A transcript of S02E10 (320) of UX Podcast. James Royal-Lawson and Per Axbom are joined by David Dylan Thomas to discuss digital ownership, creativity in the digital age, and reciprocity.
This transcript has been machine generated and checked by Cristian Pavel.
Transcript
Computer voice
Season two, episode ten.
[Music]
Per Axbom
Hello, everybody, welcome to UX Podcast coming to you from Stockholm, Sweden. We are your hosts Per Axbom, and James Royal-Lawson. Balancing business, technology, people and society, with listeners all over the world from the Cayman Islands to Moldova.
James Royal-Lawson
David Dylan Thomas. He’s an author, speaker, podcast host, UXer, content strategist, and also previous guest on UX Podcast.
Per Axbom
And in today’s chat with David, we discuss ownership, both physical and digital, we get into the importance of paying attention to power balances, and applying a social justice lens when working with design. I especially love his idea that comes up in the interview of moving towards a design framing of “build, measure, learn and give back”. Today’s interview was recorded at the UX Conference “From Business to Buttons” right here, in Stockholm. The 2024 edition of the conference will take place on May 24th, and the theme is movement. It invites you as a change maker to join the movement of working for justice and sustainability, in a world facing a number of complex challenges. Read more about the theme, and speakers such as Sheryl Cababa, Christina Joy Whittaker, Chris Noessel, Lou Downe and more on “frombusinesstobuttons.com”. And for 10% off the ticket price, use the promo code UXPODCAST.
James Royal-Lawson
So David, when you’re talking about turning conflict into collaboration and finding a place to meet, to bring out the best for those kind of conversations. One of the elements you’ve mentioned is like things you haven’t considered.
David Thomas
Yeah.
James Royal-Lawson
I know that you’ve been talking in your stay so far in Stockholm, Sweden, about the concept of ownership.
David Thomas
Yeah.
James Royal-Lawson
And this has also brought up something that you hadn’t considered earlier.
David Thomas
Yeah, I’m an American. And in America, we have very clear definitions of ownership, right? I owned this, everything is owned by somebody. And if that person owns it, they can do whatever they want with it, they can buy it, they can sell it, do whatever they want. And if anyone wants to do anything with that, they have to get permission. And it being American capitalism, ideally, I charge you for access to the thing that I own.
James Royal-Lawson
In a contract, that’s kind of like, it’s going to be checked by several lawyers that will also cost you God knows how much to get you through.
David Thomas
And the legal aspect is really interesting, but the legal language used usually is very strict. So, and I’ve been thinking a lot about ownership lately, and what it looks like to think outside of ownership, because I’ve been learning more about Native American and other indigenous traditions that some of which don’t necessarily have a concept of ownership, right? It’s like those aren’t my strawberries, those aren’t your strawberries. They’re just strawberries. They belong to themselves. Which again, from my upbringing, in an American capitalist system, is anathema. Like, what are you talking about? Somebody has to own them, somebody has to sell them.
So that already like that kind of mind lock of ownership is this binary thing, in talking with a friend of mine, Johan Berndtsson yesterday, he was telling me about how in Sweden there is this concept of you can own property and yet be obligated to let people use it. So if I own property, if someone wants to go camping, they can. And that just blew my mind. This notion of like, a complicated like a liminal ownership where it’s like: “okay, you own it, but you also have to let people use it”, which brings in I think an element of that Native American, the land doesn’t really belong to anybody I mean, yeah, you “own it”, but also we only get to share it? Like introducing that legally even I haven’t had a chance to read it he sent me the actual legal statute, having legal language even to describe that just blows my mind. Yes, I had not considered a non binary approach to ownership before so that’s definitely falls into that category.
James Royal-Lawson
That particular law in Sweden is a really interesting one. And it’s one of the things you pick up reasonably quickly when you’re here.
Per Axbom
It’s literally called “every person’s right”, “allemansrätt”.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. And and it does of course, come with a little star, sure it’s not just a free for all and that you wake up in the morning, and there’s a third person in your bed. It doesn’t quite, I mean is not quite as liberal as that. But, but yeah, I mean, I can remember all the details, but one of them is that you can’t you can’t camp, too close to someone’s property.
Per Axbom
It was too close to the house, to the man’s house. So that means, I have a property where I have calculated that, by extension, people can actually camp on my property without me being able to say no. Also, if people can essentially cross my lawn and stuff like that, it’s no problem. Because of the way I live close to water.
David Thomas
It’s interesting. So in America, we have this phrase, “Get off my lawn”, which is..
Per Axbom
Yes, exactly, yes.
David Thomas
And it’s like, literally not an option. It’s like no, get off my lawn.
James Royal-Lawson
But it is a fascinating concept. The whole thing of ownership, is even when, I think here in Sweden, at least to that extent, that is not the full ownership maybe, over the rights to use and utilise that bit of land. There’s, always ownership of something. And here, I know there’s certain things Swedes joke about and that’s like, for example, if you know where the Cantarell mushrooms are in woods, you can go into the woods and pick the mushrooms. That’s one of the kind of like things that we do in Sweden, you go and pick mushrooms or berries. But the knowledge of where the best places are for those mushrooms. You own and that you protect that knowledge?
David Thomas
Really?
James Royal-Lawson
It’s not often easily shared between people. It’s kind of, this joke that someone might… you’d kill for the knowledge of best kind of mushroom patch is in the woods.
David Thomas
Now, is that a cultural kind of like ownership? Or is that like a legal, like, oh, I can see you because you know, you blabbed the location of the mushrooms.
Per Axbom
Cultural.
James Royal-Lawson
It’s like, I mean, you’d have to have a certain bond with the person who has the information or relationship in order for them to, you know, trust you with the knowledge.
Per Axbom
But bringing that to a digital context, that’s also happens then when people didn’t realise they were sharing metadata when they’re posting photos. So posting photos online, of the mushroom place, and you didn’t realise you had chat share the GPS coordinates of the mushroom place. So things like that happened in the beginning, I was like, oh, no, you gave it up.
David Thomas
Well, this is interesting to me. Because long before I started thinking about this aspects of ownership, I had been thinking deeply about digital ownership, right? Like 10, 15 years ago, I was talking about things like, you know, used mp3s, which was an actual concept. People actually tried to sell, just as again, blowing your mind. It’s like, wait, it’s digital, you can’t use… it’s not a physical like…
Per Axbom
And then we got NFT’s, yeah.
David Thomas
Well, yeah. So that, the root of my hatred for NFT’s comes from already having explored that territory, basically, I am not a big fan of artificial scarcity. So literally just saying, it’s rare. Why? Because I said it. Right, like, release, I find very grating, but that does get back to this notion of like, and I don’t know, and I would love to learn more about this, like, what does intellectual ownership look like? Or lack there of? Right? So I’m starting to get my head around, what does a lack of physical ownership looks like? Or in moderated physical ownership looks like? But for intellectual property, which you know, in America, we absolutely would, you know, if we could make the location of the strawberry intellectual property that I could buy or sell like. I think part of that instinct to make to go full tilt on ownership is a capitalistic one. Because if I have complete ownership, okay, then I can charge for things.
Like, if I can charge for that person wanting to camp, okay, then let’s do it that way. Right? But yeah, because the mushroom thing is a voluntary, cultural: “Hey, let’s make this knowledge as scarce as possible for reasons”. The flip side of that is like the early days of mp3s and file sharing where it was like, oh, yeah, what are you talking about? Like, it would be weird, looking at it from a cultural perspective, it would be weird for me not to share this with you, because it’s just information. It’s not like a physical album. It’s zeros and ones. It’s just stuff, right? Why would I not share that with you? So it’s interesting to me the types of intellectual property that we designate as meant to be it’s okay for it to be like all wrapped up. And versus it’s okay, for just everybody should have access to it.
James Royal-Lawson
And well, me and Per we are both self employed consultants, and I know that both me and Per and this podcast, we licence under a Creative Commons licence.
David Thomas
Yeah, yeah.
James Royal-Lawson
Which, again, is another aspect of this digital ownership, we’re effectively giving away a lot of contents without demanding payment in return and so on. That’s a whole argument about what should you do there? Should you protect your knowledge as a specialist as an expert in your field? You know, why would you give all that knowledge away?
David Thomas
Yeah. And it’s interesting, too. I think Creative Commons is to like intellectual property or copyright as the Swedish law about, you own it, but you don’t totally own it is to property law, right? Because that’s what it reminds me of. Because again, it’s a notion of the even the metaphor of the volume dial I took from when people were in the early days of Creative Commons was saying, they were describing Creative Commons as putting a volume knob on copyright. So it’s prior to that it was you completely own the copyright, and anybody else uses it at all, I can sue them, or anyone can use it anytime they want, without any restrictions. Well, yeah, but what if you actually had some nuance and said: “Okay, you can use it, but you have to give me attribution” or “You can use it, but you can’t make money off of it”. I mean, in a weird way, and I hate to give it credit, but that is kind of what some of the promise of cryptocurrency not just the dollars and cents version of it, but the blockchain version of smart contracts, right? I can literally make it a part of the DNA of this piece of content, how you can use it and why and all of that stuff. That is, I think, one potential good use, not one anyone’s using, but one potential good use of that kind of technology.
But yeah, I’m a big fan now of trying to get outside of the binary. And ironically, I think technology is better suited for this. But we haven’t used it that way. We’ve used it in technology in a very binary way, when in fact, technology because you can get to this very granular level, with contents with whatever it is, you could actually be very subtle things like Creative Commons, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Creative Commons came about post web, because the opportunity for it was there. Like legally, you could have had those contracts going back since there was copyright. But it became of age when digital went relevant. I suspect that’s because there was a lot more potential for subtlety, and opportunity to say: “Oh, anybody can get access to this content? And is it really worth it, creating a basically artificial wall to it, even though at the end of the day, it is zeros and ones, if someone buys it, there’s no more or less of it in the world”. Like, I wonder if that’s how that occurred?
James Royal-Lawson
And also the whole thing with with digital artefacts is because there are zeros and ones they’re so easily replicated. Or is in the physical world, while Creative Commons is maybe, I can see why is later coming in a pure physical world, in that, you know, we there’s only so many tables, right? You know, it’s gonna take you effort and time and real materials to create another one, even if it’s identical.
David Thomas
Well there’s a service industry aspect too it. It’s like there’s a certain amount of effort I have to go into to make another one. So the best example, I learned this from Clay Shirky, and I think he learned it from the “Why we cooperate” novel. But basically, if you think about, like, music sharing, if I have a vinyl album, and you want to listen to it, I don’t have it anymore. I have to give it to you. So that’s sharing of objects.
James Royal-Lawson
And every time it’s played, it’s worn slightly.
David Thomas
Yes, that’s true.
James Royal-Lawson
It’s depreciated, it’s lifetime.
David Thomas
Exactly, right. Now if I want to make you a mixtape, okay, I can give you the mixtape and I still have all the music I use to make the mixtape but there’s effort involved, I have to like go through like actually do it. So that’s a sharing of effort. If I share, if I make a playlist on Spotify, come on, right? What am I done? Like, there’s no effort involved. All I am sharing is knowledge, right? If I share an mp3 with you, like, I still have the mp3. Now you have the mp3, they’re both perfect. They’re literally the same object. That’s sharing of information, which gets back to why it seemed weird to restrict the sharing of information. Whereas it seemed to make some kind of sense to say: “Okay, there’s effort involved in making that new table making that new vinyl record”, whatever. So yeah, it’s it’s been interesting to see that evolve.
Per Axbom
And now we’re actually accepting all over the world, Digital Rights Management, we’re buying books, we’re buying music, that we aren’t allowed to share that we aren’t allowed to copy. And it started already with the CDs and DVDs. Sure, you could copy them. But you weren’t allowed to. And now you can’t even lend a person a book. There’s like systems they put in place. If you want to lend a book on Amazon Kindle book, you can only do that like a limited number of times and then it’s done. Now you can’t share it anymore with anyone.
David Thomas
It’s becomed like software, right? We got from the sort of more artefact model of like cassettes and book if I have that book, I can share that book with you. I can’t use it while you’re well that stuff, to… I think the guy who were “Darknet” , I can’t remember his name right now. But the metaphor he used which I thought was perfect was: “We’re moving into a world where if you want to pull a book off your shelf, do you have to pay first.” Right? Like it isn’t really yours, it’s getting back to that notion of like, it’s never yours. That’s copy of, so I’ll give you a perfect example. I got a copy a digital copy of this one Ray Carles song just because. Plays at the end of the movie, “The sure thing” for you 80s movie fans out there, very hard to find. But I found it, got it on Amazon music and it was in my library was actually on my computer. I had the mp3 download of it.
At some point, my hard drive was compromised. I lost all the music on it. But hey, that’s the beauty of the internet age. I can just redownload all of it. So I did that. And guess what, just because was no longer there. So I went and looked in it was no longer available. So I owned it, I paid for it and effectively Amazon took it back when it came time for them to no longer have the right to sell it. So that would be so this example of like I have a book on my shelf and then I wake up in the morning and suddenly that books not there anymore. It’s like, did I ever really own it then? No, the company who made it owned it. They just licenced it.
Per Axbom
So the buy button is misleading, because you’re not buying it.
David Thomas
Yeah, it’s a “rent until we say otherwise” button.
James Royal-Lawson
It’s an “enter into a specific contract” button.
Per Axbom
I can’t tell you how many times across my lifetime, I’ve bought the movie “Top Gun”, thinking I still have it. But I don’t know if I do have it anymore.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. Well, I think I’ve got it on DVD. Is that owning it, nowadays? It’s a physical thing, isn’t it? Digital stuff on a physical thing.
Per Axbom
Right, but when that, I mean that deteriorates over time.
James Royal-Lawson
Hasn’t it yet?
Per Axbom
You’re not allowed to do a copy of it, though.
James Royal-Lawson
But you can.
Per Axbom
You can, but you’re not allowed to.
James Royal-Lawson
I’m staying quiet.
James Royal-Lawson
So the whole digital economy when it comes to digital artefacts, it’s based on artificial scarcity. It can’t, just by its pure definition, it can’t be based on anything else other than artificial scarcity.
David Thomas
And this is a conversation. So I did a talk called “A million Medicis” at “South by Southwest” in 20 someting something, and like, 20 years ago, at least. And I was basically talking about that conundrum. And where I landed was, my hypothesis was that we value things we pay for things based on how we think about them. And so I think about that physical album or that table as someone put effort into that, they made it, it is scarce, so I’m gonna pay for the thing that scarce. I’m gonna pay more for the thing, the more scarce it is. Oh, it’s a diamonds table. Okay, that’s super rare. Okay, I’ll pay a lot for that. When something is zeros and ones, I know what zeros and ones I know that is basically infinitely replicable. I have a really hard time paying for that. It’s like no, it’s just like water. It’s infinite. There’s no, there is literally no scarcity there. So I have to invent scarcity, I have to make an iTunes “store” that has all these objects in it that have these album covers that look like physical rare things. But no, the second I download that there was no more or less of it in the world. So I started thinking about okay, what is scarce in that scenario and what’s scarce in buying that, you know, Beyonce digital album is Beyonce. She’s the part that is in fact, individual not replicable. Super scarce, her time, her effort.
Per Axbom
Until now.
David Thomas
Well, everything about like digital personas or something.
Per Axbom
AI?
David Thomas
Well, so we’ll come back to AI. So her, that that human being is scarce, so then I should actually be paying her. And that’s where I started thinking about and that at the time, it was new, and now it’s pretty normal. But I started thinking about crowdsource patronage. So things like Patreon, which was like a newborn baby at that point. But I was sort of saying: “Okay, this is the future”. Or this is a future that makes sense with how we think about scarcity, right? I want to give the money to Beyonce, because my bet is, if she has enough money to just live her life and create, and not like work in a Starbucks or something, I will then as a result, get more art in the world that I want, rather than just pay for the art so that it’s been interesting to see that line maturing as well. Because at least for me, from a scarcity standpoint, that’s real scarcity, not artificial scarcity.
James Royal-Lawson
And also, this makes me think, of course, I mean, the whole thing of Commons, there’s normally a mutually beneficial aspect to these things. Well, Per can camp in my back garden, and I can come in his.
David Thomas
That’s true, yeah.
James Royal-Lawson
And, you know, same as the, you know, if I tell you where the mushrooms are you tell me what the strawberries are? It’s almost, it’s good, it’s commons, it’s common knowledge. It’s shared common knowledge, it’s mutual, mutual beneficial. Whereas that gets much more difficult when you’re when you’re stretching the scale. And, you know, how much if we had a mutually beneficial relationship with Beyonce? How is how is that balanced in the scale of things?
David Thomas
Well, like if Beyonce wants to camp on my property, I’m…
James Royal-Lawson
I’ll live with that.
David Thomas
I want to camp on her property, if she wants to make an arrangement that’s, I’m fine with that.
James Royal-Lawson
And she can camp two nights on my property and I can have tickets to her concerts.
David Thomas
Exchange.
James Royal-Lawson
That sounds fair.
David Thomas
No, I mean, we’re talking about this sort of industrialization of that, right? Because, you know, Beyonce is an artist at an industrial level, right? Like it’s masses and masses. She’s a one to many, many, many, many kind of relationship. But again, like I kind of like tried to think about the time, was the notion of financial risk, right? So if Disney pays $250 million to make an Avengers movie they are putting up the financial risk, right? And at that movie is a flop, you’re out $250 million. I have no stake in that, right? They make it I can pay. But since they’re assuming all that risk, absolutely they can decide how much the ticket costs. They can decide who’s in the movie who’s not. They can decide what the digital rights are around it, right? You’ve put up that much money, fine. That makes sense to me. What gets interesting is where you have a crowdfunded model, where it’s like, well, we commonly put up the money. Like if you were able to get enough of us together to raise $250 million, we decided that that was going to happen. And now we actually kind of have a say in like, what kind of like digital rights are involved in how much the fixture costs? Or should there even be a ticket because I already paid, right? Like it really warps how we think about the transactional nature. And which is the other interesting aspect of it is those crowdfunded kind of scenarios tend to be as much about love and fandom as they are about a transactional thing. Like I funded the Veronica Mars Kickstarter.
James Royal-Lawson
Oh, I did as well.
David Thomas
And I don’t know about you, I didn’t do it because I was like: “Okay, I want exactly one t-shirt and one Blu-Ray copy out of this transaction”. I was: “No, I freaking love Veronica Mars and want to be more of it in the world. Even if the movie sucks, I don’t care. I want to be part of this thing that I love. That was the motivation.
James Royal-Lawson
It wasn’t a rational economic transaction. That was an emotional, emotionally charged economic decision.
Per Axbom
We’re never rational.
David Thomas
That’s the thing! Like I think there’s something more honest about that. Because it’s skipping over the: “Oh, I’m being a rational eco human whatever. No, I am in emotional person. I’m making an emotional purchasing decision. Because guess what? They all are.
Per Axbom
And it makes me feel good, because you’re describing it now. And I can see the passion because yeah, you feel wonderful about it?
James Royal-Lawson
Well, on an individual level, yes, they’re all emotional decisions. And the rationality comes in at scale, arguably.
David Thomas
But to get, it’s interesting, you bring up the AI thing, I literally, two hours ago, I was at the Swedish Museum of Modern, the Stockholm Museum of Modern Art. And there was a Laurie Anderson exhibit, which was fascinating, if any are anywhere in the area, I highly recommend you go. But one of the first things you see is she tells a story that her I think father or grandfather told about his like, journey to America or something like that. And it’s sort of like this total tall tale of like, oh, yeah, I first got my first job when I was eight. I was married by the time I was 10. Like, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah. And it’s this just felt very, like, you know, sort of when you’re a kid, you kind of just accept this as a fact. But what she does is she has these photos very sort of like old timey looking photos on the wall of all those made up incidents. And then when you get to the end, you look at this thing. It’s like, oh, this was generated, using one of those generative AI, I think, was Mid Journey. And I’m like, it’s happened. We’ve gotten to the point where we’re generative AI art is in a museum, like, that was a legit Museum, like the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm is a very, very real museum. Like, there’s Warhol in there, too. But, yeah, and I’m like: “Oh, we’ve hit that point”. But we, I know, a lot of people will be utterly freaked out that generative AI, in a modern art museum, clutching of pearls, you know, but it’s like. But it’s Laurie Anderson doing it. So I’m like, okay.
She — I didn’t realise that — But she has been doing stuff with all sorts of generative, like machine learning stuff. She was she got there decades before anyone else, like she knows what’s up. But she’s using it, I think that’s very interesting way. Because what they did was they took those tall tales, and then as prompted the sort of photo real things out of it. Like that’s a really interesting use of that thing. So in that case, if I was doing like Kickstarter or whatever, like going back to this model of this collective, reciprocal art relationship, that would be: “Hey, I’m going to keep contributing to the Laurie Anderson Patreon because she is doing interesting things like I don’t owe the AI any money, any more than I owe a paintbrush money. I owe Laurie Anderson my money or whatever, however, I want to express that gratitude, because she is the generator, the actual generator of the art.
Per Axbom
Interesting, but then going back to the ownership discussion, to build Mid Journey, you had to have a lot of content online that you actually sourced.
David Thomas
Sure.
Per Axbom
That somebody else created. So you come back to this situation where people created something so that someone else can create something else, that competes with the thing that you made that they took for free.
David Thomas
So my initial somewhat snarky reaction to that is, that’s art baby! Because like what it reminds me of is early hip-hop right?Early hip-hop used to samples. They used, going back to vinyl, literal vinyl, they would go in, record dive find these wonderful like just little little tiny slivers of music, like a drum loop, whatever and just played over don’t over build the most amazing art out of it. Now, did they owe money to the you know, James Brown or whoever’s thing that we’re lifting? Maybe. There’s a great quote where Beastie Boys, Paul’s boutique and Public Enemies “Fear of a black planet” have between them, literally hundreds of samples. And if you listen to hip-hop albums after that point, you’ll find maybe one or two samples per album, because that’s when digital rights management started to kick in. And if you were to try to make either of those two albums today, it would literally cost you something like a trillion with a T dollars, because of all the samples they used. So it’s like, okay, I get that. I guess you’re counting, people. But gee, I sure would love another Paul’s boutique.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, it’s the way that samples have been killed off like that is, an interesting restraint, our artificial restraint on creativity. I mean, even the the great artists, going back with the different periods of art, there was also a very much, you know, talking to each other sending letters working together…
Per Axbom
Or friends inspired by someone.
James Royal-Lawson
The main artist, would be starting a picture off, one of the students would finish or work on it a bit, there’s so much spreading of or copying of what you do.
David Thomas
And I think an important distinction here is when Public Enemy is lifting James Brown, James Brown is already okay. James Brown is not suffering at that point. A lot of the art because generative AI lifts at scale, you don’t even have to do the math to know that there are a large number of artists who are suffering, who probably could use that recognition, right? So there is, whenever you have these kinds of discussions, you have to talk about power, and the power balance between, you know, Beastie Boys, and the theme from Jaws and John Williams, and the theme from Jaws, which they lifted for “Egg man”, that is a much more equal. If anything, the power balance is with John Williams in that one, right?
Versus a generative AI thing that’s pulling from 50 different people who are just creating fan art, out of the love of it, and like, you know, if we lived in a just world would actually be getting 1000s or hundreds of $1,000 because they’re really making these beautiful things. And, and the AI that is pulling from it to create, you know, art for a “Wired” article. Right? Like, okay, I feel like, you know, “Wired” is doing better in that situation than the person. So I think it would be interesting to have some kind of, you know, canonical way of basically, ranking sort of thing: “Okay, AI, you can pull from this, because these people are fine, like pull, whatever you want from Disney, they’re fine”. They’re not going to suffer if I pulled together a bunch of Disney images. But this person over here in Kansas who’s like making, you know, 22 bucks an hour working at Home Depot. Yeah, maybe not that person. . That’ll be interesting, filtered, put on your AI and say, “Do not exploit” click, you know.
Per Axbom
It’s so interesting, going back to Beyonce.
David Thomas
Sure.
Per Axbom
So if we replicate her, and start making music with her voice, and you don’t realise it at first, that it’s not her. Does that matter to you?
David Thomas
Oh, yeah, that let me tell you about the embarrassing story of the very first album I bought. So I went to a record store with my mother or my grandmother, I think it was. And on vinyl, I bought this thing of like Olivia Newton John’s Greatest Hits, except what I didn’t realise what it said was “Sounds like Olivia Newton John”, and I got it home. And I’m like: “Oh, my God!” what is this? And I was so embarrassed. More than anything. I was embarrassed that I had made this mistake. So yeah, I think that’s a very big deal. And, again, well, I mean, here’s where we get into the nuances of at least American copyright law, which is this notion of fair use, and specifically one clause that has to do with is it transformative? Right? So the example you’re using, the less transformative it is, the more effective it is, because I don’t know the difference? Whereas with at least that piece of Fair Use law, I better be able to tell the difference. Otherwise, it’s not transformative. Like, if you didn’t transform it, then it’s going to look the same. So I think there’s a big difference between sampling Beyonce and adding her to some other collage you’re making, versus; “No, really, we’re going to make it sound exactly like her and make the, tell the AI to make a song like she would make. Like, I think there’s a little bit of a difference.
Per Axbom
So pulling this all into, back into UX design.
David Thomas
Oh, sure, if you must.
Per Axbom
So what becomes our responsibility as designers within this space? Thinking about power, as you said, but also about making people aware and acknowledge what’s going on? Because there’s so much going on now that we aren’t aware of.
David Thomas
I mean, I think that there’s a lovely thing on, I was looking at a Wikipedia entry for DJ Shadows and “Endtroducing” which is just a classic electronica like album. And at the end of it, it’s like for every song of it would show you what’s sampled. Because as I was listening to it, I was like: “Wait, is that from that John Carpenter movie? Oh my god!” Yeah, it is! Oh my God. I got that, you know. And again, John Carpenter is going to be fine. But I think is very important from a content perspective to be transparent. And say just like that little button, I can click that shows me the source code, on any web page I go to, it is important that I be able to see like showing your work, right? These are the different things that I used. Or if I go to an art museum, and I see a work, it’ll say, all the materials that were used, this is like, you know, oil on this canvas with these elements involved, bla, bla bla… I think it is in right relationship to the other artists that you relied on to create your work to show your work and say in as much detail as makes sense: “These are the artists that I’m lifting from here that that have influenced me, that are either directly or indirectly, like recognised here”.
And from that’s from a content perspective, and like, what do you want to reveal to the user from a UX perspective? Like, I’m not joking, when you’re building that AI? Start thinking about the filters you can use to differentiate for power, like participatory design and other sort of more modern forms of design are thinking very much about power and the design framework. And like, when is my research being being exploited? What is my design approach being exploitative, right? So are there things that I can build into the product itself, or into the tool itself, that account for that, or at least attempt to account for that?
So yeah, I would love to sort of have that kind of, you know, AI exercise of saying, I was actually joking with my friend about this the other day, like how many AI tools when they’re trying to create a norm are basically just pulling from a bunch of white people. Because when it looks at the web, and that’s most of what it’s going to see, because the web was built by a bunch of white people. And there’s therefore populated by much. So I was saying, like, can we create an AI that is effectively creating, you know, the black internet or the, the oppressed internet? Like it’s only tell to only pull from examples of people, like if you really want to be blunt, don’t put any white people in the sample, right? But pull from people who are the targets of oppression, and see what kind of results you get? Because that would be very interesting, right? I think you’d start to see a very different picture.
I think the closest we have to this now is when I do look at people who are the targets of repression, or who are artists. And I’m finding that they’re doing the most interesting things with tools like generative AI. So I have a friend Rashid, who’s doing this amazing work creating, like, you know, Stevie Wonder action figures and all this stuff using Mid Journey. Or like, like I just said, Laurie Anderson, who is clearly coming at this from a social justice lens as thinking about things like this incredible piece of a number of pieces she’s done around. A person who at 14 was sent to Guantanamo Bay after 9/11, like these really horrific stories, that if you just let an AI loose, would never find, but because she is coming from a very particular point of view, she was able to use these tools for very particular hands. I forget what the question was, but that’s a regard. Oh, oh the UX bit. So yeah, I want Laurie Anderson’s UX mind when we’re building these things, right? I want my friend Rashid’s mind, we’re building the UX part of this.
Per Axbom
But it’s really, be intentful, don’t be lazy. Yeah, don’t just swallow everything. Make sure that you know where you want to go.
David Thomas
And do it for a reason other than just making money, like doing back to ownership. It’s like, do it for a reason that’s thinking more about the commons and thinking more about reciprocity. I think that, reciprocity, I think is a fantastic UX lens that we just never use. Just to give you a small example, Sadie Red Wing did a podcast with an inclusive design. And one of the things she talks, she’s a Native American or indigenous designer, and one of the things she talks about is reciprocity as a concept and design. And so the example might be let’s say, I’m designing the printing press. I might design that and say: “Oh, we just made her first book, yay, ship it, right? We’re done”. Whereas she would say, okay, yeah, but we made that book using what? Trees? Okay, well, let’s plant a tree for every book we make. Now the design cycle is complete, right? So we never think giving back is not a step in the like, build, measure, learn, you know, iterative process. But wouldn’t it be great if it were build, measure, learn, give back, build, measure, learn, get back like that would be a really interesting step.
Per Axbom
Regeneration as the next step after sustainability?
David Thomas
Yes. Yeah, exactly. Well, I think that’s how you get to sustainability. Like, if you don’t plant another tree, you don’t get any more trees, therefore no more books.
James Royal-Lawson
Something we do not joke about, but we’ve discussed a few times, Per, just the whole speed at which the global Internet has forced us to look upon the concepts of countries and those countries laws and communities in a very different way. Because, you know, pre internet places were exotic. It was, how they did it over there. So on, there was lots of separation, for good or bad. But there were ways which meant you could, you could keep diversive parts just slightly far enough away, so they didn’t clash. Whereas the global Internet has meant we got a massive big pot of all of it all at once and we’re scaring it it constantly and spitting stuff out of it and shit’s happening. It doesn’t always look good, at the end of it all.
David Thomas
But it’s essentially that because I think that humans use tools, the way humans are going to use tools, because again, I was just something I was sitting out looking at Stockholm, and thinking about recent issues around immigration, and that not just y’all, but everywhere everyone is facing and how immigration is basically driving a lot of people to the far conservative, right and just getting literal Nazis or ex Nazis kind of like into power. And oh, my God borders are just silly. Borders, well, like what’s the point? Borders are so… Can you find me a good user story for a border that isn’t like really racist, right? And that thing with the internet really breaking that down? Like I think it’s gone in both directions. It’s on the one hand, it is introducing people to ideas about how people do it and other places. Other what I found is I need to physically go there for it to really hit home.
I had a vague, I just came back from Japan, they do it different in Japan, they do it in this very powerful collectivist, “let’s actually try being nice to each other” kind of way that blows my mind. Like I can read about it. But being there and in it is totally different. But what’s weird is because humans use tools the way they want to use them. The internet has been used as well to create and manifest and like just cycle these stories about oh, immigrants are dangerous. Right? Which, if you’ve ever met one or spent time with one odds are you are going to find that? No. They’re just like me. Like they have different cultures maybe like like me, they want to have like a safety and maybe a family and maybe food. Right? If I rely on the internet for that experience, what I am as likely to get for a number of reasons is stories that are more fear mongering. So in a weird way. The Internet made borders worse. I don’t know how it pulled it off. But because it wasn’t the internet, it was us. But we finally found a way to use the internet, which is borderless to make borders worse. So, humans man, I don’ty know.
James Royal-Lawson
Digital thing disconnected from the physical thing that didn’t fully reflect the physical thing. And you need to go to another cultures to experience them, like say, in Japan.
Per Axbom
That one feels like a “To be continued”.
David Thomas
You do not want to like, they’re in my part of just don’t get me started.
Per Axbom
Thank you so much, David. There were loads of fun, yeah.
Per Axbom
I have to say what I really, really appreciate about how David frames, all his topics, whatever he’s talking about, really. He’s so curious. So he’s just pulling information from all these different topic areas. And applying a systems thinking perspective. For me, he is one of those designers who is constantly looking at design from a systems perspective. So he’s seeing a fuller picture than the rest of us are, in a sense.
James Royal-Lawson
I wonder to whether he his own rules of collaborative conversation, even though what we didn’t that wasn’t arguably a collaborative conversation, not in the traditional sense of that. But his three rules, which he brought up in his talk at “From business to buttons” they’re just in mind all the time. Okay, now I’ve mentioned them again, I’ve got to say what they are. Neither of us have the answer. And neither of us will win. And we are here to create something new.
Per Axbom
And that’s just a wonderful way to approach any conversation really.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. And I think that’s what you mean, looking back, another systems thinking aspect, you mentioned that as well. But looking back at our conversation, he clearly has these deep rooted in his way of handling conversations.
Per Axbom
And for someone who’s written a book about cognitive bias, of course, he’s trying to eliminate bias in every way you can. So that’s essentially what he’s doing. And he’s even admitting to us about his bias about ownership in the beginning of the interview, and saying that well, now he was curious, and now he’s learning about well, there are different ways to look at ownership.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. Fascinating. Again, about ownership or something else that I’ve been thinking about, in reflection, after listening back to our interview with David is ownership versus availability. Now, in our chat, we do talk about the temporary nature of a lot of our ownership that we’re leasing where we’re renting, we’re borrowing things rather than actually owning them in the digital space. But it made me think about how sometimes what’s more important than the ownership is availability. That there are some things that we would balance or there would be a balance there, and we would prioritise, just having something possible to get hold off, rather than saying: “It’s mine”. And I suppose, I think with streaming music anyway, for me, I can see that there’s something very attractive about having all the world’s music instantly available for me to listen to, if I fancy listening to it. And that’s a different thing to me actually owning a set of records that are mine. I don’t know emotional thing. That’s a physical thing. But but the availability is very attractive in itself.
Per Axbom
Exactly. So what you said it made me think of, yes, I can feel something when I pick up a CD case, I have the artwork, I feel something emotionally because I’ve spotted at a specific time, and place probably, and I’ve listened to it in specific places as well. So it triggers something, but I’m not triggered in the same way, by scrolling down like a playlist in Spotify.
James Royal-Lawson
No, exactly. So the availability too, another example would be if I owned a streetlight, that was the I put a streetlight on the edge of my property to shine on the edge of my drive. And then you know, that’s going to that’s going to leak light onto the road next to it and even the properties next to it. I don’t need to own that streetlight, really, I mean, what’s most important there is that I have light available to me, this is why we end up with with, you know, government provided lighting, or Council provided lighting, whatever municipal lighting.
Per Axbom
The commons.
James Royal-Lawson
The availability, the common good aspect, availability is much more important than the ownership, we don’t need to own streetlights.
Per Axbom
When you want influence that you want influence over if there are streetlights or not.
James Royal-Lawson
Possibly, but ultimately, if something’s absolutely available, as to its absolute extreme, then then there will be always be lighting, street lighting in every place that you would ever need lighting to it.
Per Axbom
But now we can get into light pollution. And some places that don’t want it. So it’s still going to be complicated
James Royal-Lawson
Pulling back into the digital side of things. And yeah, I mean, the ultimate music streaming platform would be one streaming platform, because if there’s multiple platforms that reduces availability, because then you’d have to work out which platform something is available on. So you’d have one global platform with no fees,
Per Axbom
No fees for anyone.
James Royal-Lawson
No, no fees for anyone because it’s always available, and everyone was happy with this platform. We’re laughing already because we understand the ridiculousness of some of these things.
Per Axbom
At the same time, we’re joking about sometimes how artists don’t get paid when they are on Spotify. And David was alluding to this, of course, when he was talking about you pay instead you pay the maker, the Patreon type services. What you want to pay for is, for someone to keep making the stuff, not perhaps paying for the stuff they already made, but you want them to keep doing things.
James Royal-Lawson
Exactly you want to keep, like we alluded to, keep their time available for being creative. But then we do get into the whole as David did too, the capitalist side of it, or the kind of the desire to earn more shiny things, or more money or whatever you want, whatever drives you. You get past the point maybe where you have received enough to free up your time, and you start getting to wealth accumulation. And this could easily get very political now, Per, this discussion.
Per Axbom
It could really, but it also ties into what I brought up in the in show. And what he said towards the end about build, measure, learn and give back. So if we bring it into design perspective of actually realising how much what you were designing is costing in terms of social values and social efforts, and environmental costs, then there are so many ways in which you can also make sure that your efforts are paid back into all those costs.
James Royal-Lawson
And I think you can as a designer, help influence that ownership versus availability balance as well. You know, we don’t have to implement DRM in a way which stops you from having some long term ownership, but you can also make things available, so there’s a balance. And I think we can help find.
Per Axbom
I mean, as people are realising that they don’t own anything anymore, I think as people become aware, so with increased awareness, there will be new business models that actually accommodate these different types of ownership.
James Royal-Lawson
New business models, but also new solutions, which aren’t necessarily business models.
Per Axbom
Very nice, exactly.
James Royal-Lawson
This year, we are actually going to be at “From business to buttons” again.
Per Axbom
Yay, in May.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. And we will be recording more interviews with this year’s speakers and guests at “From business to buttons” here in Stockholm.
Per Axbom
On May 24th is when it’s happening. And speakers have been announced, workshops have been announced. I’m going to start reading from the webpage here. We’ve got Jason Mesut, we got Aarathi Krishnan and we’ve got Christina Joy Whittaker, we got Lou Downe, Sheryl Cababa and Chris Noessel, some of those people you’ve noticed, we have interviewed on this podcast before
James Royal-Lawson
And if you want me and Per, part of your next conference event or in-house training, then you can just get in touch and have a little chat to us about it and see if we can arrange something.
Per Axbom
Remember to keep moving.
James Royal-Lawson
See you on the other side.
[Music]
James Royal-Lawson
Why can’t rappers take holidays?
Per Axbom
I don’t know, James. Why can’t rappers take holidays?
James Royal-Lawson
They always forget to pack.
James Royal-Lawson
You see, you don’t know anything about music.
Per Axbom
I don’t get it.
James Royal-Lawson
No, you see, if you knew anything about, if you had some knowledge about music you’d understand Tupac.
Per Axbom
So it has to do with wrapping the music and packing something which has another meaning I guess.
James Royal-Lawson
Well, it’s a rap artist, Tupac.
Per Axbom
Oh, they forget Tupac.
James Royal-Lawson
You see, Tupac is a rap artist.
Per Axbom
Well yes, that I know about.
James Royal-Lawson
They forget Tupac. I shouldn’t have to explain.
This is a transcript of a conversation between James Royal-Lawson, Per Axbom, and David Dylan Thomas recorded in May 2023 and published as episode S02E10 (320) of UX Podcast.