How art, technology and design inform creative leaders
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0:00 - 0:03I have to say that I'm very glad to be here.
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0:03 - 0:06I understand we have over 80 countries here,
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0:06 - 0:08so that's a whole new paradigm for me to speak
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0:08 - 0:09to all of these countries.
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0:09 - 0:11In each country, I'm sure you have this thing called
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0:11 - 0:14the parent-teacher conference.
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0:14 - 0:16Do you know about the parent-teacher conference?
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0:16 - 0:18Not the ones for your kids, but the one you had as a child,
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0:18 - 0:21where your parents come to school and your teacher
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0:21 - 0:23talks to your parents, and it's a little bit awkward.
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0:23 - 0:27Well, I remember in third grade, I had this moment
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0:27 - 0:30where my father, who never takes off from work,
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0:30 - 0:34he's a classical blue collar, a working-class immigrant person,
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0:34 - 0:37going to school to see his son, how he's doing,
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0:37 - 0:39and the teacher said to him, he said, "You know,
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0:39 - 0:41John is good at math and art."
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0:41 - 0:44And he kind of nodded, you know?
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0:44 - 0:46The next day I saw him talking to a customer at our
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0:46 - 0:50tofu store, and he said, "You know, John's good at math."
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0:50 - 0:53(Laughter)
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0:53 - 0:55And that always stuck with me all my life.
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0:55 - 0:58Why didn't Dad say art? Why wasn't it okay?
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0:58 - 1:02Why? It became a question my entire life, and
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1:02 - 1:05that's all right, because being good at math meant
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1:05 - 1:08he bought me a computer, and some of you remember
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1:08 - 1:10this computer, this was my first computer.
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1:10 - 1:14Who had an Apple II? Apple II users, very cool. (Applause)
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1:14 - 1:17As you remember, the Apple II did nothing at all. (Laughter)
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1:17 - 1:19You'd plug it in, you'd type in it and green text would come out.
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1:19 - 1:21It would say you're wrong most of the time.
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1:21 - 1:23That was the computer we knew.
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1:23 - 1:25That computer is a computer that I learned about
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1:25 - 1:30going to MIT, my father's dream. And at MIT, however,
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1:30 - 1:33I learned about the computer at all levels,
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1:33 - 1:37and after, I went to art school to get away from computers,
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1:37 - 1:39and I began to think about the computer as more of
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1:39 - 1:41a spiritual space of thinking.
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1:41 - 1:44And I was influenced by performance art --
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1:44 - 1:48so this is 20 years ago. I made a computer out of people.
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1:48 - 1:51It was called the Human Powered Computer Experiment.
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1:51 - 1:55I have a power manager, mouse driver, memory, etc.,
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1:55 - 1:59and I built this in Kyoto, the old capital of Japan.
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1:59 - 2:01It's a room broken in two halves.
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2:01 - 2:03I've turned the computer on,
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2:03 - 2:06and these assistants are placing a giant floppy disk
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2:06 - 2:09built out of cardboard, and it's put into the computer.
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2:09 - 2:14And the floppy disk drive person wears it. (Laughter)
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2:14 - 2:16She finds the first sector on the disk, and
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2:16 - 2:21takes data off the disk and passes it off to, of course, the bus.
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2:21 - 2:25So the bus diligently carries the data into the computer
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2:25 - 2:28to the memory, to the CPU, the VRAM, etc.,
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2:28 - 2:33and it's an actual working computer. That's a bus, really. (Laughter)
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2:33 - 2:36And it looks kind of fast. That's a mouse driver,
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2:36 - 2:38where it's XY. (Laughter)
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2:38 - 2:39It looks like it's happening kind of quickly, but it's actually
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2:39 - 2:43a very slow computer, and when I realized how slow
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2:43 - 2:47this computer was compared to how fast a computer is,
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2:47 - 2:51it made me wonder about computers and technology in general.
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2:51 - 2:54And so I'm going to talk today about four things, really.
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2:54 - 2:57The first three things are about how I've been curious
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2:57 - 3:01about technology, design and art, and how they intersect,
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3:01 - 3:04how they overlap, and also a topic that I've taken on
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3:04 - 3:06since four years ago I became the President
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3:06 - 3:10of Rhode Island School of Design: leadership.
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3:10 - 3:12And I'll talk about how I've looked to combine
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3:12 - 3:17these four areas into a kind of a synthesis, a kind of experiment.
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3:17 - 3:20So starting from technology,
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3:20 - 3:22technology is a wonderful thing.
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3:22 - 3:25When that Apple II came out, it really could do nothing.
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3:25 - 3:28It could show text and
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3:28 - 3:31after we waited a bit, we had these things called images.
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3:31 - 3:34Remember when images were first possible with a computer,
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3:34 - 3:36those gorgeous, full-color images?
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3:36 - 3:40And then after a few years, we got CD-quality sound.
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3:40 - 3:42It was incredible. You could listen to sound on the computer.
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3:42 - 3:46And then movies, via CD-ROM. It was amazing.
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3:46 - 3:48Remember that excitement?
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3:48 - 3:52And then the browser appeared. The browser was great,
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3:52 - 3:55but the browser was very primitive, very narrow bandwidth.
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3:55 - 3:58Text first, then images, we waited,
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3:58 - 4:00CD-quality sound over the Net,
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4:00 - 4:04then movies over the Internet. Kind of incredible.
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4:04 - 4:07And then the mobile phone occurred,
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4:07 - 4:13text, images, audio, video. And now we have iPhone,
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4:13 - 4:17iPad, Android, with text, video, audio, etc.
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4:17 - 4:19You see this little pattern here?
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4:19 - 4:22We're kind of stuck in a loop, perhaps, and this sense
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4:22 - 4:25of possibility from computing is something I've been
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4:25 - 4:28questioning for the last 10 or so years,
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4:28 - 4:32and have looked to design, as we understand most things,
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4:32 - 4:36and to understand design with our technology has been a passion of mine.
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4:36 - 4:40And I have a small experiment to give you a quick design lesson.
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4:40 - 4:43Designers talk about the relationship between form
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4:43 - 4:46and content, content and form. Now what does that mean?
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4:46 - 4:49Well, content is the word up there: fear.
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4:49 - 4:54It's a four-letter word. It's a kind of a bad feeling word, fear.
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4:54 - 4:59Fear is set in Light Helvetica, so it's not too stressful,
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4:59 - 5:01and if you set it in Ultra Light Helvetica,
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5:01 - 5:05it's like, "Oh, fear, who cares?" Right? (Laughter)
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5:05 - 5:08You take the same Ultra Light Helvetica and make it big,
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5:08 - 5:10and like, whoa, that hurts. Fear.
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5:10 - 5:12So you can see how you change the scale, you change
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5:12 - 5:17the form. Content is the same, but you feel differently.
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5:17 - 5:19You change the typeface to, like, this typeface,
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5:19 - 5:21and it's kind of funny. It's like pirate typeface,
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5:21 - 5:24like Captain Jack Sparrow typeface. Arr! Fear!
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5:24 - 5:27Like, aww, that's not fearful. That's actually funny.
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5:27 - 5:31Or fear like this, kind of a nightclub typeface. (Laughter)
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5:31 - 5:34Like, we gotta go to Fear. (Laughter)
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5:34 - 5:37It's, like, amazing, right? (Laughter) (Applause)
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5:37 - 5:39It just changes the same content.
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5:39 - 5:41Or you make it -- The letters are separated apart,
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5:41 - 5:43they're huddled together like on the deck of the Titanic,
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5:43 - 5:46and you feel sorry for the letters, like, I feel the fear.
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5:46 - 5:49You feel for them.
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5:49 - 5:51Or you change the typeface to something like this.
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5:51 - 5:54It's very classy. It's like that expensive restaurant, Fear.
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5:54 - 5:57I can never get in there. (Laughter)
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5:57 - 6:02It's just amazing, Fear. But that's form, content.
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6:02 - 6:05If you just change one letter in that content,
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6:05 - 6:09you get a much better word, much better content: free.
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6:09 - 6:13"Free" is a great word. You can serve it almost any way.
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6:13 - 6:16Free bold feels like Mandela free.
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6:16 - 6:19It's like, yes, I can be free.
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6:19 - 6:22Free even light feels kind of like, ah, I can breathe in free.
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6:22 - 6:25It feels great. Or even free spread out,
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6:25 - 6:28it's like, ah, I can breathe in free, so easily.
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6:28 - 6:31And I can add in a blue gradient and a dove,
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6:31 - 6:34and I have, like, Don Draper free. (Laughter)
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6:34 - 6:37So you see that -- form, content, design, it works that way.
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6:37 - 6:39It's a powerful thing. It's like magic, almost,
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6:39 - 6:44like the magicians we've seen at TED. It's magic.
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6:44 - 6:46Design does that.
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6:46 - 6:49And I've been curious about how design and technology intersect,
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6:49 - 6:51and I'm going to show you some old work I never really
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6:51 - 6:54show anymore, to give you a sense of what I used to do.
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6:54 - 6:57So -- yeah.
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6:57 - 7:00So I made a lot of work in the '90s.
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7:00 - 7:03This was a square that responds to sound.
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7:03 - 7:06People ask me why I made that. It's not clear. (Laughter)
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7:06 - 7:12But I thought it'd be neat for the square
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7:12 - 7:17to respond to me, and my kids were small then,
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7:17 - 7:20and my kids would play with these things, like, "Aaah,"
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7:20 - 7:23you know, they would say, "Daddy, aaah, aaah." You know, like that.
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7:23 - 7:25We'd go to a computer store, and they'd do the same thing.
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7:25 - 7:28And they'd say, "Daddy, why doesn't the computer respond to sound?"
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7:28 - 7:32And it was really at the time I was wondering why doesn't the computer respond to sound?
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7:32 - 7:35So I made this as a kind of an experiment at the time.
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7:35 - 7:38And then I spent a lot of time in the space of
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7:38 - 7:41interactive graphics and things like this, and I stopped doing it because
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7:41 - 7:44my students at MIT got so much better than myself,
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7:44 - 7:46so I had to hang up my mouse.
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7:46 - 7:49But in '96, I made my last piece. It was in black and white,
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7:49 - 7:53monochrome, fully monochrome, all in integer mathematics.
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7:53 - 7:54It's called "Tap, Type, Write."
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7:54 - 7:58It's paying a tribute to the wonderful typewriter
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7:58 - 8:02that my mother used to type on all the time as a legal secretary.
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8:02 - 8:04It has 10 variations. (Typing noise)
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8:04 - 8:06(Typing noise)
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8:06 - 8:10There's a shift.
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8:10 - 8:14Ten variations. This is, like, spin the letter around.
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8:14 - 8:18(Typing noises)
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8:18 - 8:25This is, like, a ring of letters. (Typing noises)
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8:25 - 8:28This is 20 years old, so it's kind of a --
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8:28 - 8:29Let's see, this is —
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8:29 - 8:31I love the French film "The Red Balloon."
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8:31 - 8:34Great movie, right? I love that movie. So,
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8:34 - 8:37this is sort of like a play on that. (Typing noises) (Typewriter bell)
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8:37 - 8:41It's peaceful, like that. (Laughter)
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8:41 - 8:46I'll show this last one. This is about balance, you know.
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8:46 - 8:48It's kind of stressful typing out, so if you
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8:48 - 8:51type on this keyboard, you can, like, balance it out.
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8:51 - 8:53(Laughter)
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8:53 - 8:56If you hit G, life's okay, so I always say,
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8:56 - 8:59"Hit G, and it's going to be all right.
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8:59 - 9:01Thank you. (Applause)
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9:01 - 9:04Thank you.
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9:04 - 9:07So that was 20 years ago, and
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9:07 - 9:12I was always on the periphery of art.
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9:12 - 9:14By being President of RISD I've gone deep into art,
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9:14 - 9:18and art is a wonderful thing, fine art, pure art.
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9:18 - 9:21You know, when people say, "I don't get art.
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9:21 - 9:25I don't get it at all." That means art is working, you know?
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9:25 - 9:27It's like, art is supposed to be enigmatic, so when you say,
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9:27 - 9:30like, "I don't get it," like, oh, that's great. (Laughter)
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9:30 - 9:33Art does that, because art is about asking questions,
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9:33 - 9:36questions that may not be answerable.
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9:36 - 9:38At RISD, we have this amazing facility called
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9:38 - 9:41the Edna Lawrence Nature Lab. It has 80,000 samples
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9:41 - 9:45of animal, bone, mineral, plants.
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9:45 - 9:48You know, in Rhode Island, if an animal gets hit on the road,
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9:48 - 9:51they call us up and we pick it up and stuff it.
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9:51 - 9:53And why do we have this facility?
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9:53 - 9:57Because at RISD, you have to look at the actual animal,
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9:57 - 10:00the object, to understand its volume, to perceive it.
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10:00 - 10:02At RISD, you're not allowed to draw from an image.
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10:02 - 10:04And many people ask me, John, couldn't you just
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10:04 - 10:08digitize all this? Make it all digital? Wouldn't it be better?
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10:08 - 10:11And I often say, well, there's something good to how things
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10:11 - 10:15used to be done. There's something very different about it,
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10:15 - 10:17something we should figure out what is good about
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10:17 - 10:20how we did it, even in this new era.
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10:20 - 10:23And I have a good friend, he's a new media artist named
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10:23 - 10:27Tota Hasegawa. He's based in London, no, actually it's in Tokyo,
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10:27 - 10:29but when he was based in London, he had a game
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10:29 - 10:32with his wife. He would go to antique shops,
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10:32 - 10:34and the game was as such:
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10:34 - 10:37When we look at an antique we want,
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10:37 - 10:40we'll ask the shopkeeper for the story behind the antique,
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10:40 - 10:41and if it's a good story, we'll buy it.
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10:41 - 10:43So they'd go to an antique shop, and they'd look at this cup,
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10:43 - 10:45and they'd say, "Tell us about this cup."
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10:45 - 10:49And the shopkeeper would say, "It's old." (Laughter)
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10:49 - 10:53"Tell us more."
"Oh, it's really old." (Laughter) -
10:53 - 10:55And he saw, over and over, the antique's value
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10:55 - 10:58was all about it being old.
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10:58 - 11:00And as a new media artist, he reflected, and said,
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11:00 - 11:03you know, I've spent my whole career making new media art.
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11:03 - 11:08People say, "Wow, your art, what is it?"
It's new media. -
11:08 - 11:11And he realized, it isn't about old or new.
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11:11 - 11:12It's about something in between.
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11:12 - 11:18It isn't about "old," the dirt, "new," the cloud. It's about what is good.
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11:18 - 11:23A combination of the cloud and the dirt is where the action is at.
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11:23 - 11:25You see it in all interesting art today, in all
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11:25 - 11:27interesting businesses today. How we combine
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11:27 - 11:31those two together to make good is very interesting.
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11:31 - 11:34So art makes questions, and
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11:34 - 11:39leadership is something that is asking a lot of questions.
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11:39 - 11:41We aren't functioning so easily anymore.
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11:41 - 11:44We aren't a simple authoritarian regime anymore.
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11:44 - 11:48As an example of authoritarianism, I was in Russia one time
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11:48 - 11:50traveling in St. Petersburg, at a national monument,
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11:50 - 11:53and I saw this sign that says, "Do Not Walk On The Grass,"
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11:53 - 11:55and I thought, oh, I mean, I speak English,
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11:55 - 11:57and you're trying to single me out. That's not fair.
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11:57 - 12:00But I found a sign for Russian-speaking people,
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12:00 - 12:03and it was the best sign ever to say no.
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12:03 - 12:06It was like, "No swimming, no hiking, no anything."
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12:06 - 12:12My favorite ones are "no plants." Why would you bring a plant to a national monument? I'm not sure.
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12:12 - 12:14And also "no love." (Laughter)
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12:14 - 12:17So that is authoritarianism.
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12:17 - 12:20And what is that, structurally?
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12:20 - 12:22It's a hierarchy. We all know that a hierarchy is how we run
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12:22 - 12:25many systems today, but as we know, it's been disrupted.
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12:25 - 12:29It is now a network instead of a perfect tree.
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12:29 - 12:32It's a heterarchy instead of a hierarchy. And that's kind of awkward.
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12:32 - 12:36And so today, leaders are faced
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12:36 - 12:37with how to lead differently, I believe.
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12:37 - 12:40This is work I did with my colleague Becky Bermont
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12:40 - 12:42on creative leadership. What can we learn
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12:42 - 12:44from artists and designers for how to lead?
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12:44 - 12:48Because in many senses, a regular leader loves to avoid mistakes.
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12:48 - 12:52Someone who's creative actually loves to learn from mistakes.
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12:52 - 12:56A traditional leader is always wanting to be right,
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12:56 - 13:00whereas a creative leader hopes to be right.
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13:00 - 13:03And this frame is important today, in this complex,
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13:03 - 13:07ambiguous space, and artists and designers have a lot to teach us, I believe.
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13:07 - 13:11And I had a show in London recently where my friends
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13:11 - 13:13invited me to come to London for four days
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13:13 - 13:15to sit in a sandbox, and I said great.
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13:15 - 13:19And so I sat in a sandbox for four days straight,
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13:19 - 13:22six hours every day, six-minute appointments with anyone in London,
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13:22 - 13:24and that was really bad.
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13:24 - 13:28But I would listen to people, hear their issues,
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13:28 - 13:30draw in the sand, try to figure things out,
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13:30 - 13:32and it was kind of hard to figure out what I was doing.
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13:32 - 13:35You know? It's all these one-on-one meetings for like four days.
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13:35 - 13:37And it felt kind of like being president, actually.
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13:37 - 13:40I was like, "Oh, this my job. President. I do a lot of meetings, you know?"
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13:40 - 13:42And by the end of the experience,
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13:42 - 13:45I realized why I was doing this.
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13:45 - 13:49It's because leaders, what we do is we connect
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13:49 - 13:53improbable connections and hope something will happen,
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13:53 - 13:55and in that room I found so many connections
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13:55 - 13:59between people across all of London, and so leadership,
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13:59 - 14:02connecting people, is the great question today.
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14:02 - 14:04Whether you're in the hierarchy or the heterarchy,
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14:04 - 14:06it's a wonderful design challenge.
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14:06 - 14:10And one thing I've been doing is doing some research
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14:10 - 14:14on systems that can combine technology and leadership
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14:14 - 14:15with an art and design perspective.
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14:15 - 14:19Let me show you something I haven't shown anywhere, actually.
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14:19 - 14:21So what this is, is a kind of a sketch, an application sketch
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14:21 - 14:24I wrote in Python. You know how there's Photoshop?
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14:24 - 14:28This is called Powershop, and the way it works is
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14:28 - 14:31imagine an organization. You know, the CEO isn't ever
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14:31 - 14:33at the top. The CEO's at the center of the organization.
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14:33 - 14:36There may be different subdivisions in the organization,
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14:36 - 14:38and you might want to look into different areas. For instance,
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14:38 - 14:42green are areas doing well, red are areas doing poorly.
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14:42 - 14:44You know, how do you, as the leader, scan, connect,
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14:44 - 14:47make things happen? So for instance, you might open up
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14:47 - 14:50a distribution here and find the different subdivisions in there,
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14:50 - 14:54and know that you know someone in Eco, over here,
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14:54 - 14:56and
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14:56 - 14:58these people here are in Eco, the people you might
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14:58 - 15:02engage with as CEO, people going across the hierarchy.
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15:02 - 15:05And part of the challenge of the CEO is to find
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15:05 - 15:08connections across areas, and so you might look in R&D,
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15:08 - 15:12and here you see one person who crosses the two areas
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15:12 - 15:15of interest, and it's a person important to engage.
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15:15 - 15:19So you might want to, for instance, get a heads-up display
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15:19 - 15:22on how you're interacting with them.
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15:22 - 15:23How many coffees do you have?
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15:23 - 15:27How often are you calling them, emailing them?
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15:27 - 15:30What is the tenor of their email? How is it working out?
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15:30 - 15:32Leaders might be able to use these systems to
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15:32 - 15:35better regulate how they work inside the heterarchy.
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15:35 - 15:38You can also imagine using technology like from Luminoso,
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15:38 - 15:41the guys from Cambridge who were looking at deep
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15:41 - 15:44text analysis. What is the tenor of your communications?
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15:44 - 15:48So these kind of systems, I believe, are important.
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15:48 - 15:50They're targeted social media systems around leaders.
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15:50 - 15:54And I believe that this kind of perspective will only begin
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15:54 - 15:59to grow as more leaders enter the space of art and design,
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15:59 - 16:03because art and design lets you think like this,
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16:03 - 16:04find different systems like this,
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16:04 - 16:06and I've just begun thinking like this,
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16:06 - 16:08so I'm glad to share that with you.
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16:08 - 16:11So in closing, I want to thank all of you
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16:11 - 16:15for your attention. Thanks very much. (Applause)
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16:15 - 16:20(Applause)
- Title:
- How art, technology and design inform creative leaders
- Speaker:
- John Maeda
- Description:
-
John Maeda, President of the Rhode Island School of Design, delivers a funny and charming talk that spans a lifetime of work in art, design and technology, concluding with a picture of creative leadership in the future. Watch for demos of Maeda’s earliest work -- and even a computer made of people.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 16:41
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for How art, technology and design inform creative leaders | ||
Thu-Huong Ha approved English subtitles for How art, technology and design inform creative leaders | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for How art, technology and design inform creative leaders | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for How art, technology and design inform creative leaders | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for How art, technology and design inform creative leaders | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for How art, technology and design inform creative leaders | ||
Morton Bast accepted English subtitles for How art, technology and design inform creative leaders | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for How art, technology and design inform creative leaders |