Chris Messina: Full Interview

Siri, play Machine Yearning Episode 1, Chris Messina.

Here's Forgive and Forget, Isabella Machine Summer's remix by the Kooks.

No, Machine Yearning podcast.

Hmm, I'm not finding anything for that.

I'll do it myself.

M-A-C-H-I-N-E-Y. M-A-C-H-I-N-E-Y. Y-E-A-S-R-X-Y-X-E.

It's Machine Yearning from Assist. It's a podcast where we think and dream about the future of AI, the talking internet, and how we're reshaping our culture. On this episode of Machine Yearning, Shane Mac spends some time with Chris Messina. Chris is a pioneer of practically everything that's been important over the last 15 years. He's one of those folks who makes peering over the next hill into an unknown future seem a lot less unsettling. He was part of the team who wrote the original Firefox. He's a co-founder of BarCamp, and for real, he invented the hashtag. In this conversation, Chris drops a lot of bold ideas, but keep an ear out for his thoughts on how capitalism and AI have some compatibility challenges. Enjoy.

I'm super stoked to have a conversation today with Mr. Chris Messina. Chris Messina, how are you?

I'm good.

We're sitting here in San Francisco drinking our Sightglass coffee. What kind did you get?

Dude, I got— I went for the pour over. I'm such a yuppie now, but it's the— it's the Kenyan and it like tastes like tea. It's so good.

Did you ever think—

After some coffee talk, Shane gets into it. We wanted to know how Chris became the guy we respect and appreciate today.

Take me back. Even when you're a kid, have you always been like the pioneer of an idea that doesn't exist yet, but you can kind of see the dots connecting? Like, where does it start?

God, I mean, it's a great question and I feel very flattered. I'll put it this way. I've never really belonged anywhere. I think, I think that, that my discomfort in my life and in me being me has led me to behave in certain ways, which to make this concrete, I've always kind of been like a social chameleon, which meant that whenever I would go to, you know, like, like in high school or even actually grade school, you know, I always saw like the popular kids and wanted to fit in with them. And, and yet I didn't. I didn't naturally fit in with them. So I, I changed my behavior to emulate their behavior, to become more like them in order to hang out with them and to fit in.

What's a specific example of that?

Great. I mean, so one example, one of the things that I observed is like popular people are really good at telling long stories. They will like tell some story about the weekend, like when they went out and they had some beers and like they drove their dad's car and they crashed into like the thing and like it just goes on and on about all their hijinks and ridiculous irresponsibility. And I was always like, that sounds so stupid. But then I'd be like, but that's what they do. They just banter about their stupid weekends. And that seems to be what's so cool about being cool is like how much you just don't talk shit.

Talk about being cool.

Yeah. And I was like, well, I can do that.

So is this how you became a coin turner?

Yeah, a little bit.

This is blowing my mind right now, by the way. This is, it's amazing.

I guess I had to learn how to like fit thoughts in other people's heads, you know? And also, but another problem that I had was like, I was always very abstract when I was a kid. Like I was so worried with problems of the world and I really, really struggled. And I've always struggled actually to like focus and get work done. You know, in high school, I was always like, why are we here learning these stupid, you know, formulas or whatever? Like, we can build, you know, we can make computers that do this for us. Why do we need to know it? And it was always like a principle thing. It's like, well, you need to know in case the computer doesn't work. I'm like, like, I need to like be able to like ride a horse in case my car breaks down.

Like, okay, but you've always been inherently curious.

Yeah.

And you're like, why? And they're like, oh, because— and that's not a good enough answer.

There's a great question for that, or there's a great example of that too. Like, um, I remember so specifically There was a time when I was in an English class and I was asking a bunch of questions about something we were reading. I don't know, some story. I don't remember what it was. Regardless, I kept asking questions. Why? Why? Why do they do this? Why do they do this? Why did it, you know, why did that happen? And finally my teacher was like, you know, Chris, these are really good questions. I'm gonna assign the class an assignment. And oh my God, everybody in the class turned and looked at me and gave me fucking like dagger eyes. Like, you fucking dickhead. Like, you just gave us more work. We're trying to do the minimum amount of work possible to get through this thing. And I'm like, I'm just trying to understand.

Yeah.

Like, and so I've always had that curiosity. And again, it's like that curiosity has gotten me into trouble. So to go back to your question, like, how does this happen? Like, how do you get ahead of this stuff? One is that curiosity. Two, it's that lack of belonging, not knowing where to— how to fit in, wanting to fit in desperately.

So the void is actually the drive.

I think, you know, in a lot of ways, sure. And anyway, so as a result, I had to learn to really observe people and observe their behavior and think differently about what they said versus what they did. And I saw how dissatisfied people were with like the jobs and the work they had. It was like this thing you had to do just to like get by, to pay for things. It's like, why? So when I left college and came out here and found the Mozilla project, I was like, this is the future.

And that was the open, 'cause I don't even know if people today would actually know, you know, many people would listen to this might not know Mozilla.

I know, it's crazy.

So that was an open source browser going against Internet Explorer, Apparently the latest version is actually very good.

Yeah.

Yeah, we know what's fascinating about you is that you like, you create the hype, but then you're a skeptic. Is that fair? Yeah. So 2015 comes, you're like conversational commerce, you write this fucking term, everyone goes, I get calls, they're like, we know that, right? Go out 10 years with your knowledge of just doing this.

Yeah.

And look backwards and say in 10 years you and I are sitting here and we're like, fuck, we created this. And what are we talking about?

Look, I mean, the whole arc is that we started out with brands that wanted to basically like, you know, brainwash you through television and radio to a place where people were like, well, that's stupid. Like, you don't even have a relationship with me anymore. And like, my friends are way more fun than you are. To brands being like, oh, we're still cool. We're cool. Like, we can, we can hack it. We can get on social media and we'll just spam you again.

Yeah.

Until now where You know, people have lots of connections and relationships that they maintain through messaging and through conversational contexts. And brands are like, well, maybe we can do that. But now the power has shifted, and now I can block you if you're an asshole, and now I can like get rid of you in a way that I can't on television. And so that's, that's huge. So brands that are getting that are like, look, I don't want to be a dick anymore. Like, I've been a dick for a long time, and I'm done with that. Like let's level up.

The private one-to-one channel is finally going to make it. So like, if you're a shitty friend, you're a shitty brand.

Yeah, you're out. You're out. You're done. So that's the thing that's going to happen. I mean, obviously it depends on things like net neutrality and stuff like that. But like, anyway, so brands get to have a shot to sort of show up and to be conversational. And there's a lot of commerce that comes as a result of that. And so that's sort of what I was pointing at. What I think is happening next is that we're about to move into a world that is defined, and I think Apple has done a good job defining it, as bionic computing. I think they use that term very intentionally. You know, the fact that like they have a bionic chip in, I don't know, the iPhone X or whatever, isn't an accident, and it's a big shift, as probably as big as like the I in iPhone, which both stood for the internet as well as I as a person.

So individualism.

Yeah, you think that you—

is that true? Like they They branded it that with that belief then.

It was— so the I stands for internet. Yeah, like the iPod, right? But the I also was not unintentional in terms of it being about I as in me. This is like when I talk about the iPhone as being the first personal computer, it's because it actually represents you. It's jewelry, and jewelry is a way of expressing yourself through physical objects.

That's played out so true. Yeah, and the youth of our generation especially. It's totally—

it's like what device you have, like You know, even with apps. Totally.

Having an app on your home screen is not cool.

Sure. It's not cool.

My niece is like, so the least amount of apps, because if you have one that isn't interesting, not cool, it's not accepted.

So technology has become so fashionable or fashion-oriented. And if you look at that, like, that's how people express themselves. That means they have a faculty with it. It's like putting on a shirt. You know, there was a time when, like, you know, clothing was just like necessary to keep you warm. But in fact, over time became a way of personally expressing yourself. And so we're seeing the same thing happening with technology. Bionic technology, though, is a little bit different in that the level and depth of coordination and integration and intimacy that you have with the devices in your life are going to get so much more profound to the point where it's going to be unclear what the role of parents is like to a degree, because—

Say more.

Yeah, I mean, like, you know, that's, that's a bold statement.

Yeah.

I mean, well, obviously, like, parents hope to and aspire to have a role, but like, yeah, You know, I'm sure you grew up on the internet and like when you were on the internet, your parents didn't know what you're doing. Increasingly, you know, you were tied and landlocked to a house and you probably called up on the internet. And when your parents wanted to kick you off, they could. You got kids now that have phones and wherever they are in the world, they're connected to everything all the time. And you can try to put locks and keys on that experience. But the reality is they'll get around it. Do you think—

do you think there's a future in which you're learning from an Alexa or an assistant, a voice you're talking to it, and the parents choose to make you like a liberal, open-minded, I kind of believe in Catholic Church. So make sure all the answers are—

well, they can try. They can try. And I think the question is what happens when there's a why that's asked? When, you know, the Christian version of Alexa is like, you know, God did these things and Jesus says this and the earth is flat. And you're like, can you show me a photo? Can you, can you project it on the wall and sort of, and then like it's a 3D representation of around marriage equals this, this equals this. And you know why?

And it's just because it's in the book.

Yeah. And you're like, you're like, what book?

I haven't seen the book. I'm just talking to a book.

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah.

So go out, go out to any, I want to come, I want to, I want to stay on this narrative because this is fascinating. Like everyone, I don't like to sit here and talk about like, hey, conversational commerce can be a thing and messaging. Like that's, you can go read about that. But the next 10 years, this, this wave. Here's what I'm fascinated by. When you're talking to people, whether it's a brand, whether it's Alexa, whatever it is, words matter.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

And in this interface, language is the game.

Yeah.

When it's automated, when does this go off the rails? Like, are— do these become racist? Like, do they start inheriting the bias of us, and if I'm talking to someone that I don't understand, I'm inherently racist just because of my ignorance. But when it's automated, that— I mean, these are— it's gonna go off the rails for sure in the short term. Is that a huge—

I don't know that that's really that interesting.

Say more.

And I don't mean that in like—

no, no, I'm just— I'm curious of like—

because yes, like, I guess to answer your question, of course it will. Yeah, I think the question is whether that's interesting. I think like If you think about that, that feedback loop, right, you think about how you can now have these virtual conversations, right? Where to put another way to make this more, I think, understandable, your experience of Google is different than mine.

Yeah, right.

So the more that we use Google, the more that we put our everyday utterances, all of our hopes, dreams, fears, all the things that are going wrong with us, you know, the athlete's foot, like this and that. Google knows a lot about you, so much so that it's not actually going to reveal to you what it knows about you because that would actually make you feel uncomfortable. Yeah, but it actually knows a shit ton about you. So Once we get to a place where there are those types of digital agents and they know that much about you and you're constantly interacting with them and you're, you know, it's funny. Lately I've been walking around my house with my AirPods in and I don't take them out.

And same, like I actually go into restaurants now and I feel like a jerk because I don't take them out.

Right.

Like headphones.

But like when I— so I don't know if you read my post about that, but I think I was— that was another good post where I called them sex sticks that fuck your ears.

You called them what?

Sex sticks that fuck your ears. Basically, like, my point was that Apple is really good at designing products that create lust and desire. And so there had been years and years of Bluetooth headsets. And in fact, if you look like the Pixel Buds, like, they look kind of stupid. Yeah. You know, the AirPods are jewelry that you want to wear, and it turns out that they actually are a very good product and they work well. And I think having, you know, gone through some design school, like, the design language of Apple products and of the AirPods obviously derived directly from the iPod earbuds. So there was, if you already had those in and you cut off the wires, like there's no real difference.

Yeah.

And so that people already were willing to wear those. So anyways, now you have AirPods and they're available always and they've got a little like CPU in them. And so you can like talk to them. Now, I don't talk to mine, but there's a generation of kids who will, right?

Because you put it low.

Exactly right. You put in Alexa and I hope someone like hacks their AirPods at some point, but I'm sure because of Apple's proprietary chips, it'll never happen. But If you were to take that form factor, put in Alexa, you would probably be talking to her constantly throughout the day. You'd be listening to music and you'd be, you know, talking to Alexa. So to your point about the racism thing, the problem then is if you're talking to Alexa in your head constantly all day long, she's going to start to reflect you and reflect your own biases, reflect your experience. So if you have a question that needs a racist answer and, you know, this thing's been programmed off the internet and there's a racist answer out there, it might be surface to you.

Got it.

Now, the question is, what are the cultures and values that are part of these systems, and what should they be? And should, again, going back to like the libertarian ideal, should you be able to become as racist as you want, or as homophobic as you want, or as, you know, gender stereotypical as you want, or is there a broader cultural imperative to force us to become a lot more open and, Essentially, to, to your point about language and words, relax a lot of the strength of the definitions that we've created to get us to where we are now, to move to a world that's more based on attributes and the phenomenon of an experience rather than saying, well, this is a male and males behave in this way. And so I will predict that the male is only going to do these things. And so therefore I will only show males, especially young males, Tonka trucks to buy as opposed to any number of things.

I don't think people even grasp the implications that are coming with this space at all.

We'll get into some of those implications in just a second.

Machine learning. Machine learning.

Machine learning is all about the ways we navigate a new world where identity and technology and commerce and security have to live together in ways we can't even fully imagine yet. We have some great guests lined up, but we want you to hip us to the people we should know. Slide into those DMs @Assist on the Twitter. Coming up, a dive into conversational commerce and relationship design that we think is pretty special. Now more with Shane and Chris.

Well, right, so there's a whole question of what is a brand? What is a brand going forward? What is the value and purpose of a brand? A brand previously was like Coca-Cola and, you know, whether or not the thing in the bottle actually is Coca-Cola or not. We're sort of moving to a world where we trust everything implicitly because we buy it off the internet and you could put a different label on it. And I don't know, like if it's a label that I trust or recognize, I just assume it's good.

Okay, let's go deep here because this is my favorite.

This is—

and I feel like brands are big. So what is a brand in the future? Yeah, here's something. This is what I can't get out of my head.

Yeah.

And I want to share it. So everyone now is building bots on the business side.

Yeah.

But the consumer bots, I feel like, could actually get here before the business bots. And they will actually force businesses to create bots because they will all fail if not. And so the theory is that brands exist because the brain can't remember enough, right? So I always use insurance because I think bot insurance would be cool and it would be bigger than insurance. And if I had any guts, I would do a consumer insurance company, but I don't. So someone's listening.

There's some people doing it.

Yeah, I'm sure it makes sense. It's clear.

It's like, duh.

Yeah. What? I hate like this. But the other side of it is this. If in the future I think about remembering Allstate and State Farm and Geico, whatever.

Totally.

But it's 3 out of like, say, 10,000.

Yeah.

I don't know how many insurance companies are, probably a lot.

Yeah.

I don't care. I just want to make sure the plan works. It's my preferences. It's my thing. I trust that the other customer satisfaction rating, whatever that is, and that essentially used to be the broker.

Yeah.

And so what if in the future the only brand you care about are the bots? So there's a consumer bot that I trust. It's called Factory Joe. Factory Joe's a guy on the internet. Don't really know, right? But he's very, very good at listening, taking all my preferences. But with infinite computing power, he or she— well, this is he— whatever, can go to all 10,000 insurance companies at the same exact time.

Yep.

And get me, based on my 7 preferences, instantly the best one. Two is if they're negotiating a live agent, they get to see 9,999 other live agents.

I mean, it's like Samantha and her.

And like, I would— why would you— I will always out-negotiate you.

I know.

Not even so 1 to 10,000, but 100 to 10,000. Now I know how you treated the other 99. So all of a sudden in this world, I just trust Factory Joe. I could give a shit about Allstate, but they're going to spend bajillions on that. But the free intermediary that is the consumer bots. Could that be in the future the only brand you trust?

I mean, now you understand why capitalism is actually not necessarily the right model for the AI-powered world.

Say more. You got some bold statements.

I love it.

No, but this is— I'm like, well, why, why do I trust any of these brands?

Think about an efficient marketplace, right? I mean, the problem right now is that there's a lot of friction and that every merchant can't talk to every possible consumer and you can't negotiate what the best possible price is for each of the people involved. And so right now there's a lot of triage. That works on ignorance. And so if you do somehow have access to an enormous amount of information and to your point, can basically lateralize the same transaction a million times over and actually lower the cost because now you're actually selling to a huge number of consumers at once. Suddenly the ways in which you would win in capitalism before don't really make sense anymore. So—

and it's the ongoing thing, right?

And so that's the other problem.

Every day it's also reminding the 10,000 that they don't have my business.

I think if you replace like Factory Joe in the short term with like Alexa, or Siri, especially if you're a brand, like you should be having your oh shit moment because what you just said is what's happening. And so to sort of draw this back.

So Amazon is that?

Yes. So what? Fuck. Yes, exactly. So what I said is true and he sees it and it's like, yeah, this is it. Yeah, right. So here's what's happening. Essentially to go back to like the original arc, right? You know, you had the internet And you, if you were a business, you're like, well, shit, I got to get on the internet. So you put up a little brochureware website so you could be indexed by Google and whatever, you know, and then eventually that website, you know, was fine and served you and there was SEO and all this other stuff. But once the App Store came out in 2007, suddenly you had to start building or thinking about native apps. And the way that you power native apps is to build APIs to your backend services. So essentially the frontend of your business is literally like window dressing, and that's not really where the value is. It's sort of like a necessary thing to do, but like mostly your focused on your core business and there's inputs and there's outputs. And so you have an API that essentially opens up third-party access to the guts of your system to judge it, not to judge it, like to access it, to interact with it. Right. You are a process. You are an organ in a body.

But the way that I judged websites with SEO, I see there's something that's going to judge the speed.

Oh, yeah. Okay.

The data, the— like Alexa will be that judge. Correct.

That's right. Right. So, so whatever the judge is, whatever the system of, figuring out the value or whatever it is that deals with the auction that basically says, I can offer you this at this price as long as you buy this many things, right? It's some backend. That's the new service. That's the marketplace, right? So essentially we went from these brochure static websites to APIs. APIs enabled the App Store. The App Store has millions of apps. So once you have millions of apps, to your point about brands and the purpose of brands for consumer recall, now you can't remember the apps that you have. So instead, what you can imagine or you can recall is what it is you're actually trying to do. You have a bunch of intents, a bunch of verbs, things that, you know, you're like, I need a car for some reason, or I need a car wash, or I need a house cleaner because my house is filthy, or I need a pet thing because my pet's having this experience, whatever. You know what you need in those, in those terms. And you're not going to be thinking about brands. Brands spend a shit ton of money to basically kind of co-opt the verbiage in your mind so that they can be the thing that you think of when you have that need. But increasingly, there's just too many choices. right? So the reason why voice computing is so contentious and where it's the next big battlefield is because now that we've opened up all these APIs to these backend systems, you don't need apps anymore. Apps are a frontend friction that exist because of the momentary time period where we needed to still have computing happen through screens. Well, if we move away from that—

and that was the distribution at the time, right? And it was controlled because, like, at least in the app world, like, Steve Jobs understood that. To stop the spam and antivirus on this personal device. Like, I need to really control that.

Basically, he looked at like Windows and was like, we're not going to like go down that path because you have to have a phone that's reliable, doesn't crash, doesn't have viruses. And so in order to do that, we're going to create a secure computing environment, you know, which has enabled lots of different things. Now we're moving to a world where the apps, besides being a way of connecting to people, which goes back to like the fashion case, you know, for kids and Instagram and stuff like that, for the most part, you don't really care to download an app to like just do this one task. You know, maybe, yes, there's some forms that happen or whatever. So Slack is interesting in that sense too, where you have a very slim sliver of an app surface to basically, you know, provide some information.

But the key change that you just said, which I think is not to be overlooked, is in the past I think of intents and I try to think of a brand and the brand spends all their time getting in my mind so that when I think of that intent, I think of them.

Yeah. What I'm saying is that you need to start optimizing for Alexa. No, you need the future.

I have an intent, right? And then I don't have to remember anything.

You just outsource it. You just hand it off to whatever. And this is where bionic computing is so important. Bionic computing, basically in this case, is about literally getting as close to your thoughts as possible to essentially interrupt where you have, or to shrink the amount of time between the generation of the intent or the awareness of the intent coming to your consciousness and then expressing it somehow. And if you have to express it through a keyboard, that's slower than speaking it. So I'm walking around with AirPods in my head and I'm like, oh, I need to get my cat washed or something, if that's a thing you do. And so you just say it.

Probably.

Cats are dirty. Right? Yeah, they're dirty. And so Siri's like, oh, I got it. I can like do that. And then like a service comes up and like they wash your cat and great, problem solved.

Yeah.

So Siri is part of that value chain and that experience. And so now Siri and Apple are able to have an auction about that service, right? So that's why Amazon is trying to put Alexa everywhere. It's not just about convenience. It's not just about, oh, whatever, like you can automate your home. Like, yeah, okay, well, that's nice. That's the consumer value that drives the adoption of this thing. But really, it's about getting a very easy and accessible interface to all of the entire Amazon marketplace to basically marshal all of those potential intents to that enormous field of service providers and product providers so that you don't even think about the act of purchasing anymore. You just say, I want it, and it appears. Basically, it's creating a genie experience for everyone.

Yeah, I'm a brand. So what? I'm a brand. I've been killing it on the internet. I've been around forever.

What does it mean that you're killing it on the internet?

Like, I adapted the business to be like big brands, right? I adapted. I'm good on the internet. Half of our revenue comes from the internet. I figured it out, kind of.

How do people feel about you?

They like receiving our emails.

You're fucked. I mean, like, honestly, it's, it's sort of like I get like those flyers in the mail, you know, like the free, like, or like the newsprint things that everyone gets. Yeah, that's over. Like, because I have to reach out to you, because, because you have to like actually show me that you understand me and that you understand my motivations and you're supporting me and that you're literally giving me superpowers. And if really all you're doing is you're extracting dollars out of my pocket and you're not helping me or informing me or educating me or enriching me as a person and as an individual, and I don't feel like you somehow care a little bit about me and that when I reach out to you, you're not super responsive or close to being as fun to interact with as my friends, you know, I think, I mean, that's aspirationally where you should go. So I think that's where if you're a hotel chain, you don't want to think about yourself as a hotel chain. Like you want to think about you are a person who creates an experience for other people to have. And why is it that they choose you instead of talking directly to Alexa? Alexa is going to give you exactly what you want, you know, no frills, very straightforward. It's going to solve your problem. I mean, think about Amazon Basics.

Basics is the unbranded everything, right?

Well, it's the Amazon branded stuff, right? It's like the generics. What's happening is that consumers are using less brand names in their in their product queries. You know, previously you'd be like, oh, I want some Energizer, you know, AAA or Duracell.

That's it.

That was like it, right? Yeah, correct. So that's generationally for us, right? Like the Energizer Bunny keeps going. When we start thinking about doing these queries, I mean, in Google or Amazon, maybe we used to type, you know, Energizer, you know, AA rechargeable batteries. But over time, you just, you know, you do Energizer, you know, batteries.

Or—

and then eventually, especially when you get to voice, you're just like, Amazon or Alexa, like, I need batteries. And what happens? Well, Amazon obviously has a competitive advantage in that marketplace and says, well, we've got Amazon Basics. They're cheaper, they're easier. We'll get them to you overnight. You know, we've got them in our forward dispatch centers, whereas these Energizer ones are going to be $2 more and they're going to take 2 days to get there. And so essentially you just start to learn to defer to Amazon's choice, and Amazon handles the entire value chain in terms of producing the batteries and then getting them to you and selling to you. And so instead of knowing or caring about a brand, you don't need to anymore. That is the opportunity. Essentially, if we get everything, if we water everything down to its basic core function, Amazon will cover everything. And so then what's necessary and where the opportunity lies is to actually pursue the arts and to pursue expression and to pursue diversity in terms of what each brand sort of brings to the table, which is unnecessary from a functional perspective, but it's part of the overall, I guess, experience design of a product. So talk about that because you were talking about experience design and relationship design. Yeah.

What, what is that?

So like relationship design has so many components to it. There's so many different ways to obviously construct a relationship. And if the relationship is fundamentally about commerce, then the only reasons to be in touch with someone is obviously to connect to commerce.

Yeah.

In which case that's like a toll road operator. I mean, that's what they're there for. It's extractive to provide a very simple service. If instead there is a flourish to the relationship where there's something that's more spontaneous, you know, it's like one thing for brands to like reach out on your birthday and be like, hey, happy birthday, here's 10% off or something. It's like, not expected, right? Yeah. It's sort of like perfunctory. It's like the least possible thing you could do. Yeah. Whereas if you actually add some creativity to it, some generativity, something that says, look, I saw that you've been doing this thing lately. And obviously there's some creep factor to this, but if you do it well, or if it's well designed as though a person actually sort of took the time to be like, you know, I happen to like check out your Instagram feed and like, you know, you've been like traveling a bunch lately. And it seemed like the last time you went to Hawaii, you didn't have a snorkel. So I sent you one. I don't know, like some crazy thing like that where your friend could do the same thing. Your friend could be like, look, I saw this from all the media that you produce, all the ways in which you tell your own story. And I found a way of aligning what I offer to that story, and I therefore am part of it. That to me is a way in which you can construct a virtual relationship, but that is actually meaningful.

Now, I feel like it's just— your example is like, if I'm the Four Seasons and I had some human layer and I'm really good and I'm going to connect the dots, right? I don't even get to the fucking basic level. Like, I just want to have— I think relationships are about memory and remembering.

Context. Shared context.

I just want— if I had one line in a booking— sure, agent— that said, would you like a king bed again? Right. I would be like, fuck my soul. That's all I want. Just thank you for remembering. I'm like, I feel so great.

Yeah, I think you're right. Well, so, but yeah, the baseline is so basic. Yeah, you're so right. Well, and but this also goes back to the privacy question. Like, we actually seem to want to like withhold so much information, and yet the more that we share, the more likely these other services are going to be able to meet our needs in a way that's anticipatory, right? In a way that actually predicts what it is that you would like based on either your past behavior or the way that you've expressed yourself. So I think when you think about relationship design, it's not just like how it looks and how it works, but how it sounds and how it feels and how it resonates. And that's a whole new realm of design that I think very few schools that I know of are actually thinking about.

Interesting. You should go teach that.

I got to figure it out first.

And that's what you, you think that, so if you're good at coining terms, right, relationship design is the one-to-one design layer that needs to be focused on and figured out for messaging and voice as an interface.

Yeah.

I mean, conversation is the media, right?

So, so obviously the service is a big part of it. Service design has been going on for a while, but relationship design is, I think it, it spreads out. It's the tentacles that sort of evolved from the service itself.

Because service design is a design in which it works for everyone.

Sure.

And really, relationship is a design that works for me.

That's right. That's great. Yeah, it's very personal. It's personalized. It's personal. It's relatable. And it's at the scale of the individual.

Fascinating.

All right.

Hey, thank you very much. This was— this was what— this is my— one of my favorites. Thank you for coming by today, man.

Thanks for having me.

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Machine Yearning is made by Paul Ciuffo and Michael Alsesser for Limina House.

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