand by saying, I, I really have tried to represent you as best as I can consumer, I'm also bringing my quote unquote ideology into this game, right?You're bringing in what you think it matters and yeah, taking a stand.
Ernest:I, yeah, I think that's such a great point that I, I definitely agree that I think a lot of digital companies have sort of abdicated that role of editor and instead of just pushed it all out into, you know, we'll just test it in whatever wins in the test we'll go with. But what happens there, which, you know, as you've been touching on, is you end up with everyone offering the same solution because everyone's doing that same testing. And so you have this, you know, sea of bland experiences. And I think what you see out in the marketplace today in particular is people gravitating to these more opinionated, like you're saying uh, type solutions. You know, when you look at physical products, you mentioned Apple, but also if you look at, say, automotive Hyundai and Kia, you know, doing so well recently with vehicles that are very opinionated in terms of their aesthetic. So I think there is this real appetite for brands and experiences that express that sort of personality, that humanity, the sense that there's some human on the other end of this, you know, that had a point of view and is offering that up. I think you're, you're absolutely right about that.
Joachim:I like that you mentioned the Kia and Hyundai. I think that is in the realm of, especially I think you're thinking about EV vehicles as they've been very, very forward and in some ways looking back as well, being proud to look at the Hyundai heritage and bringing a hatchback onto market and saying, this is referencing something we did when you guys didn't care about our products and thought they were terrible, but that's our heritage and we bring it to the future and we show you this is, this is who we are. This is where we came from and this is what's happening right now. And, and it resonates. People, people like that. You know, it's not another typical SUV, it's, it sticks out and it's idiosyncratic. It represents their culture coming into those vehicles again. So, and, and I think that's, yeah, as you said, that's a very powerful thing in the, a sea of bland. Yeah.
Ernest:I am actually hoping that we might be able to do an episode focused on Hyundai in the future. Particularly their Santa Cruz . Pickup truck. I think there's a really interesting case study there, especially based on the introduction video that, that they used when they launched the concept before it was actually approved for production. It's an incredible example of product marketing done live. The sort of thing that's usually kept behind closed doors, they actually offered up to the public. So I thought that was a really interesting case study. Um., Joachim: Would love talk about that. Yeah. But, you know. Okay. So you've, you've now heard a lot about us. There's maybe one question I'd like to ask you, Joachim, if you don't mind. It's what do you hope to achieve with this show, Learn, Make, Learn?
Joachim:Yeah, that's a tough one. It's a tough one because it touches on everything everything that we've talked about. I think this is, a place where we can start doing exactly that process that you're engaged in every day Ernest, which is, how do we get signal on the world in a very, very complicated place with lots of noise. And how do we use our very different angles to come to a more fundamental understanding of the real state of the world? So I'm really trying to grasp at what is the fundamental why? That kind of the essence of the question, what are we actually doing with these products? Are we actually tackling a real need, a real problem? And if we do stumble on someone that's done that, how did they get to that point? You know, what is the context that allows them as a group to come together and, and do this? And again, I think it, I would love to have more voices in this conversation, as you mentioned at the front end. So I'm hoping that we will be able to bring in more people and more perspectives from our networks and beyond, who'll be able to offer up a very different angle of attack on how they think about these things. So for me, the emphasis is definitely on, learn to then eventually help the make piece for myself. And as you, as the name of the podcast says, says, we're saying learn twice. Because it is very much, I think that's the ratio that you have to be in, right? That two to one kind of mix is important. And yeah. So let's, let's, that's, I'd like to embody that thinking in this podcast for, for us, and show that it's possible to have people come together, different perspectives, and we're just gonna learn, and then we're gonna learn some more at the end of it. Yeah.
Ernest:That's great.
Joachim:What about Ernest?
Ernest:That, that's very similar to my hope as well. I Think one of the reasons we hit it off. So well, when we met at Nike was that we are both so interested in this, and I, at least from my end, I've found that there... I've not encountered that many other people who are really interested in this. So to be able to find that community and bring other people together into a community, to, you know, learn from each other, bounce ideas off of each other I, I really hope that over time we're gonna be able to do that. And then this is, you know, probably gonna sound pretty grandiose, but I also hope that through that we can help to improve the state of products in the world. You know, I think most would agree that there are just a lot of really mediocre products out there. Like we were saying, you know, lots of me-too products. And so hopefully by creating this community, sharing this knowledge, we'll be able to actually make a, you know, some kind of an impact on the quality of the state of products out in the world.. Well, I hope this background is helpful for our listeners. I wanted to wrap up with something that we plan to keep up with as a recurring segment, which is a product or service that we'd like to highlight for good or for ill, you know, something that has us excited. So Joachim, how about you get us started? Is there anything that has you excited right now?
Joachim:Yeah, this one's a funky one. I stumbled on this on Mastodon a couple of weeks ago, and it's a game experience. It's deeply immersive, but when I describe it, you'll be wondering why it's so immersive. It's called Tele Hack, and it's hosted at telehack.com, and it's a simulation of a computer terminal that's connecting to another remote computer. So it's the aesthetic. It is black screen, green text like you would be in back in the days on MS-DOS, and there are a set of commands that are given to you that you can use and you just start exploring. There's no, points or anything like that. It is a pure exploration and it's all happening through a text-based interface. So it's not running a very specific language or something like that. It's trying to reference languages and feel like those things. But people have been stumbling on archived BBS posts that they themselves wrote. So they were able to follow a rabbit hole all the way down to some hidden archive of, you know, old content from the early days of the internet. And of course you can play games on it and all those things, but it has this really unique interface. It runs in your browser. You don't touch the mouse. It's text interaction. It feels immersive. You know, you really feel like you're in a William Gibson kind of world. You've stumbled on this hidden nook of the internet, and the only way you can interact with it is in this very old fashioned way. And so it's very compelling, you know, and, and I've just been doing little five minute bits and figuring out what's going on. I mean, there's stuff where you just can generate a random hash or something like that, and you go, oh, well that's cool. I don't know why I would ever need that. But there's something about that immersion into you really start believing this machine that you're logged into is a real machine that's doing stuff. You know, it's doing things in the background and it needs, it has a role outside of it. And then you start asking questions. Who set this machine up? What is it doing when I'm not here?'cause I'm not actually the user of this machine. I'm, I'm a hacker. I'm not meant to be on the system. So it's one that I really, really, really enjoyed. I recommend it to everyone. It can be a time sink, I think I've seen people go down wormholes, but it's definitely, definitely interesting and free to experience because someone just made it a passion project. So,
Ernest:That sounds awesome. What is called again?
Joachim:Tele hack. And so yeah, we'll put that in the, the notes so that everyone can check that out. But yeah, it's it's well worth checking out and I don't know who made it. I don't know anything about it. I just know this website exists and I, I'm enjoying the mystery of that. You know, I am enjoying the fact that there is a way to stumble in a world that is not open to everyone right now. You know, it's just a little nook. There are many users on it, obviously, but there's still that The imagination that kinda runs wild in this very, very limited interface. So
Ernest:That sounds super cool.
Joachim:for week that's my, this about you, Ernest? What have, what's, what's on your mind? what excited?
Ernest:I think mine might be a little funky as well. I actually spent a fair bit of time trying to think about what should I highlight. There's, you know, a few different things I've been excited about, but I thought for this first episode, it might be good to highlight a book that is not new, but is new to me, it's called Lavinia, written by Ursula K Le Guin, who's best known I think, for science fiction. But this is actually, it's not, I guess, what I would call science fiction. It's a retelling of the Aeneid-- Virgil's Aeneid, but from the perspective of Lavinia who in that tale is an important figure, particularly in the last six books of the Aeneid, but she has no characterization in Virgil's telling of the story. She has no lines. So it's very interesting to, to see her story, her experience -- the story of that epic poem told from her perspective. I'll, I'll read the, the description from the publisher, which is Harcourt, and this was actually published in 2008. So like I mentioned, it's not new, but I just encountered it and just finished it last week. So as they describe it, Virgil's hero fights to claim the king's daughter Lavinia, with whom he's destined to found an empire. Lavinia herself never speaks a word. Now, Ursula K Le Guin gives Lavinia a voice in a novel that takes us to the half wild world of ancient Italy when Rome was a muddy village near seven hills. Lavinia is a book of passion and war. Generous and austerely beautiful from a writer working at the height of her powers. I think that's a, a really good way to describe it. That was my experience of it. And I, I wanted to highlight this because I do think that, particularly on the tech side of things, a lot of people, tend to poo poo literature. There's a sense that, you know, reading fiction is a waste of time, but I just think it's so incredibly important to, as we've talked about a bunch over the course of this conversation, to get at that why, to understand human behavior, human desires, you know, The things that are at the core of who we are and why we do the things we do. And I think that literature is just such an incredible way to get in touch with that. And so I would really encourage people, especially people who are in the business of making, to really don't overlook literature -- the arts in general, but I'd say literature being a really big part of that. And I thought that Le Guin had this amazing quote that spoke to this. This was at the N ational Book Foundation Awards in 2014 when she was given the medal for distinguished con contribution to American Letters. And so I'll just read a little bit of an excerpt from her speech, where she kind of speaks to this. And it's amazing 'cause this speech was in 2014, but I, I think you'll see it's, it's incredibly timely still today. So she says, Hard times are coming when we'll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear stricken society, and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being and even imagine real grounds for hope. We'll need writers who can remember freedom, poets, visionaries, realists of a larger reality. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable, but then so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words. And I think there's so much truth to that, so much power in those ideas. And I think that comes across in all of her work, but it, it absolutely came across to me in this book, Lavinia. So that's why I wanted to recommend that one.
Joachim:I, I'm so happy that you did that And that is yeah, she is one of my favorite writers as well. And that speech I was gonna Interrupt at one point, say, oh yeah, have you heard this? And yes, you have, of course. And it's, it's very powerful. It's such a powerful counterpoint to what we were just talking about, which is the kind of abdicating responsibility to, to imagine something differently and to take a stand. And she always took a stand with everything that she was doing. It's funny that you say that about the literature being kind of pushed to the side. I, I think that's very true. It's considered frivolous and pointless, but good literature lets you imagine that other, other, domain, other world, other ways of doing and being and it's a great counterpoint to, Le Guin references capitalism there. You know, Thatcher, Margaret Thatcher, Britain's Prime Minister for many years, famously Essentially shut down imagining alternatives. In her speech, she said, you know, there is no alternative to free markets and all of those things. And what a sad thing to say, you know, I offer you freedom, but stop thinking about what else is possible. Now, you know, this is it, which seems contradictory, right? So I appreciate there were writers like Le Guin who were able to just articulate exactly that this is what we're here for. We are here to imagine those alternatives and engage with them.
Ernest:Right, and I think that's something we can do through products as well. You know, creating products that . Encourage and inspire that sort of imagination. That can be something that we can try to do through products. And I'd love to see more people aspire to do that to, to to touch that, that fundamental humanity a way that I think so many products just don't seem interested in doing these days.
Joachim:Very true, very true and bold statement, but I agree
Ernest:Well, this is an awesome conversation and I'm really looking forward to our next one. Thank you so much for listening to episode one of the Learn, Make, Learn Show. Now, as I mentioned, we want to hear from you, so please send questions and feedback to LearnMakeLearn@gmail.com and tell your friends about us. Now in our next episode, like Joachim mentioned, we'll be discussing spatial computing. With the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses trending on TikTok and Apple's Vision Pro right around the corner, it feels like a great opportunity to talk about this new class of devices through a product lens. Who are they for? Is the lightweight AR-led approach embodied by the Ray-Ban Meta Glasses the way to go, or will Apple's emphasis on mixed reality with its huge hardware requirements and huge price tag ultimately forge the path to mainstream adoption? Or maybe it's none of the above. We'll grapple with these questions and more on the next Learn, Make, Learn.
